You Have Already Arrived
People tend to recognize that “living in the past” distracts people from finding happiness in their lives. In much the same way, “living in the future” can also distract people from finding happiness in their lives. When we focus on reaching out for things that existed in the past – or that may or may not exist in the future – we risk missing out on beautiful things that surround us right now. Every life is a journey, and each moment is its own destination. You have already arrived.
If You Died Right Now
I saw a bumper sticker today that asked “if you died right now would you go to heaven or hell?” My simple answer: no.
Cancer Protein ‘Can Be Disarmed’
Interesting health news: BBC News reports today that “cancer protein ‘can be disarmed.’ Scientists have found a way to disarm a protein thought to play a key role in leukaemia and other cancers… The protein [referred to as "Notch"] is one of the body’s transcription factors, which turn genes on or off and set in motion genetic cascades that control how cells grow and develop. They also help fuel the growth of tumours.”
Cancer is one of the two most frequent causes of death in the United States, so eliminating cancer is a wonderful goal. I worry though that research like this treats the symptom rather than the cause. This type of therapy allows the cause of the cancer to continue unabated, allowing the number of cancer patients to remain constant rather than decline. What will potentially be caused is an increase in the number of cancer survivors, which of course is good. While preventing the spread of cancer within a patient’s body is admirable, preventing someone from becoming a cancer patient in the first place is an even better idea.
If there was still lead in drinking water and asbestos in building material we could use the therapy described above to treat the cancer cases and could then continue to use lead and asbestos. The root cause of the cancer would not be addressed. People would continue to get sick and would be treated. Problem solved?
A cure for cancer does not involve gene therapy to build our resistance, or to weaken cancer’s ability to spread. A cure for cancer involves us changing the conditions that lead to our developing the disease. This usually means changes in industry, changes in environmental policies and practices, and changes in diet. As individuals we ourselves therefore have a huge amount of control over our own cures for cancer. It is only a matter of change.
Autumn’s Colors
A nice audio slideshow found on the BBC this morning. It doesn’t feel like Autumn here in central Arizona, so this is a nice reminder that odd concepts such as seasons still exist elsewhere. Excerpts from The Autumn, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, read by Peter Donaldson; excerpts from Autumn, by John Clare, read by Charlotte Green.
Imagination
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Building Fertile Soil
Arizona desert soil doesn’t have many nutrients, is heavily alkaline, and is hard clay caliche. This makes it difficult to grow the things that most people like to eat. For sixty years or so our modern solution has been to truck food here from other places, or to grow it here using dangerous chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. For centuries prior to that we were able to grow food here in central Arizona by cooperating with nature rather than hopelessly trying to control it.
In order to grow food here you need soil that will sustain more than saguaro and tumble weeds. An easy way to build that soil is a layering technique called lasagna gardening. People in cooler climates can do this above ground, but here in Arizona we know that raised garden beds dry out quickly in our intense heat. This spring I cordoned off about a third of the back yard and over the next several months dug out six garden beds.
Bed One: 40′ long x 2′ wide x 3′ deep
Beds Two and Three: 17′ x 3′9″ x 3′
Bed Four: 17′ x 3′9″ x 2′
Bed Five: 5′ x 3′9″ x 3′
Bed Six: 5′ x 3′9″ x 2′
The strange width of 3′9″ for most of the beds came about simply because I used a broken broom handle to measure out the yard before digging. It was very handy to lay that on the ground, make a few cuts with the shovel, and move it along. The walkways between the beds are also 3′9″ wide.
All the hard clay caliche earth was dug out by softening it with water then digging it out with a hand shovel. This has been a long, slow, difficult process, and gave me tremendous respect for the Native Americans and pioneer farmers who worked this land before me. I piled the earth I dug out onto the walkway spaces between the beds, which raised the walkways and will cause rain (yes, someday it will rain) to roll down into the beds. Some of the caliche was also used to create a sloping berm (see upper left of photo) which runs the length of the 40′ bed. This will catch rain too, but it also serves as a deterrent for our dog. I don’t need her assistance either digging or fertilizing!
