Early Planning for Father's Day 2011: Capital City Garden and Coop Tour

Image via Wikipedia

The great non-profit group, Friends of Salem Saturday Market, is partnering with Chickens in the Yard, another Salem non-profit group, to present the first

Capital City Coop & Garden Tour

in June. This will be a self-guided tour of both chicken coops and fabulous gardens.

Would you like to be a participating garden in this year's tour and show off some of your hard work? Or, perhaps you know someone else who might be willing to open their garden, as well. We are looking for gardens that can act as inspiration for other gardeners - they're big, beautiful, diverse, unusual, efficient, or just really well done.

To participate, you would need to be willing to open your garden on Sunday, June 19 (Father's Day), from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. There should be two people available: one to greet visitors and show them where to go (outside the house only -- you do not have to open their house as well), and one to be at the garden giving a tour.

Proceeds from ticket sales will go toward C.I.T.Y.'s "Habitat for Hens" program to assist low-income families in setting up a coop and keeping chickens at their home.

To nominate your own or someone else's garden or coop as a tour stop, email Friends of Salem Saturday Market soon!

Does auto exhaust cause brain damage? Study suggests it might

Image by Simone Ramella via FlickrThis is an example of where the precautionary principle would be helpful -- there's some evidence of the possibility of serious harm from an industrial activity, but what will happen now is that it will take a long time for the evidence to solidify, particularly in light of the typical denial-evasion-obfuscation-retaliation cycle from the affected intere$t$.

What ought to happen, in these legacy cases where the activity got underway well before the science of risk assessment developed, is that the developing mosaic of suggestive studies should cause the onus to shift onto the activity ... in other words, instead of having to prove to the satisfaction of the affected industry that there is a sufficient quantum of proof to justify a serious response (which typically only happens after decades of the profit-making companies fighting against science like trapped rats), the industry ought to now have the burden of producing, within say five years, solid and valid disconfirming evidence or face a regulatory action aimed at eliminating the chance that the hazard is there.