CT Green Scene

A Blogger For Any Diet

by James Simpkins

Last week I wrote about a pizza place in Avon and no one said a word. Over the holidays I penned two articles expressing my displeasure about shopping at Discount Food Outlet in Canton; and readers are still writing in droves to expressing their displeasure about my perspective, even attacking me personally. More than one comment suggested that I leave town since I didn’t like it. I was both confronted and amused by such responses. The confrontation part is obvious, I hope—no one likes being openly despised, especially by people they are unacquainted with. Unfortunately, humans seem all too willing to express malice towards those people with opinions that do not match their own (see our current political climate). In my mind, this is akin to hating the guy next to you because you don’t like the color of his tie. Ties, like opinions can, and do, get changed. The life that wears that tie or has that opinion, however, is no less precious, and we are all hard-wired to preserve it. Fortunately that is not all us humans are born with. Laughter, they say, is the best medicine.

In another sense, I was very much amused by all the uproar realizing people’s anger was not because of an unpopular stance on abortion or gay marriage, but a grocery store. Now that is funny!!! I had no idea that people were so attached to where they bought their food. Shame on me, though, as food is always chock-full of intimate meaning for people. Lesson learned.

In the wake of the fallout from the DFO articles, this week allow me to offer a more personal piece that I hope will establish a context for what I write, and why I write it; a kind of road map to my inner gastronome.

The first item on the colloquial menu is the term “connoisseur”; this is what I consider myself in the food arena. Think of it as the “who does this guy think he is?” part of my writing. The second proffering is the usefulness of critique and analysis. While criticism nearly always gets a bad rap, I think we need critics and critical understandings of any subject, food included. As subjectivity is common to all of us, being critical can actually help us appreciate even our least favorite ideas by allowing us to see there is always another side to any story. But first, the connoisseur…

Starbucks Wins! (Crap.)

by James Simpkins

I moved to Connecticut’s Farmington River Valley about two and a half years ago and am still looking for a good cup of coffee. Check that—an amazing cup of coffee. Spare me the Dunkin’ Donuts angle; I’m tired, and their coffee couldn’t hold a candle to what I’m talking about. Here, go to this website so you’ll have a frame of reference. Honestly, Equator Coffee is the best cup o’ joe I’ve ever had, which is backed up by them winning Roaster of the Year for 2009 in Roast Magazine to add to their growing list of accolades. To top it off, they all drive hybrids or bio-diesel, recycle everything, compost their waste, just purchased their own farm in Panama where they are sustainably growing coffee with Panamanians at the helm, AND they are owned by women.

How’s that Dunkin’ Donuts tastin’ about now?

This upper echelon of coffee is what's missing in my locale. And while it may sound over the top for some of you, once you try it, you will at least appreciate the gross difference between what Equator and DD are selling--it's like finding out your butter is margarine.

For Worst Perfomance by a Recycling Committee

by Elizabeth G. Howard

So I live in Stratford, a smallish town of 50,000, here in our fair state, New England. Since I am not from this part of the country, I have discovered a curious quirk of the New English people -- they take political landscaping to an entirely different level than anywhere else I have ever lived.

In Connecticut there is no real county government, and the State government is mostly ignored. Instead, there are 169 “municipalities” that all have their own way of doing things. Actually, that is putting it lightly. Town governments in Connecticut are more like rivals on "Survivor", where the shared dialect across townline is usually "F--- you! We're the REAL Daughters of the Revolution and we're preserving our individual, municipal rights, even if we have to use canning jars and vinegar!"

For example, in the case of road maintenance, for example, the municipalities, in total, have 17,115 road miles that they are required to maintain… 4.5 times the number that the State maintains. As a result, the sheer cost of road maintenance (hmmm, every town has their own rules, storage sheds, equipment, crews, etc.) is enormous.

As far as I can see, the only thing consistent across the municipalities is enforced by the State law requiring that a very bored looking police officer be on every roadwork site, either sitting in his squad car reading a Harlequin Romance, or chatting with one or more of the otherwise-idle workers about the imminent threat of terrorism in Haddam Neck.

So, fast forward to this week, when I started to research the RECYCLING PROGRAM in Stratford...

Editorial Credibility in an Online World

by Elizabeth G. Howard

I was recruited by MomCentral.com to take part in their blog tours, when the subject was appropriate for my blogs. I have two blogs -- Letters from a Small State, which reflects on my life in Connecticut, and Honk if You Compost, my eco-humor blog.

