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.
~
[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. more→
Firstly, I would say that the energy prices that currently seem stubbornly high should fall substantially as the speculative premium evaporates and demand falls on a resumption of the credit crunch. The sucker rally that has spawned all the talk of green shoots is essentially over in my opinion.
The result should be a reversal of a number of trends that depend on the ebb and flow of liquidity – we should see stock markets and commodity prices fall, a significant resurgence in the US dollar and a large contraction of credit. The scale of the reversal should be substantial, as should its effects on energy demand. Demand is not what one wants, but what one is ready, willing and able to pay for, and in a severe credit crunch the capacity to pay for supplies of most things will be severely reduced.
As demand falls, and with it prices, investment in the energy sector is likely to dry up. Many projects will be uneconomic at much lower prices, meaning that the projects which might have cushioned the downslope of Hubbert’s curve (and the much steeper net energy curve), are unlikely to be developed. In this way a demand collapse sets the stage for a supply collapse that could place a hard ceiling on any prospect of economic recovery. That is a recipe for extremely high energy prices in the future…
The scale of the problem has been temporarily concealed by a market rally and the shovelling of tens of trillions of dollars of taxpayer’s money into a giant black hole of credit destruction. This has done nothing to reignite lending, but the temporary (and entirely irrational) resurgence of confidence has restored a measure of liquidity. As that confidence evaporates with the end of the rally, that liquidity will also disappear.
Deflation is ultimately psychological. Without trust we will see hoarding of the cash which will be very scarce in the absence of the credit that currently comprises the vast majority of the effective money supply. The combination of scarce cash and a very low velocity of money will be toxic.
Money is the lubricant in the economic engine and without enough of it that engine will seize up as it did in the 1930s, when farmers dumped milk they couldn’t sell into ditches while others were starving for want of the money to buy food. There was plenty of everything except money, and without money, one cannot connect buyers and sellers…
In my opinion, we stand on the brink of truly tragic circumstances.
When the national organization of our local Chamber of Commerce takes a stand against the best interests of American citizens, it’s time to withdraw from national membership and seek the new alliances necessary to flourish in the new century.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce “faces increased opposition from its members about the Chamber’s obstructionist approach to climate change science and responsible climate/energy/green jobs policy.” (Politico)
The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) “took a look at the Chamber’s board of directors and their public positions on global warming and gee, what we found… it turns out that the staff of the U.S. Chamber appears to be projecting the views held by a tiny sliver of its board of directors – just four out of 122 members on the board. The Chamber’s oft-stated views, which question the scientific consensus on climate change and reject the need for federal regulation to reduce global warming pollution, stand in sharp contrast to the views expressed by 19 members of the Chamber’s board that support federal regulations with goals to reduce total US global warming pollution.”
For years, the national Chamber lobby has played a key role in blocking consumer-protection legislation, a shareholder bill of rights, labor-law reform, and financial regulation. In other words, the Chamber of Commerce has worked against the people who invest in, purchase from, and make the products for, the companies they represent. That would be stupid in a small town, but arrogant transnationals don’t give a damn about anyone or anything other than growing their profits.
Its current legislative priorities include opposing a consumer financial-protection agency, opposing a shareholder bill of rights, and opposing “flawed health care proposals,” which seems to mean any health-care proposal made by a Democrat, according to The New Yorker magazine.
Apple Computer, Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources, and Exelon are all leaving the Chamber, and Nike is leaving its Board of Directors, because of its public stance on climate change.
Locally, despite solid leadership of staff and its more progressive Directors, some of its members continue to rain down wing-nut wrath whenever they deem it straying from what they consider its sole mission: helping businesses make maximum profits regardless of its negative effects on local small businesses, the environment, and our citizens… otherwise known as sociopathology. Lord help us all.
I’ve read most of the letters to the editor that the Measure A proponents have sent in, but this one has to be either written by the DDR PR firm who brag about their abilities to “coach” letter writers, or the writer thinks that we’re a bunch of local yokels with no thinking skills: “Much has been made lately about the fact that an Ohio based corporation owns the former Masonite site and is pushing their way into our community. If we pause for a moment, and look at the other out of town corporations in our community and where we would be without them right now, it is frightening. How would our locally owned stores or other service providers fare if we did not have these employers in our community? Sure there would be less competition here locally, but the unemployment rate would be so high that nobody could afford to shop in any store. How would our city government operate without the sales tax revenues that come from these stores? Over 42 percent of our general fund budget for the city comes from sales tax revenues. What would our police and fire department look like? What kind of recreation department would we have for our youth?”
Well, first off, let’s “do the math”. If every new Big Box eliminates 1.4 jobs for every job they create, that would mean that if they never came here, we would have 1,000 jobs for every 700 they have brought us. It’s not that hard to figure out. So, if we “pause for a minute” and ask ourselves “where we would be without them right now”, the answer is we would probably have half the unemployment rate that we have now. Not so frightening!
“How would our locally owned stores or other service providers fare if we did not have these employers in our community?” Well, we would probably have twice as many locally-owned stores that would keep all of our revenue and profit dollars circulating locally instead of leaving for the headquarters of the Big Box stores. Not so frightening now, is it?
“How would our city government operate without sales tax revenues?” Much better as they would have more tax revenue without the additional costs of infrastructure and safety that Big Boxes bring.
A letter writer (UDJ 10/9/09) states the following: “What I have come to notice is that some in this County are against Measure A simply to be against Measure A. They do not have any factual evidence supporting any of their claims. I just wish more voters would be like me and dig a little deeper into these issues. If you are against something just because you don’t want it, then say that. Do not run a game on all of us with weak and false claims.”
OK! I’ll say it! I’m against the Monster Mall because I just don’t want it. I like our small town and the Monster Mall will ruin it. I like our small locally-owned business community, and your Monster Mall will put our downtown out of business. I just don’t want it. I’m happy that we haven’t yet been seduced by sprawl that contributes to climate change, and instead we demand smart growth, not dumb growth. I absolutely adore owning a small local business in town and I would never re-locate into a soulless Monster Mall. I just don’t want it.
I moved away from all that years ago. I’ve traveled along the freeways down south and can see what big-time mall, condo, traffic, mall, condo, traffic, mall, condo, traffic brings. It’s sprawl hell the Monster Mall is projecting onto our communities here. When I visit down there, I cannot wait to turn around and get back to small-time Mendocino County.
Really, I just don’t want the Monster Mall here. And thanks for asking.
[More Letters from the UDJ]
Monster Mall a Slick Con Game
From Edith Lucas Owner of The Dragon’s Lair
Ukiah
I’ve been thinking a lot about Measure A and how I feel about it both as a small business owner, and as a citizen of this town. In both areas I like to apply what I call the double bottom line: what is good for the pocketbook and what is good for the soul. After much reading and thinking, I’ve decided that it is very important to vote no on A. It not only doesn’t meet the double bottom line, it could pull the bottom line right out from under us! Keep reading→
[This third book of the trilogy by Stieg Larsson will be published in the US June 2010. Available now for rent, $5 for 2 weeks, at Mulligan Books. -DS]
A couple of years ago I was in a supermarket in Carcassonne, looking for a book to read on holiday. I noticed that something called Millennium seemed to be numbers one, two and four on the bestseller list – yet I had never heard of it. That was my introduction to Stieg Larsson’s meaty trilogy of thrillers. Now the story of the author is as well known as his characters. He died suddenly in 2004, having delivered the text of the trilogy to his publisher. Larsson was editor-in-chief of the anti-racist magazine Expo, and an expert on anti-democratic, right-wing extremist and Nazi organisations. He used this background to good effect in the creation of the campaigning fictional magazine, Millennium. He also used his knowledge of SAPO, Sweden’s secret police, and the jostling for position after the end of the cold war between Europe and Russia.
The first in the sequence, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, introduced readers to diminutive Lisbeth Salander. A brilliant computer hacker, she’s a woman prepared to use violence to achieve her ends, a vigilante with no faith in the authorities, someone who – we gradually learn – has been the victim of a colossal miscarriage of justice. She is the daughter of a brutal, psychopathic Russian defector, Zalachenko, whose perceived importance to the state and national security is deemed more significant than the fact that he is a wife-beater and abuser. At the age of 13, Salander is declared insane and locked away in a psychiatric unit in order to prevent her blowing her father’s cover. The second book in the sequence, The Girl Who Played With Fire, develops these themes of the abuse of legal power, of retribution and debts being paid, rough justice all round, and finishes with an extraordinary shoot-out during which Salander is buried alive.
Now comes The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, with Salander fighting for her life in intensive care, her father lying a few doors along the corridor as a result of wounds inflicted on him by Salander herself. Keep reading→
What is more important than the skills of growing your own food to feed yourself year round? I can’t think of anything other than, maybe, the skill of finding drinkable water when you’re lost in the desert.
But, like most of us, what if you don’t have the skills or land to garden year round to feed yourself? Then I’d say the skills of growing food that other people can eat would be our most important local resource.
But what if most of the food being grown is so poisoned and processed that people are dying from diabetes, cancer and heart disease by eating it, and the cheap energy being used to poison and grow our food is declining in supply? Then I would say, growing healthy food without those poisons for other people is the answer.
But if the cheap energy that grows our food has peaked in supply and will be getting extremely expensive, then the cheap energy that gets that healthy food to our tables from far away will soon shoot food costs through the roof. Well then, the most crucially important skill is growing local healthy food for other people, and the most crucially important local resource is the group of local farmers who grow food using organic and biodynamic growing methods.
But the average age of farmers in this country is 55 and they will soon be retiring.
OK, OK, OK! Our most crucially important resource is our small group of young, local, organic/biodynamic farmers.
Adam Gaska and Paula Manalo farm 4 acres in Redwood Valley. Their biodynamic farm is supported by members who invest in a share of the harvest.
You can invest in our most crucially important local resource by joining their membership for the winter season coming up and help create a sustainable resource for your family and our community… and you will be eating the healthiest food a farmer can grow that money can buy.
The latest mass mailing from the DDR Monster Mall Developers located in Ohio brings us greetings and thanks from the folks down in Sonoma County for the millions of dollars we trundle down in our SUV’s to spend there.
If Sonoma County is so fond of all the money we take there, why have they just rejected another Big Box store? According to the Press Democrat 9/3/09, “the Santa Rosa City Council voted late Tuesday to stop Lowe’s from building a big-box home improvement store on Santa Rosa Avenue, heeding the concerns of local business leaders who warned the chain store would hurt the community… Council members also worried that Lowe’s success would come at the expense of local businesses and their employees…”
Oh, now I get it. DDR wants to make us feel like fools for turning down their Monster Mall initiative, so they just make stuff up and pretend they’re somebody else.
I say it’s better to learn from others who have already made the mistakes and regret them, than believe those who will make big bucks off us making those same mistakes ourselves. Santa Rosa is confirming what we have been saying.
Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~~
A student at Mendocino Junior College writes (Letter to the Editor UDJ 9/24/09 – see it below) in support of Monster Mall Measure A: “…we, as young people, have no options for employment in Mendocino County. I have been trying very hard and just can not find work, it is not out there. Please do not risk the youth of this County’s one opportunity for employment and experience before we enter the fast paced job market after graduation.”
A letter like this is heartbreaking. The youth of our county and our country are some of the hardest hit from this recession. It is a tragedy that is not going away soon. Both entry-level and fast-paced jobs after graduation have ground to a screeching halt.
But allowing a Monster Mall into Mendocino County will only make unemployment worse here, as it has across the country.
Fact: Independent studies show for every job the Monster Mall Big Boxes bring, 1.4 are lost. That means the 700 slave-wage jobs advertised by the Monster Mall will destroy almost 1,000 current, better-paying jobs. The reason is simple: the job losses are larger than the gains because Big Boxes accomplish the same volume of sales with fewer employees, and pay poverty-level wages. The money circulating locally from those lost jobs go somewhere else. Not only that, they have killed millions of non-retail jobs by pushing our manufacturing jobs overseas.
For the sake of our local future, and the youth growing up in our county, please Vote No On Measure A.
~
Letter to the Editor (UDJ)
I am a student at Mendocino Junior College. In addition to my academic responsibilities, I also participate in athletics for the college. If anyone goes to the college and walks around you will see that we, as young people, have no options for employment in Mendocino County. I have been trying very hard and just can not find work, it is not out there. This is why the young people of Mendocino County need Measure A to pass. Having a job and maintaining employment allows for us as young people to learn the real ways of the world. Without any type of job experience we are seriously hindered once we enter the open job market. Now is not the time to be selfish in our actions. I have asked many people why they oppose Measure A and the prevailing answer is that they want Ukiah to remain closed off to the rest of the world. Frankly, that position is one of selfishness. Keep reading→
A letter writer in Lower Lake continues to conflate our opposition to the Monster Mall with hating corporations and capitalism (Ukiah’s an armpit, UDJ 9/20/09). Again, not so.
I, and others, want good, green, well-paying manufacturing jobs by locally-owned, cooperatives, community-friendly corporations, and companies that keep our money circulating locally… not 700 slave-wage, poverty-level jobs by Big Box Bullies who suck the financial life-blood from our communities and send it to Arkansas, exploit their workers, keep their good high-paying white collar jobs at their headquarters, send manufacturing jobs to overseas sweatshops, and bring higher levels of poverty to our county. Before we know it there will be no stores left except one gigantic Wal-Mart per community.
Not only that, but they also cheat local vendors. According to a former Wal-Mart manager quoted in the book How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America, when local vendors bill for products and services rendered, they instruct the local Wal-Mart manager to always deduct 10% from the invoice, and dare the vendor to not accept it.
Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~~
[Here's a way to trade on-line for local organic produce. I'm offering Mulligan Books as a centralized SAME DAY drop-off and pick-up point for goods being traded. You'll find my offer listed on the free Veggie Trader website. -Dave]
How great would it be if there were want ads in your local newspaper or on Craigslist for organic fruits and vegetables, grown in your town, by your neighbors? A new website – Veggie Trader has sprung up that offers exactly such a service–a purchasing and bartering clearinghouse for locally grown fruits and vegetables.
Veggie Trader describes itself as the “place to trade, buy or sell local homegrown produce.” The idea is simple: you register on the website and then offer to purchase, sell, or trade any manner of surplus fruits or vegetables. If you have too many tomatoes and want to see if anyone nearby has a surplus of peaches or peppers, you can log on, run a search, and find out who in the neighborhood may be willing to exchange with you.
It’s a great way to offload additional produce and exchange it for something that you might be unable to grow in your own yard, but that another gardener may specialize in growing. It’s totally free to join, and costs nothing to post an offering, or place a wanted listing.
The website only started four months ago, and is definitely still in its infancy. Despite that, they have over 6,000 people signed up so far. The folks who have registered thus far are concentrated on the U.S. West Coast in California and Oregon, but since the website is still starting out, it could very well extend to your neighborhood. You can help make the website grow by registering and offering to buy, sell, or trade for whatever produce you have or may want.
Veggie Trader has ambitions to expand to include dairy, eggs, and meat, all items that are heavily regulated. The future may hold great things for Veggie Trader, only time will tell if the site can attract enough members to gain enough momentum to make a difference in the local food movement, but we’re certainly rooting for them.
~
For organic recipes, see Organic To Be→
Now posting regularly at Mendo Moola updated blog site→
~~
Time was, retail jobs were called “entry level.” Jenny would have a summer job running the cash register at the mom-and-pop so owner Mrs. Simpson could work on the bookkeeping in back. Johnny would get a job after school stocking shelves at the department store. These were healthy, local, low-wage jobs where you joked with your neighbors and learned how the world works. And then you moved on to college and a profession or learned a trade skill in manufacturing. Or if you liked retail, you stayed around, learned some small-business skills… maybe saved some money and opened a store of your own.
Not any more. Retail has evolved into dead-end, exit-level, dumb jobs in Big Box chain stores where all the well-paid smart jobs — information processing, accounting, advertising, logistics — are at a distant headquarters, and the community’s money is swept up nightly and sent there too. Your slave-wage, mind-numbing, soul-killing job is to do what the computer has programmed and spit-out on screens and work sheets. Endless lines at the cash register, move ‘em in, head ‘em out. Endless numbers of trucks to unload, stock the shelves, clean up the mess, take a break.
The people at the top are raking in millions and living in castles. You on the bottom are living a boring nightmare, and thankful for barely making it because the manufacturing jobs are now on the other side of the world, and even the good paying, white collar jobs are heading out.
DDR is touting 700 slave-wage dumb jobs at their Monster Mall. Google “New Rules Project” and you’ll find documented research that for every retail job a Big Box brings, 1.4 current jobs are lost; that as more Big Boxes come to a community, the county-wide poverty level rises; that California taxpayers were spending $86 million a year in 2004 providing healthcare and other public assistance to the state’s 44,000 Wal-Mart employees… and there are many more of those employees now.
We have one good place left for future entrepreneurial green jobs as the consumer economy gasps its last breath, and changing the zoning of the Masonite site now will kill that opportunity.
Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~ This post dedicated in memory of John Milder, who worked hard, with Phyllis Curtis and others, to stop the first Wal-Mart big box store in Ukiah, but failed by one vote of the Ukiah City Council. Thanks, John. You knew. We remember.
~~
September 1, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
Yes, wash hands frequently, cough into inner elbow, get plenty of exercise, eat organic food, etc.
I haven’t caught the flu for many years. Here’s my natural regimen for the coming flu season…
1. Hydrogen Peroxide: I gargle daily with 3% Hydrogen Peroxide; and if something starts not feeling right, more frequently. My throat is my weak spot because of an illness suffered as a boy. I’ve also heard it can be used in the ears. Google: Hydrogen Peroxide for colds and flu.
2. Vitamin D: Best natural source is, of course, the sun, but flu season is when the sun is not around as much. “Vitamin D… perhaps the single most powerful nutrient in the known universe for preventing influenza.” Arctic Cod Liver Oil. Some sushi now and then at Oco Time; also eating lower on the food chain means less mercury accumulation, though we now know that all fish are contaminated… those boneless sardines at the Co-op are my choice. Foods highest in Vitamin D here. List of sustainable fish from Seafood Watch is at Monterrey Aquarium here.
3. Green Tea: “One little known secret about preventing the flu is adding green tea to your diet. Research has shown that green tea is extremely effective at preventing the flu, when consumed regularly. One study, reported by the UK Tea Council showed that green tea can protect in two ways. First, green tea suppresses the growth of influenza cells. Secondly, green tea actually kills off the influenza cells. And, one thing that’s so great about green tea – it can protect against many strains of the flu virus. The flu vaccine each year just protects against that year’s most prevalent strain.” Organic, of course. I’m partial to Dragon Well green tea in bulk at the Co-op. No tea ball needed. Put some leaves in a clear cup, pour in the boiling water, watch the leaves dance their way down to the bottom. See story at Diamond Organics.
4. Cut out sugar. “Avoiding sugar is the single most important physical factor that you can address to avoid the flu.” Sugar suppresses the immune system. Google it.
