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Slice of Life: The City + Nature in Pictures

2011-10-12T20:55:00.000-04:00

When I discovered Pinterest back in August I hoped to find imagesthat would shed light on an elusive concept: the urban environment. After twoyears of intensive study, lots of blogging, and many conversations with peoplefrom all walks of life, I still can’t pin down that term. Does it refer to atype of landscape, the boundaries of a jurisdiction, or a sort of blended/compromisedecosystem? Is it a technical term? A geographical definition? Or arelationship? What are the key elements of the urban environment—human-built, ecological,cultural, or something else we’re missing?

Guerilla urbanism at The Spot in London via This Big City

These fluid borders give me plenty to ponder: I love that I’llnever run out of rabbit holes to fall into as I chase down this topic. The environmental/social/economicsustainability of cities is such a hot topic that it’s easy to stumble across anarray of thought-provoking blog posts, columns, and reports probing all anglesof the 21^st century urban problem.

I appreciate this increasingly diverse body of writing (and,hey, I’m a contributor to it), but what really gets me excited are pictures.Describing the nature of cities in words requires intention: the author knowsthey’re about to delve into a complex concept that has only recently enteredmainstream consciousness. When someone takes a photograph or makes a sketchtheir subtle associations come to the surface graphically, leaving it up to theviewer to interpret the meaning behind revealed or still-hidden assumptions andbeliefs.

As I’ve been busy pinning cool images to my very own “city and nature”-themed Pinterest board, I’ve gotten to be an interpreter ofthe urban environment. And I’ve found my own loose definition expanding.Collecting images like this wall garden and freeform public greenspace wereeasy choices: they fit obviously into the box.

Repurposed gutters via Storage | Glee

Bilbao Jardin in Spain via The Atlantic

But when I felt an urge to include this shot of a massive outdoorsculpture or this guy displaying snowballs I had to think through why they representedthe urban environment. In both cases I had to push myself to evolve my rationaldefinition in order to make space for these images that intuitively fit. (Idecided that sunlight and airflow were critical, as were people and theirinteractions with the seasons.)

Halle d’Aubervilliers in Paris via The Pop Up City

Installation by David Hammons via Frieze

And when I come across a picture that someone else hasactually labeled with this slippery term—like this photo of downtown Columbus,Ohio—I get to check their characterization against my own, another chance totest my assumptions and create new meaning.

Urban Environment by Brandon Townley

Who knows what the urban environment will reveal aboutitself next? I’m going to keep pinning to find out.

Knitting together a Love of Place

2011-09-19T17:02:00.000-04:00

I first wrote about knitted street art back in May when Icame across these concrete cozies in Boston’s North End. I didn’tknow then that this crafty art form has a name—guerilla knitting or yarnbombing—and that it’s spun from installations first needled together by Magda Sayeg and her friends in cities around the world (recognize the red headband and braidsin the Austin, Texas-shot video below?).

Guerilla Suit and Knitta Please present: #Williebomb from Guerilla Suit on Vimeo.

I didn’t know that my first sighting of guerilla knittingwas part of a larger movement of crafters, artists, and activists seeking toincorporate what Sayeg calls “something warm and human” into the urbanenvironment (such as the BeltLine Knitterati in Atlanta). But Idefinitely had a feeling that these works of art were created by people whowant to find more things to love about the places they live.

Here in Arlington, I’ve been delighted to come across moreexamples of yarn bombing: first a goofy-grinned sleeve hugging a pole in Shirlington plaza and then these pointy-toed dinosaur feet readyto stomp off with a bus stop near Ballston.

I love these semi-permanent additions to the streetscape becausethey make me look twice at the structures that make up an ordinary stretch ofconcrete. The sign post that used to be invisible now catches my eye. Like the flash of a cardinal’s red wings amongtree branches, those loops of bright yarn remind me of the beating heart behindthe mundane cover of the built world.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the hard lines and sharpangles of the city have anything to do with the human urge to create andconnect, with our innate need to make meaning and shape the world we live in.When I see bright skeins of yarn knitted with care around objects typicallytaken for granted, I’m immediately reminded of this human element. I thinkabout the deep bond that may have driven someone to perform this act of lovefor the place they call home. And I wonder how cities would change if such richrelationships with place became the most common feature of the urbanenvironment.

Installation by the BeltLine Knitterati. Photo via Sweet Peach.

Slice of Life: New Film on Biophilic Cities

2011-09-06T20:52:00.001-04:00

"How can we make better cities than ever were?"

"How can we immerse ourselves in nature every day instead of thinking we have to get in an SUV and drive 50 miles to find it?"

Richard Louv, leader of the "No Child Left Inside" movement, asks these questions in a new film exploring the transformative potential of a nature-rich urban environment. I checked out the preview of The Nature of Cities (below) and can't wait to watch the entire film to learn more about cities that satisfy their residents' urges to connect with the natural world.

University of Virginia professor Tim Beatley defines these kinds of places as "biophilic cities." In a lecture featured in the film Beatley says, "We have this sort of bias in this country that if you want nature, you can't have a city, that these are kind of polar opposites." But the idea of biophilic cities shatters that assumption, making room for urban environments that not only teem with plant, animal, and insect life, but also speak to the souls of the humans who live there.

I'm excited about The Nature of Cities because I think it will provide some answers to a question that has nagged at me for a while: can people have the kinds of awe-inspiring, life-changing, spirit-moving moments in urban nature that poets and philosophers and ordinary joes have experienced in centuries past in majestic wild places or sweeping pastoral landscapes?

Since articulating this question a few years ago in my first graduate research paper (and worrying that the answer might be no), I've had some of my own small, yet wonderful moments that suggest we can. And I'm hoping to learn from this cool little film how we can intentionally create cities that offer endless opportunities for residents of all persuasions to experience awe of the more-than-human world right outside our own doors.

My Third Place

2011-08-27T15:33:00.005-04:00

When I need a break from my computer screen, when I want a shady place to read, when I feel the urge to people watch, I go to the plaza outside Shirlington Library. There are chairs and tables, small trees, a fountain, busy entrances to the library and Signature Theater, plus a cupcake shop, grocery store, and restaurants nearby. Most importantly, there are lots of other people of all kinds having lunch, meeting friends, talking on phones, walking dogs, playing in the fountain (if they’re in the under-six crowd), and simply walking by on their way to buy groceries or heading back to work after a meal out.

Sitting in the plaza the other day with a book open, yet unread, and my notebook waiting to be written in, I absorbed the activity around me and realized that this is my “third place.” Ray Oldenburg, author of The Great Good Place, defined third places as public space alternatives to home (first place) and work (second place) where people can relax and have fun, while interacting informally with diverse members of the neighborhood.

When I did finally pick up my pencil, I scrawled out some of my observations: three tween girls perched on a bench, savoring cupcakes with tall mounds of frosting; a toddler insisting on helping her mother pull a folding cart toward the grocery store; a man with knee-length dreadlocks approaching a group of friends, then calling out “Okay, my bra” as he reluctantly left them to go to work; a red-headed guy in a Spaghetti-O’s t-shirt striding into the theater; a picture of him with the same slicked-down hair on a poster for the upcoming play at Signature hanging beside me.

I don’t know any of these people, yet they don’t feel like complete strangers. We have this place in common. It’s a center, a hub, a mini version of much-beloved public squares in old cities around the world (as well as some new ones—check out Pioneer Square Courthouse in Portland). Occasionally I do run into friends or acquaintances, but more often the kind of recognition I feel for the people around me stems from a sense of our mutual embrace of the openness this space provides. We can be ourselves here, publicly. We get to choose whether to engage passively or actively; either way, our presence signifies our belonging.

Oldenburg writes that “the character of a third place is determined most of all by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood.” Hanging out in the plaza does feel like play. Even when I bring something to work on, I feel stimulated and creative in a way that I don’t at home or in the office. The physical structure of my third place is set, but those of us who spend time here are still building and shaping that vital, yet sometimes-elusive phenomenon known as “community.”

Slice of Life: Pinning down the Urban Environment

2011-08-18T13:59:00.001-04:00

As my own relationship to the urban environment grows and skips and morphs into something I could never have imagined, I'm becoming fascinated with how other people see the city and develop definitions of natural/built spaces.

On my journey through urban environmental leadership I've captured some of the images that jar me out of non-awareness--some of those sights that freeze me in my tracks, force me to stop, mouth agape, head tilted back, awash in wonder at the hilarious/beautiful/terrifying nature of the city. I've used Flickr to gather a few of those moments, but I'm excited to start tinkering around with Pinterest, a new twist on the old-fashioned online photo album.

A blank wall just waiting to be "pinned" with pictures, Pinterest provides a way to collect images from around the web. Because each "board" centers around a user-designated theme, they act as visual dictionaries offering numerous unique definitions of endless topics. When I searched for "city," I found plenty of collages with photos of typical cityscapes--skyscrapers, bridges, nighttime streets. I also discovered people using the concept of the city as a container for a whole range of topics. Maps. Street art. Fashion. Transportation. Interior design. Romance.

I like these collections in particular because they hint at the identity of the person behind the images and reveal something of the relationship between person and place. If we move past the stereotypical image of a city, a place removed from human intention and involvement, creative definitions of the urban environment can take us anywhere and everywhere.

To Weed or Not to Weed?

2011-08-11T12:44:00.004-04:00

It’s been a summer of record-breaking heat in the DC area. My balcony container garden has suffered: wilted celosia, fried oregano, stalks of Shasta daisies crisped brown. But one plant is thriving and that’s the one I didn’t even put there.

