Save The World With Your Food

First in a series of who knows how many.

There are so many facets to food and how important it is to our body, mind and soul.

We've offered it to our gods, we pray for "manna from heaven", we've written about it, talk about it constantly, think about it, and watch shows about it. We use food to celebrate and to mourn, in acts of faith and defiance.

In the not so recent past, food was not only a source of nourishment, but a true connection to the Earth and the Divine. However, just as with so many other aspects of our culture, we have lost our respect for it and have exploited it to our fullest detriment.

I'm not saying every morsel should be a divine experience, or that an epiphany occur at every meal. But taking food for granted is no long an option. By taking a simple, straight-forard approach over the course of a year will make any degree of transition back to respecting food far easier.

Since each facet of our food and nutrition is interlinked with each other, there is no specific starting or ending point. I've broken the subject down into 5 categories:
Eating Out
Eating In
How to Eat
Growing Your Own Food
Preserving Your Own Food

Each of these topics has several subtopics to show how easy it is to make a difference within your daily life and making a difference in the world.

I am also sure I will be editing this entire series ad nauseum. LOL -

Pollinator Protection

1/26/08 Cell Phones Disrupt Sleep - What Do They Do To Dormant Bees?

Arnetz, who spoke to AFP in a telephone interview from the United States, said he and a team of researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Wayne State University in Michigan had found that mobile phone radiation appeared to cause insomnia, headaches and concentration difficulties. Over a period of 18 months, the scientists studied 35 men and 36 women between the ages of 18 and 45, intermittently exposing some to 884 MHz wireless signals, the equivalent of the radiation received when talking on a cell phone. Others meanwhile were placed in the same conditions but received only sham exposure. "The ones who were exposed reported headaches, it took longer for them to fall asleep and they did not sleep as well through the night," Arnetz said, claiming his was the largest study so far on the subject.

If this exposure can disrupt our sleep, what does it do to bees near cell towers, heavy cell phone users and users of other wireless equipment - including wireless internet?

http://www.pollinator.org/

From the looks of this map, all but 14 states are reporting colony collapse disorder of their European honey bee population...
Map of U.S. States Reporting Colony Collapse Disorder

The following is a 5 page pdf of FAQs on CCD
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/FAQ/FAQCCD.pdf

Article:
Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
By GENARO C. ARMASThe Associated PressSunday, February 11, 2007; 11:17 PM
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.
Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.

Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers _ who often keep thousands of colonies _ have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.

"We have seen a lot of things happen in 40 years, but this is the epitome of it all," Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg-based Hackenberg Apiaries, said by phone from Fort Meade, Fla., where he was working with his bees.

The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.

Along with being producers of honey, commercial bee colonies are important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats and other insects. A recent report by the National Research Council noted that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering plants _ including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs and fuel _ rely on pollinators for fertilization.

Hackenberg, 58, was first to report Colony Collapse Disorder to bee researchers at Penn State University. He notified them in November when he was down to about 1,000 colonies _ after having started the fall with 2,900.

"We are going to take bees we got and make more bees ... but it's costly," he said. "We are talking about major bucks. You can only take so many blows so many times."

One beekeeper who traveled with two truckloads of bees to California to help pollinate almond trees found nearly all of his bees dead upon arrival, said Dennis vanEnglesdorp, acting state apiarist for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

"I would characterize it as serious," said Daniel Weaver, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. "Whether it threatens the apiculture industry in the United States or not, that's up in the air."

Scientists at Penn State, the University of Montana and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are among the quickly growing group of researchers and industry officials trying to solve the mystery.

Among the clues being assembled by researchers:

Although the bodies of dead bees often are littered around a hive, sometimes carried out of the hive by worker bees, no bee remains are typically found around colonies struck by the mystery ailment. Scientists assume these bees have flown away from the hive before dying.

_ From the outside, a stricken colony may appear normal, with bees leaving and entering. But when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find few mature bees taking care of the younger, developing bees.

_ Normally, a weakened bee colony would be immediately overrun by bees from other colonies or by pests going after the hive's honey. That's not the case with the stricken colonies, which might not be touched for at least two weeks, said Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem.

"That is a real abnormality," Hackenberg said.

Cox-Foster said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems.

Researchers are also looking into the effect pesticides might be having on bees.

