Chronic chemical pollution & your liver......

I’ve just moved into place and when I  first replaced the toilet paper roll, I discovered an unusual toilet roll holder.  It isn’t solid like most of them. It made a noise like a rattle when I removed it and when I examined it I saw it has a little ‘cage' full of plastic-y beads. 

Long story short, these beads turn out to be some kind of fragrance. I can’t find the original toilet roll holder so I’m temporarily stuck with this beady fragrance dispenser.

I don’t know how to say this prosaically enough not to offend the sensibilities of people who buy fragrance-emitting toilet roll holders so, Gentle Reader, if that’s you, skip the next sentence.  But I don’t want chemicals going into the delicate membranes of my ass through chemically-scented toilet paper. It’s bad enough the toilet paper is white and probably full of dioxins. 

Is it any wonder there's so much rectal cancer when people are artificially smelling-up their toilet paper? Why do we even need to scent-up toilet paper before it has been, uh, deployed?  Think about it: what is actually being fragranced here?

Don’t people realize yet that when they spray chemical air freshener products (a misnomer if there ever was one) all over their house, they’ll be breathing the chemicals in or having chronic skin contact with it? Rug rats are especially vulnerable to upholstery and carpet sprays and cleaners; they spend half their life on the floor. Pets too.

Think about your clothing imbued with fabric softeners. How strong they smell. What are they made of? Gynecologists are actually advising women not to use scented fabric softeners with their underpants in the dryer. (But don't think the 'unscented' types are necessarily chemical-free either).  Also they say it takes several sessions with a wet towel going around in the dryer just to remove fabric softener residues from the dryer. Imagine how sticky that might be inside the body once it's gone in thru your pores.

When folks libate their bodies with chemically-fragranced body washes, again they are sending chemicals into the pores all over their body. On a daily basis.  And then there’s the daily shampooing and conditioning. Do any of us know what's in those products we get off the drug store shelf? (I believe industry has gone to some lengths to resist labeling these products and I've been told there are some pretty scary ingredients).

Imagine the chronic build-up of these chemicals inside your body over time.

Same with chemical perfumes, powders, body butters - and those things you hang in the car with chemically-induced  smells: you're locked in a car breathing that stuff in - what is it exactly? And those other ghastly things people inflict on you - air 'fresheners' that plug in an electrical outlet. Certain stores now 'condition' their air and imagine how much of that is organic or natural scent in the dog-eat-dog retail climate. But you're getting a snoot-full of it the whole time you're shopping in those windowless caverns.

It’s all chemicals, and we’re breathing it in or absorbing it trans-dermally.

Can the average liver actually manage the daily absorption of that much chemical?

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My notes on possibly helpful Saints…

·      St. Lucy – “Lucia” luce = light. Invoked against eye trouble. Often depicted holding her eyes on a plate. RC legend that her eyes were put out by a tyrant. Dante made her the symbol of illuminating grace.

·      St. Zita – Patron of Servants – A servant herself – who used to give her own food (and later her master’s) to the poor … who was lent her master’s fur coat one Xmas Eve to go to Church in, on a freeing night – only to give it to a freezing, coatless beggar outside the church (“the Angel Door”). But later that night a mysterious stranger returned it to her master.

·      St. Joseph – Saint of Silence, Patron of Patience; father of Jesus; Patron of Refugees; also of ill people (Notre Dame); model of faith—humility, prudence.

·      St. Christopher – Patron of Travellers.

·      St. Jude – The Saint of Last Resort; Saint of the Impossible; Saint of Desperate Cases. So close to Christ—cousin of Christ, says one book; one of the Apostles.

·      St. Frances of Rome – “It is most laudable in a married woman to be devout but she must never forget that she is a housewife. And sometimes she must leave God at the later to find him in her housekeeping.”

·      St. Monica – mother of St. Augustine, one of the father’s of the Western Church.

·      St. John of God – Patron of the sick and of all who take care of the sick. Portuguese. Kidnapped as a child – later a shepherd. Joined an army, abandoned his faith, forgot moral law. Got really sick – reformed and took to taking care of the sick.

·      St. John the Apostle – Beloved of Christ – 4^th book New Testament. “Woman, behold thy Son” and “Behold thy mother.”

·      St. Agnes – helps all those who want to remain pure.

·      St. Anthony of Padua – Patron for lost articles and small requests.

·      St. Bede – Writer saint. Talents only loaned.

