Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s Disappearance Day, July 7, San Jose
Giriraj Swami

bhaktivinoda_thakura_saranagati“Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura shows us extraordinary determination. We see that even in the life of such a great devotee, empowered with Gaura shakti, still the material world is no rose garden — although we long for it to be so. We hope, in our neophyte mentality, that by our performing bhakti Krishna will make the material world nice. It seems an appropriate trade, yes? As Srila Prabhupada explains in the seventh canto in relation to when Lord Nrsimhadeva offered Prahlada Maharaja benedictions, the desire for the fulfillment of one’s lusty desires in exchange for one’s devotional service is quite common. So, we can take that to heart. What would we have done facing the obstacles that Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura faced? We might have just accused Krishna, ‘Why have You let this happen to me? What is this? I have taken up the process of bhakti, and now look.’” — Devamrita Swami

Vaisesika Dasa
Devamrita Swami
Giriraj Swami

If devotees don’t help the needy because of fear of being bound by good karma, aren’t they sacrificing basic humanity for spirituality?
→ The Spiritual Scientist

From Sushant:

    Today, in my college, a handicapped child came in search of help with his father.He sits in a wheel chair and he said that he needed an amount of 2 lakh rupees to continue his medical treatment which his father could not afford himself alone.He expressed that he wants to go to school,play and do all activities like we do but cannot due to his helpless condition.So,students as well as the staff started contributing some amount of money that they could to help this child.I too wanted to contribute some money but then I was reminded about your answer podcast that even this good karma will bind me and make me suffer.So I did not make any contribution.
            After coming home,I was feeling so much guilty.I could have extended my little help to that poor child but I didn't.

Isn't it unfair?Aren't we neglecting the basics of humanity for the sake of our spiritual advancement?

To hear the answer podcast, please click here

 

Spiritual irresponsibility plunges us into an ocean of reproachment
→ The Spiritual Scientist

The father, spiritual master or husband must be able to release the dependent from repeated birth and death. If he cannot do this, he plunges himself into the ocean of reproachment for his unlawful activities. Everyone should be very responsible and take charge of his dependents just as a spiritual master takes charge of his disciple or a father takes charge of his son. All these responsibilities cannot be discharged honestly unless one can save the dependent from repeated birth and death.

Srimad Bhagavatam 5.5.18 purport

Visiting Sri Vrndavana Dham
→ KKS Blog

DSCN6589After the Czech summer camp, Kadamba Kanana Swami paid a visit to the holy land of India, more precisely to the topmost of holy places, Sri Vrndavana Dham. It was for just under a week, so the stay was short but still fully transcendental. On almost a daily basis, Maharaja participated in the 24 hour kirtan. Enthusiastic young devotees, whose only service is to be present in the kirtan for at least six hours a day in order to keep the continuous chanting alive, anticipated in the five o’clock slots, hoping for Maharaja to show up and to share in his ecstatic kirtans. And he did! For your pleasure, recordings of all these kirtans are available below for download.

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part I – 27 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part II – 27 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part III – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part IV – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part V – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part VI – 30 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part VII – 30 june 2013 in Vrndavana

 

Apart from leading kirtan, Maharaja presented several lectures: a Bhagavatam class, a talk based on the Bhagavad-gita that was given in Prabhupada’s quarters and a lecture to the resident brahmacaries to inspire their path in spiritual life and to fix them in strictly following the principles of brahmacarya. To the 24 hour kirtan party, Maharaja gave a talk in Aindra Prabhu’s quarters in the brahmacari ashram, stressing the importance of deep absorption in chanting and serving the holy name of the Lord. Since a group of young students from Delhi were visiting the Krsna-Balarama mandir, Maharaja took the opportunity to address them and help them understand the importance of following the path back to Godhead. All these classes can also be found and downloaded below by right-clicking on the title and “save target as”.

KKS – Brahmacari Class – 28 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – S.B. 4.29.51 – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – Talk in Aindra’s room – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – Student Talk – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – B.G. 14.22-25 – 02 July 2013 in Vrndavana

 

Further to his preaching efforts, Maharaja took many walks in the area around the temple and paid visits to devotee friends. The whole stay is captured in a slide-show below. In case you cannot view it then just visit flickr.

Visiting Sri Vrndavana Dham
→ KKS Blog

DSCN6589After the Czech summer camp, Kadamba Kanana Swami paid a visit to the holy land of India, more precisely to the topmost of holy places, Sri Vrndavana Dham. It was for just under a week, so the stay was short but still fully transcendental. On almost a daily basis, Maharaja participated in the 24 hour kirtan. Enthusiastic young devotees, whose only service is to be present in the kirtan for at least six hours a day in order to keep the continuous chanting alive, anticipated in the five o’clock slots, hoping for Maharaja to show up and to share in his ecstatic kirtans. And he did! For your pleasure, recordings of all these kirtans are available below for download.

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part I – 27 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part II – 27 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part III – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part IV – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part V – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part VI – 30 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part VII – 30 june 2013 in Vrndavana

 

Apart from leading kirtan, Maharaja presented several lectures: a Bhagavatam class, a talk based on the Bhagavad-gita that was given in Prabhupada’s quarters and a lecture to the resident brahmacaries to inspire their path in spiritual life and to fix them in strictly following the principles of brahmacarya. To the 24 hour kirtan party, Maharaja gave a talk in Aindra Prabhu’s quarters in the brahmacari ashram, stressing the importance of deep absorption in chanting and serving the holy name of the Lord. Since a group of young students from Delhi were visiting the Krsna-Balarama mandir, Maharaja took the opportunity to address them and help them understand the importance of following the path back to Godhead. All these classes can also be found and downloaded below by right-clicking on the title and “save target as”.

KKS – Brahmacari Class – 28 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – S.B. 4.29.51 – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – Talk in Aindra’s room – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – Student Talk – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – B.G. 14.22-25 – 02 July 2013 in Vrndavana

 

Further to his preaching efforts, Maharaja took many walks in the area around the temple and paid visits to devotee friends. The whole stay is captured in a slide-show below. In case you cannot view it then just visit flickr.

Visiting Sri Vrindavan Dham
→ KKS Blog

DSCN6589After the Czech summer camp, Kadamba Kanana Swami paid a visit to the holy land of India, more precisely to the topmost of holy places, Sri Vrndavana Dham. It was for just under a week, so the stay was short but still fully transcendental. On almost a daily basis, Maharaja participated in the 24 hour kirtan. Enthusiastic young devotees, whose only service is to be present in the kirtan for at least six hours a day in order to keep the continuous chanting alive, anticipated in the five o’clock slots, hoping for Maharaja to show up and to share in his ecstatic kirtans. And he did! For your pleasure, recordings of all these kirtans are available below for download.

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part I – 27 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part II – 27 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part III – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part IV – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part V – 29 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part VI – 30 june 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – 24-h kirtana Part VII – 30 june 2013 in Vrndavana

 

Apart from leading kirtan, Maharaja presented several lectures: a Bhagavatam class, a talk based on the Bhagavad-gita that was given in Prabhupada’s quarters and a lecture to the resident brahmacaries to inspire their path in spiritual life and to fix them in strictly following the principles of brahmacarya. To the 24 hour kirtan party, Maharaja gave a talk in Aindra Prabhu’s quarters in the brahmacari ashram, stressing the importance of deep absorption in chanting and serving the holy name of the Lord. Since a group of young students from Delhi were visiting the Krsna-Balarama mandir, Maharaja took the opportunity to address them and help them understand the importance of following the path back to Godhead. All these classes can also be found and downloaded below by right-clicking on the title and “save target as”.

