Started with a little light chainsaw work today. The chainsaw is in its last throes -- I had to tighten the chain about every two cuts and oil it every few minutes, too. Still got a little more than a tenth of a cord done. Supposed to get colder this week, with a bunch of freezing rain and sleet.
Sun was starting to go down quickly, so I drove a couple of nails into a stump and sharpened the cleaver. Had second thoughts about the cleaver, so I got the air rifle out and tried a couple of head shots. Didn't work out so well -- I just had a dizzy rooster. So we grabbed the cleaver and Lisa took off the first head. I grabbed another one and lopped off its head. We hung them to dry while the water heated, then dunked 'em. Took about 10 minutes to pluck. Gutting was a little trickier, since it's been about five years since I cleaned birds. Only nicked one gall bladder, and that was while pulling it out. So, no harm done.
John came downstairs while the chickens were being dealt with on the kitchen island. I don't know if he was impressed or appalled, but he had a one-word comment on the subject.
"Well," he said.
Chicken didn't taste bad. It was mighty lean, but we seasoned the hell out of it. Saved the bones for some stock, and the drumsticks and wings for frying. And bonus: The hens responded by laying 20 eggs. New world record!
So the frightening thing is, we cut wood for heat and killed a couple of roosters for dinner. Which is pretty darn sustainable, no? Probably more than most folks do, but it just didn't seem like so much ..
And final outrage du jour: The Lincoln commercial with Harry Connick Jr. Using post-Katrina New Orleans as a backdrop ... for selling cars? Yeesh. Ick. Yuck. Tacky.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Tourism Hell
Didn't do so much today. Hauled garbage to the dump, cleaned the car, a little mild cleaning. Scored 17 eggs this afternoon. Dodged tourists all over the place. Speaking of which, these folks live not too far down the road from us. I like the whole agritourism concept, as long as it doesn't involve tourists:
November 23, 2007
Down on the Farm With Your Sleeves Rolled Up
By EMILY BIUSO
AT an early morning hour most vacationers would spend unconscious, a few intrepid city dwellers outfitted in borrowed boots hunch over a creek full of watercress, carefully cutting the plants with kitchen scissors.
For their hosts, farmers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, it’s the start of a regular workday. But for the visitors, it’s a delicate balance between learning on the fly and trying to be of use on a working farm.
Hoeing, seeding and picking may not sound like a holiday, yet the appeal of agritourism is gaining in the United States. More and more people want to see where their food comes from, and the same drive that leads them to visit farmers’ markets or join community-supported agriculture farm-share programs draws them to the farm itself.
“I shop at the farmers’ market, but I didn’t really know how these people operate or how a farm functions,” said Elizabeth Schafer, who works for a visual-effects company in Los Angeles and decided to visit Maverick Farms in Valle Crucis, N.C., after a year of working 50-to-60-hour weeks. “It definitely made me appreciate what needs to be accomplished to put food on the table.”
The arrangement at Maverick Farms is simple: vacationers pay $120 a night to stay in a room in the hosts’ beautiful two-story, 125-year-old farmhouse, and they are also invited to work at harvesting, seeding and other chores. For each hour of labor, $7 is deducted from the bill. Up to 25 percent of the bill can be worked off. At night, the farmers cook dinner from food they grew, and the guests/laborers are encouraged to join them. At the end of the stay, visitors can, if they like, leave a donation for the food they’ve eaten.
Agritourism includes a wide variety of farm activities. Though most visitors simply spend an afternoon picking fruit or feeding animals, others remain several days, contributing labor to tasks ranging from planting crops to building greenhouses.
In Vermont, income from agritourism totaled $19.5 million in 2002, nearly twice the amount in 2000, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Though there are no similar statistics for more recent years, agritourism leaders in the state say the figures continue to rise. In North Carolina, 46 percent of agritourism operators surveyed by the state Department of Agriculture reported an increase in income in 2004 from 2003. And in Tennessee, agritourism enterprises directly added about $17 million to the economy in 2006 and bring in more than three million visitors a year, according to the state agritourism coordinator.
“It’s grown because more farmers are finding out it’s an important avenue to bring in revenue and stay on the farm,” said Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames. “Secondarily, it’s increasing because we’ve moved to an experience economy. People want to have a farm experience.”
Melissa Gunderson is a chef and caterer in Norcross, Ga. She, her husband, Eric, and their two young sons, Sam and Benjamin, visited Maverick in September. Since their stay, Ms. Gunderson has noticed a new appreciation of eggs by 3-year-old Sam. When she cracks one open for a recipe, he remembers seeing them up close in Maverick’s chicken coop. “I’m so shocked he remembers that experience,” she said.
MAVERICK FARMS is a working farm that was started by five novices in 2004, all friends in their 20s and 30s. Three had grown up on farms, but none had experience running one. They began it to help preserve family land from development, and important components of the farm’s daily practices are reducing waste, saving energy and fostering local involvement whenever possible. Boarding tourists who want to learn about farming has always been part of the business model.
“Agritourism is an incredible education tool,” said Tom Philpott, a co-founder and co-director of Maverick who also writes about food and farming for the environmental Web site Grist.org. “This is a way to come and do a typical afternoon on a farm. Maybe somebody does this, and it sparks something.”
Mr. Philpott was first exposed to farming when he traveled around Italy and stayed at agriturismos. In Italy, such projects have been supported by the government since 1985, and farmers receive tax breaks to play host to visitors. It’s a much more robust industry there and elsewhere in Europe, and many American farmers and educators have traveled abroad to see what methods can be imported from the Europeans.
