sustainableflatbush.org

Rebecca’s container gardening demonstration

Last Sunday’s event, “Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” was a huge success! The Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Committee assembled a stellar program of speakers and demonstrations on topics including Container Gardening, Urban Composting, Street Trees, Permaculture and more.

Mela and Sandra talk trees

Karla advocates for worm composting

We can’t wait for spring to get our hands dirty and start planting up the neighborhood!

2007 was the first fully operation year for Sustainable Flatbush, and I must say we accomplished a lot. Starting with our Kickoff Meeting on March 16th at Vox Pop Cafe/Bookstore, the goal was to find people in the neighborhood who wanted to work on sustainability issues locally. To my amazement, 25 people braved a blizzard to attend this event, and we had a great discussion where some common interests and goals were defined. (Full disclosure: to boost attendance I scheduled this event one week after my birthday and combined it with a party… but at least half the people there were new faces to me!)

Park(ing) Day on Cortelyou Road (story below!). Photo by Keka

For our second event we celebrated Bike Month with a program of Streetfilms (curated by yours truly) and a guest appearance by their creator Clarence Eckerson. In keeping with our theme of overcoming weather challenges, Clarence’s flight from the West Coast was delayed by severe rains and while waiting for him we conducted a discussion on Congestion Pricing with Livable Streets luminaries Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives and Aaron Naparstek of Streetsblog. Clarence’s honorarium was a vegan cupcake.

Event #3, an Urban Permaculture Lecture with former Flatbush residents Wilton Duckworth and Joan Ewing of Green Phoenix, packed Vox Pop with permaculture enthusiasts who exchanged ideas on how to apply this sustainable design practice to city living.

Then we worked with Lower East Side Ecology Center to create the first e-waste recycling event south of Prospect Park: Cortelyou Road Electronics Recycling diverted a truck full of discarded technology (and its accompanying toxins) from the landfill. Many thanks to Christina Datz-Romero for her pioneering work to make New York City more sustainable through LESEC’s recycling and composting programs, and for helping me stake out the perfect spot to park the big red dumpster.

In July we teamed up with the Green Edge Collective for Event #4, Eating Sustainably: a meetup and discussion on Sustainable Food. The Green Edge ladies, known for their Eco-Eatery tours and Supper Club community potlucks, kept the discussion lively as topics ranged from healthy food shopping to plastic bags to the environmental implications of consumption. Lots of food for thought (ouch).

I spent most of August on the West Coast, playing music, visiting family, and touring Oregon’s Willamette Valley by bicycle with a group of sustainability-minded vegans. Who knew quinoa was such a useful grain?

We started Autumn off right by participating in the neighborhood’s biggest street festival, the Flatbush Frolic, with a table full of materials promoting recycling. Eve Martinez from the Department of Sanitation’s NYC WasteLess program brought her full compliment of recycling stickers, brochures, posters, and fridge magnets. (What’s a street fair without fridge magnets?) We got to know our neighbors and I scored my new favorite T-shirt.

On September 21st Park(ing) Day was celebrated all over New York City, the U.S., and Planet Earth… including right here in Flatbush. We occupied a parking space and created a park for the day, complete with real grass, trees, a bench, art supplies, live music… and lots of people, especially kids! (See photo above.) Naturally Streetfilms covered this event, and Cortelyou Road Park is featured in their piece… check it out! This event’s special thanks go to Lindsey Lusher of Transportation Alternatives, who coordinated resources and information for almost two dozen sites all over NYC, and especially to Keka Marzagão, without whom Cortelyou Road Park simply would not have been possible! In addition to providing every possible form of support (moral, creative, physical), Keka insisted that we have real grass, which provided endless wonderment and joy to everyone who visited our park.

Okay, so in October we recuperated. By November we were ready to kick off a whole new level of activities with our Town Hall Meeting. 25 people attended (our magic number, perhaps!), and six committees were established, each with specific goals and projects. We are now holding monthly meetings where newcomers can get involved and committees report on their plans. 2008 already looks exciting, with the R3 Committee’s Post-Holiday Electronics Recycling Event coming up this weekend, the Gardening Committee planning a Spring event in conjunction with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Livable Streets Committee working on a Transportation Conference with Center for the Study of Brooklyn and Transportation Alternatives.

