I want yellow and blue wings

I am pulled into my back. Nubs of wings want to sprout.

It fucking hurts to grow wings out of this calcified chest cage.

Pushing, through flesh, wounded thin at the surface. Sap oozes, trickles down and pools, a little ocean, a salty bath for all the micro-organisms living in the small of my back.

The body absorbs.

The sea evaporates and is renewed,

one inch less.

Millions live, millions die. This goes on for a long time.

The  salt tang, the liquid pooling, the body absorbing,

water sliding, sap oozing, forming eddies.

Taste snaps me back:  this is a spiral pulling in on itself.

Something vital is being drained while I lie, face down in this cool, sunlit room. Rest does not follow this waiting.

There is a depth,

and a wide open sky,

a golden field stretching to horizons.

I need to walk it. On and on, through the day, sipping water, warmer than my breath, little laps to make it last.

Ahhhh, another blast in the middle of my mouth, stretching me thin into a wisp of cloud.

Vapour calls to vapour, clouds coalesce, densify

and rain over me,

my naked body, lying flat on a field of rape yellow, blue flax in my mind’s eye,

tongue out, waiting to receive.

Sneaky plans underway?

I heard from a couple of neighbours that they have “known” about the London Drugs expansion for a long time. The office of our MLA, Shane Simpson, says they’ve been aware of plans since 2007.

London Drugs corporate headquarters wouldn’t deny there were plans to expand, but emphasized there was nothing “in writing”.

There is no formal development application as of yet. I hope that global economic melt-down means that plans like this will also magically melt away. But the strategy to clear the block of long-term tenants like Tevere Deli is obviously going ahead. When their leases are up, the rent is raised beyond the point that existing businesses can afford.

New businesses have been offered short-term leases, and are all aware that some kind of future development is coming. Whether that’s London Drugs taking over the block all the way down the Bank of Montreal, or London Drugs paired with an IGA grocery isn’t clear because nothing about this process is transparent.

Why in a global recession would you want to get rid of a great, little business like Tevere Deli? Perhaps because once long-term tenants are gone, and new tenants’ short-term leases expire, the opposition to  upcoming development plans is crippled and the way is cleared for expansion.

I’ve put in a call to the city to find out more about our community planning process and will share that information here.

Ultimately we as residents and small businesses and folks who work at organizations in the neighbourhood have to ask ourselves where we want to live and work?  Do we want a neighborhood that supports small, local businesses? One in which small business compete and co-exist with franchises and mother corporations? Or do we give the place over completely, as so many other communities have?

There is a cost. Main streets can and do die. I grew up in suburbia. I spent my 20’s on Vancouver Island when the big boxes sprouted up on the highways, destroying the downtowns. I lived near Broadway and Commercial as the small businesses left and the chains moved in. None of these places felt more safe, welcoming or prosperous as a result of the changes.

It’s bizarre to me, at a time when the business pages every morning give yet more stunning examples of the fragility of globalization and its accompanying money scams, that any of us still believe turning the block over to corporations would promise salvation from “seediness.”

I’m no more a fan of cheque-cashing businesses or pawn shops than most of my neighbours. They exist to exploit the poor. And clearly in Vancouver, where so many of us move too because of its beauty, we like things shiny and new, apparently prosperous. But when we dismiss it all as “seedy” we also dismiss viable businesses with dingy signs that reflect what  a new Canadian without much start-up capital can achieve.

But it’s not our choice what businesses choose to expand, some say. Well, why not? We have community plans, even a “Visioning” committee for our neighbourhood through the city? Do we want more small businesses like Wheelhouse Seafoods where you can bump into a local farmer dropping the meat she raised herself, or more of London Drugs selling more cameras and small appliances, manufactured way outside of Canada?

I’m interested in creative ideas of how to express those choices, ideas and visions for our neighbourhood  like the carrotmob actions where a network of consumers  buy products in order to reward businesses who are making the most socially responsible decisions. I’m following the work of entrepreneurs like Toby Barazzuol of Eclipse Awards and the Strathcona Business Improvement Association in the Downtown Eastside who spends time meeting with arts groups, and building green rooves to grow food, as a way of revitalizing his neighbourhood for business and residents alike.

