Organic agriculture typology

For my Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems class, we were given an assignment in which we were to either a) examine USDA organic certification, or b) create a typology of organic agriculture. I chose the latter.

Organic agriculture comes in many stripes and emphases. There's agroecological farming, agroforestry and forest gardening (slightly different), biodynamics, permaculture, certified organic (several countries and international certifications), Natural Farming, Nayakrishi, wildculturing. Some of these don't have to be strictly organic (that "strictly" really being a broad range). So, what is organic agriculture, exactly? Here's the Wikipedia definition, which basically captures it:

Organic farming is the form of agriculture that relies on techniques such as crop rotation, green manure, compost and biological pest control to maintain soil productivity and control pests on a farm. Organic farming excludes or strictly limits the use of manufactured fertilizers, pesticides (which include herbicides, insecticides and fungicides), plant growth regulators such as hormones, livestock antibiotics, food additives, and genetically modified organisms.

Wikipedia also quotes the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, which goes further than the techniques and technologies required or limited by organic agriculture, to include the human element:

Organic agriculture is a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved.

The thing that is nice about this second definition is that it gets to one aspect of organic agriculture that is very important in many of its genres: the ethics of growing organic.

The essential point is that not all organic farming is the same; not all farmers who grow organic use the same methods. Organic agriculture can vary by quite a bit; for example, organic agriculture is not necessarily sustainable agriculture. Organic agriculture need not necessarily integrate crop and livestock production; some organic farmers do one or the other but not both.

Agroecology, or the science and application of ecological principles to the production of food, fuel, fiber, and pharmaceuticals, is not exactly a type of organic agriculture. Wikipedia describes several different approaches: ecosystems agroecology, agronomic ecology, ecological political economy, agro-population ecology, integrated assessment of multifunctional agricultural systems (the landscape and agriculture as part of a wider, integrated set of social institutions), and holon agroecology (an apparently huge topic in itself, the ecology of contexts).

According to the Agroecology Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agroecology is, among other things, "beneficent agriculture.'

The University of California-Berkeley calls it "a scientific discipline that uses ecological theory to study, design, manage and evaluate agricultural systems that are productive but also resource conserving." This is essentially the same description given by UC Santa Cruz' Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems.

ATTRA has a bunch of information on USDA certified organic and what that all means, with pages on livestock, pests, crops, regulation & history, marketing, fertilizer and soils. Farm Direct has a bunch of US links on organic farming; Organic-World.net has tons of info by country, statistics of all sorts, and news. And the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations also has a bunch of information on organic agriculture. The FAO describes organic agriculture as:

a holistic production management system that avoids use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified organisms, minimizes pollution of air, soil and water, and optimizes the health and productivity of interdependent communities of plants, animals and people. The non-use of external agriculture inputs which results in natural resources degradation (e.g. soil nutrient mining) does not qualify as "organic". On the other hand, farming systems which do not use external inputs but actively follow organic agriculture principles of health and care are considered organic, even if the agro-ecosystem is not certified organic.

An article in CounterPunch by Heather Gray and K. Rashid Nuri called "How Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World" talks about this, and the persistent idea that currently exists—but is changing—that "Green Revolution," industrial techniques (and attitudes, although that's usually unspoken) in agriculture are all that can stave off mass starvation. The Worldwatch Institute also discusses these stereotypes of industrial vs. organic agriculture, in an article titled "Can Organic Farming Feed Us All?" These articles touch on both technique and attitudes, but not so much on what David Korten calls the Great Turning, or a philosophical, spiritual, and cultural revolution in attitude that he (and others) believe is essential for survival.

Sustainable Table has a nice distinction between sustainable and organic agriculture:

Organic farming generally falls within the accepted definition of sustainable agriculture. However, it is important to distinguish between the two, since organic products can be (unsustainably) produced on large industrial farms, and farms that are not certified organic can produce food using methods that will sustain the farm's productivity for generations. Some organic dairy farms, for example, raise cows in large confinement facilities but are able to meet the bare minimum requirements for organic certification, while a non-organic certified small farm could use organic guidelines and be self-sufficient by recycling all the farm's waste to meet its fertility needs.

What intrigues me most, however, are the organic farming systems that focus on sustainability, ethics, and fundamental shifts in world view.

Here's a few of them:

Biodynamics

I've written about this type of agriculture elsewhere. It's sort of the Gaia approach: in biodynamics, the farm is treated as a single, unified organism. Wikipedia again proves a good source for succinctly describing what differentiates this type of agriculture from other organic approaches:

Regarded by some as the first modern ecological farming system and one of the most sustainable, biodynamic farming has much in common with other organic approaches, such as emphasizing the use of manures and composts and excluding of the use of artificial chemicals on soil and plants. Methods unique to the biodynamic approach include the use of fermented herbal and mineral preparations as compost additives and field sprays and the use of an astronomical sowing and planting calendar. Biodynamics originated out of the work of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy.

The local example of a biodynamic farm is Wild Rose Farm, owned by Eric Mayo and Susan Kerndt. My comment to Eric about it was that it seemed like a method of staying in touch with the Earth and its rhythms. Of particular note to me is the use of astronomical conditions, such as phases of the moon or planetary or stellar positions as guides to timing of planting, etc. One must be aware of the world and the skies to plant or harvest on such a schedule. ATTRA has a detailed description of the method on its website, and of course the Demeter Association, which certifies biodynamic farms through its various national chapters, does also.

Permaculture

According to the Permaculture Institute, this is more than an agricultural method:

Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches us how build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities and much more.

Permaculture is a portmanteau word, originating from permanent agriculture/culture. It takes an agroecological approach to food. An interesting feature of permaculture is the design element: the design of a system is approached both from a methodological and a structural viewpoint.

Methodology: The method used to design a permaculture system involves the following aspects in sequence: observation, boundaries, resources, evaluation, design, implementation and maintenance. Site observation, often for a full year, allows the designer to consider the seasonal changes and existing interrelationships of a given site as well as its physical characteristics. Boundaries include both physical limits and social ones. Resources include human and cultural ones (money, for example) as well as natural ones. Evaluation of these allows for preparation for the design, implementaion, and maintenance of the (in this case) agricultural system.

