The first print edition of the Green Pueblo Map showcasing our community’s favorite “green” places and spaces will be available later this year.  If you haven’t already done so, we encourage you to “make your mark” on the map by nominating your favorite sustainable sites at www.greenpueblomap.org . Please also encourage your friends and colleagues to participate.

Nominations are being accepted in more than 30 categories, including community gardens, solar sites, recycling centers, re-use shops, public parks, scenic vistas, rainwater harvesting locations, and historical sites.  It takes only a minute to nominate a site and you do not have to provide any personal information other than a zip code.  Once a site is nominated, it will typically appear on the website within a month.  A selection of sites will also appear on a printed version of the map.  If you want your site(s) to be considered for the printed map, please submit your nomination(s) by April 1, 2010.

The Green Pueblo Map is a free, community-based mapping effort.  The on-line map is constantly evolving and reflects the community we are all creating together.  Residents are encouraged to visit www.greenpueblomap.org at anytime to help identify and explore the features that promote sustainable living and which makes our region such a special place to live.

Pima County, the City of Tucson, and The Inner Connection are organizing the Green Pueblo mapping effort.  However, the project is part of a much broader, international green mapping initiative that began in New York City in 1995, and has since spread to 55 countries.  For more information, please visit www.greenmap.org .

In part this report suggests that:

“Dealing with global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; just 28% consider this a top priority, the lowest measure for any issue tested in the survey. Since 2007, when the item was first included on the priorities list, dealing with global warming has consistently ranked at or near the bottom. Even so, the percentage that now says addressing global warming should be a top priority has fallen 10 points from 2007, when 38% considered it a top priority. …

Protecting the environment fares somewhat better than dealing with global warming on the public’s list of priorities, though it still falls on the lower half of the list overall.”

You can review the results of this survey here.

The City Council is scheduled to meet again to consider adoption of the report on Wednesday February 17, 2010. Comments about the report can be submitted through the following methods:

Web: www.tucsonpimawaterstudy.com (Comment Form link)

E-mail: info@tucsonpimawaterstudy.com

Phone: 520-884-9477

Mail:P.O. Box 2344, Tucson AZ 85701

The Phase II Report can be reviewed on the study website – www.tucsonpimawaterstudy.com – or in printed format at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library, 101 N. Stone Ave.

Explores Surging Agrarian Movement

New book is “An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century”

“Food and farms are involved in a blitzkrieg of changes,” writes veteran journalist Steven McFadden in The Call of the Land, published this October by NorLightsPress. The book gives voice to a growing chorus of 21st century agrarians who are demonstrating a new vision for food and agriculture — a chorus that includes not just sustainable farmers and gardeners, but also Slow Food, Real Food, Locavore and food security activists in cities, suburbs, countryside, churches, companies, and campuses in North America.

Picking up where Food Inc., the recent documentary on the industrial food system leaves off, the tightly written, affordably priced primer presents basic theory and then offers readers dozens upon dozens of creative responses to the many challenges confronting our farms and food and to establishing a wide and wholesome culture of land and food security.

Subtitled “An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century,” the sourcebook documents a broad range of positive pathways to food security, economic stability, environmental health, and cultural renewal. To McFadden and others, the call of the land now is an SOS. The surging range of creative, innovative responses — from individuals, communities, cities, churches, colleges, and other institutions — is both practical and inspirational.

The new book features dozens upon dozens of positive pathways that can be emulated by households, neighborhoods, suburbs, cities, churches, schools, colleges and corporations. Because the book is a primer, is an ideal tool for educating both students and the general public about the many related positive possibilities in the realm of economy, environment, work, diet, and community integrity.

More information:

Author’s blog: http://www.thecalloftheland.com

To order:

http://www.norlightspress.com/our-books-cotl.html