Happy Earth Day, my dears. We love our lovely little planet, and we love clean water, lush forests, wetlands, and wild habitats. What does our stewardship of the planet and each other say about us? It’s all about the love.
earth::mother
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Tag Archives: alternative energy
we are the people
give me water
there is something very compelling about something so simple as water. get enough of it? take if for granted? watch this vid and change your mind about water. forever.
tote your own bag
Living green can be an intensely personal decision. . .or it can gain such momentum socially that it actually moves into legislation. The state of California is considering oulawing plastic bags. It’s become a status symbol to be seen toting your own canvas or other upcycled bag into the store, and why not? As consumers we have the choice to affect not just our own small corner of the world, but the entire planet. Is that hubris? It is what it is.
don’t reuse that water bottle
Dear Water Bottle, We’ve had a beautiful romance, but I’m breaking up with you. It’s simple, really: I’ve learned that you’re a slow poison, and that just doesn’t work for me. In my quest to compost and recycle more I have been studying the various plastics in my life, which until now, I’ve considered a convenience. Well, an evil convenience, but still. Oh Plastic, you have made my life easier, but the fact remains that when the landfills are overloaded and when the Pacific Island of Trash manages finally to put us in a collective gasping choke-hold, I will have no one to blame but myself.
Here are five everyday plastics and why I need to rethink them:
#1 : The most commonly used plastic and can be found in microwavable food trays, water and juice bottles. This plastic absorbs bacteria and should not be reused.
#2: A stiff plastic used in toys, plastic lumber, picnic tables, detergent, household cleaner and shampoo bottles. This plastic is nearly neutral and can be recycled to make detergent bottles, floor tiles, pens.
#3: PVC is a soft, flexible plastic used to make teething rings, toys, cooking oil bottles clear food packaging, mouthwash bottles. Sometimes called “the poison plastic,” it contains phalates that interfere with hormonal development.
#6: Polystyrene is used to make disposable cups and plates, egg cartons, take-out containers. This material leaches styrene, a carcinogen, into food (especially when microwaved) and should be avoided.
#7: Polycarbonates are used to make baby bottles, sippy cups, three and five gallon water jugs. Contains bisphenol (BPA), which migrate especially if heated, and has been linked to heart disease. BPA, is a xenoestrogen, a known ednocrine disruptor.
So you see Water Bottle, it’s over. You and your extended family are simply toxic and I’m done with you. Now that I know, I will recycle your ilk whenever possible and avoid the worst of you when I can.
Ciao, baby.
Summer Solstice Reboot
Here Comes the Sun
For years, people prayed to the sun, thinking it was an actual God and the source of their abundance. Without the sun, earth was a dark and dismal place. Witness the endless winter caused by Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, who withdrew her gifts from the earth because her daughter, Persephone was imprisoned underground with Hades, god of the underworld. Clearly, winter wasn’t all Demeter’s doing. Apollo, the sun god of the Ancient Greeks, the bringer of light to the earth and the one who told Demeter about Hades’ kidnapping of Persephone, had to be involved. Without him, crops didn’t ripen and the earth didn’t warm. While Apollo still took to the skies every winter morning, his solar beneficence waned on those dark days as he streaked across in his gilded, horse-drawn chariot. Sometimes circumstantial evidence is all you have. READ MORE HERE…
finalmente
OIL IN WATER
Pam Lazos
Chapter Eighty-Two
Four months later, Gil, Avery, Kori and Hart walked the perimeter of a building inside the Philadelphia Naval Business Center. After careful deliberation, Hart had decided not to use Akanabi’s existing plant, but to build fresh. Hart walked slowly, surveying the area, while the Tirabi children followed him like sheep behind the shepard.
“I’ve got the contractors lined up. We’ll start construction next week. We’ll have to sequester the blue prints. No one gets a full set. Just bits and pieces. Enough to keep them working on their part.”
“But we already have a patent,” Gil said.
“That we do,” Hart said. He winked at Avery who blushed. Avery’s endless hours at the library had paid off several days earlier with the arrival of the official seal of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
“We have affirmative rights,” Avery said to Gil. “but that doesn’t mean somebody couldn’t steal the idea, or maybe improve on it and get their own patent. Even if they incorporate it wholesale, we’d still have to sue them to get them to stop.”
Hart turned to Kori. “I’ll need Gil to take a little time off from school. He’ll have to be on the floor while we’re in the construction phase just to trouble shoot.”
Kori scowled at Hart, exuding denial.
“I’ll get him a tutor,” Hart said. He walked over and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “It’ll be alright. I promise.” Kori nodded and relaxed a bit.
“Can we have ice cream?” Gil asked.
Kori checked her watch. “It’s only 11:00 o’clock.”
