Happy Be-lated Earth Day!

OH how could i forget! But really everyday should be Earth day!

So in honour of Earth day I would like to urge everyone to do SOMETHING to help out the earth. Pick up some garbage, start composting, have a meat free day (cow farms produce a huge amount of greenhouse gasses), take the transit, carpool, foot-it, plant a tree and just talk to others about how they can make a difference. Lets get some dialogue going.

here is a topic that you can talk about around the water cooler...
Inform people about bottled water. ITS A FARCE! DON"T BUY IT!

Bottled water, although often advertised as glacier or spring fresh is more often just reprocessed municipal water. Basically it is water transformed into... water! Advertising campaigns of bottled water use fear tactics to sell you their purified water, promising that their water is cleaner than tap water. This is just not true. Tap water must go through multiple purifying systems to make it suitable for human consumption and it is constantly tested and monitored. There is nothing wrong with your tap water. There is evidence that bottled water has contained such things as pesticides, arsenic, and mercury. Bottled water companies do not go through the same rigorous testing that municipal water does.

Have you ever heard the idea that you should drink at least 8 glasses of water a day? I thought this was true until I saw it in a bottled water add telling me that this product (aquafina) was a good way to reach that goal. Think about this, you pay much less for tap water than bottled water, but sadly the bottling companies pay even less for access to your municipal water. Why then is a bottle of water upwards of $2.00?
Bottled water is a lucrative business that tries to convince the consumer that bottled water is environmentally friendly and good for you. (Take the Healthy choice,as Culligan water says)

Bottle water companies are taking your water away from you and increasing the price drastically for the same water. Access to clean water should be a universal human right. Speaking of which, Coca-cola extracts about 1.5 million liters of water a day from groundwater in Planchimada, Kerala from which the local farmers and citizens use. Nestle is responsible for drying up the Magnesiana in Brazil.

The bottles themselves are a threat to our environment. The waste produced by the bottles is staggering and they are ending up in our landfills. Yes you can recycle the bottles, but why make them when they are not necessary in the first place? Recycling is not the end solution to the problem of excess waste, it is just one answer. Also the trucks needed to drive the product to the consumer are not environmentally friendly.

I was trying to find out the names of water bottling plants around Regina, I was told there are many, but I could not receive a list of them. I will keep trying.Be aware that there are companies bottling our municipal water.

Most of this information I gleaned from a book called "Inside the Bottle: An Expose of the Bottled water Industry" found at the RPL. If you Google Bottled Water, though you will find many sites dedicated to informing citizens about the Bottled Water Industry.

here are some to get you started
http://www.polarisinstitute.org
http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

A Weekend Trip to Winnipeg...

Hey all,
here is a sketch I did of my Aunt Alva's extremely adorable dog JayJay. Sigh, tomorrow is the last day of our trip, and i have to say it was quite fun but far too short. Today I saw the coolest marsh creature that had the whole family stumped. It looked like a really long, skinny worm. It was about 16 inches long, and really most people would mistake it for a piece of dark grass, but i happened to catch it moving. it had no discernable head and no segments. just one looooong wormy thing, but not squishy like a worm. very odd, i shall be researching this further...
AHA! i did a little research, and it didn't take long to find out that it is called a Horsehair Worm.
it is a kind of nematode which is harmless to humans. it's only parasitic to small creatures such as crickets.

Winnipeg's downtown is probably the most interesting city center I have seen in all my travels, architecture wise. (I have to say that Times Square in NY was the most terrifying. Koln, Germany the most romantic and mythic.) Rob and I had a great day exploring downtown Winnipeg, visiting some of our favourite Winnipeg stores... but it wasn't quite the same without staying at the Roslyn apartments and having Mark be our personal tourguide:) But instead of staying with Mark we stayed at my big brothers house. Spent a lot of time with my brother Aaron and his two beautiful girls; which entails being bossed around by a 4 year old, but really how can i resist?

Also Went to the WAG and experienced baroque paintings. very dramatic paintings, they use a lot of symbolism and vanitas/still life imagery. but the painting style was very inspiring. A combination of realism and the added touch of a few choice areas being really painterly, so that you could see the movement of the artists paintbrush (it wasn't all slick with thin transparent coats of paint like most dutch paintings).

this isn't the best example of what i am trying to explain, but i did really enjoy this painting. the monks clothing was amazing.

But alas, its back to work (if you can call it that) on monday. and also how did that dress-as-an-emokid party go? sorry i missed it!! (i'm secretly an emo kid)