True story

So, I went to the Sustainability Project lecture on transportation...

but had to leave early to catch the bus.

There are still three more classes in this free series, with lots of friends speaking and participating. The food lecture by DeAnn Bauer (EcoRealtor/Goddess)even featured pictures of Noelle Aguayo's fabulous garden. A talk by my favorite Garden Wise Guy, Billy Goodnick, is part of the October 16th class. I've really enjoyed the first three sessions, and learned a few things about the environment and my community.

All classes are at the SB Central Public Library, Faulkner Gallery, from 5:30-7:30ish (7:20 if you need to catch the 24X back to UCSB)

SESSION 4 / October 2nd
GOODS & SERVICES / Party Like an Eco-Rockstar!

Ten Ways to Make Your Next Event “Green” / Selecting Eco-friendly Services:
April Palencia, Peikert Group Architects; Elizabeth Waldrop, Village Realtors;
DeAnn Bauer, Village Realtors; Jennifer Downing, PMSM Architects
Panel Discussion

SESSION 5 / October 9th
HOME & GARDEN / Eco-Living, Gotta Love It!

Home Energy Efficiency: David Inger, VCREA Energy Projects Manager
Burke Remodel: Paul Poirier, Poirier & David Architects; Allen Associates
Doering Remodel: Bill Doering; Dennis Thompson, Thompson-Naylor Architects
Live Right, Live Small, and Have a Big Life: Isabelle Greene, Landscape Architect
Panel Discussion

SESSION 6 / October 16th
HOME & GARDEN / Find Joy and Heal the Planet!

Stancer Remodel: John Kelley, Architect; Lee Walmsley, Evergreen Landscape Arch.
Permaculture: A Revival of Common Sense – Larry Santoyo, Earthflow Design Works
The Wise Guys - Owen Dell & Billy Goodnick
Eco-footprint Reports – Paul Poirier, Poirier & David Architects
Panel Discussion

Who to Woohoo Wednesday: Anne Hastings

It's easy to lose perspective in a community like Santa Barbara, especially when it comes to to a term like "poverty." While we have a lot of traffic at the Food Bank and many families struggling to make ends meet—and I don't mean to trivialize that struggle—being poor here is being rich in developing parts of the world.

In Haiti, for example, many people live on $1 a day. The country has struggled to find equality and justice since before its independence, and don't get me started about the role of the United States. Well, I'll just say one little thing, because it's relevant to the US Farm Bill. Our policies of subsidizing farmers in the US, and being sure that every corporation along the distribution chain gets to bleed out all the profit the (subsidized) market will bear, we end up having cheap rice to export. So we send it to our poorest neighbor, Haiti (again, being sure that all American shipping companies, etc., are generously paid). There, the rice is sold for much cheaper than the local rice, undercutting Haitian farmers, and pushing them off their land into urban slums. Where they enjoy the starchy goodness of US Humanitarian Aid. Meanwhile, the IMF and World Bank collects on debts accumulated by deposed dictators, payments guaranteed to keep the entire nation in poverty.

As you can tell, I get a little passionate about Haiti. So I was thrilled when the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life decided to host Anne Hastings, executive director of Haiti's largest microfinance organization, Fonkoze. The microfinance model gives women tiny loans, many under $50, but enough to transform lives in a place like Haiti. Fonkoze also educates and supports women in Haiti. Her lecture was entitled "Eradicating Global Poverty: Is It Really Achievable?"

Her talk at Victoria Hall last night gave background on Fonkoze, but focused on Hastings efforts to reach those living in extreme poverty. These people are living on less than fifty cents a day, with no concrete floor, often no roof, no latrine. The children must work instead of attending school. This is crushing poverty, or, as Hastings described it, "The poverty that kills." Hastings used the image of a ladder, on which one might climb out of poverty. "These are the people," she said, "who don't even have one foot on that ladder. Not a wheelbarrow, not a chicken, no way to get started." They are too poor even for microfinance. So, the new program helps them get that first foot on. It costs $300-$1000 for this 18-month intensive program which lifts a family of six out of killing poverty... (Gosh, one wonders... how could the US justify spending that much money on a foreign country? unless that foreign country has oil, of course...)

I was not surprised to hear she is good friends with revolutionary Dr. Paul Farmer, the subject of Mountains Beyond Mountains (he'll be speaking at UCSB October 22.)

Haiti matters for more reasons than I have time to list here. So does poverty. Hastings answer to her own question, Is eradicating global poverty really achievable?: "I don't know. But we have to keep trying." Woohoo, Anne!

And speaking of the Food Bank, tickets are on sale now for the best soup in town at Empty Bowls on Sunday, November 4. See you there!

Goldilocks Hates Slow Food

and so do I.

While I love what the Slow Food movement represents, the term "Slow Food" sticks in my craw. Slow Food is, of course, a reaction against fast food and fast food culture. What's the opposite of fast food? Slow food. Hahahahaha.

