Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

A Drawing for a $50 Luna & Stella Credit

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »

You know this blog is connected to my daughter’s birthstone-jewelry company Luna & Stella, right?

Well, today I am passing along a Luna & Stella promotion in case you would like to follow Suzanne’s company on Instagram and get a chance at a $50 gift card. As a Luna & Stella Instagram follower, you’ll also get $10 off your first order with Suzanne (use the code INSTA10).

If you are not already on Instagram, you can sign up here, https://instagram.com/.

I liked this day-in-the-life small business story that Suzanne put on Facebook today:

“A customer in Qatar who had special ordered our 14K gold Constellation Stacking Birthstone Rings for his wife to celebrate the arrival of baby due in November, emailed us on the way to the hospital last night: ‘The baby is coming now! Can we change the birthstone?’

“No problem, we said, we are always happy to make adjustments for babies who don’t arrive on schedule.

“In celebration of ‪#‎octoberbabies‬ everywhere, we are doing an ‪#‎IGgiveway‬. You can win a $50 credit to our store.

“To enter:
“1. Follow us on Instagram
“2. Tag a friend
“3. For an extra entry, tell us who is your moon & stars, and what piece you’d buy to represent them!

“That’s it! Giveaway will end on Tuesday 11/4 /15 at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.”

Photo shows the angel wing charm. See all the jewelry at Luna & Stella, here.

For angels only. Birthstone jewelry by Lunaandstella

Read Full Post »

Edible Classroom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2015| 2 Comments »

At the Guardian, teacher Steve Ritz tells Matthew Jenkin about how he began growing food in a troubled South Bronx school.

“The Green Bronx Machine was an accidental success. I wound up working at a very troubled high school in New York’s South Bronx district. It had a very low graduation rate and the bulk of my kids were special educational needs, English language learners, in foster care or homeless. It was dysfunctional to say the least.

“Someone sent me a box of daffodil bulbs one day and I hid them behind a radiator – I didn’t know what they were and figured they may cause problems in class. A while later … we looked behind the radiator and there were all these flowers. The steam from the radiator forced the bulbs to grow.

“That was when I realised that collectively and collaboratively we could grow something greater. We started taking over abandoned lots and doing landscape gardening, really just to beautify our neighbourhood. … We then moved on to growing food indoors in vertical planters around the school.

“By building an ‘edible wall’ to grow fresh vegetables in our science classroom, I gave the kids a reason to come to school. …

“Remarkably the plants grew. The kids really believe that they are responsible for them and attendance has increased from 43% to 93%. Students come to school to take care of their plants – they want to see them succeed. Along the way, the kids succeed, too.” More here.

Photo: Progressive Photos  
Steve Ritz gets students involved in the natural world. Attendance has more than doubled.

Read Full Post »

An Impossible Garden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 25, 2015| 2 Comments »

Artists love a challenge. Tell them it’s impossible and they’ll find a way to do it.

As Ralph Gardner Jr. writes for the Wall Street Journal, a good example may be found at one to the most polluted waterways in America, Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.

“What is it about the Gowanus Canal,” Gardner asks, “that attracts art and artists? I visited a bit more than a year ago and spotted some sort of homemade art project floating in the middle of the canal. It was as if the anonymous artist was saying, ‘Take that, Superfund site!’

“A far more ambitious project alighted [in late September], when Diana Balmori, a celebrated landscape architect and urban designer, oversaw the launch of a floating landscape at the foot of the Whole Foods parking lot that overlooks the canal.

“ ‘The reason we picked the Gowanus Canal is the attempt to show that plant material can clean water,’ Ms. Balmori explained. At the same time, she acknowledged, ‘We picked the hardest.’ …

“The floating island was to be filled with multiple tubes. In a poetic twist, the tubes were to be made of the same culvert pipe used to dump pollution and sewage into the canal.

