Happy Holidays

Two gifts from Shel Silverstein (and me) to you:

Weird Bird
Birds are flyin' south for winter.
Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,
Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',
Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.
He says, "It's not that I like ice
Or freezin' winds and snowy ground.
It's just sometimes it's kind of nice
To be the only bird in town."


The Giving Tree

Seeing Differently

SeeShell Snorkel Mask on Longboat Key

I attended Foundations and Frontiers in Appreciative Inquiry in Longboat Key, Florida last week.

David Cooperrider said that "All change begins in the imagination of the mind" and that inquiry and change occur simultaneously. A change in the questions will result in a change of the answering results. Therefore, our collective image of the future will be what creates the future.

How do you cultivate wonder and a renewed vision? Cooperrider cited Fred Polak's 3 parts to a re-birth of vision:

1. Influence optimisim-the belief that humans can indeed effect the future

2. Artists, poets and spiritual leaders to demonstrate how to vision and appreciate

3. Societies that work in the public space--real civic dialogue.

I need to reflect more upon the workshop, but have some initial ideas on how to implement some of what I have learned in my work.

Its the "Crooked River" stupid

I am dumbfounded that people are seriously considering straightening the Cuyahoga River to accommodate a parking lot. The word Cuyahoga literally means CROOKED in the Iroquois language. We should be investing in infrastructure that supports a walkable, bike-able urban core that relegates cars to the periphery. Not a plan that esteems a parking facility more than the beautiful, iconic oxbow of the Cuyahoga River.



In other awful news, Senator Voinovich's solution to Governor Elect John Kasich's plan to nix the 3C rail is to reallocate the funding to roads and bridges. Really? I'd rather see the money go to a rail project in another state if our leaders refuse to use it here for non automotive infrastructure.

So, Ohio will move a river and refuse millions in federal funding because we can't see beyond our steering wheels. Great. Guess it's time to write some letters.

Car-free: Day 1

Greyhound trip from Columbus to Cleveland was great and I got some good reading done. I am officially car-free in Cleveland. Walked to brunch with friends today. I get to cancel my car insurance and get a rebate just in time for some holiday shopping. Good deal.

This weekend should be good

Here’s what I’m thinking:

Friday--Pop Up Gift Shop opening

Saturday--Burning River Roller Girls fundraiser for the Animal Protective League

Sunday--Near West Theatre’s production of Willy Wonka

I'll likely sprinkle in some Ashtanga practice, coffee from Loop, light reading and some friends.

Sound in my Faith

I'm not sure I believe in Jesus, but I do believe in the Staple Singers. Their musical journey from gospel to R&B is worth repeated listening and it parallels their physical journey from Down in Mississippi to Chicago.

I listen to the Staple Singers whenever I need a boost and also to check myself. I've always liked the sound of hand clapping in music and no one does it like the Staple family. And, Pop Staples sounds a lot like my grandpa Jesse who is also from Down in Mississippi.

The Drifter

I had a vanity license plate on my first car: D R I F T E R. My dad used to call me that when I was a teenager because I was so independent and would just take off for awhile and do my own thing. “Well look who decided to come home. It’s the drifter,” was a familiar refrain. When I bought my first car, a 1988 Toyota Camry, he made a present of the nickname and had it emblazoned on my license plate.

Heading off to college at Kent State with a vanity plate for an already very used car was a bit embarrassing, but I did feel like my car was my freedom. Besides, I couldn’t hurt my dad’s feeling by changing the plate. Inside my car I could gather my thoughts, blare music, sing at the top of my lungs, take a road trip, spread my wings, burn some rubber, see the country, get a one-armed sunburn, get off campus, get to my job. I kept the car for 5 years and 220,000 miles.

A combustible engine was always the route to freedom in my family. When I was a tot, my parents were members of the Buckeye Vanners. As members of the van club, we went on road trips, used CB radios and slept in our van. My dad’s handle was Captain Midnight and my mom was Midnight Angel.

