Support your local small business this recession!

I went to visit a friend who is a small business owner today, and I felt so good shopping at her store.

Of course, it doesn't hurt her cause that she sells antiques. I LOVE old stuff because most things that have survived this long have to have had something good about them if they lasted this long, some of them hundreds of years. But I also love old stuff because when I buy it, it is being recycled into use once more. It wasn't created from precious resources from our planet just for my use, but it took resources from the earth for my grandmother and my mother (figuratively, of course) to use the product before it ever came to me. And what's better, I may be able to pass it on to one of my kids or grand kids later on.

Now that I have rationalized why I shopped on Black Friday with millions of other Americans, let me tell you why if I have to shop, I'll chose my local small business first.

Small business persons believe all the stories that have been handed down about the entrepreneurial spirit in this country. And most of today's mega businesses started out as small businesses. They wouldn't have made it if they didn't get any customers.

During these times of economic challenges for us all, it is so tempting to go to your big box store, wander the aisles, pick up what you want, and perhaps save a few bucks in the process.

But how far did you have to drive to get to that big box? How far did you have to wander around before you found your item? How long did you stand in line? Did you get good service? Were you able to talk to the owner, even give him or her a hug? Did the owner offer to make you a deal just because you're a good guy? I doubt it!

Its during times like this when many of our favorite small businesses will go down the drain because they will lose their customer base as those formerly loyal to them head off down the interstate to the nearest Wal-Mart or K-Mart or Target.

Then when times get better, voila! The big boxes are still around thriving, as usual for their ever larger customer base, but on the corner near you, just down the street, where is that little coffee shop, the car mechanic, the print shop? They will all be gone, to where heaven only knows. Their shops will now have dusty or broken windows, graffiti etched all around it, decaying until finally it is bulldozed or burned down, creating an empty space on the block like a smile with a tooth missing.

When this happens, your only choice will be to continue to shop at the big box. If your daughter or son wants to get a retail job, they'll have to apply for a job at the big box, whether this is where they would like to work or not. Whats more, those cheap prices won't be so cheap any more. Competition will no longer be as tough. When you beat the competition and there is just you left, why set your prices low? You're the winner now! You can charge whatever you want now for that new blouse or TV.

And this has happened in many of our small towns. Take my hometown in Iowa, for example.

When I was a kid, we had two major grocery stores. Today we are lucky to have one. The original two went out of business when a nearby town got the area's first big box store.

Our small movie theatre....gone. After all, only one movie would play at a time. In Omaha, the moviegoer could visit a cinema-plex, and go ennie meenie miney moe in front of the marquee.

We now have one gas station/convenience store on one side of town. We used to have three, one on both sides and at least one in the middle. All of our car dealers are gone, as are the mechanics.

We still have our two bars, but then it's kind of hard to create big box taverns, just as it's difficult to replace the small hair salon. However, we no longer have a barber in town We used to have two drug stores in town. Now we have just one, but the soda shop that went with it is gone.

This is just one town that I can personally relate to. But as you go through small town after small town throughout the country, you'll see hollowed out shops with dusty and broken windows. We Americans have learned to shop where we can get the most for our dollar, no matter what we have to give up as a result of saving a few pennies here and there.

I am almost certain that my fellow towns people, if they could have seen the results of their driving three towns away to get their bargains at the big boxes, they would have given up their cents worth of savings in order to keep the local businesses they already had.

One exception to this trend was my brother's business. I am truly proud of his business prowess
in the midst of the big box craze. My brother was proud of his community and loved to serve his clientele. He sold appliances, and he personally serviced what he sold. His prices were somewhat higher than the big boxes, but he always had time to shoot the bull with you, and to do his work with integrity. He recently retired with a good nest egg after raising four children with his stay-at-home wife. He sold his business to his nephew who carries on the tradition of service that described my brother.

If only all small businesses could be so successful! As we know, the majority of small businesses will go belly-up within their first three years. The ones who make it out of this danger zone are still not home free. They will continue to put in 60 to 80 hour weeks, mortgage their homes, dot all the i's, and cross all the t's. They have to learn to deal with the feds, the state and local governments. They have to support the local midget baseball team and cancer fund drive. They put a float in the parade and have at least one tremendous sale each year that draws in the entire family to work.

So during this recession, support your local small business person. This is the person with whom to develop a relationship. Your small business person is near you, can give you the service you need, can order the merchandise you want. They most likely will sponsor your favorite cause once that relationship is developed.

But most of all, you both love your community! You love it because this is the community that nurtures (along with you) your children and grandchildren if you're lucky. It identifies who you are just about as much as your name and phone number.

