Happy World Fair Trade Day, everyone! (And a happy Fair Trade Fortnight, too — the celebrating stretches on through May 16.)

In addition to the World’s Largest Coffee Break, which has turned into an annual tradition, festivities for this year’s WFTD include the multi-city “Big Bang Stomp.” Folks across the globe — in London, Seattle, Reykjavik, Dakar, Nairobi, Tokyo, Manila, Christchurch (New Zealand), and the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu — are picking up drums (or even buckets and trash-can lids) and making a joyful racket to get the word out about fair trade.

On a related note, we went to the second-annual Down:2:Earth expo last month, and we had a blast. Just like we did last time! The highlights:

• checking out the fascinating panel “The Future of Cars”
• sampling a tasty amuse bouche prepared by chef Mary Dumont (of the way-upscale Harvest restaurant in Cambridge)
• reading anonymous confessions of un-green behavior, as scrawled on a ZipCar
• gawping at local designers’ handiwork at the “Eco-Chic Fashion Show”
• seeing some familiar faces — like Equal Exchange and Mass Farmers Markets!

Check it out!

Oh, and a short ZipiZape Artisans update for y’all: As you may have noticed, our online store, www.zipizapeartisans.com, is currently offline. Fear not; we shall return. We’ve got a big relaunch in the works, so we’ll be on hiatus until we finish our retooling the site. Call it spring cleaning. In the meantime, you can still hang with us here. Or on MySpace. Or on Twitter.

a

^{A member of Unidos do Peruche samba school parades at the Sambadrome, as part of carnival celebrations, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, late February 20, 2009. (MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images, via www.boston.com)}

Virtual Carnival Cruise

Fat Tuesday is bearing down on us, and this boston.com roundup of Carnival festivities from around the globe was just too jaw-dropping not to share. Most of the photos were snapped in Brazil (natch), but this collection includes shots taken in such far-flung locales as the Canary Islands, Italy, France, Hungary, Germany, Haiti, and Colombia.

Enter the Sambadrome, if you dare:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/carnival.html

Mardi Hearty

[View with PicLens]

On the more provincial side, here’s a quick rundown of various Mardi Gras-related festivities happening in our neck of the woods (for this humble blogger, that’d be Boston).

BUCKWHEAT ZYDECO
Zydeco music | Showcase Live, Foxboro | Tue.2.24 @ 3 pm | $25-$50 | showcaselive.com

MARDI GRAS MADNESS
R&B with Soul City | Dick’s Last Resort, Boston | Tue.2.24 @ 5 pm | free | dickslastresort.com

FAT TUESDAY
Special Cajun menu and blues with the Gumbo Kings | Smoken’ Joe’s BBQ, Brighton | Tue.2.24 @ 6 pm | free | smokenjoesbbq.com

MARDIS GRAS PARTY
Jazz and R&B with Henri Smith’s New Orleans Friends & Flavours | Middle East downstairs, Cambridge | Tue.2.24 @ 9 pm | $5 | mideastclub.com

BEAUSOLEIL
Cajun music | Regattabar, Cambridge | Thu.2.26 @ 7:30 + 10 pm | $25 | regattabarjazz.com

VOODOO MARDI GRAS
Live percussion and mashups with DJs AA and Franklin | Underbar, Boston | Fri.2.27 @ 11 pm | free before midnight | underbaronline.com

Bonus tangentially Mardi Gras-themed joke:

Q: What’s the loneliest place in Louisiana?

A: Bayou Self.

a

[View with PicLens]

Once again, Oscar night is upon us, and in just a few short hours, we will all be rapturously gazing upon Hugh Jackman throughout an evening of television sure to be at least one-tenth as suspenseful as the final act of Slumdog Millionaire. As a champion of both art and brief attention spans, ZipiNotes is proud to present a quick rundown of this year’s nominees for Best Animated Short. (For a refresher on the 2008 award contenders, check out our post from last year.)

