About two years ago a woman newly relocated to Sandersville from New York State readily made friends with a group of women who like to begin their day with a 5:45 aerobics classes.
Just a few months after settling in arthritis problems flared up and she required a second hip replacement. She was determined to cook and freeze food so her family wouldn’t have to care for her and cook.
We told her not to bother but she looked puzzled. Our collective response was, “In the South you don’t cook when there is a serious illness or death in your family. We’ll bring you meals. That’s what we do for each other.”
This Southern tradition continues with my family this week. Within just a few hours of letting people know there is an illness in our family (manageable but disrupting our regular routines) I got a message asking when we needed food, and for how many people.
Last night my father-in-law went home to fresh vegetables and homemade chicken and dumplings for dinner from a much-loved family friend, Joy Pendry. She insisted that all I need to do is raise my hand again if we need help.
If someone says, “I went to UGA” or any large college or university, most people can readily identify something about that school (football, agriculture, technology, etc). When someone asks an alum of a Quaker school where they went to school, sometimes the person asking the question looks kind of lost if they follow-up and ask what type of school that is and the answer is a simple, “Quaker”. (I have on a few occasions extolled about one benefit of being an alum of a Quaker school is the lifetime supply of free oatmeal. I should not prey on the innocent.)
Quakers are not Shakers (but they can and do shake things up sometimes), or Mennonites, or Amish. Quakers are Quakers just like Methodists are Methodists. They come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and varieties. Flaming Liberals-yep. Middle of the Road-got plenty of those. Conservative- there are some of those too.
If you are wondering who Quakers are and what they do, The Huffington Post ran an article in June, “4 Things We Can All Learn from One of America’s Oldest Religious Communities” which does a good job of explaining some of the ways Quakers work together as a faith community (and as a result in their communities beyond their church).
There is a new family living in Ragsdale House, where the President lives at my Quaker college alma mater, Guilford College. The search to hire our ninth president was unusually transparent when compared to how many schools hire their administrative leaders. When the College announced that Jane K Fernandes had accepted the offer to join the Guilford community, there was a huge outpouring of genuine and heartfelt excitement. Jane said she truly felt called to Guilford, and her passion for the values of Quakers, a Quaker-based education, and Guilford are palpable.
Georgia’s Guns Everywhere law went into effect at 12:01 this morning. A few weeks ago I made some calls to businesses I frequent to find out if they would allow guns beginning today. A coffee shop I really like reacted like I was making a prank call. I doubled back today. They were honest and said they just didn’t know much about it, but would hustle now and get an answer back to me. They serve beer and wine, so they can’t stay on the fence on this one.
Alcohol and guns didn’t mix in Georgia, until now. Guns Everywhere means patrons at any establishment serving alcohol can bring a gun in, unless the business posts a sign telling patrons they can’t bring a gun in.
As of midnight last night, the Rosa M Tarbutton Memorial Library, a beautiful library in Washington County used by everyone in the community, will have to allow guns in the building. My county, like many others, can’t afford the additional security staff or detectors required to keep guns out of the building. All the county buildings in my community, with the exception of the courthouse, where they are adding additional staff for security, will have to allow citizens to bring guns inside.
The Georgia General Assembly and Governor Deal think we need more guns in public places but less funding for mental health services and public schools. Do legislators expect them to have a bake sale to cover their costs?
I posted this photo on January 25, 2012 after Cobb EMC abandoned Plant Washington and resigned itself to a likely $15M loss on the proposed coal plant it had bankrolled with co-op owner/member dollars.
Almost 6.5 years after it was announced as a “done deal,” Power4Georgians has asked for a permit extension for this because P4G chose to delay construction.
Today is the last day to tell the Georgia EPD that Power4Georgians has had plenty of time.
We’re all living on the same small spinning piece of real estate sharing the limited water and air that has to sustain all of us. Every one of us have skin in this game.
April is National Poetry Month. Poet Dan Corrie shared this poem with Rural and Progressive.
Table Grace: For the Good, the True and the Beautiful
Seed of the three is
the True – world itself’s
soon-entangling particulars,
like the fence-line lost
in thickets of blackberries
favored by a phoebe.
From that first, seeds buried
in the mind might
root deeper, branch higher –
single-double direction
of the Good, of the Beautiful –
of the merely here
harvested by my noticing.
