Local Ecology

Resurrecting this Blog

2010-07-18T12:39:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted anything here in a very long time. My definition of local ecology has remained the same, but my interest has become more focused on food than on politics. And specifically, I'm going to be exploring the fine points of preserving local harvests. I wish my grandmothers were still here to teach me. They both canned extensively from their large gardens. But they've been gone for many years, so I'm going to have to learn on my own.

For the past two years, I've canned beets. Last year, I also canned dilly beans. And I froze strawberries, blueberries, pesto, and roasted tomatoes. This year, I've been making tomato sauce and (peach) chutney for canning. I switched recipes on the beets (fermented vs pickled) and lost the entire effort. I had hoped to can salsa as well, but after reading through the reference materials I found on the web, I've found that it's different from tomato sauce and needs to have the acidity balanced. But why? I need to understand the science behind those instructions.

A Taxonomy of Defense Mechanisms

2009-06-07T16:56:00.003-04:00

George Vaillant is a psychoanalyst, and the PI on a longitudinal study initiated back in 1937 to follow 268 men from their college days at Harvard throughout life. "The project is one of the longest running -- and probably the most exhaustive -- longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history." The Nation (June 2009)

One section of this article particularly drew my attention.

“Vaillant explains defenses as the mental equivalent of a basic biological process. When we cut ourselves, for example, our blood clots—a swift and involuntary response that maintains homeostasis. Similarly, when we encounter a challenge large or small—a mother’s death or a broken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emotional swamp. And just as clotting can save us from bleeding to death—or plug a coronary artery and lead to a heart attack—defenses can spell our redemption or ruin. Vaillant’s taxonomy ranks defenses from worst to best, in four categories.

“At the bottom of the pile are the unhealthiest, or psychotic, adaptations—like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania—which, while they can serve to make reality tolerable for the person employing them, seem crazy to anyone else. One level up are the immature adaptations, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy. These aren’t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy. Neurotic defenses are common in ‘normal’ people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve “seemingly inexplicable naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.” The healthiest, or mature, adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship).

So what are the best predictors (according to this study) for being happy over the age of 50? Having 5 or more of the following factors? "education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight”. ~50% of the men remaining in the study who met 5+ of these health factors were happy and healthy at age 80. Not a single individual with 3 or fewer of these factors was happy and healthy at age 80, regardless of physical shape in their younger years. He also found that the men's ability to deal with stress...their defense mechanisms...matured as they aged, or as the author put it "mature adaptations are a real-life alchemy, a way of turning the dross of emotional crises, pain, and deprivation into the gold of human connection, accomplishment, and creativity." In other words, there is hope for those of us who had less than wonderful childhoods.

Meaningful Democracy

2008-09-15T11:38:00.001-04:00

"Meaningful democracy requires citizens who are empowered to create and re-create their government, rather than a mass of marginalized voters who merely choose from what is offered by an “invisible” government."
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962/

Hospitals flushing pharmaceuticals

2008-09-15T11:03:00.002-04:00

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-09-14-drugs-flush-water_N.htm
U.S. hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of
pounds of unused pharmaceuticals down the drain, pumping contaminants into
America's drinking water, according to an ongoing Associated Press
investigation.

These discarded medications are expired, spoiled, over-prescribed or
unneeded. Some are simply unused because patients refuse to take them, can't
tolerate them or die with nearly full 90-day supplies of multiple
prescriptions on their nightstands.

Getting Started with Insulin, or the Road to Regulation

2008-08-23T16:58:00.013-04:00

If you are brand new to treating feline diabetes, you have two choices of when to start giving insulin.

Because diet and insulin work hand-in-hand with each other, you may want to be sure your cat is getting good low-carb foods before you start insulin. If you choose to change diet first, please see Feeding Your Cat: Know the Basics of Feline Nutrition.

By starting with a diet change, you will have time to collect baseline glucose levels to help interpret insulin response once you begin insulin therapy. If your cat has been exhibiting diabetic symptoms (excessive urination and drinking) for more than a month, you should start insulin therapy right away. That means you won't have any baseline data, but the sooner your cat starts insulin, the better.

When cats are first diagnosed with feline diabetes, initial blood glucose readings are notoriously poor indicators of whether higher or lower doses will be needed in the future. As hyperglycemia (high blood glucose levels) decreases from initial treatment with insulin and/or a change in diet, your cat's pancreas may begin secreting insulin on it's own. For that reason, it's important to closely monitor glucose levels so that you can reduce the insulin dose, if necessary, to avoid hypoglycemia and/or somogyi rebound.

The following steps assume that you are feeding a low carb diet and home testing.

Step 1. For the first week of insulin therapy, stick with a consistent dose and shot time, 12 hours apart. This initial "breaking in" period lets the body re-learn how to use the insulin. If you are hometesting, you will want to test before each shot and get additional tests at various times during the 12-hour cycle. The timing of your spotchecks will depend on which insulin you are using. Basically you want to know when the insulin begins to work (onset), when it peaks (lowest point), and how long before it stops being effective (duration). Dosing adjustments are made based on preshots and peaks. So make sure you get at least three (3) tests around peak time.

If your starting dose gives you peak values below 100, you may want to talk with your vet about a dose reduction.

Step 2. After the first week, share your data with your vet to determine if it's time for a dose change. This will help you and your vet communicate more clearly and may be the first time your vet has worked with someone who is home testing. If you do not feel like your vet is open to this, you can post your numbers on FDMB for review.

Here are some guidelines from 5 Steps to Regulating Your Diabetic Cat.

If the average peak is above 150 mg/dl (8.3 mmol/L), increase the dose by 0.5 unit.
If the average peak is between 90 and 149 mg/dl (5.0 and 8.2 mmol/L), keep the dose the same.
If the average peak is below 90 mg/dl (5.0 mmol/L), decrease the dose by 0.5 unit.

Step 3. Repeat the cycle. However, after the first week, you may want to make dose changes every 3-4 days, especially if preshot values are remaining over 300 mg/dl. Any dose change may result in a period in which the body attempts to find a new equilibrium between glucose intake/production and insulin use. In other words, you may see higher numbers for a couple of days immediately following a dose increase. Give each new dose 3-4 days while your cat's body equilibrates or "settles" down.

Continue this approach until you begin seeing preshots no higher than 300 mg/dl and peaks close to 90 mg/dl. Many of us prefer to keep our cats more tightly regulated than this, but achieving that is beyond the purposes of this post.

These are general recommendations. Each cat and each insulin is different so you will need to customize this guidelines to your unique situation.

Union of Concerned Scientists Cartoon Winner

2008-08-21T07:18:00.009-04:00

(Could you kindly rephrase that in equivocal, inaccurate, self-serving and roundabout terms that we can all understand?)

(See the original)

I Failed the Challenge, or What I Learned From the Eat Local Challenge

2008-07-13T14:15:00.002-04:00

Eating a 100% local diet is just not easy. I tried, but I failed. And I failed for 3 basic reasons.

Availability
Finances
Time

When I was growing up, we got much of our food from my grandparents. My grandfather raised beef and hunted, so we had a full freezer of meat at all times. My grandmother and my other grandfather both planted large truck farm type gardens and always preserved enough produce to get our family through the winter months. But as my grandparents aged and my parents moved away from the home town, our diets became more dependent on processed foods and packaged produce/meats. And our family menus became less routinely meat, potatoes, and a side vegetable. With the more sophisticated (and I use that term lightly) recipes came the need to mix foods from different regions and different growing seasons. And that was the crux of the challenge I faced in planning a menu for an entire week of local eating.

I have had to acknowledge how dependent my diet is on pastas and grains, dried beans, and nice cheeses. Without pasta or grains, I struggled to come up with ideas for packable lunches. A typical summer lunch for me is tabouli and a piece of pita bread. Bulgar is not grown locally, and while there is a bakery that makes pita bread in Durham, I don't know where the wheat for their flour is grown. Another summer favorite is white bean soup. While I can use locally grown tomatoes, onions, and garlic, white beans are not grown locally. So availability of basic staples of my diet was a significant hurdle in this eat local challenge.

The foods I did find cost me $58 for the week. In a normal week, I would spend about $35, or about 40% less than what this week cost. On the other hand, I don't normally eat this well or feel this happy about my weekly menu, so the additional costs were mediated to a certain extent by that satisfaction. By continuing on the experiment, I hope to find a happy medium.

But that happy medium is going to have to also be less time consuming. For one thing, I am going back to eating cereal in the morning so that I have time to walk before work. Eggs take 15-20 minutes to fix and eat; cereal takes 10 minutes total. That extra 10 minutes costs nearly 1 mile on my morning walk. I do plan to try and find cereal alternatives for the weekend though.

For my lunches I will allow myself to eat sandwiches again. However, I will start making my own peanut butter as soon as I decide which food processor to buy and I will continue buying locally produced cheeses even though they do cost more.

I also plan to go back to eating pasta. Why? Because I love it! I enjoyed spending the time and effort it took to eat locally this week, but I didn't enjoy sacrificing the pasta. "Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony."

Thanks to Carolina Farm Stewardship for making the Challenge!

Carolina Farm Stewardship Eat Local Challenge

2008-07-13T11:04:00.013-04:00

The Eat Carolina Food Challenge was initiated by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association to promote locally grown and processed foods. From July 7-13, 2008, approximately 20 residents of North and South Carolina agreed to eat locally and to document their experience with a food log and blog posts.

I signed up for the challenge thinking it would be easy. After all, I've been eating locally for years, but I've never tried to make it 100% of a week's menu. The week started on Friday night, July 4, when I started putting together my shopping list for the Carrboro Farmer's Market. I would need something for breakfast that could be ready to eat in under 20 minutes; lunch food that could be packed and warmed up in the office kitchen; and dinner food, where I would have more flexibility.

I'd already been through Weaver Street Coop and knew that I couldn't document the "localness" of any of the bulk or packaged cereals for breakfast, so I was going to have to eat eggs. I don't really like eggs that much so I decided to make a zucchini and goat cheese frittata and biscuits to get me through part of the week. Then I would have grilled chicken for lunches and vegetable plates for dinner. Or so I thought.

Lunches were the biggest challenge. No one makes pasta from local ingredients or grows grains or beans, and those are my typical lunch staples. Couldn't find peanut butter made from North Carolina peanuts either. I'm going to be saving up to buy a food processor to make my own peanut butter, but I won't be able to rely on that for this challenge.

Last year when I took the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge, I found that Whole Foods sold chickens from Winston-Salem. Although I've been vegetarian for 30+ years, I occasionally lapse on chicken and turkey in the effort to incorporate more protein into my diet. Lapsing for the week sounded like an easy way out of the lunch dilemma. So after my Saturday morning trip to the Farmer's Market ($15), I trekked out to Whole Foods for the chicken, taking my barbecue sauce with me so that I could stop at a friends house and grill the chicken before returning home. Unfortunately, the butcher informed me that their chickens come from Pennsylvania, same place that Weaver Street gets theirs. Maybe I misunderstood before, or maybe they've just changed distributors. But for whatever reason, I now had a huge gapping hole in my weeks menu.

A trip back to Weaver Street confirmed my suspicion that without having purchased the veggies at the Farmer's Market, I was out of luck. I did, however, find some North Carolina cantalopes ($23 for cantalopes, local cheese, and milk). But I was still going to have to figure out how to use what I had already purchased to make lunch food. So I reshuffled and decided I could eat scrambled eggs for breakfast and put the zucchini, planned for the frittata, into squash fritters. Total cost for this day of shopping: $38. Already had the eggs, flour, and butter (not local).

My menu for Monday and Tuesday was:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs (Latta Egg Ranch and Maple View Dairy milk) and cheese biscuits (Lindley Mills flour, local hoop cheese, and Maple View Dairy buttermilk)
Lunch: Zucchini fritters and cantalope (yogurt for protein--not local); the zucchini was purchased from Elysian Fields Farm (CFSA members)
Dinner: mashed potatoes, pickled beets, and corn on the cob. Potatoes purchased from Pine Knot Farms; beets from Laurie Heise, and corn from Sunset Farms. Pine Knot and Laurie are CFSA members, not sure about Sunset.

So far, so good. The only slippage between Monday and Wednesday, besides my daily yogurt, was breakfast on Tuesday. Didn't have time to make eggs so I resorted to my organic cereal. And I didn't drink local wine with my dinners. At $14 a bottle, it just exceeded my budget, especially since I have a case of wine bought last week at the annual Southern Seasons sale.

Now for the Thursday through Saturday planning. I learned that there was someone at the Carrboro Farmers Market that sold chicken (free range, chemical free) so I gritted my teeth and made the purchase along with some mozzarella cheese (Chapel Hill Creamery) and heirloom tomatoes from Alex Hitt for a total of $20. Gonna have to stick with eggs for breakfast. I really miss my cereal.

The chicken was frozen so I sauteed some veggies and mixed with pasta for Wednesday night's dinner, making extra for Thursday's lunch. Another slippage on the pasta. But I couldn't think of anything else I could take for lunch that wouldn't involve slippage, so if I'm gonna sin, I want to enjoy it. I love zucchini and leeks on pasta!

Menu for Wednesday through Friday:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs and milk
Lunch (Wednesday): Zucchini fritters and cantalope (yogurt for protein--not local)
Lunch (Thursday): Pasta with sauteed squash and leeks and cantalope (squash and leeks from Elysian Farms)
Lunch (Friday): Roasted chicken breast and cantalope
Dinner (Wednesday): Pasta with sauteed squash and leeks
Dinner (Thursday): Snacks at the Orange County Beekeepers monthly meeting (not local) where they were having their annual honey tasting. Quite a tasty dinner even if it was a little sticky.
Dinner (Friday): Roasted chicken breast, tomato and mozzarella salad

I was out of milk so stopped by the Southern Village Weaver Street on my way home from work to pick up bread, milk, more cantalope, eggs, and some Carolina Brewery beer. The beer isn't made with locally grown ingredients, but it is a local brew pub, and I like it. Plus, I love the returnable jug. ($29)

Two more days to go on the CFSA Challenge, but I'm planning to keep this going, sort of, for the remainder of the summer. I don't like eggs for breakfast so I'm going back to cereal starting on Monday. For lunches, I'm planning vegetable pot pie and cantalope (these are REALLY good cantalopes). Veggie plates for dinner.

Menu for Saturday and Sunday:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs and milk
Lunches: cucumber and tomato sandwiches on Weaver Street Wonderful bread and potato chips (yeah, I know....the potato chips are not local, another slippage) (Cucumbers from Maple Springs Gardens and tomatoes from Laurie Heise at Wiseacre Farms)
Dinner (Saturday night): Spearmint and Lemonade LocoPop and Benjam in Vineyards wine (spent at the Farmers Market in Saxapahaw where I also tasted some excellent cheeses from Hillsborough Cheese Company); not the most well balanced meal of the week, but maybe the most enjoyable.
Dinner (Sunday night): cucumber and tomato sandwich (see above)

Thanks to the Carolina Farm Stewardship for issuing this challenge. Although I've always tried to eat as locally as possible, putting the extra constraints on my menu planning and shopping gave me a very different perspective on the meaning of local foods and the challenges of living and eating in a global economy.

Another Spring 2008 garden pix

2008-05-18T10:42:00.001-04:00

Front_yard1_spr08
Originally uploaded by NC Gardener

My Garden

2008-05-18T10:38:00.001-04:00

front_yard3_spr08
Originally uploaded by NC Gardener

Tonali

2008-05-04T09:05:00.003-04:00

Last night's meal at Tonali was some of the best food I've eaten in a long time. The meal began with a corn chowder with North Carolina shrimp and locally grown organic potatoes. Unlike many chowders, it wasn't heavy and it wasn't loaded up. The Tonali chef, a native Mexican, understands the concept of less is more.

All of the entrees on last night's menu were either meat or fish, so my main dish was another appetizer, chili relleno. Again, the chef outdid himself. His relleno's are stuffed with light, heavenly, delicious mashed potatoes that complimented the pablano pepper perfectly. Whoever started stuffing them with cheese? My friends had the fish tacos which were unlike any taco I've ever had. The taco shell was soft and the fish (grouper) was lightly breaded. No one asked for a doggy bag.

And then came the piece de resistance--dessert. I ordered the dulce de leche creme brulee thinking I would get something similar to the custard my friend Linda, a native of Puerto Rico, made each New Years from her grandmother's recipe. Tonali's recipe did not come from anyone's grandmother and it was not a custard. It was truly a bite of heaven. Lightly carmelized, topped with a couple of sliced strawberries, rich and creamy without being heavy.

The meal was pricey which surprised me based on the Chowhounds review. His $5.50 tacos were $12 last night. But the quality of the food was certainly worth the higher price.

Tonali
3624 Shannon Road
Durham

Bee Rescue, Day 2

2008-04-13T21:07:00.007-04:00

After a good nights rest, I got up early to go to the Farmer's Market and check on the bees. Apparently, the only way to convince a group of bees to stay in a new box is to ensure that the queen is in the box. We had failed to get the queen. The outside wall of the garage was covered in bees. And the neighbors were hot (this is a condo). They wanted the "research project" stopped immediately and the bees disposed of. Only one person was interested in what we were doing.

Ernie went to the bee supply store for advice on how to proceed and was loaned a wet-vac and a special box to connect to it. We spent the next 5 hours vacuuming bees into the box and then emptying them into the hive box. Fortunately, we were able to get the queen early on so we didn't have to keep vacuuming up bees we had already captured and moved. But many of those that were displaced during the vacuuming, headed for the comb we had dislodged the night before. The old saying "busy as a bee" is based on truth, these bees never stopped. They remained focused on their job even when they were drowning in honey.

Yep, drowning in honey. We had put too much comb in the new hive the night before and the honey had leaked out and was pooling up under the cart the hive box was setting on. The bees in the lower box literally drowned as the honey leaked down. So we had to empty the box of all those poor little carcasses and throw out about half of the comb.

As soon as we got it cleaned out, the bees we had vacuumed up and emptied into the hive box started acting much happier. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any pictures of the vacuuming or the happy hive due to having so much honey on my hands, in my hair, on my clothes, and all over my shoes. The next pictorial installment of the story will have to wait until the bees get to my house and start helping me garden.

Bee Rescue, Day 1

2008-04-13T20:33:00.012-04:00

A friend of mine has bees. He's not supposed to according to the bylaws of his neighborhood association. But he's told them that he's doing research and got a waiver from the town. During the winter, a group of bees from one of his hives decided to move...into his garage. From outside, you could see the bees buzzing around the area where the joists for the deck connect with the outside wall, but there were never too many, so he waited until spring to relocate them.

Friday night was the night to move the squatters into a new hive and then to my house. We had 5 people to help with the move, but only 3 had "outfits" so myself and the other fashion-challenged person were the photographers. The other three looked like they knew what they were doing. All three have beekeeping experience but no one had ever moved a colony like this before. Normally, a new box would have been out for them to swarm to, whenever they were ready. But in the absence of a prepared box, they made their own housing decision.

The first step was to cut a hole in the garage ceiling and determine the size of the hive. A small hole for what looked like a small colony. After cutting the hole, Ernie filled the inside with smoke to anesthesize the bees. Then he expanded the hole, and then he expanded it further. The final hole was about 10 times larger than the initial opening. By the time the opening was large enough to see the entire comb, the garage was full of smoke and bees were flying everywhere. Amazingly though, they weren't stinging.

Ernie cut the hive into pieces in order to dislocate it. After the first cut, we were all drenched in honey. The next day, I put on a pair of the gloves and could barely get my hands back out they were so sticky. The honeycomb was moved into the hive boxes, and then we all went back inside for a beer. Originally, the plan was to move the hive to my house that night, but because there were so many more bees than originally thought, Ernie felt it was better to let them calm down overnight and move them the next morning. So we plugged up the hole, wished them a goodnight, and went inside for a beer and a movie.

Choose to Be Excellent: In Honor of Eve

2008-03-19T07:43:00.002-04:00

"The love and the community which Eve (Carson) spread to all of us was not the result of some divine chance," Tom Reilly said. "It was a conscious orientation. It was Eve's choice."

"Choose to be excellent," Reilly said. "Let us have the courage to choose to be excellent, with a heart."

What goes down the drain gets turned out to pasture via toxic sludge

2008-02-03T12:03:00.001-05:00

From Physorg.com

What goes down the drain -- detergents, personal-care products and discarded and excreted medications -- may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are not, unfortunately, out of this world.

Significant amounts of toxic chemicals from households persist in the environment because they end up in sewage sludge. Though pathogens are removed in wastewater treatment plants, no treatment is required to address some of the most abundant chemical contaminants that originate in the home.

So sludge and sludge-rich composts, often containing toxic chemicals, are commonly applied to farmland, parks, forests and yards.

Take ibuprofen (its many trade names include Advil and Motrin), for example, the third most consumed drug in the world. Wastewater treatment plants remove 60 to 90 percent of it, but that's not enough, warns a Cornell researcher.

"Given the volume that is consumed, a lot still goes out to the environment," says Anthony G. Hay, Cornell associate professor of microbiology and director of Cornell's Institute for Comparative and Environmental Toxicology. He studies how ibuprofen and other chemicals present in sewage sludge are degraded by microorganisms.

"Even low concentrations of ibuprofen have been found to affect the way fish spawn, so we don't want it accumulating in the environment," says Hay.

"Understanding the biological fate is very important for being able to predict the potential for toxicity of compounds. In the case of ibuprofen, we were able to show that it can be degraded to nontoxic intermediates."

Since legislation prohibits dumping sewage sludge in the ocean, most of it in this country is applied to soil for its nutrients and to improve the physical properties of the soil, which is often cheaper than landfill or incineration.

"However, there are no requirements in the U.S. to test for or remediate organic pollutants in sewage sludges, and sludges contain a wide variety of these contaminants that conventional treatment does not eliminate," adds Ellen Z. Harrison, who served as director of Cornell's Waste Management Institute for many years until her recently announced retirement.

Gardeners may unknowingly use sludge-based products, such as free compost, because labeling is not mandated. Some products even use the term "organic" on their labels, says Harrison.

To make matters even more complex, Hay adds, "Most wastewater treatment plants were designed to target industrial pollutants. There are no requirements for monitoring chemicals from personal-care products, pharmaceutical compounds or antibiotics. We are interested in knowing what compounds are out there and if biodegradation is making these things less toxic or more toxic."

While looking at sludge, Hay's research team found high levels of compounds commonly used in detergents such as alkylphenol ethoxylates that "get more toxic as they degrade, becoming persistent compounds that mimic estrogen," says Hay. "The concentrations being reported in the environment are below levels of concern for most humans but are high enough to affect fish populations by changing sex ratios, resulting in fewer males. The question is, what is the long-term effect on populations? We don't really know.

Working with graduate student Abbie Wise Porter, Hay found alkylphenol in sludges from Syracuse, Cortland, Ithaca and Cayuga Heights at levels that were five times higher than most other places that had been studied. This suggested that the sludges had about 15-40 times more estrogen activity than dairy cow manure, which is considered to have high estrogen levels due to lactating cows, says Hay.

In addition, Porter found triclosan, a widely used biocide (used to kill bacteria), in all of the sludges at quite high concentrations. "Triclosan is coming from the antibacterial hand soaps, deodorants, toothpastes and many other personal-care products," says Hay. "There are more and more reports of triclosan in environmental samples ... in fish, and in high concentrations in breast milk. Triclosan is not all that effective in these products, but it is still being marketed to the public to quell their fears about microbes. Unfortunately, triclosan inhibits our ability to eliminate other pollutants from our body so it may be doing more harm than good."

So what are consumers to do?

"Not buying anti-bacterial hands soaps would be a good first step since regular soaps are just as effective," says Hay. "With respect to the other pollutants we detected, people can select fragrance-free products when possible and look for products that are labeled as biodegradable."

Harrison adds that, at the legislative level, banning the use of certain toxic chemicals such as the most toxic brominated flame retardant -- which is banned in California -- would be appropriate.

