People of the Center vs. The Children of Moloch

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From SHARON ASTYK
Author, A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil

I’ve gotten literally dozens of emails begging me to weigh in on the East Anglia climate scandal, and for a while, I was reluctant to do so, because ultimately, paying attention to something so inane just gives it credibility. We’re back, again, to the old battles over climate change – attention to trivialities in the absence of the central issue.

Anyone who made any effort at all knows that no, they didn’t lose or hide the data – it is still out there to be gathered by anyone doing the work. Yes, they should have kept the raw data, but given that they had a tiny budget, limited storage space and were writing their own code, maybe cut them some slack – maybe some discredit is due the climate skeptics who have kept this subject so wildly underfunded? Yes, we can still find raw temperature data at both the collection sites and at the several other compilers.

Yes, the scientists said some stupid and imprudent things – but saying that they were responsible for politicizing the discussion ignores the tens of millions of dollars spent by climate skeptic lobbyists over the last decades to create dissension and attack the scientists. Is there a religious-like orthodoxy of science that has exerted pressure on poor, hapless political leaders? Sure…30+ years of not accomplishing jack-shit – wow, those mean and powerful scientists – where do they get their power? Does an attack on four guys in England undermine all climate data? Ummm…four guys. Compared to tens of thousands of peer reviewed papers.

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

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From MICHAEL MOORE
Flint, Michigan

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner.

It is the REAL economy that needs the help…

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From MICHAEL LAYBOURN
Hopland

I was moved to quote this passage from a novel I recently finished. The novel, written by Stieg Larsson, was set in Sweden and is about a journalist unafraid to investigate and expose a number of criminal corporations and the Swedish mainstream media lack of reporting the facts, instead aiding and abetting the corporations. Near the end of the book the corporations begin to be exposed and the corporation’s many investors cause the Swedish stock market to plummet. Our protagonist is being interviewed on TV and he was asked if he felt responsible for the economy’s freefall…

“The idea that Sweden’s economy is heading for a crash is nonsense,” Blomkvist said.

The host on TV4 looked perplexed. His reply did not follow the pattern she had expected and she was forced to improvise. Blomkvist got the question he was hoping for. “We’re experiencing the largest single drop in the history of the Swedish stock exchange – and you think that’s nonsense?”

“You have to distinguish between two things – The Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the things goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan and shipments from Kiruna to Skovde. That’s the Swedish economy and it is as strong or weak as it was a week ago.” He paused for effect and took a sip of water.

“The stock exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions more or less. It doesn’t have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy.”

How To Grind, Leach, Cook and Eat Acorns

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From SUELLEN OCEAN
Covelo

[This extremely important, locally-produced book, Acorns and Eat 'Em, is available to download free here. I also have a copy I've printed out that can be browsed at Mulligan Books. If anyone wants a copy and cannot download and print it out themselves, I'm happy to do it for you. -DS]

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Hunker Down Locally as the End of the World Arrives in Mendocino County

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From TOM DAVENPORT
Family Frog Farm, Redwood Valley

Some interesting thoughts are going through the minds of our friends and neighbors – check out the ones who called Jeff Blankfort’s KZYX radio show on Nov 25…

http://www.vintagenet.us/EOTW_Call_Ins_112509.mp3
~

From KATHY McMAHON
Peak Oil Blues

Ordinary fears/extraordinary times: 55 (real) things to worry about (if you must…)

We have other things to worry about right now…

Peak Oil, Climate change and the Greater Depression will pose many challenges to our way of life but let’s get real, for a moment: Golden Hordes aren’t one of them. At least not now. Economic depression brings with it a host of serious problems, and I think you can say quite confidently, without being a chicken little, that most of the world is in a Greater Depression. But still, we’ve got a few years to go before we can say that the USA is no longer a viable culture, when no one wants to live in Paris or London, when potatoes no longer grow in Poland, and before donkey’s begin pulling our rusted-out cars. Bikers with shotguns; weaving socks from milk thistle; crashing waves drowning our cities; evacuating your house on a moments notice to house troops; the government coming to confiscate your precious metals; a mass exodus of cities as the violence and mayhem escalates to untolerable levels—all of these things should not be on the top of the list of what to prepared for. So what should be?

Cultural orphan of the class struggle

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From Joe Bageant
Author, Deer Hunting With Jesus

Hi Joe,

I just found your site a few weeks ago, computer-phobe and migraine sufferer that I am, but it seems like the more I read of you, the more I understand of myself. I’m from southern Illinois, born and raised, although I lived away from here for a short time.

Now I’m back living in Williamson county, in a town where our last major factory closed two years ago, and coal mining, what’s left of it, is not much more than an irritating reminder of better times long gone. But I give the folks around here a lot of credit. They’re always looking to get beyond the disappointments of the present, find ways to attract new business, and keep the population from decreasing. We’ve held at a steady 10,000 for a good thirty years, and although it might seem laughable to some, that’s a victory in itself, considering everything we’ve lost, believe me.

As for me, I was born working class, well, underclass, truth be told. My dad had been a prosperous farmer post World War Two, but after he lost the farm, he had no other skills to fall back on. He became a house painter, working from dawn till dusk. When his health failed, he became a janitor. My mom was a nurse’s aid at a time when not only didn’t you need a certificate, you didn’t even need to show an 8th grade diploma. It was my bad fortune to be born long after the farm was gone, so all I ever heard from my parents was how wonderful everything use to be, and how shitty it is now. I was one of those quiet, bookish, pessimistic little kids, having little in common with my parents or peers. But rural poverty will have its effect, and I grew up to hold the same jobs as everybody else, working at Wal-Mart, Kroger, and at gas stations which seemed to change their names every few months. I never had what most would consider a real job. I guess because I never felt I deserved it.

And at middle age, I have to say I’ve never found a way to overcome those feelings. A few years ago, while still in my thirties, I had the quixotic idea to go to college.

From Wage Slave to Micro Entrepreneur

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From The View From Brittany

My girlfriend is setting up her own business. It is something she had always wanted to do, but her being laid off in the wake of the current economic downturn – as we have come to call what might very well be the new economic normality – kicked her into action. She is hardly the only one in this situation. All over the country there is a flurry of new business creations. In normal times, this would bode well for a country which has indeed coined the word “entrepreneur” but had forgotten it quite a long time ago. We are not in normal times however, and this unprecedented wave of entrepreneurship tells in fact of a deep economic insecurity which can only increase with the coming energy descent. It also announces the end of an economic arrangement which had shaped the western social landscape for nearly a century : the wage system.

Wage labor has become so common, so “normal” in today’s society, that we have forgotten how marginal – and despised – it was before the Industrial Revolution. In agrarian societies wages were what farmhands, servants and journeymen got – and for the last category it was considered temporary. All respectable working people were self employed, either owning or renting land or running small – or even not so small – businesses. Living on wages was something you did when you had no other choice, and, socially speaking, that put you a mere step above a beggar or a slave. It is particularly revealing that in Latin, the word for wages has the same root as the word for prostitute.

There were, of course exceptions, but they were not seen as such. Journeymen lived on wages but, at least theoretically, it was, for them only a temporary step

Spencer Brewer urges shop local… as he closes his own store

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From K. C. MEADOWS
Ukiah Daily Journal

As the Christmas shopping season kicks off, one Ukiah business will begin a giant sale on Monday.

A going out of business sale.

Spencer Brewer, well-known local musician, is closing the Ukiah Music Center after six years selling pianos, guitars, amplifiers, guitar strings, music books, drums and every other kind of musical instrument or gizmo imaginable.

It was the largest music store in three counties and the only piano store between here and the Oregon border.

The economy certainly had a hand in the problems at UMC this year, but Brewer said he feels his situation also presents a cautionary tale about shopping locally.

“We’re going out of business in large part because of the Internet,” he said, “where they don’t pay sales taxes or freight.”

Competitors on the Internet, he said, can sell musical instruments cheaper than he can even stock them wholesale.

What is most aggravating, he continued, was that people would come into the Ukiah Music Center, ask about an instrument, get the store to give them the research and the brochures, and then buy their instrument or equipment on the Internet.