My dad always named his cars: The Green Hornet, The Blue Maverick, . . . He had pick up trucks and motorcyles: a Triumph Bonneville, a Kawasaki, a Yamaha and a Harley. The open road meant something to us. The only vacations we took were by car, van or motorcycle. I never traveled by airplane until I was an adult. I went cross country with my dad on his Harley and arrived back home, weathered, windblown and just a little tougher than when I left.

Fast forward and freedom means something very different to me now. I’ve about had it with my current vehicle. I don’t really enjoy driving anymore. I’ve since discovered Cleveland’s Regional Transit System, Greyhound, Amtrak, a bicycle and my feet. Vehicular freedom comes with a big a price: car payments, insurance, accidents, stress, carbon emissions, traffic jams, a sedentary lifestyle, isolation.

I am giving my car to my brother. I'll drop it off when I’m home for Thanksgiving and will take Greyhound back to Cleveland. I’ll try being car-free.

I went to Sonoma for a wedding last weekend. These are the first redwoods I've seen.



God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.
--John Muir

Van Morrison, Summertime in England

I know it is Autumn, but listening to this song this morning made me feel rooted in this season, in the now.

It aint why . . .
It just is . . .
Thats all
Thats all there is about it.
It just is.
Can you feel the light?

What sustains me?

Helping to facilitate Sustainable Cleveland 2019 is a part of my job I really enjoy.

Local Food Week at my House

I harvested sunflower seeds, carrots and green tomatoes.








My carrots taste flowery, kind of like jasmine tea.



I made and jarred green tomato relish.

Muni Lot, 7pm on a Monday

I saw him toss something high into the air before I heard seeds scatter in the middle of the near-empty Muni Lot. I walked to my car through a swirling swarm of September gulls. He raised his arms and smiled through a 3-month beard.

A Haiku

Twirling Umbrella

Dusk dripping rain and midges

El Buen Pastor Drums

--September South-of-Lorain

It's ok to be single

"I've given up hope."

He said, "Don't give up hope".

I look at the pile of loss and failure and shake my head.

I can't have this in my life anymore. My accumulation of single earrings--unmatched and missing their partners--weighs on me.

After an initial earring loss, I actively look for the lost mate in the bottom of my purse and in couch cushions. For half a year, I reach for the earring to wear it, but then remember I only have one. For a year, I nurture belief that I might encounter its twin behind the toilet or in the foam of my bike helmet. But after a year the lone earring taunts me with waste, irresponsibility and uselessness.





I've found new life for my solitary jewels (none of them are actual jewels!) I am sending all of my single earrings to my friend Nicole whose art business is Plenty Underfoot. She will transform them from annoying to wearable once again. Her philosophy: The waste stream of consumer culture is full of creative potential.

Civics

I've been doing something new. Every morning that I take RTA to work, I stop in front of the Abraham Lincoln statue on Mall A and read the Gettysburg Address. Now that is good oratory. I had to memorize it in 8th grade, but I don't think I really read it until a couple of weeks ago.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863

Canning is a Snap

One of the perks of volunteering for City Fresh is that I can order bulk produce sometimes. All City Fresh farmers are within 40 miles of Cleveland and the produce is usually picked the same day it is distributed.

I ordered a bushel of green snap beans and spent the day processing about half of them. I'll do the rest tomorrow after work.

Last year, I only canned tomatoes. This summer, I'll put by green beans, corn, tomatoes and maybe some soups. Thirty-six quarts of tomatoes lasted from September-May. So, this year I'll try to can about 45 to get us to July.

Canning is pretty easy. You just have to follow directions, have patience and be willing to devote a day to preserving summer produce so that you can enjoy it in the fall, winter and early spring.

Take me home . . .

Who needs fireworks when you've got this kind of excitement on July 4th?

Take me Home . . . from Jenita McGowan on Vimeo.

