a little red hen

Chinese New Year greetings: John Fu & Warren Buffett

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning's email brought a dramatic, red, Chinese New Year greeting from John Fu in Copenhagen.  He was a college student when we met in Xian, China eleven years ago.  Determined to get his next degree in the English-speaking world (he was a proficient translator in 2000),  he got his MBA in Denmark where he now lives and works as a business consultant.  We had hilarious experiences with Chinese government officials he helped me to interview in Xian.  I wanted to know how they were dealing with garbage issues. Did they have a problem?  Mayo, as they say in Chinese.

As we sat in a cab on our way to Xian officialdom,  John asked what was in my backpack.  Unzipping the green bag, I pulled out the world's smallest kitchen composter and a red knit worm to explain my kitchen composting mission.  "Oh, so this is your religion," was his insightful reply.*

Dedicated capitalist that he is, John will surely be delighted to be headlined with Warren Buffett performing at a charity fund-raiser.  If you can read Mandarin, let me know how the translation works.  When I went to YouTube for the embed code, I found such ugly, racist comments!  Opened another window on why the U.S. is in deep stuff politically and socially.  Of course, you already knew everything about that from at weeks of the Republican side-show that dominates every TV news program. 

But I digress.  Busha Full of Grace raised my consciousness about the Year of the Dragon.  Currently this spunky, knitting Grandma is nanny to a Chinese family. To expand her knowledge of the celebration, her search led to the ten important facts she posted.   "No sitting in a bedroom" knocked me out;  Number 10, "Songbirds are Good," was more expected.

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*To honor my "religion," John Fu had a chop mark made  with "compost"  in Mandarin.    For "This Dirt Museum: The Ladies' Room," my 2001 installation, I  enlarged the image,  added the word in Spanish. It had a prominent spot in the show and still hangs in our apartment.  Shown here with a few of the 150 red worm interpretations I knit for the exhibition.  [You too can have a chop; order here.]

Though amused by the idea that my intense practice of transforming  kitchen green waste into a useful, earth-enhancing amendment might be considered highly spiritual, perhaps a "religion," John's response has grown on me.

When we moved to our retirement community, a woman in the mail room invited me to join the Green Team.  What a vintage designation my NYC self thought.  Not that at all I discovered.

 We now live in Portland, Oregon, sustainability-intense city where you never forget your reusable grocery bag.  [See latest "Portlandia" episode.]  Once again we kitchen compost.  I am very involved in encouraging neighbors to do likewise.  No longer do red wigglers in our living room transform the stuff, but the intention is the same.

 

Loving To Read Obituary Pages

Where did the attraction begin?  In the 1950s and 60s, I worked in public relations in New York City.  Oh, there were so many, many daily papers that I had to read.  Mornings it was the Herald Tribune and the New York Times (image here from last week).

Not the tabloids, the ones whose big, bold headlines I'd see in the hands of subway riders and on newsstands. There was the Daily Mirror, deceased,  the Daily News, still flaunting its increasingly regressive conservatism.  In the afternoon, more that are history:  World Telegram & Sun, the Journal-American.

It was never a job requirement to read obits:  I just liked to read about the lives of others, see images of them from another era.  Ultimately, that curiosity led me to become a psychotherapist in midlife.  (I'll also be interested in your family's photos from the past.)

Reading about the deceased in the Times has continued.  Every now and then there's someone I knew or can connect to through people in my own past.  John Updike, whom I met briefly in a Harvard dorm when he came to borrow a tux from my then-boyfriend Christopher "Kit" Lasch.  I also have a letter* with Lasch's sketch of him; they were college roommates.  Most of the notable people from my era were men.  Rarely do I find a woman's obit except for a few, like my friend Barbara Seaman, who made significant contributions to women's lives with her first book, "The Case against the Pill."

Like Updike in the photo here, all of us smoked cigarettes (to be specific).  Somewhere in my stuff is a photo from 1954, my junior year at Oberlin.  I wear a short-sleeve gray cashmere sweater bought on sale in St. Louis where my family lived then.  In my hand, purposely, is a cigarette.  Updike died of lung cancer--Lasch and Seaman of other forms.  Did I stop early enough in 1968 when I was thirty-three?  Hoping so.

Back to my reading of obits--continued the NYTimes habit as we moved around.  Left NYC in 1968, continued to read the Times in Oberlin (faculty wife this time), and in Baltimore where we landed next.  Also read the ones in the Baltimore Sun once I had a sense of who was who in the community. Back to New York in 1995, still flipping to those back pages in the Times.

