The Ericson Edition

To reclaim a public space you must first know where to find it.

2011-11-06T00:51:00.001-05:00

Privately-owned public spaces (POPOS) are little bubbles of public space paired to new commercial developments, often in exchange for zoning variances.

NYC has over 500 of them; See Zuccotti Park.

Anonymous locations and heavy surveillance has meant that many of these spaces are underutilized and only nominally public.

In short, the public feels unwelcome.

But now, several groups have rolled out their own welcome mats, and are working to reclaim these spaces. San Francisco-based Rebar Group collaborated on Commonspace, a collection of artists' dispatches on the kinds of playful mischief they each hatched at some of these sites. This project was expanded by San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) into the report "Secrets of San Francisco", which includes a downloadable San Francisco POPOS map.

As it turns out, camping isn't the only way to stay occupied. Say you're in San Francisco and have the urge to fly a kite on a rooftop garden. You're in luck. Just head over to the sun terrace at 343 Sansome Street. Just an easy 7-minute walk from our local Federal Reserve Bank!

Marianne Amoss, “Challenging the Commons: a yearlong experiment tests a new breed of urban public space in San Francisco,” The Next American City, Fall 2007.

Presidio's Quartermaster Reach restoration & Doyle Drive project on Streetsblog SF.

2011-03-13T07:00:00.002-05:00

Streetsblog SF story here. Picture source: Presidio Trust

Oil Spill Clean-up and Chemical Dispersants: Does the Good Outweigh the Bad?

2010-07-23T21:35:00.005-05:00

Stephen R. Humphrey, "Chemical Dispersants and Crude Oil - Efficacy and Toxicity," The Oil Drum, 7/14/2010.

"In the case of oil released underwater, dispersant reduces the amount of oil surfacing, hence reducing danger and toxicity for the topside workers trying to repair the damaged well and contain the spill. It also increases surface area and time for oil-droplet exposure to microorganisms in the water column. The microbes digest the oil into simpler and much less harmful chemicals."

"More than 200 genera of bacteria, cyanobacteria, fungi, and algae are known to degrade or transform hydrocarbons, using them for energy and carbon."

"The US National Research Council issued a report on dispersants in 2005. The report succinctly noted the tradeoffs involved in dispersant use: 'Dispersant application thus represents a conscious decision to increase the hydrocarbon load (resulting from a spill) on one component of the ecosystem (e.g., the water column) while reducing the load on another (e.g., coastal wetland). Decisions to use dispersants, therefore, involve trade-offs between decreasing the risk to water surface and shoreline habitats while increasing the potential risk to organisms in the water column and on the seafloor.'"

"Prolonging spilled crude oil's exposure to offshore sea life increases environmental harms in ways we don't understand very well, and these harms are probably much worse than we know. In my opinion there's no silver lining among the tradeoffs, only trading off one bad against other bads.

It’s remarkable to me how much people have discussed toxicity of dispersants, and how little people have discussed the toxicity of crude oil, which is high for people and many other organisms. We definitely need to learn whether dispersant allows the oil to degrade fast enough and in large enough quantities to offset damage done by spreading the oil through more of the environment for longer. But we also need a comparable public discussion of the toxicity of the oil to people, to habitats and animals along the shore, and to the myriad creatures of the Gulf of Mexico."

The image above is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties. Accessed through WikiCommons.

Experiment Looks at Impact of European Brown Snail on Presidio Native Plants.

2010-06-21T13:45:00.008-05:00

By: Jason Ericson

The European brown snail Helix aspersa was introduced to California from Europe sometime in the 1850s. It has since thrived and is considered a troublesome pest to agriculture, but little has been written about its effect on our native plants.

I worked with Mark Frey, an ecologist with the Presidio Trust, and two students from Oberlin College, Albert Davila and Rose Hartley, to design an experiment to peer into the understudied ecology of these small, but numerous herbivores. We wanted to ask if H. aspersa’s alien descent gave them some predilection for our Presidio natives--perhaps because our natives have not had the evolutionary time to develop adequate chemical and physical defenses to this relatively new invader--and to see if this army of little brown snails might be quietly subverting our restoration work.

H. aspersa is easy to distinguish from other snails in the area once you know two distinctive characteristics: It has a brown-speckled shell and a closed umbillicus. The umbillicus is the center of the shell's spiral—a closed umbillicus looks like a cinnamon roll, an open umbillicus like a donut. Together these characteristics are distinctive.

Our field experiment tested the effect of H. aspersa on the seedlings of three species of native annuals and three species of non-native annuals, selected for their taxonomic and physiological similarities to each other. We used seedlings because this stage of life is most vulnerable to snail herbivory, and we chose annuals because their survival strategy of rapid, above-ground growth, rather than conservative investment in roots like perennials, is a sort of all or nothing gambit. We planted these seedlings into a bare, sandy area of Presidio Hills within eight pairs of wire mesh enclosures. Each of these 16 enclosures contained an identical number and palette of plants, three of each species, for a total of 18 plants per enclosure. In half of the pairs of enclosures, we added 8-10 H. aspersa, the other half were controls free of snails.

When we began, we were prepared to measure the difference in the effects of snails on the growth of natives vs. non-native plants to within a volume of a half-centimeter cubed over the course of several months. The difference between the test and control plots turned out to be visible and unmistakable.

To our great surprise, after just three weeks, H. aspersa completely decimated every plant species except one in the test plots. As plants in all of the controls flourished, even poking out of the enclosures in places, snail plots were quickly cut back to a single row of G. dissectum standing alone in a patch of empty sand.

Preliminarily, our monitoring data seems to suggest that G. dissectum and another non-native, Vulpia myuros, were not preferred, and only consumed aggressively as alternatives dwindled. The third non-native, Stellaria media, was consumed at approximately similar rates to the natives we tested, Claytonia perfoliata, Daucus pusillus, and Plantago erecta.

For now, we can only confirm that snails have an effect and that this effect can be dramatic. Our results are suggestive, but we have too little data to say that H. aspersa shows any preference for native plants over non-natives. We're considering ways to refine our techniques, but this is an important step in understanding the ecology of one of the Presidio's most numerous and potentially most important herbivores.

Gulf Oil Spill Relief -- Where to Donate:

2010-06-03T23:58:00.007-05:00

Selected, adapted and/or reprinted from Florida Philanthropic Network and National Wildlife Refuge Association.

The National Audubon Society has created a special fund to rescue oiled wildlife, and to underwrite advocacy to protect beaches and coastal birds and wildlife. It has also set up a clearinghouse for volunteers.

The National Wildlife Federation has sent a team of wildlife experts to assess the impact of the oil spill on the communities, wildlife, marshes and wetlands of the area. NWF staff members are also collaborating with BP and other industry representatives, local and national nonprofits, its state affiliate network, and state and federal government agencies to help coordinate a meaningful volunteer response to the catastrophe.

The National Wildlife Refuge Association is supporting on the ground efforts to respond to the oil spill. Contributions made to NWRA's oil spill response page are tax-deductible and will support local non-profit Refuge Friends groups along the Gulf Coast. Refuge Friends are vital to the success of our wildlife refuges - particularly during times of crisis such as this.

Image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Raise worms.

2010-06-02T19:06:00.000-05:00

Condensed and expanded from articles on StopWaste.org and WikiHow.com

Worm compost bin: Approx. 10 to 16 inches deep (24 inches max); 2 square feet per person w/ small holes on the sides so the worms can breathe, and a tight lid.

Bedding: non-glossy newsprint. Cut into 1-inch strips, moisten with water (but not sopping wet) and fill bin three-quarters full. Optional additions: shredded cardboard, dirt, leaves, sawdust, straw.

Ventilation: Drill several 1/8 inch holes in bottom of bin and in the sides, approx. 4 inches from the bottom.

Cover: The bin should have a cover to prevent light from getting in and to prevent the compost from drying out.

Worms: 1 lbs. of Eisenia fetida (red wigglers) per square foot. Add a quart of scraps and wait two weeks. After that, feed about a quart a week.

First compost ready in two to three months.

Vermiculture in San Francisco:
Garden for the Environment: 7th Ave at Lawton Street, San Francisco

Bay Worms: Vermiculture kit: $18 incl. 5-7 lbs of bedding, 1 lb. worms (1000+) worm eggs and microorganisms

Image "Red Wiggler" by Mihai Duguleana in public domain accessed at wikicommons.org.

Algae bloom, an energy boom?

2010-06-01T18:55:00.007-05:00

Green algae can double their mass every day, stretch in thick mats for miles and deprive other sealife of essential oxygen, reports Clive Cookson in Financial Times.

The blooms are a result of nutrient-loading from industrial and agricultural run-off and are aided by climate change, reports Cookson, but there might be a thin silver-lining to this green menace.

Cookson reports that some energy scientists are excited by the potential of these blooms to be harvested for biofuel. While this does not eliminate our responsibility to control nutrient-loading and work to reverse climate change, it is a great example of how we can learn to see opportunities within bad situations.

Clive Cookson, "Curse and blessing of blooming algae," Financial Times, July 12/July 13, 2008.

Photo of colonies of green algae by Simon Andrews licensed under Creative Commons.

2010-05-17T16:36:00.011-05:00

The Center for Biological Diversity is posting regular breaking news updates about the Gulf oil disaster, as well as tackling questions such as how big the spill is, what species are threatened, and who is responsible.

Image: "Scarred Giant" by artist Chris Harman

Mycoremediation: Mushrooms clean up oil spills, great in cream sauce.

2010-05-03T04:30:00.000-05:00

“Without question, mycelium is running wild just under our feet," reports Silicon Valley alt-weekly MetroActive, "and many believe that, if only harnessed and controlled, fungi could help to remedy the Earth's many problems of environmental contamination.”

Great lead paragraph too: "[oyster mushrooms] indulge in some of the most toxic, noxious petroleum products available and turn them into delicious, photogenic morsels that go wonderfully in white wine cream sauces and Japanese stir-frys with not a carcinogen remaining.”

Alastair Bland, “Panic Shroom: Are mushrooms and human hair the organic, 21st-century answer to toxic disasters like the spill in San Francisco Bay?," MetroActive, 1/9/08.

How to remediate an oil spill.

2010-05-02T12:48:00.008-05:00

There are four main ways to clean up an oil spill, reports the University of Delaware Sea Grant Program:

1. Do nothing. Let natural processes (wind, sun, water churn) break the oil down,

2. Collect it manually with booms and skimmers,

3. Apply chemical dispersants to increase the surface area of the spill, then refer to method 1,

4. Add bacteria or other microorganisms to digest the oil into harmless substances.

This last method is referred to more generally as biodegredation. Hodges and Simmers put together a guide for cleaning oil-tainted soils called "Bioremediation of Crude Oil Spills: A Non-Technical Field Guide (pdf)" for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Their technique begins on page 14, and involves skimming to remove the excess oil, adjusting pH to favor our desirable oil-eating biota, amending the soil with fertilizers to encourage their growth and regular tilling.

Aeration through tilling is crucial to their method, speeding the remediation process by exposing more of the contaminated surfaces to microbial activity. Tilling, however, may not be a desirable, or even practical, option in the Gulf wetlands, given the scope of the spill and that tilling might prove more damaging to the life there than even the oil.

Fortunately for the countless plants and animals that live in the Gulf area, with human solutions completely overwhelmed by the task at hand, wetlands are also a hotbed of microbial life, and may ultimately be the only thing truly capable of cleaning up our mess.

Next up: Remediating oil-contamination with plants.

Image in public domain, no artist credited, taken from Wikicommons.

Oil Disaster Threatens to Overload Marshes.

2010-05-01T23:48:00.006-05:00

"Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems in the world," reports the EPA, and the churning of water through them cleanses, a fact which some cities have put to use to treat their own wastewater.

NYTimes has an interactive map showing the oil spill's spread over the past few days, and Democracy Now! is reporting that 5,000 barrels a day continue to pour out.

What's worse, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was quoted in Bloomberg saying, “the more significant oil” will hit the shores of his state within the next two days.

These marshes, natural water treatment plants, are in danger of being significantly overloaded, and the microbiota responsible for breaking down wastes in this system need to be carefully monitored and cultivated.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife photo

Corn fuel, empty stomachs.

2010-04-04T04:30:00.000-05:00

Subsidies are creating a demand for more agro-fuels, but Red Pepper reports that the cultivation of crops for fuel “threatens the world’s poor with starvation, damages biodiversity and even contributes to global warming.”

“Agro-fooling ourselves” by Oscar Reyes, Red Pepper 156, Oct/Nov 2007.

Imagining a world of efficiency.

2010-04-02T04:30:00.000-05:00

“Garbage is the product of how we have decided to produce things and run our society,” reports The Tyee. An Industrial Metabolism scholar calculates, “that 94 per cent of the inputs, the raw materials and energy that go into a product, never make it into the output, the finished item. In other words, we make way more garbage than we make stuff; it's just "easier" that way.”

Ruben Anderson, “We Can Be Garbage Free: Trash is a choice. Time for 'Cradle to Cradle' design," The Tyee, November 28, 2007.

Trash as Fuel.

2010-04-01T04:30:00.000-05:00

“Plasma-arc gasification” vaporizes trash -- turning it into fuel gas and other usable byproducts.

“Ditching the Dump” by Susan Brackney, Plenty, Dec/Jan 2007

An Urban Downsize.

2010-03-02T08:04:00.004-06:00

NPR show Life on Earth covers Flint, Michigan's plan to get smaller & greener.

Phytoremediation and Soil Contamination: methods, genetic engineering, and limitations.

2009-12-25T20:30:00.005-06:00

Soil Contamination Problem Widespread:

“The contamination of the environment with toxic metals has become a worldwide problem, affecting crop yields, soil biomass and fertility, [and] contributing to bioaccumulation in the food chain,” write Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo (2005, p. 53). Heavy metals strongly bind to oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur atoms, which in turn can inactivate enzymes (Schutzendubel & Polle, 2002, p.1353). LeDuc and Terry report that more than 50,000 sites in the United States are contaminated with acutely toxic metals and await remediation (2005, p.514). “Currently, $6-8 billion per year is spent for environmental cleanup in the United States,” reports Pilon-Smits, “and $25-50 billion per year worldwide” (2005, p.17). Of this amount, approximately 35% involves metals remediation (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, 2002, p.440). Given the vast queue of sites awaiting remediation, write LeDuc and Terry, the problem demands “low-cost, effective, and sustainable methods to remove [metal contaminants] from the environment or detoxify them” (2005, p.514).

Conventional Soil Remediation Technologies:

The technologies widely used to remediate polluted sites include pneumatic fracturing, soil flushing, solidification/stabilization, vitrification, chemical reduction/oxidation, soil excavation and removal to secured landfills (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, 2005, p.54), soil washing and reburial, and pump and treat systems (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, 2002, p.440). These methods are cost prohibitive, assert Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo, and often generate secondary waste (2005, p.54). Schmidt suggests that while conventional methods are effective for small, highly contaminated sites, they are not applicable to large areas because they require high energy input and expensive machinery (2003, p.1939). Conventional methods, Schmidt continues, also destroy soil structure and decrease soil productivity (p.1939).

Phytoremediation Emerges:

An emerging alternative, reports Pilon-Smits, is phytoremediation, a collection of technologies and techniques that make “use of the naturally occurring processes by which plants and their microbial rhizosphere flora degrade and sequester organic and inorganic pollutants” (2005, p. 16). Phytoremediation does not traffic exclusively in heavy metal contamination, report Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo, but is also used to clean up “pesticides and xenobiotics, organic compounds, toxic aromatic pollutants and acid mine drainage” (2005, p.54), but exciting work with phytoremediation in heavy metal cleanup has made this problem emblematic of phytoremediation’s potential.

Phytoremediation is lauded both for its cost-effectiveness and its appeal with the general public. “Because biological processes are ultimately solar-driven,” reports Pilon-Smits, “phytoremediation is on average tenfold cheaper than engineering-based remediation methods such as soil excavation, soil washing or burning, or pump-and-treat systems” (2005, p.17). While admitting that “the science of understanding wetland detoxification mechanisms is in its infancy,” Hansen, Duda, Zayed, and Terry write that constructed wetlands, one application of phytoremediation, are “orders of magnitude lower in cost than other treatment systems” (1998, p.591). And phytoremediation is popular with the public, report Pilon-Smits and Pilon, because plants are aesthetically pleasing (2002, p.440). Phytoremediation is increasingly becoming integrated with landscape architecture, writes Pilon-Smits, as urban remediation sites are now often designed to be safely used by the public as a park or nature area during and after the remediation process (2005, p.30).

Phytotechnology Methods: A Collection of Approaches

Phytoremediation is versatile, proving effective at cleaning up solid, liquid, and gaseous substrates reports Pilon-Smits, but it requires different strategies situationally, particularly in terms of remediating organic pollutants versus inorganic. “Inorganics cannot be degraded,” reports Pilon-Smits, “but they can be phytoremediated via stabilization or sequestration in harvestable plant tissues” (2005, p.16). When inorganic pollutants accumulate in plant tissues they often prove toxic, even lethal, to the plant, writes Pilon-Smits, both directly, by damaging cell structure, and indirectly, by taking the place of essential nutrients (p.24).

Organic pollutants, in contrast, are typically manmade and foreign to a plant’s system, continues Pilon-Smits; thus a plant will lack the appropriate transporters for these organic substances, and instead move them through its body by diffusion (2005, p.24). Organic pollutants tend to be less toxic to plants because they tend not to accumulate and are less reactive (Pilon-Smits, p.24). The phytoremediation of organic pollutants “has been summarized as the ‘green liver model’ because of its similarity to mammalian detoxification mechanisms” (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p.28).

Thus phytoremediation, necessarily, comprises a collection of approaches, but all make “use of the naturally occurring processes by which plants and their microbial rhizosphere flora degrade and sequester organic and inorganic pollutants” (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p. 16). “Different phytotechnologies make use of different plant properties and typically different plant species are used for each,” writes Pilon-Smits (2005, p.19). Phytoremediation methods include: natural attenuation, phytodegradation, phytoextraction, phytostabilization, and phytovolatilization.

