Relaxing in the garden

Occasionally, I remember to STOP, sit, and enjoy the garden. Usually, my concept of leisure in the garden is an “active leisure,” where puttering around is the relaxation. But this evening I took the time to sit in the rocker on the front porch and chill. It was cloudy and overcast, so the colors aren’t too vibrant, but still, you get the idea.

As you regular visitors to The Canary Report can see, last weekend we ripped out the groundcover that surrounded the pond. It did look beautiful, but it was always galloping out of control and took more maintenance than I was willing to give it. So for now, the cement tiles holding up the terrace are visible, but we will soon remedy that with more well behaved plantings.

Poverty and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to post about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Blog Action Day 08’s topic is POVERTY. Here is my contribution.

Coping with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is a challenge on every front in a person’s life. It impacts employment, housing, social activity, personal relationships, personal care, eating habits, exercise, recreation, and leisure. Health care becomes confusing and disorienting because medical doctors do not recognize MCS and therefore do not know how to help. To add insult to injury, some MDs believe MCS is psychosomatic, and either dismiss complaints or send the patient off to the shrink.

And when people with MCS are forced to seek out alternative health practitioners, it’s a crap shoot. While most practitioners– acupuncturists, nutritionists, dentists, and others– have good hearts and surely want to help, chances are pretty good that the patient will be led on a wild goose chase, and waste precious financial resources on alternative therapies and supplements, hoping for that magical cure.

But a cure for MCS is most likely going to be elusive. After all, MCS is not a disease or allergy, it’s a reaction to low level poisoning from toxic chemicals. So the more practical course of action might be for the sufferer to find safe housing and employment, stay away from toxic friends and family, dump toxic clothing and replace with natural fabrics, eat organic foods, buy a HEPA air filter and vacuum, find a good water filter, move to a place with cleaner air. But how easy is that course of action for anyone let alone someone who is sick with depleted resources?

So you can see how MCS can catapult a person into poverty. When forced to leave employment because the air is too toxic to breathe, there is no paycheck. When there is no social or familial support system and no safe housing, a person is out on the street. If there’s not sufficient money for fresh organic food, nutritional supplements, air and water filters, and a HEPA vacuum, then a person’s health further deteriorates. And a life on that edge can very quickly spiral into poverty.

This is why too many people with MCS are sleeping in cars or in aluminum trailers in a friend’s back yard. Many who can’t find safe housing or employment hunker down, strip down, go zen, go without, and struggle to adapt to the newfound state of limited resources. This is the world of poverty, and if anyone with MCS thinks this scenario isn’t a heartbeat away, they are fooling themselves. There is no safety net for people with a health condition not recognized by the government or mainstream medical community.

Such is the life of canaries. It’s not just sensitivity to toxic chemicals that people with MCS live with, it’s acute sensitivity to the social injustice of a negligent health care and governmental system that refuses to even acknowledge there’s a problem.

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If you’d like to learn more about Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and poverty, Grist: Environmental News and Commentary covered the topic in 2006.

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Natural, nontoxic swimming pools

Nontoxic sex toys, condoms and lubricants

What’s good for the vagina & the penis is good for the planet!

While maintaining a healthy lifestyle is important for many people, one toxic aspect of daily life is continuously overlooked: the sex industry.

Most latex condoms, including Trojan, contain casein, a milk protein, and also may be tested on animals. Many water-based lubes contain paraben, a preservative potentially linked to breast cancer. Sex toys such as dildos and vibrators can contain phthalates, oil-based chemicals used to soften plastics, which get absorbed into users’ bodies and can cause a range of damage to the liver, kidneys, lungs and reproductive system.

However, there are a number of healthy, environmentally-friendly items on the market. Pure Pleasure on Church Street in downtown Santa Cruz carries a multitude of vegan products including condoms, lubrication and toys.

“All of our products in general are body-friendly,” said Amy Baldwin, co-owner of Pure Pleasure.

Baldwin said that before Pure Pleasure, there were no sex shops that catered to the vegan and body-conscious demographic of Santa Cruz.

“We don’t do anything that has phthalates,” Baldwin said. “It’s very Santa Cruz to go down that path.”

Vegan and eco-friendly sex products are nontoxic and generally made with organic and animal-free ingredients. Glyde is the only condom brand registered with the Vegan Society, and some popular vegan lubricants include Sliquid H2O and Hathor Aphrodisia, all of which are sold at Pure Pleasure.

“In my experience, vegan condoms are about the same as your average latex condom, if not better,” Baldwin said. “It’s a softer, thinner kind of latex feel.”

