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editor
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 Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 11:05 am Post subject: |
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The Gardening Gamble
Simple do-it-yourself makeovers
from the hit TV show!
Paperback
By Heather Reimer and Betty Yung
| Quote: | About the Show
The Gardening Gamble is reality TV with a green twist. Two sets of friends or families give up control of their gardens and switch homes for the weekend. Each team gets a landscape designer and a carpenter, a budget of $2,000 and two days to transform each other's space. Not only do they not know what is going to happen to their yard, they don't have ANY say... that's the "Gamble!" (-- p. 136) |
An excellent premise that makes the book a great value!
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| Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:31 am Post subject: |
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From Omens and Lucky Charms:
COUNTRY LIFE
Weekly Magazine Subscription
Spectator
The origin of the furies
By Carla Carlisle
Feb. 15/07
| Quote: | On Monday, the 'long-awaited' United Nations report on global warming was published. The result of 2,500 scientists pooling their data, it concluded what everybody but George Bush and Exxon Mobil already knew: that man has truly botched up the planet. Unless we come up with a unity of purpose greater than we've ever achieved, our children are going to pay a terrible price. ...
The UN report was released on the day the first turkeys died in Suffolk. Not that we knew. Nearly a week went by before we heard the news. But by sunset on Saturday, as I shut up my birds, I knew the worst. But it wasn't the 800 dead birds and the prospect of gassing the 160,000 remaining turkeys that caused me to tremble. It was the sight of 27 long sheds stretched across the landscape, and broadcasters calling it a 'farm' in Suffolk. This is no farm, Bernard Matthews is no farmer, and the sheds housing thousands of turkeys are not 'bio-secure' units, but havens for the development of new pandemic viruses.
...
Silent Spring
Paperback
Environmental Classic
By ecology icon Rachel Carson,
the visionary behind the DDT ban
For 30 years, I've carried around my grandfather's copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. A cotton farmer impoverished by the boll weevil, he still stood by Carson: put poison on the fields and you poison the rivers; poison the rivers and you poison the oceans. Carson dedicated her book 'to Albert Schweitzer who said: "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.'"
... I latch onto a few lines in the book's introduction, from a speech by the Duke of Edinburgh in the early 1960s: 'Miners use canaries to warn them of deadly gases. It might not be a bad idea if we took the same warning from the dead birds in our countryside.' (-- p. 100) |
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| Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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Organic Gardening
Magazine Subscription
The Bee Crisis
A dramatic demise of honeybees was widely,
and often inaccurately, reported last spring.
Here are the undisputed facts and what you
can do to help the problem.
Winter, 2007
| Quote: | America's Top Pollinators Are in Crisis
FACT: Scientists estimate that more than 30 per cent the nation's 2.4 million honeybee colonies died out over the fall and winter of 2006-2007.
... forget those rampant Internet rumors that cellphone radiation and/or genetically modified crops are to blame. "There's no evidence to support those at all," states (Pennsylvania State University honeybee expert Maryann) Frazier.
Native Pollinators Are Already Picking Up the Slack
FACT: Native bees are - and always have been - important pollinators of many favorite garden vegetables and fruits. In a lot of cases, they're doing 100 per cent of the work.
... The flowers of tomatoes, eggplant, blueberries, and some other crops keep their pollen encased in tiny tubes. Bumblees and a few other natives hold on and vibrate their flight muscles until the pollen erupts through tiny holes in the tube. "Honeybees can't do this," (James H.)Crane (an entomologist with USDA's Bee Biology and Systematics Lab in Logan, Utah) says. "But it's the only way to pollinate some crops. It's the reason tomato growers bring bumblebees into greenhouses."
... Matthew Shepher, senior conservation associate for the Xerces Society, a Portland, Ore.-based group... "Squash bees get up earlier in the morning than honeybees," he notes. "And orchard mason bees will work in colder, wetter weather."
Organic Gardeners Can Save Native Pollinators
FACT: Suburban backyards and city garden plots support as many native bees as farm fields and forests do, if not more.
"There's a huge opportunity for organic gardeners to make a big difference for bees," Winfree says. "It's a win-win situation."
Chances are you've already got dozens of species whizzing around your flowers and vegetable plot from spring until fall. Natives love backyards. ...
