Good, bad, and ugly news in Oak Park's "War on Veggies"

In the previous installment, I described how Oak Park's "War on Veggies" went viral. The resulting brouhaha had the effect it intended--the prosecution against Julie Bass for her raised garden beds in her front yard--but Oak Park has found another way to continue waging war against her for daring to fight city hall. Watch.

Oak Park Drops Charges Against Julie Bass and Her Vegetable Garden: MyFoxDETROIT.com

So the good news is that Julie Bass is no longer facing charges. All of you who raised a stink by reporting and blogging on the issue, commenting on blog and news posts, signing the petition, and sending in letters and emails to the city of Oak Park can pat yourselves on the back. Your efforts succeeded.

The bad news is that the way the story is being reported, not only in the Fox 2 Detroit clip above, but also in the Detroit News article and on Julie's own blog, indicates that the city dropped the charge by asking for it to be dismissed without prejudice. That means that that the city could reinstate the charge any time before the statute of limitations ran out. Note the coda of the report was that the city prosecutor was going to re-examine the language of the statute. If he figures out a defensible reading of the statute that allows him to go after Julie, he can file those charges again. As Julie herself describes it, it feels like her own Sword of Damocles hanging over her.

The ugly news is the city resuming their prosecution of Julie for her dogs. The sequence of events makes it look like the city is being, as Julie wrote in her most recent post, "malicious." Julie's lawyer Solomon Radner elaborated in this quote from the Detroit News, "This is really nothing other than a personal vendetta against the Basses either because somebody doesn't like them, or because they had the nerve to fight this unjust prosecution." I think the answer is mostly the latter.

Since I believe in closing circles, I think the good news is that Julie and her lawyer will appear in court on July 26th, present the proof that the dogs are licensed, and those charges will be dismissed. Even so, this entire affair has made the city of Oak Park look even worse in my eyes than it already did.

When my wife and I were looking for places to live in Oakland County, my co-workers who lived in Oak Park tried to convince me to move there. Unfortunately, when my wife and I looked at houses in the city, we were less than impressed. We got a very conformist, unfriendly, and not-at-all fun vibe from the place, so we decided to look in Ferndale and Royal Oak, which were more to our liking.

When I played the Fox 2 Detroit clip to my wife, she said that we were never going to live in Oak Park. She didn't care if we found the ideal house there at a perfect price in a great neighborhood, we won't move there. I completely agree.

Finally, stay tuned. This isn't over yet.

Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 9, 2011

I made these programming notes in part one.

Part two tomorrow, but not before another Swim post.

I've posted not one, but three posts since I wrote that, The Oak Park Outlaw by The Bard of Murdock, Portland is watching "The End of Suburbia", and Paul Krugman swims against the Chicago School, which means that I'm two days overdue for part two. Time to post!

General Sustainability

University of Wisconsin: Benson appointed sustainability research and education director
by Jill Sakai
July 7, 2011

Craig H. Benson, Wisconsin Distinguished Professor of geological engineering and civil and environmental engineering, has been named the first director for sustainability research and education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In this new role, Benson is charged with the primary goal of developing and coordinating a campus-wide effort to align UW-Madison teaching and research on sustainability with campus operations. He will also play a critical role in building a UW-Madison Office of Sustainability, a key element of the ongoing cross-campus Sustainability Initiative, which he will co-direct with Faramarz Vakili.

"The goal is to make sustainability a philosophy of operation for the entire university," says Vakili, the campus director for sustainability operations. "Our products are the students we graduate and the research we produce. It's important for these to come together with how the university operates to maximize the sustainability of the campus."

I applaud the University of Wisconsin for doing this. It shows what a high priority sustainability is for them.

Paul Krugman swims against the Chicago School

Paul Krugman being reviewed in a sustainablity blog? Yes. Remember that the intersection between a thriving economy and a just society is a bearable social economy, and Krugman is all about that, while his rivals are not. Besides, he's probably the most visible mainstream economist who takes the environment seriously, and doesn't just write it off as a series of externalities. However, that's not why I'm writing about him tonight. Krugman is also an academic, and he's dismayed at how his intellectual opponents at the University of Chicago refuse to accept the reality of today's economic situation.

Reading Noah Smith reading John Cochrane solidified a thought I’ve been grasping at for a while: the extraordinary lengths to which the Chicago School is going to avoid a straightforward interpretation of the mess we’re in.
...
[A]t Chicago and elsewhere in the freshwater universe they’re playing Calvinball (and what a good coinage that was from Mike Konczal). All kinds of novel and implausible effects — effects that weren’t in any of the models they were using before the crisis — are invoked to explain why we’re in a sustained slump; strange to say, all of these newly invented models just happen to imply the need for tax cuts and a shrunken welfare state.

