Culture

FarmRaiser Takes Fundraising Local

| ChrisHardmanWriter

WHEN MARK ABBOTT’S SON  was in fourth grade, his local elementary school recruited students and their families to participate in a fundraiser for the school. After successfully selling cookie dough and candy to friends and family, Abbott’s son remarked that he had just sold $400 worth of things the family would never eat at home. “It’s too bad we couldn’t try something healthy like apples,” said his son.

That suggestion resonated with Abbott, so he had an idea. Instead of candy and chips from national suppliers, why not make it possible for students to sell healthy food from local farmers, beekeepers, and food artisans? He started a pilot program in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. And the following year, in 2013, FarmRaiser ran 30 fundraising campaigns for schools in Michigan and Washington State.

Fundraising is a necessary evil for our nation’s schools. Budget cuts from federal and state sources have left most schools financially needy. In a 2007 survey conducted by the National Association of Elementary School Principals, 94 percent of principals–representing a wide range of school districts across the country–reported that they had held fundraisers.

Often run by parent volunteers, these fundraisers generate money to pay for everything from field trips, to playground equipment, school supplies, and new technology. Schools in both low-income and high-income areas report the need to fundraise. At least 35 states provided less funding per student for the 2013-14 school year than they did before the recession hit. Fourteen of these states have cut the amount they give for each student by more than 10 percent.

Fundraising is big business. Student salesmen generate $1.4 billion a year peddling packaged food, magazines, and gifts, according to the Association of Fund-Raising Distributors and Suppliers. But as schools are challenged to create a healthier environment for their students, parents and teachers alike question sending kids out into the community to hawk high-fat, high-salt cookie dough and candy bars. “I want to support the schools, but I don’t want to buy the stuff full of high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils,” says Therese Povolo of Champion Hill Farm in Beulah, Michigan. She and her husband are beekeepers who have sold honey through FarmRaiser since last fall. The first school that used their products was only half a mile away from their home.

Fundraising is also one more way to fill students’ lives with candy and processed food. Children are especially vulnerable to big food marketing and having schools train them to be salespeople for high-calorie, low-nutrient foods seems counterintuitive. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diet related illnesses such type 2 diabetes are on the rise. Their research shows that childhood obesity has doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past three decades.

Similar to traditional catalogue-based fundraising programs, FarmRaiser customers order products from a set list of vendors. But FarmRaiser campaigns avoid cookies and desserts, opting instead for local fruits and vegetables and locally sourced honey, pasta, granola, spice mixes, artisan breads, jam, etc. Schools can also collect money from cash donations made online.

Most of FarmRaiser’s vendors are within 30 miles of the school and if the school has a personal connection to a farm or food artisan, FarmRaiser will add them to their product list. “We love to sell products that directly connect back to the students at the school,” says says FarmRaiser’s campaign manager Christina Carson. For example Leelanau Montessori in Suttons Bay, Michigan, includes dried cherries in their fundraiser from Cherry Bay Orchards, one student’s family farm.

FarmRaiser vendors also use the campaigns as marketing tools. It provides a chance to reach new customers at a time of the year when farmers’ market crowds in Michigan are dwindling. “We have a big tourist market in the summer and when that falls off, it’s nice to get other people aware of our product,” says Povolo.

Carson says that FarmRaiser’s financial model is competitive with other types of food-based fundraising, which offer schools anywhere from 20-50 percent of the profit. In this case, the school ends up with a flat 45 percent of the amount sold, FarmRaiser takes a 10 percent fee, and the rest goes to local businesses.

FarmRaiser also helps schools raise money through a program they call The Community Basket. Here’s how it works: The school accepts cash donations in the name of a local food bank. The school keeps 50 percent and the rest of the money is used to buy local food for the food bank. Typically the students choose the charity and then have a chance to deliver the donation. “[It’s] a great way for people to share the bounty of the fundraiser with people who are in need,” says Carson.

As the need for fundraising grows, so does the need for fundraising companies working for more than just their own bottom line. FarmRaiser plans to increase their campaigns throughout Michigan and the Seattle area and to move into other states in the coming years.

“Eighty percent of households purchase something from a fundraiser every year,” says Carson. If they were selling, say, local apples instead of candy, she adds, “you’d have 80 percent of people purchasing local food.” The impact on the local farm economy could be huge.

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Detroiters Connect in Shared Kitchens

| ChrisHardmanWriter

IN MEXICANTOWN, on the Southwest side of Detroit, Chloe Sabatier makes French lava cakes. Sabatier sources as many of her ingredients as locally as possible, including raspberries, strawberries, and spices. She sells at farmers’ markets, cafes, restaurants, and specialty stores across the Detroit Metro area and her commercial kitchen is located in a banquet hall owned by Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Cathedral. How is it that French delicacies are being made in a church started by Polish immigrants in a Mexican neighborhood? The answer is an innovative program called Detroit Kitchen Connect(DKC).

By making abandoned or underutilized commercial kitchens available to local food entrepreneurs, DKC helps residents start food businesses with a minimal investment. “It’s an asset-based approach to solving problems and finding the solutions in neighborhoods,” says Devita Davison, Community Kitchen Coordinator at Eastern Market Corporation. In July of 2013, Eastern Market—one of the oldest farmers’ market organizations in the country—joined with FoodLab Detroit—a network of food entrepreneurs dedicated to growing Detroit’s local food movement—to create DKC.

