Weather talk is generally boring but our cool rainy spring is the only thing on my mind. Any day that is sunny and above 55 I take my rest on the lounge chair under the grape arbor after lunch. This spring I have done it three days and in two days it will be June. It is the middle of winter depressing, wet, damp and cloudy.
I figured it out the other day that we will know the bottom of the economy when neighborhoods like this one, stop hiring people to spraying chemicals on their yards and start to understand the nutritional value of dandelions.
On the one sunny day this week, Tuesday, I went behind our fence to the garden soil pile and was on my knees scooping dirty into a pail. Two deer jumped out of the woods to watch me. They had some of their winter coat still on that was gray and shaggy, very thin and fine boned with large brown eyes. We shared our space for two or three minutes as they watched me load my dirty. As I rose to leave, they jumped into the woods in an instant. Maybe everyone on this block has as many animals in and around their yard but I think because of our organic system of caring for the property we have more than our share. Rabbits, frogs, snakes, mice, bees and birds beyond my id abilities are visitors. There is a crow family of five in the area but one in particular visits our front yard in the morning for worms and if I throw bread to the chickens it is there in a minute steal a piece or two.
I have heard of a year in OLympia about 30 years ago that it rained most of the summer and they had only one sunny week-end. I hope history will not repeat itself this summer. A summer without sun means more peas and less tomatoes.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Reguiem for Gulf
Four minutes of music and photos of this situation.
http://www.countercurrents.org/requiem240510.htm
http://www.countercurrents.org/requiem240510.htm
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The 40's Film and the 60's dinner
John and I went to see a movie last night, Letters to Juliet. It reminded me of the movies of the '40's, people used civil language, the conversations were what average people would have said, no violence, the drama of people making choices about how to live their lives. This predictable film plus it was a travelogue of Italy I have enjoyed seeing some of those places I have seen made for great date night. After seeing the previews, I felt fortunate to have pick this film to enjoy.
For some reason I was also thinking today about a book that I read in the early 60's about Perle Mesta. It struck me as a young person that I had never been or heard of a gathering of any sort like she hosted, she lead a charmed life. Imagine hosting the leaders of the world, the policy thinkers and the most interesting names that passed though Washington D.C or any spot in the world. I have always played the mental game of gathering at my dinner table the people that I think would offer a lively evening of discussion. Of course, the year changes the invitations but I have made some fabulous lists in my life. Today, one person in particular in public life, I would like to spend a day with - no point in sharing that name. The dinner table is always changing. I wonder if other people make the list of their imaginary dinner table and what people they would gather for an evening. The one thing that would probably surprise most reading this is, that I consider my two children two of the brightest people I know, add Shuchi to that list and you know the table discussion will be lively. Call me lucky.
It is a table for twelve. I will take suggestions.
For some reason I was also thinking today about a book that I read in the early 60's about Perle Mesta. It struck me as a young person that I had never been or heard of a gathering of any sort like she hosted, she lead a charmed life. Imagine hosting the leaders of the world, the policy thinkers and the most interesting names that passed though Washington D.C or any spot in the world. I have always played the mental game of gathering at my dinner table the people that I think would offer a lively evening of discussion. Of course, the year changes the invitations but I have made some fabulous lists in my life. Today, one person in particular in public life, I would like to spend a day with - no point in sharing that name. The dinner table is always changing. I wonder if other people make the list of their imaginary dinner table and what people they would gather for an evening. The one thing that would probably surprise most reading this is, that I consider my two children two of the brightest people I know, add Shuchi to that list and you know the table discussion will be lively. Call me lucky.
It is a table for twelve. I will take suggestions.
For all of us
Some times --other people say it better and I need to share.
Food, water and population problems are not in the future they are now. All of us have to realize and change.
There is a popular saying that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result." If we keep doing business in the same way as we have for the past century, each of these six trends will continue their steep rates of decline, collapsing the natural systems that form the foundation for our civilization and the lifeblood of the global economy. Perhaps the current Gulf oil spill is the wake up call that mankind needs to snap us out of our complacency, realize that we are soiling our nest and that continuation of "business as usual" will destroy the world as we know it? Time will tell whether we heed this warning, go back sleep once the oil spill is contained, or simply tire of the endless media coverage, numb ourselves, and set these critical issues to the side.
We already have the technology and the means to turn this dark tide, but we lack the commitment to make the hard choices and sweeping changes that are necessary for shifting the future of our world from its current course of collapse to a new course of sustainability.
The following six trends are converging to form the perfect storm for global destruction, each of which is a potential civilization buster in its own right, if left unchecked:
1. Climate Change: with a 90% degree of certainty, the world's top scientists believe that our planet's climate is changing at an accelerating pace, that these changes are caused by man, and will have increasingly severe consequences for our world. Naysayers stress the 10% scientific probability that man is not the cause of current climate changes, but would you board a plane if you were told it had a 9 out of 10 chance of crashing? It is a rare person over the age of thirty who will tell you that the weather is not quite different now from when they were a child. Certainly far more erratic, though not necessarily always hotter.
Recent estimates by a collaborative team of climate scientists, including a group from MIT, calculate that even if we implemented the most stringent greenhouse gas limits currently proposed by some of the world's governments, it is quite likely that our world's climate will warm by 6.3F or more over the next century, leading to disastrous crop failures in most of the world's productive farmlands and "breadbaskets".
2. Peak Oil: Our global economy and culture are built largely upon a reliance on cheap oil. From the cars we drive, to the jets we fly, to the buildings we live in, to the food we eat, to the clothes we wear--almost everything that encompasses the fabric of our modern life is either powered by oil, built from oil, or made/grown via machines powered by oil. When the price of oil rose to $140 a barrel in 2008, the world's economy went into a tailspin--collapsing local economies, reducing consumption, and bringing the price of oil back down to a fraction of what it had been just a few months earlier. Global output of traditional crude oil peaked around 2005-2006 and is currently declining. Expensive alternate oil and oil-equivalent sources, like tar sands, deep ocean oil wells, and bio fuels have taken up the slack for the time being, but these are limited resources and their utilization is not growing as quickly as anticipated to fill in the gap caused by the shrinking output from the world's mature oil fields. In 2008 the International Energy Association (IEA) estimated that decline at a rate of the world's mature oil fields at 9.1% annually, with a drop to "only" 6.4% if huge capital investments are made to implement "Enhanced Oil Recovery" technologies on a massive scale.
