A must-see: Food, Inc. Starts July 10 in Salem!

Another reminder that Salem has a really, really terrific indie movie house, one that puts nearly every other US city to shame: Salem Cinema, with THREE, count 'em, THREE screens so that a wonderful array of movies that will never reach the megaplex will be shown right here in Salem, often before they reach much larger cities.

This summer's must see indie film: Food, Inc. From the website for the film:

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Making Salem Saturday Market even cooler

Image by tps12 via Flickr

Free bike safety instruction at Salem Saturday Market, where there's also free monitored bike parking. Nice.

Post-Peak Remodeling: What do we do with all those garages

Image by riebschlager via Flickr

Despite being created by a lawyer, there's a very nice blog, "The Sharing Solution," that has some really great ideas, including this one on repurposing garages and turning them into community building and useful spaces. An excerpt:

Picture a block where 8 neighbors repurpose their garages:

• Garage #1:The Gym. Drawing from neighbors' existing equipment, put in the stationary bike, a treadmill, an elliptical machine or two, weights, and so on, and give everyone access during reasonable hours. Cancel your gym memberships and save some money, too.
  
  
• Garage #2: The Music Room. Soundproof the heck out of one garage, roll in a piano, put in a drum set, and a disco ball, and the neighborhood garage bands will be off and rockin'. Sometimes open the garage door and have a dance party in the driveway.
  
  
• Garage #3: The Workshop. Consolidate tools, workbenches, and other useful items into one garage. Be sure to carefully label everything or take inventory so you don't forget whose tools are whose. All neighbors can come to repair broken household items, or do wood working projects.
  
  
• Garage #4: The Rec Room. Give it a cozy feel with some carpeting and couches, fill it with toys, games, and a ping pong table, and let the fun begin!
  
  
• Garage #5: Art Studio. This would be a place for folks to share art supplies, spread out with their art projects, and store their works in progress.
  
  
• Garage #6: Stuff Library. This is where you store that one neighborhood lawn mower, and any other items that neighbors are willing to lend to each other - bread machines, sewing machines, camping gear, volleyball net, and so on.
  
  
• Garage #7: Dry Goods "Store." Neighbors who want to save money could make bulk orders together and store goods in once place, and maybe come up with a ticket system for dividing expenses. For example, neighbors could buy 500 rolls of [recycled] toilet paper and store them in Garage #7. Each time a neighbor needs to stock up, he or she can go in the garage, "pay" 4 tickets per roll, and take home what is needed. It's like having an informal grocery cooperative on your own block.
  
  
• Garage #8: The Library. Carefully label your books and DVDs and shelve them here. Come up with a system for checking items out. Add a couch or two, and the library becomes a quiet place for anyone to come, relax, and get lost in book land.

Decoding the Ethanol Scam and CBO Coverup

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr

This op-ed reads like an example in "How to Lie with Statistics," one of the key intellectual self-defense tools ever created for living in the modern world. The author (a former corn-state congressman) spins the data to fool the gullible into thinking that our ethanol mania isn't killing us on our food bills. But a good analyst puts the brake on Big Ag's spin machine. See below (from an email exchange):

Yep, its responsible for a fifth of our high food inflation rate. That percentage translates to roughly [$]9 billion in higher food costs for all Americans. That is well over twice the money spent on ethanol blending subsidies (45 cents for every gallon of ethanol) and about the same as the cost to consumers ([$]9 billion) due to ethanol's lower gas mileage. Together, those costs are about [$]22 billion. The CBO is downplaying the fact that it is costing us [$]9 billion by expressing it as a percentage of a confusing percentage.

It is a reality that ethanol has had an impact on American food prices, exactly how much is debateable, but that impact pales in comparison to the impact in third world countries that rely on our corn exports where people survive on ground corn. Average monthly corn prices remain about 100% higher than historic averages (almost $4.00 a bushel versus $2.00). Those high corn prices have driven some poultry producers into bankruptcy.

Update: Excellent dissection of a cellulosic ethanol scam that snagged one of the country's biggest ethanomaniacs here.

