When most people think of eco-tourism they have images of wealthy couples exploring the Amazon or the rainforests of Borneo.
Eco-tourist company, Learn Great Foods, provides a different form of earth friendly exploration. With day and weekend tours, LGF takes guests to eco-friendly farms, retailers and communities like those found in Leland, Michigan.
About six hours drive from Chicago and nearly five from Detroit; Leland sits on the northern tip of the Leelanau peninsula on Lake Michigan. The small community is considered a great getaway in both summer and winter. In the summer the open waters provide boating, fishing and swimming. In the winter the 130-inch average snowfall provides cross-country skiing and snowmobiling opportunities for the enthusiast. Hunting and bird watching provide activity in the fall and spring respectively.
But LGF approaches the peninsula differently, instead focusing on Community Supported Agriculture and organic food providers. On a recent autumn Saturday, LGF tourists visited Sweeter Song Farms run by Judy Reinhardt and Jim Schwantes. The couple showed their guests the operation that provides member families from the area with fresh produce throughout the summer and fall.
"The last beets and carrots are about ready to come out of the ground," Judy told the visitors. "We have one more distribution before winter."
The guests were permitted to pick a basket of vegetables as they toured the acreage of this century old farm. The vegetables were turned over to a local chef, Perry Harmon, hired by LGF to prepare a gourmet meal from the ingredients the tourists would gather or purchase throughout the day.
The next stop of the day was to Leland's historic Fishtown. On the waters edge, this collection of shops and buildings appear more like an 18th century fishing village than the modern products sold inside. The first stop was to Carlson's Fish Market, a family operation for 150 years. The market sells line caught Great Lakes and ocean fish.
The tourists bought salmon, whitefish and lake trout before heading over to the Cheese Barn. The small cheese stand was having an end-of-the-season sale and the group found some wonderful organic goat cheeses for the price of commercial dairy cheese.
They visited a local winery and organic beef operation before heading back to Chef Perry. The chef prepared the meal in the Sweeter Song Farms kitchen as the group diligently took notes on how he paired food choices. The fish was pan fried and served with a pear relish with onions, peppers and some herbs grown in Judy's herb patch. For desert he prepared an apple crunch with fresh local apples.
The tour was $85 per person for the daylong event and included all the ingredients for the gourmet meal. President of LGF, Ann Dougherty, offers a variety of packages and trips. Itineraries, reservations and program descriptions are available at www.learngreatfoods.com
Friday, October 27, 2006
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Gay marriage is bad for business
With yesterday's New Jersey Supreme Court ruling ordering the state legislature to create an institution that approximates marriage for homosexuals and requiring the extension of benefits to same-sex couples and their children, the Republicans are hoping to energize conservatives to vote for GOP congressional candidates. Desperate to distract the voters from the economy and from the quagmire in Iraq, this ruling has already been touted as an example of "activist judges" and "the imperial judiciary... "impos[ing] same sex marriage in New Jersey."
For 30 years the GOP campaigned for smaller government, for state's right and against government intrusion in people's lives. Even on the fractious issue of abortion rights, the Republicans declared the necessity of letting the individual states decide. So who are these imposters in elephant clothing who want the Feds to decide to whom states can issue a marriage license, expanding government power and spending and encouraging the US Supreme Court to overturn jury awards in state courts? (See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/opinion/26thu4.html?th&emc=th)
While growing up in working class Cleveland in the 70s, political parties were defined in simple terms. The Democrats are for the little guy and the Republicans are for big business. Simple, clean and bereft of the left/right demarcations. Back then, Joe Everyman belonged to a union, worked in manufacturing or the trades, went to church or didn’t, made a decent living and thought a hot dog at the ball game was a gourmet meal. (Especially in Cleveland with Stadium Mustard.) Although he wasn’t the most tolerant of souls when it came to gays — he probably called them ‘queers’ — he frankly didn’t care enough about them to worry. He might have known a couple at work or from the neighborhood. But for the most part he never worried about their corrupting influence on society.
Joe Everyman was mistrustful of corporations — convinced after years of abuse that the company didn’t care about the workers — and would never call himself “pro-business.” At the same time, he was just as likely to subscribe to the philosophy of “Buy American.” Not because of xenophobia or racism, but rather because he understood that in a very real sense his economic interest was tied to the marketplace. He saw that an increasing number of goods were being made overseas and that companies were looking for cheaper labor. The line didn’t hold very long.
Soon the average family needed two wage earners and increasingly the good union jobs were being lost. By the mid-80s the steel mills, the shipyards, the foundries, the factories and the trades were laying off people in record numbers.
It was during this same period that the Republicans began to redefine the political parties. The Democrats became the party of tax and spend, the party of every crackpot issue, the party of liberals. The GOP became the party of rugged individualism — a party that preached, “if you’re poor it’s your fault” — the party of American strength and pride, the party of white, middle class ascendancy. It didn’t matter that these views were in opposition to reality any more than the old definitions did. Slick campaigning portrayed Democrats as weaklings, lackeys of big government waste.