Without developing energy alternatives at warp speed, or discovering and developing an entire Saudi Arabia's worth of oil every few years from now until eternity (an impossible fantasy), our world will be in a heap of trouble if and when the economy starts to pop back and supply once again falls short of demand, resulting in more oil price spikes followed by another round of crashes. In the mid 1960s, when discoveries of new oil reserves reached their historical peak, we were discovering oil at a rate four times faster than we were consuming it. In recent years, the tables have turned. With technology that is miles beyond what was available in 1960, we are discovering about 1/10th as much oil each year as we did then, but consuming it at a rate five times faster than we discover it. That's like charging $100,000 dollars on our credit cards each year, and only paying off $20,000. How long can we keep that up before we bankrupt the system? For years, governments have been official naysayers about the "Peak Oil theory". However, in April the US military issued a report saying, "By 2012 surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach 10 million barrels per day."
3. Collapse of the World's Oceans: with 11 out of 15 of the world's major fisheries either in collapse, or in danger of collapse, our world's oceans are in serious trouble! The ocean's planktons form the bottom of both the food chain and the bulk of the carbon-oxygen cycle for our planet. According to a recent British government report, the oceans have lost 73% of their zooplankton since 1960, and over 50% of this decline has been since 1990, and the phytoplanktons are also in serious decline! Unfortunately, the coral reefs aren't doing much better than the planktons. By 2004, an estimated 20 percent of the world's coral reefs had been destroyed (up from just 11 percent in 2000), an additional 24 percent were close to collapsing, and another 26 percent were under long-term threat of collapse.
4. Deforestation: Over 50% of the world's forests have already disappeared, and much of the rest is in threatened. Deforestation contributes approximately 25% of all global greenhouse gasses, nearly double the 14% that transportation and industry sectors each contribute. Additionally, the forests of the world are a critical part of the weather cycle as well as the carbon-oxygen cycle. Each large mature tree acts as a giant water pump, recycling millions of gallons of water back into the atmosphere via evaporation from its leaves or needles. It has been estimated that a single large rainforest or coniferous tree has an evaporative surface area roughly equal to a 40 acre lake. When the trees are decimated in a region, a process called "desertification" tends to occur downwind because the trees are no longer there to pump groundwater back into the atmosphere to fall back to Earth as additional rainfall at some down wind location.
5. The Global Food Crisis: Soils, Weather and Water. For the first time since the "green revolution" started, our world is producing less food each year, yet its population continues to rise as we loose more top soil, arable land, and have less water for irrigation. Climate change is currently contributing more to losses than technology is to gains. In 2008 and 2009, food riots threatened the stability of many governments. In 2010 extended droughts in the breadbaskets of both China and India are threatening the food supply for over 1/3 of the world's population!
6. Over Population: This is the elephant in the room that few are talking about. In the last decade, we have added more people to the population of our planet than were added between the births of Jesus and Abraham Lincoln. In the mid 1980s our world first overshot its capacity to provide for its human population, yet this population continues to grow and we continue to live on borrowed time. One thousand years after Jesus walked the Earth, human population was around 1/2 billion. Eight hundred years later this population doubled to 1 billion. It took only 130 more years to double to 2 billion in 1930. When I was a kid in 1960, world population hit 3 billion people and it only took another 40 years to double to 6 billion in the year 2000.
It is anticipated that the world's population will reach 7 billion in the year 2012, meaning that between the start of the year 2000 and the end of 2012 (barring some huge catastrophe that kills hundreds of millions), more people will have been added to the population of our world than lived on the entire planet just two hundred years ago! There is simply no way we can achieve a sustainable future unless our population stops growing and starts shrinking. Either nature will do this for us, with starvation and plagues spreading across the planet as our natural and man-made systems fall apart, or mankind will use its intelligence and free will to proactively implement positive solutions to these issues.
My intention is not just to bum you out, but to do my part in sounding the alarm for a massive wake up call to start taking the sort of wide ranging actions that will be required in order to succeed in changing the course of our "Titanic" (planet Earth) to dodge the iceberg of global collapse. Averting collapse will not be easy, but it is far better that the alternative! Highly motivated societies have shown that they are able to marshal huge forces to accomplish great things. When Hitler joined forces with Mussolini and Japan, the threat was great enough to unite the Russians and Americans with the rest of the world in a common goal.
If we could put humans on the moon, build the Panama Canal, defeat Hitler, and rebuild Europe after WWII, why can't we unite to create a viable planetary civilization? So far, we lack not the means, but only the will and the leadership. In general, people lead and governments follow. It took massive action on the part of millions of people in the abolitionist movement to finally put a candidate in power (Lincoln) who was willing to do something about it, and for the suffrage movement to finally force governments to grant women the right to vote. Though none of us will individually alter the course of the universe, collectively we can do this! Just as the German people were asked how they could have allowed the Holocaust to take place before their very eyes, do we wish to be held accountable by future generations for allowing the approaching "Perfect Storm" to devastate our world while we had the knowledge and technology to change its course?
Matthew Stein is the author of When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency from Chelsea Green. For more information, visit chelseagreen.com and whentechfails.com.
Food, water and population problems are not in the future they are now. All of us have to realize and change.
""""""Failure is not in falling down, but in refusing to get up. --Chinese ProverbThere are dark clouds gathering on the horizon. They are the clouds of six hugely troubling global trends, climate change being just one of the six. Individually, each of these trends is a potential civilization buster. Collectively, they are converging to form the perfect storm--a storm of such magnitude that it will dwarf anything that mankind has ever seen. If we are unsuccessful in our attempts to calm this storm, without a doubt it will destroy life as we know it on Planet Earth!
There is a popular saying that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result." If we keep doing business in the same way as we have for the past century, each of these six trends will continue their steep rates of decline, collapsing the natural systems that form the foundation for our civilization and the lifeblood of the global economy. Perhaps the current Gulf oil spill is the wake up call that mankind needs to snap us out of our complacency, realize that we are soiling our nest and that continuation of "business as usual" will destroy the world as we know it? Time will tell whether we heed this warning, go back sleep once the oil spill is contained, or simply tire of the endless media coverage, numb ourselves, and set these critical issues to the side.
We already have the technology and the means to turn this dark tide, but we lack the commitment to make the hard choices and sweeping changes that are necessary for shifting the future of our world from its current course of collapse to a new course of sustainability.
The following six trends are converging to form the perfect storm for global destruction, each of which is a potential civilization buster in its own right, if left unchecked:
1. Climate Change: with a 90% degree of certainty, the world's top scientists believe that our planet's climate is changing at an accelerating pace, that these changes are caused by man, and will have increasingly severe consequences for our world. Naysayers stress the 10% scientific probability that man is not the cause of current climate changes, but would you board a plane if you were told it had a 9 out of 10 chance of crashing? It is a rare person over the age of thirty who will tell you that the weather is not quite different now from when they were a child. Certainly far more erratic, though not necessarily always hotter.
Recent estimates by a collaborative team of climate scientists, including a group from MIT, calculate that even if we implemented the most stringent greenhouse gas limits currently proposed by some of the world's governments, it is quite likely that our world's climate will warm by 6.3F or more over the next century, leading to disastrous crop failures in most of the world's productive farmlands and "breadbaskets".
2. Peak Oil: Our global economy and culture are built largely upon a reliance on cheap oil. From the cars we drive, to the jets we fly, to the buildings we live in, to the food we eat, to the clothes we wear--almost everything that encompasses the fabric of our modern life is either powered by oil, built from oil, or made/grown via machines powered by oil. When the price of oil rose to $140 a barrel in 2008, the world's economy went into a tailspin--collapsing local economies, reducing consumption, and bringing the price of oil back down to a fraction of what it had been just a few months earlier. Global output of traditional crude oil peaked around 2005-2006 and is currently declining. Expensive alternate oil and oil-equivalent sources, like tar sands, deep ocean oil wells, and bio fuels have taken up the slack for the time being, but these are limited resources and their utilization is not growing as quickly as anticipated to fill in the gap caused by the shrinking output from the world's mature oil fields. In 2008 the International Energy Association (IEA) estimated that decline at a rate of the world's mature oil fields at 9.1% annually, with a drop to "only" 6.4% if huge capital investments are made to implement "Enhanced Oil Recovery" technologies on a massive scale.
Without developing energy alternatives at warp speed, or discovering and developing an entire Saudi Arabia's worth of oil every few years from now until eternity (an impossible fantasy), our world will be in a heap of trouble if and when the economy starts to pop back and supply once again falls short of demand, resulting in more oil price spikes followed by another round of crashes. In the mid 1960s, when discoveries of new oil reserves reached their historical peak, we were discovering oil at a rate four times faster than we were consuming it. In recent years, the tables have turned. With technology that is miles beyond what was available in 1960, we are discovering about 1/10th as much oil each year as we did then, but consuming it at a rate five times faster than we discover it. That's like charging $100,000 dollars on our credit cards each year, and only paying off $20,000. How long can we keep that up before we bankrupt the system? For years, governments have been official naysayers about the "Peak Oil theory". However, in April the US military issued a report saying, "By 2012 surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach 10 million barrels per day."
3. Collapse of the World's Oceans: with 11 out of 15 of the world's major fisheries either in collapse, or in danger of collapse, our world's oceans are in serious trouble! The ocean's planktons form the bottom of both the food chain and the bulk of the carbon-oxygen cycle for our planet. According to a recent British government report, the oceans have lost 73% of their zooplankton since 1960, and over 50% of this decline has been since 1990, and the phytoplanktons are also in serious decline! Unfortunately, the coral reefs aren't doing much better than the planktons. By 2004, an estimated 20 percent of the world's coral reefs had been destroyed (up from just 11 percent in 2000), an additional 24 percent were close to collapsing, and another 26 percent were under long-term threat of collapse.
4. Deforestation: Over 50% of the world's forests have already disappeared, and much of the rest is in threatened. Deforestation contributes approximately 25% of all global greenhouse gasses, nearly double the 14% that transportation and industry sectors each contribute. Additionally, the forests of the world are a critical part of the weather cycle as well as the carbon-oxygen cycle. Each large mature tree acts as a giant water pump, recycling millions of gallons of water back into the atmosphere via evaporation from its leaves or needles. It has been estimated that a single large rainforest or coniferous tree has an evaporative surface area roughly equal to a 40 acre lake. When the trees are decimated in a region, a process called "desertification" tends to occur downwind because the trees are no longer there to pump groundwater back into the atmosphere to fall back to Earth as additional rainfall at some down wind location.
5. The Global Food Crisis: Soils, Weather and Water. For the first time since the "green revolution" started, our world is producing less food each year, yet its population continues to rise as we loose more top soil, arable land, and have less water for irrigation. Climate change is currently contributing more to losses than technology is to gains. In 2008 and 2009, food riots threatened the stability of many governments. In 2010 extended droughts in the breadbaskets of both China and India are threatening the food supply for over 1/3 of the world's population!
6. Over Population: This is the elephant in the room that few are talking about. In the last decade, we have added more people to the population of our planet than were added between the births of Jesus and Abraham Lincoln. In the mid 1980s our world first overshot its capacity to provide for its human population, yet this population continues to grow and we continue to live on borrowed time. One thousand years after Jesus walked the Earth, human population was around 1/2 billion. Eight hundred years later this population doubled to 1 billion. It took only 130 more years to double to 2 billion in 1930. When I was a kid in 1960, world population hit 3 billion people and it only took another 40 years to double to 6 billion in the year 2000.
It is anticipated that the world's population will reach 7 billion in the year 2012, meaning that between the start of the year 2000 and the end of 2012 (barring some huge catastrophe that kills hundreds of millions), more people will have been added to the population of our world than lived on the entire planet just two hundred years ago! There is simply no way we can achieve a sustainable future unless our population stops growing and starts shrinking. Either nature will do this for us, with starvation and plagues spreading across the planet as our natural and man-made systems fall apart, or mankind will use its intelligence and free will to proactively implement positive solutions to these issues.