Local Mendocino Politics: Norman de Vall interviews Joe Wildman about Measure A and upcoming elections (Audio)

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From TOM DAVENPORT
Redwood Valley

In case you missed it, Norman de Vall’s interesting and informative interview show with Joe Wildman, on Norman’s KZYX Access Show, is available to download or listen online at: http://www.mmmab.net/NdV_Wildman_112709.mp3
~~

More Gang-Bang For Your Buck

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From CNNMoney.com

Faced with new credit card restrictions, lenders are touting debit card loyalty programs. But many come with fees that may not be worth it for consumers.

Could debit cards be the next cash cow for banks? If banks have their way, they will.

Americans have conducted more transactions and spent more money using debit cards than credit cards this year — the first time that’s ever happened.

Next year, consumers are expected to spend $1.64 trillion with their debit cards, nearly two-thirds more than in 2006, according to the payments industry trade publication The Nilson Report.

And there is no indication this growth is slowing down anytime soon. Not only are Americans increasingly reluctant to take on more debt, but banks are expected to become more stingy with credit cards once new federal legislation takes effect next year, which could make the debit card the preferred form of payment for many consumers.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by large and small banks, who are currently looking for ways to wring any extra dollars out of their business at a time of severe loan losses.

“Banks, just like airlines and local governments, are looking for fee income to fill the revenue gap,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst with Bankrate.com.

What is shaping up to be an area of focus for lenders are loyalty or rewards programs for debit card users.

A concept that has long been associated with credit cards, increasing numbers of banks have looked to such programs as a way to generate more fees from consumers.

5 evil things credit card companies can (still) do

Passing Wind

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To live sanely in Los Angeles (or, I suppose, in any other large American city) you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you — from the cradle to the grave and beyond — which it would be easy, fatally easy!, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up — before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don’t reach for the whiskey, that won’t help you. You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity. ~Christopher Isherwood, “Los Angeles,” 1966 via this week’s AVA. Subscribe to the new AVA website with meaningful local news, opinions, and blogs.→ Locally owned and feisty as hell!
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See also “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Mike Geniella’s on-line AVA column→
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How infantile is American society?  Last night’s CBS “Business Update” (in the midst of its “60 Minutes” program) featured three items: 

Rural Matters

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From SHEILAH ROGERS
Redwood Valley

From the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (the trade association for domestic microenterprise development): On Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Connie Evans, president and CEO of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) participated in President Obama’s Small Business Financing Forum, hosted by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Small Business Administrator Karen Mills held at the Treasury Department. The invitation-only Forum included Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Representative Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Grady Hedgespeth, SBA Director of Financial Assistance, Gene Sperling, Counselor to the Treasury Secretary, small business owners from around the country including a borrower from a micro lending institution, CDFI leaders, and bankers.

The purpose of the forum was to provide ideas to President Obama on what additional steps the Administration can take to improve access to capital to the small business community. Evans acknowledged the good relationship AEO has with both the SBA and the CDFI, and thanked both Administrator Mills and Secretary Geithner for their inclusion and attention to the smallest of businesses served by the microenterprise development community which includes both CDFIs and SBA Microloan intermediaries. Evans continued with these specific remarks when recognized from the floor:

“Our members are receiving ten times the number of bank referrals for loans per week as compared to before the economic crisis. They are spending more time providing technical assistance in making these loan applications viable. We ask that you allow technical assistance funds

Feeding America: How the hell did we get here?

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From TIMROFF
Daily Kos

[With the expansion of Walmart in South Ukiah, I think we need to be asking if we will be seeing a food desert (explained in this excellent post on the Daily Kos) in the Ukiah Valley. For people who are not farmers market shoppers for whatever reason, I think this is a real possibility. I say this because if Walmart becomes a superstore that contains a huge supermarket, will the other supermarkets be able to survive? Will Safeway, Lucky, and Raley's still be around? Or, will only people with transportation to Walmart be able to buy food from other than fast food establishments and minimarts (where the food is both bad for you and very expensive. -JS]

So why in the name of (insert your deity or hero’s name here) are there people starving in America? According to Feeding America’s latest figures, 49 Million people are in a state of food insercurity:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA) reported (Nov. 19th) that 49 million Americans, including nearly 17 million children, are food insecure. The 2009 report on Household Food Insecurity in the United States paints an alarming picture of the pervasiveness of hunger in our nation.

This is an increase of 36 percent over the numbers released one year by the USDA, which found that 36.2 million American were at risk of hunger.“It is tragic that so many people in this nation of plenty don’t have access to adequate amounts of nutritious food,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America.

Go to complete article here→
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Animal, Vegetable, Miserable

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From GARY STEINER
NYT Op-Ed Contributor

LATELY more people have begun to express an interest in where the meat they eat comes from and how it was raised. Were the animals humanely treated? Did they have a good quality of life before the death that turned them into someone’s dinner?

Some of these questions, which reach a fever pitch in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, pertain to the ways in which animals are treated. (Did your turkey get to live outdoors?) Others focus on the question of how eating the animals in question will affect the consumer’s health and well-being. (Was it given hormones and antibiotics?)

None of these questions, however, make any consideration of whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption. And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. Strict ethical vegans, of which I am one, are customarily excoriated for equating our society’s treatment of animals with mass murder. Can anyone seriously consider animal suffering even remotely comparable to human suffering? Those who answer with a resounding no typically argue in one of two ways.

Some suggest that human beings but not animals are made in God’s image and hence stand in much closer proximity to the divine than any non-human animal; according to this line of thought, animals were made expressly for the sake of humans and may be used without scruple to satisfy their needs and desires.

How Relocalization Worked

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From JOHN MICHAEL GREER
Via Energy Bulletin

One of the points that I’ve tried to make repeatedly in these essays is the place of history as a guide to what works. It’s a point that deserves repetition. A good many worldsaving plans now in circulation, however new the rhetoric that surrounds them, simply rehash proposals that were tried in the past and failed repeatedly; trying them yet again may thus not be the best use of our limited resources and time.

Of course there’s another side to history that’s more hopeful: something that worked well in the past can be a useful guide to what might work well in the future. I’d like to spend a little time discussing one example of this, partly because it ties into the theme of the current series of posts – the abject failure of current economic notions, and the options for replacing them with ideas that actually make sense – and partly because it addresses one of the more popular topics in the ongoing peak oil discussion, the need for economic relocalization as the age of cheap abundant energy comes to an end.

That relocalization needs to happen, and will happen, is clear. Among other things, it’s clear from history; when complex societies overshoot their resource bases and decline, one of the things that consistently happens is that centralized economic arrangements fall apart, long distance trade declines sharply, and the vast majority of what we now call consumer goods get made at home, or very close to home. Now of course that violates some of the conventional wisdom that governs economic decisions these days; centralized economic arrangements are thought to yield economies of scale that make them more profitable by definition than decentralized local arrangements.

When history conflicts with theory, though, it’s not history that’s wrong,

Obama, One Year On (Updated)

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From KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
Editor and Publisher
The Nation

Updated below

Barack Obama was elected president at a time defined by hope and fear in equal measure. It was a remarkable moment in our country’s history–a milestone in America’s scarred racial landscape and a victory for the forces of decency, diversity and tolerance. For the first time in decades, electoral politics became a vehicle for raising expectations and spreading hope while it mobilized millions of new voters. Obama’s was a campaign built on the power and promise of change from below. At the same time, he was elected as the nation was rapidly sinking into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The night Obama was elected, relief was felt around the world. There was a widespread feeling that the United States had turned its back on eight years of destructive, swaggering unilateralism and was re-embracing the global community. In many ways, the election was a referendum on an extremist conservatism that has guided (and deformed) American politics and society since the 1980s. The spectacular failures of the Bush administration and the shifts in public opinion on the economy and the Iraq War presented a mandate for bold action and a historic opportunity for a progressive governing agenda.

A year later, it’s clear we are a long way from building a new order and reshaping the prevailing paradigm of American politics. That will take more than one election. It requires continued mobilization, strategic creativity and, yes, audacity on the part of independent thinkers, activists and organizers. The structural obstacles to change are considerable. But at least we now have the political space to push for far-reaching reforms.

Whatever one thinks of Obama’s policy on any specific issue, he is clearly a reform president committed to the improvement of people’s lives and to the renewal and reconstruction of America.