Carried by the wind or dropped by a bird or maybe emerged from the bag of potting soil, a little seed sprouted in my pot, spread its rosy stalks, and put out succulent green leaves. For some reason, I let it grow. Even though I could see that it was a common (edible) urban weed—one that I’ve yanked out many times as a gardener—I left this particular purslane alone.

Earlier in the season I clipped off one branch and plucked the leaves as garnish for my salad. Since then, I’ve only watched it grow more hardy as the plants I’ve hoped to cultivate have barely hung on through weeks of no rain. Now in mid-August, tiny clusters of yellow flowers are beginning to appear among the purslane’s greenery. And despite knowing that it’s about to reproduce and contribute to our collective weed problem, I can’t bring myself to pull it out.

Maybe weeds are a typical topic of summertime conversation, but this year I’ve noticed more of the complexity in the debates raging over what to do about non-native and invasive plants in urban areas. Should we attack them with full force and fight to restore our landscapes to their pre-settlement state? Or should we change our mindset to accept the transformation that plants like kudzu and English ivy inevitably bring to urban, suburban, and even rural ecosystems?

As far as I know, purslane hasn’t tried to take over the world yet (not like garlic mustard, perhaps, which may put out toxins in the soil that actually kill the other species around it). But I have pulled up thick mats of purslane while tending a wide range of landscapes—schoolyard habitats, rooftop garden beds, backyard vegetable patches, rural farm fields.

Now that I’ve decided to let one be—to effectively nurture its existence by allowing it to use some of the scarce soil in one of my pots—I realize the choice inherent in removing it from all of those other places. Pulling weeds is a creative act. We give certain plants value and remove the others to create the landscape we want to live in. The human-dependent distribution of non-native species is a similar type of act. Setting up a backyard garden, yanking out invasive plants from along a riverbank, and unintentionally transporting weed seeds to a different region or continent are all part of the same creative process. It goes by the name of civilization.

Whether we regret the actions of others before us or around us, there’s no way to deny our impact. Even with the best intentions to live lightly on the earth, we will by necessity take something, leave something. As we make choices and set standards that protect the more-than-human world, we should remember that even this is a creative act, a form of participation that bestows value through intention, and therefore wields a potentially destructive power.

I’ll probably never stop pulling weeds, but this summer I’ll use my human intention to let that purslane grow, watch as it spreads its supple stalks all the way into autumn.

Slice of Life: Escapist Watermelons and the Re-Enchanted City

2011-07-19T17:21:00.001-04:00

What goes on in a re-enchanted city? Tang Yau Hoong’s design work offers a peek. I love the crisp surreality of pieces like “Coexistence” (below) and the clear, but not necessarily logical linkage between built and natural landscapes, the characters who inhabit them, and the forces compelling them to act.

Coexistence by Tang Yau Hoong

It makes me want to live in these places where any inanimate object could surely come to life.

In Flying Colours by Tang Yau Hoong

I could gaze into these scenes for hours. They coax me to see more in my own urban environment—more nuance, more layers, more movement and intention than my often dulled senses are willing to perceive. But today on the rooftop garden where I help grow vegetables five stories up, I got a glimpse of the kind of extra-human activity typical of a Tang Yau Hoong illustration.

I caught this baby watermelon trying to jump.

Rather than settle in to grow juicy and plump…

…this runner headed straight for the edge.

Did it know there was nowhere to go but down?

As I reeled it back in, I felt its coiled tendrils put up their resistance. Will I find it next time nestled properly in its raised bed?

Or will I hear of residents discovering tiny watermelons dangling from their balcony railings?

Swimming in Ditches

2011-07-03T14:09:00.002-04:00

For my brothers and I, growing up in rural northern Nevada, the hot days of July inevitably led to swimming in ditches. We’d hop on our bikes and ride half a mile down the gravel road to the spot where water flowed under the bridge to irrigate our grandparents’ fields. This water, brown as chocolate milk, originated in the melting snowpack in the Sierra mountains, trickled down to the rushing Truckee river, surged east through Reno to Lahontan reservoir, then into a network of canals and ditches that transformed the desert valley into a patchwork of productive farmland.

Photo: Mary Lou Grumstrup

We didn’t discuss these links as we splashed and slithered like little otters, clambered out on a tree branch and cannon-balled into the water below, or floated along on hot black innertubes from tractor tires. We didn’t talk about the complex journey these droplets had made, but we knew they were special. In a region with annual rainfall measured in the single digits (4 inches a year for our county), water is a big deal. The concrete- and sand-lined ditches and the shallow Carson River (seen in the photo above) attracted us kids like thirsty travelers to lush oases.

Reading The Thunder Tree, Robert Michael Pyle’s book about his own relationship to an irrigation canal in suburban Denver, got me thinking about my youthful summertime swims in what could rightly be considered “dirty water.” Back then, I didn’t give a hoot about the cleanliness of the flow—I even remember slurping some up to spit at my brothers. Now, although I appreciate looking at and walking along the waterways in the urban landscape where I live, I wouldn’t dare jump in and go swimming.

Part of that is just not being a kid anymore. I’ve seen little guys and girls wading in Four Mile Run, picking out smooth river rocks and reveling in the cold flow over their ankles while their parents stand watch on the shore. It was the same when I was young—I only remember a very few times when my dad splashed into the ditch with us. But I think my lack of bodily contact with the streams near my home also stems from my assumptions about urban water, that it must be polluted in a way that the country water of my childhood was not.

Although there are certainly contaminants to be wary of in urban streams—I’ve seen signs temporarily closing Four Mile Run to even canine swimmers at the riverside dog park nearby—I wonder how much of this perception is real and how much I’ve imagined. Have I unfairly contrasted city rivers with rural ditches? Am I still hanging onto romanticized notions of my childhood home, thinking of it as “pure” and “wild” while considering my urban environment tainted by human impacts?

Swimming in ditches brought me into direct contact with the natural elements of the place I grew up. What I didn’t take time to ponder as a kid is clear to me now: the water I took for granted was part of a complex, manmade system that drastically changed the local landscape and transformed people’s relationship to it.

Realizing this helps me remember that there is no boundary between the human world and the natural one. Trying to draw that line in the sand—or cement it with concrete—impedes our ability to understand our place within the big ecological picture. And for me, attempting to compartmentalize my life’s waterways into “pure” and “polluted,” “good” and “bad,” blocks me from seeing the links between rural and urban environments. It prevents me from meaningfully connecting my past and my present and it stalls the maturation of my relationship with the natural world from one of appreciation to one of participation.

I have researched the history of the streams and rivers that crisscross my neighborhood. On maps, I have traced their paths from Arlington to the Potomac River to the Chesapeake Bay, awing at the intricacy of the system that ties modest waterways to the biggest marine estuary in the U.S. Every day, I walk along the banks of Lucky Run and Four Mile Run and observe plants and animals relying on these waters for habitat and sustenance. Maybe it’s time to go swimming. Or at least wade in and get my feet wet.

Slice of Life: The Most Adaptable Food Vendors Ever

2011-06-23T21:41:00.000-04:00

Tight quarters in the city? Need a place to sell and buy food? How about setting up a farmer's market on the train tracks? My farmer friend Pablo sent me a link to this 45-second video of who have got to be the most adaptable urban food vendors on the planet.

Watching this clip makes me want to know more about this place and its people. Which came first--the market or the railroad? Was there a fight for the rights of one or the other and then this compromise? Who initially discovered just how high they could pile their produce next to the tracks without vegetables being dragged away or crushed? Do customers examine their purchases for evidence of soot or bruising from a low-slung carriage and bargain to pay less? And do the people operating these tiny shops think about the ingenuity of their situation or have they come to take it for granted?

With this "Slice of Life" entry, I'm launching an exploration of brief glimpses of cities and city dwellers through video, drawings, photography, poetry, prose, and beyond. I'll be using these snapshots as catalysts for asking questions that will help me delve deeper into one of the subjects that intrigues me most: how people develop meaningful relationships with urban landscapes.

Telling Our Stories: Empathy and Sustainability, Part Three

2011-06-15T21:04:00.001-04:00

It’s time to heed the call to empathy. The closing pages of The Empathic Civilization—Jeremy Rifkin’s 600+ page exploration of humanity’s history of relating to the “other”—make that clear. In the picture Rifkin paints, the survival of our species depends on our ability to consciously cultivate empathy to a greater degree than we ever have before. To salvage the health of the planet and avoid clashes over ever-scarcer resources, we not only have to put ourselves in the shoes of human neighbors on local and global scales, but also extend that sentiment to other beings, systems, and even non-living entities that influence the workings of the biosphere.

So how do we make that happen? Tell Arlington’s Story, an initiative bubbling up in my own community, is providing a way. People are sharing their histories, their family backgrounds, their passions, and their voices on video and in writing. They also have the chance listen to the life stories of others who are different from them, yet connected by a common ground—the place we live.

Some of my favorite stories are from the young, civically-mindd “Tu Tutors” and the teachers at Gunston Middle School remembering their childhoods. I hope to help in the efforts to collect stories—and grow empathy among diverse urban dwellers—by talking with people as they enjoy some of Arlington’s best public places—the plaza outside the Shirlington library, the Columbia Pike Farmer’s Market, the dog park along Four Mile Run.

To get my own empathic juices flowing, I shared my own story and my connection to Arlington’s endlessly-explorable urban environment. More stories = more empathy. There’s nothing more civilized than that.

