Important note: Foodies can't be Dummies

Please try to keep in mind as you shop this holiday season: Fair Trade doesn't just apply to African villagers and Amazon tribes - it also applies to the folks who grow our food here at home.

An interesting note from a farmer who tried switching from big-breasted flightless corporate turkeys to heritage birds:

Our customers who had eagerly signed up to reserve a heritage bird were not only disappointed about the size, but they also complained about the higher price tag and the noticeable lack of breast meat. So the heritage birds cost 2.5 times the price as chicks, took twice as long to grow out, ate nearly twice the food, and dressed out at half the size. We had to charge $8/lb. and we still made no profits on these birds. What was curiously frustrating was that these self-described foodies still wanted the size and body shape of a hybrid bird, along with a small price tag. Even somebody from a local Slow Food chapter still insists that we should be able to raise heritage turkeys for $4/lb.

That's right. Real food costs more, and doesn't look the same was as crap corporate food (or taste the same way, thank god!)

I've also got a post up over at Ecoble.com about how to live a little greener on Thanksgiving this year... check it out.

Whining about Wine

What is it with some people and wine?

Nobody would argue that Hershey's chocolate is better than Dagoba or Ghirardelli, or that there's no difference in quality between a Mercedes and a Mercury.

And yet, when it comes to wine, it seems every six months someone is trotting out "evidence" that there's really no difference between higher-priced bottles of wine and the cheap stuff. That it's all about elitism and marketing and hype.

When I was first learning about wine, I bought into it, too. I'd tried $6 bottles and $16 bottles, and there didn't seem to be that much difference. So why spend the extra $10?

Then I did a write-up on the Hermitage Inn in Wilmington, Vermont, and got a chance to sample from its 30,0000-bottle cellar. My first $40 bottle of wine, from California's Far Niente vineyard. Wow! Here was a wine that outshone the hype. It was complex, light, dazzling... and totally worth the price.

I still buy cheaper wines (who can afford $40 a week on wine, in this economy?), but I totally lost sympathy for the elitism/marketing whiners.

Like Robin Goldstein. His study, which "proved" that most people couldn't tell the good stuff from the cheap stuff in blind taste tests, made the rounds this past spring (here and here), and is cropping up again. Jonah Lehrer, at The Frontal Cortex, just brought it up, and Andrew Sullivan picked up on it too. Both of them pushed the line that, in Lehrer's words, "expensive wine doesn't necessarily taste better, at least for people who aren't wine experts".

This kind of "study" always bugs me, so I tend to delve into the raw numbers to see where they're pulling their conclusions from. And guess what?

To make sure that our results are not driven by wines at the extreme ends of the price distribution, we also run our regressions on a reduced sample, omitting the top and bottom deciles of the price distribution. Given the broad range of prices in the sample, this is an appropriate precaution. The remaining wines range in price from $6 to $15.

Meaning: 90% of their wines are priced at less than $15. What elitism? The useful comparison is between the $10 bottle and the $40 bottle, not between the $6 bottle and the $15 bottle.

So what's the real scoop? Goldstein was publishing a book: "The Wine Trials: Brown-bag blind tastings reveal the surprising wine values under $15." That certainly explains the fact that 90 percent of the study's wines were under $15.

Their choices of more expensive wines? Mere foils, so they could say things like:

"...when more than 500 blind tasters around the country sampled 6,000 glasses of wine ranging in price from $1.50 to $150, their preferences were inversely correlated with price. For example, Domaine Ste. Michelle, a $12 sparkling wine from Washington State, outscored Dom Pérignon, a $150 Champagne, while a six-dollar Vinho Verde from Portugal beat out a $40 California Chardonnay and a $50 1er Cru white Burgundy."

The book is a nice idea. There are a lot decent wines out there for under $15, and a guide is a great thing (see here for another good source of tips). But it's just not a source of accurate scientific data.

And yet they managed to market their 'findings' into the pages of Newsweek and the New York Times... while pontificating on the notion that much of wine snobbery was nothing but marketing. Ah, the irony..

Think Green This Thanksgiving

All we have to do this year is look toward Washington, DC, and we've got tons of stuff to be thankful for...

But as we officially enter the season of holiday cheer, holiday shopping and holiday excess, can we all think about the planet, too?

They say that green is the new black, but that doesn't mean you have to get all emo about it. It's possible to be joyful and celebratory - and smart.

