Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
BlueAir 201
I purchased this air purifier from a website in the US today. I am very excited about this purchase because I'm tired of all of my co-workers 'God Bless'ing me 30-40times a day. I'd be a lot more on board with the whole religion thing if there was someone I could pray to, or light candles to, who would lower my chances of getting hit with crazy customs fees. Fingers crossed!
Monday, February 11, 2008
A big weekend of not doing what I said I would
Clearly the fear of God doesn't move me too much, it hasn't made me give up sleeping in on Sundays, eating meat on Good Friday, being mean, and the list goes on (I won't mention some of the bigger sins because sensitive eyes might be reading, but you get the idea)... well here's another one to add to the list! I started this Lent-themed-super-goal-crossing-off-extravaganza with a bang and then it all started to peter out. I lost my resolve, I did't run at all on the weekend, and I didn't floss!
Then I got an email today with a training schedule for a 10K run I'm doing in May and I almost had a heart attack just reading the thing. No frickin' way I can do all that training! On the other hand, if I do that training schedule (and floss while I run), all my goals will be done. I think I need a buddy for this training or something.
And Bill, you'll be happy to know that I haven't let #47 go, and that I have continued to make great strides at clearing my boxes out. Turns out my fear of my mother is a much greater motivator than my fear of God. Perhaps if her present career doesn't work out she should consider becoming a fitness trainer, the kind who rides along beside you in a golf cart.
Then I got an email today with a training schedule for a 10K run I'm doing in May and I almost had a heart attack just reading the thing. No frickin' way I can do all that training! On the other hand, if I do that training schedule (and floss while I run), all my goals will be done. I think I need a buddy for this training or something.
And Bill, you'll be happy to know that I haven't let #47 go, and that I have continued to make great strides at clearing my boxes out. Turns out my fear of my mother is a much greater motivator than my fear of God. Perhaps if her present career doesn't work out she should consider becoming a fitness trainer, the kind who rides along beside you in a golf cart.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Lent
What the hey, I'm kickin' the goals thing into overdrive for lent, you know, instead of giving stuff up. I'm going to try and finish:
#3. Do 50 situps and 50 pushups every day for 50 days
#17. Floss every day for 90 days
#46. Run 3x per week for 2 months
#47. Clear the mountain of boxes out of my mother's living room left over from my move
Think I can do it? I'm sure going to have less time during the next couple of months.
#3. Do 50 situps and 50 pushups every day for 50 days
#17. Floss every day for 90 days
#46. Run 3x per week for 2 months
#47. Clear the mountain of boxes out of my mother's living room left over from my move
Think I can do it? I'm sure going to have less time during the next couple of months.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Goal #11 - Run a 5K
On December 30th, I got up in the bitter cold and went down to the Distillery District to run the Resolution Run.
It's a multi-cultural commute!
There's a big snow storm in TO today. They're advising that everyone stay off the roads if they can. Since I still have to get to work, my solution to this problem is to leave my car, and all that insurance liability, at home and take a cab to work. So, this morning, I got dressed for the elements, called a cab and went outside to shovel some snow until it arrived.
When I got in the cab, my driver was chatting on his cell phone in a language I didn't recognise with a CD hanging from the rearview mirror with Arabic writing on it. The heater in the cab was cranked to 5 million degrees and I started to feel almost immediately that I was going to doze off. But it also got me thinking.
(Now, I don't want to start anyone bitching about cab drivers or immigration, because I'm a big supporter of immigration and I'm greatful to our cab drivers for doing a very dangerous and difficult job. And if anyone says anything that even hints at racism in my comment section I will delete it.)
It just occurred to me how funny it is that almost every single cabbie in Toronto is from a warm weather country and how silly it is that they're the ones who are on the road getting us around 24/7 in hail, sleet and snow. Driving a cab is often the first job an immigrant gets when they come here, and these guys probably never in their lives had to drive in, or even experience, these kinds of conditions before they came here. So it's really a pretty ridiculous situation when I, who grew up here, and learned to cope with these conditions from when I was a little kid, is depending on a guy who has probably been here less than a year to get me around in bad weather. I read recently that the weather condition that causes the most traffic accidents worldwide is sandstorms.
Sometimes, in fair weather I get frustrated with the cabbies for how carelessly they often drive, but on days like today I appreciate the hell out of them and their 5 million degree heaters.
When I got in the cab, my driver was chatting on his cell phone in a language I didn't recognise with a CD hanging from the rearview mirror with Arabic writing on it. The heater in the cab was cranked to 5 million degrees and I started to feel almost immediately that I was going to doze off. But it also got me thinking.
(Now, I don't want to start anyone bitching about cab drivers or immigration, because I'm a big supporter of immigration and I'm greatful to our cab drivers for doing a very dangerous and difficult job. And if anyone says anything that even hints at racism in my comment section I will delete it.)
It just occurred to me how funny it is that almost every single cabbie in Toronto is from a warm weather country and how silly it is that they're the ones who are on the road getting us around 24/7 in hail, sleet and snow. Driving a cab is often the first job an immigrant gets when they come here, and these guys probably never in their lives had to drive in, or even experience, these kinds of conditions before they came here. So it's really a pretty ridiculous situation when I, who grew up here, and learned to cope with these conditions from when I was a little kid, is depending on a guy who has probably been here less than a year to get me around in bad weather. I read recently that the weather condition that causes the most traffic accidents worldwide is sandstorms.
Sometimes, in fair weather I get frustrated with the cabbies for how carelessly they often drive, but on days like today I appreciate the hell out of them and their 5 million degree heaters.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Goal #8 - Pay off credit card debt
As you all know, carrying credit card debt sucks. But I just couldn't seem to pay it down. This one was going to be a really hard one when I set out to do it. But it actually just kind of happened by itself. My mom broke her leg - and when I say broke her leg - I don't just mean crutches and colourful cast. She's still not back to work and it happened last fall. There's nothing like giving up a lot of your social events to move home with your sick parent, to keep you from overspending.
Goals #5 and 6
I'm really taking care of business today!
Goal #5 Bring lunch to work every day for a week
This one's not so ground breaking.... but.... the week I did this was the only week I've done this the whole time I've had this job. So clearly it was an achievement.
Goal #6 Get a Permanent Job
Getting a permanent job was an acheivement 10 years in the making. I've never really liked moving around (making new friends, finding someone to have lunch with, getting into a routine), but I didn't like staying the same place either (most people get old fast). I've done a lot of maternity leaves in the past. It's a really good amount of time to work somewhere. You're there long enough to make friends and find the good lunch places, but not so long that there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel. Also, I hate performance reviews, and the great thing about working contracts is that you don't have to do performance reviews. The last permanent job I had, I actually quit during my first perfomance review.
