Health Care reform and a forward-looking energy policy are not competing subjects in need of Congressional action, but interlocking national priorities, said speakers at a Santa Rosa rally yesterday.

Sebastopol City Council member Kathleen Shaffer (left), spoke out strongly in support of the health reform plan endorsed by President Obama, and the much maligned "public option" within it.

 

 

 

 

 Photos courtesy of John Hartong

Another speaker at the rally, Sonoma County Supervisor Efren Carrillo, defended proactive climate change legislation as a potential engine for economic, as well as environmental benefits.

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The Santa Rosa rally was one of many scheduled across the country yesterday by MoveOn.org.

Permaculture - an idea that began around sustainable agriculture - is moving into the urban environment.

  You can also learn more about this subject at the Oakland-based Urban Permaculture Guild.

Dave Henson, Executive Director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (right), explains that interest in permaculture arose in part in response to the widespread dominance of "monoculture," or large-scale farming of a single crop.

One of the enduring examples of crop integration is indigenous to Mexico and the American southwest, and known colloquially as the "three sisters."

 

Bicycling from Santa Rosa to Seattle is no small accomplishment, but doing it a century ago was a far greater challenge.

 The intent of his 15-day ride to Seattle, explains Bill Harrison, was to repeat the trip made by two young Santa Rosans 100 years earlier. But changes to the landscape over the past century made that impossible in places.

 

Bill Harrison celebrates his arrival at the landmark fountain on the University of Washington campus was the final destination for both Vic and  Ray—the 1909 riders whose journey was chronicled in the book, Two Wheels North (published by Oregon State University Press), and for Harrison 100 years later.

Interstate 5 was not part of the landscape 100 years ago, but Harrison explains that it now serves as the only possible route in some parts of the trip north. Curiously, though, the legal status of bicyclists varies between states.


Traveling by bicycle is an excellent way to savor the landscape as one passes through it. Harrison says one of his most memorable vistas-from among many-was this view of Mount Shasta, look back the morning he continued on from Yreka.

 

 

Harrison also remarked on this view in his online diary from the journey, which you can read here:

Another, larger repeat of the 1909 ride is being planned for later this summer by a group in Sacramento, as a fund-raising event to help fight Histiocytosis, a rare blood disease that primarily affects children under 10 years old.

Just about everyone agrees that preserving California's productive agricultural lands is a good idea, even if there have been some highly charged disagreements over the best means to accomplish that objective. Sidestepping these policy debates, California FarmLink is working directly with farming and ranching families to help them decide what they want to do with their lands from one generation to the next, as reported on today's North Bay Report:

Shrinking real estate values in California are prompting some ag families to re-evaluate their plans for their land. But Steve Schwartz, Executive Director of California FarmLink, says the shifting economic climate also holds some unexpected opportunities for new farmers to get established.

California Farmlink is hosting a series of regional conferences in Sonoma, Humboldt and San Luis Obispo counties titled Sowing the Seeds of Farm Succession:  Planning the Transition to the Next Generation of Family Farmers. the next session in Sonoma county will be held on Saturday, Feb. 21 at SRJC's Shone Farm, 6225 Eastside Road, Forestville. Click here for registration information.