Oh Walmart, can you really change?

The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.

Ron McCormick, the senior director of local and sustainable sourcing for Walmart, told me that about three years ago he came upon pictures from the 1920s of thriving apple orchards in Rogers, Arkansas, eight miles from the company’s headquarters. Apples were once shipped from northwest Arkansas by railroad to St. Louis and Chicago. After Washington state and California took over the apple market, hardly any orchards remained. Cabbage, greens, and melons were also once staples of the local farming economy. But for decades, Arkansas’s cash crops have been tomatoes and grapes. A new initiative could diversify crops and give consumers fresher produce.

As with most Walmart programs, the clear impetus is to claim a share of consumer spending: first for organics, now for locally grown food. But buying local food is often harder than buying organic. The obstacles for both small farm and big store are many: how much a relatively small farmer can grow and how reliably, given short growing seasons; how to charge a competitive price when the farmer’s expenses are so much higher than those of industrial farms; and how to get produce from farm to warehouse.

Walmart knows all this, and knows that various nonprofit agricultural and university networks are trying to solve the same problems. In considering how to build on existing programs (and investments), Walmart talked with the local branch of the Environmental Defense Fund, which opened near the company’s Arkansas headquarters when Walmart started to look serious about green efforts, and with the Applied Sustainability Center at the University of Arkansas. The center (of which the Walmart Foundation is a chief funder) is part of a national partnership called Agile Agriculture, which includes universities such as Drake and the University of New Hampshire and nonprofits like the American Farmland Trust.* To get more locally grown produce into grocery stores and restaurants, the partnership is centralizing and streamlining distribution for farms with limited growing seasons, limited production, and limited transportation resources.

Walmart says it wants to revive local economies and communities that lost out when agriculture became centralized in large states. (The heirloom varieties beloved by foodies lost out at the same time, but so far they’re not a focus of Walmart’s program.) This would be something like bringing the once-flourishing silk and wool trades back to my hometown of Rockville, Connecticut. It’s not something you expect from Walmart, which is better known for destroying local economies than for rebuilding them.

Terror

I spend an inordinate amount of time on planes and an even greater time in transit. I end up being an observer of people having real lives more than I get to have a real life. The other result of this life job is having significant limbo time to read. I tend to read novels, but given the length of the flight and my general level of energy, I will also read magazines. Today on the way to Nashville, I read The New Yorker and then Harpers Magazine both liberal, elitist fare. They were interesting until I got to this.:

According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

I have no idea what to do with that. I keep reading it, thinking that it will change. There is no way adults put that in a report and thought it would be believable. They are better at covering shit up than this right? We don't seriously have the most expensive military industrial complex ever convened unable to come up with a more plausible story for prisoner deaths than that? It gets worse, further reporting indicates that all three of these men plus one other that died shortly after them were all victims of wrong place wrong time and were shortly to be released.

So I sit in my fugue state contemplating the fact that my government is killing people for no apparent reason and then doing an embarrassingly bad job of covering it up and wonder what in the hell are we supposed to do? I have to imagine that there are a lot of people who will read the article and feel horror (if they aren't already too cynical), and while its lovely that decent people feel horror, it hardly does a lot about it. You could try to protest, but they got plans for that as well. Writing letters to the editor of newspapers that are hardly read any more seems unlikely to generate a revolution.

So I sit and keep re-reading an account of my democratically elected but apparently deeply corrupt government committing murder and wonder what it is I am supposed to do. Because clearly it is the general silence of average people that enables this to occur. There is no viable outlet for outrage. Which of course means that you must accept that they can do it to you as well and your family and loved ones will be able to do nothing. Nothing.

hibernation

As storms pound the coast and February marches on, I feel as if my body has gone into hibernation. I read stuff that normally would have amazed me and my response is muted, quiet. I wonder if I have made the progress I meant to make, but even with that currently feel as if it will figure itself out regardless of whether or not I analyse it. I hope this is hibernation and not me giving up on things in general.

not so noble reason

you consume data you have no interest in before speaking to the crowd? The crowd's disapproval would have been swift and brutal otherwise. Excellent ROI.

On a Jet plane

Wherever you go, there you are, so they say. Where are you when on a plane reading material on the how the military industrial complex needs to consolidate its organizational management after consuming an issue of adbusters magazine and barely processing a holiday season of family, friends and their (and my) unknowably fascinating interior landscapes?

The recommendation of mindful therapists everywhere is that you need to aware of the present moment in order move forward in a conscious and conscientious manner. So do I assume a limitation of my mind's capacity that I am sitting here absorbing the data necessary to speak knowingly in front of the next crowd, without having access to an understanding of why I expound this effort other than economic autonomy? A concept which seemed elemental until I was faced with an economic crisis that confirmed my worst suspicions about the numbers on the sheet being a whole lotta bullshit and self sufficiency became an acknowledged defense mechanism against the vulnerability inherent in being part of my community.

