Let's face it, for most of us trying to change our eating habits is really tough. If you're like me, you cave to the crave, which in my case means beer and chicken skin. "Healthy food," by comparison, seems bland and frightening. Still, if you're overweight, getting in shape and losing those extra pounds is a matter of health, not of choice.

One way I address the problem of "bland and frightening" is to choose a cookbook that sounds cool and just go all the way through it. I don't allow myself the luxury of choosing between different cookbook recipes to fit my mood or I'll never get off my butt and into the kitchen. A lot of healthy-recipe cookbooks these days are written by chefs who are keenly focused on taste because that's the only way many of us are going to learn to eat things like tempeh and tofu on a regular basis.

In this video we meet one such chef: Ann Gentry, Executive Chef of Los Angeles fixture REAL FOOD DAILY, a vegan restaurant that makes healthy yummy...


Propeller Sustainability Series: FOOD, Part 3 from Alexia Prichard on Vimeo.

A great place to start your healthy eating adventure is with either of Mollie Katzen's first cookbooks: THE MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK, and THE ENCHANTED BROCCOLI FOREST. Also check out her "Recipes" section!

For the more advanced, there are some wonderful books from Bloodroot, a mostly vegan restaurant that separates the recipes into seasons.

Lastly, for those days when you just can't look at another can of black beans, check out Happy Cow Vegetarian Guide for a list of restaurants and healthy-food stores.

In this video we learn a bit about eating locally. Many of us aren't aware how much food is grown right around our homes. Many of us haven't ever thought about it, but when you do the math, the savings on several fronts will astound and please you...


Propeller Sustainability Series: "FOOD, Part 2" from Alexia Prichard on Vimeo.

Check out "The 100-Mile Diet" for some great insight into eating locally. Then look around your own area to see what you have available in your foodshed. One way to find some great resources is to check LocalHarvest.org and the website for your local "CSA," or Community Supported Agriculture (you can find CSAs around via LocalHarvest). These sites will get you on your way.

Lastly, for the Ready-To-Be-Hardcore, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation so you don't poison yourself with that pickle

Shout out: Many thanks to Jennifer Kongs of Media & The Environment at Kansas University, and Joanne Poyourow of Environmental Changemakers for all their help!

Good eating everyone!

Welcome to the second segment in the Propeller Sustainability Series. For the next few videos we're going to be talking about FOOD. Given the enormity of the issues around food production and consumption in America and the wealth of information available, for the purposes of these videos I will focus only on organic produce. Although I won't be talking about animal products, I have provided links to some information about them.


Propeller Sustainability Series: Food, Part 1b from Alexia Prichard on Vimeo.

LINKS:

• There are currently four distinctions for food production sanctioned by the USDA's National Organic Program (NOP):

1. "100 PERCENT ORGANIC"
2. "ORGANIC"
3. "MADE WITH ORGANIC INGREDIENTS"
4. "PRODUCT WITH LESS THAN 70 PERCENT ORGANIC INGREDIENTS."

Read more about them here.

• In addition to the governing bodies of the USDA and the NOP, substances used in the production of organic foods are reviewed by the Organic Materials Review Institute, an independent nonprofit.

• There is no distinction under federal law with respect to the word "natural." So, if you see it being used, be cautious. It could mean "minimally processed" or it could be there just to lure you in.

• Fascinating correspondence between author Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. You can also find videos of Mr. Pollan and Mr. Mackey talking about food at the Whole Foods video blog, but I warn you that the very first video in this series-the one at the very bottom of the page where Mr. Mackey gives a long talk--is incredibly graphic and heartbreaking. He shows some very sobering and extremely disturbing images of animals being abused on their way to being food for us. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

• My personal favorite beef producer: Lasater Grasslands Beef. Yummy...

I use the word "perfect" about once a year. There just isn't that much these days that merits such an august description. For the last four weeks in Los Angeles, however, there has been.



Throughout this month I was privileged to attend a series of live performances by musical shaman Rickie Lee Jones. The artist does have a new album out--The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard--but didn't seem to be playing these shows just to hawk it. To quote the Los Angeles Times review after the first evening in the series: "She was just playing because, well, that's what she does."

