From Friday, Sept 18-Thurs, Sept 24, Bloomington Peace Week will be celebrating its second year with a far-reaching array of educational & community events promoting creative non-violence. All are free & open to the public. The week-long festival offers workshops, discussions, & films in peace-building as well as opportunities for coming together in community, with a theme of "celebrating the peace we have achieved & exploring ways to create more".

For details,see: www.bloomingtonpeaceweek.org.

Persons experiencing a Vitamin D deficiency seem more prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is often refered to by the acronym S.A.D. People who suffer from S.A.D. often experience extreme drops in mood and some experience regular bouts of depression during the times of year when there is less available sunlight.

A common prescription is an increase in Vitamin D to help resolve the problems associated with S.A.D. You may also be advised to moderately increase your intake of Vitamin D rich foods in your diet. Some Vitamin D–rich foods you might consider are listed below from the NIH Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet. As you consciously increase your intake of Vitamin D supplements or foods, or any nutrients for that matter, pay attention to your body and mood so you can tell what helps you most.

Cod liver oil, 1 tablespoon
Mushrooms, enriched with vitamin D, 3 ounces
Salmon, cooked, 3.5 ounces
Mackerel, cooked, 3.5 ounces
Sardines, canned in oil, drained, 1.75 ounces
Tuna fish, canned in oil, 3 ounces
Orange juice fortified with vitamin D, 1 cup (check product labels, as amount of added vitamin D varies)
Milk, nonfat, reduced fat, and whole, vitamin D-fortified, 1 cup
Yogurt, fortified with 20% of the DV for vitamin D, 6 ounces (more heavily fortified yogurts provide more of the DV)
Margarine, fortified, 1 tablespoon
Ready-to-eat cereal, fortified with 10% of the DV for vitamin D, 0.75-1 cup (more heavily fortified cereals might provide more of the DV)
Egg, 1 whole (vitamin D is found in yolk)
Liver, beef, cooked, 3.5 ounces
Cheese, Swiss, 1 ounce

If you want more information on Vitamin D and your body, visit the NIH website.

The City that Ended Hunger by Frances Moore Lappé

More than 10 years ago, Brazil’s fourth-largest city, Belo Horizonte, declared that food was a right of citizenship and started working to make good food available to all. One of its programs puts local farm produce into school meals. This and other projects cost the city less than 2 percent of its budget. Above, fresh passion fruit juice and salad as part of a school lunch.
Photo by Leah Rimkus

Photo by Leah Rimkus

More than 10 years ago, Brazil’s fourth-largest city, Belo Horizonte, declared that food was a right of citizenship and started working to make good food available to all. One of its programs puts local farm produce into school meals. This and other projects cost the city less than 2 percent of its budget. Above, fresh passion fruit juice and salad as part of a school lunch.

City of Bello sure has set a precedent, inspirational it strengthens and ignites the hope that we can strife towards this provided we are single pointed and unified in our mission to safeguard our food, environment...

Sangita

Wonderful lesson!

This is the sort of project that Indian NGOs and politicians of all hues and stripes should develop as critical training for all primary school to Ph.D. students across the country. In doing so, not only can they abolish hunger among the poor but also provide wholesome and nutritious food for all. Time for that could not be any more propitious than now when the entire world economy is in collapse.

Shiv Chopra

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=3330

Spring 2009: Food for Everyone

A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.

“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.”
CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL

In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life’s essentials? Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise here in the United States—one in 10 of us is now turning to food stamps—these questions take on new urgency.

To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help—not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.

The city of Belo Horizonte puts “Direct From the Country” farmer produce stands throughout busy downtown areas.

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

When my daughter Anna and I visited Belo Horizonte to write Hope’s Edge we approached one of these stands. A farmer in a cheerful green smock, emblazoned with “Direct from the Countryside,” grinned as she told us, “I am able to support three children from my five acres now. Since I got this contract with the city, I’ve even been able to buy a truck.”

The improved prospects of these Belo farmers were remarkable considering that, as these programs were getting underway, farmers in the country as a whole saw their incomes drop by almost half.

In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city makes good food available by offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the city determines a set price—about two-thirds of the market price—of about twenty healthy items, mostly from in-state farmers and chosen by store-owners. Everything else they can sell at the market price.

ABC bulk produce markets stock the items that the city determines will be sold at a fixed price, about 13 cents per pound.

“For ABC sellers with the best spots, there’s another obligation attached to being able to use the city land,” a former manager within this city agency, Adriana Aranha, explained. “Every weekend they have to drive produce-laden trucks to the poor neighborhoods outside of the city center, so everyone can get good produce.”

Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal. When Anna and I ate in one, we saw hundreds of diners—grandparents and newborns, young couples, clusters of men, mothers with toddlers. Some were in well-worn street clothes, others in uniform, still others in business suits.

“I’ve been coming here every day for five years and have gained six kilos,” beamed one elderly, energetic man in faded khakis.

“It’s silly to pay more somewhere else for lower quality food,” an athletic-looking young man in a military police uniform told us. “I’ve been eating here every day for two years. It’s a good way to save money to buy a house so I can get married,” he said with a smile.

The line for one of three “People’s Restaurants” a half hour before opening time. Meals cost about 50 cents; diners come from all socio-economic groups. Photo by Leah Rimkus
The line for one of three “People’s Restaurants” a half hour before opening time. Meals cost about 50 cents; diners come from all socio-economic groups.
Photo by Leah Rimkus
No one has to prove they’re poor to eat in a People’s Restaurant, although about 85 percent of the diners are. The mixed clientele erases stigma and allows “food with dignity,” say those involved.

Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.

“We’re fighting the concept that the state is a terrible, incompetent administrator,” Adriana explained. “We’re showing that the state doesn’t have to provide everything, it can facilitate. It can create channels for people to find solutions themselves.”

For instance, the city, in partnership with a local university, is working to “keep the market honest in part simply by providing information,” Adriana told us. They survey the price of 45 basic foods and household items at dozens of supermarkets, then post the results at bus stops, online, on television and radio, and in newspapers so people know where the cheapest prices are.

