Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,

Christmas flowers: I suspect that many people who purchase beautiful Poinsettias for Christmas wonder how to care for them and if they can grow them. Poinsettias are native to central Mexico, and although they will grow in San Diego and Los Angeles, they can’t tolerate our cold winters here in the valley. To keep them looking their best for the holidays, put them where they can receive natural light from a window with an air temperature of 65 + degrees, and keep them moist. Poinsettias come in many colors; however, most of the floral poinsettias grown for the market are red single "flowered" (the showy parts being actually bracts).

An outstanding variety that has been around for a long time is the beautiful double red Henriette Ecke named for the wife of Paul Ecke one of the world’s greatest Poinsettia breeders. Poinsettia’s belong to the Euphorbia family and are one of over 100 species. Keep in mind that the milky sap of Euphorbias is toxic, and dermatitis can be quite severe especially to sensitive people. Despite their sap, Poinsettias are wonderful plants that brighten our homes and say "it’s Christmas" to many people.

Now to the year of 2001. We wonder what challenges await.

Perhaps we should reflect on the past to help us understand the future. During this last year we came to realize that past predictions on the effects of an exploding population had finally become an unwelcome reality.

We feel the effect of increasingly dangerous traffic congestion and road rage. People seem to be in a frenzy, driving at tremendous speeds with abrupt lane changes and tailgating. Fuel prices have skyrocketed, and although this should have reduced driving and slowed drivers, it did not.

In December we lowered our thermostats and reduced our lighting as the thirst for heating was about to cause a rolling blackout throughout the state.

I will not travel during the holidays as it has become dangerous, crazy and seriously crowded.

The demand for homes especially in metropolitan areas has hiked real estate prices beyond belief and for most beyond reach. These are but a few of the negative effects of a growing population.

It is not like me to be a doomsayer, but to bring about positive change we must first understand what Pogo said long ago "we must know the enemy, and the enemy is us."

We need not continue to rush around frantically using up future resources and getting ulcers in the process. The future is now and what we do with today will determine how we live tomorrow.

Barbara and I hope all of you have enjoyed a happy and Peaceful holiday season.

Humble work stitches ragged hours
- or -
Micro entrepreneur challenges sweatshops and road widening

By Don McMillan

Ten years ago substitute teaching was my day job while I dreamed of—and during vacations strove after—literary fame. In those days, during those lulls in activity when the teacher I was replacing had a prep period, entertaining myself called for literary consumption. I bought used paperback editions of novels by authors from college reading lists and toted them to work. I dismissed using library copies lest I damage them in bike bags while pedaling to work. My job's "free" time required that I spend money, adding to the cost of my employment.

The lure of stardom has dulled. I've glimpsed more sound objectives in life, such as harmonizing my lifestyle with my professed values for ecological wholeness. While I believe that literary skills remain among my chief gifts, my efforts as if I could control whether I'm widely known or remembered for them were deluded.

Substitute teaching is once again my paid employment, raising the question again how best to fill those odd unoccupied hours away from home. Buying novels, even if they are used, involves consuming paper but more significantly reduces my real hourly wage. I'm no Gandhi scholar; however, new answers appeared when I heard of his weaving fabric for his own clothes not just to resist imperialist capital's imported, cheaply manufactured fabric but as a spiritual discipline, integrating labor and meditation.

Often now I tote needles and other materials to work. When I'm left to an unoccupied classroom, I go on working. But, off the school district's time clock for these minutes, I become self-contained. I am simultaneously CEO, middle manager, and assembler. I will simultaneously sell and buy my product. I'm a business engaged solely to fulfill my own needs.

My most recent product parodies athletic fashions so often contracted out to sweatshops. It's a pair of cycling gloves made from salvaged materials. While I did rely on scissors and needles I'd bought to produce these gloves, all the materials included in the gloves are either roadside castoffs or items I diverted from my personal waste stream.

I began with two hardware-variety suede and canvass work gloves chosen not for their mismatched colors but because they fit opposite hands. I snipped off the fingertips. (Cyclists want to be able to catch themselves in a fall without skinning their palms; in mild weather, though, we prefer direct contact with brake and shift levers.) I undid the seams between the glove proper and the heavy canvass cuffs extending back over the wrists and removed the gloves' cotton liners. Following the pattern of classic cycling gloves, I cut out a circular patch from the back of the gloves.

Stitching terry cloth from worn out athletic socks to custom-cut polyurethane foam, I had new sweat-absorbing palm liners. From the ripstop nylon and four complementing hook-and-loop patches that I salvaged from a worn out rain jacket in which I'd pedaled more than once across the Continental Divide I stitched together wrist strap closures. I finished the gloves with stitches to keep the salvaged gloves' newly cut canvass edges from fraying.

The stitches themselves cheated my bathroom waste can. My new scavenged gloves must contain a month's worth of used dental floss. When I put my needle away after the last stitch I held my product up, cheering. My choosing to spend my ragged, job-marooned hours doing by hand at a leisurely pace what sweatshop workers would do by machine under constant pressure by the machines' owners was as much a labor action as an ecological one.

