• Tag Archives Sierra Club

  • A Yellow Moon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

    A yellowed moon hung in the sky tonight, almost full.  It made the drive back in from Minneapolis a delight as it sailed in and out of view.

    In tonight for the Land Use and Transportation Committee meeting.  What a dynamic group!  They are still fighting the Stillwater Bridge issue after all these years.  They also have transit oriented development on their agenda as well as a new issue called Complete Streets.  In essence Complete Streets wants street planning to have all users in mind (pedestrians, bicyclists, cars and the handicapped in particular)

    A crisp meeting that ran on time.

    Thunder has begun to roll in so I’m going to have shut down soon.  After the Sierra Club meeting, I drove over to the Black Forest where the Woolly’s first monday meeting had just begun to wind down.  I saw Mark and Frank and Stefan before they left.  Warren and Scott stayed and we talked about Moon, Scott’s 95 year old Cantonese mother-in-law who lives with them.  She’s having a show of her calligraphy and painting at the Marsh.  It goes up on August 16th.  There will also be a book of her work available at the show.  Amazing.

    China tour tomorrow for 7-8th graders.  I added a tour this Friday of Chilean students connected with St. Johns who want a tour of American art.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics Weather +Climate Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • A Good Day

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                         Waxing Green Corn Moon

    A good day to work outside.  Still gotta fix the netaphim since other matters interfered the last couple of days.  Lots of weeding to do.  Even in a drought our watering supports the weeds just as it does the vegetables and flowers.

    The Minneapolis Art Institute balanced its books.  That’s a good thing.  Those who work and volunteer there know the last year saw colleagues cut from the work force and strain was present.

    Sierra Club legislative work is in a quiet spot right now.  The legislative agenda setting process kicks into high gear next month, then moves like a freight train rolling down hill right through May of 2010.  The work requires attention and building of new relationships.  That all takes time.

    solomonThe kids have a new puppy, Solomon, continuing the theme of traditional Jewish names for the German short-hair in the house.

    It’s funny the way camera angles often emphasize the head.  This shot looks like Solomon has the head for making wise judgments put on the body of a Chihuahua.

    Herschel, Solomon’s elder, has cancer and is not expected to live much longer.

    The Star-Trib weatherblog has gotten less attention than it deserves this last month and a half.  Three blogs  Sierra Club, weather and Ancientrails proved too demanding.  Even two can be a lot.  Giving up the Sierra Club blog made sense when the Legislative Committee Chair position came along.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Family Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Gadget

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                        Waxing Corn Moon

    A.T. got a Blackberry.  He’s not proud of it, but the life he’s chosen for the next couple of years, especially the Sierra Club part, will require maintaining a calendar while away from home, checking e-mail and using the internet.  A phone with those features made the most sense.  He thinks.  Only use will tell.

    A.T. also got a new watchband.  But, sadly, no ring has turned up or come out.  That means soon we’ll have to face the question of how to reband (rebrand?) him.  A ring carries important social and personal meaning.  A.T. feels weird without his wedding band.


    📂This entry was posted in GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • A Meeting

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                             Waning Summer Moon

    Today I went over to the Westside (St. Paul) to Neighborhood House for a meeting.  In days now long past I use to go there quite bit when Eustolio Benavides was its director.   We worked on a few projects together.  He got bounced out, I think, but nobody I talked to remembered him.

    This meeting was an initial one to get the legislative agenda setting process underway for the collaborative structure, Minnesota Environmental Partnership.  The Sierra Club is a member and as the new legislative committee chair I attended.  I haven’t been in a large room filled with people like this in quite a while.  I knew only Dan Andreson, now the lobbyist for Clean Water Action and my immediate predecessor as chair of the LegCom as the Sierra Club names its legislative committee.

    Since the players are new to me, the individuals new to me and the politics of the environmental organizational community still pretty opaque to me, I just sat there, took notes and listened.

    The meeting finished at 4:30 p.m., putting me right in the middle of the evening rush so I drove up to Saji Ya on Grand Avenue and had some chirsahi as the highways untangled themselves.

