Climate Culture
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From Iowa’s apple orchards, a delicious heirloom and a recipe for stuffing
This column is an excerpt from Friese’s new book A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland. Truly scrumptious: the “red delicious” apple’s heirloom antecedent. Photo: Kurt Michael Friese One cool spring morning about 1880, a farmer in Madison County, Iowa, named Jesse Hiatt was walking the rows of his young […]
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Try skipping the Pringles
Looking for political information on CNN.com, a headline caught my eye: “How to be sodium savvy.” Since I recently developed some concerns in that area I clicked the link. The story was written by a chef named David Hagedorn for Cooking Light Magazine, a part of the CNN/Time/Warner empire. What I found at the outset […]
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Bottled water is a sham answer to low-quality tap water
Speaking of bottled water, get this, from Environmental Working Group: The bottled water industry promotes an image of purity, but comprehensive testing by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) reveals a surprising array of chemical contaminants in every bottled water brand analyzed, including toxic byproducts of chlorination in Walmart’s Sam’s Choice and Giant Supermarket’s Acadia brands, […]
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Umbra on eco-themed Halloween costumes
Dear Umbra, Every year my friends and I throw a big Halloween party, and I had the amazing idea of dressing up as Sarah Palin. Unfortunately, I just found out that’s currently the most popular costume in my city (and most likely the U.S.), so I’m thinking about tipping my hat to my love of […]
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Bush admin aims to increase mountain-bike access to national parks
Mountain bikers will have easier access to national parks and other public lands under plans the Biker-in-Chief is trying to push through before leaving office. (Ninety-seven days!) The National Park Service said Tuesday that it will propose a rule by Nov. 15 that would speed up decision-making about mountain-bike trails by putting park managers in […]
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How to green your Halloween
The economy may have gone to pot and the country’s future leadership may be wildly unclear, but there’s one thing we can count on: Halloween. Yes, October 31 is a holiday of certainty, full of ringing doorbells, sweet treats, and tiny ghosts and witches (or, more likely, Kung Fu Pandas and Hannah Montanas). But All […]
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Nestle flexes its muscles at Miami water utility
For months, the bottled-water industry has been losing its grip over people’s pocketbooks. Consumers are realizing that buying purified tap water at pumped-up prices, packaged in little plastic bottles, makes zero sense in economic, ecological, or health terms. Now the industry appears to be losing its grip on reality. From the Miami Herald: In the […]
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Notable quotable
“I kind of thought that eco-friendly clothes meant misshapen hemp sweaters — you know, from like 1992 or something.” — actress Maggie Gyllenhaal
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How modern cities made themselves livable
Financial deregulation has obviously been a disaster. Perhaps we are entering a new era, one in which it is acceptable to talk about the positive actions that governments can take. A friend of mine, Bryn Barnard, has written about how government first stepped in to provide a minimally healthy environment — in a chapter about […]
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Budget-saving tips awfully similar to planet-preserving prescriptions
Who are you to deny me my two-car garage filled with junk, an elegant dining room I’ll never use, and massive heating/cooling bills? That’s the basic response from critics when greens question McMansions in particular and our consumer culture in general. I mean, isn’t newer, bigger, better the American way? Didn’t President Bush urge us […]
