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Indonesia’s Green School

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

And speaking of schools that develop a love of the natural world, check out this story from the radio show Living on Earth.

“On the other side of the world, in the tourist paradise of Bali, there’s a school that the U.S. Green Building Council named the greenest school on Earth for 2012. It’s called the Green School, and it educates some 300 students from 25 different countries. Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb went to check out what’s so green about the school.”

Among the people he spoke with was Charis Ford, director of communications for the Green School.

“BOBBY BASCOMB: It rains a lot in Bali. Humidity and bugs typically destroy a bamboo structure in about 4 years, but the Green School buildings should survive 20 years or more.

“CHARIS FORD: We use treated bamboo, but it’s been treated with salt essentially. We heat water and we submerge the bamboo poles into the saltwater and it makes the bamboo unpalatable to termites and mold and funguses and other things that would biodegrade the bamboo. …

“FORD: All the building companies that he spoke with were like well, ‘You have to have walls. All schools have to have walls,’ and John [Hardy, a Canadian jewelry designer who moved to Bali in the 1970s and founded the school] said, ‘Why do they have to have walls?”’ They rubbed their chins and scratched their heads and said, “’Well, where are the kids going to hang the art?’ As it turns out, you don’t have to have walls. And we don’t have walls and we’re quite happy about it.

“BASCOMB: Just outside the classroom, a chicken wanders through a patch of green beans. Gardens are everywhere, integrated throughout the campus. They mimic a natural forest ecosystem using edible plants, a design called permaculture.

“FORD: When you wander around Green School’s campus, you might think it looks kind of like it’s wild, but then as you tune in and look at the plants that you’re around, you’ll see that that’s a bean trellis, and that’s a guava tree, and that’s ginger. Even though it looks like a jungle setting, you get a little closer and you see that’s chocolate — cacao pods — hanging from a tree next to you.” Lots more here. You also can listen to the recording of the radio interview.

Photo: Mark Fabian
On extremely hot days a canvas envelope can be pulled around a wall-less Green School classroom so cool air can be piped in to keep kids comfortable. 

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Woodsy Nursery School in London

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2014| 2 Comments »

As a kid of 10 or so, I played in the woods, frequently all alone. It was magical.

As an adult, I wonder if it’s no longer considered safe. I don’t ever hear of children playing in the woods. That’s why I was interested to read about a growing movement called Forest Schools.

Siobhan Starrs writes for the Associated Press, “In the heart of north London lies the ancient Queens Wood, a green forest hidden away in a metropolis of more than 8 million residents. The sounds of the city seem to fade away as a group of children plays in a mud kitchen, pretending to prepare food and saw wood.

“These aren’t toddlers on a play date — it’s an unusual outdoor nursery school, the first of its kind in London, following a trend in Scandinavia, Germany and Scotland. It allows local children to learn, and let their imagination run free, completely surrounded by nature. …

“Each morning a group of children gather at the Queens Wood camp, which the nursery team prepares each morning before the children arrive. A circle of logs provides a place to gather for snacks, stories and songs. The mud kitchen provides an opportunity to make a proper mess and have a sensory experience, a rope swing provides some excitement and a challenge, and several tents are set up for naps and washing up.

“In a clearing in the woods, a fallen tree trunk can be transformed by imagination into a rocket train, calling at the beach and the moon, with leaves for tickets.

“A 2-year-old, Matilda, finds a stick — but in her mind it’s not a stick. It’s a wand. She says she is a magic fairy who can fly. Then suddenly the stick has become a drum stick, and a gnarled tree stump her drum. She taps away contentedly, the rhythm all her own.” Read more here.

Speaking of fallen tree trunks, I particularly remember a big tree that fell in the forest after a storm and the fun a friend and I had making up stories on it.

Photo: Matt Dunham/AP
Forest schools are increasing in popularity in the United Kingdom.

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A Holiday for Every Day of the Year

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 2, 2014| 2 Comments »

According to the website Days of the Year, today was Custodial Worker Day. I learned this by following a link at an Andrew Sullivan post.

Andrew quotes Megan Garber at the Atlantic, who writes, “Micro-holidays, which teeter somewhere in the center of the continuum between universality and irrelevancy, are political. They do what all holidays will, in the end: convene our attention around a cause. But they are different from official holidays in one crucial way: They are opt-in. …

“They’re about finding communities of like minds within the social chaos of the Internet. Every year, people will discover delightfully nerdy new ways to celebrate National Grammar Day – and they will do that in part because they are self-identified grammar nerds. Who are sharing a thing with other self-identified grammar nerds. … It says something, also, about what they want to share as people.”

By the way, Friday is Boyfriends Day, Virus Appreciation Day, and two other special days. Saturday has six micro-holidays, including World Card Making Day, Ship in a Bottle Day, and Taco Day.

You can sign up here to be notified about what each new day brings to celebrate.

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Danny Kaye Lullaby

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2014| 2 Comments »

John found a sweet little video clip of the 1955 Danny Kaye film The Court Jester featuring my favorite lullaby.

I often sing “I’ll Take You Dreaming” to my grandchildren, and I sang it to John when he was a baby and to Suzanne. (A pre-verbal Suzanne used to make a squeaking noise when I came to the word “dreaming,” and I finally figured out she thought the word was “screaming.”)

The YouTube video refused to embed, try as I might, and as I poked around the web for another video, I came on some information about Danny Kaye, who was hilarious in that movie. I never saw my mother laugh so hard. The lullaby was one of the few quiet places.

“Danny Kaye left school at the age of 13 to work in the so-called Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains. It was there he learned the basics of show biz. From there he went through a series of jobs in and out of the business. In 1939, he made his Broadway debut in Straw Hat Revue, but it was the stage production of the musical Lady in the Dark in 1940 that brought him acclaim and notice from agents.”

Oh, boy, I saw a production of Lady in the Dark in the 1980s at the Boston Conservatory. What a show!

“Samuel Goldwyn had been trying to sign Kaye to a movie contract for two years before he eventually agreed. Goldwyn put him in a series of Technicolor musicals, starting with Up in Arms (1944). His debut was successful, and he continued to make hit movies such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and The Inspector General (1949). In 1954, he appeared with Bing Crosby in White Christmas (1954), which was based on the Irving Berlin song of the same name. In 1955, he made what many consider his best comedy, The Court Jester (1955). …

“He also worked tirelessly for UNICEF.” More at IMDb.

You can find the lullaby scene on YouTube. I thought the sound quality was best here.

Studio publicity photo of actor and comedian Danny Kaye. 

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Farm to Table Banquet in Upstate New York

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2014| 4 Comments »

I’ve written a couple times about Sandy and Pat’s niece, who graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and went into farming in a serious way. My most recent post is here.

On Saturday, Sandy and Pat went to Letterbox Farm in Hudson, New York, to see their niece and enjoy a magnificent farm-to-table spread.

The original invitation said, “The meal is in motion.  Meats from the farm are curing in Ko’s kitchen.  Our beekeeper is spinning honey from the combs, and the blue corn is waiting at the mill.  Will you join us in the fields for an incredible feast?

“The culinary team at Momofuku Ko joins the Letterbox farmers to host a celebratory evening of dinner and drinks.

“The night begins with farm-made sodas and cocktails in the garden, complete with bar snacks and live music.  In our silent auction, guests can bid for offerings from bee hive installations to garden consultations or a night on the town, provided by farmers and friends.  Before dusk arrives, we will move to the hillsides for dinner and sunset views of the Catskill Mountains.

“All proceeds from this event go to support the farm as it puts down permanent roots on new land.”

I wish I could show you all the wonderful photos of the event I just received, but I think you’ll enjoy this sampling. Note the roasted beets on greens and the elegant pork, marinated for two weeks in a marinade featuring sumac.

Photos: Sandra M. Kelly

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Science Fair Project Makes Waves

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 29, 2014| Leave a Comment »

John sent a link to a story at Business Insider about a science fair project that could have a real impact on the environment.

Jessica Orwig writes, “This 13-year-old is trying to save the world one ecosystem at a time. Chythanya Murali, an eighth grader from Arkansas, has created a safe, effective, non-conventional method to clean oil spills, by harnessing the cleaning properties of bacteria — specifically the enzymes they use to break down oil particles. These enzymes disassemble oil molecules, making way for the bacteria to convert it into harmless compounds. …

“In 2012, a study found a chilling discovery about the oil-cleaning agents dispersed in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. When combined with the oil itself, the resulting mixture was 52 times more toxic to small animals like plankton than oil alone. …

” ‘My inspiration for this project began [from] the immense damage caused by the BP oil spill in early 2010.’

“To improve oil-cleaning methods, Murali designed a science fair project that explored the different mixtures of oil-eating enzymes and oil-breaking-down bacterias, to see how they effect the marine environment.

” ‘The combination of bio-additive enzymes and oil-degrading bacteria as a novel combination for short and long-term cleaning, and its effect on ecosystems, was not explored before,’ Murali told Business Insider.

“So it only seemed natural to Murali to combine the two and see what happened. She discovered that in a small-scale aquarium, the combination of her chosen oil-cleaning agents could help remove oil while preserving the health of the overall ecosystem, something that some of the oil-cleaning agents we use today cannot achieve.” Read more here.

Kids are going to save the world, I think.

Photo: Chythanya Murali
Chythanya Murali with her science fair poster.

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Transylvanian Totem Pole at Church

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 28, 2014| Leave a Comment »

OK, it’s not really a totem pole, but I was afraid the word kopjafa wouldn’t ring any bells with readers.

Today at church we dedicated a wooden pole that was carved by the minister of our sister church in Transylvania when he visited Massachusetts last year.

A translated Wikipedia entry says that, originally, two kopjafa poles were to used to carry a coffin to a cemetery. The poles were then placed at the head and foot of the mound. But according to my minister, nowadays kopjafa poles are set outside churches and, as in our case, sometimes given to a partner church.

The minister read the poem below as he spoke about our church’s connection to Transylvanians of the (almost) same religion. The subject is a little sad for what we do at Suzanne’s Mom’s Blog, but it fits with our previous discussions about the value of preserving language and customs in minority communities. (Hungarian Transylvania was handed over to Romania after World War I, and has had some challenges, starting with language challenges.)

“Leave, if you can …
“Leave, if you think,
“That somewhere, anywhere in the world beyond
“It will be easier to bear your fate.
“Leave …
“Fly like a swallow, to the south,
“Or northward, like a bird of storm,
“And from high above in the wide skies
“Search for the place
“Where you can build a nest,
“Leave, if you can.
“Leave if you hope
“Against hope that homelessness
“Is less bitter abroad than at home.
“Leave, if you think
“That out in the world
“Memory will not carve new crosses from
“Your soul, from that sensitive
“Living tree.”

Read about the poem’s author, Hungarian poet Sandor Remenyik, here.

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Reasons to Be a Tree Hugger

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Boston architecture firm IKD.
Designer Timothy Olson, material supplier Fraserwood/Mack Magee. The wood is cypress. “The presence of natural materials such as wood is associated with lower stress and positive feelings.”

There’s a great exhibit about using wood in construction at the Boston Society of Architects on Congress St. in Boston, but only until Tuesday, September 30.

I was surprised to learn that nowadays it is actually possible — and maybe even safer — to use wood for city buildings.

According to the BSA website, the timber “exhibition celebrates wood as the region’s most sensible and abundant choice of material for urban building, highlighting its flexibility and technical qualities, including timber’s potential to combat climate change.

“Yugon Kim, founding partner of IKD, Associate/Director of TSKP Boston, and co-curator of the exhibition explains, ‘We now know that timber is a superior structural building material that should be considered alongside steel and concrete. The carbon offset and sustainability benefits of wood make it an ever-relevant and timely building material in the urban landscape.’

” ‘Urban Timber: From Seed to City’ shows that recent developments — including numerous successful implementations of timber as primary structural for midrise buildings in Europe — point to a different future.

“The exhibition includes a number of case studies, examples of existing wood technology and recent material innovations in the many kinds of engineered timber available to the building industry today.”

Read more about the exhibit here.

Meanwhile, at Andrew Sullivan’s blog (here), we find a quote from James Hamblin about why trees are good for our health: “It is becoming increasingly clear that trees help people live longer, healthier, happier lives—to the tune of $6.8 billion in averted health costs annually in the U.S., according to research published this [year]. And we’re only beginning to understand the nature and magnitude of their tree-benevolence.

“In the current journal Environmental Pollution, forester Dave Nowak and colleagues found that trees prevented 850 human deaths and 670,000 cases of acute respiratory symptoms in 2010 alone. That was related to 17 tonnes of air pollution removed by trees and forests, which physically intercept particulate matter and absorb gasses through their leave.”

More from Hamblin at the Atlantic.

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Crowdfunding of a Potato Salad

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 26, 2014| 6 Comments »

ICYMI (that’s twitter-speak for “in case you missed it”), a young man who decided to go on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise money to buy ingredients for one small potato salad got more than $55,000.

According to the Associated Press, “A man who jokingly sought $10 from a crowdfunding website to pay for his first attempt at making potato salad and ended up raising $55,000 is making good on his promise to throw a huge party.

