Visiting Old Friends

Ever since we took Abbey to the National Zoo last April, she has been just fascinated with pandas. Those of you that know her well are aware that on many days she asserts that she is a pandamonkey. If you're lucky, she'll assert that you are one too.

On Monday, we went to visit her friends again. Tia Shan will be two years old in July. Like Abbey, he is working on weening. Of course, with pandas it's easier. You just put them in a different cage than mom.

To deal with his cravings, grumpy Tia Shan found a tree in the back of his cage to climb up into and go to sleep. Unfortunately for him, the tourons finally spied him up there and made a ruckus snapping pictures from the overlook nearby.

Abbey also used the day to get over her night time fear of elephants, giggle at the lone hippo floating in a tank, and to check out all the colorful birds.

But in the end, the pandas we by far her favorite exhibit. Do you think so?

Interested in seeing more of the National Zoo pandas? Do what Abbey frequently does and check out the pandacam.

A Little About My Work

On Monday, I gave a presentation at Calvin College that I was asked to make regarding childhood lead poisoning and environmental justice. The notice on the campus calendar resulted in a query from Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma for a submission to Catapult Magazine. Catapult is a pretty cool netzine for recovering Calvinists and others interested in culture, faith and community.

In response to her query, and since I had already collected my thoughts for the presentation, I provided this article.

By way of a little background, here's a map that shows where the kids who have lead poisoning in Grand Rapids live. Those of you familiar with our fair city will see the clear link between income, race, ethnicity and lead. Click the map for a larger version.

For more data and maps, download this PDF (5.6 MB) from my work website.

Reading for the Road Ahead

Next weekend, Julie and I are taking off for Washington DC then up to New Hampshire for a few days. In preparation, I went to Schuler Books to pick up Gary Snyder's new release Back on the Fire. Surprisingly, they didn't have a single copy in stock. So I placed my special order and then set about browsing.

I came across a newly released book of poems by Mary Oliver called "Thirst." I flipped open the cover and read on the inside flap that this is her first published book of new poetry since the death of her companion of 40 years. I then sampled a few poems and saw that this book of poetry takes Oliver in the direction of looking more directly at faith.

The book opens with the poem Messenger.

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Bread

One of the hardest things about baking bread is that you can't dig into the stuff right away when it comes out of the oven. You have to let it cool for a while.

So what to do with those forty minutes while you're waiting for the bread to cool? Take some pictures and blog about it.

The bread and rolls pictured here are Pain de Campagne. The recipe comes from The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. I augmented the recipe with a pinch of ascorbic acid, a scant teaspoon of extra wheat gluten, and a couple of pinches of cane sugar (I was out of malt powder).

Now it's time to warm up the squash soup and dig in!

Frustrated Gardener

It's kind of cruel that the seed companies proffer their bounty by sending out catalogues in December and encouraging us gardeners to order our seeds in January, thus fooling ourselves that gardening season is almost here.

I got both of my seed orders in the mail today... but the garden is covered by 18" of snow and the temperature is 14 degrees (which frankly, is a heat wave for this week).

My home is too dry and cold for starting seedlings, so I don't even get to prepare for that activity. Instead, I just get to sort through my little packets and page through the catalogues some more.

To further stimulate my longing for workable soil, I put this picture of Abbey settin' by the 'maters in Perkins in July on the desktop of my Mac.

Perkins Perch

This morning, I met two others from the Perkins Community Garden for breakfast to lay plans for the coming year. The breakfast was a good excuse to get me out of the house on a morning that turned into a literal blizzard that dumped 12" of snow in Grand Rapids.


On the way home, I swung by Perkins to check out the garden in winter. While I was there, I snapped this picture of the folding chair that I sit on to read while watering. In the distance is the leftover corn stalks and the dried out flower bed.

I'm eager for this year. Seed orders from Johnny's and Seeds of Change will be made online tonight.

I'm also helping the Greater Grand Rapids Food Systems Council promote the Perkins Community Garden on their web site.

Bad Bananas

I was in the grocery store about a month ago when I first spotted this amazing sight. Could you imagine paying $1.49 for three bananas?

What rube came up with the notion that a fruit born with a perfectly good wrapper needs to be wrapped in petroleum-based plastics?

Here's what one food industry web site had to say about these bad bananas on their web site, referring to these bananas as a "better mousetrap,"

If you ask consumers to list their most popular fruit, bananas would top the list for many. But bananas have one annoying problem: they tend to ripen too quickly for many consumers. Now there is a solution, with Chiquita's new Fresh & Ready Bananas that are packaged in a patented FreshPak plastic sealed tray. The tray lets in just the right amount of air to slow the ripening process naturally, keeping bananas fresh for up to 4 days longer. The product is new in the US.

All that for four days?

Apparently these bananas are being test marketed in the fair state of Michigan. To learn more about marketing gone mad, see this article in the Cincinnati Business Courier.

The really amazing thing about this dumb idea is that people actually buy these things. Who are those people?