New Years Resolutions

I have done a miserable job of fulfilling my Dark Days Eat Local challenge. But in my failure, I have learned that this is not the time of year to take up cooking. While I used to love cooking, over the past 10 years or so, I've let my career take top priority and have fallen into some rather atrocious eating patterns. The Dark Days challenge has put me back into cooking mode, thinking about cooking as a craft that takes time and gives enjoyment rather than just an end-product intended only to assuage hunger or drown my problems with.

So this years New Years Resolutions have to do with food.

1. I renew my vow to fix at least one meal a week that is composed exclusively of locally grown foods, regardless of the season.

2. I also intend to invite friends over for a meal at least once a month. Cooking for others is great motivation to try new recipes.
food budget goes to purchasing commercially produced (e.g., over processed) yogurt. With Maple View Farms milk so easily accessible, there is no reason not to make my own and re duce my reliance on pre-processed food even further.

My other resolution is to get back into documentary making. Today I began documenting old store fronts in Orange County. I'm starting with Cedar Grove Township. Here are two stores on old Highway 86:

3. And last but not least, I plan to begin making my own yogurt. A large portion of my food budget goes to purchasing commercially produced (e.g., over processed) yogurt. With Maple View Farms milk so easily accessible, there is no reason not to make my own and re duce my reliance on pre-processed food even further.

My other resolution is to get back into documentary making. Today I began documenting old store fronts in Orange County. I'm starting with Cedar Grove Township. Here are two stores on old Highway 86:

Rain Barrels

With the continuing drought, I need some way to save the few remaining plants I have in my yard. What better way than a rain barrel, especially one that I can make myself thanks to an OWASA workshop. It was fun and easy.

Here's what the finished product looks like. It began with a 55- gallon barrel, provided by Mark Ray Rain Barrels. Mark had pre-drilled the holes, one for the spigot and one for the overflow valve, so all we had to do was install the hardware. Apparently these barrels are not only useful, but they are easily obtained through NC Wastetraders. The only problem is that they were originally used to store food products. The one I selected had a distinct eau de dill pickles.

The tricky part of making this barrel is installing the spigot. While the spigot itself simply screws into the predrilled hole, it's necessary to put a washer on the backside of the spigot to keep it in place and leak free. That means.....crawling into the barrel to get to the backside of the spigot. Could anyone ask for a better photo opportunity?

For every 1,000 square feet of roof, one inch of rain produces 625 gallons of water. I'm going to need to make a couple of more barrels to collect even a portion of the runoff from my roof. Unfortunately, we're not expected to get that much rain for the next several months so I've got some time.

Caroleena's Tuscan Kitchen

My friend and neighbor, Carol Barrow, who taught me to make the Spanish Tortilla has published a cookbook, Caroleena's Tuscan Kitchen.

Carol, who was once an Italian contessa, will be signing books at Weaver Street Market on Saturday, December 22, from 2:00 - 4:00 pm.

Locavore and Dark Days Challenge Recipes

The Oxford University Press’ 2007 Word of the Year is locavore, meaning a person who endeavors to eat only locally-produced food. “The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”

In my attempt to become a card-carrying locavore, I've taken the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge. This is definitely a much harder challenge to meet than I expected. So far, I've managed one meal a week, but neither meal has meet a full range of nutritional needs. Here's what I've made:

Silken Chicken: Although I am primarily vegetarian, I do occasionally eat chicken or turkey but only if it it is ethically raised (free range, no hormones, etc). For the Dark Days Challenge, chicken is going to be my best bet for locally grown food. For the silken chicken, I was able to use locally produced cream also, but the spices and herbs aren't grown anywhere close to Carrboro.

Spanish Tortilla: This recipe was given to me by Caroleena Barrow. She served it one night when I dropped by for dinner, and I've asked her to make it for me twice since. It has a very simple ingredient list--potatoes, onions, and eggs. Carol insists that white potatoes must be used, but in the spirit of the local challenge, I used locally grown red potatoes and couldn't tell the difference. Latta's cage-free, brown eggs and locally grown yellow onions made this a totally local meal, and once I overcame my fear of messing up a dish that I love, incredibly easy to make. boil potatoes in salt water (I didn't peel them). When cool enough to handle, chop into bite-sized bits. Sautee onion in too much olive oil. Scramble eggs with salt and pepper (no milk). Add in onions and potatoes and turn into a skillet. Cook over low heat so that the eggs cook slowly into omelet-like consistency. Flip when dry enough not to fall apart (I messed this part up). The non-local part came from the salsa used to top the tortilla. I'll be checking for locally produced salsa at Weaver Street since I suspect this dish will become my winter favorite.

The Role of Women

This excerpt came from the most recent email update of the E.F. Schumacher Society. It's from a book entitled "Why the Village Movement" by Gandhian philosopher and economist J. C. Kumarappa. The publication date is 1936, once again demonstrating the principle of what's old is new.

CONSUMERS DUTIES

Often buyers are only concerned with satisfying their own requirements as near as possible and as cheaply as they can. This way of going about the business is to shirk one¹s duties. What are the duties of an effective consumer or buyer? When buying an article of everyday use one has to take account of the full repercussions of one¹s transaction.

1) One should know where the article comes from,
2) Who makes the article?
3) Under what conditions do the workers live and work?
4) What proportions of the final price do they get as wages?
5) How is the rest of the money distributed?
6) How is the article produced?
7) How does the industry fit into the national economy?
8) What relation has it to the other nations?

DISCRIMINATE BUYING

If the buyer has to make her influence felt, the further afield she goes for her goods, the less will be the power of her influence at such distance, the less the chances of her information on various points raised being accurate, and the less will be her personal interest. If the goods come from a source which may be tainted with exploitation, either of sweat labor or of the political, financial or economic hold over other nations, or classes, or races, then the buyer of such goods will be a party to such exploitation, just as a person who buys stolen articles from a "chore bazar" creates a market for stolen goods and thus will be encouraging the art of stealing.

Therefore, any one who buys goods indiscriminately is not discharging her full responsibility when the sole criterion of her buying is merely the low price or the good quality of the goods. Hence, we should buy good only from sources from which full information is readily available and which source can be brought under our influence; otherwise we shall have to shoulder a share of the blame for sweat labour, political slavery, or economic stranglehold. We cannot absolve ourselves of the all blame by merely pleading ignorance in regard to the source.

If the raw materials for making cocoa are obtained from plantations on the West coast of Africa which use some form of forced native labour, are carried by vessels on sea routes monopolised or controlled by violence, manufactured in England with sweated labour and brought to India under favorable customs duties enforced by political power, then a buyer of a tin of cocoa patronises the forced labour conditions in the West coast of Africa, utilizes the navy and so partakes in violence, gains by the low wages or bad conditions of the workers in England and takes advantage of the political subjection of India. All this responsibility and more also is put into a little tin of cocoa!

Are we prepared to shoulder this grave responsibility and pander to our palate or shall we content ourselves with a cup of nutritious milk drawn from a well-kept cow at our door? These considerations are not far-fetched but actual. Anyone who looks on life seriously and as a trustee cannot afford to ignore these far-reaching consequences of her actions.

Dark Days Eat Local Challenge

I hereby accept Urban Hennery's challenge to cook at least one local meal through the lean days of winter. I don't have anything frozen or canned so I will probably have to learn a lot of new sweet potato recipes. Want to take the challenge? Here's the rules:

1. Cook one meal a week with at least 90% local ingredients
2. Write about it - the triumphs and the challenges
3. Local means a 200 mile radius for raw ingredients. For processed foods the company must be within 200 miles and committed to local sources.
4. Keep it up through the end of the year, and then re-evaluate on New Year’s Day
5. The challenge starts now, or whenever you sign up.

Desegregation then, what now for Chapel Hill?

November 8, 2007 News and Observer

Forty-five years of history fell away at UNC-Chapel Hill on Thursday night.

Participants in Chapel Hill's tumultuous civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s said that, in some ways, a lot of progress has been made. In others, there's still a long way to go.

