Gail PC, Judy A, Janice B and Marilyn F enjoyed a day at the new Central Library.  Judy pointed  out that it is another “destination” in Austin, to show folks who come to visit you.  The area near  the old power plant is now on “Electric Drive,” and I appreciate Margaret Moser Terrace, too.  Gail and Judy stayed for an early lunch at the Cookbook Café and recommend the chicken pot pie and chicken salad. Janice and Marilyn browsed about, enjoyed the view, and attended the Talk Green to Me session provided by City Staff.

Getting there

I parked my car at Lamar Union/Alamo Drafthouse and had to wait 3 minutes for a bus and the ride took 10 minutes!  I had purchased a day pass for $2.50 and just had to let the card reader blip my phone to pay.  I took the #803, which is my favorite, now.  Gail PC and Judy A parked in the garage for a few dollars and found space easily at 10 am.  Janice B, a true TOWNie, rode her bike there!  Yes JaniceB!

What you can do at your Library

Learn to set up your Kindle or Nook reader to borrow e-books.
Get your Library card; use it from home to reserve online and hold a title to pick up later.  Note that several suburban residents can also use the APL.
Watch a DVD movie or listen to a CD at an audio visual station.
Check out an audiobook-CD for your long road trip.
Find some darn interesting titles. Here’s one:  Radium Girls—the Rare Story of America’s Shining Women, by Kate Moore.
You can also reserve a meeting room for your small group.

Talk Green to Me series: The State of Austin’s Food System

The speaker was Edwin Marty, the City of Austin’s first Food Policy Manager.  A sustainable food system has 4 parts: growing, selling, eating, & recycling (composting); those parts need to be connected and protected. The speaker described how the city staff looked across all the city departments thru a lens of food.  Data were collected and analyzed.  They found out that everybody in Austin—across all income levels–wants to feed their family with good healthy food.  But 13 city zip codes don’t even have grocery stores, and 16% of Austin population is “food insecure.”  Access to healthy food is inequitable.  To make the situation worse, we are losing agricultural land at the rate of 9 acres a day, losing it
to the push for affordable (dense) housing (150K units of affordable housing in the next 10 years in Austin). Less than 1% of our food is grown locally, yet locally grown food is a sustainability strategy since energy (transport fuel) needed to bring it to market is less than from longer distances.

Hope on the Horizon

There are 65 community gardens in Austin, agencies are opening up public lands for community gardens, and 220 schools have gardens; other methods are being encouraged so people can eat “fresh for less,” including incentivizing pop-up produce stands at the schools.  Partnerships across agencies plan to offer incentives for buying healthy food.  A new program will be rolled out soon such that when you go buy produce at your grocery store you get 2-for-1 prices if the produce is from Texas.

What you can do

Participate in the city curbside composting.
Find more information: http://austintexas.gov/food
Also, at the National Level, find out about the various forms of the Farm Bill and let your
representatives know how you feel about sustainable agricultural and food supply practices.

MarilynF