GRID Magazine June 2009

to wards a

Sustainable Philadelphia

j u n e – Ju ly 20 0 9 / i ssue 5 gridphilly.c o m

An Oasis in Overbrook Jerome Shabazz’s vision for an urban green learning center

comes to life page 20

Urban Farm Bonanza!

school, mill creek farm, ge saul agricultural high av 's way lead the char mlk high school and we er

BarberGale designing sustainable brands.

A sustainable brand

is one that resonates with authenticity backed by integrity.

It inspires and is admired. It produces foot soldiers that tell your story for you. It flourishes in today’s interdependent world, and in the long run, creates more profit for the company and more social, economic, and environmental prosperity for society.

www.barbergale.com

To Dream the Possible Dream

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friend of mine owned an independent bookstore for a number of years, and during that time he claimed to have the best job in the world. All day long, he said, intelligent, engaging people come through the door and talk about the subjects that they're most passionate about.

That same friend was also an avid runner, and he loaned me a book 10 years ago (that I haven’t gotten around to returning; sorry, Bob!) called Running & Being by the “running philosopher” George Sheehan. One of Sheehan’s favorite quotes was from William James: “The strenuous life tastes better.”

Sustainability attracts optimists, people who aren't afraid to dream big. People who will tilt at windmills and end up victorious. This spring, my sister’s friend, Ibti Vincent, quit her high school teaching job in Washington, D.C. and decided to bike across the country to visit farms and learn firsthand how the systems that produce healthy, natural food work. I'll use her words: “I have read about some of the issues and possible solutions in [Michael] Pollan's writings, in [Barbara] Kingsolver, in [Eric] Schlosser, but I want to know more. I want to see more and do more, learn more and help more.”

By the way, at the time Ibti decided to take this coast-to-coast-and-back-again 6,000 mile trip, she didn’t know how to ride a bike.

She has since learned. She’s already biked from D.C. to Pittsburgh, and she just spent four and a half days in Philadelphia visiting places like Mill Creek Farm, University City High and Saul High School. Read her blog abikeablefeast.blogspot. com to see her impressions of Philly. I mean, we already know that our city is awesome, but it’s fun to see an outsider passing through who arrives at the same conclusion.

Speaking of dreamers and epic undertakings, enjoy Natalie Hope McDonald’s excellent piece on Jerome Shabazz and the Overbrook Environmental Educational Center. When you witness what’s already been accomplished there, and what Shabazz imagines the Center becoming, you can’t help but feel hope. Similarly inspiring is the Mill Creek Farm. In just four years, Johanna Rosen and Jade Walker transformed unused land into one of the most vibrant places in the city.

Folks, there is a movement afoot, and every day more people are opening up to new—and often old, discarded—ideas. Some will hear the message and do extraordinary things. And we will admire them for it.

For the rest of us, the message of sustainability will inspire us to make the small but very meaningful changes in how we live. We might not bike across the country, but we might bike to work. (And, if we read Will Dean’s helpful how-to, we might patch our tire when we get a flat.) We might not start a farm, but we might do a little gardening, and buy more food from local farmers. And we might not start an education center in our neighborhood, but we might talk to our friends and family about what we’re learning.

Each time we taste that strenuous life, and reap the rewards of living more deliberately, we’ll be emboldened to do more. Together we’ll take more steps toward becoming the people we want to be, and living in the world and city where we want to live.

c o ver ph o t o by sh aw n corri gan

art director

Jamie Leary jamie@gridphilly.com associate editors

Will Dean will@gridphilly.com copy editors

Andrew Bonazelli, Patty Moran production

Lucas Hardison distribution

Claire Connelly 215.625.9850 ext. 114 customer service

Mark Evans mark@gridphilly.com 215.625.9850 ext. 105 writers

Phil Forsyth Paul Glover Mark Alan Hughes Ashley Jerome Brian James Kirk Natalie Hope McDonald Andrew Thompson Christopher Wink Samantha Wittchen photographers

Robin Brubaker Shawn Corrigan Dan Murphy Albert Yee illustrators

Jude Buffum J.P. Flexner Kirsten Harper Melissa McFeeters Stephanie Struse published by

Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850

↑ Ibti Vincent from abikeablefeast.blogspot.com

Printed in the usa on Leipa’s 43.9 lb Ultra Mag gloss paper. It’s 100% recycled, 80% from post-consumer waste.

publisher

Alex Mulcahy 215.625.9850 ext. 102 alex@gridphilly.com

Alex J. Mulcahy Publisher alex@gridphilly.com

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Word on the street I A Far away fan

was recently in Philly visiting my daughter, who has an internship at UPenn this summer. We were at Reading Terminal Market and, as I am very, very interested in sustainability, organic farming, stewardship, etc., someone at a stall suggested I read your magazine.

I wanted to tell you that your magazine has become my bible! It is easy, interesting and informative reading and I can’t thank you enough! I am planning my own move to the greater Philly area when my youngest daughter (hopefully) also goes to college back there. Grid has already helped me to find lots of resources within the world that interests me, and with any luck, I will make some solid contacts to pave the way for my move.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I believe I will be subscribing, so it will be a joyful day to go to my postbox and see Grid waiting for me.

You’ve done a great job; please keep up the good work. Your readers are counting on you!

—beth barnes, Long Beach, CA

Nutritious Reading

I

picked up approximately 100 copies of Grid magazine (May ‘09, #4) to distribute at our Urban Nutrition Initiative, Eats and Beats 2009 benefit dinner.

Your magazine was very well received by our guests, and it was especially nice having one of our student interns, Laquanda Dobson, featured in “The Most Important Meal” article.

I personally enjoy the information shared in Grid, and I always hear positive comments regarding the magazine whenever it is mentioned.

I encourage teachers to use the articles as part of their reading and/or science curriculum—or whenever relevant.

— john r. winters, jr.

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food

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policy

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craft

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am a web-based system support specialist, currently working in the Department of Public Health. I would like to comment on the article “Mo’ Paper Mo’ Problems” by Brian James Kirk, [May ’09, #4].

Please would someone explain why a city councilman and his junior partners are getting credit for my idea? A few months ago, in lieu of the budget deficit, Mayor Nutter had issued a call to all city employees for ideas and ways to cut costs. My submission was the concept of paperless organization. Not only did I present just the concept, but I supplied statistics and estimations as to the amount of money that would be saved using the Air Management Department’s budget as an example. Months later, the budget had been balanced, and I, as well as all the others who submitted concepts, were summoned to City Hall to receive a thank you from Mayor Nutter and a certificate of thanks.

However, if the city council is introducing this bill, I would think it only fair to have been given recognition for my efforts to the city. As of this moment, I have not been contacted about the bill. In fact, I only heard of it from this article, which was found by a co-worker who had also submitted an idea to Nutter and was at the recognition ceremony.

I can proudly say that I have worked hard to

#01, Feb 2009

#02, mar 2009

sAve Money on energy Bills!

towa rd S a

SuStainable PhiladelPhia

to wa r d S a

that has locavores talking

f e b 2 009 / issu e 1 gri d P hi lly. com

ta k e o n e

LocaL Round-up

Peach turnovers, soft bowls and insects

m a r c h 2 0 0 9 / i s s u e 2 g r i dPh i l ly.c o m

BeeR HeRe!

Philly reclaims its proud brewing tradition

Apollo’s Creed Mike McKinley talks about Philly’s solar future

a new Kensington?

TrAsh inTo TreAsure

North Philly’s quest for sustainability

→ Your old computer, their new start

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d es i g n a n d m o r e

Mo’ Paper Mo’ Problems can paperless government work in philly?

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by brian james kirk

ong lines and mountains of paperwork await citizens seeking licenses and grants, trying to establish businesses or hoping to renovate their homes. City workers tap away at keyboards fulltime, entering the requests into computers. The paperwork is then shipped to storage facilities to gather dust.

City Councilman Bill Green thinks this approach to city services is outdated—and unnecessarily costing Philadelphia millions of dollars.

He wants to streamline these operations into a “paperless” process that utilizes digital technology instead of dead trees.

“This is stuff the private sector has been doing for 20 years,” Green says, seated in front of an iMac in his office in City Hall. “We haven’t adapted.”

According to a list of proposals drafted in reI LLUSTR aTI ON By GREG PUGLESE

sponse to the city’s budget shortfall in October, Green and fellow freshman council members Curtis Jones, Jr. and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez believe that a paperless city government could save $138 to $265 million annually.

Each year in the US, the average office employee generates approximately 10,000 sheets of paper, according to the Resource Conservation Alliance. Each sheet costs 13 to 31 times the purchase price when factoring in the secondary costs of printers, mailings and storage, accord-

ing to case studies conducted by the Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board.

The council members envision enabling citizens and workers to conduct all city business by computer—online or at service kiosks throughout the city. Electronic forms would eliminate the need for data entry clerks who could be reassigned to other critical tasks. In city departments, the plan is to change attitudes and institute policies that would increase electronic distribution and decrease printing, photocopying and mailing.

Electronic form filing is a long-term project— Green believes it could be instituted in six or seven years—but paper consumption reform can happen now.

“I’ve been trying to work with the adminisContinued on page 6 →

may 2009

→ sandy salzman, executive director of the New Kensington community Development corporation

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make my office function better throughout my time with the city, and no one can appreciate the technological advancement of the paperless process more than I. It can be done, and it can save millions. But if the city won’t recognize the lowly worker who generated it in the first place, what has my work been for?

—aaron schwabe

Need to get something off your chest?

Write to us at feedback@gridphilly.com Don’t forget, you can read back issues online at gridphilly.com

#03, APR 2009 Food Buzz The blog

SuStainable PhiladelPhia

→ What everyone in Philly needs to know

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news

Dude, where’s my credit?

Back Issues Miss an issue? Call us at 215.625.9850 x105 to complete your collection! prototype, sept 2008

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fire in the kitchen Strawberry Bruschetta with Ashley Jerome

1 pint strawberries 1 handful of basil leaves 6 oz. mascarpone cheese 2 tbsp. honey

3 tsp. aged balsamic 1 baguette (Metropolitan Bakery) ¼ cup olive oil

Cut and remove the green, leafy top of the strawberries. Add the balsamic vinegar to the strawberries and let the mixture marinate in the fridge. Slice basil leaves lengthwise, in thin strips. Set aside. Mix together mascarpone and honey, and put in the fridge.

