Category: Shel’s Personal Life

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Frugality/Frugal Fun, localism/locavore, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

When I get a good apple or pear, I eat it “right down to the bone.”

Apple core

This is an actual core from a wonderful Macoun apple that I picked myself. It was fresh, juicy, crunchy, and that wonderful combination of sweet and tart. An apple right from the tree is one of the great pleasures in life. When we go apple picking, I get home and immediately start drying them and making apple sauce, because even one day later, it won’t taste quite as good. And three weeks later, it’ll taste only a little bit better than a store-bought apple shipped from the other side of the country.

As a locavore, a green business profitability expert, and someone who attempts to live a very green, yet very comfortable life, I feel each of us has a responsibility to minimize waste. Eating every last bit of a tasty apple is one of the ways that minimizing waste can actually be fun. And of course, the few grams remaining go into the compost, to be recycled by Mother Nature into something else.

And those are the two principles of waste reduction: use things more efficiently so you generate less waste, and figure out what that waste can be turned into to create something else. Better than pollution, I’d say.

Please comment below about how you are—or how you could be—generating less waste or setting that waste up as raw material for something else.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

It’s amazing how much you can see on foot, if you just open your eyes.

I just took an hour-plus walk in Springfield, Massachusetts, from Baystate Medical Center’s Chestnut Building in the North End to the Quadrangle downtown, inbound on Dwight and returning on Chestnut. And I saw all sorts of things that I found fascinating (your mileage may vary—but as I always say, I became a writer because I’m interested in almost everything). Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me, so words will have to do. Here’s some of what I discovered:

  • A spectacular blue, green, and pink Victorian house, as fancy as any of San Francisco’s Painted Ladies.
  • Not one, but three churches with Star of David motifs. One of them was obviously and one probably built as synagogues, but the third, a massive stone Catholic edifice with a medieval-style tower and an ultra-modern series of metal sculptures on the roof—could only have been built as a church. The star was directly over the main entrance.
  • The most graceful windows I’ve ever seen on a residence: the dramatically tall and elegant rounded windows on the Kimball, built in 1911.
  • Several blocks that must have once held graceful if run-down Victorians and still has a few—but most have been replaced by a tactless mix of tiny 1950s ranch houses and ugly 1970s or 1980s small duplexes. What a shame!
  • The vibrant blue art panels and gold trim on the sides of the Deco-era Massachusetts State Office Building, across from the railroad station—which I never noticed in many trips passing it as I picked up or dropped off someone
  • A former school from the late 19th century, built to resemble a castle (now housing for the elderly).
  • An enormous strip club decked out to look like a commercial block in New Orleans
  • The sprawling ante-bellum-Southern-mansion-style institution that might be part of Mercy Hospital, tall columns and all—sealed off with a chain-link fence and no trespassing signs, seemingly deserted except for one cluster of rooms with lights on. This building was sandwiched between another once-grand institutional building that had burned and been partially demolished—and a modern glass, steel, and aluminum office complex that doesn’t even have its walls yet.
  • A beautiful green antique copper clock tower on Main Street, viewed from up the hill on Chestnut near State where I couldn’t tell what building it was attached to.
  • Three gilded onion domes atop a Russian Orthodox church.
  • A sculpture all by itself on the Chestnut Street side of Museum Quadrangle, obviously part of the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden but one I’d never noticed walking around the quad—and another sculpture across from the Mass Mutual Center that looked like broken pottery.
  • The Two Mattoon nightclub is now a law office. Mattoon is a beautiful historic block that would be at home in Washington DC’s Georgetown or Brooklyn’s Park Slope. I didn’t walk it today, but crossed the western edge of it.
  • Rehab projects everywhere.
  • How remarkably few people were out on the streets. In an hour’s walk, I probably saw just a couple of dozen pedestrians, even though I came close to Main Street and it was a beautiful sunny day.

Of course, it’s not enough to notice. We need to think about what these things mean. For instance, I see Springfield as a city that actively reuses its old buildings; the ugly urban renewal project was an exception. More typical are the synagogues that have become evangelical churches, the train station that’s being redeveloped into a modern transportation center and retail base, and the school that now provides living quarters.

The near-absence of pedestrians means something less positive: that the city still has a long way to go before it feels vibrant. I’ve seen pictures of Downtown Springfield in the 1940s, teeming with people. The city needs a more active commercial base with people-centered retail and attention to both visitors and residents, as it once had.

