Fellow temperate-zone sufferers of garden withdrawal, how do you cope? What activities replace all those hours you’d like to be in the garden but can’t because of, you know, winter? I’m looking for help here because this is the part about being a gardening addict that’s sad, really – when we can’t. And of course it’s on top of the normal challenges to happiness that affect everyone, like short days and hostile weather. Here are my pathetic attempts to replace digging:
- Thorough immersion in podcast availability, with the help of my new Nano and the growing supply of gardening podcasts available on the web.
- Plowing through my stack of gardening magazines and books, even my nongardening books and a few New Yorkers.
- The occasional daytime movie, and lots of little red envelopes from Netflix.
See, I’m in trouble coz that’s not nearly enough. And this year is a particularly challenging one for me because I’m heading into winter without my daily dose of laughing at power from the dynamic duo on Comedy Central – the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Where else can I turn for that comic/tragic perspective?
That’s Craig Newmark speaking and he ought to know because he’s the brains and the soul behind his amazing lists. And hearing him say that to Charlie Rose last week evoked some of my fondest memories from the good old days (the late ’60s and ’70s, if you have to ask). He said he’s often asked when he’s going to start making the really big bucks and his response is always: “Once you’re living well and maybe providing for your future, what’s the point in more money?” So he’ll never go public and submit this culture-changing community service to the demands of Wall Street. And the guiding principle in the creation and management of Craigslists is to treat people how he’d want to be treated himself. I’m in love with this man.
And here’s what was all news to me – he’s really political, in the best nonpartisan way. (By that I mean I didn’t hear him bashing Bush or other Republicans, easy targets though they are.) No, bashing doesn’t do it for him. He says the Craigslist communities have taught him that people are basically good and trustworthy and moderate, so he’s working with a group called OneVoice to empower the moderates in Palestine and Isreal. After all, only 1 or 2 percent of the public are fanatics; they just make a lot more noise than anyone else. Or in the words of Jon Stewart, we hear more from extremists because moderates have stuff to do.
Other projects he actively supports, presumably with money as well as by promoting them publicly, are:
- The Sunlight Foundation, which was formed to “use the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing…Sunlight’s work is committed to helping citizens, journalists and bloggers be their own best watchdogs, both by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and websites to enable all of us to pool our intelligence in new, and yet to be imagined, ways.” Like the popular new slogan says, “Blogs are little First Amendment machines.”
- “New Assignment is a non-profit site that tries to spark innovation in journalism by showing that open collaboration over the Internet among reporters, editors and large groups of users can produce high-quality work that serves the public interest, holds up under scrutiny, and builds trust. A second aim is to figure out how to fund this work through a combination of online donations, micro-payments, traditional fundraising, syndication rights, sponsorships, advertising and any other method that does not compromise the site’s independence or reputation.”
He cites other examples of the new, more pro-active media: Meet-up, Media Bistro, Daylife. They’re part of what he calls the “Sohoblogplex.” It all sounds terribly interesting and I’ll be surfing their innards as soon as I get the chance.
Now here’s the really sticky wicket about all this. Craigslists themselves are replacing local newspapers as the go-to publisher of classified ads and are clearly hurting these already-beleaguered institutions. Asked about this, he doesn’t deny the charge but asserts that the near-monopolization (my word) of the media is a bigger problem, coupled with the influence of Wall Street on these now-public companies. Okay, that’s true but it doesn’t tell us how he feels about hurting newspapers. I wonder if the answer is that the Sunlight Foundation and New Assignment show his vision for 21st Century journalism, as defined by its essential duties of oversight and public enlightenment.
It’s all pretty revolutionary, again in the best sense. This career programmer for IBM and a Wall Street firm just wanted to create a community service, like any of us would start a Yahoo group for our neighborhood or for local gardeners. But he had the vision and skills to create something new that’s sweeping the world and helping millions get their needs met. Call it the Revenge of the Do-Good Nerd.
USED CRAIGSLISTS?
I’m curious about how readers have used this amazing service, so please tell me your stories. I’ll start:
- It’s how I found the terrific Kansas City design firm that created the GardenRant logo and header. House of Tears Design responded to a notice I posted on the Seattle List, as did about 20 others. The others were mostly super-commercial firms in India but at least one other outstanding candidate responded – a design group in Costa Rica.
- Just recently I went List-posting to find help with my new website. The pitch: “Barter Garden Coaching for Website Coaching.“ The most promising respondent lives 5 minutes away (in this metro area of 3 million people) and was SO on the ball I ended up hiring him for 10 or 15 hours of his time to help me – big-time. Well, barter was already just about my favorite thing in the whole world, but this experience clenched it.
Update: this terrific story about gardening on the via using Craigslists, via Pam Penick in Austin.
