I’m busy in my balcony garden planting flowers, herbs and Italian pole beans to go with my grapevine and pear tree. I love this video so I’m passing it on . . . enjoy . . . more soon . . . swan . . .
Gardening for the End of the Oil Age
. . . eat the view!
I made a mistake. When I first started following the story of the Global Seed Vault I was intrigued. I watched as they built a very technologically advanced vault in the permafrost on the Norweigan island of Svalbard north of the Arctic circle. I noted that one of the sponsors of the site was the Global Crop Diversity Trust. I looked over their website and it looked like an okay non-profit organization but I didn’t look deep enough.
Remember the green revolution?
The Green Revolution started in 1943. Financed by the Rockefeller Foundation it propagated cutting-edge US agricultural technology, dwarf grain varieties, petrochemical fertilizers and large-scale irrigation systems throughout much of Latin America and Southeast Asia. The effect was a boom for agribiz and devastation for small-scale farmers who could not afford the initial investment in seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation projects. The environmental and social costs of this “revolution” are now well-known. In The Fatal Harvest Reader, Jason McKenney describes how petrochemicals literally change the physical structure of soils, making them less efficient at storing water, air, and nutrients. Heavy reliance on irrigation compromises arable land through the process of salinification, salts building up in over-watered soil. And then there is the cost to the environment and human health from the toxic pesticides and burning of fossil fuels in farm machinery and transport vehicles.
Unfortunately, the Global Seed Vault is backed by the same people who brought us this fatal harvest. Except this time they are pushing the technology of genetic modification - which is why the seed vault is key.
GMOs represent another technical fix dreamed up by outside “experts” and marketed by transnational agribusiness giants.
I noticed as the publicity ramped up that the seed vault was being sold on fear. It was being called the “Doomsday Vault,” supposedly able to withstand catastrophic disasters of all kinds. The real catastrophe is that they are trying to control the food supply in the name of “protecting” us. Seeds do not need to be in deep storage, available only to the “scientists” who manipulate the genes so that we have franken-food with untested effects on future generations and farmers who can be sued by the likes of Monsanto if Monsanto’s seeds drift into the farmer’s fields and contaminate the farmer’s crops (yes, this really happened).
Seeds need to be used, planted every year so they can adapt to changing climate conditions. Besides seeds get old. The germination rate goes down every year and after a few years they will not produce any more. The seeds in the vault are not seeds that you and I could go get and plant in our gardens. They are genetic material for people who want to experiment on them - and us.
I wish I could believe that Global Crop Diversity Trust was a righteous organization but given the fact that Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Chemical and Pioneer are direct sponsors of the project I do not have much trust.
For myself, I’m counting on the local farmers, my friends at Seeds of Change and grassroots seed savers all over the world.
I found out from reading Restoring Mayberry,
a blog by Brian Kaller, a journalist in County Kildare, Ireland, that the Irish Seed Savers is the only organization supplying seeds to farms and gardens in Europe other than those imported from the Third World and Australia which means they are grown (and adapted to) places far, far away from the people who actually grow them. If anything were to happen to transportation, or to the harvest in faraway countries, Seed Savers would be the lifeline for 500 million people.
The solution to the food crisis exists, and is being fought for in many communities. It is called food sovereignty. Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers from 56 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
Saving your seeds is a very satisfying thing to do. Seeds of change has an excellent rundown on how to do it for us ordinary gardeners here.
Sometimes lately I’ve thought about that line from a Paul Simon song, “miracles and wonder,” and surely seeing Pete Seeger up there at 89 years old still singing “This Land is Your Land” qualifies. That man was singing when I was born - and I have eleven grandchildren and one great grandchild! Talk about a bridge between generations.
I’ve always loved folk music. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, folk festivals and fairs . . . I was young in the early sixties. I was a bridge, too. I have been in large gatherings out in the natural world, away from cities, where cynicism and divisiveness fell away and people came together in harmony with each other and the forces of nature, for the music and the sharing and the healing. And I’ve watched with sorrow as many of these gatherings have become polluted with despair and violence.