Nice local food finder: "Local Harvest"

"Cool Tools" has a nice free find(er) this week:

LocalHarvest is a comprehensive one-stop resource for finding locally grown food in the continental U.S. The site provides a customizable search feature on its homepage, and a simple zip code input provided me with a description and link to my closest Community Supported Agriculture option. Other search options include farmer’s markets, restaurants that serve food made with organic ingredients and grocery co-ops. -- Elon Schoenholz

LocalHarvest http://www.localharvest.org/

Sample excerpts:

* Shared Risk

There is an important concept woven into the CSA model that takes the arrangement beyond the usual commercial transaction. That is the notion of shared risk. When originally conceived, the CSA was set up differently than it is now. A group of people pooled their money, bought a farm, hired a farmer, and each took a share of whatever the farm produced for the year. If the farm had a tomato bonanza, everyone put some up for winter. If a plague of locusts ate all the greens, people ate cheese sandwiches. Very few such CSAs exist today, and for most farmers, the CSA is just one of the ways their produce is marketed. They may also go to the farmers market, do some wholesale, sell to restaurants, etc. Still, the idea that "we're in this together" remains. On some farms it is stronger than others, and CSA members may be asked to sign a policy form indicating that they agree to accept without complaint whatever the farm can produce.

*Advantages for consumers

• Eat ultra-fresh food, with all the flavor and vitamin benefits
  
  
• Get exposed to new vegetables and new ways of cooking
  
  
• Usually get to visit the farm at least once a season
  
  
• Find that kids typically favor food from "their" farm – even veggies they've never been known to eat
  
  
• Develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food and learn more about how food is grown

It's a simple enough idea, but its impact has been profound. Tens of thousands of families have joined CSAs, and in some areas of the country there is more demand than there are CSA farms to fill it. The government does not track CSAs, so there is no official count of how many CSAs there are in the U.S.. LocalHarvest has the most comprehensive directory of CSA farms, with over 2,500 listed in our grassroots database. In 2008, 557 CSAs signed up with LocalHarvest, and in the first two months of 2009, an additional 300 CSAs joined the site.

* Variations

As you might expect with such a successful model, farmers have begun to introduce variations. One increasingly common one is the "mix and match," or "market-style" CSA. Here, rather than making up a standard box of vegetables for every member each week, the members load their own boxes with some degree of personal choice. The farmer lays out baskets of the week's vegetables. Some farmers encourage members to take a prescribed amount of what's available, leaving behind just what their families do not care for. Some CSA farmers then donate this extra produce to a food bank. In other CSAs, the members have wider choice to fill their box with whatever appeals to them, within certain limitations. (e.g. "Just one basket of strawberries per family, please.")

Perfect 4th comic

"Frazz" is a great comic that neither of the papers most often available in Salem carry. Too bad for them.

For your old e-waste, check here first

Image by georgehotelling via Flickr

Interesting and good idea: create a website the vacuums up old electronic items that would otherwise be landfilled or disassembled and instead tries to find a use for them. If you have some old electronic junk sitting around unused, check this out -- you might get a few bucks for it, and even if you don't they'll help recycle it for you, either by directing you to a local recycler or by sending you a box that you can use to ship it to them for free.

Nice.

Time for another revolution: Against corporate irresponsibility

Image by Mr Magoo ICU via Flickr

Native Oregonian Nick Kristof's alarming column in the NY Times makes clear that the revolution we need now is against corporate-controlled science that urges us to keep producing and eating, drinking and breathing new chemicals --- unique molecules created in laboratories --- without a care in the world.

The corporations that rule politics in the US are unique entities --- devices for generating private profit while avoiding private liability for harm caused to others. Thus, they enjoy the right to keep spreading pollutants and hormone-mimics that disrupt cell biology until there's an airtight scientific case against them AND the political will to force those pollutants off the market, which often takes decades.

In other words, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty, and the onus (the burden of proof) is on us to force these dangerous molecules off the market -- which requires that the bodies and deformities pile up first, while the companies profits' pile up, giving them the resources to fog the issues and protect their "right" to keep on manufacturing and releasing toxins to hurt others.

As we celebrate Independence Day, it's time for another revolution, this time to throw off the shackles of an outmoded way of thinking about corporate privileges and responsibilities. We must shift the onus off us and put it back on those corporations who create and peddle compounds that kill and maim.

