Lettuce from Malia's Garden

As much as I've been swept up in my generations green movement, nothing has moved me more than the simple act of eating a vegetable grown from someone's garden.

I think it's so cool that the green leaves are mottled with a deep burgundy color, giving the lettuce this almost untamed sense of feel. I can taste dirt on my tongue.

Malia made me a salad for lunch and like usual, I forgot it (she is always trying to pump me up with vegetables) I feel an intense sense of responsibility to commit to eating the lettuce and not letting it go bad in my fridge though.

Here lies an interesting new relationship with food. One that doesn't exist in super markets. Sure I'm talking about a tiny piece of lettuce, but what a waste to let something someone labored over go to waste.

This is the relationship I want to re-establish with the land. Thank you Malia!

(ps. She is a rad girl!)

Movie Night: Force of Nature, limited engagement at the SIFF Film Center

Last night while I was searching for David Sazuki’s book A Sacred
Balance something else came up in the search cue: The Force of Nature.
By chance I had stumbled upon Sazuki’s docu-biopic, only showing in
Seattle for two days. What a treat! My astro van decided to help out
with my commitment to riding my bike more and driving less by biting
the dust in a busy intersection, much to the entertainment of me and
my friends. What that means is I had no excuse but to ride the bus
through town, savoring in a rare moment of peaceful, albeit bumpy,
tranquility.
I ended up in lower Queen Anne, a neighborhood of Seattle I haven’t
spent time in since I lived in the Denny regrade in a low income
apartment with my best friend. The Force of Nature is playing at SIFF
Cinema at The Film Center which is tucked under the Space Needle, (
which is painted a lovely warm orange in honor of the anniversary of
the worlds fair) with a bunch of other cool stuff like The Vera
Project and Seattle’s Ballet Hall.
I rushed in expecting Sazuki’s movie to be sold out, but I was the
only person there, as well as an older couple waiting in the lobby. I
asked the attendant if the movie was sold out and he looked kind of
surprised. I guess I expected more Pacific Northwestner’s to flock to
this movie. Oh well. Eventually 12, -count it twelve! –other people
showed up, mostly older couples with peppery hair. I’m not trying to
sound condescending. I was the youngest person in attendance. Part of
me was hoping that the audience would be a little more jam pack and
diverse considering the content of the film.
I was originally turned on to David Sazuki when I watched a
documentary called I Am, at the tail end of winter quarter of Making a
Difference. Sazuki talks about Argon, an inactive gas in the oxygen we
breath, tying us to every other living organism, all the way back to
the brontosaur and even Jesus Christ. I felt this is to be incredibly
moving and was turned onto his work. It’s funny how you can live your
life, unbeknownst to the fact that someone so amazing exists on the
planet at the same time that you do.
The Force Of Nature is Sazuki’s last lecture and he does a brilliant
job at interweaving his life’s narrative with that of the
environmental and social problems that we all face. It’s sad that the
majority of the people watching the movie were those who got to live
and experience the nascent stages of the environmental movement and
not the “me” generation who desperately need a reconnection to the
natural world.. This documentary deserves the same distribution as The
Cove or Waiting for Superman; at least so young Americans can think
about the fate of the planet, told from a kindred spirit, even if it’s
over popcorn and candy. It’s a start.
Outside of what it means to be an “environmentalist” the movie
touches upon themes of family and the importance of place. At the end,
I tilted my head sideways, and let big salty tears fall, thinking
about my dad and my grandma, all the people important to me, and how
lucky I am to have them.

Project Goal: Work through 30 hot yoga sessions.

Writer's block week four: An elegant turd?

The birds and the bees and ur...not really finding the inspiration to write much. We did try a goofy, lighthearted exercise from writing down the bones: "street rats boast about cheap real estate?" Well, what do blooming flora and a dud of a writers block equal? An elegant turd. Sometimes they happen.

Putting money back into the community!

This was an old goal, but still so excited I pulled it off. I managed to save up all my financial aid money for fall quarter and pay off my BofA credit card, close my bank account with them, and open a new checking account with Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union. I can't relay all the precise details of how a credit union operates but I know that my money is helping out the community by supporting this local bank. They also have a spiffy emerald green design theme!

Striking a hot yoga pose with Kyrsten and Pat.

Not pictured: budding Yogi master Malia Alexander. This is the best part of Hot Yoga, being done! But seriously, my awkward pose doesn't do the mind/body sensation any justice. Look at the lovely and charismatic couple of people I am posing with. They are sweating to a healthier body and sharper state of mind. But if you're doing this kind of sweating I highly endorse bringing a change of underwear!

How cool is this?

If you're a stuffy, environmentally guilted super market shopper like myself, whom every time you use one of those thin Polyurethane bags to put your evening Brussels sprouts in, knowing that the bag is going to end up asphyxiating an endangered sea animal, than this reusable lightweight produce bag is the right thing for you!

I know, I imagine either the Ted Nugent type calling me a green fag, or the hardcore environmentalist secretly loathing the weekend warrior beginner phase of my wobbly first jaunt into sustainable living. Oh well. We all need the planet to judge others and to see through our life goals.

