nature

A friend, Katja Gruijters, launched her new initiative today. She invited us all to a vegetable nursery south of Amsterdam. Kwekerij Osdorp, a great place where passionate people grow tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables. Katja works with them for her project 'mooi van nature'. This is an anti-food-waste-concept. The whole cycle from growing, harvesting, selecting, preparing and eating food has to change in order to have no waste. Why are all the peppers in supermarkets the same size? Why portobello mushrooms? Why are cucumbers all straight? Carrots? Katja makes installations for her lectures and workshops in which she uses the odd veggies. Outer size, outer shape. But with great taste! She also uses traditional methods to keep food. Pickling, using hay boxes to keep it warm, using bee wax to conserve etcetera. We all received a paper bag with funny tomatoes and a recipe. She's brilliant, and very inspiring!

Snapshot

This morning I went with a friend to a very good exhibition. Snapshot in Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. First of all, the striking exhibition design. So well done! The colours of the walls, the fonts used for titles, the lay-out of the exhibition; great. We later learned the exhibition design was from InsideOutside, Petra Blaisse's office. The topic is the relation between painting and photography in the late 19th, early 20th century. Breitner, Bonnard, Vuillard, Evenepoel are among the artists. Photography influenced their way of looking at the world around them and by doing so influenced their way of painting. At the start they used their camera as any other person; taking photographs of their family, their environment, their friends. More and more they used photography for research as well as art. We saw children, women in bath, street scenes, beaches, rooms, nudes, family scenes etcetera. For instance the out-of-focus effect, which is common in photography, became an element in Breitner's painted work. A must!

Textiles

I added a great new book to my library: Textiles-The Whole Story by Beverly Gordon, professor Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Uses, meanings, significance is the subtitle. It goes from the early beginning of fabric to the contemporary period and tells about textiles in human consciousness, survival, social meaning, power, communication and spirit. An in-depth survey, and lavishly illustrated. Textiles can tell a lot about human development, and as such is highly important to understand ourselves and our lives. A joy to read and see!

10:10

every little bit is important....together we save a lot of energy. Not just today please, but from now on.....

Girls

As part of the Millennium Development goals gender equity is an important issue. This week The Elders, a wonderful bunch of former world leaders who are still taking the lead, launched a new campaign: Girls not Brides. This campaign accompanies the importance of the Nobel peace price 2011 to the three courageous women mentioned below. Desmond Tutu: "We want to try and help these young women to catch up on the education they have lost. If they don't, we really have no hope of making a dent in poverty and hunger and, of course, there is no way we are going to be able to achieve universal primary education … and we're not going to be able to reduce infant mortality." Have a look at the film

Women

Hurray for women all over the world. Great, this Nobel Peace prize 2011 for Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee from Liberia and Tawakoel Karman from Yemen. Their struggle for peace and equal rights, their dedication for their goal is an example for women all over the world. Development starts with women!

Fish or no fish

Alarm over our fishes. Again. This image from the EU group 'fish for the future' shows the European fish population. Only 3 (!) species -mackerel, herring and saithe- are caught in a sustainable way. Meaning not too young, enough left for a healthy population, and their environment not harmed. Subsidies keep the fishing industries alive, especially in Spain. What does that mean for the future? Fish is no endless economic source; and in this way the fish population will exhaust. Subsidies will eventually finance the depletion of our seas and oceans. How cynical is that..... So a few years ago I made the choice not to eat fish at all. We HAVE to do it in a different way. Think before you eat. And be creative; there's so much left to eat besides fish and meat!

Meet

On a sunny Sunday morning, cycling through IJburg I was surprised to meet myself in a Range Rover......