7gen Bloc

In a recent blog post, I opined about recent news that mixtures of popular pesticides are almost always fatal to tadpoles and other living things. That post ended with a plea for us all to stop using these chemical poisons. But if not pesticides...what?

I admit that I have always harbored the greatest affection for nature's less photogenic creatures. I've always thought that creepy crawlies were cooler, weirder, wilder. I see toads and salamanders, walking sticks and beetles, and all of their kin as magnificent works of natural art, the beautiful endgame of an ancient evolutionary chain that is as miraculous as it is mysterious.

My thanks to Seventh Generation for helping the dream behind Know Your Source materialize: to provide health practitioners of all stripes the source of what they use on and with clients to create a model inverse to greenwashing to acknowledge vendors who make efforts toward building a sustainable economy and wellness healthcare system

I had my "a-ha" moment with the iPhone on a trip to New York City last winter. Breezing down 95 into New York, traffic began to back up and eventually stall. With time on my hands, I looked to see if I missed any calls on my newly acquired gadget (thanks Santa!).

So...what's the big environmental news of the past two weeks? Don't ask me. I have absolutely no idea.

I've always said that school is great, but it's really up to Mom and Dad to do the teaching that counts. As parents, we bear the ultimate responsibility for making sure that our kids leave the nest with all the wisdom they need to make their way in the world.

Well there you have it. Winter's first snow has fallen here in Vermont. There wasn't much to shovel out my way, but today in the clearing skies, the distant mountains are white and it's obvious that there are lots of winter scenes unfolding in the surrounding hills.

Everyone likes a clean home, but few of us enjoy the chore of cleaning...unless you're like me. Some of my earliest memories are admiring my mother as she cleaned the house. I wanted to take part in her ritual from a very young age. Growing up in the 80's, our house was filled with brightly colored cleaning products –- albeit with Mr. Yuk stickers on them.

The Carbon Shredders is a community-based low carbon diet initiative that is engaging the folks in the Mad River Valley, Vermont to pull together friends and family and find a whole host of ways to not only reduce their carbon footprint, but also the community's.

And so it has come to this. A handful of hours. One single day. Election Day 2008, a watershed moment in the American story and quite possibly in the history of humanity itself.