Food and Passive Resistance to Bylaws

Something totally different here, away from the major stories and down to survival.

I saw that some places, cities, villages, towns, have problems with people turning the front yards into gardens. What?? The cost of food has gone up, will continue to go up, and people need to find a way to eat. So, I thought on this for a while, then figured out a very old, very easy solution to bypassing those bylaws.

Years ago I joined someone in making raised gardens, and we put those in the front yard. The neighbours had not qualms with this, in fact they liked the way we designed the layout. We grew more vegetables per square foot than we could in any ground level garden, and the pests were less, our backs did not ache, and we actually enjoyed the work! Wow, what a concept!

 So, here I sit, looking at the weird and wonderful bylaws of some places and wonder, would this work in cities that seem to think only lawns, trees and bushes belong in the front yards?  The raised gardens should be one way to get this done, and still get some food on the table without fines or hassles from some overly zealous bylaw officer.

The process is simple, so here is what I did. First year we just dug up the plots, put in some good soil, and had that soil above the level of the grass. Well, it worked, but it was not quite the labour saving we wanted. So, we scavenged some lumber, put that into long boxes, and then put those boxes over the raised beds. We went a bit extravagant with adding in some black ground cover to keep the weeding down, but basically we did it on the cheap.

That allowed use to grow peppers, tomatoes, even potatoes without having to put so much space between plants. So far, so good, but I still had a back ache from bending over to weed. Hmmm ok, add in more soil, and add in some of the kitchen scraps (no meat or bones here, just veggie waste) and the next year we had a bonanza!

Back to the bylaws. I read the article and it said that gardens that took up the space of the front yard got some people fines. Hmmm well, ok, if the city or town had a problem with the lack of a “lawn” then perhaps this would be a way to work with the bylaw and still eat! Yes, it should work, but there is the question of esthetic, which appears to be the root of the complaint. Staining the wood would work, so would putting a decoration on the wood using some stencils, paint or other means. Better yet, ask the neighbours if the design is attractive. A bit of a risk, but less annoying than having to take all the boxes down mid-season.

Maybe make sure you put in some nice flowers, such as nasturtiums, marigolds (which, by the way, keep some bugs away) and perhaps add in some geraniums, just to “justify” these as gardening and enhancing the appearance.

What is the problem here in the first place?? It seems that city dwelling is meant to be such that you must buy all your food, must buy all your necessities and must keep the city looking as sterile and neat as the parking lots. Don’t, for any reason, use land for what it has been used for centuries, to raise food, to eat from! The only people allowed to do that are outside the city, the farmer, the orchard grower. So, plant an apple tree, edible chestnut, almond, orange (if you live where they actually can grow) or even the lowly cherry and make the yard more “esthetic”. The bonus you get? Your house will be cooler in summer, the winds won’t slow down when they go through, and the moisture will actually stay around for a while. Plus, the city will be happy to see the blossoms.

 Food prices are rising, they will continue to rise, and anything you or I can do to make this easier on our own pocketbooks, our own families, our own cities, must be a good thing…. or maybe just a passive way to resist those antiquarian bylaws meant to impose collective boring sameness on all of us, we MUST conform…..

New Year Gloom, A Better Tomorrow

We all wish each other “Happy New Year” and sometimes we actually mean it. Like most years in history, there is happiness, but often the new year brings in sadness, loss, and malaise. We all strive for a better tomorrow, that is as natural as breathing. How “better” is defined becomes the yardstick that is personal.

Better tomorrows are far more simplified in places where the essentials for life are scarce. Water, food, even shelter, may be the goals. Some have lived without these for a long time, and often those people are just looking for a better tomorrow in the very simplest terms.

Better tomorrows may be measured in having 3 houses instead of 2 for some, while others just believe in having at least some shelter that is affordable.

When we compare ourselves with others, we will always find someone who is better at what we do, smarter than us, or who have more than we do. It becomes a fruitless passion to compare ourselves against others. There are people who have lived through hell, and when we compare ourselves against them, we feel fortunate, but we still are engaged in a fruitless path.

There are often those who would point fingers, blame others for whatever has happened or will happen, and often our laws are invoked because of the resentment and anger.