What do you see when you walk around a neighborhood that you usually drive through? Your comments, below, are welcome.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , ,
No War in Syria Candlelight Vigil, Northampton MA 9-9-13
No War in Syria Candlelight Vigil, Northampton MA 9-9-13

Something magical happened at the peace demonstration in Northampton, Massachusetts tonight.

A young man crossed the street to read our signs, and then engaged in dialog with four of us. He told us that he was very ambivalent, because he didn’t want to be seen as supporting chemical weapons. I told him, “I don’t think you’ll find a single one of us [sweeping my hand to indicate the more than 200 demonstrators] in favor of chemical weapons. And it isn’t clear who it was that used the chemical weapons—but it is clear that war will not solve the problem, and will destabilize the region. It doesn’t have to be only two choices: war or no action. There are a lot of other options.”

Another demonstrator talked about the likelihood that Iran and Israel would be drawn into the conflict. And someone else noted, “200,000 people have died in this conflict. I don’t see that chemical weapons are so much worse than landmines as to be worth going to war.” To which the young man replied, “That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.” No doubt reflecting on our questioner’s age, the fourth demonstrator talked about the likelihood that a new war could reinstate the draft.

I spoke again: “With the possible exception of the former Yugoslavia, I can’t think of a single war after World War II where war solved the problem, and I can think of many where it made it worse. I don’t understand how killing innocent people to protest the killing of innocent people makes any sense.”

At that point, the young man said he had to go meet his friend, but he thanked us for the dialogue and said we’d left him with a lot to think about.

To me, participating in this dialogue and watching a mind open in front of us (not necessarily change, but open) makes it all worthwhile. It is so rare to get immediate feedback that our actions make a difference—but tonight, I and three other people made a difference in thinking of one young man.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead

In 44 years of participating in political protest, I can count a dozen or so times where I could see instantly that my actions actually mattered. This was one of them. Another was the very first demonstration I ever went to, in 1969 when I was 12. That time, the person who was changed was me.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

Yesterday, I wrote about how much fun I have cooking and eating local organic food—and how it’s not uncommon for 80 percent of our dinners to be grown within a few miles of our house.

Today, I want to talk about what local organic food means personally, and to the planet.

For me:

  • Food that’s fun to cook and delicious to eat
  • Super-fresh, and loaded with nutrition, vitamins, and minerals (instead of toxic chemicals)
  • Very frugal
  • Children who feel a direct connection to where their food comes from and how it grows—and who have carried their food awareness into their own lives in big cities, now that they’re grown
  • Community; we always see friends when we pick up our share at the CSA farm, and they have educational programs like herb walks or food preservation workshops, potlucks and concerts once in a while

As an example of the dollars and cents, consider the six-flat of tomato plants we bought. I think we paid $3—so 50 cents per plant. Let’s amortize the fixed costs of the garden across all the crops, and add another $3 to cover the tomatoes’ share. So we’re up to $6.

Fresh local organic tomatoes are usually around $3 per pound at the local farmers  markets—so we break even on the second pound. This is a slow year; we’re only getting about a dozen tomatoes a week, perhaps four pounds. Some years we get more like 40 pounds a week. But even with this year’s limited crop, that means we’re pulling in $120 worth over a ten-week harvest season, and in a good year, that number is more like $1200. And that’s just one crop; we’re also growing broccoli, green beans, kidney beans, eggplant, kale, onions, basil, rosemary, cucumbers, zucchini, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and peas (earlier in the year). The whole garden costs us less than $100 for the year.

We split the $600 CSA membership with another family, and we collect our share for about 23 weeks, typically getting 10-20 pounds of organic produce per week—or roughly 345 pounds for the year. If the stores averaged even $4 per pound (they’re often higher for organic), that means our $300 has turned into $1380—not bad!

Saving so much money on our local organic produce lets us justify the expense of the locally produced food craft items at the farmers markets; the cheeses and eggs are quite a bit more expensive than the industrial versions in supermarkets. But it’s worth it, because they taste so much better, feel so much better in our bodies, and help our local organic farmers stay in farming. And with those foods, a little goes a long way; $10 or $20 a week gives us all we need.