Natural attenuation is phytoremediation that happens in lieu of more deliberate management. It is the remediation that occurs when a contaminated site goes otherwise untreated. “Because the processes involved in phytoremediation occur naturally, vegetated polluted sites have a tendency to clean themselves up without human interference,” writes Pilon-Smits. “This so-called natural attenuation is the simplest form of phytoremediation and involves only monitoring” (2005, p.19). Natural attenuation is comforting because it is a kind of cleanup that happens by default, but as a deliberate approach it does not maximize time and space in the way that a more closely managed approach would. Pilon-Smits writes, “Natural attenuation is suitable for remote areas with little human use and relatively low levels of contamination” (p.19). Thus, it is most appropriate when the given problem lacks any sense of urgency.

Phytodegradation describes how plants are used to degrade organic pollutants via their enzymatic activities (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p.19). “In phytodegradation,” Pilon-Smits writes, “plant enzymes act on organic pollutants and catabolize them, either mineralizing them completely to inorganic compounds (e.g., carbon dioxide, water and Cl₂), or degrading them partially to a stable intermediate that is stored in the plant” (p.28). To this end, a plant species will generally be more effective if it has “large, dense root systems and high levels of degrading enzymes” (Pilon-Smits, p.19-20).

One type of phytodegradation is called phytostimulation or alternately rhizodegradation, whereby organic pollutants are degraded by the microbes plants host in their rhizosphere (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p.19). Rhizosphere remediation occurs without the pollutant near the roots entering the plant (Pilon-Smits, p.22). “Plants release a variety of photosynthesis-derived organic compounds in the rhizosphere that can serve as carbon sources for heterotrophic fungi and bacteria” writes Pilon-Smits (p.22). Plants, in essence, feed tiny organisms near them and, by absorbing these organisms’ byproducts, often can experience synergistic returns. For example, rhizosphere microbes “can promote plant health by stimulating root growth (some microorganisms produce plant growth regulators), enhancing water and mineral uptake, and inhibiting growth of other, [Nitric oxide] pathogenic soil microbes” (Pilon-Smits, p.22). In addition, “Fungal symbiotic associations have the potential to enhance root absorption area, and stimulate the acquisition of plant nutrients including metal ions,” writes Lasat. These “fungal associations were shown to enhance root absorption area up to 47-fold” (2002, p.110). A broad root structure promotes microbial growth and the production of compounds that can promote plant-microbe interactions (Pilon-Smits, p.20). “In rhizosphere remediation,” Pilon-Smits observes, “it is often difficult to distinguish to what extent effects are due to the plant or to the rhizosphere microbes” (p.22).

Bioaugmentation actively cultivates and encourages these rhizospheric remediation effects, either through selection of favorable combinations of vegetation, which together will create a pleasant neighborhood for microbial growth, or by growing large amounts of the desired microbial flora in the lab and introducing them to the soil at the phytoremediation site (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p.23). Important to note is that research has shown that adding native microbes is more effective than adding nonnatives, because established microbial populations outcompete nonnatives (Pilon-Smits, p.23-24).

Inorganic pollutants must be treated with other approaches, including phytoextraction and phytostabilization. With phytoextraction, report Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo, plants accumulate contaminants in their tissues, which are then harvested (2005, p.55). A sub-type of phytoextraction, called phytomining, involves harvesting the plant parts that absorb the contaminant, processing out the contaminant and then reusing it (p.55). This approach is used most often in the case of valuable metals. Phytoextraction is sometimes aided with soil additives that make contaminants more bioavailable or accessible for extraction by the plant. A plant cannot remediate contaminants that are inaccessible to it, either due to distance or because the contaminant is chemically bound to the soil. Thus, metal chelators such as siderophores, organic acids, and phenolics are sometimes used to release metals from soil particles (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p.23). However, loosening the bonds these contaminants have to the soil can be highly problematic if would-be remediator plants are unable to take up these toxins before they leach into ground water (Lombi, Zhao, Dunham, & McGrath, 2001, p.1925).

In contrast to extraction-based methods, phytostabilization aims to localize pollutants in a soil area, reports Pilon-Smits, to keep them from diffusing and causing problems along a wider area (2005, p.19). “Phytostabilization of metals,” Pilon-Smits and Pilon write, “may simply involve the prevention of leaching through the upward water flow created by plant transpiration, reduced runoff due to above-ground vegetation, and reduced soil erosion via stabilization of soil by plant roots” (2002, p.441). In this way, trees can be used as a hydraulic barrier, whereby the strong force of their transpiration creates sufficient upward water flow to prevent soil contaminants from leaching down or fanning out horizontally (Pilon-Smits, p.18). Fast-transpiring trees such as poplar are popular for phytostabilization because they maintain a strong upward flow of water, which prevents downward leaching (Pilon-Smits, p.20). Similarly, the dense root systems of grasses are used to prevent wind erosion and lateral runoff (Pilon-Smits, p.20).

With phytovolatilization, plants take contaminants into their tissues, and then release them into the air as a volatile gas (Pilon-Smits, p.19 and 29). This is an attractive phytotechnology because it removes pollutants without the need for harvest and disposal (Pilon-Smits, p.29). But, as Pilon-Smits notes, it is important to track the fate of this gas in the atmosphere to be sure remediation is not simply exporting the problem (p.29).

Many of the above strategies may work together on a restoration project simultaneously. Constructed wetlands are a great example because, depending on the design, a constructed wetland may use any and all of the above strategies to remove contaminants. Constructed wetlands “comprise a complex ecosystem of plants, microbes, and sediment that together act as a biogeochemical filter, efficiently removing dilute contaminants from very large volumes of wastewater” write LeDuc and Terry (2005, p.515). Phytoremediation plans of constructed wetlands routinely call for harvesting plant parts to remove sequestered contaminants from a site, but may simultaneously expect the species present in the wetland to volatize contaminants or stabilize them in the soil below (Hansen, Duda, Zayed, & Terry, 1998, p.595), thereby transforming contaminants into immobile or less toxic forms” (LeDuc and Terry, p.515). Constructed wetlands are a promising model because they are relatively cheap to create and maintain, and they filter a wide-range of contaminants (LeDuc and Terry, p.515).

Natural Hyperaccumulators and Other Model Organisms:

Lasat reports that plants perform the work of phytoremediation with mechanisms designed to prepare for potential stress, including mechanisms that tolerate metals (2002, p.113). Schutzendubel and Polle write, “Since plants are sessile organisms and have only limited mechanisms for stress avoidance, they need flexible means for acclimation to changing environmental conditions.” (2002, p.1352). But when it comes to phytoremediation, not all plant species are created equally, and thoughtful species selection is crucial to a remediation project’s success.

Much research to date has focused on so-called “hyperaccumulator” species that can “accumulate and tolerate greater metal concentrations in shoots than those usually found in non-accumulators, without visible symptoms” (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, 2005, p.58). Commonly, a species is considered a metal hyperaccumulator if it can accumulate approximately 100-fold higher metal levels than non-accumulator species (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, 2002, p.446). There are somewhere between 400 (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, p.58) and 500 (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, p.446) reported species of hyperaccumulators. These include at least 45 plant families (Lasat, 2002, p.112), including members of the Asteraceae, Brassicaceae, Caryophyllaceae, Cyperaceae, Cunouniaceae, Fabaceae, Flacourtiaceae, Lamiaceae, Poaceae, Violaceae, and Euphobiaceae families (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, p.58). Metal hyperaccumulation in these families probably evolved independently, Pilon-Smits and Pilon assert, perhaps as protection against herbivory and pathogens (p.446). Lasat reports that most hyperaccumulating species “accumulate Ni, about 30 accumulate either Co, Cu, and Zn, even fewer accumulate Mn and Cd, and there are no known Pb hyperaccumulators” (p.112). Of these families, Brassicaceae are particularly interesting to researchers because several species in this family have demonstrated the ability to hyperaccumulate more than one metal (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, p.58).

While phytoremediation is demonstrably cheaper than conventional methods, Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo note that it is “not an easy technology that consists of simply planting and growing some hyperaccumulating plants in the metal polluted area” (2005, p.55). Instead, they note, it is “a highly technical strategy, requiring expert project designers with field experience that choose the proper species and cultivars for particular metals and regions” (p.55). Pilon-Smits writes:

Favorable plant properties for phytoremediation in general are to be fast growing, high biomass, competitive, hardy, and tolerant to pollution. In addition, high levels of plant uptake, translocation, and accumulation in harvestable tissues are important properties for phytoextraction of inorganics (2005, p.19).

It goes without saying that plants must be where the pollutant is, writes Pilon-Smits, and be able to act on it, “Therefore, the soil properties, toxicity level, and climate should allow plant growth” (p.17). Incorporating species already growing near a contaminated site ensures local competitiveness and pollutant tolerance (Pilon-Smits, p.21).

But complicating advances using natural hyperaccumulators, Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo report that research with these species may have hit a wall. Hyperaccumulators typically have a slow rate of growth, have limited biomass and are limited to their natural habitats (2005, p.55). Additionally, most hyperaccumulator species are metal selective—meaning mixed metal soils can be lethal before the plants can complete any substantive remediation work (Schmidt, 2003, p.1950). A key challenge in phytoremediation today is finding species that can survive sites with mixed contaminants/multiple heavy metals. “[I]t must be considered that metals rarely occur alone in the environment,” write Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo, “and an adaptive tolerance may be essential for several metals simultaneously” (p.56). Despite researchers need for versatile, tolerant plant stock, Lombi, Zhao, Dunham, and McGrath found that natural hyperaccumulators have considerable specificity in metal hyperaccumulation (2001, p.1919). “Moreover,” Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo write, “the application of hyperaccumulator plants can be further limited because little is known about their agronomic characteristics, pest management, breeding potential and physiology, growing often in remote regions and in certain cases, their habitat is threatened by mining, development and others activities” (p.55).

Genetic Engineering Advances Phytoremediation:

Many lines of phytoremediation research are turning to genetic engineering to surmount these challenges. Lasat reports that, “ Brown et al. (1995) proposed the transfer of the hyperaccumlator phenotype from small and slow growing hyperaccumulator species to fast growing, high biomass-producing nonaccumulator plants” (2002, p.115). To this end, Lasat continues, “[B]iotechnology offers the opportunity for direct gene transfer, thus circumventing limitations imposed by sexual incompatibility” (p.115). Direct gene transfer is accomplished by inserting a foreign piece of DNA from any organism, from bacteria to mammals, into the plant cell genome. After propagation, the transgenic plant matures and the foreign gene is inherited by its offspring (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, 2002, p.441-442). The foreign DNA can be inserted either with a particle gun or via a soil bacterium called Agrobacterium (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, p.442). “The diversity and adaptability of microorganisms allows them to thrive in harsh, toxic environments where higher plants are unable to grow,” write LeDuc and Terry. “As such,” they continue, “microbes represent a potential reservoir of important genes involved in metal detoxification. Highly efficient phytoremediating plants could be generated that overexpress microbial genes” (2005, p.517). This work is exciting, Pilon-Smits and Pilon report, because it typically increases metal accumulation potential by 2- to 3-fold (p.451).

Even more encouraging, Lasat reports that studies indicate metal tolerance is regulated by just a few major genes (2002, p.115), perhaps as little as 1 to 3 (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, 2002, p.447). Furthermore, metal accumulation, tolerance, and plant productivity are not necessarily linked, and thus could be manipulated separately. It should be possible then to breed or genetically engineer a plant with high metal tolerance and metal accumulation as well as high productivity (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, p.447).

Risks and Limitations of Phytoremediation:

However, genetic engineering also has its risks and limitations. Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo note that “phytoremediation technology is still in its early development stages and full scale applications are still limited” (2005, p.61). And while phytoremediation works, the often complex biological reasons why it works remain to be discovered (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p.21), making the selection of traits with genetic engineering a challenge. “Phytoremediation efficiency is still limited by a lack of knowledge of many basic plant processes and plant-microbe interactions,” writes Pilon-Smits. “There is also a need for more phytoremediation field studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technology and increase its acceptance” (p.30).

But limiting the use of field trials is public unease about transgenic plant genes spreading into the gene pool of wild relatives (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, 2005, p.60) and thriving due to their metal tolerance or general weedy nature (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, 2002, p.450). Another concern is that sequestration of contaminants in plants could put wildlife and humans at higher risk for exposure (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, p.60) due to accumulation in edible plant parts or volatilization dispersal (Pilon-Smits & Pilon, p.450). Further, the safe disposal of sequestered contaminants presents challenges (Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, & Azevedo, p.60). “More research is needed to improve combustion techniques of contaminated biofuels,” asserts Schmidt, “and the production of marketable products from contaminated biomass for industrial use (mainly oils and fibers) should be tested,” but to date the challenges of properly redirecting waste products remain very real (2003, p.1952). Soberingly, Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo recommend that genetic engineering of phytoremediators be studied further “to determine the true costs and benefits of this technology to the ecosystem as a whole, before it is to be applied to a larger scale” (p.61).

More generally, phytoremediation, both of the conventional and genetically engineered varieties, is severely limited by the bioavailability of contaminants at a site. Put simply, writes Pilon-Smits, “For plants and their associated microbes to remediate pollutants, they must be in contact with them and able to act on them” (2005, p.21). “If the contamination runs too deep, or the concentration of toxic compounds is too high,” Gratao, Prasad, Cardoso, Lea, and Azevedo add, “then plants alone cannot efficiently remediate the soil” (2005, p.54). This limitation due to bioavailability can potentially open a gap between what phytoremediation can reasonably accomplish and what policy-makers and the public expect. “If only a fraction of the pollutant is bioavailable, but the regulatory cleanup standards require that all of the pollutant is removed,” writes Pilon-Smits, “phytoremediation is not applicable by itself” (p.17). This is particularly challenging at older sites, where the pollutants in aged soil tend to be more recalcitrant and difficult to phytoremediate (Pilon-Smits, p.22). As a compromise, Pilon-Smits suggests that remediation targets be pegged specifically to a site’s cache of bioavailable contaminants—those usually regarded as the most dangerous band of contaminants expressly because they are more readily accessible to living organisms—rather than total level of contaminants, many of which are stable in the soil and thus pose a lesser threat, that way phytoremediation may enjoy more widespread use (Pilon-Smits, p.31).

Another matter of concern is the considerable length of time phytoremediation can take to reach cleanup targets. “With the plant materials currently available, years or decades are needed to clean up a contaminated site” (Lombi, Zhao, Dunham, & McGrath, 2001, p.1919), limiting its applicability (Pilon-Smits, 2005, p.17). Long cleanup times may increase opportunities for collateral wildlife and human exposure to contaminants, may present continuity problems in monitoring and maintenance, and may simply exceed policy-makers and the public’s patience for results.

Future of Phytoremediation:

Unease from the general public about the use of transgenic plants in the field and the regulatory barriers that have sprung from that sentiment, LeDuc and Terry report, “have spurred researchers to innovate new methods of creating transgenic plants that will be more palatable to the public and pose less potential risk of hybridizing with nearby plants or adversely affecting wildlife” (2005, p.518). One promising result is a method called chloroplast transformation, which prevents the escape of transgenes via pollen to related weeds and crops (LeDuc and Terry, p.518). Genetically engineering chloroplast genomes of higher plants, write Ruiz, Hussein, Terry, and Daniell, “offers several advantages over nuclear transformation” (2003, p.1345). Advantages include:

very high levels of transgene expression (up to 46% [weight for weight]) of total protein; uniparental plastid gene inheritance (in most crop plants) that prevents pollen transmission of foreign DNA, the absence of gene silencing and positioning effect, the ability to express multiple genes in a single transformation event, the ability to express bacterial genes without codon optimization, integration via a homologous recombination process that facilitates targeted transgene integration, and sequestration of foreign proteins in the organelle, which prevents adverse interactions with the cytoplasmic environment (Ruiz, Hussein, Terry, & Daniell, p.1345).

Besides early indications that chloroplast engineering is highly effective at improving phytoremediation processes, perhaps its greatest advantage is that it helps quell fears that transgenic plants will interbreed with wild relatives. Hopes are high regarding the potential of chloroplast engineering in phytoremediation research, in part because similar work has demonstratively conferred “insect resistance, herbicide resistance, disease resistance, drought tolerance, and expression of edible vaccines, monoclonals, and biopharmaceuticals” (Ruiz, Hussein, Terry, & Daniell, p.1345).

And yet, regardless of the course that new phytoremediation research takes, for phytoremediation to have any meaningful effect on the world’s widespread soil contamination problems, undeniably, researchers must continue to find ways to safely move their trials out of the lab and into field use.

References

Gratao, P. L., Prasad, M. N. V., Cardoso, P. F., Lea, P. J., & Azevedo, R. A. A. (2005). Phytoremeditation: green technology for the clean up of toxic metals in the environment. Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology, 17(1), 53-64.

Hansen, D., Duda, P. J., Zayed, A., & Terry, N. (1998). Selenium Removal by Constructed Wetlands: Role of Biological Volatilization. Environmental Science & Technology, 32(5), 591-597.

Lasat, M. M. (2002). Phytoextraction of Toxic Metals: A Review of Biological Mechanisms. Journal of Environmental Quality, 31, 109–120.

Leduc, D. L. & Terry, N. (2005). Phytoremediation of toxic trace elements in soil and water, Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, 32, 514–520.

Lombi, E., Zhao, F. J., Dunham, S. J., & McGrath, S. P. (2001). Phytoremediation of Heavy Metal–Contaminated Soils: Natural Hyperaccumulation versus Chemically Enhanced Phytoextraction. Journal of Environmental Quality, 30, 1919–1926.

Pilon-Smits, E. & Pilon, M. (2002). Phytoremediation of Metals Using Transgenic Plants. Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 21(5), 439–456.

