Boreal Cat ↟

“We have to stop CONSUMING our culture. We have to CREATE culture. DON’T watch TV, DON’T read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your OWN roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are — NOW — is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You’re giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y… This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you’re unimportant, you’re peripheral — get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you’re a player. You don’t even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”

mothernaturenetwork:

The light from big cities is known to obscure star-gazing for many urban dwellers. But the high wattage from skyscrapers and office buildings is an obstacle for another nighttime phenomenon: the lunar rainbow. Sometimes called a moonbow, the band of colors is a nocturnal rainbow produced by light — in this case, from a full moon — as it passes through water droplets.
6 amazing things that city dwellers miss out on

unconsumption:

Here’s another simple gardening-related repurposing idea:

DIY “watering can” — made from a plastic jug

This photo showing small openings made by pushing a hot needle into the top of a plastic container is making the rounds on Pinterest.

For how-to / DIY details, see A journey to a dream blog.

unconsumption:

5 biodegradable seed-starting planter-pots to DIY

Like many of us, the gardening plans of Michele Pacey (mentioned previously here and here) include growing plants from seed.

In a recent blog post, Michele describes her seed-starting setup: seeds planted in biodegradable newspaper “pots,” which are placed indoors on foam meat trays while the seeds germinate.

After seedlings have sprouted, the plants — pots and all — can be planted in soil.

To make your own biodegradable seed-starters:

Roll newspaper pieces around a jar and close the ends, as Michele shows in this short video, or roll pieces of newspaper around something like this.

Fold newspaper pages, origami-like, into pots. For folding tutorial, see the For Greenies blog.

Cut pieces of paper towel or toilet paper tubes, adding four slits on one end, then fold end pieces together to form a closed bottom. (Photo via girlgearstudio.) Ends also could be left open, as pictured in this earlier Unconsumption post.

Use eggshells, as mentioned here (with description for blowing out eggs).

Use citrus peels. (Found here.)

Another idea: Create mini-greenhouses from cut plastic bottles. Simply place bottle tops over plants. (Found on Poppytalk.)

What household waste do you use for starting seeds?

sacred-geometry:

Why it Matters to Buy Heirloom Plants and Seeds

The loss of genetic seed diversity facing us today may lead to a catastrophe far beyond our imagining. The Mayan word “gene” means “spiral of life.” The genes in heirloom seeds give life to our future. Unless the 100 million backyard gardeners and organic farmers keep these seeds alive, they will disappear altogether. This is truly an instance where one person–a lone gardener in a backyard vegetable garden–can potentially make all the difference in the world.

We can help save heirloom seeds by learning how to buy and save these genetically diverse jewels ourselves.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/why-buy-heirloom-plants-seeds.html#ixzz1qSb5JDG8

pick-it-up-and-smell-it:

Baby seal rides turtle

(Source: ray-moro)

“The Earth is one but the world is not. We all depend on one biosphere for sustaining our lives. Yet each community, each country, strives for survival and prosperity with little regard for its impact on others. Some consume the Earth’s resources at a rate that would leave little for future generations. Others, many more in number, consume far too little and live with the prospect of hunger, squalor, disease, and early death.”

The Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development, Common Future

“The ecosystem concept recognizes that you are new, yet not new. The molecules in your body have been parts of other organisms and will travel to other destinations in the future. Right now, in your lungs, there is likely to be at least one molecule from the breath of every human being who has lived in the past 3000 years; the air around you will be used tomorrow by deer, lake trout, mosquitoes, and maple trees. The same is true of water, sunshine, and minerals. Everything in the biosphere is shared.”

Christie, W.J. et al. “Special contribution on: managing the Great Lakes Basin as a home”.

history repeats

“…The white North American’s reaction to this country was fear; fear of starving to death, fear of the savages, fear of the vast unknown wilderness. That reaction has carried on to this day. Western man still attempts to control the world, the weather, the earth, and all living things. Western man sees it as a triumph to conquer the wilderness. It’s been wrong right from the start. Since the beginning we should have been learning to live in harmony on this earth. We should have been developing a lifestyle that would compliment all other lives on earth. In that way we would have had some hope of survival. But we blew it. We had to conquer, take over, control, and gain from that control. Our gain meant the piling up of material things and money, things we recognized as the sources of power: power to determine the direction of affairs on earth, other human beings on earth, and all the other living things on earth.

And it’s happened. Look what has been done to North America in a short two hundred years. We conquered the wilderness, we overpowered the Indians, we fenced it, grazed it, logged it off, dug holes in it, blew great holes in it, levelled it off, cemented it over — till it got to the point when we had to create national parks so we had something left to look at, something to remind us of how it used to be. And all this time we had so much trouble with the Indians. They didn’t give up, they kept coming back for more. The vanishing race that kept not vanishing. We tried, all right. We declared them savages, heathens, non-citizens, wards of the government. We pushed them aside and we developed the hell out of the country.

Recent findings near Mexico City indicate that humans were living on this continent 25 000 years ago; 25 000 years and look what condition the continent was in after all those years. Then compare it to what we have done in only two hundred years. So now it looks like we have to finish the job. It looks like there is to be no end to the madness. There will be no end until we die from lack of food, lack of air, lack of sanity, beneath our self-created piles of garbage. An Indian woman once sent this message to the leaders of the European peoples. ‘When you have polluted the last lake and have caught the last fish and have cut down the last tree, it is too bad that then, and only then, will you realize that you cannot eat all the money you have in the bank’.

So the question is not whether the western world will continue without the Indian people. The real question is will the Indian people be able to carry on living and survive on this land, in their world, when their world is the only world left? I began speaking by saying that I am a white man; then I went on to support what the Dene people have been saying to you about the pipeline for months. This is because what they have been saying makes sense. They are thinking about their children. They are thinking about the future of people. In this, they cannot be wrong. It is not money or oil or gas we should be thinking about. We should be thinking about our children. I am thinking about my children when I ask you, the government, the people of this country, to slow down, to think for a while, while there is something left, something left to save. Hold it. We could learn something from these people that might save us all. Listen to them while there is still time. THey are speaking about our children too.”

— Jim Green, speaking to the Berger Inquiry, against the Mckenzie Valley pipeline (1976)

The Most Astounding Fact by Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, “What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?” This is his answer.

vegan-rage:

At first it mightn’t appear to be an animal rights issue but human rights are equally important because what we do to animals we eventually do to ourselves. We need to open our eyes to the amount of selfishness and lack of compassion in this world. Collectively we have so much potential for good, to eliminate suffering, yet we can’t pull together and make a difference. Humanity is destroying itself and the Natural world and this makes me so sad. Wake up!

(Source: steinark)