My intention is not just to bum you out, but to do my part in sounding the alarm for a massive wake up call to start taking the sort of wide ranging actions that will be required in order to succeed in changing the course of our "Titanic" (planet Earth) to dodge the iceberg of global collapse. Averting collapse will not be easy, but it is far better that the alternative! Highly motivated societies have shown that they are able to marshal huge forces to accomplish great things. When Hitler joined forces with Mussolini and Japan, the threat was great enough to unite the Russians and Americans with the rest of the world in a common goal.
If we could put humans on the moon, build the Panama Canal, defeat Hitler, and rebuild Europe after WWII, why can't we unite to create a viable planetary civilization? So far, we lack not the means, but only the will and the leadership. In general, people lead and governments follow. It took massive action on the part of millions of people in the abolitionist movement to finally put a candidate in power (Lincoln) who was willing to do something about it, and for the suffrage movement to finally force governments to grant women the right to vote. Though none of us will individually alter the course of the universe, collectively we can do this! Just as the German people were asked how they could have allowed the Holocaust to take place before their very eyes, do we wish to be held accountable by future generations for allowing the approaching "Perfect Storm" to devastate our world while we had the knowledge and technology to change its course?
We must do what we can. Always. At night we must go to sleep knowing that we have done our best, and there is no more you can do than that. Do not let the problems overwhelm you. Start somewhere, anywhere, with just the smallest gesture of compassion, and you have made a dent against the evil of the world. --Gottfried Muller, in Thom Hartmann's The Prophet's Way
Matthew Stein is the author of When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency from Chelsea Green. For more information, visit chelseagreen.com and whentechfails.com.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
One dish meal
There are things that need to be shared and the meal I made tonight is one of them. It is so simple but I am assuming orginal also.
Three potatoes
Some Kale
Four pieces of bacon
A hand full of cilantro, Chinese chives and basil
Since I have read about commercially grown potatoes I will never eat any potatoe skins again. I do try to buy organic potatoes but sometimes I do not have them. I peel my potatoes for this meal and cut in one inche cubes for quick boiling. To this water I add some sea salt, the only kind I buy. In the meantime, I purchase all my meat from a good butcher shop that knows the fields that the animals have grown on and the farmers that cared for them in a healthy last century manner. I put the bacon strips in a fry pan on low and go into the garden.
Kale is the most giving vegetable that I have ever planted. It goes in the ground in late summer and giving all winter and now it is May and I am still going into the garden and adding it five days a week to my meals. I planted one bed of it last fall and did protect it during a few cold spells last winter with a plastic hoop house. I plant four or five different varieties so I never get bored. I also have about four or five plants from previous years that I still harvest from also. I have learn to harvest from the bottom leaves and the plant can go for a couple year. My kale bed has been under planted with leeks last week. I will see how that works out.
Chives, as anyone knows, is the herbs forever. It spreads and spreads. I have two kinds, the common and the Chinese or Garlic Chive. The purple flower are blooming right now and they are eatable, attract the bees and a stable for me. But about today. I first cut a lot of garlic chives because I am needing the space for other herbs in a week or so, then on to the regular chives. This on top of my lettuce spinder fulled with kale. Next my stop is the ten pots of basil I have started. I top off a few plants.
I find basil is the easiest seed to germinated and one of the most tender plants to grow. The latter because I always want to put it outdoors too early. Last year I had exercised some patience and I was harvesting basil forever! This year, I have discovered the joy and health of Holy Basil at the encouraging of my daughter in law. Easy to start, different taste but oh so interesting. After the research it, is now a standard in my herb garden. A little reading on herbs has taught me that I have viewed herbs as a favor instead of a medicine and food. I am exploring the new ways of looking at my plants.
By this time, I have headed back to the house to check on the potatoes and bacon with the lettuce spinner full. I quickly pull the stems from the kale and tear it into small pieces, rinse and put on top of the potatoes for some steaming. The bacon is crisp, sit aside. Next I put stem from the basil and take off any dry tops of the chives. This very large hand full is placed on the cutting board and I chop the whole herbal pile.
Drain the potatoes and soften, bright green kale and put in a large mixing bowl is the next step. I crunch up the bacon into bits sizes and added the fresh herbs. Mix, stir and it is dinner. No dressing. Now I know that cheese, oil or dressing would probably would make the dinner party but we are not hosting tonight we are country eating. It is tasty and oh, so good.
Three potatoes
Some Kale
Four pieces of bacon
A hand full of cilantro, Chinese chives and basil
Since I have read about commercially grown potatoes I will never eat any potatoe skins again. I do try to buy organic potatoes but sometimes I do not have them. I peel my potatoes for this meal and cut in one inche cubes for quick boiling. To this water I add some sea salt, the only kind I buy. In the meantime, I purchase all my meat from a good butcher shop that knows the fields that the animals have grown on and the farmers that cared for them in a healthy last century manner. I put the bacon strips in a fry pan on low and go into the garden.
Kale is the most giving vegetable that I have ever planted. It goes in the ground in late summer and giving all winter and now it is May and I am still going into the garden and adding it five days a week to my meals. I planted one bed of it last fall and did protect it during a few cold spells last winter with a plastic hoop house. I plant four or five different varieties so I never get bored. I also have about four or five plants from previous years that I still harvest from also. I have learn to harvest from the bottom leaves and the plant can go for a couple year. My kale bed has been under planted with leeks last week. I will see how that works out.
Chives, as anyone knows, is the herbs forever. It spreads and spreads. I have two kinds, the common and the Chinese or Garlic Chive. The purple flower are blooming right now and they are eatable, attract the bees and a stable for me. But about today. I first cut a lot of garlic chives because I am needing the space for other herbs in a week or so, then on to the regular chives. This on top of my lettuce spinder fulled with kale. Next my stop is the ten pots of basil I have started. I top off a few plants.