Plum’s restorative taste
rounding around seed
might guide us to be
a health of seeds
opening, rising,
branching into falling
to seeds to deeds to seeds –
from felt meaninglessness
to meaning’s feeling.
Let each of our choices
root and rise, like the giving
of pears for the table
and mulberries for the waxwings.
Let our living
be ownerless fields
grown thick with our thanks.
–by Daniel Corrie, originally published in the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review
Dan Corrie birding at the coast
This poem emerged from my wife’s and my adventures in exploring relocalization in rural South Georgia.
Six years ago, we moved from living in Midtown Atlanta to settle on my wife’s inherited family farm in Tift County, an hour and a half north of Florida. One of our key concerns about the move was whether we’d be able to eat as we’d grown accustomed with all the choices available in Atlanta, including buying from local farms we had toured where we’d met and even become friends with some of the farmers and knew they didn’t use pesticides.
A key persuasive factor was that a member of the board of Georgia Organics lived in Tifton. We telephoned her, and she told us of her local volunteer efforts devoted to nurturing a true farmers market, as opposed to what so many such markets have been: a cross between a flea market and an outlet for venders to resell produce grown nowhere near and with no assurance of how it was grown.
After we moved down to the farm, we enjoyed joining our new friend in devoting time to the farmers market. In that process, the three of us also organized the first South Georgia Growing Local and Sustainable conference, which attracted about 60 people to the Tifton event. The conference has gone on to be held in various parts of South Georgia, organized by other friends who care about healthy, locally raised food, with the events attracting from one to two hundred participants. And Tifton’s farmers market has grown, with other friends in the community emerging to run it and to shape it and improve what our group has incorporated as the Wiregrass Farmers Market. The market has come to be headquartered at the beautiful Georgia Museum of Agriculture in partnership with the University of Georgia. The market has come to be a place where people come not only to buy food but to run into friends and enjoy visiting with each other.
Around our inherited house, my wife planted a garden, as well as sixty-some edible trees and bushes. Some of our Tifton friends began a slow food club, in which different couples or individuals will host a pot-luck at their home and everyone attending puts together dishes with local ingredients. They might grow some of the ingredients themselves, buy from the farmers market, or buy or trade or simply be given ingredients from other friends and neighbors.
In my poem, I refer to three values highly prized by Plato: the good, the true and the beautiful. While Plato thought in philosophical terms of eternal, perfect forms, my poem reflects my own personal bias for the true in terms of the real, at-hand world where the particulars matter, such as which farmer raised what we eat and how much carbon went into transporting our food during our time of global climate change. When circles of people find fun in working together while paying attention to nature’s ways, the good and the beautiful surely can follow.
Crop mob– A group of landless and wannabe farmers who come together to build and empower communities by working side by side.
You don’t have to be landless or a wannabe farmer to support farmers who are committed to sustainable farming. You also don’t have to know anything about farming or gardening (that would be me).
You will need a decent pair of work gloves, sturdy outdoor work shoes/boots, a hat, some bottled water, sunscreen, and a willingness to get your hands dirty for a few hours. In exchange you’ll help a small farmer who needs additional help during a critical part of the growing season.
My friend, and organic farmer, Lyle Lansdell, is hosting a Crop Mob at her farm, Forest Grove Farm in Sandersville, Washington County, this Sunday, April 13. Her passion for good health and good food inspired her to dig into (no pun intended) organic farming after retiring from a public health career at Chapel Hill. Lyle has also continued the careful restoration of her family’s 1850s era home, Forest Grove, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Lyle told me when she decided to raise and sell lamb, she committed to making sure she knew exactly how the lambs would be butchered and processed. She chose a processor after walking through the entire facility and talking with the owner. She sells at the newly renamed and relocated Green Market in Milledgeville on Saturdays and the Mulberry Street Market in Macon on Wednesday afternoons. You might also find her at the Sandersville Farmer’s Market on Wednesday mornings in the summer.
If you’ve wanted to show a child where food really comes from, and how much work it takes to grow that food, bring them along to help. You’ll leave with a little dirt under your fingernails and a craving for ripe, red, sun-warmed tomatoes.
When it comes to expensive, frustrating and broken websites for government programs, the President’s got nothing on Gov. Nathan Deal.