KKS – Brahmacari Class – 28 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – S.B. 4.29.51 – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – Talk in Aindra’s room – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – Student Talk – 30 June 2013 in Vrndavana

KKS – B.G. 14.22-25 – 02 July 2013 in Vrndavana

 

Further to his preaching efforts, Maharaja took many walks in the area around the temple and paid visits to devotee friends. The whole stay is captured in a slide-show below. In case you cannot view it then just visit flickr.

Detroit Becomes Largest US City to File for Bankruptcy
→ ISKCON Malaysia

BY GOLOKA CANDRA DASA

ORIGINAL ARTICLE 

 

 

KUALA LUMPUR - Industrialised cities and factories are the opposite of what Srila Prabhupada desired and preached: "Simple Living, HighThinking". Srila Prabhupada said that these cities and factories would be eventually finished and he wanted the devotees to undertake farming and cow protection, and teach the people how to live on the land and practice Krishna-consciousness. Unfortunately too many of our members themselves are entangled in working in factories etc to even think about changing that kind of life. Perhaps they will be jolted to think out of the box by news like this, that Detroit, one of America's biggest and most industrialised cities, has gone bankrupt and its people are moving away in droves to re-settle elsewhere. It serves to remind us that it is always better to put our faith in Srila Prabhupada's instructions than in the mundane material system. Hare Krishna!

 

Detroit has lost a quarter of a million residents in the past decade. Continue reading the main story

The US city of Detroit in Michigan has become the largest American city ever to file for bankruptcy, with debts of at least $15bn (£10bn).

State-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr asked a federal judge to place the city into bankruptcy protection.

If approved, he would be allowed to liquidate city assets to satisfy creditors and pensions.

Detroit stopped unsecured-debt payments last month to keep the city running as Mr Orr negotiated with creditors.

Continue reading the main story

Detroit in decline

  • Population has shrunk from a peak of 2 million in the 1950s to 713,000 today
  • Highest violent crime rate of any major US city, with 15,245 reported incidents in 2011
  • Some 78,000 abandoned and blighted buildings
  • 40% of street lights do not work
  • Only a third of the city's ambulances are in service
  • Just 53% of owners paid their 2011 property taxes

Source: City of Detroit Proposal for Creditors

He proposed a deal last month in which creditors would accept 10 cents on the dollar of what they were owed. Mr Orr suggested at the time there was a 50-50 chance of the city needing to file for bankruptcy.

In a letter accompanying Thursday's filing, Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, said he had approved the request from Mr Orr to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Gov Snyder said: "Only one feasible path offers a way out," adding that residents needed a clear exit from the "cycle of ever decreasing services".

"The only way to do those things is to radically restructure the city and allow it to reinvent itself without the burden of impossible obligations.

"It is clear that the financial emergency in Detroit cannot be successfully addressed outside of such a filing, and it is the only reasonable alternative that is available".

Mr Orr has said that the city's long-term debt could actually be between $17bn and $20bn.

The former manufacturing powerhouse's finances have struggled for some time, driven by a number of factors, including a steep population loss.

The city government has also been hit by a string of corruption scandals over the years.

Declining investment in street lights and emergency services have made it difficult to police the city.

The city lost 250,000 residents between 2000-10.

Temple of The Vedic Planetarium Update
→ ISKCON Melbourne, AU

In February the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium team presented an update to ISKCON's Governing Board Committee (GBC). You can watch it here.

TOVPUpdate.jpg
The team writes, "The Temple of the Vedic Planetarium is not another preaching center, but actually Mahaprabhu's home...2016 is ISKCON's 50th anniversary and we would like to complete this temple and offer this to Prabhupada as our collective Guru Dakshina to him: gratitude for giving us this wonderful ISKCON society for the last 50 years."

You can read more at TOVP.org.




324. 15 sec cooking video : Quick mixed rice and spinach dish
→ 9 Days, 8 Nights

1. Cook White rice and keep it aside
2. Have some raw corn, green peas and spinach ready
3. Heat pan with some oil
4. Crackle black mustard seeds
5. Add Hing
6. Add Turmeric
7. Add the 3 veggies and cook (don’t overcook and make it all mushy!)
8. Towards the end, throw in the cooked rice along with salt
9. Add butter too – it’s good !
10. Serve with crispy poppadums if you have any.

