The Fire of Life

The Fire of Life

http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-fire-of-life-oxidation-is-process.html

Oxidation is a process which uses oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide. Anything that burns is oxidizing. Our body heat is slow oxidation - we burn our food to keep warm. And oxidation also occurs in soil and compost as dead plants and animals rot, giving off heat just as in fire only slower. That's why "fast" or "hot" composting can reach boiling point or even (in dry conditions such as large piles of dry leaves or wood chips on a hot summer day) start afire ("spontaneous combustion"). The combined body heat of trillions of microbes (molds, bacteria, viruses) and tiny critters such as worms and insects builds up heat sufficient to blow off steam when the pile is opened. Similarly you can exhale steam on a cold winter day And when an animal is butchered outdoors in the winter steam rises from the carcass).

Biological heat (bioheat) is amazing. In early Spring the stinkweed plant generates enough of it (up to 15 degrees Fahrenheit above the surrounding temperature) to melt right through the snow, allowing it to be one of the season's first plants to sprout up. The heat in a well-functioning fast-type composting pile or enclosed compost reactor can reach temps sufficient to kill off some diseases - a little similar to the fever with which humans and some other animals get rid of some diseases.

The amount of chemical and biological oxidation (oxygen being destroyed and carbon dioxide being created) that's going on now on the planet (forest fires and other wood burning, coal burning, oil burning, gasoline burning, natural gas burning, etc.) is not being anywhere near balanced off by the amount of oxygen-creation carbon dioxide-using processes such as photosynthesis. Since we're not only not decreasing but are in fact still INCREASING the amount of oxidation processes, we humans (for all our talk of going green) are actually speeding up the catastrophic weather changes already evident. It is abundantly clear (to those of us unafraid to open our eyes and honestly look at the facts) that we on Earth have no choice whatsoever other than go through some extremely radical changes in our lifestyles. For the most part, these changes are now being forced upon us, such as in the reduced capacity to build in the face of weather events that lay more and more of Earth's citizens low. We are to some extent being forced to hunker down and cooperatively endure more frequent losses of infrastructure such as occurred on the east coast with Hurricane Sandy.

There are reputable and thoughtful researchers who don't think humanity has a chance any more, that we human beings bound for extinction like the couple of hundred per day of other species dying out. The interaction of: human population growth; loss of soil due to erosion; ocean acidification and pollution from e.g. oil and radioactivity leaks; and international competition for limited resources make it clear the Earth ecosystem we knew is ending and we don't know what the new age coming is going to look like. But they, I think, are wrong to give up. Some of our wisest scientific thinkers are confirming the absolute power over the material world that the spiritual world has - that miracles are in fact possible and happening every day. The technological miracles of the past century alone are mushrooming in number and scale equally as fast as the problems developing. With a profound increase in loving, cooperative action we can continue to summon the miracles that God or Science or whatever you want to call the Power behind our amazing (and ultimately harmonious) Universe has been bestowing.

Jim McCue

Dream

We are alive in a moment of Earth history in which the world we once knew is clearly ending. We are in an extinction event. The ecosystem (and the weather is a part of that) is in many ways collapsing. And we're part of it. The relatively thin skin of the planet is in decline - in number of species and (I think also) quantity of life.

At the same time - like the phoenix bird rising from the ashes of the death of the old - marvelous new technologies are coming into possibility, which (should we manage to get along well enough to survive this most dangerous time) can stabilize life and establish a new ecosystem. We are like the caterpillar who can't imagine the butterfly which it is to become. Having played a central role in the destruction of so much of the living community of which we are a part, only now as we awaken to how much we have lost are we beginning to suffer the consequences of the destruction of the ecosystem services formerly provided by those living things that are gone and dying. The weather has been modified and softened by the living things - soil life, plants, animals all together in communities - No more.

The weather extremes are getting greater because we did not respect that plants and the other non-human animals are alive. We used the ecosystem as if it were just a big collection of things - plants and animals to be eaten, burned or whatever we wanted to do with them. Now there's this terrible loneliness for what we are losing so much of (for me it's the frogs) which can only be eased by working in service of whatever life we CAN save and nurture.

