July 2015           Smaller footprint. Stronger community.          TransitionASAP.org            District 12, St. Paul, Minnesota
In this issue:

All aboard the Green Line! Our train starred in the parade.  Photo by Duane Shriever

 
Speak up for safe bike routes!  
Coming soon--two key opportunities

Monday, July 6, 6:30-8:00 pm

Transportation Committee meeting

SAP Community Council office, 890 Cromwell Ave.

Now's our chance to talk with a city design engineer about bike safety (think Raymond between Como and Energy Park Drive) and other Raymond Ave planning. 
 

Monday, July 13, 6-8 pm
Grand Round bike-walk route:
Open house for community feedback
Langford Park Recreation Center
The Grand Round is a planned 30-mile citywide bike-and-walk route that will includes stretches along Raymond Ave. and Pelham Blvd. At this open house, we get to weigh in on design for those areas.  More info at the Grand Round website.
 
 
 
 
 

Aeon development proposal:

Two community conversations 

Tuesday, July 7, 6-8:30 pm

Dubliner Pub, 2162 University Ave. W. and

Monday, July 13, 6-8:30 pm

Jennings Learning Center, 2455 University Ave. W.

Learn about Aeon's proposed apartment-commercial-retail project at University and Vandalia, now the home of the Pirtek building. Ask questions and offer feedback. Come to either or both of the meetings. Light refreshments will be served; feel free to bring kids (coloring books provided).Questions? Email Caillin at the St. Anthony Park Community Council. 


 

Park B4 Dark: Savor a summer evening

Thursday, July 16, 7:00-9:00 pm

Como - Carter Avenue area

Shop, eat, drink, enjoy live music, and chat with neighbors. It's like an open house on the street! Check out the kid zone outside Sunrise Bank. Hosted by the St. Anthony Park Community Foundation.


 

Meet the Bike!...to the Stone Arch Bridge

Saturday, July 18, 1:00 pm

Meet at SAP Community Garden, on Robbins just west of Raymond (and just south of railroad tracks)

We'll ride the U of M Transitway to Dinkytown, then cross the new bike-only bridge on our way to the Stone Arch bridge. This is a great outing for families and anyone who wants to explore the river paths and meet neighbors!  For more info,  send us an email .  


 

Community Sing

Monday, July 20, 6:30 pm 

Luther Seminary, Olson Campus Center

Led by Dan Chouinard on piano, Ann Reed on guitar. Traditional, folk, pop standards, multicultural... the mix is always fun. Free; we'll pass the hat. Come at 6:30 (coffee shop's open); singing starts at 7.

 

Reflective Circle

Saturday, July 25, 12:30-2:30 

St. Anthony Park Library, Como & Carter Aves

Responding to climate change means outreach-- but what about in-reach? This monthly circle offers a welcoming place to reflect on this deep challenge. We respond to simple questions that prompt our thinking about the natural and human systems we live in, and we find ways forward. Details at the web page.


 

Help define the future of the CEZ

Get to know the Creative Enterprise Zone, another powerhouse group in the neighborhood-- the artists, entrepreneurs, and other creative people working in the Raymond-University area. Visit the website, take the online survey, and watch for more collaborations.


 

Abuzz about the Bard!

For an outdoor staging of Midsummer Night's Dream, 

Sam Bardwell directed a stellar cast of young SAP actors. See a slide show (soon) on our website.   

___________________________________________
Resources to help us
DROP A CAR


Google Maps: On a smart phone or computer, Google Maps can tell you the best bus routes from whatever location and destination you enter.

With a membership, you can use these small, efficient cars with little advance planning. Pick one up almost anywhere in St. Paul or Minneapolis and leave it where it's convenient when you're done. Pay only an hourly rate: no gas, parking, insurance, repair, cleaning. 

A local alternative to Car2Go, an HourCar is larger (Prius or equivalent) and must be reserved in advance. Pick it up and return it to that same place, and again, you pay an hourly rate.


