The Portal to Boomeranger World

"Waste Not" A Glimpse of Beijing Hutong Life by an Almost Baby Boomer

An Ultimate in Savings

Song Dong, one of China's most inventive artists and only two years short of official Baby Boomerdom, being born in 1966 the start of the Cultural Revolution,   has made from his mother's life and her art of saving and recycling, a wonderful installation art project that is on display at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC running through Sept 21.

See this article in the NYTimes about Song Dong's mother's life and what she saved from hutong life in Beijing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/arts/design/15song.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1

Gardening: Mary's Little Eggplant

Friends by Proxy Dirt

In the nursery rhyme of my child hood, Mary had a little lamb. But my new friend and gardening buddy, Mary has a little eggplant. And she is as proud and loving of it as if it were her woolly cuddly lamb.

Mary came to me this spring through a mutual sister gardening pal and

in response to my invitation to have someone or a few someones share my yard for gardening.

As our young publishing company and www.thimbleberrypress.com (and please, become its fan on facebook) has begun to develop, my kid grow up and need more of my time during her teen years, and the demands of this blog increase, my gardening time has diminished. I have sat longing to go outside and get my hands on the dirt...but other duties at the keyboard and steering wheel have called. So I have been thrilled to have Mary come to garden.

Mary is a dear. And a brilliant dear--who is also a medieval scholar. I love to look out my bathroom window and see her folding bike parked beside the sheds and see her loving her plants--herbs, flowers and vegetables into bloom and fruition. I sometimes feel that I am out there with my hands in the dirt instead of hers. We are friends by proxy--proxy dirt.

That Dear Little Eggplant

Mary sent me these eggplant photos two days ago and I was as thrilled as if I were at a birthing! Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, through the magic of the internet..and it does seem magic to me still, I can share in the thrill of that first vegelette transforming from bloom to tiny egglette. That is Mary's love and the trans formative amazement of dirt, rain and sun on a tiny seed to nurture it into its fulfillment.

Gardening has done that for me--even proxy gardening--taken the little seed of possible, and nourished it into becoming.

I think I will always be a becoming...we all always are really. It is a false premise that we become and then are finished. No--like Mary and my friendship and the little eggplant--we are all always becoming. And that is a delicious thing.

Energy for the World in a Blade of Grass?

"You Can't Take It with You" Movie Hits Dead Center on Energy Solution

The other day I was watching Frank Capra's 1938 movie version of Kaufman and Hart's smash Broadway hit "You Can't Take It with You".

The movie starred Lionel Barrymore, Spring Byington, James Stewart and  Jean Arthur.  In one scene, Alice and Jeff are on a date and end up in Central Park discussing life. Jeff allows that banking was not his choice.

Rather in college, he was fascinated with how the green gets into leaves and blades of grass.  Jeff plucks a blade and gently turning it in his fingers, he wonders aloud what might have happened if he and his roomie had figured out how the little engines deep in the blade of grass took the sun and made green or chlorophyll.

And then Jeff continued--with something like,

"if we had figured out that we could have figured out how to make energy from the sun and power the world".

I almost fell off the couch in astonishment. This is a movie made 1938 mind you!! 

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