Take a Walk USA!
I love watching the Olympics, especially when our country is competing. I just love shouting USA! USA! from the comfort of my living room when our athletes come out on top.
Aside from our elite Olympians, our population as a whole is in no way in contention for winning a gold medal when it comes to our walking habits.
A recent study by the University of Tennessee was covered by ABC and said that only 8 percent of all errands and daily routines in the US are done by walking. The average Japanese citizen takes 7,168 steps a day. Australians take 9,695 steps per day. And for the average American sloth who has become accustomed to drive-ins for fast food, coffee, and pharmacy pick ups? We only walk an average of 5,117 steps a day. Not much to cheer about.
This week, my town, as part of its green initiative, sponsored Curb Your Car Week. ColorBrightonGreen.org, a non-profit organization that educates residents and businesses on global climate change, this week sponsored Curb Your Car Week Oct. 3-9. Brighton residents and others in the area were encouraged to register at www.colorbrightongreen.org and pledge a few days – or a whole week – to driving less.
If you didn’t register yet, it’s not too late! Log in and register any time this week you did not take your car to run an errand or walk to work or school.
Last spring, 184 Brighton and Rochester residents participated in the same event and logged in the miles that they walked, biked, bussed or carpooled. The results: participants saved 3,819 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from spewing into the air.
Now I know, I am spoiled. All my kids either walk or take the bus to school. I know most of you have a hellish commute from the suburbs to the downtown of wherever you live.
I live only seven- tenths of a mile from my job teaching preschoolers. If I am organized in the morning, I can get out the door on time to enjoy a healthy walk through a beautiful neighborhood that backs into a wooded grove and a reservoir.
Even when it’s not Curb Your Car Week, I like to hoof it to work. So I thought it was no skin off my back when I made the pledge to walk or bike this week for at least three days.
But it’s not easy being green. The toughest part switching from my car to my feet is coordination.
I mean, I admit: I’m not much of an athlete, but I can put one foot in front of the other. But then, there’s the stuff that accompanies all of us to work. We want our coffee cups. If I’m walking I have to have my iPod. And I don’t know about you, but I seldomly go to work empty-handed. I am usually lugging many books and art materials back and forth to work.
And teachers take strange, cumbersome things to school -especially preschool – that don’t make for an easy stroll. For example, I didn’t walk to work today because carrying a small wash basin that I would later use in the morning for a science/art project did not seem like my idea of a good time.
So far this week, I walked to work twice. When I signed up for Curb Your Car Week, the sun shone and the skies were blue. And this week, well, it rained so much the week should have been called Curb your Ark Week.
But I did not lose my resolve. I donned a raincoat and found my umbrella. I dug my rainboots out of the closet and headed out into the cool air. And while I walked, I really was working and working out. I gathered fallen leaves and acorns for an art project. I thought about what toys I would put out while I blasted Viva la Vida into my ears. I had time to pet the yellow lab who waits for me in his driveway. I had time to process and transition between home and work. And when I got to work, I was a little wet, but relaxed, happy and energized.
Come on, America, let’s show the Australians and Japanese who is still No. 1!
If you want to boost your health and that of the planet’s, take your own Curb Your Car challenge and pledge to drive less. Take that walk to the bank or the library or the Starbucks and say hi to some neighbors on the way. Until the snows come to Rochester, even after this week, I will be walking uphill to work. Both ways.
Why should you See a Movie at a Film Fest vs. Netflix? I’ll Tell You Why
Yesterday, I went to movie at the 10th Ames-Amzalak Rochester Jewish Film Festival. I went on yet another one of these very long beautiful summer days where I have hours of time all to myself.
Just like last week’s “too much kid free time on my hands” list, I did do some cooking and some heavy-duty cleaning of my kids bedrooms. Then, I heard the voice of Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society in my head: “Seize the Day.”
At some point, I did rationalize away the indulgent thought of going to a movie, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day, all by myself. My husband was working hard in his windowless office all week. Who am I to go out and enjoy a film, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week? After all, any movie shown at the Festival, between now and August 2, I can eventually see on a DVD rental.
But I went. And I enjoyed.
The movie, an Israeli film called Eli & Ben, was set in Hezliyah. Here is the first reason why you should go to a film festival. These movies are hand-picked by diversely populated committees that sift out the best films : Film festival films offer the opportunity to learn about the geography and culture of another part of the world.
How many movies do you know that are set in Herzliya, a coastal town in Israel? How much do you know about Israel outside what you hear on the news? Because of the Jewish Film Festival, I have seen movies set in the mystical city of Tzefat, hip Tel Aviv, a kibbutz, or spiritual Jerusalem.
Foreign film festivals allow you to improve language skills. After viewing enough movies in Hebrew, I start to recognize sentence and verb structure that I hadn’t thought about since college. I only wish that when I visit Israel everyone can walk around with subtitles.
But the main reason is the communal feeling you get from going to the theatre. Remember how I said I went alone? I really wasn’t alone. As I settled into my seat at the JCC, I was flanked by two friends that I had met there by complete chance. It couldn’t have worked out better if it was planned. Unlike going to a commercial theatre, film festival theatres are filled with the pre-film chatter and schmoozing and catching up with friends. The film was then personally announced by the festival’s chairperson. Sometimes, the director himself may be present to introduce the film or answer questions afterwards. During the film, I sat with an audience completely engaged with what was on the screen. Our emotions played off one another as we laughed, sighed or gasped in unison. If I Netflixed the same film, I most likely would have zonked out on the couch before it was even over.
Here is a list of movies I have enjoyed at Jewish Film Festivals through the years. True, most people, even pass holders, are not fortunate to see all of them on film. Whatever ethnic, racial or other niche you find yourself in, go see a good film in the company of others.
Here is a list of just some of the films I have seen thanks to the Rochester Jewish Film Festival. To see descriptions of these movies, or an archive from past film festivals, go to www.rjff.org
- Ben & Eli
- Walk on Water
- Zrubavel
- Pinchas
- The Syrian Bride
- A Late Marriage
- Live and Become
- Lemon Tree
- Close to Home
- Defiance
- The Case for Israel
A lesson in art and New York City appreciation
Seeing New York City through my daughter’s eyes is quite refreshing. She loves the pizza, the culture, and the excitement, She was blown away by the hip-hop performers that flipped and jumped through a crowded uptown train. I also wondered, how did they do that without kicking anyone in the face and when do they find an empty car to practice?
And now, just like me, she loves the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As they get bigger, I want to expose my children to as much as possible of the city where I was born and raised. Good and bad. The culture definitely falls into the good column. I’d like to thank my parents, who for one summer, took my brother and I to a different museum in New York City every weekend. Even if my brother gaped at the nude paintings and sculptures.
I’d like to thank them for staying in New York City while so many other of their friends have moved away to Florida.
I’m also thankful for art history professors who sent us to the Met to see works of art up close and personal before we wrote our final papers on them. Visiting a building that contains so many masterpieces, seeing the actual brushwork, standing before a painting exactly where the artist once stood gave me an appreciation of color, line and composition that stays with me to this day.
It’s been 15 years since I have made a pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a place that feels (I hate to say it) as sacred to me as the inside of a house of worship. It has been way too long. So off we went to the Met: my mom, Jolie and I.
At some point, surrounded by Picasso, I switched my cell phone off. This was holy ground and should be treated as such.
I watched Jolie work her way through the Picasso exhibit, then allowed her to pull me this way and that through European Baroque furniture, Greek and Roman sculpture, all the while looking for the next work of art to take in and all the while wishing she had taken her sketch book. And asking when would be the next time we would return to another day at the Met.
A switch has been turned on inside Jolie to love all that is great and cultural about New York City. But she could do without the noise, the smells, and the crowds. There was a bit of a learning curve with using her Metro card in the subway.
