OPineJournal

Re-think=Re-use=Recycle is what this little green and white pen says on it's side, along with a recycle symbol and the name of the purveyor of this paradoxical piece of pollution. Marketing - is it really necessary? I read a book a long time ago which posited that the beginning of the modern advertising age was between 1880 and 1920. Sure, a 40 year span is a long time, but the point as I remember it is that this is when advertising progressed (declined) from simply 'advertising' the availability of a product or a store to touting its benefits and aggrandizing to sell. It was very common to lie about a product - or, more precisely, to make claims that hadn't been proven, and were not required to be proven. What this era of advertising morphed into is a well disguised machine using psychology (mind games) to get you and me to buy products. Lots of people insist that nobody is convincing them to buy anything, but that does not explain why those same people are buying...

I heard another 'report' on the environmental impact of bags a few days back. The result was that bags - paper and plastic - are inconsequential in the big picture, a miniscule portion of the pollution problem, and the interviewee even said something to the effect that 'Americans will have to hoard their plastic bags just to get through life...'- yeah, I know I should have some quotes or something, but really - the result of this program is of no importance. What is of importance is that the more we treat small things like they are not part of the problem - or, more importantly, part of the solution, the larger the pool of small things there will be, and all those sayings - many hands make light work , a penny saved... etc. are all testaments to the cumulative effect of small efforts. And we know that there is arsenic in our water, but carve out a coal mine and the tailings concentrate arsenic to highly poisonous levels that we don't want in our water... cumulati...

It would seem that we know what 'natural' means. Do we? Of course, it means normal in some cases, naked in others, un-adulterated in others - but really, what does it mean? Is aspirin natural because it comes from a part of willow tree bark? Can we claim that everything is natural because everything is essentially derived from materials found here on Earth? When we get into these gray areas, we end up forgetting why we care. We care because we fear things that get too far from their natural state - for good reason. We have a knack for inventing things that kill us - rather, we have a knack for swallowing the snake-oil salesperson's pitch - and the snake-oil that often does more harm than good. Which brings me to the point of this blog - duped. I opened the cupboard earlier at work, and saw "0g trans fat" on a container of "Coffee Mate" - that powdered stuff that tastes artificial, is artificial, and replaces that horrible substance called 'mi...

This posting was from about 10 months ago when I had finished reading the book Censoring Science by Mark Bowen about Jim Hansen's public outing of the Bush administration's heavy hand in controlling environmental policy. Though this infamous administration is now happily behind us, there were 8 years of damage to repair - so I feel that this blog of mine is relevant still, and is a good example of the power a rogue administration can still wield. Trees, glorious trees I have learned a lot this week. At a few moments, I just wanted to bury my head in the sand and to chalk the craziness up to some airborne fungus that had wafted across the globe from an exotic forest in South America, but alas, it isn't so. So I trudge along, ankle deep in the climate crisis, the political morass/soapy drama, and the great financial spring unwinding after years of the greedy sneaking to the face of the clock in the middle of the night and adding a few more turns to the spring to keep it go...

I posted this April 9th on another site, but thought it would be a great thing to put here. As much as I lean left, I am loath to paint great brush-strokes of evil on honest and good natured attempts to fix problems - and the left (my peeps) really showed their metal this time by lying outright about the bill's content. Here goes! Recently I saw a flurry of blog postings, videos and news items about a bill that is being pushed by CT congresswoman Delaur. The blogs and postings were sometimes a little fiery, accusatory, negative and conspiratorial. They concerned the creation of a new agency to manage food safety thus taking it out from under the wing of the FDA - which is one way to stir the pot and get some things changed. The bill may or may not be a good thing - it all depends on what happens after the agency is formed, who gets the top positions, who the experts are on the panels and who makes the decisions. I don't think anyone can argue that we need agencies (either st...

A few words about my words. In my writing, you will see a few things that are non-traditional in established language customs. A - I use his/her, him/her, s/he etc... in stead (and sometimes I separate formerly contracted adverbs too) of 'their' which is plural and doesn't work for me when mentioning a single person. B - I hyphenate (or not) to join words any way I damn well please. Get used to it (please). C - I use human to refer to what is incorrectly, but arguably standardized 'man'. I just feel that human doesn't have any gender qualifications and so it works better for me. D - I use 'USans' in stead of 'Americans', because I think it is right rude and arrogant to call people from the United States 'Americans' as if Canada, Mexico and all of South American did not exist. To me, whether you are Achagua, Ika, Mayan, Coconuco, Sioux, Inuit or Irish Catholic (in Boston), you are an American. The Irish Catholic and the Sioux though...

Today, at the top of the escalator leaving Metro Center in DC, I found the perfectly horrific intersection between nature and the imposed mechanical world of humans. A single red rose petal was floating delicately on the edge of the teeth of the disappearing escalator steps. If you haven't noticed, there are grooves in the steps that you ride up on and there are teeth that are supposed to make the transition from exposed step to the receding underground step smooth so nobody (and nobody's scarf) gets eaten by the escalator demons. The rose petal was sitting on top of the teeth with the steps crawling steadily by millimeters away and threatening. It was uncomfortable, a feeling I have had a few times recently in my complicated little life. The petal was perhaps a moment or week from being caught or kicked and stuffed into the grinding mechanism meant to keep our big feet out, and the little feet of such delicate objects treated with disdain. It is a matter of scale, like b...

So the saying goes, 'It's the small things that count'. As I think about this a little and my mind wanders off to the trees and the nymphs and sprites floating among the green leaves, then to the little people, the one's who steal my keys when I am in a hurry... and then, well... ... ... I've returned to Earth, which, I suppose is where I belong, and where this blog is going. Small things. I spent four days in what I call [another] little eden of mine. I have a long history of referring to my 'little edens', but I don't want anyone to misconstrue - these are not the biblical version, though I'd be a denier if I claimed there was no connection - by using the word, I make the connection. Let's categorize my little edens and place them neatly in the locus amoenus category - which is where edens are often housed in literature - the paradises in the mind. This eden of mine though is a paradise, a garden of the birth of human-kind - though, not at ...

Green . How many have written oodles of words and paragraphs and books to discuss the idea of ' green ' - being green , green building, greener environment, 'it's not easy being green ', green products, green revolution, ad nauseam. Don't get me wrong - I'd bet I am greener than 80 percent of my eventual readers, and though this is not a contest, though I am not going to be writing exclusively with a reverence and seriousness like a sermon in church, the points I intend to make will hopefully bridge a few gaps in this world of competitive greenness and other things. It's a color - but it's so much more, and I intend to write about what more being ' green ' is. This blog isn't going to be about strictly 'greenness' - it'll also be about people, about observations and experiences and indeed will cover my own exploits in this world to whatever extent I think they'll be of interest to the reader. What this blog won...