Then I watched as the group dynamic changed and people began to protest what was happening in the world, from the protests against the WTO raping the planet to the environmental justice groups taking on the silent deadly enemies of chemical pollution, the sickness that hides in a cookie or a child’s toy or your next breath of air. Now I see people coming together with slow food, farmer’s markets, and home gardens.
And local self-sufficiency. Austin, Texas is about to put up the country’s largest solar array! Imagine that. We have learned the hard way about nuclear power plants (nuclear waste? what nuclear waste? ooops, sorry, grandkids . . .), got slapped down about coal and we’re too close here in Texas to the source of oil (and refinery stink) to kid ourselves about the future of oil. Say, did you see where Exxon just made a record $45 billion quarterly profit while the economy tanked by 3.8%? Who are they kidding? Out of which pocket into which pocket?
Thirty years ago some of us were publishing well researched articles about the environmental and economic advantages of solar. We had the solar technology then. All we needed to do was develop it. I’m sorry we had to go down this long dark road to get here but I’m glad we have finally arrived.
And now here we are. Pete’s been singing “This Land is Your Land” all this time and I guess our land has been what we made of it but it did my heart good to hear him sing - can you believe it at 89 years old! - at Obama’s inauguration. This is a really cool video of him and it shows Obama listening to him, too. (If you are getting this in an email, go to http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com and watch it).
Seeger’s grandson reported that Obama spoke to Seeger after the performance and asked him how he stayed so fit and Seeger told him that he lives in the woods and chops and carries his own firewood . . . chopping wood, carrying water . . . where have I heard that before . . .
I have been reading accounts of people who were there in the mall for the inauguration on January 20. Two million people! Freezing in the cold. People from all over the country came just to be there. They were jammed in there for hours and everyone says there were no complaints, no “incidents” - just joy, joy and tears of joy.
People all over the world feel that change is coming. It’s not just Barack Obama. He is there because we - collectively - were ready for him to be there. The most promising thing to me was when Bush was booed. The very proper British boo unpopular members of Parliament all the time. To them that’s honest self-expression. I was glad to hear some honest self-expression here.
People in the crowd describe how everyone watched intently (and silently) while the helicopter carrying Bush flew over and disappeared. When it had become just a dot on the horizon, wild cheering broke out. I guess you have to thoroughly reject what you don’t want before you can completely rejoice in what you do want.
Every day now the new world is taking place and there are opportunities for everyone to participate.
Change.org is a social action network where you can learn about causes, connect to other people and organizations and take action.
The Whitehouse now has a website with a Office of Public Liaison where you can send your comments directly to the Whitehouse. The little box for the comments right now is limited to 500 characters but they promise to offer more ways to communicate soon. I believe that it makes a difference to comment and sign petitions. I’ve been doing it for years and I have noticed that when a lot of people email/send petitions/phone-in on an issue, it does have an impact. After all they do work for us and have to be elected by the us, the voters, at regular intervals, remember?
Another way to communicate with your public servants is through govit.com - “a nonpartisan website built by a regular citizen to help you interact with the government and each other.” I found this one through the Born Again American website. If country music and flag waving gets your passion going, this video is the one for you: http://bornagainamerican.org
Actually it’s cool to watch anyway just to see all the different musicians and the lyrics are radical - check it out. The website says “The Born Again American movement is committed to the rebirth of American citizenship through informed and thoughtful activism.” It’s a very interactive site. You can share your story by remixing your own videos and photos into the Born Again American music video. Then you can upload a video of yourself singing them and remix it into the music video using the Remix America Editor. That sounds fun. There’s even a contest and the winners will be determined by a panel which includes Norman Lear and Keith Carradine.
So, let’s get on our soapbox, keyboard, video cam or microphone and build our new world.