But I don’t think it’s just political bias: part of what’s happening, I’m sure, is intellectual embarrassment. These people come from a movement that declared, with great arrogance, that Keynesian economics was dead – then failed to produce a workable alternative, and now finds itself in what is very recognizably a Keynesian world. Recognizably, that is, to everyone but them, because admitting that Keynesian-type thinking is useful now would just be too humiliating.

As one academic to another, I pointed out both the deeper problem and the solution.

The physicist Max Planck had this to say about progress in his field, "Science advances one funeral at a time." If economics works the same way, then the freshwater economists have exploited this process to make economics retreat, not advance. It will take decades of work by the saltwater economics departments churning out Ph.D.s to undo the damage.

So, Dr. Krugman, how many grad students are you advising these days?

I've seen this dynamic in action before, so I know what Krugman has to do in addition to being a public intellectual--train more people who think like him to outcompete his rivals. If nothing else, doing so would piss off his academic rivals no end, as it would be a sign that they haven't won, and won't have succeeded for the rest of their lifetimes.

Portland is watching "The End of Suburbia"

Found originally on New York Magazine's Vulture Blog.



Full-sized original at Slacktory

Flavorwire reproduced this graphic and added their own commentary.

[W]e’re fascinated by Slacktory’s United States of Netflix Local Favorites. Although some picks are obviously location-appropriate (New York gets New York Stories, Hawaii has Hawaii’s Last Queen, the formerly “Wild West” is flush with Westerns, etc.), there are surprising picks, too: viewers in Maine, for instance, are apparently big fans of My Own Private Idaho. But our favorite observation concerns the popularity of ’90s classics (Singles, Drugstore Cowboy) in the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps Portlandia was right: The dream of the ’90s is alive in Portland!

In the one comment to their post so far, I pointed out that they were misreading the map and missing what Portland was really watching.

Look at little closer at that map. It seems to show that Portland is watching “The End of Suburbia,” which is not about the dreams of the 90s, but the nightmares of the 00s. On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised, as Portland has the strictest anti-suburban-sprawl land use policies in the nation. Now, if only the rest of the country would watch that film, starting with the people in San Diego and Tucson watching “The Burbs.”*

I'm doing my part to make sure the rest of the country watches "The End of Suburbia"; I show it to my environmental science classes every semester--in fact, I'll be showing it to them next week. Even though the film was shot in 2003-2004, it becomes more accurate all the time--except for what it had to say about natural gas peaking. Conventional gas peaked, but fracking has increased gas production above the previous peak. The next film I'm going to add to the curriculum will be "Gasland." That should make for a good follow-up.

*I didn't get a response at Slacktory, but I posted a similar comment over at NYMag's Vulture and got a trollish response. I replied in kind.

flummoxes
@NeonVincent -
consider this comment me internet-punching you in the face for your comment.
NeonVincent
@flummoxes - Remember that hate isn't the opposite of love, apathy is. At least you're not apathetic!

I hope you readers aren't, either.

The Oak Park Outlaw by The Bard of Murdock

Today, you get a two for one special: The Bard of Murdock on Julie Bass--two bloggers swimming against the stream.

With the permission of the author.

RE: The Oak Park Outlaw Poem

If you'd like to post my verse
At Crazy Eddie's News,
I say, "Why Not? Go Ahead."
For how could I refuse?

I ask for attribution
And with the poem a link:
thebardofmurdock.com
A fair exchange, I think.

Thank you, and done.

The Oak Park Outlaw

The scofflaw, Julie Bass,
Rejected trees and grass,
And took to life of crime
With parsley, sage and thyme.

Her crime is avant garde:
The beds in her front yard
Contain illegal greens,
Like peppers, peas and beans.

Thank God the planner saw
Within the public law,
A means to prosecute
Before she planted fruit.

The plaintiff, Kevin R.,
The Oak Park planning czar,
Will see the line is toed
By pointing to the code.

But folks can misconstrue
What’s ‘suitable’ to do,
So Kevin has deferred
To ‘common’ as his word.

And what is more unique
Than cucumber or leek,
When planted in a bed
Where grass should grow instead.

Uncommon as they are
Outside a mason jar,
She’ll need to clear her yard
Of broccoli and chard.

Then justice will prevail,
And Oak Park can exhale,
Devoid of squash and kale,
With Julie safe in jail.

Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 9, 2011

In the weekly roundup, I foreshadowed that this week's linkspam would be different.