Speaking of celebrities, architect Frank Gehry is as famous as architects can be. Long known by his signature work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, he’s still wowing the critics and public alike. Witness L.A.’s Disney Concert Hall, completed in 2003.
Washington, sometimes described as the city that hires the world’s best architects to do their worst work, recently lost its chance at a stunning Gehry building – an addition to the Corcoran Gallery of
Art. The funding suddenly went away and we can only imagine the frustration of artists whose works are so difficult to realize. Gardeners pretty much have it easy on that score.
Now in my second season as a volunteer usher at a local theater, I have only good things to report. Naturally, it’s led to my seeing a bunch of plays for free. Yes, for no expense except a little gas, I’m seeing live theater – always a wow event for me. The highlight so far was last season’s "columbinus," about the Columbine High School shootings, a play I’d never have sought out willingly because I’m such a wus. My anxiety was only heightened by the preshow briefing, when we w
ere told not to say "Enjoy the show" to the patrons but instead, "Thank you for coming". Jeez, where do I hide? But it was riveting, I tell you, totally riveting, and the lead actors have been nominated for D.C.’s local acting award.
Other rewards of ushering were unexpected. Like feeling a part of the theater, if only in a tiny way. And like getting to know and having a bit of fun with the other regular ushers. Definitely a fun night out.
Last weekend I ushered for "Midwives," based on the best-selling and thought-provoking book about a home birth in Vermont that went wrong. Again, really talented people performed live in front of a couple of hundred people, probably for very little money. I sure hope our taste for entertainment doesn’t become so changed by TV and movies that we stop appreciating the immediacy and intimacy of live theater.
Scottish environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy uses leaves, grasses, stones, wood, sand, clay, ice and snow to create art in nature by arranging these building blocks of nature in unexpected ways. Andy says that "movement, change, light, growth and decay are…the energies that I try to tap through my work."
Now what exactly does Andy do that any good gardener doesn’t do every season? Help me out here. Most of his "works" don’t even last as long as our gardens do, some collapsing as soon as the tide comes in. Others, like the piles of stone he recently installed at the National Gallery in D.C., are more permanent – like the stonework we do in our gardens.
I think of Andy as like us in his love of nature and his quest to create beauty in nature and I’m totally intrigued by his success. 
He fiddles and photographs and is quite in demand. I rented a documentary film about his work and came to admire his amazing patience but also his vision and his faith in that vision. And because I also enjoy leaves, grasses, stone, wood – all of it – I love his work. Not as much as I love gardens, but I have a hunch that Andy can teach me something about arranging nature to make it more beautiful, and I’m hoping that somebody reading this will explain it to me.
[To see more of his pieces, just Google-Image his name.]
Boyobo
y, it’s great having a big chunk of time for reading – and enough great books to fill it. Which, thankfully, I did over the Thanksgiving holiday, so here’s the scoop.
First up is a really fun read about psychoanalysts by Irvin Yalom, who teaches psychiatry at Stanford and became an eminent writer in his field before turning to fiction. Here’s Irvin. If he doesn’t look the part of a shrink – or a Communist revolutionary – I don’t know what. His Lying on the Couch was a hit with my book group, including this member, and I’ll be reading more of him the next chance I get.
Next is a recent Oprah pick, so you may have already heard of it. It’s A Million Little Pieces by James F
rey, who’s more my type. Very Springsteenian, don’t ya think? This is Frey’s fascinating and gut-wrenching memoir of his three-month rehab at the Hazelton Institute. Unlike most rehab stories, this one totally rejects a Higher Power, AA, and its Twelve Steps, so it has the added appeal for me of being controversial. Soon to be released in movie form, it may even shake up the drug and alcohol recovery field, which is now totally wedded to AA as the only alternative to certain death.
And last and actually least is the book I expected to like the most – Ian McEwan’s much-praised Saturday. Heck, I’m a huge fan of 
McEwan and I even went to a local reading, so I was primed, probably too primed. To this humble reader, his account of a day in the life of a London neurosurgeon just prior to the invasion of Iraq would have made a better short story. I may be exaggerating but it seemed like it took 20 pages to get the guy out of bed, then another 30 to feed him breakfast. Sad to say, if you read the excerpt in The New Yorker, that’s probably enough.
SO, I’m back home now and life interferes with reading but I’m hoping to get to the fourth book I shlepped to Arizona – A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby. I loved his High Fidelity and About a Boy, both made into pretty good movies, and hated his next effort, How to Be Good, so it could go either way. This is about four people who meet on the roof of a building from which they all intend to jump, which is a pretty intriguing premise. [Update: Since I drafted this post I started reading the book and realized immediately that it was too close to home. I know someone who actually jumped, so why I thought I'd enjoy the "intriguing premise" is beyond me.]