·      St. Bernard – Patron of Skiers and mountain climbers.

·      St. Blaise – The blessing of throats.

·      St. Fracre – Patron of gardeners. Shrines in backyard gardens. Cures. Louis XIV; Louis XIII.

·      St. Francis of Assisi – Poverty, no fear.

·      St. Francis de Sales – “God and I wil help you. All I require of you is not to despair.”

·      St. Jean Vianney – Ptaron of parish priests and of parishes. Confessions.

·      St. Luke – Patron of doctors.

·      St. Maurice – Patron of infantry soldiers.

·      St. Mechiades – Second of 3 black popes. c. 331.

·      St. Noel Chabanel – Canada – Algonquin first nations. Total resignation to the divine will.

·      St. Pambo – Discipline of the tongue and sanctity of silence.

Married Saints:

·      St. Jutta – patroness of Prussia – saw all her children join religious groups before setting off herself. Widowed young. painful illness/self-poverty/exile foreign country. Three ways lead a person closer to God.

·      St. Elizabeth of Hungary – Queen of Hungary (and her aunt, St. Hedwig, ditto) – Married Louis of Bavaria – happy marriage 6 yrs., had children – then he died. She gave away castle funds to the poor. Provided for her 3 children, then renounced the world completely. Died 3 years later, still in her 20s.

·      St. Bridget of Sweden – Had 8 children with Ulf. Her daughter, Catherine, also later became a Saint.

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How the plebes shop

People talk to each other at the St. Vincent de Paul. An English lady customer  gives advice on what “will do” for what when it is:

·      hemmed

·      done over

·      polished

·      brought up

and she tells a dark young guy how the Belgian tablecloth he is holding would “do” for  doorway curtain, a wall hanging, a throw for a sofa, a throw rug.

            Poor people don’t have the luxury of getting things that they like or things that match, but things that will “do.” Do for this, do for that. Curtains that “do” as bedspreads, bedspreads that “do” as curtains. Throws that “do” for making a horrendous old couch less grotesque. Old mismatched ghastly things that will “do,” rather than having nothing at all…….

The lady rooting through the immense pile of curtain remnants next to me is, by her accent, Irish. She’s the first to guess that the woven “velour-y” swatch of material the guy is holding is a tablecloth. “Me mother,” she says, “used to have one on the parlour table.”

The lady at the front desk, Nicki, later tells us that it is Belgian, is a tablecloth indeed, and that the Belgians and the Dutch (“we”) use them as window hangings, rugs, etc.

The dark guy says to me and the Irish woman that he’ll take it if we don’t want it. 

The prices depend on you. If she doesn’t know you already as she obviously does the English lady, Nicki fondles the object of your desire while furtively looking you up and down. The obviously-not-wealthy dark guy gets the rug/curtain/tablecloth for five dollars. The English lady gets a five dollar suit for three because she says, rationalizing it, she’s going to have to spend a lot of time repairing it. She’s a regular. She calls Nicki ‘Nicki;’ that’s how we know her name.

I’m trying on some shoes. Suede, an awful mustard colour that I can dye, a high heel, size 10B. They fit, but I can’t get the ankle strap to do up. I try. A man called Joe tries, and fails. Finally a young, handsome, but scruffy young guy sits down and does what Joe and I could not. He works with leather, he tells me. His social worker got him into it. He has some dye too—brilliant purple.

“Tell her you’ll give her three for them,” he whispers, handing me back the shoe.

I finally do get the buckles to do up. On the bottom of each shoe is written 8.50.

Nicki addresses me from behind the counter. “You can have them for five.”

The handsome scruffy guy whispers “three” again, almost but not quite pinching my arm. Then he leaves.

I look at my new shoes in the mirror. Even at five...suede; brand new, even the heel isn’t worn.

Handsome scruffy comes back in the shop and gets Nicki to get something out of the window for him. Looks it over. “I’ll give you two dollars for it that’s all I’ve got on me.” A companion out of Nicki’s sight smirks. He gets it for two. He probably doesn’t have more than another five on him.  

I pay five for my shoes and three for some other plastic Fifties junk I found there. After all, it’s for the St. Vincent de Paul charities. 

 Nicki has a pinkie and a ring finger on her left hand and an enormous round mound where her other two fingers might be which goes over the top of her hand—it looks like one of those yellow gourds, only no bumps—in between her fingers and the teeny but agile little stump that serves as her thumb. In repose she covers her left hand, demurely, with her right. Her rings are on her right hand.

There are two high school girls, both black-haired and quite, quite pretty, done up in New Wave outfits: tights worn under heavy Navy jackets, high heels. One of them holds up a horrendous bathing suit.  “Oh, I’ve got to get a really tacky bathing suit…” She wears gloves and contemplates an arcane instrument which Nicki demonstrates to her – a glove-puller-onner.

The St. Vincent de Paul seems quite expensive compared to the run-of-the-mill capitalist second hand stores in Vancouver, as does the pensioners’ store. Can’t be sure, but I suspect the written-on prices at the SVdP are to discourage the well-off vintage-hunters and that Nicki & Co. make drastic reductions on ticket prices according to the customer’s face value.

The Irish woman who spends half an hour methodically going through a pile of lace and doilies, muses aloud that her husband by this time is usually pestering or her to go. But he’s nowhere in evidence—he’s actually in the back, and later he comes forward to collect her holding a small tower of green plastic planters.

It’s Saturday and this is how the plebes shop.

Maybe the customers talk to each other at Holt Renfrew and New Look Interiors. And they may share a camaraderie too, though perhaps not while rummaging through mountains of used sweaters in a bin or massive heavy piles of old curtains.

The St. Vincent de Paul store always did, and still does, smell dank and mildewy. In some kinky, weird reincarnation—where someone has thought fit to mimic IKEA, a back room of furniture has been created called the As Is Room.  The furniture in there is every bit as creaky and worn out, saggy and uniformly ugly as the furniture in the regular rooms…the old rump-sprung mattresses and springs; horrible chrome and plastic Fifties chairs and occasionally two of them match, and rarer still there is a matching table.

These chrome chairs are priced at $15 each. Absolutely absurd. The right person will take them away for five or three or two. Mr. and Mrs. MiddleClass will pay fifteen, as it should be. But they probably wouldn’t be caught dead there anyway, unless they thought there were painted-over Chippendale chairs in the back.

Quite obviously, no mistaking it, this is where the English lady buys most of her clothing her knickknacks and likely most of her house linens, those she doesn’t have already from a lifetime of living.

This is really poverty.

And it smells.

As is.

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©Margo Lamont

Have heard this song before. It's from an old familiar score.

I’m really really trying to get upset that the BC’s chief electoral officer is refusing to take the 700,000-signature HST petition to the BC Legislature in accordance with the law.


Pundit Bill Tieleman who has been helping the former BC premier Bill Vander Zalm (talk about strange bedfellows…) with a little PR on his blog and on his Facebook page, has a blog heading from Aug 10 that says: Total Recall!  Elections BC verifies success of Fight HST citizens Initiative petition - but won't act because of big business court action!

Oh-kay.  But where do the !!!!!s come in to this?  People are surprised?

Bill Tieleman says the reason the electoral officer won’t submit petition is “because a big business coalition is attempting to take legal action to block the entire [Fight HST] Initiative process - a bogus excuse for refusing to do their duty as required.”

I can see where Bill Vander Zalm might be a teeny bit surprised -- it is a bit flagrant -- but I thought Tieleman would know this type of thing is S.O.P.  (standard operating procedure) when the establishment wants to block those who disagree with them.

Ask any political activist from the Left.  It’s why they all burn out. They slog away year after year, decade after decade, following “the law” -- going through the process of legal dissent -- while governments or their agents, slalom around them and block them at every turn.

A recent example would be David Orchard, who tried valiantly to stop the takeover by the Canadian Alliance Party of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada - the “merger” that produced that rough beast called The Conservative Party of Canada which slouched towards Ottawa and became our federal government soon after.


The Electoral Chief of Canada actually opened his office on a Sunday -- yes a Sunday in Ottawa -- to accept the paperwork for the merger.  And you know all about the signatorial derrings-do that Peter MacKay pulled when he made the deal with David Orchard promising on paper, in writing, no merger in order to become leader of the PC Party then later enabled that merger. 


But the Right, in the person of people like The Zalm and his followers -- because they tend to be the Establishment in everything -- are not accustomed to having their legal initiatives blocked and stymied like people on the Left are.


Speaking of Vander Zalm’s followers, don’t be surprised to find out that that his intention around the Fight HST Campaign was to call forth the undead of the old Socred party and do grassroots (a favourite word of his) organization around the HST issue, with a view to supplanting Right Wing Party #1 (the Liberals) with Right Wing Party #2 in the next provincial election -- a Socred rehash.  Not that the Liberals aren’t that, but this would be a re-branded Socred rehash.