I am on a mission with these tours: to write great reviews and thoughtful pieces for whatever I sign on to. I take the job seriously, even if the pay isn't much.

Recently I committed to review Clorox's Green Works Natural Biodegradable Cleaning Wipes. I am seriously curious about this brand-- I particularly wanted see if Clorox could sell me on this disposable product.

They didn't ... the wipes, although compostable weren't amazingly useful enough to make them worth adding to the cleaning products that are tried and truly low-impact.

Everyone's Truth is Out There
Curiously, my negative eco-humor-review was not too overly adored by the MomCentral crew-- I was asked if I didn't want to tone it down just a little bit? This has indicated to me what I have been suspecting about this far-reaching and influential website (and others like it): online reviews can often be more about promoting products than they are about giving serious consideration to the product and its impact on the audience. In the case of MomCentral, I fear this may be the case.

It is certainly true that with online writing, the lines between advertising and editorial are gone. As is illustrated by contextual advertising (ie. Adsense), where once there was a firm division between the ad and the ed, we now decide precisely what we advertise based on the page content.

The result? The more niche reporting becomes, the more difficult it becomes to evaluate the credibility, objectivity and even the usefulness of information we find online. Everyone has an opinion--and that opinion is backed by an agenda that becomes more and more hidden.

I have one recommendation, and that is awareness. For more information about how to evaluate what you read on the web, have a look here.

The Cow in the Living Room

A few months ago while I was surfing for events to post, I came across the CT Audubon Society's Annual Fundrasier. Dramatic images of soaring birds promoted this year's theme: Birds of Prey.

I glanced at the menu for the event: Chicken cacciatore.

I picked up the phone and did a quick survey of meat-eating friends and family. Did this strike them as odd?

I held back from posting about it: until I read the latest issue of E Magazine and saw the publisher of this Connecticut-based magazine may agree.

The Cow in the Living Room

By Doug Moss, Publisher E Magazine, Norwalk, CT

"I politely passed on the offer of a bison burger at a recent Ted Turner-hosted fundraising event I attended in New York City (no, I’m not a donor—we were invited as press). But I couldn’t resist a wisecrack and a wink to the server that it was only because I was full, having had a dog burger on the way over.

It is funny, though, how social and environmental change work. The bad news about meat has been plain as day and out in print for decades (the only new news is that we have now discovered that the industry is also warming the globe). Jim Mason’s Animal Factories (Three Rivers Press), written with Peter Singer and published in 1980, could be re-released today without a heckuva lot of updating. Mason traveled some 10,000 miles around North America with a photographer friend, documenting the horrific conditions on factory farms and what the industry meant for our health, the environment, world hunger challenges and animal welfare.

When the book came out, though, the press didn’t want to know about it. Neither did most of the environmental groups or, for that matter, many of the animal welfare groups that were content to focus on their puppies and kitties and charismatic wildlife, which raised a lot of money and sold a lot of wall calendars. Peter Singer’s seminal solo effort, Animal Liberation (Harper Perennial), published five years earlier in 1975, also fleshed out the topic, as have numerous books since—but it’s still steak and chicken for dinner 33 years later at many an environmental fundraiser.

Environmental leaders and advocates who resist change in this area need to realize that this is exactly how the world at large reacts when we come at them with our demands to properly recycle, eschew bottled water for tap, opt for the hybrid vehicle (or the bus or the bicycle), replace those incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents or use both sides of a sheet of (recycled) paper. It’s sometimes not easy to make changes to lifestyle habits that are so ingrained. But if those of us in the trenches are hammering the world at large to do so, we need to look at the poor choices we still make ourselves and do what we’re always telling others to do: change." Visit E Magazine to read more...

Ticking Off the Ice Cream Truck Man

I was at the park today with my kids when a diesel ice cream truck pulled in. The man, in his fifties, kept the fifteen year old truck spewing smoke as he passed out frozen treats packed with artificial colors and flavors and enough preservatives to outlive the kids who ate them.

I stood by silently, my  young ones knowing better than to ask, since for the past four years their mommy claims not to have any money, or rambles on about how unhealthy that ice cream is, convincing them to go to the New Morning to pick up some organic, lactose-free, all natural, frozen desserts.

Then it hit me: this must have been what the first proponents of banning second hand smoke must have felt like. Unsure, insecure, timid. I marched up to the truck and asked if he'd be staying long. "Nope."
"Good, I replied, because we can smell your truck all the way across the park."  "If you're so worried about it, why didn't you walk instead of drive here?" he spat back.

