Industrial Hemp In Ontario, Canada

From the Eastern Ontario AgriNews
February, 2011 Vol. 35, No. 2
http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/frontpage.htm


Industrial hemp making a comeback
By Tom Van Dusen

It’s baaaaack! Industrial hemp, that is, the ancient crop which many conventional farmers love to snicker at has returned to Eastern Ontario.

It’s pretty easy to poke fun considering hemp’s close association with marijuana. It’s actually the same plant minus significant levels of the hallucinogen THC. Under Health Canada regulations, hemp and its parts may not contain more than .3 per cent THC.

Banned in North America in the 1930s, Canada reintroduced controlled production, sale, movement, processing, exporting and importing of certain varieties in 1998.

Re-introduction caused a flurry of interest in growing and selling hemp in this country, but primarily as fibre, OMAFRA expert Gordon Scheifele told information sessions at Douglas and Galetta Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.

The meetings attracted 75 farmers potentially interested in trying out the crop on contract this season for Valley Bio Ltd. which grew and marketed 245 acres of food grade hemp last year.

Scheifele said the market wasn’t there 12 years ago. Now hemp is coming back, but almost exclusively on the food oil and meal processing side. Calling hemp "the most incredible plant God created," he insisted hemp’s latest comeback in Ontario and across Canada is for real.

"This isn’t fly-by-night or boom-or-bust. The market still isn’t huge, but hemp is here to stay."

At one time, the expert noted, it was more valuable than gold, providing man with food, clothing, ropes and sails. Today, it can’t be grown without a criminal record check and a license from Health Canada.

A separate license must be obtained for each 10-acre plantation, and GPS coordinates must be provided to Health Canada’s Office of Controlled Substances. Growers must also arrange for crop tissue sampling and laboratory THC analysis at their expense.

Growing any variety of the plant remains prohibited in the U.S., opening the door to the biggest market for Canadian hemp products.

Scheifele was on hand to back the pitch of young agricultural entrepreneur Reuben Stone who launched Valley Bio to tap into the food grade market.

Stone is trying to sign up Eastern Ontario growers on a contract basis this season to help him cover at least 1,200 acres with Anka variety hemp which will be sold to food processor Manitoba Harvest which bought all of Valley Bio’s production last year.

On hand for the meetings, Manitoba Harvest’s Tom Greaves described a "big spike" in food grade hemp demand; Greaves made it clear his company will accept any extra Eastern Ontario raw product this year.

While he was thrilled with the turnout, Stone said he’s likely to only sign up as hemp producers a small percentage of the farmers who attended.

Big operators geared to corn now receiving $205 a tonne probably won’t shift gears to grow a few acres of hemp. While hemp pays $1210 a tonne, much lower yield and much higher expenses bring its net return down to $173 per acre on small fields, compared to $138 for corn on vast acreage. Stone expects any interest to come from smaller niche farmers.

Also part of Eastern Ontario’s renewed hemp movement is Marc Bercier of St. Isidore who’s been dabbling in the crop for several years and who will do most of the crop drying this year for Valley Bio.

http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/fullstory.htm?ArticleID=11436&ShowSection=News

Cracks In The Facade?

War on drugs: why the US and Latin America could be ready to end a fruitless 40-year struggle

Mexico's president Felipe Caldéron is the latest Latin leader to call for a debate on drugs legalisation. And in the US, liberals and right-wing libertarians are pressing for an end to prohibition. Forty years after President Nixon launched the 'war on drugs' there is a growing momentum to abandon the fight

• Rory Carroll and Paul Harris
• The Observer, Sunday 8 August 2010

The birthday fiesta was in full swing at 1.30am when five SUVs pulled up outside the house. Figures spilled from the vehicles and ran towards the lights. They burst into the house and levelled AK-47s. "Kill them all!" A shouted instruction, only three words, and the slaughter began.

Gunfire and screams drowned the music. Some victims were cut down immediately, others were caught as they tried to escape. By the time the killers left there were 17 corpses, 18 wounded and 200 shell casings. Among the dead was the birthday guest of honour, a man local media named only as Mota, Mexican slang for marijuana.

The atrocity last month in Torreón, an industrial city in the northern state of Coahuila, came amid headlines shocking even by the standards of Mexico's drug war. A sophisticated car bomb of a type never before seen in the country; a popular gubernatorial candidate gunned down in the highest-level political murder; and then last week the release of official figures putting the number of drug war-related murders at 28,000.

It was against this backdrop of bloody crisis that President Felipe Calderón said something which could, maybe, begin to change everything. He called for a debate on the legalisation of drugs. "It is a fundamental debate," he said. "You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides."

A statement of the obvious, but coming from Calderón it was remarkable. This is the president who declared war on drug cartels in late 2006, deployed the army, militarised the city of Juárez and promised victory even as the savagery overtook Iraq's. Calderón stressed that he personally still opposed legalisation, but his willingness to debate the idea was, for some, a resounding crack in the international drug policy edifice.

"This is a big step forward in putting an end to the war," said Norm Stamper, a former Seattle chief of police and now spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (Leap).

Richard Nixon launched the war on drugs on 17 June 1971, a hard-line prohibition policy continued by successive US presidents. Four decades later there is growing momentum in the US and Latin America to abandon the fight and legalise drugs, or at least marijuana. There have been false dawns before but many activists say the latest rays of sunlight are real.

