February 2012 – Page 4 – Kristen Baumlier

Month: February 2012

Winner of the GOOD Bike Photo and Bike Story Contest

Posted on February 10, 2012February 8, 2012 by Kbaumlier

I haven’t been riding my bike here during the Winter in Cleveland, but I do think about when it is a little warmer and I pump up the tires and start to ride it again. Individuals who ride bikes usually have a strong bond to their bike, and lots of bike stories. Some of my memorable bike moments include almost being pulled off a bike by teenagers in Oakland, CA, riding a bike and picking apples along the way with my friend Ian, and biking across the San Francisco bridge when I was an artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA.

The website GOOD did a contest for the best bike photo and story, where winners would win a year’s supply of CLIF bars and a nonprofit chosen by the winner would get a $5,000 grant. Second and Third place winners received a bike messenger bag full of CLIF Bars and they got to choose a nonprofits to receive a $2,500 grant.

Michael Riccobono was the grand prize winner, with his story called Turtle Patrol. He picked the nonprofit, Boston Cyclists Union, to receive the $5,000 grant. This group promotes biking as everyday transportation by advocating for safe and convenient cycling facilities throughout the Boston area.

Here is Riccobono’s winning story:
Turtle Patrol

Pedaling to work one morning, I noticed a rock dodging cars. I pulled on my brakes and jumped to the rescue of a bewildered snapping turtle.   We were just outside Boston, surrounded by concrete and tires – not exactly turtle paradise.

My lost friend was getting restless. Was he headed to the Shell Station down the block? If I was a turtle, I reasoned, I would want to be in the Cambridge Reservoir.   I had to act fast.

Attaching my helmet to the bike’s rack and putting the turtle inside seemed too risky. I decided to place him in the outer mesh netting of my backpack and pedal onward.   A quarter mile later, something scraped at the back of my neck. I turned my head and came face-to-face with a real-life ninja turtle. Terrified, I reached for the turtle and swerved off the road. My front tire hit a ditch hard.   In one swift and unrepeatable motion, I caught the turtle and barrel-rolled onto the grass.

He was hiding in his shell, but I could swear that I saw a grin on his face. I introduced him to some blueprints in my pack’s deepest pocket and zipped it closed. Who knew turtles could climb?   I finally made it the reservoir and opened my backpack. Out of a shell came a head, and out of a nylon sack came a turtle. With hare-beating speeds, he dashed into the water and swam away.

You can read the runners up stories From Austin to Alaska by Shiyam Galyon and Stolen Bike, Answers to Maddie by Ashley Donald on GOOD’s website.

Image Source:
Good Contest: Share a Bike Photo and Your Best Bike Story Contest

Links:

Good Contest: Share a Bike Photo and Your Best Bike Story Contest

Top 15 Stories – Good Contest – Share a Bike Photo and Your Best Bike Story

Green and Sustainability – What does the word green mean?

Posted on February 9, 2012February 8, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Where did the word green come from? The word’s earliest roots are with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, a loose collection of tribes that were the earliest agricultural communities. They used the word gro to mean grow. In Northern Europe, the West Germanic people used the word gronj for the color green. In the Dark Ages, when the Saxons (who were groups of German tribes) invaded England, the word changed to grene. The Old English verb growan means “to grow.”

The word has many associations including growth, sickness, death, inexperience, youth, envy, and jealousy. It also often it refers to nature, plants. regeneration, fertility and rebirth

The association of the word green with environmentalism emerged from the translation of the German word Grün, which was coined by die Grünen, an early formation of the Green party in Germany in the late 1970s which was a political ecology group, the Green Party.

Today the word seems to be associated with the environment, especially when used on products and in advertisements – but it is unclear exactly what green means. Green is often used to describe a product or service that possesses a lower carbon footprint, promotes recycling or pollution reduction, or something that is better for our natural environment that another product or choice.

Today there are over 300 eco-labels or green stickers that are labeling systems for consumer products and food. On the website Ecolabelindex.com, there are over 430 labels that are used across the world. Of these, I counted 36 that use the word green. Some of these labels were GreenTag Certified, Green Table, GreenSure, Green Seal, Greenstar, Greenmark, and many more.

