Kit Bakke's Blog, page 5

Amazon’s Bananas

How do you read that? “Amazon is bananas”? Or “Amazon’s gone bananas”? Or maybe just plain “the bananas of Amazon”?

If you picked the last one, you’d be correct. This afternoon I walked by an Amazon building (there are dozens in Seattle, stretching from Lake Union north to downtown—small two story buildings to forty story glass behemoths, not to mention three geodesic domes melded together like soap bubbles).

Amazon’s Bubbles in downtown Seattle

Walking by one of the smaller buildings was a small shed with a homemade sign “Community Banana Stand.” Two people were sitting on chairs behind a row of wooden packing boxes filled with bananas. People walked by and took a banana. I had to find out what was going on. Besides, I was a little peckish myself.

I went up to the banana boxes and subtly looked around for a cash register. None in sight.

“What’s going on here?”

“We’re giving away bananas.”

“Gosh, how long has this been going on?”

“About a year and a half. We’re here every day giving away bananas.”

By then I was hooked. A million questions sprung to mind. Turns out they give away around 10,000 bananas every day, five days a week. Who knew? Certainly not me. I talked to the man and woman (called “banistas” of course) behind the banana boxes for about 10 minutes—it was midday on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr Day, and during that time probably twenty bananas found new homes.

I asked about un-given away bananas. What did they do with them? Once a week, people from the Urban Rest Stop come by and pick them up to make banana bread or muffins to give to their clients. The Urban Rest Stop is a wonderful local organization that provides showers and laundry facilities for homeless people. Most homeless people have jobs, about 70% by their count, and so need showers and clean clothes on a regular basis. The Urban Rest Stop opens at 5:30 am and runs to capacity until 9:30 pm on weekdays with slightly shorter hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

The guy giving away bananas also said he’s made banana sorbet or granita from some of the leftover fruit. Totally delicious, he said and as easy as mushing up a few bananas, freezing them in a jar and then breaking them up with a fork.

Googling around a little, I see that free bananas are not universally loved. The Wall Street Journal thought maybe local fruit and veg sellers would lose banana sales. Maybe this is just one more of Jeff Bezos’ campaigns for world domination. All this press, though, was from mid 2017—nothing more recent. The criticism reminds me of the excellent documentary Poverty Inc. about how donating our used clothing to the developing world prevents indigenous small businesses from succeeding. Not sure that exactly applies to giving away bananas in booming Seattle, but interested to learn more.

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Seattle Women's March 2018

Second year in a row. Last year it was sunny and clear for our march. Eagles circled overhead at the start of the route. People were fired up and ready to go. This year, it was gray and damp. People were not happy that here we were, a year later, shell-shocked, some of us angry and depressed, tired, unbelieving.

The most energized were the younger folks, the college and high school kids, starting chants and songs, waving creative signs, wearing their knitted pink or rainbow colored hats. Us older ones there too, chatty and present, as determined as ever not to be, as one sign said, shoved back to the 1950s.

All of us, digging in for as long as it would take to get back our democracy. Lots of focus on the fall elections. More men, too, in the march this year than last. It’s everybody’s fight.

Here are a few signs.

The post Seattle Women's March 2018 appeared first on Kit Bakke.

Seattle Women’s March 2018

Second year in a row. Last year it was sunny and clear for our march. Eagles circled overhead at the start of the route. People were fired up and ready to go. This year, it was gray and damp. People were not happy that here we were, a year later, shell-shocked, some of us angry and depressed, tired, unbelieving.

The most energized were the younger folks, the college and high school kids, starting chants and songs, waving creative signs, wearing their knitted pink or rainbow colored hats. Us older ones there too, chatty and present, as determined as ever not to be, as one sign said, shoved back to the 1950s.

All of us, digging in for as long as it would take to get back our democracy. Lots of focus on the fall elections. More men, too, in the march this year than last. It’s everybody’s fight.

Here are a few signs.

The post Seattle Women’s March 2018 appeared first on Kit Bakke.

Where is Happy?

Between Christmas and New Year’s I read a 2008 nonfiction book called The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. Somewhat unfortunately titled, Weiner describes his visits to ten countries searching for the secrets to individual and community happiness. A foreign correspondent for NPR, he writes in a snappy, ironic, deprecating style, and had a research assistant who ploughed through mountains of happiness research, both scientific and philosophical, which he layers in at all the right places as he describes his travels.

Weiner began his journeys at Erasmus University’s World Database of Happiness in Rotterdam, which holds almost 12,000 studies related to happiness, of which about half contain enough empirical data to be considered scientifically tight enough to be included in their finding archive. The Netherlands is always high on all happiness indices, so Weiner conveniently began there. Needless to say, prostitution and drugs are part of the Dutch happiness story—not prostitution and drugs themselves, but the Dutch attitude toward them. From there, he went to Switzerland, then Bhutan and Iceland—countries very different from each other, but all of which rank high in happiness studies. He also visited countries with low happiness indices (but not for the obvious reasons of being desperately poor and/or war-torn), trying to understand what made them so.

I won’t spoil the fun by naming all the countries, nor reveal his conclusions about human happiness in general. It’s one of those things you probably have some accurate ideas about already, but it was a pleasure (it made me happy J) to see it described more articulately and entertainingly than I’d been able to do myself before reading the book.