Detroit’s population shrank dramatically over the last few decades, dropping from 1.5 million in 1970 to 700,000 in 2012. While people may have left, however, many office buildings, churches, and community centers remain. Many of them have commercial kitchens that are used sparingly or not at all. Instead of seeing these buildings as liabilities and signs of decay, Davison sees them as assets in a city where many people are struggling to make ends meet.

Like kitchen incubators such as San Francisco’s La Cocina and Hot Bread Kitchen in Harlem, DKC charges a low hourly rate, which gives local entrepreneurs access to facilities that would normally be out of reach both geographically and financially. But its Detroit location sets DKC apart from other incubators around the nation, because the project also has the potential to bring forgotten neighborhoods back to life.

Take the Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church. With its congregation shrinking and participation dwindling, the leaders were at a loss at how to connect with the community.

Before DKC got involved, the church had started a community garden and opened their banquet hall to rent for neighborhood celebrations, but the kitchen was only used on Sundays for a homeless outreach program. Now, the kitchen is a hub of activity that’s in use almost every day. Crème Detropolis makes gourmet sweet potato pies; Five Star Cakes makes traditional layered cakes.

With grant money from the United Way, DKC was able to give the church $5,000 for a new security system, a new door, security cameras, and outdoor lighting. “When we first started the program, this church was suffering,” Davison recalls. “Because the church didn’t have a good door, it was broken into several times.” Since the DKC upgrades, however, the break-ins have stopped.

And DKC provides services beyond the shared kitchen. DKC food artisans become part of the Eastern Market and FoodLab Detroit community of businesses. With these connections DKC tenants learn where to find local ingredients, where to sell their products, and how to navigate the city bureaucracy. Within this community, established business owners share their successes and failures with DKC’s fledgling food entrepreneurs.

As part of DKC, Detroit entrepreneurs also get help with the licensing process—another barrier to starting a food business. There are two types of licenses in the state of Michigan. The first license is for packaged food and is pretty affordable at $70 to $175. But the second type of license is for an entrepreneur who serves food such as caterers, restaurateurs, and food trucks. That license comes from the city of Detroit and costs $1,500, which is around three to four times more than any other city or county in the state.

“In a city that needs to promote entrepreneurism, in a city that is talking about using food as a conduit to grow the local economy, these barriers of entry are stifling growth,” Davison says. Her next task is to work with the city of Detroit to make the catering license accessible to more entrepreneurs.

Currently, 10 licensed entrepreneurs work in DKC’s two kitchens. April M. Anderson used to bake out of her home (under the Michigan cottage food law) but she had to turn down larger orders because her home kitchen was too small. Through DKC, she was able to rent space in a commercial kitchen and within a few months opened Good Cakes and Bakes in a retail space in Detroit. Anderson bakes at the DKC kitchen from 3 to 6:30 am and then heads to her shop at 7:00 am.
“I don’t know if April would have been able to open her bakery if she’d had to purchase hundreds and thousands of dollars of equipment,” says Davison. “She understands full well that this is what she has to do to buy her own kitchen. Until then we are her bakehouse.”

Unlike kitchen incubators in cities that receive generous public funding, Davison says, “What we’ve done here is scrappy. We haven’t gotten a dime from the city.” Private funders, including the United Way of Southeast Michigan and the McGregor Foundation, have footed the bill since the program began.

With nearly a year under their belt and some visible success stories, DKC hopes to expand and open more kitchens. The goals, says Davison, go far beyond food. “We are building a more inclusive food economy in Detroit,” she says. “We are challenging the social, political, and economic structures that reinforce inequities.”

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The Grand City of Granada

| ChrisHardmanWriter

MARAUDING PIRATES, bloodthirsty mercenaries and roughneck gold rushers all played a part in the history of the colonial city of Granada, Nicaragua. But in spite of being burned to the ground twice and taken over as a stronghold for a foreign filibuster, Granada has managed to persevere and even prosper—while emerging as Nicaragua’s best hope for its entry into the international tourism market.

History dominates Granada’s landscape. Founded by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba in 1524, Granada is known as the oldest city in the Americas. Additionally, in 1524, Córdoba founded the Nicaraguan city of León to the North. The two cities have sustained a long rivalry since then.

Nicaragua became a republic in 1835; and in the years that followed, Granada—which supported a wealthy and conservative populace—and León—whose citizens were much more liberal—battled for dominance of the fledgling nation. Hostilities increased irreparably in the 1850s resulting in a civil war. Once Managua was chosen as the capital of Nicaragua in 1857, the fighting diminished.

Looming over this colonial city is the now dormant volcano Mombacho.”

Granada became Spain’s showcase for elegant colonial buildings and high society, and the city’s residents prospered. Because of its proximity to Lake Nicaragua—which provides access to the Caribbean Sea via the San Juan River—Granada flourished through commerce and trade.

This access also made Granada vulnerable to Dutch, French and English pirates who attempted to invade and then destroy Granada. When Granada’s most important churches and buildings were burned by outside forces, its citizens would rebuild their beloved city again.

Another source of wealth was Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Company that was used to transport thousands of gold-rushers to California. In the 1800s the most expeditious route from New York to San Francisco was to go through Central America. From the Caribbean, prospectors followed the San Juan River inland to Lake Nicaragua and then crossed Nicaragua by stagecoach to the Pacific Ocean.

