tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53388064289202701712024-03-05T19:27:01.455-05:00The Yoga of EcologyProgressive, Environmental, SpiritualChristopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.comBlogger583125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-54805174419886017302013-09-05T09:48:00.004-04:002013-09-05T09:48:47.442-04:00ISCOWP September 2013 update<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><i><a href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=o6mtvfdab&v=001AQflCIZUlQ7Pyk7wIumzWWTCOoyweBtfli4nAQvfeQVEajvIGFBt04buKqGOuy7keVchEHocOBXZ-H7BDBFJZDCSg1sxMuNKM1qNTYgVh43vgiHAGa3DPiz6_R9cj4ly" target="_blank">Click here for the latest from our friends at the International Society for Cow Protection (ISCOWP)</a></i></b>Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-88731511705752557522013-08-23T17:52:00.000-04:002013-08-23T17:52:24.128-04:00The Garden of Seven Gates at The Small Farm Training Center<div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-size: 15.199999809265137px;">When I tell folks that my main course of study at Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York is eco-theology, I get either knowing nods or quizzical looks. In either case, it doesn't take much explanation to show that the Earth and the Divine are inherently connected, that you cannot have one without the other. As I have spent my summer getting the soil that sustains me firmly lodged in my fingernails and pores, I have been pleasantly surprised to see and feel that a calling to the service of the Earth may indeed be my calling as a service to God. My case of nature-deficit disorder may not be as severe as I first thought. I am more convinced than ever that to work and create earth-centered ecologically-sound communities and local food cultures, grounded in the timeless wisdom of ancient spiritual tradition, is the most vital justice work of our time and also the true spiritual revolution of our time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">On the surface, The Small Farm Training Center (SFTC), and its leading farm-hand Terry Sheldon, are offering a vital example of local eco-conscious community and food culture, but befitting Terry's decades-long immersion in the Vedic spiritual tradition, and the practice of bhakti-yoga, the SFTC is, at its essence, a reflection and practice of humanity's most original and natural connection to the Earth and to the Divine. On the SFTC website, Terry <a href="http://farmeducation.org/wp/2011/04/18/vedic-ecology/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">explains</a> the Vedic ecology at the core of the SFTC:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">"There exists a deep ecological tradition in Vedic culture by which human settlement, forests and water resources are carefully balanced. To achieve that balance, nature's welfare and human welfare cannot be separated each other. For this reason Vedic ecology teaches that the earth and the cow are to be loved and cared for as mothers. As such, culture -- including the cultivating of land for crops -- is an outward expression of spirituality. As a painting expresses the spirit of the artist, culture expresses the spirit of society. Vedic culture has lasted for many thousands of years and is still visible even today. It's a way of life that's lasts forever, is self perpetuating and regenerating."</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Terry further explains that the heart of his work with the SFTC, in helping people of all colors, kinds, and classes to become <a href="http://farmeducation.org/wp/2011/04/18/paradigm-warriors/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">"paradigm warriors"</a> for the shift from our unsustainable corporatized-industrialized civilizational model to a sustainable Earth-centered model, is hands-on education with deep wisdom:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">"Whether you're reading the sagacious words of Wendell Berry, or the biting commentary of Vandana Shiva, their conclusions are the same: The skills, aptitudes and attitudes that were necessary to industrialize the Earth are not the same as those that are needed now to heal the Earth, or to build durable economies and good communities.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">We agree wholeheartedly... but our analysis goes one layer deeper to include the spiritual dimension. Without recognizing the role spirituality has traditionally played in preserving our planet's delicate web of life, we're easily tricked into believing that secular science will come-up with a green techno-fix to save the day. It's those brainy scientist types, not the sages of yore who deserve our veneration, so goes conventional thought.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">If Western education has driven the planet to a point of crises, what is wrong with that education? And secondly, can any current Western educational institution -- whether it's orientation is secular or Judeo-Christian -- identify what's gone wrong and offer courageous or inspired leadership?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">What's needed is not more education but education tempered with wisdom--education the teaches the value of local, the interconnectedness of everything, cooperation over competition and conscience over efficiency. Let's do an about-face. Is there a model that can dismantle the scaffolding of ideas, philosophies and ideologies that constitutes the modern world view? Let's look to the East."</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><a href="http://farmeducation.org/wp/2011/04/18/eight-tenants-of-sustainable-development/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink"><br style="border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px;" />Eight core tenets of sustainable development</a>, including cow protection, vegetarianism, understanding of karma, understanding the myths of modern education, and devotion to food independence, are the foundation of the SFTC. It is these tenets at the heart of Terry's vision of "no-harm" farming and the real understanding of sustainability.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The SFTC is a living example of a no-harm mini-farm which is attempting to rewrite the landscape of eco-conscious community and local food culture in the hills of West Virginia. The "coming food revolution" that the SFTC wants to help create includes reciprocal links to networks of urban-based community gardens in schoolyards, low-income housing projects and the spaces left behind in the food desert. Terry writes that:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">"No-Harm Mini-Farms will focus on food varieties that stress plant-based diets and plant-based protein sources, including milk from a resurgent family-owned dairy industry. Domesticated farm animals-especially cows-will reappear as welcomed additions to the rural and urban landscape. Animals will be protected and valued as co-authors in the revival of cereal grain production and soil fertility renewal."</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">For the denizens and the tillers of the SFTC, sustainability is more than just about living in the material world. The cultivation of the Garden is also a cultivation of the garden of the heart, of the soul's journey towards self-realization in loving relation to the Divine. Real sustainability, according to Terry, has as its foundation the understanding of the karmic fabric that ties all life together. The farmer, and all other living entities who work with her, must see their work with the soil as a divine service. All the energies of the work being done, if offered for the pleasure of the Divine and all living beings, if done with as little harm as possible (which excludes raising animals for slaughter), insures not only material but spiritual health, wealth, and evolution.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Terry explains:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">"The real future of this whole thing is village life, where we develop ways to communicate and entertain and grow our own food, raise our children, educate, that is so location specific that it works. You develop loving, interdependent relationships with people, mutually interdependent relationships. That's our background actually. That's where were all actually coming from. That's what we're all looking for.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><br style="border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px;" />Defining relationships in this universe that are not competitive. They're cooperative. They're interdependent.The fact is that we're divine in origin. We are spirit souls. We are not bodies. We need a farming system and a philosophy that drives that farming system that recognizes the position of the soul and revers it as sacred. You're not completely non-violent, but it means how and when that violence is enacted. Its done very carefully.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Beyond being vegetarian is making a sacrament of your food, and in the Hare Krishna Movement this is called taking, or honoring prasadam. You re still karmically accountable for vegetables that are killed Its not as severe, but its there. You're taking life to maintain your life. How do you get out of that? I need to eat, but it always involves taking life. The way out is to make sacrament of the food. To take it from a source that's acceptable to be offered and the mentality, the consciousness of how you grow it, harvest it, store it, how you cook it, serve it, is done in spiritual consciousness. This is called honoring prasadam.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">It is honoring the arrangement of nature by which all these things are given to us graciously for our sustenance so we can get on with our real business, which is self-realization."</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Let me take you on a short tour of the Garden of Seven Gates, the beautiful centerpiece of the Small Farm Training Center in Moundsville, W. Va.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The Garden of Seven Gates is a certified organic project at the forefront of the local food revolution. The Garden and its tillers produce a diversity of succulent and sanctified foodstuffs for the local New Vrindaban Krishna Consciousness community. It is also the flagship farm behind the vibrant environmental/food justice works of the Green Wheeling Initiative.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Here Terry Sheldon, head tiller of the Garden, here uses a traditional hand-tiller to prepare a bed for a hopeful new crop of string-beans. The ethic behind the Garden is hand and heart power creating food which itself will create justice and enlightenment for the local community.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">A plethora of fresh green peppers.</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">An oceanic bed of deliciously provocative jalapeños.</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The hole leading to the lair of the groundhog, the adorable yet inconsiderate creature who can't control his tongue in relation to the Garden's edibles. A remake of the cinematic classic Caddyshack is currently being filmed on the premises.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Young tomatoes struggle through a wet and wily season of Appalachian weather to bloom and grow.</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><img alt="2013-08-15-7G13.jpg" height="298" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-15-7G13.jpg" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="400" /></span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The classic American weed-whacker we endlessly wrestle with so that we may endlessly wrestle with the endless weeds.</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Our flower patch, which is used to sumptuously decorate the altar at the Radha-Krishna temple at the New Vrindaban community.</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Fresh raspberries showing their colors.</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">This was the Summer of Weed (not the happy kind necessarily). In order to clear this row to plant a late batch of winter squash, Terry and I spent nearly 8 hours hand-weeding nearly 200 feet of these ginormous weeds.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Terry temporarily dominates the mutant-weeds.</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">I've become delirious with fatigue dealing with weeds ten times my size, with roots several hundred feet deep, or at least it felt that way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Crossing the rubicon...</span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The weeded patch now planted with winter squash topped with row cover to keep the elements and damned groundhogs from getting too rowdy.</span></span></div>
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<strong style="background-color: #274e13; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: white;"><a href="http://farmeducation.org/wp/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">Click here to check out more at The Small Farm Training Center website</a>.</span></strong></div>