Structure: The patterns of the physical elements of a permaculture system echo naturally occuring ones. For example, I have two herb beds in my back yard which, I discovered in researching this article, reflect principles of permaculture design. The beds are in the shape of spirals, with a high peak in the center of the roughly circular bed that slopes downward in a spiral form, resulting in a single, roughly round bed with small microclimates: high and dry to lower, cooler, and damper soil. Different herbs grow better in different spots along this spiral structure, according to whether they prefer warmer or cooler soil, quicker drainage or slower-draining, shadier spots. Permaculture's physical structure is also viewed in terms of layers, as in a forest: the canopy, low tree layer, shrub layer, herbaceous plant layer, rhizosphere (root crops), the soil surface (cover crops), the vertical layer (climbing plants that grow through the various other layers), and the mycosphere or subsurface/surface layer of fungi.

Another element of permaculture is both structural and methodological: zones of intensity of human involvement and/or manipulation. These range from zone 0, the most intimately involved with human beings (our homes) to zone 5, utter wilderness, or no human intervention. Interestingly, this seems to exclude humanity as part of the system—as though we cannot be part of wilderness (zones 00, the human self, and 6, the wider world, are included in some reckonings of permaculture).

ATTRA also has a thorough description of permaculture, and calls it "unique among alternative farming systems (e.g., organic, sustainable, eco-agriculture, biodynamic) in that it works with a set of ethics that suggest we think and act responsibly in relation to each other and the earth." It describes these ethical principles as including a life ethic that recognizes the intrinsic worth of every living thing, and calls for care of the earth, caring for people, and setting limits to population growth and consumption. I disagree that permaculture is unique in this aspect; other farming systems also have an explicit ethical component.

Alaska has a few permaculture groups and blogs: Alaska Permaculture Community, the Alaska Permaculture Guild, and the Alaskan Eco Escape Educational Center (see also the Facebook page).

Nature or Natural Farming

This is the shizen nōhō that professor Gerlach refers to in the syllabus for the class. Also known as do-nothing farming, from the permaculturist's point of view, it is a type of permaculture. Developed by Masanobu Fukuoka and Mokichi Okada, it uses five guiding principles (as described on Wikipedia):

• human cultivation of soil, plowing or tilling are unnecessary, as is the use of powered machines
• prepared fertilizers are unnecessary, as is the process of preparing compost
• weeding, either by cultivation or by herbicides, is unnecessary
• applications of pesticides or herbicides are unnecessary
• pruning of fruit trees is unnecessary

Fukuoka popularized shizen nōhō in his book, The One-Straw Revolution, translated into English with the help of his disciple, Larry Korn.

Nayakrishi Andolon

Nayakrishi Andolon translates as New Agriculture Movement, and according to Wikipedia "is an agricultural movement in Bangladesh that opposes the use of Western pesticides and genetically altered seeds." It is a philosophy of agriculture that sees human beings as an intrinsic part of the natural world. It is about happiness:

[Nayakrishi Andolon] is the movement of the farming communities to cultivate happy relations of life and environment and new ways to build up communities. It is a way to creatively relate with Nature or "Praliriti" as is called in bangla language.

But Nayakrishi does not assume Nature or "Praliriti" as an external object outside the living human beings, or do not believe that a sharp margin can be drawn between human beings and external world without falling into illusions and contradictions. We are all Nature as well, and Nature or "Praliriti" exists through us.

The organization UBINIG has more information on the approach.

In bangla the word krishi, means the act of cultivation, but not in the conventional sense as we understand cultivation now, which is as an act to produce consumer needs for the human beings using earth as merely means of production. The word 'krishi is rather cultivation of the relation between human beings and nature that transforms both and functions as an integral whole, as the single organism. In this relation human beings are not the supreme agent possessing, commanding and controlling the object of production, i.e.,nature. The nature also transforms the human beings. It is an act of reciprocal nurturing. There is no outside and inside of human existence, since we are both thinking beings and nature.
…
Andolon is movement -- movement at various levels: cultural, mobilisational, political and organisational. It is also a movement at the site of ideology, discourse and power. At the margins of imagination and determination Nayakrishi is also about promise of future. But most importantly Nayakrishi Andolon is the movement to change our destructive lifestyles, it is a lifestyle movement that is proper for human beings endowed with the capacity to act politically and spiritually against the destruction of conditions of life and livelihood. Nayakrishi is a movement to move from drstructive and preadatory stage of civilisation to creative and joyful lifestyles.

This is a level of ethics that moves into spirituality and an entire way of life, a long remove from the USDA National Organic Program certification of a technique applied on one part of a given farm.

Cross-posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Previous posts in this series:

Farms, schools, soil, and dirt
Seven industrial agriculture myths
Farming systems and Food, Inc.
Financial finagling in food and sustainability
Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Seven industrial agriculture myths

Phil Loring started writing articles on this theme for me in the Republic, but he hasn't finished the series yet. Now I find myself studying this same topic in my Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems class. The myths are those described in Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. They include:

1) Industrial agriculture will feed the world.
2) Industrial food is safe, healthy, and nutritious.
3) Industrial food is cheap.
4) Industrial agriculture is efficient.
5) Industrial agriculture offers more food choices to consumers.
6) Industrial agriculture benefits the environment and wildlife.
7) Biotechnology will solve all the problems of industrial agriculture.

The section on these myths in Fatal Harvest has been reprinted on Alternet; I've linked to them above, but here's the short rebuttal:

• Myth number one is a classic case of misdirection: it implies (as typically presented) that somehow the problem of hunger is one of a failure to produce enough food, and the answer is that industrial agriculture is the only means whereby we can produce sufficient food to feed all 7 billion of us (or the anticipated 9 billion by 2050). Actually, people go hungry because of politics, economic shenanigans, poverty, and landlessness. Industrial agriculture actually increases the incidence of hunger by raising the cost of farming (by a huge factor), by forcing farmers off their land, by focusing on high-profit export crops rather than food crops for local consumption. The World Bank and other international financial institutions have promoted policies that have supported industrial export agriculture, for example, and have caused hunger through free-market and globalization policies.

• Myth number two was thoroughly debunked for me by Food, Inc., although the movie didn't go into why this folderol is accepted. Part of the reason, as pointed out by the authors of Fatal Harvest, is that industrial food is very very consistent: it looks clean and wholesome. But looks can be deceiving: from the poisonous chemicals it's grown and treated with (as pointed out by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring) to the concentrated, empty junk of modern processed food (as described in Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock, and many other authors since), industrial food is really, really bad for you.

• Myth number three is something you can believe only if you ignore the staggering health, environmental, and human costs of industrial agriculture—a technique commonly known as "externalizing costs," and an everyday part of our modern economic thinking. It is, of course, insane to think that actual costs (not those that are mere ticks or sheafs of the paper/exchange medium) can simply be shunted aside and not counted. They show up, somewhere. It is monumentally selfish and dangerous to all of us for a few business owners to shove those costs upon us for their short-term gain. Industrial agriculture is very, very expensive, and that pleasantly consistent-looking food costs us a bundle, even if we don't pay it at the cash register. We pay for it at the doctor's, in the price of gas, in our taxes, in the length (or shortness) of our lives, in the moral cost of cruelty to animals and extinction of species and varieties, in the human cost of culture destruction, etc. Farming the old-fashioned way is a labor-intensive business, and industrial agriculture, being far more mechanized, thrust a whole lot of people out of work.

• Myth number four is partly a product of myth number three: industrial agriculture looks efficient if you don't have to count all the costs (such as destroyed, contaminated, eroded, lost topsoil, for example), and if you don't count the fact that agriculture is supposed to produce food, rather than a commodity. Industrial agriculture is very good at producing huge amounts of commodities on large amounts of land. It isn't very good at producing a lot of food per acre, though. Gardens, and small, diversified farms, are much more productive per acre. Even Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations simply outsource their land and other input needs to external sources. It really isn't a very efficient or good use of resources. (See this PDF report by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.)

• Steve Hannaford, in his book Market Domination! the impact of industry consolidation on competition, innovation, and consumer choice, thoroughly explores the phenomenon of pseudo-variety, and exploded myth number five in an article he wrote for the Republic about the problem, using beer as an example. Minor variations in content and major variations in packaging do not food differences make. Another particular problem is the disappearance of heirloom varieties of food plants. Food that can handle the conditions or requirements imposed by the industrial food system (such as long shipping distances, rough handling, uniformity of appearance and flavor, resistance to pesticides, fast growth, precisely timed harvest, etc.) loses the myriad choices that varieties adapted to a wide range of needs and microclimates offer. All those small, comparatively skinny chickens, for example, that lay small but tasty eggs and have small breasts and grow sort of slowly, but have a penchant for insect pests and chickweed. Soft-skinned tomatoes that bloom and ripen throughout the summer and have peculiar shapes and interesting stripes and spots. And so on. This variation is not adapted for industrial conditions, and so isn't sought. As smaller, diversified farms are forced out of business through land acquisition, fewer crops are grown, and more of only a few varieties. This has lead to disaster in the past and very likely will again if we keep to our present myopic course.

• Myth number six is a mix of chutzpah and nonsense. I was boggled when I heard this particular one, but a major part of this claim is that industrial agriculture is supposed to be more productive per acre than other forms of agriculture (such as organic or sustainable agriculture). I looked into this, however (some months ago, actually, before I took the class), and industrial agriculture is NOT more productive. Gardening and diversified farming are, in fact, far more productive of food. According to a new study by Jules Pretty, et al. in Environmental Science and Technology, "crop yields on farms in developing countries that used sustainable agriculture rose nearly 80% in four years." That alone doesn't refute the idea that industrial agriculture is more productive. An excellent and well-sourced article in Grist magazine reveals the truth: industrial agriculture requires massive inputs that degrade agricultural, environmental, and human systems in order to get high productivity for a limited number of foods. Industrial agriculture is comparatively sterile, and uses resources up, rather than building them up. It most decidedly does NOT benefit the environment.

• Myth number seven, that biotechnology will be, essentially, a panacea, really depends on how it is used and if its use doesn't simply cause more problems than it solves. Biotechnology as applied to food is typically used to a) patent varieties, b) create pesticide, herbicide, or disease resistance, c) create greater productivity in crops, or d) create genetic and cosmetic uniformity and/or predictability (in other words, to reduce biodiversity). Sometimes it adds nutritional value (as in "golden rice"). It creates industrial foods, crops or varieties that are adapted to industrial needs. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, has a Frequently Asked Questions page on agricultural biotechnology that provides quite the interesting contrast to the concerns I keep finding about biotech crops. While BIO answers concerns in a very even-handed tone, it does not address the basic assumptions about how agriculture should be conducted, and the philosophic underpinnings that differentiate agroecological principles from industrial ones. The site reiterates some of the basic assumptions about what the problems of agriculture are (such as, people are hungry because not enough food is grown, and biotech will help grow more food), rather than looking honestly at the results of our current agricultural system (such as inequitable distribution of food, hunger caused by poverty, farmers unable to grow food because they've been forced off their land by economic or political causes) and asking if they are really what we want or need—and then determining if biotechnology can address those needs. Another site, AgBioWorld, is even less connected to what the issues are, and is a good example of completely missing the point. This site does a lot of answering the more emotion-laden worries, the pig-in-a-poke or straw man arguments, rather than providing answers to genuine, fact-based concerns. Skipping through a plethora of articles and scholarly pieces on biotech, I did find one that talks about the issue of patent law and policy and their effect on how well (or if) biotechnology is used to benefit, say, poor small-scale farmers. It's an 87-page PDF, but talks about the unintended consequences of US patent law and policy on, among other things, researchers "applying biotechnology to the solution of developing-country food security problems."