In concert, Jones is nothing short of astounding. She gives 100% of her energy to the songs every single time. As a result, she never delivers a "canned" show. Although she begins with a few songs she and her band have clearly agreed upon, I'd be surprised to discover that there was a set list. No Rickie Lee Jones show is exactly like any other Rickie Lee Jones show you've ever seen--and you will be moved in ways you never could have expected. She has the ability to read an audience, and to give it exactly what it wants and exactly what it needs. You leave the club sated and buzzing in a way that's just perfect, having forgotten who you are, where you are, and everything else that ever was. All you've been doing is listening.

Until these shows, I'd forgotten how much I love doing that.

With all of the choices available to us in the way of amusement, it's certainly tough finding those rare artists who remind us of how incredible it is to be alive. But if you take the time and are patient, the payoff will be more than you could have hoped for: a rediscovery of grace, both yours and the artist's. So here's to Rickie Lee Jones, and to all the artists who give us back to ourselves. We can't thank you enough.

It's called the "Nano," and it's being hailed as the world's smallest and cheapest car. At roughly $2,000, the newest addition to the Tata Motors fleet has certainly caught the eye of India's growing middle class, and will probably help to boost the national economy a bit. But that's pretty much where the good news ends.

Whenever I visit Kolkata--the West Bengal site of the Singur factory, where the Nano will be built--I wake up in the mornings hacking. I have what I affectionately call "The Black Cough of Kolkata." It's due to the smog. The person-to-particle ratio here is so high that it's not even worth counting. Just imagine that every single one of the 14.8 million residents has his or her own unfiltered tailpipe to suck on every minute of the day, and you'll have some idea of what the air quality is like. Exaggerating? No, sadly, I'm not.

In addition to an exploding population, Kolkata has a massive car-density problem, with approximately 1,421 cars per kilometer and no emissions standards. Whether you're driving or walking, there is no escape from the smog (unless, ironically, you're in a sealed car). Ancient, dilapidated taxis and buses spew viscous clouds of dark gray soot every time they accelerate, causing severe irritation to the eyes, throat and lungs. To even entertain the idea of adding more pollution to this city, especially to make a profit, is nothing short of taking out a contract on the life of every last resident.

According to Ratan Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group, the Nano's design was inspired by the sight of an entire family crammed onto a tiny scooter--not an uncommon scenario in India's urban landscape. He thought that if he could build a car small enough and cheap enough for the lower middle class to afford, such families could get around in greater comfort and safety. But despite Mr. Tata's best intentions, the Nano may more prove more harmful than helpful, adding to what is already an unbearable level of smog.

A better option would be for the city to invest in public transportation. But even if we stick to the single-car-for-the-Indian-upwardly-mobile-sector argument, it would make more sense for the powerful and influential Mr. Tata to put his energies behind an electrically powered Nano. The car's small size is ideal for Kolkata's narrow, windy streets. The electric cars could be charged at simple "pumps" that could be easily installed as an addition to an existing structure. And the cost of charging the car would be cheaper for the user than the current cost of petrol.

Of course, the city's electrical infrastructure is in desperate need of an upgrade. Kolkata residents currently suffer nightly blackouts in what's called "load-shedding," as power is shifted from one neighborhood to another. In theory, the same neighborhood isn't supposed to be deprived of electricity several nights in a row, but it happens quite a lot.

Still, the cost of an upgrade to the city's power grid would be much less over time than a Beijing-style "clean up" of the constant, growing pollution. And the new petrol stations that will be built to accommodate the gas-powered Nano will only worsen the traffic and pollution problems--not to mention the fact that there isn't much space left to build them in.

The world over, people are attempting various solutions to environmental problems. Most are hard. This one isn't.

The Mexican poet Homero Aridjis said that "without nature there is no poetry," and that couldn't be more true for the subject of our next profile.

In this final installment of the "Shelter" segment of the Sustainability Series, we meet Dr. Eugene Tsui, a non-traditional architect whose design inspiration comes from nature and all the brilliant systems and methods found therein. Dr. Tsui shows us city designs inspired by termites, and gives us a tour of his parents' house, a futuristic-looking structure that has some calling it "The Fish House."

The initial costs of living green can sometimes be daunting--"Should I add solar panels, a composting toilet, wind power?"--but you don't have to go that large-scale all at once. The key to going green is understanding what to do when, whether you're remodeling your old house or trying to decide between straw bale or prefab modular construction for your new house.

