ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Just learned about a wonderful new source of short talks on ideas of interest and important. The TED Talks are 15-20 minute video presentations on all kinds of things, including food. Some of the ones I have enjoyed include

Ann Cooper talks school lunches – the fiery chef and head of nutrition for schools in Berkeley, CA quotes CDC stats that say up to 45 percent of school aged kids in the US will be insulin-dependent diabetics within the next decade;

Mark Bittman on what’s wrong with what we eat – talking about the climate change repercussions of eating meat (he’s not a vegetarian!) and the history of bad eating in the USA;

Cary Fowler: One seed at a time protecting the future of food – talking about the importance of biodiversity and the state of global seed banks in a time of climate change;

Dennis van Engelsdorp: a plea for bees – Pennsylvania’s state apiarist talking about bee issues, including varroa mites, colony collapse disorder, wild pollinators, kleptoparasitic bees, and Nature Deficit Disorder.

And there’s poetry too!

CK Williams reading poetry of youth and age;

Yann Arthus-Bertrand – kicking off with the Alberta tar sands – talking in pictures and words about environmentalism and Home: the movie.

How about that: honeybees on the terrace of a Vancouver hotel? Why not?

I was a little surprised to read this directive from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as it had not crossed my mind that the government was so committed to nutritionism. The directive reiterates the Canadian law which requires that white flour sold in this country must be enriched, at a minimum, with thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folic acid and iron; the optional enrichment items include vitamin B6, pantothenic acid, magnesium and calcium:

The Food and Drug Regulations (FDR) require that all white flour and all foods sold in Canada that contain white flour, such as bread, cookies, and pastries, be made from enriched white flour. The sale of unenriched white flour or foods containing unenriched white flour is not permitted in Canada.

Basically the law’s purpose as I read it is that if you refine flour to the point where its colour and texture are what we’re now used to, you have to replace by chemical means all the nutritional value you took out through the refinement process. Whatever keeps the wheels of commerce moving…

And finally, thanks to Pamela for passing it on, check out this site to see an annoying mechanical rodent robot that you can power with a string of fruit or vegetables.

Here’s some light entertainment to get us over the shock.

Thanks to Bernadette for sharing this link to the Fast Food Industry’s 7 Most Heinous Concoctions.

And here’s a Paolo Nutini video to get you dancing towards autumn…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GAgm8sZ5mo]

The Google Book Settlement opting-0ut deadline is upon us: by September 4 you must decide whether you’re in or out. Staying in means allowing Google to digitize and own (for distribution purposes) your copyrighted works, for which you will be compensated (via a registry and your publishers) what remains of the approximately $60 per book after any fees or percentages have been deducted.

The dissenting voices in the Writers Union of Canada (TWUC) have offered the following view, relevant bits excerpted:

Google controls all the information and, there is no auditing system in place to prove their numbers.

It would be a minimum of five years before any money is received.

By opting in (or doing nothing), writers give Google non-exclusive rights to copyrighted material.

There are other electronic options [besides] Google [–and these might better compensate copyright holders].

To opt out… access Google online but no proof of receipt is generated from this. …a registered letter should also be mailed to Google. As an additional safeguard …a separate letter should also be written to Google, telling them that they do not have the rights to digitize your material without your express permission.

For future contracts… an “out of print” clause should be added to protect copyrighted material.

Some internal discussion points out that the settlement addresses past wrongs (the unauthorized digitization of copyrighted works) but frees Google to sail ahead unrestricted in future, which seems hardly fair to the people who’ve worked so hard to create those works. And that other electronic options besides Google may afford the possibility of earning more than the pittance Google offers.

Went on a field trip on the weekend, with the BC Sustainable Energy Association, to see the Elkington Forest development site, way up on Malahat Mountain.

The site is not the easiest place to get to – steep windy roads which would be pretty much inaccessible when it’s foggy or icy, and the developers intend to keep the roads between the development clusters as narrow as possible, to intrude less on the landscape.

On our way up, we passed acre after acre of clear-cuts, with ‘for sale’ signs stuck on a number of the lots, which are divided into 5-25 acre parcels. It is this kind of development that the Living Forest Communities is trying to counter. The problem with hacking forest land into parcels is that the developers can’t resist cutting down the trees (great profit in that) before selling them off. When you do that on a large scale in a watershed area, you’re looking at creating erosion, destroying ecosystems and contaminating water supplies.

Have a look at the deforestation story told by these aerial photographs – covering just the last eight years. Precious little forest remains on the mountain, and the damage is only just starting to be visible on the Malahat Drive where heavy equipment, “for sale” signs and clear-cutting are intruding on what used to be a pristine forest drive.

Pristine in my lifetime anyway. The Elkington family bought the property as a summer retreat, after it had been clear-cut in the 1920s, and let the forest regrow. It has been logged since, but not clear cut, so there is still a lot of actual forest left.

The developers hope that by clustering the houses that are built – and all to strict environmental standards, including state of the art sewage treatment – more forest will be left, preventing erosion, protecting habitat and allowing sustainable enjoyment of the area for years to come. The Trans-Canada Trail will cross the property at the first of three housing clusters, in fact.

There is land set aside for agro-forestry purposes, which include a community garden for all the residents. There will be an eco-lodge, and several thousand square feet of commercial property, but the population will be too small, the developers think, to sustain much in the way of shops or services, and the commute not really feasible. So the site is intended for families who can live and work independently: they hope for artisans and telecommuters. Local businesses have expressed interest in supplying the residents with food and services, and there is a train line which – should it survive its latest round of critical assessment – could conceivably serve the community.

It was a nice hike on a beautiful day, anyway, and when we finally stopped at the top for lunch,

we were ready to sit down and drink in the view for a while.