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Barbara Bell Bonobo Update at Milwaukee’s World Renowned Bonobo Sanctuary


Maringa and her daughter Zomi

Photo by Mark Scheuber (keeper)

Much has happened in the past 6 months. Our bonobo troop is hovering at 16 individuals right now with a pregnancy on the way. We have lost several key players in the bonobo world and my life is all the richer for having known them for so long. Several months ago Maringa the matriarch of the troop was euthanized after she suffered a severe cerebral bleed which left her unable to move, vocalize, or tend to her family. I came in to work only to find my dear friend laying in her nest unable to respond to us and her eyes were fixed and dilated. The very easy decision to end her suffering was quickly made by the veterinary and keeper staff at MCZ. Maringa had given me so much through the years and had been totally paralyzed from the waist down for the past 10 years. She gave birth to 2 little girls in this condition, and was able to mother and lead her troop through daily decision making. We were very good friends and had known each other since 1987, so her loss is a huge one for me personally.

When I found Maringa unable to move in her nest, she had her 4 year old daughter hanging on her back crying and frightened. This was causing Maringa a lot of stress and I know she could hear what was happening. I sent our old male Lody in to Maringa’s pen to lend a hand. He sat down and stroked Maringa’s head and shoulders. He fixed her messed up hair and straightened her nest. Next he grabbed the 4 year old daughter and tossed her up on his back. He gave one last look at Maringa and then left his best friend and constant companion for over 35 years. The sadness in his face was something I will never forget. Lody gave my hand a quick squeeze as he tended to the fussy baby girl. Such a wise old man!

The troop is adjusting to the lack of female leadership and several of the young girls have tried out the role of being “in charge”, but nobody takes them seriously. Tamia attempted to be queen for about 4 days, she even decided to mother Maringa’s daughter. Until the daughter became a fussy, whiny little girl who missed her mother. Then Tamia determined the queen role was a lot of work, and 4 year olds are a handful, she quit the experiment and gave the daughter back to Lody. Maringa’s daughter “Faith” is doing fine and is being raised by her older sister Zomi who has a baby of her own.

We have a new stud muffin in the troop. Ricky came to me a few months ago from Columbus. He is very sweet, very smart, and the girls think he is a super hero. The resident young males want to somehow get rid of him because he is getting all the female attention. So, Ricky is a bit stressed to say the least. He is stuck somewhere between super hero and chopped liver…depending on who you talk to. Tamia is his full sister and they definitely remember each other from Columbus. Tamia tries to spit at Ricky and he makes faces back at her. Typical siblings. To avoid in breeding these two are being kept far apart for now.

So much for now. bb
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Customized Cargo Bikes, Milwaukee Made, Recycled and Nicely Priced

Today there was a meeting of some Sweet Water Organics workers,
some Sweet Water Foundation volunteers, and some school teachers
of great talent and fine character.

Eye on the Prize of 100 Auto-Catalytic Green Jobs: Cargo Bikes 1 Job

Imagine contracting with a design build teacher supported by the Bike Federation
to develop a cargo bike program with students of North Division High School to
create your cargo bike, customized the support your better living through exercise
and reduced carbon footprint.

Your cargo bike will allow you to carry your work materials to coffee shop offices or
meetings across town(some buses have bike racks!). You might use it to
do your grocery shopping, or, if you are a new urban farmer, to carry your produce
to your clients.

It would seem quite possible that within 5 or 10 years this project could easily
evolve to support the equivalent of one full time job, perhaps filled by one cargo bike enterpriser, or perhaps one fifth of a year’s job for 5 cargo bike enterprisers.

Send an e-mail to cargobikeprojectmakesonejob@miwaukeerenaissance.com.

Want To Help Grow One Hundred Greening Jobs Before 2020 Olde

Our Name Is 100 Labor/Knowledge Intensive Greening Jobs

I am inviting you to brainstorm with me
the development of 100 “auto catalytic green jobs”
over the next 5 or 10 years.

These jobs can be “auto-catalytic” if needs be, i.e.
they are won in the market place by the simple act of offering
goods and services that do not rely on patrons or government,
just hard won and supporting clients…
because the people you and I and our respective teams know
have skills and resources amenable to translating into
21st century green jobs in Milwaukee

with or without any external source of start-up funding.

Some call this a “social business model,” others call it “social enterprise.”

Projects to spark social entrepreneurs, free lance professionals,
urban farmers, elbow grease/common sense virtuosos,
and community organizers.

We already have the resources to manifest this vision,
especially our imagination, the resources of our partners,
and the connectivity afforded by the communications miracle
that is the world wide and quite local internet.

I’ll Stand Up for This Young Knowledge Elbow Grease Worker Farmer Social Enterpriser

I have a ready market for young and old citizens of Milwaukee in the field of
household self-reliance support and community organizing, quite complimentary work galaxies.

Self Reliance Support Jobs Looking To Be Filled

I am hoping you will “stand up for” two people to be available to develop
“penny capitalists and social enterprisers” for the following revenue sources in the marketplace:

  • food and flower garden tenders

  • basic handymon(“mon” is gender and age neutral) work to beautify and “green” old houses

  • basic family support work, e.g. driving, child and elder care, house cleaning, phone work,

and common sense problem solving

Peddling Our Start Up Worker Farmer Apprentice Professionals

Consider sharing this concept note with possible enterprisers ready to translate
some of their skills and capacities into “gigs” in the market place.

One of my favorite social roles is “peddling” good people, good work, and good ideas.
At the Milwaukee Renaissance movement resource, or your web platform,
we can chronicle these experiments in self reliance and community building.

And consider brainstorming and advancing the concept of

100 Labor/Knowledge Intensive Greening Jobs in Next 10 Years

In my capacity as an elder in the Sweet Water Organics, Inc., Sweet Water Foundation,
Community Roofing & Restoration, Inc., Milwaukee Renaissance Movement Magazine,
the Green Room, and other enterprises I aspire to advance, I can see 100 auto-catalytic jobs emerging from our mighty collaborations. Here are the personal goals I am setting for:

Sweet Water Organics, Inc.

http://sweetwater-organic.com/blog/news/ 20 jobs

Sweet Water Foundation

http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/TheSweetWaterFoundation/HomePage 20 jobs

Community Roofing & Restoration Network 20 jobs

http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/Main/CommunityRoofingAndRestorationInc

National Association Black Veterans Network 20 jobs

Kennedy King Community College Network 20 jobs

Consider Sharing Your 100 Job Vision

“By our steady combination we’ll succeed!”

“We are bound to see our measure carried, and stick to it through ages of defeat!”