And isn’t the Left playing into the former premier’s hands around the notion of supporting his anti-HST thing because Vander Zalm cares “the people?” Remember when he was Human Resources Minister of this province and told people on welfare to “pick up a shovel?” That’s Mr.  Peeps for you.


Listen to Bill T., bless his heart:

The Recall and Initiative Act is extremely clear - if the petition is verified as having met the threshold, then ‘...  the chief electoral officer must send a copy of the petition and draft Bill to the select standing committee.’ 

Not ‘may’.  Not ‘whenever he or she feels like it’.  Not ‘after business groups take a legal run at the petition’ - the Act says the chief electoral officer "must" - no ifs ands or buts.

This is the same government that tore up legal union contracts in BC, the government that has shown again and again it will do whatever it bloody well pleases.  Law-schmaw.


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Media Release, Friday, March 5, 2004

Why did the Chief Electoral Officer create the Conservative Party of Canada on a Sunday?


There will be a motion in Federal Court in Toronto on Monday, March 8th asking the court to order the Chief Electoral Officer to provide more information from his files concerning the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The Chief Electoral Officer registered the Conservative Party of Canada as a result of a purported merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance on Sunday, December 7th, 2003.  One consequence of the registration was to eliminate the Progressive Conservative Party.

The Honourable Sinclair Stevens, on behalf of a number of "PC Party loyalists," has launched an application to judicially review the Chief Electoral Officer's decision to register the new Conservative Party.

The Notice of Application alleges that there was no proper "merger resolution" as required by the Canada Elections Act.  It further alleges that registering the merger on the day after the vote by the Progressive Conservative Party denied natural justice to those who wished to make representations to the Chief Electoral Officer that he should not accept the purported merger.  

The Notice of Application also alleges that PC Party leader Peter MacKay usurped the role of the Management Committee of the PC Party in selecting the PC Party members to sit on the interim joint council of the new Conservative Party.  The Notice of Application further alleges that the Conservative Party of Canada did not have any structure whatsoever at the time that the Chief Electoral Officer registered it as a political party.

As part of the application for Judicial Review, the applicant requested that the Chief Electoral Officer provide all notes, memoranda, correspondence, emails, voice mails and any other documents concerning the Conservative Party of Canada that he had in his possession.

The Chief Electoral Officer provided some such documents but withheld others on the ground that they were irrelevant to the Chief Electoral Officer's decision.

The documents that were provided show that the initial presentation to the Chief Electoral Officer concerned the creation of a new party, not a merger.  To date no explanation has been given for the changed wording or of how it was arranged that the Chief Electoral Officer received the merger application on a Sunday.  There remain many other mysteries concerning the discussions between the Chief Electoral Officer and those who were pushing the merger.  The applicant submits that further information from the Chief Electoral Officer's files is required in order to properly adjudicate the application for Judicial Review.

The motion for an order that the Chief Electoral Officer be required to produce all the documents will be argued in the Federal Court in Toronto on Monday, March 8th, 2004 beginning at 9:30 a.m.


Court Hearing: 9:30 a.m., March 8, 2004
Federal Court, 8th Floor - Canada Life Building
330 University Avenue, Toronto

-30-

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The Greening of America - still a ways to go

I received my Staples order at work in a plastic bag that was 20 times larger than necessary to hold the two mini-BIC Wite-Out® correction tape holders it contained. (People wanting to talk to me about the ecology of correction tape, please take a number and line up to the left there).

The 20-times-too-big plastic bag had a big green sticker (!!GREEN!!) on it that said:

Make a difference.

Recycle your ink and toner today.

Staples claims on the green label that they have recycled more than 50 million cartridges!  Wow! Go Staples.....  Sounds admirable doesn't it?  And 50 million sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  But, hmn… is it really?

If you figure one printer per 10 people in the U.S. - that's at least 30 million home printers, not counting business printers.  So the 50M they boast about is 1½ cartridges per personal printer recycled in----how many years was that?

Hmn….

I opened the 20-times-too-big bag and took out the 2 little packages of mini-Wite-Outs®.  They are the size of thumb-drives, but themselves are blister-packed onto a cardboard backing.  And I had ordered the "ECOsolutions" version of the BIC Wite-Out®.

Any notion that this was "green" was in shreds because the two little containers had been sent out to me in a separate order.

So first, there was the over-packaging and the huge plastic bag (petroleum products in the manufacture and now landfill issues) … then the petroleum used to drive the thing to my work site … then the staff person used to deliver it from our Receiving area to me … and soon there'd be the cleaning person required to deal with the disposal of the 20x-too-big plastic bag and the cardboard (since we don't recycle cardboard or paper at my big worksite).  BIC says "we can be part of the solution."

What a waste of energy, time, resources this one little order was. 

I'm thinking maybe I should go back to the traditional "correction tape"-just crossing stuff out with my pen.  That seems about the greenest I could go on this one.

All those print cartridges, recycled or not - another reason not to print out so much stuff in our "paperless" work environments.

Read more about BIC's "eco solutions" - http://www.bicecolutions.com - I'm dying to see how they are "greening" the ubiquitous BIC disposable shavers and lighters....

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Chainsaws and spelling

I hate people who are picky about spelling (unless it's in a copy-editing situation).  But recently I was trying to search out a blues musician called "Chainsaw Davidson" on Facebook.

If you really want to know how bad the literacy level is in North America, maybe in the world -- search the word "chainsaw" in Facebook and start reading at about result #100.  Not that people don't know how to spell chainsaw.  It's--well, it's ...  well, here are some of the spellings I saw:

• The Texas Chainsaw Masica
• Texas Chainsaw Massacher
• Chainsaw Mascer
• Chainsaw Texas Masacre
• Texas Chainsaw Masakr
• The Chainsaw Masacure
• Texas Chainsaw Masecar
• Texas Chainsaw Massaccare
• The Chainsaw Massicure
• Texas Chainsaw Masaquer
• Texas Chainsaw Massaker
• Texas Chainsaw Masscre
• Chainsaw Massacra

The I-don't-know-how-to-spell-Texas-either list:

• Texaz Chainsaw Massacare
• Texes Chainsaw Massicar
• Texes Chainsaw Massacare
• Texes Chainsaw Masacer
• Texsas Chainsaw Massacare 

The NASCAR spellings:

• Texus Chainsaw Masicar
• Texas Chainsaw Massicar
• Texas Chainsaw Masacr 

• Texas Chainsaw Mascara  (my personal favourite)
• Chainsaw Masicka  (the gangsta rap spelling?)
• Texas Chainsaw Masscre
• Chainsaw Masscre the Beginning
• Texas Chainsaw Masequer  (Eh, garçon, it must be French!)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacrecre
• Texas Chainsaw Masakre
• Texas Chainsaw Msacre
• Chainsaw Massa  (This guy wasn't going to take any chances on 'massacre')
• Texas Chainsaw Beggining (This guy must have decided to sidestep 'massacre' altogether and just go with beginning as a keyword.  Oops.)
• Texas Chainsaw Masika  (3rd reich spelling)
• Texas Chainsaw Masakar
• Texas Chainsaw Masicer
• Chainsaw Masicare
• Texas Chainsaw Massequere
• Texas Chainsaw Masachar
• Texas Chainsaw Maccacre Texas Chainsaw Mascure

I mean there is Google for checking the spelling of things and since you're already on the internet creating your page on Fasebook, er, Facebuke, er Phacebook...

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Sad, sad, sad...Tibetan culture struggling to survive

I went to the Tibetan Cultural Festival this afternoon. It was put on to raise money for the earthquake victims (many of them ethnic Tibetans) in Jyekundo, also known as Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China where a devastating magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck April 14th, 2010. 


The theme of the festival was "Celebrating Survival."

It was sad, though, to watch minuscule numbers of young Tibetans performing -- part of an increasingly desperate attempt by Tibetans to preserve their culture in the face of what often seems like insurmountable odds - and the very negative energy of the might and not entirely good will of China.

Today I saw a handful of Tibetan performers where you would much prefer there would be hundreds.

As a Canadian, I feel a poignant kinship with Tibetans. We Canadians, too, live adjacent to a huge superpower -- one that at any time could decide it wants our resources, as China did with Tibet, and could just roll over the border and help themselves.

As much as we have trouble defining just what Canadian culture is, I know that we would suffer and mourn it just as much as the Tibetans do if it was taken away from us.  (I'm not quite sure where we could possibly go to in exile to preserve it though - at least the Tibetans had India).

It is awful to watch the remnants of a once-magnificent culture being bullied out of existence.

Namaste.

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