Overflow

Although I am a creator of "things" or "stuff" as my familiy likes to call it (and "stuff" is sometimes referred to as "crap"), I just can't imagine how human beings can continue manufacturing "stuff" and not expect that this world is going to burn itself up in its own gases??

the oversupply...

Think about how we produce new clothes for every change of season and holiday...

toys for each season, holiday, box store & boutique...cluttering our houses, minds, and blocking the creative & imaginative processes of our children...

vehicles for every income level, personality, year, and country...

pills for any ailment, psychological disorder, and unwanted pregnancy (that end up in our water tables), and ultimately in our bodies & breast milk...

disposable diapers overflowing our landfills...

and then there are all the unwanted bi-products of any various kind of production, that end up in our rivers and streams...would you like a glass of PCB's with that water?

oh, the list is endless & frustrating....endlessly frustrating!

I have been doing some research in various areas of personal interest and I have found the connections between different areas of study to be quite scary. I have taken great pleasure and satisfaction in my studies of organic vegetable farming, seed saving, food production (vegetables & animals), breastfeeding, attachment parenting, cloth diapering, religion (specifically Christianity), and also some things about Chi and Feng Shui.

Some interesting titles that I have read or viewed:

"An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver, "Chi Fitness" by: Sue Benton and Drew Denbaum, the scriptures of the Holy Bible, "A Year Without Made In China,"

websites:

http://www.nickisdiapers.com/ (offers free shipping on any cloth diaper,or babycarrier purchase), http://www.youtube.com/ (videos on babywearing {mei-tai, podegi,traditional wraps} , how to make your own cloth diapers), www.animalvegetablemiracle.com (Kingsolver's website)

Although I am not a huge fan of Al Gore's political party of choice, I respect him as an intelligent human being, purposing himself to educate people about the serious dangers we are facing because of global warming (which is a direct result of our ignorance of our own consumption of "stuff"...electricity, plastic products, vehicles that are not respectful of the o-zone, etc. etc.etc. ad nauseum...) so, anyway, I watched this video by Al Gore (which I borrowed from the public library...a great source of reuse-reduce-recycle, by the way) and he states his global warming position. This documentary should be a wake-up call for a lot of people in this world, but unfortunately, a lot of people will not even watch the video because they are either

a.) not Democrat, or b.)Conservative Republicans, that see environmentalists as just that..."mental." :) Not only that, I know people that (whether consciously or not) will do the exact opposite of what so-called "liberal environmentalists" practice, because they are ignorant, and think that living in opposition to their opposites somehow makes them right. Well, it just means we're all going to burn faster, in my opinion.

In the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" Barbara Kingsolver explains that there is an Indian Scientist guy that knows a lot about food, and he tells us that we have gone from over 80,000 plant species to under 600 plant species over the last 100 years or so, because of our in-breeding of plants, and people messing with creating hybrid plant species and such. (this is paraphrased of course, because I don't have the book handy right now.) There are mega seed producing companies, that have actually put patents on their seeds, and the seeds cannot legally be saved, some just plain old will not grow again. The Indian Scientist says that we are facing the biggest food shortage in the history of mankind because of this. It was always commonplace for people to save seeds to grow the plant again the next year.

Well folks, if the seed companies have patents on seeds, and they find that their seeds are growing in your market garden, they can put you out of business at the supreme court level, sue the pants off of you, and then throw you in jail! If you think that it's not true...it happened to a guy in Canada whose crops posessed the footprint of another major producers seed (I believe it was a large soybean crop that he was growing...) the competition tested his plant and found their plants genetics were in his crops genetics...the man had not stolen their seeds (or seed-saved), rather, his plants cross polinated with theirs, (birds and the bees & wind), and he was taken to the Supreme Court and his life business was ruined!!! He was innocent!! Nature is not even allowed to take its course in the court of law anymore. Don't mess with BIG BUSINESS, I'll tell you what!

I'm not even going to try to explain all of Al Gore's facts, charts & figures, but we have destroyed our planet over a very short period of time. He also disproves the concept that global warming, and extreme weather changes are cyclical. Not to mention the pestilance and vegetative diseases that have come along with our global warming. Look at how the ice caps are melting. He warned us with his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" when the movie was made in 2005, and it is 2009...he gave a little sequel in the movies' bonus features, in 2006, and over the course of one year, things had already gotten much worse! So what do you think 3 more years have done?