It's long past time for a revolution in regulation, one that says that molecules not found in nature are not innocent until proven guilty. Rather, molecules created in laboratories must be considered as suspect until they are scrutinized closely and cleared, just like people the national borders. It's astonishing how much we spend in response to fear of terrorists from abroad when we have huge sectors of US industry that are merrily poisoning us right here at home without a second thought.

The consequence of this revolutionary idea is that corporations will no longer be able to put a product or material into commerce until they show that it is safe for human exposure and for release into the environment. No more making victims first and then making the survivors fight to abolish the compounds that kill and deform.

. . . Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base rather than the tip.

Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors. They are very widely used in agriculture, industry and consumer products. Some also enter the water supply when estrogens in human urine — compounded when a woman is on the pill — pass through sewage systems and then through water treatment plants.

These endocrine disruptors have complex effects on the human body, particularly during fetal development of males.

“A lot of these compounds act as weak estrogen, so that’s why developing males — whether smallmouth bass or humans — tend to be more sensitive,” said Robert Lawrence, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It’s scary, very scary.”

The scientific case is still far from proven, as chemical companies emphasize, and the uncertainties for humans are vast. But there is accumulating evidence that male sperm count is dropping and that genital abnormalities in newborn boys are increasing. Some studies show correlations between these abnormalities and mothers who have greater exposure to these chemicals during pregnancy, through everything from hair spray to the water they drink.

Endocrine disruptors also affect females. It is now well established that DES, a synthetic estrogen given to many pregnant women from the 1930s to the 1970s to prevent miscarriages, caused abnormalities in the children. They seemed fine at birth, but girls born to those women have been more likely to develop misshaped sexual organs and cancer.

There is also some evidence from both humans and monkeys that endometriosis, a gynecological disorder, is linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors. Researchers also suspect that the disruptors can cause early puberty in girls.

A rush of new research has also tied endocrine disruptors to obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes, in both animals and humans. For example, mice exposed in utero even to low doses of endocrine disruptors appear normal at first but develop excess abdominal body fat as adults.

Among some scientists, there is real apprehension at the new findings — nothing is more terrifying than reading The Journal of Pediatric Urology — but there hasn’t been much public notice or government action.

This month, the Endocrine Society, an organization of scientists specializing in this field, issued a landmark 50-page statement. It should be a wake-up call.

“We present the evidence that endocrine disruptors have effects on male and female reproduction, breast development and cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, and cardiovascular endocrinology,” the society declared.

“The rise in the incidence in obesity,” it added, “matches the rise in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals that may be playing a role in generation of obesity.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving toward screening endocrine disrupting chemicals, but at a glacial pace. For now, these chemicals continue to be widely used in agricultural pesticides and industrial compounds. Everybody is exposed.

“We should be concerned,” said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. “This can influence brain development, sperm counts or susceptibility to cancer, even where the animal at birth seems perfectly normal.” . . .

Kristof is really on a roll lately. This second piece is repeats a point made by many, often hilariously (that we're evolved to face hazards that appear out of the bushes, with big teeth, and we have a hard time dealing with or even recognizing far graver hazards that only appear as scientific data . . . until it's too late) but it's great to see this idea being discussed in the archaic media.

Inspiring photo

One of nine inspiring photos for urban gardeners, each worth many thousands of words - now THOSE are raised beds!

LOVESalem HQ just got new hardiplank cement siding affixed with honking big spikes fired into firring strips that are spiked to the cinderblocks, so that will probably support a TON of these, with drip lines run up to and across each "bed" (gutter) to for all kinds of smallish things that will love the heat reflected off the insulated wall.

And this has gotta be great accessible gardening for older/disabled people who can't garden at ground level or in low raised beds.

This is one of those palm-in-forehead "Why didn't I think of that!" things . . .

HOME: the best video ever put over the Internet

This is your planet on fossil fuels. Image via Wikipedia

Just watched this astounding production yet again. Profoundly moving, profoundly beautiful, profoundly disturbing. Please set aside some time to watch it - a little more than 90 minutes -- though if you watch with an open mind, it will take you far longer to get it out of your head.