* THE GREEN GENERATION: It’s Easy Being Green!

sesame street – its not easy being green

“It’s Not Easy Being Green” by Kermit The Frog
(written by Joe Raposo for the first season of Sesame Street 1969-1970)

It’s not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It’s not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green’s the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder
Why wonder, I am green and it’ll do fine, it’s beautiful
And I think it’s what I want to be

-

THE GREEN GENERATION: It’s Easy Being Green!
by Aireen Joven

http://thehotpotato.org

15 May 2008

IN FASHION AND CULTURE, green is the new black. There are so many reasons to buy and wear organic clothing. One you may not have heard is that organic cotton feels softer than non-organic cotton. New textile entrepreneurs and designers are now exclusively using organic cotton, hemp, linen (made from flax), and recycled fibers in a fusion of their business’ green ethics and rising consumer demand. Though not totally organic, clothing giants like H & M, whose European organic 2008 spring collection will boast 1,500 tonnes of organic cotton, and Nike, who is the top organic cotton clothing manufacturer in the world, are riding the green wave as well. Did you know that non-organic cotton consume 25% of the world’s total toxic pesticides while using only 2.5% of the world’s agricultural land?

In the business world, green is fast becoming gold. Just this past week, AOL News featured a business article about what industries are projected to be favorable in the future job market. Their top three picks? Healthcare, education, and green living. It’s all about what Paul Hawken elucidated in his highly influential book published over 10 years ago, The Ecology of Commerce. Green businesses do business using the Triple Bottom Line: people, planet, and profit. Did you know that several top universities in the United States now offer a Green MBA (www.greenmba.com)?

RAINBOW CONNECTIONS

And in our homes and communities, green means not just one color, but a rainbow of all the choices we make every day to create a more peaceful, sustainable, and healthy world for ourselves, the planet, and future generations. We are worth the investment! Every action we take adds up over time, like saving pennies in a piggy bank or dollars in a retirement plan. Let’s stop emptying our eco-wallets. The source of all wealth, after all, is the Earth. And the Earth will only survive, let alone thrive, when we restore nature and re-imagine our communities to be self-sufficient, interconnected, and in partnership with eco-systems that create zero waste.

Back in the late ’60′s, early ’70′s, Jim Henson’s Kermit the Frog made famous the phrase “It’s Not Easy Being Green”. That was some 40 years ago, when the environmental movement reached mainstream consciousness along with civil rights, feminism, flower power, peace, and human rights. Today’s generation, the Green Generation, will enjoy walking the paths cleared by decades of work accomplished by those who came before them. Simultaneously, the Green Generation will inherit the planetary mess we’re in and the mission to make things right. The Green Generation will also have the benefit of “being green” from the beginning. Changing our personal habits and greening our lives happens over a long period of diligent and exciting transition. Our children and grandchildren, however, will be eating organic, calculating their carbon footprint, and using planet-friendly transporation from Day One. Just imagine. Their generation’s mantra will be “It’s Easy Being Green!!!”

Those of us new to going green are just that, still going green, not yet gone green. Every journey begins with the first step. So here are just FIVE steps that we can take to GO GREEN! Kermit the Frog would be proud of us. And so will the Green Generation.

FIVE STEPS IN THE JOURNEY TO GO GREEN

There are a lot more than five steps in this journey, and we hope you will enjoy each one! If you’re looking for a tune to hum or an affirmation to repeat while you compost your food scraps, install new CFL bulbs, or grab your reusable bag (http://www.reusablebags.com) before hitting the store, remember what Kermit sang so long ago, “I am green and it’ll do fine, it’s beautiful.”

STEP 1 – Put on your thinking cap. Being green means being aware of your choices and their impact on the health of you and the planet. This requires learning what is green, greener, and greenest in all of our choices, big and small. Search the internet. Attend community lectures. Go to the Chicago Green Festival this weekend, May 17-18 at Navy Pier (www.greenfestivals.org). Pick up a free copy of the monthly magazine, Conscious Choice, or read online (www.consciouschoice.com). Check out a children’s book about nature from the library and share it with a young member of the Green Gen while going for a picnic!

STEP 2 – Enjoy the outdoors and nature. Remind yourself often what going green is all about. Trees, rivers, animals, delicious, local, organic fruits and vegetables. It can be as simple as growing herbs on your windowsill, shopping at the farmer’s market, going for an evening stroll, or keeping track of the phases of the moon. A deep breath of fresh air. Stopping to absorb the scents of spring, like lilac, hyacinth, and magnolia. What a gift. Summer will be upon us soon!

STEP 3 – Eat green. Buy organic at the grocery store. Support organic restaurants and cafes. Eat less meat or go vegetarian. Connect with local, organic farmers for meat, eggs, dairy, and produce (try www.localharvest.org and www.illinoisfarmdirect.org). Plant a tree (http://plant-trees.org) or garden!

STEP 4 – Appreciate mobility. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Wait – it’s Superman and Superwoman getting from here to there using green transportation! Flying would be a super green way to get around. For us mere mortals, we can walk, bike, take public transportation, telecommute, carpool, drive green cars, ditch our cars, or just drive less, fly less, and explore wonders close to home.

STEP 5 – Make a commitment. You could commit to a more green work commute at least one day a week, buying only organic food, replacing every lightbulb in your home, going vegetarian on Fridays, switching to all green cleaning supplies, or investing in non-toxic organic paint, carpeting, and mattresses for you and your family (check out www.healthygreengoods.com). Whatever that commitment is, it’s up to you. Going green? That’s up to you too – and all your green friends all over the world.

the rainbow connection

* DREAMS & RESOLUTIONS: Looking To The Past And The Future For Ourselves, The Hot Potato, And The Planet

* The Hot Potato turns one year old! Join us as we reflect on our first year writing The Hot Potato, and ask: how do we follow our dreams and follow our hearts for peace & prosperity in 2008 and beyond – and reconcile our emergency plans with our highest dreams for the future. *

 

The Cranberries – Dreams

 

THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community

by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, January 2008, #40

THIS WEEK’S DISH -

DREAMS & RESOLUTIONS:
Looking To The Past And The Future For Ourselves,
The Hot Potato, And The Planet

 

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” - Henry David Thoreau

“No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.” - Jesse Jackson

“I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.”
– Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine, September 2002

 

PLANNING THE GARDEN. In April 2007, Adam, Aireen, and Aireen’s mother Ting began planning the layout of the garden and dug up the lawn to create the first out of four biointensive garden beds. In the beginning, the garden was just drawings on paper and a dream.

 

IT FEELS GOOD to be back. The Hot Potato indulged in a short break from the column for a couple weeks, and we have returned just in time to celebrate the new year and our year anniversary writing the Hot Potato! With gratitude, we would like to acknowledge the weekly newspaper that publishes our column, The FilAm Weekly Megascene, which has a large distribution across Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. The Hot Potato shares space in The Megascene with a community of knowledgeable, passionate, and insightful columnists who explore, like The Hot Potato, a wide variety of topics, from news and politics of the Philippines and Asia, to community events, spirituality, the arts, business, and all things Chicago.

Our appreciation extends as well to the professional association of journalists that took us under their wing and invited us last year to join as new, junior members. The National Press Club of the Philippines in the United States (NPC-Phil USA) held their inaugural luncheon to induct new members back on March 3, 2007. Adam and I had the honor of participating in this inspiring event that included Larry Wert, the president and general manager of NBC 5 in Chicago reading our most recent column at the time, “Becoming The Media” and even adeptly commenting on our article’s main points (media homogenization, conflicts of interest, censorship, and independent media) during his address to NPC as the keynote speaker! With positive feedback from readers and maternal-like encouragement as good as gold from The Megascene‘s publisher and editor, who is also a dear family friend, our column is now published online as a wordpress.com blog and has a growing number of cherished subscribers from the United States and beyond.

OUR GREATEST WORKS

We’d like to take a reflective moment to acknowledge a special Megascene columnist, Hermie Sanchez, who was also a family friend, that passed from an illness near the end of 2007. Hermie, a published writer and prolific fashion designer, made my 1920′s style prom dress for me almost ten years ago, and designed several beautiful gowns for my mother over the years, and even collaborated with my mother in a fundraising fashion show that raised funds for children in the Philippines. Earlier in 2007, Hermie moved from Chicago to L.A. to pursue his dreams as a writer with one published book already under his belt and a vision of his words being brought to life. I related to his cross country move, because one of my best friends moved from Chicago to L.A. several years ago to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a successful writer in film or television. She just sent me an email saying she is still working on making her well-worn dream come true, and with a renewed sense of resolve and purpose for 2008.

Their example of following dreams reminds me to be ever grateful for the unique gifts we are each blessed with – whether it be a passion for storytelling, being a guide in people’s lives, caring for others, or putting paint to a canvas. Van Gogh’s ability to transfer his vision onto the canvas was a gift. Like a painter, each of us are born with a picture to paint that is our highest aspirations. When the heart, the mind, and the painter’s hand work in unison together, we can accomplish the greatest works of our imagination. The importance of creating or collaborating on something that didn’t exist in the world until we made it is tremendous – a new place such as a garden, a new object such as an unexpected present, or a new relationship such as a special person entering your life for the first time or an old friendship refreshed with new bonds and experiences.

CELEBRATING IN THE GARDEN. In June of 2007, we celebrated Adam’s birthday with a garden party. Our friends, including the little kids, helped harvest the last of the spring time radishes. Dreams do come true.

INSPIRATION FOR THE HOT POTATO

We imagine one of the most special times when a new person enters your life is when you meet your child for the first time at his or her birth. Just a few days before everyone rung in the new year, our friends gave birth to a healthy and beautiful baby daughter named Ruby. Their daughter hit the scene earlier than expected, whose due date had been on January 1, 2008. Good for her parents, because, as the father had joked at the baby shower a couple months earlier, then they wouldn’t have to wait a whole year to benefit from a new tax write-off for 2007! Children and their well being are a big inspiration for Adam and I, in our personal lives and in writing The Hot Potato. It’s like one of our favorite Cat Stevens songs, “Where Do The Children Play?”:

“Well I think it’s fine, building jumbo planes.
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
Switch on summer from a slot machine.
Yes, get what you want to if you want, ’cause you can get anything.

I know we’ve come a long way,
We’re changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
And you make them long, and you make them tough.
But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can’t get off.

Oh, I know we’ve come a long way,
We’re changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
But will you keep on building higher
’til there’s no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

I know we’ve come a long way,
We’re changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?”

From grocery stores to the layout of communities, and the laws society creates to the way our food is grown, we wonder what would our world look like if our world was a world made for children, a world that understands and meets the needs of every child? Children need pure food that is nutritious and organic, a healthy planet, loving families who are able to care for them, and peace. Children also need fun, beauty, adventure, love, the opportunity to create and make choices, and a safe, supportive community. Politics can take years to decide on and pass laws that meet the needs of children, families, and the planet, but the needs of children are immediate and universal.