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Granada’s strategic location on the gold route attracted the attention of William Walker, a well-known 49ner living in California. In partnership with Granada’s bitter rivals in León, Walker contracted 300 men described as “colonists liable to military duty” for an expedition to Nicaragua. What followed was a series of military campaigns against Granada beginning in 1855.

Walker and his men eventually conquered Granada and ruled Nicaragua for nearly two years. Walker even managed to win a presidential election. During his presidency, he drafted a new constitution that reinstituted slavery and made English the official language. To gain favor and financial support from wealthy Southerners in the United States, Walker promoted the idea of establishing a slave trade in Central America.

Once Nicaragua’s neighbors, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Salvador and Honduras, began to suspect that Walker might infiltrate their territories, they joined with the most powerful enemy Walker had made—Cornelius Vanderbilt—to depose Walker and his men.

Vanderbilt used his Accessory Transit Company to shut off Walker’s only means of communication with the United States. He withdrew his ocean steamers and left Walker without men or ammunition, and he hired soldiers of fortune to block any attempt at escape to the Caribbean. He aligned with the Costa Ricans and contributed both money and men to wage war against Walker.

Boxed in with no way of securing additional men and supplies, Walker reluctantly retreated from Granada. Unfortunately, upon leaving Granada, Walker ordered his troops to burn the city to the ground, leaving behind many destroyed or damaged colonial buildings and an ominous placard declaring, “Here was Granada.”

Even after he was expelled from Granada, Walker planned to return to the country to which he believed he was the rightful ruler. At the end of his book, The War in Nicaragua, he wrote:

“The history of the world presents no such Utopian vision as that of an inferior race yielding meekly and peacefully to the controlling influence of a superior people… I trust the foregoing narrative shows that the stronger race kept throughout on the side of right and justice. Nor kings nor presidents can arrest a movement based on truth and conducted with justice.”

In 1857 he attempted once more to take over Granada but was arrested and sent back to the United States. The last paragraph of his book illuminates his mindset at that time:

“By the bones of the moldering dead at Masaya, at Rivas, and at Granada, I adjure you never to abandon the cause of Nicaragua. Let it be your waking and your sleeping thought to devise means for a return to the land whence we were unjustly brought. And, if we be but true to ourselves, all will yet end well.”

After writing those words, Walker returned to Central America one more time where he was captured by the British and turned over to a Honduran firing squad.

In the book, The Real Soldiers of Fortune published in 1906, writer Richard Harding Davis portrayed Walker as defiant to the end. Squarely he faced his executioners and declared in Spanish:

“I die a Roman Catholic. In making war upon you at the invitation of the people of Ruatan I was wrong. Of your people I ask pardon. I accept my punishment with resignation. I would like to think my death will be for the good of society.”

Davis described the final chilling moments of Walker’s life: “From a distance of twenty feet three soldiers fired at him, but, Walker was not dead. So, a sergeant stooped, and with a pistol killed the man who would have made him one of an empire of slaves.”

Granada’s tumultuous history is chronicled at the Museo del Convento de San Francisco located next to the blue and white Igelsia de San Francisco. Founded in 1529 under the name Inmaculada Concepción by Fray Toribio Benavente Motilinia, the convent mirrors the history of Granada.

It was built in 1529, attacked by the English pirate Henry Morgan in 1665 and burned again in 1685. More than 100 years later in 1856, William Walker commandeered the church to house his troops and intern his prisoners. The Iglesia de San Francisco was one of the buildings Walker destroyed when he fled the city with his men.

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Today the covenant and church have been restored, most recently with aid from the Swiss government. Rooms surrounding the museum courtyard display paintings, religious artifacts, a scale model of the city of Granada and pre-Columbian stone sculptures from Zapateria Island in Lake Nicaragua. Sprawling catacombs underneath the convent and church house the remains of priests and other prominent citizens of Granada dating back to 1546.

A second museum named Mi Museo, which is free to the public, specializes in pre-Colombian pottery. Under glass on top of plain, white pedestals are ceramics from throughout Central America that date from 2,000 BC to 1550 AD.

This private collection is open to the public due to the generosity of its Danish owner Peder Kolind. In addition to receiving nearly 12,000 visitors a year from Nicaragua and other countries, the museum supports archeological digs and restores ceramic archeological pieces.

The spirit of this museum is beautifully explained by archeologist Geoffrey McCafferty from the University of Calgary in Canada: “Mi Museo esta designado a ser un museo de la comunidad, el que se ha vuelto el punto focal para importantes reunions. Y no simplemente para los ricos y famosos, sino para toda la gente de Granada: ricos y pobres, educados y no educados. No es solo Mi Museo, sino nuestro museo.”

The best way to explore Granada is by walking. Gritty streets with uneven sidewalks painted in pastel colors, showcase 16th and 18th-century Spanish colonial architecture.

Behind thick wooden doors and wrought iron gates are colonial homes with 12-foot high adobe walls, ornate pillars and dark wooden accents. The living areas of the homes are typically built around a garden courtyard complete with a bubbling fountain and a squawking parrot or two. When remodeling a home in the historic center of the city, owners have to follow strict regulations to keep in line with the true traditional Spanish colonial architecture.

Granada 1.JPG

The people of Granada are proud of their city’s resilience. The faithful regularly worship in churches blackened from the fires of the past. A standard horse and buggy tour through the city takes visitors to William Walker’s old house—now a high-end souvenir shop—and past several of the buildings Walker burned to the ground. The local tour guide describes Walker plainly as “muy malo.”

