Interview with Heather Forest and Larry Foglia, founders of the Long Island Community Agriculture Network – 10.08.15

Heather Forest and Larry Foglia are two of the founders of The Long Island Community Agriculture Network and were instrumental in building the Gateway Community Garden in Huntington Station. They are co-owners of Fox Hollow Farm, a small family farm in Huntington Station where they managed a CSA for 100 families, conduct agricultural education programs, and have been engaged in vegetable farming for over 35 years.

Heather Forest, Ph.D., is a storyteller, author, musician, and organic vegetable farmer. Since 1975, she has been Executive Director of Story Arts Inc., a Huntington NY based, not-for-profit cultural arts organization that is dedicated to the art of storytelling and to its educational applications. She is one of the founders of LICAN, the Long Island Community Agricultural Network and co-owner of Fox Hollow Farm Inc. of Huntington Station, NY, an agricultural enterprise that includes a CSA serving 100 families and which offers educational programs focused on food equity, organic gardening, and farming skills. Heather holds a master’s degree in storytelling from East Tennessee State University and a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change from Antioch University.

Lawrence P. Foglia, M.S., is a farmer, natural resource consultant and environmental educator who, for the past 35 years, has worked to nurture, preserve and protect the natural world. As a Natural Resource Consultant he has been a project manager affiliated with both the Peconic and Nassau Land Trusts working to preserve and protect farms, farming and natural open space on Long Island. A founding member of LICAN, the Long Island Agriculture Network, he has been instrumental in helping to establish and build the Gateway Community Garden in Huntington Station, NY. He is founder and co-owner of Fox Hollow Farm Inc., a Huntington Station enterprise that provides land preservation consulting, has a CSA that serves 100 families, and offers educational programs on gardening and farming skills. He holds a master’s degree in Natural Resources from the Ohio State University.

Paul Fassa – Can We Trust the New USDA Dietary Guidelines to Keep us Healthy?

Our national government’s attempts at issuing dietary guidelines are usually inappropriate and ludicrous. Unfortunately, those guidelines dictate what the average certified dietitian offers as sound dietary advice. If you’ve ever had to eat hospital food, you were the recipient of a dietitian’s control over the hospital’s kitchen. Today there are virtual food fights over different dietary approaches. It seems the …

Leid Stories – 08.26.15

Mass Incarceration USA: Ending It, and What Started It
With 2.4 million people in its prisons, jails and detention centers—and an additional 5 million people under state or federal supervision through probation or parole—the United States leads the world in incarceration.
The United States accounts for only 5 percent of the world’s population, but nearly 22 percent of the world’s prison population, says Amnesty International. The nation’s prison population has grown 500 percent in the past 30 years, says The Sentencing Project.
Our guest, Carl Dix, a national spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, has been working to stop mass incarceration since the mid-1990s, and in 2011 played a key role in starting the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. He discusses the nationwide human-rights campaign to end mass incarceration—which, he says, has had devastating impact on communities of color and the poor.
Michelle Alexander, associate professor of law at Ohio State University and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, discusses in a presentation at the University of Tennessee the policies that produced mass incarceration.

Most complete human brain model to date is a ‘brain changer’

Scientists at The Ohio State University have developed a nearly complete human brain in a dish that equals the brain maturity of a five-week-old fetus. The brain organoid, engineered from adult human skin cells, is the most complete human brain model yet developed, said Rene Anand, professor of biological chemistry and pharmacology at Ohio State. The lab-grown brain, about the …

Medical Kidnapping in the U.S. – Kidnapping Children for Drug Trials – John P. Thomas

The U.S. federal government has mandated drug research with children. The need for children to participate in drug company research is high, and the temptation to overstep parental rights to force children to participate is great. Researchers publicly admit using money and other rewards to obtain participation of children in their drug trials. Organizations that advocate for the rights of …

Medical expansion has led people worldwide to feel less healthy

Across much of the Western world, 25 years of expansion of the medical system has actually led to people feeling less healthy over time, a new study has found. A researcher at The Ohio State University used several large multinational datasets to examine changes in how people rated their health between 1981 and 2007 and compared that to medical expansion …