Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas

Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas (Texas A&M University Press, 2009) is more than a stunning pictorial of the vast and varied farmlands of Texas. It's an opportunity to experience farming the way nature intended. Author Pamela Walker brings readers along for the ride as she travels the great state of Texas, profiling 10 organic farms in their efforts to live and work in step with nature rather than in spite of it as has become typical of modern commercial farming.

These 10 farms, whose products range from fruits and vegetables, to shrimp and meat, and finally to dairy, are merely examples of the extensive efforts being done around the state to farm sustainably. More importantly, they are proof that not only is organic farming better for man and earth, it's also profitable.

Walker, will the help of photographer Linda Walsh, takes you inside the operations of each location where readers meet the family, discover what first attracted them to organic farming (certified or not), and experience the triumphs and challenges of growing organically in Texas.

But like reading Joel Salatin, popular sustainable farming author and owner of Polyface Farms in Virginia, these 10 entrepreneurs are far from the exceptions to the rule. They are meant to be a beacon of hope that sustainable farming is alive and well; that it is meeting the demand of a growing community of mindful consumers; and that real people like you and me are making a difference today, right now.

Whether or not you call Texas your home, Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas is a must read. Both farmer and consumer will find the future of farming within its pages. It is this future towards which each and every one of us must strive, supporting sustainable farming one forkful at a time.

Zen Heart: Living with Mindfulness and Compassion

I had originally planned on reviewing Zen Heart: Living with Mindfulness and Compassion (Ezra Bayda) for July, but from the moment I started reading, I realized I'd be spending quite a bit of time nestled between the covers of this insightful read.

After completing the book once, I took my time the second time through allowing myself to meditate on each chapter. Bayda engages and challenges us to look deep within and find our practice not only in formal meditation, but in each and every moment of each and every day. Most notable, for me anyway, was the continual insistence that we must also reform our way of thinking about life events we would normally label "bad" - Asking ourselves, "Can I welcome this as my path?" to heated disagreements, health problems, failure, etc; turning them into instruments of learning and personal growth.

So this first question, "Can I welcome this as my path?" reminds us that our difficulties are not an obstacle on the path, but the path itself.

and later in the book:

Usually, when these difficulties arise and we get upset, we automatically believe that something is wrong. Then we jump to the belief "I have to fix this." But in doing so, we're missing a crucial point, which is seeing that these obstacles, these difficulties, can themselves be a step on the path of awakening. They are not in our way so much as they are our way.

Look, we all know the disappointment in misleading headlines (like the recent study on organic vs. conventional produce); and we all know the hard work (and sometimes failure) involved in changing local and national policy. But rather than become angry and frustrated at the slow (or stagnant) progress of the green movement in the US, can we instead accept these things as part of our path; as part of the journey; as opportunites that make us more educated, stronger, and dedicated?

I have no doubt, that to read this book a third time, it would move me in a different way, new passages catching my eye and challenging my heart. Zen Heart: Living with Mindfulness and Compassion is not a book to be quickly read, it's a book you digest slowly and mindfully; allowing time to absorb it's beautiful message.

Recommended: To anyone ready to explore an open and loving heart

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

The Ten Trusts

Acclaimed author, primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist Jane Goodall presents us with a book rich in guidance for conservation and environmental efforts in The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love. I found it extremely interesting that not only are the Ten Trusts geared to help only animals, they recognize and appreciate our role in the humanity of our world and the care we must give our environment.

The Ten Trusts are:

Rejoice That We Are Part of the Animal Kingdom
Respect All Life
Open Our Minds, In Humility, to Animals and Learn from Them
Teach our Children to Respect and Love Nature
Be Wise Stewards of Life on Earth
Value and Help Preserve the Sounds of Nature
Refrain from Harming Life in Order to Learn About It
Have the Courage of Our Convictions
Praise and Help Those Who Work for Animals and the Natural World
Act Knowing We Are Not Alone and Live with Hope

Coda: After all is said and done, silence is betrayal.

In each chapter there is information as well as moving stories that seek to personalize animals – without turning them into creatures that must mimic or entertain us in order to garner our protection. Stories of animals on land and sea, in flight and in our hearts will move you to consider the deeper meaning of our role in each trust.

What one must consider for each of these trusts is that we are also part of the environment, and each trust spoke to me in a way of how we should treat other humans as well as our natural world.

The Sixth Trust, Value and Help Preserve the Sounds of Nature “concerns the immense damage we have already inflicted on the complex web of life on Earth.” Goodall explores the poisons we have deposited on Earth including oil, chemicals, water pollution and more. Her brief comments on captive breeding programs resonated with me – as a former volunteer of the Carnivore Preservation Trust (feeding crew – whoo hoo!) I’ve looked into the eyes of some of the last of these beautiful creatures and seen how important breeding programs can be to restore even the possibility of some of our endangered species. Nowadays I have only to walk around a subdivision to realize the dim call of natural wildlife as even general wildlife habitat diminishes.