What about Portland, Oregon?  We've been permanently for over two-plus years. Why not read these too, all about everyday women and men.  Oddly, these are more satisfying. Years ago, I said to Ron, "Amazing reading obits in The New York Times could make you believe that women never die."  Surely among all those forgotten ball-players, forgotten Hollywood bit players, there could be a woman or two.  Rarely.

Women are a larger presence in the Oregonian.  I learn details of  their lives as working women in the Northwest.  Often there are photos of them both young and old like Ruth S. McDonald here who died at 89 last September.  Most are homemakers.  But there's more to learn here about Ruth's working life.  She was born in 1920, on a farm near Madison, Nebraska, town of about 3,000, whose largest employer is Tyson Fresh Meats.

She moved to Omaha, was working in the Blackstone Hotel as a waitress when she met her Army husband.  They moved to Vancouver, Washington, and both worked at the Kaiser Shipyard.  She had two sons, grandchild, great grandchildren.  Returned to waitressing at sometime in the 20th century, retired from Ye Olde Towne Crier when she was 70!

"She was a true professional who took pride in her work."  Donations suggested to  Sisters of the Road Cafe known for its programs of community-driven solutions to poverty and homelessness, and Bradley Angle, center for domestic violence survivors.  First time I'd seen organizations like these in the obits.  Think Ruth and I would have had some important conversations about tikkun olam (healing the world) if we had met.

*My letters from Lasch went to an archive at the University of Rochester.  To write this post, I saw the link for the first time and cannot figure out where and if the letters are there.   Have to ask my son, Nick, who is behind the curious small world story of how they landed there.  Another time will write about how little personal information Lasch seems to have made public as I noticed in a review of recent biography.

Knit elephant & sheep photo have something in common?

They give me a jump to posting again.  The yarn in the elephant's body came from Foster Sheep Farm in upstate New York--Schuylerville.  The sheep pictured here too.

Its maker, Carole Foster, brought it to the Columbia Greenmarket near where we lived on the upper west side of Manhattan.  She had a unique way of demonstrating how to spin which is captured on the link back in wintry 2009 in the City.  I'd admired a hat she'd knit from worsted Greenspun from her own natural colored flock.  Purchase the purple/gray yarn and she gave me her hand written recipe.  Something in it proved elusive, so....

This Danger Crafts pattern for an elephant seemed a good way to use it otherwise.  Easy to follow the thoroughly color-illustrated instructions.  Except for the end:  putting pieces together always a major challenge.

I'm trying to use yarn in my stash, of which there is far too much. With vintage black buttons for eyes, it's ready to mail for Roxie's fifth birthday next week.  Today Carole's newsletter arrived and the odd sheep view came from I know not where--in today's email.  That's my story and here is unnamed as yet doll from the rear also.

 

Roxie herself saw the elephant the other day on Skype.  She is reluctant to appear this way; her father says there is something confusing about the appearance of people she knows on a screen.

I hope the knit doll makes as big a hit as the chocolate-covered strawberries sent for our son's birthday earlier in the month.  Now those were a big hit, it's reported.  Everyone else seems to be about Edible Arrangements except me!  And I only found them by chance; was about to do something ordinary like flowers.  Great gift for the difficult-to-gift--like my over thirty son who loves fruit as well as chocolate.   Do you agree the baskets are kind of funky, like cartoons of the actual thing--fruit as interpreted by Disney?

Foster Sheep Farm is part of the 3 Bags Full Campaign in  Saratoga County, New York.  It is a land trust and advocate for smart growth, working to preserve a range of things important to hold dear--trails, small woodland parks.  Knitters and fiber artists are working to raise $15,00 to conserve the farm for future generations.  Great idea, makes me wonder if there are similar projects in other states.

INFORMATIONAL UPDATE FROM NYC..............

 January 5 (the brithday approaches) and Roxie has named elephant:  Snorty.

 

Katrina vanden Heuvel shares upbeat vision in PDX

How many references for a blog title?  Am I talking to self here or just me and Marianna at Hattie's Web?  Photo from couple of years ago when we met, walked over to the Pearl Cafe. 

"Upbeat vision" is such a delicious idea that featuring the words makes me giddy.  Outlandish and in-denial position these days?  Some of us grandmothers of young children ponder this often--Marianna and I among them.  We both are readers of The Nation Magazine, that not-glossy, picture-free, skinny lefty rag that delights or infuriates us.  So much for those claiming we only talk to ourselves in agreement.