Set the oven to broil. Slice the baguette. Brush the cut pieces with a little bit of olive oil. Broil until toasted (roughly two minutes).

Spread mascarpone-honey mixture on the bread. Spoon a bit of strawberry-vinegar mixture on top and sprinkle with a few pieces of cut basil. Enjoy!

Weaver’s Orchard Metropolitan Bakery’s Pain Au Levain This Philadelphia institution, started 15 years ago by Wendy Smith and James Barrett, has consistently churned out delicious artisan breads. Their Pain Au Levain, a classic French country bread, is an incredibly versatile sourdough. There is just enough crunch on the outside to complement the light, chewy inside. Metropolitan Bakery is also doing their part in the community by donating bread to homeless shelters each week and co-sponsoring a café to raise money for Project H.O.M.E. For locations, visit metropolitanbakery.com weav er’ s p h o t o by r obi n brubaker

Weaver’s has been a family operation for four generations. Owner Ed Weaver and his son Justin carry on the tradition, tending to their 100 acres in Morgantown, PA. In June, strawberries abound, and people are invited to come pick their own. With a market on the site that sells fresh seasonal fruit, baked goods, and deli meats and cheeses, Weaver’s Orchard is a great place to bring your family on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. 40 Fruit LN., Morgantown, PA, 610-8567300, weaversorchard.com june / july 20 0 9

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/ news & events

Director of Sustainability Steps Down → Thurs., June 18, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Free, Academy of Natural Science, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, greenworks.eventbrite.com

Mark Alan Hughes, Nutter’s Director of Sustainability (and a columnist in these pages), is stepping down in June. Following the completion of the plan for Greenworks Philadelphia, one of Hughes’ big projects, he wants to step aside and let the plan move forward with others in charge. Claiming to be “an academic at heart,” Hughes is more interested in planning than implementation.

In addition to heading the creation of the Greenworks plan, Hughes also organized Philly’s use G R E E N WO R K S of federal recovery money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Hughes will give his final public appearance as Director of Sustainability at June’s Urban Sustainability Forum, which will focus on the ayor Nutter announced his plans for Greenworks plan. He’ll discuss making Philadelphia the “greenest” city in what the plan aims to accomplish America last month, highlighting five areas and how. So if you’ve got questions of interest and 150 initiatives he hopes to achieve by 2015. He has defined about the plan, or for the man who created it, exercise your policy wonkiness and join us at the ambitious plan as a restructuring of Philadelphia towards a “green the Academy. economy,” which, if it lives up to its alternate meanings, could definitely

Lean and Green by 2015

M

P H I L A D E L P H I A

Mayor Michael A. Nutter

CITY OF PHILADELPHIA

ENERGYENVIRONMENTEQUITYECONOMYENGAGEMENT

help a city living through a recession.

Dubbed Greenworks Philadelphia, the programs will focus on five E’s: energy, environment, equity, economy and engagement. For energy, the plan’s goals are to lower government building energy use by 30 percent, cut overall city building energy use by 10 percent and buy more energy from renewable sources. To help the environment, the plan is to cut greenhouse gas emission by 20 percent and divert 70 percent of solid waste away from landfills.

Food access, a large problem for many of Philly’s residents, gets a nod, too, with a commitment to increasing the availability of fresh food and promoting farmers’ markets, community gardens and urban farms. Jobs, another big issue, are also mentioned in the plan, which aims to double the number of “green jobs” to 28,800.

When he was elected, Nutter promised to change Philadelphia and, in particular, make it more sustainable. With this plan, he takes a solid step forward in that direction. greenworksphila.org

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Down on the Farm

→ Sustainable Farming Initiative, 610-458-8129, maysiesfarm.org/saita.html → Contact vic@furiousdreams.com for more information.

Farming is one of those things that many people used to do, but now most Americans encounter their produce from behind cellophane. If you’re looking for a primer on how to grow, or if you’re considering going back to the land, the Sustainable Agriculture Internship Training Alliance is offering classes and workshops all summer.

The topics and places vary, from growing urban vegetables at Weaver’s Way to sustainable wine making at Stargazer’s Vineyard.

The programs are set up through Maysie’s Farm Conservation Center and are aimed at interns working at organic farms, but anyone is welcome to attend any workshop. phot os by peter to bi a

Win a Garden Contest, or Build One

→ Garden Contest, 215-988-8897, pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org/ events/city_contest.html → School Gardens, July 1-2, 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m., 215-988-8846, greencityteachers@pennhort.org for more information

Proud of your little spot of green space in your backyard, or around the corner at the community garden? The Pennsylvania Horticulture Society (PHS) is hosting its annual City Garden contest, and they’re looking for entries. Show off your marigolds, chrysanthemums and red chard, and receive tips from expert judges. The deadline to enter is June 30.

We’ve spent a bit of time covering school gardens at Grid, to the point that you might occasionally confuse us with High School Garden Monthly (if such a publication existed), but that’s only because we like them so much. So, if you, like us, want to see more kids getting connected with growing things in our city, and you’re an educator, PHS is also having a workshop on starting a school garden. The workshop will cover topics like how to design, build and manage a school garden, as well as encouraging community involvement and convincing your administration bosses that it’s a good idea. You’ll also actually be helping build a garden at Luis Munoz-Marin Elementary School.

Don’t forget that while the workshop is at the beginning of July, you need to register by June 26.

Good Wheel Ambassadors → bicyclecoalition.org/resources/ ambassadors

If you’ve been going to any bike-friendly events lately, you might have noticed some enthusiastic bicyclists in maroon shirts.

These “bike ambassadors” are a program of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia to educate cyclists and others about safety, traffic laws and the benefits of biking in Philly.

Ambassadors hand out information on sharing the road, fit your helmet correctly, give presentations about biking to work and talk to passers-by about how to safely make a left turn on a two-way street (and, unlike the bike geek/messenger stereotype, they’re friendly). You can request an appearance at your event, gathering or office on their website.

Outside, Inside the City

Design Learning

If you find yourself thinking, “What’s that big glowing thing in the sky?” maybe you should consider reacquainting yourself with the great outdoors (they didn’t get that “great” moniker for nothing, you know). To celebrate Great Outdoors Month, in June, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE) is hosting the Great American Backyard Campout, a night of camping without any electronic distractions.

Instead, you can go on hikes, look for wildlife, sing campfire songs, make s’mores, go fishing and other wholesome, nature-y things. There will also be a tour of the SCEE’s six new sustainably-constructed shelters, which you can use for camping anytime.

In addition to all that fun with fires, insects and no walls, SCEE is also hosting a whole bunch of events at their scenic stone pavilion. Throughout the summer, you can enjoy bands like bluegrass outfit the Setting Sons, Shakespeare performances and a special puppet cabaret by local group Puppet Uprising. Check their online schedule for dates and times.

Sustainable design is kind of a buzz word these days. Everyone seems to be doing it, and throwing around words like LEED certification, green roofs and stormwater retention as though we all learned them with our ABCs. If you’re looking for some explanation about green design terms, or are just interested in new architectural methods, then the “Green Pieces” lecture

by Todd Woodward of SMP Architects could be for you.

In addition to explaining what some of those design buzz words mean, the lecture will also cover how to incorporate sustainable tech into the basic design of a building. Too many architects, according to Woodward, just add sustainable features onto an old design to get something publicity-friendly to tell people. Woodward wants sustainable design to have a wider view than just adding a green roof onto a skyscraper.

He wants to make sustainability central to the building itself and thus, the city.

→ Backyard Campout, Sat.-Sun., June 27-28, 2 p.m.-11 a.m., $15-$20 per person, The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Ed., 8480 Hagy’s Mill Rd., 215-482-7300 x 110; → Live at the Pavilion, $5-$10, schuylkillcenter.org/events/

→ Green pieces, Wed., Aug. 5, 6:30p.m.8p.m., Center for Architecture, 1218 Arch St., phillyaaiatechseries.blogspot.com/

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/ profile

Better Living Through Rain

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hroughout the Wissahickon watershed, a 64 square-mile basin beginning in Montgomery County and flowing south into Philadelphia, a stormy early May has saturated the ground with rainwater, which will eventually twist downstream through dozens of tributaries into the Schuylkill River.

It’s been a gloomy, gray week for most, but Alden Zove cherishes the two-and-a-half inches of precipitation that’s accumulated. It has stocked the rainwater harvest that provides close to 100 percent of his company’s outdoor water needs.

Zove owns Cedar Run Landscapes, a landscaping and water garden design company hidden in a sprawl of suburban development in North Wales, and has installed a rainwater harvesting prototype that captures the precipitation off a 1,400 square-foot roof. The water is stored in a 3,000 gallon underground cistern and pumped perpetually through a decorative, self-cleansing waterfall. It is then siphoned off through hoses to cultivate nursery stock, wash a fleet of company trucks and fill ornamental ponds on display.

It’s a sales demonstration. After all, Zove is an entrepreneur who’s been in business for more than 20 years. Cedar Run’s smallest rainwater harvesting system, a 500 gallon cistern, starts at $8,000, including labor and materials.

You’ll also have to consider the cost of decorative features, ranging from a simple statue to an elaborate waterfall or pond.

Despite the cost, Zove says that it’s the right fit for a homeowner trying to better their environmental stewardship. The small installation can completely nurture a 500 square-foot garden, wash one vehicle per week and still provides an extra 250 gallons per month.

“It’s not going to be a money-saving event directly to the homeowner,” he says. There are, however, environmental benefits. “As construction in cities creates more impervious surface [area], water runoff is causing significant damage to streams and lakes.”

Zove’s roots are deep in stewardship. He has an associate degree in horticulture from Temple Ambler and a bachelor’s in plant science from the University of New Hampshire.

The company’s two-and-a-half acre lot is surrounded by vast shopping centers and housing developments. Zove remembers when it was dominated by farmland.

