Do you know how many different cows are in one hamburger?
Feed Lots in Kansas, USA
Question #1: When you are eating a hamburger, you’re not eating beef from one cow, you’re eating a beef mixture from how many cows? Let us know your answer and we’ll tell you after we get 20 responses.
Question #2: Why do you think there is a hedgerow of trees along the feedlot bordering the highway?
A North American Feedlot, Kansas
The first in a series of video posts about Your Food Supply
#1 The Trip West: An Experiential Rude Awakening
By Randy and Amanda Richards
This was Amanda’s first trip across the U.S., so we thought we’d drive. Destination? Colorado, where we would house-sit for a fellow Mountain Spirit board member. We thought we’d stay off the interstates, instead, crossing rural routes, starting with Indiana Route 24, then Missouri Route 36 west of Macon. Shortly after departing we decided to listen to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a book on tape by Michael Pollan.
Want to know what’s in your food?
As we traveled through Indiana, Missouri, and then Kansas, the book narrated our trip with views of tightly packed cornfields, and more corn, and then more corn. It turns out, about the only thing the U.S. is growing is corn, at least from what we saw. Sure there are apples in Washington, and spinach, avocados etc, in California, but in the Midwest, there’s corn, and a lot of it. We did see some soybean fields, but nothing much else than corn. We certainly didn’t see many pastoral scenes of cows grazing on open pastures. But we did see lots and lots of corn. As we listened to Pollan’s book, we were shocked to learn where all this corn is ending up in the food supply, plus how many bushels per acre of corn the farmers were squeezing out of the land. Read his book for the stark details of our homogenized food supply, and as you do, imagine seeing it in front of your eyes, passing by the window of your car. It was eery for us. I’ve driven across the U.S. probably over 45 or 50 times, and each time I’ve felt grateful to do so, and very cognizant of my impact by doing so.
I won’t go into detail about all we learned in Pollan’s book. Buy his book. However, one of the major topics he covered was how corn is not only a food, but a commodity, that is in almost all our food in a wide variety of forms. Corn drives the modern industrial food machine, being sent to beef feedlots where cows are forced to eat corn. Grass is their natural diet. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready genetically Modified Corn was another scary thing we learned about, plus how our farmers are forced work for fewer and fewer dollars, while ADM and the other monopolies make the money.
So starts our video series, rows and rows of corn, somewhere in Kansas on Route 36, but it could be anywhere in the Midwest. Stay tuned for Your Food Supply #2, for a feedlot and processing plant scene west of Dodge City Kansas, which may shock you.
Food Matters
Food Matters – A Guide to Conscious Eating
In this book, Mark Bittman explores the links among global warming and other environmental challenges, obesity and the so-called lifestyle diseases, and the overproduction and overconsumption of meat, simple carbohydrates, and junk food. It offers a plan for responsible eating that’s as good for the planet as it is for your weight and your health.
Sustainable Eating
With over 75 recipes and meal plans, this book will help you became accustomed to a style of eating that will cut back on your greenhouse gas production and teach you how to become less reliant on animal products and nutritionally worthless food.
To find out more, go to Food Matters.
How safe are your beauty products?
Film - The Story of Cosmetics
The Story of Cosmetics, to be released on 21 July 2010, examines the pervasive use of toxic chemicals in everyday personal care products, from lipstick to baby shampoo. It explores the health implications for consumers, workers, and the environment, and shows how we can move the industry away from hazardous chemicals and toward safer alternatives.
Major loopholes in U.S. federal law allow the $50 billion beauty industry to put unlimited amounts of chemicals into personal care products with no required testing, no monitoring of health effects and inadequate labeling requirements—making cosmetics among the least-regulated consumer products on the market.
Skin Deep
The Story of Cosmetics is co-produced with the trailblazing environmental health activists at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The release will support the introduction of groundbreaking national legislation to regulate personal care product ingredients.
Coming soon: New series of blog posts will open your eyes.
Keep an eye out for a new series of video and text posts starting here in a few days. We think you’ll like it.
We’ve just traveled across the U.S.A, listening to an Omnivore’s Dilemma by Micheal Pollan. It was experiential education at its best, and a sobering experience.
What’s more it led to some great footage and interviews here in Durango, CO with local farmers and restaurateurs.
Stay tuned for this informative series of blog posts on your food supply.
Snatam Kaur offers ‘Shanti the yogi’ – A yoga adventure for children in Lebanon, NH
Discover how much fun Yoga can be for your children with Snatam Kaur. Through imaginative stories, songs, mantras in motion and Yoga exercises especially for children, Snatam takes kids on a Yoga adventure. Magically woven into the adventure, Snatam conveys basic yogic principals to give kids the tools to be peaceful inside, and in their lives. Parents are welcome. Begin your child`s Yoga practice today.
Mantras for children
Wednesday, September 1st, 3:30 pm at the Carter Community Building, 1 Campbell Street, Lebanon, NH.
