How to tread as lightly as we can...yes, how?

(this is quite a long post, but I hope you'll stay with it and give some feedback from questions at the bottom!)

Before New York -Rediscovering the Wilderness of 1609 by Peter Miller

This is the title page article that has beckoned me for several days now, from the September 2009 issue of National Geographic. I guess I'm predisposed to gravitating toward such an article because I'm a history nut, especially this sort of anthropological history, which takes an educated stab at what Manhattan looked like 400 years ago. By using a map made by the British Army dating back to the Revolutionary War, and by taking one animal, the beaver, which happened upon the banks of the Bronx River in 2007 after years of restoration, one ecologist and a huge team of people were able to weave together an ecosystem where the beaver both depended on and was depended upon for food, shelter, water, trees, and many other animals, insects and elements. The artist - well, ecologist, -who spawned this idea of finding out what Manhattan looked like before too many people came, was able to come up with a virtual look at a wild Manhattan - a lovely forest with animals and trees that once had potential to be a park on par with Yellowstone.

What stood out to me the most about this article was this thing called the Muir web. "Consider a beaver that lived at Times Square in 1609. If you grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and lifted him out of the web, you'd find lines connecting him to a slowly meandering stream, to the aspen trees he ate, and to the mud and twigs he used to build a lodge. Not only that, you'd also find lines to the bobcats, bears and wolves that depended on him as prey and to the frogs, fish, and aquatic plants that lived in the pond he helped to create. 'The beaver, it turns out, is a landscape architect, just like people...You need him to flood the forest, which kills the trees that attract the woodpeckers that knock out cavities that wood ducks use for shelter.' Lifting a beaver out of the web disrupts cores of other residents which demonstrates how important it can be to think about an ecosystem as a network."

After reading this I began to think about what it would be like if someone in my "network" were lifted up out of this particular ecosystem. Individually, I thought, we may not have too much of a physical impact. For example, if I were lifted up out of this ecosystem, the environmental impact might not make too much difference - the air conditioner would still hum, the water would still run, gas and electricity in my house would still be used. I don't drive all that much, but that would be slightly lessened...you get my drift here. The husband, wife, father, mother of a household contributes different things to the survival of that unit, be it food, money, shelter, keeping the house clean, laundry clean, whatever. Ok. That said, we all know the bigger impact of an individual loss is the emotional one, even when the fallout affects other aspects of one's life. So it's interesting for me to think the same way about an actual ecosystem, like that of Mannahatta (Lenape people's name for Manhattan meaning "island of many hills" according to NG) 400 years ago, as individual species slowly died off in favor of infrastructure, people, "progress", growth, etc...a smaller picture of what is going on worldwide today. So what here is the emotional impact of our environmental destruction? A tree, for example, may continue to grow in the worst smog, drought, or poor-soil environment, but will that tree be as strong and healthy as a similar tree in a clean-air, soil-rich, healthy environment? Of course not - though they both may continue to grow at a similar rate. The effects of the environment on that first tree may be unseen, perhaps the seeds may be altered in some way though, and that will affect the way the next tree grows from that seed. This perhaps is the psychological equivalent to a child growing up in a family that doesn't function well or doesn't love the child.

In the way that invasive, non-native species often take over a piece of land, choking out native species and all the intricate, woven lives that surround them, we too, as a people are doing this at an alarming rate, causing so many different kinds of impacts we cannot possibly foresee. So what can we do? People, for now at least, are here to stay. A non-native species is invasive, as we are. My only thought is to come up with some life guidelines for treading lightly on this earth we call home in order to have the least impact with the homes that each of us live in.

Tread lightly.

Use the earth you have wisely.

Use the conveniences you have wisely.

Love your children as though they are the very seeds you plant for survival.

These are so general and I would love to hear what each of you have to say about this. Aside from the extremes like Low-Impact Man, what thoughts can you come up with that contribute to a general life set of guidelines for creating the least impact while still living where you are (meaning, I don't think too many people are willing to live in a Manhattan apartment without using electricity like Low-Impact Man)? And also, what are you doing that is "extreme" or out of the norm for where you live - or anywhere, for that matter?