Since 2003, Starhawk has been visiting Palestine and participating in the International Solidarity Movement monitoring and writing about the situation there. In this post on December 30, she clarifies some of the issues and offers a radical solution:
On Gaza
by Starhawk
December 30, 2008
All day I’ve been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR, following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I’ve been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant, open-air prison.
The Israeli ambassador speaks movingly of the terror felt by Israeli children as Hamas rockets explode in the night. I agree with him-that no child should have her sleep menaced by rocket fire, or wake in the night fearing death.
But I can’t help but remember one night on the Rafah border, sleeping in a house close to the line, watching the children dive for cover as bullets thudded into the walls. There was a shell-hole in the back room they liked to jump through into the garden, which at that time still held fruit trees and chickens. Their mother fed me eggs, and their grandmother stuffed oranges into my pockets with the shy pride every gardener shares.
That house is gone, now, along with all of its neighbors. Those children wake in the night, every night of their lives, in terror. I don’t know if they have survived the hunger, the lack of medical supplies, the bombs. I only know that they are children, too.
I’ve ridden on busses in Israel. I understand that gnawing fear, the squirrely feeling in the pit of your stomach, how you eye your fellow passengers wondering if any of them are too thick around the middle. Could that portly fellow be wearing a suicide belt, or just too many late night snacks of hummus? That’s no way to live.
But I’ve also walked the pock-marked streets of Rafah, where every house bears the scars of Israeli snipers, where tanks prowled the border every night, where children played in the rubble, sometimes under fire, and this was all four years ago, when things were much, much better there.
And I just don’t get it. I mean, I get why suicide bombs and homemade rockets that kill innocent civilians are wrong. I just don’t get why bombs from F16s that kill far more innocent civilians are right. Why a kid from the ghetto who shoots a cop is a criminal, but a pilot who bombs a police station from the air is a hero.
Is it a distance thing? Does the air or the altitude confer a purifying effect? Or is it a matter of scale? Individual murder is vile, but mass murder, carried out by a state as an aspect of national policy, that’s a fine and noble thing?
I don’t get how my own people can be doing this. Or rather, I do get it. I am a Jew, by birth and upbringing, born six years after the Holocaust ended, raised on the myth and hope of Israel. The myth goes like this:
“For two thousand years we wandered in exile, homeless and
persecuted, nearly destroyed utterly by the Nazis. But out of that
suffering was born one good thing-the homeland that we have come back
to, our own land at last, where we can be safe, and proud, and
strong.”
That’s a powerful story, a moving story. There’s only one problem with it-it leaves the Palestinians out. It has to leave them out, for if we were to admit that the homeland belonged to another people, well, that spoils the story.
The result is a kind of psychic blind spot where the Palestinians are concerned. If you are truly invested in Israel as the Jewish homeland, the Jewish state, then you can’t let the Palestinians be real to you. It’s like you can’t really focus on them. Golda Meir said, “The Palestinians, who are they? They don’t exist.” We hear, “There is no partner for peace,” “There is no one to talk to.”
And so Israel, a modern state with high standards of hygiene, a state rooted in a religion that requires washing your hands before you eat and regular, ritual baths, builds settlements that don’t bother to construct sewage treatment plants. They just dump raw sewage onto the Palestinian fields across the fence, somewhat like a spaceship ejecting its wastes into the void. I am truly not making this up-I’ve seen it, smelled it, and it’s a known though shameful fact. But if the Palestinians aren’t really real-who are they? They don’t exist!-then the land they inhabit becomes a kind of void in the psyche, and it isn’t really real, either. At times, in those border villages, walking the fencelines of settlements, you feel like you have slipped into a science fiction movie, where parallel universes exist in the same space, but in different strands of reality, that never touch.
When I was on the West Bank, during Israeli incursions the Israeli military would often take over a Palestinian house to billet their soldiers. Many times, they would simply lock the family who owned it into one room, and keep them there, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days parents, grandparents, kids and all. I’ve sat with a family, singing to the children while soldiers trashed their house, and I’ve been detained by a group of soldiers playing cards in the kitchen with a family locked in the other room. (I got out of that one-but that’s another story.)
