Wild Foods, Electric Cars and Land Use Interpertation

fire starter
Originally uploaded by taylorone.

A week ago this very Sunday evening, I was watching {"The New World" (really bad)} on this very laptop, in my tent, on the sidewalk adjacent to The South Central Farm. Imagining all that has happened on this continent from Columbus to Villarigosa sends through my body. Many changes both for the good and bad, where do we go from here? Into the acceptance of a fascist "New World Order" ? Into the creation and maintenance of a new economy of nature? Or are we stuck somewhere in between. Do you know what i mean?

In the morning I woke up early to the sounds of an industrial machine, know as the Alameda Corridor. http://www.acta.org/
As I left downtown for the inland mountain areas of Pasadena, I wonder what i will discover today. I found Christopher Nyerges
{ http://www.christophernyerges.com/ } in the parking lot a few minutes early. We were going on a wild foods hike with a group of summer camp kids near the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories { http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ }. Here we were able to identify several edibles varieties of plants including dandelions, miners lettuce and apazote. We found cultivated varieties of Fig, Zucchini, Tomatoes and wheat growing wild near the water. We also found powerful medicines used by the native tribes of southern California and elsewhere. Jimson weed is a powerful narcotic that has killed and hospitalized youth experimenting with it's powerful compounds. Also South American Tree Tobacco, a common invasive in southern California brought accidentally through trading. It contains roughly 100 times more nicotine than the common manufactured cigarette.

Friday afternoon Russell Sydney { http://www.rsydney.com/stc.html } and I went up to Santa Barbara for the premiere of the Movie "Who killed the Electric Car?" { http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/ } a fascinating look at the political climate behind the electric car production in California. We got a chance to tell folks in Santa Barbara about the Sustainable Transport Club and also to meet the owner of the Santa Barbara Electric Bike Company { http://www.sbebc.com/ }.

Saturday I visited the Center for Land Use and Interpretation { http://www.clui.org/ } . I have always wanted to visit, and my intuition was right. I think they are on the right track for illuminating industrial environmental concerns from a very professional and well informed point of view.