The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community and spontaneity
April 19, 2013
“petting” tadpoles during our walk last weekend
Category: rural
Now the real work begins
The fight to stop Plant Washington is going to get very interesting because developer Dean Alford’s filings with the EPA will be subject to Open Records sunlight.
Alford claims he met EPA requirements to “commence construction” by midnight April 12 when he signed a boiler contract with IHI Corporation in Japan and a site erection contract with Zachry Industrial in the United States.
EPA “commence construction” requires more than signing a contract. Georgia EPD staffer Jac Capp told the Macon Telegraph earlier this month that commence construction, “means that the source has both ‘begun a continuous program of actual on-site construction’ and ‘entered into binding agreements or contractual obligations which cannot be canceled without a substantial loss.’
Last Saturday, a day drenched in brilliant sunlight, I drove past the plant site. There was a dead armadillo in the road, but except for some March storm damage, not much has changed on either side of the Mayview Road, which divides the plant site, since January 2008. The dirt roads crossing the plant have no tracks indicating heavy equipment has moved in for construction work ahead.
Meeting the requirement of a “substantial loss” will now require more than Alford saying there are “several” entities lined up for this project, which is all he offered to the Atlanta Journal Constitution in January 2012 when his largest backer, Cobb EMC walked from the project. Earlier this month Alford told the Macon Telegraph he has “way over the amount of money I need for this project.” Hopefully the contract documents will soon be made public so that we’ll finally get a chance to see what all this talk is made of, and who is willing to invest in it besides the latecomer to the game, designated hitter Taylor Energy Fund.
There are brand spanking new coal plants, some built and owned by EMCs, like Spiritwood in Minnesota, which have never powered a single light bulb because the operating costs were prohibitive. Other plants, like Prairie State in Illinois, have saddled ratepayers with higher rates before supplying them with any power.
Sure, I wish Alford had called it a day late last Friday night, but I am not surprised. He doesn’t live here, he doesn’t rely on the local groundwater when he wants a drink of water, and his grandchildren won’t be breathing Plant Washington toxins into their lungs when they play outside.
For those of us who have real skin in the game, the work has just begun.
Wilcox County students say ‘Love has No Color”
The students in Wilcox County are tired of segregated private proms, so they are doing what their parents and school leaders won’t do: organizing an integrated prom so everyone can get dressed up and have fun, together. It will be the colors of their dresses and bow ties that matter the night of April 27, not the color of their skin. They set up a page on Face Book and are raising money for their dance, which will be held in Cordele.
Bran Long at Better Georgia sent out this email yesterday:
If you haven’t already heard, Wilcox County high school students have said they won’t go another year with a segregated prom.
It’s 2013 and integration is long overdue.
Since they couldn’t get the support of their high school or many of their parents, they’re just going to do it themselves.
The AJC just reported on Better Georgia’s challenge to elected officials in Georgia to support Wilcox County’s student-organized integrated prom.
It’s pretty simple: love has no color.
So while we’re waiting to see which elected officials publicly or financially support this integrated prom, here are two things you can do to help right now:
1. Get on Facebook and ‘Like’ their page. Then share it on your page and spread to your friends.
2. Use the Twitter hashtag #integratedprom to spread the word and encourage your elected officials to support this simple effort.
Lot’s of Georgia’s problems are big and too difficult for one person or one group to fix alone. Broken roads and schools. Defunded health care. Rampant corruption under the Gold Dome.
But this problem is both big — and easily fixed.
Don’t just sit on the sidelines. Support these brave kids as they teach the adults in their community a lesson in compassion and love.
This one is easy.
Thanks,
Executive Director
Better Georgia
You can’t take “way over” to the bank
Last Wednesday’s Macon Telegraph included coverage of the long-lingering proposed Plant Washington and developer Dean Alford’s race to meet an April 12 “commence construction” carbon pollution rule deadline set by the EPA almost a year ago.
