Friday, April 30, 2010

Wing Young Huie's University Avenue Project

Young mom with baby on Metro Transit bus, black and white photo
I can't wait for tomorrow night, when photographer Wing Young Huie's new University Avenue Project will be unveiled.

Huie is known for his urban photography, such as his Frogtown and Lake Street USA projects. For University Avenue, his large-format prints will be posted in the windows of businesses and as giant murals from the Minneapolis line to Rice Street, near the State Capitol.

Somali elementary students at lunch, girls in headscarves, color photo
According to the Pioneer Press, the images will be on view for six months. Plus, each night at twilight (starting 8:00 p.m. this Saturday) the images will be projected onto large screens in an empty car dealership lot at 1433 University (near Pascal Avenue.) The infrastructure to create the projections and support the screen are made from shipping containers. The images will run for two hours, and can be seen from a mile away.

High school age girl and boy at a gas station, color photo
Huie worked with students from a variety of high schools along the avenue. A number of the students and other participants, as well as Huie himself, will be speaking about it tomorrow at different "nodes" along the street.

Huie has also published a book of some of the photos (Minnesota Historical Society Press). What a lot of work this whole project must have been, and what an admirable accomplishment. I'm really looking forward to seeing it all.

Koua Fong Lee: Latest Sentence Shows Unequal Justice

As you know by now, Koua Fong Lee was convicted of criminal vehicular homicide several years ago, and has been in prison on an eight-year sentence ever since (see my earlier post). He wasn't drunk, texting, or on his phone, tried to stop (his family was in the car!), but either his 1996 Toyota malfunctioned or, possibly, he was stepping on the gas when he thought he was stepping on the brake.

Three people died and the Ramsey County attorney thought someone had to pay for it. The jury, unfortunately, agreed. There's new evidence that shows Lee definitely had his foot on the brake at the time of impact, as he said, and possibly mechanical findings about a malfunction of his cruise control.

Minnesota has many examples of people who were clearly negligent who got much lighter sentences than Lee. A new one was just recently decided, as described in the Star Tribune story Teen Charged in Lakeville Crash that Killed 3 Family Members. In this case, a 17-year-old boy with a brand-new provisional license was driving at night without his headlights when his pickup truck crossed the center line of a highway and destroyed a car containing three generations of a family (grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter).

While the teen, Brandon Iams, has not been found guilty yet, the news story reports about how he will be charged: A grand jury returned a finding of careless driving, rather than criminal vehicular manslaughter, the crime Lee was convicted of. Lee was on trial for both charges, and the jury went with the more severe crime because, as one juror put it, "If we had gone with a lesser offense, it was basically 'a slap on the hand. It was almost nothing,' he said. 'Yet we didn't want him to go to prison [for years].' "

I don't have an opinion of whether Iams should be charged with manslaughter or not. But I do believe that his actions are clearly more negligent than anything Lee did. According to the Star Tribune, "A witness saw the truck without headlights on, heading west on County Rd. 50... The driver pulled into a turning lane at Ipava Avenue, signaling a turn. But instead of turning, he returned to Hwy. 50, where he entered the eastbound lane and crushed the front end of [the family's] sedan."

What is the standard for criminal negligence? How do the facts in Lee's case (even as known in 2006) meet that standard, if the ones in Iams' case don't?

The maximum sentence Iams faces is 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. While Lee sits in prison for another four years.

It's time for a new trial, or better yet, clemency or a commuted sentence for Koua Fong Lee. Let him go back to his wife and four young children.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Can You Motivate Me Now?

Top half of a Get Motivated Seminar ad
Who goes to these megastar events? How do they work, as a business?

The sponsors have been running full-page ads for weeks in both local papers, and I'm sure the speakers' fees are through the roof, yet it says admission costs only $4.95 if purchased in advance. (It's something like $200 at the door... I wonder how many of those tickets they'll sell?).

So, of course, I Googled it. As I started to type in "Get Motivated," Google suggested "Get Motivated Seminar Scam" as the second most popular search term. Hmm.

The following is based on comments left by people who attended one of the seminars. Quite a number said that they enjoyed hearing Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani or Laura Bush. Some were appreciative of the low ticket price.

But I think it's fair to say that the wide majority of commenters had negative experiences on the whole:

  • Some were turned away or shunted to overflow sites, even though there was space left in the main room for people paying a higher admission price.
  • The big-name speakers appear to be used as a draw to get an audience for a number of get-rich-quick schemes. Quite a number of commenters said "I'm sorry I gave them my credit card number." A product named "Investools" was specifically mentioned. One commenter claimed Investools is "under investigation from almost every Attorney General’s office in the United States." Another said "I got suckered into paying the $99 for the weekend seminar and ended up having to work so I didn't go and then was unable to afford it so I decided not to do it at all. One month later they are charging my account and the fine print on the forms says you had to cancel within 3 days. I'm now looking at an overdrawn bank account. So much for making money! My motivation now is to try and get my money back!" (Both quotes are from this comment thread.)
  • Many mentioned a speaker named Tamara Lowe, who gave a Jesus-heavy, rags-to-riches speech. A commenter named Tether gave a brief bio of Lowe, pointing out that she didn't come from rags at all. Others were offended by her proselytizing at a seminar supposedly meant for business.
  • The Albany (New York) Times Union reported that their reporter was barred from entering the seminar.
A commenter on the Florida Times Union site said: "I was stunned at how many people, including 4 of the 5 friends who went with me, got reeled in by the day trading/software for $99 pitch [Investools]. I would conservatively estimate that over 50% of the 13,000 in attendance shelled out their hard earned money for it."

Given the dates of the various posts I read, both Powell and Guiliani (at least) have appeared at many of these events over the past couple of years. It's hard to believe they don't know what's going on at them.

