100-plus jobs will be lost at local nursing home

One hundred residents, one hundred-plus workers will all have to go somewhere else when all Marathon Health Care Center on Pine St. closes at the end of June.

Residents will be placed elsewhere and workers will be on their own; although the workers' union is asking for the home to be placed in receivership until a buyer can be found. But the nursing home's parent corporation declared bankruptcy last month and says they're going ahead with the closing.

The NY Times' headline story this morning is the growth in part-time jobs at the expense of full time work. Wow, where have they been? The lowest wage workers have seen this developing for twenty years. Part-time work means no benefits and is a big savings for employers. Corporations like Mal-Mart and McDonalds have gotten rich on part-time workers.

Yet another plan the U.S. won't sign- this one to reduce hunger

Fifty years of industrialized farming has not prevented 850 million people from going to bed hungry each night.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development has been working for the last five years to find a better approach to world food production, One would think that a plan developed by 400 scientists, 60 nations, private industry and consumer and activists groups would catch the attention of the U.S. Government, and so it did. The U.S., Canada and Australia rejected the report, among other reasons, because it cautions against expecting genetically modified crops to be a part of the solution, questioning production and safety issues. All three countries are big promoters of GM food, whereas the crops are are banned in Europe.

Other recommendations include:

• Land management practices to limit the effect of global warming
• Limiting the presence of pesticide resideues, heavy metals, hormones, additives antibiotics in the food system
• Sustainable use of resources like water, soil, biodiversity and fossil fuels
• More food production on the local level
• Low impact practices such as organic agriculture
• Shifting biofuels to non-food crops

A very good summary of recommendations can be found at GreenFacts.

I was tipped to this story by the London paper the Daily Mail. Interestingly, I could not find a single reference to the study in any U.S. publication except for Grist. an online environmental magazine.

Although this particular report has gone unheard in this country, aother news about the world hunger crisis is finally making its way into the media and people's consciousness. However, with more bad news everyday, the only thing that may prevent the same kind of public numbness Iraq is receiving is the pale shadow of our own deprivation-- food is still plentiful, just more expensive.

The U.N.'s World Food Program is warning that North Korea's chronic food shortages have been excacerbated by flooding and a disaster may be in the works. The Philippines has put a moratorium on the conversion of farmland to any use but food in an attempt to increase rice production. Wheat prices have gone up 60% in Afghanistan in the last year. And six years of drought in Australia, possibly the result of global warming, have reduced the country's rice crop by 98%.

Sometimes needing each other pays off

A man struggling with cancer, an eagle with two broken wings....you can read their story and how they helped each other at the Sarvey Wildlife Center.

551 whales too many

After five months at sea, Japanese whalers returned to port with just half the whales killed that they'd hoped for-- but, as as the "pirates" from Greenpeace say, that's still 551 whales too many.

Greenpeace spent fifteen weeks disrupting the hunt of Japanese whaling ships and preventing the deaths of 484 whales. Right now, Greenpeace is focusing on getting the CEO of Canon to come out against whaling.

We think Canon cameras, the Japanese company famous for its work to promote wildlife and help endangered species – should be the first ones to endorse that concept. Please write to their CEO, Fujio Mitarai, and ask that he join the efforts to make this whaling season the last.

Bloomberg won't meet with Picture the Homeless

Six months into an October commitment by NYC Mayor Bloomberg to meet with homeless-led Picture the Homeless, the mayor's still stonewalling, sending his deputy mayor to meet in his stead.

Meanwhile, the organization of homeless people is moving ahead with plans to mark the fourth year of Bloomberg's failed Five Year Plan to End Homelessness on June 24th with a town hall hearing for homeless people. Stay tuned.

Stop school bus idling in Massachusetts; breathe better!

I remember walking my granddaughter to Rebecca Johnson School in Springfield and smelling the clouds of diesel exhaust a block before we got there. Picking her up after school, the whole circular entrance would be filled with school busses idling as they waited for kids to come out of school and get on board. The air was pretty unbreathable for me as a (short) adult, and I can just imagine what it was like for kids a foot lower to the ground.

