A tribe of 40,000 strong

Washington County, where I live in Middle Georgia, is small, about 20,000 people living in a county with white clay, rolling hills, and woods filled with deer.

Yesterday I watched the area at the Washington Monument fill with twice as many people as those who call Washington County home to make their concerns about our natural resources, climate, and health, clear to the country.

Photo via 350.org
Photo via 350.org

I met fellow tribe members from Burlington College in Vermont on the DC Metro Sunday morning. The young man who chatted with me was wearing a tie, I suspect because the day was planned to be of historic proportions.

A father with his young son, perhaps four years old, wearing a Forward on Climate button, navigated Union Station. Travelers from New York and New Mexico jockeyed for hot coffee before setting out in the bitter cold for the Washington Monument.

On our way to the monument we walked past a small group of people wearing bright yellow t-shirts. imageThey weren’t smiling, and they seemed to want to debate and record people rather than participate. Clearly they weren’t there because of passion, and their sad, plain flyer with pro fossil-fuel data identified them as the hired hands the industry pays and outfits for events which threaten their profits.

We streamed in with signs and banners. We came by car, train, bus, and plane. Great-grandchildren perched on the laps of  their elders in wheelchairs. Children carried cheerful signs with bright suns and flowers, lettered in the distinct print young children use.

image

We bounced on our toes to warm our feet. Couples held gloved hands. Before long we were a sea of fleece and down jackets.

And we marched, this river of people from across North America. Women from First Nations walked in front while men towards the back kept a steady beat on a large handmade drum. So many people, so many colors, shapes, ages, and reasons for being there to say, together, that the old ways must change.

We walked away from the yellow t-shirted few, greeting the people around us while we chanted and smiled. I walked with two women from Canada, then students from Earlham College and Appalachian State. New Yorkers opposed to fracking wore their signs over their chests and backs. Three men carried wooden numbers on tall stakes spelling out 350.

We cheered and chanted in front of the White House, calling for the President to make good on his words about Climate Change and how we will fuel our country. He had escaped the bitter cold for a weekend in Florida, but we were sure our voices were heard.

Jack Magoon, 14, and his brother Will, 12, wait for the train home to Virginia with their grandparents.
Jack Magoon, 14, and his brother Will, 12, wait for the train home to Virginia with their grandparents.

Our message was clear and our voices were strong. We made history yesterday standing shoulder to shoulder for the future we want for the youngest who were among us.

 

No Dodging women

The Super Bowl commercials seem to have generated more discussion about sexism, violence, and race than creative”wow” factor (GoDaddy’s Kissfest spot wasn’t just lacking in creativity, Democratic campaign strategist and Sunday morning political pundit Donna Brazil thought viewers may have lost their dinner over it).

Audi seems to land at the top of every critic’s list for the Prom Night spot it ran early in the evening. Forbes columnist Jennifer Rooney summed up the ad’s offenses: sexual assault, violence, and sports car driven machismo (no pun intended). Add Doritos for stereotyping and mimicking little girl’s play, Mars candy making M&Ms unpalatable, and a Calvin Klein ad that left a lot of men thinking they need to put the wings and beer down and clear off the Nordic Track, and the season for Super Bowl ads was pretty disappointing.

And then Dodge Ram Trucks told “The Rest of the Story” complete with a Paul Harvey
voice-over.

The beautifully produced spot giving American farmers much-needed recognition in front of a huge global audience made critics and viewers swoon.  However, Dodge’s commercial was so busy marginalizing women and minorities who farm, that I had no idea whose trucks had just been advertised.

Based on the Dodge commercial one might think that “farmin’ is man’s work” and really, white men’s work.

I counted 12 white men, 2 white boys, 1 white women, 1 black male, 1 Hispanic male, 1 Hispanic woman, 1 white girl, 2 pair of white hands (I don’t know what the gender is of the person holding the baby chick, could be a young boy or young woman), and one white family (with two adult men at the table). I couldn’t determine the race of two men.

The United States Census of Agriculture used to think only men farm too. Up until 2002 it only collected data on one operator per farm, which meant the “womin folk” weren’t counted if there were men folk on the farm.

Between 2002 and 2007 the number of women led farms grew by 19 percent to over 1M women strong. The 2007 US Census of Agriculture reports that 30 percent of our nation’s farmers are women, and we run 14 percent of the farms as the principal operator.

Some of the staunchest allies I have met fighting proposed coal plants in Georgia are women farmers. They understand what will happen when a coal plant begins sucking 16M gallons of water a day from the groundwater that waters their livestock and crops. One woman asked if she could even call her produce organic if it is exposed to such high levels of coal plant toxins. And what will their land be worth if coal emission stacks cast a shadow over their fields?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Laura Norris working in Ben Hill County

My friend Laura Norris grew up, and farms, in Ben Hill County. There are stretches of time when she works her family’s farm alone and puts in long days in steamy south Georgia. Laura told me, “I come from a long line of hard-working farm women. My grandfather was a farmer and his wife and three daughters worked in the fields right beside him. When my 98 year old Great Aunt was in her last year of life, we asked her if there was anything she’d like to do again if given the chance. She smiled and said, “I’d like to crop tobacco one more time…”

Long before there were trucks to drive, women farmed, raised barns, herded cattle, cooked what they harvested, and women made the money stretch a little further.