This all connects with the book of Revelation in the Bible...wars, "there will be talks of peace, but there will be no peace", pestilance, changes in weather, famine, etc. You should read it for yourself...

And from practicing recycling, and scrapping every little piece of paper into our recycling bins (amongst all of the other recyclable materials), and using cloth diapers, I know how much waste one family creates, and how hard it is to be responsible for ones-self. IT IS NOT EASY...but it is NECESSARY!!!

I REPEAT...IT IS NOT EASY BUT NECESSARY TO REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE...and start spending your money on activities, instead of merchandise, to give your kids a good life. Memories last much longer than junkie pieces of plastic.

Which brings me to a whole other topic, plastic, and it's nasty chemicals that it releases into our bottled water, baby's formula (from baby bottles)...even being in contact with plastic objects is bad for our respiratory system, not to mention our skin is the biggest organ we have, and it absorbs a lot of toxic chemicals that are not visible to the naked eye!

From the book "A Year Without Made In China" I learned that China has every major city in our country named with a Chinese name...anyone prepared for a Communist takeover??....look at the labels on the crap you buy from Walmart(I mean, China )...and I know I'm offending whoever may read this, but really....we are putting our own country out of business. We have no jobs because we have stopped producing most of our goods in this country, and given our money and jobs to China (or other foreign countries)...

THINK ABOUT IT!

all in the name of....

MORE!!!!!MORE!!!!!!!!!MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I honestly feel like I am suffocating after the Christmas bomb went off at my house. We recieved one mini-van trunk load from one set of Grandparents, and another mini-van load from the other Grandparents. We bought our children about 3 gifts each. (We have 4 kids)....we were only going to do one, but then the who was going to get what game started in our heads. It's that whole overcompensating thing.

Anyway, we live in the land of plenty, but we misappropriate every red cent we have. There truely should be not one starving person in this world. The next time you want to go shopping, go buy a gift card for the supermarket and go find some poor homeless guy on the street, so he can feed himself. Whether or not he buys beer with it, is none of your business...hope for the best. Give your used clothes to a domestic violence shelter, get deep about "reuse, reduce, recycle," and spend your money locally. There are so many ways these practices can play out, and it leaves a lot of room for one to be creative and to use ones imagination with their resources and material posessions.

Insist on this practice in your life. Your conscience will thank you, and so will your local ma' & pa' at their mom n' pop shop. Check out http://www.etsy.com/ , www.artfire.com, www.revelry.com for unique handmade toys, or anything your mind can imagine. Take the Handmade Pledge...google it! Find someone that crafts to teach you their craft, and make one beautiful gift for someone for Christmas from materials that you sought out that were made in the USA, or even in your town! There is a way to save our planet from global warming, and there is a way to save our economy from collapsing, and it's called LOCAL and LESS. Doesn't anyone remember "less is more?"

As far as our food chain is concerned...plant a small garden, buy locally grown plants from your nursery, seek out heirloom only plants, borrow books about seed saving from the library and read them, and then find organizations on the internet, where you can purchase heirloom varieties. Buy your produce from the local farmers markets...go crazy and do a tour of farmers markets. Visit local farms, get to know people. Build up your community by organizing the planting of a local community garden, where everyone works, and everyone can pick what they need...even the poor homeless guy on the street! My goal this year is to buy only heirloom seeds and hopefully find some from other countries. How cool would it be to grow a tomato that they ate in old world Italy? Or some French Cucumbers?

It is my mission in life this year, to boycott major seed companies, and their attractive catalogs, and find the little guy with the big plants to grow in my backyard.

It is also my mission to boycott major companies with their attractive, plastic overpackaged goods, and only buy handmade (possibly local) gifts and other needed items. I will try to spread our little bit of wealth with others who also share their wealth with honest people trying to make an honest living, so that I can do my part to stop the corporate wheel from spinning, so that my husband can keep his job, and my friends and family can keep their businesses alive and well. It keeps the money and the jobs in this country and that is the way I like it. Otherwise, what has America become if we are no longer the "land of the free, home of the brave?" It seems to me we could become "the land of the slaves (to our debts) & the home of the co-dependant." keeping this sick cycle of consumerism, greed, materialism and dependancy on foreign crap. The same "crap" that poisons our children, spouses, and dogs (look into the dog foods that killed many of our best friends recently, by putting any and every possible contaminant into their food....used syringes from the vet's office anyone? Would you want to feed that to your Fido?