-genny

by the way, if you want to see what NYC looked like from some random street 400 years ago, visit the Mannahatta Project here.

A little piece of the past: Vintage Vignettes

When I started this blog, I wanted to use it partially to bring bits of history to light. The bits of history we come across every day, the captured moments we find in an item from our past...whether it belonged to us or not. I first fell in love with *history* in 4th grade, the year we learned about California history, and my class was lucky enough to take an overnight field trip to Sutter's Fort, where we dressed like pioneers, worked in the different Fort facilities, making candles, baking bread, selling and buying wares, cooking for 40 or so people, and even standing guard for one shift in the middle of the night. It definitely was the impetus for this ongoing love affair I have with all things related to history.  I'm not an expert at California or American history, but I can tell you there is a story behind every item you see in the antique shop. The small material possessions that we all have are the things that make up our lives - the permanence that will remain long after we are gone (luckily, most of our antiques are not plastic - too bad for our grandchildren...).

Right after my sophomore year of college, I decided to take a year off from school because I still had no idea what I would major in, a decision that was weighing on me and had to be decided soon, at the beginning of my junior year. One Saturday morning I was passing a yard sale where I spied an old, wooden, stand-up radio. This was a piece of furniture - and gorgeous! I somehow attained it for only $15 and the man I bought it from helped me lift it into the trunk of my car. Somehow or another I found out it was a 1929 Atwater-Kent. I found some fabric I liked and re-upholstered the hole in the wood that sat in front of the speaker. The electronic radio parts no longer worked - but no matter ( I kept them but never tried to get it fixed), I used it as a furniture piece in my bedroom, for my things - jewelry, perfume - above which a mirror was placed. Once I even put my current stereo inside and a small speaker where the old speaker had been (not that the sound quality was great through the layers of fabric). On the top of this old radio there was a ring stain - made from a glass of water? A vase of flowers? A vodka tonic? Who knows...but this stain held a story - this stain was the evidence of someone's life - the original owner of the radio perhaps.....I could picture a woman in a dress, standing near the radio. She places her glass of water - still wet on the outside - onto the radio's wood top, as she leans down to push the ottoman in front of her easy chair. She wants to get comfortable for the evening radio show. She goes back to the radio to get her glass of water and sits in her chair for her show. Later, when her show is over, she is about to turn off the lamp that sits on the radio, she sees the ring of water there. "Darn," she thinks, and starts to rub it off, but she can see the stain has already set...

Well, who knows. But this is my imagination, running wild around objects of the past as it always does. I suppose this little ring stain figured it's way into my life and helped me decide that year off to major in history. And now, as I'm about to go back to school in the fall to finish a Master's in Public History, I want to infuse it into my life in some different ways, different from visiting museums or reading books. And this is where you all come in.

So here goes...I am starting a little collection on this blog called "Vintage Vignettes" - which is something like what I've done above, but very wide open. I want to collect stories from the past, vignettes really, just scenes from lives.  This can be in the form of a photograph, a memory you have (needs to be at least 20 years old), or a story you have from a grandparent's life. This can be an item mentioned that we no longer use in every day life, even a thought you may have on how people once lived before the modern day (see Blue Yonder's Blue Blazes for example!), an oral history interview you were lucky enough to participate in, an antique or vintage item you just had to have because...? It has to be personal though. That is the only caveat. No stories about a history exhibit you saw, unless, say, some item stood out to you for some reason, and you want to write about that particular thing as it relates to your life. If you desire, please write these in your blogs (please link back to this entry so other people can participate), let me know, and I will post that entry into my sidebar under "Vintage Vignettes." If it is a photograph you want to post, please become a member of the Flicker Group Vintage Vignettes and post your photo there! Please add a title/caption and some description to give it a sense of time and/or place. This is all about telling stories, whether they be true or "tales out of school" this is the place for them. Share/tell as many as you'd like. They can be short (1-2 sentences) or long (whatever your blogsite will hold!) I will be doing this too, my goal is to make this a regular post, or at least as often as they come to me - I may choose a day for this. Sunday seems like a nice, dreamy day for vintage - but we'll see!  Please have fun with this! I can't wait to read your stories and see your photos! 