Looming over this colonial city is the now dormant volcano Mombacho. Even though it hasn’t errupted  in the past 1,000 years, visitors can visit cracks in the Earth called fumaroles where clouds of sulfur drift out of the ground. From the top of Mombacho, Granada appears to be a flotilla of red tile roofs floating between Lake Nicaragua to the east and Laguna de Apoyo to the west.

Only recently has Nicaragua garnered international attention as a desirable tourist destination. Nicaragua’s tourism board INTUR (Institute Nicaraguense de Turismo) is aggressively courting European and North American tourists touting Nicaragua as a safe country with natural beauty and cultural experiences.

In June, INTUR hosted the country’s first International Tourism Fair at the Crowne Plaza Convention Center in Managua. “Many countries had a decrease in foreign tourists, and yet, Nicaragua showed positive results both in tourist arrivals and revenues in the sector,” says Nicaraguan Tourism Board President Mario Salinas. According to INTUR, the amount of foreign tourists to visit Nicaragua in 2009 was 931,904, representing an increase of 8.6% compared to 2008.

INTUR predicts that at the end of 2010, Nicaragua will receive around 1 million tourists, 7.5 percent more than in 2009. The agency also forecasts an increase in activity revenue of $400 million, a 14 percent increase over the previous year.

One way that Granada has successfully attracted international tourists is through its Spanish schools. Students stay with a local host family while attending intensive Spanish classes.

As a tourist destination, Granada has long been popular with backpackers from Europe. Plenty of low-budget hostels and cheap, but, tasty restaurants are located close to the central Plaza.  The streets are safe to stroll on, and the people are courteous to foreigners. A variety of higher end hotels with full service rooms are located in the tourist part of town.

Many travelers like to use Granada as a base to explore Ometepe Island in Lake Nicaragua, nearby Volcan Mombacho and the cities of Masaya and Leon.

But it is Granada’s history that draws most of its visitors. They come to see the beauty of the colonial churches and homes. They come for a carriage ride through narrow city streets. They come to learn about the city that could not be destroyed, the city that survives against all odds, the city that is Granada.

Published in Americas magazine by Chris Hardman

 

 

Saving the Moai on Easter Island

| ChrisHardmanWriter

THE GIANT STONE HEADS on the island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Chile, have captured the imagination of countless explorers, dreamers and scientists. Hundreds of monoliths of solid volcanic rock provide indestructible evidence of man’s mastery over his environment. They hint at great feats of engineering and the ingenuity of men. Up close, the statues show their vulnerability. Their sharp features have eroded, growths invade their surface and many lie in piles of rubble.

A combination of natural and human forces threatens the statues, which are called moai in the native Rapa Nui language. To combat these forces and save the moai, teams of native and international scientists are working on reconstruction and restoration projects.

At 400 to 1000 years-old the moai are young compared to other archaeological monuments in the Americas, but the very properties of the stone that make them ideal for carving also make them susceptible to rapid deterioration. Nearly all of the statues were carved in the Rano Raraku Quarry located on the northeast corner of the island. Many of the statues never made it out of the quarry and remain there today in varying stages of completion. The red scoria stone used for headpieces found on some of the moai came from solidified froth of volcano lava.

These soft, volcanic rocks are particularly vulnerable to erosion from Easter Island’s relentless wind and rain. “When the stone is wet, the clays present in it absorb moisture and expand; as the stone dries, they contract. The internal stress of these repeated expansions and contractions results in microfissures within the stone which serve as channels for water migration and its corrosive effects,” wrote A. Elena Charola in a 1994 publication of the World Monuments Fund. Another natural process that weakens the stone is the growth of algae and lichens. Not only do they trap water—which plays a part in the wet/dry cycle of the stone—but they also eat away at the stone surface.

While nature has been hard on the moai, man has been even harder. The human toll on the statues has been immeasurable. Starting with the carvers themselves—who not only knocked over their beloved statues but also beheaded some of them—people have had a sort of fatal attraction to the heads. Archaeologists estimate that between 1,100-1,500 AD islanders meticulously carved approximately 900 statues and their accompanying stone platforms from the island’s soft volcanic rock. Most likely the carvers belonged to family groups who were competing with each other to produce larger and larger moai. The biggest statue, named el Gigante, weighs between 145-165 tons and would reach 71.93 feet high if it were standing. But for reasons unknown el Gigante was never raised and remains in the Rano Raraku Quarry.

moai2

The islander’s obsession with larger and more impressive moai wreaked havoc on the environment. More and more trees had to be cut down to provide scaffolding for the statues and to build wooden sleds to move the statues overland. By the time Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen landed on the island on Easter Day in 1722, he found a desolate landscape void of trees or bushes over 10 feet high with no birds, bats or lizards. The people were hungry and fighting amongst themselves. Sometime after contact with the outside world, the islanders knocked over and destroyed most of the moai probably as a result of clan warfare. Contact with the outside world brought new diseases, a new form of religion and kidnappings for the slave trade. By 1877 the native population of 15,000 had declined to a mere 111.