In November, California will vote on a plan – called Proposition 19 – to allow adults to possess small amounts of marijuana and let local governments tax its sale. Last week a cross-political lobby group encompassing Tea Party libertarians and leftwing liberals founded a new organisation, Just Say Now, to support similar legalisation across the US.

"We should give the [individual US] states the ability to regulate marijuana just like alcohol," said Aaron Houston, co-director of the campaign. "This is an idea whose time has come."

Three factors are driving the momentum. Baby boomers who smoked pot in their youth do not share previous generations' fear of the demon weed. Economic crises have squeezed law enforcement budgets and prompted states to seek fresh revenue sources. And Mexico's horror show of shootings, beheadings and mayhem shows what happens when a rhetorical war turns all too real.

A policy proposal long confined to radical fringes became mainstream last year when three former Latin American presidents – César Gaviria of Colombia, Fernando Cardoso of Brazil and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico – urged governments to legalise marijuana to squeeze cartel profits. Influential thinktank the Brookings Institution backed the call.

Last August, Argentina's supreme court ruled it was unconstitutional to punish people for using marijuana for personal consumption, giving the government a green light for further liberalisation. "Each adult is free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state," said the court. That month Mexico made it no longer an offence – but stopped short of declaring it legal – to possess 0.5g of cocaine (equivalent to about four lines), 5g of marijuana (about four joints), 50mg of heroin and 40mg of methamphetamine.

Maria Lucia Karam, a Brazilian former judge turned liberalisation advocate, said Calderón's statement showed that policymakers were recognising the failure of prohibition. "I certainly have to be very optimistic," she said. "Ending drug prohibition is the only way to reduce violence in Latin America and elsewhere." Judges across the region were growing bolder in challenging "unconstitutionalities" in current drug laws, she said.

Not all are convinced that Mexico's president, a conservative who has staked his rule on the drug war, is serious about reassessing strategy. His call for debate, made during round-table talks with security experts, business leaders and civic groups, may have been a tactical attempt to deflect headlines that 28,000 – a big jump on previous official estimates – had died in the past four years.

The logic behind legalisation is that marijuana accounts for about 60% of the $40-$60bn annual drug trade. Make it legal, goes the argument, and the cartels will lose most of their business while states gain tax revenue and shed the burden of jailing non-violent pot users.

The policy would not lead to a "garden of Eden", said Walter McKay, a Canadian former police officer who works with the Mexico City-based Institute for Security and Democracy. Cartels would adapt and continue making profits from cocaine, heroin, kidnapping and extortion. "But you would hurt their revenue stream, which would mean less money to corrupt police and politicians." However reluctantly, governments were being forced to confront the failures of prohibition, said McKay. "We're moving forward. In my lifetime I think we'll see prohibition dismantled or at least softened."

A report by Edgardo Buscaglia, a law professor and UN drug policy adviser, found that since Calderón declared war on the cartels their power and influence had increased massively, largely because they had been forced to become smarter and more brutal. Buscaglia thinks legalising drugs would be good policy but no panacea.

Proponents of prohibition say there is at least one success story: Colombia. A decade ago it was overrun by cocaine-trafficking guerrillas and paramilitaries. Today, after $1.3bn of mostly military US aid, the state has recovered territory and authority and jailed top drug lords. Could Afghanistan and Mexico follow suit?

Sceptics pray they will not. In a recent report called Don't Call it a Model the Washington Office on Latin America thinktank said narco-trafficking continued to flourish in Colombia, and that its security gains were "partial, possibly reversible and weighed down by collateral damage".

Latin America's drift away from a US-led drug war stems partly from Colombia and Mexico's suffering and partly from growing boldness in challenging the gringo superpower. Bolivia and Venezuela have led the way by expelling US Drug Enforcement Administration officials. As a result, say US diplomats, drug trafficking has surged.

But now some US states seem to be joining the revolt, saying prohibition of marijuana has failed just as miserably as the attempt to ban alcohol in the 1920s and has given a similar boost to organised crime.

Public opinion over California's Proposition 19 is split. Some surveys show voters narrowly in favour; others show them against. But the mere fact of the ballot's existence is an astonishing victory for legalisation advocates.

They have compared the ban on cannabis to the ban on alcohol in the 1920s, an experiment which gifted power and fortune to Al Capone and other mobsters. Prohibiting drugs has failed to prevent their use and social harm and fuelled narco-gang violence. "It has simply not worked," said Houston, of the Just Say Now campaign. "We tried to ban drugs and it has failed."

His solution is to treat cannabis like booze: legal and taxable. Legalising marijuana will slash cartel profits while providing annual savings and taxes of $43bn a year to the US economy. "And frankly, that's at the low end," Houston said.

Marijuana is already practically legal in many parts of the US. Using it for medical purposes in some form is now allowed in 14 states and Washington DC. Again, California has taken the lead. The city of Oakland is set to license four industrial-sized marijuana farms in January that will institute commercial-size cannabis growing alongside its already booming small-scale sector.

The attraction for the poor city is clear: one of the farms alone is estimated to generate $3m in tax revenue and create 400 jobs.

The California Democratic party has stayed neutral while numerous bodies from city governments to police groups to politicians have mobilised against the November ballot. An influential group of Californian police officers, the Orange County Coalition of Police and Sheriffs, also came out against the move last week, saying that it would hurt law and order. "[It] allows for a free-for-all at the local level and will be another burden on law enforcement," said Joe Perez, the group's chairman.