I hope you will consider exploring visions of 100 auto-catalytic greening jobs from your work and that of your close in team and expanding network.

And sharing those visions!

Worm Mon Show 100 Green Job Vision Swap

At the Worm Mon Show during the Sweet Water tours on Wed. at 6 and Sunday at noon,
the topic of 100 green job development partnerships will be a recurring theme.

The Sweet Water Tours are $5, but the worm mon show, which starts at 12:30 on Sundays, and 6:30 on Wednesdays, is free.

Here is a Concept Essay pertaining to these themes:

http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/Godsil/HomePage

Let’s talk about some of this while we work and walk !

Or, send me an e-mail at godsil.james@gmail.com

Olde “100 Green Jobs” Godsil

Life and the Movie “Home” in 10 Billion Gracefully Orchestrated Notes

When Marty Marty helped me overcome my Catholic Jesuit inspired anxiety about looking too closely into the metaphysics of the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Jews,
and Indiginous Peoples I hope someday to better name, I was greatly moved by the
Chinese mystics many references to 10,000 things under heaven.

And now the bacteria of Sweet Water and Sweet Soil have expanded my mind to the number 10 billion. I propose that anything of lasting value requires 10 billion steps. I also move that we realize that it makes some sense to look upon our lives as a co-created(with God, Mother Nature, and our Friends) symphony we orchestrate with a lifetime of 10 billion choices, some of which please God, Mother Nature, and our Friends, and are in accordance with truth, beauty, justice, and the way.

At the end of a day, throughout the day, our meditations and prayers, or ruminations and random thoughts, might well reflect upon the quality of the notes
we offer for our grand and hopefully harmonic life’s symphony.

Ten billion notes and steps, more graceful and thoughtful, God willing, with each and every turn of the Seasons and setting of the evenings Sun.

Here’s a movie that inspired these “idears”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

Worm Mon Off Day Reflections

Let’s Help Make Farm Aid’s 25th Anniversary in Milwaukee a Huge Success

How about we brainstorm visions for a Grand Great Lakes Heartland Alliance to
Advance Farm Aid 25?

  • How about supporting the diversification of the Heartland’s Traditional Farmers

into 21st century bio-mimicry hands-on researchers, e.g. creating high protein fish feed from worms, soldiers larvae, and other gifts of nature that free aquaculture
projects from harvesting fish species from the challenged wilds?

  • What say we help spark the marriage of engineers, biologists,

and hands-on urban and rural farmers, as Janine Benyus suggested in her Ted Lecture delivered around the same time as Clay’s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n77BfxnVlyc

  • Why not gather our urban agriculture and sustainability workers from the great cities of Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Kansas City, Madison, and Minneapolis for brainstorm linking our projects with Farm Aid 25 and beyond?

Would not Grace Lee Boggs make for a great planner and participant of this event?

http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/GraceLeeBoggs/HomePage

And other movement elders a days drive from the event, happy to fix our eyes on the prize of making Farm Aid 25 in Milwaukee an historic moment that sets the stage for mighty 21st century collaborations deeply admired by Mother Nature.

Here’s a note from one of the event’s organizers. Send an e-mail to godsil.james@gmail.com if you would like support this project.

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 10:13 PM, Hilde Steffey <hilde@farmaid.org> wrote:

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Farm Aid is pleased to announce that Farm Aid 25: Growing Hope for America, Farm Aid’s 25th anniversary concert, will be held at Miller Park Stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Saturday, October 2, 2010. Farm Aid holds its annual benefit concert in a different location each year to shine a spotlight on the great work of family farmers and food and farm groups in diverse communities and regions across the country. This year we are thrilled to be coming to Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, where family farmers are leading the way in urban agriculture, pasture-based dairy, organic production and beyond.

Farm Aid 25 will be a national stage to showcase independent family farmers as vitally important to the nation’s future, offering practical solutions to the economic, environmental and public health challenges we face. Family farmers are growing hope for America through the good food they produce, the economies they build, and with their care for the natural resources upon which a healthy agriculture depends.

There are a number of ways for family farmers and food and farm activists to get involved:

  • Media - In the weeks leading up to Farm Aid 25 and during the concert itself, numerous opportunities will emerge for family farmers to tell their stories. Farm Aid dedicates time and energy to connecting farmers with the media. For more information, see the “Media Opportunities” attachment. To register farmers as media spokespersons, see the “Spokesperson Registration” form.
  • Farm Yard - Each year we set aside a special place at the concert venue called the Farm Yard for farmers, farm activists and concertgoers to gather. While everyone is encouraged to stop by the Farm Yard throughout the day, we like to schedule farmers and farm activists at different times to keep the space lively, and to better connect spokespersons with the media. Interested parties can indicate their interest to be scheduled in the Farm Yard on the “Spokesperson Registration” form.
  • HOMEGROWN Village – An integral part of the Farm Aid 25 experience, the HOMEGROWN Village is a festive and fun area for concertgoers to explore what it takes to produce the quality family farm food that we need. We are seeking creative, interactive exhibits that both educate and entertain. To learn more about being a HOMEGROWN Village exhibitor at this year’s show, see the “HOMEGROWN Village” attachment or contact Joel Morton at joel@farmaid.org.
  • Local activities and events – Farm groups and farmers often come together to host local activities and events around concert time. If you would like to learn more about getting involved in planning such an event, please contact Hilde Steffey at hilde@farmaid.org.
  • Tickets - Tickets will be available to Farm Aid members beginning August 6th and to the general public on August 14th. A limited number of reduced-rate tickets are reserved for family farmers. Please contact Alicia Harvie at alicia@farmaid.org for more information.

We hope you can join us in the celebration! Please feel free to be in touch if you have any questions.

All the best,

Hilde, Joel, Alicia and the entire Farm Aid crew

Hilde Steffey
Program Director
Farm Aid

501 Cambridge Street
3rd Floor
Cambridge, MA 02141

1–617–354–2922
www.farmaid.org

Roadside Culture Stand, a Wormfarm Institute Initiative

In cooperation with Sweet Water Organics and Beans and Barley

The “costermonger” was an itinerant fruit and vegetable peddler. Pushing a handcart through the streets calling out or singing about their wares they made fresh local produce easy to acquire by bringing it to the people. It was also a way an entrepeneur could gain a foothold with a minimal investment and grow a business with ingenuity and creativity- what we today might call a “micro-enterprise”.

The Roadside Culturestand is a re-imagining of this tradition, linking the vision and talents of artists, designers and farmers with the goal of making locally produced food and arts more accessible. Each of the artist-designed and built Culturestands is intended to vend produce, art, as well as serving as an informational kiosk to dispense information on the source of additional sustainably-produced culture and agriculture.