The relationship between man and moai is complex, and similar to the admirers of the past, modern-day man’s fascination with the statues has produced both positive and negative results. As the island’s only industry, tourism provides a way to make a living for the most remote civilization on Earth. Unfortunately the occasional unscrupulous visitor has encouraged islanders to sell broken parts of the statues for souvenirs. Further damage comes from foreigners and locals alike who defile the moai with graffiti or accidently step on fallen rocks or buried petroglyphs. In spite of admonishments from local tour guides, some visitors touch the statues or climb on their platforms. In the early 90s, the World Monuments Fund, reported an increase in graffiti by 20% in a two-year period.

At 400 to 1000 years-old the moai are young compared to other archaeological monuments in the Americas

Locals warn that the island is not prepared to support the number of tourists that come. According to Easter Island officials, in just 3 years tourism doubled from 22,000 visitors in 2003 to more than 50,000 in 2007. Not only does increased tourist traffic stress the monuments, masses of visitors strain the island’s resources as they struggle to deal with piles of trash and to meet the increased demand for food and water.

Although Easter Island has been an official historic monument and national park since 1935, it took until 1966 for the government of Chile to actually send a small staff to the island. The Rapa Nui National Park takes up nearly half of the island and includes nearly all of the moai sites. In 1995 UNESCO named Easter Island to its world heritage list of the world’s greatest monuments. The world is so captivated by the moai that Easter Island was a finalist in the New 7 Wonders of the World campaign in 1997 where 100 million people from around the world voted on the Internet for cultural heritage sites.

One of the first scientists to realize the archaeological and cultural significance of the site was University of Wyoming Professor William Mulloy, who tirelessly campaigned UNESCO for support to study the island’s monuments. During his first official mission to the island in 1966, Mulloy and Gonzalo Figueroa led a team of experts who developed a plan for studying, conserving and restoring Rapa Nui’s cultural treasures. What followed was a series of projects with international support that restored moai and their platforms and eventually the Orongo village from 1974-1976.

moai

In 1986 Chile’s Centro Nacional de Conservación y Restauración worked with UNESCO to investigate possible treatment plants to prevent or slow deterioration of the statues. They chose a moai at Hanga Kio’e that had been re-erected but was highly deteriorated. After spending several months drying out under a protective tent, the moai was cleaned of all growths and dirt. The restoration experts applied a consolidation treatment to harden the stone and prevent erosion and a hydrophobization treatment to prevent water from seeping into the stone. Although these treatments have worked so far, they do not provide permanent protection of the moai and need to be reapplied periodically.

From 1992 to 1996 a team led by University of Chile archaeologists professor Claudio Cristino and professor Patricia Vargas completed an ambitious reconstruction project of ahu Tongariki, the largest and most impressive ceremonial center on Easter Island. Both Cristino and Vargas had extensive knowledge of the island’s monuments. From 1977 to 1996, they were part of the Easter Island Archaeological Survey, a University of Chile research program that recorded more than 20,000 archaeological sites and features. At its peak, the ahu Tongariki measured nearly 220 meters long, with a central platform measuring 100 meters and a wing on either side. A total of 15 statues weighing between 40 to 90 tons once stood on that platform.

The ahu Tongariki was leveled in 1960 by an earthquake that destroyed most of the central and southern regions of Chile. That deadly quake, some 3600 kilometers away, triggered a powerful tsunami that swept over the four meter high monument wall destroying the ahu platforms and dragging the statues inland. The broken moai were covered by tons of rocks from the destroyed platforms.

Fans of Easter Island feared that this great archaeological treasure was lost forever. Then in 1991 a Japanese company donated a crane to move the statues and partial funding for reconstruction costs. Cristino and Vargas led the reconstruction project which lasted 4 years and took a team of 50 people, most of them islanders themselves. Each rock fragment had to be studied, drawn and then input into the computer.  Due to the soft nature of volcanic tuft, the rocks were in poor condition.

The team covered the moai with huge plastic tents and once they were dry, the statues could be moved without falling apart. “The first statue that went up was about 45 tons [and] went up in a few days,” Cristino explains. Painstakingly the team reconstructed the statues and placed them on their ahu platform. The result is a monument as tall as a five story building with 15 Moai and their topknots called pukaos.

A combination of natural and human forces threatens the statues

“We started from zero, little by little, trying to put this back together,” Cristino explains. “We used historic photographs and maps. Our main goal was the reconstruction of a largely destroyed monument.”  For his mostly local staff, the project was a revelation. “Little by little [they] realized what their ancestors did was incredible. Their sense of pride was enormous.”

UCLA archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg considers herself to be “a friend of the family” to the moai. Since 1982 she has surveyed the moai compiling what she calls “biographies” of 1045 sculptural objects that include full or partial moai. Van Tilburg runs the Easter Island Statue Project (EISP) with Co-director Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, a native Rapa Nui artist and surveyor. “The statues today do not look the same as when I saw them in 1982,” she says. “I could see the change over time.” Van Tilburg appealed to the Archaeological Institute of America to fund a preservation project to develop treatments for the fragile stone. With the grant, EISP installed a weather monitoring station near two moai in the Rano Raraku quarry. For the first time, scientists will be able to record fluctuations in wind, moisture and temperature near a statue and observe how the stone reacts to changes in weather. Van Tilburg says with this information, the team will be able to develop a treatment plan that could be used not only on the sample moai, but also on the 400 other statues that reside in the quarry.

As part of the same project, Research Associate Christian Fischer of UCLA and Conservador Jefa Monica Bahamondez P. of Chile’s Centro de Conservación y Restauración used a portable sprayer to apply two different types of water-repellent solutions to the test statues. Although the mixture will take several months to evaporate and dry, the team could see that it was already working when they poured water on the monuments and watched the water droplets run off the stone.