It's amazing what people (even famous ones) will do for money, and even more so the junk people will believe if they think it will help them get rich quick.

I guess they're two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

Update: In the more recent ads (a new layout featuring even more speakers, running just about daily as the event grows nearer), I noticed the following fine print disclaimer at the bottom: "The GET MOTIVATED Seminar reserves the right to change event speakers and/or venues due to unforeseen circumstances.... SPECIAL BONUS: One of the most popular parts of the GET MOTIVATED Seminar is a special 10-minute optional bonus session on Biblical secrets of success."

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A Plastic Bag Among the Flowers

While walking to my car after work one afternoon, I couldn't help admiring the cherry and crab apple trees, exuberantly pink and frilly against the blue sky.

But wait. What was that up in the tree?

Tree with a huge number of pink flowers, glimpse of something white in the midst of it all

Was it... a Walmart bag?

White Walmart bag with tagline visible among the flowers

Yes. Yes, it was.

Remember... It's important to Save Money and Live Better.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Rude Plants

A gardening friend recently shared a website called curioustaxonomy.net, which lists scads of funny scientific names for plants and animals.

Be Sure to Read These Aloud

Arses (the monarch flycatcher)

Dolichuranus (a Triassic therapsid)

Eubetia bigaulae (a tortricid moth... you might need to read it a few times, by golly)

Pison eu (a sphecid)


For the Fourth Grade Boys

Batrachuperus longdongensis (a salamander)

Botryotinia fuckeliana (a plant pathogen fungus) and Didymella fuckeliana, both named for a guy whom we could subject to Fun with Germanic Surnames: Karl Wilhelm Gottlieb Leopold Fuckel.

Bugeranus (the wattled crane)

Colon rectum (a leiodid beetle)

Dorcus titanus (a stag beetle)

Enema pan (a rhinoceros beetle)

Fartulum (a tiny caecid gastropod that is rather like a turd in shape and color, too)

Narcissus assoanus (rushleaf jonquil, a U.S. lily)

Soranus (a fish)

Texananus (a leafhopper)

Turdus (includes the robin and thrush)


Found in Translation

Brachyanax thelestrephones (a fly, which translates from Greek as "little chief nipple twister")

Coprosma foetidissima (a New Zealand shrub whose name means "very smelly dung." Its leaves produce an offensive odor when rubbed

Eucritta melanolimnetes (a fossil amphibian whose name loosely translates as "Creature from the black lagoon")

Halticosaurus (a Late Triassic theropod... translates to "leaping lizard!")

Lycoperdon (the common puffball, whose name means "wolf-fart." In Spanish, the common name is "pedos de lobo" -- "wolf farts")

Orchidaceae (orchids) from Greek "orkhis," testicle, referring to the appearance of the plants' pseudobulb. It was once believed that terrestrial orchids sprang from the spilled semen of mating animals.

Vampyroteuthis infernalis (a squid relative, whose name means "vampire squid from Hell")

Monday, April 26, 2010

Is Your Grandma a Welfare Queen?

Apple-cheeked grandma woman with a gold crown, riding in a Cadillac stuffed with frozen pizza boxes
Pioneer Press economics columnist Ed Lotterman recently shed some light on a topic that's received more than enough attention via the Drudge Report, Fox News and Katherine Kersten's column: the widely quoted statistic that 47 percent of Americans pay no taxes.

Of course, many of these same people do pay taxes: sales tax, state income tax, and payroll taxes to Social Security and Medicare. What they don't pay is federal income taxes.

The implied (or sometimes overtly stated) fear is that these "freeloaders" will use their voting power to vote themselves even more of other people's money.

As Lotterman put it in his Sunday column, A Profound Misunderstanding of Taxes:

To some, the idea that a fifth of all households get 75 percent of their money [from the federal government] conjures up images of welfare queens driving their Cadillacs down to the supermarket to buy frozen pizzas with food stamps....

A much truer picture of this group on the public dole would be a bunch of blue-haired old ladies playing Rummikub in a senior citizens center. That is because the biggest single set of households in this lowest-income group are retirees on Social Security. And a disproportionate number are women who have outlived their husbands.

In many cases, they are not indigent. They may live in a house they own and may be drawing down their retirement savings. But if a modest Social Security payment is their primary source of income, as it is for many retirees, they would both fall into this income class and get most of their income from the government. Are these really leeches whose voting threatens our society?

Disabled people on Supplemental Security Income are another set in this poorest fifth of all households. Many are not eligible for Social Security because their physical or mental problems kept them from ever working long enough to become vested in the system. Some may have jobs but their SSI payments, together with food stamps and other transfer payments for low-income people, mean that what they get from government is large relative to their earned income.

Is our economy becoming less fair to higher income people and less economically efficient because people who spend their days in sheltered workshops or who are blind or confined to motorized wheelchairs throw their political weight around?
In concluding, Lotterman writes, "Yes, there also are people among the poorest 20 percent of households who are lazy, who make bad decisions, ... and who are dishonest. But I find such people at all income levels."

The same can be said, I would add, among that newest group of individuals -- corporations.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Boobquake Tomorrow

Soon after an Iranian cleric declared that earthquakes are caused by immodestly dressed women, a college-student blogger named Jen came up with the idea of Boobquake.

Sleeveless tank top with words Modestly dressed women rarely make earthquakes on it
It's a day -- tomorrow, April 26, to be exact -- when women are encouaged to wear their most cleavage-revealing shirts. Then, when there's no earthquake, the cleric's theory will be shown for what it is: naked stupidity.

Vikings Stadium: The $64 Question

It really does become a question of math, as pointed out by State Senator John Marty in today's Star Tribune opinion section.

Zygi Wilf and his Minnesota Vikings want enough public money to cover the principal and interest for an $870 million loan to build a new, posh stadium. That's $42 million a year for 30 years.

