my green diary

yogurt lid cut outs

2011-03-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

Here are some yogurt lid cut outs I made. I have a big collection of yogurt containers and lids and well, one thing led to another and I began making these cut outs. I've given some away and some were made with a particular person in mind but I'd like to have a show with a group of them sometime.

There is a tradition of Jewish paper cuts that I'm also referencing in this work and an amazing 8th grade student I know also inspired me with some of his cut outs...Also I can almost finish one if I get up early and start cutting before anyone else in the house is awake. It's a great way to start the day when I can manage it.

Mini-Maker Faire

2010-10-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

I'll be making a collaborative solar powered sculpture at the East Bay Mini-Maker Faire on October 24th, More info is here

my own private Idaho

2009-12-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

We went to Idaho to visit family for the holidays. When I was a child Idaho sounded impossibly remote to me. I lived in the Oregon woods but in Idaho I was sure the trees were taller, disappearing into the blue, the shaggy dark green branches, covered in snow like heavy frosting and drifts so deep one had to tunnel out for months at a time. Now when I drive to my in-laws from the airport we pass Borders, Target, the Olive Garden. Everywhere feels like everywhere. On our return to Oakland my 7 year old daughter points out TJ Maxx. " They have that in Idaho." "Yup, they do."

solar chandelier video

2009-02-18T23:18:00.000-08:00

solar chandelier installed!

2009-02-18T21:21:00.001-08:00

Here are some shots of the sculpture. First being installed by Maurice and Jeff Levitch. I'm so glad I didn't have to ascend the ladder. The second shot shows the panel and the last two show the piece hanging...It all went well, a few adjustments were made and I was nervous as it went up, would someone fall? would the panel work? (edit...oops posted in the opposite order of preview for some reason so the first mentioned is the last, but you get the picture...video to follow)

it moves

2008-12-29T13:14:00.000-08:00

my solar panel is moving the solar sculpture in circles...maybe a bit faster than I had hoped but still....it moves!

where I've been

2008-11-25T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've been away from my blog. yup, between the obsessively following the election, teaching, doing laundry, and working on the biggest ever solar project I've made I got out of the habit of posting but I'm going to start posting again. Above you can see the Solar Chandelier in my studio...still very much work in progress I've spent every recent Friday tying teeny tiny knots in filament to make the stuff hang just so. My panel arrived cracked so now I'm waiting for the replacement to see if the thing will turn or not.....very suspenseful.

my new hero

2008-10-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

Today I was struggling with my solar powered sculpture project. It's coming together but there have been some technical areas I just didn't know how to make work. The art/techy types I emailed weren't responding...despair was beginning to set in. Finally, today I called, yes just got on the phone with, Therese who I had been referred to by Tony and she sent me to Guy. Guy is the guy I would be in an alternate universe. Look at his website. He has designed all kinds of amazing stuff. Created his own art and collaborated with other artists. He's built a solar hot water system. He lives in gorgeous Maine and to top it off he answered his phone and gave me several easy answers to problems I could not solve in my brain at 4 am! I heart Guy!

ecoversary

2008-09-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

This week I celebrated 20 years of being married. In the midst of the busyness of school starting, daughter's bday, and myriad details of daily life my husband and I managed to get away for 24 hours! We had a light green theme to our celebration...On the actual day(Wed) we visited the temple of food and bowed down to local, organic, delicious, slow, tastes at Chez Panisse. It was the first time we'd ever eaten downstairs and the food was not surprisingly, amazing. The vibe felt warm and perfectly celebratory for 20 years, a number I find it hard to get my mind around...I guess I don't feel old enough to have been doing anything for 20 of my adult years but at the same time yes, of course, and glad to be doing what felt exactly right, eating that incredibly artful and honest food.

On Saturday we took the ferry to San Francisco with our bikes. Then ate more delicious local fare at the ferry building, Acme bread, local blue cheese, figs...then biked to our downtown hotel....we splashed out big time and had a view of the whole Golden Gate bay from our lovely room. In the afternoon we made our way to Crissy field along the water. It felt incredibly freeing not to have to worry about parking, all that stress of looking for it and paying for it, gone. We kept pace or even beat the traffic on our two wheels. Wandering around North Beach later we found Cafe Divine, another restaurant with local suppliers. The waiter, a younger version of my husband, gave us champagne and treated us with sincere kindness.

Sunday morning we went back to the ferry, ate more delicious local fare then onto the boat and with tenderness watched the city recede...pedaled home through the quiet Oakland streets to reunite with kids and all the stuff of life.