Rambling toward Paradox: Empathy for Sustainability, Part Two

2011-06-08T17:26:00.003-04:00

On a daily basis, I walk, but it feels like forever since I’ve walked somewhere without a purpose. I stride briskly to work, sometimes finishing breakfast or gulping iced tea. I exercise my two dogs on adventures around the neighborhood. I trek the half mile to Shirlington Village to return library books and trek back with bags of groceries. Even over Memorial Day weekend when I camped in the Blue Ridge mountains, I hiked the trails to reach a waterfall, get a view of the sunset, and make it back to camp for dinner.

It wasn’t until today that I realized how long it’s been since I’ve just rambled. Off work early in the hot middle of the day, I decided to let myself explore a shady trail heading into a wooded park. The deeper I went into the trees, the slower I walked and the quieter my mind became. I stood in awe under a huge oak, wandered over a little bridge, and padded down a dirt path along a dry streambed. This is how it feels to be a kid, I thought, remembering and experiencing again that boundary-less feeling.

The coolest thing about this ramble is that it happened right in the middle of the city—something that my younger self growing up in rural Nevada would have never thought possible. Over the past several years I’ve had more and more opportunities to challenge my once unconscious belief that I could only have extraordinary experiences in natural places that were still “wild.”

Living in highly-contrasting places—from northern Nevada to eastern Washington state, Yellowstone National Park to Omaha, Nebraska, northern Alabama to Washington, DC—has forced me to rethink my definitions of nature and cities, wilderness and society, escaping and coming home. After so much personal reflection and academic exploration of sense of place, today’s ramble helped me realize that the contrast is not coincidental to my expanding perspective; rather, the paradox is key.

As I wrote about in Sustainability and Empathy, Part One, Jeremy Rifken's book The Empathic Civilization describes the co-evolution of cities (including industry powered by fossil fuels, the destruction of natural lands to build human settlements, and the separation of people from seasonal processes) and a growing sense of care for and identification with “the other” (leading to richer relationships, globally connected communities, more egalitarian and tolerant societies, and, eventually, an extension of empathy to other species and non-living entities).

Rifken highlights the connections between two seemingly antithetical elements of civilization and shows that living in dense urban communities leads to a stronger sense of who we are as humans and our relationship to the places we live and the beings we share them with. For this equation, just like mine above, like plus like does not provide a satisfying result. The contrast, the paradox, is what makes it work.

In the midst of my ramble, even when I felt time slow down and I lost myself in childlike wonder, I never lost consciousness of my surroundings. I heard lawn mowers running and people talking outside the houses nearby. I passed jungle gyms and trash cans and remnants of a burst piñata. I reached the edge of the park and crunched over glass on the street and watched a starling pecking at mulberries near a parked car. All of these undeniably urban details did not detract from my slow walk, but filled those moments with an even more precious meaning.

Slow-Walk

At 99 degrees, the careful sidewalk melts
and I lose my trail of crumbs in the
deep
dark
woods.

Through the hazy boughs—a house,
pitched
roof and satellite dish—
and rubber tires through poison vines,
but there is no way out:

in this place, if I do not make a sound
I do not exist.

The limbs of the oak stretch wide—
not yearning, affirming—
and underneath: the creeping crawling sparkling things
I never dared hope to find.

Even kindergarteners know
you can erase crayon from skin, wood and stone
and dead-
lines are just that—snarls of plastic collecting scum
on the surface

while fish of blinking orange
and electric chartreuse dart freely
through the deep dark
depths.

From here, I slow-walk into real life,
gulp for breath
as the waves lick my chin, bob out further
and gape at the strumming wind
taking shape
as a tulip tree in June.

Mulberries Give Me the Shoulds

2011-06-02T09:55:00.002-04:00

It wasn’t until after picking my first batch of mulberries from a tree near my apartment and stewing them with sugar to make a filling that could stand in for strawberries on my shortcakes that I realized a scene like this one throttles my souped-up sense of “should” into hyperdrive.

Rather than being satisfied with my foray into urban foraging and letting it slide into the category of “something cool I did once,” I feel like I should be doing more: picking more mulberries so they don’t go to waste when even the birds can’t eat them all, talking more publicly about the opportunity to glean food right in our own neighborhoods, seeking out more edible city plants like foraging guru John Kallas and making salads out of common “weeds” like purslane and lambs’ quarters.

At first it’s exhilarating to think of all the possibilities and I imagine myself nourished by the overlooked urban bounty, educating neighbors and friends about the cornucopia of wild food just beyond our doorsteps. But then the weight of "should" settles on my shoulders and the potential to explore becomes a self-imposed expectation that I can’t realistically live up to. Walking over crushed mulberries on the sidewalks twice a day with my two dogs, I feel a pang of guilt at what I should be doing and haven’t found the time or energy for.

Talking with friends who are concerned about protecting the environment and consuming less resources, I’ve discovered that an overgrown sense of should is a common attribute of urban environmental leaders. On one level, it’s a good thing. Feeling like we should do something differently serves as a catalyst and drives us to change our behavior. For a course in 2010 focused on ecological citizenship, my classmates and I tapped into our individual and collective should to push ourselves to become more aware of our impact on the environment by trying out new habits. We blogged about our efforts to drive less and reduce our electricity use and eat only locally-grown food and bake our own bread.

Working simultaneously on our shoulds lent positive energy to the project, but we all expressed frustration at some point in the process about not being able to muster enough willpower or commitment or resources to do enough. This is where should can turn bad. Once we feel like we can’t measure up, should becomes a source of anxiety and drains our capacity to enthusiastically engage in change-making.

Since that group experiment in ecological citizenship, I’ve fallen out of the habit of many of the practices I tried out. I made granola bars from scratch for a few months, then got busy and had to go back to store-bought. I composted vegetable scraps in my coat closet in two bins filled with worms, but after almost a year, realized that my homemade system made regularly harvesting the castings a huge challenge. I still feel like I should be doing these things, that doing them would be more responsible and in line with my values. But I also wonder how getting bogged down in should impairs my ability to act.

This nagging feeling of never meeting the mark may be preventing me from learning from failure. What if rather than trying to close the gap between what I actually do and what I should do, I let that gap yawn wide for a while? What if I let myself stand on the precipice and look around at where I am instead of to the other side? What if I let myself look down into that deep, dark chasm and feel the fear and thrill of that open space? At that cliff’s edge, I think I can pause long enough to enjoy the wild taste of mulberries on my fork.

Snuggling with the City

2011-05-25T20:14:00.001-04:00

Staying in the South End in Boston this past weekend, I discovered that street art can be more than just stenciled graphics spray painted on sidewalks or provocative posters plastered over brick walls. The funky knitwear in the clip below snuggled the most inanimate of objects, making me wonder about the subtle heartbeat of the non-human components of the city. How do the mundane aspects of the landscape that we take for granted shape our daily lives? And how can a more keen observation coupled with let-loose imagination add layers of meaning to our urban places?

I am indebted to the person who stopped and noticed and thought and measured and planned and knitted and then came out in the broad light of day to transform these lumps of concrete and metal into something that could catch my fickle attention. Thank you for reminding me to seek out the thread of life that is hidden, but never absent.

“Re-Enchanting” Trash

2011-05-17T10:58:00.001-04:00

I have an old pair of underwear hanging on my kitchen wall. No, I’m not going for some kind of Diary of a Wimpy Kid-inspired décor, I just like making new stuff from old stuff. And no one would ever know that the scrap of purple fabric representing a Stockton Red onion on this hand-sewn tapestry used to be part of an undergarment.

Crafting with found objects has become a trendy hobby for the eco-conscious set: ReadyMade and Instructables and a zillion cool blogs too numerous to list show off the green-glamorous side of using trash to make treasure. Some projects are utilitarian, like cutting up old pairs of jeans to make purses or weaving together candy wrappers to make wallets. I made a card for my mom out of the catalogue that happened to be sitting in front of me when I remembered Mother’s Day was coming up in four days. Spirituality and Health columnist Geri Larkin made it her mission to sew potholders out of every scrap of material she could find when she learned about the consequences of fabric ending up in landfills.

Taking it a step further, art made from what would otherwise be just junk taps into the troubled relationship between humans and the material world. On the one hand, we love our stuff; on the other, we know we shouldn’t. One day we gather it close to us and display it in our homes and on our bodies; the next, we throw it “away,” relegating it to one of the most despicable locations on earth—the dump. Choosing to re-assemble some of these objects that have been deemed useless and give them artistic value lends a positive spin to the human practice of materialism.

As the modern godfather of agrarianism Wendell Berry said, even God loves material things; after all, He made them. In Thomas Moore’s exploration of the comfort-loving soul (versus the thrill-seeking spirit), he emphasizes the need of the human soul to be surrounded by prized possessions—not necessarily expensive or expendable things, but things that hold meaning and provide a tangible link to the physicality of life.

When artists and crafters choose to infuse value into stuff that society considers worthless, they mend some of the split. They allow us to love material goods and, as Thomas Moore would say, “re-enchant” the world by weaving rich meaning back into an everyday landscape that has become dulled to our senses. One of the most powerful examples of this are Chris Jordan’s photographs of dead birds from Midway Island, their bodies decomposed to reveal bits of brightly-colored trash they once consumed, but could never digest.

These images remind me of the paradox of human life on Earth: in order to love the world and be fully in it, we must deplete it. Jordan’s photos fill me with sadness and dread, but their beautiful transparency also stirs a connectedness that makes me feel something like hope. My next project is a quilt with patchwork squares cut from old boxer shorts and curtain scraps. So far, I’ve only begun to cut the fabric and envision its final form. But with this trash in my hands I can already picture people living in a re-enchanted future.