EMERGENCY PLANS AND DREAMS FOR THE FUTURE

We began The Hot Potato on the tail end of a whirlwind year for us, uprooting ourselves from living 2 and half years in one of the largest urban areas in the world, Chicago, to spend 32 weeks learning organic agriculture and living in tune with the seasons on an organic farm in the Kettle Moraine countryside of southeastern Wisconsin. Just a couple months before starting the weekly column, in November 2006, we also completed a life-changing, highly recommended 3 day workshop on a sustainable method of growing food called GROW BIOINTENSIVE, taught by Ecology Action in California’s Mendocino County. John Jeavons, bestselling author of one of our favorite books How To Grow More Vegetables (Than You Ever Though Possible On Less Land Thatn You Can Imagine), began the workshop, attended by several dozen people from all over the world and from all walks of life, with a hard but pro-active look at the state of the environment, the implications of current and future resource levels for our generation and future generations, humanity’s responsibility, and empowering ourselves to change the course and change it fast.

He asked everyone at the workshop to take a moment to ask themselves, I paraphrase,

“What steps would you take if you knew you, or your community, had to grow all of your own food by the next five years?”

At least some of the workshop participants really put themselves into this situation, and one young woman who teaches urban gardening to children and her community in Washington D.C., expressed that she felt overwhelmed at the prospect of what she would have to do to address the need for a totally localized self-sufficient food economy.

In April of 2007, we returned to Mendocino County (the first county in the United States to ban the growing of any genetically engineered crops like corn or strawberries) to visit Ecology Action’s research farms and explore the prospect of doing a multiple year internship with Ecology Action. Although we came to realize we had to stay in the Midwest, at least for now, the majestic landscapes and progressive people we connected with during our travels in California left permanent impressions. John Jeavons’ question to the biointensive workshop participants, about growing all your own food out of necessity, stayed with me as I wrote the answers to questions in the application for prospective interns at Ecology Action. When Adam and I met with John to discuss our applications, he noted a particular line I wrote in response to the question, how do you see the future and how are you preparing for it? I wrote something along the lines of:

“It’s great to know that our plans for emergency-type situations are also our dreams for the future.”

SEASON’S END. By Thanksgiving 2007, only the cold hardy veggies, the carrots, cabbage, parsley, kale, and mustard greens were still growing strong, even more tasty in the fall weather. The tomatoes and potatoes and most of the crops we had planted weeks earlier. The stalks, leaves, and kitchen scraps of the plants from our garden all made their way into the compostpile and will be turned into next year’s soil.

DANCING TO YOUR OWN SONG IN 2008

What I meant by emergency plans matching our dreams for the future is that our choices involve a synchronicity between what the planet needs and what we want for ourselves. Becoming aware of your connection to the land and the people who grow your food, or growing your food yourself, also happen to be a great way to address climate change and pollution of air, land, and water. Walking and biking more, taking public transportation, and even choosing to drive a more eco-friendly vehicle helps the planet and is fun, healthy, and even exciting. All those good things that you’re “supposed to do” actually feel good to do!

No one can do it for us. But we’re not alone as we begin to walk a different path that is healthier for ourselves, our families, and the world. Accomplishing whatever it is that we wish to change for ourselves in 2008 may seem like a chore sometimes, like an invisible voice asking you to do what you don’t want to do. But if we change our mindset to knowing this is our own choice, then maybe the doing can be done with a sense of thanks that we have this opportunity to try. It may take work, discipline, thinking ahead, and marching to the beat of our own drum, but imagine how much fun and easier it will be to dance to the rhythm of our own song in 2008.

Until next week, The Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!

–

Where Do The Children Play?
Cat Stevens/Dr. Seuss

 

* LABEL SAVVY! – Bodycare…or Bodyscare? Identify Toxic Ingredients & Natural Alternatives!

* In this third edition of LABEL SAVVY!, we expose some of the most common toxic chemicals found in everyday bodycare and cosmetics products, while offering ways to seek out and identify truly natural, non-toxic alternatives (including D.I.Y.)!

HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community

by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, December 2007, #39

THIS WEEK’S DISH -

LABEL SAVVY! – Bodycare…or Bodyscare? Identify Toxic Ingredients & Natural Alternatives!

COLLECTING INGREDIENTS. The plant ingredients to be made into an herbal body salve were placed in a basket as we harvested them around the farm. Pictured are plantain, calendula, and yarrow. Because the ingredients were harvested fresh and prepared right away, the potency and quality of the salve we made was very good. Stored in a refrigerator when not being used, the salve kept for several months. Wisconsin, 2006

ALLERGIES, CANCER, AUTO-IMMUNE DISEASES. What part could our shampoo, lotion, soap, cologne, perfume, cosmetics, and even baby wipes have to do with these health issues for which millions seek treatment? For our third edition of the ongoing LABEL SAVVY! series, we provide some possible answers to this question by exposing the often toxic chemicals found in most bodycare and cosmetic products on the market. The good news: with a little bit of searching and a whole lot of LABEL SAVVY!, you’ll be able to seek out healthier, non-toxic alternatives in no time!

But first, a trivia question: Can you guess the human body’s largest organ? If you answered “our skin,” you’re right! Stretch out flat the average person’s skin, and it would cover over 2 square yards. Not only does our skin comprise almost the entire outer covering of our bodies, it is highly absorbent, sort of like a sponge. Nearly every substance that comes into contact with our skin is, to a greater or lesser degree, absorbed into our bloodstream.

Think about that. Every time you put moisturizer on your face, shampoo on your scalp, or soap on your hands, the ingredients in that product are being soaked up by your skin and could be deposited into your blood. True, the amounts involved may be minute, but how many times a week do you wash your hands, moisturize your face, shampoo your hair, or apply makeup? These minute amounts add up, especially if your bodycare and hygiene products contain toxic chemicals.

You may be appalled to learn that most bodycare and cosmetic products contain toxic, even carcinogenic, chemical compounds. Consider, however, that the cosmetics industry is largely self-regulated. According to The Cancer Prevention Coalition (www.preventcancer.com), companies aren’t required to conduct pre-market safety testing for cosmetics. 884 of the chemicals used in bodycare products have been reported to the government as toxic substances, yet the FDA has committed no resources for assessing the safety of these chemicals, many of which are known to cause genetic damage, biological mutations, hormone disruption, and cancer.

THE NO-FLY LIST OF BODYCARE PRODUCTS

Next time you reach for your favorite bodycare or cosmetic product, turn it over and read the label. Products that claim to be “natural”, and even products with the word “organic” in their name can and often do contain harmful ingredients. If you find one or more of the following ingredients listed, we ask that you please consider switching brands:

PARABENS: A common preservative in bodycare and cosmetics, parabens can come in many forms: methyl, proply, butyl, ethyl, etc. Parabens are derivatives of petroleum, and are known endocrine disruptors. They can manipulate estrogen levels in males and females, possibly increasing the risk of breast and testicular cancer. You can find parabens (i.e. petroleum derivatives) in shampoo, toothpaste, lotion, other body(s)care products, and even food.

In 2004, The Ribbon, a newsletter of the Cornell University Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors (BCERF) published an article “Five Types of Parabens Detected Intact in Human Breast Tumors” by Suzanne M. Snedeker, Ph.D.

FRAGRANCE: Unlike pure essential oils, fragrance is made up of nearly 100% toxic, synthetic substances. 95% of the chemicals in fragrance are derived from petroleum, and many of these chemicals are known or suspected carcinogens. These chemicals can enter the bloodstream through the skin or inhalation. Nearly all commonly sold perfumes, shampoos, soaps, lotions, and general cosmetics contain fragrance. Even household air fresheners such as Glade contain fragrance. It is used to both make the product smell “good” and mask the smell of the other chemicals that make up the product. Cosmetic companies do not have to disclose which chemicals they use in their “fragrance,” citing trade secrets, and can list any number or combination of harmful chemicals simply as “fragrance“, “parfum,” or “scent” on the ingredient label. Some fragrances contain phthalates, another hormone disruptor linked to breast cancer. Others contain chemicals like musk ambrette and AETT, two known neurotoxins.

Even if a product is labeled “unscented” or “fragrance free”, it can still contain masking fragrances which are used to cover up the smell of other chemical ingredients. Read the label carefully. Other fragrance ingredients may be listed separately as the following: methylene chloride, toluene, methyl ethyl ketone, ethanol, benzyl chloride, and methyl isobutyl ketone.

FORMALDEHYDE: Another known carcinogen, the following cosmetic ingredients contain formaldehyde: DMDM hydantoin, quaternium 15, diazolidinyl urea, and imidazolinyl urea.

TALC: Found in eye shadow, powdered blush, and face powder, cosmetic talc is carcinogenic and should be avoided.

ARTIFICIAL COLORS: “FD&C” Red, Yellow and so on are coal tar derivatives, and are carcinogenic. Lead acetate and ammonia compounds are found in hair dyes and other cosmetics, and are toxic and possibly carcinogenic. Titanium dioxide, iron oxide, and mica are synthetic coloring agents found in many different makeups, including “natural” cosmetics. All are listed as being of low toxicity, but titanium dioxide has tested positive as a cancer and reproductive toxicity hazard, and iron oxide and mica are bio-accumalitive, meaning they can build up in the body. If you find products with these latter ingredients, particularly in makeup, consider using them sparingly or not at all.

OTHER CANCER RISKS: Diethanolamine (DEA) and Triethanolamine (TEA) can form carcinogens in products containing nitrite preservatives. Bronopol (2-bromo-2nitropropane- 1,3-diol) can break down into formaldehyde and cause the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines. It is used frequently by Chanel, the Body Shop, and many top baby care brands. 1,4 – dioxane is a highly volatile chemical found in such common bodycare ingredients as sodium laureth sulfate, polysorbates, and ethoxylated alcohols. It can enter the body through the skin or inhalation.

ALUMINUM COMPOUNDS: Found in deodorants, lotions, and many other brand-name bodycare products, the toxicity level of cosmetic aluminum compounds ranges, according to the Cosmetic Safety Database (www.cosmeticsdatabase.com), from moderate to serious. Products containing aluminum in any form are best avoided.

DIOXIN AND SYNTHETIC TAMPONS: Detected in the synthetic fibers of tampons, dioxin has been linked to toxic shock syndrome in women. A lingering toxin best known for its use in the war defoliant Agent Orange, exposure to dioxin may play a role in cancer, endometriosis, immune-system suppression, hormone abnormalities, and infertility. We urge you to research this further if you feel compelled, and to switch to the natural alternatives for yourself and/or share this with the women and girls in your life.

Many tampons are made out of the synthetic material rayon, which contains petroleum derivatives (see parabens above). Many pads and tampons are also bleached using chlorine, which was used as a chemical weapon in World War I. Seek out companies that make dioxin-free feminine care alternatives made from natural, organic materials, such as Natracare (www.natracare.com) and Seventh Generation (www.seventhgeneration.com). Another option is to use washable, organic cotton/flannel pads that can be purchased in many styles or hand-made. This category alone deserves an entire article in a future Hot Potato.

ANIMAL TESTING LABELS: Labels that say “cruelty-free” and “no animal testing” may only mean that the product itself was not tested on animals. However, the individual ingredients could have been animal tested. The only way to be sure is to call and ask the company, or better yet, buy only products that contain non-toxic ingredients. Non-toxic, food-based cosmetic ingredients like coconut oil and shea butter generally do not require toxicity testing because…they’re food!

