Do I have to give up bleach to go green? | Ethical and green living | The Guardian

‘I’m willing to go green in almost every other area, but the eco loo cleaners I’ve tried just don’t do the job.’

While not the most elegant subject, the bleach/toilet conundrum is a common one. The standard dictates of eco living tell us bleach is bad, toxic to waterways and aquatic life and should be substituted with a paste of lemon and vinegar and cup of borax, or at least ready-made bleach-free eco alternatives such as those from Bio D or Ecover.

On the other hand, there’s that deep seated, nagging belief – encouraged by years of primetime TV advertising – that toilets are the deadliest places on earth. Unless we tip down a substantial amount of sodium hypochlorite (household bleach), we feel we are leaving our homes open to bacterial invasion.

. . . But the real ethical issue centres around manufacture. Bleach is from the organochlorine family of chemicals, compounds rarely found in nature and which can take centuries to decompose.

America’s Great Lakes are used as the canary in the coal mine for the global effects of organochlorine pollution on water: 200 compounds have been detected in the water, sediments and animals, and traces found in breast milk. Greenpeace has called for a complete end to organochlorine production. Arguably, by buying household bleach, although it can be considered relatively innocuous in itself, it helps to prop up the whole organochlorine industry.

Bleach does the job, but what is the job and is it necessary? As we live in the Age of Bacteria immunologist, Gerald N Callahan, sums up: ‘Neither humans nor micro-organisms benefit from fully destroying the other. This is not a war, as it has often been described, even though we have an impressive array of weapons – bactericidal cribs and mattresses, toilet cleaners… If it were (a war), we would have lost long ago, overpowered by sheer numbers and evolutionary speed. This is… like a waltz that will last for all of human history. We must hold to our partners carefully and dance well.’ Seems there’s an elegant side to this debate after all.”

Source: Do I have to give up bleach to go green? | Ethical and green living | The Guardian

Berkeley’s Own Molly Ivins: Carol Denney – Martin Nicolaus

Berkeley’s Own Molly Ivins: Carol Denney

• By Martin Nicolaus in Satire

“The weird American reality has spawned a line of great satirists: Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, Dorothy Parker, Paul Krassner, Molly Ivins, to name just a very few who have shredded the veneer of sanctimony from many a pillar of culture and politics. In that same vein thrives Carol Denney, with roots in West Virginia, but for more than five decades a proud and prominent Berkeley troublemaker. Her bio would be an ample vita for four people: musician, artist, activist, and writer, but she wraps all of that into one slender frame.

Since the founding hours of People’s Park, Denney has been wielding the pen as a dart gun whenever targets popped up. In the mid 90s she began firing regular salvos monthly. At first she edited Hard Times — “It’s Free, and its’ Funny” — and then, under the nom de plume Grace Underpressure, she morphed that broadsheet into Pepper Spray Times.”

Source: Duplex Press – Martin Nicolaus, publisher and editor

(18) Finest Kind@Shepley Spring Festival 2011 The Riley Boys Were Here – YouTube

Do You Need to Worry About Old Gas in Your Car’s Tank? | Family Handyman

“If you have a car that hasn’t been driven for a while, you might be wondering if the gas in the tank is still OK or if it needs to be removed and fresh gas added. Here’s your answer.

Is old gas in the tank bad for your car? The quick answer

In almost every case, old gas is not an issue. Gas that sits does slowly go bad. However, gas that sits, even for a few months can be redeemed by topping off the tank with fresh gas. When the fresh gas mixes with the older gas, the motor will operate properly. John Ibbotson, chief mechanic at Consumer Reports, says that, “The new gas will mix with what’s already in your tank, and any variance in the octane will be adjusted for automatically by your car’s engine computer.” The adjustment will get the engine running back to normal.”

Source: Do You Need to Worry About Old Gas in Your Car’s Tank? | Family Handyman

Marie Kondo Talks About Tidying Up in 2021 and Her New Product Launch – The New York Times

By Penelope Green

• Jan. 11, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ET

It was perhaps inevitable that Marie Kondo, the one-time Shinto shrine maiden turned tidiness guru and media powerhouse, would expand her organizing business into products.

Yet her first embrace of consumerism more than a year ago roiled the internet, which cried foul as she began selling an array of minimalist objects — housewares, decorative items and organizing supplies — that included pink suede slippers, a boar-bristle broom set and, most notably, a tuning fork presented as a “reset” tool, the ping of which one imagined was the actual sound of “sparking joy,” Ms. Kondo’s trademark phrase.

It was a spare (ish) collection, however. Her latest foray is expansive: 100 organizing objects in a collaboration with — wait for it — the Container Store.

This is the second blockbuster alliance between the retailer and what we might call organizing media. Last year the Container Store partnered with the Home Edit, the Tennessee-based company responsible for Khloé Kardashian’s hair extension closet — an Instagram sensation the writer Amanda FitzSimons likened to an art installation about late-stage capitalism. If Ms. Kondo’s ethos of aspirational organization leans toward emotional and moral clarity — a transformative act, as she often points out — the Home Edit, which uses the colors of the rainbow as its organizing principle, is the equivalent of flashing a logo. (“Conscientious luxury” is how Pam Danziger, a marketing expert, would define both efforts, a trend on point for 2021.)