“Perhaps even more poetically, the goal of the experiment was to test the viability of creating large-scale ‘edible’ islands in polluted urban rivers to serve as a food source. Some plants were to be irrigated with distilled water, others with captured rainwater, and a hearty few even with water directly from the canal. …

“I was told that a duck had laid an egg on some earlier iteration of the project. And indeed, we stood there admiring the island’s three monarch butterflies, a beleaguered species in recent years, flitting about the plants.”

More at the Wall Street Journal, here, but there may be a firewall. The author is highly skeptical about anyone ever eating plants from this island, but you can tell he has a grudging admiration for an optimistic artistic vision that insists on a better future.

Photo: Cassandra Giraldo for The Wall Street Journal

Read Full Post »

New England Photo Roundup

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2015| 6 Comments »

Time to share a few more pictures. The sunlit chestnut grows in Rhode Island. (I didn’t know chestnuts were around anymore.) The colorful dahlias are in John’s front yard.

The brick wall with shadows is in the Fort Point area of Boston. The decorated pillar is one of several opposite the Greenway. It’s called “Harbor Stripes” and is by Karen Korellis Reuther. The work on all the pillars was sponsored by the Design Museum, which, among other enterprises, promotes public art.

The colorful shield is at the Swedish consulate in Fort Point, where I went to pick up my granddaughter’s Swedish passport. She has dual citizenship. I had to show a letter from Erik and also his Swedish driver’s license. I collected a lot of brochures about Sweden and about upcoming Swedish  activities in the Boston area.

Wrapping up the photo presentation with more shadows.

101115-chestnut-New-Shoreham

101715-dahlias

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

101715-special-dahlias

 

 

 

 

102215-fort-point-brick-and-shadows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

102315-Design-Museum-likes-public-art

102315-Reuther-Harbor-Stripes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

102215-visiting-Swedish-consulate

101715-thru-the-shade

Read Full Post »

Man Builds Entertainment for Dogs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 23, 2015| 2 Comments »

The website “The Dodo: For the Love of Animals” recently posted about a man who built a little choo-choo train to give dogs rides.

Stephen Messenger writes, “Eugene Bostick may have officially retired about 15 years ago, but in some ways that was when his most impactful work began. Not long after, he embarked on a new career path of sorts — as a train conductor for rescued stray dogs. …

“Over the years, Bostick has taken in countless abandoned dogs. But more than just keeping them safe, he’s found an adorable way to keep them happy, too.

“While the rescued dogs have plenty of room to run and play on Bostick’s farm, the retiree thought it would nice to be able to take them on little trips to other places as well. That’s about the time he was inspired to build a canine-specific form of transportation just for them.

” ‘One day I was out and I seen this guy with a tractor who attached these carts to pull rocks. I thought, “Dang, that would do for a dog train,” ‘said Bostick. ‘I’m a pretty good welder, so I took these plastic barrels with holes cut in them, and put wheels under them and tied them together.’ And with that, the dog train was born. …

“The dog train has come to attract a fair share of attention among locals who occasionally stop to ask if they can take a few pictures. But for Bostick, it’s all about bringing a bit of joy to a handful of dogs who had been through so much before finding themselves as his cheerful passengers.”

Bostick tells Messenger, “Whenever they hear me hooking the tractor up to it, man, they get so excited, they all come running and jump in on their own. They’re ready to go.”

More.

Photo: Tiffany Johnson/Facebook

Read Full Post »

New England Factory Tours

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 22, 2015| 2 Comments »

I was hoping to have a factory tour to write about this fall, but when I went to the MeetUp page to register, it turned out New England Factory Tours was taking a break.

I like factory tours. I remember a tour of a lima bean packaging factory on Shelter Island, NY, when I was a kid, and a Kodak tour when Suzanne and John were little.

I have often referred to the lima bean factory when trying to explain to colleagues why a good publishing process involves doing things at the right time. You wouldn’t try to put the lima beans in the package after you had pasted the wrapper around it, and you shouldn’t make lots of changes to your original paper after it has been copyedited, laid out, and readied for press.

What I gleaned from Kodak was mainly how much got thrown away. It seemed wasteful, but the guide said it was cheaper to toss things. I’d like to see the lean manufacturing that’s more common today.