Also, you can Google: Homeopathic remedies for the flu (especially Oscillococcinum); and Herbal remedies for the flu. Green Tea image from Gaia Herbs
~~
August 31, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
To The Editors:
I’m continually baffled by a few of the locals who are promoting the Masonite Monster Mall. When I hear them speak, in one breath they talk about how much they love living in our rural small town, and in their next breath they talk about how great it will be to have a Monster Mall here so they don’t “have to drive to Santa Rosa to shop.”
Yet, they never bridge the gap between what we have, and what we would become. They never say “I’m looking forward to the sprawl and traffic and pollution and sirens and hubbub just like they have in Santa Rosa.” Or, “I want our town to look just like all the other towns and cities south of us. Wouldn’t that be just too cool?”
Instead, I want something else entirely. And Wendell Berry says it better than I can:
“In this difficult time of failed public expectations, when thoughtful people wonder where to look for hope, I keep returning in my own mind to the thought of the renewal of the rural communities. I know that one resurrected rural community would be more convincing and more encouraging than all the government and university programs of the last fifty years, and I think that it could be the beginning of the renewal of our country, for the renewal of rural communities ultimately implies the renewal of urban ones.
“But to be authentic, a true encouragement and a true beginning, this would have to be a resurrection accomplished mainly by the community itself. It would have to be done, not from the outside by the instruction of visiting experts, but from the inside by the ancient rule of neighborliness, by the love of precious things, and by the wish to be at home.“
Is it either/or? Yes, I think it is.
Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities. ~~
August 24, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California
To The Editors:
Over the past 50 years, the expansion of national businesses into local domestic markets with Big Box Stores, Chain Stores, Franchises and Monster Malls has diverted and redirected local circulating money to centralized corporate coffers. There it is spent on large capital outlays, national advertising, overseas goods, executive salaries, loan repayments, and dividends to Wall Street investors.
This interception of funds has depleted local towns and cities across our nation of an important source of funds: recirculated income.
To draw attention to this problem and save their small, locally-owned businesses, towns and cities have instituted Buy Local campaigns. They have been somewhat successful, so the giant international corporations are using big buck propaganda campaigns to claim they are “local” businesses.
One of the world’s largest international banks is now claiming to be “The World’s Local Bank” and Lay’s Potato Chips is seizing on citizen’s desire for locally-grown food with a “Lay’s Local” advertising campaign.
And, sure enough, the Masonite Monster Mall folks are also claiming that passing Measure A will be supporting Buy Local. Ha! Because they say it does not make it so! The Monster Mall can mail a million pamphlets, and make a million local phone calls, but the Masonite Monster Mall with Measure A is the antithesis of buying local and will sweep up even more of our money and send it elsewhere.
Buying groceries at Ukiah Natural Foods Cooperative, locally-owned by its members, is buying local. Keep reading→
August 18, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
Excerpt from The Elegance of the Hedgehog
(Author Muriel Barbery’s eagerly awaited follow-up, Gourmet Rhapsody, due in stores next week)
I open the door.
Monsieur Ozu is standing there.
“Dear lady,” he says, “I am glad that you were not displeased with my little gift.”
In shock, I cannot understand a word.
“Yes, I was,” I reply, aware that I am sweating like an ox. “Uh, uh, no.” I am pathetically slow to correct my stumbling reply. “Well, thank you, thank you very much indeed.”
He gives me a kindly smile.
“Madame Michel, I haven’t come here so that you can thank me.”
“No?” I say, adding my own brilliant rendition of “let your words die upon your lips,” the art of which I share with Phaedra, Bérénice, and poor Dido.
“I have come to ask you to have dinner with me tomorrow evening,” he says. “That way we shall have the opportunity to talk about our shared interests.”
“Euh…” A relatively brief reply.
“A neighborly dinner, a very simple affair.”
“Between neighbors? But I’m the concierge,” I plead, although whatever may be inside my head is in a state of utter confusion.
“It is possible to be both at once,” he replies.
Holy Mary Mother of God, what am I to do? Keep reading→
August 17, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
The more money is used locally and kept circulating locally, the more jobs are created and the wealthier a local community becomes (see Why NOT To Shop In Santa Rosa below).
Mendo Moola is smart money… a local currency, issued by locally-owned merchants and circulated only within Mendocino County. It is accepted in payment by participating, locally-owned merchants. The first merchant to issue its own currency is Mulligan Books in downtown Ukiah using wooden coins as change for purchases, and as “gift certificates”.
By using Mendo Moola in trade – face-to-face, hand-to-hand – money does not leave our community as it does using Federal Reserve Notes and Credit/Debit Cards.
Communities across the country and around the world issue local currencies to protect themselves against “tight money” and “credit crunches” that kill jobs and local economies. See Mendo Moola website for more info and a growing list of local businesses and services accepting it.
Mendo Moola Proposed Rules:
1. Mendo Moola (MM) as a Local Currency can initially be issued by any merchant, in branded wood coins or paper, with a store front that stocks inventory. It is then backed by the full faith and credit of that particular merchant’s inventory and cash flow, and by the health of the community’s local trade. (Eventually, any business or service could issue its own currency.)
2. MM will always be redeemed for cash by the issuing merchant upon request by either customers or other merchants, although using MM to purchase products is preferred.
3. MM will only be issued into circulation as change, direct exchange for cash (not sold as a taxable product), or as “gift certificates”.
4. MM will not be issued into circulation by being “spent” by the issuing merchant for products or services, i.e. merchants will not use their own issued currency from storage to purchase products themselves. Keep reading→
August 17, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California
It is obvious why DDR’s Measure A eliminates the requirement for the California Environmental Review Act (CEQA) that is usually an automatic requirement for a project this size. Big Box retail parking lots rank among the most harmful land uses in any watershed. During rain storms, parking lots deliver a hefty dose of toxic pollutants leaked by vehicles or deposited from the atmosphere — including phosphorous, hydrocarbons, heavy metals, herbicides and pesticides — into our nearby water bodies.
While a 200,000 square-foot mall covers 4 acres and consumes another 12 for parking, the same amount of retail spread over two floors in a Main Street-style setting with shared parking takes up only 4 acres. The Masonite Monster Mall is four times that size (800,000 square feet). In some cases, permits for big-box projects have been denied on the grounds that they would add additional pollution to a nearby river. DDR has eliminated that possibility and denied the democratic control of our own environment with Measure A.
Instead of creating more disastrous car-dependent sprawl, the solution is to revitalize what is already here — our own walkable, bikeable downtown business district. Compact downtowns that have multi-story buildings, multi-story parking, and support a mix of uses, take up far less land and create far less polluting runoff.
Measure A is an attempt by slickster outside corporations to colonize our valley and override our zoning requirements with big bucks and pretty pictures… while insisting that, somehow, their Monster Mall, full of boring Big Boxes, Corporate Chains, and Industrial Food Restaurants, just like everywhere else, will be “shopping local”. Ha! What a bad joke! Keep reading→
August 13, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
Excerpted from Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture
Our best hope, both of a tolerable political harmony and of an inner peace, rests upon our ability to observe the limits of human freedom even while we responsibly exploit its creative possibilities. ~Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires (1959)
If it’s happening in Danish politics (or, for that matter, Scandinavian or European politics), Peter Mogensen knows about it. An economist by training, he’s the chief political editor of Denmark’s second largest national newspaper, Politiken, and for four years (1997-2000) he was the right-hand man (“head of office” and “political advisor”) to Denmark’s then prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen. A handsome man of young middle years, he also plays in a “Bruce Springsteen look-alike” rock band, and cuts a wide swath through Danish popular society.
So it was particularly interesting to see this normally unflappable man with a slightly confused look on his face.
We were in the studios of Danish Radio (their equivalent of BBC or NPR) in downtown Copenhagen, where I was broadcasting the week of June 23-27, 2008, and I’d just asked Mogensen how many Danes experience financial distress, lose their homes, or even declare bankruptcy because of a major illness in the family.
“Why, of course …” he blinked a few times, “none.”
I explained how every year in the United States millions of families lose their jobs and their homes, Keep reading→
August 4, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
MYTH: Big-Box Stores Create Jobs
FACT: Studies by independent economists show that big-box stores eliminate more retail jobs than they create. A recent study examined 3,094 counties across the U.S., tracking the arrival of new Wal-Mart stores between 1977 and 2002. The study, conducted by Univ. of California economist David Neumark, found that opening a Wal-Mart store led to a net loss of 150 retail jobs on average, suggesting that a new Wal- Mart job replaces approximately 1.4 workers at other stores (The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets, January 2007).
The reason for the overall decline is that a new Wal-Mart store does not increase the amount of money that residents have to spend. Sales gains at these stores are invariably mirrored by a drop in revenue at existing businesses, which then must down-size or close. The job losses are larger than the gains because Wal-Mart accomplishes the same volume of sales with fewer employees. Although similar studies have not been done of other big-box retailers, it’s likely that they also have either a negative or no impact on employment because the underlying dynamics (i.e., no increases in consumer spending) are the same.
MYTH: Big-Box Stores Boost Tax Revenue
FACT:The tax benefits of big-box stores are negated by the cost of providing public services to these developments and declining tax revenue from existing commercial districts. Big-box development creates substantial public costs. These sprawling stores are not efficient users of public infrastructure. Compared to traditional, compact business districts, they require longer roads, more road maintenance, additional miles of utilities, and more fire and police time. One case study in Barnstable, Mass., found that the annual cost of providing city services to traditional downtown and neighborhood business districts Keep reading→
July 31, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
Bruce Anderson, Editor and Publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, has just published Volume Two of the Mendocino Papers, Mendocino Noir, available now at local independent bookstores.
Included stories:
•The Fort Bragg Fires
•Vincent J. Sisco: Willy Loman as arsonist
•Who Burned Fort Bragg and Why
•Killed Without Dying
•The Victim Didn’t Smoke
•Nothing Sadder Than A Young Person Dying For No Reason
•The Biggest Little Crook In Ukiah
•The Hunter As Prey
•Tree Rustling, Fort Bragg Style
•The Great Fort Bragg Witch Hunt
•Naked Woman In The Side Pocket
•The Poison Sandwich
•Dr. Wonderlick and His Lugar
•Monica’s Walk on the Wild Side
•Deputy Gander’s Halloween Party
•No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
•Where Are They, Jimmy?
•One Murder, Four Deaths
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July 30, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
In a democracy, one should always appreciate opinions that engage the debate, are well articulated and offered with passion, even when in opposition to one’s own. And I do. In the July 30th issue of the UDJ, I am taken to task for being hypocritical for opposing the Masonite Monster Mall while at the same time being “in favor of the City of Ukiah spending redevelopment money to purchase the remaining acres of land out near the airport” for retail development. This, he wrote, had him “rolling on the floor in laughter.” Thereafter he went on at great length, taking up two full columns, describing my positions and how wrong all my letters to the editor are.
However, he misinterpreted a letter that simply pointed out that the argument for the Monster Mall so we could have a Costco was a false argument and took that to mean that I supported having another Big Box store. Not true. He can get up off the floor now.
He failed to include letter(s) of mine that could have saved him all that effort. For example, in response to the UDJ supporting the purchase of that land, I wrote “This seems like nothing but dumb growth based on dumb oil… which is destroying nature and community.” Keep reading→
July 27, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California
As for man, there is little reason to think that he can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures.
The quote above sounds like it was written today. Yet, it’s not from a doomsday article in a current magazine. That quote is from a novel published in 1949.
Can a novel over a half a century old speak to current concerns? The answer is yes. Earth Abides is probably more relevant now than when it was written. In 1949, a story about a new disease that wipes out the human race would have been one more science fiction story. Now, with AIDS progressing around the world and a dozen other newly discovered diseases such as Ebola lurking, ready to erupt, the idea is no longer just science fiction but a current concern. Another comment from the opening chapter is that just because something has never happened does not mean it cannot happen. In other words, just because the human race has never been wiped out by a plague, doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen tomorrow.
This may sound like the novel is a polemic or a tract. It is not. It is a good, solid end-of-the-world yarn.
Ish, a young graduate student, spends several weeks in the mountains of California, doing research for his thesis. He has deliberately cut all communication with the outside world, not even listening to the radio. He wants to focus on his work and he is a man who enjoys being alone.
The scene when he drives out of the mountains to return to San Francisco is still creepily effective. Nothing is wrong except no other car is moving on the highway and the radio picks up nothing but static. Keep reading→
July 21, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California
Editor:
Wait just a minute!
I don’t mind being called “ignorant” or being accused of trying to scare people “just like Bush and Cheney” or that I “want to be Amish” (Letter to Editor: What’s wrong with Capitalism? UDJ 7/20/09 – see below). But when someone who lives in Lower Lake comes over here and calls Downtown Ukiah “an armpit” — that’s just going too far!
It’s especially offensive during these hot, hundred plus temperatures when everyone is doing their best to stay cool. After all, we in Mendoland don’t have the ability, like Lake County folks, to take those crisp, clean dips in Clear Lake algae water to stay freshened up and re-fragranced!
But it was only when I read on and found “please people (sic), quit whining about marijuana” that I realized the writer had mistaken the aroma of our number one crop, now maturing on the landscape and in boarded-up houses, for our personal lack of good hygiene.
Can’t we import some Monsanto scientists to genetically modify our main crop with some aromatherapy oils? It could save our personal reputations, not to mention our tourist industry… tourists must think we’re just a bunch of yokels and hippies up here who don’t bathe!
Who knew?
~
What’s wrong with capitalism?
MONDAY, JULY 20, 2009
Ukiah Daily Journal
To the Editor:
Dave Smith and all the people who think big box stores are so bad because they send local money overseas are ignorant. Let me explain the cycle of selling widgets. Keep reading→
July 13, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California
Editor – Ukiah Daily Journal:
In her letter to the editor titled Still Shopping in Santa Rosa (UDJ Sunday, July 12) a writer asks “Why is Ukiah so afraid of allowing this town to grow?” and then proceeds to cheer the Masonite Monster Mall Big Box Stores. She states “If we don’t let a few of them in, then we will have to go to Santa Rosa to shop and spend our hard earned money, it won’t be spent in Ukiah.” This argument continues to be put forward in the paper even though it continues to be countered with facts. This is the old Big Lie tactic of repeating falsities over and over, hoping to win over those who are not paying close attention.
OK, I’ll counter it again. The City of Ukiah is not afraid of growing. It has set aside properly zoned land in the City for more retail stores. They recently purchased even more land for retail. That is where retail for Ukiah and the surrounding area belongs, with its appropriate requirements of environmental, design, and traffic impact reviews and requirements. The Masonite site should not be rezoned for retail because it is properly zoned for green industrial, better-paying jobs, which the Obama administration is intent on helping us create.
Just the facts, ma’am. Image Credit: Evan Johnson
~
See also Big Box Mart cartoon→
~~
July 9, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Excerpt from January 11, 1944 message to Congress on the State of the Union
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Keep reading→
July 6, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Editor:
In his diatribe against our Ukiah City Councilors who dared vote 5-0 opposing the Masonite Monster Mall, the letter writer (UDJ July 6) asks “why there is this vehement opposition” and “how arrogant is it for an elected body to pass a resolution opposing something that was (sic) passed by popular vote?”
Well, sir, it is the arrogance of democracy and the law. Elected officials are voted by the populace to represent and lead their community. And the reason there is vehement opposition is because the initiative process, bought and paid for by a huge outside corporation, bypasses the legal zoning rights and environmental reviews required by local zoning ordinances democratically set up by our community of citizens to protect ourselves.
You go on to suggest that they should come up with a “plan to patrol” the project, rather than oppose it. Having just chastised our officials for wanting to enforce local laws, one wonders what silly, powerless patrols you would suggest?
~~
June 30, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Mendocino County has not yet been hurt badly by the financial crisis – for three reasons. First, because marijuana is our number one product; second, because that product, unlike timber, is bought and sold in cash; and third, we were not on the fast-track, high-growth frenzy that had captured other areas in the state south of us.
We have heard for many years the constant whining, frustration and fury by developers that it is nigh impossible to get anything through our local planning departments. We may want to stop a minute and thank our bureaucrats for being so grossly slow and inefficient.
The Monster Mall folks finally gave up and put their dumb growth project on the ballot. They’re determined to suck the lifeblood from our county and send it who knows where, to who knows who. Citizens in Windsor, San Diego, and San Joaquin Valley had very high throughput planners to help in their building frenzies and big box growth, and now they’re suffering horribly for it. They might want to send their planners up here for seminars on how to drag their feet.
But what of our local future? A slow squeeze has begun on another of our major sources of income: decent- and good-paying (thanks to Unions) local and regional jobs supported by taxes such as teaching, police and fire, public services, etc. Unless teachers get into outlaw agriculture, growing bud is not going to take up the slack. As cash becomes scarce, small businesses will suffer, local stores will close, tax income will go down further, more jobs will be lost… and we will join the death spiral that many other communities are experiencing.
Then we will start asking hard questions about why we are spending money at big box and chain stores that send our money out of our county; about why some locals would want to welcome even more occupiers in to plunder what little money we have; and how shopping local circulates our money around and around here at home, creating jobs, rather than taking leave for parts unknown.
We will also then consider creating our own local currencies, as other communities are doing, that stays local, purchasing food from our own farmers and restaurateurs; purchasing goods from our own merchants, makers and suppliers; purchasing entertainment from our own neighbors and local talents rather than watching it on the boob tube.
June 28, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
In its Editorial Opinion, Sunday, June 28, 2009, the Ukiah Daily Journal calls our city’s purchase of vacant retail and commercially zoned land in the Redwood Business Park a “smart move.”
The Op-ed goes on to support the opinion by stating “The bottom line for the city’s residents is the potential for tax revenues that land represents. Vacant it represents nothing. Bundled and sold or leased for a major retail project it has the potential to increase annual property taxes by between $7 million and $11 million and bring in new sales taxes of $1.7 million… The question is whether the economy revives enough in the next couple of years to lure a major big box chain to construct a new store in Ukiah.”
This seems like nothing but dumb growth based on dumb oil, and we would expect a newspaper owned by some distant conglomerate to be supportive of the same old crap that wants to monitize every last bit of the commonwealth (“vacant it represents nothing”) which is destroying nature and community. That statement, in and of itself, pretty much sums up the moral and financial stupidity that has gotten us into the environmental disaster that we share. And despite allegedly being our source of important news, does our local newspaper know what’s really going on in the world?
We renew our call for local entrepreneurs to purchase the UDJ so it is locally-owned with responsive ownership that gives a damn for something other than its own bottom line.
Meanwhile:
Every increment of added population, and every added increment of affluence invariably destroys an increment of the remaining environment.
We hear a lot today about “smart growth,” as though “smart growth” was the magic key to the achievement of sustainability. A central ingredient in “smart growth” is regional planning; regional planning encourages more population growth, and population growth is unsustainable. It is thus clear that “smart growth” can’t solve the problems.
The problems with money stem entirely from how conventional money is normally issued – it is created by central banks in limited supply. There are three things we know about this money. We know what it does – it comes and it goes. We know what it is – it’s scarce and hard to get. And we know where it’s from – it’s from “them”, not us.