Also, people should find out where the sludge from their local treatment plants goes, and make sure it is not used at schools or parks, says Harrison. "When they obtain compost or soil amendments for their yards, they should find out whether they contain sewage sludge. And of course, they should try to use products that don't contain toxic chemicals and should not flush unwanted chemicals or pharmaceuticals down the drain."

More suggestions about environmentally friendly products can be found at http://www.fingerlakesbuygreen.org.

Source: Cornell University

http://www.physorg.com/news120927003.html

7 R's of Anti-Sustainability

2008-01-07T10:23:00.000-05:00

From Sustainable is Good:

Refuse to consider thoughts and opinions other than your own. If you are right and everyone else is wrong, why bother?
Remain glued to the status quo. After all if what you have been doing works, why take a chance on changing anything?
Reject any idea that even remotely sounds like compromise even though sometimes, that is the best way to accomplish progress.
Resist any new technology unless it is absolutely perfect and supports your position. “See I told you it wouldn’t work” can be all so satisfying.
Ridicule anyone who appears to be profiting from their work in sustainability, especially if their margin appears to exceed your own.
Repel anyone seeking knowledge or help. Everyone knowing as much as you do cannot be a good thing.
Resign yourself to the fact that the environmental problem is too large to be fixed. Seek new goals that are easier to achieve!

Bill Richardson on Energy

2008-01-06T14:47:00.000-05:00

Bill Richardson at last night's Democratic candidates debate in New Hampshire:

"You know, what we need is an energy revolution in this country. Not some of the bills that the congress has passed. We need to go to 50 miles per gallon fuel efficiency. We need to have 30 percent of all our electricity renewable. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by the year 2040. And we need the American people to sacrifice a little bit."

Now that would be an energy policy I could support. For more details, see http://action.richardsonforpresident.com/page/s/energyplan

How cool is that that we have a woman, an African-American, and a Hispanic running in this race!

RIP: Squeeze the Pulp

2008-01-01T11:22:00.000-05:00

Squeeze The Pulp (STP) was initially set up as a political forum to counter to OrangePolitics shortly after Carrboro annexed the Homestead Road communities. While OP is a blog, STP was a discussion forum, a technology that I much preferred. Content-wise, STP was angry about the annexation and especially the annexation process. But occasionally the discussions were much more informative than those on OP because the posters weren't all in agreement with each other. On the other hand, some of the discussions were just downright offensive. After a particularly ugly thread on Moses Carey, in which one poster used a number of racial epithets, Fred Black and I left that forum and swore never to return. I went back on that promise during the fall 2007 election when I was supporting someone who I thought the angry posters would also support. Unfortunately, anger was all some of those folks had to contribute to the political dialogue and their vitriol and name calling contributed, in large part, to my candidate's loss. Instead of using the technology to rally around her, they used the technology to trash-talk those they opposed.

Today, a new STP has been unveiled in the form of a wiki rather than a discussion forum. Two "columnists" have been given their own sections of the wiki to moderate. One of those columnists was the most virulent of the angry posters. "We have brought on some of the more controversial posters from the old Pulp as contributors. Each controls their very own slice of the Pulp."

So after a couple of years of blasting OP as someone's private sandbox and criticizing that individual's editorial decisions, now Mr Angry Poster has his own private sandbox in which he can make his own editorial decisions. Talk about hypocrisy.

And then there are the definitions. Apparently the owner of STP has a lot of Mr Angry Poster in him. Here's an example: “BOA” – A term used to denote the governance board of Carrboro, known for its playpen mentality. Only pals are allowed in. Often compared to the monkey house at a zoo, the BOA is known for the figurative flinging of monkey dung at those in opposition to the errors in judgment routinely committed by the BOA." Now there's a great strategy for improving political discourse in the community. The Angry Posters seem to overlook the fact that VOTERS select the Board of Alderman. They were so ineffective in supporting the candidates from their area that they lost what should have been a slam dunk change. Now they resort to name calling. That just about sums up STP.

The owners of STP and OP have the right to do whatever they want with the technology they manage, even in STP's case if that means giving rights to individuals who have less than the best interests of this community in their hearts. We'll see how these changes work. To the STP owner: it would have been nice to have known this was coming so that those of who did invest the time and effort to do research could have pulled our old contributions. I will not be posting at the new site.

New Years Resolutions

2007-12-31T20:45:00.000-05:00

I have done a miserable job of fulfilling my Dark Days Eat Local challenge. But in my failure, I have learned that this is not the time of year to take up cooking. While I used to love cooking, over the past 10 years or so, I've let my career take top priority and have fallen into some rather atrocious eating patterns. The Dark Days challenge has put me back into cooking mode, thinking about cooking as a craft that takes time and gives enjoyment rather than just an end-product intended only to assuage hunger or drown my problems with.

So this years New Years Resolutions have to do with food.

1. I renew my vow to fix at least one meal a week that is composed exclusively of locally grown foods, regardless of the season.

2. I also intend to invite friends over for a meal at least once a month. Cooking for others is great motivation to try new recipes.
food budget goes to purchasing commercially produced (e.g., over processed) yogurt. With Maple View Farms milk so easily accessible, there is no reason not to make my own and re duce my reliance on pre-processed food even further.

My other resolution is to get back into documentary making. Today I began documenting old store fronts in Orange County. I'm starting with Cedar Grove Township. Here are two stores on old Highway 86:

3. And last but not least, I plan to begin making my own yogurt. A large portion of my food budget goes to purchasing commercially produced (e.g., over processed) yogurt. With Maple View Farms milk so easily accessible, there is no reason not to make my own and re duce my reliance on pre-processed food even further.

My other resolution is to get back into documentary making. Today I began documenting old store fronts in Orange County. I'm starting with Cedar Grove Township. Here are two stores on old Highway 86:

Rain Barrels

2007-12-31T19:36:00.000-05:00

With the continuing drought, I need some way to save the few remaining plants I have in my yard. What better way than a rain barrel, especially one that I can make myself thanks to an OWASA workshop. It was fun and easy.

Here's what the finished product looks like. It began with a 55- gallon barrel, provided by Mark Ray Rain Barrels. Mark had pre-drilled the holes, one for the spigot and one for the overflow valve, so all we had to do was install the hardware. Apparently these barrels are not only useful, but they are easily obtained through NC Wastetraders. The only problem is that they were originally used to store food products. The one I selected had a distinct eau de dill pickles.

The tricky part of making this barrel is installing the spigot. While the spigot itself simply screws into the predrilled hole, it's necessary to put a washer on the backside of the spigot to keep it in place and leak free. That means.....crawling into the barrel to get to the backside of the spigot. Could anyone ask for a better photo opportunity?

For every 1,000 square feet of roof, one inch of rain produces 625 gallons of water. I'm going to need to make a couple of more barrels to collect even a portion of the runoff from my roof. Unfortunately, we're not expected to get that much rain for the next several months so I've got some time.

Caroleena's Tuscan Kitchen

2007-12-19T22:31:00.000-05:00

My friend and neighbor, Carol Barrow, who taught me to make the Spanish Tortilla has published a cookbook, Caroleena's Tuscan Kitchen.

Carol, who was once an Italian contessa, will be signing books at Weaver Street Market on Saturday, December 22, from 2:00 - 4:00 pm.

Locavore and Dark Days Challenge Recipes

2007-12-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

The Oxford University Press’ 2007 Word of the Year is locavore, meaning a person who endeavors to eat only locally-produced food. “The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”

In my attempt to become a card-carrying locavore, I've taken the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge. This is definitely a much harder challenge to meet than I expected. So far, I've managed one meal a week, but neither meal has meet a full range of nutritional needs. Here's what I've made:

Silken Chicken: Although I am primarily vegetarian, I do occasionally eat chicken or turkey but only if it it is ethically raised (free range, no hormones, etc). For the Dark Days Challenge, chicken is going to be my best bet for locally grown food. For the silken chicken, I was able to use locally produced cream also, but the spices and herbs aren't grown anywhere close to Carrboro.

Spanish Tortilla: This recipe was given to me by Caroleena Barrow. She served it one night when I dropped by for dinner, and I've asked her to make it for me twice since. It has a very simple ingredient list--potatoes, onions, and eggs. Carol insists that white potatoes must be used, but in the spirit of the local challenge, I used locally grown red potatoes and couldn't tell the difference. Latta's cage-free, brown eggs and locally grown yellow onions made this a totally local meal, and once I overcame my fear of messing up a dish that I love, incredibly easy to make. boil potatoes in salt water (I didn't peel them). When cool enough to handle, chop into bite-sized bits. Sautee onion in too much olive oil. Scramble eggs with salt and pepper (no milk). Add in onions and potatoes and turn into a skillet. Cook over low heat so that the eggs cook slowly into omelet-like consistency. Flip when dry enough not to fall apart (I messed this part up). The non-local part came from the salsa used to top the tortilla. I'll be checking for locally produced salsa at Weaver Street since I suspect this dish will become my winter favorite.

The Role of Women

2007-12-01T22:24:00.001-05:00

This excerpt came from the most recent email update of the E.F. Schumacher Society. It's from a book entitled "Why the Village Movement" by Gandhian philosopher and economist J. C. Kumarappa. The publication date is 1936, once again demonstrating the principle of what's old is new.

CONSUMERS DUTIES

Often buyers are only concerned with satisfying their own requirements as near as possible and as cheaply as they can. This way of going about the business is to shirk one¹s duties. What are the duties of an effective consumer or buyer? When buying an article of everyday use one has to take account of the full repercussions of one¹s transaction.

1) One should know where the article comes from,
2) Who makes the article?
3) Under what conditions do the workers live and work?
4) What proportions of the final price do they get as wages?
5) How is the rest of the money distributed?
6) How is the article produced?
7) How does the industry fit into the national economy?
8) What relation has it to the other nations?

DISCRIMINATE BUYING

If the buyer has to make her influence felt, the further afield she goes for her goods, the less will be the power of her influence at such distance, the less the chances of her information on various points raised being accurate, and the less will be her personal interest. If the goods come from a source which may be tainted with exploitation, either of sweat labor or of the political, financial or economic hold over other nations, or classes, or races, then the buyer of such goods will be a party to such exploitation, just as a person who buys stolen articles from a "chore bazar" creates a market for stolen goods and thus will be encouraging the art of stealing.

Therefore, any one who buys goods indiscriminately is not discharging her full responsibility when the sole criterion of her buying is merely the low price or the good quality of the goods. Hence, we should buy good only from sources from which full information is readily available and which source can be brought under our influence; otherwise we shall have to shoulder a share of the blame for sweat labour, political slavery, or economic stranglehold. We cannot absolve ourselves of the all blame by merely pleading ignorance in regard to the source.

If the raw materials for making cocoa are obtained from plantations on the West coast of Africa which use some form of forced native labour, are carried by vessels on sea routes monopolised or controlled by violence, manufactured in England with sweated labour and brought to India under favorable customs duties enforced by political power, then a buyer of a tin of cocoa patronises the forced labour conditions in the West coast of Africa, utilizes the navy and so partakes in violence, gains by the low wages or bad conditions of the workers in England and takes advantage of the political subjection of India. All this responsibility and more also is put into a little tin of cocoa!

Are we prepared to shoulder this grave responsibility and pander to our palate or shall we content ourselves with a cup of nutritious milk drawn from a well-kept cow at our door? These considerations are not far-fetched but actual. Anyone who looks on life seriously and as a trustee cannot afford to ignore these far-reaching consequences of her actions.

Dark Days Eat Local Challenge

2007-12-01T22:10:00.000-05:00

I hereby accept Urban Hennery's challenge to cook at least one local meal through the lean days of winter. I don't have anything frozen or canned so I will probably have to learn a lot of new sweet potato recipes. Want to take the challenge? Here's the rules:

Cook one meal a week with at least 90% local ingredients
Write about it - the triumphs and the challenges
Local means a 200 mile radius for raw ingredients. For processed foods the company must be within 200 miles and committed to local sources.
Keep it up through the end of the year, and then re-evaluate on New Year’s Day
The challenge starts now, or whenever you sign up.

Desegregation then, what now for Chapel Hill?

2007-11-11T09:41:00.000-05:00

November 8, 2007 News and Observer

Forty-five years of history fell away at UNC-Chapel Hill on Thursday night.

Participants in Chapel Hill's tumultuous civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s said that, in some ways, a lot of progress has been made. In others, there's still a long way to go.
They met for a panel discussion at UNC's Wilson Library to celebrate the republication of John Ehle's 1965 book "The Free Men," which chronicles Chapel Hill's desegregation.
The movement was marked by dozens of demonstrations, sit-ins, hunger strikes and other protests. Some demonstrators were physically assaulted. Hundreds were arrested.
Several panelists made the distinction between desegregation and integration and said they feel the latter is lacking in Chapel Hill.
James Foushee, who participated in demonstrations, said, "Chapel Hill is going to become, in the next five years, an all-white town."
"We have desegregated," Karen Parker said. "Integration is up to the individual."
"Blacks are priced out. Are the people of Chapel Hill aware of that? No, they're not," said Wayne King, who covered the protests for The Daily Tar Heel, UNC's student newspaper. "It's harder to notice that ... no black people are having breakfast in the Carolina Coffee Shop. ... Would you notice?" he asked the audience.

Many of us notice. The problem is what to do about it. I do not believe that building luxury housing surrounding the remaining historically black neighborhoods in downtown is an acceptable solution. Gentrification received little to no discussion in last week's municipal election. Will Raymond tried though and I thank him for that.

(photo from UNC News Service press release, photographer: Jim Wallace)

Planning Guidance for Sustainability

2007-10-29T11:00:00.000-04:00

If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed,
If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree.
If you are thinking one hundred years ahead,
educate the people.

Kuan Tzu Chinese Poet, c. 500 B.C.

How to Avoid DKA, Hypos, and Other Side Effects of Feline Diabetes

2007-10-28T19:13:00.000-04:00

Ketones are waste products that result from the body's use of stored fat for energy. In a diabetic, any urinary ketones above trace, or any increase in urinary ketone level, or trace urinary ketones plus some of the symptoms above, are cause to call an emergency vet immediately, at any hour of the day. Diabetic ketoacidosis is caused by a lack of insulin or an insufficient amount of insulin.

Hypoglycemia is dangerously low blood sugar brought on by too much insulin. It can result in seizures, coma, and even death.

These two conditions represent the opposite ends of the diabetic spectrum, from too much insulin to not enough. Managing your cat's diabetes involves navigating between these two potentially lethal side effects. Diet, testing, and regulation are primary considerations in achieving this goal.

Feed a low-carb wet diet.
If your cat refuses to eat wet food, supplement the dry food with cooked meats as you transition away from the dry. See Dr. Lisa's Transitioning Dry Food Addicts to Canned Food for more ideas.
Use a human glucometer to test your cats blood at home.
Hometesting will give you the information you need to determine when a dose needs to be changed either up or down. If you have a good relationship with your vet, you can call and report your test numbers and work together to determine any dosing adjustments. If your vet doesn't support hometesting, join one of the Insulin Support Groups and work with others who have experience with your particular insulin.
Hometesting video
Use the results of your testing to achieve regulation.
When your cat is first diagnosed with diabetes, your goal is to "regulate" her or his blood glucose, which may take a few weeks or even many months. Eventually you will want to aim for blood sugar levels in the 70 to 200 range. This won't happen right away but by reducing carbohydrates from your cats food and hometesting, you can achieve this goal safely. The well-regulated diabetic cat should look and act the same as he/she did before diabetes. If you have any concerns about your meter reading too low, you can test a non-diabetic cat as your control.

There's no sure-fire method for eliminating all risk of hypos, DKA, and other diabetes-related problems, but you can greatly reduce the risk by learning all that you can. Insulin is a powerful hormone. The more you know about it, the safer your cat will be.

Rebound: A Positive Feedback Loop

2007-10-03T15:10:00.000-04:00

A positive feedback loop is a cause and effect response that has no self-correcting mechanism. An example of a positive feedback loop is your bathtub. If you turn the water on and let it run to fill, it will continue running until you manually turn it off, even if that means it floods your bathroom.

Counter intuitively, negative feedback loops are self-correcting. An example of a negative feedback loop is your home thermostat. You set it at the threshold you want, and it continually samples the room temperature and makes corrections to maintain the desired temperature setting (threshold).

In feline diabetes, the way a cat's body uses insulin is both a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop. When the body gets too much insulin, the liver releases glycogen (stored glucose) to protect against hypoglycemia. That's the negative feedback loop.

When the body receives too much insulin over time, the liver adjusts its threshold upward. For example, instead of recognizing 50 mg/dl (for felines) as a glucose level that is too low and requires intervention through released glycogen, it starts to think anything lower than 200 mg/dl needs adjustment. So the cat's body stops using the insulin effectively and stays in a continuous hyperglycemic state, also called rebound. The negative feedback loop, which is the natural mechanism, is overwhelmed by too much insulin, which in turns creates the unnatural positive feedback loop.

Since there are no tests for rebound, humans too often continue to increase the insulin dosage in order to alleviate the hyperglycemia, causing the liver to set the 'hypo' threshold even higher. So no matter how much additional insulin the cat receives, the response is in the opposite direction than what is expected.

Unfortunately, a cat in rebound is always subject to hypoglycemia since the liver does not have a endless supply of stored glucose/glycogen. When the glycogen runs out, hypo results.

The only way to break a positive feedback loop is to stop feeding it. In feline diabetes, that means reducing the insulin dosage, hopefully before the cat hypos.

Other examples of positive feedback loops:

credit card debt (the more you borrow, the deeper in debt you go and the more you need to borrow to cover the debt)
hyperactive behavior in a child; the more they over-react, the more wound up they get
alcoholism and drug addiction....any addiction

Drought Restrictions

2007-10-03T08:09:00.000-04:00

As of October 1, 2007, the OWASA reservoirs are 56% full. According to the state climatologist, La Nina conditions are expected to continue the drought well into the winter months. La Nina is cooler than normal ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean that affect weather patterns in North Carolina. There are about 10-12 reliable indicators, but drought prediction is still a nascent science. So while these predictions could be totally wrong; the state climatologist (Ryan Boyles) just doesn't think so.

And yet, just last week, OWASA wrote to the towns, "We believe there is little risk of running out of water this year, but the community could face a substantially more serious shortage next year, when it will be too late to catch up, if rainfall and streamflow are less than normal this winter."

See page 5 of this letter for a chart of what is and is not allowed at the various stages of water restriction. If OWASA is saying that there will be a serious shortage next year if there is less than normal rainfall this winter, and if the state climatologist is predicting a dry winter, why are we allowing up to 1,000 gallons per day of outdoor irrigation (for those on irrigation meters)?

Last weekend I sent an email to all elected officials in Chapel Hill and Carrboro asking that they request a change in the irrigation restrictions effective immediately. Last night Carrboro asked citizens to voluntarily cut back to 500 gallons and also agreed to contact Chapel Hill and OWASA for tightening the current guidelines: "The board voted to pass a resolution asking its residents to cut back to 500 gallons a day, and agreed that Chilton should contact Mayor Kevin Foy in Chapel Hill and ask that he present the same idea to the Chapel Hill Town Council and that he contact OWASA officials to say the aldermen are strongly in favor of tighter restrictions." (Chapel Hill Herald, October 3, 2007)

OWASA, as a non-profit organization, needs to collect sufficient revenues to pay their costs, even during a drought. Continuing to allow irrigation, especially with their new cost structure, passes the extra financial burden of conservation onto those who abuse the community good. But the long-term risk associated with drought, leaves me to believe the greater community good would be better served through a cost recovery mechanism that does not involve wasting a limited, precious resource.

Serious drought frequency has risen since 2000, whether we attribute it to global warming, growing populations, or changing weather patterns. We as a community need to look into new ways of protecting our water resources while also protecting the financial integrity of OWASA.

Follow Up to Community Journalism

2007-09-14T21:45:00.001-04:00

The Chapel Hill News and the Carrboro Citizen have both posted stories/blog entries on the Dan Coleman park incident since I questioned their failure to do so last week. Community journalism is alive and well in Carrboro and Chapel Hill!

Altar Call for True Believers

2007-09-09T16:15:00.000-04:00

I loved Janisse Ray's first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. And now she's done it again with a brilliant article in Orion Magazine, Altar Call for True Believers.

I want to see our communities get more and more localized, with more local food produced and consumed, more local goods bought and sold. I want to see local entrepreneurship and craftsmanship encouraged. I want a renaissance of the hands, so that we use fewer electrical gadgets and motorized tools.

I want to hear of an organization that decides, because of the climate crisis, to cancel its annual conference. I want to see us relying on the mail and conference calls and e-mail for corresponding with distant colleagues, and engaging more deliberately with our neighbors. I want to see us using petroleum as if it were precious, which is to say sparingly and wisely, driving shorter distances and less often; in fact, I want getting in a single-occupancy vehicle to be a last resort.

I want us to get radical. I want us choir members to make even the hardest decisions while holding the Earth in mind.

I want us to raise the bar for ourselves.

New Environmental Paradigm

2007-09-09T15:58:00.000-04:00

A environmental assessment tool develop by Dunlap and Van Liere in 1978 to measure attitudes toward environmental protection and the development of a systematic way to address the increasing depletion of natural resources (carrying capacity). This new environmental paradigm contrasts with the dominant social paradigm which "reflects the view of the industrial era where economic and population growth and continued exploitation of natural resources can continue without damage to the environment." (Sussman)

The New Environmental Paradigm Scale

We are approaching the limit of the number of people the earth can support.
The balance of nature is very delicate and easily upset.
Humans have the right to modify the natural environment.
Humankind was created to rule over the rest of nature.
When humans interfere with nature it often produces disastrous consequences.
Plants and animals exist primarily to be used by humans.
To maintain a healthy economy we will have to develop a "steady state" economy where industrial growth is controlled.
Humans must live in harmony with nature in order to survive.
The earth is like a spaceship with only limited room and resources.
Humans need not adapt to the natural environment because they can remake it to suit their needs.
There are limits to growth beyond which our industrialized society cannot expand.
Mankind is severely abusing the environment.

Community Journalism?

2007-09-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

Community journalism is defined as "reporting of news and information for a certain geographic area... a community, if you will, with the purpose to serve the best interests of that certain group....'Make them happy... make them mad... but whatever you do... make them think.'"

Chapel Hill and Carrboro are served by two newspaper conglomerates, the Herald Sun and the News and Observer, both of which allocate a page to goings-on in each county within their service area. The N&O also owns the subsidiary Chapel Hill News, which covers Orange County in more detail. The most recent addition to the local media scene is the Carrboro Citizen which promised to provide more in depth coverage of local politics and arts. And then there are the broadcast media.

With all this coverage, you would think that our local news would be covered with more than a cursory nod. So where is the coverage on alderman Dan Coleman's assault with a deadly weapon? Both the N&O and the Herald covered the story the day after the incident, although the Herald omitted the fact that it occurred during a Carrboro High School cross country meet. Three days later the Carrboro Citizen still hasn't updated it's electronic version, as it did promptly when John McCormick was arrested.

The police have 5 written, eye-witness accounts to the incident, in addition to Dan's written statement and the verbal report made by the alleged victim. None of these individuals have been interviewed. Carrboro High has not been asked to confirm that an official cross country meet was underway and that Ms Kotecki was an authorized volunteer. Nor has Carrboro Parks and Recreation provided any confirmation that they knew the meet was taking place and that traffic could be disrupted. Isn't it the role of local media to confirm the facts of a case such as this? And yet we know nothing more than was reported the morning after the incident based.

The incident itself is distressing, but what I am more concerned about is this lack of media coverage. Dan was a regular columnist for the Herald prior to his appointment to the BOA and had frequent guest posts in the Chapel Hill News. More than likely he has friendships with the Carrboro Citizen editorial staff. Do these personal and professional ties explain the lack of investigation? This is an election year and Dan will be running for the first time. Will it be left to his detractors to cover this story on Squeeze the Pulp or other citizen-based outlets. Or will the press step forward and try to provide a more detailed and unbiased account?