They met for a panel discussion at UNC's Wilson Library to celebrate the republication of John Ehle's 1965 book "The Free Men," which chronicles Chapel Hill's desegregation.

The movement was marked by dozens of demonstrations, sit-ins, hunger strikes and other protests. Some demonstrators were physically assaulted. Hundreds were arrested.

Several panelists made the distinction between desegregation and integration and said they feel the latter is lacking in Chapel Hill.

James Foushee, who participated in demonstrations, said, "Chapel Hill is going to become, in the next five years, an all-white town."

"We have desegregated," Karen Parker said. "Integration is up to the individual."

"Blacks are priced out. Are the people of Chapel Hill aware of that? No, they're not," said Wayne King, who covered the protests for The Daily Tar Heel, UNC's student newspaper. "It's harder to notice that ... no black people are having breakfast in the Carolina Coffee Shop. ... Would you notice?" he asked the audience.

Many of us notice. The problem is what to do about it. I do not believe that building luxury housing surrounding the remaining historically black neighborhoods in downtown is an acceptable solution. Gentrification received little to no discussion in last week's municipal election. Will Raymond tried though and I thank him for that.

(photo from UNC News Service press release, photographer: Jim Wallace)

Planning Guidance for Sustainability

If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed,
If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree.
If you are thinking one hundred years ahead,
educate the people.

Kuan Tzu Chinese Poet, c. 500 B.C.

How to Avoid DKA, Hypos, and Other Side Effects of Feline Diabetes

Ketones are waste products that result from the body's use of stored fat for energy. In a diabetic, any urinary ketones above trace, or any increase in urinary ketone level, or trace urinary ketones plus some of the symptoms above, are cause to call an emergency vet immediately, at any hour of the day. Diabetic ketoacidosis is caused by a lack of insulin or an insufficient amount of insulin.

Hypoglycemia is dangerously low blood sugar brought on by too much insulin. It can result in seizures, coma, and even death.

These two conditions represent the opposite ends of the diabetic spectrum, from too much insulin to not enough. Managing your cat's diabetes involves navigating between these two potentially lethal side effects. Diet, testing, and regulation are primary considerations in achieving this goal.

• Feed a low-carb wet diet.
  If your cat refuses to eat wet food, supplement the dry food with cooked meats as you transition away from the dry. See Dr. Lisa's Transitioning Dry Food Addicts to Canned Food for more ideas.
  
  
• Use a human glucometer to test your cats blood at home.
  Hometesting will give you the information you need to determine when a dose needs to be changed either up or down. If you have a good relationship with your vet, you can call and report your test numbers and work together to determine any dosing adjustments. If your vet doesn't support hometesting, join one of the Insulin Support Groups and work with others who have experience with your particular insulin.
  Hometesting video
  
  
• Use the results of your testing to achieve regulation.
  When your cat is first diagnosed with diabetes, your goal is to "regulate" her or his blood glucose, which may take a few weeks or even many months. Eventually you will want to aim for blood sugar levels in the 70 to 200 range. This won't happen right away but by reducing carbohydrates from your cats food and hometesting, you can achieve this goal safely. The well-regulated diabetic cat should look and act the same as he/she did before diabetes. If you have any concerns about your meter reading too low, you can test a non-diabetic cat as your control.

There's no sure-fire method for eliminating all risk of hypos, DKA, and other diabetes-related problems, but you can greatly reduce the risk by learning all that you can. Insulin is a powerful hormone. The more you know about it, the safer your cat will be.

Rebound: A Positive Feedback Loop

A positive feedback loop is a cause and effect response that has no self-correcting mechanism. An example of a positive feedback loop is your bathtub. If you turn the water on and let it run to fill, it will continue running until you manually turn it off, even if that means it floods your bathroom.

Counter intuitively, negative feedback loops are self-correcting. An example of a negative feedback loop is your home thermostat. You set it at the threshold you want, and it continually samples the room temperature and makes corrections to maintain the desired temperature setting (threshold).

In feline diabetes, the way a cat's body uses insulin is both a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop. When the body gets too much insulin, the liver releases glycogen (stored glucose) to protect against hypoglycemia. That's the negative feedback loop.

When the body receives too much insulin over time, the liver adjusts its threshold upward. For example, instead of recognizing 50 mg/dl (for felines) as a glucose level that is too low and requires intervention through released glycogen, it starts to think anything lower than 200 mg/dl needs adjustment. So the cat's body stops using the insulin effectively and stays in a continuous hyperglycemic state, also called rebound. The negative feedback loop, which is the natural mechanism, is overwhelmed by too much insulin, which in turns creates the unnatural positive feedback loop.

Since there are no tests for rebound, humans too often continue to increase the insulin dosage in order to alleviate the hyperglycemia, causing the liver to set the 'hypo' threshold even higher. So no matter how much additional insulin the cat receives, the response is in the opposite direction than what is expected.

Unfortunately, a cat in rebound is always subject to hypoglycemia since the liver does not have a endless supply of stored glucose/glycogen. When the glycogen runs out, hypo results.

The only way to break a positive feedback loop is to stop feeding it. In feline diabetes, that means reducing the insulin dosage, hopefully before the cat hypos.

Other examples of positive feedback loops:

• credit card debt (the more you borrow, the deeper in debt you go and the more you need to borrow to cover the debt)
  
• hyperactive behavior in a child; the more they over-react, the more wound up they get
  
• alcoholism and drug addiction....any addiction

Drought Restrictions

As of October 1, 2007, the OWASA reservoirs are 56% full. According to the state climatologist, La Nina conditions are expected to continue the drought well into the winter months. La Nina is cooler than normal ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that affect weather patterns in North Carolina. There are about 10-12 reliable indicators, but drought prediction is still a nascent science. So while these predictions could be totally wrong; the state climatologist (Ryan Boyles) just doesn't think so.

And yet, just last week, OWASA wrote to the towns, "We believe there is little risk of running out of water this year, but the community could face a substantially more serious shortage next year, when it will be too late to catch up, if rainfall and streamflow are less than normal this winter."

See page 5 of this letter for a chart of what is and is not allowed at the various stages of water restriction. If OWASA is saying that there will be a serious shortage next year if there is less than normal rainfall this winter, and if the state climatologist is predicting a dry winter, why are we allowing up to 1,000 gallons per day of outdoor irrigation (for those on irrigation meters)?

Last weekend I sent an email to all elected officials in Chapel Hill and Carrboro asking that they request a change in the irrigation restrictions effective immediately. Last night Carrboro asked citizens to voluntarily cut back to 500 gallons and also agreed to contact Chapel Hill and OWASA for tightening the current guidelines: "The board voted to pass a resolution asking its residents to cut back to 500 gallons a day, and agreed that Chilton should contact Mayor Kevin Foy in Chapel Hill and ask that he present the same idea to the Chapel Hill Town Council and that he contact OWASA officials to say the aldermen are strongly in favor of tighter restrictions." (Chapel Hill Herald, October 3, 2007)

OWASA, as a non-profit organization, needs to collect sufficient revenues to pay their costs, even during a drought. Continuing to allow irrigation, especially with their new cost structure, passes the extra financial burden of conservation onto those who abuse the community good. But the long-term risk associated with drought, leaves me to believe the greater community good would be better served through a cost recovery mechanism that does not involve wasting a limited, precious resource.

Serious drought frequency has risen since 2000, whether we attribute it to global warming, growing populations, or changing weather patterns. We as a community need to look into new ways of protecting our water resources while also protecting the financial integrity of OWASA.

Follow Up to Community Journalism

The Chapel Hill News and the Carrboro Citizen have both posted stories/blog entries on the Dan Coleman park incident since I questioned their failure to do so last week. Community journalism is alive and well in Carrboro and Chapel Hill!

Altar Call for True Believers

I loved Janisse Ray's first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. And now she's done it again with a brilliant article in Orion Magazine, Altar Call for True Believers.

I want to see our communities get more and more localized, with more local food produced and consumed, more local goods bought and sold. I want to see local entrepreneurship and craftsmanship encouraged. I want a renaissance of the hands, so that we use fewer electrical gadgets and motorized tools.