    In the old days I used to say, “Another day, another meeting.”  Now they’re a bit unusual.  I don’t dislike meetings.  A lot of folks I know profess a dislike for them, but I consider them one way of getting work done.   This one was the start of a long process.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work permaculture Politics 📎and tagged

  • My life, now

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                  Waning Summer Moon

    Vega the wonder dog has:  shredded the netaphim irrigation,  chewed up a length of high quality hose, swallowed my wedding ring, peed on the bench cushion Kate made and, most recently, peed on our oriental carpet.  As a result we have:  put up a split rail fence, done loads of laundry and taken the oriental in to the rug laundry.

    On the upside, she’s irrepressible, enthusiastic and downright funny.  Her sister Rigel, a sweet girl and a lover, seems bland in comparison, but they have the same parents.

    This weekend I’m off to Decorah, Iowa for a conference at the Seed Saver’s Exchange farm.  There will be lots of information on organic farming/gardening, wagon rides, two speeches on heirloom vegetables, a presentation on Heritage Poultry and a barn dance.  There will be workshops on saving seeds, garlic, potatoes, hand-pollination and bud grafting.

    This turn toward permaculture, horticulture, gardening was a gradual process.  It sort of snuck up on me as I dabbled in perennials on Edgcumbe in St. Paul, grew some vegetables, then did a bit more after we moved to Andover.  Later, I took a horticultural degree by mail from London University in Guelph, Ontario.  At some further point I began to read about permaculture, picked up Bill Mollison’s book and began to make contacts locally.

    The real spur to push further on all this was a conference Kate and I attended in Iowa City three years ago now.  Run by Physician’s for Social Responsibility it convinced me that I needed to turn my activist attention toward environmental matters.

    It took a while to get going but I got myself on the Sierra Club’s political committee last year in the summer, then followed up with work on the Club’s legislative committee this last session writing a blog.  Last September we hired ecological gardens to do a permaculture design for the whole property and made a push to get the orchard planted that fall so it would have the benefit of a full growing season this year.

    This gives me work outside, in the political arena and, as a Docent, in aesthetic and intellectual realms.  A really good deal for me.  As always, thanks, Kate.


    📂This entry was posted in Art and Culture Garden permaculture Politics 📎and tagged

  • Mulch

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer              Waxing Summer Moon

    The six cubic yard of mulch pile has become several piles of mulch at strategic locations along the paths and beds of last year’s orchard installation.  Now it awaits distribution, looking like debris fields from some recent wooden mountain slide.  Mulch serves many purposes in the garden.  Winter mulch keeps the ground cold during spring’s heaves as the earth thaws and refreezes.  Summer mulch helps in weed suppression, keeps the ground cool to avoid plants getting overheated and helps hold moisture in the soil during hot weather.

    Mulch in the orchard serves mainly to suppress weeds and to give a uniform look to the beds and paths, but it has one important purpose that Paula Westmoreland of Ecological Gardens taught me.  She says the breakdown of wood chips gives a different boost to soil chemistry, one more favorable to perennial plants while straw works better for annual plants like vegetables.  I don’t understand it, but she seemed very confident.

    I drove into Panera’s in Northeast for a meeting with Dan Endreson, outgoing legislative committee chair of the Sierra Club and Margaret Levin, its executive director.  We went over the past patterns of developing agendas for the upcoming legislative session.  Dan made me a disc of all the documents that had been useful for him and the committee over the last four sessions while he’s been active.

    It’s fun to get into a responsible role in an issue area I feel is important and in an aspect of the work that involves politics.  The future looks like lots of meetings, phone calls and work in or around the capitol.

    The kids are on their way back here from a 4th of July spent in Chicago with Jen’s family.  Herschel will be happy to see his family again.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • A Promising Alliance

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                     Waxing Summer Moon

    A strange sensation today as I walked up the long flight of stairs at 2828 University Ave. SE.  Not deja vu exactly, I knew was this not a relived moment of my past, but a definite sense of having been here before, walking in to a strange room, meeting people, shaking hands, thinking further down the road.

