Urban Farm on Wilson St.

The Urban farm over on Wilson St. has gotten a lot of press lately. Also the city has mentioned that the Stevenses could go through Grassroots Gardens to get their lease for the land. In the past the Mayor's administration was very helpful in working with Grassroots Gardens and moved the leases that are needed through the process quickly. Currently there have been no new leases with Grassroots Gardens in more than one year. This is a big deal as Grassroots Gardens has not be able to allow over 20 Community groups the ability to use their community gardens. The gardening season is upon us, so we would like to allow people to garden. Mr. Mayor and Commissioner Reilly please move these leases off of your desk and into the Common Council for approval! Check out David Torke's post on the Mayor's response to questions regarding the Urban Farm on Wilson St.

Its been a while! Burlington Vermont and my Birthday!

HI All. It has been a while since I have posted and all sorts of crazy things have been happening. The one that I want to talk about now is the fact that last weekend I went up to Burlington Vermont with my Friend Jake to visit my sister for my birthday (yes I am now 28 years old!) It was a long drive (9Hours) but the conversation was good.
Saturday we went to Shelburne Farms (an old Rockefeller Farm/Castle) and saw the little baby sheep that had just been born and also the sugar shack where they were boiling off the Maple sap to make maple syrup. It was really neat to see that process being done. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of Maple Syrup.
Then we went to Palmer's Farm where we have hot dogs BOILED IN PURE MAPLE SYRUP!!!! and Sugar on Snow. The hot dogs were a highlight of the trip, so delicious that no ketchup was needed. And the sugar on snow is shaved ice with maple syrup poured on it, served with a pickle and a donunt ( I don't know why the pickle but it was damn good.) That night I went out with my tiwn friends Heidi and Heather (and Alagash the Gnome) to celebrate our Birthdays (we all came into the world on March 26th, a year apart though) It was great fun and the above pictures are Heidi's Hope all has been well with everyone!

From nature, to destitution, to casino

My friend Bekah and I went for a walk yesterday. I guess first we went for a ride in the car, then we walked then drove then walked! It was a crazy day! Started off at SPot coffee on Delaware then we headed over to Times Beach which is a great and weird place it is off the skyway on Fuhrman Boulevard near the Coast Guard Base. It is really hard to get to because of the stupid Skyway. Buffalo's waterfront is so cut off from everything! But we walked along the break wall and over towards the coast guard base and on the boardwalk the picture is from the Nature part of our day.

Then we drove around the area over near the grain mills and onto Chicago Street where there is much destitution, and also some housing projects which butt right up against boarded up buildings such as this little firehouse. Some of the projects are boarded up themselves, which is pretty crazy to me! That's the destitution part!

Then we saw the NEW flashy and weird Native American Casino which is only the temporary site for a larger and more magical casino which probably will never be actually built (the steel skeleton is there though) IT was weird to go from a serene nature spot to the destitution of Buffalo to this glitzy casino.

We then went to Campieri's on Main Street for some awesome food. The food was great, and we were really hungry. It was an awesome day!

Shovel Ready Sites?!

New York Gov. David A. Paterson's office has identified more than 1,900 "shovel-ready" projects that could be started soon, depending on how federal stimulus dollars are allocated.

This database includes proposed projects in every county in New York but is linked directly to Erie County projects. You can also sort through them if you would like. Some ask for millions others ask for $30,000. It is really a crap shoot as to who gets what funding. Lets hope that Buffalo is included in a big way in this allocation!

Flight 3407

It is one thing to not hear the back story and be like 50 people just died it is a totally different story when you start hearing the names and life details of the people on flight 3407. BuffaWhat shared the above graphic from Hero Design. I felt numb up until now with regards to this, but now as the stories of peoples lives lost come out it feels real. I prayed tonight for the first time in a long time.

A New Vacant Lot Strategy. NINJAS!

