Stories & Curios

What’s been happening lately

2010-07-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

Summer jackhammered inside me in March

Wanted to be shared thrown, alone in the bright blue seagull-wheeling city,
wanted to jump clap dive skip, brick on the blue sky rust on the brick

Summer smells cigarettes in tee-shirts and sun-warmed car seats jackhammer ratatatatat summer

wanted to shout and then it was May

But I saw summer on my lunch break alone ratatat, saw the sky on a cold day, circled

my own heart like a bird of prey

Now gasping soft sky summer is tired but fields of fireflies not forgotten
Summer hot puff wind growling around me

I’m no closer to breaking open ratatat no closer to feeling alive in the seagull streets of the city

I want to love but not alone

2010-03-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Winter still?

I go again
Alone into my small grey February

Think any feeling’s something better than none

So, split me open for firewood

Isn’t dead wood best for burning?

My grey February sky empties snow on an empty field

And an empty heart and an empty tongue

On empty hands hoping for an execution

Thoughts on Surviving February

2010-02-11T17:36:00.000-08:00

The light in February may be golden, but it’s still deep winter in the woods in Maine. Outside walking the crust of the snow in the field, under the sky, the long tracks of voles race by, the marks of rabbits cross and hop through low brush and twigs. In the full moon sky the owls go hunting and the voles run from the danger of the open field. Onwards, into the forest, into the branches and the deep piles of snow, into the smell of fir and pine and the trickling of water under frozen-over streams.

It’s February and the warmth and food of the holidays are gone. The days are filled with waiting and the busy-making that seems the only way to stave off defeat and darkness. Waiting for a job, waiting for night, waiting for spring. Waiting for the return of love, for the rains of April, for the unfurling of grass and daffodils. While waiting, I read.

Dylan Thomas, in his poem Especially When the October Wind, wrote:

Especially when the October wind

With frosty fingers punishes my hair,

Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire

And cast a shadow crab upon the land,

By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,

Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks

And I read it, and I don’t feel so bad about February. February is just the middle, the necessary darkness in a year of seasons and winds. I wait all year for October and November, for the oncoming coldness and the sweaters and the glorious, unfettered feeling of trees without leaves, sky without cloud, streets without people. For ravens on bare branches, frost on windows, and the emptying of rock and sea leaving only me, the waves, the sound, the ache. Come February I've cooked hot soups and sweet cookies, sprawled in the snow, stood quietly, peacefully in empty fields. It’s February and it’s time now to hibernate one last time before the trumpeting spring and then the waiting for autumn. Time to haul in my expectations and turn inwards. Time for quiet, dark days, time for golden light in the afternoon, and perhaps even time to be defeated.

I come in for tea, red face and hat hair, full of the wild feeling of cold air and wind. The woodstove is cranking, burning logs shifting inside, teakettle steaming and boiling. Through the window bare skeleton trees sway in the wind across the hillsides. The sun goes down, purple red sky on snow. In the dark I turn a light on, read for a while, and wait.

Things in the Desert

2010-02-05T07:56:00.000-08:00

It rains the whole way from Monterey to Sin City, the once-a-year kind of rains that we bring with us from the roiling Pacific Coast into the desert. California sent us on our way with storms and surges and thunder and we make our way out of one state and into another hunched over at the wheel against the wind. Away from the roaring rain and the bent backwards trees and the hail and the blizzards. We drive with quiet faces through the barren mining towns of eastern California and the outpost of shacks at the end of Borax road off Boron exit. Along the road the tan and green scrub and tumblers serve as gathering places for trash and bits of plastic brought by desert winds, clinging like decorations on stunted branches. I like them, incongruous, lonely, human pieces in an empty place. Leaving one life and heading for something new, we ache, full of goodbyes. We ache all the way into the Mojave, and suddenly immense weight and disappointment lift from my shoulders and my chest opens and I feel unexpectedly, unbearably, joyfully alive. Something opens in me inside all this empty space, something possible. Something? Something intangible but glorious. We drive on into the afternoon, into the dark, and at last, into Las Vegas.