A Local Currency Pilgrimage to Wörgl

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From ROB HOPKINS
Co-Founder Transitions Network
See also Mendo Moola

Well not quite, but en route to a gathering of Ashoka Fellows in Austria where I’ll be for the next couple of days, I by chance found myself in the Austrian town of Wörgl, famed for its alternative currency experiment in the 1930s… The Wörgl was introduced to the town in 1932, at the height of the Depression, when a third of the town was without work. It is an amazing story.

The town’s then Mayor, the wonderfully named Michael Unterguggenberger, was taken with the idea that the national currency promoted hoarding and disincentivised spending, and proposed instead what he called “Certified Compensation Bills” (not a name to trip off the tongue I grant you). The notes were issued by the Council, who agreed to accept them as currency. The idea of the Wörgl was that it was money that went off, it lost value over time, a process known as ‘demurrage’. The notes needed to be stamped each month, or else they depreciated by a small amount, which incentivised its rapid turnover (a feature of the Stroud Pound). The back of the notes contained the following explanation;

“To all whom it may concern! Sluggishly circulating money has provoked an unprecedented trade depression and plunged millions into utter misery. Economically considered, the destruction of the world has started. It is time, through determined and intelligent action, to endeavour to arrest the downward plunge of the trade machine and thereby to save mankind from fratricidal wars, chaos, and dissolution. Human beings live by exchanging their services.

In Memory of Wayne Knight

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From JAMES HOULE
In Memory of WAYNE KNIGHT

The Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra is chanted daily in Buddhists Monasteries in China, Japan, Tibet, Korea and right here in Mendocino County. Also known as the Great Prajna Paramita Sutra, the name refers to the intuitive wisdom that can be experienced by the mind that has gone over to the far shore. A sutra is not a prayer to a supreme being, for Buddhists do not experience a supreme being. Rather, a sutra is a discourse, a homage to how things are. This discourse concerns “heart-mind”, the indissoluble linkage between thinking and feeling, between mind and matter. Wayne Knight experienced this linkage and expressed it in his portraits of Cambodians. Please suffer with me for a moment as I try to explain the inexplicable.

The convergence between science and mysticism, between Eastern thought and Western pragmatism became apparent in the Post-Einsteinian revelations of Quantum Physics, which confirmed what the Mahayana Buddhists discovered about 350 CE. Matter was found to be essentially empty of materiality and subatomic particles were found to be packets of light, or of waves, without mass. The solid indestructible blocks of matter upon which our Newtonian/Cartesian science has comfortably rested all these years was badly shaken in the 1920s by Bell’s Theorem and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. When looked at under an electron microscope, instead of particles of matter, physicists found nothing but a continuous dance of energy particles. The elementary particles were not independently existing entities but merely sets of relationships with no inherent separate existence. Nagarjuna, in 200 CE had already explained this: “Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves”.

Pastured Turkey Cooking Tips

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From SHANNON HAYES
Chelsea Green Books

For the past week, farm families across the country (including my own) have been rising each morning to engage in what has become our own unique, albeit macabre, Thanksgiving Tradition.  We are processing our turkeys.  Unlike the factory-farmed birds found in most grocery stores, these birds are usually processed just a few feet from the lush grasses where they were raised, quite often by the same hands that first gently set their newly hatched toes into a brooder, and then carefully moved them, once they were old enough, out to the fields for a few months of free-ranging turkey living.  Now that the processing complete, our birds sit in our coolers and await our customers, who will venture out to the farm for a tradition of their own, retrieving their annual Thanksgiving feast.  For those of you who are new to this process, here is a list of tips to guide you through and make sure that you have a delicious holiday feast.

1. Please be flexible. If you are buying your pasture-raised turkey from a small, local, sustainable farmer, thank you VERY much for supporting us. That said, please remember that pasture-raised turkeys are not like factory-farmed birds. Outside of conscientious animal husbandry, we are unable to control the size of our Thanksgiving turkeys. Please be forgiving if the bird we have for you is a little larger or a little smaller than you anticipated. Cook a sizeable quantity of sausage stuffing if it is too small (a recipe appears below), or enjoy the leftovers if it is too large.  If the bird is so large that it cannot fit in your oven, simply remove the legs before roasting it.

Book Review: The Last of the Husbandmen – Gene Logsdon

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Reviews of
The Last of the Husbandmen By Gene Logsdon

[From TIM BATES, Philo Apple Farm: Join Dan and Tim this Monday Nov. 22nd at 1:00 KZYX for another fun, lively, and sobering discussion with Gene Logsdon--ye old Contrary Farmer himself. Still raging against the machineries that keep rural people from realizing their potential as vital parts of American society. Gene now hosts a blog site  -- The Contrary Farmer -- with well over a hundred postings carrying forward the conversation. Gene's books include All Flesh is Grass, Good Spirits, The Pond Lovers, and most recently a novel, The Last of the Husbandmen -- which will be a focal point of the show. All topics are fair game and nothing is sacred.]

“In The Last of the Husbandmen—as in everything Gene Logsdon writes — wit is the nurse crop to wisdom. With a conclusion as comical as it is hopeful, this latest book is equal parts entertainment and enlightenment—just what we’ve come to expect from Mr. Logsdon.”

Michael Perry — author of Truck: A Love Story

“Gene Logsdon remains as true–to–form in his fiction as he does in his non–fiction.… this book was maybe as valuable a read as any of his books, not for the instruction, but for scope and perspective on a life lived ‘tied down’ to a place.”

Mendocino Landscapes at Grace Hudson Museum

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From MARVIN SCHENCK
Curator, Grace Hudson Museum
November 21, 2009 – February 7, 2010

This exhibition presents the work of eight resident Mendocino County photographers who have had a long relationship with their subject. Each has found his or her unique vision of the area’s landscapes. The photographs span a wide range of processes and photographic heritage. Bill Brazill, frequently using a large format camera, creates film- based black and white images that are reminiscent of A. O. Carpenter’s documentary style. Robert Taylor works in the rich tradition of high contrast, modernist, black and white images, while Paul Kozal explores a softer approach reminiscent of California Pictorialism. Tom Liden, known for his bright color images, debuts enchanting sepia works featuring subtle patterns of light across quiet textured terrain. In the realm of color, Peter W. Stearns presents his lush views of rural panoramas. Rita Crane’s compositions offer detailed glimpses of poetic coastal and inland scenes. Jon Klein materializes masterful color visions of spectacular seascapes. Finally, Charlie Hochberg digitally captures the soft atmospheric moods of early morning in the inland valleys. All of the artists give caring, soulful renditions of what is through the viewfinder, their Mendocino landscapes.

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Flattened! Final Monster Mall Results

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

We should all send appreciations to the DDR carpetbaggers and their Big Time, high-priced, out-of-county consultants for getting out the vote! It was a masterful job!

Every phone call, every mailing! Wow! They made every dollar, and every dumb decision count! Good job!!!

63% vs 37%! And 50% voted in an off-year election!

Break out the cheers and the cheescake!
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Book Review: The Lovely Bones

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From RON CHARLES
Christian Science Monitor

Don’t start Lovely Bones unless you can finish it. The book begins with more horror than you could imagine, but closes with more beauty than you could hope for.

Still, there are reasons not to open this runaway bestseller. In the first chapter, 14-year-old Susie Salmon describes how she was enticed into a little cave by a neighbor on a snowy day. He stuffs her hat into her mouth. They both hear her mother calling her for dinner. He rapes her, cuts her throat, and then dismembers the body. It’s the most terrifying scene I’ve ever read.

For the next seven years, she describes how her family and friends – and even her murderer – cope with her absence. She’s in heaven, so she can see everything from up there. It sounds mawkish, like a ghastly version of “Beloved” for white suburbia, but Alice Sebold has done something miraculous here.

It’s no coincidence that the novel has been embraced during a period of high anxiety about child abductions – perhaps the only dread darker than our new fear of terrorism.

With her disarming wit and adolescent candor, Susie drags us behind those stories from Salt Lake City and Stanton, Calif., forcing us to consider the mechanics of rape and murder and grief in a way no news report ever could.

A few days after her death, Susie realizes that all the people she’s with now are experiencing their own versions of heaven, reflecting their simplest dreams and aspirations from earth.

“There were no teachers in the school,” she tells us about her paradise. “We never had to go inside except for art class for me and jazz for my roommate.