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<em style="background-color: #274e13; border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: white;"><strong style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.wvpubcast.org/search.aspx?q=Terry%20Sheldon" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">Click here to listen to Terry's interviews on the Green Wheeling Initiative and the Small Farm Training Center with West Virginia Public Broadcasting</a></strong>.</span></em></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-58032525175503146362013-08-23T17:34:00.000-04:002013-08-23T17:34:21.670-04:00The Teaching Garden at The Small Farm Training Center<center style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><span style="list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial;"><img alt="2013-08-02-tgtitle" height="413" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-02-tgtitle" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="589" /></span></span></span></center>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-fici/the-yoga-of-ecology_b_1692190.html" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">In a previous blog exactly a year ago here on HuffPost</a>, I shared the philosophy of "simple living and high thinking" as presented by the eminent Vedic teacher/scholar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._C._Bhaktivedanta_Swami_Prabhupada" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada</a>. In carrying the timeless wisdom of the <em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">bhakti-yoga </em>tradition to the wide world outside of India, Swami Prabhupada was determined to create a profound paradigm shift that would carry our sense of civilization forward by harkening back to our natural foundation. This foundation not only consists of yogic practices designed to help us recover and restore the natural state of our being, as souls devoted to the Divine and all life, but it also consists of an ecologically-sound, agrarian way of life which in many ways is the polar opposite of the urbanized, industrialized, and technologized model of civilization we are deeply conditioned and committed to.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Swami Prabhupada dared to say that the agrarian model of life was not a backwards step. He wanted to us to understand that our reconnection to the simple life of the land was not only the most necessary forward step for our civilization, but also that it was the most necessary forward step on the journey towards our own spiritual self-realization.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Terry Sheldon, one of Swami Prabhupada's original students, has carried forward this aspect of Swami's misison with his service creating <a href="http://www.farmeducation.org/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">The Small Farm Training Center (SFTC)</a>, part of the <a href="http://newvrindaban.com/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">New Vrindaban temple and community</a> in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. The Small Farm Training Center is the flagship project of the Green Wheeling Initiative (which we have previously blogged about <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-fici/the-yoga-of-ecology3_b_3595961.html" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-fici/the-yoga-of-ecology-a-day-in-the-life_b_3613905.html" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a>). Terry has been at the cutting-edge of political and spiritual thought throughout his life, from the radical streets of Berkeley in the 1960s to the historic spread of the <em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhakti_yoga" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">bhakti-yoga</a></em> tradition across the Eastern and Western world. Now he shares the conviction and living example that the local food movement, and the paradigm shift towards ecologically-sound agrarian living, is the true and most essential earthly and spiritual revolution of our time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">From the<a href="http://farmeducation.org/wp/category/our-story/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink"> Small Farm Training Center website</a>, Terry writes:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The Small Farm Training Center (SFTC) is a land based educational center and a hands-on working organic farm. Our purpose is to create community -- a web of supportive relationships -- by making locally grown organic foods readily available and affordable with the use of simple technology.</span></span><div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Although I've spent 30 plus years farming and gardening in Appalachia, I don't consider myself a "local." You might say I'm spoiled. My grandfather's farm in Northern Michigan, where I was raised, is both flat and fertile. West Virginia hillside farming is daunting. The soils here -- like the air, the streams and the people themselves -- have been used and abused for 150 years.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The "real" locals, those who can trace their heritage back for two or three generations, love Appalachia. That spark of original mountain culture permeates their very being, Unfortunately, their bodies tell a different story. Morbid obesity and diabetes are the norm. That's the price you pay when you no longer grow what you eat and eat what you grow. Like most Americans, their industrially grown food is starving them nutritionally while fattening them for the "big round-up" by the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Something is out of balance. The Small Farm Training Center is one of many local organizations challenging this dying paradigm. We farm, we garden, we teach, we encourage, we improvise and most importantly we listen to input. We also call a spade a spade when it comes to identifying the political, economic, cultural and spiritual stumbling blocks to restoring the environment and securing a safe, stable food supply... We nourish both person and place.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">For the past month I have been participating in the SFTC <a href="http://farmeducation.org/wp/category/training/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">apprenticeship program</a> with Terry and the SFTC. The program is a fountain of hands-on knowledge in relation to the ABCs of organic farming, biodiversity, composting, and the fine arts of constant sowing, seeding, and weeding. However there is an extra layer to how Terry approaches the idea of teaching and sharing. For him molding an apprentice means molding a <em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">paradigm warrior</em>. He writes:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">All privately held corporations are living a lie. They believe we live in a world where capital has the right to grow and that right is higher than the rights of people, If you're one of those people who passively accept corporate domination of America's food supply and political life, be forewarned, we don't. Corporations are no more a part of the natural order than the English monarchy was 200 years ago. They want us to believe that industrial agriculture is the only way to feed the world. That's a lie. They want us to believe that it is cheaper to destroy the earth than to take care if it in real time. That's another lie. At the heart of their economic system and theory is the proposal that life is too expensive. We disagree. We choose life and we're going to tell our own story. We're looking for paradigm warriors who can expand the conversation and are fluent in the language of inclusion, kinship and possibility.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The Small Farm Training Center apprenticeship program is about:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Learning by doing, and then teaching it to others -- that's how you earn your degree in bio-citizenship. Yoga, vegetarian cooking, and the care of farm animals -- especially milk cows -- are additional features of our curriculum. We also regularly distribute surplus organic veggies to soup kitchens and local charities. Turn off the boob-tube, shut down your laptop and pick up your hoe.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Being an apprentice here is about developing the courage to literally make the change happen, to be part of the global movement which draws us back to the foundations of natural community and civilization. It is about getting that sacred soil lodged in your fingernails and on your hands like a true badge of honor. It is about understanding the essential art of "no-harm" farming and the real definition of sustainability, as we'll discuss more in our next Yoga of Ecology blog.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">For now, let me take you on a tour of one of the two gardens that make up the Small Farm Training Center. Today we will show you our Teaching Garden, and in our next blog we will check out our eight-acre Garden of Seven Gates. Join me!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The 1/2 organic Teaching Garden provides foodstuffs and flowers for the New Vrindaban community and guests, for the <a href="http://www.krishna.com/when-does-food-become-prasadam" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">sacred prasadam</a> food offerings to the resident Deities Radha-Vrindaban Chandra, and for the outreach efforts of the Green Wheeling Initiative.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The Teaching Garden stands with feet in both new and old paradigms, honoring and participating in the progressive ecological movement of our time by showing an example of a cow-centered farm. The practical and philosophical aspects of the Garden are based on the principles of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vedic-Ecology-Practical-Surviving-Century/dp/B006CDT960" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">Vedic village ecology</a>, from Indian culture, one of history and humanity's most advanced and ecologically sound systems of agriculture.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">All fertilizer in the garden comes from the community's resident cows and goats, demonstrating that real fertility comes from living in harmony with our fellow living entities. <a href="http://www.iscowp.org/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">The honoring and protection of our fellow animal community</a> members is a deep and essential spiritual principle which insures karmic harmony and the sustainability and evolution of the soul towards self-realization for everyone involved with the Garden.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The Teaching Garden is an example of small-scale biodiversity, empowering the local community with local food culture. The tillers of the Garden offer workshops and tours which explains the ABCs of organic farming in relation to small-scale backyard gardening, market gardening, or the art of selling and preserving organic produce, and mini-farming, growing a wide array of foods for the local community without capital-extensive, external inputs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">The Garden also has a strict reuse, recycle, and restore ethic in relation to our mechanical assistants. Hence our trusty tractor, which has been in operation since the 1940s.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><img alt="2013-08-02-tg4" height="313" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-02-tg4" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="420" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Tromboncino squash, which is resistant to squash bugs. Take that Monsanto!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><img alt="2013-08-02-tg6" height="313" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-02-tg6" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="420" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Our mint collection includes lemon-mint, chocolate mint (which tastes like a York peppermint pattie), peppermint, and spearmint.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><img alt="2013-08-02-tg7" height="313" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-02-tg7" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="420" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Dinosaur kale, whose dark-green leaves have a delicious nutty texture and remain firm in texture when cooked.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><img alt="2013-08-02-tg8" height="313" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-02-tg8" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="420" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><img alt="2013-08-02-tg9" height="313" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-02-tg9" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="420" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;"><img alt="2013-08-02-tg10" height="313" src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-08-02-tg10" style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="420" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13;"><span style="color: white;">Some of the Garden's resident sunflowers. Nectar for the eyes and soul.</span></span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-53428669290766329052013-08-02T15:53:00.001-04:002013-08-02T15:53:12.349-04:00ISCOWP July 2013 update<a href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=o6mtvfdab&v=0011yfyIBi0NNqFlnjwVwkzOpBUNxQP4kw8ZX5BXIbSwaaXT5_qmm9onKpDMCmWuaRvs32oyGHZN-kEzHDMdkVdniolRuEifzkjDOvFqfg6zqgk65sXQ9WMOgvkwUwKgEdr" target="_blank"><i><b>Click here for the latest from our friends at the International Society for Cow Protection (ISCOWP)</b></i></a><br />
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<i><b> </b></i>Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-7867018335820315672013-08-02T15:46:00.000-04:002013-08-02T15:46:29.581-04:00A Day In The Life of the Green Wheeling Initiative
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<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-fici/the-yoga-of-ecology3_b_3595961.html" target="_hplink">In my previous "Yoga of Ecology" post,</a>
I shared the truly brilliant and compassionate work of the Green
Wheeling Initiative (GWI), a grassroots ground-up local food movement in
Wheeling, W. Va. The GWI is helping the diverse peoples of Wheeling to
reclaim their backyards and the bounties in their backyards through
community gardens, cultural workshops, grant programs, and campus
ecology events, amongst much else. <br />
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Terry Sheldon, one of the co-founders of the GWI, <a href="http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/576179/Gardening-Group-Grows-Their-Own.html?nav=510" target="_hplink">explains in an article on the GWI in the local <em>Wheeling Intelligencer</em></a>
that "in a very positive way, we are trying to provide an alternative
food system that creates a healthy environment for Wheeling. We're
convinced through local partnership that we can create a local food
economy around the issue of food that are grown by and consumed by
people in the Wheeling area." <br />
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It is a project at the forefront of the just sustainability movement,
which bridges the gaps between the environmental justice and the
sustainability movements. In my eco-theology studies at Union
Theological Seminary in New York, I was introduced to the conflict
between the environmental justice (EJ) movement and the sustainability
movement. Critics of the EJ movement may say that the work of EJ groups are too
human-centric in their focus. They may argue that by being overtly
focused on insuring justice for people in largely impoverished and
marginalized communities, on insuring freedom from pollution and
toxicity being dumped in their backyards, the EJ movement fails to fully
acknowledge broader ecological issues involving non-human life/ life
systems. Critics of the sustainability movement argue that by focusing
overtly on these broader ecological issues, the gritty issues of
incinerators and toxic waste being dumped in impoverished communities,
and all the resultant health problems that come along with, are not
given specific and proper attention, care, and concern.
