The Loma Prietan
December 2000/January 2001
Meandering
by John Maybury
Lucky
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who will not survive the week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony
of torture, or the pangs of starvation,
you are ahead of 500 million people around the world. If you attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than almost three billion people in the world. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the people in the world. If you have money in the bank, cash in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy. If your parents are still married and alive, you are very rare, even in the United States. If you hold up your head with a smile
on your face and are truly thankful, you are blessed because the majority can
but most do not. If you can read this message, you are more blessed than two billion people in the world who cannot read anything at all.
Oh Noah
Order detailed flood zone maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), P.O. Box 1038, Jessup, MD 20794-1038. For customer service, call 800/358-9618 and ask for Jerry.
Hot Spot
Here’s a rainy-day destination for you meandering romantics: San Gregorio. The town hangout is a combination post office, general store (everything from cowboy boots to sandwiches), bookstore, full bar, lending library, and entertainment center (live bluegrass or folk music on weekends; just fill up the tip jar). A potbelly stove warms up the place during cold weather. San Gregorio, one of the smallest towns in California with its
own zip code, is just a mile inland from Pescadero Beach and Highway 1.
Boo
Throw a few logs on the fire, spread some blue cheese on a baguette, and get nice and comfortable. But a nest of black widow spiders in the woodpile has been ruining your parties. So you call the Farm Bureau in Half Moon Bay and
ask them how to get rid of the spiders without fouling the firewood with toxic bug spray. Simple advice: Just spread the logs out and the spiders will book.
Hands-On Calendar
Get your hands on next year’s best calendar put out by San Mateo County’s Used Oil Program, available by calling 650/726-9059 in Half Moon Bay. It is packed with useful advice on disposing of or recycling old household and car batteries, latex paint, motor oil, oil filters, and hazardous wastes.
Bogus Burgers
Fired Webvan butcher Richard Espinoza is suing his former employer, accusing it of retaliating for his beef that lower-quality meat was substituted for premium label under false pretenses. Espinoza says his supervisor told him, "Nobody will know the difference." Lawyers for both sides are sharpening their meat cleavers. Did Espinoza get
a raw deal? (See S. F. Chronicle Sept. 27.)
Freeze Fix
Experiencing frequent screen freezes? Try unplugging and replugging your mouse cord into the keyboard. Saves
on shutting down and restarting.
Well Trained
On her Elderhostel Scandinavian summer idyll, Eleanor Tomic took pictures of sophisticated and clearly labeled Swedish recycling and composting facilities. At a national park, Eleanor watched picnickers dutifully deposit table scraps, utensils, plates, and cups in their appropriate bins. "Well trained" is how she describes the Swedes.
Yogurt Mustache
Hoorah for Stonyfield Farm in Londonderry, New Hampshire. The yogurt maker is launching a print ad campaign to raise consciousness about rain forests, child labor, and a healthy planet. The ads will feature celebrities, who I hope will not be wearing silly yogurt mustaches.
Megatech
Check out this series on global extinc-tion, genetic engineering, industrial agriculture, and techno-utopianism, which ran as full-page ads in the New York Times: www.turnpoint.org.
Whinermobile
The front page is full of it: Firestone blames tire failures on drivers’ "lack of care." (Tell that to the survivors, Mister Ono.) PG&E blames its rising expenses on "the cost of our buying [customers] their electricity." (Gee wiz, guys, sorry to be so much bother. Oh, would you mind passing along that great wholesale rate you pay?) Automakers beg the state for more time to roll out electric cars, saying there is no market for them. (Well, get out there and market them, dumkopf!)
Chalk One Up
When it comes to ants, Oakland architect Leal Charonnat just draws the line, literally. He gets big, soft sidewalk chalk (any color works, but he prefers green) and makes three chalk marks, three inches long, two inches apart, right across the marching line of ants. In half an hour, the ants are gone. You may have to repeat this drill the next day, but Leal says he’s never had to do it more than three times to completely "disappear" the little pests, all without using poison.