“I know,” Gil said. “But I’m hungry.”
“Tell you what. Let’s go down to 9 th and Catherine. There’s a little deli called Sarcone’s . They make the best hoagies you ever ate. It’s all in the bread. They got a veggie one – spinach and roasted peppers.” Gil turned up his nose and looked the other way. “You gotta try it. If you don’t like it, we’ll go to Geno’s and get you a cheesesteak.”
“But I want ice cream,” Gil said.
“Ah, but you didn’t let me finish. Afterwards we’ll go to John’s and get the best water ice you ever tasted.”
“Like Rita’s Water Ice?
“Rita? Never heard of her. But I can assure you, Rita don’t know nothin’ about nothin’ when it comes to water ice. I’m tellin’ ya’. This is the stuff.”
“Okay, but I want half kiwi-strawberry, half mango.”
“You got four flavors. Chocolate, cherry, pineapple and lemon. They may have added one in the last twenty years, I don’t know, but if they did, it won’t be kiwi-strawberry,” Hart said.
Gil frowned. “Whatever. Can we go now? I’m starving.”
“Why am I not shocked,” Avery said, following Hart out.
Gil stole a last glance around the deserted floor and ran to catch up.
➣➣➣
Hart started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
“Estimated time of arrival, sixteen minutes,” Hart said. Avery sat next to him in the front seat, Gil and Kori in the back.
“I don’t think I can wait sixteen minutes,” Gil said. “I’m so hungry, my stomach is soon going to eat the rest of me. I’m also thirsty.” Gil made notes in the blue folder on his lap, his head bowed in concentration.
“Why didn’t anyone remember to bring snacks and libations for this child?” Hart kidded Kori.
Kori rolled her eyes and rummaged around in her purse, coming up with an old, yet edible peppermint which she handed to Gil. Gil tried ripping the paper off, but it had melted on in sections and the job was too tedious. He handed the mint back to Kori who yanked it out of his hand.
“Can’t you do anything yourself?” she asked, picking lint and other sundries previously living in the bottom of her purse off the stale, hard candy. Gil shook his head. When the mint was wrapper-free, she handed it to Gil. He popped it in his mouth and crunched it to bits within seconds, then looked again at his sister.
“That was it. I don’t have anymore,” she said.
Gil went back to his notebook. Several minutes later, he raised his head, capped the pen and closed the folder. “Hey, Hart?” Gil said.
“Yo.”
“Did you ever hear about the Zero Point Field?”
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to fill me in,” Hart said. Gil smiled and looked at Avery before grabbing Kori’s purse.
“Hey, you little brat,” she said, but made no effort to retrieve it. Gil began routing around, looking for more candy.
“The Zero Point Field is a constant backdrop in all physics equations. The theory is well known,” Avery said, “but not in the way Gil is working on it. Because it’s a constant, it used to be something that physicists subtracted out of everything.”
Gil found another peppermint, this one more tattered than the first. He handed the peppermint to Kori and she peeled the plastic off in strips. He grabbed it from her outstretched hand, picked off the last few pieces of lint, and chomped it up as quickly as the first one.
“But for the last thirty or forty years, a few pioneers have been tinkering with the idea that there’s more to the Field than the need to remove it from a few equations,” Avery said. “Some of the brave ones have begun a series of experiments, mostly in isolation. Collectively, their work points to a phenomenal result. It turns out that the Zero Point Field, what used to be thought of as empty space, is this massive, cohesive unit of energy that runs through everything , not only on the planet, but in the entire universe.”
Gil licked the sticky peppermint off his fingers. “Anything can happen in the Field” he said. “That’s why sometimes they call it the Zero Point Field of All Possibility.”
“Sounds like science fiction,” Hart said.
“Yeah,” Gil said. “Did you ever see on Star Trek when they heal somebody without medicine and without surgery? They were tapping into the Field.” Hart laughed out loud and Gil blushed.
“He’s not kidding. The Field will make our ideas of modern medicine obsolete,” Avery said.
“If you get shot or a tiger bites your arm off and you want somebody to reattach it then you’ll still need a doctor,” Gil added.
“Yeah, but not for the stuff like cancer or arthritis or Alzheimer’s,” Avery said. “You won’t need to take drugs.”
“Yeah, because you can just go back in time to the “seed moment” and fix it before it gets to be a problem,” Gil said. He stuck his hand in Kori’s purse and fished around for more candy. She yanked it away.
“Enough,” she said.
“What’s a seed moment?” Hart asked.
“Well, these physicists who are studying the Field say it’s the time of the conception of a disease. Or actually, the exact moment before when all the pathways are coalescing to form what will become the disease.”
“And you’re saying you can go back in time and cure it even before it manifests itself just by accessing this mysterious Field,” Hart asked. Gil nodded.
