What will it take?

There's always a disconnect when a natural disaster happens far from where you live. You empathize with the people involved and, typically, go about your normal routine. However, when that disaster hits close to home, you begin to question the safety of everything and everyone around you.

In less than two months, Enbridge Energy Partners have had 2 pipeline leaks in the Midwest: Michigan and now Illinois. The EPA ordered the pipeline shut down until the leak was contained. It's fortunate that a citizen noticed the water and alerted authorities. What would have happened if a huge crisis had developed? Would we have been prepared? Where are the regulations that ensure this doesn't happen?

Perhaps the word in question shouldn't be safety. Maybe we should ask ourselves about the fragility of our environment, fragility of the institutions meant to protect us, and the fragility of our lifestyles that show eminent change will happen either by goodwill or force.

What do we want?

We want clean air. We want the coal industry to stop polluting our streams. We want alternative energy resources. See, that's a nice chant for tomorrow night's coal ash hearings downtown at 5 p.m. (rally) at the Hilton Chicago, 720 S. Michigan Ave. You can even sign up to speak at the hearings at the following times: 10:00 a.m., 1 p.m., and 6:30 p.m.

Here's all the info:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageNavigator/adv_bigpicture_coalash_resources?JServSessionIdr004=pm3uj9gp51.app220a

http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageNavigator/adv_bigpicture_coalash_hearings

Hard choices

It was/is my intention to avoid driving at all costs. I'm trying to take public trans, walk, or bike to my destinations. Yet, this seems so hard to do. I know I can't or won't be perfect in my endeavors, but it seems that time is the main reason why I can't seem to be consistent in my intention.

By the time I get home from school, I'm exhausted or want to make sure I have enough time to eat, read, exercise, and relax before bed. I could of course exercise my way to my errands, but some of them require eight hands to carry everything. It sounds like I'm whining and making excuses.

I wish there was a support group for eco-addicts who can't stay on the program! How I envy those bike riders I pass in the morning. There is no easy answer......

Foraging

I'm truly amazed at the love from Mother Earth. Yesterday, while foraging for natural food in urban environments, it struck me that no matter how much glass, oil, smoke, or trash lay on the ground there will always be food.

We found the poor man's pepper, hackberrys, huckleberrys, yellow wood sorrel, wild apples, and other things I can't remember right now. In among the concrete, behind fences, and around dumpsters was food. We are never separate from life.

Our guide summed it up well: "We've been living inside our heads for too long, now it's time to live in the stream of sensation we call, life."