A beautiful day is always a good excuse to walk the grounds of the deCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., enjoying the sculptures and lake view.
A little history from the museum website: “DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is located on the former estate of Julian de Cordova (1851-1945). The self-educated son of a Jamaican merchant, Julian de Cordova became a successful tea broker, wholesale merchant, investor, and president of the Union Glass Company in Somerville, Massachusetts. Although he married into the locally prominent Dana family of Boston, Julian achieved prosperity without the advantages of inheritance or social position. …
“Inspired by his trips to Spain and his own Spanish heritage, Julian remodeled his summer home in Lincoln, Massachusetts in 1910 to resemble a European castle. …
“For Julian, the visual arts served as a medium for self-improvement and enlightenment. In his later years, he opened the doors of his estate to share the wonders he had collected during seven decades of world travel. Julian envisioned a place where art would continue to educate and excite beyond his lifetime. To meet that end, he gave his property to the town of Lincoln in 1930 with the stipulation that his estate would become a public museum of art following his death.
“Julian’s will established a committee of incorporation, whose duties included formulating the policy, objectives, and supervision of the new museum with the guidance of professionals in the field, such as the Director of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston. Independent appraisers determined that Julian’s collections were not of substantial interest or value, so the collection was sold and the proceeds were used to create a museum of regional contemporary art.”
It’s nice to have an institution that focuses on New England artists, especially one that also offers a beautiful park for families to enjoy.
The yellow cables that seem to vibrate between the concrete blocks are a startling aspect of Stephanie Cardon’s sculpture Beacon. The collection of giant leaves, by Alan Sonfist, is called The Endangered Species of New England. The purple carpet is by Mother Nature and is called Violets.
In Helsinki, Finland, where young people traditionally leave home at 18 but can no longer afford urban rents, Millennials are applying by the hundreds to live with the elderly.
According to Kae Lani Kennedy at Matador Network, “Retirement homes are serving as more than a community for the elderly. These facilities are providing affordable housing for the city’s growing population of homeless millennials.
“ ‘It’s almost like a dorm, but the people aren’t young. They’re old,’ explains Emil Bostrom, a participant in ‘A Home That Fits,’ a new housing project that allows millennials to move into retirement communities. Bostrom is a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher, and though he has a steady income, it is not enough to compete with 90,000 other renters in a city that has roughly 60,000 affordable rental properties. …
“Bostrom, along with many other young adults, can enjoy discounted rent in exchange for socializing with the seniors in their community. …
“By interacting with a younger generation, the elderly involved with ‘A Home That Fits’ have the opportunity to be engaged in an active and diverse community, instead of being left behind in a forgotten generation.” More here.
And check out a post I wrote about the same phenomenon in Cleveland, here. Both initiatives sound like fun to me.
Interested in doing well by doing good? Consider attending the April 29-April 30 Providence event hosted by the Social Enterprise Greenhouse and the Social Innovation Initiative at Brown University.
According to the nonprofit’s website, the 2016 SEEED (Social Enterprise Ecosystem for Economic Development) Summit “provides a comprehensive support system to inspire, start, grow, and sustain successful social enterprises. …
“This year’s conference theme is Growing Businesses with Impact. We will explore the unique challenges facing a social enterprise at three stages of growth, with half day modules devoted to launching, growing and transforming.
“Whether you’re a social entrepreneur, student, academic, impact investor, policymaker, or plain ol’ fan of ‘do well, do good’ business, we hope you will join us. This year’s conference will include free coaching, a ‘Buy With Heart’ market, lunchtime roundtable discussions, and a pitch competition. …
“SEEED is the first impact conference in the US to adopt a ‘pay what you can’ ticket model so that the event is accessible to everyone. However, it costs us $200 per participant. Therefore, we ask all attendees to pay what they can to support our mission (the minimum payment to register is $1.00). … For any questions contact info@segreenhouse.org.” Register here.
The keynote speaker is Willy Foote of Root Capital. According to Sacha Pfeiffer in the Boston Globe, “This year, the Cambridge nonprofit Root Capital expects to have surpassed $1 billion in loans made to small businesses in the developing world, a sector neglected by large commercial banks. …
“Because many farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America don’t have the traditional collateral needed to borrow money, such as property deeds, Root Capital relies on less conventional ways to judge creditworthiness. For example, it accepts future production of harvests — including cocoa, coffee, cotton, fruit, and nuts — as collateral for financing. That approach has been a success; Foote says Root Capital’s repayment rate is about 97 percent. …
“Root Capital doesn’t just loan money; it also offers financial training to rural entrepreneurs, helping them improve their business skills and strengthen their market connections.”
Here’s something fun from the bird kingdom: a mating dance that looks like Michael Jackson’s moonwalk and a researcher who posits an aesthetic sensibility in animals.
WNYC radio in New York has the story.
“Richard Prum is an ornithologist at Yale University … Some of Prum’s latest work is on the philosophy of aesthetics. It stems from his earliest research, as a young scientist, studying small South American birds called manakins. Manakins are known for outlandish mating displays. The males perform an elaborate dance, including moves that look a lot like moonwalking.
“To Prum’s eye, the diversity and complexity of these dances could only be explained as an appeal to the birds’ aesthetic preferences — in other words, it’s art. ‘My hypothesis is that ornament in manakins evolves merely because it’s beautiful,’ Prum says.
“This idea clashes with the view of most evolutionary biologists, who see displays like these as signs of evolutionary fitness. They think the male manakin’s dance signals to females that he is healthy and will sire strong offspring. …
“Prum says that Charles Darwin was on his side. ‘That was Darwin’s original idea about mate choice — it’s about the aesthetic faculty’ …
“Doesn’t this idea about animals having aesthetic preferences anthropomorphize them? ‘I think that we don’t anthropomorphize birds enough!’ Prum says. ‘We’re afraid of talking about their subjective experiences, because we can’t measure it. But in fact, what they experience is desire, the subjective experience of beauty, of being attracted to something.’ ” More here.
In this story from radio show Studio 360, we learn that music is intriguing to animals, at the very least arousing their curiosity and perhaps stimulating and soothing them.
“Laurel Braitman is a historian of science and the author of ‘Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves.’ She’s particularly interested in the mental health of animals in captivity.
“ ‘If their minds aren’t stimulated, they can end up with all sorts of disturbing behaviors,’ she says. Braitman wondered if music — so often soothing to people, but usually foisted on animals without their permission — could help counter their symptoms of anxiety and depression.
“That led Braitman to arrange a series of concerts for all-animal audiences: gorillas in a Boston zoo and a small herd of bison in Golden Gate Park. Recently, the bluegrass band Black Prairie played for the residents of Wolf Haven wolf sanctuary in Tenino, Washington. …
“Can we say that they liked it?
“Researchers are trying to answer this question in controlled experiments where they observe whether animals move toward or away from speakers, depending on the music.
“Dr. Charles Snowdon of the University of Wisconsin collaborates with a composer, David Teie, who writes music tailored for certain species. They base their compositions on sonic frequencies the animals use in nature. Their music for domestic cats features tempos of purring or suckling kittens; small monkeys called cotton-top tamarins, on the other hand, got music that sounds remarkably like nails on a blackboard. ‘It is pretty godawful if you ask me,’ Snowdon says. ‘But the tamarins dig it.’ ”
I’m hearing more and more these days about “good bacteria,” including in a song by singer-composer Will McMillan on the friendly bacteria we humans carry around.
Now, it seems, bacteria found in soil may help to save amphibians from dangerous fungal epidemics. Public Radio International’s environmental news program, Living on Earth, has the story.
“Around the world, fungal diseases have been killing millions of frogs and bats and snakes. And a newly emerging disease in salamanders in Europe is scaring biologists here, so the US Fish and Wildlife Service has introduced a ban on their import to try to protect amphibians in the US.
