Jessie's Answer to Bethy's Blog :-)

Tiny Houses!

2009-03-05T21:17:00.004-05:00

When we were living in New Jersey, basically when I was in high school, we had a grey gardening shed out in the back yard. It was small, had a potting bench and a couple hooks for rakes and whatnot. I dreamed of how I could turn it into my own little house. I could have a bed on one side (or a hammock! how cool would that be??) the kitchenette on the other side. A few shelves for a pot or pan or book or two. The only thing I couldn't figure out was where to place the toilet. But then, the little shed was behind our house, so I could always go to the bathroom inside... In my imagination, it was terribly cute, with curtains in the windows and everything. Turns out, I'm not the only one with this idea. I really wish I could live in a house like one of these. Just sell all of our STUFF and move on in. Little tiny house with lots of land. Anyone want to buy some furniture?

I was good today

2009-03-04T19:33:00.004-05:00

I was good today and took care of several new year's resolutions at once. Yay me! I put Allie in the backpack and took a walk down to the grocery store. Since I had the backpack and no reusable bag with me, there was a limit to what I could carry, so I ended up with just a carton of organic milk for Allie and toilet paper. Exercise, fresh air and toilet paper. What more could a girl ask for?

Speaking of toilet paper... I would like to declare the toilet paper wars officially over! I now have scientific proof that overhanging your toilet paper (as opposed to underhanging it) is the right way. Yes, there is a RIGHT way to hang toilet paper. Click here for the proof! Not that I have ever doubted myself, but I have run into a few underhangers in my time (ahem, Becca!). Now, if we could just get the whole world to overhang their recycled toilet paper...

And in case you're wondering, these are the brands of recycled TP we've tried:

Trader Joe's - cheap, soft. Doesn't last long in our house... maybe a day.

7th Generation - expensive. Lasts longer than TJ's, but not much.

Marcal - akin to Scott, definitely not the softest out there, but each roll lasts awhile! And is carried by the grocery store down the street. I got 12 rolls for $4.50 today - it was onsale with my Pathmark card.

By the way, Kimberly-Clark, the company that makes Scott and Cottonelle toilet paper and Kleenex brand tissues, has a pretty dismal environmental record. They're cutting down old growth forrest so we can blow our nose and wipe our butts. For shame! Check out the Greenpeace campaign!

Laundry. Bah.

2009-01-15T20:22:00.003-05:00

Laundry. It's never ending. Just when you think there is nothing left to wash, you realize you're wearing clothes that will be back in the hamper by tonight. Bah. I'm beginning to think nudists have the right idea.

Anyway, I have a few thoughts. First, everyone should try Charlie's Soap. There are a few stores where you can buy it in person, but its easiest to buy it online here. Not only does it work great on clothes (and is safe for cloth diapers), but I used it to wash the kitchen floor the other day along with a cupful of vinegar and it worked beautifully! Of course, it didn't last, but that is life with a 15 month old who likes raspberries.

My other thought is that I need another drying rack, preferably one of those enormous ones from Gaiam (I think they sell them at Amazon too). I have a small sized washer, and even with the smaller loads, not everything fits on the drying rack I currently have. My problem is that I don't have enough space to set up a ginormous drying rack, short of getting rid of the kitchen table. I've been tempted to get the telescoping kind and to hang them above our washer. Not very scenic, but then, our apartment isn't particularly scenic to begin with. I figure air drying more will not only cut down on the dryer use (and electricity use and therefore environmental impact), but will also reduce the dust. One can dream, right?

New Year's Resolution #4 - Jessie Rants

2009-01-14T10:43:00.003-05:00

So, resolution #4 has been proving the most difficult, despite the large stocks of tomato sauce in our freezer. Why? Because its winter. Because we don't have all that much time to cook (and somehow I spend my time playing sudoku on facebook instead of cooking in the evenings - bad Jessie!). Because trying to convince people that we don't need to eat meat on a daily basis is difficult. Even more difficult is trying to stuff vegetables into the mouths of resistant adults. Allie I can handle...

I have friends who are raising their kids more-or-less vegetarian. They eat fish, but not other forms of meat. At first, I thought they were being a little unfair - raising a child vegetarian means that they never develop the enzymes to digest meat, and then meat consumption makes them sick. (Ask anyone who has been vegetarian for a long time, they can tell you in graphic detail what a little chicken stock can do to them.) By raising a child vegetarian, you are making the decision for them that they will never eat meat, or at least, they will never eat meat without digestive consequences. My friends make the argument that parents make lots of decisions for their children - raising them within a particular religion, for example. I say that a Catholic kid can become Buddhist later in life without physical discomfort. Its an ongoing discussion...

But lately I've been thinking that their decision not completely off base. I don't want to deny Allie meat altogether, but the reality is that Americans eat WAY too much meat. Once or twice a week is more than sufficient protein in our diet, especially when we're consuming eggs and dairy as well. All of the environmental reasons have been discussed at length here and here and a hundred other places - just google environment and vegetarianism. But there are really good health reasons as well! People who eat meat have a greater chance of developing heart disease, various kinds of cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. The way we raise meat in this country is horrifying as well. Even if you take the animal welfare out of the picture (which is important too!), you still have the fact that factory farms are filling our food animals with antibiotics, creating lots of antibiotic resistant bugs, and feeding animals unnatural foods, which is unhealthy for us. Did you know that grass fed beef contains less cholesterol than grain fed? And then there are the processed meats... do you actually know what is in a hot dog? If you did, you wouldn't eat it. Ew.

The moral of the story can be summed up as whole grains and vegetables, good, lots of meat, bad. What I want most for my daughter is for her to grow up healthy and happy, and on a planet that is prepared to support her generation. Given all of the environmental and health reasons to go mostly-vegetarian, what am I waiting for?

Carbon Offsets - Have you tried it?

2009-01-13T21:47:00.002-05:00

While finishing up the last of changes on my thesis, I had on the National Geographic channel's program called 6 Degrees. The earth's temperature has already risen by .8 degrees celcius. Eek! So I decided to take a step to reduce my carbon footprint - I offset the carbon produced by our car. While the Prius is great compared to other car types, we still produce almost 2 TONS (yes, TONS) of CO2 a year. So I went to the carbon fund website and offset those 2 tons, taking care of the carbon produced by our car. Offset - I donated towards projects that will take that 2 tons out of the atmosphere this year. They have many different projects and you can specify what you'd like your money to go towards (renewable energy, energy efficiency or reforestation are the general categories). Someday soon I'll offset the carbon produced by our "small apartment' living lifestyle... but I should wait until I get paid again. Bah.

MLK Day of Service

2009-01-07T22:17:00.003-05:00

Quickly, since I'm really supposed to be finishing my thesis talk right now, I wanted to let folks know that I'm going to try and answer President Elect Obama's Call to Service and spend MLK day volunteering. I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do, but I want to make sure that its something that Allie can participate in (or at least, be there). Among the options is helping clean up Central Park and delivering food and winter clothing to NY residents in need. There are also health fairs, emergency fire education and all sorts of other projects to fit your interest. To find a volunteer project near you, check out usaservice.org and enter your zipcode. Or create your own!

Anyone up for joining me?

It's the End of the World as We Know It

2009-01-06T22:38:00.006-05:00

Global warming. We've all heard about it. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, trapping the heat from the sun. The glaciers are melting. The polar bears are starving and drowning. Its enough to make me try and breathe less. But tonight, I learned something new. The solution to global warming is pollution! Ok, that really wasn't the take home message, just my sarcastic paraphrasing of it. But seriously - it turns out that all of the particulate pollution we generate has been having the effect of blocking out the sun. Solar dimming! Er, the good news (?!) is that this has actually damped the effects of global warming. The bad news (?!!) is that now we're polluting less. But no worries! China and India are picking up our slack!

So it turns out that the famine in Ethiopia that occurred during the 1980s was due to particulate pollution generated by North America and Europe. The pollution carried itself on the trade winds to the African coast, dimmed the sun and totally changed the weather pattern. This prevented the monsoon rains from falling, drought occurred, leading to decreased crop production and famine. When we cleaned up our act, the rains returned (mostly) and people are eating.

The most direct (and astounding!) evidence they have of solar dimming actually comes from September 11th. After that dreadful day, all commercial planes were grounded for 3 days all across the U.S. This means that these aircraft were not leaving their contrails across the sky, blocking the sun with their clouds. Do you know what happened during those three days? The temperature spread (i.e. the daily high minus the overnight low) got bigger by 2 degrees! That doesn't sound like much, but in the world of global climate, its actually huge. The day was hotter and the night was colder.