Why am I even going through this discussion? Simple. Each of us has the ability to be excellent, even if it is as a barber, a farmer, a machinist, a mother or friend. When we use our energy, our own drive to be the best WE can be,  blame disappears, resentment often lessens or even goes away, and certainly we find far less time to blame.

Sure, work depends on someone hiring us, trusting us to do the work as well as we can, and we are, in a sense, dependent on them for our income. Losing a job can mean we feel betrayed, hopeless, powerless, and start on the path to comparing what we are, what we have, with thousands of “them”. What we forget, or just do not know, is that most companies that have to let us go, either by layoff or firing, don’t want to do that. They are feeling much the same things we are, especially when the company is depending on suppliers or buyers who have disappeared. Yes, the industrial and commercial world is built on cooperation, not competition, just as our lives are.

Companies depend on us, they cannot live without people working for them, people buying their product, and the social recognition of their existence. Companies NEED us. This is where some of the international flaws have widened into chasms and the financial earthquake that hit in the last few months is as natural as weather. Companies that believe that dollars are the base for existence are based on fallacy. Stockholders are NOT the lifeblood of corporate health, nor are those CEO’s who “manage”, but the ordinary people who work, often out of the light of recognition, YOU and ME.

WE are the ones that companies MUST learn they NEED. The Great Depression was NOT caused by the collapse of Wall Street, or the markets, it was caused by mechanization. Instead of having people making the cars, the goods people bought, machines began to do that work. When people were put out of work, the market for the goods faded, often dying because no-one had the income to buy. There is a parallel in our modern society. We have mechanized jobs with computers. Instead of having people write out the purchase orders, package the goods, computers have moved into doing those jobs. Basically, if taken to the extreme, companies could work with a tech support team and one or two people making decisions.

Personally I am NOT surprised that economies have gone down, mostly because I have watched the computerization of work to an extreme, without any compensating change for people needing to work.

The world economies have faded and probably will continue to fade, unless WE find our way to our own solid ground. This may mean we look at our own excellent abilities which each of us DO have, and trust ourselves to find the way to make a better tomorrow.

Oddly enough, the fade, the change in thinking, may be the best thing that could happen. It forces us to focus on what WE are, what we are part of. Nature SUPPORTS us, not the other way around. Farmers know this quite well. Those who work with nature know it. Our lives depend on nature, not cars, not plastic cups to drink from, not computers.  Water, air, soil, and the interdependence of all animals, including us, is nature.  This is the focus that Barack Obama has found, and for once, I am pleased.

So, each of us can make some impact here. Grow a head of lettuce, a hill of potatoes, or plant as many tree seeds as we can. Protect the endangered animals, the environment, and we all will have a better tomorrow, because WE DEPEND ON NATURE.

We live in cooperation with each other, our neighbours, our friends, our families, our communities, and most importantly, our world. Wars may reduce populations, but they also violate life, and history proves beyond any doubt, that violence using weapons will return to those who attack.

May our new year be one of reflection, spirituality, peace, and most importantly, a year of our own possibilities. Trust in our own inner drive, our own inner desire to have that better tomorrow, with the understanding that what we do can and does ripple out to affect far more than we know, may well be the lesson for this new year. Hope, acted upon, may just make our tomorrow better.

Bush Designs Pollution, Health Hazards, Guns for America

I honestly thought this was some kind of sick joke when I got some information sent to my email account, but when I checked with several sources, it is true.

The outgoing president is using his “executive” powers to put into law a whole bunch of stupid laws that guarantee fecal matter in streams and drinking water as well as increases in lead. He is also putting into law that truckers can work more than half a day on the road, which most people know is worse than driving drunk!

This is from the Guardian in the U.K.

Paul Harris, The Observer, Guardian.co.uk

George Bush is working at a breakneck pace to dismantle at least 10 major environmental safeguards protecting America’s wildlife, national parks and rivers before he leaves office in January.

With barely 60 days to go until Bush hands over to Barack Obama, his White House is working methodically to weaken or reverse an array of regulations that protect America’s wilderness from logging or mining operations, and compel factory farms to clean up dangerous waste.

In the latest such move this week, Bush opened up some 800,000 hectares (2m acres) of land in Rocky Mountain states for the development of oil shale, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet. The law goes into effect on January 17, three days before Obama takes office.