“But now scientists see some hope in soil bacteria that get onto the salamanders and frogs and apparently protect them. Doug Woodhams is an assistant professor of biology at UMass Boston, who’s been working with amphibians in Panama – and he explained what his team has found to Living on Earth’s Helen Palmer.
“WOODHAMS: Some of the amphibians have beneficial bacteria that live on their skin and these have antifungal properties.
“PALMER: This is kind of like having good bacteria in your gut, for instance, that stop you from getting sick. … Is there any evidence that good bacteria actually work against devastating funguses?
“WOODHAMS: Yeah, there’s quite a bit of evidence. Many of the bacteria that we can culture from some amphibian species are able to inhibit the fungus in culture. We also have some population-level data that shows populations that tend to have these antifungal bacteria can persist with Bd in the environment and survive. …
“Bd is the chytrid fungus that’s been spreading around the world and devastating amphibian populations. So salamanders, frogs, toads. Populations that tend to have more of these beneficial bacteria seem to be surviving, and populations that don’t have as many of the individuals that have these bacteria seem to disappear. …
“The next thing we want to try is adding some of these bacteria, not just to petri dishes, but to soil and see if infected amphibians can be cleared of their infection by being housed on soil that’s been inoculated with these bacteria. …
“There are other fungal pathogens, so it could be something that you could apply in a cave that could reduce White-nosed syndrome [in bats]. Also, rattlesnakes have been recently affected by fungal disease during hibernation, so it could be applied into a rattlesnake den.”
Photo: Matt Becker The Appalachian Mountains are home to this Cow Knob Salamander, Plethodon punctatus, from George Washington National Forest, Virginia.
I think it’s safe to say that most adults would rather take care of themselves than rely on charity, but sometimes it’s hard for people living in extreme poverty to figure out how to cut the cord. Beth Alaimo at the Christian Science Monitor‘s People Making a Difference has a story about some Ugandans who are finding a way.
“Iganga, a town conveniently located along the central highway from Kampala to Nairobi, is much more than a popular truck stop. It’s where Musana, a community organization breaking Uganda’s reliance on foreign aid, has made its home. …
“With 67 percent of the population living in poverty, Uganda is no stranger to dependency. Despite being a popular region for development ventures, organizations often lack an approach that prioritizes what locals want and need while leaving the savior mentality behind.
“Originally a children’s home for 80 orphans, Musana Community Development Organization decided to change its model from a system that perpetuated child-rearing dependency to one that encouraged parents to provide what they could. Today, says co-founder Leah Pauline, ‘we are more than a charity. We’re a sustainable solution for the community.’ …
“Its first and largest project, the nursery and primary boarding school, is the closest to being self-sustainable. Roughly 600 students are attending this upcoming semester, an estimated 500 of whom are paying fees, with the rest receiving scholarships.
“Businesses created and run by locals are also moving the Musana community closer to achieving sustainability. A trendy restaurant (the ‘only place in Iganga you can find a burger’ says Pauline), a dairy farm, and handmade women’s crafts are all businesses funding community outreach.
“A bakery is the newest sustainability project at Musana and has quickly become profitable. Proposed and started by the head of child care, the kids often come in and help bake.” More here.
A famed Wharton School professor from South Africa, Ian C. MacMillan, has been known to complain about the dependency cycle he sees in Africa, and has taken steps on his own to boost independent small businesses there. An article here is partly about that work.
Photo: Musana Community Development Organization The Musana Community Development Organization runs several enterprises, including a nursery and primary boarding school. A bakery, proposed and started by the head of child care, is the newest project and has quickly become profitable. The children often come in and help bake.
What a weekend for entertainment! On one day, we saw the musical The Wild Party (LaChiusa version) at Moonbox Productions in Boston. (Very good.) On another, we attended a flamenco concert in a church.
The flamenco headliner, guitarist Juanito Pascual, was joined by flamenco percussionist and singer José Moreno and singer and dancer Bárbara Martinez. Such exuberant and mournful fun! It reminded us of fado concerts we’ve attended, although that happy-sad tradition is Portuguese and flamenco is Spanish.