Parking Day movie

2008-09-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a little movie I made of Parking Day.

Parking Day 2008

2008-09-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

Happy Parking Day and happy 1st bday to my blog! Mary V. Marsh and I set out bright and early but ironically, got caught in traffic, on our way to parking day. Still we set up outside SFMOMA and made our park. Parking day regulars came by and drank sun tea, read Mary's earth flags, watched solar flora rotate, and fed our meter in exchange for little books. Newbies asked questions, we had a long intense conversation about climate change with a fellow from Denmark, writing his dissertation on visual imagery and climate change. All in all a day well spent.

madrone

2008-08-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

I went to Oregon last weekend and visited the place I grew up. 40 years ago my parents "dropped out" and moved to the country, formed a commune and lived without electricity or running water. This was our 40 year reunion. Naturally seeing all the people was amazing but I'm not going to say much about that. What struck me was the place, the land, the smells, colors, sounds. All those feel stitched into my body at an almost cellular level. Each smell of flowering plants or pine was an olfactory reminder of my younger self. The soothing sound of creeks and streams heard everywhere on the land, the icy cold water on skin. The heat of the August sun. The greenish flaky serpentine rocks, deep purple blue oregon grapes, white queen anne's lace, orange red earth, red poison oak. Bird song, cedar tree, doug fir, madrone. Madrone bark peeling in layers, dropping down, red bark, brown bark, green. All of it soothing me back to my childhood summers and singing in the voice of the sweetest mother I have ever known.

sustainable school institute

2008-08-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

This week I attended a Bay Are Teacher Dev. Collaborative institute on Sustainability. It was held at the Bay School (hence the photo). Two fun filled days of presentations, conversations, and delicious, organic food. The keynote speaker was Fritjof Capra,from the Center for Ecoliteracy . I took a class with him on Deep Ecology in the 80's at UC Berkeley. Hearing him speak I realized how much his teaching had inspired my thinking on sustainability and my general worldview. His view of life as a complex system in which each part's relationship to the whole must be valued was inspiring then and now. However it is difficult and sobering to realize how much more dire the situation looks now than it did 20+ years ago. Today I read that the Arctic is now predicted to be ice free in summer in 5 years rather than 60....Still it was so exciting to be in a room full of people, including a number of heads of schools, who want to use their institutions to create real change.

So much to fear so much to hope for.

I heart Freecycle

2008-08-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

I recently got back into Freecycling as I cleared out stuff and I've got to say I loooove it. If you are unfamiliar with Freecycle Freecycle it is an email list where folks post what they have to give away and others respond. Let me enumerate what I love about freecycle. I can post my odds and ends, things that are cluttering and encumbering my life and others, often unseen, will gratefully relieve me of them. Things I've recently freecycled include a pile of old bricks, a car stereo whose volume went down every time I drove over a bump, and a shoe holder. On the other end of the equation I've gotten amazing stuff, most of which I would have no idea where to find. The ergonomic tray holding this keyboard on which I type is the example closest at hand. Oh and a real manual typewriter, which I will take to school to use with my students, but for now my 5 yo is learning letters on (my son came into the kitchen and typed one pithy line...the f word over and over and over, I heart twelve year old boys too). With freecycle there is the thrill of winning when someone picks me, yes me, for their item and the sweet relief of having something unloved by me loved and desired by so many. Truly green magic.

cool art

2008-07-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

Wow, just found out about Virginia Fleck who makes mandalas from plastic bags and is part of the Austin Green Art. I need to be part of a group like that. OK, anyone know any other Bay Area artists who would be into it? I need a collective, collaborators, co-conspirators...

In other news I am making yogurt lids and cardboard tubes into art. Time consuming fun!

handlebars

2008-07-12T14:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a video of my son and pals performing the Flobots song, Handlebars. It has a serious message about our times and yes, I'm biased, but I think he does a great job with it!

blue shadows

2008-07-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

With all the smoke in the air lately the colors have changed. The light has a yellow/orange cast and the shadows look bluer than usual. It made me think of Monet's paintings of sunsets that were probably created by the coal and wood smoke hazing the cities back then....

today'snews

2008-07-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

So in the hazy bay area air I read and heard some good green news recently. Elizabeth Kolbert's article in the New Yorker talks about a small island becoming energy independent. Her original series in the magazine a few years ago was a catalyst for my own environmental awakening. It was an incredibly bleak portrait of climate change that later became "field notes on a catastrophe", a book I own a signed copy of but have yet to work up the courage to read. In this piece she talks about how change actually happens. I like the vision of plucky farmers competing to see who can produce the most energy, also how the organizer worked with the existing tendencies of the community to create peer pressure to change. Social engineering against climate change! I'm going to be thinking about how to harness this when I go back to school in the Fall.

In a local parenting paper the editors looked at their carbon footprints but I can't find it online...

Today I heard on NPR that a garden is being planted in Civic Center, San Francisco. They are tearing up lawn and planting veggies! Very cool. Apparently an artist started this garden project. Another instance of the intersection of art and environmentalism.

smoke

2008-06-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

Just returned from celebrating my mother's 70th birthday in Graeagle, CA. My sisters and I had planned a surprise long weekend away with her and our families. However the state of California was hit with huge, unprecedented, wildfires in the days before. We arrived in the picturesque Sierra hamlet to find smoky skies and trees hazed with weird orange light. As an asthmatic who suffers after sitting around a campfire for too long I felt an almost instant physical response and as a chronic worrier about climate change I felt a deep emotional one. It was bizarre beyond belief to be sitting around celebrating as the state burned.Watching my children frolic in the strange grey air.

I still haven't seen any articles talking about the flooding in the midwest and the california fires being a result of climate change, though clearly this is what has been predicted....there seems to be a huge cloud of denial along with the smoke.

hot

2008-06-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

Has it ever been this hot in June in the Bay Area? It is 9pm and 82 degrees inside my house. We have had more hot days than I can ever remember and fires are already starting up. The whirrr in my brain says "climate change, climate change, climate change" As I folded the dry warm laundry off the line this evening ( a benefit, shirts dried within minutes of being pinned up. I rotated through three loads on my two lines)the cat, Rosie mewed pitifully from the roof. Once more she had gotten herself up there but forgotten how to get down. Is this us, roasting in our fur on the roof, with no awareness of how to escape when in fact we just need to take a leap on to a rickety fence and balance back to the ground? I fan myself and hope....

blue rumbler

2008-06-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

alas our biodiesel 1979 Mercedes aka the blue rumbler has some real issues, transmission is slipping, glow plugs are flickering, driver's door sticking. We're going to put her out to pasture...however hope springs eternal! We are buying a 1980 smaller (rumbler was a boat that putted up hills at 10 mph even with the pedal to the metal) version! Hoping to convert to straight veggie oil and have better luck in the repair department.

Father's Day

2008-06-15T15:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a poem I wrote a few years ago...

First Period

my father brought me flowers,
cheerful in the vase as I cramped,

embarrassed by their public color,
his male mention of my new body,

Today when I bled
I remembered the cone of blossoms.

Now he is gone.
Now my shame is done.

All that remains is my memory
of petals and stems

and grant us this,
red bloom of truce.

frogs

2008-06-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

My daughter and I collected some pond scum this spring and have been watching the eggs turn to tadpoles and now to frogs. She is delighted and amazed, as am I. I find myself gazing into the tank several times a day to see what changes have happened and when the first pollywog emerged from the deep onto dry land I felt like I was seeing primordial evolution happen before my eyes!

summer is a coming in

2008-06-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

One of the wonderful things about teaching is, of course, summer vacation. In mid-May it feels like summer will never arrive and then there is the amazing rush of early June when it seems I will never get everything done that must be done before the year can end. There are the field days and graduations when I look at the students and think about what they were like 5 years ago when I met them. How tall they've grown, how they look like young men and women instead of kids. There is the sadness of saying goodbye to colleagues who are moving on or retiring. There is the deep appreciation of certain treasured colleagues who stay on. The regret for moments played poorly and pride in those pulled off. I feel moored in a slipstream of time, bobbing up and down on its currents and pulled by the deep tow of my own certain someday voyage on.

slooow down

2008-05-24T04:04:00.000-07:00

I've been busy, really busy with the multiple things that make up a mom, teacher, artist, environmentalist, life. Yes, I admit being busy is my addiction. The rush of saying "yes" to another important task, the thrill of moving at light speed from one event to the next, the exhilaration of forward momentum. Sometimes slowing down feels like a hangover. I get edgy even snappish. So it was a delight to find myself lying in the sun on the deck with my five year old today. We had an outing planned but my son unexpectedly fell asleep at noon (he also has a predilection for pushing himself until he drops) and so we made an impromptu picnic with basil from the garden, alas, colorful but not that tasty tomatoes from Mexico, olive oil, and good bread. The warm deck, my daughter's silly chatter, sweet basil ahhh the slow life of now.

pheasant

2008-05-09T07:59:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, while biking home, I saw one of these on the trail near Lake Temescal. I've never seen one in Oakland before. S/he was looking through a chain link fence towards the lake and perhaps trying to understand what it was and how to get back over to the water. I imagined lifting it in my arms, scratchy feathers, warmth, wiggle, dusty smell, but instead, just pedaled on home.

art for sale

2008-05-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

I just dropped off a bunch of art for the sfmoma 15th annual warehouse sale.