Should someone call or email Alford? Maybe he missed exactly what the EPA said when it announced the carbon rule (see section 2.2.4). Maybe he hasn’t seen the EPA filings specifically about Plant Washington, or the news coverage and numerous web site postings in the past year pointing out that beating the clock on the April 12 deadline won’t help his no-bid project.
When the EPA announced the deadline, the agency said very clearly that to be exempt from the carbon rule, new coal plants had to have a final permit in hand.
Plant Washington didn’t have a final permit when the rule was announced.
So it isn’t exempt from the carbon emission rules when you get right down to what the EPA said. We all know from past playground experience, whoever makes the rules also gets to enforce them.
The EPA knows exactly when Alford got a final permit because last spring in another set of court filings pertaining to mercury emissions, the agency refers to Plant Washington’s lack of a final permit at the time the carbon rule was announced. The EPA’s filing included this, “The Power 4 Georgians’ (“P4G”) Project (Case No. 12-1184): Movants submit a declaration stating that “as of April 9, 2012, P4G has a final PSD permit and all other required permit approvals necessary to commence construction of Plant Washington.” Mot. Ex. H ¶ 5. This assertion is incorrect, inasmuch as state administrative challenges to the P4G permit remain pending.”
Ooops.
Other coal developers did get the news. They ran the numbers again for their projects as natural gas, and even wind and solar, gained more ground in the power generation market.
Like dominoes, developers began cancelling proposed plants, even in coal friendly states like Texas. The math just didn’t add up any longer. They couldn’t finance, build, and then sell coal-generated power for a profit. They said new coal can’t compete, and existing coal isn’t so cheap either. Beating an April 12 deadline wouldn’t help them. They couldn’t afford to go forward.
Despite the fact that the carbon rule does apply to Plant Washington (and Alford said that having to meet carbon rules would kill the project), Alford has continued talking up his project and making a lot out of meeting the April 12 deadline.
Earlier this week Alford continued the charade when he told the Telegraph “If I add up everybody I’m talking to, I’ve got way over the amount of money I need for this project.”
“Way over” must be A LOT of money, because conservative 2011 estimates, without carbon controls, put Plant Washington at a whopping $3.9B, almost doubling the original $2.1B estimate in 2008. I can’t imagine how many zeros would be added to a price estimate to engineer and control for carbon.
Alford is “talking to” utilities, private investors, pension funds and independent power producers. (Never mind that one doesn’t “talk to” pension funds, it is the fund manager who must be convinced to invest.) Power4Georgians (P4G) and Washington EMC also think there is no reason to be burdened by a pro forma study or independent market analysis to make the case to investors, so at least they aren’t having to trot out tried and true methods of return on investment to funders.
Oh yeah, “talking to” is also not the same as having power purchase agreements, contractors, an EPA approved boiler design, county issued bonds, or all the financing confirmed.
And in all this “talking to,” who is Alford saying will own this plant which will not only supply power to the power purchase customers, but also repay the debt owed in a timely manner?
When Alford announced Plant Washington in January 2008, he said it would be owned and operated by the EMCs in P4G. I heard it with my own ears because I was in the room. Alford even said that under oath in September 2010.
That all changed when his former employer, Cobb EMC, abandoned the project in January 2012. Alford made a final pitch at that meeting to keep his largest funding source engaged. The Marietta Daily Journal’s coverage last year included this from the Cobb EMC minutes, “Power4Georgians owns the permits but he (Dean Alford) stated that P4G never intended to build Plant Washington. He stated P4G’s goal has always been to obtain the permits needed and then sell them to any interested party that could build the plant.”
In January 2012 Alford told the AJC there were “hundred of entities” interested in this project. If the contracts were real, investors were lining up to get a piece of this project, and an owner had been secured, wouldn’t they have been paraded out by now?
The time for Alford and the four remaining EMCs to call it a day on Plant Washington is “way over.”
There’s no need to wait until April 12.
When the unthinkable happens, who will step up?
There is no hiding behind the fact that the explosion at coal-fired Plant Bowen yesterday could happen at any of the power plants in Washington County. Accidents happen.