That’s the news for 2007. Much much more to come…

Special Thanks (in order of appearance):
Keka Marzagão (website/logo design, photos, VJ, chief co-instigator)
Jeff Duneman (DJ Drummerman, groove provider for Events #1-3)
Sander Hicks and the staff of Vox Pop
Cacao Arcoverde and Ileana Santamaria (musical magic for Event #3)
Susan Siegel and everyone at Flatbush Development Corporation
Clarence Eckerson and all at Streetfilms
Christina Datz-Romero (Lower East Side Ecology Center)
Carolyn Gilles and the Green Edge Collaborative
Lindsey Lusher (Transportation Alternatives)
Eve Martinez (NYC Department of Sanitation)
Mark Levy (host of Sustainable Flatbush Mothership)
Chris Kreussling (Flatbush Gardener)
Eli Kramer (Brooklyn Junction blog)
Gretchen Maneval (Center for the Study of Brooklyn)
Cycleliciousness blog (inspiration for a bike-friendly NYC)
The Flatbush community for supporting our green future
Brooklyn bloggers for setting high standards of journalism, neighborhood pride, and humor
YOU… for reading

“How I Spent My Summer Vacation” continues, with more photos and anecdotes from the sustainability bicycle tour I went on in August…

Maitreya Eco-village, Eugene, OR

The trip began in Eugene, where we camped for the first few nights at a place called Dharmalaya. This is a privately owned home with land that hosts a yoga and meditation studio and acts as a community center for concerts and educational events. It is also an experiment in sustainable living, with an organic garden, composting toilets, and greywater reuse system. (More on Dharmalaya, including their ups and downs with the Eugene zoning board, here.) We visited a community called Maitreya Eco-Village, where we received some lessons in green building techniques (specifically straw bale and cob construction) from founder and architect Rob Bolman. We dropped by the factory and showroom of Bike Friday, manufacturer of world-famous sublime folding bikes, and got to take a few for a spin around the parking lot. We also checked out Eugene’s Center for Appropriate Transport, which hosts a community bike workshop and educational programs that teach kids how to build and design bikes and bike accessories.

Center for Appropriate Transport, Eugene, OR

Once this show actually got on the road, the distances each day were pretty significant for my wimpy self. (One point of pride was that I did actually RIDE up the hilliest portion of the trip, albeit at approximately 1.5 miles per hour.) I discovered that I like traveling by bike very much, and am looking forward to doing more in the future. It’s a great way to see the countryside, silently self-propelled, while still actually covering some distance in the course of a day. The weather was fantastic and Oregon’s Willamette Valley is a beautiful place.

Willamette River Valley, Oregon

We camped at organic farms and spent some time with the farmers who shared the reality of their work and lives with our group, including some delicious produce! We got our hands a little dirty on these farms too (though I personally can’t claim to have been very useful). Seeing both the beauty and the difficulty of this life made me more determined than ever to support the people whose labor and dedication brings beautiful healthy food to the rest of us.

Cyndi gives her chickens lots of love!

Next: “How What I Did On My Summer Vacation Changed My Life”... for real!

Okay, I can actually say it: by popular demand, the “How-I-Spent-My-Summer-Vacation” thread must go on! A lovely woman named Lisa sent me an email asking about the Oregon bike trip I went on in August, referenced in an earlier post. Thus, I will attempt to describe that experience, from the perspectives of sustainability, bicycling, and travel, in somewhat haphazard order.

I had seen ads for a sustainability-themed bike tour last year, but was unable to go at the time. The idea of travelling by bicycle was intriguing to me in and of itself, and the trip seemed pretty affordable by comparison with other supported bike tours (meaning, you camp but your luggage is transported in a van). The itinerary — visits to organic farms, green buildings and permaculture sites — was very attractive. To top it off, the support vehicle runs on biodiesel! What’s not to like? The tour company promotes their trips as

“Holistic - Vegan - Alcohol-free - Intrinsically Political - Community-Building Experience(s)”

… Um, okay… but I must confess I had a few fears about what I was getting into. Prominent among them was that I would be not only the oldest person there, but also the only person who was (a) not a vegan in “real” life, (b) not super-buff in that quasi-anorexic hipster way, (c) not covered with tattoos and/or piercings, (d) politically slightly to the right of anarchist, (e) blessed/cursed with the sarcastic sense of humor that can be a rarity on the West Coast. It’s not that I feel incapable of hanging with a crowd that fits this description (though perhaps not for an entire week), it’s just that growing up in Berkeley has made me somewhat weary of uber-political-correctness. Ironically, this breeding has also made me completely unfit for any other environment. I took a deep breath and sent in my deposit.

Fortunately all of the fears cited above were unfounded. The age range of our tour group was 12 years old to 70! In fact the folks older than me were among the strongest cyclists, usually found sipping cappuccinos at the 30-mile rest stop by the time I straggled in (great role models!). All the participants were really friendly and nice, with interesting lives and stories, some hailing from as far away as Canada and New Zealand. There were even a few fellow New Yorkers, one of whom provided a daily opportunity to make fun of the vegan fare by referring fondly to pastrami sandwiches at Katz’s Deli.