10 Great Ways to Green your Thanksgiving

Getting There - Thanksgiving is one of the heaviest travel weekends of the year, and how you choose to get there can make a big difference in your annual carbon footprint. If you’re driving long distances, avoid SUVs and big gas-guzzlers – remember, you can always rent something smaller. Carpooling is also good, although not always an option. And if you’re flying, keep in mind that air miles are about the most damaging mode of travel for the environment. Avoid flying if possible; if you can’t, consider purchasingcarbon offsets from a reliable source.

Set the Scene - Candles are great for creating a warm, homey environment. But paraffin candles are awful for the home environment. They’re made from petrochemicals, they put vaporized parrafin into the air, and they often contain artificial oils and scents that you don’t want your loved ones to be breathing, either. Today, we have better options, made with beeswax and soy wax. Likewise, as you’re buying decorations, think of what’s going to happen to them when the holiday has passed. Try to avoid buying a bunch of paper goods that will go straight into the landfill.

Moderate the Meat - Industrial agricultural poultry farms generate a huge amount of waste; too much to compost (which is how small farms deal with natural by-products in a natural way, returning them to the soil as fertilizer). Instead, all that manure degrades into methane – a greenhouse gas that’s 20 times more potent than CO2. Plus, these birds are pumped full of antibiotics and nasty chemicals to try to keep them healthy in that cramped, hellish environment. This does awful things for the meat – both in terms of nutrients, and in flavor. Go for a free-range organic bird – your taste buds will thank you, as will your arteries. (Or you could try going Vegan…)

Go Local - Transportation is a big part of the CO2 impact of our food. Shipping by water has a modest impact, trucking is pretty bad, and air freight is terrible. Which means that, surprisingly, (ocean-shipped) Peruvian mangoes may have a lower impact than (trucked) Idaho potatoes. Your best bet – buy local. Go down to the farmers market for the most planet-friendly potatoes and yams.

Go Seasonal - Hothouse-grown peppers, tomatoes and lettuce are also not great for the environment – because of the hefty energy used in growing them in cold climates. Think like the Pilgrims, and try to focus on things that grow naturally in your neighborhood this time of year. In the north, that might mean substituting cold-loving crops like spinach, kale and chard instead of a salad.

Go Organic - Industrial agriculature depletes the soil, then uses petrochemical-derived fertilizers to attempt to replenish it. It’s a crazy system that’s accelerating climate change. Organic agriculture, in contrast, actually returns large amounts of carbon to the soil. If all the farms in the US switched to organics, it would be the equivalent of taking millions of cars off the road! Plus, organics are healthier. And your health is always something to be thankful for.

Avoid Packaged Foods - Often, producing and disposing of food packaging takes more energy than it took to grow and process the food in the first place. What can you do about that? Cut back on pre-packaged stuff. Go with fresh local spinach instead of frozen; bake your own pumpkin pie instead of buying one in a plastic clamshell from the market.

Recycle - And of course, make sure the cans, bottles, and packaging you use gets recycled.

Compost - Don’t send your scraps off to a landfill! In that nasty environment, food waste breaks down into methane, which as we’ve noted is a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2. Set up a home composting system; if you can’t, check locally – many cities now have composting programs.

Don’t Say “Yes” to Excess - Don’t go whole hog – or whole turkey. Buy a smaller bird, only make three side dishes instead of six, go for two pies instead of four. You can still eat plenty of food, there will be less waste overall, and when you step on the scale Monday morning, you’ll be able to look at that dial without fear and loathing.

Image credits:

1. Flickr Creative Commons photo by Groovnick
2. Flickr Creative Commons photo by Eschipul
3. Flickr Creative Commons photo by Cyanocorax
4. Flickr Creative Commons photo by NatalieMaynor
5. Flickr Creative Commons photo by KingDesmond1337
6. Flickr Creative Commons photo by Normanack
7. Flickr Creative Commons photo by Darkroom Demons

How to Cook the Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey

I've got one of my classic pieces up on Helium.com: How to Cook the Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey. It includes step-by-step instructions, plus expert advice from Eric Trites, the gourmet chef at the Hermitage Inn in Wilmington, Vermont.

A sample:

Your first turkey could be a piece of cake, or it could be a total disaster. So we thought we'd seek out some professional help - Eric Trites, chief cook and pheasant plucker at the Hermitage Inn in Wilmington, Vermont. The Hermitage is a resort that specializes in the fare the pilgrim fathers (and mothers) laid on their tables: pheasants, wild turkeys, ducks, gamecocks, deer. And Trites figures he's cooked around five hundred turkeys over the past ten years....