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The just sustainability movement can create an synthesis of concern
and action that works to honor, correct, and improve the needs and lives
of those who have been ecologically prejudiced against and
marginalized, whether they are human or not. Julian Agyeman, EJ advocate
and chair of the Department of Urban + Environmental Policy + Planning
(UEP) at Tufts University, in his book <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookid=9791#.Ue2Uv4IZy9g" target="_hplink"><em>Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of EJ</em></a>, writes:<br />
<blockquote>
"Just sustainability highlights the pivotal role that
justice and equity could and should play within sustainability
discourses. In so doing, it fundamentally challenges the current,
dominant, stewardship-focused orientation of sustainability, which has
as its main concern the conservation of the natural environment, namely
environmental sustainability...Transformative or just sustainability
implies a paradigm shift that requires sustainability to take on a
redistributive function. To do this, justice and equity must move center
stage in sustainability discourses, if we are to have any chance of a
more sustainable future."</blockquote>
In spending time with Terry as an apprentice at his <a href="http://www.farmeducation.org/" target="_hplink">Small Farm Training Center</a>
in nearby Moundsville, W. Va., I've had the chance to see and
experience the Green Wheeling Initiative first-hand and in action. Terry
has introduced me to the very people who give life to the local food
movement in Wheeling, who understand, despite being in the "belly of the
beast" in West Virginia, where the poverty and obesity epidemics reign
supreme, that they can reclaim the health and wealth in their own
backyards. <br />
<br />
Here is a photo essay of a day in the life of the Green Wheeling
Initiative, and we hope you are inspired to share what is going on here
and that it inspires you in your own just sustainability efforts.<br />
<br />
<em><strong>A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE GREEN WHEELING INITIATIVE</strong></em><br />
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Every Tuesday Terry brings in at least eight boxes of swiss chard, or
"West Virginia spinach" as the locals like to call it, to various soup
kitchens in the Wheeling area, such as Catholic Charities Neighborhood
Center and the <a href="http://www.wheelingsoup.org/" target="_hplink">Soup Kitchen of Greater Wheeling.</a>
Terry hopes that his contributions can be an encouragement towards
integrating organic and local food, as an alternative to processed
foods, into the serve-outs, food-boxes, and meals on wheels that make up
the local charity networks.
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Our journey on this Tuesday begins somewhat ominously, as Terry takes
a shortcut on a dirt road through one of the local coal mines. He tells
me that the coal residue on the road is highly toxic yet there is no
regulation for its safe disposal, if such a thing exists. He tells me
that the air in this part of the country is dirtier, because of the coal
residue, than it is in my home locale of Manhattan.<br />
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One of the first aspects of the GWI that Terry showed me was the
community gardens in some of the local schools in the Wheeling area. The
challenge is to scale up, to find a way to integrate a garden into
student bodies with hundreds of students, giving them each some little
plot of investment. But the raised bed gardens at these schools are a
good head start, creating a momentum and flow that could grow into
something quite nourishing. The GWI has community gardens in four
elementary schools, one preschool, and two universities in the Wheeling
area.<br />
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The community garden at Woodsdale Elementary in Wheeling.<br />
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The community garden at Wheeling Jesuit University<br />
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Corn as high as an elephant's eye at Wheeling Jesuit<br />
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Raised bed community garden at McNinch Primary in Moundsville, WV</center>
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We next moved on to the 18th Street Overpass Garden, which we
mentioned in our previous piece as being the epitome of the potential
for urban agriculture.<br />
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The 18th Street Overpass Garden is a <a href="http://organicgardening.about.com/od/startinganorganicgarden/a/lasagnagarden.htm" target="_hplink">no-till "lasagna" garden</a>,
which helps to restore the integrity of soil which has suffered from
being in a highly urbanized and polluted environment like Wheeling.<br />
The GWI holds workshops for the local community and envisions a
culture around the Overpass Garden which would include regular block
parties and vegetable carts that could travel into the surrounding
blocks and sell vegetables from the garden to the local residents, which
would keep money in the community.<br />
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The Overpass Garden is a fore-runner of the green-collar economy, of
retrofitting urban environments for urban gardening and farming. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/detroit-urban-farming" target="_hplink">Like similar projects in other blighted locations such as inner-city Detroit</a>, the Overpass Garden shows how community and ecology can be re-born in the ashes of the "American Dream."<br />
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The next place we came too was where the Green Wheeling Initiative originally came into being: <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wvncc.edu%2F&ei=wKjtUa3oCuvi4AOL1YCIDw&usg=AFQjCNFTYxnDTeJYNLhd87kOvUUrdZJTvA&bvm=bv.49478099,d.dmg" target="_hplink">West Virginia Northern Community College (WVNCC)</a>,
in downtown Wheeling. One of the founders of the GWI, Gene Evans, was a
professor in the Culinary Arts program at WVNCC and helped inspire the
founding of the Culinary Arts Garden on the campus.<br />
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The Culinary Arts Garden at WV Northern Community College. Beets,
squash, basil, and hysop are many of the bounties being grown here.<br />
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Terry tells a wonderful story of his own initial connection with
WVNCC. Participating in the annual Harvest Fest which takes place on the
campus, he met a member of the community who was very piqued by his
presentations on local ecologically and economically sound food culture.
When Terry told her his vision of making organic food fully affordable
to the people of Wheeling, she was moved to tears. It so happens that
this woman is the wife of Martin J. Olshinsky, the president of WVNCC.
Soon after, over fifty culinary arts students from WVNCC toured Terry's
Small Farm Training Center project.<br />
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The GWI hopes to inspire, via the Culinary Arts Garden, a new
curriculum within the Culinary Arts program at WVNCC which would focus
on helping students become advocates and activists for the local food
culture in Wheeling. The idea is that this program would empower the
students with knowledge of how to grow, cook, find, and share local
foods in the Wheeling area.<br />
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We next visited the raised bed gardens of King's Daughters Child
Care. The garden is full of peppers, zucchini, potatoes, sunflowers, and
much more. Over the past three months Terry has held 13 mini-workshops
for the preschoolers who attend the child care program. Besides the
tremendous amount of loving hilarity that comes along with interacting
with these precocious personalities, Terry hopes to provide an example
of how gardening can be integrated into the lives of all people in
Wheeling, from preschoolers to wise old sages.<br />
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"Farmer Terry" holds a mini-workshop for some mini-people. Here
he teaches the kids about hysop, a plant that flavors many different
kinds of sweets, such as licorice</center>
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Farmer Terry pulls up some potato plants to show everyone that indeed potatoes grow within the Earth herself.</center>
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A hands-on experience for the kids in picking swiss chard (or "West Virginia spinach") leaves off their stalks<br />
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The kids favorite part of the mini-workshop: getting to water the garden...<br />
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...and they have some pretty unorthodox watering techniques<br />
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On Wheeling Island is the Island Rats Community Garden, with 25
raised beds and active patronage from members of Wheeling television and
media.<br />
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Last and certainly not least, we visited the home of Shannon, a
house-mom with five kids and a husband who is an over-qualified coal
miner with bigger dreams. Shannon has offered to become one of the main
caretakers of the community garden at McNinch Primary. Terry and I were
very impressed with her commitment to making sure her kids were given as
much fresh and healthy food as she could possibly cook. It is moms like
Shannon who in many ways are the real cutting-edge of the local food
movement not only in Wheeling, but around the globe.<br />
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<a href="http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/576179/Gardening-Group-Grows-Their-Own.html?nav=510" target="_hplink">Quoted once again in the <em>Wheeling Intelligencer</em></a>,
Terry speaks about Wheeling living up to its real potential. "It makes
the tagline of 'The Friendly City' very real. Farming is not solemn work
that you do all by yourself just to feed your family. The joy of
farming, the joy of gardening is when it's done as a cooperative effort.