**UPDATE**: La Maison en Petits Cubes won! Click here for the full list of winners.

La Maison en Petits Cubes (clip)
The most languid of the bunch, the melancholy La Maison en Petits Cubes is animator Kunio Kato’s first Oscar nod. Set in a steadily flooding world, the film follows an old man who tries to keep his head above water in a house built of memories. (And if you like what you see here, take a look at this YouTube user, who has a pretty extensive collection of Kato vids.)

Official site: http://kiteretsu.robot.co.jp/kunio/

Lavatory: Lovestory (full)
From Russian animator Konstantin Bronzit, Lavatory: Lovestory is a sweet, simple tale about a lonely washroom attendant and her secret admirer. Get a little more info (and a duplicate video clip) here: http://haha.nu/beautiful/lavatory-lovestory/

Official site: http://www.melnitsa.com

Oktapodi (full)
Put together by a crew of mighty talented film students, Oktapodi is a frenetic romp through windy Euro streets, as one very determined squid fights to save his leggy paramour from certain calamari doom. Oh, and as much as I love the lightweight convenience of YouTube, you really owe it to yourself to watch this one in high-res.

Official site: http://www.oktapodi.com

Presto (clip)
Backed by mighty Pixar muscle, Presto — a manic battle of wills between an uptight magician and his ornery rabbit — is an awfully promising contender in this competition. Actually, my favorite part of this film was the intro: a tip-o’-the-hat to classic Disney shorts. (See the full version here at Truveo.)

Official site: http://www.pixar.com/shorts/presto/index.html

This Way Up (clip)
I saw this BBC-produced short three times in theaters last year (thanks to the always-excellent Animation Show), and it only gets better with every viewing. Two undertakers — glowering dad and hapless son — end up going through a bizarre journey through hell and back when they let their latest corpse slip through their embalming-fluid-stained fingers.

Official site: http://www.thiswayupmovie.com/

Bonus Oscarificness

Let the Right One In

Recently, I polled a bunch of Boston film luminaries (i.e., theater directors, indie filmmakers, festival organizers, etc.) on their fantasy Oscar picks. Here are the results, as published in Stuff magazine (nee Stuff@night) last week.

http://stuffboston.com/get/archive/2009/02/09/oscar-wild.aspx

Their answers were all illuminating, but here are the major lessons I took away from this experience:

1) Everyone needs to watch Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In, pronto.
2) Someone decided to pair up Will Smith with a jellyfish.
3) Boston’s film elite have no problem dispensing the lulz.

a

And in other news, we’ve got a couple new places where you can connect with us online.

Facebook
It was only a matter of time before we embraced this brave new Facebook world — and that time was now.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Milford-NH/zipiZape-Artisans/61964773264

Yelp
Now that we’ve got the store up and running, come visit us, and let Yelp know what you think!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/zipizape-artisans-milford

a

ZipiZape Artisans is opening a brick-and-mortar store! We made a test run with the storefront in December, and things went so smashingly, we decided to take the plunge. And you’re invited to the grand opening celebration!

ZIPIZAPE ARTISANS GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION
Friday, January 30, 2099 • 7pm-9pm
20 Middle St., Milford, NH 03055
[click here for details]

We’ll have live music — provided by trio Mottau, Drew & Clark — and a whole mess of fabulous new finds. Click here for more details!

Here’s our location:

Download KML

So now you can still check us out anytime day or night at our online store, and if you’re ever in southern New Hampshire, you can check out our new home sweet home. Come visit!

a

Tomorrow, World Fair Trade Day 2008 is being celebrated in over 70 countries, with free food, lectures, concerts, fashion shows and art exhibits. Surrounding WFT Day is the first-annual Fair Trade Fortnight, which is running through May 18. For this inaugural Fortnight, the theme is environmental justice.

For example, Trade Aid New Zealand is going all-out with their “Junk 2 Green Funk” contest, in which participants re-fashion trash into art. The aim is to to heighten awareness of conservation and the role of the artisan in fair-trade craftsmanship.

So what do you get out of World Fair Trade Day?
Retailers all over the country are going to be handing out free fair trade coffee, chocolate and other samples. And we’re not talking just any caffeinated swill here — this is quality stuff. Great art and film events abound, too.

