Thus, I have not had time to write.  This has done such wonderful things for our country, which sorely needs some positive energy! Regardless of your political views, you must admit it is an amazing thing to watch. 

My beautiful niece, Beth Harrison, just received 3 awards for her book , including         Check out her website via my Links page.......

needless to say I'm sooooo proud of this young lady.  Congratulations Beth.  (I think I have 2 more books in the store in Charlottesville.

OK, the store is officially closed in Charlottesville VA but I'll be there Sat., June 7 serving Mimosa's to the first dozen or so customers.  Come on out and help me by buying stuff that I won't have to move!! 

I am putting final touches on my little, first ebook called "Antiquing & Treasure Hunting in Eastern VA" it will be packed with secret sources, tips and my leads for antiquing....watch my home page!

Send me a little pity -- my youngest son Robert, 20, is home for.....a while.  He tried to make it in the Pacific NW but jobs are tight.  So "our plan" is for him to work here a few months and save his money to go back out there.  Boy is this an adjustment.  Any advice?  First, he has become a vegan, he sees aliens, he thinks every injustice is a government plot, doesn't trust anyone with white hair, hates our music. And to think, we had just gotten used to having early, quiet dinners, controlling the remote, listening to the birds, oh well. Ya gotta love 'em. 

Don't forget to visit my friend Carol Olmstead at www.FengShuiforRealLife.com.  She is so awesome and knows her stuff.  Carol has a highly informative monthly e-zine....tune in.

Stay in touch!  Love Penny

If you shop at regular supermarkets or eat out, you're most likely eating Genetically Engineered Foods ("GE Food"). Untested and largely unregulated, GE crops are controversial not only in Europe and other industrialized countries, but in the developing world as well. At least 40 countries around the world have restricted GE farming and ingredients in foods by requiring mandatory labeling, while a number of nations and regions have banned genetically modified organisms in agriculture altogether. But they are sold in the US and most people unknowingly eat these scientifically modified, untested foods.

Alternative:
-Eat organic food and shop at health food stores.
-check online for what food is GE food or non-GE food.
Here's one site that has a list of GE and non-GE foods.

Other links:
-The Campaign to label GE food.
-Another site about GE food. 
-A really cool Flash animation about GE foods and Kraft. 

The latest news, "Dying Bees".

Up to 1/3 of the bees in the United States are dead. Let's try to solve this mystery. Personally I think when you engineer and genetically modify produce without any understanding or care of environmental impact, surprise you have bees that are intolerant to garbage.

Although my statement above springs from simple common sense, other's have done extensive research and can back up the claims.

Click here to read the story

I guess I better stock up on honey, before those prices go through the roof!

Peace Out!

Overpopulation is what leads us to starvation, not lack of food production. Right now someone dies every 3.6 seconds from hunger. I’d like you to calculate the amount of food we’d need to start producing and distributing–over the billions of tons produced already–in order to even make a dent in that rate. That’s assuming, of course, that all of those deaths from hunger are solely from lack of food, not political maneuverings that have kept the food from undesired populations. The fact is, when we have individual governments and religions–and they’re highly culpable, both–that deny birth control, technology, and resources, then we’re going to have starving people. We need to address the disease, not the symptom.

AND I wrote:

Even if we food drop into some countries, the starving won’t get the food.

Almost directly on cue, God dropped the hammer on Burma (Myanmar).  And lookee what happens:

Myanmar's isolationist regime allowed the first plane of a major international airlift to land Thursday with aid for cyclone survivors, a U.N. official said, amid fears that lack of safe food and drinking water could push the death toll above 100,000.

But the junta was not allowing U.S. military planes to fly in critical relief goods and continued to stall on visas for U.N. teams urgently seeking entry to ensure aid is delivered to the victims. . .

Four planes loaded with high-energy biscuits, medicine and other supplies have waited for the last two days while frustrated U.N. officials negotiated with the military regime to allow the material into the Southeast Asian nation.

Even after a devastating cyclone that has killed tens of thousands of people, perhaps 100,000, with over a million people displaced or affected, the Myanmar government was more concerned with their grip on power than the welfare of their people. 

It is governments like this that lead to mass starvation and waste of resources (including people who could be taught to farm and produce food).  When the short-sighted, destructive and wasteful policies of such governments are no more, and people are allowed the freedom, technology, and resources to thrive, food will once again be abundant worldwide.  Without resorting to the gambling with our major foodsources. 

