It’s a hot August afternoon and I’m working from home or trying to work anyway. Two old casement windows are cranked open and I’m distracted by the sound of many, many bumblebees swarming over a stand of Jerusalem artichoke aka Dump Daisies that are putting on their annual explosion of yellow.

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Josh wasn’t the only one inspired to write about the first snow storm last February. The aught seven Valentine’s Day Blizzard, we are calling it. As the wind howled and snow drifted up in my driveway, I surfed the net to find a newslink to send to my scattered family.

Look at what’s happening here, I wanted to say. Instead, all I could find were stories about the roses that couldn’t be delivered.

Thousands and thousands of roses! Actually, 175 million to be more precise. In February! Where on earth did they come from?

Red flowers have a magical power to lift my spirits, and I often buy whatever is on sale, gently placing them on top of other indulgences — organic broccoli and local lettuce. Where, I wondered, do they come from, these spectacular flowers that are so tempting, and cheap, year round in the local stores?

So, I did a little research on cut flowers. (more…)

“Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together.” From a December 2006 United Nations report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”

Tom Philpott who writes about food and farming for Grist said, “To me, that fact calls for a massive realignment of the environmental movement toward food-system reform.”

Realignment of the environment movement? Food system reform? What are we talking about here? Many of us are switching to florescent light bulbs and considering buying a sub-compact hybrid for our next car, but changing what we eat and how we produce and buy it – that’s major.
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News from Vermont, by Janisse Ray

Two hundred years ago, eating local was a way of life. Vermonters stocked root cellars, smoked meat, made sauerkraut and pickles, and canned fruits and vegetables for winter. Now, eating local has become an important way to decrease dependence on fossil fuels and to help build a more dependable, decentralized food system. The average calorie travels 1,500 miles to arrive on our plates.

To help us get back to eating locally produced foods, Vermont Localvore is sponsoring the Winter Localvore Challenge in the Mad River Valley, Vermont, for one week: January 29- February 4, 2007. The challenge is to eat only foods grown, produced, or raised within a 100-mile radius of your home - for a meal, a day, a week - you decide what is a challenge for you. Click here to join the Winter Eat Local Challenge. All Winter Challenge participants will have access to an email list where they can post questions and receive email updates about the Challenge. (more…)

Oh arghh… We’re having an ice storm, I’m trying to work from home, and it’s not going well. I’m back from vacation and feeling a surge of pent up energy to get some work done on SCA’s websites. That, coupled with anxiety about having been away for 10 days has me feeling more than my usual frustration when things go awry, as they have this morning. First the SCA server went down, then I lost my internet connection altogether, and now the power is off. I will be out of business in about an hour when the battery in my computer goes dead.

I guess I could find a pencil and some paper and write the review that I have been promising of David Abram’s book The Spell of the Sensuous, Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. (more…)