So I have been thinking about vacant lot strategy for the city of Buffalo. Buffalo has between 7,000 and 10,000 vacant properties many of which are lots. We are busy creating community gardens tree farms etc on these lots to reclaim them from what they formerly were which was often places where people dumped tired and other debris. People also used these lots as places to do drugs and other illicit things. I know this is a huge and important problem, but just wanted to throw out an idea that I think is great and silly. NINJAS. (takes a little while to get down to the street view) If you click on this link you will see the new Ninja Training school that has been established in the City of Pittsburgh in order to take back the vacant lots that are throughout the city. No one wants to dump trash in a vacant lot if they know that ninjas are lieing in wait to cut them to bits. No gang activity is going to go on there because as everyone knows Ninjas can cut bullets in half with their swords. So I say if Pittsburgh can do it so can we! Go Ninja Go Ninja GO Ninja GO!

Grassroots Gardens

I have been involved with Grassroots Gardens for about 4 years now. I kind of fell into it. A friend of mine was working on a community garden at the corner of West and Hudson on the West Side, and told me that the city wanted to take it away to make way for infill housing. I went over to the garden saw how beautiful it was and thought to myself, "NO WAY!" This garden was full of life, it contains a peach tree, tomatoes, squash, beets, chard, carrots, peppers, peas, etc as well as a diverse assortment of flowers. Our little group organized and got about 500 signatures and sent them to Brian Davis (who would not agree to meet with us!) He sent back a letter stating that he had talked to the block club president and that the community wanted this in-fill housing. We shopped our petitions around and found that once you shine a light on something it is easy to ensure that your ideas will be heard. The house was never built and we still have a great garden!

That first year I didn't really garden, I just worked on the organizing end of things. We got together a little group we called, "The Buffalo Garden Group." This group was pretty much me, Justin Weidenbach, and Anna Falicov. Anna put together a great policy brief that we brought to the city, and to Tim Wannamaker (then head of economic development) to see if we could make into some sort of policy or ordinance. This didn't really work, as no real follow up came from the city.

Our little group disbanded shortly thereafter because we had other things to do and our garden was safe, but I became a board member of Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo, and then became the Vice President, then President of the board. That was about 3 years ago and the ride ever since has been an amazing learning experience! I have now started gardening much more regularly and have a roof top garden outside my window. If anyone wants to start a Community Garden in Buffalo leave a comment and I will do my best to get back to you. There will certainly be more posts on this in the future.

Handle Meetings with CARE!

So yesterday was a day full of meetings. Mostly regarding an international marketplace that I have been working on over on Grant St. Literally back to back to back meetings. 10am-3:30pm straight! Even lunch was a meeting to plan strategy for a later meeting. By the 3 o'clock meeting I was a bit wiped but manager to keep it together.

I do feel as though the meetings were productive and we are moving towards a concrete project that we can all be proud of, but it was a really tough day. At 3:30 when I had my last meeting I took a 15 minute walk just to decompress. It is tough to be "On" for that long!

The truth is I love my job, I think that city goverment needs people that care. That care for the individual, the neighborhood and the city as a whole. I try to do that as much as I can when I am out in the district or at meetings or wherever I am. It is truly important to care, and to listen. So those are 2 tenents that I try to live by I guess caring and listening! Even when you have literally a day full of meetings. CARE and LISTEN that's how we can make Buffalo better!

Listening

Sometimes I sit in meetings and I think to myself, man people sure do a lot of talking but they sure as hell don't listen that well. I think it all comes down to listening. If you can listen well then you will be able to do well in life. You need to be able to listen to the things that are unsaid, the subtle gestures and the rising tension in the room. Being able to listen and respond correcltly is the thing that can truly make or break any relationship; be it romantic, business or otherwise. I feel that in so much of life everyone wants to talk, and no one can take the time to actually listen. Listening is what we need more of that should have been Obama's campaign slogan. He should have said I will listen, if he would have said that he might have won Arizona too!! Like I said meandering thoughts is what I do best!