The Friday Photo
January 3, 2014
I began 2014 with good women at my friend’s new home in Wilmington, NC. Her microwave made me laugh.
Category: food
Another year’s supply
The Friday Photo
November 29, 2013
Every family has its own traditions. One of ours includes making sausage each year.
This is most of the 120 lbs made by four generations earlier today. It will be frozen, shared among seven households, and enjoyed until it is all gone.
Black Friday belongs on Friday
I’ve posted this before, but revisited it too late the night before Thanksgiving. In hunting up a current link, I learned that the director, Gary Weis, spent most of his time filming at Kennedy in an international concourse, betting that people arriving from such long distances would be emotional. He said the woman holding flowers hadn’t seen her sister in 25 years.
Can’t we take a break at least on Thanksgiving to be thankful for what we already have, and who matters in our lives? http://garyweis.com/snl/snl.html
When upside down is straight up
The Friday Photo
November 22, 2013
Decades ago my mother-in-law taught me her trick for storing multiples: the upside container means another one is already open.
Jo’s memory is upside down and sideways now, but her keen idea is straight up.
As we gather around the table
Who’s coming to Thanksgiving and what will you serve? Two keen pieces on families and Thanksgiving (FYI Sullivan uses strong language in his post. He’s spot on).
The perfect argument for higher minimum wages captured in one photo.
And Andrew Sullivan on the Cheney sisters, “Christian compassion,” and equality.
It’s about fresh tomatoes and spitting watermelon seeds
The EPA held two public listening sessions in Atlanta yesterday concerning carbon pollution (greenhouse gas) and regulations which will be announced for existing coal power plants next year. At the last minute I wasn’t able to go to Atlanta to share mine in person. My three minutes of comments are below, which I will submit to the EPA by email.
I want to thank you for holding a public listening session in Atlanta, just miles from the country’s largest carbon emitting power plant, Plant Scherer. I live in rural Washington County, in Middle Georgia, about 2.5 hours southeast of Atlanta. My family and community are downwind about 60 miles from Scherer, and 30 miles from another coal plant, Plant Branch. After almost six years since it was announced, my community remains opposed to Plant Washington, an 850 MW coal plant that would be about eight miles from my front door in the eastern part of my county.
As a rural resident who relies on a well as our only source of water, we already know and live with the impact of uncontrolled carbon pollution in our country. Years of drought affect our ability to do basic things like run two loads of laundry in one day, even with a high-efficiency washing machine. Last summer, in 2012, my husband, who loves planting and taking care of his small garden, had to let his garden go. We had no captured rainwater to use and had to decide between having household water and fresh vegetables picked just minutes before dinner.
This past summer we had the other extreme. Our gardens drowned and our creeks and rivers overflowed.
At the end of the summer a year ago, I sadly realized I had not had nearly enough fresh locally grown tomatoes. There just weren’t any to be had. This past summer drug on with the rain gauge overflowing and the tomatoes suffering from root rot or bursting on the vines from too much water.
There is a very real connection between Plant Scherer, Plant Branch, the proposed Plant Washington, and carbon pollution. Kids missed out on spitting watermelon seeds in the backyard. And it is a crime for parents to not be able to say, “Eat those tomatoes and quit picking at your green beans. I grew them and you have to eat them.”
The damage done by unregulated carbon pollution in our country is here and we can see it at our dinner tables every night.
I urge the EPA to adopt strict carbon emission limits for existing power plants, and to require even stricter limits for Plant Washington, Plant Holcomb, and Plant Wolverine.
Pass the horseradish please
The Friday Photo
October 18, 2013
There’s real skill in opening an oyster
and not hurting yourself. I don’t think
my nephew Dillon ate any, but he was
glad to help open them for those of us
who do.
We have seen a fool’s true character and the return of a hero
Ted Cruz finally managed to come clean on why he drove us to the brink of economic collapse, locked federal employees out of their offices (except the ones who had to work without pay), threatened our veterans’ benefits, and closed our national parks.
Yep, a rookie United States Senator just put our country through Hell so he could raise some PAC money and collect names for campaigning.
In the midst of all this stupid selfish mess, a hero returned. John McCain not only urged his fellow Republicans to give up a fool’s errand to unwind Obamacare, he thanked the women of the Senate for doing the work that the men couldn’t do.
The Tea Baggers must really have their underwear in a twist today. In the end, it took a combination of their greatest nightmares to clean up the colossal mess they made: the Democrats in Congress, a bi-partisan group of women Senators, and a second term black President.