Pilon-Smits, E. (2005). Phytoremediation. Annual Review of Plant Biology, 56, 15–39.

Ruiz, O. N., Hussein, H. S., Terry, N., & Daniell, H. (2003). Phytoremediation of Organomercurial Compounds via Chloroplast Genetic Engineering. Plant Physiology, 132, 1344–1352.

Schmidt, U. (2003). Enhancing Phytoextraction: The Effect of Chemical Soil Manipulation on Mobility, Plant Accumulation, and Leaching of Heavy Metals. Journal of Environmental Quality, 32, 1939–1954.

Schutzendubel, A., & Polle, A. (2002). Plant responses to abiotic stresses: heavy metal-induced oxidative stress and protection by mycorrhization. Journal of Experimental Botany, 53(372), Antioxidants and Reactive Oxygen Species in Plants Special Issue, 1351-1365.

South Africa's Shack Dwellers Movement Raided by "Armed Thugs."

2009-09-28T19:00:00.008-05:00

"Since Saturday.... Armed thugs are killing people, injuring people and destroying homes--- all with the sanction of the local police and the South African government."

This summer, a friend of mine had the chance to spend a week with leaders from a growing social movement in South Africa called the Shack Dwellers Movement. She got to know Mazwi, a young person whom she says has incredible vision and clarity about how the world's poor should be organizing for human rights, and Reverend Mavuso, a man she described as having a big sense of humor and a deep commitment to ending poverty.

These two are leaders in Abahlali baseMjondolo (or Shack Dweller Movement), which now includes 10,000 people and 30 settlements. The movement began in 2005 in response to mass numbers of forced evictions and housing demolitions of informal settlements outside of the city of Durban, South Africa.

"Since Saturday, there has been a ferocious attack on Mazwi, Rev. Mavuso, and all the other members of the Shack Dwellers Movement," reported my friend. "Armed thugs are killing people, injuring people and destroying homes--- all with the sanction of the local police and the South African government."

She stressed the importance that the South African government know that international eyes watching.

She asks that you to sign this petition addressed to South African President Jacob Zuma: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/9/an-open-letter-to-jacob-zuma

For more info, see the Media Mobilizing Project's website:
http://mediamobilizing.org/south-africas-shackdwellers-under-violent-attack

"Clean City Law" Blanks Outdoor Ads in Brazil Metropolis.

2009-08-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

"In 2007, the world's fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil's most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising," reports Adbusters.

"The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution," São Paulo mayor Gilberto Kassab told Adbusters, "pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution."

David Evan Harris, "São Paulo: A City Without Ads," Adbusters, 3 Aug 2007.

Food, Inc., Oil Blue & Sweet Crude

2009-04-06T12:00:00.004-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Food, Inc., Oil Blue & Sweet Crude," New Raleigh, April 6th, 2009.

Forget that Full Frame is screening documentaries for a moment. In those pauses between one film and the next—when you see the event itself—Full Frame has the easy-going bustle of a company picnic, and everything is so damned, surefire pleasant. Perhaps I expected a tart sort of haut sommet, pardon my French, but the festival was much more pink lemonade than Pinot noir.

A sunny courtyard connects the Durham Convention Center and the Carolina Theatre, two of the event’s three venues, and people flow through in full summer casual—flip-flops and cut-offs can be spotted about as often as large, audacious sunglasses and cute, teased-up hairdos. The third venue, Durham Arts Council, is right around the corner, making the whole event imminently walkable, and easy to navigate. Outdoor tents sell foods off the grill, and everywhere people balance bottles of cold beer and steaming, little paper trays with plastic forks sticking out. Truly, it is one part Vanity Fair and one part State Fair.

But it’s not simply casual; it’s comfortable. In every interaction, the volunteers were friendly and helpful. Fairly high-strung by nature, I could hardly find any of the usual excuses to feel rushed or huffy, the event was so well-staffed and smoothly managed.

Over Friday and Saturday evenings, I caught seven shows and three conversations with directors—Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc., Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Eva Weber’s Steel Homes, Gary Hustwit’s Objectified, Elli Rintala’s Oil Blue, Sandy Cioffi’s (left) Sweet Crude, and Vincent Morisset’s Miroir Noir—about 8 ½ hours of film and discussion all together. Full Frame inspires this kind of gleeful cinema gluttony.

Food, Inc.

Food, Inc. was my first show, and first time inside Carolina Theatre’s historic Fletcher Hall, a mammoth and ornate 1920’s-era auditorium trimmed in blue and gold. The film tells the story of the American factory farm system and the hard impact its rapid growth has had on all levels of the food chain, including animals, farm owners, laborers, and consumers. The film has turned heads since it’s U.S. premiere at AFI Dallas last month, and was hyped as part of the festival’s special programming series. It played in Durham to a packed house.

If you’re familiar with a certain kind of polished, high production value political documentary, there aren’t a lot of surprises in content or style. This film plays much like The Corporation (2003), Super Size Me (2004) or Fast Food Nation (2006), only more pastoral. The film’s frequent meditations on animals grazing and colorful fields of grain over the tranquil swell of instrumental music made me feel like I was watching a kind of Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser version of Brokeback Mountain. Watch the trailer and maybe you’ll see what I mean.

The film is essentially a mash-up of Pollan and Schlosser’s best-known books, Omnivore’s Dilemma and Fast Food Nation, respectively, and Pollan and Schlosser figure heavily in the film’s interviews. Schlosser also co-produced it. The film’s villains, as it turns out, are McDonald’s, Monsanto, and corn. Um, sorry: spoiler alert.

Yes, the film has polish, with nicely done titles and interspersing headers. Unfortunately, these were among the biggest standouts of the film, with the exception, perhaps, of small farm owner Joel Salatin, who steals the movie with his brash, folksy charm.

Farmer Salatin (left) joined Kenner (right) for a conversation after the film, moderated by NPR’s Frank Stasio. On stage, Salatin played the role of documentary film star, and Kenner the nervous elephant handler, looking a little afraid of what might, at any time, drop out of Salatin’s mouth. Salatin has the passionate air of a man you wouldn’t be in the least surprised to find out has written a manifesto. To compensate, Kenner chuckled at everything Salatin said—just to make it absolutely clear to everyone in the audience that Salatin was saying funny things.

Oil Blue & Sweet Crude

A real treat was the new Finnish film Oil Blue, a purely visual tale of an oil tanker’s journey across the Baltic Sea. The 25-minute film has no dialogue, only the sounds of the ship and the sea, mixed seamlessly with an instrumental score. The film has a quiet brilliance, and it’s easy to lose yourself in its lonely beauty. Oil Blue won the Full Frame President’s Award.

One film to really seek out is Sweet Crude, which covers the struggle by indigenous peoples in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region against gross pollution and resource exploitation by oil companies like Chevron and Shell.

To give a taste of how rotten the natural landscape of the Delta has gotten in the half century since oil was discovered there, life expectancy in the region has since dropped by an average of 20 years. Now most Delta natives will only live to around the age of forty.

When positive-minded, non-violent resistance groups begin to form to push back against human rights abuses and spur a dialogue about indigenous resource control, they are met with atrocious brutality from Nigeria’s oil-money complicit government. Their resistance is punished with routine physical intimidation and assassinations.

Cioffi skillfully portrays a people with their backs against the wall—unable to live in their hellishly degraded river basin, and yet with nowhere to turn for representation or even diplomatic intervention. In response, militant groups form—ready to meet the oil companies and government stooges gun for gun, and bullet for bullet.

Cioffi’s film succeeds, not only because she humanizes the members of these oft-maligned resistance groups, but because she makes their approach seem like the only logical and available option.

Sweet Crude was, hands down, the most fresh and interesting documentary I saw at Full Frame, and I got busted later by another New Raleigh writer, who had been somewhere else in the crowd at the Sweet Crude screening, for starting what became a roaring standing ovation for the film. And really, there’s no harm in that.

An Arbitrary Death Penalty.

2008-12-21T04:30:00.000-06:00

Seeking the death penalty in Tennessee varies widely county by county; different pools of prosecutors have created huge sentencing disparities. Nashville Scene calls for a general review standards. And in related news, the one guy on Colorado death row might get some company, pending the results of seven cases profiled here in the Denver Westword.

Sarah Kelley, “Death Row Lotto: In Tennessee, who gets the death penalty is a grim game of chance,” Nashville Scene, 2/28/2008.

Alan Predergast, “Inmates Waitin' Around to Die: Only one man is on death row, but seven others are waiting in the wings," Denver Westword, 2/28/2008.

Home Borrower Beware.

2008-11-24T04:30:00.000-06:00

For mortgage servicing agencies, "The profit margin for collecting only the mortgage is very small, but the fees can be a cash cow," reports Independent Weekly, "There is an incentive to charge fees that are not proper…[and] to let loans be foreclosed because [the sevicers] make more money. There is not a single economic incentive for treating the borrower well.’"

One old couple fought them and won - but did they? After the case, their servicer was up to the same tricks.

Also, Lisa Sorg's sidebar breaks down the four major players in foreclosure.

Mosi Secret, “Stung by a middleman: Bad service," Independent Weekly (Durham, North Carolina), 3/12/08.

Lisa Sorg, “Anatomy of a Foreclosure," Independent Weekly (Durham, North Carolina), 3/12/08.

"Swoon" in Detroit

2008-11-13T04:30:00.000-06:00

Short, mostly visual piece about wheat paste street art in Detroit created by Brooklyn-based artist Swoon. Cool art takes over the ample, unused wastelands of D-town.

Mike Medow, "New Visions on the Corridor's Walls: Swoon hits Detroit (.pdf)," Critical Moment.

Tenancies in common are attacking The City.

2008-10-22T04:30:00.001-05:00

Like co-ops in NYC, the “Tenancy in Common” (TIC) model (or concurrent estate) is taking over the San Francisco housing market. I’m interested in ownership models, and this is one I haven’t heard much about in the press.

In real ownership terms, there aren’t a lot of differences between TIC’s, co-ops and condos, but in practice, the differences can be huge. The SF Bay Guardian explores how TIC’s are working as a gentrification steam roller in SF.

Pauline Bartolone, “For rent sale: Tenancies in common are depleting San Francisco's rental-housing stock,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, 12/5/2007.

It's not my (geological) fault.

2008-10-21T07:53:00.001-05:00

Geologists discovered last year that the Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area has had a big earthquake roughly every 140 years, on average, since 1315. Today marks year 140.

At 7:53 a.m. on Oct. 21, 1868, the Hayward Fault let out a roar, and the western side of the fault lurched six feet north between San Leandro and Hayward. The shaking toppled buildings in San Francisco, crumbled chimneys in Stockton, sent a 10-foot wave up the Sacramento River and flipped a Hayward grain warehouse nearly upside down.

Boo!

Carolyn Jones, "Hayward Fault is our deadliest - a 'tectonic time bomb," San Francisco Chronicle, 10/18/2007

Image is from the 1906 quake.

Can Obama win Texas?

2008-10-08T04:30:00.001-05:00

A familiar story from the Democratic primary earlier this year: state primary that usually doesn’t matter suddenly did – but this was Texas, so it was a really big deal.

The Fort Worth Weekly provides a largely anecdotal and yet, interesting break down of the Democratic candidates’ organizations, bases of support and expected challenges in the Texas during the primary earlier this year. Now, in the heat of the general election, might all that work Obama did in February and March building campaign infrastructure pay off in November?

Can Obama win Texas?

Dave McNeely and Betty Brink, “Gone to Texas: For once, the presidential election is coming to a neighborhood near you," Fort Worth Weekly, 2/13/2007.

The Criticized Mass

2008-10-01T04:30:00.003-05:00

This sharp and short screed in Boston's Weekly Dig attacks prickish elements in Critical Mass from a walker's perspective.

At one point, Mason writes: “Riding on the sidewalk makes you look like a candy-ass.” Now, I haven't done a Critical Mass in Boston, but are you folks really riding on the sidewalk? There's no way, right?

Honest question, because, let's face it, Critical Mass gets a bad rep. Groups like Critical Manners have sprung up that gear themselves expressly toward being polite and non-confrontational.

Stewart Mason, “Car - Bicycle - Pedestrian Hierarchy," Weekly Dig (Boston), first week of Feb. 2008.

Review of Katie Ford's Colosseum in Rain Taxi.

2008-09-22T20:31:00.003-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Colosseum, Katie Ford, Graywolf Press ($15)," Rain Taxi Review of Books, Vol. 13 No. 3, Fall 2008 (Article not available online).

Excerpt:

As a poet displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Katie Ford speaks in her new book Colosseum with the fragmentary and stunned voice of a survivor. This is the poetry of shock. The verse is quiet and measured, lean and spare, honest and affected....

L.A. Museum features magician’s collection of vaudeville broadsides

2008-09-18T04:30:00.001-05:00

The Hammer Museum in L.A. featured 80 weird, old vaudeville posters last November constituting "Extraordinary Exhibitions: Broadsides from the Collection of Ricky Jay."

Enjoy the likes of such favorites as: the Human Skeleton!

Don Waller, “Collector of Illusions,” Los Angeles City Beat, 10.25.07.

Image: Courier Litho. Co, "O'Brien & Havel, Joseph Hart Vaudeville Co. direct from Weber & Fields Music Hall, New York City," Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Theatrical Poster Collection, 1899, courtesy of Wikicommons, and not a part of Jay's collection.

Trash Raft The Size of Texas.

2008-09-15T04:30:00.000-05:00

A reporter’s journey into “a Texas-size section of the Pacific Ocean that is irretrievably clogged with garbage”—“The Gyre” is a unique spot in the Pacific where currents are still, allowing immeasurable amounts of garbage, including tons of plastics and chemicals and at least one motorcycle tire, to collect and sit, grotesquely waiting for the Rapture.

Thomas Morton and Jake Burghart, “Oh, this is great: Humans Have Finally Ruined the Ocean," Vice Magazine, vol 15, #2.

Music note: Kid Dakota shoots for the hip.

2008-08-14T21:54:00.005-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Music note: Kid Dakota shoots for the hip," Twin Cities Daily Planet, August 12, 2008.

The Patio Nights summer concert series at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (MMAA) continued July 24th with sets from Story of the Sea and Kid Dakota.

Story of the Sea opened the night, with over 50 people on hand in the audience. The indie-rock quartet played tight, disciplined power pop with teary, emo-indie-rock vocals. The band is Damon Kalar (guitar), John McEwen (bass), Adam Prince (guitar/vocals), and Ian Prince (drums)—with Kalar and McEwen taking turns singing back-up.

With the exception of singer Adam Prince, the band appeared loose—they were comfortable playing together, and they were having fun rocking out. Bassist McEwen grooved in a goofy, sometimes flailing, funk two-step; colorful Kalar clowned in silly, guitar hero struts.

Only singer Prince affected a serious pose throughout the set, fitting his sad and moody lyrics—and matching the look of a huddle of teenagers standing near the back of the patio, sporting Story of the Sea t-shirts and lavishly styled, face-concealing haircuts. Prince’s vocal style is a flat, nasally drone; yet even in this narrow range, he seemed pressed at times to hit or hold notes.

The highlight of the act was drummer Ian Prince, formerly of Kid Dakota. Prince used a very simple drum kit, but he beat the living hell out of it. His face appeared wild—like a mad-dog convict with a smuggled pair of spoons and thirty unsupervised minutes near the prison wall.

After intermission, the crowd swelled to around 80 for Kid Dakota. Since the departure of Ian Prince, Kid Dakota is Darren Jackson on guitar and vocals. Joining Jackson for the show were a drummer, who had a thick cord of beard under his mouth adorned with several inches of beads and baubles, and a bassist, cloned from a stray hair of Buzz Osborne from the Melvins. Kid Dakota’s set flashed with personality and attitude, but the best part was the mean and growling bass lines. Unfortunately, this hardworking bassist must remain nameless for now; the bio on Kid Dakota’s website hasn’t been updated since Ian Prince left.

The man who plans the Patio Nights line-up, MMAA Events Coordinator Phil Borreson, told me he’s working to reeducate a public conditioned to think St. Paul is devoid of good music venues. He’s working to lure people over, he said—and the top-shelf bands who have been playing in this series make a compelling case to visit.

Daily Planet contributor Jason Ericson lives in Minneapolis. For more of his writing, check out his blog: jasonericson.blogspot.com.

Patio Nights in the Daily Planet:
• Melissa Slachetka on Awesome Snakes and Dance Band
• Jason Ericson on Spaghetti Western String Co.

Work gives us purpose and happiness.

2008-08-14T04:30:00.000-05:00

Having work and being satisfied with your job is apparently more enjoyable than just kicking it all day poolside.

Arthur C. Brooks, "I [HEART] My Work," The American, Sept./Oct. 2007.

Remember Blackwater.

2008-08-07T04:30:00.002-05:00

The Nation wrote one year ago on private mercenary company, Blackwater USA:

A pattern is emerging from the Congressional investigation into Blackwater: the State Department's urging the company to pay what amounts to hush money to victims' families while facilitating the return home of contractors involved in deadly incidents for which not a single one has faced prosecution.

This story is just a part of Scahill's excellent on-going coverage of Iraq and Blackwater that began in 2006 and has continued through this year in over a dozen articles. Scahill's dogged persistance makes for commendable journalism.

Scahill, Jeremy, "Blackwatergate," The Nation, 10/4/2007.
Scahill, Jeremy, "Blood Is Thicker Than Blackwater," The Nation, 4/19/2006
Scahill, Jeremy, "Blackwater's Private Spies," The Nation, 6/5/2008.

US Contractors in Iraq's motto: "What happens here today stays here today."

2008-08-06T04:30:00.001-05:00

The Most Privatized War in US History.

