Melinda Briana Epler

Redefining Normal

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The last couple of days I’ve been struggling with how to begin the Green Your Insides Challenge. And then it hit me that I needed to address this: the reason it is so difficult for anyone to green themselves, inside or out, is that society is constantly pushing us in the other direction. We have learned since we were wee tots that we are supposed to want more, want better, want now now now. And usually, we can have what we want… so we do.

Slow Food Nation gains momentum

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Over 50,000 people are expected at the Slow Food Nation celebration in San Francisco August 29-31. Restauranteer and food writer Alice Waters comments: “We want to lift a loud voice to change our food system. We need to change the ways we grow, distribute, and eat food, which needs to be good, clean, and fair. Things are at a crisis point with respect to health and the environment.”

Thinking eco-logically and the food web of a bluebird

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When you consider which plants, insects, and animals you ideally would like to share your backyard garden with, you think immediately of the most beautiful and beneficial creatures—perhaps bluebirds, luna moths, fiery searcher beetles, barn owls, bluegills, and foxes. You reject “ugly” or “harmful” creatures—pine voles, rosy apple aphids, starlings, and hognose snakes. This kind of thinking, perfectly logical when applied to a totally man-made environment like a house, won’t work when applied to nature.

Hubbert schizophrenia

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Simultaneously trying to prepare for “the Crash” and to come up with the rent money can be stressful, even for a doomer. … The doomer in me is like the strange uncle I’m embarrassed about but can’t leave home, because he’s me too.

Peak caviar

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Once, black caviar from the Caspian Sea was ubiquitous in Russia in its typical blue cans. Now, it has disappeared. “Peak Caviar” has taken place around 1980 in Russia. … “Peak Caviar” is another confirmation of how common the “Hubbert” behavior is. It doesn’t matter if a resource is theoretically renewable, as sturgeons and whales are. If sturgeons or whales are killed much faster than they can reproduce, then they behave as a non renewable resource; just as crude oil.