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Drummer and sculptor Maxwell Kofi Donkor stirs up the spirit
So, you’re a Ghanian prince?
My father is the highest chief, the Asantehene, it means the king of the Asante. The Asante is the largest tribe in Ghana, and because I am one of his sons – there are ten of us children and six sons – I am a prince.
Now I know Kofi means Friday, because you were born on Friday. What is the language?
It’s Asante Twi. Twi is the wider language. We have four or five different languages but it’s all Twi.
Any thought of going back to rule the country?
I don’t think I would. I don’t think that is my personality. I have always been a different kind of leader — really in the trenches. And I am hoping to make a difference here, too. We have 13 acres where we are [in Greenville]. The goal is to build a nonprofit organization.
Tell us about the school you envision.
I don’t call it a school. It is a place of experience where people would come and learn to bring the arts to the world. The very old forms of art, folk art, are being lost. These are the foundational forms and some of them are not even recorded. It is sad.
So there will be a place where people would come and stay for a couple of days, not long, and have an experience with a master, like me. It would start from Africa. But I’m looking at other cultures, indigenous cultures, like Japan, Fiji, Aborigines, Native American. We would bring people here and they would take that experience with them and they would become a link so that we could reach out to the world.
The name of your drumming and dancing group is Sankofa. What does that mean?
It’s a symbol which looks like a bird whose neck is curved, looking the opposite way. My grandfather would always explain it this way, “Listen, you see the bird and you think it is looking at you, looking forward, but it’s looking backward. Literally translated, Sankofa means, ‘It’s OK. It’s OK to go back — but don’t stay back; don’t stay in the past.’” The past should be a springboard for you to look ahead.
You come from privilege, but you have always had a feeling for the underprivileged. Where did that come from?
My mom would bring home somebody from the street and have them stay with us and she took care of them. We worked on the farms with the laborers. We did everything that needed to be done in the house. And even though there were those in the house who were serving us, we never called them servants; we called them our brothers and our sisters.
What is it about you that compels all this self expression?
I would say, we, as people, as humans, we are made to express. We are vehicles of expression and everybody has a unique form of expression. If you don’t allow that part of you out, we create this kind of vacuum, or I should say, this storage. It is very vital that we express ourselves. There are some cultures that suppress that. We are preserving certain basic forms. These are foundational, creative forms of expression that I don’t want to see being stored in just the galleries.
Gary Oppenheimer stages a coup d’ waste
Where was the idea for AmpleHarvest.org born?
Right here in front of you. In this garden, 2007 was a very prolific year. It reached a point where my wife was saying, “No more of that in the house.” And I’ve always hated waste, whether it’s food or time or energy. So I contacted a battered women’s shelter right here in [West Milford] and said, “I’ve got this extra food, can you use it?” I showed up with about 40 pounds worth of produce — peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes. This lady answers the door and she’s very gracious, and as I was leaving, she says, “Thank you, we now have some fresh food.” That really struck me.
When did you realize this problem was endemic?
In 2008, I was asked to take over the community garden. A lot of food was left to rot. I said, “If we’re going to have an ample harvest, the least we can do is give it away to people.” Google said the nearest food pantry was in Morristown, 25 miles away. I knew that was wrong. If I, an old geek and very internet savvy, can’t find food pantries in my town, that same problem must apply to millions of other gardeners. I got up the next morning and looked to see if AmpleHarvest.org was available as a domain. It was and I grabbed it.
You have 4,439 pantries signed on across the country.
Has this taken over your life?
Oh yeah. The more I spoke to people, the more I realized that I had stumbled upon a hole in the dike, and I figured I could plug it. The hole in the dike was the problem in the American food bank network that can best be summed up, if you ever read Adam Smith, as excess supply not meeting demand. There is excess food locally grown and there’s a vast need for food, and the two aren’t getting together.
You spend hours a day on the site. Does it support you?
I’m digging into my savings, to be blunt. We’re out looking for funding to have a paid staff . This is a lovely idea, but it’s not going to survive as a volunteer eff ort.
Have you always been a computer geek?
