Where All The Lights Should Be Bright

Mr. Prairie Roots has referred to some posts I have brewing about downtowns (especially small towns' downtowns) and how vital they are to communities. First, though, I'll talk about this place, the old Masonic Temple, most commonly known around town as Masons on Main (the name of the restaurant that occupied the building several years ago). I finally had the chance to see the inside a couple months ago, and despite its current state of somewhat disrepair, I was pleasantly surprised. It's a stunning building. There is no place in town to rival it. As our local newspaper editor wrote recently, it would indeed be a loss to the community to allow it to fall into further disrepair.

I have no idea what Masons' new owner plans to do with the building, but I know the business I'd love to start there: a moviehouse. Now, Madison already has a movie theatre, the West Twin. As we understand it, the owners of the West Twin keep the theater open essentially as a public service to the town, and for that, I'm very glad. However, I think a movie theater can do much better than break even in Madison.

I also believe a great movie theater is an incredible asset to a small town. For one thing, it provides a great entertainment venue for kids and families. One of the real disadvantages of the current theater is that it's located on the west edge of town. That's hugely unfortunate for kids, who make up a good share of a theater's audience. Right now, if kids want to walk or bike to a movie, they have to cross the intersection of two highways to get there, and there are no sidewalks leading to the theater. The building itself is surrounded by a huge gravel parking lot--not exactly an inviting environment.

Instead, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a theater located in the heart of town within easy (and pleasant) walking/biking distance of most residential neighborhoods? (Next door to the Dairy Queen, I might add.) The Masons building, which is essentially the gateway to downtown, is a perfect location.

Here are a few of our ideas:

• Convert the main area into a single-screen theater (would have to remove the center staircase that was added when the building was a restaurant).
  
• Build a proscenium stage, so that the theater can also be used for live events like concerts.
• Get both digital sound and projection systems to allow for renting out the space for business meetings, playing video games on a big screen, private screenings of home movies and family slideshows, and other similar uses.
• Convert the fabulous front rooms of the building into the concessions area. Instead of a typical theater lobby where patrons merely purchase their popcorn and Milk Duds, though, this would be a cafe stocked with locally baked goodies like brownies and muffins and furnished with tables, chairs, and comfy couches. It would be a real gathering place for the community. We'd open it before the movies started for the day and keep it open after the last movie ended (adjusting hours according to customer demand, of course).
• House the projection room, as well as a possible additional cafe/lounge area, on the small third story. The spectacular balcony would function as additional space (also furnished cafe-style) for non-movie events.
• Spruce up the beautiful front portico and brick patio and add tables and chairs for an awesome outdoor brownie-eating, people-watching, solving-the-world's-problems spot, right at one of the liveliest corners in town.

It's pretty obvious that we'd like to run a business that facilitates interaction between members of our community. We wish there were more places in town to do that. This theater would also be a concerted effort to increase the nightime activity downtown, which is currently limited to the China Moon restaurant (which we love, and are so glad is open late!) and the "four corners" bars at the south end of downtown.

I'll get into more of the philosophy behind this type of business in upcoming posts, but I will mention now that an article in a recent issue of YES! Magazine hits on the things that draw me so much to the social commons of communities...and why I want so much for the social commons areas of my community to be better:

. . . in localities throughout the nation, there are efforts to resurrect the economy of the social commons that the corporate market has displaced. The opposition to Wal-Mart, for example, is as much about reclaiming the social productivity of traditional main streets as it is about the big box giant’s treatment of its employees. The so-called new urbanism is really the old village-ism, a rediscovery of the wisdom of traditional patterns of human settlement in which interaction is built into the flow of daily life. (emphasis mine)

And another quote:

. . . common spaces give expression to a "we" side of human nature that is both universal and deep. I have a brother-in-law in the Philippines who helped build a water system in a rural village there. He told me that the women continued to come to the common containment pool to wash clothes in the morning, even after the project was completed and the water ran to individual homes. The spontaneous social interaction was as important in its own way as the water itself, just as in community gardens the community is as important as the garden. (emphasis mine)

Fellow Madison-area residents (or former residents), what do you think?


Coming up: more thoughts plus a photo tour of downtown.

Cosy Knitting

It’s dark, rainy, and blustery this afternoon—perfect for tuning in to the world’s greatest radio station, baking up a batch of homemade brownies, and talking about knitting. I don’t intend to write much about knitting on this blog, but it does fit into my emphasis on sustainability, so I'll add something about it from time to time. I’ll start by talking a bit about the woman who taught me to knit: Cosette Cornelius-Bates.

