Recent Reading and Viewing

I've been so busy and not blogging but here's a little of what I've read and watched lately.

This op/ed piece from the New York Times By Thomas Friedmancaptures my feeling about the times we live in now. His last column about Noah is also brilliant.

This one about junk maileveryone should read and stop their unwanted, forest killing junk mail. It really works! I now get almost no junk mail.

I loved Susan Ito's latest column on Literary Mama.

This weekend I also saw "Argonautika' which was truly brilliant (but closed today) and "Juno".

We baked many batches of cookies at our place and slept in.

Next week on to Anaheim and Disneyland AND I plan to read a novel.

hockey goes green

Oh my goodness! I just found out about this from an email newsletter from the David Suzuki Foundation. Check it out hockey players offset their emissions. Now that's cool!

weather

Here's a recent poem I wrote on the subject...

The Weather
Adult topic
of last resort,
it was not to be questioned
or moved by our actions
then-

when I was knee high to the world
ravished by its largeness
untarnished by hubris.

Summer’s scorch on skin
that vast,
comforting indifference
of blue sky
beneath my feet
when Up I swung

The drumhum rain
on the tin roof
while sleeping snug or scared

this at least seemed certain,
Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer

Now everyone agrees-
too much exhalation
causes disruption

I read the thread of ice
worn thin
while my fridge still whirs
and out my window
the continuing unblinking blue
behold

grateful

I haven't posted in a while...busy with kids, holidays, family good stuff and then a nasty cold, not so good. Anyway it's been a while and frankly on the green front I've been bummed. The oil spill in the Bay, the fires in L.A., news from the Arctic, stories about tar oil etc frankly lots of bad news and combined with a head cold well, it can make one gloomy. So I wanted to write about what makes me grateful and hopeful. This storypassed on to me by Mary V. Marsh about a young people's green summit gave me a glow of hope. As did the news of google's investments in solar. My hope comes from smart people willing to take risks, financial, career, artistic, and people brave enough to change the status quo, to come out and profess their fear and love. Those people give me hope and I'm very grateful to all of them, all of you out there, thinking and creating in this most challenging time.

ifixed it

i do love my old ipod. i got it on craigslist and it is loaded with our whole library. This makes for some odd segues on shuffle. ACDC to Mary Poppins to podcast of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell me (love that show!). Anyway it stopped working the other day BUT I googled and followed these easy directions and it worked! I am scrubbing the paint palettes to the dulcet tones of Karl Kastle again!

a good day

Today was a good day. Today the headmaster of my school, the facilities manager of my school, students from the middle school and high school, and faculty from both campuses sat in a room with a representative of the green business program and heard how to certify our campuses as a green school. This is something I have worked for over a year to have happen. Hurray! Everyone sat there together and nodded in agreement. It took a lot of work to get to this day and there were a number of times I was close to giving up, putting my efforts elsewhere, or just getting so tired of trying. But today was a good day! Hurray!

biking to work

I ride my bike to work a couple of times a week, on the days when I don't have to drop off or pick up kids. It takes about 20 minutes with a few steep downhills and some up hills too so I get to work rosy cheeked and needing to change my shirt but not so sweaty I need a shower. My route starts with a big downhill that wakes me up then a small uphill enought that I have to pump my legs, then more zooming along with the view of the bay off in the distance. I feel like a kid, free. Sometimes I sing outloud.
My route takes me past Lake Temescal and often there are loud choruses of birds in certain bushes and then at one point a serene reflection of trees in the water. When I get to the frontage road there is a longish uphill stretch. From there I can see highway 24 just packed with cars. I feel so inconsequential pedaling my measly miles. Where are the other bike riders? When will this eight lanes of traffic be as empty as my frontage road is?
Sometimes a real bicyclist passes me. They are on their touring bikes resplendent in tight, bright spandex. They look amazing and go so fast but I feel virtuous with my pannier and work clothes. Hey, I'm going to work, I think to myself, not just on some bike ride for fun. I am NOT driving. But it's more than just not driving.
Unlike the car ride to work each bike ride feels like a unique journey. I'm aware of the weather and my mood in much more detail than in the box of the car. I feel my heart and legs pumping and know I have a body. I'm aware that I'm lucky to be able to do this, both healthy enough and living close enough to my job. So while on the outside I look like a middle aged mom puffing up a hill, on the inside I feel like a saint and a rebel and a wild kid all just from biking to work.

sustainable art teacher

My art room is an eco-chick nightmare. Full of non-recycled drawing paper, paper towels, markers, paint etc. They just don't sell many recycled art papers, sure I save the marked on one side ones for scratch work and have even started saving dried out markers to make something or other.

My latest eco art room nightmare is the acrylic paint. I'm teaching middle school painting and it is such a blast! The kids are making groovy, colorful canvases and I love it. But at the end of class there are all these dirty palettes. Now I used to use paper plates for palettes and throw them away but I decided that was too wasteful so now we wash them and by we I mean ME. So all this paint is going down the drain, that can't be good! My latest system is to use wax paper over the palette and throw that away...then wash the palette if there is paint on it. Meanwhile I have a pile of painty palettes on my counter that haunts my middle of the night thoughts.

greenland and me

This morning I stumbled into the kitchen and glanced at the paper. The first words to catch my eye Greenland melting at a much faster rate than predicted. Now they can grow broccoli there for the first time but the sled dogs are suffering, and then I read about a huge plastic gyre in the ocean. Twice the size of Texas. What a way to start the day when what I wanted to write about today was the seven sixth grade girls that came into my art room at lunch yesterday to make posters for the environmental club. How their excited listing of tasks we could try to tackle made me feel hopeful and grateful. They even made up a little recycling song to sing at town hall, and I do feel charmed and happy about their growing awareness and involvement but when I think of that gyre of plastic swirling away in the salt I want to open my mouth and howl like an out of work Greenland dog.