Cost is $10 per person. Parents, Kids’ Yoga teachers and children of all ages are welcome! Pre-registration is requested.
• Create a Fun Experience of Yoga for children
• Teach children mantras and songs for self esteem and happiness
• Teach basic yogic principals for a peaceful child and future leader of tomorrow.
A yoga adventure
The workshop is modeled after Snatam’s children’s yoga DVD “Shanti the Yogi – Mountain Adventure” and features music from Snatam’s newly released children’s album “Feeling Good Today!” Snatam Kaur takes you on an adventure of Yoga, singing, and play with Shanti the Yogi. Snatam Kaur’s story-telling is woven through with beautiful illustrations, a Yoga and movement class and her joy-filled music. This is a children’s yoga adventure that parents are sure to love too! This is the first time that Snatam Kaur’s children’s Yoga workshop is held in New Hampshire.
Space is limited so pre-registration is requested.
To find out more or register, please contact us at Mountain Spirit Institute
Tel: 603-763-2668 or Email: Amanda@mtnspirit.org
I have read this to many a program participant around camp in the mountains, and thought I’d share it here.
Hitchhiking in Labrador
The Invitation, By Oriah
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive. (more…)
We are not powerless to what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico.
Gulf of Mexico
Dr Masaru Emoto is the scientist from Japan who is well known for his research and publications about the characteristics of water. Among other things, his research revealed that water physically responds to emotions. Many people have the predominantly angry emotion when we consider what is happening in the Gulf. And while justified in that emotion, we may be of greater assistance to our planet and its life forms if we sincerely, powerfully and humbly pray the prayer that Dr. Emoto, himself, has proposed.
Let’s give energy of love and gratitude to all the living creatures in Mexico Gulf by praying like this. To whales, dolphins, pelicans, fishes, shellfishes, planktons, corals, algae and all creatures ion Gulf of Mexico
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
Masaru Emoto
May, 9th 2010
We are not powerless. We are powerful. Our united energy, speaking this prayer daily…multiple times daily… can literally shift the balance of destruction that is happening.
We don’t have to know how…we just have to recognize that the power of love is greater than any other power active in the Universe today.
To read the article published by Dr Emoto, go to
http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/dr.emotos_message_2.html
‘In Snatam’s voice there is purity, clarity and love' - Ram Dass
Mountain Spirit Institute is delighted to announce a benefit concert featuring Snatam Kaur with Guruganesha Singh. The Sacred Chant Concert will be at Lebanon Opera House, Lebanon NH on 1st September 2010. Tickets on sale now at
http://www.lebanonoperahouse.org/event.php?id=777
Snatam Kaur is one of the most popular New Age artists of our time, selling over 75,000 albums a year. An international favorite with fans across the globe, including North America, Europe, Asia, South America and the South Pacific, Snatam Kaur performs at over 100 venues each year, from the Bahamas to Singapore.
Snatam Kaur, whose father was a manager for the Grateful Dead, has an amazing ability to transform traditional chants into a contemporary sound that appeals to the modern ear yet awakens an ancient yearning in the soul. Ram Dass, celebrated author of Be Here Now, says that “in Snatam’s voice…there is purity, clarity, and love.”
Snatam’s CDs Prem, Shanti, LIVE In Concert and Liberation’s Door are setting the industry standard for excellence in New Age sacred music. Snatam Kaur embodies the Sikh message of strength through inner serenity. She brings music, yoga and meditation to the communities she visits, as well as to hospices, juvenile detention centers, and schools she visits along the way.
The U.S. citizens’ perspective of the world might not be quite as bad as depicted in this map, but I feel it may be close. While although “we are all one”, and Americans have the best of intentions, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
In a recent NPR interview, a few large truck and SUV drivers were asked if there were any connection to their driving habits and the Gulf oil spill, and, did they feel any remorse. They said “no”, they still needed “to get to work, and deliver the farm goods”. We’re all part of this problem, even the Amish, most of who don’t drive. They still need and send deliveries sent by truck. As Tolle asks, “Are you cleaning up the mess or contributing to the problem?
Back to the American perspective. This map illustrates the longstanding isolation and provincial perspective that seems unique to the USA. Just across the border in Quebec, the world view is, more worldly. The U.S. is a young country full of many, but not all, who still think we’re on top of the world. It’s understandable. Our continent stands alone, our controlled media* and corporatocracy has perpetuated a tunnel vision for many years that is catching up to us. This narrow vision that has been sold to us, effects not only our global view, but our environmental abuse, and our imperialistic tendencies.
At Mountain Spirit Institute, our mission is to broaden the American perspective. See our programs on Peru and the USA/Peruvian Music Exchange where a bit of Peru was brought into the schools and communities in the Northern U.S.
What do you think about this map? We invite your comments.
*“Cause when they own the information Oh, they can bend it all they want”. John Mayer
Thanks to Amanda Richards for sending this map my way. She was a little apprehensive about my posting this, but I thought, “Heck, our readers have a good sense of humor”.
Mountain Spirit's Blog 