Two ideologically trained monkeys tax my mind's ear. The liberal one screams that I might be twitting sweatshop operators, but I'm also undercutting plenty of labor between the sweatshop and my cycling hand: shippers and sellers. I'm contributing less to the economy, taxes that could be used to maintain nature preserves. I could get so much more done with the amount of time I sunk into botching my own product with irregular stitches. The conservative monkey chides me for being so lazy as to tolerate a job often with 50 minutes off the clock besides lunch break. If I took a real full time job, I could buy gloves and have money to spare. If I didn't like the environmental impact of those gloves' production, I could donate to an environmental cause, but wouldn't it make better sense to stimulate the economy by spending that extra money on fast food and haircuts? And if I don't like sweat shops, I'm nuts. Those people deserve to redeem their "developing countries" from poverty through hard work.

I don't have to live with ideological monkeys on my back. My choice to be my own boss for a few hours and meet my need directly very slightly reduced opportunities for others to work for the money I would have paid for manufactured gloves. And, slight though the impact was, it sent ripples through the economy with the reduced demand. However, my choice also had some unmistakable benefits. I reduced competition for manufactured gloves and for all the natural resources demanded to construct them, ever so slightly nudging the price for such items down for my fellow cyclists who prefer to buy them. I voted definitively to postpone the pollution required to produce the new gloves. I removed two abandoned work gloves from the roadside where they waited to rot or justify public expense for litter abatement.

The people of Stanislaus County are still not sure of all the health effects of the Westley tire fire catastrophe, yet another environmental disaster looms over our county. Ogden Martin Systems wants to burn medical waste brought in from across California and other states at its waste-to-energy plant in Crows Landing.

Stanislaus County and the City of Modesto will soon begin the process of applying for permits to burn medical waste. This proposal would have to be approved by the County Board of Supervisors, the Modesto City Council, and various state agencies.

A company called Integrated Environmental Systems (I.E.S.) would be contracted by the city and county to bring the medical waste to the Ogden facility for incineration. I.E.S. currently burns medical waste at its incinerators in another low-income community of color in Oakland, an act of environmental racism and injustice.

I.E.S. is the only commercial medical waste incineration plant in California, and has a long history of violations and excessive emissions. Since 1990 it has been cited for approximately 260 violations. Through a coalition of community, environmental, health, and labor organizations, Oakland is demanding that I.E.S. shut down its incinerators. As a result, I.E.S. is hoping to move its medical waste incineration business from Oakland to Stanislaus County.

Incineration cannot completely or safely destroy medical waste or garbage, and toxic pollutants are emitted. Medical waste contains mercury, large quantities of PVC (polyvinyl chloride) plastics, and dioxin.

Dioxin can cause health problems including cancer, birth defects, hormonal changes, declining sperm counts, infertility, endometriosis, immune system impairment, and diabetes, as well as detrimental effects on the liver, spleen, bone marrow, and skin. No amount of dioxin exposure is safe.

A new U.S. EPA study found dioxin is more toxic than previously thought and can cause health problems at even low levels of exposure. Dioxin bioaccumulates in the environment, including the food chain, posing a risk to public health, wildlife, and the agricultural, poultry, and dairy industries in the county.

The Westside of Stanislaus County is becoming the toxic waste dumping ground for county and city officials and big business. Please join us in preventing another environmental disaster and securing environmental justice in our county.

By MYRTLE OSNER

Last month I reviewed The Legacy of Luna by Julia Butterfly Hill. This month the tree made Time magazine because it had been vandalized Thanksgiving weekend.

Hill lived in the tree for two years until an agreement was signed to protect the tree in perpetuity, with Pacific Lumber/Maxxam of Scotia, California. (The agreement is a deed of covenant, similar to a conservation easement, that is held by the land trust Sanctuary Forest.)

A critical cut was made into Luna with a large chainsaw. The perpetrator made one deep and precise cut that went through a significant portion of the tree. While the tree is still alive and standing, it is extremely vulnerable in a windstorm. Judging from the precision of the cut, the criminal action appears to have been committed by an experienced tree feller.

Julia Butterfly was devastated to learn of the injury to Luna. "Luna is the greatest teacher and best friend I have ever had. I gave two years of my life to ensure that she could live and die naturally. But two years is nothing compared to the thousand years she has lived, providing shelter, moisture and oxygen to forest inhabitants. It kills me that the last 3 percent of the ancient redwoods are being desecrated. I feel this violent attack on Luna as surely as if the chainsaw was going through me. Words cannot express the deep sorrow that I am experiencing, but I am as committed as ever to do everything in my power to protect Luna and the remaining ancient forests."

The most recent news notes that Luna withstood a recent storm and the cut has been fastened together by experienced tree surgeons. Only time will tell if she withstands this "unkindest cut of all."