"I'm on a tightwire, one side's ice and one side's fire"

Ahhh tomorrow kicks off senior week.

 

this past weekend I've put in a solid amount of time preparing my WISE presentation, relatively at-least. Last night I spent two hours editing 45 min of footage into a rough 20 minutes of quality footage. In the end even that needs to be narrowed to around 7 minutes. I was telling my mom last night, and might as well tell you tonight, how constricting it is to take an hour long interview and compact it into a cute 7 min. message. It's reductionism I tell you! I've learned that my job is to search for gems; those hard hitting one-liners that go something like. " buying local stimulates the local economy and is the quintessential act of democracy" (not a real quote). The problem is the message is so much more dense. I need to walk the line just right, between not oversimplifying or overwhelming. "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." said wise Mr. Einstein

So i need to do probably 10 hours, at-least, of video editing. 

I've got the intro worked out, but am still working out how the middle will be organized. Drizzy G I know you want a story board. I have thought of the major elements of my film and points I want to address, and how I will weave those points in with interviews, but I don't have a concrete movie making formula to follow yet. I do know that my intended audience is those who know little and want to learn, and those who know a lot and just need to be inspired/ reinvigorated.

As for my presentation I have decided to do it all on the fly. Better for the nerves that way.

Just playing, I took about 5 pages of notes of points I wanted to hit in my presentation (and movie). I am going to start by talking about what I set out to do, and why I set out to do it. Then I plan on diving straight into the subject of food, using that as a microcosm for the entire resilience movement. Food will lead into the importance of localism, which will lead into energy use, which will lead into transportation, and so on and so forth....

Well goodnight. 

If I knew what I know now...

As usual I've been busy, but have neglected to tell you any of my thoughts, accomplishments,etc. 

To resalivate (hey that's not a word!) your palate of Ecoboy-shenanigan-knowledge let's begin with a short piece of writing I was required to do in WISE last monday. 

The question--- What did you not know in September that you know now?

The answer---

 I like reading more than writing. Moreover if it was up to me I wouldn't write anything; I would direct people to things already written, works much better than a sloppy teenager could manifest.

I know bundles of new facts,stats, and figures, such as--- The EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested, i'll talk about it more in my next post) of oil in 1930 was 100:1 and now it is as low as 11:1 in the U.S. (20:1 globally). Let's see what else... according to one book I read-- 98 tons of ancient algae matter is compacted into 1 gallon of oil. Last one-- it is legal to put ground-up euthanized cats and dogs into cow feed. The FDA says you can feed a herbivore man's best friend, but they don't have the power to recall food, what a trip.

It has come to my attention that senioritis is a farce; contrary to popular belief it is the placebo of laziness.  Unfortunately my case is so far progressed the doctors say i'm surely a goner. 

Sometimes you've got to just do it! it being work.

I've found a word that's much more fitting than "sustainable", it's  "resilience!" 

I know that eating local in winter as a student is nearly impossible. 

I've learned that holding a camera while walking produces a video clip that makes the audience dizzy.

Time flies, but only if I let it.

I know that you create your outcome by the way you perceive yourself.

  

Dacha-- a Russian retreat home (in Freeville...)

I used to think gardening was only for aunts, or dads trying to convince their sons that "hard work builds character." I am not sure what it is, maybe it's just because I am happy for the the sunshine, but these last two weekends I've spent more time in the garden having a great time than ever before. Gardening was not so long ago synonymous with torture. Is it possible I appreciate playing in the dirt more now because I've finally grasped its importance? Maybe I'll soon tire of le jardin, who knows. I'm not going to lie, picking weeds isn't my favorite. I am more a fan of planting, especially peas; they are just fun to poke into the soil. Patting a thin layer of compost over seeds makes the same deep thump sound as patting a baby's back, it's awfully satisfying. Also, try lying on your belly and putting your eyes right up to the soil-- there is so much happening. Alright, enough romanticizing. But seriously its nice to feel summer on the air.

Saturday night I went swimming for the first time this year. Sunday I headed with Sally my pup, also known as the "noble steed", my Papa, and Sis to a commune in Freeville. The Dacha Project was the undertaking of six kids, most fresh out of college, looking to avoid a mortgage and the volatility of industrial living. Lea, one of those six, gave us a tour of the place. She would tell you they're are each there for different reasons; personally she wants to lead writing workshops, and have the community use the land. Lea is a effervescent free spirit, "This place is just magic, things just work and we don't know how..." was her response to my dad's praise of the lush grass. She showed us everything, from the inside of their main building, which is passive solar with an entire wall of south facing windows ("why would you turn away from that which gives you life and heat! who wants to face the road!?"-Lea) and two walls buried underground. The land in Freeville was purchased only a year or so ago, so buildings are still being put up (Leas future bedroom housed nothing more than a drum set and cinderblocks).
The Dacha is completely off the grid by the grace of a sole solar panel, four decrepit, forlorn batteries, and a diesel generator in the process of being converted to run on veggie oil.

