Tag Archives: incitytimesworcester.org

Earth Day 2021🌍🌏🌎

April 12, 2021 admin

By Edith Morgan

Edith working in her garden

It’s time to stop abusing our Mother Earth, folks! What we humans have done to the planet that sustains us is pure abuse, and we are waxing closer and closer to the time when finally mother nature will have her vengeance. We are committed to an economic system that can survive only with ever growing waste and expansion.

Momma!!💜💜💜

So we throw away things we have used once, or that we are bored with, or that advertising and fashion say are “passé” We double and triple wrap everything …

Too much packaging!

… and regularly throw away a huge percentage of our food, either because we are served larger portions than we can or want to eat, or for any of a number of reasons. When we were growing up, my parents would say “Eat up, because the ___________ (fill in your own people) are starving.“ We live in a “throw-away“ society where rather than fix, mend or otherwise repair things, we throw them out and buy new stuff.

Out of sight, out of mind. When we throw it out, it is gone … Or is it? Where does it all go when we dump it? China used to take shiploads of our trash, but as they enter the industrial age themselves they no longer take our refuse. Our landfills are filling up, and we have miles of floating debris in our oceans, plastics that do not just disappear but last for many more years than we live!

We have populated a whole continent, fenced in and laid claim to it all, taken from people who believed that you cannot own your Mother Earth and, therefore, it was easy for White man to just take it all and declare it as ours. And so now we are responsible for what has happened to it and what will be handed over to our children and their children.

In Edith’s yard … pic: E.M.

I am hopeful when I see so many of our young helping with clean-ups, recycling, re-using, renewing. I am very disturbed that our public schools are not at the forefront in teaching our young every year, in every area, to be aware of what we humans are doing to this planet. So far the only one where we can comfortably survive!

💜 pic: E.M.

As we go from 2 billion people to seven billion people on Earth … to maybe even 9 or 10 billion humans, displacing and extinguishing species that are part of the delicately balanced ecosystem on which life depends, do we really have a full idea of how long we can continue down this road?

I had hoped that the enforced sequestering of this global pandemic would be seen as a warning, a time for a course correction, a time to decide to mend our ways, and to cherish that which sustains rather than to overpower it.

We can still decide! Re-use, recycle, renew, share and think, think, think!!!

Glass is better, more lasting, safer than plastic, and can be re-used so many times. We can buy vegetables and fruits locally, even grow our own, without big gardens – pots work well. We can walk, bicycle, car-pool and insist that our vehicles deliver 60 or more miles to the gallon – or are free of gasoline altogether. And we can fund or enact research that shows us how to live more respectfully on this planet where everyone can thrive.

So, love your Mother Earth, treat her respectfully, and listen to what she has to say …

In Edith’s garden …hyacinth. pic: E.M.

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

SAVE OUR EARTH! REDUCE GREENHOUSE GASES by EATING LESS MEAT!!

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

🇺🇸FIVE EASY PIECES🇺🇸

March 21, 2021 admin

By Rosalie Tirella

Maybe it was “The Shining.” Maybe it was “Terms of Endearment.” Maybe it was “Something’s Gotta Give” … but somewhere along the line I stopped seeing Jack Nicholson as an actor, an artist, and started seeing him as a pair of eyebrows: dark, foreboding and arched to a point, like a triangle. Beneath them, Jack’s pair of blue, maniacal eyes darting in all directions on the big screen. Then there was his serpentine grin, white teeth clenched – a kooky smile of pure … hatred. Was Nicholson acting? Really?

So it was wonderful to rewatch the film EASY RIDER a few weeks ago and rediscover the Jack Nicholson that we Baby Boomers fell in love with in the ’70s and ’60s: fine, subtle, sexy, young, lean, smart, eruptive … wild … emotional Jack Nicholson. Then I Googled his movies, read the critics’ rave reviews about FIVE EASY PIECES (1970) and checked the DVD out of the library. Just screened it in the “ROSE BLACKSTONE CINEMA” with Lilac snoozing by my legs.

WOW.

Wow.

First, let me explain: I’ve never seen the movie because I thought “pieces” in the film’s title denotes money, coins, “pieces” of gold. I thought the movie was about a bank heist or it was a gangster flick – and I hate both. I thought I saw, years ago, a poster for the movie with five PIECES OF GOLD flying through the air. But the movie FIVE EASY PIECES HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COINS! Here, “pieces” means classical music pieces. Musical scores or “pieces” you play. Pieces that Jack Nicholson plays on the piano beautifully, sensitively but somehow it’s not enough. He’s cut off from life. Pissed off, lost, messed up … He’s a million miles from his upper-class musical family roots and piano-playing. He’s brilliant, intuitive but living in a crappy trailer park surrounded by dolts and his beautiful, sexy and loving but dim-witted waitress girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black) whom he cheats on with ease. He works on an oil rig with his best bud Elton whom he loathes because Elton thinks he has it good.

