According to George Lakoff there are 6 basic types of progressives:
1. Socioeconomic progressives think that everything is a matter of money and class and that all solutions are ultimately economic and social class solutions.
2. Identity politics progressives say it is time for their oppressed group to get its share now.
3. Environmentalists think in terms of sustainability of the earth, the sacredness of the earth and the protection of native peoples.
4. Civil liberties progressives want to maintain freedoms against threats to freedom.
5. Spiritual progressives have a nurturant form of religion or spirituality, their spiritual experience has to do with their connection to other people and the world, and their spiritual practice has to do with service to other people and to their community. Spiritual progressives span the full range from Catholics and Protestants to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Goddess worshippers, and pagan members of Wicca.
6. Anti-authoritarians say there are all sorts of illegitimate forms of authority out there and we have to fight them, whether they are big corporations or anyone else.
"The problem is that many of the people who have one of these modes of thought do not recognize that theirs is just one special case of something more general, and do not see the unity in all the types of progressives. They often think that theirs is the only way to be a true progressive. That is sad. It keeps people who share progressive values from coming together. We have to get past that harmful idea. The other side did."
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Public Meetings Rant
My rant for the day. Where does OWASA post their public meetings notices? OWASA has subcommittee meetings of the board every month, but they aren't posted to the Board calendar. Is the point to make sure they comply with the law but don't have to deal with the messiness of public oversight?
What about the town of Carrboro? Carrboro has a Greenways Commission meeting scheduled for October 28, but I can't find it anywhere on their website. It's not on the message board with Top News, it's not even on the inaccessible printable calendars.
Legally, all meetings must be posted 48 hours in advance. Apparently, it doesn't matter where they are posted or else citizens have got to be clued in separate from the public posts.
Orange County has the worse website of any local government in Orange County, but at least they have an accessible and up-to-date calendar. Even the Chapel Hill website has a current events page that is sort of like a calendar and is easier to use and more up-to-date than OWASA or Carrboro.
End of rant.
What about the town of Carrboro? Carrboro has a Greenways Commission meeting scheduled for October 28, but I can't find it anywhere on their website. It's not on the message board with Top News, it's not even on the inaccessible printable calendars.
Legally, all meetings must be posted 48 hours in advance. Apparently, it doesn't matter where they are posted or else citizens have got to be clued in separate from the public posts.
Orange County has the worse website of any local government in Orange County, but at least they have an accessible and up-to-date calendar. Even the Chapel Hill website has a current events page that is sort of like a calendar and is easier to use and more up-to-date than OWASA or Carrboro.
End of rant.
Sad Death of Organic
The article below is not written by a local writer or published in a local newspaper, but it very much a local problem. We have three natural food groceries in this community and other large chains (H-T and Lowes) have organic sections. But our local farmers are selling out to developers.
(begin reprinted article)
The Sad Death Of 'Organic'
How weird and depressing is it now that Kellogg's and Wal-Mart are hawking 'natural' foods?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
***I*was a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the familiar ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and famously beautiful version of "Over the Rainbow (I know, but it really is quite lovely) and my first reaction was merely to cringe and wince as yet another exquisite and plaintive song was whored out to the advertising demons, just one of thousands.
But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect Mom feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in soft morning breakfasty light with happy trees peeking through the windows of the Perfect Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America, a bizarre scene that of course does not exist anywhere on this planet given how there weren't three empty wine bottles and some used underwear and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle of Xanax and an open
newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and nuclear warheads and Korean sex slaves anywhere in sight.
And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing voice-over. It was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. And your heart goes, Ugh.
You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you sort of gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with "organic" in big scripted flowing font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus warmth and happiness and false notions of health and nature and protecting your Perfect Child from the millions of icky poisons and unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps exactly like, well,
exactly like Kellogg's.
Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. It's sort of like saying "Lockheed Martin Granola Bars" or "Exxon Bottled Spring Water." Self-immolating, and not in a good way.
That's when I heard it. The plaintive wail, the sigh, the crack and the moan and the whimper, like a tree shooting itself in the head. It was the final death knell of the "true" organic movement, breathing its last.
