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Urethral stricture is an abnormal narrowing of the tube that carries urine out of the body from the bladder (urethra).
Urethral stricture may be caused by inflammation or scar tissue from surgery, disease, or injury. It may also be caused by pressure from a growing tumor near the urethra, although this is rare.
Other risks include:
Strictures that are present at birth (congenital) are rare. Strictures in women are rare.
A physical examination may show the following:
Sometimes the exam reveals no abnormalities.
Tests include the following:
The urethra may be widened (dilated) during cystoscopy by inserting a thin instrument to stretch the urethra while you are under local anesthesia. You may be able to treat your stricture by learning to dilate the urethra at home.
If urethral dilation is not successful or possible, you may need surgery to correct the condition. Surgical options depend on the location and length of the stricture. If the stricture is short and not near the urinary sphincter, options include cutting the stricture via cystoscopy or inserting a dilating device.
An open urethroplasty may be done for longer strictures. This surgery involves removal of the diseased part followed by reconstruction. The results vary depending on the size and location, the number of treatments you have had, and the surgeon's experience.
In cases of acute urinary retention, a suprapubic catheter
may be placed as an emergency treatment. This allows the bladder to drain through the abdomen.
There are currently no drug treatments for this disease. If all else fails, a urinary diversion -- appendicovesicostomy (Mitrofanoff procedure) -- may be done. This allows you to perform self-catheterization of the bladder through the wall of the abdomen.
Treatment usually results in an excellent outcome. However, repeated therapies may be needed to remove the scar tissue.
Urethral stricture may totally block urine flow, causing acute urinary retention. This condition must be treated quickly.
Call your health care provider if symptoms of urethral stricture occur.
Practicing safer-sex behaviors may decrease the risk of getting STIs and urethral stricture.
Treating urethral stricture quickly may prevent kidney or bladder complications.
Jordan GH. McCammon KA. Surgery of the penis and urethra. In: Wein AJ, ed. Campbell-Walsh Urology. 10th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 36.
Brill JR. Diagnosis and treatment of urethritis in men. Am Fam Physician. 2010 Apr 1;81(7):873-8.
McCormack WM. Urethritis. In: Mandell GL, Bennett JE, Dolin R, eds. Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases. 7th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Elsevier Churchill Livingstone; 2009:chap 106.
Linda J. Vorvick, MD, Medical Director and Director of Didactic Curriculum, MEDEX Northwest Division of Physician Assistant Studies, Department of Family Medicine, UW Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington. Louis S. Liou, MD, PhD, Chief of Urology, Cambridge Health Alliance, Visiting Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M. Health Solutions, Ebix, Inc.
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A temporary boyfriend / girlfriend until your crush comes around. Named after "Kelly Girls", from Kelly Services.
They won't last, that's his kelly until Miranda is ready to hook up with him
They won't last, that's his kelly until Miranda is ready to hook up with him
ayon kay Rod Beatty ika-17 ng Nobyembre, 2006
Someone who dumps ppl for other ppl that are more popular. most likely a flirt (in a bad way) and usually is a bitch/hoe.
Sum1 random: dude she just told me she didnt want to be my frend anymore.
Another random person: duuudddeee, sheee is a total kelly...
Another random person: duuudddeee, sheee is a total kelly...
ayon kay sum1 random ika-18 ng Pebrero, 2008
Someone's exposed butt crack. Especially when at least three inches is visible and hairy.
(See plumbers crack.)
(See plumbers crack.)
Dude! get a belt, you showin your kelly! and by the way, shave a line where your back stops and your butt starts.
ayon kay John the man! ika-09 ng Disyembre, 2007
A girl who is very much like a ned but doesn't wash and is extremely stupid. They also have a child and sometimes a dog who are about as stupid as them. They also like to thieve pointless things like couches. Never trust Kelly shes the biggest lying scumbag.
Hey your as stupid as kelly and you smell worse.
Kelly, you stupid bitch.
Fuck you kelly
Kelly, you stupid bitch.