I posted this week's part three, Sustainability news from national commercial sources for the week ending July 2, 2011, last. In fact, I didn't get around to doing it until Friday. Don't worry, that won't happen this week, for no other reason that I won't have that kind of part three this week.

Right now, I have only two parts to this week's linkspam: Part one from Michigan's research universities and part two from the public research universities of Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. There just weren't any sustainablity articles in this past weekend's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday for me to reuse and recycle. If I change my mind, part three will be news from local sources, as I was having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog to actually post about them--for example, I've already posted two "Swim" entries, Oak Park's "War on Veggies" goes viral and Impaling Vlad, or With friends like this, Kunstler hardly needs enemies, this week, and I have another one queued up to post in the morning as I type this.

So far, unlike my previous months blogging here using a NaBloPoMo theme, I'm having a lot of fun with "Swim." In a way, it actually helps me fulfil what I said I'd do in my very first post.

I'll also post reviews of other blogs about societal collapse and what to do about it. There are plenty of them out there, and they all deserve a good meta look.

I've broadened this to examining all kinds of sustainability bloggers, as this blog has become as much about "sustainability with a science fiction slant" and "sustainability in Detroit" as it has about collapse. Cue the Robocop references in five, four, three...

As usual, I attempt to arrange all the topics so that they form a metaphorical circle, with each section leading to the next and the last leading back to the beginning. I told you, I take that metaphor seriously. After all, I'm an environmentalist; I recycle!

General Sustainability

Norm Lownds, associate professor in the Department of Horticulture, talks about his role as curator of the Michigan 4-H Children's Garden.

Michigan State University: Faculty conversations: Norm Lownds
July 8, 2011

In the Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden, there is a pizza made of plants.

"You can see we have chives, we have basil, we have tomatoes, we have garlic, we have peppers, oregano," said Norm Lownds, curator of the garden located on the Michigan State University campus. In the kid-sized, pizza-shaped garden — with a single slice taken out — there’s even a pineapple growing this year.

There are about 85 different theme gardens in the Children’s Garden, including the PB&J, herb, food plate and music gardens. There is also Monet’s bridge, dance chimes, a water-squirting frog sculpture and even a tame "Whomping Willow," just like the one in the Harry Potter books and movies, Lownds said. (It’s really just a weeping willow, he said.)

"One of the things we want people to do is we want them to take away the idea that, 'Oh, this is something that I can do at home,'" he said.

"This is something I can do at home." Just for that, I'll tell Julie Bass about this article and video.

Impaling Vlad, or With friends like this, Kunstler hardly needs enemies

In James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on marriage equality, I pointed out three areas, marriage equality, hard currency, and immigration, where Kunstlers ideas didn't square with his self-professed liberal identity. I emphasized his issues with immigration policy in Happy 4th of July from James Howard Kunstler's Tea Party!, in which I commented on the following passage from My Tea Party.

My tea party would reduce legal immigration to a tiny trickle and get serious about enforcing sanctions against people who are here without permission...The truth is that neither party really wants to do anything about the extraordinary influx of Mexican nationals because they want to pander to a growing segment of Hispanic voters (or secondarily want to maintain the pool of cheap labor for US businesses). My party does not believe in unbounded multi-culturalism. My party also views the lawlessness of the current situation to be corrosive of the rule-of-law generally. My party views the global population overshoot problem as a condition that requires a more rigorous defense of US territory, sovereign resources, and even whatever remains of American common culture.

One particular paragraph of my response bore directly on this paragraph.

There is already an answer to the Tea Party based on critical thinking. It's called the Coffee Party...They quite agree with Jim about the major parties being hostages to political money, and would also agree about many of his goals. The only thing they would not agree with Jim about would be severe restrictions on legal immigration, as Annabel Park, the Coffee Party's nominal leader, is Korean-American and would not get on board with any policy she sees as immigrant bashing.

Given that background, it should come as no surprise that Kunstler himself would bring up his zero tolerance stance on immigration, however indirectly, and that I would jump on him for it.

Old Allen Ginsburg got it right fifty years ago: "America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb," he said. Even back then, in the age of purple people eaters and the weird neutered figure of Ozzie Nelson lurking in kitchen with nothing to do but drink endless cups of coffee, all was not so well. Freedom to cruise for burgers turned out to be a pretty trashy thing, considering all the blood and sacrifice that preceded those days of fun in the California sunshine. Look at California now: Nathanial West Meets Aztlan (coming soon on home video). Who put that locust in my burrito?

I'll let my response speak for itself.

"Look at California now: Nathanial West Meets Aztlan (coming soon on home video). Who put that locust in my burrito?"

