Category: green

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Helping Ukraine

We can all do what Americans and Canadians do best: send money.

This painting has ceased to exist; it was a musing on the First Gulf War.

Although I’m fairly ‘green’, I bought my Prius in 2005 primarily for geopolitical reasons. It had been only a few short years since 9/11. There was credible information that our oil purchases were funding jihadism. I wanted to limit the amount of money I was sending to the Middle East.

Dependency on foreign oil has been a fact of life since the invention of the internal-combustion engine.  Today it’s Europe that is suffering from the boycott of Russian oil. I reckon that every gallon we don’t consume is a gallon that eases pressure on European consumers.

We drive a hybrid and heat primarily with wood. We can and will curtail unnecessary travel, but I can’t figure out how to cut our oil consumption much further. If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has put paid to any idea that modern Europeans have somehow sidestepped their bloody history. The post-Cold War peace was illusory; it has exploded into hot conflagration.

As I write, a friend is driving to Poland to try to rescue her cousin from the mass of refugees streaming across the border. I can’t drive to Poland, but I can do what Americans and Canadians do best: send money.

Retired journalist Rita Truschel is the child of refugees herself. She put together this list of organizations helping in Ukraine or for refugees. I’ve appended Charity Navigator ratings where appropriate. (No rating doesn’t mean the organization is wasteful; it just means that they aren’t required to file American tax forms.)

Children’s welfare

Save the Children (91.82)                         

United Nations Children’s Fund(89.18)     

Emergency housing

Airbnb Disaster Response (not a charitable organization but funneling money to people on the ground)

Surplus medical supplies 

Afya Foundation Disaster Response  (97)

MedWish International (100)

Medical volunteers

Doctors Without Borders (92.25)

International Medical Corps (83.94)

Logistics & shipping

Brother’s Brother Foundation(92.92)

Flexport (not rated)

Refugees’ survival & resettlement 

Catholic Relief Service(83.94)

Canada Helps (not rated)

Canada-Ukraine Foundation (not rated)

CARE Ukraine Crisis Fund (92.64)

International Rescue Committee (86.92)

Lutheran World Federation (not rated)

Sunflower of Peace (not rated)

US-Ukraine Foundation (not rated)

United Nations Refugee Agency(not rated)

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t is one of the paintings at Rye Arts Center’s Censored and Poetic, which is what I should be writing about today.

In normal times, this post would have been about the opening of Censored and Poetictomorrow evening, so I should at least mention it. If you’re in the metro New York City area, I’d love to see you there, and if not, the event will be livestreamed here.

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The changing nature of green

Green is infinitely varied, by location and by season.
Spring allee (bridal path) by Carol L. Douglas

Earlier this week I gave readers my matrix for mixing greens. It’s a central console from which you can travel in any direction to meet the greens that you actually see. Greens shift by latitude, altitude, and by season of the year, but if you start there, you should be able to go anywhere.

In the northeast, we aren’t seeing much green yet. The willow twigs are yellow and the osier is a brilliant red but everything else appears dormant. Later this month we’ll see the first haze of spring foliage. That is often anything but green, depending on the color of the bud scales. Maples, for example, have distinctive red buds. You can expect to modulate your greens with yellows, blues or even orange in spring.
(The US Geological Service tracks tree budding here.)
Early spring, by Carol L. Douglas. Early spring colors can look just like autumn colors.
By June our foliage is hardening into its true summer color. From June to August, the northern forest is growing rapidly. Trees compete ferociously for sunlight. They crowd out the weak and aggressively send saplings into any open space.
Beach saplings, by Carol L. Douglas. By mid-summer, trees have assumed a fairly uniform green.
Leaves convert light into energy through photosynthesis. This happens in tiny organelles in the cells of the leaf that contain the pigment chlorophyll. During peak summer months, leaves are absolutely stuffed with chlorophyll. If one color represented mid-summer green, it would be chromium-oxide green. However, it would be a mistake to paint trees with this pigment. You’d have an undifferentiated, uniform mess of green. How do I know? I’ve done it.
Trees breathe through stomata, located on the undersides of deciduous leaves and in bands along evergreen needles. This is why leaves are paler on the underside.
Palm, by Carol L. Douglas. The greens of tropical areas are different from northern greens.
By late summer, replacement chlorophyll is blocked from traveling into the leaves. This results in autumn color. But green, albeit dulled, remains an integral part of the autumn landscape right until the last leaves fall. Dampen those brilliant greens by modulating with their complements.
There is also green in the dead of winter. The evergreens retain their dark foliage, which ranges from almost black to grey-greens.
Nunda barn, (pastel) by Carol L. Douglas. Even in the height of fall color, there is much green.
Conifer needles usually last around three years before they turn brown, yellow or red and drop off. This natural aging affects the color you see at a distance.
Most pines drop their needles in the fall. These turn yellow naturally from the top to the bottom of the tree. Spruces and firs also drop needles, but the change is usually less noticeable because their older needles are thinned progressively.
Snow at higher elevations, by Carol L. Douglas.
Usually, conifers are the only green we see in the winter landscape. These trees are biologically adapted to lousy soil and the weak sunshine of high latitudes. That gives them their dark-green coloration; it helps them absorb more sunlight. This is why the pines of the south are lighter in color.