Goodbye, Lone Ranger: Empathy and Sustainability, Part One

2011-05-11T11:22:00.004-04:00

Reading about the tensions between collective and individual identity in Jeremy Rifkin’s bible-length tome, The Empathic Civilization, I realized I’ve lived most of my life with a Lone Ranger mentality. As an American kid who grew up in the sparsely-populated landscape of northern Nevada amidst a ranching family that prizes hard work and self reliance above anything else, that’s hardly a surprise. Many of my most vivid experiences as a child took place in landscapes rich with imagination, but devoid of many other people. During transcendent moments at the peak of adolescence, I stood alone on craggy mountaintops or under immense starry skies, stunned by the contrast between nature’s grandeur and my tiny self. In darker moods, I fantasized about escaping the pressures of high school for a hermit’s cabin in the middle of nowhere.

For all of my young years, I thought of myself first and foremost as a unique individual with needs that could be mostly met through my own efforts. I valued my independence above all and defined myself by my courage to act outside social norms. Communities? Who needed ‘em when all they offered were expectations I couldn’t or didn’t want to meet. After high school graduation, I shot out of my hometown like a rocket ship headed for Mars. Who knew when I’d be back in touch with my fellow Earthlings?

In the 10+ years since then something has definitely shifted. Along the path through college, love, and work, I started to hunger more for connection with people rather than distance. I had once romanticized the rugged individual; now I searched high and low for that special feeling I could only describe as “community.” Part of this change, I’m sure, is just growing up, transitioning my values as I’ve matured and learned more about the world. More interestingly,it also signals my recognition of the importance of relationships in not only fulfilling my own potential, but also the potential of human life on Earth.

I encountered Rifkin’s exploration of a civilization based on empathy at just the right moment, at the tail end of my time as a graduate student in the Urban Environmental Leadership program and just as I was wrapping up my final thesis exploring youth participation and urban agriculture. Rifkin paints a picture of humanity that binds us all together—from our earliest days to the present—in an undeniable arc toward greater awareness of “the other.”

This development of collective and individual capacities for empathy is not a coincidence and not without purpose. And, most fascinating to me, it can’t happen without widespread cultural consciousness of both strong self-identities and rich interpersonal relationships. Child development expert Joseph Chilton Pearce explains that the self can only be created by interacting with other unique selves. Rifkin’s book reveals that the open and tolerant exchanges necessary for fostering empathic communities can only come about within diverse communities of self-assured individuals. Both represent inter-dependent feedback loops that, once initiated, only serve to strengthen themselves (unless, as Rifkin notes, the “entropic burden” becomes too great, which I will explore in part 2 of this series).

What does all of this mean for me? I’ve had a lot of “ah-ha” moments reading The Empathic Civlization (and Pearce’s book From Magical Child to Magical Teen) and I’m finding ways to knot together many of the theoretical loose ends I’ve had flapping in the breeze of my investigations. I’m only halfway through Rifkin’s 616 pages (and only up to the Industrial Revolution in his chronicling of human history), but I’ve already started to think through the relevance of these ideas for urban environmental leaders and our work on sustainability issues. I now have a framework for considering my own transition from Lone Ranger to community member (I’ll have to do more research to find a cultural model to emulate—I think they’re rare in the U.S.).

Over the past few years, I’ve used volunteering as a way to explore my mounting list of questions about communities, citizenship, and activism. I have not only developed ties to the place I live and the people around me, but I’ve also redefined how I think of myself. On a recent Sunday when I had back to back events scheduled with various community projects, I anticipated feeling stressed and exhausted by all of the interactions and wanted to put on my old hermit cloak and disappear in the desert. Somewhere between the second and third event I realized I was riding high—full of energy, inspiration, and excitement from working together with interesting and diverse people to create new ways of doing and being. Goodbye, Lone Ranger, here in this community of empathic selves is where I’m meant to be.

Blazing a Leadership Trail

2011-05-03T17:04:00.000-04:00

After two years and 11 trips to Boston, numerous papers and dozens of blog posts, countless hours of reading and an intense, four-month-long action research project, my time in the Urban Environmental Leadership master’s program at Lesley University has come to an end. I’m still trying to absorb the fact that this momentous undertaking is now complete. But maybe that’s because this program has opened my eyes to the ongoing and cyclical nature of learning.

Although I’ll take one last flight to Boston in a few weeks to receive my diploma at commencement, I know that my process of becoming an urban environmental leader has only begun. Moving forward, I will have opportunities to re-make the theories I’ve read about and discussed by applying them in real-world settings. I will build on the community connections I’ve made and add depth to the projects I’ve started. And I’ll undoubtedly be surprised to discover how lessons learned through the program dovetail with experiences in other parts of my professional and personal life.

I’ve already started to notice those connections by pulling together much of the writing I’ve done on the web into a cohesive unit on Trailmeme. This tool lets users act as expert tour guides making sense out of endless mounds of online content. It also provides a structure for aligning specific web pages around a central theme. I tried it out by chaining together blog posts I’ve written over the past several years. The posts from my pre-Urban Environmental Leadership days intermingle in unique ways with those I crafted while immersed in the program. The path I carved out does not follow a logical order—posts from 2007 hook up with posts from 2010 and back again—and it covers a broad range of topics that don’t have obvious relationships—from information design for the millennial generation to feedback loops in leaf veins to creativity as a form of protest.

I like this visual (and clickable) trail because it shows me learning and exploring, testing and checking, drawing connections and weaving in new threads. It gives me a graphic reminder that my development as a leader didn’t start with my entry into grad school and it won’t end as I continue moving forward.

Zooming around the Urban Environment with Prezi

2011-03-24T21:00:00.002-04:00

I've fallen head over heels with Prezi. It's a super snazzy web-based presentation tool and it only took me one day to learn.

Learn what? How to zoom, swoop, skip, and fly. How to frame and gather and highlight. How to bring words to life without departing from Times New Roman and get my point across with only a few key photos. How to make a statement on a clean white background that makes PowerPoint's array of colors and themes seem way overdone.

I love how Prezi mimics the way people actually communicate: we organize our thoughts, but not linearly. We drill down into ideas and then pull back out for a 360 degree view. We pick up one thread and knot its ragged end with another we find waiting in a dusty corner. Prezi provides a way to make visible the kind of thought-webs that urban environmental leaders construct in their heads, linking seemingly disparate concepts and issues in a messy, looping, reiterative network of inspiration, feedback, and meaning.

This is a presentation I made for a discussion with local high schoolers about the food system and human social interaction. I can't wait to have another opportunity to zoom around with Prezi.

Food and Society on Prezi

Bringing Home “Vacation Mind”

2010-10-28T20:58:00.005-04:00

The best thing about traveling, I’ve decided, especially abroad, where I don’t understand the language and people operate by different cultural rules, is the “vacation mind” that descends and dazzles me into a buzzing state of openness. I had the good fortunate to visit Hong Kong and Vietnam this month and in spite of the 300-plus pictures I took and the few Vietnamese handicrafts I packed into my suitcase, this state of mind seems like the most valuable souvenir from my trip.

In Hong Kong, I dawdled on the longest outdoor elevator in the world, meandered through a wet market snapping photographs of vegetables and seafood, bumped along in a 16-seat mini-bus, careened down rollercoaster streets in a taxi, peered out at bustling streets from the top of a double-decker bus, blatantly wielded my guidebook trying to navigate my way to a distant neighborhood, and shoveled fish and dumplings and rice and noodles into my mouth with chopsticks, meal after meal.

I didn’t worry about hiding my non-localness—even though many Westerners live and work in Hong Kong, the population is overwhelmingly Chinese and the language of casual conversations is Cantonese. Being an obvious outsider gave me a certain freedom. I could simply observe and engage and appreciate without making judgments about the place or the people or myself. My senses took over and brought me into immediate contact with the sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and textures of foreign-ness.

This sensory experience deepened as I explored Vietnam, losing any vestiges of routine as I immersed myself in the tropical paradise of Con Dao, a still-remote island in the South China Sea. Floating on my back in the calm waves of the bay, ordering dinner in a garage-like restaurant from a family who spoke only Vietnamese, peering into the underwater world of corals and tiny fish and bobbing up to pour saltwater out of my snorkel, I embraced every moment of newness.

When I buzzed around the island on one of the motorbikes that serve as the locals’ favorite mode of transportation, I felt eyes on me as people gawked at the tall white woman in a skirt and sunglasses. But none of the self-consciousness I would feel in my own country crept in and I looked right back at them, waving when I felt confident enough to release my grip from the handlebars.

As Scott Russell Sanders said in a speech given at the 2006 Civic Tourism conference, traveling has to be about more than escaping the daily grind. What we learn while on vacation should improve our daily existence when we come back home: “As in a mythic quest, what begins as a private search ends up enhancing the life of the tribe.”

If what I just returned from was a mythic quest, a journey to shed light on the everyday workings of my own culture, this is what I want to share with the tribe: the pressure we put on ourselves to fit in, act right, meet expectations, be productive doesn’t have to be so overpowering. And the barriers separating us from others aren’t as brick-solid as we think. We can let ourselves slip into vacation mind, look a complete stranger in the eye and wonder about who they are, what might they might hold in common with us, what differences might rattle us into an entirely new way of thinking.