Plant Washington developer Dean Alford has never actually built a coal plant. Should we be checking his firefighting credentials too? How about the firefighting credentials of local business owners who are banking on tidy profits associated with the plant? How many elected leaders will suit up in fire gear? Will Washington EMC Board Members and Senior Management race in to help?
The EPD told citizens that plant operators would be required to handle a fire or accident should there be one at Plant Washington. We can’t get them to show up for a fish kill, so my confidence in assurances about public safety are zero.
Local volunteer firefighters have told me there is no way we have adequate fire fighting capacity to fight fires at the two natural gas peaker plants here or a coal-fired plant. They also told me they won’t suit up because a fire at any of these plants would be more than our local folks could handle.
Just how far are local leaders willing to go at the expense of our health and safety? And if they wouldn’t risk their lives, or those of their families, to protect Plant Washington, how can they expect anyone else to do the same?
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.
In this week’s mail
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community and spontaneity
March 22, 2013
This is one of the nice things about living in a rural community.
We don’t agree on Plant Washington, and Larry isn’t even my commissioner.
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.
Innovative idea for an aging country
Georgians over the age of 65 make up 11 percent of our state’s 9.9M citizens. Over 110K Georgians are 85 and older. Rural Georgians have fewer choices to care for the oldest among us. We lack a strong network of programs like Meals on Wheels, day care programs, home health providers, and nursing and retirement homes.
How will we adequately and compassionately care for all our elders in Georgia and across our country?
Janice Lynch Schuster, poet, award winner writer, and advocate for aging populations, has a suggestion for providing affordable and high quality care for our elders. Her post is reprinted here with her permission.
Caregiver Corps: Tapping A Nation of Caring People
By Janice Lynch Schuster
I recently participated in a Twitterchat (#eldercarechat), where someone raised the question of what we want government to do to improve the lives of the nation’s 60 million family caregivers. Someone suggested creating a Peace Corps-like program to recruit new graduates to serve family caregivers. I immediately volunteered to launch a petition to do just this, and wrote one on the White House website, which encourages civic engagement.
My petition is very short. It seemed to me that in the context of trying to raise interest and garner signatures, I needed to be to the point (http://wh.gov/GURc). It reads:
We petition the Obama Administration to: Create a Caregiver Corps that would include debt forgiveness for college graduates to care for our elders. More than 60 million Americans are family caregivers. They face challenges: Health suffers. Finances suffer. Families suffer. Aging Boomers will overwhelm our caregiving resources. Let’s create a Caregiver Corps, that would marry college debt forgiveness with programs that place recent graduates with families and aging services providers. Let’s bridge the generational divide that promotes ageism. Let’s do it!
One of my Twitter followers admonished me for my lack of detail. Without it, she said, no one would take me seriously. The idea is in its early stages, and would require thoughtful analysis and number-crunching by experts. But in the meantime, here’s the general idea for it.
Why We Need a Caregiver Corps
Several demographic trends are creating a future that will leave families and our beloved elders overwhelmed, exhausted, and bankrupted by the challenges of living with old age-that is, living past 80–with multiple chronic conditions that will, no matter what they do, kill them. In any given year, some 60 million Americans serve as family caregivers to another adult, someone who is either old, disabled, or both. (And millions more care for children and young adults who live with serious disabilities, and face even more challenges in terms of education, employment, and so on.)
These families will run square into a medical system that is not prepared to care for them in the ways the need most. These individuals might sometimes need rescue and cure—but they will more often need long-term supports and services, and help with things like transportation, hygiene, and food. And while they’ll have plenty of access to ICUs and new hips and knees—they will be shocked and disheartened by the costs of all the things they will need to pay for on their own: private-duty nurses, for instance, and home care; transportation and food and skilled nursing care.
Unless these families spend-down to become Medicaid beneficiaries or have adequate long-term care policies, their costs will be out of pocket. And those costs will be beyond reach for most middle-class Americans.
