An Easy Way to Stop Junk Mail and Help the Environment

Posted on by Marina

I just discovered the GreenDimes junk mail removal service. They offer a centralized way to get yourself off junk mailing lists. Reducing the number of catalogs sent out saves trees, fuel and transportation costs, etc., and therefore is a tremendous boost for the environment.

If you opt for GreenDimes’ free service (which includes either (A) getting a dollar from them or (B) having a tree planted or (C) getting a free issue of something), then you will have to do a lot of the legwork yourself, but they offer all the information you need.

They also offer two paid-for services ($20 and $36), which they somewhat misleadingly say only require one payment. What they really mean is that you pay once and they do what they can to get you off the junk mailing lists, which should reduce your junk mail for 3 to 5 years, but you may need to pay a half-price “refresh” fee if you move or your purchasing habits put you on new lists. Since many mailing lists are printed months ahead of time, they say to give the service a good three months to start showing results. You have up to a year to request a refund if you aren’t happy.

You do need to tell them what catalogs you receive that you want to stop receiving, but that is easily done. You will also need to sign and send some postcards, but they send you the postcards and even include postage. It couldn’t get much easier than this.

Oh—and they will plant five trees for you with the paid-for services as well. Since we all need to plant a lot of trees to make up for our carbon footprint in our lifetime, this is another painless way to help the environment.

I am already quite in love with this service. I signed up for their $20 service, and have already added over 20 catalogs to the list. I have been recycling all my junk mail, but it is a greater benefit to the environment to reduce it or stop it entirely.

Carbon Footprint? What is That?

Your carbon footprint is basically the quantity of carbon dioxide you cause to be created by using utilities, driving a car (or using buses, taxis, airplanes, etc.), using gas-powered lawn equipment, riding a motorcycle, and so on.

How much is your carbon footprint? Use this calculator to find out. It will also tell you how many trees you need to plant to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions you create. Since carbon dioxide is absorbed by trees, a very easy and common way to offset your carbon footprint is by planting trees, either on your own or by paying someone to do it (or, of course, both).

I am proud to say my household carbon footprint is much smaller than the national average. Having made the calculations, I find that between my gardens over the years and paying for trees to be planted, I have already planted almost enough trees (36) to make up for my carbon footprint (I need to plant a minimum of 43). Nice to know. However, I believe the national average, carbon-footprint-wise, is much higher, so if you don’t want to use the calculator, you can just go with the national average, which is that most people need to plant about 77 trees.

 

Not All Animal Rescue Societies Truly Rescue

Posted on by Marina

I just took a look at this Web site—it has a nice, clean appearance, and reviews some really cool products for cats. Take a look, if only for the nifty cat swag.

But also, the author has written an article about Best Friends Animal Society and a recent rescue they have been working on. A case of institutionalized animal hoarding had been found, and Best Friends was brought in to help make things better

Animal hoarding is a weird aberration in which a person or institution (in this case, an institution named FLOCK), collect some type of animal, saying that they are only thinking of that animal. But instead of caring properly for them or trying to find good homes for them, the hoarder(s) maintain the animals in horrific conditions. The animals often die or end up completely frightened and confused—and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The conditions are truly, truly horrible, and the state in which the animals are when discovered requires a strong stomach.

To quote from the HARC (the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium at Tufts University), “Animal hoarding is not about animal sheltering, rescue, or sanctuary, and should not be confused with these legitimate efforts to help animals. It IS about satisfying a human need to accumulate animals and control them, and this need supercedes the needs of the animals involved.”

In this case, the conditions were as horrific as they get.

The story brought tears to my eyes. I have such a hard time understanding how people can harm cats, and I really don’t get the cat hoarding mentality. Yet it is a problem. A few months ago, I read of a case of cat hoarding that took place in Petaluma a few years back. The woman who was doing it said she was “rational.” Ha!

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A Turkey Visitor Provides Food for Thought

Posted on by Marina

A (wild?) turkey on my back fence

On March 27th, I was up early working at my computer with my balcony door open (which is pretty usual—I like lots of fresh air). I kept hearing what sounded like a turkey gobbling coming from down the street, but told myself it couldn’t be so, could it? It could have been a very weird dog.

The gobbling got closer and closer until it was coming from right in front of my house, at which point I had to get up to go check it out, because now it sounded unmistakably like a turkey. Sure enough, there in my front lawn was a young-looking turkey, strutting around. As soon as I stepped onto the balcony, though, it whisked around the corner into my side yard. I never realized that the land speed of a turkey was so fast.

I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs, then snuck quietly out the back door. It tried to come into my back yard but was foiled by the iron gate. When I came out, it turned around and headed for the northwest corner of my yard. I got a few pictures, one that isn’t very clear at all, one under the redwoods (taken through the iron gate), and a couple that I took by swinging wide and around the redwoods after it flew to the back fence. Then it spread its wings and flew away, rather gracefully and effortlessly for such a large bird.

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The Simply True Show

Posted on by Marina

I recently designed and edited Ingrid Katal’s book, What is Your Honor Code? Ingrid is starting a talk show soon, called “The Simply True Show.” This show is connected with Oprah, so many people will see her and her book, I am sure.

In her book, Ingrid offers food for thought and quite practical, do-able tools for understanding and improving many areas of one’s life. The gist of Ingrid’s message is that we are each responsible for our lives and that we create our own realities. I was very much in tune with her on this, which made editing the book a pleasure.

One of the strongest points of Ingrid’s book is that it uses a question-and-answer format, with bulleted answers, to help people learn about and understand the roots of a given issue, and take positive steps toward making matters better in that area. It is the kind of book that gets used, rather than just read. You can purchase used ones from Amazon.com; I think it will also soon be in Borders and Barnes & Noble, and of course you can order it directly from Ingrid’s Web site.

About Bees…and the Environment

Posted on by Marina

I just discovered that bees are slaves. I never knew that. In the years in which I kept bees, starting with the very gentle swarm that I captured without incident or loss of life back in the late 1970s, and kept for several years without incident, I always thought that it was a cooperative enterprise. Mind you, I didn’t practice any of the things that many beekeepers do–I never killed a queen; never killed any of the bees; never medicated them; collected only the surplus honey, not the honey they needed to overwinter with, nor the pollen, propolis, royal jelly, etc.; and so on. Essentially, I respected the bees as partners, and thought kindly of them, and did everything I knew how (which was mostly just leaving them alone and providng them with new supers as needed) to make sure they were healthy and happy. In my entire time managing that hive, I was never stung. (I later had a different hive of bees in Arizona, and that was a nasty-tempered bunch. With that hive, I did get stung.)

I am being sarcastic here about the bees-as-slaves idea. The person who wrote that bees are slaves has many valid points about how we, as a society, are mismanaging honeybees, and I agree with most of them. Many years ago, Rudolph Steiner predicted that our beekeeping practices would weaken honeybees, to the point that we would have the exact problems we are having today with colony collapse disorder (CCD).

CCD is just one result of the carelessness with which humanity as a whole has been treating the world. Though some like to point fingers at the United States, the truth is that people around the world, in all levels of society, are abusing the environment out of ignorance, greed, shortsightedness, and general contempt for any lives other than their own.

The thing is, it is so easy to reduce one’s impact, to respect the planet, to live kindly and lovingly on this earth. It may mean some “sacrifices” for some people (do we women really need to wear makeup everyday? Or even any day, for that matter?), but the end result will be happier people and a healthier planet, I am quite sure of it. You can start by checking out some of my recommendations on this page.

There is a lot of information available on the Internet on the many different things you can do to help the environment; many of them will save you time and money, too, making it a win-win situation for all.

If you decide to make a difference, don’t overwhelm yourself and give yourself goals that are hard to reach. Start small. Pick even one change that you are willing to make, then stick to that one change for a while. Do the research, though. Some groups, such as PETA, who sound like they are wonderful are sometimes doing the opposite of what they say they are about.

On Dreams

Posted on by Marina

I just woke up from a rather horrible set of dreams. I believe that all dreams are real in some regard. I do not believe that they are things concocted by our own brains solely for our own use; if I meet in a dream someone I know in waking reality, I tend to think that there is the possibility, at least, that I have actually connected with and communicated with that person, if only on the soul level.

Therefore, if I encounter a disturbing situation in a dream, especially where people are doing bad things to other people, and especially if those bad things are being done to me, I ask myself about the meaning. I don’t always get good answers from myself. But this morning, I thought to tune in to my spirit friends and ask them to comment, especially since I had received some information last week that I thought might be related to the dreams. As soon as I did, I got the following reply, which I am recording as accurately as I can remember.

“When we dream, we venture into many realities. Some are our own and belong to us; others are realities that we are just visiting. Those that are our own reflect our own truths; those that belong to others, while still reflecting truths, do not necessarily reflect our truths unless we wish to accept them.”

This was just a brief reply, but it was very reassuring. If you want to hear more about my theories and experiences with dreams, I would be happy to write up a post for my Web site. Just let me know.

The Lord of the Rings versus Dungeons and Dragons

Posted on by Marina

There are a lot of fans of fantasy who have come to the genre so recently that they don’t know its history. In not knowing the history, they end up making unwarranted, disparaging comments about classics in the field. Let me give you a few examples.

  • When the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I heard people say that yes, they were good, but they were “derivative” of Dungeons and Dragons.
  • In reviews of the television version of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books, many reviewers commented that it was okay, but man oh man, the school for wizards—that was soooo derivative of Harry Potter. (The Earthsea television series was, in fact, rather horrible and bore very little resemblance to the books; the wizarding school was one of the few elements that it retained.)
  • The Spiderwick Chronicles series of books has also been accused of being derivative of Harry Potter as well, because it has magic and magical creatures in it.

Tolkien versus Dungeons and Dragons

J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnificent work, The Lord of the Rings, was first published in three volumes in England in the mid-1950s. Note that date. It was later published in the United States in the 1960s, first in an unauthorized edition, and then later in an authorized one.

The Lord of the Rings was enormously influential on a number of writers, including game designers E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who created Dungeons and Dragons in the early-mid 1970s—about 20 years after the first publication of The Lord of the Rings. Although Gygax says he was only minimally influenced by the book, he did definitely take the concepts of halflings, orcs, treants, elves, dwarves, etc. from it. (Initially, he used the terms hobbit and ent, for example, but was forced by the Lord of the Rings copyright holders to change those terms. Also, he changed the height of halflings from Tolkien’s description of being about the height of a ten-year-old boy to about the height of a two-year-old toddler.)

In a nutshell? The Lord of the Rings story can in no way be derivative of something that was published twenty years later.

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