What's wrong with fast food? Well, if you're reading this blog, you probably know already—f you don't know, Fast Food Nation is a good place to start. No question, it's bad stuff. Global, cultural, individual pollution.

So I hate that Slow Food defines itself in relation to fast food. I also feel like fast food is a problem because it is so extremely large, extremely corporate, extremely cheap, extremely fast—so extremely extreme. But is the correct response another extreme? That's what the term "Slow Food" implies to me. You're for us or against us. Fast food or Slow Food. What about Just Right Food?

I feel like maybe it's important to guard against extremism in food culture the same way we do in religion or politics. Just Right Food allows you to make informed choices. Do what you can. Can if you can. If you aren't spending the last days of summer canning heirloom tomatoes from your own garden, THAT'S OKAY. If you use a can opener, you are not a traitor to The Movement. Occasionally choosing convenience shouldn't mean exile to the Dark Side, but that's what I think of when I hear the term Slow Food. The phrase is like a Sicilian grandmother chastising me for cutting corners and spitting on her traditions, wagging a boney finger beneath her black mantilla, uttering curses...

I prefer to focus on an idea that nurtures me like a good meal. I love the term "locavore" a lot—it implies community, appetite, and a little silliness. As much as I love the Slow Food Movement, I wish we could call it something else.

I Can't Believe It's Not Toxic!

The Jiffy Pop Tavern is safe from the Zaca Fire and hungry for business, but the ConAgravation theme continues.

As "news," we learn a guy in Colorado who eats lots of microwave popcorn developed lung disease. Fact is, this diacetyl disease isn't news at all.

C'mon. Is it really a surprise that microwave popcorn might have some scary stuff in it? Didn't folks notice that if the bag is microwaved for a few extra seconds, black acrid smoke-demons begin seeping from the bag? Do folks just shrug that off as an artificial "smoke-like fragrance"? It takes an exorcism to get that smell out.

It's not news. It's ConAgra. ConAgra has been poisoning its workers with scary, buttery toxins for a long time.

ConAgra Foods Inc, maker of Orville Redenbacher and Act II microwave popcorn brands, said Wednesday it will drop diacetyl from its butter-flavored microwave popcorn in the "near future" to safeguard its employees....The additive, which gives microwave popcorn a buttery taste, has long been linked with a rare lung disease, bronchiolitis obliterans, found in plant workers.

Oh. "Plant workers." Whew. I was worried people might have been in danger. Now that a consumer has been diagnosed with the "popcorn plant disease," there will be immediateish changes:

ConAgra spokeswoman Stephanie Childs said that after months of deliberations [!] the company now expects to remove diacetyl "within a year" to protect employees who are exposed to large amounts of the additive.

"We made that decision in order to provide our employees with the safest work environment possible, but also to eliminate even the perception of concern for consumers," Childs said in a telephone interview.

Don't worry, Ms. Childs. We have no such perceptions.

A silver lining?

Just in case, fire crews are wrapping Cold Springs Tavern in a protective foil wrapping. That way, if the Zaca Fire begins racing toward the pass, the historic building will be protected.

For some reason, I can't stop picturing the owner returning after the fire burns through to find the foil-wrapped tavern has expanded to twice its original size, and huge puffs of popcorn are spilling out of the doors and windows. Imagine the salty, butterish aroma!

Curse you, Jiffy Pop... I hate what you've done to me...

Are You There God? It's Me, Gloria

Big news here at the ranch... our little chick is now a hen. Gloria laid her first egg this morning. It's tiny, about the size of a quail egg, and a lovely teak brown. So cute!


One of the exciting things about raising eggs here is the variety—so much more interesting than a foam carton of identical orbs from Death Star Farms. The Orpintons' eggs are chai-ish: some just off-white, some almost cafe au lait. When the little araucanas start laying, their eggs will range from ceylon green to china blue. Pictured here (from front to back): a quarter, Gloria's first egg, an Angie egg, an Ethel egg. Ethel's eggs are about 30% bigger than Angie's—much larger than the typical grocery store egg. BIG.

In fact, I've learned that sometimes Ethel's eggs are too big. For example: a pasta recipe that asks for "three eggs" needs less than two Ethel eggs. I'm learning to trust my instincts as a cook, recipes be damned.

It will be a few more months before Gloria lays regularly enough for us to recognize her "type" of eggs—for now, we'll just know they're the little ones. And try to stop strolling around singing, Urge Overkill style: "Chick (ba bom bom bom) you'll be a layer soon..."

"Welcome to Santa Barbara Airport... D'oh!"