In the meantime, the social services agencies meant to serve aging Americans continue to 
be devastated by short-sighted budget cuts. Sequestration alone, one estimate suggests, will eliminate 800,000 Meals on Wheels in the State of Maryland.
And there will be few people to provide the hands-on care that these adults will need. The nation faces a profound shortage of people trained in geriatric care, from geriatricians to nurses to direct care workers. These shortages stem, in part, from the relatively low pay geriatricians earn, and the outright unlivable wage direct care workers receive. By one estimate, by 2030, when all of those Boomers are in their dotage, there will be one geriatrician for every 20,000 older adults.
A Caregiver Corps: Hope—and Help–for Us All
What’s a country to do? Launch a Caregiver Corps, a program modeled on similar valuable, successful, and long-lived efforts, such as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, VISTA, and Teach for America. The program could recruit volunteers: high school graduates not trained for the workforce; college graduates facing a tough economy and huge undergraduate debt; and older adults, those healthy enough to want to remain in the workforce and contribute to others’ well-being.
Volunteers could sign up for a year or two. In exchange for their service, they could earn tuition credits to cover the cost of college; they could receive some degree of loan forgiveness, to lessen their burden of debt; they could be paid a stipend that acknowledges the value of their work. They could be assigned to community-based organizations that serve older adults, such as Area Agencies on Aging, non-profit health care institutions, social services agencies, and others.
While volunteers could offer enthusiasm, compassion, and insight, they could also learn the kinds of skills required to care for an older adult and his or her family. They could learn about the public policies that affect that care. They could acquire medical and nursing skills—the kind of skills family caregivers use routinely in their daily routine. They could be exposed to older people, and bridge the generational gap that splits our country on this demographic. In the end, they might even be inspired to pursue a career that features caring for one another.
That, it seems to me, is something Americans have always done best—and will have to do more, as we all reach our own old age. Developing people who have the skills, resources, and motivation to help us in our self-interest. And it is in theirs, too. Millennials face the highest unemployment of any group in the country, and finding ways to become marketable, employable adults is critical to their own security and future.
So, let’s try it. Let’s create a Caregiver Corps. Let’s get the Administration to think about it, and weigh in. It’s time, really, to move forward. We need 150 signatures to push the petition to the public pages of We the People. Please take a moment to add yours:
Janice Lynch Schuster specializes in writing about aging, caregiving, and end of life issues, and is a co-author of an award-winning book on the topic, Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Has anyone seen Mack Jackson or David Lucas?
Last year during the General Assembly session my House Representative, Mack Jackson, told me he hears from almost no one in the district during the session (shame on us, constituents). He added me to an email list with a summary of legislation each week he sent to some local folks. He even emailed me a few times to ask for my thoughts on specific issues.
This year I haven’t gotten a response to questions I have raised on two very specifics issues: the funding of Chip Rogers job at GPB, and tax credits extended to schools which discriminate against gays and lesbians. I emailed, then called, then emailed again.
Weeks have turned into over a month. Mack did send me a text that he would respond, but still, nothing.
And David Lucas? My brand new freshman Senator elected in a run-off last summer? Nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada.
And I copied Lucas’s staffer at her request. No bounce back emails either.
No newsletter, no generic email response (we all know legislators can do that based on Senator Heath’s less than friendly email to hundred of constituents), no messages on my voicemail. Nothing.
Lucas is past figuring out where the meeting rooms are. Maybe Mack is a little too comfortable in his seat since he didn’t have any opposition last year.
I’m going to try one more time, by emailing them this blog post.
Be The Lorax
There is no time to wait.
Be The Lorax wherever you are.
Paging Barney Fife
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community and spontaneity
March 1, 2013
White Stallion gallops away from proposed 1200 MW coal plant
Texas, a stalwart in using coal for electricity, has seen three proposed coal plants tank since the beginning of December. The Limestone 3 unit, which would have produced 745MW of power, went belly-up the first week of December. Developers spent six years trying to get that plant permitted and built before throwing in the towel.
In the last week of January Las Brisas Energy announced the cancellation of a 1320 MW proposed plant (the plant would have used a petroleum refinery product which is much like coal, called pet coke).