I dream of a world in which the young learn from the mistakes of those who were once young. Where the blind logic of argument dissolves into the humanity of love. Where we all finally manage to stop looking up and down at each other. Where food grown is food shared, period - no buying and selling, no advertising, no having to be wasted because it wasn't able to be sold. Where dictators take off their crowns BEFORE they get knocked off. Where our rapidly advancing communication technology is finally allowed to tune in to the songs of the trees rather than to the grunts of football players. Where the fresh new Spring green growth of meadows is not injured and stunted by noisy stinky lawn mowers and weed whackers spewing gas fumes. Where lawn fertilizer/pesticide applicators (poisoning us while in mortal pursuit of that most deadly of enemies - the dandelion weed) are replaced by mushroom growers and front yard gardeners and egg layers and horse riders and worm whisperers and visible nature spirits. Where pleasuring by mouth with poison fake "food" (later to suffer the pain of numerous medical problems caused by this "food") is replaced by a sensitivity to the complex delights of the real thing - real live food, grown without chemicals and with all the nutrients that give it its delicious taste.

Our taste buds have been so dumbed down that we have been deluded into thinking the only tastes are sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Whether it be corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup or sugar (or "sucrose" which is just another way of saying "sugar" without the manufacturer having to admit to having added sugar to what you're eating) or whether it's aspartame or nutrasweet or fructose or glucose or whatever - we're engulfed in the sweet taste to smother the tastes of the industrial chemicals that are also in that highly processed food. The many trace minerals and other nutrients in a healthy plant are what humans have co-evolved to enjoy. The profit motive has over the centuries provided the incentive to compete successfully by stretching out food with fillers and copious advertisements, so that nowadays the eating experience is so often about TRYING to satisfy one's hunger than actually being able to do so. Chemicals such as monosodium glutamate are added which, aside from whatever medical damage they do, are there in your mouth for no other reason than to "enhance taste" (increase your desire so you keep on buying and eating.)

We live in Upside Down World, where many of the things we believe are not actually true. Ever since we humans learned to talk, we started to figure out how to lie to each other (and to ourselves). The natural tendency is to believe that which is in synch with one's desires (conscious or otherwise). So our history is full of pleasant lies we've told ourselves. And these lies continue to do damage.

Here's an example of an upside down belief so many people have. If I say "Germs are bad," many would respond something like, "Well, duh!" But microbes are NOT bad. In fact, most of them are good - either directly or indirectly - from a human point of view. We've got to not only stop making war on the microbes but nurture them - because (among the other services they do us) diverse microbial communities actually suppress outbreaks of disease.

Centuries of what you might call bandaid economics has brought us to think we are in an enemyship relationship with microbes, when in fact microbes are even an essential part of the functioning of our digestive systems.

Not problem-solving holistically by looking at the big picture, we solve one problem by making another. Overcrowded conditions in the cities led to the invention of the flush toilet - staving off disease caused by malnutrition-induced lower immune systems exposed to human waste no longer being returned to the soil as it was in past rural times. So what was once the fertility of the soil ends up polluting rather than being a resource. Our rivers overfull of nutrients are choking the oceans, while a very high percentage of our waste is organic but going to landfills (where it will ferment to cause greenhouse gases). Band-aids which make the problems worse in the long run.

The only way to maintain sanity in a world which in some ways really is insane is to focus confidently on your version of the dream - that which most makes YOU happy.

Life is good.

Some people approach challenges with such a positive attitude that they are able to accomplish way more than those of us (such as myself) who are frequently stymied by fears (unconscious or otherwise). With Green Building Alliance's Inspire lecture series at Phipps Conservatory I got to hear a lecture (more of a rallying cry to America) by a person I would have to call a saint in action.

His name is Stephen Ritz of the South Bronx, one of the most difficult urban neighborhoods in the United States. He and those he has been working with have taken conditions most of us would consider unbearable (and unbelievable that they actually exist in this country) - pollution so bad many of the students need inhalers; poverty and lack of school funding so stark the normal things like functioning bathrooms and plumbing we wouldn't consider not having are not givens; violent crime a daily fact of life - and turned these problems into chances to transform lives and communities.

