Free the Snake River & DamNation Movie

I just watched the film DamNation on Hulu (free with ad-breaks).  The film is about four deadbeat dams on the lower Snake River and how we can fix the problems they cause.  It’s full of magnificent mountain scenery and underwater footage of salmon and steelhead.  I’m still thinking through the information presented; I may rewatch it to more fully understand everything.

Overall, it was a great film, with the exception of some profanity and a few pictures of a lady in Glen Canyon sans clothing.

Below is a 7:30 minute short film about the Snake River dams.  It’s what led me to watch the movie.  Enjoy!

DamNation Official Site

Plastic SEAS Trailer

“Plastic SEAS is a film exploring the connection between plastic pollution, the seas, and human health.”

I recently saw this trailer for Jeneene Chatowsky’s documentary and it was fairly scary. I choose not to use disposable plastics for the most part, but that doesn’t mean I’m not affected by them. Please watch this trailer and get you a reusable water bottle!

(And since most bottled water is just from a tap anyway, use your own glasses instead of buying bottled water for home use. Unless, of course, your water is unsafe.)

Cinema Thursday: Sheep teaches young bull to head butt

Here’s a cute video I saw the other day and had to share.

On a sad note, Sabrina succumbed to  the heat on Tuesday.

Thought for the Day

Don’t rely on buzz-words, make sure your food is actually good for you.

You Know You Eat (mostly) Unprocessed Food When…

As I was making dinner this evening, I was debating whether or not to add another can of tomato paste to the chicken.  (Now, we always wash the top of the can before opening it.)  Then I thought, “I have to add it, I already washed it and it will go bad if I don’t use it!”

Well, maybe veg goes bad quickly after washing, but I don’t think that applies to cans. 

(As an aside, we ate our first garden tomato for this year!  It was a delish Cherokee Purple.  There’s another one that should be ripe soon, yay!)

Baked Chicken of the Wrong Kind

Hey there, just want to remind all chicken keepers to watch out for your flock during high heat.  I almost lost Sabrina yesterday.

Some ideas for keeping your birds cool and hydrated:

• Chilled water
• Crushed ice
• Watermelon
• Cucumber

Make sure their water is in the shade or they may not go drink it.  Mine won’t.

Cinema Thursday: Return of the Cicadas

This a neat excerpt from a documentary-in-progress by Samuel Orr.  If you are grossed out by videos of crawling bugs, you my want to skip this one.

It’s pretty dramatic.  Possibly over-dramatic, but I liked it anyway.

Return of the Cicadas on Vimeo

Support the film on Kickstarter HERE.

Flowers Time Lapse by Katka Pruskova

  I found this beautiful video today.  It is simply a time lapse of flowers blooming with lovely music.  Enjoy.

  “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.”  ~Luke 12:27

Flowers Timelapse from Katka Pruskova on Vimeo.

Cinema Thursday: The Miseducation of America with Charlotte Iserbyt

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt (pronounced Izzer-bee), former Senior Policy Adviser in the US Department of Education during the Reagan administration, was interviewed in May of 2011 about the miseducation of America.  It’s not so much an interview as it is her telling the story of what has gone on in education.  Please listen with both ears and your mind, you’ll need them.  There is so much information in this video.  I really felt that my brain drowned in information (that’s a good thing).

Charlotte Iserbyt’s website is deliberatedumbingdown.com.

Charlotte Iserbyt: The Miseducation of America Part 1-Full

Read the Transcript: America’s Road to Ruin

Read more of Iserbyt & others’ work here.

Charlotte has also written the book The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America which is online for free.   It is a chronological history of the past 100+ years of education reform.  It contains a lot of research including government plans and policy documents from her time in the Department of Education.

Avoiding GMOs in Your Garden

Lately, it seems that we’re up to our eyeballs in GMOs.  Corn, soy, zucchini, you name it they’ve tampered with it.  That’s why gardening is important.  When you grow something yourself you know what went into its development.

But you didn’t think that Monsanto and their cronies would watch their customers drift off into organic-ville quietly did you?  Of course not.   They want to capture whatever revenue streams are available.  And since gardening is in vogue again (and they’re already in the agriculture business) of course they’ll try to get their slice of that pie.

The two major ways Monsanto is interfering is by buying up smaller seed companies and also the names of heirloom seeds.  That way you either buy from them without realizing it or the seed company has to pay Monsanto for using “their” seed name.

Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist, has written an excellent article about this HERE.  Thanks for alerting us, Sarah.

Here is a list of seed companies Monsanto has bought or does business with.

This post was linked to the Homestead Barn Hop!