Farming will make you humble. It will make you stay up at night worrying that there isn’t enough rain, or too much. Will the price I can get support my family? Will we have enough hay this winter?

We need to make a special effort to support the farmers who show up at local farmer’s markets with vegetables still wet with last night’s dew. They are our friends and neighbors, sharing their love of the land in our communities and what it can give to us in return for good stewardship. And millions of them are women.

Bonzo cake

If you aren’t much for baking (I am not), I hope you are lucky and have friends and family who do bake. My family considers my husband’s Bonzo Cake to be just as important at Thanksgiving as the Bonzo cake from Murphy's.turkey and sweet potato souffle. I found the recipe in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and tucked it away. When my husband and I were in Atlanta many years ago and stopped in at Murphy’s in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood, I recognized the dessert I had never tried on the menu at Murphy’s where it was created.

My friend who just retired, and likes to enter baking and cooking competitions, asked me for the Bonzo Cake recipe. I have posted the Bonzo Cake recipe under Fuel Resources because friends consistently want to make it themselves. It is well worth the time and effort to make it. It is a perfect dessert for a Valentine’s Day dinner at home.

Customers abandon Whole Foods in lockstep

Earlier this month Whole Foods CEO John Mackey spoke with National Public Radio (NPR) as a book Mackey co-authored, Conscious Capitalism, was released. For years Mackey has said he thinks the healthcare reform laws are a form of socialism, but he took it up a notch and told NPR he thinks, “it’s more like fascism.”

The next day on CBS This Morning the Whole Foods founder tried to dial back his rhetoric and “bad choice of words.” Customer’s weren’t buying it.

Mother Jones followed the NPR and CBS features with a January 18 email interview with Mackey. BAGHe seized the opportunity to set off Whole Foods customers with his comments on Climate Change, which included, “climate change is perfectly natural and not necessarily bad.”

Mackey is pretty egalitarian in his ability to alienate customers who know they are paying premium prices to shop at Whole Foods (also called “Whole Paycheck” by customers).

My friend Karen Bonnell sent this email to Whole Foods, which she is allowing me to reprint here:

Dear Whole Foods Market,

I am writing to tell you I must end our love affair. Your (CEO’s) recent comments that Obamacare is “like fascism” and now, saying that Climate change “is not necessarily bad” shows me beyond any shadow of doubt that you don’t have a clue about things most important to me. So, it is adios, and I and my pocketbook will shop elsewhere.

I bet the lines are shorter at Whole Foods these days. That’s the way conscious capitalist consumers behave.

One step short of 1M

The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community, and spontaneity
December 28, 2012
December 28, 2012

I took this picture in the fall and saved it as a reminder of what I can do when I stay focused. I didn’t know my pedometer had a maximum step count until I realized one day, after walking at least three miles plus the other steps I had collected that day, that my count hadn’t increased in several hours. Getting to 10K steps a day requires some planning and effort when your work allows, or requires, sitting in front of a screen all day.

I haven’t worn my pedometer in a while, too long. I would like to say that I was going to the three day a week 5:45 a.m. aerobics class I love, so I didn’t need to count steps every day. Or I was walking some known distance and then stopping at the Wellness Center to do some strength training. Or I was using the inexpensive elliptical in my home office during conference calls.

It is silly, not carving out some time to take care of myself. Just like it is silly to not get enough sleep because there is so much I have to do (have to do and want to do are not the same, but I have trouble seeing that too).

Maybe I’ve had just enough time away from my daily work routine over the holidays to realize that I don’t have to return to my usual work habits next week. Maybe I have finally realized that I can’t afford to waste the second chances at life I have gotten (one at 25 years old after a car accident, another at 50 years old with breast cancer). Maybe that homemade eggnog wasn’t low-calorie after all.

Maybe it doesn’t matter why I am making sure I get stronger and more fit as long as I do it. And there is no reason to wait until January 1.

“I know it when I see it” Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community, and spontaneity
December 8, 2012

Pornography for gardeners

During the short days of early winter the seed catalogs begin to appear
among the Christmas offerings. The lush colors and ripe vegetables are
like the Three Sirens to avid gardeners.

 

No Mor Chikin 4 me (a variation on The Friday Photo)

The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community, and spontaneity
July 20, 2012

created by Bully the Bullies

When it became clear to me that Chick-Fil-A really doesn’t support equal rights for all of its customers, I decided to skip the drive through on the few occasions when I happened to be near one. Granted, I wasn’t propping up their profits by any stretch (I was a fan of their diet lemonade more than anything else that they serve), but I decided that even that little bit of infrequent business was too much.

Now the Cathy family has removed all doubt that it wholeheartedly and financially supports work to deny LGBT Americans (many of whom are their customers) the same rights that heterosexual enjoy.

I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry enough to stop at a Chick-Fil-A until they decide that all  people should have the same rights. Period.

And it will probably take putting some of their profits right where they have advocated for disenfranchisement and inequality to send me to the drive through again.

 

 

Streamlining protection of our natural resources could result in huge savings for taxpayers

When the Effingham County EMA stepped up and advised citizens to stay out of the Ogeechee River downstream from King America Finishing (KAF) for the second Memorial Day weekend in a row, I started mulling over a suggestion on how the Georgia Environmental Protection Division  (EPD) of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) could save taxpayers significant money and streamline protection of our natural resources. On the heels of yet another advisory issued this week due to blistered catfish downstream from KAF, I think the time is ripe for my suggestion.

Blistered catfish in the Ogeechee River, July 4, 2012
(photo by Effingham County EMA)

Based on the fact that the EPD doesn’t find unpermitted dumping when it does site inspections (the dumping went on for five years at KAF), negotiates paltry consent agreements, and then issues a draft permit which essentially says, “Go ahead and pollute but this time you will have a permit” I suggest that at the least the water program be closed except for one staff person.

My guess is that with the willingness to issue lax permits to repeat polluters, one staffer could readily handle the issuing of permits because it seems issuing permits to dump chemicals and wastes into our rivers and streams is what the EPD thinks it is supposed to do. A small desk with a large “PERMIT APPROVED” stamp is all they would need.

With all the chatter in Georgia about smaller government, the elimination of at least the water program in the EPD could not only serve as a savings to taxpayers, but could also be used for economic development. I can see the advertising now, “Bring your business to Georgia. No restrictions or penalties on polluters! Hurry down for prime river access sites!”

The General Assembly could then take some of those savings on department operations and direct it toward the county agencies who do respond promptly to protect the health of all those who love to fish, swim, and boat in Georgia’s rivers.

Effingham County’s EMA Director, Ed Myrick is a real bargain. Following the second fish kill and two tropical storms in May, Myrick told me in a phone conversation that he is the first full-time EMA Director they have had, and he is the only person on staff.

Myrick isn’t afraid to do whatever it takes to protect the citizens in Effingham County. He told the Atlanta Journal Constitution what we already know, “it is apparent that the pollutants in the Ogeechee River are continuing to be an ongoing problem and may always be until the Northern portions of the river are reclassified. I sympathize with the businesses that depend on the Ogeechee River for income, but we must look after the health and safety of everyone involved.”

One person speaking up when an entire state agency won’t. Because it is the right thing to do.
Riverkeeper suit scheduled in Superior Court Monday, July 9.

 The Ogeechee Riverkeeper (ORK) filed a suit against the EPD when an administrative judge in Atlanta ruled that citizens who live on the river, fish and swim in it, rely on it for their livelihood, or simply enjoy watching the wildlife, have no standing in court. The legal challenge will be heard this Monday, July 9 at 2:00 p.m. in Superior Court in Statesboro.  in Judge Turner’s Courtroom, Judicial Annex Building, 20 Siebald St. Statesboro, Georgia. This is not an opportunity to comment or speak, but rather to support the Riverkeeper and demonstrate your concern by being there. Please remember to adhere to proper courtroom attire and conduct. 

 

What is missing from all the noise about breast cancer funding?

Last week when the country erupted over Susan G. Komen’s decision to yank funding for Planned Parenthood, one key element was missing from all the shouting: how many cancer organizations are talking about the very real dangers and causes of cancer resulting from how our food is produced, and what is in the air and water we rely on?

Genes play a part in one’s proclivity for disease in many cases, but what we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink play a large part in our health. Exercise does too, but if you have asthma or respiratory problems, being outside on a bad air quality day isn’t an option.

Why aren’t more health and disease focused groups insisting that these contributors to poor health status be addressed? Before quitting my job as the Executive Director of the Georgia Rural Health Associaction (GRHA), I made mention of my volunteer work, more than once, with the Fall-line Alliance for a Clean Environment (FACE). My “hobby” fighting coal was just that, a volunteer thing I did on my own time and dime.

I would go to meetings with state partners fighting three proposed coal plants in Georgia and folks would ask why, if GRHA was working on behalf of better health for rural Georgians, wasn’t the organization speaking up to protect the air and water sheds in the threatened communities? That remains a mystery to this day.

Standing up to new coal, AND talking about the problems already plaguing rural communities from existing coal plants, would have been appropriate and right. I couldn’t make my personal agenda GRHA’s, but it still begs the question: why aren’t more health care advocacy organizations speaking up for what lies at the root of so many health problems? The silence from the Department of Community Health in Georgia is stunning.

While so many of us focus on how Komen let politics get in the way of delivering preventive      health screenings to undeserved women, we shouldn’t forget that our environment and access to healthy foods play a part in good health too. When you consider where to donate, think about what isn’t being said publicly. Better yet, ask them why before you sign the check.

 

(Read a 2011 post asking if any state agency in Georgia is protecting citizen health here:  http://ruralandprogressive.blogspot.com/2011/10/why-isnt-department-of-public-health.html)

Moving from one site to another

Rural and Progressive is in the process of moving from blogpsot to ruralandprogressive.org. Please bear with me while I get everything in place. I hope you will comment and be engaged in addition to sharing the posts.

Got ideas on how this can be a really great site? Let me know.

Katherine

Rural and Progressive

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