Resistance is even stronger outside California. Few people are realistically looking at measures to legalise hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin. America is still having enough trouble getting used to the idea of accepting marijuana as part of the legal landscape. No one thinks other drugs will follow quickly behind, if ever.

Tom Rosales, the leader of No On Prop 19, which opposes legalisation, called the formation of the Just Say Now group "tasteless". Its name, he claimed, is a taunting nod to the 1980s anti-drug slogan associated with Nancy Reagan, Just Say No. But supporters of Proposition 19 would say that the prohibition policy has its own brutal, three-word epithet. Kill them all.

WHERE THE LAW HAS BEEN LIBERALISED

PORTUGAL

In 2001, Portugal became the first European country officially to abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs. Those found guilty of possessing small amounts are sent to a panel made up of a psychologist, a social worker and a legal adviser who will advise on appropriate treatment.

ITALY

Drug laws were relaxed in 1993 to define very small amounts of drugs (usually less than half a gram) as being for personal use. People found with smaller amounts do not face criminal prosecution, though they are placed on a users' register.

CALIFORNIA

The passing into law of Proposition 215 in November 1996 did not legalise marijuana in California but created a new exemption from criminal penalties for its medical use for those with a doctor's recommendation, which can be made either in writing or verbally. This November the state will vote on a plan, called Proposition 19, to let adults possess small amounts of marijuana and let local government tax its sale.

THE NETHERLANDS

The Dutch classify cannabis in all its forms as a soft drug and the smoking of it, even in public, is not prosecuted. Selling cannabis, although technically illegal, is widely tolerated in coffee shops which, however, must keep to a five gram maximum transaction and sell only to adults. Recent moves have been made to tighten these controls in response to drug tourism.

SWITZERLAND

Zurich's Platzpitz park needle exchange project in the mid-1980s led to the decision by authorities not to police the park on the grounds that it would focus drug use in one place. The experiment ended after the number of addicts in the park rose from a few hundred in 1987 to more than 20,000 in 1992.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/drugs-legalise-mexico-california

Coup Made Ivory Coast Elite Face the Music

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 10, 2000; Page A14

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast—When the soldiers shot the lock off the door of Room 419 of the Golf Hotel on Dec. 24, Laurent Fologo was standing in front of the television, barefoot.

The general secretary of the Democratic Party, which had ruled Ivory Coast for 40 years, was caught without shoes but not without warning: Five years earlier, a journalist had suggested Fologo, who like other Ivorian elites watched a lot of foreign TV, might do well to bend an ear to the music favored by the soldiers who were now dragging him outside.

"I told him in 1994 that what the young people are saying in music reflects the popular discontent," said Joachim Beugre, political editor of the independent Le Jour newspaper. "But he didn't take it seriously."

The result was a military coup backed by a reggae beat. As mutinying soldiers arrested Fologo (whom they later released) and sent President Henri Konan Bedie scurrying overseas, other troops seized the state radio station and put back on the air the recordings of Ivorian musicians whose banned music had inspired them.

"They're the people who tell the truth," Sgt. Olivier Zadi declared of the musicians. "They say exactly what happens. It's because of them that we became conscious of what's going on and said, 'Enough is enough.' "

Sgt. Alaid Kouame nodded toward the station he was helping to guard. "We take their songs, we go to the radio station, and we play them," he said.

They played "Dictatorship," by Alpha Blondy and the Solar System, and "The Thieves of the Country (Kleptocracy)." They played Tiken Jah Fakoly singing "fight the powers that divide" and Serge Kassy's "Pay Your Taxes," aimed at political elites who don't.

Kouame's favorite is "Tattletale," about courtiers currying favor with a ruler. After hearing it, a retired general named Robert Guei telephoned Kassy, who wrote it. Guei said he recognized his fate in that song, having been dismissed as army chief of staff after refusing the president's order to send troops to an election boycott demonstration in 1995. Kassy was so impressed, he wrote "My General."

Today, Guei is Ivory Coast's new leader, heading a transitional government he said will hold power only until free elections can be scheduled. And Kassy is greeted on the streets with "Hey, Sergeant!" a play on his first name, Serge, that also reflects the alliance of music and militance that has been the hallmark of reggae since it emerged from the slums of Jamaica.

"We feel that we are Bob Marley's children," said Kassy, 37. "Most Jamaican singers are going on about Africa, so we thought: If the Jamaicans are going on about Africa, what about us? Why can't we, being close to reality, bring more?' "

For some artists, the reality grew a bit close for comfort. Blondy was terrified by the soldiers shooting in Abidjan's streets. Hiding, he said, under the bed in one of the most conspicuous houses in town, he refused to come out even when soldiers came knocking at the door.

Blondy and others trace the downfall of the ruling party to the early 1990s, when Ivory Coast joined the continent's post-Cold War transition from single party rule to a multi-party system. The transition never quite came off here: Scores of parties sprang up, but Bedie always found a way to disqualify the most serious challenger.

But expectations had been raised, and the resulting outrage found vent in youth culture. Kassy decided on a career in "engaged music" in college, where opposition politics was beginning. His first album, released in 1990, was "I'm Proud." Banned on state radio, it became a staple at opposition rallies.

"In weak democracies, musicians are like journalists," said Blondy, 46. "They talk about things that some journalists wouldn't dare to, because all the papers are owned by political parties. We are the voice of the voiceless."

As the '90s wore on, Bedie's government took the blame for a slumping economy and worsening corruption. But the most corrosive issue was the government's promotion of "Ivory-ness," or ethnic division. The concept was aimed at dismissing the northern, largely Muslim, population that produced the strongest political challenger, Alassane Ouattara.

Beugre, the political editor, recalled riding in a cab last year. The driver had just learned from a Tiken Jah cassette that northerners had been in Ivory Coast even before the Akan group that formed the then-ruling elite. "So why are Akans saying we are the foreigners?" Beugre recalled the cabbie asking.

Beugre estimated that 50 percent of the energy driving the coup was supplied by the musicians. "We were so popular that it was difficult for the police to arrest us," Kassy said. "But there were journalists who were always in jail. Different opposition figures were in jail."

After the coup, Kassy changed the name of his new album from "Cut But Not Bleeding" to "Liberty." And he says he feels Guei "can be trusted. But man will be man. And leadership power is a monster.

"All I can say is, we have started something," Kassy said. "Change has started. . . . Today I'm with Guei, because I feel that Guei will put in place what the people want. But if in the long run people feel that he came just to be in power, then I will be the first one to fight against him."

© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-01/10/015r-011000-idx.html

Industrialized Seeds

Europe plugs its own leeks

By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, January 26, 2011; 1:59 PM

Before the Scots came to call oatmeal gruel "porridge," the word meant leek soup, derived from "porrum," the Latin word for leek. "Porrum" is also the source of the French words "potage" (soup) and "potager" (kitchen garden).

In winter there is scarcely a European garden without a blue-green stand of leeks, and in the northeast of England amateur leek-growers compete for big prizes. Americans, for whom leeks are a gourmet oddity, have some catching up to do.

Until the 1990s all leeks were open-pollinated (OP) varieties, not proprietary F1 hybrids with corporate ownership. New methods have made hybridizing them possible, so now many seed catalogues offer both. Their descriptions make interesting reading. The new hybrids are promoted as vigorous, high-yielding, disease-resistant, upright, straight and - above all - uniform, since uniformity is what commercial growers, packers and marketers demand. OP varieties are described as adaptable, hardy, tender and mild, with good flavor - all qualities that appeal to small or home growers.

I don't care if my leeks are uniform. I like a mix of small and big. That said, we did grow a hybrid called Upton (now replaced with Megaton) that showed admirable vigor at our farm and home garden. But we're glad that we have a choice. With OP crops you can select and save seed to adapt a variety to your own soil. Furthermore, OP crops can be improved just as well as F1 hybrids can. Unfortunately, that is not the way the industry is heading.

Meanwhile, all is not well across the Big Pond. According to rules of the European Union, only seeds prescribed by national lists posted by member countries can be sold. It is argued that this is necessary to protect the integrity of the seeds, but in fact it favors companies that can afford to register a variety and maintain it according to EU standards.

A small farmer would be able to grow leeks (or any crop) from seeds passed down from his Aunt Betty, which he had selected and adapted to his region, but he could not sell them to another farmer who might benefit from his work.

Granted, the current lists do contain OP varieties, some of them heirlooms, and there are also seed-swapping organizations that growers can use. One clever seed company in the United Kingdom called Real Seeds gets around the regs with a buying club in which part of seeds' purchase price pays for membership. Still, many old varieties will go extinct from lack of support, thus diminishing the gene pool for the world's food supply.

I'm grateful that rules this stringent and self-serving have not spread to the United States. But the worldwide trend is still toward fewer varieties in commerce, controlled by a small number of global companies.

These are my thoughts as I stir a creamy leek soup on a cold winter day. The leek may not yet hold a place of honor in this country, but maybe we can secure it a better future.

Damrosch is a freelance writer and the author of "The Garden Primer."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/26/AR2011012604748.html

Dobro Great

Dobro's standard-setter

By Bill Friskics-Warren
Sunday, January 30, 2011; E06

The fickle nature of the music business often has artists second-guessing themselves, particularly when their careers span decades. That is certainly the case with Seldom Scene co-founder Mike Auldridge, one of maybe a handful of truly innovative Dobro players in the history of country and bluegrass music.

For the D.C. native who now lives in Silver Spring, the crucial "What if?" moment came when he had the opportunity to move to Nashville in the early 1970s. Had he done so, Music City's dearth of Dobroists would have made him country music's most in-demand session player on the instrument. Instead the distinction went to his protege, Jerry Douglas, who moved to Nashville not long after Auldridge decided not to.

"Looking back, I've often wondered and even wished I'd gone to Nashville," said Auldridge, who will perform Wednesday, as part of the Institute of Musical Traditions concert series, with singer-songwriters Eric Brace and Peter Cooper at the Takoma Park Community Center.

"My wife and I seriously considered it, but who knows?" he added with a chuckle. "Had we moved to Nashville I might have wound up playing steel guitar in a band and dying in a plane crash."

All kidding - and conjecture - aside, Auldridge's decision to stay put was Washington's gain, and he accomplished much that he might not have had he moved to Tennessee.

He almost certainly wouldn't have been able to remain in the Seldom Scene, with whom he went on to entertain hundreds at the Birchmere each week while helping cement the D.C. area's reputation as a hotbed of contemporary bluegrass. He also might not have honed an elegant, lyrical approach to the Dobro consistent with an urban setting like the nation's capital or become a first-call sideman for recordings made on the East and West coasts by genre-crossing artists like Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.

