Blogs & Ecology

Fun on the Farm Down Home in Long Island City "P.S. 1, in Long Island City, Queens, has been hosting its weekly summer dance-party series, Warm Up Saturdays, for 10 years. This year, instead of the usual urban beach-themed décor, the courtyard has been transformed into an urban farm: 260 cardboard cylinders, from waist-height to towering, that sprout 51 plant varieties, like Swiss chard, dill, strawberries and tomatoes." ::New York Times

Why Fly When You Can Float? It has been more than 70 years since the giant Hindenburg zeppelin exploded in a spectacular fireball over Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 crew members and passengers, abruptly ending an earlier age of airships. But because of new materials and sophisticated means of propulsion, a diverse cast of entrepreneurs is taking another look at the behemoths of the air. ::New York Times

See also Zeppelins are Back, Too

Monsanto on the Menu: How it has transformed itself from a money-losing pariah to a $ 5 Billion pariah, and how it is betting that the food crisis will create new markets for genetically modified products. "They are trying to exploit the food crisis as a means to win acceptance for their [patented, transgenic] products " ::Business Week

Hotels Struggle to Find the Right Eco-Message: "Hotels that care about the environment often have a delicate balancing act. They want to offer guests the opportunity to stay, without guilt, in a pristine environment. Yet their very existence there is an intrusion. " ::Joe Sharkey in the New York Times

Read TreeHugger on Eco-Travel

With Migrant Workers in Short Supply, a Farmer Looks to MachinesScores of Jim Bittner’s cherry trees are now just heaps of roots and sticks, piled in his fields here along Route 18. Some of the branches lying on the ground are dotted with small blossoms, the season’s earliest evidence that sweet cherries were on their way. But for Mr. Bittner, having sweet cherries would have meant hiring someone to prune the trees and harvest the fruit, and he was not sure that he could do it this year. So he cut his trees down. ::New York Times

Food is the big international story but the effect is felt at home when you order a pizza.

Pity the Pizza, in a Land of Nuggets The nation’s largest pizza chains are being hammered by sluggish sales and runaway ingredient costs. It’s a bad time to be in a business where two of the main ingredients are cheese and dough. Dairy and wheat prices have skyrocketed in the last year.::New York Times