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Landscapers save rainwater for watering gardens by brian james kirk

As construction in cities creates more impervious surface [area], water runoff is causing significant damage to streams and lakes.

—Alden Zove Now water pours from downspouts, picks up harmful chemicals from the street and spills across impenetrable asphalt parking lots into storm water drains that will empty into the Wissahickon Creek—one of Philadelphia’s sources of drinking water. Suburban development has been detrimental to the Wissahickon’s natural flow, water quality and ecosystems, according to a 2007 report by the Philadelphia Water Department.

Impervious cover—roads, sidewalks, parking lots and soil compacted by urbanization— can cause flooding that erodes stream banks, injects dangerous pollutants like motor oil into

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watersheds and stops rain from recharging the groundwater. In some sub-basins around the Wissahickon, more than 30 percent of the land area is impervious.

“If more people did this regionally, it would be a cost savings to towns, cities and states,” Zove says, waving his hand to illustrate the rainwater flowing down his waterfall.

His eyes lighting up, he adds one last value of rain harvesting to the list: “Sharing this with your children can have an impact on how they will live their lives. That’s the payback.” ■

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phot o by a l bert yee

/ policy

Ask Mark

Philadelphia’s Director of Sustainability, Mark Alan Hughes, answers our readers *This month’s column is my last as Director of Sustainability and my question comes from the editors of grid.

What is the most important or surprising lesson you’ve learned during your time as Director of Sustainability?

Great question. The biggest attraction of this job for me was always the opportunity to learn, which is just another way of saying that I’m an academic at heart. (As an aside, let me digress to answer another question that may be on people’s minds: Why am I leaving?

The answer is that I finished what I came to do and now I’m going back to where I belong. The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability is established and Philadelphia’s sustainability frameworkgreenworksphila.org is launched, and now I can go back to my native habitat: academia.)

I’ve learned many things during my 15 months in this job. And I’ll exercise the columnist’s prerogative to answer both your questions—most important and most surprising.

The most surprising lesson is how much work it takes to accept people’s offers to help.

This lesson came from nowhere and it took me a long time to fully appreciate the consequences.

I’ve had over 200 speaking engagements since I started and after almost every one of them, people, sometimes by the dozens, would come up and tell me they wanted to help and would do anything to join the Mayor’s efforts. They would often give me a business card or contact information. I also received hundreds of voicemails, emails and old-school letters making the same offer. Some of these were job hunters or vendors pitching for work. But the large majority were people offering to volunteer their time and expertise. In addition to individual offers, I have received scores of requests to partner with institutions in ways that would allow them to contribute valuable resources to the Mayor’s agenda. Universities, private companies, nonprofits and coalitions of industries and advocates have all made generous and repeated offers.

The surprise was how much work all this generosity demands. I could literally spend all day at my desk answering voicemail and email and following up on notes scribbled on

business cards. Now, the obvious strategy is to prioritize. I could do that for some potential partners, like those individuals and institutions visible enough to be named to the Sustainability Advisory Board. But for the hundreds of other potential partners and resources, we had to build a capacity to acknowledge their offer and engage their potential. That took time, especially because I didn’t fully appreciate the need to build that capacity.

We’ve gotten much better in the last six months at using technology (the Web, Facebook, and all the rest) to deploy this social networking.

But the most surprising lesson is that I should have done that during my first six months. And let me not miss this chance to apologize to everyone I didn’t respond to and involve as fully as I wish I had.

The most important lesson is that knowledge isn’t the missing ingredient for change.

Too often we treat our challenges as puzzles to be solved, when really they are decisions to be made. Sure, science faces lots of open questions in the climate debate, the technology of clean energy and waste management, and so on. But we know more than enough to achieve significant progress. How significant? I’d go so far as to say that Philadelphia, or any city, can become the greenest in America by simply deciding to do what we already know how to do. That is what Greenworks Philadelphia really attempts: to set out our collective commitment to a set of decisions about issues as wide-ranging as energy, food, wastewater and equitable access to jobs.

If we achieve our 15 targets by 2015, we will have earned the mantle of “greenest city in America.”

And we can do it.

Let me offer my thanks to Grid for the opportunity to write this monthly column (and for the cartoon!). It’s been a pleasure and a great chance to speak to readers. You have done an amazing job with your own start-up and I’ll remain a committed reader! ■

We lifecycle!

At SCA, ethics, social responsibility and environmental sustainability are not just buzzwords. They are integral parts of who we are as a company. That’s why we are so proud to be recognized again by Ethisphere as one of the World’s most ethical Companies.

We have a long tradition of respect for our employees, the environment and the communities in which we live and do business. Wherever SCA operates, we are engaged in initiatives that arise from our core values of Respect, excellence and Responsibility.

We bring the lifecycle of nature into balance with the human lifecycle. In short, we lifecycle.

Proud manufacturer of Tork tissue and TENA bladder control protection solutions.

SCA Americas Cira Centre, Suite 2600, 2929 Arch Street Philadelphia PA 19104, 610-499-3700

www.sca.com

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/ how-to

Beneficial Inflation

S

o you’re riding along, minding your own business, maybe humming a tune, and suddenly every push of the pedal takes ages, and people are walking past you. Unless you have some kind of heart condition (in which case, please seek medical attention), your tire probably popped a flat. Don’t fret, though: Flats are quick and easy to fix with the right tools.

1. First, you’re going to have to remove your wheel from the bike. If your bike is newer, it should have quick release wheels. These have a lever on one side and a cap (a little cone-thingy) on the other. Flip the lever, which should take some effort, and turn it until the wheel is loose. The wheel should be easy to take off. If you have an older bike, the wheel might be attached by nuts. You should carry around an appropriately-sized wrench if this is the case, or an adjustable one. Use the wrench to take the nuts off, put them somewhere safe and take the wheel off.

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■ ❑ ■ ❑ ■ ❑ ■ ❑

bike patch kit pump wrench (optional) tire tool (optional)

How to fix a bike flat by will dean

2. Next, you need to remove the tire. You can do this with your hands, or use a tire tool (they come in sets of two) and wedge it between the rim and tire. Lever it up and push the tire away from the rim. Leave the first tool there and use the other one in the same way a few inches away. Continue doing this around the tire, pushing the tire away from the rim while leaving the original tool in place. You can also use your hands and work the tire off the rim, but it’s harder.

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supplies

3. Remove the tube from inside the tire, but use the valve as a marker so you know where the tube was (so you can find anything lodged in the tire that might have caused the flat). Look at the tube to see if there are any obvious punctures or bits of metal protruding.

4. Fill the tube with air and listen for a hiss of air escaping. Feel along the entire length to detect any air coming out. Once you’ve found the hole, let the rest of the air out of the tube.

illus t r at ions by j.p. fl exn er

5. Scuff up the rubber around the puncture with the little piece of sandpaper or rough metal in the patch kit. Apply the glue to a space bigger than the patch you’re going to use. Each kit comes with a few different sizes, and if your puncture is small, you can cut up patches to make them last longer. The most important point is to make sure the hole is entirely covered.

Seeing Clearly How to recycle your TV by samantha wittchen

M 6. Once the glue is dry, press the patch onto the glue and hold it there for a few minutes. Use a book, or something heavy and flat, to apply even pressure. While you’re waiting, check the tire for anything (metal, glass, rock, etc.) that could have caused the flat.

Look especially hard around the part of the tire that corresponds to the puncture on the tube.

7. Put the tube back in the tire and pump it up to test for leaks. Let the air back out and put the tire back on the rim, and make sure that the tube isn’t pinched between the tire and rim. Use your hands to put the edges of the tire inside and use the tire tool (if you have to) to put the last sections on by wedging the tire tools against the rim and lifting the tire onto the rim.

8. Put the wheel back on the bike and reattach it. With quick release tires, don’t just spin the lever until it’s tight; spin it until it’s just starting to get tight and then push the lever over until the opposite side is showing. It should be easy until the lever is perpendicular to the bike; then it gets progressively harder. Some quick releases become easy to push after they are most of the way over, so don’t worry if it’s really hard, then gets really easy. If you’re using nuts, tighten one side part of the way, then the other, and alternate until they are both snug and the wheel is evenly situated on the frame (i.e. no tilting to either side).

9. Make sure the brakes are not rubbing against the wheel, then pump up the tire to the recommended pressure, which should be listed on the sidewall of the tire. ■

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y television is older than I am. When I was younger, my best friend called it “The TV From Outer Space” because it has that mid ’70s space-age look. My sister, who lives with me, hates the thing. So, when the digital television transition became imminent, she was all but salivating at the prospect of us finally getting a new TV. Much to her dismay, we got a spiffy new converter box instead.

However, plenty of Philadelphians will opt for another route—replacing their analog televisions with digital ones—when we reach the extended digital transition deadline on June 12. Should you choose to go that route, it is extremely important that you recycle your old television. A typical cathode ray tube TV contains two to eight pounds of lead, in addition to other toxins like cadmium and beryllium, which should not end up in a landfill where they can leach into the groundwater supply. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only 18 percent of scrapped televisions are currently recycled.

Finding a responsible recycler can be difficult. According to TakeBackMyTV.com, run by a coalition of nonprofit groups promoting responsible recycling in the electronics industry, most electronic waste collected in the U.S. for recycling is exported to developing countries for primitive “recycling” that causes damage due to improper handling and contamination of the surrounding environment.

Some television manufacturers, such as Sony, Samsung and LG, have implemented take-back programs to collect and responsibly recycle your unwanted TV. TakeBackMyTV.com is an excellent resource for comprehensive information on these programs, participating manufacturers, other responsible recyclers and drop-off locations.