What do bees need from you? A lush flower garden that blooms in three seasons. Some bare ground and/or suitable wood for nesting. Water. And protection from chemical attacks, even organic ones. (-- pgs. 52-55) |
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 1:45 pm Post subject: |
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Animal Farm
A Fairy Story
Papberback
A classic by the great George Orwell
| Quote: | "We were very lucky to get out of Spain alive," George Orwell wrote afterwards. He was not talking about the nearly fatal throat wound he suffered in combat during the Spanish Civil War but about Stalin's murderous political apparatchiks who had gained partial control of the Spanish government by 1937.
He had gone to Spain to fight for that government because he thought it represented political decency, and his belief in the importance of political decency had nearly been the end of him. More or less by chance, he had ended up in a Trotskyist outfit at a time when Stalinists were trying to destroy every trace of Trotsky's contribution to the Russian revolution. These purges were directed from Moscow, but had deadly consequences even in faraway Spain, where Stalin was obstensibly supporting a democratic Spanish government.
"Many of our friends were shot, and others spent a long time in prison or simply disappeared," Orwell recalled in his preface to a 1947 Ukrainian-language edition of Animal Farm.
This narrow escape from the long reach of Moscow-style politics left him alarmed about the gullibility of other well-meaning, decent people in Western Europe. He thought too many decent people in the Western democracies had succumbed to a dangerously romantic view of the Russian revolution that blinded them to Soviet reality.
Communism paid a heavy price for what it did to Orwell in Spain. Out of that experience came Animal Farm. An attack on the myth of the nobility of Soviet communism, Animal Farm became one of the century's most devastating literary acts of political destruction. (From the Preface by Russell Baker, pgs. v-vi) |
| Quote: | Animal Farm
Audio CD
Narrated by former British journalist Ralph Cosham
If his read of 1984 is anything to go by, this must be first rate! |
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| Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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New York Times Magazine
Why Bother?
In a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch - CO2-free and dollar-free.
By Michael Pollan
April 20/08
| Quote: | Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it's one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren't great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can't prove that it will. That, after all, was precisely what happened in Communist Czechoslovakia and Poland, when a handful of individuals like Vaclav Havel and Adam Michnik resolved that they would simply conduct their lives "as if" they lived in a free society. That improbable bet created a tiny space of liberty that, in time, expanded to take in, and then help take down, the whole of the Eastern bloc.
So what would be a comparable bet that the individual might make in the case of the environmental crisis? Havel himself has suggested that people begin to "conduct themselves as if they were to live on this earth forever and be answerable for its condition one day." Fair enough, but let me propose a slightly less abstract and daunting wager. The idea is to find one thing to do in your life that doesn't involve spending or voting, that may or may not virally rock the world but is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards. Maybe you decide to give up meat, an act that would reduce your carbon footprint by as much as a quarter. Or you could try this: determine to observe the Sabbath. For one day a week, abstain completely from economic activity: no shopping, no driving, no electronics.
But the act I want to talk about is growing some - even just a little - of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don't - if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade - look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it's one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.
... At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. (emphasis added) ... (--pgs. 23, 88) |
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:38 am Post subject: |
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Harrowsmith Country Life
Magazine Subscription
World's First Vertical Farm
Sin City rolls dice on 30-storey food factory
Compiled by Jason Santerre
April, 2008
| Quote: | What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. And that goes double (or nothing) for the city's vegetables. The desert playground's neon glare is taking on a "green" hue as state officials gamble on an image makeover, from giddy excess and wastefulness to "sustainability and environmental awareness." The first major step involves the construction of a 30-storey building just off the Strip. No, not another casino. This time developers are breaking ground on the world's first vertical farm.
The US $200-million building is designed to grow enough food for 72,000 locals and tourists every year. Dickson Despommier, a professor at New York's Columbia University and a designer with Sun Works, an eco-friendly engineering firm, says the time is right. After all, the world's population - 60 per cent of which lives near or in an urban centre - will exceed 9 billion by 2050. Despommier imagines a future when skylines are dotted with skyscraper farms. "Each will grow enough crops to feed its citizens without weather or pests ever being a factor."