You may be able to see some tree leaves poking out of one of the beds to the right of the photo; that’s where I’m composting tree trimmings from the front yard. In another bed I’m composting waste from our rabbit friend. In two separate bins I’m composting kitchen waste (we’re vegan so all the kitchen waste – except anything not organic – is very earth friendly).
I’m in the process now of building new soil in two of the beds using the “lasagna” technique. This process has begun in the bed at the front of this photo and the one to the left of the tree. Once they are productive I’ll then have more mulch and compost to use for building soil in the other beds – and the building soil cycle will continue.
This much planting space should allow me to grow a lot, so we hope to be canning and freezing large quantities, rather than traveling to the store and buying large quantities in plastic bags.
It’s Never Too Late For A Picnic
It doesn’t seem like autumn at all, except for that unique sepia tint to the light in the sky. The weather today was beautiful and sunny; the temperature hit 86F / 30C degrees, and I spent a great deal of time working outside. Did we change hemispheres?
An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle
In Medieval Europe, politics often involved a monarchy that controlled their territory through agreements with regional warrior nobility, who then controlled the local people. The warrior nobility lived in castles and took elaborate steps to protect themselves from competing warrior nobility, from the local people in case they might rise against them, and even from the monarch. The only safe place for the warrior nobles was inside their castles; the warrior noble could do as he pleased in his own castle, and entering it uninvited was considered a potential act of war.
There was a large income disparity between warrior nobility and the local people (peasants, serfs, etc). Writings from the late 1500s indicated the common belief the everyone’s home was in effect their castle; people were free to live without the constant watch of the warrior nobles in their own home (no matter its size) and entering uninvited was not to be done. In his 1581 work “The Stage of Popish Toyes: conteining both tragicall and comicall partes” Henri Estienne states that “youre house is youre Castell.” In the same year, Richard Mulcaster wrote in “Positions, which are necessarie for the training up of children” that “He (the householder) is the appointer of his owne circumstance, and his house is his castle.” Within your home, you have the right to expect privacy.
In 1604 the “castle” terminology was first written into law by Sir Edward Coke, then the Attorney General of England. Sir Edward wrote in Semayne’s Case (77 Eng. Rep. 194; 5 Co. Rep. 91) that “the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose.” He added “in all cases when the King is party, the sheriff may break the party’s house, either to arrest him, or to do other execution of the K(ing)’s process, if otherwise he cannot enter. But before he breaks it, he ought to signify the cause of his coming, and to make request to open doors.”
Sir Edward Coke’s writing in Semayne’s Case became an important factor in English law, and its concepts later became the basis of the knock-and-announce principle in American law and more importantly of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fourth Amendment states “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” There is no King or warrior noble now; in America the federal government or its agencies should not invade your home or your privacy without probable cause and without a warrant.
The Fourth Amendment was one of the Bill of Rights, written by James Madison in 1789 and passed into law in 1791. At that time a primary concern of warrants and seizures in the colonies had been the home invasions and seizing of colonists’ property by British government tax collectors. In the mid 1700s this had been a huge problem, and in 1761 a five hour court petition by James Otis Jr. passionately denouncing British government and government agent practices made him such a hero that he was later elected to the Massachusetts General Assembly. John Adams was in the room at the time and concurred with Otis, labeling the events Otis described “as the spark in which originated the American Revolution.” Later, with the revolution finally won, an American’s home would be his or her castle too, and Americans would have the right to expect privacy when inside their homes.
Two hundred years later America still has the Fourth Amendment, but it is being interpreted in entirely new ways. Kings, warrior nobles, tax collectors or government agencies no longer have to knock down your door in order to invade your castle. Instead, they record your internet traffic, list your credit card purchases, tape your telephone calls, copy your bank records, and film and photograph you day and night. “Reasonable search” and “probable cause” are also open to interpretation. On October 28, 2009 the New York Times quoted Valerie Caproni, the F.B.I.’s general counsel as stating “Those who say the F.B.I. should not collect information on a person or group unless there is a specific reason to suspect that the target is up to no good seriously miss the mark… The F.B.I. has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security — not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.” In other words, investigate everyone until you find someone suspicious.