The biggest difficulty for Philadelphians is that many of these responsible recyclers are not located in the immediate area. For a $10 fee per television, Magnum Computer Recycling in Westville, NJ accepts plastic televisions (no old-style console TVs) for recycling. The Philadelphia Streets Department also collects TVs at their Household Hazardous Waste events, as well as year-round (8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday–Saturday) at the following Sanitation Convenience Sites: State Rd. & Ashburner St., Domino Ln. & Umbria St., and 3033 S. 63rd St. Magnum Computer Recycling, magnum-llc.us; Hazardous Waste Drop-Off Event, Sat., June 27, Northwest Transfer Station, Domino Ln. & Umbria St., phila.gov/streets/hazardous_waste.html

june / july 20 0 9

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11

/ how-to

Buzz On

How to attract beneficial insects to your garden by Phil Forsyth

W

hen most people think of insects, they think of mosquitoes that bite, bees that sting and a host of annoying bugs that munch leaves and plants. The truth is, there are vastly more beneficial insects than pests in the garden. In fact, we’d all quickly starve without the pollination they provide for nearly all of our food crops. Insects are essential to healthy garden ecology. parasitic insects to keep their populations under control. Attracting these beneficial insects to your garden is the easiest and safest way to keep pest damage to a minimum.

So who are some of these garden allies and what kind of plants do they like?

Lacewings

One of the best predatory insects, these little guys flutter around the garden on delicate green wings at dusk. Their larvae are known as “aphid lions,” but lacewings also attack thrips, caterpillars, mites and more!

COMPANION PLANTS: dill, goldenrod, dandelions

LADYBUGS

There’s a reason these spotted beetles are considered lucky, as their presence helps protect your garden from bothersome pests. Their larvae look like tiny alligators and voraciously consume aphids, mealy bugs, scales and spider mites.

COMPANION PLANTS: yarrow, sunflowers, mint

honeybees

Along with a wide variety of native bees, these hardworking allies are essential for the pollination of most fruits, nuts and veggies. They are also very reluctant to sting; bumblebees and hornets are much more often the culprit. And there’s the honey! COMPANION PLANTS: clover, hyssop, bee balm

BRACONID WASPS

These tiny wasps don’t sting, but they gruesomely consume everything from gypsy moths to cabbageworms to corn borers.

After laying eggs inside their prey, their young eat their victims alive from the inside out. How’s that for revenge against your enemies? COMPANION PLANTS: fennel, coriander, Queen Anne’s lace

DADDY LONGLEGS

Eight legs good!

Like the spiders they are closely related to, these useful fellows feed almost exclusively on all kinds of insects.

COMPANION PLANTS: comfrey, yarrow, nettle

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And how do I attract and keep them in my garden?

1 Avoid spraying chemicals. Insecticides are generally indiscriminate, killing good and bad bugs alike. In the long run, this will only make your problems worse. The pests will quickly return and, in the absence of predators, their populations will explode and devastate your garden. By the time your natural insect allies return, the damage will be done.

2 Feed your insect friends with beautiful flowers. Besides eating pest insects, many beneficials also feed on pollen at different stages of their life cycle. Attract them by planting a wide variety of annual and perennial flowers. Keep them in the garden by making sure you have something blooming in all seasons. Plants with clusters of tiny flowers (the umbel and aster families in particular) are often the best for bringing in beneficials.

3 Provide a home for your new garden allies. Ideally, you want them to stay in your garden year round as a permanent garrison of pest protection. Dense vegetation, fallen leaves, mulch and rock piles all provide good shelter for beneficials to live and reproduce.

If possible, leave your end-of-season garden clean-up until spring to allow your insect friends to stay the winter. Pre-industrial farms always had hedgerows, wild spaces in between fields that provided habitat for a balanced ecology. Even in the smallest garden, you can apply the same principle by planting some flowers with your veggies.

4 Create a watering hole. Although many beneficials meet their moisture needs from drinking nectar, others need a water source to stay hydrated or to reproduce. This can be accomplished with something as simple as a birdbath or as ambitious as a graywater processing pond. ■

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Learn more: The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control, Ellis & Bradley; Gaia’s Garden, Toby Hemenway.

from top: Courtesy of Department of Entomology, Academy of Natural Sciences (4); Courtesy of Cornell University Press

Problems with pest insects generally result from a lack of ecological balance. A healthy garden may have some aphids and other pests, but it will also have a wide variety of predatory and

/ local highlights

Helen’s Pure Foods: Hummus This stuff is as creamy and healthy as snacks get! Made in Cheltenham, PA, Helen’s Pure Foods churns out delicious vegetarian and kosher foods. The plain hummus is great to eat with fresh carrots or red pepper slices, or enjoy one of their adventurous flavors like jala-

peno or sun-dried tomato & basil. Go ahead— snack away, guilt-free. Mariposa Food Co-op, 4726 Baltimore Ave., 215-729-2121, mariposa. coop; Weaver’s Way Co-op, 559 Carpenter Ln., 215-843-2350, weaversway.coop

Community Education Center In an effort to forge greater connections between people of different backgrounds and cultures, this nonprofit opened its doors in 1973. Offering yoga, pilates, martial arts, and a variety of dance and theater, the Community Education Center features cultural diversity under one roof. Classes are reasonably priced and a discount is available for students. 3500 Lancaster Ave., 215-387-1911, cecarts.org

a casual, affordable, neighborhood belgian brasserie Full menu available ‘til 1 AM nightly 200+ world-class bottled beers No Crap On Tap! 100% Wind Powered for all of our electrical needs “The Soul of Belgium in the Heart of Philadelphia”® Tom Peters and Fergus Carey, proprietors serving fine Belgian ales since 1985

Fresh Melt Water Store Joey Gothelf and Brooks Bell have been screen-printing t-shirts out of their apartment, but this past April they opened a store selling all their locally-made products in Northern Liberties. Minimally designed, the space sells clothes for girls and guys. You can find items like the Urinal Tee, a screen-print-

ed homage to Marcel Duchamp’s avant-garde decision to call a urinal “art” (said urinal is now displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art). They also sell over-dyed old button downs by Bert Lorenzo. Support local fashion and check them out. 1001 N. 2nd St., Unit 20, 267-588-686, freshmeltwater.com june / july 20 0 9

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/ food

In Season

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e’re still full from our food issue (last month, by the way), but we decided to continue expanding our recipe selection, along with our pant sizes. The kind bloggers at FarmtoPhilly.com agreed to help us out by mixing up a whole meal of delicious, local dishes you can serve at home, or bring to a potluck. Each recipe is by one of their stable of food experimenters, and you can see more of their work at their website. So, get to it—we’re getting hungry just typing this.

Recipes for a four-course local meal

[main course]

Honey-Glazed Pork Chops recipe by nicole wolverton 4 ½

pork chops (Country Time Farm) cup (or more) of buckwheat honey (Bee Natural) salt and pepper

Season pork chops with salt and pepper, and brush generously on both sides with honey.

Grill chops to your liking, continuing to brush honey onto chops throughout grilling time.

[appetizer]

Mushroom Tart With Spelt Crust recipe by kevin parker shell

8

tbsp. cold butter, cut into 8-10 equally-sized pieces 1 ½ cups spelt flour 1 tsp. flour

ice water filling

1½ 1 ½ ½ 2 1

pounds mixed mushrooms, sliced tbsp. fresh thyme, minced onion, chopped cup red wine or vermouth oz. grated cheese egg, slightly beaten

In a food processor, combine the salt and flour by pulsing for one to two seconds. Add the butter and process until the texture is consistent, but no more than 10 seconds.

Pour mixture into a bowl. Gradually add water, one tablespoon at a time, as you form a ball of the dough with your hand. Once it coheres, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for one hour.

Meanwhile, add butter (or oil) to a widebottomed frying or sauté pan, and apply me14

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dium heat. Add onions and sauté until soft. Add a handful of mushrooms and cook until they are softened; then add another handful. Continue until all of the mushrooms are cooked. Add thyme, stir and cook until thyme is fragrant.

Add red wine, or vermouth, and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated, leaving only a small amount on the bottom of the pan. Allow to cool.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and place the baking rack in the center of the oven. Roll out dough in a circle, alternating sides and liberally dusting with flour as you go. (I use my granite-topped kitchen table, which has the advantage of staying cold. A piece of marble or a stone cheeseboard would work as well.) Roll out the circle until it is two inches larger than the tart pan you’re using. If the dough tears, patch it with dough taken from another spot, as your

j une/j uly 2009

circle won’t be remotely uniform. Carefully transfer the dough to the tart pan, pressing the dough into corners. Remove excess dough that drapes over the side of the tart pan by rolling the pin across the top of the tart pan, using it to patch any tears. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Fashion a piece of aluminum foil to the size of the tart pan, brush the bottom with oil and place inside the tart pan, against the dough.

Weight the foil down with dried beans or rice (or even an appropriately-sized pot or pan). Cook for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Turn the heat down to 350. Remove the foil and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from oven.

Add the grated cheese and egg to the mushroom mixture and stir to incorporate. Then, add the mixture to the tart pan. Cook for 10 minutes or until the mixture is set.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

[sidedish]

Sugar Snap Peas With Bacon and Green Onions recipe by jackie merchant 4 slices thick cut bacon (Meadow Run Farm) 2-3 spring onions, sliced lengthwise and cut into half moons (Red Earth Farm) 1 pound sugar snap peas (Red Earth Farm) ½ cup cold water

salt and pepper

Brown bacon in a medium skillet over medium high heat. Remove with slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel. Crumble when cool.

Add onion to the pan and sauté in the bacon drippings until tender, about five minutes.

Add sugar snap peas and water to the pan, cover and cook for five minutes. Uncover and cook off most of the remaining liquid. Stir in crumbled bacon and remove from heat. Salt and pepper to taste.

[sidedish]

Smashed Potatoes and Broccoli

top. Steam until tender.

Combine broccoli, potatoes, butter, yogurt and chives in a bowl and smash by hand with a potato masher or big fork. (If you use a mixer, you risk ending up with a gluey purée, rather than a toothsome mash.) Seek out broccoli stalks for extra diligent smashing. Stop when you’re satisfied with the consistency. Salt and pepper to taste.

stir until the dough just comes together into a wet ball.

Spread the cobbler topping out over the fruit and sprinkle the top with the remaining two tablespoons of maple sugar.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until the fruit is tender and the topping is brown.

Serve with ice cream, sweetened crème fraîche or vanilla yogurt.