As Marianna floats along on a Nation Cruise--an adventure almost unimaginable on my calendar--I question why that is any "more" or "better" than my going to a Nation fundraiser the last day of November.  It is not. Note to self:  watch that judgmental stuff.  Marianna and I were children in complex families where financial and personality issues loomed large.  We emerged with  with deep concerns on sorting out who we were/are and the lives of others.

In my own family of origin social justice was a keynote.  One of the reasons Hattie and I are  friends via blogging and real time is our penchant to sign petitions for causes (here's one today), march with signs in public, let others know what we support whenever possible.  We understand how lucky we are to have emerged from our darkish childhoods into adult lives to where we are today.

Though The Nation has been around for a long time, sometimes seems the place where aging leftists go to complain, Katrina vanden Heuvel as Editor reminds me how many young activists and thinkers are visible these days.  Marianna is a particular fan of Chris Hays of MSNBC; my own is Rachel Maddow at the same network.  It's also good to consider how my own "silent generation" has contributed some good to the present times.   My contemporary, Victor Navasky, my contemporary, had the foresight to bring Katrina into The Nation.

About the fundraiser.  We knew no one there, not a surprise.  We're always struck how the left has not discovered that the cause might be better served by a bit of reaching out.  Are we too uncomfortable with ourselves, fearful that the person we don't know might have politics a tad lefter than ours or a cause we do not care about?  We had a good time after Ron snagged a woman walking by who seemed to have an open demeanor.  As a result, had our best laugh of the evening.  Originally from New York, she and her spouse who soon came along, spoke about their early days in the City as adjunct faculty for a "third-rate university." 

Where? "That's where our son is an Associate Professor, lucky guy!"  I replied with enthusiasm. See, you just never know how small a world we live in.  Not very experienced with fund-raisers, it was curious to me that the evening was so very low key.  After Katrina gave her talk about the importance of readers increasing their support, people went up to speak with her.  I took photos.  

Shortly after, there was a book-reading at Powells' where Katrina spoke about her latest, The Change I Believe In: Fighting for progress in the age of Obama.  Poor woman, she had only a moment to eat, then had to be upfront again--with a far larger and livelier audience.  The place was packed; Ron and I split up to find seats.

Mine was next to a friendly woman my age who said she wished there was someone who'd go on a Nation Cruise with her.  She'd enjoyed the trip a few years ago.  On the other side was a man whose father had been a Wobblie!

Generally though the audience was younger than those at the fund-raiser.  Why didn't I get up and shout, "Folks, The Nation needs your subscriptions!"  That's one of the points Katrina made, and one electronic readers dodge around. By the way, I never have a link to Amazon, that book-destroyer.

She stays on message: we need to be as pragmatic and clear-eyed about Obama as he is about us....it's important for movements to keep working with the president, and pushing him when needed--criticizing, engaging, and supporting when called for.  As with Plan B and the fear of teen pregnancy.

It's invigorating to be the choir preached too--don't care what anyone says.  Katrina delighted the crowd.  Just before the very, very long line for book-signing, I slipped her another one of those immodest proposals.  Suggested that The Nation initiate Teach-Ins around the country about Occupy.  Oh, not those Nation reader groups listed in the back of the magazine.  The woman next to me, like others, have said she had to quit one because one person came to dominate with his opinions.  We had that in Baltimore too.

Could there be a better design:  Potlucks for the left?  We do need something that gets us to come together in real time, to do the hard work that Marianna and I talk about--for our grandchildren's futures.

HAPPY CUP...new, remarkable coffee roast in Portland

You're thinking, "Why would an old lady blogger be touting a new coffee roast?"  Tea, maybe, but...

And I'm answering, "HAPPY CUP is special."  

It's the latest idea from our daughter's FULL LIFE, now in its 12th year providing s a employment opportunities and a range of creative activities for people with disabilities. 

Midspring Rachel Bloom, CEO of Full Life, had an urge to  start a Flower Farm.  Before we knew it, some lovely person in the community near her business offered an odd lot--one that would not work for other development.

Full Life Flower Farm sprung into being.  Provided joyful work and outdoor space for her clients.  And  glorious blossoms.  Around the same time, HAPPY CUP was perking around in the development stage.

Rachel talks about the flowers and the coffee on this video from the website.

 

Full Life from Lifted Visuals on Vimeo.