These three characteristics, common to all national currencies, determine that we constantly have to compete for a share of the limited amount of the “stuff” that makes the world go round. This money can go anywhere, and so it inevitably does, leaving the community deprived of its means of exchange.
It is simply the nature of conventional money that by its coming and going it creates conditions of competition and scarcity, within and between communities.
So we have to scramble for money to survive, we are forced to compete for it, often ruthlessly. Intent on getting the most for the least, we strive for the best bargains, as individuals, businesses, non-profits, governments, and nations.
As a society, as a generation, it seems we are determined to have everything ourselves no matter what consequences our excesses and negligence bring for others, now and in the future.
We rely on this money. It seems there isn’t much choice, despite its evident failings. Some people have little or none and cannot do what they need to live in this world – Read more→
From Dave Smith
Adapted from Whole Grain Cookery (o/p 1951)
by Stella Standard
June 16, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Whole Wheat Muffins
1¼ cups organic whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon soda
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup raisins
1¼ cups organic buttermilk or kefir
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons organic butter, melted
Mix the dry ingredients and stir the raisins through them. Combine with the mixed liquids, stirring as little as possible. Pour into greased muffin tins and bake in a hot oven about 20 minutes.
~
Blueberry Whole Wheat Muffins
2 cups organic whole wheat pastry flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons syrup
1 tablespoon molasses
1 organic egg, beaten
1 cup sour cream
¼ cup tepid water
wild or organic blueberries, washed and drained
Mix the dry ingredients. Beat the egg and add the sour cream, syrup, molasses and a little of the water. Combine with the dry ingredients and if the batter seems too thick, add a little more water. Stir as little as possible. Put half enough batter in each greased muffin tin, add a tablespoon of blueberries and then cover with the rest of the batter.
Bake in a hot oven about 20 to 25 minutes. 375°F. for 15 minutes and then reduce the heat to 325°F.
~
Buckwheat Muffins
1 cup organic buckwheat flour
½ cup corn meal
2½ teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 organic eggs, beaten
1¼ cups organic milk
4 tablespoons melted shortening More→
June 15, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
I bought a bicycle a couple of years ago to use around town. I put a couple of saddle paniers on the back to carry my laptop to work and groceries home from the co-op. All set going green.
But I soon learned that I would rather walk. Our town is not that big, and if you live in town like I do, it doesn’t take long to get most anywhere here on foot. The only requirement is slowing down the mindset that time is of the essence and walking is a waste if you can get there a few minutes faster.
I didn’t like wearing a helmet, and I’d had a couple of close calls getting run over on the bike. The difference between the speed of a bike — even riding slowly and cautiously — and walking, was the difference between almost crashing, and simply stopping just in case the other person didn’t see me. And in inclement weather, biking is much more hazardous.
The only problem then became transport… of my laptop, books, food for dinner. So I scouted around for messenger bags, bought one, and it does the trick quite nicely. It is heavy packing the computer, but I figure it helps build strength as the daily walking to work, to the store, and back, keeps me in pretty good shape… especially when I’m also packing a thermos of green smoothie.
The bag is not big enough to carry a weekly grocery shop, but is big enough for a daily trip to the co-op on the way home. Fresher, healthier food, like the Europeans shop. Cool!
Most of the people walking our streets are street people. There are some skateboarders, kids on bikes, and dog walkers. Health walkers around Todd Park, sure. But mostly, walks around here are brief — from car to destination, and back to the car. I’ve been walking to work almost daily now, rain or shine, for almost two years. For me, definitely the way to go. More→
June 10, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Back in the sixties, many of us protested the Vietnam war and various cultural suffocations by growing our hair. The Beatles (“mop-heads” was one early, affectionate term for them) may have started the trend, and sprouting long hair we did—men from our heads, cheeks and chins, women from their armpits and legs—and it was as potent a statement of protest and disgust as the middle finger salute.
But those days are long gone, replaced in the last few years by the soul-shriveling trend to conservatism, demonstrated by shaved heads and hairless chests. I am told that baldness has now even reached our nether regions, encouraged by the popularity of the porn industry. I recently observed a healthy young fellow sun-bathing on the beach in Los Angeles like a pink Chihuahua, completely hairless, apparently shaved and waxed from head to toe.
The authoritarian, buttoned-down, flag-waving war-mongers, chicken-hawks, and ditto-heads, have us just where they want us. Their co-conspirators are the corporate razor, shaver, and shaving foam pushers, who need only to trumpet their next blade addition to have us scurrying to the stores for the brand-new 10-blade model that will do you up in one fell swoop. And not one of their religious fellow travelers sports even a well-trimmed mustache.
We’re devoid of dignity like the sad, engineered, featherless chicken that made the news awhile back. We’ve been gutted, neck-tied, trussed-up, pre-scalded, and readied for the cook pot. →
June 9, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
From Small Is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher:
As Gandhi said, the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the masses.
The system of mass production, based on sophisticated, highly capital-intensive, high energy-input dependent, and human labour-saving technology, presupposes that you are already rich, for a great deal of capital investment is needed to establish one single workplace. The system of production by the masses mobilizes the priceless resources which are possessed by all human beings, their clever brains and skillful hands, and supports them with first-class tools.
The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources, and stultifying for the human person. The technology of production by the masses, making use of the best of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human person instead of making him the servant of machines.
I have named it intermediate technology to signify that it is vastly superior to the primitive technology of bygone ages but at the same time much simpler, cheaper, and freer than the super-technology of the rich. One can also call it self-help technology, or democratic or people’s technology—a technology to which everybody can gain admittance and which is not reserved to those already rich and powerful.
~
Excerpted from The Transition Handbook – From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, by Rob Hopkins
We need to be building the capability to produce locally those things that we can produce locally. It is, of course, easy to attack this idea by pointing out that some things, such as computers and frying pans can’t be made at a local level.
However, there are a lot of things we could produce locally: a wide range of seasonal fruit and vegetables, fresh fish, timber, mushrooms, dyes, many medicines, →
June 7, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
The blight of Monster Mall dumb growth, and the horror of mass mammal slaughter by Navy war games are forcing themselves on Mendocino communities. Some will shrug their shoulders in passive resignation, others will nod in welcome to a colonial economy; some will smile in anticipation of self-interested benefit, others will nod off in a non-caring stupor.
Wendell Berry:
There’s a lot of scorn now toward people who say, “Not in my backyard,” but the not-in-my-backyard sentiment is one of the most valuable that we have. If enough people said, “Not in my backyard,” these bad innovations wouldn’t be in anybody’s backyard. It’s your own backyard you’re required to protect because in doing so you’re defending everybody’s backyard. It is altogether healthy and salutary.
The environmental movement was founded and built by so-called NIMBYs, and Do-Gooders. They responded to the poisoning and destruction of our shared natural environment, first revealed by Rachel Carson in her book Silent Spring, by opposing it in their own backyards, neighborhoods, watersheds, and communities. They took personal responsibility, as good citizens and their elected representatives do in a democracy. I say good for them, good for us. If we don’t take responsibility for our own backyards and communities, who will? There are some things that should not be in any one’s backyard or neighborhood, and those who are most motivated to stop them are those who are immediately and locally affected. And when someone says that government should just get out of the way, they are saying democracy should just get out of the way. →
To any tourists who just happens to be in Mendocino County this time of the year I say welcome to whine country. Not “wine” country as in a good grade of Ripple, but “whine” country, as in the sound made by the constantly complaining Mendocino County Progressives. I truly believe that these progressives were dyed in the wool brats who got anything and everything they wanted by continuously whining at their parents until they did, and I think they feel that this type of behavior should be just as successful for them as adults as it was when they were children.
I know that I am not the only one who is growing weary of this constant carping. But, as usual, out of adversity rises opportunity. I think I’ll go into the earplug business and I can make a bloody fortune selling plugs to others who are as fed up listening to the whining progressives as I am.
June 3, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
RESOLUTION NO. 2009-
RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF UKIAH STRONGLY OPPOSING THE MENDOCINO CROSSINGS MASONITE MIXED USE SPECIFIC PLAN BASED ON THE CITY COUNCIL’S CONVICTION THAT THE SPECIFIC PLAN WILL HAVE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS ON THE CITY OF UKIAH AND THE REGION
WHEREAS a request for Ballot Title and Summary for an initiative has been filed with the Mendocino County Clerk to Amend the Mendocino County General Plan and the Inland Zoning Code of Mendocino County, and to enact the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan; and
WHEREAS the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan would allow approximately 650,000 square feet of commercial development and 150,000 square feet of residential development on approximately 74 acres north of and in close proximity to the City of Ukiah; and
WHEREAS the City of Ukiah has reviewed and discussed the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan; and concludes that build-out of the Masonite site pursuant to the provision of the Specific Plan could result in potential impacts to the City of Ukiah; and
WHEREAS the potential impacts include:
1) Traffic congestion resulting from the future connection of the Orchard Avenue Extension to proposed Valley Drive that would serve commercial and residential development rather than previously assumed industrial development;
2) Traffic congestion associated with the uncertainty of the effectiveness of the 5 additional traffic lights on North State Street proposed as part of the Specific Plan;
3) The cumulative build-out of the greater Ukiah Valley area has already negatively impacted public safety services within the City of Ukiah. The proposed project increases these negative impacts on police and fire services. These impacts include Read the rest of this entry »
From KIRKPATRICK SALE
Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (1991)
June 3, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Far from being deprived, far from being thus impoverished, even the most unendowed bioregion can in the long run gain in economic health with a careful and deliberate policy of self-sufficiency. The reasons are various:
1. A self-sufficient bioregion would be more economically stable, more in control of investment, production, and sales, and hence more insulated from the cycles of boom-and-bust engendered by distant market forces or remote political crises. And its people, with a full close-up knowledge of both markets and resources, would be able to allocate their products and labor in the most efficient way, to build and develop what and where they want to at the safest pace, to control their own money supply and currency value without extreme fluctuations—and to adjust all those procedures with comparative ease when necessary.
2. A self-sufficient bioregion would not be in vassalage to far-off and uncontrollable national bureaucracies or transnational corporations, at the mercy of whims or greed of politicians and plutocrats. Not caught up in the vortex of world-wide trade, it would be free from the vulnerability that always accompanies dependence in some degree or other, as the Western world discovered with considerable pain when OPEC countries quadrupled the price of the oil it depended on, as the non-Western world experiences daily.
3. A self-sufficient bioregion would be, plainly put, richer than one enmeshed in extensive trade, even when the trade balance is favorable. Partly this is because no part of the economy need be devoted to paying for imports, a burden that severely taxes even an industrial country like the United States—where, try as we might, we have not escaped a severe trade deficit in the last fifteen years—and that simply drains nations heavily dependent on imports, such as Britain, Brazil, Mexico, and most of the Read the rest of this entry »
June 3, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
From a local citizen: “DDR has spent $1,000,000 on marketing, legal and political services just to get this monster to market, even before the current filing. If you add in the most recent $186,336 [UDJ 5/31/09], and if DDR only needs 12,000 voters to win this election, DDR has already spent $98.86 for each one of those targeted voters – almost $100 per voter!”
From Financial Times May 29 2009:
California’s system of direct democracy, while laudable in aim, is another headache. “Ballot initiatives” were introduced in 1911 by Hiram Johnson, then governor, who wanted to curtail the influence of the mighty Southern Pacific Railroad and return power to the people. Since then, any issue can be put to a state-wide vote, provided half a million or so signatures are gathered to support a change in the law. Ballot initiatives were intended to give a voice to voters. “It was supposed to be about mom and pop talking about something around the dinner table and then getting all their friends to sign a petition,” says Dan Mitchell, professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the School of Public Affairs. “But most initiatives on the ballot don’t start that way.” Instead wealthy individuals and special interest groups “pay a couple of million dollars to employ people to collect signatures outside of supermarkets”.
DDR Spokesperson response? “I don’t believe this to be buying a campaign.”
Tonight, Wednesday June 3 the Ukiah City Council will consider a resolution about Developer Diversified Realty’s (DDR) ballot measure to change the Masonite site from industrial zoning to a huge shopping mall. The item will come up early on the Council’s agenda, possibly 6:15 p.m.
~~
People v. Inez Garcia, Monterey County Superior Court, 1977. On a self-defense theory, Inez Garcia was acquitted of killing the man who raped her.
People v. Emily Harris, U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California and Alameda County Superior Court, 1978. Involved the defense of Emily Harris, who was charged with kidnapping Patricia Hearst.
People v. Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, Alameda County Superior Court, 1990. This case, which reached only the investigation stage, focused on Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney as suspects in the bombing of their own vehicle. Defendants were not charged.
In re 1993 Superior Court Elections, Mendocino County. A highly charged ballot recount arising out of the election by a 3 vote margin of a controversial supervisor. Election results upheld.
Tamara A. v. Berkeley Unified School District, United States, District Court for the Northern District of California, 1995-96. A lawsuit on behalf of 12 minor plaintiffs and their mothers against the Berkeley Unified School District for violation of civil rights arising out of sexual molestation and sexual harassment by an elementary school teacher. Case settled.
May 29, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
This interactive map at Slate shows job losses by county from January 2006 to present. You can watch in horror as the careless greed of the Masters of the Universe race across the U.S. “bombing” jobs month-by-month, obliterating everything in its path.
Meanwhile, many of us here in Mendocino County have to spend our precious time fighting off the death throes of a thrashing DDR dinosaur, trying to squeeze out one last political perversion before dropping permanently into the black hole of consumerist history. Instead, we should be rebuilding our county economy, based on localizing renewable energy and organic/biodynamic agriculture.
Yesterday on Democracy Now, Eduardo Galeano, author of The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, the book Chavez gave to Obama, had this to say:
There is a new energy, which is not new at all. I think that history never ends. Some histories inside history have no happy ends, unhappy ends. But history doesn’t end. She’s a stubborn lady, and she goes on walking, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing. But it never ends. When histories say goodbye, history is really saying, “See you. See you later. See you soon.” So this is like a subterranean river, who went on flowing and nowadays is reappearing with a very important energy coming from people…
I have an engineer friend of mine who said, “Lo único que se hace desde arriba son los pozos,” “The only thing that you can make from up to down are holes.” And it’s true. All the other things are made, are created from the bottom. And that’s the way it’s going to be done, and it’s already going on in several Latin American countries, which is good news, indeed, for the world…
May 29, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Don’t be deceived
To the Editor: RecentlyI was in Chico and happened by a sad strip mall called Chico Crossings. There was a now defunct Circuit City, a Food Maxx and a number of empty buildings. I have no doubt this property is owned by the same company who is attempting to get the Masonite Property rezoned. It seems obvious to me that the rezoning is a ploy to raise the property value on the real estate prior to unloading the property.
I have no doubt that we will one day soon have a Costco, most likely in the same area they have spoken of putting it in near Friendman’s. The whole ploy of talking about a Crossings Mall reminds me of an incident which happened to my poor sister-in-law when she sold her home. The buyer kept begging her to lower the price because the buyer wanted to move in with her family and loved the home so much. My soft-hearted sister conceded, only to watch the buyer raise the price and put it back on the market when escrow closed.
With malls going out of business all over the U.S. and this company having lost substantial money on their stock value, it seems only logical that their aim is one of gaining the most money possible on the sale of the property by rezoning. Don’t be fooled by their rosy talk of Mendocino Crossings.
Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of deception, I have spoken to several people who actually signed the petition unaware that it was for the Mendocino Crossings.
M J Wilson
Potter Valley
~
DDR, good money after bad
To the Editor:
Developers’ Diversified Realty “has fallen into financial distress as it continues to refuse to widen the state highway (New Hampshire Route 1) that town officials say would assure the projects approval.”
So reported the Daily News of Newburyport, N.H., on April 6 of a DDR-financed mall project in its area (“Developer in Financial Turmoil”).
It said the publicly traded company, hit hard by the recession, is suffering from rising debt and a cash shortage. “Its stock value once at a high of $72.33 per share in February 2007,” said the News, “Opened on the stock exchange late last week at $2.39 per share.”
May 27, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
[Fiscally solvent North Dakota is doing it . . . and so can California. So can Mendocino County! So can Ukiah! And save our own economy. Seriously! Right now! -DS]
Money in a government-owned bank could give us the best of both worlds. We could have all the credit-generating advantages of private banks, without the baggage cluttering up the books of the Wall Street giants, including bad derivatives bets, unmarketable collateralized debt obligations, mark to market accounting issues, oversized CEO salaries and bonuses, and shareholders expecting a sizeable cut of the profits.
A state could deposit its vast revenues in its own state-owned bank and proceed to fan them into 8 to 10 times their face value in loans. Not only would it have its own credit machine, but it would control the loan terms. The state could lend at ½% interest to itself and to municipal governments, rolling the loans over as needed until the revenues had been generated to pay them off.
According to Professor Margrit Kennedy in her 1995 book Interest and Inflation-free Money, interest composes, on average, fully half the cost of every public project. Cutting costs by 50% could make currently-unsustainable projects such as low-cost housing, alternative energy development, and infrastructure construction not only sustainable but actually profitable for the government.
If all this seems too radical and unprecedented to venture into, consider that one state has had its own bank for 90 years; and it has not only escaped the credit crunch but is doing remarkably well . . . .
North Dakota has also managed to avoid the credit freeze, through the simple expedient of creating its own credit. It has led the nation in establishing state economic sovereignty. In California and other states, workers and factories are sitting idle because the private credit system has failed…
Bioregionalism
From Kirkpatrick Sale
Dwellers in the Land (1991)
The issue is not one of morality but of scale. There is no very successful way to teach, or force, the moral view, or to insure correct ethical responses to anything at all. The only way people will apply “right behavior” and behave in a responsible way is if they have been persuaded to see the problem concretely and to understand their own connections to it directly—and this can be done only at a limited scale.
May 22, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
It’s a beautiful day, and solitary bees are flying low to the ground, buzzing around their homes, then crawling underground to deliver food to their unhatched babies. Small black spiders scurry everywhere, and I see an ant carrying an impossibly large piece of wood from who knows where to who knows where for who knows what reason.
There’s a slight breeze, and the tips of redwood branches sway softly. A small blue butterfly lands on my elbow. I walk to the pond. Tadpoles hang beneath the surface, and if I get too close they dive and wriggle their fat bodies into the mud. Caddisfly larvae, looking for all the world like clumps of wet duff (probably because their armor is clumps of wet duff) trundle along reeds. Bright blue dragonflies dip their abdomens into the water, laying eggs, and tiny mayflies hover there, too. A couple of mayflies must have been caught earlier in spiderwebs, for now they’re motionless, suspended.
I sit cross-legged on the ground a couple of feet from the edge, and begin to edit this morning’s work. A quick movement catches me, and I see that a gray jumping spider has landed on my hand. Fearful of accidentally crushing it, I try to wipe it off on a piece of grass. It slips around my hand, always away from the grass and toward me. I let it stay.
It turns to look at me, and I look back at it. I lift my hand so I can better see its gray face and many black eyes. It shifts, too, to keep my face always in view. I shift my hand. It shifts its body. I put my hand back on my knee, and begin to write with my other. The spider moves to the edge of my right hand that is closest to my left, clearly considers the distance, and finally jumps.
