Memories of Middle School

Frazz is the BEST.

Celebrate Earth Day with Queen of the Sun and a local hero

The best movie house between San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C., our own fine gem, Salem Cinema, brings a super-special event to Salem for Earth Day, QUEEN OF THE SUN, along one of the local beekeepers profiled at the 6 p.m. showing on Saturday, April 23:

QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are The Bees Telling Us?

United States. 2011. Directed by
Taggart Siegel. (83 mins.)
Not Rated.

What's all the buzz about? In celebration of Earth Day, please join us for the magnificent documentary QUEEN OF THE SUN: WHAT ARE THE BEES TELLING US?

Jon Betz and Silverton commercial beekeeper Andy Angstrom will join us on Saturday, April 23rd to answer questions following our 6 PM screening!

This wildly entertaining honey of a documentary is a dynamic, fascinating, bee-autiful blend of poetry and science, providing not only an eye-opening education on the collapse of our honeybee colonies and the affect on our earth's fragile ecosystem but the information necessary to prompt action. For the gloriously shot QUEEN OF THE SUN, winner of swarms of awards, Portland filmmaker Taggart Siegel (THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN) made a beeline around the globe to interview some of the world's most gregarious and passionate beekeepers. Their heartfelt, hopeful and focused proposals to inspire sustainable practices take some of the sting out of the vital, alarming message this thoughtful film brings to the hive.

Earth Day Celebration at Salem Saturday Market tomorrow!

Image by NatalieMaynor via FlickrThe great folks behind the "Friends of Salem Saturday Market" send this along. Salem Saturday Market is one of the best things around, and joining in and with the Friends gives you a way to both give and get more great stuff from this local wonder.

Happy Spring!

Hello again from Friends of Salem Saturday Market! The Market has begun again, and we've got some great plans in the works. :

2011 Season: The Market is back in season! It opened [April 2] with an interesting mix of sun and rain, but the vendors reported brisk business. They're glad to be back, and I know we're all glad to have them return! Salem Saturday Market is your best source for fresh, local produce, meats, cheeses, breads, and other hand-crafted goods. The Market runs every Saturday through October at Marion & Summer streets, near the Capitol.

FSSM Programs: Help us celebrate Earth Day at the Market on Saturday, April 23. We'll have fun kids' crafts, seed-planting opportunities, and a Zero Waste Zone celebration. We're planning some more really great programs, demonstrations, and classes for this summer. Stay tuned for a full calendar of events, coming soon!

The FSSM Booth: You'll notice an expanded presence at the Market for Friends of Salem Saturday Market this year, all at a new location! FSSM will have a long row of tents set up at the south end of the Market -- the Marion Street side. This little compound will be the hub of all our activities. Our Bike Valet service will move to this spot, and we're adding a third Zero Waste Station. All of our classes and events will be held at this location, and the FSSM booth will also be headquartered here. Our full booth will only be set up on days that have FSSM activities scheduled. The next will be April 23. On those days when the FSSM booth is not present, you'll still find membership forms and other information stocked at our Zero Waste Station & Bike Valet tent.

FSSM Membership: It's time to renew your membership for the 2011 Season! Current members will be receiving a postcard in the mail soon reminding you about the renewal.

If you're not yet a member, now's a great time to join! Friends of Salem Saturday Market is making a great impact on the community, and you can be a part of it. You can find out more information online: http://friendsofsalemsaturdaymarket.wordpress.com/membership/

Or, stop by our booth on April 23 to join in person. Thank you! we appreciate your donation to support Friends of Salem Saturday Market's mission! All donations are tax-deductible. This year, members will receive a sheet of exclusive coupons to local shops. P lus, as always, you'll receive one of our most sought-after benefits: Farm tours ...

Behind-the-Scenes Tours: We're excited for another season of exciting and informative tours for members of Friends of Salem Saturday Market. These are exclusive opportunities available only to FSSM members. In April, we'll be visiting Willamette Valley Cheese. And in May, we'll head back to Fairview Farms, which charmed our members last year with a bevy of baby goats. We'll send invitations via email, so watch your inbox for more information soon.

Remember: Tours are only available for FSSM members, so be sure to join or renew your membership!

Zero Waste Zone: Our volunteers are back at it, staffing the Zero Waste Stations to help customers toss their disposable items into the correct container. During the warmer months, we will expand from two Zero Waste Stations to three, making it more convenient to find a station when you need it. Last year, our emphasis on composting and recycling resulted in an 83% reduction of garbage thrown away at the Market. Thank you for your support of and participation in this valuable project!

Salem Weekly just published an article that spotlights the project and our nomination for a Green Award

Bike Valet: The Bike Valet service will be returning on May 28. At that time, you'll find it in a new location - on the south side of the Market, easily accesible from the Summer or Winter street entrances.

Volunteering: Interested in volunteering? We always welcome your help in staffing our Zero Waste Stations, the FSSM booth, and Bike Valet service. We also have many opportunities to help with the organization and planning of FSSM. Plus, we're seeking student interns for a variety of roles. Please contact me if you want to learn more!
--
Stephanie Matlock Allen
FSSM President
(503) 877-FSSM
info@friendsofsalemsaturdaymarket.org

Another great Straub event: The Birds and the Bees!

Image by Salim Virji via FlickrTuesday, April 19, 2011, 6:30-8:00pm
Sustainability Workshop
The Birds & The Bees: Backyard Animal Husbandry
Straub Environmental Learning Center

This workshop will give a basic introduction to animal husbandry for people interested in raising chickens and/or bees. Join us for this interactive workshop to hear local experts on both of these animals share their knowledge and resources for successful backyard animal husbandry. Workshops are free, but registration is required due to limited space.

RSVP to Alexandra at 503-391-4145 or email fselc@fselc.org. All workshops will be held at Straub Environmental Learning Center from 6:30-8:00 pm, unless otherwise noted. For a schedule of the entire series, click here.

More local heroes: Habitat for Hens

The City of Salem put the would-be henkeepers of CITY (Chickens in the Yard) through an absurd ordeal before finally coughing up a giant hairball of an ordinance that, supposedly, permits Salem residents to keep three hens.

To their great credit, the CITY folks have responded to the shabby treatment, suspicion, distrust, and just plain racism and classism aimed at them with real style and grace, working hard to make this small step for greater sustainability and food security a reality here in Salem -- including for people priced out of having hens by the City's determination to make henkeepers jump through as many ridiculous hoops as possible.

One great thing: The Habitat for Hens program. Good for them!

Getting ready for another Habitat for Hens
Winning the two-year battle to legalize backyard chickens was very rewarding, but not nearly as satisfying as the work we’ve done since then.

Last November CITY volunteers constructed a chicken coop for a family in northeast Salem. In addition to receiving an 8’ x 12’ coop and run, the family was given three hens nearly ready to start laying, a 50 pound bag of feed, a waterer, a feeder, and a bag of oyster shell – everything needed to get started raising chickens. The excited look on the children’s’ faces that day made the two-year struggle worth every minute. We call this project Habitat for Hens and we can’t wait to do it again next month!

Habitat for Hens is a community-building activity that helps local families become more self-sufficient. Sharing excess eggs or vegetables produced in our own backyards is a wonderful thing, but giving others the resources and skills needed to produce their own healthy food is even better.

Volunteers came together one Saturday to donate their time and labor, making this event possible. Despite the threat of rain, muddy conditions, and the fact that most of us had never met, things went very smoothly. It was amazing to watch everyone pair up and get to work sawing, hammering, stapling, etc., while getting to know one another. Individuals donated lumber, paint, bricks, roofing material, concrete, and a screen door. Even the hens, feed, and other supplies were donated by the Old Mill Feed & Garden Store and Farwest Hatchery, leaving very little for CITY to have to purchase.

The recipient family showed their appreciation by providing hot lattes and pumpkin scones in the morning and serving homemade enchiladas when the job was done. We started out as a bunch of strangers, but by the end of the day we were good friends who sat down together for a meal and listened to those who’ve raised chickens in the past share their stories (anyone who has raised chickens always has a good story or two to tell).

I know that someday the children we helped will tell their story, possibly to kids of their own, about the day nine strangers showed up and built them a chicken coop and what that meant to them.

Very soon we will be building a coop for another Salem family, a young couple with two small girls. They are anxious to begin raising hens and have already taken our Chicken-Raising 101 class, but need help with the initial investment. If you would like to be a part of this event please rummage through your garage or shed and look for building materials you no longer need that are in good shape, and/or consider donating your labor when we build the coop.

It's tentatively scheduled for May 21 or 22, depending on the weather. Contact kristineznanski@gmail.com if you have something to donate. Thank you!

Reality's well-known liberal bias reveals itself again

You can almost hear the Koch Brothers from here: "Dammit, who put the eggheads on the payroll?"

Critics' review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming

A UC Berkeley team's preliminary findings in a review of temperature data confirm global warming studies.

. . . The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called "the legitimate concerns" of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent.... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."

. . . The Berkeley project's biggest private backer, at $150,000, is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels, the largest contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gases. . . .

But conservative critics who had expected Muller's group to demonstrate a bias among climate scientists reacted with disappointment.

Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman who runs the skeptic blog WattsUpWithThat.com, wrote that the Berkeley group is releasing results that are not "fully working and debugged yet.... But, post normal science political theater is like that."

Over the years, Muller has praised Watts' efforts to show that weather station data in official studies are untrustworthy because of the urban heat island effect, which boosts temperature readings in areas that have been encroached on by cities and suburbs.

