May 2007
Federally Subsidized Obesity for Poor
This and other issues...
You are what you grow...
Remembering Carr's Beach
Annapolis Alive!
Report that pothole
Now here's a thought
Dear Friend,
First of all, Sunday, May 13th is Mother's Day! I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all our Ward 7 mothers a Happy Mother's Day. May God bless all our mothers with an abundance of love, incredible energy, patience galore and the divine wisdom to instill the knowledge of right and wrong!
An excellent article by Michael Pollen points out how the current US Congressional farm subsidies bill affects us as Annapolitans. I encourage you to read the article below about US government farm subsidies -- You are what you grow!
On April 21st more than 40 midshipmen and Ward 7 community supporters showed up to plant more than 700 trees, shrubs and plants at Back Creek Nature Park. It was a great success. Mel Wilkins and the Friends of Back Creek Nature Park board of directors send a big thank you to all who helped! If you have not joined Friends of Back Creek, I encourage you to do so. You can find the membership application form by clicking here! Simply print it out, complete it and mail it in with a modest membership fee.
Volunteers are needed to give a few minutes one day a week to watering plants at Back Creek Nature Park. A data input volunteer is needed to help with the Crime Initiative Study. Click here for description of volunteer needs and contact phone numbers.
Naval Academy graduation is quickly approaching. To get a listing of major graduation week events including Blue Angels show times click here!
Upcoming City Council Meetings:
May 14th, 7:30 p.m., City Council Legislative Meeting
May 21st, 7:00 p.m., City Council Public Hearing
(The Thursday prior to each meeting agendas will be posted on the City of Annapolis website.)
You are what you grow!
by Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism, University of California, Berkeley
Reprinted from The New York Times Magazine, April 27, 2007
A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person's wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?
Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods - dairy, meat, fish and produce - line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.
As a rule, processed foods are more "energy dense" than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them "junk." Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly - and get fat.
This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?
For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system - indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world's food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat - three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades - indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning - U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.
That's because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.
To continue reading this article click here!
Carr's Beach Memories
Louise Smith, Tersheia Wells-Smith, and producer of the Carr's Beach documentary film The Sands of Time Deni Henson with Alderman Shropshire at the April 30th dedication of the Carr's Beach commemorative sign. The Smiths are descendents of the former owners of Carr's Beach. The Rev. Johnny Calhoun, pastor of Mt. Olive AME Church, and Mayor Ellen Moyer officiated the dedicatory event. Alderman Shropshire also sponsored legislation to give Edgewood Road the commemorative name Carr's Beach Road. These new street signs will be placed along Edgewood Road during May.
During the 50's and early 60's, Anne Arundel County was still segregated and the beaches for African Americans were Carr's Beach and Sparrow's Beach right here in Ward 7, and the beach communities of Highland Beach, Arundel-On-The-Bay and Columbia Beach in the county. Carr's Beach was the most famous of the beaches and was affectionately called "The Beach." During the week Carr's Beach was a place for day camp, church picnics, etc. But on the week-ends, especially Sunday afternoons, Carr's Beach had the unique distinction of being a major stop on the "Chitlin Circuit."
Saturday nights grown-ups would go to Carr's Beach and see stars such as Ray Charles, Bill Doggett, Dinah Washington, Author Prysock, etc. Sunday afternoons there was family fun. Thousands of people from as far away as Philadelphia would come to Carr's Beach to swim and picnic. But at three o'clock it was showtime and people would pack into the pavilion to see and dance to the Major R&B stars of the day -- stars such as Little Richard, James Brown, Lloyd Price, Etta James, The Shirelles, The Coasters, The Drifters. You name 'em, they played Carr's Beach.
To learn more about Carr's Beach click here.
Annapolis Alive!
Celebrating three amazing centuries
Sparked by the 300th anniversary of the signing of Annapolis' royal charter, Annapolis Alive! is a joyful celebration of this city's independence. The 1708 charter - the only royal municipal charter in the colonies - not only provided Annapolis independent "city" status, but permitted locally elected representation for the first time in the southern colonies. The celebration of the 300th anniversary of the city charter provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to highlight the traditions of Annapolis and its impact to a larger audience.
Annapolis Alive! isn't your typical dry, powdered-wig stuff!
This is a yearlong party that will stretch from Annapolis' historic City Dock, to the US Naval Academy, to neighborhoods, schools, streets and pubs all over town.Major arts, cultural and historical events will share the stage with neighborhood festivals, pub-crawls, parties, special historical tours, even a National Town Crier competition.
Annapolis invites the whole world to help us make history by celebrating 300 years of dynamic, inclusive, surprising, sometimes revolutionary self-rule. This year, everyone discovers what it means to be an Annapolitan.
On Friday, May 4, 2007, at 5 p.m. Mayor Ellen Moyer opened the Maryland Maritime Heritage Festival and unveiled the brand new Annapolis Alive! logo. There will be cannons blazin', horns blowin', town criers cryin' and choirs a singin' as the Mayor unveils the logo that will serve as an international symbol and a calling card inviting people from around the world to celebrate 300 amazing years of Annapolis history.
OK! Let's party!
Want to report a pothole or a street light that's out?
The Annapolis Department of Public Works is directed by John Patmore and a very qualified staff. You can get information about how to report potholes. You can learn about the City's mosquito management program, get recycling hints, or find out about the many other services offered by John's department by clicking here!
Now here's a thought!
“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
--President Theodore Roosevelt
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Back Creek Nature Park
Annapolis Maritime Museum