In the meantime, beekeepers are wondering if bee deaths over the last couple of years that had been blamed on mites or poor management might actually have resulted from the mystery ailment.

"Now people think that they may have had this three or four years," vanEnglesdorp said.

Mid-Atlantic Apiculture: http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/index.html
Penn State University Entomology Dept.: http://www.ento.psu.edu/
American Beekeeping Federation: http://www.abfnet.org/

From Organic Gardening - May 2007

1/3 of North American food supply derived directly from (rather than created for food for other foodstuffs) plants requiring "active" pollination (rather than self pollination)
More than 100 crops are grown in North America that require active pollination
It's estimated pollinators help create over $3 billion in crops for US growers.
Worldwide estimates - $40 billion.
2005 was the first year since 1955 that bees were imported to assist in pollination of crops due to low numbers of bees.
24 states reporting Colony Collapse Disorder within its borders.

Focus The Nation

FOCUS THE NATION - Coming in January!

Focus the Nation is organizing a national teach-in on global warming solutions for America--creating a dialogue at over a thousand colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, places of worship, civic organizations and businesses, and directly engaging millions of students and citizens with the nation's decision-makers. Focus the Nation will culminate January 31st, 2008 in simultaneous educational symposia held across the country. You can participate by hosting a showing of a free, live, interactive webcast called "The 2% SOLUTION" on WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30TH at 8 PM EASTERN. Join Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider, sustainability expert Hunter Lovins, green jobs pioneer Van Jones, and youth climate leaders for a discussion of global warming solutions.

Find out more at http://www.joinliveearth.org/page/m/6f020579cc3bb9a7/ue1xyl/

1/15/08 Found on The Grist.org

Focus, People, Focus Join the largest teach-in ever and help fight climate change On Jan. 31, more than 1,300 colleges, universities, high schools, middle schools, faith organizations, civic groups, and businesses will join together in the biggest national teach-in in U.S. history, Focus the Nation: Global-Warming Solutions for America. If you're not already on board, well, what are you waiting for? Eban Goodstein, director of Focus the Nation, explains how (and why) to get involved.

see also, in Gristmill: Focus the Nation, save the planet -- now!

A Bit of Family History

I've not put the entire 4 pages in here. This was written by my Great-Aunt, Millie Coleman. It was written for her nieces and nephews, one of which is my mother. It helps explain the Coleman history as best she knew. What I find interesting is the oral history of what life was like after the Civil War...

Of course you know that Great-Grandpa Coleman, Benjamin Jackson Coleman that is, came from Orange County, NY an orphan and Uncle Ben Drake took care of him until he grew up. There are still relatives in Goshen, NY, but probably several times removed. I have heard that at the time he came, it was be toll road and they put up at the blockhouses.

Now, in the old days, the road that goes up from Barton on the East side of the bridge was called Coleman Road. The reason being that several Colemans, and I believe they were brothers and cousins, about 8 or 10 of them, lived on that road and that is where your Grandfather, Curtis Joseph was born. In one of those houses.

Now, your great-grandmother Jane Anne Coleman was born a Catlin and she was also brought up by a relative, called Aunt Clyminnie. Her father, Joseph Catlin, was married three times and had three families. I guess it got a little too much for him, so he allowed some of them to go to live with less fortunate relatives.

Aunt Clyminnie was probably very good to her except that she was not allowed to where her shoes to and from church, just in church and she always had to carry chip dirt from the woodpile to put around the currant bushes. Grandma said that Aunt Clyminnie always had very nice currants.

Now, I don’t know how Great Grandma and Great Grandpa met, but probably at a square dance or a raising or husking bee. I don’t think they had roller skating rinks in those days. But anyway, they were married and at the horning bee, someone fired a gun in front of the window where they were standing and scared Grandma in a “fit” and for the rest of her life she was afflicted with these spells. In fact they felt that when she died she had had one and fallen into a pool of water at the foot of the cellar stairs where Uncle Jed, her son, found her when he came from doing the morning chores.