She has yet to understand that putting up with the city’s unpleasantries as they hang on to their claim to living in the Big Apple is what give New Yorkers their character. For her, she wouldn’t trade the relative peace and quiet of Rochester for the center-of-the-universe qualities of New York City. It is turning out to be a nice place to visit but she wouldn’t want to live there. It’s just not where she is from.
Rochester, in all fairness, with all of your wonderful quality of life aspects, your great suburban school districts, incredibly affordable housing and 10 minute commutes to anywhere, you are not New York City.
Yes, I have come to appreciate Rochester’s cultural treasures, like the Memorial Art Gallery, the Eastman House, and the eclectic Artisan Works. But nothing compares to the treasures that dirty, crowded, noisy New York City holds. When I describe any of Rochester’s “tourist attractions” to friends back in New York City, I always preface it with “for a city of its size, Rochester has …..”
The MAG can never be the Met, and that’s okay. It is 10 minutes from my house, contains wonderful sculpture gardens and amazing traveling exhibits of Monet, Degas, and O’Keeffe since I have lived in Rochester. It has free parking.
NYC friends and family: I love and miss you all very much in the months and years I do not see you and the few precious days I visit with you over lunch or a holiday meal while living up North. But I have decided that when visiting NYC, I need to start playing the tourist instead of spending much of my time in living rooms. Please try not to be offended and try to understand, and make plans to come along with me to a visit to the Met or MOMA next time I’m in town.
There are no tomatoes like Jersey tomatoes
Our first house in Fanwood, New Jersey was on a street called Shady Lane. It was anything but shady. There were very few trees around our 1950’s Cape Cod, the former site of one of the countless farms that were sold to suburban developers. The one advantage of living in a neighborhood that was once farmland: great soil.
“You have to dig a trench and plant your tomatoes horizontally to encourage the roots and make your plant less leggy,” my mom instructed as I planted my first garden. My mom was raised in an apartment in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, but knew all there was to know about tomato gardening from her tiny yard in Staten Island.
So I planted my first tomato plants. Jersey Big Boys and a few plants of cherry tomatoes. The support cages I surrounded them with were so tall it gave my neighbor, a chain-smoking retired firefighter, chuckle with skepticism.
“You really think they will get that big?”
But they did. Each night after work, I would come home to find new flowers on the plants that continued to grow and stretch inside their cages. Thanks to that soil and constant New Jersey sun.
The sun was merciless that summer. In fact, New Jersey in 1998 was under a severe drought alert and temperatures reached 90 and above. Every night, after my husband and I bathed our kids, I would haul out the bathwater, one bucket at a time, to water my tomatoes. By the end of the summer, I had baskets of tomatoes to enjoy with my neighbors, who weren’t laughing at my puny tomato plants anymore. I brought in bags of cherry tomatoes to snack on in my office in Manhattan and left some in the break room for my co-workers to enjoy.
Contrast this with my garden in Rochester. My neighborhood: home to 80-year-old towering sun-sucking Sugar Maples. Unlike the loamy beautiful soil of New Jersey, my Brighton neighborhood is the site of a former brick yard. You guessed it: thick, clay soil.
I love trees. I have — no had – 10 trees surrounding my property. But with only an average of 165 sunny days in Rochester, and a huge pine tree standing in the way between my vegetable garden and the sun after 3 p.m., I did the unconscionable. I cut down that tree. I wanted those red tomatoes that badly. Even so, my vegetable garden in Rochester, will never be so kissed by the sun as the ones back in New Jersey. The threat of frost lasts until mid-may. Days of clouds and rain cause blossom rot and blight. Last year, we received so much rain that if my tomato plants could dream, they dreamt of a sunny hillside somewhere in Italy. Or New Jersey.
Only this summer did I witness what other sun-starved Brighton neighbors did to achieve that perfect, sun-ripened tomato: for $25, they reserved a plot of land in the town’s community garden. On a tract of land that used to be a farm. More on this community garden in a future post.
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Stacy Gittleman 