The shift in frame to food as a right also led the Belo hunger-fighters to look for novel solutions. In one successful experiment, egg shells, manioc leaves, and other material normally thrown away were ground and mixed into flour for school kids’ daily bread. This enriched food also goes to nursery school children, who receive three meals a day courtesy of the city.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world. But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

The result of these and other related innovations?

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The cost of these efforts?

Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.

Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social mentality”—the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of us have access to good food, so—like health care or education—quality food for all is a public good.”

The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect.

And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in human nature is required! Through most of human evolution—except for the last few thousand of roughly 200,000 years—Homo sapiens lived in societies where pervasive sharing of food was the norm. As food sharers, “especially among unrelated individuals,” humans are unique, writes Michael Gurven, an authority on hunter-gatherer food transfers. Except in times of extreme privation, when some eat, all eat.

Before leaving Belo, Anna and I had time to reflect a bit with Adriana. We wondered whether she realized that her city may be one of the few in the world taking this approach—food as a right of membership in the human family. So I asked, “When you began, did you realize how important what you are doing was? How much difference it might make? How rare it is in the entire world?”

Listening to her long response in Portuguese without understanding, I tried to be patient. But when her eyes moistened, I nudged our interpreter. I wanted to know what had touched her emotions.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world,” Adriana said. “But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

Adriana’s words have stayed with me. They will forever. They hold perhaps Belo’s greatest lesson: that it is easy to end hunger if we are willing to break free of limiting frames and to see with new eyes—if we trust our hard-wired fellow feeling and act, no longer as mere voters or protesters, for or against government, but as problem-solving partners with government accountable to us.

Frances Moore Lappé wrote this article as part of Food for Everyone, the Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Frances is the author of many books including Diet for a Small Planet and Get a Grip, co-founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and a YES! contributing editor.

The author thanks Dr. M. Jahi Chappell for his contribution to the article.

* Promoting Transition US, the non-profit organization providing inspiration, support, training, and networking for Transition Initiatives across the United States, found at www.transitionus.org
* Facilitating the international work of the Transition Network, based in the UK, found at www.TransitionTowns.org and www.TransitionNetwork.org
* Connecting serious "transitioners", encouraging the development of local Transition Initiatives.

Peak oil, zero waste, financial security, localization, post carbon, local resilience -- announce your group, join in, make your voice heard. http://transitionus.ning.com/

Inspired by the writings of Fritz Schumacher, Jane Jacobs, Martin Buber, the Gandhian J.C. Kumarappa, and other decentralist economic thinkers, the E. F. Schumacher Society has worked for three decades to develop the theory and application of place-based economic institutions that link people, land, and
community.

Check the Calendar for small examples of positive citizen action are now helping to inform a vibrant national and international dialogue about creating solutions to our common economic problems.

October 17th, Stockbridge, MA, E. F. Schumacher Annual Lectures
(www.smallisbeautiful.org)

October 18th-23rd, Sonoma, CA, Economics of Peace (www.praxispeace.org)

October 22nd-25th, New Bedford, MA, Bioneers by the Bay
(www.marioninstitute.org)

October 24th, 350.org, International Day of Climate Action led by Bill
McKibben (www.350.org)

National Multiple Sclerosis Society
7301 Georgetown Road, Suite 112
Indianapolis, IN 46268
E-mail marci.corbin@nmss.org

JOIN THE MOVEMENT
nationalMSsociety.org/ini

Goodbye, GM
by Michael Moore
June 1, 2009

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.
As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.

So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.

But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:
1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.
President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.

2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.
3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).

7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.
9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.

Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.
100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.

Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.
So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
,

Editorial Ramblings

Greetings,

Note - The CRANE previously looked at water suggesting it as an area needing our continued focus. The need to really pay attention to water has increased in recent years. Find out what is going on in your communities and let us know.

Dear Readers,

Food, water, shelter, health care, happiness are all inter-connected and essential to our health and well-being. We are stepping into a world that can unfold with further imbalance, or we (the collective we) can look at the enormous possibilities before us; just as much of the world is doing, and seek to embrace opportunities that could shift our outcomes toward something more hopeful, sumething that could lead us toward a sustainable future. A future different from what we may have considered, but one that may hold hope for our youth, future generations and our earth home.

In this time of global transformation we are faced not only withchanges in our weather patterns, but to changes surrounding our basic resources and attitudes. We live in a global community, and for us (the global us) to survive in a healthy and peaceful manner, changes that are just and equitable with consideration for our collective wellbeing need to be embraced.

Again I am called to speak out on Seeds Being Too Precious to Loose!

"It seems not enough for you that food varieties discovered, developed and maintained for thousands of years are gone or going away, like so many named and unknown species now gone because of some corporate minded human greed, blind only to their own pockets, unable to see the need to maintain abundant global diversity." From CODEX - 1997

It has been more than ten years since I first wrote the CODEX poem as a response to information about corporate negotiations to consume seed sources and control the use and labeling of nutriceuticals. My listeners then described it as a manifesto. I did not set out to write a manifesto. The idea of any one person or small groups or corporations having control over essential life needs such as food and water is of great concern to me!

That our lives have become so distant from that which sustains us, that we could, without knowledge, allow historical seed lines developed by our global ancestors over many thousands of years to be owned, controlled, manipulated, deleted and in some cases determined illegal due to their having been purchased and patented so the owners could destruct them through genetic mutation for their own profit, is to allow the loss of something most precious to us all.

This process of loss is underway, has been for decades, and now, globally we seem to be gaining a greater awareness of what we have unwittingly allowed to disappear, as well as what these losses may mean to our greater health and well-being. Could there be a connection between genetic modification and the increasing inability of our bodies to assimilate nutrients from our foods, and the rising numbers of persons and animals with allergies to our petroleum based agricultural system. In school I was taught that life forms all evolve in direct relationship with their environments. That means us too! So, it is reasonable to consider that, if you change the genetic information of food plants, our bodies will not have the receptive information necessary to understand the modified genetic information and offers a negative response.