Sometime back Fred Black wrote that the financial model of print newspapers precludes investigative journalism. And yet looking at the number of outlets dedicated just to Orange County, I find it hard to believe that staffing can explain this current failure. Is local journalism broken or just protecting one of its own?

Garden Quotes

2007-09-03T10:54:00.000-04:00

I'm cleaning out all the dead plants from my garden today. Drought is brutal. Hopefully some of my native perennials have simply gone dormant and will return next year although I'm rethinking my entire garden design. Going to be looking for shrubs this fall. Even though I've been quite diligent about planting drought resistant perennials, they still need SOME water.

"I can't resist a pretty plant. When I see it, I want it, I buy it, take it home, and plant it where ever I can find a place. If I had a similar moral code when it comes to romance, I would be divorced several times over by now. That is the reason I grow a cottage garden. I can stick everything in with complete abandon and no discrimination whatsoever."
-- Cassandra Danz, Mrs. Greenthumbs Plows Ahead: Five Steps to the Drop-Dead Gorgeous Garden of Your Dreams

"Gardening... is a painstaking exploration of place; everything that happens in my garden--the thriving and dying of particular plants, the maraudings of various insects and other pests--teaches me to know this patch of land more intimately, its geology and microclimate, the particular ecology of its local weeds and animals and insects. ... Lawns work on the opposite principle. They depend for their success on the overcoming of local conditions."
-- Michael Pollan, Second Nature

"I sometimes believe that acknowledging a consciousness and a conscience within nature actually holds the last best hope for a humanity seemingly bent on destroying this fair Earth."
- Jim Nollman, Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place

Letter to the Editor: Sustainability

2007-09-02T12:30:00.000-04:00

Excellent letter praising the county for creating the Lands Legacy Program in today's Chapel Hill News. But what I liked was the call to define sustainability in terms of Orange County in order to incorporate it, with metrics, into the comprehensive plan.

The next step should be to continue funding Lands Legacy, but also to define what sustainability means. With a broad commitment and emphasis on sustainability, the comprehensive plan should describe the processes by which the basic needs of our citizens are provided and protected without depleting the quality of life. It should set up an annual measurement of the natural and man-made indicators of sustainability, such as water supply and air quality, and add new ones like the supply of locally grown agricultural products and foods. This annual report would reflect the quality of our planning and our successes.

Sustainability is easy to talk about. Putting it into practice, balancing out the various aspects from affordability to environmental conservation, will require political leadership and collective action. Do we have will to pursue this challenge?

Endocrine Disrupters

2007-08-18T17:39:00.000-04:00

(this is the handout I will be distributing in Saxapahaw tomorrow)

What are Endocrine Disrupters?

Endocrine disrupters are chemicals that affect the endocrine system and prevent hormones from performing their usual functions in the body. In humans, as in animals, hormones play an important role in communications; they affect mood and memory, reproduction and development, and virtually any other biological process you can name.

Exposure to endocrine disrupters during critical stages of development can result in permanent effects on overall health, intelligence, and the ability to reproduce. Hormone disrupters are suspected of causing cancer, birth defects, and immune problems. Even incredibly tiny concentrations can interfere with reproduction.

Bisphenol-A (BPA)
BPA is a hormone-disrupting chemical considered to be potentially harmful to human health and the environment.

BPA is used as a plastic coating for children's teeth to prevent cavities, as a coating in metal cans to prevent the metal from contact with food contents, as the plastic in food containers, refrigerator shelving, baby bottles, water bottles, returnable containers for juice, milk and water, micro-wave ovenware and eating utensils. Scratched and worn polycarbonate feeding bottles are known to leach this chemical into liquids.

10 Everyday Pollution Solutions
(see the Environmental Working Group link for explanations of each)

Use cast iron pans instead of nonstick.
To avoid chemicals leaching into food, go easy on processed, canned or fast foods and never microwave plastic. (Bisphenol A)
Buy organic, or eat vegetables and fruit grown with minimal pesticides.
Use iodized salt to combat chemical interference from the thyroid.
Seal outdoor wooden structures (arsenic).
Leave your shoes at the door. This minimizes distribution of dust-bound pollutants.
Avoid perfume, cologne and products with added fragrance as well as antibacterial soaps.
Buy products with natural fibers, like cotton and wool, that are naturally fire resistant. (Chemical flame retardant PBDE)
Eat low-mercury fish like tilapia & pollock, rather than high-mercury choices like tuna & swordfish.
Filter your water for drinking and cooking.

DON’T FLUSH!
Wastewater treatment plants and septic systems are generally not designed to treat pharmaceutical waste. Dissolve unwanted medications in water and mix with kitty litter or sawdust (or any material that absorbs the dissolved medication and makes it less appealing for pets or children to eat), then place in a sealed plastic bag BEFORE tossing in the trash.

Other articles I will be distributing:

More on Carrying Capacity

2007-08-10T20:48:00.000-04:00

From Rachel's Democracy & Health News #919, August 9, 2007

Why precaution? Because of cumulative impacts.

One of the reasons for adopting the precautionary principle, rather than the "trust in economic growth" decision rule, is "cumulative impacts."

The foundational assumption of the "trust in economic growth" rule (that economic activity is generally to the net benefit of society, even if it causes environmental damage) is further assumed to be true no matter how large our economy becomes. To implement the "trust in economic growth" rule, all we do is eliminate any activity without a net benefit, and in doing this we examine each activity independently. The surviving economic activities, and the accompanying cost-benefit- justified damage to the environment, are both thought to be able to grow forever.

Not only is there no limit to how large our economy can become, there is no limit as to how large justified environmental damage can become either. The "trust in economic growth" decision rule contains no independent constraint on the total damage we do to Earth -- indeed the core structure of this decision rule assumes that we do not need any such constraint. People who think this way see no need for the precautionary principle precisely because they see no need for the preferential avoidance of damage to the environment that it embodies.

But, as we now know, there is in fact a need for a limit to the damage we do to earth. Unfortunately, the human enterprise has now grown so large that we are running up against the limits of the Earth -- if we are not careful, we can destroy our only home. (Examples abound: global warming, thinning of Earth's ozone shield, depletion of ocean fisheries, shortages of fresh water, accelerated loss of species, and so on.)

And it is the cumulative impact of all we are doing that creates this problem. One can liken it to the famous "straw that broke the camel's back." At some point "the last straw" is added to the camel's load, its carrying capacity exceeded. Just as it would miss the larger picture to assume that since one or a few straws do not hurt the camel, straw after straw can be piled on without concern, so the "trust in economic growth" decision rule misses the larger picture by assuming that cost-benefit-justified environmental damage can grow forever.

Thus, it is the total size of our cumulative impacts that is prompting us to revisit our prevailing decision rule. This is why we now need a decision rule that leads us to contain the damage we do. It is why we now must work preferentially to avoid damage to the Earth, even if we forego some activities that would provide a net benefit if we lived in an "open" or "empty" world whose limits were not being exceeded. We can still develop economically, but we must live within the constraints imposed by Earth itself.

Ultimately, the conclusion that we must learn to live within the capacity of a fragile Earth to provide for us, painful as it is, is thrust upon us by the best science that we have -- the science that looks at the whole biosphere, senses the deep interconnections between all its parts, places us as an element of its ecology, recognizes the time scale involved in its creation and our own evolution within it, and reveals, forever incompletely, the manifold and mounting impacts that we are having upon it and ourselves.

Lois Gibbs in Saxapahaw

2007-08-10T20:01:00.000-04:00

Famed Love Canal Environmental Activist will speak in Saxapahaw, NC

Nationally-acclaimed environmental leader Lois Gibbs, Executive Director, Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), will be in North Carolina to discuss the importance of community activism in fighting polluting industry. Lois is known as the "mother of Superfund" for her groundbreaking victory in 1980 relocating 900 families away from the Love Canal, the site of a former toxic chemical waste dump. Families with children living in the Love Canal district experienced birth defects, miscarriages, cancers and health problems.

Please join us for this FREE event!
Sunday, August 19, from 1-4 p.m.
River Landing Inn, 5942 Whitney Road, Graham, NC 27253
(*just across the bridge from Saxapahaw)
Live music by MEBANESVILLE ~ PICNIC pickins!

The event is being sponsored by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL), Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) and BE SAFE, NOT SORRY of Alamance County. Leaders from local community-based organizations in Alamance, Orange, Guilford and Granville Counties who will be speaking about their current challenges fighting polluting industries include:

Martha Hamblin, GASP for Clean Air. Stericycle medical waste incinerator;
Pat Dodson, Be Safe - Not Sorry. South Atlantic steel galvanizing plant and polluting industry ordnances;
Nancy Holt, Neighbors Opposing Bio-Sludge (NO-BS). Health and environmental risks of land application of sewage sludge;
Linda Moore, Watchdogs in the Southeast (WISE). Neighborhoods united to stop an asphalt plant;
Mike Holland, Coalition for Environmental Responsibility & Education through Synergy (CERES). Protecting & preserving the quality of life in the Haw River Valley.

And more.…for an afternoon of discussion, activism, music, and picnicking at the beautiful River Landing Inn on the Haw River. The Inn will offer rooms at a 10% discount for the event. For more information contact Sue Dayton/BREDL: sdayton@swcp.com.

Children are not just small adults

2007-08-10T19:21:00.000-04:00

From today's Rachel Democracy and Health News

Childhood Growth Stages Determine What Harm Pollution Does

Geneva, Switzerland -- An increased risk of cancer, heart and lung
disease in adults can result from exposures to certain environmental
chemicals during childhood, the World Health Organization said today.
This finding is part of the first report ever issued by the agency
focusing on children's special susceptibility to harmful chemical
exposures at different stages of their growth.

Air and water contaminants, pesticides in food, lead in soil, as well
many other environmental threats which alter the delicate organism of
a growing child may cause or worsen disease and induce developmental
problems, said the World Health Organization, WHO, releasing the
report at its Geneva headquarters.

The peer-reviewed report highlights the fact that in children, the
stage in their development when exposure to a threat occurs may be
just as important as the magnitude of the exposure.

"Children are not just small adults," said Dr. Terri Damstra, team
leader for WHO's Interregional Research Unit. "Children are especially
vulnerable and respond differently from adults when exposed to
environmental factors -- and this response may differ according to the
different periods of development they are going through."

"For example, their lungs are not fully developed at birth, or even at
the age of eight, and lung maturation may be altered by air pollutants
that induce acute respiratory effects in childhood and may be the
origin of chronic respiratory disease later in life," Dr. Damstra
said.

Over 30 percent of the global burden of disease in children can be
attributed to environmental factors, the WHO study found. (more)

Drought

2007-08-08T08:15:00.000-04:00

My garden is dying. I have been watering a few select plants, mostly shrubs that were planted this year so that their roots systems are still vulnerable. This morning I actually dug up a few that are at deaths door and put them in containers so that I can water them. And we're only in a moderate drought? But how many years in a row is this?

Now on top of the drought, we have the excessive heat with the associated air quality advisories. We need a tropical storm!

Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem

2007-08-06T11:26:00.000-04:00

This is one of the best examples of systems dynamics that I have seen in a good long while. We have to stop looking for fixes for one problem without analyzing the consequences that fix might have on other aspects of life.

******************************************

http://www.agweekly.com/articles/2007/04/01/news/opinion/opin81.txt

Corn Can’t Solve Our Problem

By David Tilman and Jason Hill, Special to The Washington Post

The world has come full circle. A century ago our first transportation biofuels — the hay and oats fed to our horses — were replaced by gasoline. Today, ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans have begun edging out gasoline and diesel.

This has been hailed as an overwhelmingly positive development that will help us reduce the threat of climate change and ease our dependence on foreign oil. In political circles, ethanol is the flavor of the day, and presidential candidates have been cycling through Iowa extolling its benefits. Lost in the ethanol-induced euphoria, however, is the fact that three of our most fundamental needs — food, energy, and a livable and sustainable environment — are now in direct conflict. Moreover, our recent analyses of the full costs and benefits of various biofuels, performed at the University of Minnesota, present a markedly different and more nuanced picture than has been heard on the campaign trail.

Some biofuels, if properly produced, do have the potential to provide climate-friendly energy, but where and how can we grow them? Our most fertile lands are already dedicated to food production. As demand for both food and energy increases, competition for fertile lands could raise food prices enough to drive the poorer third of the globe into malnourishment. The destruction of rainforests and other ecosystems to make new farmland would threaten the continued existence of countless animal and plant species and would increase the amount of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Finding and implementing solutions to the food, fuel and environment conflict is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. But solutions will be neither adopted nor sought until we understand the interlinked problems we face. (see full article for the rest of the article)

Honey's New Furrever Home

2007-08-05T19:22:00.000-04:00

Honey Boy was officially adopted today by a wonderful woman named Joanna (she wants a lap cat!) and her other cat Lacey. He chastised me all the over to Raleigh but when we got to Joanna's he lost all his bravado. Lacey came up to the carrier and immediately began rubbing up against it in welcome. So we let Honey (now Chester!) out and he took off exploring. Lacey followed him around, occasionally hissing to establish her dominance, but there were no problems other than Honey's shyness. He ended up hiding under the bed. I took him some treats, which he ate, but he wouldn't come out. So the last time I saw the boy, he was cowering in the dark. Not the way I wanted the introduction to go.

So the sweet boy is gone. Joanna has promised to feed him wet food and has extended an open invitation to visit. Lucy is once again an only cat, much to her pleasure. And while I will not miss his 5:00 am wake up calls, I will miss his very loud purring, the way he liked to hold hands, and his willingness to be picked up and hugged anytime I wanted. I hope he is very happy with his new family.

Saturday, August 11. Joanna called to say she was totally in love with my Sweet Honey and that he has a home furrever!

Carrying Capacity

2007-08-04T13:46:00.000-04:00

Carrying capacity can be defined as the "maximum number of organisms that can use a given area of habitat without degrading the habitat and without causing social stresses that result in the population being reduced." Overpopulation is the result of exceeding carrying capacity. In a local environment, such as Orange County, how do we determine carrying capacity?

Apparently many of our local officials, those who make land use policies, believe that as long as we are building inside the urban services boundary, there is no problem with carrying capacity. They believe that if we have strict requirements for open space and stormwater management with investment in public art and transit that we can proceed with total build out. Does carrying capacity relate only to land use? What about resources, such as water and sewer, air quality, or waste management?

The county's comprehensive plan has a goal of “Less solid waste per capita with cost effective and environmentally responsible disposal and management.” Using a normalization factor, such as per capita, is a good start at informing growth management from a real on-the-ground approach over the theoretical approach that has been dominating the conversation in the past several years. But per capita doesn't tell the entire story. We also need to know the growth projections being used by the planners. We can reduce per capita trash consumption while still growing our total volume produced. Is it acceptable to reduce per capita trash production while increasing total volume given the costs we will be incurring from shipping our trash out of county as of 2011? Is affordability part of carrying capacity?

I believe there are signals, the unaffordability of our housing, our failed landfill siting exercises, our persistent school funding issues, and growing stormwater problems, that should be interpreted as threats continued growth imposes on our natural environment and quality of life. The precautionary principle says that despite the lack of cause and effect evidence, we should still proactively engage in measures to protect the environment and social structures of the community. "According to the precautionary principle, precautionary action should be undertaken when there are credible threats of harm, despite residual scientific uncertainty about cause and effect relationships."

The assumption used by most elected officials, the Village Project and others is that growth is inevitable. Some embrace it; others don't. But discussion around growth seem to always come down to a choice between urban density and sprawl. I hope the upcoming election will bring this false dichotomy into a serious political discussion. Do we proceed with building out southern Orange County or do we recognize that some activities associated with growth "may cause serious, irreparable, or widespread harm and that [we] have a responsibility to prevent harm and to preserve the natural foundations of life, now and into the future."

Honey Boy

2007-07-29T16:33:00.001-04:00

Honey Boy came to me as a Second Chance foster cat on December 16, 2007 (Saturday)-. He was diabetic and overweight, he wouldn't bathe himself, and he stank. His first glucose test was 441. Not a healthy 4 year old boy. All he wanted to do was sit on my lap.

I didn't bother with transitioning him from the dry food garbage he had been fed at the shelter; started him on Wellness the night that he got here and he showed no hesitation in eating it (or demand more at 5:00 am the next morning!). High blood sugar was his only symptom of diabetes. By Monday evening, his glucose was down to 286 on diet alone, but it was back up in the 400s by that evening. I started him on 1/2 unit of Humulin N (the insulin provided by Second Chance) the evening of 12/19/06. He was too low to shoot that next morning (235) since I didn't have any data to show how low he went the night before and I wasn't going to be home to monitor. That night, he was 286 so he got another 1/2 unit.

12/16/06
arrives from rescue shelter, starts Wellness diet--ate it no problem, so no transition period

12/17/06
given remaining antibiotic and deworming medicine--stressful. Decided to postpone ear poke until evening to increase likely of a non-stress reading. Ate the Wellness with gusto but has diarrhea. Not sure if it's from the dewormer, diet change or stress.

First glucose test....441 (499 at the vets at end of November)

12/18/06
Second glucose test 286

12/19/06
pm ps......421....1/2 unit NPH (first insulin)
+3.5.......161

12/20/06
am ps......235 (no insulin because I didn't know enough about how he responds and wasn't going to be around)
pm ps......283....1/2 unit NPH
+4....123

12/21/06
am ps....286....1/2 units NPH
+14......129 (no insulin)

12/22/06
am ps.....262...1/2 unit NPH
pm ps.....213 (before dinner)
+15.......157 (no insulin)

12/23/06
am ps.....fed, no test, no shot--dealing with Lucy's inappetance
+15.......157
+38.......134

12/24/06
+48.......155... 1 drop (about 1/10 of a unit) NPH
+2.5......66
+8........143 (food)
+10.5.....129

12/25/06
never over 140

12/26/06
+54.......140

12/27/07
+65.......122

Honey got exactly 4 injections of 1/2 unit each before he went into remission. Was he really diabetic? I don't think so. He was first taken to Second Chance when he was 2 years old after his family moved out of town and left him behind (declawed but not neutered!). He was adopted with another Second Chance cat and spent almost 2 years in that home before they returned him with diabetes. There's no way to know what caused the high glucose levels, but my experience with him has solidified my belief in a good diet and a little insulin to start off.

Within a month, he was off insulin. At that point I started urging him to bathe himself (I had been wiping his butt for him and was sick of it). So I starting using a warm washcloth to wipe down all of his fur. He liked it and was very cooperative, but it wasn't a strong enough hint. So I started getting the washclothe very wet so that he was dripping. He didn't like that at all, and had to immediately start licking himself dry. We only had to do that a couple of times and voila--a self-cleaning kitty!

Now it's July 2007 and he's lost a couple of pounds and looks great. He plays, his fur is super soft, and his glucose levels are below 70 anytime I remember to check him. On 7/15/07 he had a date with a very nice lady from Raleigh. She was looking for a declawed cat above the age of a kitten. She had just adopted a 7 year old declaw from the Wake Humane Society and wanted a companion for her (she likes other cats). The lady's adult daughter lives here in Chapel Hill, so I invited here to meet Honey instead of taking him to Second Chance (he is NOT a cooperative traveler). They hit it off fabulously. Honey purred very loudly as usual and showed off him cute play moves. He even let me put a ribbon around his neck to help him look extra handsome. I got the call today that she is filling out his adoption papers next Sunday. I will take him to her house that afternoon.

Lucy will be thrilled; the fights have been escalating. Although I will miss him, he's going to the perfect situation. A bean who wants a lap cat and another cat who likes cats. And they lived happily ever after......

How N.C. mistreats its beaches

2007-07-27T09:12:00.000-04:00

This isn't really a local issue, and it's probably a copyright violation to copy the article here. But I want to preserve this article as it gets to the same problems the Smith Level Road task force has encountered with DOT. "Engineering" approaches to beach management and road management arrive at different ends than resource management approaches. With apologies to all my engineering friends, we need to stop letting engineers make these management decisions.

Article published Jul 22, 2007
Pilkey: How N.C. mistreats its beaches

At a recent international conference in Australia, I met a South African coastal management official from Capetown who excitedly reported the outcome of a move by his government. In December 2001, recreational driving on beaches was halted throughout South Africa. It proved to be a wise environmental decision.

Almost immediately after the ban, surveys indicated that the numbers of a variety of beach nesting and beach feeding birds increased. Critters living in the beach sand also recovered quickly, and surf zone fishing seemed to be improving in tandem with the recovery of the near-shore ecosystem.

But what excited this young man the most was the return of the leopards. Tracks began to appear on some remote beaches. Finally, a beach hiker reported seeing one of these shy creatures bounding along the swash line.

North Carolina has every reason to be envious of this beach success story at the far-away southern tip of Africa. Here we seem to be going in the opposite direction.

We have grown to accept our beaches as engineering projects not much different from highways. Driving is allowed on many North Carolina beaches, including the Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores. Even on wild Shackleford Bank, the park service sends a four-wheeler daily up and down the beach to "check things out."

Politicians argue back and forth about funding and about how much sand to use in nourishment projects without a thought about the devastating impact of pumping in new sand on the fauna and flora. The loss of the beach critters is a blow to birds and offshore fish alike.

Bulldozing of sand from the lower to the upper beach, also a death-dealing process to the beach ecosystem, is routinely done in many communities, including those on Topsail Island, Bogue Banks, Holden Beach, Nags Head and Kitty Hawk.

Beach-raking carried out frequently in Myrtle Beach and Virginia Beach and occasionally in a number of smaller North Carolina communities, such as Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach, is as deadly a killer as bulldozing.

Also, a number of North Carolina communities inexplicably don't clean up their beaches as houses and roads collapse into the retreating shorelines. Asphalt chunks abound on Ocean Isle as they do elsewhere on the Outer Banks.

Hundreds of sand bag seawalls line the beaches. Some, such as those in South Nags Head, extend to the mid-tide line.

There is some good news on the sandbag front. The N.C. Coastal Resources Commission has begun taking steps toward removing them. Time will tell if the CRC can withstand a storm of protests.

But the biggest travesty to beaches in North Carolina is our beach nourishment program. We have put more poor quality material on beaches than any other East Coast state. Fist-sized cobbles abound on Oak Island. Sharp shell gravel is found in the intertidal zone of portions of Pine Knoll Shores and Emerald Isle. Hardened mud chunks crop out in Atlantic Beach, and construction debris is found on Holden Beach.

Why do we treat our beaches with such contempt? The primary reason is the political power of beach front property owners anxious to preserve their property.

The reason we have bad beach nourishment material is an ineffective state agency that manages our beaches and an inept federal agency -- the Wilmington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- which has approved all the bad quality beach nourishment projects.

Local governments, with their tiny number of year-round voter-residents, usually don't help much with their focus on development.

The state of North Carolina is about to come up with a new beach and inlet management plan. Let's hope it doesn't accept the status quo that our beaches are simply engineering projects to keep a wealthy few happy.

Let's hope that the consultant group will recognize the treasured, even sacred nature of North Carolinas beaches.

Let's hope the plan will take the long view: that it will recognize that the sea level is rising and that it will work to preserve the beaches for our great-grandchildren.

Orrin Pilkey is director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Duke University.

Copyright © 2007
The News & Record
and Landmark Communications, Inc.

Lady Bird Johnson, 1912 - 2007

2007-07-12T09:08:00.000-04:00

Favorite quotes from Lady Bird Johnson

“My heart found its home long ago in the beauty, mystery, order and disorder of the flowering earth.”

“Some may wonder why I chose wildflowers when there are hunger and unemployment and the big bomb in the world. Well, I, for one, think we will survive, and I hope that along the way we can keep alive our experience with the flowering earth. For the bounty of nature is also one of the deep needs of man.”