Beth Kennett, the owner of Liberty Hill Farm in Rochester, Vt., accompanied Senator Patrick Leahy on a 1998 trade mission to Ireland and saw how agritourism was done there.
“In Ireland, they consider this economic development,” she said. “It put a whole other spin on it for me. I thought: ‘This is real. This is a business model. We can emulate this in Vermont.’”
In the mid-1990s, Ms. Kennett, other local farmers and the University of Vermont Extension Service formed the Vermont Farms! Association to organize agritourism in the state. After the trip with Senator Leahy, the association received an agritourism grant from the Department of Agriculture, according to Ms. Kennett, who is now the association’s chairwoman. Today, it offers training, support and marketing to farmers and provides guidance to associations in other states.
Jill Adams of Adams Farm in Wilmington, Vt., and secretary of Vermont Farms!, is a fifth-generation farmer on her family’s land but not the first to welcome paying guests. In the 1880s, her ancestors put up families from New York who sought a retreat from city life. Her parents, William and Sharon Adams, closed off the farm to concentrate on dairy farming in the early 1970s, but in 1980 they decided to diversify and bought a team of Belgian draft horses to pull sleighs filled with visitors around the farm.
The popularity of the rides and interest in the farm led the Adamses to take the government’s offer to buy their whole herd of cattle as part of a federal program in 1986. The family was no longer in dairy farming, and they began to focus on agritourism and marketing their maple syrup and other products directly to consumers. In 1992, Jill Adams reopened the farm to the public. She now has more than 10,000 visitors a year. In addition to the sleigh rides, visitors can milk goats, gather eggs from the chicken coop, watch sheep herding and see yarn being spun.
Good story, if a bit "safari-like" on the part of the writer. Not sure I'm in agreement with the phrase "intrepid city dwellers" if it involves cutting watercress. This was the story that made me see red -- I mean, WTF? And why can't there be an acronym for "Who Gives a Shit?" Maybe WGAS?
November 25, 2007
Tightening the Beltway, the Elite Shop Costco
By ASHLEY PARKER
WASHINGTON
RICHARD PERLE said he was game for a reconnaissance mission.
Mr. Perle, the neoconservative and former adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, offered to walk through his local Costco, pointing out the products that he said were increasingly drawing D.C. power shoppers like himself.
That Richard Perle? The gourmand with a home in Provence who once dreamed of opening a chain of soufflé restaurants?
Yes, Mr. Perle proudly shops in Costco’s cement warehouses stocked with three-pound jars of peeled garlic and jumbo packs of toilet paper. And he has no problem serving the store’s offerings to dinner guests.
“Because it should have been Dean & DeLuca?” he asked, sounding half incredulous and half amused. “I really think there’s a socio-cultural thing here, and people are entitled to their pretensions.”
As a recent article in Vanity Fair lamented, the days of glamorous Washington dinner parties are long gone. Indeed, some hostesses today aren’t above serving Costco salmon, nicely dressed up with a dollop of crème fraîche.
Mr. Perle said he shopped at Costco once a week when he was in town, and at a dinner party he held recently for several colleagues and friends, most ingredients were from there — the beef for his daube à la Provençal, the limes for his lime soufflé. The salmon for gravlax — also from Costco. He said he always received compliments, and he always got double takes when he told his guests where he shopped.
He’s not the only D.C. host or hostess to go big box.
“I do it — Costco all the way,” said the writer Sally Quinn, who is known for the power salons she puts on with her husband, the former Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee, at her Georgetown town house. “I just started.”
November 23, 2007
Down on the Farm With Your Sleeves Rolled Up
By EMILY BIUSO
AT an early morning hour most vacationers would spend unconscious, a few intrepid city dwellers outfitted in borrowed boots hunch over a creek full of watercress, carefully cutting the plants with kitchen scissors.
For their hosts, farmers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, it’s the start of a regular workday. But for the visitors, it’s a delicate balance between learning on the fly and trying to be of use on a working farm.
Hoeing, seeding and picking may not sound like a holiday, yet the appeal of agritourism is gaining in the United States. More and more people want to see where their food comes from, and the same drive that leads them to visit farmers’ markets or join community-supported agriculture farm-share programs draws them to the farm itself.
“I shop at the farmers’ market, but I didn’t really know how these people operate or how a farm functions,” said Elizabeth Schafer, who works for a visual-effects company in Los Angeles and decided to visit Maverick Farms in Valle Crucis, N.C., after a year of working 50-to-60-hour weeks. “It definitely made me appreciate what needs to be accomplished to put food on the table.”
The arrangement at Maverick Farms is simple: vacationers pay $120 a night to stay in a room in the hosts’ beautiful two-story, 125-year-old farmhouse, and they are also invited to work at harvesting, seeding and other chores. For each hour of labor, $7 is deducted from the bill. Up to 25 percent of the bill can be worked off. At night, the farmers cook dinner from food they grew, and the guests/laborers are encouraged to join them. At the end of the stay, visitors can, if they like, leave a donation for the food they’ve eaten.
Agritourism includes a wide variety of farm activities. Though most visitors simply spend an afternoon picking fruit or feeding animals, others remain several days, contributing labor to tasks ranging from planting crops to building greenhouses.
In Vermont, income from agritourism totaled $19.5 million in 2002, nearly twice the amount in 2000, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. Though there are no similar statistics for more recent years, agritourism leaders in the state say the figures continue to rise. In North Carolina, 46 percent of agritourism operators surveyed by the state Department of Agriculture reported an increase in income in 2004 from 2003. And in Tennessee, agritourism enterprises directly added about $17 million to the economy in 2006 and bring in more than three million visitors a year, according to the state agritourism coordinator.