I found the Ten Trust to be a simple and inspiring read, one that prompted introspection of many pressing issues that affect not only animals, our ourselves the animal and the environment that we life in. Rated 4 out of 5 stars for Green Readers.

Soul Currency: Investing Your Inner Wealth for Fulfillment and Abundance

I'm your average American right now, struggling with a downturn in financial income and housing related issues. But I honestly refuse to participate in the emotional frenzy and other emotional stresses that surround our national pulse. I've become extremely aware that the focus on trying to be Greener both in ways, means, and outlook as radically altered my perspective on issues like finances, frugality, and life outlook. I think that I've realized that "going greener" isn't just about buying the right products, it is about making the right choices and choosing my attitude.

With that mindset going, I snatched Soul Currency: Investing your Inner Wealth for Fulfillment and Abundance by Earnest D. Chu off my Library's new book shelf. Right now I'm seeking books that green my attitude as much as much actions - and this seemed to fit the bill. As you begin to explore this book one realizes that Chu doesn't write necessarily from the platform of a preacher, teacher, or self-help guru but rather one that has made millions as the founder of nine companies, lost millions and lived off the help of friends only to make much more money back.

Chu explains the term soul currency in his introduction in that "It's a medium for exchanging value. Like money, soul currency can be shared, traded, donated and invested. But unlike money, it is not a symbolic object. It is spiritual energy that resides in everyone." (p. 3) But take heed, this isn't a book only about spirituality, moreso it is a work about finding spirituality in ourselves to encourage the flow of soul currency in our lives to heal other peripheral issues like work satisfaction, compensation, life investment.

Chu incorporates the studies, quotes, and philosophy of everybody from Budda (quote: Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it) to Studs Terkel (quote: Most people's jobs are too small for their spirits) as he weaves information about the fabric of the American working life together. Statistics and studies he brings into play show that most of us are only a paycheck or two away from hardship, and many people trade their job satisfaction in for job security when possible.

Chapter four, on Eliminating Counterfeit Currency is the best chapter in my opinion. To me it related very well to the current economic crisis and how much of America has hedged their bets on creating a currency that is false, and doesn't lend itself to satisfaction in many respects. The sub chapter on downsizing your false beliefs about success and money was important - and perhaps what many of us are doing now was we try to return to some of the simple pleasures in life, and step outside satisfaction based on acquisition that ultimately only leads to stress.

Now for the downside of the book, that in my opinion I felt just kind of "meh" when I read it. I think I'd do a disservice if I raved about every book that I read or reviewed. For many of the points in the book I felt like I'd get a greater level of enlightenment to just read the parts of Budda the author liked to quote rather than just reading what the author had to say about the quotes. He seemed to have a great love of pulling out case studies to illustrate his concepts, but I have little faith in reading case study parables and liken them many times to the likes of Dr. Phil. Just didn't really work for me in that respect.

My eyes seemed to glaze over at several points of the book - and I felt like his salient points were made in the chapters and sub chapters rather than the text of the book. Under each sub chapter there was usually an excellent nugget such as "when you invest your spiritual capital in positive ways, you make a choice to live in a world of possibility rather than limitation and fear." (p. 201) The excellent point was the Jerry McGuire moment of "you had me at hello," but everything else written beyond that pivotal statement was filler rather content that kept me engaged.

All in all it was an interesting read, and his concepts are profound though the rest of the material didn't work for me on many levels. Can I be so crass as to suggest a bullet pointed Cliff Notes for Soul Currency? I'd rate it as a 2 out of 5 for Green Readers.

Book Review: Finding Beauty In A Broken World

This is the first book I've read by Terry Tempest Williams although I've heard her name in the distance for years. And the truth is I set the book down after the first 35 pages and it was only by chance I picked it up after two weeks and began again. The second time I barely set it down until I turned the last page though.

Finding Beauty opens with TTW's experience with making mosaic in Italy, the metaphor of which is carried through the remainder of the book. I could have done without this part but the art ties the remaining two seemingly disparate sections of the book together.

The first half, after the opening, is about prairie dogs. Yeah, I know. Prairie dogs. I saw one once and have never given them another thought. Given their shrinking numbers I'll likely never see one again either. And I was fascinated with them.

TTW spends two weeks with a leading prairie dog researcher in the Utah desert observing the dogs 14 hours a day. Her observations are all over the map. They're part memoir, part poetry, part educational, humor, despair, part hope. I fell in love with prairie dogs. They live in communities, communally nurse the young and are brilliant in their contribution to the natural landscape. And they have language. It's amazing.