Which, as Marty says, is a $64 subsidy per seat per game for the next 30 years.

Artists' rendering of a possible Vikings stadium
With ticket prices that range from $105 to $845 per seat in the current stadium (and that's just to see them play the Cowboys, not even a team like Green Bay, and not including the likely bump in ticket prices we'll see in the fancy new stadium), I'd say adding $64 to the ticket price might not even be noticed by the average fan. The reason for the high subsidy per seat: There are only 10 home games per season. That's $2.9 million dollars per game, people -- just to cover the $870 million in principal!

Contrast that figure with 81 home games for the Minnesota Twins (playing in a just-opened 39,504-seat stadium, built with $392 million of public financing.) They're getting subsidized $4.08 per seat per game over 30 years. (Based on selling out all the seats every game... unlikely, given the Twins' history.)

Or the Guthrie Theater (opened a few years ago with three stages totaling 2,000 seats), built with $25 million in taxpayer support. Their most recent year recorded 463,412 theater-goers, subsidized $1.80 per seat per show over 30 years.

Of course, there are arguments to be made about other economic effects of a large construction project like the Vikings stadium, and longer-term economic benefits to the area surrounding it. Not to mention the threatened loss of the Vikings to some other city that builds them a stadium (which would leave the Twin Cities as nothing but, as some have put it, "A cold Omaha").

But $64 per seat per game. For 30 years?

That's a hard argument to make.

Sources: Minnesota Twins 2010 schedule, Wikipedia entries on Target Field and Guthrie Theater, Guthrie Theater 2008-2009 annual report

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Next Time They'll Just Use a Photo

You have to admit, the idea is pretty funny: Fortune magazine hired illustrator/cartoonist Chris Ware to do the cover for its upcoming Fortune 500 cover.
Fortune magazine cover with dominant 500 drawn as a glass-walled building, squatting on the U.S.
Clearly, someone at Fortune wasn't aware that Ware's work "explores themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression," as the Wikipedia entry about him says. It's similar to the way conservatives like my governor, Tim Pawlenty, can be fans of Bruce Springsteen without realizing what the lyrics of "Born in the USA" actually say. Or maybe the magazine's art director is a monkey wrencher. Who knows?

Whatever the reason, Ware's illustration is a keen example of afflicting the comfortable. His basic concept is a huge corporate structure squatting upon a devastated landscape. But it's the details that make it worth looking at.


On the roof of the building, corporate executives get paid big bucks, drink champagne, laze around and dance with joy. But where is their money coming from?


From the dump trucks that are busy picking up cash everywhere, then driving up the winding roads to the corporation.


They're helped out by helicopters that raid the U.S. Treasury (having already left the Greek treasury broke).


Not to mention that little casino known as the stock and bond markets.


Meanwhile, regular people shop at the Big Box Super Glut store, or get paycheck advances, while others worship Warren Buffet.


Other people are underwater in their homes (which are conveniently located in the Gulf of Mexico, south of New Orleans).


And the 401K is dead. (Note the misspelling of "cemetery" -- that's one of my classic errors, too!)


Of course, south of the barb-wire-ringed Mexican border, there's some exploitation going on.


And a final touch -- a nest of survivalists keeps an armed watch, while tea partiers wave their flags and blow off some steam.

Ware showed the cover during a talk at C2E2 (the Chicaco Comic and Entertainment Expo), on April 16, 2010. He has said he accepted the assignment because it would be like doing the cover of the 1929 issue -- the year before the magazine was founded.

They aren't running the illustration, by the way. Just in case you had any doubt.
________

Here's a much larger copy of the full illustration. Don't miss the Guantanamo prisoners in the bottom right corner.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Water Takes Energy

Today is water day during No Impact Week. Because I live in Minnesota (the land of 10,000 lakes yadayadayada), I often hear people saying water is not really our problem.

But check out this short Q&A with Peter Gleick, a water usage expert, in which he points out that it takes energy to treat and move water -- such as the water I drink every day, which comes from the mighty Mississippi. So even if the water is in ample supply, it doesn't magically appear in your tap. Someone burned coal or split some atoms to make it available to you.

I've been doing some things to conserve water. No low-flow toilets, but I've got a gallon milk jug taking up space in the tanks. No running the water while brushing teeth at our house. Short showers, alternating with sponge baths. We recently had the Home Energy Squad in, and they replaced all our faucets and shower heads with low-flow models. I've gotten rid of our lawn almost completely, and have tried to replace it with plants that don't need much water beyond our admittedly irregular rainfall. I've got a couple of rain barrels, too.

H2O Conserve logoI used the H2Oconserve.org calculator, which I thought was pretty well-designed -- the questions were set up fairly logically and therefore possible to figure out an answer that's probably pretty accurate about my behavior. (As opposed to the calcuator on waterfootprint.org, which asked questions in ways that made no sense to me and therefore arrived at a usage number that may or may not have had anything to do with reality.)

Here's my score from H2Oconserve.org:

Score result sayign I use 886 gallons per day compared to 1190 for the average American

Isn't that incredible -- each member of my family uses 886 gallons of water a day. This includes an estimate of the water used to produce the food we eat (meat eaters require the most water, ovo-lacto vegetarians less and vegans the least).

Here are a few tips from that site that I'm considering doing:

  • Putting a bucket in the shower and the sink where the clothes washer empties to catch "gray water" to use on the garden.
  • Keeping water used to boil pasta or other foods to water the garden.
  • Replacing toilets with low flow or dual flush models. Low flow models save 2.5 gallons per flush.
The site also reminded me that a dripping faucet uses about 20 gallons of water a day! So it's really worth it to get those fixed right away when they develop.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

No Energy for Energy Day

Wow, it's been a really tough day, and I don't have the mental capacity to write anything for No Impact Week's energy day.