This is the nature of the Patriot Act, which was signed into law on October 26th, 2001 by George W. Bush. This legislation was rushed through Congress in the six weeks immediately following 9/11 and was passed though some Senators and Representatives openly admitted having not read it. Such was the need at that moment to quickly do something, anything to heal.
What happened on 9/11 was so counter-intuitive that our normal emergency responses might not have been effective. We knew how to address the immediate impact, but were confused by the twisted minds of those who had caused the event. How could we bring justice? As people tried to figure this out some action taken was heroic, and other action was ineffective and occasionally contemptible. In hindsight the spirit of Patriot Act is admirable and gives greater power to those who are supposed to protect us. The Patriot Act clearly allows liberties to be trampled though. Denying the liberties of American people in order to protect the liberties of American people makes no sense whatsoever. Liberty is not a three dimensional object; it is not something that can be cordoned off and stored in a secure facility while criminals are caught. Liberty is a concept, is lived as an experience, and is expressed through actions. Liberty comes with risks. It sounded risky to King George III, who used his military against American colonists, and it sounded risky to George W. Bush, who in signing the Patriot Act began to use the FBI and other government agencies against American citizens.
The USA Patriot Act is still law now, and has come back into the news again because the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide has been made public. This Guide shows us the criteria the FBI uses to determine which Americans should be considered potential suspects, and therefore targets for spying. Originally, reasonable suspicion and a warrant were necessary in order to invade the home of a suspect. Now, the FBI appears to be suspicious of all Americans, and warrants may or may not even be needed for the spying to begin.
It has now been eight years since 9/11, and eight years since the Patriot Act began formally allowing for our privacy to be invaded. My sincere hope is that our newly elected officials will revise the Patriot Act so that it respects the liberties guaranteed to American citizens in our Constitution. My gut feeling though is that after eight years of invading our castles, our government is highly unlikely to pull its eyes and ears out of our bank accounts and bedrooms and every single other nook and cranny of what we thought were our personal lives.
Beating Cancers, Step One: Eliminate Animal Milk
For years the animal milk industry has told us that milk is good for us. This was because one ingredient, calcium, is required by our bodies. What the milk industry has never explained is what all the rest of the ingredients in animal milk do to our bodies. Numerous studies, including ones conducted by the animal milk industry, have shown a direct link between consumption of animal milk products and a loss of bone density, not a strengthening of them. There goes the number one selling point, so what’s left? Maybe habit, and the investment of industry. Consumption of animal milk has also been linked to heart disease, cancers, obesity, allergies, diabetes, and other health conditions though, so like stopping smoking, it’s time we began asking ourselves why we are letting advertisements run our lives. Why are we doing this to our bodies, to the environment, and certainly to the animals themselves? Consumption of animal milk has been linked directly to breast cancer, ovarian cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. Here’s a recent press release from the chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. Smoking doesn’t kill you immediately; it’s a slow painful death. Despite this knowledge people find it difficult to quit because they’re addicted. Consumption of animal milk has also been linked to health risks and terminal disease, but in this case quitting is much easier: there’s no addiction to break, only habits. Now almost all markets have products such as almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, oat milk, or others that come in a wide variety of flavors (yes, chocolate too!) and can be used in coffee, on cereal, in recipes, in baking, in anything just like the animal milk we grew up with.
Our parents’ generation smoked, but our generation learned better. Our parents’ generation drank animal milk, but our generation learned better.
Greener, Healthier, More Compassionate Workplaces
The managers in most businesses are always looking for ways to become more productive and more profitable. There’s always some procedure being changed or some new tool being used, but these changes are almost always designed to have an immediate and direct impact on short term financial targets. Rarely do managers consider other costs that the business may be incurring. For example, what might the cost-benefit analysis be of addressing employee healthcare proactively rather than reactively? What might the cost-benefit analysis be of addressing not just the workplace environment, but the overall impact of the business on the global environment? Small changes can occasionally make big differences in these areas, but traditional business models don’t train managers to think this way. “Changing a workplace” sounds like a huge task, but like Henry Ford taught the world, when taken in small steps great things can be accomplished.
