Archive for category Social movements
Farmers Go Wild
Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Nature, Social movements on February 10, 2012
Winter Green Farm
My article “Farmers Go Wild” about conservation-based agriculture is in the Winter 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. You can read it here.
It begins:
“Frogs are an indicator species,” Jack Gray explains, leaning over a small, muddy pond to look for tadpoles.
Here on the 170-acre Winter Green Farm, 20 miles west of Eugene, Ore., Gray has raised cattle and grown vegetables and berries for 30 years.
It’s a sunny April day, but water pools in the pastures, evidence of the rains this part of Oregon is known for.
Gray is in his mid-50s and agile from decades of working outside. He built this pond to provide habitat for native amphibians, because bass in another pond were eating the red-legged frogs and Western pond turtles.
Cows graze in a field behind him; wind whispers through a stand of cattails, and two mallards lift off. Gray points out the calls of killdeer, flycatchers, and blackbirds. Up the hill a flock of sheep chomp on long grass. “They’re part of a controlled grazing to try to control reed canary grass, which is an invasive species,” Gray explains. “It tends to smother areas. It makes deserts almost.”
Gray, his wife, Mary Jo, and two other families co-own Winter Green Farm. They are committed to something Jo Ann Baumgartner, director of the Wild Farm Alliance, calls “farming with the wild.”
Winter Green Farm
Winter Green Farm
A2R Farm
A2R Farm
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Becoming Carcinogen Abolitionists
Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Social movements on May 16, 2011
Photo Credit: Angelo González
“I look back on the life of Abraham Lincoln, whose portrait hangs in every schoolroom in Illinois, and marvel that our economy was once dependent on slave labor. Unthinkable. I believe our grandchildren will look back on us and marvel that our economy was once dependent on chemicals that were killing the planet and killing ourselves.” – Sandra Steingraber
A couple of weeks ago, I saw Living Downstream, a documentary based on the life and research of Sandra Steingraber. Steingraber, a biologist and author, was diagnosed with bladder cancer at 20 and believes she is part of a cancer cluster in her hometown in Tazewell County, Illinois, where “three dozen different industries line the river valley and farmers practice chemically intensive agriculture along its floodplains.”
After Steingraber was diagnosed with cancer, her doctors told her it was a fluke. But when she consulted the scientific literature, she discovered that bladder cancer is “considered a quintessential environmental cancer, meaning that we have more evidence for a link between toxic chemical exposures and bladder cancer risk than for almost any other kind of cancer.” For instance scientists had known for decades that certain textile dyes cause bladder cancer in humans. Not only are these dyes still in use, they are present in the groundwater of Steingraber’s hometown.”The disconnect between what we in the scientific community know about carcinogens and what cancer patients are told is huge,” Steingraber says.
In the next thirty years, Steingraber went on to become a cancer survivor, receive her PhD, write several popular books and dozens of articles, and speak all over the world. She became a passionate “carcinogen abolitionist.”
I’ve long admired Steingraber’s writing in Orion, and her message is resonating with me more than ever right now for a variety of reasons. Despite Richard Nixon famously declaring war on cancer in 1971, cancer is on the rise. Recently my sister-in-law and several friends have been diagnosed with cancer in their early forties.
Where I live in Eugene, researchers have identified two cancer clusters – an elevated rate of leukemia around the Baxter creosote factory and elevated numbers of lung cancer cases near the Union Pacific railroad yards. These two neighborhoods have something in common with the Illinois county where Steingraber grew up: they’re populated by low-income people. I’ve known two families who lived near the Baxter plant. Both complained about fumes that kept them awake at night. The Oregon Toxics Alliance was started, because children at a school in the Baxter neighborhood were crying and begging to come inside from recess because of plumes of noxious gases in the air. I’m convinced that no one, regardless of income, should be forced to breathe toxic chemicals.
Moreover, over the last two years, I’ve embarked on a personal project that’s made me reflect on our society’s reliance on synthetic chemicals. I replaced shampoo, conditioner, cosmetics, bug sprays, and cleaning products with simple, cheap, nontoxic ingredients (baking soda and vinegar, in most cases), eliminating the majority of toxic chemicals from my home. What surprised me the most about the process? The simple ingredients work better.
That’s right, those products I once used, which are loaded with questionable ingredients, are unnecessary. Yet the majority of people continue to use them. The average home contains 62 toxic chemicals. Why? Advertising? Lobbying? They don’t know about the alternatives? Could those things also partly explain the reliance on chemicals by industrial agriculture, forestry, landscape management, etc.? Maybe. For instance we often hear that chemical-intensive farming methods are a necessary evil if we want to feed the ballooning world population. But on the contrary, a U.N. report released in March reveals that by switching to small-scale, sustainable agriculture, we could not only feed the world, we could double food production.
The widespread commercial use of numerous synthetic chemicals is a recent phenomenon culminating after World War II. Babies born in the 1950s were the first generation of newborns exposed to multiple synthetic chemicals in the womb. In other words, it is a grand experiment, one that I’m increasingly convinced is failing.
Steingraber is a powerful advocate for eliminating the chemicals linked to cancer, early puberty, miscarriages, and birth defects. She’s a talented writer and one of the most moving speakers I’ve ever heard. Yet, I’ve noticed that many people have a hard time embracing her message.
When I excitedly told a friend about the showing of Living Downstream and showed him the above trailer, he reacted the way I think many people do. He said, “You’re going to watch that? It looks really depressing.”
Then I posted the movie trailer on Facebook, and someone wrote. “Great, now I have to stop drinking water and breathing.”
I can relate to these sentiments. My generation has been bombarded with environmental fears since we were born. Every nature video and discussion in grade school invariably ended with human-wrought devastation – the diminishing ozone layer, acid rain, rapidly-growing endangered species and extinction lists. By the time I was in high school, the word carcinogen meant little to me. When our teachers and parents lectured us that cigarettes were carcinogens, my friends and I shrugged. What wasn’t a carcinogen – from the water we drank to the sun we depended on for life?
So I understand why many of us might feel environmentally-fatigued and why Steingraber’s call for us to become carcinogen abolitionists could be falling on deaf ears. We tend to want a checklist of things we can do to protect ourselves and our kids from disease – eat organic, exercise, replace our household cleaners, avoid tobacco, breastfeed, eat less animal fat. Steingraber advocates all of the above, but she also makes it clear that we can not do this on our own.
“I am a conscientious parent. I am not a HEPA filter. If organophosphate pesticides are damaging children’s brains at background levels of exposure and above, they should be abolished,” she writes.
She is convinced that we have to join together, we have to speak out, we have to contact our representatives, we have to support organizations like the Oregon Toxics Alliance. We have to unify against some of the most powerful industries in the country and rebuild our society and economy. That’s not an easy message.
Yet I find it hopeful. Remember the eco-problems we kids were bombarded with in the eighties – acid rain, the ozone layer, lead poisoning? We tackled those. The EPA’s Acid Rain Program forced factories and automobiles to reduce emissions, helping to improve the pH of precipitation. Developed countries phased out ozone-depleting substances, and evidence suggests the ozone layer is regenerating. Laws banning the use of lead in house paint and gasoline mean that kids have six times less lead in their bodies than they did 30 years ago. How did we accomplish these environmental successes? By addressing the problems and working together to solve them. I hope Steingraber is right and we can also become carcinogen abolitionists.
I am betting that my children—and the generation of children they are a part of—will, by the time they are my age, consider it unthinkable to allow cancer-causing chemicals, reproductive toxicants, and brain-destroying poisons to freely circulate in our economy. They will find it unthinkable to assume an attitude of silence and willful ignorance about our ecology.
Wishful or not, I am determined to win this bet because my children’s lives are inextricably bound to the abiding ecology of this planet, which is worth everything I could possibly wager. An environmental human rights movement is the vision under which I labor, from which I am not free to desist, and which may, if we all work together, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Want to learn more about Sandra Steingraber and her work? Check out her website or the following:
- 3 Bets, Orion, May/June 2009
- Mind Games, Orion, March/April 2011
- Interview with Sandra Steingraber, The Ecologist, Nov. 30, 2010
- Environmental Cancer Risk, On Point With Tom Ashbrook, NPR, May 12, 2010
Car-Free Chronicles
Posted by Abby Quillen in Alternative transportation, Family life, Parenting, Social movements on April 18, 2011
When my son Ezra was an infant, he was no fan of the car. Car rides, even short jaunts around town, invariably included crying and multiple comfort stops. But, at some point, my almost-three-year-old became a huge admirer of the automobile – perhaps right around the time we sold ours.
“Mama, we need a truck. A big, huge truck. We can drive it all over the streets,” he remarks as we walk past a neighbor’s pickup.
“Dada, we should buy a car at the store,” he insists as we cross the parking lot to the grocery store. “We need a car.”
On the rare occasions when we rent a car, Ezra is ecstatic. “I can’t drive the car yet,” he explains as he crawls into his car seat. “My feet don’t reach the gas pedals. I will drive it when I’m this tall.” He waves his hand a few feet over his head.
Sometimes I wonder if our car-free experiment, now in its eighth month, is cementing our son’s love for all things automobile. One day he’ll undoubtedly drive a monster truck and eschew gardens, clotheslines, and hand-washing dishes.
But if our experiment has made my son more enamored with cars, it has only reinforced my husband and my ambivalence about car ownership.
A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law flew in from New York and rented a car for the week. We loved seeing her, and having a car around was great in lots of ways. We ran all kinds of errands and visited both the coast and the forest. I was able to zip over to a nearby town to interview someone for an article. My husband and I marveled at the convenience and warmth of cruising across town while rain pounded down. We shot sympathetic glances at cyclists who passed by us dripping wet and dressed head-to-toe in rain gear.
Then midway through my mother-in-law’s visit, my husband and I biked across town to run an errand.
“I feel alive again,” my husband said as we pedaled down the path. I couldn’t help but agree. For all the convenience of the car, I had really missed walking and riding my bike.
Plus, as my husband mused, car ownership is expensive — not only because of the car’s price tag, $3.80 a gallon gas, and the inevitable maintenance. With the exception of the ocean and hiking trails (which I love and miss visiting more often), we noticed that the car tended to take us to places where the main activity is spending money – notably malls, box stores, and home improvement centers. We hadn’t visited these places in about eight months, and we hadn’t missed them.
Apparently my husband and I are not alone in our ambivalence about car ownership. Car sharing was all over the news last week, when Zipcar, a car-sharing service with 560,000 members in 14 cities, went public on Thursday and raised an impressive $174.3 million in its initial public offering. Peer-to-peer car share services, like RelayRides, which allow car owners to rent out their own vehicles, have also been getting a lot of press.
The Oregon House of Representatives just passed a car sharing bill with overwhelming support. If it passes in the senate, it will allow car owners to rent their cars to friends or neighbors through a car sharing service without fear of losing insurance policies or facing increased rates.
As our planned one-year car-free experiment nears an end, we go back and forth about whether to buy another vehicle. Oddly, my husband, who once drove the car almost exclusively to commute to work and shop for groceries, is the one who’s more convinced we can live without one. He’s adapted amazingly well to commuting about 12 miles a day on his bike, and he’s in the best shape of his life because of it.
I rarely drove the car when we owned one, preferring to walk and ride my bike, but I’m more torn about whether we should buy another one this summer. I don’t want a car loan, and I don’t miss the stress and worries involved with maintaining an older vehicle. On the other hand, in a few months, we’ll have a new baby, who won’t be able to ride in a bike trailer or bike seat for quite awhile. I’m a huge fan of walking, and Eugene has decent public transportation, but I know a car will make daily life with an infant and three-year-old easier, a seductive idea as I contemplate caring for two little ones.
Hopefully car sharing will become an option for more of us soon, making decisions like my family’s easier and providing extra income opportunities for those who invest in car ownership. In the meantime, at least we know how Ezra will vote when we have to decide whether to shop for another vehicle.
As my mother-in-law packed, Ezra cried and told her how much he was going to miss her. Then, as we lugged her bags out to the rental car to say our goodbyes, we realized he was also going to miss something else.
“Grandma, please don’t take the red car,” he cried. “Can’t you walk to New York?”
Interested in reading more about car-free living? Check out these posts:
From Farm to Table
Posted by Abby Quillen in Gardening, Health, Social movements on April 11, 2011
“Where do you get your wheat?” I was about to ask.
My husband and I were out for a rare dinner alone at a nice restaurant, which advertises itself as exclusively local and organic. Next to us, a floor-to-ceiling board announced the night’s specials next to a list of farms where the food was grown.
I had just interviewed a local wheat farmer for an article and heard about a number of farmers in the Valley, who are switching from growing conventional grass seed, long the main crop in this part of the world, to growing organic grains for local markets. I was curious if this restaurant bought its wheat from one of the farmers I’d heard about.
But just as the waiter leaned in, and the question was about to leave my lips, I thought of this spoof of Portland, Oregon from the new show Portlandia, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
It’s true – Oregon is in the midst of a farm-to-table restaurant boom. I’ve been to three restaurants in the last few months with boards listing local farms. One is decorated with a mural of the rolling hills where the restaurant’s produce is grown, and the menu includes photos of the smiling farmers who grow the food.
Of course, farm-to-table restaurants are not new. Alice Waters has been serving up local, organic fare at Chez Pannise in San Francisco for decades. What is new about the locavore restaurants opening in this area is that more and more of them are affordable. One of the restaurants I ate in is a brew-pub and another serves “healthy fast food”, with all dishes under $10.
Moreover, just as the clip of Portlandia suggests, local restaurateurs (as well as grocers and bakers) seem to be forging closer relationships than ever with local farmers – and all parties are coming out ahead.
“It became a heck of a lot more fun to farm,” the wheat farmer I interviewed told me about his farm’s switch to growing food for local markets. “It’s infinitely more rewarding than just growing a product for a guy that you never know.”
We consumers might be the biggest winners. I’m a huge advocate of growing a garden, shopping at farmers’ markets, and cooking from scratch, but the reality is, Americans eat out a lot. In a 2006 survey, the average American family spent 42 percent of their food budget in restaurants.
When restaurants buy from local farms, our meals are more nutritious and taste better, since the food hasn’t made the 1500-mile road trip most produce takes before consumption in the U.S. And just think about all of the pollution and carbon not spewing into our air, and all of the money staying within our communities.
Besides, as a consumer, you can always put down the menu, ask the waiter to save your seats, and go meet the farmer who grew your wheat.
Are farm-to-table restaurants cropping up in your area? What do you think of the trend? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
6 Ways to Love Your Community
Posted by Abby Quillen in Social movements on February 14, 2011
“We cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love.” – Mother Theresa
Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s the perfect day to think about love. I’m not thinking about romantic love, although I’m all for that too. What I’m thinking about is something I’m convinced we need more than ever right now – love for our communities.
In the last few years we’ve seen housing prices plummet, jobs become scarce, and retirement accounts evaporate. Many of us and our friends and neighbors are suffering. Many more fear a bleak future. But I’m convinced we will thrive. How? By building community.
An increasing number of people are starting to talk about resilience rather than sustainability, about investing locally and learning (or relearning) the skills that will help us succeed in a different kind of economy and a different climate. Humans have the ability to get through tough times. We’ve done it before. And it only works when we do it together.
Here are six ways you can invest in your community this Valentine’s Day:
1. Get to know your neighbors
For the first seven years we were together, my husband and I were nomads. We lived in seven different houses in two different states. We had a lot of different neighbors, few of whom we knew very well. Then we bought a house and got a neighborhood. Now we know the majority of our neighbors. We borrow ingredients from each other. We talk in our yards and driveways. We swap babysitting and gardening tips. We go for walks together. The neighborhood kids play outside – laughing, climbing trees, and riding bikes and scooters up and down the block – until sunset. When my old nomadic ways surface, the first thing that I think about is our neighborhood. How could we leave this?
Getting to know your neighbors doesn’t just help you buck the troubling trend toward social isolation in the U.S. It helps you build the kind of wealth that people seem to take for granted these days – friends. When a neighbor had to foreclose on his house, a bunch of the neighbors showed up to help him move. He ended up renting a house down the street. “I can’t leave these people,” he mused while he watched a neighbor load furniture into his truck.
Want to get to know your neighbors and not sure where to start? Sit on your front porch. Walk and ride your bike through your neighborhood. Have a yard sale. Take your headphones off. Talk to your neighbors. Attend a community meeting. Check out i-neighbors.org.
2. Buy local
The New Economics Foundation, a London think tank, compared what happens when people buy produce at a grocery store versus in a local farmer’s market or community supported agriculture (CSA) program. It turns out that when people shop locally, twice the amount of money stays in the community.
When you buy from local businesses, you not only support a local business owner. Local businesses tend to buy from other local businesses, so money flows where you live rather than exiting for corporate headquarters. Moreover, local businesses are usually located in city centers rather than the fringes, encouraging customers to use people-powered or public transportation to get to them. And since they usually rely exclusively on local labor, you help to employ your neighbors. Local businesses are also what make our towns and cities unique.
3. Join a CSA
How can you support a local farmer, eat ultra-fresh vegetables all summer, and get to know the people who grow your food? Buy a CSA share. You usually pay a lump sum at the beginning of the season, which helps farmers have cash flow when they need it the most.
We’ve bought CSA shares over the years and have had great and disappointing experiences. One year, we ate a lot of Asian pears. So make sure you know what to expect. Here are a few questions you might want to ask before you sign up: What does the farm grow? Is the produce organic? How big is the standard share? What happens if you’re on vacation? Does the farm do home-delivery or will you need to pick it up? Do you get any extras, like eggs or flowers?
Be ready to plan your menus around your weekly produce box. You might see some produce that you’ve never eaten before, but most farms send out a newsletter with cooking tips and recipes to help introduce you to the exciting world of kohlrabi, garlic scapes, and mustard greens.
4. Volunteer your time
For many years, I thought about volunteering, but I was convinced I didn’t have the time. Then I changed my definition of volunteering. I used to think of being a volunteer as something you needed to sign up for, go through an orientation, and wear some kind of badge to do. Quasi-employment. Certainly formal opportunities abound to help out at food banks, libraries, literacy centers, schools, animal shelters, parks, nature centers, and other agencies if you have the time and inclination. But maybe you already work full time or more than full time? Or maybe you care for your kids all day and can’t get away? Well, there are plenty of informal ways to volunteer your time to your community that are easy for most anyone to squeeze in.
Here are a few ideas: Bring a bag and gloves with you on walks and pick up garbage. If you see ripe fruit on a tree going to waste, ask the property owner if you can pick it and donate it to a local food bank. Ask an elderly neighbor if you can help with chores or shopping. Donate books to the library and gently-used clothes to shelters or thrift stores. Share your talent or skill with your neighbors by donating a craft or piece of art to a charity. The idea is to give a little bit of time to bettering your community each week.
5. Be courteous on the roads
Aggressive driving and road rage are on the rise in the U.S. In one survey New York claimed the prize for having the most aggressive drivers and Portland, Oregon the most courteous. But all cities have ample room for improvement. AAA reports that, “At least 1,500 men, women, and children are seriously injured or killed each year in the United States as a result of senseless traffic disputes and altercations.” Driving a car can make people feel more isolated and protected, encouraging them to act in ways they normally wouldn’t. That probably explains all of the horn-honking, gestures, and fist-waving going on out there.
We can improve our communities immeasurably by simply being courteous on the road, whether we’re motorists, cyclists, or pedestrians. If you find yourself getting angry behind the wheel, like 60 percent of commuters report they often do, here are a few ways to prevent road rage: Get enough sleep. Give yourself more than enough time to get to your destination. Slow down. Don’t get in the car when you’re upset. Listen to upbeat or relaxing music when you drive. Relax and breathe.
If you’re on a bike, don’t forget to be visible, ride defensively, and always follow the rules of the road.
6. Be kind to strangers
“Hi,” my son chirps every time we pass someone on the sidewalk. Each time, it makes me glad. It’s easy to focus on the not-so-good things we inevitably role-model as parents – the slipped swear word or a proclivity toward chocolate chip cookies. But if our kids see us being friendly, chatting with neighbors, and being polite in the grocery store and post office, we’re teaching them something that has the power to change the world – kindness.
Researchers James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis have demonstrated that a single act of kindness can influence dozens more. In an experiment, they divided participants into groups of four, gave each person 20 credits each, and asked them to secretly decide what to keep for themselves and what to contribute to a common fund. Then they distributed the credits and mixed the participants into different groups. If just one person contributed a generous amount to the common fund in a round, his entire group contributed more in the next round, showing that kindness really can go viral.
How do you show your love for your community? I’d love to hear about it.
A Year of Dressing Locally
Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Social movements on January 24, 2011
Plant Dyed Wool, Photo by Anna Kika
“My one year challenge is to live in clothes that are solely farmed, created, treated, and colored all within 150 miles of my front door,” Rebecca Burgess said in an interview last April.
Burgess is a textile artist living in Fairfax, California, a small town just north of San Francisco. Like most of the United States, her region has no textile industry. To meet her challenge, Burgess would need to find local cotton growers and sheep, goat, and alpaca farmers. She’d need to track down a local mill, something that used to be commonplace across the United States, but is now nearly extinct. And she’d need to design, knit, sew, and dye her own wares by hand or pay local artisans to do it for her.
Why would one woman undertake such a Herculean challenge?
Locavore was the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2007. Across the country, people are challenging themselves to eat 100-mile diets, eschewing the tempting strawberries and tomatoes on supermarket shelves in January, and patronizing local farmers’ markets. The local foods movement is even transforming the mountains of Colorado where I grew up, a region where elevations reach 10,000 feet and the growing season is as short as 40 days.
But the sad reality is that most of us are shopping at those farmers’ markets or toiling in our backyard gardens wearing clothes that are anything but local. In 1965, 95% of our clothes were made in America. Today 97% are made overseas, often by garment workers laboring long hours in terrible conditions for little pay.
The textile industry is an environmental nightmare. Most of the clothes we wear are made from synthetic fibers, which are made from petrochemicals. They require massive amounts of energy to create and have huge carbon footprints. The chemicals used in their manufacturing pollute the air, soil and water. Even the natural fibers we don, like conventionally-grown cotton, require pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and huge amounts of water. And the vast majority of our clothes are colored with synthetic dyes made of highly toxic, often carcinogenic chemicals.
Burgess is half-way through her year-long project, which she calls the Fibershed Challenge. She’s been wearing locally-made clothes since June. Her wardrobe started with just a shirt and a pair of pants. “There were some interesting sensory moments when the clothes were being washed– realizing that without those garments– there was just me and my skin. I didn’t think of the necessity of my clothes, until I didn’t have them,” she wrote on her blog. By September, Burgess had eight garments, which you can see here:
Burgess estimates that her wardrobe for the year will cost $2,000. Of course, most of us don’t spend anywhere near that much on clothes in a year, nor could we afford to. However, Burgess hopes her project will inspire people to think more about the ecological and human costs of inexpensive clothes. Moreover she wants to inspire new business models that could eventually bring down the price of locally-sourced, sustainably-produced clothing.
Organic Non-Dyed Cotton, Photo by Squirrel Cottage
She hopes people will start asking, “Hey, we don’t have a cotton mill? This is awful. What’s happening? Why can’t our small farmers grow cotton and have it milled? … Or, we have all these mulberry trees. we could feed silkworms like crazy. Why aren’t we producing our own silk? … Or, there’s no naturally produced color in this country?” she told Jill Cloutier of Sustainable World Radio. Burgess points out that in her county, ranchers raising sheep for meat compost or throw away up to 20,000 pounds of wool fleeces each year, because nobody is currently processing the material in the region.
“My prayer is that people will see this as a way to give people real jobs again, and to clothe us in a way that’s non-toxic, and that we don’t keep off-shoring misery to people trying to keep up with our consumption. The transition could be beautiful.”
You can keep up with Burgess’ year of dressing locally on the Fibershed Challenge blog. If you start at the beginning, you can take a tour (beautifully documented with photographs by Paige Green) of an organic cotton farm, a small mill, and a suburban homestead sheep farm. You can discover the community of designers, farmers, ranchers, natural dyers, and ethnobotanists that Burgess found just outside her front door, and follow them as they plant indigo, knit and sew clothes, tan skins using Native American techniques, design a wardrobe, felt wool, and dye fabric with plants and seawater.
Natural Dyes, Photo by luckywhitegirl
And if you’re inspired by Burgess to change the way you dress, she pointed out in an interview that we can all do some small things to make our wardrobe more sustainable. She suggests starting with the following:
- Recycle textiles through your community. Stop thinking of clothes as something you constantly consume. Buy durable, well-made garments, and join a clothing swap to trade with others.
- Re-skill yourself. Take a knitting, sewing, weaving, or natural dyes class. Burgess insists you’ll never look at clothes the same way.
- Support a local fiber producer. Buy yarn from a provider at your local farmer’s market, if available. If you can’t knit, stop into a local knitting store and ask if someone would be willing to knit you a piece. Burgess bets you’ll find dozens of local knitters eager to be of service.
What do you think of Rebecca Burgess’s Fibershed Challenge? Do you own any locally-made clothes? Do you knit, sew, weave, or dye? I’d love to hear about it.
YES! Magazine Article
Posted by Abby Quillen in Parenting, Social movements on January 19, 2011
My article, “Raising Babies in Prison,” which appears in the Winter 2011 issue of YES! Magazine, is now available online. The article begins:
Like most new moms, Erika Freeman is enchanted by her baby, nine-month-old daughter Riley. She decorated her daughter’s room in pink, with pictures of princesses and “Princess Riley” on the wall in block letters. Freeman grins when she talks about her daughter’s strong personality. “She wouldn’t eat for me. She would only eat if she could hold the spoon. It was everywhere.”
In other ways, Freeman has little in common with most new moms. She can’t take her daughter to the park or library. She can’t take Riley to her grandparents’ house, and at certain times of the day, she can’t even take Riley down the hall to the bathroom.
Freeman is in prison at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW). She is one of 12 low-level, non-violent inmates who are parenting their infants for up to 30 months behind bars in WCCW’s Residential Parenting Program (RPP). They live in the J-Unit, a housing complex surrounded by razor-wire fences in the prison’s minimum-security wing.
The J-Unit is the sort of facility you’d expect in a prison—with gray walls, pay phones, and locked doors. But the mother-baby pairs have their own rooms, painted in bright colors and furnished with beds, cribs, and rocking chairs. There’s a shared kitchen and a cheerful playroom outfitted with couches and bins of toys.
You can read the rest of the article here.
(You can also read more about my visit to the Washington Corrections Center for Women and the process of writing the article here.)
There Must Be Something in the Water
Posted by Abby Quillen in Health, Social movements on January 12, 2011
Photo Credit: Darwin Bell
Last week a couple of news stories made me look at my drinking water a little differently:
- The U.S. Department of Health and Public Services proposed that utilities sharply reduce the amount of fluoride being added to municipal water supplies, because many children are being exposed to levels that exceed recommendations. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the risks of ingesting excess fluoride include dental fluorosis (pitted and mottled teeth), bone fractures and skeletal fluorosis, and possibly osteosarcoma (bone cancer), neurotoxicity, and disruption of thyroid function. Seventy-two percent of Americans currently drink fluoridated water.
- The EWG conducted a sample of hexavalent chromium – the carcinogenic chemical Erin Brockovich made famous – in 35 different community water supplies. They found the chemical in levels higher than California has declared “safe” in 25 of the communities. The National Institute of Health deems hexavalent chromium a “probable carcinogen”, because it causes cancer in laboratory animals. The chemical seeps into our water supply from steel and pulp mills and metal-plating and leather-tanning facilities, and through erosion of soil and rock.
Should we worry?
Are excess fluoride, hexavalent chromium, or the multiple other contaminants the EWG warns are in our water, including petroleum distillates, pharmaceuticals, and perchlorate a health threat worth worrying about?
“The United States enjoys one of the cleanest and safest supplies of drinking water in the world. Municipal utilities provide water that comply with existing state and federal standards in more than 92% of cases,” the EWG states. “At the same time, we also know that there are many unregulated contaminants in our nation’s drinking water.”
Many Americans are concerned. In a 2009 Gallup poll, 84% of people said they worry a “great deal” or a “fair amount’ about pollutants in their drinking water.
Can we protect ourselves?
The EWG recommends taking the following steps if you’re concerned:
- Learn about your water. You can find out what’s in your drinking water at the EWG’s tap water database, or by contacting your water company.
- Avoid bottled water. Bottled water often comes from municipal water supplies, and the glut of plastic bottles – we throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour in the U.S. — further pollutes the environment.
- Buy a filter. The EWG recommends that Americans (especially pregnant women or parents mixing infant formula with tap water) consider buying a water filter. They give a rundown of different filters here. An inexpensive carbon filter will reduce many water contaminants, including lead and byproducts of the disinfection process, but it does not filter out fluoride or hexavalent chromium. A more expensive reverse osmosis filtration system reduces levels of most water contaminants. The EWG warns that we also absorb water into our bodies through bathing and showering, so you may want to consider filtering your bath water.
- Contact your public utility. If you’re concerned about contaminants or excess fluoride in your water, speak up.
If you want to limit the amount of fluoride you or your young children ingest, you can also:
- Reduce other sources of fluoride. Tap water is the largest, but not the only source of fluoride many of us ingest. You can reduce your children’s intake of fluoride in toothpaste, supplements, rinses, and food sources.
We don’t have fluoridated water in Eugene, or in most of Oregon, so I’m not worried about that. But the news about hexavalent chromium has made me wonder about the other untested and unregulated chemicals that could be in our drinking water. We don’t filter our water, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s a good idea. Of course, the real solution is for us to put pressure industries to find greener ways to do business and keep toxic chemicals out of our environment.
More information about chemicals and tap water:
- Probable carcinogen hexavalent chromium found in drinking water of 31 U.S. cities – Washington Post
- Tap Water & Chemicals: Debating the Concerns – On Point with Tom Ashbrook
- Officials Say Kids Getting Too Much Fluoride – NPR
- National Drinking Water Database Report Findings – Environmental Working Group
- EWG’s Guide to Safe Drinking Water – Environmental Working Group
What do you think? Do you worry about the safety of your tap water? Have you installed a water filter or a filtration system? I’d love to hear about it.
Raising Babies in Prison
Posted by Abby Quillen in Parenting, Social movements on December 1, 2010
I’m thrilled to announce that my article, “Raising Babies in Prison”, appears in the Winter 2011 episode of YES! Magazine. It’s about the Residential Parenting Program at the Washington Corrections Center for Women, which allows selected pregnant, non-violent inmates in the minimum-security wing to raise their babies for 30 months in prison.
I’ve interviewed many people for articles, and it’s been inspiring to hear their stories, to focus on actively listening to them, and to weave their words into articles. But until now, I’d been writing articles about green entrepreneurs and social activists. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I traveled up I-5 to Gig Harbor in September to visit a prison and sit down with an inmate.
I had to go through security and walk through a razor-wire fence to get to the J-Unit, an H-shaped building in the prison’s minimum security wing, where up to 20 mothers at a time live with their babies. I met with Erika Freeman in an empty administrative office. Across the hall, inmates in prison uniforms – gray sweat suits, white socks, and black plastic sandals – sprawled across couches and chairs and watched TV in the day rooms.
Freeman is 26 and friendly. She drank coffee from a plastic cup as she told me about the crimes that brought her to WCCW, the terrifying months she spent in Closed Custody, when she didn’t know if she’d get into the program or have to part with her newborn, and about bonding with her daughter Riley. I walked away inspired by Freeman’s courage to change her life, by her determination to help other young women not end up where she is, and by the power of family bonds, especially those between parents and children, to heal us.
As with every interview I’ve done, I was also amazed by how powerful the act of listening to someone’s story is – for both the teller and the listener. It’s something we can do for free by just calling or visiting someone, asking questions, and focusing on listening, yet, we seem to do it less and less in our hurried culture.
A few weeks ago, after I’d finished writing and editing the article, my next door neighbor knocked on my door, and asked if I’d seen the local paper that day. “Your prison moms are in there,” she told me.
It turned out that the Portia Project was sponsoring a conference at the University of Oregon on women and prison. Cheryl Hanna Truscott, a photographer who has documented the women and babies in the Residential Parenting Program for seven years, would be displaying her photos that evening. She was the first person I interviewed about the program, and her beautiful photos accompany my article. I wanted to meet her in person, but it was short notice, and I couldn’t make it that night.
The next afternoon, I went to campus, hoping to see the photos and perhaps sit in on a lecture or two. I had no idea what the agenda was, or if Truscott would still be around. When I walked into the lecture hall, I recognized the speaker’s voice immediately. It was Marie-Celeste Condon, a researcher I’d interviewed. Many of the other people I’d talked to for the article were sitting on the stage, and Erika Freeman’s parents were there. It felt like a cosmic moment, like I was supposed to write this story and be in this room – even though both occurrences had seemingly happened by accident.
It was great to meet everyone in person, to talk to Freeman’s parents, and to hear the stories of a few more of the mothers who’ve gone through this program, which I’m now convinced is a beacon of hope in our Corrections system.
So if you get a chance, I hope you’ll check out this issue of YES! Magazine. (Coincidentally, it includes a feature by Jeremy Adam Smith, who was my editor at Shareable.net until he left recently for a Knight Fellowship at Stanford, as well as photos by Patrick Barber, who I interviewed last November for an article about the Eastside Egg Cooperative in Portland.) I’ll post a link to my article, when it’s available online.
Automation Nation
Posted by Abby Quillen in Social movements on November 22, 2010
Credit: Arthur Rothstein, 1915-1985, photographer. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
The supermarket near my house has five self check-out stations. Often one or two is down, and sometimes, you have to jab at the buttons on the screen multiple times to get your choices to register. Regardless, a line for the automated cashiers usually snakes around the tabloids. When I go to this supermarket, I usually find myself waiting in this line and traipsing up to one of these self check-out stations.
But, recently, as I was poking repeatedly at the screen and listening to the computerized voice ask me about an unexpected item in the bagging area, I glimpsed a cashier a few aisles down. She was scanning a customer’s groceries, smiling, and making small talk with him. It looked like a far better experience than the one I was having. So why did I choose the machine?
I kind of enjoy scanning my own groceries. The beeping of the barcode reader and the jigsaw puzzle of packing my cloth bags reminds me of playing grocery store with my sister when we were kids. But did I also choose the self check-out because I wanted to avoid a human interaction? And if so, why?
A few days after my grocery store experience, I was at the library, where self check-out is now the only option. I heaved a pile of picture books onto the counter, slid one across the radio frequency antenna, and waited for it to register on the screen, before sliding the next one. Meanwhile I tried to keep my two-year-old son from darting outside, yanking on the fire alarm, or pulling down his pants. I felt a little bit like a contortionist.
After I’d piled all of my books into my tote bag and herded my son toward the exit, the security gate rang – a common experience. The one person on duty behind the desk strode over, looked over my receipt, and counted my books. “Looks good,” he said, with a smile. “The machine must have missed one. Happens all the time.”
That’s when I remembered how the library used to be. Someone else checked out our books for us. Are the machines doing a better job than those people did? That hasn’t been my experience.
I’m not anti-technology. I use a computer nearly every day. I have a cell phone. I’m on Facebook. I blog and tweet. And I don’t want libraries – or grocery stores – to return to the days of Carnegie. Years ago I worked in a library before it transitioned to a computerized card catalog, and every night, we manually alphabetized towering stacks of cards. Let there be no doubt, computers are far better and faster than humans at alphabetizing six dozen titles starting with The Berenstein Bears and…. I’d guess they’re also helpful for keeping track of grocery store inventory.
But I’m not convinced that computers are better at face-to-face customer service.
And what are we losing? In an age when jobs are scarce, many of us are complicit in making them scarcer when we choose machines over people, even when the machines are less effective. At my local library, the people who once checked out books – some of whom had worked in the organization for decades – recently had their hours cut by 20 percent. A friend of mine in that position had to foreclose on her house, because she could no longer afford the mortgage.
And what are the social costs when we increasingly choose to disconnect from human interactions? In the U.S., social isolation is on the rise. In a 2006 study, 25 percent of Americans said they have no one with whom they can discuss their personal troubles. That’s double the number who said the same thing in 1985. And we know that for many people, social connections are the difference between life and death. Researchers from Brigham Young University recently reviewed 148 studies and found that people with strong social ties have a 50 percent lower risk of dying over a given period than those with fewer social connections.
Dr. Stephen S. Ilardi, a clinical phsychology professor at the University of Kansas points out that depression rates around the turn of the century were almost zero, but today more than 23 percent of Americans experience major depression during their lifetimes. Ilardi partly blames our growing social isolation. “I believe it’s time that we start living as Americans as if relationships are the things that matter to us the most…” he said in a recent interview.
I agree. And when so many are sounding an alarm that Facebook and other social networking sites may make us lonelier, because we’re not connecting face-to-face, perhaps it’s time to look at our ubiquitous replacement of customer-service representatives with machines. At least we can use social networking to connect with each other. Automation’s only purpose is to disconnect us.
So from now on, I think I’ll be choosing the cashier’s line. I wish I could still do that at the library.
What do you think? Do you use self check-out? Do the social implications of replacing customer service representatives with machines concern you?
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