Category Archives: environment

Michigan

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(A side note~ A funny thing about the migraines is that a song will usually pop into my head. This time it was “We all live in a yellow submarine…a yellow submarine…a yellow submarine…”  (Yellow Submarine, The Beatles)  Haha.  It’s funny now but not so much when I’m lying their like a slug in pain…)

I’m still feeling rather puny and foggy-brained, so I’m not posting any more than this post–
One of the residents of the building has left copies of Muskoka magazine out for the rest of us to enjoy.  This particular month’s magazine just has me drooling…

They talk about a couple who lived on Lake Muskoka (that has got to be a Native American name.  They inhabited the area before the Europeans took over.)  Anyway, this couple had made plans all their life to build their own dream home on the lake and it looks and sounds wonderful.

Michigan itself is a beautiful state.  They actually treasured their trees, unlike Indiana, which couldn’t plow them down fast enough…and *still* has not learned the lesson of what has been lost.  If you take a look at a real time map, you’re able to spot Indiana without anyone even drawing lines–compared to Ohio and Michigan, we are devoid of trees.  There’s a little scrap of land here that must resemble what Indiana once looked like before paved roads and skyscrapers took over–it’s like walking back in time…

…and it’s being threatened with closure (probably some greedy developer wants the land to build more condos…)

Speaking of which, the Muskoka magazine featured an article on a 70-acre (?) spread that once was home to a sanitorium, long since closed.  Can you imagine?  They once actually cared about mentally ill folks (and the ones with tuberculosis) in a setting that was peaceful and serene…

And now they’ve hired a new head honcho who wants to…wait for it…demolish the buildings and…well, we don’t know what they want to do with the property, because the article just dances around what they’re planning, but where have you ever heard of a $$$ dollars man seeing the value in nature and leaving it undeveloped??

I mean, the properties listed in the back of the magazine are prime real estate–they actually have an island for sale for $13,000,000.  Of course, if this is too salty for you, they also have some for the *cough* poor folks in the $3-9 million dollar range…

…so…you can see what is going through this head honcho’s mind without the article even stating the obvious…the property has been left alone since 1994, and they just hired this guy and he immediately wants to tear the buildings down (not really a problem, unless they’re in the way of building something…but since they will cost millions to tear down, there will be money coming in to cover it, n’est pas? (gah, I hope I spelled that right–long time since high school French class )

So…a serene untouched area will be once again devalued for the very natural state that gives it value.  Makes complete sense to me. /snark

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And speaking of serenity for the mentally ill–the state hospital I used to work out was like that, also.  Of course, we didn’t have a lake or as many trees on the property, but it was still maintained in a way to give a sense of peace and serenity.  It also was self-sufficient back in the day.  They had their own bakery, their own farm to grow their food, and I think they may have even had their own butchering, but I’m just guessing at that.  That all went away with the reforms of the mental institutions.  They threw the baby out with the bathwater.  I think it would be so much more gratifying for a patient to help in farming than to sit around all day watching mindless TV.

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And speaking of things popping into my head–I thought of something that I wrote on a blog many years ago–

It’s the same blog that I had my answer deleted after I said that Hillary Clinton was no “Shirley Chisholm”…

There was a guy that the blog owner liked, so he frequently guest blogged.  He was obsessed with the behavioral psychologists, and one in particular really irked him.  He was always writing blogs against this guy’s research.

One day, he wrote a blog on how this guy was studying the human will.  He asked the question “Why would anyone try to determine if there is a human will?

To which I replied:  “Job security??”

🙂

The Farm Bill

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Alliance for Natural Health has this report up on the Farm Bill. (hat tip to organic consumers).

From the article:

The aforementioned Farm Bill riders would outlaw any EPA review of a genetically engineered crop under the Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. This terrible legislation would ensure that no agency other than the USDA (which is decidedly pro-GMOs) will be allowed to provide analysis of the impacts of GMO crops. Further, the riders also establish extremely short deadlines for approval of GMOs. If the crops are not reviewed and approved within the extremely short timeline, they would default to immediate approval and commercialization.

So…if this is true, then there’s an underhanded reason why Obama is urging the passage of the Farm Bill–given that he appointed Vilsack as Secretary of Ag, who is a Monsanto toadie…yeah, well, it’s real hard not to think Obama is doing their bidding...