Las Vegas, city as showgirl, glitz and cars and massive waste of natural resources. After decades as a successful gangster both east coast and west, Bugsy Siegel “invented” Las Vegas as we know it in 1945, building a paradise for gamblers, the morally decrepit, and the lonely. And what now? Service industry workers trot around trying to please the bizarre fantasies of sleazy college boys while mid-level office workers try their luck in bed or at the game table. From outer space, Las Vegas is the brightest city on Earth. It’s not just light pollution that Las Vegas gives off, but the pollution caused by rampant consumption, by trucking in building materials and raw natural resources to fuel the non-stop “go” of the “Entertainment Capital of the World.” Las Vegas is surrounded by arid red Mojave desert, but within city limits it’s fantastical and green and beachy. It’s hard to find this place beautiful or defendable. Yet there is still beauty to be found in human nature, in the bizarre, in watching each other on display, indulging, shameless, and strange. It feels alien, this playground built by mobsters, lights flashing into the desert night sky, high heels on sidewalks under an electric blue faux Eiffel Tower. Las Vegas is all around me tonight, blinding billboards and frat buddies with beer bellies cat-calling the Hooters waitress with orange-tan skin. We check out of our casino hotel at 7 a.m. while stringy haired slot machine players sit in the background with their coats on, robotically depressing slot levers into the early morning.

It only takes half an hour to get from one man-made desert atrocity to the next. Thirty miles from Las Vegas, Nevada to the Hoover Dam in Arizona. There are scars across the red cliffs of the Colorado River, and it feels like we’ve driven from an impossibly tacky fantasy world into a land of domineering metal robots. Towering metal structures walk along the cliffs of the Black Canyon, strung together with thick cables, while one slow car inches along the dam precipice at a time. These beautiful hills have been ripped away by construction workers, ambitious businessmen, and politicians. The idea for the Hoover Dam was hatched by the governors of the states of the upper and lower Colorado River basins as a way to split up the resources of the river, feed agricultural efforts in the desert, and power the ever-growing population of the west. The dam was completed in 1936, at which time it was the largest hydroelectric plant in the world. It still provides power to large parts of Nevada, Arizona, and California. A cast of heavy machinery stands tall along the canyon walls, overwhelming the river and the humans scurrying around below. For decades this mass of concrete and metal has dug its knees and fingers into the ground until nothing gets by but carefully controlled trickles of water. What was once a healthy river stretching to the sea is now a reverse estuary with salinity levels higher the further inland one goes from the delta. Beyond the path of the river, beyond the scratches and claw marks of mankind’s machines, the red desert unfolds, endlessly dry and empty. Our car climbs slowly upwards, leaving the dam behind as we head east. Poor desert we leave behind. Poor red desert with robots trolling for goods of one sort or another. Poor beautiful wild desert that stole my heart.

2010-01-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

On the road through flash floods and 45 mph winds, flooded vineyards and blizzards and the netherworld of Wasco, CA where you can fuel yourself at Perkos Cafe or the Jolly Kone Drive-Thru. Spotting for tumbleweed in the storm, hours ahead of us still to go. I feel sad and curious about your past with her. About all the mistakes and all the hearts that won't stop hurting. More rain. A shrine to James Dean at the only truck stop in Cholame where we finally stop to pee. Glorious wild half-done day on the road, but still, the ache of goodbyes, the ache of the past.

2010-01-19T08:55:00.000-08:00

Yes, we were good citizens of the bedroom

Now, under the rain, under the windshield, under the wipers

Under the wet coats and the cold hands

Heading east, I wonder what we will refuse to remember

January

2010-01-14T18:17:00.000-08:00

Some old feeling comes sinking in. Cross-country in a few days now, coast to coast. I know where I go there'll be snow. Drifting piles crunching under cars and heels. There will be city buses to get to work, or greyhound buses to get away. I’ve ridden a lot of buses - yellow school buses with cracked green pleather seats and the smell of old apple cores wafting from my L.L. Bean backpack, greyhound buses to Boston, Burlington, and New York, and all the 30-line buses in DC, running up to Friendship Heights, smelling of piss. So many mistakes I’ve carefully planned out, executed, and then despaired of. Which this time? I hope a place, I hope this feeling for not too long.

