A Different Kind of Pot Head: The New Johnny Appleseed
10/25/2007
Everyone likes to think of themselves as an instrument of social change these days. Everybody got some great idea for changing the world around them when they aren’t in the club gettin’ tipsy. Perhaps your philanthropy might take the form of a recently purchased, vertically-integrated-manufacturing-ed Rib Boy Beater Tank from sweatshop renouncer Am App , or, you might have traded in your decade-old Vespa for a fixed gear several years ago. Regardless of how you express your good will towards man and/or planet, we are all blown away when a true social visionary materializes out of nowhere.
Enter Paul Glover (having a Wikipedia page lends a person more legitimacy than a library card), a contemporary Johnny Appleseed. Young Glover has transplanted himself from the post-industrial wastelands of Upstate New York to the oft-swept-by-Center-City-District-Munincipal-Employees-and-gunfire sidewalks of Philadelphia where he has made a pledge to transform Philadelphia’s some 40,700 vacant lots into viable apple orchards. Sixty-year-old Glover plans to achieve this lofty goal through the Philly Orchard Project, or POP (a convenient acronym), and his elephantine green thumb.
Scoff though some may, Glover has an impressive list of personal accolades to support the legitimacy of his cause. The social activist is credited with creating the “first US bioregional currency, accepted by thousands of residents and over 500 businesses" (Ithaca HOURs) and founding several nonprofit, collective health financing systems, as well as being a 2004 Green Party presidential nominee (no sheeeeeeet). Regardless of what happens, dude's serious ‘bout ripened ovaries and coming to a bombed-out lot near you.
Read up on Sustainable Development.
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