Three days worth of weather
We’ve got another print in the store. It’s a 4-color letterpress poster.
I am also looking for local Brooklyn/New York folks who want to collaborate on posters this summer. If you’re interested, holler @me.
→ Paola Antonelli & Charlie Rose - Design and The Elastic Mind
Function truly is also to elicit emotions.
→ "Respect for the Human Scale" - An interview with James Howard Kunstler and Nikos Salingaros
NAC: Jim, can you talk about your thoughts on LEED certification?
JHK: Well, I put that in the category of what I call “blowing green smoke up our ass[es].” I saw a fantastic example of that last night. In a commercial break from the Iowa caucus returns, there was a commercial from General Motors for a hydrogen car, and the story they were trying to put across was, “We’ve already invented this, and you can go out and buy it tomorrow.” Which is complete nonsense. We don’t have any hydrogen cars, we don’t have a fleet of hydrogen cars, and we certainly don’t have any network of hydrogen filling stations even on the drawing boards that would service these things. So the whole thing was just an exercise in unfortunately bending and twisting the reality of the American viewing public. And we do an awful lot of this.
New York has never learned the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts. Its present invents itself, from hour to hour, in the act of throwing away its previous accomplishments and challenging the future.
Simple Precision 15
Get the Flash Player to see this video.
Here’s an overwhelmingly boring video overview of the steps involved printing on the new SP15. In the video, I am making the first test print on the press; it’s a kind of bastardized synesthesia I overheard not too long ago (more accurately described as a cross-sensory metaphor, I reckon).
Observant viewers will notice I accidentally printed onto the tympan paper (d’oh).
Noticeably absent from the video are any shots of cleanup or typesetting (both as necessary for printing as the printing itself, I’d say). Maybe if we are all lucky, I will make another equally engaging video focusing solely on cleanup (and somehow try to communicate in that video the peculiar joys of California Wash – the extraordinarily noxious solvent used to remove the ink).
The music here comes courtesy Van Dyke Parks – if you haven’t, it’d behoove you to listen to Song Cycle.
→ Change we can stomach
Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, writes about (some of) the problems with current industrial agriculture.
For decades, environmentalists and small farmers have claimed that this is several kinds of madness. But industrial agriculture has simply responded that if we’re feeding more people more cheaply using less land, how terrible can our food system be?
Now that argument no longer holds true. With the price of oil at more than $120 a barrel (up from less than $30 for most of the last 50 years), small and midsize nonpolluting farms, the ones growing the healthiest and best-tasting food, are gaining a competitive advantage. They aren’t as reliant on oil, because they use fewer large machines and less pesticide and fertilizer.
In fact, small farms are the most productive on earth. A four-acre farm in the United States nets, on average, $1,400 per acre; a 1,364-acre farm nets $39 an acre. Big farms have long compensated for the disequilibrium with sheer quantity. But their economies of scale come from mass distribution, and with diesel fuel costing more than $4 per gallon in many locations, it’s no longer efficient to transport food 1,500 miles from where it’s grown.
I like the idea of a cooperative marketing organization for local farmers.
Chefs can help move our food system into the future by continuing to demand the most flavorful food. Our support of the local food movement is an important example of this approach, but it’s not enough. As demand for fresh, local food rises, we cannot continue to rely entirely on farmers’ markets. Asking every farmer to plant, harvest, drive his pickup truck to a market and sell his goods there is like asking me to cook, take reservations, serve and wash the dishes.
We now need to support a system of well-coordinated regional farm networks, each suited to the food it can best grow. Farmers organized into marketing networks that can promote their common brands (like the Organic Valley Family of Farms in the Midwest) can ease the economic and ecological burden of food production and transportation. They can also distribute their products to new markets, including poor communities that have relied mainly on food from convenience stores.
Similar networks could also operate in the countries that are now experiencing food shortages. For years, the United States has flooded the world with food exports, displacing small farmers and disrupting domestic markets. As escalating food prices threaten an additional 100 million people with hunger, a new concept of humanitarian aid is required.
I’m not entirely convinced about his conclusion, though.
Truly great cooking — not faddish 1.5-pound rib-eye steaks with butter sauce, but food that has evolved from the world’s thriving peasant cuisines — is based on the correspondence of good farming to a healthy environment and good nutrition. It’s never been any other way, and we should be grateful. The future belongs to the gourmet.
I am not sure that ‘truly great cooking’ is the point…
→ United Nations Brooklyn Farm Tour
It looks like another community garden is having an event this weekend. I recently received this from the Hattie Carthan Community Garden:
For two weeks in May, delegates from across the world will be visiting NYC as part of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. This is the first year of a two-year cycle in in which the United Nations sets its policies on sustainable development. Agriculture is one of the major themes before the Commission.
New york City is a model for innovative urban food systems and agriculture projects, and the City Farms Tour will highlight several sites in Brooklyn, including sights in [Bed-Stuy]. We invite you to come out and be part of this exciting moment, when community-based food projects in your district are receiving international attention.
FARM TOUR SCHEDULE FOR SATURDAY, MAY 10TH
10:30 – 11:30 am Hollenback Community Garden
460 Washington Avenue
Tour of garden, rainwater harvest system
and composting toilet
Contact: Cara Perkins
917.701.2875
hollenbackcommunitygarden@yahoo.com11:45 am – 1:45 pm Hattie Carthan Community Garden
654 Lafayette Avenue
Tour of garden, cooking demo facilitated by
community food educator, Yonette Fleming,
and global lunch made from local food
Contact: Yonnette Fleming
718.638.3566
hattiecarthangarden@yahoo.comThe Hattie Carthan Community Garden invites you to attend a “Wake Up! It’s Spring!” seasonal cooking demonstration facilitated by Yonnette Fleming, City Farms Trainer/Community Food Educator and author of A Time for Healing. Herbal beverages and seasonal foods will be available. This cooking demonstration is sponsored by the Independence Community Foundation and Green Guerrillas as part of the garden’s 2008 food security workshop series “Healthy and Wise.”
2:00 – 3:30 pm Bed-Stuy Farm, Brooklyn Rescue Mission
225 Bainbridge Street
Walking tour of the community, farm, food
pantry and farmers’ market site.
Contact: Rev. DeVanie Jackson
718.363.3085
brooklynrescue@msn.com3:45 – 5:15 pm East New York Farms
613 New Lots Avenue
Tour of farm highlighting youth program,
vermicomposting and urban beekeeping.
Contact info: David Vigil
718.649.7979 ext 12
david@eastnewyorkfarms.org