Sexual Attitudes In Agrarian Life

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From GENE LOGSDON
The Contrary Farmer

When a writer wants to sound astute, lofty words like agrarian come in handy. Nobody knows for sure what agrarian means. Makes what one says on the subject sound intelligent whether it really is or not. I use the word here to mean the whole farming and gardening way of life that wraps around the actual work of producing food. That would include, of course, sexual behavior. What follows is an excerpt from the Afterword of my recent (2007) book, The Mother of All Arts where I discuss, among other agrarian attitudes, whether people who farm and garden as a vital part of their lives look at human sexual behavior a little differently than people who don’t. Quote:

At one point in this book, I was moved to say—almost blurt out, if one can speak of writing as blurting—that all art is about sex. I made that statement in reaction to Mississippi John Hurt’s remark that all music was about human sexual relationships. [John Hurt was an early country blues singer and a real farmer whose music is now enjoying a resurgence among country music purists.]

The Final Word On Cell Phones

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From JASON PETERS
Front Porch Republic

In the early days of FPR, and then again more recently, I was impertinent enough to write disparaging remarks about cell phones, which as everyone knows are utterly pernicious. On both occasions interlocutors expressed their disapproval by espousing the publicly sanctioned predictable sentiment: that technology is neutral, that it is only our use of a given thing that renders it good or bad, right or wrong, boonful or baneful.

As any pine board knows, this is nonsense. It’s time for the correct opinion to be more widely disseminated.

Plato, if I remember aright, was worried about the perfidy a certain new technology—we would recognize it by the name “book”—would perpetrate on memory. He was vexed by what the transition from an aural to a written culture would do to our capacity to bear things in mind.

Now I like books — even Bill Kauffman’s — and I’m going to side with them. The book is a technology I’m going to defend. But I also happen to sympathize with Plato, who, I believe, was right: by writing things down we cheat the memory. I would go so far as to say that a written record resembles all technology

Book Review: Wimpy Kid Dog Days

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From TERRY MILLER SHANNON
KidsReads.com

Oh, poor Greg Heffley! Somehow, he must manage to endure his summer vacation. You see, Greg knows his parents expect him to be outside enjoying the warm weather during the “three-month guilt trip” as he calls it, but he despises the outdoors. He only wants to spend those 90 precious days inside and in front of the television with the blinds drawn and the lights turned off — all the better to play one video game after another.

Greg reflects on how the first part of the summer, when he actually did venture outside, was not exactly stellar. His best friend, Rowley, invited him to go to the local country club swimming pool with his family every day. The first mishap was asking a new neighbor girl to go with them and then watching her find romance with the lifeguard. Moving onward while musing about some people’s lack of loyalty, Greg felt free to kvetch about the service at the country club, griping whenever the waiter forgot to put an umbrella in his drinks. Eventually, Rowley informed Greg that he was no longer invited to go to the pool with his family.

However, Greg’s escapades at the country club pool pale beside his misadventures at the town pool.

Suzanne Somers speaks out against the conventional cancer industry: mammograms, chemotherapy vs. alternative cures

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From Natural News

As the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Knockout: Interviews with doctors who are curing cancer,” Suzanne Somers is making waves across the cancer industry. Her powerful, inspired message of informed hope is reaching millions of readers who are learning about the many safe, effective options for treating cancer that exist outside the realm of the conventional cancer industry (chemotherapy, surgery and radiation).

Recently, Suzanne Somers spoke with NaturalNews editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, to share the inspiration for her new book Knockout. “People are just starving for some new information… for other options, for hope in [treating] cancer,” she explained.

The full interview with Suzanne Somers is available as a downloadable MP3 file from NaturalNews.com: http://naturalnews.com/Index-Podcas…

In it, Somers explains why she’s so concerned about the current course of the cancer industry:

Book Review: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Annoying Argument Against Eating Meat

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From JENNIFER REESE
Double X

Eating Animals

For weeks I’ve walked around debating Jonathan Safran Foer in my head, trying to put my finger on what it is that irritates me so deeply about his new book, Eating Animals [2]. Getting to the root of this animus has been particularly tough, because Eating Animals is an unwieldy hybrid of two different narratives—one I like very much, and one I find wrongheaded and staggeringly condescending.

So let’s start by disentangling the two. The central and admirable point of Eating Animals is to critique industrial agriculture and, as a case against factory farming, this book is both timely and stirring. Although Foer’s descriptions of agricultural atrocities may be familiar, he brings literary celebrity and a bracing moral urgency to the topic, arguing that our eating habits should reflect our ethics and that if we disapprove of filthy, overcrowded chicken factories, we should never buy another Perdue broiler. I agree.

But Foer does not stop there. Eating Animals is also a meditation—sometimes whimsical, sometimes strident, often personal—on animal husbandry and carnivory more generally. Here, Foer’s ignorance and biases are matched only by his arrogance.

Question #1: What if Al Gore’s Climate Change Conclusions Are Wrong?

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

I don’t trust Al Gore. He wrote Earth In The Balance, and then, after becoming Vice President, said and did nothing about the environment for eight long years. That doesn’t mean he is wrong. But now, working in his own investment firm, promoting the cap-and-trade scam, one must question motives and intent and be open to what other scientists are also saying before drawing one’s own personal conclusions and taking action…

Question #2: Who will make the Big Bucks from Climate Change?→

Question #3: Who are the Climate Change Deniers?→

Gore’s Guru Disagreed…→

Calling him “a wonderful, visionary professor” who was “one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming,” Gore thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992. Gore’s warmth for Dr. Revelle cooled, however, when it became clear that he had misunderstood his former professor: Although Dr. Revelle recognized potential harm from global warming, he also saw potential benefits and was by no means alarmed, as seen in this 1984 interview in Omni magazine:

The best current overview of peak oil, what it means, and what we should do

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From GAIL TVERBERG
The Oil Drum

I decided to write another rather basic level article because there are so many people I meet who have heard a bit about the oil situation, and it is hard to point to one single article to give an overview of some of the current issues. Regular readers will find many repeats of graphs. There are some new ones, as well, from the Denver ASPO-USA conference. Because there is so much to tell, the story gets a little long.

We live in a finite world. It is clear that at some point, we will eventually start hitting limits—we won’t be able to extract as much oil, or we won’t be able to mine as much silver or platinum, or fresh-water aquifers that have built up over millions of years will run dry.

We are reaching limits in several areas, but the one I would like to talk about here is oil production. Oil is essential, because nearly all transportation depends on oil, and because a huge number of goods use oil in their manufacture (including textiles, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, asphalt, plastics, lubricating oils, and computers). Oil is also essential for our current agricultural system–growing food and transporting it to market.

Why people are concerned about a decline in oil production

Keep reading at The Oil Drum→

See also Abiotic Oil→
~~

Debt, equity, and a third thing that might work better – Seth Godin

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From SETH GODIN

If your business needs money, it seems as though you have two choices:

• Get a loan from a bank
• Raise equity from an investor, giving up part of your company in exchange

Banks are everywhere, so the idea that they can loan us money seems obvious. And venture capitalists and the companies they fund are in the news all the time… and making a billion dollars sounds like fun.

Here’s the thing: for most businesses, most of the time, neither is a realistic option.

Banks aren’t in the business of taking risk. Which means that they make boring loans to boring companies for boring purposes. They do everything they can to be riskless. Which means you need to guarantee the loan with your house or with assets worth far more than the loan. Which means that a good idea is not a sufficiently good reason for a loan.

And equity? Well there are two problems. The first is that the number of investments that professional VCs can make is microscopically small compared to the number of businesses that want them. Go to Seth’s Blog for article→
~~

The Fate of Cesar Chavez’s Dream

From MARC COOPER
TruthDig

[Having worked for Cesar Chavez from 1968 - 1972, I am saddened by the ineffectiveness of the union in subsequent years. -DS]

In the midst of a searing heat wave in the summer of 2005, three Mexican-born California farmworkers succumbed to the relentless sun within a few weeks of each other. Outraged local community groups, some with roots in but no longer affiliated with the legendary United Farm Workers union, organized a protest march and rally in the gritty town of Arvin, in California’s Central Valley.

At the last minute, a delegation from the UFW more or less commandeered the event from the original organizers. I was there reporting on the conditions in California’s fields (for a piece that would be published few weeks later in the L.A. Weekly) when I saw the UFW arrive. Accompanied by a caravan of shiny vans, with a high-tech mobile broadcast unit along from one of the union-run radio stations, UFW members in trademark red-and-black T-shirts disembarked from a couple of buses and joined the crowd assembled in a church patio.

