Green Options

Roses are Red . . .
Are those roses fair trade? How far did they travel? Are they grown organically, sustainably responsibly? If you don’t have a honey to send you flowers (or are unlikely to get them from your own honey), send yourself your favorite flowers!
                  Buy ‘green’ roses from Colombian Florverde growers (not local, but for a good cause).

Skip the Card . . .
Can we get creative electronically? Or write love poems on our bodies or something? Lots of ways to send the message w/out killing trees. If you don’t have anyone to send a love message to, take some time to imagine you are your own lover and send yourself a wonderful love note and appreciate who you are!
                  Care2 has some great FREE eCards that also help highlight important causes

Keep it Local . . .

Simply Divine Botanicals has created a miraculous eye gel, that’s made with loving energy.

If you wear make-up, have sensitive eyes, wear contacts, or are prone to circles in the morning when you’re sleepy then try this healing “instant gratification” eye gel called “Pack your bags they’re leaving“… It is recommended to try one eye at a time to see it work magic. The best feature is the added aromatherapy benefits with ingredients such as: cucumber, watermelon, lemongrass, tangerine, frankincense, myrrh, electrolyzed gold, seaweed, sea buckthorn oil, vitamin E, unconditional love, and gratitude. It really feels as cool and refreshing as a cucumber but with a delicate and fresh scent.

This eye gel was mindfully created to reduce puffiness naturally under and above the eye area. The founder tells us that “it works by activating acupuncture meridians to strengthen kidney function“. Simply Divine Botanicals is a handcrafted, Reiki-energized skincare that has drawn

Coming up with a list of 10 eccentric habits of what she calls “love snobs who try to evoke green passions but miss” shouldn’t have been easy for anyone. But Jeanette, my green-conscious friend, did it with very interesting observations.

Eco-consciousness in many intimate relationships of the boy-and-girl type can be snobbish, Jeanette says, because the lovers who probably kissed on a garden sidewalk for the first time unknowingly tend to outdo each other while emphasizing their green credentials. This is the thrust of her musings:

Dearest Sustainablog!

Thank you for welcoming me back after an extended hiatus travelling our great American countryside.  Burned out from the stresses of the Sust Enable project, my partner Scott and I took off for the great wilds of U.S. National Parks in early August.  I haven’t written a blog since, as my adventures swept me far from the reaches of the Internet, for the most part.  Now I am back in Pittsburgh, not living sustainably, yet still reeling from the life lessons reaped from the past four months.

I anticipated having a slew of breathtaking photographs to offer you, alongside commentary from the trip in which I reflected on our often-severed connection with nature, and the deep wisdom such a connection provides.  Instead, one night while we camped in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, our video and digital camera were stolen from the glovebox of Scott’s car.  In the middle of a peaceful campsite, in which the sense of goodwill invoked a dozen campers to leave their car doors unlocked that night, a band of thiefs took advantage, slipped in after dark, and robbed a handful of people… not only of material possessions, but of their precious trip memories.

I wept inconsolably when I learned that the camera which held our trip photographs had been taken from us.  I cared little for the money-cost of these items, but I couldn’t stop hurting from the void that the thief left in me–having robbed me of the potential for life-long memories.

Memories surely live on in one’s mind… but as an avid student of the sciences, psychology easily reminds me that minds distort experiences.  I was hoping to use the photographs from our trip as a guideline for revisiting the feelings and sights that this wonderful trip stirred in me.  That hope is gone now, exchanged for a fleeting handful of cash to another.

And so, in the middle of my meditations on how the entire human race might be unified if we each and all had the opportunity to pause in the arms of nature’s bounty… I was sharply reminded with a single malicious act… that we have much further to go before then.

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on August 6.

Greenpeace has an important mission for you: to show the European Commission how much you love forests! Why? they explain it on their website:

The European Commission has delayed a vital vote on protecting forests from illegal logging till September. We want to make sure the commissioners don’t forget about it during their summer holiday. We need you to help us make an extra impression before the September vote.

We all love the forests, and we would like to showcase all that love to the EU (and we know for a fact that the EU doesn’t have anything against some loving). The forests already have made an effort themselves!

Thank you thank you thank you to Greenoptions and all of the great minds behind it for offering this platform. In this journal we will follow Ecocities - the projects happening around the world and the humans that make them happen.

We’ll start with today’s posts, but if you would like to see the full range of stories, people and multimedia we have gathered around the Ecocity topic, visit the main site at www. ecocitymedia.org.

Be well!

The German intellectual, Georg Lichtenberg, once said that “to do just the opposite is also a form of imitation,” but reversing Saint Nicholas’ image is certainly not the most sincere way to flatter it.

What’s the truth about Santa Claus? Who is this large, jovial fellow with flying reindeer and hordes of merry elves? If the truth about Saint Nicholas can lay the commercial icon to rest, maybe it can also restore the true meaning of Christmas as a time of peace on Earth, love and goodwill toward all.

Santa as a commercial icon undercuts the ideology of benevolence and humble giving. See this video on the chain of consumption for an idea of who gets left out when Santa goes corporate. A truer idea of the real Saint Nicholas and his current image around the world might reconnect us with the greater feelings of compassion and caring that should symbolize this (and every) season.