(Note that Methinks They Lie also brings up the Shirley Sherrod fiasco…yeah, that was a great move. Not.)

They’re buying air, land, water…

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Good God, it’s come to fruition…

…how in the hell does one, in good conscience, try to make a profit off of something one had no hand in creating…?  What kind of soulless being thinks it’s okay to do such a thing?

From the story:

Like other aspects of neoliberalism, the commodification of nature forestalls democratic choice. No longer will we be able to argue that an ecosystem or a landscape should be protected because it affords us wonder and delight; we’ll be told that its intrinsic value has already been calculated and, doubtless, that it turns out to be worth less than the other uses to which the land could be put. The market has spoken: end of debate.

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Exactly.  Once the price tag has been set, the $$$ will trump all other values…because one cannot put a price tag on beauty, on value to other beings besides two-leggeds (because all the rest don’t matter, according to these folks), nor can a value be assigned when the benefits are unknown, as most of the natural world’s benefits aren’t known until they’re lost…

West Nile

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…well, it’s that time of year for the Health Dept to put out its dire warnings of West Nile virus, spread by mosquitoes.  This is an annual warning by the dept. so you would think that thousands of people die of the disease...nope.

Here’s  a story on a death by West Nile.  Note that it’s the first one since 2007:  http://www.statesman.com/news/local/west-nile-death-first-since-2007-2425637.html

The state’s Health Dept. was recommending people use DEET to avoid mosquitoes, and subsequently, the virus.  I was at the beginning of chemical awareness and asked the director of the office I was in whether citronella was as effective.  He said yes, but citronella had to be applied every 30 minutes.  When I asked about an article I had just read about DEET being linked with epileptic seizures, he confirmed that it did cause seizures in some people.  So, I asked why the public wasn’t informed of this, and that citronella was a non-chemical solution, he blew me off. The health dept. denied people information so that they could make their own decisions.  This was another reason I left that job.

Here’s  a link (gov) on it: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002763.htm

Here’s a less biased link:  http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2005/DEET-Cox-NCAP17oct2005.htm

A good link here.  She outlines the dangers and then gives helpful suggestions on natural repellants.   When I still had my house, I would light three or so citronella candles before going out to the patio, and never had a problem with being bitten.  And I also had natural citronella bug repellant wipes that I used when I was out.

I tried to look up deaths from DEET, and there are few reported cases.  Since it is known to cause seizures, and other neurological issues, I have to be skeptical of the statistics–how many had seizures that caused death, but it was not attributed to DEET?  Since there is such denial in the medical profession of the devastating effects of chemicals (toxins) on our health, I’m just not that confident that they are inquiring about the chemicals a person uses.

Drought Map

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common dreams has a drought map up.  As I posted before, the Ag secretary was saying that there was a bumper planting of corn this year, so the corn crop isn’t going to be that affected…which means there is speculation and falsely jacking up food prices.

They reported this morning that a meteorologist from Purdue was saying that a drought this bad is a “once-in-a-lifetime” happening and that folks who are living now will “never” see something like this again….um, yeah…

…and there’s this thing called the 1988 drought that I remember quite well because I was pregnant and worried about the food shortages they were predicting.  I’ve also been watching the rivers ever since then, and my memory may be faulty, but I don’t recall them reaching their former levels with the exception of a couple of years.  This has concerned me ever since.

This is the only article I could find that notes the extended drought –it puts it between 1988 and 1992.

 

Dow sponsoring Olympics

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Helen Clark at commondreams has this up on Dow being a sponsor of the Olympics.   I think the time is long past of the Olympics being held in high regard…

Here’s a pretty good page on Agent Orange’s effects.

…and yet the lessons still haven’t been learned…

…and the unsuspecting folks who were unaware they were being poisoned…  Be sure to click on the link at the top of the page.  Unfortunately, I don’t have time to click on all the links on the page.  The one at the top is absolutely stunning.

Along these lines–

I looked up a couple of pages on the chlorinated hydrocarbons–insecticides– here and here. 

Michigan’s state website has this:  http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-27249–,00.html

It’s just mindboggling that so much is known about the dangers of these chemicals, but still they are used.