I have a few things to say about the concerns of genetically engineered food, which I will now call GE cause I'm lazy like that.  First of all, I'm gonna address all that "OMG we're tampering with nature" junk.  We pollute the air with factories and cars.  We cut down trees for mutliple reasons.  We build schools on top of toxic waste (I should know from personal experience).  Now you want to say that we're tampering with nature?  Shoulda thought of that a while ago, my friends.

Also, some people think it's unsafe.  Tell me, has anyone died yet from transgenic tomatoes or cloned cows?  Didn't think so.  I had this discussion with my dad a while ago.  We came to the conclusion that it probably won't affect your health to eat GE foods.  Especially the cloned animal part.  Cloning isn't risky.  We don't inject the clones with poison.  It's just like getting a normal cow with borrowed DNA.  Like twins.  Would you have a problem with eating twin animals?  No?  Then why fret over clones?

Finally, there's all those people protesting on the lack of labeling on GE products.  I agree with them; we deserve to know what we're eating.  However, the picture of a woman with a sign that says "Tested on kids.  Not mother approved" is a bit melodramatic, eh?  How are we suppossed to make scientific advances like this?  I think America is over reacting.  Now excuse me while I go eat my recombinant dinner. 

On March 11, this documentary was aired on French television (ARTE - French-German cultural tv channel) by French journalist and film maker Marie-Monique Robin. The in-depth film depicts how Monsanto, a gigantic biotech/agriculture corporation based in St. Louis, is destroying plant biodiversity around the world with genetically engineered seeds and, basically, endangering our future as a human race ... I know that statement may seem a bit dramatic and paranoid, but the amount of control this corporation has gained over global food production should be illegal - oh, I forgot, why would the government make laws against itself? Monsanto is the government:

Former Monsanto employees currently hold positions in US government agencies such as the Food and Drug Adminstration and Environmental Protection Agency and even the Supreme Court. These include Clarence Thomas, Michael Taylor, Ann Veneman and Linda Fisher. Fisher has been back and forth between positions at Monsanto and the EPA.

Also note that Donald Rumsfeld earned $12 million from increased stock value when G.D. Searle & Company was sold to Monsanto in 1985.

If you feel as disgusted as I did after watching this movie do not hesitate to take action:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

It also takes a look at seed saving with one of Australia’s pioneers in the field, Jude Fanton pictured here with a mildew resistant Professor Mary Sheahan's cucumber.

I interviewed Louise Sales, genetic engineering campaigner with Greenpeace. Louise discusses what's been an eventful month in relation to GE crops.

Moratoria in Victoria and NSW will end in February while South Australia took a more cautious approach on GE crops deciding to extend its moratoria.

February also saw several Canadian farmers visit Australia to warn about the perils of adopting GE-canola. I interviewed Canadian National Farmers Union Vice-president and a canola grower, Terry Boehm who talked about how GE seeds and biotech companies are forcing farmers into a relationship he likens to "feudalism".

Jude Fanton, co-founder and director of the Seedsavers Network talked to me about the importance of saving the seeds of hierloom and rare varieties to combat the consolidation of the seed ownership and the ecological risks of genetic monocultures.

You can download the show (after Sunday) or subscribe to the podcast at www.3cr.org.au/podcasts.

But next spring, for the first time, Green intends to plant beets genetically engineered to withstand Monsanto's powerful Roundup herbicide. The Roundup will destroy the weeds but leave his crop unscathed, potentially saving him thousands of dollars in tractor fuel and labor.For Green and many other beet farmers, it is technology too long delayed. Seven years ago, beet breeders were on the verge of introducing Roundup-resistant seeds. But they had to pull back after sugar-using food companies like Mars and Hershey, fearing consumer resistance, balked at the idea of biotech beets. Now, though, sensing that those concerns have subsided, many processors have cleared their growers to plant the Roundup-resistant beets next spring.

It would be the first new type of genetically engineered food crop to be widely grown since the 1990s, when bio-engineered soybeans and corn entered the market. And it could pave the way for the eventual planting of other biotech crops like wheat, rice and potatoes, which were also stalled.

But so far it is sounding like the quietest of revolutions.

"Basically, we have not run into resistance," said David Berg, president of American Crystal Sugar, the largest sugar beet processor in the United States. "We really think that consumer attitudes have come to accept food from biotechnology."