Sen. Benjamin Downing, D-Pittsfield, introduced a bill to bring school bus idling to an end. The bill has passed the Senate and is now in the House of Representatives.

We have a huge asthma epidemic in this country, with significant health costs. Children's lungs are still developing and they are more affected by poor air quality than adults. But an anti-idling law for vehicles at schools would not only improve the air we and our children have to breathe, it would save each school district money at a time when every penny counts.

I talked to First Student, the company which transports most of Springfield's students to school, and asked them what their idling policy is. They said, No more than five minutes. The Environmental Protection Agency has a great fact sheet on the myths of school bus idling, and why busses don't need to idle at all; check it out.

Then, support Sen. Downing's bill by calling your legislators. If you don't know who your legislator is, or how to reach him/her, go to this site at the Mass Elections Division and type in your address. Take action!

We drive, they starve

Yesterday I wished there was a way for us to translate a gallon of gas into the exact amount of rice taken from a poor family's table.Well, the U.N. has come pretty close.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted. Telegraph, UK.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme issued a report on solutions yesterday whose recommendations were supported by 60 countries and the World Bank-- but the U.S., Australia and Canada have not yet endorsed the report, because it calls for radical changes in farming policy and warns that biofuel production threatens to increase malnutrition worldwide. Guardian, UK.

PLEASE read these articles. We in the U.S. have simply got to understand the forces in play.

Photo: A demonstrator eats grass in front of a U.N. peacekeeping soldier during a protest against the high cost of living in Port-au-Prince. Telegraph, UK

I got the right to sing the blues

Rules for Blues:

1. Most Blues begin, "Woke up this morning..."
2. "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town."
3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes... sort of: "Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound."
4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch--ain't no way out.
5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or Sport Utility Vehicles. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and company motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.
6. Teenagers can't sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.
7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or any place in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain.
8. You can't have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.

9. Good places for the Blues: a. Highway b. Jailhouse c. An empty bed d. Bottom of a whiskey glass
10. Bad places for the Blues: a. Nordstrom's b. Gallery openings c. Ivy league institutions d. Golf courses

11. No one will believe it's the Blues if you wear a suit, 'less you happen to be a old ethnic person, and you slept in it.

12. You have the right to sing the Blues if: a. You older than dirt b. You blind c. You shot a man in Memphis
d. You can't be satisfied
13. You don't have the right to sing the Blues if: a. You have all your teeth b. You were once blind but now can see c. The man in Memphis lived d. You have a pension fund

14. Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.
15. If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the Blues

16. Other acceptable Blues beverages are: a. Cheap wine b. Whiskey or bourbon c. Muddy water d. Nasty black coffee
17. The following are NOT Blues beverages: a. Perrier b. Chardonnay c. Snapple d. Slim Fast

18. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it's a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So is the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broke-down cot. You can't have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.

19. Some Blues names for women: a. Sadie b. Big Mama c. Bessie d. Fat River Dumpling

20. Some Blues names for men: a. Joe b. Willie c. Little Willie d. Big Willie
21. Women with names like Michelle, Amber, Debbie, and Heather can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

22. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit: a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.) b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Melon, Kiwi, etc.) c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not "Kiwi.")
23. I don't care how tragic your life: if you own even one computer, you cannot sing the blues.

From Outlier Music

Tiptoeing toward disaster

The City of Springfield is repaving St. James Ave. near the Rt. 291 entrances. I was headed that way yesterday when I saw the signs: Bump and Grooved Surface. I reduced my speed a little but what astounded me was the way the sports utility vehicles around me were practically tiptoeing over the bump! What the hell good is having a "rugged, adventurous, pathfinding, exploring, blah, blah, blah" vehicle when you treat it like a baby carriage carrying a newborn? And as usual, nearly every SUV held one person only-- the driver.