Georgia taxpayers are shelling out nearly half a million dollars a week just in overtime pay to fix Gov. Deal’s broken system for Georgia’s neediest families – those applying for help to feed their families.
And, what does Gov. Deal think about this problem?
He told 11Alive’s Rebecca Lindstrom that, despite a November letter from the federal government warning that unless the state takes corrective action, $75 million in funding could be in jeopardy, he was unaware of the scope of the problem until recently:
“I’d only become aware that it was of that magnitude just fairly recently.”
For months, Georgia’s neediest families have found it almost impossible to apply for food stamps.
They’ve often waited on the phone for hours only to be disconnected.
Those who were lucky enough to have internet access got repeated error messages on the website. And thousands of Georgians who already qualified for assistance were accidently kicked off the program. In early March, DFCS officials acknowledged a 100,000 case backlog.
Half a million tax dollars each week in overtime costs.
$75 million of federal funds in jeopardy.
Thousand of families in crisis.
And Gov. Nathan Deal is asleep at the wheel – again – during a preventable crisis.
Sound familiar? It should.
Ignoring problems until they become a crisis that threatens the health and safety of Georgia families and costs taxpayers millions is an all-too-typical pattern for Gov. Deal.
This time, because the governor’s appointees invested in an out-dated, insufficient system to process applications for food stamps, Georgia taxpayers are now on the hook for nearly half a million dollars a week in overtime cost alone for the 2,000 DFCS employees who are struggling to fix the mess.
Not being able to get their calls through is more than an inconvenience for Georgia’s 1.9 million recipients of food stamps. Getting cut off means going hungry or scrambling to get help from local charities – or both. Of those who qualify for food stamps in Georgia, 52% are families with children.
The media has been reporting on this growing crisis for months.
Yet, Gov. Deal was unaware?
We don’t know why the State of Georgia invested in a technology boondoggle, but we know, from his own mouth, that Gov. Deal just wasn’t paying attention. Now, instead of creating more problems for needy Georgians caught up in this crisis, Gov. Deal should wake up, pay attention and stop wasting our tax dollars.
Call Governor Deal’s office today. Tell Gov. Deal that instead of making it even harder on Georgia’s neediest families, he should fix the system his political appointee broke. And, after you call, let us know how it went. Call now.
North Carolina artist Kathy Clark is calling for the tradition of Ash Wednesday to also be Coal Ash Wednesday. She is encouraging people to reduce their use of electricity as much as possible today as a reminder of the damage coal ash continues to do in the Dan River.
Clark is urging people to use a bare minimum or no electricity from 7:00-7:30 tonight. Whether you observe Lent or not, this is an excellent opportunity to consider how you use electricity (and other fuel) and how you can reduce your consumption. It is time to get some religion about energy use in our country.
The Charlotte Observer reports that Duke Energy notified the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Sunday afternoon that one of their coal ash ponds at the Dan River Power Station was spilling coal ash waste and toxin contaminated water into the Dan River. The company’s early estimate was that 82,000 TONS of toxic coal ash waste and up to 27 MILLION gallons of water had poured into the river supplying municipal drinking water systems downstream.
photo Catawba Riverkeeper
Duke Energy officials waited until 4:03 on Monday afternoon to inform the public.
The Observer quotes power company officials saying on Tuesday that it was “definitely unexpected” that a reinforced concrete pipe would break.
Except Duke Energy didn’t use concrete pipes for two thirds of the length of the pipe where the leak continues to spill into the Dan River. The company thought it had used concrete pipes in the 1960s when they built the coal ash ponds, but now they know that only one-third of the length of the pipe work is concrete.
Ooops.
photo by Appalachian Voices
Late yesterday Appalachian Voices reported that coal ash has reached the intake point at the Danville water works. Virginia Beach authorities have turned off the pumps at Lake Gaston until the full impact of the spill is determined.
The water problems aren’t over for West Virginians either. The News Observer reports that Dr. Rahul Gupta, health officer for Kanawha and Putnam counties urges parents with children ages three and younger, as well as people with weakened immune systems, to avoid drinking the water. Yesterday two schools had to close when students and teachers were overwhelmed with the licorice fumes associated with the coal processing chemical that contaminated water resources last month.