The contrast couldn’t have been more stark.

Mendo Island Transition – New Grain-Share Project

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From DOUG MOSEL, JOHN GRAMKE, and SOPHIA BATES
Mendo Island Transition→

A Grain-Share for Mendocino County

What’s a Grain-Share?

• A community-supported way of producing grain locally
• Members buy a share in the annual grain harvest and receive a portion of the grains produced
• Member shares support the cost of growing, harvesting and distributing the grain
• Members share with the farmers the risk of poor or failed crops

How Will It Work?

• The farmers will prepare the fields, care for the soil, plant and harvest the crops, and distribute the grain shares to members
• Each member of the grain-share will buy one or more shares of the harvest in exchange for 100-120 pounds of grains. We anticipate that each share will cost $150-$200.
• Members will receive periodic updates on progress of the crops, expected harvest times, plans for distributing the grain shares, and suggestions for storing and using the grains.

Drawing Marathon Saturday 11/14/09 – Art Center Ukiah

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Artists will work from 10 am Saturday till they just can’t go on! Public is invited to drop in any time during the marathon to cheer and support the artists while they work. View the drawing, painting, quilting, collage and more in progress.

Participating Artists

William Bacon ~ Oolah Boudreau-Taylor ~ Lisa Bregger ~ Josh Christensen ~ Tania Evans ~ Laura Fogg ~ Tom Johnson ~ Sandy Marshall ~ Nancy Horowitz ~ Elizabeth Raybee ~ Esther Siegel ~ Eva Strauss-Rosen ~ and more

~~

Why The Economic Markets Imploded – John Perkins on Democracy Now

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From AMY GOODMAN
Democracy Now

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins calls himself a former economic hit man. He has seen the signs of today’s financial meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiasco, the collapse of the banking industry, the rising unemployment rate—these are all familiar to him.

Perkins was on the front lines of monitoring and helping create these very events that were once just confined to the third world. From ’71 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm Chas T. Main, where he was a self-described “economic hit man.” It was based in Boston.

He’s the author of the New York Times bestseller, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire. Well, he’s out with a new book. It’s called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them.

He joins me here in the firehouse studio.

Bozos on the Couch – What is ‘Good Therapy’ in a Time of Collapse?

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From KATHY McMAHON, Psy.D.
Via Energy Bulletin

I read Sally Erickson’s post [The Culture of Pretend] and as a clinical psychologist, I gotta tell you, I found it sort of depressing. It wasn’t her criticism of psychotherapy. I understand her point about psychotherapy not healing a sick culture. James Hillman made the same point in “One Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The World’s Getting Worse.” But golly, if we’re here anyway, shouldn’t we have some role as Peak Shrinks while the world as we know it collapses around us?

Psychotherapy wasn’t designed to heal a sick society, but proponents of psychotherapy have been calling our world a sick culture for quite a while. Harry Stacks Sullivan complained bitterly about it, when he was launching his own psychiatric practice during the Great Depression. The theory he developed talked a lot about the importance of honest, emotionally-connected relationships, and the lack of them in his time.

Therapists with a clear macro-view of the world realize that to be minimally effective, they are going to have to leave the therapy room and actually attempt to heal and repair the world, just as Sally has tried to do in her movie. But let’s talk about what relevant therapy is going to look like in the future.

I run a site, Peak Oil Blues, which is devoted to helping people face an energy-depleted future, full of climate change and a collapsing economy.

Farmers Market Ukiah Saturday 11/14/09

 

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From SCOTT CRATTY
Ukiah

The Ukiah Saturday Farmers’ Market is still going strong and this Saturday promises to be another clear, crisp morning — perfect produce gathering weather.  Please help get the word out that the Ukiah Saturday market is now year-round, 8:30 to noon as always, and is still going strong.  We had 24 vendors last week and expect as many or more this Saturday.

At this Saturday’s market you can expect a couple of new craft vendors including blown glass, locally assembled purses and wooden toys. Add that to our great selection of dolls, linens, body care, candles, glassware, knitted goods, toffee, etc, and your holiday buying can be done in one spot with unique, locally-produced gifts that keep your $ local.

We will also have the usual great range of local produce including the expected (weather permitting) return of Humboldt Bay oysters.  I also expect the return of Flowers By the Sea from Elk.  They promise to bring cabbage, three kinds of onions, four kinds of potatoes, apples, lettuce, arugula, spinach, radishes, Bok Choi, Swiss chard, beautiful broccoli, sugar snap peas, possibly a few late raspberries, and eggs.

See you at the market!
~~

Major Hasan and The Legacy of George W Bush

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From THOM HARTMANN
Via Common Dreams

If Bill Clinton – or, presumably, Al Gore (or even Ralph Nader) – had been President in 2001, the Ft. Hood massacre almost certainly wouldn’t have happened. Because George W. Bush was president, it did. Here’s why it’s Bush’s fault:

One of the first lessons aspiring novelists and screenwriters learn is that the goodness of a hero is defined by a single quality – the evil of his opponent. From Superman’s Lex Luthor to Batman’s Joker to Indiana Jones’ Nazis to Luke Skywalker’s Darth Vader, for a hero to be perceived as larger than life, he must have a larger than life enemy.

If Frodo in “Lord of the Rings,” for example, hadn’t been forced to do battle with the supernatural powers of the Ring and its minions, his story would have merely been a boring travelogue. But with an army of supernaturally brilliant, evil, and powerful opponents, Frodo had the opportunity to display his extraordinary inner courage and resourcefulness, qualities he didn’t even realize he had until they were called forth by the peril of an awesome evil.

This is a lesson that was not lost on Karl Rove and George W. Bush. If they could recast George as the opponent of a power as great as the Ring, then the rather ordinary Dubya could become the extraordinary SuperGeorge, rising from his facileness to prevail over supernatural powers of evil.

Bill Clinton had a similar chance, but passed on it for the good of America and the world.

The Culture of Pretend: How Psychotherapy Keeps Our Communities Sick

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From Sally Erickson
Via Energy Bulletin

Early in my experience as a psychotherapy client I received the therapeutic counsel that “Secrets keep you sick.” As scared as I felt when I identified and then disclosed secrets to my therapist, I saw the healing power that came as as a result. I worked hard in therapy. I realized how much material I had kept secret, even from myself. I learned the power and value of deep insight, as I recalled forgotten events, experiences, and emotions. I committed myself to make the most out of my therapy and that counsel about not keeping secrets proved to be of great personal value. I felt real relief at finally knowing myself and then at allowing someone else to know me to the bone.

I saw some smart and helpful therapists along the way. It is not a stretch to say that psychotherapy very likely saved my life. It definitely improved my life and my regard for myself. But, like most people who have been on either or both sides of “the couch,” I didn’t expect complete healing of everything. I accepted on-going self-doubt, neuroses, bouts of insecurity, and inner triggers and over-reactions as part of being human. I’ve kind of accepted, like Jack Nicholson does in one of my favorite movies, that this is “As Good As I Gets.”

Now, after twenty-five years of being a psychotherapist and some thirty-five years since I first entered therapy as a client, I’m questioning some basic assumptions about the institution of psychotherapy. And it is because of that counsel about not keeping secrets, that I have begun this questioning.

Psychotherapy can help people to acknowledge their own history of unmet needs, hurts, and trauma, and the resulting emotions. It also can help us to acknowledge the pain of friends and family who take the risk to share themselves deeply.

Our most important task – Vandana Shiva (video)

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From VANDANA SHIVA
Via Transition Culture

The most important pressure people in the South face is the grabbing of their resources to feed a consumer machinery where the rich North doesn’t really benefit from that consumption, but it thinks it’s benefiting.

A Transition Town movement in the North, that reduces the pressure on the South, while maintaining solidarity on issues where the North can’t provide for itself — you can’t grow your coffee, you can’t grow your spices in Europe, you can’t grow your cotton — a Transition Town movement in the North needs to shrink its ecological footprint in areas where it is shrinkable, and it needs to generate more livelihood locally in production and the first candidate for this is fresh vegetables.

