For book lovers, seekers, health enthusiasts and thinkers
I feel like I am in limbo. So many things to do. What to do first? I’ve been dragging my feet all month, waiting for inspiration. Mostly I’m just recovering from the burden of mental effort and worry expended the past year. I’m balancing my business checkbook today, something I’ve been putting off for three [...]
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Yesterday my friend Robbie and I went to lunch. Robbie is well known in the community since she has lived here over half a century and is involved with community projects. I arrived first at the restaurant and got us a table. When she walked in she quickly said hello to another diner and then [...]
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Organic food is a great idea. Grow food as naturally as possible without toxic chemicals by providing for the health of the soil. The farmers’ market is a great idea. Get fresh, local produce directly from the grower. So what has gotten me so irritated that I’ve written a seven-post series called Screw National Farmers’ [...]
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Continued from Part V. Our little town of Veneta hosts a farmers’ market on Fridays, and I seldom go because so few farmers participate. I went this past Friday to check out the prices and struck up a conversation with a couple next to me. Turns out they grew the produce on the table that [...]
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Chase was calling me two to four times a week asking for money they know I didn’t have. I would feel my body tighten up whenever the phone rang. As much as I tried to make a game of it, I was still getting stressed by the frequency of calls. Each time I spoke with [...]
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I subscribed to Ode Magazine last year because it’s supposed to be an upbeat publication focusing on people and businesses caring about people and the planet. In other words, “upbeat, happy” media. Soon after I subscribed I started getting invitations via email to renew my subscription. Say what? Then the subscription expired and I was [...]
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Continued from Part IV. Saturday’s Farmers’ Market was packed when I arrived around 11 o’clock. I decided not to risk getting a ticket and parked in the free parking structure a couple blocks away. The market runs from April to mid-November and is open from 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock. The air was warm, the [...]
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So I’m looking at this four-pound carcass last night wondering, Where do I start? I have hungry, crying cats and a dull knife. Arthur is crawling up my leg digging his tiny claws into my flesh. Puddy is crawling up the counter a drawer handle at a time. I locked the cats in the sunroom, [...]
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Continued from Part III. The major grocery stores need large volumes of uniformly sized fruits and vegetables that can survive handling and transport. They aren’t interested in small batches from local farms. Their logistics system requires they buy from huge monoculture farms, such as Earthbound. So how do the little farms compete? They grow a [...]
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Continued from Part II. An organic bulletin claims that the price of organic food is more reflective of the actual cost of growing it, and that tax subsidies have helped conventional farmers from going bankrupt. Are conventional farmers going bankrupt because they’re selling so cheaply? Or is it because they are growing one crop of [...]
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