In this segment we tour the "mkLotus," a prefab modular home designed by Michelle Kaufmann for West Coast Green, and talk with green builder Tim Schmidt, CEO of Xtreme Homes, an environmentally-conscious home production company, about what to keep in mind if you're building green.



LINKS

Cradle to Cradle/McDonough-Braungart Design Chemistry

"TreeHugger: Top 5 Plants For Improving Indoor Air Quality"

NASA Study about pollution-fighting plants

Nike Considered, evironmentally-conscious shoe design

Sustainability begins with the individual. There's much we can each do to help improve our small corner of the world, and it doesn't mean breaking the bank. It just requires a little imagination...

In this segment, environmental architect David Hertz takes us on a tour of some of the sustainable features in his own home. His are ideas we can all implement or use to craft our own efficient designs.

Any discussion of sustainability cannot go forward without mentioning the first dwellers of this land: Native American Indians. In this second installment of the Propeller sustainability series, we pay homage to those to whom we owe so much.


Next week we visit the home of architect David Hertz to get some ideas of how some environmentally-conscious systems really work. Have questions about radiant heating and cooling systems, solar domestic hot water, and natural ventilation? This is the segment for you!!!

In a new video series on sustainability, Propeller Anchor Alexia Prichard focuses on shelter, food, water, waste and community--how we relate to them, and how they affect us.

Sometimes our house isn't home. Sometimes it's just the place we come back to after a hard days' work--but it really should be more than that.

In this first installment of a series on the ins and outs of sustainability, Alexia Prichard talks with architect and author Sarah Susanka about the true meaning and importance of "home," and how truly sustainable it can be.

Every fall in Southern California, the warm Santa Ana winds kick up and we all brace for fire season. When a particular region is saved from the flames, the fire chief declares that the blaze is "100 % contained." Unless you live in SoCal, you can't imagine the weight that's lifted upon hearing those words.


Fire season means asking yourself: "Of all of the things that I own, what can I be at peace with losing?" Almost every year, we are forced to evaluate our possessions, and every year I am surprised by the things that define me, the things I chose to save. Family photo albums, heirlooms, jewelry with sentimental value, computers with their precious archives, portable musical instruments. Methodically we go through the house, gathering up only those things that will fit in the car. The things that don't fit, we don't save. Or at least we steel ourselves against the potential trauma of losing them.

Having lived here for only three years--and having gone through "only" three fire scares--I am still unaccustomed to cherry-picking through my stuff. I'll look at some nonessential object and feel a pang of emotion, as if that lifeless thing is somehow staring back at me and calling me a traitor. The memories associated with the item come flooding in, and I play a desperate, split-second game of packing roulette. "Isn't there even one little nook or cranny left in the Honda?"

And then there's the house. Here is our spirit cave, our cozy den, our shelter. Here is our long-fought-for dream, the sum of our accomplishments, our home. What must it be like to lose that? I don't ever want to know. But this year, after long battles were waged to save them, more than 1,500 homes disappeared in the flames.

Another thing you learn quickly after moving here is that the firefighters are badass. Working 24-hour shifts, they frequently go hours without food, scrambling over slippery rocks and sand in 90-degree weather, carrying 70 pounds of gear. They set backfires, shovel dirt, hose down what they can, and keep on moving.

I tear up when thinking of firefighters. Many of the men and women on these dry mountains are the same ones who flew out East to help us New Yorkers in the aftermath of 9/11. Grateful residents in SoCal show their support and humble awe in the form of donated food, water, coffee. Yesterday I heard that a Starbucks store, closed due to its proximity to one of the fires, gathered up that day's delivery of sandwiches and dropped it off at the local fire station. You can never do too much for these people.

This year, fire season is especially bad. The lack of rain and intensified summer temperatures turned the already arid landscape into a state-sized tinderbox, waiting for the odd cigarette butt or downed power line to start a blaze. As we all know now, some of the worst brushfires in SoCal history are currently carving their way through the terrain, and there's nothing to suggest that it won't be the same, or similar, next year or the year after that.

At the time of this writing, more than 1 million residents have been displaced, upwards of 1,500 homes have burned to the ground, 2 dozen firefighters have been injured, and five people have lost their lives. Yet in SoCal, fire is still just a fact of life, and certainly not a deterrent to people sticking around. Looking at the current situation, an Easterner like me might ask: "Why rebuild in a fire zone?" The answer comes as quickly and easily as I imagine it does in New Orleans: "Because it's home."