Reusable produce bag: $3

Broadway Farmer's Market opens!

Happy Earth Day! What better way to celebrate than to buy some grub from the Broadway Farmers Market on opening weekend. I had this idea to buy all the food I eat exclusively from PNW Farmer's markets, but given the price and the diversity of goods, I've decided I would feel less overwhelmed if I started small by getting to know a couple of new veggies and work up my "locavore" muscles.

I've been raised on the notion that if I'm not getting a deal on cheap food than I am getting ripped off. So naturally, I was a bit apprehensive about paying 3 bucks for a tiny bushel of broccoli. But this penny pinching anxiety about spending a little extra money on food stems more from a miseducation about agriculture than from a sense of cheap deal entitlement. So I aim to educate myself, and what better classroom than Capital Hill on a sunny spring afternoon among eccentric mushroom masters and a lady, ecstatic to tell me about RAAB kale.

Broadway Farmer's Market stats: I started small: a bushel of broccoli for $3; "German Butterball" potatoes grown at Olsen family farms, 2.75 a pound; and a loaf of almond sourdough bread for 2.50. Next time I'll relax enough to remember where the food comes from and give the producers due credit.

Earth Day wouldn't be complete without a row around the arboretum, Audobon Birds of North America Manual, and some of my best friends.

Happy day!

Writer's Block Week Three: Bone By Bone by Natalie Goldberg

"One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and nonaggressive. Art lives in the Big World. One poem or story doesn't matter one way or another. It's the process of writing and life that matters. Too many writers have written great books and gone insane or alcoholic or killed themselves. This process teaches about sanity. We are trying to become sane along with our poems and stories."

Project Goal One: Bike More and Drive Less.

This is my Trek 1000 roadbike brought out of winter hibernation just in time for this Spring Project. Among Seattle's elite biking culture this generic bicycle, manufactured (born) someplace in the Pacific, doesn't turn many heads unless I'm crashing it into the side of a red toyota pruis. On average a 130 pound bicyclist going 14 miles per hour burns 405 calories. I imagine that since i've adopted this TREK we have burned 475,239 calories together, and eaten pavement on a hanful of occasions. Occording to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, there are roughly 700 cyclist deaths per year, with 90 percent of those people being male. The benefits of riding a bike outweigh the risk of splitting your melon all over the road though.

The beginning of this thing.

I am the one in the back of the rowboat with the shit-eating grin on
my face. My name is Gavin Aubrey Tiemeyer. This is a blog, an
itty-bitty thing floating aimlessly in the giant clamorous world of
social networking. This thing here is part of an individual learning
contract that I am doing at the Evergreen State College. I have a
simple yet complex question to work with: How in the face of serious
environmental and social problems do ordinary people like you and I
maintain sanity and make a difference? This blog will document my
clumsy and joyous romp through self-discovery and what it means to
live a more environmentally conscious and sustainable life. If all of
that sounds too high falutin I understand, allow me to it break down.
Making a difference can be just about anything as long moments are
taken to slow down and listen and make some sort of tiny attempt to
understand how the way we live affects every single organism and the
fate of the biosphere that we all live in. If you peg that as typical
Evergreen fodder that is fine. I am still adjusting to it myself. But
I do believe that at on an intrinsic level, despite religious or
political affiliation, whether you’re a “conservative” or
“progressive,” if you’re an artist or a retail worker, we all share a
dynamic relationship with the natural world. This relationship has to
compete with the many distractions and comforts of modern living and
we loose this relationship at our own peril.
Personally, this project is comprised of little jaunts not major life
alterations. Like everyone else, giving up my creature comforts is
very hard. Part of this means simply understanding how luxuries like
transportation and easy food have real consequences that affect other
people and the natural world. So for me doing simple things like
riding my bike more and driving less are great first steps to living a
more fulfilling and ethical life. If I’m riding my bike to a local
food co-up that is even better!
Frances Moore Lappe calls these tiny actions, “entry points.” Entry
points allow us to see overwhelming issues differently. With entry
points we can digest major problems easier and more affectively. Entry
points Lappe says are “sharp points that break into and deflect [our]
downward spiral of powerlessness; they are deliberate actions that
strengthen the flow of positive causation, putting in motion an upward
spiral of empowerment.”
Forwarding what Lappe is saying, it is simply about personal
empowerment. When I die I want to be able to look back on my life and
know that I was more than just a consumer, mowing around aimlessly,
unmoored from the life sustaining rhythm of the natural world. This is
what making a difference to me. Should be messy and fun.
The picture above was taken after breakfast at Sunlight Café in the
University District in Seattle. I ended up in a row boat in the
Arboretum on Lake Washington, under the premise that hanging out with
close friends rowing clumsily was in fact “sustainable” and could
possibly “get the academic and creative juices flowing.”

"Class" in Discovery Park with Lucas.

Lucas is busy at work during our free writing session. He Enjoyed it so much that he suggested we extend the ten minute exercise. We ended up writing for 25 minutes and I had to pull his leg to get him to stop.