R U OK?

Saw the fires -- R U OK -- you can come to our house if you need a place -- dogs are welcome too!

That’s the email I received on Saturday from a colleague. It wasn’t until we’d exchanged a string of emails yesterday that I realized how close she was to the Diamond Bar fires shortly after she offered up her place.

I’m in Ventura County; she’s in the OC. But as I looked up at a gray sky all weekend and smelled the air, when it comes to Santa Ana winds and the fire season, we’re all in it together.

I’m tired of the Southern California fire season. I’ve lived here for decades and I know that global warming isn’t a joke. Saturday was November 15th for goodness sakes!

I don’t need to watch You Tube clips from VIP global warming seminars with factoid-fanatic experts droning over their PowerPoint slides showing 30 years worth of rising temps. I can feel it on my arms and legs still clothed in short-sleeved tee-shirts and cropped cotton pants, sans a sweater even at night.

Last weekend the temperature was in the 90’s. Friday I thought I was going to scream with humidity in the single digits. Not only has driving become impossible, don’t get me started on that, but the weather has pushed me round the bend.

Today I heard a weather person report with joy that it’s going to get cooler. Today will be 90 degrees. Cool and 90 do not belong in the same sentence.

Here’s an article from Huffington Post by a fellow Californian that shares my sentiments. If you like your posts filled with factoids rather than crazed rants, check it out.

The Birth of a Community Activist

This morning I made calls at an Obama house call center just like I’ve done the past few days. All ages, colors, ethnic groups, people I’ve never seen before sitting on living rooms couches, patio chairs, kitchen benches hunched over their cell phones and scripts. It was such a moving, spirited feeling to be surrounded by others committed to the same efforts as me. The conversations swirling around me spurred me on. All of us calling because we knew this was the moment to take our country back.

I learned that our district has made the most calls in California and that California has made the most in the nation for Obama. I am so proud of my state. We are not a bunch of nuts that have rolled to the coast. We are proud Americans working for what we believe in, a country that will return to the principles of democracy and opportunity that I was taught in school.

My daughter is in college in Germany for her junior year. She sent an email saying the university is putting on lectures today and tomorrow about the American political system. Virtually everyone she meets is for Obama. The whole world is watching.

I’ve been glued to the TV as I work as best as I can on a day like no other. I write an email pitch as I click back and forth from CNN to MSNBC. At the last minute I remember to join a client conference call. I mute the set and watch during the call, checking Huffington Post as I take notes. We’ll start hearing some results soon because it's now after 6pm in the East and Wolf Blitzer says some polls in Indiana have closed. At MSNBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza is partying like it’s the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Can two years of kitchen table politics really be ending?

The long lines and energy for this election makes me hope that we will all work to undo the damage of the last 8 years, really since 1980, and repair our economy, our healthcare system, and our environment. No matter what happens I know that the seeds of community activism have been sown. For me and for others I’ve spoken with at meetings and driving to Nevada, there’s no going back.

My high school daughter told me she was proud of my efforts. I'm proud of me for walking the walk, not just talking the talk. I decided we should stay home with her to watch all the returns instead of going to a neighborhood election party. And we’ll Skype her sister at midnight to celebrate.

We are the change, the infrastructure, the community we have been waiting for. I just can't believe it. Where are the tissues?

California Proposition 2

STANDARDS FOR CONFINING FARM ANIMALS. INITIATIVE STATUTE.

• Requires that calves raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be confined only in ways that allow these animals to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.


• Exceptions made for transportation, rodeos, fairs, 4-H programs, lawful slaughter, research and veterinary purposes.


• Provides misdemeanor penalties, including a fine not to exceed $1,000 and/or imprisonment in jail for up to 180 days.
  

Last Sunday the New York Times Magazine ran an article about Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, “The Barnyard Strategist by Maggie Jones. As the article says, he’s been “campaigning to unite vegans and meat-eaters in support of California’s Proposition 2, the country’s most sweeping ballot initiative on animal welfare.”

By coincidence, I just finished reading Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food by Gene Bauer, about how he started an animal rescue for farmed animals and the whole back story about industrial animal agriculture.

Now, I’m not not interested in how we get the chicken I make soup with; but I can’t call myself an activist - yet. I thought I knew what I was getting into when I started it. Wrong. I’ll review the book in another post. Right now I just want to say that it made me think about a question which I’ll pose here:

What do you do when you learn about an injustice? Can you turn away or are you called upon to do something?

Reading about the way agribusiness treats animals and the disease that’s introduced to the food system makes me want to consider becoming a vegetarian. Just consider at this point, not make a complete about face.

I like meat. Should I just eat a little bit? Should it be organic from animals living like they’re supposed to, not in factories? That will cost more so should I give it up altogether? Does it matter at my age that I’ve got unnecessary hormones in my body? My girls are 20 and almost 17. What did I do to them and what should I tell them to do as they move out on their own? And what about my husband? He’s all for composting, cloth napkins and beans but can he give up smoking brisket in his R2D2-shaped smoker?