He might not, in other words, have expanded the possibilities for the Dobro. (The name Dobro is a contraction of Dopyera brothers, the Slovak American siblings who patented an early version of the instrument in 1928. A single, bowl-shaped resonator is built into the face of an acoustic guitar to produce a richer, stronger tone without requiring amplification.) With his playing, Auldridge set a sophisticated new standard for young Dobro players, and he's served as a harbinger of an omnivorous strain of bluegrass-based acoustic music later popularized by Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch and others.

"Mike changed everything," said Jerry Douglas, for years a mainstay of Krauss's Grammy-winning band, Union Station. "He phrased differently. He was the first guy to use the Dobro in a more modern way, to phrase it more like a saxophone or some other instrument.

"Mike isn't a fast, rolling Dobro player, and because of that he created this other way," added Douglas, who early in his career emulated Auldridge's playing and approach. "He was able to play more modern material and that freed me. It unchained me from traditional bluegrass music. It was a revelation, and Mike was the guy who made it happen."

Eddie Stubbs, an announcer on the Grand Ole Opry and for years the host of a drive-time bluegrass radio show on Washington's WAMU, placed Auldridge's significance in even broader historical context.

"Bashful Brother Oswald is the man who rescued the Dobro from obscurity with his work with Roy Acuff in the '40s and '50s," Stubbs explained. "Then Uncle Josh Graves came along and took the thing to another level with the three-finger roll he learned from Earl Scruggs. Mike, who initially played in the style of Josh Graves, brought a smoother approach. He had a more commercial approach that could appeal to both the hardest-core traditionalist but at the same time to people who didn't know much about the instrument or who didn't follow bluegrass music."

Auldridge, whose maternal uncle, Ellsworth Cozzens, played Dobro on some of Jimmie Rodgers's early recordings, uses words like "fate" and "unknowingly" to describe the evolution of his playing.

"It was just one of those things where you do something and don't even know you're doing it," he said with characteristic understatement. "I just came along at the right time to bridge what the Dobro was in the '40s and '50s to what it is now. It wasn't until the '80s and '90s, when younger players like Rob Ickes started coming up to me at shows and saying how much I influenced them, that I realized that I had become Josh Graves to these guys."

Now 72, Auldridge has played with a number of bands over the years, from Chesapeake to the Country Gentlemen, with whom he turned down a regular gig in the early '70s only to have a 14-year-old Jerry Douglas claim the spot. He's also released nine solo albums, as well as a recent collaborative project, for Nashville-based Red Beet Records, with country steel guitar great Lloyd Green.

Auldridge's playing continues to evolve, including the development of his signature eight-string resophonic guitar. The formative early days of his more than two decades with the Seldom Scene, however - a time when he was still working a day job as a graphic artist at the now-defunct Washington Star - were when his playing, and bluegrass music, really turned a corner.

"We were the next step in the polish," he said of the Seldom Scene. "We liked James Taylor as much as we liked Ralph Stanley, and we attracted an audience of like-minded people. We were college-educated. We were contemporary and urban. We weren't singing about mother and log cabins because that's not where we came from."

The Seldom Scene, echoed Douglas, "changed the mind-set that bluegrass couldn't be modern music. Suddenly they were doing Bob Dylan songs. They weren't just rehashing all these old mountain ballads. They bred a whole new generation of players and bands, and they definitely had an influence on what Alison Krauss & Union Station are doing now. They made it clear that it was okay to change, that bluegrass wasn't just about who your influences were."

"The Seldom Scene took bluegrass music to great heights in the Washington metropolitan area," added Eddie Stubbs. "It was the perfect vehicle for Mike's talents."

Bill Friskics-Warren is a freelance music writer living in Nashville and a regular contributor to The Washington Post.

Mike Auldridge performs with Eric Brace and Peter Cooper on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Institute of Musical Traditions -Takoma Park Community Center. 7500 Maple Ave. Takoma Park. 301-754-3611

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/27/AR2011012707393.html

Man With A Sound

Steel guitarist Buddy Charleton dies at 72

By Terence McArdle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 2, 2011; 8:46 PM

Buddy Charleton, 72, a steel guitar virtuoso whose groundbreaking instrumental work in the 1960s with the country band Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours influenced several generations of musicians, died Jan. 25 at his home in Spotsylvania, Va. He had lung cancer.

Mr. Charleton was a Shenandoah Valley native and as a young man accompanied Virginia-born singer Patsy Cline before she won a national audience. With Tubb's band, he and lead guitarist Leon Rhodes became known for dazzling string work and musical interplay on such pieces as "Almost to Tulsa" and "Rhodes-Bud Boogie."

When Mr. Charleton joined Tubb, the drawling honky-tonk singer was still a major presence in country music after 20 years of touring and broadcast appearances. The Texas Troubadours played up to 300 shows a year - in addition to weekly Grand Ole Opry appearances and a radio show, the Midnite Jamboree was broadcast every Saturday from the Ernest Tubb Record Shop.

The 1960s edition of the group was termed "the great band" by country historian and Tubb biographer Ronnie Pugh. It was a full-fledged revue that included vocals by rhythm guitarist Cal Smith and drummer Jack Greene, both of whom later launched successful solo careers.

Often playing to dancers in ballrooms, the Troubadours added such jazz standards as Duke Ellington's "C Jam Blues" and "Red Top," popularized by saxophonist Gene Ammons, into the band's repertoire.