I met Cosy at Regent almost three years ago. We were both new students, and we connected right away. I had a lot of fun hanging out with her throughout the year, together arguing the pitfalls of capitalism in our “Christianity and the Economic Order” class, and learning to knit from her.

I almost hesitate to talk about knitting because it’s so trendy right now. But Cosy knits for much better reason than trendiness. For her, knitting is a redemptive, incarnational activity. It’s about stewardship, community, and theology, things that I, too, am keenly interested in. I’ll let her do the explaining here, here, and here.

For me, knitting is about roots and sustainability, aside from the obvious pleasure in producing something both practical and beautiful. Cosy taught me to go for the wool rather than the cheaper acrylic. (And acrylic is a petroleum-based product, so wool is definitely the sustainable choice.) Every hand-knit piece I wear is one less that was produced by a machine. Often I know the person knitting the piece (especially if it’s me!), sometimes I know where the wool came from, sometimes I know who dyed or even spun the wool. I’m enamored with alpacas and may eventually own one, so someday I may even personally know the animal from which I got the wool.

My progeny wearing a square hat knit by her mama.
Pattern, recycled yarn, and hand-dyed yarn from Cosy.

I’m not blind to the great pleasures that living in a post-industrial society brings. I have absolutely no desire to make the majority of my own clothes, let alone weave my own fabric from which to make clothes. But I do think we live an economy that values speed and uniformity over true craft and beauty. Knitting is a good “focal practice” (to borrow a term from Cosy, who borrowed it from Albert Borgmann) and is therefore worth my effort. It helps me take a step out of an overwhelming industrial production cycle and makes me a bit more mindful of the creation that sustains me.

I also believe that anything that teaches us to pay attention is worthwhile to consider taking up as a regular practice. Since I first read the following quote several years ago, I have tried to take on practices like knitting and gardening that teach us to pay attention:

The French philosopher Simone Weil saw that the everyday studying that students do—learning math or grammar or history—can form in them rich capacities for attention. Indeed, she suggested, this is study’s most important purpose, for those who learn attention in this way become able to give attention also to other people and to God. They become able to be present to those who are suffering, and they become able to pray [Bass, Dorothy C., Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), p. 36].

Our culture does not teach us to pay attention very well. In fact, we have so much that seeks our attention (cell phone calls, e-mails, media, advertising, etc.) that we learn to pay very little deep attention to anything. Knitting, like gardening, is an antidote to my culture's absent-mindedness.

Among the places you can find Cosy (her blog and her shop) will, I hope, soon be a bookstore near you. She has a knitting book in the works, for which I am very happy to have been able to test a pattern (see pic above). If you're a knitter and interested in adding some lovely new patterns to your stash, keep an eye out for Knit One, Embellish Too: Hats, Mittens, and Scarves With a Twist next spring.

In the Beginning

This is my favorite method for germinating seeds. If memory serves me correctly, I got it from Dr. David Nelson, my philosophy prof at SDSU.


Set individual seeds on cotton balls or cut-up cotton balls and place in a plastic container with a lid. Spray the cotton with water so that it's fairly wet but not sopping. Keep the container in a cupboard or other warm, dark spot until the seeds germinate. With the lid on the container, the cotton shouldn't dry out. As soon as the seeds sprout, plant them in small containers (I reuse yogurt cups) and set them in a sunny spot where they can continue to grow until ready to transplant into the garden.

And the Winner Is...

...not me. I'm not the grand prize winner of the Go Green on Gather Contest (read the winning entry here). Alas. As a finalist, however, I do have $100 in trees from the Arbor Day Foundation coming to me. Good thing I love trees! Since I was a kid, I've wanted a weeping willow. The Arbor Day site says that they're not good for our zone 4, but I've seen a few around here. And since they thrive where there's lots of water, I think we can get one to grow. We have a spot where rainwater tends to collect and a little Cottonwood grove has taken root soaking up the water. Might make a good weeping willow spot, too.

Since the contest is over, I'm posting my entry here:


Practicing Permanence

Recycling, composting, driving less, buying and consuming less, installing compact fluorescent lightbulbs, xeriscaping, organic gardening, shopping locally. All of these are excellent and necessary steps to take in earthkeeping. But I agree with Alan Durning and Wendell Berry that striving toward sustainability starts with being rooted in a particular spot. Durning speculates in his book This Place on Earth, “There may not be any ways to save the world that are not, first and foremost, ways for people to save their own places . . . begin with place, and specifically, with one place.” I think he’s onto something. So, my resolution is a quiet, simple action. I’m staying home.