Riding back from my first-ever snorkeling dip on one of Con Dao’s brightly-painted fishing boats, I looked around at the mountainous isles, the rolling waves, the cloud-strewn sky, and the sunweathered men who had generously shared out their beer and dried squid and freshly-caught fish. With the wind in my face I turned to my traveling partner and soul mate and said with complete honesty, “My heart is so open right now.” The gift I can give to my home community is to hold onto that openness as long as I can, and to share it.

Uncaging My Voice

2010-10-05T20:53:00.014-04:00

For the past several weeks, I have been actively letting go of the pursuit of perfection. Kind of a bold goal, I know. But even more brazen, I think, to question why I would ever engage in such an impossible and hubristic pursuit in the first place. I’m still untangling the reasons, but rather than sit and fight with the ghastly knot, I’ve decided to simply take out my scissors and clip it free.

One way I’ve started to embrace my imperfection is by taking Rachel Bagby’s advice to make some noise. In her book Divine Daughters Bagby charges daughters everywhere to sing, chant, hum, feel the bones of their chests vibrate with the power of sound. With a little trepidation, I tried it one day. I used to sing in the youth choir at church, but never had any kind of vocal training and plenty of loved ones have guffawed at my attempts to mimic my favorite American Idol stars. Now realizing that I can raise my voice in joy or hurt and the ensuing sound doesn’t have to be perfect, I have discovered a whole realm of possibility for expressing my relationship with all kinds of things—family, the urban environment, life, what blankets it all.

That first day, I cranked up David Gray’s Life in Slow Motion and twirled and kicked and let the coos and ahhs and zzings spill out of me in delicious imperfection. After this, my voice was uncaged. Everything I thought about for long became a sound. I watched crows flapping across the sky at sunset and found myself chanting about them flying home to roost, home to roost. I sashayed home from the bus stop one night fluting out the same single line of Singin’ in the Rain over and over again. And when it came time to think about my sense of place in the city for a cooperative inquiry project I’m doing with classmates, I knew my voice would be the perfect medium to express my complex and evolving feelings on this subject. “Create dangerously,” Albert Camus said, and this scary-thrilling slide down the slopes of imperfection has pushed me to act.

Magical Blending of Personal and Public

2010-09-30T14:21:00.001-04:00

Here in Arlington, many of the elder (and some not-so-elder) residents speak proudly about the “Arlington Way.” When I first heard the term I knew it had to be something special. In a 2003 report on the evolving role of citizenship in Arlington, local researchers Patrician and Strand describe the Arlington Way as a tradition of resident involvement in local government, particularly the citizen commissions that advise the county board on issues like education, transportation, and development. But these authors push the definition of citizenship even further, which provides potential for many more Arlington residents to take ownership of the role:

"Drawing a bright-line boundary around ‘civic engagement’ is neither possible nor desirable. Striking up a conversation at a dog park, a networking event, the school bus stop, the softball field, a church meeting, or a bar can draw citizens into informal groups that may (or may not) eventually lead to official processes. All of these provide opportunities or are entry points for civic engagement."

Alternative modes of citizenship come in all shapes and sizes in Arlington and one of my favorites is at the Ft. Barnard Community Garden. During the garden’s initial construction, neighboring residents registered formal complaints, opposing the untidy appearance of the newly created plots. In response, members of the garden spoke up at a county board meeting and saved their growing space. Now the garden is a serene and verdant sanctuary of vegetable crops and flowers, well-loved by members and neighbors alike.

Although individuals manage their own plots of about ten by ten feet, everyone cooperates to tackle recurring or special projects that affect the space as a whole. They mow the grass between plots, maintain commonly-owned tools, and share the tasks of opening up the garden in spring and closing it down for the winter. A few budding apiarists take care of three beehives at the garden’s center. Others tend a plot dedicated to growing vegetables for the Arlington Food Assistance Center.

This community garden exudes a sense of shared purpose. As a place where people can weed their garden beds in contemplative silence or join in lively conversation with fellow gardeners, the Fort Barnard garden magically blends the personal and the public. I think the connections made here—both with the urban environment and with its human inhabitants—nurture the seeds of ecological citizenship. Gardens like this one show how collectively striving for diverse personal versions of “the good life” can actually be done.

The New Citizen Training Grounds

2010-09-13T15:00:00.003-04:00

The practice of growing food in the city has made some exciting strides this growing season. From the launch of The Farm at Walker Jones, an educational and production garden in northwest Washington, DC, to the re-visioning of zoning laws in Seattle to allow urban agriculture to flourish in all areas of the city, innovative ideas are taking hold and spurring the development of even more creative projects. The health and social benefits of community gardens have long been recognized and the economic possibilities of growing food in cities are now being more fully explored, but I think urban agriculture has another prospective advantage: the ability to produce not just consumable crops, but also engaged citizens.

Why is citizenship so essential for the progress of our cities? Herbert Reid, author of Recovering the Commons: Democracy, Place, and Global Justice, writes that “we will make little progress toward a sustainable Earth unless we can forge a politics recognizing that social and natural emancipation codetermine one another.” Active, dedicated citizens are the linchpin in the development of environmentally and culturally sustainable cities. And urban agriculture provides a way to get there.

I’ve written before about Agricultural Urbanism, a model for city planning that includes in its definition of urban agriculture not just the act of growing plants in soil, but also the transportation, processing, and selling of food products, as well as the sensual and often communal practices of cooking, savoring, and celebrating food. Bob Ransford, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based design and public affairs consultant, describes this approach to integrating food into the fabric of cities as “an instigator and activator for community life. It is both the product of citizen engagement and the vehicle for citizen engagement at the community level.”

In a culture where the notion of citizenship has been stripped of its full meaning and has become synonymous with the terms voter, taxpayer, and even consumer, I think we need many more “vehicles” for ordinary people to access the power of citizenship. In the book Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems, Peter Newman and Isabella Jennings list several alternative modes for engaging people in citizenship, from deliberative polls, where people dialogue with experts on contentious issues then share their opinions, to participative budgets, where municipalities directly consult residents about how to set priorities for spending.

But people need training on how to participate in and get the most out of these experiences. As John Barry pointed out during a 2004 panel on “The Nature of Citizenship,” “citizens are made not born.” Urban agriculture projects can help by serving as training grounds for people to practice collective decision making and participatory democracy. This summer, I explored the social structures, potential for citizen-building, and community ties of three urban vegetable gardens, including the garden at Arlington’s Central Library. In upcoming posts, I’ll write about what I discovered and continue identifying the connecting threads between growing food in cities and fostering citizenship among urban dwellers.

Urban Crossroads: Soil, Plants, and People

2010-08-10T22:13:00.005-04:00

Since talking with Kim Haun about Arlington’s potential to become a “community of gardeners” I’ve explored several growing spaces around the county where citizen involvement in urban agriculture yields more than just vegetables. From the Ft. Barnard community garden where plot owners participate in collective work days and celebrate with a late-summer cookout in the garden, to the immaculate rows of tomatoes, Swiss chard, and eggplant at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church where every harvest benefits the Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC), these lovingly tended patches of earth link one neighbor to another, feeding both body and soul.

The new vegetable garden at Arlington’s Central Library impacts many residents thanks to its highly visible and publicly accessible location. Squeezed into a small space in a landscaping bed formerly devoted to decorative shrubs and grasses, the garden serves as a conversation starter for a diverse group of people visiting the library. Not only does it get people talking about the potential for growing food in the city, it also spotlights the issue of food inequality in a generally affluent area: every pound of produce harvested from the library garden goes to AFAC where it’s distributed to Arlington residents in need of healthy food.

Puwen Lee, AFAC’s coordinator of volunteers and the Plot Against Hunger program, helped establish the garden at Central Library earlier this year. During summer evening harvest sessions she has encountered numerous people who have approached this magnetic space with wonder and excitement. One man saw it once, then returned with his wife to show off the little vegetable oasis. A woman and her son walked by on corn-picking night and asked if they could take home the discarded husks to make tamales.

For Puwen, this growing space provides an opportunity to map the web between people, food, and community, and back again: “Connecting people is the inspiration for me.” Sharing of knowledge is key, she says, and that happens both informally and formally at “Tuesdays in the Garden” gatherings where volunteers are on hand to share information and hear ideas from anyone stopping by. When I attended last week’s session I perceived the positive energy reverberating around this dynamic intersection of soil and plants and people. I can’t wait to see what new kinds of relationships and actions it will encourage in our urban landscape.

A New Kind of Community

2010-07-26T20:44:00.004-04:00

This past week, I had the chance to visit with Kimberly Haun, the coordinator of Arlington’s community garden program. At the center of a network of people excited about growing food in the city, Kim helped me identify new places to look for the connections between urban agriculture and civic participation. During our conversation she told me a story that shows how Arlington’s urban environment paired with its unique culture has the potential to create a vibrant food-growing citizenry.

Back in April, as part of Arlington Public Library’s month-long celebration of food, Novella Carpenter read from her book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. To introduce the Oakland, California-based author to Arlington’s version of urban agriculture, Kim took her on a tour of the 26-square mile county and its community gardens. As they looked around Novella noticed with surprise the absence of vacant lots. These readily available, untapped resources just waiting to be reclaimed for growing food in Oakland are not even part of the landscape in Arlington where unclaimed land is scarce.

For the community garden program that Kim coordinates, there’s a three-year wait to get your hands in the soil. Arlingtonians are hungry to grow their own food, but the little open space still available can’t satisfy that mounting urge. Instead of focusing solely on carving out more plots in the existing gardens, Kim says her approach is rather to help Arlington become a “community of gardeners.” In such a place, people can’t help but grow food in any way they can. In pots on balconies and windowsills. In neighbors’ backyards. In median strips where previously there was only grass. At churches and libraries and schools. On rooftops overlooking the city.