Thanksgiving food-fests: "Before you start cooking, remove the little plastic bag with the giblets." It is, of course, not a major disaster if you forget this. It just makes the inside of the bird a little messy when the plastic bag starts to melt in the 325-degree oven...

"Actually," Trites notes, "the first thing you have to do depends on whether it's fresh or frozen. If it's frozen, you've gotta defrost it. The best way to do that is to leave it in the fridge, because turkeys are apt to spoil - as with all fowl. They have been known to have salmonella, which is not fun. Spending Thanksgiving day on the john is not a good time."

On the Practical and the Symbolic.

Bill McKibben has a great column in Orion magazine this month, in which he makes an interesting point:

But in a world where we need massive change at lightning speed, the usual equations are turned upside down. We’re used to thinking that being practical is what really counts—that you can only reduce carbon by, in fact, reducing carbon. Hence the light bulb, or the farmers’ market, or the hybrid car. If we think globally, to use the hoariest of green clichés, we should act locally. In the fight against global warming, though, the practical acts are for the most part symbolic, while the symbolic acts might just save the day. Say you have a certain amount of time and money with which to make change—call it x, since that is what we mathematicians call things. The trick is to increase that x by multiplication, not addition. The trick is to take that 5 percent of people who really care and make them count for far more than 5 percent. And the trick to that is democracy.

We naïvely believe that it takes 51 percent of the people to make change in a democracy, but it clearly doesn’t—5 percent is plenty, if those 5 percent are engaged in symbolic action that can force the kind of legislative change that resets the course for everyone. In the civil rights movement, for instance, the strategy was not to desegregate the country one lunch counter at a time—there were way too many lunch counters. Instead, you use the drama of the fight over one lunch counter to help drive the Civil Rights Act, which puts the full power of the federal government behind the idea that anyone can order a hamburger wherever they want to. And here’s the thing: I bet less than one-quarter of 1 percent of Americans took part in a protest during that great movement, but it was more than enough.

Google has Life magazine's photo archive

Wow. Just wow. Life magazine's photo archive (published and un-published) at your fingertips...

Futuristic Green Transit: 10 Vehicles for 2010

Want to green your ride, but can’t afford a Tesla? That’s okay… there are plenty of cool (if not quite so flashy) new transportation options coming down the pike that will cost you less than $100,000. Some of ‘em you can even build yourself.

Seriously Strange Fossil Fuelings:

Who needs hydrogen? Some energy alternatives have been around for years, and are making a comeback.

1. Wood

It’s not talked about as much as the Manhattan Project, but there was a big energy crisis during WWII, when the military sucked up a huge portion of the world’s petroleum output. Individual car-owners across Europe converted their cars and trucks to run on… wood.

Wood?

Wood. Engines don’t run on liquid gasoline - they literally run on fumes. Same goes for the fire in your fireplace – when you see flames rising, that’s the fumes of volatiles coming off the logs and igniting. You can do the same thing in your car.

Some folks are working on making this high-tech, with scrubbers and sealed, carefully controlled burners. Renewable Energy Systems are currently running a demonstration coast-to-coast tour with a couple of modded 1991 Dodge Dakota V8 pickups.

But for now you can go very low-tech – plonk a stove on the back of your pickup and run a vacuum hose to the carburetor; after that your spark plugs ignite the fumes as per usual. You can get information on the web to rig your vehicle with a hundred or so dollars in parts: Jim Mason offers workshops and info, or order a how-to guide from Mother Earth News.

But either way, your fuel can be wood if you want – or any scrap biomass.

2. Steam

The British Steam Car looks like the Batmobile and runs like an iron horse. It is not quite road-ready just yet, though, as it guzzles 1,000 litres (one ton!) of water per 25 minutes of travel time. So for now it is recommended only for shorter commutes (or perhaps not at all).

3. People Power

HumanCar is driven by people - even the steering is human powered, like on a bicycle or motorcycle.

How does it work? They’re being very, very cagey – there’s lot of talk on their website about patents and proprietary trade secrets, not too much on how it will run.

But for sure, this won’t be a Flintstones-style feet-through-the-floor operation.

Already on the Market:

4. ZAP Xebra

Perfect for in-city commuting or shopping, this little car only has a 25-mile range. Still, it brags that even after counting emissions from generating the electricity it uses, it produces 98% less pollution than a gas vehicle. And it’s available now. Next up: A ZAP trucklet with a solar panel to fuel itself.