I find basil is the easiest seed to germinated and one of the most tender plants to grow. The latter because I always want to put it outdoors too early. Last year I had exercised some patience and I was harvesting basil forever! This year, I have discovered the joy and health of Holy Basil at the encouraging of my daughter in law. Easy to start, different taste but oh so interesting. After the research it, is now a standard in my herb garden. A little reading on herbs has taught me that I have viewed herbs as a favor instead of a medicine and food. I am exploring the new ways of looking at my plants.
By this time, I have headed back to the house to check on the potatoes and bacon with the lettuce spinner full. I quickly pull the stems from the kale and tear it into small pieces, rinse and put on top of the potatoes for some steaming. The bacon is crisp, sit aside. Next I put stem from the basil and take off any dry tops of the chives. This very large hand full is placed on the cutting board and I chop the whole herbal pile.
Drain the potatoes and soften, bright green kale and put in a large mixing bowl is the next step. I crunch up the bacon into bits sizes and added the fresh herbs. Mix, stir and it is dinner. No dressing. Now I know that cheese, oil or dressing would probably would make the dinner party but we are not hosting tonight we are country eating. It is tasty and oh, so good.
The complex lying
"""“Of 18 dispersants whose use EPA has approved, 12 were found to be more effective on southern Louisiana crude than Corexit, EPA data show,,,,,Once again, the most immediate profit concerns predominate. Corexit is produced by Nalco Co., a firm headed up by executives from both BP and industry leader Exxon. “It’s a chemical that the oil industry makes to sell to itself, basically,” said Richard Charter of Defenders of Wildlife."""
The leaking oil in the gulf is yet another opportunity for the our society to understand that the environment is being destroyed by our negligence and allowing corporations rule the situation because of their profits. We allow this. This opportunity of learning maybe so big and so overwhelming that even the human race will have to witness the death of part of the ocean before it realizes that action of out rage is necessary.
It is clear that chemical companies have controlled our environment since WWII. Oil is a major part of it but it is just another piece of the total. We take farmland and pay some people not to plant crops and then we spray the poisons on our lands so we get bigger yield on other fields. In the meantime, there is no balance of nature in planting anymore, the natural way life works. All of nature supports each part and the current system single crops agriculture destroyed the Eco balance. The bees make the news but the top soil and the dead soil is also a problem as well as the misuse of water. These chemicals used today will never broke down, the ones used for insecticides, GMO seeds, medicines or fertilizers. They resident in our water, our food and our bodies. Surprised about the cancer rate, why?
My sadness is there but I think this event will be remembered as the before and after. It is so dramatic and so clear that no one can say incompetency wasn't an issue and that greed, lying, profit were on display.
We have allowed it and we can form the will together to put a stop to it.
The leaking oil in the gulf is yet another opportunity for the our society to understand that the environment is being destroyed by our negligence and allowing corporations rule the situation because of their profits. We allow this. This opportunity of learning maybe so big and so overwhelming that even the human race will have to witness the death of part of the ocean before it realizes that action of out rage is necessary.
It is clear that chemical companies have controlled our environment since WWII. Oil is a major part of it but it is just another piece of the total. We take farmland and pay some people not to plant crops and then we spray the poisons on our lands so we get bigger yield on other fields. In the meantime, there is no balance of nature in planting anymore, the natural way life works. All of nature supports each part and the current system single crops agriculture destroyed the Eco balance. The bees make the news but the top soil and the dead soil is also a problem as well as the misuse of water. These chemicals used today will never broke down, the ones used for insecticides, GMO seeds, medicines or fertilizers. They resident in our water, our food and our bodies. Surprised about the cancer rate, why?
My sadness is there but I think this event will be remembered as the before and after. It is so dramatic and so clear that no one can say incompetency wasn't an issue and that greed, lying, profit were on display.
We have allowed it and we can form the will together to put a stop to it.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Edible Alliums
Today is an Ireland day, it is overcast, comfortable temperture and everything is outstandingly green. I am happy to have this day in between the sunny ones that are going on as I consider it a rest day from weeding and planting in the garden.
I planted my some Valencia onions, shallots and leeks yesterday. I learned a new way with the onions. Put a hand full of seeds in a four inches pot that has been filled with potting soil. Of course in short order the pot will look like a green mass of strings growing. This is when I take the pot outside and put the mass in my hand and run the hose on the mess. All the soil falls away. Now it is time to plant individual baby onion starts. I found yesterday that after I trimmed the top off at two inches and it was easier to handle. I make a row, in this case it was under my towering kale plants. Next I use a chop stick to create the hole for the onion to slide into it and finally all my new plants get a little of B-12 Vitamin that has added to the watering can.
For sometime I have thought that shallots are over rated but this year I read in Fedco Seed catalog about Prisma Red Shallot. It is a long day shallot with a strong onion flavor and each seed is going to produce 2-5 bulbs which will be ready in September and keep until April next years. I am sure I planted them too close but I can see how things grow. If they make the cut for next year, I will save some to plant next year.
Dating back to the 19th century, the Bleu de Solaize leek has been French heirloom and it is getting harder to find. They will winter over in our climate and that makes it worthy of planting in my garden. I love to be able to add during the winter some greens and leeks to my winter soups. Leeks have been a favorite in my garden for years. I usually let a few go to seed because I love the large flower head that is formed the second year and then I have my own supply of seeds. I have found a new use that is some recipes ask for onions seeds or mustard seeds toasted on the surface of fish, I use my leeks seeds for that crunch.
The other new leek I am trying this year is Carentan. This one is wider at the base and very mild in favor originally came from the Middle East but has been loved in Europe for centuries. Leeks have never been as popular in the United States as Europe but if more gardeners realized how easy they were to grow and how versatile they are for cooks to use, more home gardeners would plant them.
While I am on the subject, I did plant 2 rows of 25 feet along my back fence of garlic. In this climate they go in the ground in the fall. I have been better about fertilizing them with aged organic manure and it has made a difference. Along with the two or three varieties of garlic I threw in the mix a few elephant garlics and a few shallots. It has reached the point that I save my larges cloves each summer for planting but I have completely lost the names of the varieties that I have. My new way of saving some of the garlic is to simply put the cloves, cleaned, in a pint jar and freeze. It worked wonderfully this past winter and I will continue to do that in the future. By this time, of the year, I am out of my own garlic and I miss it in my cooking.