More details on this local, sustainable business (we are in Portland, Oregon, where sustainability is the most-often repeated word) in a recent Business Journal article.

Today, an email with the latest from Scott, Rachel's spouse, very involved with Happy Cup:

As a social enterprise- Happy Cup will donate 100% of net profits to organizations that create programming for individuals with disabilities.

  Of course, we're very proud and drinking delicious coffee.  Happy Cup can be ordered online in Dark Roast, Full Potential (Expresso), Papua New Guinea, and El Salvador--even has its own cup and tee-shirt.  Just in time for the holidays there's also a Gift Box.

Happy Cup is a socially conscious product in providing excellent ethically traded coffee that is also roasted, packaged and delivered by individuals with disabilities.   Full Life has found another way to create jobs for underserved members of our community.  Government funding for programs like Full Life are being slashed in the Oregon state budget.  Full Life Flower Farm and Happy Cup underwite the lost funding for programs that provide a more meaningful life for "people with potential."

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There are those who believe that Ron and I have many irons in the proverbial fire--knit, spin, weave, etcetera.  We are in awe that both our children have taken the model so much further. 

Last week our son, Nick Bloom, remembered to tell us, in a kind of offhand way during a Skype visit, about his latest book, American Tourism:  Constructing a National Tradition. 

This one, co-edited with  J. Mark Souther of the Center for Public History at Cleveland State University, features 35 illustrated articles from a  group of public historians, travel writers about places transformed into tourist destinations. 

 

 

 

 

C-span panders just like network TV?

Sunday late afternoon and the Big Screen broadcasts.  Ron spins, I knit.  An intriguing interview with Howard Markel, doctor-author of "An Anatomy of Addiction:  Sigmund Freud, William Halsted & the Miracle Drug Cocaine".  Quite a title, fascinating book. I remember  the Halsted's name--a late 19th/early 20th century innovative surgeon at Johns Hopkins.  I had doctors' appointments in a building named for him when we lived in Baltimore.

Last summer when I read the N.Y. Times review , I was reminded about Freud's drug habit.  Earlier writers, many in psychoanalytic fields intent on preserving his image,  have downplayed this journey on the dark side.  As the Times' review points out, it was very dark:

Freud liked the stuff so much that between roughly 1884 and 1896, when he was in his 20s and 30s and in his major cocaine period, he tended on many days to have a red, wet nose. He gave cocaine to family and friends.

Also, famously, to a patient.  Much as I wanted to know more-- how Freud's habit did or did not influence his psychoanalytic theories, I was not moved to get the book.  Today's C-span expanded my knowledge, but reading the book is the only way my questions might be answered.

Another C-span Book review appeared on the screen.  Oh, Bill Clinton with his latest foray into how-many-ways-can-I-prove-I-should-still-be-president thorough his new book, "Back to Work."  Busy with my knitting problem, I stopped paying attention then started again when I noticed--how could I miss--that daughter, Chelsea Clinton, was his interviewer.  Odd, don't you think?

Perhaps this was a practice gig for Chelsea's coming appearance as a regular on NBC.  A number of journalists have commented on her hiring, not happy with her lack of background for her work.    John Doyle in the Globe & Mail, offers a Canadian perspective.  Noting American journalists' uneasiness with numerous recent NBC hires of relatives of political figures, he adds:

...a larger trend becoming evident here. It’s the same urge to hire celebrity names that compels sports broadcasters to hire ex-professionals to do sports analysis, instead of real reporters....the hiring of Chelsea Clinton is another sign of the terminal decline of network news. Thank goodness for newspapers. Right?

I should mention that the Clintons were appearing on the stage of the New York Historical Society which gave the interview a patina of dignity that it did not deserve.  Once again, as in those halcyon days when Bill Clinton was revealed as a philanderer, I felt sorry for Chelsea.

Immediately following, C-span proved that it may be in the same groove as NBC:  Truman Clifton Daniels, grandson of Harry Truman, was interviewed by Margaret Hoover, perky Fox News correspondent and great granddaughter of (ready?) Herbert Hoover.

He has published a book of letters between his grandparents and is Director of Public Relations at Truman College in Chicago, also wrote the 1995 book, Growing Up With My Grandfather: Memories of Harry S. Truman.

Could someone open the window?

 

Condom Amulets Startle Knitters!