Ok, so what does this mean? This means that the global warming crisis is actually MUCH WORSE than current measurements are telling us. This means that our pollution is actually masking the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Want to hear something even more depressing? As the temperature rises, there will be a tipping point at which the oceans no longer trap and store methane gas, and the methane will be released into the atmosphere. Methane is a MUCH worse greenhouse gas than CO2. We're doomed. Bah.

Ok, everyone, stop breathing! Save the rain forest! Kill your television and read a book you checked out from the library! By candlelight! Aah!

Hey God? Can we have a do-over? I think humanity needs it. Then again, I'm not sure I can promise we'll do better the next time around. **sigh**

New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-02T23:52:00.004-05:00

While Matt and I were driving around the Berkshires, we caught a program on the local public radio station (WAMC, for those of you who are listeners) called In Our Backyard. The host, Dr Ward Stone, was talking about his New Year's resolutions, and I have to say, I agreed to all of them. A few highlights that I am personally going to try and adopt:

Get outside. Every day. And get my daughter outside as well. (If I can get Matt out too, all the better!) Today, we went to the botanical gardens and spent the afternoon in the cold, fresh air. So much fresh air, Allie fell asleep in her backpack!
When outside, pay attention. Notice the clouds, the trees, the smell of the air. Teach my daughter to notice these things as well. The more you appreciate the world around you, the more it is worth protecting.
Go to the water. Whenever possible, I will seek out bodies of water, as all life depends upon these. And then, adopt #2.
Eat healthy, eat local, eat organic. Not necessarily in that order. Matt and I spent all afternoon grocery shopping yesterday and bought LOTS of fresh veggies, herbs, fruit. We made our own pasta sauce last night (lots of it!), and Matt made lasagna today with lots of veggies and our homemade sauce. Yum. The more cooking we do, the more we know what is in our food. We're making soup tomorrow, freezing the extra so we have good, healthy food when we are too tired to cook. Whoohoo!
Walk more. I would say drive less, but we don't really drive much anymore as it is. But I'm chubby, and could use the extra exercise. So I need to find excuses to walk, but I guess that is what #1 is about.

If you would like to walk more, outside, enjoying nature with me, then give a holler! Extra incentive - we are now members of both the Bronx zoo and the NY Botanical Gardens. Fresh air and exercise in one!

Happy New Year!

Breaking the Bottled Water Habit

2008-10-22T15:16:00.004-05:00

Today, I took the pledge to break the bottled water habit. Here are a few reasons to stop using bottled water (aka, what Poland Spring and Dasani don't want you to know):

1. Bottled water is full of oil! Ok, not literally. But making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 17 MILLION BARRELS of oil annually.

2. At least 40% of bottled water is tap water anyway! Yep, that's right! You're paying good money for tap water. You're being ripped off! Not only that, but in taste tests NYC tap water beat out the leading brands of bottled. By the way, tap water is more highly regulated than bottled water and therefore, possibly safer.

3. Disposable plastic water bottles are not reusable. Sure, for awhile I used the excuse that I refilled my water bottles, and was therefore being more eco-friendly. NOT! Worse than that, reuse of the bottles can lead to leaching of dangerous chemicals from the plastic.

So join me and take the pledge!

A great idea from my friend, Kate

2008-10-16T13:35:00.006-05:00

So here is an email I just got from Kate which I thought you all might appreciate (er, all 2 of you reading this)... I love that this is originally advice from Queen Latifah's grandmother!

I happened on this old idea for a very safe facial cleanser while reading an interview with Queen Latifah talking about her grandmother's beautiful skin (why was I even reading this? I must have been stuck nursing somewhere and this was within reach…)

Anyway, she suggests exfoliating with BAKING SODA, which is a very gentle, safe abrasive as well as having gentle cleansing qualities. Since I'm a sucker for new uses for safe household products, I decided to give it a try…and it is awesome!

Then I read up online and found that other people have discovered this too. It's a great alternative to traditional exfoliants (which are apparently made with teeny tiny little balls of plastic that end up in the ocean and fill fishies full of teeny plastic balls, yuck) and natural scrubs with e.g. walnut shells, which are too abrasive and damaging to skin. I love the feel of exfoliants but hated those options - what to do?

You can use a pinch of baking soda mixed in your palm with water, or just add a little to your squirt of whatever daily cleanser you use, but either way I have been using it for about 2 weeks now and I love the effect - soft, silky, cleeeeean skin. Not sure what it would do to someone with problematic skin, but I suspect it would only be helpful. You just have to be sure to moisture afterward.