I find that other nationalities use food as medicine and American always talk about taste. Maybe that is why sweetness and salty are the two most used favors in this country. Recently, I was looking up the benefits of some herb and realized that other cuisines incorporate herbs and spices in their dishes because of the affects to their health. I am trying to think about this more even if I have had a late start on this.
I planted my some Valencia onions, shallots and leeks yesterday. I learned a new way with the onions. Put a hand full of seeds in a four inches pot that has been filled with potting soil. Of course in short order the pot will look like a green mass of strings growing. This is when I take the pot outside and put the mass in my hand and run the hose on the mess. All the soil falls away. Now it is time to plant individual baby onion starts. I found yesterday that after I trimmed the top off at two inches and it was easier to handle. I make a row, in this case it was under my towering kale plants. Next I use a chop stick to create the hole for the onion to slide into it and finally all my new plants get a little of B-12 Vitamin that has added to the watering can.
For sometime I have thought that shallots are over rated but this year I read in Fedco Seed catalog about Prisma Red Shallot. It is a long day shallot with a strong onion flavor and each seed is going to produce 2-5 bulbs which will be ready in September and keep until April next years. I am sure I planted them too close but I can see how things grow. If they make the cut for next year, I will save some to plant next year.
Dating back to the 19th century, the Bleu de Solaize leek has been French heirloom and it is getting harder to find. They will winter over in our climate and that makes it worthy of planting in my garden. I love to be able to add during the winter some greens and leeks to my winter soups. Leeks have been a favorite in my garden for years. I usually let a few go to seed because I love the large flower head that is formed the second year and then I have my own supply of seeds. I have found a new use that is some recipes ask for onions seeds or mustard seeds toasted on the surface of fish, I use my leeks seeds for that crunch.
The other new leek I am trying this year is Carentan. This one is wider at the base and very mild in favor originally came from the Middle East but has been loved in Europe for centuries. Leeks have never been as popular in the United States as Europe but if more gardeners realized how easy they were to grow and how versatile they are for cooks to use, more home gardeners would plant them.
While I am on the subject, I did plant 2 rows of 25 feet along my back fence of garlic. In this climate they go in the ground in the fall. I have been better about fertilizing them with aged organic manure and it has made a difference. Along with the two or three varieties of garlic I threw in the mix a few elephant garlics and a few shallots. It has reached the point that I save my larges cloves each summer for planting but I have completely lost the names of the varieties that I have. My new way of saving some of the garlic is to simply put the cloves, cleaned, in a pint jar and freeze. It worked wonderfully this past winter and I will continue to do that in the future. By this time, of the year, I am out of my own garlic and I miss it in my cooking.
I find that other nationalities use food as medicine and American always talk about taste. Maybe that is why sweetness and salty are the two most used favors in this country. Recently, I was looking up the benefits of some herb and realized that other cuisines incorporate herbs and spices in their dishes because of the affects to their health. I am trying to think about this more even if I have had a late start on this.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Accurate Information
All truth passes through three stages:
First it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860)
What value system does this fall under?
The next time some one on T.V. starts talking about Christian values and abortion---------I want you to remember what the United States Government did this in our name as a nation. Don't let these imagines go! We as a nation did this. This is the results of our policy for war/oil. We do have people that hate us for all the right reasons. What a nation of hyocrites ! Have our president, our senators, our war leaders seen these pictures? Send it to your senator.,,,,,your congressman....the pentagon....this government is ours.
From http://www.countercurrents.org/
The same evil forces are now doing it to our ocean..........I am outraged and you should be too.
""""''The latest I heard and it is unofficial, is that in Basra, doctors are advising women not to get pregnant for the next 25 years. Basra being an enclave of the shiite government, no one dares publicly announce that. It just circulates in secret among the newly wed...
In Falluja on the other hand, it is official --women are publicly advised not to have any babies, no number of years are indicated -- it is assumed for a long, long time...
The reason for this pregnancy dissuasion stems from the fact that the West who cares so much about its own little infants, had absolutely no qualms into pouring tons of lethal chemicals as in Weapons of Mass Destruction over the people of Basra and Falluja --to name but a few...chemical weapons like depleted uranium and phosphorus which caused cancer rates to soar among children and which produced the most ugly looking monsters -- genetically modified by "freedom and democracy"...
The mothers of Falluja and Basra don't have the luxury of some American women...and their little Frankensteins are not a product of some odd nature's mishap.. no. Their little ones have been planned and conceived in Washington DC and 10 Downing Street. Their are the fruit of the West. The West's labor...and our pangs.
No one will fuss over the Iraqi mothers, nor will they receive the satin gloved support and empathy like an AMerican women would...they will just lie in that delivery room, assuming there is one...and expel one monster after another...made in America and Great Britain."''''''
But you see there is one thing that probably escapes you...these monstrous infants, these deformed babies -- not of nature but of your "civilization" -- are only a reflection of you own ugliness...in themselves these infants are beautiful...and in yourselves, you are just plain hideous.
Additional Reading: : British army to be sued for War Crimes.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Sharing with the animals
"I hate robins." As surprising as it first sounded, I understood and smiled. The man talking is a grape breeder and owner of a back yard vineyard. Robins love ripe grapes and are not easily chased off.
I have a daily watch out for rabbits invading my backyard. This spring there were two nests in two different raised beds. One had six baby rabbits for a few days. A week later, I checked and they had died. My conscious if free on this one, I was on standby during the period.
Cedar fencing six feet high completely surrounds my backyard, it is anchored to the house on the left side and the right side. This would be the standard protection against most animals but surprisingly there is variety of animals that visit regardless of the fencing.
At noon on Monday while eating lunch I notice a rabbit in the middle of my back lawn munching on the fresh green lawn. I immediately went to the back door, grabbed a couple sticks to make noise and started to chase the rabbit. The key is to chase the rabbit to find the entrance point and pug it up. This dumb rabbit ran to the left side of the house and found no exit and quickly run the fence to the back and up the right side of the fence. Now I watched him near the clothline and felt at at last he will exit the yard. NO! he could not find his way out. He turned toward me and run under the tool shed and found refuge. I gave up.