What do the fair-trade craftsmen and farmers get out of it?
Where to start? Living wages; safe working environments; ecologically sound production methods; long-term working relationships between producers and retailers.

Of course, just because Mother’s Day comes only once a year (you didn’t forget, did you?), doesn’t mean you should ignore your mom for the other 364 days. So it goes without saying that it’s important to support fair-trade producers whenever you can. At zipiZape Artisans, we celebrate Fair Trade Day every day, offering handmade crafts from artisans from all over the world — Mexico, Nepal, South Africa and Peru, to name just a few of the countries our producers hail from, as well as Navajo and Zuni art from right here in the US.

Back to WFT Day: There are fair-trade throwdowns going on all over the country this weekend. These 6 listings should give you a little taste of what’s going on in our neck of the woods (New England), including trunk shows, free coffee and chocolate, film screenings and wine samplings:

Worlds Biggest Coffee Break
Saturday, May 10 | 3pm-4pm

Description: “Aiming to set a world record for the biggest ever coffee break, Amherst Fair Trade Partnership (AFTP) will stage a ‘Fair Trade Coffee Break’ on May 10, World Fair Trade Day. It will be one of hundred’s of Fair Trade coffee breaks held simultaneously around the world, and will focus on the benefits of Fair Trade for farmers, consumers, and the environment. AFTP will distribute Free Fair Trade coffee, chocolate and flowers at various businesses throughout Amherst at 3pm. Live music will be at some locations. AFTP will also distribute a guide to all the places that carry Fair Trade products in town. In order to set the world record, the events will have to draw over 5,000 people throughout the U.S. participating at the same time.”

Participating venues: Black Sheep Deli/Cafe, Loose Goose Deli, Henions Bakery, Wheatberry Bakery, Bart’s Ice Cream, Collective Copies, Tabella Restaurant

[Amherst, MA (downtown). 413.687.1434. amherstfairtrade@earthlink.net]

- – -

Fair Trade Film Screening: “Chocolate Country”
Saturday, May 10 | 2pm

Description: “This 30 minute film won Best Short Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival and is an exciting, positive story set to local Dominican folk music. It will take you into another world and culture and show you where chocolate comes from, how it’s grown and prepared, and how you can support a better life for the farmers who grow it. You can read about it and see the trailer at ChocolateCountryFilm.com. The director, Robin Blotnick, and the producers, Northampton locals Jill Higgins and Joe Blotnick, will be there to present and discuss the film. Chocolate Country came into being while Jill and Joe were Peace Corps volunteers in the Dominican Republic working with the cacao farmers’ cooperative and their film maker son came to visit.” Admission is $3, and apparently comes with free Pierce Brothers coffee and Divine chocolate.

View trailer (click here if you’re having trouble viewing the embedded video below):

[Amherst Cinema, Amherst Cinema Arts Center, 28 Amity St., Amherst, MA. 413.687.1434. $3. amherstcinema.org, chocolatecountryfilm.com. amherstfairtrade@earthlink.net]

- – -

World Fair Trade Day @ Made on Earth and Lydia’s Cafe
Saturday, May 10 | 9am-5:30pm

Description: “Made on Earth and Lydia’s cafe will join together to celebrate Fair Trade Day. Lydia’s will provide free Fair Trade coffee between 3-3:30pm and Made on Earth will donate 10% of it’s sales to GALA, a local organization promoting just and equitable commerce and environmental intergrity on a local level.”

[Made on Earth and Lydia's Cafe, Wolfeboro Marketplace, Wolfeboro, NH. 603.569.9100. madeonearthwolfeboro.com

- - -

World's Largest Coffee Break
Saturday, May 10 | 10am-5pm

Description: "Join us in Celebrating World Fair Trade Day on Saturday, May 10th. Simply Unique Boutique will join with people from 70 countries worldwide to celebrate World Fair Trade Day. We're trying to set the World Record for the Largest Fair Trade Coffee Break at 3:00pm. Come learn about Fair Trade and How you can Make a Difference. We will be introducing Fair Trade Coffee, Tea and Chocolate. Don't forget to put your name in for Fair Trade Gift Raffles!"

