Discounts for End-of-Year Green Books

It's time to plan for a greener 2017 at your museum.

Both The Green Museum and Environmental Sustainability at Historic Sites are available at a discount: 35% off from Rowman & Littlefield.  Just use the code RLWEB3516 at checkout.

If you would like additional, more personal support during your green journey, please consider joining a Green Team for Green Leaders, or contacting me for private coaching work. 

You know where to find me: sarah@sustainablemuseums.net and www.sustainablemuseums.net.


Go Green and Prosper in 2017.

Seed Saving: An Act of Preservation

Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth

In a recent post I wrote about Heritage Breeds of livestock and how helpful the book is for historic sites and open-air history museums who are considering adding or expand on livestock programs. Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, by Suzanne Ashworth, is just as valuable for those considering or already cultivating Heirloom Fruits and Vegetables.

In the days before industrial farming, and when so many more of us grew our own food, seed saving was a familiar practice. Saving and sharing seeds from a family's best produce was a way to save money and reproduce quality fruits and vegetables. Seeds were the heirlooms of the human family.

Today, as hybridization techniques create modern foods that ripen simultaneously, travel well, and have uniform appearances so important to grocery store distribution, the varieties are lost and the genetic pool is much reduced. As there are fewer gardeners, and even fewer people who know how to breed plants and save seeds, and even fewer who are trained to in agriculture colleges, we are left with fewer and fewer strains.

To me, that means today's crops, planted widely with newer seed varieties, are very likely to be less-suited for the place where they are put to grow and therefor at higher risk to damaging, weather conditions. A plant with heritage in a certain geography is more likely to weather slight changes to climate, and larger changes in weather, than a plan from a seed sourced in another region entirely. This monoculture approach to food types also means that a large percentages of our food sources is vulnerable to a single pest or disease, and that the genetic material and the histories of plants are being lost. There is strength in diversity.

Historic sites and open-air history museums have an opportunity to play a role here. Just as they can cultivate Heritage Breeds of livestock, they can cultivate Heirloom Fruits and Vegetables.

This book is an excellent how-to. It can get very technical, but it also offers the basics for starting with just a few varieties to restore, cultivate, and interpret as a part of your institution's contribution to history, to sustainable food, and to healthy communities.

Seed to Seed costs just under $25. It is a great resource for your professional library. Go ahead: add to the world's seed bank and feel good about it.

Book Review: An Introduction to Heritage Breeds: Saving and Raising Rare-Breed Livestock and Poultry

Think what living history farms and historic properties could do for the genetic pool of livestock and poultry if even a quarter of the 19,500+ historic sites or houses, historical societies, historic preservation groups and history museums in the country participated in some way in conserving Heritage Breeds.

But don't think this view and this practice is just about history. It's about environmental sustainability.

"Agriculture has changed more in the past century than in the last 10,000 years. In both developed and undeveloped countries diversified farming based on adaptation to local conditions", the authors write, and is being replace by standardization most often including adaptations for confinement, standardized feeds, and selection for very specific traits (meat or egg production, for example). The more multi-purpose, versatile, and lower-maintenance animals of the past have begun to die out for lack of interest  - - often based on perceptions of reduced value. Well, in a time of changing climate and decreasing genetic diversity, it's clear that local adaptability and a broad gene pool predisposed for adaptability are a good idea.

The Livestock Conservancy and Storey Publishing have given us An Introduction to Heritage Breeds: Saving and Raising Rare-Breed Livestock and Poultry, an excellent and much-needed how-to for those of us who haven't thought enough about this aspect of our work. It's a safe starting place for beginners, and a great promotional and educational tool for the more experienced among us who could use support educating our peers and funders. The writing makes no assumptions about prior knowledge yet speaks to the reader respectfully. (The book is only $19.95: buy it for your bookshelf and then stock it in your gift shop for all your homesteading visitors.)