Like Hazelwood, they have no grocery store. They are a food desert. When you're poor and don't have the ability to get to a grocery store to buy decent food, you end up relying on junk food, sodas and candy - not the way to grow sane adults. This is why we have a food club in Hazelwood, and why we're working with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to start a community-owned grocery here.

Talking about how children can't learn when they're fed either not enough or the processed junk that passes as food in so many poor neighborhoods (and which causes any number of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and attention deficit disorder), he asked, "How many kids are going to bed hungry tonight? And how many kids are eating themselves to death?" But rather than get discouraged by the inhumanity of a society that allows some to starve and others to overeat so much food laced with chemicals that they suffer enormous problems (so that some corporations can make a buck selling junk), Stephen teaches the strategy of "endless resourcefulness" - making use of what you have, never giving up. His students recycle: plastic bottles into plant growing structures such as greenhouses; cardboard into furniture; organic garbage into compost; old buildings and abandoned lots into plant factories with green roofs. He's taken the fears of children living in such circumstances which lead to drugs and criminality, and led them into making money inventing and building even computer-monitored vegetable and herb growing operations. Those on the way to suffering prison and early death are now making money designing and building landscapes for high-end residential and business customers. Making lemonade when life hands you lemons.

Recognizing that the entire ecosystem of the Earth is in a state of emergency, as I do, can yield crippling depression. But though I work to wake fellow citizens to the absolute life and death nature of this emergency, a balance must be kept which recognizes that the problems ARE solvable - IF we work together. The same science which is wrecking even the weather of the planet by our addiction to (and wars for) fossil fuels and combustion processes such as the internal combustion engine automobile, the same science can and must be used to transform our whole society. And it needs to happen now, not ten years down the line, not thirty years, NOW! People say Oh you'll never get the whole world to love each other, Good luck with that, and You've got to look out for yourself, you can't change the whole world. But what the majority of cynics don't know is Number 1 - The best science is proving the miraculous, Number 2 - The problems are so at core now that there is no saving yourself, there is no escape, this is the big one, what are you gonna do, leave the planet? And 3 - The key to the miraculous (and I'm talking real science now, concrete results of our good intentions that go beyond what most think the laws of science allow) is love. We're all connected to each other.

As goofy, mystical, illogical, and unrealistic as it sounds, we are connected to the whole universe beyond time and space. This is why there have always been miracles happen. All life is a miracle. When a loved one is injured or even killed, often the supposedly impossible happens - hearts make connection at whatever distance. When you're trying to do something good, something loving (like feed people) your love spreads and the next thing you know others are working together with you. When Hurricane Sandy knocked the hell out of parts of the east coast, Stephen Ritz and so many others somehow managed to reach the deepest level of joy in themselves by saying "Si se puede!" - Yes we can! And they did! The kids who had learned from birth ducking bullets and knives are now building living roofs and living walls and recycling the organic waste we've been letting go to the landfill to grow good quality food to feed each other for free and sell to those who can afford to pay for it. They're not just learning survival at a minimum wage throwing unhealthy poor quality cheeseburgers; they're learning to enjoy cooperative work producing something to be proud of - top quality vegetables and herbs, and for a profit.

Do you not think THAT is miraculous?

To find out more about Stephen Ritz's Green Bronx Machine, look at the links the Green Building Alliance has provided at:
http://www.go-gba.org/content.aspx?ContentID=341 And even if you can't support their work financially, liking and sharing them on facebook and twitter and anywhere else will help them by spreading the word:
http://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_ritz_a_teacher_growing_green_in_the_south_bronx.html

ALL life is good. Every person and every creature, every living thing has a purpose in the beautiful holographic symphony which is the Universe.

Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org

Emergy - Embodied Energy

Embodied Energy

Things are so much more than what they seem at first glance. A child sees something that looks good and is soon harmed by it. That's the way so many consumers are with food. We want to believe advertisers that say something is healthy, when in fact it's been candied up and is full of additives that make it look good. And some of the ingredients of these "foods" serve (the manufacturers) by increasing rather than satisfying the appetite. So what should be making us stronger is actually making us weaker. The profit motive has made it easier to make money by lowering the quality of food.

Thoughtful people have come up with the phrase "embodied energy" to highlight seemingly unconnected impacts such as environmental degradation from the creation of some of our products, in order to try to help us step back from some of our destructive decisions. Though our first impulse is to choose the product or service that is least expensive, the survivors-to-be among us are making what used to be called "moral" choices. These choices complicate things but ultimately lead to a happier life. With the interactions between changes at this "quantum change" moment in history, we are at what might be called a time of Instant Karma. At this most turbulent time - with its glass half-full of miraculous technological advances and its glass half-empty with billions in poverty - the chickens are coming home to roost for those who don't yet know that the most powerful scientific law is Love. We humans have to radically widen our circles of love in each of our lives or we're going to go extinct. It's that simple. We're on what the Buddhists call the Wheel of Samsara - the constant seesaw from pleasure to pain, happiness to unhappiness that we swing back and forth with - until we learn to care about more than ourselves alone.

Looking at the bigger picture helps show how not all food is created equal. Some food is grown with the help of wage slaves. If food is gotten to your table with the help of a huge amount of gasoline to transport it, it has more of what is called "embodied energy" than something grown right nearby. If it was grown with the help of synthetic fertilizers, it has even more embodied energy because it took energy to make the fertilizers. With the human population and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mushrooming, and ecosystems collapsing, the costs of food and energy will continue to rise until we transform our society into one in which cooperation rather than competition is what makes money. A system which promotes warfare and enslaves and impoverishes vast sectors of our species as it tortures and destroys other life forms can't help but end up destroying even those of us who are on top at the moment.

Food that is procured with the least amount of destruction has the least amount of embodied energy in it, and so will be best in the long run. It is a mistaken assumption that we humans will always be the way we are. Civilizations come and go. Some functioned with human sacrifice as an integral part. We lately in the upper income sector of the planet have been eating more and more meat - not necessary and quite damaging as far as embodied energy. Eating the animals: poisons us via bioaccumulation up the food chain; takes vastly more energy, labor, feed, and other resources than if we would just eat the plants rather than feed them to the animals first; and ultimately forces us to compete ever more brutally on the international scene for fossil fuels.

If we stay narrowly focused on only our own short-term interests, we'll be destructive of others and we'll hurt ourselves too in the long run. The School of Hard Knocks is one of the Universe's most extensive learning institutions. The amount of suffering on this planet alone is unfathomable, but it has a reason (especially in this time of great change). We are being called to progress into a bigger community. No longer is it a good strategy to only love your own family or country or race or religion or political persuasion or even species. The key to sustainable agriculture - agriculture capable of keeping humanity healthy for the long term - is biophilia - love of all life. Everybody enjoys being in natural areas, surrounded by a myriad of plants, animals, and smaller life forms. The whole planet is at a stage at which we have to work as one unit, one being essentially.

We can stop making ourselves sick and stop needing to hurt others to make money. A better world IS possible. The children's movie called Monsters,Inc. pointed out that energy can be made just as easily by making people laugh as by scaring people. The nightmare world we are living in now will pass, but not until we stand up and dance to the new reality - that all life on Earth is one.

To get a glimpse into how such a seemingly delightful substance as sugar can so be insidiously packed full of unnecessary embodied energy in the form of human labor that you'd be far better off in the long run staying away from it, watch the trailer for the 2007 film The Price of Sugar at http://thepriceofsugar.com/trailer.shtml .
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Hazelwood Urban Gardens http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com is in dire need of both those with administrative expertise and gardener volunteers. Please call Alex Bodnar, HUGS treasurer, at 412-422-1886 at his restaurant.
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My out-of-body-experiences and their importance