“Zack Brown is planning PotatoStock 2014, an all-ages, charity-minded party Saturday in downtown Columbus featuring bands, food trucks, beer vendors, potato-sack races, and definitely potato salad.

“His effort on Kickstarter in early July to buy potato salad ingredients took on a life of its own and attracted worldwide attention as the amount grew.

“The 31-year-old eventually raised $55,492. The Idaho Potato Commission and corporate sponsors have donated supplies for Brown and volunteers to whip up 300 pounds of potato salad for the event.

“The Columbus Dispatch reported that Brown partnered with the Columbus Foundation to start an endowment to aid area charities that fight hunger and homelessness. The account, started with $20,000 in postcampaign corporate donations, will grow after proceeds from PotatoStock are added.” More here.

By golly, I do love quirky.

Photo: Chris Russell/The Columbus Dispatch via AP
Zack Brown’s PotatoStock 2014, an all-ages, charity-minded party, is set for Saturday in Columbus, Ohio.

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Meadowscaping, Cont’d

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

In June I wrote (here) about my friend Jean Devine’s latest venture, “Meadowscaping for Biodiversity.” Jean hoped to get middle-grade kids involved in creating a meadow where once there was lawn juiced with chemicals — and learning how meadows provide habitat for many small creatures. She conducted a pilot program over the summer with her collaborator Barbara Passero and an 8th grade science teacher, Steve Gordon.

Jean e-mails her friends and fans, “We’re delighted to announce that our 8-week summer pilot of “Meadowscaping for Biodiversity” in Waltham, MA, was a great success! The three of us, along with a strong soil turner and a landscape designer, worked with a few boy scouts (and their mothers) to repurpose a 400 square foot plot on the east lawn of Christ Church Episcopal (750 Main St. across from the Waltham Public Library) into a meadow filled with native plants.

“Why did we do this? To engage youth in fun, project-based, outdoor education, while providing native plants as habitat — especially food source — for bees, caterpillars, butterflies, birds, etc.

“The end result? An aesthetically pleasing product and proof that Meadowscaping for Biodiversity, a generative/environmental education program, pays a solution forward to the next generation by inspiring, engaging, and empowering students to be problem solvers and stewards of the Earth. All involved, including the vendors who supplied plants and garden materials, were able to see that this program helps heal the Earth and improve outdoor educational opportunities for youth ‘one meadow at a time.’ Now all we have to do is convince funders, teachers, city planners etc. of the benefits of this program!”

If you fit any of those categories or just want to learn more, contact information is here.

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Third Giant Mural in Dewey Square

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 24, 2014| 2 Comments »

I blogged about the two previous murals in Dewey Square, here, and now there is a third one. The first two were by artists who had shows at the nearby Institute for Contemporary Arts (the ICA). The new one is by an artist associated with the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA).

According to Geoff Edgers at the Boston Globe, Jill Medvedow, ICA director, was not pleased that the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy chose a different museum. “Really?” she said. “It’s walking distance to the ICA.”

WBUR radio’s “The Artery” covers more of the story: “Shinique Smith, the creator of the latest work, recalls seeing pictures on the Internet of that earlier mural by the Brazilian twins Os Gemeos. Standing in the grass below her piece, she told me she thought the wall was amazing, ‘and I wanted to do something like them.’ ” More here.

In case you’re wondering, Smith didn’t stand there painting it all herself like the Os Gemeos twins who did the first mural. Instead she gave a kind of map to skilled painters from a company that does this sort of thing, translating a smaller work into a giant one.

I took four photographs of the progress.

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Scavenging in Waste Sites

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2014| 2 Comments »

In her comment at my post about artists returning a discarded museum to life, KerryCan wondered if all the old, weird museum collections ended up at the dump. All is not lost if they did, as dumps seem to attract amateur archaeologists with a nose for uncovering treasures.

Eve Kahn wrote recently in the NY Times about collectors who look for terra cotta shards in the Staten Island landfill and poke around promising demolition sites.

“This summer, true shard collectors [led] me into the weedier parts of the Northeast, where slag heaps and demolition debris survive from the long vanished factories that once thrived.

“These particular experts are interested in manufacturers of windowpanes and architectural ornament. They write books and lead tours, but they also pack their homes and workplaces with excavated artifacts from what seems to be a limitless supply. Anyone can follow in their trail and gain an understanding of American ingenuity as well as accumulate booty for gardens and windowsills or even more ambitious art projects.