I have been an advocate of seed saving since the mid 70's and encourage every gardener I know to use open pollinated seeds; I also encourage them to learn how to save seeds. When asked why am I so passionate about seeds and saving them, I reference a report I read in 1981, that of all the seeds cataloged by the US Department of Agriculture at the turn of the century, that less than 3% of those food varieties were left; and that the the majority of those remaining seeds were for tomatoes!

I wanted to see what I could find about the current state of seeds considering that I'd been recently told that one of the largest seed producing companies in the world had been purchased by a company with interest in genetic modification and patenting of seeds.

In Googling US Seed Bank, I came upon the following information.

In January of this year, Georgia Cooper wrote "Seed bank for the world threatened by financial crisis" Her report opens with - A seed bank that is trying to collect every type of plant in the world is now under threat from the global financial crisis, its director says.
The Millennium Seed Bank Project aims to house all the 300,000 different plant species known to exist to ensure future biodiversity and protect a vital source of food and medicines, director Paul Smith said. - Read Complete Article - ARDINGLY, England (Reuters)

Continuing on my search, for current information, I found the following information -Seeds of Success (SOS) was established in 2001 by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in partnership with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) to collect, conserve, and develop native plant materials for stabilizing, rehabilitating and restoring lands in the United States. The initial partnership between BLM and MSB quickly grew to include many additional partners, such as botanic gardens, arboreta, zoos, and municipalities. These SOS teams share a common protocol and coordinate seed collecting and species targeting efforts. SOS is a vital part of the Native Plant Materials Development Program.

To date, SOS has over 6,689 native seed collections in its National Collection. This material is being used for direct seeding in restoration projects such as germination trials, common garden studies, and protocol establishment. Portions of each collection are also being held in long-term storage facilities for conservation.

In June of 2008, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Bureau of Land Management, Chicago Botanic Garden, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, New England Wild Flower Society, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, North Carolina Botanical Garden, and the Zoological Society of San Diego. The MOU ratifies Seeds of Success as a national native seed collection program in the United States coordinated by BLM.
If you have questions about the Seeds of Success Program, contact mary_byrne@blm.gov.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/sos/

Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada (Seed Bank, Gene Bank) - Heritage and Heirloom Organic Seed Catalog : Salt Spring Seeds ... stated intention of helping other communities across Canada to grow their own seed banks. ...
www.seedsanctuary.com/

It took me a while to get to this - it didn't show up readily when I searched for US Seed Bank so I changed my term to - united states department of agriculture seed bank. The mission of the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation (NCGRP) is to acquire, evaluate, preserve, and provide a national collection of genetic resources to secure the biological diversity that underpins a sustainable U.S. agricultural economy through diligent stewardship, research, and communication. http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?
modecode=54-02-05-00
On this site I found this information and these links - Seed in the NPGS base collection comes from USDA-ARS-NPGS regional or crop specific field sites. At the field sites, seeds are dried to ambient conditions and cleaned to remove empty seeds and chaff. A sample of seed from each accession is retained at the field site for regeneration, multiplication, distribution, characterization and evaluation and comprises an active collection. The NPGS base collection contains all the inventories of each accession including the original sample and earlier regenerations. This consolidated collection of all of NPGS holdings is stored at the NCGRP in secure freezers at -18°C. The viability of stored seeds is periodically monitored using standard germination assays. A fresh sample of seed is obtained if seed supply is too low or germination percent decreases below about 60%. A fresh inventory usually contains between 1500 and 3000 seeds.
As of July 1, 2008 the NPGS base collection stored at the NCGRP consisted of:
Number of samples 505,770
Number of unique accessions 384,876
Number of genera 1,180
Number of species 6,968
Number of seed accessions 380,727
Number of vegetatively-propagated accessions 4,177
Percent of NPGS accessions backed-up 76%
Percent back-up of vegetatively-propagated accessions 8% - Last Modified: 12/10/2008

U.S. contribution to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault: Describes U.S. initiatives to send NPGS seed to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway and provides a yearly update of progress.

Now we return to where this article began -

Open pollinated seed vs Monsanto genetic engineered seed: David and Goliath? Extracts from Monsanto's Destruction of Seed Cleaners and the Immense Threat to Human Access to Seeds by Linn Cohen-Cole

Life itself depends on seeds. Multinational biotech corporations such as Monsanto have been genetically engineering them, promoting GE-seeds as producing better yields, helping the starving of the world, using less pesticides and as a boon to small farmers. From http://pratie.blogspot.com

Globally there is a growing move toward creating food security. So what can we individuals do? These are just a few suggestions!

For a starting place, visit our IHHN Gardening Resource page and other related pages, such as the Plant Data Bases.
-educate yourself even if it is just to find out how to gain greater food security for your family
-Become a seed saver
-Become a member of the Seed Savers Exchange
-Join a local seed exchange
-Find a Local Food Network in your area - if there isn't one, talk to your gardening friends and set one up.
-Join a CSA (community supported agriculture) that grows from open-pollinated seeds
-buy open-pollinated seeds
-plant a garden with open-pollinated seeds
-barter with your neighbors, even estaablish a neighborhood exchange
-give the gift of open pollinated seeds to a gardener friends and family
-get involved with your Center for Sustainable Living (Bloomington and contact your local government to see if they have an office on Sustainability (Bloomington)) and any projects and organizations in your area that support local food security
-support the "Simply Healthy Fair" or similar events in your area and help spread the word about the importance of seeds to each of us as a valuable resource.

Open-pollinated seeds are an essential resource in supporting sustainable local communities. If seeds are only available with the restrictions of patents and genetic modifications, then the simple act of raising food and saving ones own seed becomes a crime. Many farmers around the world are now involved in seed lawsuits.

We must learn to be stewards. We are the ones who will make a difference within our own lives. We need to begin acting and living in support of that which we value. We need to become clear about what we love and want to leave for all of our children, and those in far future generations .