Takes about 10 mins to make.


15.15 – Krishna’s inner presence is to coach us, not catch us
→ The Spiritual Scientist

“Krishna is present in my heart. That means he has the best vantage point to catch all the wrongs that I do.” If such fears bother us, that’s usually because we have mistakenly divorced Krishna’s inner presence from his overall purpose.

Such a mistake may happen because we may carry into our devotional life past conceptions of God as a strict judge. Or we may project on to Krishna our past unpleasant experiences with a nagging elder.

To prevent such misconceptions, Gita wisdom integrates the fact of Krishna’s indwelling presence into an endearing vision of God as the supremely loving and lovable person. Krishna loves us so much that he descends repeatedly for inviting us to his personal abode for a life of eternal love. And he share Gita wisdom to explain the supreme glory of divine love and the ultimate futility of everything else.

To help us assimilate this message of love he becomes our constant inner companion, as the Bhagavad-gita (15.15) indicates. His purpose is not to catch us when we do wrong, but to coach us for doing right. He desires the best for us – even more than we desire it for ourselves. The only catching he looks forward to do is to protect us when we fall,  just as a loving parent expertly catches a beloved child who is about to fall.

He coaches us through flashes of inspiration and through the voice of conscience regularly. More importantly, when we show him our intention to love him, he transforms life into a living classroom wherein the events of daily life become demonstrations of spiritual truths.

Life with such a loving coach is a life of ever-growing wisdom and ever-deepening devotion – a life worth cherishing, not at all a life worth fearing.

***

I am seated in everyone’s heart, and from Me come remembrance, knowledge and forgetfulness. By all the Vedas, I am to be known. Indeed, I am the compiler of Vedanta, and I am the knower of the Vedas.

 

The Green Wheeling Initiative
→ The Yoga of Ecology


My hands in the soil eco-theology transcending my nature-deficit-disorder Farm Yatra summer tour continues as I return to a place I called home for two very formative years in my life: the New Vrindaban bhakti-yoga spiritual community, located in the Appalachian foot-hills of the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, where I had previously lived as a monk in the bhakti tradition. New Vrindaban is the home to the Small Farm Training Center (SFTC) project, a "land based educational center and a hands-on working organic farm" with the purpose of creating "community -- a web of supportive relationships -- by making locally grown organic foods readily available and affordable with the use of simple technology." The SFTC wants to create "paradigm warriors" who can "expand the conversation and are fluent in the language of inclusion, kinship and possibility" in relation to our existential ecological crisis. I'll be here for over a month and I will be blogging on the many facets of this dynamic and spiritually revolutionary project.
For my previous Yoga of Ecology blogs on my time with the biodynamic Episcopal sisters at Bluestone Farm in Brewster, NY, click here and here.
The photo above is an epitome of the potential and reality of urban agriculture. This is the 18th Street Overpass Garden in Wheeling, W. Va., one of the community gardens which is part of the Green Wheeling Initiative. The image juxtaposes so much of what it means to try to create a green-collar economy, a sense of ownership and empowerment over one's local community and local food sources. The beautiful garden, deep in its nourishing color and emanation of a literally life-giving aesthetic, stands in contrast to the huge modern sculpture of the overpass, a type of "artwork" which has long outlived its fashion and utility. The billboard in the background advertises for a local funeral home. One can suppose the ad is hardly needed. There are few more eternally profitable and stable businesses. In a place like Wheeling and in Appalachia, in the "belly of the beast." where nearly one in four people live below the poverty line and where West Virginia has the highest obesity rate in the country, questions of life, health, death, and food culture hang ominously in many spoken and unspoken places. If one can empower the people of Wheeling to create their own local, healthy, and ecologically-sound food culture, then one is creating justice, spiritual hope, and real honest-to-goodness happiness in a place where such things seem to have been long since lost in the most visceral and essential sense.
Standing in the Overpass Garden is Terry Sheldon, one of the founders and movers of the Green Wheeling Initiative, and the head of the Small Farm Training Center project at the New Vrindaban community near Wheeling. I had previously worked with Terry during my time as a monk in New Vrindaban, and I have also written about the SFTC project here. The GWI is an extension of Terry's vision of his own work and service to the local community, driven by his understanding and his spiritual obligation to share the wisdom of the true sustainability of the soul. It is a vision of "no-harm" farming, as Terry writes:
West Virginia is hurdling towards local foods. The day is coming when grocery store shelves will be stocked with blueberries from Beckley rather than Beijing. Kudos to the ag. economists, policy makers in state government, NGO think tanks (like The Hub) and the growing numbers of pioneer-spirited, small scale farmers and gardeners statewide. That's the good news.