We're trying to create a culture in which people want to work
together."<br />
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<em><a href="http://www.wvpubcast.org/search.aspx?q=Terry%20Sheldon" target="_hplink">Click here</a>
to listen to Terry's interviews on the Green Wheeling Initiative and
the Small Farm Training Center with West Virginia Public Broadcasting.</em><br />
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</em><br />
<em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Green-Wheeling-Initiative/220426608041802" target="_hplink">The Green Wheeling Initiative on Facebook</a></em>Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-9699745568325196062013-07-18T21:20:00.002-04:002013-07-18T21:20:34.260-04:00The Green Wheeling Initiative<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<em style="border: 0px; font-size: 15.199999809265137px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">My hands in the soil eco-theology transcending my nature-deficit-disorder Farm Yatra summer tour continues as I return to a place I called home for two very formative years in my life: the New Vrindaban bhakti-yoga spiritual community, located in the Appalachian foot-hills of the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, where I had previously lived as a monk in the bhakti tradition. New Vrindaban is the home to the <a href="http://www.farmeducation.org/" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">Small Farm Training Center (SFTC)</a> project, a "land based educational center and a hands-on working organic farm" with the purpose of creating "community -- a web of supportive relationships -- by making locally grown organic foods readily available and affordable with the use of simple technology." The SFTC wants to create "paradigm warriors" who can "expand the conversation and are fluent in the language of inclusion, kinship and possibility" in relation to our existential ecological crisis. I'll be here for over a month and I will be blogging on the many facets of this dynamic and spiritually revolutionary project.</span></em></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">For my previous Yoga of Ecology blogs on my time with the biodynamic Episcopal sisters at Bluestone Farm in Brewster, NY, click <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-fici/the-yoga-of-ecology-at-bluestone_b_3550948.html" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-fici/the-yoga-of-ecology_b_3576560.html" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a>.</span></em></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">The photo above is an epitome of the potential and reality of urban agriculture. This is the 18th Street Overpass Garden in Wheeling, W. Va., one of the community gardens which is part of the Green Wheeling Initiative. The image juxtaposes so much of what it means to try to create a green-collar economy, a sense of ownership and empowerment over one's local community and local food sources. The beautiful garden, deep in its nourishing color and emanation of a literally life-giving aesthetic, stands in contrast to the huge modern sculpture of the overpass, a type of "artwork" which has long outlived its fashion and utility. The billboard in the background advertises for a local funeral home. One can suppose the ad is hardly needed. There are few more eternally profitable and stable businesses. In a place like Wheeling and in Appalachia, in the "belly of the beast." where nearly <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/54000.html" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">one in four people live below the poverty line</a> and where West Virginia has the <a href="http://www.thenewscenter.tv/home/headlines/WV-Obesity-Stats-211909131.html" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">highest obesity rate in the country</a>, questions of life, health, death, and food culture hang ominously in many spoken and unspoken places. If one can empower the people of Wheeling to create their own local, healthy, and ecologically-sound food culture, then one is creating justice, spiritual hope, and real honest-to-goodness happiness in a place where such things seem to have been long since lost in the most visceral and essential sense.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">Standing in the Overpass Garden is Terry Sheldon, one of the founders and movers of the Green Wheeling Initiative, and the head of the Small Farm Training Center project at the New Vrindaban community near Wheeling. I had previously worked with Terry during my time as a monk in New Vrindaban, and I have also <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-fici/the-yoga-of-ecology_b_1692190.html?utm_hp_ref=green" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">written about the SFTC project here</a>. The GWI is an extension of Terry's vision of his own work and service to the local community, driven by his understanding and his spiritual obligation to share the wisdom of the true sustainability of the soul. It is a vision of "no-harm" farming, as Terry writes:</span></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">West Virginia is hurdling towards local foods. The day is coming when grocery store shelves will be stocked with blueberries from Beckley rather than Beijing. Kudos to the ag. economists, policy makers in state government, NGO think tanks (like The Hub) and the growing numbers of pioneer-spirited, small scale farmers and gardeners statewide. That's the good news.<div style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
<br style="border: 0px; display: block; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px;" />Now the bad news. Most West Virginians aren't paying attention. They reside in urban and rural food deserts where affordable healthy food is out-of reach. They suffer from junk food malnutrition, buy inexpensive processed food, drink large amounts of soda and are reducing their life expectancy. Their diseases--chiefly diabetes and obesity--are not preventable without lifestyle change from the bottom-up.</div>
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Simply stated, the local foods movement is out-flanked and out-financed by the titans of the fast food industry. Following Big Tobacco's lead, fast food advertising is targeting youth, the poor and the uninformed. No number of feasibility studies or private foundation grants can usher-in a local food economy from the top down. Why? Because the food choices and self destructive eating addictions that drive West Virginia's health crises are the result of policies favoring commodity-based agriculture over community-based agriculture. It currently takes approximately 25 acres of land to satisfy the average West Virginian's appetite for an animal-centric diet.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">Our vision of the future? Home economics classes returning to the public school curricula. Small scale organic "farmetts" dotting the suburban, city and small town horizons. Food mentors, not armed guards, in every school, every day-care and every housing project with the skills to teach every child the basics of a healthy-food lifestyle.</span></em></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">The Green Wheeling Initiative is a down-home, ground-up, grass-roots revolutionary food justice and cultural movement which is responding to the food crisis which threatens not only our health and well-being, but the integrity of life for so many living entities on this planet. It is those entities on the margins, because of their race, economic condition, their species and what is considered the correct utility of their existence, who are the most unjustly treated in the trenches of this crisis. The GWI is a response of environmental justice that represents real courage, clarity, and compassion.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">The goal of the GWI is simply the restoration of the very idea of community that has been lost in the industrial-technological civilization of the overpass. The 18th Street Overpass Garden is not the first garden ever to rise in that particular neighborhood of Wheeling . Before the overpass went up, there was a real sense of place which has been now been paved over. The folks behind the GWI are trying to remind people that their backyards are something that truly belongs to them. They are trying to remind people that the bounties in those backyards can provide them with a quality and quantity of life which no corporation or outside interest has the right to co-op. It is the inalienable right of the people in this and any community to cultivate, grow, share, and enjoy the fruits of their very sustenance.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">The motto of the GWI is "We Are Wheeling's green future... collaborate, collaborate, collaborate". In their mission statement they write:</span></div>
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<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">Our mission is to build a local food production and distribution system that saves energy, creates jobs and circulates more money into the local economy. We partner with local farmers, community gardeners, schools and businesses to make fresh food available and easily available. We are Wheeling's green future.</span></em></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">In the past few years, Terry, along with co-founders Danny Swan, the pioneer of East Wheeling Community Gardens and a regular vendor at Wheeling's Farmer Market, and Gene Evans, an adjunct culinary arts professor who is currently teaching in Parkersburg, W. Va, have created a community garden network of 20+ gardens in the Wheeling area. In short time the GWI attracted the attention of private foundations such as the Hess Family Foundation and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, who have given the GWI over $80,000 in grant money. The GWI regularly offers organic community workshops in the Wheeling area and its influence and inspiration continues to grow (pun intended) upon a wide and diverse swath of peoples in the Wheeling area (check out local reports on the GWI <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/Business/201207080083" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a>, <a href="http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/576179/Gardening-Group-Grows-Their-Own.html?nav=510" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a>, <a href="http://www.wtrf.com/story/16976360/gardening-can-lead-to-a-whole-new-level-of-health-says-green-wheeling-initiative" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a>, and <a href="http://www.newvrindabanbloggers.org/?cat=222" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink">here</a>.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">There are also five ongoing raised-bed garden projects in local schools in the Wheeling-Moundsville area. Some of the current initiatives of the GWI include a grant-funded study on "Bringing our Food Dollar Back Home", which would explore shifting 10 percent of the local economy towards community gardens and localized food cultivation, along with urban-gardening micro-grants which would serve as a clearing house for persons interested in start-up money for community gardens. The GWI is also developing a campus ecology project, which would help to create strategies for measuring the ecological footprint of local universities and colleges. Students would design their own audit projects for their schools. An initiative is also in the works to help make SNAP (food stamps) double in value at the Wheeling Farmer's Market when people use them to purchase healthy, locally grown foods.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">In our next Yoga of Ecology piece we will take you on a tour of a day in the life of the Green Wheeling Initiative.</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Green-Wheeling-Initiative/220426608041802" style="border: 0px; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_hplink"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white;">Green Wheeling Initiative on Facebook.</span></a></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-82973596411221375072013-07-09T22:14:00.002-04:002013-07-11T21:12:12.384-04:00The Yoga of Ecology: More From Bluestone Farm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the most amazing things that I heard about at our student orientation at Union Theological Seminary last fall was the existence of the "nun farm." Claire West, a Masters of Divinity student and one of the people behind the Edible Churchyard project at Union, told me about the Bluestone Farm community and the wonderful Sisters who were creating, harvesting, weeding, and living a simple yet grand experiment in spiritually-formed ecologically-sound living in upstate New York.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In my own anticipation to see what the "nun farm" was all about, I began to understand what communities like Bluestone were anticipating. Now, after having spent some actual time with the Sisters, in the dirt and sweat and joy, having left a little piece of my heart at the farm to make sure I return, this anticipation becomes tangible. I am becoming part of a group of seekers, both of the spirit and the land, who are shaping visions of community and civilization as we shift from industrial-technological civilization to ecological civilization.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Bluestone Farm is an <i>anticipatory community</i>, a community that by its very living example is anticipating the coming shape of our communities and civilization, a shape that we hope and work for in such a way that it will be in harmony with the shape of our Mother Earth. We hope, work, and anticipate that this shape of life will not become weakened by a romanticism or an idealism which doesn't have it's feet in the ground, its hands in the dirt, or which stands apart or aloof from the concerns of justice, which doesn't allow the voices of the marginalized, both human and non-human alike, from being heard, honored, and brought to the front.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The deep loving spiritual vision that the Sisters are trying to imbibe and present through their work on the farm is linked to a "new cosmology" of inter-being and inter-spirituality. They explain on their website:</span></span><br />