Fresh vegetables are the reason Third World people are losing their land. Fresh vegetables do not get exported by small peasants… giant companies take over the land, put green beans and lettuce onto flights, and ship it to the North.

So if you reduce your consumption of long distance flights for vegetables, and increase your local production ecologically, you are reducing the pressure on the South, you are making sure families don’t go hungry in the South.

That’s the kind of solidarity that helps.

Go to video at Transition Culture→

See also Sharon Astyk’s Comments→

[This is the reason the so-called "Green Revolution" is a disaster for the world. -DS]
~~

Avoiding Factory Farm Foods

 

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From NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN
Huntington Post Blogs

Livestock Rancher, Lawyer, and Author, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms

Most people share at least the following traits: they want to be healthy; they like animals; and they value clean air and water. Yet relatively few Americans connect those concerns with their food. As more people start making the link (especially if they’ve seen graphic video footage of industrial animal operations), many decide it’s time to stop eating foods from factory farms. This is a guide for doing just that.

I’ve been a vegetarian for more than twenty years. Unlike the fits and starts described in Jonathan Safran Foer’s autobiographical book Eating Animals, the day I decided to quit eating meat was the last time I ever did. I remember that dinner well. It was my mother’s tuna fish casserole, and actually quite tasty. But while I chose to stop eating meat, I never adopted the view that it was morally wrong, and, consequently, didn’t become one of those vegetarians who spends her spare time plumbing the depths of meat industry literature looking for bits of information to shock my friends and family into giving up meat.

Nine years ago, I had just started working as an environmental lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. when he approached me about leading a national campaign to reform the livestock and poultry sector. He said that industrialized animal production had become one of the nation’s worst polluters of water and air, and he wanted to aggressively attack the problem.

Spokane Considers Community Bill of Rights

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Thousands of people voted to protect nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.

[After two resounding and very satisfying defeats of outside Big Money interests, is this a good next step for Mendocino County? -DS]

From Mari Margil
Yes! Magazine

Of all the candidates, bills, and proposals on ballots around the country [last week], one of the most exciting is a proposition that didn’t pass.

In Spokane, Washington, despite intense opposition from business interests, a coalition of residents succeeded in bringing an innovative “Community Bill of Rights” to the ballot. Proposition 4 would have amended the city’s Home Rule Charter (akin to a local constitution) to recognize nine basic rights, ranging from the right of the environment to exist and flourish to the rights of residents to have a locally based economy and to determine the future of their neighborhoods.

A coalition of the city’s residents drafted the amendments after finding that they didn’t have the legal authority to make decisions about their own neighborhoods; the amendments were debated and fine-tuned in town hall meetings.

Good Calories, Bad Calories

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From DON SANDERSON
Mendocino County

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. ~ Plato

This is a review of a book that Michael Pollen has described as “A vitally important book, destined to change the way we think about food.” Alternative medicine guru Andrew Weil, M.D., called it “A very important book.” Yet, it is an investigated report of intimidating depth, 609 pages including the index, that sadly I doubt most of you will ever read. I only try below to give you a softer tour of a few of the high points to tempt you. The book is Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, Anchor Books, 2007. Taubes not only describes the expected results of various diets, but at least as importantly I believe, recounts a pertinent allegory of our times, of how easily we can be manipulated to our and the Earth’s detriment.

Nearly thirty years ago, I was experiencing a variety of seemingly unrelated symptoms that became more worrisome over time. So began a wandering from physician to physician, specialist to specialist, seeking relief. One night, after ten years or so and a dozen physicians, I was in terrible distress and Marlene somehow or another got me to an emergency facility.

Vegetarian’s Rebuttal to ‘The Carnivore’s Dilemma’

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From TreeHugger

Last week’s NY Times featured an op-ed entitled “The Carnivore’s Dilemma“–an ostensibly enlightened response to the chorus of voices promulgating a vegetarian diet as a way to significantly reduce one’s emission of greenhouse gasses (not least amongst these voices is Michael Pollan, author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma”). Unlike “The Omnivore’s Delusion“–a fluff piece by the industrial agriculture lobby that defends the status quo–the author of the Times’ piece, Nicolette Hahn Niman, is no great defender of current industrial agricultural practices; she’s a rancher and advocate of “traditional”, grass-fed livestock production. Hahn Niman’s argument focuses on debunking the notion that vegetarianism is inherently the most beneficial way of eating for the environment.

While Hahn Niman has several valid points, her arguments often fall short of a sale. She frequently compares best-case scenario meat consumption and worst-case scenario vegetarianism. She states, “It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian.” First off, she doesn’t say that this theoretical conscientious carnivore will be more environmentally friendly, she merely uses the more hopeful “could” and “may”. Moreover, she never deigns to compare a conscientious meat eater to a conscientious vegetarian.

The Carnivore’s Dilemma

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By NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN
Bolinas, Calif.
New York Times Op-Ed

Is eating a hamburger the global warming equivalent of driving a Hummer? This week an article in The Times of London carried a headline that blared: “Give Up Meat to Save the Planet.” Former Vice President Al Gore, who has made climate change his signature issue, has even been assailed for omnivorous eating by animal rights activists.

It’s true that food production is an important contributor to climate change. And the claim that meat (especially beef) is closely linked to global warming has received some credible backing, including by the United Nations and University of Chicago. Both institutions have issued reports that have been widely summarized as condemning meat-eating.

But that’s an overly simplistic conclusion to draw from the research. To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them — cause substantial greenhouse gases. It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian.

Robin Collier: You cannot have it both ways! (Updated)

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

According to the UDJ 11/8/09: “MCT [Mendocino County Tomorrow, funded by DDR] Director Robin Collier said the organization now plans to partner with Ukiah officials to help fill vacancies in the city’s downtown, and has a particular interest in working with the Friends of the Palace, a group dedicated to restoring the historic Palace Hotel on State Street… ‘It’s my wish to see DDR keep going.’”

Sorry, Robin. Your organization cannot simultaneously work to destroy our downtown, as you did heading up the Yes On A Campaign for DDR, and also “partner with Ukiah officials” and “work with the Friends of the Palace.”

Your organization, and what it stands for, was thoroughly trounced in the recent election. In my opinion, as long as it is sponsored by DDR,  MCT is a pariah. Our downtown does not need any “help” from an organization that continues to support DDR’s ambitions and methods. What part of “No” don’t you understand?

I, for one, as a downtown merchant, want no further dealings with Mendocino County Tomorrow. Please leave us alone.
~

Update (thanks Sherry Glavich)

[As of November 10th, this is the top letter MCT presents on their website. I ask you... we want "help" from this crew? Ha! Democracy lives! -Dave]

Dear Supporters of the Mendocino Art Center…

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From MARGARET PAUL

As you are probably aware, the Art Center is in crisis.  There are now new board officers and the following board members have resigned:  Brandt Stickel, Don McCullough, Dale Moyer, Cynthia Crocker Scott, and the wonderful Janis Porter.  The new officers of the BOD are:  Tom Becker, President and Treasurer, Richard Miller, 1st Vice President, Don Paglia, 2nd Vice President, and Leona Walden, Secretary, with Robert Burridge and Terry Lyon as members.

Of the six remaining board members, only one, maybe two, have seen the light and are not in support of the new executive director’s many ill-advised decisions.  This is an important juncture, because after the November 19th Board meeting, they won’t have another public meeting until the end of January. Important issues need resolution NOW!

If you are concerned and want to contact the MAC board of directors, here are their email addresses:

drrichardmiller@aol.com
pacrdg@mcn.org
dpaglia@mcn.org
rburridge@robertburridge.com
terrylyon@aol.com
tbecker@mcn.org

The Executive Director, Karen Ely’s email is:  director@mendocinoartcenter.org

Suggestion:  Consider ccing the board any emails sent to Ely.  Keeps everyone up to speed.

Let’s unify and save MAC.  We can do it!  Mark your calendars:  The next board meeting is November 19th at 2PM.  Hundreds of community members need to attend and voice their concerns.

Thanks!!!
~~

Lillian Brown Vogel at Mendocino Book Company Today Saturday 11/7 at 3 pm

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From ANN KILKENNY
Mendocino Book Company
Ukiah

Please join us in welcoming Lillian Brown Vogel to the Mendocino Book Co this Saturday, November 7 at 3 p.m. She will be sharing her life story and her secrets or rather explanation for her long life of a 100 years. Refreshments will be served and we would love to have a great crowd to celebrate this remarkable achievement.

