All Entries in the "Community" Category
NOCO a finalist in the RFT’s 2012 Web Awards
A big crowd gathered at the Old Rock House this week, celebrating the finalists and winners in the Riverfront Times' 2012 Web Awards. Photo by Kholood Eid.
Last year, NOCO was honored by the Riverfront Times as the Best Neighborhood Blog in St. Louis. This year, I’m happy to report that the honors were doubled! Not only was I asked to serve as one of the judges for the 2012 Web Awards, which allowed me to meet some amazing people, but NOCO was once again nominated and named a finalist.
The RFT decided to spread the love around and give the Best Neighborhood Blog prize to another worthy site, ILoveSoulard.com. (Congrats, Ryan!!) But you know, that’s perfectly fine with me. As someone who launched a website for the sole purpose of supporting and promoting my community, I can’t think of anything better than talented neighborhood bloggers popping up in every corner of the metro area!
I was especially happy to see my friend Nicki Dwyer recognized for her lovely neighborhood blog, Nicki’s Central West End Guide. I also enjoyed re-visiting the Cherokee Street News, a fellow finalist from last year.
Of course, I didn’t judge my own category. All conflicts of interest were nipped in the bud. But I did get to view and write about dozens of other interesting websites, in categories like Best Personal Blog, Best Political Blog, and my favorite, Best Architecture Blog.
A huge thank you to the RFT’s Chad Garrison for choosing me for this project. It was lots of work but so much fun! Thanks also to everyone who nominated NOCO! To read more about the 2012 Web Awards and check out the list of winners and finalists, jump on over to the RFT…
NoCo Catholic schools hosting an Open House
Though I’m neither a parent nor a particularly religious person, I do know one thing without a doubt: North County’s Catholic schools play an incredibly vital role in our community. Without them, we will definitely lose more families to other areas. We will also lose the foundational glue that holds many local neighborhoods together.
In the past few years, facing closures, consolidations and declining enrollment, the eight schools within the Northeast Deanery finally figured out that they’re stronger if they work together. And despite some setbacks – including the recent decision to move Blessed Teresa School to the old Good Shepherd location, which upset a good number of folks here in Ferguson – the “Federation” has certainly made positive strides.
Not only did they launch a new marketing campaign this month, but they’re hosting a Community Open House on January 29. And if you have school-age kids or know someone who does, I heartily encourage you to attend. You don’t even need to be Catholic.
“We invite parishioners, families of all faiths, community leaders and all members of the North County community to celebrate Catholic Schools Week with us by visiting one or more of the schools located in our neighborhoods,” says Cara Koen, Director of Advancement for the Federation of Catholic Schools in the Northeast Deanery. “Come and see our facilities, meet families and students who attend our schools, and learn about the positive ways Catholic schools impact North County.”
The Federation includes the following parish-sponsored elementary schools, which will all be open to the public on January 29, 2012 between 1:00-3:00 pm. Why not stop by and say hello…
- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, 314-522-3888, 150 N. Elizabeth Avenue, Ferguson
- Christ, Light of the Nations, 314-741-0400, 1650 Redman Road, Spanish Lake
Sponsored by Holy Name of Jesus and Our Lady of the Rosary Parishes - Our Lady of Guadalupe, 314-524-1948, 1115 South Florissant Road, Cool Valley
- Sacred Heart, 314-831-3372, 501 St. Louis Street, Florissant
- St. Angela Merici, 314-831-8012, 3860 N. Highway 67, Florissant
- St. Ferdinand, 314-921-2201, 1735 Charbonier, Florissant
Serves parishioners of St. Ferdinand and St. Martin de Porres - St. Norbert, 314-839-0948, 16475 New Halls Ferry Road, Florissant;
and St. Norbert Early Childhood Center, 314-420-9773, 1625 Swallow Lane, Florissant
Serves parishioners of St. Norbert and St. Sabina Parishes - St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, 314-921-3023, 3500 St. Catherine Street, Florissant
New Wildlife Hotline offers help for local animals
One of the best things about growing up in my NoCo subdivision, Fox Manor, was that every once in a while I actually got a glimpse of live foxes. Living just up the block from a rustic, heavily wooded stretch of Coldwater Creek, I also saw coyotes, beavers, deer and all manner of native wildlife. And for me, having this kind of access to Mother Nature and her creatures has always been one of our greatest gifts in North County.
That’s why I was happy to hear about a new organization dedicated to protecting our wildlife. Known as the Missouri/Illinois Bi-State Wildlife Hotline, this all-volunteer effort led by local wildlife rehabilitators provides the general public with round-the-clock guidance about animals in need.