Because yes indeed, it's over. Organic is dead. Corporations have officially bought it out, the USDA has weakened its definition to near death, Whole Foods has made it chic and popular and profitable and yet has compromised its integrity like no other by being forced to pretty much ignore small, local farms and ideas of sustainability in favor of staggering commercial growth. And now this.
Did you know? Did you already understand the real definition? Because that's what "organic" was really supposed to mean, way back when: local, sustainable, ethical, connected to source, pesticide- and hormone-free. But the vast majority of organic product now flooding the market only gloms on to that last aspect (and sometimes, barely even that), to meet the USDA's impotent organic guidelines. Ah, government. There's just nothing like it to make you want to smack yourself in the skull with a
brick.
One example: Stonyfield Farm's organic yogurt. As BusinessWeek points
out, the stuff is made not on an idyllic working farm like the one on the label but rather in a giant industrial factory. They get their milk trucked in from a whole range of suppliers and it's possible they will soon begin to import some of their organic ingredients -- in dried, powdered form -- from New Zealand, so as to meet national demand, delivering it all over the country via pollutive trucking companies.
This is the harsh reality, the real cost of mainstream organic. There apparently aren't enough happy small, Earth-conscious local farms around to produce this stuff in sufficient quantities to feed the entire Wal-Mart nation. Massive compromises have been made. And those compromises mean "organic" is a shell of its former self.
"Organic," according to the lobbyist-friendly USDA, does not have to mean the food is grown using sustainable (read: nondestructive) farming practices. It does not mean locally produced. It does not mean the ethical treatment of animals. Nor does it mean the companies that produce it need be the slightest bit fair or trustworthy or socially responsible. All it means now: no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers,
no bioengineering.
So is that enough? After all, the fact that megaproducers like Kellogg's and General Mills and frightening discount megaretailers like Wal-Mart are going big into organic certainly will translate into an enormous reduction in chemicals in the American diet, thousands if not (eventually) millions of pounds of pesticides and hormones and fertilizer removed from the food chain as a whole. The benefits of this cannot be understated: It's a great thing indeed.
But there's a massive snag: Thousands of products now claim to be organic, but many merely replace the chemicals and pesticides with a slew of other industrial, pollutive, destructive processes that easily offset any health benefits -- most notably the extra shipping and global delivery these "industrial organic" producers employ to obtain and deliver organic ingredients, which pumps so many chemicals back into the environment it probably counteracts all those saved in growing the stuff
in the first place.
(On that note, if you're going to read one astounding book on the subject of farming, organics, fast food, and the American diet overall, let it be Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." He maps it all out far better than I ever could. It's your must-read of the summer, even though it's now fall.)
Whole Foods? Perhaps the greatest mixed blessing of all, an amazing company that has single-handedly done more to bring the organic movement to the mainstream and raise awareness of healthy foods and improve farming and meat-quality standards across the board, not to mention the pleasures of food shopping overall. Yet at the same time, merely by its sheer size and success, they've simultaneously done more to dilute the
real meaning of "organic" than any other company.
Put another way: Unless you shop at farmers' markets or quasi-hippie co-ops or unless you do your homework and find a true family-run farm within 100 miles of your home and establish a relationship with them and /really/ begin to buy local, the odds that the next "organic" product you buy truly meets the original definition is about as likely as finding real breasts at the Playboy mansion. And for now, maybe this is just the way it has to be.
Which brings us back to Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. Industrial to the hilt, not the slightest bit locally grown, not the slightest bit sustainable, from the same company that poisons your kid with Pop-Tarts and Froot Loops and Scooby-Doo Berry Bones and cares about as much for the health of the planet as Dick Cheney cares about pheasants. And of course, they ship the crap all over the country in planes and trucks that burn enough oil to make Bush leer and the oil CEOs grin and it's
all just one big happy joke. On you.
But hey, at least they're helping remove millions of pounds of chemical crap from the food chain, right? At least they /pretend/ to care. Problem is, they've merely replaced those chemicals with an even more toxic additive: hypocrisy. Now, can you swallow it? (end of reprinted article)
The Foundation for a Sustainable Community, a project of the local Chamber of Commerce, recently initiated a sustainable business program and gave out a sustainable business of the year award. Whole Foods was one of the finalists. I shop at Whole Foods occasionally (Lucy loves Whole Paws cat food) and am happy to have them in this community. But let's not kid ourselves that they are a sustainable business. We jeopardize 'sustainability' as much as 'organic' by doing so. (Congrats to Weaver Street Market for being the first recipient of this award.)
