Chase away the winter blues at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG). According to the its web site, exposure to daylight, even on a cloudy day, can help restore energy, alertness, and contentment. BBG has a wealth of ongoing programming, from classes to public tours.
Choose from an extensive list of adult classes this winter: register for one in Tai Chi Cuan, or one in designing a brownstone garden. GreenBridge, the community environmental horticulture program at BBG, offers free workshops (space is limited) in topics such as starting seeds indoors or street tree care.
Coming up this Sunday, Feb. 7, there will be a special theme tour to rid you of the winter blues: an hour-long wintertime walk conducted by Lynne Spevack, LCSW, a licensed psychotherapist and veteran BBG tour guide . Two tours remain this season, one this Sunday, Feb. 7, and one on Sunday, March 7, beginning at 1 p.m. Meet at the Visitor Center, dress warmly and wear comfortable shoes. Rain or shine.
Or, you can visit the garden on your own. Admission is free on weekdays from now until March 2.
City Tech physics Professor (and Bed-Stuy resident) Gregory L. Matloff recently released a new book he co-authored called Paradise Regained: The Regreening of Earth.
The book outlines how space resources and space-based power generating systems can work together with Earth-based conservation to meet industrial needs and forge a sustainable future.
Matloff co-wrote the book with Les Johnson, deputy manager of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Advanced Concepts Office at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Al.
“With an ever-increasing share of the human population making the transition to the ‘developed’ world,” said Johnson in a press release, “will come increasing stress on the Earth’s environment, natural resources and ability to produce enough food. The modern environmental movement is tackling these problems head-on by promoting energy efficiency, recycling and renewable resources. While these strategies and technologies are vital, they will be woefully insufficient to provide for a prosperous, long-lived global society with a moderate-to-high standard of living.”
The solution to a progressively worsening environmental situation and its negative impact on society will require “drawing upon the vast energy and material resources that space alone can provide,” said Matloff in a press release. “Doing so will enable us to create a cleaner, healthier environment essential to sustaining life on Earth far into the future.”
Paradise Regained is published by Springer Science & Business Media and is available on Amazon here.
This Saturday, Jan. 30, the Brooklyn Green Team will celebrate its second anniversary with an 80s-themed party at Bar Reis on 375 Fifth Ave. in Park Slope. For a $10 cover charge, sample local and organic drink specials and participate in a silent auction. Items in the silent auction include a gift certificate to Park Slope restaurant Aunt Suzie's, a $100 gift certificate to Green Apple Cleaners, a nature photograph donated by Green Team founder Amanda Gentile, a “greenmarket” basket donated by the Council on the Environment of New York City, a free yoga class, and more.
City Council Member Brad Lander will speak at the party, and a DJ will spin 80s music starting at 11 p.m. Attendees will receive $20 gift certificates to Green Apple Cleaners, while supplies last.
Money raised at the party will benefit Haiti relief efforts and will also aid local electronics recycling, according to Gentile.
The Brooklyn Green Team is comprised of a group of friends — sisters Amanda and Noelle Gentile, Melissa Browning, Jennifer Bartels, Johanna Voutounou and Robert Weinstein — who got together after seeing the film The 11th Hour and wanted to inspire positive change. They hold regular eco-challenges to raise environmental awareness.
Photo above is from the Green Team's first anniversary party. From left to right: Noelle Gentile, Johanna Voutounou, Amanda Gentile, Jennifer Bartels, Melissa Browning and Robert Weinstein. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Green Team
Last week, the Brooklyn Public Library announced the winners of its sixth annual, Power Up! business plan competition. One of the second place winners, taking home a cash prize of $5,000, submitted a plan with a green theme.
Prospect Heights resident Vandra Thorburn (above left) proposed Vokashi Kitchen Waste, a simple, natural solution to disposing of kitchen refuse. This business will give residential households a small catering companies the tools to recycle their food waste — primarily, a product that ferments discarded food and distributes it to composting sites where it becomes organic soil. The process is natural and easy.
It seems Power Up! winners commonly have green business plans. One of last year's second place winners was Elissa Olin, who proposed the plan for a green home goods store, Green in BKLYN, which she then opened in Clinton Hill on Earth Day last year.