THE TROUBLE WITH TOOTHPASTE: Most toothpastes contain fluoride, which in it’s natural state is a beneficial mineral. However, the form found in toothpaste and our water supply is sodium fluoride, a by-product of aluminum processing which is toxic to humans and has actually been linked to increased incidences of tooth decay, osteoporosis, and cancer. Additionally, most name-brand toothpastes contain artificial coloring, foaming agents and petroleum-based preservatives.

DO SOME RESEARCH AND PROTECT THE PLANET TOO

The Cosmetic Safety Database (www.cosmeticsdatabase.com) lists toxicity and testing information for just about every ingredient found in bodycare products. Every major brand containing each particular ingredient is also listed. We would like to emphasize also that many, perhaps all, of these synthetic ingredients go through a manufacturing process that is often harmful to the environment. “The production of bleached rayon is part of the chlorine industry,” writes Chicago-based Lee Reilly in Vegetarian Times, “which regularly introduces dioxin and other dangerous organochlorines into the environment, according to both the International Joint Commission, a U.S. and Canadian environmental advisory agency, and Greenpeace. For some women, this may be reason enough to shop for [feminine products] alternatives.”

WHY ARE TOXIC INGREDIENTS IN YOUR BODYCARE PRODUCTS?

The bottom line: these toxic chemical ingredients, like hydrogenated oils or artificial sweeteners in food, are cheap and abundant for cosmetics companies. As an example, natural essential oils of jasmine and tuberose can run more than $40,000 a pound, while synthetic, often carcinogenic ingredients run less than $10 a pound. This means cheaper cosmetics for you – but again, as with trans fats or aspartame, there is a hidden price tag. What you are not paying for in dollars, you are paying for with your health, and potentially your children’s’ health. While unknowing consumers pay the ultimate price, the cosmetics industry continues to rake in an average of $30 billion a year in the U.S. alone.

IN THE KITCHEN. A group of us pitched in to make the herbal body salve while looking up the healing properties of each ingredient. The ingredients were plantain, calendula, yarrow, comfrey root, burdock root, beeswax from a local farm, and olive oil. The salve, which would normally fetch for a high price in a store, turned out to be very soothing and effective for problem skin areas. Wisconsin, 2006.

NATURAL, NON-TOXIC ALTERNATIVES TO THE RESCUE!

WHAT TO LOOK FOR: So where do you go to find non-toxic, truly natural bodycare and cosmetics? Fortunately, there are a growing number of options, but an open mind, sense of adventure, and a little bit of LABEL SAVVY! will be your best friends. Most major grocery stores carry primarily toxic bodycare products. Walgreens? CVS? Forget about it! Try Whole Foods, where most of the products are of less-than-average toxicity, and a select few are the diamonds of bodycare – completely non-toxic. The Vitamin Shoppe also carries some slightly less-toxic and non-toxic brands, and their prices tend to be better than Whole Foods. Trader Joes’ only non-toxic option, as far as we can tell, is Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, which is a favorite and has a few dozen different purposes. Try your local health food store, where you will at least be able to find less-toxic options. Finally, there are always great deals online if you’re willing to search them out, and we’ve provided a few websites below to make your search easier.

There are essentially two things to look for when searching out truly natural, non-toxic bodycare and cosmetics:

1) TRANSPARENCY: Full disclosure of ingredients, purposes behind specific ingredients, and company practices are rare and usually signs of a quality product. If the product claims to be “natural”, are the reasons why clearly spelled out on the ingredient label? How much of the label is hype and advertisement, and how much is hard information?

2) EASILY IDENTIFIABLE AND ORGANIC FOOD, FLOWER, AND PLANT INGREDIENTS: The highest quality cosmetics are, believe it or not, entirely food and plant-based. This may sound strange, but consider again how absorbent your skin is. Why would you want to put anything onto your body that you could not safely put into your mouth? For this reason, it’s important to seek out bodycare companies that source organic food ingredients. Also, look for products with natural preservatives like vitamin E, grapefruit seed extract, and citric acid.

OUR FAVORITES

Below, we’ve listed just some of the bodycare and cosmetic companies out there that are making truly natural, non-toxic products. Many of the best companies are small, regional, and online businesses, some of whom are owned by mothers who began their business for the health of their own chemically sensitive children. If one of your favorites is not on our short list, please leave a comment on our blog or let us know!

AUBREY ORGANICS (aubrey-organics.com): Based in Tampa, Florida, Aubrey’s makes shampoos, conditioners, lotions, moisturizers, makeup remover, hair dyes, a baby care line, and even one of the few non-toxic deodorants! Amazingly, Aubrey even makes a line of totally non-toxic cosmetics, which includes eye shadow, lipstick, and a face powder that boasts only 5 lovely ingredients: Silk Powder, Cinnamon Powder, Aloe Vera, Henna, and Natural Flower Oil. Their cosmetics get rave reviews online.

DR. BRONNER’S (www.drbronner.com): Our heroes! Leading the fight to preserve organic standards in bodycare while treating their workers better than any other company we’ve ever seen, Bronner’s makes the best soap out there in terms of quality and value. It’s comprised of 95% organic ingredients and fair-trade hemp, coconut, and other vegetable oils. A 16 oz. bottle can cost between six and eight dollars and last you several months, depending on how much you dilute it with water and how many different ways you use it (you can use it to clean just about anything). Based in Escondido, California with a Milwaukee, Wisconsin connection, Dr. Bronners also makes lotion, body balm, and lip balm under their Sun Dog label.

TRILLIUM ORGANICS (trilliumorganics.com): Handmade in Door County, Wisconsin, Trillium is one of our new favorites! They make excellent, almost 100% organic exfoliating body polishes, face polishes, body oils, body butters, soaps, and shea butter for lips and skin. Their products are available locally at Evanston’s Healthy Green Goods as well as through their website.

NATRACARE (www.natracare.com): A UK-based company, Natracare are makers of organic, dioxin-free, GMO-free natural tampons, pads, and other feminine products. From their website: “Natracare pads are made from totally chlorine-free, natural cellulose materials derived from ecologically – managed forests and are over 95% biodegradable and compostable. Natracare is first to use the new biodegradable Bioplastics that are made from starch and hypoallergenic natural and effective sugar-based absorbents, to replace commonly used, petroleum-derived synthetic materials.”

WELEDA (usa.weleda.com): Begun in Arlesheim, Switzerland with help from Dutch medical doctor Ita Wegman and Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, many Weleda products are available in natural foods stores here in the U.S. We have special ordered the children’s toothpaste at Whole Foods before. They make a line of products for babies as well as oral care, facial care, body oils, and other items for adults.

SUKI (www.sukipure.com): We have not yet tried Suki bodycare products, but they are members of Co-op America and use mostly pure, organic ingredients and essential oils. Based in Northhampton, Massachusetts, Suki’s website also offers a handy list of ingredients to avoid (more extensive then ours), and an interesting criticism of the Environmental Working Group’s “Skin Deep” database that, according to Suki, misleadingly informs consumers about bodycare products, for example, in not differentiating between organic and non-organic ingredients. What a huge difference to leave out!

MIESSENCE (www.miessenceproducts.com): We have not yet personally tried Miessense bodycare and cosmetics products, based in Australia, but they are one cosmetic company that uses mostly pure, organic ingredients. Remember to read those labels though!

MORE COSMETICS – check out www.holisticbeauty.net and www.allnaturalcosmetics.com: a couple resources for several different non-toxic cosmetics companies and a wide selection of products. Again, read closely: some “natural” cosmetics still contain the no-fly ingredients listed above. Another good place to search is on Co-op America’s Green Pages (coopamerica.org).

WHEN IN DOUBT (OR DEBT)…MAKE YOUR OWN!

We’ve recently started experimenting with making our own exfoliating “body polish” for use in the bath and shower. Inspired by Trillium’s Body Polish, Adam purchased a jar of hand-harvested sea salt for around three dollars and began blending in organic olive oil and Trillium’s organic body oil to the desired consistency, creating small batches “on demand”. While we’re still in the experimental phase, making our own bodycare has been fun and easy, and we’ve saved money in the process! A lot of the potentially toxic ingredients in products are used as preservatives. You can make your own bodycare potions and lotions as you go, free from harmful ingredients, and you have total control over what your skin is “eating”. For more great DIY bodycare ideas, the book Better Basics For The Home by Annie Berthold-Bond is filled with useful recipes. Visit betterbasics.com for a database of free bodycare and home cleaning recipes.

Until next week, The Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!

–

See also:

* LABEL SAVVY!- Shelf Life…Or Death?: Hydrogenated Oils & Trans Fats

* LABEL SAVVY! Part 1 – The Sweet And Low-Down On Healthy And Unhealthy Sweeteners

–

SOURCES:

1. BBC Science & Nature Fact Files, www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/factfiles/skin/skin.shtml
2. Steinman, David & Epstein, Samuel S., M.D.. The Safe Shoppers Bible. Wiley Publishing, 1995.
3. Redemske, Sandra & Young, Joyce R., M.D.. Fragrance: A Growing Health and Environmental Hazard, Redemske Design, 2006.
4. Dadd, Debra Lynn. Home Safe Home, Tarcher, 1997.
5. Natural Health and Longevity Resource Center, “Scientific Facts on the Biological Effects of Fluoride”, www.all-natural.com/fleffect.html
6. The Cosmetic Safety Database, www.cosmeticsdatabase.com
7. Phillabauem, Lacey. “Organic Beauty Is Only Skin Deep,” www.organicconsumers.org
8. Reilly, Lee. “The trouble with tampons – risk of dioxin found in tampons,” Vegetarian Times, July 1996.

* THE ART OF CAMPAIGNING: Diamonds Or Pearls & Democracy Is A Girl’s Best Friend

* Can we use creative visualization to elect a President? Check out Aireen’s alternative “diamonds or pearls” question for Senator Clinton, from one woman to another, that instead asks the Senator if she prefers “democracy or politics?” Finally, find out why Kucinich has the best chances of winning in 2008 and beyond. *

 

Sean Penn Endorses Dennis Kucinich 12-07-07

read his full speech “Piano Wire Puppeteers” by Sean Penn

 

THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community

by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, December 2007, #39

THIS WEEK’S DISH -

THE ART OF CAMPAIGNING:
Diamonds or Pearls & Democracy Is A Girl’s Best Friend

 

“The process of change does not occur on superficial levels, through mere “positive thinking.” It involves exploring, discovering, and changing our deepest, most basic attitudes toward life. That is why learning to use creative visualization can become a process of deep and meaningful growth. In the process we often discover ways in which we have been holding ourselves back, blocking ourselves from achieving satisfaction and fulfillment in life through our fears and negative concepts. Once seen clearly, these limiting attitudes can be dissolved through the creative visualization process, leaving space for us to find and live our natural state of happiness, fulfillment, and love. . . That is the point of creative visualization – to make every moment of our lives a moment of wondrous creation, in which we are just naturally choosing the best, the most beautiful, the most fulfilling lives we can imagine.” – Shakti Gawain, from her classic bestseller released in 1978, Creative Visualization

 

 

VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE. You’ve heard the phrase, no doubt. I like the other version too: visualize whirled peas. There is a science behind the popular sentiment “visualize world peace”. It is the science of imagery and the power of thought. The concept has been popularized in two recent films, What The Bleep? and The Secret, as well as in the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto. Dr. Emoto’s book Messages From Water documents how the molecular structure of water is changed by exposure to simple words and stimuli. After freezing the droplets of water, Dr. Emoto photographs the crystalline structures before and after exposure to the words or music, creating dramatic images. The book Creative Visualization by bestselling author and teacher of consciousness Shakti Gawain, a classic that I just recently picked up to read, is a simple guide for all to teach how we can use our thoughts every day to improve our lives. The most essential work on the power of thought is our favorite book series of all time, The Ringing Cedars Series by Russian bestselling author and entrepreneur Vladimir Megre.