Blackwater USA: The US State Department pumps $700 million worth of security contracts into the soldier-for-hire company of a major Republican funder. Meanwhile, Paul Bremer signs Order 17 granting immunity to private contractors in Iraq, "effectively barring the Iraqi government from prosecuting contractor crimes in domestic courts." Havoc ensues.

Jeremy Scahill's "Making a Killing" in the Oct. 15th, 2007 issue of The Nation investigates the unprovoked massacre that erupted on Sept. 16th, 2007, where Blackwater agents fired indiscriminately into a crowd of unarmed Iraqis, killing as many as 28, including several children. Among those that survived the attack is Iraqi lawyer, Hassan Jabar Salman, who describes how he was shot four times - in the back - as he was running away in terror.

Scahill reports that Iraqi officials claim that there have been at least 6 other deadly incidents involving the company in the last year before the story broke alone. And while Iraq's Interior Ministry announced that it was treating these as criminal offenses and expelling Blackwater from the country, Order 17 has them hogtied.

In a similar piece by Scahill called "Blackwatergate," which appears in the Oct. 22nd, 2007 issue, he writes that the State Department has lately pushed for the company to pay restitution to the families of its victims. However, this, he writes, amounts to "hush money" and should not free the company or its employees from criminal prosecution. Often, he writes, employees involved in these incidents are merely whisked out of the country and no further action is taken.

How crosswords are made.

2008-08-04T04:30:00.004-05:00

Esopus offers a colorful step-by-step guide to the art and science of crossword puzzle construction. I love any windows I can get into obsessions I don't understand.

“Deconstructing Constructing” by David Quarfoot, Esopus #9 (article abstract only).

Ericson Edition officially partners with local news site.

2008-08-02T23:18:00.005-05:00

Twin Cities Daily Planet adds Ericson Edition as a media partner; EE is listed with their "Arts Media and Blogs," and there is now a link to EE from TCDP's front page.

Ericson Edition called "Noteworthy."

2008-08-02T23:12:00.003-05:00

Minneapolis Observer Quarterly lists The Ericson Edition among its "Noteworthy Links."

7 Walldogs Photographs make Daily Planet's Front Page.

2008-07-26T22:57:00.008-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Walldogs 1," "Walldogs 2," "Walldogs 3," "Walldogs 4," "Walldogs 5," "Walldogs 6," and "Walldogs 7," Twin Cities Daily Planet, 7/26/2008.

Skunky Monky? Bigotry might have left one Buddhist monk grounded.

2008-07-23T04:30:00.000-05:00

On Oct. 30th, 2007, Buddhist monk Soy Seng left his small, Wisconsin community of Khmer people to make the long trip to Cambodia to raise funds for a new school, unsuspecting of the trouble about to visit him on his American Airlines flight.

Seng is the head monk for the Cambodian Buddhist Society of Wisconsin, which serves the community of Madison-area survivors of the brief, but devastating rule of Pol Pot in Cambodia during the second half of the seventies.

Seng made it to St. Louis without a hitch. However, as Bill Lueders reports in Madison, Wisconsin-weekly, Isthmus, before Seng’s connection to L.A. could exit the gate an American Airlines employee asked Seng to deplane and return to the terminal. The reason? An unidentified passenger allegedly complained that Seng had an unpleasant odor.

However, the motive for delaying Seng, Lueders suggests, may be rooted more in bigotry than Seng’s supposed scent. The monk was wearing the customary burnt orange-colored robes of his order and might have seemed out of the ordinary to the offended party.

The airline put Seng up for the night in a St. Louis hotel and gave him $15 worth of vouchers to cover two meals. The next day, the airline allowed Seng to continue on to L.A., but by then Seng had missed his connection to Cambodia and had to spend the night in the L.A. airport waiting for the next flight.

More important than blaming Seng’s unfair removal from the plane on the unidentified complainer (if this person exists at all) or even the brash employee, American Airlines should ultimately be held culpable for policies that would permit its employees to discriminate against passengers on such arbitrary grounds.

To reclaim a public space you must first know where to find it.

2008-07-22T04:30:00.001-05:00

Privately-owned public open spaces (or POPOS) are “public spaces” that some cities require being included in new commercial buildings (NYC has over 500 of them). The spaces are often anonymous, underutilized and heavily surveilled. Thus they are only nominally public.

The San Francisco-based COMMONspace project collaborated to produce the presentation: “Mapping the City: Artists Engage with the Urban Environment” – a sort of Fodor’s Guide charting what various artists found they could get away with in these spaces, compiled into a directory. So you're in San Francisco - want to fly a kite on a rooftop garden? Go to 343 Sansome St.

Marianne Amoss, “Challenging the Commons: a yearlong experiment tests a new breed of urban public space in San Francisco,” The Next American City, Fall 2007.

Utne Reader Music Reviews: July-August 2008: The Explorers Club

2008-07-19T13:08:00.004-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Utne Reader Music Reviews: July-August 2008: Explorers Club," Utne Reader, July-August 2008.

Excerpt:
Explorers Club
Freedom Wind (Dead Oceans)
I’m not the first to notice that the Beach Boys were incredibly good. Paul McCartney said as much. But as often as classic bands like the Beatles are imitated... (more)

"Holding the water for us to see it": New artist-designed outdoor drinking fountains in Minneapolis.

2008-07-18T04:30:00.001-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "'Holding the water for us to see it': New artist-designed outdoor drinking fountains in Minneapolis," Twin Cities Daily Planet, July 15, 2008.

Minneapolis City Council approved $500,000 last January for the construction of 10 new public drinking fountains, each designed by different Minnesota artists. Invigorate the Common Well, a trilogy of performances being staged over a two-year period at In the Heart of the Beast Theatre (HOBT), inspired the project. Sandy Spieler, artistic director of HOBT, writes in a public letter that the show began as a meditation upon a broken drinking fountain in the lobby of the group’s Avalon Theater. It is a “sad shrine,” she writes, to widespread neglect of the value of water.

Now, Spieler and Staff from HOBT are providing overall artistic direction for Minneapolis’s ambitious drinking fountain project, which means they will work with the fountains’ artists on the overall concept, artistic themes and designs. HOBT will also design and oversee the creation of one new fountain. Final designs, and possibly one or two fountains, will be unveiled as part of Minneapolis’s celebration of its 150th anniversary this July.

The new drinking fountains are expected to cost $50,000 each: $40,000 to cover the artists’ design and fabrication services, and $10,000 to cover Minneapolis’s costs. Minneapolis’s costs include site excavation and restoration, bringing plumbing to the location, and consultation from city plumbers. A representative from Most Dependable Fountains, Inc., drinking fountain brand used at Minneapolis’s Midtown Greenway, said that their fountains cost between $1525, for the most basic outdoor model, and $4300, for a model with “all of the bells and whistles,” like stainless-steel construction and freeze-resistant parts.

The City Council of Minneapolis approved funding on January 18th for 10 artist-designed public drinking fountains. Here are the sites, with links to information about the Minnesota artists selected to design them:

1. Mill District (Sandy Spieler/Heart of the Beast Theatre)
2. Nicollet Mall (Marjorie Pitz of Martin & Pitz Associates, Inc.)
3. Lake Street near the Midtown Exchange (Gita Ghei, Sara Hanson & Jan Louise Kusske)
4. Franklin Avenue near the Library and the American Indian Center (Peter Morales)
5. Plymouth and Penn Avenues North (Doug Freeman)
6. Dinkytown (Seitu Jones)
7. Central Ave NE (Mayumi Amada)
8. Uptown (Andrew MacGuffie)
9. and 10. Marquette and Second Avenue South. (2 fountains, artists TBA)

So when asked why roughly $15,000 worth of functional equipment and plumbing needs $35,000 worth of decorative art around it, Spieler said she hopes these fountains will be not only pretty, but also educational, “People will, of course, see the fountains, but I hope the fountains enable us to see the water, in a new way, with gratitude.” Spieler said, “The art holds the water for us to see it.” And though each fountain is guaranteed to be unique, Spieler said she would use her position as the project’s artistic director to encourage designs that educate the public and foster reverence for water.

Minneapolis currently maintains only one outdoor drinking fountain, located on the Midtown Greenway near 31st Street W and Chowen Avenue. St. Paul, by comparison, maintains 98, said Joe Buzicky, Building Trades Supervisor for St. Paul Parks and Recreation. Buzicky said the estimated cost for Minneapolis’s new drinking fountains seemed within reason. He added that he gets calls every spring asking why St. Paul is behind Minneapolis in getting all of its outdoor drinking fountains turned back on. Buzicky said he tells callers that yeah, it takes St. Paul longer, but Minneapolis, he quips, has only got to turn on that one fountain.

Of the total $500,000 Minneapolis budgeted for its new fountains, the City’s Water Fund will spring for $250,000, and Art in Public Places, a division of Minneapolis’s Department of Community Planning and Economic Development, will contribute the other half. City Council began annually funding Art in Public Places in 1992. Since then, more than three-dozen capital improvement projects have been commissioned through the program. The first focus of Art in Public Places was neighborhood gateways. The first was Michael Sheridan’s Elliot Park Gateway: Sky View (1992) at 5th Avenue S and 10th Street. Since then, the program has expanded to include a range of types of projects. Minneapolis’s website offers the interactive “Minneapolis Public Artworks Map” as a guide to these and its other public art sites.

In order to have more of the drinking fountain project ready in time for Minneapolis’s 150th anniversary, the Minneapolis Arts Commission decided to use a more abbreviated Request For Proposals (RFP) process, as opposed to the Request for Qualifications process that Minneapolis typically uses to select artists. A Public Art Advisory Panel, selected by the Minneapolis Arts Commission, chose the artists. The panel includes two artists; an arts administrator from an appropriate organization; an architect or landscape architect; three arts Commissioners; two engineers or technical representatives (i.e. Public Works); one planner or developer; three community representatives; and, if necessary, other experts, as non-voting members. Despite the rushed timeline for choosing artists and designs, the artists themselves will have over a year to finish building and installing the fountains.

Private partners, rather than Minneapolis, will perform daily sanitary maintenance, annual maintenance and winterizing. Annual maintenance to prevent significant freeze damage and replace broken plumbing parts is estimated to cost approximately $600-800 per fountain. Minneapolis’s Public Arts Administrator, Mary Altman, oversees Art in Public Places. Altman said that Minneapolis is still negotiating with these private partners, and will be announcing the partners publicly in mid-July. Each partner will be contracted to maintain their fountain, and Altman will monitor these contracts.

Spieler said she appreciates private partners being enlisted to maintain the fountains, because this will allow a more reciprocal relationship between the fountains and the communities in which they are built. People near the fountains, those who presumably will see and use them most, will be more aware of the condition of the fountains, and when they need attention, Spieler said. Members of the immediate community, not Minneapolis, then become responsible for tending the common well, she said. Spieler hopes this project will remind people, “You’re always upstream from someone, and someone is always downstream from you,” she said. “It’s bigger than just your personal water.”

Daily Planet contributor Jason Ericson (jasondericson@gmail.com) lives in Minneapolis.

Image courtesy of Heart of the Beast Theatre.

Lyndale, My Concord

2008-07-16T04:30:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Lyndale, My Concord: An urban settler comes to know his ‘town’ — block by block," Minneapolis Observer Quarterly, Summer 2008.

It’s sunny in the alley as I walk toward the northwest corner of the Lyndale neighborhood, the ten-by-seven-block community in which I live. Today, I’m systematically walking Lyndale’s streets — back and forth, up and down — covering every block, exploring my “town” much as Henry David Thoreau did 150 years earlier in Concord, Massachusetts. Measured boot prints pockmark eight squares of sidewalk on 35th Street, heading east toward Stevens Avenue, and I imagine them his, on his way to Walden Pond.

I aim to describe the natural world of Lyndale, to get to know this little square, beyond the paths I typically beat. During the next five-and-half hours, I’ll walk nearly 14 miles, gain no elevation, and yet never be more than a half-mile from my house. I do this to learn something about this place where I live, so that when asked what I know about Minneapolis, or myself, I can tell a little something about a walk I took one day in Lyndale. I’ll find that what I happen to see is less important than what I choose to notice.

A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer.

—Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

I begin at Lake Street and Lyndale Avenue, where four neighborhoods meet: Lyndale, CARAG, Lowry Hill East, and Whittier. Heading east, I find Lake Street hobbled by construction, the sidewalks barely navigable. Frequent stretches are covered with plywood, patches are plain dirt. Orange barrels hold fences of orange plastic mesh to keep walkers from falling into the Lake of torn-up asphalt. As a yellow John Deere scoops dirt into the back of a dump truck, a sign above Schatzlein Saddle Shop tells me it’s been selling jeans, boots and hats since 1907. The Western-wear shop sits next to Extreme Noise, our volunteer-run punk shop. I walk on dirt to cross Pleasant, and peer into the huge hole the city has made. Three workers sit inside, maybe 9 feet down, eating sandwiches together. In a peeling mural, an angel watches over a child. Despite signs of change in my neighborhood, this soil is rich and old; my Lyndale is built upon strong bones.

Blaisdell is gravel at Lake. Here, Nicollet Park once stood — where baseball’s Minneapolis Millers played from 1896 to 1955. Now, the neon martini glass outside Champion’s Sports Bar announces “Cocktails,” and their sign offers a Twins beer special. Half a dozen 12-to-15-foot-high piles of soil, separated by color, sit in the closed-off eastbound lane of Lake. Across the street, at the southern border of Whittier, is Big K-Mart, choking the natural north-south flow of Nicollet Avenue, Lyndale’s main artery. Businesses exude a markedly more predatory vibe along Lake near Phillips: payday loans and greasy food. A sign greets me as I turn the corner onto Stevens Avenue: “Welcome to Lyndale, Bienvenidos, Soo Dhawaada.”

I approach Horn Towers, three skyscrapers of public housing, Lyndale’s tallest landmark, and northern compass point, visible everywhere. Stoic sentinels, the three buildings stare off at the skyline of Minneapolis. I pretend that they are robots, protecting the good people of Lyndale from villains and rogues. At their feet, a black fence encloses a small yard where kids kick around a soccer ball. Near Pillsbury, there are several 10-foot-tall trees scattering white petals on the ground before my feet. I try to always walk on the grass, not the sidewalk — it’s easier on the legs, and I feel closer to the ground. A swing set on mulch, squeezed behind a private residence, calls itself Lyndale Park; young plants on a corner resemble corn leaves; lime-green flower pods on the ground, near Vietnamese Alliance Church, look like miniature banana peppers. I pass a yard gone wild, and wonder if I could gather native plants here. An older man sits on the corner in a wheelchair, smoking a cigarette and staring toward the late-morning sun.

In a vacant lot near Garfield and 32nd Street, the grass is cut, and the few scrub pines look trimmed like a Japanese garden; blackbirds in the lot argue over scraps. Throughout the neighborhood, calm, peaceful stretches like this abound. Near a Southern-style white house with a wrap-around porch, a rain-hollowed stump holds an empty water bottle. Wild mint grows near alleys. Three people wait for their bus at Grand, while behind them a thick, tangled vine climbs the entire length of a cyclone fence.

Near the Church of St. Francis, I smell fire — a man is burning logs in a large metal grill. At Stevens, a large wall of wood, maybe 40 two-by-fours high, stands before me: the sound barrier for I-35W. While it mitigates the noise of the highway, the wall makes this strip visually placid.

Trees with wine-dark leaves, called Crimson Kings, dot the curb-grass, and New Orleans–style, double-decker front porches grace several two-story duplexes; houses under renovation sit next to houses branded “unlawful occupancy.” A few blocks away, a tiny yellow house sits atop a slope filled with beautiful ferns.

On this day in May, Super America sells unleaded for $3.68 a gallon, Marlboro cigarettes for $4.18 and up; while the Super Elite Grocery Store, once painted African green, gold, and red, is advertising new management, and sporting a fresh coat of red, white and blue.

Several roads between Lyndale and Nicollet don’t directly connect the two streets, instead they divert the flow of traffic with unexpected twists. A green mail-storage box stands in what should be the middle of 34th; errant cars have given it bent legs.

Along the southern border at 36th Street, I see my first “Welcome to Kingfield” sign, featuring a silhouette of children playing. I pretend Lyndale and Kingfield are rivals, and compose lyrics to Lyndale fight songs while wickedly taunting the blank-faced houses of Kingfield. Some houses along Lyndale’s southern border are fabulously well kempt; others are shedding their siding like snakes. On the southeast corner of Lyndale, there’s a tree with dark red leaves and pink flowers.

Finishing the east-west way, I proceed to weave north and south. To end my journey at Lake and Lyndale, where it began, I add an alley after Garfield to get back down to 36th. The alley is filled with an artful array of graffiti. I cut through Painter Park, anchoring the western border. By the time I round the gas station at Lyndale’s southwest corner, and begin north on Lyndale Avenue, I’m positively giddy.

When I arrive back at Lake, my goal met, I stand quietly at the corner and review my journey. Thus was my first long look at Lyndale completed; and a second walk, through the alleys of Lyndale, already forming in my mind. I finally left that corner at 3:40 p.m., and walked the short distance home.

And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass. Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Planting a Seed: A U of M program cultivates urban farmers

2008-07-15T04:30:00.001-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Planting a Seed: A U of M program cultivates urban farmers," Minneapolis Observer Quarterly, Summer 2008.

Julie Noren has always been a gardener, but this spring the University of Minnesota student has been doing some real urban farming, tending the 1.3-acre Student Organic Farm on the St. Paul campus.

Noren, an undergraduate majoring in Italian (with a minor in horticulture), was looking over some cabbage sprouts in the greenhouse on a recent afternoon. She’s one of 20 students in the spring semester class who are learning about the realities of organic agriculture. They start plants from seed in the greenhouse, observe the growing cycle, and watch over the 50 or so chickens that roam the grounds.

“Every student is responsible for three crops,” Noren said. “One is a perennial, so we don’t really do that much with it, because it’s already out there. With the other two, we have to look at all the old records, look at its sales, inventory the seeds, figure out when to plant, how many to plant, when to transplant, do a layout of the bed.”