Among lubricants sold at Pure Pleasure is Hathor Aphrodisia, made by a Vancouver-based company that uses certified organic and plant-based ingredients with no paraben, synthetic fragrances, colors or animal products.

Link to City on the Hill Press for full story and more info on nontoxic sex products

This evening’s walk

This is the park where I walk most evenings. We go at the very end of the day just as it gets dark. It’s a county park about a mile from my home–it’s an old baseball field chock full of history in our community from the days when sugar was king and every plantation community had a baseball team. The oldtimers tell some great stories!

My newest fascination is with the bats that join us in the evening just as it darkens too much to see well. How I wish I could catch them on film! They dart and flutter catching bugs way up high. They are my new favorite animal.

Anyway, here are three snaps: one of the park when we first arrived, then one toward the ocean (the direction we call makai), and one toward the mountain (mauka) as darkness fell. I should go get some photos in the full light one day so you can see how much prettier it is than these show!

Fashionable MCS terrorist goes for a bike ride

Lou Cheese, at Living w/ Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, catches his reflection in a bus window while taking a bike ride in Cleveland.

Too bad you couldn’t see the bike. I’ve started wrapping the respirator ensemble in a color-matching silk scarf for bike rides. I can only imagine what the people inside the bus were thinking, probably something like “Well, it’s nice to see the terrorists are making an effort to be a little more fashionable now.”

Link

A special treat: Hawaiian Hoary Bats!

We took a walk this evening at Ookala Park– a large, flat park about a mile up the road with the ocean on one side and green grassy cow pastures on the other–, and as it got dark, we had a special treat: Two beautiful Hawaiian Hoary Bats circling way up high overhead.

I got so excited because although I’ve lived in Hawai‘i since the age of six, I’ve only seen Hawaiian bats a couple of times, and never here on The Big Island. They were so beautiful (sorry, I didn’t have my camera), their dark bat silhouette against the darkening sky.

I’m so glad I went on the walk– I almost didn’t go because I wasn’t feeling so hot today. But my husband always tells me: When you don’t want to walk is when you need it most. So I said, “Let’s go take a walk!” I fed the chickens and off we went.

You never know when life is going to give you a special treat.

This photo and description are from the Honolulu Zoo website.

Hawaiian Hoary Bat

DISTRIBUTION and HABITAT:

The Hawaiian Hoary Bat (Lasiurus cinereus semotus) is a member of the Family Vespertilionidae (Common or Vesper bats). It is described as a subspecies of the North American Hoary Bat. Hoary means frosted, and refers to the white tips of the body hairs.

Native Hawaiians named the bat Opeapea, referring to the bats half-taro leaf, canoe sail, cross, or radially spoked outline.

Bats are still commonly seen on the islands of Hawaii, Kauai, and Maui, but are rarely seen on Oahu. The bat is considered to be Hawaii’s only native land mammal. There is fossil evidence of at least one other Hawaiian bat species. Several failed attempts at deliberate introduction of non-native bat species have been reported.

BEHAVIOR:

Usually considered solitary, Hawaiian bats are assumed to roost in trees and have only rarely been seen exiting lava tubes, leaving cracks in rock walls, or hanging from man made structures. They are found in both wet and dry areas, and from sea level to 13,000 ft.

Link to more info and photos.

Sunday morning in my secret garden

I spent some of my Sunday morning visiting the front entrance pond, tea and camera at hand. The fish get so excited anticipating food, voracious little buggers. The mosaic plant is outrageously beautiful since I got control of the summer algae bloom. And the variegated leaves of the day water lilies are spectacular. Everything is blooming today. Wow.

From top to bottom: View down the front stoop to the pond and gardens (bird bath to the right), variegated water lily leaves and orange comets, lavendar water hyacinth bloom and yellow mosaic plant blooms, close up of mosaic plant (is that beautiful or what?!), side view of whole pond.

Crafting in a nontoxic AND sustainable way

I love to craft things and have dabbled in dollmaking, water colors, basket weaving, sewing, jewelry making and more. Actually, my addiction to gardening and tending my ponds is an extension of that type of leisure because both those activities involve a lot of creativity and design, too.

Crafting for people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity can be tricky because we have reactions to so many art materials and media. But we can enjoy these activities in a chemical-free way by choosing the right products. There are alternative paints and paper, organic fabrics and yarn, wooden buttons and boxes, nontoxic glues and adhesives.

The blog Crafting a Green World is a cornucopia of green crafting ideas that are not only nontoxic, but sustainable as well, taking our personal concerns about synthetic chemicals one step further: what’s good for us is good for the planet.