The place I'm working at now is awesome, I love most of my co-workers, it has a great vibe, and I see myself staying here for a long time. So, it's worth staying, even though they make me do performance reviews.
Goal #5 Bring lunch to work every day for a week
This one's not so ground breaking.... but.... the week I did this was the only week I've done this the whole time I've had this job. So clearly it was an achievement.
Goal #6 Get a Permanent Job
Getting a permanent job was an acheivement 10 years in the making. I've never really liked moving around (making new friends, finding someone to have lunch with, getting into a routine), but I didn't like staying the same place either (most people get old fast). I've done a lot of maternity leaves in the past. It's a really good amount of time to work somewhere. You're there long enough to make friends and find the good lunch places, but not so long that there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel. Also, I hate performance reviews, and the great thing about working contracts is that you don't have to do performance reviews. The last permanent job I had, I actually quit during my first perfomance review.
The place I'm working at now is awesome, I love most of my co-workers, it has a great vibe, and I see myself staying here for a long time. So, it's worth staying, even though they make me do performance reviews.
Back on the horse and Xing off Goals - #2
Getting an RRSP. I know it's not super sexy, but it's way sexier than eating cat food when you're old. Besides, it's been one of my life goals to retire as soon as I freakin' can. Anyway, I've been at my job over a year now, so let me into their matching RRSP plan. Signing up was a pain and I was very disappointed with the lack of choice and not excellent performance of the green and ethical ones. So I just picked one and tried to forget about it. Then I got my year end statement, and I already had 800 bucks in there woohoo!
New Entry - my god she's back!
Yeah yeah, I've been super AWOL, I'm sorry.
I've been busy. This is the first time in months that I've had a quiet minute in front of the computer. The BF and I have officially given up our apartment, and I'd just like to mention that moving sucks. I'm not totally done because I've filled my mother's living room with boxes and predictably she's pissed about it, so I have weeks of work ahead of me sorting boxes.
I've not only neglected my blog, I've also neglected my friends. So, if you're reading this, and I normally send you a gift on your b-day and you didn't get one this year, send me your list, I'm ready to be thoughtful now.
My first priority now is my goals, I'm sooo behind. I need to clean em up, write the rest of them out, get flossing, run places, and write posts about the stuff I've already done. Whew!
I've been busy. This is the first time in months that I've had a quiet minute in front of the computer. The BF and I have officially given up our apartment, and I'd just like to mention that moving sucks. I'm not totally done because I've filled my mother's living room with boxes and predictably she's pissed about it, so I have weeks of work ahead of me sorting boxes.
I've not only neglected my blog, I've also neglected my friends. So, if you're reading this, and I normally send you a gift on your b-day and you didn't get one this year, send me your list, I'm ready to be thoughtful now.
My first priority now is my goals, I'm sooo behind. I need to clean em up, write the rest of them out, get flossing, run places, and write posts about the stuff I've already done. Whew!
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Friday, November 23, 2007
Spills & thrills
Trash and Smash, centre, a blocker for Les Contrabanditas takes out a member of La Racaille at the Montreal Roller Derby. (John Morstad)More pictures
Don't let their retro-style skates and short skirts fool you. On the rink these roller derby vixens will trash talk and bodycheck their way to the finish. It's fast, rough and dirty - and it's bringing spectators to their feet
M.J. STONE
From Friday's Globe and Mail
November 23, 2007 at 8:46 AM EST
MONTREAL — The capacity crowd at the Aréna Saint Louis is on its feet. Gliding into a corner, Beater Pan Tease delivers a solid bodycheck that sends her rival, Miss Sassy Craft, tumbling. The felled player rolls forward with bowling-ball intensity, tripping up her fellow competitors as they advance behind her.
The audience roars as, one by one, the skaters lose their balance, crashing into a massive pileup of bodies.
Campy and irreverent, the inaugural season of the all-female Montreal Roller Derby was the summer's cult sporting sensation.
It's part of a resurgence that has crept across North America, with leagues springing up in Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Toronto and Hamilton.
Founded by Concordia University student Alyssa Kwasny (a.k.a. Georgia W. Tush), the MTLRD featured more than 40 women and three teams: La Racaille (Dirt), Les Contrabanditas (Pirates) and Les Filles du Roi, (The King's Prostitutes). With homemade uniforms and old-school roller skates, the players ham it up for the crowd with trash talk and threats of violence.
Add a plethora of spectacular falls and masked wrestlers duking it out between periods, and it's no wonder why Montreal audiences, fuelled on Pabst Blue Ribbon, whooped it up at the derby.
The sport has come a long way since the first event took place in Chicago in August, 1935. The brainchild of movie-theatre mogul Leo Seltzer, the 3,000-mile Transcontinental Roller Derby featured multiple two-person teams racing around a track 11 hours a day for an entire month. When Mr. Seltzer noticed how much spectators enjoyed the collisions and spills, he retooled the derby into the event it resembles today.
Although the roller derby's profile had been in steady decline since the 1970s, the sport has been boosted by Rollergirls, a reality TV show about the Texas Roller Derby League's Lonestar Rollergirls.
As practised in the MTLRD, it's a two-team contest that takes place over three 20-minute periods. Matches feature four "blockers" and one "jammer" per side. Jammers begin the race at the back of the pack and gain points by fighting their way past the opposing team's blockers, whose sole purpose is to push, shove and bodycheck the competition's jammer to the floor.
Zoe Brown, (a.k.a Di Nasty) - a filmmaker and community worker by day and roller derby vixen by night - could barely skate when she first joined Les Filles du Roi. "I was falling around like a helpless four-year-old."
But Ms. Brown now says that she loves competing in front of an arena full of rowdy spectators - despite the risk that she might get hurt.
"I love the speed and adrenaline and look forward to all the hitting and checking," she says. "Competing in the derby is a wonderful way to channel your aggression."
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Carnivorous plant has a secret deep inside
BEN HIRSCHLER
Reuters
November 20, 2007 at 8:10 PM EST
LONDON — The carnivorous pitcher plants that feed on insects in the Asian tropics may not snap shut like Venus flytraps, but they are smarter than they look.
Rather than being passive pitfall traps, the tube-like pitchers of Nepenthes plants actually contain a clever slimy fluid -- similar to mucus -- that produces powerful filaments to snare prey, French researchers said on Wednesday.