5. Smart Fortwo

This may look like a toy, but it pumps out 110 horsepower (between a 4-cylinder gas engine and a 50-kilowatt electric motor) And it is kind of cute. This vehicle seats two comfortably (depending on the individual, of course); at a stretch you can cram in thirteen contortionists.

Future Green Transport:

6. Zoop

This little electric flitter can travel at up to 120 mph (although that prospect raises the specter of “Unsafe at Any Speed”). The Zoop is more about being seen – hence the clear canopy and the flashy design by EV-proponents André and Coqueline Courrèges of Paris-based fashion house Maison de Courrèges.

7. Ecooter

It is hard to say whether this Chinese offering is even a car, and even the name implies it is some sort of scooter…

Still, it has four wheels (in a diamond layout, rather than the standard “four corners” formation) and there is a roof over your head to keep out the wind and rain, so perhaps it qualifies.

The way it parks is particularly interesting - thanks to the diamond wheelbase, you can do some remarkably tight turning with this little thing:

7. Loremo

The name stands for “Low Resistance Mobile” This just goes to show that you don’t need to wait for next decade’s technology to accomplish amazing things with milage: The Loremo combines a highly-efficient German-engineered diesel engine with extremely low-drag design to achieve 150 miles per gallon. Coming next year to Europe, with US launch to follow.

8. Helios

Want to really get off the grid? Helios has the answer: a solar-powered buggy with a saurian solar sail that spreads out to soak up the sun and recharge, photovoltaicly. This concept car won the Best Use of Technology at the Interior Motives Design Awards 2008. Note to racers: do NOT attempt to deploy the sail as a drag chute…

9. The Air Car

Coming as early as spring 2009 from MDI and Zero Pollution Motors, it runs on compressed air. Developed by Formula One engineer Guy Nègre, the Air Car is expected to make big inroads in India, where it will be sold as the Tata Nano for $2500.

10. VW 1-Liter

A few of the mainline automakers are trying to break out of the gas-guzzler mode (although not GM, who have announced they won’t be bringing their min-cars to the US market, further demonstrating their brilliant business acumen and why the government should give them a big bailout.) VW wanted a car that would go 100 miles on one liter of gas, but it’s taken them more than six years to perfect the high-tech low-weight materials like carbon fiber and titanium. Along with a super-sleek aerodynamic shell, this diesel-powered commuter car is scheduled to get a spectacular 235 mpg when it hits the roads (in a limited edition test release) in 2010.

Can’t wait - or really want to do something now? Don’t despair - you can upgrade your current rustbucket to at least make it a little more fuel-efficient.

Yes, We Did

Print magazines are so last century...

At this stage, who really wants dead-tree magazines shipped to your doorstep?

It seems there is finally an alternative - and the first dose is free, thanks to The Read Green Initiative.

There's a wide range, from Parenting to Playboy, plus PC, Popular Science, even Reader's Digest. Nice!

Over the past few years, I've cut out just about all of my magazine subscriptions (Lyra and I still get Mother Earth News and the sister publication, Herb Companion).

I'm trying to decide with zine to take as my freebie... probably going to go with Outside. I'm guessing Lyra will go with Saveur.

Snag yourself some documentary

Snag is offering a pre-election Film Festival, screening dozens of documentaries on everything from climate to education to straight-forward politics.

Check out this one, on the movement in the Hudson Valley (where I grew up) to clean up the river.

Earthdance!

No matter where you're reading this from, you can go to Earthdance this weekend.

Earthdance is one of those times when unification trumps narcissism. This is a trans-global dance party, with events from Argentina to Zambia, but we're fortunate in having the Hub Event, the center of it all, just up the coast at the Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville. It unites world music, jamband, electronica, folk and reggae on five stages over three days.

Find your local Earthdance event - from Argentina to Zambia - on the main website.

Paul Stamets: Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World

Wow.

Mushroom expert (what an inadequate word!) Paul Stamets preaching the gospel of Mycelium.

Islands are crumbling

"World sea levels rose 3.1 millimetres (0.12 inch) per year from 1993 to 2003, the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said."

Doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? It's just millimeters, right?

The thing that is rarely reported when they mention that figure is... "average" means that some places it's lower, and some places it's higher... much higher.

"...a 2006 study by Australian oceanographers found the rise was much higher, almost one inch every year, in parts of the western Pacific and Indian oceans.

"It turns out the ocean sloshes around," said the University of Tasmania's Nathaniel Bindoff, a lead author on oceans in the U.N. reports. "It's moving, and so on a regional basis the ocean's movement is causing sea-level variations ups and downs."

