Do we have any idea what we are doing?

How big this is? How much waste we produce? How much it impacts the world? How big the world is?

I don't know about you, but when I feel I'm in for some mind-boggling I sit down and start thinking about how many people there are in NYC...and then in other cities like Beijing or Munich or Paris...and then I start thinking about how impossibly many people there are on Earth. Yes, I know the figures. I could just think about the number...but it's not really the same humbling feeling.

Chris Jordan is a photographic artist who has created a number of masterful pieces of artwork that help us visualize numbers that are really beyond the comprehension level of "whoa that's a lot." He is brilliant and if you haven't spent some time exploring his website, you should do it today.
www.chrisjordan.com

p.s. More foodie pictures coming soon...my computer had to be wiped and reinstalled, so I'm just now getting that stuff back together.

a quick thought

I'm still finishing up stuff for this week's food bank meeting but wanted to take a moment to share this thought that I had today:

Even the cactus seem to be wilting in this heat.

overwhelm-ment

I'm in the process of compiling a list of bands I want to see when we travel out to Austin for SXSW next month. Whoa is there a lot to sift through. I'm not sure the number of bands that are officially slated to play, but I haven't successfully gotten through the list yet. If you want to see just how long it is, click here.

This feeling of being overwhelmed reminds me of the feeling I often get when I try to take in excessive amounts of information about world events and politics. My brain just can't hold it all.

Maybe my brain extra small? OR maybe this explains all the apathy in our country...we can't focus on anything else because too much of our attention is absorbed in marketing and spin.

Also (and randomly): It was snowing in Tucson today. I ate flourless chocolate cake, that Dylan made me for V day, as a snack. Today is the last day of my 30 day yoga challenge.

ya learn something new every day

In reading Roz Cummings retrospective food column today had an elated epiphany about thyme. And I quote from Roz:

Most transcendent moment in an organic garden
When I visited Sooke Harbour House, on Vancouver Island last spring, I took a tour of the organic garden with Nichka Phillips. While showing me the herbs, she mentioned that the French use thyme in a tincture to treat respiratory ailments. I suddenly remembered the expression that I heard my father use all my life whenever the topic of healing came up -- "Nothing heals as well as a tincture of time." Might he really have been saying "a tincture of thyme"? It made me feel connected to him, even though he died a few years ago. The sense of feeling connected to someone I loved while standing in an aromatic garden in a beautiful place was completely lovely.

HA! A tincture of thyme! I'm familiar with the expression, having heard it before, probably from my grandparents. I had no idea - and apparently neither did she!

(if you are interested, her full article is here.)

g.o.l.

For a long time I've avoided usung the lol acronym...mostly out of stubborness. Sometimes it seems appropriate in a given situation, but not quite right...maybe I'm not all out laughing...maybe just giggling. SO, I'm instituting a new (or new to me) acronym: gol, Giggle Out Loud.

Dude, like, that's some serious wind...

Today we went for yet another 60 mile ride as part of my training regime for the STP in July. The ride was great, except that the headwind (and sidewind, at times) on the way back was outrageous. There were actually a couple to times where I had to stop and wait for the wind to die down a bit - just so I didn't get blown over.

Somehow being forced to travel at a slower speed (even though I was outputting all of my umph) gave me more space than usual to think during the ride. I thought about how the air smelled of pending rain (awesome!), how everything seems to be blooming (and we've got pollen to prove it), and how I haven't really had a real, complex thought in about a month. Well, that may not be totally true, but here's my new theory:

Excessive amounts of certain types of exercise stunt your intellectual growth.

Of course, I don't mean that excercise kills brain cells - it probably helps by stimulating blood flow to the brain. What I realized is that when I ride my bike all weekend and am either riding or practicing yoga after work I don't have any time to expand my brain (reading being the most obvious way to do this). I suppose if I didn't have a full time job, I'd have extra time outside of training to read great books and interesting magazines.

Then I thought back to other times when I have excercised a lot, but avoided this feeling of braindeadedness. In Seattle, I rode the bus to and from work. So I had about an hour and 15 minutes of dedicated reading time each day. Add to that the time I spent reading NatGeo, Utne, Mother Jones, etc. on the elliptical machine at the gym and it seems like I really had time to expand my brain - even with all the exercise I got.

This is sort of a recurring theme for me. I really enjoy the feeling you get after a great run or a long bike ride, but, oh, the time it takes...there are so many other things that I like to do besides exercise. How do I fit them all in? I suppose this is a quandry everyone has. Darned time and it's limitations!

So, I've made a pact with myself to spend more time reading. Especially at the table on the weekends with daylight streaming in the windows. Today was a great start and I feel more alive already!

Wir schweigen nicht.

We went to see Amy Goodman (host of DemocracyNow!) speak this past Friday evening. She was in town promoting her book, Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People who Fight Back. Overall, I'm glad that we went to see her, though it did seem that - at least in our case - she was preaching to the choir.

