Strange Magic

9 beds in 9 nights, 10 hours of sleep in a 72 hour period, a funeral, a wedding (yes, that's the same chapel), brain surgery, midday fog you could touch, a clueless bellhop, parachuting, plane-ticket-as-impulse-buy, crying and almost crying, a birthday and a porch swing. Did I leave anything out - yes.

...

You know, I was looking forward to this trip to Houston and NOLA. Now, I can't remember who I was before I left, this is going to take a bit.

...

Oh, yeah, Verde, sorry. Well, the conference, the Policylink conference, Regional Equity 08, was a very good thing for us. Like mentioned sometime before that will never come back, we were on a panel with our fathers and mothers, and to our very great surprise found we'd a story to tell that almost belonged next to their stories, and fell thru a hole in the universal chair when we realized where the hell we were, humbled by the chance to serve.

We saw good friends, good friends, good friends, good friends, made new good friends, and left thinking that, if we keep doing our work, doing it well, and speaking the truth - well, things will work out the way they are supposed to...

goodbye forever Jim, congratulations forever Ken and Rhianna, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye for however long that has to be.

Dead Melodies

My oh (2x) My

Too much coffee, man, and I suppose that means that we're learning how to be happy. Somebody has to do it, so it might as well be us. It's not like g-d's decided to share the rules, anyway..

This is a good time to be Verde, so we enjoy it as long as it lasts. Last week, we took another very important, very small step toward the vague something we daily pursue, we put plants in the greenhouse! Take a look, ain't they purty (clearly, I've more learning to do on this whole camera exposure thing):




























Something else is happening, something we've kind of hoped for but weren't sure about, but the first reviews are in and so far so good.

So, in communities like ours, low income communities, where a lot of people don't speak english and really aren't familiar with the notion that others folks give a crap about their ideas and needs and hopes anyway, changes can come to the neighborhood without anybody knowing about them or having a chance to say what they think.

This neighborhood has almost no parks, local folks load up the kids into a van and take them a couple neighborhoods away to play soccer, to run around, to have a picnic. There's a big site right here in the neighborhood, a 25 acre capped landfill formerly known as Killingsworth Fast Disposal (see pg 14). Now, a master planning process is underway for the Thomas Cully Park, a new park to be located over the landfill. It's a pretty standard process, with periodic workshops/open houses at a local church where folks talk about what they want from a new park.

Well, despite the fact that there's a largely Latino affordable housing community with 321 units, many with large families, only a few of these residents attended the open houses - tho, oddly enough, they did manage to get photographed and placed on the project's website

(hey! that's not right! making fun of the consultants for putting the 4 brown people who attended the session on the website! - I'm just saying...)


Well, we tried something different. We laminated the 11x17 final concepts (Concept E and Concept F), and made many photocopies of the questionnaire. The next morning, Nursery Crew Members reviewed the maps and questionnaire, then incorporated outreach into their time spent maintaining Hacienda CDC's affordable housing properties. In one week of sharing this information, we collected, translated into english, and forwarded to the the consultant team 25 questionnaires, connecting community folk to a process which is going to have a great impact on their daily lives and which, to date, had failed to secure their participation.

We're going to try this some more, with later phases of the Thomas Cully Park Master Plan process, as well as with a new project coming into the neighborhood, the Cully Green Street planning process

staying alive

well, wherever we go, here we are...

Most of the year stretches out before us, and so we might permit ourselves a brief - if delayed - view of anticipation, the things we'd like to achieve in 2008 for ourselves, nuestra comunidad, and our organization-called-Verde. This year we're going to grow our own plants, and we're going to install them in our own projects:




















This year we're going to participate in new affordable housing construction projects, multiplying the effect of these dollars - not only will they create places for people to live, but they'll create jobs for the people who live there



We're going to take the mountain to Muhammed. Where local environmental decisions could affect out community, could help solve community problems, we're going to take the process to them so their voices can be heard, so the decision can reflect their needs.


And, we're hitting the road, along with our brothers and sisters (mostly sisters) from the Latino Network, to Policylink's 3rd ever National Summit on Equitable Development, Social Justice, and Smart Growth (whew.). Verde will be presenting as part of the Workshop Series 5: Strategic Alliances, Building Public Will, and Community Organizing (Friday, March 7, 12:30 to 2:15 pm). No, we won't be on the panel discussing The Green Economy and Jobs. Instead, we'll be on a panel named "Environmental Justice Partnerships," which f'n rocks. Why, because we'll be sitting next to such EJ Ass Kickers (of the Fantastic, ahem) as:

Robert D. Bullard, Director, Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University

Beverly Wright, Founder and Director, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Dillard University

Donele Wilkins, Co-founder and Executive Director, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice

You know, I read Dr Bullard's stuff when I was in law school, I use his definition of Environmental Racism in the class I teach now, and I've read time and again of the Deep South Center's and the Detroiters' work, so I'm like my daughter in a candy store.

ok, see you when there's more time to kill...

let's dance to joy division

(and celebrate the irony, everything has all gone wrong, and we're so happy)

well, that made sense at the time, so we'll just leave it there and hopefully the broken clock will do its thing and be right again, as it always does...

the calendar year closes, the enterprise goes on hiatus, and the mail is forwarded. good times and hard times to be remembered and celebrated, heads to shake in wonder as how we possibly made it thru such things, and controls to be set to cruise so we can drive with one finger

when we return, we'll start something new, thanks to our friends at SOLV. They want us to start working on steep slopes, removing invasives without also falling into the river, Willamette or otherwise.

So, guess what we got to do, even tho - as we discovered - we're all scared of heights:























































Many thanks to Kenny and the other good folks at the Portland Rock Gym for their time and instruction, and to SOLV for footing the bill.

(There were pictures of me doing this stuff too, but they were mysteriously deleted)

We'll see on the other side. Best wishes to you and all you care about.

How Long Will It Take

(...I've been waiting for a long time).

Seems we've lapsed into the never before seen and completely unprecedented, let's-take-a-weekly-blog-and-umm-say-we-really -decided-it-functioned-better-as-a-monthly-you-see-ahem

hey, we've been busy, we're all changing our names to cesar chavez, and you can't stop us; lose many, win some, winsome. Here are some of our wins, lately (losses to be shared later on the page):

• Labor Hours Sold: slow december begins, and we're proud to say we've sold verde's services every available day from July 1st to the end of the calendar year. The sincerest gratitude and credit to the Verde Native Plant Nursery Crew, regular and temporary, for embracing this hardest of work and doing it better than well, for working in the rain and the cold and the hornets and the heat to make these kinds of transformations:

NE 38th & NE Tillamook Green St. filtering stormwater in Portland's Hollywood neighborhood







Lovena Farms, SE Portland, in the Johnson Creek Watershed, invasive plants removed and ready for native plants

• Revenue Sharing: Yes, by gum & land o' goshen, we did it. Because we met our goals, we'd excess revenue, and we distributed half of it, also known as $4649, in the form of cash bonuses to them hard-working crew members based on hours worked (if you know a better way, lemme know/keep it to your damn self). Yee-oouch, hurts good. It was a big day, and a promise kept.

• Community Members on Verde's Board. In November, Maria Gastelun and Brenda Reyes, mother and daughter, community advocates and leaders, and long-time residents of Hacienda CDC housing, joined Verde's Board of Directors. There to teach and to learn and to teach, their experiences will guide Verde and the Nursery as we share our lessons with our community, building awareness that plenty of people make a good living protecting the environment, so why can't we?
  

OK, so, here's what's not working as well as we'd like. We're walking, but we'd like to run. We're not low-skilled, we're semi-skilled, and it's the highly skilled that earn rates which support the kind of wages we must pay.

So, we now begin the hardest part of our life-so-far.

We've got to keep the work coming in, even if it doesn't pay $35/hour, even if it kills our margins.

We've got to subsidize the margins however we can, because we have to keep the crew together so they continue to build skills and cohesion.

We've got to keep them together and build these skills because we've got irons in the fire, people in affordable housing, in greenstreets, in on-site stormwater management, in environmental groups who want want want to work with us, and we're turning the wheels to get there, and one day one or two or lots of those well-paying gigs are going to pop out and...

...and we need to be ready

Prince of Turbulence

Well, that was fun. Who knew that greenhouse construction was a complete pain in the ass (well, except most nursery folk and such). But, it's done, we're excited, and you can see it unfold:

Hole Digging - using a 2-man auger, shovels, picks and gloved hands to get 2 feet down into this rocky, missoula flood soil:






























Setting and Cementing the Posts - mixing quick dry cement, then staking the greenhouse support posts:

































Leveling:
































Setting the Arcs:


































Completing the Frame:































Stretching the Poly:
































Installing & Cutting the Corrugated Plastic:































Hanging the Sliding Door:































Finis!




































Oh and Hey: Happy Birthday to Us (10.19.2007)!

Tennessee's Not the state I'm In

so, greenhouses ain't so easy to construct

well, at least and for sure, digging 2 foot anchor holes in rocky NE Portland/bretz flood soils really sucks, even when you use a 2 man auger, also known as the back killer, according to reputable industry sources:
but, it was fun and exciting, there's no doubt about that. we worked all day, ate some good food per our usual wednesday routine, and were greatly energized by the late afternoon arrival of our greenhouse, and by some hands-on training provided by their driver/installer. like always, we took a lot of pictures, so we'll let them do the talking...





















nice, huh? more to come...