Remembering A New Years Past

2009-12-30T22:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday at this time, I though that today at this time I would be back in Vermont, eating flourless chocolate cake with candy bumbles on top and feeling nostalgic or heartbroken or happy or sad. Hard to predict. Any way, I would have been wrong. More snow and no airplanes leaving, and I’m nowhere else except still here. Somehow it's January again and the story starts with the sound of cold wind through branches and the D30 bus braking at the Tunlaw Street stop.

I thought I would escape this DC nightmare for the first days of the new year. All I've wanted from the city is a place to stay busy until the cherry trees bloom in spring. I haven't asked for someone to share body or bread with, butter or bed. Can you imagine - three years and the only lips I've kissed are drunk ones. I don't want more mouths done up with wine.

One time I went to a kite festival and smoked cigarettes with Rob into the cold clear December. I told him how I always think the answer is somewhere else. Perhaps in the country, in the quiet melancholy hooting of owls at night. In the soft slipping about of foxes on dirt roads and fireflies in summer fields. DC threatens. Pressing and suffocating emptiness. I can see I will be a failure this year, and so the story becomes the most important thing.

Exploring the Implications of Vertical Farms

2009-12-22T15:04:00.000-08:00

A response to Growing Skyscrapers: The Rise of Vertical Farms, Scientific American, November 2009

By Caroline Peckenham and Aylara O.

The world's population is projected to grow exponentially in the near future, raising concerns about feeding an expected 9.5 billion mouths by 2050. The food crisis of 2009 has already pushed one billion people into hunger (FAO, 2007). In an attempt to tackle the current food crisis, conventional agricultural methods are becoming ever more unsustainable with increased inputs of fertilizers and scarce water resources. Vertical farms are housed in skyscrapers and grow food in rigorously controlled conditions. They are among several technological solutions proposed to address the global food supply crisis. Dickson Despommier, a major proponent of vertical farming, advocates building vertical farms in major cities across the globe. His articles and op-eds on this subject have recently appeared in the New York Times and Scientific American. As a result of the attention being given to this potential solution to the global food crisis, vertical farms are now being considered by urban planners and policy-makers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dubai and many other urban areas. The authors of this article would like to raise a few questions about the economic and social implications of this revolutionary idea.

The concept of vertical farming developed as a radical answer to energy inefficient farming techniques, concerns about climate change, and the world's growing need for food. Vertical farms of the future will be located in large urban areas, reducing greenhouse gas emissions released during transportation, decreasing transport costs, and allowing overtaxed agricultural land to heal. Despite the urge to gratefully welcome any solution to feeding the hungry, which at the same time promises to help address the world's climate challenges, there are many problems inherent in the premise of vertical farming. Vertical farms require an inordinate amount of energy and water, not unlike conventional farming. Vertical farming also requires financial resources in order to buy up scarce property in an urban environment, build the capital intensive farm infrastructure, and maintain the farms. In light of these issues, how is it possible that vertical farms are being touted as an answer to the global food crisis? The enormous stock of financial and other resources needed for vertical farms is lacking where its most needed – the developing world. Vertical farms are economically unfeasible in the areas of the world where population is projected to explode, and where, in the majority of cases, water resources are already stretched to their limit. The bottom line is that promoting urban sustainability through the development of vertical farms is not the answer to the world's growing need for food.

Rather than developing expensive, unrealistic, and technological solutions to the global food crisis, what about seeking answers from the earth itself? Despite Despommier's statement that "agriculture also uses 70% of the world's available freshwater for irrigation, rendering it unusable for drinking as a result of contamination with fertilizers, pesticides, herbicidies, and silt," the answer shouldn't be to turn to ever more technological, input-reliant methods of growing food. The answer should be to revolutionize the destructive, expensive, and wasteful practices of large scale conventional agriculture. If land is treated with more care, if sustainable agriculture is practiced globally, and if trade subsidies are abolished on agricultural products from countries with rich soil, the authors believe that land currently under agricultural development would indeed produce enough food for everyone. Local farmers could feed their communities, surplus crops from certain regions could be traded to regions suffering from drought, and local economies would grow stronger; promoting cohesive societies and better nourished individuals. On top of these economic and social benefits, the land we live on would eventually become healthier and more productive.