“Bobby” loathes himself, too. We guess that’s why he moves from one crumby job/living situation to the next … it’s when he can’t take it any more. But as he flees in his sexy denim jackets and flared jeans from this lover and that Mc-job, the artist in him continues to “record” … He’s attuned. To injustice. To people’s feelings. To his failure to measure up. To the pretensions of the rich – to their “crap.” Which is why he may have ended up with the blue-collar Tammy Wynette-loving Rayette in the first place – only to wake up to a different kind of “crap.”

Rayette

The movie’s first half depicts Bobby in his rough and rowdy working-class world: dirty, hard work on the oil rig. Bowling on Friday nights with Rayette and Elton and his wife. A six pack at the end of the day … driving off to have sex, wild fun, with the lil’ lady he met at the bowling alley (Sally Struthers) … then coming home unrepentant to a desperate, cloying, totally in love with him Rayette. “DON’T YOU LOVE ME BOBBY? JUST SAY IT. SAY YOU LOVE ME,” Rayette whispers in Bobby’s ear in bed, on the sofa, in the car. She coos and kisses. She’s gorgeous, but it’s not working. How can it? according to Bobby. Rayette is so “pathetic” … . Rayette knows he’ll leave her someday.

We see the real Bobby when he and Elton are stuck in traffic and an enraged, exasperated Bobby leaps out of Elton’s jalopy and starts gesticulating and screaming at all the vehicles qued up in the sun. Up ahead he sees a truck piled with furniture; he leaps onto the bed, pulls the cover off a piano and starts playing it. Beautifully. Sensitively. In a traffic jam. On the highway. With a million cars honking, scores of drivers swearing at him.

🌹

Bobby is oblivious … Elton is too big a dope to realize what his friend is and just yahoos and yips in the sunlight. A big joke. Bobby stays on the truck with his upright piano and is driven away … an off ramp carries the music and Bobby away. This is an unforgettable scene: making art in the middle of mayhem. Because of the mayhem. Nicholson is violent, frenzied, tender … a mystery.

What makes one brother – Bobby’s brother Carl – choose to stay at the family compound giving music lessons to a cultivated lovely young woman whom he will marry soon? Why does he follow in his father’s footsteps and the other son – Bobby – choose a whacky, even dangerous, path? Why do we choose one road and skip all the others, infinite in number? Bobby confronts his black-sheep-ness when his sister, also a pianist, sees him to tell him: Our father’s dying. Maybe you should see him one last time.

Bobby agrees to drive north to see his dad who’s in a wheelchair and can no longer speak. He tries to leave Rayette at home; she senses his shame in her – and is heartbroken. Bobby relents, after he throws a cursing fit in his car, and takes her along. Inside their apartment, he’s remorseful and invites Rayette to join him on his road trip. It’s a pain of a trip – they pick up a couple of hitch hikers, one of whom pontificates FOR HOURS on the filthiness of America. Trash, garbage every where. Maggots, too. Weird lady. But there is a terrific scene in a diner: Bobby asks the waitress for 2 pieces of toast, on the side. The burned-out, middle-aged lady tells him: NO SUBSTITUTIONS. Bobby tries to work around the rules – but they can’t be broken. So, like he’s always done before, Bobby makes the rules explode – and walks away.

Bobby dumps Rayette off at a motel just before he gets to his family’s big mansion. He tells Rayette he will call her in a few days, after he’s settled and as she later explains to his family: “feel up the situation.” Once at “home” he reconnects with his eccentric sister who adores him …

🌱

… and plays ping pong with his equally eccentric brother, Carl – and lusts after Carl’s beautiful, wild-haired piano student. She’s in her 30s, wise, cultivated, articulate and recently divorced. Carl “restored” her in hard times, she later tells Bobby. After he’s ravaged her. After Bobby tells her to leave “this asylum” and go away with him because he wants to be with her. She seems to be his intellectual and emotional equal. But she asked him to play the piano and, after his playing moved her to tears, Bobby insults her, says: It meant nothing to me. It’s the easiest piece to play! I first played it when I was 8 years old – and I played it better then! … To have her feelings mocked, to see a man who can’t admit to his feelings makes her reject Bobby. She tells him: You don’t love anything. You don’t love yourself. How can I love you? You don’t deserve to be loved because you can’t love. (I disagree!)

The woman walks away …

Then Bobby walks away – but not before he rolls his dad, in his wheelchair, up a hill and tries to, before an expanse of woods in a lovely field at sunset, explain his life to his ill father who is now silent, expressionless, all bundled up against the cold. A terrific scene! Nicholson is so moving … apologetic, honest, searching … Not over the top. Understated, like so much of life. “I move around a lot,” he tells his dad. “Not because I’m looking for anything in particular but because I go away when things get bad.” He admits to his father that they never had much to say to each other, especially at the end, before he left home. Bobby says his sister wants them “to reach an understanding,” but admits, realizes right there on that hill, that it’s unlikely they ever will.