Thought, affirmations, and images used with intention can be wonderful tools for personal or spiritual growth. This power can be used to influence many people as well. For example, any giant advertising executive or marketing branch of a major corporation can tell you that how their product is marketed, that is, what kind of image is projected to the public, is a determining factor in how successful its marketing campaign and sales will be. Stylists, magazine editors, and celebrity management can also tell you about the power of what you project. It is the their job to somehow program you, the consumer, to associate positive feelings with their product or personality. Positive thoughts, affirmations, and images used for creative visualization can be converted into marketing concepts, slogans, and logos for economic branding.

However, applications of the science of imagery go beyond personal growth, commercial interests, or pop culture and its many icons. Imagery plays a major hand in politics as well. And not just on the superficial level of image, e.g. which candidate is more “rock star”, has a “better haircut”, or “looks presidential”. The power of thought, imagery, and creative visualization can do more than manipulate a product or a person to appear more attractive to others. It can even accomplish more than bringing abundance, health, and growth into your personal life. The power of thought and images can transform the world to help all humanity and creative positive social and environmental change.

THINK ABOUT IT, FOLLOW YOUR HEART

Thought is the uniting thread in all things that have changed the world. The most powerful thoughts are those powered by love. Think about it. Before any invention, historic event, or social upheaval, there was the thought that preceded the action. If you want it to be, Gandhi said, you must be the change you wish to see. In other words, you must see the change you wish to be. See the change. Sea change. Change the scene. It’s a mind game, and don’t let yourself be played like a pawn. Take charge of your own thoughts by creating your own thoughts. If you watch TV, read the mainstream newspapers, and keep receiving “input” from outside sources all the time, you are closing yourself off from a diversity of ideas and possibilities. There are independent media outlets in print, online, and radio; books; artists; musicians; local civic and grassroots groups; and people you meet are all sources of knowledge, new perspectives, and opportunities for intelligent exchange.

Another source of information about current events is the one most often overlooked – yourself. Verisimilitude means the ring of truth. The ring of truth can only be heard through your own heart, never through the words of others alone. When you listen to the news or political candidates, if what you are hearing goes straight to the brain while bypassing the heart, the mechanism of discernment is missing. On the other hand, when your perspectives are informed by both the heart and the intellect, you are in a position to make the most informed and confident decisions with the best possible outcomes. By heart, we don’t mean how you feel about emotional issues like gun control, abortion, or marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples. Listening to your heart means going with your heart. When one doesn’t follow his or her heart, the cynical, hurt side of ourselves can take the reigns when we make decisions. If all people always believed in themselves, in their heart, and in their power to make a difference, just imagine the kind of world we could create.

MENTAL SPACE NOT FOR SALE

SPACE TO THINK. Here’s Adam taking a break, hanging out at the Milwaukee River bordering the organic farm where we worked in 2006, with plenty of space to think and no distractions.

Okay, if consulting one’s heart and mind is the best source of information, how do we make an appointment to consult with ourselves? When is the best time to tune into our heart’s channel? Is the reception fuzzy? Many people are overwhelmed with obligations, busy schedules, mind chatter, or personal worries. The space and time needed to sit with our own thoughts, with zero distractions, may not be there in the current infrastructure of how our lives have been set up. It’s like mental pollution that distracts us from our own thoughts. If our thoughts are the first step in changing the world, then we’ve got to stop the source of the pollution blocking our own thoughts.

Sometimes it’s visual pollution. When I used to live and work in Chicago, almost everywhere I looked, my mind was bombarded with ugly, garish advertisements on buses, billboards, benches, company cars, storefronts, t-shirts, and garbage strewn about. Then, after two and a half years of being Chicago urbanites, we had the life-changing good fortune to move to an organic farm out in Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine countryside. We spent whole work days, weeks, even months NEVER EVER NOT ONCE seeing an advertisement trying to sell us something. We didn’t watch TV. We didn’t even read magazines very much. We did read YES! Magazine, but YES! has no advertisements in its pages. No spaces for sale, no billboards, no ads distracting us from the beauty of the nature and animals all around. We planted and cultivated in the farm’s fields bordering a vast nature preserve in freedom. Our mental space was not for sale.

Maybe advertisements and commercials don’t bother you. I am a very visual person, and naturally take note of my immediate environment. You may enjoy ads, and I have found enjoyment in some particularly clever or artistic ads in the past, but there is a limit to how much mental pollution we should allow. Why? Because if ads, commercials, and downright useless entertainment is filling the majority of your thoughts and waking hours, and if thoughts do indeed create reality, then you are letting someone else create your world for you.

Take note, we think CNN, FOX, and other mainstream media can much of the time be classified as downright useless, even unhealthy entertainment. We’re not talking about in depth journalistic investigations or serious local news that covers community events. We’re talking Paris Hilton, O.J., sensationalism, ratings-based, sponsor-driven media, and a kind of coverage of politics that emphasizes celebrity intrigue and fancy hollywood production with staged interviews, high-tech graphics, and manipulative music.

THE THEATER OF POLITICS

Did you hear about the latest controversy surrounding the December 1st, 2007 CNN Presidential Debate held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas? One YouTube video described it as “The Politics of Planting”. What’s the scoop? Certain people who were chosen to ask the presidential candidates questions during CNN’s live televised debate, described by CNN as “undecided voters”, turned out to be “planted” by CNN, and it appears that the candidates, at least some of them, were in on it.

CASE #1: A young woman named Maria Luisa Parra-Sandoval, a student at UNLV, asked hands down the #1 most trivial and waste-of-time “soft ball” question I have ever seen in all the debates. Her question to Hillary Clinton, “This is a fun question for you. Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?” was not only reflective of CNN’s low journalistic standards for choosing this question to be asked. It is also a prime example of entertainment being more important that actual, intelligent, honest debate. But the story doesn’t end there. The “diamonds or pearls” questioner, student Parra-Sandoval, has been discovered to be a political communications intern for Senator Harry Reid in Washington, D.C. The son of Senate Majority Leader Reid is the head of Hillary Clinton’s Nevada Campaign. The implications of CNN rigging the debate to favor certain candidates are not to be underestimated.

CASE #2: A Nevada woman named Judy Bagley asked Barack Obama a question about ensuring Social Security and Medicare are available to future generations. Obama’s response began with, “Well, first of all, Judy, thank you for the question, and thanks for the great work you do on behalf of the culinary workers, a great union here.” If you watch the video of the debate or review the CNN transcript, you will see that nowhere in Judy Bagley’s question and nowhere in the commentary by the CNN moderators is it revealed that Bagley was a member of the culinary workers union. It was only stated that she worked in the casino industry. Question! How did Obama know this fact about her? Well, because the two had obviously already met before she asked her question in the live debate, even though the public is given the impression that the candidates do not know ahead of time what these “undecided voters” in the audience will ask.

For more about the CNN Las Vegas Debate questions regarding the identity of the so-called “undecided voters”, please see “CNN Plants Questions To Protect Hillary” for more details and links to sources compiled by Doug Ross.

DEMOCRACY IS A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND

That is the politics of planting. It is also an example of manipulating the image people have of presidential debates. These debates are more than biased and unfair, especially regarding the time given to candidates, particularly Congressman Dennis Kucinich. The networks that host the debates are largely not interested in honestly educating the public. I don’t care about diamonds or pearls. I don’t even think it was a funny question. I think it was a media stunt, a cheap political grab for merit-less attention, and a call for the American voters to start seeing the game for what it is and to then reject it. A president should be elected based on his or her merits. May I tell you what my question for Clinton would have been?

My alternative “diamonds or pearls” question would have been:

“To Senator Clinton, 2007 has been the deadliest year for U.S. soldiers in Iraq – 852 deaths in 2007 as of November 6th. According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent organization that tracks military deaths, and as reported in The New York Times, an average of 69 Americans serving in Iraq lose their life per month.

Knowing this, Senator Clinton, do you prefer democracy or politics? One option, that you are fully capable of choosing, is to bring our troops home within 3 months of the beginning of your presidency, as Congressman Kucinich has pledged he will do, thereby reducing the number of American deaths in Iraq to perhaps 207 during your presidential term, based on the average number of U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq every month being 69. Or, Senator Clinton, do you prefer bringing all troops home out of Iraq by sometime after your first term, that is, after 2013, thereby allowing perhaps over 3,200 more U.S. military men and women to die in Iraq, in a war based on lies, based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction and a false pre-war connection between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaida?”

The short version of my question to Clinton, aimed at replacing the choice between “diamonds or pearls” to instead a choice between “democracy or politics”, would go like:

“Senator Clinton, you, along with Senators Obama and Edwards, conceded in the September 26, 2007 Hanover, New Hampshire debate at Dartmouth College, that you will NOT get all U.S. troops out of Iraq before 2013. This is a serious question for you. Do you prefer democracy or politics? That is, do you prefer practicing democracy or playing politics?”

THE CANDIDATE WITH THE BEST CHANCES

Dennis Kucinich is the only presidential candidate who has pledged to move all U.S. troops out of Iraq within three months of his presidency, April 2009. Kucinich has a detailed 12 Point Plan For Iraq to make it happen, including reconciliation and reparations for Iraqi citizens who have lost family or property because of the U.S. war and occupation. Kucinich’s 12 Point Plan also calls for international cooperation and the removal of all U.S. military bases and Blackwater mercenaries out of Iraq, thereby returning true sovereignty to the people of Iraq. In the recent Black and Brown Presidential Forum specifically addressing the concerns of Hispanic and African-American communities in Iowa, Senator Joe Biden admitted that he had not yet read Kucinich’s plan to get out of Iraq. Kucinich responded, “Read it.” We agree. Download it at http://www2.kucinich.us/files/pdfs/12point_plan.pdf.

People parrot the prophesy of Iraq plunging into chaos and conflict if the U.S. pulls out. We recently saw unimbedded journalist Dahr Jamail speak at the University of Illinois-Chicago about his first-hand reports from Iraq. His unflinching, compassionate, and well-researched reports have been compiled in Jamail’s just released book From The Green Zone: Dispatches From An Unembedded Journalist In Occupied Iraq, published by Haymarket Books. Iraq is already so totally embroiled in chaos and conflict, including lack of clean water, electricity, medical services, and security. The fears people have about the what might happen to Iraq if the U.S. leaves are already happening with the U.S. present in Iraq. As Dennis Kucinich states again and again, the U.S. occupation is fueling the insurgency.

