You must ultimately find the place where you can be most effective, and this will inevitably be in doing what you're best at. In other words, no one is 'good at' saving the world; one is good at music or painting or writing or politics or science--and any of these can put one in a position to make a contribution toward saving the world.
Carnival of the Green : Wow, Links From Treehugger
I really admire Treehugger.com, and I guess I knew that hosting the carnival of the green would get me a link from them, but this is still cool; I'm one of Treehugger's "Favourite Greens of the Week!"
My logo's even on their composite image of the sites, which is neat :)
This Friday, March 17, is the greenest holiday of all - St. Patrick's Day! What better week to host The Carnival of The Green? Learn about the carnival at City Hippy and Triple Pundit, who created the carnival. Well, in the St. Patrick's Day spirit, none of these bloggers are going to get pinched no matter what they wear; they're plenty green!
Social Issues
Enrique at Common Ground has some great stuff about Fair Trade. One thing you can say for Fair Trade: Consumers like it. Amid the annoyance of roasters and retailers, Fair Trade sales continue to double annually, major corporations continue to adopt the label, and critics pay dearly for its seal of approval.
Dawn at Frugal for Life asks: bottled or tap water? Which is better both for your health and your pocketbook? Some would say the cost is worth the health benefits for bottled. Others say our water is just fine coming out of the tap.... You decide.
Sandean (Jerry) in this post looks at the system of water delivery in the U.S. as a form of socialism that dares not speak its name. He compares this with some historical examples and maintain that our system of water infrastructure has some problems, but on ballance "water socialism" is better than water capitalism.
Laurie at Slowly She Turned points out that Walmart is doubling its organic food offerings, but she does NOT see this as a good thing. She suggests we support our local farmers now more than ever. Laurie is heavily involved in the Slow Food movement in Greensboro, NC.
Rebecca Carter at Greener Miami is starting her Week of Trash project today, in which she will be analyzing her trash for the week. She starts preparing for the week by looking at her method of disposal: plastic grocery bags.
Judy Kingsbury, The Savvy Vegetarian, says: These - three - posts make up one long conversation about breastfeeding. At first I thought, this doesn't fit Carnival of the Green, but thought again: what's more green than breastfeeding? All organic and perfectly in tune with nature. Happier, healthier Mom & Baby. No plastic bottles or gmo soy based formula, less pharmaceuticals.
Marigolds2 (Mary Ellen), environmental writer for The Blue Voice group political blog writes about Havana's and South Central LA's community gardens as examples of sustainable community solutions to catastrophe/poverty, examples of what Heinberg calls "Powerdown" and "Building Lifeboats."
I like this one, because I've been wondering about this. Tracy posts EcoStreet's Guide to Green Cleaning: the best green cleaning products, and some home-made alternatives.
Camdenlady (Cathryn) says: "This week, I've been sorting out my pension fund, and what I'm investing in. Some of the fund is going directly into stocks and shares which have a strong environmental ethic, so I've been looking at renewable energy and waste management. I've found three interesting stocks, and bought shares in them a few days ago. A post in two parts.
Agroblogger introduces "The Green Theme." The Green Theme is a concept being used at the Open Sourcing blog over at Agricultural Innovations. At the beginning of each month, when a new theme is unveiled, I will start the ball rolling by discussing the theme's general topic, and challenging other bloggers to join in on the debate.
Finally, The Luck O' The Irish is with me as I announce The Forest Image Registry Project, which is particularly the brain child of Harlan Weikle a.k.a. The Naked Vegetarian. Also involved, so far, are myself, Andrew Turner of Green Roof Resource, and Jeff McIntire-Stasburg of Sustainablog.The Forest Image Registry, F.I.R. began as an awareness-building project on the eve of the piecemeal sale of our National Forest lands in early 2006. Using satellite imaging and mapping technology the project will build a visual record of the forestlands as they are today, before private development.We would like to encourage Americans to send copies of their personnel photos, images of the forests they've visited. Adding your pictures to the F.I.R. project, sharing them freely with the world will perhaps help us learn to appreciate America's National Forests before they are changed forever. Send submissions to submissions@forestimages.org Another way to submit images is to upload your images to your own Flickr! account and tag them (forestimages, firforest=ForestName, or geo:lat= geo:lon=, etc).
If you want to read other issues of the carnival, the last one (#17) was at EnviroPundit, and #19 will be next Monday at Baloghblog.
Working on Carnival of The Green #18, my UNCG Food Fight research paper (15-20 pages), and The Forest Imaging project, among others. Very busy. Hope to start posting more regularly again after the carnival is up on Monday.
If you will be joining us, please take note of the following:
° Choose a 12, 18, or 24 hour shift. You need to post twice an hour on average to qualify for the Green Blogathon merit badge.
° Pick a non-profit that you will be raising money for.