My husband and I have decided to do everything we can to stay in one spot for as long as possible—we hope for the rest of our lives. That particular spot is on the shores of a little lake in the midst of the farmland of eastern South Dakota. We’ve chosen a spot already familiar to us. It’s where my husband grew up and it’s 50 miles from where I spent most of my life.

Deciding to let our roots continue to grow here is both frightening and liberating. It can be frightening, because we’re in a rural/small-town area, and finding like-minded people here is often challenging. Always in search of community, I sometimes feel the sting of isolation and miss the times in my life when I had near-daily contact with close friends. Then there’s the job market. It’s not bad for a town of 6,500, but it certainly doesn’t carry the potential of the more metropolitan areas of our region.

Our decision, though, is also incredibly liberating. We have dreams of an organic demonstration garden, some market gardening or a CSA, a straw bale greenhouse, and a straw bale art studio. Someday we’d love to open a café supplied with food produced as locally as possible, maybe even from our own garden. Will we accomplish all this? Probably not. But staying here for the long haul means we have the freedom to think about plans like this. Acting on those plans means caring more and more about our place and our community each day.

For a person like me, who often finds more excitement in the contemplation of an idea than in its execution, practicing permanence is real discipline. It curtails my tendency to dream about greener pastures: where there are more people with similar convictions, where there are more and better jobs, where it’s possible to live car-free and buy local food at huge farmers markets.

Of course, staying in one place can lead to provincialism and isolationism. That’s why it’s important to invite outside influences, to experience other cultures and places. I’ve enjoyed and treasured my times away from South Dakota and appreciate what I learned while in different places. For instance, we recently spent eight months in Vancouver, British Columbia, a city that is the polar opposite of our little town in so many ways. There we learned the discipline of living without a car. We walked to the grocery store, rode our bikes to work and class, and navigated the public transit system. I took an organic gardening workshop at the City Farmer demonstration garden and learned about community kitchens.

These great experiences, however, didn’t convince us to pull up our South Dakota roots. We deeply love our place and can’t imagine planting ourselves anywhere else. We know there is work to do here. There is prairie to restore. There is a regional food network to build. There are people to encourage along the way. So, we’ll do something profoundly counter-cultural: stay put. Choose place above career. Integrate our vocations with our place. Practicing permanence will allow us to learn much more about the land here, its creatures, its ecology, its people, and its history. I hope that practice will help us care for the land more deeply.

Ultimately, I believe what Wendell Berry says in his last poem in A Timbered Choir: “There is a day when the road neither comes nor goes, and the way is not a way but a place.” That day has come for me. The way to a more sustainable life indeed is a place.

Food for Thought

In a recent article for Books and Culture, Bill McKibben mentions a couple of the reasons I like farmers markets. They're good for building community and positively impact the local economy.

. . . the deepest questions about postmodern food have as much to do with community as they do with taste.

A local farmers market, for instance, is not only about providing fresher food than a supermarket can offer (and doing it with much less use of energy, an increasingly important factor in a world starting to fret that long-distance food plays a more-than-trivial role in causing climate change). It's also about rebuilding the local agricultural economy so that small farmers no longer have to sell their products as commodities at prices set by the most efficient, largest operations. And it's about rebuilding communities: one sociologist last year followed shoppers around farmers markets and supermarkets, and discovered that they had ten times as many conversations at the former. In a lonely society, that's an encouraging statistic.

Finalist!

I'm one of five finalists in the Go Green on Gather writing contest! My entry, "Practicing Permanence," is the featured piece for the Living A Sustainable Life group all day today. The grand prize winner will be announced May 1.

The contest asked for original entries outlining an action toward living a more sustainable life. Mine is all about staying home. Read it here! Take a look at some of the other entries while you're at it.

Go Green on Gather Contest

American Public Media and Gather.com are holding an online writing contest on sustainable living in celebration of Earth Day. I can't post my entry on this blog until after the contest, but you can read it here.

Step It Up

I'm listening to Bill McKibben and Cal DeWitt, two of my favorite Christian environmental writers, speak on NPR's "Weekend America" at the moment. Today is Step It Up's National Day of Climate Action. I found out about this too late to organize anything locally, but it's on my radar for next year.

Read all about it!

Get Your Yard Off Drugs*

Local newspaper editor Jon Hunter wrote about local water quality issues on the same day we received an ad in the mail for a chemical lawn service (which will remain nameless--no need to give them free advertising). Hunter writes the following in his 4/11/07 op-ed piece:

Lakes, streams and wetlands in Lake County all deserve attention, especially concerning excess phosphorus and sulfates. There are several sources of these challenges, including livestock operations, cropland, residential lawns and sanitary sewer systems. The city of Madison intends to upgrade its wastewater treatment plant. Lake development associations have formed task forces to improve water quality. And farm organizations are working to find environmental solutions for ag operations.

