I’ve been a member Neighbors Organics Weekly Buying Clubs for a while and was disappointed to see them cease operations a few months ago.

So were a lot of other people who convinced owner Grant Watson to keep it going and here is the next step:

Member Drive to Restart NOWBC Operations

Please show your support by July 21st

Hi Everyone,

Neighbors Organics Weekly Buying Clubs is moving forward with plans to re-start operations, please help us get the co-op started so that we can start selling great organic food again! So far 14 people have filled out the online survey. We need 50 people to take action by July 21 so we can move to the next step. And we need you to tell your friends.

Help us revive NOWBC as a Co-op and start sourcing delicious, local organic food again by doing any or all of the following:

1. SUPPORT THE CO-OP SET-UP: We need a minimum of 50 people who want to be members to send a cheque for $20 to NOWBC to help with consulting fees. Cheques will not be cashed until we have enough to actually proceed. There are funders who will augment this if we show that there is support among our members and potential members. Make cheque payable to NOWBC, put "Co-op Share" in the memo and mail to:

NOWBC c/o Grant Watson 102-5698 Aberdeen St Vancouver, BC V5R 4M6

2. COMPLETE THE ONLINE SURVEY: We need to have at least 150 people fill out our survey. Whether you are ready to sign up to be a member yet or not, please fill out our survey. This helps us decide what the terms of association of the co-op will be.

3. TELL YOUR FRIENDS: Tell your friends and give them the opportunity to sign up and/or fill out our survey too. Feel free to forward this notice! Help us build a strong local food distribution network.If you are new to NOWBC, please see our web site (www.nowbc.ca) to find out who we are! In short though, NOWBC is a source of local organic food, at co-op prices, structured so that members can order exactly what they want from our suppliers each week (and not what they don’t!).

NOWBC Re-Structuring Details

Here is the NOWBC good news–we now have sources for start-up money and some advisors ready and waiting to help us revive NOWBC as a co-op. But here’s the deal: in order for us to actually GET the funding to setup the resources we need to get going, we have to show we have PEOPLE who want to buy food through NOWBC by having at least 50 people commit with seed money. Cheques received by NOWBC will be collected until we have at least 50. Then we will work with a co-op expert to build a business plan and by-laws. You then be invited to join, and funders will be invited to help with seed money. They have already expressed interest, but need to see a solid plan.

With sufficient sale of shares and outside funding, we can move forward–form the co-op, source some food, set up the infrastructure, hire staff and provide our members great food again! We don’t need a huge amount of startup money, but we do need enough people making a commitment to buy food through NOWBC to make it viable. Lets believe in ourselves and

Thank you for your time and interest!
Revitalization Committee: Joanna, Ross, Cabot and Grant
Neighbours Organic Weekly Buying Clubs
www.nowbc.ca

Please share this with all your friends and neighbours.

"Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like."

Here are my del.icio.us tags as seen in Wordle:

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It is official. I have 16 days at the Vancouver Farmers Market this year. Eight days each at Kitsilano & Riley Park. You can see a schedule on the right, but for the record, here are the days:

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If you are in the Vancouver network on Facebook you can join the Farmers Market group page here and their fan page here.

I also have a fan page on Facebook: Great Day Bokashi

This is a post about a news article about Guerilla gardeners that showed up in the Asian Pacific Post a few weeks ago. I mentioned it in some Twitter posts when I found that they had used some of my images without my permission. This has been corrected.

The same article appeared yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald. It is ephemera of the news cycle that I find interesting. The story is a filler that editors can add when they need more content. The Asian Pacific Post added a local angle which they were not required to do but I’m glad they did. I’m surprised the Sydney Morning Herald could not do the same [from their own publication!]

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Here’s the view in my neighbourhood this morning:

It is surreal and beautiful too.

A tweet: Love watching the falling petals of cherry blossoms; snow that doesn’t melt. The wind blows them down the street like confetti. Slippery too.

Real snow on April 19 -  No one I know remembers it snowing so late in the year

But snow at the end of March is normal - it did that last year too.

Snow and cherry blossoms

First post with Windows Live Writer - positive reviews on Lifehacker. I agree.

I have no control over what happens only how I respond to it. Usually in my other work, I am a duck and whatever people say to me rolls off. But not today. Within minutes of starting work, a few bad encounters started an anxiety attack. I wanted to quit right then and there, but I worked through it. Eventually, it passed with deep breathing and a hug [I asked for one] and I was able to get through the rest of the day.

When I got home and checked my daily zeitgeist I found this one:

The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

I stopped at No. 29 and as watched, all the shmutz of the day simply melted away.

Here, on live TV, without benefit of editing or retakes, Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray silently mime a domestic dispute whose crescendos and valleys perfectly correspond to classical music. It’s brilliant, and there’s not much more to say.

Yep. I can sleep well tonight.

Enjoy!

Look closely. I see a water channel between the mountain ranges on this air vent cover outside the new Superstore / Home Depot store at Cambie at 7th

At this angle it looks like a VU meter gone crazy:

The air vent is both beautiful and cold at same time. It was probably designed to make it impossible for skateboarders to use it while evoking elements of our natural landscape.

From work

J. H. didn’t even know that what he put on that morning would be a throwback to the weird and wonderful 80’s

Bev wears hats like these all year long. As the seasons change, so do the hats. Halloween and Xmas are the best!

My Firefox homepage is Delicious’ Popular links page. Every day I get to look at things that people on the web think are important. One time, one the links was for someone that I knew [a flickr contact] before they made the popular list.

Most times, a link stays up for a day, sometimes two, as the critical mass of the web adds to its staying power. I don’t click on every link, but many do end up on my own del.icio.us page [which are added to my Feedburner RSS feed]

This video was on the popular list for three days. Take a look at it and you will know why. “Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor tells an amazing story of had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke….”

Spoiler alert: Taylor presents a compelling argument that religious ecstatic experience is simply a function of the brain’s anatomy. But if those experiences can bring about universal peace, I don’t care how it happens.

More pictures for my Aunt who wondered if the crocuses are blooming, can the daffodils be far behind?

and Uncle It is still very much winter here and spring very far off.