People started to question why so many “minorities” received welfare — remember the welfare queens in their mink coats and Cadillacs (hey at least they bought American) — even though statistics showed that the overwhelming number of folks on the welfare rolls were white. The fundamental shift is best seen in the support for the White House’s union busting in the air-traffic controllers strike. Workers who favored unions were seen as obstructionists and crybabies. Stories were legion about the difficulty of getting union employees to follow even the simplest rules and firing someone was described as impossible.
What people failed to see was that supporting this reasoning, following this thinking enriched corporations but not the people. Supporting the GOP was patriotic even if the party routinely voted against middle and working class interests. To point this out, one risked the label of liberal and worse — some suggesting that to support such a position only empowered our enemies (the evil Soviets and their allies).
Each year, as real wages for the bottom two-thirds of Americans stagnated or fell, as corporate profits soared and the term “golden parachute” joined the common lexicon, the GOP became more powerful. The Republicans somehow created a dichotomy between conservative and liberal and assigned itself the former. The party further defined anything liberal as anti-American, anti-God and to blame for all the world’s ills.
Each election cycle the GOP found issues to divide the opposition into splinter groups. Minority v. white “Americanism”, urban “corruption” v. rural “heartland”, educated “elite” v. “real.” In essence these dualities always favored the rich and fractured the rest of us. The power in urban areas didn’t lie with the poor people who lived there, but rather with the suburban “carpet-baggers” who controlled employment. The educated elite were rarely in favor of an egalitarian state, rather they were enriching themselves from running the United States. The poor were painted as non-whites in spite of the numbers to the contrary.
Now it’s a liberal assault on religion and marriage that the GOP uses to frame the issues. Forget Iraq, forget illegal immigration, forget gay marriage: these issues are straw men. Implementing policies that would benefit the economic bottom nine-tenths of America are the real issues for the GOP.
The more one considers the issues, it appears Republicans are opposed to same sex marriage not on moral or legal grounds but rather for pro-business economic reasons. If homosexual unions are recognized on a federal level, businesses would have to extend benefits to same-sex partners that they currently extend to heterosexual married partners. (Sometime during the 80s the concept of common-law marriage became extinct and all marriages needed government sanction.)
The same economic impact holds true in undocumented workers. Any recognition of rights for these people would cost employers much more money than they pay now. Undocumented workers are not entitled to workers compensation, family and medical leave, overtime pay, OSHA regulations or sick time. And if workers agitate for these things they are fired and cannot seek government redress.
The government policy in Iraq is also based in enriching the wealthy — and here it is more insidious. While corporations like Halliburton are making untold millions without paying corporate income tax, the voters foot the bill. Meanwhile, well-meaning Americans suffer needless deaths and dismemberments.
GOP policy is not directed from any moral compass; it’s based on enriching the wealthiest and dividing the rest of us.
For 30 years the GOP campaigned for smaller government, for state's right and against government intrusion in people's lives. Even on the fractious issue of abortion rights, the Republicans declared the necessity of letting the individual states decide. So who are these imposters in elephant clothing who want the Feds to decide to whom states can issue a marriage license, expanding government power and spending and encouraging the US Supreme Court to overturn jury awards in state courts? (See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/opinion/26thu4.html?th&emc=th)
While growing up in working class Cleveland in the 70s, political parties were defined in simple terms. The Democrats are for the little guy and the Republicans are for big business. Simple, clean and bereft of the left/right demarcations. Back then, Joe Everyman belonged to a union, worked in manufacturing or the trades, went to church or didn’t, made a decent living and thought a hot dog at the ball game was a gourmet meal. (Especially in Cleveland with Stadium Mustard.) Although he wasn’t the most tolerant of souls when it came to gays — he probably called them ‘queers’ — he frankly didn’t care enough about them to worry. He might have known a couple at work or from the neighborhood. But for the most part he never worried about their corrupting influence on society.
Joe Everyman was mistrustful of corporations — convinced after years of abuse that the company didn’t care about the workers — and would never call himself “pro-business.” At the same time, he was just as likely to subscribe to the philosophy of “Buy American.” Not because of xenophobia or racism, but rather because he understood that in a very real sense his economic interest was tied to the marketplace. He saw that an increasing number of goods were being made overseas and that companies were looking for cheaper labor. The line didn’t hold very long.
Soon the average family needed two wage earners and increasingly the good union jobs were being lost. By the mid-80s the steel mills, the shipyards, the foundries, the factories and the trades were laying off people in record numbers.
It was during this same period that the Republicans began to redefine the political parties. The Democrats became the party of tax and spend, the party of every crackpot issue, the party of liberals. The GOP became the party of rugged individualism — a party that preached, “if you’re poor it’s your fault” — the party of American strength and pride, the party of white, middle class ascendancy. It didn’t matter that these views were in opposition to reality any more than the old definitions did. Slick campaigning portrayed Democrats as weaklings, lackeys of big government waste.