Tonight, I'll dream of electric powered ice cream trucks that sell organic, healthy frozen treats on sultry summer days.

83 Trees Cut Down to Make Better View for Billboard

Via The Green Vibration

Action is needed to protect trees in our very own state! We need to stop companies like LAMAR not only littering our landscapes but destroying our trees to achieve their goals. Send letters of support to Blumenthal and please visit www.scenic.org to send a letter to Jodi Rell stating your support of her bill to ban new billboard contracts in CT, including digital billboards.

Article Written By
BY ROBYN ADAMS REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

WATERBURY-- Nancy Voghel grew up on a "little piece of heaven," but she said Friday that the land near her childhood home has been destroyed.

Last year, Lamar Advertising of Hartford got a permit from the state Department of Transportation to trim and remove undesirable growth on state land off Sidney Street to increase the visibility of one of its billboards.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a lawsuit against the billboard company and Long Hill Tree and Lawn Care Services of East Hartford for cutting down 83 trees that included birch, maple, oak and white pine that were between 85 and 200 years old. Long Hill Tree was hired by Lamar to do the work.

Hal Kilshaw, vice president of governmental relations for Lamar, headquartered in Baton Rouge, La., said the attorney general got it wrong.

"We got permission from the landowner and a permit from the state. We hired Long Hill and met with the state's landscape person, who was on site and agreed to everything that was cut," Kilshaw said in a telephone interview.

Many of the trees that were planted on the land in question were planted by Margaret Casey's grandfather.

"In less than one day, less than an hour, Lamar Advertising came in and changed our lifestyle," said Casey, of 56 Sidney St. "The noise -- we cannot open the windows anymore. We cannot hear the television because of the noise. It is unbearable."

The trees provided a buffer to highway traffic and noise, and soaked up water that spilled down the hilly terrain.

"Last year, I had five feet of water in my basement," said Jerod Voghel, 30, who is Karen Voghel's son. He bought the house that his mother grew up in four years ago; she now lives in Wolcott.

With the open swath of land in the background, Blumenthal and Rep. Selim Noujaim, R-75th District, talked to residents about the lawsuit.

Blumenthal said Lamar "clearly and disgracefully broke the law" by cutting 83 trees that provided a buffer to I-84. The state is suing for unspecified monetary damages to replace the trees.

Bottled Water Debate Is Nothing New, but Drugs in our Tap Water?

There's no two ways about it: bottled water is B-A-D for the environment and E Magazine (below), for one, agrees. But what to do when reports like the one that was released last week by AP show that our tap water is ladened with, "A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows?"

So let me get this straight. We have drugs, pesticides, herbicides, petroleum, storm water run off and other pollutants tainting the water that flows from the tap, yet bottled water wreaks havoc on Mother Earth and leeches plastic from the bottles. It's no wonder, as Lester Brown pointed out last year, we've fallen subject to one of the greatest con jobs of all time: believing that bottled water is safe.

Organic Vodka, straight up, anyone?

 

The Devil Wears Lip Balm

by Heather Burns-DeMelo

Who am I to scorn Treehugger for selling out to Discovery or look down my nose at Bear Naked and Kashi giving in to Kellogg? After all, I'm only a hard working mother of two whose hard earned money helped fatten their sacrificial lamb.

Sure I was bummed that I could no longer purchase my favorite cereal or Toms of Maine feeling good about voting for a greener economy with my dollars, but Clorox purchasing Burts Bees for $913 million in November has officially tipped my needle from mild disappointment to despair.

And just to add insult to injury, this article in the New York Times reports that Clorox plans to turn Burt’s Bees into a mainstream American brand that's sold in big-box stores like Wal-Mart.

Who's next?


 

Green Quandry #1

A few weeks ago I took my laptop to a major electronics chain for repair. The woman at the service desk suggested that I purchase a new AC adapter from the store, see if it solved the problem, and return the product for a full refund if it didn't. Sounded easy enough.

It turned out not to be the AC adapter and I went back to the store to get my refund. With the adapter on the counter, my newly-found green conscious prompted me to ask the cashier what would happen to the perfectly good piece of electronics sitting before us. "Just tell me it won't just end up in the trash, that it will be repackaged (it came in one of those plastic containers that you have to cut to get open) and re-sold--it's perfectly good," I studdered. "It'll go back to the vender, and they'll throw it away," she spat.

So now what? Write a letter to the chain? Boycott the store? Suck it up and accept it? Anyone....?