° Make a post on your blog, and tell everyone you know that you're taking part in the Blogathon. Your readers can make a pledge- a penny, dime, dollar, or Benjamin for every post you make. If you're going for 12 hours, they make pledges on 24 posts, 24 hours garners you 48 posts to pledge on.
° If you can't start on Friday, you can pick us up on Saturday. I'll be starting up at 7am EST on Saturday and rolling through the 7pm EST Saturday night, so you'll have company.
° You'll need to arrange the logistics of your donors transfering the money to your non-profit of choice after the Blogathon. It might be a good idea to have them give it directly to the non-profit to cut down on things like PayPal fees, but, I leave that up to you.
° Please comment here to comfirm your participation, even if you have previously emailed Shea. Leave a link to your site and let him know how long a shift you are going to take and what time you'll be starting. He'll also want to know the non-profit you'll be blogging for.
UPDATE: It unfortunately appears that my parents will be in town that weekend. If they aren't, I'll be blogging. If they are, I won't be able to participate :(
How to Grow Seedlings and Bedding Plants Organically Whether you have a full-sized garden or a window box, you can enjoy the fruits of your labors by growing your own vegetables, herbs and flowers. Starting your own plants from seed:
u.s. tries to bully europe into accepting biotech food The World Trade Organization is expected to render its verdict on charges by the U.S. that Europe is illegally restricting imports of genetically modified crops, reported The New York Times on the Web
E-mail addles the mind But the study said "an average worker's functioning IQ falls 10 points when distracted by ringing telephones and incoming e-mails ... more than double the four-point drop seen following studies on the impact of smoking marijuana."
Scientist predicts 'mini Ice Age' A Russian astronomer has predicted that Earth will experience a "mini Ice Age" in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity.
Until the righteous waters of god washed away mother nature's sins a few days ago, my world was awash with the physical evidence of her whoremongery. Everywhere I looked, I saw the filthy, powdery effluence. It covered cars as far as the eye could see; no doubt part of the liberal car washing industry's ties to this disgusting tradition. The yellow semen of nature's sexual escapades was everywhere. This, however, is only the surface of this yearly pornography.
The sinful stuff caused the bodies of my comrades to react violently, no doubt because they were less righteous than myself. However, even my otherwise sinless body could not resist letting out a few sneezes and nose drips due to its pervasive nature. This, of course, is simply a throwback to a time of man's less virtuous days when he joined in nature's orgies at the changing of the seasons and partook in godless, pagan practices such as fertility celebrations and drug-crazed sex parties. I, for one, am glad that those days of disease-free ecstasy and fluid exchange are over. God stopped those practices short by creating sexually transmitted diseases and ESPN.
World renown sex pervert Georgia O'Keeffe used nature's disgusting practices for her own financial gain by not only pointing out the horrible similarities between flowers and the female sex organs (yet another sign of nature's sickness), but actually celebrating some of the most shameful body parts that god was unable to stop Satan from creating.
Oh, and don't think that other creatures are left out of my tirade. Just look at this abomination:
Such practices must stop. Each spring, the Christian world is subjected to this carnival of sin, but not much longer. I am petitioning Congress, with the help of Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson, to pass laws outlawing all perversion on the part of "Mother Nature." We will prevent these events, if nothing else, for the sake of our children. How can we sleep at night knowing, one day, a curious tyke may ask us "Mommy? Daddy? Where do flowers come from," and we may have to lie to him in order to spare him the dismay of learning that something that seems so beautiful is in fact one of the dark prince's closest allies.
Tarheel State : I'm Hosting Next Week's 'Tarheel Tavern'
I'm posting this later than I meant to, but I'll be hosting the next Tar Heel Tavern. It will be held on March 27, 2005. What the hell am I talking about? Well, if you'd clicked the link a few lines up, you'd know!
The Tar Heel Tavern will be posted every week, during the night between Saturday and Sunday. Every week a different NC blogger will edit and host the carnival. Links to all issues will be posted right here, on this post, as they appear each week. This post is also going to serve as the homepage for the carnival, where up-to-date information will be posted about submission rules, past/current/future hosts, and whatever other information may be neccessary at any time in the future. We will soon design a logo and post a code here that you can import into your blog template to serve as a link to this page.
By the way, it's for NC Bloggers talkign about NC issues.
Anyway, you can either leave a comment with a link to the post you'd like to be included, or you can email me at george-at-dirty-greek-dot-org.
When you send an entry for the next carnival, please put "Tar Heel Tavern" in the Title field of your e-mail (so it does not get eaten by spam-killers). Provide the name of your blog, the title of the post, and the URL of your post. Additional blurb about it is also a nice touch.
Please send only one entry, and try to make it not more than one week old, i.e., written since the previous carnival was posted. Newbies may, as their first effort, submit an older (but better) post that will showcase their writing better as they introduce their blog to the community for the first time.