“As I look back across a span of more than seven decades, I’m grateful for the joy that nature has given me and for the lifetime of experiences that led me to believe that I might repay a part of the debt I’ve incurred for beauty enjoyed.”

The Heart of the Problem

2007-07-11T17:58:00.000-04:00

Climate Change: The Heart of The Problem
by Elizabeth Sawin

"Acting close[r] to the heart of the problem recognizes the interconnection of problems and increases the odds that the effort applied solves multiple problems simultaneously.

Excessive CO2 production may be closer to the heart of things, but it’s not THE heart, of course. There are deeper reasons, the reasons that cause us to produce so much greenhouse gas pollution in the first place.

If moving one step closer to the heart of things - moving from the symptom of rising temperature to its cause, CO2 pollution - produces the ability to solve multiple problems with a single solution, then what might be the power of reaching even deeper - into consumerism, into our sense that the Earth is ours to dominate, into the assumptions of the of the industrial growth society?

Go deep enough, find ways to act that are deep enough, and we might find ourselves solving not just warming and ocean acidification, but also mercury pollution and toxics build-up and topsoil loss. We might find choices that could begin to heal both the wounds of the Earth and the wounds we impose on each other - wounds like poverty, oppression, violence, and despair.

Getting to such depths, acknowledging what we find there, and figuring out what to do about what we find won’t be easy. But I believe that this is the direction that climate change and all the other tangled challenges of this moment in time are pointing us towards."

Community Sustainability

2007-05-06T14:00:00.000-04:00

Mark Marcoplos makes two important points on OrangePolitics. "The fundamental issue to me is that the community should have a realistic understanding of the truth about how sustainable we are as a community" and "We certainly should reward baby steps toward sustainability."

While I value the environmental leadership shown by Mark and others, sustainability is not about environmental issues alone. We've made great strides forward in environmental protections thanks to our many local activists, but we've done so at the cost of economic and social sustainability. Two excellent articles by the local press last weekend highlight my concerns about how, we as a community, are approaching sustainability: OWASA, Town Weigh Water Issues and Mark Peters on school budgets.

How much is OWASA service going up this year? Yes, I know--higher rates will reduce demand and promote conservation. And the inverted block pricing structure will make some attempt to accommodate low income households. But the capital improvement budget for expanding the wastewater treatment plant to meet unconstrained population growth should not be ignored. Smart growth is protecting open space, but by concentrating growth inside the OWASA service area it’s adding to the inflationary cost of living here.

I support the concept of the rural buffer, but I also believe that all theories should be monitored to assure that they are accomplishing the intended goal. In this case, we may be protecting our farmland and open space at the expense of the affordability of our urban spaces. What expense is acceptable and when do we need to rethink the approach, if not the theory? Where is the data needed for lawmakers and the public to assess the continued efficacy of the rural buffer?

As for the schools, the current growth rates in this community are simply outpacing the funding mechanisms. Passing infrastructure charges off on developers raises the cost of housing; we all know developers are not going to take the financial hit inherent in current land use policies--despite the honorable intent of those policies. If we were funding all infrastructure, such as schools and other government services, on the same cost of service principle used by OWASA, the tax rate would be enormous but at least it would be more visible than it has been over the past many years.

Looking at our community demographics and the cost of living, I believe our local economy is trapped in a positive feedback loop. "A positive feedback loop is self-reinforcing. The more it works, the more it gains power to work some more....Positive feedback loops drive growth, explosion, erosion, and collapse in systems. A system with an unchecked positive loop ultimately will destroy itself." The more we do to protect the environment, the more expensive it becomes to live in this community. Positive feedback loops are not sustainable, even when they are caused by environmentally sustainable policies. That's why true sustainability addresses the environment, the society, and the economy.

Although I value the contributions of local environmental activists, I think it's time to look at something other than environmental policies for determining our community sustainability quotient. Only then will we have a "realistic understanding of the truth about how sustainable we are as a community."

Our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually. Growth no longer makes most people wealthier, but instead generates inequality and insecurity. Growth is bumping up against physical limits so profound—like climate change and peak oil—that trying to keep expanding the economy may be not just impossible but also dangerous. And perhaps most surprisingly, growth no longer makes us happier.

--Bill McKibben, Reversal of Fortune

Sometimes Less is More....unfortunately

2007-05-01T10:01:00.000-04:00

From Environmental Health News

Does 'the dose make the poison?'
Extensive results challenge a core assumption in toxicology

The "dose makes the poison" is a common adage in toxicology. It implies that larger doses have greater effects than smaller doses. That makes common sense and it is the core assumption underpinning all regulatory testing. When "the dose makes the poison," toxicologists can safely assume that high dose tests will reveal health problems that low dose exposures might cause. High dose tests are desirable because, the logic goes, they not only will reveal low dose effects, they will do so faster and with greater reliability. Greater reliability and speed also mean less cost.

The trouble is, some pollutants, drugs and natural substances don't adhere to this logic, as can be seen in the photograph above. Instead, they cause different effects at different levels, including impacts at low levels that do not occur at high doses. Sometimes the effects can even be precisely the opposite at high vs. low. Because all regulatory testing has been designed assuming that "the dose makes the poison," it is highly likely to have missed low dose effects, and led to health standards that are too weak. (read more)

Water treatment removes some toxins and some pharmaceutical residues, including hormones. But it doesn't get it all. Those 'small doses' are passed along through waterways impacting fish, frogs, and other wildlife, as well as the community downstream. Current water testing doesn't/can't measure the small doses......

Safe Soap and Cosmetics

2007-04-21T12:46:00.000-04:00

The evidence of pharmaceutical and personal care products degradation of our water resources continues to grow. From levels of synethic musk being found in breast milk to the potential links to cancer and developmental delays from flame retardants to the inadequacy of laboratory testing to predict the impact on fish and wildlife, chemicals are impacting health in unanticipated ways.

Thanks to Mother Earth News for compiling a list of chemical-free cosmetics and personal care resources. Being environmentally responsible should not have to mean losing one's vanity!

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

The Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep database

The FDA's Voluntary Cosmetic Registration Program

Corporate Greed Takes Root at the US Postal Service

2007-04-16T20:28:00.000-04:00

Quoted from an email from Robert McChesney (Freepress.net)

"The news media are covering the tragic murders in Virginia this morning, and as they do an extraordinarily significant story is slipping through the cracks.

On very rare occasions I send a message to everyone in my email address book on an issue that I find of staggering importance and urgency. (My address book includes pretty much everyone who emails me in one form or another, and I apologize if you get this message more than once.) This is one of those times.

There is a major crisis in our media taking place right now; it is getting almost no attention and unless we act very soon the consequences for our society could well be disastrous. And it will only take place because it is being done without any public awareness or participation; it goes directly against the very foundations of freedom of the press in the entirety of American history.

The U.S. Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its rates for magazines, such that smaller periodicals will be hit with a much much larger increase than the largest magazines.

Because the Post Office is a monopoly, and because magazines must use it, the postal rates always have been skewed to make it cheaper for smaller publications to get launched and to survive. The whole idea has been to use the postal rates to keep publishing as competitive and wide open as possible. This bedrock principle was put in place by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. They considered it mandatory to create the press system, the Fourth Estate necessary for self-government.

It was postal policy that converted the free press clause in the First Amendment from an abstract principle into a living breathing reality for Americans. And it has served that role throughout our history.

What the Post Office is now proposing goes directly against 215 years of postal policy. The Post Office is in the process of implementing a radical reformulation of its mailing rates for magazines. Under the plan, smaller periodicals will be hit with a much larger increase than the big magazines, as much as 30 percent. Some of the largest circulation magazines will face hikes of less than 10 percent.

The new rates, which go into effect on July 15, were developed with no public involvement or congressional oversight, and the increased costs could damage hundreds, even thousands, of smaller publications, possibly putting many out of business. This includes nearly every political journal in the nation. These are the magazines that often provide the most original journalism and analysis. These are the magazines that provide much of the content on Common Dreams. We desperately need them.

What the Post Office is planning to do now, in the dark of night, is implement a rate structure that gives the best prices to the biggest publishers, hence letting them lock in their market position and lessen the threat of any new competition. The new rates could make it almost impossible to launch a new magazine, unless it is spawned by a huge conglomerate.

Not surprisingly, the new scheme was drafted by Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the nation. All evidence available suggests the bureaucrats responsible have never considered the implications of their draconian reforms for small and independent publishers, or for citizens who depend upon a free press.

The corruption and sleaziness of this process is difficult to exaggerate. As one lawyer who works for a large magazine publisher admits, “It takes a publishing company several hundred thousand dollars to even participate in these rate cases. Some large corporations spend millions to influence these rates.” Little guys, and the general public who depend upon these magazines, are not at the table when the deal is being made.

The genius of the postal rate structure over the past 215 years was that it did not favor a particular viewpoint; it simply made it easier for smaller magazines to be launched and to survive. That is why the publications opposing the secretive Post Office rate hikes cross the political spectrum. This is not a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it is a democracy issue. And it is about having competitive media markets that benefit all Americans. This reform will have disastrous effects for small and mid-sized publications, be they on politics, music, sports or gardening.

This process was conducted with such little publicity and pitched only at the dominant players that we only learned about it a few weeks ago and it is very late in the game. But there is something you can do. Please go to http://www.stoppostalratehikes.com and sign the letter to the Postal Board protesting the new rate system and demanding a congressional hearing before any radical changes are made. The deadline for comments is April 23.

I know many of you are connected to publications that go through the mail, or libraries and bookstores that pay for subscriptions to magazines and periodicals. If you fall in these categories, it is imperative you get everyone connected to your magazine or operation to go to http://www.stoppostalratehikes.com.

We do not have a moment to lose. If everyone who reads this email responds at http://www.stoppostalratehikes.com, and then sends it along to their friends urging them to do the same, we can win. If there is one thing we have learned at Free Press over the past few years, it is that if enough people raise hell, we can force politicians to do the right thing. This is a time for serious hell-raising. And to my friends from outside the United States, I apologize for cluttering your inbox. If you read this far, we can use your moral support.

From the bottom of my heart, thanks.

Robert W. McChesney
(End quote)

Honest Dialogue about Race, Diversity, and Privilege

2007-04-04T08:22:00.000-04:00

Robert Jensen, an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, will will speak tonight on “The Reality of Race, Gender, and Class Privilege: Beyond the Politics of Diversity” from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Southern Human Services Center on Homestead Road. According to the Chapel Hill News, this is to be a "honest dialogue about race, diversity and privilege." How unfortunate that it has received so little publicity.

A couple of references on Dr. Jensen's work on racism:
White Privilege Shapes the U.S.
Why White People are Afraid

Environmental Justice

2007-04-01T11:26:00.000-04:00

There has been a lot of talk about environmental racism and justice as part of the landfill/transfer station discussions in Orange County. At yesterday's SURGE conference, I attended the tail end of a session with the Environmental Justice Network and learned that they have been invited into Orange County to address both the landfill concerns and the Cane Creek are sludge battle with Alamance County and OWASA.

According to the EJN, environmental justice

Demands that public policy decisions be based on mutual respect and justice for all people, free from any form of discrimination or bias.
Calls for universal protection from dangerous practices that threaten the fundamental right to clear air, land, water, and food.
Demands that those responsible for the production of dangerous substances be responsible for safely protecting the environment.
Insists that community members participate as equal partners at every level of decision making that might affect their health
Recognizes the right of all workers to a safe and healthy environmental without being forced to choose between an unsafe job and unemployment.

Using these principles, the original siting of the landfill was clearly an environmental injustice. And the process for selecting a site for the transfer station violated the principle of participatory decision making. As with so many other controversial issues in this community, such as Carrboro's annexation and Chapel Hill's Lot 5, our elected officials continue to execute their official functions as if we were living in the early 20th century, when a more paternal role of government was the norm. But this is an educated and activist community. Our local governments need help in learning to seek out the contributions of citizens with multiple perspectives. If Rogers Road residents had been brought into the decision making process or if the county had pursued a 21st century town meeting prior to making their decision, we might be able to move forward. Instead, I fear that we will live the consequences of the faulty process for siting the transfer station for many years, just as Carrboro will continue to pay the price of the faulty annexation process. Process matters.

Gangs

2007-03-27T22:12:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, the Chapel Hill Police Department, in conjunction with the Sunrise Rotary Club, the YMCA, and East Chapel Hill High School sponsored a community workshop entitled Gang Involvement and Prevention: Help Your Children Make the Right Choice. Although there were only 20-25 non-police participants, the workshop was highly informative and charged us all to help bring awareness to the community. Unfortunately, there was a big disconnect between the materials they gave us and the ones they used in the presentation. My notes are disjointed but I'll try and get down the important facts and then clean up the writing and structure later on.

A gang is defined as a group of 3 or more individuals who share a common dress code, symbols, signals all toward a common purpose. Five (5) levels of gang involvement were given:

Great Pretender: someone who behaves and dresses in the manner of a gang member.
The Actor: someone who has casual association with a gang
American Idol (Gonna Be, Associate): someone who knows and likes gang members
The Believer: someone who has been formally accepted as an entry level gang member
Hard Core: someone who has made a total commitment to a gang

Gangs provide structure and a feeling of connectedness. Youth who do not have strong families or who are socially ostracized are at greatest risk. But the majority of gang members are not juveniles.

There are two (2) macro gangs in the US from which all others have evolved: Folk Nation and People's Nation. The Crips and Bloods are offshoots of these two. Crips, who identify with a 6-pointed crown, pitch forks, winged hearts, and the color blue are associated with Folk Nation. Bloods use the 5-pointed crown and the color red come from People's Nation.

There are also three (3) hispanic/Latino gangs: Sureno 13, Norteno-14, and MS-13. MS-13 is from El Salvador and evolved from paramilitary actions there. North Carolina has the 4th largest concentration of MS-13 activity in the US.

In Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 8 hybrid gangs have been identified. These groups are not associated with the macro gangs, but they are highly susceptible to recruitment. Identifying these groups and their members and working with them to promote alternative lifestyles is imperative.

Graffiti is the 'newspaper' of gangs. Symbology is used to establish territory, to brag, and to diss others. When you see graffiti, the police would like for you to take a picture of it and then give them the picture and the location. It is important that graffiti be erased as quickly as possible. In Chapel Hill, the police will offer to paint over it themselves if property owners can't or won't. They have the authority to remove the graffiti even if the property owner objects. No one to date has objected.

In Carrboro, the police do not have that same authority. They can ask and encourage a property owner to remove graffiti, but that's the extent of their power. During the January point in time count, we noted two private locations with gang graffiti. The graffiti is still present at both sites, and has multiplied several times over at one site. I spoke with the town manager, his assistant and the town attorney tonight about drafting a policy/ordinance that would give the police more authority. Apparently Mike Brough's office recently drafted an ordinance for the town of Tarrboro so hopefully Carrboro can use that to their advantage and move quickly. In the meantime, they have created an online Graffiti Report Form.

The workshop concluded with two (2) suggestions for what to do:

Know the signs; educate yourself, your family, friends, and co-workers. Don't panic.
Encourage community involvement to develop a proactive response to this thread. Mentoring programs have been highly successful in Jacksonville Florida. In our community, the Orange County Sheriff's Department has their GREAT program that includes a large outreach effort.

Affordability for Green Housing

2007-03-20T12:36:00.000-04:00

According to Ram Development and the developers of Greenbridge, green building can not be done affordably. If we want energy efficiency and green building, we must settle for housing that drives the affordability of the community the rest of the way through the roof.

And yet in Longmont CO, Solar Village Prospect is a multifamily development being designed to range in price from $198,000 and $370,000 for units of 800-1,373 square feet. Alex Platt, co-founder of Solar Village LLC, the developers of Solar Village Prospect is quoted in Solar Today: "There's a perception [by developers] that it's more expensive. The difference for us is that our whole thought on this was from the get-go--before we even looked at the land--this was going to be a green, sustainable project. So [we thought] how do we start now and look at every single aspect as we go and that's what's been able to bring the cost point down."

Finally....someone who understands the difference between building a faddish 'green' building and one that is truly sustainable.

This is just one of many affordable green projects I've read about lately.

Recycling Unused Medications

2007-03-20T12:11:00.000-04:00

From the Caspar Star Tribune

Recycling Unused Medications

By MEGAN MOORE
Star-Tribune staff writer

What can a person do with the bottles and bottles of expensive medications once the sick, either by death or through cure, have no more use for them?

Try recycling them. It could save another person's life.

The City of Casper-Natrona County Health Department recently put in an application with the Wyoming Department of Health for the Medication Donation Program. Legislated in 2005, it involves the donation of unused prescription medications and supplies to the various clinics in the state involved, who in turn give them to individuals who either can't afford their medications, don't have health insurance, or who can't afford their copay.

The program should be installed and running in Natrona County by April 16 and will mean that Casper residents no longer have to bear the cost of shipping for their donated medications.

"I'm really excited about the people's response to the program," said Donna Artery, Pharmacist Consultant for the Wyoming Department of Health. "I had someone call from Casper whose father was a cancer patient and she had tons of his unused medication and was willing to pay the cost to ship it to us."

Artery said that while there is no money actually legislated for the cost of mailing, there are many who are willing to pay the cost of shipping to see that the medications get used.

"We're mainly concerned about the high cost medications going to waste. We're very excited about Casper being involved," said Artery who is working with the Natrona County Health Department to get the program started.

Mary Janssen, Director of the Community Nursing Division with the Natrona County Health Department, said the program is voluntary.

"We'll be getting the information out to physicians in the community," Janssen said. Then doctors will be able to send patients who express a need to the health department, where a nurse practitioner will be able to issue the donated medications.

At first, said Janssen, "patients will be limited to whatever we have in stock," noting later that it may take a few months to really build a stockpile of medications.

"Our goal is to try to get it back out," she said, "otherwise it's just such a waste."

Up to a $10 handling fee will be charged for medications dispensed at the Natrona County Health Department.

Janssen and Artery are hopeful for the program's future, and Artery soon hopes to see the program adopted by cities in all four corners of the state.

"Eventually we're hoping to start a statewide Web site where a doctor from anywhere can look on the site to see where the medication is available," Artery said.

Megan Moore can be reached at (307) 266-0532 or megan.moore@casperstartribune.net.

What can be donated

* Prescription medication in its original, unopened and sealed packaging. Or, medication in sealed, singled-dose packaging. Patient names will be removed to protect confidentiality.

* All medications must be donated within expiration dates.

* Over-the-counter medications will be accepted at the discretion of the donation site, depending on available space.

What cannot be donated

* Controlled substances such as painkillers and medications with high abuse potential

* Injectables

* Medications that require refrigeration

* Loose pills

How to dispose of medication that cannot be donated

* Keep the medication in its original container, since labels may contain safety information and caps are typically childproof. Scratch out or cover patient's name with permanent marker.

* Modify the contents to discourage consumption. Add a small amount of water to pills or capsules to at least partially dissolve them; add salt, flour, charcoal, or a nontoxic powdered spice such as turmeric or mustard to liquid medications to discourage ingestion; and wrap blister packs containing pills in multiple layers of duct tape.

* Seal and conceal. Tape container lids shut and place in a nontransparent bag or container to ensure the contents cannot be seen.

* Discard the container in your garbage can. Do not place in the recycling bin or conceal medicines in food -- they could be inadvertently consumed by wildlife scavengers.

* Do not flush medications.

US Fish and Wildlife Speaks Up on Pharmaceutical Disposal

2007-03-19T15:12:00.000-04:00

IMPROPER DISPOSAL OF UNUSED MEDICATION SPARKS CREATION OF NEW AWARENESS PROGRAM
Initiative to Focus on Environmental and Public Health Impacts of Improper Disposal

CONTACTS:
Joshua Winchell, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
202 219 7499; Joshua_Winchell@fws.gov

Erica Jefferson, American Pharmacists Association 202-429-7537; ejefferson@aphanet.org

ATLANTA, GA - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) have joined forces to help protect our nation's fish and aquatic resources from improper disposal of medication. Officials from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) signed a formal agreement today outlining how they will work cooperatively to build consumer awareness of the hazards posed by the improper disposal of unused and expired medications into the nation's waterways. As part of the effort - dubbed "SMARxT DISPOSAL" - the USFWS and the APhA will work to publicize the potential environmental and health impacts of unused medications when they are flushed into our nation's sewer systems.

"Medications that are flushed down the toilet or thrown straight into the garbage can and do find their way into our nation's waterways every day. Those drugs are present in water that supports many species of fish and other wildlife," said H. Dale Hall, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We are concerned about reports of fish abnormalities possibly caused by improperly disposed prescription medications. That's why we are excited about this new partnership with the Association and its ability to educate the public about simple things they can do to clean up our waters and help prevent fish, and people, from inadvertent exposure to prescription medication."

This new initiative was unveiled at APhA's annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, one of the largest gatherings of pharmacy professionals and health services providers in the country.

"Medications play a vital role in our society," added Dr. John A. Gans, Executive Vice President and CEO of APhA. "Consumers - and pharmacists - should be aware that it is important to take that extra step to protect our families and our natural resources, including our many waterways, fish and other aquatic organisms."

The consumer outreach campaign will feature educational brochures and a website with information for both consumers and medical professionals. There will also be promotional events held in several cities across the country designed to generate greater awareness of the importance of proper medication disposal and the harmful effects it can have on the environment and public health. The initiative will begin with a pilot program in selected U.S. markets later this year and expanded in 2008.

APhA Provides Guidance on Proper Disposal of Unused Medications

2007-03-19T12:04:00.000-04:00

http://www.drugnewswire/13130/

February 19, 2007 - 6:44 AM

By DrugNewswire

Use With Respect and Discard with Care

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to a growing concern about the improper disposal of unused or expired medications and the recent media coverage about medication misuse, the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) recommends three simple steps that consumers should take to protect their families, community, and the environment:

1. DO NOT FLUSH unused medications.

Consumers were once advised to flush their expired or unused medications; however, recent environmental impact studies report that this could be having an adverse impact on the environment. While the rule of thumb is not to flush, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined that certain medications should be flushed due to their abuse potential. Read the instructions on your medication and talk to your pharmacist.

2. When tossing unused medications, protect children and pets from the potentially negative effects.

APhA recommends that consumers:

Crush solid medications or dissolve in water (this applies for liquid medications as well) and mix with kitty litter or a solid kitchen substance, then place in a sealed plastic bag to reduce the risk of poisoning children and/or pets before tossing in the trash.
Remove and destroy ALL identifying personal information (prescription label) from the medication container.
Check for approved state and local collection programs or with area hazardous waste facilities. In certain states, you may be able to take your unused medications to your community pharmacy.

3. Talk To Your Pharmacist.

Research shows that pharmacists are one of the most accessible healthcare professionals. As the medication experts on the healthcare team, pharmacists are available to guide you on how to properly dispose of your unused medications.

Medications play an essential role in our society, but medications are powerful. They should be used with respect and discarded with care. Following these simple guidelines can help protect your family and community, prevent the illegal diversion of unused medications, and minimize a potential negative impact on the environment.

Orange County Trash

2007-03-18T18:55:00.000-04:00

"There's a real predilection in people who live in municipal areas to say put it out in the country. It's somebody else's neighborhood. On the OWASA board, I called it urban imperialism: "It's immoral to ship waste to another landfill so let's build our own, but not in Chapel Hill and not in Carrboro." Barry Jacobs, vice chair of the Orange County Commissioners, during a discussion on siting garbage transfer station. (from Herald Sun Verbatim column)

Global Challenges, Local Solutions

2007-03-18T18:30:00.000-04:00

Press Release from Michael Lanier:

Local filmmaker Jim McQuaid screens his new film “After the Peak” – a provocative look at the world of oil scarcity set in Orange County in the near future -- followed by a public meeting about our energy future and how we can address these challenges locally.