This video is a excerpt of an interview with Alicia Silverstone in which she speaks about taking her vegan ethics to the workplace. Her points are all well-taken, but her mind is darting all over the place, to the point that I’m not sure if she actually completed more than a handful of sentences. I absolutely understand both the frustrations and the joys she has faced as a vegan in the workplace. It’s disappointing to see your coworkers and the company make decisions that negatively impact personal and environmental health when other options are available. On the other hand, it’s great to share in people’s discovery of healthier, more compassionate alternatives that end up being less expensive too.
Sugary Foods Linked to Hypertension, High Blood Pressure
Added sugars are in a vast array of American processed foods and drinks. Particularly since the government began subsidizing the production of corn, high fructose corn syrup (and a variety of other corn derivatives) is in a large variety of foods and drinks. FoodQualityNews.com reports that “a study presented at the American Society of Nephrology’s Annual Meeting in San Diego last week” found “high fructose intake in the form of added sugars is significantly and independently associated with higher blood pressure levels in the US adult population with no previous history of hypertension.”
This does not mean that all these added sugars are directly responsible for high blood pressure, but there appears to be an undeniable scientific link between the two.
We should expect scientists to spend years studying this, and the food industry to spend millions of dollars refuting the science. In the mean time, do your family a favor by consuming more fresh whole foods, fewer processed foods, and fewer sugary beverages.
Time For A Surgeon General Warning Label
Likely due in part to the number of recent meat recalls US senators are concerned that the American meat industry is not following guidelines meant to help ensure public safety. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has proposed an E.coli testing bill. The industry news website MeatProcess.com reports:
“The New York Senator last week tabled a bill to overhaul the US food safety system – calling the clause to oblige mandatory testing for E.coli in ground beef the cornerstone of the legislation. There is currently no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for E. coli, she added.
“The new legislation that would require all plants that process ground beef to test their products regularly before it is ground and again before it is combined with other beef or ingredients, such as spices, and packaged. If ground beef is found to be contaminated, the bill requires the company to properly dispose of the contaminated batch, or cook the meat to a temperature that destroys the E.coli.
“An industry-wide sampling of all ground beef produced, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service in 2009 found that nearly one in every 300 samples of ground beef was contaminated with E.coli, said Gillibrand.
“Ground beef is especially vulnerable to E.coli because its source material is not from a single cut of meat but from a compilation of trimmings from many parts, including fat that lies near the surface of possibly contaminated hide.”
Of course there’s a simpler way to avoid contracting E.coli from infected meat: simply don’t eat meat products at all. That also greatly reduces the risk of developing a wide range of other health issues, including heart disease, many types of cancers, and obesity. People do not need to eat meat to live; just the opposite is true: eating meat speeds people’s death.
Vulnerable: Maldives
Maldives must be one of the most beautiful countries imaginable; lush tropical islands in crystal clear waters, inhabited by welcoming and friendly people. Unfortunately this wonderful place is at great risk of being consumed by the ocean, not due to earth quakes or tsunamis, but rather due to global warming.
This is the very real impact of our abuse of the environment. Because we burn coal in electric plants, burn oil in vehicles, factory farm animals, and perform a host of other environmental catastrophes, global warming is causing polar ice caps to melt and therefore sea levels to rise. The Maldives have an average ground level of just 1.5 meters above sea level, so are quite literally losing ground as you read this.
This is an emergency. The time to change our ways has come. People are counting on us. To see their faces, their homes, and other wonderful photographs of this vanishing paradise visit Maldives In Still Mode.
350 Is Still Too Much
It was wonderful to see thousands of people from countries all over the world participate in yesterday’s international day of climate action. Yesterday’s blog post was a part of that, as were posts on thousands of other blogs; letters to editors, letters to politicians, action in city streets, and action in on remote mountains all made this event the largest coordinated environmental action in history. It received considerable worldwide media coverage; in this country stories appeared in newspapers such as the New York Times, and even places you might not expect, such as the entertainment outlets Fox News and CNN.