Mendocino Book Co
102 S School Street
~~

Too Big to Fail – Too Big to Exist (video)

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From SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS
Vermont

More than a year has gone by since Congress passed the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. The Federal Reserve has committed trillions of additional dollars in virtually zero-interest loans and other assistance to large financial institutions resulting in the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Today, most of the huge financial institutions still standing have become even bigger — so big that the four largest banks in America (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup) now issue one out of every two mortgages; two out of three credit cards; and hold $4 out of every $10 in bank deposits in the entire country.

If any of these financial institutions were to get into major trouble again, taxpayers would be on the hook for another massive bailout. We cannot let that happen. That is why I introduced legislation that would give the secretary of the Treasury 90 days to identify every single financial institution and insurance company in this country that is too big to fail and to break them up within one year.

If it’s too big to fail, it’s too big to exist! Break ‘em up!

Go to video→

The Toilets of Mendocino

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From TODD WALTON
Anderson Valley

I was going to title this piece Pay To Poop or The Pooplic Option or something else related to the maddening absurdities of the current healthcare debate and the ongoing economic meltdown, but I didn’t want to offend anyone until they started reading. But seriously, folks, the powers-that-be have announced they are closing the only public restroom in the village of Mendocino! And these same enlightened ones just carted away the handicapped-access plastic latrine at Big River Beach. That’s right. The idyllic village and tourist destination of Mendocino may soon have No Public Potties. Why?

According to Sigmund Freud, the short answer is that Americans are insensitive barbarians. Freud made his one and only visit to America in 1909, and his most lasting impression of our great land came not from Niagara Falls, but from the lack of public restrooms. He said, and I paraphrase, “A society that does not provide public bathrooms for its citizens is essentially cruel and maladjusted and barbaric.”

When I first moved to Mendocino four years ago, I was struck by the brusque, dismissive, and sometimes cruel manner in which merchants would respond to my query, “May I use your bathroom?” I was inevitably directed to the state-funded public facility on Main Street, a stinky concrete bunker maintained by the state park people on whose land (our land) the bunker resides. I would sometimes find a homeless fellow bathing in the toilet stall. Sometimes the floors were so slick with piss, the journey across the cement floor wasn’t worth the risk of a fall. But most times the place was relatively clean and usable, and I was relieved and grateful that such a depository was available to the likes of me.

Why aren’t there two or three public restrooms in a village whose economy is tied to the tourist trade? Good question. In my fourteen hundred days as a resident in Mendocino, I have been asked at least three hundred times by visitors in the vicinity of the post office, some doing that telltale jig as they asked, “Is there a bathroom around here I can use?” And I have dutifully sent them to the distant bunker that our public servants tell us they must close because it costs them twenty-five thousand dollars a year to maintain, and the state is bankrupt, so… Really? Twenty-five grand to hose the bunker out every few days? Well, yes, because the hosing must be done by someone in the union, you see, so the numerous offers by the community to maintain the bunker must be declined because, well, hosing out bunkers is, what, highly technical?

More→

The Oceans Are Coming

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From DMITRY ORLOV
Club Orlov

Part I: The Global Mistake

In September 2009 the latest global temperature rise projections released by the Hadley Centre, part of the British Meteorological Office indicated an average rise of 4 degrees Celsius (that’s a balmy 7.2°F) by 2055 given a business as usual scenario. Some places will be a bit more stable, but the places that particularly matter – the ice caps, the methane-rich permafrosts in northern Canada and Siberia, and the Amazon rainforest – will be melting, off-gassing, and burning, respectively. The report offers some detail on what that would feel like:

In a 4°C world, climate change, deforestation and fires spreading from degraded land into pristine forest will conspire to destroy over 83 per cent of the Amazon rainforest by 2100… in a 4°C world there will be a mix of extremely wet monsoon seasons and extremely dry ones, making it hard for farmers to plan what to grow. Worse, the fine aerosol particles released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels could put a complete stop to the monsoon rains in central southern China and northern India… the people most vulnerable to a 4°C rise are also least able to escape it. At 4°C, the poor will struggle to survive, let alone escape.

And what of that lodestone, global sea level? This happens to be a very interesting question, because ocean levels are set to rise dramatically. According to UCLA scientists, the last time carbon dioxide levels were as high as they are today was 15 million years ago. At that time, the sea level was between 20 and 36 metres higher (75 to 120 feet), there was no permanent ice cap in the arctic, and very little ice in Antarctica or Greenland. That is where we are headed. The only remaining question is, How long will it take us to get there?The authors of the Hadley Centre report predict a rise of just 1.4 metres by 2100. The IPCC in their 2007 4th Assessment Report predicted something like half a metre by 2100 based on a combination of the fattening of the oceanic envelope caused by thermal expansion and the increased runoff from glaciers and minor ice sheets. None of this sounds particularly catastrophic just yet, but then it turns out that these predictions are not based on anything particularly relevant: the British Antarctic Survey, in 2008, made it clear that the IPCC had not included the source of nearly 100% of the world’s potential ice melt – the major ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland – simply because they had little idea of how the ice caps would behave in a heating world:

More at ClubOrlov→

See also Anthropoclastic Climate Change→
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Slamming the Climate Skeptic Scam

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From JAMES HOGGIN
Author

There is a line between public relations and propaganda – or there should be. And there is a difference between using your skills, in good faith, to help rescue a battered reputation and using them to twist the truth – to sow confusion and doubt on an issue that is critical to human survival.

And it is infuriating – as a public relations professional – to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.

That’s what is happening today, and I think it’s a disgrace. On one hand, you have the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – as well as the science academies of every developed nation in the world – confirming that:

• climate change is real;
• it is caused by human activity; and
• it is threatening the planet in ways we can only begin to imagine.

On the other hand, you have an ongoing public debate – not about how to respond, but about whether we should bother, about whether climate change is even a scientific certainty. While those who stand in denial of climate change have failed in the last 15 years to produce a single, peer-reviewed scientific journal article that challenges the theory and evidence of human-induced climate change, mainstream media was, until very recently, covering the story (in more than half the cases, according to the academic researchers Boykoff and Boykoff) by quoting one scientist talking about the risks and one purported expert saying that climate change was not happening – or might actually be a good thing.

Few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as this attack on the science of climate change. It has been a triumph of disinformation – one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world. As a public relations practitioner, it is a marvel – and a deep humiliation – and I want to see it stop.

Here’s how it works: Public relations is not a process of telling people what to think; people are too smart for that, and North Americans are way too stubborn. Tell a bunch of North Americans what they are supposed to think and you’re likely to wind up the only person at the party enjoying your can of New Coke.

More at author’s DeSmogBlog.com→
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Climate Change Deniers Are Not Skeptics – They’re Suckers

From GEORGE MONBIOT
The Guardian/UK

My fiercest opponents on global warming tend to be in their 60s and 70s. This offers a fascinating, if chilling, insight into human psychology

There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed.

A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world has been warming over the last few decades has fallen from 71% to 57% in just 18 months. Another survey, conducted in January by Rasmussen Reports, suggests that, due to a sharp rise since 2006, US voters who believe global warming has natural causes (44%) outnumber those who believe it is the result of human action (41%).

A study by the website Desmogblog shows that the number of internet pages proposing that man-made global warming is a hoax or a lie more than doubled last year. The Science Museum’s Prove it! exhibition asks online readers to endorse or reject a statement that they’ve seen the evidence and want governments to take action. As of yesterday afternoon, 1,006 people had endorsed it and 6,110 had rejected it. On Amazon.co.uk, books championing climate change denial are currently ranked at 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8 in the global warming category. Never mind that they’ve been torn to shreds by scientists and reviewers, they are beating the scientific books by miles. What is going on?

It certainly doesn’t reflect the state of the science, which has hardened dramatically over the past two years. If you don’t believe me, open any recent edition of Science or Nature or any peer-reviewed journal specialising in atmospheric or environmental science. Go on, try it. The debate about global warming that’s raging on the internet and in the rightwing press does not reflect any such debate in the scientific journals.

An American scientist I know suggests that these books and websites cater to a new literary market: people with room-temperature IQs. He didn’t say whether he meant fahrenheit or centigrade. But this can’t be the whole story. Plenty of intelligent people have also declared themselves sceptics.