In 2010, there will be four Roadside Culturestands traveling the roads of Wisconsin. Currently there are two in Milwaukee, one in Madison and one in Sauk County. This initial rollout will provide valuable information as we seek to develop the project in 2011 and beyond.

Look for more information about the Culturestands at www.wormfarminstitute.org and also look for the next round of Call for Proposals for 2011 Culturestands in the Fall/ Winter of this year.

www.wormfarminstitute.com

Worm Mon Shows and Morality Play

Audition for part of Mother Earth, Father Sky, Rainforest, Ice Cap, Worm Mon, Bug Mon, Plant Mon, Work Mon, Business Mon, Artist Mon, and more at Sweet Water’s Theatre in the round, every Wed. 6 p.m., Sunday noon, adjacent tour moments.

Click here for a first draft description of Worm Mon Shows And Morality Play.

Nice Film Clip from NPR’s “State of the Reunion” on Sweet Water Fish Vegetable Farm Experiment in Re-Purposed Vintage Factory Building

http://stateofthereunion.com/urban-farming-milwaukee

Making Money and Honest Profits In Urban Farming: Explorations

Concepts to take into consideration:

  • SPIN Farming - They show how a small scale plot can be economically sustainable. SPIN Farming (Small Plot Intensive farming) has done a pretty good job of developing some pretty specific models for 3 different sizes of small farms, down to equipment needs and budgets http://www.spinfarming.com/ (some of the information on the website is not free)
  • Growing high-value crops to sell to those who can afford them to help cover the cost of growing food for those who cannot. Here is a model, in the Boston area, that works in this manner: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/2007914/slocum.

Useful links:

If anyone is familiar with any research that was made on this subject with relevant data I’ll be happy to learn about it as well.

Thanks again!
Raz

Notes from the Forum

Boggs, Wallerstein on Detroit, movements, and systems

by Frank Edwards Published June 24, 2010 in AREA Chicago

Common Dreams put Mark’s filming of the Boggs - Wallerstein workshop up on the front page of their site this a.m. http://www.commondreams.org/home

It was truly an honor to be witness to a conversation between Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein this morning at the Social Forum. I recorded audio (available for download here at the original article), and jotted down a few notes that I’d love to share. I know I will listen to this conversation again soon, and hope to spend some more time when things are less hectic reflecting on their words and observations.

Grace Lee Boggs: Living at the expense of the earth has brought us to the edge of disaster. We face evolution to a higher humanity or the devastation and extinction of all life on earth. Revolution is also evolution.

Immanuel Wallerstein: Historical systems do not go on forever. The modern world system has entered into strucutral crisis, it’s coming to an end. The system doesn’t provide the possibilities in its own terms to work. Its own terms is an endless accumulation of capital… It’s worked brilliantly for a couple of hundred years, but its moved far from eqilibrium and we are in a structural crisis. Struggles today are not about preserving the present system, but what will replace it. Every little action on our part helps to determine the end. We don’t know who’s going to win the struggle about what replaces the current system. There’s no certainty, but it all depends on us.

Grace Lee Boggs: Resistance to commodification is a human resistance. All over the world we have resistance developing. People are resisting the commodification of relationships, the commodification of their communities. The movement we are engaged in is not only about the transformation of institutions but also about the transformation of ourselves.

Immanuel Wallerstein: To live well is not necessarily to endlessly consume. This isn’t the kind of system that people at Davos want to create. It doesn’t have to be capitalism, it could be worse than capitalism. We have to talk about the consequences of this for organizing. Everybody has to eat today, not tomorrow. You can’t tell people that they have to wait another 5 years or 10 years or 20 years. That was a line of the historic anti-systemic movements. You’ve got to worry about today, but you can’t only worry about today. The problem is working out a strategy that contains an immediate attempt to meet people’s needs and a medium run strategy of changing the system. People need to have less pain immediately. That doesn’t transform the world, but it meets people’s needs. You’ve also got to explain to people that we’ve got a 20 or 30 or 40 year struggle. There will be some new system, it can be better or it can be worse.

Original article here visit and add a comment :)
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Milwaukee Artisan Agrarian Erik Lindberg Highlighted by Milwaukee T.V. News Show

http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-100608-rooftop-gardening,0,4463403.story

The Next Development in Education

By James Boggs

Excerpted from a 1977 speech by James Boggs (1919–1993) at the University of Adult Education in Detroit. —GLB

For most Americans education is for the sake of getting a good job. They don’t realize that the concept of education has gone through many changes in the past few thousand years. The Greeks, Romans and Chinese used education to prepare a few people to govern. During the feudal period in Europe training was mainly in swordsmanship and horsemanship. With the Reformation in the 16th Century, ordinary people learned to read and write so they would not be dependent on priests to interpret the Bible.

The greatest leap in the concept of education came with the American Revolution which proclaimed self-government for ordinary people. Making self-government possible became the purpose of Education.

Education did not become tied to economic goals in the United States until the late 19th Century with the speed-up of the industrial revolution and the huge surge in immigration. For the first time the purpose of education became preparing the illiterate masses to work in factories.

In the 1930s people still believed that a high school education was enough to get a decent job. However, with the introduction into factories of the HiTech developed during World War II, young people were persuaded that you needed a college education.

Today, with millions coming out of college every year, even teachers find themselves looking for work.

Yet few people are ready to recognize that unemployment in the United States is not due to lack of schooling but is rooted in a system which, giving priority to economic development over human development, installs automation to replace human beings.

So long have we continued to believe that education is the road to economic success that we have not even begun to evaluate what happens to a people who treasure economic development over human development.

Today we need to change our concept of education from Education for Earning to Education for Governing. By governing I mean the continuing exercise of our distinctively human capacity to choose between policies that will benefit our communities and posterity, and those that serve only our immediate self-interest.

To develop Education to Govern, we have to recognize that the foundation of good government is the moral development of young people. This must begin in the home or family where the child learns in practice certain values, such as the importance of telling the truth and doing one’s share of work around the house. These are the basis of trust and cooperation, without which no family and no community can long survive.

Next comes the development in the child of the skills necessary to make a productive contribution to the whole society. Particularly in a highly technical society, it is necessary that from an early age young people, female and male, do some productive work that will contribute to the overall society, both because this is the best way to learn and because it is impossible to keep young people as parasites in school for 15–20 years and then expect them to be responsible citizens.

•How do we reorganize our schools so that our youth will learn, not only in theory but in practice, that workmanship is important to their development as human beings?