It’s a kind of uneasy feeling, having something locked away in a room in your house that you can’t look at. Ever caught a mouse in a glue trap? And you can’t bear to watch it suffer, so you leave the room and close the door and don’t come back until it’s really, really dead.
Like a horrific fractal, the locked room repeats on different scales. The Israelis have built a wall to lock away the West Bank. And Gaza itself is one huge, locked room. Close the borders, keep food and medical supplies and necessities from getting through, and perhaps they will just quietly fade out of existence and stop spoiling our story.
“All we want is a return to calm,” the Israeli ambassador says. “All we want is peace.”
One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.
But attempts to exterminate pests breed resistance, whether you’re dealing with insects or bacteria or people. The more insecticides you pour on a field, the more pests you have to deal with-because insecticides are always more potent at killing the beneficial bugs than the pesky ones.
The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there’s a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.
It’s this-instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.
Of course, to follow such a strategy, you must actually see and know your enemy. If they are nothing to you but cartoon characters of terrorists, you will not be able to tell one from another, to discern the religious fanatic from the guy muttering under his breath, “F-ing Hammas, they closed the cinema again!”
And you must be willing to give something up. No one gets peace if your basic bargaining position is, “I get everything I want, and you eat my shit.” You might get a temporary victory, but it will never be a peaceful one.
To know and see the enemy, you must let them into the story. They must become real to you, nuanced, distinctive as individuals. But when we let the Palestinians into the story, it changes. Oh, how painfully it changes! For there is no way to tell a new story, one that includes both peoples of the land, without starting like this:
“In our yearning for a homeland, in our attempts as a threatened and
traumatized people to find safety and power, we have done a great
wrong to another people, and now we must atone.”
Just try saying it. If you, like me, were raised on that other story, just try this one out. Say it three times. It hurts, yes, but it might also bring a great, liberating sense of relief with it.
And if you’re not Jewish, if you’re American, if you’re white, if you’re German, if you’re a thousand other things, really, if you’re a human being, there’s probably some version of that story that is true for you.
Out of our own great need and fear and pain, we have often done great harm, and we are called to atone. To atone is to be at one-to stop drawing a circle that includes our tribe and excludes the other, and start drawing a larger circle that takes everyone in.
How do we atone? Open your eyes. Look into the face of the enemy, and see a human being, flawed, distinct, unique and precious. Stop killing. Start talking. Compost the shit and the rot and feed the olive trees.
Act. Cross the line. There are Israelis who do it all the time, joining with Palestinians on the West Bank to protest the wall, watching at checkpoints, refusing to serve in the occupying army, standing for peace. Thousands have demonstrated this week in Tel Aviv.
There are Palestinians who advocate nonviolent resistance, who have organized their villages to protest the wall, who face tear gas, beatings, arrests, rubber bullets and real bullets to make their stand.
There are internationals who have put themselves on the line-like the boatload of human rights activists, journalists and doctors on board the Dignity, the ship from the Free Gaza movement that was rammed and fired on by the Israeli navy yesterday as it attempted to reach Gaza with humanitarian aid.
Maybe we can’t all do that. But we can all write a letter, make a phone call, send an email. We can make the Palestinian people visible to us, and to the world. When we do so, we make a world that is safer for every child.
Below is a good summary of some of the actions we can take. Please feel free to repost this. In fact, send it to someone you think will disagree with it.
– Starhawk
Updated Action Alert on Gaza:
We Need “Sustained, Determined Political Action”
December 29, 2008
As of this writing, a third consecutive day of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed an estimated 315 Palestinians and injured more than 1,400. According to the UN, at least 51 of the victims were civilians and 8 were children. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has vowed ominously “a war to the bitter end.”
Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip are being carried out with F16 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, and naval gunboats all given to Israel by the United States with our tax dollars.
