Kitchen Table Sustainability

My friend, Peter, the local real estate agent, came over the other day to see how the building was coming along. He’s been cheering us on, especially during the storms and floods. I found a plan and we walked around the building site. 

“Great that it’s all on one level,” Peter smiled, pointing to the ramp on the drawing. 

“Retirement housing”, I whispered, but I was thinking of my architect friend, Mary Ann.

Mary Ann Hiserman, 1979

Had she still been alive, this house would have been for her, with its elegant wheelchair-accessible ramp and spacious turning circles.

We’re not planning a retirement in wheelchairs. But you never know.

At least we know how important accessibility is.

When I was teaching at Berkeley in the seventies, I had a teacher myself, a young woman who was a wheelchair user: Mary Ann Hiserman. She died at 49 after a remarkable life of activism. She transformed my life, teaching me by example and direct experience what I know about accessibility and Universal Design.

Mary Ann Hiserman was the first wheelchair user to graduate from the Berkeley Master of Architecture Program and one of the first wheelchair users to become a licensed Architect in California. She was an expert on disabled accessibility codes and a tireless advocate for accessibility rights. She worked from 1979 until her death in 1997 and wasresponsible — more than any other person — for the evolution of physical accessibility on the Berkeley campus.

Long before it was mandated or fashionable.

Mary Ann reminded me that an accessible environment is one that’s comfortable and convenient for all. And, when we think about sustainability in our housing, public spaces and buildings, the ageing and increased disability of our population must be a major consideration. Sure, we’re living longer, but many are living with a disability.

In her capacity as campus access coordinator, Mary Ann saw that all campus buildings at Berkeley met handicapped compliance codes. She coordinated the Chancellor’s Committee for the Removal of Architectural Barriers and was an access consultant for two local municipalities.

Mary Ann spent nearly her entire academic and professional career at Berkeley, was a member of the staff since 1977 and received both her BA and master’s degrees in architecture from Berkeley.

What a woman she was!

Unable to walk and severely crippled by polio and childhood arthritis, she nevertheless drew and painted beautifully, traveled widely, campaigned furiously for the rights of people with disability and for accessible environments. And yet she could not walk, dress herself, cook or perform basic hygiene activities without an attendant. She needed five hours’ of attendant care a day.

When Mary Ann left me in a borrowed wheelchair in a so-called “accessible” Berkeley park for an afternoon, I was in tears when she returned. Half a dozen people had come up to pray for me, offer access to miracles and speak to me as though I was a child.

Self-Handicapping, Berkeley, 1978

This “infantilizing” experience reminded me of how the able-bodied members of our community make the rules and define the priorities. The story of our lunch in a Reno casino is apocryphal. I screamed back at the waitress who asked “what the wheelchair wanted for lunch” and Mary Ann just smiled.

It’s not always easy building an accessible house in the bush. But it’s not impossible, either. Our house is a metaphor for the values we hold true.

And accessibility, honouring the memory of my fearless friend, is one of those values.

For photos and stories about this remarkable woman: 

 http://disweb.org/cda/memorials/Memory_p1.html

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt2c60199h&chunk.id=c000022&brand=oac

When there’s morning fog in our valley –  as there is today – I go inside. I can no longer see the sacred mountains my activist neighbours saved from logging with fierce campaigns in the seventies and eighties.

My daily glimpse of a politicised landscape to remind me what’s important.

What we’re fighting to save.

My forest.

Even my tiny glimpse of the neighbours is blocked this morning. The fog even seems to silence our tiny ephemeral creek that, this year, is running in the so-called ‘dry’ season.

I go inside.

I stay by my window, inside my memories.

I sit at my desk looking into a wide, grey expanse. Breathe. Then it all comes back.

Vancouver fog in my home town.

I grew up on the boundary of a big city, right at the edge of a dark forest. Most mornings I awoke to the sound of fog and foghorns…

 Hoooo hoo.

There were no trees in my suburb. The original forest had been shredded and pummelled flat in response to someone’s unrealistic expectation of building a landing field for small planes. I could not see single living tree growing by the new houses. Not one, not a single one.

In the early days, in the forties, when the houses were brand new, the mountain lions … or were they cougars..? who could say? … still crept down from their forest lairs and along the river banks and wandered the dark winding streets.

Afraid of them and their wildness, prudent householders barred their doors against their shadow-presence. They dreamed of chasing them back to the river. Chasing them back to the remaining vestiges of forest high on the mountain.

After some research, I discovered why we had so much fog in Norgate Park in the early days. The sawmill not far from our place was still operating and there were few controls on emissions in the forties and fifties. When the sawmill closed down (they’d cut down all the forests), the fog stopped. No more mournful foghorn tones in the morning.

But I was gone by then – to seek adventures elsewhere.

What do these musings have to do with fog in Nimbin in 2009?

I’m not exactly sure.

We saved our forests in the Northern Rivers.

Fog is natural in the Rainbow Region.

But this cold winter  – colder at night than Vancouver – with frost in the valley– my neighbours – and even our small household – are burning timber in fires and stoves.

How ‘sustainable’ is that?