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<i><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The "new cosmology" is an important theological strand that weaves together great scientific discoveries of recent decades with the wisdom of mystics throughout the ages. The late <a href="http://www.thomasberry.org/" style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Thomas Berry</a> was perhaps the first to use this phrase in its theological context, and it has since been further developed by many others, including mathematician <a href="http://www.brianswimme.org/media/press_kits.asp" style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Brian Swimme</a> and Sister Miriam MacGillis of <a href="http://www.genesisfarm.org/" style="letter-spacing: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Genesis Farm</a>. The new cosmology confirms for our current day what Jesus and prophets from all religious traditions have long said — all living beings are sacred, we are all interconnected and creation is our home and our very being.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Such a fantastic universe, with its great spiraling galaxies, its supernovas, our solar system, and this privileged planet Earth! All this is held together in the vast curvature of space, poised so precisely in holding all things together in one embrace and yet so lightly that the creative expansion of the universe might continue into the future. We ourselves, with our distinctive capabilities for reflexive thinking, are the most recent wonder of the universe, a special mode of reflecting this larger curvature of the universe itself. If in recent centuries, we have sought to collapse this larger creative curve within the horizons of our own limited being, we must now understand that our own well-being can be achieved only through the well-being of the entire natural world about us. The greater curvature of the universe and of the planet Earth must govern the curvature of our own being...</span></i></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Thomas Berry, </i><em>The Dream of the Earth</em></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #38761d; color: #333333; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;"><i><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In particular, we offer our companion "travelers" opportunities to experience what it might mean to recognize and embrace our essential spiritual nature as we are transformed from consumers into citizens. We feel our path is one more way in which human civilization might be transformed for the benefit of all.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The vision for the future of the Bluestone Farm community as a whole includes an inter-spiritual center that would give space and facility to many different wisdom traditions to give of their hearts and to receive, to add their own seeds to the farm and their own angles of theological vision. The community also anticipates the shape of spirituality as we move into the dynamically uncertain waves of the 21st Century. They want to provide a integrative space for the spiritual and ecological seeker who may not necessarily be inclined to monastic life or other traditional religious and spiritual vocations. Yet it is the strength of the Sisters' vocation, based in what has worked and open to what will work, and the strength of the community they have built around their vocation, which provides a structure for the 21st Century person willingly or unwillingly immersed in the post-structural and the post-modern.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the center of it all is the land and the cow and the spirituality of farming. The Sisters write:</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 21px;"><i><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With the passing of each season, on the farm and through the church calendar, we are coming to know how agricultural, environmental, and spiritual practices are truly intertwined. Our study and our prayers have moved us toward living more sustainably in the city, and toward building a new sustainable and energy-efficient convent with an architecture that allows us to live out our values. Our work to cultivate Bluestone Farm has given us farmers' hearts, which resonate and rejoice in the Scriptures' charge to tend the land, to give thanks for the harvest, and to see God's hand in every living thing.</span></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 21px;">Our call to heal the soil, live sustainably, reskill, and worship on this our plot of land is upheld by friends, neighbors, and Church in an ever-widening and deepening social geography. We find that our Community's desire to live in ever-increasing appreciation of the wonder of creation is shared widely, beyond the church, by small farmers, local food advocates, and environmentalists. It gives us great joy to share our understanding of the spirituality of farming with this growing network: our farm is at once a gift, a work, an invitation, and a prayer. </span> </span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The philosophy the Sisters are developing in their work on the farm is based much more than just the obvious, much more than what can only be seen with our eyes or directly perceived by our senses. They have been developing biodynamic methods based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. They are convinced, as generations and generations before them, of the miraculous utility of cow manure. In my own small way, in my recovery from <i>nature-deficit disorder</i>, I have begun to develop a set of "soft eyes" which lets me see all the peas or asparagus I need to pick, and all the specific weeds I need to pull. In fact weeding, the eternal art, is a kind of Zen activity if one is able to simply disconnect from the urbanized, carbonized, and digitized whoosh that seems to be blowing like a gale through our minds constantly.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here again are some images of life at Bluestone Farm which illustrate our values, joy, and abundance</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A little baby cucumber enters into this mad, mad world</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Beautiful broccoli waiting to be fully bloomed, harvested, cooked, buttered, and enjoyed</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A mystical rainy afternoon on the Farm...but too much damn rain this summer!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mashing comfrey leaves to make comfrey tea, a permacultural (and very smelly) prep designed to prevent bad bacteria, fungi, and pests from wreaking havoc.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Halfway to my nine-pound harvest of champagne currants</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Sister" Katie Ferrari uncovers a cow horn filled with cow manure that had been buried in the garden all winter.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is a biodynamic technique, based on the theories of Rudolf Steiner, in which the energy-drawing design of the horn helps to maximize the nourishment potential of the manure</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; line-height: 18px;">Sister Helena Marie removes the manure from the cow-horn</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Cow manure, God's greatest invention</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; text-align: start;"><span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Sister Carol Bernice, the sacred cow-woman of Bluestone Farm, lovingly cares for her favorite girls, Jiffy and Mercy</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our worship at Bluestone Farm is like everything else we do, rooted in traditional wisdom but always seeking to integrate the threads of spirituality which we all share in the 21st Century. One of the most unique creations the Sisters have grown is the Celebration of Life eucharist, in which the traditional elements of communion, such as the bread and wine, are exchanged with bounties from the garden, such as fresh blueberries and buttermilk. The liturgy is also geared towards an understanding of the Earth as Eucharist. To whit:</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: #274e13;">Today we continue to participate in this dance of life, taking in and releasing energy just as our ancestors the first particles learned to do. Our duty and our joy is twofold: to speak the glad celebration of all creation, and to participate in the evolutionary journey of consciousness with mindfulness and awe.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: #274e13;">We celebrate our own place in the community of Mother Earth, giving praise to the Holy Dream that transformed a cloud of hydrogen into stars, otters, and rosebushes. We remember that this miracle of transformation occurs because the journey of life in this Universe in deeply Eucharistic.</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The worship at the Farm is also deeply inter-spiritual. In my time there we took part in a traditional Chinese tea ceremony led by our friends and Community Associates Kay and Anne from New Mexico, and I led a kirtan from the <i>bhakti-yoga</i> tradition of India. The community also incorporates elements of Sufi <i>zikr</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The bell that calls us to worship in the chapel</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our chapel space, prepared for a traditional Chinese tea ceremony</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Divine Mother</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and Divine Mother Earth</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our Summer Solstice drum circle</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anne and Kay bang the drum slowly</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">as does Matthew</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To everyone at Bluestone Farm, all of my love, blessings, and gratitude for opening your home and making me feel at home. To any ecologically-minded spiritual seekers, worshipers of Divine Mother Earth, any time spent with the Sisters is an experience you will cherish.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For more information on internships and volunteering, <a href="http://www.chssisters.org/farm-faith-internships/" target="_blank">check out the Farm online</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Check out the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bluestone-Farm-Fans/116453775039403?fref=ts" target="_blank">Bluestone Farm Fans on Facebook</a></span></div>
<br />Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-79508178558643300942013-06-28T20:03:00.000-04:002013-06-28T21:08:08.415-04:00The Yoga of Ecology at Bluestone Farm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://yogaofecology.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html" target="_blank">The <b>Yoga of Ecology</b> blog originally began</a> in 2008 as a chronicle of the spiritually inspired agricultural exploits of the Small Farm Training Center project at the New Vrindaban <i>bhakti-yoga</i> community in the foothills of the West Virginia Panhandle. I wanted to share the unique experience I was having not only of monastic life in the 21st Century, but also the experience of being part of a community and project focused on the ideals of "simple living and high thinking."<br />
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Inspired by the practical wisdom of <i>bhakti-yoga</i> scholar/teacher A/C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, communities like the Small Farm Training Center were and are presenting a model of anticipation as we move from an unsustainable model of industrialized and commodified civilization to an ecologically sound civilization.<br />
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The waves of time has moved my own journey and the journey of this blog in new directions and vistas. I am now studying for my master's degree in eco-theology at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and once again I am drawn to the work of the soil, of the spirit within the soil, and to those people creating what has been coined by eco-theologians, including Larry Rasmussen in his latest book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Earth-honoring-Faith-Religious-Ethics-New/dp/0199917000" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Earth-Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics In A New Key</a>, as the <i style="font-weight: bold;">anticipatory community</i>.<br />
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These are sacred <i>sanghas</i> of individuals who are determined, courageous, knowledgeable, humbly setting themselves to the rhythms of our Mother Earth, showing us today the ways and means of harmony that will lead us to the cultural, ethical, and spiritual adaptation that tomorrow calls for.<br />
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I have realized that if I am going to be any kind of eco-theologian, eco-activist, eco-ethicist, or simple tiller of the soil, citizen of the Earth, my studies must include but not remain solely in the head-space. The Earth is the realm of the hands and heart, and with this understanding I have embarked this summer on a series of organic farm internships that will help me to learn the fine arts, skills, and meditations of grounded ecological life.<br />
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This is an experience that I hope will help me to overcome my <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4665933" target="_blank">nature-deficit disorder</a>. </i>In this mood, this blog will return this summer and beyond to a chronicle of experience in the communities I am serving in, as we share the bounties of our harvest that fill our plates and our spirit.<br />
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First, a brief word on what I mean by the the <i style="font-weight: bold;">yoga of ecology</i>. Having been a practitioner in the <i>bhakti-yoga</i> community for nearly a decade now, I have come to understand that the values of yoga, values that connect us, that <i>yolk</i> us, to the Divine are values that inherently create ecologically-sound lifestyles and communities.<br />
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<i>Bhakti</i> means devotion to the Divine, and this devotion, when it is the foundation of a spiritual community, creates an understanding of the boundless potential for spiritual grace and happiness that can only truly be found when we respect and understand the boundaries and spaces that Mother Earth asks us to live in. Devotion is a value which removes the dust from our heart, the dust of greed, envy, and selfishness, the internal pollution which manifests in the external pollution that wrecks our planet.<br />
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To farm, to till and love the soil, for the purpose of loving devotion to the Divine and to each other, is a form of yoga, and the soil also teaches us much about the true essence of spiritual values if we become tuned in enough to observe and listen.<br />
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I have spent the last three weeks in Brewster, New York, an hour north of the City, at Bluestone Farm and Living Arts Center, which is part of the Community of the Holy Spirit. <a href="http://www.chssisters.org/melrose-bluestone-farm/" target="_blank">From their website</a> the resident Sisters explain a bit of their history and standing:<br />