To better educate and manage visitors to Easter Island, the Corporación Nacional Forestal de Chile (CONAF)—the government agency that manages all of Chile’s national parks and reserves—opened a sustainable visitor center in May of 2011. The center is located at the entrance to the Orongo Ceremonial Village, which is one of the most visited archaeological sites on the island. “Easter Island is a landmark in the tourism world and that is why we need to work hard to preserve its resources as well as offer all kinds of information and education to its visitors, both national and international,” says CONAF Executive Director Eduardo Vial Ruiz-Tagle.

The moai of Easter Island tell different stories depending on the listener. For the islanders, they tell the story of their ancestors. For scientists they tell the story of a society gone awry and for the rest of the world they tell the story of human ingenuity.  “Without something to remind us of the achievements or problems of the past, we don’t pay attention,” says Jo Anne Van Tilburg. To make sure that we continue to pay attention, scientists and conservationists are working to protect the statues for the generations of listeners in the years to come.

Published in Americas magazine, November-December 2011, by Chris Hardman

 

Mowtown to Growtown

| ChrisHardmanWriter

FOUR YEARS AGO, Detroit businessman John Hantz received national attention when he announced his plans to create the world’s largest urban farm in Detroit. His plan to buy vacant city land and convert it to orchards and tree farms was hailed as visionary by some and nefarious by others. After 4 years of negotiating wit the city and meeting with neighbors, Hantz Farms was finally able to purchase 1,400 vacant city-owned lots on Detroit’s lower east side for half a million dollars.

“The purpose of the investment is to make neighborhoods more livable,” says Hqntz Farms president Mike Score. “Our intention is to take larger blocks of contiguous land and make our woodlands a permanent feature in the city.”

In a bankrupt city that has lost a quarter of its population in 10 years, vacant land has become a pressing  concern. The city of Detroit is drowning in the fniancial burden of owning nearly 200,000 vacant parcels–almost half of them residential plots.

The Hantz proposal, initially a plan to create commercial fruit orchards and cut-your-own Christmas tree farms, had been scaled back to a simpler tree-planting project by the time the city approved the land sale in December 2012. Hantz Woodlands–a subsidiary of Hantz Farms–agreed to buy 1,400 vacant parcels from the city, clean up the debris, tear down decaying buildings, plant 15,000 trees, mow the grass regularly,and pay taxes on the land. The parcels are interspersed among homes that people are caring for and living in.

A small, but loud, group of community activists allege that the transaction is a “land grab” and demand that Detroit’s surplus land go into a community trust. They accuse Hantz of greed disguised as philanthropy. What if Hantz sells some of those parcels for housing, they ask, and he makes a profit off the cheap land?

Score has posed that question to the people currently living in the area. “If you go up and down the street and ask people, ‘What do you really want to happen in this neighborhood?’ they say they want a house on every lot,” he says. At this time, there isn’t a great demand for land in Detroit, but if in the future people decide this is a nice place to live and Hantz Woodlands can build houses on some of its land, Score says the neighbors would be pleased.

Hantz Farms maintains a small demonstration site next to its office on Mt. Elliot Street. Oak and sugar maple trees in tidy rows grow on 50 lots that formerly were used as dumping grounds. Gone are the frayed tires, soggy mattresses, and semi trailer full of chemicals. The drug dealer that used to operate on the corner has moved on, and the 80-year-old woman who lives on the street is delighted.

Although urban farming seems a viable income source for a city with a surplus of land an a shortage of people, Detroit lacked a formal policy for urban agriculture until recently. The city’s first agriculture zoning ordinance, adopted by Detroit City Council in April 2013, recognizes agriculture as a legal use of land and establishes guidelines for it. With the law on their side, Detroit’s farming entrepreneurs should now be able to avoid spending 4 years and a lot of money for the right to buy land in Detroit.

Published in Organic Gardening magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Eating Local at the Ballpark

| ChrisHardmanWriter

AS A FAITHFUL Detroit Tigers fan, I have been known to purchase my share of ballpark food. It’s one of the only places I’ll let my kids eat cotton candy and one of the few places you’ll see me munching on a hot dog on a white bun. But as the editor of a local food magazine I am always interested in who produces the food we’re buying and where they are from. The more I researched, and the more I ate, I began to realize that one of the largest venues for Michigan foods is indeed Comerica Park.

Having a hot dog at the ballpark is almost obligatory. The most famous of all hot dogs, the Ball Park Frank, made its debut right here in Detroit. In 1957 the owner of the Tigers challenged local sausage makers to create the ideal ballpark hot dog. Hygrade Food Products Corp., a Detroit-based meatpacking company, answered the call and baseball history was made. Although Ball Park Franks are no longer made in Detroit, their tie to the Tigers remains.

The ideal vessel for the hot dog had already been in use at the park in the form of soft, white hot dog buns. Brown’s Bun Baking Company in Detroit has been baking buns for Tigers fans since the 1930s. The buns are also used for Winter’s sausage, the official sausage of the Detroit Tigers. This family-owned company was started in 1951 by a German immigrant and master sausage maker named Eugene Winter. His daughter, Rose Mary Wuerz, runs the company today.