Not only do vertical farms present a fairy tale answer to feeding urban poor and those globally suffering from undernourishment, but they threaten to diminish the already stressed relationships between people and place that contribute to healthy societies and communities. Much has been written on the effects of urbanization on mental health and psychological well being. Much has also been written and discussed on the importance of a connection to one's neighbors and a connection to the land one lives on to human happiness and well-being. 83.5% of the world's population is projected to be living in urban areas by 2050 (United Nations, 2000). While there is nothing immoral or inherently bad about life in urban areas, what kind of future are we looking forward to if the majority of humans will have a decreasing connection to the land they live on, the farmers who grow their food, or the sense of community that gives meaning to life and a feeling of belonging? Building vertical farms promotes urbanization. Vertical farms propose to feed the growing ranks of urban dwellers from within the bounds of each metropolis. In the developed world, where vertical farms are financially feasible and where more and more people suffer from depression and feelings of loneliness, how can vertical farms really contribute to a better society? More urbanization will only worsen the societal ills which plague many parts of the "developed" world. Happiness and well-being can be fostered by efforts at relocalization, promotion of farmers markets and community-supported agriculture, and revitalization of local farms and local economies.

We applaud any efforts to eat locally, to decrease emissions from the transport of food goods, and to make use of urban gardening techniques. Rooftop gardens, "vertical gardens" on vines on your balcony, and city gardens in abandoned lots are all approaches to growing food in an urban environment that promote collaboration, a sense of community, a sense of place, and a sustainable urban life. We are not fundamentally opposed to the concept of vertical urban farming, but strongly disagree with the belief that this can be a solution to feeding the unfed, or meeting the growing nutritional need of the urban impoverished. We also believe that such technological solutions to basic human needs should be approached with caution, with consideration for societal implications, and only when combined with efforts at revitalizing small scale farming and relocalization of food systems in rural and semi-rural areas. Is it unrealistic to expect conventional methods of agriculture to be replaced by sustainable, locally-based farming? Yes. But rather than channeling our intellectual, financial, and technological resources to develop a concept like vertical farming that can only lead to further breakdown of human connections and a sense of place, we should channel those efforts and resources to fixing what we already have, taking care of our natural resources, and building a more cohesive human community. Currently in press, Despomeir’s new book on vertical farms is called Vertical Farm: The Big Idea That Could Solve The World’s Food, Water and Energy Crises. With the economic and societal implications of vertical farms, we are left wondering - what’s the big idea?

Photo credit: www.doornob.com

November

2009-12-08T22:54:00.000-08:00

November 25^th in California is all off-kilter somehow. Blue sky and sunlight through morning windows, cars whizzling happily, family-holiday-style along Del Monte Avenue outside the apartment.

Isn't November skies gone to grey and cold and rain? With our collars up and our hands in our pockets. Withered last apples of fall dangle gloomily from grey trees. Brown leaves in muddy, frozen clumps along the roadside.

November. Melancholy walks at high tide. Mittens on. Whistling of wind. Glorious, empty, numb fingered turning of the season. Quick, faster-than-ever darkness in the ever earlier afternoon. More rain beating at the windows. Red berries on the table. Frost hardened brown grass outside waiting for snow.