“It’s grown because more farmers are finding out it’s an important avenue to bring in revenue and stay on the farm,” said Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames. “Secondarily, it’s increasing because we’ve moved to an experience economy. People want to have a farm experience.”
Melissa Gunderson is a chef and caterer in Norcross, Ga. She, her husband, Eric, and their two young sons, Sam and Benjamin, visited Maverick in September. Since their stay, Ms. Gunderson has noticed a new appreciation of eggs by 3-year-old Sam. When she cracks one open for a recipe, he remembers seeing them up close in Maverick’s chicken coop. “I’m so shocked he remembers that experience,” she said.
MAVERICK FARMS is a working farm that was started by five novices in 2004, all friends in their 20s and 30s. Three had grown up on farms, but none had experience running one. They began it to help preserve family land from development, and important components of the farm’s daily practices are reducing waste, saving energy and fostering local involvement whenever possible. Boarding tourists who want to learn about farming has always been part of the business model.
“Agritourism is an incredible education tool,” said Tom Philpott, a co-founder and co-director of Maverick who also writes about food and farming for the environmental Web site Grist.org. “This is a way to come and do a typical afternoon on a farm. Maybe somebody does this, and it sparks something.”
Mr. Philpott was first exposed to farming when he traveled around Italy and stayed at agriturismos. In Italy, such projects have been supported by the government since 1985, and farmers receive tax breaks to play host to visitors. It’s a much more robust industry there and elsewhere in Europe, and many American farmers and educators have traveled abroad to see what methods can be imported from the Europeans.
Beth Kennett, the owner of Liberty Hill Farm in Rochester, Vt., accompanied Senator Patrick Leahy on a 1998 trade mission to Ireland and saw how agritourism was done there.
“In Ireland, they consider this economic development,” she said. “It put a whole other spin on it for me. I thought: ‘This is real. This is a business model. We can emulate this in Vermont.’”
In the mid-1990s, Ms. Kennett, other local farmers and the University of Vermont Extension Service formed the Vermont Farms! Association to organize agritourism in the state. After the trip with Senator Leahy, the association received an agritourism grant from the Department of Agriculture, according to Ms. Kennett, who is now the association’s chairwoman. Today, it offers training, support and marketing to farmers and provides guidance to associations in other states.
Jill Adams of Adams Farm in Wilmington, Vt., and secretary of Vermont Farms!, is a fifth-generation farmer on her family’s land but not the first to welcome paying guests. In the 1880s, her ancestors put up families from New York who sought a retreat from city life. Her parents, William and Sharon Adams, closed off the farm to concentrate on dairy farming in the early 1970s, but in 1980 they decided to diversify and bought a team of Belgian draft horses to pull sleighs filled with visitors around the farm.
The popularity of the rides and interest in the farm led the Adamses to take the government’s offer to buy their whole herd of cattle as part of a federal program in 1986. The family was no longer in dairy farming, and they began to focus on agritourism and marketing their maple syrup and other products directly to consumers. In 1992, Jill Adams reopened the farm to the public. She now has more than 10,000 visitors a year. In addition to the sleigh rides, visitors can milk goats, gather eggs from the chicken coop, watch sheep herding and see yarn being spun.
Good story, if a bit "safari-like" on the part of the writer. Not sure I'm in agreement with the phrase "intrepid city dwellers" if it involves cutting watercress. This was the story that made me see red -- I mean, WTF? And why can't there be an acronym for "Who Gives a Shit?" Maybe WGAS?
November 25, 2007
Tightening the Beltway, the Elite Shop Costco
By ASHLEY PARKER
WASHINGTON
RICHARD PERLE said he was game for a reconnaissance mission.
Mr. Perle, the neoconservative and former adviser to Donald Rumsfeld, offered to walk through his local Costco, pointing out the products that he said were increasingly drawing D.C. power shoppers like himself.
That Richard Perle? The gourmand with a home in Provence who once dreamed of opening a chain of soufflé restaurants?
Yes, Mr. Perle proudly shops in Costco’s cement warehouses stocked with three-pound jars of peeled garlic and jumbo packs of toilet paper. And he has no problem serving the store’s offerings to dinner guests.
“Because it should have been Dean & DeLuca?” he asked, sounding half incredulous and half amused. “I really think there’s a socio-cultural thing here, and people are entitled to their pretensions.”
As a recent article in Vanity Fair lamented, the days of glamorous Washington dinner parties are long gone. Indeed, some hostesses today aren’t above serving Costco salmon, nicely dressed up with a dollop of crème fraîche.
Mr. Perle said he shopped at Costco once a week when he was in town, and at a dinner party he held recently for several colleagues and friends, most ingredients were from there — the beef for his daube à la Provençal, the limes for his lime soufflé. The salmon for gravlax — also from Costco. He said he always received compliments, and he always got double takes when he told his guests where he shopped.
He’s not the only D.C. host or hostess to go big box.
“I do it — Costco all the way,” said the writer Sally Quinn, who is known for the power salons she puts on with her husband, the former Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee, at her Georgetown town house. “I just started.”
Friday, November 23, 2007
Stuff
Been a busy week:
Up to 12-18 eggs per day. Yay!
The lump of two months is apparently benign. Yay!
Going in Tuesday for a shoulder MRI and x-rays. Boo!
Finally got the house mess sorted out. Yay!