The New York Times has a Green blog which states it is about energy and the environment. The U.S. Green Party has in its mission that it is,”committed to ecology, social justice grassroots democracy and nonviolence.” The cleaning product Simple Green has a quote on its website, “A great day to be green!” As the word green as well as the word sustainable are being used more and more, it is getting increasingly more confusing to determine what exactly these words mean.

One day our consumer products will be made from healthy and safe materials that, at the end of their life, will be taken apart and turned into raw materials for new products or returned to the earth as compost. These products will be manufactured using renewable energy and marketed with socially responsible strategies. I’m not sure what they will be called, but if you know, let me know.

Image Source:
Google Image Search: Green

Links:
Ecolabel Index

Recology San Francisco: Artists in Residents at the City Dump

Posted on February 7, 2012February 6, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Recoogy San Francisco is a unique Artist in Residence program in San Francisco, CA at the city’s waste management and transfer plant (also known as “the dump.) In this program, artists are given an opportunity to work with discarded materials at the site, receive a stipend, and get access to a studio space at the Recology Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center.

Since it began in 1990, more than 85 professional artists and 20 student artists have done residencies. During their residencies, artists have scavenging privileges, have 24-hour access to the art studio, and participate in some public programs which includes presentations to children and visitors. At the conclusion of their residency, there is a two-day public exhibition and reception for the artists

Artists donate work to Recology, which might include donating a piece for the Sculpture Garden, which is a three-acre site with over 35 sculptures on the site.

The Artist in Residence program has roots in the work of artist Jo Hanson, who came to prominence in the 1970s began a personal practice of sweeping in front of her Lower Haight neighborhood home. She made work with litter, and eventually organizing city-wide street sweeping campaigns and tours of illegal dumping sites in the City. She was eventually invited to visit the San Francisco dump, which led to her presenting the idea of the residency program.

Early artists in residence included sculptors William Wareham and Jim Growden who created large-scale, steel sculptures that today are located in the Recology sculpture garden and gallery. In the 1990s, social practice art forms emerged with Remi Rubel, who collaborated with kids from the Youth in Action Corps to create large-scale bottle cap-covered mosaic mural.

There has been a variety of projects at Recology which include interactive pieces, installations, sculptures, paintings, and photographs. Artist-in-residence Andrew Junge (2005) developed a variety of work at Recology which included his piece, Styrofoam Hummer H1 (low mileage, always garaged), which is a life-size Styrofoam version of a Hummer.

In 2009, during his residency, Bill Basquin collected food scraps and documented fruits and vegetables as they broke down over time. He created a sensory immersion chamber, called Dirt House where visitors could sit in a three by three foot redwood box that contained compost, in order to have an intimate encounter with the composting process.

Suzanne Husky in 2010-2011 while in residence, explored the “back to the land” and living off the grid movements. At Recology, she constructed “Sleeper Cells”—small, house-like tructures that had wheels and could be moved. The pieces were made from wood lath, The two pieces completed during her residency—one a porcupine-shaped structure, the other an abstract, organic form—were both equipped with wheels for easy mobility. They were made from lath and were furnished with the cast-offs of consumer culture.

If you are interested in applying for a residency, or want to know more about the current artist in residence for 2012 you can check out the Recology website or blog.

Images:
Recovered Resource – Recology Blog

Links:

The Recology Artist in Residence Program

Recovered Resource – Recology Blog

From Hunting and Gathering to Drive Thrus and Microwaves: How Much Time do we Spend Eating and Drinking?

Posted on February 6, 2012February 6, 2012 by Kbaumlier

All modern humans were hunter-gatherers from 2,000,000 until 10,000 years ago, spending most of their time looking for food. Everyday activites were looking for berries and nuts, and hunting animals. Stone Age people moved from place to place looking for food, but they stayed in one place as long as there was food and water.

Eventually people learned to grow their own fruits and vegetables, which was the start of the agricultural revolution. People built small mud houses and began to tame and keep animals.

