From the open publishing newswire: Reclaim the Commons!!

SE Portland Food not Lawns has tools and herb/veggie starters ready for use. What we need are more people and places to start more gardens in SE, especially outer SE. A lot of the starters I have really need to get into the ground ASAP.

Where my gardeners at!!!!! Looking for people that want to start garden outside of there personal gardens and community accessible. If you have space or know of spaces and want to learn, please contact us [Click on Read More Link]

From the open publishing newswire: Out on the edge of Cascadia, there is a pirate raft being built from recycled material, that will ferry people up and down the Columbia. There's an eco village with a composting toilet and a kite powered water pump. There's a thrift shop/ media center/ potlatch. And if you're looking to start a new life, there's an open invitation to you:

Get thee out to Ilwaco.

There, the Nutrinos and friends are laying the groundwork for a community on the water, centered around activism, anti capitalism, egalitarianism, hard work, and fun. Lots and lots of fun.

From the open publishing newswire: Rising Moon Organics (RMO) has served the finest ravioli and desserts at the Oregon Country Fair (OCF) since 1992. RMO was formerly one of many food booths producing mountains of trash over the 3 day festival, but changed their approach in 1993 to pursue a trash-free mission.
As a result, RMO has saved over 100,000 plates, cups and forks from going to the landfill. RMO marked its 15th year at the Oregon Country Fair in 2006, by becoming a not-for-profit booth donating all profits to local organizations.

RMO has been instrumental in creating a sustainable fair with less trash that supports the OCF in furthering its trash-free mission. The process began in collaboration with the Fern Ridge School District to wash most durables off site. And that was just the beginning for greening the practices of feeding thousands of hungry fair goers.

From the open publishing newswire: I have been asked to speak here tonight because of the way I have been spending my time lately, which is growing vegetables, fruit, and herbs in a bunch of different plots around Southeast, and doing most of the traveling, hauling, etc., by bike. "Bicycle-based urban agriculture," it has been called. I am running the operation as a CSA. A CSA -- which stands for "Community Supported Agriculture" -- is a business arrangement in which a set of households provide resources, fiscal and otherwise, to a farmer in the Winter and Spring and in return recieve produce throughout the Summer and into the Autumn.

Together with my farming partners, who also ride their bikes everywhere, we are growing food for 40 households out of all these plots. We also have "The Staple Foods Project", with its own set of supporters, which is intended to raise survival foods such as quinoa, soybeans, sunflowers-for-oil, soup peas, lentils, and more. The overall goal of these projects is food independence, for a small number of people anyway, by this winter. Also, we will share whatever it is we learn with whomever wants to know. When it comes to food growing, none of us can afford to make any trade secrets.

From the open publishing newswire: A friend recently was complaining about how everyone is talking about buying gold to protect themselves from economic collapse. He told me a story about his elderly aunt who had lived through several holocausts. She was Jewish and one of only a few who survived in her family. As a child she and her mother first fled the Nazi's and ran into Russia, then fled the Russian's and fled into France and finally they came to the U.S. They had few things with them. The woman told my friend that she and her mother survived starvation, which killed many refugees, not by hoarding gold, but by secretly carrying seeds in the fold of their clothes. People around them, even the enemy let them live because they had a skill that was much needed... the knowledge of how to raise their own food. [ Radical Botany ]

From the open publishing newswire: I want to introduce you to someone. This is C404. He is a unique, intelligent being. In this photograph, you get a sense of his playful nature. He's like this. More than many sea lions, he seems to seek out human contact. I've known him for years, and although I always try to maintain a respectful distance from my wild neighbors, this guy has often followed me in the water when I am out on the river. The Columbia river is his home at this time of the year, as it has been home to countless generations of sea lions before him, for thousands, upon thousands of years. And he is in danger. Wildlife officials want to kill this being, perhaps as soon as next week,unless you stop them.