People started to question why so many “minorities” received welfare — remember the welfare queens in their mink coats and Cadillacs (hey at least they bought American) — even though statistics showed that the overwhelming number of folks on the welfare rolls were white. The fundamental shift is best seen in the support for the White House’s union busting in the air-traffic controllers strike. Workers who favored unions were seen as obstructionists and crybabies. Stories were legion about the difficulty of getting union employees to follow even the simplest rules and firing someone was described as impossible.
What people failed to see was that supporting this reasoning, following this thinking enriched corporations but not the people. Supporting the GOP was patriotic even if the party routinely voted against middle and working class interests. To point this out, one risked the label of liberal and worse — some suggesting that to support such a position only empowered our enemies (the evil Soviets and their allies).
Each year, as real wages for the bottom two-thirds of Americans stagnated or fell, as corporate profits soared and the term “golden parachute” joined the common lexicon, the GOP became more powerful. The Republicans somehow created a dichotomy between conservative and liberal and assigned itself the former. The party further defined anything liberal as anti-American, anti-God and to blame for all the world’s ills.
Each election cycle the GOP found issues to divide the opposition into splinter groups. Minority v. white “Americanism”, urban “corruption” v. rural “heartland”, educated “elite” v. “real.” In essence these dualities always favored the rich and fractured the rest of us. The power in urban areas didn’t lie with the poor people who lived there, but rather with the suburban “carpet-baggers” who controlled employment. The educated elite were rarely in favor of an egalitarian state, rather they were enriching themselves from running the United States. The poor were painted as non-whites in spite of the numbers to the contrary.
Now it’s a liberal assault on religion and marriage that the GOP uses to frame the issues. Forget Iraq, forget illegal immigration, forget gay marriage: these issues are straw men. Implementing policies that would benefit the economic bottom nine-tenths of America are the real issues for the GOP.
The more one considers the issues, it appears Republicans are opposed to same sex marriage not on moral or legal grounds but rather for pro-business economic reasons. If homosexual unions are recognized on a federal level, businesses would have to extend benefits to same-sex partners that they currently extend to heterosexual married partners. (Sometime during the 80s the concept of common-law marriage became extinct and all marriages needed government sanction.)
The same economic impact holds true in undocumented workers. Any recognition of rights for these people would cost employers much more money than they pay now. Undocumented workers are not entitled to workers compensation, family and medical leave, overtime pay, OSHA regulations or sick time. And if workers agitate for these things they are fired and cannot seek government redress.
The government policy in Iraq is also based in enriching the wealthy — and here it is more insidious. While corporations like Halliburton are making untold millions without paying corporate income tax, the voters foot the bill. Meanwhile, well-meaning Americans suffer needless deaths and dismemberments.
GOP policy is not directed from any moral compass; it’s based on enriching the wealthiest and dividing the rest of us.
Watch this video
Click on the title above to watch commentary by MSNBCs Keith Olbermann. Amazingly spot on, please share with friends and family.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Torturing the Constitution
The new law signed last weekend by President Bush denying prisoners of the War on Terror rights to Habeus Corpus has already been implemented. According to the New York Times, federal officials have served notice to the courts with pending lawsuits on behalf of terror suspects to dismiss the cases for lack of jurisdiction.
According to the Times editorial, the new law "raises insurmountable obstacles for prisoners to challenge their detentions. It does not require the government to release prisoners who are not being charged, or a prisoner who is exonerated by the tribunals.
The law does not apply to American citizens, but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening. It further damages the nation’s reputation and, by repudiating key protections of the Geneva Conventions, it needlessly increases the danger to any American soldier captured in battle."
Had enough yet? Don't forget to vote next month.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Support our troops unless they do their jobs
US Navy Lt. Commander Charles Swift — the JAG lawyer for Salim Hamdan who was told to "negotiate a guilty plea" and instead acted ethically on behalf of his client — was passed over for promotion and will soon be separated from the service.
Meanwhile the president is being permitted to continue kidnap and torture alleged enemies of the United States. In fact his powers have actually been extended to include not just those who actually take up arms or plan violence US, he can also kidnap and torture those who support terrorists in any way. (The administration announced today that they had arrested some nut job in California who called for the overthrow of the American government.)
Ethical behavior is punished while sadistic behavior appears to be protected. Bush should grow himself a little mustache.
Meanwhile the president is being permitted to continue kidnap and torture alleged enemies of the United States. In fact his powers have actually been extended to include not just those who actually take up arms or plan violence US, he can also kidnap and torture those who support terrorists in any way. (The administration announced today that they had arrested some nut job in California who called for the overthrow of the American government.)
Ethical behavior is punished while sadistic behavior appears to be protected. Bush should grow himself a little mustache.
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