[dessert]

[salad]

Rhubarb Cobbler

Spring Greens Salad With Raspberries and Goat Cheese

recipe by marisa mcclellan Fruit base

4

½ 1 ½

recipe by erin gautsche

cups of chopped rhubarb (Culton Organics) cup maple sugar (Patterson Farms) tsp. apple cider vinegar (Green Meadow Farm) tsp. cinnamon

Salad

6 4

cups baby greens (Green Meadow Farm) oz. sharp chevre (Shelbark Hollow Farms) 4 oz. local raspberries 10-15 fresh mint leaves, torn

Cobbler topping

1 ¼ cups whole wheat pastry flour (Daisy Flour) 2 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. salt ½ tsp. cinnamon ¼ tsp. nutmeg ⅓1 cup butter, very cold (Green Meadow Farm) 1⅔ cup milk (Dutch Meadow Farm) 2 tbsp. maple sugar

Vinaigrette

2 3 2 3

5

tbsp. extra virgin olive oil tbsp. white balsamic vinegar tbsp. fresh mint leaves (Lancaster Farms) young garlic bulbs (Tuscarora Organic Growers) local raspberries (take from your 4 oz. container) salt and pepper

recipe by allison kelsey 1 ¾ 6

lb. potatoes (Highland Orchards) lb. fresh broccoli (Highland Orchards) oz. plain, thick yogurt (Pequea Valley, can be low fat or full fat— nonfat is not recommended) 3 tbsp. butter 2-3 tbsp. snipped chives

salt and pepper

Peel and cut the potatoes in pieces. Boil in water until tender. Drain.

Trim and cut the broccoli into pieces. Put stalks at the bottom of the steamer, florets on

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and butter a pie plate or small baking dish.

In a large bowl, combine the rhubarb, maple sugar, vinegar and cinnamon. Stir together. Pour the fruit into the baking dish and set aside, so the rhubarb starts to relax and produces some syrupy juice in combination with the sugar and vinegar.

In the same bowl, combine the dry topping ingredients and whisk until incorporated. Using a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour mixture until it is pea-sized. Pour milk in and

Blend all vinaigrette ingredients, except raspberries, in a small food processor or blender until smooth. Choose a few raspberries and add to the mix, pulsing until the vinaigrette turns a deep, rosy pink.

Place salad greens in a large bowl and add the vinaigrette a few tablespoons at a time, blending between additions, until the greens are lightly coated. Add remaining raspberries, mint and crumbled goat cheese to dressed greens. Lightly toss and serve. Salt and pepper to taste. ■

june / july 20 0 9

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15

/ food

Vegan Fare From Near and Far Combining local foods with the realities of your pantry

L

ike many people who are concerned about the environment, recipes and photos by I dutifully seek out locally-grown produce. I try to patronize restaurants that lean dynise balcavage heavily on local fare. I even make my own soy and coconut ice creams instead of purchasing my favorite West Coast-produced brand. ¶ But at the same time, I love to travel and try exotic new foods from different cultures. For gourmands like me, permanently abstaining from Belgian dark chocolate, Israeli couscous and Jamaican curry powder is just not in my realm of reality.

Happily, like most things in life, eating locally is not a black and white issue. Any step you can take toward helping the environment is a lean, green step to be applauded. Using one local ingredient is better than using none. Eating one vegan or vegetarian meal a week is better for Mama Earth—not to mention for your health and, of course, the animals—than a steady diet of Quarter Pounders with cheese. That’s why, in this month’s column, I wanted to show you that you can seamlessly mix and match local ingredients with the realities of your pantry. Like every other learned behavior, making green choices in the kitchen gets easier and more fun with practice.

Blood Orange Cupcakes With Easy Dark Chocolate Ganache

I fell in love with blood oranges in Spain, where I enjoyed them freshly juiced at every breakfast. Their sanguine hue makes them appear somewhat foreboding, but, in actuality, their easygoing flavor makes them the kinder, gentler citrus.

These cupcakes are impossibly light while the ganache is hedonistically decadent.

Enjoy them with a sip of Cointreau —or a cup of orange spice tea. This recipe makes six cupcakes, but it is easily doubled.

[serves 6]

Cupcakes

3 ½ ⅓1

½ 1 ½ ½ ¾

½

tbsp. canola oil cup soy or rice milk cup blood orange juice (juice of about 2 to 3 oranges) tsp. orange extract tbsp. blood orange zest (zest from about 2 oranges) tsp. vinegar cup sugar cup flour (Daisy Organic Flour, made in Lancaster County, available at the Fair Food Farm Stand at the Reading Terminal Market) tsp. baking powder dash of salt

If blood oranges aren’t available, substitute navel oranges.

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Ganache

¼ 2 ¼ ¼

cup dark chocolate buttons or chips (70 percent cocoa, minimum) tbsp. vegan margarine (non-hydrogenated) tsp. orange extract tsp. vanilla extract blood orange wedges for garnish

Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place liners in cupcake pans. In a medium bowl, mix wet ingredients, including zest, until smooth.

In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients. Stir in the wet ingredients and mix until very smooth.

There should be no lumps.

Fill pans ¾ full with batter. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until knife inserted in center of cupj une/j uly 2009

cakes comes out clean.

Let cool completely on a rack before icing with ganache.

Ganache

Mix all ingredients in a medium glass bowl.

Microwave on 50 percent power until melted.

(Times will vary depending on your microwave.) Or melt in a small saucepan on the stove over low heat.

Stir well and allow to cool slightly. Spread ganache on top of cupcakes. Adorn each cupcake with an orange section or some orange zest.

Allow ganache to harden slightly before serving.

Jamaican Curried Couscous Salad [serves 8]

¼ cup slivered almonds 2 ½ tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil 2 tsp. Caribbean curry powder (Do not use Indian or Thai curry; the results will not be the same) ½ tsp. turmeric 1 dash ground cinnamon 1 garlic clove, minced 1 tbsp. water 1 tbsp. agave nectar 1 cinnamon stick 1 medium carrot, finely diced ½ cup unsulphured raisins or sultanas ½ cup frozen peas, or fresh peas, shelled ¾ tsp. salt 2 cups Israeli or pearl couscous 1 small zucchini, finely diced 10 cherry or grape tomatoes, quartered

pepper and salt

Many people think couscous is a grain, but it’s really a petite pasta. Typically used in Middle Eastern dishes, couscous greedily absorbs whatever flavors you feed it. In this case, the flavor of choice is Caribbean curry powder. Caribbean curry’s mild sweetness highlights the dish’s other subtly sweet ingredients, like raisins, carrots and agave nectar.

For this salad, I prefer using Israeli couscous: The pellets are bigger, rounder, a bit chewier, and the curry powder and turmeric paint them a stunning saffron hue.

This dish travels well and can be served warm, room temperature or chilled. It’s the perfect dish to bring to summer picnics along with your favorite reggae CDs.

Dressing

In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, curry powder, turmeric, dash of cinnamon, garlic, water and agave nectar.

Salad

Heat a small skillet to medium-high. Toast almonds, turning frequently, until golden brown, about five minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.

Bring a large saucepan full of water to a boil.

When boiling, add cinnamon stick, carrots, rai-

sins, frozen peas, ½ tsp. salt and couscous. (If using fresh peas, add them about 3-4 minutes before the couscous is completely cooked.) Boil for 10 minutes, or until couscous is al dente. The couscous may absorb much of the water; this is normal.

Drain couscous-vegetable mixture and rinse with cool water to stop it from cooking.

In a large bowl, gently toss couscous-vegetable mixture with dressing, tomatoes, zucchini and toasted almonds. Salt and pepper to taste.

Dynise Balcavage, author of urbanvegan.net, lives and writes in Philadelphia. Her cookbook, The UrbanVegan: 250 Simple, Sumptuous Recipes From Street Cart Favorites to Haute Cuisine is available for pre-order on Amazon.com and will hit bookstores this fall. She’s been featured in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and VegNews. june / july 20 0 9

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17

/ design

Dyeing for Reuse

Old factories and warehouses get a green retrofit by christopher wink

F

or five generations and 140 years, the Globe Dye Works dyed and wound yarn, and employed hundreds at its peak. In 2005, unable to continue fighting the globalization and outsourcing that moved other businesses, Globe closed, ending another vestige of Philadelphia’s past as the Workshop of the World. Its 11 buildings and 165,000 square feet, located off Torresdale Ave. in the Frankford area of Northeast Philadelphia, were shuttered and left vacant.

That's when six partners decided to give the compound new life as a work space for the creative economy, all with an eye on the environment.

“This push for sustainability is going to change the face of construction,” says Charles 18

g r i d p h i l ly. c o m

Abdo, who is helping to lead the renovation and repurposing of the Globe compound. “Philadelphia is really at the forefront of a lot of these trends.”

Abdo and the other members of the Globe Development Group are finding green an-

j une/j uly 2009

swers for common obstacles faced by those renovating Philadelphia’s vast collection of old manufacturing and warehouse facilities. They hired award-winning local architects Digsau to implement a massive green overhaul, including a widespread stormwater management system, which will capture rainwater from the roofs of their 11-building compound and use it for their planned landscaping. On the largest, southern roof, they plan a highly visible solar array. They’re also planning to use empty oil and boiler tanks for graywater storage and unique planters.

“Plus, we're renovating an abandoned warehouse,” says Matt Pappajohn, another partner in the warehouse conversion, which already has seven tenants. “There’s nothing greener or more sustainable than reusing and refitting a building like that.”

What was once a dying dyeing factory now houses light industry, including a metalsmith, a woodworker, a steel drum manufacturer, artists—a photographer and a former chairman of the University of Pennsylvania’s fine arts department—and an antiques wholesaler.

Globe isn’t the only industrial building getting a makeover. With two additional partners, David Gleeson led the development of Kensington’s Crane Arts Building. Once the abandoned, century-old former headquarters of the Crane Plumbing Company, it now boasts a permeable surface parking lot, combining large concrete slabs and Belgian block to allow for natural storm water runoff. Leo Addimando and his partners renovated a metal castor factory into the art and workspaces of 2424 Studios in Fishtown. They funnel their heating and cooling systems to get more for less, and a white roof reflects summer heat.