Knitters, concerned and good-natured women with a sense of the humor, contributed to an the idea I had pre-Portland, when I lived in New York.  When I finish this post, I'll contact them with the surprisng proof it worked: use provocative knitting  to raise awareness about HIV.  Like this one, The Princetonian, the first of my college amulet series.**

Knit a Condom Amulet,  the title I'd been using for a little paper zine give-away, became my second blog -- 7 amulets by 5 knitters.  It was beautifully designed by a woman in New Jersey I only knew online and the phone.

The debut post featured my friend Annette's hand adorned with Lisa Daehlin's copper wire Condom Amulet Bracelet.  It appeared Decemer One, 2007, to highlight that year's    World AIDS Day. 

 

The image at left is a screen shot of the statisitics for the blog that I check once in a while to see if it still has visitors all these years later.  After the initial outing, viewership has been low.  Once a very kinky crowd, definitely not fiber folks, were entranced by some of the content.

A couple of the amulets ---Man Thong, Bra & Breast Pouch (pink one here by Lisa Daehlin) -- are especially so.  Comments on the blog are closed; simply out there hoping to be discovered.

October 13, 2011, was the all-time big bump of  2,356 visitors, October 14 another 564, October 15, 223, the next day, 296.  And another 192 for the finale.  Five days, close to 3,000 hits on a blog that usually has 20-30 daily visitors!  Turns out this time it was by our target  group--knitters.  These were from Knitting Paradise^SM - Knitting and Crochet Forum whose membership is in the thousands.  [We also started a group on  Ravelry, an even larger online knit and crochet community.]

It began with "Deb," an active Forum member.  She linked to our site and noted, "No, I'm not kidding. Hey, someone might want one of these!"  And then the deluge.

Culturally the Forum knitters appear different from those on Ravelry but, without a rigorous study, who knows?   Judging from their photos, they are generally older women than most on Ravelry.  Many were shocked:  should this even be happening?  Some, amused.  Others thought it just might be a way to "...begin talking with my granddaughter..."  That's it, ladies!  Referring to Michelle Edwards' beaded amulets from corn silk yarn, one poster was ambivalent:

  first amulet is very pretty & COULD be used for something else...but someone might recognize it from this site. LOL   

I plan to  join Knitting Paradise (could use some extra magic with current projects on the needles) to thank "Deb" for introducing our site to her fiber friends.  Forum member "Jenna" the Ball Band Condom Amulet (Kay Gardiner design)  would be just the thing for people she knew,  "Christmas gifts  for single girlfriends,  holds at least three condoms."

In the past, when I've heard from an knit amulet enthusiast, the knitter wants   to find out if their creations could be sent to me:

"I work for the AIDS Resource Group in Evansville, IN and love your idea... inspired by  patterns and made a few amulets for the "environmentally concious" condom user out of "plarn" (plastic bags made into yarn). Is there an address that I could send them to?" 

My response is that we hoped the person's own circle would provide ideal recipients, that the primary idea behind our project was more personal:  gift someone close to you--like "Deb" and "Jenna."  You know, the personal is always political, as we used to say back in the day.

** College series includes:  Oberlin, Columbia & Oregon State Universities, send in yours for posting here.

UPDATE...On December One, 2011, an email arrived with a reminder.  Here's a poster you might copy to your own blog and a plea you can sign from The Feminist Majority.

Ask President Obama and Congress to fight AIDS with science and medicine, not ideology. Condoms must not be an afterthought.  Click on the link below to sign.

Ask US Leaders to Stop Abstinence Only Programs

 

"The Invention of Lying" and Tooth fairies

 

  

 Don't we all need a few laughs?  I certainly do.  How disappointing that "The Invention of Lying" was only being shown one time tonight.  Couldn't make it but watching the clip cheered me up. 

Began to think about the "acceptable untruths" we tell children.  Recently we convinced granddaughter Zoe, who'd just lost her first one, that there is indeed a tooth fairy.  When her parents returned to relieve our baby-sitting stint, we reminded them not to forget to exchange the tooth under her pillow for cash.  Some discussion on fairy payment inflation since their day.

Back to today, lunchtime, picked up current issue of The Nation.  Lead article by Bill Moyers, "How Wall Street Occupied America," looked important:  too many pages, too intense for midday, might darken my film clip-induced mood.

Nation columnist Katha Pollitt in her one-page often has me wishing for another life, the one where my writing would be tighter/sharper.  Today she  outdid her usual in  "The Call" (enhanced online to the less subtle, Rick Perry, God and Me:  When I Got the Call).  It begins:

"God called me a couple of months ago and told me to run for president. It was late at night, and he had this weird voice. It sounded like he’d been drinking, so I hung up on him."

