I also try to buy local and organic where possible. This summer has been wonderful. 90% of are veggies and 75% of our meat is from the OSU Farmer's Market or food coop. Just wish the winter produce was as abundant, but a little at a time I am learning how to perserve what we like. Mostly freezing due to time constraints (if only a job wasn't necessary;) Most of the vendor's at the farmer's market welcome visitor's to there farm's and will answer questions about pesticide, antibiotic, etc. use. More and more are organically certified. I question some who use "no pesticides"- what about herbicides? Might not hurt me, but don't like the side effects to other plants. So I try to buy local and organic, then local and near organic, local and conventionally grown, then the grocery store. If something is conventionally grown, why not buy it fresh locally instead of one week old from the grocery store. Of course, it has taken a few years to get to this point, but the more familiar I get with the local sources the easier it is. For those who don't want to join the coop, consider that the coop website has information that will allow you to contact most of the producers. Many give information on how animals are raised or if produce is raised organically. So you can find someone near you in the state and where they sell their products. Many people sell from their farm's or at farmer's markets closer to them. Other's might have their products in a local grocery store like Crescent Market or The Earth in OKC. It is a great resource- especially for those like me who isn't always organized for a once a month order and delivery! BTW- the newest OKGazette just came out today. The issue is dedicated to articles about local food. Paraphasing pedmond "BTW, I'm not a producer for the co-op or any other producer for the farmer's markets, I just like the fact that it provides an alternative to store bought products and the fact that my money stays in Oklahoma to help other Oklahomans." This is a topic I feel very passionate about, so I am glad to see so many of my gardenweb friends talking about it.

Come on people. GW and THS have been really good to me; I have gotten tons of useful info from these sites. As some of you have said these things tend to run their course. I say that we trust GW to make the best choice in the long term for the users and for the viability of the site. I can't believe that anyone is raking in piles of money from these ads and I also cannot believe that any nefarious planning was behind it. Obviously everyone is free to make their own choice. For me it is way easier to ignore those little links than to install a bunch of stuff or to get steamed about it. Its too bad if people get mad and leave; but I could not keep from laughing at the fact that a link popped up in the very rant against links :-). -alg p.s. i don't even notice the things - funny how adaptable we can be

FYI, from someone who RIDES the NYC subway daily: MOST of the subway passages I go through are lined in 4x4 square. I almost never see the oblong ones. Maybe a very few really old ones.... And, I don't want my home to look like a subway passage! The white tile, no matter what its shape or size, has never said "luxury" to me; it has always said "institutional." Even those 1920s tiles were chosen because they looked sterile and easy to clean. So I don't quite get it when people combine Carrera marble (which to me is the epitome of luxury) w/ subway tiles (which to me is as "high school bathroom/subway tunnel" as you can get) I'd put white subway tiles in my bathroom in a flash, because of the steriity aura. But I wouldn't pair them w/ big, splashy Carrera marble.

Well, there are lots of things that offend my exquisite decorating sensibilities, but most of them are in other people's houses, not mine, and they have to live there, I don't, so I guess it doesn't matter what I think. And, of course, vice versa. If people don't like the looks of my piano, they don't have to play it. In fact, they don't even have to look at it. To tell the truth, they can just stay home in their own lovely pianoless houses and enjoy looking at the big old honking blank spots on their walls. That's how much I value other people's opinions about my house & what I have in it. Nada. What, though, if something that I have offends me? Well, I could do as Jesus recommended we do when dealing with, say, body parts that offend us--pluck them out or cut them off--but then, this is one of those times where he's speaking metaphorically, not literally. Ya gotta be careful about that. He didn't really mean we should cut off our hands or yank out our eyeballs. How, then, would we read the Bible? Or even turn the pages? No, it's just an expression. But his point is clear: don't ALLOW the thing--hand, eye, piano, whatever--to offend you. Just deal with it. Same here. Sure, some pianos are more attractive than others, but a piano (for the fortunate) is just a fact of life, and therefore something to work with (or maybe around), not against. I, myself, don't have a piano, but I do have a CD player, and I can tell you this: it's not particularly handsome. That is, it isn't a sleek techno-marvel, it's not an expensive designer icon of Cutting Edge Modernism that I get points for even owning. It's a $79 no-brand cheapie that I picked up at Circuit City a week before they went down the tubes. But the thing works, and I'm not ashamed of it or the fact that I don't have something fancier, so it's not hidden away in a special cabinet to conceal its offensive cheapness, it's right out there in the open for everybody to see. In fact, several hundred thousand people have seen my cheapo CD player because it was in my O at Home shoot, and what I loved was that Roland Bello, the photographer, nixed the suggestion of another person to remove it--it & a messy stack of CDs--from the shot. "No, let's leave it right where it is. It's real." In a day when overzealous stylists typically remove any shameful vestige of normal, everyday reality--the dog's slimy chew toy, the slightly past-their-prime flowers in the vase, the trashy paperback novel on the bedside table, the copy of TV Guide on the coffee table--from the photos in Glossy Home magazine, or the 'After' shots on TV decorating shows, it's refreshing to see a talented professional embracing the simply, ordinary facts of life. Why are such things so shame-ridden? They shouldn't be. In fact, in one of the most famous photos of any 2Oth Century interior, Nancy Lancaster's famous yellow drawing room in London, you can practically smell the 2-day old water in the vase of flowers on the desk. But, then, such matter-of-factness is really no surprise coming from her. One of my favorite NL lines is "If every piece is perfect a room becomes a museum & lifeless." Short, easy answer to the problem of what to do about offensive eyesores? Stop looking at 'em. Slimy vase water, cheap CD players, big screen TVs, pianos--even 'ugly' pianos: they're all evidence of real life going on in a room, and therefore, they're good. Really good. So don't sweat it. Magnaverde Rule No. 4O: Sometimes, the easiest thing to change is our attitude.