Fuck you kelly
ayon kay stevie sharpy ika-11 ng Disyembre, 2006
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NY auto dealers try to make registering Tesla stores illegal - Page 2
By June 21, 2013 / Photos by Alex Nunez
Below is the statement issued by Tesla Motors at 2 pm today:
Bill Attempts to Put Tesla - America's Leading Electric Car Company - Out Of Business In New York
A.7844A/S.5725A Hinders Consumer Choice, Hurts Economy, And Will Increase New York's Carbon Footprint
The bottom line for New York consumers and New York suppliers is that if this bill passes, special interests in Albany will once again have gotten their way while robbing New Yorkers of choices in the marketplace, and Tesla will be put out of business in New York. The result would be that all of Tesla's New York employees will lose their jobs. It means that New York-based suppliers to Tesla will lose business and New York consumers cannot buy the most advanced electric car in the world today. Banning Tesla from selling its vehicles is also a step in the wrong direction for reducing carbon vehicle emissions and the green environmental movement in New York. With the State of New York pushing so hard to lead green innovation supporting entire agencies for energy efficiency like NYSERDA, it is absolutely defies logic to ban Tesla from selling electric cars in New York.
From the beginning, Tesla's goal has been to catalyze the market for electric vehicles and selling through intermediaries at this stage of the company will not work. For Auto Dealer Associations to claim that restricting competition is in the best interests of the public is wrong and defies obvious common sense. If we are kept out of New York, it forestalls progress and defeats innovation.
Tesla has created jobs in New York at both its stores and service centers and the sales of its vehicles go into supporting the local economy. Tesla remains committed to bringing electric vehicle technology and its customer focused sales and ownership experience to New York consumers, while complying with all local and state laws."


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In his Transportationist blog, David Levinson asks which kills more: Deaths by vehicles from crashes (both cars and trucks) or deaths by vehicles from air pollution.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration counted approximately 43,500 fatalities caused by car crashes in 2005 in the United States. MIT research, led by Fabio Caiazzo, found that same year had roughly 52,800 deaths attributable to particle matter from road transportation (which accounts for a quarter of emission-related deaths)—a 19.7 percent increase from crashes nationwide. An additional 5,250 deaths are caused by road-related ozone concentrations.
Death, however, is only one form of measurement regarding the health impacts of both auto emissions and crashes. Levinson tries to adjust for age through the Global Burden of Disease database, which includes a measurement accounting for "Years of Life Lost." In 2010, about 1.87 million years were lost to road injuries, whereas 1.65 million years were lost to breathing particle matter. (While this may not seem like a mind-blowing difference, the gap is actually wider, as the latter includes all forms of air pollution. If a quarter of pollution-related deaths come from cars, then a more accurate number would be about 410,000 years.) Auto emissions, overall, cut lives 12 years short; crashes, which mainly affect younger people, cut about 35 years.
In short, while Americans appear more likely to die from auto emissions, car crashes pose a bigger danger when considering wasted life potential.
Image by Honou, licensed under Creative Commons.
North Dakota's prairie towns are being reshaped by the domestic oil boom, for better or for worse.
Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.
At 9 p.m. on that August night, when I arrived for my first shift as a cocktail waitress at Whispers, one of the two strip clubs in downtown Williston, I didn't expect a 25-year-old man to get beaten to death outside the joint. Then again, I didn't really expect most of the things I encountered reporting on the oil boom in western North Dakota this past summer.
"Can you cover the floor?" the other waitress yelled around 11 p.m. as she and her crop-top sweater sidled behind the bar to take over for the bouncers and bartenders. They had rushed outside to deal with a commotion. I resolved to shuttle Miller Lites and Fireball shots with extra vigor. I didn't know who was fighting, but assumed it involved my least favorite customers of the night: two young brothers who had been jumping up and down in front of the stage, their hands cupping their crotches the way white boys, whose role models are Eminem, often do when they drink too much. One sported a buzz cut, the other had hair like soft lamb's wool.