The Boston Globe‘s Jon Christian wrote about a trip to manufacturer Built-Rite, which makes automation systems for industrial tasks.It’s in Lancaster, Mass.

“Built-Rite is the fourth plant visited by the group of manufacturing enthusiasts known as New England Factory Tours. Inspired by a similar group in San Francisco, it is indicative of the cachet manufacturing has gained in recent years as a new generation of entrepreneurs known as makers turn their attention from software and services toward tangible products — from hardware to drones to smartwatches.

“The growth of this movement is underscored by the emergence of shared workspaces such as Artisan’s Asylum in Somerville, the home of startups such as 3Doodler, the maker of a 3-D printing pen, and Greentown Labs, also in Somerville, a hardware incubator that houses wind turbine developer Altaeros Energies, weather sensor maker Understory, and other firms. …

“In Massachusetts, manufacturing still employs about 250,000 people, paying average wages of about $80,000 a year compared with about $60,000 for all industries, according to state labor statistics. Most manufacturing in the state is so-called advanced manufacturing that uses sophisticated processes, makes sophisticated products, and requires highly skilled workers.” More.

I’m hoping the MeetUp organizer gets going again. A factory tour is something fun to do with kids and can make a lasting impression.

Photo: Kieran Kesner for The Boston Globe
During a tour of Built-Rite Tool & Die, president Craig A. Bovaird (center) spoke with tour organizer Chris Denney and visitor Erik Sobel, a principal at Technology Research Laboratories.

Read Full Post »

Grow a Better Head of Lettuce, and the World Will …

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 21, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Tim Faulkner at ecoRI has been covering Rhode Island’s newest food initiatives. Recently he wrote about the unusually advanced greenhouse of Boston Greens. in Kingstown.

“Lewis Valenti, CEO and founder of the greenhouse and the Boston Greens line of leafy green vegetables and herbs it produces, spent five years studying how to start a business that grows produce indoors and year-round. …

“The result is what Valenti describes as the most technologically advanced greenhouse in New England. The 8,400-square-foot glass barn relies on advanced computer programs to manipulate light, feeding and humidity.

“All plants are fed a fertilizer-rich water that recirculates in a system of troughs at the base of the plants, a process known as hydroponic growing. The water alone goes through several filters and processes that strip it of minerals and all non-water elements. A nutrient mix is then reintroduced before it is fed through the hydroponic system.

“The benefits are an ability to control the nutrients in the plants and increase their overall health benefits. There are no pests and therefore no need for pesticides or herbicides, according to Valenti. The process conserves water, using 1,200 gallons a day compared to 28,000 gallons for a comparable outdoor field, according to Valenti. The yield is higher, too. The greenhouse will grow 250,000 heads of lettuce throughout the year, producing the equivalent of a 4-acre farm. …

“So far, the $1.3 million project has been privately funded, and it’s already generating revenue. All future harvests of lettuces and herbs have been pre-sold to a handful of restaurants and eight grocery stores in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

“Valenti, who went to college in Rhode Island and keeps a home in East Greenwich, said Rhode Island is a foodie state with top restaurants, culinary schools and a burgeoning agricultural movement. But with limited space for farmland, the new greenhouse is the best way to keep the local food movement sustainable while creating jobs, he said.

“ ‘I can’t think of a better place to grow food than Rhode Island,’ Valenti said.”

More here.

Photo: Tim Faulkner/ecoRI News photos
The new greenhouse is expected to grow 250,000 heads of lettuce annually.

Read Full Post »

A Mural That Speaks

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 20, 2015| 2 Comments »

111315-Lawrence-Weiner-artistLawrence Weiner discusses art in Dewey Square.

The latest Greenway mural in Dewey Square comes courtesy of MIT’s List gallery and is the work of Lawrence Weiner.  I admit to liking it even though it seems to be nothing more than bright orange letters on a blue background, with words saying, “A translation from one language to another.”

