Community Gardens near me.

Local Food Systems Scenario: Players locate and map where food comes from in their neighborhood. Dairy farms? Community garden plots? Organic Farms and CSA? Canneries? Egg farms? Beef farms? Cabbage? Cranberries? Orchards? Processing plants?

Play: In the map to the right, I’ve outlined in red the community garden plots near me. For going over to them and walking around both sets, I’d get some points, similar to the UNM game Chris Holden created. If I became an expert on the locations of the other community gardens in my city, I’d earn some sort of badge. If I learned more by interviewing some of the gardeners about what they’re growing (and why), and sharing that in the game, I’d earn some further expertise points. I could add restaurants that use local food as well. The game is limited only by what the quests are, and in this game, I can challenge — and accept challenges — from other players, so there really is no limit.

Basically, I have a notion that if we got together with a few interested peers and students/PAs, we could come up with a really interesting interdisciplinary place-based field experience that offered multiple quests at multiple levels of expertise (ala “I’ll take Botany for 200, Alex”) that could be replicated in different areas across the state (and country). Although my initial thoughts center on using ARIS, they only extend as far as using ARIS as a prototyping tool — the actual game might end up in a number of different formats for different technologies.

My goals are these. I’ve been passionate about place-based/embodied learning for decades, and am now in a position where I’ve got access to cool folks and cool tools (Google Maps and ARIS, etc.), and a job where I can finally start to coordinate the creation of something amazing that combines them all. My big evil scheme is to get smart  brains in one whiteboard-filled room, and let ideas cross-pollinate. I imagine a large scalable tour/game/field experience with new quests/activities being continually added as they’re developed.

If we build a structure/frame together, it will be easier to add components individually, as needs/resources arise. And we can recruit players by luring them from other quests (i.e. I’ve played the Astronomy Quest, and like this activity — maybe I’ll try out the Ecology Quest to supplement my points!)

I have no doubt that players would quickly find that many skills overlap from discipline to discipline. So if I kicked butt in and really enjoyed a Probability sub-quest in the Botany line of quests, I might want to jump over an rip through some Probability sub-quests in the Language line of quests (e.g. um… probability of multi-vowel adjacency in billboard ads in Wisconsin?).

Wild Moose (Martin, 2005), and Mitchville (Martin, 2006) were both AR games that used GPS equipment and a handheld computer to mimic a communication device, which relayed up-to-the-minute information to the trip to help them in their task (Martin, 2008). What happened was that the game narrative motivated campers to move beyond the ease and safety of trail hiking. The difficulty of actually hiking off-trail, coupled with the uncertainty of what one might find there, challenged the campers, and pushed them to move slightly beyond their comfort level.

Here’s a description of what was done in the past:

Towards the end of each summer, while the older boys were doing manly things on the Allagash or at Katahdin, we others took part in the wild pursuit of thieves, kidnappers, and other nefarious individuals.

That first summer of mine, quite unexpectedly, as we were about to set out on our regularly scheduled trips one Tuesday morning, we were all called together and the cold facts were put before us. Something terrible had happened; I am sure that I don’t remember what. Plans had to be changed at the last moment, and all our energies were to be devoted to helping the local authorities, whoever they were, hunt down the criminals and bring them to justice. At the same time we would uphold the honor of the camp, and in all probability bring fame and fortune to ourselves and our counselors.

Assignments were quickly made. For the sake of expediency, the original trip groupings would be maintained, but we would travel unexpected paths. All of this had been well arranged beforehand; and I can visualize the counselors now constructing the complicated plot in the evenings after we had gone to bed. Now they were ready to play it out.

I can’t remember much of that first Mystery Trip except that it rained. It rained all the time. The villains, whoever they were, had left clues and trails as they challenged us to track them down. Coded messages were found and deciphered. The net was slowly tightening. In tracking those undesirables, we learned more than we at the moment wanted to know about following trails in the woods. I clearly remember looking for stone cairns on the mountain side under what were certainly not the most favorable conditions (Price 1986).

• The Books We Make embrace their physicality — working in concert with the content to illuminate the narrative.
• The Books We Make are confident in form and usage of material.
• The Books We Make exploit the advantages of print.
• The Books We Make are built to last

The article is, again, worth the read.

Last night, biking home from a friend’s birthday celebration, I noticed an ethereal glow from the canopies of the Quann Park dog “shelters” (they’ll shelter from a straight-down rain, or the noon sun, but not much else).

With the newly-installed (I think it’s recent, anyway — hadn’t noticed them before) solar panels and the spooky night-time glow, I’ll now be able to take my dog to the park at night and do some reading while he frolicks about in the dark with the creatures of the night.

Okay, honestly, I’m torn about them. On the one hand I’m a big fan of solar technology and of public infrastructure, so to add “forever” solar lighting capabilities to a public gathering place is a fantastic wonderful idea. On the other hand, these hardly qualify. I’d prefer to see them at all the bus shelters (and see more bus shelters).

Although it is true that this park needs more shelter from the sun, I’d prefer the shelter of trees — another fantastic public infrastructure investment. Being on a former landfill undoubtedly means some types of trees would be a problem, but how about around the edges?

I still haven’t decided whether this post is a rant or a rave…

On the same weekend of this NYTimes editorial on backyard gardening, the local expo center is holding Madison’s Garden Expo:

The 2009 Garden Expo will be held February 13, 14 and 15 in the Exhibition Hall at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison. This is the 16th annual Wisconsin Public Television Garden Expo. (Last year’s event attracted 16,400 attendees.)

Visitors may choose to attend more than 100 educational seminars and demonstrations on gardening, lawn, and landscaping topics and enjoy hundreds of different exhibitor booths in the exhibition area. Attend one of the many hands-on workshops and learn new skills while creating an art piece to take home.