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Melrose house was established in 1961, in Brewster, New York, about an hour northeast of New York City. In 2004, we began to pursue our interest in sustainable living by starting Bluestone Farm and Living Arts Center. Grown organically, the produce we cultivate and store (by drying, lactofermenting, and freezing) feeds us throughout the year. Over the last five years, the farm has come to include beekeeping, duck and chicken flocks, cows, maple syrup and honey production, and wine-making among other activities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #274e13; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;">Together, we are engaged in weaving together our worship and our work, inspired by the writings of the late </span><a href="http://www.thomasberry.org/" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">Thomas Berry</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;">, </span><a href="http://www.brianswimme.org/" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">Brian Swimme</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;">, </span><a href="http://www.divinity.duke.edu/portal_memberdata/edavis" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">Ellen Davis</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;">, and </span><a href="http://www.contemplative.org/cynthia.html" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">Cynthia Bourgeault</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;">, among others. (Learn more about the "</span><a href="http://www.chssisters.org/new-cosmology/" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">new cosmology</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;">" and the </span><a href="http://www.chssisters.org/spirituality-of-farming/" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">spirituality of farming</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; text-align: start;">.)</span></span></div>
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Sisters Helena Marie, Carol Bernice, Catherine Grace, and Emmanuel, of the order of the Community of the Holy Spirit, are the wonderful and wise souls who have devoted their lives to this project. They are joined by Resident Companions Rev. Matthew Wright and Jody Ballew, and for the past few weeks and months interns Katie Ferrari, Yanick Savain, Sarah Lucas, and myself. We are a small but determined group, happily set to explore a way of life which carries deep meaning, potential, and soul.</div>
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The voices of the Sisters and Companions explain the heart of their intentions and work:</div>
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<i>Melrose is a biodynamic farm community...practicing the principles of permaculture and the religious life, we foster a mutually enhancing Earth-human relationship through prayer, ongoing reflection, manual labor, celebration and the arts. We hold a deep respect for creation as a primary revelation of God, and by sharing our work, worship, harvest and all we learn we model sustainable living, social justice and spiritual fulfillment in the context of local community and resilience.</i></div>
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<i>We stand at the turning point. We are a small group of people who have transformed a yard into a farm to help save Earth. We do not mean to startle or preach; we mean to declare that with intention and the labor of love we will ease the damage done to our Mother Earth by civilization gone awry. We mean peacefully to weave our own strand into the web of life as it exists here and now in our neck of the woods.</i></div>
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<i>We eschew any form of agricultural practice that shocks, destroys, or otherwise inhibits participation of all the species in the life of our farm. We recognize the rights of beings to their habitat. Thus we enjoin upon ourselves the patience, tolerance, and care needed to proceed mindfully through our days.</i></div>
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<i>Working together, we will learn from one another how to care for our Mother Earth. Working together, we will walk naturally into the great creative rhythm of the universe. We mean our lives together to be our act of love for one another, and in love we are confident of redemption.</i></div>
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Here is a photo essay of some of my experiences of life at Bluestone Farm:</div>
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<a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/1010173_10200693560195498_2026288009_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/1010173_10200693560195498_2026288009_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Our backyard, the Bluestone Farm</i></div>
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<i>St. Cuthbert's House and the Farm</i></div>
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<a href="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/1013827_10200693565355627_664371451_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/1013827_10200693565355627_664371451_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Jiffy, her daughter Mercy, and the milking shed where our beloved cow-friends give us gallons of fresh raw milk daily, which we drink and also use to make homemade butter and cheese</i></div>
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<a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/207007_10200693566155647_1441417355_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/207007_10200693566155647_1441417355_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Resident Companion Jody Ballew hand-milks Jiffy. With the guidance of Jody and our "sacred cow-woman" Sr. Carol Bernice, I have already accomplished one of my main goals for the summer: learning how to milk a cow!</i></div>
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<a href="https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/968924_10200712269583221_1488321071_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/968924_10200712269583221_1488321071_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Sunset over the Farm</i></div>
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<i>Freshly harvested strawberries and peas</i></div>
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<i>Broccoli blooming</i></div>
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<i>Katie and a ginormous kale harvest</i></div>
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<i>The first gaillardia bloom</i></div>
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<i>The caterpillar of the monarch butterfly</i></div>
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<i>Sr. Helena Marie amongst the Margarittes</i></div>
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<i>Matthew, Katie and myself displaying the spaceship kohlrabi</i></div>
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<i>Matthew and our harvest of kohlrabi, collard greens, and snap peas</i></div>
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<i>Cauliflower blooming</i></div>
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<i>The omnipresent height of evolution: the weed. Farming is eternal. Weeding is eternal. If you don't like weeding you are in the wrong business</i></div>
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More to come in the days ahead, including the unique ways we incorporate our harvest into our worship and celebration life, and the magic of biodynamic techniques and cow manure.</div>
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For more, check out <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bluestone-Farm-Fans/116453775039403?fref=ts" target="_blank">Bluestone Farm Fans</a></b> on Facebook</div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-83952742413156631832013-04-29T09:00:00.001-04:002013-04-29T09:00:12.796-04:00Govardhan Eco-Village Receives IAA Olive Crown Award<br />
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i><a href="http://www.radhanathswami.com/2013/04/govardhan-eco-village-receives-iaa-olive-crown-award/" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Radhanath Swami's website</a></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The
India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (an
international body of Media & Advertisers) conducted the Olive
Crown Awards for the year 2013 in Mumbai on the 1st of April.
A Special Jury Award was conferred upon the Govardhan
Eco village (GEV) in recognition of its continued efforts
towards environmental sustainability. On behalf of the Govardhan
Eco village, the award was collected by Shri Hrishikesh Mafatlal,
Shri Kushal Desai and Shriman Gauranga Dasa.</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Under
the inspiration and guidance of Radhanath Swami a dedicated community
began the development of the GEV in 2003 with the aim of
demonstrating the principles of self-sufficiency and localized
economy and highlighting the importance of living in harmony with
nature by presenting a sustainable living model. Gradually they have
developed fundamental aspects of the eco-village including organic
farming, cow protection, education, rural development, alternative
energy, eco-friendly constructions and sustainable living.</span></div>
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Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-17576257854706310092013-03-20T14:18:00.000-04:002013-03-20T14:18:09.784-04:00ISCOWP March 2013 Update<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs157/1102923281326/img/337.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs157/1102923281326/img/337.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
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<b><i><a href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=o6mtvfdab&v=001VZO97oWchjBJoY9vk4erP7IxZJo9PaEwCp23gCLWhvNHi_HEWkG7U07J5DtDv7CXY6AHfviEf6qvTKkp_6mRXmLQq8PAus3F5RjMa86ORKnHpe4OKXojGfJgQef4hQmm" target="_blank">Click here for the latest from our friends at the International Society for Cow Protection (ISCOWP)</a></i></b>Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-84652319124908067682013-02-21T09:00:00.000-05:002013-02-21T09:00:00.343-05:00India's Rice Revolution<b><i><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/16/india-rice-farmers-revolution" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from John Vidal at The Observer</a></i></b><br />
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<a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/2/12/1360681156168/People-work-on-a-rice-fie-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/2/12/1360681156168/People-work-on-a-rice-fie-001.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"It
is a set of ideas, the absolute opposite to the first green
revolution [of the 60s] which said that you had to change the genes
and the soil nutrients to improve yields. That came at a tremendous
ecological cost," says Uphoff. "Agriculture in the 21st
century must be practised differently. Land and water resources are
becoming scarcer, of poorer quality, or less reliable. Climatic
conditions are in many places more adverse. SRI offers millions of
disadvantaged households far better opportunities. Nobody is
benefiting from this except the farmers; there are no patents,
royalties or licensing fees."</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For
40 years now, says Uphoff, science has been obsessed with improving
seeds and using artificial fertilisers: "It's been genes, genes,
genes. There has never been talk of managing crops. Corporations say
'we will breed you a better plant' and breeders work hard to get
5-10% increase in yields. We have tried to make agriculture an
industrial enterprise and have forgotten its biological roots".</span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-52754252379884615162013-02-14T09:00:00.000-05:002013-02-14T09:00:06.372-05:00The Global Farmland Rush
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<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/02/06/opinion/0206OPEDyoon/0206OPEDyoon-articleInline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/02/06/opinion/0206OPEDyoon/0206OPEDyoon-articleInline.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/opinion/the-global-farmland-rush.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130206&_r=1&" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Michael Kugelman at the New York Times</a></i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">OVER
the last decade, as populations have grown, capital has flowed across
borders and crop yields have leveled off, food-importing nations and
private investors have been securing land abroad to use for
agriculture. Poor governments have embraced these deals, but their
people are in danger of losing their patrimony, not to mention their
sources of food.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">According
to </span></span><a href="http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bn-land-lives-freeze-041012-en_1.pdf"><span style="color: #666699;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>Oxfam</u></span></span></a><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">,
land equivalent to eight times the size of Britain was sold or leased
worldwide in the last 10 years. In northern Mozambique, a
Brazilian-Japanese venture plans to farm more than 54,000 square
miles — an area comparable to Pennsylvania and New Jersey combined
— for food exports. In 2009, a Libyan firm leased 386 square miles
of land from Mali without consulting local communities that had long
used it. In the Philippines, the government is so enthusiastic to
promote agribusiness that it lets foreigners register partnerships
with local investors as domestic corporations.</span></span></div>
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</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">The
commoditization of global agriculture has aggravated the
destabilizing effects of these large-scale land grabs. Investors
typically promise to create local jobs and say that better farming
technologies will produce higher crop yields and improve food
security.</span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">However,
few of these benefits materialize. For example, as The Economist
reported, a Swiss company promised local farmers 2,000 new jobs when
it acquired a 50-year lease to grow biofuel crops on 154 square miles
in Makeni, Sierra Leone; in the first three years, it produced only
50.</span></span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-70161530688628337332013-02-04T09:00:00.000-05:002013-02-04T09:00:07.706-05:00In Energy Taxes, Tools to Help Tackle Climate Change
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/30/business/jp-PORTER/jp-PORTER-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/30/business/jp-PORTER/jp-PORTER-articleLarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/business/energy-tax-is-underused-tool-in-climate-change-fight.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130130" target="_blank">Click here to read more from Eduardo Porter at the New York Times</a></i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">The
erratic weather across the country in the last couple of years </span><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/153608/Global-Warming-Views-Steady-Despite-Warm-Winter.aspx"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>seems
to be softening Americans’ skepticism about global warming</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">.
