Takoma Gardener

Off-topic: Finally, an honest story of recovery

Don't miss "Cracked" in tomorrow's Washington Post Magazine by my friend Ruben.  Unlike A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, Ruben's story about covering DC's crime scene as a crack addict himself is the truth. And unlike another recent story of recovery in the Post - by a self-pitying ex-university professor - his is honest.  It would also make a helluva good book.

Garden Withdrawal

Fellow temperate-zone sufferers of garden withdrawal, how do you cope?  What activities replace all those hours you'd like to be in the garden but can't because of, you know, winter?  I'm looking for help here because this is the part about being a gardening addict that's sad, really - when we can't.  And of course it's on top of the normal challenges to happiness that affect everyone, like short days and hostile weather. Here are my pathetic attempts to replace digging:

• Thorough immersion in podcast availability, with the help of my new Nano and the growing supply of gardening podcasts available on the web.
• Plowing through my stack of gardening magazines and books, even my nongardening books and a few New Yorkers.
• The occasional daytime movie, and lots of little red envelopes from Netflix.

See, I'm in trouble coz that's not nearly enough.  And this year is a particularly challenging one for me because I'm heading into winter without my daily dose of laughing at power from the dynamic duo on Comedy Central - the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.  Where else can I turn for that comic/tragic perspective?

Obies take First Prize this time - Greenest College

Oberlin did it again - this time being awarded the top spot by Sierra Magazine.  Again just ahead of Harvard, exactly where they've always wanted to be.  Congrats again, guys.

Pumpkin Art

Truth to tell, someone sent me these and many more fun pumpkin photos and has no idea who took them.  Credit gladly given, though, if someone speaks up.

Where Everyone's the Same Age - the Class Reunion

Yes, I attended my high school class's big four-oh reunion this past weekend, and here are some preliminary observations:

• Where are all the fat people?  Or, for that matter, the bald guys?  Is the Class of '67 just super-fit, or are the not-so-fit just declining to show up for inspection?  I gotta say, people looked GOOD.
• The guys lined up along the dance floor to watch the women dancing solo. Some things never change.
• When a guy introduced me to his wife as "my second-grade girlfriend" I suddenly remembered how much I liked him.  We traded a few drug stories and bonded all over again.
• Lots of couples had met in high school, married, and are still together.  They even looked happy.  Go figure, and congrats to them!
• Others of us had traveled a bumpier road.  Lots of us.
• I loved hearing people scream that they'd seen me in the New York Times or on CBS.  Others screamed "OMIGOD, You wrote 'Golden Girls'!!!!" and gee, I wish I could have just nodded and said yep, that's me.  But no, I'm the humble garden writer, not the rich, famous TV writer.  But no matter - I love that they wanted me to be that successful and famous.  It's great to know the old gang is cheering me on.
• To understand the context in which one classmate wore a bikini T-shirt to the event, remember we were at a fairly fancy country club and "party clothes" were specified on the invitation.  But she thought it would be a hoot to wear the tacky beach T-shirt and a hoot it certainly was.  Who says you have to act like  a grandmother just because you're old enough to be one?
• Speaking of which, the guy I used to sneak out with at 2 a.m. to go sailing across country roads at 100 miles an hour, with no driver's license in sight, now has 8 grandchildren.  But he's still cute and a great dancer.  So there. 
  
• This being the Richmond, Virginia, left-wingers furtively huddled together and inquired in hushed voices about other lefties and with whom, on the other hand, we should avoid the subject of politics at all costs.
• A member of our 7th grade girl gang complained that we'd all been mean to her because her clothes didn't have the right label and we confessed it was only because she was cuter than all of us, and that seemed to help.  Maybe some old wounds were healed.
• My old swimming teammate and I were bragging about our trophy-hogging performance (best relay teams in the state!) when others spoke up to remind me I was the fastest runner in our class.  Year after year, apparently.  Thanks for the memory, y'all! That's one I hope I don't forget.  (Though I must say it's saddening to remember why I didn't pursue whatever talents I might have had at running - no women's track team existed.  This was pre-Title IX, ya know, and our "athletic" options were limited to cheerleading or twirling a baton.) 

We may all meet again 10 years from now or in just 2 years for a big 60th birthday blow-out.  I say: Why wait? 