CARRBORO – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: A group of concerned citizens, sponsored by local organizations, will hold a public meeting on April 5^th at 7pm at the Century Center on South Greensboro Street in downtown Carrboro to address our energy future with a focus on local solutions to global problems.

The organizers include Mike Lanier, Stephen Hren, Tom Henkel, Alison Carpenter, Blair Pollock, Jim McQuaid, Dave Stancil and Sally Goerner. Sponsors include NC Cooperative Extension, NC Powerdown, SURGE, The Chapel Hill Solar Roofs Committee, The Alliance for Community Economics, The Orange County Economic Development Commission, The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, and The Village Project.

The program will open with the premiere of McQuaid’s half-hour film After the Peak reporting on life in Orange County as people and institutions cope with $10 a gallon gasoline. The film is a natural springboard for community conversations on how to respond to the challenges facing us as oil becomes scarcer and more expensive. Following the film, three speakers will give short presentations on ideas for local solutions to these global challenges. Those presentations will be followed by audience questions and comments. Local elected officials have been invited to attend to foster community dialogue and action.

The first speaker will be Simon Rich, a thought leader on the interconnection of energy and agriculture. Mr. Rich is a former CEO of Louis Dreyfus Natural Gas and is active in many organizations including the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, The Center for Environmental Farming Systems and Environmental Defense.

Second will be Eric Henry, long associated with a wide variety of local solution issues from bicycling, to land use, to sustainable apparel – apparel production which creates no unwanted chemical or environmental side effects. He produces bio-diesel fuel for a local cooperative and uses solar power at his Burlington plant. His passion is the “triple bottom line” business model and recreating local economies.

The third speaker will be Patrick McDonough, a Board member of The Village Project and a transportation planner. He will speak on how regional and local land use and transportation decisions affect our energy consumption and how future growth patterns can drastically reduce our auto dependence.

The meeting is free and open to all interested members of the public.

CONTACT: Mike Lanier / 919 245-2063 / mlanier@co.orange.nc.us

Pet Food Recall

2007-03-17T11:54:00.000-04:00

60 million containers of pet food recalled

"A major manufacturer of dog and cat food sold under Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger and other store brands recalled 60 million containers of wet pet food Friday after reports of kidney failure and deaths.

An unknown number of cats and dogs suffered kidney failure and about 10 died after eating the affected pet food, Menu Foods said in announcing the North American recall. Product testing has not revealed a link explaining the reported cases of illness and death, the company said."

Menu Foods Press Release
Hills Food Press Release (Hills makes Science Diet)
Proctor and Gamble Press Release (P&G owns Iams and Eukanuba)
Purina Press Release

Acute Kidney Failure (ARF) "is an acute suppression of renal function. The insult causing ARF equally and abruptly disrupts the function of all nephrons without time for compensatory mechanisms which are involved in chronic renal failure to "kick in"." The good news is that ARF is potentially reversible. The symptom to watch for any change in urination. If your pet is urinating less than normal, get to the vet immediately.

Point In Time Comparison, 2005-2007

2007-03-17T09:15:00.000-04:00

Taken from the PIT reports sent to HUD. Not much change over the 3 year period except in the chronically homeless category. I suspect 2006 is bad data, but unfortunately that is the number the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness is using to base their 10-year plan around.

HUD Category	2007	2006	2005
Homeless people staying in temporary shelter:	199	203	-
Homeless people without shelter (i.e. on the streets):	25	34	-
Homeless families:	23	27	59
Homeless people in families (including children):	60	83	-
Homeless children:	35	51	38
Homeless individuals (not in families):	164	154	171
Homeless people with a history of domestic violence:	23	25	48
Chronically homeless people:	71	39	70
Total Counted	224	237	230

Homlessness article from The News of Orange, editorial

2007-03-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

Reprinted by permission from The News of Orange

By CASEY FERRELL
Editor

Homelessness looks very different in Hillsborough and in the rural areas of the county. Unlike in Chapel Hill where the problem is self-evident, with people sleeping on benches and panhandling, the homeless folks in this end of the county walk among us mostly unnoticed.

“It’s a very different population here,” said Hillsborough Planning Director Margaret Hauth. “They’re harder to find, but they’re local families and we’re attached to them.”

Assistant County Manager Gwen Harvey said that the numbers “may be smaller or [the homeless] are less visible, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.

“What we may not see may be equally problematic as what we do see.” At the town government level, not much is offered in terms of social services, including those that help the homeless. Historically, those services are provided at the county level in North Carolina, Hauth said.

Municipalities rarely foray into the fight against homelessness, and for the most part the town of Hillsborough is no different. It would be inaccurate, however, to say the town does nothing. In fact, the Town Board enthusiastically supports local non-profits like Orange Congregations in Mission (OCIM) and Neighbor House of Hillsborough, Inc., that provide services Hillsborough cannot.

The town of Hillsborough allocates some of its annual budget to non-profits and Hauth sees the spending as the town’s way of supporting a mechanism by which it can provide those services, at least indirectly. For example, the town implemented a water assistance program for those who were struggling to pay their bills. Not only did the town offer $5,000 seed money for the account, they also send out letters every quarter soliciting donations for the fund. OCIM then distributes the money based on referrals from the Department of Social Services.

But ultimately, the town’s annual financial contributions to area non-profits tend to make up only a fraction of their total operating costs. Consider that Hillsborough can allocate somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 of its annual budget to OCIM, which has an operating budget of $167,000.

SHELTERING THE HOMELESS

If the town is ever to have a homeless shelter, it will be because a non-profit group decides to launch one. “If Neighbor House and OCIM were to come together and give the Town Board a proposal saying this is where we can open our shelter, this is the property; we have this much money through donations and grants, and we need “X” amount of dollars from the town, the board would seriously consider it,” said Hauth.

A site in Fairview was proposed in November, 2004 by Neighbor House, a local non-profit. But resistance to the location made it clear that finding the right place for the shelter was paramount. No further proposals have been put forth. Hauth said she thinks that homelessness won’t be wiped out in Hillsborough until a shelter is available.

Harvey offers another perspective. "There would need to be evidence of an escalating need,” she said. “And I just don’t know if we’re at that particular stage.”

For the foreseeable future, it appears that the Hillsborough homeless will have to continue trying to get to shelters in Chapel Hill or Durham.

10-YEAR PLAN

The 10-year plan to end homelessness, a work in progress that could be approved by the end of the month, is steered by a committee made up of the who’s who of area politics, social services and businesses and includes commissioners, police chiefs and mayors.

Tara Fikes, the housing and community development coordinator for Orange County, is also on the steering committee and said the situations she sees most in her office are folks that are “doubled and tripled up,” she said. These are people that are living with friends and relatives. Many become homeless due to the fact that once that arrangement ends, they no longer have a place to go.

There are also a variety of substance abuse problems that directly and indirectly prevent people from getting housing.

“It creates all sorts of barriers to their access of housing,” she said.

Criminal backgrounds also cause problems, as do former evictions on credit files. “We see a whole myriad of problems,” she said.

Fikes said the county’s 10-year plan to end homelessness is currently gathering information on best practices used in other counties around the state and country. In fact, Durham and Wake counties have already begun implementing their versions of the 10- year plan.

“We’re targeting the chronically homeless but don’t want to exclude people that may be homeless for a variety of reasons,” Fikes said.

COUNTY SERVICES

The ways that homeless people are targeted for service is compartmentalized at the county government level. “The condition of homelessness has so many contributing factors,” Harvey said. “There’s social, mental and physical factors, as well as societal ones.

“Departments have certain tools to address certain factors. The Department of Social Services has Medicaid and food stamps to help with financial hardship, for instance.”

Harvey said that programs to directly or indirectly address homelessness exist in multiple departments including social services, health, housing and community development and OPC Mental Health. Even the Department on Aging can make an impact by intervening with elderly citizens who might be struggling to keep up with house payments.

“Intervention and prevention programs are better, overall I think, than ones that try to react to the condition of homelessness once it’s already occurred,” Harvey said.

She also said that budget cuts to social services at the state level have left counties in North Carolina struggling to offer the same services, underscoring the difficulty of delivering social services at the local level when such services are not well-funded at the state level.

“The state should be more responsible to the social safety net,” Harvey said.

Homelessness article from The News of Orange, part III

2007-03-16T21:01:00.000-04:00

Reprinted with permission from The News of Orange

By KERI SPRENGER

Staff Writer

The man walked up with some hesitation, but apparently was hungry enough to overcome his momentary discomfort.

Volunteer Steve Lopez stood ready with a plastic bag in one hand and a paper bag in the other.
“Is it just you?” Lopez asked, his breath showing in the sub- freezing air.

The man, burrowed into the hood of his coat, thought for a moment.

“I got a girl next door ... ”

Lopez handed him two meals consisting of chicken noodle soup, a sandwich, green beans, fruit, a snack and a drink.

“Thanks. God bless,” the man said, and started to walk away.

“Hey!” yelled Ronnie Torain. “You want a Bible?”

The man came back.

“Yeah,” he said, and pocketed the book.

Lopez said 84 meals were prepared at First Baptist Church that night. When the line of people was at its end, the volunteers started to pack up the remaining food to take to those they knew needed it but hadn’t made it out to the site.

So it goes at the nightly food drop at Fairview Baptist Church and across town in Daniel Boone Village. The food, provided by various faith groups in Orange and Durham counties, is distributed Monday through Thursday between 6 and 7 p.m. to those who are hungry.

The sharing of food is just one way that faith groups and non- profits are reaching out to the homeless and hungry in Hillsborough, Orange County and across county lines.

Torain, who is the founder and executive director of Neighbor House of Hillsborough, Inc., said in the process of developing the idea of Neighbor House of Hillsborough, he has sometimes seen homeless people that have become complacent with their situations, but not because they aren’t willing to accept help.

“Some have been in a homeless situation so long that they lose all hope of ever becoming self-sufficient again. After they lose hope, then they look at homelessness as a lifestyle,” he said. “Some have expressed that the more they try, the harder it becomes.”

Torain said it is a blessing that volunteers have worked so hard to make the Food For All program a success.

“Anytime you have a vision, and a group of people step up and begin to assist you in the vision, it is really awesome,” he said.

One of those people is Pastor Brooks Graebner of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church.

When the Food For All program was first proposed, Graebner coordinated volunteers from local churches to provide the food, prepare it and deliver it to various sites around Hillsborough.
Although there were some initial concerns about security, safety and where food should be delivered, 15 months after it began, the Food For All program has served more than 17,000 meals in Hillsborough.

“I continue to be a strong supporter of this program and the witness that it makes,” Graebner said.

He said it has been encouraging to see the way different churches have come together and embraced the idea of feeding the hungry as their common purpose. And it’s not just the people being served meals that are benefiting.

A prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi has a line that says, “‘for it is in giving that we receive.’”

Graebner said it is that kind of commitment by volunteers that makes this program work.
“I think it’s proved to be a very durable program,” he said. “It has justified its existence [and] been a source of real, genuine joy and heartfelt satisfaction.”

The process of creating and delivering the meals has been an eye- opener for many involved with the Food For All program.

“It makes the presence of homelessness and hunger real and palpable,” Graebner said.

Homeless situations ‘always changing’

At the Inter-Faith Council in Chapel Hill, executive director Chris Moran says he has seen it all in his 22 years of service to the homeless, the last 12 years as its director.

“You can’t take homelessness and put it in a square,” Moran said, “because the situations are always changing.”

There are those who suddenly find themselves homeless after an unforeseeable incident. Then there are others who are chronically homeless. But in the past few years, the largest number of newly homeless people he sees are women and children.

“My experience is, predominantly the women that are becoming homeless have experienced domestic assault or sexual abuse,” he said.

He has also seen an increase in the number of veterans being served. He said the Veterans Association has many resources available but people are still falling through the cracks.
“Folks aren’t being reached,” he said.

And it’s not just veterans being missed.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn’t recognize homeless families. Therefore, no money is available for families, only single men, single women, or single women with children.

It is Moran’s hope that when the men’s shelter is relocated, it can be closer to the Project HomeStart women’s shelter so families can be closer even though they will still be separated. Once they are settled, they might be able to work their way out of homelessness. Or not.
“It takes a hell of a lot of resources to get out of a situation,” Moran said, adding that there are always more unsheltered people than those that are sheltered.

Tracking, finding homeless a daunting task

Tracking the homeless is a difficult task, Moran said, and can’t be narrowed down to a certain number of people in Hillsborough or the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area. Those who have been in a homeless situation for at least a year are not asked where they are from, Moran said, but there are a number of people at the shelter from the Hillsborough and northern Orange area.
“We serve the homeless from all over the county,” he said.

A recent development for IFC has been the partnering with Housing for New Hope in Durham. This partnership will be key in helping to lower the incidents of chronic homelessness, Moran said.

“We have to remember we can’t just talk about Orange County,” he said. “People cross county lines all the time.”

Governments are starting to recognize that as well. Moran said he was pleased with the Hillsborough Planning Board’s interest in 2005, when they accepted a tour of IFC when trying to craft ordinance language to allow a homeless shelter within town limits.

“They’re trying to find the right way to make this happen,” Moran said. “They were very sensitive and open to suggestions.”

It is that sort of commitment that will be needed for the 10-year plans to work in all the counties, said Stan Holt, the Triangle United Way’s Homelessness Specialist. Holt spent more than 10 years working with the transitional housing program in the city of Durham prior to working with the Triangle United Way.

The United Way’s goal in the project of ending homelessness is to help people in each county work together on sharing ideas. They also help fund each county’s 10-year plan and point out innovative ways that the different counties are tackling the issue.

“Our perspective at the Triangle United Way is that homelessness is a regional problem,” Holt said. “This whole sharing of best practices is crucial to this thing.”

Though each county may implement their 10-year plans differently, the overall goal of each county’s plan will help eliminate chronic homelessness in conjunction with other counties so the homeless people aren’t just moving from one county to the next.

Each county has it’s own uniqueness in politics and services available, and each has its own nuances. But that’s not so much a stumbling block as it is an opportunity.

“I think you can honor [the differences] but still create a collective vision,” Holt said. Part of that is that governments are involved in a way they haven’t been before.

“For the first time in the 10 to 11 years I have been doing this work, governments are at the table” and creating strategies for dealing with homelessness, he said.

“Our goal is that they see the importance of that and invest in those strategies.”

Federally, the recognition is also there, Holt said. While other programs are being cut across the board for federal funding, more money is being invested in eliminating taking care of the homeless.

“Part of it is there’s a greater awareness and understanding,” Holt said.

He believes homelessness can be ended in the sense that there won’t be chronically homeless people. There will always be the need for temporary shelter, he said.

“The challenge has been that people have fallen on the streets and got stuck in that place,” he said.

Some people say the homeless choose to be that way, but after more than 10 years entrenched in the issue, Holt doesn’t believe that.

“It’s not about choosing to be homeless; it’s about choosing to not go into a shelter with stringent rules,” he said. Those who wouldn’t want to go into the shelter could be a person with a drug or alcohol abuse problem. They spend time at the hospital and in jail because of their problems. Many times, the abuse is brought on by mental illness, he said.

“Does that really exclude them from having a safe roof over their heads?” Holt asked.

Creating those roofs is a challenge but can sometimes be done on a temporary basis, says The Rev. Sharon Freeland, executive director at Orange Congregations in Mission, a partner of the Triangle United Way.

On occasion, OCIM also provides some rental deposits to help people, as well as providing some temporary housing at hotels for families and individuals.

But what it boils down to is money. There are nearly 50 congregations involved in the support of OCIM, and the thrift shop sales help raise money as well but there is always a need for more. The Meals on Wheels program and the Food Pantry are just two of the many programs for which OCIM needs funding.

The Food Pantry served 5,209 individuals last year, Freeland said. Of those 5,209, 2,225 were children. While there can be no doubt as to how many people are hungry in the county, there is also a homeless population that OCIM has assisted. In 2006, a total of 13 people identified themselves as homeless to workers at OCIM.

“Certainly, the homeless situation is real,” she said.

What to do if the money isn’t there

OCIM’s overall operating budget for 2007 is $572,871 — $166,900 of which is designated for Samaritan Relief. That amount is down nine percent from the previous year, even though Freeland expects they will serve even more people this coming year. The Samaritan Relief program provides help for people on referrals from the Department of Social Services, the health department, both law enforcement departments in this area, the Red Cross, Orange County Schools and OPC/Caring Family Network.

“The one thing we don’t ever want to do is cut our services,” she said.

For OCIM employees, that means no raises again this year. But Freeland does not lament that fact in the face of what they can do with the money instead.

“We’re doing alright,” she said. “We’re holding on.”

Community, individuals continue efforts

Torain said Neighbor House of Hillsborough, Inc. has one committee working to locate and submit grant applications and one working on seeking a building to house the shelter. In the process of searching for the homeless, Torain has changed his own view on it.
“I am less judgmental now than when I first started,” he said.

In hearing about those who are unable to find jobs that will pay enough money to afford housing, or those who have made mistakes in the past, such as not paying their rent or a committing crimes. Torain knows he is blessed in what he has and wants to do anything he can to help others.

“I often say any one of them could have been me.”

Article on Homelessness from the News of Orange, part II

2007-03-16T20:59:00.000-04:00

Reprinted by permission from The News of Orange

By KERI SPRENGER
Staff Writer

Jeffrey Ruffin is a man who likes to give. He gives of his time to those in need, whether they need help changing a tire, jumpstarting a car or handing out meals to the hungry through Neighbor House’s Food For All program. He holds elevator doors for folks, and helps solicit people to fill out surveys for Men for Health, a program aimed at informing men about prostate cancer.

“That’s sometimes how my day will go. I know if I can help somebody, somewhere down the line, it will come back to me,” he said.

What he can’t give of is his money, because he hasn’t much. But he’s never begged for anything from anyone, he says proudly.

When asked point blank what his housing status is, Ruffin sighs and looks away.

“I guess I am homeless.”

The 47-year old grandfather spends the coldest nights at his sister’s house in Hillsborough. But because she receives housing assistance, he can’t stay there often except to shower and catch a few hours of rest.

During the day, he tries to put on enough clothes to stay warm outside.

“My daily activity is just trying to make it through the day,” he said.

He sometimes sleeps at the Inter-Faith Council’s shelter for men in Chapel Hill. The police in Chapel Hill know Ruffin, and he said they always offer to give him a ride to IFC if he needs it. But his arrival at the shelter is largely dependent upon catching the Orange Public Transportation bus heading south from Hillsborough. The bus stops running at 6 p.m, and Ruffin only rides it if he has the $1.50 one-way fare.

If not, he might end up sleeping in the woods that night, kept company by his friends who also have no place to call home.

Injury one cause of homelessness

Ruffin’s homelessness is due in part to a fall that shattered his ankle in 2003. He also suffers from degenerative disc disease, a condition in which the discs that separate the vertebrae of the spine lose moisture to the point where the bones fuse together. If not for those factors, he could still drive trucks, which is how he made his living prior to the injury. He also has experience in glasswork, building boats and furniture, and is somewhat computer- inclined.

He has applied for disability, and has been turned down twice for benefits. He will have a third hearing in March. “That’s my hardship right now — waiting on my disability,” he said.

On cold days, he has difficulty getting from one place to another yet relies on his own two feet to get him where he needs to go. Occasionally, someone might stop and give him a ride.
“A lot of people see me, they think I’m able to work,” he said.

But that isn’t the case. Ruffin can’t hold a steady job because of his injury.

He receives food stamps, so he doesn’t worry about what he will eat from day to day. Medicaid pays for his medication, of which he takes seven different types. One has a copay of $170, and lasts him a month at best. It’s tough finding that money, he said, but sometimes, the county’s Social Services department is able to help him out.

When the past comes back to haunt you

There is also the problem of his past.

Ruffin admits he may not have made the best choices in years gone by. He had a drug abuse problem, which resulted in several felonies that show up on a criminal background check.

“Sometimes, your lifestyle in the past will come back to haunt you,” he said.

Due to his past mistakes, Ruffin is unable to keep a stable lifestyle or a job. Some employers won’t even give him a chance because of his background.

He said that’s wrong.

“If I paid my due to society, I should have the opportunity to move on,” he said. “Everyone sees you, the first instinct is, ‘you’re less than.’

“I think sometimes society throws you away [even] when there’s something you could do.”

Ruffin has applied to Vocational Rehabilitation to try to find a job while he’s been waiting for his disability to come through. They were unable to help him because he has applied for the disability, which assumes that he is unable to work.

“You still have to go out like a regular person and look for a job,” he said.

Existing day to day on faith

On a good day, Ruffin will be moving around without much pain and might even get to visit with the guys at Papa Pizzeria on N.C. 86 in Chapel Hill and stay warm inside the restaurant.

They reach out to people, he says of the restaurant’s staff.

“A lot of times, conversation will get a person through,” he said.

Ruffin’s faith in God has helped him during his past four years of homelessness.

“I’m blessed, even in my position. I’m gonna get a breakthrough,” he said, eyes shining.

He said people in Hillsborough pass him on the street as he is struggling to get from place to place due to his ankle problems. Sometimes he sees the same people pass him by without stopping.

“First picture they see, they write the story,” he said. “I just wish they’d ask.

“I’m a firm believer that before you look down on a person, reach down to help them up. In the Bible, God says how you going to love Him when you don’t love the people here on earth?”

If his disability benefits are approved next month, Ruffin can expect roughly $800 a month to live on, he said. With the average housing price in Orange County’s 2005 Out of Reach report listed at $673, Ruffin knows more challenges lie ahead for him.

“You’re going without something [at that amount],” he said.

Ruffin said he is encouraged by the work being done by different organizations around the county, and hopes to see the day when no one is without basic necessities.

“[The homeless] really need some help to move from one point to the next level,” he said.

He doesn’t expect a handout from anybody. He said he would just like to have a job and a home like other people.

“Shelter — somewhere I can come home and stick a key in the door,” he said. “That’s the main thing — having a place to call your own.”

He missed seeing his children grow up. He doesn’t want the same thing to happen with his grandchildren. When he has his own place, his grandchildren and other relatives can come visit him, he said.

He pulls out a small toy, which he said he bought for his niece. He smiles as he turns it over in his hand.

“I keep a positive attitude. I know even with me being without, I’m going to be alright,” he said. “Sometimes, you just have to bear the cross and move on.”

Homelessness article from The News of Orange, part 1

2007-03-16T20:54:00.000-04:00

Reprinted by permission from the News of Orange

By KERI SPRENGER and CASEY FERRELL

Marilyn Ghezzi stepped out of the back seat of the patrol car with her clipboard and approached the man with the scraggily, dirty beard. She introduced herself and then got right to the point.

“Do you have a place to sleep tonight?” she asked.

The man, with somewhat slurred but coherent speech, answered that yes, he has a place to sleep. He has some kin that live right around the corner, and he sleeps there. But not always.

The man tells Ghezzi that he doesn’t have a home, that he sometimes doesn’t have a place to sleep. From the tattered appearance of his clothes, it’s not hard to imagine the man’s been through some rough nights outdoors.

After a few more questions, the man accepts the gifts of socks and crackers Ghezzi offers him and heads down the road to where food is being served at Fairview Baptist Church.

The man is one of Hillsborough’s homeless. And he’s not the only one.

Ghezzi is part of a volunteer force that canvassed the county on Jan. 24 trying to count them all.

THE POINT IN TIME COUNT

Vanessa Neustrom observes daily the devastating effects that homelessness can have. She’s the housing coordinator for Orange Person Chatham (OPC), an area non-profit.

It’s not an easy job, and this year it was made even tougher when she was tapped to lead the Point In Time count, an annual tally of the county’s homeless.

Each year, a verification is needed in the county of all those who are considered homeless according to guidelines set forth by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. HUD defines the homeless as those living “in places not meant for human habitation, such as cars, parks, sidewalks, abandoned buildings or tents” and those in emergency or transitional shelters.

Thus there are two categories of homeless — the emergency homeless, who live on the streets, and the sheltered homeless, who stay in homeless shelters.