(begin reprinted article)
The Sad Death Of 'Organic'
How weird and depressing is it now that Kellogg's and Wal-Mart are hawking 'natural' foods?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
***I*was a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the familiar ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and famously beautiful version of "Over the Rainbow (I know, but it really is quite lovely) and my first reaction was merely to cringe and wince as yet another exquisite and plaintive song was whored out to the advertising demons, just one of thousands.
But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect Mom feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in soft morning breakfasty light with happy trees peeking through the windows of the Perfect Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America, a bizarre scene that of course does not exist anywhere on this planet given how there weren't three empty wine bottles and some used underwear and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle of Xanax and an open
newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and nuclear warheads and Korean sex slaves anywhere in sight.
And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing voice-over. It was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. And your heart goes, Ugh.
You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you sort of gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with "organic" in big scripted flowing font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus warmth and happiness and false notions of health and nature and protecting your Perfect Child from the millions of icky poisons and unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps exactly like, well,
exactly like Kellogg's.
Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. It's sort of like saying "Lockheed Martin Granola Bars" or "Exxon Bottled Spring Water." Self-immolating, and not in a good way.
That's when I heard it. The plaintive wail, the sigh, the crack and the moan and the whimper, like a tree shooting itself in the head. It was the final death knell of the "true" organic movement, breathing its last.
Because yes indeed, it's over. Organic is dead. Corporations have officially bought it out, the USDA has weakened its definition to near death, Whole Foods has made it chic and popular and profitable and yet has compromised its integrity like no other by being forced to pretty much ignore small, local farms and ideas of sustainability in favor of staggering commercial growth. And now this.
Did you know? Did you already understand the real definition? Because that's what "organic" was really supposed to mean, way back when: local, sustainable, ethical, connected to source, pesticide- and hormone-free. But the vast majority of organic product now flooding the market only gloms on to that last aspect (and sometimes, barely even that), to meet the USDA's impotent organic guidelines. Ah, government. There's just nothing like it to make you want to smack yourself in the skull with a
brick.
One example: Stonyfield Farm's organic yogurt. As BusinessWeek points
out, the stuff is made not on an idyllic working farm like the one on the label but rather in a giant industrial factory. They get their milk trucked in from a whole range of suppliers and it's possible they will soon begin to import some of their organic ingredients -- in dried, powdered form -- from New Zealand, so as to meet national demand, delivering it all over the country via pollutive trucking companies.
This is the harsh reality, the real cost of mainstream organic. There apparently aren't enough happy small, Earth-conscious local farms around to produce this stuff in sufficient quantities to feed the entire Wal-Mart nation. Massive compromises have been made. And those compromises mean "organic" is a shell of its former self.
"Organic," according to the lobbyist-friendly USDA, does not have to mean the food is grown using sustainable (read: nondestructive) farming practices. It does not mean locally produced. It does not mean the ethical treatment of animals. Nor does it mean the companies that produce it need be the slightest bit fair or trustworthy or socially responsible. All it means now: no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers,
no bioengineering.
So is that enough? After all, the fact that megaproducers like Kellogg's and General Mills and frightening discount megaretailers like Wal-Mart are going big into organic certainly will translate into an enormous reduction in chemicals in the American diet, thousands if not (eventually) millions of pounds of pesticides and hormones and fertilizer removed from the food chain as a whole. The benefits of this cannot be understated: It's a great thing indeed.
But there's a massive snag: Thousands of products now claim to be organic, but many merely replace the chemicals and pesticides with a slew of other industrial, pollutive, destructive processes that easily offset any health benefits -- most notably the extra shipping and global delivery these "industrial organic" producers employ to obtain and deliver organic ingredients, which pumps so many chemicals back into the environment it probably counteracts all those saved in growing the stuff
in the first place.
(On that note, if you're going to read one astounding book on the subject of farming, organics, fast food, and the American diet overall, let it be Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." He maps it all out far better than I ever could. It's your must-read of the summer, even though it's now fall.)
Whole Foods? Perhaps the greatest mixed blessing of all, an amazing company that has single-handedly done more to bring the organic movement to the mainstream and raise awareness of healthy foods and improve farming and meat-quality standards across the board, not to mention the pleasures of food shopping overall. Yet at the same time, merely by its sheer size and success, they've simultaneously done more to dilute the
real meaning of "organic" than any other company.
Put another way: Unless you shop at farmers' markets or quasi-hippie co-ops or unless you do your homework and find a true family-run farm within 100 miles of your home and establish a relationship with them and /really/ begin to buy local, the odds that the next "organic" product you buy truly meets the original definition is about as likely as finding real breasts at the Playboy mansion. And for now, maybe this is just the way it has to be.
Which brings us back to Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. Industrial to the hilt, not the slightest bit locally grown, not the slightest bit sustainable, from the same company that poisons your kid with Pop-Tarts and Froot Loops and Scooby-Doo Berry Bones and cares about as much for the health of the planet as Dick Cheney cares about pheasants. And of course, they ship the crap all over the country in planes and trucks that burn enough oil to make Bush leer and the oil CEOs grin and it's
all just one big happy joke. On you.
But hey, at least they're helping remove millions of pounds of chemical crap from the food chain, right? At least they /pretend/ to care. Problem is, they've merely replaced those chemicals with an even more toxic additive: hypocrisy. Now, can you swallow it? (end of reprinted article)
The Foundation for a Sustainable Community, a project of the local Chamber of Commerce, recently initiated a sustainable business program and gave out a sustainable business of the year award. Whole Foods was one of the finalists. I shop at Whole Foods occasionally (Lucy loves Whole Paws cat food) and am happy to have them in this community. But let's not kid ourselves that they are a sustainable business. We jeopardize 'sustainability' as much as 'organic' by doing so. (Congrats to Weaver Street Market for being the first recipient of this award.)
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Jack Klein
My friend and neighbor, Jack Klein, died last night. Jack was the first neighbor to welcome me to Heritage Hills. He was a little disappointed, I think, that I bought this house. He had just married a young Hispanic couple who had been trying to buy it, but couldn't get financing.
Jack was the most openminded, progressive individual I have ever known. He accepted everyone and judged no one except those who tried to limit the freedom of others. Jack planned his own funeral (April 2006) as a celebration to be held while he was still here to enjoy the party. He danced, sang, and told stories along with everyone else. It was a great party and by far the most moving and memorable funeral I've ever attended. The amount of love in that room was overwhelming. What a tribute--celebration rather than mourning.
Jack's last community activity was the IFC sponsored Crop Walk. He walked and was pushed in his wheel chair for 3 miles to raise money for the hungry. A party-loving, human-loving individual. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the Crop Walk in any of our local newspapers, let alone Jack's dedication and contribution.Jack Klein is the model of what it means to be a progressive in Chapel Hill/Carrboro. More importantly, he was a good, loving man with a great sense of humor. I will miss him.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Corn
"At its most basic, the story of life on earth is the competition among species to capture and store as much energy as possible—either directly from the sun, in the case of plants, or, in the case of animals, by eating plants and plant eaters. The energy is stored in the form of carbon molecules and measured in calories: the calories we eat, whether in an ear of corn or a steak, represent packets of energy once captured by a plant. Few plants can manufacture quite as much organic matter (and calories) from the same quantities of sunlight and water and basic elements as corn.
The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when the huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over from making explosives to making chemical fertilizer. After World War II, the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought
was given to spraying America's forests with the surplus chemical, to help the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on the poison gases developed for war) is the product of the government's effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As the Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, "We're still eating the leftovers of World War II."
http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/july/presence.php
There's corn in that?
- It takes the equivalent of half a gallon of gasoline to grow every bushel of corn.
- Of 10,000 items in a typical grocery store, at least 2,500 use corn in some form during production or processing.
- Your bacon and egg breakfast, glass of milk at lunch, or hamburger for supper were all produced with US corn.
- Besides food for human and livestock consumption, corn is used in paint, paper products, cosmetics, tires, fuel, plastics, textiles, explosives, and wallboard – among other things.
- In the US, corn leads all other crops in value and volume of production – more than double that of any other crop.
- Corn is America's chief crop export, with total bushels exported exceeding total bushels used domestically for food, seed, and industrial purposes.
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