It makes it. I stop writing. It peers again at my face, then walks to my wrist. I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and the spider crawls in and out of the folds, stopping now and again to look up at me. It gets to my shoulder. It stops. It looks at me. I look at it, eyes straining to focus this close. I don’t know how long it stays there. Maybe five minutes. Maybe ten. Then it makes its way back down to my wrist, to my hand, and jumps off into the grass.
Life is really, really good.
~~ Spider photo from PBase.com
[With Dean Parks' gorgeous guitar backing, this song is pure heaven ... New album just out. -DS]
Instead of feelin’ bad, be glad you’ve got somewhere to go
Instead of feelin’ sad, be happy you’re not all alone
Instead of feelin’ low, get high on everything that you love
Instead of wastin’ time, feel good ’bout what you’re dreamin’ of.
Instead of tryin’ to win something you never understood
Just play the game you know, eventually you’ll love her good
It’s silly to pretend that you have something you don’t own
Just let her be your woman and you’ll be her man.
Instead of feelin’ broke, buck up and get yourself in the black
Instead of losin’ hope, touch up the things that feel out of whack
Instead of bein’ old, be young because you know you are
Instead of feelin’ cold, let sunshine into your heart.
Instead of acting crazy chasin’ things that make you mad
Keep your heart ahead, it’ll lead you back to what you have
With every step you’re closer to the place you need to be
It’s up to you to let her love you sweetly.
Instead of feelin’ bad be glad you’ve got someone to love
Instead of feelin’ sad, be happy there’s a god above
Instead of feelin’ low, remember you’re never on your own
Instead of feelin sad, be happy that she’s there at home
She’s waitin’ for you by the phone
So be glad that she is all your own.
Get happy
She’s waitin’ for you by the telephone.
So get back home.
~
Video here (but not as good as recorded version)
From King of the Hill – 1972 by A.E. Hotchner (also Paul Newman’s partner in Newman’s Own)
I tried every which way to get my mind off food. I had read all my books, so I got out the pile of old Woman’s Home Companions that my mother had stored in the back of the closet. Looking through these was how I started to eat roast beef and chocolate cake. There was this absolutely gorgeous roast-beef-and-gravy ad a whole page high with little potatoes and carrots, and I took a scissors and cut it out and began to eat it. What was amazing was how the paper actually tasted like roast beef. The same with the chocolate cake. I cut that out and then found an ice cream ad, and I put the ice cream on top of the chocolate cake and it really tasted like chocolate….
MICHAEL Shuman has written an excellent book diagnosing the reasons entrepreneurial businesses face an uneven playing field and an unfair competitive disadvantage versus the multinational corporatist oligopolies (MCOs). This book, The Small-Mart Revolution, also prescribes 95 ways we can help rectify this damaging distortion of the ‘market’ economy — as customers, investors, public policy-setters, community members, citizens, and entrepreneurs ourselves.
Shuman introduces a useful acronym to differentiate the types of entrepreneurial business we need to encourage and support: LOIS (local ownership & import substitution). Only when owners live and work in the communities they operate in do they really care about the people and environment in those communities, he argues. And only by replacing shoddy products and services transported half way around the globe (at enormous social and environmental cost) with goods and services produced right in the community can we hope to build strong, healthy and resilient local economies where people can both live and make a reasonable living.
The first part of the book outlines the 13 market distortions that multinational corporatist oligopolies (MCOs) have been able to create and exploit to enormous advantage, to the great detriment of entrepreneurs who actually add value to the communities in which they operate — and offer customers much greater value for their dollar:
1. Government Subsidies: More than $300B in corporate subsidies, almost all of which go to MCOs, are paid by North American and European governments each year to protect and incent these rich and powerful corporate goliaths. These subsidies are ‘purchased’ with MCO campaign donations, junkets and lobbying.
2. Access to Cheap Capital: MCOs can borrow money much cheaper and under much more favourable terms from the big financial corporations than entrepreneurs can. These rates reflect formulaic conventional lending wisdom and not actual risk.
3. Labor Negotiating Power: MCOs have the clout to smash unions and bully employees into accepting lower wages and fewer benefits, with the threat of outsourcing and offshoring jobs if the cuts are resisted.
4. Supplier/Retailer Negotiating Power: With their corner on the markets for supply (oligopoly) and big box retail distribution (oligopsony), MCOs are in a position to bully big, brand name suppliers into offering their products exclusively through the MCOs, at hugely discounted prices. These ‘deals’ force suppliers in turn to outsource and offshore their operations to afford these prices, and often force these suppliers into bankruptcy in the futile attempt to endlessly reduce costs.
5. Subsidized Transportation and Energy Infrastructure: Because the cost of gasoline is suppressed by political deals with OPEC, and energy and highway projects are heavily subsidized with tax dollars to favour long-distance transportation carriers, the true cost of imports is hugely distorted, to the advantage of MCOs.
6. Undervaluing of People’s Time: Because we are too busy to find and visit small local suppliers, and because we undervalue the time and energy it takes us to drive to big box malls, we overvalue the ’savings’ we supposedly receive from MCOs.
7. Deceptive Advertising: Huge MCO advertising and PR campaigns delude us into believing we are getting value from overpriced, poor-quality imported junk that MCOs sell us. And if you try to get your money back, the armies of ‘customer care’ and the armies of corporate lawyers are ready to dissuade you.
8. Addiction to Consumption and Debt: MCOs and their handmaidens in the lending industry and in government spend a fortune to persuade you that irresponsible spending and borrowing beyond your means is socially necessary and good for ‘the economy’. Once you’re hooked, there’s no way out — especially now bankruptcy laws have been tightened up.
9. Lack of Consumer Protection: Under the guise of ‘deregulation’ and blocking ‘frivolous’ litigation, consumer protection laws in many countries have been weakened or gutted, encouraging poor quality production and services and other irresponsible MCO practices.
10. Naive Local Planners and Zoners: Because they’re unaware of the multiplier benefits of LOIS enterprises, local zoners and planners often offer huge incentives to attract MCOs that yield little local return on that investment, and actually destroy local employment and manufacturing.
11. Oligopoly Network Power: MCOs, by striking exclusive deals with other MCOs, cut LOIS enterprises out of the bidding for major supply contracts, effectively starving them out of all distribution channels except local independents’. You won’t find small local food vendors’ products in large chain grocery stores, for example, because the Big Agribusiness producer oligopolies won’t let the chains carry small competitors’ products.
12. Lack of Environmental Regulation: Thanks to heavy ‘deregulation’ lobbying by MCOs, environmental regulations in many countries have been weakened, or are unenforced, allowing megapolluting MCOs to ‘externalize’ (pass off to taxpayers and those who have to live in the polluted communities) the heavy environmental costs of their operations.
13. Lack of Training in Entrepreneurship: As I have been harping on in these pages for years, there is little or no reasonably-priced training available to entrepreneurs on how to establish and operate a responsible independent business effectively. The consequence is huge entrepreneurial failure rates and millions of enterprises that could easily, with a bit of coaching, be much more effective, successful and happy places to work.
If these distortions could be overcome, Shuman argues, we have a lot to gain from an economy in which LOIS enterprises compete fairly and effectively with MCOs:
* LOIS enterprises are closer to the customer and hence better attuned to their needs, and able to be more innovative and adaptable to meet those needs.
* LOIS enterprises are less vulnerable to spikes in energy and transportation costs, which are certainly on the horizon (though Grist argues that this is offset by the endemic lack of infrastructure that LOIS enterprises must live with).
* LOIS enterprises are better able to customize products to meet the unique needs and opportunities that are present in each local market (One size never fits all).
* LOIS enterprises are better able to leverage virtual and peer production and distribution networks because they are less committed to and invested in older physical networks and infrastructure.
* LOIS enterprises, thanks to the personal touch and local ownership, generally have much lower turnover (and hence more knowledgeable staff) and greater employee loyalty (and hence better service) than MCOs.
* LOIS enterprises are less dependent on corporate subsidies and low interest rates, and if, as many suspect, the US dollar and economy soon tanks and interest rates spike, they will have the resilience to continue to operate when many MCOs go under.
The balance of the book prescribes the 95 actions we can take to remedy the market distortions:
* As customers — e.g. by buying local and creating local buying networks
* As investors — e.g. by investing in local enterprises and creating local investment funds, networks and capacity
* As public policy-setters — e.g. by appreciating the economic advantages of LOIS enterprises and leveling the playing field for them
* As community members — e.g. by creating local community-based economies
* As citizens — e.g. by combating the wealth and power of MCOs politically (e.g. by voting out corporatists) and economically (e.g. through boycotts)
* As entrepreneurs ourselves — e.g. by creating local Natural Enterprises and networking them with others
There are two disturbing and enduring myths about entrepreneurship:
1. That franchises are a healthy form of local entrepreneurship; and
2. That entrepreneurs need to compete on price with MCOs by offering customers the same imported, subsidized low-price crap as MCOs, instead of local, high quality, non-mass-produced (‘unaffordable’) products
Shuman tackles the first misconception well, but sidesteps the second. One of the most frustrating experiences of enlightened customers is to go into locally-owned retailers and discover everything on the shelves is imported (mostly from China) when good local sources of similar goods are available (just invisible). Or to hire a local service provider only to discover that they buy all their supplies from a wholesaler’s catalogue, most of which is imported products that by-pass local producers.
But we have to start somewhere, and this book provides a good blueprint on how to do so.
What will be even more essential than a grassroots buy local movement will be entrepreneurs and local activists researching, cataloguing and creating networks of LOIS enterprises, and acting as organizers and intermediaries to help customers in local communities become aware of, and arrange to buy from, LOIS enterprises.
Just as important will be encouraging and coaching new LOIS enterprises to get properly and sustainably established, and helping them appreciate (and explain to their customers) the benefits and value of buying the goods on their shelves, the service that support them, and replacement and supply parts and accessories, from local suppliers.
This book is the perfect antidote and response to the corporatist apologists’ argument that “no one is forcing you to buy from Wal-Mart”. It’s time for responsible, enlightened LOIS entrepreneurs to break ranks with the corporatists in chambers of commerce, the anti-Kyoto forces, and the cynical ‘deregulation’ lobby, and realize that MCOs are not their allies but their worst enemy. The Small-Mart Revolution is long overdue, and needs our support and collaboration to make it happen.
~
May 20, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
This Wednesday May 20 the Ukiah City Council will consider a resolution about Developer Diversified Realty’s (DDR) ballot measure to change the Masonite site from industrial zoning to a huge shopping mall.
One of the versions of the resolution before the Council will urge the public to vote “No” when DDR’s measure goes before the voters in November.
The presence of those of us who oppose DDR will be essential. Please attend if you can.
The item will come up early on the Council’s agenda, possibly 6:15 to 6:30 p.m.
[I didn't move to this beautiful valley to shop. -Guiness McFadden]
The economic structure that mega-retailers are propagating represents a modern variation on the old European colonial system, which was designed not to build economically viable and self-reliant communities, but to extract their wealth and resources. Yet many cities eagerly usher in these corporate colonizers.
Some envision a tax windfall, only to discover that these sprawling stores impose a significant burden on public infrastructure and services. Or worse, after their local economies have been bulldozed, they find that they are utterly dependent on a few big boxes that might raise prices, lay off employees, or threaten to move to a neighboring town if they don’t receive a tax break…
As retail sprawls outward, running errands entails more driving. The 1990s saw a jump of more than 40 percent in the number of miles driven by the average household for shopping—which translates into an increase of almost 95 billion miles a year for the country as a whole. Mega-retailers are thus fueling smog, acid rain, and global warming. Retail sprawl has also emerged as a top threat to our rivers, lakes, and estuaries…
May 19, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
• What it does
The ballot measure would amend the County General Plan and zoning code to adopt a Specific Plan covering DDR’s 76-acre Masonite site. The Specific Plan was written for DDR by an Orange County consultant and is 310 pages long.
It allows DDR to build “Mendocino Crossings” with any combination it wants of big box retail stores, residences and other facilities. The limit for big box stores is 800,000 square feet [B-41], which would make Mendocino Crossings a tie with Coddingtown Mall in Santa Rosa as the largest shopping mall on the North Coast. The parking lot would hold more than 3,000 cars.
The Specific Plan would also allow DDR to build up to 150 residences. Although the Specific Plan provides 3 different “Conceptual Plans” of how the shopping center might look, it also states that “The exhibits shown are conceptual and do not reflect what may actually be constructed on the site. The actual development of the site is subject to change based on market and regional demands.” [B-42]
• Could the Specific Plan ever be amended?
Only by another ballot measure [Initiative text, Section 8]. Once adopted, the Specific Plan is law and the County’s elected officials would have no control over what DDR does with the property, within the broad limits established by the Specific Plan.
• How does the Initiative affect the County General Plan?
If enacted, the Initiative would require that everything else in the County General Plan would have to be revised to eliminate any inconsistency with DDR’s Specific Plan [Initiative, Section 5-B].
• Will there be an Environmental Impact Report?
No. Rezonings that are put on the ballot by petition are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), since there is no public agency which is responsible for approving the project [B-228].
• How did DDR qualify the Initiative for the ballot?
DDR, under the name “Mendocino County Tomorrow,” hired a professional signature-gathering company, H&H Petitions, which brought approximately 20 signature gatherers here from out-of-county, beginning April 9, 2009. They were paid $2 per valid signature. According to numerous citizen reports, the petitioners mostly told the public that the petition was to “clean up the Masonite site.” There were 4 letters to the editor in the Ukiah Daily Journal from different individuals who stated that they had been misled in this way, and 82 people who had been misled by the signature-gatherers sent letters to the County Clerk asking that their names be removed from the petition. Nevertheless, DDR was successful in submitting its petition to the county on April 29, 2009, claiming it had sufficient signatures to force a special election in November on its Initiative.
• What is the history of the property?
The site is zoned for industry and was used by Masonite Corporation for 50 years. DDR bought the site in 2005 and demolished the plant facilities, despite appeals to save it for new industrial uses. The 76-acre property is the largest industrial parcel in the inland county and has rail access and other features that make it ideal for new industrial development.
• Why should the site stay in industrial zoning?
Because industrial employers offer better wages and benefits than the minimum-wage jobs offered by big box stores. Also, industry creates a stronger local economy because it brings money into the area, instead of draining it out like big box stores do. There is good potential for future industrial use of the Masonite site, if it stays in industrial zoning. About 27 acres of new industrial buildings have gone up just north of the Masonite property just since 2001, showing the demand for industrial property. Many timber industry officials believe that the regrowth of the county’s forests will create a need for a new wood byproducts facility.
• How would DDR’s mall affect traffic?
The County’s draft Ukiah Valley Area Plan found that major traffic improvements are needed if there is more development around the Masonite site, including a new north-south road and a new freeway access off Brush Street. But DDR’s Specific Plan doesn’t include any of these new roads. Instead, the Specific Plan dictates that North State Street will bear all of the burden. DDR’s Specific Plan specifies 5 new traffic lights on North State Street, bringing the total to 7 traffic lights in the ½ mile stretch from Orr Springs Road to Ford Road [B-65]. While this forest of red lights will make North State Street a nightmare for thru-traffic, DDR apparently figures that it can still get shoppers off and on the freeway.
• Besides North State Street, would DDR pay for other off-site road improvements?
Almost certainly not. The Specific Plan says DDR will pay for the new traffic lights and road widenings it wants on North State Street. Beyond that, the County must prove by a “nexus report” that any fees imposed on the project are justified by impacts created by the project, AND THEN, whatever DDR has paid for the North State Street alterations will be DEDUCTED from those fees [B-223].
• How would it affect the water shortage?
DDR says that it would meet the large new water demand for the shopping mall from an existing well (Masonite well #6) near the Russian River [B-73]. How this pumping would affect the total demand on the river and on Lake Mendocino isn’t clear, since DDR is circumventing the requirement for an Environmental Impact Report.
• What development standards would apply to the project?
Only what DDR has written into the Specific Plan, which substitutes for all County Zoning regulations [Initiative, Section 3]. In other words, DDR has written its own rules. Not surprisingly, these conflict with the existing limits and aesthetic standards that are common in Mendocino County. For example, DDR gives itself the right to erect a 100-foot tall lighted sign next to the freeway, four times taller and eight times larger in area than allowed by County zoning [B-124]. Signs on the stores themselves can be up to 500 square feet, three times larger than allowed by County zoning. [B-120]. There is no provision whatsoever for design review by the County of the buildings or other features.
• How can this area support such a huge shopping mall?
Only by capturing the lion’s share of all retail business in Mendocino County. With about 12 big box stores and numerous smaller shops, the development would be designed to be a “magnet” destination sufficiently compelling to attract shoppers and keep them on site for most of their shopping needs. The impact on downtowns and existing shopping districts throughout Mendocino County is obvious. An economic study commissioned by the county in 2007 concluded, “The prospects for new regional retail [center] depend on its ability to capture expenditures from a trade area larger than the Ukiah Valley.” [“Ukiah Valley Area Plan Economic Background,” Economic & Planning Systems, Inc., p. 37] DDR claims that its shopping mall would create hundreds of new jobs, but there is every reason to believe that these new jobs would be offset by lost jobs at existing stores in Mendocino and Lake counties.
• But don’t we need DDR’s shopping mall to get a Costco store?
No. Costco was in advanced negotiations to build a store in Ukiah’s Redwood Business Park and detailed site plans had been submitted to the city in both 2003 and 2007 for a 15-acre parcel. As soon as it bought the Masonite site in 2005, DDR went to work to persuade Costco to give up on the City of Ukiah site. Finally DDR succeeded, and Costco suddenly stopped talking to the city in June, 2007. But when DDR’s ballot initiative is defeated, Costco can still build on the original City of Ukiah site if it still believes the local market will support its store. The City of Ukiah has 95 acres of vacant land zoned for retail.
• DDR is experiencing financial distress. How could DDR build a new shopping mall when it is trying to sell property to raise cash?
It’s true that DDR is shaky. Last year its stock plunged to only $2 a share, and its debt was recently reduced to junk bond status by the rating agencies. But the ballot measure is a potentially lucrative speculation for DDR, even if the election campaign costs $1 million. A rezoning could increase the market value of the DDR property by as much as $30 million. Then DDR could sell it to another developer.
• But isn’t it the democratic way to let the voters decide?
Only if there is full information fairly presented to the voters. As DDR showed in the signature-gathering campaign, lies succeed when they are aggressively disseminated without opposing information. DDR figures it can spend so much money painting a one-sided picture of the Initiative that it can drown out all opposition. Even before the Initiative drive, DDR mailed 5 fancy brochures to all county voters, projected a false image of their plans. DDR will circumvent the normal requirement for an Environmental Impact Report, which is an essential source of objective analysis on any project. DDR seeks to lock its 310-page Specific Plan into law and prohibit any public hearings or review by our elected officials. This can’t be described as democratic. It’s more like direct corporate rule.