Most New Yorkers say they believe big storms like </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/nyregion/most-new-yorkers-tie-hurricane-sandy-to-climate-change-poll-finds.html"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>Sandy
and Irene</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"> were
the result of a warming climate. Whether climate change is directly
responsible or not, the odd weather patterns have underscored the
risk that it poses to all of us.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">What’s
yet to be seen is whether this growing awareness of the risks will
translate into sufficient political support to address climate
change, especially after we figure out the costs we will have to bear
to do so.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">In
his inaugural address, President Obama wove </span><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hurricanes_and_tropical_storms/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>Hurricane
Sandy</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"> and
last year’s drought into a </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/us/politics/climate-change-prominent-in-obamas-inaugural-address.html"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>stirring
plea to address climate change</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">.
“The failure to do so would betray our children and future
generations,” the president said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange;"><br />
</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">But
even as he put global warming at the top of his agenda, he avoided
dwelling on how much it would cost to address. And nowhere in his
speech did he allude to the most powerful tool to address the
problem: a tax on the use of energy.</span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-41332885900846325092013-01-31T09:00:00.000-05:002013-01-31T09:00:08.238-05:00ISCOWP Update January 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs157/1102923281326/img/335.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs157/1102923281326/img/335.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b><i><a href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=o6mtvfdab&v=001rq5EDIUvnj479qNPZyU_OwVVxBluctwIi4GlC5_EIWdbyKiNX7CcgPaZXRANDjV6_-f4uKN55tR1suBgVP8kQxj9g5bCabJ3uRtDFI5TKdmy9ezGOFp3yfCNLtdwnW_c" target="_blank">Click here for the latest from our friends at the International Society for Cow Protection (ISCOWP)</a></i></b></div>
<br />Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-60831711376990329612013-01-27T09:00:00.000-05:002013-01-27T09:00:02.575-05:00How High Could the Tide Go?
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/22/science/22SEAL1_SPAN/22SEAL1_SPAN-articleLarge-v2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/22/science/22SEAL1_SPAN/22SEAL1_SPAN-articleLarge-v2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/science/earth/seeking-clues-about-sea-level-from-fossil-beaches.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130122&_r=0" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Justin Gillis in the New York Times</a></i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">"In
previous </span><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/geosciences/people/maloof/pdf/Kopp2009b.pdf"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>research</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">,
scientists have determined that when the earth warms by only a couple
of degrees Fahrenheit, enough polar ice melts, over time, to </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/24/opinion/sunday/what-could-disappear.html"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>raise
the global sea level by about 25 to 30 feet</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">.
But in the coming century, the earth is expected to warm more than
that, perhaps four or five degrees, because of human emissions of
greenhouse gases.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<spacer align="RIGHT" height="6" type="BLOCK" width="196"><span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">Experts
say the emissions that may make a huge increase of sea level
inevitable are expected to occur in just the next few decades. They
fear that because the world’s coasts are so densely settled, the
rising oceans will lead to a humanitarian crisis lasting many
hundreds of years.</span></spacer></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">Scientists
say it has been difficult to get people to understand or focus on the
importance, for future generations, of today’s decisions about
greenhouse gases. Their evidence that the gases represent a problem
is based not just on computerized </span><a href="http://nas-sites.org/climatemodeling/"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>forecasts</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"> of
the future, as is commonly believed, but on what they describe as a
growing body of </span><a href="http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/climatechange"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>evidence</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"> about
what occurred in the past.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">To
add to that body of knowledge, Dr. Raymo is studying geologic history
going back several million years. The earth has warmed up many times,
for purely natural reasons, and those episodes often featured huge
shifts of climate, partial collapse of the polar ice sheets and
substantial increases in sea level.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;">“<span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">I
wish I could take people that question the significance of sea level
rise out in the field with me,” Dr. Raymo said. “Because you just
walk them up 30 or 40 feet in elevation above today’s sea level and
show them a fossil beach, with shells the size of a fist eroding out,
and they can look at it with their own eyes and say, ‘Wow, you
didn’t just make that up.’"</span></span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-9707431048597371712013-01-24T09:00:00.000-05:002013-01-24T09:00:01.182-05:00Obama's Climate Challenge<br />
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</div>
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<a href="http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/obamas-climate-challenge-20130117/1000x306/20130115-obama-x306-1358281332.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/obamas-climate-challenge-20130117/1000x306/20130115-obama-x306-1358281332.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obamas-climate-challenge-20130117" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone</a></i></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;">"I
think the president understands the climate crisis intellectually,
but he has not had the 'holy shit' moment you arrive at when you
think about this deeply enough," says a leading climate advocate
who has had private conversations with Obama about global warming.
Instead of talking about the risks of climate change during the
campaign, Obama touted an "all of the above" energy plan
that was a soft-porn version of "drill, baby, drill." Under
Obama, in fact, oil and gas production have soared: Last year, U.S.
oil production grew by 766,000 barrels a day, the largest jump ever,
and domestic oil production is at its highest level in 15 years.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="color: orange;"><br /></span>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;">Obama,
who prides himself on his pragmatism and willingness to compromise,
may also be ill-suited to address such an urgent and unyielding
crisis – especially because it would mean taking on the
climate-denying Republican majority in the House. "Climate is
the toughest issue to get any cooperation from Republicans on,"
says Podesta. In fact, House Republicans see climate change as a
wedge issue, the atmospheric equivalent to abortion, which allows
them to collect mountains of cash from oil-industry magnates like the
Koch brothers while painting themselves as defenders of free
enterprise.</span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;">"You
can't continue with business as usual and pretend you are dealing
with the problem," says former Sen. Tim Wirth, who now heads the
United Nations Foundation. "It requires a fundamental
realignment of how you think about everything, from national security
to agriculture to economic investment. Climate change is not one of
those issues you can deal with in a few tactical moves."</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-53836836263334281902013-01-10T09:00:00.000-05:002013-01-10T09:00:07.593-05:00Photographing Climate Change<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/Climate_Change_03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/Climate_Change_03.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<b><i><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2013/01/photographing-climate-change.html#slide_ss_0=1" target="_blank">Click here to view the blog/slideshow from our friend Rachelle Klapheke at The New Yorker</a></i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: orange;">Climate
change is not only a major issue for scientists and politicians but
for artists as well. Here are ten examples of photographers and other
visual artists who are challenging viewers to consider the dangers of
inaction by capturing the effects of extreme weather and a warming
world.</span></span><br />
</div>
<br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<b><i><br /></i></b>
<b><i><br /></i></b>Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-66741427982049279902012-12-30T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-30T09:00:08.946-05:00Welcome to Saudi Albany?
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/12/16/magazine/16economy/16economy-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/12/16/magazine/16economy/16economy-articleLarge.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT">
<b style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/magazine/welcome-to-saudi-albany.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121216" target="_blank">Click here to read the full op-ed from Adam Davidson at the New York Times</a></i></b></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia; text-align: center;">Most
observers would agree, though, that changes in regulation do not come
from objective scientific studies. (Both sides, after all, can flood
any government hearing with experts and impressive-looking scientific
reports.) Regulations are determined, in large part, by politics. And
the politics of fracking are changing and are very likely to change
drastically in coming years. As examples from the last century
suggest, the sudden discovery of oil and gas can transform an entire
economy and regulatory system to serve the industry’s interests.
Economists call this the resource curse — the perverse process in
which a valuable discovery like oil, gas, diamonds or gold ends up
enriching a few at the cost of impoverishing most of the population.
At its worst, the resource curse leads to deeply corrupt regimes like
those in Iraq, Iran, Myanmar and Libya. At its mildest, this can
create one-industry economies in which there is little innovation and
even less resistance to the whims of a handful of powerful interests.
Many believe this already describes the oil economies of Louisiana,
Texas and Oklahoma and, increasingly, North Dakota, where the
fracking industry is entrenched. Politically and economically, it’s
hard to argue with an industry that has helped keep the state’s
unemployment rate at about 3 percent.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">If
there is an uneasy equilibrium, right now, between environmentally
concerned citizens and pro-fracking industrial groups, what will the
political balance be like in a decade? What pressures will be on
state legislatures and regulators if the projections are true and the
millions of workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and maybe
New York will owe their jobs to fracking. There will be trillions of
dollars of new wealth. Will environmental and health concerns have
any chance against that juggernaut?</span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-8577847572309436862012-12-27T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-27T09:00:11.280-05:00Will the West ever solve its water woes?
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/Wires/Online/2012-12-12/AP/Images/Western%20Water.JPEG-06fec.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/Wires/Online/2012-12-12/AP/Images/Western%20Water.JPEG-06fec.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia;"><b><i><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/13/can-we-adapt-to-climate-change-the-colorado-river-basin-may-soon-find-out/" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Brad Plumer at the Washington Post Wonkblog</a></i></b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"The </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Colorado
River</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> provides
fresh water to nearly 40 million people in seven states out
west: Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah and Wyoming. A sizable chunk of U.S. agriculture relies on that
water — about 15 percent of the nation’s crops and 13 percent of
its livestock. (Indeed, the vast majority of the river’s water is
used for irrigation and agriculture.)</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: orange;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: orange;">But
there’s a problem: The Colorado River may soon no longer have
enough water to satisfy the region’s needs. Thanks to rapid
population growth in cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix, water demand
is surging. Meanwhile, the supply of water is dropping — and could
keep dropping as climate change speeds evaporation, shrinks the snow
pack in the Rocky Mountains, and makes droughts more likely."</span></span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-72603964852407889562012-12-22T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-22T09:00:01.843-05:005 Takeaways From NOAA’s New Study On Climate Change And Extreme Events<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://insights.wri.org/files/insights/imagecache/story-feature/features/Texas_drought.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://insights.wri.org/files/insights/imagecache/story-feature/features/Texas_drought.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<b><i><a href="http://insights.wri.org/news/2012/07/5-takeaways-noaas-new-study-climate-change-and-extreme-events" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Kelly Levin at WRI Insights</a></i></b><br />
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Many
people are understandably perplexed at the U.S.’s </span></span><a href="http://insights.wri.org/news/2012/07/more-extreme-weather-say-hello-our-changing-climate" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><u>recent
extreme weather events</u></span></a><span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> like
record heat waves, torrential downpours, droughts, and </span></span><a href="http://insights.wri.org/news/2012/07/colorado-forest-fires-and-climate-connection" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><u>wildfires</u></span></a><span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">.
