Hey everyone,

 I just got signed up for Dr Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web On-Line course. soilfoodwebcourse.com maybe your asking Who and What … well those are good questions.

Dr Elaine Ingham is an American soil biology researcher and founder of Soil Foodweb Inc. She is known as a leader in soil microbiology and research of the soil food web. She is an author of the USDA's Soil Biology Primer. In 2011, Ingham was named as The Rodale Institute's chief scientist. So she has a really big brain about everything under our feet.

For me soils and compost have really been a mystery. Yea I took agronomy in college, I’ve read the books on the correct nitrogen to carbon ratio in the compost. I have even piled up cow poo and green and brown plant material and watch it turn into “compost”. I think to myself “how good or bad is this stuff?”, WELL Dr. Elaine can give you not only answers but she can show you how.

I saw her talk at the PV1 (Permaculture Voices Conference) in California this spring and what I saw, Well, “I Gotta Get Me More of This!” I looked to see when her next class was going to be on the East Coast and … Nothing.  When I heard about the On-Line Course I was all over it.

And Now you can too. Here is a link to get to the website soilfoodwebcourse.com and in fact there is three intro video that you can watch for nuttin, thats free.

You have about a week to sign up, sorry for the short notice but I just found out a week ago.

Also there are a lot of bonus stuff with this course!!!

So head on over and check it out, soilfoodwebcourse.com if you really want to change the world from the roots up this could be one of your best tools. I know that it will be for me. 

"picture taken one week later off the dock"

There are many problems in this world that have been given much attention, Global : Warming-Cooling-Climate Change, Peak Oil, Wars, Terrorist, Genocide, etc and the list goes on and on.


My grandma had a placard on her wall that read “ Lord help me change the things I can, and not worry about the things I can’t”

What can I really do about these large and sometimes huge issues when I am only one man or one family?

When I find out that a sewage treatment plant has released over 5,000,000 gallons of raw sewage into the Patuxent River and that there was another release into the Potamac River, I wonder how can this be? Then I fined out that this isn’t the first time.

So my question is do we live in the twenty first century or is this the stone age?

I admit that there are a lot of problems and challenges in our world but water is equal to life. No Water No Life. I would think that we should clean up our own backyard, especially when that back yard is the Nations capital, REALLY?!

I’m shocked that the people of the DC metro have acted like this is status quo.

The only thing that I can do is look out on to the water of the Patuxent and scream, and maybe put together a video and bring attention to the disgust in my fellow citizen and leaders.

I have attached a video below to show what I am talking about.

I try to find solutions to problem and then test them, but I have to admit that this is a complicated one. I have questions to the authorities that are supposed to be “looking out” for the rivers and ultimately the Bay.

1. Do we have a base line on what is “normal” water quality?
2. Are we being informed on the status of the river?
3. What is being done to “fix” the problem?
4. Are there going to be any citations? 

I thought this was going to be the decade of transparency?!

I know that if we all put our heads together these problems can be “fixed” one by one, but maybe we should start in our own backyard and BE AWARE of what is going on in OUR backyards.

When we look out there to find these solution they are usually found, we just need to seek.

Here is a person that has dedicated her life to water : 
Jennifer Green - http://www.waterresearch.org/about/director.html

Wikipedia also has a great definition of “Created Wetlands” 

: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_wetland

In my research I also found that there are nearly 50 water sewage treatment facilities in the Northeast of varying size that use created wetlands to assist in the treating of the waste we create.

All in all, the discussion needs to be not can we fix it but WILL we? 

Mike