The whispers are getting louder
During the dark years of the Bush/Cheney Presidency, I began to think that one outcome would be a fundamental social and economic revolution in our country. I think, and hope, the whispers are getting louder.
Code of conduct
The Friday Photo
October 11, 2013
Allie Katz in Augusta, Georgia
Hot doughnuts now
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo celebrating art, spontaneity, and community
August 30, 2013
Law enforcement in the Garden of Eden
There has been lots of coverage about the organic farm raided by a SWAT team in Arlington, Texas. According to Huff Post, the raid carried out at the Garden of Eden farm lacked a warrant and police officers shielded their name badges so the citizens couldn’t identify them.
John S. Quarterman, who knows his way around an okra plant, had a thoughtful take on the actions of city officials and law enforcement in Arlington. His comments can be found at Canopy Roads of South Georgia.
Get ’em while they’re fresh!
We got a new stove last week (the old one only lasted about 20 years) and I asked friends for an easy recipe using fresh blueberries. My friend Louise Baxter has one that is a real winner and will be repeated in the fall when the pears growing in our front year are ripe.
You can find Louise’s recipe here and others that have been kitchen and family tested under Fuel Resources.
Don’t underestimate a dirt road
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo celebrating art, spontaneity, and community
My friends John and Paula Swint, and neighbors, by country folks definition, have more organic green beans than they can eat or want to can for the winter. I arrived to get the fresh picked beans they offered and got to hear a teen brother and sister duo perform a song they were rehearsing with John for church this Sunday.
The dirt road in today’s photo may be just another dirt road to most people. For me, and many others in rural communities, dirt roads take us to fresh food that is gladly shared and a peek at young talent encouraged by parents and neighbors.
Simple and fresh
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community and spontaneity
June 28, 2013
The third ingredient in my favorite summer breakfast
is organic French vanilla yogurt.
Why the Georgia EPD is toothless
This week started with Mary Landers at the Savannah Morning News reporting that employees at King American Finishing (KAF) were told to drink bottled water at work for the past six months. Tests of two wells at the company’s textile and chemical plant in Screven County found unacceptable levels of cadmium and phenanthrene (known to cause cancer, cardiovascular disease and other serious health problems). An attorney for KAF told Landers in an email that Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division (EPD) ordered the company to switch to bottled water.
Landers contacted EPD Director Jud Turner, who said that the EPD had not issued that requirement.
Someone isn’t telling the truth.
Both the state and the Chicago based company keep telling concerned citizens that everything is okey dokey. But it isn’t.
Last night the Statesboro Herald reported that King America now says the initial water test results were wrong. Why should we believe KAF or, for that matter, the EPD? Both have talked in circles for two years when tens of thousands of fish died in the Ogeechee, and people ended up in the hospital after swimming in polluted water.
What did the EPD tell 200 citizens during Tuesday night’s public comment session on a proposed permit for the plant? The Savannah Morning News reports that EPD official Jane Hendricks said, “Please understand that under the law EPD has a very limited ability to deny the permit.” The paper goes on to say that Hendricks said that the special conditions that can trigger a denial don’t apply in this case.
Based on newspaper and television coverage, that didn’t quell citizen outrage. They went ahead and took the EPD and King America to task for polluting the river, setting unreasonable discharge limits, failing to respond quickly to citizen complaints, making a mess of the water and wildlife, driving down property values, and hurting businesses based on river activities like boating and fishing.
But Ms. Hendricks’ statement that the EPD can’t easily deny a permit is telling on both EPD and state leaders. If the EPD was really in the business of proactively protecting our natural resources, they would be all over state legislators each session asking them to put some teeth in their enforcement abilities.
And if state legislators wanted the EPD to protect our water and air, wildlife, drinking water, land, and swimming holes, they’d pass some laws that would empower the EPD to do just that.
In the end, they continue to do nothing. It doesn’t seem to matter how many fish die, how many citizens end up in the hospital after swimming in polluted water, how many people continue to boil water from their wells out of fear of the poisons that may be in it, or how many small businesses are crippled due to boaters, fishermen, and families who just don’t want to chance getting sick from whatever is lurking in our rivers and streams.
It does matter to the citizens and taxpayers. And we are tired of hearing, and feeding, a toothless guard dog barking on our porch.
Who will you sign for?
The deadline for comments to the State Department on Keystone XL’s tar sands pipeline is today. I signed for them. Who will you sign for?
Speak up TODAY to protect Georgia’s rivers, property rights, and taxpayers.
As the clock runs out on this year’s General Assembly session, the House is yet to take action on S.B. 213, a water rights bill drenched in bad policies. The Rules Committee will consider it first, and I’ve already been in touch with my local rep, Mack Jackson, a Rule members, who took time yesterday to thank me for bringing the issues to his attention via email.
This bill, as passed by the Senate, included a Yes vote by my absentee freshman senator, David Lucas. He must not know, or care, that his district includes rivers which could be put at risk for reduced downstream flow, as well as stripping away water rights for his constituents.
This bill allows government to step in and make decisions impacting property owners and taxpayers without public hearings. It puts government and private business ahead of citizens. It threatens property owner’s access to water that flows through their land in rivers and streams, or under their land.
S.B. 213 is poisonous for our rivers, property owners, farmers, and sportmen.
“Augmentation” threatens Georgia’s riparian rights system – altering fundamental property rights and threatening longstanding Georgia water rights law.
The bill now includes:
- The augmentation provisions allow the EPD director to deny water users that are downstream of an undefined “augmentation” project the use of any of the “augmented” water flowing past their property, without prior opportunity to be heard.
- This provision allows the State to control (or allow a private party to control) a portion of stream flow and prohibit the reasonable use of it, which is akin to prior appropriation of water – a short step from western-type water regulation. State ownership of water is different from the state’s current regulation by permit.
- Property owners in Georgia have a “bundle” of rights that make up their property rights. An essential property right in that bundle is the right to reasonable use of water on or under your property. Allowing the appropriation and state control of water, and not allowing downstream property owners the right to reasonable use of it, radically diminishes that property right.
- An augmentation project to benefit endangered species is already operating on a tributary to the Flint River. This language is not needed to do this augmentation project or protect endangered species.
- The flow augmentation language will allow a hugely expensive, taxpayer-funded, multi-million dollar Aquifer Storage and Recovery/Southwest Georgia Regional Commission Stream Flow Augmentation project to continue to be funded in the lower Flint.
- The water added by this project will flow to Florida while Georgia farmers and other property owners will be denied reasonable use of it.
- The project could add to Metro Atlanta water supply but at an extremely high cost that is projected to fall on Metro utility ratepayers, who already pay the highest water bills in the state.
You need to call your Georgia House member TODAY, right now, before you get another cup of coffee, check Face Book, or think about what you want for lunch. Find your House member’s info here and tell them to oppose S.B. 213 if it includes this language when it reaches them for a vote.
What kind of cheese is on the menu today?
While I was outside at the Dublin High School solar panel groundbreaking ceremony earlier this week, I could hear the sirens’ song beckoning me to the swank Kroger grocery store just up the road.
It didn’t take long to find what I needed, and I began looking for the last thing on my list, “good” cheddar cheese. I walked past the dairy cases but didn’t see what I wanted. I looked again, no luck, and nothing close to it. In all that looking back and forth I saw this sign:
Below it were all kinds of grated cheeses, cubed cheese, and string cheese. I was at a complete loss for what “Hispanic cheese” is, and why these particular cheeses are considered “Hispanic” (Hispanic should be capitalized, FYI).
I wandered back to the deli section, found some Tillamook cheese from Oregon (yum) and paid for my groceries.
Then I asked to speak with a manager.
The young cashier paged Craig Justice. He introduced himself and I asked him if he could “educate” me on a product. We walked to the dairy aisle and I asked him what exactly “Hispanic cheese” is. He wasn’t sure. We looked at all the grated cheese for a while and he said “Maybe for tacos?”
As we stood there I said that in our part of the world, as he probably has seen and heard, Spanish-speaking people aren’t really welcomed here unless they are picking vegetables (and even then, “welcomed” is a stretch). While we talked he finally saw two types of cheese with all Spanish labeling that were obscured from our view.
Labeling them “Hispanic” still didn’t seem right to me. Justice asked for a suggestion and I offered Latin American, which indicates culture, food, geography, history and language instead of a term that is fairly derogatory when used here. he pointed to other signs behind us that read “Latin American” and “Asian.”
Justice agreed there could be other ways to point customers to these those items, and he said he would look for other signage options. And then he did this:
Wow.
I admire Mr Justice for listening, having an open mind, and being committed to customer service. And acting.
I don’t go to Dublin very often, but I do get to the über swank Kroger in Milledgeville pretty often. I do so hope they have Tillamook cheese there too.
Be The Lorax
There is no time to wait.
Be The Lorax wherever you are.