THE GARDEN.

I am proud and excited to share with you these photos, of the second year, of our student garden. For some of us it has been a distant goal for a long time, for others a pleasant surprise, but I think we can all agree that it is an encouraging victory of our effort.

All of us have put a great deal of energy into SFI--whether by planning, organizing, decorating, reading, watching, debating, hoping, or eating--we have successfully begun to materialize a vision of new ways we can grow, relate, eat, distribute and share food within and around the Juniata community.

 We all eat, some more than others, and this gives us a great responsibility. Our efforts over the last 3 years are being noticed, supported, and realized and it is our small group of students who is responsible. We should never underestimate or doubt the power of our own initiation.I hope we can continue to agree on our continuing goal of supporting each other in our individual and group efforts dedicated to food issues.

The food we are growing in the garden (and farm) is a small portion of the food and ideas that we aspire towards, but we are nevertheless creating fertile land on which to grow imagination. Growing ideas that will

inspire (or derail) other imaginations is the essential to what we are doing.

Here is our garden as of June (more recent photos are on-the-way):

Kenya Opens New Camp for Somali Refugees

  

  

Kenya is opening a new camp on its border with Somalia to accommodate refugees fleeing the region’s worst drought in decades. The Kenyan government says the camp will take in around 80,000 people within 10 days. An estimated 380,000 people are currently living in nearby camps meant to hold less than one-fourth that amount. The United Nations describes the Somali drought as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, with more than 11 million people in need of life-saving assistance. A doctor at a Kenyan hospital said he is seeing increased arrivals of children suffering from severe malnutrition.

Doctor: "In the last few weeks, we’ve been seeing increasing cases of children with severe malnutrition. Of these children, most of them come with complications resulting from acute malnutrition. The children that we have seen in the wards, most of them are very sick, and most of them come here with an inability to feed, and we have to feed them through the nasal-gastric tube."

Understanding Stress

Stress-related diseases like heart attacks are becoming common. Science is trying to understand how the human body copes with stress

STRESS - always recognised by alternative medicine, ancient Indian practitioners and yogis as a cause for disease, is only now being studied by modern scientists and doctors for its implications for the human body. Advances in the understanding of the neurobiology of stress open vistas for preventive medical treatment including drug therapy and in the more distant future, gene therapy.

"The proper acti-vity and effects of the stress system in the resting state and appropriate activation and effects in the stress state are important both for normal daily functioning and for coping with superimposed stress," explains G P Chrousos, a stress expert at theUS-based National Insti-tutes of Health ( NIH ).

Farmer's Thoughts

Tony Ricci, Green Heron Farm, Farmer:


It’s hard to please a farmer – at least when it comes to weather.  First this season was too wet and the main topic of conversation was our inability to plant.  Then it became too hot and dry and farmers donned their drought persona.  It’s usually an easy switch.  You just slouch to one side or the other depending on the relative humidity as you engage the closest sympatric ear in your tale of woe.  That’s why it’s difficult for most farmers to express themselves when things go according plan – if you can call the vicissitudes of nature a plan.  Right now I’m at a total loss for words because it rained yesterday.  Not just a half hearted drizzle or flash in the pan thunderstorm – but a real soaker.  I’m not sure I’d be able to have a coherent conversation with another farmer in this hour of bliss because all we could say to each other is, “How many inches did you get?”  No moaning about the shriveled corn, no beating of breasts or wringing of hands over the flooded beet field.  Just, “Hey what about that rain.”  Might as well just go back to bed and wait for a random hail storm to liven up the conversation.  There’s just nothing to complain about – at least for the next twenty four hours.  That’s about how long it will take for those weeds we thought were completely eradicated to take over the carrot patch.  

Diabetes: A Global Epidemic?

According to a major international study which analyzed global data on diabetes since 1980, the prevalence of diabetes has gone up or at best remained unchanged in every part of the world for the last 30 years. The number of people with the disease has more than doubled during that period to 347 million adults. The increase can be attributed to population growth, aging, and to an overall higher prevalence.

Diabetes is a metabolic disease where a person has high blood sugar due to the body's inability to produce enough insulin or because the cells do not respond to insulin. High blood sugar can cause a number of troubling complications including hypoglycemia and cardiovascular diseases. Since medicinal insulin became available in 1921, diabetes has been treatable and people can still live healthy functional lives.

Dive!

in.gredients Wants To Be The First Packaging And Waste-Free Grocery Store

In an industry littered with excess packaging, it sounds like an impossible goal. And the Texas startup isn't just targeting waste, it's also going after food deserts, too.

In an industry littered with excess packaging, it sounds like an impossible goal: in.gredients, a startup out of Austin, Texas, wants to create the first zero-waste, packaging-free grocery store in the U.S.. Can this ever work?