From 2001-2006, the United States transferred to Israel more than $200 million worth of spare parts to fly its fleet of F16’s and more than $100 million worth of helicopter spare parts for its fleet of Apaches. In July 2008, the United States gave Israel 186 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel and signed a contract to transfer an addition $1.9 billion worth of littoral combat ships to the Israeli navy. Last year, the United States signed a $1.3 billion contract with Raytheon to transfer to Israel thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and “bunker buster” missiles.
Make no mistake about it-Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip would not be possible without the jets, helicopters, ships, missiles, and fuel provided by the United States.
Information for action — you can go directly to two websites:
And United for Peace and Justice and get to working links.
You can email Obama or post comments at http://change.gov/.
Ali Abunimah, of The Electronic Intifada, wrote, “Palestinians everywhere are asking for solidarity, real solidarity, in the form of sustained, determined political action.” In light of our country’s enabling role in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, it is the least we can do. Here’s how:
1. Attend a protest or vigil, or organize one yourself.
2. Contact the White House, the State Department, your Representative and Senators, and the Obama Transition Team to protest Israel’s war on Gaza and demand an immediate cease-fire.
White House: 202-456-1111 or comments@whitehouse.gov
State Department: 202-647-6575
Congress: 202-224-3121
3. Make your voice heard in the media. Contact your local media by phoning into a talk show or writing a letter to the editor.
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4. Tell President-Elect Barack Obama that we need a change in Israel/Palestine policy.
5. Sign up to organize people in your community to end U.S. military aid to Israel.
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6. Come to Washington, DC for Inauguration Day on January 20. Upwards of 4 million people are expected in Washington, DC for President-Elect Obama’s inauguration. This is a perfect time for us to reach out to and educate our fellow citizens about U.S. policy toward Palestine/Israel.
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7. Join Democracy in Action in Washington, DC for a Grassroots Advocacy Training and Lobby Day on February 1-2.
Interfaith Peace-Builders and the US Campaign are organizing this exciting two-day event, featuring interactive, skills-building workshops and the chance to meet with your Representative and Senators to discuss U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine. Spaces are filling up fast.
Starhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of The Earth Path, as well as Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, The Fifth Sacred Thing; and eight other books on feminism, politics and earth-based spirituality. She teaches Earth Activist Trainings that combine permaculture design and activist skills, and works to offer training and support for mobilizations around global justice and peace issues.
Copyright (c) 2008, 2009 by Starhawk. All rights reserved. This copyright protects Starhawk’s right to future publication of her work. Nonprofit, activist, and educational groups may circulate this essay (forward it, reprint it, translate it, post it, or reproduce it) for nonprofit uses. Please do not change any part of it without permission. Readers are invited to visit the web site: www.starhawk.org.
Now that a lot of people are into backyard gardening, the next thing that comes to mind is “why not have a few chickens, too?” Since many cities have laws about not keeping livestock, there is actually an underground urban chicken movement. As you can imagine, trying to keep a yard-full of cluckers and squawkers quiet is pretty hard to do. Let’s not even talk about the cock-a-doodle-do at 5 AM. But now thanks to grassroots activist groups like Backyard Chickens more cities from Maine to Colorado are passing ordinances to allow a small number of legal hens in the yard.
When you grow your own, buy local, go to a farmer’s market or join a community supported agriculture cooperative (where you pay a set amount at the beginning of the season and get a boxful of farm grown veggies and fruit every week) farm-fresh eggs - or backyard-fresh eggs - just make it better.
It also makes it possible to not go to WalMart for your food.
In this urban apartment where I live, most of the people have had gardens, a lot of us have also had chickens, before ending up in the city. We would like nothing better than to tear up the parking lot, put in rows of corn and beans and have some chickens for eggs. It would improve the quality of everyone’s diet, too! I also took a poll of who would quit using the dryer in the laundry room if we had a clothes line and every single person said - “oh, yes! I really miss hanging my clothes on a line.” Maybe we’re a little old fashioned over here in our corner of Austin but I suspect there are a lot of people who miss the old ways even if they are too young to have actually experienced them.