I think that it is important for our individual and collective wellness to really take a look at the connectedness of all things in our world, and to examine our relationship to the global community and decide, if we want to be the visionaries of our future, or do we want to allow those who do not have our best interest to fashion our tomorrow?

Water, food, healthcare, affordable housing have become increasing critical areas for many within our local communities and around the world. With shifting economic tides and damaged renewable resources, we need to look carefully at how we use resources that have the potential of sustaining us in the present and into the future.

You need to know
-Where does my water come from and who controls it?
-What is the state of local health care? If you are fortunate and live in Bloomingon, you have access to Volunteers In Medicine.
-What is the state of our local food security?
-If you are in Bloomington, you can contact the Center for Sustainable Living
-What is being done to transition your community through the shift from peak oil
- What are others in the US and around the world doing to create health and greater sustainablity?

Come hear Diana Leafe Christian, Editor of Communites Keynote on "Ecovillages: Who they are, where they are and why they are important!" A presentation of over 400 slides showing people around the globe who are creating more sustainable lifestyles and communities! November 12th, 2009 in Bloomington.

Editor

P.C. Coleman

Diana Leafe Christian will present a Keynote for "Creating Sustainable Communities: Simply Living Fair and Wellness Expo 2009". She is Editor of Communities Magazine and the author of "Finding Community" How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community

Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities

------------------------------

The 15 Elements of Ecovillage Living according to Hildur Jackson and Karen Svensson, Editors of Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People, Ecovillages provide us with "a glimpse of the enormous potential for positive change that is available to us and can lead us into a more harmonious and satisfying future"

"Ecovillages are basically a matter of living on the Earth with respect for all beings and natural systems. They embody a mindful lifestyle, which can be continued indefinitely in the future."

For the purpose of their publication, divided the subject into 15 basic elements of ecovillage living. These fifteen elements constitute a broad definition of sustainability, including social and cultural/spiritual dimensions. Each of the three dimensions contains five elements; together they comprise the ecovillage sustainability circle.

Social - Economic
Education and Communication - Living and Learning
Healthy Lifestyle - Preventive Healthcare - Complementary Medicine
Building Community - Decision-Making - Conflict Resolution
Modernizing Welfare - Care of children & elderly - Integration of Handicapped
Localizing Economics - Complementary Currencies

Ecological
Green Business - Life cycle Analyses
Ecological Building - Renewable Energy - Local Water Care
Permaculture - Ecovillage Design
Wilderness, Biodiversity, Earth Restoration
Local Organic Food Production, Consumption and Recirculation

Cultural - Spiritual
Creativity, Personal Unfolding
Spirituality - Finding Divinity within - Uniting with Nature
Celebrating Life - Honoring Cultures - Natural Cycles
Holistic Circulatory - Worldview, Science and Philosophy
Localization, Bioregions - Resisting Globalization

Aloe Vera: The Medicine Plant for the 21st Century from ConsciousChoice.com

When you peruse the literature, it's easy to see why Aloe Vera has earned a reputation as a medicine plant. A dermabrasion study done ten years ago showed that facial wounds healed seventy-two hours faster when aloe vera was added to the polyethylene oxide gel wound dressing. More recently, vascular surgeon Dr. Tyler, M.D. of Louisiana recorded the near-miraculous second chance that aloe vera afforded a diabetic in danger of losing her arm. Aloe Vera also is great for avoiding scarring after reconstruction and facial surgery.

It will take a long time for the US to embrace pedestrians, bicycling, and
electric carts as substitutes for cars in our communities. And yet an
inevitable change is coming that will significantly increase environmental
quality, and restore real community and economic viability. Changing
legislation, master planning, and the development of car-reduced and
car-free communities will move us forward.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

In the last 60 years we have gone from people-centric communities to car-centric lifestyles. We no longer thrive in community-wise American cities, towns and farms, but rather commute to a series of single use destinations via roads and highway systems, fragmenting community and ecology. We are displaced to malls, office parks, big box stores and
suburbs, to the top of a mountain, or across the country. We have surrounded ourselves with a landscape of "going" with no place left "to
be".
...

Read the complete article at http://www.CultureChange.org/go.html?461

You may already know that plastic bags are a byproduct of the petroleum industry!

You decrease Your Oil Consumption and Pollution Output when you take Reusable Shopping Bags when Going to the Store

When you go shopping, bring a canvas or other durable bag with you. Some countries have already enacted a ban against the use of disposable plastic shopping bags. Plastic bags are made from crude oil, thus increasing oil dependence. Also, litter and chemical pollutants result from the disposal of plastic bags. Learn more about these current bans and the problem of plastic bags through this slide show from the Pocono Record.

No More Plastic Bags

Westport, Conn., (Published: September 29, 2008) this month became the latest of a handful of communities to ban some plastic bags. The bags, which have only a brief, useful life, can survive forever in landfills and are of enormous concern to not only environmentalists but local officials who are running out of places to put their trash.

Westport's ordinance will take effect in six months and applies to bags dispensed at checkout counters. Others, like dry cleaning bags, will be exempted. The aim is to reduce litter and encourage customers to tote their groceries in reusable cloth bags.

The town's stand is laudable but will have only a limited effect on what is, after all, a statewide problem. The Connecticut Legislature rebuffed a proposed statewide ban last year. Massachusetts and Maine considered similar bans and also backed down.

Americans use and dispose of at least 100 billion bags every year. Although the plastics industry points out that plastic grocery bags are made more from natural gas than petroleum, natural gas is not a renewable resource and contributes to global warming. And about only 5 percent of all plastic bags are recycled nationwide. The rest end up in the trash, hanging in trees or floating in water where they menace marine life.

There are other possible remedies, including a constructive idea that has taken hold in Ireland. In 2002, Ireland became the first country in the world to impose a tax on plastic bags. Use of the bags dropped by 90 percent, and proceeds from the tax went to environmental causes.

If Ireland is any guide, tax laws may have greater impact on human behavior than recycling laws. Tax law could also be written to apply to an entire state, thus eliminating the need for town-by-town bans.