Salmon have been on the Columbia river for at least 100 million years.
Sea lions have been on the Columbia river for at least 10 thousand years. After at least ten thousand years of co-existence with sea lions, the salmon runs of the Columbia nevertheless numbered tens of millions of fish. Commercial fleets and capitalism came to the Columbia river about a century and a half ago, and more than 200 dams began cropping up in the region about a half century ago. While the sea lions were able to live with the salmon for at least 100 centuries without reducing the runs, the humans took only one century to drive the runs down from 20 million fish to roughly 1 percent of their historical levels. Human predation, under the demands and strange incentives of capitalism, has led the salmon toward extinction. The only way to lead the salmon away from that brink is by curbing human predation. Not by killing sea lions.

From the open publishing newswire: The public is invited to comment at the hearing in the Council Chambers, 4th and Madison at 2 PM, Wednesday. Comments can also be e-mailed to Karla Moore-Love, Council Clerk  kmoore-love@ci.portland.or.us or given or mailed to her at 1221 SW 4th, Rm. 140, Portland 97204.

This is your opportunity to tell the Council what you think of more high-rise development, gentrification, and construction downtown. Moyer's architect is talking in the press like a planning Czar. He says he can put skyscrapers anywhere downtown using FAR stratagems if zoning does not allow, as with Moyer Tower. The Block-5 area has been a construction-sacrifice zone too often through the years :1997-2000, 2006-2008, and, if Moyer gets his way, it will be so again 2008-2011.

"What market collapse?" say developers, who claim they're building "ten years into the future" and for "an exclusive market." What do you say to the makeover of your city for the benefit of some hypothetical upscale market from out of town? Moyer Tower stands for all of that and more of that.

From the open publishing newswire: This last Fridays Critical Mass , a monthly bicycle ride with a history of police harassment resulting in no fun and small turn outs, starts out with 60 plus riders, a human pyramid, a bitchen sound system, and pays a visit to the auto show.

We made it to the auto show and grouped up outside the main door. A good sized banner was unfolded and held up for all to see that were making their way into the auto show. People laid on their backs and made like they were pedaling.

From the open publishing newswire: I once lived in the Coast Range of Oregon. I had a farm with a large garden and a few fruit trees. My children and I were happy there. My farm was surrounded by land owned by a family who made their living harvesting forests. They used the most terrible type of tree extraction - clearcutting. About a year after I moved onto my property, the family decided to clearcut the forest just above my farm. I could hear the chainsaws take down the forest. It was a sad time for me. I loved that forest above me. It was diverse: Douglas fir, red alder, a wonderful array of wild native berry plants, ferns, and many herbs and wild flowers lived in that place. My children and I had identified three types of wild orchids in that forest: Fairyslipper (Calypso bulbosa) Mountain Lady Slipper (Cypripedium montanum) and Western Coralroot (Corallorhiza maculate).

One afternoon a year after the extraction of the forest I walked up the mountain to see what damage had been done. My heart was broken. I kneeled on the ground with my hands over my face. I saw a land that had been broken.

I did not go back up that mountain for another month. It was late spring when I sat in the muddy field of the clearcut. I looked around. I did not see anything unusual. I closed my eyes and asked for healing. I opened my eyes. I saw not far from the outer edge of the clearcut a bright green plant. I went to it. It was beautiful with waxy round leaves and a little white flower attached to a stem that shot up through the leaf. I sat for a long time and observed how it seemed to be spreading all around the edges of the wounded earth. It seemed to be creeping from the darker edges of the forest.

I took a sample of the plant to a local native plant lady and she identified it as Miner's Lettuce. She told me the story of how the plant was supposedly named by Miners who were suffering from scurvy and were able to find this plant, where hardly anything else grew, including in piles of mine tailings. They ate the plant and felt very much better. My friend called the plant a major healer of the earth. Where ever it grew there was work to be done. It grew heartily along abandoned logging roads, in clearcuts, and in other disturbed areas.

From the open publishing newswire: Yesterday, an internal memo leaked out of the offices of the Pacific Fishery Management Council and into the hands of the press. The story outlined in that memo is horrific: The Chinook salmon of California's central valley, and indeed the salmon populations all up and down the west coast, are crashing. They are in "precipitous decline."