“We also used as many materials from the existing building as possible,” Addimando says, pointing to the original concrete and wood floors, which were refinished.

Of course, there are obstacles to outfitting an old factory. Abdo says Globe Development went over-budget when retrofitting the building’s electric and sprinkler systems, a great challenge in the aged, sprawling compound.

Heating and cooling is another battle for energyefficient warehouse repurposing. At Globe Dye Works, new, heavily insulated roofs were added, and they’re slowly replacing existing windows with energy-saving models. The building’s age and size also made becoming LEED-certified an impractical goal, Abdo says, but the measures they are taking mark a positive shift in building practices.

“This is good in a lot of ways,” Abdo concludes. “We’re saving energy. Industrial jobs are coming in here. We’re using what would [otherwise] be abandoned buildings. But mostly, this is a step to the future.” ■

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The ultimate vision of an eco-friendly and educational urban oasis story by natalie hope mcdonald • illustration by stephanie struse

T

he sounds along Lancaster Ave. in West Philadelphia’s Overbrook neighborhood don’t usually include chirping. But on one overcast day in May, across the street from the U-Haul rental center and footsteps from a fruit and vegetable bodega, a small red-breasted bird whistled over the rattle and hum of traffic on this, one of the city’s longforgotten corridors.

“That’s not a pigeon,” says Jerome Shabazz, the mastermind behind the Overbrook Environmental Educational Center (OEEC), a nonprofit at 61st and Lancaster. “Birds will make the site a part of their annual migration,” continues the youthful-looking Shabazz, a former Philadelphia Water Department worker with a vision.

He plans on attracting an array of native species to the site that both he and his wife Gloria started building several years ago. “They stop over when they see trees and a green space,” he says, admitting that it’s unusual to find any natural habitat in the run-down concrete jungle around Lancaster, which began carrying travelers as early as 1795.

Surprisingly situated between abandoned factories, burned-out rowhomes and boardedup nightclubs, a grassy lot is just starting to bloom. Young Japanese maple trees, dew-covered spring flowers and a quarter-acre of thick woods create a backdrop to this future hub for eco-friendly education and better living.

A building supply company in recent years, and a granite quarry dating back to the 1800s, the center is truly Shabazz’s baby. He’s spent the better part of two years preparing for the day when neighbors will be able to learn about green energy, take healthy cooking classes, study natural ecosystems in outdoor labs and experience the benefits of reusable rainwater in the city.

It wasn’t easy convincing anyone the good that an environmental education center would bring to a post-industrial urban environment.

But Shabazz, along with the Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) and a very hands-on board of directors, has removed potentially toxic waste from the site, making room for a series of eco-friendly additions to the property.

It’s been a long road, but this year you can see considerable progress in greening the space.

“Philadelphia Building Supply left behind old cars and containers filled with mystery fluids,” says Shabazz, “as well as debris and pretreated wood with arsenic.” His recent—and revealing—500-page report for the EPA details the site’s progress, goals and ongoing maintenance, making it a safe educational destination in a uniquely urban environment. “Most other centers like this are in the country or the suburbs, but here, people in the city will be able to come together and learn valuable skills.”

The 45,000 square-foot site, which hosts an art center, a conference and training center (to be housed in two separate buildings that are being remodeled using eco-friendly building materials), and a wooded area with outdoor classrooms, will be completed next year as much-needed donations trickle in from private, corporate and government grants. Even though construction is ongoing, programs are already being offered this year in the 4,500 square-foot art center, which includes a coffee shop, bakery, working kitchen, dance studio, art gallery, office, small stage and event space.

“We’re hosting a summer camp for the first time this year,” says Roosevelt Sanders, one of OEEC’s board members. He says the day camp was inspired by many years of working with local elementary and high schools on eco-friendly

My son talked about studying ecology at Overbrook High School. I asked him what he’s gone out and seen. And he told me they hadn’t seen anything. ← Jerome Shabazz, Founder of the Overbrook Environmental

Educational Center

programs in Overbrook. Shabazz’s work teaching school-age children about the environment is what inspired him and his wife to create the OEEC. At the time, the couple’s own son was enrolled in public school, facing all the same limitations when it came to the cost of providing effective science programs.

The ripple effect “My son talked about studying ecology at Overbrook High School,” says Shabazz, who was especially curious about a subject close to his own heart: environmental science. “I asked him what he’s gone out and seen. And he told me they hadn’t seen anything.” Instead, the science program consisted of textbook-bound learning, which inspired the father to ask himself how his son and fellow students could learn hands-on about the world within their own community. And how he would convince the schools to think outside the classroom.

Shabazz worked with Vivian Robinson, the director of Overbrook High School at the time, to create a program that would allow kids to study the impact of pollution on their own park and water supply. They would learn about science, the elements and chemistry through real-life experiments and fieldwork. He credits Robinson, now deceased, with having the faith to see the idea through. More than five years later, the curriculum is still being used and the Center is a reality.

For the first project, students adopted Indian Creek in nearby Morris Park at 66th and Sherwood. “We removed weeds and cleaned up the stream and stream bed,” says Shabazz.

“And we discussed point-source pollution.” The students also learned how to test water, a nod to Shabazz’s own experience with the city’s water department, and the importance of keeping the environment clean. The lessons would be shared with each student’s family, creating an eco-friendly wave of learning in a community that suffers from all the usual issues of urban blight: crime, violence, poverty and pollution.

Within two years of creating this educational program with the Overbrook schools, Robinson tracked a noticeable increase in the participating students’ overall grade point averages. “The students were visual learners,” says Shabazz.

They learned by creating their own recycling programs for paper, plastic, aluminum and glass at home and at school; and by using outdoor biolabs to learn about stormwater management, urban conservation and eco-friendly landscaping at the Center, even though it was just getting started.

Since beginning the community-education partnership, science teachers have joined with math and English instructors to implement environmental studies as a multidisciplinary

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classroom discourse. “English teachers have children write journals about how their environment changes,” says Shabazz. Math teachers work with students to calculate rain flow on a green vegetative roof compared to a traditional, non-vegetative roof.

The program also teaches students about Overbrook’s own history as a one-time center for farming, an upscale suburb to downtown Philadelphia and an important railroad hub.

The students learn about industrialization and its impact on the air, water and local food supply, as well as distinguishing freshwater from wastewater (with a visit to the Philadelphia Wastewater Treatment Plant) and tracing the source for their home and school’s water supply.

Suddenly, kids who equated science with textbooks too heavy to carry home in their backpacks were using terms like flocculation and sedimentation, and taking an active interest in their community. “The beauty in the Center is that it’s in an ultra-urban environment,” says Sanders.

“People in the community can walk to it and be able to identify something positive in the neighborhood. We all want to be a part of something historic in terms of having an environmental center in the middle of Lancaster Avenue.”

Summer school The Center is using the successful education program as inspiration for OEEC’s firstever summer camp, starting in July at the art center. Children from first to eighth grades are invited to participate in day and weeklong programs headed by Teenagers in Charge’s Judith Dumorney-McDaniel, a member of OEEC’s advisory board. High school-age students will also have the chance to log community service hours by assisting at the eight-week summer camp to learn leadership skills.

“We’ll focus on health, fitness and fun,” says Dumorney-McDaniel. Each program will incorporate exercise into the daily routine. Children will also have the opportunity to run their own T-shirt and poster printing business, and take field trips within the community. DumorneyMcDaniel will take the children on trips to farmers’ markets to teach them the importance of eating fruits and vegetables. There will also be cooking demonstrations for the entire family, including vegan menus, to emphasize better dietary habits.

“If we can help these young people to change their behavior of going to fast food restaurants to showing them how to make their own meals, they’ll see the value and that they taste good with only a few minutes of work,” she insists.

“We’ll also share that information with their parents. We want to eventually be able to offer programs to entire families.” OEEC will begin hosting personal enrichment programs, or a “CommuterVersity,” for adults in the evenings 22

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on everything from healthy cooking to wellness and computer skills.

Sanders says that while the new summer camp is designed for kids, the Center wants to involve entire families and initiate conversations between parent and child, even if it means something as simple as going to the coffee shop together for a fresh-baked organic snack, or participating in an art show.

“Last year, we did a photo contest with Overbrook Elementary called ‘Faces and Places of Overbrook,’ ” says Sanders. Children were asked to take photos from their community, school and home. The best photos spent a year on exhibition in City Hall, and participants received prizes from Best Buy, a sponsor of the contest.

“It was really surprising,” he says, explaining that kids with no photo training went out in the community and took creative pictures of neighborhood buildings, the postman on their street or the neighbor’s dog. “As a young person, I was taught to see the greater value in art and music. These things make children more interested in school.”

The power of green Despite the ongoing success of these enriching community programs, Shabazz knew that he needed help making the actual Center a reality. A mere two years ago, he stood on a property consisting of two former storefronts and an empty lot, wondering how to transform them into the Center he and his wife dreamed about.

As Shabazz faced his biggest challenge, he read an article about urban greening and development by architect Todd Woodward, principal of SMP Architects in Philadelphia. Woodward is also a member of the Community Design Collaborative, a volunteer organization of design professionals that assist nonprofits with community-minded projects. Shabazz would tap into both resources to start the blueprints rolling—literally.

“I started working with Jerome pro bono in 2005,” says Woodward from his office at 16th and Walnut. “We identified the work on the site in phases.” The goal is to use green materials to rehab existing buildings for the Center.

For starters, certified lumber from sustainable forests was used to create roof decking on the center, which will be turned into a vegetative roof that harnesses rainwater for the plant life on the site. “We feel that from an environmental point of view, it’s better to reuse and recycle rather than build new,” says Woodward, who claims both structures are in good working shape, making the job considerably more advantageous. It’s also cheaper to reuse some of the existing materials than to pay a third party to dispose of them in landfills, an option Sha-

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bazz wanted to avoid.