The second half of the book is about the author's experience in Rwanda with a group of artists building a memorial in a survivors town. It's a world away from the Utah desert but TTW ties it in with the mosaic metaphor. I appreciated reading the ways in which the Rwanda people are healing. And it was hard to read what individual people went through, are still going through. But there's beauty; the never ending beauty of spirit, of community, of courage and renewal. A miracle really.

I not only learned about prairie dogs and the people of Rwanda from reading this book but it reminded me to look for beauty in the broken places too. My only disappointment is I can't read it for the first time again.

I recommend this book to all people. It's our story regardless of landscape or borders.
I rate it 4.5 stars only because the beginning nearly kept me from the remaining beautiful stories.

Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion

What is the answer to your question of what it means to be you, in all of your beauty and even in fault? Zen Heart by Ezra Bayda gives us exactly what it intends to do, give us simple lessons on how to embrace your life and live openhearted.

Living in our modern world and coping in our modern world can sometimes put us at odds. It is a rush, rush, hurry, hurry, go, go, and one thing that Zen Heart encourages is a slowdown and recognition of ourselves. We are encouraged through pointers, practices, and exercises to recognize our inner spirituality and how it connects to our psyche.

You have to take the time to work through the steps to realize the true lessons. There is a three step process:

Me-Phase - becoming aware of our patterns of thinking
Being Awareness - expand upon our awareness with greater scope
Being Kindness - connecting to who we truly are, and the compassionate nature of ourselves

In keeping with the spirit of the clean simplicity of the book I'm going to keep my write-up very small and honest. This book is transformative, it is calming, it is a gentle read to help your spirit. I'm not putting it all into practice, but I walked away with inspirational thoughts that will help me along my journey, especially in relation to being a compassionate person to others.

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

Many thanks to Joyce from tallgrassworship for sharing yet another review with us. This time, she's reviewed a Blogging Bookworm favorite. It is wonderful to get so many perspectives on the book. We all seem to come to the same conclusion, though . . .

Over the past year, several friends have highly recommended Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time. I finally finished it this week, and I agree with them; it's a very inspiring read.

Greg Mortenson is a son of missionaries who spent a good part of his childhood in Africa. After a tour of duty in the military, he was pursuing his hobby of mountaineering in the Karakoram Mountains of Pakistan in 1993 when an aborted climb landed him in an extremely remote mountain village. The relationships he developed there, and his recognition of the deep desire the villagers had for an educated future for their children, ignited a passion in him for building a school for the village. Single-handedly, and against tremendous odds, he raised the funds, located the materials, and oversaw the labor of the villagers themselves to bring the first educational opportunity to their children. When word of this accomplishment got out in the surrounding area, other village leaders came to him to beg that he would help them do the same.

Eventually he formed the Central Asia Institute, a foundation set up to continue building schools in the most remote and politically fragile areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the Taliban attempts to deny access to education for girls, and where radical madrassas train boys in the most extreme form of Islam. Mortenson's schools are open to girls as well as boys, and offer a standard secular education. Many who have followed the progress of the Central Asia Institute recognize it as the best hope for opening the area to peaceful relations with the West, as well as offering opportunities for these remote villagers to raise up teachers, medical workers, and leaders from their own ranks.

Mortenson's work in a region of the world that is currently in conflict with the U.S. has drawn the attention of Congressional leaders. He has been asked to brief Congress on conditions in the Afghan-Pakistan border area. He has put a human face on the people of Central Asia, and championed their desire to find ways to raise themselves up and interact peacefully with the West.

Reading the book is a terrific way to gain an understanding of a part of the world that may be daily in the news, but remains a mystery to most Americans. The ruggedness of the terrain, the misunderstandings of culture, the differences between the various strains of Islam, and the challenges the West faces in dealing with the emergence of radical Islam are all explored in Three Cups of Tea. Mortenson was in that part of the world when 9-11 occurred. He was captured and held by the Taliban at one point, and feared for his life. Yet, his love for the ordinary villagers caught in the maelstrom of war shines through in his work for them.

I came way with two thoughts: first, that the fruit of his efforts is only now beginning to ripen, as the first students of his schools reach adulthood and go on to higher education, leaving their villages for further training, and having interaction with the wider world. We will see the snowball effect of this as we move into the future. Secondly, as horrifying as 9-11 was, and perpetrated by those bent on evil, this one good has come from it: the attention on Mortenson's work that resulted has brought his organization the recognition and funding it deserves, and has lead to a burst of school building that will be, in my opinion, impossible to be erased by the Taliban, no matter how much they may try to eliminate the CAI schools. It is possible that the ultimate effect of bin Laden's attack on the U.S. will be the cultural and political opening of Central Asia to the rest of the world. It will be fascinating to watch.