We urge you to read Dahr Jamail’s book, go to his website, and educate yourself about the absolute crimes against humanity that are right now being perpetuated by U.S. policy in Iraq, and the dire situation the Iraqi people are living in. It must stop, and we can’t wait until 2013. And don’t forget, Iraq was not about WMD’s, Saddam’s crimes, or Al-Qaeda – all lies and manipulated intelligence for an illegal agenda of preemptive war by Bush, Cheney, and Company. It was and still is about oil, money, and power. That is why Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, and also supports the impeachment of George Bush after Cheney. Kucinich is the people’s champion and a champion of truth. He is the only candidate supporting the defense of our Constitution by impeaching Cheney, then Bush. By impeaching Bush and Cheney, we declare to the world that the United States will hold its criminal politicians accountable.

We have encountered people whose convictions are most aligned with Kucinich, but feel a weakness in the power of their vote to Kucinich making a difference, so much that they defeat themselves by deciding to vote for a different candidate. Our answer is that Kucinich IS the candidate with the best chances. Kucinich has the best chances of restoring democracy to the United States, raising the health and prosperity of its people, and facing the looming environmental challenges of climate change and sustainability with wisdom, courage, and integrity.

KUCINICH SWEEPS THE PRIMARIES…EDWARDS, OBAMA, CLINTON CONCEDE…KUCINICH WINS!

This presidential election is more than matters of a difference of opinion that should be respected. We respect people’s right to choose their candidate. That is democracy…and democracy is a girl’s best friends. However, there is a difference between the right to choose and who a person ultimately chooses. It matters that you make a choice, and it also matters who your choice is. Frankly, these are matters of life or death.

Healthcare, education, war and peace, and the sustainability of humanity on planet Earth. We need a president who has a proven track record of standing up for the best interests of the people, no matter what. And above all, we need a country made up of people who will be leaders themselves, that take action from the heart and mind, and will go all the way to do what is right. Humanity faces extraordinary challenges now and in the near future. We need an extraordinary leader. Now more than any other time in history, we need a leader who is not in debt to corporate contributions. Money talks in the debates, but what our world needs is not the candidate with the most money.

A fellow Kucinich supporter said “When people tell me Dennis doesn’t have a chance, I say, he’s our only chance!” We honestly feel that, out of all the Republican and Democratic candidates, Dennis is our best chance for humanity and the planet to not just survive but also thrive. It is after the election in November 2008 when the REAL work begins – the forging of peaceful relations among all people and bringing our planet forward out of the disastrous consequences of human behavior destroying ecological systems we cannot live without and into a harmonious balance of a sustainable civilization.

Some people feel Kucinich has no chance against the status quo. We ask in reply to this thought: which candidate has the best chance against what humanity is collectively facing?! Forget the status quo. The status quo, frankly, have slim chances of surviving on planet earth. We need to change, and change fast. Dennis is the candidate with the best chance against our problems.

Climate change; topsoil depletion; loss of biodiversity; increasing drought, floods, and fires; non-local, petroleum dependent economies and agriculture; and pollution of air, land, and water: theses are the real candidates up for election. Fortunately, we have good candidates to choose from too, like: adopting sustainable practices in our homes, businesses, and cultures; growing food locally, organically, and sustainably, using methods like biointensive, permaculture, and indigenous practices; educating others about taking positive action while being a model for change in whatever way you can; and electing candidates to office who are ready to make choices based on wisdom and courage.

DECEMBER 15, 2007 AND JANUARY 20, 2009

www.DECEMBER152007.com
THIS DECEMBER 15, 2007, THE PEOPLE WILL SPEAK.
It was on that date in 1791 that the Bill of Rights took effect. This December 15, donate to the one candidate who restore those rights for all Americans..DENNIS KUCINICH.

There are two dates we can keep in mind while using the power of creative visualization. The first date is a call to all who resonate with Dennis Kucinich to support his campaign by pledging to donate $100 on December 15, 2007. December 15 is the anniversary of the Bill of Rights being enacted. It is also the anniversary of when Dennis Kucinich, as Mayor of Cleveland in 1978, protected the best interests of Cleveland by refusing to privatize the city’s municipal electric system, a choice that later garnered him great thanks, including a city council resolution honoring Kucinich for saving Cleveland’s citizens $300 million in payments since December 15, 1978.

On December 15, 2007, Kucinich needs your help. Our goal is to get 100,000 people to commit to donate $100 each to Dennis Kucinich on December 15, 2007, for a total one-day contribution of $10 million. Imagine the possibilities of our candidate having greater funds from 100% grassroots donations to campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire, and in the other February 5th Super Tuesday states, including here in Illinois. Please visit www.december152007.com to make your pledge and donate to Dennis on December 15 at dennis4president.com or by calling 1-877-41-DENNIS. You can donate $10 or $1000, but the goal is 100,000 people donating $100 each. If your imagination is sparked by this coordinated “money bomb” for Kucinich, then pass on December 15, 2007 to as many other people as you can.

If you are reading this far, then you must be a seeker of knowledge, with an open mind, thinking towards the future. The second date to keep in mind is seemingly far off into the future – January 20, 2009, the date that the 44th President of the United States will be inaugurated into office to serve the best interests of all people and living beings. When you think about January 20, 2009, remember the power of thought and the science of imagery. Activate your hope for the future with the love you feel for what is important to you now. Imagine yourself watching tv, reading the paper, or perhaps attending in person the inaugural parade and oath of office. Imagine that what is happening is exactly what you wish to see. Imagine the possibilities. Start living the days that will lead up to January 20, 2007 as you see it. Until next week, The Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!

–

 

Summay of CNN Debate
+ Special Guest Appearance
by 35percenters.com

 

CNN: The Politics of Planting

 

DEC. 15TH KUCINICH MONEY BOMB- PAY IT FORWARD

 

To Be The President.

 

* THE NEW MAIN STREET: Green Gift Ideas, Trees For The Future & What Would Jesus Buy?

* Journey down “The New Main Street” of green businesses and eco-friendly, fair trade gifts, plus check out our preview of the newly released documentary What Would Jesus Buy? *

THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community

by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, November 2007, #37

THIS WEEK’S DISH -

THE NEW MAIN STREET:
Green Gift Ideas, Trees For The Future & What Would Jesus Buy?

“Christmas after hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of corporate imagery has become this nostalgic, this passive, certainly not political in any way, but that moment in late December when daylight gets longer and the darkness less, that is a sea of change. That is the promise of spring. All religions and all kinds of people regard it as an important and exciting moment. This year, especially, with the world at war and the climate crisis, our neighborhoods and families in trouble, this year, it really needs to be a different kind of Christmas.” – Reverend Billy, an anti-consumerism activist from the Church of Stop Shopping, speaks with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, 21 November 2007, about his role in the new film What Would Jesus Buy, produced by Morgan Spurlock, Oscar-nominated director of the documentary Super Size Me.

WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY? Promotional Poster for the film What Would Jesus Buy?, produced by Morgan Spurlock, Oscar-nominated director of the documentary Super Size Me, directed by Rob VanAlkemade, and starring Reverend Billy and the Church Of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir. Poster by international artist and award-winning photographer David LaChappelle.

‘TIS THE SEASON to be…shopping? Yes, the holidays are upon us once again, and like a Northerly wind, they’ve brought along the blizzard of holiday gift-giving madness. Before you get swept up in the storm, lace up your boots and squeeze into your parkas, because we’re going for a ride…off the beaten paths of Michigan Avenue, and onto the windswept hills of “the New Main Street”, the land of sustainable businesses and earth-friendly, socially-conscious gifts!

This year, it’s easier than ever to “give green” and shop with conscience, but you’ll probably have to venture beyond the walls of most big-box stores to find such treasures. Fortunately, there are several businesses, locally and online, where you can use your dollar to support a healthier world while finding plenty of memorable and unique gifts for your loved ones and, while you’re at it, having a unique adventure that Target and Best Buy could never match. From fair trade, handmade crafts to stylish, organic clothing to eco-friendly and non-toxic home and beauty products, here are a few of our favorites.

GREEN GIFT IDEAS – THE NEW MAIN STREET

• TEN THOUSAND VILLAGES - www.tenthousandvillages.com
We LOVE Ten Thousand Villages. It’s like Pier 1 Imports meets Tiffany’s….only FAIR TRADE! Their online and retail stores offer beautiful, hand-crafted gifts from all over the world, including the Philippines, Mexico, India, Haiti, Ecaudor, and the West Bank, that are made by skilled artisans who are paid fairly for their work. We go to the Ten Thousand Villages in Evanston, just north of Chicago, but other locations in the area include Oak Park, Glen Ellyn, Grayslake, and Rockford. You can also search for a store close to you on their website, which lists over 160 Ten Thousand Villages across the U.S. and Canada. At the Evanston Ten Thousand Villages, you are always greeted by a friendly staff person, ready to offer a complimentary cup of freshly brewed fair trade coffee. All Ten Thousand Villages stores are nonprofit organizations, and are staffed by volunteers.

Our favorite products include simple, lovely, hand-woven baskets from Bangladesh. We use them to hold cassette tapes, gardening catalogs, and office supplies. They would also work as storage for kitchen utensils, baby clothes, or potted plants in the round baskets. I found a pair of flower-shaped silver and pearl inlay earrings at Ten Thousand Villages, fairly traded from Mexico, that I’m always complimented on when I wear them. Other products to look for are colorful wallets and purses, folk-inspired clothing, natural children’s toys, recycled kitchen mats, musical instruments, and home decor. Thanks to TTV, we’ve found fair trade pot holders with a cute garden print; a warm wool hat; a creme-themed scrapbook made out of handmade Nepalese paper and flowers for a wedding gift; greeting cards; the most often used of the bunch, a dark gray stone mortar and pestle from India; and of course, rich, organic, fair trade chocolate bars by Equal Exchange that made it into several family members’ holiday stockings last year.

Ten Thousand Villages Illinois Locations:
• 719 Main Street, Evanston, IL 60602
• 121 North Marion Street, Oak Park, IL 60301
• 499C Pennsylvania Avenue, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137
• The Wacker Building, 960 Harris Rd. Ste. 1B, Grayslake, IL 60030
• JustGoods: A Fair Trade Market, 201 7th Street, Rockford, IL 61104

• HEALTHY GREEN GOODS – 702 Main Street, Evanston, IL 60202 – www.healthygreengoods.com
Even before Adam started working at Healthy Green Goods just a couple months ago, it was the only local place to find, as the HGG motto says, “Eco-friendly, toxin-free products for your home, body & future.” It’s like Target meets Linens ‘n Things….only NON-TOXIC! Healthy Green Goods is the first retail store in the entire Chicago area to carry environmentally conscious merchandise for the home that is also healthy for the consumer. Owner Marny Turvill, M.D., is a pediatrician, mother of two, and now successful business owner who understands the importance of a green, non-toxic home environment because of her own multiple chemical sensitivities.

Natural rubber and organic mattresses; organic cotton bed sheets and pillows; organic cotton towels; chemical-free cleaning products in bulk and non-bulk sizes; luxurious body oils, facial cleanser, lip balm, and chemical-free perfume by Trillium Organics; natural chewing gum by Glee Gum; adorable organic baby clothing; reusable shopping bags; bamboo window treatments; no-VOC house paints custom-mixed in house; natural carpeting free of toxic chemicals found in traditional carpets; and the list goes on and on. Try the peel-off nail polish that requires no smelly, chemical-fuming nail polish remover. There’s even low-chemical nail polish remover for non-peel nail polish. Healthy Green Goods just may have something green and fun for everyone on your shopping list.

