Tag Archives: Birds and Bees Urban Farm

Make Des Moines the Local Food Capital of the U.S.

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When it comes to food, Des Moines is most prominently known for the World Food Prize. It’s also home to the second largest farmers market in the country, and we have more and more grocery stores and restaurants sourcing locally grown food.

Furthermore, Des Moines has grower-friendly ordinances that allow residents to keep chickens, bees, rabbits, and even a couple pygmy goats and potbelly pigs. We’re also able to raise food in our front yards and, with some restrictions, on the parking strip between the sidewalk and the street.
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An 81,000-mile journey on “muscle fuel”

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My first guest is Dr. Corrine Sanchez, executive director of Tewa Women United (TWU). TWU was founded in 1989 as a support group for Native women in New Mexico dealing with “the traumatic effects of colonization, religious inquisition, and militarization leading to issues such as alcoholism, suicide, domestic/sexual violence, and environmental violence.”

Corrine is from the San Ildefonso Pueblo north of Santa Fe. Her Pueblo is one of eleven Native communities who extended kindness to participants in the Great March for Climate Action in 2014. It’s safe to say that, without their help, the March wouldn’t have made it across New Mexico. Continue Reading →

Reimagining St. Patrick’s Day

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Instead of glorifying drunkenness, let’s celebrate Ireland’s vast wealth of writers, poets, musicians, and warriors.

Let’s celebrate a people who won independence after 800 years of oppression under the heel of British imperialism.

Let’s celebrate a people who survived despite England’s attempt at genocide (known in sanitized history books as “The Great Famine,” because everything Great Britain did back then had to somehow be associated with greatness). Continue Reading →

The power of nonviolent action

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The Race to Save the World challenges us to get involved with our whole person — our bodies and our minds — through creative actions, risking arrest, crazy-long marches, and disrupting business-as-usual for oil companies, banks, and lackluster politicians.

Ultimately, ending the climate crisis will involve major legislative initiatives. Perhaps we’re seeing the front edge of that with the Biden administration’s climate-action proposals. Even so, it’s time for a global mobilization on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps The Race to Save the World can inspire that. Continue Reading →

Coral Reefs in Deep Trouble

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A new report paints a disturbing picture of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The coral’s status has declined from “significant concern” to “critical,” as bleaching continues to kill more and more coral. The report fingers climate change as the primary culprit. It’s not just coral: One-third of all natural World Heritage sites are threatened by climate change. Continue Reading →