Professors Paul Porter and Bud Markhart provide instruction and context, sharing stories about the three-year-old program, which is funded by the sales of its produce to campus dwellers. Last season’s profit: $10,000, mostly on the strength of the mixed greens and strawberries.

Markhart said his challenge is to provide the necessary horticultural context without stemming his students’ creativity. “When I’m out in the field and I have a chance to show [students] something that’s going on, or look at a new bug, or something starting to flower, that’s what’s really interesting.”

The class, Noren said, has helped teach her to see a farm as a whole system. Her analogy is chickens: “Chickens offer eggs. They’re composters. You can use their waste. They go through the garden and eat insects after you harvest.” With everything you introduce to the farm, she said, you have to consider its various aspects.

“You hear the news reports,” said Markhart, “‘Oh, farmers lose X’ or ‘flood takes out Y,’ but until you’re out there and it’s you putting the seed in the ground, and you’re personally vested in the success or failure of that seed — that is what the farm experience here gives people.”

Recently, Noren began raising chickens in her own garden, at her home near downtown Minneapolis. She adopted some fertilized eggs from chickens at the farm, and borrowed a hen to sit on them from a former student of the class. The four hatchlings arrived over spring break.

Student Organic Farm becomes officially certified organic in July. Until then, they are considered transitional. Help them celebrate by buying a pint of their strawberries this summer. For more information, see sof.cfans.umn.edu.

Muraling Nicollet Avenue

2008-07-14T04:30:00.003-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Muraling Nicollet Avenue," Minneapolis Observer Quarterly, Summer 2008 (article not available online).

“This is going to be one of the largest creations of public art in Minneapolis’s history,” said Mark Hinds, executive director of the Lyndale Neighborhood Association, about the Walldogs mural project planned for this summer. “It’s a different kind of public art — the use of volunteers, the style of it. We think the quality is top-notch.”

Walldogs on Nicollet is an innovative effort by the Kingfield and Lyndale Neighborhood Associations to call on local and national artists to paint 11 murals on eight buildings along South Nicollet Avenue, a major commercial corridor the two neighborhoods share. The murals will be painted during a four-day span from July 24 to 27, on buildings along a 16-block stretch from Lake Street to 46th Street.

“Walldogs” is the traditional nickname for painters who traveled from town-to-town making signs and murals. Their contemporary namesake is a loose affiliation of public mural enthusiasts from around the country keeping the tradition of mural-making alive. Though they live in disparate locales, they organize “meets” to paint murals, typically in small rural towns. Minneapolis will be their first large urban site and the first with an emphasis on involving local artists.

Hinds says investments in public art are essential to the vibrancy of the neighborhoods. “If you’re a business or property owner, this is adding a lot of value to your building,” he says. Property owners contribute a couple of hundred dollars; but, as Hinds says, “If you look at the [Fischer Grocery mural] on 34th (pictured), we put literally thousands of dollars of time and effort into improving that building. It’s a pretty good deal.”

Members from the Kingfield and Lyndale communities have been involved in every aspect of the project, which sprung from the minds of a few creative community members and has been propelled by the two neighborhood associations. “This isn’t the kind of thing that needs a lot of city involvement,” says Hinds.

To raise money for this summer’s Walldogs event, Kingfield’s neighborhood association dedicated their share of the proceeds from their Third Annual Community Art Show and Silent Auction on March 22 to the mural project. Titled “Living Art,” this year’s art show and auction drew 113 artists. From each piece sold, artists received half the money, Walldogs the other half.

The promotional art for the auction featured the image of the Fischer Grocery mural, designed by local Walldogs artist Carole Bersin and completed last fall as a demonstration of what the Walldogs plan to do this summer. The mural, which represented more than a thousand volunteer hours including planning and painting time, was destroyed on Feb. 21 when a fire leveled the building. Since then, Hinds has seen a “strong outpouring” of support from those saddened by the loss of the mural. “I think it’s really going to fire them up to come out and help paint and work this summer,” he says.

He worries, however, that for those who did not get a chance to see the Fischer Grocery mural, it will be more difficult to explain how delightful these murals look when they are complete. “We could tell people, ‘Go to the corner of 34th and Nicollet; look at what we did,’ and people saw it and they were just amazed at how good it was and how beautiful it turned out,” says Hinds.

Hinds hopes Walldogs on Nicollet encourages other neighborhoods in the Twin Cities to undertake similarly ambitious public art projects. After this summer’s Walldogs meet, the two neighborhood associations plan to put together a resource book to guide others who want to do it too. “[They’ll know] where we went for funding, hurdles we overcame, what worked and what didn’t,” he says. One rough patch they hope to smooth for mural projects to come are what Hinds calls the city’s “fairly restrictive and outdated” sign ordinances. The two neighborhood associations, with help from Ward 8 Council Member Elizabeth Glidden, have been negotiating with the city’s zoning department to ease restrictions that would severely constrain the murals’ designs and sizes. Hinds says Glidden has helped “make sure that the city sees that what we’re doing is art.”

More than 120 people attended a preview party on May 3, where mural locations and lead artists were formally announced. Themes celebrate the history of the two neighborhoods: J’s Furniture Building at 3400 Nicollet Ave. S. — four blocks from where Nicollet Ballpark once stood — will feature the ballpark and its home team, the Minneapolis Millers; the TNT Building at 3601 Nicollet Ave. S. will feature the streetcar system once hubbed two blocks up on 38th; and Ungerman Construction at 4450 Nicollet Ave. S. will tell the story of Minnesota’s long tradition of beer making.

The complete list of locations, themes and lead artists is available at http://www.walldogs.lyndale.org/, where you can also learn how to get involved; or contact Mark Hinds, 612/824.9602 ext. 16, or mark@lyndale.org.

Response, Repose 10: Finding Grace: the face of America’s Homelessness

2008-07-10T04:30:00.002-05:00

Lynn Blodgett, Finding Grace: the face of America’s Homelessness, Earth Aware Editions.

While many of the images in Lynn Blodgett’s Finding Grace: the face of America’s Homelessness are indeed striking, I somehow find myself wishing that they could stand apart from his simplistic anti-homelessness message.

The book’s preface informs readers that we need to start seeing homeless people in order to deal with the problem of homelessness, but that’s what it has to say, if it wants to duck the charge of being what it really is, which is exploitive.

Honestly, I can’t imagine that ours has ever been a problem of not looking. We’re a nation of voyeurs with a hard-fixed gaze trained on anything with even a whiff of the unusual or extraordinary. These are billed as strange, exotic people, living strange, exotic lives – that’s a scopophilic formula as old as National Geographic.

These people may lack teeth or have questionable grooming habits or have homemade tattoos or show the sun damage of too many days of surfing or even carry a strange stick with a crystal ball attached to it, but I get what they look like. What I want from this book are their words.

On the facing pages, instead of Blodgett’s paternalistic reflections, why not include the words of these subjects? Case in point, when a subject named Melanie points toward Blodgett’s camera to get her small son to look his way (p. 78), Blodgett clicks the picture and then reflects on the opposing page:

“When I saw the image I felt she was indicting me, asking, ‘What will you do to help with this American tragedy?’”

Really? To me, she looks like a mother trying to get the wandering eyes of her toddler to look at a camera. Instead of telling me what you imagine she is thinking, why didn’t you ask her?

And the book so often tries to be a book about the children, the children, the children, but then finds itself holding the other 60% of homeless people (and other 90% of the images in this book). It sites the Children, of course, because it’s always for the Children. Every good cause is for the Children. The book needs that kind of a pure victim to reverse-justify Blodgett’s eager clicking, which began, he confesses, simply as a project for a high-end (pricey?) photography class.

Blodgett, on the one hand, wants to make the gee-golly point that "the homeless" are people too. But then, on the other hand, he pays them $10 a head to be in a coffee table book. There aren’t many better ways to dehumanize than to take a person's picture and then impose a trite message upon their image.

“Reception” theory: Are we in a new era of silent film?

2008-07-07T04:30:00.001-05:00

“In Uncanny Bodies, Robert Spadoni argues that during the silents-to-sound era of 1927–1931, movie audiences had to make a perceptual adjustment to accept the idea of synchronized sound," writes MetroActive reviewer Michael S. Gant. The book, Gant writes, "points to the important question of 'reception' theory, i.e., how do we learn to perceive new forms of representation."

The idea is that our minds have not caught up to advances in technology. Essentially it's like the old story of D.W. Griffith pictures teaching audiences how to watch films. Spectators see a shot of a man riding a horse; the camera cuts to a house, only they haven't learned yet that, in the language of cinema, this means the man's riding toward the house. Griffith taught his audiences how to make that conceptual leap. So that was then - Now, what haven't we learned about cell phones, the internet, and our other little blinking devices?

"With digital formats, small screens and Internet streaming," writes Gant, "viewers are absorbing new ways of understanding the traditional big-screen, communal experience that defined filmgoing for the 20th century.” Unfortunately, after such a provocative suggestion, Gant drops the point and ends the review.

Michael S. Gant, “Review of Robert Spadoni’s Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre," MetroActive (Silicon Valley), 12/5/2007.

See also: Adam Golaski, "Noises in the Dark," Open Letter Monthly, 11/1/2007.

U.S. States Repo’ed by Native Peoples’ Group

2008-07-03T04:30:00.003-05:00

A small group of Sioux have reasserted indigenous peoples’ claims to large sections of five Western states that, “have been illegally homesteaded for years,” reports the Independent Media Center (IMC). On Dec. 17th, the Lakotah Freedom Delegation (LFD) renounced all treaties with the U.S. and declared independence (pdf) for the country of Lakotah.

Ron Garmon writing for LA CityBeat speaks with Naomi Archer, LFD liaison, “This is the beginning to rebirthing.... We’re indigenous, not a fraction within something larger.”

“Lakota’s efforts are gaining traction,” reports the IMC, “as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are ‘very, very interested in the Lakota case’ while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with ‘respect and solidarity.’”

However, highlighting LFD’s legitimacy problem, Rapid City Journal editor Mikel LeFort blogs about the challenge his paper has faced while covering the story:

[T]his was going to be one of the biggest ‘talkers’ of the day… [but] there were no tribal presidents in the group which made the announcement, no one from the top ranks of any of the Lakota Sioux tribes…. And so we determined the story would not go on A1, unless we could confirm support of this group’s decision by any of the top officials from any of the Lakota tribes.

Utne Reader has covered other U.S. succession movements: check out Jay Walljasper’s 2004 piece, “How to Be an Expat Without Leaving Home,” about a group trying to pull Vermont out of the union, and Archie Ingersoll’s 2005 piece, “Succeeding at Seceding?,” which surveys several groups, including Hawaiian, Alaskan, Californian and, “of course,” Texan secessionists.

Image: “Republic of Lakota Map,” courtesy of wikicommons.org, in public domain by its creator.

Chess: Say what you will, it’s still just a board game.

2008-06-30T04:30:00.004-05:00

Viceroy butterflies thrive because they’ve adapted a look that mimics the reportedly nasty-tasting Monarch. Taking a page from the Viceroy’s book, some otherwise nameless colleges have managed to impersonate academically potent universities by fielding chess teams that regularly beat up on Ivy League squads.

Since popular imagination sees good performance at this particular board game as tantamount to intelligence, such academic powerhouses as the Miami-Dade Community College and the University of Texas at Dallas have drawn headlines with enthusiastic press releases about their chess teams’ big name conquests. Harvard bites Community College isn’t a story, but Community College bites Harvard is.

As Luke Mullins writes in The American, a handful of schools managed to dominate tournaments in a relatively short time with just a sprinkling of money and a pinch of recruiting effort, since most other schools are indifferent to building strong chess teams, regarding them like clubs.

I like the game of chess, don’t get me wrong. I even played in some tournaments when I was a kid. I was no Bobby Fischer, but I could move the pieces. But I don’t care what the game is – chess, spelling bee, crossword puzzle, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit – plain and simple: these things are like the thing, not the thing itself.

Furthermore, the victories of these chess teams are like when you get bored while driving on the Interstate and start to “race” other cars; if you win when no one else is trying, it doesn’t matter.

This dynamic might soon be changing though. Mullins writes that Texas Tech, fierce competitors that they are, have recently started pumping some of that huge sports budget into their chess team. Look out, Miami-Dade. I wouldn’t be surprised if this marks a trend back toward big name schools, tired of the occasional embarrassment, spending a couple of drops of their athletic budgets on chess, just to push out these pretenders and reclaim their place on top.

"Chess Pieces" image used under terms of GNU Free Documentation license, courtesy of wikicommons.org: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Chess_pieces.png

Clone Meat Science: Got three eyes, and they still can't see.

2008-06-21T12:00:00.008-05:00

Most of the research about the edibility of cloned animals has been done by mouthpieces for the very corporations interested in selling clone-meat.

One of the few independent researchers working on the topic says that, in fact, clone-meat is demonstrably different–including higher incidents of birth deformities, retarded muscle and immune system development, and delayed puberty. And that's just among the viable off-spring.

The FDA’s opinion is, sure, but how does that make them any more unsafe to use as food? Hmm.

P.S. – Euthanized clones are ground up and made into livestock feed and pet food.

Alex Roslin, “Clone, clone on the range: Since many cloned farm animals are born with abnormalities, how safe is their meat and milk?” Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC), 2/21/08.

Hot Damn! Twin Cities Daily Planet gives me a "writer's page."

2008-06-18T07:00:00.002-05:00

Excerpt of the email from my Daily Planet editor:

Hi Jason--

I'm pleased to tell you that the Daily Planet has created writer's pages for many of our regular contributors--including you!

http://tcdailyplanet.net/jasonericson

This page links to all stories you've written for the Daily Planet, and will be continuously updated as new articles are published--including any stories you might write for our media partners that are reprinted in the Daily Planet. This page will be linked from your writer's bio at the end of all future stories. We're also listing our writers' pages on our About the TC Daily Planet page:

http://tcdailyplanet.net/about

Music note: Spaghetti Western String Co., under the big St. Paul sky

2008-06-18T06:34:00.007-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Music note: Spaghetti Western String Co., under the big St. Paul sky," Twin Cities Daily Planet, 6/17/2008.

Photos by Jason Ericson

By Jason Ericson , TC Daily Planet

June 17, 2008

Scissors beats paper. Rock beats scissors. And last Thursday evening, string beat rock.

The Patio Nights summer concert series at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (MMAA) moved into its second week last Thursday with sets from Spaghetti Western String Co. and Davina and the Vagabonds. The event also marked the opening night of the MMAA’s new exhibition Crate 1 of 2: Paintings & Sculpture from the Collection.

Crate 1 of 2 is a small but broad offering of art made by Minnesota-seasoned favorites—like abstract expressionist George Morrison and social surrealist Walter Quirt—peppered with work by nationally-renowned American masters, including impressionist William Merritt Chase and realist John Sloan. All works are from the MMAA’s permanent collection. As of opening night the proverbial dust had yet to settle; a small crew of casually-dressed workers with electric drills and folding ladders spent the night blocking off a section of the gallery with lines of extension cords, to fiddle with something—the ceiling lights? the wall mounts? some precocious painting?—under the bright stare of portable floodlights. This distraction aside, the selection of paintings and sculptures was apt, daring, and rewarding. This is hard candy for locavores of the arts and culture variety.

A phone call from my companion’s babysitter forced us to duck out during intermission, and leave before catching headliners Davina and the Vagabonds, but listening to opener Spaghetti Western String Co.—two-time recipient of Minnesota Music Awards for “Eclectic Artist of the Year”—made for a pleasant evening out.

From their name, one might expect Spaghetti Western String Co. to have a twangy, country-western sound, but the name actually honors founding member Michael Rossetto’s Italian roots—you’ll recognize a somber kind of Romani in their sad, often wordless, ballads. An acoustic quartet, the band comprises Rossetto (banjo, guitar), Nicholas Lemme (mandolin, guitar, voice), Paul Fonfara (clarinet), and Ethan Sutton (cello). Their compositions are technical—think Reinhardt and Grappelli—and the players proficient, yet their performance was playful and inventive. On one song, Lemme incorporated a colorful plastic baby monitor—yes, the kind new parents use. Draping his moaning vocals in static, he varied the distance between the monitor’s broadcaster and receiver to play their hissing feedback like a Theremin.

The crowd, though mostly seated, was responsive and appreciative, and included young and old. Great Waters Brewing Co. served beer on the patio. The brewery’s main location is less than four blocks north on St. Peter St., and proved very convenient for pre-show merrymaking. As the sun set on this warm evening, folks seemed happy to relax, drink their drinks, enjoy the tunes, and let the picturesque Mississippi roll by.

Killed by King: Buy your way into a murder mystery.

2008-06-16T04:30:00.000-05:00

How much would you pay to get killed by Stephen King? I, for one, wouldn’t pay a dime for that particular honor, but in 2005 a woman in Florida paid $25,100 (that’s 251,000 dimes) to have her brother axed by the horror master.

Max Ross in the Oct. issue of Rake reports how Minnesota mystery novelist, William Kent Krueger, followed such authors as King, Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers and Amy Tan when he hosted an online auction offering the naming rights for a character from his recently published novel, Thunder Bay. Proceeds from these auctions have gone to benefit charities.
Ross suggests that besides the philanthropic reasons, wanting a literary namesake likely represents a “desire to be part of something larger (and possibly more glamorous) than oneself.”

With this in mind, I’ve decided to take a page from these more accomplished authors and offer to our reading public the chance to bid on being cited in one of my future blog entries as “a credible source.” Offer your bid in the comment section and I’ll declare a winner when convenient. Proceeds will not go to charity, but if the winning bid is over $19.97, I might also throw in a free one-year subscription to the Ericson Edition.

File Under Progressive: Radical Librarians Catalogue for the Cause.