When they were first married, they went to live in a small house on Coleman Road, the first house up from the corner where the Ross Hill Rd comes out on the Barton or Coleman Rd. When your grandfather, Curtis, was about 8 years old, they moved over on the ‘crick” in Beaver Meadows on the Halsey Valley Rd. They cleared the land and built the house and barn. I remember Grandpa Curt telling about the snow blowing in on their beds the first winter because the house wasn’t finished. When I was complaining about the way the old houses were laid out one time, Grandpa remarked that they were considered quite an improvement on the log cabins.
For Christmas, the boys always received a pair of leather boots, which had to last them for the next year. If anything happened to the boots, they just had to wait until the next Christmas for another pair. When they went for the cows, they would get the cows up from where they had been lying during the night and stand where they had been to warm their feet.

Great Grandma made all their clothes, raised sheep for wool to knit socks and stockings and mittens for the family of 10 children. Picked and preserved berries and fruit as that was before Mason jars come along, dried apples and corn to provide food for winter. Part of their income was from butter which she churned and packed in wooden tubs or firkins, a cloth and a layer of salt over it to preserve it and sold it in Waverly. She claimed that the butter made in June was the best. There was a dog and a treadle to do the churning.

Geese were raised to be plucked at certain intervals (times of the moon) to provide pillows and feather beds. She also made maple sugar and sold it and once she exchanged maple for store sugar at the rate of five pounds of maple to one pound of store sugar, and later when Great Grandpa went to the store in Halsey Valley, he discovered that the storekeeper had melted it and moulded it into small moulds and was making a pretty penny profit from it.

Twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall, a trip was made to Owego by horse and wagon to buy necessary articles of clothing and unbleached muslin was bought by the yard-wide bolt for sheets and pillow cases which were hand sewed, two widths to a sheet and were washed and hung outdoors to bleach when the apple trees were in blossom. Part of the winter’s busy work was the overcast these seams firmly in addition to cutting and sewing carpet rags for the rag rugs to cover the floors. These were woven either in striped pattern or “hit and miss” in thirty-six inch widths which had to be sewed together with linen thread.

Another winter chore was piecing quilts, Lincoln logs, toad in a holler or frog in a puddle – these two were the same pattern, or steps to the White House. No waste of calico in these patterns, they were squares and half squares and long rectangular pieces. She also made her own dyes for her yarns from butternuts, sumac and the like which she dyed after she had spun the yarn, the carding she hired done.

In those days, instead of having a deep freeze, she made pumpkin, apple and mince pies, which she froze out of doors and when she needed pie, just brought one in and thawed it out.

Sunday night supper in wintertime was always mush and milk, the cornmeal being ground from corn they had raised themselves. There was also a dish made from buttermilk called buttermilk pop, buttermilk thickened with flour and eaten with sugar on it.

Blackberries were pickled in a crock with cinnamon and cloves for seasoning. This was one of Grandpa Curt’s favorite dishes. In those days, blackberries could be picked by the milk-pail full, large black and juicy and a big batch was made all at once and put in a crock for winter.

Sweet apples were also made into pickles in a crock. Back when orchards were set in those days, a pound’s sweet was always set with northern spies for cross pollination.

She also made her own candles from tallow from farm animals and waste fat and wood ashes were saved to leach the lye from to make soft soap for washing.

She also did most of the family doctoring, gathering and drying herbs for medicines and also did a lot of midwifery around the neighborhood. Take it all around, Great Grandma was quite a handy gal.

Chemicals On Your Body

FYI - Your skin is the largest organ your body has. If you're not willing to ingest a chemical, WHY would you put it on your skin?

By Judi Ketteler

With literally thousands of chemicals and fragrances added to everything from moisturizer to nail polish, how do you know if your beauty product is safe?

We live in a chemical-infused world. Although there are some benefits -- clean drinking water, for example -- when it comes to beauty products, chemicals are thought by many to cause adverse health effects. That's because chemicals from beauty products don't pass through your digestive system where they might be filtered; instead, they head right into your bloodstream.

It's important for consumers to understand that the cosmetic industry is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Companies are required to list all the ingredients in order of use, but they're not required (by federal law) to test products for safety. The FDA can only act if they have strong scientific knowledge that a product is dangerous. That doesn't mean that companies don't have safety standards, but it does mean that claims like "natural," "botanical" or "organic" are basically useless.

So where does this leave the consumer? The Environmental Working Group (EWG) -- a non-profit, non-partisan organization working to educate consumers about chemicals in cosmetics -- created Skin Deep a searchable database that analyzes about 25,000 beauty products and 10,000 different ingredients.