As an expatriate Angeleno living in Detroit, I resemble that remark. For years, when I ran into another person who had moved to Michigan, I asked them, "So, do you miss Mexican food?" and they invariably answered, "Yes! Do you know where any is around here?" They also missed cheap Cantonese food, too. I was always happy to steer them to the nearest good examples of both.

Within the past decade, Chinese takeout places run by immigrants from the mainland have sprung up all over southeast Michigan, to the point where two of the three small towns on the outskirts of Irish Hills each have one and the next small town I moved to had one as well. Also, Mexican food has become common enough and people have developed enough of a taste for it that the local blues joint that served ribs has become a Mexican restaurant. I no longer run into Californians who can't find the food of home; it's now all around them. I personally consider this to be an improvement.

All of the above reminds me that I've twice before remarked about your anti-immigration stance and how it conflicts with your self-identification as a liberal, the first time a year ago in "My Tea Party," an entry of yours that I really enjoyed, and two weeks ago in "Man Down," in which I found three of your paragraphs about gender equality troubling and also conflicting with your political identification.

Four commenters responded to me. The first was negative, the second was positive, the third was incredulous and the fourth was, well, see for yourself.

Weekly Roundup for July 3rd through 9th, 2011

It was another busy week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, as I posted eleven entries to this blog during a seven-day period again. In fact, it was so busy that I didn't get around to posting the weekly roundup until now, Sunday evening. Going on a field trip with my Geology classes all day Saturday and then going to a colleague's pool party Saturday night didn't help. As I've written before, I can't be all doom all the time. Good thing I was able to program my Saturday posts in advance.

As usual, I started off the week with part one of a four-part sustainability news linkspam, Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. That series continued with part two, Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. As with last week's part three, I posted this week's part three, Sustainability news from national commercial sources for the week ending July 2, 2011, last. In fact, I didn't get around to doing it until Friday. Don't worry, that won't happen this week, for no other reason that I won't have that kind of part three this week. Like last week, there was a themed part four posted before part three, An update on The CoDominion planning for sustainability. I don't think there will be one of those, either. If there is, it will be news from local sources, as I was having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog to actually post about them.





Speaking of "having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog," I got into the "swim" of this month's NaBloPoMo theme by posting about sustainability bloggers swimming against the flow. That series started last week with Woman in Oak Park swims against the stream, plus Nablopomo for July, but I didn't return to Julie Bass until the end of the week. Instead, I decided to have some fun with James Howard Kunstler first.

Kunstler inspired the four posts in the series, beginning with James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on marriage equality. Kunstler may consider himself a liberal, but he's very much the classic conservative on a range of issues. I pointed that out in Happy 4th of July from James Howard Kunstler's Tea Party!--I did tell you that I observe three patriotic holidays as part of my blogging, Canada Day, Independence Day, and Bastille Day; two down, one to go! In that post, I not only highlighted Kunstler's positions that conflict with most liberals, but also told him and his readers that the ones that don't fit right in with those of the Coffee Party. The next two posts followed up on the first one, beginning with James Howard Kunstler swims against the stream on gender role equality, too, which I mirrored to my LiveJournal. The mirror post spawned a lively discussion that I commented about in Follow up to women in Kunstler's fiction. Sex roles and sustainability? Hey, I specialize in sustainability in unexpected places--Slutwalk in Grand Rapids and Sustainability in archeology, anyone?

I then moved on from Kunstler, for this past week at least, to his estranged neighbor in Elaine Meinel Supkis uses anime and draws fan art to make sustainability points, which updated a three year old review of her on I posted to my LiveJournal. I plan on posting more about Elaine, as she really marches to her own drummer--generally in a good way.

Not all who swim against the flow are bloggers. Some of them might be nations, as I explained in The end of an era: last space shuttle mission. I think the United States is in danger of acting out one of the great tragic tropes of science fiction in real life if it abandons manned space flight. After all, this blog is "sustainability with a science fiction slant"--a phrase never before used on the internet, if Google is to be believed--so of course I'd look at the event that way.

I ended the week by returning to Julie Bass and Oak Park's "War on Veggies" with Brief update on Oak Park's war on veggies for week ending July 9th. Unlike Kunstler and Meinel Supkis, Julie's story is up close and personal and has real world stakes for her. It's also gone viral, as the first post in the series dealing with her, Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects was number one for the week for the second week in the row, winning the "back catalog" category. Not only was it the most popular for the week, it's been number one for the day for three days in a row, and number one for the month. Over the past weekend, I've watched it climb the top ten all time list until it's now the third most viewed post in the history of this blog. As I wrote in the first post of this week, Oak Park's "War on Veggies" goes viral, "Behold the power of Drudge."

That concludes last week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Stay tuned for more "swim" posts as well as the sustainability news linkspams.

