As long as I can type on a keyboard and figure out the instructions to send blogs out, I'm going to post something about a different woman each day in March. 31 women I have either learned about just recently and respect, or women who I think very highly of already.
I say the warning about my typing, because it's become harder to get the right keys sometimes. Just saying.
Enjoy these powerful women!
3 Products You Didn't Know You Could Buy Plastic-Free
Toothpaste tablets made by "Huppy" foam like regular toothpaste and, despite expectations, are not chalky. They come in a recyclable tin, and the refill packets are compostable—purchase the tin once, and then get the refills for the smallest carbon footprint possible.
Bonus! Your purchase removes 10 pieces of plastic from the ocean.
Shop: Huppy Peppermint Toothpaste Tabs and Refills
Lip Balm
Blue Heron Botanicals makes high-quality, small-batch products using 100% home-compostable, recyclable, or reusable packaging. As in, no more plastic tubes for lip balms.
These lip balms come packaged in 100% PCW recycled paperboard, which can be composted after use.
Their Lip Therapy balms are ultra-rich lip conditioners formulated to keep lips hydrated with a creamy blend of botanical butter and oils, perfect everyday beauty.
Bonus! A baby sea turtle is saved for every balm purchased.
Products that have been formulated with oil of lemon eucalyptus are a great option to DEET. This natural ingredient has undergone efficacy testing, is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, and is even recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) as an alternative to DEET.
And here's a plastic-free product, Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve's "Don't Bug Me" Lotion Bar. They come as a solid bar in a metal tin, which eliminates the plastic bottle and hard-to-recycle spray mechanism (or, worse yet, aerosol) that most repellents come in.
Bonus! Your purchase removes 10 pieces of plastic from the ocean.
Shop: Chagrin Valley Soap and Salve Bug Repellent Lotion Bar
These products are part of Free the Ocean,
Let us be gentle to each other this brief time,
For we shall die in exile far from home,
...I have never had a heart attack, but I do have heart problems that slow me down. All of my life I've felt that I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof, not anymore.
I think men are expected to be superheros (maybe they wish it too) and often feel so depressed to let their friends and loved one's down. But hey, the heart beats so many times, and we get to do whatever we are capable of...and that's that!
I had thought this would be published on the anniversary of my heart attack...thus gave it the 13th of the month...but ackk, it's Feb 13...and silly. So I'm going to try to add Tom's comment, and my reply, and then forward it to at least today's date!
Just a FYI
From CNN 2/17/23
Russian President Vladimir Putin has switched his preferred mode of transportation from a private plane to an armored train out of fear that his aircraft might be tracked and shot down, investigative reporter Ilya Rozhdestvensky told CNN.
Frybread
A bit of history I didn't learn much about in school, so I want to have it here as a resource.
On Feb. 15 1898 -
The Maine was stationed in Havana to show support for Cuba’s independence movement, and to protect U.S. business interests on the island. Even though Spain had agreed to grant Cuba some autonomy, relations between the United States and Spain were strained. The Maine was sitting quietly in the harbor when the massive explosion ripped through her at 9:40 p.m. Two hundred and sixty crewmembers were killed.
"... Congress issued a declaration of war against Spain in April, one day after Spain had declared war on the United States.
The Spanish-American War was short-lived. Spain sued for peace in July. Three hundred American troops were killed in battle, and 4,000 of them died of tropical diseases. With its defeat, Spain lost the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico to the United States, and Cuba gained its independence."
That's the information I found on Writer's Almanac yesterday. A war of 3 months duration, and what we decided as spoils were lots of tropical islands, where most of the inhabitants didn't speak English.
I focused on the numbers of deaths, from the crew on the Maine, to combatants, to those who succumed to tropical diseases. Not to have a numeric total, but just to suggest that this war, among many, should not have taken place.
I bring this up as we are aware that it's been a year since Russia invaded the Ukraine...over territory.
Thursday, February 16, 2023
"So far this year, there have been more than 70 mass shootings across the US, according to the Gun Violence Archive."
They don't seem to be keeping track of the numbers of human lives lost or injured...