Another Michigan company, Garden Fresh Gourmet, sells chips and fresh salsa in the ballpark. From humble beginnings in Ferndale, Jack and Annette Aronson have created a top-selling brand that is sold throughout the country. Not only has the company received awards for taste and freshness, Garden Fresh has also been recognized for its commitment to Michigan’s economy and to helping other small businesses.

Comerica even has local pizza makers. Little Caesars has six stands in the park. The well-known pizza franchise is owned by Ilitch Holdings, the same company that owns the Tigers. When Mike Ilitch, who once played shortstop for the Tiger’s farm system, purchased the Detroit Tigers in 1992, his baseball dreams came true.

For the gourmand, the exclusive Tiger Club offers a scratch kitchen utilizing local produce when possible. Regional Executive Chef Mark Szubeczak’s enthusiasm for good food sets the stage for this upscale venue. The menu varies from game to game, but freshness and quality stay the same. A beautifully appointed cheese table features house-made bread and a rotating selection of cheeses—from Michigan and beyond—displayed on cutting boards in the shape of the Michigan mitten. Fresh smoothies and sushi are prepared in front of waiting fans.

A baseball game wouldn’t be complete without at least one or two snacks. My kids always go straight for the cotton candy and now that I found out the candy is spun on site, I can’t use “It’s not local” as a reason to say no. As a matter of fact, many of the snacks are from local companies. Nuts come from Germack Pistachio Company, located on Russell Street near Eastern Market. The popcorn comes from the Detroit Popcorn Company on Telegraph Road in Redford Township. And the exclusive Tiger Traxx ice cream comes from a 118-year-old creamery on the west side of the state.

Hudsonville Creamery introduced the limited edition Tiger Traxx to fans last year. Imagine vanilla ice cream infused with chocolate-covered pretzel baseballs and thick fudge swirls. According to Hudsonville sales and marketing lead Randy Stickney, the flavor was so popular with park-goers that the creamery was unable to keep up with the demand. This year Hudsonville has increased production and plans to offer the flavor at the park and at grocery stores until October or even November, “if the Tigers do what I expect them to do,” Stickney says.

Also debuting last year, was the Michigan craft beer stand near the standing-room-only section of the park. The stand features 26 local brews, 10 on draft and 16 in bottles. According to Bob Thormeier, general manager of Comerica’s concessionaire—Delaware North Companies—sales in that space went up 600% following the introduction of Michigan craft beers. The growing interest in Michigan specialty beers has created an entire generation of beer lovers who are faithful to their brands. Beer comes from local breweries including New Holland, Bells, Atwater, Motor City and Arbor Brewing. Thormeier points out that Michigan fans have supported the Tigers during good times and bad, so the Tigers simply want to give back.

While I enjoyed tours and tastings, the rest of my family shivered in the stands enduring high winds, sleet and temperatures below 40°. Within an inning of returning to my seat, I was too cold to dance during the seventh inning stretch. As I pulled my hood up over my Detroit Tigers baseball cap, I saw hail falling into my bag of Detroit Popcorn Company popcorn. I turned to my family and whined, “There’s no hail in baseball!”

But there sure is a lot of Michigan food in Comerica Park.

Published in edibleWOW magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Cancun Makes a Comeback

| ChrisHardmanWriter

NEARLY A YEAR after one of the strongest Caribbean hurricanes on record ravaged Mexico’s number one tourist destination, Cancun is reinventing itself. “In addition to improved airport facilities, returning guests will also witness that Cancun’s resorts, attractions and beaches have experienced a great deal of change since Hurricane Wilma last year, thanks to a destination-wide commitment to revitalize the area,” says Artemio Santos, executive director of the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau.

More than just a popular vacation spot, Cancun generates a significant source of income for the country as a whole. According to the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau, approximately three million tourists visit Cancun each year accounting for 30% of all tourism dollars spent in Mexico. When hurricane Wilma blew through the Yucatan peninsula on October 21, 2005, the damage to Cancun’s hotels, restaurants, and beaches was immeasurable. Ranked a category 5, Wilma battered Cancun for more than 24 hours with top winds estimated at 145 mph.

The slow-moving hurricane decimated Cancun’s top attraction, its beautiful shoreline with miles of soft sand. What was once a boulevard of powder-white sand, was reduced to a thin strip of beach in some locations and to no beach in others. To fix the famous beach, the Mexican government hired Jan De Nul, a global leader in dredging, stone placement, filling and salvage services, to reclaim the sand that was swept out to sea.

On February 1, Jan De Nul embarked upon a massive dredging project they finished in record-time only two months later. Working around the clock, workers dredged sand from 22 miles offshore and delivered it through a pipe for distribution on Cancun’s shoreline.  The project cost $21.5 million to complete and gave Cancun an even wider beach than before Wilma.

In addition to beach improvements, the city is using this opportunity to upgrade its infrastructure and add new attractions, condos, and restaurants. Many of the hotels have been rebuilt with additional first-class services.  The airport, which ranks second to Mexico City as the country’s busiest airport, is expanding and upgrading to accommodate more tourists at a higher level. “A lot of what was done was trying to make [Cancun] a more luxurious destination,” says Claire Kunzman a representative for the Cancun Tourism bureau. Upgraded services, and increased high-end hotels are designed to appeal to a more upscale visitor.

The city of Cancun has launched a massive public relations campaign—which included a $77,000 two-page advertisement in the official 2006 World Cup guide—to convince people to come back to Cancun. According to the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau’s most recent statistics, 700,937 tourists visited Cancun from January to April of 2006. Although that number is less than the 1,277,847 tourists who visited Cancun in the same time period last year, the public appears to be welcoming the new Cancun.

Recently the leading online travel company Orbitz ranked Cancun as the third most popular destination in the world for the summer of 2006. “We expect that both new and returning visitors alike will be excited to see the brand-new Cancún and all that the island now has to offer,” Santos says.

Published in Americas magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Bumper Crop: A Detroit Garden

| ChrisHardmanWriter

WHAT DO YOU GET when you combine zoo animal manure, coffee grounds and shipping crates? The answer is an environmentally friendly start to Detroit’s newest urban garden.

Located on Merritt in southwest Detroit, the Cadillac Urban Garden marked its first year with a bumper crop and steadfast community support in spite of the drought and the parched economy. “It has exceeded our wildest dreams,” says Sylvia Gucken, garden volunteer and assistant to the chairman of the Ideal Group, the local business that administers the garden.

The concept is simple: On Saturday mornings and after work, neighborhood residents are invited to stroll through the gardens and pick the produce free of charge. What happens next is magical. People stop to talk to each other. Neighbors who previously only exchanged a superficial “hello” become friends.

“Our mission is to create a space that promotes the health and security of our community,” says Frank Venegas, Ideal Group chairman. “Cadillac Urban Gardens is producing vegetables, community health and growth.” Ideal Group, an eight-time GM Supplier of the Year, worked with both for-profit and nonprofit organizations to create the garden. General Motors provided 250 shipping crates for the raised-bed gardens. The soil was supplied by Detroit Dirt, with composting materials, coffee grounds and food scraps from the Detroit Zoo, Astro Café, the Marriott Hotel and GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. Better Day Ministries and southwest Detroit residents provided labor.

Children from the neighborhood are the heart and soul of this garden. Take 13-year-old Christopher Lara, for example. The adult volunteers credit him with keeping the garden alive during the summer drought. Pedaling back and forth from home to the garden on his bike, Lara spent between five and 15 hours a week tending to the 250 raised beds. With this summer’s inconsistent rainfall, Lara put a lot of his energy into watering the crops. The sturdy boxes of overflowing plants that cover a once-abandoned parking lot delight him.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. His summer as a gardener has sparked an interest in becoming a landscape architect.

All told, neighborhood youth have contributed more than 800 volunteer hours working in the garden. Ideal Group’s Esperanza Cantu is responsible for motivating and organizing those young people. She draws on the nearby Cristo Rey High school, Latino Family Services, LA SED and Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision for labor. Many of those same kids will bring their parents to the garden to enjoy the vegetables they have planted.

Gucken summarizes the spirit of the garden in one sentence: “Anyone who comes here is part of the garden. They own it.”

Published in edibleWOW magazine by Chris Hardman

 

Vitamin Angels Save Lives

| ChrisHardmanWriter

ONCE IN A WHILE a simple solution comes along to a complicated problem, and since 1994 the non-profit organization Vitamin Angels has been working on a complicated problem. Every year an estimated 190 million children under five suffer from vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which can cause death and blindness. The lack of Vitamin A and other essential micronutrients in the diets’ of children and pregnant women throughout the world prevents proper physical and brain development robbing children of the tools they need to succeed in life.

The solution is a worldwide campaign to distribute vitamins and other nutritional supplements to at-risk populations. Howard B. Schiffer founded Vitamin Angels after a relief worker told him that 2 capsules of high dose vitamin A could prevent children from going blind and save lives. He was shocked. He had been selling vitamins for 14 years and had never realized that. Schiffer asked for clarification that two capsules a day can prevent a child from going blind and save lives. “No,” was the answer. “2 capsules a year.”

Using his contacts in the health food industry, Schiffer created a non-profit named Vitamin Angels to solicit donations. Then he found charitable and government organizations—already working in country on health issues—and asked if he could use their infrastructure to distribute the vitamins. Today Schiffer works in rural areas such as Southern Belize, with organizations like Belize’s Ministry of Health to distribute vitamins to women and children living in some of the world’s most remote areas. In 2010 alone, Vitamin Angels helped more than 20 million children in 40 countries around the globe.

The human body needs a mixture of minerals to grow and develop properly. Health professionals have identified 5 essential micronutrients: vitamin D for survival and sight; iodine for brain development; iron for brain and motor development; zinc to fight infections and diarrhea; and folate for fetal development. In 2010 Vitamin Angels and their partner agencies delivered 120,000,000 doses of essential micronutrients to more than 300,000 at-risk children and mothers in 26 countries, including the United States.

Malnutrition is a debilitating product of poverty. The poorest people in the world do not eat enough of nutrient-rich foods such as milk, eggs, meat, fish and fruits and vegetables. In the developed world, most of the staple household foods such as milk, sugar, cereals, oils and noodles are fortified with essential vitamins and minerals and have been for the past 50 years. But in developing nations, these foods are not fortified and are out of reach financially for large segments of the population. “Most people don’t know that chronic malnutrition is the underlying cause of death for more children than AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis,” says Vitamin Angels president Howard B. Schiffer. “The amazing thing is, malnutrition is solvable. We don’t need to do any research. We don’t have to try to find a cure. Just getting nutrients, especially vitamin A, out to children is the lowest cost, highest impact intervention you can provide.”

Published in Americas magazine by Chris Hardman