There are plenty of potential coal ash spills waiting to happen. Today’s Washington Post notes that there are 207 plant sites in 37 states where coal ash contamination has violated federal air and water health standards. Georgia could be next.
Georgia is riddled with coal plants and the toxic waste they produce. Even as Georgia Power begins to shutter coal units, the coal ash remains. Middle Georgia’s Plant Branch and Plant Scherer as ranked as Significant for hazards. After the doors are locked at Plant Branch next April, the tons of coal ash and toxic-soaked water will still be there in retention ponds, right there on the banks of Lake Sinclair that feeds the Oconee River.
How can this be? Easy.
IN HARM’S WAY: Lack of Federal Coal Ash Regulations Endangers Americans and Their Environment, a report by the Environmental Integrity Project includes this on coal ash waste regulations and monitoring, “Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia either require no monitoring of their numerous ash ponds or monitoring only after the ponds have been closed, a rare event as most ponds are operated perpetually as ‘storage’ sites. Monitoring data from state files in Georgia were so minimal that no assessment of impacts could be made.”
Power companies in Georgia are allowed to self-monitor their coal waste storage sites. Not the state agency that issued their permits, not river keepers, not municipal agencies. The power companies get to make the waste and monitor the safety of its storage.
We’ve allowed corporations, lobbyists, and legislators to put us at risk for decades and we can’t afford any longer to think “it won’t happen to us”. The “us” is everyone in the Charleston, West Virginia, Danville, and now Virginia Beach.
If you are using social media (at least Facebook) you may see a lot of profile pictures washed in purple as part of World Cancer Day today. There are all kinds of good ways to support cancer research, cancer patients and survivors, health care professionals, and caregivers.
I have a friend who begins chemo tomorrow. She’ll beat this.
Cancer sucks.
I’m not going purple today. Instead I’ve picked up the phone and shared a call to action.
The Georgia Senate Natural Resources Committee is meeting this afternoon to consider SB 299, which will strip away water protection and leave us just as exposed and vulnerable as the people in West Virginia. I called and left a message asking Chair Ross Tolleson to vote NO on this bill.
There are all kinds of ways we can support cancer patients today, and tomorrow, and the day after that. The ribbons and the walks are fine, but we also need to have the hard discussions about what we are doing to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Because cancer sucks.
The Friday Photo
January 31, 2014
Solar panels at John and Gretchen Quarterman’s farm Okra Paradise cranked out power despite a coating of sleet earlier this week. John took this photo while he and Gretchen, along with their dogs Brown Dog and Yellow Dog, surveyed their farm in southwest Georgia.
He’s back! President Obama has his feet back under him and the State of the Union address he just delivered made it clear that he and the Democrats are on their game.
The President isn’t going to wait around for the Republicans to hold who knows how many pointless votes on policies and programs they can’t overturn. Instead, he will work with Democrats and any willing Republicans, and he’ll use Executive Orders to move our country forward on minimum wage increases, equal pay for equal work, world-class education for our country’s children, peace in the Middle East, keeping our troops at home, making the voting booth easily accessible for legal voters, and immigration reform.
Obama said we are building a stronger economy using renewable energy fuel resources. The President also told climate deniers to get out of the way.
Come on Mr President, put a cherry on top of tonight’s speech and say No to Keystone XL now.
I listened to Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers deliver one of four responses to be offered up by the Republicans tonight (Tea Party darlings Sen Rand Paul and Mike Lee are responding too while Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen R-Florida will deliver remarks much like McMorris Rodger’s but in Spanish).
McMorris Rodgers touched on some of the points Obama raised like access to health care, jobs, and education, but she didn’t do much more than share some personal examples about how important those things are to her and her family.
And really, did the Republicans and McMorris Rodgers think they need to pander to women by asking a woman who just had a baby two months ago to deliver their flimsy response?
Women and people of color will be wooed and courted by Republicans and Democrats from now until the November elections are over. The President and Democrats came to the front door tonight with a huge bouquet of long stem roses, jewelry, and heated seats on the 50 yard line of this Sunday’s Super Bowl. The Republicans can’t decide on a team captain.
I don’t keep a diary or journal. As 2012 was winding down a friend suggested collecting the high points throughout the course of the year, writing them down, and keeping them in a container. At the end of the year it could serve as a reminder of happy moments that were worth writing down. This is what my 2013 container looked like.