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NY Times Comment:

Someone who knows me, asked me to read her little book on tidying up the house. It was good advice, and I resolved to try harder. One of her neat ideas, hold up each individual x, a book in the library, a record or CD, and ask, does this item give me joy? If it doesn’t, give it up. She obviously isn’t a writer and historian with archival instincts. Yet, I know that the internet has made most of my archives obsolete. What really keeps me from cleaning up? I’d rather read the NY Times and its competitors and blog about the world going to hell in a handbasket. Also, deep down inside, I know that the easiest way to really clean up, is to die, and the ones who follow will less anguish than I over my multitude of collections.

“Songs of Nature and the Human Spirit, Climate Change and the 6th Extinction” performed by David Lindsay and Kathleen Schomaker. | Facebook

Green Village Initiative (GVI)

1gtSSponshlored  · 

This Friday Harvest Fest concludes with “Songs of Nature and the Human Spirit, Climate Change and the 6th Extinction” performed by @davidlindsayjr and Kathleen Schomaker.

Tune in at 7pm 10/30

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84530165689

Or find us on Facebook live!

https://www.facebook.com/greenvillageinitiative/posts/3718021504883417

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Did Floyd Protests Lead to a Virus Surge? Here’s What We Know – The New York Times

Last night Paul McGuire and I taught morris jigs on zoom to the New Haven Morris and Sword Team, for the last time till we resume in September. However, in September, I will argue that we can meet and practice outside. I am now playing tennis regularly outdoors, and as the article below suggests, outdoors is much safer than indoors, may 18.7 times safer.

“. . . .   Outdoor transmission is more rare.

Conditions at the demonstrations may not have been conducive for transmission, mainly because the protests occurred outdoors, epidemiologists said.

The virus spreads far more easily indoors than outdoors, and close contact indoors is believed to be the main driver of transmission, epidemiologists say. One study based on a review of 110 cases in Japan found that the odds of transmission were 18.7 times higher in closed environments — everything from fitness studios to tents — than in open-air environments. Another study involving a review of thousands of cases in China found only a single instance of outdoor transmission.

In Minnesota, where Mr. Floyd was killed, cases among young adults climbed substantially over June. But officials said that gatherings in re-opened bars were partly to blame.”

Opinion | Jason Isbell: John Prine Taught Me to Stay Vulnerable – The New York Times

“. . .  John was in his early 20s when he wrote “Hello in There” from the perspective of an old man sharing an empty nest with his lonely wife. Hearing him sing the song after decades of hard living and surviving numerous illnesses brought new meaning to the lyrics, now delivered by a man who had caught up with the character he created. John always said when he grew up, he wanted to be an old person.

Related

Opinion | Margaret Renkl

John Prine: American Oracle

Oct. 22, 2018

John Prine, Who Chronicled the Human Condition in Song, Dies at 73

April 7, 2020

John was known for his ability to tell stories that related universal emotions through the lens of his gigantic imagination. He constructed what Bob Dylan called “Midwestern mind trips” from the tedium of the everyday, and he was a master at concealing the work involved.

His songs sounded like they’d been easy to write, like they’d just fallen out of his mind like magic. He was praised for his dry humor and loved for his kindness and generosity. John had the courage to write plainly about the darkest aspects of the American experience in songs like “Sam Stone,” about a drug-addicted Vietnam veteran; “Paradise,” about the devastating effects of strip mining on a Kentucky town; and “The Great Compromise,” about his disillusionment with his country. Among his peers in the legendary Nashville songwriting community of the 1980s, his songs were the gold standard.

Of all the things I love about John’s songwriting, my favorite is the way he could step so completely into someone else’s life. John had the gift and the curse of great empathy. In songs like “Hello in There” and “Angel From Montgomery,” he wrote from a perspective clearly very different from his own — an old man and a middle-aged woman — but he kept the first-person point of view. He wrote those songs and the rest of his incredible debut album while a young man working as a letter carrier in Chicago. “Angel From Montgomery” opens with the line “I am an old woman/named after my mother.”

I remember hearing his 1971 recording of this song for the first time and thinking, “No, you’re not.” Then a light bulb went on, and I realized that songwriting allows you to be anybody you want to be, so long as you get the details right. John always got the details right. If the artist’s job is to hold a mirror up to society, John had the cleanest mirror of anyone I have ever known. Sometimes it seemed like he had a window, and he would climb right through.”

David Lindsay:  John Prine performing Sam Stone from his debut album John Prine in the 1970’s. #johnprine #samstone #veterans
This is another song, I just met for the first time. I confess, I didn’t pay enough attention to this guy when I was collecting and performing. I heard him at the Mariposa Folk Festival, when I was college age, and fell for him. But when I got home, I decided his work that I knew didn’t work for me. I was truly in love at the time with traditional songs and ballads. I vaguely recall that I worried, his material might not be around in a few hundred years.

John Prine performing Sam Stone from his debut album John Prine in the 1970’s. #johnprine #samstone #veterans Get this single on the album Souvenirs here: ht…

YOUTUBE.COM

John Prine – Sam Stone

John Prine performing Sam Stone from his debut album John Prine in the 1970’s. #johnprine #samstone #veterans Get this single on the album Souvenirs here: ht…

percale vs egyptian cotton sheets – Zenya.com – Search The Web Web Search

Source: percale vs egyptian cotton sheets – Zenya.com – Search The Web Web Search

(47) Countercurrent: Tunes in Seattle – YouTube

I’ve been listening to my first cousin once removed Brian Lindsay’s new cd, CounterCurrent Exchange, and wondering who was playing the feet to so well on that cd. Here is the answer.
I want Dan Hedden to listen to this guitar player, Alex Sturbaum. I was trying to learn his right hand strum in the car last night driving to band practice for the New Haven Contra Jammers.