Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees by Sanford and Bonney, Storey Publishing 978-1-60342-550-6 -------thinking of getting bees. there's a meeting next week about beekeeping at the mg office in flint. hope to go
went to the midmichigan beekeepers meeting in june at richfield township office, first thurs
at 7. pretty interesting, but sounds like work too. guess lester used to keep bees
difference between azaleas and rhododendrons? usually azaleas have 5 stamens; rhodos have 10 or more. always wondered what a way to tell them apart was.
sites to visit: www.grainmaker.com (expensive!)
www.tashatudorandfamily.com//www.maryjanesfarm.org//www.mypetchicken.com//www.adoptapet.com//www.organicconsumers.org//www.eatwild.com//www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/SmallWonders.cfm//
As the month progresses, the destruction to ed continues.
Really enjoyed reading the recent Urban Farm magazine and MaryJanesFarm. Both filled with tryable ideas, resources, recipes, advice, etc. In fact may get subscriptions to 1 or both.
Michigan Farm News--always fun to read. Articles often against things or for but the opposite view taken for whatever affects farmers. I know give and take is necessary but it sounds hypocritical to be against oil consumption or the EPA or "entitlements" but want corn subsidized and want corn used for fuel. p14 April 30 2011: "The solution to keep gas prices lower is for American motorists to have an alternative to gasoline. That alternative is available today--in homegrown, renewable ethanol. Barriers to the market have slowed development, and Broin urged senators to block attempts to prevent 15% ethanol--recently approved by EPA after extensive testing..." [Broin is an ethanol produces, CEO of POET, the largest ethanol producer in the world.]
p.8 same issue: Lugar bill would end sugar program. this article analyzes why is would be bad to support legislation introduced by Sen Lugar (R) that would repeal the US sugar program and allow large food manufacturers to buy sugar on the world market." the author believes the Competitive Enterprise Institute has been influenced by a powerful group of sugar users. Any co using sugar pays more than 2x the world market price for sugar because of a hidden tax--the result of sugar price fluctuations in the 70's and then Katrina in 2005. Easy to see/understand both sides of problem in this article but "opening world markets woiuld create an uneven playing field, just like in the 1970's."
same issue--interesting fact for me to know: p.3 "under current law, which will now remain in effect, IRS Form1099-Misc must be filed when a person engaged in a trade or business pays $600 or more to a non-employee for services performed during the calendar year. Rental payments are included in the reporting requirement, but payments made to corporations are generally excluded. The business making the payment must provide a taxpayer id # for each payee. A copy of the 1099 form must be furnished to both the person providing the service and to the IRS." probably why jelinek pays 500.
green homes info: bluhomes.com/nrdc
onearth.org/gallery
onearth.org/media
welovebirds.org
legacygifts@nrdc.org or www.nrdc.org/giftplanning
de la Normandie a la Californie, une vie transatlantique par Robert Boudesseul
from the Nation april 4, 2011:
My Monster, My Self/p.27/book The Shallows What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, Norton and Hamlet's BlackBerry A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age by William Powers, Harper
...But now reading has been supplanted, as Carr puts it, by "the speedy, superficial skimming of information" culled from the links generated by a Google search, which discourages "any deep, prolonged engagement with a single argument, idea, or narrative." Whereas once we nurtured our private selves by communing with literature, now we have only a "library of snippets," Carr says , in which "the strip-mining of 'relevant content' replaces the slow excavation of meaning." This is no accidental outcome. Asa Marshall McLuhan, whom both writers draw upon heavily, famously said, "The medium is the message." This medium's message is, as Powers puts it, "to avoid deep immersion."
The internet, Powers thinks, embodies a "very particular philosophy of technology. It can be summarized in a sentence: It's good to be connected, and it's bad to be disconnected."
When E.M. Forster urged us to "only connect," he didn't have in mind the kind of boundless promiscuity the Internet forces upon us, in which connection is mediated not by flesh but by screens. Constantly in the digital crowd, we are deprived of depth and substance, even when we don't know it. You may be sipping a Starbuck's latte in your chinos, but clicking on those top links, your sense of what is important conforms to collective norms as surely as if you were wearing a gray flannel suit to your corporate office. Indeed, you might be better off at the mercy of IBM or GM, because at least then you could see the disturbing truth lurking under the "idealization of maximum connectedness": that with every Google search or friend request or tweet or stolen look at your BlackBerry, you are that much more firmly plugged into the collective and that much less in touch with yourself."
Carr is polemical too, but his animus is largely directed toward the "Church of Google", not only for the way it forces us to join the congregation but how it calls us to worship at the altar of efficiency. In a clever and apt historical reference, he reminds us of Frederick Taylor, whose time-motion studies helped industrialists squeeze the last drop of productivity out of their assembly-line workers. "What Taylor did for the work of hand," Carr writes, "Google is doing for the work of the mind"---using its knowledge of our habits of mind to make us ever more efficient grazers of information."
same issue: article on the next big housing crisis? p. 24--second-lien mortgages, banks too big to fail are allowed to conceal losses by allowing these banks to keep large portfolios of 2nd lien mortgages on their books at close to pre-bubble values. today, banks are carrying these portfolios at 85 to 93 cents on the dollar when depending on their date of issue and other factors open-end 2nd lien loans are actually worth 40-60 cents.
while gas was 3.98 here for 3 days in lafayette it stayed at 3.69 at bp. next week i bought it at meijers for 3.79 and next day bingo 4.19. today i heard that the us average was around 3.78--must be michigan is rich and has to pay more--or maybe someone is getting kick backs.
from hobby farms p 104 may/june issue: www.farmland.org, www.privatelandownernetwork.org, www.lta.org/policy/advocates, http:findalandtust.org to locate an alliance member land trust //info on land trusts, conservation easements and land conservation (www.lta.org) easement tax incentives, etc
build a pond = www.hobbyfarms.com/projectpond
attract wildlife = /projectwildlife
income = /projectmarket
fencing = projectfencing
small cows: kerry and dexter associations/ also miniature jerseys
cool electric netting fencing = www.premier1supplies.com in iowa
plants native to zone: www.wildflower.org/plants
thin apples to 1 nickel sized fruit per cluster to equal 1 fruit/5-8 inches
blue jade corn www.seedsavers.org
www.mthealthy.com hatchery for chickens, game birds, ducks, turkeys
pv windowpanes from refeel spa in italy, polysolar lim in the uk or solyndra inc in ca/ www.solyndra.com