My Alma Mater - Fifth Greenest College in the World

Oberlin grads must be happy to see this - Grist Magazine reporting that it's the fifth greenest college or university anywhere.  I know they'll all notice it's listed just ahead of Harvard, a spot most Obies have always considered its due on any scale, small-school pride being what it is.  Anyhoo, here's what Grist has to say about it:

Oberlin College
Hoping to get an ober-view of energy use, faculty and students at this small liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, collaborated in 2005 to create a web-based monitoring system in some of the dorms that shows how much energy and water is being used, giving students real-time feedback that can help change their consumption habits. Last year, students worked with Cleveland-based CityWheels to create a car-sharing program on campus. The college's Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies is housed in a pioneering green building that opened in 2000. Oberlin also boasts Ohio's largest solar array and is transitioning to 100 percent earth-friendly cleaning products.

Sounds great and good for them (with or without my measly alumni contributions) and it's not really a surprise, given Oberlin's ultra-left credentials.  But I have a little story about that.

Anybody read The Road from Courain by Australian-American writer Jill Kerr Conway?  Well, her next book was True North, which covered her life in the U.S., including her 10 years as president of Smith College.  What's of interest here is the part of True North where Conway compared two schools that were established during the 1830s, one all-women and one coed, those schools being Smith and Oberlin.

Now because Oberlin was the first coed college in the U.S. (as well as the first racially integrated one), this is a pretty big part of its pride in the world of progressive thinking.  Damn right!  And if you spend four years there you hear this history recited repeatedly, and I used to brag on it myself.  But then I read what Conway found in her research.

I have no direct quotes and I won't be rereading the book just to find them BUT Conway found out that  women were admitted (just a couple of years after the school opened for the purpose of educating male ministers) for three purposes:

• So that female students would be available to do the darning and other domestic duties for the male students.
• So the young ministers could find suitably educated wives.
• And one more reason just as obnoxious as these two that I can't remember, but you get the point.

Man, history can be inconvenient, can't it?  Coz Conway just blew that whole progressive origins thing right out of the water and even had me worried that that their underground railroad history might turn out to be tainted, too.  (So far, so good on that score.)  But Conway's point is that entire educational program was then designed for men, with women as an afterthought.  I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised to find these conditions when I arrived there as a freshman:

• Women had curfews; men didn't.
• Men and women paid the same for room and board, but men had maid service in their rooms and women didn't. 

SHOCKED?  That's probably because you're young and sexism wasn't nearly as blatant by the time you came along, right?  Do tell, readers.  But now you see why I'm an equal-opportunity cynic.

Photo credit: Oberlin College.

"At Craigslist We're Not Selling Out"

That's Craig Newmark speaking and he ought to know because he's the brains and the soul behind his amazing lists.  And hearing him say that to Charlie Rose last week evoked some of my fondest memories from the good old days (the late '60s and '70s, if you have to ask). He said he's often asked when he's going to start making the really big bucks and his response is always: "Once you're living well and maybe providing for your future, what's the point in more money?"  So he'll never go public and submit this culture-changing community service to the demands of Wall Street.  And the guiding principle in the creation and management of Craigslists is to treat people how he'd want to be treated himself.  I'm in love with this man.

And here's what was all news to me - he's really political, in the best nonpartisan way.  (By that I mean I didn't hear him bashing Bush or other Republicans, easy targets though they are.)  No, bashing doesn't do it for him.  He says the Craigslist communities have taught him that people are basically good and trustworthy and moderate, so he's working with a group called OneVoice to empower the moderates in Palestine and Isreal.  After all, only 1 or 2 percent of the public are fanatics; they just make a lot more noise than anyone else.  Or in the words of Jon Stewart, we hear more from extremists because moderates have stuff to do.

Other projects he actively supports, presumably with money as well as by promoting them publically, are:

• The Sunlight Foundation, which was formed to "use the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing...Sunlight’s work is committed to helping citizens, journalists and bloggers be their own best watchdogs, both by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and websites to enable all of us to pool our intelligence in new, and yet to be imagined, ways."  Like the popular new slogan says, "Blogs are little First Amendment machines."

• "New Assignment is a non-profit site that tries to spark innovation in journalism by showing that open collaboration over the Internet among reporters, editors and large groups of users can produce high-quality work that serves the public interest, holds up under scrutiny, and builds trust.  A second aim is to figure out how to fund this work through a combination of online donations, micro-payments, traditional fundraising, syndication rights, sponsorships, advertising and any other method that does not compromise the site’s independence or reputation."

He cites other examples of the new, more pro-active media: Meet-up, Media Bistro, Daylife.  They're part of what he calls the "Sohoblogplex."  It all sounds terribly interesting and I'll be surfing their innards as soon as I get the chance.

