ECHO Global Farm in Fort Myers

I always take Maggie on an unexpected outing during her visits. Our trip to Solomon's Castle a couple of years back set a high bar for pure entertainment (not to mention kitsch). This year's outing found us at ECHO Global Farm in Fort Myers.

ECHO's mission is to develop sustainable farming techniques that use low or no-cost technology for dissemination to communities combating hunger. ECHO has impact centers in West Africa, East Africa, Thailand and the Caribbean. Its network extends to 4500 missionaries and church organizations in those regions. (Maggie and I were a bit concerned there would be proselytizing on the tour, but the guide focused solely on the agricultural aspects of the farm.)

ECHO's location was carefully selected for having the worst soil in Florida, an environment similar to that of the countries where ECHO's solutions are made available. Our guide referred to the 50+ acre farm as a "living classroom." Interns receive 14 months of training before heading out into the field. More than 250 students have been trained at ECHO.

Shelter made from bamboo

Our first stop was a lesson in the many uses of bamboo. The hard wood can be used to build houses, barns, fences and bridges.The trees grow quickly--five to six feet per year--and their foliage can be used to feed animals. We saw structures throughout the facility that had been built by residents using "appropriate technology;" i.e., tools and materials readily available at essentially zero cost.

We learned that 75% of the world's food is generated from 12 plants and five animal species. ECHO's small duck and tilapia pond was one example of a sustainable food source. Ducks were chosen because their eggs have the highest level of protein while tilapia are the fish of choice because they reproduce when quite small. The ducks are housed in a wire cage where their droppings fall into the water and grow into algae. The tilapia live off the algae. According to our guide, many villages would be able to live off the food produced from the tiny pond. 

A turken

The farm also raises goats, rabbits and turkens (a hybrid turkey/chicken). A mature nanny goat can produce five-six pounds of fresh milk daily. One rabbit will provide a meal with protein for a family of five (and, of course, rabbits breed frequently).  And the turken has a third less feathers than a regular chicken, with the excess energy expended to create bigger eggs and meatier legs. Chicken poop is also an excellent fertilizer. These animals come in handy for the interns, who are required to eat one week each month only from what they can find on the farm.

Interns working monsoon-ready raised beds

The farm has different areas whose environments mimic those of the regions where ECHO's work will be shared. One area featured raised beds where crops can be planted in a way that will protect them from drowning during monsoon season. (This is the way strawberries are grown here in Florida.)  Another area had steep land where terraces had been created using rocks, rail ties and deep rooted plants.  Plants on trellises are found throughout the farm because growing them in this way enhances their ability to survive and thrive.

Perhaps my favorite farm area, though, was the urban environment. Again, ECHO looks for materials readily available for would-be farmers, and they've landed upon discarded tires as a convenient garden planter. Once the side walls are cut out and they are filled with soil, tires are a habitable environment for a backyard or rooftop garden. It seems kind of brilliant to me.

ECHO has a separate tour relating solely to "appropriate technology" that I'm sure would be quite fascinating. We learned that twenty types of water pumps have been developed that require no electricity. We also were given a demo of a biogas digester created from an old barrel that can provide five months of fuel for a family of five.The creativity would make McGyver proud.

So much information was presented that my head was spinning by the time our 90 minute tour was over. I came away amazed at the ingenuity and selflessness of people dedicated to helping alleviate world hunger. It really is quite an operation.

If you're interested in learning more about ECHO, their Global Food & Farm Festival on March 19 would be the perfect opportunity. According to ECHO's press release, "the festival features samplings of exotic foods, a tropical rain forest demonstration, tours of the farm’s 300-variety seed bank and fruit tree arboretum, and educational programs about the connection between food and cultures. Farm visitors will have the opportunity to crush sugar cane and peanuts and taste the results. And there will be live 30-minute cooking demos on stage, featuring a very diverse group of local chefs. At the end of each session, the chefs will serve the dishes they’ve prepared.” It sounds like a great way to spend an afternoon. 

Disney and Dali: Architects of the Imagination

Although I refer to my friend Maggie as my bridge partner, the characterization has become less apt as time passes. Admittedly, we do arrange our visits so we can play in a tournament in our quest for those elusive gold points. (Don't ask.) But we also spend lots of time exploring, and Maggie's visits to Florida always include a stop at the Dali Museum. This year was no exception.

With Salvador and Walt

While the Dali has a very cool permanent collection (best explored with one of their docents), the Museum also brings in special exhibits by other artists or creatives. I was a bit disappointed by both the Warhol and Picasso exhibits, which had great potential but fell a bit flat. But the current exhibit highlighting the collaborations and parallels between Dali and Walt Disney is a real winner.