•Should all schools have gardens and greenhouses so that young people can learn how to grow food a well as restore their relationship to nature, and should all schoolchildren cook and serve their own food, in the process learning more about nutrition and budgeting?

•Why shouldn’t young people in each school be responsible for the trees, playgrounds and roads in their neighborhoods?

•Why shouldn’t students in science be given real problems to solve, such as the best ways to conserve energy sources?

•What kind of political system and education do we need to involve all citizens in a process of responsible social decision-making that will take the place of the kind of sweepstakes or lottery in which we are now asked to engage every few years?

These are just some of the questions that we must now begin to ask ourselves to initiate the next development in education. We haven’t asked them before because we thought our minds were like cameras, only reflecting theories, facts, information created by others. Now we must recognize that knowledge is something that human beings create through our reflections and our practice.

Milwaukee Program to Honor Milwaukee Born Mildred Harnack, Executed by Hitler 1942

On Memorial Day, please remember Mildred Fish Harnack, Milwaukee native and MPS product, the only American Woman Executed by the Nazis for being part of the German Resistance

Sunday, June 6th at 4pm at the UW-M Union

The director and producers of the upcoming film, NUMBER 228, narrated by famed actress Meryl Streep, will appear at the UWM Union Theatre Cinema, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd. in Milwaukee. The film’s subject is Milwaukee native, Dr. Mildred Fish Harnack, the only American woman beheaded by Hitler’s direct order for her activity in one of Berlin’s first German resistance movements. Executive Producer/Director Jade Wu and Producers Adrian Schriel and Caitlin O’Connell will present a trailer screening for the film which is still in production and will be released for theatrical distribution and television broadcast in late 2011, combined with a discussion and presentation on the film’s educational outreach plan. The event at the UWM Union Cinema, beginning at 4pm, is free and open to the public. For further information, contact Art Heitzer, aheitzer@igc.org, 414–273–1040, ext. 12

A bio sketch of Mildred Harnack at http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/HumanRights/HomePage
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Madison Bike Brigade to U.S. Detroit Social Forum Might Need Your Backyard

Dear All,

There is a contingent of bike riders from the Madison area en route to this early June’s US Social Forum in Detroit…”Another World Is Possible!”

They will be passing through Milwaukee on June 11 weekend.

http://www.grassroutescaravan.org

We hope we have a place for them at Kadish Park, but that might not work.

Might anyone have a backyard that would hold 10 people camping out? Plus let them use a bathroom on site?

Here is the web site for the U.S. Social Forum, which all of Milwaukee is invited to, perhaps some bike riders joining in!

http://www.ussf2010.org/

Another world IS possible,

Godsil

The End of the Line: Imagine a World Without Fish

http://endoftheline.com/film/ [DVD via Netflix]

There’s an Interesting ‘calculator’ there to determine the wider impact of the buying choices we make

http://endoftheline.com/campaign/widget

Frogman

He who knows how to be poor knows everything. — Jules Michelet

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Barn Swallows, Fruit Flies, and Natural Fertilizing

The Sweet Water Younges and their friends
Do not enjoy fruit flies from our compost range
As uninvited guests at their workshop gatherings.

The barn swallows, on the other hand, seem
Ecstatic as they dive bomb around
Making fruit flies feel like stars in Hitchcock’s “Birds.”

Anyone have any ideas about harvesting fruit flies
Along with the barn swallows?

Godsil
La Causa School’s Worm Man

Bay View Food Guild

The owners of Alterra, Svens, Wild Flower Bakery, Honey Pie,
for starters, have signed on to explore the concept of a
Bay View Food Guild.

A Bay View Food Guild would afford the participants in this
increasingly important community industry a chance to
meet one another and explore “mighty collaborations” to
advance our common aims and community commerce.

Anyone thinking about growing food in their community gardens,
backyard farms, edible playgrounds, faith community or company plots
would be eligible to partipate.

Anyone with organizing without organizations skills, or people
in the food industries, restaurants, grocedry stores, and pubs of Bay View, 

 are eligible as well.

I wonder if we should make anyone who eats a possible member
and contributor of a Bay View Food Guild.

Improving Our Social Practice

We can all do better by our neighbors, community…our family…
Our selves!

Bay View is on the road to become one of the most participatory
and possibly prosperous communities in Milwaukee and beyond.

The food industry will become an even more vital part of our lives,
both in our “industry, i.e. work” that creates “use value,” i.e.
good stuff the tax man don’t grab any of…the barter or informal economy,
as well as in the formal economy of commodities, taxes, and “exchange value.”

Sign on up and let’s explore even better collaborations than over the past 8 years,
which have been stunning!

Godsil

“Wall Street Journal” Features Sweet Water Story

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703950804575242594125593702.html

Sweet Water Fish: Fine Food For Our Beautiful Brains

The Claim: Fish Is Brain Food

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/health/03real.html

Fish Oil Supplementation and Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome: A New Study

http://www.naturalnews.com/008003.html

“Huffington Post’s” Kerry Trueman On Milwaukee’s Arugula as Birthright Project

Entire article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-trueman/rachael-rays-radical-evoo_b_573374.html.

But we live in such a bizarrely partisan era that a humble salad green like arugula has become shorthand for supposed liberal lunacy. James Godsil, the Milwaukee mover and shaker behind the awesome urban ag project Sweet Water Organics and [former] Growing Power board member, is on a mission to rescue arugula, aka “rocket,” as it’s known in Europe, from its current status as a symbol of all things socialist and restore it to its rightful place on our plates, regardless of region or social status. As he wrote on the Milwaukee Renaissance website:

It is a stupefying fact that our president was mocked for sharing his love of arugula.

Godsil’s “Arugula as Birthright” campaign seeks to get kids all over the country psyched about growing, and savoring, fresh salad greens, while also learning invaluable lessons:

Imagine a school with a principal and one teacher committed to affording each and every student a taste, for starters, regular tastes eventually, and growing classes, ultimately, of arugula and spinach.

Then imagine a school with a composting and vermiculture program that gave our students a chance to learn about turning urban waste streams into the world’s most nutrient-rich soil, and then some hands on experience in science, math, biology, chemistry, and construction, creating raised bed gardens, even hoop houses, for their school edible playgrounds.

We need grassroots activists with Godsil’s vision and passion, we need celebrities like Ray who is willing to use her star wattage to turn up the heat on Congress, and we need politicians like Gillibrand, a mother of young children who appears willing to challenge our long-entrenched Iowa-based cornarchy.

To to see Ray bounding through the Beltway demanding that our politicians start showing true family values by allocating more money to give our kids better food is a dream come true for me.