My geekdom started in my junior year in college [University of Bridgeport]. The school had just installed a mini-computer. I was enthralled with programming. In 1975, I designed a prototype email program when I was working for a bank. That same year, I built a computer. I soldered a computer together. My mother said I liked machines more than people.
AmpleHarvest.org just won the 2011 Glynwood Wave of the Future Harvest Award. Did you have any inkling?
I knew about the nomination. What I didn’t know was coming was last week, when I got an email from Arianna Huffington. She said I was nominated as one of the Huffington Post Game Changers for 2011.
Do you find yourself wondering how this all happenned?
No. What surprises me is: How come nobody thought of this earlier?
– Photo and Interview by Barbara Gref
Tomboy Mae Katz, 100, has advice for grouchers and groaners
By Geri Corey
First things first: did you ever have any bad habits?
I smoked a little, just to show off. When I was younger women didn’t smoke like today, so I had to show off that I could. My older brother caught me and said, ‘Mae, is that one of those damn cigarettes in your mouth?’ I laughed. Alcohol, no. I never drank.
What’s your typical day like?
I used to be up at 5 a.m. to milk the cows, but because I’m not working the farm, I usually get up about 7. Every day at lunch hour I walk my dog, Charlie, up the street and back, about one mile.
During the day I do a variety of things, like I always did: help with clearing the table, doing the dishes, ironing, straightening up around the house and working in the garden, planting flowers and picking up sticks. I go to church each week with my daughter and go to church events.
What was it like growing up on a New York farm pre-electricity?
I used to milk the cows by hand, and when I was old enough, drove the horses to bring the milk to the creamery, came home to change my clothes and then ran like the devil to school. I like outdoor work best. I always did and I still do. My sister was the ‘house’ girl; I was the ‘boy in the barn.’
My favorite part of growing up on a farm was riding bareback on one of my father’s black, shiny horses. He loved his horses and they had to be kept clean. When it rained, he wouldn’t take them out of the barn, and we had to walk to church.
When I was 13, my father asked me to drive him to Port Jervis to go to his friend’s funeral. He didn’t drive and my brothers were busy, so I drove there and back. It was regular farm life; whatever was asked of us, we did it.
What’s your passion?
More than anything, I like to make things grow. We raised all of our vegetables and canned them. I’ve pulled a lot of weeds.
Tell us about falling in love in the 1930s.
I married Irving Katz in 1932, the same year we electrified our house. We met at a home party. After we were first married, often we’d milk the cows, then drive to New York City to go dancing. Once we placed first in a dance contest and won a trip to Niagara Falls.
Were you a working woman?
When my sons got older and could do more farm chores, I worked as a waitress at Villa Roma, at a grocery store and then at a ladies’ dress shop. I also did a lot of volunteer work for the Retired Citizens Volunteer Program, the Red Cross, and I rode as a first aid responder for the Jeffersonville Ambulance Corps. I taught courses in cane and rush work for Home Extension. I raised foster children, too.
Any advice for others who’d like to live a long while?
People say, ‘I can’t do that.’ They grouch and groan about doing work, but I say just get up and do it. When I’m stiff, I just keep going until I get back to normal. The best way to get rid of pain is to get up and get going.
How do you feel, Mae?
I feel good.
World-class disc golfer Steve Brinster is bombing drives at a course near you.
What makes disc golf green?
Players are aware of their surroundings. Unlike in ball golf, where you have groundskeepers to take care of the property, you’re the people that have to volunteer and clean it up. People take it upon themselves to respect the woods, because they don’t have anyone cleaning up after them.
It’s a low-maintenance kind of sport. A lot of our holes are in the woods and feature boulders and other natural elements. We incorporate those in course designs. On a ball golf course it might be easier to knock those down.
Who’s a typical disc golfer?
Disc golf attracts more hikers, as opposed to the businessmen of ball golf.
You were a pitcher in high school. What drew you to disc golf?
I like the fact it’s not a team sport. You’re in control of everything that happens. It’s you against the course. I like being able to control my own destiny.
So why golf and not, say, ping-pong?