Since the salmon crisis on our own Columbia river is being blamed upon sea lions at Bonneville dam, sea lions who are being threatened with assassination this spring due to the dwindling salmon, it is important that we look at the real scope, depth, and breadth of this problem. It is not only the salmon of the Columbia, but those of every waterway along the west coast, who are in peril. According to the Pacific Fishery Management Council memo, this year's run of fall Chinook on the Sacramento river dropped by a shocking 67 percent over last year's run. Sixty-seven percent! This number is even more astonishing if we consider that, last year, the same organization lamented the unexpectedly low numbers of returning salmon, so that a 67 percent drop in an already calamitously low number raises the looming specter of extinction. In truth, the salmon population has been taking a precipitous nose-dive for years. Over-fishing, loss of habitat, and collapsing ecosystems are to blame. On the Columbia, we have the added burden of being the only river in the nation to actually allow commercial gill nets within the river channel -- a channel that is home to fish known to be "protected" under the Endangered Species Act. (If you want to see this for yourself, you will need to go out at night. Wisely, the commercial nets are not cast until after 7pm. They work at night, when there are few witnesses. But, despite the thousands of threatened and endangered salmon swept up in the nets, the ODFW declares that their activities are perfectly legal.)

From the open publishing newswire: As Peak-Oil and economic change begin to affect the growing and distribution of food, new approaches that are more sustainable and locally-based seem likely to emerge.

Some readers of this site might know me from when I worked at People's Co-op, or was an Indymedia activist. These days I've become what I guess you'd call an "urban farmer". I garden a set of plots around the City of Roses, mostly in Southeast. Lacking both a driver's license and a desire to drive, I do most traveling, harvesting, hauling, etc., by bicycle. Occasionally, I'll get help from a friend with a truck to move a tiller or something, but that's not too common. I am supporting myself this way by using the CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) model. So far I've been in no danger of becoming money-rich, and I've really been enjoying the endeavor!

I will be having an event about the urban farming I've been doing. Attendees will be treated to a slide show of bounty and be made privy to the details of running a business like this, from property-acquisition to planning & planting, financial budgeting and harvesting & processing.

Wed., Jan. 30th, 7-9 pm
People's Food Co-op
3029 SE 21st Ave. (1 block north of Powell)

From the open publishing newswire: Radical Botany Week 3- Learning the lay of the land: floods, volcanoes and ocean uplifts - Plant: Oregon Grape

Before you search Cascadia for the great healing plants, you should understand the lay of the land. What formed this amazing place? What kind of soils and geology will you encounter and you hike through the forest, valleys and high deserts. I am going to give the big picture here. I will write more about orienteering and how not to get lost at a later time.

Why should you learn the geology of a place? Why understand the lay of the land?
- You will be able to know where to find the plant communities.
- You will not get lost in the woods or the mountains or the desert. You will be able to find your way from any point on the land.
- You will know how to find food, water and shelter when you need it.
- You will see wonderful things and will not be afraid to wander in paradise. You will remain open to the adventure and encounter unusual plants and their communities.

Where else on earth could you live near a ocean, active volcanoes, conifer rain forests, high desert, marsh lands, sea estuaries, fertile valleys, high mountain glaciers and so much more. Cascadia is a place of earth, water and fire. It is a place whose geology is new, old and ever forming.

From the open publishing newswire: Today two activists were arrested at a rally protesting NW Natural's investment in new Liquefied Natural Gas(LNG) related pipelines. Activists converged on the NWNasty office with banners and dozens of trees to demand an end to clear-cuts for over 600 miles of proposed pipelines for new fossil fuel development.

Portland forest defense activists are targeting NW Natural for the gas utilities' involvement in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) related pipelines, which threaten to clear-cut strips of forest throughout Oregon.

Piling dozens of trees on NW Natural's downtown office entryway, activists with Stumptown Earth First! and Cascadia Rising Tide, aim to send a message to the LNG-invested gas company: "There's nothing Green about Clear-cuts, No new pipelines."

The Palomar pipeline, Oregon LNG pipeline and the Pacific Connector, which total over 600 miles of pipe, threaten to cross over 1000s streams, rivers and wetlands and require wide clear-cut construction corridors through public lands, including roadless areas and old growth forests.