Chainsaw is working again. Yay!
Four "yay" and one "boo." Probably not horrible.
Yeesh. Christmas is here. Or, I should say, shopping season is here. I'm sorry. Going shopping on Thanksgiving is just ... disgusting. Occurred to me that two years ago, I was toodling around the largest shopping mall on the East Coast on the day after Thanksgiving. On this day after Thanksgiving, I took a lunch break to acquire the following:
*** One 50-pound bag layer feed
*** One 50-pound bag grower feed
*** One 50-pound bag whole corn
*** One 50-pound bag rabbit food
*** Two bales of mulch hay
*** One bale aspen shavings
I think I like the Vermont day-after-Thanksgiving concept better.
Also picked up a couple of big winter jackets for kids. They'll need 'em. Single digits tonight.
Have moved the big turkeys into the new chicken barn. They don't seem to appreciate their offspring very much at all. I've let the small chickens out into the chicken yard, but they're not too excited about the big, wide world out there. Plus, the big chickens in the adjacent yard are heckling them, I think.
Woke up mid-week with 10 more baby Angoras. Grand total of 21 in the hutch now. Dogs can't decide whether to run to the rabbit hutch, the chicken coop, or the chicken barn. It's making Stink crazier than usual, I think.
Really need to get back on the training treadmill, but I'm waiting until I hear a bit more about what's going to be involved with the shoulder. It's been a problem for about six, seven years now. I think that means it's time to stop whining about it and get it fixed. Went for my annual physical, and it was just hanging there. Approximate transcript of patient-doctor conversation follows:
Doctor: That arm's been a problem for a long time.
Patient: Quite a while.
Doctor: I'm giving you some painkillers and scheduling an MRI and x-rays.
Patient: Don't need them.
Doctor: They're not for you. They're for me.
Patient: Excuse me?
Doctor: If you take enough of these, you won't be able to whine.
He then proceeded to let me know that my cholesterol was getting high. Gave him three dozen eggs on the theory that if I raise everyone else's levels, maybe mine won't seem so high.
Lastly: I've bitched about this before. But I was glad to see the following in the Washington Post. My tribe has been screwed, screwed, screwed for 400 years. And we're morons! They ask us to help out with the Jamestown celebration, and we do it. How dumb is that?
As Year's End Nears, Disappointment
Va. Tribes Had Hoped Jamestown Events
Would Help Them Gain Sovereign Indian Nation Status
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 23, 2007; B01
They have donned their fringed buckskin, bone breastplates and finest headdresses made of turkey feather or porcupine hair. They have danced for the Queen of England. They have smiled for President George W. Bush.
At every turn during this Jamestown 400 Commemoration, Virginia's remaining Indian tribes have done everything asked of them.
As the anniversary year draws to a close, however, they do not have the one thing they wanted most: federal recognition as sovereign Indian nations, equal to the Navajo, Arapaho and the Sioux. "First to greet. Last to be recognized," had been their rallying cry. Now, many Virginia Indians find themselves in a familiar, hollow place.
"You're left feeling that this is all kind of superficial, from the Indian point of view. Like we were used one more time," said Chief Ann Richardson of the Rappahannock tribe. "You feel like in 2008, they might just forget about us again."
"Broken promises to Indians," added Chief Ken Adams of the Upper Mattaponi. "The cycle does repeat itself, doesn't it?"
On Wednesday, leaders from some of the eight state-recognized Indian tribes again donned their regalia to offer their annual Thanksgiving tribute of fish and game to the governor, honoring the 1646 treaty with the British Crown that gave them the reservation land that over the centuries only two tribes, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi, have been able to hold on to.
There was such excitement this time last year, tribal members said, as they readied for the world's eyes. "Now, we're afraid that we've lost the moment," said Reginald Tupponce, an Upper Mattaponi leader who recently resigned his position from the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life, a group that hosts pow wows and yard sales and raffles baked goods to raise funds to lobby for federal recognition.
The road to federal recognition for any tribe is steep and uncertain. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has a Federal Office of Acknowledgement that requires tribes to prove, with reams of exacting documents and genealogies, that they have been in continuous existence from the time of first contact with European settlers. That's 400 years for Virginia Indians.
"The procedures put in place were so stringent, they were designed to limit the groups that could come in," said Mark E. Miller, a historian who has written books about forgotten eastern tribes.
So a process that was designed to take two years for the 300-some tribes that have applied instead generally takes 20, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Some tribes have instead appealed to Congress. But some powerful figures, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), argue that lawmakers do not have the expertise to make the call. And in the days since the Indian gaming/Jack Abramoff scandal that sent lobbyists to jail for defrauding Indian tribes, the route through Congress has become close to impossible.
Tupponce remembers sitting in the gallery high above the House of Representatives in spring, holding his breath as lawmakers debated whether to pass the legislation that would give sovereign status to six Virginia tribes: the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock and Monacan.
The bill would enable their children to apply for scholarships and would open up federal funds for housing, health care and economic development.
It would mean that they could finally petition the federal government to return the bones of their ancestors from the drawers and boxes of Smithsonian warehouses to be buried with respect, something that only tribes with federal status are allowed to do.
I suppose if there's a bright side, we're no longer considered "colored," which we were in Virginia until the 1960s. Still, you've got to wonder what the hell it takes for the federal government to say, "Oh, yes. Indians lived here once, didn't they?"
Up to 12-18 eggs per day. Yay!
The lump of two months is apparently benign. Yay!
Going in Tuesday for a shoulder MRI and x-rays. Boo!