I want to hear of an organization that decides, because of the climate crisis, to cancel its annual conference. I want to see us relying on the mail and conference calls and e-mail for corresponding with distant colleagues, and engaging more deliberately with our neighbors. I want to see us using petroleum as if it were precious, which is to say sparingly and wisely, driving shorter distances and less often; in fact, I want getting in a single-occupancy vehicle to be a last resort.

I want us to get radical. I want us choir members to make even the hardest decisions while holding the Earth in mind.

I want us to raise the bar for ourselves.

New Environmental Paradigm

A environmental assessment tool develop by Dunlap and Van Liere in 1978 to measure attitudes toward environmental protection and the development of a systematic way to address the increasing depletion of natural resources (carrying capacity). This new environmental paradigm contrasts with the dominant social paradigm which "reflects the view of the industrial era where economic and population growth and continued exploitation of natural resources can continue without damage to the environment." (Sussman)

The New Environmental Paradigm Scale

• We are approaching the limit of the number of people the earth can support.
  
• The balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset.
  
• Humans have the right to modify the natural environment.
  
• Humankind was created to rule over the rest of nature.
  
• When humans interfere with nature it often produces disastrous consequences.
  
• Plants and animals exist primarily to be used by humans.
  
• To maintain a healthy economy we will have to develop a "steady state" economy where industrial growth is controlled.
  
• Humans must live in harmony with nature in order to survive.
  
• The earth is like a spaceship with only limited room and resources.
  
• Humans need not adapt to the natural environment because they can remake it to suit their needs.
  
• There are limits to growth beyond which our industrialized society cannot expand.
  
• Mankind is severely abusing the environment.

Community Journalism?

Community journalism is defined as "reporting of news and information for a certain geographic area... a community, if you will, with the purpose to serve the best interests of that certain group....'Make them happy... make them mad... but whatever you do... make them think.'"

Chapel Hill and Carrboro are served by two newspaper conglomerates, the Herald Sun and the News and Observer, both of which allocate a page to goings-on in each county within their service area. The N&O also owns the subsidiary Chapel Hill News, which covers Orange County in more detail. The most recent addition to the local media scene is the Carrboro Citizen which promised to provide more in depth coverage of local politics and arts. And then there are the broadcast media.

With all this coverage, you would think that our local news would be covered with more than a cursory nod. So where is the coverage on alderman Dan Coleman's assault with a deadly weapon? Both the N&O and the Herald covered the story the day after the incident, although the Herald omitted the fact that it occurred during a Carrboro High School cross country meet. Three days later the Carrboro Citizen still hasn't updated it's electronic version, as it did promptly when John McCormick was arrested.

The police have 5 written, eye-witness accounts to the incident, in addition to Dan's written statement and the verbal report made by the alleged victim. None of these individuals have been interviewed. Carrboro High has not been asked to confirm that an official cross country meet was underway and that Ms Kotecki was an authorized volunteer. Nor has Carrboro Parks and Recreation provided any confirmation that they knew the meet was taking place and that traffic could be disrupted. Isn't it the role of local media to confirm the facts of a case such as this? And yet we know nothing more than was reported the morning after the incident based.

The incident itself is distressing, but what I am more concerned about is this lack of media coverage. Dan was a regular columnist for the Herald prior to his appointment to the BOA and had frequent guest posts in the Chapel Hill News. More than likely he has friendships with the Carrboro Citizen editorial staff. Do these personal and professional ties explain the lack of investigation? This is an election year and Dan will be running for the first time. Will it be left to his detractors to cover this story on Squeeze the Pulp or other citizen-based outlets. Or will the press step forward and try to provide a more detailed and unbiased account?

Sometime back Fred Black wrote that the financial model of print newspapers precludes investigative journalism. And yet looking at the number of outlets dedicated just to Orange County, I find it hard to believe that staffing can explain this current failure. Is local journalism broken or just protecting one of its own?

Garden Quotes

I'm cleaning out all the dead plants from my garden today. Drought is brutal. Hopefully some of my native perennials have simply gone dormant and will return next year although I'm rethinking my entire garden design. Going to be looking for shrubs this fall. Even though I've been quite diligent about planting drought resistant perennials, they still need SOME water.

"I can't resist a pretty plant. When I see it, I want it, I buy it, take it home, and plant it where ever I can find a place. If I had a similar moral code when it comes to romance, I would be divorced several times over by now. That is the reason I grow a cottage garden. I can stick everything in with complete abandon and no discrimination whatsoever."
-- Cassandra Danz, Mrs. Greenthumbs Plows Ahead: Five Steps to the Drop-Dead Gorgeous Garden of Your Dreams

"Gardening... is a painstaking exploration of place; everything that happens in my garden--the thriving and dying of particular plants, the maraudings of various insects and other pests--teaches me to know this patch of land more intimately, its geology and microclimate, the particular ecology of its local weeds and animals and insects. ... Lawns work on the opposite principle. They depend for their success on the overcoming of local conditions."
-- Michael Pollan, Second Nature

"I sometimes believe that acknowledging a consciousness and a conscience within nature actually holds the last best hope for a humanity seemingly bent on destroying this fair Earth."
- Jim Nollman, Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place

Letter to the Editor: Sustainability

Excellent letter praising the county for creating the Lands Legacy Program in today's Chapel Hill News. But what I liked was the call to define sustainability in terms of Orange County in order to incorporate it, with metrics, into the comprehensive plan.

The next step should be to continue funding Lands Legacy, but also to define what sustainability means. With a broad commitment and emphasis on sustainability, the comprehensive plan should describe the processes by which the basic needs of our citizens are provided and protected without depleting the quality of life. It should set up an annual measurement of the natural and man-made indicators of sustainability, such as water supply and air quality, and add new ones like the supply of locally grown agricultural products and foods. This annual report would reflect the quality of our planning and our successes.

Sustainability is easy to talk about. Putting it into practice, balancing out the various aspects from affordability to environmental conservation, will require political leadership and collective action. Do we have will to pursue this challenge?

Endocrine Disrupters

(this is the handout I will be distributing in Saxapahaw tomorrow)

What are Endocrine Disrupters?

Endocrine disrupters are chemicals that affect the endocrine system and prevent hormones from performing their usual functions in the body. In humans, as in animals, hormones play an important role in communications; they affect mood and memory, reproduction and development, and virtually any other biological process you can name.

Exposure to endocrine disrupters during critical stages of development can result in permanent effects on overall health, intelligence, and the ability to reproduce. Hormone disrupters are suspected of causing cancer, birth defects, and immune problems. Even incredibly tiny concentrations can interfere with reproduction.

Bisphenol-A (BPA)
BPA is a hormone-disrupting chemical considered to be potentially harmful to human health and the environment.

BPA is used as a plastic coating for children's teeth to prevent cavities, as a coating in metal cans to prevent the metal from contact with food contents, as the plastic in food containers, refrigerator shelving, baby bottles, water bottles, returnable containers for juice, milk and water, micro-wave ovenware and eating utensils. Scratched and worn polycarbonate feeding bottles are known to leach this chemical into liquids.

10 Everyday Pollution Solutions
(see the Environmental Working Group link for explanations of each)

1. Use cast iron pans instead of nonstick.
   
2. To avoid chemicals leaching into food, go easy on processed, canned or fast foods and never microwave plastic. (Bisphenol A)
   
3. Buy organic, or eat vegetables and fruit grown with minimal pesticides.
   
4. Use iodized salt to combat chemical interference from the thyroid.
   
5. Seal outdoor wooden structures (arsenic).
   
6. Leave your shoes at the door. This minimizes distribution of dust-bound pollutants.
   
7. Avoid perfume, cologne and products with added fragrance as well as antibacterial soaps.
   
8. Buy products with natural fibers, like cotton and wool, that are naturally fire resistant. (Chemical flame retardant PBDE)
   
9. Eat low-mercury fish like tilapia & pollock, rather than high-mercury choices like tuna & swordfish.
   
10. Filter your water for drinking and cooking.

DON’T FLUSH!
Wastewater treatment plants and septic systems are generally not designed to treat pharmaceutical waste. Dissolve unwanted medications in water and mix with kitty litter or sawdust (or any material that absorbs the dissolved medication and makes it less appealing for pets or children to eat), then place in a sealed plastic bag BEFORE tossing in the trash.