Action Tuesday

2008-10-07T18:52:00.004-05:00

OK, here's your action for the day! We're sending a letter to the EPA asking them to ban endosulfan, a dangerous pesticide that is already banned in Europe. Not only does it cause all sorts of toxicities with acute exposure, but there have been studies that link in utero exposure to autism. (And for those of you who know me, know that this is one of my soap box issues!) So please go to the EarthJustice website and send your message today! (Image stolen from aforementioned website)

Another Reason to like Ben & Jerry's

2008-10-05T14:41:00.003-05:00

(cause you needed another reason?) They just introduced hydrocarbon freezers to keep their ice cream cold, instead of the old hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) ones. Hydrofluorocarbons are serious green house gases, and they can be released from refridgeration & freezer units as the units run and age. This is BAD. Which is why the new freezer technology is GOOD. Want to know more - go straight to the source! Ben & Jerry's website, of course!

TreeHugger.com - Getting Recession Ready

2008-09-30T14:24:00.003-05:00

In light of the current economic forecast, I've been thinking about ways that I can save money. Not that I don't have a reliable income that is unlikely to change (for the next year or two anyway), but it might not be a bad idea to try and save a bit. Tree Hugger has a new article out about getting ready for a recession - the Green Way. The most ridiculous part is that these are mostly common sense suggestions that save lots of money: Ditch prepared foods. Eat less meat. Get rid of your car (or at least, use it a lot less). Get the last drop out of your toothpaste & shampoo. I think the author took a page from The Tightwad Gazette. But seriously, all of these are easy to do and are environmentally friendly. See - I'm not crazy for trying to get what's left of the old bar of soap to stick to the new bar! Now if only I could talk myself into reusing old coffee grounds. (Ew!)

Christmas - I'm Excited!

2008-09-30T14:16:00.003-05:00

Um, so I'm trying REALLY hard to live up to the handmade pledge I took for Christmas. I started making stocking stuffers on Sunday night. All was good except that the glue was not so eco-friendly (in fact, I'm sure it was quite toxic given all the warnings on the package). But I opened a few windows and vowed to find a more eco-friendly option... I think Allie's rice cereal after sitting at room temp for a few hours would probably work. That stuff turns into cement! I'm just not sure it would smell so hot after a few months. Ew. Let me know if you have any better suggestions!

I'd post a picture of what I was making, but that would ruin the Christmas surprise now, wouldn't it? Still, I'm excited. :-)

Action Wednesday! ooh! politics!

2008-09-17T10:04:00.003-05:00

There's lots you can do to bring environmental issues to the forefront. One of my favorite environmental groups, Environmental Defense, has an "action" you can take now to urge the moderators of the presidential debates to ask the hard questions about global warming and alternative energy. Follow this link, and you can send an email to each of the debate moderators. Easy peasy!

P.S. Above image is stolen from the ED website. :)

Action Friday. Er, Monday!

2008-09-15T19:58:00.004-05:00

Ok, folks. Our darling President is at it again, trying to destroy everything I believe in, one at a time. Actually, that's not true. He's doing it all at once! So quick! Save the whales! And the polar bears! And the bald eagles and all of the endangered species currently protected under the Endangered Species Act. Cause folks, our dear president is doing his best to weaken the ESA. Why? Who knows?! Presumably so people can drill for oil in protected wildlife habitats. Or maybe he really just hates polar bears and monarch butterflies. Butthead.

Anyway, click the link below and send your message to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, telling them not to approve the Bush/Cheney changes. Do it soon! Tell them you care! Please!

Defenders of Wildlife Action Center

(Image stolen from TreeHugger.com - a great site if you've got time to procrastinate! Quite Addictive!)

Eco Snobs

2008-09-12T13:55:00.002-05:00

Yep, I'm one. And it is so difficult to bite my tongue sometimes when people do things that are just so easy not to do! Like yesterday, in Pathmark, some women stopped to grab an extra bag (while all the bags in her cart only had one or two things - I swear she bought 10 items and had 6 bags!) and I really was tempted to tell her that that extra bag will take 5000 years to degrade, and, oh, by the way, took petroleum to produce so thank you, lady, for the high gas prices. But I was soooo good and bit my tongue. People in the Bronx tend to have nasty tempers. It could have been ugly.

