June/July 2008
My Mother’s Garden
Muktha Jost
Getting A Grip
Frances Moore Lappé
The Documented Health Risk of
Genetically Engineered Foods
Dr. Jeffrey Bland Interviews Jeffrey Smith
The Emerging Significance of Urban Agriculture
Jody Woodruff
Our Food Future
Scott McGuire
We Need A New Generation of Farmers
Zoë Bradbury
Soft Intentions, Hard Results
Peter Moore
Fitness Training For The Brain
Jim Brown and Molly Brown
Improved Health Through Detoxification
Daniel Smith, ND
Awakening and Embodiment
An Interview with Judith Blackstone
Randall Keller
Reclaiming Our Attention
Guy Finley
Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain
By Deborah Mokma
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
I have lost track of the number of times Margaret Mead’s quote has appeared on this page, but because it communicates this essential concept so very well, I am compelled to share it yet again.
Along with this thought I believe we should consider another which is equally as important—the cost of doing nothing. It is our hope that by sharing the excerpt from Frances Moore Lappé’s latest book, Get A Grip, which begins on page 6, we will encourage our readers to consider the importance of embracing the many possibilities which exist for changing the status quo. Ms. Lappé makes an excellent case for citizen participation: “What if together with our friends, family, and acquaintances, we could probe the root causes of the biggest threats to our planet? What if we were able to grasp something of the common origins of these threats and then identify powerful entry points to interrupt them? And more than that, what if we could then feel we are shifting the destructive underlying patterns toward health? Now, that’s power. Our power.”
There are so many ways in which we can accomplish the goal of improving our shared world—by joining grassroots political efforts, reducing our carbon footprint, choosing to buy locally grown food and locally made products, buying from locally owned businesses, creating community organizations, encouraging food growing in our yards and in our communities—a list of all the possibilities is much too long to include in this small space! And besides, as time passes, we will think of even more.
One program at the University of Oregon in Eugene (Community Climate Stewards, http://climlead.uoregon.edu/programs/neighborhook.html) seeks to identify effective means of helping households learn about and take action to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By increasing understanding of climate change while supporting household and individual efforts to measure and reduce energy use and GHG emissions this program seeks to build the market for climate friendly products and technologies and build public support for improved climate policies. They recently released a report on 42 Eugene-area residents who had taken steps to improve their environmental friendly living and who had succeeded in reducing their personal greenhouse emissions by two tons per person—a 5% reduction from the carbon footprint of a typical Eugene resident—after only one year.
Sarah Mazze, the Climate Master program director, said “I think that what these people achieved were small changes over a period of time that resulted from changes in the way they had been thinking. We heard that people began making decisions differently, as if they were operating with a climate filter. They started understanding where their greenhouse gas emissions were coming from. If you don’t know where they come from, you can’t make choices to reduce them.”
When we understand that what prevents us from making better choices may simply be the ideas we have about what is or isn’t possible the potential for a better future increases significantly. These ideas have come to us from many places including our culture, family of origin, school and the media (especially television). Questioning their veracity is not always an easy task, but being open to new ideas provides a fertile medium for creating a world in which the greater good becomes everyone’s priority.
Muktha Jost’s description of her mother’s garden—and overall approach to life—will hopefully inspire others as it has me (see page 5). The feeling of providing for my family is never more potent than when we eat the vegetables I grow in my kitchen garden, and the resulting sense of the divine feminine which nourishes us all has become an unintentional part of my spiritual practice. The connection to all of creation that gardening provides is so palpable I can’t imagine what it would be like to exist without it.
Expanding our awareness and choosing the most sustainable approaches possible in our gardens, our households and our communities helps the dream of a healthier world become a reality. What better gift could we hope to pass on to the following generations?
