Potato tower revisited

The One Straw blog has a post about making a four square foot potato tower. It seems akin to the one I posted about earlier, albeit with perhaps a more elegant design than the one featured on Lifehacker.

Regardless of how you build it, this proves you don’t need a lot of space to grow your own very inexpensive and very delicious food.

Might this even work on a balcony?

A new home, a new home garden

Some very good news: I will no longer have upstairs neighbors! They’re good people, but it’ll be nice not to have people coming in and out all hours of night and day.

The other good news: along with the new digs, we will have a huge garden! By city standards, having almost 1,000 square feet as a garden is huge. But such things are possible on the south side, and that’s exactly what we’ve got now.

Which leads me to my question… what should we call it? I’ve a few ideas, but you can add yours, too:

Second, because it’s going to be such a big space, I’m looking for some suckers GOOD PEOPLE, possibly you, who would be willing to lend some assistance in setting up and tending the beds. Plus, you’re entitled to plant and grow your own crops, and, naturally, take it harvest home with you when.

And if you’re interested in helping set up the yard-farm and grow some food, drop me a line: my email is haazah –> @ <– gmail.com. If you can figure out how to turn that into a usable email address (and not spam me), you’re a good candidate for the garden.

Thanks!

Deep Thought

How did the availability federal stimulus money effect Scott Walker’s position, philosophical stance, or behavior? How will this effect his upcoming gubernatorial bid?

Cardinal Stritch drops Cousins Center purchase

JSonline has the story.

I’m glad in a way, as I’ll shortly become a neighbor to the Cousins Center and Seminary Woods.

Part of me wonders what will come next.

Last minute attempts to get 1% sales tax through Joint Finance

We the People of Milwaukee asked for and voted in favor of the 1%. Let’s make it happen!

Copying an email from Bill Sell — hope you don’t mind that, Bill –

Once more into the breach (vote expected this Thursday)

A call today, or tonight (voice mail or fax or email is fine) to

John Lehman (d)
Senate District 21, Racine
PO Box 7882
866 615-7510
608 267-6793 fax
Sen.lehman@legis.wisconsin.gov

To ask him to support RTA and Milwaukee’s desire for a sales tax to pay our own way to fix our parks and transit

pick any of one or two or three reasons:

* Today 40,000 jobs are inaccessible to public transportation in Milwaukee due to the Walker bus cuts.
* If our buses do not get dedicated funding, the number of inaccessible jobs will rise to something over 100,000.
* Milwaukee voted to fix this with a rise in our County’s sales tax. And a reduction in our property tax. Our bus system will die without this change.

and please say THANK YOU for his support

thanks so much
peace and joy to all, especially
* our Milwaukee workers and students who are
* blind
* underage
* carless for any reason
* seniors who should not be driving

Bill Sell

---

We also need to push Lena Taylor and Pedro Colón on this, as they both sit on Joint Finance.Let’s make it happen!

Milwaukee named “a water technology hub” by the U.N.

Terrific news!

Quoting JSOnline:

“The United Nations on Tuesday will designate Milwaukee as a U.N. Global Compact City, making it one of 13 such cities worldwide, in a move that will help the region promote its image abroad as an international hub of water technology.

“The 5-year-old U.N. program obligates member cities to showcase progress on issues that involve human rights, environmentalism, health or labor standards…

“Milwaukee becomes only the second such U.N. city in the United States alongside San Francisco, which champions a Business Council on Climate Change that encourages Bay area companies such as Google Inc. to adhere to low-carbon environmental practices. Milwaukee is also the second U.N. city anywhere with a focus that involves water. The other is Jamshedpur, India, where Tata Steel’s giant mills are working on industrial sewage treatment projects.”

(How often do we see Milwaukee and San Francisco alongside one another in a positive light, much less at all?)

It must be noted that Milwaukee is home to Sweet Water Organics, the first aquaculture farm started in a reclaimed industrial building. This appears not to have gone unnoticed; the article lists “studying aquaculture to breed edible fish on the assumption that seafood offers cheaper animal protein than livestock” as one of the proposed projects that got our city this honor from the U.N.

Let’s make it good, Milwaukee!

Walker or Neumann, which will it be?

As the Sheboygan-based blog SheVegas notes, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker will run against incumbent Gov. Jim Doyle for governor in 2010. This will come with as a great shock to approximately no one, as Walker is as subtle as a wet sock hitting you in the face. What may have come as a surprise to some is the possible presence of former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann in the race. The possible entry of Neumann into the race was telegraphed by Jim Klauser, whom Uppity Wisconsin describes as “a very smart GOP operative,” wrote an open letter to WisPolitics.com that advocated for Mark Neumann to join the race.