So here it is, the only cute cat photo to ever grace the pages of Daughter Number Three.

Fuzzy kitten sleeping on its back

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Local Food Day

The No Impact Week guidelines asked me to eat all local food today.

This is a tall order in Minnesota in April. But here are a few things I've tried this week:

  • Fiddleheads from the ostrich ferns in my yard
  • Sorrel pesto from the sorrel plant I started growing a few years ago
  • Wild ramps from nearby in Wisconsin
Ramps, with white scallion-like bulbs, red stems and wide green leaves
Have you heard of ramps (Allium tricoccum)? They're also called wild leeks, and are very popular in Appalachia and the south. But they're native in Minnesota and Wisconsin, too. They taste similar to scallions, although a little stronger, and when cooked begin to smell a bit like garlic as well.

Yesterday, I sliced up a couple and mixed them into some local cottage cheese on an overwintered potato. Tonight I braised some, including the greens, and put them on a turkey burger.

They're only available for a brief time in the spring. I was just looking into where they grow, and it sounds like they would love my back yard. Hmmm.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Planes and Automobiles

Today is Transportation Day for No Impact Week. I was planning to ride my bike to work, but things went awry, inadvertently creating a perfect example of why people end up driving in their cars way too often.

I had forgotten I had to drop something heavy off three miles from my house, in the opposite direction from work, before going into the office. Okay, I thought, I'll drive that over, then go back home, leave the car, and take my bike.

But by the time I got to where I had to do the errand and then talked to the people there for a while, I didn't have enough time left to get home, head off on the bike, and still get to work on time. So I joined the parade of cars on the highway instead.

Back of a pickup truck full of vegetables, two men sitting with their feet in the veggies
On a broader transportation topic, I wanted to share an article from today's Star Tribune, No Way to Market, Kenya's Produce Waits and Wilts. Aside from stranding jetsetters all over Europe, the Icelandic volcano has also grounded planeloads of Kenyan vegetables and cut flowers that normally are sold in upscale European stores.

Horticulture is Kenya's top export and generator of foreign currency, and they've been losing $3 million a day, waiting for the ash to clear. According to the story, "Two million pounds of fresh produce is normally shipped out of Kenya every night. Eighty-two percent of that goes to Europe, and more than a third goes solely to Britain."

Much of the produce is rotting or being fed to animals because its buyers (grocery story chains in Europe) don't want anything with their name given away to hungry people for free. Huh. According to the New York Times version of this story, at least some of the unpackaged produce is being given away to orphanages.

As the crow flies, Nairobi is the same distance from London as New York. That's a long way to fly roses and baby zucchini.

But who am I to talk. The only garlic I could find at the co-op yesterday was from Argentina, which is even more distant from Minnesota than Kenya is from London.

And is any of this any odder than the idea that several hundred people had to cancel their appearances in the Boston Marathon because they couldn't get a flight out of Europe? What will it take for the huge number of people who fly somewhere at the drop of a hat to change their habits?

Monday, April 19, 2010

Trash, Trucks and Garbage!

Today is Trash Day during No Impact Week. I'll be collecting everything I throw away so I can think about it later. I actually generate relatively little trash, generally, but I'm sure there's a lot I can still do.

By coincidence, Ed Kohler over at The Deets has posted a video about trash hauling in my beloved city of St. Paul. For those who aren't from these parts, believe it or not, every household has to contract separately for trash hauling, as if we were living out in the country. Don't they realize services are supposed to be one of the benefits of living in a city, I ask you?

This means six or more garbage trucks go down every alley once a week, breaking our pavements and spewing hydrocarbons, for no reason other than lack of public and political will.

Minneapolis, on the other hand, has organized contracts with trash hauling vendors, so only one truck goes down each alley. What a concept!

Ed explains it all:



There was some talk a few months ago that the city council might take up this issue, but I haven't heard anything about it lately.

For No Impact Week, I think I'll make a vow to organize my whole neighborhood to use just one trash hauler within the next six months. Or at least cut the number down substantially. It can be done. I don't even think it would be that hard.

One final thought about trash... The lyrics to the song "Garbage!" by Bill Steele, © 1969:

Mister Thompson calls the waiter,
orders steak and baked potato
Then he leaves the bone and gristle
and he never eats the skin
The busboy comes and takes it, with a cough contaminates it
As he puts it in a can with coffee grounds and sardine tins
Till the truck comes by on Friday and carts it all away
And a thousand trucks just like it
are converging on the Bay
Garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage
What will we do when there's no place left
To put all the garbage

Mister Thompson starts his Cadillac and
winds it up the freeway track
Leaving friends and neighbors in a hydrocarbon haze
He's joined by lots of smaller cars all
sending gases to the stars
There to form a seething cloud that hangs for thirty days
While the sun licks down upon
it with its ultraviolet tongues
Till it turns to smog and settles
down and ends up in our lungs

Garbage, garbage
We're filling up the sky with garbage
Garbage, garbage
What will we do
When there's nothing left to breathe but garbage

Getting home and taking off his shoes
he settles down with evening news
While the kids do homework with the TV in one ear
While Superman for the thousandth time
sells talking dolls and conquers crime
They dutifully learn the date of birth of Paul Revere
In the paper there's a piece about the mayor's middle name
And he gets it done in time to watch
the all-star bingo game

Garbage, garbage
We're filling up our minds with garbage
Garbage, garbage
What will we do when there's nothing left to read
And there's nothing left to hear
And there's nothing left to need
And there's nothing left to wear

And there's nothing left to talk about
And there's nothing to walk upon
And there's nothing left to care about
And nothing left to ponder on
And nothing left to see
And there's nothing left to do
And there's nothing left to be but garbage

Sunday, April 18, 2010

No Impact Week


It's No Impact Week, and I've signed onto the pledge, so here's a warning: That means it may also be TMI (too much information) week at Daughter Number Three.

First of all, I need to say that I think the name No Impact Week is wrong. It's Less Impact Week. This goes for No Impact Man himself… It's not possible for anyone to live without environmental impact. But I take it as a motivator toward less impact -- as the original No Impact Man has. Although I know I won't take it as far as he and his family did (washing clothes in the bathtub, giving up all powered transit, even mass transit).

Here's the list of guidelines for those participating in the week, in case you're interested. It's pretty thoughtful.

One thing I want to do is write down every I action I take, to document my environmental requirements. I've been doing that today, thinking I would post it here, but after doing it for most of the day, I've decided it's too boring. Maybe parts of it will turn up later.

But what I am doing is keeping all of the waste I generate today in a reusable grocery bag, so I can look at it later and see how much of it was only useful for a very short time. As directed in the guidelines, I made a list of things I "need" to purchase this week... it's a pretty short list, because I didn't have any shopping excursions in mind. I didn't watch the Story of Stuff video, as suggested, because I've already seen it and felt its impact on my life.

Each day of the week has a theme, so here's what you have to look forward to:

  • Monday - Trash
  • Tuesday - Transportation
  • Wednesday - Food
  • Thursday - Energy
  • Friday - Water
  • Saturday - Giving Back
With No Impact Week on my mind, I wanted to highlight three stories from today's papers.

The Star Tribune's Karen Youso answered a question about the "ban" on incandescent lightbulbs. A hearing-impaired reader was concerned that this would mean no more bulbs for the signaling devices used by the deaf as doorbells, phones and baby monitors. Youso, bless her heart, pointed out that there is no ban on incandescents, despite frequent alarmist media reports to the contrary. What there is is a set of energy use requirements. These will be difficult for most incandescents to meet, but 22 types of bulbs are exempt, from 40-watt appliance bulbs to the kinds of bulbs needed for signaling devices. She also pointed out that halogens are incandescent and meet the standards.

The Pioneer Press reprinted a Los Angeles Daily News story about the Dervaes family. For over 20 years, they have been gradually changing their one-fifth-of-an-acre Pasadena yard into a working urban homestead farm, which now produces 5,300 pounds of organic fruits and vegetables, 1,780 eggs, and enough biodiesel to power their cars. Their solar panels keep them almost off the electric grid. According to the Wikipedia entry on Jules Dervaes, there's a documentary about them called HomeGrown: The 21st Century Family Farm. Their website can be found at urbanhomestead.org.

And then, for something completely, different, the Star Tribune's James Lileks's column, called Waste Not, But Make Room for the Living, Too. It combined great laugh lines with his patented edgy, almost-anti-environmentalism. It seems Minneapolis was named the seventh least wasteful city recently (in the Least Wasteful Cities rating,* sponsored by Nalgene, makers of reusable water bottles):
St. Paul is not on the list, which means either it was rolled into Minneapolis -- again -- or it's worse than last-place Houston, where people apparently use cars to drive their half-ton of garbage down to the boulevard. With the air-conditioning on and the windows down.
He faults the list of criteria for including things like reusing wrapping paper, taking books out of the library instead of buying them, and limiting water use when brushing teeth or showering:
So a city gets dinged because parents let kids rip open presents instead of insisting they open them with an Exacto knife so Mommy can iron out the creases and use the paper next year, and you get Care Bear paper for your high school graduation....

I know I'm supposed to stand under a cold trickle and scrub as briskly as someone hallucinating that he's covered with ants, but I have a simple rule for showers: I'm done when I'm done.
As one who is known for saving wrapping paper and who's considering putting a bucket in my shower to catch water so I can reuse it to water plants, I'm used to being made fun of. So it's okay, James, I can take it. I'll keep reading you to take the pulse of the eco-resisters... plus, you're a lot more fun to read than the Pioneer Press's Joe Soucheray, that's for sure!

* I have to say I have my own doubts about the Least Wasteful Cities study. I took the quiz and got a 1222, which puts me 10 points lower than Minneapolis's 1232 -- which is supposedly representative of everyone in Minneapolis (and St. Paul). Meaning I'm more wasteful than the average person here? Um, no. Sorry, I don't believe that. I think there was a whole lot of wishful thinking and wanting to please the interviewer going on in that survey, or a skewed sample, since they only interviewed 150 people per city. Although my low score for the heavily weighted public transit question definitely counted against me. And the survey made absolutely no allowance for people who bike instead using transit or cars. Weird.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

More Signs of the Timez

A photographer named Christopher Rory was shooting at a Tea Party rally in Champaign, Illinois last Thursday. He's posted quite a number of images to his Facebook page.

Here are a few of them... First, a couple of classic spelling errors, in keeping with my earlier post on this subject. In the interest of fairness, I should note that these were the only two I saw among almost 50 photos.

Smiling white woman with sign reading The best social program in Ameica is a job
But that one is an excellent example, you have to admit.

Man holding sign that says No taxization STOP without representation
This sign is completely incoherent, and it's not just the extra letters in "taxization." "No taxization STOP without representation" anyone?

And then there's this guy...

Beefy man holding big sign with lots of words making claims about Obama's support for terrorists
Click to see it larger so you can read his every one of his correctly spelled but still unintelligible words.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Give Where It Counts

You know all those 10K races and 5K walkathons and even concerts that are held on behalf of worthwhile charities? Doesn't it seem as though there are more and more of them all the time?

Jeanne Hopfensberger's story on the expansion of "cause marketing" in yesterday's Star Tribune did a good job of showing the negatives of these types of events (basically, that very little money usually goes to the cause), while still pointing out the positives as some see them (hey, lots of "awareness" is raised!).