No matter how disparate we are as individuals, at the end of the day we're all in this life together. All we have is each other. You can see that so clearly as the flames burn in SoCal. Our deepest identity is our innate humanity, and that is defined not by what we will choose to save, but whom.

As nuclear attacks go, this one wasn't all that bad. For starters, it was live-blogged. But there were other reasons to be impressed. A real bomb was detonated at Portland International Raceway, producing a big, dramatic fireball; actors walked around playing radiation victims; and the Secretary of Homeland Security was in town! What's not to love? There was even fake media on hand, but that's such an oxymoron that I'm going to leave it alone.



The "attack" came at 9:06 AM PST, sharp! (The mere fact that something historic happened in my time zone was, to be honest, what got me interested in this story in the first place. Nothing really happens in Pacific Time.) The exercise went off without a hitch. Communications were solid, all relevant organizations worked well together, and--as I mentioned earlier--Michael Chertoff was there to oversee the whole thing. All in all, a good day for the USA.

Of course, the exercise did omit a few details from the scenario. Like traffic. And mass panic. And looting. And random acts of homicide. And, you know, fallout. There was plenty of room in the hospitals for radiation victims, but that was because the bomb affected only 300 citizens--even though approximately 2 million people live in the Portland metropolitan area. According to OregonLive.com, in fact, the real citizens of the real city of Portland had been "advised" to stay indoors and stop the flow of air circulating from outside. But otherwise they were unlikely to be inconvenienced by the attack: "You may hear a few extra sirens during the simulation or see actors covered in mock burns and blood being wheeled into local emergency rooms. But the fictional emergencies should mostly happen in the shadows."

Now, call me nitpicky, but shouldn't such an exercise be a little more convincing? Don't you want to really, truly test your federal, state, and municipal systems, so that in the unlikely event of an actual dirty bomb, everybody--including the American people--is ready to handle it? I mean, hell, back in the 1950s we had "duck and cover." What do we have? Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye.

Preparation is comforting, and I'm all for federal institutions getting their acts together. But at 25 million tax dollars per exercise, I think I'd like to be personally involved. Therefore I respectfully request that Los Angeles be chosen for the next summer exercise. And I'd like to be "burned," please. I want to see for myself what the rescue response times are. I'd also like Hollywood to be shut down, gasoline to be rationed, and the ban on air conditioning to be enforced. You want to see how well our agencies handle mass panic? Tell a bunch of movie stars they can't use their AC.

All kidding aside, there's no better way to prepare for a nuclear or dirty bomb attack than to do everything we can to avoid one. There are also plenty of more effective uses for our tax dollars than staging expensive, dubious exercises. We could make more flu vaccine, fortify our aging infrastructure, and educate our children. We no longer need to look outside our borders for possible problems, but rather inside them for probable solutions.

The "cap-and-trade" solution to climate change is my new favorite thing. Recently hawked by presidential candidate Barack Obama, such legislation would charge companies for their greenhouse gas emissions. It would also put a cap on how much they could vent into the air. "If you're going to pollute," the proposal seems to say with a wagging finger, "well then, by God, we're going to make you pay for it!"

Wow. That's harsh. It's as if you're telling a bully to go ahead and beat up some smaller kid on the recess field every day as long as s/he does some community service for it later. I wonder how many parents would agree to that as school policy?

The proposal is being called a "100% auction," meaning that for every measurable amount of CO2 vented, the company will have to pay a 100% tax. The CO2 and tax amounts, I'm sure, would be very carefully determined by Congress--whose own track record on climate change has been, you know, patchy-like-the-ozone-layer. Meanwhile Congress will continue to field "suggestions" from coal lobbies for support on the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Energy Act of 2007, an act sponsored by... wait for it... presidential candidate Barack Obama.


The Coal-to-Liquid (CTL) process produces diesel fuel instead of petroleum. Diesel is seen as an improvement because it burns a bit cleaner than regular gas, even though it still produces a destructive amount of CO2--as does the CTL process itself.

(For more detailed information on CTL, please read the earlier NewsQuake article here).