Find a sick possum or an orphaned bird? Got a squirrel in your attic? Did a skunk spray your dog? Then call the Wildlife Hotline and the experts there will assess the situation and tell you what you can do….even if it’s in the middle of the night. The hotline is open 24/7 and is available free of charge to anyone in the metro area.
And because it runs on a shoestring budget, and I know how many animal lovers we have in NoCo, I thought I’d do my part by spreading the word.
For more info about these good folks and the generous work they do, check out the Wildlife Hotline website. I also suggest visiting their Facebook page, especially if you like photos of adorable baby animals! (I think the beavers are my favorite.)
The Bi-State Wildlife Hotline can be reached at (636) 492-1610 or toll-free at (800) 482-7950.
Incredible Edible: Could it happen in Ferguson?
In the English town of Todmorden, residents grow vegetables for all to share.
Here in Ferguson, we have an award-winning farmers market, several vibrant community gardens, and the oldest organic farm in Missouri. Could this revolutionary project from England be the next step for us? Story by Vincent Graff of the Daily Mail…
Carrots in The Car Park. Radishes on the Roundabout. The Deliciously Eccentric Story of the Town Growing ALL its Own Veg
Admittedly, it sounds like the most foolhardy of criminal capers, and one of the cheekiest, too. Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds. If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.
Today the beds are bare. Why? Because people have been wandering up to the police station forecourt in broad daylight and digging up the vegetables. And what are the cops doing about this brazen theft from right under their noses? Nothing.
Well, that’s not quite correct. ‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.
For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The police station carrots — and thousands of vegetables in 70 large beds around the town — are there for the taking. Locals are encouraged to help themselves. A few tomatoes here, a handful of broccoli there. If they’re in season, they’re yours. Free.
So there are (or were) raspberries, apricots and apples on the canal towpath; blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries beside the doctor’s surgery; beans and peas outside the college; cherries in the supermarket car park; and mint, rosemary, thyme and fennel by the health centre.
The vegetable plots are the most visible sign of an amazing plan: to make Todmorden the first town in the country that is self-sufficient in food. ‘And we want to do it by 2018,’ says Mary Clear, 56, a grandmother of ten and co-founder of Incredible Edible, as the scheme is called. ‘It’s a very ambitious aim. But if you don’t aim high, you might as well stay in bed, mightn’t you?’
So what’s to stop me turning up with a huge carrier bag and grabbing all the rosemary in the town? ‘Nothing,’ says Mary.
What’s to stop me nabbing all the apples? ‘Nothing.’
All your raspberries? ‘Nothing.’
It just doesn’t happen like that, she says. ‘We trust people. We truly believe — we are witness to it — that people are decent.’
When she sees the Big Issue seller gathering fruit for his lunch, she feels only pleasure. What does it matter, argues Mary, if once in a while she turns up with her margarine tub to find that all the strawberries are gone? ‘This is a revolution,’ she says. ‘But we are gentle revolutionaries. Everything we do is underpinned by kindness.’
The idea came about after she and co-founder Pam Warhurst, the former owner of the town’s Bear Cafe, began fretting about the state of the world and wondered what they could do. They reasoned that all they could do is start locally, so they got a group of people, mostly women, together in the cafe.
‘Wars come about by men having drinks in bars, good things come about when women drink coffee together,’ says Mary. ‘Our thinking was: there’s so much blame in the world — blame local government, blame politicians, blame bankers, blame technology — we thought, let’s just do something positive instead.’
We’re standing by a car park in the town centre. Mary points to a housing estate up the hill. Her face lights up. ‘The children walk past here on the way to school. We’ve filled the flower beds with fennel and they’ve all been taught that if you bite fennel, it tastes like a liquorice gobstopper. When I see the children popping little bits of herb into their mouths, I just think it’s brilliant.’
She takes me over to the front garden of her own house, a few yards away. Three years ago, when Incredible Edible was launched, she did a very unusual thing: she lowered her front wall, in order to encourage passers-by to walk into her garden and help themselves to whatever vegetables took their fancy.
There were signs asking people to take something but it took six months for folk to ‘get it’, she says. They get it now. Obviously a few town-centre vegetable plants — even thousands of them — are not going to feed a community of 15,000 by themselves.
But the police station potatoes act as a recruiting sergeant — to encourage residents to grow their own food at home. Today, hundreds of townspeople who began by helping themselves to the communal veg are now well on the way to self-sufficiency. But out on the street, what gets planted where? There’s kindness even in that.