And the small businesses? They depend on the people in this community to make their living, for which they will do one's best to see that you are pleased with what you buy from them and want to keep you, that special customer, happy. What a symbiotic relationship!

Let's not lose it! If you must, buy less, but make it local and small. It's an investment in the future of vitality for your community.

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Save your pee for your plants

Tonight I want to write about pee. Yep, that's pee, like in urine, tinkling in the potty, that yellowish liquid that really puts out a stink if it's not flushed down the stool frequently.

Well, that pee is a miracle solution for our plants. It has historically been used in many developing countries, and very likely, your ancestors used it, too, for fertilizer. Yes, fertilizer, one of the best!

And it's accessible to us all!

Nevertheless, this precious liquid, rich in ammonia, phosphorous and nitrogen, is flushed into our sewers and then into our rivers, already overly enriched with these nutrients. We don't want them in our waterways because they encourage the growth of plants with them, choking much of our little critters that help improve the health of our rivers.

So do you get where I'm going with this?

Yep, if you're a gardener, even if you live in a metropolitan area (and especially so), you need to be collecting that pee and fertilizing your sweet little cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, even corn. About the only crops it's not so good for are the root crops, since it tends to promote growth of plants' foliage more than the roots.

One warning, however: Keep a tight lid on your urine so the ammonia doesn't escape, and dilute it at least four to one with good old pure H2O. Pure urine will kill your plants because it is acidic.
But diluted, it will bring a richer green and vibrancy to your plants.

I visited http://www.citydirt.net/city_dirt/drinkpeedrinkpeedrinkpee.html today, and even though I saw the benefits of urine use on my plants this summer, I learned even more from this site. (Mind you, the writer seems to be in New York City, so this isn't just something for you folks in suburbs and farms.)

The site tells us that ABC.com reported this spring that in 24 of 62 metropolitan water systems traces of pharmaceuticals and hormones were found. These components aren't always measured by city water systems. So if the people upstream from you take sleeping pills, birth control pills, high blood pressure medication or anti-depressants, there are some good chances that you're sharing the medication with them, the second time around. As a matter of fact, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science says that 60 to 70 percent of the active ingredient in your medication is excreted into your urine.

Now at this time, scientists aren't alarmed about the dangers such drugs present to the drinkers downstream. Citydirt.net tells us:

"Though barely measurable, these pharmaceuticals are present in a variety worthy of a medicine cabinet: drugs for aches, infections, seizures and high blood pressure; hormones for menopause; the active ingredient in a popular sedative; and caffeine -- all bound for the city that never sleeps."

So we establish that our pee doesn't belong downstream heading for the next town, but instead in our gardens doing some good. Check out these facts:

• Although just 1 percent of the waste water going through our waste water systems, urine carries 50 to 80 percent of the nutrients that could be nourishing our gardens instead of causing unwanted algae growth in our rivers where plant growth isn't wanted.
• 85-90% of the nitrogen and 50-80% of the phosphorus are concentrated in the urine. These nutrients are desirable in agriculture.
• Even if not used directly into your garden, scientists have found that waste water treatment could recycle urine nutrients to be used as fertilizers, while at the same time, this would remove problematic micro pollutants. For example, 98 percent of the phosphorus can be recovered by precipitation with magnesium. The end product would be "struvite," an attractive fertilizer, free of pharmaceuticals and hormones.
• If we used our pee as fertilizer, we would be able to provide an estimate 31 percent of the nitrogen and 20 percent of the phosphorus necessary for healthy plant growth and production.

Now some folks would say this is an unsanitary thing to do. Overall, your urine is free of microbes as it leaves your body. Sciencedaily.com sites a recent study reported last year in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, which said the following:

"Our results show that human urine could be used as a fertilizer for cabbage and does not pose any significant hygienic threats or leave any distinctive flavor in food products"

The article also said that urine is relatively free of bacteria or viruses.

If you're still worried about eating food that you have fertilized with your pee, here's some more advice. Water/Fertilize your plants around the roots, not on the leaves, and quit using the pee solution about three weeks before you eat the produce. Usually by that time, the plant has received all the nourishment it needs to be productive, and by then you can eat your luscious food not fearful that it will taste like pee. I have also read that it is great fertilizer for fruit trees, just in case you still feel uncomfortable about food growing too close to your urine.

Remember, we humans are part of the ecosystem, not apart from it. We get our life from other life on earth. We are nourished by the food that grows from and on the earth. We breathe the oxygen released from plants and we drink the water that filters through our earth and streams. When we die, we should be willing to let our body again nourish the earth for other life to spring from it. Starting now with our pee will be our first step.