Here are the details:

The event begins with a grand opening reception that features complimentary wine and live music, and it closes with an afternoon of live jazz. Throughout the sale, the gallery offers special extended hours. The gallery restocks sale works daily, but visitors are encouraged to attend early for the best selection. The event is free and open to the public. On opening night, a limited number of reserved parking spaces will be offered in the Fort Mason parking lot. Free parking is available outside the gates in the Marina Green.

15th Annual Artists Warehouse Sale Opening Night
Wednesday, May 07, 2008, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Special Sale Hours
Thursday, May 08 and Friday, May 09, 2008, noon - 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 10, 2008, noon - 5:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 11, 2008, noon - 4:00 p.m

Earth Day

2008-04-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I will wear my solar hat to the school where I teach and I'll bike to work too but the articles getting my attention are less the thoughtful and encouraging like Michael Pollan's and more the bitter and satirical like Gail Collin's "fat Bush" piece in the New York times or this one in Salon about dumping Earth Day. In truth I feel torn between the desire to be "virtuous" as Pollan calls it and do my part and a cynical despair that it is far too late to do anything but "slow the growth"and cope with the resulting catastrophe.

spring wash

2008-04-12T11:18:00.001-07:00

It's in the 80's in Oakland and I'm hanging out the wash. Yesterday 5 yo daughter asked " does God think it's summer?".

new work

2008-04-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

This is what I made during my spring break. Materials include cups from a baby shower, tea tin, thread spool, wire, play dough top, Peets iced coffee cup, motor, solar panel, epoxy.

best green blogs

2008-04-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I'm listed on best green blogs on today!

earth hour

2008-03-29T14:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight is earth hour. We're asked to turn off our electricity for an hour tonight from 8-9pm local time. My son's first reaction "no way. I want to watch a movie tonight" and to be honest I'm not sure I'll pull it off. It's kind of ironic because I spent years growing up without electricity. I remember when I first started spending lots of time in electrically illuminated homes it seemed like people were addicted to electricity, to the ability to be very active at night, when it should be dark and calm. Now I take my addiction to illumination for granted and only feel the hold it has on me when I'm asked to give it up...for an hour.

edit- can't get the link to work...try this www.earthhourus.org.

solar hot tub

2008-03-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hurray, our solar water heater is heating up a lot these days and making hot water for the hot tub. The way it works is that there is a panel on the roof and water is pumped up there. When it reaches 104 degrees the water flows into the tub and new water goes up. By late afternoon the water is quite hot and we only have to use the heater for a short time in the evening to heat it more. I love hearing it gurgle through the pipes. This summer I want to make a solar fountain to listen to and look at while in the tub.

a few things

2008-03-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

A few things I've been up to instead of blogging (but want to blog about sometime):

Had a great weekend with my sisters in Lakehead....near the world-famous Basshole!

Learned how to design a circuit at the amazing art place the Crucible.

ummmmm and this weekend my son is playing in the Norcal ice hockey playoffs. go Bears!

snow

2008-03-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamed of mountains and snow. In the dream it had snowed and I saw high mountains outside my window covered in white but when I looked on the ground instead of snow there was a pile of styrofoam pieces with small pellets drifting in a gentle breeze.

ps I just found the image above...the artist is named Tara Donovan and those are cups.

Study in brown

2008-02-19T08:38:00.000-08:00

My son was excited about the elephant seals too. He followed one as it wriggled up the beach, as I nervously reminded him not to get within 25 feet. The seal appeared to me to be about my son's age, an early adolescent. He squirmed his way along the sand towards a larger one sleeping in the corner of the beach. When he got about 15 feet away from the bigger one that one raised his head, turned, and gave a howl, clearly stating " no way are you encroaching on my territory". The little one retreated a bit, the big one gave another signal to back off. The little one headed into the waves as though it had just occurred to him that a swim might be nice. Jasper and I watched this drama together. In his brown hoodie, picked out for the first time for looks and not because of a sports team, he seemed at just the same stage as this young seal.

