Daily Loaf

The air is getting cool and crisp, and let’s hope it stays that way, because it is time to chill – in every sense of the word. Chillounge Night – sponsored by Cointreau and created by a Sarasota gallery owner – transforms a four-block area in downtown Tampa into a swanky lounge and nightclub. The outdoor lounge, decked out with lights, a banging sound system and hundreds of stylish daybeds – for those who want to kick back and enjoy a tasty beverage – is a great way for people to mingle in an unusual, elegant environment. If you don’t feel like chillin’ then take your pick of entertainment: festivities include tango dancers, opera singers, jazz musicians, a fashion show, a cigar lounge and a grand finale Brazilian Samba Parade. This ingenious party is bound to be kick-ass and, as if you need another reason to attend, the event benefits Friends of the Festival. Sat., Oct. 10, 6 p.m.-11 p.m., $15 per person in advance, $20 per person at the door, $75 VIP, attendees must be 21+, downtown Tampa along Franklin St., 941-448-0995, chilloungenight.com. – Lily Reisman

A traveling exhibition organized by Chattanooga’s Hunter Museum of American Art, I Heard A Voice: The Art of Lesley Dill brings nearly 30 of the acclaimed contemporary artist’s works — with an emphasis on sculptural installations — to St. Petersburg. Poetic and psychologically charged, Dill’s constructions often combine fabric and figures (or dress forms) with text to spellbinding effect; works featured in I Heard A Voice respond to poetry by Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu and Franz Kafka. Expect to be moved by the artist’s ideas and awed by her craft. (Pictured: “Rise,” Laminated fabric, hand-dyed cotton, paper, metal, silk organza with cotton. Courtesy of the Artist and George Adams Gallery, NY) Oct. 10-Dec. 27, Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Dr. NE, St. Petersburg, 727-896-2667, fine-arts.org. – Megan Voeller Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Fixing sprawl and redesigning suburbia- Grant Rimbey CNU explores a possible strategy towards improving existing sprawl. Fixing the sprawl that we have, along with sprawl demolition and recycling, are strategies that could be employed in the future as a new green industry.

Nation’s largest solar facility to be in DeSoto County by next year- Florida Power and Light is currently building the nation’s largest photovoltaic plant in DeSoto County, a $173.5 million, 25 megawatt solar generating facility.

Fresh: New Thinking About What We’re Eating screening – What’s wrong with the mega-industrial food industry- Struggling small farms, problems with food safety rules and the mega-industrial food industry, and a film about all of the above.
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Scattered about me are books and magazines. On one the poster child of the climate change movement, the polar bear swimming in icy clear water. Audubon chose the title Sink or Swim: Another Assault on the Arctic and How You Can Help Stop It. In all honesty, I think it’s too late. We are currently witnessing the fifth or is it the sixth mass extinction since life first emerged from the slime or rocks or whatever that latest scientific findings happens to suggest. But remember when compared to our life spans this extinction will take an insanely long time. So the urgency just doesn’t seem to be there, because if it did, then we would all be in the streets marching on Washington, D.C. and the United Nations demanding that something be done yesterday.

Another magazine, the April/May 2009 issue of Free Inquiry, has a time bomb on its cover. The number on the clock 6,790,064,816. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of August 16, 2009, at my time of 10:15 a.m., the human population is 6,845,146,634.  In 1960, it was 3 billion. By 2044, 9 billion. That’s a 6 billion jump in less than 100 years. For me, this is the number one problem plaguing Homo sapiens. There are just too many of us, which leads to greater and greater demands on water and food, both quite finite. And the energy demand will only increase GHGs if viable alternatives are not found – think China and India. If human population growth does not slow down, we will not have the resources to feed everyone. I have to smile when I think about the town hall meetings and the misinformation being propagated with end-of-life issues and death squads. If we don’t stop breeding who knows. Sounds like a great story for a movie, though. Oh wait! It’s already been done - Soylent Green.
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Composting is definitely the least sexy part of “going green.” But after learning that grinding food in the disposal contributes to water pollution, I considered it an environmental duty. To start the composting process, you throw all your kitchen, yard and leaf refuse in a pile and the discarded items decompose over several months, morphing into a nutrient rich fertilizer. The transitional process, however, isn’t pleasant – swarms of insects buzz about, half rotten grapefruit halves stare back at you and there’s sometimes an odiferous whiff.

Although initially intimidating and bordering on gross, composting is simple. I established Project Compost by mounding anything I’d normally throw down the disposal and a load of dead gutter leaves in a shaded corner next my house. If you don’t enjoy the luxury (or curse) of a yard or want to take the cleaner route, you can buy or make a compost bin.

An important step of composting is aeration, achieved by placing holes in the bottom of your compost bin and/or stirring or “turning” your pile if you’ve mounded it on the ground. This also allows the microbes to burrow their way into the fray to facilitate the composting process. I turn my vegetation heap using a pick-hoe about once a week but some websites recommend everyday. Purchased bins make the turning process easier.

Other key steps for composting include the paying attention to the nitrogen/carbon ratio – the 50/50 brown to green percentage. A blend of leaves, grass cuttings and bark should be mingled with your kitchen scraps to aerate, to chemically prevent strong odors and to speed the composting process along. In addition, your compost needs to be moist at all times. Too dry and the microorganisms become dormant; too wet and the aeration process stalls. And one more thing… don’t throw meat, bones or fish scraps into the pile – they attract critters.

More resources for composting:
Scientific stuff on howtocompost.org
Easy instructions on Treehugger.com
Mother’s Organics Humus Farm

Classes on how to compost at:
Sweetwater Organic Farm
Hillsborough County Extension
Pinellas County Extension