The father

The prodigal son

And now because he’s trapped in his outsider-ness, an interloper with no way in, he leaves his father forever and jettisons his life with Rayette (Elton told him she’s pregnant). No matter. He’s gotta split … This wonderful movie is infused with Tammy Wynette tunes – complementing the characters’ feelings and their deeds – but this time there’s no music behind his giving the unsuspecting Rayette his wallet, leaving her their car as it’s checked out at the gas station, even abandoning his winter coat in the men’s room at the gas station – staring at himself in the mirror: WHO AM I? he seems to be asking himself. … Bobby’s talking with a long haul trucker at the gas station – can he hitch a ride with him? We don’t hear the conversation but, once in the truck’s big cab, we are in the scene again: Truck driver to Bobby: “Don’t you have a jacket or anything with you?” Bobby lies and tells him he lost everything “in the fire.” The driver says: “Where we’re going it’s gonna be colder than hell.”

Alaska.

Bobby says: That’s ok. “Fine. Fine.” And off they roll, the pregnant Rayette still in the gas station coffee shop buying a cup to go.

Complex. True-to-Life.

That was Jack Nicholson.

Animal Issues

New South Wales Bans Dolphin Breeding! Now SeaWorld Must “Flip”!

March 14, 2021 admin

From PETA.ORG:

A wild dolphin leaping in the ocean!❤

PETA is overcome with joy about the news from Down Under: New South Wales, Australia, has made the compassionate decision to ban the breeding and importation of captive dolphins in the state. Following a government inquiry and a long public consultation in which many PETA Australia supporters took action, the new regulations will prevent future generations of dolphins from suffering under the guise of entertainment.

While New South Wales–based Dolphin Marine Conservation Park continues to explore the idea of a seaside sanctuary for its existing captives — Zippy, Bella and Jet — this new rule means that no new dolphinariums are allowed to open in the state. The three dolphins currently there will be the last ones forced to perform for noisy, gawking crowds in New South Wales.

But there’s still a dolphin in the tank: SeaWorld. The abusement park needs to follow the example set by Dolphin Marine Conservation Park — which didn’t complain that its dolphin-breeding days are over — and stop breeding dolphins. SeaWorld already ended its sordid orca-breeding program, so why is it acting as though other dolphins aren’t equally sensitive, intelligent, and deserving of bodily autonomy?

It’s 2021, and SeaWorld is still ignoring the growing groundswell of public condemnation as it continues to bolster its inventory of dolphin victims through breeding. Canada banned whale and dolphin captivity in 2019, and France has made it illegal for marine parks to abduct or breed orcas and other dolphins. No informed, compassionate person thinks it’s acceptable to breed, imprison and exploit marine mammals.

DOLPHINS ARE BEAUTIFUL, SENSITIVE AND SUPER INTELLIGENT! THEY MUST NOT BE KEPT IN TINY WATER PARKS TO BE EXPLOITED BY MAN!

In case you missed it, in SeaWorld’s dolphin-breeding program, unwilling male bottlenose dolphins are masturbated and females are forcibly removed from the water, sometimes after being drugged to prevent them from fighting back, after which staff shove tubes filled with semen into their vaginas and uteruses.

In one study, scientists at SeaWorld describe how handlers stimulated the animals into exposing their penises and gave them an erection. Then, staffers made the dolphins ejaculate by hand. They do this repeatedly until they feel they’ve collected enough semen. We’re secondhand embarrassed for SeaWorld because of its depraved behavior. It’s time to stop breeding dolphins and forcing them to perform

🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬

SeaWorld has ended its sordid orca-breeding program.

InCity Voices

From John: COME NOVEMBER👪, CAN OUR MOST VULNERABLE WORCESTER STUDENTS❤ RETURN TO SCHOOL🏃?

September 23, 2020 admin

By John Monfredo, Worcester School Committee

It’s hard to believe that we are in the throes of a global pandemic, with over 200,000 people in the United State dead – passed away due to the novel coronavirus. This certainly has frightened many people – and rightly so.

Guidelines from the CDC have been posted just about every day, and the importance of wearing a facial mask has been articulated by every health official across our nation.

Back to school … BUILDINGS?? pics: R.T.

When it comes to starting school, there appears not to be any right answer, other than to make decisions on the side of safety. In Massachusetts, using the data, each city has been placed in a catalog of green to go and red to stop when moving forward with decision making of returning to schools in person.

