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By Jessica Reeder on November 9th, 2009
Howdy folks! New Orleans was a blast, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. But let’s pick up where we left off: the one, the only, the ever-fabulous New York City.
As you may have noticed, my blog’s a little out of date: this photo, for example, was taken back in August. I’ve spent the last couple of months traveling faster than I can write: now I’ve landed for the winter, and I’ve got tons of stories to tell.
That’s Luciano and Brian shakin’ they bacon at the roller skate dance party in Central Park.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be catching you up on everything I’ve done and learned since August. It’s been a great adventure.
From New York we’ll blast through New Hampshire to Maine, Massachussetts, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana, then stop off in Nevada before landing safely in California. You’ll meet hippies, foodies, party kids, dirtbags, volunteers, artists, normal folks, dogs, chickens and (my personal favorite) The Navigator.
Ready? Here we go…
By Jessica Reeder on October 25th, 2009
Hey everybody, I’m headed deep into New Orleans and won’t be back for a spell. Gonna see my first Second Line parade today, then spend a few days working with Common Ground… and then it’s Halloween.
I’ll be back on the radar soon, and in the meantime here’s some food for thought: photos from the Big Post-Katrina Easy.
Odds are, this house and this car never met before Katrina…
but they’ve been together four years now.
Downtown’s got its troubles too
You can construct a new boardwalk, but you can’t just rebuild the bayou:
this should be full of trees.
By Jessica Reeder on October 21st, 2009
This summer I traveled from Boston to New York, and back again, for $3. That’s $1.50 each way: $1 for the ticket and 50¢ in booking fees.
How did I do it? Baby, I took the Megabus.
Megabus bills itself as “America’s first low-cost inter-city bus service,” but it’s oh so much more. Its buses are brand-new, double-decker behemoths—practically limousines compared to Greyhound’s rusty clunkers—and what’s more, they offer wi-fi en route.
Megabus isn’t the only bus company offering dirt-cheap fares: $1 bus fares are popping up everywhere following Megabus’ success. Greyhound itself has launched a competing service, BoltBus, covering essentially the same service area at the same cost.
» Continue reading How to Travel Cheap & Green: Take the $1 Bus!
By Jessica Reeder on October 19th, 2009
So there I was in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. Just out of the way of public transportation and once heavily controlled by the Mob, this area has become somewhat of a car-oriented wasteland in recent years. Blocks are wide, full of brick buildings and parking lots. A brand-new Ikea sparkles in one corner, beckoning Brooklynites with all its fabulously disposable wares.
And right next to the Ikea? Why, a huge, flourishing community garden!
The Added Value Urban Garden is a volunteer-driven, youth-oriented community garden that also happens to be planted right on top of the asphalt here in Brooklyn. The farm is funded with grant money and is considered a public land in New York—which means that it’s open to everyone. Two days a week, volunteers come from all over town to help with planting, weeding, composting and harvesting. During the summer, a weekly farmer’s market brings in cash and public interest. And in between, Added Value works with young kids from the neighborhood, providing paying jobs.
That paid work is incredibly important. I talked to a Red Hook teenager who used to make money selling water on the streets. That’s a sight better than selling drugs, but still not a great job for a 14-year-old. He heard that the NY Department of Youth and Community Development was helping kids find work, and went down to the recruiting office looking for better work. They placed him here at the Red Hook garden, where he’s now a leader in the youth program.
» Continue reading Try This at Home: Join a community garden
Fighting climate change with Blog Action Day
By Jessica Reeder on October 15th, 2009
You know you love it. So work harder to save it.
What is Blog Action Day?
Blog Action Day is a cheesy title for an important event: one day in which the online world dedicates itself to fighting climate change. Today, the B.A.D. team at Change.org is rallying Web writers—and thusly our readers—to get involved.
Climate change is more than just a cause celebre; it’s a very real threat, and each of us must take real action toward a healthier world. And although the issue is bigger than any one of us can tackle alone, by rallying our forces and working together with world leaders we might just be able to change things.
Today, bloggers around the world are united, spreading the world to our eleven million readers and exhorting them—no, exhorting YOU—to take action.
Why Should I Act Now?
This is a crucial moment in our planet’s history. On December 7, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen to hash out an international agreement on environmental policy. That gives us less than two months to make sure our leaders know that we demand a fair, ambitious, and binding agreement.
The United States is a leader in clean technology, but it’s also one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases. President Obama has asserted that climate change is an urgent threat—but words and actions are two different things. We must make sure that our leadership knows how strongly we feel about this issue, so that strong action will be taken at an international level. In short, we have to stand up and fight for change.
How Can I Take Action?
Easy! You won’t even have to move your butt from your cushy chair. Here are a few ways to make your voice heard:
More Information
Not convinced? Really? Check out these links for a little kick in the pants:
By Jessica Reeder on October 12th, 2009
This is the Waterpod™.
If you live in New York—or if you’re a sustainability geek—you probably heard about this highly ambitious project: 5 artists living on a barge on the waterways of New York, creating their own food, water and shelter in a demonstration of sustainable technology. The Waterpod visited each borough of New York, hosting events and offering free demonstrations and information to all visitors.
Cool stuff, at least in theory. Apocalypse enthusiasts and Kevin Costner fans alike have long toyed with the idea of living on the water; finally, somebody (one Mary Mattingly) got up the gumption to try it. And as it prepared to launch this spring, everyone from Discover to Inhabitat was singing its praises.
However, by the time I arrived in NY, the project had gotten some mixed press. Questions of the barge’s true sustainability were rampant—and my interest was piqued.
I tried to find information on the technical details via the project’s website, but only found a lot of artist-speak and a long James Joyce quote about water. What was the Waterpod exactly, and was it actually a viable living space—or just a high-concept artpiece created by ambitious amateurs?
The answer, not surprisingly, was a little of both. What I found at the Waterpod was not so much a fully-functioning project as a demonstration of possibility. Maybe it doesn’t work perfectly, but it offers fantastic food for thought and a lot of inspiration.
» Continue reading The Waterpod: life on a New York boat
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