Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,

As you know, there continues to be much press over Genetically Engineered (GE) foods. Just about every day we read or hear something relating to GE foods and how the public is reacting.

In today's market, 2/3 of the Corn, Potatoes, Soybeans, and Canola, are Genetically Engineered. Scary isn't it.

Companies such as Kellogg's, Kraft, Nestle USA, and Quaker Oats all use GE foods in their products.

One of the biggest issues is over labeling. Biotech companies oppose labeling saying it is too difficult to differentiate GE from non GE foods. I know the reason why labeling is opposed. When people are given a choice they will buy non GE foods.

Let me give you a few reasons for not buying Genetically Engineered Foods and or supporting companies that use them.

To begin, current testing on how humans react to such organisms as Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) in potatoes and corn, or Glyphosate (Roundup) in soybeans is inadequate. There are medical questions concerning human allergenic and toxic reactions that are not known. The nutritional content of GE food may be diminished. GE plants could become toxic to animals. Previously unknown protein combinations may not like new genes introduced into the plant.

Fallen leaves from GE plants may change the soil environment. Genes may escape into wild plants. Pollen drift may cause non target insects to die. As Nature adjusts to GE we may create super weeds, and super insect pests.

It is a sure bet that insect pest and weeds will become resistant to the pesticides used. A spinoff from this resistance is the loss of BT to Organic gardeners and farmers in the control of voracious plant eating caterpillars.

Just how far are we willing to go disrupting the flow and cycle of biological life? The possibilities seem endless, with current work on creating enviropigs whose feces contain less phosphorus, to creating faster growing fish.

What is to become of our world as we find the need to continuously manipulate Nature and its process of natural selection ?

With more people to feed, and less land to grow food, it may be considered necessary to utilize science to interfere with the ebb and flow of life.

So why do I feel so disheartened, so opposed, so hopeless in the face of these so called modern miracles.

I love this earth for how it is. Not for how it could be. I cannot imagine a world existing in which there were no surprises, where everything is planned to serve the selfish needs of man.

We need to do everything we can to protect and to preserve the right of Nature to evolve according to her own laws.

By Myrtle Osner

I thought we didn’t have much for the Connections calendar this month, till I started to read the newsletters.

Then it dawned on me that there are places to go and things to do right here, or an hour away or so, if you really look.

First off, if I had a family of any size children, I’d check out the Great Valley Museum, on the corner of Stoddard and College Avenues in Modesto. This place is unique in all the valley, with its displays of natural history from throughout the Central Valley. Think of our home as a lush place of river bottoms, oak savannas, ephemeral lakes (meaning that they come and go with the weather), and the vast delta of the Sacramento San Joaquin river system that empties into San Francisco Bay. Get out in the early morning and you will discover a world alive with nature’s bounty. The hills are brown in summer, but our vast agricultural fields are bursting with goodies.

Learning About Nature the Easy Way

The Great Valley Museum has a Geology Field Trip to Yosemite scheduled for July 8, a bus trip co sponsored by the Museum, MJC Science Math and Engineering Dept., and Modesto Area Partners in Science (MAPS). For a quick overview of Yosemite Valley and a view of its wonderful waterfalls, plus lectures along the way about how it all got that way, you can’t beat Gary Hayes, the leader. And, you don’t have to drive your car, thus polluting the air less and saving wear and tear on your nerves. By the time you get this, it may well be full. Call 575-6196 for price and info.

For Friday nights, the Astronomy Observatory Open houses are scheduled for July 7 and August 4. Bill Luebke, astronomer extraordinaire, has the telescopes out and is ready to show you, whatever is available at the time. Children are always welcome, accompanied by an adult. Free.

For young children;(grades K-2) Tuesday, July 6 from 10 to 11 am, the program is "What Goes Bump in the Night?" Children can learn more about nocturnal animals and make animal masks. Pre-registration and advance payment is required. This is true of all the Museum programs.