2008-06-12T04:30:00.003-05:00

Q: Where can I find a list of feminist on-line zines, blogs, and websites?
Q: What are some of the best self-help books on Adult ADD out there? (books that don't advocate medication)
Q: What is genderfucking?

Radical Reference was set up as a resource for activists during the build up to the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. Users ask questions; the site’s collective of registered librarians help connect them with materials, created from a progressive perspective, that might offer answers. The collective is “dedicated to information activism to foster a more egalitarian society,” their website reports.

Though one library-related blog bristled at the thought of librarians mixing personal beliefs with information access, the collective counters that “citizens are less and less informed due to consolidation and corporatization of media.” They claim that the project helps, “inform citizens so that they can participate fully in the democratic process.”

From coming out in adult life to radical reading lists for your kids, the site promises not to traffic in lifestyle judgments.

Thanks, Bitch magazine (article not available online).

Leave kids alone.

2008-06-11T05:00:00.002-05:00

Kids need unstructured time to themselves. This story got me thinking about my own trance-like, near-hallucinogenic imagination games as kid, those now lost in the creation of hyper-stimulated super-kids.

Ouellette really gets cooking a couple of sections in, so keep reading.

“Death and Life of American Imagination” by Jeannine Ouellette, Rake, Nov. 2007.

“It can’t be done, but we do it anyway.” An Interview with Award-winning Juggler and Magician, Dean Bunn.

2008-06-09T20:18:00.007-05:00

Ericson, Jason, Lyndale Neighborhood News, “'It can’t be done, but we do it anyway.' An Interview with Award-winning Juggler and Magician, Dean Bunn," May 2008.

“We have a fantastic opening trick,” said juggler and magician Dean Bunn, who lives in Lyndale, “where we pour a pitcher of milk into a paper cone. We toss the cone into the air and the milk has all disappeared.”

Bunn, who turned 80 on May 5th, recently won two first-place awards in the Minneapolis Veterans’ Creative Arts Competition. He won in the category of juggling and in magic. Ropes, silks, and steel rings play key roles in his magic show. “We put steel though steel,” Bunn said, “It can’t be done, but we do it anyway.”

Bunn has performed his amazing feats for over 65 years. “Anybody can juggle,” he assured me, “with 30 years of practice.”

Bunn got started because his father knew a few coin and card tricks, “I watched him,” Bunn said, “and thought: “Boy, that looks like fun.”

So Bunn began to study and practice. “Most tricks are simple,” he says, “and yet, it has to be that way, because if they aren’t simple, nobody can follow them.” He added, “Of course, a lot of the magicians that perform magic are simple too, but that’s another story.”

Bunn served in Korea in 1951-52. He was assigned to the Army’s 31st infantry regiment, but was transferred to Special Service, the Army’s entertainment unit, after a general caught him practicing his juggling. In all of his 80 years, Bunn says the best shows he ever saw remain those of Jack Benny, when the two worked together on USO camp performances.

Soon after his transfer to Special Service, Bunn’s former infantry regiment was devastated in battle, suffering 40% casualties. “So the very fact that I was able to juggle and do magic,” he said, “in all probability, saved my life.”

Bunn later worked as an assistant for both Harry Blackstone, Sr. and Harry Blackstone, Jr., and played with them in many big theaters, around the country. The work was challenging: “Everything has to be in the exact same place, at the exact same time, every show. There can be no deviations whatsoever.”

But appearing to do the impossible pays off for Bunn in laughs. “In our show, we perform things that can’t be done. We make people wonder. But I think entertainment is the bigger part of it. If we can make them laugh and have fun. That’s the big thing.”

Recently, Bunn performed at the Cavalcade of Magic, a large convention in Arkansas, now in its 37th year. During one trick, “One lady was almost falling on the floor laughing,” Bunn said. “When you make the audience that happy, you’re doing something right.”

“A magician is the only person who can drive a thousand miles, wearing dirty jeans and dirty tennis shoes, to get to where he’s going to work,” Bunn said, “Then put on his tuxedo, shave, comb his hair—and look good—then go out and do one, damn good show, to use the vernacular expression. Only a magician can do that.”

“We’re crazy people,” he said, “but that’s what makes us so much fun.”

When I asked Bunn how many children and grandchildren he had, his wife, Roberta, and daughter, Brenda, began tallying names. Bunn said simply, “Let’s just say, we’ve started a lot of the world.”

Next up for Bunn is a show in tiny Okabena, Minn., a fundraiser for the town’s little league team.

Local band, The Pines, Play Hosmer Library.

2008-06-09T20:15:00.001-05:00

Ericson, Jason, Lyndale Neighborhood News, "Local band, The Pines, Play Hosmer Library," May 2008.

Alt-country two-piece, The Pines, drew over 40 to Hosmer Library on May 3, as part of the library’s Concert Series. The band offered their brand of lonesome folk ballads, drawn from the vein of American traditional music. The crowd varied widely: from young to old; from first-time listeners, to faithful fans, to family of the band.

The Pines is David Huckfelt, who lives in Lyndale, and Benson Ramsey of St. Paul; both sing and play guitar. For their live show, they enlist a drummer. Their arrangements offer pleasant, faintly metallic, Western-style jingle-jangle, due to Ramsey’s bright harmonica and crisp slide-guitar work.

Community librarian Roy Woodstrom booked the show. He first approached Huckfelt last year, while Huckfelt was browsing the library’s CD collection, unaware Huckfelt was in a band. “I walked up to him and said, do you know about our concert series?” said Woodstrom.

The two men began chatting, and Huckfelt gave Woodstrom a Pines CD before he left.

Woodstrom listened to the CD, liked it, and wanted the group to play Hosmer. But soon after, the Pines set off on a busy, national touring schedule, and Woodstrom had trouble finding a date that worked.

The show idea fell off his radar, until three months ago. Woodstrom was listening to that same Pines CD in the back office of the library, when who should walk in, but Huckfelt. The two reconnected, and set up the show in May.

“I’m in here a lot,” said Huckfelt. “I booked this show mostly because Roy has a passion for putting on these shows,” he said. “I just really like somebody with that kind of spirit to put on the music, so I thought it would be really fun for us.”

Dan Rein, one of two DJ’s from KFAI who did sound recording for the show, said that if the Pines approve the recording, songs from the show could be playing on the KFAI very soon.

“Any time as a musician,” said Huckfelt, “that you get a chance to support something you believe in, like a library or a benefit, with a concert—we value being able to do that.”

Check http://thepinesmusic.com for music downloads, and a list of upcoming shows.

5 Tips for Lyndale Gardens in May with Tom Schneider, Sabathani garden coordinator and certified urban gardener

2008-06-09T20:07:00.004-05:00

Ericson, Jason, Lyndale Neighborhood News, “5 Tips for Lyndale Gardens in May with Tom Schneider, Sabathani garden coordinator and certified urban gardener," May 2008.

1. Traditional last frost is Memorial Day weekend. Plants that are frost sensitive are going to get toasted if you put them in the ground too soon. Tomatoes, lettuces, and peas are particularly vulnerable. But there are plants with natural anti-freeze: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale, and kohlrabi. Any of those would be good to put in the ground now. They have a long season, and are high in nutritional value.

2. In the meantime prepare your plot. Now is a good time to till in compost. Prepare the ground with an eye on what you plan to plant; different plants have different soil requirements. Watch nitrogen levels. For your tomatoes, use low nitrogen compost. Too much nitrogen and you’ll get all plant and no fruit.

3. Impatient gardeners can build cold frames, which, like small greenhouses, insulate plants from frost. Make one common and inexpensive version by cutting the bottom off of plastic milk jugs. Place the jug directly over the plant. Keep the cap off during the day; put it back on at night, to hold heat.

4. For people starting sprouts inside, harden off plants by taking them outside daily. Generally, double the amount of time each day that sprouts are outside: 10 minutes outside the first day, 20 minutes the next, then 40, then 80, and so on. This period of adjustment gets plants strong enough to handle wind and sun. This can be done any time of day.

5. For more gardening advice, event information, networking, and support, check out:
-- GardenWorks – www.gardenworksmn.org - (612) 278-7123
-- Minnesota State Horticultural Society - www.northerngardener.org - 651.643.3601

Sabathani Community Garden is a one-acre community garden located at 310 East 38th Street, behind Sabathani Community Center – www.sabathani.org - (612) 821-2349.

Ideas to End the War: Local Voices on How to Get Out of Iraq

2008-06-08T00:56:00.003-05:00

Ericson, Jason, Critical Moment, "Ideas to End the War: Local Voices on How to Get Out of Iraq," Issue 21: March - April 2007.

"Encourage Conscientious Dissent and Create Alternatives to the Military"

The war would end tomorrow if soldiers refused to fight it. In order to support, honor and reward soldiers who resist, we need to develop civilian-initiated systems of support to serve soldiers who are court-martialed for conscientiously refusing orders. We need to create networks that deliver access to jobs, schooling and other tangible resources to soldiers who refuse to fight.

Similarly, we need to make the job of recruiters harder by creating a strong range of viable options outside of the military. The military preys on economic vulnerability. While one hand of government makes deep cuts to social services, the other beckons with sexy, action-packed enlistment commercials, where the life of a soldier is made to look like fun-filled days of rock-climbing and ropes courses.

Would-be soldiers need to be given the time and resources to gain experiences and find themselves before they are allowed to sign their lives away.

The Free Press: No really, take one—they’re free.

2008-06-02T04:30:00.001-05:00

It’s tough being Philly’s free daily newspaper. You’re passed around on public transit. You lose millions of dollars. Not to mention, major newspapers all over the country want to take you out.

G.W. Miller III of the Philadelphia Weekly charts the sorted history of innovative, free daily, the Metro. The Metro’s unique model has had a far-reaching impact on an industry struggling with steadily declining readership and grasping at fresh ideas to reverse the tide, “By 2005 more than a dozen free daily papers had been launched across the country, each mimicking the Metro formula—brief summary stories in a colorful tabloid format.”

Throughout the paper’s colorful history, it has dealt with harsh scrutiny, not the least of which being from journalists, who claim its coverage is bubblegum, “Being free isn't bad, but being thin on content is,” journalism professor Philip Meyer told Miller, “Free newspapers? They might be the saviors of print journalism.”

G.W. Miller III, Philadelphia Weekly, "Pushing Paper," 1/23/08

My first time in The Rake (even if it is just an event listing).

2008-06-01T14:25:00.000-05:00

Red Hot Electric
Submitted by Kate Iverson on Friday, May 30, 2008

READINGS:
What Light Poetry Reading
Join our friends at mnartists.org for a lovely Sunday evening of poetry at Magers & Quinn. Tonight will include readings from Patricia Kirkpatrick, Brenda Hellen, Jason Ericson, and other winners from the latest series of mnartist's "What Light" poetry contest. Make an afternoon of it with a stroll around Lake Calhoun, or a bit of Uptown shopping and/or eating!
Sunday at 5 p.m., Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Uptown Minneapolis; free.

Kate Iverson, "Secrets of the Day," Rake Magazine, 5/30/2008

Response, Repose 8: Lightspeed Champion

2008-05-29T04:30:00.002-05:00

Lightspeed Champion
Falling Off the Lavender Bridge
Domino Records
Released: 2/5/2008

The UK’s Test Icicles frontman Dev Hynes puts out his first proper solo-release as Lightspeed Champion with production help from his friends at Saddle Creek Records.

Appropriate perhaps, since Hynes puts off that same kind of highly-posed, fragile-genius, hipster vibe that Conor Oberst sharpened until it was dull again. Prepare yourself for a hearty dose of awkward boy does love-sick, heart-on-his-sleeve indie-folking rock.

I liked parts more than others, and it hasn't worn well for me over the months since its release, but it's been entertaining upon the occasional listen. The art school, fashionable weirdness of it all is so damned over-the-top that it must be a critique, right?

College radio must be loving: “Number One/Galaxy of the Lost” (track 1/track 2) and “Midnight Surprise” (track 5).

The McConfidence Man

2008-05-28T04:30:00.002-05:00

What's the connection between the Correction Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in the world, and the sexual assault of a McDonald's employee in Mt. Washington, KY?

To answer this question, you must first be familiar with the strange case of Louise Ogborn, an 18-year-old McDonald’s employee forced by an assistant manager to submit to a strip-search in a small, back office of the chain's Mt. Washington store. She was held in this office, naked, for nearly four hours and later sexually degraded and assaulted by her manager's fiancé -- all at the calm, stern direction of a man on the phone, who identified himself as Police "Officer Scott."

On Oct. 5th, 2007, a jury determined that McDonald's did not adequately warn its employees about the dangers of such a hoax and ordered McDonald's to pay Ogborn $6.1 million.

Like the “McDonald’s Hot Coffee” case, Ogborn's case has been paraded by some as an example of a society too eager to (ab)use litigation to extort money out of hapless corporations. Blame is often shifted to the victims: Ogborn, the assistant manager and the assistant manager's fiancé, while the Caller’s role is concomitantly reduced. A prank call is just a prank call. A Fox-TV commentator reportedly asked, "how the managers who went along could be so ‘colossally stupid.’”

However, for those more familiar with the details of the case, this eerily persuasive Caller’s role should not be diminished. Outraged, Buddy Stump, the lone detective in the Mount Washington Police Department, rabidly pursued the origins of the call and managed to trace it to Panama Beach, FL. He soon linked up with a handful of other interested detectives from around the country pursuing prank calls with a similar m.o. made to restaurants in their jurisdictions. Together they began to piece this one incident in Kentucky into a much larger pattern.

From 1995-2004, police suspect that the same person managed to convince store employees at 68 chain food stores in 32 states to perform similarly unimaginable and inappropriate acts. So while some may wonder how Ogborn and Co. could all be duped by a something as seemingly transparent as prank call, the scope of this particularly wicked hustle would suggest that the Caller was very familiar with, if not the formal theory, than certainly the practice of using the psychology of power to manipulate average people to submit to his perceived authority, coaxing them to perform acts that they otherwise would consider exceptionally warped (see the Milgram experiment or Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment fiasco).

In short, the Caller was exceptionally good at establishing and then exercising power. While Ogborn and Co. have often been judged harshly, their responses were not unlike those of dozens of others who performed similarly when their call came. Ogborn is perhaps unique only in that her torture was captured on a surveillance camera and then submitted to the scopophilic gaze of millions of ABC News viewers.

When police tracked the calling cards used to make this and other calls back to Wal-Marts in Panama Beach, Fl where they were sold, video taken from one of the stores showed that the man buying the cards was wearing a CCA uniform. Andrew Wolfson, of Louisville’s Courier-Journal reports:

When they showed [the footage] to the warden at the company's Bay Correctional Facility, he identified the man as David R. Stewart, 38, a guard on the swing shift. Stewart denied making the calls, but when confronted, he started to "sweat profusely and shake uncontrollably," Flaherty wrote in a report. Stewart also asked, "Was anybody hurt?" and said, "Amen, it's over," according to the report. Stewart insisted he'd never bought a calling card, but when detectives searched his house, they found one that had been used to call nine restaurants in the past year, including the Idaho Falls Burger King on the day its manager was duped.
Interestingly enough, police also found, “dozens of applications for police department jobs, hundreds of police magazines, police-type uniforms, guns and holsters.” This law enforcement fetishism led Detective Sgt. Vic Flaherty, who had been assigned to lead a task force investigating the crimes after the Caller hit four Wendy's in the Boston suburbs on one night in February 2004, to note: "It was very apparent Dave Stewart wanted ... to become a police officer.”

Though Stewart was extradited to Bullitt County, KY in October of 2006 on charges of impersonating a police officer, soliciting sodomy and soliciting sexual abuse, he was acquitted of these charges, in what figured to be a test case to see if the charges would stick elsewhere. He currently walks the streets a free man. No similar calls have been made since his arrest.

Regardless of Stewart’s guilt or innocence, there are a few important revelations from this case. One is that Stewart, an employee of CCA for 11 months at the time of his arrest, had been hired despite two previous arrests for battery, once in 1993, which was later dropped, and again in 1997, for which he entered a plea of no contest and served 30 days. With so many incidences of prison guard abuse of prisoners in the US, and at CCA in particular, it’s highly questionable to hire as a guard a person who has a demonstrable history of "beating, wounding or offensively touching" another person.

Another is that even assuming that Stewart is innocent and just the victim of a stupefying preponderance of misunderstandings and coincidences that point directly to his guilt, a CCA connection can still be made through the CCA-uniformed man caught on buying the calling cards. Even if this is not Stewart, it raises interesting questions about how prison work may affect guards and spill into their non-working life.

This case is a sexual variant of what might otherwise be called “social engineering” or perhaps even “hacking.” Social engineering describes the act of tricking someone into doing what you want them to do -- a con, a hustle, a prank. Though we're more familiar with cases where it’s used to get access to personal information, passwords or money, the Caller’s methods were not unlike those used by hackers to gain vulnerable information over the phone. The Caller had done his research.

In each case, he knew the names of the people he would need to gain his victim’s confidence, including the names of the restaurant's upper management and local law enforcement personnel. He spiced his con with enough facts to establish himself as a legitimate authority. It has been theorized that he also knew that there would be a girl that fit Louise’s description there, that an assistant manager would be the only one in charge and that the restaurant was busy and short-staffed.

Along with maintaining a cool, calm businesslike manner throughout the call, the Caller exploited a natural cognitive bias toward irrational escalation. In other words, we tend to judge our actions not by what we would normally do, but by what we’ve just done. By gradually escalating his demands over the course of several hours, he gained a thousand miles through a series of single steps.

Thus, first, we can't judge Ogborn and Co. by the standards of a normal "prank call;" this operation was way above and beyond that. Second, it would be foolish to ignore the possible lessons this con can teach us about human psychology, particularly that of prison guards, because of its more spectacular elements. And finally, aside from the principles, this case highlights looming clouds in both the culture of obedience created by fast-food management and the culture of domination in the prison industry.