For the Point In Time count, the county is divided into three different sections. Those sections are Chapel Hill/Carrboro, Hillsborough and unincorporated areas of the county. Some volunteers look for the emergency homeless, while others head to the shelters to interview the people staying there.

The count is conducted in January, Neustrom said, because the cold weather helps push the homeless into shelters where they’re more easily counted. If it was done when the weather was nicer, many of the homeless would be spread all over the county, living outdoors where they are harder to find and count.

Neustrom said police officers usually identify sites in the county where people have been spotted hanging out, including underpasses and any abandoned trailers. In past years, information from hospital officials and hotel clerks has aided the volunteers in their efforts of identifying those in need.

Once sites are identified, volunteers accompany police to interview people. The count’s integrity rests on following a prescribed format and asking as many questions as possible. Some of the people interviewed said they wouldn’t have considered themselves homeless but, according to materials provided by HUD, they fit the definition of homeless. Questions asked in regards to physical health, mental health, substance abuse issues and employment status help in this determination.

There is a reason for asking for more information than just whether or not the person is homeless.

“We’re trying to gauge where that person sits in the range of homelessness,” Neustrom said.

The overall numbers, which won’t be released until Feb. 13, will give what the agency hopes is an accurate representation of the sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations,

The information gathered will then be sent to the North Carolina Inter-Agency Council. OPC staff members will also report the information on their continuum of care application to the federal government. Money received from those grants is converted to housing funds OPC can use to help families in the area.

They currently serve 22 customers with the funds they have. But there are others still in need, those that are in danger of becoming homeless as well.

“We get phone calls once a week at least of [people looking for help],” Neustrom said.

STRIVING FOR ACCURACY

Despite their best efforts, Neustrom knows there are more people out there without a home. The numbers the agency will derive from this count do not incorporate those who are “doubled-up,” or living with friends and relatives whenever there’s room.

“Not every homeless person will be counted, and all the information we strive to gather during the count cannot be gathered in its entirety,” Neustrom said. “Unsheltered individuals are more difficult to locate and/or identify, or perhaps they were not accessing services on the day of the count. Also, information cannot be gathered in its entirety because once a person is identified as homeless on the day of the count, he or she still does not have to provide any information about themselves or the factors related to their homelessness if they don’t wish to.

“Some information is better than none, but the data is inherently incomplete.”

On the night of the count, a pair of volunteers canvassing Hillsborough interviewed about five people, most of whom would be considered the emergency homeless.

Hillsborough Police Department Capt. Judy Jacobs said she thought that five was an accurate number.

Jacobs, who along with Sgt. Irving Davis accompanied the volunteers on the count, said this is the third year she has helped identify sites where the homeless might be sleeping.

“Last year, the count was higher than this year,” Jacobs said.

She acknowledged that there could be more people inside of homes, staying with friends. The temperature was about 10 degrees colder than last year.

Jacobs said she was a little apprehensive about volunteers just walking up and asking people straight out if they were homeless or not. But she also saw the value in it.

“It appeared that they wanted help,” she said.

In the three years that she has been coordinating efforts with volunteers for this count, Jacobs said she has changed her tune about who is really homeless.

“My definition is someone who has nowhere to go,” she said.

Now that she has been “schooled,” as she calls it, she looks at the problem of homelessness in a new light.

“It’s been an eye opener each year,” she said.

Jim Martin, a volunteer who works with the Caring Family Network, said his task was to count the emergency homeless, which he felt they were able to do on a night when many would seek shelter with friends or at the homeless shelters in Chapel Hill or Durham.

“It seemed like we were checking reasonable places,” he said.

After the interviews, Martin and his volunteer partner Ghezzi, handed out the care packages that included socks and crackers.

Neighbor House’s Food For All program, begun in November 2005, has been serving between 300 and 350 meals a week at Fairview Baptist Church and at Southern Comfort Inn in Daniel Boone Village. Other Point In Time volunteers were conducting counts at the food distribution sites, so the number of Hillsborough’s homeless will be determined by the combined totals of all the teams of volunteers who counted that night.

COMING TOGETHER

Martin said that he felt like volunteering was a good way to help his fellow service providers.

“In order to keep getting the funding, we need the data,” he said.

Neustrom said that when she put out the call that volunteers would be needed for the count, agencies around the county stepped up to the plate.

“I was encouraged throughout the process because every agency we contacted came through with enthusiasm,” she said. “It made me proud of Orange County.”

Way to Go Isaac!

2007-03-14T20:35:00.000-04:00

From Today's Chapel Hill News (Roses & raspberries)

ROSES to McDougle Middle School's history bowl team, which won the regional North Carolina History Bowl at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum in Sedalia on Monday.

By virtue of their victory, the McDougle eighth-graders advance to the state championship, to be held at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh on May 16.

Given the narrow focus on standardized tests in the three Rs, subjects like history are all too often relegated to the back burner. Yet few subjects are as rich or offer as many important lessons. It's good to see local students, and their coaches, recognize that.

McDougle, which represented the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district, defeated Southeast Forsyth in the final game to win the regional title.

Captain of the McDougle team is Kyle Villemain and team members are Nick DiCecco, Jaime Morin and Isaac Warshauer. Coaches are Cissy O'Neal and Louise Peters. The principal is Debra H. Scott.

Good job, Mustangs. We're proud, but we can't say we're surprised; McDougle has won regional and state titles in past years. The school has a, um, history of doing well.

Planning Around Public Health

2007-03-14T12:20:00.000-04:00

"Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity.--Ralph Bunche

When our planning processes begin to address the full realm of human needs, instead of just property uses, then we truly become a country that seeks peace and equity for all people.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/16330982.htm

The California Endowment, a private health foundation that provides grants to community health organizations throughout the state, has given Richmond $255,000 to help facilitate the health-based planning concept.

General plan elements that will be developed within the context of public health include nutrition, bicycle and pedestrian safety, hazardous materials ordinances, air and water quality, homelessness and violent crime.

Since the early 20th century, cities have planned for aesthetic amenities such as parks, tree-lined streets and walkable neighborhoods. However, never before have city planners actually identified associated health benefits, Iacofano said.

2007 Point In Time Count

2007-03-10T21:46:00.000-05:00

Orange County Homelessness Fact Sheet
February 2007

Total Number of Homeless People Counted in January 2007: 224

Homeless people staying in temporary shelter: 199
Homeless people without shelter (i.e. on the streets): 25
Homeless families: 23
Homeless people in families (including children): 60
Homeless children: 35
Homeless individuals (not in families): 164
Homeless people with a history of domestic violence: 23
Chronically homeless people: 71

These figures do not include numbers of people who are “doubled up,” that is without a legal residence of their own and temporarily staying with another person. Furthermore, the data does not account for people who are at-risk of homelessness for any reason including unemployment, foreclosure, eviction, chronic or sudden illness and domestic violence. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 40.5% of renters in Orange County pay 35% or more of household income toward rent which qualifies as at-risk of homelessness.

In Orange County:

A minimum wage earner (earning $5.15 per hour) must work 117 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, to afford the fair market rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom unit, which is $785 per month. An SSI recipient (receiving $603 monthly) can afford monthly rent of no more than $181, while the fair market rent for a one-bedroom is $603 (Out of Reach Report, 2006).

In order to afford FMR for a two-bedroom unit ($785), without paying more than 30% of income on housing, a household must earn $2,617 monthly or $31,400 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into a Housing Wage of $15.10 (Out of Reach Report, 2006).

In 2006, the Inter-Faith Council served 85,055 hot meals; provided 7,726 bags of groceries to 7,187 members of the community; granted 3,500 requests for food, cash, and help with utilities and other service needs representing more than 2,100 households; and offered 813 homeless individuals a place to sleep through its Community House and HomeStart program.

Neighbor House, Inc. distributed at least 17, 680 dinners to members of Northern Orange County through its Food for All Program in 2006. They are currently serving an average of 85 meals per night, four nights per week.

In 2005, the Community Initiative to End Homelessness received approximately $275,000 to provide permanent housing to homeless and disabled individuals or families. The funding is shared among OPC Area Program, the Chrysalis Foundation for Mental Health, Inter-Faith Council for Social Service and UNC Horizon’s. The CIEH applied for additional homeless assistance funding in 2006, but award letters have not been received as of 2/13/07.

Thank You Eddy Landreth

2007-03-07T07:37:00.000-05:00

I do not want Tyler Hansborough to leave UNC, but I agree with Mr. Landreth that the physical abuse he has taken over the past couple of years became intolerable in Sunday's game against Duke. I listened with total disbelief as the CBS commentators assured us all that Gerald Henderson's elbow in Tyler's face was really an accident occuring during a legitimate attempt to capture a lose ball.

The ACC should be ashamed of itself for not protecting its most prized assets: its players.
Either clean it up or petition the NBA to let these guys go pro right out of high school again. At least they could bank several million for whatever punishment they may endure.
The whole affair is disgusting and shameful, and that would be the case no matter which teams were playing and no matter which kid took the beating. It's just plain wrong.

Orange County Elementary Schools

2007-02-20T20:32:00.000-05:00

Orange County School District has been put into Title I Improvement due to lack of progress in reading scores over the past three years. Using NC Report Card I pulled out the Snapshot data statistics on race and economic status for each of the elementary schools in the district. The racial and economic status columns in this table represent the percentage of students passing both reading and math tests. 46% of economically deprived students passed both compared to 70% of not economically deprived students. Clearly economic status is a factor in student performance in Orange County.

School	White	Black	Hispanic	Econ Deprived	Not Econ Deprived
Cameron Park	88	49.1	63.6	58.7	85.1
Central	57.7	32.1	60	47.4	46.5
Cheeks	58.4	26.6	33.3	36	53.3
Grady Brown	76.4	41.9	37.5	41.8	74.6
Hillsborough	91.8	52	0	60	88.2
New Hope	69.7	20	36.7	33.9	70
Pathways	74.4	34.2	57.1	44.3	74.9
OVERALL AVERAGE	73.8	36.6	41.2	46.0	70.4

Maintaining an energy efficient refrigerator

2007-02-18T14:03:00.000-05:00

Appliances account for about 20 percent of a household’s annual electricity use. (Union of Concerned Scientists Green Tips, February 2007)

Refrigerator/Freezer

Keep your refrigerator away from heat sources (including dishwashers, ovens, heating vents, and direct sunlight), which cause it to work harder to keep its contents cold.
Leave a few inches of space behind the refrigerator to ensure proper air circulation around the condenser coils, and vacuum the coils at least once a year.
Open the door as little as possible to minimize the amount of cold air that escapes.
Don’t keep your refrigerator or freezer too cold, which can waste energy. Recommended temperatures are between 37 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit (ºF) for refrigerators and 5 ºF for freezers.
Keep the refrigerator and freezer full to better retain the cold. If your refrigerator is fairly empty, store water-filled containers inside.

Limits on Growth?

2007-02-18T12:47:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, the Chapel Hill Town Council authorized the town manager to finalize the contract with Ram Development for the Lot 5 development. While the Council did instruct the manager to assure that the contract included a stipulation of 20% energy reduction in accordance with ASHRAE 90.1 standards, the decision also continues and endorses a pattern of large-scale development within our downtown area. Where will this growth end? Oddly enough, today's Chapel Hill News reports that the Chamber of Commerce is considering the establishment of a Sustainability Certificate program for local businesses.

Apparently our local Chamber, who enthusiastically endorsed the Lot 5 proposal at every one of the public hearings, is not familiar with Donella Meadow's essay on What Does Sustainability Mean?

If we decided to live sustainably, we'd start by eliminating waste. We would discover that we could run this country with half as much energy as we use now (some technological optimists say one-fourth as much). We could also cut our materials budget in half by better recycling, by increasing the useful lifetime of products, and by reducing extravagant practices such as overpackaging and junk mailing.

Those are efficiency gains, not lifestyle losses. Our showers would still be hot and our beer cold, our motors would turn, our drain on resources and flows of pollution would go down, and so would our monthly bills. If we used the savings to grow more -- more people and more stuff for each person -- we would quickly find ourselves unsustainable again. Halving the energy and materials use per car or house but doubling the number of cars or houses would put us right back where we started.

The question our elected officials continue to overlook is how much growth are we willing to accept and over what kind of timeline? Do we need large-scale development in our community in order to protect the rural nature of the county or do we need to impose more obstacles to slow down population growth in the county without penalizing economic growth? Hasn't the unrestricted growth over the past 20 years created the problems we now have with unaffordability?

Our present world is much better at producing quantity and technology than quality and morality. But that's culture, not scientific law or immutable destiny. It would take a big change to turn from quantity to quality, but the change would start with just a small click in our heads. It could happen with the speed of a thought. The thought would be that we should stop working so hard to produce growth and instead produce what we really want.

Does Chapel Hill want to grow into a larger and larger city or would we prefer to slow down growth and improve quality of life, ensuring the protection of our environment as well as maintaining affordability and diversity of population? Can we nurture a healthy, sustainable business community, without the current overgrowth in residential population?

The current unaffordability in this community is a feedback signal to elected officials. Our community is stuck in a positive feedback loop. We build more and more residential developments and get further and further in debt and lose more and more of our long-term residents. "So how big do we have to get to reach that magical, mystical place where growth will finally start lowering taxes? Or maybe it would be better to ask: how much more evidence do we need before we stop believing that myth?" (exerpted from The Real Cost of Growth in Oregon)

Lot 5, Greenbridge, and all the other new developments planned in Chapel Hill and Carrboro will not improve affordability, adding retail to our downtowns won't support sustainability economic development regardless of how green their business practices are, and concentrating the county's overgrowth within our urban boundaries won't protect our air and water quality unless we step back and take a hard look at the big picture of what is happening and where we want to go as a community. We need analysis of the overall situation, including the economic and social impacts growth are having on this community. We need to engage the entire community.

A Valentine from the Cat...

2007-02-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

A Valentine from the Cat...

You are an amusing playmate,
a good provider,
a prompt & efficient litter changer.
You're excellent at stroking & brushing & you clearly adore me.
So let me say, from the bottom of my heart,

you'll do.

Downtown Redevelopment

2007-02-11T12:38:00.000-05:00

Within the next couple of months, downtown Chapel Hill could be set to house hundreds of new residents. The Lot 5 redevelopment project of the town council is a done deal for all practical purposes, and hopefully the contract with Ram will assure some degree of sustainability comes with that project. Greenbridge, on the other hand, is a great concept gone bad and there is still time to stop it.

But my personal opinions about Greenbridge aside, the implications of the growth represented by these two projects and the scale of their physical presence is a community discussion that should have been addressed outside of the development review process. Better late than never though, the Chapel Hill News tackles the question today.

Village or city?

In her online Web log, Town Council member Laurin Easthom wrote that coming decisions will determine "whether or not Chapel Hill remains a town in which you seem to know everyone, or a small city."
Easthom said increasing density downtown is the price to pay for preserving the countryside north and west of Chapel Hill-Carrboro. As long as people want to move to Chapel Hill, she said, developers will want to build here. The Town Council wants to push them downtown rather than into the wilderness.
"I lament the fact that we are going to see density, but I also understand that we need to do that in order to preserve the rural buffer," Easthom said. "I want Chapel Hill to be the small town that I've known it to be forever."
Council member Mark Kleinschmidt, on the other hand, does not believe a denser downtown will destroy the small-town appeal. He envisions a small city where neighbors do know each other, perhaps better than they do under the dominant pattern of developing vacant land into sprawling subdivisions on large lots.
That pattern, he said, "diminished the village quality that a lot of people romanticize when they think of Chapel Hill."
If downtown develops as Kleinschmidt envisions, residents will be able to walk to work and shop, greeting each other and shopkeepers along the way.
"These kinds of redevelopments, particularly in our downtown core, actually bring us back to those elements of our village past that made our community such an attractive place to live," he said.

Can this community continue to support a rapidly growing population? Looking at this from a sustainability perspective, there has been proactive planning to protect farmland and natural areas through the rural boundary agreement that has been in place for close to 20 years. But is that agreement working? Are we achieving the environmental protection benefits anticipated by the planners? Do we really have the water and sewer infrastructure needed to support all the growth planned for Carrboro, Chapel Hill and the University?

What about the economic and social impacts of the decision to push growth into the towns in order to protect the environment? Are we sacrificing those aspects of sustainability through our efforts to protect the environment?

The cost of living in the towns has become unaffordable. Is this the result of the managed growth policy? Are we protecting farmlands and open spaces at the expense of our local economy? Should the county be looking at how tax revenues are distributed to help offset the burden on the towns? Clearly both towns need an economic development plan beyond just downtown growth. But if Lot 5 and Greenbridge are both approved, will that provide the stimulus for economic development the Council expects?

What impact is this growth having on the social aspects of the community? We know our community demographics look very different from 20 years ago. How much of that change is the result of growth pushing out long-time residents who can no longer afford to live here? How much is the result of the school system reputation?

I'm glad to see other people asking these same questions. "Can we steer Chapel Hill's growth in a way that will allow us, in 10 or 20 or 30 years, to express the same sort of sentiment? The village has grown up, and it has more growing yet to do. The challenge, as it always has been, is to grow not just bigger, but better." (CHN Editorial)

Sustainable Growth

2007-02-10T17:38:00.001-05:00

www.planetizen.com/node/22812
….the dominant focus of sustainable development, at least as stated in the published policies and plans of many institutions of government, is more concerned with sustainable growth than ecologically sustainable measures, such as averting global warming, limiting resource depletion and loss of biodiversity. Further, social issues are rarely given significant concern in what is theoretically supposed to be an equal balancing of the three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. This produces a very different policy response than the traditional planning policy of looking after the disadvantaged in pursuit of the wider public good.

Feline diabetes care plan

2007-01-01T15:43:00.000-05:00

This is a plan Donna, a nurse, put together for her diabetic cat. I especially like #1 of Other Goals.

Short-term goals:

Tigger will demonstrate compliance with a low carb (<10%).
Tigger will maintain bg's under 300 80% of the time within 2 months or by September 30, 2006. Tigger had a set back while we vacationed for the first week in September. Paid caregiver unable to test bg's. Goal modified: to within 3 months or by October 31, 2006.
Tigger will be more affectionate as demonstrated by increased purring and social interaction, within 3 months or by October 31, 2006.
Tigger will demonstrate improved hygiene as demonstrated by adequate preening within 1 month or by August 31, 2006.
Tigger will urinate within normal limits as evidenced by urine clunks in litter box ongoing.
Tigger will have increased activity level as evidenced by playfulness, less lethargy within 2 months or by September 30,2006.
Tigger will demonstrate decreased aggressiveness as evidenced by no hissing and biting of family or friends within 5 months, or by December 31, 2006.
Tigger will attain and maintain bg's under 200 80% of the time within 6 months or by January 31, 2007.

Intermediate goal:

Tigger will attain and maintain bg's under 130 80% of the time within 9 months or by April 30, 2007

Long Term Goals:

Tigger will attain and maintain bg's within 80-130 with or without extrinsic insulin within 12 months or by July 31, 2007.
Tigger will live a healthier and happier life as demonstrated by few if any complications related to DM.

Other goals:

Tigger's Caregivers will utilize appropriate coping mechanisms, such as but not limited to Chocolate, wine, social outings, exercise, and sleep to prevent caregiver burnout.
Tigger's Caregivers will utilize appropriate support groups, such as YDC forums, to maintain sanity!

7 Golden Rules of Energy Efficiency

2006-12-09T10:14:00.000-05:00

Some good tips from the Woking Burough Council (UK) for local land use planners, especially those who chose not to include any energy efficiency standards in their own major downtown development project earlier this week.

The Golden Rules for energy efficiency and renewable energy

Follow the seven golden rules to successfully integrate sustainable energy in new development:

Start to plan at the outset how you will address these requirements. Factors such as site layout, building design and orientation all impact on energy efficiency and generating renewable energy. If these are addressed early on, there will be a wider range of options that are viable and the solution is likely to be more cost effective.
Aim to achieve the highest possible standards of energy efficiency. The greater the energy efficiency, the lower the energy consumption. This will reduce the target level of renewable energy that will need to be generated within the development.
Think carefully about how energy will be consumed. For example, a development of one and two-bed apartments will have a very different pattern of hot water consumption than a sheltered housing development, and solar hot water heating may not be the most effective means of generating renewable energy in both cases. This is because the quantity of energy generated by a solar hot water panel may fall short of the amount claimed by its suppliers if the occupiers of a development do not consume hot water at a rate equivalent to its production.
One size does not fit all. Just as with many other aspects of Planning, every development will bring its own circumstances. For example, the solar resource (amount of sunlight available to generate renewable energy) will differ from site to site depending on overshadowing by other buildings and trees.
Seek advice from energy experts. Modelling the energy consumption of a development and designing to achieve high energy efficiency and integrated renewable energy generation requires particular skills. Early involvement of the right expertise can help to achieve a successful solution and avoid delays during Planning. Advice for house builders is provided by the Energy Saving Trust and for commercial development by the Carbon Trust.
An energy efficient development is not a 'niche' development. Whilst some examples of energy efficient development are conspicuous by their leading edge design, very high standards can be achieved in more 'conventional-looking' developments. Energy efficiency and renewable energy generation does not need to be at the expense of quality architecture. Many measures (such as wide cavities, insulation, ground source heat pumps) have no visual impact. New products such as solar tiles are also becoming available that have very low visual impact.
Do not always assume energy efficiency and renewable energy are very costly. Not all energy efficiency measures carry a net cost. For example, designing to capture passive solar energy. The growth in the market for high specification materials and micro renewable energy and higher volumes of production means increasingly competetive prices. In addition, as energy prices rise and environmental awareness increases, consumer demand for energy efficient homes can be reflected in the marketing of new development. Grants and other finacial incentives (such as enhanced capital allowances) can also reduce the net cost.

Progressives

2006-10-29T18:17:00.000-05:00

According to George Lakoff there are 6 basic types of progressives:

1. Socioeconomic progressives think that everything is a matter of money and class and that all solutions are ultimately economic and social class solutions.

2. Identity politics progressives say it is time for their oppressed group to get its share now.

3. Environmentalists think in terms of sustainability of the earth, the sacredness of the earth and the protection of native peoples.

4. Civil liberties progressives want to maintain freedoms against threats to freedom.

5. Spiritual progressives have a nurturant form of religion or spirituality, their spiritual experience has to do with their connection to other people and the world, and their spiritual practice has to do with service to other people and to their community. Spiritual progressives span the full range from Catholics and Protestants to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Goddess worshippers, and pagan members of Wicca.

6. Anti-authoritarians say there are all sorts of illegitimate forms of authority out there and we have to fight them, whether they are big corporations or anyone else.

"The problem is that many of the people who have one of these modes of thought do not recognize that theirs is just one special case of something more general, and do not see the unity in all the types of progressives. They often think that theirs is the only way to be a true progressive. That is sad. It keeps people who share progressive values from coming together. We have to get past that harmful idea. The other side did."

Public Meetings Rant

2006-10-15T10:32:00.000-04:00

My rant for the day. Where does OWASA post their public meetings notices? OWASA has subcommittee meetings of the board every month, but they aren't posted to the Board calendar. Is the point to make sure they comply with the law but don't have to deal with the messiness of public oversight?

What about the town of Carrboro? Carrboro has a Greenways Commission meeting scheduled for October 28, but I can't find it anywhere on their website. It's not on the message board with Top News, it's not even on the inaccessible printable calendars.

Legally, all meetings must be posted 48 hours in advance. Apparently, it doesn't matter where they are posted or else citizens have got to be clued in separate from the public posts.

Orange County has the worse website of any local government in Orange County, but at least they have an accessible and up-to-date calendar. Even the Chapel Hill website has a current events page that is sort of like a calendar and is easier to use and more up-to-date than OWASA or Carrboro.

End of rant.