As I left, Kim gave me a book that made it easy to imagine Arlington as this kind of community. In Paul Fleischman’s Seedfolks neighbors who begin as strangers grow vegetables in a trash-filled square of unwanted land. Without intending to, they become important to one another as they transform the space into a beautiful garden. My next step will be to identify ways Arlington can leverage that kind of personal connectivity to go beyond the existing definition of community garden and develop into an active and engaged community of gardeners.

Cultivating Citizenship in the Community Garden

2010-07-17T11:58:00.001-04:00

Urban gardens are a great place to bump up against the idea of citizenship. At the South Four Mile Run community garden where I’ve been sharing a plot with a friend this summer, I’ve chatted and deliberated with gardeners diverse in age, ethnicity, communication style, and approach to growing food. I’ve embraced the opportunity to experience first-hand the range of advantages and challenges associated with community gardening—from receiving extra tomato plants from one neighbor to being locked out of the plot by another. Even the way I landed on the chance to garden here came about through the unpredictable nuances of human networks: I happened to strike up a conversation with someone at a launch party for the DC Food For All blog. She needed a buddy to share her plot, which happened to be at the community garden only half a mile from my house where I’d been on the waiting list for a year!

Unlike gardening on private property, growing veggies in a community garden pushes people to confront their roles as citizens. Interactions with neighbors can’t be avoided. Conflict is inevitable. Some personal preferences have to be sacrificed in order to achieve a measure of happiness for everyone. The duties and responsibilities of working tiny plots of land in close proximity with other community members echo those of “republican citizenship.”

John Barry delves into the contemporary implications of citizenship in his article “Resistance is Fertile: Exploring Green Citizenship from Republicanism to Recycling.” His observation that republican citizenship “does not require that there be one ‘commonly held’ view of the good life” makes sense in the community garden. My co-gardeners and I don’t have the exact same values, but we try to coexist in a way that allows everyone to find their own kind of satisfaction. It currently happens, I think, without much conscious intention. As Barry points out though, “citizens are made not born.” In order for effective citizenship to become commonplace in cities, we need to set up structures for learning and practicing its necessary skills. Community gardens could be the perfect landscape for growing engaged citizens.

Practicing Agriculture with a Month of Potlucks

2010-06-29T21:16:00.002-04:00

Maybe it has something to do with the start of summer, but I’ve taken part in more potluck meals this month than I have all year long.

It started with the lunch meeting at work where I brought a simple salad of fresh greens harvested the night before from my community garden plot. A few days later I picked up some New York cheddar cheese and crackers from Glut Co-op in Mt. Rainier, Maryland to share at a happy hour with coworkers. Then I made shortcakes and sliced up not strawberries, but sweet cherries and took them to a barbecue celebrating Arlington Traditional School’s garden volunteers. And just this weekend I prepared two special dishes for a group of friends using vegetables grown by Tree and Leaf Farm, who I work for at a local farmer’s market: roasted fingerling potatoes with shallots and two loaves of zucchini bread. Ah, summer!

All of this delicious food—much of it sourced locally or regionally—took on a deeper meaning when I shared it with others. Watching the film Nourish: Food and Community tonight emphasized what my month of potlucks already told me: the connections between what we eat and how we relate to our neighbors runs much deeper than we realize. Chef Bryant Terry hints at it when he describes farmer’s markets as events that create community. People get a certain kind of satisfaction from shopping at a farmer’s market even when they can’t pinpoint exactly how it happens. The spark joining food and community happens there just as it does at meals where everyone contributes their own lovingly prepared dishes.

I’ve realized how easy it is to get swept up in the excitement of the “grow your own” movement and forget that agriculture includes more than just the production of food. The approach of Agricultural Urbanism seeks to interject all components of the food system back into our everyday lives. This not only includes growing food, but also processing, distributing, selling, buying, and eating it! It’s exciting to think about my potluck meals as one more link in the chain of urban agriculture—and an important mechanism for the development of engaged communities.

Shattering the "Surround" with Food

2010-06-17T01:04:00.004-04:00

As part of my intern orientation at the Capital Area Food Bank, I read David Hilfiker’s Poverty in Urban America, a brief, but brave discussion of the causes and consequences of the poverty challenging communities across the country. Hilfiker describes the conditions keeping people in poverty as a crushing “surround” that make it impossible to break free. I experience varying levels of stress every day, but I can’t imagine that kind of pressure—constant and wearying and wholly unjust. And yet, Hilfiker notes the determination of people to survive, to reach something better despite the odds.

This is where community comes into play. Improvements in job availability, support networks, healthy food access, and vertical integration or neighborhoods (where high-, middle-, and low-income folks interact and do business together) can chip away at the hard shell of that “surround.” Urban agriculture can be a way to start that process.

Growing food in the city is about more than just community gardens and farmer’s markets. A truly functioning urban agricultural system includes webs of local enterprises taking food every step of the way—from production and processing, to distribution and dining. I like the approach of Agricultural Urbanism, a framework for city planning that “focuses on integrating the widest possible range of food system elements into a community in a manner appropriate to that community.” It even includes mechanisms for educating residents and celebrating the gifts of food as integral components in the big picture. Agricultural Urbanism aims to make food part of people’s lives again, changing its production from something distant, hidden, and mysterious into something prominent, visceral, and knowable.

On their own, garden plots and fresh produce can’t lift entire communities out of poverty. But maybe a more integrated vision of urban agriculture could make strides in that direction. By providing jobs, educational opportunities, and social ties, a city-based food system might not only curb hungry, but connect people emotionally and culturally to the places they live. After that bond is made and the debilitating “surround” is shattered, community members may then be able to begin the journey toward civic engagement. Urban agriculture could become a key mode of developing citizenship, particularly among disempowered urban communities. My goal for the next few months is to uncover the stories of how and where this is already taking place.

Urban Agriculture: Feeding More than Bellies?

2010-06-06T21:20:00.005-04:00

How many ways can you grow food in the city? From small-scale farms and shared-space CSAs, to creative container gardening and workplace growing spaces, the possibilities are practically limitless. As new stories of urban farmers and backyard gardeners pop up all over the American landscape, the practice of urban agriculture seems more practical and viable every day. The Breaking through Concrete Tour, for example, is traveling to cities across the country from May 19 to July 10 to highlight some of the most intriguing stories surrounding this re-emerging phenomenon.

Both popular media coverage and scholarly research continue to enlighten us about the benefits of city-based food production, particularly relating to health and economics. But what about the less tangible effects? How does urban agriculture feed more than just bellies and begin to nurture civic participation? What happens to people’s sense of place when they tend tomatoes in a community garden plot or take a class on incorporating fresh vegetables into home-cooked meals? Do children who spend time in a schoolyard garden develop a stronger sense of community that leads to more civic involvement in adulthood?

This summer, I’ll be exploring all of these questions and more as I look closer at the relationship between urban agriculture and civic participation. During my first week as an intern at the Capital Area Food Bank I visited a little oasis of a youth garden tucked into a quiet neighborhood in southeast Washington, DC. The heat and humidity did nothing to diminish the kids’ energy as they lined up to take part in the afternoon’s cooking class. They squirmed at the picnic table and jostled with one another for cups of ice water, but when it came time to cook, their attention couldn’t be torn away. One boy sliced tomatoes while two others snipped scallions. A small crew heated tortillas and beans on a hot plate and others harvested Asian greens from a raised bed.

The focus of these kids on the task at hand was incredible. And their pride in preparing this food shone through in their bright eyes and wide grins. The children rushed through eating their snack when an afternoon rain shower became a downpour. They squealed under the cool droplets and asked for help untying their aprons, then raced off for the next activity.

Even though their attention spans may be youthfully short right now, something tells me these kids will remember this garden when they’re older. Will it affect not only how they choose to eat, but also how they decide to interact with the community and with larger society? I’m looking forward to digging into this question as I dig into the soil this summer.

Embracing “Creative Stress”

2010-05-05T21:47:00.001-04:00

“Drip, drip, drip.” That’s not a leaky faucet or the remnants of a spring rain, but how author James O’Dea describes the constant presence of “low-grade” stress in our lives. It’s easy to dismiss because we get used to pushing it to the back of our minds. It’s not pressing enough to demand our full attention so we let it stay buried. But the build up can get to us. That ongoing drip, drip, drip dulls our senses and our openness. We glaze over. We turn away from others. We deny ourselves.

For a leader, these negative effects of stress can spell the end of effectiveness and connection. That’s why I’m interested in transforming the everyday tension that chips away at my ability to respond to problems large and small from a detriment into the advantage of “creative stress.” This powerful force “is all about freeing you to be you,” but, as O’Dea points out, “there is no short-term quick-fix that will deliver you to yourself; there are no shortcuts.”

So how to start this evolving process? O’Dea recommends paying careful attention to your own patterns of avoidance: when do you gloss over your feelings on a subject or pass on a potentially difficult interaction with someone? Just identifying these instances can begin to open up wells of suppressed creative energy.

I can imagine how electrifying it would be to finally tap into an inner force that has long been smothered. And what a resource for an emerging environmental leader! I have certainly experienced firsthand O’Dea’s reminder that “there are no shortcuts” to becoming unified with your true self. It must be the same with finding your true nature as a leader. So here I go…I’ve got a lot of hard work to put in. But perhaps I can leverage my creative stress into eye-opening experiences along the way.