I highly recommend this book, giving it five stars.

To learn more about CAI and it's work, check out their site. If you order the book through that site, or through Amazon, a portion of the cost will go toward Mortenson's work.

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

A couple weeks ago, the mainstream media blasted photos taken with a cell phone across the airwaves. They showed the casualties of war and those casualties were children.

Pakistani troops and tribesmen recently shot down a U.S. drone within Pakistan's borders and the United States has reportedly stepped up fire in Pakistan to disrupt Al Qaeda's ability to plan complex plots.

Last Friday, I listened to the two men vying to become the forty-fourth president of the United States argued about the war in Afghanistan, our relationship with Pakistan, and whether America is safer now than before 9/11.

There could not be a book more relevant for where we stand now, for our place in history, for our ability to change its course than Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson.

Three Cups of Tea follows Mortenson from his first fuzzy footsteps as a lost mountain climber into a small rural, Pakistani village through his tireless efforts back home, in America, to raise funds for Muslim children on the other side of the world. Mortenson succeeded where no one else could. He forged relationships with Pakistani elders, acknowledged and respected their culture and religion, grew a great deal, and built a number of schools throughout a region plummeted in war, famine, drought and poverty.

Mortenson inspires and informs. He offers a window into a world we've never seen and therefore do not, as of yet, understand. He also offers a solution that involves the cliched "books not bombs". It is a solution that might actually work.

The book is a real life page turner, as interesting as it is educational. You will enjoy it as a change of pace and not even realizing that it is also changing your world view. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars - I'd give it more if that didn't bust the rating system. ;-) I recommend it for everyone.

Book Review: Mountains Beyond Mountains

Our guest reviewer today comes from the midwestern United States. Joyce works on staff in the music ministry at her church in Savoy, Illinois. She read "Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World" on my recommendation, and I read it on kale for sale’s! With Haiti so much in the news recently, I thought it was a really appropriate book to review. Joyce reports that the president of the University of Illinois recently gave a copy of this book to every incoming freshman. Here's what Joyce thought of it.

While I was on vacation, I read "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder. This is a very thought provoking piece of non-fiction about a physician and anthropologist, Paul Farmer who is one of the founding members of Partners In Health, an organization which directs attention, money, and service toward the very poorest people on earth.

Farmer says there are two kinds of poverty: relative poverty, which we see primarily in the developed countries such as our own; and abject poverty, which is found in underdeveloped countries. The former is exemplified by those who are certainly restricted from higher education, full-service medical care, excellent nutrition, and comfortable housing by inadequate income and education. However, there is still a safety net in the form of food stamps, subsidized housing, universal primary education, and emergency medical treatment. When we think of the kind of poverty that was revealed by Hurricane Katrina, it was this kind of relative poverty. Certainly these people live in very trying circumstances, and feel marginalized in our affluent culture.

The latter, who are the focus of Farmer and his organization, have no safely net. They lack shoes, potable water, access to even basic education and medical care, their housing is totally inadequate (i.e., dirt floors, leaking roofs, no insect screens, no furniture, etc.), they are landless and often disenfranchised by completely dysfunctional governmental and cultural systems. For Farmer, the people of Haiti best exemplify this kind of poverty, and that country has been his primary focus.

Farmer had a very non-traditional upbringing, and, as an adult, practices Christianity in a non-traditional, though Biblically driven way. Many Christians would struggle with his salty language and some other eccentricities of his life-style. However, it would be hard to argue against the fact that he is one of the few who is absolutely focused on living out the teachings of Matthew 25- "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."- meaning that he focuses on serving those who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, or in prison. He has used his education and the connections formed by his time at Duke and Harvard to bring attention and help to these afflicted people.

While others in Partners In Health chose to work with the big picture by bringing their needs to the attention of the World Health Organization or the Gates Foundation, Farmer has always been known for his personal attention to the individuals he treats. He argues that healing someone, then sending them back to the very conditions that caused their illness in the first place (malnutrition, impure drinking water, constant exposure to malarial mosquitoes, etc.) is a fool's errand. He takes a holistic approach to medical intervention. While he has long been one of the top experts on TB, he has also taken his methodology into the AIDS epidemic, including the explosion of cases of both diseases in the prison system of the former Soviet countries. He sees prisoners as humans in need of healing, no matter how monstrous their crimes, and is unique in his ability to rally a staid international medical establishment to tackle issues that most would not care to think about.

I found this book, and Farmer himself, inspiring. He will challenge you on every level to think about your prejudices, phobias, and political philosophies. You will, perhaps for the first time, realize what one individual can do to make a difference of global significance. You will wonder what you could be doing yourself. Your eyes will be opened, your comfort afflicted by what you read. I recommend it to everyone. 5 out of 5 stars.