Will Agribiz astroturfers accuse her of treason for conspiring in a a terroirist plot—with a Brit, no less—to foist fresh, healthy foods on America’s youth?

When Oliver appeared on Ray’s show recently to talk about ‘his’ Food Revolution and his desire to support Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, Ray told Oliver:

No matter where your representatives or your congress people are from, this is something we all care about as a country, and we’re not asking, we’re demanding change!

I was duly impressed by her genuine enthusiasm for the First Lady’s endeavor, and I also applauded her for enlisting the resources of her non-profit Yum-O! and the powerful platform of the Rachael Ray show to reward one of my own personal heroes, Pressure Cooker star Wilma Stephenson.

But I had no idea Ray would put her money where her self-proclaimed “big Sicilian mouth” is. Will wonders never cease? Let’s give Ray a shout-out, and while we’re at it, let’s let Senator Gillibrand know we’re thankful for her efforts as a member of the Ag Committee to bring “specialty crops” out of left field. And speaking of bringing greens out of left field, won’t you please join James Godsil in his quest to stop shameless partisans from soiling arugula’s reputation? Please email him at godsil.james@gmail.com if you share his conviction that arugula should be a uniter, not a divider.

Entire article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-trueman/rachael-rays-radical-evoo_b_573374.html.

Follow Kerry Trueman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrytrueman

The Rise of Company Gardens

By KIM SEVERSON
Published: May 11, 2010 New York Times

HERE at the world headquarters of PepsiCo, the masterminds behind $60 billion worth of Mountain Dew, Cheetos and Rice-A-Roni roam polished hallways.

But a five-minute walk away is the organic corporate vegetable garden, where spreadsheets and performance reviews give way to basil starts and black peppermint plants. Employees can sneak out for a quick lunchtime weeding session and cart home the harvest.

As companies have less to spend on raises, health benefits and passes to the water park, a fashionable new perk is emerging: all the carrots and zucchini employees can grow.
Read the rest at the New York Times
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Jan Christensen’s Mother’s Day Proclamation Milwaukee 2010

An Updating of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870.’‘

You may remember Julia Ward Howe as the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic. She was also a major force behind the creation of Mother’s Day. Her 1870 Proclamation addressed the horrors of the Franco-Prussian War, and envisioned a Mother’s Day of Peace – a long way from the Hallmark holiday we celebrate today.

However, her Proclamation might also address the “Gang War” mentality we are facing in our city today. With a few minor changes that I have humbly undertaken with all apologies to Mrs. Howe, let me present an updated…

Mother’s Day Proclamation – Milwaukee, 2010
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have questions of life or death decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands and lovers shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one neighborhood will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the devastated earth herself, a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood will not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken their work and their homes to take to violence in the streets, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let us meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let us solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Gang but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of race or social class may be appointed. Let it be held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of all people in our land, the amicable settlement of questions of wealth and education, guns and crime and violence, the great and general interests of peace.
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Cooperativas

I would be happy to cultivate an entrepreneurial perspective for the black gold circles the Worm Man could set up with the people. For example, we create 500 dollar bags of black gold while talking about

  • turning wastes into resources

  • protecting our waters from the methane gas caused by fruit veggie wastes in anaerobic land fills

  • talking about the power and elegance of nature’s ways, wherein compost becomes food for worms which become food for fish which become food for people

  • talking about self reliance and community crafting with various Sweet Water projects

  • talking about enlisting the black gold packagers into the entrepreneurial challenge of selling our product, with them getting some appropriate percentage of the gross sales, depending the “value of their labor power contribution embodied in the fruits of the labor.”

  • talking about helping schools help families learn to compost, raise worms, develop raised bed gardens, and, for the most talented 10 per cent, creating basement, garage, or backyard hoop house aquaponic systems for family and neighborhood protein and green sourcing

  • little red hen principles, e.g. you bag the gold, sell it, and competently handle the money, and you get an appropriate percentage of it, according to the value you have given the process. If you bag the gold you get this, if you bag the gold but also sell it, you get that. If you organize a family team to help you, the SWF gets this for providing the materials and the training and the good will embodied in the brand, and you and your team or family get that for processing the gold from large wholesale bags into attractive, inspiring packets that include face to face and label instruction we develop as we go.

  • Muneer and his youth team and the Ladies Radulovich develop glorious containers for the worms who are happy to be to new homes through our work along little red hen principles as well.

Mother Nature loves enterprising sons and daughters!

Independence with community!

Gardening Angels of Detroit Sparked a New American Dream

Requiem for Detroit?
By Grace Lee Boggs

Requiem for Detroit? aired March 13 on BBC2. But I didn’t view it until last week when I received the DVD (with a thank you note) from Julien Temple, the director, and George Hencken, the Films of Record producer.

In 1960 Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame was a turning point in American consciousness because it forced us to recognize that the food we enjoy is picked by migrant agricultural workers living and working under unspeakable conditions.

Requiem for Detroit? can play a similar role in this period of transition from an increasingly destructive industrial culture. The documentary makes very clear that Detroit’s notorious devastation is not a natural disaster but a man-made Katrina, the inevitable result of illusions and contradictions in our insane 20th century pursuit of unlimited economic growth. We witness autoworkers reduced to robots to produce Henry Ford’s Model Ts, and then struggling to reclaim their humanity by sitdown strikes and battling Ford’s goons at the overpass. We meet southern blacks who relish the “freedom” of Northern cities but also experience the racial tensions that exploded in 1943 and 1967. Cars that grow the profits of the auto industry speed by on freeways which destroy neighborhoods to provide escape routes to the suburbs. Neighborhoods are turned into war zones as the drug trade replaces jobs that have been exported overseas.

This documentary is the Odyssey of how a mode of production and transportation, once celebrated as the height of human creativity, morphed into a dehumanizing consumerism at the expense of human beings and other living things.

A number of Detroiters, black and white, comment throughout. But the only named cast members are white-bearded John Sinclair, poet, former MC5 manager and White Panther Party leader; Martha Reeves, Motown’s earthy, gospel-infused singing star; Heidelberg Project community artist Tyree Guyton; and me.

John Sinclair recalls the glories of the last century as he drives through disintegrating neighborhoods. An exuberant Martha Reeves helps us understand how the distinctive Motown sound emerged from the “this is my country” euphoria of blacks who had left behind them the sharecropping and lynching culture of the South. Tyree Guyton explains that he created the Heidelberg Project to depict the destruction of his neighborhood. He also describes today’s rising hope as neither a white or black thing but “I” becoming “We.”

