Land – Our Relationship to the Ground upon which we stand
In Growing Potential – Wealthy Investors snap up farmland amid rising food prices Bernard Condon writing for the Associated Press notes that a Tulsa software executive snapped up 430 acres of Michigan cornfields for $4 million and a California insurance executive purchased 156 acres in Iowa, overbidding the farmer who had rented the land for 20 years. The farmer’s maximum bid was $1.1 million. A former Goldman Sachs executive has been reported buying arable land in Africa, competing with Chinese investors seeking to profit from coming food shortages. Investors are free to invest in farmland; however they are removed from the land – its texture, smell. They do not experience the land’s response to hoe or disc harrow. They rarely experience the excitement...
Holiday or Vacation – Welcomed Retreat from Vacation Country
Vacation Destinations – We live in one and now we visit another. Here’s our home that we have left for Manitoba. The Stanford Inn at Dusk We are in Matlock, Manitoba, Canada on vacation or as they say in Manitoba, “on holiday.” Manitobans have it right: a vacation is a holiday – or holy-days – and they are for us. These days are special. There are few interruptions. (When we first are on the road, there are lots of calls from the Inn. They taper as members of our staff get their footing – something we hope they remember when we return.) Murphy retrieving a stick on Lake Winnipeg At home, which is the Inn, we work seven days a week providing little time for reflection and meditation. When we are here, on the same short...
Violence – and diet…..
Yesterday, November 17th, a friend as well as a former employee called from across the continent. We talked for quite a while. During the conversation, he mentioned that he believed that I hadn’t been happy with him when he last lived and worked here because he wasn’t vegan. He told me that it takes some time to “digest” the information regarding the health effects of a vegan diet vis-à-vis the animal based American diet. He said that I had time to understand all of this but he hadn’t had enough time. He was wrong. First, I wasn’t disappointed that he had not become vegan. I knew that he didn’t understand. Second I hadn’t become vegan for physical health at all. I told him that it was a simple change: Twenty-four...
Cellphones, Cordless Phones and Cancer – Real Warnings!
This is one of most important entries I have written. I feel badly that I haven’t posted this information earlier, but I wanted to do additional research. I have sent emails to people I know with phones which appear to be more hazardous than I ever expected. For the last 15 years, I have been following research on the effects of non-ionizing radiation produced by cellphones. Our entire family and most of our staff and guests use them. Knowing their hazards makes using them a bit geeky and definitely less convenient, but, importantly, somewhat safer. In any case – let’s start with the recommendations from a stellar panel of scientists from the planet’s premier universities. First, this information is from a study released in August,...
Home and Canadian Health Care
Awoke this morning after a very short night (didn’t get to bed until 4:00 AM). A raven called out. There were no other birds announcing their presence. I looked out over the pastures – brown and dry, dust rising up from the horses’ slow walk to find grass. Mendocino is in the midst of the dry season and our fall-winter-spring visitors, killdeer, robins, redwing black birds, are gone. There are plenty of human visitors escaping inland’s heat, exploring the California Coast, and/or just getting away from home, here, now. Our vacation was wonderful: North America is magnificent – whether the plains relieved only by rivers cutting through the otherwise flat land; grain silos and trees; rolling prairies; mountains; or the coast. We...
A Question of Justice – Juvenile Justice Gone Awry
Our daughter forwarded us an editorial in The New York Times on juvenile justice in the United States “12 and in Prison” that notes that trying juveniles as adults is “terrible public policy.” Children sentenced as adults are more likely to become repeat violent offenders and The New York Times calls for Congress to cause the States “to simply end these inhumane practices to be eligible for federal juvenile justice funds.” The editorial could more simply advocate putting “justice” back into the nation’s juvenile justice system. This summer our daughter, a law student at New York University, interned in New Orleans helping represent children caught in the city’s juvenile justice system. Some of the...
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