The music included pieces that go back centuries plus Pascual’s own compositions, which are a fascinating blend of old and new. Challenging at times, but pretty intriguing. One was dedicated to the person back home in Minnesota “who persuaded my mother to let me take guitar lessons.”
An article in the Concord Journal notes that Pascual, who is just beginning a 15-city tour to promote his latest CD, “skillfully weaves such influences as Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Bach and many others into his original compositions.” The Journal also quotes Boston Globe critic Steve Morse, who admires how Pascual “combines vivid colors, rich imagination and a yearning, never satisfied mastery of his art.”
Even in pieces without Moreno’s percussion support, Pascual’s virtuoso performance sounded like he was simultaneously playing two guitars and a set of bongos (flamenco involves slapping the wood as well has playing the strings). Very dramatic.
More at the Concord Journal, here. And you can hear samples of the music at all three artists’ websites.
As a coffee drinker and a fan of Dean’s Beans (whose mission is “to use high-quality specialty coffee as a vehicle for progressive change throughout the coffeelands of Asia, Africa and the Americas”), I was interested to come upon a Living on Earth radio story about the wider sustainable-coffee movement.
Steve Curwood is host of the Public Radio International show.
“CURWOOD: A cup of joe might help sustain your energy, but it may not be so sustainable for the Earth. Just 12 percent of coffee is sold under the label ‘sustainably grown.’ A new initiative called the Sustainable Coffee Challenge aims to change the way the coffee industry operates to the benefit of the Earth. Peter Seligmann is chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Conservation International. … So tell me about the sustainable coffee challenge that CI has just formed. Why did you zero in on coffee as a target for sustainability?
“SELIGMANN: Well, we started working on coffee about 15 years ago with Starbucks, and after 15 years we’ve been able to announce with Starbucks that 99 percent of all their coffee is certifiably sustainably harvested and produced. Which means that as their company has grown they have not cut a single tree, and hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests have been set aside as Starbucks has expanded its coffee business. That inspired us to think, is it possible to make coffee the first agricultural commodity that is completely and 100 percent sustainably produced. …
“The dark side of coffee growing is that coffee that is not produced under the shade of forest, [is] produced by clear-cutting forests and planting coffee. And when you clear-cut a forest, you destroy the biodiversity, you put emissions — CO2 emissions — in the atmosphere, you lose soil, and you do industrial agriculture, which maximizes pesticides and chemicals and reduces the benefits to society.
“CURWOOD: So, what’s the obstacle to growing coffee sustainably?
“SELIGMANN: It’s convincing the producers that this is in their enlightened self-interest. To go from non-sustainable coffee to sustainable coffee requires an investment of money and it requires time. Most of these growers, farmers actually work in co-ops, and the challenge is getting the co-ops to agree that this is the transition they want to make from non-sustainable to sustainable and what’s going to motivate them is there being a buyer for the coffee they grow. And so it gets back to the consumer, and the consumer says it’s what we want.” Read on.
Photo: Martin Diepeveen, Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Coffee beans are the pits inside the fruit or “cherry” of the coffee plant.
Time for another animal story. Edie Freedman has a surprising one about elephants, African farmers, and bees at a new-to-me website called O’Reilly.
“Although elephant populations have increased since the 1970s, the human population has grown even more quickly,” she writes “cutting the elephants’ habitat up into farms and roads. The elephants’ key migratory routes have been cut off in many places. As result, they regularly break through fences, where they eat and destroy crops. When the farmers confront elephants on their property, things don’t generally end well for either party.
“Lucy King, a researcher working with Save the Elephants, has spent many years investigating the problems involved in crop protection. Her goal is to find long-term solutions that reduce the frequency of human-elephant conflicts—and that can be financed and managed by local farmers.
“As Ms. King looked into the elephants’ habits for any clues to keeping them out of fields planted with crops, she noticed that they tended to avoid acacia trees with active nests of African bees. Elephants, it so happens, are afraid of the bees, and will move away from an area and warn other elephants if they hear bees buzzing nearby.
“And so the beehive fence was invented. The fences are simple, inexpensive, and easy for the farmers to build and maintain. … The hives are hung at chest height, which makes it easy for the farmer to harvest the honey, while also making them highly visible to the elephants.
“The hives, connected by wires, are hung every 10 meters around the perimeter of a field. The farmers leave wide pathways between their crops so elephants can move past the fences along their migratory routes. If an elephant makes contact with one of the hives or the connecting wires, the beehives all along the fence will swing and release the bees.”
My daughter-in-law sent me a link to this funny story about Sweden’s latest tourism promotion: letting foreigners call up a Swede to ask questions.
Jillian Kumagai writes at the Atlantic magazine, “Last week, the Swedish Tourist Association, a volunteer organization, declared Sweden the first country in the world with its own phone number: +46 771 793 336. The number connects callers to a switchboard and then, wherever in the world they are, to ‘a random Swede, somewhere in Sweden.’
“(So says an automated voice before your call is connected, though since Swedes have to sign up via a mobile app to receive these calls, the sample likely skews to the friendly and the cell-phone-owning.)
“Which raises a question: Why? As it happens, the tourist association also bills Sweden as ‘the first country in the world to introduce a constitutional law to abolish censorship,’ in 1766, and the introduction of The Swedish Number commemorates 250 years since that happened.
“But what does censorship have to do with getting a phone number? And what kind of people, in what kind of country, sign up to be called at all hours by total strangers? (The number’s website notes politely that while ‘you are welcome to call at anytime … we might be asleep.’)
“One of them was Jenny Engström, a spokeswoman for the STA, who had already fielded calls from strangers in China, Turkey, and Michigan. She explained that part of the point was to give callers an ‘uncensored’ view of Sweden, by letting Swedes speak for themselves.
“So that explained one mystery. And perhaps unsurprisingly, my experience of ‘Sweden: Uncensored’ was not at all scandalous. Among the things an uncensored Swede might tell you about, if you asked: what his compatriots name their dogs (often appellations that fit Nordic men, like Gunnar and Bosse); typical opinions on the Swedish band ABBA (from mixed to vaguely fond); the words for home-cooked Swedish food (husmanskost) and Swedish candy (lösgodis).” More here.
Erik asked his mother if she had considered signing up to answer calls, but she did what I probably would have done: she demurred.
Colored chalks are provided for patrons of the Small Point Café in Providence. Someone made a gorgeous dragon.
There are three photos of shadows: a broken wrought-iron fence, branches on the sidewalk, and two kinds of trash cans.
Spring snow at the Wright Tavern in Concord. Lotus sports cars on a Sunday outing. An old-tyme lunch counter with jukebox at Providence Place. Another treehugger tree. Daffodils on the vacant Route 195 land in downtown Providence. The Swedish Workingmens Association building, which now houses a Starbucks.
Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/Christian Science Monitor Vicki Houska, who has fostered 12 children, including Brandon (l.) and Michael, started a food pantry to help other foster parents.
I could probably write a post every day just drawing from the Christian Science Monitor series People Making a Difference. It’s overwhelming how many stories they collect — overwhelming and reassuring about human goodness.
Here’s one by Marjorie Kehe about a St. Louis woman who mothered 12 foster children in addition to her biological ones and now helps other foster parents lighten their expenses.
“Vicki Houska is a woman of many gifts. But one of the first things that her friends and colleagues will tell you about her is that she is a hugger.
“ ‘No one leaves her without a hug and a smile,’ says Michelle Barron, a work crew supervisor for the St. Charles County Juvenile Justice Center. …
“On this busy Saturday, though, Ms. Houska is getting ready to dispense more than just hugs. She’s moving briskly through the jampacked rented rooms that house the operation she runs for FAST (Foster Adoption Support Team), a support organization for foster and foster adoptive families caring for children who are wards of the state of Missouri.
“Houska’s making sure that packages of frozen pork chops, fresh loaves of bread, and tiny snowsuits are all properly shelved and stacked, ready for the families who are about to arrive and lay claim to them. …
“A foster parent herself since 1998, she has fostered 12 children over the years and, of those 12, adopted three. ‘It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do,’ she says of foster parenting. The emotional challenges ‘will bring you to your knees.’
“But one thing that doesn’t have to be so hard on foster parents, she decided some years ago, is the financial burden. …
“Foster families are expected to provide food, clothing, and household items like toothbrushes and hairbrushes, and to cover school expenses and any additional treats, lessons, or outings.
“From her own experiences and those of other foster families she has met, Houska came to feel that financial challenges were one of the biggest obstacles to the foster-parenting experience. So in 2005, to help alleviate the strain, she lined her own basement with industrial freezers and shelving, sought out donations, and began distributing food, diapers, and toiletries each Saturday, free to all local foster families. …
“Eventually, the OASIS Food Pantry, a local nonprofit, notified Houska that it had rental space available near its own operation in a nearby strip mall. …
“Houska’s pantry offers not only household items but emotional and social support. …
“Foster families arrange play dates, with pickups and drop-offs scheduled at the food pantry. Sometimes, for siblings who have been assigned to separate families, a trip to the food pantry is a chance to reunite in the pantry’s backyard, where the children are invited to romp on the playground equipment donated by a local church and other well-wishers. …
“ ‘Poverty doesn’t take a vacation,’ [Houska] says. ‘Kids in need don’t take a vacation. So neither do I.’ ”
Read what happened to Houska at age 21 that is one reason she is so dedicated, here.
Back in the early days of this blog (nearly five years ago), I posted about the imaginative Japanese manhole covers that I had seen at the Gwarlingo website. Now Asakiyume has clued me in to collectable cards made from the designs.
The Japan Times has the story. “The cards will be distributed for free to anyone who wants one at sewage plants and other facilities. Pictures of the manholes will be on one side of the cards, which are roughly business card size, while explanations about their designs will feature on the reverse side.
“The manhole designs differ from area to area, and often feature flowers and animals used as symbols in respective communities, or yuru kyara (local mascots). …
“The manhole cover designs are decided after asking the public for ideas, or through a competition among manufacturers of manhole covers. [Hideto Yamada of the GKP, a group including officials from local governments and the infrastructure ministry’s sewage management department] said he hoped the cards will help lift public interest in the sewage system.”
An even better way, I think, would be create greeting cards and postcards that could be sold widely and sent around the world.
You haven’t heard the last word on tiny houses from this blog yet. Just check out Treehugger reporter Kimberley Mok’s amazing story about using a 3D printer to create a tiny house and SUV that can create, store, and share energy. Unreal but true.
“Designers from architecture firm SOM, University of Tennessee and researchers from the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are cleverly tackling the energy issue by using a concept they call ‘integrated energy.’
“Their innovative design features a 3D printed house, that comes with a 3D printed SUV, which each generate, store and share energy — boosting energy efficiency both ways, while benefiting from the reduced construction waste and quick turnaround that comes with additive manufacturing techniques. …
“The design of both home and car uses carbon-fiber-reinforced ABS plastic (admittedly not the greenest of materials). The home was printed in separate modules that are assembled together and reinforced with steel rods, and insulated with a modified, highly efficient atmosphere insulation panels, resulting in a surprisingly strong and insulated structure.
“Certainly the most intriguing thing about the design is the reciprocal energy relationship that the car has with the house. … The 3D printed SUV is a hybrid that uses both electricity and natural gas to power itself. It’s parked on an inductive charging pad that allows it to send or receive energy from the solar-powered house — thus significantly solving the electricity issue on cloudy days. If there’s no electricity at all from either solar panels or car, the house can still tap into the energy grid. …
“Thanks to the additive manufacturing process, the prototype took only one year to realize from start to finish.” Read more here.
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