Stewart, 38, is married and a father of five. CCA was reportedly taking steps to terminate his employment with the company.

Bibliography:

1. For in-depth local coverage, see Andrew Wolfson’s “A Hoax Most Cruel” in Louisville’s Courier-Journal.
2. To watch the ABC News story.
3. Wolfson, Andrew, Courier-Journal: “Ogborn gets $6.1 million in strip-search lawsuit”
4. See a related story about Milgram and Torture by Utne Reader’s Bennett Gordon.
5. Learn more about the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment and to see Quiet Rage, the documentary about the experiment.
7. It’s worthy to note that the BBC recently replicated Zimbardo’s experiment with better controls for observer bias and observed much different results. Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam, BBC News: “Why not everyone is a torturer."
8. Wolfson, Andre, Courier-Journal.
9. Heidi Bell Gease, Rapid City Journal, “Fla. man arrested in strip search hoax calls."
10. Jamie Fellner, Esq., Human Rights Watch: “Prisoner Abuse: How Different are U.S. Prisons?”
11. Not With Our Money, ”Prison Profit: Corrections Corp of America” and Si Kahn, Alternet: “Memphis ’68, Revisited.”
12. For more, begin with Elaine Cassel's "The Effects of Prisons on Prison Guards: A Review of Newjack by Ted Conover." or sites like http://policecrimes.com/ and http://www.copwatch.org/
13. Sarah Granger, Security Focus: “Social Engineering Fundamentals, Part I: Hacker Tactics.”

Just spoonful of salt helps the chicken shit go down.

2008-05-15T04:30:00.004-05:00

Forgive Lee Klein’s steady stream of shit and chicken-related jokes in his Nov. 22nd Miami New Times article, “Sirloin with a touch of crap.”

Skim his wordy profile of the lonely opposition, Dr. Robert Ben Mitchell, and the eccentric doctor’s puerile brand of protest humor.

And assuredly skip Dr. Mitchell’s inane Bob Dylan parody Soylent Brown on YouTube.

Instead, take note of startling facts like, “A 1998 Food and Drug Administration report titled The Use of Recycled Animal Waste in Animal Feed states, "Animal wastes have been deliberately incorporated into animal diets for their nutrient properties" for 40 years as a "viable alternative to ... landfill."

Klein reports that while neither the FDA nor the USDA expressly endorses using waste for feed, “their policies are to resist regulation unless a shipment crosses state lines. Manure, though, rarely travels that far, because transport costs would undercut the price advantage.” As a result, Klein reports, “The World Health Organization estimates nearly 10 million metric tons of slaughterhouse sewerage are fed to livestock every year.”

An implicit endorsement, though, can perhaps be read in the FDA’s list of approved ingredients for animal feed, which include both dried chicken feces and “dried poultry litter.” The latter, Klein reports, is about 60 percent excrement and “the rest comprises bedding, dirt, feathers, and other debris scooped from the floors of broiler sheds.”

Surprising though it may sound, Klein reports that chickens and cows don’t actually like to eat chicken shit, so to be used as feed it must be masked with salt and sugar. Even then the animals have to be deprived of any other, better options:

It takes a lot of salt to make shit edible. …Turns out that while chickens and cows aren't the fussiest of diners, neither of them will eat feces without a solid dose of sodium — plus a mess of molasses. It still can't be pleasurable, but at some point (on average three to five days), with no better options on the horizon, both animals will succumb to hunger, swallow their pride, and lap up the poop.

Klein highlights a concern that deliberately feeding shit to animals (and a lot of shit at that) will increase the risk of human exposure to big nasties like E. coli and Mad Cow Disease.

Ironically, Klein writes, public concern about the spread of Mad Cow might have led to an increased use of fecal matter in feed. Growing public awareness about the disease led to a reduction in making feed out of other economical treats, like ground up, “brain tissue, spinal cords, and euthanized cats and dogs.” Something had to fill the gap and chicken shit could hardly be cheaper or more abundant.

For more on chicken feces in animal feed see:

Denise Grady’s 2004 NYT piece, “Mad Cow Quandary: Making Animal Feed.”

Chris McGann’s 2004 Seattle Post-Intelligencer piece, “Hot debate over chicken dung in cattle feed.”

And while the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine has removed the consumer information flier The Use of Recycled Animal Waste in Animal Feed from the web because it contains, “dated information,” here’s the section in their compliance manual about recycled animal waste: Sec. 685.100 Recycled Animal Waste (CPG 7126.34).

Barrack Hussein Obama is a Muslim, and other lies waiting in your Inbox.

2008-05-08T04:30:00.002-05:00

Dems are frequently the target of under-the-radar attacks by right-wing emails, the Nation reports. “Peer-to-peer” whisper campaigns are, “For a certain kind of conservative… an informational staple, a means of getting the real stories that the mainstream media ignore.”

Yet, far from being truly organic, the Nation suggests that some of the more successful chains are the work of “professional political operators.”

To stop Internet rumormongering, The Nation recommends that you encourage your mom to check these debunking sites before forwarding that email: snopes.com and breakthechain.org

“The New Right-Wing Smear Machine,” Christopher Hayes, The Nation, 11/12/2007.

Rorschach Presidential Bumper Stickers

2008-05-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

I’m a sucker for reports that try to peer into a candidate’s psyche through some crazy backdoor. Here are two fun, visual pieces on what the candidates' bumper stickers reveal.

"Designs for signs, Web sites show presidential candidates' strengths, weaknesses" by Chris Steller, Minnesota Monitor, 5/6/08.

“Designs on the White House" by Ryan Bowman, Good 006, Sept/Oct 2007.

Lost images of a "catastrophic suburb."

2008-05-05T07:45:00.010-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Lost images of a 'catastrophic suburb,'" Twin Cities Daily Planet, 4/28/08.

Several years ago, local journalist Brad Zellar was poking around in the damp, poorly lit basement of the Bloomington Historical Society. He was looking for photographs documenting the construction of I-494. He had tried several other repositories of historical records: each a dead end. In the last room in the Historical Society basement left to search, Zellar found a pair of big filing cabinets standing amid a crowd of clutter. He opened the first drawer, and thumbing through its contents, quickly realized the value of his discovery.

“Basically, the range of stuff that you see in the book was evident immediately from that first file drawer,” he told an audience at Magers & Quinn Booksellers on April 16. “In my first glimpse, in the first ten minutes, I saw car accidents, I saw dead bodies, I saw parades, I saw Christmas dinners: the entire range of American community life in the 50s, in one segment of one drawer.”

Zellar had discovered the work of Irv Norling: an expansive collection of 8×10, black-and-white photos from Bloomington’s boom era—the 1950s through the 1970s. Many of the photos were taken on a bulky, old-time camera, capable of two shots per film cartridge. Take a picture. Flip the cartridge. Take another picture. Change the film. The collection totals over 10,000 prints.

Zellar first wrote about the collection in a City Pages feature story. The book, Suburban World: The Norling Photos, was published this year, and photographs from the collection are currently on display in an exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society. And yet, all of these together barely skim the collection’s surface.
Norling was not a professional photographer. He designed tools at Honeywell until he retired in the late 70s. A couple of months before the City Pages feature came out—and just weeks before Norling’s death—Zellar visited Norling in his assisted living facility. Norling showed Zellar handfuls of his old time cards from Honeywell, where Norling regularly clocked 50- and 60-hour weeks.
With his photography, “[Norling] was clearly on some sort of obsessive mission,” Zellar said. “He did all this in his spare time.” Norling’s wife June and their kids assisted him in setting up equipment and taking pictures. Piling in the car in the middle of the night, they’d race to car crashes and crime scenes. Each of Norling’s three children recalls, before turning ten, having seen splayed corpses. One son claims to have taken his first picture of a dead body at the age of six. With Suburban World, Zellar said he wanted to capture the photos’ disorienting, weird feel—what one radio interviewer called “the Twilight Zone effect.”

Norling studied the work of Twin Cities photojournalists of his time, those who worked for the Associated Press and the two St. Paul papers. Their photos were garish and sensational: typical of tabloid news. But Norling’s style was similarly lurid, said Zellar, “whether he was taking portraits or Christmas cards. So everything looks like a car accident.”
Five distinct veins surface within Norling’s work: architecture, community events, family gatherings, portraiture, and crime scenes. Always ready, Norling loved the chase and often beat police to the scene of crimes. He kept seven police scanners for the purpose, and even slept with one under his pillow. When asked about Norling’s compulsion, Zellar said, “the kids are just like their dad: ‘I dunno, it’s just what we did.’”
One possible motive, Zellar suggested, is that Norling was aware of Bloomington’s accelerating growth and was compelled to capture it. “From the time he started taking these photos in the early ’50s to the time he stopped, none of [the original Bloomington] existed anymore. The place was just completely blown up and made over.”

Zellar describes Bloomington as a “catastrophic suburb.” In the period the book documents—not quite 20 years—Zellar notes that Bloomington went from being a town of 7,800 to being the fourth largest city in the state. Bloomington “had been a very self-contained community,” said Zellar. “As soon as it got plugged in through the arteries of freeways and highways, it was suddenly, wholly transformed. All the locations of his photos, we’d drive to these places and you couldn’t even tell that you were in the same place anymore.”
“A lot of people,” continued Zellar, “just approach it as history, or as their lives. They lived through it. I didn’t. I just wanted interesting, startling images and juxtapositions.” The book is structured, said Zellar, so that the pictures work together to tell a story. “I filtered. I liked the mystery of it. And even despite [Norling’s] captions, after six or seven years [of research], I still don’t know the story behind most of the stuff.”

Norling lived for two decades after he stopped taking photographs. “By his own admission,” said Zellar, “when he retired from Honeywell, he retired—and that meant putting down the camera as well. He bought a Winnebago and he was going to travel. I don’t think he did much of that. His health went downhill pretty quickly.” Norling’s children donated the collection to the Bloomington Historical Society when their father moved into assisted living.
Zellar has made a flurry of appearances to promote the book and the exhibit. His talk at Magers & Quinn was his last scheduled event, the final stop in what Zellar calls “two weeks of craziness.” To handle book promotion, Zellar scheduled ample time off, some months ago, from his regular writing gig with The Rake. In the meantime, The Rake‘s print publication folded. “It hasn’t set in that I’m not working, that I’m unemployed.” Zellar remains uncertain about his prospects, “I really don’t know. It’s a weird market. I’m wide open. I know so many people who are unemployed. I’ve been [writing for a living] for more than 15 years, and the landscape has changed.”

“I owned a used bookstore for a while,” he adds. “Maybe I’ll go back into the book business.”
Daily Planet contributor Jason Ericson (jasonericson.blogspot.com) lives in Minneapolis.

For more information online, see Suburban World at Borealis Books, the Norling exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society, Brad Zellar’s City Pages article on the Norling archive, and the Norling collection at the Bloomington Historical Society.

Response, Repose 7: Antonio Gaudi, a film by Hiroshi Teshigahara

2008-05-04T04:30:00.000-05:00

The Criterion Collection just re-released Hiroshi Teshigahara’s classic, 1984 documentary on the work of architect Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926). Largely a silent film, the director allows the buildings to speak. It would be hard to imagine a more menacing treatment of Gaudí’s work or a more reverent one. The exquisite score by Shinji Hori, Kurodo Mori, and Tôru Takemitsu works up a strong sense of foreboding and would be equally at home in a horror film. The director, meanwhile, casts long, loving gazes upon over a dozen of Gaudí’s buildings, pausing on favorite details, like Gaudí’s fluid, melting stairways, twisting like snail-shells, his serpentine columns, inspired by the roots of trees, and the streams of indirect light poring through hidden windowpanes. And rather than mere biography, the filmmaker visually offers Gaudí’s context through shots of the Spanish countryside and the Catalonian people going about their days. The filmmaker approaches the architect’s work like a pilgrim to a sacred place and the result is a stunning tribute.

Response, Repose 6: Bombadil

2008-05-03T12:41:00.002-05:00

Bombadil
A Buzz, A Buzz
Ramseur Records.
4/29/08

A Buzz, A Buzz is what might happen if smart, catchy lyrics challenged inescapable hooks to a footrace. Durham, North Carolina’s Bombadil dashes through 11 songs in thirty some odd minutes and escape with something like a woozy, oceanic version of Weezer’s Green Album. Like my completely fictionalized, kindly pappy of my ego-ideal always told me: get in there, do what you do, and always leave them wanting more.

http://www.myspace.com/bombadil

Response, Repose 5: New Bloods

2008-05-02T12:38:00.000-05:00

New Bloods
The Secret Life
Kill Rock Stars
Released: 4/8/08

Chopping, slicing, staccato fiddle-work; insistent, tick-tock, bass and symbol-heavy drums; overlapping vocal harmonies and clever, storytelling, New Bloods are top-to-bottom, a flawless reincarnation of classic, low-fi post-punk Londoners, the Raincoats. The Secret Life has the quality of being a musical folk tale—it’s a trip to grandma’s house, a stroll through a creepy forest, wolves and bears lurk in the shadows, and there’s plenty of tempting gingerbread.

http://www.myspace.com/thenewbloods

And the Band Smoked On; or just because I’m indie don’t mean I don’t like to get real paid.

2008-05-01T08:32:00.012-05:00

Who invited cigarette companies to the show? R.J. Reynolds caught in a new whirlwind of lawsuits over a cartoony editorial / advertisement in Rolling Stone, still finds ways to reach the indie crowd.

R.J. Reynold Tobacco Co. has been throwing all kinds of money at indie rock, including sponsoring tours, passing out branded compilation cd’s and paying Rolling Stone magazine to make pretty-looking, (possibly illegal) cartoon advertisement/editorial fold-outs, to promote its Camel brand cigarettes, the Daily Swarm reports in an ongoing feature.

“It all sounds like a lame attempt by corporate behemoths to crash the Pitchfork party, and assign aging and increasingly uncool brands some credibility with “the kids” by name-checking a bunch of new bands and waving the “indie” slogan around in an embarrassing attempt to be a part of the next generation,” write the editors of the Daily Swarm.

The Rolling Stone fold-out ad debacle has kicked up a flurry of lawsuits from states and led R.J. Reynolds to say in November that it will stop doing print ads altogether. However, the courting of the indie audience through Camel sponsored shows, at least for now, continues.

I went to a Camel-sponsored Black Keys/Bobby Bare Jr. show this past June at the Fineline in Minneapolis. I didn’t hear about it until a friend who lives in my building came by about an hour before the show and gave me his ticket because he got called into work. I didn’t really know what “Camel-sponsored” meant when he told me, except that he said to get a free ticket, he’d gone to Camel’s website and filled out a questionnaire.

Now granted, the Fineline is not a very big venue, its max capacity is 720, but in case there was any doubt, “Camel-sponsored” means that you can’t hock a loogie without hitting a Camel logo (or a Camel representative). Camel took the place over. Neon and backlit signs were on every wall and various tents housed cheesy carnival-esque nonsense like a photo-booth and a windproof lighter giveaway. This tobacco lovefest featured crowd-pleasers like free drink tickets and during the sets, thick fogs of “flavored” smoke piped over the balcony and onto the screaming crowd below.

I used to have a pack a day habit; it’s been about seven years since I quit. My method was, I suppose, an unusual one. I took a summer job working in a remote area where I wouldn’t be able to get any more smokes for at least a month. When I arrived at the spot on my first day it was around one in the afternoon. I had a little over half a pack with me and I told myself that I’d allow one cigarette a day for the first week of quitting, just to take the edge off, and in that way ease my way out of my addiction. By eleven that night, I’d already smoked the remainder of the pack and I lay in my new bed, rolling around and sweating – aching for a smoke – and unable to sleep.

That whole first week was almost unbearable. My guts were all tied up. I was groggy, yet anxious without a wake up cigarette. I’d eat too much because I didn’t have a smoke to end the meal. I couldn’t sleep without my last smoke of the day. At one point, I actually rolled up crushed leaves in another leaf and tried to smoke them. But slowly – slowly – the grip loosened and now I’m done.

Remembering the horrible discomfort of quitting, plus the gravelly-throated mornings and random coughing spells that preceded it, has kept me off. My dad, who’s been using tobacco in one form or another for forty years, has been unable to have a similar conversion experience, despite repeated attempts. The cigarette companies, with their endless rebranding and marketing schemes, are bloated, blood-sucking ticks that should be picked off and destroyed before they can reproduce. At the very least, they should be getting phased out, not coming to our shows and sticking their tongues in our ears.

I’d be remiss not mention that R.J. Reynold’s has recently ramped up marketing its American Spirit brand to readers of the independent press, including running ads in the magazine of my now-completed internship, Utne Reader. So again, this is completely about the creation of a brand image – taking the same handful of noxious ingredients and turning them into a cigarette brand that represents the real “you.” Remember this is same tobacco company, R.J. Reynolds: their edgy Camel brand targets indie rockers, while their American Spirit brand, with laughable sunflowers and Native American iconography, co-opts “green” imagery.

Thanks to Jeremy Goldmeier’s piece in Paste for the tip.

Response, Repose 4: Halcyon High

2008-04-30T04:30:00.000-05:00

Halcyon High
To Be Infinite
Vibraphone Records
Released: 4/1/08

Spacey, ambient one man show, Halcyon High is no more and no less than looped, layered guitar riffs straight from the dome of guitarist Roger Anderson. Very listenable, rock drone, if not entirely distinct from other loner stoners doing similarly spacey, loopy guitar projects.

http://www.halcyonhigh.com/

Response, Repose 3: American Princes

2008-04-29T12:28:00.003-05:00

American Princes
Other People
Yep Roc Records
Released: 4/15/08

Little Rock, Arkansas, five-piece American Princes has created the perfect soundtrack to an unmade John Hughes, Brat Pack movie. Songs like “Son of California” and “Watch as they go” bring to mind piano riffs from the Cure, pleading Cars vocals, enthusiastic Simple Minds beats, and Kenny Loggins guitar thunder, without a trace of winking irony. The album reimagines Eighties music with all of its mix of fun and angst, but above all, earnestness.

http://www.americanprinces.com/

Failing Cities, Terrorist Witch-hunts

2008-04-29T04:30:00.000-05:00

Some failing cities pursue terrorist witch-hunts without looking at or funding research that might question its effectiveness and impact on non-terrorism-related crime fighting.