I am letting it sink in. Perhaps it’s about the translation from the artist’s idea to a work that others see. Perhaps something is lost in the translation. Perhaps it’s about how differently we understand one another, even without so-called language barriers.

Here’s what the Greenway writes, “Lawrence Weiner is considered a key figure in the Conceptual Art movement, which includes artists like Douglas Huebler, Robert Barry, Joseph Kosuth, and Sol LeWitt.

“A primary motivating factor behind Weiner’s work is the desire to make it accessible, without needing to purchase a ticket or understand a secret visual language. He contended that language reaches a broader audience, and situating language in contexts outside traditional art-viewing settings, such as art museums, furthers that reach.

“Thus, he began creating works consisting of words and sentences or sentence fragments that he displayed in public spaces, books, films, and other accessible media, as opposed to the cultural institutions that might deter broad and diverse viewership. Click here for an interview with Lawrence Weiner.” More at the Greenway site.

Malcolm Gay at the Boston Globe adds, “For Weiner, the work is less about art historical knowledge, outrage, or relating to other people. It’s about a viewer’s individual response to an object in the world — an object that’s been created by another person.

“ ‘Our job is not to throw things at people,’ he said. ‘The work doesn’t exist unless somebody decides to deal with it. You can pass it on your way work, and it’s not going to screw up your day. But if you pay attention to it, it might screw up your life.’ ”

092515-dewey-sq-list-gallery-mural

092515-Lawrence-Weiner

Read Full Post »

Missing Muralist Found Baking Pies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 19, 2015| Leave a Comment »

When the MBTA subway system decided to rebuild the stop called Government Center a couple years ago, it began a search for the artist who created the original murals there to see if she would like them back, and if not, if she would be OK with selling them.

It wasn’t easy to find her.

As Malcolm Gay writes at the Boston Globe, she was baking pies as part-owner of the Pie Place Café in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

“ ‘I got a phone call one day,’ [Mary] Beams explained, ‘and a voice I didn’t know said, “How does it feel to know that all of Boston is looking for you?” I had no idea what to say.’

“Beams, it turned out, hadn’t disappeared at all. An animator who had been a teaching assistant at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, and whose work has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, she’d simply left the art world …

“With her blessing, the MBTA plans to hold an online public auction of the artworks, giving Bostonians a chance to own a piece of the city’s history.

“The online auction and display of murals will run Oct. 20-29, with a kick-off event at the state Transportation Building at 10 Park Plaza on Oct. 21. … The event will be something of a homecoming for Beams, who left Boston soon after completing the murals. She has never been back.

“ “I am so curious to see them again,’ she said. ‘I’ve gone on and lived this whole other life. But to be able to confront something that you made 35 years ago and ponder what they’ve been through? It’s quite amazing.’ ”

Pictures of the murals — and more information on the artist — here.

Mural by Mary Beams, for sale at Skinner

Read Full Post »

Peacetime Drones

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 18, 2015| 2 Comments »

Martin Del Vecchio narrates his beautiful drone shots of Gloucester, Mass.

As Greg Cook writes at WBUR’s show the Artery, drones have as many uses as human creativity can devise, some good, some not so good.

He focuses on the photography and art applications. “In April, a graffiti artist going by the name KATSU used a customized drone to (illegally) scrawl paint high up on a Manhattan billboard that had been thought inaccessible to taggers. A video posted to YouTube in March, shows a bicyclist riding high up along a cliff in (according to the post) Sedona, Arizona. People have brought back astonishing footage from flying drones into fireworks and active volcanoes.

“Video by video, drones are transforming how we see the world — and this new view is changing how we understand the world.

“ ‘It’s not a fad,’ says Randy Scott Slavin, founder of the New York City Drone Film Festival. ‘Flying cameras are here to stay for sure. Because the perspective they get is great.’ …

“[Slavin] fell for drones when he got a Phantom a few years back. ‘I would shoot everywhere I went. Every time I went on vacation, I would shoot,’ he says. ‘Before I knew it, I started showing it to some of my director friends and they were like, “Shoot for me.” ‘ ”

Helen Greiner, CEO of Massachusetts-based Drone maker CyPhy Works says, “You’re just seeing the world the way a bird sees.” More here.