Oh, the list of sightings is endless, Tuesday morning, three rabbits front yard, Wednesday one first yard, one back yard, last Saturday three at one time in the backyard around eight in the morning, same day evening five o'clock one back yard. As fast as I pug up a entrance they tunnel a new one.
Besides, the rabbits I have one squirrel that runs the top of the cedar fence daily. His routine is to check out for any dropped crack corn or seeds around the tool shed that may have missing the pile going to the chickens. Mice and a chipmunk are occasionally seen in the same area. As soon as the weather gets warmer, I hope my garden snakes return and lounges along the back fence on the warm rocks that have been placed there to keep the rabbits out. The occasionally snake sighting is encouraging for me because they keep down slugs, mice and hopefully scare off others.
The number of birds in my backyard fine until the strawberries and blueberries are ripe. I cover the blueberries, the strawberries are beyond thinking about. When my grapes are ripe I put out the plastic owl and move it every couple days. Mostly, I smile about sharing with the birds. The humming birds darting around makes up for all the consumption of the other birds.
I was thinking about my wildlife and what is happening in the gulf of Mexico. I am moved to sadness and rage.
All of it haven't changed my mind about rabbits, though, "I don't like rabbits."
I have a daily watch out for rabbits invading my backyard. This spring there were two nests in two different raised beds. One had six baby rabbits for a few days. A week later, I checked and they had died. My conscious if free on this one, I was on standby during the period.
Cedar fencing six feet high completely surrounds my backyard, it is anchored to the house on the left side and the right side. This would be the standard protection against most animals but surprisingly there is variety of animals that visit regardless of the fencing.
At noon on Monday while eating lunch I notice a rabbit in the middle of my back lawn munching on the fresh green lawn. I immediately went to the back door, grabbed a couple sticks to make noise and started to chase the rabbit. The key is to chase the rabbit to find the entrance point and pug it up. This dumb rabbit ran to the left side of the house and found no exit and quickly run the fence to the back and up the right side of the fence. Now I watched him near the clothline and felt at at last he will exit the yard. NO! he could not find his way out. He turned toward me and run under the tool shed and found refuge. I gave up.
Oh, the list of sightings is endless, Tuesday morning, three rabbits front yard, Wednesday one first yard, one back yard, last Saturday three at one time in the backyard around eight in the morning, same day evening five o'clock one back yard. As fast as I pug up a entrance they tunnel a new one.
Besides, the rabbits I have one squirrel that runs the top of the cedar fence daily. His routine is to check out for any dropped crack corn or seeds around the tool shed that may have missing the pile going to the chickens. Mice and a chipmunk are occasionally seen in the same area. As soon as the weather gets warmer, I hope my garden snakes return and lounges along the back fence on the warm rocks that have been placed there to keep the rabbits out. The occasionally snake sighting is encouraging for me because they keep down slugs, mice and hopefully scare off others.
The number of birds in my backyard fine until the strawberries and blueberries are ripe. I cover the blueberries, the strawberries are beyond thinking about. When my grapes are ripe I put out the plastic owl and move it every couple days. Mostly, I smile about sharing with the birds. The humming birds darting around makes up for all the consumption of the other birds.
I was thinking about my wildlife and what is happening in the gulf of Mexico. I am moved to sadness and rage.
All of it haven't changed my mind about rabbits, though, "I don't like rabbits."
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Drill, Spill and Kill
As I age I realize that I am living on a circle of events that repeat themselves.
There was an oil spill off the coast of the U.S. near Santa Barbara in 1969. That spill was near the Channel Island and killed 10,000 birds. That spill shocked the people living along the beautiful California coastline and it reminded them that oil rigs in the distance more than little twinkling lights in the evening to watch off the coast.
The same year the notorious Curahoga River that runs Arkon to Cleveland caught on fire in the summer, again. This river was devoid of fish, had no animal life and it was said that a person did not drown in the river they decay. I remember seeing pictures of the river of fire in Time magazine and the newspaper. I could not believe water could burn but of course it wasn't water, it was a ooze of chemicals. Because of the national attention of this fire of 1969 and the outrage of pollution around the country things changed. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act come to be.
Quietly for years there was a woman that had written books, articles and had radio programs about the sea, the marine biologist, Rachel Carson. She was born in 1907 on a farm in Pennsylvania, her love of nature evidently lead her to career in research and writing. Carson was a lone voice for years about the effects of pesticide policy of the U.S. and what DDT that sometimes was mixed with oil fuel was doing to our environment. The chemical industry intentionally spreading disinformation and public officials had accepted industry claims uncritically. Most of her titles were to do with sea life but the book she is remember for is about a spring that no birds sang a song.
Silent Spring was published and it become a best seller.
Today BP was doing what the U.S. self regulating allows. This accident would not have happened in the North Sea because Scotland and Norway have a difference standard for shut off valves. Same is true off of Brazil. Another factor that no media talks about it that their rig platforms are unionized and there is always a safety engineer on site. Reminds me of a coal mine accident.
At a time when some are talking about government getting out of our lives it is time to realize that some issues are too big for individuals to fix and the corporations are working for profits not the good of our environment, the future of the planet or the health and safety of human beings. Corporations continue to spread misinformation and lobby politicians but I see the storm clouds have gathered again as they did in the summer of 1969.
Silent Spring needs to be read by a new generation.
There was an oil spill off the coast of the U.S. near Santa Barbara in 1969. That spill was near the Channel Island and killed 10,000 birds. That spill shocked the people living along the beautiful California coastline and it reminded them that oil rigs in the distance more than little twinkling lights in the evening to watch off the coast.
The same year the notorious Curahoga River that runs Arkon to Cleveland caught on fire in the summer, again. This river was devoid of fish, had no animal life and it was said that a person did not drown in the river they decay. I remember seeing pictures of the river of fire in Time magazine and the newspaper. I could not believe water could burn but of course it wasn't water, it was a ooze of chemicals. Because of the national attention of this fire of 1969 and the outrage of pollution around the country things changed. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act come to be.