Crafting a Green World

Crafting a Green World features do-it-yourself projects that incorporate reused, recycled, and natural materials. Find knitting, sewing, crocheting, and other project ideas for eco-friendly and fashionable clothes, crafts, gifts and more.

Green is the new black, as they say, but what in the world does that mean? It means living sustainably is the “cool” thing to do, but some of us have been doing these things for years. Take crafters for example - many of us keep scraps of fabrics from other projects for future use, “frog” old sweaters and scarves to have fresh yarn to work with, and tweak items and patterns we find to make them just right for our tastes.

The renewed popularity of green living has benefits for creative folks, including new sustainable fabrics and innovate ideas for reusing a plethora of resources. For those of us who enjoy being a part of the creative process or are beginning to experiment with do-it-yourself projects, then Crafting a Green World is for you!

We feature everything from eco-patterns, supplies, and creators to book reviews and event/sale notices. Crafting a Green World (CAGW) is your #1 resource for organic, natural, and recycled crafty projects, products, media, and businesses.

Whether you are a novice, a pro, or somewhere in between, Crafting a Green World has the sustainable crafty content you are looking for.

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Walkability: The Land Use - Public Health Connection

Here’s an interesting article discussing walkable neighborhoods and the correlation between people walking more and improved health. It’s written by Beth Conover at Headwaters Consulting, who has over 20 years experience implementing sustainable environmental and economic practices. It’s a smart concept, and us canaries should be interested promoting this kind of growth because we benefit in many ways: not only is the walking just plain good for health but less vehicle use means cleaner air for us to breathe.

Here’s Ms. Conover’s post:

Earlier this week I chanced upon the walkscore website, which ranks the walkability of hundreds of United States neighborhoods by calculating the average distances between homes and basic services to determine their ease of accessibility to people on foot. From the site:

Picture a walkable neighborhood. You lose weight each time you walk to the grocery store. You stumble home from last call without waiting for a cab. You spend less money on your car-or you don’t own a car. When you shop, you support your local economy. You talk to your neighbors.

What makes a neighborhood walkable?

• A center: Walkable neighborhoods have a discernable center, whether it’s a shopping district, a main street, or a public space.
• Density: The neighborhood is compact enough for local businesses to flourish and for public transportation to run frequently.
• Mixed income, mixed use: Housing is provided for everyone who works in the neighborhood: young and old, singles and families, rich and poor. Businesses and residences are located near each other.
• Parks and public space: There are plenty of public places to gather and play.
• Pedestrian-centric design: Buildings are placed close to the street to cater to foot traffic, with parking lots relegated to the back.
• Nearby schools and workplaces: Schools and workplaces are close enough that most residents can walk from their homes.

Streets Designed for Everyone

Complete Streets are roads are designed for everyone who uses them, including bicyclists, pedestrians of all ages and abilities, and people getting on and off transit vehicles. These streets are:

• Accessible: There are wheelchair ramps, plenty of benches with shade, sidewalks on all streets, etc.
• Well-connected: Streets form a connected grid that improves traffic by providing many routes to any destination.
• Built for the right speed: Lanes are narrow or traffic calming is in place to control speed.
• Comfortable: Pedestrian medians at intersections, count-down crosswalk timers, bicycle lanes, protected bus shelters, etc. make the street work better for those outside of a car.

It’s a beautifully simple concept, and one that’s at the heart of current land use planning and public health efforts. In our car-centered culture, “walkability” has become an elusive (and so desirable and increasingly marketable) quality. It’s something our ancestors took for granted: ready, car-free access to life’s amenities, with an intangible boost to quality of life (related to exercise, knowing your neighbors and the makings of a desirable “place”)  thrown in.

As detailed in many recent studies, many of the same land use principles that support environmental health also often support improved public health. Some of the greatest public health challenges of our time  - obesity and respiratory illness - have been traced to inactivity and poor diet, which, in turn, appear to result from living and working in places that are car-centered and do not encourage (or actively discourage) individual physical activity and healthy food choices. It is hard to log 10,000 steps per day on a pedometer if you spend all your spare time driving to and from work, school and a big box shopping center. Walkable neighborhoods improve the well-being of those who live in them by reducing the circumstances that lead to  problems like obesity and respiratory illness.

Link to rest of article

A shot of fresh air: Queen Liliuokalani Park

This is my favorite park in Hilo: Queen Liliuokalani Park. It’s a Japanese garden, in fact the only truly authentic Japanese garden in the country because of its composition and location: it has views of both mountains (Mauna Kea) and ocean (Hilo Bay). When I took this shot, the tide was high (the bay is behind me, it feeds this shallow lagoon in the park), so the inner walkways of the park are covered with water. I watched this couple wade out to their island respite, sit and take in the view. They looked very peaceful and content.

