Wednesday 30th June 2004
Bush pilloried by Nobel laureates  US Democrat Presidential candidate, John Kerry, tore into the Bush administration's environmental policies last week backed with the endorsements of no less than 48 Nobel Prize laureates. See www.ens.com and others.
The big news about Bush in Ireland last weekend seems to have been the pictures of him in his underwear at the window of luxurious Dromoland Castle and the tough time he suffered in an interview at the hands of  RTE's Washington correspondent, Carole Coleman. In both cases, enraged White House aides tried to influence the broadcast of the items, but to no avail (the photos made many Middle Eastern papers front pages). To the utter perplexity of the White House, our Irish state-supported television station, RTE, seemed to behave as if they were free, intelligent and independent. What a shock to a regime that congratulates itself on having a "free press"? 
Things have changed, changed utterly, since the Reagan visit in 1984. Viva la change!

Wholesome news from America  In the waves of negative foreign policy news from the US, it is often ignored that extraordinarily positive things are going on in other areas there, even in such conservative states like Bush's Texas. For instance, the most exciting, the most innovative, the largest organic and natural foods business on the planet, Whole Foods Market, had its genesis in Austin, Texas in 1978. 
Today, Whole Food Markets, with 157 stores in 28 states and worth $3.9 billion, has its "corporate" headquarters there. The original founder of the business, 50 year-old John Mackey, still heads the dynamic and ultra-ethical company that's driving coaches and horses through the management and labour relations rule books and, in the process, making money hand-over-fist for management, staff and even, believe it or not, suppliers. 
Very, very big food producers, processors and retailers are now taking a great interest in the revolutionary business model and products of WFM. 
For more on this, read the well-researched article, The Anarchist's Cookbook, by Charles Fishman in the current issue of Fast Company at www.fastcompany.com/magazine/84/wholefoods.html 
The opening story, of Mackey's originally aggressive response to an animal rights activist, and his subsequent conversion from vegetarianism to vegan, is quite an inspiration. Their new Columbus Circle Manhattan "signature store" sounds like organic heaven - "a carnival of comestibles". It would be reason enough - for the likes of me anyway - to visit the Big Apple (which I sadly haven't done yet, partly to do with what a CIA goon said to me in Ballyporeen in 1984; "If you come State-side, you commie bastard, we'll have a special welcome for you."
There is much to be enamoured about in this dynamic way of doing business, but one of the things I particularly like is the declaration that "Whole Foods is not a business for a clique, or for the elite".
Another interesting statement from Mackey recently was, "Twenty years from now, factory farms will be illegal in the United States." This followed his having intensively studied the whole issue of large-scale animal farming (mostly because of the challenge from the activist mentioned above), and implementing new standards for his meat suppliers. One fascinating and immediate result of his efforts - a duck producer, now has "swimming pools" for its birds. 

Mad Cow claims first US human casualty  The latest news of BSE striking down its first human victim is sending tremors through the conventional meat producing industry there. It's an ill wind etc but, as in Britain and Europe during the BSE crisis here, consumers are going to change their eating habits rapidly and organic food outlets, like the giant Whole Foods Market company, will benefit substantially. The writer of the piece above, Fishman, said, "Americans have a hair-trigger alert to issues such as mad cow disesase."

Sheep Dip  Read this report from a Scottish organic farmers'  conference last week about the prickly issue over whether to use conventional organochlorine sheep dip in cases of severe sheep scab in organic sheep or not.  http://business.scotsman.com/agriculture.cfm?id=746362004  
The conclusion sounds reasonable to me. What do you think?
Brian Kaye, the chairman of the Scottish Organic Producers Association, also said at the same event that there was now a lot of common ground between conventional and organic production systems. He claimed that standards of conventional farming had risen in the recent past and that there had been a benfit too from the lapsed organic farmers who returned to conventional practices. Its an ill wind again etc.

Is there an organic advantage? Sally Squires of the Washington Post asks this question, and tries to answer it in this week's edition of the regular Lean Plate Club in that newspaper.
I disagree with her conclusions - "No studies have systematically compared organic food regimens against conventional fare to examine either short-term or long-term health. The research is simply too expensive, time-consuming and difficult to do." - and will be writing to her. See Organic Lolly below 
But the column perhaps deserves a closer look. See past columns. 
Ms Barnes introduces the concept, new to me, of "smart food". She expalins, "... the Club is about smart food. It is not about dieting and food deprivation." 
Smart food, slow food, good food, craft food, artisan food and organic food - they are all headed generally in the right direction. Let's be smart - let's support them all. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13242-2004Jun28.html 

Organic wines Ireland  Helen and Urs Tobler run their admirably ethical wine business, Vendemia Wines, www.vendemiawine.com from their premises in Kilkenny - Unit 24, Hebron Road Industrial Estate. In Dublin, you can meet them at the Pearse Street Market on Saturday mornings. See their entry on my Products page 

Monday 28th June 2004 
Not on the label  I was going to review the book of this name but I've found a good one online, so I'll give you a link to it instead -  www.itv.com/page.asp?partid=1536 - confine myself to a few comments, and tell you where to get the book quickly and cheaply. 
Not on the label; What really goes into the food on your plate by Felicity Lawrence, published by Penguin, £7.99, was launched just a few weeks ago and looks set fair to becoming a bestseller.
For my part, I cannot recommend it enough. It says everything I ever said on this subject or wanted to say - and some more. And it says it all so logically and lucidly, and, if read with its Notes, Introduction and Afterword is a fantastic resource giving us accurate knowledge about our food, teaching us how to avoid the most dangerous shite, and guiding us to sources of good, safe products (interesting that the farmers' union in the UK, the NFU, publishes a list of farmers markets. Irish Farmers Ass., please note).  
I like too what she says about getting the message across about the most deprived sectors of our communities - "I am acutely conscious that not everyone has the luxury of choice. ....the poorest fifth of the popuation already spends a much higher proportion of its income, about a third*, on food than the more affluent." But cheap food is not the answer, she points out, claiming that the poor are the most victimised by cheap food policies (listing her reasons for so saying). She concludes that "..the answer is not that food needs to be cheaper but that political action is necessary to make sure they can afford it." 
Bravo Ms Lawrence! You are the first in the world in print with this one. I shall look at this in more depth later; maybe a radical proposal or two. And no, not the Swiftian one.
But all this is only what you would expect from someone of Lawrence's calibre, a long-time investigative journalist covering problems in our food industry. She is Consumers Affairs Correspondent for the UK Guardian newspaper and a working mother. "I love cooking and I love eating" she says - doing her own daily shopping, often just down the high street and often choosing local over organic (she has things to say about "industrialized" organic food). But she is also an ardent supporter of organic food and, in particular, box schemes.
And she urges, wonderful woman, that we are not powerless in today's marketplace - "It is possible to send powerful signals to government, manufacturers and retailers by changing the way we shop. Thousands of small rebellions by consumers in revolt can force change." 
I could go on and on, but I'll leave you to read the review above and then the book.

*The same proportion as it was for the overall population 50 years ago. Today the proportion of  incomes spent on food in the UK is about 10%.

Not on their label  As we're talking about labels, an Irish consumer contacted me during the week about the lack of contact information on an organic product. She bought Ballinree burgers in Super Valu for the first time and found them to be "very, very salty". Normally happy with Tipperary-based Ballinree's other beef products, she wanted to give the company feedback, but, apart from the bare address on the packaging, there was little else. Frustratingly, an 11811 enquiry failed to trace them on the scanty information. Planorganic to the rescue - I had sorted this before - and a quick glance at the Products page, Meat section, solved the problem - of the phone number that is, not of the salty burgers. Traceability? 

German jailed for organic fraud  Let the buckos in Ireland - well-known and still to be outed - that cheat on organic standards, quake in their wellingtons - eight years in jail could be their lot, if the severity of German sentencing applied here.* 
Hans-Ernst Bastian, an agricultural engineer got this sentence for selling conventional corn as organic. But it  wasn't just a peck or two. No, the bould Hans flogged more than 23,000 tons making a cool profit of 2.5 million. The case was widely covered in Germany and, according to the judge, the crime has caused not only economic damage but "a great loss of image" to the organic industry. And it doen't finish there; Bastian might also have to serve a consecutive six and a half year's sentence for a similar offence. (You wouldn't get that for murder here!)

* But don't worry, you few out there who are cheating skunks, we will not - here in the "Food Isle" - in the near future, take organics itself seriously, let alone cheating on organic standards.
Although this case has got scant publicity here, cheating is a constant Irish consumer's concern.  A commorn question raised with me, "Can we believe that organics is what it claims to be."  My usual reply; " No human endeavour is without blemish but organics are about 95% authentic." 

Organic Plan for Europe - again  In view of the above fraud case and the dramatic slowdown of growth in the organic sector in Europe, the recent /relaunch of the "European Action Plan for Organic Food and Farming" is timely. It proposes a list of 21 "concrete policy measures to be implemented (see them and more on http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/qual/organic/plan/index_en.htm ). 
The press release claims, "This plan comes in response to a rapid increase in the number of farmers producing organically...in the last years". That surely is grossly misleading! Growth of organics in the EU has slowed from a high of 25%  to a current low of 5%.- and going down. Ireland, of course, languishes at the bottom of the EU table with Greece, in terms of organic as a percentage of overall agricultural production, at a level equal to the EU average of 1985! 
The 21 measures are all laudable and I hope they are all passed at the meeting of Ag.Mins due soon, but this one I particularly favour - "Defining the basic principles of organic agriculture and thus making its public service explicit; increasing transparency and consumer confidence" They're getting there.

Organic lolly  Serious money at long last is going to be spent on organic food research. € 18 million is to be invested on a European-wide, Quality Low Input Food (QLIF) project. The research will compare the taste and nutritional quality of organic and conventional crops. It will be headed by Prof. Carlo Leifert (remember him and the search for a blight-free potato?) of the Nafferton Ecological Farming Group at the University of Newcastle. The first report will be made available in January 2005. More on this later. 
If things go the way I think they'll go, I should be able to add substantially to my Scientific evidence of the benefits of organic food and farming  page in the near futture.

Wednesday 23rd June 2004 
I posted an update yesterday and it disappeared! Gone; vanished; cyber-swallowed; whatever. And I can't blame the CIA this time as, despite being a front-line veteran of Ballyporeen in 1984, I am not involved in the current Irish anti-Bush/anti-war campaign.* 
I will do another update today or tomorrow, depending on when the batteries are charged up again.
The wonderful rains of the last 48 hours, whilst nourishing the vegetables and filling the water tanks, has meant the solar batteries have run down. So, it will likely be tomorrow rather than today. 
In the meantime, occupy your organic-news-hungry-eyes by looking at http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/qual/organic/plan/index_en.htm for the latest developments towards an Action Plan for organics in Europe. 

* But many good friends of mine are, and If you want to get involved, contact Sinéad, Dominic or others at http://irishantiwar.org 

Incoming update: read about the Germans jailed for organic fraud, a huge boost for organic research, and, possibly, a story about Reagan, the CIA, sugar beet and rabbits.

Friday 18th June 2004 
Our organic champion  Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian farmer dragged through the courts by Monsanto, and who, almost by default, became a focus of dissent against GMOs and a supporter for the  organic cause, forced a "split decision" in the Canadian Supreme Court. I said in my item, David and Goliath - a draw? (below 26th May), that it was a "developing situation" - intending to come back to it. Well now I do so, to point you towards a fine article written by Dr Ann Clark of the Univ. of Guelph, Ontario, in which she clarifies the legal interpretation of the case and points out the positive gains for those against GM technology. Contrary to general reporting on the case, Monsanto, according to her analysis, conceded a lot and Scmeiser and his supporters gained substantially. 
"Quite apart from losing their own accumulated court costs as well as the value of Schmeiser’s 1997 crop, their ability to threaten financial reprisals to inadvertent infringers was lost or greatly weakened. Hopefully, the arrival of Monsanto’s investigators on the doorstep of guiltless farmers will soon be a thing of the past.* But of greater long term importance, Monsanto’s behavior toward Schmeiser and hundreds of other farmers has now been exposed to the world." Dr Clark said. She wound up by claiming that "the Schemisers have effectively shifted the balance of power between Monsanto and farmers..." See www.cropchoice.com/leadstry.asp?RecID=2612 via www.gmwatch.org (Newsletter, 15/06/'04 GMW: Who really won the Schmeiser case?).

*I had a conversation with a farmer today who reminded me of the dreadful bullying suffered by farmers in the 1970s (tell me about it? I was there in the thick of it fighting for my father's farm) from the Irish banks and the Agricultural Credit Corporation in particular. His solution, if they tried to put him and his family out of his property: " I'd have stuck a bazooka up their f.....g a...s."
 I'm afraid I was a bit wet in comparison: I told the ACC they wouldn't get paid until we could  pay. My militant correspondent, unlike so many others ripped off in the recent scandals by Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland, is quite happy with the lending institutions now: " We put manners on them then", he maintains. 
Which reminds me of the story of the lawyer, the doctor and the banker being rescued from the shark-infested sea........but .I'll only tell it if I am swamped by your pleas. 

National Health  The biggest show in Ireland featuring organic and natural health products takes place on 26^th & 27^th June, 2004 , at the National Show Centre, Cloghran, Co.Dublin (5 minutes from Dublin Airport ). Contact Nelton Exhibitions on Dublin  01 4651903 or email: naturalhealth2004@eircom.net  
I had intended being there, and even had an offer of accomodation from my good friends, Peter and Yvonne Mc Kinley just up the road in Rush, but, too much going on these days...

International Health There is to be a charity barbecue and music gig in my home town of Fethard, Co.Tipperary tomorrow night. The venue will be the other famous McCarthy's Bar (second only to Mc's of Castletownbere), in a marquee at the back, adjacent to the wonderful town walls that make Fethard the  outstanding mediaeval town it is. Eleanor Shanley and support supply the main music and afterwards, local talents, the Pheasnat Pluckers will join in an "informal session" which could go on 'til late or even later! The event is a fund-raiser for the Ethiopian Self-Help Appeal Fund.  Full details on www.fethard.com News page.
My brother Steven, in the course of his horse trek around Ireland, will be there with "Murphy" and undoubtedly a Murphy's or two. He's had a huge reception in the area, having had his coming heralded in local newspapers and radio stations. Friends and well-wishers have swamped him on the road and at his stop-overs. Latest news and photos on www.pilgrimhorse.info  

Wednesday 16th June 2004 
Bloomsday* this gorgeous June day  On this, the 100th anniversary of the famous day-in-the-life-of Dublin and its denizens, I too celebrate the day with the thousands of people in our capital city and throughout the world marking the occasion with mutton-kidney breakfasts, readings and whatever.
I personally thank Mr Joyce for the liberating effects of Ulysses on me as a youngster, a typical, religiously oppressed country boy in Engalnd in the '60s. I both read the book and saw the film (directed by Joseph Strick, with Milo O'Shea as Bloom and Barbara ? as Molly) in 1966. In fact, I was so taken with Ulysses at the time that, at considerable effort and expense, I went to the premiere of the film in London. 
I have been known to burst into the opening scene of the book whilst making coffee in the mornings: you all know it of course - "Introibo ad altare Dei", intoned Buck Mulligan, raising his shaving bowl to the heavens, yellow dressing gown blown back by the seabreeze, paganly exposing himself to the sun rising in the east over the Irish Sea. 
The bould Mulligan, was modelled by Joyce on Oliver St John Gogarty (a distant relative of ours), and his morning ablutions at the Martello Tower in Sandycove, Dublin. The pair shared the unusual, fortified accomodation in real life for a couple of weeks in 1904. There was a also a third man, an Oxford friend of Gogarty's, who went a little crazy - he shot at an imagined black panther one night - causing Jimmy Joyce to cut short his stay. Joyce went on to become a professional exile, dragging Nora Barnacle with him, and eventually, gloriously achieved his stated aim " forging in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." 