[Simply Unique Boutique, 206 East Main Street (Rt. 16), Milford, MA. 508.473.3473. simplyuniqueboutique@verizon.net]

- – -

Faith Brewing Justice
Saturday, May 10 | 1pm-5pm

Description: “World Fair Trade Day Resource event for Christians and Churches (and anybody else!) in the Boston area: –Fair Trade Coffee Break –Interactive Workshops –Local Fair Trade Organizations –Ecumenical Worship.”

[Harvard Epworth Church, 1555 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA. 978.979.7878. bostonfaithjustice.org]

- – -

WFT Day Trunk Show and Wine Tasting
Saturday, May 10 | 3pm-5pm

Description: “Autonomie Project, a new Fair Trade fashion company, is hosting it’s first trunk show in honor of World Fair Trade Day. Shop Autonomie’s new collection of Fair Trade sneakers, flip flops and hand bags; hear a presentation about the workers behind the products and how Fair Trade helps them and their communities; sample Fair Trade wines while you shop; get a free goodie bag full of Fair Trade swag and coupons!”

[Greenward Shop, 776 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA. 617.395.1338. autonomieproject.com]

a

Oh, and plenty of fresh-faced sincerity — from the farmers’ market reps, to the cycling advocates, to the Boston Harbor Islands conservationists. Slightly more cynical was environmentalist Bill McKibben (choice quote: “I’m not an insane optimist … I wrote a book called ‘The End of Nature’ “), whose keynote speech quickly roused me from my feel-good stupor.

And what would a eco-fest be without an eco-fashion show? Hemp threads abounded, accessorized by felt totes from Etcetera Media, lacquered paper beads from Paper to Pearls and shoulder bags made of repurposed sailcloth.

Also, stay tuned for Part 2, when I’ll be posting a batch of recipes swiped directly from D:2:E. Believe me, you’re going to want to learn how to make that Haley House slaw. (Sooo good.)

a

[I]f the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.

This year, 370 cities worldwide took the pledge; and now Earth Hour 2008 has come and gone. Was it a success? While results seemed a little mixed, one thing is for sure: Sydney and Manila both earned gold stars. Just take a look at Boston.com’s photo gallery:

^{[photo courtesy the Associated Press]}

Inspiring, no? And the Earth Hour Flickr pool is filling up with some equally dramatic photos. (Way to go, Seattle!)

Even Google got in on the act.

^{[photo courtesy pirate johnny]}

OK, I worry that this post might be coming off as a bit breathless … but after seeing environmentalist Bill McKibben speak at D2E Boston, it’s hard not to be all fired up about climate change. Yesterday, McKibben dropped this sobering statistic: NASA researchers recently concluded that the maximum safe atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is roughly 350 parts per million. And we shot past that benchmark 20 years ago — we’re at 385 ppm right now.

McKibben offers this analogy: Let’s say your doctor tells you that your cholesterol is dangerously high. Sure, you may not be doubled over with a heart attack right this second, but unless you’re looking to become a young, well-marbled corpse, McKibben says, “you have to stop eating cheese.” Consider Earth Hour a slice of cheese not eaten.

McKibben’s latest effort is 350.org, a global-warming activist movement still in its infancy. Check it out!

a

By the time March rolls around, we New Englanders are through with merely being SAD — we’re exasperated. (Seriously; have you seen NH’s snowfall statistics?)

So, really, it’s no surprise that the New England Spring Flower Show is consistently packed to the gills with nearly 100,000 of the Northeast’s winter survivors, all straining to catch a glimpse of green to tide them over until the earth wakes up and starts blooming again. For this annual event, the Bayside Expo Center surreally transforms into a lush garden paradise.

