expect delays
Add comment December 4th, 2007
Archive for December, 2007
fuel vs. food
Add comment December 4th, 2007
I heard the other day fuel prices were gonna go up. Mostly due to high fuel costs. Sure, it costs more in transportation to haul the nettle harvests to market down at the organic produce sections of the Plaza, Haggens and QFC. We nettle growers have come to expect that.
But this is different. The high fuel costs are the result of some of us South End Growers in the Nettle Cooperative breakin loose and growin our crops for Bio=fuel.. It takes about 3 gallons of gas to make 4 gallons of nettle oil. Same as corn or switchgrass or lawnmower clippings. I’m a dirt poor nettle farmer, not a Harvard educated economist, but I’m troubled by this. Mexico’s already got the corn riots. They’re turning corn into bio-fuel instead of tortillas and the poor folks can’t afford to buy hi priced tacos now. That’s like taking Big Macs and selling the buns and the glue and the crud that makes the special sauce and the hormone enhances cow and grinding it all up to make a bucket full of McGasoline so now a super size real meal deal costs 20 bucks, but it gets 20 miles per gallon.
These are slippery slopes, I tell ya. Down at the distilleries of the South End this means Skeeter’s using nettle mash to make high octane bio-fuel instead of single stalk scotch. The entire social fabric begins to unravel. Families have to choose: drive to town for groceries or stay home to picket Daddle Distilleries? The more the groceries cost, the more you need that single stalk palliative.
Divorce rates climb. Traffic accidents soar. The old growth nettle forests get decimated and global warming accelerates. Bipartisan politics widen and bipolarity increases in direct proportion to the use of St. John’s wort to make laughing gas. Well…. You see my point, I hope. We got to nip this bio-fuel in the butt. Bud. Whatever. Food should be food. People are starving. They don’t need a damn car that gets 50 mpg on boiled down nettles. And us South Enders need Skeeters Distilleries making hi proof mood enhancers, not hi octane bio-fuel.
the cultural oxymorons strike again!
Add comment December 4th, 2007
A second area library has been the beneficiary of the South End Cultural Oxymorons with the recent installation of glass artist Jack Archibald’s donation of two large panels of glass at the Stanwood branch of Sno-Isle Regional Library. The ad hoc art group with the tongue in cheek name brought a wide array of artworks to the Camano Island branch when it opened its doors to the public. The group is also responsible for the sculpture and whimsy at Hutchison Park on Camano’s South End.
Archibald’s artwork, titled BIBLIOTEKA, stands behind the circulation desk, each rising nearly 6 feet. The artist stated that the predominant glass was mouthblown by Jim Flanigan of Fremont Antique Glass in Seattle, a glassblower Archibald states unequivocably blows the most exquisite flatglass in the world. The same glass was used in Archibald’s Skagit Valley Hospital chapel murals recently to give the work a rich and ethereal presence. And Archibald uses it in nearly all of his public and private commissions.
The South End Cultural Oxymorons have begun to make a small impact on the cultural identity of the area, not surprising when the list of artists and musicians who comprise the group are considered. A spokesman for the group stated that this would be just the beginning of many more public donations in the area.