As I am told how the six of them dug the foundation by hand, how the cute straw-bale house (that Lea is living in for the time being) was built with almost no previous experience, how the ponds will end up gravity irrigating the garden, and how they will soon try out gathering their own seeds to plant for next year, I just keep thinking how resourceful these six are. My dad said this is nothing new--he knew lots of similar places in Vermont-- but for me it's just even more of an anomaly.  You graduate from Rutgers, you say "hey I've got enough to pay with student loans, why would I want to pay more, why would I want to leave nature in a frantic rush to pay bills? Why not start a commune?"
And when you think commune don't think a bunch of hippies in the woods eating wild berries and singing Kumbaya. They built their own veggie generator, which heats water, creates air pressure for the water pumps, and generates electricity .check it out =>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMAmNiVuvOU&feature=player_embedded

It doesn't seem altogether to crazy of an idea in a world of rising energy costs, environmental degradation, and myopic, fast-paced living. It's just sensible.  Check out their blog, it's much better than mine-- subtly humorous, yet informative. http://dachaproject.com/blog/

(sigh)
what else is new? I worked with Drizzy G on a calendar of things I need to do before my presentation, which by the way is on June 14 (tentatively). I started thinking about my film. I'm listening to my Dave Von Ronk radio station on pandora, "Flowers Never Bend With the Rain" by Paul Simmon might work nicely with the Dacha Project video...

It's summer! check out this poem i heard this morning.

Summer Music

by May Sarton

Summer is all a green air—
From the brilliant lawn, sopranos
Through murmuring hedges
Accompanied by some poplars;
In fields of wheat, surprises;
Through faraway pastures, flows
To the horizon's blues
In slow decrescendos.

Summer is all a green sound—
Rippling in the foreground
To that soft applause,
The foam of Queen Anne's lace.
Green, green in the ear
Is all we care to hear—
Until a field suddenly flashes
The singing with so sharp
A yellow that it crashes
Loud cymbals in the ear,
Minor has turned to major
As summer, lulling and so mild,
Goes golden-buttercup-wild.

Say cheese

I'm drenched. The hot whey steam scorches my nostrils, I  hardly finish wiping my forehead before a slick layer of sweat resurfaces....

I arrived at Snow Farm hoping to take a quick tour of the dairy operations, and then talk over a nice cool glass of milk. Well, I was wrong. Before I could say Gouda I had been swept into a room resembling the high school showers, and was soon wrestling 50 pounds of steamy raw cheese into a bucket as my bare feet soaked in the pungent trickle of warm whey water.

 "Making cheese ain't as easy as playing baseball, is it?"

Aarron Snow chuckles across the vat from me. He has a long  neck, a sinewy build, and the smile of a seven year old on Christmas. His eyes are just like his dad's-- alive and giddy. His pops joins in on the laughter as he puts the finishing touches on my blubbery mold of cheese. His checks and forehead are shinning too--15 minutes of pouring hot cheese juice on mounds of giant silly putty is no cake walk.


So what was I doing on a perfectly nice Saturday afternoon indoors making cheese?


Cal and Aaron Snow may just be the coolest father-son cheese making duo this planet has ever produced. Mr. Snow has been a dairy farmer in Brooktondale all his life. By far the youngest of all his brothers he took over the farm in 1974 after graduating from Cornell. The Snow family has been farming in this area for a  long long time-- precisely 50 years before the civil war began.
But it's been a while since any Snows were making cheese, probably over 80 years ago.
So when Aaron returned from the Peace Crops. in Tanzania he and his dad thought it was a pretty swell time to put an idea 10 years in the making into action. Two years, a handfull of  runny provolone batches and  a few dozen workshops later Snofarm once again became creamery; the only in Tompkins County as a matter of fact.

Now I have known Mr. Snow for a couple years now, and I had heard about the cheese operation. When the Brooktondale Market had a day of Snofarm cheese tasting , a month or so ago, I decided to swing by. Well as Mr. Snow attested during my visit, the response was phenomenal. Arron and his pops joked before the event that they would be lucky to sell five pounds. By the time I had gotten there they had sold over 70. It was easy to see why, the cheese I tried was almost as good as its punny name-- fetish. That's when I decided to get an insiders look.


Although I visited,and made cheese over two weeks ago I am still so gosh darn excited by all that I filmed. I can't wait to show you.

Farmers really have got the good life figured out.

Soul food

Well this past weekend I decided it was time to give this whole local eating thing a bang. After an hour of circling the Greenstar produce section I felt slightly disappointed the only local vegetable was a strange, orangery brown, not terribly pretty looking, potato/dicon thingy. It kind of resembled an oversize wart. So I did another round, at least my 5th. Finally, having discovered the ground beef, I was lucky enough to run into a family friend who had watched me aimlessly wander the store mumbling to myself "alph alpha seeds, 1 pint, 1 pint." In response to her quizzical look, and disbelief, "you're still here!" I conceded and told her of my attempts to eat local for the next week. Well lordy you would never believe how nice people are to help you out in a bind. Those witch nose vegetables turned out to be  sunchokes, "excellent on salads."

So an hour and a half later I had almost covered half of the bottom of my shopping cart, spent $42.79 (to the amazement of my mother who gasped "5 dollars for that little thing of butter, oh Marcellll"), and was glowing from check to shinning check.

