how to be a locavore

this is how they do it in down-under.
i found insight in this SEED film about the different types of making sure that the food on your table is as local as possible: farmers markets, food box systems, food coops, community farms, community gardens and school garden.
plus i found that besides being a vegetarian (or vegan) it is also important to be a locavore=Someone who exclusively (or at least primarily) eats foods from their local or regional foodshed or a determined radius from their home (commonly either 100 or 250 miles, depending on location). By eating locally, most locavores hope to create a greater connection between themselves and their food sources, resist industrialized and processed foods, and support their local economy. The majority of locavores do not give themselves a strcit radius from which to eat, but instead buy as much of their food as they can from farmers, growers, and sellers with whom they have a relationship or whose growing or producing practices appeal they want to support. (about.com definition)
in the american oxford dictionary, locavore was word of the year in 2007, as there are many laudable american initiatives which subscribe themselves to the eat local challenge. so for all you snotty people put there thinking nothing eco ever came from or is happening in the US, wrong again!

anyhow, this is australia in this short film.
i've got nothing more to write about it, the film is self-explanatory, just watch, be inspired and learn!!!

economy, ecology, bikosophy

i invite you to watch John Burke, president of one of the major bicycles producers in the world, about the need of his industry to pay much more attention on lobbying governments for a bike-friendly world.

bikes can solve what he sees as the main global problems : obesity (in US and W Europe), Traffic congestion, urbanization, and environment deterioration ( cars' emissions= 60 % of air pollution)
what is good for his business is good for everybody. YOU couldn't find a greater way to market anything! some might want to contest it by asking why so much money and energy is wasted on those carbon models, as long as they cannot "save the planet more" than you regular 3 speed aluminum? but then again, complex needs are an inherent part of capitalist logic...... um, and it's too late to do away with capitalism now.

and by the way, did you know that 7 to 20 bikes fit in the parking space of a car? try it!

get you bicycle videos and fluff from here

new findings

i found a website showing 50 ways to help the Planet. wonderful!

HERE

only that most of them do not apply to my community's lifestyle. it seems that the risks brought about by environmental change are global, but the language is sometimes so space-specific that you can feel the gross disparities between the developed and the developing.
for example, nobody I know owns a dishwasher, nor a dryer, and i hope they never will, because such conquests or technology are utterly useless. due to habituation to these numerous appliances, the environmentally concerned Americans will promote their limited use, but cannot conceive their absence from the household.

nevertheless, the advice you find here is starting to apply for the Romanian in busy urban society, like # 24 "invest in you own coffee cup"( which everybody should be promoting in their offices) # 22 "buy local" (an impulse to those skeptical about local products and the consumerist snobs)+ all that refers to recycling, including object you no longer need and somebody else might want (Freecycle)

#40 my personal hope is to see hyper and supermarkets cutting down on their plastic bag usage, as "plastic bags suck" and replace maybe with cloth bags like the ones you can find in the German Plus retailers which carry the message "Mach mit-Deiner Umwelt zuliebe"

of course we would need to become more practical and loving and do the #17 : "shower with your partner", but remember afterwards to #6 : "diaper with a conscience".

just thought you should know

this is a photo of the International Herald Tribune, 2nd of May 2008.
also it is important to notice the assymetry of space provided for the two obituaries. yes, there are two!

don't mess with garbage

the building of the good old faculty of political science is where time stood still for me, being the location my mom inhabited when she first came to bucharest, and she felt the shakes of 1977 earthquake. now a proud institution of higher and mightier education since 1991, it also registers me among its yearly enlarging student-body. it is also a web of bizarre coincidences for me because i got to meet so many alumni outside school that it got me thinking everybody went to my school at some point. that sounds about right, since we label ourselves citizens, now *european*moreover, we all should try to understand what it means to be this type of modern animal. one way of doing it is perhaps a trip to this tiny university, but keep your attention limited, as you might observe how different bodies of administration or government don't give a rats ass about the power of citizenship.

too much ado about nothing, one might say, but i was happy that day when i saw that in front of my faculty building there stood three large garbage containers with bright labels on them telling us what to feed each. there was
BLUE for GENERAL WASTE
GREEN for PLASTIC
YELLOW for PAPER AND CARDBOARD

it is marvelous that Bucharest finally started to apply something that more honest cityhalls have since a few years ago (Timisoara for eg.), but hey, there is also the splendid banner from district 2 town hall advising to "selectively collect the waste" and explains how:
BLUE for PAPER AND CARDBOARD
GREEN for WHITE AND COLOURED GLASS
YELLOW for PLASTIC

parallel universe! i think, and a write an e-mail to the Investment and Public Service Dept (Mr. Corneliu Drug) demanding at least a metaphysical account of the magic banner. After 11 days i get an empty e-mail with an attachment of a scan "communicating " me that he firm SUPERCOM SA was informed about this issue and asked to eliminate the error.

i wonder how long will it take to correct this and if they still consider it allright to offend the bucharest people's intelligence by doing stuff like providing for differentiated garbage or bike lanes without minding how operable the result is and bragging about it on wasted budget. and these are just details we can see, never mind the big stunts with big money.who in the world needed those banners?

photos: you can see the uni building in the back, and my public excuses to the man accidentally in the shot. my thanks to the guy/girl who grafitti-ed the containers, as it makes things more bearable, eliminating one of the two options.
i am now in the register of the town hall as a "solved complaint" case:

clash of civilisations and valentine's day

my ONLY sunshine?

heh, i've been planning to pay my respects to greenpeace for this fine campaign, and now is the moment.
they say incandescent light bulbs ( traditional ones) use only 10% of the energy to produce light and dissipate the rest into heat. thus 90% waste.

replacing them with economical ones will make adjustments to the energy bill, as well as save mother Gaia some tiresome work. that is, if you love her...

hungry for love

As I was crawling up the underground stairs I noticed a new ad which warmed my soul and fantasy. it said: "birthcontrol pills don't make you fat. Food does." all right! so that's what it was...i'll run to the nearest drugstore to get me a handful of them pills for romantic dinners.

Seriously, although i can't see it around me (as everyone is fitter than my present self and that's frustrating) they say that romania is the third in europe at female obesity. Well, this study has been conducted by a nutrition pharmaceuticals producer, thus take it with a glass of water.
However, romanian society is far from that post-materialist western development outlook, and still into the traditional "stuffed and beautiful" idea. (although a fading precept thanks to tabloid media + the 2000s crop of local "stars") What we do here is devour: food, people, cars, buildings, nature, clothes, fashion, drugs, animals, u name it... but art and culture are taken in delicate bites, and often permanent lenting from them is advised.

maybe today they're gonna put up the male-version of this ad "an extra pack of condoms doesn't make you look like pregnant. beer+football on the couch do"

i am sick and depressed, but it's beside the point...

yes, of course I cringe at the thought of bombings, murders, deaths by any means, and I can hardly say that famous stalin joke "a single death is a tragedy, death of a million is statistics" is hilarious.
BUT there are certain pieces of information which blatantly point out the IRRATIONAL CRUELTY of people and they just sadden me to the bone. there u have it: a rare siberian tiger in a zoo in central china was beheaded and skinned in order to make some money on the black market.
she was anesthetized by her killers who otherwise could not have performed this, and she was one of the 530 of its kind in the wild.

even if not butchered by criminals, animals in bucharest zoo are killed by the personnel.
to me the whole idea of zoo is obsolete and cruel. even if located in china, bucharest, berlin, they are all sad places that bruise the imagination. i do want to see a kangaroo, i love them, but i don't want it to be restricted to a place which undoubtedly stinks and cannot replace its natural habitat.

since i don't stray from films analogies too much, one that touches on the obscurity of the zoo and its relation to human decay is "A Zed and Two Noughts" by the old man Peter Greenaway, a fountain of criticism which i admire.

hand of a stupid fortune

this year's Romanian Cycling Tour has been marked by a tragic and absurd event, which in my view could have been avoided, with a normal degree of care and awareness. riding his last 50 m of the race, cyclist Razvan Juganaru ran over a 62 year-old man who decided to trake a few lethal steps into the circuit. i can only shrudder at the schock lived by both men......a moment which sent one in a deep coma and consequently to his personal finish-line......and the other, straight to the local police station to inquire about what was obvious.

in the commotion another cyclist was almost ran-over by car, thus finis coronat opis........

what in its essence is a celebration of physical and mental vitality culminated in stupidity and death.

the sour cherries on the commemorative cake are the intricacies of Romanian bureaucracy and judicial system which are complicating the life of the athlete. all in all, let's keep our fingers crossed that he will not end up with a criminal record just because suicidal old men are permitted in the public of badly organized national competitions.

to make things a bit more sininster, this is a photo of prez. BUsh holding his full-suspension TREK bike, with which i am sure he is killing all common sense.

i comment no further, myself being a proud owner of a TREK. oups, found my soft-spot