(Here are some organizations who are helping make this country safer:)
Moms Demand Action
Everytown for Gun Safety
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Violence Policy Center
Gabby Gifford’s Americans for Responsible Solutions
The Brady Campaign
I have been preparing for Women's History Month (March), with many women I believe have made (or are making) history. So I may not be expressing my opinions here for a while. I know you're sighing, it's about time!
"How dare you politicize a tragedy like this!
This is not the time!
You can’t even wait until the bodies are in the ground!
I heard that again today from the lovers of guns.
I knew I would.
And honestly, normal grieving would be nice.
I’d really like to have that option.
Students at Michigan State U hug each other. Getty Image
"I wish I could give every single one of those beautiful human beings the personal attention they deserve.
I’d like to spend time telling each of their stories in the greatest of detail; to find out what they loved to do, their favorite restaurants, the movies they liked, the people they dreamed of being when they grew up.
I’d like to see the pictures they had on their bedroom walls, to learn the names of their dogs and secret crushes, to hear about the specific idiosyncrasies that only those who know them well understand.
I wish I could talk to their parents and their best friends and their favorite uncles, so that I could paint a fitting portrait of every one of their vibrant, beautiful lives enough to eulogize them properly.
I’d like to to pause and try to let us all catch our breath from something so terribly breathtaking.
But that’s the problem: there simply isn’t time.
There isn’t time to “wait until the bodies are in the ground,” because by the time that happens there will be more shootings.
This is the stunning regularity of death here now.
By the time we mourn them, there will be more students or shoppers or church members or moviegoers or music fans or tourists to grieve over.
There will be more hallways riddled with bullets, more terrifying phone video taken by young people whose classrooms became war zones, more Breaking News of an active shooter, more frantic texts from parents to their sons and daughters that will not be returned.
And by the time we’ve had a chance to grieve and bury the children killed today—there will be more dead children.
And on that terrible day, just like today, you will tell me this isn’t the time.
You’ll again chastise me for being insensitive.
You’ll again feign offense and accuse me of politicizing a tragedy.
You’ll pretend that you actually give a damn about the memories of these young people or the pain of their families, or the fact that someone’s children were once again huddled and terrified in cafeterias and gymnasiums and classrooms while you tell me it’s too soon to talk about how wrong this all is.
And in this time you’ve scolded me to wait silently through, millions of dollars will flow directly from the NRA to the very politicians charged with protecting these children who will die.
In that time of silent waiting, gun advocates will generate every false narrative to blame the carnage on Muslims or immigrants or Liberals; to place culpability somewhere else, anywhere else but where it belongs.
In that time you’re telling me to be silent, people will be easily buying assault weapons and planning the next atrocity, while the people who love and sell and profit from guns try and wash the blood from their hands.
And in the time it takes to properly grieve and mourn these children killed today—you will have forgotten about them.
You will have moved on.
They will be yesterday’s news.
The nightmares of this day will have been replaced by another round of terrified teachers, of distraught parents speeding toward schools, of hollow thoughts and prayers from politicians tone policing my outrage and doing nothing else.
By the time we bury these sons and daughters, there will be another set of bodies awaiting the ground.
Before these wounds have healed there will be more wounds inflicted.
And you’ll be there again to tell me this isn’t the time.
To hell with that.
This is the time.
This is the time, because this isn’t normal.
This is the time, because kids aren’t supposed to die in school.
This is the time, because we have a gun problem.
This is the time, because half our Government is in bed with the gunrunners.
So yes, we agree.
These children deserve to be properly eulogized.
They deserve to be rightly remembered.
These also deserved to live.
And the children who will die tomorrow deserve to live too.
I care about them enough not to wait.
I will not wait until they are no longer radiant young lives—but bodies awaiting the ground.
For them—now is the damn time.
(Here are some organizations who are helping make this country safer:)
Moms Demand Action
Everytown for Gun Safety
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Violence Policy Center
Gabby Gifford’s Americans for Responsible Solutions
The Brady Campaign
"I would love for everyone to follow along on my journey, I love to put content out there and use my voice on this platform for sustainability," she says.
Her advice for those just beginning their sustainability journey? "Get on YouTube! Watch bloggers, watch documentaries, keep trying to reduce reliance on single-use plastic," Gabriel enthuses. "The knowledge is at our fingertips."
" The second Plastic Waste Makers Index, compiled by the philanthropic Minderoo Foundation, found the world generated 139 million metric tons of single-use plastic waste in 2021, which was 6 million metric tons more than in 2019, when the first index was released."
From Brisbane Australia, In CNN Marketplace HERE, this article pinpoints some of the areas that contribute to plastic waste.
"But the report found that recycling isn’t scaling up fast enough to deal with the amount of plastic being produced, meaning that used products are far more likely to be dumped in landfills, on beaches and in rivers and oceans than to make it into recycling plants.
The index named just two companies in the petrochemical industry that are recycling and producing recycled polymers at scale: Taiwanese conglomerate Far Eastern New Century and Thailand’s Indorama Ventures, the world’s largest producer of recycled PET for drink bottles.
Indorama Ventures is also number four on a list of 20 of the world’s biggest producers of virgin polymers used in single-use plastic. The list is led by US oil major Exxon (XOM) Mobil, China’s Sinopec (SHI) and another US heavyweight, Dow, in that order, according to the report.
And in making polymers bound for single-use plastic, those 20 companies generated around 450 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions — around the same amount of total emissions as the United Kingdom, according to Carbon Trust and Wood Mackenzie, which analyzed the data. Last June, the UK’s Office for National Statistics said UK greenhouse gas emissions fell by 13% to just over 478 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt Co2e) in the year to 2020."
The report does mention a few of the steps being taken to limit single use plastics by countries and states. Then it goes on to say:
"Last year, the United Nations Environment Assembly, the world’s highest-level decision-making body on the environment, agreed to create the world’s first-ever global plastic pollution treaty.
An intergovernmental committee is working to a 2024 deadline to draft a legally binding agreement that would address the full lifecycle of plastic, from its production and design to its disposal."
Today's quote:
Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts. -Madame de Stael, writer (1766-1817)
Memories of blooms and other things will be my posts for a while.
Yesterday morning several friends on Facebook posted their own photos of the balloon flying right overhead. I didn't see it myself, but I figure different photos made it real.
Facebook didn't like it, and took down one of my friend's sharing of some of those photos. She still wonders where her post went.
But WLOS, our local TV station affiliated with ABC seemed to find enough to substantiate that it really happened, and posted on it's app. Then as soon as the balloon went over the Atlantic, the Air Force finally got to shoot it down.
Thanks to The Far Side.
This event is so basically silly to me, and maybe to some news broadcasts as well. I'm listening to a book which I've already read, which makes this particularly poignant. The book is "Compassionate Civilization" by Robertson Work. It has just become available as an audio book. The reader is quite melodious in her reading, though at times I don't keep track of things. But I think that's my being less a listener and more visual in my learning abilities.
Anyway, a Compassionate Civilization would mean that people wouldn't have the anxiety that was expressed in our media when another country was looking down at us through a weather balloon. I hear "we are all brothers and sisters, we depend upon each other," and I believe this is needed. I'm not sure I believe it's possible though. So reading Robertson's writings helps me move in that direction.
Here's the link to the audio book.
Here's a blog from yesterday about the US Air Force Museum showing lots of planes, though not all of them, by Big Daddy Dave.
Here's my earlier post Remembering Flying that has most of my photos that remain of my own short-lived months of being a stewardess for Pan Am.
My story for today's Sepia Saturday includes another stewardess, "J."
She was trained and stationed in New York, to fly the European circuit. I flew the Latin American circuit from Miami.
Though she's a little bit older than I am, she kept flying longer before getting married and hanging up her wings. (Yes that pin was called wings.)
Remember this was the 60s. Here Chubby Checker gives J. (on far right) tips about the Twist. Look him up if you've never heard of him, or the great dance moves.
When J. got married, she had two little girls, and the oldest was born about the same time as my second son. J. and I never met when flying. Crews out of Miami seldom would be on a flight with crews from New York.
So my second son graduated from Georgia Tech and lived in Atlanta. And that's where he met Michelle, J.s daughter, and they fell in love. Imagine their surprise that both their mom's had been flying around in Pan Am planes at the same time. Imagine my surprise too. J. had stayed in touch with some of her friends she made while flying. I didn't stay in it long enough to make any friends.
But we do love laughing about our days of wearing uniform skirts below the knee. And a girdle was also required! Another thing you may have to look up!
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Today's quote: