Editor's Take: April 21, 2008
Mud: It's what's for dinner.
Food for Thought
On Friday, the New York Times published one of the most startling articles I’ve read of late. Haitians are eating mud mixed with sugar to stop the gnawing in their stomachs. Here, grocery prices are rising dramatically. Meanwhile, Seattle floats a local food plan that could help the city’s poor, the area's organic farmer, and the health-conscious shopper.
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Your editor today is Kristin Kolb | View All Today's News
Seattle's Recipe to Cure Society's Ills
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
04/21/2008
It's a liberal manifesto aiming to transform how locally produced food gets to Seattle neighborhoods.
Winning raves from some activists as "visionary," the "Local Food Action Initiative" offers goals as lofty as they are sweeping: racial and social justice, environmental sustainability, improved public health, economic development and more.
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Why You're Paying More at the Grocery Store
Seattle Times
04/21/2008
Shoppers around the globe are sharing her experience in yet another example of our growing interconnectedness. From Beijing to Bellevue, Edinburgh to Everett, we're devoting more of our incomes toward food.
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Commentary: Rising Prices, Rioting for Food
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
04/21/2008
Americans are still worrying about their weight, even as we look warily at rising supermarket prices. In the rest of the world, there is growing anxiety -- or should we say terror -- about having enough food to eat.
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Puget Sound: One Man's Indictment, Love Poem and Call to Arms
Seattle Times
04/21/2008
Like a subconscious id, Puget Sound is a repository not only of all the runoff of pollutants and problems from the crest of the Olympics to the Cascades, but of the hopes and fears of Pacific Northwest civilization. It reflects, unmercifully, who we truly are: stewards or wastrels, deep thinkers or merely deep-sixers.
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The Mystery of Oregon's Missing Salmon
Oregonian
04/21/2008
Ever fewer Sacramento River chinook survive the journey from inland California to the Oregon coast.
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BC Backs off Climate Targets
Vancouver Sun
04/21/2008
Slow down, you're going green way too fast. That's been the message from inside many of Vancouver's boardrooms to Premier Gordon Campbell after he joined California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in fighting climate change. It now appears the premier is listening to business and will slow down the implementation of CO2 reduction targets.
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Homeless Crisis Grows while Canada Prospers
Vancouver Sun
04/21/2008
Not since the Great Depression have so many Canadians been homeless or at risk of losing the roofs over their heads. But what makes the homeless crisis different from the 1930s is that this is not the result of a natural disaster. It's the result of a perfect storm of failed government policies.
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Anchorage Mayor to Challenge Sen. Ted Stevens
Anchorage Daily News
04/21/2008
Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich said Sunday he's made up his mind to run against U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in the fall election.
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The New York Times Magazine's Green Issue
New York Times
04/21/2008
Some bold steps to make your carbon footprint smaller, including Seattle's walkscore.com, pay-as-you-go car insurance, and green-collar jobs. Oh my!
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Tom Frank: Obama's Touch of Class
Wall Street Journal
04/21/2008
If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they've got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don't care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I'll fly the plane myself.
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