bad news for the bees

Big-size problems are brewing for agriculture in the United States: The honeybee population is dwindling dramatically. From the Star-Ledger:

Jean-Claude Tassot felt the sunshine spilling over his shoulders. It was unseasonably warm for January -- a good day, he decided, to check his honeybees. So Tassot jumped in his truck and rumbled over the back roads of Morris County to the first of the eight farms where he stores his boxes of hives.

"When you first take the cover off, usually you can see the bees," said Tassot. "But when I looked, there was nothing. I kept looking (but) the hives were all dead."

Read the entire article

It's tough to say what the culprit is, whether it's pesticides, bioengineered corn, mites or some previously unknown disease, but what's bad for the honeybees is bad for the entire agricultural industry and everyone who eats food that requires pollination. (That would include the human race.)

Best thing to do? Stop using pesticides and messing with the DNA of our food, plant a vegetable garden, and give part of your lawn over to wildflowers, so that wild honeybees, if there are any near you, can start to make a comeback.

Who the heck needs grass? Most of us wouldn't have a clue how to eat it, it's dull to see if for acre after acre, and it doesn't do much for biodiversity if everyone's growing turf on their corner of suburbia. I'll never understand how it became our chief crop in the first place.

i am humbled

Today, I recevied in my e-mail the following message from The Wittenburg Door, pretty much the world's only magazine devoted to religious satire, which I have subscribed to for the past 10 years, give or take. It is a forward of an e-mail they received from James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who is widely known for his statements same-sex marriage, abortion and other hot-button issues of the Religious Right.

I rather doubt that Dobson has changed his views on same-sex marriage, or abortion, or many of the other things he has taken a stand on over the years. But what I see in this letter is a remarkably contrite spirit, a humility that allows him publicly to admit to error, and a desire to undo some of the damage he has done.

God grant that I be willing to do the same when I am in the wrong.

Here follows the letter:

                We have tweaked our friend the Rev. James Dobson pretty regularly in the past, particular for his involvement in politics. And when Dr. Dobson called for the resignation of the Rev. Richard Cizik, president for the National Association of Evangelicals because he believed that Cizik was spending too much time worrying about global warming and not enough time spent on "core" Religious Right issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriages, we gigged him pretty hard then, too.

                However, we received this e-mail this morning from Dobson's Focus on the Family ministry and we think it is a remarkable document. It is probably the most honest, most revealing statement ever made by the normally carefully controlled Dobson.

                So, in the spirit of Christian reconciliation, we're making available Dr. Dobson's complete statement, without editorial comment. (If you would like to send Dr. Dobson an e-mail of support for his courageous reassessment, we've kept his contact information at the end of his statement.)

Perhaps he should rename it FICUS on the Family

– Robert Darden, Senior Editor

Colorado Springs, CO – Dear friends and supporters:

Since my ill-advised attack on my dear friend Dick Cizik a few days ago, I have had an extraordinary week of reflection and spiritual enlightenment.

Through the counsel of godly men, such as the Rev. Dr. Jack Hayford, the Rev. Rick Warren, Richard Stearns (President, World Vision), David Neff (Editor, Christianity Today) and other members of The Evangelical Climate Initiative (www.Christiansandclimate.org), I've come to see that my assessment of Dick's motives and, in fact, "global warming," have been in error as well.

I have been guilty of a particularly pernicious form of short-sighted Dispensationalism, believing that since the earth has no future with the blessed Second Coming nigh, we, as Christians, have no responsibility to care for Creation.

Through loving testimony, instruction and careful study of the Bible with these and other mentors, I no longer believe that Dick is -- as I said earlier, much to my regret -- guilty of a "relentless campaign" to save the planet at the expense of what I called more "serious" issues, such as same-sex marriage. I see now that I have strictly exploited those issues and others like them to manipulate my audience and as a calculated and callous form of fund-raising.

As part of my penance for my unmerited attacks on a courageous, godly man, I have initiated contact with both the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Don Wildmon, with the earnest desire to convince them of the error of their ways as well. While both continue to condemn what they call "earthism worship," I will continue to pray that this revelation will be made available to them as well.

As for the rest of my penance, I will devote the rest of my career -- however long the Lord sees fit to continue in this capacity -- to working with my Christian brothers and sisters to insure that all life on the planet, God's first and greatest gift to us, is protected and cherished.

God bless you all,

Jim Dobson

Focus on the Family

8605 Explorer Drive

Colorado Springs, CO  80995

1-800-232-6459

www.family.org

You are receiving this email because you, or someone who has access to your email account subscribed to our weekly newsletter. We occasionally send out special messages when noteworthy events occur.

The Wittenburg Door Magazine
5634 Columbia Ave.
Dallas, TX 75214
214.827.2625
www.wittenburgdoor.com

my footprint

So I took the test at www.myfootprint.org, and while I'll agree that I'm not as environmentally sensitive as I should be, I think the recycling, composting and other day-to-day things we do here at the house make us a little better than this.

Nah. I'm probably just being defensive.

CATEGORY	GLOBAL ACRES
Food	6.9
Mobility	1
Shelter	7.4
Goods/Services	5.7
TOTAL FOOTPRINT	21
In comparison, the average ecological footprint in your country is 24 global acres per person. Worldwide, there exists 4.5 biologically productive global acres per person. If everyone lived like you, we would need 4.7 planets.

Want to make a difference on Earth Day? Go organic

Today is Earth Day. Forget for a minute the canard you've Heard about how every day should be Earth Day, and how we should love the earth, our universal mother. Popular as they are, such oversimple sentiments produce little of the meaningful change that Earth Day has been about for the last 34 years. If you want to make a difference, go organic.

That means two things, the simpler being a change in diet, and the second a more encompassing change in lifestyle. A basic organic lifestyle involves a commitment to buying — or, better yet, raising — produce grown without chemical fertilizers, pesticides or defoliant. Part of that is just a matter of taste. Organically grown carrots taste more like carrots, the tomatoes taste more like tomatoes and the apples taste more like apples, than the usual fare we settle for at the supermarket. Once the sole purview of health food stores, organic food in the last several years has moved into America's supermarkets, making it increasingly easier to find, even in the prepared foods section.

If you're already accustomed to eating organic produce, make the leap to other foods. Organic meats can be harder to come by than organic produce, but they are well worth the effort. As with organic produce, organic meat is at once more flavorful and far healthier than conventional meat, coming as it does from animals that are not confined to narrow cages nor subjected to the other inhumane conditions that are a standard practice among factory farms.

Besides food, there are any number of other organic practices that any of us can implement easily and reasonably cheaply. Skip the chemical fertilizers, and build the soil in your yard with natural supplements such as finished compost or organic fertilizers. Forget the pesticides, and add a birdfeeder or bat box to your back yard and let nature take care of the biting, stinging, crawling insects. A commitment to organic gardening makes for a much more beautiful and far healthier lawn in the long run than chemical treatments that leach the natural nutrients out of the soil, put young children at risk, and pollute our waterways.

Like anything else that is worth undertaking, adopting an organic lifestyle is something that will come in stages. Take the first steps today, and make this Earth Day one where you make a difference that will last a lifetime