But leading climatologists said the previous studies accounted for the effect, and the Berkeley analysis is confirming that, Muller acknowledged. "Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming?" he asked in his written testimony. "We've studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no." . . .

Join the "No Ivy League," April 23, 9 a.m., Wallace Marine Park

Image by swan corner via Flickr

Salem Area "No Ivy" League: Kick-off event April 23rd

English Ivy can cause incredible environmental damage, destroying native vegetation and trees. The best way to combat the noxious weed is to work collaboratively. The Glenn-Gibson Creeks Watershed Council asks that individuals and organizations join us and support the creation of a Salem area "No Ivy" League. The mission of the "No Ivy" League is to restore native habitats by targeting invasive plants, especially areas overrun by English Ivy. See the attached memo for more information.

Please join us for the first "No Ivy" League event April 23rd from 9 am to noon at Wallace Marine Park in West Salem. City of Salem Parks and SOLV will help provide the tools needed and the watershed council will provide refreshments.
Hope to see you there!

Aida Arik, Coordinator
Glenn-Gibson Watershed Council
503.623.9680 x112
580 Main St., Suite A, Dallas, Oregon 97338
glenngibsonwatershedcouncil.org

Taxes due 4/18 -- time to sharpen the pitchforks and prepare the torches

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via FlickrWord from Chris Hedges:

. . . We will not halt the laying off of teachers and other public employees, the slashing of unemployment benefits, the closing of public libraries, the reduction of student loans, the foreclosures, the gutting of public education and early childhood programs or the dismantling of basic social services such as heating assistance for the elderly until we start to carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience against the financial institutions responsible for our debacle. The banks and Wall Street, which have erected the corporate state to serve their interests at our expense, caused the financial crisis. The bankers and their lobbyists crafted tax havens that account for up to $1 trillion in tax revenue lost every decade. They rewrote tax laws so the nation’s most profitable corporations, including Bank of America, could avoid paying any federal taxes. They engaged in massive fraud and deception that wiped out an estimated $40 trillion in global wealth. The banks are the ones that should be made to pay for the financial collapse. Not us. . . . “The economy is controlled by a handful of economic elites. The necessities of most Americans are no longer being met. The only way to change this is to shift the power to a culture of resistance. This will be the first in a series of events we will organize to help give people control of their economic and political life.”

If you are among the one in six workers in this country who does not have a job, if you are among the some 6 million people who have lost their homes to repossessions, if you are among the many hundreds of thousands of people who went bankrupt last year because they could not pay their medical bills or if you have simply had enough of the current kleptocracy, join us . . .

We will picket . . . Bank of America, one of the major financial institutions responsible for the theft of roughly $17 trillion in wages, savings and retirement benefits taken from ordinary citizens. We will build a miniature cardboard community that will include what we should have—good public libraries, free health clinics, banks that have been converted into credit unions, free and well-funded public schools and public universities, and shuttered recruiting centers (young men and women should not have to go to Iraq and Afghanistan as soldiers or Marines to find a job with health care). We will call for an end to all foreclosures and bank repossessions, a breaking up of the huge banking monopolies, a fair system of taxation and a government that is accountable to the people.

The 10 major banks, which control 60 percent of the economy, determine how our legislative bills are written, how our courts rule, how we frame our public debates on the airwaves, who is elected to office and how we are governed. The phrase consent of the governed has been turned by our two major political parties into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. And the faster these banks and huge corporations are broken up and regulated the sooner we will become free.

Bank of America is one of the worst. It did not pay any federal taxes last year or the year before. It is currently one of the most aggressive banks in seizing homes, at times using private security teams that carry out brutal home invasions to toss families into the street. The bank refuses to lend small business people and consumers the billions in government money it was handed. It has returned with a vengeance to the flagrant criminal activity and speculation that created the meltdown, behavior made possible because the government refuses to institute effective sanctions or control from regulators, legislators or the courts. Bank of America, like most of the banks that peddled garbage to small shareholders, routinely hid its massive losses through a creative accounting device it called “repurchase agreements.” It used these “repos” during the financial collapse to temporarily erase losses from the books by transferring toxic debt to dummy firms before public filings had to be made. It is called fraud. And Bank of America is very good at it. . . .

What's behind our budget problems? Tverberg

You don't have to agree with every word to respect the intelligence "Gail the Actuary" Tverberg brings to the task of trying to make sense of what's happening to us. A truly great post that should be read by any person who pays taxes, spends taxes, or enjoys services provided by them.

Important film from Salem Progressive Film Series: "Killing Us Softly"

Killing Us Softly 4

Thursday, April 14, 2011
7 p.m., Grand Theater

In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.

Grand Theater, 191 High Street NE, Salem, Oregon

Doors open at 6:15p, Films begin at 7p

Adults $4, Students $3

Contact numbers: 503-881-5305, 503-779-5288