The unusual qualities of the fluid could one day be used to develop new, less environmentally harmful pesticides, the experts believe.
Just how pitcher plants catch their prey has intrigued biologists since Charles Darwin's time. Until now, it was thought that gravity and the slippery tube surface were the key, with the fluid in the pitcher simply helping digestion.
But Laurence Gaume at the University of Montpellier and Yoel Forterre from the University of Marseille have discovered that the fluid actually has the perfect viscoelastic properties to snare flies and ants.
"The elastic nature of the fluid is responsible for the huge spring-back forces that act on moving insects," Dr. Forterre said.
"The only chance for insects to escape the fluid would be to move slowly. But once they've fallen in the pitchers, insects most often panic and exhibit quick movements. It is like swimming in jelly."
The effect is seen even when the fluid is diluted more than 90 per cent with water, as can happen during heavy rainfall in the jungles of Borneo, where many of the plants grow.
The researchers have yet to identify the molecules responsible for the elastic properties of the fluid, which appears to be unique in the plant kingdom. But they believe the ingredient could help produce better pesticides in future.
Viscoelastic fluids or polymers are often added to pesticides and herbicides to prevent sprayed droplets from bouncing off plants, so limiting soil pollution.
The fluid from Nepenthes could provide new polymers that are both highly effective and environmentally friendly.
Reuters
November 20, 2007 at 8:10 PM EST
LONDON — The carnivorous pitcher plants that feed on insects in the Asian tropics may not snap shut like Venus flytraps, but they are smarter than they look.
Rather than being passive pitfall traps, the tube-like pitchers of Nepenthes plants actually contain a clever slimy fluid -- similar to mucus -- that produces powerful filaments to snare prey, French researchers said on Wednesday.
The unusual qualities of the fluid could one day be used to develop new, less environmentally harmful pesticides, the experts believe.
Just how pitcher plants catch their prey has intrigued biologists since Charles Darwin's time. Until now, it was thought that gravity and the slippery tube surface were the key, with the fluid in the pitcher simply helping digestion.
But Laurence Gaume at the University of Montpellier and Yoel Forterre from the University of Marseille have discovered that the fluid actually has the perfect viscoelastic properties to snare flies and ants.
"The elastic nature of the fluid is responsible for the huge spring-back forces that act on moving insects," Dr. Forterre said.
"The only chance for insects to escape the fluid would be to move slowly. But once they've fallen in the pitchers, insects most often panic and exhibit quick movements. It is like swimming in jelly."
The effect is seen even when the fluid is diluted more than 90 per cent with water, as can happen during heavy rainfall in the jungles of Borneo, where many of the plants grow.
The researchers have yet to identify the molecules responsible for the elastic properties of the fluid, which appears to be unique in the plant kingdom. But they believe the ingredient could help produce better pesticides in future.
Viscoelastic fluids or polymers are often added to pesticides and herbicides to prevent sprayed droplets from bouncing off plants, so limiting soil pollution.
The fluid from Nepenthes could provide new polymers that are both highly effective and environmentally friendly.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Dear Japan, I hate you, signed Jennifer
Japanese Whale Hunt: A Japanese fleet left for the Antarctic Ocean yesterday with the intention of killing more than 1,000 whales, including 50 of the endangered humpback whales protected by an international moratorium since 1963. Japan argues that whaling provides value material for research into whale stocks, and that whale populations are at sustainable levels. Hideki Moronuki, whaling chief at the Japan Fisheries Agency, said humpback whales in our research are rapidly recovering Junichi Sato, spokesman for Greenpeace Japan, said "this is not about research," and charged that most of the whale meat will end up in Japanese pubs and supermarkets
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Championship coverage
Here is a link to an article on the championship bout. (I'd like to request that my friends remember that I'm camera shy, and would prefer if you don't comment on the pictures in such a way as to point out which person I am.)
We won!
I'm in pain, and I'm tired, but we won and I am so happy. I don't have any video from the game yet, but I'll post it if I get any.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
A Private Hatred
I'm furious with someone. I really want to vent about it. But the problem is that it's not very mature to bitch about someone publicly when it will most likely get back to them.
This kind of brings me to wonder about blogging ethics, what to write, or avoid writing. Is a blog more like gossip on the bathroom wall, or writing an article for a newspaper or keeping a diary? Each kind of writing has different rules.
If the blog is my diary and I slam someone in it, and that person is mad, then is that their problem for reading my inner thoughts? Do you open my blog at your own peril? It can't be like the bathroom wall, because even if I don't have my name attached to this blog really, most of the people who read this know who I am. If it was a diary, then you wouldn't be reading this at all because it would be on a piece of paper in a book under my mattress, with one of those funny little locks on it.
I always admire the way that Linny can talk about her feelings and issues she's having with other people without revealing too much, it's deliciously cryptic. But when I do anything like that it doesn't seem nearly so interesting, perhaps it's just not possible to find oneself interesting?
Anyway, if you're reading this, and you're wondering if it's you that I'm mad at, it's probably not and I wouldn't really worry about it, I'm not planning on sending ninjas to any one's house or anything. I just kind of wish that I believed in an afterlife so that I could believe that the person I'm pissed at would get some kind of punishment for what they've done.
This kind of brings me to wonder about blogging ethics, what to write, or avoid writing. Is a blog more like gossip on the bathroom wall, or writing an article for a newspaper or keeping a diary? Each kind of writing has different rules.
If the blog is my diary and I slam someone in it, and that person is mad, then is that their problem for reading my inner thoughts? Do you open my blog at your own peril? It can't be like the bathroom wall, because even if I don't have my name attached to this blog really, most of the people who read this know who I am. If it was a diary, then you wouldn't be reading this at all because it would be on a piece of paper in a book under my mattress, with one of those funny little locks on it.
I always admire the way that Linny can talk about her feelings and issues she's having with other people without revealing too much, it's deliciously cryptic. But when I do anything like that it doesn't seem nearly so interesting, perhaps it's just not possible to find oneself interesting?
Anyway, if you're reading this, and you're wondering if it's you that I'm mad at, it's probably not and I wouldn't really worry about it, I'm not planning on sending ninjas to any one's house or anything. I just kind of wish that I believed in an afterlife so that I could believe that the person I'm pissed at would get some kind of punishment for what they've done.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
First night out after surgery
As I've already mentioned, I've been staying with my mother since she had surgery 7 weeks ago. My mother's an early to bed early to rise type of person these days. And, that's altered my social life significantly. Saturday was my good friend Neil's birthday. Neil's birthday is always a pretty big event, not something that you could flake out on if you could avoid it. So, I arranged for my mom's friend to come by and serve breakfast and made plans with my lady posse, Miss A and Big D
and the lovely Claire who
was in town for a vacation.