Finally got the house mess sorted out. Yay!
Chainsaw is working again. Yay!
Four "yay" and one "boo." Probably not horrible.
Yeesh. Christmas is here. Or, I should say, shopping season is here. I'm sorry. Going shopping on Thanksgiving is just ... disgusting. Occurred to me that two years ago, I was toodling around the largest shopping mall on the East Coast on the day after Thanksgiving. On this day after Thanksgiving, I took a lunch break to acquire the following:
*** One 50-pound bag layer feed
*** One 50-pound bag grower feed
*** One 50-pound bag whole corn
*** One 50-pound bag rabbit food
*** Two bales of mulch hay
*** One bale aspen shavings
I think I like the Vermont day-after-Thanksgiving concept better.
Also picked up a couple of big winter jackets for kids. They'll need 'em. Single digits tonight.
Have moved the big turkeys into the new chicken barn. They don't seem to appreciate their offspring very much at all. I've let the small chickens out into the chicken yard, but they're not too excited about the big, wide world out there. Plus, the big chickens in the adjacent yard are heckling them, I think.
Woke up mid-week with 10 more baby Angoras. Grand total of 21 in the hutch now. Dogs can't decide whether to run to the rabbit hutch, the chicken coop, or the chicken barn. It's making Stink crazier than usual, I think.
Really need to get back on the training treadmill, but I'm waiting until I hear a bit more about what's going to be involved with the shoulder. It's been a problem for about six, seven years now. I think that means it's time to stop whining about it and get it fixed. Went for my annual physical, and it was just hanging there. Approximate transcript of patient-doctor conversation follows:
Doctor: That arm's been a problem for a long time.
Patient: Quite a while.
Doctor: I'm giving you some painkillers and scheduling an MRI and x-rays.
Patient: Don't need them.
Doctor: They're not for you. They're for me.
Patient: Excuse me?
Doctor: If you take enough of these, you won't be able to whine.
He then proceeded to let me know that my cholesterol was getting high. Gave him three dozen eggs on the theory that if I raise everyone else's levels, maybe mine won't seem so high.
Lastly: I've bitched about this before. But I was glad to see the following in the Washington Post. My tribe has been screwed, screwed, screwed for 400 years. And we're morons! They ask us to help out with the Jamestown celebration, and we do it. How dumb is that?
As Year's End Nears, Disappointment
Va. Tribes Had Hoped Jamestown Events
Would Help Them Gain Sovereign Indian Nation Status
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 23, 2007; B01
They have donned their fringed buckskin, bone breastplates and finest headdresses made of turkey feather or porcupine hair. They have danced for the Queen of England. They have smiled for President George W. Bush.
At every turn during this Jamestown 400 Commemoration, Virginia's remaining Indian tribes have done everything asked of them.
As the anniversary year draws to a close, however, they do not have the one thing they wanted most: federal recognition as sovereign Indian nations, equal to the Navajo, Arapaho and the Sioux. "First to greet. Last to be recognized," had been their rallying cry. Now, many Virginia Indians find themselves in a familiar, hollow place.
"You're left feeling that this is all kind of superficial, from the Indian point of view. Like we were used one more time," said Chief Ann Richardson of the Rappahannock tribe. "You feel like in 2008, they might just forget about us again."
"Broken promises to Indians," added Chief Ken Adams of the Upper Mattaponi. "The cycle does repeat itself, doesn't it?"
On Wednesday, leaders from some of the eight state-recognized Indian tribes again donned their regalia to offer their annual Thanksgiving tribute of fish and game to the governor, honoring the 1646 treaty with the British Crown that gave them the reservation land that over the centuries only two tribes, the Pamunkey and Mattaponi, have been able to hold on to.
There was such excitement this time last year, tribal members said, as they readied for the world's eyes. "Now, we're afraid that we've lost the moment," said Reginald Tupponce, an Upper Mattaponi leader who recently resigned his position from the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance for Life, a group that hosts pow wows and yard sales and raffles baked goods to raise funds to lobby for federal recognition.
The road to federal recognition for any tribe is steep and uncertain. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has a Federal Office of Acknowledgement that requires tribes to prove, with reams of exacting documents and genealogies, that they have been in continuous existence from the time of first contact with European settlers. That's 400 years for Virginia Indians.
"The procedures put in place were so stringent, they were designed to limit the groups that could come in," said Mark E. Miller, a historian who has written books about forgotten eastern tribes.
So a process that was designed to take two years for the 300-some tribes that have applied instead generally takes 20, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Some tribes have instead appealed to Congress. But some powerful figures, such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), argue that lawmakers do not have the expertise to make the call. And in the days since the Indian gaming/Jack Abramoff scandal that sent lobbyists to jail for defrauding Indian tribes, the route through Congress has become close to impossible.
Tupponce remembers sitting in the gallery high above the House of Representatives in spring, holding his breath as lawmakers debated whether to pass the legislation that would give sovereign status to six Virginia tribes: the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Nansemond, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock and Monacan.
The bill would enable their children to apply for scholarships and would open up federal funds for housing, health care and economic development.
It would mean that they could finally petition the federal government to return the bones of their ancestors from the drawers and boxes of Smithsonian warehouses to be buried with respect, something that only tribes with federal status are allowed to do.
I suppose if there's a bright side, we're no longer considered "colored," which we were in Virginia until the 1960s. Still, you've got to wonder what the hell it takes for the federal government to say, "Oh, yes. Indians lived here once, didn't they?"
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Tired
Been a long week. Long Sunday, and it'll be a long Monday.