On Thursday, February 14, White Stallion Energy gave plant opponents the sweetest Valentine possible by announcing that it isn’t going to pursue its 1200MW coal plant any longer.
Did they quit because of a lack of water? Air quality concerns? The impact on the health of local citizens?
Nope. It was all about the bottom line.
White Stallion said in a very short press release, “the presently low price of natural gas has made the price of electricity from a new coal fired generator uncompetitive at this time”
That is COO speak for “this project is too expensive for us to make any money.”
Which brings us full circle to the questions people have been asking since January 2008: what makes Plant Washington such a good investment?
There is no pro-forma study to justify the project, in fact there is no independent information to support this multi-billion dollar plant,, and there never has been. Washington EMC officials have told us that much. They spent $1M of our money on a project which has no data or cost analysis to demonstrate that it is a sound way to spend our money (and it is our money since the co-op belongs to the members).
The Texas Observer’s coverage the day after White Stallion bucked its project summed up the present status of the coal industry with the article”Coal, an Obituary.” It included these observations and analyses:
- “coal stopped making economic sense. In short, coal got fracked.”
- “The story for White Stallion is similar too: local opposition that started small but grew (it certainly helped that the conservative county judge turned against it); major regulatory impasses for the company; and a bottom-line that had the bottom fall out of it.”
- “The White Stallion developers also didn’t do themselves any favors with ridiculous claims that the plant would lower electricity rates locally and that their traditional coal plant was a “clean coal” facility.”
- “It’s weird to say, but get used to it: Coal is expensive.”
The Texas Observer also forecasts, “Wind power is cheaper. Even solar is fixing to eat coal’s lunch, if it isn’t already doing so. El Paso Electric Company recently agreed to buy power from a New Mexico solar farm for a little under 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. A new coal plant costs twice as much.”
Perhaps the most damning statement about White Stallion came from Eva Malina, with the local No Coal Coalition. Malina said, “I think they thought that since we were a small rural community, they would not encounter opposition. They were wrong.”
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.
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. 
They 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.
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.
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?
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.
Waiting for the harvest
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community and spontaneity
February 1, 2013
The gardening competition has begun.
And they’re off!
The Georgia General Assembly session begins today. Last year brought us:
- Rep Terry England (R-Auburn), who compared women to farm animals, provoking a national social media campaign featuring Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, Kevin Bacon, Amy Poehler, Olympia Dukakis, and others
- Rep Kip Smith (R-Columbus) who was stopped for DUI during the session and quickly told the officer he is a state representative
- Senator Chip Rogers (R-East Cherokee), was shamed into resigning after the November re-elections for hosting an Agenda 21 meeting (an absurd theory involving the United Nations, urban housing, and mind control that gets ginned up periodically by the wing-nuts on the Right)
- Rep Doug McKillips (R-Athens, defeated in November) who championed access to abortion bills so medically unsound that doctors, who don’t usually show up at the Gold Dome, came down to the Capitol to oppose the bill. Women legislators also left the floor in opposition during votes. (A Georgia court delayed the law after three Georgia obstetricians filed suit.)
- Senator Don Balfour (R-Snellville) just stepped down from his powerful position as chair of the Senate Rule’s Committee after GBI investigations into his expense filing to the state (Balfour’s filing have been questioned in the past on numerous counts. It turns out that filing a request for expenses when you were actually out of the state with lobbyists isn’t o.k. after all , even though the ethics requirements for Georgia legislators are few and far between)
The list could go on because, just like a clown car, there always seems to be room for one more Bozo at Georgia’s General Assembly.
Commissioner refuses to attend Commissioners’ meetings
Elected officials who are good at being in engaged with their constituents give up a lot of time to serve their community. On the local level in Washington County, they don’t get much money as an elected official, so there must be other factors motivating them.
Yesterday Benjamin Dotson, the county leader of the NAACP, made another respectful but powerful request that the Washington County Commission meetings be held early in the evening so that more working citizens can attend. The monthly meetings have been held at 9:00 a.m. on the second Thursday of each month “forever.”