I'm here today as the animated Queen Whackamole, voicing my support of the Light Blue Line Project. There has been a lot of debate about the City Council's choice to spend $12,000 dollars on painting this line—a line indicating Santa Barbara's coastline changed by the (conservatively) predicted seven-meter rise. That is: this is where your kids will want to put their beach towels to watch your grandkids or great-grandkids play...

Scientists don't know precisely when it will get here, but we know it's coming, by trickle or flood. As Bill McKibben argues in his 1989 (almost 20 years ago!) book The End of Nature, climate change means that nothing is known anymore... we're well into "best guess" territory. It's not new information we're getting now (McKibben certainly can't be accused of "greenwashing" in 1989)—we're just finally getting the old information, or kinda getting it. I don't think any of us can really comprehend how much change is ahead. I know I can't. Easier to cross that bridge when we come to it. The future will have lots of bridges: structural, emotional, cultural, economic...

Really, compared to all we don't know, the amount of sea-level rise is a relative sure thing. I don't think of the Light Blue Line as art—I think of it as information.

The value will come if we are able to act on that information. While almost all leaders now admit that global warming exists, they can't seem to incorporate this information into their planning. They say they get it, yet in their actions climate change is nothing but a theory, a remote possibility.

We need to hold our leaders accountable, and give them support, for making difficult and unpopular decisions that recognize the reality ahead. We should be questioning why the airport is being expanded in its current location, on reclaimed wetland that is highly vulnerable to changing sea levels. From afar, we in Santa Barbara can click our tongues as FEMA provides funding for folks to rebuild in Midwest flood plains year after year... we can question the wisdom of rebuilding a sinking New Orleans... but what we really need to do is recognize that change is happening, change will impact us, and the sooner we start responding, the easier our task will be.

Wow. When I get animated, I really get animated! I'm off to Moe's.

A tip of the animated iceberg to both George & Amy...

Jelly time!

Last night we visited the gorgeous (and surprisingly unsmokey) Alisal Guest Ranch in Solvang, where members of the extended Whackamole family are enjoying ranch living for a week. My brother-in-law greeted us with a margarita, which we sipped by the pool. Turns out, I would be an awesome cattle rancher: I like pools AND margaritas!

Anyway, we heard of their many guest ranch adventures: archery class, five-star dining, breakfast rides, and catch-and-release bass fishing were just a few of them. Alisal Ranch has a private lake, with a pier, paddle boats, and jellyfish. Um, yeah. Jellyfish, the size of a nickel. Swarms of them.

I'd never heard of freshwater jellyfish. How cool!

So, in the labyrinth of government agencies, it turns out that the U.S. Geological Survey keeps track of Non-native Aquatic Species (motto:"Putting the NAS back in NASTY"), including freshwater jellyfish. It turns out, if you flip a freshwater jellyfish over, you will be able to read "MADE IN CHINA" on the bottom.

Reading about these freshwater jellies—Craspedacusta sowerbyi, indigenous to China's Yangtze River valley—it doesn't sound like they're dangerous. They can sting, in theory, but their sting is not powerful enough to be felt by swimmers, in theory. (There are some things I'm just not interested in testing.) Scientists don't know much about them really, but they don't seem to harm local fish or have much effect on local ecosystems. Ah, sweet ignorance...

Jellyfish are fascinating. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has an awesome exhibit of jellies, and I spent most of a day mesmerized by little living lava lamps. I wish they had a jelly cam. I wish I could have a tankful of jellies at home. Unfortunately, jellyfish are pretty difficult to keep. Apparently, the freshwater jellyfish are no easier.

Plus, as much as I love jellyfish in the ocean or in aquariums, I'm unnerved by the little creatures suddenly appearing in a local pond. It ain't natchrell. Freshwater jellyfish, indeed. What's next? Sharks in Lake Cachuma?


Picture from the IUP Jellyfish Research Site


P.S. It's not your imagination. Birds really do sing when you visit the Alisal web site. Not that I was fooled at all...

Time to make some granola!

Via Eat Local Challenge.

First the News-Press, now this?

Many, many years before becoming a News-Press subscriber, I fell in love with the gray, pulpy paper and the grainy photography of the black and white tabloids. I bore the inky smudges on my hands like a badge of honor, and proudly papered my high-school locker with articles clipped from my favorite paper.

Over a year has gone by since I cancelled my News-Press subscription. As much as I loved the paper it was, I don't know that I treasured any of the articles the way I cherished those early clippings from the Weekly World News. It was in the Weekly World News I first learned to fear mermaids. It provided the only reliable source of political critique from the extraterrestrial perspective. News that mattered.

I still mourn the loss of my morning News-Press, the lesser of my journalistic loves. Dark vales of regret cast shadows on the road ahead of me as I learn that the Weekly World News is ceasing publication.

Woe is me. Thank you, Marty, for letting me know that our dear friend WWN is fading out of print, hiding in exile online. I like to think that there's a little Bat Boy inside each of us, plotting a triumphant return.