Up this morning and finished the chicken run fence. Lots of digging, chicken wire stapling. Still have to put netting over the top to keep out the hawks and owls. Think the chickens were excited, though. They laid 19 eggs today, a new record.
We finally put tarps over the gardens. Lisa piled a ton of really nasty compost on it, and Stink saw fit to wallow in it, which earned him a shower this morning. He's a much older Stink, a much wiser Stink ... a much sadder Stink. Gave Pepper a shower, too. They were some pretty miserable border collies after all was said and done. And Gray Kitten sat and watched. Ever seen a cat smirk?
Anyway. Did what I could with the chicken run while Lisa hung plastic in the rabbit coop. Very exciting -- one of the local yarn stores saw her Angora gloves and wants her to spin Angora for them.
Sawed a three-by-six foot pile of wood. It's getting colder in a hurry, into the teens. So we're burning a fair amount of wood.
Tomorrow's going to be rough. Will has to be at school before 6a. Then I'll take John to the bus stop at 630a. Then off to the doctor's appointment when they open for some nagging issues. The shoulder/arm issue is near the top of the list, but I've got to have a few other things looked into, ASAP. I know, the shoulder is the least of my problems right now, but I'm still hoping to get something done for it. At this point, even surgery would be an improvement.
Hope to run down to the CSA during lunch and pick up most of my half-pig. It's either that or cut wood. Then work through the afternoon and pick up Will from his field trip around 8p. They're going to Burlington for a youth group conference; he's very excited. If I get a few, I may take John to the mountain to fill out paperwork for his job.
Maybe I'll catch my breath Tuesday.
Up this morning and finished the chicken run fence. Lots of digging, chicken wire stapling. Still have to put netting over the top to keep out the hawks and owls. Think the chickens were excited, though. They laid 19 eggs today, a new record.
We finally put tarps over the gardens. Lisa piled a ton of really nasty compost on it, and Stink saw fit to wallow in it, which earned him a shower this morning. He's a much older Stink, a much wiser Stink ... a much sadder Stink. Gave Pepper a shower, too. They were some pretty miserable border collies after all was said and done. And Gray Kitten sat and watched. Ever seen a cat smirk?
Anyway. Did what I could with the chicken run while Lisa hung plastic in the rabbit coop. Very exciting -- one of the local yarn stores saw her Angora gloves and wants her to spin Angora for them.
Sawed a three-by-six foot pile of wood. It's getting colder in a hurry, into the teens. So we're burning a fair amount of wood.
Tomorrow's going to be rough. Will has to be at school before 6a. Then I'll take John to the bus stop at 630a. Then off to the doctor's appointment when they open for some nagging issues. The shoulder/arm issue is near the top of the list, but I've got to have a few other things looked into, ASAP. I know, the shoulder is the least of my problems right now, but I'm still hoping to get something done for it. At this point, even surgery would be an improvement.
Hope to run down to the CSA during lunch and pick up most of my half-pig. It's either that or cut wood. Then work through the afternoon and pick up Will from his field trip around 8p. They're going to Burlington for a youth group conference; he's very excited. If I get a few, I may take John to the mountain to fill out paperwork for his job.
Maybe I'll catch my breath Tuesday.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Of Chickens and Chainsaws
So I'm very pleased with the chickens lately. I'm averaging 11 eggs per day. The New Hampshire Reds are laying more than the Aruacanas, which is expected. I'll get about seven brown eggs and four green eggs. And the baby chickens are starting to look like real Aruacanas, with the black and gold feathers. Very pretty.
The chainsaw, I am less pleased about.
Damn cover keeps popping on it, which means I have to tighten the chain about every five minutes. I just need a new chainsaw. I got the boys off to school about 645a, and cut wood until 8a, when the screw that holds the cover popped off. Couldn't find it, so I had to quit for the day.
Wrapped up the day job early and went for a 5-K. A rather vegetative experience, but good for me. I usually do a lot of thinking -- get some of my best ideas while running -- but I just turned the brain off for 27:03 and enjoyed the movement.
Wrapped up the run and took cans to be recycled, got my hair cut, grabbed some groceries, bought a new screw and chain for the chainsaw and picked up a bag of corn at the Agway. Came home, made dinner for the kids. Lisa's making semi-local pie -- Grafton cheese, CSA kale and onion, and our own green eggs.
Hope to get the damn chainsaw working tomorrow and throw some compost on the garden over the weekend. And in the "enough, already!" category, from WCAX-TV:
Brattleboro Considers Nudity Ordinance
Brattleboro, Vermont - November 7, 2007
The select board in Brattleboro is once again working on an ordinance that would ban public nudity.
They have asked Interim Town Manager Barbara Sondag to prepare a draft ordinance for them to review at their next meeting in two weeks. The select board enacted an emergency nudity ban this summer, but later voted down plans to make it permanent, because they couldn't agree on a punishment.
The board has reached a compromise that would make public nudity in Brattleboro a civil violation.
Passing an anti-nudity ordinance in Vermont in November seems like the height of unnecessary legislation. It's getting down to 20 already at night; another month, and anyone walking around Brattleboro with no clothes will confirm Darwinian theory.
So we're worrying about frostbitten wee parts in this neck of the woods, while other places are doing some really interesting stuff, like this:
In Berkeley we're thinking a lot about solar this week, because on Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council approved a breakthrough financing plan aimed at encouraging local solar panel and solar water heater installations.