In Worcester, remote learning for the entire school population was the course of action agreed upon by the Superintendent and the Worcester School Committee. At this point in time WPS students will continue with remote learning until the end of the first semester, which ends around the first week in November. Based on data from the medical professionals and where we are as a community, a decision will be made on whether part of the student population will go back using a hybrid model of going to school one or two days a week or continue with the present remote learning model. Also, parents will have the option of staying with the remote model.

So many great DVDs to watch and discuss with your history teacher: HARRIET..

The other unknown factor is the air quality in each school building and whether the work being done now will allow some students to return to their buildings. The projected finished air quality project has been estimated to be completed sometime at the end of December.

The Vernon Hill School was once Providence Junior High School. It has scores of HUGE windows, but is it Covid-safe during winter?

Come November, depending on those factors, perhaps we will be able to bring back our most vulnerable students: our special education children and our English Language learners on a four-days-a-week schedule first.

Another group worth mentioning that I am extremely concerned about is our Pre-K to Grade One students. These students need a teacher in front of them!! There is no substitute for real interaction from a teacher in any grade, but especially one in early education.

How does one learn to read remotely? Distance learning within this subset is most difficult for children who need the classroom teacher in front of them. With online learning there is no engagement or sense of community that exists for these young ones.

It is most unfortunate that these children are starting their school career with a computer, and their first school experience in school is behind a screen and devoid of the environment that students absolutely need.

What is most important in learning are the people, the nurturing and the relationships between teachers and students.

My advice at this stage of the pandemic is to do all that we can to get our early learners, SPED students and ELL students back in school. However, with distance learning taking place now, we need to understand that RELATIONSHIPS are essential for the school district. We may not be together, but we can stay in touch and show that we care. We need to keep in mind that children require strong connections with adults to thrive. I would encourage teachers to check in one on one with each student via Zoom as frequently as possible and send a class-wide email every day to the parents.

Little learners need their teachers in-person!!

Also, teachers will need to reach out to the parents on how to support their child’s learning and actively solicit parent feedback weekly. We are in difficult times, but everyone needs to give their best effort. Let’s hope that in the near future we can find a way to return our neediest students back to school!

👪🏃👪🏃👪👪👪🚶💃

FYI:

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

📷Bapy and Jaju: Mad about You!

May 3, 2020 admin

By Rosalie Tirella

While changing up my kitchen table tablecloth this a.m. …

🙏

… I rearranged a few photos of my late grandparents, small, framed pictures that form a hippy kind of centerpiece on my table, and snapped a picture of their giant wedding-day portrait that hangs in my bedroom.

📷 I saw and liked the progression of the photos: my Polish immigrant grandmother and grandfather – “Bapy” and “Jaju” – at the beginning, middle and end of their 55-year marriage in America, Worcester’s Green Island: pics 1, 2, 3:

#1

📷

Their Wedding Day portrait by Vernon Studios on Vernon Street. … 100+ years ago few people owned a camera – so they went to the pros for photographs, usually only on special occasions: weddings, family reunions, formal family portraits. Staged before heavy, lugubrious floral arrangements and fake marble columns and urns. There were several of these professional photography studios on Vernon Hill, a Worcester neighborhood Bapy and Jaju, young and beautiful but very poor, could only aspire to.

They got married on Valentine’s♥️ Day. Very romantic for a couple of DPs, “Dumb Pokaks” as they and their kin were called by others in Worcester: Polish immigrants, poor, heavy jowled, Catholic, unable to read or write or speak English, doing the city’s, the county’s, dirtiest jobs … to survive in The Block of tenements in Green Island. Many of the men, like my Jaju, worked in the textile mills in Douglas. Jaju was a dyer for 35+years – pre-OSHA, pre-labor unions – and it shows. Just look at him in the last photo. Sure, he was a smoker, but still … My late mom, Cecelia, rolled his cigarettes (no filters) every morning in his little metal rolling machine, using almost transparent white tissue paper squares (in their own little box), then handing the cigs to Jaju before he left for work. His friend had a car, picked him up, and together they drove in to work.

📷A few years ago, I drove down to Douglas/Dudley/Webster to check out what was left of the textile mills, ancient and abandoned, trying to find Jaju’s mill. I may have found it – a huge brick complex with small windows. I imagined working summers in that place – on a humid July day!

2:

📷

📷Picture 2: World War II – their only son, my uncle Joe, back home on leave from the US Navy. Big meal, all homemade by Bapy: meat and cabbage and potato pierogi, gawompki, beet soup, pigs knuckles/feet (pigs knuckles – I ate them as a little kid growing up on Lafayette Street in Green Island – they came in a bottle! My mother bought them at the Polish market on Millbury Street.) Hugs all around and Polka music and photos taken on the Block’s roof, by my auntie with her Brownie camera. Years ago a young graphic designer scanned the originals photos for me and blew them up. I framed the scans, besutufully done – still have them on my walls, all over my apartment. But the one I am showing you here, above, is of Bapy and Jaju inside their tenement in the Block on Bigelow Street. I love how happy Bapy looks – she adored my grandfather, as wild about him! – and I love how contented Jaju seems, his arm casually draped over his little wife’s round shoulders.