The rest of the night was a blur of beer bottles and customer commands to smile more. It was only later, after the clientele was herded out to Red Peters's catchy "The Closing Song" — "get the fuck out of here, finish up that beer" — and the dancers had emerged from the dressing room in sweatshirts, that I realized everyone was on edge.
"What's wrong?" I asked the scraggly bearded bouncer walking me to my dusty sedan, whose backseat would soon double as my motel room.
"The kid's going to die," he replied. Turned out one of the brothers had gotten his head bashed in by a man wielding a metal pipe. He'd been airlifted to the nearby city of Minot where he would pass away a few days later.
I hadn't driven nearly 2,000 miles from Brooklyn to work as a cocktail waitress in a strip club. (That only happened after I ran out of money.) I had set off with the intention of reporting on the domestic oil boom that was reshaping North Dakota's prairie towns as well as the balance of both global power and the earth's atmosphere.
This spring, production in North Dakota surged past one million barrels of oil a day. The source of this liquid gold, as it is locally known, is the Bakken Shale: a layered, energy-rich rock formation that stretches across western North Dakota, the corner of Montana, and into Canada. It had been considered inaccessible until breakthroughs in drilling and hydraulic fracturing made the extraction of oil from it economically feasible. In 2008, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced that the Bakken Shale contained 25 times more recoverable oil than previously thought, sparking the biggest oil rush in state history.
Now, six years later, the region displays all the classic contemporary markers of hell: toxic flames that burn around the clock; ink-black smoke billowing from 18-wheelers; intermittent explosions caused by lightning striking the super-conductive wastewater tanks that hydraulic fracturing makes a necessity; a massive Walmart; an abundance of meth, crack, and liquor; freezing winters; rents higher than Manhattan; and far, far too many men. To oil companies, however, the field is hallowed ground, one of the few in history to break the million-barrel-a-day benchmark, earning it "a place in the small pantheon of truly elite oil fields," as one Reuters market analyst wrote.
This summer, driven partially by North Dakota's boom, the United States surpassed Saudi Arabia in total oil and gas production, making the nation not only the number one consumer of fossil fuels but also the number one producer. (China is currently leading when it comes to annual carbon emissions, although this country still has higher emissions per capita.) Around the same time, the Pentagon issued a warning that climate change, caused by unchecked fossil-fuel extraction, "will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions — conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence." A subsequent report issued by the CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board, a government-funded military research organization, went even further, stating that the effects of climate change — food insecurity and massive forced displacement, just to name two — "will serve as catalysts for instability and conflict."
And so, when I arrived in Williston this summer, easing my sedan past the fiery flare offs and the welcome sign exclaiming "Boomtown U.S.A.!," my plan was to report on some of the less discussed aspects of the domestic energy revival, such as farmland pollution and the oil industry's increasing militarization. But I had also come to Williston just to be, to explore the existential question of what it's like to live amid a frenzy of activities that, as scientists have assured us, are likely to threaten the very existence humanity has known for the last few thousand years.
On my first night in town, I landed in the unfinished, wood-walled cabin of a local bartender and his friend, a flat-faced, 230-pound hulk of a man who worked on an oil rig and reminded me of Fred Flintstone. As we prepared pork chops stewed in Campbell's mushroom soup and sipped cherry-flavored Southern Comfort, the two traded stories about Williston — the kind, they said, that don't make the newspapers.
There was the time a man threatened to kill the bartender, and when the cops arrived, they let him go, arguing, "Well, he's driving a company truck..." Plenty of companies here issue their employees trucks, although by far the most common branded vehicles in Williston are white Ford Super Duty pick-ups with "Halliburton" stenciled on the front passenger door.
They recycled rumors about secret fights in rooms with padded walls and padded doors, where a winner can walk away with $50,000 to $60,000 in cash, and home poker games with buy-ins of more than $1,000. I quickly began learning the challenge of reporting from the oilfields: rumors are rampant — there is not, for example, a cache of weapons and explosives stashed in a bunker behind Scenic Sports and Liquor, despite claims that it's so — yet the most insane-sounding things have actually happened.
