Our very own “Rubber Chicken” and friends, battery hens rescued from a cull during the change in ownership of a factory farm. In the US, several workers from poultry and dairy farms have tested positive for H5N1, a type of avian influenza or “bird flu”. Millions of chickens and nearly 100 dairy herds over 48…
The graph below says a lot. We can greatly reduce our environmental footprint if we don’t need pasture and feed crops to produce beef and lamb. If we eliminate dairy it will help even more. Much of that extra land can grow forest and soak up carbon dioxide and support wildlife (there are more domestic…
The world has grown weary, and lately I have been feeling weary about the world. A song by Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 sprang to mind this morning. My lifelong friend Lasse introduced me to this band at about the time the song came out – way back in 1994. Lasse and I and our…
When I was a young lad, my family lived in a couple of nailed-together shacks in rural British Columbia. To say it was rustic would be giving the wrong impression. “Farmhouse chic” it was not. “Late 70s Broke” was more the vibe. Ah, the things you settle for in an age of stagflation. The house,…
As I trod the trail in a fir-fragrant afternoon under a hazy sky, I “got to thinkin’” as I joke with Valerie when I have a spell of contemplation. It wasn’t a solitary walk, Dusty the ragamuffin dog alternated between lagging behind and speeding ahead depending on how interesting the scentscape was in either direction….
When I was growing up, my grandma had a great system for spending time with her grandkids. It ensured bickering would be low to nil, and the level of care quite manageable. She would invite all of us kids to spend a week with her and grandpa at their modest but cozy home during the…
My wife Valerie and I love podcasts about plant-based living, mindfulness, and health. The hosts and guests tend to be quite concerned about the environment. That might be no surprise, but what raises my eyebrows is when the host ask their guest something like: “How is the family? You’ve got five kids right?” Whoa, five…
When you think of the words “dog lovers”, you might have visions of the legions of breeds, their breeders and fans at their show-of-shows, the Westminster Dog Show. A great sendup of this world can be found in the Christopher Guest mockumentary “Best in Show” (which also includes Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, more recently…
“A Kinder World” – image copyright Susan Pitcairn – susanpitcairn.com This week more than any other since October when I kicked off my writing efforts, I am struggling to write. Valerie was listening to a podcast today where a man described the pandemic like a mix of the trepidation around a tsunami or hurricane and…
In 2008, as the full weight of the global economic collapse came to bear on American consumers there was a brief period of sanity: average house sizes bucked the trend and began to decline. Since the early 1980s, average detached homes had grown by about 50%. After the economic crisis, the average size settled back…