My efforts at mindfulness awareness have shown me that my desire for an unwritten narrative were naive at best and utterly missing the point at worst. Just live your life. Mind you with this new perspective I only manage to design a new goal of being able to tell the youth I am invested in the memo I'm convinced I never got, only the more the life goes on I realize I got far better memos than most and had built in advantages that were inaccessible to me at the time. So gratitude would seem to be the appropriate response and there is gratitude, but still I swim in frustration that I cannot wholly perceive the fabric that I exist within.

So the future stands still while the present is infinite. My high school year book quote "It's all just a game, we all just wanna be loved" stands as a comforting indicator that even then, despite my cynicism, I saw a reason, a purpose for the effort required to live life well however one defines it. So in this moment I will seek comfort in the belief that I have loved well and am well loved. All I need is all I got.

Family

Last night, I met the family of the fellow I aim to have as my companion. It has nearly a decade since my last meet the family encounter and alas, I have evolved less than I had hoped....

My whole life I have read fiction, non fiction, biographies, philosophies etc in the hopes that somewhere in there I would glean the type of insight that enables a person to see clearly in the moment the tapestry that is being woven and then, instead of just observing the weaving, actually pull a few threads to enhance the overall pattern. There are people who can do this, but anecdotal observation indicates that they do it innately. It seems to odd to them that not everyone can do it. I can not do it. I can imagine it sometimes. I can see nervous chattiness or deer in headlights in the moment sort of. but never in such a way that I can grab hold of the space and allow or enable myself to occupy it in a more dignified way.

There are areas of improvement. That should be said. I do not worry about losing myself this time. I do not worry that I am glossing over inconvenient truths in order to make the picture fit. I have grown up a bit and I have improved, but of course, as life is apt to do, it all get so much more complicated now. The pressure and meaning of decisions, compromises and negotiations will feed more significantly into the meta narrative. I am no longer given the comfort of writing a little written story, which was scary but easier to improvise within, easier to see what defined progress & growth. Now I would pretend to write an interesting story within a nearly universal tale.

Now I have to believe in something in order to see it. Now I have to believe in someone in a way that puts my own well being at risk. Now I do not walk alone and its terrifying. There really had better be some fucking unicorns and rainbows or I'm going to be pissed.

It's that time of Year again

I have been keeping this blog since 2006, which seems such a long time ago. I fear that it has proven less valuable than I hoped and am sure that I have not grown significantly in my capacity to write in a way that conveys my impressions of the world. In fact, with the unending disaster that is this embarrassing attempt at health care reform, I am finding my interest in how the world runs itself waning. It seems that only the utterly corrupt and indifferent get airing and those of us who wake up everyday and get the job done, we are dispensable. There is no ROI on our lives in the eyes of those with the power and money. I will do a self check and if I really have given up I will stop posting. No reason to subject others to my cynicism.

Let it be true!

Apple's alleged Kindle-killing tablet appears to be on the runway for a spring 2010 takeoff. And in what may or may not be related news, two top-drawer US publishers are holding back ebooks of dozens of their upcoming major titles until the same time frame.

According to one analyst's "supply chain sources," mass production of Apple's long-rumored "iPad" is scheduled to ramp up in February, with release to follow in March or April. So says Yair Reiner, senior analyst for Applied Technology and Apple specialist at the Oppenheimer & Co. investment firm.

Frigging Fascinating

This makes so much sense once you think about it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I am moving this weekend and enjoying the holiday season for quite possibly the first time in my life. It's amazing.

The things that move us

I should go to bed soon. I am tired and have a long day in front of me. Still, I want to know...if you can not ever know your story till it's written, how can you know how well you are writing it? And really, if we are honest, given what we know about how memory works, even when its written, we likely still don't really know. So we live and then die barely knowing what we have done and yet desperate to have done something that will have mattered. Somehow in there, with the pain, struggle, joy and logistics should be a guaranteed quota of peace. Moments where you feel at one with the universe that you can remember in all the other convoluted moments and tell yourself you had a glimpse of the larger narrative, so you don't need to worry so much about your own. It should be a fairly large quota.

moments in time

I am having problems at work. It seems like everything I'm assigned to is blowing up in spectacular fashion. Hopefully it will pass with no significant calamities but it has made me aware of how disconcerting it still is, despite my wizened age, when the ground you are standing on shifts suddenly.