Other articles I will be distributing:

• Stewing over sewage fertilizer
  
• Rivers of Doubt: Minute quantities of everyday contaminants in our drinking supply could add up to big trouble
  
• Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs): Basic information

More on Carrying Capacity

From Rachel's Democracy & Health News #919, August 9, 2007

Why precaution? Because of cumulative impacts.

One of the reasons for adopting the precautionary principle, rather than the "trust in economic growth" decision rule, is "cumulative impacts."

The foundational assumption of the "trust in economic growth" rule (that economic activity is generally to the net benefit of society, even if it causes environmental damage) is further assumed to be true no matter how large our economy becomes. To implement the "trust in economic growth" rule, all we do is eliminate any activity without a net benefit, and in doing this we examine each activity independently. The surviving economic activities, and the accompanying cost-benefit- justified damage to the environment, are both thought to be able to grow forever.

Not only is there no limit to how large our economy can become, there is no limit as to how large justified environmental damage can become either. The "trust in economic growth" decision rule contains no independent constraint on the total damage we do to Earth -- indeed the core structure of this decision rule assumes that we do not need any such constraint. People who think this way see no need for the precautionary principle precisely because they see no need for the preferential avoidance of damage to the environment that it embodies.

But, as we now know, there is in fact a need for a limit to the damage we do to earth. Unfortunately, the human enterprise has now grown so large that we are running up against the limits of the Earth -- if we are not careful, we can destroy our only home. (Examples abound: global warming, thinning of Earth's ozone shield, depletion of ocean fisheries, shortages of fresh water, accelerated loss of species, and so on.)

And it is the cumulative impact of all we are doing that creates this problem. One can liken it to the famous "straw that broke the camel's back." At some point "the last straw" is added to the camel's load, its carrying capacity exceeded. Just as it would miss the larger picture to assume that since one or a few straws do not hurt the camel, straw after straw can be piled on without concern, so the "trust in economic growth" decision rule misses the larger picture by assuming that cost-benefit-justified environmental damage can grow forever.

Thus, it is the total size of our cumulative impacts that is prompting us to revisit our prevailing decision rule. This is why we now need a decision rule that leads us to contain the damage we do. It is why we now must work preferentially to avoid damage to the Earth, even if we forego some activities that would provide a net benefit if we lived in an "open" or "empty" world whose limits were not being exceeded. We can still develop economically, but we must live within the constraints imposed by Earth itself.

Ultimately, the conclusion that we must learn to live within the capacity of a fragile Earth to provide for us, painful as it is, is thrust upon us by the best science that we have -- the science that looks at the whole biosphere, senses the deep interconnections between all its parts, places us as an element of its ecology, recognizes the time scale involved in its creation and our own evolution within it, and reveals, forever incompletely, the manifold and mounting impacts that we are having upon it and ourselves.

Lois Gibbs in Saxapahaw

Famed Love Canal Environmental Activist will speak in Saxapahaw, NC

Nationally-acclaimed environmental leader Lois Gibbs, Executive Director, Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), will be in North Carolina to discuss the importance of community activism in fighting polluting industry. Lois is known as the "mother of Superfund" for her groundbreaking victory in 1980 relocating 900 families away from the Love Canal, the site of a former toxic chemical waste dump. Families with children living in the Love Canal district experienced birth defects, miscarriages, cancers and health problems.

Please join us for this FREE event!
Sunday, August 19, from 1-4 p.m.
River Landing Inn, 5942 Whitney Road, Graham, NC 27253
(*just across the bridge from Saxapahaw)
Live music by MEBANESVILLE ~ PICNIC pickins!

The event is being sponsored by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL), Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) and BE SAFE, NOT SORRY of Alamance County. Leaders from local community-based organizations in Alamance, Orange, Guilford and Granville Counties who will be speaking about their current challenges fighting polluting industries include:

• Martha Hamblin, GASP for Clean Air. Stericycle medical waste incinerator;
  
• Pat Dodson, Be Safe - Not Sorry. South Atlantic steel galvanizing plant and polluting industry ordnances;
  
• Nancy Holt, Neighbors Opposing Bio-Sludge (NO-BS). Health and environmental risks of land application of sewage sludge;
  
• Linda Moore, Watchdogs in the Southeast (WISE). Neighborhoods united to stop an asphalt plant;
  
• Mike Holland, Coalition for Environmental Responsibility & Education through Synergy (CERES). Protecting & preserving the quality of life in the Haw River Valley.

And more.…for an afternoon of discussion, activism, music, and picnicking at the beautiful River Landing Inn on the Haw River. The Inn will offer rooms at a 10% discount for the event. For more information contact Sue Dayton/BREDL: sdayton@swcp.com.

Children are not just small adults

From today's Rachel Democracy and Health News

Childhood Growth Stages Determine What Harm Pollution Does

Geneva, Switzerland -- An increased risk of cancer, heart and lung
disease in adults can result from exposures to certain environmental
chemicals during childhood, the World Health Organization said today.
This finding is part of the first report ever issued by the agency
focusing on children's special susceptibility to harmful chemical
exposures at different stages of their growth.

Air and water contaminants, pesticides in food, lead in soil, as well
many other environmental threats which alter the delicate organism of
a growing child may cause or worsen disease and induce developmental
problems, said the World Health Organization, WHO, releasing the
report at its Geneva headquarters.

The peer-reviewed report highlights the fact that in children, the
stage in their development when exposure to a threat occurs may be
just as important as the magnitude of the exposure.

"Children are not just small adults," said Dr. Terri Damstra, team
leader for WHO's Interregional Research Unit. "Children are especially
vulnerable and respond differently from adults when exposed to
environmental factors -- and this response may differ according to the
different periods of development they are going through."

"For example, their lungs are not fully developed at birth, or even at
the age of eight, and lung maturation may be altered by air pollutants
that induce acute respiratory effects in childhood and may be the
origin of chronic respiratory disease later in life," Dr. Damstra
said.

Over 30 percent of the global burden of disease in children can be
attributed to environmental factors, the WHO study found. (more)

Drought

My garden is dying. I have been watering a few select plants, mostly shrubs that were planted this year so that their roots systems are still vulnerable. This morning I actually dug up a few that are at deaths door and put them in containers so that I can water them. And we're only in a moderate drought? But how many years in a row is this?

Now on top of the drought, we have the excessive heat with the associated air quality advisories. We need a tropical storm!

Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem

This is one of the best examples of systems dynamics that I have seen in a good long while. We have to stop looking for fixes for one problem without analyzing the consequences that fix might have on other aspects of life.

******************************************

http://www.agweekly.com/articles/2007/04/01/news/opinion/opin81.txt

Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem

By David Tilman and Jason Hill, Special to The Washington Post

The world has come full circle. A century ago our first transportation biofuels — the hay and oats fed to our horses — were replaced by gasoline. Today, ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans have begun edging out gasoline and diesel.

This has been hailed as an overwhelmingly positive development that will help us reduce the threat of climate change and ease our dependence on foreign oil. In political circles, ethanol is the flavor of the day, and presidential candidates have been cycling through Iowa extolling its benefits. Lost in the ethanol-induced euphoria, however, is the fact that three of our most fundamental needs — food, energy, and a livable and sustainable environment — are now in direct conflict. Moreover, our recent analyses of the full costs and benefits of various biofuels, performed at the University of Minnesota, present a markedly different and more nuanced picture than has been heard on the campaign trail.

Some biofuels, if properly produced, do have the potential to provide climate-friendly energy, but where and how can we grow them? Our most fertile lands are already dedicated to food production. As demand for both food and energy increases, competition for fertile lands could raise food prices enough to drive the poorer third of the globe into malnourishment. The destruction of rainforests and other ecosystems to make new farmland would threaten the continued existence of countless animal and plant species and would increase the amount of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Finding and implementing solutions to the food, fuel and environment conflict is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. But solutions will be neither adopted nor sought until we understand the interlinked problems we face. (see full article for the rest of the article)

Honey's New Furrever Home

Honey Boy was officially adopted today by a wonderful woman named Joanna (she wants a lap cat!) and her other cat Lacey. He chastised me all the over to Raleigh but when we got to Joanna's he lost all his bravado. Lacey came up to the carrier and immediately began rubbing up against it in welcome. So we let Honey (now Chester!) out and he took off exploring. Lacey followed him around, occasionally hissing to establish her dominance, but there were no problems other than Honey's shyness. He ended up hiding under the bed. I took him some treats, which he ate, but he wouldn't come out. So the last time I saw the boy, he was cowering in the dark. Not the way I wanted the introduction to go.

So the sweet boy is gone. Joanna has promised to feed him wet food and has extended an open invitation to visit. Lucy is once again an only cat, much to her pleasure. And while I will not miss his 5:00 am wake up calls, I will miss his very loud purring, the way he liked to hold hands, and his willingness to be picked up and hugged anytime I wanted. I hope he is very happy with his new family.

Saturday, August 11. Joanna called to say she was totally in love with my Sweet Honey and that he has a home furrever!

Carrying Capacity

Carrying capacity can be defined as the "maximum number of organisms that can use a given area of habitat without degrading the habitat and without causing social stresses that result in the population being reduced." Overpopulation is the result of exceeding carrying capacity. In a local environment, such as Orange County, how do we determine carrying capacity?

Apparently many of our local officials, those who make land use policies, believe that as long as we are building inside the urban services boundary, there is no problem with carrying capacity. They believe that if we have strict requirements for open space and stormwater management with investment in public art and transit that we can proceed with total build out. Does carrying capacity relate only to land use? What about resources, such as water and sewer, air quality, or waste management?

The county's comprehensive plan has a goal of “Less solid waste per capita with cost effective and environmentally responsible disposal and management.” Using a normalization factor, such as per capita, is a good start at informing growth management from a real on-the-ground approach over the theoretical approach that has been dominating the conversation in the past several years. But per capita doesn't tell the entire story. We also need to know the growth projections being used by the planners. We can reduce per capita trash consumption while still growing our total volume produced. Is it acceptable to reduce per capita trash production while increasing total volume given the costs we will be incurring from shipping our trash out of county as of 2011? Is affordability part of carrying capacity?

I believe there are signals, the unaffordability of our housing, our failed landfill siting exercises, our persistent school funding issues, and growing stormwater problems, that should be interpreted as threats continued growth imposes on our natural environment and quality of life. The precautionary principle says that despite the lack of cause and effect evidence, we should still proactively engage in measures to protect the environment and social structures of the community. "According to the precautionary principle, precautionary action should be undertaken when there are credible threats of harm, despite residual scientific uncertainty about cause and effect relationships."

The assumption used by most elected officials, the Village Project and others is that growth is inevitable. Some embrace it; others don't. But discussion around growth seem to always come down to a choice between urban density and sprawl. I hope the upcoming election will bring this false dichotomy into a serious political discussion. Do we proceed with building out southern Orange County or do we recognize that some activities associated with growth "may cause serious, irreparable, or widespread harm and that [we] have a responsibility to prevent harm and to preserve the natural foundations of life, now and into the future."

Honey Boy

Honey Boy came to me as a Second Chance foster cat on December 16, 2007 (Saturday)-. He was diabetic and overweight, he wouldn't bathe himself, and he stank. His first glucose test was 441. Not a healthy 4 year old boy. All he wanted to do was sit on my lap.

I didn't bother with transitioning him from the dry food garbage he had been fed at the shelter; started him on Wellness the night that he got here and he showed no hesitation in eating it (or demand more at 5:00 am the next morning!). High blood sugar was his only symptom of diabetes. By Monday evening, his glucose was down to 286 on diet alone, but it was back up in the 400s by that evening. I started him on 1/2 unit of Humulin N (the insulin provided by Second Chance) the evening of 12/19/06. He was too low to shoot that next morning (235) since I didn't have any data to show how low he went the night before and I wasn't going to be home to monitor. That night, he was 286 so he got another 1/2 unit.

12/16/06
arrives from rescue shelter, starts Wellness diet--ate it no problem, so no transition period

12/17/06
given remaining antibiotic and deworming medicine--stressful. Decided to postpone ear poke until evening to increase likely of a non-stress reading. Ate the Wellness with gusto but has diarrhea. Not sure if it's from the dewormer, diet change or stress.

First glucose test....441 (499 at the vets at end of November)

12/18/06
Second glucose test 286

12/19/06
pm ps......421....1/2 unit NPH (first insulin)
+3.5.......161

12/20/06
am ps......235 (no insulin because I didn't know enough about how he responds and wasn't going to be around)
pm ps......283....1/2 unit NPH
+4....123

12/21/06
am ps....286....1/2 units NPH
+14......129 (no insulin)

12/22/06
am ps.....262...1/2 unit NPH
pm ps.....213 (before dinner)
+15.......157 (no insulin)

12/23/06
am ps.....fed, no test, no shot--dealing with Lucy's inappetance
+15.......157
+38.......134

12/24/06
+48.......155... 1 drop (about 1/10 of a unit) NPH
+2.5......66
+8........143 (food)
+10.5.....129

12/25/06
never over 140

12/26/06
+54.......140

12/27/07
+65.......122

Honey got exactly 4 injections of 1/2 unit each before he went into remission. Was he really diabetic? I don't think so. He was first taken to Second Chance when he was 2 years old after his family moved out of town and left him behind (declawed but not neutered!). He was adopted with another Second Chance cat and spent almost 2 years in that home before they returned him with diabetes. There's no way to know what caused the high glucose levels, but my experience with him has solidified my belief in a good diet and a little insulin to start off.

Within a month, he was off insulin. At that point I started urging him to bathe himself (I had been wiping his butt for him and was sick of it). So I starting using a warm washcloth to wipe down all of his fur. He liked it and was very cooperative, but it wasn't a strong enough hint. So I started getting the washclothe very wet so that he was dripping. He didn't like that at all, and had to immediately start licking himself dry. We only had to do that a couple of times and voila--a self-cleaning kitty!

Now it's July 2007 and he's lost a couple of pounds and looks great. He plays, his fur is super soft, and his glucose levels are below 70 anytime I remember to check him. On 7/15/07 he had a date with a very nice lady from Raleigh. She was looking for a declawed cat above the age of a kitten. She had just adopted a 7 year old declaw from the Wake Humane Society and wanted a companion for her (she likes other cats). The lady's adult daughter lives here in Chapel Hill, so I invited here to meet Honey instead of taking him to Second Chance (he is NOT a cooperative traveler). They hit it off fabulously. Honey purred very loudly as usual and showed off him cute play moves. He even let me put a ribbon around his neck to help him look extra handsome. I got the call today that she is filling out his adoption papers next Sunday. I will take him to her house that afternoon.

Lucy will be thrilled; the fights have been escalating. Although I will miss him, he's going to the perfect situation. A bean who wants a lap cat and another cat who likes cats. And they lived happily ever after......

How N.C. mistreats its beaches

This isn't really a local issue, and it's probably a copyright violation to copy the article here. But I want to preserve this article as it gets to the same problems the Smith Level Road task force has encountered with DOT. "Engineering" approaches to beach management and road management arrive at different ends than resource management approaches. With apologies to all my engineering friends, we need to stop letting engineers make these management decisions.

Article published Jul 22, 2007
Pilkey: How N.C. mistreats its beaches

At a recent international conference in Australia, I met a South African coastal management official from Capetown who excitedly reported the outcome of a move by his government. In December 2001, recreational driving on beaches was halted throughout South Africa. It proved to be a wise environmental decision.

Almost immediately after the ban, surveys indicated that the numbers of a variety of beach nesting and beach feeding birds increased. Critters living in the beach sand also recovered quickly, and surf zone fishing seemed to be improving in tandem with the recovery of the near-shore ecosystem.

But what excited this young man the most was the return of the leopards. Tracks began to appear on some remote beaches. Finally, a beach hiker reported seeing one of these shy creatures bounding along the swash line.

North Carolina has every reason to be envious of this beach success story at the far-away southern tip of Africa. Here we seem to be going in the opposite direction.

We have grown to accept our beaches as engineering projects not much different from highways. Driving is allowed on many North Carolina beaches, including the Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores. Even on wild Shackleford Bank, the park service sends a four-wheeler daily up and down the beach to "check things out."

Politicians argue back and forth about funding and about how much sand to use in nourishment projects without a thought about the devastating impact of pumping in new sand on the fauna and flora. The loss of the beach critters is a blow to birds and offshore fish alike.

Bulldozing of sand from the lower to the upper beach, also a death-dealing process to the beach ecosystem, is routinely done in many communities, including those on Topsail Island, Bogue Banks, Holden Beach, Nags Head and Kitty Hawk.

Beach-raking carried out frequently in Myrtle Beach and Virginia Beach and occasionally in a number of smaller North Carolina communities, such as Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach, is as deadly a killer as bulldozing.

Also, a number of North Carolina communities inexplicably don't clean up their beaches as houses and roads collapse into the retreating shorelines. Asphalt chunks abound on Ocean Isle as they do elsewhere on the Outer Banks.

Hundreds of sand bag seawalls line the beaches. Some, such as those in South Nags Head, extend to the mid-tide line.

There is some good news on the sandbag front. The N.C. Coastal Resources Commission has begun taking steps toward removing them. Time will tell if the CRC can withstand a storm of protests.

But the biggest travesty to beaches in North Carolina is our beach nourishment program. We have put more poor quality material on beaches than any other East Coast state. Fist-sized cobbles abound on Oak Island. Sharp shell gravel is found in the intertidal zone of portions of Pine Knoll Shores and Emerald Isle. Hardened mud chunks crop out in Atlantic Beach, and construction debris is found on Holden Beach.

Why do we treat our beaches with such contempt? The primary reason is the political power of beach front property owners anxious to preserve their property.

The reason we have bad beach nourishment material is an ineffective state agency that manages our beaches and an inept federal agency -- the Wilmington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- which has approved all the bad quality beach nourishment projects.

Local governments, with their tiny number of year-round voter-residents, usually don't help much with their focus on development.

The state of North Carolina is about to come up with a new beach and inlet management plan. Let's hope it doesn't accept the status quo that our beaches are simply engineering projects to keep a wealthy few happy.

Let's hope that the consultant group will recognize the treasured, even sacred nature of North Carolinas beaches.

Let's hope the plan will take the long view: that it will recognize that the sea level is rising and that it will work to preserve the beaches for our great-grandchildren.

Orrin Pilkey is director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Duke University.

Copyright © 2007
The News & Record
and Landmark Communications, Inc.

Lady Bird Johnson, 1912 - 2007

Favorite quotes from Lady Bird Johnson


“My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.”

“Some may wonder why I chose wildflowers when there are hunger and unemployment and the big bomb in the world. Well, I, for one, think we will survive, and I hope that along the way we can keep alive our experience with the flowering earth. For the bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man.”

“As I look back across a span of more than seven decades, I’m grateful for the joy that nature has given me and for the lifetime of experiences that led me to believe that I might repay a part of the debt I’ve incurred for beauty enjoyed.”

The Heart of the Problem

Climate Change: The Heart of The Problem
by Elizabeth Sawin

"Acting close[r] to the heart of the problem recognizes the interconnection of problems and increases the odds that the effort applied solves multiple problems simultaneously.

Excessive CO2 production may be closer to the heart of things, but it’s not THE heart, of course. There are deeper reasons, the reasons that cause us to produce so much greenhouse gas pollution in the first place.

If moving one step closer to the heart of things - moving from the symptom of rising temperature to its cause, CO2 pollution - produces the ability to solve multiple problems with a single solution, then what might be the power of reaching even deeper - into consumerism, into our sense that the Earth is ours to dominate, into the assumptions of the of the industrial growth society?

Go deep enough, find ways to act that are deep enough, and we might find ourselves solving not just warming and ocean acidification, but also mercury pollution and toxics build-up and topsoil loss. We might find choices that could begin to heal both the wounds of the Earth and the wounds we impose on each other - wounds like poverty, oppression, violence, and despair.

Getting to such depths, acknowledging what we find there, and figuring out what to do about what we find won’t be easy. But I believe that this is the direction that climate change and all the other tangled challenges of this moment in time are pointing us towards."

Community Sustainability

Mark Marcoplos makes two important points on OrangePolitics. "The fundamental issue to me is that the community should have a realistic understanding of the truth about how sustainable we are as a community" and "We certainly should reward baby steps toward sustainability."

While I value the environmental leadership shown by Mark and others, sustainability is not about environmental issues alone. We've made great strides forward in environmental protections thanks to our many local activists, but we've done so at the cost of economic and social sustainability. Two excellent articles by the local press last weekend highlight my concerns about how, we as a community, are approaching sustainability: OWASA, Town Weigh Water Issues and Mark Peters on school budgets.

How much is OWASA service going up this year? Yes, I know--higher rates will reduce demand and promote conservation. And the inverted block pricing structure will make some attempt to accommodate low income households. But the capital improvement budget for expanding the wastewater treatment plant to meet unconstrained population growth should not be ignored. Smart growth is protecting open space, but by concentrating growth inside the OWASA service area it’s adding to the inflationary cost of living here.

I support the concept of the rural buffer, but I also believe that all theories should be monitored to assure that they are accomplishing the intended goal. In this case, we may be protecting our farmland and open space at the expense of the affordability of our urban spaces. What expense is acceptable and when do we need to rethink the approach, if not the theory? Where is the data needed for lawmakers and the public to assess the continued efficacy of the rural buffer?

As for the schools, the current growth rates in this community are simply outpacing the funding mechanisms. Passing infrastructure charges off on developers raises the cost of housing; we all know developers are not going to take the financial hit inherent in current land use policies--despite the honorable intent of those policies. If we were funding all infrastructure, such as schools and other government services, on the same cost of service principle used by OWASA, the tax rate would be enormous but at least it would be more visible than it has been over the past many years.

Looking at our community demographics and the cost of living, I believe our local economy is trapped in a positive feedback loop. "A positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing. The more it works, the more it gains power to work some more....Positive feedback loops drive growth, explosion, erosion, and collapse in systems. A system with an unchecked positive loop ultimately will destroy itself." The more we do to protect the environment, the more expensive it becomes to live in this community. Positive feedback loops are not sustainable, even when they are caused by environmentally sustainable policies. That's why true sustainability addresses the environment, the society, and the economy.

Although I value the contributions of local environmental activists, I think it's time to look at something other than environmental policies for determining our community sustainability quotient. Only then will we have a "realistic understanding of the truth about how sustainable we are as a community."

Our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually. Growth no longer makes most people wealthier, but instead generates inequality and insecurity. Growth is bumping up against physical limits so profound—like climate change and peak oil—that trying to keep expanding the economy may be not just impossible but also dangerous. And perhaps most surprisingly, growth no longer makes us happier.

--Bill McKibben, Reversal of Fortune

Sometimes Less is More....unfortunately

From Environmental Health News

Does 'the dose make the poison?'
Extensive results challenge a core assumption in toxicology

The "dose makes the poison" is a common adage in toxicology. It implies that larger doses have greater effects than smaller doses. That makes common sense and it is the core assumption underpinning all regulatory testing. When "the dose makes the poison," toxicologists can safely assume that high dose tests will reveal health problems that low dose exposures might cause. High dose tests are desirable because, the logic goes, they not only will reveal low dose effects, they will do so faster and with greater reliability. Greater reliability and speed also mean less cost.

The trouble is, some pollutants, drugs and natural substances don't adhere to this logic, as can be seen in the photograph above. Instead, they cause different effects at different levels, including impacts at low levels that do not occur at high doses. Sometimes the effects can even be precisely the opposite at high vs. low. Because all regulatory testing has been designed assuming that "the dose makes the poison," it is highly likely to have missed low dose effects, and led to health standards that are too weak. (read more)

Water treatment removes some toxins and some pharmaceutical residues, including hormones. But it doesn't get it all. Those 'small doses' are passed along through waterways impacting fish, frogs, and other wildlife, as well as the community downstream. Current water testing doesn't/can't measure the small doses......

