Newsletter - October 10, 2023

My dear brothers and sisters,

Baba Ganouch is a creamy, savory, eggplant dip with tahini, garlic and citrus. What better way to make your dinner reverberate than with a  dreamy dip and some homemade pita to go with it?

It is usually made with roasted or baked eggplant. Let’s substitute zucchini and crookneck summer squash.Instead of baking we’ll be grating, so that its raw and alive. We add our Living Tree tahini and a tablespoon of our Living Tree almond butter, we follow  with our Greek Heritage Olive Oil, some chopped cloves of garlic, salt and lime juice. In a mixing bowl, we stir it all together.  Voila’! We have an ecstatic, creamy dip.

On sale  this week is our Greek Heritage Olive Oil. Its high in biophenols.  Our pleasure to offer a $6 discount. We suggest you try some and meditate on how  alive and organic this world could be.

Ben with GrowVeg, our favorite gardener, tells us how the long, warm days of summer are over but his harvests are not.  He takes us on  a delightful tour. His garden is a riot of color with nasturtiums, borage and marigolds interplanted among his veggies. As he harvests he also plants his winter garden with kale, leeks and chard.

Our Victory Garden Sale, this month, includes Cashew Butter, Tumeric and Honey Butter and Tomatoes - Dried and Organic of course! We offer these at a 10% discount.

We follow with a profound article by Jonathan McLatchie on the difficulties in explaining the origin of life in a mechanistic way.

Then Yishan Wong makes a magnificent reply to Bill Gates who said recently that planting trees as a key solution to tackling climate change was “complete nonsense” and that view must be held by “idiots,” not “science people”. Mr. Wong heads a company dedicated to restoring the world’s forests to revive ecosystems and build thriving communities. They have facilitated the planting of over 850,000 biodiverse trees and plants and created nearly 700 jobs worldwide—more than half of which are held by women.They launch early-stage forestry teams to build and scale biodiverse reforestation projects worldwide.

Then there is Federal bill H.R. 4141  the new pro-wireless industry bill introduced in Congress. This bill aims to eliminate key environmental and historic preservation safeguards.In addition to the health, privacy and safety risks, wireless technology harms our natural environment. A growing body of science demonstrates these harms to plants, animals, insects, bacteria, and the atmosphere, including:

- Biological damage, adverse effects on growth rate and shorter life spans in plants;

- Irreversible infertility, increased mortality rates and altered genetic expression in the brain in animals;

We take heart that you, in your wisdom, will overcome,  flourish and thrive,

Jesse Schwartz PhD
President
Living Tree Community Foods

by Jonathan McLatchie

We have often considered the difficulties inherent in the popular RNA world scenario that is envisioned for primitive life. According to this model, prior to the emergence of DNA and proteins, RNA ribozymes served as the first replicators. The model is intended to circumvent the problem of causal circularity — that DNA must be copied by proteins, which are themselves coded for by DNA. Problems abound for the RNA world theory. Chief among those are the inherent instability of RNA (being single stranded, and possessing an additional 2’ OH group, rendering it prone to hydrolysis) and the fact that ribozymes have not been shown to be capable of complete self-replication. 

A Physical Limitation

Indeed, on this latter point, when RNA forms complementary base pairs to fold back on itself, part of the molecule no longer presents an exposed strand that can serve as a template for copying. Thus, there is a physical limitation on the capability of RNA to self-replicate.

Another problem that has not received as much attention is the problem of replication fidelity. What do I mean by this? An important requirement of life is a means of minimally accurate self-replication. Biologist Jack Szostak explains that “In order for RNA to have emerged as the genetic polymer that enabled protocells to evolve in a Darwinian manner, the process of RNA replication must have been accurate enough to allow for the transmission of useful information from generation to generation, indefinitely.”1 Indeed, as biochemist Sy Garte observes, when the replication fidelity falls below a certain threshold, “modern organisms undergo an error catastrophe from which they cannot recover, as has been shown in the cases of viruses, aging, in evolution and in macromolecular replication in early life.”2 Viruses, particularly RNA viruses, are close to this critical threshold, with approximately one mutation per replication — and, in fact, increasing the rate of mutations to result in an error catastrophe has been proposed as an anti-viral strategy.

Read more

by Yishan Wong

(Fast Company) On stage last week during Climate Week in New York, Bill Gates said planting trees as a key solution to tackling climate change was “complete nonsense” and that view must be held by “idiots,” not “science people.”

But when confronted with big problems, even smart people have a tendency to dismiss great solutions out of hand if they encounter just a couple issues with them, rather than taking the time to think more deeply.

Bill Gates comes from a lifetime of success in the technology world.  But could that have affected his ability to give trees a fair shake?  

I’m the CEO of Terraformation, a company dedicated to restoring the world’s forests to revive ecosystems and build thriving communities. With over 50 million seeds stored across our global seed bank network, we’ve facilitated the planting of over 850,000 biodiverse trees and plants and created nearly 700 jobs worldwide—more than half of which are held by women. Our Seed to Carbon Forest Accelerator continuously launches early-stage forestry teams to build and scale biodiverse reforestation projects worldwide. 

Read more

Federal bill H.R. 4141 is the new pro-wireless industry bill introduced in Congress. This bill aims to eliminate key environmental and historic preservation safeguards required by the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, which are designed to protect people and the environment.

In addition to the health, privacy and safety risks, wireless technology harms our natural environment. A growing body of science demonstrates these harms to plants, animals, insects, bacteria, and the atmosphere, including:

• Biological damage, adverse effects on growth rate and shorter life spans in plants;
• Irreversible infertility, increased mortality rates and altered genetic expression in the brain in animals;

Read more