And once again, what can one person do about The System, no matter which industry we’re trying to change?

So as my brain wandered around, I realized there was one first step I could take. We’re trying to get a farmers market into our unincorporated city. There’s the usual red tape that’s frustrating the process. I wrote a letter to our local newspaper supporting the market and sent a copy to our county supervisor.

Small step for sure. For now, I know I’ll cut back on the size of the meat portions, make a few more veggie meals, check prices on milk and meat, read up on it, and of course vote for Prop 2.

Dear Editor:
As a 15 year resident of Oak Park, I believe that a farmers market would be a good thing for the city. Whatever we can do to strengthen the ties between people and build a viable local community, we should consider.

I’ve visited other cities like Seattle with its Pike Market Place and Vancouver with its Granville Island and the value in a public square is immeasurable. Sure, those centers are permanent and include numerous shops and galleries along with the farmers market. But if you’ve ever sipped a coffee and watched the human parade go by at an outdoor café, you know what I mean by the joy of spending a few hours at a real public gathering place.

It’s not like we don’t have ongoing examples nearby with the Calabasas and Thousand Oaks Farmers Markets. What a lovely way to spend the morning walking among the vegetable displays, lingering over the olive oil samples and schmoozing with the farmers. When you ask a merchant what to do with some strange looking beets, you’re likely to get a friendly, impromptu recipe from the customer standing next to you.

I know we have to be careful about parking, noise and all the other worries that the permit people have to deal with. But why not consider the spirit, rather than the letter of the law.

As we move into that most quintessential of American holidays, Thanksgiving, it’s time to think about the public good. Let’s save our family farms and our communities and put up a farmers market in Oak Park. If we’re ever going to pull this country back together, we have to start somewhere and over a ripe tomato is as good a place as any.

Read Up On It

My answer for everything is – read up on it! Hey, I was one of those kids who curled up on the couch with the World Book encyclopedia for fun, not a homework assignment. So it’s natural that my way into the green world is through the written word. The issues are many and each is complex. As I find a blog, website or a retro hold-in-your-hand book that offers information, understanding and community, I’ll share my finds with you.

I’ve just finished a memoir entitled “Epitaph for a Peach, Four Seasons on My Family Farm” by David Mas Masumoto and winner of the 1995 Julian Child Cookbook Award in the literary food writing category.

That’s right. It’s not a recent book and he’s written numerous other books before and since. Check out his website. But I am in a frugal/eco mode, as I get up-to-speed, reading what’s available on the library shelf or through the library system when I can. Plus I would consider this a classic-in-the-making, or as the LA Times said, “Masumoto uses his farm as Thoreau did his Walden Pond.”

The author, a Japanese-American, has returned to his family’s farm in the San Joaquin Valley, the Central Valley as we also call it, in California. So for me, reading the book is different than someone in say, Minnesota. I can picture the fields and the surrounding mountains. I can feel the oven-like heat and low humidity on my skin as I read. And I can bone up on my California history as well.

Masumoto, an organic peach and grape farmer, wants to continue growing Sun Crest peaches, a variety that tastes like the essence of peach but doesn’t travel well, which of course is the essence of produce marketing. Should he give up on the peach and bulldoze the trees down? Or should he give it a go for one more year?

This primer on a year of growing the quintessential summer fruit is also the story of Japanese-American family farming in California in the 20th century. Masumoto explains the importance of tradition, of families working the land and chores together, of communities where kids grow up on the farm, leave for college returning only like a visitor before the final move to the big city. Some never come back, while some, like Masumoto, return because these few acres are where home and the meaning of life truly is.

How do you prune a fruit tree so it will live a full productive life, how do you manage a crew that knows more about harvesting than you, if all farming is wrestling with nature, how can you win without ultimately damaging the land. These are a few questions Masumoto, the poet-farmer, attempts to answer. I say ‘attempts’ because for this farmer, everything is about the journey, not the arrival.

I call the book an ‘ode to an orchard’ because it’s not a how-to, rather it’s a why. Why salvage old machinery parts rather than purchasing shiny new ones, why plant cover crops, why walk the farm day after day to get feedback from the land itself. Why breaking even may be enough if the farm and its way of life can be saved.

I’m a suburban girl who loves big cities and can’t wait to leave the exburbs for a walkable, mass transit life. What am I doing reading a book about a Japanese-American peach farmer? I guess the reason I can recommend this book, especially if you want to get up to learn about saving family farms and community building, is because it’s the story of someone who cares about quality over quantity, people over product, authenticity over the consumer-driven life. How much more real can you get than the food you put in your mouth and the soil it comes from.

Or maybe I’m just bone deep tired of multi-tasking amid a mountain of electronic gizmos, skimming websites and calling my emails, even from work colleagues, a community. In any case, “Epitaph for a Peach” is how one man tries to live an attentive life.

Now I’m off to the library website to see which of his other books they have so I can curl up with them.