The plan is to grow each crop using hydroponics, whereby the plant travels along a conveyor belt, passing beneath grow lights and automated nutrient-delivery systems. Genetically modified strains could come into play with regard to certain fussier crops, but the details still have to be finalized. Some aspects are certain, especially in cities other than Las Vegas. For instance, less land is needed in vertical farming. Depending on the crop, one indoor acre is equivalent to six outdoor acres. Vertical farming should also reduce fossil fuel consumption: No more tractors, heavy machinery or 18-wheelers used in shipping. The controlled environment is said to help eliminate herbicides and pesticides.
And what about irrigation? Despommier says water will come from filtered sewage and "evapo-transpiration," a natural process that collects water vapour from condensation from the plants; leaves. When it comes to real estate, vertical farms can go up on unused or even condemned lots.
The initial costs of the world's first vertical farm is high, but planners says it will generate an annual revenue of US $25 million through produce sold to the city's myriad restaurants and hotels, and another US $15 million from tourists. "It should be as profitable as a casino with operating expenses being $ US 6 million a year." The farm is said to open its doors in 2010. (-- p. 80) |
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| Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:49 pm Post subject: |
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Good Poems
Hardcover
Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor
| Quote: | How to See Deer
Philip Booth
Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,
lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
Next to deep woods
inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,
and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always,
find your luck slowly.
Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;
make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,
drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen
trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.
You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to
new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;
as if it were dusk
look into light falling:
in deep relief
things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.
(From Part 10, Beasts, pgs. 245-246) |
| Quote: | 3 doz. poems
Audio CD
Selected and narrated beautifully by Keillor
Years of radio have perfected the clarion Keillor delivery! A joy! |
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| Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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The Great Warming
Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
Hardcover
By Brian Fagan
| Quote: | Southern England, Fall, A.D. 1200. The chilly mist hangs low over the treetops. A pervasive drizzle drifts across the plowed strips, misting the weathered faces of the two men sowing wheat from canvas seed bags slung around their necks. Snub-nosed and tousle-haired, they are barefoot, clothed in dirty, belted tunics and straw hats, swinging effortlessly to and fro, casting seed across the shallow furrows. Behind them, an ox-drawn harrow, a square wooden frame with wooden spikes pointing into the earth, covers the newly planted seed. As one strip is sown, the men move on to the next, for time is short. They must plant before heavy autumn rains can wash the seed from the earth.
The routine of planting, learned in childhood, is as unchanging as the passage of the seasons. Older men remember cold, dreary days when even a sheepskin cloak could not keep out the pervasive chill. They also recall years when the sun blazed down from a cloudless sky, the heat shimmering above the fields. These were times when the village gambled that it would rain and planted anyhow. Sometimes, the bet paid off. All too often, it did not. When it didn't, there would be hunger the following year. (Opening paragraphs of Chapter 1, A Time of Warming, pgs. 1-2) |
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| Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 1:16 pm Post subject: |
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Sonnets to Orpheus
Hardcover
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Edward Snow
Bilingual Edition
| Quote: | 21
Spring has come again. The earth
is like a child who knows poems by heart;
many, so many! ... For the work
of such long learning, she wins the prize.
Her teacher was demanding. We'd grown fond
of the white in the old man's beard.
Now when we ask what the green and the blue are:
she can tell us, she knows, she knows!
Earth, lucky earth, on holiday play
with the children now. We want to catch you,
happy earth. And the luckiest will.
What her teacher taught her! So many things,
and what's imprinted in the roots and on the long
difficult stems: she sings it, she sings!
Fruhling is t wiedergekommen. Die Erde
ist wie ein Kind, das Gedichte weiB;
viele, o viele...Fur die Beschwerde
langen Lernens bekommt sie den Preis.
Streng war ihr Lehrer. Wir mochten das WeiBe
an dem Barte des alten Manns.
Nun, wie das Grune, das Blaue heiBe,
durfen wir fragen: sie kanns, sie kanns!
Erde, die frei hat, du gluckliche, spiele
nun mit den Kindern. Wir wollen dich fangen,
frohliche Erde. Dem Frohsten gelingts.
O, was der Lehrer sie lehrte, das Viele,
und was gedruckt steht in Wurzeln und langen
schwierigen Stammen: sie singts, sie singts!
(From First Part, pgs. 46-47) |
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| Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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Pigs Have Wings
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Empress of Blandings was the apple of Lord Emsworth's eye. Twice in successive years winner in the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, she was confidently expected this year to triumph for the third time, provided - always provided - that this Parsloe, who owned her closest rival, Pride of Matchingham, did not hatch some fearful plot for her undoing.