Green Wombat has the full story, but the basics are simple. The city foots the bill for the installation, but homeowners retain ownership and pay the city back over 20 years via an annual property assessment. And if they sell their house before the bill is completely paid off, no worries -- the liability for the remaining bill, along with the solar panels, goes to the next owner of the house.
(Disclaimer: Green Wombat is not only a co-resident of Berkeley, but a fellow member of the Malcolm X Elementary PTA. I will now shamelessly steal from him: "Solar power in Berkeley: By Any Means Necessary.)
The math sure looks good to me. The annual property assessment fee adds up to about a year's worth of electricity bills. Like many homeowners, I've been daunted by the $20,000-$30,000 price tag for a solar installation. But I'm going to be lining up with my Berkeley brethren to apply for participation in the "Sustainable Energy Financing District" when it is up and running, perhaps as early as 2008.
Imagine if the federal government supported a similar program. My guess is that leadership on this issue might make buying some shares in a solar power start-up a pretty good investment. Oh, wait a minute: Solar power start-ups are already some of the hottest action on the market, without the federal government doing a damn thing. As Green Wombat also reported on Thursday, the stock price of thin-film solar module maker First Solar shot up 34 percent on Thursday, to a Googlish $224.43. The performance is all the more remarkable when considering how badly the rest of the market did this week.
Green Wombat bills itself as covering "the intersection of the environment, technology, business and policy." But if you review the last six posts as of the morning of Nov. 9, every single one concerned some aspect of solar power, with a heavy focus on California. Solar power is exploding in California, and a horde of venture-capital funded start-ups are jostling with each other to get a piece of the action. So while Democrats and Republicans trade jabs over who is responsible for the current price of a gallon of gas, and by the latest reports are fumbling a major opportunity to pass legislation that would significantly boost the production of renewable energy, here in California, something powerful is actually happening.
Then again, almost all our power in Vermont should be coming from the Quebec hydro plant on Rupert River by 2012. So nyeah. We're cleaner and greener and can afford to bicker about trivial crap like clothing-optional towns.
The chainsaw, I am less pleased about.
Damn cover keeps popping on it, which means I have to tighten the chain about every five minutes. I just need a new chainsaw. I got the boys off to school about 645a, and cut wood until 8a, when the screw that holds the cover popped off. Couldn't find it, so I had to quit for the day.
Wrapped up the day job early and went for a 5-K. A rather vegetative experience, but good for me. I usually do a lot of thinking -- get some of my best ideas while running -- but I just turned the brain off for 27:03 and enjoyed the movement.
Wrapped up the run and took cans to be recycled, got my hair cut, grabbed some groceries, bought a new screw and chain for the chainsaw and picked up a bag of corn at the Agway. Came home, made dinner for the kids. Lisa's making semi-local pie -- Grafton cheese, CSA kale and onion, and our own green eggs.
Hope to get the damn chainsaw working tomorrow and throw some compost on the garden over the weekend. And in the "enough, already!" category, from WCAX-TV:
Brattleboro Considers Nudity Ordinance
Brattleboro, Vermont - November 7, 2007
The select board in Brattleboro is once again working on an ordinance that would ban public nudity.
They have asked Interim Town Manager Barbara Sondag to prepare a draft ordinance for them to review at their next meeting in two weeks. The select board enacted an emergency nudity ban this summer, but later voted down plans to make it permanent, because they couldn't agree on a punishment.
The board has reached a compromise that would make public nudity in Brattleboro a civil violation.
Passing an anti-nudity ordinance in Vermont in November seems like the height of unnecessary legislation. It's getting down to 20 already at night; another month, and anyone walking around Brattleboro with no clothes will confirm Darwinian theory.
So we're worrying about frostbitten wee parts in this neck of the woods, while other places are doing some really interesting stuff, like this:
In Berkeley we're thinking a lot about solar this week, because on Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council approved a breakthrough financing plan aimed at encouraging local solar panel and solar water heater installations.
Green Wombat has the full story, but the basics are simple. The city foots the bill for the installation, but homeowners retain ownership and pay the city back over 20 years via an annual property assessment. And if they sell their house before the bill is completely paid off, no worries -- the liability for the remaining bill, along with the solar panels, goes to the next owner of the house.
(Disclaimer: Green Wombat is not only a co-resident of Berkeley, but a fellow member of the Malcolm X Elementary PTA. I will now shamelessly steal from him: "Solar power in Berkeley: By Any Means Necessary.)
The math sure looks good to me. The annual property assessment fee adds up to about a year's worth of electricity bills. Like many homeowners, I've been daunted by the $20,000-$30,000 price tag for a solar installation. But I'm going to be lining up with my Berkeley brethren to apply for participation in the "Sustainable Energy Financing District" when it is up and running, perhaps as early as 2008.
Imagine if the federal government supported a similar program. My guess is that leadership on this issue might make buying some shares in a solar power start-up a pretty good investment. Oh, wait a minute: Solar power start-ups are already some of the hottest action on the market, without the federal government doing a damn thing. As Green Wombat also reported on Thursday, the stock price of thin-film solar module maker First Solar shot up 34 percent on Thursday, to a Googlish $224.43. The performance is all the more remarkable when considering how badly the rest of the market did this week.
Green Wombat bills itself as covering "the intersection of the environment, technology, business and policy." But if you review the last six posts as of the morning of Nov. 9, every single one concerned some aspect of solar power, with a heavy focus on California. Solar power is exploding in California, and a horde of venture-capital funded start-ups are jostling with each other to get a piece of the action. So while Democrats and Republicans trade jabs over who is responsible for the current price of a gallon of gas, and by the latest reports are fumbling a major opportunity to pass legislation that would significantly boost the production of renewable energy, here in California, something powerful is actually happening.
Then again, almost all our power in Vermont should be coming from the Quebec hydro plant on Rupert River by 2012. So nyeah. We're cleaner and greener and can afford to bicker about trivial crap like clothing-optional towns.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Book Deals
... just about everything today has to do with books. Except, of course, the chainsaw, which I retrieved during lunch. The cover had snapped, which meant the chain kept coming loose. It's the sort of thing that can cause an excessive amount of excitement, so I had it fixed. Plus, it's getting colder by the day, and we can use the wood. Snow flurries the last two mornings, and the leaves are pretty much history.
Two cars drove up near the track, one leaving its headlights on. A mother and her son’s wife climbed out and hugged several friends in this woeful homecoming.
“The most beautiful thing I’ve seen,” said Susan Shay, Ryan’s mother. “Everyone has been so supportive.”
One of the ducks was attacked a few weeks ago by the turkeys (and the chickens piled on), so I had it in a crate next to the coop. I thought they'd pecked its eyes out, but turned out it was just blood that had crusted over. So when it made its great escape from the crate this morning -- God knows how -- Lisa put it and four small ducklings into the chicken run. Which sent the boy ducks into a fighting tizzy and made the collies go absolutely beserk, but things seem to have calmed down now. Got 11 eggs, which seems to be par for the course these days.
So, books. I'm dealing with three (and possibly four) publishers for books on various and sundry subjects. I need to break down and just hire an agent. I'm beginning to see why some people feel the need to hand over 10 percent of their advances, or whatever it is that agents get these days. I'll resist the temptation another month or so ... maybe.
Anyway. I've vented. I feel better.
But while going through the loft, I found a book that contains the following passages. Guess when this was written:
"In so far as summer residents occupy productive land, take it out of use and let it revert to brush, they are a detriment to the agriculture of the state. Certainly this is true in the more productive valleys.
"Another thing the summer residents do to Vermont agriculture is to put a premium on factory goods and specialties shipped in from out of state, have them carried in the stores and thus help to persuade Vermont residents that it is easier and cheaper to get dollars, exchange them for canned goods sold in the stores, and abandon long-established gardens in the course of the turnover. Thus the state is made less dependent upon its own agriculture and more dependent on dollars, many of which will be used to buy out-of-state produce.
"If this process goes far enough, Vermont will develop a suburban or vacationland economy, built on the dollars of those who make thier income elsewhere and spend part of it during a few weeks or months of the Vermont summer. Such an exonomy is predominantly parasitic in terms of production, although income and expense accounts may be in balance. Carried to its logical conclusion, it would make Vermonters sell their labor power to summer residents, mowing their lawns and doing their laundry, thus greatly reducing their own economic self-dependence. Such an economy may attract more cheap dollars to the state, but it will hardly produce self-reliant men.
"Summer people do more than upset Vermont's economy. By living on their places during the summer and closing them for the balance of the year, they turn sections of the State into ghost towns. Neighborhoods, to be meaningful, must have continuity. Part-time towns are parasitic dead towns."
The above was written in 19-'effin-54, in The Good Life. I can't say I agree with an enormous portion of the Nearings' experiment -- the rants against putting animals into bondage are just a bit much, and there seems to be quite a bit too much holier-than-thou-ness going on -- but give them huge props for prescience.
Finally, a really wonderful start on the Ryan Shay tragedy from the NY Times:
November 8, 2007
Small Town Mourns a Running Marvel
By JERÉ LONGMAN and AIMEE BERG
Small Town Mourns a Running Marvel
By JERÉ LONGMAN and AIMEE BERG
CENTRAL LAKE, Mich., Nov. 7 — It snowed the night they brought Ryan Shay home to bury him. Three hundred candles in paper bags lined the inner lane of the high school track. The wind extinguished some candles and ignited several bags into balls of flame.
“A kid from a village of 1,000 makes it big, that’s a million-to-one shot,” Quinn Barry, the athletic director at Central Lake High, said as he patiently relit candles, maintaining his frozen vigil. “But Ryan always had a plan.”
This was Tuesday. On Sunday, 150 people had come to walk or run in tribute to Shay, who died a day earlier at the Olympic men’s marathon trials in New York of causes still undetermined. Now there was a lone, thin runner circling the track in tribute, wearing a skullcap and tights, only his footsteps announcing him in the dark football stadium.
Two cars drove up near the track, one leaving its headlights on. A mother and her son’s wife climbed out and hugged several friends in this woeful homecoming.
“The most beautiful thing I’ve seen,” said Susan Shay, Ryan’s mother. “Everyone has been so supportive.”
Beautiful lead, but the story lost me here:
Much remains unknown. Autopsy and toxicology reports have yet to be completed. Given the tarnished nature of running, where doping has been widespread, Shay’s father has asked that the toxicology report be made public so that it might absolve any suspicion that Ryan used illicit substances. The New York medical examiner’s office declined to say what specific substances would be screened.
Marathon doping? Um, excuse me? I'm sure there are some asshats out there who are doing it for marathons, but I always thought drugs were good for short bursts of energy, not for hours of entertainment. Of course, shows what I know. But I just keep thinking, Please, God, no more Rosie Ruiz, and please don't let this sport turn into professional cycling.
So, the plan for tomorrow: Run. Cut wood. Work. Rest. Enjoy.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Frustration Overload
... with the day job. So I did the best thing you can do in these circumstances. And went running.
I feel a bit better now.
I feel a bit better now.
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