hockey

Today in the Chronicle there was an article about a hockey playing kid we know. My son, J., went to school with him and when J. was in second grade he played a lot with Louie who was in 5th. They were both athletic and outgoing and the age difference seemed to matter less at the tiny school they attended. J. looked up to Louie for his atheletic prowess as well as his warmth and friendliness. I felt a lot of mixed emotions reading this article which describes how Louie is flying back and forth to L.A. every weekend to play hockey. The same mixed emotions I feel about my son's hockey commitments, three practices a week, sometimes three games in a weekend and tournaments that require getting on a plane. He's in 6th grade and could have played at this level a few years ago but we held off as long as we could. Even this year we had many discussions about the stress and the overall toll on our family. Still if we had let him he would have gone to hockey camp all summer and played on the best team he could and gone to as many tournaments as he could. He totally and completely loves the game and has from his first time out on the ice at age 4. So I feel a twinge of guilt that we have held him back from his passion...but HOCKEY?? A sport that requires an incredible amount of electricity to produce the ice and incredible amounts of gasoline to travel to the games. I mean it's pretty much the most environmentally unfriendly sport for a Californian to play. So I feel a huge pile of, not exactly guilt but confusion. Such are the contradictions faced by a green mom in 2007. One small consolation, at least our Oakland ice rink has solar panels....

book meme

Wow my friend and blogger extraordinaire Susan has tagged me to do this.

1. Hardcover or paperback, and why? Truth is I read a lot of magazines...are they paperbacks?

2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it…hmmm don't know but it would have art, artists books and comfy couchs, oh and magazines.

3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is…"Be here now" from Be here now by Ram Dass.

4. The author (alive or diseased) I would love to have lunch with would be ….ok I copied this directly from the website and I'm picturing myself having lunch with an author with leprosy ooooooh alive or diseased.....ok alive, not diseased, amazing Lynda Barry.

5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except from the SAS survival guide, it would be…I don't know but Susan's description of Little, Big made me think I should read that one right away. The truth, the complete New Yorker.

6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that….would stop time while I was reading so that I could read as much as I want to and don't have time to.

7. The smell of an old book reminds me of….my mortality.

8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be….Jo in Little Women or Marlys in Ernie Pooks Comeek.

9. The most overestimated book of all times is….gotta be the Bible.

10. I hate it when a book….has mistakes in it that I can catch.

Happy Indigenous People's Day

The above images are by Mark Brest van Kempen . You can see this one and others in person at the Green City Gallery. He has taken cityspaces and made images of what they looked like in 1701. They create a time machine effect. Answer the questiong I often ask around town what was it like "before"? When the land was unspoiled. My son is reading Ishi in two worlds for school right now. These images and that story create such longing for an imagined past...a human time of learned balance with all the other elements of nature. I dream of it, as I type these links and fling them into the ether...

floods

Today I read about the floods in India. 4000 people are dead and the severity is being attributed to climate change. It made me think of this poem that I heard on the radio by Kay Ryan.
The Fabric of Life

It is very stretchy.
We know that, even if
many details remain
sketchy. It is complexly
woven. That much too
has pretty well been
proven. We are loath
to continue our lessons
which consist of slaps
as sharp and dispersed
as bee stings from
a smashed nest
when any strand snaps—
hurts working far past
the locus of rupture,
attacking threads
far beyond anything
we would have said
connects.

divine caroline

One of the cool things that happened on Parking Day was being interviewed by Amanda Coggin. I just found the story she wrote about us on Divine Caroline . I like her story and she also talks about an artist knitting plastic bags...hmmm I want to try that!

Sukkot

It is Sukkot right now. This is one of my favorite holidays. This one has no story about the Jews being persecuted (Joel ben Izzy's description of most Jewish holidays-"they tried to kill us. they didn't. let's eat!")but is a celebration of Harvest and nature. Under the sukkah there is a chance to connect with the seasons and with generations of people sitting together under the stars. My daughter's first outing, at eight days old, was to a sukkot celebration and last night, at the same sukkah she shook the lulav with me in the six cardinal directions. I felt a surge of joy and hope for the future feeling these complex pleasures; our smallness in the night sky, the constancy of the stars and seasons as we age and grow, and the shared warmth of our bodies as our voices lift, together in the dark.

Step it Up

Step it Up 2007 is happening on November 3rd. Bill McKibben is the main organizer but it involves lots of local actions demanding politicians take action on climate change. I often feel so paralyzed by the hugeness of climate change but coming together with others who feel the same fear and desire to make a difference really helps.

So look on the website. Find a local action or host one and step it up!

Hello

Here it is, my first post on this blog. I've started this blog because I wanted to post the photos from parking day somewhere. Because I love reading my friend Susan's blog. Because I love to sit in front of the computer. Because I can only write a paragraph at a time. Because I can do it in between dishes and managing homework. (But I will not blog at my job...no matter how tempted I am!)

Because I want to write about my green projects and art projects and post pictures and links and have someone maybe look at them.

Ok, now look at the amazing good time we had at parking day!

Parking Day 2007

Mary and I participated in parking day on Friday. We set up in front of SFMOMA with solar flora and earth flags and lots of quarters. The day was a blur of conversation with kind visitors. In my whirling, solar rose hat I felt like part of a changing world. You can read more about parking day at www.parkingday.org and see video of us here.

You can see more photos here.