Michael Pollan makes the connection between big insurance and big agriculture. He's good at it - drawing us the picture that is. Here's his roadmap to healthcare reform in the US:

Big Food vs. Big Insurance

Yesterday I spent the better part of the day in the kitchen cooking. I had an abundance of harvest both from my garden and the farm's "family holdback" produce I had carried home over the past two weeks. I had to take all that fresh produce and prepare it for eating over the next few weeks and months.

Last weekend - summer squash blanched and prepared for freezing - summer onions chopped and packaged for the freezer, mizuna pesto prepared for stuffing tomatoes and for sandwich spread for the weekend trip to Detroit, first modest corn harvested - steamed and eaten with no added anything - delicious! Who knew you could grow any corn on 6 hours of sun a day?

Back in December, when this farm odyssey began, our first task was trimming, sorting and bagging onions for market. There were sacks and sacks full of them all cured and ready for their final presentation to the market shopper/eater.

So I went to see Food, Inc. at the Cedar Lee with a full house of foodies on Monday night. I recommend the film. It features Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser and Joel Salatin and other well known (to foodies) folks. I had received an email invite from Brad Masi and I went with my farm collegues. After the show there was a panel. Brad was on it and some guy (who's name I cannot recall from Whole Foods) and Warren Taylor of Snowville Creamery in Pomeroy, Ohio. Warren was awesome.

On Friday, the harvest took almost the entire day with seven of us working diligently. Toward day's end we were able to get the rest of the tomato stakes pounded into the ground next to their waiting plants, but that was in the last 20 minutes before quittin' time.

In addition to the various greens (mustard, kale, chard, lettuce), basil, fennel, nasturtiums and flowers made into bouquets, we added some new roots to our harvest activities. Beef and eggs do not require the efforts of "down the hill" farmhands.

Long Red Florence Onions (ready for market above and as they were gathered below) were ready to pluck from their beds.

This seemed to be a great weekend for orange. Green, too. They are opposites on the color wheel. First, baby carrots just plucked from the soil.

I recently took a day to visit with my friend Gloria Ferris. We spent a sunny Saturday afternoon in Tremont, first sitting outside at a coffee shop and then driving around in the neighborhood. (Gloria is recovering from a heart mishap and so walking that far was not advisable.)

We think of a carrot as a sort of straight orange root vegetable, but that's just one such carrot.

As of July 2009, European farmers will be able to market wonky carrots in the European marketplace.

I know that there were lots of people at Parade the Circle today and I saw many folks with cameras, too. I caught these snaps before my batteries gave up.

There was a lot of DayGlo in the Parade this year.

DayGlo pinwheel...

Today's harvest available at North Union Farmer's Market, Shaker Square and Sunday at Crocker Park.

pickers in the peas

peas before they were snatched (they're a little hard to locate... three passes usually find the ones that are ready to be eaten)

Merce Cunningham is brilliant even as he transitions his company to its end.

Before we spend too much time talking about another "opportunity corridor", let's get the first one working. What say you?

It could be grown right here in Northeast Ohio.

Garlic planted last year will be ready to harvest in July.

Rossa di Milano onions grow in the rows next door. Low growing clover in the paths in between keeps weeds down and adds nitrogen to the soil. Aren't they beautiful?

Michael Moore says goodbye to the old General Motors and offers some really good advice to President Obama.

He offers nine really good suggestions for the GM makeover (that'd be our taxpayer makeover of GM). The first one sets the stage well.

Lo and behold, Frank Jackson's office has held this "close to the vest":

"The Apalachee will be part of the exhibits at the restored Coast Guard station on Whiskey Island. The station is a national historic landmark. It will be a maritime and Coast Guard museum and interpretive center." - USCGC Apalachee Maritime Museum

Tony Brown and Steve Litt take a turn in front of a camera to discuss the impending sale of the Cleveland Playhouse to the Cleveland Clinic. The video is so poor that Brown comments asking for our forebearance. I really couldn't hear much at all, but IMHO Philip Johnson's design is worth saving not for design, but for the horrible waste of embodied energy.

With so much trendwise, associated content, spying, spamming, paranoia, writing of the sort that is so hastily posted as to be unintelligible (punctuation and sentence structure is there for a reason), and because Max posted Annie Leonard's Story of Stuff video again to RealNEO, I thought I would share this series of documentaries from BBCTwo:

Amazing discussion for all my friends especially for those who say they don't "understand" dance.

Who would deny a patient his meds? If you think about realNEO as a means to strenghten social well being, where a diverse community of individuals is welcomed... This is an interesting perspective: BLOGS AND THE RISE OF THE GLOBAL CHEAP VITAMIN

The Hot Spots for Organic Food

• May 2, 2009 NYTimes metrics section of the business pages

The graphic linked here surprised and pleased me. I have driven through western Ohio and seen the ditches sprayed with killing herbicides. I have seen the miles of herbicide and pesticide sprayed croplands and I have read about the confined animal feeding operations in Ohio.

Drawing Movement’s Connections

Owner of Hilliard Square Theater looking to sell historic Lakewood building so it can be restored

Where's Ray Shepardson? It's time to restage Jacques Brel! Or maybe some depression era plays.

“I don’t agree with Schwarz that protest is futile. I think that every voice that is raised has its effect. My opinion is that if you have convictions, you shouldn’t be afraid to express them” (Elmer Price, We, the People: A Play in Twenty Scenes [New York: Coward-McCann, 1933], 138).

My favorite choreopgrapher, Liz Lerman now has some video online. Here she speaks about her process:

• Concrete Is Remixed With Environment in Mind
• Smog-busting paint soaks up noxious gases
• Permeable Asphalt
• Solar School Roofs

If we're gonna do these things, let's get 'em right.

On Saturday morning, I rolled out of the quiet house in Old Southeast St. Petersburg with my hosts. We were en route to the Saturday Morning Market where local vendors sell fruit, bread and pastries, coffee, vegetables, arts and crafts and serve a wide variety of food and drink. Oh, yes, there's music, too. All kinds and especially the great drumline from the local middle school.

Last evening at a block club meeting in Ohio City, I was made aware of a great potential loss to Cleveland's built environment and history. I was invited to view a presentation to the block club group concerning two churches in that near westside neighborhood. I asked the researcher to share some of his voluminous research and documentation with readers of realneo. The following is respectfully submitted on behalf of Tim Barrett.