Incredible Edible is about more than plots of veg. It's about educating people about food, and stimulating the local economy (pictured Vincent Graff and Estelle)
‘The ticket man at the railway station, who was very much loved, was unwell. Before he died, we asked him: “What’s your favourite vegetable, Reg?” It was broccoli. So we planted memorial beds with broccoli at the station. One stop up the line, at Hebden Bridge, they loved Reg, too — and they’ve also planted broccoli in his memory.’
Not that all the plots are — how does one put this delicately? — ‘official’. Take the herb bushes by the canal. Owners British Waterways had no idea locals had been sowing plants there until an official inspected the area ahead of a visit by the Prince of Wales last year (Charles is a huge Incredible Edible fan).
Estelle Brown, a 67-year-old former interior designer who tended the plot, received an email from British Waterways. ‘I was a bit worried to open it,’ she says. ‘But it said: “How do you build a raised bed? Because my boss wants one outside his office window.”’
Incredible Edible is also about much more than plots of veg. It’s about educating people about food, and stimulating the local economy. There are lessons in pickling and preserving fruits, courses on bread-making, and the local college is to offer a BTEC in horticulture. The thinking is that young people who have grown up among the street veg may make a career in food.
Crucially, the scheme is also about helping local businesses. The Bear, a wonderful shop and cafe with a magnificent original Victorian frontage, sources all its ingredients from farmers within a 30-mile radius. There’s a brilliant daily market. People here can eat well on local produce, and thousands now do.
Meanwhile, the local school was recently awarded a £500,000 Lottery grant to set up a fish farm in order to provide food for the locals and to teach useful skills to young people. Jenny Coleman, 62, who retired here from London, explains: ‘We need something for our young people to do. If you’re an 18-year-old, there’s got to be a good answer to the question: why would I want to stay in Todmorden?’
The day I visit, the town is battered by a bitterly-cold rain storm. Yet the place radiates warmth. People speak to each other in the street, wave as neighbours drive past, smile. If the phrase hadn’t been hijacked, the words ‘we’re all in this together’ would spring to mind.
So what sort of place is Todmorden (known locally, without exception, as ‘Tod’)? If you’re assuming it’s largely peopled by middle-class grandmothers, think again. Nor is this place a mecca for the gin-and-Jag golf club set. Set in a Pennine valley — once, the road through the town served as the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire — it is a vibrant mix of age, class and ethnicity.
A third of households do not own a car; a fifth do not have central heating. You can snap up a terrace house for £50,000 — or spend close to £1 million on a handsome stone villa with seven bedrooms. And the scheme has brought this varied community closer together, according to Pam Warhurst.
Take one example. ‘The police have told us that, year on year, there has been a reduction in vandalism since we started,’ she says. ‘We weren’t expecting this.’ So why has it happened?
Pam says: ‘If you take a grass verge that was used as a litter bin and a dog toilet and turn it into a place full of herbs and fruit trees, people won’t vandalise it. I think we are hard-wired not to damage food.’ Pam reckons a project like Incredible Edible could thrive in all sorts of places. ‘If the population is very transient, it’s difficult. But if you’ve got schools, shops, back gardens and verges, you can do it.’
Similar schemes are being piloted in 21 other towns in the UK, and there’s been interest shown from as far afield as Spain, Germany, Hong Kong and Canada. And, this week, Mary Clear gave a talk to an all-party group of MPs at Westminster.
Todmorden was visited by a planner from New Zealand, working on the rebuilding of his country after February’s earthquake. Mary says: ‘He went back saying: “Why wouldn’t we rebuild the railway station with pick-your-own herbs? Why wouldn’t we rebuild the health centre with apple trees?”
‘What we’ve done is not clever. It just wasn’t being done.’
The final word goes to an outsider. Joe Strachan is a wealthy U.S. former sales director who decided to settle in Tod with his Scottish wife, after many years in California. He is 61 but looks 41. He became active with Incredible Edible six months ago, and couldn’t be happier digging, sowing and juicing fruit.
I find myself next to him, sheltering from the driving rain. Why, I ask, would someone forsake the sunshine of California for all this? His answer sums up what the people around here have achieved.
‘There’s a nobility to growing food and allowing people to share it. There’s a feeling we’re doing something significant rather than just moaning that the state can’t take care of us. ‘Maybe we all need to learn to take care of ourselves.’
For more info about this innovative program, visit the Incredible Edible website.