Sad Death of Organic

2006-10-15T09:35:00.000-04:00

The article below is not written by a local writer or published in a local newspaper, but it very much a local problem. We have three natural food groceries in this community and other large chains (H-T and Lowes) have organic sections. But our local farmers are selling out to developers.

(begin reprinted article)
The Sad Death Of 'Organic'

How weird and depressing is it now that Kellogg's and Wal-Mart are hawking 'natural' foods?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist , Friday, October 13, 2006

***I*was a little unprepared. The commercial came on and I heard the familiar ukulele strums of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's famous and famously beautiful version of "Over the Rainbow (I know, but it really is quite lovely) and my first reaction was merely to cringe and wince as yet another exquisite and plaintive song was whored out to the advertising demons, just one of thousands.

But then came the barrage of images: the requisite shot of the Perfect Mom feeding her Perfect Child some sort of Perfect Food, all bathed in soft morning breakfasty light with happy trees peeking through the windows of the Perfect Kitchen in some utopian hunk of Perfect America, a bizarre scene that of course does not exist anywhere on this planet given how there weren't three empty wine bottles and some used underwear and a stack of dirty dishes and a fresh bottle of Xanax and an open
newspaper offering up giant headlines about murders and nuclear warheads and Korean sex slaves anywhere in sight.

And then it happened. The logo. The product shot. The soothing voice-over. It was a commercial for a brand-new product: Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. And your heart goes, Ugh.

You say it aloud and the words tend to catch in your throat and make you sort of gag. Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies, with "organic" in big scripted flowing font across the top of the box, all steeped in bogus warmth and happiness and false notions of health and nature and protecting your Perfect Child from the millions of icky poisons and unhealthy crap churned out by giant megacorps exactly like, well,
exactly like Kellogg's.

Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. It's sort of like saying "Lockheed Martin Granola Bars" or "Exxon Bottled Spring Water." Self-immolating, and not in a good way.

That's when I heard it. The plaintive wail, the sigh, the crack and the moan and the whimper, like a tree shooting itself in the head. It was the final death knell of the "true" organic movement, breathing its last.

Because yes indeed, it's over. Organic is dead. Corporations have officially bought it out, the USDA has weakened its definition to near death, Whole Foods has made it chic and popular and profitable and yet has compromised its integrity like no other by being forced to pretty much ignore small, local farms and ideas of sustainability in favor of staggering commercial growth. And now this.

Did you know? Did you already understand the real definition? Because that's what "organic" was really supposed to mean, way back when: local, sustainable, ethical, connected to source, pesticide- and hormone-free. But the vast majority of organic product now flooding the market only gloms on to that last aspect (and sometimes, barely even that), to meet the USDA's impotent organic guidelines. Ah, government. There's just nothing like it to make you want to smack yourself in the skull with a
brick.

One example: Stonyfield Farm's organic yogurt. As BusinessWeek points
out, the stuff is made not on an idyllic working farm like the one on the label but rather in a giant industrial factory. They get their milk trucked in from a whole range of suppliers and it's possible they will soon begin to import some of their organic ingredients -- in dried, powdered form -- from New Zealand, so as to meet national demand, delivering it all over the country via pollutive trucking companies.

This is the harsh reality, the real cost of mainstream organic. There apparently aren't enough happy small, Earth-conscious local farms around to produce this stuff in sufficient quantities to feed the entire Wal-Mart nation. Massive compromises have been made. And those compromises mean "organic" is a shell of its former self.

"Organic," according to the lobbyist-friendly USDA, does not have to mean the food is grown using sustainable (read: nondestructive) farming practices. It does not mean locally produced. It does not mean the ethical treatment of animals. Nor does it mean the companies that produce it need be the slightest bit fair or trustworthy or socially responsible. All it means now: no pesticides, no chemical fertilizers,
no bioengineering.

So is that enough? After all, the fact that megaproducers like Kellogg's and General Mills and frightening discount megaretailers like Wal-Mart are going big into organic certainly will translate into an enormous reduction in chemicals in the American diet, thousands if not (eventually) millions of pounds of pesticides and hormones and fertilizer removed from the food chain as a whole. The benefits of this cannot be understated: It's a great thing indeed.

But there's a massive snag: Thousands of products now claim to be organic, but many merely replace the chemicals and pesticides with a slew of other industrial, pollutive, destructive processes that easily offset any health benefits -- most notably the extra shipping and global delivery these "industrial organic" producers employ to obtain and deliver organic ingredients, which pumps so many chemicals back into the environment it probably counteracts all those saved in growing the stuff
in the first place.

(On that note, if you're going to read one astounding book on the subject of farming, organics, fast food, and the American diet overall, let it be Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." He maps it all out far better than I ever could. It's your must-read of the summer, even though it's now fall.)

Whole Foods? Perhaps the greatest mixed blessing of all, an amazing company that has single-handedly done more to bring the organic movement to the mainstream and raise awareness of healthy foods and improve farming and meat-quality standards across the board, not to mention the pleasures of food shopping overall. Yet at the same time, merely by its sheer size and success, they've simultaneously done more to dilute the
real meaning of "organic" than any other company.

Put another way: Unless you shop at farmers' markets or quasi-hippie co-ops or unless you do your homework and find a true family-run farm within 100 miles of your home and establish a relationship with them and /really/ begin to buy local, the odds that the next "organic" product you buy truly meets the original definition is about as likely as finding real breasts at the Playboy mansion. And for now, maybe this is just the way it has to be.

Which brings us back to Kellogg's Organic Rice Krispies. Industrial to the hilt, not the slightest bit locally grown, not the slightest bit sustainable, from the same company that poisons your kid with Pop-Tarts and Froot Loops and Scooby-Doo Berry Bones and cares about as much for the health of the planet as Dick Cheney cares about pheasants. And of course, they ship the crap all over the country in planes and trucks that burn enough oil to make Bush leer and the oil CEOs grin and it's
all just one big happy joke. On you.

But hey, at least they're helping remove millions of pounds of chemical crap from the food chain, right? At least they /pretend/ to care. Problem is, they've merely replaced those chemicals with an even more toxic additive: hypocrisy. Now, can you swallow it? (end of reprinted article)

The Foundation for a Sustainable Community, a project of the local Chamber of Commerce, recently initiated a sustainable business program and gave out a sustainable business of the year award. Whole Foods was one of the finalists. I shop at Whole Foods occasionally (Lucy loves Whole Paws cat food) and am happy to have them in this community. But let's not kid ourselves that they are a sustainable business. We jeopardize 'sustainability' as much as 'organic' by doing so. (Congrats to Weaver Street Market for being the first recipient of this award.)

Jack Klein

2006-10-08T12:58:00.000-04:00

My friend and neighbor, Jack Klein, died last night. Jack was the first neighbor to welcome me to Heritage Hills. He was a little disappointed, I think, that I bought this house. He had just married a young Hispanic couple who had been trying to buy it, but couldn't get financing.

Jack was the most openminded, progressive individual I have ever known. He accepted everyone and judged no one except those who tried to limit the freedom of others. Jack planned his own funeral (April 2006) as a celebration to be held while he was still here to enjoy the party. He danced, sang, and told stories along with everyone else. It was a great party and by far the most moving and memorable funeral I've ever attended. The amount of love in that room was overwhelming. What a tribute--celebration rather than mourning.

Jack's last community activity was the IFC sponsored Crop Walk. He walked and was pushed in his wheel chair for 3 miles to raise money for the hungry. A party-loving, human-loving individual. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the Crop Walk in any of our local newspapers, let alone Jack's dedication and contribution.

Jack Klein is the model of what it means to be a progressive in Chapel Hill/Carrboro. More importantly, he was a good, loving man with a great sense of humor. I will miss him.

Corn

2006-10-06T23:23:00.000-04:00

"At its most basic, the story of life on earth is the competition among species to capture and store as much energy as possible—either directly from the sun, in the case of plants, or, in the case of animals, by eating plants and plant eaters. The energy is stored in the form of carbon molecules and measured in calories: the calories we eat, whether in an ear of corn or a steak, represent packets of energy once captured by a plant. Few plants can manufacture quite as much organic matter (and calories) from the same quantities of sunlight and water and basic elements as corn.

The great turning point in the modern history of corn, which in turn marks a key turning point in the industrialization of our food, can be dated with some precision to the day in 1947 when the huge munitions plant at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, switched over from making explosives to making chemical fertilizer. After World War II, the government had found itself with a tremendous surplus of ammonium nitrate, the principal ingredient in the making of explosives. Ammonium nitrate also happens to be an excellent source of nitrogen for plants. Serious thought was given to spraying America's forests with the surplus chemical, to help the timber industry. But agronomists in the Department of Agriculture had a better idea: spread the ammonium nitrate on farmland as fertilizer. The chemical fertilizer industry (along with that of pesticides, which are based on the poison gases developed for war) is the product of the government's effort to convert its war machine to peacetime purposes. As the Indian farmer activist Vandana Shiva says in her speeches, "We're still eating the leftovers of World War II."

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/july/presence.php

There's corn in that?

It takes the equivalent of half a gallon of gasoline to grow every bushel of corn.
Of 10,000 items in a typical grocery store, at least 2,500 use corn in some form during production or processing.
Your bacon and egg breakfast, glass of milk at lunch, or hamburger for supper were all produced with US corn.
Besides food for human and livestock consumption, corn is used in paint, paper products, cosmetics, tires, fuel, plastics, textiles, explosives, and wallboard – among other things.
In the US, corn leads all other crops in value and volume of production – more than double that of any other crop.
Corn is America's chief crop export, with total bushels exported exceeding total bushels used domestically for food, seed, and industrial purposes.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1031/p17s01-lihc.html

Chay: The P Lot Kitty

2006-05-28T14:44:00.000-04:00

Early this spring a young tabby kitten showed up in the UNC "P" park and ride lot. Over the next couple of months, various commuters took to feeding her. We didn't know each other, only that the kitty's food bowl was kept filled. A couple of weeks ago, I put up a sign at the light post where we fed the kitty asking for contributions to get "him" neutered and vaccinated. According to everything I read about feral cats, trap, neuter and release (TNR) was the best we could do for him unless someone wanted to take him home. One woman responded to my post, and when we met, I learned that she, Kathy, had developed a very special rapport with the boy who she called Chay--Chapel Hill Gray.

POP-NC, Pet Overpopulation Patrol, comes to the Orange County Animal Shelter just up the road from the parking lot every Tuesday so I borrowed a Hav-A-Heart trap and set out to trap him. Unfortunately, we had major thunderstorms for the next 3 Mondays and in the interim we realized that he was getting pretty chubby. Over that week we finally realized that he was a she and she was probably pregnant. On Friday, I got an email from Kathy asking if I thought there might be two kittens. She said Chay had hissed and been very unfriendly the night before.

Over the weekend I agonized over how to handle her pregnancy. A veterinary friend assured me that it was best for Chay to go forward with the spay. She said feral cats who are forced to raise kittens in captivity are miserable and frequently end up killing their kittens. And allowing her to give birth in the parking lot was sure to bring just as much heartache since Chay had already been hurt once herself. I didn't see her on Friday or Saturday. But when I got to the lot of Sunday she came running for food and looked very thin. Were there two kittens--one pregnant and one not? Or had she given birth already?

According to the Feral Cat Coalition, if she had kittens we could still trap her and get her spayed but we would need to get her back to the site within 24 hours. So I made the appointment for this past Tuesday, and Kathy and I agreed to not feed her on Monday afternoon to increase the likelihood of a successful trap on Tuesday morning.

I got to the lot early on Tuesday morning and set the trap before Chay's normal breakfast hour. Skinny Chay cooperated by showing up almost immediately, and walking right into the trap to get the food. And then she walked out--too light to have set off the trap. Notice how she is licking her lips!

Fortunately, I only put down a couple of bites since she was heading into surgery if the trap was successful. So I pushed so more of the nice smelly food onto the paper plate and got a long stick so that I could trip the lock myself. Success!

She fought like the proverbial wildcat, but I had followed the trapping advice from the Feral Cat Coalition and came prepared with an old sheet which I immediately draped it over the trap. She calmed right down and was a little lady throughout the car ride and the check in procedure.

Was it Chay that we trapped or were there two of them? I went back to the lot and put down more wet food to try and solve the mystery. To my great relief, the food was still there when I got back to the lot that afternoon. One feral kitty is enough!

When I picked Chay up, I was told that she wasn't pregnant but she was lactating. From what I read and the POP folks confirmed, Chay needed to be kept indoors and warm for 24 hours after her surgery. The POP staff also felt like there was no point in returning her to the parking lot for the kittens because her milk had just about dried up, indicating that the kittens, if there were any, were old enough to eat on their own.

Kathy had decided to take Chay home after the surgery so I picked her up and met Kathy for the handoff. Unfortunately, Chay started waking up just as we were transferring her to Kathy's car for the ride to Durham. She was totally freaked out, swaying from side to side and banging her head into the sides of the cage. It was absolutely heartbreaking. But once again, once we covered the cage, she calmed down. What we had hoped would be a perfect ending for our beautiful little girl was marred by our fear for the kittens. We put up another sign and agreed to do what we could to find them, if there were any.

Since Chay had gone from chubby to skinny over about 4 days the week before, I felt like she had miscarried or the kittens had died prematurely, but Kathy wasn't willing to take that chance. She returned Chay to the parking lot the next day. I've been out everyday since, but Chay isn't going to have anything to do with me. And there are no sign of any kittens still.

As much as I wanted Chay to live happily ever after with Kathy, I love knowing she's somewhere around the parking lot. Parking lots are such barren wastelands and her presence adds a humanizing factor that I didn't know I was missing before she came to live there. I'm still hoping we can recapture her and convince her that living with Kathy is a better life than living on asphalt, but in the meantime, I look forward to going to work everyday and seeing our P lot kitty.

School Funding: The 20-Year Debate

2006-04-08T12:28:00.000-04:00

The Problem

As population in the CHCCS service area increases through new development, the demand for schooling in CHCCS increases
The ad valorum taxes resulting from that population growth is not sufficient to meet the O&M requirements of the schools.
In order to meet the O&M requirements AND all the special services demanded by district parents, the CHCCS budget is becoming increasing dependent on the district tax.
The district tax was created to fund non-basic services. The current funding mechanism used by the commissioners balances the basic services budget of the CHCCS district against the full budget of the OCS.
The impact of growth in the CHCCS service area and the resulting financial machinations is imposing an artificial ceiling on the OCS budget.
If the CHCCS does not use the district tax to cover a portion of its budget, the budget presented to the county commissioners will inevitably exceed the 48.1% targeted limit on school funding set by the BOCC back in the early 1990s. If a larger portion of the county budget is allocated to schools, less funding will be available for other vital human services such as mental health and environmental protection.

The Evidence

Evidence of growth can be found in the State of the Economy report. The population of Hillsborough, Mebane, and the rest of the county (53,874) is 20% smaller than the population of Chapel Hill/Carrboro (67,091). Between 2000-2004, Chapel Hill-Carrboro experienced 17.3% growth, Hillsborough 4.1% and the county 4.7%.
Financial resources between the county/Hillsborough and Chapel Hill-Carrboro are unequally distributed:
- The towns generate more ad valorem taxes per capita
- The towns generate significantly more retail sales (sales tax) per capita. $1,436,798,693 of revenue was generated through retail sales last year. 73.4% from Chapel Hill-Carrboro; 26.6% rest of county. So while the county population is only 20% less than the population of Carrboro-Chapel Hill, the county's retail sales (sales tax generation) is 64% less than Carrboro-Chapel Hill. That means that the residents of the county pay a larger portion of the taxes for services than does the town population.
- According to the Cost of Community Services in Orange County report residential development contributes approx 76 cents for every $1 of service; agricultural land contributes approx $1.38 for every $1 of services, and commercial land contributes approx $4.21 for every $1 of service.

My conclusions

There is a greater demand for schooling in the towns
Taxes in town generate more services than taxes in the county, meaning that there is less tax load on the average town resident than on the average county resident: higher in-town residential property values generate more ad valorum taxes; there is more commercial property in town (less demand for services); and the 64% higher retail base generates significantly more sales tax.
The district tax supplements the already larger revenue source availabe to the city schools. But since residential growth doesn't pay for itself and we know more commercial growth is needed, the CHCCS shouldn't be held totally responsible for their dependence on the district tax. (Although the school board members should understand this better.)
Current land use policies (which I support and don't wish to change) puts a ceiling on the revenue generating capacity of the county
The county residents are already paying a larger % of their taxes for services and receiving fewer services than the town residents
When the district tax is used to fund basic services, contrary to the intent of that tax, it becomes a limiting factor in the per pupil funding allocations for the district schools.
Creating a new district tax for county residents ignores the basic problems and adds to the already inequitable distribution of wealth and resources between town and county residents.
Any real solution must address the financial burden placed upon county residents by an environmentally positive land use policy
Any real solution must address the inadequacy of residential growth to adequately fund the O&M budgets of the city schools
Any real solution must address the inelasticity of the district tax in relation to the OCS budget.

Sleeping on Street Benches

2006-04-01T09:49:00.000-05:00

According to today's News and Observer, sleeping on a street bench in the town of Chapel Hill can get you thrown into jail. Should I turn myself in? I was waiting for the bus last week and fell asleep on one of the benches. But I was clean and had on decent clothes so I probably wouldn't have been fined or arrested even if one of Chapel Hill's finest had noticed the violation.

While I was very pleased with idea of moving the men's homeless shelter to the Southern Human Services Center area that came out of this week's Assembly of Government meeting, and I feel sure such a move would change the complexion of homelessness in the downtown business district, I don't think it will solve the problem of sleeping on benches. Those men who are willing to abide by the strict rules of the shelter, aren't the ones who sleep on the benches.

From working with the Community Initiative to End Homelessness assessment committee, I've learned that there are many kinds of homelessness. The shelter is best equipped to deal with those who are experiencing transient homelessness, or individuals who are unemployed, victims of domestic violence, or have serious health problems. Then there are those who have camoflaged their homelessness by living with relatives or friends (doubled up). The guys who sleep on street benches are more likely to be chronically homeless. They may have a drug or alcohol abuse problem, a mental illness, or some other life challenge that interferes with their ability to gain control over their behavior. To stay at the shelter, they must be drug/alchol free and they must be inside by 8 pm. And so they wander the streets at night and sleep on the benches during the day.

Assembly of Governments

2006-03-30T22:46:00.000-05:00

There were 3 items on tonight's Assembly of Governments meeting: relocating the IFC shelter operations from downtown, solid waste update, and a small area plan for Rogers Road. I expected the IFC discussion to be the same old same old, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The chair of the IFC board laid out the predicament by explaining how much funding they have lost over the past 3 years (HUD) and how much they need and want to provide the same type of quality facility and programming for men as they do for women. But to do that they need the 3 local governments to work with them. It went round and round (Eubanks Road too far out, don't want to run water/sewer into the rural buffer) with none of the elected officials addressing the request for partnership, until Steve Halkiotis pointed out that all the services that shelter residents need are contained at the Southern Human Services center and that there is plenty of room to put the shelter there. It was such a simple, obvious solution to a problem the community has agonized over for nearly 20 years. Everyone recognized the beauty of the solution and the partnership was formed. The IFC folks left very happy (and surprised).

The solid waste discussion focused on methane. Earlier today I had heard about the fact that the landfill doesn't generate enough methane to make it attractice to the utilities or to justify the investment in capture for onsite use. The elected officials have a very different opinion. They think the new transfer station, the animal shelter, and something else could be powered by landfill methane. And supposedly UNC has contacted the commissioners about piping it to Carolina North. It should be interesting to see which story lies closest to reality. In the meantime, OWASA is already doing it.

Black Thursday

2006-03-30T10:16:00.000-05:00

The lottery opens today. Sad, sad day.

Feline Diabetes: Ketones & blood glucose levels

2006-03-25T08:47:00.000-05:00

Edited from a post by Hilary & Zug (GA)

Ketones are a serious side effect of diabetes. Caregivers must test their cat's urine for ketones daily when blood glucose (BG) levels are high (over 300) and a couple of times a week as long as exogeneous insulin is being given. The explanation describes 3 conditions in which high blood glucose levels can lead to ketones and 1 condition in which high blood glucose levels rarely leads to ketones.

1. Insufficient insulin. Insulin allows glucose (energy) to enter cells. Without insulin, cells starve because they don't get glucose. Insulin's like a door key -- if the key's missing, you can't open the door, and all the glucose stays on the wrong side. If the cells don't get enough glucose, they try and compensate by breaking down lipids (fat) for energy, and that causes ketones.

2. Infections. The immune response to the infection can impair insulin usage. So it's like the doors are partly barricaded, and not enough glucose can get in to feed the cells. That's why things like UTIs or bad teeth can cause ketones, even at relatively innocuous numbers.

3. Insufficient food intake. This one often seems counterintuitive, and even grasping the physiology, it took me a little while to bend my brain around this. Because even at high numbers, a cat needs a fresh infusion of nutrition-wrapped glucose for the insulin to let into the cells. kind of like the cells are watching a stale buffet get staler, and waiting for the good fresh stuff to come out of the kitchen. when it doesn't, they start looking at ways to get more/better "food", and that can mean breaking down fats and causing ketones.

4. Too much glucose. Rebound is the bodies response to an insulin dosage that is too high over time (a positive feedback loop). In rebound, glucose still enters the cells at a good rate, but MORE glucose is being dumped into the bloodstream (well, technically, more glucose is being produced via glycosis, but...). So the cells aren't starving, and they don't "feel the need" to break down fats into metabolic products they can use. Plenty of food's coming in the door, there's just a lot more out there. So the physiological mechanism that creates the high BG levels is a very different underlying physiology that won't lead to ketosis. If your cat has high BG levels and you suspect it is due to rebound, you have a little more leeway to experiment without the threat of ketones hanging over your head.

So, to put it in really simple terms there are 3 ways to get ketones:

High numbers (not enough insulin/ineffective insulin) --> possible ketones.
Inappetance/insufficient food intake --> possible ketones
Infections --> possible ketones

(Note that the latter 2 issues make it possible for ketones to appear at relatively "low" BGs e.g., under 300mg/dl)

When you start combining these issues, you increase the probability of developing ketones, ketosis, and potentially fatal ketoacidosis.

Thanks to Hilary & Zug(GA)

Tarheels Beat Duke 83-76!

2006-03-05T11:48:00.000-05:00

They came close at the Dean Dome, and succeeded at Cameron!

"The freshman-heavy squad of No. 13 North Carolina handed the senior-laded team of top-ranked Duke its second loss in as many games with an 83-76 victory in the ACC finale for both teams.

Tyler Hansbrough scored a game-high 27 points and added 10 rebounds as North Carolina's four freshmen outscored Duke's four seniors 55-51 in a game that again showed why ranking, statistics, age, beauty and credit rating mean nothing in college basketball's craziest rivalry."

http://www.newsobserver.com/122/story/414847.html

Too bad David Noel's leadership role isn't recognized in the N&O's reporting on this win. He's been my favorite player since he joined the team. Clearly Roy Williams feels the same:

"Carolina coach Roy Williams didn't recruit Noel, but he might just adopt him if Noel's family wants to share permanently. Williams was nearly in tears in describing what an unselfish and heroic effort Noel has given since the end of last season until now.

"I have a saying on my desk at my house," Williams said. "It says, 'Statistics are important, but relationships last a lifetime.' And the relationship I have with players has always meant more to me than anything.

"David Noel has done as good a job -- no one has ever done anything better than David Noel."

Getting Started with Feline Diabetes

2006-03-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

The initial diagnosis of feline diabetes (FD) can be overwhelming. It adds a new dimension of caregiving to the relationship we have with our cat as well as changing the day-to-day routine we have all established around feeding. But FD is not a death sentence and the changes it introduces into our households can be routinized fairly quickly. It is a complex disease though, and there is a lot to learn. The best sources of information are the Feline Diabetes Message Board FAQs and the Pet Diabetes Wiki.