More ideas please!

London Drugs plans to swallow my neighbourhood

There is a London Drugs in my neighbourhood on E. Hastings St in the beautiful, crazily expensive, but ever more cash-strapped city (thanks Olympics!) of Vancouver, BC.

You can buy a vacuum there, a rubbermaid tote, toothpaste, contraceptives, drugs, computers, cameras, batteries, cosmetics, stationary, junk food, camping gear in summer, cookware, toasters, blenders, hallmark cards and holiday decor according to the season.

London Drugs is big on the street already, bigger than any other store.  But not big enough. They plan to take over most (or all?) of the block to the west. They want to  dominate Hastings, our main street in this little urban village of Hastings-Sunrise. Or maybe it’s an IGA coming in- the rumours are flying, in the absence of any clear consultation.

Tevere deli is gone already to my shock. I heard from another of my favourite shop-keepers that “it’s a done deal and that even the businesses didn’t know about it until too late.”

Are you mad yet?! It’s not over. The liquor store between Slocan and Kaslo is now privatized. Done again overnight with no public consultation. The landlord refused to sign the lease with the BC Liquor Store. Across the street a huge new mental health facility is being built (I’m fine with that, being a fan of all forms of health) with a massive NEW SHOPPERS DRUGMART.

We chose this neighbourhood  because we could walk here to buy groceries, stop at a cafe, get a key cut, visit the doctor,  go to school and greet people I recognize and who recognize me along the way.  Small businesses are key to what makes this neighbourhood great.

I love buying from shop-keepers who own the stores they work in.  I love that there is a mix of stores on this street; from independent dollar stores, to Donald’s and all the other fabulous green grocers, to Wheelhouse Seafoods who now sell a full range of non-medicated meat, to Le Petit Saigon- my favourite pho in Vancouver, to the Cake Master bakery/optometrist shop to GreenRoom Yoga, owned by my teacher Alix, who also lives in the neighbourhood.

It’s not perfect for sure. We could make it safer, we could encourage more of the kind of businesses and services we need. But I feel deeply lucky to live here where some small businesses are able to thrive.

This is when I would like some super-hero activists to sweep in and make this go away. The cost of “fighting a battle” is that we don’t get the time to create the peace. I’ve got ideas and energy for that right now! I don’t want to spend time beating back the corporate behemoth that wants to swallow my neighbourhood.

I don’t even know what to do but write this. But I mentioned this on Twitter and Barbara said “boycott ‘em all. Picket them.” I mentioned it to my 6 year old  and he said “we got to tell everyone and get it in the newspaper.” (He learned a few lessons from the successful community fight to save Garibaldi school last year.)

I’m up for something fun and powerful. Any ideas, energy,  or previous rabble-rousing experience you’d like to share? Please also share any up to the minute information…lots of rumours are circulating about the plans for the block.

The View from Barcelona #1

This is a joint production of Harry and I, photos chosen by Harry. He also had final authority on the text.

We start the day at a cafe where Harry drinks his hot chocolate, usually from a bottle but sometimes in a glass. He is now a confirmed cacaolat maniac. Grammie and mom prefer cafe con leche.

We were very excited to see some of Gaudi’s buildings and designs in person after pouring over a Gaudi book that Brian (Harry’s dad) brought back from his trip to Barcelona last year. Gaudi was inspired by nature. He observed the curves, waves and arches that we see in trees, shells and bones.

This was on the roof of Casa Milà, also known as “La Pedrera” which means the quarry in Catalan. Catalan is the first language in Barcelona but everyone speaks Spanish too and many have a bit of English.

Harry ran these stairs fast as lightning to the bottom.

Each day before we got out, or after we come in, Harry does a bit of school work with grammie.

Guess what? Spiderman lives in Barcelona!

That’s all for now- school’s out!

Ugh How I feel the spirit

Pure Hokum photo by arushmere, uploaded by me

Andrew sent along these photos from the turn-off near UBC Farm:  “I wanted to take some photos of the incredibly ironic signs that the developers just splashed all over 16th and Wesbrook that advertise the ’Pacific Spirit’ development (in the respected postmodern tradition of razing beautiful landscapes and then naming the new homogenous suburbs after them).”