Are you game? Think about it over the winter!

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"The Mad Cowboy" makes me sad

"No one was willing to stand up and say we were killing a way of life," says Howard Lyman regarding the loss of family farms as agriculture in America becomes industrialized.

He is the star of "The Mad Cowboy," a documentary about a Montana farmer who becomes a vegan after his brother dies at 32 and he acquires a tumor on his spine. He leaves the farm and is now in Washington, DC, fighting for the small American farmer.

He went to senate after senate office trying to outlaw animal patenting, which was a successful effort. But this was just one step on his journey. Then he went after the threat of Mad Cow disease. One of the few congressmen who listened to him was Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who sponsored a bill to outlaw the feeding of dead cows to other cows, an important step in protecting consumers from Mad Cow disease.

The Center for Food Safety and Lyman partnered on educating consumers on how our animals are treated as they are grown for our meat. Lyman says he did everything because of his love for animals. We have completely transformed the way our meat animals live during their entire life span. Worldwatch Institute has also listened to his story, and are ready to talk his message regarding the need to cut back on the amount of meat global consumers eat.

Neal Bernard, the famous cardiologist, speaks the message, as well. He claims that our problems with heart disease in this country are directly related to our large consumption of meat.

Lyman was contacted by Oprah Winfrey and this event became the famous time when she said that she was" stopping cold from eating another burger," a statement that led to a court suit by the beef industry. Lyman was belittled, but his wife Willow notes how strong he was, sacrificing himself for the betterment of the planet. Basically the trial caused more people to look at how our animals are raised and the dangers of meat in our society. Oprah and Lyman won the case. And free speech one more time was allowed to live on.

Lyman says that our animals are pumped full of drugs so they grow as fast as possible. Even Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia has given a long impassioned speech on the way we are treating our animals. He called it inhumane the way we raise and slaughter our animals....up to 50 billion a year.

The Mad Cowboy asks us to envision the life a pig raised industrially has to live. The movie takes us into a facility where we see the crying pigs with no room to move in, amidst filthy conditions....all so we can have our bacon and ham and sausage.

Another advocate of Lyman talks about how he considers his dog a "being," but up to just a few years ago, he hadn't considered chickens, sheep, goats, rabbits or cows as "beings," as well. They have no constituency to speak for them. If they are to be heard, we must speak for them.

The movie talks about terrorism and how we call the terrorists evil. But we must look at the systemic evils that exist in our factory farm system. We need to create that awareness.

But looking beyond the inhumanity of the factory farm method of raising and killing animals, we need to also consider the health complications of eating meat, Mad Cow Disease, Hoof and Mouth Disease, e coli, and other diseases that can be carried over to the human population from the eating of meat. He spoke with a researcher in the Netherlands who studies Mad Cow Disease (CJD or Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease), and he said, knowing the dangers, he now mainly eats fish and vegetables, and much less beef. This germ or virus can remain dormant in persons up to 25 years before it becomes active.

Lyman went to farms in England, where some farmers are now embarrassed to tell people they are farmers because of the stigma that has come with Mad Cow Disease. He spoke with a mother whose daughter died of Mad Cow Disease. She said her daughter's brain became filled with holes, and eventually her daughter didn't recognize her any longer. Eventually she died of the disease. She is one of 125 humans who died of this disease because she ate infected beef. The movie features pictures of people in their last months who were on their ways to excruciating deaths.

We are reminded that Americans have changed their beliefs on slavery, the killing of Indians, the suppression of women, and we can also change our ideas on the eating of meat.

Lyman says that he came from four generations of raising beef, and is probably more responsible for the killing of more cattle than the people he talks to. His message is that it is up to you to get involved now, or there may not be any future for our grandchildren. This is about the survival of the species, he insists.

His wife says that the animals are very patient, and that they are waiting for us to become enlightened. "We have to. We have no other choice," according to his wife, Willow.

The film ends with an announcement from our own Department of Agriculture that Mad Cow Disease has been found here.

I highly recommend this film for vegetarians and meat eaters. I lived for about four years as a vegetarian, but because of anemia, I had to go back to eating meat. But I am intent on eating as little as possible and eating only those which were pasture raised and killed humanely.

I recently told my daughter, who also used to be a vegan, that if I were God, I would have made humans so that we would be strictly plant and grain eaters. To kill an animal so that I can live is still repulsive to me.