Now the bad news. Most West Virginians aren't paying attention. They reside in urban and rural food deserts where affordable healthy food is out-of reach. They suffer from junk food malnutrition, buy inexpensive processed food, drink large amounts of soda and are reducing their life expectancy. Their diseases--chiefly diabetes and obesity--are not preventable without lifestyle change from the bottom-up.
Simply stated, the local foods movement is out-flanked and out-financed by the titans of the fast food industry. Following Big Tobacco's lead, fast food advertising is targeting youth, the poor and the uninformed. No number of feasibility studies or private foundation grants can usher-in a local food economy from the top down. Why? Because the food choices and self destructive eating addictions that drive West Virginia's health crises are the result of policies favoring commodity-based agriculture over community-based agriculture. It currently takes approximately 25 acres of land to satisfy the average West Virginian's appetite for an animal-centric diet.
Our vision of the future? Home economics classes returning to the public school curricula. Small scale organic "farmetts" dotting the suburban, city and small town horizons. Food mentors, not armed guards, in every school, every day-care and every housing project with the skills to teach every child the basics of a healthy-food lifestyle.
The Green Wheeling Initiative is a down-home, ground-up, grass-roots revolutionary food justice and cultural movement which is responding to the food crisis which threatens not only our health and well-being, but the integrity of life for so many living entities on this planet. It is those entities on the margins, because of their race, economic condition, their species and what is considered the correct utility of their existence, who are the most unjustly treated in the trenches of this crisis. The GWI is a response of environmental justice that represents real courage, clarity, and compassion.
The goal of the GWI is simply the restoration of the very idea of community that has been lost in the industrial-technological civilization of the overpass. The 18th Street Overpass Garden is not the first garden ever to rise in that particular neighborhood of Wheeling . Before the overpass went up, there was a real sense of place which has been now been paved over. The folks behind the GWI are trying to remind people that their backyards are something that truly belongs to them. They are trying to remind people that the bounties in those backyards can provide them with a quality and quantity of life which no corporation or outside interest has the right to co-op. It is the inalienable right of the people in this and any community to cultivate, grow, share, and enjoy the fruits of their very sustenance.
The motto of the GWI is "We Are Wheeling's green future... collaborate, collaborate, collaborate". In their mission statement they write:
Our mission is to build a local food production and distribution system that saves energy, creates jobs and circulates more money into the local economy. We partner with local farmers, community gardeners, schools and businesses to make fresh food available and easily available. We are Wheeling's green future.
In the past few years, Terry, along with co-founders Danny Swan, the pioneer of East Wheeling Community Gardens and a regular vendor at Wheeling's Farmer Market, and Gene Evans, an adjunct culinary arts professor who is currently teaching in Parkersburg, W. Va, have created a community garden network of 20+ gardens in the Wheeling area. In short time the GWI attracted the attention of private foundations such as the Hess Family Foundation and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, who have given the GWI over $80,000 in grant money. The GWI regularly offers organic community workshops in the Wheeling area and its influence and inspiration continues to grow (pun intended) upon a wide and diverse swath of peoples in the Wheeling area (check out local reports on the GWI here, here, here, and here.)
There are also five ongoing raised-bed garden projects in local schools in the Wheeling-Moundsville area. Some of the current initiatives of the GWI include a grant-funded study on "Bringing our Food Dollar Back Home", which would explore shifting 10 percent of the local economy towards community gardens and localized food cultivation, along with urban-gardening micro-grants which would serve as a clearing house for persons interested in start-up money for community gardens. The GWI is also developing a campus ecology project, which would help to create strategies for measuring the ecological footprint of local universities and colleges. Students would design their own audit projects for their schools. An initiative is also in the works to help make SNAP (food stamps) double in value at the Wheeling Farmer's Market when people use them to purchase healthy, locally grown foods.
In our next Yoga of Ecology piece we will take you on a tour of a day in the life of the Green Wheeling Initiative.