Other titles for the Tuesday and Thursday young children programs are: "Color Your World", "Gone fishing", "Be a Rock Hound", "Out of Your Gourd", "Scat and Tracks", and "Tree Cookies".

Programs for Elementary Children are on a three day schedule, one a week thru July, Titles are: "Butterflies are Free", "Marvelous Motion Madness", "Boxes are Squares", "Stories in Stone".

Last but not least: Friday Family Night, Science at the Park. A light dinner is included, evening nature walk, and nighttime stories around a campfire. These will be held on July 21 at Caswell State Park near Ripon, and on August 11 at Valley Oak Park near Oakdale. Recommended for children 7 and older. For those families who want something more vigorous, there is a family backpacking trip on July 8 and 9. Children must be 10 or older and accompanied by an adult, for the backpacking trip.

The Great Valley Museum is a non-profit organization To get their newsletter you need to be a member; the cost of trips and classes is less for members. Visit the Museum Tuesdays thru Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm. The Great Valley Museum is closed during August.

Other Places to Go

You might try exploring the Delta on your own, but be sure to take a map that shows the levee roads around all those islands. The other day, coming south from Sacramento, on a whim I turned off at I-5 at Walnut Grove exit. All of a sudden, it was quiet. As soon as I came to a fork, I took the "road less traveled" and found myself on Andrus Island, driving on top of the levee, a narrow winding road. Old homes built below the levee many years ago attest to the tenacity of the people who farm out there. Pear orchards predominate on that particular island, trees and brush line the road thickly with every so often a glimpse of the quiet sloughs that define the islands out there. It’s the top producer of asparagus in California and probably in the world. Occasionally you’ll see a marina as you get off the island and onto a more major thoroughfare (Highway 12 bisects the Delta and has a magnificent drawbridge to cross the Sacramento into Rio Vista. If you hanker to ride the last ferry in the Delta, go north of Rio Vista a few miles, past the airport, and wait for the teeny car ferry across to the next island. My husband and I once rode our bicycles over there and found asparagus by the side of the road just asking to be picked. (but don’t you dare go out in the fields; farmers take a dim view of trespassers!) Another caution: never, ever, toss anything lighted out the window, cigarette or match. That is peat land, and the land itself will burn.

Thousands of people take boats to the Delta and cool off for the summer. Needless to say, you need a map of the sloughs, and it is very easy to get lost since you are below the bank and can’t see where you are going. Anyway, there are few landmarks out there. When I was driving around the island, I noticed Mount Diablo kept appearing in different places and realized I was going in a circle.

Another interesting fact about the Delta: When the land was drained about a hundred years ago and levees built, it dried out and began to sink. Now, if you drive along the levee along the Sacramento River, the river is right beside you, but the land is perhaps 15 to 20 feet below you. And the houses are built down there, below the water level. It does give you an eerie feeling when you hear reports of flooding, in the winter.

The Delta is an extremely valuable asset of California, not just for its crops, but for its capacity to provide water for all of California, and the wetlands are irreplaceable. They are host to millions of birds each winter who fly here on their annual migration from Alaska and Canada. Wetlands help keep our water clean and are the source of endangered plants and animals, including valuable fisheries.

By DON MCMILLAN

Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence. New edition. New York: Penguin, 1999

Alan Thein Durning. How Much Is Enough? New York: Norton, 1992

John O. Andersen. [selected essays]. Internet. http://www.spiritone.com/~andersen/index.html (accessed April 06, 2000)

Like sober prophets at Belshazzar's feast, some voices decipher writing on the wall reckoning the cost of the consumer empire's strutting affluence. A recent edition of Dominguez and Robin's practical guide to frugality occasions notice of some such outspoken iconoclasts.

Up to reading Vicki Robin's and the late Joe Dominguez' Your Money or Your Life , saving money was a means for me to work jobs that I believed in keeping with my agenda, like teaching writing. Reading Your Money or Your Life thrust upon me a brutal reexamination of this reason for restricting my household expenses, bringing me heightened awareness of the compromises my pay check dependency required of me. I could now acknowledge a resentment I'd been denying: educational institutions' top agenda of ranking students by test scores and grade points made teaching and learning into an adversarial pursuit. Students, supposed to learn what the institution valued rather than what they valued, learned primarily how to flatter bosses. It didn't matter what the institution called the course I was teaching; its implicit curriculum, unacknowledged as it was dominant, was learning to please a boss. As Dominguez and Robin pointed out, my search for "Job Charming" had ended in a cul-de-sac. Dependent on the institution for my wages, I had to follow its agenda or risk my livelihood. What's more, as a part-time instructor, my taking employment that I fancied close to my agenda had led me to accept a pathetic real hourly wage.

This is not to say that Dominguez and Robin don't favor saving money or meaningful work. Based on a profoundly simple assumption as to the nature of money, Dominguez and Robin's advocacy of frugality is aimed at reducing workers' dependency on paid employment. When workers regard as precious the time and money their paid employment exacts from them, they will align their spending with their values, enabling them to reduce their dependency on wages. The most meaningful work, Dominguez and Robin believe, takes place not as paid employment but as things people take up completely for the joy of it: work such as parenting, civic participation, or producing art. People can free themselves for such non-remunerative activities through what Dominguez and Robin call FI (Financial Intelligence and Financial Integrity which inexorably lead to Financial Independence).

Dominguez and Robin confront common assumptions about money and work and leisure in our culture of dependency. For instance, they contend that it is possible to have enough money and enough of what money can buy. People who are unaware of their own point of sufficiency throw away valuable time in jobs so that they can afford the things they've bought on time but that they don't have time to enjoy because they're working.

Through the concept of FI, Dominguez and Robin urge workers to regard themselves not as powerless employees, but as businesses in their own right. Trading their lives' finite hours for money, workers can maximize the yield on the time they spend earning their wages, thereby making available savings which they can invest, ultimately generating sufficient investment income to make employment income superfluous. Dominguez and Robin's investment strategy (buying federal treasury and agency bonds) seems based on assumptions that the government will not use such investments in destructive (let alone potentially self-destructive) ways. (What about nuclear weapons research? What about helping U.S. corporations export weapons and carcinogens?) They assume that, unlike private-sector investments, federal bonds are absolutely secure.

Dominguez and Robin's singular belief that the true FI investment is in federal bonds excludes financial advisors (equated with salespersons of financial "products") and mutual funds, presumably even socially responsible mutual funds. They contend that investing in government bonds by citizens helps to lower taxpayers' burden by keeping the interest on such government borrowing lower. Without domestic investment in such bonds, the government has to raise the yield on its bonds to lure foreign investors.

Hardly a practical guide to citizen/worker empowerment, Alan Thien Durning's approach to consumerism and its global impact, How Much Is Enough? divides the world's inhabitants into three ecological classes: consumers, middle income, and the poor. Consumers distinguish themselves by eating a high fat, high meat diet, traveling by automobiles and jets, and by wholesale waste of materials. Middle income populations eat primarily grains; travel by bicycle, train, and bus; and avoid wasting material. Poor populations are malnourished, have no transportation other than foot, and their subsistence livelihoods on marginal land often cause habitat degradation. In Durning's view, ecological health would be more likely if the consuming class were to mimic the ways of the middle income class. The reduced demand for global resources could allow many presently poor people to achieve the sufficiency known by the middle income class.

A contribution to the Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series, Durning's indictment of consumerism follows typical Worldwatch patterns. It presents a dire multitude of statistics documenting the world's declining ecological vitality. It suggests that crucial to reversing this decline is government involvement. And it presents some bright counterpoints to the unhappy general trends. As one such bright spot, Durning hails Dominguez and Robin and those who, following their path, have slashed excess spending, in its place substituting meaningful lives. However, Durning is skeptical that such a movement can make a big enough difference fast enough. There's still too much social pressure to consume, Durning believes, for a general embrace of FI thinking.