Tangier Summer

2009-11-17T11:08:00.001-08:00

Although it’s been over a year now since I lived in Morocco, the three months I spent there are still bright colors in my mind:

1. We walk through the warren of the Kasbah back roads, stopping first at Café Hafa, where men are playing mahjong and smoking hashish, wearing sunglasses, sitting around small tables in red plastic chairs. We drink sweet tea from small, gilt-rimmed glasses, stuffed with fresh mint leaves, conspicuously female, but not caring. After tea, on through the warren: Emerging from narrow streets to a hilltop overlooking the port, the open Atlantic, Gibraltar. Stopping to buy a bag of popcorn from the evening popcorn seller for half a dirham, then settling down on the rocky hillside, pockmarked with ancient, long empty Roman tombs. We’re early for sunset, but as the sky turns color the rocks around us begin to fill with Moroccan mothers and children, husbands and wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, and grandmas. Dusk-borne swallows swarm the air above the hill. Popcorn in the half-empty bag goes cold and daylight fades away.

2. It is an accident, our discovery of the nighttime underwear souk. We have just finished eating a shawarma dinner in the surrealist plastic-cheese-dripping-down-the-wall Salvador Dali Pizza and decide to take a new route home for a bit of adventure. Half a block from the Dali we magically enter into a bustling, post-work, post-dinner netherworld of fourteen year old boys and their fathers hawking lacy women’s bras and underwear, entire trousseaus spread out in bins and on the sidewalk to be bargained for. Posses of stroller pushing hijabi mothers and their nonchalant husbands compete with each other for striped "Spach" brand underwear and satin nightgowns, shoving and laughing. Deeper and deeper into the souk, the dark streets and the shop lights, bins shift from underwear to coats, from coats to dried fish, to pirated DVDs and pots and pans, and at last stumbling out into our very own neighborhood, proud owners of five pairs of stretchy underwear and one grey cardigan.

3. Tangier’s culinary riches: Nassir Sandwich, the corner shawarma shop in Ibn Khaldoun neighborhood where three nights a week you order a huge plate of shawarma and fries with canned beets and mayonnaise and eat it while watching Arabic-dubbed Bollywood films.

The street-side orange juice stands. A few dirham buys you a glass of the most delicious fresh orange juice in the world which you then drink while walking in the hot North African sun.

Under an umbrella, the date stand in the old medina where you ask for half a kilo of Tunisian dates, because they’re sweetest. You fork over some change to the wrinkle-faced date seller who reminds you of a sailor in his blue knit cap.

You can’t help it - you eat all of the dates by dinnertime.

Rise of the Fallen in Central Asia

2009-11-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

November 16, 2009
By Aylara O.
Edited by Caroline Peckenham

Stretching the Boundaries of Social Entrepreneurship

Are the Two Types of Entrepreneurship Mutually Exclusive?

It is a truism that the fall of the Soviet Union unleashed new economic and social opportunities for those living inside its walls. Quick and opportunistic, many people made a fortune banging their buck on new ideas and pioneering their way to the market economy. But are these individuals social entrepreneurs or at best, are they simply business entrepreneurs?

In order to answer this question, I interviewed two witnesses to the rise of the fallen in Central Asia. Yazgul Kurbanova, formerly Senior Loan Analyst and Head of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in Turkmenistan and Evgeny Savenko, formerly a Loan Administrator in Uzbekistan. Both Dr. Kurbanova and Mr. Savenko worked with a number of entrepreneurs in the 90’s through the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund (CAAEF). In their opinion, the type of entrepreneurship that appeared in Central Asia was a hybrid – both business and social in nature. In sharp contrast to their first-hand experience, current literature on social entrepreneurship fails to recognize the possibility of such hybrids, drawing clear boundaries between the two types of entrepreneurship.

Definitions: Social Entrepreneurs vs Business Entrepreneurs

Scholars for decades have been trying to define social entrepreneurship. The word entrepreneur comes from French, meaning someone who “undertakes.” In recent years, it has come to mean someone who is an “innovator”, a “catalyst”, a “reformer”, or a “revolutionary.” All of these words emcompass the concept of value creation. In Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for Definition, Roger Martin and Sally Osberg attribute the main difference between social and business entrepreneurs to the value created by their products and services. This view is maintained by other scholars such as Gregory Dees in The Meaning of “Social Entrepreneurship” and Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair in Social Entrepreneurship: Creating New Business Models to Serve the Poor.