My mom, her boyfriend, Jose and her condominium neighbors invited me and my siblings to their potluck and sing-along.

Steve is beet; time for a nap

Storing Produce w/out Plastic

The Berkley Farmers' Market offers some tips for storing fruits and vegetables without plastic.

Why avoid plastic? Here's one good reason.

Slughs

At night, by the light of a headlamp, you can see them in great crowds pulsating all over the compost bin. We've got slugs and they are eating and rotting out my radishes. I'm all for a healthy backyard ecosystem, but I think we're overrun.

Some Magic Hat #9 in a couple cat food tins did in about 8 of them. Perhaps it had too many hops for those slugs that prefer a domestic, macro-brewed pilsner. We'll try something a little more conventional and economical in the future.

I learned a new word today: iatrogenic.

Conventionally used to describe inadvertent, negative effects of medical treatment, author John McKnight uses the word to describe the consequences of professionalizing care--turning citizens into "clients" and care into "service".

It is now clear the economic pressure to professionalize requires an expanding universe of need and the magnification of deficiency.
The Careless Society: Community and its Counterfeits

I recently witnessed a well-intentioned person try to co-opt, professionalize, define and control a movement long-percolating among grassroots groups and volunteers citizens. This person believes "success" requires a leader who will focus efforts and "take it to the next level". Beholding work that has potential is inspiring, but the desire to co-opt a movement dis-empowers enthusiastic people, destroys creativity and stifles agility.

I'm grateful to my friend who gave me the book just before I started my new job. It is helping me to be aware that co-opting, professionalizing and serving can be harmful. I'll do my best to support positive efforts and leave power where it belongs--with citizens.

Bikes in the Motor City

Wishing Cleveland a happy Bicycle Week from here in the Motor City.







I'm attending the National Farm to Cafeteria Conference in Detroit this week. The photos are from the Henry Ford Museum.

Herban Spiral

We'll be refining the herb spiral this week. The herb seedlings and seeds are just about ready to join the great outdoors. The idea is to plant the herbs that thrive in arid climes at the top, getting progressively water-loving as they descend.





Here's the plan from top to bottom:
Rosemary, oregano, marjoram, sage, tarragon, thyme, dill, cilantro, parsley, chives, fenugreek, lemon balm, a pile of cheery marigolds spilling from the bottom.

Near West Community Gardens

I entered in the addresses of all of the community gardens I could find on the Near-West Side of Cleveland into a Google map. I thought I'd share. Let me know if I'm missing any.

You can click through to see them all or use your mouse to pan across the map.



View Near-West Community Gardens in a larger map

Being Scrappy

"I operate within the constraints of my life. Opportunities abound. " My friend Doug Lodge's statement in the recent Antaeus Dance program uses graceful prose to refer to what I call "being scrappy".

My job history is comically diverse, but the through line is that I am open to opportunities as they arise. So far it's been a real trip.

I've been a babysitter, lawn-mower, athletic club janitor, baton twirling teacher, journalist, drive thru cashier, waitress (from 3rd shift at Country Kitchen to fine dining), bartender, pizza maker, telemarketer, knitting store employee, modern dancer, choreographer, audio book quality assurance tester, dance educator, assistant to a city councilman, archival property researcher, passenger train advocate, after-school program designer, community researcher, Volunteer Coordinator, Healthy Lifestyles Coordinator and a Census Campaign Coordinator.

I'll be starting a new job soon. My first full-time, grown-up, benefits and retirement job. I know the constraints and opportunities will continue to keep life interesting. I am never bored.

Down Home

I went on a pilgrimage to Southern Ohio last weekend. My grandparent's house on S. 10th street in Ironton has been torn down since I was last there. In place of the mint green and chocolate brown post-war bungalow is a parking lot. The unchanged view of the hills from their former backyard did console me.



View from my grandparents' former home.