3:

📷

📷The final picture – three or four years before Jaju – now retired and doing a ton of woodworking around the house (he made Bapy a big two-seater glider swing for their front porch) – died of lung cancer. In the photo, Bapy is holding me! Precious cargo! Her first born Lafayette Street grandchild!

I love how Jaju, now 50 years later, has changed places in the photographs: Bapy stood dutifully by his side in their Wedding Day Portrait: in the Lafayette Street photograph, taken by my mom, Jaju is the one standing dutfully by Bapy. His woman. For more than half a century. No words. Just the neat buttoned up white shirt showing respect and love for his wife, the mother of his children. Now proud grandmother.

Jaju was my favorite. He was sweet-natured, quiet and loved carpentry and crafts. We used to sit on our Lafayette Street back porch, my Jaju in an old weather beaten black wooden chair, me sitting on a little foot stool he made. Me holding my block of dark clay – Jaju reaching for it, then molding a clay pony out of my “putty” – and then his thick, gnarled fingers working like magic to make a clay cowboy and a big 10-gallon clay cowboy hat for him! And then Jaju would seat my clay cowboy on my clay pony – and we would recite a Polish prayer over it, together. … Bapy was the fiery mate!

Yep. My Jaju, after killing himself for decades in the Douglas textile mill to support his wife and four kids, going fishing with his African American pal from work on weekends. Bapy reluctantly fed the two a big lunch and glasses of beer after seeing her first Black man – no Black folks in Poland back then – and fearing him! – and JAJU SAYING CURTLY: He’s MY FRIEND! FEED US, WOMAN! Jaju, just a man, an American now but no civil rights crusader. Jaju, now an old man, sitting in his wooden chair by the kitchen window nursing his glass of beer (that Bapy had watered down and handed to him like a waitress♥️) and watching the world go by, his world: Lafayette Street, Bigelow Street, Lodi Street …
My Jaju and Bapy showed me – everybody in our family – what true love is.

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶:

InCity Voices

Today is Earth Day! 🌎♥️, Rose, Michael + more🎶

April 22, 2020 admin

🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎

FOR EARTH DAY, A NEW FILM FROM MICHAEL MOORE! WATCH IT!:

🌎🌎🌍🌍🌍🌍

From PETA.ORG:

Today – April 22 – is Earth Day!

It’s the perfect time to slow down, reflect on how our actions impact the planet, and consider the ways in which we can do more.

Maybe this year, you’ll plant a garden, volunteer to do a coastal cleanup, or attend a local festival.

Whatever you choose, here are five easy actions that you can incorporate into your day that will help animals and the planet:

🌎1.
Save water!

Let your friends and family know that while dairy products may not be meat, their production is just as bad for the Earth (not to mention cows).

🌍2. Bring a vegan dish to the office to share with coworkers:

♥️

With hundreds of delicious vegan recipes on our site, PETA.ORG, we’re sure that there is something for even the most skeptical palate.

🌍3. Print/MAKE this sign and put it in your car window:

🚗🚗🚗🚗

Why not use your time while you’re sitting in traffic to let others know just how detrimental eating meat is?

🌍4. Share the Cowspiracy trailer and host you own moo-vie party:

The more people who see this vitally important film, the faster we can save animals, people, AND the planet.

🌍5. Go vegan:

EAT LESS MEAT, WORCESTER!

According to the United Nations, a global shift toward a vegan diet is necessary to combat the worst effects of climate change.

Whatcha waitin’ for?

🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎

SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE!

Life was more “basic” in Worcester way back when my Bapy and Auntie, pictured here, …

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

… lived in Green Island, in The Block, on Bigelow Street. They cooked all the family’s meals from scratch – often using mushrooms, blueberries and fish that my Polish immigrant grandfather, “Jaju,” picked/caught in the wilds of Worcester! My high school friend’s mom, a Polish immigrant, still made everything from scratch for her family – noodles, rolls, pierogi, gawompki – many Polish meals. And pizza!!!! Very tasty! As a teen, I ate many a meal in that grand three decker on Vernon Hill!!

We kids – real young to teens – walked everywhere. To see friends. To play whiffle ball, tag, Red Rover, double dutch, Chinese jumprope, hopscotch, marbles … When we got older we took a bus downtown to meet our pals and hang out at “Worcester Center” – the big mall, The Galleria, next to Notre Dame church (always full to capacity on Sunday)! A Galaxy of fun in The Galleria: record stores, clothing shops, shoe stores, a five and ten and our fave – Orange Julius!!