the artist and her model

2008-02-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

We went to Ano Nuevo this weekend to see the elephant seals. Due to a variety of factors we didn't make it onto the official tour but down on the beach we saw three elephant seals. Ava instantly started drawing them in the sand. She has just started drawing people and animals in the last few months and this artist/mama felt so awed by her instant desire to translate her experience into art.

my favorite news story

2008-02-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite news story I've read recently It's all about how hummingbirds make sounds with their tails instead of their vocal chords. Wow, amazing tiny musicians!

welcome to a new era

2008-02-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

I read yesterday that scientists now believe we have entered a new geologic era, ladies and gents welcome to the Anthropocene Era! That means that the earth has been so altered by one species, humans, that one must consider it to be different place than it was in the Holocene. More that half the dirt on the planet is being used, cultivated, altered by us bipeds.

Reminds me of the middle part of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

God’s Grandeur
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I love this poem and I do believe that nature is never truly spent, though alas, the warm breast of the Holy Ghost brooding over us is not something I frequently feel in this new era.

creating happiness

2008-01-27T17:01:00.000-08:00

Saturday I went to a great event at a local school. Just sitting in a gym full of well-meaning, anxious parents was strangely comforting. I felt part of a community trying to get it right. The keynote speaker was Christine Carter of the Greater Good Center talking about childhood keys to adult happiness. It helped me with another thing I struggle with, despair for my kids future and confusion about what I need to be giving them . Should I be teaching them survival skills, how to spin wool and eat acorns, or indulging them with ipods and cool sneakers now, since the future looks so bleak? Her research based emphasis on happiness as a teachable skill made me rethink my task. Maybe helping them create the habit of gratitude and happiness will serve them in whatever predicaments and difficulties they find themselved in the unpredictable future. Anyway it's worth a try!

remembering my dad

2008-01-19T18:02:00.000-08:00

This is one of the cabins my dad built back in the 70's. I didn't live in this cabin but remember a later one he build really well. It had large windows looking over a meadow and a big deck. It was a beautiful spot, something that always mattered to him. From Florence, Italy to Bellfountain, Oregon he was always one to choose a pretty spot. I'm grateful to him for teaching me the power of place. January 17th, 2004 was his 67th birthday and the last time I saw him.

Caro babbo, ti voglio bene.

sketch book

2008-01-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking this year about, how do I put it, noticing, noticing my creative actions. The gestures I make that make me feel alive and like I'm really seeing the world. This is often not the work I show anyone...Lynda Barry said in an interview I read that she makes art all the time and some of it she chooses to share with others. I felt so freed by that.

In my current state as artist, writer, mom, teacher etc etc my creative moments may occur during a staff meeting as this drawing of the molding and shadow on the wall of the meeting room did....

nostalgia

2008-01-06T10:03:00.000-08:00

The new year brings a feeling of nostalgia, pronounced in the Italian way, nos-tal-jee-uh. It has a different feeling than the English word... a deep longing for past places and people, maybe a longing for the person one was then. My sister sent me links to youtubes of songs that were popular when we lived in Italy 30 years ago. The one that brought tears to my eyes was this one by Lucio Dalla. It's a song about the new year and when I was 15 I knew all the words. Hearing it again they all came back.

Yesterday I dashed to San Francisco in the rain to see the Joseph Cornell show before it closed. It fit perfectly with this mood of longing. His sensitive worlds of collage and assemblage were breathtaking. So much collage can turn into pastiche and sentimentality whereas his are exquisite portals into the imagination. One thing I was particularly struck by was how he allowed each element plenty of space to breathe and relied on the juxtaposition to create the the magic. Ineffable, lovely nostalgia.

Recent Reading and Viewing

2007-12-19T20:54:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hockey goes green

2007-12-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

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

weather

2007-12-07T18:45:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now everyone agrees-
too much exhalation
causes disruption

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

grateful

2007-11-28T18:24:00.000-08:00

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

ifixed it

2007-11-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

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

a good day

2007-11-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

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

biking to work

2007-11-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

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

sustainable art teacher

2007-10-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

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

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

greenland and me

2007-10-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

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

hockey

2007-10-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

book meme

2007-10-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Indigenous People's Day

2007-10-08T09:06:00.001-07:00

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

floods

2007-10-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

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

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

divine caroline

2007-09-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

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

Sukkot

2007-09-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

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

Step it Up

2007-09-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

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

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

Hello

2007-09-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

Parking Day 2007

2007-09-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

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

You can see more photos here.