Safe Soap and Cosmetics

The evidence of pharmaceutical and personal care products degradation of our water resources continues to grow. From levels of synethic musk being found in breast milk to the potential links to cancer and developmental delays from flame retardants to the inadequacy of laboratory testing to predict the impact on fish and wildlife, chemicals are impacting health in unanticipated ways.

Thanks to Mother Earth News for compiling a list of chemical-free cosmetics and personal care resources. Being environmentally responsible should not have to mean losing one's vanity!

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

The Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep database

The FDA's Voluntary Cosmetic Registration Program

Corporate Greed Takes Root at the US Postal Service

Quoted from an email from Robert McChesney (Freepress.net)

"The news media are covering the tragic murders in Virginia this morning, and as they do an extraordinarily significant story is slipping through the cracks.

On very rare occasions I send a message to everyone in my email address book on an issue that I find of staggering importance and urgency. (My address book includes pretty much everyone who emails me in one form or another, and I apologize if you get this message more than once.) This is one of those times.

There is a major crisis in our media taking place right now; it is getting almost no attention and unless we act very soon the consequences for our society could well be disastrous. And it will only take place because it is being done without any public awareness or participation; it goes directly against the very foundations of freedom of the press in the entirety of American history.

The U.S. Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its rates for magazines, such that smaller periodicals will be hit with a much much larger increase than the largest magazines.

Because the Post Office is a monopoly, and because magazines must use it, the postal rates always have been skewed to make it cheaper for smaller publications to get launched and to survive. The whole idea has been to use the postal rates to keep publishing as competitive and wide open as possible. This bedrock principle was put in place by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. They considered it mandatory to create the press system, the Fourth Estate necessary for self-government.

It was postal policy that converted the free press clause in the First Amendment from an abstract principle into a living breathing reality for Americans. And it has served that role throughout our history.

What the Post Office is now proposing goes directly against 215 years of postal policy. The Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its mailing rates for magazines. Under the plan, smaller periodicals will be hit with a much larger increase than the big magazines, as much as 30 percent. Some of the largest circulation magazines will face hikes of less than 10 percent.

The new rates, which go into effect on July 15, were developed with no public involvement or congressional oversight, and the increased costs could damage hundreds, even thousands, of smaller publications, possibly putting many out of business. This includes nearly every political journal in the nation. These are the magazines that often provide the most original journalism and analysis. These are the magazines that provide much of the content on Common Dreams. We desperately need them.

What the Post Office is planning to do now, in the dark of night, is implement a rate structure that gives the best prices to the biggest publishers, hence letting them lock in their market position and lessen the threat of any new competition. The new rates could make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine, unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate.

Not surprisingly, the new scheme was drafted by Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the nation. All evidence available suggests the bureaucrats responsible have never considered the implications of their draconian reforms for small and independent publishers, or for citizens who depend upon a free press.

The corruption and sleaziness of this process is difficult to exaggerate. As one lawyer who works for a large magazine publisher admits, “It takes a publishing company several hundred thousand dollars to even participate in these rate cases. Some large corporations spend millions to influence these rates.” Little guys, and the general public who depend upon these magazines, are not at the table when the deal is being made.

The genius of the postal rate structure over the past 215 years was that it did not favor a particular viewpoint; it simply made it easier for smaller magazines to be launched and to survive. That is why the publications opposing the secretive Post Office rate hikes cross the political spectrum. This is not a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it is a democracy issue. And it is about having competitive media markets that benefit all Americans. This reform will have disastrous effects for small and mid-sized publications, be they on politics, music, sports or gardening.

This process was conducted with such little publicity and pitched only at the dominant players that we only learned about it a few weeks ago and it is very late in the game. But there is something you can do. Please go to http://www.stoppostalratehikes.com and sign the letter to the Postal Board protesting the new rate system and demanding a congressional hearing before any radical changes are made. The deadline for comments is April 23.

I know many of you are connected to publications that go through the mail, or libraries and bookstores that pay for subscriptions to magazines and periodicals. If you fall in these categories, it is imperative you get everyone connected to your magazine or operation to go to http://www.stoppostalratehikes.com.

We do not have a moment to lose. If everyone who reads this email responds at http://www.stoppostalratehikes.com, and then sends it along to their friends urging them to do the same, we can win. If there is one thing we have learned at Free Press over the past few years, it is that if enough people raise hell, we can force politicians to do the right thing. This is a time for serious hell-raising. And to my friends from outside the United States, I apologize for cluttering your inbox. If you read this far, we can use your moral support.

From the bottom of my heart, thanks.

Robert W. McChesney
(End quote)

Honest Dialogue about Race, Diversity, and Privilege

Robert Jensen, an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, will will speak tonight on “The Reality of Race, Gender, and Class Privilege: Beyond the Politics of Diversity” from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Southern Human Services Center on Homestead Road. According to the Chapel Hill News, this is to be a "honest dialogue about race, diversity and privilege." How unfortunate that it has received so little publicity.

A couple of references on Dr. Jensen's work on racism:
White Privilege Shapes the U.S.
Why White People are Afraid

Environmental Justice

There has been a lot of talk about environmental racism and justice as part of the landfill/transfer station discussions in Orange County. At yesterday's SURGE conference, I attended the tail end of a session with the Environmental Justice Network and learned that they have been invited into Orange County to address both the landfill concerns and the Cane Creek are sludge battle with Alamance County and OWASA.

According to the EJN, environmental justice

• Demands that public policy decisions be based on mutual respect and justice for all people, free from any form of discrimination or bias.
• Calls for universal protection from dangerous practices that threaten the fundamental right to clear air, land, water, and food.
• Demands that those responsible for the production of dangerous substances be responsible for safely protecting the environment.
• Insists that community members participate as equal partners at every level of decision making that might affect their health
• Recognizes the right of all workers to a safe and healthy environmental without being forced to choose between an unsafe job and unemployment.

Using these principles, the original siting of the landfill was clearly an environmental injustice. And the process for selecting a site for the transfer station violated the principle of participatory decision making. As with so many other controversial issues in this community, such as Carrboro's annexation and Chapel Hill's Lot 5, our elected officials continue to execute their official functions as if we were living in the early 20th century, when a more paternal role of government was the norm. But this is an educated and activist community. Our local governments need help in learning to seek out the contributions of citizens with multiple perspectives. If Rogers Road residents had been brought into the decision making process or if the county had pursued a 21st century town meeting prior to making their decision, we might be able to move forward. Instead, I fear that we will live the consequences of the faulty process for siting the transfer station for many years, just as Carrboro will continue to pay the price of the faulty annexation process. Process matters.

Gangs

On Sunday, the Chapel Hill Police Department, in conjunction with the Sunrise Rotary Club, the YMCA, and East Chapel Hill High School sponsored a community workshop entitled Gang Involvement and Prevention: Help Your Children Make the Right Choice. Although there were only 20-25 non-police participants, the workshop was highly informative and charged us all to help bring awareness to the community. Unfortunately, there was a big disconnect between the materials they gave us and the ones they used in the presentation. My notes are disjointed but I'll try and get down the important facts and then clean up the writing and structure later on.

A gang is defined as a group of 3 or more individuals who share a common dress code, symbols, signals all toward a common purpose. Five (5) levels of gang involvement were given:

1. Great Pretender: someone who behaves and dresses in the manner of a gang member.
2. The Actor: someone who has casual association with a gang
3. American Idol (Gonna Be, Associate): someone who knows and likes gang members
4. The Believer: someone who has been formally accepted as an entry level gang member
5. Hard Core: someone who has made a total commitment to a gang

Gangs provide structure and a feeling of connectedness. Youth who do not have strong families or who are socially ostracized are at greatest risk. But the majority of gang members are not juveniles.