Chinook Book:  chinookbook.com 

___________________________________________
Five ifs
for enjoying public transit 
More practical wisdom from Ranae:

If you carry water, a snack, and a notebook or a book, you'll come to look forward to transit delays.    

If you bring likely supplies--sunglasses, umbrella, mittens to pull over gloves--you'll be able to share with the shivering neighbor at the stop.

If you learn one means of transport (foot, bike, bus, rail, Hour Car, Car2Go, Enterprise Rental, taxi) before adding another, you'll soon have a crisis-proof portfolio of options.

If you slow down, you'll remember to check the seat before you leave the train or the car or the bus.

And if you happen to rush off without glancing back, you'll learn the grace of gifting whatever it was you left behind.
___________________________________________
Tim Wulling reports on two June events:
"There Is No Planet B"
The Tar Sands Resistance March drew 5000 of us to downtown St. Paul on Saturday, June 6. About a dozen of us from Transition ASAP joined in, saying, "Keep the tar sands in the ground." Oil from Alberta's tar sands emits so much carbon dioxide that is will be a climate buster if we use it.

At the march, Bill McKibben proclaimed Minnesota the center of the pipeline debate. (Our Public Utilities Commission has many applications for new and expanded oil pipelines.) Rep. Frank Horenstein got to the essence, saying the choice isn't between carrying oil by rail or by pipeline. Rather, "Are we going to continue our dependence on oil or get serious about conserving?" 

Tim, Barry, and Len carry our banner. Photo: Marilyn Benson

* * *
The Energy Fair in rural central Wisconsin is always a big affair. Thousands of people come for two-and-a-half days of exhibits, 250 presentations, and keynote speakers: this year featured Democracy Now host Amy Goodman. 

The Midwest Renewable Energy Association in Custer, Wisconsin, puts on the fair on the third weekend of June. At other times of the year, they train and certify professional installers of solar and wind systems. I joined Jon Freise (Minneapolis) who scheduled two Transition Town events: a meet-up for people in Transition groups or wanting to find a group, and a showing of the film  In Transition 2.0. Both made for good discussion and connections from small attendances. We are hoping to use this as a start for building a Transition presence at future Energy Fairs.

 

Tim Wulling is a leader in our Home Energy Curtailment and Community Solar action groups. As an electrical engineer, he's been focusing on energy efficiency since the 1970s.    


___________________________________________
Join an Action Group
Curious? Visit the action group pages on our website, get in touch, and see if you'd like to join in. Or start a new group: email Michael Russelle to brainstorm.

Community solar: Steve Yetter 
and Barry Riesch
Home energy curtailment:   Tim Wulling
Housing options: Phil Broussard
Reflective Circle: Marilyn Benson 
and Ranae Hanson
School liaison: Mimi Jennings
Sustainable food and land: Kit Canright , Lois Braun
Transportation: Pat Thompson
Zero waste: Gary Carlson 
and Brandon Sigrist
___________________________________________
We welcome your input.

Contribute to Transition Times ASAP and to our weekly e-calendar, The Transition Bee. To send your ideas, or to add names to our mailing list, email editor

Mindy KeskinenOur website was built with grant funds from the St. Anthony Park Community Foundation and with the ongoing support of the SAP Community Council, which also serves as our fiscal agent. We're also grateful for support from the Metro Clean Energy Resource Team and the 3M Foundation.


Pat Thompson designed our Transition Times ASAP logo. 
Regula Russelle created the Transition "t."

July 4 in the Park: Parading with a Message
by Pat Thompson

Over two dozen supporters of Transition Town - All St. Anthony Park created a transportation spectacle in the annual July 4 parade down Como Avenue.

Five people "drove" a Metro Transit Green Line train, to the delight of children along the way. Designed and built by Brandon Sigrist from upcycled cardboard boxes (and painted with help from his fellow Transportation Group members), this lightest of light rail trains may become a fixture of future parades.

We brought lots of messages with us: Drop a Car, Meet the Bike, and use the bus (with schedules and GoTo card reminders). Our transportation choices are one of the biggest things we can affect as individuals.

A colorful ten-foot rag rug, woven at community events this spring, was carried like a magic carpet to symbolize the future of our transportation possibilities.  Thanks to everyone who walked in the parade to get the messages across! 


Len, Sam, and Krista spread the word, an all-ages crew flew the magic carpet, and the SAP Community Council led the way.
Photos by Duane Schriever 
 













Stepping into the Picture:
Everything's Closer without a Car 
by Ranae Hanson

St. Anthony Park looks, smells, and feels closer, more detailed, more finely grained now that I experience it without the cloaking of my own car. Expecting challenge, I've discovered mostly benefit. 

Benefit 1: Wonder
Surprisingly, the car-free state has brought me a heaping dose of wonder. Through the window of the light rail, I gaze at the river instead of throwing her a quick driver's glance. During my commute, I now feel the lightness of snow on my hair or the sting of sleet on my face, I hear the delight of rain on the umbrella, I notice how cold dissipates after the first two brisk blocks. "That cardinal is singing to you, Ranae," my neighbor called out. Yes, I think it was, now that it sees me so often.

Benefit 2: Community 
I expected to be lonely when my daughter, our cat, and my car moved away, all at the same time. Not so. When the 87 bus pulls up to Raymond Station, my neighbors and I get on. We talk. I have learned the names of people I only nodded to before; the bus gives us time and reason for conversation. It also lets us be quiet. Riding transit gives an immediate sense of something larger than the self--an alley-block, St. Anthony Park, the light rail line, this river-laced city. Yet it allows some of us to be our introverted selves--loners, but in company. I have a favorite train seat where I work, share moments with fellow travelers, catch up with friends who happen aboard, overhear languages and ways of life that open my mind. Because I have no car, I understand more viscerally that I depend on community action. I have not been lonely. I've been with my city-mates close up, whether on bike, on foot, in the bus, or on the train. 

Benefit 3: Freedom
Even when I drive the Car2Go, I feel free of the worry about the pollution I am creating because I am sharing, because we are working on this problem together. On the bus or the train, a person can be even more free-can doze, daydream, read, think. One who is not control of the vehicle can become more in control of her life. Life has more texture without that car. Decisions are closer, smaller, less like the rush of the freeway. 

Benefit 4: Pride
A bus does not wait for a busy person to fit in one more thing. We transit-users learn to plan. I'll admit a bit of pride in this new accomplishment. I have my good backpack--tight against rain and snow--and I have my leather boots. When you don't buy tires and gas, you can up your criteria for boots. Hip folk compliment them. "Where'd you get yours?" we ask one another. We tough ones get the satisfaction of physical achievement without having to join the gym. The evening this winter when I walked from Raymond Station through a biting snow-laced wind, my hand-knit scarf covering all but my eyes, I felt almost as accomplished as I did years ago when, wearing that same scarf, I would cross the mile-wide lake on a deep January night.

Benefit 5: Amazement 
Amazement shows up suddenly. Someone leaves a Car2Go within a block of your house just the morning you need it. Or you get into that car and think--whose dog could have such fine, white hair? More amazement to discover, at EggPlant Urban Farm Supply, that a whole bale of straw fits in the trunk! And, then, topping it off, the guy at the compost site wants a full explanation of how car-sharing works: maybe his family can use it as a second set of wheels. You tell him that the Chinook Book has not one but three Car2Go coupons: buy one book and get memberships for three family members or out-of-town guests. Even the bus brings amazement. One day the driver stops at your street, which isn't a real stop. Or you find that the 87 goes right to Tea Source...and that taking the train and bus to the Health Partners Specialty Center is a whole lot easier than getting there by car.

* * *
We'll each have different delights--and different troubles--when we throw ourselves into shared and close-to-earth transportation. For me, that first step of saying no to something that wasn't essential to my soul made me better able to say no to other optionals. Paring away has, in its turn, left me able to say "yes" to the close-to-heart beings that bring blossom and fragrance to life.

 

 

Ranae Hanson gave up her own car a year ago.  A leader in our Reflective Circle, she teaches courses such as ecofeminism and global studies at Minneapolis Technical and Community College. 

 

 

Editor's note:  See related tips and resources in the left-hand column.

Welcome Zahra Sheikh
Zahra Sheikh is working this summer to make connections between the neighborhood's Somali community members, other people in the neighborhood, and the goals and concerns of Transition Town. Zahra is Somali herself. She grew up in Kenya, so she speaks Swahili as well as Somali and English. She is now a student at the U of M focusing on business and environmental studies, having completed an AA degree at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

Zahra: The name means
"sunflower" in Arabic.

Last fall Zahra spoke to the Future First gathering about her environmental and climate concerns and about her experiences in bridging the three cultures of which she is a member--the Somali, the Kenyan, and the Minnesotan. Fitting into all three calls for courage and grace, qualities that shine forth in Zahra. 

Zahra has begun her work already, having met with the Transition Town - ASAP planning group, made connections with a few people in Hampden Square Apartments, spoken with a staff person at Seal Highrise about ways to contact some folks who live there, and conversed about this work with SAPCC executive director Suyapa Miranda. Should you know anyone from the neighborhood who speaks Somali or Swahili, feel free to email Zahra with information about how she can make contact with that person.  Reach her at this address:   Intern@TransitionASAP.org.
Apricots

by Marilyn Benson

I have been thinking a lot about what my grandson said last week. Our family was talking about fresh apricots, the taste of a really ripe one. And how rarely we in Minnesota get to experience that taste. I told them about the fruit trees in the back yard of their California grandfather's childhood home in Menlo Park, California. Years ago in apricot season I would stand under the tree and eat the ripest ones, juice running down my arm and dripping off my elbow. I have never had apricots as good. My 13-year-old grandson quietly said something like, "When I grow up there won't be any fruit trees. There won't be bees to pollinate them."

I did not say anything. I could not say anything I did not know what to say. I wanted to say, "Oh, there will be fruit trees..." And "Lots of people are working hard to protect bees." And more. I wanted to say I am so sad that we adults have damaged our earth in so many ways. I wanted to remind him that I and others are working with Transition Town All St. Anthony Park.

That Saturday, after helping set up our Transition ASAP booth at the art fair, several of us went to the Tar Sands Resistance March in downtown St. Paul. Five thousand people marching are too few, but I have hope that numbers will grow.

 

Marilyn Benson has worked with the Transition Town movement in St. Anthony Park since its beginning in 2008 and is active in the Reflective Circle. She is ordained in the United Church of Christ, and although largely retired, continues a part-time practice of spiritual direction. 

 

 

Editor's note:  Marilyn brought her granddaughter to a prayer circle on June 18, after Pope Francis issued his encyclical about environmental justice. Learn more about this far-reaching statement at the website for Interfaith Power and Light, which works for a "religious response to global warming."
The Transition Town - All Saint Anthony Park initiative grew from the Energy Resilience Group, a subcommittee of the Saint Anthony Park Community Council's Environment Committee.  Visit the   SAPCC website  to learn more about Saint Paul's District 12 neighborhood projects, including the Creative Enterprise Zone.  Lend a hand!

Our purpose:
To raise our understanding in Saint Anthony Park of climate, the limits of fossil fuels, and the adaptation of our community that is possible and positive.

What's a Transition Town? 
It's a community starting the transition from a fossil-fueled, energy-intensive way of life to a more satisfying, locally oriented community with increased stability in disruptive times.