Now comes the critical part: remembering to focus on the present moment.
October 24th marked an amazing effort to raise awareness, and to show the world’s politicians who will attend the meetings in Copenhagen that the world’s people support immediate and strong measures to address global climate change. The mission though is not accomplished. Earth’s climate continues to degrade, and we, Earth’s people, continue to work busily towards our own extinction. Today is October 25th. What do we do?
Perhaps there is no march scheduled in your town today. There may be no public forum for you to attend. What do we do?
Here are some ideas to get you started:
Join the League of Conservation Voters:
Then contact your elected officials and explain to them how important it is to you that they vote pro-environment.
Go organic:
Stop eating all those cancer-causing and earth-destroying chemicals that are sprayed on our food while it grows and mixed into it while it is processed.
Compost:
The EPA says “Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 24 percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. That’s a lot of waste to send to landfills when it could become useful and environmentally beneficial compost instead!”
Take re-usable canvas bags to the mall and to the grocery store:
This is a no-brainer. And while you’re at it, write to your mayor and tell him that plastic bags should be banned in your town. After all, if a city the size of San Francisco can do it, surely your town can too.
I’d Like To Commute Less
“On average, each American spends the equivalent of 42 workdays every year stuck behind the wheel of a car. Suburban moms spend more time driving than they do feeding, bathing or otherwise caring for their children. That’s because we as a nation have been spreading out rapidly and often irrationally with new land development during the past half-century, on the assumption that gasoline will always be plentiful and cheap.” Fascinating but sad lifestyle facts from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
My own commute to and from work accounts for much more time than I would like. No one is paid for their time spent getting to work, and that time is essentially wasted, unproductive, sitting in a metal box, polluting the atmosphere. There are many days that the air over Phoenix looks dirty, and our tens of thousands of cars and trucks are a major part of this. Phoenix now has a wonderful light rail system, which helps take some cars off the roads. The light rail lines have to be expanded in a big way though in order to have the type of ridership that will truly help address some of the negative environmental impacts of urban sprawl.
Expanding light rail will require billions of dollars and many years of work. In the mean time, the highways are being widened and expanded – easing things for more cars. Much of the work is being done in outlaying sprawl areas though, so all the downtown bottlenecks (like the one seen above) will still exist. The current highway expansion work will simply allow a greater number of cars from the sprawl areas to arrive to the downtown bottleneck together.
The NRDC article linked above highlights Smart Growth neighborhoods, an alternative to urban sprawl. Smart Growth neighborhoods are designed much like communities were many years ago, with a central core of businesses that provide jobs, shopping, and essential services. This means that many residents would not be required to make a daily commute outside of their local area. The idea of a five minute commute sounds really nice.
This idea is not new to Arizona at all; architect Paolo Soleri and his colleagues have spent decades building Arcosanti, a wonderful community in the desert just north of here. This is an architecture experiment though and not residences. More approachable for families perhaps is Verrado, a community of attractive homes on the outskirts of Phoenix. It was built around a small core of businesses and also allows some degree of reduced commuting.
If my job allowed it I would much prefer to telecommute. Imagine not only the reduced environmental footprint, but also the money saved by me in car-related expense and by my employer in facility-related expense. Quite honestly, to be able to control my work environment (i.e. to be able to concentrate in peace and quiet) I anticipate would also benefit my productivity enormously.
Taking a bigger picture view of our place in the world means looking beyond our job. We need to also consider the impact on the environment of all aspects of our job, such as our commutes, the the supplies used, the products offered, the marketing, the operations, the billing, etc. It is highly likely that there are things we can do to control costs in our companies that also mean less environmental degradation, like paperless billing for example. Now, about our commute…
350 Is Too Much
I once hiked across a glacier that straddled the border between Austria and Italy. The scenery was cold, stark and beautiful. The border was marked only by an empty wooden guard shack about the size of a telephone booth, but with a beautifully ornate roof. I stood near the guard shack for a moment, listening to the icy wind howl and watching fluffy clouds blow over the border from southern Austria into northern Italy, just like I was.