Hart mulled this information over for a moment before speaking: “What if it wasn’t a disease, but an accident. Could you change it then?”
Avery looked at Gil who shrugged.
“Does it involve more than one person?” Gil asked.
“Yeah,” said Hart.
Gil thumbed through his folder and rubbed his chin just like his father used to do. After a minute he closed the folder. “Too many variables,” Gil said. “You can talk to God, but you can’t have his job.”
Hart’s expression sank as he exited the highway. Gil caught Hart’s eye in the rear view mirror and smiled, forcing Hart to do the same. Hart shrugged.
“Anyway….” Gil handed Kori the blue folder. On the cover, in large type it read: “Plans to Solve the World’s Health and Energy Problems Using the Zero Point Field, ” by Gil Tirabi. At the bottom of the page in smaller type it read: “ I give this five stars.”
Kori read the cover and turned to stare at her brother. “You – are kidding me. You never gave anything five stars.” Kori flipped through the folder. “What? Did you prove the existence of God or something?”
“Something,” Gil agreed. He fidgeted in his seat and made a goofy face, one that belied the intelligence lurking beneath.
Kori dropped the folder on the seat next to Hart who at present was maneuvering deftly around a car double-parked in the driving lane. He cast his eyes down to the folder lying next to him and read the title. He looked at Gil in the rearview mirror.
“Are you serious? Because if this is true, Gil, we better hire some better security, and pronto.”
“Well,” Gil said, “maybe you should start interviewing.”
THE END
earth day (g)
For thousands of years, we’ve used and reused the same water as the dinosaurs, Galileo, Genghis Kahn, and Jesus. Until now. Now the water is chock full of contaminants that the ancients didn’t even know how to pronounce. That’s because Mama Nature doesn’t know how to remove radionuclides, usually held safely within the earth’s crust, and other chemicals found in the fracking wastewater that’s slowly making its way into Her rivers, lakes, and streams. Until now, we’d been sipping the same stuff as Adam and Eve. Until now.
Enjoy an excerpt from THE QUALITY OF LIGHT:
She died that night. Doc attended the funeral along with dozens and dozens of ranchers and their families all come to pay their respects to this great woman, one of the “stickers” whose family had come in the late-1800s during the first boom and bust era of timbering and mining and oil and construction and who had stayed on to make a living. They worked the land for what it would produce – cattle. So when the time came and they asked if anyone wanted to say anything on behalf of this fine woman, Doc’s hand raised itself, his body stood up, and he took over the funeral.
“Twila’s great-grandfather was thrilled when the first oil men knocked on his door with a check and a promise. They may not have tamed the harsh out of the land, but at least they made it more hospitable. They built roads and paid well, and the ranchers loved them. That was the heyday when oil flowed like free love out of those great big underground reservoirs. Sweet gas, they called it. Back then a whisper could’ve coaxed that oil out of the ground.” To read more of this post, click here…
earth day (b)
“Brightest New Mexico. In the vivid light each rock and tree and cloud and mountain existed with a kind of force and clarity that seemed not natural but supernatural.”
So does Fire on the Mountain begin with Billy’s view of this rugged land, this “country of dreams.” Billy’s mother has no love for the ranch, but for Billy, like his grandfather, the place is in his DNA. Billy’s barely accustomed to the rhythms of his long awaited vacation when the summer turns sour. One of Vogelin’s horses has gone missing. They later find him dead under mysterious conditions high up along the mountain trail. Vogelin’s suspicions about the identity of the perpetrator are confirmed when the Air Force lawyer arrives soon after. The U.S. government wants Vogelin’s land since it sits . . .READ MORE HERE
kali calling
Kali called; she wants her Gaia back. She’ll do what it takes, so strap on your Teflon pantyhose honey. Even if we stop abusing the planet now, she’s already warmed up and the punch she’s packing is gonna be a gobsmacker. Here are a few fun facts about changing weather patterns that might just be relevant:
Fact: While global temperature has increased about 1.4% over the last millennium, we are currently heading toward an unthinkable rise of between 2 and 12 degrees by the year 2100.
Fact: An increase of 2 degrees F will result in a 5-15% crop reduction; 3-10% increase in rainfall during heavy rainfall events (increasing flooding risk); a 5-10% decrease in stream flow in some river basins; and a 200-400% increase in wildfires.
Fact: Experiencing extra snowy winters doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real. Rather, the increased water vapor in the atmosphere results in increased precipitation, a Catch 22.
Fact: In the last millennium and a half, global sea level has risen about 9 inches and is expected to rise 1.5 to 3 feet by 2100. The increase in sea level will force coastal dwellers from their homes, maybe permanently, and if that happens, what the heck will it do to Manhattan?
persephone's step-sisters 