The term 'Heritage Breed' focuses on unique adaptations in an animal based on local conditions. Think about it - if you wanted to have livestock on your site, wouldn't the stock best-suited for your region and your mission make the most sense?  The cattle, goats, sheep, swine and poultry that have adapted to the landscape and living conditions of your area are the ones who will have the best survivability, physical comfort, and resource productivity for the least effort. We're talking Spanish Black Turkeys, Navajo-Churro sheep, Red Wattle pigs, and Cleveland Bay horses.

These are not static breeds. Their value is their adaption to local conditions, so continued adaptation is appropriate. It's the animal's role in human-managed agriculture that we're preserving, not the exact traits of a time long ago. That might be hard for some purists to accept, but it reflects the times we live in. Your weather and climate conditions are changing; isn't it important to be working with the breeds most likely to be able to adapt to changes with less intervention on your part?

Caring for, protecting and supporting Heritage Breeds is not just for specialists or history museums, it's also for small-scale farmers interested in livestock raising. So, if you're interested in promoting sustainable living among your members and community supporters, this topic is a perfect opportunity for public engagement. If you're getting questions about "what kind of chicken should I keep", does your answer consider an appropriate heritage breed? Well consider that the bulk of the conservation work is already being done by individuals in our communities. These private champions have taken responsibility for rescuing, stabilizing and promoting rare breeds. Don't let them go it alone.

Certainly some museum leaders are pulling their portion of the weight on this: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Plimoth Plantation, Accokeek Foundations, and The Farmer's Museum, but isn't it time historic sites and museums stepped up their conservation work in the manner of zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens in their areas of mission and expertise? If you can safely and responsibly care for these animals in alignment with your mission while increasing public engagement, then it's an opportunity to be taken seriously.

What's in your barnyard?


 

So You Want to Write a Book

For the Annual Meeting for The New England Museum Association they have a Pecha Kucha night where we get to mush big, or special, or special big topics into 20 slides, 20 seconds each.  It is an excellent processing challenge I enjoy, so I tried to condense my writing/publishing experience (and my confusion at why I keep writing books) into that time frame, with a bit of song-dance-acting-and confessions all rolled into it. 

Preparing it was an excellent diversion from working on my current book on Environmental Sustainability at History Museums and Historic Sites.  I can't put all the images here, but I'll put a few....

1.    So – you want to write a book. We all think about it and it’s time it was out in the open - We all have fantasies.

2.    We dream of NPR interviews. And we imagine that oh-so-delicious feeling of sliding that book – your book – into the book case.  Seeing your name there on the spine as it sits on the shelf with the others you’re going to write some day...

3.    Like any sane person, you dream of money. But sane people don’t write books for niche markets like the museum field.  You’ll get 8% unless you have a co-author and then it’s less.  And have you ever seen a book sell at full price on Amazon?

        4.    Still, you’ve agreed to do this thing and there is a deadline.  So you collect all your ideas and you review the outline. Then you pitch it because it’s boring and you start over. And you write a new one which turns out to be just like the old one with a few embellishments. So it’s really time for inspiration.

        5.    After all – this has to be best thing you’ve ever written. You relax and let the ideas come to you. You assign the tough parts to your subconscious, and you start thinking about all the great things you’ll put in the book. Soon you are so excited that it’s time to start writing. 

6.    Choosing the right writing spot is critical.  I love a porch – fresh air, nature, a slight breeze, it all helps the ideas flow.  But coffee shops are more productive. You can’t just stare out in space, you have to at least look productive and you can’t duck-in to do the laundry or dishes.

7.    But I really write, in the office, at a desk with my butt in my seat, it’s all about butts in seats.  This is where you will pin down the thoughts, organize them, and finish the work. Music can help.

8.    Music - I love working to music, but writing words while listening to a song like BRAVE will just have me up dancing and singing, and there will be no typing happening. For me, music with words is contra-indicated. 