I really thought that part of getting older would be getting better at life. I am beginning to wonder if that assumption in not only flawed but fundamentally inaccurate. There are certain areas where I will get better, but fundamentally threaten my sense of security and those gains can seemingly be washed away with nary a thought. It is disheartening to think that we can only improve our ability to handle the stable moments in life, but have much less chance of improving our handling of life changing moments.

This year's assignment

As I come into yet another holiday season, I struggle with what I did with the last year of my life. SO..this year I am publishing an assignment list that I can either check off or give myself a fail at next year. Same time.

1. Make a list of 50 things that I want out of life. Get input on possibilities from coterie.

2. Explore opportunities for expending energy on making a concrete difference.

3. Make a home for myself. A real, permanent home.

4. Meditate consistently.

5. Improve schedule management.

Thoughts on singlehood- updated

I wrote about being single and its implications on life a little less than a year ago. I was a long time singleton, who assumed on a fundamental level that I would stay single. I am good at being single. I am well suited to having a well developed life and personhood as defined by me and me alone, but alas I find myself once again in a relationship.

So the plans would have to be altered if this were to become a permanent thing. I will have to compromise some level of autonomy in order to experience long term companionship.....and as I dip myself back into the flow of an intimate dynamic, I feel no clarity on the reference point question, middling confidence on having the capability of sustaining/creating a dynamic that mostly enriches, and real curiosity about what happens next.

Holy Crap, so cool!

Kid helps save the world!

"At that time, I didn't have a lot of knowledge about engines. I knew that there must be some problem with the engine's combustion [to have all that black smoke coming out] and I knew that an engine is about the combination of two elements: gas and air. I started looking into the gasoline side, but there had been lots of efforts to improve the gas - all sorts of additives - and none had really worked.

"So I started to think about the air side. I realized that if I wanted to change anything, I had to treat the air before it reached the combustion chamber."

From that initial brainstorm, after much trial and error, the Z5 emerged. In layman's terms, the device, built from a special alloy, improves the air flow into the engine in such a way that the combustion is much more efficient. By being more efficient, the car both uses less fuel and produces fewer emissions.

How does a teenager with a dream and lots of will power actually create a product? Trial and error, according to Badash.

"We had an old large generator in our house that used to put out lots of black smoke. I started trying to put different metals into the air filter. Then I would measure the amount of gas used and try and gauge whether less black smoke was coming out."

"It took a long time, with a lot of trial and error, until one day I realized that I was actually making a difference in the amount of smoke coming out," he recalled. "Well, I was very excited when I realized that I had discovered something which worked. It's not every day that a 16-year-old invents something.

"I went to my father and we took it to the next level. We spent two years perfecting it, finding the right metals. Now we've started to market it."

The next step for this budding inventor and entrepreneur is one familiar to most 18-year-olds here: Badash will soon be drafted into the IDF.

Asked whether he had any other ideas up his sleeve, Badash replied with a laugh, "We'll start with this right now and see where it goes."

Being Alpha

I am pretty sure that I have a naturally competitive personality. I have always wondered about the nature/nurture question as it impacts gender identity. Specifically, since there is anatomical proof of structural differences between male and female brains, what of it. Are there traits that are universally female or male?

An interesting study by Gneezy, Leonard, and List (2008) explored the role of culture in determining gender differences in competitive behaviour. They investigated two distinct societies, the Maasai tribe of Tanzania and the Khasi tribe in India. The former is patriarchal while the latter is matrilineal. In the patriarchal society, women were found to be less competitive than men, a result consistent with studies using data from Western cultures. But in the matrilineal society, women were more competitive than men. Indeed, the Khasi women were found to be as competitive as Maasai men. The authors interpret this as evidence that culture has an influence.

After watching the healthcare speech

I needed some good news. Here is what I found.

Blueprint for a better world

Meet the forgotten 90 percent of your brain: glial cells

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

oh shit!

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Seven young Chinese women suffered permanent lung damage and two of them later died after working for months without proper protection in a paint factory using nanoparticles, Chinese researchers reported.

Nanotechnology, or the science of the extremely tiny, is an important industry. One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter while nanoparticles measure between 1 to 100 nanometers.

Now can we jail him?

The documents show that staffers in Rove's office were actively seeking to have Iglesias removed after Republican figures in New Mexico complained that he was not pursuing voter fraud cases they wanted. In 2005, Rove aide Scott Jennings sent an e-mail to another Rove aide saying, "I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY."

time management

I used to be able to manage life. I used to be excellent at scheduling, being super punctual, etc. Now I'm like some crazy lady walking around dropping things and forgetting stuff and unclear on how anything is getting done. I prefer the old me and would like to re-create her asap.