The Planet:

Now, let’s look at what my food lifestyle means to the economy and ecology of my town, and the whole country:

  • Very low carbon footprint. Instead of being shipped across the country, our food is hand-carried about 100 feet from our garden to our kitchen, or brought three miles (five kilometers) from the CSA farm either by car or bicycle. Instead of requiring huge inputs of petrochemicals and petrolabor, we work our garden by hand, except for the initial rototilling. And as vegetarians, our carbon footprint is much lower than if we ate meat (it would be lower still if we went vegan).
  • Chemical-free. No health effects from pesticides and herbicides—to me and those who share my table, or to the farmers who grow it. AND no harmful effects to the soil and the water.
  • Good for the local economy. Our farm membership fee and the dollars we spend on local dairy products, bread, and fruit stay in the community, instead of being siphoned off by a dozen middlemen and into the coffers of far-away corporations.
  • Good for farmland. Every farmer that sells food to us is a farmer who is keeping the land in agriculture instead of selling that land off for development—and every successful local organic farm is a living lesson to other farmers that they don’t need to douse the earth (and their customers’ bodies) with poisons.

Pretty cool!

Now it’s Your Turn:

Please leave a comment about how you’ve incorporated (or will start incorporating) local artisan foods into your lifestyle. How are local organic foods making a difference to you?

Still need ideas? Tomorrow’s blog will provide concrete steps you can take to green your food, even if you live in a city. I do have to warn you though: once you’ve tasted REAL food, you won’t ever be satisfied by the poor imitations that dominate the industrial food system.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environmenl, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , ,

Are you a locavore?

From June through October, the vast majority of or dinners are 60 percent or more sourced locally—and the majority of that, hyperlocally: either our own garden, or the Next Barn Over CSA farm 3 miles up the road, or the artisan cheeses and breads we buy from area farmers markets. (In a CSA farm, you pay a membership fee and then collect the harvest all season)

Last night’s dinner, about 80 percent locavore, was typical: Of the five different dishes I prepared, four used only local main ingredients (plus very small quantities of non-local flavorings, such as olive oil, salt, and balsamic vinegar):

  1. Cucumber-tomato-basil soup. All three main ingredients from our garden, plus a touch of hot pepper from the CSA .
  2. Grilled shitake mushrooms, grown by a friend of ours one town over, and seasoned with herbs from the CSA farm.
  3. Our own green beans and onions in a nonspicy peanut sauce (locally made one-ingredient natural peanut butter thinned with boiling water—yes, I know, the peanuts, were grown elsewhere, but I ground them myself a couple of days ago, using the store’s machine).
  4. Organic brown rice (the one nonlocal main ingredient) with our own tomatoes, our own oregano and lavender, the farm’s thyme, and local Greek yogurt.
  5. Salad with our own cucumbers, the farm’s salad greens and red bell pepper, and a local artisan goat cheese, garnished with non-local walnuts.

I was in a Mediterranean mood, so I used a lot of oregano, thyme, Greek yogurt, and salt. Some meals are more Indian,  Chinese, Italian, or Mexican themed, some are a mix—and some have no theme at all.

Eating like this has been remarkably easy, frugal, and infinitely rewarding—I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

This time of year, our menu planning revolves around what’s in the crisper. I cooked what I cooked because we had two big bags of green beans in the fridge,and one of them was harvested three or four days ago and was not going to last too much longer, by our standards. I’d originally thought I’d make a mixed-veggie dish with our garden broccoli, zucchini, and eggplant—but when I saw the large number of beans that had to be used, I shifted the plan. The rice was left over from Dina’s cooking Thursday night, and we’re still inundated with cucumbers, so I built both the soup and salad around them (all-told, I used eight cukes and four tomatoes plus another seven or so for a batch of frozen sauce I made this morning).

Last night’s feast was a typical meal in the Horowitz/Friedman household. It’s how we eat in the summer and fall. In the winter, we often still manage to eat 30 to 50 percent locavore, drawing heavily on what we’ve frozen and dried during the harvest.

It’s still August, and our freezer is already crammed with corn, kale, green beans, three kinds of our own berries, tomato sauce, garlic scapes, basil pesto, and I forget what all else, and our pantry is lined with jars of dried zucchini and tomatoes—all of it local and organic, and processed while still very fresh.

Growing up in New York City apartment buildings in the 1960s and 70s, “locavore” was an unknown concept. The “fresh” vegetables  we ate were trucked from California and had been sitting for weeks and most of our my friends ate their veggies out of cans. So the way I eat is a radical departure from the way I ate as a child. I knew ONE family with a garden: friends of my mother who lived in suburban Westchester County.

Tomorrow, please check back—we’ll look at the impact of eating locally and organic—how being a locavore is good for you, your wallet, and the planet.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

In Part 1, I looked at my own history as a bicultural who is at home in my native New York City as well as in the farm village of 200 people where I live now. Part 2 looked at the context of going no-impact in present-day NYC, and how in some ways it’s easier now, and outlined Colin Beavan’s choices in attempting to live a year with no net negative impact on the environment.