I have a nose for good, green products, since I am also sensitive to chemically toxic, unnatural products. I feel nauseous around unnatural perfumes and have even developed a rash from the chemicals doused on new, non-organic bed sheets. Organic cotton always feels softer and better on the skin. Trust me! And using chemical-free, organic products to clean your body and clean your home just makes sense. What you put on your skin and put into the air and surfaces of your home should be as good as what you eat, because these substances are absorbed into your body through your skin and air passages.

Interestingly, Adam noticed that both Healthy Green Goods and Ten Thousand Villages, just down the street from each other in Evanston, are both on Main Street. Along with other like-minded shops on Evanston’s Main Street, like the Plain and Simple – Amish Furniture Store and Dave’s Down To Earth Rock Shop, this turn towards a sustainable future of fair trade and eco-conscious businesses symbolize the more and more common greening of Main Street, USA.

• GAIAM & REAL GOODS – www.gaiam.com
In case you don’t live near Evanston but love the sound of Healthy Green Goods products, look no further than Gaiam, an online store and catalog that carries similar items for green living, yoga, and a toxic-free organic home. Apparel; home, garden, and outdoor products; air purifiers, humidifiers, and energy efficient fans; lamps; jewelry; art; books; DVD’s; toys; and special fair trade items can all be found at Gaiam.

According to their homepage, “Gaiam is a health-conscious, environmentally responsible lifestyle company whose goal is to bring LOHAS to the mainstream. The Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) concept is centered on the idea that our own health and happiness is connected to the health of our planet. Taking a holistic approach to our content and product selection, we encourage wholesome lifestyle choices with healthy, green products for your home and body.” Be sure to take note of which items in Gaiam’s catalog are organic and fair trade. Watch out for bamboo clothing too, as bamboo seems to be a renewable resource but the chemical process required to make it into fibers for clothing is not 100% organic.

Gaiam’s Real Goods Catalog focuses on solar and renewable technologies for green living. Here you can find the scoop on super energy efficient refrigerators and laundry machines; small scale solar and wind installation for your home or business; composting toilets; rechargeable batteries; compact fluorescent and LED light bulbs; sun ovens; and solar-powered, water-powered, and hand-cranked almost everything, including flashlights, cell phone chargers, radios, alarm clocks, calculators, laptop chargers, and blenders. Gaiam and Real Goods is like Target meets Circuit City meets Home Depot….only GREEN!

• CO-OP AMERICA – http://coopamerica.org
Still looking for where to find the right green gift? Then Co-op America is your place. A nonprofit organization, their mission is to “harness economic power – the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace – to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.” Not only does Co-op America host the annual Green Festivals in D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle, and the Green Business Network, they also publish The Green Pages, a screened directory of nearly 3,000 businesses and groups around the world who meet Co-op America’s standards of making a firm commitment to “sustainable, socially just principles, including the support of sweatshop-free labor, organic farms, fair trade, and cruelty-free products”.

You can browse the online green pages for just about any product or service, from travel to finance to clothing to energy to recycled office products to activism to wine & beer. Another option is to support the work of Co-op America by becoming a member, for which you’ll receive a hard copy of The Green Pages, be subscribed to the Co-op America Quarterly and Real Money newsletters, and join a growing community of green consumers and business who care about the “Triple Bottom Line” of sustainability – People, Planet, and Profit, a phrase coined by John Elkington in 1994 and expanded on in his 1997 book Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business.

Co-op America’s website is a rich resource for articles like “21 Things You Didn’t Know You Can Recycle“, “10 Green Toys For The Holidays“, “10 Things You Should Never Buy Again“, and, the perfect segue into the next section of this week’s Hot Potato, “Choose the Best Carbon Offset“. Co-op America’s resources and publications are like Oprah’s “My Favorite Things” Show meets Martha Stewart meets The Price is Right….only SOCIALLY, ENVIRONMENTALLY, AND HUMANELY CONSCIOUS!

TREES FOR THE FUTURE

What if you could give someone a gift that would keep on giving back to the planet for decades, maybe even lifetimes, providing cleaner and more abundant amounts of air while helping restore ecosystems and provide jobs, education, and invaluable life skills? This year, we’re considering giving such a gift to our loved ones by having trees planted in their names! Trees For The Future (www.treesftf.org), an organization based in Maryland, has been helping people around the world plant trees since 1988, while distributing seeds and providing training in sustainable agroforestry. In just 18 years, they have helped plant an estimated 50 million trees across Central America, Africa, and Asia while empowering rural communities to preserve and enrich their homelands and cultures. It is estimated that these 50 million trees remove nearly 1 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.

How can you help? For a $45 donation, over 450 trees are planted, and your friend or loved one receives a customized tree planting gift certificate and bumpersticker. If you don’t want to spend this much on just one person, you could plant 450 trees for your entire family. Think of the implications of such a gift! Estimates on the average American’s carbon emissions per person vary; we’ve seen anywhere from 11,000 to 40,000+ pounds (the U.N.’s estimate) per person per year. Depending on climate, the type of tree planted, and the sustainability of the project, each tree planted could sequester between 38 and 50 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. In theory, this means that 450 trees could offset as little as nearly half and possibly all personal carbon emissions per year…for $45!

Keep in mind that the first step to offsetting your personal carbon emissions is, as Co-op America writes in “Choose the Best Carbon Offset”, “Reduce your impact first” instead of relying solely on buying your way to a lesser impact. Co-op America suggests “flying less, driving less, driving a higher mileage car, or reducing your home energy use.” To that we would add, buying organic food, supporting local, organic farmers, and growing your own – all of which greatly reduce the impact of fossil fuels used in gasoline for shipping, pollution emitted by the trucks or airplanes, and petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers. The planting of trees for carbon offsets is still somewhat of a controversial subject (which we’ll cover in a future Hot Potato), but if done sustainably, such projects will go a long way toward repairing the damage done to our precious Earth, while providing natural beauty and self-sufficiency for future generations. As long as they are planted using wise, agroforestry principles, more trees are always good.

WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY?

Since when did Christmas become all about shopping? The material addictions of American culture seem to explode to the forefront starting the day after Thanksgiving, a day ominously dubbed “Black Friday” by the retail sector (“black” means “profit”). Not that there is anything wrong with buying stuff, but who really gives a thought to what they buy? When you step into a big-box department store, do you stop and think, “How are the workers here treated? Do they earn a living wage? Do they have health benefits?” When you buy a sweater or anything else that’s made in China or somewhere overseas, do you ever stop and think, “I wonder if this was made in a sweatshop? Was the person who made this paid a living wage? Are they over 8 years old?” Do you ever stop and think of how your purchases are impacting the Earth?

Luckily, there is one man out there who is on a crusade to save Christmas from what he terms “the Shopocalypse”. His name is Reverend Billy, and he and his entire congregation, The Church of Stop Shopping, are coming soon to a city near you. In the new documentary, What Would Jesus Buy?, Reverend Billy and his congregation travel the country, performing exorcisms at Wal-Mart’s Headquarters, taking over the center stage at the Mall of America to preach against the materialism of our increasingly corporatized culture, and eventually ending up at Disneyland on Christmas Day. Along the way, Billy and director Rob Van Alkemade explore the effects of corporate conglomeration and consumerist culture on small businesses, individuals, and American society.

Produced by Morgan Spurlock, director and star of 2004′s Oscar-nominated Super Size Me, What Would Jesus Buy? promises to deliver equal parts hilarity and revelation as it explores the excesses of a materialistic age while offering ideas and hope for those looking to become responsible consumers and buy less while giving more. Reverend Billy, a New York-based performance artist whose real name is Billy Talen, is as hysterical as he is convincing, and the power of his unique mission is summed up well by Morgan Spurlock during an interview with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman: “If you can make people laugh, you can make them listen.”

What Would Jesus Buy? is already out in theaters in New York and the West Coast, and opens November 30th at Chicago’s Landmark Cinema. For more information, visit wwjbmovie.com, or go to Reverend Billy’s website at www.revbilly.com.

KISS AND DIY – THE GREENEST GIFT IDEAS

K.I.S.S. stands for Keep It Simple Sweetie, and D.I.Y. stands for Do it Yourself. This holiday season, the gifts most cherished by loved ones may be the ones that you sprinkle with your own special blend of KISS and DIY. We’re talking about creative, hand-made, and non-material gifts to give instead of store-bought ones. How about tickets to see a favorite sports team or musical performer as a holiday gift? One year for Hanukkah, we gave Adam’s grandmother tickets to join us for a local production of The Diary Of Anne Frank. Not only did the $100 we spent for four tickets support a theater company in our own neighborhood in Chicago, the money also went to one of our most enjoyable family nights and led to future theater outings to Adam’s grandmother’s own favorite musical theater. Last year, I gave my mother a membership to the Chicago Botanic Gardens for Christmas, because she loves to garden as well as paint flowers and nature.

Last holiday season though, it turned out that the holiday gifts to receive the most rave reviews and thanks were the ones made out of our own labor of love. As interns on an organic farm in southeastern Wisconsin, we experienced the joy and empowering feeling of putting by food to be saved for use throughout the winter, food that we watched go from seed or flower bud to harvest and table. Knowing they would make the perfect holiday gifts, we canned extra tomato sauce and cinnamon apple sauce. Made out of tomatoes we planted, watered, weeded, and harvested, and apples we pruned, picked, washed, and chopped, before cooking, spicing, and canning, these jars of love were a wonder to behold under the Christmas tree and in the excited eyes of our family. To make the gifts festive, I added gold-colored ribbons tied into bows on the top of each glass jar. On stickers of painted flowers that I used to decorate the sides of the jars, I hand-wrote the ingredients and “From: Adam & Aireen“. We gave a jar of the nutritious and delicious local, organic, hand-grown, and hand-canned cinnamon apple sauce to the parents of Adam’s goddaughter, who decided to save the jar to be the very first food their daughter ate after her mother’s breast milk!

So this holiday season, have fun shopping…or not shopping…with sustainability, visit websites like responsibleshopper.org, remember the words of Reverand Billy, and keep your green eye open for the best green gift ideas of the season. Until next week, The Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!

–

What Would Jesus Buy? Trailer

* FROM THE SHADOWS OF HISTORY: An Homage To North America’s Indigenous Forbears

THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community

by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, November 2007, #36

THIS WEEK’S DISH -

FROM THE SHADOWS OF HISTORY: An Homage To North America’s Indigenous Forbears

 

“I make the argument too, and I don’t think it’s a new argument, that America doesn’t know how to say it’s sorry. I don’t know if anybody’s noticed this. This is not a strong suit in America. 20,000 more troops [in Iraq] doesn’t sound like ‘I’m sorry’. …America doesn’t know how to say it’s sorry for pretty much anything from what I can figure. And I think we’ve got to work on it.

You know, I have seven kids in my house right now. …To learn how to say you’re sorry is something that you try to learn at about four, isn’t it? And I feel like America is at about four. …The perfect example: 1990, a hundred years after the Wounded Knee massacre, Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I know a lot of you know this story. You know, three hundred men, women, and children shot down by the 7th Calvary.

The Lakotas go to Washington, and they ask for an apology from Congress. You know this story. ‘Can I get an apology?’ At that time, Daschle, very powerful guy, says, ‘No, we can’t do that.’ His answer was that if we apologize to the Lakotas, we’re going to have to start apologizing to a lot of other people too.”