Last night I was up late at a birthday party (& Happy Solstice!) and met a bunch of fine folk, all longtime Vancouverites. We got talking about the folks leaving town. You want a creative class (and yes, I am retching as I write that phrase) in the city? It’s easy: cheap rent!

I know of a few folk who have already departed for the east, back to where many of us started out. It’s hard to fault people for moving to Montreal but it is incredibly sad and disheartening that people have to leave. Right now I’m just hoping there’s something left that will tempt Hanna Mitchell to stay in town when she comes back from her pilgrimage to the east.

As she documents it’s not that we don’t need more housing in Fat City. But this kind of condo development will not serve the people or the land itself that make this such a creative, wild city to live in.

Ooooh how I feel the spirit, originally uploaded by Keira. Photo by arushmere.

Save the UBC Farm

Update: Here’s a brochure that will help you craft your letters of support for the UBC farm. Another way to help the farm: come volunteer on a project or for the farmer’s market. I promise you’ll leave with a foolish grin on your face. It really is a joyful place to be even with the current pressures.  And note Andrew’s comments below about the meeting next week:  Show up anyway!

The UBC farm is threatened by development pressures. In the current plan the 24 hectare farm- the last in Vancouver- is designated as “future housing reserve.” It’s not that they want to eliminate it, just shrink it and possibly move it and chop down the forest around it for condos.

I don’t think you have to be an academic agriculturist to get why this might be problematic for the farm. This is soil that has been growing and nurtured for 40 years in the context of a rich and diverse habitat. You can’t just cut the landbase on a farm and destroy the surrounding habitat and expect the farm to thrive.

Besides it’s on this particular land that faculty, students and the community have invested their intellectual, spiritual and physical energies into projects that promise to all keep us eating for the tough times to come. This isn’t a “nice to have” community resource, it’s bloody critical to our survival- that is, if us city folk would like to continue to eat while living in the promised land.

Why at a time when the whole world is in the grip of a global food crisis, when eating local has caught the imagination of people on the street, when even a total duffer like me can get my picture in the paper for growing vegetables in the front lawn, would we even be having this conversation?  Real estate baby! That’s what keeps this city hopping.

It’s enough to make you pull your hair out in frustration.  But I was recently associated with a David and Goliath battle- when the Vancouver School Board threatened to close our local school, Garibaldi. A diverse community team came together, buoyed by the constant and unflagging spirt and efforts of the Garibaldi’s Parent Advisory Committee and Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, and campaigned with joy and creativity. They wrote letters (me too!), delivered flyers (I did 1 round), posted signs on the lawn (just took it down!), went to meetings (4 for me) and through all of this collective effort, an act of public imagination triumphed. A truly innovative proposal went forth to the VSB and guess what: we, the community won!

So I’m starting to ponder what wee drops in the Save the Farm bucket I might contribute. This is what I’ve found out the Save the Farm crew needs right now:

1. They need folks to come out to a campus planning meeting: Food Security and the Vancouver Campus Plan

DATE: June 25, 2008
TIME: 3:30 – 5:30 p.m. (Light snacks available) LOCATION: GSS Ballroom, 6371 Crescent Road, UBC

How to register: Contact  Stefani Lu, UBC Campus and Community Planning Telephone 604-827-3465 or email stefani.lu@ubc.ca

2. They need letters written: (you know the drill: the kind with a stamp seems to make more of an impact but filling the appropriate people’s inboxes is good too.)

3. They need you to sign a petition.

4. It’s not always easy to get the connection between the research that happens behind the walls of our public universities and our lives. But the research and the projects that happen on the farm are accessible in so many ways. Come to the farmers’ markets, take a tour, learn about projects like the Inter-generational Landed Learning or  the Urban Aboriginal Kitchen Garden project or the myriad of UBC courses that take place on the farm.

She even hung up paper towels to dry

Since I got my picture in the paper some people assume I know what I’m talking about, and that I’ve got some serious credentials to back up my “environmental work”. This article from the Guardian describes exactly my schooling in this area.

Over by the sink, you’d find a soggy tea bag, maybe two, awaiting second use, and dotted around the Aga would be several saucers of leftovers – some likely to contain as little as a few peas or a handful of pasta shells. Meanwhile, upstairs, you’d doubtless come across a toothpaste tube, or maybe a bottle of moisturiser, cut open with nail scissors to reveal its final scrape.

This is not about saving money, although I’m sure finances played a part. We weren’t seriously hard-up. It was something else. A hangover from wartime austerity, perhaps,…#65279; which both sets of grandparents passed on to my parents when they were growing up in the 50s. An almost moral sense of obligation not to waste what you have but make it go as far as possible.  The Pleasure of Penny Pinching by Anna Shepard via my good friend Wendy

I did throw out a number of used tea-bags when I was home at mom’s last month- sorry mom. I also came across some photos of the backyard when I was a kid. It is a huge suburban yard; I was deeply proud that it was the biggest in our neighbourhood (by some fluke I assume for our house was no grander in any  other respect).  Mom planted a massive vegetable garden to which I’d be chained to pull crab grass. Good thing I could turn myself invisible and so could quickly slink off to read books.

Garden Now for Fresh Food Year-Round

On Saturday the Sustainable Living Arts School hosted the “Garden Now for Fresh Food Year Round: A Winter Garden Course”. Heather Johnstone was the teacher.

I’ve organized a couple of learning parties with Heather over the last few months- one on starting seeds, one transforming a patio into an edible garden- and we’re hoping to do one on home brewing soon. She organizes the annual permaculture meet-up on Cortes Island which in just two years has become the highlight of my winter months. She was at Abundant Food in the City: An Urban Permaculture Workshop with Gregoire. She also hired me to do a strategic plan for the Edible Garden Project, which she coordinates on the North Shore. (They’re a fabulous, smart and incredibly productive organization that grows and collects home-grown produce and distributes it those in need.) So I guess it’s safe to say we’re colleagues, and that alone makes me  proud of this last year’s work.

What’s really thrilling about this organizing work with the Sustainable Living Arts School is that I get to organize learning parties for what I want to learn, with teachers that I want to learn from. Heather repeatedly joked on Saturday about her “lazy gardening” or her refusal to buy supplies.  Why collect kale seeds when you can let them dry on the plant and then shake them around the garden? Why can vegetables when you can ferment them in some salt-water for 1/4 the work? Why slave over jam when you can freeze some strawberries on trays and dump them in bags for treats all winter long? Why buy lumber when you can salvage wood from the old fence being torn down across the street?

There’s an awful lot of productivity in this laziness of course. But what there isn’t at all is any of that manic Martha perfectionism which paralyzes me. There’s also almost no shopping involved which is delightful and rare. The emphasis with Heather is on the joy of growing and figuring stuff out, on hacking your way through,  and on eating, drinking and celebrating what you make.

For my teacher Robin

Apple Blossoms by cwalker71

Robin Wheeler is coming to town to teach a full-day course for the Sustainable Living Arts School and Langara College Continuing Studies “Gardening for the Faint of Heart”. You should really come if you’re in the Vancouver area.

This course was designed for those who feel they are beginners in food gardening but would love to feel more confident about understanding garden systems and food production. Students will learn garden terms (the fun way!), explore the magic of “microclimates”, make design choices, select plants for your needs, delve into seed catalogues and learn techniques for watering, simple soil improvement and more.

I am very proud to count Robin as my teacher and my colleague in the Sustainable Living Arts School. What I’ve learned from her is that “sustainably” is really about accepting ourselves as creatures of this earth: we’ve got to get our hands dirty.

I was questing for a teacher when I first encountered Robin through the Vanpermaculture listserv. When newbies like me asked questions she’d jump in fast with answers that were grounded in her direct experience, extensive study and immersion in a community of small farmers and wildcrafters. I stumbled onto her book which was hands-down the best, funniest guide to growing food for beginners that I’ve read. Which was great but what I really wanted was to learn from someone in person, in a way that fit with my working mom’s schedule. Robin stepped up and hosted the the first “Practical Permaculture” weekend at her land in Robert’s Creek BC, a short hop over from Vancouver.

The Garden Gate at Edible Landscapes

It was a radical and beautiful thing she did that weekend. Our teachers were the local farmers, back-to-the-landers, herbalists and other country folk. Folks who lived with the land were the “experts”. This simultaneously honoured their years and years of experience and impressed upon us, the students, that what was counted was our own, very personal connection with the earth.

These weekends have been the ground and centre of my learning the last few years. Robin’s own classes are always the highlight for me. They’re often deceptively simple in structure, a walk and talk around her garden that she calls “Timely Actions” where we experience what the garden needed right then. But talking to Robin about gardens and plants is a venue to deep learning about food, our culture and the earth. Ideas take root.

She also nailed the format: 1.5 hour workshops, comprised of demonstrations and experiential activities, interspersed with discussion and as many questions as we could squeeze in, located either in Robin’s extensive gardens, buzzing with insects, studded with birdsong, graced by weeds and charmed by snakes, or in nearby homesteads and farms.

These weekends grew into what is now an urban and rural grassroots education venture: The Sustainable Living Arts School. Robin starts stuff and then she commits to it, until the help arrives. This is how her activism on behalf of local farms happens (check out the “Be Subversive” campaign), how she practices as an herbalist, how she writes books (Gardening for the Faint of Heart is being reprinted and Food Security for the Faint of Heart due soonish from New Society Publishers) and how she runs a nursery full of the kind of plants you’ve got to have for your own edible landscape, all on a shoestring, in the spare seconds when she’s not working at her day-job.

People who live in open acknowledgment of themselves as earth creatures are not sanguine about our future. They are afraid of what’s coming and they are busy preparing for it. They see it, in signs large and small in their kitchen gardens, in the ever-shrinking woods, in the roar of the excavators. Despite more and more coverage on “the environment”, the rampage continues unabated.

Robin is urgent.

She’s also funny and wise and big, big, big despite her size, which actually isn’t all that big. But she’s fed by the earth and it really is something to get a chance to learn with someone like that. She just gets down to it- the class we’re offering on May 3rd in conjunction with Langara College’s Continuing Studies will be packed with ways to start growing food, with the detail you need to get over that initial flood of questions before worms start speaking to you via your dreams (oh yes it can get weird this gardening stuff!). I’m deeply excited. I’ve never had a full day to ask her all the questions I’ve got. Though I wouldn’t say I’m exactly “faint of heart” anymore there’s still big gaps where I’m less than fully confident.

Once you’ve done that you’ll want to head to Robert’s Creek and May 10 and 11 to experience her organizing genius. She’s got an amazing line-up for the Wild Weekend with workshops taught by local experts on Wildcrafting Indigenous Herbs, Wild Basket and Container Making, Cooking on a Fire, Plant Technology and Into the Woods. Register by phone (604) 885-4505

Spring is nigh

I’ve been fighting against the urge to confess. I started this week mellow, tired, content. Folks appeared out of the ether for Northern Voice, embodied and making music in our living room. Such energy and excitement to be together! It was living in community while it lasted and that is a while when friends share their experience so generously on their blogs once they’re home. I had a wrap-up post on the go too but I stalled and it’s died on the vine. It’s been curiously painful to resume my work and my life this week. I feel resistance, a discouragement deep in my bones.

Perhaps it’s the daffodils that are appearing in markets, and snowdrops in my garden. Spring is late this year, we’re often well into the blossoms by now. It’s the loveliest and longest season on the west coast of British Columbia but we had something a bit like Canadian winter this year. I’ve worn my 2nd hand Nike ski jacket (Be Subversive Buy Local Food button strategically placed over the swoosh) and my purple and black skull toque everyday since Solstice.

The joy of spring is sharp and sudden whenever it comes. Golden daffodils on the kitchen table suck the breath out of me, leave me bereft. In about six weeks they’ll claim all the garden beds at Hamilton General Hospital in Ontario, just down the highway from home.

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (via The Lost Language of Plants by Stephen Harold Buhner)

I’m going to spend my day of childcare tomorrow (9:30 until 2:30!) outside tomorrow and ask the plants for help and heart’s ease: medicine.