All local (50 mile radius) shopping list---

.ground beef

.whole chicken

.unsalted butter

.plain yogurt

.corn grits

.bread flour

.ramps (another vegetable previously unbeknown to me. they're kind of like scallops. great on salads) 

.mutzu apples

.lettuce 

Arriving home I immediately assigned my sister to the task of baking two loves of bread, which of course she did an excellent job doing. 

My mom popped the loves in the oven in this morning. There's not much better than waking up to the soft, spongy small of bread. 

So today is day numero uno of eating local. I am actually quite proud of myself if i may say so. If it takes me 15 min to buy grits imagine how long it takes me to cook them.

Breakfast=

-local grits

-local milk

-local water 

-2 slices homemade local wheat bread

-local butter

-local mouth

Lunch=

- 2 sandwiches w/ homemade bread, local lettuce

- not local turkey (couldn't find any-- shouldn't have missed the farmers market) or mayo

- local apples

-not local rip-offf cheezit things

Snack

-4 pieces of bread w butter and local honey

Dinner=

- 2 grilled cheese sandwiches  (bread,cheese, butter)

-all local salad (apples, ramps, sunchoke, backyard dandelions, lettuce,"snow farm fetish" cheese, carrots) 

-local milk

I had to resort to grilled cheese because I didn't have any thawed meat. 

The temptation to eat chocolate and buy a milkshake was almost to hard to handle-- when have I ever not eaten something I wanted and that was not within my purchasing power....

So far the spoiled eco boy has encountered these problems--

• Eating 1 1/2 loves of bread in one day get's old fast. basically after the first day
• The hours of the piggery (place to get local wilberts) don't match up with times I am free
• Farmers market isn't until next week
• need to get more milk. don't have time
• Away baseball games mean i get home at 9. I eat lunch at 12. waiting 10 hours between eating means this sinewy build is loosing energy. I regret to say I have an away game tomorrow and I plan on eating the cheap white bread sub the team provides. Michael Pollan please do not strike me with a thousand lightning bolts!

Having fun. Oh ya

Reading Research and Reality

With only a short practice after our game was canceled I arrived home at 5. It has been a while since I've been home before 6:30. I had no idea what to do with myself. After some jubilant time wasted I warmed up a bowl of noodles, poured a glass of milk, grabbed a book on peak oil and headed to the plush green grass--shirt off, tan time.

Reading about oil iss a great time. Who knew that something as boring as thousand year old algae remains could have so much written about it. Acting out of the ordinary I felt inclined to take notes on what I was reading. Many scribbled stats will not go forgotten--
"EROEI of oil in 1930 was 100:1" 
"Europeans use 1/2 the amount of oil per capita of an American."
"resilience vs. sustainability"

the great thing about research is it puts everything back in perspective. It gets you thinking again.

I want to come back and summarize some of the articles I read.
But here they are for now.
Oh ya, and I couldn't help but read a couple of articles on cows/beef-- agriculture is so interesting!

• http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html
• The Transition Handbook
•  http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/  ---this was quite helpful 
• NY Times "rethinking the meat guzzler"

get the dome piece ready for thoughts on oil!

My main dilemma with reading splurges is passing the info on. Restating  the information seems pointless when I can simply refer you to the article. But of course it helps me think critically when I have to argue an idea on my own. Anyone can read and regurgitate. With such discerning readers as yourself I don't want to disappoint.

Lists-- cause aint nothing wrong with brevity

I'm getting eaten by mosquitoes as we speak. Not trying to dwell at this comp too long. here's what you need to know....

 In the last week I've...

• Attended a lecture on global warming and what our responsible response to it should be
• Interviewed local dairy farmer Cal Snow and son Aaron. Such great people! We should get the football team to make cheese, it's a workout
• Got a couple books out of the library about transportation.
• Started reading the Transition Handbook, about turning cities into zero carbon emitters. It's possible and almost as easy as eating fritters....
• Set up a possible informal tour of a Dacha. Still not really sure what it is--kind of like a commune, and they produce their own food make their straw-bale houses. The lady is really cool. check out the blog http://dachaproject.com/blog/ 
• Contacted Chris about possible problems with movie files. Told me to try on my own first. Haven't tried... think it'll work....
• Contacted Tim Logue. Have yet to set up a time
• Planned out a week of eating local.
• Drove a lot. " I heard that. Wish I hadn't heard that. But I heard that"

As you can see I do a lot of nothing. But at least I'm working towards something.

I am pretty busy now as 8 games have been canceled and rescheduled for the following weeks, (make that 9 it's pouring outside my cozy abode right now),. But still...
In the next two weeks I should do these things:

• Return Fast Food Nation. Great Book.
• Go to garden meeting at Mrs. Clark's house at 6:30 on April 26. Make some food for it if I can
• Go to the Economics of Happiness movie at Cinemapolis on April 27
• Go to other Fleff Movies
• talk to Time Logue
• try out I movie files
• visit Dacha
• cross fingers
• Post on going to the farm
• post on peak oil
• post on failure
• prepare for local eating
• mom interview me. Just DO IT

 

I'm working hard these days people. ohhhhh ya