Tag Archives: organic

California Gear, Sightseeing, Viewpoints

Parks and Recreation Magazine

California Parks and Wreck

tv the big distraction

step 1. kill your television
step 2. get outside, everyday
step 3. sleep overnight, under the stars

For those who may be still trapped in TV-Land, welcome to Total Escape, a dedicated web site all about the “real world” of wilderness and non-fiction, California style.

parksrectv

Before I started my web business people would suggest to me that I need to write a book. So I naturally chose the world wide web. Now decades later, they are still asking the same question. “Why don’t you write a book on this stuff?”

I say “I did, it’s online. On the internet already. Go look.”
Puzzled, they would turn away to gaze at their device.

Total Escape was created in the web 1.0 days (1996), so I could easily keep track of my many travels, the awesome destinations, my recommendations, my travel logs, zillons of photographs, camping trips, the back roads, signs, maps, GPS, all of it. I worked my day job doing 3D & then moonlighted starting this small web biz. My biggest draw to the internet format at first was being able to update outdoor info instantly. Secondly, it was the ability to work from anywhere with a phone line. (56k anyone?)

No toxic inks, no newspaper. No glossy mag. No waste. Just free digital energy about outdoor destinations, transferred across the cyber waves, just for you the avid Escaper.

park magazine

Then came the buy-out offers and seasonal magazine ideas from sources in San Diego. By late 2003, none had solidified. Several print magazines did however mention totalescape.com in a few articles, which resulted in some nice traffic spikes. Eternally grateful for the early on-lookers and participants!

Quite personally, I had already had my share of smelly inks, papers & paints in art college. Working in a computer career field, I was fully aware of the web in the early 1990’s. I was ready for the computer age & the internet. Eager in fact! Ready to make that leap from graphics & print concepts over to web windows was all I thought about for years.

I did not want to print anything; waste anything. I wanted my biz to be state of the art, futuristic – so here I am, 26 years later. WOW!

Thousands of photos, hundreds of destinations, all local to California. All by itself, Total Escape is a Parks and Recreation Magazine online – and always updating.

DanaMite
Total Escape – California, Off the Beaten Path
totalescape.com

California Outside Blog

California A to Z

AtoZsmalltowns

California Photos
flickr.com/photos/danamite/sets/

propanecampfire
Stupid idea #544967 – the propane campfire
Shouldn’t we be looking up at the stars?

secluded camps

ranger

Parks & Forests

Wilderness List

califrepublic

California Google Maps

Historic Site, Sightseeing, Viewpoints

Grange Hall, now California Guilds

gold country grange

Why are most California Granges now called Guild Halls?

Simply, it’s FOOD politics.

Corporate food power versus local food production: organic, GMOs, bees, pesticide drift and a host of other issues. In 2011, all hell broke loose with the historic Grange Halls – newly elected officials, and the national goals versus the local community interests.

The following year California was voting to label GMO foods, a proposition which educated millions of eaters and chemical corporations spent gazillions opposing the bill, but it was only narrowly defeated. The National Grange was standing on the opposite side from the California State Grange on this important food issue. This may be when the chasm began to widen.

nongmo

Hippies, yuppies, left coast thinkers. Fruits, flakes and nuts! Tree huggers, eco-terrorist. Damn liberals. Food and California.

wyandotte

Remember that half of California voters knew about genetically engineered ingredients a decade ago. Many of them made diet decisions based on new information readily available. Maybe they sometimes exercise outdoors, and dig this web site. Others choose to ignore the food topic and ingredients listed. Call it denial. Call it an obesity epidemic.

Although the labeling law did not pass, many companies begin putting NON-GMO labels on the front of the food packages anyway. Health food manufacturers, now major brands, especially food produced inside California.

old building

SLOW FOOD

The local food movements in cities and in rural communities started growing, prior to the year 2000; Grange membership began increasing (for the first time since the 1950s) as young farmers and organic farmers took a new interests in “creating community” and finding a cleaner, greener way to the future of food.