I know. At this point you're saying to yourself: "Wait.... WHAT?" But there's more. The "solution" that's being put forth as to why CTL is "better" than regular coal processing is carbon sequestration, an untried method of "hiding" the carbon underground. This option is perfectly suited to the La-La-Land of our current Congress, where a Band-Aid approach is usually preferred to the "Let's just design it better" approach. Additionally, instead of saving taxpayers money and reversing the tide on global warming, CTL would cost more than alternative solutions--$3 billion for each plant converted from coal to CTL production.

While I can understand that transitioning our energy focus from coal to environmentally saner alternative solutions is like trying to get a battleship to turn on a dime, it still makes more sense to start that process than to pursue CTL. And Obama knows it. But he's a senator from one of the top coal-producing states in the country and is, for that reason, possibly choosing this harebrained path. That, or he's just straight-up power-hungry and thinks he needs the backing of Big Energy in order to win. If that's the case, it only reaffirms my decision not to vote for him. We don't need another puppet with a God complex. We need a leader.

So, Obama for President? No (cough) thanks.

Sadly, the glow would wear off sooner than I could imagine. On October 10, 2002--less than two years after she had been elected--Senator Clinton gave a speech on the Senate floor, discussing the pending resolution that would grant President Bush unprecedented military powers, as well as the authority to invade Iraq. In her 2,476-word speech, Clinton urged the nation to tread very carefully. Saddam was bad, she said, but war was far, far worse. "If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us." She spoke of tyrannical Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his eventual defeat. "We and our NATO allies did not depose Mr. Milosevic, who was responsible for more than a quarter of a million people being killed in the 1990s. Instead, by stopping his aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo, and keeping on the tough sanctions, we created the conditions in which his own people threw him out and led to his being in the dock being tried for war crimes as we speak." It started out as a good speech--a great speech--but didn't end as one. After delivering about three-quarters of a very convincing and passionate anti-war message, Senator Clinton voted for the resolution.

Her entire speech was spin, and I felt betrayed. But I wasn't the only one. In the years since she cast that vote, Clinton has been haunted by it. She has had to answer again and again for that decision--her presidential campaign has been dogged by it--and she has had to watch as military decisions based on her vote failed time and time again, costing trillions of dollars and many thousands of lives.

Because of her vote, I was angry at the senator for a long, long time. For me, her support of the war was the ultimate line-crossing, an unforgivable act. And yet, when she announced her candidacy for president in January 2007, I decided to give her a second chance (as did many Americans and New Yorkers). Betraying my earlier instincts, I reasoned that the past was the past, and told myself that there was little she alone could do about the current debacle in Iraq. In short, I started letting myself like her again.

As her presidential campaign unfolded, I was once again charmed by her intelligence and poise. I was inspired by the idea that she really could become our first female president, and would therefore be more compassionate. There was a desire for change, a promise of strength, but most of all, there was the hope that Clinton, with her eight-year track record as the most politically active First Lady, could repair our nearly devastated foreign relations.

And then the other shoe dropped.

On September 26, 2007 the Senate assembled to vote on the politically psychotic Lieberman-Kyl Amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill--an amendment that, in no uncertain terms, authorizes military action against Iran. Now, let's put aside for a second the awkward fact that the amendment was being debated while the President of Iran was visiting this country. Let's also put aside the question of where the troops for such an invasion would come from. Instead, let's consider how much data there is clearly demonstrating how much Americans don't wish to launch another war.

As I read the amendment, I wasn't as terrified as I usually am by such things, because I was sure that Hillary (as I was now calling her) would lead the logical and overwhelming opposition. Here was the chance to correct her earlier, gargantuan mistake. She could use her clout as a presidential candidate to quickly vaporize the lunatic project.

Imagine my sense of betrayal when she did just the opposite, and voted in favor of the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment.

Candidate Clinton has now voted for war not once, but twice. No additional sanctions, no continued, UN-driven multilateral talks-war. It is therefore that, with heavy heart, I give up on her. I have no other choice. If she can do this as a senator, what insanity would she approve as president? She had, and still has, the opportunity to lead by example, to show the world that we aren't a nation of bullies and Lone Rangers, but rather one for whom diplomacy and negotiation are the stuff of foreign policy. Let's hope she turns it around. I'd like that, but I'm not going to hold my breath, and, in the interim, will seek elsewhere to cast my vote.

Netscape visits the Lower Ninth Ward and learns about The House of Dance and Feathers from founder Ronald Lewis.