"It's about trying to pick better products in the same category," says Kristan Markey, a chemist and research analyst for EWG. For example, it's not reasonable to stop using all soap, but you can choose milder soaps with fewer ingredients. "It's a big challenge, but basically, it's just a matter of slowly going through your bathroom cabinet," Markey says. The best place to start is by looking at the ingredients. However, even that can feel like a Herculean task, given that most ingredients are multi-syllabic words you can't even pronounce, let alone have any idea what they do.

Here are some tips to get started:

Minimize Fragrances

Beware of the word "fragrance." You might think it's something that simply smells pretty, but scents are chemicals. The truth is, it's impossible to know exactly which chemicals are in a fragrance. There are more than 5,000 different fragrances used in cosmetics and skin care products, reports the American Academy of Dermatology. Plus, not all chemicals are listed on a label. To complicate matters, fragrance chemicals are a leading cause of allergic reactions to cosmetics. Choose "fragrance free" whenever possible. Or, if the bouquet of lavender fields is crucial for your morning shower, look for products with no chemical preservatives."

Scrutinize Nail Polish

Phthalates -- used widely in nail polish -- are a big topic of controversy and research. Scientists have been studying this group of chemicals for at least 20 years and have found that they may be linked to birth defects in humans (they're definitely toxic to animals). Unfortunately, phthalates often get hidden under "fragrance," so it's hard for the consumer to know if the nail polish contains it or not. The best tactic: Use less nail polish -- perhaps just paint your toes and skip the nails.

Use Hair Dyes Less Often

Salons are not required to list the ingredients in their hair dye, Markey says, but we know that many contain coal tar ingredients -- chemicals that have been linked to cancer. Black hair dyes for men have also been found to contain lead (called lead acetate), which has been restricted in both Canada and the European Union. Avoiding hair dye altogether is a tough pill to swallow -- but try to go as long as possible between uses.

Avoid Skin Lighteners

"You want to avoid anything that changes your skin composition," Markey says. Watch out for products that have hydroquinone -- a chemical that bleaches the skin and can cause lesions. The FDA has issued warnings about it and recommended that it no longer be generally recognized as safe and effective.

Choose Shampoo Carefully

Be especially wary of dandruff shampoos, because they often contain selenium sulfide -- a neurotoxin and possible carcinogen. If you can, avoid shampoos that list ethanolamine or diethanolamine -- called TEA or DEA on the label. These are nitrosamines, says Markey, which are thought to be carcinogenic (though it's not clear in what amounts). The FDA has also been monitoring the contaminant 1,4-dioxane, which on a label could be called "PEG," "Polyethylene," "Polyethylene glycol," "Polyoxyethylene," "-eth-," or "-oxynol-."

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Once you start digging into the ingredients of many of your favorite beauty products, it's easy to become disheartened. After all, who doesn't like to look nice, smell nice and have smooth skin and pretty nails? But try to look for ways to cut down the amount of products you're using: Drop a step from your skincare routine, give your hair days off from washing, use fragrance free whenever possible and always look for products with less ingredients.

1/25/08 Article on Moisturizers from the Grist.org
http://www.grist.org/advice/products/2008/01/08/?source=weekly

Asphalt Roads Heat Netherlands

Dutch tap solar heat from asphalt roads
Posted by Martin LaMonica
A Dutch civil engineering company has designed a heat-absorbing road that bridges winter and summer.

Road Energy Systems: using summer sun to clear icy roads. (Credit: Ooms Avenhorn)
The Road Energy System, from Ooms Avenhorn Holding, is essentially an asphalt road with tubes placed underneath. Water circulates to siphon off the heat from the road and it is stored underground for several months.
The heated road, sort of like radiant floor heating in a home, was originally conceived as a way to melt ice from roads without heavy salting.
Now, with growing interest in renewable forms of energy, the system can also be used to heat and cool homes while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent.
A current project is using the high-tech road to heat four office buildings. The stored heat is used in conjunction with a heat pump to reach temperatures high enough to warm a building.
The system costs twice as much as existing road-building techniques, Ooms Avenhorn Holdings told the Associated Press, but it should reduce maintenance and cut down on accidents from icy roads.
It's not clear how general-purpose heated roads will be. But the Road Energy System appears to work: its first installation has been operating since 2000.