In 1973-4, I was working night shift at Mayview State Mental Hospital and taking psych, drama, and writing at Pitt night school. First at the Medical Center, in which the patients were also physically sick, and later at Bengs Building I had, through exhaustion from caffeine and whatever other factors, what later through reading I came to understand were out of body or near death experiences. Since I didn't die, I call them out of body experiences. There was an hour long break on night shift at Medical Center, during which I went into the visitors room and laid down on the couch and immediately fell asleep and (you know how sometimes we can tell when it's time to wake up because we have some kind of internal clock) slept what seemed like an hour and I jumped up and went out to look at the clock - but much less than an hour had elapsed, so I laid back down...This occurred several times until the hour really was up. And this happened on more than one night. I looked at the clock, and a couple times spoke to the older fellow employee about how I thought the hour was up, but she kept reading her book as if I wasn't there...I later put together that my spirit only jumped out of my body to see what time it was each time.

The one out of body experience in the Bengs Building was much more deep and meaningful, with increasing meaning as I have remembered it in light of reading about obe's years later, and I have a scientific perspective about it which integrates the science w/spirituality. While working on a paper on autism for psych, and at that time taking caffeine pills like they were candy, I finally concluded that I may have been subclinically autistic myself, and I remembered the one line in a book given me by a priest I counseled with after having been rejected ("not mature enough" I think) for the seminary after grade school - The one sentence was "The Universe is a living manifestation of God." I was so exhausted that I gave up working on the paper, fell down sitting on a couch in the dayroom of the ward I was supposed to be taking care of (wishing I was in the back corner, a more strategic place should the one patient who was "on high" and potentially violent wake up, or should the nurse come on her rounds...I would be more likely to wake up and pretend I had been awake so the nurse wouldn't find I'd been sleeping on the job)...Well, a vortex of energy sucked me into a tunnel to a light...or a vortex of energy brought the light to me I don't know which (and there was a crackling sound as if a thousand leaves were rushing or electrical sparks or some sound like that) and I thought I was dying and with all my might got myself sitting back up and then wondering what that marvelous light was...and then falling back and coming to the light again (or it coming to me) and again becoming scared thinking I was dying and so pulling again with all my might to sit up again and then again wondering about that light...maybe five or six times...I felt that light was a being, loving...and I when I was down was watching from near the celing in the far corner of the dayroom (the most strategic place) what was then happening (or going to happen, you see we're in a different dimension here, somehow above time-space) when I had what was the first what might or might not be called the first auditory hallucination I had ever had (despite a long history of psychedelic drug use) - I heard as clear as a bell, each time I succumbed to tiredness and fell back to sleep on the couch and came to (or was come to by) the light, a heavy metal door opening which indicated that either the nurse was coming onto the ward or the "on high" patient was coming out of the side (isolation) room or one of the other patients were coming out of the group bedroom...Years later, I remember the Jimmy Stewart character in It's a Wonderful Life who is given a look by his angel at what the world would be without him...I would have watched as my body passed out on the couch was discovered by the nurse, or some other scenario which would ensue if I died then...Previous to the door opening, I felt the whole environment to be alive with vibration...The next morning I decided all the drugs I had taken over the years had finally "burnt my brain" (caused brain damage), but there was an awe in my memory of the experience, and I remember swearing during it (the light being helped me with a loving non-judgemental life review) that I would never smoke a cigarette again...a resolution I have broken since many times...And I read of a study that claimed to find that obe's actually more fully integrated the brain (such as between the left and right hemispheres) rather than do damage to the brain. For many years I said psychedelics can be mind expanding, but they are not soul expanding. And I do nothing illegal now, though I do advocate the legalization under prescription of psychedelics (including the mild psychedelic and tranquilizer marijuana), but use of these while they were illegal has been a huge mental complication in my life, since each experience has to be filtered through the question Does this represent a "flashback" or is what I'm experiencing perfectly natural?...I concluded that I had not damaged my brain - with all the psychedelics, anyway - when I aced the CLEP (College Level Examination Program) which gave me (minus 15 credits of distribution of studies necessary regardless of the test results) the first two years of college credit without having to take the classes..."I'm speechless", I said to the woman who told me the test results. "I am too", she said. So now I'm listed as mentally ill, on disability, and, with this low monthly income I am free to work on whatever I feel is my own unique gift/contribution to life, including having helped found a community organization, a community newspaper and community garden organization.
So how crazy am I? You decide. I know that the experiences of such a "mystical" type as out of body experiences don't make sense in ordinary physics. But the most advanced, wise science is now coming around to an acceptance of the miraculous.
All life is miraculous.
Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org

