I've been away for a week--fishing for Striped Bass and
Blue Fish off the Great Point of Nantucket Island. Yowee!!
Here's a forward from the NY Times.
Thanks to all that put the compost info into the public
domain. Its a nice thought to know I can now go back to
the archives and recapture your wisdom as I continue on my
composting odyssey. The worms really do sound like the
better route. (And the idea of blending up the scraps and
pouring directly on the soil is something I am going to
try.) But alas my totally urban husband can not mentally
handle the idea of using worms to eat the scraps coming
from our kitchen and small garden. Even the notion of
composting is a stretch. So I am starting small and when
the notion of composting is no longer a scary thing, the
worms will arrive!! And no way am I letting him near
Misha's post on rats. Eeek. Thankfully we have three
Dalmatians and two neighbor cats that regularly prowl our
space. Although I did wander out one night to the trash
cans and startle an opossum quietly munching in an opened
trash can.
best to everyone, kate
June 7, 1999
Europe's Profound Fear of Food
By JOHN MICKLETHWAIT
or anybody from General Motors who is even slightly
insecure about his or her position, a trip to London has
become a distinctly Kafkaesque experience.
Pick up a tabloid newspaper, flick on a television talk
show, study the graffiti on street walls and you are
greeted by a constant refrain: "G.M. is evil." At Notting
Hill dinner parties, people plot how to drive G.M. back to
America; in Soho pubs people mutter that G.M. is
"dangerous" and "disgusting." Just about every titled
person in London, from the Marchioness of Worcester to
Prince Charles, wants to get poor G.M.
In fact, the "G.M." that has so enraged Britons stands for
"genetically modified," as in "G.M. food" (though opponents
now seems to have stopped adding the word "food,"
presumably out of fear that it will be contaminated by the
deadly initials). According to one recent poll, only 1
Briton in 100 (a pollster's way of saying nobody) thinks
that genetically modified products like herbicide-resistant
soybeans and delayed-ripening tomatoes are good for
society.
Despite an expensive advertising campaign by the pioneer in
the field, Monsanto, feelings run deep in most of Europe
and even parts of Asia. In India activists working for
Operation Cremation Monsanto have burned fields of
genetically modified crops.