How to make a detox bath

I’ve taken my share of detox baths. A detox bath is a little different from a plain everyday bath because you need to make the water hotter than usual and rather than using froo-froo additives like essential oils (if you can tolerate them) you use salts that draw out toxins.

I close up all the doors and windows in the bathroom to keep in the heat. I like to use a generous amount of Epsom salts in the water: I buy it in half-gallon milk carton type containers and use half a carton for one bath. It’s good idea to use filtered water (my water is double filtered at the main pipe before it comes in the house).

The key is to get the bath water as hot as you can without getting burned. I make a kettle full of boiling water, wrap it in a towel and add it to the bath water periodically to keep it really hot. I keep a large towel draped over my whole body to hold in the heat. The goal is to sweat and sweat and sweat for about a half hour.

After drying off, I take a special body brush and brush my limbs in an invigorating sweeping motion from the tips toward my heart to get the lymphatic system stimulated– it feels great! You can get a dry body brush at your local health food store (it’s different than the type of brush for washing yourself).

More on Epsom salts with some history and recipes.

Photo and more good stuff on Epsom salts and detoxing.

Use the Green Vacation Hub to find MCS-safe lodging

The Green Vacation Hub makes traveling safer for people with MCS.

The Green Vacation Hub is a great website for finding green lodging while traveling. They offer special screening for people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

A growing number of children and adults have asthma, allergies and chemical sensitivities (or MCS).

We at the Hub know that this can pose additional challenges to traveling, so we have set up the site to make it easy to narrow down to vacation accommodations that meet your specific needs.

Here’s how:

Once you have used the site map/search to narrow down to the listings in your destination city, you will notice that along the left a variety of criteria will appear. You can use the criteria on the left to narrow down those listings that meet your needs or the needs of your family members.

• If you are allergic to animals, you can use the drop-down menu along the left to narrow down to listings that never allow pets
• If it’s important to you that your accommodations are fragrance free, choose the fragrance free checkbox to narrow to listings that passed the fragrance free category.
• If it’s important to you that your accommodations are careful about air quality issues, check the air quality to narrow to listings that passed the air quality category.

Remember, businesses need to pass only three of five questions in a category in order to qualify for that category. Be sure you read their Green Profile on their full page listing to make sure they have answered Yes to the questions that are important to you. Click here to view the questionnaire that members fill out when they join.

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Homemade finger paints keep baby Rembrandt safe

Who didn’t love finger painting as a kid? It wasn’t about the finished product for me, it was all about the way the brilliant color slid across the page remembering where we’d been. There was no separation between me and the paint, no tool, just fingers and color, and I was fascinated with blending two colors to get a third: purple was the prize.

Here’s a homemade finger paint recipe to keep the little kiddies safe.

Ever see a child use finger paints and not put their colorful, gooey fingers in their mouths? Protect their health and let them have fun using this homemade finger paint recipe that is free of synthetic dyes and pigments.

• 1 c. cornstarch
• 1/2 c. water
• 1/3 cup soap flakes melted with 1/2 cup boiling water
• juice dyes (see below)

Make your own soap flakes by grating a bar of homemade hand soap (available in your health food store) until you have 1/3 of a cup of soap flakes.

Combine the cornstarch, water, and melted soap in a bowl. Stir to blend. Let the mixture set until it has become thick. Divide into separate bowls, and stir in juice dyes for color.

How to Make Juice Dyes

• 1/2 cup of plant material to make the desired color (see below).

Blue: blueberries, red onion skins.
Brown: walnut hulls, paprika.
Green: oak bark, crab apple leaves, and bark.
Orange: yellow onion skins, oats.
Purple: purple grapes.
Red: cranberries, beets.
Tan: coffee and tea.
Yellow: apple tree bark, white onion skins, turmeric.

Use the juice straight from thawed berries, or juice drained from canned beets. If using fresh berries, fruit, walnut hulls, tea, or other plant matter, combine the plant material with 1 cup of water in a pan and simmer over low heat for 1/2 hour or so, adding more water as it evaporates. Mix colors for hue variations.

From Better Basics for the Home, by Annie Bond, Healthy Living editor for Care2.com.

Link with a ton of info at Co-op America on how to find nontoxic art supplies.

Photo by mjrhavoc at flicker.