Quietly for years there was a woman that had written books, articles and had radio programs about the sea, the marine biologist, Rachel Carson. She was born in 1907 on a farm in Pennsylvania, her love of nature evidently lead her to career in research and writing. Carson was a lone voice for years about the effects of pesticide policy of the U.S. and what DDT that sometimes was mixed with oil fuel was doing to our environment. The chemical industry intentionally spreading disinformation and public officials had accepted industry claims uncritically. Most of her titles were to do with sea life but the book she is remember for is about a spring that no birds sang a song.
Silent Spring was published and it become a best seller.
Today BP was doing what the U.S. self regulating allows. This accident would not have happened in the North Sea because Scotland and Norway have a difference standard for shut off valves. Same is true off of Brazil. Another factor that no media talks about it that their rig platforms are unionized and there is always a safety engineer on site. Reminds me of a coal mine accident.
At a time when some are talking about government getting out of our lives it is time to realize that some issues are too big for individuals to fix and the corporations are working for profits not the good of our environment, the future of the planet or the health and safety of human beings. Corporations continue to spread misinformation and lobby politicians but I see the storm clouds have gathered again as they did in the summer of 1969.
Silent Spring needs to be read by a new generation.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Clothesline bed
It is time for me to put in the row of potatoes behind the strawberries that are in the bed near the clothesline. The four feet wide bed facing east running about 20 feet long right next to the house. A nice warm spot. Each of the six summer season in this house it have been changed in some manner.
The original plantings were native sweet smelling bushes care free and slow growing. It would have worked for an inactive gardener and most home owner. These bushes were donated to the City of Lacey four years ago. The first transplants that found the area a new home were some old roses that were moved off of Ken's property. The varieties were old, healthy and wonderful for bees and bouquets. About the same time strawberries under my fruit trees were sucking up too much of the nutrients from the development of the young trees so they jointed the rose bed. It began the great migration of strawberries plants around the yard and it continues.
Two years ago I was reading about nuts trees and realized I had none on my property and that filberts or almonds were easy to grow here. I made space for them for two dwarf trees so they can view my clothesline. Or was that three years ago?
Last summer was a time out of sorts because my new laying chickens. They roamed the backyard with only one purpose to scratch up each strawberry bed and find moving life. This was permitted until I noticed they like red tomatoes even more that earth worms. The feathered ladies rambling days were over and I found the virtues of chicken yard fencing.
Early in March this year on a warm day I spend the day with 20 feets of lose black dirt and moved all the strawberry plants in this bed to a neat straight row. With my pad to kneel on and sit on I slowing worked my way from one end to the other wondering if all these plants could be my prized Mara des Bois berries. In the end, I have a big pile of weeds and a even bigger pile of unused berry plants, both I have to deal with. Now I view space behind the strawberry plants between the rose bushes and around the two nuts trees as a spot to plant some potatoes.
April was a cool, windy with little periods of sun. I did find a person to trim all the ornaments in the front yard along with some needed weeding. Another day of clean up in the backyard helped me over the mental stress of the looking at too many projects for my body to handle. Now I wait and wait for June weather in May to come so I can spend all the day light outdoors either touching the soil or sitting under the grape arbor reading. The white blossoms of strawberries are all over the yard and they do offer the prized first sweet taste of fruit in the summer. Spring is the longest season, isn't it!
The original plantings were native sweet smelling bushes care free and slow growing. It would have worked for an inactive gardener and most home owner. These bushes were donated to the City of Lacey four years ago. The first transplants that found the area a new home were some old roses that were moved off of Ken's property. The varieties were old, healthy and wonderful for bees and bouquets. About the same time strawberries under my fruit trees were sucking up too much of the nutrients from the development of the young trees so they jointed the rose bed. It began the great migration of strawberries plants around the yard and it continues.
Two years ago I was reading about nuts trees and realized I had none on my property and that filberts or almonds were easy to grow here. I made space for them for two dwarf trees so they can view my clothesline. Or was that three years ago?
Last summer was a time out of sorts because my new laying chickens. They roamed the backyard with only one purpose to scratch up each strawberry bed and find moving life. This was permitted until I noticed they like red tomatoes even more that earth worms. The feathered ladies rambling days were over and I found the virtues of chicken yard fencing.
Early in March this year on a warm day I spend the day with 20 feets of lose black dirt and moved all the strawberry plants in this bed to a neat straight row. With my pad to kneel on and sit on I slowing worked my way from one end to the other wondering if all these plants could be my prized Mara des Bois berries. In the end, I have a big pile of weeds and a even bigger pile of unused berry plants, both I have to deal with. Now I view space behind the strawberry plants between the rose bushes and around the two nuts trees as a spot to plant some potatoes.
April was a cool, windy with little periods of sun. I did find a person to trim all the ornaments in the front yard along with some needed weeding. Another day of clean up in the backyard helped me over the mental stress of the looking at too many projects for my body to handle. Now I wait and wait for June weather in May to come so I can spend all the day light outdoors either touching the soil or sitting under the grape arbor reading. The white blossoms of strawberries are all over the yard and they do offer the prized first sweet taste of fruit in the summer. Spring is the longest season, isn't it!
Saturday, May 1, 2010
A line of credit
Ellen Brown writes in the April issue of Arces about our currency and debt. She is a guru of understanding the financial world. After reading that article the following piece of news makes sense. THANK Heavens Washington is one of the states mentioned in the following article.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51277
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/ is Ellen Brown's blog....Bookmark it and check it out occasionally.
The month of April had 20 working days and 23 Banks taken over by the FDIC. Did any paper you read list these banks? Discuss the 62 banks from January that have been taken over? Any t.v. news mention anything about banks failing this year?
To understand it is to be prepared.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51277
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/ is Ellen Brown's blog....Bookmark it and check it out occasionally.
The month of April had 20 working days and 23 Banks taken over by the FDIC. Did any paper you read list these banks? Discuss the 62 banks from January that have been taken over? Any t.v. news mention anything about banks failing this year?
To understand it is to be prepared.
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