September 26, 2014 by suzannesmom
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ap, Associated Press, Chris Russell, Columbus, Columbus Dispatch, Crowdfunding, fundraising, Idaho Potato Commission, joke, kickstarter, ohio, party, postaday, Potato Salad, potatostock, zack brown | 6 Comments »
September 25, 2014 by suzannesmom
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged barbara passero, biodiversity, climate change, earth, ecology, environment, global warming, Jean Devine, lawn, meadowscaping, middle grades, nature, outdoor education, postaday, Steve Gordon, steward | Leave a Comment »
September 24, 2014 by suzannesmom
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, boston, contemporary art, dewey square, ica, Jill Medvedow, mfa, mural, museum of fine art, photograph, postaday, rose kennedy greenway, Shinique Smith, wbur | 2 Comments »
September 23, 2014 by suzannesmom
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Agaton Strom, archaeology, demolition, dump, eve m. kahn, glass, landfill, museum, postaday, scavenge, Staten Island, terra cotta shards, tiles in new york, Tina Kaasman-Dunn | 2 Comments »
September 22, 2014 by suzannesmom
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged burundi, champions of change, co-op, ethnic food, Fabiola Nizigiyimana, farm, farmer, flats mentor farm, food, growing, home country, lancaster, lenga lenga, Martha Bebinger, massachusetts, small business, taste of home, usda | Leave a Comment »
September 21, 2014 by suzannesmom
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. 
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged art, brown university, dump, Henry Fountain, John Whipple Potter Jenks, lost museum, Mike Cohea, museum, natural history, naturalist, postaday, providence, science, taxidermist | 4 Comments »
September 20, 2014 by suzannesmom
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged africa, animal travel, conservation, genet, george Dvorsky, photography, postaday, wildlife act team | 2 Comments »
September 19, 2014 by suzannesmom
Providence is engaging in so many entertaining pop-up activities I can’t keep up. Suzanne sent this link about one that happened today. I guess it is what people mean when they talk about “placemaking.”
Chris writes at the blog for Our Backyard Rhode Island, “Where else but Our Backyard could you walk to dozens of parks in just one day? Today 32 temporary parklets have sprung up in Downtown, the West Side, and the East Side of Providence to mark PARK(ing) Day. More than 30 metered parking spaces have been transformed into temporary public parks. Designers worked with local businesses to find creative ways to add green space to the urban environment. They trucked in plants, Astroturf and picnic tables to create alluring stop offs for people out for a walk.
“On Matthewson Street, you can even use frisbees to play checkers on a board as big as a queen-size comforter. Organized locally by the RI chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (RIASLA), the RI chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIAri), and Transport Providence, Park(ing) Day strengthens connections in Our Backyard.”
More here.
Photo: http://ourbackyardri.com/
A Providence parklet today.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged backyard, parklet, placemaking, pop-up, postaday, providence, public park, recreation, rhode island, RI chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Society of Landscape Architects, temporary, Transport Providence | Leave a Comment »
September 18, 2014 by suzannesmom
Today’s post features a bunch of photos again, if you can bear it.
I was especially intrigued by a lovely sunflower and a utility pole that is an actual tree trunk. Although the tree trunk has probably been right in front of my nose for 20 years, it wasn’t until a recent late-train day that I actually noticed. “Holy cow! That’s a tree trunk!” No one else seemed to notice.
Other photos are attempts to capture early-morning light, but you may not be able to tell what time of day it is.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged concord, massachusetts, motorcycle, new england, photo, postaday, sunflower | 4 Comments »
September 17, 2014 by suzannesmom
The radio show Living on Earth is a font of useful and interesting environmental knowledge.
In a recent show, host Steve Curwood spoke with “agronomist Frank Forcella about how he modified the common sand blaster to simultaneously fertilize and weed food crops.”
Curwood introduces the topic thus, “If you’ve ever weeded a garden, you know it’s a backbreaking job, and if you have row upon row of crops, it’s, well, it’s easier to use herbicides. But then the crop is not organic. Enter a team of soil scientists for the U.S. Department of Agriculture who harnessed a common tool of the building trades to blast away those unwanted weeds without chemicals. Joining me to explain this breakthrough is Frank Forcella. He’s an agronomist with the USDA’s North Central Soil Conservation Research Laboratory.”
Forcella then tells Curwood how he got the idea. “One of my hobbies here in Minnesota is growing apricots, and 2007 happened to be a wonderful year for apricot production in Minnesota.
“We ended up with about a five gallon bucket worth of apricot pits, and I was wondering what can we do with apricot pits. One of the things you can do with them is to grind them up and use then as a grit in sandblasters, and I was talking about that with one of the fellows who works with me, Dean Peterson, on our way out to our field plots. Both of us work on weeds, and we had more or less simultaneously had the idea, ‘I wonder if you could use sandblasters to kill weeds.’ Initially we thought that had to be the dumbest idea in the world, but it was one of those ideas we just couldn’t get out of our heads.”
Read how a dumb idea led to a great invention here.
Photo: Frank Forcella
The four-row grit applicator in action, driven by Charles Hennen. 
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged agronomist, Charles Hennen, Dean Peterson, ecology, environment, farm, fertilize, four-row grit applicator, Frank Forcella, living on earth, minnesota, organic, sand blaster, Soil Conservation Research, soil scientists, steve curwood, usda, weeding | 4 Comments »
September 16, 2014 by suzannesmom
We bought Wiffle balls and bats this summer, but the grandkids were not quite ready for the big leagues.
Meanwhile, WBUR radio’s Bill Littlefield decided to cover the Golden Stick Wiffle League All-Star Series for Only a Game.
“At about 8:30 [on a] Sunday morning, a half-dozen Wiffle Ball enthusiasts began assembling the field that would host a three-game series of All-Star games between the most accomplished Wifflers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and their counterparts from New York and Philadelphia, dubbed, vaingloriously, the World All-Stars.
“The field, which took up most of the front yard of a large home in Danvers, Mass., featured black, cylindrical outfield walls which had to be inflated with a leaf-blower. There were yellow canvas lines tacked to the grass to distinguish singles from doubles and a backstop featuring a metal target and a couple of corporate logos. According to Jason Doucette, a player who’d driven down from Laconia, N.H., the logos were a little misleading.
“ ‘Not a lot of people sponsor wiffle ball,’ Doucette said. “Money-wise, we stick together. We try to help each other out.’ …
“Perhaps in part because of a recent cancer diagnosis, [Pat] Vitale was only scheduled to pitch one inning for Massachusetts/New Hampshire. But after Vitale had retired the New York/Philadelphia — a.k.a. ‘World’ side — in order, team manager and president of Golden Stick Wiffle Ball Lou Levesque was asked if he would follow that plan.
“ ‘No, no, by no means. We’re leaving him in there,’ Levesque said. “He’ll go right up to the full three if he keeps playing like that.’
“Would he yank Vitale if he didn’t keep playing like that?
“’Oh, yeah. Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Cut throat. This is the All-Star game.’ ”
More Wiffle fun here.
Photo: Louis Levesque
Pat Vitale tosses a pitch during the Golden Stick Wiffle League All-Star series. The 62-year-old managed to stay in the game for an unexpected three innings.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged all star, bill littlefield, danvers, Golden Stick, Jason Doucette, laconia, louis levesque, only a game, Pat Vitale, postaday, wiffle ball | Leave a Comment »
September 15, 2014 by suzannesmom
The Upper Midwest has some unusual races. One year in Minnesota, for example, my husband and I went to an outhouse race, and I wrote up the experience for an East Coast community paper.
Today I read in the NY Times about a Wisconsin race. Mitch Smith writes, “In Spain, they run bulls. In Kentucky, thoroughbreds. But here in America’s Dairyland, llamas are the four-legged athletes of choice.
“On Saturday afternoon, the llamas converged on this tiny town in the corn-covered hills of western Wisconsin, as they do each September. A llama named Lightning, a 14-year-old with swift feet and a bit of a temper, claimed the heaping basket of tomatoes and peppers that goes to the speediest camelid.
“To the roughly 1,900 residents of Hammond, the Running of the Llamas is something far more than an annual excuse to watch South American pack animals lope down Davis Street. In the 18 years since a local bar owner first let the llamas loose, the event has become a source of communal pride and identity in a state where it seems every dot on the map has its own quirky festival.
“ ‘It makes our town unique,’ said Ariel Backes, 16, the reigning Miss Hammond. ‘It just shows small towns are the best.’ …
“Some llamas were eager to race, sprinting swiftly behind the handler holding its reins. Others were compliant but unenthusiastic, making their way past the cheering fans, lined up four and five deep on some stretches of sidewalk, at more of a brisk walk than a run. And a few llamas were downright uninterested, forcing their handlers to practically drag them to the finish line.” More here.
Suzanne and Erik’s two-year-old fed a llama this summer. I can’t quite picture that llama wanting to do anything but eat.
Photo: Colin Archdeacon on Publish September 14, 2014.
This llama-racing event is in its 18th year in Hammond, Wisconsin.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ariel Backes, camelid, Colin Archdeacon, Festival, hammond, llama, mitch smith, postaday, race, small town, wisconsin | Leave a Comment »
September 14, 2014 by suzannesmom
Yesterday my husband, my cousin Dennie, and I went to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) to see a video installation of Icelandic musicians performing together but in separate rooms of a crumbling mansion on the Hudson River.
Museumgoers entered a large dark gallery at any point in the performance and fixed their eyes on whichever of the nine big screens caught their attention. We happened first upon the guitarist Ragnar Kjartansson in the bathtub singing at the loudest point in the cycle. We turned to each other with our mouths and eyes wide in a huge grin, it was so incredibly crazy and far out.