Ethanols and other biofuels are coming under increased criticism for turning farmland into fuel land; biofuels are tagged as one of the more immediate causes of the current world food crisis. But all fuel usage has its cost. I wish there was a way gas pumps could give a precise calculation of these costs, something like: "Using this gallon of gas will remove blank number of grains of rice from a poor family's food bowl, contribute to blank number of new asthma cases, etc."

One thing of which I am pretty convinced is that for every mile you drive in an SUV, you lower your emotional and moral IQ by an unknown but commensurate degree, sorta like, the more TV you watch, the stupider you get. I saw an SUV advertised on TV the other day which has two separate DVD players, so your kids don't have to fight over what to watch. OMG, does anybody remember looking out the window, playing Twenty Questions, License Plate Bingo, or I'm thinking of a color?

I have a TV and I have a car and I use both nearly every day. My knees are too bad to ride a bike and I'd certainly miss discussing the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica with my sister, but I can't escape the growing unease of operating on borrowed time.

Cartoon: Chris Madden, The Beast That Ate the Earth

Crazy juxtaposition of the day

CNN this morning:
separated by two commericials:
Food riots in Haiti
oyster eating contest in New Orleans
35 dozen in 8 minutes

The snow job: why personal responsibility won't end poverty

Yesterday Bob Herbert at the New York Times wrote about the apparent futility of every effort we've taken so far to end the war in Iraq and change our nation for the better. Herbert described the results of our lack of collective power in concise and heartbreaking terms:

The U.S., once the greatest can-do country on the planet, now can’t seem to do anything right. The great middle class has maxed out its credit cards and drained dangerous amounts of equity from family homes. No one can seem to figure out how to generate the growth in good-paying jobs that is the only legitimate way of putting strapped families back on their feet.

The nation’s infrastructure is aging and in many places decrepit. Rebuilding it would be an important source of job creation, but nothing on the scale that is needed is in sight. ......The U.S. seems almost paralyzed, mesmerized by Iraq and unable to generate the energy or the will to handle the myriad problems festering at home. The war will eventually cost a staggering $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. When he was asked on “Democracy Now!” about who is profiting from the war, he said the two big gainers were the oil companies and the defense contractors.....This is the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

This morning Jo-Ann Moriarty at the Springfield Republican writes about the effect of poverty which, many say, is shared disproportionately by Western Massachusetts. Last year Springfield was ranked the sixth poorest city in the nation. In the nearby city of Holyoke, Mayor Michael Sullivan talks about homeless families being sent from the Eastern part of the state to shelters in Holyoke; if those families move into apartments there, then the overall poverty rate of the city increases.

No one who lives around here likes dealing with the effects of poverty, and why should we? Run-down houses, broken streets and litter-filled empty lots are just the physical signs. We have a high student drop-out rate, high unemployment, crime. The vast majority of that crime is committed by poor people against poor people, but that is still small comfort for the non-poor. The bonds between poor and yet having faith in the future and some dignity in the meantime are nearly broken. Too many of the rest of us revel in apathy.

The question we all want to know the answer to is, why are things the way they are? Part of it has to be the decline in our industrial base over the last forty years, hardly unique to Western Mass. Our industrial manufacturers-- the ones that weren't driven out of business-- moved their operations to places that could increase their bottom line. What's replaced them, for the most part, is service jobs: you wait on me at Burger King, I wait on you at CVS, we wait and are waited on by PCAs, child care workers, teachers' aides and security guards. A $9 an hour, 35 hours a week job yields an annual salary that barely topping $16,000.

Most of the dialogue and much of the anger in our community focuses on personal responsibility. In press conferences about the gang problem, pronouncements about the homeless and the drop-out rate, and in exchanges on Springfield's Masslive forum, the poor are admonished for failing to take control of their destiny. Citizens decry the "entitlement mentality" of food stamp users, welfare recipients and those on SSI.