"A steel guitar player has a bar in his left hand and some picks on his right hand, and it's not comfortable for him to go 90 miles an hour playing a tremendously fast song," Rhodes told the Tennessean in Nashville. "No matter how fast I could play on my guitar, though, Buddy could do it on the steel."

If his speed astounded other musicians, Mr. Charleton was equally renowned for his sensitive accompaniments on such Tubb ballads such as "Waltz Across Texas," where the sweet sound of the steel contrasted with the singer's tart drawl.

After leaving the Troubadours in 1973, Mr. Charleton embarked on a long career as a steel guitar teacher in Culpeper, Va.

His students included Bruce Bouton of the Garth Brooks band, Pete Finney of the Dixie Chicks and Tommy Hannum, who worked with Emmylou Harris, Ricky Van Shelton and the D.C.-based Rosslyn Mountain Boys.

Elmer Lee Charleton Jr. was born in New Market, Va., on March 6, 1938. His father, a bricklayer and part-time musician, taught him the basics of lap steel guitar.

He first heard the pedal steel guitar, a new sound in the early 1950s, on Bud Isaacs's accompaniment to singer Webb Pierce on the hit country weeper, "Slowly," which was recorded in 1953.

"I listened to that record over and over," Mr. Charleton told The Washington Post in 1995, "and finally figured there was something mechanical pulling the strings one way and the other. My dad said, 'I can fix that.'

"He took my double-neck Fender [steel guitar], drilled a hole through it, took a coat hanger and connected it to a pedal from a piano on one end and the string behind the nut at the other. It worked. I couldn't believe it."

In 1959, Mr. Charleton moved to Manassas and performed at Hunter's Lodge in Fairfax for the next three years. Tubb's bassist, Jack Drake, approached him to replace Tubb's steel guitarist, Buddy Emmons, who was leaving to join singer Ray Price.

His first marriage, to the former Karen Harmon, ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 31 years, Kay Lee Wilson Charleton of Spotsylvania; three children from his first marriage, Kim Fowler of Hermitage, Tenn., Elmer "Buddy" Charleton III of Nashville and Michael Charleton of Lebanon, Tenn.; his mother, Edna Charleton of Catlett, Va.; three sisters, Janet Meyers of Sacramento, and Carolyn Dean and Nancy Dean, both of Catlett; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Mr. Charleton was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1993. "The steel player's job is to back the singer," he said a few years later. "What we're all doing today, I call it hot-dogging. But it sure is a lot of fun."

mcardlet@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/02/AR2011020202242.html



posted at 5:11 PM ET, 01/27/2011

Buddy Charleton dies; Washington steel guitarist influenced generations

By Terence McArdle

Buddy Charleton, the steel guitarist whose work with Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours, influenced several generations of musicians, died Jan. 25 at his home in Locust Grove, Va. He had lung cancer.

Mr. Charleton and standard guitarist Leon Rhodes joined the Troubadours in the early 1960s and were known for their dazzling string work and interplay on such instrumentals as "Almost To Tulsa" and "Rhodesway Boogie."

While Tubb pushed Rhodes and Charleton to focus on very simple, melodic solos during his vocal numbers, he also encouraged them to showcase their technical abilities with dizzying improvisation during their portion of his revue.

Often playing in ballrooms to dance audiences, they added such jazz standards as "Take The A-Train" and saxophonist Gene Ammons' "Red Top" into the band's repertoire. This boundary blurring approach to musical genres inspired a kindred spirit, singer Willie Nelson, who recorded with them on his 1966 album "Country Favorites, Willie Nelson Style."

"A steel guitar player has a bar in his left hand and some picks on his right hand, and it's not comfortable for him to go 90 miles an hour playing a tremendously fast song," Rhodes told The Nashville Tennessean. "No matter how fast I could play on my guitar, though, Buddy could do it on the steel."

If his speed astounded other musicians, Mr. Charleton was perhaps best known for his sensitive accompaniments on such Tubb ballads such as "Waltz Across Texas" where the sweet sound of the steel contrasted with the singer's tart drawl.

After leaving the Troubadours in 1973, Mr. Charleton embarked on a long career around teaching steel guitar in Fredericksburg, Va. Steel guitarists influenced and mentored by Mr. Charleton include Bruce Bouton of the Garth Brooks band, Pete Finney of the Dixie Chicks and Tommy Hannum, who has worked with Emmylou Harris, Ricky Van Shelton and locally, with the Rosslyn Mountain Boys.

If you have any memories of Mr. Charleton please leave them below.

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By Terence McArdle | January 27, 2011; 5:11 PM ET

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2011/01/buddy-charleton-dies-washingto.html

Whoever most wants to be in charge is usually the least suitable to do it.

Reading the comments section of an article in the Guardian about the Muslim Brotherhood and the current situation in Egypt, I found the following:

Vraaak

3 February 2011 5:37PM

Whoever most wants to be in charge is usually the least suitable to do it.

Life is so very very short for ordinary people to have to put up with the fanatical, vulgar and self demeaning cravings of some for power.

Depressing isn't it?

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/03/egypt-muslim-brotherhood-west-democracy)

I try to avoid the depressing part - not that it isn't though. otherwise, on point commentary.

1500mg of Salt - once low sodium, now the standard

Dietary Guidelines may reduce allowance for salt and sodium

Jennifer LaRue Huget
Thursday, November 4, 2010; PG15

How much is 1,500 mg of sodium?

