From the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/15/AR2009041501960.html
The gist of the article is that the EPA is going to start requiring pesticide manufacturers to test some 67 chemicals contained in their products to see if they have an adverse affect on human health, specifically the endocrine system which regulates our growth, metabolism, and ability to reproduce.
My question: why isn't every chemical required to pass such a test? Why should anyone be allowed to knowingly put chemicals into our food, our environment, and our bodies without first proving that they are safe? Yes, I can see the burden this would place on business interests, but what about my interest in not dying of thyroid cancer? Or my sons' interest in being able to produce children of their own?
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Eat local - it's good for you!
At our house, the first sign of impending warm weather is when Mike hooks up his basement grow light and places tiny seeds in the grid-shaped seed starter. It's a sign of faith that the cold Kansas winter will eventually come to an end and when it does, our broccoli, chard, spinach and lettuce will have a head start in our small garden space so and that we'll be eating fresh-from-our-garden salads soon. Our backyard doesn't get much sun, so we plant what we can and enjoy the growing process.
Growing food, however much we can, is a way for us to remember where our food comes from. It's a lesson for our children. Our boys know that lettuce starts out as a seed and that someone grows it before it makes its way to the supermarket isle. It's also a way for us to eat frugally and in a way that is beneficial to our environment. Enough lettuce seed to last a season costs only a few dollars. In our climate, rain is usually plentiful enough to water our garden. What sun our backyard gets is free. No fossil fuels are burned on our walk out back.
What we can't grow in our small plot out back, we try to buy from local farmer's markets. Produce at these markets is usually brought in from less than 100 miles away and most of the growers are small family farms. Over the past couple of years, we have developed real relationships with a few of the growers whose stands we frequent. When our youngest was born a few years ago, we even sent one farming family a birth announcement.
But it's not just about the relationships. Local food tastes better, too, and has been shown to have more nutrients. A zucchini picked 2 weeks before purchase and trucked in from 500 miles away pales in flavor to the zucchini picked the night before it was purchased from a farmer's stand.
If the idea of shopping at a farmer's market baffels you, or you don't know where to find one, a favorite website of ours is http://www.localharvest.org/. It will point you to farmer's markets and other sources of good, local food. Here in Kansas City we even know a few local farmers who deliver.
Cheers!
Growing food, however much we can, is a way for us to remember where our food comes from. It's a lesson for our children. Our boys know that lettuce starts out as a seed and that someone grows it before it makes its way to the supermarket isle. It's also a way for us to eat frugally and in a way that is beneficial to our environment. Enough lettuce seed to last a season costs only a few dollars. In our climate, rain is usually plentiful enough to water our garden. What sun our backyard gets is free. No fossil fuels are burned on our walk out back.
What we can't grow in our small plot out back, we try to buy from local farmer's markets. Produce at these markets is usually brought in from less than 100 miles away and most of the growers are small family farms. Over the past couple of years, we have developed real relationships with a few of the growers whose stands we frequent. When our youngest was born a few years ago, we even sent one farming family a birth announcement.
But it's not just about the relationships. Local food tastes better, too, and has been shown to have more nutrients. A zucchini picked 2 weeks before purchase and trucked in from 500 miles away pales in flavor to the zucchini picked the night before it was purchased from a farmer's stand.
If the idea of shopping at a farmer's market baffels you, or you don't know where to find one, a favorite website of ours is http://www.localharvest.org/. It will point you to farmer's markets and other sources of good, local food. Here in Kansas City we even know a few local farmers who deliver.
Cheers!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
What it means to be Assisi Minded
What is Assisi Minded?
This blog was born out of our desire to humbly promote a consistent pro-life ethic. We feel strongly that God's call for human kind to care for creation encompasses ALL of creation - from that newly formed child in the womb to the humble bumble bee.
As a family, we are actively involved in both the environmental and pro-life movements. To many, that seems very contradictory, but to us fighting the rise in green house gasses and saying a rosary outside an abortion mill have the same goal in mind - a healthy world that sustains and values life.
To be 'green' or an 'environmentalist' often means to value something other than oneself. That is a noble quality of character, as being 'green' can require a number of sacrifices for the good of our planet. Still, we feel such intentions often spring from disordered thinking. We are frustrated by environmentalists who bemoan the mountain of land-fill destined waste created during a child's first year of life and who see population reduction as the answer to that problem. As if the value of a human life can be measured in trash. We would like to see environmental problems approached from a perspective that respects the dignity of every person, born and unborn. It is easy to do away with our most fragile and vulnerable when they have no voice.
We also want to encourage our friends in the pro-life movement to embrace environmental stewardship. That bumble bee is important. If he's not protected, he can't pollinate the plants that provide the food that sustain us all. We're at the top of the food chain, and that makes us perhaps the most vulnerable of all God's creatures to environmental degradation. Also, as we plan to discuss in this blog, there are many farming and industrial practices common today that not only harm the environment we all share, but that insult our very dignity as human beings. Our biblical call to stewardship over God's creation is important.
Our inspiration for this blog comes from St. Francis of Assisi, the poor 13th century beggar. Few, if any, have lived the Gospel so concretely as St. Francis. In his day, he ministered to lepers and gave sermons to birds. He exemplified what it means to serve all of God's creation. The name Assisi Minded is a reference to the ideal for which we are imperfectly striving. In some small way, we hope to contribute toward what was begun some 700 years ago.
We humbly ask for St. Francis' intercession as we seek to start this conversation.
This blog was born out of our desire to humbly promote a consistent pro-life ethic. We feel strongly that God's call for human kind to care for creation encompasses ALL of creation - from that newly formed child in the womb to the humble bumble bee.
As a family, we are actively involved in both the environmental and pro-life movements. To many, that seems very contradictory, but to us fighting the rise in green house gasses and saying a rosary outside an abortion mill have the same goal in mind - a healthy world that sustains and values life.
To be 'green' or an 'environmentalist' often means to value something other than oneself. That is a noble quality of character, as being 'green' can require a number of sacrifices for the good of our planet. Still, we feel such intentions often spring from disordered thinking. We are frustrated by environmentalists who bemoan the mountain of land-fill destined waste created during a child's first year of life and who see population reduction as the answer to that problem. As if the value of a human life can be measured in trash. We would like to see environmental problems approached from a perspective that respects the dignity of every person, born and unborn. It is easy to do away with our most fragile and vulnerable when they have no voice.
We also want to encourage our friends in the pro-life movement to embrace environmental stewardship. That bumble bee is important. If he's not protected, he can't pollinate the plants that provide the food that sustain us all. We're at the top of the food chain, and that makes us perhaps the most vulnerable of all God's creatures to environmental degradation. Also, as we plan to discuss in this blog, there are many farming and industrial practices common today that not only harm the environment we all share, but that insult our very dignity as human beings. Our biblical call to stewardship over God's creation is important.
Our inspiration for this blog comes from St. Francis of Assisi, the poor 13th century beggar. Few, if any, have lived the Gospel so concretely as St. Francis. In his day, he ministered to lepers and gave sermons to birds. He exemplified what it means to serve all of God's creation. The name Assisi Minded is a reference to the ideal for which we are imperfectly striving. In some small way, we hope to contribute toward what was begun some 700 years ago.
We humbly ask for St. Francis' intercession as we seek to start this conversation.
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