An example used in Hopfensberger's story was the Turkey Day 5K, sponsored by Lifetime Fitness to benefit Second Harvest Heartland, our regional food shelf network. No one can argue that 2HH is a great cause. But according to the story, "The company [Lifetime Fitness] only cleared about $30,000 from the event" according to Lifetime's spokesperson, "because 80 percent of the registration fees were spent on police, Minneapolis Park Board fees, advertising and other logistics." If my math is right, that means the total income was $150,000. But only $10,000 (plus some amount of donated food) went to 2HH. That's a bit under 7 percent.

If they "cleared" $30,000, why didn't all of that amount go to 2HH? So maybe I'm not understanding the numbers here. But even if they netted $10,000 on expenses of $80,000, that's still only 12.5% of the amount spent.

Obviously, there are expenses involved in having a large event. But when I hear an event has major sponsors, I assume those sponsors are covering all or at least most of the operating cost, so that the registration fees or donations go to the named charity. Guess I'm wrong about that, though. The sponsors get their names all over the event, effectively getting a bunch of advertising subsidized by people who thought their money was going to charity.

Another prime example is the Freedom Concerts sponsored by an organization called Freedom Alliance, which is connected to Fox News's Sean Hannity. A conservative blogger named Debbie Schlussel blew the whistle on this, which she called a scam. The concerts are advertised as raising money to donate to injured veterans or to provide scholarships for the children of veterans. The concerts have raised tens of millions of dollars, but have only donated single-digit percentages of their ticket revenue to the people who are supposed to be their mission.

Schlussel documents that the vast majority of money goes to produce the concerts, even though the performing artists often donate their time: "millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferry the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style."

She goes on to give details:

According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10,822,785, but only $397,900 -- or a beyond-measly 3.68% -- of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers.

On the other hand, 62% of the money went to “expenses,” including $979,485 for “consultants” and an “advisor.” Yes, consultant/advisors got more than double what injured troops and the kids of fallen troops got. The tax forms show that “New World Aviation” got paid $60,601 for “air travel.” Was that for Hannity’s G5 [private jet]? ... that year, Freedom Alliance spent $1,730,816 on postage and shipping and $1,414,215 on printing, for a total of $3,145,031, nearly half the revenue the charity spent that year and about eight times what the injured troops and the children of fallen ones received.
The most recent year on file is slightly better -- 12 percent went to veterans or their kids -- but still nowhere near the 70 percent figure generally recommended as a minimum when assessing the validity of a nonprofit's work. (70 to 90 percent is the idea range, according to Minnesota's Charity Review Council. More than 90 percent usually indicates an unsustainable organization.)

The key point of all this: The best way to give money to an organization you support is to send them cash directly, whether by check, through their website, or by using a reputable site like GiveMN.org. And if you don't intend to donate any additional money that year, save them money (and spare some trees) by telling them you don't want any additional mailings or phone calls.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

It's Leaf Day!

Light green leaves, just opened, against gray branches and blue sky
Probably the earliest one on record in Minnesota... the day when the leaves officially stop being buds, and all the branches are yellow-green.

There were dandelions and midseason tulips blooming on April 12. I think that happened about a month later last year.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Looking Down

Photo of a Pringles can top with the ring turned so it looks like a face
I've been enjoying the Looking Down photographs of San Francisco artist William Salit, such as the one above. As William says, "Guaranteed! Everything just as I found it." (To see more of his work, go to his website. Because it's Flash-based, you'll have to select Portfolio, then Looking Down.)

While walking into work the other day, I had my own looking down moment:

Round plastic hubcap near a square crack in a sidewalk, yellow curb at bottom

Monday, April 12, 2010

Walking Away from Omelas

Poet, essayist and novelist Wendell Berry is known for writing only by daylight. His words stop when the sun goes down.

Why?

Because he's from coal country, and knows the damage coal does to the land and the people. So he refuses to give any more money to the coal-powered utility companies than he must, or to use one more ounce of coal than absolutely necessary.

Recent news stories made me think about Berry's refusal. The West Virginia mining "accident," of course. (I put accident in quotes because, as Tom Vanderbilt says in Traffic, it's the wrong word for an occurrence that could have been foreseen.)

But also the new power line story in Sunday's Star Tribune (not on their website yet), which told of the CapX2020 high voltage lines that are about to be built across southern Minnesota, connecting the Dakotas and Wisconsin. This is part of the new grid that's needed (I assume) to carry the wind power under development on Dakota wind farms, and to generally meet anticipated increased demand. (Actually, demand has decreased in the years of the recession, but the utility companies believe that it will return to the originally plotted rates soon.)

The story focused on homeowners and small business owners opposed to the line. I didn't get a complete picture of why they are opposed -- I got the idea the lines would be loud, though no details were given. I'm sure it's partly aesthetic: who wants a 100-foot-tall metal tower in their line of view? And there were vague and inconclusive references to possible health effects of the electrical fields. The net effect, of course, is that it will be bad for property values.

While reading the story, I wondered if the people living in the path of the power line have done anything to decrease the need for the power line. The Johnsons, who were profiled in the story, have three young children, and live on a large lot in a house that's the result of new or at least recent construction. Assuming the parents have jobs, they're driving some distance to get to them since there isn't much of an economic center in their exurban location. (The newspaper photo shows a long asphalt driveway holding three vehicles, although one of them might belong to the reporter.)

A second homeowner mentioned is Bob Johnson. (I assume he's not related to the other family; Minnesota is the land of 10,000 Johnsons, after all). Having hiried a lawyer, he's fighting the power line from "his office high in the former World Trade Center in downtown St. Paul" -- which means he has a 25-mile commute in each direction.

I know that the driving habits of these people don't affect the amount of electricity needed to power the state. But it seems plausible that one type of energy profligacy will correlate with the other.