Two years before, by tempting him with his gold, this sinister Baronet had lured away into his own employment Lord Emsworth's pig man, the superbly gifted George Cyril Wellbeloved, and it was the opinion of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's younger brother, strongly expressed, that this bit of sharp practice was to be considered just a preliminary to blacker crimes. a mere flexing of the muscles, as it were, preparatory to dishing out the real rough stuff. ...
'Parsloe!' he said. 'I've known young Parsloe since we were both in the early twenties, and he was always so crooked he sliced bread with a corkscrew. When they saw Parsloe coming in the old days, strong men used to wince and hide their valuables. That's the sort of fellow he was, and you can't tell me he's any different now. You watch that pig of yours like a hawk, Clarence, or before you know where you are, this fiend in human shape will be slipping pineapple bombs into her bran mash.' ...
The Empress lived in a bijou residence not far from the kitchen garden, and when Lord Emsworth arrived at her boudoir she was engaged, as pretty nearly always when you dropped in on her, in hoisting into her vast interior those fifty-seven thousand and eight hundred calories on which Whiffle insists. Monica Simmons, the pig girl, had done her well in the way of barley meal, maize meal, linseed meal, potatoes, and separated buttermilk, and she was digging in and getting hers in a manner calculated to inspire the brightest confidence in the bosoms of her friends and admirers. ...
'Hullo, Clarence!' he said. 'The old heart seems a bit bowed down. What's the matter? Not brooding on that incident at the Emsworth Arms, are you?'
'Eh? Incident? What incident was that?'
'Has no word of it reached your ears? I had it from Beach, who had it from the scullery maid, who had it from the chauffeur. It appears that that butler of Parsloe's - Binstead is his name, I believe - was swanking about in the tap room of the Emsworth Arms last night, offering five to one on Parsloe's pig.'
Lord Emsworth stared.
'On Pride of Matchingham? The fellow's insane. How can Pride of Matchingham possibly have a chance against the Empress?' ... (-- pgs. 8-17) |
How indeed!
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| Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 10:39 am Post subject: |
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From the Fighting Irish:
Door Into the Dark
Hardcover
By Seamus Heaney
| Quote: | The Outlaw
Kelly's kept an unlicensed bull, well away
From the road: you risked fine but had to pay
The normal fee if cows were serviced there.
Once I dragged a nerous Friesian on a tether
Down a lane of alder, shaggy with catkin,
Down to the shed the bull was kept in.
I gave Old Kelly the clammy silver, though why
I could not guess. He grunted a curt 'Go by
Get up on that gate'. And from my lofty station
I watched the business-like conception.
The door, unbolted, whacked back against the wall.
The illegal sire fumbled from his stall
Unhurried as an old steam engine shunting.
He circled, snored and nosed. No hectic panting,
Just the unfussy ease of a good tradesman;
The an awkward, unexpected jump, and
His knobbled forelegs straddling her flank,
He slammed life home, impassive as a tank,
Dropping off like a tipped-up load of sand.
'She'll do,' said Kelly and tapped his ash-plant
Across his hindquarters. 'If not, bring her back.'
I walked ahead of her, the rope now slack
While Kelly whooped and prodded his outlaw
Who, in his own time, resumed the dark, the straw.
(-- pgs. 16-17) |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:27 pm Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
Divots
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | "I understand and approve of your horror," said the Oldest Member, gently. "But you must bear in mind that Jenkinson's is not an ordinary case. You know and I know scores of men who have never broken a hundred and twenty in their lives, and yet contrive to be happy, useful members of society. However badly they may play, they are able to forget. But with Jenkinson it is different. He is not one of those who can take it or leave it alone. His only chance of happiness lies in complete abstinence. Jenkinson is a goof."
"A what?"