It seemed like a lifetime since I'd been out past 9 pm, and resultantly I had some cash in my pocket, perhaps those two factors led to a certain amount of overindulgence...
We met the party at the Embassy and then headed over to Neutral.
So, I drank too much, I got in a humourous (I thought) arguement with our cab driver on the way down. We got to Neutral and suddenly I felt like I'd walked onto the set of one of my 5 least favourite films of all times, Slacker by Richard Linklater. It was totally excruciating to watch. The sensation kept coming back to me all night. While I was with my friends I was having fun, but as soon as I walked away from them to got to the bathroom or the bar, and had to interact with other people there, the sensation came back. I suppose I was too drunk, and had too big a crowd with me to figure out a plausible exit strategy. It was quite odd, because I normally enjoy myself at Neutral.
The most hilarious part was when a woman came up and struck up a conversation with me. I had no idea why she wanted to talk to me, I'm not even sure what her opening was. If it had been a guy, I would have had my armour on and said something witty and smooth and slightly cutting so he'd get the picture and leave me alone, but, when a woman approaches you, you don't immediately know what she's after. She might be planning to tell you that you have toilet paper on the sole of your shoe or that you've lost an earring. Anyway, this woman started talking to me, and I went along, thinking that I would just find out what she was after. Then, she asked me for my email address. So I gave her my junkmail address, of course, I've never been so drunk that I've given my actual email address to a stranger at a bar.
All week, I kept discovering new reasons not to drink so much. On Sunday, I woke up to find a huge ketchup stain on the front of my new white shirt. Later, I realized that I never said goodbye to Claire at the end of the evening. I told her how to get home and then went back to chatting with my other friends, never acknowledging that I'd enjoyed her company and that I'd probably not see her again.
On Monday, I realized that I'd broken the top button of my favourite jacket in half, not sure how or when or where.
On Tuesday, Ash emailed me pictures of parts of the evening I didn't even remember.
On Wednesday, I suddenly realized that the woman who had struck up the conversation with me at the bar was likely a lesbian and that she'd been hitting on me. Then, I had to admit to my bf that I'd unwittingly given my email address to a lesbian who was hitting on me. Also, with relief, tinged with dismay, I had to acknowledge the fact that the lesbian hadn't emailed me (perhaps I don't still have 'it'?).
Today, I realized that the random friend request that I'd gotten on facebook on Tuesday, and not thought too much about, was from the lesbian, and that I'd made a huge tactical error by giving out my junk email address because it's also the one that's linked to my Facebook account. Fuuuuuck!
OK, so now I need some advice. I'm not really interested in being friends with this woman. She seemed nice enough, but not my kind of person. Also, she's clearly interested in doing stuff that I'm not interested in doing at this hetero/monogamous period of my life. But I don't bear this woman any ill will. Do I ignore the friend request? Do I refuse it? What if I run into this woman again. Do I send her a message and tell her that I'm in an LTR with a dude? I suppose that's the grown-up thing to do? I dunno. Maybe I don't owe this woman anything.
It was pretty embarrassing/dubious telling my bf that I'd given my email address to a lesbian.... If I start an email convo with this woman, I'll have to admit that too.
Jesus Christ!
I'm not vowing to quit drinking... obviously it was going to be a crazy night, Neil's b-day always is.... but next time I'm not going to drink so much that I don't gracefully exit immediately I sense the presence of Richard Linklater.
and the lovely Claire who
was in town for a vacation.
It seemed like a lifetime since I'd been out past 9 pm, and resultantly I had some cash in my pocket, perhaps those two factors led to a certain amount of overindulgence...
We met the party at the Embassy and then headed over to Neutral.
So, I drank too much, I got in a humourous (I thought) arguement with our cab driver on the way down. We got to Neutral and suddenly I felt like I'd walked onto the set of one of my 5 least favourite films of all times, Slacker by Richard Linklater. It was totally excruciating to watch. The sensation kept coming back to me all night. While I was with my friends I was having fun, but as soon as I walked away from them to got to the bathroom or the bar, and had to interact with other people there, the sensation came back. I suppose I was too drunk, and had too big a crowd with me to figure out a plausible exit strategy. It was quite odd, because I normally enjoy myself at Neutral.
The most hilarious part was when a woman came up and struck up a conversation with me. I had no idea why she wanted to talk to me, I'm not even sure what her opening was. If it had been a guy, I would have had my armour on and said something witty and smooth and slightly cutting so he'd get the picture and leave me alone, but, when a woman approaches you, you don't immediately know what she's after. She might be planning to tell you that you have toilet paper on the sole of your shoe or that you've lost an earring. Anyway, this woman started talking to me, and I went along, thinking that I would just find out what she was after. Then, she asked me for my email address. So I gave her my junkmail address, of course, I've never been so drunk that I've given my actual email address to a stranger at a bar.
All week, I kept discovering new reasons not to drink so much. On Sunday, I woke up to find a huge ketchup stain on the front of my new white shirt. Later, I realized that I never said goodbye to Claire at the end of the evening. I told her how to get home and then went back to chatting with my other friends, never acknowledging that I'd enjoyed her company and that I'd probably not see her again.
On Monday, I realized that I'd broken the top button of my favourite jacket in half, not sure how or when or where.
On Tuesday, Ash emailed me pictures of parts of the evening I didn't even remember.
On Wednesday, I suddenly realized that the woman who had struck up the conversation with me at the bar was likely a lesbian and that she'd been hitting on me. Then, I had to admit to my bf that I'd unwittingly given my email address to a lesbian who was hitting on me. Also, with relief, tinged with dismay, I had to acknowledge the fact that the lesbian hadn't emailed me (perhaps I don't still have 'it'?).
Today, I realized that the random friend request that I'd gotten on facebook on Tuesday, and not thought too much about, was from the lesbian, and that I'd made a huge tactical error by giving out my junk email address because it's also the one that's linked to my Facebook account. Fuuuuuck!