Our time was limited, so I didn't have a chance to explore the whole exhibit. Luckily, Maggie had wandered off and I did a quick spin through the show to find her. I came upon a line at the exit to the show which, of course I got on. (With the Disney theme, I thought it appropriate that I had to spend some time in a queue.)

Dali's Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's "Angelus"

The line was for a virtual reality experience that brought viewers into Dali's imagined world of his 1935 work Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's "Angelus." Three seats were set up in front of large screens. When a viewer sat down, a set of goggles and headphones were placed on her head. To get started, you position the dot in the goggles on a white ball on the screen. From there, you navigate Dreams of Dali by moving from dot to dot. It was INCREDIBLE. The three minutes flew by, and I wanted to get right back on line to do it again. (To get a sense of what the experience is like, watch the videos in this link.)  But time was short and there was more to see.

Chronos with Dahlia as nose and eyebrows

The exhibit also contained clips from "Destino," a project Dali and Disney embarked upon in 1945. Dali and Disney studio artist John Hench spent eight months storyboarding the film before Disney pulled the plug. (Although the official reason for the project falling apart was that WWII affected Disney's bottom line adversely, it's not a stretch to imagine that Walt found surrealism a bit too out there for his--and Disney followers'--taste.)

Walt's nephew Roy discovered the project in 1999 and decided to bring it to fruition. Although both Dali and his wife Gala were dead by this time, Gala's journals yielded information about what Salvador had in mind. And illustrator John Hench was still alive to help bring the storyboards to life.

"Destino" is set to a ballad by Armando Dominguez and tells the story of the god Chronos' ill-fated love for the human Dahlia. You won't be alone if you can't quite follow the story line of this short film. But it's both beautiful and strange and fascinating to watch. (Click here to watch the film, which was nominated for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Short Animated Film.)   

The exhibit runs through June 12 and is well worth a visit to St. Petersburg to see. 

The New World by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz

The "Rooster Award" goes to the ToB winner.

For the past 12 years, the Morning News has run its Tournament of Books. It's a competition that, in their own words, is stupid.  "Books aren't basketball players," the website points out. "Stories don't care about other stories....The Tournament of Books (ToB) is actually less an award or event, more a long heated chat about books and reading and writing and what makes literature good or bad or something in between."

In years past, I've taken a look at the list of books with interest and a vague idea that I might try and read along. The brackets (hence the reference to basketball) are announced late January, with the one-on-one competition between books kicking off in March. But who has the time? This year's list, though, contained two books I'd already read -- Lauren Goff's Fates and Furies (loved it) and Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (confused about all the hype). I decided to read a couple of other books on the short list.  And so I discovered The New World by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz.

The premise of the book is, admittedly, odd.  Jane is a pediatric surgeon who's been away at a conference. When her flight lands and she turns on her phone, there are dozens of texts and voicemails about her husband Jim's collapse.  Her seatmate clears the way for her to get off the plane, to the front of the cab line and into a taxi where she wishes the driver had a siren to deliver her to the hospital more quickly.  "She imagined rolling down [the window] and making a wailing siren of her mouth and her head, and she could see the cartoon image very clearly -- her neck stretched impossibly long and her eyes flashing and spinning, one red and one blue, her lips oversize and overdefined, wrapping sensuously around every howling O up the Grand Central Parkway and clearing a path." 

When Jane arrives at the hospital, she learns that her husband has died.  And here's the odd part--his head has been taken away to be cryogenically frozen. Unbeknownst to her, Jim signed on with Polaris, a cryogenics company, to be part of the future. 

The balance of the slim novel alternates between Jim navigating his new world (hence the title of the book) and Jane trying to come to terms with Jim's decision.

"Greetings and salutations!" Jim's (social worker) tells him. (Parentheses are used around words to indicate they are not quite right for the future but represent concepts the recently deceased can understand.)  Jim, in his current iteration, is stunned to learn that he is alive in some sense. "You have always been alive," he is told, "But now you are awake." But in order to fully reconstitute himself, he has to try harder. "Jim noted the absence of eyelids to shut tight, or hands to squeeze into fists, or buttocks and a jaw to clench--everything he was accustomed to doing when he was really trying at something.  Instead, he tried to muster their interior equivalents...an effort like internal pooping."  (Jim had used this analogy in the past as he thought about his attempts as a humanist chaplain to pray.)

Meanwhile, Jane is also in contact with the Polaris people, who express sympathy for her "perceived loss." She just wants her husband's head back.  Without it, "..it felt somehow like Jim had left her for somebody else, like infidelity added to death."

I want to go on sharing passages from the book that made me sit up and take notice of the words and the ideas behind them. But you should discover for yourself the emotions this book both reports and evokes. There's humor and sadness and the joy of real love. And despite my desire to let you find the parts of the book that speak to you, there's one more excerpt I can't resist sharing. At one point Jim is talking about Jane to Alice, his (social worker), and says, "Who cares about love? That's the easy part.  It's only the first part. We were in life together, Alice. We were in life!" What a simple yet powerful way to describe their relationship.