You should also read and post on the message board. Ask questions, then ask more questions. Also check out Making the Most of Your FDMB Experience.

In the meantime, you must still care for your sugar cat. Here are a few tips to help you get started. As you learn more about feline diabetes, each of these tips can be customized for you and your cat.

If you are already using insulin, don't switch your cat to low carbohydrate diet unless you are hometesting. A low carbohydrate diet has a high probability of reducing your cat's insulin needs so when and if you do decide to switch, do so carefully. For details, read 10 Good Reasons NOT to Change that Diet Just Yet!
If your cat is on insulin, don't adjust dosages upward until your cat's body has had time to adjust to the current dose. This usually requires between 3-5 days. You can adjust downward at any time. Dose adjustments should be made in .2 or .5 unit increments.
Most FD cats benefit by being on a schedule, but don't be daunted by the prospect; most of us work and have a life, yet are able to manage our FD kitty by making a few adjustments in our day-to-day lives. If you choose to hometest, you can either test, feed, shoot OR feed, test, shoot. With fast acting insulin, such as NPH, you may need to wait for 30 minutes to an hour after feeding before shooting. Over time, you may refine this sequence to meet the needs of your unique kitty.
If you choose not to hometest, don't expect your vet will do everything for you. At minimum you need to know the clinical symptoms of hypoglycemia and be prepared to act quickly. Following a set schedule will help you recognize any odd behavior following an insulin shots.
Don't forget to test urine for ketones (weekly). If your cat has had ketones or DKA, you should test daily or every other day. Ketones and hypoglycemia are the most dangerous side effects of feline diabetes. Be sure to learn about both early on in your studies. -
Don't hesitate to ask lots of questions on FDMB. We've all been in your shoes, we like to share our experiences!
FDMB members have varying degrees of experience and knowledge regarding feline diabetes and often have differing opinions. Don't assume that what someone says is the one and only "right" answer. If you are asking for advice and getting divergent opinions, ask posters to explain why they are recommending a certain course of action. "Why" is an excellent question. Only you can decide what is right for you and your cat.
Don't piss off your vet over diet or hometesting. Your cat will need medical care beyond what you can do at home. Of course it is better to have a vet who will work with you on hometesting and dietary adjustments, but if you live in a small town and don't have choices, you need to find a way to work with the vet you have.
Interviewing Vets for the Treatment of Your Diabetic Cat and
Questions for Vets.
Don't feel like you are in this alone. FDMB is a community. We care about you and your cat. If someone doesn't answer your question right away, it only means no one is around who knows the answer. Be patient. If your question gets lost, repost it. Be persistent!
Don't worry yourself sick about feline diabetes. It is a manageable disease, especially if you don't stress yourself out. Go to the movies now and then. Take walks. Have fun. Your cat will be OK and you'll both be happier if you take as good of care of yourself as you take of your sugar kitty.

Remember, this is just a quick reference to help you start caring for your diabetic cat until you have time to read and understand the more technical information contained in the FAQs and the Pet Diabetes Wiki.

Bombast

2006-02-22T07:48:00.000-05:00

"A life without bombast is not a life."

Steven Halkiotis, Orange County Commissioner, in response to chair Barry Jacobs' recognition of Halkiotis' 20 years of service. "We thank you for your compassion, your integrity, dedication, creativity and for your passion and even for your bombast on occasion." Halkiotis announced yesterday that he will not seek re-election.

I attended my first county commissioners meeting last week when OWASA was asked to explain to the commissioners how they handle assessments (adding service to existing neighborhoods with septic systems). The atmosphere was casual and collegial between the commissioners themselves and the presenters. I don't recall ever laughing out of amusement at a Carrboro or a Chapel Hill town meeting, but Commissioners Halkiotis' bombastic speech gave me a couple of good belly laughs that night.

I regret now that I haven't paid more attention to the county commissioners. We could certainly use more interesting characters in local politics. Sorry I missed the opportunity of getting to know Commissioner Halkiotis as a legislator and a bombast.

More on Net Neutrality

2006-02-16T15:08:00.000-05:00

"Nothing less than the future of the internet is at stake in these discussions. We must preserve neutrality in the system in order to allow the new Googles of the world, the new Yahoo!s, the new Amazons to form. We risk losing the internet as catalyst for consumer choice, for economic growth, for technological innovation, and for global competitiveness." Vint Cerf , speaking to Congress on 2/7/06

GGC all -the-way

2006-02-13T08:23:00.000-05:00

In my younger days, I ended many nights of partying on Franklin Street at Hectors. Not the best of places for vegetarians, but the GGC (Greek grilled cheese) all-the-way will go down in memory as one of my favorite foods.

Raspberries to the property owner that is forcing Hector's out of their space on the corner of Henderson and Franklin Street. I'm glad they'll be re-opening elsewhere but it won't be the same. Pretty soon all the remnants of old Chapel Hill will be gone. Thank goodness for the Shrunken Head!

First School

2006-02-11T17:23:00.000-05:00

FPG Institute is proposing a new model of early childhood education. "This model offers a new way to think of children starting school that moves away from simply thinking of preschool, Head Start or More at Four as being an “add on” to the existing system, that is not fully integrated into how we think about educating children in our community." (Dick Clifford memo excerpted by Neil Pederson in his memo to the Sewell School Governance Committee)

The idea is to build the school at the back end of the Horace Williams Tract, close to Seawell School to create a natural transition from the preK-2nd students at First School into grades 3-5 at Seawell. On the surface, this is a great idea, like everything else that comes out of FPG Institute. Children from low-income homes are exposed to more non-educational television and less written and numerical materials than children in middle-to upper class homes. When they come to school, the disparity in readiness creates one of the most significant social problems of our era (IMHO).
I was happy to see the following also from the Dick Clifford memo (see above for reference):

"The model has as a major goal of reducing the achievement gap between children with great economic advantage and those with less advantages. About half the achievement gap exists prior to kindergarten entry according to recent studies. By reaching children earlier we have a chance to substantially reduce the gap at this point in their lives. We know that both your More at Four and Head Start programs have this same goal and we see a joint effort in First School as the next logical step in working toward school success for all. A clearly articulated model that cuts across the current age and grade configuration should be a major help in dealing with the achievement gap. We know that the school system has been committed to addressing this issue and believe First School will offer a new set of strategies to accomplish this common goal.

I understand the concerns expressed elsewhere about institutionalizing children at such a young age. But this proposal is an attempt to provide exposure to words and numbers and other intellectual activities that low SES children do not always receive at home. Children in lower-income homes don’t have as many books, newspaper, or magazines available to them in the home; their parents are less likely to be seen reading or calculating; their neighborhoods have less signage; they don’t travel as much so their neighborhoods and homes are the environments that establish their frames of reference. In essence, their environment does not convey the message that literacy (words and numbers) is a vital aspect of everyday life. Schools are built upon the basic assumption that words and numbers are the basic operational tools of life. If children come to schools without already having embraced that assumption, they are at significant disadvantage. As are the schools that have to balance their services between those who already ‘fit the mold’ and those that don’t.

The school district needs all the help it can get in resolving the minority achievement gap, and I've long wanted to see more interaction between the university and the school district. But I am concerned that Seawell isn't the best choice for students to populate this program. For one thing, Sewell Elementary is doing a better job of bridging the gap than 4 other district elementary schools.

Excerpted from the Chapel Hill Carrboro School ReportCard for 2004-2005

Elementary School	Black	Hispanic	Economically Disadvantaged	Limited English Proficiency	Disabilities
Seawell	74.2	87.5	80	78.9	81.5
FP Graham	66.1	76.7	65.9	74.1	65.6
Glenwood	78.1	89.5	78.0	76.2	72
McDougle	71.1	66.7	69.2	50	68.1
Carrboro	63.3	67.5	60	51.3	51.9
Ephesus	57.1	85.7	68.1	78.6	51.4
Estes Hills	60.8	71.4	61	64.7	57.9
Scroggs	88.2	73.3	73.3	80	80.6
Rashkis	74.4	57.1	65.7	83.3	63.6

I hope the school board will consider an assignment plan that pulls students from Frank Porter Graham, Carrboro, Ephesus, and McDougle as well as Seawell if they go forward with this project. The goal should be identifying strategies for reducing inequities, but I'm afraid the money savings may get in the way of their focus.

Questions for now:

1. Who will be attending this new school? Will this new school taking students exclusively from the (middle class) northern neighborhoods currently served by Seawell or will it also pull from FPG elementary and Carrboro where there is a more diverse student population (racially and SES)?

2. The minority achievement gap is the most significant performance problem in our school district. According to the literature, children who come to school ready to learn lose the benefits of early age programming by late elementary/middle school. Where do the students of CHCCS most benefit--an additional readiness program or late elementary/middle grades programs that help prevent the erosion of benefits from current readiness programs? Does the financial situation dictate making a choice between the two?

3. What criteria will the school board use for making this decision? Can we take the financial aspects of it off the table for the first round of discussions? How will the school board and district administrators communicate with the public? Will public review come early enough to actually have an impact on decision making?

I'm much less skeptical of the programming part of this project than I was when I first heard about it. Hopefully, the implementation plan will focus on serving the most underserved children and not get too tangled up with finances.

Changing Paradigms

2006-02-04T13:26:00.000-05:00

This week we saw the 'messiness' of appointing someone to a position that should have been filled through election. The public debate of the Carrboro Alderman was painful, circular, and at times appeared to be downright, heavy-handed bullying. For a while there was two groups on the board, publicly defined by the individual that group was supporting for the open seat.

The ideological differences between those two groups is of critical importance for members of the community to understand. Too bad those different positions were so singularly attributed to representation for the annexation area, to be referred to as northeast Carrboro from here on out (thanks for the suggestion Mark!). Certainly that was a consideration, but I think it was masking the deeper divide on issues of growth.

On one hand, there is the 'go slow, minimize change' group. Those individuals are working to maintain the status quo of Carrboro as a small, funky bedroom community of Chapel Hill. In many ways, this is the group I most closely identify with. At least, it is the group that has my emotional support. The other group is working from the assumption that future growth within the urban services boundary will take place in Carrboro and that we need to acknowledge the inevitability of change and to plan for it. While I don't like the way change is destroying the small-town, close knit community feeling of Carrboro, I also intellectually understand that denying this position will force development outside the urban services boundary and result in sprawl/environmental degradation.

Donella Meadows says that 'If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and to who has power over them.' (Rule 4 of Leverage Points) What do we know now that the 'no/limited growth' group has control of the rules?

Environmental regulations within Carrboro zoning control will become stricter. On the surface this is hardly objectionable. And yet, we don't live in a bubble. What happens to growth that is kept out of Carrboro? We certainly won't stop it from occurring, so we should assume it will go where there are fewer restrictions, such as Chatham County. They may be downstream from our waterways, but their traffic certainly flows northward.
The stock of affordable housing will increase. Again, hardly objectionable. And yet, focusing on supply through zoning ordinances/policy is tied so closely to development of luxury housing that we should be prepared for the current trend of decreasing proportions of low-to-moderate income residents to high-income residents to continue, creating a more economically bifurcated population.
Taxes will most likely continue to increase. I'm not a no-government supporter. I don't object to paying for taxes that provide valuable human services and environmental protection. I do mind wasting my hard earned money on unsustainable infrastructure and administrative services. I definitely object to the impact annual tax increases is having on the composition of the community. Gentrification and out-migration of Carrboro's African-American population will leave this community looking more like Cary than Carrboro.
The cultural divide between old and new Carrboro will turn local government into a war zone. The repercussions of the appointment process will have a significant and detrimental long-term impact on old Carrboro. There's no way to predict whether appointing someone from the newly annexed northeast Carrboro area would have smoother over the transition, but there is no doubt in my mind that the failure to appoint someone with a legitimate claim to representing those who were not able to vote will have a major impact on the 2007 election. Fortunately the residents of northeast Carrboro do have a strong environmental and social justice ethic, but they will change us in other ways.

Up until now, local growth has been caught up in a series of postive feedback loops ("any place where the more you have of something, the more you have the possibility of having more"). The more growth we see, the more pressure is placed on local government and human service agencies, the higher the taxes go, the more we need development to support the burden of growth. The reputation of our school system contributes to those growth pressures. The better our kids do on national tests, the more development occurs to support wealthy families who want their kids to go to school here.

What steps/policies will the new majority on the BOA undertake to break the growth cycle? Will they be successful or will they create more turmoil? Will they acknowledge the complexities or fall back on positions they've shared in previous contexts? And how much pressure will they feel to act quickly before the 2007 election? Will they dance with the system or try to control it?

The question that can never be answered but which we should never forget, is how the use of appointment rather than election impacts everything that happens over the next couple of years. Yes, I know there was no way around appointment. But the appointment could have been made on the basis of the last election by appointing the 4th runner up. That one little decision may be the one flap of a seagull's wings for Carrboro.

And where does Dan Coleman fit in all this? Without his participation in the electoral process and having been subjected to the intense questioning of groups like the Sierra Club, we really don't know but we might have a clue. In one of his pre-campaign season editorials, he speculated about a candidate of the future: "In the future, Carrboro may find itself on the horns of a dilemma: On the one hand, a marvelous case study that small really can be beautiful; on the other, a small town facing the challenge of trying to affordably meet the expectations of an increasingly affluent population....Some future candidate might posit a merger with Chapel Hill as a way to resolve this tension."

Where's my crystal ball? Certainly sounds like a campaign issue that would get him traction with Carrboro's newest neighborhoods in 2007.

Point In Time Count

2006-01-29T15:26:00.000-05:00

Last week, we did a community point-in-time count of homeless people here in Orange County. The goal is to count everyone in the county who classifies as homeless by HUD standards. By far the largest portion of our homeless population is covered by the service agencies, but we also had to count those individuals who live on the street and don't use the services. In the past, the street count portion has been handled by the police exclusively. As part of our effort to increase the accuracy of our reporting, we decided to try using volunteers rather than the police this year. Since it was our first time to use volunteers, we decided to start slow and partner volunteers with police officers and then use those volunteers to develop a training program for a summer count. Our goal is to make this an entirely volunteer activity; it's going to take much more training and preparation than I anticipated.

I went out with the Carrboro officer from 9:00 pm - 11:30 pm. It was a very cold and windy night so fortunately we only found two guys, both of whom were willing to talk with us. We began by driving around looking for anyone walking. Next we began checking out a list of places that had been compiled by the other officers on the force (underpasses, abandoned houses, etc.). Fortunately, we only found two guys out that night. They were just walking around trying to keep warm. When we pulled up in the car, they were very hesitant to talk with us at first (no surprise there!), but the the police officer really knew how to talk to them and help them relax their guard. They told us that homelessness, substance abuse, and unemployment are a vicious cycle. If you drink, you can't hold a job; if you can't hold a job, you lose your housing; if you lose your housing, you can't get a new job; if you can't get a new job, you keep on drinking.

It's interesting to see the town late at night from the eyes of a cop. I had no idea that people hangout in the rafters of road overpasses, or that there are small communities of individuals living in tent cities within the urban area. All we saw was the sites that night, but one place we went really scared me. Besides being outside with only industrial plastic covering beds that had been pulled out of dumpsters, the amount of trash spread around the site was just unbelievable. I've lived in cities so I've seen desperate poverty, but this was different. I can't imagine living like that or how it must feel to be so totally cut off from the wealth and prosperity that is this community. It was a very humbling experience.

...homelessness deprives people of far more than shelter. They have no place from which to be productive and giving, to be restored, to be welcomed, to be themselves, to give physical expression to their personalities. The homeless are, quite simply, deprived of their humanity. Restoring that to them requires more than grudging public expenditure and warehouses where they can sleep at night....I don't know the solution for homelessness. What I do know is that it requires more than an impersonal institution that removes the homeless from our sight and our minds. It requires some attention, some engagement from all of us, some willingness to focus on homeless people not as statistics but as individuals, needing care, needing to be welcomed back as full members of the human race.
--Donella Meadows, Being Homeless is More Than Being Without Shelter

Net Neutrality, or Keep the Internet Free

2006-01-29T13:10:00.000-05:00

Net neutrality is the basis of the Internet, the assumption that 'all users are entitled to access content and services or run applications and devices of their choice.' A couple of posters to Squeeze the Pulp don't want a municipal network because they fear government would destroy the concept of net neutrality.

But it's really the big businesses are that systematically attempting to destroy free and open access of the Internet. Cable providers (telecomms) and phone companies (telecos) are at each others throats in their attempts to protect their communications turf. On January 11 representatives from Verison, Time-Warner, Bellsouth, and others met withe NC Revenue Laws Committee to try and convince our legislators to regulate use of the Internet. The telecomms want to prevent telecos from offering video services, and the telecos want to prevent the telecomms from offering voice over IP telephony.

The companies that control the pipes want to discriminate in favor of their own applications, while shutting out or slowing down competing services. These companies have a business incentive to create their own affiliates to compete with the most popular applications — like search engines, voice-over-the-Internet, and streaming video archives.
They now seek to pad their pockets further by becoming gatekeepers to all things digital — deciding what content, applications and services we can use. The telco and cable giants — which dominate 98 percent of the broadband market — not only expect consumers to pay to access the Internet, but they want to charge content producers for using their wires to deliver it. (Deadend for the Internet)

Businesses have every right to expect reasonable profits but access to the Internet and other telecommunications services can no longer be considered luxury service. Local news sources do not provide indepth reporting and analysis; more and more businesses will only accept online job applications; schools budgets don't fund print reference books, etc. Without access, living and working in this community is seriously curtailed.

Access has two components. First, is the information available and representative of all views and second, is it available to everyone, regardless of income level. Through a municipal network we can assure access on both levels.

Here's what I believe:

A municipal networks is the only means of protecting our free and open access to the Internet and all its associated benefits.
Local government should support the creation of a non-profit organization that would oversee the design, installation, and ultimately the management of the service; but that service should be protected against any interference by local governments in policymaking, etc.
Local governments should commit to use the service to support their own operations, thus creating a significant market demand from the start and reducing their own municipal expenditures for network access.
The service should be low-cost but not free. It should follow the similar cost of service principles written into the OWASA charter.
Taxes should not be used to fund ongoing operation although municipal funding will be necessary for start up costs.
Such a service will create new, well-paying jobs to support our local economy and will continue to support economic development by reducing business costs and creating new business opportunities, especially if we can bundle Internet, telephone, and cable services.

Ultimately, I want telecommunications in southern Orange County to be treated as a utility--a basic function necessary to life in the 21st century. Just as I trust OWASA to protect my water supply, I will trust a similarly structured utility to protect my access to a free and open Internet.

The Free Expression Policy Project has put together an excellent "overview of the mass media system and the concerns of the media democracy movement"

Feline Diabetes

2005-12-11T18:46:00.000-05:00

My lovely Lucy was diagnosed with feline diabetes in September 2004. Initially we were told to give her 1 unit of Humulin L every 12 hours. Between September 2004 and March 2005 she had 4-5 UTIs and lost 4 pounds. She had complete workup done in April and came home limping badly. The bloodwork was another $300 and told us nothing. So I started looking for a new vet. Before I was able to make a well-cat appointment, something happened, I don't know what, but Lucy developed a huge abscess on her belly and nearly died. She has very thick fur and has always hated having her belly touched so it took several days to figure out that her malaise and inappetance was due to something other than the diabetes or another UTI.

Fortunately, I was able to get an appointment with one of the vets I had on my list; she found the abscess and rushed Lucy into surgery. She spent the next 3 weeks recovering. But she didn't really recover. By big, funny, pesky girl was wasting away. She stayed curled up in a ball sleeping 24 hours a day. If I picked her up, she just laid there--didn't try to bite or get down, very abnormal behavior. Every morning I expected to find her gone. Everytime I left the house I was scared to come back in. Nothing helped. She had a very odd, intermittent twitching in her head and her eyes were scarey looking. She just looked at me like I was failing her. I was miserable.

All this time, we followed the vet's advice completely. We had bloodwork whenever we were told, and I fed Purina kidney formula (dry) for CRF. My friends were all telling me to let her go, but I had to try one more time. I found a vet who would come to the house and hoped that she would see something different since Lucy wouldn't be as stressed out if we went to a clinic. Lucy was doing the twitching thing right in this vets lap. Another big bill with no advice other than making the end of her life as comfortable as possible.

That's when I took charge. I found the Feline Diabetes Message Board (FDMB) where I was told to begin hometesting. Why didn't I think of that before? No physician would ever allow a human patient to take insulin without a blood glucose check. In retrospect, I believe the twitching was a result of low blood glucose. I'm not sure if she ever had a full-blown hypo, I was too ignorant to recognize it if she did. We also switched to a high-protein, low carbohydrate canned food (Fancy Feast) and then to Wellness. That change along brought almost normal BG levels. Following the recommendations of the folks at Phydeaux and some FDMB members, we then changed to a raw diet (Nature's Variety frozen medallions). Within a week, Lucy was off insulin.

Within two months, due to dietary changes, Lucy went from near death to being a diet controlled diabetic, the twitching ended, and her eyes took back their normal mischievious glint. She's gained her weight back, along with her fractiousness. Her neuropathy is gone (methyl-B12); she runs, she plays, she growls at the mailman and neighborhood cats who come into her yard. My old friend once again helps me type and read the newspaper. She demands her breakfast as soon as I open my eyes every morning. I can't believe I waited so long to take charge.

I've offered to show the vet how we do the hometesting and share my data with her, but she's not interested. I've written to the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Association to encourage them to stop prescribing dry food and to start expecting owners to hometest. No one, human or feline, should have to settle for the uninformed care Lucy had for the first year of her diabetic life. Vets are professionals who should be more willing to work with us than to demand that we put everything about our cat's health in their hands. I'm still hoping to find someone with the right attitude; I will never again be a passive caregiver.

Accountability

2005-11-14T12:06:00.000-05:00

On November 8, the Board of Education for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System enacted a policy, effective this year, that requires all students in the 8th grade and higher, to pass end-of-course exams in order to pass the course associated with that exam. Although students who do not pass the exam on the first try will be given additional opportunities for remediation and retesting, the fact is that kids who worked hard all year long, were assessed by their teachers to be proficient in the topic, could still find themselves judged to be inadequate based on a single test. These 10 new high stakes exams are in addition to an already full agenda of placement tests, achievement tests, graduation exams, and of course, course exams.

The justification for this new policy is accountability. But accountability for what?

Holding students accountable for their own performance? Their semester-long record provides that data in a much more timely fashion.
Holding teachers accountable for teaching the standard curriculum? Should students be penalized if their teachers are not aligning their instruction with state standards?
Holding administrators accountable for placing well qualified teachers in each classroom? Again, should students be penalized if the district is not performing up to expected standards?

I believe in accountability, but in this instance, children are being victimized by adults who are misapplying the concept. If we want to make teachers accountable for teaching the standard curriculum, then let's adopt item banks of assessment items within each content area and require teachers to use those items in their course exams throughout the school year. Then if students are not doing well, we can more easily trace the problems back to individual student performance or to teachers who are not following the standard curriculum.

Assessments are intended to provide feedback in a timely fashion. When offered in a timely fashion, this feedback allows students to review materials before progressing on to the next unit or course and lets teachers know when they need to review materials that were inadequately taught the first time. End of course testing is an inspection process that punishes students in an attempt to “make teachers accountable in teaching the N.C. standard course of study.” You cannot inspect quality into a product on the assembly line, and you cannot inspect quality into a student at the end of the year.

When provided throughtout the school year, standard assessments, such as shared item banks of test questions, can ensure that teachers are counseled and/or replaced without punishing students by causing them to retake a course. And if we really believe in accountability, then let's look at data on minority student achievement over the past 20 years. That cumulative data speaks volumes on the LACK of accountability we impose upon the district administration, including the Board of Education.

Teachers and administrators do need to make sure that students are proficient in one course before moving on. But adding new high-stakes tests is misguided at best and at worse it will further erode the confidence of all children who are already stressed by the sheer volume of testing.