I visited my grandparents in their retirement community in Portsmouth. My93-year-old grandfather complained about the lack of decent chess and checkers. He also told me stories about the rooster his family had when he was growing up and about how my grandparents got married when he was on leave in the Navy. My grandmother followed him up and down the west coast via train when they were newlyweds so they could be together while he finished his enlistment.



Charles E. Morrison, Navy photo


I also went hiking at Lake Vesuvius in the Wayne National Forest. I stayed a a great little bed and breakfast right on the Ohio River: , Riverview Inn in Franklin Furnace.



Lake Vesuvius, Wayne National Forest, Ironton Reservation

10 Things I Like about Cleveland: Part X

It's difficult to choose only ten things I like about Cleveland, but I guess I'll finish my list with something salient. I like the Cleveland International Film Festival--coming soon!

A Bridge for All

Those who don't have a car still do
Pay public infrastructure taxes too
So why can't those who don't have a car
Use the bridge in their own backyard?…

All kinds of traffic should be delivered
Up over the Cuyahoga River
If they drive a bike or just walk around
Give everyone a way to get downtown.

Let's keep Cleveland on the right track.
Take a step forward not a step back
Now is the chance if we answer the call
To build a bridge that connects us all.

unbound

I say jump! But I do not jump. I indicate energy
and yet I still look for my own bloom—
through fine lines, past flat belly to cold toes.

Everything is careful and documented these days. Lightly treaded.
I am not bound and I feel the burden of what holds me?
Not pursuit of purse and suit.

I work and I walk and I sew and I plant and I cook and I clean and I speak and I sleep

I’m not a real dazzler
but I only borrow the salty soft whys from the unfulfilled.
Incanting patience with a cycle of believe, bereave, be, believe, bereave, be.
I’d rake in all those hesitant moldering leaves and celebrate the end of this season, but they’re not mine to burn.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part IX

I like the snow. Winter is my least favorite season, but the snow makes it bearable. I like its variations--from snow-globe flakes to harsh blustery blizzards. I like being tough and trudging through drifts when walking to work. I like being a baby and using it as an excuse to stay home, drink tea and cuddle my cat. I like how it brightens gray days. I like yards dotted with Snowmen.

We Clevelanders are blessed with four seasons made even more seasonal by our great lake. That basin of fresh water ensures springtime slogs will be spongy with a sucking, loamy, flower-sprouting ground. Our summer will be humid, yet made more sufferable because of cool lake breezes. Autumn will be misty with a foghorn soundscape. We'll have mayflies in June and seagulls all year round. And in winter, we'll have Lake-Effect Snow.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part VIII

I like Pop Up City. A part of the Kent State University Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, Pop Up City activates vacant/underused urban spaces in creative ways. All of their events are at the root, based on collaboration, sharing assets, a wacky sense of fun and having their finger on the pulse of what makes Clevelanders get off of their sofas.

My first Pop Up was Cleveland's initial Bizarre Bazaar. Then I went to Leap Night down in the Flats. I was fortunate to be able partner with P.U.C. when I was a Fellow on the Electric Roller DiscoTech and then again when I was volunteer coordinator for The Bridge Project.

If you've never experienced a Pop Up City event, or if you know you love them, check out Brite Winter Festival this weekend.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part VII

I like the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter from the Great Lakes Brewing Company. It is heavy enough to suit my winter palette, but fizzy enough for me to enjoy during the heat of summer. The taste is rich, complex, smooth and somehow bitter. I like it in a bottle, in a growler or from the tap at the brewery.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part VI

I like the abundance of urban agriculture in Cleveland. We have:

• plots of vacant land you can buy for about $1,
• a diverse group of willing, committed people,
• hungry citizens in need of fresh, nutritional produce,
• free technical assistance,
• innovative urban gardening and urban livestock zoning policies,
• bottom-up DIY-ness and
• top-down support.

