By Walter Steinwald. Originally written January 27, 2015. From its very birth, we have been using the door to form for ourselves a new womb, a place to stay safe warm in body. It has been a medium to grasp the shadowy world beyond, through story and analogy. It gives a child safety when fleeing to their room and hiding under the covers with it closed. It seems, for us all, to incarnate a provisional constancy of sorts. But, lately in our world, perhaps the door has become a wall, not this temporary barrier closed in time of storm to be reopened when calm has returned. Rather, it seems the door has become a barrier to everything and anything all the time, a place we hide our vulnerabilities from one another, soothing ourselves from the lurking dangers out there. There is talk of children not going outside, not playing in the streets, local parks are lonely, bicycle sales are down, but with this great thing dividing the “out there” from the “inside,” isn’t there an irony that adults can take control of? There usually is a good reason for inventions, some need fulfilled or a task lightened, but then come the dragons of misuse and overuse. Interior climate controls and a well insulated home are wonderful inventions; easing our life and even simplifying it, so we can concentrate on the more ethereal ways. Is there reason, though, to hermetically seal a home on a breezy summer evening, with the lilac and the rustling of leaves floating about? Is there good reason to keep the face of our home tight in early spring when the whole earth outside is waking up and knocking at its winter shell? Though we know with every strain of lilac there comes a gust of diesel fumes and the singing leaves are overwhelmed, nearly, with the engines climbing and falling, breaking and rising again. The natural along with the un-natural forces certainly justify, not only, a door but a rather thick and powerful one. And so we must be impractical at times. We remember the pansy that has made its way up through the crack in the sidewalk, forcing us to step over it and admire it, with the same voice the light tinge of bird song or faint taste of grass hovering on the wings of fumes and smoke can convince us that “out there” is worth having, not only seeing, and enduring some little sacrifice in obtaining. {Click below to continue reading.}
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By Molly Steinwald. January 14, 2019. Saturday was filled with building, and building! I've been the Executive Director (and Walter and kiddos, volunteers) of the Environmental Learning Center for four years now; and we were excited to move the Center's annual benefit to its 64-acre nature campus for the first time in a decade. While I prepped that morning for the evening's logistics and commentary, Walter and kiddos built - in our driveway - a beautiful outdoor projection screen of wood and canvas. The screen was key to the evening's fundraising; and Center staff and community members will be able to use it for many, multi-purposed events outdoors into the future. {Click below to continue reading.}
By Walter Steinwald. Originally written September 17, 2015. The kids love taking the dogs for their walk…on Tuesday. On all other days of the week it is a necessary tedium, a chore, but on that one day, like a grand opening sale, people line the streets with offerings of all sorts. Trash Day, as far as gifts are concerned, vies with Christmas and Birthdays and surpasses Halloween and all the others that fall in between. Partially this status grows from the weekly repetitions and in part from the mystery of the gifts and the knowledge obtained about our neighbors. Granting reprieves through continuing use or distribution into new memories are the ways the kids see trash. For them rejuvenating and continuing the narrative is much more tangible than buying things (new) that often have little ability to create one. Sometimes they are amazed that, “Someone would throw this away.” Often they are saddened by their own inability to use so much that is usable. I think if they could drive we would have a great deal more “stuff” in our yard and house. Often what they do literally drag home are; plants (that they saved), cloth, books, any sort of wheel and etc. It is a way that the kids get to know there closeted neighbors in at least a mild form, to see what they don’t want or what they have used gives quite a lot of information. From the very old to the new, things that were stored for a near generation or the things that were bought yesterday tell the kids stories of the owners and the neighborhood. From the houses that curb things in much better condition than any Goodwill sells to the indescribable rust heaps all give tone and understanding to us lookers on. The things on the latter end are what get a new home. Neither one of the kids really appreciates the new, but instead find value in the aged, very used things. For an example, a seed spreader from about 1950 that doesn’t turn or a tea service with broken handles and handmade contraptions that don’t seem to have an obvious use are all in our home. This irony of taking old worn opposed to new shiny things is something I have thought about with some pleasure because I think what they were after is not so much stuff but memories. When they use pieces (pieces because that’s usually what becomes of them) of these things now they remember the house and sometimes even the time of year and the owner. These are precious things and the older and more used they are, the more precious. {Click below to continue reading.}
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June 2019
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