(by the way, if you do not have a blog but want to participate, please email me your story and I will post it in one of my entries, crediting you. Then I will place that day's entry under the sidebar "Vintage Vignettes." Make sure to give your story a title!)

Familiar hometowns, possible Main streets

That crisp feeling, and a scent when you first step out the door on an early spring morning. It's familiar, you know it because you've felt it or smelled it a thousand times before. From the time you were a child, when it held possiblity and the unknown world, through the years up til now, when it still holds possiblity, but the world is better known now, and a little more predictable. There were times when you wanted to escape this place and go places where no one would know you - you would be invisible there, and perhaps the world there would again be unknown, but this place has always called you back. No matter how many times you left or dreamed of leaving, it has called you back into its familiar nest.

There's something about hometowns that we both love and hate, isn't there? The familiarity is sometimes good and sometimes bad. What's really great about hometowns though is when they seem to improve over time. In my lifetime, Sacramento has gone from being a relative cow-town to having its very own star on the map - and not just because it's the state capital. Admittedly, sometimes it does appear to think itself better than it is, and gets a bit big for its britches, but the trees have only grown bigger, downtown has become more walkable, and people seem to be getting more conscientious overall. Seeing old friends in old neighborhoods just adds to the charm. I've always tried to escape it and it appears that I am continuing this trend. Nevertheless, Sacramento holds a place in my heart. So for that, here's a great big shout out to hometowns.

And speaking of hometown improvements, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has this neat little program called Main Street. It is an effort to revitalize the downtown areas of cities that have become - in a word (my word) - blah. It is an effort to beautify the downtown area as well as boost it economically, make it more walkable and promote community events. It strives to capitalize on a neighborhood's best assets, like cultural or architectural heritage, walkable streets and points of historic interest. I love this program. Not that I've ever participated in it, but it is inspiring to me and it gives me hope for our future. Who wants to look at Walmart shopping centers all the time? Not me, but if you know me, you know how much I dislike the way our country's landscape is losing its individuality, becoming homogenized with Walmarts and the other big box stores along all our freeways. Anyway, I'd like to love my hometown more. Maybe our new mayor will do good. I heard we recently broke ground with the railyards area - and that it will take 20 years to complete all said and done, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Maybe by then our britches will fit us.

Lemonade, Road Travel and Billboards

I always just assumed lemons ripened in the summer - why else would lemonade be such a summertime drink? Now that I've owned a house with a lovely Meyer lemon tree, I see how much work it takes to give away all the lemons that actually ripen in the winter. This is despite the fact that I have three in-laws who love them and eat them by the bagfuls, and a mom who also appreciates a bagful now and then. So even though we give bags and bags away, as we approach May, our tree still has tons of lemons. Well, only one thing to do with lemons - make lemonade. We just squeeze 'em, boil up some water with agave syrup and crushed dried mint, wait for it to cool, add to the lemon potion, let it sit for a few days in the fridge, then pour into ice cube trays and freeze it. When frozen we throw them in a baggy and use them to make little glasses of lemonade. Yummy.

This morning we are headed on up the road to Portland. First trip in a while. Portland is our home away from home. Several years ago we decided we would eventually move there, now that's a little up in the air - but we still love the place. Usually we fly but since we last visited our son passed the two-year mark and you all know what that means for airline prices. I thought 2-year olds flew half price but apparently I thought wrong. That means we're driving. My son is looking forward to it because it's the only time he gets to watch t.v. - on long car trips. We have a Caillou and Elmo video for him to watch - I know, I know. I'm a hypocrite - but lordy what else to do to keep him in his car-seat for 10 or more hours? I suppose it would be less of an issue if car-seats were not the law, if it were 1950 and he just went sliding about on the pleather bench seat and dvd's were non-existent. Oh how I wax nostalgic for a time when people could drive without being bombarded by media, advertisements and billboards. I think there are some scenic byways where billboards can't be found, but be sure the billboard lobbyists are looking for ways to change that. Besides, what would it matter that there were no billboards if I'm listening to Elmo's computer say, "Elmo has mail, Elmo has mail." Ugh.

Have a great weekend!