Another part of the country facing property value decreases is a 40,000-resident community called The Acreage, west of Palm Beach, Florida. According to a story I heard on NPR, the community has been identified as a cancer cluster -- specifically, a cluster of brain cancer. In children.

How terrible, I thought. But catch this: "Tracy Newfield says she moved [to The Acreage] with her family in 2002 because of the area's beauty and the large lots. The extra land gave her family room for Jet Skis, a boat and ATVs."

That means The Acreage represents the worst kind of sprawl known in the sprawling United States. Its construction destroyed over a hundred square miles of wetlands in Florida's fragile ecosystem. And the privileged families who moved there are shocked, shocked I tell you, that their children's lives are endangered. And angry that the CDC says it's unlikely anyone will ever know why the cluster exists. And outraged that their property values are going to fall through the floor (if they can even sell their houses at all).

One possible cause of The Acreage's cancer cluster might be the fill materials used to even out the naturally swampy topography of the area, making it flat and dry enough for home construction. According to the Palm Beach Post, the materials mostly consist of waste from demolition and construction sites.

Americans need to wake up and realize that our way of life is built on pollution and resource depletion. We need to recast our lives to decrease both as much as possible, and demand that industry and government do the same. Demand that we should be paying the long-term cost of the things we consume, not just the oversimplified production and distribution cost.

I know this sounds like I'm blaming the victims. But we're all villains, as well as victims.

We need to change our behavior, and to do that, we have to change the infrastructure that supports our current ways. And I write this knowing that I am sitting here using a computer to compose this for my blog, while my daughter watches television and does her homework on a computer at the same time. We are all implicated (except Wendell Berry, I suppose).

Almost 40 years ago, Ursula LeGuin wrote a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away for Omelas." It's a morality fable about a beautiful city, named Omelas, where everyone is happy and well cared for. But the city has a secret that's revealed to young people by the time they're 12 years old: The existence of this utopia is dependent on a starving, debased child who is kept in a dark and dirt-floored closet. Covered in sores. Crying to be let out.

Everyone has seen the child, and while all are disturbed by the knowledge, they also understand that helping the child would destroy the city's prosperity, and so most go back and live their happy lives.

But sometimes, they don't return to their lives. Instead,

They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

What Would Jesus Say?

What happens when you place quotes from people like Newt Gingrich, James Dobson and less well-known members of the our nation's, ahem, conservative sector into the virtual mouth of Jesus?

You get a site like Tea Party Jesus. Each image is linked to a site where the quote was recorded. Although, in fairness, from the quotes I checked, the speakers aren't Tea Party "members" as much as they're part of the generally anti-Obama crowd.

Jesus telling children bilingual education is bad because it it teaches living in the ghetto, not prosperity
Newt Gingrich

Jesus tells children that pain is purifying and parents should hurt them until they cry
James Dobson

Jesus wondering aloud when people should go and beat their state legislators to a bloody pulp for being an idiot
Blogger Erick Erickson, the latest addition Fox News's crew of commentators

Via the Friendly Atheist

Saturday, April 10, 2010

The Lion King of Kings

Surburban garage door painted with a mural of an adult Simba with Nala. On the roof of the garage is a wooden sign that says Joy to the World the Lord Is Come
What are the odds the owners of this garage actually think Simba is God?

I suppose it's more likely they painted the mural when their kids were young, then put up the "joy to the world" sign at Christmas and neglected to take it down. Which makes it a fine example of house blindness.

I wonder if Simba can make blind homeowners see?

Photographed in Roseville, Minnesota.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Under the Dome, Madison, Wisconsin

Inside of a dome
While in Madison, I spent a little time inspecting the state capitol. Since moving to the Midwest almost 25 years ago, I've heard that the Badger State's capitol is supposed to be one of the most beautiful capitol buildings.

I haven't been in any others to compare it to (not even the one right here in St. Paul!), but I can imagine why people say this, now that I've seen it. The central dome is impressive, and just below it are these four mosaics:

Mosaic of sitting Lady Liberty

Sitting Justice with scales

Male Government

Male Legislation
The color is wonderfully vivid, and it was nice to have some gender balance...even though the women represent eternal verities, while the men stand for human institutions.

Bust of La Follette
How could the building be complete without a statue of Fighting Bob La Follette?

Plaster badger statue at the doorway peak
And how many state capitols do you know that decorate the doors of their legislative chambers with badgers? That alone makes it worth a visit.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

More to Learn About Howard Zinn

The Progressive has a report from Howard Zinn's memorial service, which was held last weekend in Boston. Speakers quoted in the story include Bernice Johnson Reagon, Marian Wright Edelman, Noam Chomsky, and Marge Piercy.

The most recent Rethinking Schools magazine has an exquisite cover illustration of Zinn by Joe Ciardiello, one of my favorite illustrators.

Rethinking Schools magazine cover with illustration of Howard Zinn

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Night of the Living Skin

Dumbest advertising message I've heard lately:

"Clearasil gets that skin behaves differently at night."

Maybe it sneaks out the window, climbs down a convenient tree, and goes dancing.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Book of Ages, the Last 50 Years

I have arrived at the end of Eric Hanson's A Book of Ages, which has earned its place in the Bathroom Books Hall of Fame. I've been reading it so long that it came out in paperback before I was finished with the hardcover.

Here are a few favorites from the entries about people (mostly) older than me:

JRR Tolkien with pipeAge 47: On Halloween 1954 W. H. Auden reviews a new book about a hobbit who inherits a magic ring and goes on an adventure. Auden likes the book very much and suggests it would make an excellent Christmas gift.

Best accompanied by:

Age 57: Sitting on a bed in his attic and typing with two fingers, Oxford professor J.R.R. Tolkien finishes The Lord of the Rings, 1949. The manuscript is more than half a million words and took seventeen years to write.

