At the Table on 11/25/09:
Cindy Schneider, Dennis Kinsley, Charles Griffin, David Rosenberg, Lauren Hanisian, Ellen Bierhorst, Jeff Cobb, Boris Wolfley-Yarden, Julia Yarden, Heron Scow, Vlasta Molak, Sophia Yarden
David sang:
Why are there so many songs about rainbows
and what's on the other side?
Rainbows are visions, but only illusions,
and rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we've been told and some choose to believe it.
I know they're wrong, wait and see.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
Who said that every wish would be heard
and answered when wished on the morning star?
Somebody thought of that and someone believed it.
Look what it's done so far.
What's so amazing that keeps us star gazing
and what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
All of us under its spell. We know that it's probably magic.
Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices?
I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that called the young sailors.
The voice might be one and the same.
I've heard it too many times to ignore it.
It's something that I'm supposed to be.
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection.
The lovers, the dreamers and me.
Ellen's upcoming trip to Egypt...
David: I am fascinated by the sites of Central America; the geometry; the engineering of the pyramids.
Charles: the perimiter of the base of the pyramid. = Circumfrence of the earth.
David: Michael Murphy knows all about this stuff. ... a scholar named Sitchen (?) ... extraterrestrial life coming to earth, mentioned in the bible..
Jeff: I am showing the film "No Impact Man" at UC, Dec 7 Monday, 7 p and Dec 9, Wed, 7 pm. About a man who lived a year in NYC with zero environmental iimpact.
David: Geo Carlin's biogralpher was interviewed on NPR. There was a Carlin "talk" about global warming... "look what the earth has been through...ice ages, shifting poles, etc. etc." "So what's the big deal about global warming?"
Cindy: ... the qustion about California. ??
(CA is rising; Nevada is sinking; two tectonic plates coming together; The Pacific Plate is being subducted under California. Nothing to do with CA.)
David: if global warming happens as it might, many of the world's major cities will be under water,...San Francisco, Amsterdam, NYC...
Jeff: .. the scientific consensus is 1 meter ocean rise by the end of the century.
(?)
David: the theory is, the accepted science is that the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, nGas) is causing the atrmosphere to have more CO-2 (carbon dioxide) which causes more of the heat to remain on the earth instead of being reflected away, like your car parked with windows closed on a sunny day.
Julia: also, methane, taiga is melting, permafrost melting releasing huge amounts of methane. Taiga is frozen tundra.
Vlasta: today I joined the Chamber of Commerce. I spoke up to contradict the guy who said Global Warming is a hoax. ... ... French health care is first in the world, though they spend half what we do per person!
.. the fossil fuel companies are dinosaurs and will be irrelevant.
David No, my belief is that the oligarchs probably understand and know the science better than we do; the reason why they are in denial publically is because they have not figured out yet how to align the public policies so they can own the new paradigm. So we must understand that the question is for us to get smarter than they or the Green Paradigm will be owned by the oligarchs.
40 years ago Organic Agricultyure was where global warming is now, at a critical mass of understanding in the public. At that time the oligarchs were saying "pooh pooh". Earl Butz, "if we switched to organic ag 50,000,000 ameicans are going to starve." Now they say the reverse! What is changed is that the oligarchy owns the organic agriculture structures. Oligarchy = the megacorporations and the players that go in and out of governmental regulatory positions.
We used to thin monopolies were the enemy. We broke the m up and they became 4 or 5 even huge-er companies.
I think we are still asleep about this issue, in general.
Julia I think were not asleep, but hypnotized.
David: re. organic agriculture and being asleep. Many here tonight are interested in organic agriculture. Now there is huge awareness about food and diet. Thre are many feel-good things for the general public to do: farmers markets, recycling, C S A (consumer supported agriculture), ... they are just dog and pony shows. They don't address the issue, which is "Who owns the means of production in agriculture?" We have a city now full of farmers' markets where 95% of the farmers cannot earn their living by farming. No accident! The oligarchy controls the means of distribution and the food production resources. So a system of food delivery with prosperous, land owner farmers can earn a good living and their children want to earn a living doing the same... that system has yet to emmerge.
Farmers markets and CSAs in Cinti are not helping; they are deluding people into thinking they are.
Jeff The book Righteous Porkchop makes that same point. The whole "no impact man" project makes the same point. ... Avoid buying foods from far away.
(Ellen: what should we be doing?)
DAvid: herdshare is the first form of CSA (community supported agriculture) that actually keeps the farmer inbusiness, and works in this area. Reason is with only 30 families you can buy milk or butter or cheese and the sales are high enough to keep the farmer in business.
Herdshare: consumers buy shares of cows, so that the milk is "their" milk, and it need not be pasteurized.
Julia "aegis" contract is very old, back to Roman times. The towns people or urban dwellers hired farmers to milk the herd and deliver the milk.
David so all this regulation around milk (pasterurization etc) may have served a good purpose 100 years ago, but today it fractures the relationship of consumers / farmers and serves the oligarchy.
Herdshares are so good because there is a dearth of supply. Milk is a "value added" product; One cow can feed 10 people, so it doesn't take a lot of customers.
With vegetable farmers it is more complicated. The product is undervalued and underpriced at farmer's markets.
Julia the dairy model that is helping us win in the last 30 months because we have legitimized the herd share process; the legality has been worked out.
also, when petrochemicals got expensive, got more expensive to buy "cooked" milk at Kroger than organic herd share milk became cheaper. Today Kroger milk is $8 + / gal, and herd share organic local is $6 only!
... some make a living on only 5 cows.
David generally it takes 30 consumers to support a farmer.
cindy: after the depression, government gave subsidies to farmers...
David right now is a whole different scene. We have the technology to grow food for 9 billion people at the expense of wage slave labor. The sprays, shortcuting ecosystems; pollution. The typical agribusiness "mines" the soil; the farms are only half as fertile as they were a hundred yrs ago.
the earth change (negative) due to chemical agriculture is as serious and huge as the problem of fossil fuels/global warming.
Julia: they are part of the same thing.
David What is left out of the global warming equation is that it all has to do with agriculture. Agriculture uses more petrochemical and causes more damage than anything else we do on the planet.
Julia: my father is a Bechtol V.P. (an infrastructure construction co.) ...See "soil not oil" book. The green revolution was planned by the petrochemical industry.
David: my numbers show for a vegetable farmer to succeed you need 100-200 consumers supporting it.
Julia: i disagree. I make a living not even owning the land I farm. I have a niche market.
Charles: It is true, successful, sustainable veg farmers have close to 200 members.
You need 100,000 $ in sales; and if you are efficient, you might keep $50,000.
David so the bottom line: if city people want independent farmers they need to get in groups of 1-200 and partner with a farmer, and it will cost them about 10% of their food budget. 80% will still be spent at Kroger.
Ellen Advantage of keeping those farmers alive?
David: you want a natural food delivery system. Much interrelation; closed circle. Renew the soil. We need a n urban/rural system to sustain us.
... There is no scarcity of food on the planet. ..
Julia: the trouble with Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is that the animals are fed on grain rather than grass, and the grain is incompletely digested, resulting in molecular changes in the meat. Not good for us.
This is correlated with breast cancer rates. Where women eat little or no CAFO meat, they have a fraction of the rates of breast cancer.
There are five factors for cancer: toxins in environment; genetic predisposition; stress levels; food quality; exercise.
Find the farmer at a local farmer's market.
Meet other consumers at community groups, schools, walking the dog, your AA group, your religious institution.
This issue must become as "on everyone's lips" as now is Global Warming. Solving this will do as much to combat global warming.
See "Food Inc"
Read "soil not oil"
