On June 26th join hands with others to protest offshore oil drilling. This is an international peaceful protest. At 11am, go to your beach and at 12, join hands with others. Here’s the website that can help connect you with others in your area and give you more information about Hands Across the Sand.
On Sunday Neil wanted to go for a bike ride. We decided to go along a path he’s always been interested in, which runs along the water in Brooklyn. We drove to a spot right by the Verrazano bridge and headed toward Coney Island. Sunday was very hot, but being by the water we had a nice breeze. Much to Lindsay’s delight, our ride took us past an amusement park. We stopped there and ate our picnic lunch and Lindsay went on a few rides. It was practically empty (I guess dads don’t choose to go to amusement parks on father’s day) and the guy running the swing ride kept the ride going and going and going.
One of the things I packed was beef jerky. Don’t know why, but I saw a new kind called Go*ggi at our local cheese shop Stinky, which is a Korean-style bulgoggi flavored beef jerky. I would recommend it as an alternative to the usual teriyaki flavored ones.
The next time we’re going to explore the bike path higher up by the old airstrip Floyd Bennett Field. I hope everyone had a nice father’s day.
It’s almost the weekend and I’m just now posting about last weekend. For some reason I’m feeling very overwhelmed and can’t really pinpoint why.
Anyhoo, on Saturday Neil and I went to see the Yankees play the Mets. Our friends graciously took Lindsay for the day, so we could play grown up. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and our seats were high above home plate. I actually love being high up because it gives a really nice perspective of what everyone is doing. We were also right behind home plate, so you could really see how the ball was in relation to it. Being high up also had the added benefit of being shaded by a bit of roof, which was very appreciated.
The game was great and the Yankees won. As we were driving home we passed a building with a green roof. It’s the first green roof I’ve seen out in the wild. I’m going to have to figure out what the building is. And no, 4 years in photo school didn’t teach me not to put my finger over the lens. Actually I’m just glad I got anything because I was frantically trying to get my phone’s camera working before we drove by the building (and we were on the highway).
For several months we have been living with chairs that looked pretty shabby. The fabric covering started to tear on several of them. This weekend we finished re-covering them, which was a simple process.
One of the enormous benefits of living in New York City is the ability to find almost anything. I needed upholstery fabric, foam and dacron. I got the fabric at Mood fabrics (famous for supplying the show Project Runway) and I got the foam and dacron at Canal Rubber. Dacron is a stretchy, web-like material that covers over the foam. If you are at all like me and are not on top of *everything*, you might have chairs that go neglected. What happens under the fabric is that the foam turns a gross shade of orange and becomes brittle and powdery. The dacron stretches over the foam and keeps this powder from dusting the floor under the chair. Have I shared too much??
Anyhow, the internet is rich with videos on how to re-upholster a chair. Each version is slightly different. Glueing the foam to the seat didn’t seem right to us, so we stretched the dacron over it and stapled it down. It’s mostly just common sense.
Neil unscrewed the seat of the chair from the wooden frame. There were 4 screws on the bottom of the seat. He then took a flat head screwdriver and removed all of the staples holding the fabric and foam onto the seat. The seat is just a sheet of plywood.
I traced the plywood shape onto the foam, giving an extra 1/2″ of space all around. I cut the foam with an electric turkey carver. Now I feel I have to explain something…we don’t use this carver to cut turkey. We bought it when we made a foam turtle shell for our daughter’s Halloween costume years ago. The man at Canal Rubber suggested using a box cutter to cut the foam, but if you can get your hands on one of these electric carvers, your life will be much easier.
I cut the dacron with a pair of sharp scissors to a size about an inch or 2 larger than the foam. We placed the foam on the plywood base and stretched the dacron over it. Then we used short staples and a staple gun to attach it to the wood.
I traced the shape of the old fabric onto the new fabric. The foam we used was slightly puffier than the old foam, so I needed to add about an inch and a half all around. You can use scissors. I used a rotary cutter. Then you stretch the fabric over the dacron and staple it down. I found this much easier with two people, but you could do it solo. We also did the canvas stretching technique, which is when you start stapling the fabric in the middle of one side, then flip it around and staple the middle of the opposite side. You do this on all sides and work your way to the corners.
I should have taken more photos, but I think it is really common sense. When you get to the corners, fiddle with how you fold the fabric so it looks nice.
Last night I went to a lecture on making fermented foods. Sandor Katz was the speaker and the evening was organized by Just Food. Sandor was a funny, intelligent and very knowledgeable man. He has been experimenting with different methods of fermenting food for about 10 years. Wild Fermentation is his book, which looks to be an interesting read.