The Green Wheeling Initiative
→ The Yoga of Ecology


My hands in the soil eco-theology transcending my nature-deficit-disorder Farm Yatra summer tour continues as I return to a place I called home for two very formative years in my life: the New Vrindaban bhakti-yoga spiritual community, located in the Appalachian foot-hills of the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, where I had previously lived as a monk in the bhakti tradition. New Vrindaban is the home to the Small Farm Training Center (SFTC) project, a "land based educational center and a hands-on working organic farm" with the purpose of creating "community -- a web of supportive relationships -- by making locally grown organic foods readily available and affordable with the use of simple technology." The SFTC wants to create "paradigm warriors" who can "expand the conversation and are fluent in the language of inclusion, kinship and possibility" in relation to our existential ecological crisis. I'll be here for over a month and I will be blogging on the many facets of this dynamic and spiritually revolutionary project.
For my previous Yoga of Ecology blogs on my time with the biodynamic Episcopal sisters at Bluestone Farm in Brewster, NY, click here and here.
The photo above is an epitome of the potential and reality of urban agriculture. This is the 18th Street Overpass Garden in Wheeling, W. Va., one of the community gardens which is part of the Green Wheeling Initiative. The image juxtaposes so much of what it means to try to create a green-collar economy, a sense of ownership and empowerment over one's local community and local food sources. The beautiful garden, deep in its nourishing color and emanation of a literally life-giving aesthetic, stands in contrast to the huge modern sculpture of the overpass, a type of "artwork" which has long outlived its fashion and utility. The billboard in the background advertises for a local funeral home. One can suppose the ad is hardly needed. There are few more eternally profitable and stable businesses. In a place like Wheeling and in Appalachia, in the "belly of the beast." where nearly one in four people live below the poverty line and where West Virginia has the highest obesity rate in the country, questions of life, health, death, and food culture hang ominously in many spoken and unspoken places. If one can empower the people of Wheeling to create their own local, healthy, and ecologically-sound food culture, then one is creating justice, spiritual hope, and real honest-to-goodness happiness in a place where such things seem to have been long since lost in the most visceral and essential sense.
Standing in the Overpass Garden is Terry Sheldon, one of the founders and movers of the Green Wheeling Initiative, and the head of the Small Farm Training Center project at the New Vrindaban community near Wheeling. I had previously worked with Terry during my time as a monk in New Vrindaban, and I have also written about the SFTC project here. The GWI is an extension of Terry's vision of his own work and service to the local community, driven by his understanding and his spiritual obligation to share the wisdom of the true sustainability of the soul. It is a vision of "no-harm" farming, as Terry writes:
West Virginia is hurdling towards local foods. The day is coming when grocery store shelves will be stocked with blueberries from Beckley rather than Beijing. Kudos to the ag. economists, policy makers in state government, NGO think tanks (like The Hub) and the growing numbers of pioneer-spirited, small scale farmers and gardeners statewide. That's the good news.

Now the bad news. Most West Virginians aren't paying attention. They reside in urban and rural food deserts where affordable healthy food is out-of reach. They suffer from junk food malnutrition, buy inexpensive processed food, drink large amounts of soda and are reducing their life expectancy. Their diseases--chiefly diabetes and obesity--are not preventable without lifestyle change from the bottom-up.
Simply stated, the local foods movement is out-flanked and out-financed by the titans of the fast food industry. Following Big Tobacco's lead, fast food advertising is targeting youth, the poor and the uninformed. No number of feasibility studies or private foundation grants can usher-in a local food economy from the top down. Why? Because the food choices and self destructive eating addictions that drive West Virginia's health crises are the result of policies favoring commodity-based agriculture over community-based agriculture. It currently takes approximately 25 acres of land to satisfy the average West Virginian's appetite for an animal-centric diet.
Our vision of the future? Home economics classes returning to the public school curricula. Small scale organic "farmetts" dotting the suburban, city and small town horizons. Food mentors, not armed guards, in every school, every day-care and every housing project with the skills to teach every child the basics of a healthy-food lifestyle.
The Green Wheeling Initiative is a down-home, ground-up, grass-roots revolutionary food justice and cultural movement which is responding to the food crisis which threatens not only our health and well-being, but the integrity of life for so many living entities on this planet. It is those entities on the margins, because of their race, economic condition, their species and what is considered the correct utility of their existence, who are the most unjustly treated in the trenches of this crisis. The GWI is a response of environmental justice that represents real courage, clarity, and compassion.
The goal of the GWI is simply the restoration of the very idea of community that has been lost in the industrial-technological civilization of the overpass. The 18th Street Overpass Garden is not the first garden ever to rise in that particular neighborhood of Wheeling . Before the overpass went up, there was a real sense of place which has been now been paved over. The folks behind the GWI are trying to remind people that their backyards are something that truly belongs to them. They are trying to remind people that the bounties in those backyards can provide them with a quality and quantity of life which no corporation or outside interest has the right to co-op. It is the inalienable right of the people in this and any community to cultivate, grow, share, and enjoy the fruits of their very sustenance.
The motto of the GWI is "We Are Wheeling's green future... collaborate, collaborate, collaborate". In their mission statement they write:
Our mission is to build a local food production and distribution system that saves energy, creates jobs and circulates more money into the local economy. We partner with local farmers, community gardeners, schools and businesses to make fresh food available and easily available. We are Wheeling's green future.
In the past few years, Terry, along with co-founders Danny Swan, the pioneer of East Wheeling Community Gardens and a regular vendor at Wheeling's Farmer Market, and Gene Evans, an adjunct culinary arts professor who is currently teaching in Parkersburg, W. Va, have created a community garden network of 20+ gardens in the Wheeling area. In short time the GWI attracted the attention of private foundations such as the Hess Family Foundation and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, who have given the GWI over $80,000 in grant money. The GWI regularly offers organic community workshops in the Wheeling area and its influence and inspiration continues to grow (pun intended) upon a wide and diverse swath of peoples in the Wheeling area (check out local reports on the GWI here, here, here, and here.)
There are also five ongoing raised-bed garden projects in local schools in the Wheeling-Moundsville area. Some of the current initiatives of the GWI include a grant-funded study on "Bringing our Food Dollar Back Home", which would explore shifting 10 percent of the local economy towards community gardens and localized food cultivation, along with urban-gardening micro-grants which would serve as a clearing house for persons interested in start-up money for community gardens. The GWI is also developing a campus ecology project, which would help to create strategies for measuring the ecological footprint of local universities and colleges. Students would design their own audit projects for their schools. An initiative is also in the works to help make SNAP (food stamps) double in value at the Wheeling Farmer's Market when people use them to purchase healthy, locally grown foods.
In our next Yoga of Ecology piece we will take you on a tour of a day in the life of the Green Wheeling Initiative.