Louis Armstrong with cigarette in long holder, looking pensiveAge 56: In September 1957 Louis Armstrong breaks his long silence on the race issue in an interview to a young reporter for the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota. It comes as a shock to most Americans who are used to the trumpeter's ingratiating smile, but he is angry and has been angry for a long time. Two weeks ago black schoolchildren were barred from schools in Little Rock by National Guardsmen. And almost a century after Emancipation, Armstrong is the first black man to stay in Grand Forks' finest hotel.

Age 64: Karl Marx dies in poverty in London, March 14, 1883. Eleven people attend the funeral.

Marianne Moore in cape and hat with cockatooAge 67: Poet Marianne Moore has been hired by the Ford Motor company to help name their newest car-model, 1955. Among her suggestions are: Utopian Turtletop, Andante Con Tropo, the Anticipator, the Thunder Crester, the Silver Sword, the Regna Pacer, the Magigravue, the Turcotingo, the Pastelogram, the Varsity Stroke, the Mongoose Civique, the Intelligent Whale, and the Resilient Bullet. Ford decides to name the new car the Edsel, after Henry Ford's son and heir.

[I wonder what they paid her. Those are some terrible names.]

Age 71: In May 1962 retired president Dwight D. Eisenhower holds a press conference to criticize things that have happened since he left office. Current president John F. Kennedy says: "The thing I liked best was the picture of Eisenhower attacking medical care for the old under Social Security as 'socialized medicine'--and then getting into his government limousine and heading out to Walter Reed."

Age 74: H. G. Wells's name is put near the top of the list of persons to be immediately liquidated by the SS when the Nazis take over the government of Great Britain, 1940.

Ida May Fuller getting her check in the mailAge 100: Ida May Fuller, a classmate of Calvin Coolidge and the first person to receive Social Security in 1940, is still living in Ludlow, Vermont, 1974. She will die in 1975. In thirty-eight years of retirement, her Social Security benefits will total $22,888.92. A nice return. Miss Fuller paid in $24.75 during the last three years of her working life. She was a life-long Republican and never thought much of the New Deal.

Previous posts on Hanson's book:

Ages 13 - 44
J.D. Salinger, age 22
Ages 3 - 7

Monday, April 5, 2010

Koua Fong Lee Update

Today the Star Tribune ran an editorial that essentially said the same thing I wrote a month ago about Lee's case, challenging the illogic and injustice of his sentence. It was a fine piece of writing, containing this slap in the face:

L.C. Wesley Armstrong...was convicted last year of second-degree manslaughter after he began arguing with a pregnant woman in the passenger seat of the car he was driving and took his hands off the steering wheel to grab her. The car flipped and crashed, killing the woman. Armstrong also was convicted of first-degree burglary in 2009.

For those convictions, Armstrong spent a total of four months in prison.

[Koua Fong] Lee, now 32, had no criminal record, no prior driving offenses, no drugs or alcohol in his system and steadfastly maintained that he'd pumped the brake as his car rocketed through the intersection. Prosecutors and Lee's defense attorney concluded that he'd mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead. For this, Lee is serving eight years in prison.

Shown the newspaper story about Armstrong's four-month sentence, Lee grew quiet and looked around the Lino Lakes prison conference room in bewilderment on Thursday.
The same issue contained an interview with Lee, which closed with these words from him:
Had I known this was going to happen, I would have stayed in the refugee camp. If I had known lives would be lost and my wife and kids separated from me, I'd rather have lived in a refugee camp. I would like the victims' family to know that this was not on purpose, not intentional. I tried to step on the brake. I tried to stop the car. It just didn't happen.
Finally, a commenter to my earlier post left the address of a Facebook page in support of freeing Koua Fong Lee.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Earth Day 2010

Earth Day will be 40 years old on April 22. (Actually, it will be the 41st Earth Day. But like babies in western cultures, who are not considered to be 1 until their first birthday, annual events get caught in a weird time warp.)

The Wisconsin Historical Museum has mounted a small exhibit highlighting the role of Senator Gaylord Nelson in starting Earth Day. Here are a few of the items included.

Orange poster for the first Earth Day, with graphic rendering of traffic and pollution
Poster from Washington, D.C.

Black and white photo of a small group of young people marching up some stairs, carrying a white flag with the black ecology symbol on it
Madison's Earth Day march in April 1970.

Seeing the images in the exhibit made me wonder what happened to the ecology symbol -- I don't remember seeing it used in decades! According to the Wikipedia, the symbol was created in November 1969 by underground cartoonist Ron Cobb as a combination of E and O, which stood for environment and organism. (The fact that it's also the Greek letter theta appears to be unintentional.)

It was first incorporated into a flag graphic by Look magazine in its April 21, 1970 issue. (I couldn't find a visual representation of it online, however.)

Green ecology flag printed as a full page of a newspaper
Look's flag was followed by this one in the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin -- The Cardinal, April 22, 1970. Hmm. Wonder how that happened so fast?

Environmental Action newsletter cover with the symbol and illustration of Statue of Liberty crushed by pollution with headling Is that any way to treat a lady?
The symbol was adopted by the organization Environmental Action, and is still used as their logo. I'm not sure if EA is the direct successor to the original Environmental Teach-In organization, founded by Nelson and directed by Denis Hayes. The content and format of EA's website (referring to the first Earth Day as 35 years ago!) makes me think they're not at the forefront of environmental efforts any more.

Maybe this use by a specific organization caused the symbol to lose its more general meaning. Or maybe it became associated with a particular type of environmental activism, no longer seen as effective by later generations of world-changers.

But seeing it reminded me that environmentalism lacks a good symbol, something as simple and effective as the recycling symbol, but more encompassing.