My closing comments make clear that the new American Dream emerging in Detroit is a deeply-rooted spiritual and practical response to the devastation and dehumanization created by the old dream. We yearn to live more simply so that all of us and the Earth can simply live. This more human dream began with African American elders, calling themselves the Gardening Angels. Detroit’s vacant lots, they decided, were not blight but heaven-sent spaces to plant community gardens, both to grow our own food and to give urban youth the sense of process, self-reliance and evolution that everyone needs to be human.

That’s why growing numbers of artists and young people are coming to Detroit. They want to be part of building a Detroit-City of Hope that grows our souls rather than our cars.

I hope ¿Requiem for Detroit? will be shown at the 2nd USSF meeting in Detroit June 22–26. It is the story behind the USSF mantra: Another World is Necessary. Another World is Possible. Another World is happening in Detroit!

Viewing it can help Detroit’s mainstream media become less shallow. It can deepen the imagination of the new generation of media makers attending the annual Allied Media Conference which precedes the USSF. These young people need this deepened imagination to do justice to the present escalating struggle between the Bings and Bobbs, scheming to gentrify Detroit by closing down neighborhood schools, and grassroots Detroiters who are organizing not only to save our schools but to bring the neighbor back into the ‘hood by inventing new forms of education that motivate schoolchildren to learn through community-building activities.

For more about ¿Requiem for Detroit?

www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10/detroit-motor-city-urban-decline
www.filmsofrecord.com/content.php?id=138
www.imdb.com/title/tt1572190/

=======

Guardian Angels of Detroit Sparked a New American Dream

Requiem for Detroit?
By Grace Lee Boggs

Requiem for Detroit? aired March 13 on BBC2. But I didn’t view it until last week when I received the DVD (with a thank you note) from Julien Temple, the director, and George Hencken, the Films of Record producer.

In 1960 Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame was a turning point in American consciousness because it forced us to recognize that the food we enjoy is picked by migrant agricultural workers living and working under unspeakable conditions.

Requiem for Detroit? can play a similar role in this period of transition from an increasingly destructive industrial culture. The documentary makes very clear that Detroit’s notorious devastation is not a natural disaster but a man-made Katrina, the inevitable result of illusions and contradictions in our insane 20th century pursuit of unlimited economic growth. We witness autoworkers reduced to robots to produce Henry Ford’s Model Ts, and then struggling to reclaim their humanity by sitdown strikes and battling Ford’s goons at the overpass. We meet southern blacks who relish the “freedom” of Northern cities but also experience the racial tensions that exploded in 1943 and 1967. Cars that grow the profits of the auto industry speed by on freeways which destroy neighborhoods to provide escape routes to the suburbs. Neighborhoods are turned into war zones as the drug trade replaces jobs that have been exported overseas.

This documentary is the Odyssey of how a mode of production and transportation, once celebrated as the height of human creativity, morphed into a dehumanizing consumerism at the expense of human beings and other living things.

A number of Detroiters, black and white, comment throughout. But the only named cast members are white-bearded John Sinclair, poet, former MC5 manager and White Panther Party leader; Martha Reeves, Motown’s earthy, gospel-infused singing star; Heidelberg Project community artist Tyree Guyton; and me.

John Sinclair recalls the glories of the last century as he drives through disintegrating neighborhoods. An exuberant Martha Reeves helps us understand how the distinctive Motown sound emerged from the “this is my country” euphoria of blacks who had left behind them the sharecropping and lynching culture of the South. Tyree Guyton explains that he created the Heidelberg Project to depict the destruction of his neighborhood. He also describes today’s rising hope as neither a white or black thing but “I” becoming “We.”

My closing comments make clear that the new American Dream emerging in Detroit is a deeply-rooted spiritual and practical response to the devastation and dehumanization created by the old dream. We yearn to live more simply so that all of us and the Earth can simply live. This more human dream began with African American elders, calling themselves the Gardening Angels. Detroit’s vacant lots, they decided, were not blight but heaven-sent spaces to plant community gardens, both to grow our own food and to give urban youth the sense of process, self-reliance and evolution that everyone needs to be human.

That’s why growing numbers of artists and young people are coming to Detroit. They want to be part of building a Detroit-City of Hope that grows our souls rather than our cars.

I hope ¿Requiem for Detroit? will be shown at the 2nd USSF meeting in Detroit June 22–26. It is the story behind the USSF mantra: Another World is Necessary. Another World is Possible. Another World is happening in Detroit!

Viewing it can help Detroit’s mainstream media become less shallow. It can deepen the imagination of the new generation of media makers attending the annual Allied Media Conference which precedes the USSF. These young people need this deepened imagination to do justice to the present escalating struggle between the Bings and Bobbs, scheming to gentrify Detroit by closing down neighborhood schools, and grassroots Detroiters who are organizing not only to save our schools but to bring the neighbor back into the ‘hood by inventing new forms of education that motivate schoolchildren to learn through community-building activities.

For more about ¿Requiem for Detroit?

www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10/detroit-motor-city-urban-decline
www.filmsofrecord.com/content.php?id=138
www.imdb.com/title/tt1572190/

>>>>>>>

Most Recent Pictures of Sweet Water Organics

by Allen Washatko AIA
Co-Founder
The Kubala Washatko Architects

Become a Neighborhood Worm Store

Sweet Water Organics provides you with $50 of red wriggler worms, you retail them for $100, return $50. Or, you assemble arugula pot ingredients worth $50, and sell for $125. A nice family project or fund raising project for schools, faith communities, and associations! To brainstorm write godsil.james@gmail.com.

Share Your Project As Soap Box Orator At May Day Hide House Event

Along with

  • Sufi Poetry Performances by Karen Kolberg and Sky Schultz

  • Remix! Hip House Dance company

  • Embedded Reporter Music

  • Youth Haiti Presentation

Dear All,

Part of the May Day Bay View Hide House Community Garden Work Celebrations in the evening will be…

Soap Box Moments at the Hide House

This will occur during the Haiti Benefit part of the evening, from 5:30 to 7:30, which will also include music, dance, and Sufi poetry(more on that to come)

I have been given 15 minutes to devote to the Soap Box Moments piece.

If you would like to give a 2 minute soap box oration about your project, practice, or family business, send me a line. Godsil.james@gmail.com

Godsil

Tasting Rocket Vegetables: A Birthright For Our Students

Dear All,

Does it not make sense to advance the vision of each and every one of our students
experiencing the taste and healthy power available were some potted arugula, lettuce,
and spinach plants somehow available to them through a classroom experience?

It is a stupefying fact that our president was mocked for sharing his love of arugula.