Now we have farmers markets and CSA’s (community supported agriculture programs) all over the nation. Fresh food deliveries on a weekly basis. Awareness has only been accelerating on the food topic – with organic food sales rising steadily over the past few decades.

Raised Garden Bed
Grow Your Own Food
growingreens
Growing Your Greens

more articles & resources –

The State of the Grange

West Coast Grange Wars: A Reborn Farmers’ Movement Takes on Corporate Agriculture

The California State Grange backed 2012’s Proposition 37, which mandated labeling of genetically modified foods….

The National Grange suspended the California State Grange’s charter in September 2012, and revoked it in May 2013

We are anti-pesticide, anti-fracking but we are for food sovereignty. The National Grange is dynamically opposed to all of those. They are pro-GMO, pro-pesticides, pro-big farming as opposed to small and local farms. Politically there is a dynamic difference.

Food Movies: Food Documentaries, GMO Movie, Farm Documentary Films

Gardens, Viewpoints

Our Food

local farming

According to a new report by the National Center For Health Statistics, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. adults are now officially obese. An all-time record high. More than 70 percent of us are now officially overweight.

GIVE THANKS, we live in the “illusion of prosperity”

Now, it’s time to get serious and educated on the matters at hand.

The majority of the population does not even understand what is being done to them. Major food corporations know that eating heavily processed foods is addictive and an edible path to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other deadly diseases, but they keep pushing those foods on us anyway. Junk food is making them rich and making us sick!

  • energy drinks
  • soda pop
  • candy
  • fast food

The average American diet is extremely self-destructive, and it is well time for a change. Which is why we at Total Escape decided to focus on the topic of FOOD for this autumn month of Thanksgiving.

On the towns pages we link to local farmers markets, health food stores, community co-ops, family farms, organic farms, farm stays and vineyards.

our food

OMG, GMO – soy, corn, sugar
* May contain ingredients partially produced with genetic engineering.

High fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin, natural flavors….
you may not realize how much GMO is in your food.

Why Care about Food

If you are concerned with your physical health & well-being, you already know that nutritious, real food is the best for your daily diet. You are what you eat!

Almost half of California voters voted to label genetically engineered foods, way back in 2012. So if you didn’t understand about healthy food choices 5 years ago, you might be willing to look at the food issue more closely these days.

mission corn chips

Although the labeling law did not pass, many companies begin putting GMO-free or NON-GMO labels on the front of the food packages anyway. Health food manufacturers, major national brands, and especially food produced inside California – can be found with the non-gmo verified label.

FOOD as medicine, in light of recent news:
Americans are the fattest culture ever; Declining bee population, continued environmental pollution, and the link to our epic diseases. Gut disorders, allergies, autism, cancer, diabetes, the list goes on and on.

Most Prevalent Pesticides

Glyphosate is a potent and dangerous chemical found in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, the most commonly used herbicide in history.  Glyphosate has contaminated the planet, and is now found in mother’s milk, our bloodstreams, and in our food and water supply. The World Health Organization announced in 2015 that glyphosate ‘probably’ causes cancer.

Levels of the herbicide Roundup in human urine have increased dramatically among California residents in the past two decades, a new study reports. Roundup is used to protect genetically modified corn and soy crops from weeds; Also sprayed on wheat and oats, during harvest; And blindly used by public and private land owners to control weeds on their property, which ends up in run-off water, as poison to lakes and rivers.

This chemical corporate push in agriculture is a decades-long experiment with our very own ecosystem: Our health and the health of our planet.

____________________________________________

Watch Food Documentary Films to find out more on this topic.

Organic is Non GMO & More

Granges are now Guild Halls?

Follow the Food Babe blog online

Favorite West Coast Pioneers:

Amy’s Kitchen
Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar
Bob’s Red Mill
Cal-Organic
Cliff Bar
Dr. Bronner’s Soap
Full Belly Farm
Lundberg Family Farms
Masumoto Family Farm
Organic Valley Coop

califricebag