– Winona LaDuke, Program Director of Honor the Earth, Founding Director of White Earth Land Recovery Project, Vice Presidential Candidate in 1996 and 2000 for the Green Party, and Ojibwe mother of three, writer, and environmentalist, speaking at the Montana Human Rights Network/Honor The Earth benefit on 12 January 2007

 

LAKE SHASTINA. Adam admires beautiful Lake Shastina and the surrounding land while attending a healing ceremony for the earth. Mount Shasta, California. April 2007.

 

LET US NOT FORGET. For many, Thanksgiving represents coming together with loved ones to share in the harvest bounty, while looking forward to the warm tidings and celebrations of December. In schools, children are taught the story of the Pilgrims and the Indians who came together to share a historic meal of cooperation, neighborliness, collaboration, and even diplomacy.

As one delves deeper into U.S. history, history itself reveals that the commonly accepted views of history have largely been written from the perspective of white colonizers. In the United States, for example, it is generally believed and taught in schools that the U.S. began as and still is a democracy today. This teaching contradicts, or at best, skews historical fact. From the country’s start as a national government, the vast majority of the population were disenfranchised with no power to vote, including: Native Americans, all people of color, women, and white people who didn’t own land.

Had it not been for the dedicated activists who made up the various voting rights movements – the power of the people’s protests, their voices in unison, their acts of courage undertaken at the risk of imprisonment, ridicule, personal injury, and death – would theses groups still be unable to vote, own land, or hold office? Where would we be had not our forebears daily been a force for change?

Even today, millions of people in the U.S. still do not have the power to vote, such as citizens who have served time for a felony in certain states, immigrants, and citizens under 18 years old. In addition, the undemocratic barriers to voting experienced across the country – from rigged electronic voting machines, partisan election officials, unfair I.D. requirements to vote, and a cornucopia of election day voter suppression crimes – is an article unto itself. Let us not forget that we are the forebears of tomorrow, and that no governing body can ever hold authority over what is the birthright of the people.

STEWART MINERAL SPRINGS. Following Adam’s participation in his first sweat lodge at Stewart Mineral Springs, Aireen dips her feet in the retreat center’s pure, healing waters that flow directly from the peaks of Mount Shasta. Weed, California. April 2007.

SPIRIT OF THE LAND

All but forgotten from the pages of mainstream American history except in over-simplified or demonized episodes, the native people of this land continue to work for economic and political equality, reparation, recognition, identity, and healing. Did you know Christopher Columbus is documented by historians as having killed and enslaved the indigenous populations of the places his ship landed, people who had lived on their homeland for perhaps thousands of years? Since Columbus set foot in Costa Rica in 1492, a day still disrespectfully celebrated as “the discovery of America”, and onward to the first 13 colonies and the later “expansion” of white settlement from coast to coast, millions upon millions of Native Americans have lost their lives in what has been aptly termed “The Silent Holocaust”. This is the history of our country and the land we live upon. Whole families and villages slaughtered. Well-worked farms abandoned or destroyed. Rich cultures, languages, and wisdoms lost to the barrel of guns and prejudice.

It is a “silent” holocaust, because its length spans hundreds of years yet is still unacknowledged by the vast majority of Americans, school curriculums, and political leadership. It is a “holocaust” because, like the Holocaust perpetuated on over six million Jews and others in Nazi Germany, it has been systematic. A key part of official government policy since the first convening of the Continental Congress, between 95 and 99 percent of the original indigenous North American population have been killed. We use the present tense in describing this domestic holocaust against the native people of the U.S., because the prejudice, poverty, and detrimental policies against Native Americans continue to this day.

Who is left standing to tell the story of what our indigenous brothers and sisters have gone through, to preserve the wisdom of their ancestors, and renew the timeless beauty of their cultures? Beyond the lies of history, television news, and modern-day distraction, the story is clear. We can listen to the spirit of the land and the songs of the soil upon which communities and civilizations once lived and loved without oppression. The trauma of nearly five hundred years of genocide, displacement, and forced integration into white society continue on reservations across America. Yet, simultaneously, representatives of the tribal nations, young and old, hold high the light of peace and reverence for all of life in ceremony, song, and spirit, ensuring that the light of the ancient knowledge will never fade into nothingness.

MOUNT SHASTA. Attending a healing ceremony for the earth in Northern California, Adam smiles as sacred Mount Shasta towers behind him. April 2007.

A RESERVATION, A SCHOOL AND A CEREMONY

While traveling out West earlier this year, I met a young Native American man in the bathroom of a Greyhound Bus station. Full of passion, sadness, and a profound sense of honor for his heritage, he told me of the tragedy of one Indian reservation today that he knows well: rampant alcoholism, cycles of poverty, alarming suicide rates including members of his family, and the degradation of a culture tormented by the demons of abuse spanning generations upon generations. This torment had affected him deeply, but he had chosen to turn away from self-destruction and take a different path. He had just come from a school in California where younger Native American generations can go to be trained in the ways of their elders, where the ancient wisdom and practical traditions are passed on through ceremony, stories, skills, and songs.

The school the young man attended, Headwaters Outdoors School, is open to all with multiple locations in California. Classes include Wild Edible & Useful Plants, Wilderness Skills, Plant Medicine, Boy’s Rites of Passage, Earth Philosophy, The Scout Way, and Nature Awareness. Special retreats include Hidden Canyons of Utah, Garden Island of Kauai, and The Art of Seeing. The Headwaters website says:

“At Headwaters Outdoor School we teach skills Earth People have used throughout time to survive in kinship with the Earth. Our classes are held in areas chosen for their abundance of wildlife, creeks, meadows, forests and spectacular views. Class locations include the Marble Mountain Wilderness, the Mount Shasta area and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Classes are intensive and we suggest you arrive prepared to immerse yourself fully. Beginners as well as experienced students are welcome in all classes. Our class sizes are small to insure that the individual needs of each student are met. If this sounds like the school for you, please come and join us.”

A week prior to meeting this young man, I had attended my first sweat lodge ceremony led by Native American tribal elders. Inside the lodge, men and women of all ages and denominations gathered around hot rocks heated by a wood fire and, in pitch black, played drums, sang songs, and offered prayers of healing and thanksgiving to the Earth and the Great Spirit. I remember one man who, during his turn to lead the prayer, spoke with anger and defiance about the undying light of his people. In his words, I discerned the pain and eternal strength of a nation in healing, poised to emerge from the shadows of history.

The next day, at a Native American healing ceremony for the Earth, overlooking pristine Lake Shastina and wondrous Mount Shasta, I saw leaders of all races and nationalities, from white to red to yellow, gathered to uphold this same fire: the fire of healing. As we gathered in a circle, offerings of tobacco and sage were cast into the fire, and prayers and songs of healing for the Earth and all nations were spoken and sung, sometimes solo and often in unison.

RED WHITE AND YELLOW. A group of young women from Japan who participated in the healing ceremony for the earth pose for a portrait with new friends. Mount Shasta, California. April 2007.

STEWARDS OF THE LAND

Thanksgiving the holiday is thought to be based on a three day harvest feast shared by Wampanoag Indians and Puritan settlers in late autumn of 1621. There is debate about whether this feast is historically factual, but what is beyond debate is the four hundred years that followed: the broken treaties, broken communities, forced removal and integration of entire populations, and the countrywide genocide of North America’s indigenous people.

Since 1970, a group of people have marked Thanksgiving Day as a Day of Mourning with a spiritual ceremony and political protest on Coles Hill, overlooking one of the first landing places of the European settlers, Plymouth Rock. On Thanksgiving Day, we celebrate family, friendship, and the bounty that the Earth provides for us. For those who wish to remember, this day can also become a holiday to honor the memory and continued legacy of those who called this land home long before the signing of the Constitution. To those who continue to carry the torch of the spirit of the land, shining light on the history of our country, we thank you and honor you on this day.

Behind the story of the Indians teaching the Pilgrims how to plant corn, grow it, and survive by the labor of one’s own hands is an entire history. Today and into the future, we the people who call the United States home can continue the example of sharing knowledge and shared reverence for the land. We can choose to plant kernels of equality, compassion, and peace. Let us reconnect with the true history of the land and its people. Let us remember to honor the stewards of the land upon which we walk, feast, and live.

 

Winona LaDuke at Honor The Earth Benefit, 1-12-07, pt. 1

* CHEERS TO A HEALTHY, VEG-FRIENDLY THANKSGIVING: The Garden’s Harvest, The Chicago Diner & Farm Sanctuary

THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community

by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, November 2007, #35

THIS WEEK’S DISH -

CHEERS TO A HEALTHY, VEG-FRIENDLY THANKSGIVING:
The Garden’s Harvest, The Chicago Diner & Farm Sanctuary

“If you’re going to change hearts and minds, it’s going to be with love. …Being that change doesn’t mean being angry. That’s not going to change things.” - Farmer Harold Brown at the Conference For Conscious Living, hosted by EarthSaveChicago at the University of Chicago, 3 November 2007

 

PLANTING POTATOES IN OUR GARDEN, MAY 2007. Adam chooses a seed potato to plant. These potatoes are now harvested and will soon turn into delicious Thanksgiving mashed potatoes!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING from the Hot Potato! This week, we ask how does a person put into action the thanks we feel for the good food, festivities, and family? For a conscious, joyful Thanksgiving, we can:

• be mindful of each ingredient and mouthful,
• enjoy each colorful attribute of autumn – the golden, yellow, pink, and red trees, the pumpkins, the geese in formation, sweaters, soup, and fires in a hearth,
• and make the most of each moment spent with people and animals dear to our hearts.

We could cover a host of topics related to celebrating this bountiful holiday, but let’s keep it focused on the best part – the food! Okay, you’re right, it is always one of the brightest times of the year because for those of us so blessed, we are able to share the year’s harvest in festivities with our loved ones. Family, whether by blood or by bond, make the world come together to celebrate the holidays.

Let’s honor our family, the young and the old, family near and family far, and the one human family and our great earth family, by celebrating the gifts of the season in greater consciousness of the hands that worked with the land, the rain and sun and harmony of weather that nurtured the plants and animals, and the network of economies, families, and sweat that touch us on this day of thanks.

OUR OWN HEIRLOOM MASHED POTATOES AND THANKSGIVING AT THE CHICAGO DINER

This year, we are thinking about going for the gold and ordering a Thanksgiving package from Chicago’s oldest vegetarian, in fact, vegan restaurant, The Chicago Diner. We’re not going “cold turkey” as far as cooking. We will still put together some of the tasty spread, like a batch of the best mashed potatoes ever. This is especially a big year to celebrate, because it will be the first year we can make Thanksgiving dishes with produce from our very own garden! This will include the four different kinds of heirloom potatoes that we planted, grew, and harvested by our very own hands – peruvian purple fingerlings, german butterball, yukon gold, and caribé.

We must give big prop’s to my aunt, Levita, who joined us in the backyard garden during our potato harvest day. A nurse by profession and well-seasoned gardener herself, especially in growing prized, juicy tomatoes, Levita got on some garden gloves, grabbed a shovel, and dug right into the potato plot. Searching several inches deep into the soil, it is always a fun and rewarding treat to come across the patch of potatoes that began as just a cut up piece of potato planted months earlier. A true volunteer, my aunt did not even take home any of the harvest from her own labor, because, she said, she’s not a big potato fan.