In a blog post I found on www.brighthub.com, a few more "advantages" were listed:

• longer food shelf-life or availability (also known as the Twinkie phenomenon or the winter tomato)
• less constraint in number of croppings per year (again, not counting the true cost of using up the soil, water, etc.)
• greater availability of human labor (read: more unemployment)
• faster time to market (and what does it mean if the market is halfway around the world as opposed to down the road?)

Sustainable Table has a long list of concerns that deal in large measure with profound
philosophical and quality of life issues that are only partly addressed by the agricultural industry. It seems almost that holders of these two viewpoints are talking past each other rather than to each other.

Cross-posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Earlier posts in this series:

Farming systems and Food, Inc.

Financial finagling in food and sustainability
Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Food systems, policy, and foodsheds

The second week of my Comparative Food Systems class has readings in Anna Lappé's book, Diet for a Hot Planet, going over Hamm's seven principles for a healthy food system, reading an article by Jack Kloppenburg and others on the foodshed, an article on rural Alaska food systems by my professor, Craig Gerlach, and researching definitions of "food system." In the meantime, I've been working on the Alaska Food Policy Council's introductory paper on food policy and the Alaska food system, so these two projects dovetail quite nicely. It adds up to a lot of reading—interesting, definitely, but a lot of pages.

So, to start: Lappé makes the argument that not only is small-scale, diversified organic farming that caters to a local market sustainable and good for communities, this type of agriculture is climate-friendly because it: produces fewer comparative greenhouse gas emissions than industrial farming; requires less energy inputs from fossil fuels; improves the soil; and actually sequesters carbon in the soil rather than releasing it. Her description of the energy-intensiveness of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations is horrific—and never mind the inherent cruelty of them, she hasn't even gotten into that so far. She does talk about the unhealthiness of the modern diet in terms of the amount of processing food undergoes: highly processed foods, like Pringles or Pop-Tarts, use a huge amount of energy and resources—and they're just not that good for you.

Lappé describes seven principles of a climate-friendly diet:

1. Reach for real food (food that has fewer ingredients and isn't processed or transmogrified a lot is likelier to be less climate-destructive)
2. Put plants on your plate (eat less meat—most modern meat is grain-fed, which is energy-intensive; if you eat meat, eat meat that is raised humanely and sustainably, because these practices, like grass-fed beef, produce less greenhouse gas emissions—grain-fed cattle produce more methane than grass-fed cattle!)
3. Don't panic, go organic (industrial chemicals require large energy inputs; nitrogen fertilizer produced through the Haber-Bosch process, for example—and then there's all those petrochemicals used for pesticides)
4. Lean toward local (less shipping, for one)
5. Finish your peas…the ice caps are melting (food waste is a waste of energy resources; institutional composting makes use of food waste and reduces land-fill emissions)
6. Send packaging packing (the throwaway society wastes humongous amounts of resources; I think we should institute a law like that in Germany, where the producer or seller of packing must take it back from whoever they sell it to. For example, the customer buys a box of chocolate, but returns the box to the store—the store has to take the box, no charge. Then the store can return their collected boxes to the supplier of the chocolate—and the supplier can't charge them. The cost to the retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers has reduced extra packaging dramatically in Germany. Lappé has not mentioned this law so far in my reading.)
7. DIY food (grow and cook your own food: better for you and lots less processing—and therefore lots less energy intensive)

Hamm's article, assigned last week, was also interesting but a bit less easy reading than Lappé's book. (My editorial eye kept twitching—he'd have had red ink all over his paper had I gotten to it before publication.) His operating principles for a healthy food system are that it would:

1. insure community food security for all residents
2. be community based
3. be locally integrated
4. be reasonably seasonal in nature
5. present primarily opportunities rather than problems
6. connect health across the layers of the system
7. be diverse

This is, of course, not at all what our current food system looks like. Our current food system is highly energy-intensive, unseasonal, deters connectivity between the different layers of the food system, is almost completely disassociated with local communities, is rarely distributed or minimally distributed within a community, and is rife with pseudo-diversity and ultra-processed crud disguised as foodoid items.

You can tell where I'm coming from, can't you?

A concise definition of "food system" comes from the San Francisco Food Alliance's 2005 San Francisco Collaborative Food System Assessment (PDF), which says

A food system describes the cycle of growing, distributing, eating and recycling our food, and all the factors that affect it.

Short and sweet! It's "all the factors" that are the hairy part, however: natural resources and environmental systems, social and cultural systems, political systems, economic systems, technology, research, education, etc. That encompasses a lot of things: disease, hunger, political will, costs, food safety, commodities trading, water rights, the Green Revolution, agribusiness, organic certification, heirloom seeds, and so on. This in turn brings up ideas like food democracy and equity, food sovereignty, fair trade, self-reliance, guerilla gardening, etc.

Kloppenberg's article, "Coming in to the Foodshed," takes the metaphor of the watershed and applies it to food. How does food move through the landscape, the community? One quote from it struck me:

Provided with an apparent cornucopia of continuously available foods, few consumers have much knowledge of the biological, social, or technical parameters and implications of food production in the global village.

Of course, much of the power of agribusiness ultimately depends on farmers and consumers not knowing. If we do not know, we do not act. And even if we do know, the physical and social distancing characteristics of the global food system may constrain our willingness to act when the locus of the needed action is distant or when we have no real sense of connection to the land or those on whose behalf we ought to act. Ultimately, distancing disempowers. Control passes to those who can act and are accustomed to act at a distance: the Philip Morrises, Monsantos, and ConAgras of the world.

(My emphasis added.) In short, it pays the big guys for the public to be uniformed or misinformed.

The thing that I am discovering about an examination of food systems and sustainable farming: food is political, and food politics are radical—because the nexus of the issue is about self-determination, freedom.

