Penguin Party Hat

I walked inside the house with a handful of mail today. With my birthday next week, I wasn't too surprised to spy a greeting card-sized envelope in the mix. 

The head-scratcher was the return address. It looked distantly familiar but nothing I could place or put a name to. I tore open the envelope lip and realized my credit card company sent me a birthday note. Just a consumer friendly, confetti, and penguin wearing a party hat card from Visa. The message was a polite little nudge to treat myself for my birthday.  

It made me chuckle. I must be getting older and more responsible. Fifteen years ago my lending agent ~might~ have sent me a birthday card. The message, though, would have suggested I endorse all of my birthday checks and make them directly payable toward that account. 

Ballet Shoes

N started a Chinese Folk Dance class this year through UNL's Confucius Institute. She went digging around in my closet to find these shoes. They're mine. From ages and ages ago, obviously, but they are my shoes. 

I wore them when my inner narrative was convinced I was part of a Degas portrait. I just hadn't walked through the correct frame, yet.

The Great Backyard Bird Count

I spent Friday afternoon with thirteen kids armed with birding books and binoculars. We took part in the Great Backyard Bird Count. 

The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Then you upload the data for Cornell University and the National Audubon Society to use. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts.

During a 15 minute outing we saw crows and a woodpecker. This is a set of photos I snapped while I wasn't looking up, but admiring my group of enthusiastic beginners.

Food Safety

I was making mulligatawny soup last night. It was that brothy bit of soup that happens before you blend it and add cream. I also had dinner reservations and a concert at the Lied Center. 

This soup wasn't due until the next day's potluck. So, I was standing at the stove, stirring the pot, and mentally surveying the dresses in my closet, selecting which one I'd wear this evening.

I got to that point in cooking where the potatoes were done and I had to push the pause button, and I wondered what to do with the stockpot? I supposed I could just leave it on the stove. In order to justify the stove top storage option I readily conjured a mental image of kitchens across the globe. Cooking that occurs outside of a world of refrigeration. It was an Indian soup. It had to be somewhat robust and unlikely to go off. It probably wouldn't hurt anything to put the lid on the pot, turn off the heat, and resume the mulligatawny when I got home. 

Then I considered my justification. There are certain lead-ins that I've grown sensitive to. For example, when I justify my parenting with a statement like, "Well, back in an agrarian culture, this would be no big deal...she'd be slopping pigs by the time she was three."  I have to examine that lead-in pretty closely. Looking to a pre-industrial age for parenting tips and tricks probably isn't my best instinct. Similarly, conjuring a third world kitchen that doesn't sport a refrigerator to serve as my food safety guidepost probably wasn't my best option.


I turned off the stove to let the pot cool while I was upstairs getting dressed. I plopped the soup in the refrigerator before heading out the door.

The Nicest Thing

Late February

K inspires me to revisit this poem this morning. Coffee. Wet hair from the shower. Poetry. What could be better?

Late February by Ted Kooser : The Poetry Foundation

Friday Blurbs

We did not come to remain whole.

We came to lose our leaves like the trees, 

The trees that are broken 

And start again, drawing up from the great roots

- Robert Bly

_______________

N participates in a world of the Mind-Paint Workshop. She writes poetry and comes home with a bubbling from under her skin. 

Thanks, C, for inspiring my kid to love writing and words!

_______________

All of the programmable electronics in my house - my coffeepot, my blackberry, my gas furnace... - wake up at the same time. I'm the straggler. I roll out of bed, at least, 20 minutes late. 

________________

I have developed a cooking-crush on the smittenkitchen website. 

________________ 

Citizen Science Alert: this weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count. I have a group of 13 elementary school students fired up and ready to go this afternoon. Clip boards. Binoculars. Warm Coats. We're good to go! 

Polaroid

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Green Economy

When the United Nation’s Environmental Programme inspired the question of “[The] Green Economy: Does it Include You?”  my knee-jerk reaction was to shout out a self congratulatory ‘heck, yes!’  I had a ready-made list in my head to brag about: my green job, my hybrid vehicle, my life-long habit of recycling, my walk-able neighborhood, the compost pile which occupies some space along one side of my house. 

There are pockets of every community willing to take up environmental issues. The ethical premise of sustainable living resonates with that group on a very deep level. It’s a group that routinely measures the carbon footprint of vacations and major purchases. A group that makes the purposeful effort to support the Green Economy.  Understand that I count myself a member of this group. My eyes don’t roll at all when I mention our instinct to read tree-hugger blogs, find ways to make more with less, and occasionally attempt to out-green each other with biodegradable this, or energy-efficient that. 

