commodification gone cuckoo

'Twenty years ago, who would have thought that someone would get money for a bottle of drinking water? Now, in Belgium, a glass of drinking water in a pub is more expensive than a glass of beer! The trend towards the commodification of almost everything has been most exemplified in Ireland with the commodification of drinking water....'

http://www.daramolloy.com/DaraMolloy/Writings/Commodification.html

I'd copy the whole dang article if I could - but check it out for yourself. Dara lives on Inis Mor in the Aran Islands - he grows potatoes the old way, in lazy beds, fertilized with kelp gathered from the sea and brought up from the beach for manure (as is shown in "Man of Aran" 1934 film - on IMDB a viewer ponders, "I wonder if people are still farming Aran or if they have all left for the big city.").

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The Reverend Billy (yes!) taught me a lot about the commodification of experience.

http://www.revbilly.com/about_us/

'Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir believe that Consumerism is overwhelming our lives. The corporations want us to have experiences only through their products. Our neighborhoods, "commons" places like stoops and parks and streets and libraries, are disappearing into the corporatized world of big boxes and chain stores. .... So we are singing and preaching for local economies and real - not mediated through products -- experience. We like independent shops where you know the person behind the counter or at least - you like them enough to share a story.'

Urban Chicks

This NY Times food news brought an article about urban backyard poultry

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/dining/19yard.html?ex=1347940800&en=f845e9a338a72fb7&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

It ALMOST made we want to get a few chickens - which I am sure are not allowed in the condominium where I live. But memories quickly staunched the flow of longings for my own supply of animal protein and manure. My job as a grade school child was the chickens. (My brother's was the pigs - which I liked a whole lot better as creatures.) My father had Five Acres and Independence ambitions, and frequently quoted from St. Paul (though I'm not sure he knew that was the source) that "Those who don't work, don't eat." Eggs still warm from the girls are lovely, but not lovely enough to overcome memories of the daily round of care and the periodic mucking out of the hen house. Slaughtering I could probably do - but the plucking!

Perhaps I need to find someone to partner with who has some hens but isn't much interested in vegetable gardening. We could have our own little sustainability system.

"what could be so offensive about burning turkey poop?"

That's a quotation from an article in yesterday's New York Times, another example of the complexities involved in assessing the risks and benefits of biofuels. And another example of the abuses of the term sustainability.

A system is not sustainable unless the outputs of one part serve as inputs somewhere else along the line, in cycles of usefulness.

If some of the turkey turds were used to power light and heat for the turkey coops, or a pump and watering system, and some were used to fertilize the next crop of turkey fodder, then there'd be sustainability.

I'm increasingly convinced that we need to be clear about the range of meanings of sustainability. Just doing something useful with manure is not necessarily sustainability.

Here's the article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/science/earth/06manure.html?ex=1338868800&en=32c85ca01997c519&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink