Edibles & Colorfuls

After returning from India, JP and I started growing things. Arugula (wilted flowers pictured here), heirloom tomatoes, Portugal hot peppers, sugar snap peas, herbs, cucumbers, and mesclun for eating, marigolds and hollyhocks for dyes.
Our apartment is overgrown, our fire escape would be hazardous to negotiate in a fire situation, and we've spread our growing fervor to neighbors. We have a community garden plot too. A 4 x 4 plot of arable land. 16 square feet to farm. We compost food scraps. We save water for the plants by keeping big jars and buckets in the shower while waiting for the water to heat up. We haven't produced much yet, but each tomato is cherished and shared in a slightly ceremonious pseudo-harvest.
Now if only my landlord would let me on the roof...

Red Hook

Shifting

This is Long Beach, Long Island. Flat, watery & fragile, its edges shifting whether we like it or not, eroding, building land, and occasionally brought back from natural disaster by conservationists to its "natural" state. Like most water's edge sites on Long Island, this place was inhabited by humans, reconstituted, dredged, paved, jettied, bulkheaded and stabilized. Certain sites are left "natural" like beaches for human pleasure. When a storm blows over and washes miles of this beach away, it is promptly rebuilt with sand that had been deposited in the "wrong" place.

The lives of Long Beach are fascinating. People who live near the coast have a stronger connection to the land and water, and it brings a sort of cadence to everyday life. The rise and fall of tides, the telling winds, the threat of a storm, the weathering of everything from the salty air. It is a microcosm of the long sandbar that is Long Island, although LI has been developed so much that living just slightly inland can destroy any intuition of living on an island.

My first architectural project on the water is becoming a laboratory of renewable energies and sustainable manipulations of water for human needs. This structure will take salty water from the Bay to a rooftop pond where it will be heated by solar thermal tubes, turn to steam and condense into a channel leaving the salt and minerals behind. When enough water has been purified and collected in the channel, it becomes a waterfall off the side of the building into a tank below, alerting the inhabitants to the progress of the system. The water is then potable and the salt collected is the kind of sea salt that gourmet food stores sell at high prices.

This is a new architecture for Long Island in which the building (working with its inhabitants) makes its own sea salt, cleans water, produces its own energy with photovoltaics, grows its own food (there are herb and vegetable gardens), and uses geothermal for heating and cooling.

In the Dead of Night

A post from 2/26, not yet published on this blog:

In a jeep, driving from Jessore to Kulhna through small villages, woods, dark fields, with a stranger, I played a little game where I tried to count how long I could look out into the night and not see another person. It never happened. I always saw people walking, carrying loads, riding bicycles. People everywhere.

You really learn to control your imagination when in these kinds of situations in Bangladesh. I stepped out of the jeep and two men waiting on the street took my bags. Without a word and just a quick wave from my driver, I followed them through a market, into the darkness, down the dock towards a tiny boat, the sounds of the village life fading behind me. We pushed off the dock and rowed in silence except for the tinny, small splashes of water and faint din from the town and far away motorboats.

I boarded the M.V. Chhuti, our boat for the Sundarbans tour. My cabin was small, about 5 by 7 feet with two hanging bunks, a mirror and nighttable. No electricity, but cosy, comfortable and simply what I needed. I wasn't expecting dinner so late (11:00 pm) and I was the only person to arrive the night before our departure, but in true Bangladeshi hospitality, a huge meal was waiting for me in the lounge: dal (lentils), rice, roasted cauliflower, vegetable curry, salad, prawns, fried fish, an orange, tea and cookies. I ate alone. An oil lamp lit my small area, just beyond the radius of light- darkness. I was alone, but watched, and taken care of. I knew I was safe.

Betel tree in the Khasia village

Post started on 2/17/08... not published on the blog til now:


In two short days I experienced so much, I can't begin to describe it all. Over time, I'll reveal the story of my trip to Srimongal through the picturesque hills of tea gardens, pineapple plantations, in the tropical rainforest, through villages of betel-nut and betel-leaf cultivators, at the Hindu festival for Pooja that I happened upon one clear night and the fascinating people I met along the way including a young geologist working for Chevron, drilling for oil in the fragile Bengal landscape. (As you can imagine, we had lots to talk about!)

Everything is an adventure here. I asked my tour guide, Santoush if he could bring me to an ATM at some point during the day. We kept driving and stopping, asking directions, twice walking into what looked like an old Victorian home, but without furniture, just a desk in each room. How could anyone think that these places might be a bank? After an hour and a half of driving, wondering if I should be stopping this wild goose chase or just enjoy the adventure (and actually being let out of the car to navigate the crowded streets once in a while) I realized that the Bengali people truly want to help and this time it had led to an undesirable situation for all, and I was the only one who would stop it. Finally I told Santoush that I wanted to get going on our tour. His face was flush with self disappointment at not being able to find what I needed, but I suspect there was a bit of relief too.