Just as warming is much higher than average in the Arctic - and causing a host of problems, from melting sea-ice to melting permafrost - the sea level change is higher in some places, like the island nation of Kiribati.

"For nations and communities that sit only a few metres above sea level, even small ocean rises engulf their land and send destructive salty water into their food supply, leaving residents with little choice but to flee...

As sea levels have crept higher, the coasts have eroded, corals have been bleached, and islanders' staple foods such as the giant Babai taro, coconut and banana are unable to grow in salty soil.

On the Carterets, where one island has been split in two by the encroaching sea, Rakova said hunger and desperation were sending the young men to mainland Papua New Guinea, or spiralling into depression."

Another place the rising waters threaten: Australia's Torres Straights Islands. Here, too, it's the extremes:

"Ron and Maria Passi, who operate Murray Island's only taxi, were out driving the night the king tide struck... The couple's son, Sonny, was outside his fibro shack with his five children, watching the monster surf, lashed by north-west winds, rise ever higher. In the commotion, everyone had forgotten that Sedoi, the baby, was still inside. They heard her crying and found her in her cot, covered in sand. Water had surged in after a wave picked up a big wooden pallet and flung it through the front wall...

No one on Murray had ever seen such a high tide before. Other islands in the Torres Strait, which lies between the far north-eastern tip of the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea, have witnessed similar scenes in recent years. Houses, roads and graveyards have been flooded, and the locals believe they know the reason: climate change."

Something for the rest of us to look forward to...

UPDATE: The Guardian reports that the Maldives are looking to buy themselves a new homeland.

Not thinking about polar bears

Watchmen Trailer

Coming in 2009... at last.

Termites and hydrogen

Searching for a miracle... a fuel source that is actually efficient.

Ethanol has been a disaster, barely breaking even in energy output, not doing well at all in carbon footprint, and driving up the price of corn and other grain. Time to try something else.

Hydrogen hasn't been much better, so far - it's still not cost effective. We simply don't have an industrial process to make it cheaply and in bulk. Wouldn't it be nice if we did? Termites, and the microbes in their guts that allow them to digest wood, could change that.

Termites? Termites!

A worker termite tears off a piece of wood with its mandibles and lets its guts work on it like a molecular wrecking yard, stripping away sugars, CO2, hydrogen, and methane with 90 percent efficiency... Offer a termite this page, and its microbial helpers will break it down into two liters of hydrogen, enough to drive more than six miles in a fuel-cell car. If we could turn wood waste into fuel with even a fraction of the termite’s efficiency, we could run our economy on sawdust, lawn clippings, and old magazines.

Check out the article... it's fascinating.

Sea ice closing in on record

Bad news for those who still think it'll be 20 or 30 years before we have to face an ice-free arctic ocean. Climate change is accelerating far faster than anything in the models.

More ominous signs Wednesday have scientists saying that a global warming "tipping point" in the Arctic seems to be happening before their eyes: The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles set last September...

Within "five to less than 10 years," the Arctic could be free of sea ice in the summer, said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally.

"It also means that climate warming is also coming larger and faster than the models are predicting and nobody's really taken into account that change yet," he said

Celebrating Lenny Bernstein

Where was I twenty years ago? Covering Leonard Bernstein's 70th Birthday bash at Tanglewood...

Leonard Bernstein at 70
Tanglewood, August 25-28
By Jeremy Bloom

There is an irony to the career of Leonard Bernstein, celebrated this past weekend with a whole series of concerts and parties at the Tanglewood Music Center, where that career began.

By the end of Thursday night's gala multi-starred celebration, it was obvious what an impact “Lenny” (as everyone calls him) has had in every area of music, from conducting the works of Copeland, Stravinski and Mahler to his own writing for the classical halls, the Hollywood screen, the Broadway stage.

There is so much wonderful material to draw on - songs from his early broadway shows, On the Town and Wonderful Town; his ballet collaboration with Jerome Robbins, Fancy Free; his film score for On the Waterfront: and of course, the unforgettable melodies of West Side Story and Candide.

"Poor Lenny, ten gifts too many,'' was the sad refrain of the lyrics specially penned for the evening by collaborator and friend Stephen Sondheim.

And yet, this is the man who once criticized Gershwin as being merely a pop composer whose music would not dwell among the immortals. Bernstein wants very much to be remembered as a serious classical composer. But of the 36 works performed over the course of the weekend, only four were from among his classical writings - and all four were choral works or songs, including the jazzy Mass. His heavier pieces, such as his Age of Anxiety Symphony, were passed over completely.