9.    Now LAST OF THE MOHICANS, with all that Dah, dah, dah dah, dah dah, dah, dah, is perfect for typing.  A little Celtic music, and some George Winston work well too, even PIRATES of the CARRIBEAN or MASTER and COMMANDER work.  

10.  What if you don’t type?  I write the first draft long-hand; it helps me really think things out.  Then I read it into the computer.  And I am careful not to listen to music with words while talking to the computer...    I choose my approach based on my mood.  Sometimes my mood needs a little help....

11.  Bribery – I love coffee, but if I have too much. then it’s hard to keep my butt in the seat. So I also bribe myself with peppermint patties.  If I finish a chapter or a case study, I get a peppermint patty.  The peppermint patties live at the store.  I have to walk there to get them. If they lived at home there would be too much of my butt in my seat. 

12.  Wine is a good antidote to coffee; it helps me relax and really get the ideas flowing. Plus I have to edit this stuff, anyway, so it doesn’t matter about spelling and punctuation when I’m on the wine. 

 13.  One day you are finally done.  You skip off to the post office - yes a print copy and a CD version - and you stand in line and you wonder if anyone notices the aura of a published author around you. They don’t.  And then you realize they wouldn’t because they’re probably not published authors..... You hand it in and skip home …

        14.  ... and on the way you think that you should not have used the hyphenated version of environmental-sustainability quite so often, and then you think of all the other people you should have interviewed, and all the other people who could have written this so much better than you did. This is called Fraud Syndrome. It will fade until ....

         15.  ... one day you’re surprised by this big whopper of an email with all the editor’s changes. Sheesh!  They want you to double-check your references – even though you’re a trained historian and you did that to begin with; and they want you to put a period after the date in every reference!  Well,

16.  You would have done that if had read the author’s guidelines instead of picturing yourself sliding that book into the bookcase; [It’s time for wine], and …wait for it….they want you to not hyphenate "environmental sustainably so much". You do all this because you know they are right, even if you are grumpy, and then you fake-skip to the post office. 

17.  Still - no one in line notices you’re a published author. So, you trudge home swearing you will never to do a hyphenated green thing again. Then you take all the recycling and put it in the garbage.  Then you take the compost and put it in the garbage too. It does not make you feel better. You do penance for your sin by putting it all back.

       18.  But one day a box arrives! It's a box of 20 books you can’t sell because you have   

             appropriately promised to send them to all the kind people you interviewed and who know

             more about this than you do.  So you take out the one copy you’ll keep, and you cry, and you

             have  a glass of champagne and you slide it on the shelf and admire it.

      19.    Well, one day, years later, the second book comes and you open the box and you don’t cry

              but you have two glasses of champagne, and you put it on the shelf next to the first one.Y

              You smile.  Then one day the third book arrives and you open it up, look at it and 

              say "who okayed these colors?" (you did), and "is there anything else in the mail?" And you

              don’t cry, you don’t drink, and you put it on the shelf. (Now you're just getting snooty).

       20.    And then, one year, the fourth one comes and you see how big and fat it is and you say

                “this is getting out of hand”.  But to celebrate you sit on a friends’ porch and drink a glass

                of wine. And slowly an idea comes to you, and you find a scrap of paper and write down a

                few notes, and you realize you are about to do hyphenated green things all over again!

Writing for the museum field isn't exactly earning a living, but it certainly is a great life.

Overheard: Climate Change Discussion at a History Museum

Girl visitor exiting log house and cooking demonstration at Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum: "I wouldn't have wanted to live then: no air-conditioning".

Slightly older male visitor with her: "they didn't need air-conditioning back then; there wasn't as much asphalt heating-up everything". 

Just the week before I had had a conversation with a conservation client about focus group on environmental literacy among its members. The responses showed widespread awareness of the connections among air, food, water and the health of the environment, but no mention of climate change or, when queried, understanding of the relevance of climate change to environmental health. I had hoped in my heart of hearts that climate change had reached awareness levels, but I guess I wasn't surprised to hear this report. 