    It was the celebration of the Blue/Green Alliance’s opening its new offices.  The mayor’s of Minneapolis and St. Paul, RJ Rybak and Chris Coleman gave speeches, Ellen Anderson and Melissa Hortman were there along with others including Mark Andrews, former Hennepin County Commissioner.  There were labor leaders, leadership of the Sierra Club and a number of other folks whose personal and political lives pull them somehow into the orbit of labor and/or environmental politics.

    I met Michael Porter, a guy from Macalester who runs their intern program.  I shook hands with Mark and saw Margaret Levin, executive director of the Sierra Club and Joshua Low who has done great work as the Green part of the Blue/Green Alliance.

    Crowded rooms make hearing a difficult task for me, so I look to get away when I can, but it felt familiar to be there, getting ready for something months away, the second session of the 2009-2010 legislature.

    This particular group and what they represent give me real hope in a couple of different directions.  Labor unions have had a tough go of it over the last twenty years or so and this represents a new and promising direction.  David Foster, the executive director of the Blue/Green Alliance, put it this way in a speech in Germany recently:  I want every job to be a green job and I want every green job to be a union job.  Sounds right to me.  Second, the environmental movement has often looked away from the difficult politics of economic justice, yet no lasting change in environmental policy will take place if those in the lower income sectors of our economy have to bear the brunt of it.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • Accepting a New Position

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                      Waxing Summer Moon

    The escape artists of our local pen had to remain outside when I drove into the Sierra Club meeting.  They did not break out again.  In this case they need an incentive to escape.  That usually consists of a human in a place not immediately accessible to them.  I was gone; Kate was gone; ergo, no incentive.

    This was the baton passing moment for the legislative committee.  Josh introduced me as the person taking over from Dan Endreson, who had filled the job for the last four years.  I enjoy politics, enjoy talking politics and enjoy the strategy and execution.  This position will be a lot of work, but a type of work that energizes me.

    The heat which sat on us for a couple of days has modulated a bit downwards and the night is pleasant.

    The waxing summer moon is the slimmest of slivers, a nursery rhyme moon in need of a cow.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • A Good Lesson In Humility

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring           Waxing Seed Moon

    I’ve been working with the Sierra Club for a while now and I’m constantly amazed at how much more these folks know about politics than I do.  I’ve begun to realize that I never shepherded legislation though the legislative process or worked on the ground in a modern political campaign.  I’m a rabble rouser, an agitator, a motivator and an organizer, but political process has never been my strength.  And all along I thought it was.

    So the uphill curve has found me panting along behind, running hard to keep up.  At times, like tonight, I’ve felt out of my depth, just not up to the task.  In fact I’ve taken the risk, jumped in and tried to stay afloat.  I’ve not got the total package going on as yet, but I can get there.  A good lesson in humility.

    Tonight will be the last night of meds, the penicillin will run out Friday at noon and I believe the infection will be on its last legs, even if they could take awhile to go down.  Yeah.

    Lunch tomorrow with Bill Schmidt, talking nuclear power.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics 📎and tagged

  • Wonky Politics

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring              Waxing Seed Moon

    Kate left home to visit a snow storm.  4-6 inches falls in Denver right now.  Tomorrow will be a good day for a ski oriented family to have a birthday.

    Though the southern part of the state has blizzard warnings, we look mild here.  Saturday does not look quite as good as I thought it would for outdoor work.

    I popped two alleve and the throbbing went down toward manageable levels.  A vicodin will get me to sleep.  Bearable now.

    A week plus of little commitments stretches out ahead of me, so I plan to school myself on Sierra Club issues, especially safe mining and building sensible communities.  Environmental politics has a wonky aspect once you get past tree-spiking and waving signs.  A lot of science and complex theory behind much of the work makes even entry level understanding a challenge.

    How have I continued to work without a detailed knowledge of the issues?  Well, two things.  One, I have a good, broad grasp of the issues, just not a detailed one.  Second, the politics have been what interested me initially and politics I understand.   The Sierra Club folks understand the legislative process much better than I do, but in politics I’m a quick study and I was not as far behind in understanding as I was on the issues.


    📂This entry was posted in Great Work Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged