Very sad day today. Marv Hurwitz, one of my oldest and closest friends, died this morning at the age of 77.  It was sudden and fast, so a good dying for him; a shock to everyone who loved him.  I blogging about him because it may help, and I don’t know what else to do.
We met back in ‘73 when we both worked at Common Cause headquarters, and we became and remained friends through one of his marriages and two of mine. Through Marv I met lots of other people who became good friends, including PamJ pictured above, her husband Doug and even one of my husbands. We traveled to England together – as just friends.  Marv was like that – a good friend to both men and women, an incredibly good listener who also collected guns and loved motorcycles. A dealer in antique scientific instruments whose independence from a boss we all admired.
I hope you can tell from the photos that he was also fun, though he never drank as much as the rest of us.
I’m happy that in the last years of his life Marv became close to his daughter Dana and got to see his granddaughter Gillian every week. And he was pretty darn healthy til the end. So really, life was pretty good to Marv, and he was a wonderful friend to me. But shit, who am I going to call at the last minute for dinner or a movie? And who’s going to encourage me and tell me how silly I am to worry about money?
If you’ve found your way here via AgelessNorthShore’s recommended 14 Blogs 4 U, I invite you to look around. You’ll see from the categories that I cover not just what’s happening in my garden but news in the eco-gardening world and whatever I’m up to at the moment. Usually it’s organizing for good causes and no money (see graphics in sidebar) but finally, it’s for pay! Just launched this week is Garden Center Blogger, where my partners and I help independent garden centers communicate online successfully, and get the very best local gardenbloggers hired in the bargain!
It’s all part of what I used to call My So-Called Second Career, in which I tried to cobble together a living as a garden writer.  (For my first 30 years after college I worked as a “court” reporter in Congress and the courts of D.C., when I wasn’t doing stints at a string of nonprofits that started with Common Cause.) Finally after attempting what seems like dozens of possible revenue channels, it’s looking like using my blogging experience to help companies in my industry succeed might just be the perfect fit.  To clarify, helping companies that I really WANT to succeed.  So even to a ’60s activist, it doesn’t feel like selling out to corporate America or whatever nightmare vision used to haunt us.
But back to Ageless North Shore – I THANK them for including me and I feel honored! I’m also a fan of Time Goes By, whose list of “elderbloggers” the folks at Ageless North Shore perused to find their favorites. Ronni Bennett does an awesome job and I’ve enjoyed contributing a couple of movie reviews to Time Goes By.
Related posts, including a couple on the team blog GardenRant, include:
Here’s the class of six, plus teachers Adele Schmidt on the far left and Sam Hampton on the far right.  My co-director, the talented Mario Starks, is second from left.  The students are a United Nations of aspiring filmmakers, and a wonderful bunch who produced some great 3-4-minute documentaries over six weeks. It all happened at Docs in Progress in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.
Feeling a bit sluggish about now, deprived of gardening for all these months? Me, too! But not as sluggish as I’d be feeling if I didn’t have THE PROGRAM.  That’s what I call my ever-increasing compilation of exercises that a bevy of physical therapists has devised for me over the years.
Exercise for the gym-averse
See all my exercise toys? They’re cost under 150 bucks and with a little training in their use, comprise everything a gardener needs to stay fit – just add cardio. So if, like me, you’d rather not spend money on health clubs you’ll use for a month, or even if you DID go to the club you’d really rather not exercise with the sweaty young crowd there, no problem! Do-it-at-homers can get just as much done – with practically NO excuse for ever skipping a day.
So here’s my routine:
Every single fricking day, right after reading my email and the NYTimes online, I get on the treadmill, with coffee mug in hand, for 45 minutes of fast walking. What makes this tolerable – nay, even enjoyable – is the television you see here, on which I play tapes of the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, an assortment of PBS shows and even the occasional network show (I’m loving “Modern Family”). Oh, and how can I forget Netflix? Good lord, what a great service! I’m currently racing through the fifth season of “Weeds”, thanks to those red envelopes of happiness.
Also every day, I do a bunch of stretches and some Pilates core-strengthening exercises.  (Once you’ve discovered your “core”, you’ll never want to go back to your old, slouching, flaccid-muscled state.)
Every other day I use those dumbbells and stretch bands and that cool “therapy ball” to staunch the muscle-deteriorating trend that kicked in big-time in middle age.  “Use it or lose it” turned out to be one of the better slogans from the ’70s.
That’s it. Plus in season, gardening my ass off, as we say in the GardenRant Manifesto.  So what do YOU do to keep your boding from wasting away in the winter?
Photo above right: The view from the treadmill. The TV is mandatory, lazy cat optional.
My adventures in video continue! After all my troubles buying the wrong stuff, it came time to learn to DO something. My first grown-up move was to admit that when it comes to either hardware OR software, I'm not what you would call an autodidact. So I ignored the advice of my videographer friends to "Just do it" and signed up at the nearest teaching facility that looked promising. (After my Photoshop class at the nearest community college ended up teaching me exactly nothing I needed to know, I learned to do some research before payment.)
So voila the film school - Docs in Progress, a nonprofit promoting and teaching the art of documentary-making, and it's right in my 'hood. I caught one of their free salons – on the subject of point of view – and noticed the atmosphere was welcoming to beginners. Same thing at the work-in-progress screenings they hold at the Geo. Wash. U. Film Department. (The screening I saw included a rousing 3-camera-crew doc about Obama's inauguration.)
So I signed up for their "Film Production" class – really a workshop because only the first class is classroom-style. The instructor (Adele Schmidt in the photo right) has created over a dozen films for PBS, so has actual cred as a filmmaker . Now, can she teach?
Class One – The Rules
Turns out the workshop is rigidly defined and limited by rules. With the 3 video teams having only 6 classes and the weeks between to plan, film, edit and show a 3-4 minute video, ya gotta have limits. I totally support that. But it's scary to only be allowed to shoot 30 minutes of video. Oh, we can shoot more if we want, but it won't be downloaded for editing (gotcha!). Up to 3 still photos can be used, as well as a limited amount of music. Also, we can only use one location, and we have to use their cameras and editing equipment. Kinda like those survivor-type reality shows, and may the best team win!
The Hiphop Garden Production Company is Born
I swear I had nothing to do with being paired with Mario Starks, my smart, savvy and personable partner – we were teacher-assigned. He's a young web designer in the nonprofit world using his off-hours to inspire people his age to acquire the skills they need. He's also part of Global Soul Power, which showcases the "creative works of musicians, filmmakers, writers, and activists who promote world awareness messages of unity, self-respect and peace." Good lord, how cool is that?
Asked what our new "film production company" should be called, the class decided quickly – Hiphop Garden. Okay!
Our Assigned Topic? A Civic Center
At first I thought the other two teams had been given much more promising, artsier topics – a local stage for plays, and an artist (of some sort). (All subjects were in Downtown Silver Spring.) Our topic was to interview a government worker about a new government building. Oh, goody. Like that's anything new in this government town (DC and 'burbs.)
But we did the research about this new civic center and the guy in charge of getting it ready for its July 1 launch, and learned it's intended as a "tool for social transformation" and that the "government worker" is an experienced community organizer. So when we met political appointee Reemberto Rodriguez we were pleasantly surprised by his friendliness and dreams for the project's impact on the town. Like the image of Latin Americans gathering in the large outdoor theater to watch the World Cup, or seniors hanging out in the media room and picking up skills – cool images of a lively communal space. But really, you can build a wonderful facility – indoors and out – but it'll only succeed if people use it. So he knows he has his work cut out for him – and he's super-happy that we're creating a little video to help publicize it. (We learned that these student projects sometimes end up on websites, like this one for a tap-dance company.)
But can it Compete with Astroturf?
Turns out there's an interesting landscape-related twist on our story. This this isn't just any government building we're talking about but one replacing an incredibly successful public "garden" called the "Silver Spring Lawn", though the lawn was a fake. That's right – the entire site was covered with synthetic turf for a couple of years waiting for the project to begin and to everyone's surprise, it became a wildly popular space to hang out. Reports in the local media included residents' rhapsodizing over its utter fakeness – no grass stains! No bugs! Landscape architects despaired at the popularity of something so devoid of actual plants, with several long reports on its popularity in Landscape Architecture Magazine, no less.
Next – the Interview w/B-Roll
More rules come into play the next time we meet with Reemberto because we can use only 40% of our 30-minutes of video interviewing him (only 12 minutes~!) and have to use the rest for B-roll (background shots). But Mario and I dutifully did our homework – creating a list of shots and questions for Reemberto – and I'll report back after we've nailed those 30 minutes, so stay tuned. It's not like you're gardening anyway, right?
Okay, so my mostly-black cat doesn't really look scary, maybe just ridiculous. And okay, so it's a day late but this blog's been out of commission all weekend.
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with being paired with Mario Starks, my smart, savvy and personable partner – we were teacher-assigned. He's a young web designer in the nonprofit world using his off-hours to inspire people his age to acquire the.jpg)
Okay, so my mostly-black cat doesn't really look scary, maybe just ridiculous. And okay, so it's a day late but this blog's been out of commission all weekend.