If a federal advisory committee has its way, it will be the recommended daily amount adults should consume, down from 2,300, when the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 are updated in December. Put in real-food terms, it could mean: Cheerios with skim milk and orange juice for breakfast (about 300 mg), two pieces of whole-grain white Wonder Bread with peanut butter and plain yogurt (about 600 mg) and a healthful entree for dinner (about 600 mg).

Sound appetizing? Not so much. But if cutting sodium makes sense to you (and your doctor), there are easy ways to do so without sacrificing flavor.

The recommendation to gradually move toward consuming 1,500 mg of sodium a day (about two-thirds of a teaspoon's worth of salt) is part of an effort to lower the incidence of cardiovascular disease. The average daily consumption has most recently been estimated at more than twice that: 3,436 mg to 3,712 mg per day. Consuming less sodium can lower an individual's blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death in the United States.

That logic is widely embraced; the American Heart Association is among the many health organizations that agree that lowering sodium consumption would benefit public health. "Any change down would be a change in the right direction," says Ralph Sacco, president of the American Heart Association.

But just how can you "change down" without resigning yourself to a bland diet? Here are some ideas:

Experiment with herbs, garlic and onions, and other low-sodium seasonings.

Ease up if you tend to add salt at the table. Though keep in mind that table and cooking salt account for only a small fraction, 5 to 10 percent, of our total sodium intake.

Consider eating more potassium-rich foods such as baked potatoes, bananas, cantaloupe and cooked dark green vegetables such as spinach. Potassium plays a big role in maintaining health blood pressure; you should consume about 4,700 mg daily.

Be aware that your desire for salt will likely diminish within a few weeks after you cut back. That taste is apparently not inborn in humans.

Cook more meals at home. This is the biggest change you can make. Substitute less-processed, more "whole" foods in place of processed, packaged foods and restaurant meals. About three-quarters of our sodium comes from such foods, a reality that suggests that much of the sodium-reduction work has to be done with food manufacturers and restaurants, not so much with individuals.

Not everyone agrees that cutting back salt will result in a healthier nation. Some experts, and, naturally, members of the salt industry, question whether there's enough evidence linking sodium reduction to better cardiovascular health. In a critique of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee's report published in the October issue of the journal Nutrition, the authors -- a group that includes Morton Satin, director of technical and regulatory affairs at the Alexandria-based Salt Institute -- argue that the proposed sodium guideline, like others before it, isn't sufficiently rooted in solid science to be implemented nationwide.

Others say that the more important contributor to the rise in cardiovascular disease is simply over-consumption of food, salty or not, and the obesity epidemic. That was the conclusion of a study co-written by Walter Willett, chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and published in the November American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It found that our sodium consumption hasn't changed much in recent decades, even as incidence of cardiovascular disease has continued to rise.

Here's the thing about the Dietary Guidelines: They're important, but not mandatory, and you're free to follow or ignore them as you please. Their reissue every five years is a good opportunity, though, to review the way you eat and decide, maybe with your doctor, what you might do differently. Even if that means taking them with a tiny grain of salt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/01/AR2010110106078.html

Is 1,500 mg of sodium a realistic goal?

By Jennifer LaRue Huget

I grew up in a salt-loving family. We salted everything: tomatoes, melon slices, any food on our plate - before we even tasted it to see if it really needed more salt. One of my early vivid memories is of getting a McDonald's hamburger and fries and pouring a packet of salt on each before drizzling ketchup over the fries.

I'm the only one of my family members who has (so far, at least) avoided high blood pressure. Though I sometimes crave a salty treat, I don't seek salt out, and I never add it to anything I eat, save for the occasional bowl of popcorn.

But as I write in this week's "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy" column, I think even I might be hard-pressed to cut my sodium intake to the level that's likely to be recommended in the upcoming Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010, to be issued in December. If that document adopts the recommendation of the advisory committee whose findings largely inform the final guidelines, Americans will be urged to gradually reduce their sodium intake from the more than 3,000 mg we now consume, on average, to just 1,500 mg daily, well below the 2,300 mg that the current (2005) guidelines allow.

Even if you don't add salt at the stove or the table, it's hard to keep your sodium intake that low. Packaged and processed foods and restaurant meals are by far our biggest sources of sodium; even skim milk delivers a dose. You'd have to cook practically everything you eat from scratch to stay within 1,500 mg a day. The advisory committee recognizes this difficulty and notes that much of the sodium-reduction work ahead must be done by food manufacturers.

As for the McDonald's meal of my youth, here's what the current nutrition data says about its sodium content: A plain McDonald's burger has 520 mg; add cheese and the new total is 750 mg. A small serving of fries has 160 mg; a medium has 270 mg, and a large has 350. A package of ketchup adds 110 mg; one salt packet contains 270 mg.
So that little meal of mine would have added up to at least 1,330 mg of sodium.

That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.

Do you think you could get by on just 1,500 mg of sodium a day? Check the nutrition facts for the foods you typically eat. I think you might be in for a surprise.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2010/11/is_1500_mg_of_sodium_a_realist.html?sid=ST2010110204277

I thought I understood salt. My knowledge wasn't enough to fill an encyclopedia but could be summed up thusly: Use it sparingly for taste. And then I talked with Mark Bitterman, who blogs about salt and also sells it through the Meadow in Portland, Ore., and everything I knew went out the window. Mark told me most of the salt in my cupboard should, too.