Other design elements include a bio-retention basin for harvesting rainwater runoff, flowthrough planters and an urban garden with native plants. Leftover stone dividers, used by the building supply company to store lumber, will be turned into outdoor classrooms. “The hope,” says Woodward, “is they can become individual garden plots where students can do experiments and create different soil conditions.”

The OEEC will also build a hoop farm, a raised-bed greenhouse, with the help of Penn State University. The greenhouse will be used to grow plants and food in a controlled environment, something that will be a first for Overbrook.

“Hopefully it will be a little bit of a catalyst on Lancaster Avenue,” says Woodward, who explains that many of the Center’s features can be used to educate other community members, homeowners and businesses about eco-friendly building. “The green roof will lessen the heat gain, so that it makes it easier to cool the building in the summer. It also diverts and holds storm water. The one we’re installing will be on the long face of the building with a sloping roof that is visible from the ground.”

Woodward and Shabazz both hope the Center inspires the community to consider green technology, including solar power. At the conference and meeting center, which will eventually consist of two floors of classrooms, labs and meeting space, students will be trained in green technology and building (from installing solar panels and building green roofs to learning weatherization techniques to save money on heating and cooling costs). “People can eventually be trained to install these products,” says Sanders, who admits the vision is enormous but necessary to create interest and jobs.

Shabazz enthusiastically leads a tour around the Center, jumping from the art gallery to the coffee shop, offering samples of fresh vegetables and pointing out the new trees he planted this year with the help of almost 90 percent minority-led contractors. He’s particularly proud of the porous asphalt and mulching system that eliminates ponding. “There are five different ways to capture water here,” he says, pointing out the swell and flow-through technologies hidden beneath emerald green rain-soaked grass.

Shabazz eventually climbs atop a small mountain of enormous granite rocks that borders a thick quarter-acre of woods behind the Center. “When you stand here, it’s hard to believe you’re in the city,” he says. He points to a knotted vine and jokes about Tarzan, picking up a rock mined more than 200 years ago. Like most every other natural material, it, too, will be somehow reused on the site.

“You can always find value if you know where to look for it,” he muses. Shabazz just happened to look where no one else thought to. ■

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23

Farming differently

B

at Cave #2. That’s the first thing you can easily make out about the main farm building at West Philly’s nonprofit Mill Creek Farm.

It’s painted in yellow on a piece of metal that juts out of a low, glimmering building in the middle of a green plot at 49th and Brown. Though no bats yet live in the cave—actually a small structure meant to mimic the attics the nocturnal animals prefer—the attempt to attract them is just one example of the creativity and ingenuity on display at Mill Creek.

“We want them because they eat mosquitoes,” says Johanna Rosen, one of the two women who run Mill Creek. Their choice to attract bats instead of spraying chemicals is one of Mill Creek’s goals: to grow healthy, fresh and chemical-free food to support their community. “[T]here’s no place to buy healthy produce; there’s a real lack of access in the city,” says Jade Walker, the other woman behind Mill Creek.

“The Philadelphia Food Charter [a declaration released by the city in October ’08] says they want everyone to be able to access healthy food within 10 minutes of their homes, and they have so far to go in that respect. There’s corner stores, there’s Chinese shops, there’s pizza shops, but there’s no place to go to buy healthy produce.

That is a really significant problem, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.”

To help fix that, Mill Creek offers produce for sale at the farm on Saturdays from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and on Thursdays at the bus stop on 52nd and Haverford from 1 p.m.-5 p.m., donates food twice a week to community food shelters and sells produce at the Mariposa Food Co-Op on Baltimore Ave. They start the produce stands in late June to get their food sales to coincide with a state payment—an extra 20 dollars as part of food stamps—to purchase local food.

Despite their small size—their plot is about half as long as the block and as wide as a few

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rowhomes—Mill Creek produces a variety of veggies. Leeks, spinach, collards, carrots, beets, cilantro, dill, cucumbers, lettuce, chard, kale, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, okra, sweet potatoes, asparagus, strawberries, beans, sunflowers, turnips and mustard greens all pop out of the soil. They were already harvesting asparagus in early May and getting local favorites planted.

“People come to the table and ask, ‘Where are the collard greens, where is the okra, where are the sweet potatoes?’ ” Rosen laughs. “Our first year we had one row of okra, the next year we had two and this year we’ll have three or four rows. We can’t keep up with demand.”

Their commitment isn’t just about providing food, since their plot can only produce so much, but education and advocating around food access. When they applied for the land in 2005, they were both working for the Urban Nutrition Intiative, teaching nutrition and gardening. “We were doing a lot of food systems education,” says Walker, “and it became really clear that there was this major

j une/j uly 2009

Mill Creek Farm sets a standard for sustainable farming by will dean disconnect between the tomato you buy from the store and any concept of where it comes from and how it’s grown.”

So they started Mill Creek to both teach people about growing food in an urban setting and how to do it as sustainably as possible.

Almost everything used at the farm comes from the land, or salvage. The main building itself is made using “cob,” a construction method that uses dirt, sand, straw, water and other objects (in their case bottles, bike parts and tiles) to make an adobe-like structure.

Rosen and Walker showed me around the farm and the many improvements they’ve worked on since getting access to the land as part of a Water Department project to decrease water runoff into the sewer system.

If everything looks handmade, that’s because it usually is. The farm was a vacant lot before, “just trash and weeds,” according to Rosen, but now it sparkles with life. A mural inside the building is made from tiles plucked from a dumpster and some mirrors a friend didn’t

It became really clear that there was this major disconnect between the tomato you buy from the store and any concept of where it comes from and how it’s grown. ← Jade Walker, Mill Creek Farm Co-Founder

need. The pastiche of colorful tile pieces and mirror shards are reminiscent of the stuff local artist Isaiah Zagar has covered the South Street area with, but it depicts the silhouettes of the six high school students who helped build the farm from nothing in 2006.

Rosen points to some bathtubs and piping: “This mess is part of a project we’re working on with some students from the University of the Arts. They’re in an industrial design class and they’re helping us design a graywater system. We want to route the water through these tubs and some water barrels, and have different tanks to get the sediment out, and have plants in there to clean out the water.” She motions up at the building’s overhang, which is actually made of solar panels. “With these solar panels, we’re going to run a pump to get clean water for hand-watering.”

Next to the panels, there’s a living roof, made from compost and expanded slate, spotted with a variety of sedum, a succulent that usually grows in the mountains. The plants have expanded a lot in the past few years and they hope the plants will continue to spread. “If everyone had green roofs in the city,” says Rosen, “we would have a lot less stormwater runoff and urban heat island effect.”

pho tos by d an m u rp h y

Slow drip irrigation delivers the water to the plant’s roots—so less is lost to evaporation— feeding the fields when it doesn’t rain. Beehives made from stacked wooden boxes with frames of comb inside produce honey and pollinate crops.

There’s even a composting toilet, and, of course, a tool shed with farming implements volunteers can use. Walker says, “[We want to be] an education space to learn about where vegetables come from and how they’re grown. We’ve had over 2,000 volunteers in the past year.”

Mill Creek is also trying to make sure the green space they’ve carved out of the urban landscape remains preserved. Presently, the land is owned by the Redevelopment Authority, a department of the city that manages cityowned property. The Water Department manages the Mill Creek plot and leases it to Rosen and Walker as a stormwater retention project.

While it succeeds at reducing stormwater runoff—thanks to the absorbant soil, waterhungry plants and a berm installed by the Water Department—Mill Creek is much more, and the farmers of Mill Creek don’t want to lose it. They’re trying to get the space donated to a land trust run by the Neighborhood Garden Association that would guarantee it remains

green space.

“It’s really important to protect the farm and the community garden as open space for growing food and education and these continued environmental benefits for the neighborhood,” says Rosen.

The only hurdle remaining is approval from City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, who represents this section of West Philly. All of the other city authorities have agreed to the deal, so the two women have been circulating a petition, and urge people to contact Blackwell on their website.

Regardless of how long it takes to get the land set aside, Walker and Rosen are committed to continuing their work at Mill Creek.

“For me right now, the largest conundrum is if you want to grow food in the city, sell it here and live off it,” says Walker, gesturing to the rows of new crops rising out of the soil. “Why do you have to only be supporting very highend markets in Rittenhouse Square, or somewhere like that, and make your food cost a lot and only service a very, very small percentage of the population that is of a particular privilege?

There are all these macro pictures and this micro answer to some of them here.” ■

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Farmer’s rap

O

Weaver’s Way helps start high school farms

n a May afternoon at Martin Luther King High School in East Germantown, several students tilled compost onto one of the many mounds being readied for sowing. Along with their stewards from nearby Weaver’s Way Co-op and the Philadelphia Orchard Project, they had just finished harvesting some of the kale and collards planted in April at the farm the school runs with Weaver’s. The one-third-acre farm and its adjacent greenhouse sits just south of the King’s soccer field and overlooks bustling Stenton Avenue.

Freshman Tiffany Jackson, 18, bobbed back and forth rhythmically as she smoothed the compost over the hump, preparing it for bell peppers. “I gonna rock wit’ it, gonna lean wit’ it. Rock you so damn hard you break yo’ spleen wit’ it,” she rapped as she moved the rake over the mound.

Rapping and farming. To the students at MLK, the incompatibility of the two at one point seemed self-evident. Farms were in the country and tended by country music-loving farmers, not by metropolitans in underused urban nooks. But along with the more obvious goals of the farm, like providing food for the local community and teaching kids that corn chips don’t spring up from the ground in bags, overcoming the disconnect between the urban and the country is a fundamental adjustment for students. Teaching kids that urban farms are not only possible, but also practical, can plant seeds for expanding local food production in Philly down the road.

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That lack of awareness is more understandable at MLK than it is at Andorra’s agricultural specialty school, Saul High School, Weaver’s Way’s other educational partner. Saul, whose pastoral environment partially populated by cows can make one easily forget that they’re in a city, is the only high school in the state certified to teach food science. The farm the students work on is a community supported agriculture plot, meaning that buyers pay for food ahead of time and receive it after it’s harvested. Students I spoke to said they had never heard of community supported agriculture before the Weaver’s Way program, and hadn’t given much thought to urban farming, either.