The timing is crucial. Most regulations take effect 60 days after publication, and Bush wants the new rules in place before he leaves the White House on January 20. That will make it more difficult for Obama to undo them.

“There are probably going to be scores of rules that are issued between now and January 20,” said John Walke, a senior attorney at the National Resources Defence Council. “And there are at least a dozen very controversial rules that will weaken public health and environment protection that have no business being adopted and would not be acceptable to the incoming Obama administration, based on stances he has taken as a senator and during the campaign.”

The flurry of new rules – known as midnight regulations – is part of a broader campaign by the Bush administration to leave a lasting imprint on environmental policy. Some of the actions have provoked widespread protests such as the Bureau of Land Management’s plans to auction off 20,000 hectares of oil and gas parcels within sight of Utah’s Delicate Arch natural bridge.

The new regulations include a provision that would free industrial-scale pig and cattle farms from complying with the Clean Water Act so long as they declare they are not dumping animal waste in lakes and rivers. The rule was finalised on October 31. Mountain-top mining operations will also be exempt from the Clean Water Act, allowing them to dump debris in rivers and lakes. The rule is still under review at the OMB. Coal-fired power plants will no longer be required to install pollution controls or clean up soot and smog pollution.

Yet another of the new rules, which has generated publicity, would allow the Pentagon and other government agencies to embark on new projects without first undertaking studies on the potential dangers to wildlife.

Announcements of further rule changes are expected in the next few days including one that would weaken regulation of perchlorate, a toxin in rocket fuel that can affect brain development in children, in drinking water.
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Bush can pass the rules because of a loophole in US law allowing him to put last-minute regulations into the Code of Federal Regulations, rules that have the same force as law. He can carry out many of his political aims without needing to force new laws through Congress. Outgoing presidents often use the loophole in their last weeks in office, but Bush has done this far more than Bill Clinton or his father, George Bush sr. He is on track to issue more ‘midnight regulations’ than any other previous president.

Many of these are radical and appear to pay off big business allies of the Republican party. One rule will make it easier for coal companies to dump debris from strip mining into valleys and streams. The process is part of an environmentally damaging technique known as ‘mountain-top removal mining’. It involves literally removing the top of a mountain to excavate a coal seam and pouring the debris into a valley, which is then filled up with rock. The new rule will make that dumping easier.

Another midnight regulation will allow power companies to build coal-fired power stations nearer to national parks. Yet another regulation will allow coal-fired stations to increase their emissions without installing new anti-pollution equipment.

One lengthens the number of hours that truck drivers can drive without rest. Another surrenders government control of rerouting the rail transport of hazardous materials around densely populated areas and gives it to the rail companies.

One more chips away at the protection of endangered species. Gun control is also weakened by allowing loaded and concealed guns to be carried in national parks. Abortion rights are hit by allowing healthcare workers to cite religious or moral grounds for opting out of carrying out certain medical procedures.

Bush’s midnight regulations will:

• Make it easier for coal companies to dump waste from strip-mining into valleys and streams.

• Ease the building of coal-fired power stations nearer to national parks.

• Allow people to carry loaded and concealed weapons in national parks.

• Open up millions of acres to mining for oil shale.

• Allow healthcare workers to opt out of giving treatment for religious or moral reasons, thus weakening abortion rights.

• Hurt road safety by allowing truck drivers to stay at the wheel for 11 consecutive hours.

Bush says F U to the Country and All Citizens

What this looks like, to me, is Bush trying every trick in the book to sabotage the country, the new president, the endangered species act, the FDA, the Federal Environment Agency, and basically making everyone live in a garbage dump.

There is no good excuse, never mind reason, to pass this unless you want to work for one of the companies that will give you a job with them later. This is totally aimed, in my opinion, at Barack Obama, green energy and the value of the wildlife and ecology of North America, all being sabotaged by Bush.

What I cannot figure out is why on earth Bush would want to do this, other than total contempt for his own daughters and their children, the people who live in the rural areas, and above all, the families of truckers who may end up attending the funerals of either the trucker or someone that trucker killed.

Bush, you are one stupid Son Of A Bitch, and the man who threw shoes at you was insulting you, not target practicing.  That action was akin to throwing a used sanitary napkin at your head, with the blood of children, women and others killed on the napkin. Got it?