Now here's the really sticky wicket about all this.  Craigslists themselves are replacing local newspapers as the go-to publisher of classified ads and are clearly hurting these already-beleaguered institutions.  Asked about this, he doesn't deny the charge but asserts that the near-monopolization (my word) of the media is a bigger problem, coupled with the influence of Wall Street on these now-public companies.  Okay, that's true but it doesn't tell us how he feels about hurting newspapers.  I wonder if the answer is that the Sunlight Foundation and New Assignment show his vision for 21st Century journalism, as defined by its essential duties of oversight and public enlightenment.

It's all pretty revolutionary, again in the best sense.  This career programmer for IBM and a Wall Street firm just wanted to create a community service, like any of us would start a Yahoo group for our neighborhood or for local gardeners. But he had the vision and skills to create something new that's sweeping the world and helping millions get their needs met.  Call it the Revenge of the Do-Good Nerd.

USED CRAIGSLISTS?
I'm curious about how readers have used this amazing service, so please tell me your stories.  I'll start:

• It's how I found the terrific Kansas City design firm that created the GardenRant logo and header.  House of Tears Design responded to a notice I posted on the Seattle List, as did about 20 others.  The others were mostly super-commercial firms in India but at least one other outstanding candidate responded - a design group in Costa Rica.
• Just recently I went List-posting to find help with my new website.  The pitch:  "Barter Garden Coaching for Website Coaching."  The most promising respondent lives 5 minutes away (in this metro area of 3 million people) and was SO on the ball I ended up hiring him for 10 or 15 hours of his time to help me - big-time.  Well, barter was already just about my favorite thing in the whole world, but this experience clenched it.

Update: this terrific story about gardening on the via using Craigslists, via Pam Penick in Austin.

Disney Concert Hall!

Speaking of celebrities, architect Frank Gehry is as famous as architects can be.  Long known by his signature work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, he's still wowing the critics and public alike.  Witness L.A.'s Disney Concert Hall, completed in 2003.

Washington, sometimes described as the city that hires the world's best architects to do their worst work, recently lost its chance at a stunning Gehry building - an addition to the Corcoran Gallery of Art.  The funding suddenly went away and we can only imagine the frustration of artists whose works are so difficult to realize.  Gardeners pretty much have it easy on that score.

Starstruck in L.A

Now I wasn't born yesterday and I like to think I'm reasonably cool around celebrities.  And by D.C. standards I totally AM cool - able to not-stare at the likes of Teddy Kennedy, John McCain, even Hillary and Barack!  But damn, on my short visit to family in Los Angeles the first thing we do is go out for brunch and there's David Schwimmer in front of us in line for a table.  That's right, Ross from "Friends" ($1 million per episode) has to wait in line with the rest of us.

Subsequent walks around town and meals at other trendy restaurants yielded no sightings, despite my very best rubber-necking.  But when a family connection landed us in the second row of the "Tonight Show," close enough to garner a handshake with Jay Leno himself, my ear-to-ear grinning was a dead giveaway: Out-of-towner right here!  Honestly, he was 6 feet in front of us giving his monoloque, looking just inches over our heads at the camera.  More silly grinning.  And I'm not even a particular fan of his - well, until now* - or of his guest, Bill Maher.  But to observe the whole production up-close, especially the during-commercial goings-on, was just fascinating.  My only complaint - and you bloggers out there will identify with this - photos weren't allowed, except for the lucky, ballsy few who asked to have Polaroids taken with Jay himself.  Sorry!

Coming up next - outasight architecture, and even some garden photos.  (Yes, I've read online complaints lately about gardenbloggers going off-topic but it's winter, for chrissake - cut us some slack!)

*No, he didn't win me over with just the handshake.  It was seeing his preshow outfit (every night) of jeans and a workshirt, and hearing from people who work with him that he's a good guy.

Three-Way Blogger Meet-Up!

It happened last night at a D.C. library, in a meeting room that brought to mind everyone's favorite prison movies, but no matter.  The subject was flowers and Flower Confidential and the event brought together previously on-line-only buddies - visiting author Amy Stewart, local magazine editor Kathy Jentz*, and yours truly. 

Longer report to follow, after checking in on Amy's appearance this afternoon at the U.S. Botanic Gardens, and lunching with my GardenRant partner in crime.

*Heaps of praise to Kathy for making this event happen.  The turn-out was fabulous, despite what passes for Arctic weather in these parts.