“Before I came here, I thought of farming and I thought of out in the middle of nowhere and you have all these crops and animals by the thousands and everything,” says Saul student Ryan Wilgenkamp, 17. “But now I see that it can survive in a city. It’s kind of changed my perspective that it can survive anywhere, you just gotta try.”

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by andrew thompson

T

he number of co-ops in Philly has declined from the ’70s heyday of 24 to exactly two today (Mariposa in West Philly is the other). But despite co-ops’ scarcity, the farms at Saul and MLK are outgrowths of a demand for more. Weaver’s Way began its first volunteerrun urban farm at the Awbury Arboretum just south of MLK in 2000 as a sort of prototypical exhibit of what farms in cities could be. In 2006, the company’s customer-base had grown enough to fund an entire Farm Department, which allowed it to pay for a farm manager.

The growth continued (to a sometimes stifling point inside the actual co-ops; one employee told me that “it can be hard to move”) and last year Weaver’s Way partnered with education nonprofit Foundations Inc. and food-based nonprofit Seeds for Change to open up the farm at MLK and afford salaries to its student keepers.

With enough money to pay for staff, Weaver’s Way decided to partner with Saul to open their farm in April this year, as well as create a much smaller set-up for the Stenton Avenue Homeless

Shelter, which teaches residents to grow their own food.

Even at Saul, where a farm would seem as integral to education as textbooks, it’s taken the partnership for the school to even have its own farm. Before Weaver’s Way approached Saul, “I think [this farm] was just grass; I don’t think they were using it,” says Weaver’s Way director of communications Jon McGoran as he looks out across the rows of vegetables. Past offers from organizations who wanted to set up the land as a farm had tinges of exploitation, says Jess McTammany, a teacher at Saul.

“We get a lot of people who want our labor, but don’t want to teach our kids,” she says. But with Weaver’s Way, “we become a part of the process instead of just the force behind the process.”

The students at Saul are at least acquainted with the horticultural process (“You only need one row to show kids how to seed,” says McTammany). For the MLK students, watching a seed become food can be somewhat of a break-

Now I see that a farm can survive in a city. It’s changed my perspective that it can survive anywhere, you just gotta try.

—Ryan Wilgenkamp, Saul High School student

through, and their astonishment at such a basic phenomenon raises questions about whether at least cursory study of the food process shouldn’t be mandatory in schools. “Everyone eats” has become a sort of battle cry for the local food movement, and its universalist tone resembles the thinking behind much of the curriculum of early and adolescent education. Everyone is bound by the laws of science and mathematics; everyone is part of the human experience described in literature; everyone lives in a present inherited from history.

“I try to peg what we do to some [mandated] standard,” says Ted Moynihan, an English teacher at MLK who utilizes the garden for his classes. “But at the end of the day, what we do here is so important that taking one hour out of the week that doesn’t directly relate to becoming a better writer or becoming a better reader I think is more in line with my view of what education should be, which is helping them make better choices and understand the world around them.” ■

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by will dean

Unquenchable:

Wild Fermentation

by Sandor Elix Katz Chelsea Green, 2003; $25 ’ve lost count of the number of times this book has been recommended or mentioned to me, and it deserves every one. Katz explores the world of fermentable foods, which includes some of the earliest prepared foods humans ate, not only to give you something great to eat, but also to remind us how exciting and unusual the world of edibles can be.

I

Wild Fermentation isn’t just a cookbook; it’s also a history lesson on how foods like sourdough bread and kombucha were developed along with human civilization. Katz—who goes by Sanderkraut on his website, in a reference to the fermented favorite sauerkraut—weaves stories about how fermented foods were as important to human growth as the tiny bacteria that live in all of our intestines are to our digestion. He also rails against the homogenization of processed—i.e. not-living—foods that are bland, interchangeable and not very nutritious.

Fermentation is the process where microorganisms, like yeast, go to work on a food product, eating parts of it to produce different tastes, textures and often healthy benefits.

Fermented foods tend to have tastes that are stronger, or stranger, than the kind of processed sweetness we’ve seen in the past half-century. Part of the book is about rediscovering those tastes, like the tartness of sauerkraut and pickles, and the complex flavors of cheeses. Another part is about teaching people to make the foods themselves and reaping the health benefits (many fermented foods contain extra vitamins, particularly B and C).

There are plenty of great recipes for beer, bread, kimchi, cheese and anything else that can be fermented. Even if you’ve been culturing cheese and brewing beer yourself for years, there’s plenty of little hints and tips to try different things. (In an offhand comment, Katz mentions a friend makes kombucha—a tart, fermented tea drink—with Mountain Dew, which a friend of mine tried to surprisingly good effect.)

We love DIY stuff here at Grid and this book is bursting, like an over-fermented cask, with delicious, self-sufficient projects.

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j une/j uly 2009

America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It

by Robert Glennon Island Press, $27.95

Unquenchable begins with the story of one of the most obvious and ostentatious wastes of water in America: Las Vegas. A gleaming, neon-bedecked homage to decadence in the middle of the desert, Vegas is a testament to our ability to build what we want, where we want regardless of any mitigating circumstances. There are private lakes, gigantic fountains and water parks—all in the middle of the desert.

The free use of unlimited water is something we take for granted, but in this book Robert Glennon argues that we’re already in the midst of a water crisis and it’s only going to get worse if we don’t change. He notes droughts in places like Atlanta and the massive importation of water into Southern California as signs that we’re straining our water resources to the limit. Many places in America are drawing more groundwater out of their areas than can naturally be recharged through rainfall.

Although the book is long and has a lot of technical details, Glennon mixes it up with water anecdotes from big cities and small towns to keep it interesting. He also provides several solutions, most notably cutting back on our consumption of water and using waterless toilets, which he hopes will turn the tide (sorry for the pun) in the coming water crisis.

The PHS City Parks Handbook Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, $19.95

Parks can provide a safe place for kids to play, a relaxing green break from buildings and pavement and a spot to host events— but only if they’re cared for by the community surrounding them. That’s the message of the Horticultural Society’s City Parks Handbook, which aims to teach community members how to organize and support their local park.

There are sections on forming citizen groups, developing plans, grant writing and conducting clean-ups. You can learn about everything from planting trees to forming your own nonprofit Friends of (insert your park’s name) group. Interspersed among the informative sections, there are small stories about how Philly residents transformed their local parks from overgrown lots into shady, playground-full oases. It also comes with a DVD about park stewardship.

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29

Green Jobs for Philadelphia

P

hiladelphia’s greenest dreams can come true, with enough money. Parks and yards can overflow with fresh healthy food; our neighborhoods can become as beautiful as our kids’ smiles; each of us can be proudly employed rebuilding our city; every home can be secure.

The economy should be fun

Suddenly, millions of fresh dollars are coming to town. Federal and state programs are pouring cash into solar and wind power, urban farms and weatherization. But we’ll need far more money than this to fix everything that’s broken here: unemployment, health care, mortgages, schools, crime, gas & electric bills, food prices, student loans, water pollution, streets. Government doesn’t have sufficient dollars. Hundreds of generous local foundations can’t pay the bill.

And Wall Street has been busy losing money.

Moreover, most dollars are still tied to technologies and institutions that damage the earth and keep us dependent.

So who’s got the money to make Philadelphia’s economy green and enjoyable? We Philadelphians. We’re the ones who care most about our lives and communities. We’re going to create money, and make it do what we need.

Here’s how: Philadelphia already has an impressive variety of financial players rebuilding damaged neighborhood economies from the ground up: credit unions, community development corporations, green banks, churches, green businesses. The best of these are laying the foundations of sustainable local wealth: energy efficiencies, local food and fuel, water conservation, alternatives to the automobile, nonprofit housing, local manufacture and trade. Thousands of grassroots jobs are being invented by citizens dedicated to ecology and social justice. We’re building an economy that connects people, rather than controls them.

Even so, bolder financial institutions are needed to allow the public direct authority over money, trade, investment, interest rates and land use. Let’s consider some examples of new local programs slated to begin.

turing goods here from local recycled materials, while hiring citizens with the least formal education.

The aforementioned programs need to be coordinated by a non-governmental nonprofit WPA. Let’s call it the Green Labor Administration (GLAD). More information about these programs is at greenjobsphilly.org

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(PhilaFEL) lowers basic living costs by pumping tax-deductible donations for green tools into lowest-income districts. This creates jobs owned and controlled by neighbors. It encourages equitable development: strengthening rather than displacing longtime residents.

When you need money, print it. Several types of community currency will put millions of dollars worth of local paper cash and other credits into our greening sector.

Microloans (up to $20,000) can be made interest-free. Who backs this money? You are the bank, you are the treasury, and you are the treasurer.

Co-operative plans, whose members pool small amounts of money, reduce expenses for housing, childcare, electricity and dinner. A health co-op will cover an increasing range of everyday emergencies for small annual membership payments, ultimately enabling members to hire their own doctors and start their own free clinics.

The Philadelphia Insulation Factory (PIF) exemplifies import replacement: manufac-

by paul glover

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Philadelphia’s green economy will value us as neighbors and citizens, rather than as consumers. We’ll revive the American Dream—to earn enough money from one job to raise a child, to feed and clothe ourselves well, and travel. We’ll have work that’s creative and interesting. We’ll have something greater than jobs and money.

We’ll work enthusiastically, by putting love at the center of commerce. ■

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paul glover teaches Metropolitan Ecology at Temple University, and publishes Green Jobs Philly News. A member of Philadelphia’s Green Finance Task Force, he is the founder of programs like Ithaca HOURS local currency, Health Democracy, Citizen Planners and the Philadelphia Orchard Project. paulglover.org

Philadelphia Regional & Independent Stock Exchange (PRAISE) brings together capital of all kinds for local eco-development. The rich profit by empowering, rather than dominating, the poor. The Securities & Ecologies Commission (SEC) counts local economic progress by specific local measures of environmental and social justice.

Philadelphia Fund for Ecological Living

g r i d p h i l ly. c o m

j une/j uly 2009

illus t r at ion by k ir s t en h a rper

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