Countries around the world are taking action to reduce plastic bag use. Bosnia, Ireland, Kenya, Bangladesh and a growing number of American cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento are among many places that have committed to reducing plastic bag use or getting rid of them altogether.

Most recently, the western Indian state of Maharashtra banned the manufacture, sale and use of all types of plastic bags after they choked the drainage systems during recent monsoon rains and caused extensive flooding across the state.

Australia Plastic Bag Phase-Out Has Started in!
It's governments' intention to phase-out the lightweight plastic carry bags used by many retailers by the end of 2008. Many retailers have already started to make the change away from these types of bags.

Action: Call Hershey to ask for more Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate in the US

Earlier this spring, Green Business Network told its members how Cadbury is taking steps to bring more Fair Trade chocolate to Europe via its popular Dairy Milk bar. But there's still no conventional US chocolate company that is stepping up to make Fair Trade Certified™ chocolate widely available on US supermarket shelves.

Green America Business Network members have led the way (companies like Divine, Equal Exchange, Ithaca Fine Chocolates, Sweet Earth Organics, and Theo Chocolates), and it's time for the conventional companies to follow. Hershey needs to take a stand against abusive child labor in the cocoa supply chain, and the best way to do that is to go Fair Trade.

When you call Hershey today, you'll be joining with Fair Trade supporters across the country who want to see US chocolate companies upholding a higher standard for their supply chains. (If you place a call, please e-mail us later and let us know how it went.)

Find phone numbers and a sample calling script "
Find Fair Trade chocoloate companies (and other retailers) in our business network to support "
Download or order our Fair Trade Guide "

Dear EarthTalk: What effects do fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides used on residential lawns or on farms have on nearby water bodies like rivers, streams-or even the ocean for those of us who live near the shore? -- Linda Reddington, Manahawkin, NJ
With the advent of the so-called Green Revolution in the second half of the 20th century-when farmers began to use technological advances to boost yields-synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides became commonplace around the world not only on farms, but in backyard gardens and on front lawns as well.
These chemicals, many of which were developed in the lab and are petroleum-based, have allowed farmers and gardeners of every stripe to exercise greater control over the plants they want to grow by enriching the immediate environment and warding off pests. But such benefits haven't come without environmental costs-namely the wholesale pollution of most of our streams, rivers, ponds, lakes and even coastal areas, as these synthetic chemicals run-off into the nearby waterways.
When the excess nutrients from all the fertilizer we use runs off into our waterways, they cause algae blooms sometimes big enough to make waterways impassable. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom and decompose in a process that removes oxygen from the water. Fish and other aquatic species can't survive in these so-called "dead zones" and so they die or move on to greener underwater pastures.
A related issue is the poisoning of aquatic life. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Americans alone churn through 75 million pounds of pesticides each year to keep the bugs off their peapods and petunias. When those chemicals get into waterways, fish ingest them and become diseased. Humans who eat diseased fish can themselves become ill, completing the circle wrought by pollution.
A 2007 study of pollution in rivers around Portland, Oregon found that wild salmon there are swimming around with dozens of synthetic chemicals in their systems. Another recent study from Indiana found that a variety of corn genetically engineered to produce the insecticide Bt is having toxic effects on non-target aquatic insects, including caddis flies, a major food source for fish and frogs.
The solution, of course, is to go organic, both at home and on the farm. According to the Organic Trade Association, organic farmers and gardeners use composted manure and other natural materials, as well as crop rotation, to help improve soil fertility, rather than synthetic fertilizers that can result in an overabundance of nutrients. As a result, these practices protect ground water supplies and avoid runoff of chemicals that can cause dead zones and poisoned aquatic life.
There is now a large variety of organic fertilizer available commercially, as well as many ways to keep pests at bay without resorting to harsh synthetic chemicals. A wealth of information on growing greener can be found online: Check out OrganicGardeningGuru.com and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Alternative Farming System Information Center, for starters. Those interested in face-to-face advice should consult with a master gardener at a local nursery that specializes in organic gardening.
CONTACTS: CDC, www.cdc.gov; Organic Gardening Guru, www.organicgardeningguru.com; USDA's Alternative Farming System Information Center, www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/ofp/ofp.shtml.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook

"We found that very small reductions in salt intake would have very large health benefits in the U.S. population," said lead researcher Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, who presented the findings at the recent American Heart Association's Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention annual conference, held in Palm Harbor, Fl. Furthermore, Dr. Bibbins-Domingo noted that the benefits would be even greater for African-Americans. "They are more likely to have high blood pressure and their blood pressure is more likely to be sensitive to salt," she said. For example, the study found that by cutting 3 grams of salt a day from our diets, there would be 3 percent fewer deaths. But if African-Americans reduced their salt intake by the same amount, that rate would double to 6 percent fewer deaths from heart disease. According to Dr. Bibbins-Domingo, health organizations recommend 5 to 6 grams of salt a day.

News Release: Slight cut in salt intake would mean fewer heart attacks, deaths www.abcnews.go.com March 12, 2009

Don't wait for the FCC and manufacturers to take action. Co-op America has taken matters into their own hands, and put together a short list of steps that you as a consumer can take to minimize the impact of the digital switch.

1. Check your television. - Many TVs made after 2003 were equipped with digital tuners. Look for a label that says "Integrated Digital Tuner," "Integrated Digital Receiver," "Digital Receiver Built-in," or "Digital Receiver Built-in." If you have a digital tuner already, you're all set.
2. Use a converter box. - If you don't have a digital tuner, a set-top converter box can still keep your TV from becoming e-waste. Each household is eligible to receive two vouchers, valued at $40 each, to use toward purchase of a converter. Check out www.dtv.gov for more information.
3. Recycle your television - If you must purchase a new television, make sure your old one isn't simply carted to a landfill. The Basel Action Network provides a list of recyclers who have pledged not to export hazardous e-waste. Also, Sony is offering a free take-back program for all Sony electronics in the US.
4. Speak out about the e-waste nightmare -- Finally, take our action to tell the FCC that you're concerned about the coming deluge of e-waste that may be triggered by the digital switch. Tell the FCC to require manufacturers to follow Sony's lead and take responsibility for their products throughout their entire life cycles.