Now, as I was out of the state when Neumann ran against Sen. Feingold, I don’t know much about him. I know a thing or two about Walker, having watched the continued decline of Milwaukee County under his reign as county exec. But, how do these two stack up compared to one another?

Did Neumann graduate from college?

Is Walker a devoted Christian?

Do they both have plans to freeze taxes, and if so, how do they compare?

If the Republican primary was tomorrow, who which one should I vote for?

It’s time to start thinking about and talking about it.

April 24: Feeling left out after seeing Neumann getting all the attention, Walker: Tosa Error has confirmed he’ll run in 2010.

April 26: James Rowen has delivered his thoughtful commentary on this matter.

Research paper: Food crisis in Imperial Germany during the First World War

I might have made clear on here a time or two that I’m a history major at UWM. I’m in my last semesters, and on track to graduate either in December of some time in 2010. (The latter would comply with my self-declared Five Year Plan.)

As with many other parts of my life, my historical interests have turned from all things Cold War to all things food and food-growing. For my capstone research paper, I’m researching the food crisis that existed in Imperial Germany and the rest of Europe during the First World War. One thing I’ve recently been pondering was if the Reich ever started a victory garden iniative as did England and America. (Ein Sieg Garten, jeder?) Turns out that they did, although it came much too late. The image below turned up in the book World War I: A History in Documents by Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee.

For those whose German is as bad or worse than mine, the translation says, “War Assistance Day. Exhibition of vegetables and fruits from small garden plots.”

Exactly what we’re talking about doing through community gardens thourhg MUG and the VGI.

Difference is, we’re not in the midst of a huge war that is killing thousands of people every day (anymore) and draining our land of food and resources, as was Germany. Nor are we penned in by a strict embargo, as was Germany; nor are our people starving to death as a result of it, as were Germany’s.

The First World War is responsible for the shape of most everything that followed. The Cold War stemmed from it, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in turn were rooted in the Cold War. To think, if Germany hadn’t sponsored Vladimir Lenin’s trip back to Russia in 1917, the world could have been very different. Of course the Great War was such a horribly complicated turn of events that folded in and back upon itself that to have many things happen differently in it would have changed the world.

Best if it hasn’t happened at all. But it did, which gives us historians a lot to write about.

One from the Odd Spam Files

When someone emails me promising a way to “raise your sexual event,” I don’t get very interested. And this is no different save for the very bizarre wording:

“raise your sexual event with relef of priceless medicaments.”

I would say, “Huh?”, but I really don’t want to know.

Baltimore Sun: Mayor plans to turn formal gardens in front of City Hall into vegetable gardens

This is great news! The Sun is reporting that the city of Baltimore is turning some of its pretty but idle flower garden land into a productive food garden.

Where could we have a high-visibility garden in Milwaukee? City Hall certainly won’t work, as there’s no gardens there anyway. Perhaps the former Army Reserve site here in Bay View? What about the former Park East land?

A few people have noted that the Kilbourn Reservoir Victory Garden (no direct relation to the Shorewood-based Victory Garden Initiative) was started today. That’s a very good project for that neighborhood. (Apparently the article on that garden has been the most active article in the Riverwest Currents web site’s history.)

I’m reminded of something I read in today’s Journal Sentinel about the river cleanup that also happened today:

“Amid the old shoes and clothes, rusting car parts and dirty bottles that were picked up by volunteers Saturday along the banks of the Menomonee River in Hoyt Park, Colin Brown discovered something in the mud that made him do a double take.

It was a cardboard sign that read: “The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”

Back to the Baltimore garden article, it’s worth noting that the food grown in the 2,000 square foot garden will go to feed the city’s hungry. That’s a laudable goal, and in my estimation one of the best uses of public land and resources. Why not use it to feed those who need it?

Also of note in the article is the list of how many places are getting on board with the public garden idea:

“This week, California first lady Maria Shriver announced plans for a vegetable garden at the Statehouse in Sacramento. Citizens in Flint, Mich., are planting a 2-acre vegetable garden in the middle of town. A garden is planned around the Kingston, N.Y., town hall, Doiron said, and the first family of Georgia is discussing an official garden. Maryland’s first lady, Katie O’Malley, is planning a vegetable garden for Government House in Annapolis, too, despite the abundance of shade trees.” [Emphasis added.]