~
From The Shadow of the Wind (2005)
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
May 19, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
The man called Isaac nodded and invited us in. A blue-tinted gloom obscured the sinuous contours of a marble staircase and a gallery of frescoes peopled with angels and fabulous creatures. We followed our host through a palatial corridor and arrived at a sprawling round hall, a virtual basilica of shadows spiraling up under a high glass dome, its dimness pierced by shafts of light that stabbed from above. A labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves rose from base to pinnacle like a beehive woven with tunnels, steps, platforms, and bridges that presaged an immense library of seemingly impossible geometry. I looked at my father, stunned. He smiled at me and winked.
“Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Daniel.”
I could make out about a dozen human figures scattered among the library’s corridors and platforms. Some of them turned to greet me from afar, and I recognized the faces of various colleagues of my father’s, fellows of the secondhand booksellers’ guild. To my ten-year-old eyes, they looked like a brotherhood of alchemists in furtive study. My father knelt next to me and, with his eyes fixed on mine, addressed me in the hushed voice he reserved for promises and secrets.
“This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though. When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here.
In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth, books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend. Now they have only us, Daniel…”
~~
May 18, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Editor:
A recent letter to the Ukiah Daily Journal 5/15/09 decries the “lack of logic” and “emotional arguments” of anti-Monster Mall citizens, saying that “All these objections disappear when the same stores are proposed inside Ukiah’s City Limits and are not objectionable at all. Pure hypocrisy.”
Citizens oppose bad projects for many different reasons. Some of us oppose any big-box or chain store to save our local economy and downtown merchants; others oppose the Monster Mall at the Masonite site to save our best industrial land for good-paying jobs; and still others oppose it because there is land already set aside for retail stores in town.
As a self-described, life-long developer, the letter writer knows perfectly well that our opposition is by a united coalition of diverse interests.
May 15, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Thanks to Darca Nicholson, you can support the fight to stop the Masonite Monster Mall by having the above machine-embroidered on t-shirts and other pieces of clothing.
Take them to Jana at Encore Fashions, 109 W Church St in Ukiah (707) 463-5590, along with a suggested donation of $25 each to Save Our Local Economy (SOLE).
May 12, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Because of legal tender laws, the “dollar” has come to have two meanings — (1) as a medium of exchange or payment (a currency), and (2) as the standard of value measurement or pricing unit.
An alternative currency must eventually decouple from both “dollars” but the more urgent need by far is decoupling from the dollar as a means of payment.
As I’ve pointed out in my books, an alternative currency that is issued on the basis of a national currency paid in (e.g., sold for dollars), amounts to a “gift certificate” or localized “traveler’s check.” (See Money Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, Chapter 14, pp 145-163). It essentially amounts to prepayment for the goods or services offered by the accepting merchants. As such, it substitutes a local, limited use currency for a national, universal currency.
That approach provides some limited utility in encouraging the holder of the currency to buy locally, but the option of redeeming the currency back into dollars without penalty raises the question of how many times it will mediate local trades before being redeemed and leaking back to the outside world.
To truly empower a local community, a currency should be issued on the basis of goods and services changing hands, i.e., it should be “spent into circulation” by local business entities and/or individuals who are able to redeem it by providing goods or services that are in everyday demand by local consumers. Such a currency amounts to an i.o.u. of the issuer, an i.o.u. that is voluntarily accepted by some other provider of goods and services (like an employee or supplier), then circulated, then eventually redeemed, not in cash, but “in kind.” In this way, community members “monetize” the value of their own production, just as banks monetize the value of collateral assets when they make a loan, except in this case, it is done by the community members themselves based on their own values and criteria, without the “help” or involvement of any government, bank, or ordinary financial institution, and without the need to have any official money to begin with.
This is what I mean when I talk about liberating the exchange process and restoring (some part of) the “credit commons” and bringing it under local control. In this way, the community gains a measure of independence from the supply of official money (dollars) and the policies and decisions of the central bank (which in the US is the Federal Reserve) and the banking cartel. That is the primary mission that needs to be accomplished if we are to transcend the destructive effects of the global monetary and banking regime, devolve power to the local level, and build sustainable, economic democracy.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
5/12/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
The Truth
New biotech crops will not solve industrial agriculture’s problems, but will compound them and consolidate control of the world’s food supply in the hands of a few large corporations. Biotechnology will destroy biodiversity and food security, and drive self-sufficient farmers off their land.
The myths of industrial agriculture share one underlying and interwoven concept-they demand that we accept that technology always equals progress. This blind belief has often shielded us from the consequences of many farming technologies. Now, however, many are asking the logical questions of technology: A given technology may be progress, but progress toward what? What future will that technology bring us? We see that pesticide technology is bringing us a future of cancer epidemics, toxic water and air, and the widespread destruction of biodiversity. We see that nuclear technology, made part of our food through irradiation, is bringing us a future of undisposable nuclear waste, massive clean-up expenses, and again multiple threats to human and environmental health. As a growing portion of society realizes that pesticides, fertilizers, monoculturing, and factory farming are little more than a fatal harvest, even the major agribusiness corporations are starting to admit that some problems exist. Their solution to the damage caused by the previous generation of agricultural technologies is-you guessed it-more technology. “Better” technology, biotechnology, a technology that will fix the problems caused by chemically intensive agriculture. In short, the mythmakers are back at work. But looking past the rhetoric, a careful examination of the new claims about genetic engineering reveals that instead of solving the problems of modern agriculture, biotechnology only makes them worse.
Will Biotechnology Feed The World?
In an attempt to convince consumers to accept food biotechnology, the industry has relentlessly pushed the myth that biotechnology will conquer world hunger. This claim rests on two fallacies: first that people are hungry because there is not enough food produced in the world, and second that genetic engineering increases food productivity.
In reality, the world produces more than enough to feed the current population. The hunger problem lies not with the amount of food being produced, but rather with how this food is distributed. Too many people are simply too poor to buy the food that is available, and too few people have the land or the financial capability to grow food for themselves. The result is starvation. If biotech corporations really wanted to feed the hungry, they would encourage land reform, which puts farmers back on the land, and push for wealth redistribution, which would allow the poor to buy food.
The second fallacy is that genetic engineering boosts food production. Currently there are two principal types of biotechnology seeds in production: herbicide resistant and “pest” resistant. Monsanto makes “Roundup Ready” seeds, which are engineered to withstand its herbicide, Roundup. The seeds-usually soybeans, cotton, or canola-allow farmers to apply this herbicide in ever greater amounts without killing the crops. Monsanto and other companies also produce “Bt” seeds-usually corn, potatoes, and cotton-that are engineered so that each plant produces its own insecticide.
If you’re an old timer around these parts, you know the Ford family, and the four Ford boys, Steve, Patrick, Robben, and Mark. The brothers are locals and have played music around here and elsewhere since high school under the names of The Charles Ford Band, and The Ford Blues Band, among others, and travel the world playing music together and separately. They most recently played here in Ukiah at Sundays In The Park this past summer, 2008.
When he’s not on the road, touring America and Europe with his band, Patrick runs his record company Blue Rock’It Records in Redwood Valley where you can buy their own albums on-line along with his other recording artists. Robben’s website is here; and, hopefully, Mark will be the subject of a future feature.
(See links to rest of the story below)
~
That last tour with Charlie Musslewhite was pretty brutal. Sharon and I wanted to have kids, and this is where we wanted to have them, so we moved back home to Ukiah in 1974.
I kicked around for awhile trying to figure out what to do. I liked gardening and was knowledgeable in the area, so I went to one of the nurseries and the owner picked me up as a landscape maintenance guy. In about a year, Gabriel was born, and I was getting a little bored with my job. I liked the gig, but I had been playing music for a lot of years at that point and I was getting anxious… I needed something more exciting than maintaining PG&E’s landscaping.
At one point, because we were really in trouble for money, I had to sell my drum set to a friend down in the Bay Area who had always wanted it. To this day, it makes Sharon so sad when she remembers watching from the window at my folk’s house, loading up my drum kit on a friend’s truck and the look on my face as the truck rolled off down the street. She had told me not to do it, but I said we were out of money. That carried us for a couple of months between jobs.
Bartlett Flats crew, Pat on left
Anyway, I was getting antsy and I saw an ad in the back of the Journal (UDJ) that the US Forest Service needed fire fighters. It was Fall and their seasonal employees were going back to college. I went over to Upper Lake and signed up. I got stuck out in Bartlett Flats in Lake County, about an hour on this dirt road from Nice. It was hot and miserable and pretty funky there in a quonset hut. Chester, my foreman, was this American Indian who was just the sweetest, most wonderful guy… the greatest to get for my first boss. He put me to work learning to drive one of these little pumper units, fire techniques, and how to operate a chainsaw. He took me under his wing and was very patient when I would screw up.
May 8, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
One of our letter-to-the-editor writers (UDJ 5/08/09) asks: … “rather then waving your banner of ‘corporate conspiracy,’ why don’t you take your own advice and recognize this petition as part of that ‘democratic process’ that you are so fond of?”
Here’s why. Our nation was founded on one person, one vote… not one dollar, one vote. We the citizens of Mendocino County won Measure H against GMO pollution of our food supply despite being outspent by corporations $500,000 to $100,000. How is that lopsided amount of available money from outsiders, against the citizens of a poor rural county, fair? How is that democratic?
Why should an outside corporation worth billions of dollars be allowed to fund an initiative process that overruns all the local laws set in place by those who live here? How is that fair? How is that democratic?
Corporations have their place and are valuable in many ways. I’ve created and run several myself. But they must get behind the constitution. With their wealth and monopoly power, they are plundering our commons and buying off the democratic process. Please read Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights by Thom Hartmann, and The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly.
Once you’ve educated yourself, come back and defend your charge: “Your attempts to marginalize this process, is in effect a way of saying that democracy is defined as anything that supports your views, if not, then it’s a conspiracy.” Really… it’s just us citizens trying to protect and defend ourselves against overwhelming power and money.
Your leadership stated that you have “had enough of our local government not acting in our best interest.” Our local government is elected democratically by our citizens. They represent our majority interests. Since you tried and failed to buy our County Supervisors off and we defeated you at the polls, now you’re trying an “end-around” the democratic process. How is that fair? How is that democratic?
It isn’t. But we will defeat you once again, because we don’t want your Monster Mall in our place, and we are more determined to stop it than you are to foist it upon us.
~~
May 8, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
Editor:
As regards the Masonite Monster Mall debate in local letters to the editors, first we had the “Vote to clean up the Masonite site” canard, misleading citizens about what the initiative really is about. Then we had the Costco canard, where the argument that we could have Costco if we voted in the Monster Mall was shown to be false.
Now we have a “straw man” argument where citizens who are against the Monster Mall are labeled “hippies”, and then we are told that hippies are a minority in our county… implying that a majority will vote for the Monster Mall.
I like hippies. Some of my best friends are hippies. But the majority in this county who will defeat this initiative are citizens. This is a sad continuation of the culture wars.
We’ve heard all this before during the Measure H campaign where we defeated big corporate interests who wanted to poison our county with genetically modified organisms. We beat the big bucks that time. We’ll beat them again this time, and save our local economy from outside occupiers.
Journalists – they’re never around when you want one. Two weeks ago a momentous event occurred: the beginning of the world’s first evacuation of an entire people as a result of manmade global warming. It has been marked so far by one blog post for the Ecologist and an article in the Solomon Times*. Where is everyone?
The Carteret Islands are off the coast of Bougainville, which, in turn, is off the coast of Papua New Guinea. They are small coral atolls on which 2,600 people live. Though not for much longer.
As the Ecologist’s blogger Dan Box witnessed, the first five families have moved to Bougainville to prepare the ground for full evacuation. There are compounding factors – the removal of mangrove forests and some local volcanic activity – but the main problem appears to be rising sea levels. The highest point of the islands is 170cm above the sea. Over the past few years they have been repeatedly inundated by spring tides, wiping out the islanders’ vegetable and fruit gardens, destroying their subsistence and making their lives impossible…
~~
We are ‘We the People.’
We must write the laws.
We must enforce them.
There is no one else.
Organizing Communities to Govern Cartel Retailing Empires like Wal-Mart
Many communities are frantically trying to resist the encroachment of giant retail merchandising corporations and the economic and environmental injuries that those corporations inflict on locally owned businesses, community character, and workers.
Past efforts to control the amount of harm inflicted by these corporations have resulted in increased environmental and land-use regulation, but there has been a marked failure to secure local authority over whether those corporations will be allowed to operate by the communities that they impact.
In recent years, organizations, communities, and community leaders working on a range of other “single” issues have begun to question why their industrious enforcement of zoning laws, environmental regulations, environmental impact studies and other legal land-use tools have failed to protect the natural environment, create an improved quality of life, or increase community control over corporations. As some community leaders have learned, available legal regulatory remedies are drawn from a “stacked deck” of sorts. Created to enable communities to make it more expensive for corporations to site or operate in a particular location, those regulations maintain the illusion that the community has fundamental decision-making authority over how, or whether, the corporation will operate within the community.
Over the years, activists and communities have struggled to correct the symptoms of corporate control through their use of the regulatory system – a system that, in effect, serves as nothing more than an “energy sink” for activists. Indeed, regulations aimed at lessening corporate harms may actually serve to work against that goal. So often the temporary, regulatory “wins” of activists merely codify specific levels of permissible harm that corporations may legally inflict on people and communities.
Unless these communities, groups, and municipal governments shift their focus from regulating corporate behavior (seeking to lessen corporate harms) to asserting local, democratic control over corporations, attempts to build sustainable communities and protect the natural environment will fail.
…At honest moments, though, I suspected my reluctance to seek out organic rutabagas was more lazy than practical. So last year, when global food prices began to soar, I devised an experiment: My husband and I would eat conscientiously for a month, not just on our regular grocery allotment but on the government-defined, food-stamp minimum: $248 for two people in our hometown of New Haven, Conn.
We would choose the SOLE-est products available — that is, the sustainable, organic, local or ethical alternative. We would start from a bare pantry, shop only at places that took food stamps and could be reached on foot, and use only basic appliances. The test would mean some painful changes; gone was my husband’s customary breakfast of Honey Nut Cheerios and our favorite dinner of pepperoni pizza. But it would answer that nagging question: When shopping for food, did I have to choose between my budget and my beliefs?
Challenges began on my first grocery trip, where staples required some massive outlays of cash. It was anxiety-inducing to shell out $4 a jar for organic spices, even after I pared down my shelf to salt, pepper, oregano, basil, curry, cumin, chili and cinnamon. (I also bought some garlic, soy sauce and red wine vinegar, though these were non-local organic; I justified the carbon footprint — not to mention the price — with the thought that cheap eaters need to fill up on flavor.) It was frightening to spend $7 on a small bottle of organic olive oil in hopes it would last all month. The costliest decision was meat; I didn’t want to impose a completely vegetarian diet on my carnivorous husband or on-and-off-carnivorous self, but the frozen slabs of grass-fed steak at the farmers’ market seemed tough to manage. Instead, I bought a small free-range chicken for about $9 and a scant pound of local ground beef for about $6, knowing that this, along with some sustainable canned fish, was our allotment of animal flesh for four weeks. Even less expensive purchases demanded worry and adjustments; the price difference between organic fruits and vegetables, for example, prompted me to switch apples for carrots in my packed lunch.
The real work began when I lugged my haul home. The chicken had to go far: After roasting my scrawny-looking bird in the most basic way — a smear of oil across the skin, a sprinkle of salt and pepper — I sliced, hacked and pulled every piece of meat I could find off the bones and then simmered the carcass in a pot for basic stock. (I saved the fat for cooking.) Along with the meat, this broth was divided into meal-size portions and stored in my freezer for soups, sandwiches and dinners to come.
[Talk I gave at Mendo Time Bank organizing meeting, May 4, 2009, Ukiah, California]
Why are you here… in this life?
Why are we here… in this time and place together?
I believe we are here to be useful, that we have a greater purpose than to just fulfill our own little selfish wants on our own little island of stuff, and that our greatest usefulness comes in serving others.
There are certainly many paying jobs that serve others selflessly… teachers, fire fighters, etc. And many of us who support families are certainly serving others.
But in a culture and economy based on consumption, and our consumption based on things way beyond basic, simple needs, we may not be feeling very useful and fulfilled in our regular work lives.
Or, we may be unemployed and therefore feel useless.
Internationally renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who endured years of unspeakable horror in Nazi death camps, wrote this in his ground breaking book Man’s Search For Meaning:
I published a study devoted to a specific type of depression I had diagnosed in cases of young patients suffering from what I called “unemployment neurosis.” And I could show that this neurosis really originated in a twofold erroneous identification: being jobless was equated with being useless, and being useless was equated with having a meaningless life. Consequently, whenever I succeeded in persuading the patients to volunteer in youth organizations, adult education, public libraries, and the like – in other words, as soon as they could fill their abundant free time with some sort of unpaid but meaningful activity – their depressio disappeared although their economic situation had not changed and their hunger was the same.
Frankel developed “logotherapy.” Logos is a Greek word that denotes “meaning,” and his therapy was based on the “striving to find a meaning in one’s life,” which he felt was “the primary motivational force in man.” What matters is “not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment… Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”
In a letter to the Ukiah Daily Journal (5/3/09), two Manchester residents said they would love to see a Costco in Ukiah. Now, when they go to Costco in Santa Rosa they said they also shop at Friedman’s, Home Depot and Wal-Mart. Their shopping does not benefit Mendocino County, but it could.
They would do their shopping in Ukiah, they wrote, if there was a Costco.
What if Costco located in the current Airport commercial mall, with Friedman’s, Wal-Mart and with Home Depot close by?
Costco, the City of Ukiah, and the owner of the Airport commercial mall could work this out to benefit not only themselves but all county shoppers. Furthermore, that’s good planning because it would use the existing commercially zoned land. The Masonite site could remain zoned for industry.
Why not do it?
~
From DAVE SMITH
Masonite Not About Costco
Julie Simental in her letter to the editor (UDJ 4/20 responding to my letter against the Masonite Monster Mall) has either not done her homework, or is purposefully misleading citizens. By hanging her argument for supporting the mall around “we could have a Costco right here in Ukiah,” she does a disservice to our community.
In numerous letters to the editor and opinions in the UDJ, it has been well-documented that Costco was about to close a deal with the City of Ukiah for building on land already designated for retail in the city. Costco withdrew their plan when they were offered a deal by DDR to build on the Masonite site, even though that site is not zoned for retail. I daresay walls would already be going up for a Costco store in Ukiah by now if that had not happened.
Personally, I do not support any more big box stores in our area for all the reasons I’ve stated [in other letters]. But, please. Can we put the Costco canard to rest?
~~
The model of land development practiced today will surely be the scavenged ruins of tomorrow. Peak oil will guarantee this outcome…
Up until World War II, most communities developed according to a model of interconnected streets, small lots with homes build close to the sidewalk, and front porches oriented to the street to facilitate and encourage social interaction between neighbors, pedestrians, and home occupants. To be a pedestrian in this environment is a noble thing and contributed to the spirit of living and socializing.
The pedestrian in a contemporary development is converging on the forlorn version so presciently written about by Ray Bradbury in his short story The Pedestrian or notable and eerily clairvoyant novel Fahrenheit 451.