My aunt was the one to find by far the largest potato in the whole plot, a real hunker that we guess is a Yukon Gold. We’re not sure of the variety, because it’s from a bag of nameless potatoes that we bought from Whole Foods. Cutting up store bought potatoes for seed isn’t recommended, because they’re not certified disease-free seed potatoes, but we tried it anyway. The store bought ones had the benefit of sprouting in the light and warmer temperature longer than the certified seed potatoes we had shipped to us and planted right away. We suspect the extra time the store ones had to grow longer green shoots before planting gave them a head start to grow bigger.

Most of the several pounds of potatoes from our garden are currently still coated in dirt, stored in a brown paper grocery bag in our basement’s cedar closet. The dishes we’ve already cooked up with the garden potatoes have been absolutely delicious, each heirloom variety offering their own distinct taste. Potatoes can keep for several months through the entire winter if stored properly – ideally with garden soil not washed off, in a cool and dark room, with plenty of air flow in a burlap or paper bag that will not trap moisture.

Back to the cooking pros, The Chicago Diner (3411 N. Halsted Chicago, IL 60657, 773.935.6696, www.veggiediner.com) is hosting their 25th Annual Vegan Thanksgiving this month, which is dine-in or carry out. Reservations for their Thurs. Nov. 22 dine-in are already sold out, but you can still order either online or over the phone the complete meal for carry out! You must schedule a pickup time for the Thanksgiving carry out on Wed. Nov. 21 or Thurs. Nov. 22.

Here is the Thanksgiving menu from The Chicago Diner’s website:

FULL MEAL – Price: $ 31.63
Includes: Squash Apple Soup, Field Greens Salad, Choice of Entree, 5 sides (glazed sweet potatoes, cranberries, green bean admondine, wild rice pilaf, 7-grain stuffing), bread & pumpkin pie. Price includes sales tax $28.95 + $2.68.

RAW MEAL – Price: $ 36.00
Holiday seasoned, savory nut loaf with wild mushroom gravy, field greens salad, corn harvest soup, sweet potato souffle, marinated greens, cranberry relish, raw dessert & beverage. Price includes tax $32.95 + $3.05.

You can also order items from The Chicago Diner à la carte, including entrees: Roasted Veggie Turkey, Beefy Wellington, Pumpkin Ravioli, Raw Savory Nut Loaf, Vegan Lasagna; and side items such as: Corn Bread, Vegan Brown Gravy, and Pumpkin Pie. All 100% vegan – no dairy, meat, or any animal products. We recently ate at The Chicago Diner with our roommate after collecting signatures to put Congressman Dennis Kucinich on the Illinois Presidential Primary Ballot during the Boystown Halloween Parade, right by The Chicago Diner. It had been years since we had gone to the diner, and all three entrées we chose were fabulous.

PLANTING POTATOES IN OUR GARDEN, MAY 2007. Adam measures the distance to plant potato pieces, about 9 inch centers and 9 inches deep, using hexagonal biointensive planting described in the book How To Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons.

HAROLD BROWN: A MEAT AND DAIRY FARMER GOES COLD TURKEY

Earlier this month, we also had the pleasure of collecting voter signatures for the Kucinich For President campaign at The Conference For Conscious Living at the University of Chicago, hosted by EarthSaveChicago (http://earthsavechicago.com) and VegChicago (www.vegchicago.com) with The Vegan Society of U of C (http://veganuchicago.org). It was at this conference that I was fortunate enough to see and even meet Farmer Harold Brown, whose moving story of transformation and compassion is featured in the documentary film Peaceable Kingdom.

While Adam faithfully kept watch at the Kucinich table, part of the conference’s Compassionate Living Fair, I found a seat in the high-ceiling, wood-trimmed Ida Noyes Hall, sunlight streaming through billowy, floor-to-ceiling curtains on an unusually warm November day, not yet knowing how genuine and eloquent the speaker would turn out to be. Dressed in a light brown suit jacket, Farmer Harold Brown looked different than how you will see him in the Peaceable Kingdom photos, wearing blue overalls and a baseball-type hat, cheek-to-cheek with a big black and white cow.

I encourage everyone to read Farmer Brown’s books and watch Peaceable Kingdom, which we look forward to doing soon. They tell his story much better than we could. To summarize, Harold was born and raised in a family of meat and dairy farmers, and he worked in the dairy industry himself for three years. Any child growing up on a farm is a little farmer too, doing chores like collecting eggs, sweeping the barn, and helping with harvest. Harold told the group how when he reached a certain age, still a young boy, his family now considered him “old enough” to do what all the men in the family were expected to do. This entailed castrating the male calves by hand, without anesthesia. Harold the boy, not more than 11 years old, cried the first time and said we didn’t want to do it, but over time, he learned to repress his feelings and push down the trauma and PTSD he took on from the experience of castrating hundreds of calves.

Eventually, he cut out dairy and red meat, because he was at risk of a triple bypass, like his father had had, but his was predicted to happen by age 40 and had already suffered a heart attack at age 18. Feeling ostracized by family since the diet change, Harold and his wife moved from rural Michigan to Cleveland, Ohio, where Harold worked as a car mechanic. It was here that he met his future. A kind African-American woman dropped off her car to be serviced. When she picked her car up, Harold went through the work done on the car and then had to ask about one of her many bumper stickers. She said, “Which one?” Harold said he just did not get the one that read, “I don’t eat my friends.” “Does that mean you’re not a cannibal?” he wondered. She explained that she was a vegetarian, in fact, a vegan, and didn’t eat meat because animals are her friends. Harold mused to the U of C audience how he had gone to a big Michigan University for four years, and up to that point in the body shop, had managed to never hear the word “vegetarian”.

FARM SANCTUARY: ANIMAL FRIENDS & AMBASSADORS

The woman told Harold she buys all her food from the local co-op grocery store. Harold found out that the co-op was less than a block from his home. There on the co-op’s community billboard, he saw a vegetarian potluck group meeting soon…and the rest was history. The moment of truth though came much later when a small cow who Harold had met before remembered him on his next visit, butting his cow nose into Harold’s frontside. It was this moment of emotion and recognition from the cow that was able to crack through years of bottled emotions Harold had held about animals and his relationship to them, including his unrecognized feelings from childhood. He was vegan already, and now felt why.

Harold ended up working for Farm Sanctuary. With locations in California and New York, Farm Sanctuary (www.farmsanctuary.org) is a non-profit organization that accepts and cares for all kinds of animals that otherwise would have been killed or sent to slaughter for food, including cows, horses, chickens, pigs, and other friends. They also offer farm tours, overnight accommodations, retreats, and conferences. Farm Sanctuary’s website describes their work:

“Currently, Farm Sanctuary operates two shelters — a 175-acre farm in upstate New York and a 300-acre farm in northern California. Our shelters rescue, rehabilitate and provide lifelong care for hundreds of animals who have been rescued from stockyards, factory farms, and slaughterhouses. Here, the animals are given all the care and love needed to recover from a lifetime of abuse and neglect. All of the animals have nourishing food, spacious, clean barns, and acres of green, sunny pastures in which to roam.

When you walk through the pastures, you’ll see frolicking calves, who once only knew pain and suffering in veal crates. As you enter the barns, you’ll see pigs slumbering in soft straw — a tremendous change from a cold, filthy stockyard pen. Everywhere you look, you’ll see animals who have suffered untold agony and cruelty. Only now, you’ll witness these animals experiencing the joys of freedom for the first time in their lives.

At Farm Sanctuary, people see farm animals as living, feeling beings who are just as capable of suffering from isolation, fear and neglect as a dog or cat. Our “animal ambassadors” have a very special way of reaching and teaching people. So, if you know someone that loves animals, bring them to a Farm Sanctuary shelter…a very special place for farm animals and for the friends of farm animals.”

An animal sanctuary in the making, Wagner Farm Rescue Fund also had a table at the conference. Founded by Debby Rubenstien of Glenview, Illinois, WFRF arranges the purchase of and finds a suitable farm to care for the animals that are no longer needed at the Glenview Park District’s Historic Wagner Farm And Museum. Adam and I both knew of WFRF’s work, since we had both worked at Wagner Farm this summer, but we had the chance to meet and speak with Debbie for the first time. She is collecting donations to buy a 50 acre farm in southern Wisconsin, so then we could have a farm animal sanctuary of our own here in the Midwest. Please consider donating your time or money to Wagner Farm Rescue Fund, a 501(c) 3 non-profit, at www.wagnerfarmrescuefund.org or write to Wagner Farm Rescue Fund, P.O. Box 2815, Glenview, IL. 60025.

WE CAN BE FARMERS OF COMPASSION

After Farmer Harold Brown’s talk, he visited the Kucinich For President table, where he related how Harold and his wife have run into Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich at their favorite vegan restaurant in Cleveland, Dennis’ hometown and seat of his Congressional District. I told Harold how I was vegetarian and Adam is vegan, and that I was very impressed with the comments he made about Rudolph Steiner, who founded Biodynamic farming and Montessori schools. The organic farm where Adam and I were interns, and in fact, many farms in the Wisonsin/northern Illinois area that we encountered practiced Biodynamic farming and insisted that animals must be part of the farm equation. Harold noted in hist talk that Steiner himself became vegetarian later in life and, at this stage in his progress as an agricultural and educational icon, wrote that a farm can be harmonious without animal inputs, but that harmony must first be a part of the farmer’s life and diet. First the farmer, then the farm. This is reminiscent of my own take on Gandhi’s famous quote that you must be the change you wish to see. In addition, you must be the garden you wish to see.

A skeptical farmer, who spoke to Harold at an Ontario farmers market about animal or stock-free agriculture, experimented on parts of his farm with and without animal fertilizer one season. The farmer came back to Harold’s booth the next summer with a report that the acres without animal inputs produced 500% greater than the other areas. Harold encouraged everybody at the conference to be “farmers of compassion” by planting seeds of compassion, and to approach people with not anger but love. Change the world with LOVE, because, Harold said, it is not the words but the FEELING you gave that the person you spoke with will remember. If your cause is peace, healthcare, education, animal rights, climate change, or a raise at work, you can be a farmer of compassion, planting seeds with love to one day harvest whole fields of love.

Not everyone will have a meat-free Thanksgiving this year, but you CAN have a more veg and earth-friendly Thanksgiving. Please buy organic, be conscious of your choices, and celebrate. To the health of you, your family, and the planet.

Merci, Ahó, Chezu ba, Gracious, Dankon, Mamnoon, Ô chò, Spasibo, Dhanyabaad, Gratias, Asante, Mèsi, Salamat po, Danke, Diolch, Xie xie, Thanks!*

* In order: French, Native U.S./Apsaaloke, Burmese, Spanish, Esperanto, Farsi/Iran, Hmong/Vietnam, Russian, Nepali, Latin, Kiswahili/Southeast Africa, Kwéyòl/Haiti, Tagalog/Philippines, German, Welsh, Mandarin, English! (from “‘Thank you’ in over 465 languages” http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/thankyou.htm)

Animal Rights Conference 2007 – Harold Brown