It is a sad fact that most of the nation to date has not had the benefit of tasting fresh grown “rocket vegetables” like arugula, spinach, and lettuces of the kind grown by our local farmers and, increasingly, urban gardeners.

Imagine a school with a principal and one teacher committed to affording each and every student a taste, for starters, regular tastes eventually, and growing classes, ultimately,of arugula and spinach.

Then imagine a school with a composting and vermiculture program that gave our students a chance to learn about turning urban waste streams into the world’s most nutrient rich soil, and then some hands on experience in science, math, biology, chemistry, and construction, creating raised bed gardens, even hoop houses, for their school edible playgrounds.

Please send me a note if you would be up for brainstorming the concepts. godsil.james@gmail.com

  • Rocket vegetables as birthright

  • Veggies, jobs, health care, and hands-on education

Olde

Seek Households for Arugula Experiment

I have 25 pots of arugula to deliver to households that are in my Bay View, River West, Brewers Hill, Harambee, or Eastside travel rounds.

Or, you can pick them up at some Riverwest drop off point.

For barter or a fair price.

Barter could include a certain amount of entries into Milwaukee’s arugula journal or a certain amount of effort inspiring neighbors, especially young people, to try a taste of arugula direct from your potted arugula plant.

Were you to inspire a school teacher to develop a worm bin, raspberry patch, and arugula garden at a local school, I am frightened by how much bounty would come your way from the Sweet Water sweet ones.

Life is very different when one can go out into the backyard and pick some arugula for a sandwich or salad.

What a nation we will become when arugula and/or wheat grass are substituted for cigarettes and potato chips.

WANTED:

Children who would like to share the stage as fluttering butterflies, or as prairie habitat prop movers, as part of a short musical interlude honoring the Monarch Trail during Sierra Club’s Earth Day Celebration on Thursday, April 22nd at the lakefront. Music will be primarily from an excerpt of the opera overture of Madam Butterfly, about two minutes in length.

If interested, contact Janine Arseneau at: janinea@execpc.com — no later than April 12th. The butterfly movement piece requires no experience. This is an excellent way for a child—relative or friend—to actively participate in a nature-centered event in a community setting.

For more information, go to greatwatersgroup.org or contact Dianne Dagelen at: dagelen@sbcglobal.net

Thanks, Dianne

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Consider Volunteering With the Sweet Water Foundation

The newly established Sweet Water Foundation, God willing, aims to work with…

  • the Inland Seas School for Expeditionary Learning
  • the Wisconsin African American Women’s Association
  • the National Association of Black Veterans
  • Journey House
  • The Scooter Foundation
  • Honey Creek School
  • The “Nigella Commons” Community Garden Project In Harambe
  • more to come

to advance…

  • community gardens
  • family backyard and front yard gardens
  • vermiculture soil growing projects
  • edible playgrounds, i.e. a worm bin and raspberry patch in each and every school!
  • small scale aquaponic projects

Sweet Water Foundation’s(SWF) mission is committed to the rebirth of sustainable living by transforming waste into resources for self-reliance, healthy families, and environmentally conscious communities. The foundation’s goals are to enhance the quality of life in the area by:

  1. Advancement of urban farming, aquaculture, and vermiculture principles through education.

  2. Turning waste into resources and increasing the use of sustainable farming practices.

  3. Strengthening the community and environment

Milwaukee is becoming a top urban agriculture/aquaponics city of the nation.

These projects advance self reliance and community development.

Volunteers will learn many new skills, meet good people, and please Mother Nature.

Send me an e-mail if interested in applying for a volunteer position. 

 “James Godsil” <godsil.james@gmail.com>,

Grateful,

Godsil, co-founder
Sweet Water Foundation

Restoring Urban Economies Through Urban Agriculture Micro Loans

We in Wisconsin have a chance to influence the agenda for our upcoming gubernatorial elections. I would very much appreciate responses to this first draft on micro loans, as well as other positions we might suggest our candidates develop to advance our movement.

Urban agriculture contains important seeds for the renewal of local urban economies.
A small amount of financial support can spark a considerable amount of wealth, including:

  • nutritious, delicious food to replace processed food of less quality and adverse health implications
  • reduced health care costs via physical exercise and outdoor experience for young and old
  • the acquisition of skills and understandings of value for other work situations, e.g. self reliance
  • entrepreneurial experience for that percentage of gardeners who trade or market their product
  • occasions of neighborliness and association building that sparks exchanges of

a wide variety, e.g. child care, errand runs, community building information exchange,
handyman connections

  • neighborhood beauty, reduced crime and vandalism, and increased property values

Micro Loans for Green Work, Jobs, Careers, and Family Enterprise

Small start-up loans for home and community gardening would be far reaching for the generation of a variety of “capital,” e.g. healthier, happier, and more vigorous people, money from the sale of food and gardening services, social connections that advance career development, family businesses, and neighborhood safety, cultural capital from hard won
insights into the bounty of nature for those who steward the land and husband resources.

Loans as small as $300 could provide the start-up capital for the “hardware” required, e.g. compost, seeds, water, and tools for persons and/or families already equipped with gardening know-how. For those in need of training, $500 could cover the cost of the hardware and the “software,” including workshops and courses, as well as on-site visits by professional urban agriculture educators. A considerable amount of the cost of software could be avoided by the growing number of “victory gardeners” eager to be of service to their fellow citizens.

A Recruitment Process to Enhance Prospects for Success

The Little Red Hen Principle Applied. The limited funds for urban agriculture micro loans would go further if great care is given in choosing who merits such loans. Persons and families with track records of hard work and community service should be the initial recipients. The numerous garden and vermilculture demonstrations recently initiated in a number of our schools, spiritual communities, day care centers, and associations could become partners in the selection process. Loans could be offered to those who have shown interest and aptitude in their volunteer work in these projects, and perhaps in other public interest projects of their respective organizations.

Urban Agriculture Micro Loans for Contributing Parents and Teachers

Would it not be right and proper to encourage the providers of
urban agriculture micro loans from $300 to $600 to place at the
front of the line parents and teachers at our schools who blaze
trails developing edible schoolgrounds and hands-on science,
math, biology, and homemaking urban agriculture/aquaponic
projects?