But I did manage to carry home all of my items in my book bag and not take a bag myself, as I had forgotten my reusable bags at home. Er, go me! **sigh**

Best Stain Remover EVER - Ecover

2008-09-02T19:57:00.004-05:00

I was skeptical, but it totally works. So well that I bought one for my sister in law too. Its made from plant based ingredients and is biodegradable. Its gotten grass stains out of Allie's knees, and spaghetti sauce off of Matt's shirt. Yay! It works! Oh yeah, and the packaging is recyclable. Mom approved. :)

Action Tuesday

2008-09-02T19:30:00.003-05:00

Since I missed last Friday's "Action Friday", I'm celebrating Action Tuesday instead. So here it is: go to: www.coalriverwind.org and sign their petition! Coal River Mountain is one of the last remaining mountain tops in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia. All the others have been strip mined flat! Sign the petition to turn the mountain top into a wind farm instead of another casualty of mountaintop removal. This would create clean energy jobs, and prevent the pollution of streams and rivers that is the consequence of strip mining. You can read all about it at their website. Please add your signature to the petition!

You have been warned

2008-08-23T16:46:00.005-05:00

Only unique/original gifts this Christmas, either made by me, or handmade by somebody else. Why? Because its better for the world. I'm not supporting the sweat shops (unless you count my kitchen, which also contains my sewing machine!). Because I know what my gift is made out of. Also, because I promised.

Tell Kleenex to come Klean!

2008-08-22T09:08:00.007-05:00

I'm going to start posting "Take Action Fridays" which will be easy ways for you to tell your favorite Congressman, Representative, local politician, or Corporation what you really think (er, or what I really think!). Occasionally these will be kudos, but today, we're telling Kimberly-Clark that we'd like them to increase the recycled content in their Kleenex. Currently, its 0%. Really? We're chopping down trees hundreds of years old to blow our nose? (or wipe our butts!)

You can send your message through GreenPeace - all you have to do is put in your name and address, and they send your message on to the powers that be at Kimberly-Clark. How easy is that??? So click the link! Just do it! (er we'll get to Nike another day...)

http://members.greenpeace.org/action/start/209/?session_action=reset

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

2008-08-19T14:57:00.004-05:00

I'm going to try and be more diligent about this blogging thing. I have Allie's blog, which is all about, of course, the adventures of Allie! I'm going to use this blog to try and save the planet, one day at a time. Check in to see my adventures in green - products I've tried and challenges I'm giving myself and how're they're going. Maybe I'll even inspire you? :-) Hope so!

So here is challenge number one: Starting today, no more plastic shopping bags. Period. If I forget my reusable ones, well, sucks to be me. I'll just have to buy less (a good idea for the planet and my wallet!) or look silly carrying it all.

Ask me how its going a week from now... and remind me to put my reusable bags back in my car.

definitely a girl

2007-06-06T15:35:00.000-05:00

Last Friday, we had another screening sonogram. This one was to check that all of our child's organs were formed properly (they were) and functioning (so far so good). The tech spent lots of time looking at the heart, showing all four chambers and the valves working properly, and lots of time examining the brain showing us the ventricles and the cerebellum. And the whole time I was frustrated - of course the brain and heart were normal. In my mind there was no possibility of a hiatal hernia, faulty valves or hydrocephaly. I just wanted to know - BOY OR GIRL!?!!

Turns out she is definitely a girl. No doubt about it. I was thrilled, and Matt seemed, well, relieved. After weeks of saying it didn't matter one way or another, he was actually relieved it was a girl. Are boys that bad? Heh. I guess he would know!

So now comes the difficult process of naming the poor child. So far we don't really agree on any names. Its harder that I ever imagined to come up with a name that seems to really fit this little creature growing in my belly. How can I name her when I barely know her? So many names bring up specific pictures in my mind - a Claire is feminine and perhaps a bit prissy, Bronwyn is a tomboy who excels at all things athletic. Will she be musical like her daddy? Will she be a daredevil like her uncle Cam? I dread having a wussy kid so if not a daredevil, I at least hope that she is brave and not afraid of the world. But then, she is my child (ok, and Matt's too), so of course she'll be perfect.