A Kellogg spokeswoman, Kris Charles, said her company, the top U.S. maker of cereal, "would not have any issues" purchasing such sugar for products sold in the United States, where she said "most consumers are not concerned about biotech."

If some other big food companies are now open to genetically modified sugar, though, they are not talking about it. Both Hershey and Mars declined to comment. "There's just nothing we have to say on the topic," a Mars spokeswoman said. Many sugar refiners and seed developers also refused to comment, hewing to an industrywide plan to coordinate the rollout of the genetically engineered beets and carefully control what is said about them.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, there is a reason to keep one's corporate head low - to avoid protests. Some opponents of biotechnology are only now getting wind that the sugar beets have been resurrected, and they have issued a call to arms.

"When I first saw this I said, 'No, it can't be,' " said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association. "I thought we had already dealt with this."

His organization is behind a campaign that has resulted in thousands of identical e-mail messages being sent to Berg at American Crystal Sugar warning that "profit margins of your company and its supporting farmers" would be hurt by consumer resistance.

Berg said he received 681 messages in a 24-hour period before having the e-mail blocked. He said he still believed most consumers would accept biotech crops.

But Cummins said he would next try to get consumers to pressure food companies to boycott the sugar. "I don't think companies like Hershey are going to want any more hassles than they already have," he said, referring to recent earnings pressure and management turmoil at the company, a chocolate maker.

Sugar beets are grown on only about 1.3 million acres by about 10,000 farmers in the United States, mainly in northern states from Oregon to Michigan. That makes them a minor crop compared with corn, at about 90 million acres, and soybeans, at almost 70 million.

And yet beets account for about half the U.S. sugar supply, with the rest coming from sugar cane. The sugar from beets and cane, generally considered interchangeable, is used in candies, cereals, cakes and numerous other products, although some food manufacturers have switched to high-fructose corn syrup, which is less expensive.

When genetically engineered versions of soybeans and corn - as well as cotton and canola (rapeseed) - were introduced in the mid-1990s, they were quickly adopted by farmers. But opposition to genetically engineered crops then took hold, particularly in Europe. Food companies, fearing protests or loss of customers, pressured farmers not to grow the crops.

Sugar was not the only crop affected. Monsanto's insect-resistant potatoes were withdrawn from the market in 2001 after fast-food companies resisted them. Monsanto gave up on developing Roundup-resistant wheat in 2004, in part because American wheat farmers feared losing exports. The rice industry, also heavily dependent on exports, has never grown herbicide-tolerant varieties.

Even if the situation has now changed for sugar, however, other crops might still meet resistance.

For one thing, sugar is a refined product that contains no DNA or proteins, just the chemical sucrose. "While the sugar beet is genetically different, the sugar is the same," said Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association and co-chairman of the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

By contrast, the foreign DNA and proteins in genetically modified wheat, rice or potatoes can be eaten by consumers, which at least theoretically raises food safety questions. Moreover, only about 3 percent of American sugar is exported, Markwart said, compared with about half of wheat and rice.

The sugar industry's organizational structure also helps. Virtually all sugar processors - which buy the beets from farmers and then extract the sugar and sell it - are owned by the farmers themselves. That makes them more likely to accept the biotech crops than an independent processor might be.

Because such foods would have to be labeled in Europe as containing genetically engineered ingredients, some U.S. food companies might use cane sugar, which is not genetically modified, for products they export to Europe. But in the United States, foods containing sugar made from biotech beets would not have to be labeled.

The sugar beet industry conducted field trials in Idaho last year and Michigan this year. Duane Grant, who grows about 5,000 acres of sugar beets in Rupert, Idaho, and was one of the growers in the Idaho test, said the biotech seeds had slightly higher yields and sugar output than very similar conventional varieties.

Some environmentalists say the use of Roundup on sugar beets could contribute to the growing problem of Roundup-resistant weeds. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it expected little, if any, environmental impact from growing the beets.

One factor that could help contain the trait from spreading is that beets produce seeds only in their second year of life, after passing through a winter. So beets grown in most parts of the country never produce seeds, because farmers harvest beets every fall and plant new seeds the next spring.

But in California, beets do stay in the ground through the winter and there are also weeds that can mate with sugar beets. So growers there may be wary about joining the Roundup revolution.

"We have to make sure we don't cause ourselves more problems than we're curing," said Ben Goodwin, executive manager of the California Beet Growers Association.

source: www.iht.com