More at Common Dreams via The Guardian→

See also The Global Climate Change Lobby→
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Nowhere Man

 

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He’s a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody…

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THANK YOU, NO ON A’YERS!

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to be of use
Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
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No On A Victory!

 

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Final Results
OVERWHELMING LANDSLIDE
62% No – 38% Yes

Wahoo!!!!!

Measure H. Measure A. Millions of dollars turned away.

Dead Dino Rest In Perpetuity.

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Handpicked – The Apple Farm in Anderson Valley

 

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From the New York Times

Northern California breeds food pioneers: M. F. K. Fisher, Alice Waters, Alfred Peet, for starters. But to some, a pioneering spirit means finding the next frontier. Take Sally and Don Schmitt and their family. First they put the agricultural backwater of Yountville on the culinary map with their restaurant, the French Laundry. Then they left town and spun around farm-to-table in Philo.

Napa Valley might seem like the stuff of “Falcon Crest,” but it’s really farm country. It was much more so in the early ’70s, when Sally Schmitt’s cafe had the area’s only espresso machine and she cooked meals for the gatherings of Napa’s 13 vintners. The kitchen that was built for her mail-order chutney business was soon used to host theme dinners, with menus inspired by the Time-Life cooking series. After the couple took over a former French steam laundry, the meals evolved into one of the area’s first set-menu restaurants — a financially iffy move in a place where farmers loved their red-sauce Italian restaurants. On its opening night in 1978, the French Laundry served pasta with clam sauce, blanquette de veau, rice, asparagus, salad, cheese and rhubarb mousse for $12.50.

By the mid-’80s, the French Laundry had become a destination restaurant — and Napa a destination. But the family was eager to find the next fringe. They began fantasizing about life in the Anderson Valley, a hard-to-reach area in Mendocino County with its own dialect and an economy that runs partly on the barter system. A real estate agent showed Don and Sally a run-down apple farm in Philo that reminded them of “the old Napa.”

“So they called us and asked us if we wanted to be apple farmers,” recalls Karen, one of the Schmitts’ five children. “We said yes! with no hesitation, knowing nothing about it.” The Philo Apple Farm was born.

More at New York Times→

Final Letter, and a Last Desperate Move From DDR To Screw Our County

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Final Letter to the Editor UDJ

[Of all the great letters from our community urging our No on A vote, this one from Laurel is outstanding! -DS]

From LAUREL NEAR
Ukiah

This election about whether we should host a large shopping mall has me thinking about change; the huge changes I’ve seen here in this valley over the last half a century and more. Every so often, a pinnacle decision is made that then sets the tone for the future rollout of dozens and dozens of other changes that then ripple out in the community changing life for generations to come.

And what strikes me as important about the mall vote is that we may have enough hindsight now to know that if we say yes to the mall (even if they don’t build it) life here will be different. We know that instead of simply accepting change with a shrug from the sidelines that we can be actively shaping the very changes that allow for the healthiest, happiest, most bountiful life here. And yes, sometimes that takes patience.

When I do a whirlwind rewind of my life growing up here, I recognize some of the staggering changes I have seen have been great for this small town. However other changes have not always been in alignment with promoting our very best qualities as humans and as a collective community. It doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

In 1947, my parents bought an 1,800-acre cattle ranch in Potter Valley for $30,000 on Pine Avenue. Only three deeds or so before, the land had been the home of Pomo people for thousands of years. Can we imagine no fences and no pavement anywhere? When I was little, my mother drove us without seat belts to Ukiah on a road that went through where Lake Mendocino is now. There was an outdoor roller skating rink with a huge sound system and on hot summer nights, parents would sit in their cars and watch their kids skate under the stars as they listened to Elvis, The Four Seasons and The Supremes. The Pear Tree Shopping Center was a real field of pears, the drive-in movie was in a field off of Dora Street and I pretty much knew everyone in town. There was an award winning marching band led by Roland Nielson that marched down State Street and a thriving performing arts program at the high school theater directed by Les Johnson who directed fully staged musicals of the times to packed houses.

My parents didn’t have a credit card but then they didn’t buy a lot of stuff. In the fall, we went to McNabs, The Palace Dress Shop or Irene’s, Tots to Teens to buy one new outfit and a coat for school and sometimes we bought a 45 at Hayes Music. Most parents’ quality time with their children in Potter was doing chores, going for walks, swimming in creeks, fishing, shadow tag, 4-H, family meals, square dances at the grange, looking up at the sky full of stars but not shopping.

The Devolution of Basketball

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From TODD WALTON
Anderson Valley

John Wooden, the legendary coach of the UCLA basketball team just turned ninety-nine. Wooden coached the UCLA team from 1948 to 1975 and won ten National Championships in a span of 12 years, including 7 in a row from 1967 to 1973, a feat so unimaginable today it seems more myth than fact. As a college player, Wooden was a three-time consensus All-American, the first ever, and spent several years playing in the early professional leagues while simultaneously coaching high school teams. During one 46-game stretch as a pro he made 134 consecutive free throws. During World War II, he enlisted in the Navy and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He never made more than $35,000 a year as the UCLA coach, and never asked for a raise.

Wooden said: “The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team,” and “What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.”

In an interview with him on the day before his 99^th birthday, he was lucid and wry, and made a fervent wish that “they” wouldn’t do anything special for his birthday. “If I make it to a hundred, well, okay.”

Among Wooden’s many famous protégé’s was Lew Alcindor who became Kareem Abdul Jabbar. We often hear superlatives connected to the superstars of today, but none of them single-handedly changed the game of basketball as Alcindor did. Few remember that when Alcindor began his college career at UCLA, freshmen were not permitted to play on varsity teams. Alcindor’s freshman squad played the UCLA varsity squad, the number one-ranked team in America, and beat them 75-60. Alcindor scored 51 points, many of his baskets dunks.

As a result of this overwhelming display of his dominance, and before Alcindor could join the varsity squad as a sophomore, the NCAA banned the dunk in college basketball, a ban that was lifted three years later when Alcindor graduated and turned pro. That’s right. They imposed a national ban to contain one specific player. But even without the dunk, Alcindor was so dominant (and seven-foot two inches tall) that for the first time in the history of basketball, referees allowed defenders to constantly foul another player (Alcindor) to keep him from scoring.  more→
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Derrick Jensen Calls Out Richard Dawkins et al.

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From CounterPunch

First, if the scientific materialist instrumentalist perspective is right and every other culture is wrong, the universe is a gigantic clockwork – a machine: a very predictable and therefore controllable machine. Power in this case, then, is like meaning in that there is no inherent power in the world (or out of it)—just as no power inheres in a toaster or automobile until you put it to use—and the only power that exists is that which you project onto and over others (or that others project onto and over you). Power exists only in how you use raw materials – the more raw materials you use more effectively than anyone else, the more power to you. And science is a potent tool for that. That’s the point of science.

This means, of course, that might then makes right, or rather, right, too, is like meaning and doesn’t inhere anyway—if nonhumans are not in any real sense beings and are here for us to use (and not here for their own sakes, with lives as meaningful to them as yours is to you or mine is to me) then using (or destroying) them raises no significant moral questions, any more than whether you or I do or don’t use or destroy any other tool—which means right is what you decide it is, or more accurately, it’s irrelevant, right is whatever you want it to be, which means it’s really nothing at all. But this malleable notion of right means that you can fairly easily talk yourself into feeling good about exploiting the shit out of everyone and everything else. If all of this sounds sociopathological, that’s because it is.

Western philosophy and scientific philosophy is sociopathological, it finds logic through the power of command. It makes us all insane. Richard Dawkins wrote, “Science boosts its claim to truth by its spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and to predict what will happen and when.” Do you see the fundamental flaw in logic here? I’m guessing that if we lived in a culture that wasn’t sociopathological we would all see through this in a heartbeat. Let’s ask a simple question: How does science boost its claim to truth? Here is Dawkins’s (and the culture’s) answer: by making matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and by predicting what will happen and when. Do you see the problem yet?…

The fact that they, too, must pay this price of suffering and death as a cost of participating in the joyous web of experience and relationship that is the ongoing and eternally creative process of living, somehow seems to them an affront. To which I have a two-word response: grow up…

See complete interview here→
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