November Peak Moment Newsletter

I've been posting occasional Peak Moment videos relevant to the iCreate mission, mostly sustainability. Who couldn't relate to "locally reliant living for challenging times"? Here's the November Newsletter. 

Watch for: Community Garden Report from Joan Embree, iCreate updates including but not limited to music outreach update (mostly pictures from Tomas Wolff); Christmas Land performances by Kay, Pegeen and Lenora, meeting rescheduling, overdue report from last meeting.

click to view complete newsletter online

November 2011 news

We're exercising our self-reliance muscles to build infrastructure in the winter encampment site for Little House, our RV home. We're dragging water pipes through the forested hillsides and building solar panel racks. Our work is accompanied by thrilling calls of circling red-shouldered hawks and curious cackling ravens.

This peaceful place and slower pace feels in stark contrast to the quickly moving events swirling around the Occupy Movement, as it draws attention to the egregious wrongdoings on Wall Street at the expense of the many. We valued Bill Moyers' look back to How Wall Street Occupied America, and Richard Heinberg's big picture Memo to the #Occupy Movement, in which he reminds: "Given the finite nature of our planet and its resources, the recent trend of global economic expansion was destined to end."

Legalize Local Investing. Sign a petition supporting HR 2930, which will legalize investment in small local businesses. It's advocated by Michael Shuman author of Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity, and Peak Moment episode 44: The Slow-Mart Revolution.

Ideas for Sustainable Living: Undriving

A PeakMoment video: applying it here would call for additional considerations. We'd need better roads and bike paths here. How would golf carts count? Waivers? A point system with bonus points for walking and super humongous penalties for flying? What about trips to Albuquerque? Car pooling with a community ride share system? Undriving - Changing the Way We Think Peak Moment 205: Be the first in your group to get your Undriver License ? it's great fun! You pledge to reduce automobile use ? yours or others'. Seattle founder Julia Field's creative project is sparking imaginations and creativity by changing how people think about getting around ? be it skateboards, sailboats, or just plain skipping the trip! Undrivers of all ages are jumping on the bandwagon, changing assumptions, and telling their empowered stories. (Janaia's outrageous Undriver License goes wherever her bike goes). [http://www.undriving.org] Join the Peak Moment community - subscribe to email newsletter at http://www.peakmoment.tv on the right side. More

Eat Your Greens, or Your Gut Gets It

Another good article on healthy eating, community gardens, growing your own and more leafy green vegetables from Tom Philpott at MoJo (Mother Jones online). This, along with gardening tips, other community gardens, growing your own, locavore and other "green" topics have become regular features. "Eat Healthy" or "Eat Healthy because..." seems like a good name for this one.

While Big Food rams its Tater Tots and frozen pizza school lunch agenda through Congress, we're learning more about the effects of diets high in starchy foods and low in green vegetables. And it's not pretty.

[MoJo columnist, Tom Philpott] pointed yesterday to a vast recent Harvard study finding that heavy consumption of potatoes—even in non-fried forms—leads to unhealthy weight gain. Now, from UK scientists, comes a study (press release here; abstract here) suggesting that green vegetables may have even more dietary importance than we previously thought. (Hat tip Atlantic Life.) The researchers subjected mice to a diet stripped of vegetables, and found that after just three weeks, the mice lost 70 to 80 percent of a kind of white blood cell called intra-epithelial lymphocytes (IELs), which, the press release states, "play a critical role in monitoring the large number of micro-organisms present in the intestine, keeping infections at bay and maintaining a healthy gut."

The researchers posit that a substance known as indole-3-carbinol, prominent in leafy greens, is responsible for maintaining these white blood cells. Take it out of the diet, apparently, and the cells die. Here's a graphical depiction of their findings:

Image: Babraham Institute

One of the researchers, Marc Veldhoen, remarked that, "since the new diet contained all other known essential ingredients such as minerals and vitamins,” the results surprised him. But .... [f]oodstuffs are complex .... Whole foods interact with our bodies in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Read the rest of Tom Philpott's Eat Your Greens, or Your Gut Gets It and follow his column at MoJo (Mother Jones online)

Announcing the #NMCentennial #Gardens Program

Something for #Mountainair #CommunityGarden or perhaps the Manzano Mountain Art Council (partnering with MPS) to consider. Please note  that "priority will be given to both limited-resource communities and to projects that demonstrate strong collaborations and community support." 

Centennial Gardens - Call for Proposals
The New Mexico Centennial Gardens Program is an initiative of the New Mexico Centennial Foundation, working in partnership with state agencies and private partners. Thanks to the generosity of the Coca-Cola Foundation, the NM Centennial Foundation is able to provide grants to support school and community garden projects in New Mexico in 2012. Grants will be available at levels of $2,500, $5,000 and $10,000. To be eligible for a Centennial Garden grant, applicants must be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization or nonprofit K-12 school that is developing or currently maintaining a garden project that will help communities engage with fresh fruits and vegetables. Garden projects may be at any stage of development; planning, construction or operation. In selecting grant recipients, priority will be given to both limited-resource communities and to projects that demonstrate strong collaborations and community support. Relationships with food banks or other outlets to distribute food to New Mexicans in need are a plus. To download the guidelines and application please visit the NM Centennial website or call 505-984-2012. The application deadline is January 13, 2012.