Power in numbers

I haven’t spent as much time as I’d like in the garden this past week, I keep getting pulled away to other tasks: my day job, my community work, dinner guests, other parts of my life. But I always have to find at least a few minutes every morning and every evening to check all the ponds, feed the fish, and same for the chickens, collect eggs, let the hens out of their coops and then put them to bed.

You’d be surprised how sociable the fish are– well of course it’s all about food, but still, they are friendly and curious and interactive, so it’s always fun to pay them a visit. Last week, I took a batch of small comets out of a smaller pond on the front lanai and put them in with the larger fish in the larger outside entrance pond (pictured here), making a total of 20+ comets of all sizes now put in together. With the addition of more fish, something magical happened: they started to school, moving together as one unit–when a few move off in one direction, all the others follow. I’m fascinated by this new development. When they were less in numbers, single fish were off to themselves in both ponds and there was a lot of just hanging around. But now, all together, they band together, interact with what looks like great joy, no one ever left alone or left behind.

Yup, there’s some power and awesome energy in numbers.

What makes green tea so special?

I am a green tea addict. It’s always the lure of a mugful (no weenie tea cups for me!) of hot green tea that gets me to roll out of bed in the morning. Truth be told: I used to buy expensive organic green tea at the health food store, but now I get the less expensive at Cost U Less. I’m hoping the health benefits outweigh the non-organic status.

My first brew of the day is a double-bag potful steeped for about five minutes, then poured into a huge latte cup and blessed with a spoonful of honey and a generous dose of soy milk. Yum. I toodle out to the front lanai trying not to spill, settle into the wicker chair, and read the morning paper.

So what’s so great about green tea? Well, it has amazing health benefits. Here’s a good description on The Miracle of Green Tea:

The secret of green tea lies in the fact it is rich in catechin polyphenols, particularly epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). EGCG is a powerful anti-oxidant: besides inhibiting the growth of cancer cells, it kills cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. It has also been effective in lowering LDL cholesterol levels, and inhibiting the abnormal formation of blood clots. The latter takes on added importance when you consider that thrombosis (the formation of abnormal blood clots) is the leading cause of heart attacks and stroke.

Links are being made between the effects of drinking green tea and the “French Paradox.” For years, researchers were puzzled by the fact that, despite consuming a diet rich in fat, the French have a lower incidence of heart disease than Americans. The answer was found to lie in red wine, which contains resveratrol, a polyphenol that limits the negative effects of smoking and a fatty diet. In a 1997 study, researchers from the University of Kansas determined that EGCG is twice as powerful as resveratrol, which may explain why the rate of heart disease among Japanese men is quite low, even though approximately seventy-five percent are smokers.

Why don’t other Chinese teas have similar health-giving properties? Green, oolong, and black teas all come from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. What sets green tea apart is the way it is processed. Green tea leaves are steamed, which prevents the EGCG compound from being oxidized. By contrast, black and oolong tea leaves are made from fermented leaves, which results in the EGCG being converted into other compounds that are not nearly as effective in preventing and fighting various diseases.

Bottoms up!

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Photo by tim at Flickr, clockwise from bottom: Coco Mint green tea, Genmai Cha green tea, Citron green tea.

A peaceful Spot

I puttered around my ponds last evening to relax and get some fresh air. Here’s the fountain in the 60 gallon pond near our Garden Room. Those are comets– the orange & white one is my favorite, my neighbor named her Spot.

Instant relaxation: Let go

07/15/08

Simple but powerful way to relaxation. Star gazing works, too. And don’t forget to breathe…

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A shot of fresh air: Walking!

07/15/08

Doesn’t this look like fun? Walking tours in Tuscany. So much better than a bus! I love walking, it’s my exercise of choice. The beach is my favorite place to walk, but I’d do Tuscany if I could just wiggle my nose and skip the plane trip… If you hate exercise, try walking!

Ancient Footpaths North of Siena

Walk with us in Tuscany and experience the essence of Italy—vineyards and cypress-lined lanes, dramatically perched hill towns, valleys bathed in golden sunlight, celebrated wines, mouthwatering cuisine, unforgettable Renaissance art and architecture and a warm and welcoming people. Make your way along footpaths strung along wide-open hillsides and ramble through picturesque villages that color the landscape. At day’s end, settle into some of Tuscany’s most charming hotels and savor hearty local cuisine and wines. Benvenuti in Toscana!

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Bloomin’ beautiful

07/07/08  This is a night blooming lily in the early morning shortly before closing up for the day. Tropical water lilies are either night blooming or day blooming, and go through the open & close cycle for three days before drooping underwater and pollinating the next blooms. I love walking around the gardens first thing every morning and checking on the ponds. There are always beautiful surprises to be found.

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