*The reason that the epoch-changing book was based on this day was because James and Nora had it off for the first time - probably on Dollymount Strand, Jim's first licit, illicit sex. His other sexual explorations were all of the sleazy, professional, red-light kind, and the legacy from these encounters, syphilis (according to the latest bioghraphy), was to blight his life and relationships thereafter. But in the meantime the Blooms flowered and one of the world's greatest works of literature was born.  "Such.." as Ned Kelly has it just before his particular leap into eternity and immortality, ".. is life".

What's Joyce and his work got to do with organics? The best original answer to this will get an unusual prize.

Friday 11th June 2004
Sustainability and politics  I mentioned the fact back in April that I had attended a sustainability conference in Dublin. It was on at the same time as (but unconnected to) the Convergence Festival. A lot of interesting things went on there - and were well worthy of being reported - but I got wonderfully distracted (see various reports in late April and May below) and I'm just too impatient/lazy to go back on notes in an attempt to resurrect the subject. 
But my conscience was bothering me (which reminds me, I should finish my report on the Tipperary Institute's Celebrating the Environment - sorry Tipp.and for Sunday's game as well). 
I was therefore delighted when somebody whom I met there, Sinéad Ní Bhroin, volunteered to write up the conference for me. 
Don't have it yet, as Sinéad is embroiled to her tonsils in the local elections in Dublin. The articulate and environmentally passionate 33 year-old is running for the Green Party in Ballyfermot. She believes that "we need creative solutions to ensure a sustainable future for our communities" and has a particular interest in Community Supported Agriculture schemes.
I love Sinéad's publicity slogan; "The weak are a long time in politics."  She also has a business website promoting her marketing and office administration services - www.dublinsgirlfriday.com 
The article on the conference is promised by the 18th June - regardless of the outcome of the election, I'm assured.

Zero rating for incinerators  "Energy from waste is a waste of energy" is the pithy slogan on a website launched in Ireland recently, www.downtozero.ie  Down to Zero is a well-designed campaigning site promoting sustainable solutions to Ireland's waste problems and explaining the problems of incineration.There is a facility to vote for increased recycling and composting and letting Min.Cullen know about it. An animation sequence showing and explaining the workings of an incinerator plant is very cleverly done: Incineration as depicted there does not inspire confidence! 
The site is an initiative of VOICE - Voice of Irish Concern for the Environment. 
Speaking, yesterday to the site's designer and seasoned activist, Will St.Leger, we shared common experiences (he was in Clonmel too in the '80s - Merck, Regan and Ballyporeen, Clonmel Corp.etc, et miserable cetra), views about where organics and environmentalism has come from - and is going to - in Ireland today. Describing the atmosphere in South Tipperary in the 1980s, Will made the telling comment that there was then a "moratorium on dissent".
Things have changed, thank goodness, and today dissent in Ireland against bad performance by the authorities on environmentalism is in the open, well organised (and with the expertise of the likes of St Leger and his generation, harnessing the media very well to the cause) and has ultimately, in many cases, the big clout of the EU behind it.

Gaia goes nuclear  Professor James Lovelock is in the news over the last few weeks because of his proposal at a lecture in Devon that nuclear power is the only way in which we can now save the planet. Claiming that we are "at war with the Earth itself" and that "global warming is the response of an outraged planet", the professor went on to point out the hopelessness of dealing with the current earth's population and the pressure on resources; "To attempt to farm the whole earth to feed people, even with organic farming, would make us like sailors who burnt the timbers and rigging of their ships to keep warm."
Lovelock was the darling of the environmental movement because of his Gaia Hypothesis, widely understood to be that the earth behaves like a living organism which self-regulates its atmospheric gasses and other environments. His inventions of highly precise instruments, capable of measuring parts per trillion, led to the discoveries of pollutants like DDT - giving rise to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, PCBs and CFCs - leading to the discovery of holes in the atmosphere's ozone layer. 
He has a strong local connection here on Beara as he purchased a holiday home a few miles east of here in 1968, "sited on the slopes of Hungry Hill, a small ("small"! - it's 682 metres + the height of the cairn) mountain of warm (!) sandstone." He built the famous, wonderfully named, Exponential Dilution Chamber there in a converted cowhouse and employed his "neighbour Mr O'Sullivan", a local sheep farmer as a lab assistant. He completely vindicated the local prejudice against the east wind by showing that it carried three times the CFCs as the westerlies (which were not unpolluted either). He demonstrated that the haze which came with the east wind was a "petrochemical smog from southern France and Italy." Tests along our seashore alos showed that seaweed contained the pollutant dimethyl sulphide, as he expected, but also the "astonishingly toxic and carcinogenic methyl iodide, unexpected outside the laboratory."
Reactions are still coming in to Lovelock's speech. Tony Juniper, from Friends of the Earth, Britain, said that although here was much to admire in Professor Lovelock's thinking, it was crazy to consider nuclear power as a solution.
One of the interesting refutations was by the scientist, PR Rowland, FRSC, who suggests that a total energy audit (TEA) for nuclear energy would show a negative "profit" and that Lovelock's advice on this subject is invalidated  "because he has not considered these fundamentals."
I will write some more next week on this subject. 