"A goof," repeated the Sage. "One of those unfortunate beings who have allowed this noblest of sports to get too great a grip upon them, who have permitted it to eat into their souls, like some malignant growth. The goof, you must understand, is not like you and me. He broods. He becomes morbid. His goofery unfits him for the battles of life. Jenkinson, for example, was once a man with a glowing future in the hay, corn, and feed business, but a constant stream of hooks, tops and slices gradually made him so diffident and mistrustful of himself, that he let opportunity after opportunity slip, with the result that other, sterner, hay, corn, and feed merchants passed him in the race. Every time he had the chance to carry through some big deal in hay, or to execute some flashing coup in corn and feed, the fatal diffidence generated by a hundred rotten rounds would undo him. I understand his bankruptcy may be expected at any moment." (From The Heart of a Goof, pgs. 16-17) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 11:02 am Post subject: |
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Red Bird
Hardcover
By Mary Oliver
| Quote: | I don't want to live a small life
I don't want to live a small life. Open your eyes,
open your hands. I have just come
from the berry fields, the sun
kissing me with its golden mouth all the way
(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds
following along thinking perhaps I might
feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes
only to you. Look how many how small
but so sweet and maybe the last gift
I will ever bring to anyone in this
world of hope and risk, so do.
Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.
(-- p. 67) |
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| Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:17 am Post subject: |
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Plan B 3.0
Mobilizing to Save Civilization
Paperback
By Lester R. Brown
| Quote: | Saudi Arabia, a country of 25 million people, is as water-poor as it is oil-rich. Relying heavily on subsidies, it developed an extensive irrigated agriculture based largely on its deep fossil aquifer. After several years of supporting wheat prices at five times the world market level, the government was forced to face fiscal reality and cut the subsidies. Its wheat harvest dropped from a high of 4.1 million tons in 1992 to 2.7 million tons in 2007, a drop of 34 percent.
Craig Smith writes in the New York Times, "From the air, the circular wheat fields of this arid land's breadbasket look like forest green poker chips strewn across the brown desert. But they are outnumbered by the ghostly silhouettes of fields left to fade back into the sand, places where the kingdom's gamble of agriculture has sucked precious aquifers dry." Some Saudi farmers are now pumping water from wells that are 4,000 feet deep, nearly four fifths of a mile or 1.2 kilometres. (footnotes omitted) (From Emerging Water Shortages, p. 73) |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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From Loaded Dice:
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
President Obama must say no to farmers
'Farmers were the political allies of the President, so nothing could interrupt the subsidy bonanza'
Agromenes Countryside crusader
Jan. 28/09
| Quote: | ... The indications are ominous. Agricultural exporting has long been an important factor in US economic life. Huge private companies such as ConAgra, Archer Daniels and Cargill dominate the food markets of the world. Yet, most people are unaware of the significant role that farming plays in the American balance of payments. Nor do they know how closely aligned are the politicians and the farm lobby in successive administrations. Together, they have successfully blamed the EU for protectionism, as they themselves run a much more extensive agricultural support system. A panoply of taxes and duties, subsidies and exclusions keep imports out of their markets and support their exports in ours. The Farm Bill is the apotheosis of pork-barrel politics. Well-briefed and well-breeched lobbyists descend upon Washington pressing for ever-greater handouts to the industry and ever-stronger protection from imports.
Under George W. Bush, those calls were answered more generously than ever before. In addition to the usual agricultural subsidies, and fortified by the appeal to national security, those who wanted to grow energy rather than food were richly rewarded. As a result, a huge American biofuels inudstry has burgeoned - landing subsidized oil in Europe at a price that undercut all our home production. At the same time, the US excluded much of the far cheaper ethanol and diesel exported from Brazil. Farmers from the corn belt were the political alies of the President, and nothing was allowed to interrupt the subsidy bonanza. Their votes were necessary to prop up remaining Republican electoral hopes.
We might have expected President Obama to steer a different course. His concern about climate change should have led him to recognise the unsustainability of biofuels produced in Iowa. His support for the poor in Africa should have alerted him to the damage done to indigenous agriculture by subsidy in the US and EU. That recession should have ensured that he would look to cut the wasteful, politically motivated, expenditure of his predecessor. All logic would point to radical reform - forcing reciprocal action in the EU.
Sadly, we will get none of it. Already, the new Secretary for Agriculture has been appointed. He is from Iowa - a pork-barrel state in receipt of huge amounts of agricultural subsidies. Secretary Vilsack fervently backs the biofuels industry for which President Obama was forced to declare his continued support during the election. So, the whole grisly dance could begin again. The US farmers pushing for yet more support; the administration demonising Europe; the EU demanding equal cuts across the board; British politicians, not knowing about the huge US subsidies, siding with the US; the EU forced to give way; yet more EU markets and jobs lost to the subsidised American industry. ... (-- p. 36) |
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