Congratulations, West Virginia!

We've all heard the news the last few days, out of West Virginia:

West Virginia chemical spill frustrates residents for fourth day

And what else can you say to the people of that state except a hearty congratulations?

Congratulations for voting against your own, best, self interests. Congratulations for voting Republican. Congratulations for voting for "small government" that doesn't regulate---oh, I don't know---chemical companies?

Now, could lessons be learned?  Would you join us over here on the side of sanity and reason and good sense?

Please?

For your sake and ours, both?

From the "Things We Allow Corporations to Get Away With" file

Perhaps you saw some of these headlines in the last few days?

West Virginians to be without water for days because of chemical spill

Tap water fix in West Virginia still days away, official says

Thousands Without Water After Spill in West Virginia

West Virginia chemical spill frustrates residents for fourth day

Which brings up this thought I saw yesterday on Facebook:

"If a foreign terrorist group poisoned the water of an entire region in the U.S. we'd likely be going into another war, but since it's just an improperly regulated company, well, that's just the cost of doing business."

--From a post on Http://Fb.com/TheMarmelPage

Additional link:  The Steve Marmel Page

Quote of the day--on man, and nature

What the heck did we ever do to food?

I ask again, what the heck did we ever do to food?

And then, why?

First, we added pesticides and chemicals and have made it cancerous and who knows what.

Then we created "supplements." How the heck are supplements supposed to be an improvement on grown food?

For starters, they're not a meal. Some of them have flavors, like if they're in a smoothie or shake, heaven forbid. Then there are the vitamins and pills.

Instead of food?

Does this makes sense?

Is that somehow an improvement on having 3 balanced, intelligent, delicious meals a day?

Put me in the corner of saying heck no, absolutely not.

I'll stick with my broccoli and vegetables, thank you.

KCMO and KS not on "Cities with Worst Tap Water"

No, neither Kansas City is on this list but Omaha, Nebraska is--and comes in at number 7 (see link below).

What they had to say about it:

Forty-two chemicals were found, with 20 exceeding health guidelines and 4 exceeding health standards. This included agricultural pollutants like nitrate and nitrite, industrial pollutants like arsenic, water treatment and distribution byproducts and more.

Apparently, Smithville (MO) is too small a town to include on their research because if it were big enough, it would surely be there.

Oh, yeah.

Link: http://www.losethebackpain.com/blog/2012/06/08/worst-tap-water/

Missouri River: One of American's "most polluted"

Yessiree, our own Missouri River is ranked as one of "America's Top 10 Most Polluted Waterways." To anyone who knows anything about it, that should come as no surprise. I once heard a statistic--I'll have to verify it--that once the water gets here, it's already been through 5 human systems. If true, that's the least of our concers. Anyway it's in the latest edition of "Mother Jones" but the original data is from the Environment America Research and Policy Center. (Both links below). Why the Missouri, you ask? Well, it gets 4,887,971 pounds of total toxic discharges put into it every year and 19,553,305 pounds of toxic discharges put into it from its entire watershed region. Unfortunately, the "Big Muddy" isn't the only river in the region that is cited in the report. It seems the Kansas River also gets 10,485 pounds of "developmental and reproductive toxicant releases" put into it, too. These are "those shown toimpede the proper physical and mental development of fetuses and children" so if we can't do this for ourselves and/or the fish and wildlife, as we ought, maybe we can and should do it for our children and grandchildren.

There are two more rivers, too, in Missouri that receive these developmental and reproductive toxicant releases. They are Crooked Creek and Bee Fork Creek. They're getting these "...because of heavy discharges of lead from mines and smelters operated by the Renco Group and Doe Run Resources Corp." The name of the original report gives you an idea, I think, of just what we're talking about here, too: "Wasting Our Waterways 2012; Toxic Industrial Pollution and the Unfulfilled Promise of the Clean Water Act" The report goes on to emphasize that the Federal Government needs to both follow the original Clean Water Act but also toughen it. We need it. Besides creating fish kills, the discharges we're talking about here are frequently highly carcinogenic, again, no surprise. Corporations won't want it but it's what we need to do, for all of us. In the current environment, I just don't see that happening but there's always hope. This is one more thing we will have to demand of our government representatives and government, in order to get what is needed. It has to come from us. Links: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/03/top-10-polluted-rivers-waterways; http://www.environmentamerica.org/reports/ame/wasting-our-waterways-2012

Alice Waters: A magnificent impact on the world

Can you imagine how magnificent it would be to have the kind of impact on even just your own neighborhood, let alone your city--and then your state--and then your region--and then the nation you live in and finally, out to the world as Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse restaurant in San Francisco had?

Here is a woman who recognized that our food was too processed and pumped full of chemicals and cancer-causing agents that she began doing purely natural food, straight from the earth to the meal table and in it, made a food revolution.  