We did SIMPLE, BASIC STUFF – like read books and magazines, listen to our albums on record players … We learned how to play a musical instrument … We joined the Providence Street Junior High School Chorus – led by our beloved – THE ICONIC ♥️ – Miss Avedikian! Everyone’s favorite teacher, she was adorable – only 4′ 10″ high but, boy, could she keep the big tough boys in line! And she got them singing! She hugged everybody! All the time! She knew many of us kids were deprived … city kids in need of music and love! And so much more! She was our ally and booster – this little lady who needed a booster seat for her desk chair. This little lady, dressed impeccably, her little legs dangling from a kid’s desk chair!

THIS EARTH DAY, LET US LEARN FROM THIS PANDEMIC and LOVE THE BASIC and simplify, simplify, simplify!

– Rose T.🌎🌍♥️🎶🎶

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶:
written by BLAZE FOLEY!:

Fashion

How to celebrate Earth Day during a pandemic … and more🌷

April 20, 2020 admin

By Heather Moore

Mother Earth, her animals and plants are getting a much needed break from us humans during COVID-19!

It’s been 50 years since the first Earth Day, when 20 million Americans “took to the streets” to demonstrate for a clean, livable environment. That won’t be happening this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic has left most of us confined to our homes. We can still make a difference, though. This year, as Earth Day, April 22, goes digital, we can all help halt climate change and other environmental problems in real life by eating vegan foods rather than animal-based ones and urging our friends and followers on social media to do the same.

Go, Uncle Joe!

The novel coronavirus likely originated in a “wet market” that sold fish, live poultry and exotic animals for human consumption. Wet markets, factory farms and slaughterhouses not only contribute to potentially deadly diseases, such as COVID-19, they also release significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A 2018 University of Oxford study involving 119 countries and 38,000 commercial farms found that beef and other animal-based foods have an “outsize effect” on emissions, noting that just 2 pounds of beef generates 132 pounds of greenhouse-gas emissions. Overall, the production of animal-derived foods is responsible for 10 to 50 times more emissions than the production of vegan foods.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the West’s high consumption of meat and dairy is fueling climate change and that cutting them from our diets could reduce our carbon footprint from food by two-thirds. It will also help conserve resources, reduce pollution and prevent the loss of forests—not to mention the slaughter of billions of sentient animals.

Oxford University researcher Joseph Poore says that going vegan is “the single biggest way” to reduce our impact on the planet. Animal agriculture plays a huge role in everything from water pollution and water shortages to deforestation and food scarcity. A 2018 NRDC report called the agricultural sector “a serious water polluter” and indicated that it was the “leading cause of water degradation” around the world. In the United States, it’s the main culprit when it comes to contaminated rivers and streams, the second when it comes to wetlands and the third for lakes.

A recent University of Delaware study found that 55% of the water taken from the Colorado River basin is used to grow food for cows. As a result, 53 species of fish are at risk of extinction, because freshwater stores are wasted on water-hungry crops to feed animals who are bred to be killed and eaten, even though ethical and environmentally friendly options exist.

And freshwater stores aren’t all that’s being exhausted by meat production. Cattle ranching accounts for 80% of current deforestation rates, making it the largest driver of deforestation in every Amazon country, according to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

When researchers from the Institute of Social Ecology studied ways to meet the expected global food demand in the year 2050—without sacrificing any forests—they concluded that the only option is for everyone to go vegan. Jessica Fanzo, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, who conducted a similar study in 2019, says we’ll be in “dire straits” if we don’t. Thankfully, we’re all learning that we can change our behavior to beat a crisis — or at least to prevent one from worsening. So, this Earth Day, how about exploring veganism? Eating Earth-friendly vegan foods is easy and enjoyable, and it will help prevent future pandemics and further environmental destruction!

☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

FYI:

♥️♥️♥️

♥️♥️

InCity Voices

Quick lunch by Chef Joey🇫🇷 … and an essay by him!😊

April 19, 2020 admin

QUICHE!

Text and pics by Chef Joey

☮️☀️Joey!

So what’s for lunch? How about a quiche?

Joe Joe made this beautiful quiche🇫🇷 today!

What’s great is they are simple to make: You can add anything to them, like spinach or broccoli, or mushrooms. Or you can go all French and do ham and cheese.

The secret to a great veggie quiche is to partially cook the veggies – let them cool down and you place everything in the pie shell. Then you add your egg mixture.

The base layer is always cheese, then top it with your meat or veggies – or both – then pour on the egg mix and bake approximately 30 mins or less at 350F.

I use pre-made shells …

☀️

… as they tend to be less expensive to make and are quick. If you want to be traditional: take 2 sticks butter … Cut them up … also let them get soft. Take 2 cups flour and a pinch of salt. Add a TINY amount of cold water to get it to grab – mix well with your hands and roll out the crust.