Ultimately, The New World is a story not about cryogenics or the future but about a marriage. I'm curious why it's not up against Fates and Furies in the Tournament of Books. Regardless, I'm looking forward to reading the tournament commentary on this book, which I'm heartily rooting for to win. And I'm appreciative of the ToB introducing me to The New World, a novel I'm fairly certain I never would have found on my own.  Read it! 

Looking at Art with Jeffrey T. Larson

One of the perks of chairing the National Art Exhibition at the Visual Arts Center is having the opportunity to get up close and personal with the juror for the show. And while it's always fun to watch the juror as he goes through the judging process, this year's experience with Jeffrey T. Larson was, in a word, fabulous. 

David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps"

Jeff studied at Atelier Lack, a program that "focuses primarily on teaching fine draftsmanship and painting skills leading to the creation of well constructed artwork."  What's cool is that the instructional lineage of the school can be traced back to the Neo-Classical artist Jacques-Louis David who painted, among other famous works, "Napoleon Crossing the Alps."  

Jeffrey Larson's "Electrolux"

So it comes as no surprise that Jeff is a representational artist focused on the craft of painting (although you might not put his "Electrolux" up against David's "Death of Marat" and immediately see the connection.)  As an aside, when asked about the painting, Jeff shared that his mother-in-law had told him and his wife Heidi that if they ever came across an Electrolux, they should snap it up. They found one at a garage sale and did as instructed. Although it didn't work well as a vacuum cleaner, Jeff found the streamlined design of the machine an interesting subject.  

Jeff's first introduction to the 134 works he had chosen for this year's show (from a field of 633) came when he and Heidi walked into a gallery overflowing with artwork. Paintings hung in a haphazard fashion on the walls; some were on the floor leaning. Despite the chaos, a smile broke out across his face as he saw the artwork he'd previously viewed in 3x3 thumbnail photos online.  He was happy with his selections. "Every work," he said, "Has something, a little spark." 

Anna Bain "Self-Portrait in the Studio"

The hardcore judging took place the next morning, which Jeff spent studying the works and eliminating. Eventually, the only paintings hanging were those he was considering for a prize. Co-chair Ingrid Carroll's and my job was to be on hand to answer basic questions -- more or less to be flies on the wall as the judge went about his business. But Jeff was downright voluble as he shared his thoughts with us about different works. 

He turned Anna Bain's "Self-Portrait in the Studio" upside down to look at the composition. (I'd seen this trick before in a critique session, but it's always striking. It was funny when someone came into the gallery and said, "Well, I guess that work's out of the running."  Au contraire.) He loved the work's balance and the way all lines led to the artist's face. The work received Second Prize in the show.

Dominic Avant "Pizzicatto"

He talked about his characterization of Dominic Avant's "Pizzicatto" as a genre piece rather than a portrait. Knowing that Dominic's 14-year old son had sat for this painting, I was curious about the difference. In a portrait, he said, your focus is on the individual. Who are they? What are they thinking? In a genre work, the focus is on the setting, the activity. The motion of the cellist's hand as he plucks the strings draws the viewer's eye rather than his face. The work received Third Prize in the show.

Bill Farnsworth "On the Line"

Bill Farnsworth's "On the Line," which won Best of Show, captured Jeff's attention because of the way the artist created different points in the painting that draw the viewer's eye in.  Some paintings, though skillful, lead your eye off the canvas and onto the next work.  Farnsworth's dollops of light and the sense of movement from the waves force the viewer's eye to keep circling around and considering the work. It's a manipulative artistic technique that an uneducated viewer (like me) might not even realize is happening. 

James Wolford's "Friendship House"

It was interesting to hear Jeff comment that he could tell certain works had been painted from a photograph.  How did he know, you might ask (as I did).  Jeff pointed out that when the human eye is looking at, say, a house, you focus on one point and the hard edges soften. (He referred to them as "lost edges.")  In James Wolford's "Friendship House," the rooflines are uniformly distinct, a sign the artist painted from a picture (after, Jeff was certain, many studies of the work).  Photo-realistic paintings are neither good nor bad, just a technique that the viewer might appreciate. (While "Friendship House" did not win a prize, Wolford's "USS Constitution" garnered an Excellence Award.)

The National Art Exhibition will be on display at the Visual Arts Center through March 12. If you're in the area, it's a show worth seeking out -- even if you don't have the benefit of Jeff Larson's commentary along the way. And for a bit more insight into the show, check out Nancy Stetson's article in Florida Weekly: A Good Year for Art.