In traditional communities, blocks were short and navigable, retail and services in compatible and attractive corner stores within easy walking distance, and other destinations like schools and libraries easily walkable as well. Critics suggest that this model is outdated and no longer desired. Yet research suggests that most people when offered the option will choose the new urbanist model. This explains the wild popularity of communities like Celebration and Kentlands and visits to theme parks with Main Streets and Frontiertowns.
People are longing for a simpler, more community-oriented way of life but in most cases do not realize that is can be available again if only the majority of developers would build it, if municipalities would allow it in the zoning, if bankers would lend money to fund it, and if engineers and public safety officials would find acceptable infrastructure models to re-adapt to it. The examples are out there and should be aggressively distributed and posted for any community to use as a model. The use of form-based zoning codes championed by the Congress for New Urbanism offers a ready means to shape urban design in this manner.
But that’s not enough. The current sprawl model should not be allowed anymore and the neo-traditional model should be required. There should be no choice in the matter. There are fiscal, social, environmental, energy, safety, and psychological arguments favoring the neo-traditional model. The old model contributes to waste in every sense of the word and cannot be sustained. Any building or development utilizing the sprawl model is a bad investment both individually and for the community. Short-term investment timelines still in vogue may offer gains as before but any longer-term investors will be left holding the bag and local governments will go broke extending and maintaining the infrastructure.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
5/2/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
The Truth
Industrial agriculture is the largest single threat to the earth’s biodiversity. Fence-row-to-fence-row plowing, planting, and harvesting techniques decimate wildlife habitats, while massive chemical use poisons the soil and water, and kills off countless plant and animal communities.
Industrial agriculture’s mythmakers have been so successful in their efforts to shape opinion that they must believe we’ll swallow just about anything. They now assure us that intensive farming methods that rely on chemicals and biotechnology somehow protect the environment. This myth, as illogical as it may sound to an informed reader, is increasingly widespread in America today and is increasingly accepted as valid. What’s worse, agribusiness is saturating the media with misleading reports of the purported ecological risks of organic and other environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.
A typical claim of the industrial apologists is that the industrial style of agriculture has prevented some 15 million square miles of wildlands from being plowed under for “low-yield” food production. They continuously assert that the biggest challenge of the 21st century is to increase food yields through modern advances in agricultural science, which include the genetic engineering of commercial food crops. They also claim that if the world does not fully embrace industrial agriculture, hundreds of thousands of wildlife species will be lost to low-yield crops and ranging livestock.
There is a plethora of evidence that busts this myth. At the outset, the idea that sustainable agriculture is low-yield and would result in plowing under millions of square miles of wildlands is simply wrong. Relatively smaller farm sizes are much more productive per unit acre—in fact 2 to 10 times more productive—than larger ones, according to numerous government studies. In fact, the smallest farms, those of 27 acres or less, are more than ten times as productive (in terms of dollar output per acre) than large farms (6,000 acres or more), and extremely small farms (4 acres or less) can be over a hundred times as productive.
Dear Friends,
We, the undersigned, call on ethically responsible people across the world to Break the Chains of self-destructive consumerism by boycotting Wal-Mart and other national and international chain stores, fast food restaurants, corporate coffeehouses, and products bearing the logos of the multinational Brand Name Bullies.
Wal-Mart and the multinational chains are colonizing our communities and our minds, North & South, East & West, rural and urban, killing off small businesses, exploiting workers and farmers, devastating the environment, and sowing a toxic culture of cheap goods and social unaccountability. Unless we stop this Wal-Martization of our communities, we can say goodbye to Fair Trade, family farms, independent businesses, workers rights, and environmental sustainability.
From Manhattan to Mexico, from China to Chile, farmers, consumers and independent businesses are resisting the invasion of Wal-Mart and the Corporate Chain stores and building grassroots power through local, green, and just commerce. The answer to Wal-Martization and so-called “Free Trade” is ethical consumer purchasing and political action–building and supporting local and community-based producers and businesses through solidarity, collective purchasing power, and mutual aid. Fair Trade, not Free Trade, must become the global norm, with organic and sustainable production leading the way. Local and community control over essential goods and services provides the only solid foundation for economic democracy, a sustainable environment, and public health.
Help us mark the beginning of the end for Wal-Mart and the Corporate Chains. Please join us as we step up the pace to re-localize and green a just global economy. Consumers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!
["Rockpile Lifestyle Center" returning to just a pile of rocks. -DS]
They fought long, hard, and at great expense to build a “lifestyle center” atop the “Rockpile” in town. Now it appears that bad timing and a sluggish economy have caught up with Developers Diversified Realty Corporation (DDR) of Ohio.
According to DDR Senior Executive Vice President of Leasing and Development Paul Freddo, construction of the 150,000 square foot, $37 million retail center called Guilford Commons has stopped, for the interim, he says.
“For now, Developers Diversified’s Guilford Commons, a 26-acre lifestyle center development, has suspended further construction,” stated Freddo. “We view the suspension as a temporary delay.”
Not surprisingly, Freddo said that current economic conditions, including shrinking consumer confidence and poor retail sales, have caused retailers who prefer the lifestyle center format to slow their expansion plans on a national level.
In many of its presentations to the community, DDR indicated that tenants such as Talbots, Ann Taylor Loft, Banana Republic, Chico’s, Coldwater Creek, and Panera Bread Company would most likely be part of their “lifestyle center” family…
The developer has four other projects in Connecticut in Manchester, Plainville, Waterbury, and Windsor.
A useful place to start in an exploration of what exactly is happening to the global economy, in particular in the light of how it relates to peak oil and climate change, is with a look at what are the assumptions we have made thus far about the economy. Do they still hold after the events of recent months? Did they ever actually make sense in the first place? What are the assumptions about the economy and the financial system, as well as about the basic resources, both natural and cultural, on which we have based our decisions for the last 50 years – are they still valid? Chris Martenson, author of the Crash Course, puts it thus;
“Here’s how it all sums up. There are some knowns. We know that energy is the cause for all growth and complexity. We know that surplus energy is shrinking. We know that the age of cheap oil is over. And we know that because of this, oil costs will consume an ever-greater proportion of our total budget. And because of these knowns, there are some risks. There is the risk that our exponential money system will cease to operate in a world of declining energy surplus. It might simply not be suited to the task. And there is the risk that our society will be forced to become less complex. If you really think about it, that is a very loaded sentence right there.”
Chris Martenson http://www.chrismartenson.com/
Our assumptions, in brief, have been as follows;
economies can grow forever, that every year we will trade more, make more money, produce and consume more goods and reach more customers to sell them to
this indefinite economic growth and the raw materials needed to make ever more goods will always be available cheaply, and that the energy required to make them will always be available, cheaply
we will always be able to access cheap credit, and that we can borrow from the future on the assumption that the future will be richer, more technologically adept and more solvent than the present
the UK can move from being a society with a manufacturing base and a diverse and resilient agriculture, to having an economy based on services and knowledge, or as comedian David Mitchell puts it, “ringtones and lattes”
the value of our homes would increase in the long run, and that we could use them as cash dispenser machines, and so the more houses we built, the more people could borrow huge sums, forever
somehow all that extra economic growth and ‘progress’ will give us more flourishing lives and communities and the only likely alternative is poverty, unemployment and a break-down in law and order
Clearly these assumptions are now highly questionable.
April 28, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
First, the history. On the campaign trail, then candidate Obama announced that raiding medical marijuana dispensaries was not going to be a priority for his administration. Within weeks of moving to the White House, he seemed to be keeping to this promise and word began emanating from the White House through aides that the president believes that “federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws.”
Medical marijuana advocacy groups, NORML, and defendants facing many years in federal prison for operating medical marijuana dispensaries were for the first time in years jubilant that a sane marijuana policy might begin to take shape within the Justice Department and the DEA.
For over 10 years, the federal government has conducted a relentless war against the operation of California’s proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act. The government has closed down local medical marijuana dispensaries (one of the first being the here in Ukiah in 1998); it has tried to stop doctors from writing prescriptions for medical marijuana (they lost this one in the Supreme Court); it won a ruling from the Supreme Court that says that there is no constitutional right to have access to medical marijuana, even if your life is endangered without it; it has gone after landlords renting to medical marijuana dispensaries; and it has imprisoned, for long prison terms, individuals operating collectives and dispensaries.
When, in February the new Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the DEA would no longer raid retail medical marijuana outlets, it seemed that this bad chapter of federal muscle flexing might be over. Was a new and sane marijuana era coming into being?
Tom Ammiano, California State Assembly person from San Francisco, wrote a bill to legalize marijuana. Betty Yee, Chairperson of the Board of Equalization, whose agency currently collects $18 million in sales taxes from dispensaries, said that a regulated marijuana industry would bring in $1.3 billion. Unfortunately, the Ammiano bill died in committee.
It’s not time to celebrate yet. Far from it in fact.
Almost immediately after Holder’s announcement, the DEA began to undercut the change they saw coming. Several raids on medical marijuana dispensaries have been conducted in California since the February announcement, four on the very day of the announcement. Backtracking, spokespeople for the administration started to talk about no raids, only “if the dispensaries were in compliance with state law.” Until this moment, the federal government took the position that whatever state law was, it didn’t matter. They could ignore state law. It’s justification for busting dispensaries was, that they, like any ordinary dope dealers, were distributing marijuana. Now, it was state law that was being violated.
Suddenly, it seemed we are going to have the DEA in charge of deciding who is complying with state law. The smallest real or imagined failure to comply with state law will now do to justify a raid: one of the recent raids occurred apparently because the woman who ran the dispensary was late on her payment to the BOE.
From John E. Ikerd
Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics
University of Missouri Columbia
College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
“Perhaps people who have money can eat like that, but what about poor people?”I hear comments such as this in nearly every discussion of the growing opportunities for people to eat more locally grown, sustainably produced foods.My typical response is that just about anyone anywhere can find good locally grown food these days and just about anyone can afford it.
Locally grown foods, particularly meat, milk, and eggs, are probably going to cost a good bit more than comparable items in the supermarkets. But most people, even those with modest incomes, can afford to buy good local foods, simply by spending a bit less on other things that add less to their health and happiness.As I have written before, costs of good local foods tend to be higher because local sustainable producers pay the full cost of production; they don’t pollute the environment or exploit other people in the production process.Once people understand the differences between typical industrially produced foods and local sustainably produced foods – in terms of freshness, flavor, wholesomeness, and nutrition, as well as social and ethical integrity – good local food acquires a priority that makes it seem easily affordable.
The average American family spends only about a dime out of each dollar of disposable income for food.So, spending ten or even twenty percent more for good food only requires spending one or two percent more of the typical family’s income for food, rather than for some other discretionary budget item.In some cases, good food may not require actually giving up anything else.For example, the average American family today spends about fifteen percent of their income for health care, and as we learn more about the linkages of diet with health, it’s becoming evident that spending a bit more for good food could result in spending a lot less for healthcare.
From DAVE SMITH
Excerpted from To Be Of Use - The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work (2005)
Once upon a time, members of my generation broke free and created what was labeled a “counter culture.” Because the surrounding culture was not living up to our young ideals, we began creating our own work, our own services, our own communities. I prefer to call what many of us were doing a “parallel culture,” as my experience was more about building something new rather than countering or opposing.
Between the straight culture and the anticulture, we chose to be part of a third way, seeking to build something positive out of the chaos rather than just spending all our time protesting and demonstrating. We chose to compose new social and workplace structures and relationships, practicing and feeling them, discovering how to make them meaningful and how to restore a measure of love and joy and amazing grace to our daily work. Instead of remaining within rigid hierarchies and stratified gender roles, we were all in it together. Sure, we made mistakes, but we were willing to fail young rather than take our assigned places and nod off into the ethical and moral wasteland we found around us.
Those times in the sixties and seventies mean different things to different people, and our memories of that time are most often associated with events and places. One image we have is Woodstock: free lovin’, dope smokin’, skinny dippin’, screw-it-all, hippie heaven. Another is Berkeley: radical, peacenik, burn-it-down, anti-war, anti-nuke, anti-everything. Another is the summer of love in the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco in 1967. At the time, I was coming of age in the center of it all, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I migrated after having grown up in South Florida, a land of racial segregation with its separate schools, separate restaurants, and separate public water fountains marked “Colored” and “White.”
Along with many others, I had responded to John F. Kennedy’s call to service. We believed we could and would change the world, and we did. Along with our protests and marches for civil rights, farmworker’s contracts, and the environment, we organized free universities, cooperative food stores, and small alternative community businesses. Our memories of that time are overwhelmingly positive. We had passionate faith in the future and look back now with pride at our accomplishments.
We stopped a war. We put civil rights into law. We shut down the building of new nuclear plants. We passed the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act — every one of them now being chipped away by the culture that was then being countered.
We created movements built around human potential, women’s rights, the environment, alternative health, and natural foods. Many of the positive results have by now been diffused into the overall culture as part of our everyday lives. One of many examples is the market for organic foods. The demand for healthy foods germinated in the fifties through vitamin-centered health food stores and a few scattered organic farms and took root in the sixties through hippie cooperative buying clubs and the popularity of Asian diets. The organic food market has now been growing over 20 percent per year and has gone mainstream.
The future is green in the Ukiah Valley, where city officials have joined with the Solar Living Institute to train workers for an anticipated new age of alternative energy. “It’s economic development,” Ukiah City Councilwoman Mari Rodin said of the two-year pilot project, dubbed Ukiah Greenworks.
The program is aimed both at providing workers with job skills and luring green energy businesses with the promise of a skilled work force.
It also will boost the local economy by attracting visiting students from throughout the country, said Erica Cooperrider, the institute’s marketing and workshop coordinator.
Ukiah will contribute $30,000 in redevelopment funds to the program and will provide classroom space and equipment for the alternative energy workshops, Rodin said.
A green jobs conference in Ukiah on May 5 will kick off the classes.
The first Ukiah class is scheduled for June 10, said Cathleen Moller, Ukiah’s economic development manager.
The weeklong course focuses on photovoltaic systems, from safety to mechanical design and performance analysis.
Typically, Solar Living Institute one-day workshops cost up to $150 and weeklong courses cost about $900, Cooperrider said.
The city and the Institute are investigating funding opportunities for people who are unemployed or low income.
If successful, the Ukiah training center is expected to become permanent.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of issues in the community, I wanted to turn now to a coalition of community activists, union members and environmental groups that are here in the Spokane area that have begun gathering signatures to get a number of wide-ranging changes to the Spokane City Charter on the November 2009 general election ballot.
The changes are part of a proposed “Community Bill of Rights” drafted in a series of workshops and town hall meetings over the last year by a group called Envision Spokane. The changes include giving greater control to neighborhoods over new development, creating legally enforceable rights for the protection of the Spokane River, and guaranteeing access to affordable preventive healthcare.
Supporters must gather 2,700 valid signatures from registered city voters by July 6th to get it placed on the general election ballot. Then a majority of voters have to approve the entire package in a straight up or down vote.
Thomas Linzey is also with us. He’s an attorney serving as an adviser to Envision Spokane, joining us here at KSPS PBS studio.
Welcome to Democracy Now!
THOMAS LINZEY: Thanks for having us, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: So what is this plan that you have?
THOMAS LINZEY: Well, some folks would not probably normally think of Spokane as being a cutting-edge place for activism, but this, these twenty-four different groups that have come together, these labor union locals, environmental organizations and neighborhood councils for—in Spokane have actually come together to model a Community Bill of Rights, which deals with a bunch of different issues, from healthcare to housing to unionization to protecting the Spokane River to a greater extent from the pollution that it’s been subjected to over the past couple decades.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain the Community Bill of Rights.
THOMAS LINZEY: It’s actually—Spokane operates under a city home rule charter. Some cities in the United States operate under those. It’s basically a local constitution for the city. And citizens can come together to actually petition to change that home rule charter. And the idea about driving in a bill of rights was to say to folks in Spokane and these groups that came forward to work on this project, to say what aren’t we getting over the past couple decades of our work, because it seemed to some people that our conventional, traditional activism was failing—in other words, writing letters to congressmen and doing what we perceived as traditional activism in terms of protesting and soliciting comments at regulatory hearings and those types of things—that folks have increasingly felt a need to seize their local government entities to actually begin to build their values into those frameworks of law, rather than simply waiting for other people to come and save us, to do that work themselves. And so, these folks have stepped forward to actually drive their values into the city home rule charter here.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re a part of this whole corporate charter movement. Explain what that is.
The Indian peasantry, the largest body of surviving small farmers in the world, today faces a crisis of extinction.
Two thirds of India makes its living from the land. The earth is the most generous employer in this country of a billion, that has farmed this land for more than 5000 years.
However, as farming is delinked from the earth, the soil, the biodiversity, and the climate, and linked to global corporations and global markets, and the generosity of the earth is replaced by the greed of corporations, the viability of small farmers and small farms is destroyed. Farmers suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian peasants.
1997 witnessed the first emergence of farm suicides in India. A rapid increase in indebtedness, was at the root of farmers taking their lives. Debt is a reflection of a negative economy, a loosing economy. Two factors have transformed the positive economy of agriculture into a negative economy for peasants – the rising costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalisation.
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto, and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds which needed fertilizers and pesticides and could not be saved.
As seed saving is prevented by patents as well as by the engineering of seeds with non-renewable traits, seed has to be bought for every planting season by poor peasants. A free resource available on farms became a commodity which farmers were forced to buy every year. This increases poverty and leads to indebtedness.
As debts increase and become unpayable, farmers are compelled to sell kidneys or even commit suicide. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997 when the practice of seed saving was transformed under globalisation pressures and multinational seed corporations started to take control of the seed supply. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.
The shift from farm saved seed to corporate monopolies of the seed supply is also a shift from biodiversity to monocultures in agriculture. The District of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to grow diverse legumes, millet, and oilseeds. Seed monopolies created crop monocultures of cotton, leading to disappearance of millions of products of nature’s evolution and farmer’s breeding.
Monocultures and uniformity increase the risks of crop failure as diverse seeds adapted to diverse ecosystems are replaced by rushed introduction of unadapted and often untested seeds into the market. When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in India in 2002, the farmers lost Rs. 1 billion due to crop failure. Instead of 1,500 Kg / acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kg. Instead of increased incomes of Rs. 10,000 / acre, farmers ran into losses of Rs. 6400 / acre.
In the state of Bihar, when farm saved corn seed was displaced by Monsanto’s hybrid corn, the entire crop failed creating Rs. 4 billion losses and increased poverty for already desperately poor farmers. Poor peasants of the South cannot survive seed monopolies.
And the crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed monopolies of global corporations.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
4/20/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
The Truth
What the consumer actually gets in the supermarket is an illusion of choice. Food labeling does not even tell us what pesticides are on our food or what products have been genetically engineered. Most importantly, the myth of choice masks the tragic loss of tens of thousands of crop varieties caused by industrial agriculture.
