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Texas Organic Label part 4
Dennis Holbrook was appointed by Hightower to the Texas Organic Advisory Board that Dan Kelley was assembling that would craft a Texas Organic Label. We talked about that process in the previous blog. Holbrook has farmed organic in South Texas for over 40 years. Holbrook is a bit of a legend in Texas organic circles. He has a story to […]
The Jeff Friedman Story: A First Glance
By Sarah Pike Today, Austin faces a myriad of problems including rampant water issues, gentrification, and overcrowding; and like the population, these issues are only growing. However, in an alternative world, Austin might have been a different city. It might have been a city that saw its imminent future as a booming metropolis, and instead of ignoring it’s looming […]
Exploring Space City!
Space City! was an underground newspaper published in Houston from the summer of 1969 to the summer of 1972. The New Journalism Project has selected a wildly eclectic collection of articles, adorned it with the wildly creative art and cartoons that decorated those articles, and published it a beautiful book that is perfect for Christmas presents for everyone on the […]
VOICE LESSONS
PHIT is proud to announce the publication of Voice Lessons, a major memoir of one of Austin’s own legendary activists. Alice Embree is indeed a Texas legend. When I arrived in Austin in the mid-1970s, tall Texas tales were already being told of her free speech battles with Frank Erwin, the rather misogynist chairman of the UT Board of Regents. […]
Pesticides are Hell on Bugs and Not Much Better on People
People’s History in Texas is in the middle of a in-depth project collecting oral history and archives on the Jim Hightower tenure as Commissioner of Texas Department of Agriculture from 1983-1991. In those eight years, an amazing legacy of support for family farmers and sustainable rural agriculture was implemented. That legacy of positive programs is still making its impact on […]
Wine, Texas, and the Camelot Project
The Jim Hightower Department of Agriculture (1983-1991) operated like the Knights of the Round Table. He attracted men and women who were willing to fight the good fight and sent them out into the field to Do Good things for the small farmers, the consumers, the farmworkers and the environment. One group, working through the marketing department, offered valiant services […]
Farmer’s Markets in Texas
Farmer’s Markets!! Don’t we all just love going down to our local farmer’s market and getting our sprouts and local eggs and home-grown tomatoes? These days it is so easy, and, well…normal. Farmer’s Markets are ubiquitous, an essential cog in the “know what you eat” movement.” Buy local, talk to the people who grow your food, pay attention to […]
Wind Power and the TDA
Texas is the now King of Wind! Wind delivered 22% of the state’s electrical energy in 2019. More than the nasty, no longer dirt-cheap, coal and wind power gaining rapidly on natural gas as a source of Texas electricity. It is quite a stunning achievement for Texas, the land of fracking and flaring natural gas, to also rule the renewable […]