Funny thing, wind. It blows from city to city, country to country, over oceans and continents, from distant places to here, and from here to destinations unknown. Wind has no regard for borders, for what happens to be on the ground below, or for what it carries along: birds, balloons, snowflakes, storm clouds, smoke from barbecues, smoke from chemical factories, exhaust from cars, exhaust from lawn mowers, evaporation from lakes, evaporation from urine ponds at dairy farms. All this enters the air and travels around the world without a ticket or a passport. Not all of it stays in the air of course; some of it mixes with water in the atmosphere and showers down all over you as rain or sleet or snow. Much of what is in the air then waters the food we eat. It enters our water supply. It enters us.
I don’t think I want all that in my food, in my water, or in me. Corporate America has a wonderful environmental track record, and most American citizens are bicycle-commuting vegans, so I suppose this should be nothing to worry about.
Oh wait – I nearly forgot about wind not needing a passport though. This means that everything entering the air in, say, China for example, can be carried along on the wind and deposited here. That makes it harder for us to control the cleanliness of our air and environment in general. It also means that what we do here in consumer-driven America can have an absolutely devastating impact on other places in the world. Our selfish wasting of the earth’s resources can mean that people we have never met may face climate catastrophes before we do.
What doesn’t come down as acid rain – or acid sleet or acid snow – can rise above the cloud layer of our atmosphere. Being above the clouds sounds like it would be such a clean and untouched place, but over the years so many gases have risen up there that it has become very crowded. These gases that are crowding up there now are referred to as greenhouse gases, and there are so many of them up there now that two horrible things have happened. First, the overcrowding up there means that heat can’t escape from the earth, so our temperatures are slowly rising. This means, among other things, that our massive polar ice caps are melting. That’s a huge amount of ice, and when you melt all that into the ocean it means more water. More water in the oceans means that more land will be buried under water. This is happening as we speak. Second, the earth’s atmosphere is something like a balloon. All the overcrowding up there means that there is so much pressure on the balloon that it has popped several times and there are now holes in it. This is a big problem, because the balloon was our sunscreen. When there are holes in the sunscreen, more harmful UV rays get in that can damage us, other animals, and plants. They can also impact temperature change, melting those ice caps, and turning green areas into deserts.
Acid rain and greenhouse gases are different things with similar impacts, but they have one remarkable thing in common: their cause.
Us.
This is actually good news. Because we created the problem, we can also fix it. Our only real obstacles are getting past the lethargy of people who who can’t see past their television screens, getting past the greed of corporations who can’t see past their short term profits, and getting past the corruption of politicians who accept donations from those corporations. In other words, everyone wants to save the world, so this should be easy.
Let me ask you a question: doctors have established goals for our cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight. Do you know anyone who has exceeded any of those goals? I think I could name one or two people.
The fact is, exceeding those goals does not mean that the doctor’s patient dies immediately. There are two types of doctors: those that succumb to the prescription drug industry and simply tell the patient to address the issue with the industry’s drug. The patient will then likely end up taking the drug for many years, making wonderful profits for the drug company. Then there are the wise doctors who explain to the patient what life style habits likely led to the problem in the first place and can thus be changed in order to reverse it. In this way it may be possible to address the health issue with no drugs at all, or to take them for only a short time.
I bring up this point because addressing climate change is exactly the same. The majority of doctors are like the first one above, and the majority of people are waiting for some magic pill that will fix the environment. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way – not for our health, and not for the environment either.
The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Climate scientists set a health goal of 350 parts per million for earth that we have exceeded. We are currently at 387 ppm, and if this number continues to rise the impact will be devastating. Weather patterns will continue to shift; global temperature will continue to warm; coastal areas will flood; animals, including people, will be displaced; and some species may become extinct. The good news is that we can come down from 387 ppm – but there is no magic pill. We need to address the life style habits that led to the problem in the first place in order to reverse it.
Today is a very special day, a day for increased climate change awareness around the world, a day that more and more people are learning about the importance of returning the earth to CO2 levels below 350. Let’s be clear about this: every one of us has played a part in damaging the environment, so every one of us needs to change to a healthier lifestyle – one that not only helps reverse the damage, but also helps prevents future damage. Don’t let the news scare you; much of what we need to do is actually pretty easy. Visit 350.org for more information.
