Page 6 RAIN July 1978 LAND Films on Food and Land, free from: Earthwork 1499 Potrero San Francisco, CA 94110 Films are often a stimulus to further inquiry into a subject and are effective tools to use with people who can't or won't read. They are especially good for pr.esenting new ideas to large groups of people. So Earthwork has put together a directory of films on food and land that can be used in educating and organizing. Some subject areas covered are agriculture and agribusiness, ecology and pollution, food workers, gardening, nutrition, and the world food situation. Besides listing these resources, this manual explains how to use:; audiovisuals as educational tools to help guide the viewer's interest and energy into action. It covers such basics as ideas for discussion leaders, making arrangements for showing, doing a film festival and publicity. A very helpful resource. -JM Microbes to Man: The Story ofa Prairie Farm, directed and produced by Tom Putnam, 16mm color, sound film, 3 5 minutes. Available from: Tom Putnam 2344 Columbia St. Palo Alto, CA 94306 415/326-1050 'Microbes to Man is not so much the story of a prairie farm as it is the story of Gene Poirot and his relationship to the land he cares for. He began farming 56 years ago on land that had been worn 0ut by 70 years of tenant farming. Only half of his land had been farmed, however. The remaining acreage was virgin prairie and from the beginning he studied the comparison between land worked by man and land worked by nature. What he learned was translated into a long process of soil restoration. The film touches on his methods of fertilization, use of legumes, animal and plant nutrition, gravity irrigation, fishraising, biological diversity and biological control of insects, wildlife conservation, no-till planting and general methods of ecological farming. I highly recommend this film as an infroduction to ecological farming and to ecological laws. -JM Our Margin of Life·, Eugene M. Poirot, available for $3.50, postpaid; from: Acres USA P.O. Box 9547 Raytown, MO 64133 Our Margin of Life is Eugene Poirot's personal observations and practical dem- ;..r <ll/ ~-. . ~ .,...:;;::.;;;.;;;;;;; # .-;"/ -;;.:;.,. ~, ~~.: , ....... , ... "" .• from Our Margin of Life onstration of nature's science. In it Poirot explains in greater depth the processes he w~nt through to restore his land and the common sense behind each step. But this book also offers a way of seeing as well as a way of doing. "If you wish to piece together a philosophy of life, the prairie offers a pat- , tern of living things: The prairie does not measure its c.reatures in gold or silver, but rather in those values they create for other creatures. There is no place for those that fail in this simple task, but even the microbe aids many times in extending the thread of life to man." And I would add: "If man measurd:l his succes~ the same way, all those who work well to make things that people can use in body, mind or spirit have reached success." - JM HEALTH Menopause: A Positive Approach, Rosetta Reitz, 1977, $9.95 from: Chilton Book Co. 201 King of Prussia Rd. Radnor, PA 19089 Nothing sums up our culture's negative attitude towards women or aging more than the double whammy of our prejudices and misunderstandings about menopause. This book is written by a woman who wanted i:o know more about what was beginning to happen to her body and who could find virtually nothing written in "popular" literature, while the medical literature treated it as an illness that needed to be cured rather than a normal, natural stage of life. Although intended primarily for women in their menopause, this is a good book to turri to for anyone who is interested in dispelling the myths and opening up the dialogue of health and well-being on all fronts. -LdeM , Avoid or Achieve Pregnancy Naturally, Terrie Guay, 1978, $3.50 from: Bookhouse Northwest P.O .. Box 296 Portland, OR 97207 For those of us still in the reproduction years, natural birth control has become an increasingly: attractive alternative to chemicals and devices which have questionable side effect·s. This book is another of the several that have appeared in the past year that describe in detail how to learn about your body's monthly, cycle to control conception. This one relies on _the mucus method alone, unlike some which combine charting the vaginal mucus with keeping track of temperature changes. Simpler but probably a little riskier. Any of the variations are·a val1:1able way to get in touch with the rhythms of your body and, incidently, I've found, with the changes of the moon. - LdeM Breast vs. Bottle: The Scandal of Infant Formula Promotion, $1 from: Food Monitor P.O. Box 1975 Garden City, New York 11530 If you are not familiar with the scandal of baby formula manufacturers pushing their products on Third World mothers, this reprint from Food Monitor is a good place to start. Companies like Nestle use pictures of robust babies and salespeople dressed like nurses to convince mothers that their expensive product is more nutritious and "modern" than breast feeding. When the women, most of them poor, dilute the formula to save money, many of the babies die from malnutrition. Yet another example of large corporations making a killing on a substitute for something • ~hich is provided free by nature. Boycott all Nestle products and use this pamphlet to spread the word. -LdeM from Breast vs. Bottle Killy l awr1mct1
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