Oak Park's "War on Veggies" goes viral

This morning, I added the following update to Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects.

Welcome all of you coming over here from Oak Park Hates Veggies! You've made this entry the most popular post of the week for two weeks running as well as making it the fourth most popular of all time with a bullet. Thank you!

That was only a few hours ago. The post is now the third most viewed in the history of this blog, in addition to being the most popular of the current day, week, and month. I wasn' t kidding when I said it was "fourth...with a bullet." How did this happen?

Simple, Drudge happened. A couple of days ago, Matt Drudge placed a link to The Agitator's post on his front page with the headline "Woman faces 93 days in jail for planting garden in front yard..." Since then, the story has spread like wildfire. Here is a list of the media sources I've found covering this story with links to their articles (Hat/tip to April Alexander at Urban Homestead Diaries for compiling most of these).

Grist: Michigan woman could face jail time for growing a garden

Treehugger: Michigan Woman Faces 93 Days in Jail for Planting a Vegetable Garden

Huffington Post: Woman Could Be Jailed For Vegetable Garden

Washington Post: Julie Bass may face jail time for planting vegetables

Look at that progression. Not only are the environmental publications and the avowedly liberal Huffington Post on board, one of the two national papers of record, The Washington Post, is now covering this story. The issue has even attracted attention from overseas.

The Daily Mail (UK): Woman faces jail for growing vegetables in her front yard

A check of Google News shows 66 results for "Juile Bass", all of which are about this story and are all from July 8th or later. Behold the power of Drudge.

The most recent of those 66 stories right now is from The Detroit News. As far as I can tell, this is the first time this story has made the local papers, even though two of the local TV stations covered the story a week and a half ago. It figures that it would take the story going international before it got the local attention it deserved.

On the subject of local coverage, the Washington Post embedded this video from Fox 2 Detroit's segment on this story. Since I used the Channel 7 embed in my first post on the topic, I should now be "fair and balanced" (after all, this is Fox).

Oak Park Woman Faces 93-Days in Jail For Planting Vegetable Garden: MyFoxDETROIT.com

Speaking of going viral, remember the petition I posted yesterday? Julie Alexander updated her readers on its status Friday.

The petition for Julie is now up to 4,400 signatures in just a few days, and the urban homesteading activists have only just begun.

Brief update on Oak Park's war on veggies for week ending July 9th

It's been a full week since I last updated on Oak Park's "War on Veggies", so it's time to recap this week's developments.

First, I stopped by Julie Bass's house on Thursday just to see for myself what all the fuss was about.* I didn't have a camera, but Julie herself posted a photo of her front yard earlier that day, saving me the trouble. Surf over to the entry to see for yourself.

Here's what the beds look like from the sidewalk (posted last Saturday).






Thanks, Julie, for posting those photos. I hope you don't mind my hotlinking borrowing them to illustrate this post!

Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with her front yard. In fact, I think it looks better than her neighbor's lawns, which the July sun has turned dry and yellow. While I think I know what the city of Oak Park's problem is, if I didn't have any preconceived notions, I wouldn't understand why they are objecting.

In other news, Sue Ann Reed from Care2 commented on my first post on the issue with the following.

Hello,

I saw your blog post about Julie Bass and the ridiculous idea that she is facing criminal charges and potential jail time for growing a garden in her own yard.

The folks from the Urban Homesteading Facebook page have set up a petition on Care2 and we would love your help spreading the word.

Here's the link to the petition:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/oak-park-hates-veggies/

I promised to post that link the next time I updated on the issue, so, to quote the Emperor of Austria-Hungary from "Amadeus," there it is. Of course I signed, and I urge all of you reading to do so, too.

Other people besides Julie and I have started blogging about this issue. Julie herself published a guest post from Sundari Kraft of Eat Where U Live. Sundari had earlier published an entry to her own blog, Front Yard Gardens vs. a Lack of Common Sense the same day I first posted about Oak Park's "War on Veggies". Sundari agrees with me about the esthetics of the garden.

The vegetable are not unruly or untended — in fact, it’s one of the tidiest raised-bed gardens I’ve seen in a long time.

It's a great post, and you should read it.

Finally, the same day Julie published Sundari's guest post, Urban Homestead Diaries posted In Oak Park Michigan it is Illegal to Grow Veggies in your Front Yard, Seriously. As you read, they were the ones who set up the petition mentioned above. As of the day of the post, 500 people had signed the petition.

As for the rest of the story, read Julie Bass's blog. She has more to say on the matter than I could possibly summarize in a "brief update!"

*My commute takes me through Oak Park, so I didn't have to go far out of my way to do this.