Hospitality for the Coming Age

3. Peak oil
Where do the vegetables sold in Richmond groceries come from? California, often, sometimes Mexico, Argentina, once in awhile Michigan…. The statistic I see and hear the most is that the food on your plate has traveled an average of 1500 miles to get there. Yikes.
There are a huge number of problems with fossil [...]

2. Amount of food grown for the meat industry
Does this even need to be mentioned? 1 pound of beef requires 8 pounds of grain (and tons of water, and leaves a bunch of pollution, but I’ll get to that later). Eating the grain would have saved everyone a lot of time, money and been gentler [...]

I get a lot of blank and bemused stares when I talk about food insecurity. Perhaps people are picturing a silo full of corn saying, “Please don’t make me go out there, I’m SO shy….” Now that WOULD be ridiculous. But the image of bountiful food not leaving storage is one accurate piece of food [...]

We look at monarchy and divine rule and communism and think that those people were duped by the ones in power.
We look at our society and government and pride ourselves on our enlightenment and freewill and liberty.
In truth, we have been duped as well, by weapons manufacturers telling us we need military to be safe, [...]

Eating locally may feel like an enormous challenge – and doing so 100% of the time really is! I hadn’t realized how well I was raised until I started doing my own grocery shopping and learned how expensive vegetables are at the grocery (especially salad in December, which is still my weakness). So if it’s [...]

Krista Tippett’s interviews with Majora Carter and Calvin DeWitt offer hope and wisdom for those in the “environmental” movement. Listen to the whole thing, or check out gems on:
the role of academic experts in the environmental movement
How did we trick ourselves into thinking that we would NOT know (or be able to learn) how to [...]

I can’t draw, so I’ll plug a visual representation of hosting important conversations on Dave Pollard’s blog. This is only a part of the image, so visit the site for the full sketchbook!

16 October 2008
Kelly, Aaron, Chris and I gathered over Indian food, celebrating the very non-local ingredients I ordered on Ebay. In my defense, I only ordered these ingredients online because the Co-op doesn’t carry them, and because I didn’t want to make an otherwise unnecessary trip to some city.
We had samosas (I made the wrap [...]

Dan Ulrich’s October sermon “Faith, Fear and Finances” has already gotten plenty of attention in the blogosphere. I’m posting about it anyway, to highlight something that Dan added for his second preaching of this great sermon, at the Richmond Church of the Brethren.
“We need more than frugality – we need generosity,” said Dan on Sunday. [...]

What do you do when your guests make a mess?
Crumbs scattered on the couch, ground into the carpet, sweating beverages leaving marks on the coffeetable….
Seems like the mature, honest thing to do would be to proactively discuss the matter with the messy guest. But for those of us who avoid confrontation and fear hurting people’s [...]