Children learn valuable lessons by connecting with their food source. One of them that comes to mind is the time that a friend of mine had just received a box of newly hatched turkey chicks. It was a very cold December evening and she was worried about keeping them warm through the night. We decided to put them in the oven with only the pilot light on so it was a toasty, comfortable 80-something degrees in there. Just right for the chicks. We put them in a big roaster pan and just as we were slipping the chirping little guys into the oven, her 3 year old came hauling round the corner into the kitchen, saw what we were doing and starting screaming bloody murder! After we calmed him down, we all had a good laugh but I’ll bet he remembers that to this day.
The thing I love the most about living this way is how life flows with the weather, the seaons, and the unique character of each day. There is a close and personal connection between the earth, the sky, what you eat and how you feel. It is a feeling of completeness and reciprocity with the natural world. When you watch the rain fall on your early spring garden, when you’re on first name basis with the hen who laid the eggs you’re eating for breakfast - you get it. No words are needed. It might just be the most healing thing we can do and in the process take back control of one of our most basic needs.
Another helpful website I found was from a group in Albuquerque called Urban Chickens They are building a network of urban chicken keepers and offer help with establishing pro-chicken ordinances and laws. They also have a blog and some really down to earth advice on all things chicken.
Maybe when we turn off our dryers and put up clotheslines, put some solar panels on our roofs, dig up the front yard and put in corn and beans and run a few chickens in the back - even in the cities we can start living like we belong here again.
Many of the people who evacuated ahead of Hurricane Ike ended up here in Austin. There are about 30,000 people in shelters and while things are infinitely better than the Katrina debacle, there are some problems. Not enough food and water. No cots in some of the shelters. The Red Cross running out of money. People talking about “disaster fatigue” -!
We have thousands of National Guard trucks rumbling down the road, helicopters, humvees, all kinds of heavy equipment, disaster management “command centers” that look like the space program launch centers, talk of martial law and forcing people who stayed behind to abandon their homes in the aftermath of the storm . . .
And then we have the grassroots: American Rainbow Rapid Response (ARRR). It’s a lively, all-volunteer, non-profit organization that many got to know through The New Waveland Cafe after Hurricane Katrina, a cooperative effort of evangelicals from Texas, friends from Burning Man and Rainbow Gatherings, the folks at Organic Valley, and some runaways from Red Cross who got tired of the bureaucratic delays, among others.
For the full story of ARRR on today’s DailyKos, go HERE - and to volunteer or donate to ARRR, go to their website at http://www.americanrainbowrapidresponse.org/ and click on the paypal button or dial 1-800-339-9941. Extension #1 is for large resource donations, extension #2 is for financial or in kind donations, extension #3 is for individual volunteers or groups. Please leave your location, any available equipment, and the dates of your availability.
Thank you.
Copyright: Good Nature Publishing Co.
I’m reading The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring, a book by Richard Preston about the last remaining coastal redwood trees of Northern California and Southern Oregon. Old-growth forest means really old. Redwood trees live for thousands of years. In 1850, there were about two million acres of old growth forests between Big Sur and the southern tip of Oregon. Only about 4% of them remain.
It is difficult to imagine just how big an ancient redwood tree is. The tallest one is believed to be 370 feet tall. National Geographic called it “the Mt. Everest of All Living Things.” The Wild Trees is about an eccentric group of botanists, biologists and climbers studying a grove of redwoods, the largest of which is named Iluvatar.
Redwood trees are not just a simple configuration of one central trunk that is very very tall with horizontal branches sticking out. Many of the horizontal branches thrust out smaller “trees” that grow vertically, parallel to the trunk, and look just like the main tree. Horizontal branches on these small versions thrust out even smaller versions. Iluvatar had 220 trunks of smaller and smaller trees in six levels of heirarchy. It had become “a forest inside a forest . . . and one of the most structurally complicated living organisms that has ever been discovered.” It is, as Preston describes it, “an architecture made up of nooks and crannies and shaded, moist spots and fertile pockets where all kinds of living things can become established and can interact with one another.”