On January 3rd I recorded my first contribution for 2014: New Year’s Day with Brenda, Diana, Maia, and Karrie (close in my heart).
I would include a link to the Chevrolet Silverado High Country pickup truck commercial I posted yesterday, but Chevrolet has put the brakes on the ad. Chevrolet replied to the comment and link I posted on their Facebook page yesterday saying they “paused” the ad (the same response was posted to other comments about the commercial).
I really don’t want offensive advertising to drive me away (no pun intended) from another Chevrolet purchase in the future. There is a Chevrolet Equinox in my driveway, and before that there was a Malibu.
My dealer, like many across the country, works hard to build good relationships with their customers. Chevrolet could best serve their dealers and vehicle owners with marketing that celebrates and respects our diversity.
I like to watch a good football game. Sunday I caught the end of the Broncos-Patriot game (go Peyton Manning) and then watched the entire 49ers-Seahawks game. My husband went to bed but I stuck with it until the trophy was presented (including that horrible interview between Pam Oliver and Jim Harbaugh).
The online world lit up after Chevrolet ran an ad several times during the games touting their High Country pickup truck. The truck looks like it is a thing of beauty, comfort, and performance.
http://youtu.be/GF0xHVpgRvg
The High Country isn’t built to appeal to people who like tofu, veggie burgers, and kale (and quinoa, based on the Chevy Trucks Facebook page).
Chevrolet said so.
Chevrolet thinks tofu is for women, as the macho truck driving man hands an attractive woman a recyclable grocery bag while the voiceover says “tofu” (nice touch adding the eco-friendly bag). Ridiculing veggie burgers and kale salad were next on the menu.
But enough of that girly stuff. Chevrolet switches to football jersey wearing men tearing into the food Chevrolet thinks their truck owners eat: beef burgers and grilled chicken cooked over a fire. They close with a visual of the large covered smoker the truck pulled to the cookout, and say of tofu, veggie burgers, and kale, “be damned” (whew-that set off a firestorm of criticism).
The number of American farms owned and operated by women doubled between 1982-2007. The USDA reported in April of last year that 1 Million women are the primary and secondary operators of farms in our country, boosting our ranks to 30 percent of the farm owners in our country. The United Soybean Producers “Farmer Profiles” page includes two women among the five growers featured there.
I’ll bet somewhere on their farms those women have a pickup truck. Maybe a couple of them. I wonder if these women know High Country pickup truck drivers are not the kind of people who eat soybean based foods like tofu or veggie burgers, you know, “girl” foods.
Maybe during the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks Chevrolet will introduce a full size pickup truck that is only powered by renewable energy. In pink. With cup holders designed for yogurt containers and hummus. Because women deserve a “special for us” choice in pickup trucks too.
West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources can’t seem to get warnings right in regards to the coal chemical contamination that continues to leave citizens looking for a glass of fresh water. Georgians should be aware that neither our state’s Environmental Protection Division or Department of Community Health issued warnings about health risks during the largest fish kill in our state’s history on the Ogeechee River in May 2011. That was left up to the counties.
Speaking of unpermitted dumping and our rivers, U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood signed an order yesterday approving the settlement between the Ogeechee Riverkeeper and King America Finishing over the fish kill referenced above. The Savannah Morning News says, “Wood’s order ends that legal dispute while allowing King America to deny culpability.” A handful of private citizens are still pursuing the company in other legal action.
Week One and Republican legislators under the Gold Dome are considering giving Federal gun control the finger and with legislation that would provide a “hall pass” to violate laws and regs. Creative Loafing covers it.
The Peach Pundit said yesterday that a possible restoration of funds for “charity hospitals” in Georgia might be in the works. The Pundit wrote, “making sure that charity hospitals–especially in rural Georgia–don’t close due to lack of funding could complete the hat trick that lets Deal remain in the governor’s mansion for another four years.” Serving patients who require Medicaid does not make a facility a “charity hospital.” And FYI, hospitals in Atlanta, Athens, and Savannah are not rural hospitals. They may serve rural patients, but they are urban/metro providers.
Restoring the backbone of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 might happen with a bipartisan bill introduced by yesterday. And yes, it would apply to Georgia.
establishment serving alcohol can bring a gun in, unless the business posts a sign telling patrons they can’t bring a gun in.
Crop mob