So what? Let's let Lenny and his psychiatrist and the historians sort it out. Thursday night, there was no doubt about how his contemporaries feel about him.

One after another, the people he has touched took the stage to thank their friend and mentor with a memory, a joke, and a gift of song - a Who's Who of 20th century music, from cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch, older than Lenny himself, to the 16-year-old Japanese wunderkind violinist, Midori; more than 50 singers, conductors, composers and musicians.

"I was at the Nureyev birthday celebration in New York last year,'' said one tuxedoed gentleman who had laid out $5,000 for top tickets for the week, ""and it was nothing like this. No one else has this depth of talent to draw on. These aren't just performers he's worked with - these are all his friends.''

Or, as Greek minister of culture Melina Mercouri put it, one of dozens of world figures sending greetings to the birthday boy: "To say, bless you? You were born blessed.''

Remembering Lena

Another of my "Greatest Hits"

Cafe Society
(Appeared in The New York Times, 1991)
By Jeremy Bloom

“There is a cloud of weirdness that hangs over Saratoga Springs,” says the singer-songwriter Bruce (Utah) Phillips. He should know, having spent most of the mid-'60s period he calls “the great folk music scare” in the small upstate New York city, along with Arlo Guthrie, Don McLean, Rosalie Sorrels, Bob Dylan, Spalding Gray and others.

They gathered spontaneously around Lena Spencer and Caffe Lena, the small Bohemian coffeehouse she ran in Saratoga Springs from 1960 until her death in 1989. The oldest continuously-running coffeehouse in the country, Caffe Lena endures as almost a time capsule - and a natural documentary subject.

In 1989, a BBC-TV crew filmed performances and interviews with some of the many musicians who considered Spencer a friend and her “caffe” a surrogate home. The result, titled “Caffe Lena”, will be broadcast at midnight Thursday on WNET (NY).

Arlo Guthrie is on hand for the film, as he always was for Spencer - he jokes about his role as financial angel for the often-broke cafe, saying he knew things were O.K. with Lena when he didn't hear from her.

Rosalie Sorrels lived with Spencer, and her children stayed with Spencer when she was on the road (Spencer never had any children of her own, but after her husband left her, the cafe provided an ever-shifting family). Ms. Sorrels' contribution to the documentary is a soulful performance of Mr. Phillips' “I Could Be the Rain” with blues-rocker David Bromberg playing lead guitar; it's the kind of collaboration that happened all the time in the early days.

Spalding Gray got his first acting job in a short-lived theater company which Spencer founded and then folded at the cafe during what he describes as the surreal summer of 1966. He has vivid memories of late nights with Spencer piloting the Ouija board.

“The theater productions were done with such inspired madness,” he told an interviewer. “The backyard looseness of it really set the tone for the Wooster Group's work,” he added, referring to the avant-garde theater he founded in New York in 1975 with Elizabeth LeCompte, who was waitressing at Caffe Lena when they met.

And then there was Spencer herself. She presided at the top of the stairs with the myopic regality of a Persian cat. “Do you have a reservation?” she would ask each visitor in the refined tones of an Italian immigrant's daughter who has trained for the stage.

Like her friend Bob Dylan (he played the cafe in 1962, but is not seen in the film), Spencer was at heart a private person. “She was a strange, warm, mothering character,” Mr. Gray recalls fondly. “One of the few I've met in America.”

Four easy ways to cut your CO2

Want to cut your carbon footprint at home? Four ways you can make a difference:

Disposable Coffee Cups
It might not seem like a big deal, but paper coffee cups add up – fast. One national chain estimated that in just one year, their customers who chose to bring their own mugs together prevented 30 tons of paper from going into landfills. That’s a lot of trees, and a lot of CO2.

Disposable chopsticks
Next time you’re in an Asian restaurant, think about the more than 100 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks used every year, the millions of trees cut down to make them, and the CO2 released when they are burned or land-filled. You can join the movement to bring your own chopsticks.

Wrap it up
More than 4 million tons of wrapping paper goes into US landfills every year. Use old newspapers, color comics, magazines or pieces of cloth instead.

Nix the bottle
Americans use - and dump - 30 million plastic water bottles every day. All of those bottles were manufactured (using power and 63 million gallons of petroleum per year), packed into cardboard boxes (millions of trees cut down), then trucked around the country (more oil). Use an inline filter on your tap, and a reusable bottle when you're on the road.