BONUS ENERGY-SAVING STEPS: If you must purchase a new television, look for an LCD (liquid crystal display) model, marked with the Energy Star label. LCDs use six times less energy than plasma screen models. You can cut your energy use further by unplugging your TV (and its attached appliances) when you're not watching it; this prevents your electronics from consuming electricity even while not in use.

Please forward this e-mail to all your friends and family. We need as many people as possible to understand how to reduce the impact of the digital switch, and we need a groundswell of pressure on the FCC and the electronics companies to manage the e-waste problem better. Send an e-mail to the FCC today and visit our Responsible Shopper.org to find contact information for major electronics manufacturers, and links to the TV TakeBack campaign.

Also,

Here are 22 steps you can take -- each with the energy savings you can achieve each year. Pick the ones you'll do to get your first 10% energy savings. (These energy savings assume an average US home, which uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year and 19,000 cubic feet of natural gas per year.)

1. Turn off lights you're not using - We even have switchplate reminders for you, downloadable on our Web site. (2% energy savings per year, assuming an average family's energy use)
2. Schedule an energy audit - Your local utility will probably provide an audit for free, and you may also get a more comprehensive audit (saving you more money in the long term) by paying for a whole-house audit. (Up to 50% energy savings per year)
3. Don't heat or cool empty rooms - If there is a room in your house that is rarely used, close off the vents to save on heating and cooling. (Varies by size of room.)
4. Give your dishwasher a rest - Skip the energy-intensive drying cycle on your dishwasher and choose the air-dry option, or open the door for zero-energy dish drying. (5% energy savings per year)
5. Shift your energy load to off-peak hours - Because power sources must produce electricity around the time of use (without capacity for long-term storage) it is our collective peak demand that triggers the building of more polluting power plants. (Varies)
6. Turn off your electronics - If you're going to be away from your computer or other appliance for more than an hour, turn it off. (5% energy savings per year)
7. Eliminate "phantom load" - Many electronics use energy even while turned off, so your best bet is to unplug them when not in use. (5% energy savings per year)
8. Make your fridge more efficient - Keep your refrigerator's coils clean to boost its overall power, and store jugs of water in any empty space inside, because water retains coldness better than air. (4% energy savings per year)
9. Wash clothes in cold water - Your clothes will get just as clean, on half the energy. (7% energy savings per year)
10. Give up your dryer - Hang your clothes to dry on a clothesline or indoor rack. (10% energy savings per year)
11. Plug your air leaks - Energy-efficient heating and cooling systems are wasted when you're leaking out the cool or warm air you're putting in. (5% energy savings per year)
12. Reduce your water use - Simple ways to save water include fixing any leaks and replacing faucets and showerheads with low-flow options. (3% energy savings per year)
13. Cut waste through windows - Properly seal window edges, cover windows with curtains to prevent heat loss, or coat windows with reflective "low-e" films that reduce heat loss while still allowing light to shine through. (10% energy savings per year)
14. Help your hot water heater - Add an insulating cover to reduce heat loss. (1% energy savings per year)
15. Install ceiling fans - Reduce your air conditioner usage with ceiling fans. Look for "Energy Star" models that use 50 percent less energy. (19% energy savings per year)
16. Get a programmable thermostat - Automate when your heating or cooling systems come on to save energy while you sleep or are away from home. (10% energy savings per year)
17. Upgrade your appliances - Look for the "Energy Star," and you may be eligible for a tax break. (3 - 12% energy savings per year)
18. Upgrade your hot water heater - Save energy and space by upgrading to a tankless or solar hot water heater. (14% energy savings per year)
19. Green your roof - Studies have found that a green roof on a typical one-story building can result in a 25 percent reduction in summer cooling needs. (12% energy savings per year)
20. Save energy through landscaping - The US Department of Energy found that the proper placement of as few as three shady trees will save an average household between $100 and $250 in energy costs annually. (12% energy savings per year)
21. Replace your windows - In step 13, we have recommendations for working with the windows you have. Replacing your windows with more energy-efficient versions can save you even more. (14% energy savings per year)
22. Don't waste energy on TV - With the switch to digital TV coming in 2009, many people are buying new, digital-ready TVs. If you must shop for a new television, look for an LCD (liquid crystal display) screen, which uses six times less energy than a plasma screen. (2% energy savings per year)

Third location will bring unique fair trade outlet to Courthouse Square

September 3, 2009 – Indianapolis and Bloomington, Ind. – Global Gifts, which operates two fair trade stores in Indianapolis, will celebrate the grand opening of its third location on September 11 and 12, 2009. The new store, on the Courthouse Square in Bloomington, will feature exclusively fair trade items – gifts, jewelry, textiles, home décor, toys, and instruments, as well as coffee, tea, and chocolate.

Global Gifts offers customers a selection of items from more than 35 countries, most in developing regions around the world. All items are fair trade, meaning they are ethically produced and ethically obtained.

“We are pleased to be opening our third location in Bloomington,” said Sam Carpenter, general manager of Global Gifts. “The Bloomington community has long embraced fair trade, and we are proud to offer conscientious consumers a fully fair trade shopping option in Bloomington as we have been able to do for more than 20 years in Indianapolis.

“It’s also exciting, given today’s retail climate, to be bucking the trend by opening a new store,” Carpenter added. “I believe this shows just how committed the people of central Indiana are to the principles of fair trade, and to supporting those ideals with their purchasing decisions.”

A unique facet of the Bloomington Global Gifts store is that staff will partner with Fair Trade Bloomington to develop a service learning program for Indiana University students. The program, created in collaboration with IU’s Office of Service Learning and the student group Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), will enable students to learn the principles of fair trade enterprise while involving them in the day-to-day operation of Global Gifts Bloomington.

“Fair Trade Bloomington is excited to partner with Global Gifts in opening the store and creating the service learning program,” said Mary Embry, president of Fair Trade Bloomington, SIFE faculty adviser, and member of the Global Gifts board of directors. “This relationship will give IU students the opportunity for hands-on education in the principles of fair trade and how to run a fair trade business.”

Global Gifts Bloomington will celebrate its grand opening Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12 from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Customers can browse fair trade merchandise while enjoying refreshments and live music. Customers will receive a 10% discount on all merchandise.

About Global Gifts

Global Gifts is a fair trade organization with stores in Indianapolis and Bloomington, Indiana. Founded by members of the First Mennonite Church in 1988, Global Gifts celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2008. Global Gifts is a member of the Fair Trade Federation and limits its purchases to vendors who have a proven commitment to fair trade practices. Global Gifts builds long-term relationships with its artisan partners, many of whom might not otherwise be able to reach a market for their products. As a fair trade enterprise, Global Gifts insists on gender equity, no child labor, and safe and healthy working conditions from our artisan partners, plus an emphasis on environmental responsibility and sustainability.

About Fair Trade Bloomington

Fair Trade Bloomington is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing opportunity for those living in Bloomington and nearby to contribute to global economic development and poverty relief through education and promotion of products that adhere to fair trade principles.

Global Gifts … making a difference one purchase at a time

www.globalgiftsindy.com

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:

24 Hour
Internet Marathon

Celebrating
International Day of Peace
and
The Autumnal Equinox
21 September 2009

Over 3,500 locations around the world are
celebrating The International Day of Peace
on the day the sun crosses the equator marking the
beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere

Join the World Peace Prayer Ceremony Internet Marathon
and send prayers for peace to every country on earth!

The Internet Ceremony can be accessed here.

Eco News on WFHB

SMALL THINGS
YOU CAN DO

When you unplug your computer when not in use and your appliances when not in use, you will lower your energy bills and help in reducing wasted electronic energy.

Turn off the water when you're brushing your teeth and take shorter showers for a month and see how much water you will have conserved. Find out what your water footprint is by visiting http://www.Waterfootprint.org.

Health Care

A Pilgrim In Your Body: Energy Healing And Spiritual Process
by Jim Gilkeson

Ancient Chants by Alex Chornyj

If one can truly listen
Thay can hear the sound
Of more than their own voice
Know when to be quiet.
To pick up on sensations
That are only perceptible
At a moment in time
When time seems to stand still.
Not to hear a pindrop
But to be in the presence
Of a far greater occurrence
When one can hear an inaudible life form.
If they are in touch with
A transparent root
An invisible filament
Provides light to a knowing core.
To come out of the darkness
Then perceive higher contact
With those beyond the border
Of a man made fence.
This takes an outlook
That has no boundaries
To experience the endless possibilities
When one thinks outside the box.
Life is limitless
In its scope and spectacles
We are born with more than what we know
We are all part of one sea.
As we're part of one forest
One sky and one earth
No one exists alone
Unless they choose to shut themself off.
My hand is a petal
Or a branch
My ears are like mountains
Or a running stream.
My eyes are like the stars
I absorb the sparkles
We are one and the same
Endowed with a sight from ancient chants.

Submitted for reprint by author

The Spirit Of Love by Deepak Chopra / Common Ground Magazine (commonground.ca)
In the West, what we generally call love is mostly a feeling, not a power. This feeling can be delicious, even ecstatic, but there are many things love is meant to do that feelings cannot. When love and spirit are brought together, their power can accomplish anything. Then love, power and spirit are one. There has never been a spiritual master - not Buddha, Krishna, Christ or Mohammed - who wasn't a messenger of love, and the power of the message has always been awesome. It has changed the world. Perhaps the very immensity of such teachers has made the rest of us reticent. We do not accept the power love can create inside of us and, therefore, we turn our backs on our divine status. Read More

When you volunteer for either of these support positions, you will receive a free Merchant or Practitioner Page Listing and service. In addition to this, as the Classified Ad Manager or Calendar Manager, you will be able to post up to two unique classifieds and calendar listings each month for your product or service, and receive one static, side border banner ad 120 X 60 pix on a page with your directory listing.

Interested, contact us. We request a six month commitment. Send information about yourself, any expertise you may have, and why you think you will be perfect for this job to: Manager at mail.ihhn(at)gmail.com.

Dear EarthTalk: What kind of job opportunities might be opened up by the new federal emphasis on green projects? -- Dick Wetzler, St. Paul, MN

If it's a U.S. industry that has the potential to be cleaner and greener, chances are the Obama administration has already set aside some stimulus money for it. In February 2009, the new president signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. Besides creating jobs, the bill promises to spur American companies to greener heights through investments totaling over $75 billion.
According to Environment America, a federation of state-based environmental advocacy groups, the stimulus package includes $32.8 billion for clean energy projects, $26.86 billion for energy efficiency initiatives and $18.95 billion for green transportation. Some of the key green features of the bill include accelerating the deployment of "smart grid" technology (systems of routing power in ways that optimize energy-efficiency), providing energy efficiency funds for schools, offering support for governors and mayors to beef up energy efficiency in private homes and public buildings, and establishing a new loan guarantee program to help renewable energy producers survive in down economic times.

With the private capital and credit so tight due to the recession, this influx of federal support is vital to help the still fledgling green energy and transportation sectors stay afloat. And most economists agree that it makes good sense to steer away from finite foreign oil toward homegrown renewable energy. Obama has promised the creation of some 500,000 jobs in the nation's burgeoning clean energy sector alone.

"The central facts here are irrefutable: Spending the same amount of money on building a clean energy economy will create three times more jobs within the U.S. than would spending on our existing fossil fuel infrastructure," writes University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin in The Nation. "The transformation to a clean energy economy can therefore serve as a major long-term engine of job creation." Wind turbine engineers, insulation installers, recycling sorters and photovoltaic cell salespeople-along with the businesspersons behind them-can all look forward to bright and potentially lucrative futures.

