poster by C.S Neal

Wondering if your neighborhood farmers market measures up?

According to our friends at The Daily Green "The top 12 farmers markets in the country are for more than just picking up produce. At these big markets, you'll find cooking classes, festivals and live music, along with dozens of vendors selling fresh local produce. All those extras make them hot spots for the both locals and visitors who want a taste (literally and figuratively) of the local scene."

By Gloria Dawson

Just One Thing: Green Your Halloween Costume
Group Green Halloween Says Swapping Costumes Helps Environment, Reduces Waste

"For Halloween this year, your child doesn't have to dress up as Captain Planet to help the environment.

According to the group Green Halloween, if half the kids in the U.S. who celebrate Halloween swapped costumes, rather than buying new ones, the nation's annual landfill waste would be reduced by 6,250 tons. That's about the weight of 2,500 mid-size cars."

Green Halloween is a non-profit, grassroots community initiative to create healthier and more Earth-friendly holidays, starting with Halloween. It began in the Seattle area in 2007 with backers such as Whole Foods Market and was such a huge success that in 2008, the initiative expanded nation-wide. In cities across the country, volunteer coordinators are turning their city’s Halloween holiday healthy and eco-friendly, but many are also raising money for their own, local nonprofit beneficiaries via the initiative.

For more information click HERE.

"What would it mean to us if the spring-bringers stopped arriving?" Would it be like losing rainbows? Michael McCarthy wonders, or roses or hope or music? It's a new tactic -- asking us to imagine our world without the species, sounds and smells we take for granted. And it works. A sense of wonder is replaced with a strange hollow feeling -- one part guilt, one part regret and one part denial.

McCarthy set out to "locate the deeper meanings birds may have . . . to the human imagination, a field of study which is just beginning to emerge and has been tentatively labeled bioculture." He begins in Africa, with the migration each year of 16 million birds to Britain. He describes the various routes, the "fantastic traffic" and the particularly stunning tenacity of some species. He sees the sense of wonder in his son's eyes when he hears the song of the nightingale for the first time. He describes the journeys, songs and preferred habitats of sedge warblers, turtle doves and many others. He wanders among hawthorn hedges in mid-May, describes the two-note call of the cuckoo that heralds spring and weaves through the works of philosophers, composers and artists before landing in a place barren of possibility: the future.

"On every continent," he quotes a report from BirdLife International, "species which have always been familiar and taken for granted are steadily dropping in numbers."

Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo: Migratory Birds and the Impending Ecological Catastrophe

Book now and save over Thanksgiving weekend!

For a limited time, The Ambrose is pleased to offer a 30% discount on guest room reservations arriving between Wednesday, November 24 and Sunday, November 28. We look forward to celebrating the holiday with you in Santa Monica! (Promotional rate is non-refundable and non-transferrable. No minimum stay required). BOOK NOW!