A final Reminder

This coming Tuesday is election day and for those of you readers located here in Ohio I wanted to give a final reminder and plea to vote NO on Issue 2. If you recall my last post i listed some of my reasoning to reject Issue 2. The following is from a local small farmer and friend about why he is against it.

I have been asked many times in the last week to give my opinions on Issue 2. I am pleased to hear so many seem to want my opinion before making up their own mind. So, here goes:

I am solidly against Issue 2 and will vote NO on Issue 2!!
The reason is that Issue 2 was created by the confined animal producers to protect their right to raise animals in confinement. It will create a board to oversee animal care made up primarily of these confinement farmers.
Issue 2 is NOT about local food, it's about Ohio farmers who want to retain their right to raise confined animals. The advertising is Orwelling double-speak in the worst way I have ever seen.
As you know, raising animals this way is not healthy for you who eat the food, whether it is dairy, eggs, pork, or beef. It takes away the Omega 3, betacarotine and CLA and replaces it with fat and cholesterol. Please read "Why Grass-fed is Best" and "Omnivore's Dilemma."

Again I want to emphasize that the responsibility is not nor should it be given to the government to make our food safe. If the government was truly committed to a safe food supply then we would not have entered into our current situation. They are more concerned with packing their excess of corn and soybeans into your diet for the sole benefit of the economy. More inspectors and chairpersons can be "influenced" just as so many have been already. If you are the inspector of your own food supply then the system becomes far more legitimate.

So please, for the sake of small local safe farms, for the sake of rural communities and most of all for the sake of actual safe and healthy food for all of us please vote NO on Issue 2 this coming Tuesday.

Vote Like You Mean It!

In regards to Issue 2 on the upcoming November 3rd Ohio Ballot

Here is an exceprt from the website in support of Issue 2: http://www.safelocalohiofood.org
But consumers also want to know more about how their food is produced on Ohio's farms. That means knowing that animals are healthy and well cared for, that the food they buy is safe and of the highest quality, and that farmers are running their farms responsibly and following all regulations. Consumers also want choice at the grocery store, both in the foods they buy and in how those foods are produced.

And here is my two cent rebuttal Illuminating the truth:
If consumers want to know more about their food and know the animals are healthy and well cared for, if they want to know that farmers are running their farms responsibly then don’t rely on or trust in the government to give you that information, GO SEE FOR YOURSELF! The government tells you that beef from hundreds of miles away is safe for consumption and treated humanely, if you were to go and see for yourself you’d realize this was not true at all. As for regulations, they only look at the logistics, does the barn look like it should, is the killing floor non porous are the slaughter house walls stainless steel and are they cleaned regularly. How about sampling the goods?! Measure the bacteria and contaminants, set some acceptable standards for the stuff that actually makes people sick, are the employees healthy, do they even know how to safely handle potentially hazardous food products? Does the facility operate at a pace conducive to maintaining safety for the staff as well as the food products?
The answer is not to help the government create thirteen more pointless taxpayer draining jobs just so we can “feel” safe when we bite into our mass produced burger, the answer is to demand more transparency of our food system. Demand to see where your food comes from, demand to see how the animals are treated, especially demand to see where and how they are slaughtered. You will never be permitted to see a killing floor, no intelligent mass producer will let anyone in that area, they don’t think you need to know what goes on in there. You do need to know but you don’t want to know, if you did you would probably quit eating meat, at least their meat, and they can’t allow that.
Food bourne illness was not a real problem until we began to centralize our entire food system and require that everyone raise their food in the same way, meeting the same requirements.
A vote for Issue 2 will not reduce the incident of food bourne illness, it will not make local foods any more affordable, it will not create more jobs or boost the economy, what it will do is lead to the closing of more small scale farms that can’t afford to meet the same requirements as the mega farms for whom these requirements were designed. If you want to vote for local foods, for safe foods, then do it with your wallet, buy from farmers who are really responsible, buy food that is produced locally and really does boost the local economy. This is the only vote that will really count.
For information about local farmers or local food systems and the issues surrounding them check out some of these sources:
Websites
http://oeffa.org
http://local-matters.org
http://www.localharvest.org