Photo: Greg Cook/WBUR
As drones have become cheaper and easier to fly, many people, like Martin Del Vecchio of Gloucester, are exploring the creative possibilities.

Read Full Post »

Shop Local Despite Construction

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2015| 5 Comments »

Massachusetts Avenue in East Arlington is shrinking. After contentious debate, the town decided to widen the sidewalks, add barrier islands in the street, and new plantings and benches.

The job is not done, but in spite of construction and less room for vehicles, the traffic doesn’t seem to have increased — one of those counterintuitive results that designers tout. The goal is to make the street more pedestrian and bike friendly and allow more community activities on sidewalks. Through the tree committee, John has been involved with the beautification side of things.

One of the issues that gets raised when a major disruption like this is afoot is the effect on small businesses. Neighbors are making a point of shopping local, hoping that Arlington merchants won’t suffer.

And to make sure residents don’t forget how important that is, there is an amusing signage campaign — signs saying that “Businesses are [fill in the blank] during Construction.”

For example, “Businesses are Opalescent during Construction.” Other Mad-Libs-type adjectives used are Quirky, Colorific, Radiant, Prismatic, Harmonic, Niblicious, and Excellent.

Below, I include a couple of the signs. And I tried to show how the project is coming along — the wide sidewalk, the plantings, the bench. I look forward to seeing how the residents begin to make use of their new public spaces.

091915-shop-local-despite-construction

101715-support-small-biusiness

101715-bump-out-sidewalk

101715-widening-the-walk

101715-wider-walk-allows-benches

Read Full Post »

Business Opportunities in Captured Carbon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 16, 2015| 2 Comments »

I’ve been learning a lot lately from reading ecoRI’s Tim Faulkner. Recently he wrote about entrepreneurial approaches to taking carbon out of the atmosphere. He notes that one of the more ironic opportunities, according to Thorne Sparkman of investor Slater Technology Fund, is through the oil and gas industry, which uses CO2 in extraction and now can at least bury it instead of releasing it.

“Finding ways of supplying some [CO2] from existing carbon sources is a one of the main markets in the emerging, and broadly defined, field of carbon capture and storage (CCS),” writes Faulkner.

“ ‘CO2 is everywhere, but it has not really been harnessed,’ said Emily Cole, co-founder of Liquid Light, a New Jersey-based startup that wants to reduce greenhouse gasses by transforming carbon dioxide into industrial chemicals. …

“Enhanced Energy Group of West Kingstown is also looking at cutting emissions from the oil and gas industry, while increasing production. Its founder, Paul Dunn, spent 25 years designing engines for the Navy, some of which were emissions free.  He’s now building power sources that sequester CO2 before it vents into the air. …

“Bioprocess Algae is converting unwanted CO2 into algae for fish and animal feed, and as nutritional supplements. The company recently relocated its headquarters from Portsmouth, R.I., to Shenandoah, Iowa, to be closer its CO2 supply source, a corn-fueled ethanol plant.”

Chief technology officer Toby Ahrens says that sequestering carbon dioxide in algae may not have large-scale prospects, but so far, it is one of the few profitable opportunities in this arena. More at ecoRI, here.

Photo: iStock
Trees are one way to sequester carbon.

Read Full Post »

New England Cottontail Said to Rebound

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Is the New England cottontail no longer in trouble? I guess, as David Abel suggests at the Boston Globe, it depends on who you talk to.

“The threatened New England cottontail — the region’s only native rabbit, made immortal in The Adventures of Peter Cottontail [by Thorton Burgess] — appears to be making a comeback.