She started by telling us what a rigorus schedule she has been keeping (3 cities a day), mostly as an explanation as to why she was late to the show. She then launched into some several stories, many of which have made it into the mainstream media by now. This included everyone's good friend Cindy Sheehan. If found it interesting that Amy focused on her for so long, as her story is so well known already. Regardless.

There was one story that had apparently hit the mainstream media, but which I missed when it passed by. This was a T-shirt story.

Earlier this year Iraqi blogger and activist Raed Jarrar who was forced to change his T-Shirt before boarding a JetBlue Airways flight at Kennedy airport. The shirt he wore? A black shirt with the words "We will not be silent" written in English...and Arabic. You see, the Arabic language has become a language of terror - as far as the TSA is concerned, anyway.

Actually, the phrase "We will not be silent" was originally drawn by the shirt's creator from the 4th leaflet put out by The White Rose, an a small group of university students in Nazi Germany who felt they should do something to speak out against the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. Ignorance, it seems, is killing us (and everyone else).

(incidently, if you are interested in purchasing a shirt, you can do that here).

Car free, care free?

Well...not exactly...

One surburbanite woman (living in Normal, IL) has taken on the challenge of getting around with her two daughters for the month of July sans car.

See her blog here

What she seems to be discovering is a newfound disgust for the fact that it is so impossible to get around via public transport if you don't live in a major city (I'm thinking NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc.).

I can totally relate. Tucson is similar to C. Springs in the fact that it seems to have been dropped from the sky and splattered all over the earth. It sprawls, okay?

When we were looking for a house we tried to find something near the University/Downtown. Bad news, unless we wanted to live in a complete fixer we were priced out of the market. And that's Tucson real estate prices. So, our next best choice was our current neighborhood, one designed around the idea of "New Urbanism."

Bad news again...
There is nothing within walking distance of our house. Nothing.

So, I can sympathize with our friend in Normal, IL. I've thought of biking to work...but I need to build endurance to make the 50 mile round trip ride. The bus doesn't even come to our part of town. We both *need* cars.

It's just gross.

I say, more power to the public transportation riders!

New Initatives from Whole Foods

I've long been a fan of Whole Foods Market. While it is more expensive that other stores, the staples don't break the bank (really, it's the esoteric foods that cost you more). A couple of years ago I remember seeing local heirloom tomatoes in the Seattle store that we shopped at. Of course, they were expensive, but that is related to how well ripe heirlooms travel...even a few miles from the farm.

Here in Tucson we don't have a WFM...only a Wild Oats, which I think is a despicable knock off of WFM. Everything that WO sells is over priced...they seem to just be riding the organic wave (more on this later...this is a hot button for me).

Today I read an article in Grist regarding a letter that John Mackey (CEO of WF) wrote to Michael Pollen (author, who has criticized WF in the past). The story quoted only a part of the letter, but the general idea was that WF has set goals as a company to work harder at supporting local food producers, especially those producing animal foods. This is a good step.

I have many frustrations with the current organic foods movement. While I think it is great that more and more people are becoming aware of the value of growing food organically, I think that many are missing the part about also growing the food sustainably. It's great that more and more farms are growing crops without pesticides, but they are still large-scale growth operations who focus on the bottom line (and the bottom line only). They are just meeting the standards set by the FDA, rather than considering the impacts of their actions (which I think is more the idea behind the organic foods movement). Consider Horizon Organics. Once upon a time, before Dean bought them, they were a decent, small dairy operation. Now they have cows that never see the light of day and chickens who live in cages. The guidelines for organic milk that are set out by the FDA do not require that the cows be able to wander in a pasture...only that they cows are not fed hormones and that they are fed organic feed.

Anyway, I could go on and on...

Read the full article here: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/6/29/143121/559?source=daily
or check out John Mackey's blog and see the full exchange here:
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blogs/jm/

Risk

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

-Anais Nin

The Future?

This piece by the Museum of Media History is an intersting prediction of what will happen to the Media in the future. It's a bit long (and slow at times) but interesting none the less.
http://www.idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/

Aren't news pieces all some journalist's interpretation/story anyway? This takes it to the extreme, but I'm inclined to recall a discussion I had with a neighbor a year back or so. My argument was that the job of all journalists, no the news organizations, was to present stories that revolved around facts and to actually do investigative journalism. She argued that that was not their job at all (though I can't honestly remember why she thought this was not part of the job description), rather that they are paid to create sensationalism (well, that's not exactly what she said).

And, yes, I did use Blogger to post this...

Thanks...

To all of the friends we have, near and far. We're lucky to know you!
I hope that everyone had a fun-filled and thankful Thanksgiving.
We spent the day with Dylan's boss, Lisa. Went for a hike 2/3 up Aqua Caliente and then celebrated the traditional way with Turkey and fixins at Lisa's house. We thought of everyone we didn't see and ate enough food for all of you!
See the hiking blog for pictures of the hike...

real love

trapped in the coffehouse during our open house. listening to live bluegrass/folk. reading david sedaris. a line strikes,
"Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings."
how true that is.