In this final part, I close the circle and direct my bicultural lens on Colin’s choices.

First, I have enormous respect for what he and his wife did. They telescoped into a matter of weeks lifestyle choices that took us decades to evolve, and with considerable personal sacrifice. No  movies, no eating out, no curling up with a great book long after the lights are out.

Second, I understand why they took it to the extreme they did. Their lives were so far out of balance that it took radical surgery to set it right, and it was clear at the end of the movie that as the cycle ended, they would reintroduce some of those comforts, starting with electricity.

But I don’t go quite that far. I’ve always had a goal of low negative environmental impact, rather than no environmental impact.

When I lived in Northampton, I walked or biked constantly—but I could get to town in three minutes by bike, or eight on foot. Now, I live in a place that is not served by public transit. And while I’ve been biking more frequently to Amherst or Northampton, I don’t always have the two hours to bike round-trip, versus 30 to 40 minutes by car.

On the other hand, I eat very locally. In the summer and fall, about 75% of our diet is hyperlocal, either from our own garden or from the CSA farm three miles away (and yes, we often pick up our veggies by bike). Another big chunk comes from local farmers markets eight miles away, whose vendors are mostly within 20 miles. But that still leaves us eating plenty of stuff that doesn’t grow around here.

And I’ve had a consciousness about local food for 30 years—something that’s very common here in the Valley even among the most mainstream people. Living here, I see the cycles of food in a way that’s difficult to experience in New York City.

I live in a single family home that could be better insulated, and now that the kids are grown, it’s a lot of space for two people. Certainly more than we absolutely need.

On the other hand, we’ve added solar hot water and photovoltaic, and the house, built in 1743, long ago amortized the carbon footprint of its construction.

Colin chose to give up toilet paper in favor of rewashable cloth, because he didn’t want to be responsible for cutting down trees. I am not sure that’s actually the most eco-friendly option. First of all, toilet paper NOT made from virgin wood is widely available. In New York City, at least four brands of recycled toilet paper are easily available, including Marcal, which actually uses New York City’s junk mail to manufacture its paper goods, and has for 63 years. So using that solution actually reduces landfill impact. And second, in order to avoid a BIG problem with germs, the water to wash those cloths has to be really, really hot. And hot water, unless it’s solar-heated, is an emormous draw-down of energy and user of fossil fuels.

If were to be eco-purist, I could find 100 little inconsistencies to carp about—but that’s not the point. The point is that this experiment transformed Colin and Michelle’s lives, and actually had a large impact on the way people think—particularly people in large cities.

And what do YOU think? Please leave your comment below.

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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

I’d been wanting to see “No Impact Man” since it came out a few years ago. It’s a documentary of a family who tries to live for a year with zero net impact on the environment, phasing down gradually from the conveniences we take for granted.

Last night, we watched the movie. What I had never realized is that Colin and his at-first-skeptical wife Michelle are doing this in New York City—in the capital of consumerism, in the belly of the beast. And Michelle in particular came from a superconsumerist lifestyle, a self-identified shopping addict who purchased lots of designer clothes and either ate out or got take-out almost every night.

The Bicultural Perspective

Dina and I were both raised in New York City; we were both living in Brooklyn when we met. But 32 years ago, we moved from Philadelphia (we’d lived there for nine months) to Greenfield, Massachusetts, population 20,000 and the hub town for farmy Franklin County.

Six months later, when Dina got a job 40 miles south of us, we moved 20 miles south to Northampton, a hip, urbane small college/arts town of 30,000, also surrounded by farmland.

And then, after 17 years in Northampton, we moved across the river 15 years ago to Hockanum, a tiny village of about 200 souls. We live on a working farm that’s been in our neighbors’ family since 1806; they raise 400 cows as well as hay and corn to support the cattle.

Our farm neighbors sold us a house that was built in 1743, and they were only the second family to own it. Mount Holyoke (the mountain, not the college) is literally right behind our house; Mount Tom is just across the Connecticut River.

It’s pretty darn different from the 26-storey apartment building in a 35-high-rise complex where I lived during high school, or from the noisy urban melting pot neighborhoods of my earlier childhood and Dina’s entire upbringing.

For many years, we’ve called ourselves “bicultural.” We can still function well in the fast-paced, loud, crowded setting of New York. But after 32 years in the Pioneer Valley, we’re actually more at home with our country neighbors—talking about our gardens, hiking the hills, and sharing an ethic that values the land. Frugality and green choices have always been a part of our lifestyle, even before we left the city.

With this history, our viewing of “No Impact Man” reflects both our urban past and our rural present: two very different worlds. (to be continued tomorrow)

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

This is very personal to me; my son’s college is about a mile from Copley Square.

He was fine, but he and a group of friends decided to walk home (several miles) rather than take the train as usual.

9/11 was also very personal. I was one connection removed from at least two people who were killed, and it took me two frantic weeks to find out that my ex-housemate from my Brooklyn days, who was at that time living just two blocks from the WTC, was all right.

But what made me want to write tonight was not those deep personal connections. It was a question by my friend @PeterShankman, founder of HARO, about how he can talk about this sort of random violence to his daughter, due to be born in a few days.

My answer, I admit, talked around his question rather than going straight for the center. I wrote:

We explained to our young kids (now 20 and 25) why we were bringing them to protest various wars and injustices and environmental atrocities, and to talk of the importance of NOT accepting evil, that we could always do SOMETHING and whether it worked or not was less important than that we did not turn a blind eye.

Interestingly enough, they both have been involved in social justice work quite a bit. My daughter defended a nerdy male classmate against bullies when she was six, and my son was also six when he organized a children’s fundraiser for Save the Mountain, the environmental group my wife and I started that actually did save our local mountain. I was and still am very proud of them.

I do feel that one of the things we did right as parents is to inculcate our kids both with a sense of social justice and with the knowledge that they can actually have an impact. These were lessons I got from my own mother, the late Gloria Yoshida; as a young mom in New York City, she was one of the white volunteers civil rights groups could call upon to find out if that “already rented” apartment was REALLY rented, or if it was only off the market if a black family came to look at it.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

The organizers of a rally to protest Karl Rove’s appearance at the University of Massachusetts tonight opened the microphone to anyone who wanted to talk. I hadn’t planned to speak, but I felt I had something to share with this crowd of 150 or so, most of them in their 20s.

My remarks went something like this:

Back when I was a teenager protesting the Vietnam War, we had a president named Richard Nixon. We thought he was pretty conservative—but his record is to the left of Barack Obama.

Obama blows with the wind. He feels the breeze of the Tea Party—but he doesn’t feel us. We have to ‘have his back’ when he does the right thing—and make a lot of noise when he doesn’t.

Richard Nixon brought us the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, detente with the Soviet Union, a newly opened door with China…

Barack Obama took nearly three years to get us out of Iraq, failed to close Guantanamo (and hasn’t tried very hard), escalated drone strikes, backed away from his early rhetoric on climate change, and refused to provide the deep change he was elected to bring.

Even on his signature issue, health reform—one area where he was actually willing to act presidential–he wouldn’t even talk about the real reforms, like single-payer. Yes, I know he has done many good things, and I now he’s been battered by a hostile Congress. But he could have done much more, if he’d enlisted the support of progressives around the country.

And not only has he failed to undo most of the policies of the Rogue State Government of George W. Bush, he has let the treasonous, anti-moral crooks and liars of the George W. Bush administration, including Karl Rove, walk free.

Obama is weak and susceptible to public opinion. Yet, only the opinions of the right-wing fringe seem to sway him—because the left does not understand how to pressure politicians. We elected him twice, and we can get him to listen to us. But for that, we need different strategies and much much better framing.

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , ,

I just got back from a Nigerian Highlife concert at Mount Holyoke College. The place was set up with a huge dance floor and folding chairs off on the sides. The audience was mostly female, mostly 20-something college students, and more racially mixed than the typical crowd in this mostly-white area.

And yet—for the first fifteen minutes or so, I was the ONLY one on the dance floor, even though the opening song was a very danceable number called “Shake Your Body,” and even though the bandleader kept imploring people to get out and dance! I’m a 56-year-old white guy with gray in my beard and a history of ankle and shoulder injuries, and I was dancing, by myself. Why weren’t those lithe 20-somethings out on the dance floor?

Finally, the bandleader pretty much ordered everyone on the floor. And what do you know—one they were out there, they liked dancing, some of them were quite good, and a lot of them stayed dancing (as did I) for the remaining hour and a half. A few even got up on stage and strutted their stuff with the band.

But in my day, we didn’t have to wait to be commanded to dance. We heard music, and we danced!

(Note: in case it’s not obvious, this post is an attempt at humor; I’m not actually upset, just surprised.)

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