Just hours ago the BBC and their partner Rockhopper TV released the first episode of Hot Cities. It provides a fascinating look at Lagos, Nigeria, the city on which I focused much of my masters degree work. Lagos truly is a global leader, just perhaps from a different perspective than we normally see in Western media. It was also nice to see the direct connection made between our wasteful personal lifestyles or corporate practices, and the impacts these have on other areas around the world. Polluting the air in one city, for example, pollutes the world’s air, not just that city’s air, and as a result the impact of that pollution is felt worldwide. Let’s hope that this realization occurs to politicians before joining together for the coming climate talks in Copenhagen. You can view Hot Cities online here.
Maggie
For two days now I’ve made half as many breakfasts and dinners. It’s less work, takes less time, and is less expensive. If I were a corporation maybe I’d be happier about this increased productivity and lowered costs. Instead, I’m a person who just lost someone I considered a surrogate child.
I adopted Maggie when she was three years old. Her previous life had been less than happy; most people immediately focused on her scars, both physical and emotional. The agency I had adopted her from did not even diagnose her as being deaf, something I quickly came to realize. She and I learned to communicate though, and over the years she learned how to trust again. I set up a web site to both provide and collect information about her conditions and gathered responses from around the world. No one appeared to have documented what Maggie and I were learning together, so I wanted to ensure that others could benefit from our experience. Maggie found love in a wonderful partner, and it was a joy to see the two of them together. It was while she was with him that she was finally able to really come out of out of her defensive shell and relax. Her beauty and strength made our family complete for many years.
Maggie became ill several months ago and as a result was partially paralyzed. The disease spread, eventually immobilizing her. Her strength was called upon and seemed boundless; I provided hospice care, hand-feeding and cleaning her for weeks. On the evening of October 20th, as I stroked her cheek, Maggie passed away.
I am absolutely heartbroken.
I laid Maggie to rest in the back yard next to Spike and Chloe and under the tallest tree in the yard. I added some carrots, cilantro, apples, and a lock of my own hair so that we would always be together. It felt good to feed all the rabbits again for the first time in years. I apologized to Chloe for having only red apples; her favorite had always been green ones.
We now have a wonderful rabbit garden, and the neutrons, protons, and electrons that used to make what we called the bunnies (and me because of my hair) will now slowly recycle themselves and become entirely new things together. My last words to them that night were that I looked forward to seeing them all in future, whenever we meet, wherever we meet, and in whatever forms we may take. Whatever grows in that space in future will have some of all of us in it, so I know it will be beautiful.
There is now just one rabbit in our home. His personality fills the place, but if there is a hole in his heart the size of the one in mine I know we will need to adopt him a rescued friend. A rescued family member.
Walk For Farm Animals 2009: Phoenix (01)
A scene from yesterday’s Phoenix area Walk For Farm Animals. This annual event takes place in cities across the country and raises funds for Farm Sanctuary, whose mission is to end cruelty to farm animals and promote compassionate living through rescue, education, and advocacy. Visit Farm Sanctuary online here.
I’ve proudly taken part in these Walks since sometime in the late 90s. They were much smaller then; before my first Walk we were asked to meet at Pita Jungle in Tempe, where we received an information packet and sponsor sheet. I think we filled three tables. It was during that Walk that I realized vegan people were normal and often professional people – just more aware, more compassionate, and often more knowledgeable about the things that really mattered in life. Meeting all those vegans on my first Walk was all I needed to move permanently from vegetarian to vegan, and every year when I see new faces at the Walk I wonder who else is making that same leap. For those who have gone vegan this year, congratulations and welcome!
Walk For Farm Animals 2009: Phoenix (02)
A scene from yesterday’s Phoenix area Walk For Farm Animals. This annual event takes place in cities across the country and raises funds for Farm Sanctuary, whose mission is to end cruelty to farm animals and promote compassionate living through rescue, education, and advocacy. Visit Farm Sanctuary online here.