Then fill with cheese and toppings.

☀️☀️☀️

☀️☀️☀️☀️
For the egg filling, whip together 6 eggs and a small container of plain yogurt. I like the Greek kind:

☀️

Mix together well – pour into the shell …

☀️☀️☀️☀️

… – and you are done! It’s great with a salad!

♥️

🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷

COVID-19 in France: My Thoughts

By Chef Joey

So here we are halfway through April and decisions are being made on what to do about the “Corona Virus’ “covid 19.” Being housebound by a mandatory curfew here in France I get to see lots of social media, some fun posts – and many disturbing ones, such as people wanting to go to the beach.

Sand harbors disease, people spread disease … And if the rest of the world is on “protection mode” so shouldn’t the USA! In 1918, in America, during the “Spanish Flu,” when Americans wanted to have parades, post World War I – cities that did not have parades survived, but cities that did, like Philadelphia, were “piling up corpses like firewood.”

Here in France, we must wear a facemask that is provided by the town. We must wash hands and wear gloves but, most importantly, Stay Home. To leave our homes we have to print out a form that explains the purpose of our travels and the time you left your house. The form has civil information, like address and birthdate, and being out for the following reasons: Essential employee, a pharmacy run, bringing food to the elderly, essential food shopping, and personal exercise and or dog walking. Quite simple. And the walking: Yes, it’s stay within 1 kilometer of your residence – and wear a mask.

These simple tasks are paramount to people regaining their lives again. Bars and restaurants are currently closed here🇫🇷 until mid-July. Hotels are closed as well – this too shall pass! The streets here are sprayed down every day to prevent the spread of the disease. Places that have foot traffic, like pharmacies, grocery store sidewalks and ATMs are done first – then the rest of the streets are done.

Children are restricted unless completely necessary to go to stores, as are the elderly, and social distancing is paramount – and enforced everywhere.

I do not look at this as my rights being taken away. I look at this as something serious because in the final stages of the disease, the patient is quarantined off and left to pass away on their own. No one to hold their hand, no one to kiss goodbye. Even in death there is no public celebration, no funerals allowed … of course, weddings are stopped as well.

So we will remember 2020 as an off year when the world was on hold, and I will be glad to have stayed home and stayed healthy to tell the story to (hopefully!) a grandkid or two!

🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷

Green Island Grrrl, Rosalie's Blog

BE COVID-CREATIVE!!!

April 19, 2020 admin

Text and pics by Rosalie Tirella

A few days ago I posted this beautiful picture of the beautiful yellow and orange facial mask my art director hand-sewed for me … To help me get through the pandemic:

♥️

But SHE MAILED IT TO ME FROM A WOO SUBURB, and you know the Worcester mail: She might as well have sent my face mask to me from California VIA PONY EXPRESS! So, as I wait and wait uneasily for my beautiful face mask, and need to grocery shop tomorrow, and HATE TO GROCERY SHOP without a facial mask – it is a scary, stressful, under-10-minute race thru the cheese, fruit and bakery aisles – I decided to STEP UP. PUSH UP, to be exact! – and make my own facial mask by converting my old push up bra into a facial mask – TWO facial masks, to be exact.

♥️

Remember the ol’ Wonder Bra, ladies? Well, mine is a “knock-“off (ha ha), but it is still pretty perfect for these COVID 19 days, seeing our President has FU*KED US ALL OVER AND WE DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH PPE plus America is selling our facial masks to other countries to MAKE $$$!!!, and, as I close in on 60, maybe my bra’s sexier days are receding into the COVID-19 sunset😢. I have worn it special for … but wait!! I must refrain from sharing! Face Book is a PG 13 platform!!!

♥️

♥️Each of my bra cups covers my mouth and nose perfectly. Inside, the push up foam acts as a filter. Totally breathable. And washable. I started my lil’ project last night – I have to put the ribbons through its corners so I can tie it on my face. I am hopeful. Doing my part. Following Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus, Dr. Hirsh and Worcester Mayor Petty’s directive. It is a new kind of law here in Worcester. We are all supposed to wear facial masks in supermarkets.

♥️

☕So, ladies, let’s wave our flags! Let’s save our city! And remember: When the going gets tough, the soft get going!

♥️Love you! Stay safe!

**********

♥️🎶♥️🎶:

Green Island Grrrl

Thursday🍳☕ wrap-up: Gordon H., Chef Joey, Rose, Worcester caring for kids + more! ♥️

April 16, 2020 admin

First …

Outside my window: SPRING HAPPENED! LOOK AT THESE TREES in our backyard, THEIR “DARLING BUDS” aching to open:

🌷🌷pics: Rose T.

