Happy National Pretzel Day, UESiders!
While we await news of what won last week’s Participatory Budgeting vote…
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Let’s get down on the 7 days ahead:
Saturday, April 25th: 82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket
82nd Street between First and York, 9am–2pm
Compost & Clothes Collection – 9am–1pm
At their tables will be Bread Alone, Ballard’s Honey, Valley Shepherd, American Seafood, Samascott, Gajeski, Rising Sun and Garden of Spices Farms! And lucky we are to have Floral Beauty Greenhouses with us, too!
AND there’ll be yet another great, new farm joining our great veterans: organic, no-till Alewife Farm of Duchess County, New York! (Check out their vegs on Instagram!)
AND… Yes and can’t say it enough… Master Knife Sharpener Barbara Hess will be returning to her table!!
AND… Compost/Clothes Collection/Recycling will be at a new market location… Out on 82nd, in front of the St. Stephen! (So much easier for Sanitation and Wearable Collections to load their trucks with all the stuff we’ve brought!)
Going to be the best Greenmarket spring/summer yet!
Last week’s recycling totals: 80 lbs. batteries: 22 lbs. cords, corks, cellphones and cartridges; 3 pairs eyeglasses; 7 3/4 compost bins; 25 bags of clothes.
Crazy green, people!!
Saturdays, April 25th to October 2015: Queens Night Markets
Parking Lot, New York Hall of Science, Flushing Meadow, Corona, Queens, 6-12pm
Think an ever-growing number of food vendors (25 at least) offering treats from Nagoya chicken wings, grilled squid skewers, takoyaki balls, tapioca bubble coffee, arepas, Burmese iced desserts, palata, choclo, Ecuadorian juices, and mini cakes… Just for openers and screened for cultural authenticity! Free entry. For more and directions...
Sunday, April 26th: Founders Day Mass & Italian Heritage Celebration
Our Lady of Peace Church, 237 East 62nd, 11:30am
From out of the past and in an effort to preserve the lovely interior of the church (its exterior is landmarked) which forms the west end of the UES Tredwell Historic District… Worshippers carrying the church’s statue of the Virgin Mary will process west on 62nd to Second Avenue, down Second to 61st, west on 61st to Third Avenue, then up Third Avenue to 62nd Street and back to the church. Used to be a fairly regular southern East Sixties neighborhood happening up to the late 1950’s! Got to be amazing…
Monday, May 4th: Esplanade Friends Second Annual Spring Benefit!
Bar Felice, 1591 First Avenue between 82nd & 83rd, 6-8pm
Great food! Great raffle prizes!! A fantastic honoree: Friends’ great, generous and UES-committed Rockefeller University! We’re on our way to reinventing the Esplanade we deserve! (You’ll be eating our dust one day soon, Riverside Park!) For your tickets and more…
Sunday, May 10th: It’s My Park Day – Spring Edition – Part 1
On the Esplanade, 11am – 4pm
Bit by bit, we’re turning that 96th Street Planter and environs into one citizen-created masterpiece! So get ready to weed, clean, plant, scrape, paint and snack on great eats! Be there, people, for an hour or two or more! It’s so lovely along our beautiful East River…
Sunday, May 17th: 19th Precinct Shredding & E-Waste Collection Event
151 East 86th Street (in front of the NYSports Club, 10am-1pm
Bring on the paper! All that unwanted tech, too, with all working devices receiving free data destruction! There’ll also be free electronics registration with the NYPD’s Operation ID! Did we say everything’s free?! (But businesses are limited to 2 banker’s boxes of paper.)
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O’ Miscellany:
First and foremost, one PRIME JOB OPPORTUNITY… A job which our great Market Manager Margaret describes: “Love local food and want to spend the next 7 months at NYC’s Greenmarkets? Apply to be a market manager!! (And spread the word!) Market locations include Washington Heights, Inwood, the Bronx and the Upper West Side!
On to some disgruntlement:
And the winner of the incomprehensibly worst Earth Day ad ever is… Glock!
(We kid you not.)
Of course, we’re used to associating the cruise ship industry with mass assorted food-borne illnesses and mechanical failures (and the occasional encounter with reefs and shoals) but, until now, not so much with pollution of several kinds… For a look at what and how much’s being spewed and who’re the bad actors…
For those of us who’ve traveled I-40 from Texas to L.A., no mystery why methane levels at the Four Corners is off the charts… One of the biggest coal-burning power plants ever built blights the point – and country for miles around it – where AZ/CO/UT/NM meet.
Grrrr… Bad news: While many states have banned personal products containing wretched microbeads – unfilterable by water treatment plants – NYS isn’t one of them (although a bill was proposed). Good news: Attorney General Schneiderman just reintroduced that bill!
Then there’s what’s going on with Iowa’s water quality…
And how are some power companies reacting to the encroachment of solar…?
On the totally good foot now:
Nice Gina Bellafante piece on Particpatory Budgeting as it’s evolving across our city…
Meanwhile, NYC Council just approved a pair of enviro-centric bills: (1) Expansion of BRT and (2) First update to our air quality code standards in 40 years! (Be nice if they connected the dots of residential neighborhood – hundreds of garbage trucks – public housing – kids on playing fields – abysmal UES air!)
Happy to say WNET’s backed off and will – wisely – be leaving “Independent Lens” and “POV” in place on Channel 13’s schedule!
Holy crow, what’s with McDonald’s?! They’ve just pledged – and they’re the first fast food chain to do so – to eliminate deforestation from their global supply chain. Add that to their recent commitment to ensure that the palm oil, beef, fbier-based packaging, coffee and poultry in their products don’t contribute to tropical deforestation and peatland destruction!! (Could McTofu be far behind?!)
This just in from Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health and entitled, “Civic Engagement May Stave Off Brain Atrophy, Improve Memory. Instead of shrinking as expected, as part of the normal aging process, the memory center in the brains of seniors maintained their size and, in men, grew modestly after two years in a program that engaged them in meaningful and social activities.” (Thanks to reader Carol Rinzler for the tip!) (The Esplanade Friends’ benefit and It’s My Park Day are calling you…)
On our must read list: The Triumph of Seeds by Thor Hanson!
Chocolate milk a healthy drink? YES!!
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Bring on the critters:
Hey, Colorado Parks and Wildlife!! No killing prarie dogs!! (If you agree…)
Some 3 weeks ago we encountered Teva, an especially adorable senior citizen dachshund, delicately making her way along 12th Street. Owner Sandi generously forwarded some great Teva pix she had on file.…
This last from the Hudson River Alamanac:
4/16 – Manhattan, HRM 13.5: On the path up through the Clove at Inwood Hill Park, the snowdrops had finished, but Dutchman’s breeches were beginning to bloom – i’ts said that this is the only place on Manhattan Island where they grow. Spicebush was beginning to bloom, too – it has blossoms before leaves – making the path fragrant. Young leaves of garlic mustard were abundant and also some of lesser celandine. The seed I spread brought only three mourning doves and a white-throated sparrow, but I heard a blue jay scolding, a woodpecker drumming, and watched a downy working its way up an oak. Up on the ridge, forsythia was fully blown, periwinkle was blooming in sunny spots and the woods, mostly bare, were sprinkled throughout with the little yellow spicebush blossoms. – Thomas Shoesmith
Greenness rules,
UGS
This Week at The Markets 