Bad Bidi
Flavored Indian smokes called bidis (beedies) are quite popular with a certain crowd (you know who you are), but these little cheaper cancer sticks are no better for your lungs than cigarettes are. Don’t be fooled by fad and fashion; look at the facts. 60 Minutes recently aired an expose on child slave laborers in India who are sold into indentured servitude by their debt-strapped parents. Money lenders who buy the children force them to roll 800 to 1,000 bidis per 10-hour shift. An American lawyer working in India has been documenting these practices and suing in court to free
some of the enslaved kids. He also has pressured U.S. Customs to block import of some bidis, which have three times
the nicotine of regular cigarettes.
Cell Hell
What is just as dangerous as drinking and driving? Cell phoning and driving! Both behaviors quadruple your risk of having a collision. So hang up and drive, pal. Learn all about it at their website or write Advocates for Cell Phone Safety, 407 South Sixth Street, Perkasie, PA 18944.
Playing Without a Helmet
National Hockey League expansion team Minnesota Wild is fighting a trademark turf war with the Canadian Wildlife Federation. The pucksters claim rights to the name Wild, even though the wildlife federation has used the name for five years as the title of its children’s magazine. Yo, give it up, you hockey pucks, do you need a high stick upside your head?
New Use for Firestones
That massive SUV tire recall could be a blessing in disguise. University of Illinois scientists have found that old tires, plus pistachio shells, work as well
as or better than current commercial products in cleaning up toxic mercury in the flue gas from coal-fired power plants.
Hot Burgers
Lionel Emde forwards a scary piece from the Agribusiness Examiner #79 about Titan Corporation irradiating Brazilian beef raised on cleared rainforest land and turning it into hamburger patties sold in 250 stores in five states. Titan’s SureBeam subsidiary zaps the meat in a linear accelerator at its Sioux City processing plant. Had a bellyful
of this fooling around with food?
Visit the Public Citizen Web site at www.citizen.org/cmep/.
Antsy
Mix boric acid powder with mint jelly for a cheap, effective ant poison that is safe to use (except for the ants). Or use half-inch-thick cucumber slices to "cuke" ants away. Bait the buggers with crushed garlic in every nook and cranny.
Food Safety
After handling raw meat, poultry, or seafood, avoid cross-contamination by washing your hands, knives, utensils, platters, countertops, and cutting boards with hot, soapy water. Thoroughly wash all raw fruits and vegetables with water, not soap, before you cut into them. Thoroughly cook all meat, poultry, and seafood, especially shellfish. Reheat all leftovers until steaming hot. Observe "use by" dates. Cover and store leftover cooked food in the refrigerator ASAP. Remember that freezing stops bacterial growth but does not kill bacteria.
Gas Shocks
Freaking out about high gas prices? Parade Magazine suggests ways to get better mileage: drive smoothly, service your car, keep tires aligned and inflated properly, buy the right octane, use air conditioning wisely, don’t carry unnecessary heavy stuff in the trunk, avoid bumper-to-bumper traffic, slow down to 55 (going 75 mph uses 25% more gas), plan your errands, and fill up in the cool hours (you get more gas for your money that way, believe it or not).
Nice Kitty
We told you not to flush it. Then we told you not to plastic-bag it. So now what? Pete Hammar gets it: "Plastic bags don’t break down well when buried in Ox Mountain Sanitary Landfill near Half Moon Bay, where most Peninsula garbage goes. I went there once and it was a sobering experience. Not only are we using up this finite space, but what’s there makes for a hideous sight. That once beautiful oceanside canyon should have been a nature preserve. Instead, it’s an environmental nightmare that local, state, and federal governments overlook because they have no choice. The toxic runoff into the ocean during winter rains is something no one is talking about. Help save Ox Mountain and the coast:
If you have a yard, create a mulch area and mix cat poop, pee balls, and used litter with soil. (Carry the stuff outside in a bucket designated for the task.) The scent of your cat’s ‘duty’ might deter trespassing cats and skunks. If you can’t bury the stuff in your own yard, wrap
it in newspaper or other uncoated
(not slick) paper, which is much more biodegradable than plastic, and take it
to your garbage can."
Don’t put cat poop in the regular compost/mulch heap that you use for gardening, especially for food crops. The kitty litter mulch pile should be kept totally separate.
The duke of URL: Send news to John Maybury at mayburrito@firstworld.net.