Why has she, a non-believer, received the voice of God?  Because he wants her to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.  He has taken on the "nudgy and insistent voice of Jon Lovitz":

"...would arrange for me to have a conversion experience [Jewish to Christian], where I would renounce “feminism and all that” and find Jesus."

The page brims with all kinds of foolishness appropriate to our crazed, misogynist times.  She creates an amalgam of current politics with a hint of Don Marquis, early 20th century humorist and creator of "Archy & Mehitabel," the typing cockroach and his free living alley cat friend.  In Marquis'  "Miss Higginbotham Declines," God visits an elderly Fifth Avenue virgin with a request she become birth mother to the reincarnation of Jesus.  Marquis begins:

"It was Jehovah's custom, when he came to New York, to put on the material appearance and manner of a member of the Union League Club; indeed, he used the club iself a great deal."

Miss Higginbotham, like Katha, will have none of it.

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Approaching Occupy Portland...hearing about Vancouver, B.C.

How to support a movement seen as necessary, important, but beyond one's participation?  Since October 7 when Occupy Wall Street began, that question has been on my mind.

It was so close here in Portland, Oregon, yet so far away.  Contribute some change to Occupy Portland.  Last week Pay Pal notified me that Red Owl Media had returned the money.  There has been a problem between those who wanted Occupy Portland to become a non-profit, those opposed.  Money collected in two places.  Now returned.  It is all part of the formlessness of the effort.

Last week I left a canvas bag from the local, longtime Peoples Co-op with a miscellany--bags of millet and garbanzo flour from cooking classes at Bob's Red Mill, jar of Ron's strawberry jam, bedroom slippers I was discarding, toothbrushes from the dentist (have to stop taking these: we use electric), pony tail hair bands purchased for grandchild Zoe.  And another bag:  Keep Portland radical.  Talked with a neighbor who had purchased a blanket from our thrift shop, made the bus trip downtown and left it with someone at the edge of the encampment.  Hearing that I'd taken the short walk inside to hand over my stuff to a place about food, she asked, "How was it?" 

Smelled awful, even on a sunny day there was an overcast, scruffy feeling--people living outside for a long time, and coughing.  What could we expect?  Radical political action is not attractive.

[Problem with this report, had to take down]  By chance, what is happening in Vancouver, B.C., was broadcast as I was writing this post.  The responses to questions by a volunteer medic are worth listening to especially the hard ones about a young woman found dead at this encampment.  Is it my imagination or does this Canadian broadcaster seem far more respectful than ones in the U.S.?

Have watched the live streaming from here and NYC.  Think how different it might be in New York where people around me would be talking about frequently, arguing its merits.  In Portlande, even at Portland State University, there is not a sense in the halls that some of their peers are in tents only 10 blocks away, that what is taking place is work by those who speak for all of us who would never occupy but feel voiceless.  But maybe that's the norm in other cities where many have opted out of full engagement with any kind of politics.

Lunch today at Pearl Bakery with Alon, who taught the delightful  Sociology of the Bicycle.  He has been to GA (general assembly) meetings at Occupy Portland, works with Education and Outreach groups there.  It was good to talk with someone who has real time experience with the group.  We have been concerned that our unsolved social problems in Occupy cities--homelessness, mental illness-- street people in need of food and a roof might overwhelm the political intentions of those who began the occupations.

He is hopeful; we want to be too.  Love this video.

 

UPDATE Monday, Nov. 7, 2011, 8:15 p.m. (PST), Local TV news:

In an open letter to the Occupy Portland movement, Mayor Sam Adams said the current safety conditions at the encampment were "not sustainable," changing the previous day-by-day approach of the city.
Citing specifically increasing arrests, drug use and violent behavior, Adams said the purpose of the letter was to stress the urgency in dealing with these problems...."I have said from the beginning that I believe the Occupy movement would have to evolve in order to realize its full potential."

 

TAKE BACK OUR FOOD: OCCUPY MONSANTO

Earlier this week, I was glad to see this at Marion Nestle's Food Politics blog. Link is to her post about Denmark's experiment with a "fat tax." 

But then as the days went by, the message seemed diffuse.  "Big Food," yes, but we need to focus on some of the really, really BAD guys.  How about the source for GMO badness.  And so, with apologies to whoever did the powerful original, here's my online graffiti.

Copy it, take it to  your neighborhood OCCUPY site..  May it be raised everywhere.