Outcome Analysis for Upscaling the Enterprise. Micro loans from $300 to $500 for the first year could be considerably increased for years 2 and 3 by simple measures of outcomes, that would include not only the amount of produce grown per dollar spent, but also the amount of enterprise sparked by the initial loan, e.g. recipients whose work stimulated a number of other successful participants.

to be continued

Grateful,

James Godsil, co-founder
Sweet Water Organics
Sweet Water Organics Foundation
http://sweetwater-organic.com/blog/

Community Scaled Manufacturing and ®Evolutionary Urban Farming

In Defense Of Manufacturing

By Grace Lee Boggs

In this article Michelle Lin projects an unconventional approach to manufacturing that can help revive our cities. A graduate student in Landscape Architecture and City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, Michelle plans to return to Detroit after she completes her studies. --- Grace Lee Boggs

Manufacturing can save our cities. We should not view it only as dying. Instead, we must rethink it within a “community-scaled” framework that produces products, jobs, skills, relationships, and stronger neighborhoods.

The familiar narrative about manufacturing in the U.S. begins at the turn of the 20th century. Manufacturing gave us prosperity. It gave us global economic power. It created a robust middle class. It ramped up at unprecedented scales to meet the demands of mass consumption, particularly in the automobile industry. Cities like Detroit (“Arsenal of Democracy”) and Philadelphia (“Workshop of the World”) were hailed as success stories of the Industrial Revolution.

This revolution did not last forever. Deindustrialization began in the post World War II years. With automation the number of workers required on the line declined significantly. As the labor movement grew in strength, companies left for the suburbs. Today corporate urban flight extends overseas, and the bastions of American industry struggle with the devastating effects of disinvestment and rising unemployment rates.

Economic development solutions for de-industrialized cities often fall into two categories. The first looks at the physical conditions of thousands of derelict buildings sitting idly across the landscape and devises programs that rehabilitate neglected industrial buildings for commercial or residential uses. e.g. former factories are converted into luxury condos. The second approach focuses on job creation by building a “knowledge-based” economy. Advances in digital technologies have sped up globalization, placing a premium on jobs in this sector. To become a “knowledge city,” cities invest in research institutions that develop technological innovations in science and engineering. Advocates believe that cities with a strong knowledge economy will increase their global competitive edge.

These prevailing approaches do not leave much room for viewing manufacturing as part of the equation for urban revitalization. Should every abandoned factory become high-end residential lofts? Is the knowledge economy the panacea for all de-industrialized cities? Only if manufacturing is caricatured as an industry encumbered with union lobbyists or associated with a dying era, one that should step aside for the Information Age.

A Brooklyn-based non-profit is demonstrating the viability of community-scaled manufacturing. Through the acquisition, rehabilitation, and management of neglected industrial spaces, Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center has transformed six properties into top-rate facilities. These buildings mainly house custom-made artisanal operations, like woodworkers, upholsterers, and fabricators. Over 100 businesses reside in GMDC’s buildings, supporting over 500 workers. The majority of employees are residents from the surrounding neighborhood, showing that community-scaled manufacturing can deter fears of gentrification and displacement.

Economist E.F. Schumacher said, “If you get too many useful machines, you will get too many useless people.” By encouraging the reuse of supposedly obsolete industrial infrastructure, community-scaled manufacturing is a place-based strategy that roots manufacturers in their local areas. It addresses workforce development concerns about the lack of skilled workers. The apprentice-style education provides a way for people to discover and develop their own abilities.

Thus manufacturing becomes a step towards broadening hands-on opportunities for many people. Jobs in trade and craft are good skills; community-scaled manufacturing recovers the societal value of jobs in which people make things. Its inherent small-scale demands a localized economy and has the capacity to advance craftsmanship, promote education, and build stronger communities.

Manufacturing can, should, and is taking place in our cities. More communities are recognizing the need to localize goods and services. The local food security movement reflects this understanding. Community-scaled manufacturing can realize similar outcomes. It has the ability to bring the consumer closer to the producer, decrease the ecological footprint of manufacturing, improve local economies, and encourage self-sufficiency. We can let go of the old way of manufacturing – its polluting factories and menial labor – and embrace the future of community-scaled manufacturing. Which will be the city that gives its children…

®Evolutionary Urban Farming and Community Scaled Manufacturing

The day after this article appeared in the Midwest Airline in-flight magazine…

http://www.mymidwestmagazine.com/2010/03/01/projected-growth/

A congressman from Kansas City called inspired by the piece to seek a visit
in hopes that we would help him replicate SW in his home city.

And he will probably be even more inspired if community scaled manufacturing is coupled with urban revolutionary farms in old factory complexes.

One Worm Bin and 3 Raspberry Bushes for Each and Every School

The White Fish Bay Earth Club is reaching out to the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” coordinatorsin every D.C. federal office involved, hoping they will help connect us with the local federal offices “Let’s Move” coordinators.

How about we see how long it takes to install one worm bin and 3 raspberry bushes
for each and every school.

I suspect I could convince the Sweet Water Foundation to provide the funds necessary for, say, 250 worms per school for starters.

The Inland Seas School for Expeditionary Learning is working with Julia Swanson and Anushka Peck to develop worm bins that are attractice and functional, i.e. the Ladies Radulovich Worm Spas.

Bohdan’s Nedlisky’s New Horizon School in Shorewood has students already helping grow worms at Sweet Water Organics.

Sharing the Transaction Costs

It’s connecting with the schools with these offerings that’s the big ticket item.

Might anyone be up for helping find one teacher at each and every school who would
help oversea these worms and these raspberry bushes?

Grateful,

Godsil, co-founder
Sweet Water Organics(SWO)
SWO Worm Man

Roadside Culture Stands

The concept intrigued me, but when I finally saw the first Roadside Culture Stand its appeal was clear. It looked cute from a distance and downright magnetic when stocked with veggies and cool art. Hook it up to your trusty steed and go. (A pick-up truck works well, too.) Set it up at a festival in the city of near a state park in the countryside. It looked…..well………..fun!

In southwest Wisconsin we get into discussions about locally-produced food, art and the like appealing to the same folks. It’s not all academic, these deliberations happen at tourism and economic development meetings. If we want folks to visit, what are those “clusters” of things they might enjoy?

The folks at the Wormfarm Institute have been on to elements of this dialogue for some time, as their mission is dedicated to integrating culture and agriculture. Their website notes that they are “….an evolving laboratory of the arts and ecology and fertile ground for creative work. Planting a seed, cultivating, reaping what you sow . . . both farmer and artist have these activities in common”. So it’s a natch that they would come up with the culture stand idea.

Click Here for the rest of the story.
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Last edited by Godsil. Based on work by Tyler Schuster, Worm Mon, godsil, Commonwealth Citizen, Bill Sell, patricia obletz, Theresa Ford, BillSell, marc rassbach, bs, Jacob Hey, tyler schuster, TeganDowling, Eddee Daniel, Steve Jerbi, Olde, Melanie Hupfer and Peggy Hong.  Page last modified on August 23, 2010, at 11:50 AM

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