“Federal wildlife officials [are] removing the cottontail from the list of candidates to be named an endangered species. It’s the first time any species in New England has been removed from the list as a result of conservation efforts. …

“Wildlife officials said the bark-colored rabbits, which have lost nearly 90 percent of their dwelling areas to development, are benefiting from an increasing effort to protect their habitat. …

“The rabbit, which has perky ears and a tail that looks like a puff of cotton, has been the victim of development that has wiped out most of the region’s young forests. … Unlike its abundant cousin, the Eastern cottontail, the New England species relies on the low-lying shrubs of young forests for food and protection from predators, such as raptors, owls, and foxes. …

“Some environmental advocates worry that the federal government may be acting prematurely in removing [New England cottontails] from the list of candidates for endangered status …

“It has never been easy to galvanize concern for the cottontails, given how much they look like the nonnative Eastern cottontails. Those rabbits, brought to the region by trappers in the 19th century, have flourished because they have better peripheral vision than the native bunnies …

“ ‘People think they’re everywhere,’ Scott Ruhren, director of conservation for the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, said of the local cottontails. ‘But like every species, they are important and deserve a place on the New England landscape.’ ” More here.

Update January 10, 2019: More good news at EcoRI, here. If zoos can do more this sort of wildlife restoration, they will go a long way toward justifying their existence to opponents.

Photo: Mark Lorenz for The Boston Globe
A New England cottontail bred in a refuge in Newington, N.H., was penned Thursday in advance of its release.

Read Full Post »

Airport Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 14, 2015| 6 Comments »

It took a little poking around on the web as neither the Rhode Island State Arts Council nor the Block Island Airport seem to have published any information on the airport’s new exhibit, but I can finally share some tidings of artist Neal Personeus.

From Cape Scapes: “Neal began his interest in driftwood sculptures as a young boy on the beaches of North Truro in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. His original works were typically pirate ships in the sand made from the various flotsam and jetsam that Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic Ocean would return to the land. By the time he was in his early teens, his works began to change towards wharf scenes and typical seaside shops perched upon interesting driftwood base pieces.

“When Neal was in his early twenties, he became an architectural and engineering draftsman. He rented a beachside cottage with some friends during the summer of 1984, and spent the entire vacation working beachside on his sculptures while watching the Olympics. It was during this time that he honed in on the type of works he would ultimately settle upon. Utilizing his interest in architecture, he would scour the beaches and dunes for beautifully bleached and unusually shaped base pieces, and then picture the style of house that would blend into and compliment the environment of the base piece.” More here.

You can find lots of Neal’s work on Pinterest if you search on Neal Personeus. And check out this Warwick Museum of Art poster featuring the piece called “Yeah … but the view” here.

Art: Neal Personeus
This humorous piece, currently in an exhibit of Personeus sculptures at the Block Island Airport, is called “Yeah … but the view.”

Read Full Post »

Grow Salad in the Entertainment Cabinet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Rupa Shenoy had an interesting story on WGBH radio recently. It was about local startups interested in urban farming. I wrote previously about Higher Ground Farm, situated on top of the Design Center in South Boston, but Grove Labs, with its use of LED lighting for indoor gardening, was new to me.

Shenoy says, “Some of these new entrepreneurs are thinking big. Jamie Byron and Gabe Blanchet graduated from MIT and started Grove Labs two years ago with the idea to make every living room a potential growing space. …

“Their product is a cabinet that allows people to grow fruits and vegetables year-round in the home. It’s connected to the internet, controlled by an app on your phone, and designed to make urban farming easy and engaging.

“There are a few models set up in a space at Greentown Labs in Somerville, which they share with other startups. Each wooden cabinet, with several components, is about the size of an entertainment center.

“At the heart of the cabinet system is a fish swimming in a tank. The waste from that fish is sucked into tubes and converted into nitrate fertilizer. The fertilizer is pumped around the cabinet to trays filled with brown clay pebbles. That’s where the fruits and vegetables grow, with the pebbles serving as soil. Byron says once you get the system up and running, you can harvest enough for about two small salads everyday.” More at WGBH.

For more on using fish to fertilize your produce, see my recent post about an experiment in Duluth, here.

Photo: Rupa Shenoy / WGBH News
Somerville startup Grove Labs plans to sell cabinets for growing produce in your home.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »