Mood Swings

Today I have been “under the weather”, so to speak with some sort of cold. I was just getting over one, except that my vocal cords were not getting better. There’s a lot of smog in the air that has been making a lot of folks ill too, but that will change tomorrow with the storm system coming in.

I’ve also been having pretty significant hormonal fluctuations.
Continue reading

Buy Nothing Day Action

See more photos at Pom Poms Not Bomb Bombs.

About 10 people participated in singing anti-consumerism carols at a local shopping center.

and about half a dozen animal rights activists engage in some clever protesting against retailers of fur clothing.


Continue reading

Liberia elects first woman president

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 67, was elected Africa’s first head of state in a historic election in Liberia.

This is being seen as a turning point in war-torn Liberia, turning the page on decades of lawlessness and corruption after back-to-back civil wars since 1989.

People were dancing in the streets at the news. “We want stability, free education and also reconciliation, and I believe that Mrs Sirleaf has the best interests of the Liberian people in mind.”

Temperature Inversions

My respiratory system has been feeling the effects of a temperature inversion in the Salt Lake Valley – a phenomenon that occurs frequently in the winter months here. Many of my studnets have been complaining of an exascerbation of their asthma symptoms.

In inversion occurs when a high pressure system develops and just sits over the area, trapping the smog and creating more polluted and still air until a storm comes along and blows it away.

Some days it gets so bad that people are asked not to drive or burn wood stoves.

They Department of Environmental Quality‘s website today reports that the air is “green” or “heatlhy”.

Continue reading

Goliath on the Prowl

Walmart is eyeing a community south of Salt Lake – Saratoga Springs. The artile headline in today’s Deseret News reads:
Wal-Mart eyes Saratoga:Officials see a need in north Utah County city

See a need? The mayor sees this possiblity as “a great thing”.

Meanwhile, the giant corporation has hired more lobbyists this week to ramp up its opposition to a groundbreaking bill that would force the retail giant to offer better benefits, a step that could be replicated in state houses across the nation next year.
Continue reading

Dorothy Day

This is the fourth article in my series on Famous Progressive Women.

Dorothy Day was the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Continue reading

Photojournalism on the plight of the world’s refugees

Next week I am taking my yearbook class to see Exodus by the world-renowned Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado. It is an exhibit of over 300 photographs taken over a six year time period of migrants and refugees all over the world.

Exodus contains five sections and presents the story of the global movement of populations at the end of the millennia. In each section, images dramatically depict the unprecedented circumstances in which millions now find themselves, helping us grasp both the tragic plight of refugees and their resilience and dignity in the face of hardship.

Continue reading

They just keep rollin’ in…..

….and I can hardly keep up! This is great! City Hippy has an article on “Gifts that Give”.

Check it out and add it to the lists that have already been published and circulating.

More on the Holiday Hoop-La

Earlier I wrote on Holidays, Consumerism and Stress.
As we head into the frenzy of the season, consider the following:

  • Americans spend APPROX. $1,042 on holiday gifts
    (Annual per capita income of a Vietnamese citizen: $280)
  • Average number of months it takes a credit-card user to
    pay off holiday bills: 4
    (57% of consumers plan to pay for holiday purchases with
    credit)
  • Total U.S. credit-card debt: OVER $600 BILLION
  • Rate at which consumer debt is growing in the United
    States: TWICE THE RATE OF WAGES
  • Number of extra tons of trash produced in the U.S. each
    year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day: 5 MILLION
  • Almost 52 percent of women, ages 35 to 54, said their stress levels go up during the holidays. By contrast, 40 percent of surveyed men in the same age bracket said their stress levels increase with the holidays.
  • Folks 55 and over expereince the least increases in stress at the holidays.
  • Forty-seven percent making $15,000 to $30,000 said stress levels increase for them during the holidays.
  • Forty-nine percent of working women with children experience elevated stress levels during the holidays. Forty-eight percent of working women without children expereience higher stress in the holidays. Homemakers, follow at 44 percent.
  • 46 percent from the West experience holiday stress-more than in the Midwest at 43 percent.
    Continue reading
  • Scott McLarty, GPUS Media Committee Coordinator, has written the article It’s Time To Dump The Dems, Support The Green Insurgency on Znet.

    McLarty appaluds a recent November 9 editorial in The Nation in which the it is stated that no canidatate will be supported who does not call for a speedy end to the Iraq war. McLarty also calls upon The Nation and other publications that have opposed the war redirect their support towards candidates and parties that have consistently opposed the war from the beginning and called for withdrawal–like the Green Party and examines the reasons why.