Here’s what the ICA says about the installation: “A celebration of creativity, community, and friendship, The Visitors (2012) documents a 64-minute durational performance Kjartansson staged with some of his closest friends at the romantically dilapidated Rokeby Farm in upstate New York. Each of the nine channels shows a musician or group of musicians, including some of Iceland’s most renowned as well as members of the family that owns Rokeby Farm, performing in a separate space in the storied house and grounds; each wears headphones to hear the others. …
“The piece itself sets lyrics from a poem [“My Feminine Ways”] by artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, Ragnar´s ex-wife, to a musical arrangement by the artist and Icelandic musician Davíð Þór Jónsson; the title comes from a 1981 album from Swedish pop band ABBA, meant to be its last.” More.
From “My Feminine Ways,” by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir,
“A pink rose
“In the glittery frost
“A diamond heart
“And the orange red fire
“Once again I fall into
“My feminine ways.”
I wrote about the crumbling Hudson River estate before, here.
My husband said Rokeby would have been a great setting for the Antiques Roadshow. Dennie, who is related to the owners of Rokeby, says her friends will never believe that she, a person who always disparages far-out art, was drawn in and ended up really liking “The Visitors.” We watched it twice. I’m still singing the most-repeated line,”Once again I fall into/My feminine ways.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, antiques Road Show, art, contemporary art, Davíð Þór Jónsson, hudson river, ica, iceland, icelandic, installation, musician, my feminine ways, postaday, Ragnar Kjartansson, rokeby, The Visitors, valley | Leave a Comment »
September 13, 2014 by suzannesmom
Did you ever see tiny, straw-colored objects like the plant called Japanese Lantern at a farmers market and think, “What the heck?” I have. But I would pass them by incuriously, assuming they weren’t edible. They are husk tomatoes.
Turns out my train buddy Kathy grows them. One day this week she surprised me with a little bag of them. She said, “You just squeeze the husk and pop the little tomato into your mouth.”
The taste was sublime. Very sweet. But unlike any tomato or anything else I’ve had before. John thought they looked like a snack his family ate in Egypt, but my daughter-in-law said that was not the same. My grandson liked the idea of popping the tomato out of the husk for me.
That reminded me of car trips when John and Suzanne were little and how my niece said she could always recognize our car because the back seat was full of peanut shells. Husking peanuts was a reliable car-trip occupation for years.
Read more about husk tomatoes (also called ground cherries) here. I’m going to a farmers market Sunday, and if I see any husk tomatoes, I’m going to buy them.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged farm, garden, ground cherry, husk tomato, postaday, sweet | 4 Comments »
September 12, 2014 by suzannesmom
Every once in a while, when I walk over Fort Point Channel to get some lunch, I run into people dressed as comic-book characters who have wandered off from the convention center.
So I got a kick out of this NPR reporter’s visit to a San Diego Comic-Con (convention) and her description of “cosplay: the art and science of dressing up like your favorite character.
“I’ve got a confession to make,” writes Petra Mayer. “I’m a cosplayer myself, though without any sewing skills, my costumes are a little hacked together. Luckily for me, there are some truly fantastic sights out on the convention floor, like zombie Teletubbies or an army of Daenerys Targaryens (Daenerii?). And so many Frozen princesses I can’t keep track. There are classic Star Trek uniforms, Doctors Who, lady Thors and Lokis in gorgeous armor, and a truly impressive Silver Surfer in head-to-toe body paint that must have taken him hours.
“Today, I’m one of them. Every other day of my life, I’m Petra Mayer, mild-mannered books editor — but today, I am embodying one of my favorite characters in all of comics: Spider Jerusalem, swaggering, world-changing, foul-mouthed and foul-minded journalist of the future, star of the old Transmetropolitan series.”
Petra is thrilled when two kids she meets “actually recognized my costume, but they were just about the only ones — Spider’s ’90s heyday is long gone, and I needed some validation. So I went by the Vertigo booth, Vertigo being the imprint that published the Transmetropolitan books, back in the day.
“And what do you know, someone asked if he could take my picture. Turns out I’d just met Ray Miller, who manages Darick Robertson, the comic artist who helped create Spider Jerusalem. Only at Comic-Con!
“But after everything, all the joy, all the freedom, all the swagger — you still have to get home and take your costume off. And that’s how I learned this very important lesson: If you forget the spirit gum for sticking down your bald cap, don’t try to fudge it with liquid latex.”
Read Petra’s full report or listen to the audio here.
Photo: Petra Mayer
Twelve-year-old Hayley Lindsay spent almost a month working with her dad on this Toothless the Dragon costume. There are sawn-off crutches in the front legs so she can comfortably walk on all fours.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged character, comic con, cosplay, Darick Robertson, Hayley Lindsay, npr, petra mayer, postaday, ray miller, spider jerusalem, toothless the dragon, Transmetropolitan, vertigo | Leave a Comment »
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