Another day in Cleveland

Currently my thoughts and life are not organized enough to confine my post to a single topic, so I’m going to throw a bunch of stuff out there, and see how much of it makes sense....so Cleveland is pretty cool so far. I had a hairy afternoon yesterday where i conjured up some serious anxiety...and gradually it subsided and the evening was terrific. The anxiety was cause by sitting at the phoenix coffee shop and writing checks, three of which for moving of parking violations. This severely interrupted my budget, but not all that seriously. None the less, the sudden out-come (?) of funds with out any income i could plan on made me nervous. I spend $109 dollars at Trader Joe's, which is more than twice as much as i usually spent. Of course, i just moved into a new apartment, so this was a "big shopping", so i anticipated this, but i'm used to spending between $30-$50 a week at Trader joes and because i didn't i was upset. I'm also used to seeing Jenn at Trader Joes, but Jenn works at the trader Joes in Baltimore, where i don't live anymore. I also was used to having sprouts at trader joes, and this TJ's doesn’t' carry sprouts!!!...and for some reason this series of unexpected variations at Trader Joes, which is generally so reliable a part of my week, was interrupted. I spent two years finding my groove in Baltimore, and a part of it was relating to food, my morning granola, banana and apple, afternoon sandwich and most important, my evening salad with green leaf lettuce, tomato’s cucumbers peppers, beets, carrots, flaxseed oil, apple cider vinegar or Braggs and Sprouts. I eat this salad with my hands, off of a large plate, on my matching placemat and napkin  and I don’t have sprouts or a table to put my plate on when I get home. I haven’t had this salad in over a month because they don’t have Greenleaf lettuce in Israel and flaxseed oil is more expensive that oil. But this is not Israel, this is America, this is Galut, I want my friggin salad!!! At Giant Eagle food store grab sprouts.  Kale is $1.29 a pound, Lentils and Chickpeas are about the same. This is wrong!!! Joe is finishing up his shopping while I am out in the parking lot, reflecting on my anxiety and the cityscape of this large strip mall and I feel like I’m back in Baltimore and I can’t stand it. I feel like I’ve taken a step backwards.Then I get a call from Judy, a new friend I’m met at the StorahTelling training in July and it happens she’s driving right by the parking lot and going to stop by to say hello…that never happens in Baltimore. People don’t stop by parking lots to see you and say hi, they are too busy rushing somewhere away from something (all that busyness and still nothing happens). And we stand in the parking lot for 15 minutes, Judy, Joe, and Jesse, talking about the future of books and creating StorahTelling marketing. This is not Baltimore. I get back to my neighborhood and eat my sandwich (with sprouts from General Eagle) and the pieces of my life are slowly leaving their packing crates and falling back into place. Our downstairs neighbors, the Cobbs, are lovely and are perfectly willing to move their van at 10:30  at nigh so I can park off the street (other wise I get a ticket). Their van, which blocks the drive way is the van the drive to biznesses and factories, inspecting them for environmental risks and holding them responsible for EPA standards. This is G-d word. G-d Bless the Cobbs. Joe and I run again to the phenix to inter-web and chill out. I overhear behind me that Bread and Puppet theatre are coming to town. We talk about her son, who is apart of the company, and we can tell how proud she is that her some lives on a farm in Vermont with hippies making puppets. Someone else from the Jewish community who works for Kucinich strikes up a conversation with us and invites us to his Shul. Her refers to the Dobama theatre as their community theatre. This is not Baltimore and I feel alright.  At home fold laundry and listen to a podacst my friend Nicky suggested, William Mcdonough’s TED talk on sustainable design. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle...Highly suggest it. It shook me a little. He is hard on civilization. He points to a Rubber ducky make of a poisonous plastic that we give to children and will remain in a landfill for centuries. Why would we design such a thing? Who would issue that design assignment? Who would take that assignment on? The same people that would design gas chambers. What wrong with us?  He also points to another design assignment: design something that consumes human waist and turns it into o2, provides shade, food, is self replicating etc…it’s a tree. G-d designed it. and its marvelous and the design concepts reflects the love and kindness of G-d.  Also, we can build systems, products and cities that are sustainable and nurturing and will leave a future for our children. We know how to do this and we can’t afford not to. He is as aware of the danger as he is hopeful. This shook me like the film Wal-ee shook me. After I saw that film I called my friend Jakir who is a farmer and Jewish farm educator and told him I get what it is he is doing. G-d Bless Jakir, he is doing G-ds work. The next day I made a call to  a woman in Cleveland about being a farmer, and I really pray I will be, because I really want to be on that side, I want to be part of the solution. So I was also thinking about a theatre composition that reflects his cradle to cradle principals. Cradle to Cradle perceives the safe and productive processes of nature’s ‘biological metabolism’ as a model for developing a ‘technical metabolism’ flow of industrial materials. Product components can be designed for continuous recovery and reutilization as biological and technical nutrients within these metabolisms—“eliminating the concept of waste.” Cradle to Cradle also addresses energy, water and social responsibility through the following tenets:Waste equals food * Design products that are safe for human health and the environment throughout their lifecycles * Use materials that can be recycled/composted perpetually * Create and participate in systems to recover the value of materials following their useUse current solar income * Maximize the use of renewable energyCelebrate diversity * Manage water use to maximize quality, promote healthy ecosystems and respect local impacts * Guide operations and stakeholder relationships using social responsibilityI’m brain storming…FYI-I don’t usually post about Ideas for project that I want to do. I keep these close to home unless I’m scheduled to start rehearsing the project, so don’t get all excited about something. Things can stay on the backburner for a long time. But I like brainstorming.