Having Faith and Other Thoughts

2007-04-08T07:25:00.000-05:00

From our living room window on the 26th floor of 1945 Eastchester Road in the Bronx, we can see the water of Eastchester Bay, which is connected to the north to the Long Island sound and to the south, past Rikers Island, to the East River. Orchard Beach is over in Pelham Bay Park, technically on the Long Island Sound, and in the summer is a fascinating study in humanity for a girl used to the placid seashores of New England, but that is another blog, another day. Between us and the Eastchester Bay is this golden mound of earth (green in the summer, but we havn't had enough sunshine yet to turn the world green). This golden mound, about 16 stories high, from a distance actually looks quite pretty against the blue of the sky and grey of the sea behind it but when you get closer you find that its surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire around the top. You can drive within 15 feet of the mound and there is a bike path that winds past it, but you cannot climb on it, around it, to the top to see the view of the sea over the trees, at least not legally. The toxic waste dump closed back in 1978, and was buried under about 4 feet of topsoil and some grass seed, but not before who knows how many thousands of pounds of oil sludge, solvents, cyanide and lead were dumped there. The reason for the barbed wire fence is actually because the mound is still out-gassing. Its scary to see this dump located next to the bay - who knows what is leaching into the ground water or into the bay. Orchard beach is less than 2 miles away, where families swim in the water of the LI sound. If the mound is outgassing, what happens to the air quality in Co-Op City or in my neighborhood every time the winds blow in from the east? I should feel lucky, the Bronx has only 3 toxic waste dumps (we will ignore for now, the toxic waste sites created by closed factories, etc) compared to Brooklyn's 9. If you're in a lucky neighborhood in Brooklyn, it won't matter which way the wind is blowing, you'll always be downwind. And if you live in Greenpoint, then the very ground beneath you is one of the world's largest oil spills.

Now, even before I was pregnant I was "green", albeit perhaps a lighter shade. I recycled as much as possible, talked my husband into replacing our small SUV with a prius, used 7th Generation toilet paper and biodegradable dish soap. But I started thinking more about how the environment affects ME when we were given the keys to our new two-bedroom apartment. When we started moving stuff in, you could still smell the fresh paint and the newly varnished floors. I was told by my doctor not to do any painting myself, which made me think about what I was breathing in during the days following our move. I know that everything outgasses - carpets, paint, compressed wood used to make furniture, our clothing - but what exactly is coming out? I still have no idea.

What has really pushed me over the edge is a book that my friend Kate gave me, called Having Faith which was written by an ecologist (Sandra Steingraber) as a reflection on her pregnancy and the early days after her daughter's birth (I'm only about half way through, at about month 6 of pregnancy). She talks about the myth of the placental barrier, how the placenta really works, and what that means when you're talking about fetal development and toxin exposure. For example, the placenta actually concentrates some toxins on the fetal side, so while the mother's level of methylmercury may be relatively low, the fetus is exposed to higher and higher levels as the placenta transports the methylmurcury as though it were calcium. Lead, dioxin, solvents, synthetic estrogens... all of these can harm the developing fetus, more easily and with greater consequences than adult exposure.

What does this all mean for me and our baby? At this point, I'm not a fish consumer so mercury is not my immediate concern. And I can't panic about the solvents and cyanide from the toxic waste dump we see from our window, or about whatever it is that is leaching from our walls and floors - there is nothing immediate I can do short of wearing a gas mask which might be a tad extreme (or it might not be - just paranoid). Where I am left then, is mad. I am mad that there are so many unseen, unfelt, unmeasured and unregulated poisons that my parents and grandparents and I (yes - even I have contributed to this mess) have released into the environment for my child will have to deal with. The chances of my having a child with Down Syndrome are in the range of 1 in 1250. My chances of having a child with autism are less than 1 in 200. We have a prenatal test for Down Syndrome. As Dr. Steingraber points out, my generation and the future generations, are the ones who will have to deal with raising the "damaged" children. So I guess what I've learned since being pregnant is environmentalism is not about saving endangered species and the rainforest. You won't get enough people to change their habits with saving the rainforest as your goal. Environmentalism is about saving ourselves and our children. Yes, I would love for my child to see the glaciers of Glacer National Park and see the bald eagle fly over the Connecticut river, but more importantly for me, today, is that my child be born with eyes to see these wonders and a brain able to comprehend them.

TESTING... one, two, three

2007-04-07T07:42:00.000-05:00

Everyone else seems to have a blog, so I thought we should too. Hopefully will save on the mass emails, since there is a lot going on lately and lots of emails to send. We promise to keep posting if you promise to check in now and then!