Although he doesn't seem to have reached his attitudes towards work, leisure, and consumption through Dominguez and Robin's FI program, writer John O. Andersen reached some similar conclusions. Dissatisfied with climbing the ladder of success as an Air Force officer, Andersen considered a career as a professor. In developing such a career, he completed a master's degree in German literature. However, the unquestioned competition of this career path didn't appeal to him. By accepting that self-worth had nothing to do with his employment's social status, Andersen was able to find leisure and contentment running his own blue-collar business.

Before he found equilibrium, however, Andersen had to strive with ghosts of the prevailing more-is-better psychology in running his carpet cleaning business. At first, he wanted it to grow. He needed to generate enough contracts to pay a growing number of employees. While captaining such a business led to growing status, it also led to headaches. He had to be sure employees delivered satisfactory service. During slow seasons, the growing business meant promotional worries.

Andersen found that he could generate enough income as a lone owner-operator. Slow seasons added time for travel and educating his own children. He hardly finds the strenuous labor of carpet cleaning to be degrading. Time alone applying his cleaning wand yields opportunities to mull over a piece of writing in progress or to recite poetry. He meets interesting people among his customers, and he savors the freedom he has achieved by being a "social heretic," foregoing the dream-home mortgage, lawn mowing, and luxury car payments that many of his customers face. He's even freed himself of having to wear a wristwatch.

As an unpaid writer, Andersen spells out his wry perspective on society's consuming conformities with no compunctions to please a bottom-line-obsessed editor or flatter the majority who don't comprehend his approach to life. His writing, which easily shuttles from the quotidian strokes of a carpet cleaner's trade to the sublime, expresses overt pride for the work he does for a living. The care he invests in his writing implies pride in his unpaid intellectual enterprises. One essay, "Possessions," on joys of not owning, typifies Andersen's burnished prose. "The ability to enjoy something to the fullest," he observes, "has little to do with whether we own it or not. Rather, it has infinitely more to do with how well we learn to extract the nectar out of all that we find intriguing, amusing, and delightful."

The Tibet pipeline: drilling into the Land of Snows

From CorpWatch

For the first time, western corporations are involved in a major resource extraction project in Tibet. BP Amoco, Enron, and Agip (Italy) are all assisting PetroChina in the construction of the Sebei-Lanzhou gas pipeline — The Tibet Pipeline. The 953 km pipeline represents a significant escalation of China’s ongoing strategy of developing Tibet into a resource extraction colony, and would remove petroleum from Tibet without any benefit for Tibetans. Begun in March, and scheduled for completion in October 2001, this project could implicate western corporations in ongoing human rights violations in Tibet.

The Tsaidam basin, located on the Northern Tibetan plateau, is rich in oil and gas reserves. Development of this basin into a major petroleum (oil & gas) producing region is one of the major economic interests behind China’s continued occupation of Tibet, and one of the major strategic priorities for the development of China’s petroleum industry. Constructing this pipeline paves the way for full-scale petroleum development in Tibet.

The pipeline, and the increased drilling, will pose serious threats to Tibet’s fragile environment, which is the headwaters for virtually all of Southeast Asia’s great rivers. Tibetans will almost certainly watch Chinese control over the region further tighten, as more military will be brought in to protect the project. For this, Tibetans can expect to see little if anything in return, like many other communities around the world where oil & gas are found.

In April of this year BP Amoco bailed out PetroChina from a near disastrous initial showing on the New York Stock Exchange, and invested $580 million in the Chinese oil company. This cash infusion makes BP Amoco the largest foreign investor in PetroChina, and covers the estimated $530 million needed to construct the Tibet pipeline. BP Amoco did elect not to participate in the pipeline joint venture, but their money still fuels the project.

FOOD Initiative

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