There are two (2) macro gangs in the US from which all others have evolved: Folk Nation and People's Nation. The Crips and Bloods are offshoots of these two. Crips, who identify with a 6-pointed crown, pitch forks, winged hearts, and the color blue are associated with Folk Nation. Bloods use the 5-pointed crown and the color red come from People's Nation.

There are also three (3) hispanic/Latino gangs: Sureno 13, Norteno-14, and MS-13. MS-13 is from El Salvador and evolved from paramilitary actions there. North Carolina has the 4th largest concentration of MS-13 activity in the US.

In Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 8 hybrid gangs have been identified. These groups are not associated with the macro gangs, but they are highly susceptible to recruitment. Identifying these groups and their members and working with them to promote alternative lifestyles is imperative.

Graffiti is the 'newspaper' of gangs. Symbology is used to establish territory, to brag, and to diss others. When you see graffiti, the police would like for you to take a picture of it and then give them the picture and the location. It is important that graffiti be erased as quickly as possible. In Chapel Hill, the police will offer to paint over it themselves if property owners can't or won't. They have the authority to remove the graffiti even if the property owner objects. No one to date has objected.

In Carrboro, the police do not have that same authority. They can ask and encourage a property owner to remove graffiti, but that's the extent of their power. During the January point in time count, we noted two private locations with gang graffiti. The graffiti is still present at both sites, and has multiplied several times over at one site. I spoke with the town manager, his assistant and the town attorney tonight about drafting a policy/ordinance that would give the police more authority. Apparently Mike Brough's office recently drafted an ordinance for the town of Tarrboro so hopefully Carrboro can use that to their advantage and move quickly. In the meantime, they have created an online Graffiti Report Form.

The workshop concluded with two (2) suggestions for what to do:

1. Know the signs; educate yourself, your family, friends, and co-workers. Don't panic.
2. Encourage community involvement to develop a proactive response to this thread. Mentoring programs have been highly successful in Jacksonville Florida. In our community, the Orange County Sheriff's Department has their GREAT program that includes a large outreach effort.

Affordability for Green Housing

According to Ram Development and the developers of Greenbridge, green building can not be done affordably. If we want energy efficiency and green building, we must settle for housing that drives the affordability of the community the rest of the way through the roof.

And yet in Longmont CO, Solar Village Prospect is a multifamily development being designed to range in price from $198,000 and $370,000 for units of 800-1,373 square feet. Alex Platt, co-founder of Solar Village LLC, the developers of Solar Village Prospect is quoted in Solar Today: "There's a perception [by developers] that it's more expensive. The difference for us is that our whole thought on this was from the get-go--before we even looked at the land--this was going to be a green, sustainable project. So [we thought] how do we start now and look at every single aspect as we go and that's what's been able to bring the cost point down."

Finally....someone who understands the difference between building a faddish 'green' building and one that is truly sustainable.

This is just one of many affordable green projects I've read about lately.

Recycling Unused Medications

From the Caspar Star Tribune

Recycling Unused Medications

By MEGAN MOORE
Star-Tribune staff writer

What can a person do with the bottles and bottles of expensive medications once the sick, either by death or through cure, have no more use for them?

Try recycling them. It could save another person's life.

The City of Casper-Natrona County Health Department recently put in an application with the Wyoming Department of Health for the Medication Donation Program. Legislated in 2005, it involves the donation of unused prescription medications and supplies to the various clinics in the state involved, who in turn give them to individuals who either can't afford their medications, don't have health insurance, or who can't afford their copay.

The program should be installed and running in Natrona County by April 16 and will mean that Casper residents no longer have to bear the cost of shipping for their donated medications.

"I'm really excited about the people's response to the program," said Donna Artery, Pharmacist Consultant for the Wyoming Department of Health. "I had someone call from Casper whose father was a cancer patient and she had tons of his unused medication and was willing to pay the cost to ship it to us."

Artery said that while there is no money actually legislated for the cost of mailing, there are many who are willing to pay the cost of shipping to see that the medications get used.

"We're mainly concerned about the high cost medications going to waste. We're very excited about Casper being involved," said Artery who is working with the Natrona County Health Department to get the program started.

Mary Janssen, Director of the Community Nursing Division with the Natrona County Health Department, said the program is voluntary.

"We'll be getting the information out to physicians in the community," Janssen said. Then doctors will be able to send patients who express a need to the health department, where a nurse practitioner will be able to issue the donated medications.

At first, said Janssen, "patients will be limited to whatever we have in stock," noting later that it may take a few months to really build a stockpile of medications.

"Our goal is to try to get it back out," she said, "otherwise it's just such a waste."

Up to a $10 handling fee will be charged for medications dispensed at the Natrona County Health Department.

Janssen and Artery are hopeful for the program's future, and Artery soon hopes to see the program adopted by cities in all four corners of the state.

"Eventually we're hoping to start a statewide Web site where a doctor from anywhere can look on the site to see where the medication is available," Artery said.

Megan Moore can be reached at (307) 266-0532 or megan.moore@casperstartribune.net.

What can be donated

* Prescription medication in its original, unopened and sealed packaging. Or, medication in sealed, singled-dose packaging. Patient names will be removed to protect confidentiality.

* All medications must be donated within expiration dates.

* Over-the-counter medications will be accepted at the discretion of the donation site, depending on available space.

What cannot be donated

* Controlled substances such as painkillers and medications with high abuse potential

* Injectables

* Medications that require refrigeration

* Loose pills

How to dispose of medication that cannot be donated

* Keep the medication in its original container, since labels may contain safety information and caps are typically childproof. Scratch out or cover patient's name with permanent marker.

* Modify the contents to discourage consumption. Add a small amount of water to pills or capsules to at least partially dissolve them; add salt, flour, charcoal, or a nontoxic powdered spice such as turmeric or mustard to liquid medications to discourage ingestion; and wrap blister packs containing pills in multiple layers of duct tape.

* Seal and conceal. Tape container lids shut and place in a nontransparent bag or container to ensure the contents cannot be seen.

* Discard the container in your garbage can. Do not place in the recycling bin or conceal medicines in food -- they could be inadvertently consumed by wildlife scavengers.

* Do not flush medications.

US Fish and Wildlife Speaks Up on Pharmaceutical Disposal

IMPROPER DISPOSAL OF UNUSED MEDICATION SPARKS CREATION OF NEW AWARENESS PROGRAM
Initiative to Focus on Environmental and Public Health Impacts of Improper Disposal

CONTACTS:
Joshua Winchell, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
202 219 7499; Joshua_Winchell@fws.gov

Erica Jefferson, American Pharmacists Association 202-429-7537; ejefferson@aphanet.org

ATLANTA, GA - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) have joined forces to help protect our nation's fish and aquatic resources from improper disposal of medication. Officials from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) signed a formal agreement today outlining how they will work cooperatively to build consumer awareness of the hazards posed by the improper disposal of unused and expired medications into the nation's waterways. As part of the effort - dubbed "SMARxT DISPOSAL" - the USFWS and the APhA will work to publicize the potential environmental and health impacts of unused medications when they are flushed into our nation's sewer systems.

"Medications that are flushed down the toilet or thrown straight into the garbage can and do find their way into our nation's waterways every day. Those drugs are present in water that supports many species of fish and other wildlife," said H. Dale Hall, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We are concerned about reports of fish abnormalities possibly caused by improperly disposed prescription medications. That's why we are excited about this new partnership with the Association and its ability to educate the public about simple things they can do to clean up our waters and help prevent fish, and people, from inadvertent exposure to prescription medication."

This new initiative was unveiled at APhA's annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, one of the largest gatherings of pharmacy professionals and health services providers in the country.

"Medications play a vital role in our society," added Dr. John A. Gans, Executive Vice President and CEO of APhA. "Consumers - and pharmacists - should be aware that it is important to take that extra step to protect our families and our natural resources, including our many waterways, fish and other aquatic organisms."

The consumer outreach campaign will feature educational brochures and a website with information for both consumers and medical professionals. There will also be promotional events held in several cities across the country designed to generate greater awareness of the importance of proper medication disposal and the harmful effects it can have on the environment and public health. The initiative will begin with a pilot program in selected U.S. markets later this year and expanded in 2008.