The book also includes some interesting asides and caveats that might get you thinking and traveling in new directions yourself. For instance, the photo above is one I took on a trip to Bhutan recently. But that’s another story.

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Doing the Same Thing Over and Over

One thing I don’t like is doing the same thing over and over again. Like commuting along the same route every day. Like always doing laundry on Sundays. Like cooking the same Thanksgiving dinner every year.

I like to mix it up a little. International travel does that, for sure. Saying “yes” more than “no” does that. Of course, sometimes you get in way over your head, like the months I was volunteering at three different organizations at once and they all ended up scheduling me on the same Thursday month after month. Or the backlog of sewing projects in my basement, or writing projects in my head. There are always way more steps to every plan, from cleaning out that basement, to learning how to draw, to knitting a pair of sox than I ever anticipate. Eyes bigger than the brain, I guess.

Even so, it’s worth a few failures to try new things.

Last year, I tried kayaking with my husband for the first time. Turned out we both wanted to be in charge, so we’re unlikely to take it up as a major hobby.

More successful was driving to Idaho to see full totality during the recent eclipse. As everyone says, true totality is completely different from 99.9% totality. Next one is in April 2024—Mexico to Vermont, so plan ahead! Here we are in an Idaho state park with my brother and sister-in-law getting ready. I’m definitely keeping my eclipse glasses—now I can look at the sun any time I want.

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Splashing along

As if those 6 months in Europe weren’t enough, Peter and I spent three weeks in the North Atlantic, traveling from the English Channel, up the west coast of Scotland, over to the Hebrides, then to Iceland, then Greenland, then Newfoundland, then down (or up, as a New England friend corrected me) the St Lawrence Seaway, to Quebec and ending in Montreal. One Terrific Itinerary!! We kayaked, zodiaced, hiked and steamed around icebergs, open ocean, craggy mountains, puffin nesting cliffs, tiny fishing villages perched on ancient lava beds, and spent time both on and inside glaciers. Also learned a lot about the Vikings and those early Norse settlements.

A part of our planet we need to take better care of, that’s for sure. Here’s a few photos.

Ice, rock and tiny humans in southern Greenland

 

Puffins at Heimaey, Iceland

Us kayaking in Newfoundland

The post Splashing along appeared first on Kit Bakke, author of Dancing on the Edge and Miss Alcott's E-mail.

Still on the Road

Our six months in Europe is winding down to its last week. We’re in Venice for the month of May, hosting friends and family in the apartment we rented. Sunshine and sparkly water all around. A couple pictures below. More stories on O Lucky Man and Lady.

Grand Canal entrance as seen from the top of the San Marco campanile

Gondolas galore–at rest in the high tide of evening

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On the Road

Berber village in Atlas Mountain foothills in mid March.

Best place to find me these days is on O Lucky Man & Lady!  Lots of travel…

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London! and more

From a side trip out to Le Manoir aux Quatr’ Saisons near Oxford

Whilst Peter and I are traveling in Europe, you can follow along with some bits being posted on companion website www.oluckymanandlady.com. Latest post is from London–grocery store tips and more. I love investigating other countries’ grocery stores. Much more fun than hanging out in other countries’ laundromats, although they also provide interesting insights.

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Have Words, Will Blog

Books–not so easy to write a good one

I’m working on a tricky historical nonfiction project, and my editor suggested I read Stephen Pyne’s book Voice & Vision. Which I have just done. Terrific book!! Well, if you are into that sort of thing. But a lot of his advice would work for fiction writers as well.

He’s not a writing teacher, he’s an environmental scientist who’s won a MacArthur fellowship and writes about wildfires among other things. He doesn’t sugar coat anything.

After providing lots of examples and thoughts about the craft and the art of writing, his last chapter is full of this sort of thing:

Writing is about choices,

and among the first of those choices is

to assure yourself time to work.

Otherwise you are writing a diary or a blog.

There you go. If you spend all your time on the small stuff, the big stuff never happens.

He says that writing is like politics: it’s all about the art of the possible. Writers have to live with the “time, funds, sources, ideas and talent” that they have available to them. And it’s different for each of us. If you know what you have available, then you can tailor your writing project to those resources.

Like most books on writing, he makes the point that “If you don’t actually write, you don’t get anything written.” The old butt-to-the-chair advice.

One bit that I liked a lot was the observation that “ideas come from writing as much as writing comes from ideas.” For his nonfiction-writing audience, he adds “Writing is a means of understanding that ought to accompany research, not appear magically at its end. With practice, you will trust your ability to make the text happen. If you write, the words will come.”

Pyne addresses the question: “When to push on and when to pull back?” by which he means, how do you know when you’ve done your absolute best. Because it’s disastrous to stop before that. Again, he says, it’s a matter of choosing—“It’s about constantly making calls regarding what is good enough. Assessing the unstable gap between what you desire and what you can do is the hardest call of all.”

Wow, no wonder writing a good book is hard…all those choices, all that risk, juggling all those slippery inputs, the dangers of stopping too soon or never really getting going at all.

OK, back to the real work.

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