This is the home of the marbled murrelet, an elusive little member of the auk family, similar to the penguin in many respects, who spends most of its life in the ocean but who flies (so far, so fast that researchers use a radar gun to track them) up to 70 km inland to nest 140′ in the air in the lichen-lined “nooks and crannies” of old growth trees like Iluvatar, carrying very small fish in their tiny curved beaks to feed their young. These little birds, who mate for life, have become a very endangered species. I have been following the saga of those who struggle to pull them back from the brink of extinction for three years now and finally there has been an historic breakthrough.
The California Supreme Court has given new protection to the marbled murrelet and the magnificent old growth forests by throwing out an open-ended long-term logging plan for 200,000 acres in Humboldt County that the California Department of Forestry had approved - delegating the completion of the plan to protect endangered species to the logging company! Justice Carlos R. Moreno ruled that the Department of Forestry “failed to proceed according to law.” This decision grew out of lawsuits that followed the historic Headwaters Agreement, a 1996 pact between Pacific Lumber Co. and the state and federal governments.
In early August, the new management of Humboldt Redwood Co. (HRC) which was previously Pacific Lumber Co., met with activists and assured them that old growth groves on HRC land will be permanently protected. This is a wonderful victory for the dedicated activists who have put their lives on the line for the forest. This video from North Coast Earth First! shows what was involved in protecting these trees, this habitat and the marbled murrelet.
Local activists are going to keep on organizing, holding non-violence trainings and action camps, and North Coast Earth First! Media will continue to exist, releasing more videos and continuing to keep the public awareness of local issues as high as possible. There are other local lumber companies who are still clearcutting, and there may even be some hidden old growth out there, so organizing and actions will continue, until they are no longer needed. And that will be a wonderful day, indeed.
The most recent stories in Wildflower Stew on the saga of the marbled murrelet are:
Miracle of the Marbled Murrelet
Protecting the Marbled Murrelet
More Good News
The poster of the beautiful watercolor of the two marbled murrelets by artist Ram Papish is available from http://goodnaturepublishing.com along with many other visual delights of the natural world.
When I was a kid, there were certain things growing wild that we knew it was okay to eat. Wild mint and watercress down by the creek, baby dandelion leaves, and a flowering shrub with bright red flowers you could pick and suck the sweet nectar from the end of the trumpet-shaped blooms. We knew never to eat china berries or hack berries. I don’t remember how we knew. Someone must have told us. There were huge oleander bushes lining my grandmother’s driveway. They are extremely toxic. We never went near them. We just knew.
At the right time of the year, there would be wild onion, wild carrot and something that looks (and tastes) like asparagus. All these things were available to an observant child growing up in the country, close to the natural world. There are worlds more of edible foods, herbs and wild crafting supplies for the taking out there - for an amazingly complete rundown on surviving on wild plants see: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/plants-1.php
These days it is becoming popular in some neighborhoods to turn up the front yard and plant a garden. Excellent idea! The kids get to see where some of their food comes from, for one thing. But what about the back yard - or whatever area you have around you where you live? Can you find a spot to turn from landscaped (water-intensive, chemical dependent) back to the wild?
As more and more land gets put into play for humans - agriculture, subdivisions, golf courses, etc. - less and less is available for the critters. People start seeing wildlife in their backyards, coyotes in Central Park. Where else can they go? And then there’s the crazy weather and floods and fires. I read about the wildlife in the fires near Big Sur running toward the ocean to escape the flames. What will they do when they get there?
