Cool pix showing urban development...pretty patterns - for the overall good, or bad?



http://www.shft.com/reading/alex-maclean-dwelling/

Some help for the early garden planners:

Two charts below: One for how many days to germinate vs. temperature and the other for seed starting vs. temperature.


http://www.knowledgeweighsnothing.com/when-to-plant-vegetable-seeds-2-excellent-printable-charts/

Tar Sands Protest Arrests

February 13, 2013

Contacts:
Eddie Scher, Sierra Club, 415-815-7027
Maggie Kao, Sierra Club, 202-675-2384
Daniel Kessler, 350.org, 510-501-1779

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morning, 48 environmental, civil rights, and community leaders from across the country joined together for a historic display of civil disobedience at the White House where they demanded that President Obama deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and address the climate crisis.

http://www.tarsandsaction.org/

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation invites everyone to the Wild and Scenic Film Festival - 

13 February 2013
in Camp Hill, PA


The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay's Wild & Scenic Film Festival!
This year, the Alliance is partnering with the Goddard Symposium to bring the largest environmental film festival in North America to Central Pennsylvania!

With a growing public awareness for the environment, the Wild & Scenic Film Festival aims to find common ground with a diverse audience through inspiring and educational films which motivate people to go out and become involved in local groups.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation is just one of the many groups who will be there. Stop by our table in between film screenings to learn more about our Save the Bay efforts, and how you can get involved!

This year's films include Chasing Water, which follows Pete McBride as he travels down the Colorado to see where his family's ranch water goes. To see this and other great films in their entirety, come to the Wild & Scenic Film Festival on February 13th. Details below.

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE: https://allianceforthebay.org/2012/12/wild-scenic-film-festival-2013/

5 Ways to Avoid GMOs in Your Food

From the Green Philly Blog:

http://www.greenphillyblog.com/green-living/5-ways-to-avoid-gmos-in-your-food/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GreenPhillyBlog+%28Green+Philly+Blog%29

A note for members of Newark Natural Foods Co-op:

Strategic Planning Session

The Board of Stewards would like your participation in an upcoming Strategic Planning Session!

 Saturday, February 2nd

8:30am - 12:00pm

Ashland Nature Center

3511 Barley Mill Road

Hockessin, DE

The goal of the session is to discuss, determine and redefine, in the very broadest sense, the primary purposes and priorities of the Co-op. 

• What do we do?
• For whom?
• Why?
• Where do we want to be as an organization in the future?

Remember, the Cooperative is more than just a store...it's a democratic mechanism designed for a purpose.  We operate a retail establishment, but that's not our sole reason to exist.  We will be using this session to clarify our organizational intentions.

Members are invited to participate in the morning, while the afternoon is reserved for a working meeting of the Board of Stewards and General Manager.

PLEASE RSVP TO FLO or ANITA via the Co-op at 302-368-5894.

Breakthrough news for honey bees!

A new European study labels the bee-killing pesticide clothianidin unacceptable.

Photo by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

But the EPA wants to wait until 2018 to determine its safety.

Contact the EPA and tell them we must act now to save our rapidly disappearing bee populations!  

A great link from Transition US - promoting sustainability and community resilience.

Lots of great ideas and motivators!
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=16a9bff55e0e10287af37f7e0&id=63736c8083&e=81fa87b930


From the Transition US website:

Let's mobilize of thousands of new residents, create innumerable sustainability actions provide the community networks and cross-sector collaborations needed to Transition our towns and cities across the US.

Getting started

• Find out what it's all about: Transition 101
• Organize a Transition Salon (what is a Transition Salon?)
• Form a group and start a Transition Initiative
• Get in touch at info@transitionus.org
• Support Transition Initiatives and invest in Transition today
• Browse our volunteer opportunities

A petition to ask the European Union to ban pesticides that have been known to harm bee populations worldwide:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/hours_to_save_the_bees/?bdMbocb&v=21422

Quietly, globally, billions of bees are dying, threatening our crops and food. But in just a few hours the European Union could move to ban the most poisonous pesticides, and pave the way to a global ban that would save bees from extinction.

Four EU countries have begun banning these poisons, and some bee populations are already recovering. Days ago the official European food safety watchdog stated for the first time that certain pesticides are fatally harming bees. Now legal experts and European politicians are calling for an immediate ban. But, Bayer and other giant pesticide producers are lobbying hard to keep them on the market. If we build a huge swarm of public outrage now, we can push the European Commission to put our health and our environment before the profit of a few.

A request from the Delaware Riverkeepers:

Please take a minute to call New York Governor Cuomo this week – Jan. 28 through Feb. 1 -- to tell him

• Do not allow fracking
• Do not issue DEC’s unfinished environmental study (SGEIS)
• Do not finalize DEC’s proposed gas rules 
• Fracking is a dangerous method of drilling for natural gas that threatens our health, communities and environment
• New York needs protection from the dangers of fracking

In the next few weeks, New York could finalize its study of fracking without conducting a comprehensive and publicly accessible health analysis of the threats to human health, without full review of all the environmental impacts and economic implications, and without addressing longstanding and potentially catastrophic deficiencies in how the New York regulates gas drilling.

But an unprecedented 200,000 comments and in-depth criticism by experts exposed the fatal flaws and lack of science behind the proposed fracking regulations.

Tell Governor Cuomo Fracking cannot be done safely. Step back and consider the immediate and long range indelible harm that will result if the floodgates of fracking are opened in New York!

Please recruit your friends, family, and neighbors to call Governor Cuomo!

We need thousands upon thousands of calls to make turn the Governor back from the edge of disaster here in New York.

For more information: http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/about/event.aspx?Id=322