THINGS GOTTA CHANGE—old-hat rhetoric? lachrymose echolalia? dyspeptic parroting of unfulfilled election promises? Well, taking an even cursory glance at just about everything driving the news these days, I’d like to reverse polarity and add a positive movement to this rather gruesome mix of new-decade decline-and-fall downerisms ad infinitum.
And I’m going to take Cleveland, and the “Cleveland Model,” as a new and enlightening nexus point, that is, its cooperative spirit, literal co-ops and bright green focus—and, hoop fans, I’m not talking LeBron James, Shaq, turn$tile revenues (green of another sort) and the concomitant full-glaze opiate common of professional sports. This is—drum roll, please—CHANGE TO BELIEVE IN! And I think we’re all ready for a true (a posse ad esse) annus mirabillis. Read More »
WHETHER YOU CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS OR NOT, here are some gift ideas that we think capture the spirit of green without going overboard—in other words, you won’t find a carbon-offset certificate “elegantly” carved into a lump of coal or a solar-powered recycled-materials rabbit hutch/chicken coop “peaceful coexistence” backyard combo shelter (although wouldn’t that be something to set up with a web cam, see in harmonious action and learn from?!—UN, Hopenhageners and world leaders, please take note!).
WILSON REBOUND BASKETBALL “Think globally. Hoop locally.” Hoop it up with Wilson’s first green product, made from 40 percent recycled rubber. The packaging is 80 percent pre- and post-consumer board. A great way to get active and green simultaneously! Read More »
THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT—no, not the latest Hollywood holiday fluff-fest replete with soulless characters, derivative plot points and vapid action, but a sensible way of reckoning the recyclic power of buying local to energize communities—yes, the classic “what goes around comes around.” As BALLE cofounder Michael Shuman writes in The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition, “The future of small business, the future of community vitality and the future of humanity depend on a fundamentally new approach to our local economies. The challenge is to find ways to nurture competitive local alternatives to Wal-Mart that can revitalize our local economies and communities.”
And with the holiday season upon us, what better time to—if you haven’t already— shop and buy local, and keep your cash, and attendant goodwill, recirculating in your community. So rev up that actions-speak-louder-than-words multiplier effect, it’s small-mart time! And I promise no descents into the vagaries of zero-sums and game theory, trade deficits, WTO WTF?!, China, India or, for that matter, droll laissez-faire Milton Friedmanesque spouts. Read More »
“I LIVE IN A PART OF THE COUNTRY that at one time a good farmer could take some pleasure in looking at,” Wendell Berry intones in the opening essay of his new collection, Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009); a little farther down the page he continues, “Now the country is not well farmed, and driving through it has become a depressing experience.” This somber tone-setting essay, “Nature as Measure,” was written 20 years ago. Poet-essayist-novelist Berry—now in his mid-70s and who has farmed a hillside in his native Henry County, Kentucky, for more than 40 years—has had plenty to rail against when it comes to Big Ag, the politics of indifference and our alienating post-industrial age; but he also has had plenty to celebrate in clear-eyed observations of humankind interacting with nature, the value of true hard work (diametrically opposed to the digitally and plutocratically enabled “work” of accumulating phantom wealth) and the rewarding simplicity of sharing, of family, of community.
An out-of-touch cranky neo-luddite screeching for a return to prelapsarian times? Hardly. Berry’s vision is that of a hardy-yet-hoary realist, tinged by both optimism and pessimism (ah, the foibles of humanity!), attempting to show us a path out of our befoulment, a steaming, festering swamp we teeter face-first ever closer toward. And Berry’s prose? Gracefully worn and weathered to a burnished beauty, like a glacier-cast erratic, transfigurative in its straightforward simplicity. Read More »
‘To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd.’ —Wendell Berry
WE’RE AT THE OUTER EDGE OF SUMMER, TEETERING TOWARD FALL, the autumnal equinox mere days away, and celebrating, here in Oregon, another Organically Grown in Oregon Week, now in its twenty-first year. With 425 certified organic farms and organic production covering more than 115,000 acres, Oregon has been a longtime leader in the organic agriculture charge toward sustainability and “good food for all.” And now with an organic vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House (raising a big the-day-has-finally-come HURRAH! from Alice Waters; not so much from Monsanto) and everywhere you turn talk of simple, slow, local, organic and boy, do we ever need to change our nation’s eating habits, let’s hope this movement can gain serious momentum, and requisite backing, to make a real difference in the way food is grown, harvested, sustained and eaten.
As Michael Pollan writes in the introduction to a new collection of essays by Wendell Berry, Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009), “Certainly these are heady days for people who have been working to reform the way Americans grow food and feed themselves—the ‘food movement’ as it is now often called. Markets for alternative kinds of food—local and organic and pastured—are thriving, farmers’ markets are popping up like mushrooms, and for the first time in more than a century the number of farmers tallied in the Department of Agriculture’s census has gone up rather than down.” Read More »
CAN SUSTAINABLE AND FISHING PEACEFULLY COEXIST IN THE SAME SENTENCE? Or are they destined to be oxymoronic combatants forever at odds in obliviously overfished seas, rivers, creeks, streams, lakes, ponds, you name it? Running across a sobering piece about the plight of the hoki by New York Times reporter Bill Broad yesterday brought this debate fresh to mind and got me wondering, Who’s really looking out for life in the sea, and are they having any impact that’s truly quantifiable? (Broad’s story even managed to receive a near-instant rebuttal from the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council—how’s that for muddying the waters from the other side of the planet?!)
With perhaps 20,000 known species of fish swimming around out there, why should we worry about the “ugly” bug-eyed hoki (as described by Broad), a fish, also known as a whiptail, that didn’t even make the cut for inclusion in Richard Ellis’ enthralling Encyclopedia of the Sea (New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 2000)? It turns out that there’s a very good reason for concern, and a fish like the hoki, while certainly not as cute or family friendly as darling Nemo, helps bring overfishing further into the collective public consciousness—that plus the work of many, many diligent NGOs. That’s our bait, now let’s get ready for the tackle! Read More »
ABOUT HALFWAY UP THE LONG BEACH PENINSULA on the southwest Washington coast, in rather unprepossessing territory*, you’ll happen across 