So the comment about asphalt and air-conditioning struck me. Why did this historic site visitor connect to climate change and the science/nature group did not?  This is too small a sample for conclusions, but it does encourage me to think about how historic sites - demonstrating change over time (though not with this mythology behind them) - can make a great difference in communicating climate change.

One of the challenges of communicating climate change is that demonstrated change, and demonstrated impact create the strongest, most defined, responses, but climate change is such a large and complex issue, that it can be difficult to demonstrate without using distant imagery: comparative photographs of melting polar ice, or decades of history of change in carbon levels or frequency of storms (see link at end of blog). Our visitors probably haven't felt that change; they see it and consider it, but don't feel it. 

When the situation relates directly to the individual, it becomes more real.  So, in these two examples, those being directly affected by heat and comfort are drawing conclusions, while those thinking about the environment as a whole, and its effects on larger scale, have missed it entirely.

With our credibility as some of the most trusted sites for information, museums, zoos, gardens, sites, and aquariums can communicate climate change in meaningful ways, but perhaps the history museums and historic sites have the best chance of creating change that leads to action.

• If your site has planting and weather records from 100 years ago, and can compare them to current weather and planting reports, you can demonstrate direct impact that a visitor can recognize and feel.
• If you interpret architectural or community-building history at the waterfront, you can discuss how weather-incidents and potential for sea-level rise might affect community and home location choices today.
• Do you have collections with photographs, paintings, or etchings for comparing to today's landscapes? Are they of nearby places (more accessible than Alaska) that more visitors are likely to see and feel personally?

Climate change and environmental sustainability issues aren't just for science and nature sites. These are global issues and we all have a role in creating change.

Note:  The 2005 article by Anthony Leiserowitz  on risk perception and communicating climate change for Yale University is a good read and is something I use in my work.

 

Kickstarter and Green Museums: Cynwood Station

The crowd is helping to fund a  green preservation project: Kickstarter supporters have contributed more than $5000 to fund the stormwater management project that will keep water out of the Cynwood Train Station and help preserve it long term. In the process, the project creates a welcoming space, provides educational/demonstration opportunities, and improves local water quality to boot.  What’s not to love?

The station is part of the Cynwood Heritage Trail in Lower Merion Township, PA. It is an active-use public transport station being revitalized as part of a more sustainable approach to community living.

Sarah Francis is a project board member and green consultant (LEED-AP for existing buildings) for the Cynwyd Station Revitalization Project.  This project was her idea – on the ground and on Kickstarter – and it’s part of the green vision for the site.

Here’s a description from the Kickstarter site:

The sustainable landscape was designed by North Street Design, LLC, in conjunction with students of the Engineering School at Villanova University. The most impressive element of the initiative is its innovative, multifunctional rainwater harvesting system, designed specifically for the station. Tanks made from recycled materials can also be used as benches for trail users and commuters, and the collected water will irrigate surrounding gardens, lowering our tap water use, while also preventing runoff from causing more soil erosion in the gardens.

They have already fully-funded the project, but the rest of the money raised in the next two days will contribute to additional stormwater management on site. Sarah Francis writes:

the extra money will go towards the other elements of the ...site, including plantings and supplies for 2 rain gardens, and a planted trench along the foundation of the station.

I’ve contributed.  I hope others will consider supporting this project and using it as an example for their own work.

Is anyone else out there crowd-funding their green projects?

Twelve Days of a Green Christmas at the Historic Site

On the first day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site a much-needed energy audit

On the second day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Two stormwater cisterns

On the third day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site a Three-part compost bin

On the fourth day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Four solar golf carts

On the fifth day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Five miles of window seal tape

On the sixth day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Six chimney pillows

On the seventh day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Seven heritage cattle

On the eighth of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Eight rooms of insulation

On the ninth day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Nine hens a laying

On the tenth day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Ten recycle bins

On the eleventh day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Eleven storm window inserts

On the twelfth day of Christmas, donors sent the historic site Twelve Compact Fluorescents