OK, so now I need some advice. I'm not really interested in being friends with this woman. She seemed nice enough, but not my kind of person. Also, she's clearly interested in doing stuff that I'm not interested in doing at this hetero/monogamous period of my life. But I don't bear this woman any ill will. Do I ignore the friend request? Do I refuse it? What if I run into this woman again. Do I send her a message and tell her that I'm in an LTR with a dude? I suppose that's the grown-up thing to do? I dunno. Maybe I don't owe this woman anything.
It was pretty embarrassing/dubious telling my bf that I'd given my email address to a lesbian.... If I start an email convo with this woman, I'll have to admit that too.
Jesus Christ!
I'm not vowing to quit drinking... obviously it was going to be a crazy night, Neil's b-day always is.... but next time I'm not going to drink so much that I don't gracefully exit immediately I sense the presence of Richard Linklater.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
What Was Behind the Honey Bee Wipeout?
My friend M sent me this article from alternet.org
Everyone has a theory why the honeybees started dying off. Try malnutrition.
On Alan Wilson's table at the Oakland Farmers' Market, row after row of glass honey jars catch the early morning sun that angles down Ninth Street. Some of the honey gleams a reddish brown, some a paler amber, depending on the particular mix of flower species the bees foraged. All of it was produced by Wilson's colonies, which number a third of what he had last fall, before the infamous bee die-off that afflicted growers around the world. "I'd better get the honey while I can," one customer remarks.
The flurry of media attention given this winter's bee losses, now labeled "colony collapse disorder," has updated the world of bees for a heretofore-clueless public. Our image of honeybees is a lot like our bucolic images of farm animals -- and just as far from the brutal truth of today's corporate agriculture. We picture fields of clover, blossoming orchards, the wildflowers beneath the trees, filled with happy bees industriously gathering nectar and pollen to take back to the hive. As the bees gather pollen, they transfer it from plant to plant, thus assuring cross-pollination.
Fewer people can picture what happens at the hive, where the bees feed the protein-rich pollen to their developing brood. The adults live on honey they make from collected nectar -- sipped from the throats of flowers into the bees' honey stomachs, disgorged at the hive into the hexagonal wax combs made by the bees, fanned by bee wings to evaporate excess moisture until it reaches the perfect syrupy consistency, and then sealed with a wax cap to keep it clean and ready to sustain the colony over the winter. In order to do all this, bees rely on a diverse range of flowers blooming over a wide stretch of the year.
The honeybee (Apis mellifera) is a European native, one of very few bee species in the world to store honey in bulk and live fulltime in large colonies (30,000 to 100,000 individuals). It is the only bee with a long history of intensive management by people. For almost all of this time, and continuing today in many parts of the world, the rosy picture of bee life painted above is largely accurate. But when beekeeping meets industrial agriculture, the result is very different. Colony collapse disorder may have many contributing causes, but it comes down to bees hitting the biological limits of our agricultural system. It's not so much a bee crisis as a pollination crisis. And we may end up calling it agricultural collapse disorder.
It's a rare beekeeper in the United States who can survive by selling honey. The trade loophole that has flooded this country with low-cost Chinese honey for the past ten years guaranteed that (fortunately for beekeepers, that hole has just been plugged by new federal tariff regulations). The only income remaining has been in pollination services. Alan Wilson's bees are rented out for almond pollination starting in February. After that they go south to the orange groves, then all the way to North Dakota where they make clover honey. Wilson's Central Valley location near Merced has little to offer bees over the dry summer months except roadside star thistle and the brief flowering of cantaloupes in August. Nearby agricultural chemicals are a concern, especially the defoliant used on cotton before harvest. Just the drift from the defoliant has taken the paint off Wilson's hives. Still, this year he plans to keep his bees closer to home where he can manage them more intensively and try to increase their numbers.
Every commercial beekeeper has different arrange-ments, but each involves long-distance trucking and the California almond crop. Almonds are entirely dependent on the seasonal importation of honeybees. Growers can't get crop insurance coverage unless they have at least two bee colonies per acre at almond blossom time; some growers use up to five colonies per acre for heavier yields. Over 800,000 Central Valley acres are planted in almond trees. As beekeeper Randy Oliver says, it is "monoculture at its absolute worst -- they don't allow one species of weed to grow": mile after mile of bare soil and almond trees. No native pollinators can survive on this wasted landscape to ease the honeybees' burden, and nothing lives to sustain bees before or after the almond bloom.
Truckloads of bees begin to arrive as early as November from all over the nation -- it takes virtually all of this country's commercially operated pollination colonies to cover California's almonds. While the bees roll down the highways, hive entrances boarded up, or wait in Central Valley bee yards for the trees to bloom, they're fed a mixture of high fructose corn syrup meant to replace nectar, along with soy protein meant to replace pollen. (Some beekeepers, Wilson among them, have switched to beet syrup as a safer though more expensive alternative.) Oliver sums up the patent absurdity: "When bugs from the east coast have to be trucked to California to pollinate an exotic tree because California has no bugs, it's a pretty whacked-out agricultural system."
Oliver's 500 bee colonies -- he was lucky, with losses under ten percent -- follow a relatively short migratory truck route that takes them from Central Valley almonds to Sierra foothill wildflowers to Nevada alfalfa. He attributes his success to fewer and shorter moves, reliance on pasture forage for much of the year, and avoidance of artificial feeding. "Some of these guys move their bees a dozen times a year," he says. Popular pollination routes include apples and blueberries, which rely on honeybees for 90 percent of their pollination, peaches (50 percent), and oranges (30 percent). Farmers won't bother planting squash or melons if they can't get beehives in place by bloom time. One-third of all US crops depend on honeybee pollination.
It hasn't been this way for long. Even 30 years ago growers could rely on a combination of native pollinating insects and local honeybees for most crops. In 1970, there were 35 beekeepers in Alan Wilson's area; now there are two. As farms grew more and more of fewer and fewer crops, using petrochemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, vast tracts of land have gradually approached the reductionist goal of supporting no life at all except the target crop. It's not just the almonds -- every crop is grown this way. That's why it's called industrial agriculture, or factory farming.
Bee researchers have been calling bees "the canary in this coal mine," a different version of the birds and the bees. A quote attributed to Albert Einstein has been popping up all over the Internet: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Einstein never said it, but the instant ubiquity of the sentiment says everything.
Though the media only picked it up this year, bees have actually been in trouble for the past couple of decades. Mites -- parasitic insects small enough to use bees as their hosts -- jumped from other species to honeybees, another example of collateral damage from global transportation. First tracheal mites in the '80s, then varroa mites in the '90s -- even before last winter, the world's honeybee population had declined by half in 30 years.
UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen points out that before the mites arrived, winter losses of five to ten percent of a beekeeper's colonies were the norm. The mites increased yearly losses to 25 percent by the late '80s, and now we're at 40 percent or higher, with some years better than average and others catastrophic. Randy Oliver says, "If we made a list of collapses of the last 20 years, this winter's would not make the top five." Last year's losses were bad for Alan Wilson, but the last four years together have decimated his colonies by over 90 percent. The only beekeepers doing substantially better are the very small percentage practicing non-chemical mite control coupled with little or no trucking or artificial feeding -- in other words, labor-intensive vigilance combined with lower pollination income. It's not a financially viable option for many fulltime beekeepers.
The difference with this winter's losses is not having an identified cause, and therefore no quick (even if temporary) fix. For tracheal mites, beekeepers developed nontoxic preventive treatments -- Alan Wilson successfully doses his bees on a mixture of Crisco, sugar, and peppermint extract. Varroa mites proved trickier, and beekeepers started down the slippery slope of synthetic insecticide use. "Until the mid-'90s nobody dreamed of using chemicals in beehives," Oliver says. Once they did, the race was on, with insecticide-resistant varroa mites evolving neck-in-neck with the newest chemical treatment. European beekeepers, who have had the varroa mite longer, have pretty much given up on chemicals and use an Integrated Pest Management approach. US beekeepers who go this route find it labor- and attention-intensive, and effective within its parameters (not eradication but healthy bees living with a smaller number of mites). According to Oliver, "We're just prolonging our agony as long as we continue to use chemical treatments."
Everyone agrees the honeybee buzzed into the 21st century carrying a heavy load of stress. Colonies were weakened by mites, perhaps by chemicals used to kill the mites, and probably by at least some of the 25 different viruses carried by varroa mites. Add in a fungus, nosema, that's tolerated by healthy bees but a problem for already weakened hives. Then there's the stress of long-distance truck travel, longer distances for more bees every year. The small hive beetle, an African native recently found in Florida hives, posed another challenge; aggressive African honeybees attack the beetle, but European bees, bred to be docile, let it overrun the hive.
Cell phone interference has been proposed as a threat to bees, based on reports of a German study showing bees unable to find their way home in the presence of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. This particular theory must be called inconclusive at best, since the study was not designed with enough apicultural knowledge to produce reliable results.
No bee taken from the hive for the first time, as was done in the study, would be able to find its way back, since bees navigate primarily by landmarks, not electromagnetic homing sensors. Their first few excursions are short orientation flights, not blind trips in a box to a release point.
Of all these factors, many beekeepers judge varroa mites the most consistently debilitating. But there's another weakening influence more obvious and more integral to the larger agricultural dilemma. It's the stressor Mussen calls the most important of all -- bee malnutrition. High-fructose corn syrup and soy protein are not any more nutritious for bees than they are for humans (see Spring 2007), and bees in transit and between pollination jobs often must subsist on nothing but these non-foods. Compounding the problem, we're talking genetically modified corn and soy, every cell of which contains a bacterial insecticide. Are bees not insects? US studies have indicated that Bt corn pollen does not kill healthy bees or brood reared on it, but a German study showed that Bt pollen led to "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" in hives already weakened by varroa mites.
We do know that corn pollen in general is poor bee food, high in fiber and low in protein. The Midwest, up until now the country's best bee forage habitat, this year is being planted much more aggressively to GM corn as a source for ethanol -- aggressive meaning planting marginal areas and edges usually left to the asters and goldenrods that are high-quality pollen sources in late summer when bees need to raise the generation that will overwinter. Even when bees are out foraging for real nectar and non-GMO pollen, for much of the year they are likely to be ingesting a monocultured diet due to their use as pollinators for industrial-scale agriculture -- nothing but almond, then nothing but apple, then only watermelon. They're exposed to pesticides used on their forage crops as well. Oh -- and one more influence to factor into the equation -- very hot weather can damage the protein content of pollen, decreasing its food value for bees. Global warming is kicking our butts from more directions than we can comprehend.
Given these conditions, last winter's losses can hardly be considered a surprise. Neither can the failure of bee researchers to come up with one specific cause, much less a magic bullet cure. Still, the kind of thinking that got us this far continues. According to Mussen, "the only hope is the USDA Tucson lab" which is working on a liquid feed that bees can eat all year. Randy Oliver calls this the "holy grail" of bee research. The USDA's proprietary formula, if they come up with one that works, will be patented and licensed to a commercial producer, and the whole agricultural system may manage to lurch along for a few more years, complete with pollinators hauled from Florida to California in time for the almond bloom.
How did all those almonds get pollinated this year, on the heels of beekeepers' discoveries that half (in some cases up to 90 percent) of their colonies had suddenly gone missing? It wouldn't have happened without a change in regulations that allowed bees to be imported from Australia. Bee businesses Down Under went into boom mode, sending 100,000 packages of bees to the States. A package is a starter kit of about 10,000 worker bees and a queen, enclosed in a small screened box with a sugar water feeder. The receiving beekeeper shakes the package into a waiting hive, and given proper nectar and pollen resources, within a month a new generation of bees will be expanding the colony.
The Australian influx may be short-lived, as a colony of Indian bees (Apis cerana) was recently discovered living aboard a yacht off Australia. The Indian bee is host to yet another mite that could wreak havoc if it spreads to the European honeybee. Another factor in almond pollination this year was the rental price for a bee colony, which averaged $150, nearly twice what it was last year. This was the first year in which the income beekeepers realized from almond pollination surpassed the income received for the entire US honey crop. There's talk of opening the Canadian border for next year's almond season.
To paraphrase Randy Oliver, we're prolonging our agony by continuing with this profoundly unworkable agricultural system. Suddenly terms like "organic" and "biodiversity" shift from boutique buzzwords to elements of survival. This country has 4,500 species of native insects that are potential pollinators. On the East Coast, where farms are much smaller, more diverse, and broken up by uncultivated land, native insects account for up to 90 percent of crop pollination. Studies done on Costa Rican coffee crops have shown that yields are 20 percent greater within one kilometer of forest remnants. Canadian canola farmers show increased yields by leaving 30 percent of their cropland wild. It's all about pollination.
Fortunately for us, insects are quick to recolonize formerly dead areas. Hedgerows, windbreaks, wetlands, woodlots -- the particulars of restoration agriculture are easy and already known. It's the big picture that's harder to shift, from the extractive industrial petrochemical model to the biodiverse ecosystem model. Honeybees have upped the ante, giving us all the motivation we need to change -- do we want to continue to eat?