Kloppenberg, Hendrickson, and Stevenson go on (and bear in mind that this article was published 15 years ago) to talk about "foodshed work." They describe it so (again, my emphasis):

• A foodshed will be embedded in a moral economy that envelopes [sic] and conditions market forces. The global food system now operates according to allegedly "natural" rules of efficiency, utility maximization, competitiveness, and calculated self-interest. The historical extension of market relations has deeply eroded the obligations of mutuality, reciprocity, and equity that ought to characterize all elements of human interaction. Food production today is organized largely with the objective of producing a profit rather than with the purpose of feeding people. But human society has been and should remain more than a marketplace.
• Community Supported Agriculture also serves as an illustration of our expectation that the moral economy of a foodshed will be shaped and expressed principally through communities.…We imagine foodsheds as commensal communities that encompass sustainable relationships both between people (those who eat together) and between people and the land (obtaining food without damage). …[B]uilding the commensal community means establishment or recovery of social linkages beyond atomistic market relationships through the production, exchange, processing, and consumption of food. …Finally, the standards of a commensal community require respect and affection for the land and for other species. It is through food that humanity's most intimate and essential connections to the earth and to other creatures are expressed and consummated.
• The dominant dynamics of the global food system actively erode both moral economy and community. We agree with those who believe that this destructiveness is an inherent property of the system, and that what is needed is fundamental transformation rather than simple reform.

All this makes having a garden at home look like a revolutionary act. And maybe it is.

More later on Gerlach's article, "Rural Alaskan Food Systems: Problems, Prospects, and Policy Considerations," written for the Alaska Food Policy Council in August 2010.

See my previous posts on this course:

• Food systems and shizen
• Sustainable food systems class

Cross posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Sustainable food systems class

Well, I'm going back to school, or at least, I'm taking a course for credit. Craig Gerlach is teaching a course at UAF, Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems. This is a 400-level undergraduate class cross-listed in geography, natural resources management, and cross-cultural studies. As you may have surmised, I am very interested in food systems and agriculture and food issues these days, and when, in the course of my work for the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, Craig asked me to make a poster for the class, I decided that it sounded so interesting that I wanted to take it. Here's the description:

This exciting course explores the principles of food systems geography and food security, with cross-cultural examinations of dietary traditions, poverty, hunger, equity, and food access and distribution. What can be done about “real world” food, farming, and agricultural problems? Where is the contemporary agroecological system strong or weak with respect to restoration and renewability? How can we be better educated and more innovative in dealing with food production, distribution, access, and the promotion of ecosystem health? We will compare agricultural systems in the context of social, ecological, and economic sustainability. Alaska and other high-latitude food systems will be considered, including country food, wild game harvest, and rural to urban nutrition transition.

The booklist is pretty cool, too:

• Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture, by Miguel Altieri (1995)
• The World Is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food, by José Bové and François Dufour
• Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, by Temra Costa (2010)
• The Fatal Harvest Reader, edited by Andrew Kimbrell (2002) [also, there's Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture]
• Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, by Anna Lappé (2010)
• Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine, by Gary Nabhan (2009—this one was reviewed very favorably by Phil Loring in The Ester Republic)
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan (2008—I have this one already, but haven't yet read it)
• Sex, Seeds, and Civilization: How the Hidden Life of Plants Has Changed Our World, by Peter Thompson and Stephen Harris (2010)

There are several other interesting texts on the syllabus.

I am a little intimidated about the work and reading load that this course will require to do right, but the topic is of such interest and is so pertinent to my job at the U that I am plunging on with it. I've decided that I will blog about the course as it goes along, too—it will be a good way to organize my thoughts and work for the class, I think.

TTY scam: Yorkies for Sale

Or perhaps it's English bulldogs, or terriers to give away. Sound familiar? It should: it's exactly the same scam as that run by those arseholes sending e-mails requesting ad placement. Same phrasing, and a curiously insistent person wanting to know when, exactly, the credit card will be run, and can it be run today, right now, in fact? I received one of these calls a couple of weeks ago, and it was so suspicious that the only thing I could think of was that the person on the TTY machine (also known as a TDD) had stolen somebody else's card. They gave me a name and residence address (Juneau, and I looked it up on Google--it appeared to be a local church). Took 45 minutes to get exactly nowhere.

Then Leah got another call yesterday. What a waste of time!

The scam may not be in the ad placement, but in the dog end (so to speak). Free or cheap dogs, but shipping that costs a lot and somehow the dogs never arrive.

I get requests for ads all the time, usually by e-mail, that reveal that the person placing them has no real interest in the periodical in which they are to be placed and no conception of English grammar. There are often mistakes in spelling and grammar, but not the kind a native speaker of English would make. They also clearly know nothing of the periodical they have contacted (for example, how often the Republic comes out!) The same is true of this new TTY version of the scam.

I'm not sure if it's a hearing shyster taking advantage of the TTY phone, a deaf shyster abusing a TTY phone, or a person posing as a TTY operator but who is in fact a scam artist. No matter the case, newspapers and magazines should watch out.

Senator Baucus: bought and paid for?

Well, this is one possible answer to my question on why, if Senator Baucus thinks we have such a terrible health care crisis in this country, he isn't (as chair of the hearings) allowing single-payer advocates a seat at the table:

One of the Baucus 13, Kevin Zeese, recently summarized Baucus’ career campaign contributions:

“From the insurance industry: $1,170,313;
health professionals: $1,016,276;
pharmaceuticals/health-products industry: $734,605;
hospitals/nursing homes: $541,891;
health services/HMOs: $439,700.”

In other words: his campaigns have been financed by the for-profit health industry.

Interesting, wouldn't you say?

Let's just take a look at WHY single-payer reduces expenses so dramatically. Here's the United States' system as it currently stands:



Rather messy, no? Convoluted, even.

And here's Canada's single-payer system:



Much simpler. It's the complexity of the US system that breeds an expensive wastefulness, and the profit motive that creates an incentive to whittle away people's coverage and endurance through (again wasteful) quantities of paperwork, etc.

These graphic representations of health care systems are from Neil Davis' book, Mired in the Health Care Morass, which I published last year. Reading that book made it very very clear just why Congress' and the White House's approach on this is so wrong-headed, and doomed to failure--from a health care standpoint. It will work beautifully from an investor's profit-making standpoint, so long as you don't care that people will be dying and sickly and going broke as a result.

Top 10 most challenged books for 2008

The Office of Intellectual Freedom keeps tabs on challenges to books in libraries.