It’s a lot more in depth a sport than most people give it credit for. It requires a lot of visualization and three-dimensional understanding. What’s the bigger gap, what disc should you throw to give yourself the highest percentage shot, how far away is the hole, how far is that tree you need to get around? You need to see all these things combined to have a full understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish. That’s something I’ve always had a knack for.
And it’s outdoors. You get to go to beautiful places. You’re not indoors on a generic court. There are outside elements that make it more appealing. Every situation you’re in the woods is different.
There’s something about being able to throw an object 600 feet. It’s much more thrilling than throwing a football.
Have you always been an outdoorsman?
I grew up in West Milford, where I’ve been doing mountain bike trips and hikes my whole life. One of my favorite places to hike is Budd Lake. I bike in Wawayanda State Park, Ringwood State Park, Jungle Habitat, and up in Vermont.
You just moved to Warwick. What brought you here?
We love the vibe of Warwick. The open space, it’s not overdeveloped. We love the downtown area. The school system was an appealing factor.
What makes a great golfer?
The most important thing is having a good awareness of how your discs fly. If you’re throwing a shot and it goes left, was it you that threw the wrong shot, or was it the wrong disc?
Where to play
• Warwick Town Park, Warwick
• Campgaw Reservation, Mahwah
• Brown’s Point, West Milford
Wildman Steve Brill. Photo by Bruce Hunter
How’d you get into foraging?
I was bicycling in Queens for exercise. Ethnic Greek women dressed in black were picking something in a park. I came home with a bag of grape leaves. Back then, all the grape leaves you could buy were embalmed with chemicals. It was my first experience making stuffed grape leaves, and they were delicious.
Who’s your competition, human or otherwise?
The mowers. But the weeds just keep coming back. They’re things people consider weeds, they’re unwanted. They just grow and reproduce and grow and reproduce more.
Who’s foraging?
People who want healthful, tasty food they can’t get anywhere else. Some interested in the science behind it. Some foodies who want to get their food for free. A bartender on a trip from England who likes to make drinks from exotic ingredients. I get a lot of outdoor people, raw food people, macrobiotic, people into self reliance, people who think there’s going to be some impending disaster here and want to be able to survive. A lot of people bring their kids so they can get some hands-on outdoor experience. They’re certainly not getting outdoor environmental education in the schools.
Is there such thing as a weed-eating major?
No, I had to learn this all on my own. It’s rare that I get invited by academic institutions. Those people are fighting amongst themselves for funds. They’re loathe to spend money on outsiders. I am definitely not part of the academic institution.
Have you ever made a mistake, “Into the Wild”-style?
I made a mistake. I grew up on junk food. But no, I’m very careful. I once waited 10 years to eat a berry: the Cornelian Cherry. It’s in the Dogwood family, which has poisonous members. Before the age of the internet, I couldn’t find anything about it in botany books. Finally, I found that it is the national fruit of Turkey; people have been eating it there for millennia.
What staple might you find in Wawayanda State Park?
The Cattail. Several parts are usable in different times of spring. The shoot tastes like cucumber and zucchini. The immature flower tastes like corn on the cob. It’s a little dry; dry things go really well with sauces. And the pollen is great used in combination with whole-grain flower. I eat cattails any time I come across them — even though I’m a vegan.
Do you worry about ingesting pesticides or fertilizers?
I try to steer clear of anything that might be treated. But the worst stuff that’s treated is what you get in the supermarket.
Could a modern-day adult live off the land indefinitely?
You would have to be drying and preserving a lot of these things for the winter. But you can certainly get tremendous nutrition. My thing isn’t 100 percent survival. It’s supplementing what you’re eating with some really delicious produce. And taking better care of ecosystems. If you enjoy the renewable resources, you’re going to want to take care of the habitats in which these things grow.
What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve found foraging?
I met my wife on one of my tours. It was a singles tour. We were attracted right away. We started dating. We went to Antarctica, and six years ago – Violet, what happens six years ago?
Violet Brill: I was born.
Steve Brill gives foraging tours throughout the greater New York and New Jersey area. He just released a wild edibles app that catalogs 165 of North America’s edible and medicinal plants.
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