What do the rest of you feel about factory farms, the demise of the family farm and the killing of 50 billion animals a year so we can have our meat?

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Bail out the car makers.....but with some serious strings attached!

I read today that the US car manufacturers are "begging" the government for a $25 billion bailout. I say let them have it, and maybe even a little more.

But it must come with some strings:

• None of it could be used to build a family or a single owner's vehicle that gets less than 30 mpg in the city, 40 on the highway.
• Each car manufacturer will not lay off any of their workers.
• Most funding would have to be used to "re-create" mass transit (rail, buses, motorized bicycles and other forms of transit).

I live in a city that has a bus system, but no matter where you live, if you miss your bus, you have to wait another entire hour. Many don't have schedules that would be that flexible.

However, if our city had more buses, then people could catch the bus that goes through their neighborhoods more frequently. This would equal more bus riders because they could catch their buses easier. And buses would have to be just as available for evenings and weekend riding, which are usually the first to be cut when budget tightening takes place.

I met with a colleague not long ago. I asked her what she thought was the most crucial need in our city that if met, would improve the environment. She answered a better mass transit system. She lamented how she was forced to drive her car much more frequently than she would otherwise.

That was when I put on my judgmental hat and bragged that I walked everywhere I went, inferring that she should do the same. Talk about a blow-up! I found out that I hit upon a real sore spot for this woman, and thinking about it later, I could see why she became so angry.

Her main point was that there had to be other options out there for busy environmentalists and everyone else who don't want to drive their gas-guzzling vehicles for just about every errand they need to take on. I live close to where I do my everyday tasks, so thankfully I can walk just about everywhere. Some others can't have that opportunity, or their jobs takes them all over the city throughout the day. Their only option: They must drive their cars, and they hate it.

My problem is of another type. When I do have to drive I take the interstate some 170 miles to go see my husbands on every other weekend. Well, that's as many miles as if I were driving more than 10 miles a day to and from work. Therefore, I as well, am not as pure as the newly fallen snow either. And like my colleague, I don't like it.

In my case, if I were to try to take the Greyhound bus (which has a monopoly on non-metro bus systems), I would have to ride more than two hours to Knoxville and then wait there for four hours before catching another bus to Kingsport, another two hour ride. So a ride that takes about an hour and a half with my own car takes more than eight hours on the bus.

So give the car makers the money they want, but with it, make they create vehicles that will fix our broken transit system. They conspired to kill such a system nearly a century ago. Now is their time to fix it by make quality mass transit vehicles for cities and our country at affordable rates.....while even getting paid to do so.

Maybe we're letting them off the hook too easily, but it doesn't do one any good to kick a man whose already down, and pulling down thousands of laborers with him.

We have a sick economy. We have a dying car manufacturing business. There are no new jobs out there for laid off auto workers. We have ever worsening greenhouse gases being emitted from inefficient transportation systems (or lack of any system). We are near Peak Oil and higher gas prices. We have a rotten mass transit system. We have a new Administration taking over in just a couple months, one that believes in renewable fuels and better mass transit systems.

Is someone trying to tell us something? To my perspective, the writing is on the wall. Bail out Detroit, but with a vision of better transportation attached.

That's the only way to save this segment of our economy and to improve this environmental situation on our planet. Go for it, Congress!

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In 2008, Tennessee makes sharp turn to right and hate groups

Looking at election results, I'm relieved that I am now a resident of North Carolina. Meanwhile I am saddened at the route my old state, Tennessee, has taken during this time of a Democratic takeover.

In North Carolina, we elected Bev Perdue as our governor, Kay Hagan as our new US Senator, and re-elected Heath Schuler as our Congressman....all Democrats.

In Tennessee, the Democrats lost seats in both the State House and Senate, so now in the Senate the Republicans have the majority 19-14, while in the House, the Republicans hold 50 seats, compared to the Democrats' 49. With this majority, the Republicans expect to bring in their own secretary of state, state comptroller and state treasurer. Alone at the top remains our Democratic governor Phil Bredesen, who governs more like a Republican than a Democrat himself. He made a name for himself by disbanding the old TennCare program, which many claim led to hundreds of deaths from abandoned sick people who were allowed to die with no medical care. Bredesen came into politics as a owner of a health management organization that made millions.

The most heart-breaking loss among Democrats in Tennessee came from my old house district, where newcomer Republican Tony Shipley edged out incumbent Democrat Nathan Vaughn, an African-American who carried the district for three terms, a district with only about 5 percent of its population black. Rep. Vaughn was our Barack Obama. He put himself above race, dedicating himself to the poor, the sick and those who were looking for someone to listen to.