According to Martin and Osberg business entrepreneurs expect to “derive personal financial gain” from a project. They state that this is mostly due to the fact that the population at large “can comfortably afford the new product and service.” In contrast, Martin and Osberg argue that social entrepreneurs “neither anticipate nor organize to create substantial financial profit” as their projects target those who cannot afford to pay. A social entrepreneur aims to create value in the form of large-scale, transformational benefits to society. As the aforementioned case studies from Central Asia suggest, there is a different and unique species of entrepreneur that combines characteristics of both business and social entrepreneurship.

The Rise of the Entrepreneurial Spirit in Turkmenistan

Dr. Kurbanova, who worked for 6 years with entrepreneurs in Turkmenistan, says that new business ventures after the fall of the Soviet Union were not only economic in nature. Although they provided jobs and opportunities for the population, they had a true impact on the society by creating something of value to everyone. New business ventures brought a new era of consumer choices to a population formerly starved for choices and dependent on state-run enterprises. Mr. Savenko of Uzbekistan agrees, saying that social entrepreneurs “broadened opportunities for the population at large.” The case of the Arkach Bakery sets the stage for an attempt to provide a fresh perspective in the discourse on social entrepreneurs.
Arkach, opened in 1994, was the first bakery in Turkmenistan serving as an alternative to government run bakeries. Arkach was funded by CAAEF through contributions from the U.S. government. It produced freshly made french bread along with other types of baked goods such as rolls and pastries. This was a huge change from the former government controlled bakeries that made only one type of bread called buhanka. Most people in Turkmenistan value french bread, a bread of much higher quality than buhanka. Many people prefered to purchase french bread. Arkach provided freshly made baked goods at a lower price than the former government produced bread. Providing a product of high value which met the population’s needs, Arkach had a societal impact while making a financial profit.

The Fallout: The Unfortunate Political Fate of Entrepreneurs in Turkmenistan

Akin to the Arkach Bakery, many entrepreneurs in Central Asia after the fall of the Soviet Union were funded by the United States. The U.S. invested millions of dollars in Central Asian republics through organizations such as CAAEF and Eurasia Foundation. CAAEF was a non-profit organization established in 1994 to encourage the creation of small and medium-sized enterprises in the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. During its active operating years, CAAEF entered into 27 joint ventures with equity financing totaling $61.5 million, granted 352 loans to establish or expand SMEs totaling $37.3 million, and funded more than 3,000 micro-credit loans totaling $10.4 million. US funding activities in Central Asia were largely motivated by the desire to promote social change in the region. The suffocating political climate in Turkmenistan forced CAAEF and Eurasia Foundation to leave the country, leading to a withering of the promising entrepreneurial spirit seen so briefly. Most importantly and devastatingly, this political climate has resulted in both economic and societal stagnation.

Lessons from Central Asia

While the rise of the hybrid social-business entrepreneur in Turkmenistan was doomed, the remaining four Central Asian Republics fared better. The broader lesson from Central Asia shows that when social entrepreneurs are allowed to exist, they change the society and move it towards a new equilibrium. Indeed, entrepreneurs are often the major force behind economic progress. An Austrian economist named Joseph Schumpeter theorized that in the absence of entrepreneurial activity, economies become static, structurally immobile, and subject to decay. This was the case in the Soviet Union, where these entrepreneurial forces lay dormant for decades. Release from the Soviet grip unleashed these forces of productivity and change in Central Asia.

The fall of the state controlled system produced unique opportunities for a rise in enterprises that were both economic and social in nature. They were run by people who were motivated by both social change and personal gain. They clearly expected to make profit because they borrowed from lenders like CAAEF at the extraordinarily high rate of 18%. They were willing to take this risk in order to make an impact on society. The Central Asian experience shows that being a business entrepreneur does not exclude one from also being a social entrepreneur. Not all of the entrepreneurs that mushroomed in Central Asia post-Soviet Union were members of this hybrid species. However, without a doubt, those funded by the US most certainly were, and those that progressed the society forward most certainly were.

Originally posted at: http://aylara.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/socialentrepreneur/