Sustain Dane rain barrels with clever RainReserve Diverter.

I went last year to help the local environmental group, Sustain Dane, hawk their very cool Rain Barrel System. Afterwards, I got a chance to wander around and see what counted as “garden” these days (spoiler: very little to do with actual plants).

The Garden expo exhibitors seemed to focus on patios, pavers, artwork, decorative ponds, etc. There were, of course, some seeds and plants interspersed throughout, but most of the Garden Expo was about decoration. 

Growing up, my family’s garden once approached a full acre in size, and we didn’t have a single piece of artwork in it (except the scarecrow, which was fantastic!). Our basement was full of meticulously labeled jars of whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato sauce, pears, apples, apple butter, applesauces, green beans, corn, pickles of all varieties (including an unpopular with the kids experiment with watermelon rinds), beets, peas, carrots, jams and jellies of all sorts (cherry, apple, strawberry, raspberry, elderberry, plum, grape, pear, boysenberry, black raspberry, and combinations thereof) — not to mention the baskets and baskets of root vegetables in the cellar all winter, and the upright and chest freezers full of fruits and vegetables (and chicken, turkey, goose, pork, and beef that we grew).

We also had flowers in the yard around the house.

Verlyn Klinkenborg writes hopefully in her NYTimes editorial, that perhaps the crappy economy will bring on a Depression-era  boon in backyard gardening as families turn to their own devices for growing food rather than buying it. I wonder. I haven’t gardened since I left home because my summers have almost always been spent leading trips and working at summers camps. If I had a summer at home, I wonder if I’d remember enough to be able to run a full-sized garden (certainly not a super-sized one as my parents did).

I think that for me, and a significant portion of the population, a simpler option would be needed. Something that lets me start small the first summer, and expand. Namely, a window-box garden, or potted garden — small enough, and contained enough that it feels manageable, but big enough and sure enough that I get rewarded with just enough sweet home-grown tomatoes (perhaps) to make me proud, but not enough to satisfy or overwhelm. Leave me hungering for more, so that next summer I want to expand beyond the window boxes to a small raised bed in the backyard.

This is, in many ways, an area of place-based learning that I’ve been ignoring in my research. Maybe it’s time that I turned an eye on it.

Early February is, in no way, Spring in Wisconsin. But yesterday and Saturday it was warm (in the 40s!). The sun was out. The snow (that had turned into dirty ice) on the roads and sidewalks was melting and forming quick little streams and rivulets throughout Madison.

I have, what I’m beginning to learn is, a strange quirk. I love to shovel snow. It’s actually more than that. I love clean, dry sidewalks, driveways, patios, and roads. Perhaps it’s partly due to being a year-round bike commuter, and preferring ice-free smooth routes for safety and comfort. But it’s also about seeing something soaking up the sun’s warmth in winter. Making a warm surface for a cat to sit in the sun.

It’s why I prefer brick patios to wooden decks. I’m beginning to think more about thermal mass. When I was in Nepal, I ventured off the main Annapurna Trekking trail to the edge of the Mustang valley, and stayed in an ancient guesthouse called the “Red House” (translated) run by three old sisters. It got very cold outside at night, but the old stone building had gathered the sun all day before, and let go of its heat slowly throughout the night. In the morning the house was cold, but breakfast was served on the roof in the warming sun. And throughout the day, the house recharged itself in the sun. Incidentally, there was a graduate student living there, studying the dialect spoken in the region, who did the same thing with her laptop — solar charged it all day when she was out gathering field notes, and killed the battery at night when she wrote up her notes.

Ah, the promise of the sun!

Unretouched light from a 7-dollar, 48-LED “bulb” I bought from dealextreme.com

More Efficient Fabrication lowers the cost

Researchers in England have found a way to make the ultra-cool LED for less money. Much more efficient that standard incandescent bulbs (and CFLs, with the added benefit of containing no mercury). I’ve purchased a bunch of 48 array LED bulbs from dealextreme.com (for ~$7 each) and love them, but cheaper would be better.

LEDs are already in use in bicycle lights, mobile phones, camera flashes and Christmas lights because they are relatively cheap due to their size and brightness compared to normal bulbs. But until now the production costs have been too expensive for widespread use because the material had to be ‘grown’ on sapphire wafers, meaning a single household bulb would have cost £20. Scientists at the Cambridge University-based Centre for Gallium Nitride solved that problem by growing it on silicon wafers. A manufacturer, RFMD in County Durham, has begun work on production prototypes and the first bulbs could be in the shops within two years. The head of the centre, Professor Colin Humphreys, said: ‘This could well be the holy grail in terms of providing our lighting needs for the future.

‘We are very close to achieving highly efficient, low-cost white LEDs.

Northland College just got rid of trays in their cafeteria, following in the (carbon-lighter) footsteps of places like Dalhousie University (and I’m certain some others). From Dalhousie’s site:

Aramark is saving approximately 1040 gallons (3936 litres) of water a day and approximately $13,000 worth of electricity. They’re saving a little over 900,000 trays from being washed per school year.

Sure, it’s Canadian dollars, back from March, but still, that’s a chunk o change.

In the spirit of “every little bit helps,” folks at SPRANQ have  created a laser printer typeface with tiny little holes in it that don’t affect readability, but cut down the amount of toner needed to print by 20%!

It’s called EcoFont, and it looks fine at smaller font sizes. Clearly not great for anything over 48pt (unless you want a holey look), EcoFont gives you one free page of text for every five pages that you print.

Remember “draft mode” on the old dot-matrix printers? It looks much better than that.

Of course, my favorite tricks are to use both sides of the page (duplex), minimize font-size, and use a 2-up format.