A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school, requesting that materials be removed or restricted because of content or appropriateness. In 2008, OIF received 513 reports on efforts to remove or restrict materials from school curricula and library bookshelves.

From the American Library Association, here is the list of the books most frequently challenged during calendar year 2008:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell*
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group
* this one is based on true events, about a male couple of chinstrap penguins who successfully raised a chick at the Central Park Zoo
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman*
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, violence
* I've read two of the three books in this series; very interesting works. Very good.
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, violence
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, violence
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited to age group
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality, unsuited to age group
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Doogan: champion of the First Amendment. Not.

And from the other editorial cartoonist on staff at The Ester Republic:

A little bysplash from an outing

Just one of many cartoons that will be generated by this brouhaha, I'm sure.

About freakin' time!

One of the more amazing things about the Bush years was the willingness by the White House, various members of Congress, and a huge number of the (supposedly) Christian crowd to embrace the use of torture (so long as that icky word wasn't used). This country descended into a pit of depravity and destructive amorality so fast the supersonic boom of horror it left stunned those of us who blithely assumed that Americans would of course understand it for the evil that it is. The Bad Guys, the guys in Black Hats, those were the people who did that kind of thing.

Lest anyone forget, our congressional delegation all--every single one of them (count them, the three of them)--supported "harsh interrogation techniques." Ol' Uncle Ted, Sweet Lisa, and Yon Dung.

And still, the Obama White House and the Democratic-led Congress can't seem to recognize how important it is that war crimes and abominations like these policies, even if described with pretty words, are still abominations and the people responsible for them need to be brought to justice. That's called complicity.

But the Spaniards are finally calling the Bush White House on its shit.

Anonymity, the Press Club, and real stupidity

One of the subjects that came up last night on the blogging panel was whether bloggers (read: the subset of bloggers that tend to be political commentators with a journalistic/observational bent) should remain/be allowed to remain anonymous. Shannyn Moore and I both agreed (us on the left of the podium) that yes, of course, anonymity is the perogative of the individual blogger. Andrew Halcro also agreed, with the observation on a standard true-name byline, "How could you enforce it, anyway?"

Well, as Mike Doogan has, as of this morning, demonstrated, one way to enforce it is by the method of forced outing. Doogan revealed the actual name of a popular blogger, Mudflats. (He used, rumor has it, an e-list of constituents to spread this word, which may constitute a conflict of interest. More on this later.)

This immediately brings to mind the outings of closeted gay public figures; the ethics of this has always been troubling to me. On the one hand, outing someone who can't yet deal with this innermost conflict in their identity is, to me, a form of violence perpetrated on the outee. On the other hand, the outee may in fact be a perpetrator of, say, legislative violence upon fellow gays who are honestly out, taking that risk that the closeted can't bear to face.

However, Mudflats is simply an individual commenting on politics. The refuge of the pseudonym in literature and journalism has a time-honored history. I think it is Doogan here who is in the wrong. He has overstepped his bounds.

I'll have to get off line here for the moment. The hotel needs to do some maintenance.

Public testimony and a poll on the death penalty

There's an informal poll on KTVA.com on the death penalty bill. So far it's 56 percent against, but of course these things change like mad.

Alaskans Against the Death Penalty has a bunch more information on the hearings for HB 9. Jay Ramras, it turns out, is a co-sponsor. Well, I may appreciate his concern for agriculture in the Bush and villages suffering from hunger and lack of fuel, but I think his judgement is WAY off on this one. This is wrong, Jay.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth Chenault

Ah, yes, in commemoration of our 50th year as a state, Representative Mike Chenault wants to introduce the death penalty to Alaska. As if we didn't have enough stupidity and expense in gummint these days. (Actually, I'm not that generally displeased with Alaska government, but boy, howdy, certain Republicans sure seem to want to muck things up but good.) Sarah Palin, good little bloodthirsty Christian that she is, shares Chenault's absolute faith in the impeccable, color-blind, and utterly error-free operation of our criminal justice system. Ramras evidently also has no qualms about it, either: "Hang 'em high." Or, if they don't think the system is perfect, they're still perfectly willing to sacrifice one or two here and there, or not worry about the disproportionate application of the death penalty depending on the convicted person's race, or the expense before the person even gets to trial.

And to top it off, Chenault is just fine with wasting the legislature's limited time:

It is not my expectation that HB 9 will pass the Legislature and become law this year. In fact, I would be quite surprised if it did.

Nope, Chenault wants us to have a "healthy dialogue" about it. I submit that perhaps the 90-day session is not the best place to do this.

Talk about stupid.

An oil industry bias

I've been rather busy the last week due to the upcoming John Trigg Ester Library Lallapalooza and the Perennial Problem of Paper Production (which ALWAYS takes far longer than I anticipate), so I haven't been posting here of late, despite the fascinating news stories abounding. So I'll try to make up for that in the next couple of days.

First up: after all the brouhaha with certain saurian Republican legislators chastising UA President Hamilton for the supposed 'anti-development attitude' of University of Alaska students who dared to come down to Juneau and (gasp!) express doubts about particular mining projects, I received an interesting press release from PEER about Professor Rick Steiner, who is getting his NOAA grant yanked by Sea Grant.

It seems that last year, Dr. Steiner, a marine scientist, protested a pro-oil industry bias that he saw in Sea Grant programs.

Hmmm.

Here's an excerpt from the release:

Professor Rick Steiner, a noted marine scientist and environmentalist with the University of Alaska Marine Advisory Program, incurred the wrath of NOAA officials by protesting a pro-industry slant in Sea Grant programs to promote oil drilling in Alaska’s Bristol Bay. Shortly after Steiner’s March 18, 2008 letter [PDF] and press conference, his dean was approached by National Sea Grant Deputy Director Jim Murray, who according to an e-mail from Dean Denis Wiesenburg recounting the conversation, indicated that NOAA had “an issue with Rick Steiner” because “he was acting as an advocate and asked if he was being paid with Sea Grant funds”, adding that “one agent can cause problems nationally”.

As the basis for urging that Prof. Steiner “not be paid with Sea Grant funds” NOAA’s Murray cited manual guidance that Sea Grant extension agents should strive to be “neutral brokers of information”. Ironically, Prof. Steiner, a tenured professor, had been publicly protesting that the Sea Grant program was violating its own principle of neutrality by stacking a program to favor offshore oil development and improperly minimizing potential resource damage to Bristol Bay fisheries and marine life.

“Under Bush, NOAA programs, including Sea Grant, were ordered to lubricate oil company initiatives,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch whose organization is urging incoming NOAA Administrator-designate Jane Lubchenco to strengthen the Sea Grant role in ocean protection. “The Sea Grant program needs a thorough housecleaning starting with its leadership.”

As a result of the NOAA threat, Dean Wiesenburg recommended in December that Professor Steiner’s Sea Grant funding be terminated because Steiner “has chosen to be a maverick and work independently,” noting that “Mr. Steiner has devoted some of his energy during the review period to publicly attacking the Alaska Sea Grant program,” and that “Steiner regularly takes strong public positions on issues of public debate.” Significantly, the dean did not mention the quality or quantity of Prof. Steiner’s award-winning marine conservation extension efforts.

“The present crisis in our nation’s marine and coastal ecosystems requires a clear and urgent national response,” said Prof. Steiner. “But instead of responding to the ocean crisis, this new de facto gag order from NOAA Sea Grant will have a chilling effect on scientists who want to advocate for greater ocean protection and restoration.”

Bullying is bullying, gender aside

And the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board recognized this last night at their meeting, with all four members present speaking in support of including gender identification its nondiscrimination and harrassment policies.

The issue was brought to the committee’s attention when a high school administrator and school counselor said students had raised concerns of bullying and harassment toward other students who might be questioning their gender identity.

The current policy addresses sexual orientation but not gender identity — which are two separate issues, according to Gayle Pierce, labor relations director for the district.

Unfortunately, a few of the News-Miner's bloggers seem to think that the issue is one of "social engineering," or that gender identity is the same thing as homosexuality, or that it encourages kids to have sex.

Nope. The issue is one of bullying, harrassment, physical and verbal abuse. And that is simply not acceptable behavior. It puts the people engaging in it on the level of pigeons or chickens, making them dumb, brutal clucks. It demeans them and their victims, hurts people, and NOT addressing bullying allows this very bad behavior to flourish.

Gender identity is very important in our society, but gender is not, as I've said before, a simple black/white, male/female issue. Gender is a continuum, both physically and mentally, and a complex of physical traits and hormones and emotional, psychological, and spiritual facets. It's just not always a simple thing.

Take me, for instance. I am a woman with a slight moustache and developing beard. I don't like the beard (really a goatee), but I do like my rather feminine moustache. So I tend to shave my chin hairs and leave my upper lip hairs. But I don't do it every day, and, you know, hair grows. Every once in a while, some little kid looks me dead in the eye and asks me, "Are you a girl or a boy?" or they point to my face and say, with surprise or glee or shock, "You've got a moustache!" It's a bit refreshing. Kids, little kids, just blurt out the questions. Grownups pretend they don't see anything different, and either avert their eyes and shun me, or simply accept me, or--after they've known me for a while--hesitantly come out and ask me why I don't shave or get electrolysis or whatever. (Women are the ones who tend to do this, and then frequently try to convince me that really, it would be so much more attractive/civilized/better/nicer if I did shave.)

So I answer the kids by explaining that I'm a woman, and that some women have hair on their faces, but that most of them shave it off, and I just don't feel like it. It's no big deal. But for them, the identifying factor on maleness or femaleness is hair (and whether one has an outie or an innie, to quote a poster on the News-MIner blog). But it gets confusing when one has both, or one's reactions and feelings and hormonal shifts seem to match one official gender but one's body parts or way of moving or something else matches the other official gender. There is tremendous pressure to choose one of the two official genders, and to stick to the rather narrow parameters of that official gender. For some, this is right. For others, like me, we buck a trend by being just a tiny bit--or hugely--ambiguous.

Do your bit for R&R Day

If there's one thing that sharply demarcates the essential difference between Barack Obama's presidency—already—and George W's disastrous eight-year folly, it's this: personal responsibility. Obama has already demonstrated this in the preparedness of his pre-election readiness with his transition team, then with the work he and his transition team did so he could get started right away, then with the symbolic work at charities on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and now with his first- and second-day schedules.

I don't think we're going see an excessive amount of vacation time from the 44th president.

(Still, all work and no play…apparently Americans work harder than is good for them. George W., in my estimation, was freakin' lazy and didn't work enough! But that's another issue. George, in contrast to Obama, has real problems with being responsible for his own actions, or lack thereof. He demanded complete loyalty, rather like a feudal lord, but he didn't fulfil the other end of the bargain: responsibility to those who'd placed their trust in him, responsibility to the Constitution he'd sworn to uphold and protect. Nope. I don't think W. ever quite understood the value of that oath.)

Personal responsibility is also what Obama's asking of us, all of us, as individuals, as a nation. Government in this country is not about "Gummint vs. the People": government is the people. Unless, of course, we slack off and don't do our job. Our job is to be engaged, to be the government, to take responsibility for our own actions, for our neighborhoods, for our communities, for our state and our country. And the way to do that is elbow grease. Git out there and do your bit!

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What is it that I do to contribute to the wellbeing of my community? How can I fulfill my duty as a citizen? as a responsible human being? Voting and jury duty are the two basic duties, but what Obama is asking us to do is go far beyond that:

We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.

On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright -- it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.

So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

It's R&R day, Rest & Relaxation through Renewal & Reconciliation. The gods know we need it.

I'm also liking what I'm reading here:

Communication -- Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. [WhiteHouse.gov} will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

Participation -- President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

In other words, one basic responsibility is to inform ourselves, and another is to participate in what our government does.

Sloth is not rest. That's important to remember.

I put the paper, this blog, and the Ester library stuff I do in the category of citizen participation. These are things that, I believe, make the world a better place. Newspapers and blogs are there to inform people, not only of the actual news, but of the feelings of people and the meaning of events. Libraries—well, man, that's a whole additional blog post. And the fact that they are local is also a big deal to me: grassroots, folks, home-grown.