Plan B

There are no formulas for success in this world. What works one day won't the next. In this time of great change, those who think things will stay the same are planning for a future that is not going to be there. Those unable to wake up to the new reality will be stuck-on-stupid, like zombies stumbling around with their eyes closed. Our Plan A's are not working; it's time to start considering alternatives.

I'm sorry for feeling that in order to do an honest job I need to write about some very serious subjects, but this is how I see things at present:

Environmental feedback effects are bringing on catastrophically rapid climactic changes. Barring the miraculous, nothing will stop this radical change. And it's not decades or years down the line, it's now. Even if somehow people all over the world were able to work together enough to stop all combustion processes such as burning gasoline, oil, coal (and even biofuels), permafrost melting and fermentation (emitting co2 and methane) - along with melting and consequent release of undersea methane frozen till now in ice - will make the climate shocks to date look tame in comparison.

I do, however, believe in the miraculous. First of all, all life is miraculous. For instance, though we humans have learned how to use phenomena such as electricity, we really don't understand it. Each moment and every day is a miracle, whether you personally are too arrogant to realize it. Along with the quantum increase in problems - such as pollution, biodiversity loss, high-tech warfare, human-caused weather changes, overpopulation - the progress of science is also mushrooming.

A silver lining to the planetary emergency is that inclusiveness of rich and poor in this crisis is forcing to the forefront (of a media previously controlled by money) the naked truth of how technological progress has been held back by the financial concerns of the defenders of the status quo. A prime example, with little known Pittsburgh history, is the life of the inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla worked in Pittsburgh. There is a street named after him in Hazelwood. Were it not for the economically driven dumming down of our educational system, every citizen grade school age and older in the world would know of Tesla as well as we know of Einstein, Edison, JP Morgan, Westinghouse, and Marconi. He helped Westinghouse, Edison, Marconi, and Morgan make a lot of their money, and then his work was destroyed when his further inventions threatened their profits. Planned obsolescence, which should have been made illegal a long time ago, has also held back progress due to the status quo. For an intro to how the long term health of our society has been damaged by short-term money-making, take a look at this short video-clip called
The Light Bulb Conspiracy - The Untold Story of Planned Obsolescence
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wYuggmRLjgQ

Mushrooming technological progress in the field of communications is clearing the way for harmonious human change on a previously impossible scale. Since everyone knows we're all in trouble, and with our newfound capacity to throw massive amounts of information at the speed of light (electronically), we can use the same flexibility of mind which gave our species top status to transform our technology to life-nurturing rather than the current dog-eat-dog model, which is based on the assumption of scarcity. What's holding up feeding the world and restoring the planet's ecosystem to health is economics, not technology.

If we get off our addictive mindset (which says we have no choice but to do things this way - driving in our cars alone rather than carpooling and bicycling and walking; making money doing destructive things such as selling junk "food", manufacturing weapons, fighting over oil and other natural resources) - we can stop committing suicide via Earth ecosystem destruction. If we: stop competing and work together with Nature to let Earth be reforested; change to electric vehicles fueled by green energy (including the "free energy" Tesla was working on); massively convert our industrial agriculture (which tortures life for short-term profit) to pro-life local agriculture (which produces by nurturing the whole web of life rather than naming certain species as enemies and going to war on them) - then we have a shot at remaining on the planet's list of keeper species. It requires a more ethical consciousness.

Jim McCue
412-421-6496
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://facebook.com/alllifelover

Greater Pittsburgh Green

The only real leaders at this great moment in Earth history are those who both: recognize that radical change is both needed and inevitable now; and look forward to those changes no matter how difficult they may be. Here are some local examples of people who are working to facilitate these changes. These are but a few of the many quietly and diplomatically transforming diverse problems into integrated solutions. And I think our success lies in somehow learning to enjoy working together on our common problems.

