Green Options

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After the immense enjoyment I got from Gaia Girls - Enter the Earth, I had some high expectations for the second book in the Gaia Girls series. I’m happy to say that author Lee Welles delivered yet again!

With the first tome based around the element of earth, the second tome is all about water (as the title suggests). Miho’s scientist parents were lost at sea and she now has to move to Japan to live with her uncle. Though she speaks no Japanese and has never met her uncle, she has no other choice but to move in with her only living relative.

While visiting the beach house of her grandparents (who have already passed on), Miho meets the already infamous otter, Gaia. Miho is quickly swept up in the excitement of being able to talk to all the creatures of the sea and makes friends with a large group of dolphins. Of course, her adult uncle thinks she is nuts and simply can’t follow orders when he tells her to be home at a certain time and she continues to come home dripping wet.

She was very young, 3 or 4, when our green light started to blink. As we drove through the streets of suburbia, the extensive urban sprawl was evident everywhere. Orange trees and grapefruit trees were plowed down quickly and furiously by developers. From her car seat she would become enraged about the trees and animals. We found it amusing… at first.

She became incessant and consistent in her convictions as the years passed by. The groves of trees all around us were still being destroyed. She wanted to write to the President of the United States. We started to become concerned. Where was this coming from? How did this happen? A green girl in our very red home. It became a joke — our little “treehugger,” we would say.

One day, standing in our kitchen, she asked me a very pointed question. “Do we recycle?” she knew the answer, by this time she was 5 or 6. I honestly said, “no” (I was a little ashamed). “Why not?” she pressed. I didn’t have an answer. What was I to say? The county provides containers for that very purpose and they retrieve the containers from the end of our driveway. Instead of answering her question I said “Let’s start now.” She was pleased. We immediately found the recycle containers in the garage and put them in a handy place. Then we went on line and looked up the rules, days and times for our area.

As the author of a book series about eco-heroes, I get a lot of fan mail from kids that are fired up to do something to help the environment. Kids can get fired up by many things: seeing a favorite bit of nature developed, a television show on Animal Planet, PBS or Discovery, a personal experience with wildlife. How do you help the next generation move from being inspired to taking action?

I steer my young fans to a fantastic organization called, Roots and Shoots. Formed by renown primatologist and humanitarian, Jane Goodall, Roots and Shoots channels the energy of youth into making positive change for their communities, for the animals and for the planet!

‘Tis the weekend to find a meaningful, last-minute gift! The best gift you can give a child is a gift that will help forge a connection with nature. I believe birds and plants are the two great ambassadors of the environment. If your child has been nagging for a pet, why not help them develop a sense of responsibility and foster their connection to nature with a birdfeeder?

Contrary to what you may have heard, birdfeeding will not spread disease or make the birds forget where their natural food sources are. All seed is not created equal. The cheap seed you find in mega-marts generally comes from the bottom of the silo of seed for human consumption. It is long bereft of the healthy oils that the birds are seeking. If you see the birds, “sorting” through your seed, you need to look for a better quality source.

I purchased a “pole system” from my local Wild Birds Unlimited a few years ago and am watching a pair of cardinals, a nuthatch, purple finches, mourning doves, and blue jays converging on the feeder as I type. Yes, occassionally a sharp-shinned hawk swoops in to grab a meal; but learning about predator/prey and the cycle of life is part of appreciating nature!

Oh yeah, you read the subject of this post correctly … shopping, eek. The holiday gift season usually begins the day after Thanksgiving, a day which I intentionally avoid doing any buying. This year, shops and merchants are breaking out the good stuff (and the good deals) right after Halloween to try and help jump-start the economy again.

If having a gift-free holiday is not something your family would go for, why

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This past week, I have been immersed in the pleasing insanity that is Portland Fashion Week. Though there were not any children’s lines being shown at the event, I learned about Little Marmara while I was in town, thanks to an e-mail from founder Gabrielle Ackerman.

At Little Marmara, we believe in simple things. That we should treat the environment as we would treat ourselves. That nothing should go next

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Jeremy Hernandez is the man. He was trapped on a tilting school bus in the recent Minnesota bridge collapse with a bunch of kids and rose to the challenge of the chaos by kicking out the back door and leading them all to safety.

The media loves a good hero story and Jeremy has been getting buffeted by accolades, interview requests, and gifts. He’s been offered free tuition at a car repair tech school (he had […]

Fischer Price just announced a massive recall on a ton of toys because of Lead Paint. What year are we in? How in the fracking world do Fischer Price toys have lead paint?

I have two little girls who like Dora the Explorer. I think Swiper the Fox is cute and it’s a good little educational show and we have a bunch of Dora toys. I’m beyond mad at all the douchebags in the chain of corporate events that lead to my children playing with toys coated with lead. What kind of society do we live in that builds poison toys?

Wake up and smell the Cradle to Cradle.

The complete list of toys being recalled is after the jump, you can go here to see pictures of the affected toys (the site was down when I tried to check, probably because there are millions of worried parents flooding there for help).

Every time you read something good and green about Walmart, remember that they still pull shit like putting a bunch of poor Mexican kids to work for nothing.

Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be “volunteering” their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country’s labor laws. But some officials south of the U.S. border nonetheless view the practice as regrettable, if not downright exploitative. “These kids should receive a salary,” says Labor Undersecretary Patricia Espinosa Torres. “If you ask me, I don’t think these kids should be working, but there are cultural and social circumstances [in Mexico] rooted in poverty and scarcity.”

Half of the population of Mexico lives on less than $4/day, so any job- even one for nothing an hour with the possibility of tips, is an attractive one. Wal-Mart is exploiting kids who already live on the bottom of life’s heap. They live in crappy houses in crappy neighborhoods and have to live their crappy lives every day on what I spend on buying a smoothee.

My kids go to an awesome little co-op preschool where my wife Heather runs recruitment. She helped organize a fundraiser last fall where I ended up winning the door prize- a gift certificate for a Lobster dinner for two. It was with one of those dealies that actually ship you the lobsters overnight. I’m really not a big fan of lobster and always had a problem with that first minute after my dad would chuck them into the boiling water when I was a kid so I put the gift certificate on my dresser and pretty much forgot about it.

In the process of packing up the house to get ready for our move (we’re moving down the road to Yarmouth, more to follow on that), Heather found the gift certificate and decided to call it in. She grew up a vegetarian, has never even had lobster, and was admittedly lob-curious.

The next day our friendly overnight delivery man rings the doorbell and leaves the box on the porch.

We. Must. Get. Out. Of. Iraq.

There are too many reasons now why Bush’s stupid war needs to be ended yesterday. Add this one to the pile…

As would be expected, Iraqi children living in Jordanian camps report witnessing gruesome events related to the war. These sorts of trauma leave indelible marks on children’s social and emotional development. According to a World Vision report Trapped! The Disappearing Hopes of Iraqi Refugee Children, “43 per cent of children surveyed in Amman, Jordan witnessed violence in Iraq, and 39 per cent said they lost someone close through violence.”

I can’t imagine how it would be to grow up in a war zone or have to flee your home for a refugee camp. Even as refugees, the children do not feel safe. Electronic Iraq reports, “‘These children have been kidnapped and held for ransom, witnessed brutal home invasions, suicide bombings and murders. Now refugee life offers them little option but to go to work as child laborers, exposing them to the threat of deportation,’ said Ashley Clements, author of the report. Understandably, 25 per cent of the Iraqi refugee children World Vision surveyed did not feel safe in their Jordanian homes. This is a combination of past experiences, lack of refugee status, which leaves the entire family unsure, and the absence of healthy routines like going to school, the report says.”