“You must stay off private property, of course, but I also recommend that you avoid the comical errors that I made on my early expeditions. … I was so bedazzled by glass that I was about to sit down with shards in my front pockets.”

More on Kahn’s scavenging adventures, here. You might also like the blog “Tiles in New York,” here.

Photo: Agaton Strom for The New York Times
Tina Kaasman-Dunn searching for terra cotta shards on Staten Island.

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Growing Food from the Home Country

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Martha Bebinger had a great story at WBUR recently. It’s about an immigrant from Burundi with a mission.

“There were still drops of dew on the stalks of thick, spear-shaped leaves Fabiola Nizigiyimana slashed and tossed into a box one early morning.

“ ‘We call them lenga lenga, in our language,’ she said, laughing the words. “They are [a] green.’

“The 40-year-old single mother of five farms a one-acre plot in Lancaster. She’s one of 232 farmers who share the 40-acre Flats Mentor Farm. Last year, Nizigiyimana helped found a co-op that teaches farmers, many of whom can’t read or write in English or their native tongue, how to turn their plots into a business.

“They get help with packaging and selling their goods to local restaurants, ethnic food stores and farmers’ markets, many of them creating budgets and balance sheets for the first time.

“Nizigiyimana [was] honored for her work … at a White House ceremony after being selected as one of 15 USDA Champions of Change, who represent the next generation of farmers and ranchers.”

Read about all that this optimistic, cheerful woman has overcome and what challenges lie ahead for her business here.

Photo: Martha Bebinger/WBUR
Fabiola Nizigiyimana helped found a co-op that teaches farmers how to turn their plots into a business.

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Artists Return Discarded Museum to Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2014| 4 Comments »

No matter how bad things get in the great world, there will always be someone who starts a quirky, individualistic project just for the love of it, reassuring us all.

In Providence recently, a few folks got together to resurrect an abandoned natural history museum partly to see what an early museum looked like, partly because it was a shame to throw it all out.

In the NY Times, Henry Founatain wrote,  “If museums are meant to preserve objects forever, then forever ended here in 1945.

“That year, Brown University’s natural history museum, which included multitudes of animal skeletons and specimens among its 50,000 items, as well as anthropological curiosities like rope made from human hair, was thrown away.

“It was a sad end to what had been a labor of love for John Whipple Potter Jenks, a Brown alumnus, taxidermist and naturalist who founded the teaching museum in 1871.

“But Jenks had died in 1894 — on the steps of the museum, no less — and what by then was known as the Jenks Museum fell into disarray. It was shuttered in 1915, and the objects were scattered or stored until most of them were hauled, in 92 truckloads, to a nearby dump in 1945.

“But now the Jenks Museum lives again, at least temporarily, in an exhibition that is as much about art as it is about science.

“A group of Brown graduate students, with help from a faculty adviser and a New York artist, has rounded up a few surviving odds and ends, commissioned artists to recreate some of the vanished objects, and installed it all in Rhode Island Hall, the home of the original museum. The exhibition, which also includes a recreation of Jenks’s office as it might have looked in the year of his death, will be on display until spring.” Read more here.

The Lost Museum will be on display in Rhode Island Hall on the Brown University campus, 60 George Street, the Jenks Museum’s original home, through May 2015.

Photo: Mike Cohea/Brown University
The office of John Whipple Potter Jenks, who founded the natural history museum at Brown University, was recreated for an exhibition called Lost Museum.

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Unexpected Wild Animal Travel

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on September 20, 2014| 2 Comments »

John sent me a collection of photographs showing that a small mongoose-like animal hitches rides on rhinos and other large creatures in previously unrecorded behavior.

George Dvorsky writes at io9, “Earlier this month, conservationists working in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park were very surprised when they reviewed photos snapped by their camera trap. Images revealed a mongoose-like genet hitch-hiking on the backs of at least two different species of animals — behavior never seen in the mammal.

“Zoologists have observed cowbirds riding on the backs of cattle to pick off their parasites, along with egrets grazing on the tiny creatures that collect on wildebeest. But mammals riding on the backs of other mammals? Not so much. At least not outside of humans and their domesticated animals. That’s what makes this recent discovery so unique.

“The Conservationists write at their blog, Wildlife Act Team:

This series of photographs depicts a large spotted genet on top of two individual buffalo. One of the buffalo seemed to be unimpressed with the genet and can be seen turning around and thus shaking the genet off. The other buffalo was quite content to let the genet “tag along” for an evening stroll. The genet seemed to have spent this particular evening riding buffalo!”

More here. Lots of pictures.

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