Human Flower Project

Cut-Flower Trade

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Konvalinka - It Took an Army

For the annals of unintended consequences: how the Red Army kept the bloom on Moravia’s May flower.

Convallaria majalis (lily of the valley), known in France as “muguets,” in the Czech Republic as “konvalinka”
Photo: Klaus Neukirch

Klaus and Nicole Neukirch of Quarante, France, emailed these lilies of the valley several weeks ago, observing—as well as digitization permits—the beautiful French custom of sharing and wearing muguets for good luck on May 1. Merci, mes tresors!

Imagine our surprise when a week later, we met this woman selling the tiny white bells and their green-leaf wrappers on the street in Brno, Czech Republic. It was Saturday, May 9, formerly recognized as Czech Liberation Day, but we don’t know as that occasion brought this woman from her home in Vyskov to the city. More likely, it was just that lilies of the valley were in bloom. When we asked a clerk at our hotel if this flower held any special meaning at this time of year, she replied: “It’s just something old people in the country do for money.”

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Monday, April 20, 2009

Flower Vendors, Sing Out!

To Archie Green’s temple of laborlore, we bring another offering: “cries” from the street.

Archie Green
at home on Caselli Ave., San Francisco, 2008
Photo: Shelly Romalis

A month ago, one of my heroes gave out after 91 years. Archie Green died March 22 in San Francisco.

As widely read and thoughtful as anyone I’ve known, Archie stretched over political theory, linguistics, the history of art prints, ethnomusicology, 19th Century American literature…. In conversation, he was precise and boundless, also given to fine eccentricities, like intentionally mispronouncing the singer Madonna’s name – “Ma-dOne-Ah,” with a very long, dopey O.

Archie’s great commission was studying the culture of working people, what he called “laborlore.” From the inception of the Human Flower Project, I tried to get him aboard but never succeeded.

Here, I and others have looked at many dimensions of flower labor. We’ve written about the conditions for fieldworkers in several parts of the world, and tricks of the florists’ trade. We’ve run photographs of New York sweatshops where women made artificial flowers. We even documented the use of flowers in a Montreal labor union’s demonstration. Pushing all these efforts at Archie, I could tell he was never really grabbed by any of it.

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Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Olympic Flowers ‘10: Just Choose June

To make its victory bouquets, Vancouver’s Olympics committee has chosen a florist with prison credentials.

June Strandberg, florist for the Vancouver Winter Olympics
Photo: Sharon Doucette, for Surry Now

Conscientious consumption—the demonstration of ethics via your nearest and dearest commodities—will take the international stage next year, in the grip of swooshing ski jumpers and jaw-rattled luge riders.

The organizing committee for Vancouver’s Winter Olympics 2010 has chosen Just Beginnings Flowers to make the 1500 bouquets for next winter’s Olympic champions.

Just Beginnings, HFP readers may recall, is a fascinating flower shop that combines social uplift with retailing.  Owner June Strandberg trains recovering addicts and ex-prisoners in floral design, offering instruction in the basement of her shop in Surry’s Phoenix Centre. Strandberg has also taught floristry behind bars.

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Sunday, February 01, 2009

With Flowers for the Columbia

A national tragedy revealed the human flower instinct.

The space shuttle Columbia, February 1, 2003
Photo: by Dr. Scott Lieberman, via AP

Six years ago today, we were driving to Houston on the Lunar New Year, fired up about interviewing some of the city’s Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese residents about floral traditions of the “spring festival.” Breezing down Highway 71, we clicked on the radio and heard the news – something had gone very wrong with the space shuttle. Still-early reports suggested that the Columbia had been damaged re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere and broken apart over East Texas.

As we approached the Harris County line the worst was confirmed. The Columbia had exploded. All seven crew members were dead.

The news was haunting, especially for those of us who’d grown up during the “space race.” We could still remember sitting excitedly in a tiny chair in the school gym to watch Alan Shepherd lift-off in Freedom 7, May 5, 1961. The whole school watched this unbelievable event on a black and white television and cheered when the rocket sparked and heaved into flight.

But this was February 1, 2003. We’d hadn’t even been aware that the Columbia was orbiting Earth, on its 28th mission.

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