The material appearing here is copyright Terrain magazine, which is published by the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California. (510-548-2235). The material is to be circulated for educational purposes only, and is not to be reprinted in any publication, or distributed for commercial purposes, including copying for sale, without the permission of the editor of Terrain.
Everyone has a theory why the honeybees started dying off. Try malnutrition.
On Alan Wilson's table at the Oakland Farmers' Market, row after row of glass honey jars catch the early morning sun that angles down Ninth Street. Some of the honey gleams a reddish brown, some a paler amber, depending on the particular mix of flower species the bees foraged. All of it was produced by Wilson's colonies, which number a third of what he had last fall, before the infamous bee die-off that afflicted growers around the world. "I'd better get the honey while I can," one customer remarks.
The flurry of media attention given this winter's bee losses, now labeled "colony collapse disorder," has updated the world of bees for a heretofore-clueless public. Our image of honeybees is a lot like our bucolic images of farm animals -- and just as far from the brutal truth of today's corporate agriculture. We picture fields of clover, blossoming orchards, the wildflowers beneath the trees, filled with happy bees industriously gathering nectar and pollen to take back to the hive. As the bees gather pollen, they transfer it from plant to plant, thus assuring cross-pollination.
Fewer people can picture what happens at the hive, where the bees feed the protein-rich pollen to their developing brood. The adults live on honey they make from collected nectar -- sipped from the throats of flowers into the bees' honey stomachs, disgorged at the hive into the hexagonal wax combs made by the bees, fanned by bee wings to evaporate excess moisture until it reaches the perfect syrupy consistency, and then sealed with a wax cap to keep it clean and ready to sustain the colony over the winter. In order to do all this, bees rely on a diverse range of flowers blooming over a wide stretch of the year.
The honeybee (Apis mellifera) is a European native, one of very few bee species in the world to store honey in bulk and live fulltime in large colonies (30,000 to 100,000 individuals). It is the only bee with a long history of intensive management by people. For almost all of this time, and continuing today in many parts of the world, the rosy picture of bee life painted above is largely accurate. But when beekeeping meets industrial agriculture, the result is very different. Colony collapse disorder may have many contributing causes, but it comes down to bees hitting the biological limits of our agricultural system. It's not so much a bee crisis as a pollination crisis. And we may end up calling it agricultural collapse disorder.
It's a rare beekeeper in the United States who can survive by selling honey. The trade loophole that has flooded this country with low-cost Chinese honey for the past ten years guaranteed that (fortunately for beekeepers, that hole has just been plugged by new federal tariff regulations). The only income remaining has been in pollination services. Alan Wilson's bees are rented out for almond pollination starting in February. After that they go south to the orange groves, then all the way to North Dakota where they make clover honey. Wilson's Central Valley location near Merced has little to offer bees over the dry summer months except roadside star thistle and the brief flowering of cantaloupes in August. Nearby agricultural chemicals are a concern, especially the defoliant used on cotton before harvest. Just the drift from the defoliant has taken the paint off Wilson's hives. Still, this year he plans to keep his bees closer to home where he can manage them more intensively and try to increase their numbers.
Every commercial beekeeper has different arrange-ments, but each involves long-distance trucking and the California almond crop. Almonds are entirely dependent on the seasonal importation of honeybees. Growers can't get crop insurance coverage unless they have at least two bee colonies per acre at almond blossom time; some growers use up to five colonies per acre for heavier yields. Over 800,000 Central Valley acres are planted in almond trees. As beekeeper Randy Oliver says, it is "monoculture at its absolute worst -- they don't allow one species of weed to grow": mile after mile of bare soil and almond trees. No native pollinators can survive on this wasted landscape to ease the honeybees' burden, and nothing lives to sustain bees before or after the almond bloom.
Truckloads of bees begin to arrive as early as November from all over the nation -- it takes virtually all of this country's commercially operated pollination colonies to cover California's almonds. While the bees roll down the highways, hive entrances boarded up, or wait in Central Valley bee yards for the trees to bloom, they're fed a mixture of high fructose corn syrup meant to replace nectar, along with soy protein meant to replace pollen. (Some beekeepers, Wilson among them, have switched to beet syrup as a safer though more expensive alternative.) Oliver sums up the patent absurdity: "When bugs from the east coast have to be trucked to California to pollinate an exotic tree because California has no bugs, it's a pretty whacked-out agricultural system."
Oliver's 500 bee colonies -- he was lucky, with losses under ten percent -- follow a relatively short migratory truck route that takes them from Central Valley almonds to Sierra foothill wildflowers to Nevada alfalfa. He attributes his success to fewer and shorter moves, reliance on pasture forage for much of the year, and avoidance of artificial feeding. "Some of these guys move their bees a dozen times a year," he says. Popular pollination routes include apples and blueberries, which rely on honeybees for 90 percent of their pollination, peaches (50 percent), and oranges (30 percent). Farmers won't bother planting squash or melons if they can't get beehives in place by bloom time. One-third of all US crops depend on honeybee pollination.
It hasn't been this way for long. Even 30 years ago growers could rely on a combination of native pollinating insects and local honeybees for most crops. In 1970, there were 35 beekeepers in Alan Wilson's area; now there are two. As farms grew more and more of fewer and fewer crops, using petrochemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, vast tracts of land have gradually approached the reductionist goal of supporting no life at all except the target crop. It's not just the almonds -- every crop is grown this way. That's why it's called industrial agriculture, or factory farming.
Bee researchers have been calling bees "the canary in this coal mine," a different version of the birds and the bees. A quote attributed to Albert Einstein has been popping up all over the Internet: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Einstein never said it, but the instant ubiquity of the sentiment says everything.
Though the media only picked it up this year, bees have actually been in trouble for the past couple of decades. Mites -- parasitic insects small enough to use bees as their hosts -- jumped from other species to honeybees, another example of collateral damage from global transportation. First tracheal mites in the '80s, then varroa mites in the '90s -- even before last winter, the world's honeybee population had declined by half in 30 years.
UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen points out that before the mites arrived, winter losses of five to ten percent of a beekeeper's colonies were the norm. The mites increased yearly losses to 25 percent by the late '80s, and now we're at 40 percent or higher, with some years better than average and others catastrophic. Randy Oliver says, "If we made a list of collapses of the last 20 years, this winter's would not make the top five." Last year's losses were bad for Alan Wilson, but the last four years together have decimated his colonies by over 90 percent. The only beekeepers doing substantially better are the very small percentage practicing non-chemical mite control coupled with little or no trucking or artificial feeding -- in other words, labor-intensive vigilance combined with lower pollination income. It's not a financially viable option for many fulltime beekeepers.