Every year, the Flower Show takes on a new theme, and encourages its exhibitors to run wild with it. For 2008 (marking the 137th show), they chose “Rhapsody in Green,” a celebration of eco-friendly and sustainable horticulture. ” ‘Green’ doesn’t have to mean dull and practical,” exclaims the Mass Hort website. “This year, we’ll show the cutting-edge, sensual and colorful side of responsible gardening.” And the exhibitors delivered, filling the Bayside with battery-powered lawn mowers, solar-powered trash cans and rain gardens.

Here are the highlights. For the full image gallery, click here to view it at our Flickr page. (Note: If you enjoy this recap, stay tuned for our coverage of D2E Boston, which kicks off at the Hynes Convention Center next week. You might also want to check out our notes from our last trip to the Bayside, for Boston’s inaugural Going Green Expo.)

Upon entering the showroom, visitors were greeted by this massive metal spheroid made by sculptor Chris Williams.

The word of the day was “xeriscapes,” or landscaping that relies on plants that have a reduced need for water. The city of Boston’s Parks & Recreation Department put together a little display they deemed “Green on Green” to show off the low-irrigation plants they’ve incorporated into their landscaping (the roster includes Moses in the Bulrushes, Lavender Cotton, Variegated Umbrella Plant, Cabbage Palm, Yu Hwa Ginger, Swedish Ivy, Capita Yew and Hicks Yew). Here’s what they had to say about “Green on Green”:

[It] conveys the ability to construct a creative floral presentation with the use of carefully selected water-conserving plant materials, a 100% solar-powered trash compacting receptacle, and a wire recycling bin, while demonstrating how the City of Boston’s open spaces can integrate green practices with beauty.

Boston, you’ve got solar-powered dumpsters. The future is now!

Here’s another xeriscape, this one from Tranquil Lake Nursery. You probably can’t tell from my crummy photo, but the plants are poking out of a bed of sparkly sea glass.

Froggy went a-courtin’ … and got shot down pretty hard, apparently.

I don’t know if the MassHort judges have a category for “Most Resembling a Hallucinogenic Fever Dream,” but if they did, there’s no question that Fine Garden Art’s exhibit would win, hands-down, with their tribute to monocots — such as oats, spelt, wheat and corn. From their promo blurb:

What does ‘GRASS’ mean to you? A lawn, horse food, marijuana? ‘Grass’ belongs to a vast botanical family of plants that have forever been indispensable to life on earth. This exhibit honors the contribution of this family of plants to the whole family of man. Let us give thanks.

Whatever your definition of grass, we can agree that it took a lot of it to make this tableau. This display has everything: mysterious glowing cones, 7-foot-tall pillars of undulating grain, rusty scythes and an enormous sidewinding cornucopia.

Here, Chris Williams’s giant iron moose wades in a koi pond, munching on pond grasses.

On to the flower-arranging design competition. The motif here is “Tornado.”

To be honest, this portion of the flower show still sort of mystifies me. But it looks great!

Neuton came packing their slick battery-powered, no-emissions lawn mowers and haulers. These guys aren’t new to the green party — they’ve been in business since 1985.

Here we are at the dealer’s row. (Would you believe that those eerily lifelike flowers in the first picture are actually just corn starch and Elmer’s glue?)

Of course, I can never make it out of the flower show without scooping up a plant or two (dozen) to spruce up my sad little apartment container garden. These are my trophies!

Well, OK, this little guy didn’t actually come from the flower show — but his Talavera-style perch did!

a

Yes, today is 3.14 … which means it’s time for math-flavored absurdity and geeky carbohydrates!

Historical food blogger The Old Foodie has decided to downplay the numbers to put together five neat posts examining the history of “pi(e)” itself. (Though she does note that, all punning aside, pi and pie are inextricably linked by their geometrical associations.)

Her first installment rounds up a strange bestiary of extinct, exotic or long-forgotten pies, including eel pie (1861), bride pie (1660) and pies with live birds and frogs (1665).

And if all this gastronomic archaeology really lights your fire, I should point out that The Old Foodie’s forthcoming book, “The Pie, a Celebratory History,” will (hopefully) be available in late 2008.

a