“The Ripple Effect of War” by Pooja Shah, The Next American City 16, Fall 2007.

Zellar and Norling - Ericson in the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

2008-04-28T21:11:00.002-05:00

Zellar and Norling - I'll get the full text up when the story moves off the DP's front page.

Response, Repose 2: Baby Dee

2008-04-28T09:35:00.000-05:00

Band: Baby Dee
Album: Safe Inside the Day
Label: Drag City Records
Street: 1/22/2008

Creepy, vaudeville stroll through the beautifully dark mind of a world-weathered queen. Will Oldham co-produced this feat and when you listen, you can picture that bonnie prince standing next to Dee’s piano sipping a bourbon on the rocks, hairy chest pushing out of a frilly, black, flapper dress. At least that’s what I picture.

Dee’s biting lyrics and rich voice could drive this record, but thankfully she steps back on several tracks (7,10,11) to let her amazing musical arrangements take a turn at the wheel.

Check out: “The Earlie King” (track 2), Teeth are the only bones that show (track 4 – listen to this if nothing else) and “The Dance of Diminishing Possibilities” (track 9).

Also, everywhere I go now I find myself incongruously singing the wicked “Big Titty Bee Girl (From Dino Town)” (track 6).

Green Stripes: prisoner-run environmental programs

2008-04-27T11:28:00.007-05:00

A prisoner-run greening program in Washington State reduces waste and saves money.

Craig Ulrich, an inmate who heads up the composting program, said, "We educate as many people as possible on the program in order to get people to incorporate this type of lifestyle when they get out.”

“Crops and Robbers” by Anne Casselman, Plenty, Dec/Jan 2007.

Painter Park’s Monday Playgroup: “If Your Kid Is Home: Come to the Park.”

2008-04-22T22:05:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, "Painter Park’s Monday Playgroup: 'If Your Kid Is Home: Come to the Park,'" (article not yet available online), Lyndale Neighborhood News, May 2008.

Ten paces from where I’m sitting, on the floor inside the recreation center of Painter Park, a terrible super-villain named The Spoiler appears suddenly and declares, “You’ll never stop me, Spider-Man!” then runs off—to the squealing delight of a nearby 4-year-old boy, pegged, evidently, to play the part of Spider-Man.

Homeschooling mom, Jennifer Ericson [no relation] of Kingfield, sits to my left. She tells me that last year she had sought a secular, eclectic playgroup for her two kids: 2-year-old, Freja and 6-year-old Soren (aka The Spoiler). She connected with a Homeschool/Unschool Group (HUG) in Southwest Minneapolis, started earlier in the year by Amy Roff of Bloomington, and now she and her two children regularly attend.

Roff, Ericson said, “basically starts these groups and then lets us go.” The Southwest Minneapolis HUG began meeting last summer at Lake Nakomis to play outside, but by August needed an indoor location. They migrated to Powderhorn Park, where much of group still meets, but their late start time became difficult for Ericson because it fell during her young daughter’s naptime.

When other members of the Powderhorn group began to discuss adding additional meeting times and locations, Ericson chimed in. She felt Painter’s recreation center was underutilized and that its price was right, “A lot of people were trying to find other locations, and we had to pay for all of them. Some other parks were asking for money too, but not here.” Ericson, for one, believes that getting to use the park’s space for free is only right. “Especially during the day, all the parks should be free for anybody, as long as you’re willing to include whoever comes in.”

Kristi Peterson, a preschool teacher at Painter, said the park rents two of the rooms in its recreation center: a multi-purpose room and an arts and crafts room. The park’s programming, Peterson said, is meant to cater to public interests, “Often someone from the community comes and says, ‘We’d like to do this at the park. Is there an opportunity to do that?’” And so, besides hosting playgroups, Painter also offers spaces for organized activities like soccer, karate lessons, scrapbook making – and something they call: foosball frenzy. Community members interested in reserving one of the park’s rooms are invited to drop in during park hours or fax the permit form; permits go to the park’s director, who books spaces.

The Painter HUG has no age restrictions or even formal curriculum, just unstructured playtime, “We were here one Monday [that was] a release day from school,” Ericson said. “There were a couple of other families who were off and they came, and we all played with the big parachute and some other games, so I don’t want it to feel like you’ve got to be a homeschooler.”

Ericson believes that Lyndale has many parents who are homeschoolers in name, and many others who call staying home with their kids simply that: staying home with their kids. When children are young, the differences can be particularly minor. “Soren gets asked, ‘What grade are you in,’ [and he says] ‘I dunno. I don’t go to school.’” Though Ericson reports that Soren, however, says it with a kind of pride, “I think he thinks I’m going to let him play until he’s eighteen.”

Regardless of whether parents think of themselves as homeschoolers or not, Ericson would welcome more children at the HUG playtime. To neighborhood parents, Ericson says: “If your kid is home: come to the park.”

Painter Park Homeschool/Unschool Group (HUG) meets every Monday, 12pm – 1:30pm.
www.minneapolisparks.org

Painter Park
620 W. 34th St.
Minneapolis, MN 55408
Phone: 612 370-4911
Fax: 612 822-8115
painter@minneapolisparks.org

Intern labor, Exploited?

2008-04-22T17:37:00.008-05:00

Journalism interns take their knocks:

"'To get your foot in the door, you need to serve your time as an intern,'" one journalist told the Press Gazette (UK), "'which essentially means working for free in the most expensive city in the country.'”

And without unpaid intern labor, like the kind provided by the poor, bittersweet souls pictured here (identities concealed to protect the innocent), one respondent told the Press Gazette that neither the national daily or the Sunday newspaper for which he or she worked would survive.

But now, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is questioning this source of free, renewable, clean-burning, fresh-faced energy:

"Newsrooms are offering potentially illegal work experience placements to journalism graduates lasting months, giving them hollow promises of paid work and relying too heavily on free labour, the NUJ has warned."

Thanks, Utne interns, for forwarding this along. No one will ever know how many of our comrades died to bring us this report.

Rachael Gallagher and Patrick Smith, “Unpaid interns: 'It's exploitation,'" Press Gazette (UK), 4/18/2008.

New Role for Journalists: Put together facts and go a little Gonzo.

2008-04-22T04:30:00.001-05:00

“Matt Taibbi on How the U.S. Is Like Ike Turner” by Matthew Fleischer, LA Weekly, 12/11/07.

I hear huddled journalists whispering about their shifting role. The too-much-information age has met a weird, flagging market. In short, writers fear that in a year’s time, they’ll all be either unemployed or blogging 14 hours a day for 4-cents a page-view.

This interview of Taibbi on his new book, Smells Like Dead Elephants, features forward-looking media criticism from someone obviously willing to go out on a limb:

That’s the frustrating thing about writing: Nobody reads. And the people who do read tend to be better informed anyway. I mean, I’m not Seymour Hersh. I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to come up with some groundbreaking exposé. But what I try to do is put available facts together and present them using language that makes people very upset. I aim for an emotional response. I think that’s a role a journalist has to play. But we have a limited impact — especially now. Unless you have a concerted effort from all the different media organs to focus on one thing, for at least a week, you’re not going to get the public to move on anything.

His tone is sharp, acidic and cleansing.

Response, Repose 1: Atlas Sound

2008-04-21T11:30:00.000-05:00

Band: Atlas Sound
Album: Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Label: Kranky Records
Street: 2/19/08

Atlas Sound is the solo project of Deerhunter front Bradford Cox. Atlas Sound material pre-dated Deerhunter, but this is Cox’s first full-length under that moniker. Part of the appeal is Cox’s harp-like, reverb-drenched layers of vocals, which along with the sounds of his various other electronic gadgetry, create a wild, ambient and dreamy feel. But far from being a boring or unlistenable conceit, Cox never forgets his audience. He reigns himself in with hooky, almost pop beats that impose sonnet-like order on his musical free verse. Check out: “Quarantined” (track 4), “Ready, Set, Glow” (track 10) and “Ativan” (track 14).

For a nice read while you’re listening, check out the cover story conversation with Cox in Fader #49, conducted by his old friend, and Black Lips front, Cole Alexander. It’s not your typical interview since they‘ve known each other for years and are both damn near crazy.

Unfiltered 1: Intermedia Arts S.A.S.E. Wings Mentorship, Personal Statement

2008-04-18T07:00:00.004-05:00

Submitted as part of my application materials; an introduction to a potential mentee:

I was maybe 14 when I decided I was a writer. My parents were divorced. I was shuffled back and forth. High school was a drag. Nothing made me a writer, besides keeping a journal in a drawer by my bed and wanting to be one.

I sought informal education: I fought wildland fires in Colorado, hitchhiked across the Sierras, cooked for rock-climbers at a base camp in North Carolina, motorcycled through New England and Canada, and slept on the beaches of Hawaii. I also earned a degree in English with honors from the University of California-Berkeley. More importantly, I kept writing.

I write poetry mostly, and have a collection of about 150 poetry chapbooks, but in the past couple of years I’ve expanded into journalism and short fiction. My writing has appeared in MinnPost, Twin Cities Daily Planet, and Utne Reader.

I work on my writing. I read the guidebooks. I’ve taken creative writing classes at The Loft and U of M’s Split Rock Arts Program. I post my work on Northography and MNartists.org. I try to put myself out there. Take some risks, get feedback, and learn how to tune up my work.

And despite all of this talk about work, I’m pretty easy going. Writing is fun for me. I’m happy you want to share your writing, and I look forward to reading and talking about it.

Building Design for the Birds

2008-04-18T07:00:00.001-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Building Design for the Birds,” Utne.com, 4/4/2008

Excerpt:
One hundred million birds are killed each year in the United States by collisions with buildings, the New York City Audubon Society writes in its free, 55-page, downloadable booklet, Bird-Safe Building Guidelines...

Muralists invited to add color to Nicollet Avenue

2008-04-17T18:30:00.001-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Muralists invited to add color to Nicollet Avenue,” MinnPost, 3/27/2008.

Excerpt:
“From what we’ve been able to find, this is going to be one of the largest creations of public art in Minneapolis’s history,” said Mark Hinds, Executive Director of the Lyndale Neighborhood Association, “It’s a different kind of public art—the use of volunteers, the style of it. We think the quality is top-notch.”

Walldogs on Nicollet is an innovative effort by the Kingfield and Lyndale Neighborhood Associations to call on local and national artists to paint six to ten murals along Nicollet Avenue, a major commercial corridor the two neighborhoods share. The murals will be painted during a three-day span in late July on buildings in a 16-block stretch from Lake Street to 46th Street….

DNA Microarrays as Overwhelming Art

2008-04-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “DNA Microarrays as Overwhelming Art,” Utne.com, 3/31/2008

Excerpt:
The scholarly article reads like an art review: “A grid of red, yellow, and green spots glows against a glassy black backdrop in an abstract composition no larger than a microscope slide.”...

The Visionary Art of Prisoner 114591

2008-04-16T06:30:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “The Visionary Art of Prisoner 114591,” Utne.com, 3/31/2008

Excerpt:
There once was a Texas prisoner named Frank Jones (1900-1969), who “as a child . . . was told that he was born with a veil over his left eye, and that this veil would enable him to see spirits,” reports Lynne Adele in the outsider art magazine Raw Vision....

The Masterful Raconteurs

2008-04-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “The Masterful Raconteurs,” Utne.com, 3/25/2008.

Excerpt:
Ever since Brendan Benson, Jack White, and company formed a band and rescued the word “raconteur” from semantic obscurity, two ever-present companions tagged along in reviews: “supergroup” and “Jack White side project.” Notice the tension there....

Dr. Vino’s Fine Wine Line

2008-04-15T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Dr. Vino’s Fine Wine Line,” Utne.com, 3/25/2008.

Excerpt:
“Dr. Vino” Tyler Colman claims to have calculated the carbon footprint of wine and come up with a simple answer: If you live west of the line he’s drawn through the middle of the country, you should buy wine from California, and if you live east of the line, you’re better off buying from East Coast or European wineries. You may have good reason to think twice about his findings, however....

Muralists invited to add color to Nicollet Avenue

2008-04-15T06:45:00.002-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Muralists invited to add color to Nicollet Avenue,” Twin Cities Daily Planet, 3/24/2008.

Excerpt:
“From what we’ve been able to find, this is going to be one of the largest creations of public art in Minneapolis’s history,” said Mark Hinds, Executive Director of the Lyndale Neighborhood Association, “It’s a different kind of public art—the use of volunteers, the style of it. We think the quality is top-notch.”

Walldogs on Nicollet is an innovative effort by the Kingfield and Lyndale Neighborhood Associations to call on local and national artists to paint six to ten murals along Nicollet Avenue, a major commercial corridor the two neighborhoods share. The murals will be painted during a three-day span in late July on buildings in a 16-block stretch from Lake Street to 46th Street….

Good News For People Who Like Real Music

2008-04-15T06:30:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Good News For People Who Like Real Music,” Utne.com, 3/5/2008.

Excerpt:
Burlington’s alt-weekly Seven Days reports on how two dedicated scenesters dreamed up the idea for a noncommercial, low-power FM station committed to showcasing homegrown Vermont talent and then sustained the project’s momentum through the years. Today, the station broadcasts more than 50 local-interest shows….

The Plague of Placards

2008-04-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “The Plague of Placards,” Utne.com, 2/26/2008.

Excerpt:
Tired of seeing your public spaces wallpapered with campaign signs? Las Vegas Weekly has some tips for amending and enforcing local laws to bring the placard deployment under control.

The Meat Tax

2008-04-14T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “The Meat Tax,” Utne.com, 2/25/2008.

Excerpt:
Further fueling suspicions that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals dreams up campaigns by asking conservatives, “What would tick you off the most?” Stratton Lawrence of the Charleston (South Carolina) City Paper reports that the group is lobbying for a 10-cents-a-pound federal meat tax....

Where Does "Expansive Knowledge of Pornos" Go on a Resume?

2008-04-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Where Does 'Expansive Knowledge of Pornos' Go on a Resume?,” Utne.com, 2/25/2008.

Excerpt:
P. Joseph Potocki worked his way through a human sexuality Ph.D. program as a library intern, archiving his university’s expansive collection of old stag films....

Guitar Hero = Guitar Lessons

2008-04-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Guitar Hero = Guitar Lessons,” Utne.com, 2/19/2008.

Excerpt:
A music instructor and guitar shop owner in Vermont uses the popular video game Guitar Hero as a part of his lessons, not only because it gets kids interested but also, as Dan Bolles reports in the alternative weekly Seven Days, because it instills the player with a sense of rhythmic timing and a subconscious recognition of melody lines....

Citizen Journalism’s Blind Spots

2008-04-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Citizen Journalism’s Blind Spots,” Utne.com, 2/18/2008.

Excerpt:
Citizen journalism is a much-lauded fruit of internet democracy, as Adam Weinstein notes in Mother Jones, but the stories produced by these self-selected reporters are seldom vetted by editors or otherwise quality-controlled, spawning a briar patch of new media ethics questions. “The Triblocal.com kind of citizen journalism has at least one conspicuous defect,” writes Miner, “nothing gets written about unless somebody feels like doing the writing.”

Will the $2,500 Car Kill the Planet?

2008-04-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Will the $2,500 Car Kill the Planet?,” Utne.com, 2/14/2008.

Excerpt:
Major media outlets have been humming about Tata Motors’ new $2,500 car, the Nano, which is expected to speed into mass production in India later this year. While many in the West were previously unfamiliar with Tata, an informative profile in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki reports that the $30 billion conglomerate has been sparking India’s industrial sector since the 19th century. However, it is the company’s impossibly cheap car that has prompted worldwide media attention, fueling fears about the potential environmental impact of putting automobile ownership within reach of a market containing more than a billion people....

Who’s Stimulating the Stimulus?

2008-04-10T13:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Who’s Stimulating the Stimulus?,” Utne.com, 2/12/2008.

Excerpt:
When it comes to their pocketbooks, “most people have been hurting for quite a while,” writes David Sirota for In These Times' online edition. Yet, it’s only recently that Washington’s line has switched from “Nothing to see here. The economy is fabulous. Move along,” to one more reminiscent of the shrieking at a 1964 Beatles concert...

A Hip-Hop Whodunit

2008-04-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “A Hip-Hop Whodunit,” Utne.com, 2/7/2008.

Excerpt:
Did a St. Louis hip-hop record exec use his label to wash hundreds of thousands of dollars of drug money or does he really just like his “steak” medium-rare? Police wiretaps and the problem with slang....

Green Bulbs Mean Layoffs for Some

2008-04-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Green Bulbs Mean Layoffs for Some,” Utne.com, 2/5/2008.

Excerpt:
Energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs may be lighting all of our homes within 10 years, but by next fall, they will cause the lights to turn out in six Cleveland-area General Electric plants. Hundreds of union light bulb makers will lose their jobs, reports Lisa Rab in the Cleveland Scene, because it’s cheaper to make CFLs in countries with an abundance of cheap labor....

‘Local' Food, Chinese Ingredients

2008-04-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “‘Local' Food, Chinese Ingredients,” Utne.com, 2/5/2008.

Excerpt:
China’s exporters are increasingly cornering markets on ingredients in prepared foods, some of which will go on to be labeled “local,” reports Wayne Roberts in Toronto’s Now magazine....

Everyone Who Reads This Takes a Drink

2008-04-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ericson, Jason, “Everyone Who Reads This Takes a Drink,” Utne.com, 2/5/2008.

Excerpt:
I’ve never played a drinking game, so I was glad to stumble upon this humorous guide to playing them in the Portland Mercury....