Shipley was buoyed up by other Republican office holders in Northeast Tennessee. They couldn't stand having a lone Democrat within their delegation, and they gave everything they had to get him out, pasting his head to a blackbird, along with Obama and Nancy Pelosi's heads to blackbirds and telling voters that "birds of a feather flock together." This, along with a barrage of robocalls, was enough to switch the majority over in favor to the Republican, whose claim to fame was ownership of an ambulance company that went out of business.

Tennessee is also the state where the Federal investigators stopped a plot that planned to go on a spree to kill 102 black persons in the state, 14 by be-heading, with a final target of President-elect Barack Obama. In the Memphis Commercial Appeal, while reporting results of the election, on the same day reported on the indictment in Bells, TN of the two main figures, who have been described as neo-Nazi skinheads, in this death plot.

Ironically, Memphis's Shelby county, with its high population of African-Americans, moved in the opposite direction of the rest of the state, by giving the majority of its votes to Obama. Tennessee's final vote went 57 percent to McCain and 43 percent to Obama.

Also in the Commercial Appeal today was a story about how additional emergency staffers will be sent to DeSoto County, also in West Tennessee, where the European-American Unity Rights Organization (EURO), another hate group, meets this weekend.

Many may say that the state has taken an even more sharp turn toward the Republicans because of the financial condition the state is now facing, a shortage of funds expected to reach up to $600 million by the end of Tennessee's June '09 fiscal year. The reason for this shortfall can be pointed to the state's horrible system of taxation, which relies heavily on the sales tax, including a tax on food of up to 8 percent or more. The state always suffers most during economic downturns because people shop less during these times. The state is faced now with either raising the sales tax up to 10 percent on the dollar or initiating a progressive income tax, which the Republicans insist will not happen during their watch.

So millionaires who value private schools, gated communities, security guards and few public services, move to Tennessee. Tennessee loves rich people, and rich people love Tennessee, where their incomes aren't taxed, and the poor support the state by paying high rates of tax with every purchase of milk, food or shoes they make.

This is a perfect breeding ground for the skinheads, the KKK and neo-Nazi groups, often attractive to poor whites, who blame the wrong guys and races for the poverty and oppression they experience in the state, mostly related to an educational and medical system that continues to be broken.

Meanwhile in North Carolina, we see a balance between an income and a sales tax. We see healthy competition between political parties (now heavily leaning towards the Democrats). Education continues to improve, including higher education that is some of the best in the South. The Triangle Research Center attracts some of the smartest persons in the country. Cities are looking toward stronger environmental regulations and incentives for power companies to move to alternative renewable energy, such as 3,000 solar panels soon to go up in Western North Carolina by Progressive Energy.

I'm glad I now live in North Carolina. I pray for my friends still in Tennessee.

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"Happy Days are Here Again!"

I remember that during the 60's when John F. Kennedy was elected president, the Democrats would play "Happy Days are Here Again," and that is how I feel tonight!

We are all living in a historic time. And you folks in Illinois, how wonderful you must feel! Your favorite son Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves; and now another favorite son is the first black president of the US, nearly 150 years later. What do you guys eat there?

While in prayer today it occurred to me that the young child Barack Obama was playing basketball near his home in Honolulu while my husband and I were celebrating what we called R & R in Hawaii, and while Sen. John McCain was suffering in a POW camp in North Vietnam.

Tears welled up in my mind. To think about a random moment when the four of us were living our own lives in very different ways some 37 years now have come together on Election Day. Two of us running for president and the other two of us just simple citizens deciding for whom to vote. And we went for the little boy playing basketball near his granny's apartment in Honolulu.

What a day for Americans! What a day for the world. David came to fight Goliath and won the hearts of fellow Americans with his sling shot aimed straight at our hearts.

"Happy Days are here Again" in the United States of America!

At what I call our common house in my community, we filled the living room all day today designating the house as a safe space for people to come and meditate in a non-partisan way. Tonight we wrapped the solemn day up with a living room packed full of people in prayer, considering a theme that we all have a name.

We all come from different histories, different looks, different goals, but we are all deserving of and desiring for a life of peace and of recognition. Our decisions are equal, and no matter how the election was to end, we would accept the results and go on to make the world a place where everyone's name is important.

But tonight as we left, entered our home doors and turned on the TV to begin watching returns, try to imagine our wonder, our thrill as we saw that (in my opinion) God had found this as the time to have David lead his people into the Promised Land.

And this is why I now say, "Happy Days are Here Again!"

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