April 2010

HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH By Doctor Manuel Cordova Transgenics (Gmo’s)What’s It All About?Part II   In the 90s, the food technology industry worked very hard to develop new methods to produce better appearance and yield from agricultural products. The result was a new form of genetic manipulation in the food industry and a new concept […]

Embracing Mortality By Dilia Suriel   During a survey of what people fear most public speaking came in first, death came in second. While this conveys the terror toward public speaking, “death” remains forbidden. To clear a party simply mention “dying.” It is tantamount to social suicide. Let’s start with religion. It has been stated

A BOY CALLED MOHAMMED By Fred Mittag   Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote a piece that makes a normal stomach feel like throwing up breakfast. It’s about a boy named Mohammed Jawad who was seized in Afghanistan when he was – well, nobody knows how old he was. Some guessed his age at

Signs of Global Warming at Lakeside By Ed Tasca   It seems as though everywhere on the planet you look these days, weather patterns are changing, and climates, once predictable, suddenly turn on you like a bad drunk. Given the predictably near-perfect nature of Lakeside weather, is it possible that global warming can disrupt in

FROM MY TROPICAL DECK CHAIRBy Consuelo   I wonder if my mother wanted the same thing I grew up to want, a quiet place of my own. Books, paints and travel. I know she loved armchair travel as much as I do. Shelves and shelves of books were our company. So I have reading to

My Plan To Save the World By David Harper   It came to me as I was watching the Winter Olympics. A newscaster appeared on the screen to tell me that I should not worry because they had a helicopter on the way to cover a shooting that had just occurred in Tacoma. All I

A MAN CALLED BENITO By Dave Gutk   At the age of thirteen Benito left the field and walked  to Oaxaca  where he found work as a domestic servant in the household of Don Antonio Maza, who also employed his sister. Don Antonio, impressed by Benito’s quick intelligence and desire to learn, became interested in his development. His friend Antonio

Sins of Our Fathers By Scott Richards   Mankind’s unfathomable ability to consume, destroy, endanger and control his entire environment has fascinated and saddened me from childhood. As we unconscionably harvest the Earths resources to the brink of extinction and beyond in our congenital belief of self-entitlement, ignoring the billions of inhabitants of this planet

JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE WORLD By Carol L. Bowman Part Three—From Land to SeaTorre del Paine to Punta Arenas   As our bus climbed in elevation, the Andean peaks enveloped us on all sides. The flatness and stark emptiness of the Patagonian steppes gave way to Beech tree forests of Chile’s Torre del

UP-DATES FROM THE ANIMAL SHELTER By Thetis Reeves   We dropped by the Shelter dog center the other day to see how Bingo was faring these days now that Chester, his long-time room-mate, finally got adopted a while ago. Chester held the record of being in residence for 359 days before going off to a