Senator Stevens might be able to serve, even in jail

According to Constitutional scholar Sandy Levinson, the Senate may not actually be able to expell Stevens (not legally, anyway), and Stevens thus might be able to serve as our Senator, even from the Gray Bar Hotel:

Let's begin with this question: Could a state require that a candidate for the Senate not be a convicted felon? One might believe that the answer would be "of course," but I take it that the meaning of the Term Limits v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), is that states cannot add to the bare qualifications set out by the Constitution itself, which are limited to "hav[ing] attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Ciizen of the United States, and who shall..., when elected, be an Inhabitant of the State in which he shall be chosen."

His full argument is on Balkinization, and rather interesting. He asks, "If a "sovereign"... state can't add to the list of qualifications, why in the world can Congress?" He also has either a keen satiric wit, or more faith in the electorate than I do:

If the people of Alaska want to be represented by a felon, then why not? To be sure, if he is sentenced to jail, there might be some additional problems, but then the good folks of Alaska might have considered that when casting their vote for Sen. Stevens.

Read the commentary, too: lots of good discussion on the issue.

Fluff and lies

Obsidian Wings has an excellent analysis of the falsehoods in Sarah Palin's speech. In condensed form, here they are:

1. McCain shows constancy. Nope: check the Carpetbagger Report on this.
2. "Thanks, but no thanks." Er, she did accept the money, and at a time when Louisiana and Mississippi were in desperate need of money for infrastructure rebuilding.
3. Obama hasn't authored major legislation. Unless you think that the "strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet" is, perhaps, major. Apparently Palin doesn't actually think much of ethics... And all these other bills that Obama sponsored or co-authored don't count with her either.
4. Obama is against producing more energy. Uh, what? That's directly contradicted here, on his website.
5. Under Obama, our taxes would go up. Yeah, right. See my commentary below on this pony puckey. (Pay attention, Mark. You mocked me the other night on this, and I'm not happy about it. )

Many thanks to Hilzoy for this excellent factchecking and analysis.

The Reality-Based Community also has a good refutation of Palin's lies.

And of course, the Daily Show has the word on community organizers. (See this interesting New York Times discussion of the term.)

Sarah, I'm really disappointed in you. Your speech is making me think seriously for the first time ever of actually donating money to the Democratic presidential campaign. I've been a long-time Green, but with this particular election and these particular candidates I might just break ranks. (God, I cringe to say this out loud.) Of course, what's really really annoying is that the Greens are damn good, but are shut out.

The Republicans offered nothing but the same old crap, with more extremism. Given what that's brought us to in the last eight years, I'm appalled that people could possibly think this would be good for the country. Apparently, though, you can fool a chump again and again.

Puppy: small and cute and very very young

A two-week-old puppy was brought into the bar tonight, a little fat roly-poly black and white unknown (but possibly Lab-oid) who'd been found abandoned and brought to the after-hours animal clinic. Cute as the dickens, with a fat tail, mostly head and body, but with strong (if short) little legs, with tiny little ears (unopened) and still blind. It was nuzzling or sleeping in whoever's arms it lay, making those funny little puppy unh-unh-unh noises. So small, and so terribly vulnerable. The woman taking care of it had managed to find a milk replacer that it would eat (it didn't like the first one, which wasn't good for an infant animal that needs to eat every two to four hours), so it had put on weight and actually had a few fat wrinkles. Its fur was thick and glossy. But it (he) needs a home.

It's so awful to see young creatures in this fix, abandoned, taken from their mothers. I don't understand this at all. Babies, whether dogs or cats or humans, are a responsibility. You can't just throw them away. Yet people do.

McCain: a liberal conservative

A local conservative described John McCain this way tonight, saying that this was why most conservatives hated McCain: he was a liberal conservative. In other words, he was too dang liberal. I laughed myself silly. John "Bush Lite" McCain has long since ceased being "conservative" but he was never a liberal, least of all now.

An oxymoron, indeed. Of course, most conservatives are not, these days, at least in this country. They're either neocons (as in, the "new con game") or rightwingnuts (missing any bolts to hold them down to earth). McCain panders to the both of them, thereby, apparently, pissing off both segments. And he's certainly raised the ire of Democrats who were pleased with his "maverick" qualities so long ago.

I was playing cribbage with Kate, but was sitting too close to the rather loud and exuberant political discussion at the right wing of the bar, and just couldn't keep my mouth shut on the more egregious statements (Kate's valiant efforts to distract me ["Shut yer piehole and play!"] notwithstanding). But mostly I managed to keep out of it. Not very well, but I did.

Anyhoo, now I'm home and for some reason I keep thinking of the seven deadly sins. These are, for those of you not familiar with the Church's views on the world, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Of these, the ones that pop into my head with relation to tonight's political discussion and cribbage game are:

• gluttony: the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste.
• greed or avarice: a sin of excess; disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason (especially for personal gain, for example through bribery); hoarding, theft and robbery; simony.
• wrath: inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger; vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide).
• envy: sorrow for another's good.
• pride: the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor; a desire to be more important or attractive than others.

I wonder how my neighbor and I can be so far apart on political issues. It seems to me crystal clear that the Republican favorite (indeed, the Republican party) has degenerated into representing the worst and most sinful and most fearful of the United States and its character; I fail completely to see how good people can fall for their lies, or think that continuing so many of the failed policies of the past three Republican administrations can do anything but fail us and the country, again, thoroughly. Yet, people keep voting for them. Stevens won the primary again. Many of my local conservative neighbors voted for Bush. Twice.

And they seem to be amazed that I can vote for "wackos" like Nader, or a Democrat (any Democrat).

There's this tremendous, vast, uncrossable chasm between us, and not only can I barely see my neighbors on the other side, I can barely hear them—and they me. We can't seem to communicate. We can wave, and shout, but there's no real discussion, or understanding. I just don't get it. Neither do they. And this just doesn't seem right.