Dotson’s request wasn’t new. That same request has been made by citizens over the course of several years, but it fell on deaf ears.
Larry Mathis, who is serving his first term as a Commissioner, once told a room full of citizens that if their concerns were really important to them, they would find a way to be there. People said they can’t afford to clock out at work and asked why they should take a day of vacation or expect a smaller paycheck because they needed, or wanted, to attend a Commissioners meeting.
Yesterday Mathis softened his stance and agreed with three other commissioners to try evening meetings.
This time it was Commissioner Melton Jones, who stunned the small group attending the 
meeting yesterday. Jones said point blank, and repeated himself, that he would not attend any Commissioners meetings due to his family and work schedule. Period. He followed up by being the only one to vote against granting a long-standing request from a broad range of citizens over several years.
So now the ball is in the public’s court. The meeting dates and times will be advertised in the local papers and on radio stations.
If citizens don’t show up we give the Commissioners our approval to meet at a time that is convenient to them, which looks like 9:00 a.m. on the second Thursday of each month.
Which would suit Commissioner Jones just fine.
I got nothing
The Friday Photo
A weekly photo inspired by art, community, and spontaneity
December 14, 2012
I didn’t have a photo for today when I went to bed last night.
For me, the fun in doing this weekly photo is the “ah ha” moment.
I was counting on that happening today.
Then I turned on the television to catch up on the news while I ate a late breakfast.
The “ah ha” moment for me came along with a nation that has turned our hearts to a tiny rural community in Connecticut.
So today, I got nothing.
Rural post offices deliver more than mail
Late one afternoon last week I walked into the Sandersville post office just steps behind an older man dressed in jeans, a work shirt, and boots. He looked very comfortable in his clothes, like that was what he had worn to work in for years. His gate was slow, which seemed to emphasize his tall and lanky build. He turned to go toward the post office boxes and I went into the customer service area to mail my package.
Before long he came in and got in line. When it was his turn he approached Lynn, the mail clerk. He said he didn’t understand why his phone bill was almost $100. It was hard to understand him through the combination of a rural Southern accent and speech that was perhaps thickened by an earlier stroke. He didn’t want to pay the bill because it was so high, but he said he would. Lynn asked if he was making long distance phone calls, or if anyone else was using his phone or had added services to his line.
As a spectator listening to the conversation while I filled out my shipping forms, it was 
heartbreakingly clear that this man had no one else to ask for help. Well actually, he did. He knew the clerks at the Sandersville post office would at least listen.
Those few minutes dispelled all the arguments laid out in big city offices about why small town post offices just aren’t necessary, that they really don’t serve anyone at all.
Before I turned around to get in line, Lynn told him that if his bill was high again next month, she would come to his house, help him figure out why, and then help him do something about it.
Lynn told me after he left that she has helped other seniors with similar problems after she has left work. She said it is her way to pay things forward so she can sleep at night.
And really, rural post offices are like community water coolers. People share news in the lobby while they retrieve their mail: marriages, births, graduations, new jobs, children moving away, illnesses, and deaths. The clerks ask about vacations when people come in to pick up their mail, how grandchildren are, if the house will be full of family for the holidays.
Lynn happened to be at the counter that afternoon, but anyone who has stood in line in the Sandersville post office has seen each and every person working behind that counter treat the customers who need a little more help, who aren’t moving as fast as those of us who operate in a constant “hurry up” mode, with respect and patience.
I could buy stamps for our Christmas letter at Wal-Mart on Sunday night when the counter at the post office is dark. But I won’t. I’ll buy them in Sandersville during old-fashioned “banker’s hours,” stamp them at home, and then slide them into the outgoing mail slot in the Warthen post office five miles from the house, which is now only open two hours every weekday.
Sure, it will take a few days for the letters to get delivered. But here’s no replacement for putting a Christmas card on the refrigerator which may well stay there until next year’s arrives to replace it. This is one time of year when snail mail trumps email.