A </span></span><a href="http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/2011-peterson-et-al.pdf" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><u>new
report</u></span></a><span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> published
by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) and other institutions may finally offer some
insight into climate change’s connection to the damaging and costly
extreme events that are on the rise.</span></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 0.16in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.16in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><u><a href="http://www.wri.org/press/2009/07/science-reinforces-human-role-climate-change-impacts-accelerate">Numerous
studies</a></u></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> have
shown that the Earth is warming rapidly, due in large part to human
activities. While existing research focuses on climate change’s
implications for the intensity and frequency of extreme events like
storms and heat waves, due to scientific complexities, most
scientists to date have tip-toed around attributing any single event
to climate change.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.16in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.16in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Until
now, that is. Last week, scientists from </span><a href="http://www.noaa.gov/"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><u>NOAA</u></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,
the </span><a href="http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><u>UK’s
Met Office</u></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">,
and other institutions </span><a href="http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/2011-peterson-et-al.pdf"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><u>published
a special report</u></span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> in
the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) that
attributed a number of recent extreme events to human-induced climate
change.</span></span></div>
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</div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-21103326795668122612012-12-19T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-19T09:00:01.407-05:00How Millions of Farmers are Advancing Agriculture For Themselves<b><i><a href="http://independentsciencenews.org/un-sustainable-farming/how-millions-of-farmers-are-advancing-agriculture-for-themselves/" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Jonathan Latham at Independent Science News</a></i></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://independentsciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/image001-300x225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://independentsciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/image001-300x225.jpg" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Liberation Sans, FreeSans, sans-serif;">The
world record yield for paddy rice production is not held by an
agricultural research station or by a large-scale farmer from the
United States, but by Sumant Kumar who has a farm of just two
hectares in Darveshpura village in the state of Bihar in Northern
India. His </span></span><a href="http://independentsciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/India-Bihar-Paddy-Record-Yield-SRI.pdf" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Liberation Sans, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><u><b><span style="background: #f8f8f8;">record
yield</span></b></u></span></a><span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Liberation Sans, FreeSans, sans-serif;"> of
22.4 tons per hectare, from a one-acre plot, was achieved with what
is known as the</span></span><a href="http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Liberation Sans, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><u><span style="background: #f8f8f8;"> </span></u></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Liberation Sans, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><u><b><span style="background: #f8f8f8;">System
of Rice Intensification</span></b></u></span></a><span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Liberation Sans, FreeSans, sans-serif;"> (SRI).
To put his achievement in perspective, the average paddy yield
worldwide is about 4 tons per hectare. Even with the use of
fertilizer, average yields are usually not more than 8 tons.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div align="LEFT">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'Liberation Sans', FreeSans, sans-serif;">Sumant
Kumar’s success was not a fluke. Four of his neighbors, using SRI
methods, and all for the first time, matched or exceeded the previous
world record from China, 19 tons per hectare. Moreover, they used
only modest amounts of inorganic fertilizer and did not need chemical
crop protection.</span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-69890580414947236022012-12-15T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-15T09:00:00.294-05:00ISCOWP November 2012 Update<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs157/1102923281326/img/326.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs157/1102923281326/img/326.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b><br /></b>
<b><i><a href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=o6mtvfdab&v=0018lFCxjd71KMiUY4CMgPrv5vhrivsbqtI8ugMFvi6HQ9V07bCnzX6sH3tHWS-qk6uJY0gaOb0xmFPr8rmDz94CF79NwwAlsDmU6x6nOsTId_dOZw3VK4Micl5fttDCiu_" target="_blank">Click here for the latest from our friends at the International Society for Cow Protection (ISCOWP)</a></i></b>Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-85138099703968243562012-12-13T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-13T09:00:03.817-05:00Forecasting Denial: Why Are TV Weathercasters Ignoring Climate Change?
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/forecasting-denial-why-are-tv-weathercasters-ignoring-climate-change-20121205/1000x600/20121205-weather-600x-1354727914.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/forecasting-denial-why-are-tv-weathercasters-ignoring-climate-change-20121205/1000x600/20121205-weather-600x-1354727914.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/forecasting-denial-why-are-tv-weathercasters-ignoring-climate-change-20121205" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone</a></i></b></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia; line-height: normal;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's
been a busy year for TV weathercasters: </span><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120808-hottest-month-july-warming-temperature-dust-bowl-nation-science/"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><u><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">July
was the hottest month</span></u></span></a> <span style="font-family: georgia;">ever
recorded in the United States, </span><a href="http://www.denverpost.com/wildfires/ci_21574373/giant-wildfires-seven-times-common-today-1970s"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><u><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">unprecedented
wildfires</span></u></span></a> <span style="font-family: georgia;">scorched
the West, </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/science/earth/severe-drought-expected-to-worsen-across-the-nation.html"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><u><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">the
worst drought in 50 years</span></u></span></a> <span style="font-family: georgia;">parched
two-thirds of the county. Then, in October, Hurricane Sandy slammed
into New York and New Jersey. Yet the cause of much of the
meteorological mayhem – global warming – was rarely mentioned on
air. The reason: There's a shockingly high chance that your friendly
TV weatherman is a full-blown climate denier.</span></span></div>
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><br /><br />
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-46892121602217871062012-11-25T09:00:00.000-05:002012-12-31T17:50:52.663-05:00In the Book Bag, More Garden Tools<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/24/nyregion/FARM/FARM-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/24/nyregion/FARM/FARM-articleLarge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><b><i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/nyregion/schools-add-in-house-farms-as-teaching-tools-in-new-york-city.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121124" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Lisa W. Foderaro at The New York Times</a></i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="color: orange; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">Across
New York City, gardens and miniature farms — whether on rooftops or
at ground level — are joining smart boards and digital darkrooms as
must-have teaching tools. They are being used in subjects as varied
as science, art, mathematics and social studies. In the past two
years, the number of school-based gardens registered with the city
jumped to 232, from 40, according to</span><a href="http://www.greenthumbnyc.org/"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u> GreenThumb</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">,
a division of the parks department that provides schools with
technical support.</span></span><br />
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">But
few of them come with the credential of the 2,400-square-foot garden
at Avenue B and Fifth Street in the East Village, on top of a
red-brick building that houses three public schools: the Earth
School, Public School 64 and Tompkins Square Middle School. </span><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/michael_arad/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>Michael
Arad</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">,
the architect who designed the </span><a href="http://www.911memorial.org/"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>National
September 11 Memorial</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"> in
Lower Manhattan, was a driving force behind the garden, called
the </span><a href="http://www.5thstreetfarm.org/"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>Fifth
Street Farm</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">The
idea took shape four years ago among parents and teachers, when Mr.
Arad’s son was still a student at the Earth School. The family has
since moved from the neighborhood to Queens, but Mr. Arad, president
of a nonprofit corporation that oversaw the garden, stayed on. The
farm, with dozens of plants ranging from leeks to lemon balm, opened
Oct. 19. Already, students have learned about bulbs and tubers, soil
science and nutrition, while the cafeteria has cooked up fresh kale
and spinach for lunch.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: orange; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">Mr.
Arad said a conversation with his two children during an
apple-picking trip spurred his interest in the farm. “They said,
‘What? Apples grow on trees?’ ” he recalled. “A lot of
kids don’t get to go upstate. This is 365 days a year. It gives
them an immediate, visceral connection to nature.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338806428920270171.post-62364726190527851802012-11-22T09:00:00.000-05:002012-11-22T09:00:00.054-05:00Solar Companies Seek Ways to Build an Oasis of Electricity
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="color: black;"><b><br /></b></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/20/business/JP-GENERATE/JP-GENERATE-popup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/11/20/business/JP-GENERATE/JP-GENERATE-popup.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="color: black;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="color: black;"><b><i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/business/energy-environment/solar-power-as-solution-for-storm-darkened-homes.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121120" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article from Diane Cardwell at the New York Times</a></i></b></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: white;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">Here’s
a $70,000 system sitting idle,” said Ed Antonio, who lives in the
Rockaways in Queens and has watched his 42 panels as well as those on
several other houses in the area go unused since the power went out
Oct. 29. “That’s a lot of power sitting. Just sitting.”</span></span></span><br />
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">Yet
there are ways to tap </span><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/solar-energy/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier"><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><u>solar
energy</u></span></a><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"> when
the grid goes down, whether by adding batteries to a home system or
using the kinds of independent solar generators that have been
cropping up in areas hard-hit by the storm.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">In
the Rockaways, where nearly 14,000 customers still had no power as of
Monday morning, volunteers set up a makeshift solar charging station
between a car roof and a shopping cart. A multipanel, battery-tied
system is helping fuel a relief center’s operations.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: white; font-family: georgia, times new roman, times, serif;">In
the storm’s wake, solar companies have been donating equipment
across New York and other stricken areas to function as emergency
power systems now and backups in the longer term. It is important,
executives say, to create smaller, more decentralized ways of
generating and storing electricity to help ease strain on the grid in
times of high demand or failure."</span></div>
Christopher Ficihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12101732802629222937noreply@blogger.com0