May 19, 2009

As yet another cargo train thunders past her house in Fortín de las Flores, Mexico, Benita Juárez wraps a scarf around her head and looks up. In addition to its usual load of sugar cane, coffee and automobiles, the train carries migrants traveling north from Central America. As the train passes, Juárez, 84, glimpses the migrants who huddle in the wells at the back of the cars, ride on top, or cling to the sides of the train.

• Plant lettuce in a window box. Lettuce that you grow yourself does not have to be transported from farm to grocer to home, burning fuel. A home garden can be as simple as a window box and as elaborate as a carefully designed urban plot. (kitchengardeners.org)

• Boycott meat from Confined Animal Feeding Operations. Anything that comes shrink-wrapped in the grocery store is from a CAFO unless otherwise noted. (Union of Concerned Scientists)

It had been almost three months since I made a pastoral call on Jack Matthews, who is one of our elderly parishioners now living at Pittsburgh’s West minster Residences. He mentioned this to an elder, who might have said something to a few other church members. Soon I was pulling into West minster’s freshly painted parking lot, lined with small shrubs and promising little trees.

An old Senegalese proverb says, “An elder who dies is like a library that burns.” This belief is at the heart of the small but moving independent film Goodbye Solo, directed and co-written by Ramin Bahrani. It’s also the conviction that drives the main character, Solo (Souléymane Sy Savané), an upbeat Senegalese immigrant to the U.S.