But the more I thought about the topic the more certainly I concluded being part of a Green Economy isn’t something a person opts into or out of.  How active a business or an individual is in that economy varies but membership doesn’t. Membership comes with breathing. Like it or not a person breathes the air that is in front of his or her face. Whether you drive a hybrid or a hummer, it’s the same air. Businesses benefit from efforts to protect biodiversity. Job markets respond to growth sectors no matter their color.

Some people shy away from the term Green Economy. The term conjures images that are both expensive and irrelevant to their everyday lives.
At this point I don’t think the Green Economy wins out over apathy based on the moral argument. The people who were going to take up sustainability issues based on the ethical rewards have already done so. That’s your tree-hugging blog reader, your life long recycler. 

What I like is that the Green Economy now has the metrics and the data to make a business case, and a long-term investment or employment case. The metrics speak for themselves, they engage a broader audience. Boiled down to its essence the Green Economy inspires a series of questions about stuff: how much of it we’re consuming? Are there ways to be more efficient with the stuff we already have?

The main distinction between a Green Economy and more traditional economics is how the traditional model is fuelled by a frenzied instinct to consume, throw away, and consume more.  An economic base that encourages gluttonous pace of consumption burns itself out in the long run. Ultimately the traditional economic basis runs out of money, jobs, resources, and all the stuff the economy makes itself out of. 

I’m rather optimistic that people will eventually engage with the Green Economy it presents a better, smarter model. It offers a paradigm with less pollution, less waste and more profit. It’s the better offering for an individual as well. It’s cheaper. It’s cleaner, it’s healthier. It offers a more stable source of employment.

Does the Green Economy include me? Without a doubt. The Green Economy isn’t particularly interested in who or why a person becomes engaged. Whether sustainability practices are fuelled by regulation, the compelling business model, or by an environmentalist’s moral leanings the outcomes are the same. And the outcomes, the externalities, of a Green Economy are like the air we breathe it pulls everyone in with or without their explicit consent. 

Camel-Jerky

I worked in the CSU Library during my undergraduate degree program. Leafing through my journal I found the following entry dated February 10, 1995:

"Camel-Jerky" said Mark, the librarian," write it down in your book of cool things that people say."

"Camel-Jerky?" I asked.

"Camel-Jerky."

"That's it?"

"Uh-huh, just: Camel-Jerky. Sort of says it all."

"I shouldn't write down your name or the context or anything?"

"Nope."

The Gig

It's been more than 20 years since I've sung in front of a crowd. Small venues, you know, like my my car and the shower were OK but that was about it. 

But my mom and Nancy Marshall have been teaching me some new tunes recently. We had my first in 20 years gig tonight for the Stephen's Ministry group at First Plymouth.  It was pretty cool.

Art & Bubbly

N's Homemade Valentine circa 2006

I'm pretty excited to attend the Sheldon Art Gallery's Art & Bubbly event this Valentine's Day season. I bought a new red dress and everything.

Evidently it's a champagne tasting with sweet treats, and candlelight. The event also sports a silent auction.

At the close of the evening I'll plop a Polaroid snapshot of my pretty red dress and a glass of champagne into my coat pocket.  Ooo-ooo-ooo! As if that isn't  enough my little Polaroid won't be the only one kicking around. Andy Warhol's Polaroids will be on display in the Focus Gallery.

What's your Valentine's Day plan?

Date: February 11, 2012 

Time: 6—8pm
Location: Sheldon Art Gallery  Lincoln, NE

Tickets: $30 Sheldon members -or- $35 general admission 

Reserve your tickets by visiting Art & Bubbly tickets or by calling 402-472-1454

Cab Line

So my conference in Phoenix ended. With the last presentation we applauded the speakers. I retrieved my luggage from the side aisle of the room, wheeled myself into the hall and onto the down escalator. I waited for a cab at the curb. Made small talk with the enviro next to me. It was your usual line-waiting chit chat.

Flying home today?  

Which presentations at the conference did you attend? 

Where are you from?

What sort of work do you do?

Then the conversation flopped over onto its belly mid-sentence. 

You'll see what I mean. 

We were comparing fields of experience. I gave my blurb. He gave his when (out of nowhere) he shrugged and said, "...so, naturally, we started working with NASA about six years ago..."

The kicker? 

He wasn't kidding.