Over dinner last night, I was thinking about how much time I spend preparing my food and the change in our eating (and hunting patterns) that has occurred in the last 10,000 years.

The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey (ATUS) collects information on how Americans spend their time—on paid work, household activities, child care, recreation, and numerous other activities. There is a eating and health section that is done, which contains questions on whether respondents ate or drank while engaged in other activities, such as driving or watching TV; general health, height, and weight; participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly the Food Stamp Program); children’s consumption of meals obtained at day care, school, or summer programs; grocery shopping and meal preparation; and household income.

The results from the study in 2008 showed that on an average day in 2008, Americans age 15 and older spent 67 minutes eating and drinking as a “primary,” or main, activity, and 28 minutes eating and 81 minutes drinking (except plain water) as a secondary activity. A secondary activity is multitasking- where a person is —eating while engaged in another activity considered primary by the individual. Such as watching television, driving a car, working, etc.

With the agricultural revolution we have greatly adapted how we get our food and the way we live, but our bodies are still pretty similar to what it was 10,000 years ago. Today spend a lot less time working on getting food to eat and spend more time working and living our “modern way of life.”

There are still a few parts of the world that still hunt and gather food, and resist changing to our modern agricultural systems such as in Western Australia or in the Andaman Islands.

Since our ancestors spent so much time hunting our bodies developed the “human fight or flight response.” This is our response to stress – which in hunting would result aggressive, combative behavior or by fleeing potentially threatening situations. It is debatable if our stress level and if our fight or flight response is more active more or less today. It is proven athat we spend a lot less time worrying, getting, and preparing our food.

Images:
USDA – Economic Research Service – Eating and Health Module (2008)
johnbarban.com

Links:

USDA – Economic Research Service – Eating and Health Module (2008)

Xeriscaping – Dry Landscaping Going From Freaky to Increasing Property Value

Posted on February 5, 2012February 4, 2012 by Kbaumlier

I grew up in a suburb in Milwaukee, where everyone had front lawns with grass, bushes and trees. Well almost everyone. There was one girl’s mother who changed their front lawn into a prairie – with tall wild grasses, flowers, and tall plants. This filled the half circle of lawn inside their driveway, and you could not see the front door of their house. We used to stare at the “freaky lawn” as we passed by on the bus and some people used to make fun of the girl because of her crazy wild grass front lawn.

Today there is a name for this type of alternative landscaping which is gaining momentum, called xeriscaping. The word xeriscaping comes from the word xeros, which is Greek for the word dry combined with part of the word landscaping. Xeriscaping refers to a method of landscape design that minimizes water use.

The term was started in Denver in 1978, where employees from the Water Department made up the term for landscapes that conserve water. This approach of landscaping emerged when there were severe water shortages in Colorado. Generally, plants that are considered local native plants are used in xeriscaping, and the landscape design works to avoid water evaporation and run-off. The xeriscape garden uses plants that usually have low water requirements, and are able to handle short periods of drought.

Some of the benefits of xeriscaping is that it saves water, requires less maintenance then traditional grass lawns, does not use fertilizers or pesticides, provides habitat for wildlife, and can sometimes improve property value.

The plants used in xeriscape projects vary based on the location. In the Midwest, prairies, or native plants with heavy mulching might be used. In the southwest, cactus, yucca, and sage might be planted with boulders and rock mulch around.

On my street, there are a few houses that have front yard gardens, or have partial lawns with native plants and grasses in the front.

My parents still live in the same area outside of Milwaukee, so I have biked by the house where I first saw a wild prairie in the front lawn. It still exists, but today looks like a contemporary landscaped front lawn, with birds, larger trees, and flowers.

Each Summer at my house in Cleveland, we decide not to water our lawn – and let it get brown if there is a drought. I do plan eventually to have a lawn with alternative plants and landscaping. The idea of retiring the lawnmower is appealing.

Image Source:
ecohomeresource.com

Links:

Xeriscape: Denver Water

eartheasy.com – Xeriscape