New Brainerd farmers' market!

There's good news for folks living in Brainerd - or really anywhere in Chattanooga! Grace Episcopal Church  has begun hosting a farmers' market on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; this Saturday marks the the market's third week. Grace is eager to support the people who grow food in and near Chattanooga as well as offering its neighbors a chance to buy food grown in good soil, harvested recently and raised without the many chemicals that can cause health problems. Along with the farmers, some of Grace's food-enthusiasts will have a table at the market offering recipes, food preparation ideas, and other useful information. You can support local farmers and take home healthy food for your family with one visit to Grace's Brainerd Road parking lot. Please visit! (For directions, please click on the link above.)

Participating farmers include:

Tant Hill Farm
Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and cauliflower.

Owl Hollow Farm
Fresh herbs (spearmint, chocolate mint, and rosemary), snow peas, red and yellow onions, garlic, assorted flowers and plants, and preserves (peach, strawberry, and blackberry). English peas and potatoes will be coming in by the end of June.

Ridgeside Farm
Lettuce, collards, kale, cabbage, and spring onions, blackberries and peaches. We will also have free range eggs.

Walden Farm
Lettuce and salad greens all summer and a few summer vegetables.

Cloud Crest Farm
Grass fed beef and pork.

World Oceans Day

Did you know that World Oceans Day was this week (June 8)? The day began as a day celebrating the many ways humans are connected to the sea, and with the looming oil disaster in the Gulf, this year it's more important than ever to appreciate and preserve the earth's waters.

You don’t need to live near the beach to be connected to the ocean. Oceans and coasts affect people’s lives every day, around the world.  According to The Nature Conservancy, here are five reasons we should care about oceans - not just on World Oceans Day but every day!

1. The air we breathe. Oceans are a critical player in the basic elements we need to survive. Ocean plants produce half of the world’s oxygen, then these amazing waters absorb nearly one-third of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. Oceans also regulate our weather and form the clouds that bring us fresh water.
2. The food on your plate. Besides seafood, oceans are connected to what you eat in many more ways. Ocean ingredients, like algae and kelp, are used in making peanut butter beer, soymilk and frozen foods. Plus, 36 percent of the world’s total fisheries catch each year is ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs.
3. The items in your medicine cabinet. You’ll find ocean ingredients flowing out of your medicine cabinet in everything from shampoos and cosmetics to medicines that help fight cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, viruses and other diseases.
4. Jobs and the economy. One in six jobs in the United States is marine-related and more than $128 billion in GDP annually results from ocean tourism, recreation and living resources. Healthy marine habitats like reefs, barrier islands, mangroves and wetlands help protect coastal communities from the results of hurricanes and storm surges.
5. A shared resource. While many of us enjoy the spectacular recreational activities that oceans offer, for some people oceans are a lifeline for survival. Keeping oceans healthy keeps people healthy, and we each have a personal responsibility to protect our oceans

Show off your photos of the ocean - or any other natural wonder - by entering The Nature Conservancy's fifth-annual photo contest. Details are here, and the winning photograph will be featured in the group's 2012 calendar.

Summer green

With summer here and kids out of school, the focus of many families turns to entertainment. But having fun can also mean - literally - tons of trash. Here are some ideas for greening up your entertainment, courtsey of The Green Book.

Books
Use the library or buy secondhand books. Consider sharing the ones you have with friends or donating them, rather than throwing them away. About three billion new books are sold each year, requiring 400,000 trees to be chopped down.

DVD's
Rent DVD's instead of buying them. Depending on how much you watch one, you could save money too! The average movie rents for about $4 (and many online movie rental services are even cheaper!), while the average new DVD sells for more than $16. You also won't have to worry about contributing to their trash pile: 100,000 DVD's and CD's are thrown away each month. If you own DVD's that you want to get rid of, donate them to a local library or thrift store, or look for a DVD recycling center.

Tunes
Download tunes to an mp3 player instead of purchasing them at the store. The average price of a CD is $15, whereas an album download is about $10. Each month, more than 45 tons of CD's become obsolete, outdated, or unwanted - and end up in landfills. And when you upgrade your iPod or mp3 player, recycle your old one or return it to the manufacturer. Some companies give customers up to 10 percent off their next purchase when they return their old players. And about 40 percent of the lead in U.S. landfills comes from improperly discarded electronic waste, and the lead in turn pollutes the air and groundwater.

Candy
Buy loose, unwrapped candy from the bin, if you can. Many candy wrappers contain chemicals that make them stain- and water-resistant but also make them difficult to recycle.