Fishes and Loaves Cooperative Ministries Buying Club
http://www.ststephen-hazelwood.org/flcm-buying-club
is addressing the long historical trend - fueled by mergers and acquisitions - of centralizing food distribution into larger and more distant retail outlets (resulting in food deserts). We no longer have any fresh quality produce in Hazelwood except what is either accessible by car or grown in our gardens.

Hazelwood Urban Gardens
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com , formerly http://hazelwoodharvestinc.blogspot.com
was formed to: make ours a more walkable neighborhood (groceries within walking distance); re-direct organic waste back to the soil where it belongs (where it went before we invented "civilization"); help Nature's processes clean up our polluted land; learn and educate regarding nutrition - food's connection to health; beautify the community; provide healthy and enjoyable exercise; increase property values; provide positive outlet for young peoples' energy; and nurture communication among people who would not normally meet.

The Sierra Club is among other things working to get us off of fossil fuels.
http://alleghenysc.org

Pittsburgh Permaculture
http://pittsburghpermaculture.org
is a group of agricultural experts taking our damaged land and turning it back into attractive, productive, and environmentally useful self-sustaining ecosystems. Hazelwood Food Forest is Pittsburgh's first food forest.

YMCA Hazelwood
http://ymcaofpittsburgh.org/locations/hazelwood-ymca
with the help of Blackberry Meadows Farm
http://blackberrymeadows.com
has established an educational and food-producing garden which includes a playpump in the form of a seesaw which the children can use to draw rainwater up to the garden which is behind and above the Y building. This garden also includes a greenhouse which Hazelwood community gardeners shared getting herb and veggie starts going in in late winter last year.

A consortium of groups is envisioning the use of the former Hazelwood Presbyterian Church as a community center which could include a place where people learn indoor food production, preparation, and sale. Growing trends toward locally-produced natural food (including fish) head toward providing some food security in a breathtakingly quickly changing world. Food may be grown on the roof in what is being called a "living roof." Growing Power http://growingpower.org in Milwaukee is a successful example of turning city organic waste into healthy food - inspiring those here at http://pittsburghaquaponics.org and Floriated Interpretations http://floriated.com and Schwartz Market http://1317eastcarson.blogspot.com and sproutfund.net/project/page/3 to establish similar socially conscious ventures here. John Todd's "living machine" concept, one of which was established was established with the help of Pittsburgh native David W. Orr, (who spoke at Phipps Conservatory recently) at Oberlin College some 20 or so years ago, is another example of safely and attractively transforming organic waste (in this case sewage) into fertilizer for the production of plants http://www.centerforsustainability.org/resources.php?category=226&root= .

The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank continues to feed by supplying farmstands, but also fosters food self-sufficiency by encouraging the recycling of waste biomass to soil, with the recognition that natural organic gardens which encourage a variety of life are a way to help people provide for themselves. And they are interested in helping w/Hazelwood's farmers market/community grocery/co-op/eatery/culinary and food production training center should it get off the ground.

Healcrest Urban Community Farm in Garfield
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Llh19/healcresturbancommunityfarm
is empowering low-income residents by educating them on how to grow food and culinary and medicinal herbs.

Homewood Community Garden in Frick Park is Pittsburgh's oldest.
http://batchgeo.com/map/pghcommunityfoodgardens

The Pittsburgh Garden Experiment https://pittsburghgardenexperiment.org schedules hands-on and educational seminars where people network and help each other how to grow and process healthy food.

The worldwide Transition Movement, which has many sites in the UK, has one in Pittsburgh: http://transitionpgh.org They (we, I'm a part) are more aware than most how drastic the changes coming are, and are dedicated to cooperatively building resilience in this time of great change.

Grow Pittsburgh http://growpittsburgh.org teaches people how to grow food, grows food, and builds and supports gardens. Hazelwood Urban Gardens is grateful for their helping starting our first, the Ladora Way Urban Farm.