This view is shared by the Solar Energy Industries Association, which predicts that the stimulus will help create some 119,000 jobs in the American solar sector alone before the end of 2010. Employers from solar cell manufacturers to green building materials retailers to wind farm maintenance firms to recycling haulers to energy auditors will likewise be looking to swell their ranks of employees with relevant skills.
The federal government itself is also in on the recovery effort beyond doling out the money. According to the official Recovery Act website, the General Services Administration's Public Building Service will invest $5.55 billion in federal building projects, "including $4.5 billion to transform federal facilities into exemplary high-performance green buildings, $750 million to renovate and construct new federal offices and courthouses, and $300 million to construct and renovate border stations." About $1 billion worth of projects will be undertaken-a boon for everyone in the building industry, including construction workers, electricians, plumbers, air conditioning mechanics, carpenters, architects and engineers.

CONTACTS: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, www.recovery.gov; Environment America, www.environmentamerica.org; Solar Energy Industries Association, www.seia.org.

We are working with grassroots partners across the country to build an online community for criminal justice reform, networking, and artistic celebration, and we need your help.

This survey is completely anonymous and takes less than four minutes. When you click the final "done" button at the end, you are helping us better understand how technology and media are being used to work for reform of our criminal justice system.

http://ent.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub
.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j
=269534119&u=2905943

We are Thousand Kites, a national dialogue project addressing the U.S. criminal justice system. We are artists located in the central Appalachian coalfields who began to use radio, film, web and theater to address human rights abuses in our region's prisons and with support from folks across the country took the project nationally.

Contact us if you have any questions or suggestions. Thank you for taking the survey and passing it along to your network!

thousandkitesproject@gmail.com
http://ent.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php
?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=269534
119&u=2905944
ph: 606-633-0108

Peace,
Nick Szuberla and Julia Taylor, Thousand Kites Team

We are part of the internationally acclaimed arts organization Appalshop, located in Whitesburg, KY

Papercrete - Paper What?

Whenever I say these two words, papercrete and Ho'oponopono, people often pause and say, "What did you say?" Often they follow with "What's That". Here is a little on papercrete and you can find mor information links on our Green Building Page. I iwll say more on Ho'oponopono after I return from a conference in November.

Okios calls it Induatrial Strength Paper Mache.
Papercrete is a recently developed construction material which consists of re-pulped paper fiber with Portland cement or clay and/or other soil added. First patented in 1928, it has been revived since the 1980s. Although perceived as an environmentally friendly material due to the significant recycled content, this is offset by the presence of cement. The material lacks standardisation, and proper use therefore requires care and experience. Eric Patterson and Mike McCain, who have been ascribed with independently "inventing" papercrete (they called it "padobe" and "fibrous cement"), have both contributed considerably to research into machinery to make it and ways of using it for building. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Papercrete

Well, Papercrete is a material made by pulping used paper. It almost always contains various additives (commonly sand and cement) and is formed or molded to a useable shape. After allowing it to dry for a few weeks, a lightweight and versatile building material results. Structures such as houses, garages, or sheds are common. Some have used it to create remarkable sculptures. It can be very strong in compression and highly insulative. Other forms of papercrete include padobe, fidobe, fibercrete, and fibercement.

We discuss various ingredients included in papercrete mixes, construction of papercrete mixers, and their use and application. Water proofing strategies utilizing stucco, ferrocement, elastomerics, clapboards, shingles, and various other techniques are common topics. Integrating papercrete into construction and building practices as it pertains to concrete and other foundation types, framing, post and beam, electrical, plumbing, HVAC (heating ventilation and air conditioning), roofing, windows, and other aspects of construction are all important factors open to discussion. IBC (International Building Code), local codes, inspections, and related topics are common. Since papercrete architecture includes nearly all architectural styles we have fun discussing that as well. - from the Yahoo Papercreters Group homepage.

http://www.doityourself.com/stry/papercrete

Editor's note: the author has just come out with his excellent book Time's
Up!, joining the Chelsea Green stable of works on sustainability.

How important do you think humans are?

For millennia we have been taught that human beings have a vital almost
divine role in the Great Chain of Being, and to look around the cities
where most of us now live you could indeed be forgiven for thinking that we
are ecologically dominant, if not vital to the functioning of life on
Earth: I think it's about time this was put into some kind of perspective.

Modern human beings, or homo sapiens sapiens, are but one species within
the large order of animals known as mammalia. Enveloping the mammals is the
far larger phylum known as chordata, or animals with stiff spinal rods; but
even the chordata, which also includes all the fish, reptiles and birds
pales into insignificance compared to the rest of the Animal Kingdom, which
is largely ruled by the exoskeletal insects and the writhing omnipresent
worms. A great Kingdom of animals, which just happen to occupy a tiny niche
in the tree of life, alongside the plants and the fungi, not to mention the
slime molds – our surprisingly close relatives.

But, of course, most of life on Earth consists of bacteria and, if you
consider them to be living, viruses. Countless trillions of single-celled
organisms in every spoonful of soil. It seems to make the 6.8 billion human
beings little more than a smudge in the global petri dish; it just happens
that in our civilized manifestation that relatively small number have
become capable of a huge amount of damage. Insignificant, but so very
dangerous.

The Psychosis Of Civilization

Civilized humans are global predators occupying not only the top of the
food chain, but at the very pinnacle of the global energy pyramid. We have
become a ferocious but delicate flower waiting to be blown away in the next
breeze of extinction; yet what do we see as the most important factor in
our role as human beings?

Money.

Our values have become outrageously skewed in favor of whatever most
benefits the onward march of the global economy. We do not see the rise and
fall of habitat viability on the television news, instead we see the rise
and fall of the markets in the capital economy; we do not count species
extinctions in newspaper bar charts, but we urgently count companies going
bust; we do not map the catastrophic breaks in the energy flows between
different parts of an ecosystem, but we do acknowledge every time a budget
airline discontinues a route, or whenever a main road has "severe" delays.
As if it matters.
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Read the complete article at http://www.culturechange.org/go.html?523