Parties
Use electronic invitations (Evite is a great one!) or choose chlorine-free postconsumer recycled paper for your party invitations. (Better use of paper could allow the world's wood consumption to be reduced by 50 percent and possibily as much as 80 percent or more.) For your table, use "real" dishes, silverware, and glasses rather than plastic and paper. Each year, 40 billion plastic utensils are thrown into landfills across the country. You can also save money - using your own stuff is free, whereas the cost of plastic plates, forks, knives and cups for 50 meals could add up to $100.

Drinks on the go
If you have the choice, buy soda from the fountain in a paper cup instead of a can or plastic bottle. You'll reduce the amount of aluminum cans and plastic bottles that are wasted. More paper (48 percent more) is recycled and recovered to make new products than aluminum soda cans (43.9 percent) or plastic bottles (25 percent).

Tickets
Buy your movie and event tickets online or via telephone and print them at home. You'll save time and paper waste. Print-at-home tickets use plain copy paper, which is easier to make into recycled paper than the paperboard used for printed tickets. Some 1.4 billion movie tickets alone are sold in the U.S. annually - and almost every one of them goes in the trash can.

Wanted: A Christian response to the oil spill

Reprinted with permission from www.joshuacase.net

The other night while watching the show Life I was amazed. There were these ants that would eat these mushrooms and then rush off to die under trees where new mushrooms would sprout from their dead heads. I mean, when it comes to tv, this is serious stuff. So serious in fact, that it seems odd that you could call it anything but natural. I mean lets face it, although it is somewhat mysterious that the ants love to eat the plants which drive them crazy, it really is just a natural cycle of a natural creation. It is life.

What is happening in the Gulf of Mexico this week as a result of BP Chemical’s failure to make good on its promise to protect the wildlife of the world’s oceans while extracting oil to be used for cars is not something to marvel at. Species of fish, pelican, squid, duck, and who knows what else are all being swallowed up into the black gulf of oil which will not only limit their capacity to fly or swim, but will inevitably be the cause of much death. Death that is both unnatural and preventable!

Preventable or not, the disaster is here. The question I have is: where are all the Christians? I mean honestly, here you have an example of humans exacting a kind of injustice on the creation that they claim to be responsible for stewarding, and there has been no effort to try to help or to mobilize (at least from what I can find) people as good stewards to action. And whereas many Christians in the empire were more than ready to suggest that drilling for oil was Biblically justified on a stewardship basis, few are coming forward to take up responsibility for clean up or care.

I have to admit that as I write I am more than a little bummed that if you Google “Christian oil spill volunteers,” you actually find an Atheist organization recruiting volunteers to help with clean up before you find Christians. Now this isn’t to say they are not out there, only to say they are not activating their bases, they’re not stepping in and saying “we love to drive our cars with our fish on them, and so we too are kind of responsible for this mess.” They are not even saying that the oil clean up is part of their responsibility as people of faith in the public square.

But shouldn’t a Christian response to this crisis be equally as measured as a response to other tragedies like hurricanes and earthquakes? Or, in some classic sense, do most Christians still fundamentally believe that God only cares about human life and human surviving? Is there a way in which this oil spill, like the slowness of Christian response to HIV/AIDS in the early years of the pandemic, will be the beginning of breaking of this kind of disconnect? Maybe, but maybe not.

Maybe response really depends on how one views God’s relationship to Creation. If one views God as completely other and distant then it makes sense why caring for the animals about to be destroyed would matter less. And if you buy the Left Behind logic, it matters even less as everything is going burn.

But what if Sallie McFague was right when she suggested thinking about the relationship between the world and God this way: “the world is God’s body?” Would our response be different? Would we be quicker to help if we experienced the violence against the earth as violence against the goodness of God?

McFague’s understanding of the world as God’s body challenges and calls disciples of Jesus to re-imagine the doctrine of creation not merely as God’s acting upon the world, but as God “sharing” divine power with humans that all of creation may flourish. In McFague’s articulation, not only does God meet with humanity in the “intrinsic and intimate” details of their lives, but in the everyday experiences of life at home in planet earth. With this vision of earth as home, McFague hopes to inspire humans to not only be planted as good stewards of the earth (as God’s body) but also to bear witness to the goodness and sustainability of creation in God. (Some might even argue, that it is this way of understanding God/World that allows Christians to challenge the injustices they experience under any political system.)

Might not this view call more Christians to a sharing in clean up? Might not this view make for a kind of green revolution necessary for sustainable life on earth for all that share it?

You may remember that Glenn Beck infuriated Christians all across the US just a few short weeks ago by suggesting that people should report their pastors for using any kind of social justice language in the church. Beck’s point at the time was that these pastors were just buying into a liberal socialist agenda of the Obama administration and that Jesus’ movement had nothing to do with it. Well, on this point, maybe Beck will have nothing to worry about. For it seems to me that the Church is still very much behind the times with regards to creation care. Or, maybe I’m wrong! Let’s give Beck something to talk about and let Rush know that though he may wish to blame ‘the environmentalists’ for this tragedy, its everyone in the empire who is to blame!

