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Fertile Ground Guesthouse is hosting a pizza party fundraiser for Olympia Salvage this Friday, August 4th, starting at 6pm. You can buy a cob-oven baked pizza for dinner and support the work of Oly Salvage to keep usable building materials out of the landfill. They are raising funds to get a new retail space.

www.olympiasalvage.org

Fertile Ground Guesthouse:
311 9th Ave SE, Olympia
www.fertileground.org

No matter how hard we try we are all a part of destroying something.  None of us is innocent from oppressing someone or something else.  Even these plastic parts and wires we're using to "connect" will someday end up in the junkyard rotting the earth even more.  We have outgrown our own sophistication so much that the choices we "think" we're making are really not choices at all.  Rather, they are desperate attempts to prove that somehow we have control over what we call our life...but really, where does your next breath come from?  How does your heart keep beating without you willing it to do so?  The day that you can yourself create life out of dust...perhaps that will be the day that you will be given your license to take away life. There are a myriad of perspectives about life and death.  It doesn't do any good to throw stones at one another because we're all in this whole mess making an even bigger mess of the very time, breath, energy, and existence we have.  Everyone needs to be told daily that they are loved.  Everyone needs to be forgiven for something.

 "Music is love in search of a word."

From Canadian Transportation and Logistics:

TACOMA, Wash.--The Port of Olympia and Port of Tacoma Commissions have voted to adopt an Interlocal Agreement to form a strategic partnership that will improve regional rail system capacity, establish a center for warehousing and distribution and create a major South Puget Sound employment center.

The Port of Olympia Commission approved the Interlocal Agreement at its regularly scheduled public meeting Monday, July 17, and the Port of Tacoma Commission approved the agreement at its public meeting today.

The Interlocal agreement calls for the two ports to cooperatively purchase, plan and develop a South Sound Logistics Center on a 745-acre site in Thurston County, along Interstate 5. Under terms of the agreement, the two ports have until December 31, 2007 to sign a final Joint Operating Agreement.

On August 17, U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada will face a pre-trial hearing for refusing to deploy to Iraq. “It is my conclusion as an officer of the armed forces that the war in Iraq is not only morally wrong but a horrible breach of American law. The war and what we’re doing over there is illegal,” explained the first military officer to publicly take such a stand.

On August 16, the day prior to the hearing, The Friends and Family of Lt. Ehren Watada are calling for a “National Day of Education” to pose the question, “Is the war illegal?” 

"Experts have shown that using pesticides does not guarantee increased yields. David Pimentel, professor of insect ecology and agricultural sciences at Cornell University, says: "[Pesticide] use does not always decrease crop losses. For example, even with the 10-fold increase in insecticide use in the United States from 1945 to 1989, total crop losses from insect damage have nearly doubled from 7% to 13%."

This came from my new favorite website journeytoforever.org...

Women contest Plan B stances - The Olympian:

TUMWATER - The battle over an Olympia pharmacy's refusal to stock emergency contraceptives intensified Monday as nine women filed complaints with the state against a handful of South Sound pharmacies that failed to have the Plan B ­morning-after pill on hand recently.

The pharmacies targeted include Ralph's Thriftway, which has been the focus of a boycott by activists that is beginning its second month today. Also named were an Albertsons Sav-On in Olympia, which was out of stock several times, as well as a Walgreen's and a Rite-Aid, both in Lacey.

"I hope this brings the focus on how stocking or inadequate stocking affects women's access to emergency contraception," Janet Blanding of Olympia said as she and other activists filed paperwork with the Department of Health in Tumwater.

Blanding was one of nine women to file complaints based on her personal experience of trying to obtain Plan B emergency contraception at local stores. She said she not only wants to make the medications more available to women who need them, but to clarify state policy so that pharmacies must stock emergency contraceptive medications.

Way to go Janet. Go here to see a refusal caught on video.