No Venus here on Beara That is not to say that there is no love or romance here on "heavenly" (the adjective most used by Beara locals during the recent sunny weather) Beara but that the much talked-about "transit of Venus" - not seen since 1882 - was invisible to us, Tuesday, because of persistent cloud cover. They got a good gawk at it in Dublin, however, and photos of the six-hour passage of the planet moving across the face of the sun, can be seen on www.astronomyireland.org 

And now for something completely different.... Heard of Mark Thomas, the English stand-up comic cum self-styled "agitator" whose material is largely composed of descriptions of his real-life clashes with authority? Would anyone out there have read an article in last Tuesdau's Irish Examiner (I saw it in a cafe and forgot ro buy a copy later) and be able to tell me correctly (Thomas got it wrong, I'm certain) Dave Allen's joke about racism, the "two Paddies" and a London audience? It's  a wonderful double-edged sword when properly told, I'm convinced. I'd like a copy of the article too - the Examiner no longer have free access to their site. Thomas is coming to Ireland, the Olympia in Dublin, later in June (date?).

Thursday 3rd June 2004 
Have a biodynamic day out in London  Learn more about biodynamic food and farming, meet the producers and growers, listen to talks, taste wonderful food and wine at Rudolf Steiner House, London, Sunday 13th June. Read all about it at www.anth.org.uk/rsh  One of the co-founders of farm (www.farm.org), Robin Maynard, will give the opening talk. Wish I could be there but the brother is arriving in Ireland that weekend to begin his circuit of Ireland horse-trek. See www.pilgrimhorse.info 

Organics on the front pages  Where? - I'm sure you're rushing to ask. Well certainly not in good old scandal-riddled Ireland, with the Irish banks falling about our ears (but shamefully, with no culpable executives falling on their swords) as the whistle blowers get shriller, and candidates for the European and local elections gabbing about everything in the universe except food or agriculture (Doesn't it just get your gall that serious other issues like obesity in children, our ailing health service and the future of the countryside are sidelined to oblivion in the media. They choose (and I'm sure many pollies gladly acquiesce) to ruck over the financial scandals or drool over whether the Labour leader has got himself into a "Rabbit Stew" or not over his criticisms of the Ceann Comhairle [Speaker of the parliament - think referee?].
The BBC at least has noticed "the lack of bread and butter issues" in the Northern Ireland pre-election debate; see  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/3758577.stm  where the broadcaster laments that the "greening of Ulster is problematic"."Northern Ireland", he continues, "may look like one of Europe's greenest landscapes, but those legendary 40 shades (of green) are in fact largely the product of intensive farming There is still little evidence of the organic food and farming revolution which is sweeping across many regions of Europe." Same here of course - but worse.
No, organics has not featured here in the Republic in recent debate but it has been to the forefront in the media in a country that one would think had other, bigger fish to fry - like running a major war. Yep, you've guessed it - the United States of America. And why, do you think, has organics been the big issue there this week? Because the US Dept. of Agriculture was about to tamper with the National Organic Standards*, that's why. Touch our NOP at your peril they, the organic lobby and particularly the Organic Consumers Association, "ultimated" to their Secretary of Agriculture Ms Venemannn. And after a week she retreated in disarray. See, it's not just guns and their "right to bear arms" that Americans get touchy over - the OCA can raise a storm just as much as Charles Heston's NRA.  http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1085944430210 

* You might remember (if not go to Archived Weekly News  and search under NOP or Venemann or whatever) how the US ended up with the best organic standards (believe it or believe it not, but it's true) in the world, following a huge public campaign a few years back. 

Growing Awareness is a West Cork group initially established to fight the good anti-gm fight. In recent years they have been organising farm walks that have proved popular and enjoyable. The next takes place on Sunday June 6th, 3pm at Parc an Tobair (a beautiful permaculture garden and earth-learning centre) Rosscarbery, Co. Cork. Contact Parc an Tobair on 023 48963 for details. For particulars of other events this summer see GA's website http://growingawareness.org/  Email: workshops@growingawareness.org 

Sustain yourselves by getting the CD of the recent lecture by Satish Kumar - see below 13th May 'Like talking with God' . Send  €13 to;  
Cultivate Sustainable Living Centre,
15-19 Essex Street West, Old City, Temple Bar, Dublin 8.
Ph: +353 (0)1 6746396 Web: http://www.sustainable.ie  
Email: mailto:info@sustainable.ie

Organic College Ireland - An tIonad Glas - at Dromcollogher, Co.Limerick has upgraded its website. See www.organiccollege.com  Amongst other things, they are seeking students for their Sustainable Development course starting next September.

The Day after Tomorrow and the election posters  Frightening! Nightmarish! We have to act now or we'll all be swamped. That is my overwhelming impression, having gone to see the latest blockbuster film in our new, local cinema in Bantry Tuesday last. 
And that was before I saw the film! 
All along the 30-mile route, posters for the local and EU elections, lined the roadsides. And almost without exception, the faces that looked out were baleful, sinister, and, after our unseasonal hot weather, beginning to weather alarmingly into shades of green, yellow and red that would suggest that not only do we already have climate change (towards hot rather than cold as depicted in the film) but the aliens have landed too. Those that didn't make you shudder and rush to protect your childrn's eyes, just looked decidedly unwell and prompted the thought that, far from running in elections, the poor candidates should be joining the queues to be admitted to sanatoria. 
In fairness though, it has to be said that the "likenesses" are extremely unkind to the candidates, at least to the ones that I have met in the flesh. I told one that braved my overgrown boreen in his hitherto, showroom-condition, unscratched car, that it was a relief to see that he was not a bit like his poster and in fact was a fine looking fellow.
I know they are not in a beauty contest but there are limits, come on! As a keen photographer, I am of the suspicion that there is a conspiracy among some in the  profession to mischieviously represent their political sitters in something less than their best profiles. 
And hey! Are those ribbed plastic posters recyclable?
As to the film; I loved the special effects, they are terrific (their camera people know their job) and displayed admirably (DDS wow!) in the larger of the studio theatres in the new cinema. But the story is utterly trite and the physics/meteorology dubious to a laughable degree (although I must check out the one about the Siberian mammoths that they suggest were flash-frozen in seconds in the last ice age). Listen for the background broadcast of people being evacuated from Belfast to Dublin - frying pan into the fire or freezer on a 5 star setting to a 4? They surely, according to the rationale of the film, should have been evacuating from the Shankhill to the Sahara, as they were in the States from Memphis to Mexica. Also listen and cringe at the President's blubber of thanks to the third world at the end.
Can it really be so that this frothy (frosty?) little blockbuster will, as is being claimed, affect The US Administration's attitude to Kyoto?
Another Irish reaction to it; “The film is fiction, but climate change is real and humans are causing it” says StopEsso Ireland’s spokesperson, Will St. Leger  “The real-life disaster of climate change is currently being directed by Esso and produced by George W Bush” he added.  http://www.stopesso.ie

Smallholding upheld  Alan Beat, a regular contributor to Country Smallholding magazine, has just self-published a book A Start in Smallholding. Details on Alan's website www.smallholders.org