I’m convinced that there is a huge need for Christians to wake up and to respond to this crisis as good stewards of a good creation. As people who ought to be working already to participate in the healing of the world, it is our duty! I’ve started rallying my circles and my networks to mobilize people towards action. Won’t you join me?!

Do Justice!
Joshua

Joshua Case is a blogger (http://www.joshuacase.net/), podcaster (http://www.thenickandjoshpodcast.com/), and activist. As a co-facilitator of the Atlanta Emergent cohort, he has blogged and podcasted on matters related to Christianity in the emerging culture for a number of years. Joshua is the chair of the Candler Social Concerns Network and is a third year MDIV student at the Candler School of Theology. He has led a roundtable discussion via podcast about the Christian response to the oil spill, which can be found HERE.

Go outside and play!

North Chickamauga Greenway, Hixson

Studies show that experiencing nature is an important ingredient for a child's physical, academic, emotional, and spiritual growth. But statistics show that children are six times more likely to play a video game indoors than to ride a bike outside, and older children spend an average of 6.5 hours per day in front of some sort of electronic screen.

Here are some ideas for getting the whole family outside ...

• Hiking is a recreational activity that works for the entire family, and Chattanooga is full of great local trails. (Check Hiking Chattanooga for all types of hikes.) Hiking is great exercise, it's free, it can be done almost year-round, and it requires very little equipment. Even young children can participate as long as you start slowly and consider the terrain. Remember the sunscreen and water!
• Camping is a great way to spend quality time with your family outdoors, but it does require some extra preparation. Try to avoid long car rides, and find out ahead of time whether the campgrounds are kid-friendly. Help children take part in everything from pitching the tent to making dinner (with close supervision, of course!).
• Outdoors at home. Don't neglect the simple pleasures of being together in your own back yard. Chasing fireflies, family sunset-watching, looking for four-leaf clovers, and raking/jumping in leaves are all no-cost family activities that children will remember for a lifetime!
• Astronomy. The night-time sky can be magical. Do some research on the Internet or in the library to help define your local night sky, and then lie on your back on a clear night to watch the show God puts on every night. (This is fun for preschoolers, who often enjoy the extra "treat" of getting to stay up a bit later.)

Spending unstructured time outdoors - without the distractions of screens and chores that often take priority inside the home - is a wonderful way to connect with children through meaningful conversations. Since a language-rich family environment is an indicator of school achievement, these ideas for unstructured family time may help you discover ways to improve your family's physical and academic health at the same time!

(Sources: Creative Discovery Museum, U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, and Harvard Education Letter.)

Warner Park recycling center to close temporarily

from recycleright.org

Due to construction on property adjacent to the Warner Park Recycle Center, the Center will close for approximately one month beginning May 17, 2010. Citizens are encouraged to take their recyclables to one of Chattanooga's other four recycle centers until the project is completed.
Chattanooga convenience center locations:

• Access Road at DuPont Parkway, 4500 Access Rd., with the Residential Refuse Collection Center, 37415
• John A. Patten Recreation Center, 3202 Kelly's Ferry Rd., 37419
• East Brainerd Baseball Complex, end of Batter's Place Road, 37421
• Brainerd Recycle Center, 5955 Brainerd Rd., 37411

The convenience centers are open seven days a week, operating under the following schedule:

• Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

In addition to everything that is recyclable through curbside collection - cardboard, newspaper, all paper grades, plastic #1 and #2 bottles with a neck, aluminum and rinsed out steel cans - Chattanooga's recycling convenience centers accept wet and dry cell batteries, small electronics (no TVs or microwaves), shredded paper, glass bottles (brown, green and clear), motor oil, compact fluorescent bulbs and tubular fluorescent bulbs.

Citizens may recycle their computer monitors at Orange Grove's Industrial Training Center, 720 Arlington Avenue in Chattanooga. A $10 fee applies.

Recycling the right way in Chattanooga is easy. Clear guidelines for both curbside recycling and recycling at convenience centers are available at www.recycleright.org. The Web site also offers online subscription for curbside recycling, calendars for curbside collection days and answers to frequently asked questions.


The Warner Park Recycle Center is located at 1250 East Third St., in downtown Chattanooga.

Did you know?

If you were at the April 21 evening meal at Christ Church, you might have noticed the slideshow going on in the background. If not ... check it out here!

Green Facts

(You may have to manually scroll through each side by clicking on the right arrow.)