I can't wait for the upcoming growing season. The plan is to turn the entire yard into a garden this summer. We've made layers of comforter compost and are letting it prepare the soil this winter

Last spring, garden prep

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part V

I like the Greater Cleveland Rapid Transit Authority--specifically the trains. I know that the RTA has raised fees and cut service. And I'm disappointed in that. However, I do like the convenience of taking the Red Line to University Circle, Detroit Shoreway Neighborhood, the Ohio City Neighborhood and the Airport. I like taking the Green or Blue line to Shaker Square.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part IV

I like the Ohio City Bicycle Co-op. OCBC is involved in so many community events include the Urban Harvest Garden Tour, Cleveland Bicycle Week, social rides and safety and repair classes. My bike got stolen this fall and I am riding an OCBC loaner bike until I can get another one.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part III

I like the People's University. I rarely purchase books, cds or dvds because the Cleveland Public Library has everything. CPL is part of the CleveNet Library Cooperation and the online catalogue makes reserving a book just as easy as ordering from Amazon.com. I get my books sent to the branch nearest my house.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part II

I like the Stone Cold Bikini Show. It's where I get my Indie Rock and Pop. Listen live on 91.1 FM-WRUW on Saturdays at 9am 10am, but if you're not up early enough you can listen online to the latest show anytime. The host Christine, is just as rad as the music she plays.

10 Things I like about Cleveland: Part I

I like the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge--the Guardians, the view, the river below

.

A poem to celebrate the chill

It's winter on Turtle Island.

Landscape with Mud Turtle

I'd have thought my life at halfway would look

half-grown, half-gone, or half-born,

But try as I might I can't get far enough off to see it.

Among the reeds, the rocking cattails,

the hollow seed pods of last summer's lilies,

I can't for the life of me get a long view. And why should I?

A doe drifts along the rise, fur fading with the season,

stiff and lithe by turns—the same one,

I know her by the scar, I see often browsing at the edge

where woods and marsh and graveyard lands converge.

What, I wonder, does she see? By what mark

would she know me from others of my species?

When I was a girl I used to lie down

in the pressed-grass hollows where the deer had slept.

I tried to dream myself a deer,

that wordless, that meant-to-be-there.

I pressed the rough, live ends of their antlers

against my forehead and wished.

Under the pond mud, half-frozen, dormant among

the dormant,

turtles breathe through their skins,

barely, not quite dead in their shells. Geodes.

Come spring, come stronger light, they thaw,

gasping at ice cracks, clawing at the slush and scum,

self-resurrected. It happens every year. Until it doesn't.

A pond turns marsh, turns meadow in no time flat:

silting in, not drowning all the windblown seed that falls,

letting the alder and pussy willow take root,

parching the pondweeds, deporting the turtles,

the snails that cling to the lily pads' undersides,

and the waterbirds that ate them.

A transformation before your eyes.

Where I skated in spirals one winter, beech trees grow:

Silver for silver, not everything lost.

Where red-winged blackbirds flew up singing

victorie, victorie, cardinals search the brambles for berries

and dogs off their leashes snuffle up rabbits.

After an ice storm, I found a wren stiff in the cold,

its russet specks and stripes magnified,

its eyes shut, its beak like something carved

and drawn on. I closed it in my hands

and, fool that I still am, blew through the gaps

between my thumbs.

JENNIFER ATKINSON

Witness

Volume XXII / 2009

Looting or Scavenging for Survival?

I am bothered by recent news coverage of the Earthquake aftermath in Haiti. A headline reads Looting Flares when Authority Breaks Down. If you go to the article, you can see people unearthing food from the rubble of a once-supermarket.

If I were a hungry, thirsty, homeless and desperate earthquake survivor, I'd dig in the rubble of a supermarket and try to find some food for myself and my loved ones. Is this really looting or is this smart scavenging for survival? Why is the media making victims into villains?

Now, this might qualify as looting. I'd appreciate more distinction, subtlety and understanding in the news coverage of how Haitians are attempting to feed themselves while they wait for comprehensive disaster relief.