The difference with this winter's losses is not having an identified cause, and therefore no quick (even if temporary) fix. For tracheal mites, beekeepers developed nontoxic preventive treatments -- Alan Wilson successfully doses his bees on a mixture of Crisco, sugar, and peppermint extract. Varroa mites proved trickier, and beekeepers started down the slippery slope of synthetic insecticide use. "Until the mid-'90s nobody dreamed of using chemicals in beehives," Oliver says. Once they did, the race was on, with insecticide-resistant varroa mites evolving neck-in-neck with the newest chemical treatment. European beekeepers, who have had the varroa mite longer, have pretty much given up on chemicals and use an Integrated Pest Management approach. US beekeepers who go this route find it labor- and attention-intensive, and effective within its parameters (not eradication but healthy bees living with a smaller number of mites). According to Oliver, "We're just prolonging our agony as long as we continue to use chemical treatments."
Everyone agrees the honeybee buzzed into the 21st century carrying a heavy load of stress. Colonies were weakened by mites, perhaps by chemicals used to kill the mites, and probably by at least some of the 25 different viruses carried by varroa mites. Add in a fungus, nosema, that's tolerated by healthy bees but a problem for already weakened hives. Then there's the stress of long-distance truck travel, longer distances for more bees every year. The small hive beetle, an African native recently found in Florida hives, posed another challenge; aggressive African honeybees attack the beetle, but European bees, bred to be docile, let it overrun the hive.
Cell phone interference has been proposed as a threat to bees, based on reports of a German study showing bees unable to find their way home in the presence of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. This particular theory must be called inconclusive at best, since the study was not designed with enough apicultural knowledge to produce reliable results.
No bee taken from the hive for the first time, as was done in the study, would be able to find its way back, since bees navigate primarily by landmarks, not electromagnetic homing sensors. Their first few excursions are short orientation flights, not blind trips in a box to a release point.
Of all these factors, many beekeepers judge varroa mites the most consistently debilitating. But there's another weakening influence more obvious and more integral to the larger agricultural dilemma. It's the stressor Mussen calls the most important of all -- bee malnutrition. High-fructose corn syrup and soy protein are not any more nutritious for bees than they are for humans (see Spring 2007), and bees in transit and between pollination jobs often must subsist on nothing but these non-foods. Compounding the problem, we're talking genetically modified corn and soy, every cell of which contains a bacterial insecticide. Are bees not insects? US studies have indicated that Bt corn pollen does not kill healthy bees or brood reared on it, but a German study showed that Bt pollen led to "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" in hives already weakened by varroa mites.
We do know that corn pollen in general is poor bee food, high in fiber and low in protein. The Midwest, up until now the country's best bee forage habitat, this year is being planted much more aggressively to GM corn as a source for ethanol -- aggressive meaning planting marginal areas and edges usually left to the asters and goldenrods that are high-quality pollen sources in late summer when bees need to raise the generation that will overwinter. Even when bees are out foraging for real nectar and non-GMO pollen, for much of the year they are likely to be ingesting a monocultured diet due to their use as pollinators for industrial-scale agriculture -- nothing but almond, then nothing but apple, then only watermelon. They're exposed to pesticides used on their forage crops as well. Oh -- and one more influence to factor into the equation -- very hot weather can damage the protein content of pollen, decreasing its food value for bees. Global warming is kicking our butts from more directions than we can comprehend.
Given these conditions, last winter's losses can hardly be considered a surprise. Neither can the failure of bee researchers to come up with one specific cause, much less a magic bullet cure. Still, the kind of thinking that got us this far continues. According to Mussen, "the only hope is the USDA Tucson lab" which is working on a liquid feed that bees can eat all year. Randy Oliver calls this the "holy grail" of bee research. The USDA's proprietary formula, if they come up with one that works, will be patented and licensed to a commercial producer, and the whole agricultural system may manage to lurch along for a few more years, complete with pollinators hauled from Florida to California in time for the almond bloom.
How did all those almonds get pollinated this year, on the heels of beekeepers' discoveries that half (in some cases up to 90 percent) of their colonies had suddenly gone missing? It wouldn't have happened without a change in regulations that allowed bees to be imported from Australia. Bee businesses Down Under went into boom mode, sending 100,000 packages of bees to the States. A package is a starter kit of about 10,000 worker bees and a queen, enclosed in a small screened box with a sugar water feeder. The receiving beekeeper shakes the package into a waiting hive, and given proper nectar and pollen resources, within a month a new generation of bees will be expanding the colony.
The Australian influx may be short-lived, as a colony of Indian bees (Apis cerana) was recently discovered living aboard a yacht off Australia. The Indian bee is host to yet another mite that could wreak havoc if it spreads to the European honeybee. Another factor in almond pollination this year was the rental price for a bee colony, which averaged $150, nearly twice what it was last year. This was the first year in which the income beekeepers realized from almond pollination surpassed the income received for the entire US honey crop. There's talk of opening the Canadian border for next year's almond season.
To paraphrase Randy Oliver, we're prolonging our agony by continuing with this profoundly unworkable agricultural system. Suddenly terms like "organic" and "biodiversity" shift from boutique buzzwords to elements of survival. This country has 4,500 species of native insects that are potential pollinators. On the East Coast, where farms are much smaller, more diverse, and broken up by uncultivated land, native insects account for up to 90 percent of crop pollination. Studies done on Costa Rican coffee crops have shown that yields are 20 percent greater within one kilometer of forest remnants. Canadian canola farmers show increased yields by leaving 30 percent of their cropland wild. It's all about pollination.
Fortunately for us, insects are quick to recolonize formerly dead areas. Hedgerows, windbreaks, wetlands, woodlots -- the particulars of restoration agriculture are easy and already known. It's the big picture that's harder to shift, from the extractive industrial petrochemical model to the biodiverse ecosystem model. Honeybees have upped the ante, giving us all the motivation we need to change -- do we want to continue to eat?
The material appearing here is copyright Terrain magazine, which is published by the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California. (510-548-2235). The material is to be circulated for educational purposes only, and is not to be reprinted in any publication, or distributed for commercial purposes, including copying for sale, without the permission of the editor of Terrain.
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