In December, I caught up with David Hurd, director of the Office of Recycling Outreach and Education (OROE) at the Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), and Jae Watkins, Brooklyn's recycling outreach coordinator, for a story about recycling. During our interview, they showed me a video CENYC compiled of New Yorkers talking about the guidelines for recycling in New York City. Hurd explained that the video was a "good way to extend [CENYC's] outreach," and get the message out to more people about recycling. Check it out:
This Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., bring your electronic waste to be recycled at Prospect Park West and Third Street. Volunteers from the Lower East Side Ecology Center will collect items such as old computers, monitors, printers, scanners, keyboards, modems, DVD players, VCRs, cell phones and answering machines. Kitchen equipment is not accepted.
It’s long been a tradition for Macintosh hobbyists to convert their old, cherished computers into something else — a fish tank, for example. With this idea in mind, Jeff Graber, owner of the Mac Support Store in Gowanus, looked at the pile of obsolete computer equipment in his store and wondered, what could be done with it?
Since the Mac Support Store is part of NYC's Retailer Take-Back Program, the equipment was slated to be recycled. But Graber and Brooklyn curators Michele Jaslow and Spring Hofeldt decided to put out a call for artists to use them to create art pieces.
The result is the show “Programmed,” which opened on Dec. 21 at the Mac Support Store, with a satellite exhibit in the windows of wine shop Red White & Bubbly on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope.
Eight artists contributed 12 pieces to the show, three of whom are Brooklyn-based. “[The artists’] work speaks to the idea of how quickly these electronics become obsolete,” Jaslow said. “What happens to the old, which is relatively not so old.”
The work in the show is diverse; Jaslow described a necklace made out of an iPod and a working lie detector made out of computer parts. Brooklyn artist Noah Fischer created a multimedia installation called “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish,” (left) named for a commencement speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in 2005. The expansive piece comprised of stacks and piles of computer parts with blinking lights set to a soundtrack of Jobs’ speech fills the better part of a room. See the video below.
Brooklyn artist Kimberly Simpson’s work (right), a “video reliquary” dedicated to “Saint Obsoleta.” According to her artist statement, it is inspired by the computer parts and by medieval reliquaries which protect a saintly relic. The patron saint of outmoded objects, Saint Obsoleta encourages humans to adopt new technologies in order to replace the old. She also acts as a guide, directing obsolete technologies and outdated electronic items to their final resting place.
Nancy Lunsford, a Park Slope artist and founder of 440 Gallery, contributed pieces based on quilt patterns (top, left). She was surprised when working with the computer parts, she said. “It was much more colorful than I anticipated, much more delicate.”
Using pieces from computers juxtaposed with children’s pacifiers symbolizes how people are “pacified by computers,” Lunsford said.
With her work, Lunsford wanted to emphasize the human-machine connection. “[Computers] are made by human beings, they are used by human beings... they are more human than we think and we are more machine than we think.”
Graber, too, wants viewers to take away from the show a new way to think about their relationship with computers. “I hope it stimulates people to think about and interact with their electronics,” he said, explaining that we spend so much time using the computer when it’s on that “when it’s off, it takes on a whole new meaning.”
What originally inspired Jaslow, she said, is “what happens to these electronics when you’re done with them, [asking] what is their place in our community, what is their place in art... looking at things in a different way.”
But the most important message Graber hopes people take away from “Programmed” is that, “Computers and electronics must be recycled. There are so many toxic elements within computers and electronics.”
“Programmed” features work by Noah Fisher, Liesl Hazelton, Nancy Lunsford, Mario Marchese, Ryan Mcintosh, Patricia Paludanus and Kimberly Simpson. The satellite installation features work by Ryan Seslow.
The show will continue at the Mac Support Store through March 13, with a reception this Friday, Jan. 15, from 6 to 9 p.m., sponsored by Red White & Bubbly, which is open to the public. For more information, click here.
Chase away the winter blues at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG). According to the its web site, exposure to daylight, even on a cloudy day, can help restore energy, alertness, and contentment. BBG has a wealth of ongoing programming, from classes to public tours. 