There were samples of fermented foods to sample: sauerkraut, carrot/ginger kraut (for lack of a better term), cheese and kefir. He demonstrated how easy it is to make sauerkraut while sharing his knowledge and wit with the audience. I learned a lot about making kombucha, which I think I will try soon. To make kombucha and kimchi, you need a bit of “starter”. In the case of kefir, it is called kefir grains. In the case of kombucha, it is called the mother, the mushroom or scoby. The scoby looks like a thick, gelatinous pancake. Several people in the audience very generously brought kefir grains and a scoby. The scoby grows in layers, so you can peel off a layer and start brewing your own kombucha.
There are a lot of health benefits from fermented foods: greater digestibility, higher amounts of nutrients, etc.
Be prepared to see some posts on fermented foods coming up soon!
One of the stranger things I’ve read today has been that human and animal hair and fur is being used to soak up the oil washing up from the BP spill in the Gulf. An organization called Matter of Trust is accepting donations of hair, fleece, and feathers to make into mats and booms to aid in the BP Gulf oil spill clean-up.
Go to this site for more information. Just think about how shipping hair over long distances is going to use oil though. This is probably a better local venture.
The horror of BP’s oil spill just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Now we’re hearing that it might not be until the end of August before they can drill holes to stop the oil gushing out into the Gulf. The estimates BP gave of 200,000 gallons of oil gushing were absolutely wrong. It’s almost 800,000 gallons gushing a day. They have sprayed questionable chemicals to make the oil sink, they have lied about the scope of the spill. It seems as though their priority has been to cover their asses instead of trying to fix this mess.
What amazes and disgusts me is how BP is keeping their name out of the headlines. I keep seeing it called the Gulf Spill. And then somewhere in the article they mention BP. I fear that the media is desperately trying to hang on to any and all of its advertising dollars and don’t want to alienate a big company like BP.
While writing this, I’ve been looking at various articles and noticed if they have anything to do with trying to plug, cap or stop the spill they have BP’s name in the headline. If it has to do with the actual disaster and how it’s affecting 3 Gulf states, BP’s name isn’t in the headline. Now they are working on a commercial to try and salvage their name. Is anyone besides me totally sickened by this??
My sister made a post about the spill which echos my own thoughts. There are photos of a pelican struggling in the oil sludge. Louisiana’s state bird is the brown pelican, which was extirpated there. A number of years ago it started to make a comeback in LA. It’s hard to have a state bird that is wiped out in your state. But now, the BP spill is working on decimating the brown pelican in Louisiana once again. Good job guys.
I am so disgusted and disheartened, and feel almost completely helpless to do anything. As a long-term solution we have to reduce our need for oil. Simple as that. They are just going to drill and drill in the wildest, most remote spots as long as there’s a need for the stuff. I’m part of the problem as much as anyone else. This is an awful time. My only hope is that some better regulation will come out of it. But that’s not going to help all the wildlife fighting to survive in the Gulf. Here’s a link to people working in the Gulf. I’m sure they could use donations. You can also donate to the National Wildlife Federation here.
Over the years, the bluebird population has greatly decreased. Bluebirds, as many other animals, have suffered loss of habitat. They are cavity-nesters, that seek out hollows in decaying trees. Besides the fact that there are fewer trees left to decay, there are also 2 non-native birds (european starling and the house swallow) that are much more aggressive than the timid bluebird. They snatch the available nest sites, and even take over a nest that the bluebird has claimed (by cracking their eggs and killing the nestlings and/or the parents).
A number of years ago I noticed little wooden bird houses popping up in farmer’s fields in upstate New York. This was a part of a bluebird recovery effort. I was curious about this because I had never seen a bluebird and like to hear positive stories of human/animal interactions.
Last year when I visited the Berkshires, the neighbors next to my in-laws had several bluebird houses up in their backyard. They had several bluebird families living in them and I finally saw my first bluebird. If you have never seen one, you will be blown away at the beautiful shade of dark blue on their back feathers.
This year, my in-law’s neighbor gave them a nest box and now they too have bluebirds in their yard. In fact, I saw more bluebirds than any other bird while I was there this past weekend. I tried to photograph them, but didn’t get very close. My best attempt is below, but here’s a site with a lot of information and photos.
I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend. We went up to the Berkshires to visit Neil’s parents. They live in a very pretty, rural area near Great Barrington, MA. Behind their house is a beaver pond/wetland area. They always have more than their share of mosquitoes, but have always had loads of bats living in their open wood shed. Last year the bats did not come back. That, of course, means that there are zillions of mosquitoes. It seems as though the barn swallows have increased in number a bit. Neil’s parents wanted to be able to enjoy their yard, so they found a small tent as a possible solution. Lindsay loved it because of the playhouse aspect. She also found a little green caterpillar, which is a rarity in our lives in Brooklyn.