From Wikipedia:

Alice Louise Waters (born April 28, 1944) is an American chef, restaurateur, activist, and humanitarian. She is the owner of Chez Panisse, the world-renowned restaurant in Berkeley, California famous for its organic, locally-grown ingredients and for pioneering California cuisine.^[1]

Waters opened the restaurant in 1971 at age 27. Since then, it has become one of the most awarded and renowned restaurants in the world, and has consistently ranked among the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Waters has been cited as the most influential person in food in the past 50 years, and has been called the mother of American food.^[2] She is currently one of the most visible supporters of the organic food movement, and has been a proponent of organics for over 40 years.^[3] She believes that eating organic foods, free from herbicides and pesticides, is essential for both taste and the health of the environment and local communities.

In addition to her restaurant, Waters is involved in a variety of other projects. She has authored several books on food and cooking, including Chez Panisse Cooking (with Paul Bertolli) and The Art of Simple Food, and is one of the most well-known food activists in the United States and around the world. Waters’ work and philosophy is based on the principle that access to sustainable, fresh, and seasonal food is a right, not a privilege,^[4] and believes that the food system needs to be “good, clean, and fair” ^[5]

With this vision, she founded the Chez Panisse Foundation in 1996, and created the Edible Schoolyard program at the Martin Luther King Middle School (Berkeley) in Berkeley, CA. Waters also serves as a public policy advocate on the national level for school lunch reform and universal access to healthy, organic foods, and the impact of her organic and healthy food revolution is typified by Michelle Obama’s White House organic vegetable garden.[6]

To do well is one thing.  To be successful, sure, that's terrific.  But to realize something so fundamental but important that it not only gives you a success but also helps start a revolution of sorts, and then to go on from that success and successful idea and create other avenues to get the word out and help others do more with the ideas and enjoy those avenues and benefits, it's pretty incredible.

It's a terrific example of what only one person can do.

It's enough to give a person terrific hope.

Link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Waters

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chez_Panisse

Live green, die green, right?

I think there's plenty of us out here who recycle and try to live "green" and not waste but reuse, etc., right?  And more and more of us realize, I think, too, that the way we live isn't sustainable.  Finally, combine that desire for not wasting along with wanting to be fiscally, financially conservative and it seems like a "green" burial is a natural, don't you?

Think about it.

Either no coffin or a leaner, less expensive pine coffin.  (You could be buried in a shroud).  No chemicals.  No ridiculous, absurd and unnecessary embalming.  Just put you right in the Earth.  What a beautiful way to go, I think.

And it's gone commercial, thankfully:


'Green' burials require no coffins or chemicals

By MANUEL VALDES (AP)

GOLDENDALE, Wash. — Steve Sall moved forward on uneven, rocky terrain in his motorized wheelchair and came to a stop at the edge of a sweeping vista of ponderosa pines and bright pockets of yellow wildflowers.

Before being stricken three years ago with Lou Gehrig's disease, the 61-year-old Oregon resident who was an avid hiker would have backpacked this canyon. Instead, he was there to pick out his grave site.

Three months later, Sall was laid to rest in the forest.

He would be among the small but growing number of Americans choosing environmentally friendly burials. The so-called "green burials" are a departure from the norm in that they don't use concrete vaults, metal coffins or any chemicals.

The Green Burial Council, an industry group that sets standards, now counts more than 300 approved providers in 40 states, while only a dozen existed as recently as the beginning of 2008.

So that's great news, I think.  It saves money, it's much more natural and it both wastes and costs less.  Additionally, you can be literally closer to nature.  Sure you're dead but still, I think it only makes sense.

If there's bad news to this, it's that there's only one provider for this service registered on the link below for Missouri.  So along with this bit of information is a possible business suggestion for you.  That is, open up a "green" burial service company here in Kansas City.

It's a thought.

Enjoy that beautiful weather out there in the meantime, folks.

Links:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101014/ap_on_re_us/us_green_burials;_ylt=AlfKvcpiKnR9tF1PSfGc6wSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFpZG01dWpmBHBvcwMzOARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX21vc3RfcG9wdWxhcgRzbGsDZ3JlZW5idXJpYWxz;
http://www.greenburialcouncil.org/

Quote of the day--on our mistaken direction

When a dictatorial president takes us to ill-begotten wars, the solution becomes simply to find a better president -- as if the problem were one of leadership rather than an underlying structural impetus to make war. When those wars go badly, both in fact and perception, we announce a “surge” that will escalate an already-lost conflict in an attempt to somehow “win” it. Better technology is the answer to too much technology. A new pill can cure the ailments produced by the pills we’ve been taking. Weeds and pests become resistant to our biocides, so let’s make them even stronger -- and the same logic goes for our antibiotics. The economy crashes and consumes vast resources, so we’ll prop it up with an infusion of even more resources. And on and on. Link to original post: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/20-1

Quote of the day--peaceful coexistence

"We are on the cusp of a significant turning point in history - either these instances of really terrible seemingly unstoppable catastrophic disasters will increase and get worse or we will wake up and make the changes we need to make to transform them into planetary peace and stability. It is up to us to choose, but first we must each take responsibility for our own part of the problem." --Yehuda Berg

Link to original post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yehuda-berg/what-the-is-going-on_b_561642.html