Books
Everything I Want to do is Illegal Joel Salatin
In Defense of Food Michael Pollan
The Omnivores Dilemma Michael Pollan
Animal Vegetable Miracle Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp
The Revolution Will Not be Micro waved Sandor Ellix Katz

Push and Roll

The hollow whirring sound of polyurethane rolling and sliding on asphalt, reverberating through the laminated hardwood they are connected to by cast steel trucks- a symphony of aggression. The pure unadulterated clap of the tail against the pavement or the grinding of the steel trucks against concrete curb- like angels singing a chorus to god. This is the music of my childhood.
Growing up somewhere between the burbs and the inner city during the 1980’s there were, for me, few choices where to fit in, there was the mainstream option, you know, the usual football games or other sports events, pop music and conservative or “acceptable” clothing from JC Penny or some other trendy department store. The other option was the “alternative” as it was referred to back then. Thrift store clothing, Hardcore-punk music and the cherry-on-top, skateboarding! Around this time, skateboarding had begun to return as a pastime for youth across the nation after a sabbatical from the 70’s.
This however, was not a “sport” that was welcomed with open arms by the mass public. To this day I’m not entirely sure what the problem with skateboarding was, most likely it was more with skaters than with the sport itself. It seemed that for some reason skateboarding attracted a less than appealing personality. Perhaps it was the fact that here was a physically demanding sport that required determination, practice, agility, endurance and most of all, durability but lacked all the usual guidelines and rules that fenced in other sports activities. Skateboarding was a sport that embraced freedom, freedom from regulations, freedom from rules, freedom from any one location, and because of that only a short lived freedom from laws. This is most likely where skateboarding lost it’s attraction to the mainstream public. With no centralized location to practice or play, skaters took their game to the streets and parking lots and public walkways and shopping centers and so on. This seriously annoyed business owners, managers and police, oh yes, and especially security guards who with their false sense of authority and self proclaimed supremacy, regularly entered into territorial pissing matches with skaters.
It was this rejection by mainstream society coupled with teenage rebellion and the desire to find ones place in the world that lead to the boom in “skate-punk” population. Here was a sport or activity that became a subculture that accepted the unacceptable. Skateboarding was no longer something to do between school and dinner; it had become an identity, a culture and community. You didn’t even need to know how to skate, some kids just carried a board or pushed around clumsily, it didn’t matter, no one else wanted them and that was for a large part, a common thread. There were kids from good homes with loving parents, kids from broken homes or abusive parents, rich kids, poor kids, black, white Asian and Hispanic kids, even disabled kids, and they came from all over town. I met people from all over the state that either came to our town to skate or we went to theirs, and if you went away on vacation and took your board, you were almost guaranteed to meet someone new while you were skating.
This was not just about the subculture or the community, it was about the board. The board became an extension of you, if you had the right wheels, the right trucks and deck, it was like God himself reached down and blessed the earth for you to skate. The slide, the kick, flip, pop, tap, clack, whirring, grinding, flying, spinning. The world saw it as wanton destruction, jumping around messing things up, we on the other hand, saw it as pure poetry, a ballet of aggression and control, an expression of our lives and trials. When you were in the moment, when everyone around was just doing their thing and having fun, no one was competing, no one was trying to prove anything to anyone but themselves, the synchronicity, of five people skating a single curb, ramp or transitioned wall, anything that spoke out to us “skate here!” -it was absolutely amazing.
That is all behind me now, as the board gave way to the car and girls, then work and college and even more work, then a wife and kids. I may never get that back, the feeling of flying, the grind, the slide, the landing, and the impact. I don’t heal as well as I used to, I may still have the determination and endurance, but I have lost the durability. No longer can I hit the pavement at 20 miles an hour and just shake it off, I can’t take a blow to the head like I used to, and leaving an open wound to bleed concerns me now. A wife and kids has softened me up considerably, but I’m happy for that. Now when I see kids out skating, I heckle them just like people did to me, but I’m not mean about it, it builds character! I tried a while back to get back into it but it ad been so long that I lost the balance, I’m not as coordinated as I once was. Now I watch when I get the chance, I like to see kids at a parking lot more than the pros on T.V., they still have the grit that I used to love about skating. Yes, I have been reduce to a spectator, but I’m O.K. with that, I’m not an armchair commentator, I watch in awe and reverence as a reminder of what fun it was and as an inspiration to pass on to my kids.