I know that in the places I’ve been the last few years, even urban areas, the birds and animals are coming closer. I don’t know if they are losing their fear or just doing what they have to do to survive. But I know that it feels right to try to make some room for them too, in whatever way we can, as we all try to cope with our suffering planet. The payback may be waking up to watch deer graze out your bedroom window just before dawn or attracting the most beautiful butterflies, the migrating birds, the best chorus of frogs after a rain.
I was lucky enough to spot a hummingbird nest (no easy task - they are very small) and show it to my grandson when he was two and we watched as the parents fed the extremely small babies and saw them take off in their tiny perfection when they were fledged. How can you compare that with a manicured lawn that has to be mowed with a gasoline powered lawn mower which sounds like some kind of demon from hell?
Cities have all kinds of ordinances about these things as do neighborhood associations. In Austin your grass can’t be more than 12 inches high. Period. That requires lots of mowing. Maybe we should pass an ordinance outlawing lawns!
Then the hummingbirds and butterflies and possums and deer and red tailed hawks could share our space with us and we’d all be a lot better off.
The National Wildlife Federation will certify your very own backyard wildlife refuge if you register with them. They have been offering the certifications since 1973. By the spring of 2008, there were almost 100,000 National Wildlife Federation certified habitats in backyards, schoolyards, just down the road, coming to your neighborhood soon.
I live in an apartment house that’s shaped like a “U” around a central courtyard that we all share. Some of us have flowers. Hibiscus, jasmine, roses, coleus, elephant ears, petunias, spider plants, geraniums, aloe vera, and tall red canna lilies. But this year some of us have taken on growing a little food.
Among with the tomatoes and squash and peppers and beans one of my neighbors has plunked one little strawberry plant in a large pot filled up mostly with marigolds. Everyday I’ve been watching the tiny white star-shaped flowers turn into little green nubbins and then blush red as they gradually ripen. Everyday I taste the sweet memory of strawberry as I watch them grow.
I think of the morning when I was a very young child visiting my aunt and uncle and I slipped out at dawn, alone, and feasted on my uncle’s strawberry patch, plucking every red one in sight! I think of the story of the zen monk about to either be eaten by a lion or fall off a cliff whose last act was to reach out and pick one sweet strawberry - and savor it!
I think of the strawberry pie I invented when I was the baker for a restaurant. Everybody loved it. I wouldn’t tell them the secret recipe. It was strawberries, cooked up with a pinch of cornstarch to make it hold together, poured in a baked pie shell and chilled, served with a dot of whipped cream. Nothing else. But they were really good strawberries. They wouldn’t have believed me.
This one little plant wakes up all my strawberry stories like nothing in a basket from the store can do. Then one day the two strawberries that I’ve been watching are gone. Were they sweet? Were they savored? How precious were those two berries?
We used to joke about our ten dollar tomatoes when I was growing food for my family. When you count the hours, the hard work, the garden tools, compost, mulch, seeds, water, prayer and deer fencing, it feels that way sometimes.
But there was much more to it than that. What I gained, besides the food, was exercise, wisdom, experience, pleasure, vitamin D and fresh air. I was also teaching my children (and their friends), sharing with my neighbors and inspiring anybody else who was thinking about trying it. I was improving the soil in that spot, too.
What I was not doing was putting more CO2 into the air because of trips to the store, gas for the trucks that brought it in, environmental degradation from commercial farming methods, and making more profits for big agribiz, wholesale food corporations and (gasp!) Monsanto.
So, I would say, in light of all that, that each homegrown strawberry is an engine of social change, a contribution to global healing and, of course, a celebration of the sweetness of life.
To plan for some sweetness in your life Seeds of Change is a good place to start. You can sign up for their newsletter, The Cutting Edge, and get a free catalog. Another good place to get (and give) the best seeds is the Seed Savers Exchange - a non-profit organization of gardeners dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.
If you don’t find what you’re looking for there, you can go to the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service and look under the Organic Seeds Suppliers Search, a very complete database of certified organic suppliers of seed. Good gardening - and seed saving - is a year round activity. Any time is a good time to start.