So, fellow Lake County residents, throw out (better yet, recycle) those chemical lawn service brochures and consider switching to natural lawn care. The city of Vancouver's website offers some great information to get you started, as does City Farmer. I know these aren't local links, but I know about them from my brief time living in Vancouver, a city that is making great strides toward sustainability.

Don't forget that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are petroleum-based products, so eliminating them from your lawn care not only improves our area lake water quality, but it's also one way to combat our dependence on oil.

*Post title flagrantly stolen from here.

Local Eating in South Dakota

Keep your eyes out for the May/June issue of South Dakota Magazine, which promises a story about South Dakota farmer's markets. More posting later on my thoughts about eating locally....

House

Cory and I began our marriage in the 480-square-foot lakeside cabin he had lived in for several years. It was originally a double garage on another site and was eventually trucked to the lake and turned into a summer cabin. Later Cory and his dad renovated it, adding a sleeping loft with big south-facing windows and making it a year-round home.

A couple years ago, with our first baby on the way, we decided it was high time to move out of our cramped quarters and look for a house. We decided on having a new home built at Lake Herman for a number of reasons. We had settled on living in either Sioux Falls or at Lake Herman. We found out that the housing market in Sioux Falls was mostly out of our range, despite our having stellar credit, zero debt, and a nice chunk of savings for a down payment (but we planned to live primarily on a teacher’s income, since Cory supported my decision to stay home with the baby). So, that left Lake Herman. It was where Cory had grown up, and he loved it deeply. I wanted to live in one place for a long, long time and carry out land stewardship plans, and Lake Herman seemed like a logical place to do that. Cory’s parents gifted us with the land to build on, which was the only reason we could afford to do so (and because we built frugally, it ended up being less expensive than buying a house in Sioux Falls).

We would have loved to build our house in a much more environmentally conscious way than we did. Our budget and time constraints meant we had to build a mostly conventional house. So, no straw bale construction (doesn’t quite meet the requirements for the SD Housing’s first-time home buyer mortgage rate), no solar panels, no wind turbine. Those all will have to wait.

We were, however, able to do a couple of things with the house right away. Almost anyone who builds a new house can do the same. For one, we built a relatively modest-sized home. Ours is slightly over 1,200 square feet (two bedrooms, two smallish bathrooms). Even though we don’t live in a high-density area, we still believe in small house footprints, at least by American standards (it's a palace by world standards). We felt this was enough room for the three of us, and if our family size increases someday, we’ll be perfectly capable of making due with the space we have. Afterall, going bigger means heating and cooling more space, buying more furniture to fill it, and generally using up more resources than we really need to.

We also thought carefully about where the house would sit and oriented it to take full advantage of the sun. The long side with the most and largest windows faces south for as much passive solar heat as possible. This little action works surprisingly well. The house warms up quite nicely on a sunny winter day. In the summer, we get some shade from trees in the nearby shelter belt, and we’ve planted trees on the south side to eventually provide more shade. We’ll soon build a trellis over the deck and plant climbing vines to further shade the south-facing patio doors.

Another small step was to install compact fluorescent light bulbs in the new house. Right now about 98% of our light bulbs are CFLs.

Of course, our place isn’t anything close to this. We’re starting with small steps, but we hope to do more. I’d love to install solar panels (and I welcome any advice from those of you who have done so on your own homes), but those aren’t financially feasible for us at the moment. I’m interested in the idea of a bike generator, and we may be able to tinker around with that soon. Although a bike generator doesn’t produce that much energy, I’m intrigued by the concept of converting the energy I produce with my own body into electricity we can use in the home.

In the meantime, we’ll remain conscious of the energy we do consume and commit to using as little of it as we can. We’ll resist the rampant consumerism in our culture that tries to convince us we need to buy new stuff all the time. We’ll keep asking around and researching renewable energy sources for our home. And we’ll keep inching toward better stewardship of our energy resources.

Straw Bale at SDSU

My alma mater may not have an organic student farm...yet, but I'm thrilled to find out that it is starting research on green building. SDSU will soon have a straw bale house. Progress! The SDSU Collegian reported a couple weeks ago on the construction to be completed this summer. McCrory Gardens will be home to the straw bale building, which will also have a living roof. Read all about it here.

Construction of the building will be the result of an SDSU class this summer. I won't be able to take the class, but I'd love to hear from someone who does. At the very least, I'll snap some photos and post them here later.

Sidenote: Ever the stickler for grammar and spelling, I noticed the glaring word usage error at the beginning of the Collegian article (editions/additions). Journalism students, spelling does matter!