Pictured here, pomegranates at the west side farmers market this morning.
How wonderful is it that an organic farmer in Montana was elected to the United States Senate? It's true. State Senator Jon Tester beat the incumbent, Conrad Burns, in a tight race, but one which is over. Tester even has a blog, to which I just subscribed.
Oddly enough—spooky even—is that just this morning, blogging friend/restaurateur Haddock wrote a moving post called A Farmer's Hands. He wrote that the farmer with whom has a symbiotic relationship (the farmer takes Haddock's restaurant compost and feeds his pigs, and Haddock then buys the pigs) had an accident with a bandsaw, and stands to lose some of the use and feeling of the fingers on his left hand. He has to undergo five hours of surgery. I read the Wikipedia article on Jon Tester: “As an adolescent, Tester lost the middle, index and ring fingers on his left hand in an accident while working with a meat grinder.” (Prayers and good wishes for the best possible outcome, and comfort for, Haddock's farmer friend and his family, please.)
• • • • • • • • • •
Sierra Magazine has a lot of tasty articles in their November-December issue on food. Highly recommended: the article with Marion Nestle, deconstructing the marketing tactics and more in a mid-sized Safeway in Berkeley. Yes, she's preaching to the choir, but she's funny, too. Worth reading. Also worth reading: the Sierra Club blog, Green Life. There's even a food and drink section.
• • • • • • • • • • •
“The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here!” My catalog arrived for the 27th Annual Ecological Farming Conference. Farmers and enthusiasts attending the conference remind me of pilgrims visiting Mecca or the Vatican. But blast it, the two panels I'm most interested in are scheduled for exactly the same time. Those would be Farming: The Next Generation, with my young farmer friend Brandon Faria (he's 23 and runs his family's farm), and Farms on the Menu, featuring two farmers and two chefs. Reading through the schedule is fun...I've already got my pen out.
• • • • • • • • • • •
My friend, the beautiful and inspiring Patricia Rain (you may know her as the Vanilla Queen) posts on her blog about One.org, and some people who are attempting the impossible to raise awareness for the 1.2 billion people who do not have access to clean water.
• • • • • • • • • • •
Completely unrelated to farming at all, but recently I had received an inferior quality, bootleg DVD from an eBayer who refuses to answer my e-mails about replacing it with a new one, as stated in the listing. So I did some Googling and found an incredibly useful blog article by an Iowa lawyer named Brett Trout. The post is called ”Bring DVD Bootleggers to Justice.” I hope it helps some of you.
• • • • • • • • • • •
Lastly, feel free to tune out if you're a Republican, because I have to post something from a friend in Dallas, Texas. David Weiner (that links to a page with details of his 2004 candidacy for the court of appeals) is a lawyer with an incredibly good mind, wit, and heart, and he ran in 2004 for a seat on the court of appeals. At Readerville.com, he posted in the Politics and Dissent thread these inspiring words. He has given me permission to quote him here.
Please bear with me as I relate this local story. Dallas County has been deep, deep red since 1984, when almost all Democratic officeholders, including elected judges, were swept out of office. Since the 1998 general election, as a result of shifting demographics, the Democratic vote has been ticking up about two percent per election cycle, after falling to a low of 42% in 1992.
In 2004, we (Democrats) elected three district judges and a sheriff (female, Hispanic, and lesbian, no less). In addition, running in a seven-county race for a seat on the court of appeals, I garnered 52.39% of the Dallas County vote. Seeing these numbers, Democratic candidates stampeded to file for the 2006 elections.
On Tuesday, Dallas Democrats captured 42 out of 42 contested judgeships. We also elected a District Clerk, a County Clerk, a County Judge, and, in a stunning rebuke to the white establishment, an African-American District Attorney who was outspent by hundreds of thousands of dollars by the handpicked would-be Republican successor to the current D.A.
We're back.
I called my mother, whom I call "The Democrat in the Basement" (all three sisters in Georgia got bodysnatched and turned into Republicans, and Mom lives in sister Kristen's basement), which my mother regards as an even bigger failure than all four of my sisters turning into bleach blondes) to read her that. We stick together on these things.
That's all for today and for Day Eleven of NaBloPoMo, with the intention of writing something of substance every day in November.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “We're back.” —David Weiner
Thanks for visiting.
Please thank "The Democrat in the Basement" for raising at least one unrepentant Democrat! There is -- at last -- much to celebrate in last week's election results.
Posted by: Lydia | 12 November 2006 at 04:09 AM