Lunch stop (biodiesel support van in the background)

The Great Change: The World Beyond Petroleum
An evening with Albert Bates

Where:
Friends Meeting House
15 Rutherford Place, Manhattan
(15th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues)

Sponsors:
Sierra Club NYC Group
Beyond Oil NYC
Neighborhood Energy Network
Tri-State Food Not Lawns
Friends in Unity with Nature

Cost:
free, but donations to support Albert’s travel costs welcome

With a style both humorous and deadly serious, Albert Bates walks us through the challenges that lie ahead for the United States and the world: climate change, peak oil, and global economic meltdown creating conditions for civil unrest, recession and hardship. Picking his way through the minefield of unrealistic expectations, Bates pulls together a picture of a very different future, consciously created and far better than anything we might have imagined before. (more…)

Last night I attended a lecture at the Museum of Natural History by 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai. What an inspiration! For those not familiar with her organization,

The Green Belt Movement provides income and sustenance to millions of people in Kenya through the planting of trees. It also conducts educational campaigns to raise awareness about women’s rights, civic empowerment, and the environment throughout Kenya and Africa.

Because she is such a charming and charismatic person — not to mention a visionary — I not only didn’t mind that she shamelessly (with great humor) plugged her autobiography “Unbowed”, I’m now planning to read it at the first opportunity.

More photos from Portland here:

• Views from bridges and mountains
• Bicycle-loving graffiti and architecture
• Stormwater management strategies
• Gorgeous produce at the Farmers’ Market
• Did I mention the bikes?

Have a look!

Next up, a report and photos from the Sustainable Energy in Motion Bike Tour…

While in Portland, I was eager to check out some of the projects spearheaded by a local organization called City Repair (”an organized group action that educates and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform the places where they live”). One of their traffic calming “intersection repairs” turned out to be a few blocks from where I was staying, so I encountered it by accident on the way to breakfast:

These two women are also not locals, and when they asked me about the origins of this traffic circle I was proud to be able to speak with some knowledge about it (thanks to all the Portland promotion on Streetfilms).

This sheltered bench, located outside the Hawthorne Hostel, is an example of a centuries-old natural building technique called “cob” construction. It is one often used by City Repair because cob is an easy material to work with for those with little or no experience — requiring no forms, bricks, or wooden framework — and is well-suited to sculptural structures like this one. As I would soon learn on my upcoming sustainability-themed bicycle tour, cob is not made from corn cobs! It is made from clay, sand, straw, water, and earth, and formed by hand into bricks or blobs or whatever. After the structure is established the material can be shaped by hand like modeling clay. Portland is filled with cool hangout spots like this, thanks to City Repair’s annual Village Building Convergence (”a 10-day event in which neighborhoods activate to build shared public places that they have envisioned, designed, funded, and will maintain for themselves”).

What can I say? I’m impressed. And trying to envision a what Brooklyn version would look like. And planning a visit to next year’s Convergence.

We had a full house for Friday’s lecture by Wilton Duckworth and Joan Ewing of Green Phoenix Permaculture.

Wilton provided some fascinating historical perspective on New York City’s infrastructure; I was particularly intrigued to learn of our transition from a city that was once able to sell its “night soil” (waste from outhouses) to farmers on Long Island for fertilizer, to our current garbage situation requiring massive daily truck caravans to cart our waste to faraway locations, at huge municipal expense. Joan also spoke eloquently of the city’s human resources – energy of youth, wisdom of elders, richness of cultural diversity, etc. – and the need to reclaim our time so we can better utilize them.

photo by Chris Kreussling aka Flatbush Gardener

Harvesting rainwater to mitigate Combined Sewer Overflow and promoting community composting to turn organic waste into nourishment for the city’s gardens and parks were just two of the ideas discussed on what Urban Permaculture might look like; both exemplify perfectly the Permaculture philosophy of turning problems into solutions. It is worth noting that these activities make sense financially as well as environmentally (homeowners, checked your water bill lately?) and are relatively simple to implement.

Sustainable Flatbush would like to give big big thanks to Joan and Wilton for coming back to the neighborhood to share their knowledge and experience with us!!

more photos from Event #3 can be seen at Flatbush Gardener’s Flickr gallery.

Event #3 also provided a special treat for the late-nighters who stayed to hear Cacau Arcoverde and Ileana Santamaria perform music and dance from Pernambuco, Brazil! We even had a roda de capoeira going for a minute (thanks to Samir).

DJ Drummerman (Jeff Duneman) and I helped out on percussion too.

photos by Chris Kreussling aka Flatbush Gardener