Active Openness to Alternate Viewpoints

2010-04-26T20:50:00.002-04:00

Back in March I wrote about the importance of listening. As I explore what it means to be a leader, particularly a servant-leader, I’m realizing more and more how vital it is to avoid the pitfalls of “group think.” Although it’s easy to surround ourselves with perspectives that validate our own beliefs and opinions, this kind of isolation reduces the potential for effective leadership.

After reading Saul Alinsky’s writing on “native leadership”, I started pondering the sources of group think. Although Alinsky argues that leaders who emerge from within a community offer more authentic guidance than outside “social do-gooders,” both types of leaders can become stuck in isolating viewpoints. Place-specific knowledge, history, and connections give native leaders an edge in communicating with constituents who are also their neighbors and friends. But tightly-knit social networks can also create opportunities for abuse of power if they quash the plurality of voices present in any community.

A leader who understands the necessity of curbing group think may affect more than just the group she directly manages and motivates. As J. Richard Hackman points out in Leading Teams, “many of the skills that are grouped under the emotional intelligence label are learnable.” In other words, most people have the capability to develop the awareness and receptiveness that allow a diversity of perspectives to flourish; they just need to be taught how to cultivate those skills and apply them.

That’s good news for leaders—it means they aren’t alone in their efforts to make constructive listening a key component in the movement for urban and global sustainability. This more nuanced understanding of the functions and capacities of teams will play a crucial role in 21st Century leadership styles. As I work to define my own style of servant-leadership, I will actively pursue proficiency in the flip side of group think—active openness to alternate viewpoints.

Honing Leader Vision: Relational Power

2010-04-19T22:10:00.001-04:00

As I’ve started heading down the path to urban environmental leadership, I’ve thought more about personal and social power. Many people think of power as a tool for oppression or a path to corruption. In Getting a Grip, Frances Moore Lappe says “power is an idea. And in our culture it’s a stifling idea. We’re taught to see power as something fixed—we either have it, or we don’t” (p. 78). Richard Manning’s article “The Oil We Eat” ties the beginning of social power imbalances to the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago. The first farming settlements, he writes, were marked by

“grain and granaries and, more tellingly, of just a few houses significantly larger and more ornate than all the others attached to those granaries. Agriculture was not so much about food as it was about the accumulation of wealth. It benefited some humans, and those people have been in charge ever since.”

The modern industrialized world’s dependence on fossil fuel maintains this unbalanced paradigm by denying people, groups, and governments the power to act outside of it. Peter Droege addresses this problem in Renewable City, his book on sustainable energy generation. Even though the idea of limitless growth fueled by limitless energy sources has been debunked on paper, it still keeps a tight cap on people’s ability to imagine alternatives. We have become reliant on a system that not only denies power to a great majority while allowing a small minority to profit, but also has made itself seem inseparable from life as we know it.

Lappe provides a hopeful viewpoint, contending that another approach is possible: “If power is our capacity to get things done, then even a moment’s reflection tells us we can’t create much alone. From there, power becomes something we human beings develop together—relational power.” To hone my “leader vision,” I’m going to continue searching out real-life examples of relational power and think about ways I can foster opportunities for empowerment—both for myself and for my community.

“Bird by Bird”

2010-04-04T13:44:00.003-04:00

In Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken discusses the strengths and vulnerabilities of what he calls the most powerful social movement in human history—the collective efforts to protect the environment, secure justice and equality for all people, and defend the earth’s remaining indigenous cultures. Although he writes with an attitude of hope, Hawken makes it clear that transformation won’t happen overnight. Tracing the movement’s roots back to the emergence of fact-based natural science in the 18th century, he shows just how long this change has been a-brewing. And we still have so much work to do.

For a nascent urban environmental leader like me, this pace seems ploddingly slow. With all the pressing issues facing our world, why can’t we move faster? Can the movement ever become more than just a collection of special interests? Will we really be able to turn the tide and implement sustainable practices on the wide scale necessary to make a difference?

As an undergraduate creative writing major, I revered Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird for its funny and accurate depiction of the neurotic and emotionally challenging life of a writer. All of her advice rang true, but the story associated with the title is one I’ll never forget. Lamott tells of her brother at ten, overwhelmed by a research project on birds due the next day:

“He was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

As I work to become an effective urban environmental leader, taking small actions to bolster this historic movement, I need to remember to take it bird by bird. It’s easy to forget that my small drops in the bucket are combining with hundreds of thousands of other drops that will soon fill this vessel to overflowing. According to Hawken, the one-step-after-the-other approach defines the success of our collective action: “This movement’s key contribution is the rejection of one big idea in order to offer in its place thousands of practical and useful ones.”

Although it’s often tough to measure progress, this systematic chipping away at environmental disregard and social injustice may be the best way forward. Bird by bird…

Citizenship 101: A Pre-Requisite for Leadership

2010-03-29T21:07:00.007-04:00

In her book, Getting a Grip, Frances Moore Lappe explores an alternate version of reality: what would life in the United States be like if democracy meant more than consumerism supplemented by an annual trip to the polls? In her definition of “Living Democracy” everyone has the opportunity, the training, and the tools to participate in decision making. Instead of an “us” versus “them” attitude, citizens hold themselves accountable for civic accomplishments and setbacks because they have driven the process—a government that is truly of, by, and for the people!

After spending the last two months looking closely at how my individual behaviors affect the urban environment, I am convinced that real transformation depends on the momentum of community. Rather than focusing on what each person is doing wrong, I am more interested in creating new structures that make it easier for everyone to do right.

But how do we get there? Lappe’s fresh perspective on democracy may hold the key. Revising physical and social frameworks will be a huge and complicated task. In order to get broad buy-in, citizens must be involved in the process. More than simply providing multiple and varied channels for engagement, we also need to foster a culture that encourages ordinary people to live public lives. Lappe lists many ways people can put their individual values into public service: beyond the familiar roles of consumer and voter, we can also act as savers and investors, advocates and volunteers, service recipients and tax payers, employers and workers, members and leaders.

All of this has me thinking that my job as an aspiring urban environmental leader is to first develop my role as citizen. Before I can motivate or empower others to shake off the inertia of a system that doesn’t serve our needs, I must fully own my citizenship and all of the duties and privileges that come with it. I must be willing to interweave my life’s public and private threads. How many ways can I help bring our democracy back to life?

Feedback Loops: From Leaves to Leadership

2010-03-18T15:54:00.005-04:00

As I hurry through my days and weeks, busy with projects, activities, and chores, it helps to have an occasional reality check. The elegant and effective structure of a simple leaf reminds me of the importance of feedback loops. A recent article in The Economist highlighted research showing that closed-loop networks in biological structures like leaf veins are far from redundant: they increase efficiency, “allow for a more nuanced delivery system,” and “help to ameliorate damage.”

Like a leaf, I can monitor my own growth as a leader by using loops to check in, re-evaluate, and shift energies. Practices like reflective writing, talking with close friends and family, and reviewing formalized goals all provide opportunities for looping back. Some of these things I do occasionally or absent-mindedly. I’d like to be more purposeful about them in order to reap the full benefits of the looped network—efficiency (personal efficacy), nuance (deeper awareness of self and world), and damage control (mental, emotional, and physical health).

My first step is to close the loop and transform current habits into meaningful practices. I’ll start with my journal—turn it into a fully-functioning feedback loop by going back and reading what I’ve written, assessing any changes in my values and goals. While eating breakfast (which I have recently tried to reserve for just eating—no multitasking!), I will be open to receiving signals from the farthest corners of my being, checking on the status of my head and heart, spirit and soul.

As for new practices, a few possibilities are bubbling up. A few days ago, a friend and I spent three hours sketching with oil pastels and letting conversation come and go. The process of creating while talking and listening satisfied me deeply and I hope to make these art-making sessions a regular opportunity to “create dangerously.” I’ve also been invited to help start a Wisdom Circle (a small-group gathering for sharing and listening) and this could help me evaluate my progress and develop a close community of advisors.

I recently discovered this piece of advice from spiritual leader Anandamayi Ma. Its graceful challenge makes it the perfect feedback loop—a leaf flapping in the breeze that contains a universe of complexity:

“Only actions that kindle your divine nature are worthy of the name of action; all the rest are non-actions—a waste of energy.”

May all my actions be worthy of that name.

Listening to the Enemy

2010-03-11T17:30:00.001-05:00

How do servant-leaders approach their opponents? After reading an article in The Atlantic that discounted the benefits of school gardening and demeaned the importance of experiential education for today’s youth, I went from angry to intrigued. As I scanned the first pages of the piece, my heart pounded, responding physiologically to the author’s mocking words. Instead of spluttering curse words at the computer screen, I checked my reaction and kept reading.

By the final paragraphs, I had spotted the holes in the writer’s argument and identified her main goal—to create a disturbance by questioning the validity of an increasingly successful movement. Whether her intent was malicious (as could be partly supposed from her initial inflammatory language) may not matter. The article got people thinking, talking, and pushing back. Several commenters posted eloquent responses on The Atlantic’s website. Agriculture and education-related listservs lit up with posts rebutting the writer’s arguments, citing research, and articulating why gardening education works. I had the chance to share my own ideas with advocates and educators on the DC Food For All discussion group.

Although it’s more comfortable to stay insulated in a group of people who think like me, this article reminds me how important it is to hear the other side. The ability to really listen to an opposing viewpoint seems like a vital skill for servant-leaders. Not just to build stronger platforms for their own opinions, but to reach real consensus, to cultivate an idea, a plan, a step forward that everyone can support because it emerges from the basic humanity that connects us. I’d like to see more leaders—at the local and national levels, in both the public and private sectors—practice this kind of listening. I’m going to seek out ways to practice it myself. I expect my heart to pound and my defenses to rise, but I hope I can keep listening so I can begin the conversations that may just get us somewhere.

Hey, This Really Works!

2010-03-04T21:22:00.002-05:00

After reading so much about the theories of urban environmental leadership lately, I am now smack dab in the middle of an opportunity to put those concepts into practice. I’m leading a project to connect a group of willing volunteers with the schoolyard garden at Arlington Traditional School. The hope is that the school will be better able to use the enhanced and expanded garden as a place of everyday learning. And the volunteers—young adults in their 20s and 30s who are part of Community Volunteer Network—will have the chance to learn about gardening and education while making friends and giving back to the community.

Before getting dirty in the garden at our first work day this Saturday, I called a meeting to not just talk about logistics, but to start giving the project away. Bit by bit, I want the group’s members to take ownership of this idea. Inspired by what I’ve read about servant-leadership, I decided to involve the volunteers in the goal-making process. After laying out the framework for the project and explaining the school’s objectives, I passed out cards for each person to jot down goals for themselves, for the group, and for the community. When everyone began earnestly writing, I enjoyed a quick moment of silent awe and unbearable excitement. Hey, Robert Greenleaf, I wanted to call out, this really works!

At the end of our meeting, I asked people to sign up for some simple jobs to keep the group running smoothly (typing and sharing the goals, setting up a happy hour, taking photos at our work day). Again I sat in wonder—there was something so powerful about giving up control and letting others take responsibility. It’s great to have buy-in on this idea I cooked up; it’s even better to have a hand in empowering others to take action for themselves and their community.

Hop, Skip and a Jump: From Play to Leadership

2010-02-23T22:36:00.004-05:00

“Marian called it Roxaboxen. (She always knew the name of everything.) There across the road, it looked like any rocky hill—nothing but sand and rocks, some old wooden boxes, cactus and greasewood and thorny ocotillos—but it was a special place.”

In Alice McLerran’s picture book Roxaboxen a cluster of kids transforms what some would see as barren hill in the desert into an environment rich with possibility and meaning. The children create streets and houses with lines of white rocks, operate imaginary bakeries and ice cream parlors, taunt and tease each other in boy-girl battles, and become intimately familiar with lizards and cactus flowers.I love this book because even though the landscape is not quite the same as my Northern Nevada version of the desert (Roxaboxen is a real place in Yuma, Arizona, now recognized as a park), it perfectly captures the spontaneity and creativity I experienced as a child playing outdoors.

My brothers and I carved toy truck routes into the sandhills behind our house. We went on heroic quests across the alfalfa fields and bobbed in irrigation ditches brimming with sandy water. The junk pile behind our grandfather’s shop tempted us to imagine nomadic caravans (as we sheltered inside a giant tractor tire), whirring space ships (as we pushed buttons and twisted knobs on a truck’s dashboard), and shady circuses (as we bounced on rusty bed springs).

I miss playing like that—slipping into another world so completely, re-purposing discarded materials into something meaningful, gauging time by the press of sunlight and wind. Even more, I worry that today’s kids, particularly in cities and suburbs, aren’t getting that Roxaboxen experience.

Since the publication of Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods in 2005, which forcefully articulated the consequences of decreasing opportunities for unstructured outdoor play, parents and educators have been working to fix that. Schools and parks are setting aside places where children can delve into the messiness of playing in nature and exercise their imaginations along with their bodies. Hidden Oaks Nature Center (near me in Annandale, Virginia) lets kids explore, build, and imagine at the wooded Nature Playce.

Another type of space—Wild Zones—takes it in a slightly different direction. Instead of isolating children in these play areas, Wild Zones invite adults and teens to join in for a multi-generational experience. This structure encourages collaboration between people of diverse ages, laying the groundwork for an important kind of relationship—partnerships.

In an article about youth leadership and civic participation, organizer Wendy Wheeler and high schooler Carolyn Edlebeck assert that young people should serve as leaders not just in the kid-sphere, but in the real world. Instead of taking on token roles, youth leaders can make tangible contributions and accept genuine responsibilities. Rather than empowering young people, Wheeler and Edlebeck suggest partnering with them: “Empowerment assumes just one party has something to give the other. Partnership assumes each can learn from the other and already possesses gift to bring to the process.”

Common public spaces that allow kids and adults to play and work together could be the next iteration of Roxaboxen. Maybe we’ll never return to a world where children can explore nature with the freedom and independence they once did, but creative outdoor play may find renewed pertinence in its ability to connect people across generations and foster new understandings of who can lead.

Leadership on the Street: Robert Egger

2010-02-16T20:58:00.004-05:00

I felt lucky this week. I almost didn’t make my phone call with Robert Egger, founder of DC Central Kitchen, The Campus Kitchens Project, and the V3 Campaign. I almost didn’t get the chance to talk with him about America’s complicated relationship with food and the reawakening of interest in small-scale agriculture. I almost didn’t hear his exciting ideas about using social enterprise as a serious tool to curb hunger and cultivate nutrition. I almost didn’t meet this inspiring leader and add him to my list of real-life role models. But I did.

I only spoke with Mr. Egger for thirty minutes over the phone, yet I knew immediately that he’s someone I’d like to emulate. Leadership professor John J. Gardiner describes “quiet presence” as the genuine awareness of self, others, and world at the core of the servant-leader. Gardiner refers to Francisco Varela, who explains the special pull of quiet presence like this:

“When we are in touch with our ‘open nature,’ our emptiness, we exert an enormous attraction to other human beings. There is great magnetism in that state of being which has been called by Tungpa ‘authentic presence.’…And if others are in that same space or entering it, they resonate with us and immediately doors are open to us.”

I’ve met other people who exude this special openness—an intangible quality that encourages me to test norms, dares me to take risks, demands that I give my best. Now that I can put a name to it, I’ll know I can seek out quiet presence and affirm it in servant-leaders both emerging and established, the leaders on the street who challenge us all to get to work, dream bigger, create dangerously. Robert Egger calls on young leaders to heed that call.

“Create Dangerously”

2010-02-11T13:25:00.007-05:00

“There’s nothing new under the sun.” My college poetry professor always reminded us of this as my creative writing classmates and I sought to express the experiences and ideas that rocked our worlds. What seemed so uniquely personal to us had already been felt, thought, written, acted out, time after time throughout the millennia of human experience. But that didn’t stop our professor from challenging us to craft the most vivid, authentic, and emotion-rich poems that we could, and it didn’t douse our desire to create.

Since reading Robert K. Greenleaf’s commentary on the last lecture published by Albert Camus—“Create Dangerously”—I can’t get that charge out of my mind. What does it mean to create? In a world obsessed with efficiency and function, creative work often gets condescendingly labeled as personal expression—a hobby, an escape. As if the act of creating some new whole from disparate pieces serves only to calm the temperament of a person distracted from the serious business of life.

Greenleaf and Camus assert otherwise. The courage to create may be the most valued quality in anyone yearning for a better world. Servant-leaders link creativity and service by questioning norms, taking risks, asking questions, proposing solutions, starting over, again and again.

The call to create dangerously taunts me. When I think I can rest, it pops into my head and starts nagging: push back, stop whining, start imagining, get busy with your little fingers, draw a picture, let others test it, disturb that greasy glaze of fatigue coating everything that’s just “good enough.”

Next Test

Trim paper dolls from the scraps
of your enemies’ ardent speeches.
Don’t recycle. Knot
stray threads into a ladder and scramble
down to the surface of just-cooled magma.
Turn over that brick
someone’s made seem permanent.
If someone

leaves the garden gate unlocked
slip inside (otherwise hop the fence). That
green secret world
belongs to you. Despite the signs, the bodies
of gourds hang for crimes
they didn’t commit.
The pea vines know. The squash blossoms
know. The garlands of green tomatoes
know what must come next.

Walk somewhere far. Weave past unknown
buildings and trees and dripping spigots
and crowds and flocks
of starlings pecking at wide expanses of grass.
Look up at the churning clouds, then

remember: go home and shut off the lights.
When the invisible hand reaches out,
dragging its chain,
swat it away. Turn back to your dolls.
Dress them
in once-great truths you’ve deftly
scissored into nonsense.

Pebble Between My Feet

2010-02-02T13:16:00.019-05:00

An exploration always begins with a starting point. Before delving into a set of concepts, ideas, and feelings as complex as urban environmental leadership, I like to picture a tiny pebble. This smooth slice of stone rests on the ground between my feet.

To consider this pebble, I have to bend in half, look down, peer closely to detect the subtle ridges and swirls. All my attention focuses on this ordinary, tangible object—but then it shifts.

I look inward, through my knees, up my spine, into my blinking, flashing brain, and then out; my tumbling gaze takes in my immediate surroundings—peeling sycamore bark, discarded water bottle, rumbling trash truck—and spirals out, exploring ever-further rings of the urban environment.

I can go fast or slow, backwards or forwards between the layers. I can be bombarded by the big picture or go back to the pebble and focus on the core. No matter where I wander, I can always return to Start Here.

I’m going to use this method to begin designing my own approach to urban environmental leadership. It will be grounded in Robert Greenleaf’s model of serving first. My interests in leading have always been about encouraging something true and meaty to come out of the collaboration of engaged workers.

Now I will actively hold up Greenleaf’s question to each endeavor I take on: “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”