I had Morton's table salt and kosher salt and two large boxes of La Baleine sea salt. Mark, who owns the Meadow with his wife, Jennifer, suggested I throw them all out. His reasoning was simple: “These are all industrial salts, whether they are solution-mined from salt deposits or evaporated from the San Francisco Bay," he said. "They are refined into more or less pure sodium chloride, processed into the desired crystal shape, [often] treated with any number of chemicals and then packaged for various markets. If you are not interested in highly processed, industrially manufactured foods, you should not use them, ever.”

While sea salt may seem natural, Mark called La Baleine "unnecessarily refined to a standard of industrial purity not needed in table salt." He said the company makes 800,000 tons a year of solar-evaporated sea salt.

While I know that many salts are highly processed, his strong reaction got a strong reaction back. I use kosher salt a lot, and think of it as refined more than other salts and purer. I like that it is relatively less salty and that the bigger crystals help me control what I use, more so than fine table salt. (“Kosher” here does not refer to the acceptability of the salt but to the way it is used in koshering meats.) As far as my research goes, kosher salt is obtained from the sea and does not contain additives. Mark disagrees: “I think if squeeze-tube margarine is your butter, hot dogs are your meat, and spray-whiz nacho sauce is your cheese, then I suppose kosher can be your salt. Otherwise, reach for a natural salt.”

While I agree with using natural salt, I still believe kosher salt is the lesser evil of all the industrial salts available.

We moved on to a topic I have been wanting to learn about: artisanal salts.

Mark is the author of the upcoming "Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most

Essential Mineral, With Recipes" (Ten Speed Press), and he talked about how salt is the oldest culinary product on the face of the earth, produced by man for 12,000 years. Every civilization, every culture, every group, and virtually every region over the last dozen millennia has produced or sourced salt. Each one of those salts was the unique reflection of a geography, climate, economy, technology and cuisine. Hundreds of thousands of salts are lost to time. A few thousand remain.

The key to taking advantage of various salts, he said, is to think: What effect do I want the salt to have on my food, and how can I use the salt most effectively to achieve that effect? Baking, grilling, roasting, boiling, brining, curing and, of course, sprinkling salt on food right before serving (finishing): All can call for a different salt. That said, one nice natural salt can fit many of those uses, he advised.

So what salt does he use instead of regular old table salt? “I use sel gris. Think of sel gris as a whole food: it contains 84 trace minerals occurring naturally in the sea, has irregular, chunky crystals and plenty of residual moisture that lends each crystal a supple crunch.”

There are great sels gris (gray salts) from around the world; some are sweet, and others are briny, most notably those from the ancient Celtic saltmaking regions on the French Atlantic coast. It is also a good finishing salt for hearty foods like steak or roast vegetables. “For 12 bucks for a 2.5-pound bag, you basically get a year’s supply of one of the world’s most premium ingredients,” he said.

Most of the wilder-looking salts out there are best used as finishing salts. Besides sel gris, the other basic types include fleur de sel (flower of salt), traditional, flake and rock, among others. Mark sent me samples of his four favorite types. I tasted each and found that each has a different level of saltiness, so experimenting is required to see how each of these work with different types of dishes. Mark had a suggestion: Try each one with popcorn and see how the taste differs.

• Pangasinan Star is a fleur de sel with sweet, almost brambly, warm flavors and a slightly billowy granular crystal. Perfect for daily use on such things as toast with unsalted butter, stir-fried veggies, grilled fish and chicken curry.


• Marlborough Flaky has a fringed flake crystal and a crisp, clean taste that makes it ideal for salads and fresh or steamed vegetables. It also may be the best salt on the face of the earth for margarita rims.


• The Meadow Sel Gris is mild and incredibly balanced but with huge crystals that yield between your teeth. I've been using it as an all-around cooking salt: ground up in baking, whole on grilled foods, dissolved in water for cooking pasta and blanching vegetables, for preserved lemons, and more. I also use it as a finishing salt on roast poultry and root vegetables, steak, lamb, and for salt crusts.


• Iburi Jio Cherry is an incredible smoked salt, with impossibly fine crystals and a rich, bacony aroma and flavor. Frankly, I can't imagine what it wouldn't be good on. It’s pricey, but potent; think of it like vanilla or saffron, except that you can eat it on anything from popcorn to ice cream, from a tuna melt to salmon sashimi, from burgers to foie gras.

Obviously, my mindset on salt has changed. Now, it's this: Use kosher, use natural, use artisanal, use sparingly, and don't forget that there is almost no life to a dish without salt.

-- Monica Bhide

Gambas a la Plancha (Shrimp Cooked on a Griddle)
4 appetizer servings

This recipe uses salt for both flavoring the food and as a cooking medium.

Serve the shrimp as part of a tapas selection.

Adapted from "Made in Spain," by Jose Andres (Clarkson Potter, 2008).

1 pound kosher salt
16 medium heads-on shrimp

Spread the salt on a flat griddle or in a medium skillet. Place over medium-high heat.

When the salt is hot, lay half of the shrimp on it. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes. Turn the shrimp over and cook for 2 minutes on the second side. The shrimp shells will be pink and the flesh should be opaque.

Transfer the shrimp to a serving platter; repeat with the remaining shrimp. (Some of the salt will stick to the shrimp.) Serve immediately. (Discard the bed of salt.)

By The Food Section | March 5, 2010; 7:00 AM ET


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/all-we-can-eat/i-spice/i-spice-salt.html?sid=ST2010110204277