To challenge this perspective is to be accused of enabling, of making excuses for the poor, but that is not the intent of anti-poverty activists. We shake our heads in discouragement when someone throws away yet another chance, and we encourage and cheer poor people and each other on when someone succeeds in moving ahead. But we don't believe that if everyone took personal responsibility, got a job, or stayed in school, poverty would disappear. Of course people think of individual responsibility first, because its apparent lack is the easiest to see. Why does that woman have children she can't afford to feed? Why don't they pick the papers up out of their yard? The result of poverty is mistaken for its cause.

So picture this: One day you wake up and discover that every kid in the city is refusing to drop out of school, every addict has stopped using, and every unemployed person is demanding a job. What do you think will happen? I picture chaos as our institutions collapse trying to meet the needs of people who have taken personal responsibility of their lives.

As long as the majority of us think that all poor people could stop being poor if they just wanted it hard enough, then we will fail to make the connection between poverty and the war, poverty and corporations, poverty and globalization.. And that will be just fine with our current policymakers and the economic elite, because they like things the way they are.They're the only ones benefiting in a really big way

Yes, take individual responsibility and by all means expect it from others, but don't stop there. Look up the food chain and demand real solutions. We all deserve a chance.

graphic from Stir Your World and CensusScope.

Old habits die hard

I hate shopping and avoid it as much as possible, but yesterday was one of those days when I had to be out and about.

I went through Burger King's drive-though to get a cup of coffee and that cup of coffee, in styrfoam and with a plastic lid, was handed to me in a paper bag! I folded the bag and handed it back. (When I've handed bags back in the past in grocery and convenience stores, I've often seen the clerk try to throw the bag away! That means I have to take the time to say, 'Don't throw that away! Save it for the next customer!" On my end: I should buy a decent reusable coffee cup and bring it with me when I go out.

Then I stopped at Stop and Shop for milk, cantalope and flowers and decided it was a good time to buy a couple of their cheap and sturdy recycle bags. As I fumbled for my wallet, I saw that the bagboy was packing everything-- recycled bags included!-- into a plastic bag. On my end: if I'd brought one of my bags from home, which, so far, I only remember to do 50% of the time, the bagboy's choice would have been unnecessary.

Another side of seniors

Seniors in the Western Mass area are leaders in the anti-war movement. Don't know who this woman is, but she's beautiful.

20 beds and 60 days-- Seattle's homeless policy goes too far and not far enough

Last year, after much criticism of the vicious destruction of personal property at one of Seattle's homeless encampments, the city agreed to develop new rules for the sweeps of encampments. Yet even as of last month, the destruction continued. Seattle MetBlogs.

Now the new rules have finally been issued. Sweeps will continue, but for any three or more encampments:

• Campers on public property will get 72 hours notice that a sweep will take place.
• Personal belongings will be stored for up to 60 days
• Outreach workers will be sent to the camps before the sweep to help plug residents into services.
• The city will add 20 more shelter beds.

Problem is, there are 6,000 to 8,000 people homeless in Seattle.

Graphic from the August, 2007 Civil City Sleep-Out at the Anti-Poverty blog.

More homeless elders on the street than ever before

Homeless men and women aged 62 or older are the fastest-growing population among the homeless, a new study finds. On any given night, between 3,000 and 4,000 elders are on the streets of L.A. or in shelters.

Shelter Partnership, Inc. has used these findings to underline its new strategic plan to develop permanent affordable housing. You can read more about it here.

A closer look at the ocean's plastic layer of garbage

A few months ago I wrote about a sea of plastic waste floating just below the water in a huge area of the North Pacific. Well, the blogger New York Nerd got an email from some folks who actually decided to go see it.

What people don’t get is that it’s not really a patch and it’s not really an island, both of which you might be able to contain and control. No, what we found is much worse. It’s like a gigantic toxic stew and it’s a big big problem that we need to pay attention to now.

There's links to at his site to YouTube videos of what they saw. Check it out.

Graphic from Buffalo Readings; this page is a good source of other information about this catastrophe.