And yet, the clouds float in: Our president – Trump – and the federal government have failed us Americans! President Trump has not led America, has not used his powers to GET MANY 🇺🇸 factories making PPE, ventilators … He has PUT HIS NAME ON RELIEF CHECKS! He has not HELPED AVERAGE AMERICANS in a timely fashion – all aid given piecemeal and grudgingly.

TRUMP LIES TO US! … We Worcesterites must follow the directives of Worcester Mayor Petty and CM Ed Augustus, NYC Mayor de Blasio, governors Cuomo and Baker – and our own Dr. Hirish!

Please! Shelter in place:

Try to eat well!

Stay active around the house – create a schedule, create chores:

🗑️🗑️🗑️🍳☕

Try to smile thru the tears!:

And when you go out for your necessities, wear a facial mask in crowded spaces like supermarkets, buses, the pharmacy …

Rose’s facial mask – handsewn for her by her art director♥️

*******

Rose caught up with FRIENDLY HOUSE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Gordon Hargrove …

Gordon, left, and Tim Garvin, director of the UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL MASS.

Gordon is on the frontlines of Worcester’s COVID 19 FIGHT, working to provide meals to our hungry kids and families and providing ANYBODY with emergency food during these challenging COVID 19 days.

Gordon😊

He told us ALL WOO’S FOOD INSECURE KIDS ARE BEING FED at city feeding sites. Here are places and times:

Friendly House’s Feeding sites!:

Site, Name, Location, Starting time to End time, in the a.m. and lunch time:

10:30 a
11:00 a
Vernon Hill Park
87 Providence
11:15 a
11:45 a

Greenwood Park
14 Forsberg St
12:00 p
12:30 p

Logan Field
539 Mill St
12:45 p
1:15 p

Bannis Field
Dorcester St

10:30 a
11:00 a

Lake Park
281 Lake Ave
11:15 a
11:45 a

East Park
Shrewsbury St
12:00 p
12:30 p

University Park
965 Main St

12:45 p
1:15 p

Grant Square Park
Corner of Windsor & North Hampton
1:30 p
1:45 p

Castle Park
965 Main St

11:30 a
11:45 a

Plumley
16 Laurel St
12:30 p
1:00 p

Stratton
161 West Mountain
11:30 a
12:00 p

Kids Klub
180 Constitution Ave/GBV
11:30 a
12:00 p

Homework
45 Freedom Way
12:00 p
12:30 p

Friendly House
36 Wall St
12:00 p
12:30 p

Autumn Woods
16 Upland Gardens
12:00 p
12:30 p

South Worcester Neighborhood
47 Camp Street
1:45 p
2:00 p

Green Island
50 Canton Street

♥️♥️♥️And the Friendly House, Quinsigamond Village, South Worcester Neighborhood Center, Plumley Village and Grern Island FOOD PANTRIES ARE OPEN AND GIVING EMERGENCY FOOD PACKAGES to ANYONE IN NEED!!:

Friendly House, 36 Wall Street, 508-755-4362
Monday – Friday 9am-5pm

Quinsigamond Village Community Center, 16 Greenwood St., 508-755-7481
Monday-Thursday 9:30am – 3pm Fridays emergencies – call first

Plumley Village, 16 Laurel St, 508-755-3989
Tuesdays 9am-4pm and Friday 12pm-4pm

South Worcester Neighborhood Center, 47 Camp St., 508-757-8344
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 9:30am-1:30pm, Wednesday 11:30am-1:30pm

Green Island Neighborhood Center, 50 Canton St., 508-890-2737
Wednesday 11am-2pm, Thursday 1pm-4pm

👏👏👏Thank you to supporters: Worcester County Food Bank, Project Bread and Worcester Together!!!👏👏

🌷🌷🌷And … Great news! Gordon told us A NEW REFRIGERATED FOOD-DELIVERY VAN has just been donated to the City of Worcester FEEDING OUR KIDS food program!! A big thank you to City of Worcester Health and Human Services Director Dr. Mattie C. and the Health Foundation of Worcester for making this VAN-GIFT🚐🚐🚐 a REALITY!♥️

🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷

Easy Recipe …

☀️YOU CAN USE VEGAN CHICKEN CRUMBLES for this recipe – BUY A BAG AT TRADER JOES ON RT 9, SHREWSBURY. Trader Joes has a lot of MOCK MEATS that are very tasty – and CRUELTY-FRER!
– Rose

🇫🇷From Chef Joey …

WRAPS!

Text + pics by Chef Joey

Gigi’s dad!😊

By my before and after pictures – during France’s COVID 19 quarantine – I’ve noticed a slight tightening of my waist. So, as a result, I’m doing Fairview Days, and one of them is my favorite: lettuce wraps:

Gigi🌷🌷🌷♥️