A persistent myth created and sustained by food manufacturers is that only industrial production could provide consumers with the wide variety of food choices available today. Industrial farming and processing, so the myth goes, have broken down limitations on food choices imposed by growing seasons, plants’ geographical ranges, and crop failures. Wandering the aisles of a 40,000-square-foot supermarket, we may be readily taken in by the myth. The breakfast cereal section, for example, may contain upwards of 50 different brand names, each one uniquely packaged and presented. Take a minute, however, and try to find a variety made primarily of a grain other than corn, rice, wheat, or oats. For an equally daunting challenge, try to find a box that does not list sugar and salt among the leading ingredients.
With one simple test, the myth of industrial food variety begins to break down. We begin to see that despite clever packaging and constant advertising blitzes, much of what is presented to us as variety is actually little more the repackaging of extremely similar products. Meanwhile, most of the vastly diverse foods available to humanity since the beginning of agricultural history have been virtually eradicated, never making their way to modern supermarket shelves.
The Loss of Diversity A seldom-mentioned impact of industrial agriculture is that it deprives consumers of real choice by favoring only a few varieties of crops that allow efficient harvesting, processing, and packaging. Consider the apple. It is true that without industrial processes we might not be able to eat a “fresh” Red Delicious apple 365 days a year. However, we would be able to enjoy many of the thousands of varieties grown in this country during the last century that have now all but disappeared. Because of the industrial agriculture system, the majority of those varieties are extinct today; two varieties alone account for more than 50 percent of the current apple market. Similarly, in 2000, 73 percent of all the lettuce grown in the United States was iceberg. This relatively bland variety is often the only choice consumers have. Meanwhile, we have lost hundreds of varieties of lettuce with flavors ranging from bitter to sweet and colors from dark purple to light green. The monoculture of industrial agriculture has similarly reduced the natural diversity of nearly every major food crop in terms of varieties grown, color, size, and flavor.
Update 4/28 – We had pulled even in the counts when they took it off their site, and it’s not the 100th day yet. We’ll see how they use it. Thanks, and way to go! They had a huge head start on us, but we caught them and were headed to a win. ~DS
4/20/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
MSNBC has a poll up about the President’s job so far for the first 100 days. Take a look. The opposition is flooding it with “F” votes. You go vote:
Send this link to everyone you can. Our President needs our help. His 100 day mark is approaching fast.
Despite my own questions about some of his decisions, I’m supporting the guy 100%.
It is up to us, the grassroots, to support him while letting him know what we like and don’t like about his choices, and put the pressure on him and our representatives in this imperfect democracy that we have. If you think he’s given the technocrats enough time to fix the banks, tell him that the financial clowns have run their course, that the hard choices they are trying to avoid have got to be made, and to get people in there who can do it or do it himself.
It’s so easy to stand back and take pot shots when he doesn’t do everything as we had hoped… but he’s doing some pretty amazing things, and when he needs our support, like this — even when it’s a bullshit poll meaning nothing — we need to give it to him.
C’mon! Flood that sucker with A’s!!
~
Update 4/27/09
Neck and neck!!!!!!!!!!!!
We’ve made up a lot of ground! Now let’s pull ahead! GObama GO!!!
Apr 13, 2009, Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
I’m not a raw foodist or diet nut. But the more raw fruit and vegetables I eat — especially dark green leafy vegetables — the better I feel… and, I believe, the healthier I’ll be.
Problem: have you tried drinking wheat grass juice? Ugh! How about carrot juice? Much better, but if you do it at home, cleaning that juicer is a pain, and root vegetables are not the most nutritions foods available. Eat lots of salads? Good! How about kale, chard, dandelion greens? Not so much, huh? Feels like more of a duty than pleasurable eating… Mom shaking her finger “eat your vegetables!” Even though they are the most nutritious plants on earth, dark green leafy veggies are very tough to eat raw… and steaming them, according to some, destroys much of the vital nutrients. What to do?
There is a lot of info on the internet by googling “green smoothies” and in books by Victoria Boutenko and others if you need convincing about health results. This approach feels like a real health breakthrough because it’s fast, easy to make and clean up, easy to digest, are complete foods, will get lots of vital chlorophyll and fiber into your body …and tastes terrific!
Try it:
Apple-Kale-Lemon Smoothie
In your blender,
3 organic apples
1 organic banana
1/2 organic lemon (juice only) or piece of ginger root peeled and chopped
5 leaves organic kale (remove white stems), or other green, leafy veggie
2 cups water
Blend until smooth.
Every morning for a week or two, adjusting ingredients to taste, is all I ask. You’ll be glad you did, and it may change your life.
~~
Right Livelihood is one of the hottest issues I’ve seen lately. Talks and workshops on the subject are on a “standing room only” basis. I think there has been a significant shift in work values. In the past it was considered reasonable for people to develop a marketable skill and pursue a career that would earn them enough money to do the things they really wanted to do. People worked at their jobs so they could do the things they wanted on weekends, go where they wanted on vacations and in some cases earn enough to retire “early” and then do what they wanted. Now our peers are saying, “That’s nonsense; why should I do something I don’t like 70% of my life so I can do what I want 30%?” They want to combine what they enjoy doing with their livelihood.
The Tough Question
Now that more people are thinking about doing, working at, and being what they want, the really tough question becomes, “What do I want?” The person who goes camping every weekend doesn’t necessarily want to be a forest ranger, nor does the weekend sailor want to be in the merchant marines. Hobbies, interests, and avocations don’t always translate directly into full-time activity. Finding right livelihood is difficult and takes plenty of time, often many years. Right livelihood is a concept found in Buddhism (one of the eight-fold paths), Sufism, and early Christianity. It is part of a whole view, part of being a whole person. It is a fundamental element in the Briarpatch. We want people to enjoy what they are doing fully, and to do it for the intrinsic rewards.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
4/6/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California
The Truth
Small farms produce more agricultural output per unit area than large farms. Moreover, larger, less diverse farms require far more mechanical and chemical inputs. These ever increasing inputs are devastating to the environment and make these farms far less efficient than smaller, more sustainable farms.
Proponents of industrial agriculture claim that ”bigger is better” when it comes to food production. They argue that the larger the farm, the more efficient it is. They admit that these huge corporate farms mean the loss of family farms and rural communities, but they maintain that this is simply the inevitable cost of efficient food production. And agribusiness advocates don’t just promote big farms; they also push big technology. They typically ridicule small-scale farm technology as grossly inefficient, while heralding intensive use of chemicals, massive machinery, computerization, and genetic engineering — whose affordability and implementation are only feasible on large farms. The marriage of huge farms with ”mega-technology” is sold to the public as the basic requirement for efficient food production. Argue against size and technology — the two staples of modern agriculture — and, they insist, you’re undermining production efficiency and endangering the world’s food supply.
At Sprawl-Busters.com you will find a list of 395 communities who have beaten a big box store in their community at least once, or pressured a developer to withdraw.
At NewRules.org you will find these victories over the forces of dumb, unsustainable growth:
Voters in Agawam, Mass soundly rejected two ballot measures that would have allowed National Realty & Development Corporation to build a 563,000-square-foot shopping center (about ten football fields, plus another 25 football fields worth of parking). Although NRDC did not name tenants, the project likely would have included two or more big-box stores and numerous mid-sized and smaller chain retailers.
Voters in the small town of Damariscotta, Maine, overwhelming approved a local law barring stores over 35,000 square feet (about the size of a medium grocery store). The vote puts an end to Wal-Mart’s plans to build a 187,000-square-foot supercenter in this village of just 2,000 people.
Voters in Frisco, Colorado, resoundingly defeated a plan to develop a Home Depot superstore.
The City Council of Santa Maria, California, voted unanimously to deny Wal-Mart’s request to rezone land for a supercenter. The vote took place before an overflow crowd of more than 200 citizens. Nearly forty people spoke at the hearing.
In our modern society, we rely on the education system to teach us what we need to know to live and make a living.
That system has let us down badly. It is in the interest of those who control the current economic system, those with the established wealth and power, that we not know that there is a better way to make a living than working for them, doing meaningless work as wage slaves, just to buy ourselves some leisure time to do what has meaning for us.
We each need, personally, to rediscover the joy and meaning of natural work, of Natural Entrepreneurship. Finding the Sweet Spot is an attempt to get you started on that journey.
We need a blossoming of millions of Natural Enterprises, connected and collaborating and supporting each other as part of a dynamic Natural Economy.
But what we also need, collectively, as a society, is a blossoming of thousands, millions of Natural Enterprises, connected and collaborating and supporting each other generously as part of a dynamic new Natural Economy. Is such a thing possible?
The American food system rests on an unstable foundation of massive fossil fuel inputs. It must be reinvented in the face of declining fuel stocks. The new food system will use less energy, and the energy it uses will come from renewable sources. We can begin the transition to the new system immediately through a process of planned, graduated, rapid change. The unplanned alternative-reconstruction from scratch after collapse-would be chaotic and tragic.
The seeds of the new food system have already been planted. America’s farmers have been reducing their energy use for decades. They are using less fertilizer and pesticide. The number of organic farms, farmers’ markets, and CSA operations is growing rapidly. More people are thinking about where their food comes from.
These are important building blocks, but much remains to be done. Our new food system will require more farmers, smaller and more diversified farms, less processed and packaged food, and less long-distance hauling of food. Governments, communities, businesses, and families each have important parts to play in reinventing a food system that functions with limited renewable energy resources to feed our population for the long term.
Initiative Measure to Be Submitted Directly to the Voters
The County Counsel has prepared the following title and summary of the chief purpose and points of the proposed measure:
Petition to enact a general plan and zoning code amendment, and mixed-use specific plan for the former site of the Masonite facility.
The ballot title is as follows:
AN INITATIVE TO ENACT A GENERAL PLAN AND ZONING CODE AMENDMENT, AND MIXED-USE SPECIFIC PLAN FOR THE FORMER SITE OF THE MASONITE FACILITY
The purpose of this Initiative is to amend the Mendocino County General Plan and Inland Zoning Code and to enact the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan for the former site of the Masonite facility. The proposed amendment to the General Plan is attached to the Petition as Exhibit A and the Specific Plan is attached to the Petition as Exhibit B.
The former Masonite site is located in unincorporated Mendocino County and consists of approximately 76 acres. The site is bounded on the west by North State Street, on the South by State Highway 101, on the east by the Northwest Pacific Railroad tracks, and on the north by Masonite Road. In the current General Plan, the site is designated as Industrial and it is zoned as I-1 (Limited Industrial) and I-2 (General Industrial) for industrial use.
This Initiative would modify the existing land use designation of the site from Industrial to “Mixed-Use Specific Plan”. This Mixed-Use Specific Plan designation will allow for a variety of uses including light industrial, retail, commercial, residential, office, hotel, entertainment, educational, public facilities, utility installations, parking lots and structures, and open space.
The proposed Specific Plan contains a conceptual land use plan, development standards, design and landscape guidelines, circulation and infrastructure plan, and project mitigation measures to mitigate potential impacts to the community and the environment. The actual development of the site is subject to change based on market and regional demands. The Specific Plan also states that water will be supplied to the site by the same well that serviced the area when the former Masonite facility was operating there. Because the Specific Plan would be enacted by initiative, under the law it is not subject to the procedures under the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”).
This Initiative must be adopted by a majority of the voters. The Initiative also states that, in the event there is a competing measure on the ballot relating to a general plan designation, zoning, or permitted uses on the site of the former Masonite facility, or any other measure that seeks to amend or limit any provision of this Initiative or allow uses incompatible with this Initiative, those measures shall be deemed to conflict with the entire cohesive scheme adopted. Because of this conflict, if this Initiative, and any such other measure, receives a majority of the votes at the election, the measure receiving the most votes shall prevail.
Dated: April 1, 2009
JEANINE B. NADEL
County Counsel
County of Mendocino
Who says money doesn’t grow on trees? Homeowners expect their yards to cost them money. Few ever consider the possibility that instead of costing money, a yard actually can help save money.
The average yard in this country consumes money in three major ways. First, hundreds of dollars are wasted because few yards are planned to take advantage of solar heating or basic cooling techniques for the house. Second, yards that have large lawns, particularly in the arid West, where constant watering is necessary, often have high maintenance costs. And, finally, few yards are designed to cut food and gift-giving expenses.
Heating and cooling experts estimate that up to 20 percent of air-conditioning bills and 20 to 30 percent of heating bills for residences can be cut by proper placement of landscaping elements. The larger your yard, the more savings you can realize by strategically placing trees and shrubs. Well-placed evergreen shrubs and trees help cut down the effects of winter winds against the house; by removing evergreen shrubs and trees near the south-facing wall, the homeowner allows the winter sun to warm the wall. Conversely, in the summer, deciduous trees, shrubs, and vines can shade the south and west walls, preventing the heat from building up in the house.
Lawn, the Great Money Sink
I’ve seen it happen time and time again. People who are on a tight budget think they cannot afford to spend a lot of money on the landscaping; so they go to the nursery, buy a package of grass seed, and turn most of their yard into a large lawn. There are few things you can do, particularly in the West, that will cost you more over the long run. A lawn will nickel and dime you to death. Lawn mower, gas for the mower, lawn-mower maintenance, edger, water, sprinkler repairs, fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides, vacation maintenance: all for just a humdrum lawn. And a show-place lawn can cost you many hundreds of dollars a year. A well-maintained lawn needs to be aerated, thatched, reseeded, and top dressed every year. All of those expenses are just the tip of the iceberg. They don’t even take into account that the lawn area could be covered with money-saving plants that would provide food for the table.
“Faced with the real threat of climate change, economic decline and peak oil (the point when cheap and abundant oil ends) they’re ripping up their grass lawns for edible gardens, installing rainwater collection barrels under roof gutters, and forming coalitions to transition their communities to a local and low-energy lifestyle.
“As we hit climate chaos, as we hit peak oil, assuming that you can get your food from far away and use fossil-fuel-intensive systems to produce food is totally not sustainable. Bringing food security close to home will have to be the project of the future.”
The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses
4/1/09 Ukiah, North California
Excerpts from the Introduction
[I didn't move to this beautiful valley to shop. -Guiness McFadden]
The economic structure that mega-retailers are propagating represents a modern variation on the old European colonial system, which was designed not to build economically viable and self-reliant communities, but to extract their wealth and resources. Yet many cities eagerly usher in these corporate colonizers.
Some envision a tax windfall, only to discover that these sprawling stores impose a significant burden on public infrastructure and services. Or worse, after their local economies have been bulldozed, they find that they are utterly dependent on a few big boxes that might raise prices, lay off employees, or threaten to move to a neighboring town if they don’t receive a tax break…
As retail sprawls outward, running errands entails more driving. The 1990s saw a jump of more than 40 percent in the number of miles driven by the average household for shopping—which translates into an increase of almost 95 billion miles a year for the country as a whole. Mega-retailers are thus fueling smog, acid rain, and global warming. Retail sprawl has also emerged as a top threat to our rivers, lakes, and estuaries. The specific culprit is pavement, which does not allow rain to soak into the ground, but sends it, loaded with oils and other pollutants, rushing into nearby bodies of water. No other category of land use creates more pavement and polluted runoff than big-box stores and shopping centers…
Local retailers breathe life into our downtowns and neighborhood business districts. They provide a setting for casual socializing with our neighbors—standing in line at the bakery or walking along the sidewalk—which builds a sense of camaraderie and responsibility for one another. This kind of informal interaction has a tangible impact on community health. Studies show that people who live in places where a larger share of the economy is in the hands of locally owned businesses take a more active role in civic affairs. These communities come out ahead on various measures of social well-being. They have lower rates of poverty, crime, and infant mortality, and are more resilient in times of adversity. Their citizens are far more likely to attend public meetings, volunteer, and even vote than those living in areas dominated by big corporate chains…
One of my dearest friends, Charles Martin, an organic/biodynamic farmer, is a lean, spry youngster of seventy-seven years with a twinkle in his eye and some thoughts about farming, food, and health that are definitely not mainstream. For many years he and his wife, Catherine, ran a small biodynamic/organic farm in Comptche, here in Mendocino County near the coast, supplying their neighbors and local restaurants. They also operated a nonprofit health foundation. Charles co-founded the Ecology Action/Golden Rule Bio-Intensive Intern/Apprentice training program with John Jeavons, and was active as Vice-President and Farm Reviewer for the Mendocino Renegade eco-label program of the Mendocino Organic Network. They now live in a very active retirement near Willits, California.
Charles tells their story:
As a boy growing up in Whittier, in southern California, Charles was interested in gardening and farming, and in high school he had a job milking cows on a dairy farm. Inducted into the Korean War, he was seriously injured. The drugs and antibiotics administered to him for his injury further damaged his health. After graduating from mechanical engineering school and going to work for Boeing in Seattle, he began exploring his health problems and was advised by a homeopathic specialist in degenerative diseases that he needed to “get back to nature, get off all refined foods, grow your own organic produce, get your water from clean springs, buy a juicer, grind your own flour, and eat naturally.” The doctor told him that his body could gradually repair itself over time if it was fed properly. That advice changed his life. I stopped by to see Charles awhile back, and as we chatted about his farm and about health in general, I asked him what he had learned from changing his diet so many years ago.
I’m convinced that health comes from the soil, from what we eat and the quality of what we eat. I had kidney problems, backaches, ulcers, you name it. By my late twenties, eating mostly from our backyard organic garden, I was back in very good shape.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
3/31/09 Ukiah, North California
The Truth If you added the real cost of industrial food—its health, environmental, and social costs—to the current supermarket price, not even our wealthiest citizens could afford to buy it.
In America, politicians, business leaders, and the media continue to reassure us that our food is the cheapest in the world. They repeat their mantra that the more we apply chemicals and technology to agriculture, the more food will be produced and the lower the price will be to the consumer. This myth of cheap food is routinely used by agribusiness as a kind of economic blackmail against any who point out the devastating impacts of modern food production. Get rid of the industrial system, we are told, and you won’t be able to afford food. Using this “big lie,” the industry has even succeeded in portraying supporters of organic food production as wealthy elitists who don’t care about how much the poor will have to pay for food.
Under closer analysis, our supposedly cheap food supply becomes monumentally expensive. The myth of cheapness completely ignores the staggering externalized costs of our food, costs that do not appear on our grocery checkout receipts. Conventional analyses of the cost of food completely ignore the exponentially increasing social and environmental costs customers are currently paying and will have to pay in the future. We expend tens of billions of dollars in taxes, medical expenses, toxic clean-ups, insurance premiums, and other pass-along costs to subsidize industrial food producers. Given the ever-increasing health, environmental, and social destruction involved in industrial agriculture, the real price of this food production for future generations is incalculable.
Environmental Costs
Industrial agriculture’s most significant external cost is its widespread destruction of the environment. Intensive use of pesticides and fertilizers seriously pollutes our water, soil, and air. This pollution problem grows worse over time, as pests become immune to the chemicals and more and more poisons are required. Meanwhile, our animal factories produce 1.3 billion tons of manure each year. Laden with chemicals, antibiotics, and hormones, the manure leaches into rivers and water tables, polluting drinking supplies and causing fish kills in the tens of millions.
People need to live from their local landscape and their local countryside as much as they possibly can, as much as they reasonably can… The idea that a city surrounded by fertile farmland that’s well-watered should be importing food 2,500 miles away is preposterous. It drives the cost up and it removes from the consumers all the powers of choice, of knowledge and of judgment. The consumers who import foods from long distances eat what they’re given to eat, what they’re sold. Many things would improve if they ate closer to home, including the local farm economy.
It would be wonderful because the quality of our food would go up. As the distance that it’s transported decreased, the quality would go up, and it would also go up as it came more and more under the influence of the consumers. Consumers don’t eat hard, tasteless, characterless tomatoes because they choose to. They eat those tomatoes because those are the only tomatoes they’re offered…
If you’re talking about a local food economy or any other kind of local economy, you’re talking about an economy that’s going to have to run a considerable extent on cooperation, not on competition between consumers and producers. You’re talking about an atmosphere of good feeling in which people try to find out what they can do well for one another. The local consumer is going to have to be concerned that the local producer have a livable income. The local consumers want the best products possible and the local producers are going to have to be interested in supplying the most desirable products possible to the local consumers. So if you’re going to succeed, it can’t be a situation in which everybody is in an economic war against everybody. That’s a description of the global economy.
The advantage of the local economy is you can secede from the global economy, which permits the exploitation of everybody and everything for the benefit of relatively few.
There’s a lot of scorn now toward people who say, “Not in my backyard,” but the “not-in-my-backyard” sentiment is one of the most valuable that we have. If enough people said, “Not in my backyard,” these bad innovations [big box malls] wouldn’t be in anybody’s backyard. It’s your own backyard you’re required to protect because in doing so you’re defending everybody’s backyard. It is an altogether healthy and salutary.
However, a community has to understand that if it refuses the proposal, then it has to come up with something better. And if a corporation comes in and says, “We want you to have this obnoxious installation because it will employ your people; it will bring jobs,” then the community has to have an answer to the question: “Where are we going to find jobs?” Sometimes it won’t be an easy question. Sometimes it will be a devastating question, but the community nevertheless has to begin to look to itself for the answers, not to the government—and not to these corporations that come in posing as saviors of the local community, because they don’t come in to save the local community.
So the community has to begin to ask what they need that can be produced locally, by local people and from the local landscape, and how it can be produced in a way that doesn’t damage the local landscape or the local community. You have to realize that people are working very hard to remove the choice between an economy of grace, based on generosity, and in an economy of scarcity based on acquisition. They can remove that choice simply by making it impossible for small economic enterprises to survive.
A community, for one thing, is an economy. And if you have a community but no local economy your community is seriously impaired. It becomes a thing of feeling only. And you can’t exclude any members from the community. If a community becomes false, it becomes artificial, and is in danger the way all false things are. A community can’t exclude the nonhuman creatures, for instance, if it hopes to last. It can’t exclude its climate. It can’t exclude the air. All these, in a real community, are members. So if you are careful enough in defining a community, you see that it’s a pattern of practical relationships. It’s also, of course, a pattern of loyalties and it’s an emotional pattern.
~~
From Dave Smith
My Foreword to Finding The Sweet Spot by Dave Pollard
[To counter the efforts of those who would foist The Masonite Monster Mall on our community, we need young entrepreneurs to galvanize new local businesses at the potential Masonite Transition Park. The intended gathering of Big Box Dinosaurs and other chain and franchise stores to force their way in, feed at our community trough, and leak their ill-gained revenues and profits to parts unknown, rather than allow small locally-owned businesses to thrive and re-circulate our money locally, will leave our community with lasting scars. If they overrule local citizens and government through their big bucks purchase of the initiative process, and the zoning of the Masonite site is changed adding $30 million to its value, then you can kiss local small business opportunities here goodbye for a generation at least. It's highly doubtful, for many reasons, that a mall will ever be built. But by keeping the zoning industrial, we will keep the property price within reach of local appropriate technology startups, with good paying jobs, rather than having some retail monstrosity imposed on us from outsiders. Recessions, with great changes upon us, are opportune times to help create the next world of business. Because credit and investment capital is tight or non-existent, businesses will have to be started on shoestrings. This is good. It focuses attention and requires great tenacity. The choice is ours. This book is a key business how-to manual from Dave Pollard for budding entrepreneurs. And here is my Foreword. -DS]
3/27/09 Ukiah, North California
A couple of stories, one a “business failure”, the other a “business success.”
During the seventies, with high unemployment and energy shortages a fact of daily life, some friends and I started and ran a very successful natural food cooperative in Menlo Park, California called Briarpatch Natural Foods. It was created to fill a real community need, following the age-old business adage of “find a need and fill it.” People had time on their hands, and natural foods were expensive, so by working 8 hours every three months, members were able to purchase healthy foods for at least 30% less. Three of us co-managed the store, and the work of unloading trucks, stocking shelves, buying fresh produce at the produce terminal, running the cash registers, and everything else needed to operate a small grocery store was done by members. At one point, there were over 350 families on the waiting list.
Because labor is, by far, the largest expense of doing business, taking most of that cost out of the expense statement created not only cheaper food but an enormous forgiveness for the obvious inefficiencies of volunteer, untrained labor and the lack of basic business skills by its enthusiastic and smart, but woefully unskilled management. What fun we had playing store!
It eventually proved to be unsustainable long-term for the simple fact that business is cyclical and when Silicon Valley exploded into runaway growth and success, no-one had time to play store, and the store didn’t adapt quickly enough to the rapidly changing times that did it in. All vendors were fully paid, all member investments were fully returned, and the graceful ending of a beautiful success left us only fond memories. By our current business standards, it was a failure because it didn’t grow and make its “investors” a ton of money. By those of us most intimately involved in the daily business of running a community cooperative, it was one of our most beautiful, successful business experiences.
On the other hand, Smith & Hawken, the $100 million garden company I co-founded is considered an enduring entrepreneurial success. I disagree, and here’s why.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
3/27/09 Ukiah, North California
The Truth
Industrial agriculture contaminates our vegetables and fruits with pesticides, slips dangerous bacteria into our lettuce, and puts genetically engineered growth hormones into our milk. It is not surprising that cancer, food-borne illnesses, and obesity are at an all-time high.
A modern supermarket produce aisle presents a perfect illusion of food safety. Consistency is a hallmark. Dozens of apples are on display, waxed and polished to a uniform luster, few if any bearing a bruise or dent or other distinguishing characteristics. Nearby sit stacked pyramids of oranges dyed an exact hue to connote ripeness. Perhaps we find a shopper comparing two perfectly similar cellophane-wrapped heads of lettuce, as if trying to distinguish between a set of identical twins. Elsewhere, throughout the store, processed foods sit front and center on perfectly spaced shelves, their bright, attractive cans, jars, and boxes bearing colorful photographs of exquisitely prepared and presented foods. They all look unthreatening, perfectly safe, even good for you. And for decades, agribusiness, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have proclaimed boldly that the United States has the safest food supply in the world.
As with all the myths of industrial agriculture, things are not exactly as they appear. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that between 1970 and 1999, food-borne illnesses increased more than tenfold. And according to the FDA, at least 53 pesticides classified as carcinogenic are presently applied in massive amounts to our major food crops. While the industrialization of the food supply progresses, we are witnessing an explosion in human health risks and a significant decrease in the nutritional value of our meals.
Increased Cancer Risk
A central component of the industrialized food system is the large-scale introduction of toxic chemicals. This toxic contamination of our food shows no signs of decreasing. Since 1989, overall pesticide use has risen by about 8 percent, or 60 million pounds. The use of pesticides that leave residues on food has increased even more. Additionally, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that more than 1 million Americans drink water laced with pesticide runoff from industrial farms.Our increasing use of these chemicals has been paralleled by an exponential growth in health risks, to both farmers and consumers.
The primary concern associated with this toxic dependency is cancer. The EPA has already identified more than 165 pesticides as potentially carcinogenic, with numerous chemical mixtures remaining untested. Residues from potentially carcinogenic pesticides are left behind on some of our favorite fruits and vegetables. In 1998, the FDA found pesticide residues in over 35 percent of the food tested. Many U.S. products have tested as being more toxic than those from other countries. What’s worse, current standards for pesticides in food do not yet include specific protections for fetuses, infants, or young children, despite major changes to federal pesticide laws in 1996 requiring such reforms. Many scientists believe that pesticides play a major role in the current cancer “epidemic” among children. And the cancer risk does not just affect consumers; it also imperils tens of thousands of farmers, field hands, and migrant laborers. A National Cancer Institute study found that farmers who used industrial herbicides were six times more likely than non-farmers to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer. Along with their cancer risk, pesticides can cause myriad other health problems, especially for young people. For example, exposure to neurotoxic compounds like PCBs and organophosphate insecticides during critical periods of development can cause permanent, long-term damage to the brain, nervous, and reproductive systems.
[The car-centric dinosaur Masonite Monster Mall feeds the Climate Change disaster rather than alleviating it. We need transitions to inviting, walkable, bikable, sustainable, small towns run with renewable energy systems... with jobs based on organic farming and localized, appropriate technology. -DS]
Yes, windmills and dams deface the landscape but the climate crisis demands immediate action
From Bill McKibben
Don’t be too “Canadian” about the backlash – this is no time for Mr. Nice Guy
Watching the backlash against clean energy projects build in Canada has moved me to think about what Americans have learned from facing this same problem. I have been thinking and writing for several years about overcoming conflict-avoidance and the importance of standing up for “Big Truths” even at the price of criticizing fellow environmentalists.
It’s not that I’ve developed a mean streak. It’s that the environmental movement has reached an important point of division, between those who truly get global warming, and those who don’t.
By get, I don’t mean understanding the chemistry of carbon dioxide, or the importance of the Kyoto Protocol, or those kinds of things – pretty much everyone who thinks of themselves as an environmentalist has reached that point. By get, I mean understanding that the question is of transcending urgency, that it represents the one overarching global civilizational challenge that humans have ever faced.
In the U.S., there are all manner of fights to stop or delay every imaginable low-carbon technology. Wind, solar, run-of-river hydro – these are precisely the kinds of renewable energy that every Earth Day speech since 1970 has trumpeted. But now they are finally here – now that we’re talking about particular projects in particular places – people aren’t so keen.
Opponents of renewable energy projects point out (correctly) that they have impacts – there are (overstated) risks to birds from wind turbines, to fish from run-of-river hydro, that the projects mean “development” somewhere there was none and transmission lines where there were none before.
They point out (again correctly) that the developers are private interests, rushing to develop a resource that, in fact, they do not own, and without waiting for the government to come up with a set of rules and processes for siting such installations.
The critics also insist that there’s a “better” site somewhere – and again they’re probably right. There’s almost always a better site for anything. The whole business is messy, imperfect.
If we had decades to burn, then perhaps the opponents would be right that there’s a better site, and a nicer developer. There’s always a better site and a nicer developer. But in the real world, we have at most 10 years to reverse the fossil fuel economy. Which means we have to do everything quickly – conservation and plug-in cars and solar panels and compact fluorescents and 100-mile food and tree planting. And windmills, windmills everywhere there is wind, just like off the shores of Europe.
From Brenda Ueland Excerpted from If You Want To Write (1939)
Still in print
If you read the letters of the painter Van Gogh you will see what his creative impulse was. It was just this: he loved something—the sky, say. He loved human beings. He wanted to show human beings how beautiful the sky was. So he painted it for them. And that was all there was to it.
When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. He sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lampost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: “It is so beautiful I must show you how it looks.” And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it.
When I read this letter of Van Gogh’s it comforted me very much and seemed to throw clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I had thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about design and balance and getting interesting planes into your painting, and avoided, with the most stringent severity, showing the faintest academical tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and on.
But the moment I read Van Gogh’s letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
3/23/09 Ukiah, North California
The Truth
World hunger is not created by lack of food but by poverty and landlessness, which deny people access to food. Industrial agriculture actually increases hunger by raising the cost of farming, by forcing tens of millions of farmers off the land, and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops.
There is no myth about the existence of hunger. It is estimated that nearly 800 million people go hungry each day. And millions live on the brink of disaster, as malnutrition and related illnesses kill as many as 12 million children per year. Famine continues in the 21st century, though few of us are aware of the truly global nature of the problem. In Brazil, 70 million people cannot afford enough to eat, and in India, 200 million go hungry every day. Even in the United States, the world’s number one exporter of food, 33 million men, women, and children are considered among the world’s hungry.
There is, however, a myth about what is causing this tragic hunger epidemic and what it will take to alleviate it. Industrial agriculture proponents spend millions on advertising campaigns each year claiming that people are starving because there is not enough food to feed the current population, much less a continually growing one. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? 10 billion by 2030″ proclaimed an old headline on Monsanto’s Web page. The company warns of the “growing pressures on the Earth’s natural resources to feed more people” and claims that low-technology agriculture “will not produce sufficient crop yield increases to feed the world’s burgeoning population.” Their answer is pesticide- and technology-intensive agriculture that will produce the maximum output from the land in the shortest amount of time. Global food corporations, they say, will have to serve as “saviors” of the world’s hungry.
From Fatal Harvest
The Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture
3/17/09 Ukiah, North California
Industrial agriculture is devastating our land, water, and air, and is now threatening the sustainability of the biosphere. Its massive chemical and biological inputs cause widespread environmental havoc as well as human disease and death. Its monoculturing reduces the diversity of our plants and animals. Its habitat destruction endangers wildlife. Its factory farming practices cause untold animal suffering. Its centralized corporate ownership destroys farm communities around the world, leading to mass poverty and hunger. The industrial agriculture system is clearly unsustainable. It has truly become a fatal harvest.
However, despite these devastating impacts, the industrial paradigm in agriculture still gets a free ride from our media and policy makers. It is rare to hear questioning, much less a call for the overthrow, of this increasingly catastrophic food production system. This troubling quiescence can be attributed, in part, to the enormous success that agribusiness has had in utilizing the ”big lie,” a technique familiar to all purveyors of propaganda. Corporate agriculture has flooded, and continues to inundate the public with self-serving myths about modern food production. For decades, the industry has effectively countered virtually every critique of industrial agriculture with the ”big lie” strategy.
These agribusiness myths have become all too familiar. Most farmers, activists, and policy makers who question the industrial food paradigm know the litany of lies by heart: industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world, to provide us with safe, nutritious, cheap food, to produce food more efficiently, to offer us more choices, and, of all things, to save the environment. Additionally, when confronted with the indisputable environmental and health impacts of industrial agriculture, the industry immediately points to technological advances, especially recent achievements in biotechnology, as the panacea that will solve all problems. These claims are broadcast far and wide by way of industry lobbying efforts, product promotions, and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns, including television, newspaper, magazine, farm journal, and radio ads. Moreover, as the industry becomes more consolidated-with biotech companies owning the seed and chemical businesses and a handful of companies controlling a majority of seeds and food brands — the strategies for promulgating these myths become ever more concerted and the messages ever more honed. Archer Daniels Midland is now known to us all as the ”supermarket to the world,” while Monsanto offers us ”Food, Health, Hope.”
These myths about industrial agriculture have been, and are being, repeated so often that they are taken as virtually unassailable. A central goal of [these essays] is to conceptually debunk the myths that have for too long been used to promote and defend industrial agriculture. This myth busting is an essential step in exposing the impacts of current agriculture practices and educating the public about the realities of the food they are consuming.
We identify the seven central myths of industrial agriculture, note their assumptions and dangers, and provide direct and clear refutations. This is specifically designed to provide consumers, activists, and policy makers with clear, compact, and concise answers to counter the industry’s well-funded misinformation campaigns about the benefits of industrial agriculture. We encourage you to utilize these seven short essays whenever you are faced with the ”big lies” being used by corporate agribusiness to hide the true effects of their fatal harvest.
As far back into childhood as I can remember, every morning and every evening I went to the barn to “do chores.” “Chores” on the farm then (and now) meant feeding the chickens and livestock, gathering the eggs, and milking the cows. This work must be done every day come hell or high water—- especially come hell or high water. I did chores even in seminary college— I much preferred being in the barn than in chapel. That’s how it finally dawned on me that the priestly life was not for me, so I can say with all honesty that doing chores guided me to my true place in life. I am still doing chores although I have bowed to age and given up everything except sheep and chickens.
In childhood, I didn’t always go to the barn happily, but now, except in the coldest weather, I still prefer my barn to any church or any public meetinghouse. Farm animals are so appreciative of getting fed and watered and when you get to know them well, they make good company. They are always glad to see me and do not try to tell me how to vote or pray. If you have only a few of each, they become your friends or at least your close acquaintances, each with his or her own personality. When I shell a little corn off the cob by hand to feed to the hens, one of them, always the same one, parks herself right between my feet to get the first kernels that fall. More than once I have stumbled on her. Our golden-feathered rooster is so utterly vainglorious that when I watch him strut about the barnyard, I can’t help but think of Donald Trump.
““We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. … Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me. And I welcome their hatred!”
Our community is gearing up once again to keep the Masonite site available for living-wage jobs as a light industrial site, rather than permitting DDR to change its zoning so they can impose a Monster Mall on our citizens, colonizing our county, sucking revenue and profits out to distant absentee owners from our small towns and communities, devastating our locally-owned, independent businesses, crushing our small business entrepreneurial spirit, and reducing our job seekers to non-living wages with no benefits. Two County Supervisors have lost their jobs, and several City Council candidates were defeated, for supporting this travesty. What part of our resounding NO don’t DDR, and its local enabler Ruff and Associates, understand?
Corporate retailers have so eroded our sense of community that they think they can sell it back to us in the form of superficial design concepts. To overcome opposition on the part of city planners and elected officials, DDR has made a big show of redesigning their original Monster Mall plans “to better fit the community” by adding amenities, like pockets of “green space” and pedestrian walkways that snake alongside parking lots to add a suggestion of walkability to their project built entirely for cars, and solar powered parking lots. This is standard operating procedure that mall builders have used to hoodwink communities for many years.
These revisions are presented to us as major concessions and meant to make county planners feel as though they are doing their jobs by holding a tough line with the developer and even forging a legitimate compromise with citizens who oppose their project. But they are obscuring the real issues by putting lipstick on the pig. You can’t put cosmetics on a bad concept and expect it to work. It won’t work, and we’re not going to allow the project.
Another common ruse is to depict themselves as responsible and involved members of the community by donating to various local causes and charities, then manipulate the publicity to further the corporation’s goals. One community charity in another town celebrated with one of those blown-up checks from Wal-Mart for $500. That Wal-Mart store was doing upwards of $100 million in sales, a big chunk of it stolen from downtown merchants.
The most critical question about corporate retailers charitable giving, rarely asked, is whether their donations actually make up for the contributions lost when locally owned businesses close in their wake. WalMart donated $170 million in 2004, which actually works out to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of revenue, the equivalent of someone who earns $35,000 a year giving $21 to charity. Why did Target, with no local presence, recently donate to a local charity?
We will vote NO on any initiatives DDR puts on the ballot to change the zoning on the Masonite property. History has moved on, malls are dinosaurs, and our community will defend itself and create its own unique future.
[Thanks to Big Box Swindle for some of the above info. -DS]
~
From DAVE SMITH
From King of the Hill – 1972 by 
From Transition Culture UK