To mention just three that turned out to be all too true: during the winter, a long-time resident rented out an ice house for $5 a night to newly arrived workers struggling to find lodging; members of the Black Hawk private security company (no relation to the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater, although the founder enjoys the "intimidation factor" caused by the confusion) once set its men, armed with M-4 assault rifles, to guard 30,000 pounds of fracking-related explosives in the middle of the badlands; oil companies here have burned billions of dollars worth of natural gas straight into the atmosphere because it was less hassle than building pipelines to transport it.
Whether or not any of the stories those two men told that night were accurate, I was struck by their generosity and the kindness of others. That first day alone, I'd been lent a shirt by a woman working at the front desk of the Aspen Lodge & Suites, offered ideas for stories, and fed a home-cooked meal. Perhaps the deep social ties and steadfast humility of pre-boom North Dakota continued to permeate oilfield culture, as one lifelong resident optimistically suggested. Then again, sometimes generosity can shade over into other things entirely. That bartender, for example, would later try to lure me into the underground sex industry by promising no-participation-required journalistic access. I only had to pass one test, which involved being on my knees.
"I wish you could have followed through so i could of helped your story..." he texted me after I walked out.
The next time I saw Fred Flintstone, he was tired of his haphazard schedule with Key Energy, an oilfield service company, so we spent the afternoon cruising in his Ford Mercury, visiting the offices of its competitors as he looked for a new job. He wore baby blue surfboard shorts and his lower lip was embroidered with a line of black stitches from a recent bar brawl. He was a lover, not a fighter, he assured me, although he also mentioned that the other guy had a broken jaw and a few staples in his head.
According to residents and oilfield workers, including Fred, there are only two things to do in Williston: work and drink. The reasons are simple enough. Unlike in significant parts of the country, well-paying jobs are easy to acquire in the oil fields. As a result, North Dakota boasts the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, an eye-popping 2.8%. To access these jobs, however, the majority of workers had to leave their families and relocate to this remote region, where you often end up living in company-provided housing in steel shipping containers and the number of men vastly, sometimes dangerously, exceeds that of women. Many of these men, in turn, experience feelings of loneliness and alienation, which is where the drinking comes in.
Fred was so confident he'd have a new employer by the end of the week that he suspended the day's job-hunting when the remotest possibility of picking up a woman arose. ("I know this is crazy," he asked the secretary at Nabors, a drilling contractor, "but are you all married up?... No?... Well, when do you get off?") Soon enough, we parked at R. Rooster BBQ Co. to down some pulled pork, then stopped to check out a '98 Honda Accord. He swore that he's bought and sold 68 cars over the years. To end our day, for reasons that passed me by, we stopped and checked out a butcher's shop.
To my surprise, as we drove, he explained that he wasn't a big fan of the whole oil extraction thing; he'd spent much time watching the National Geographic Channel and was concerned about the deforestation of the rainforest and the warming of the atmosphere. "When they say polar bears could be extinct in the next few years, you're obviously doing something very, very wrong."
He wasn't the first oilfield worker I'd met who wondered just what he was involved in and exhibited concern about climate change. Many proved surprisingly aware of the way that flaring off the natural gas that surges out of the drilled wells contributes to global warming or how spilled wastewater from the hydro-fracking process can sterilize land. I'd even met one former river guide turned oilfield worker who texted me an entire Terry Tempest Williams poem upon my departure.
Despite such genuine concerns, most agreed with Fred's assessment: "I, one man alone... I can't do a fucking thing about it. So I'll just get rich and I'll move away, find my acreage back in Iowa or Nebraska or Kansas or whatever, and live my life accordingly."
When I ran into him again about a week later at Williston's recently opened $70 million recreation center, sure enough, he had a new gig.
Of course, there are a slew of sites in the United States where residents are mounting serious resistance to fossil fuel extraction. To name just three: in P.R. Springs, Utah, land defenders are attempting to stop the construction of the nation's first commercial tar sands mine; on a reservation on the Black Mesa plateau in Arizona, the Diné (often called Navajo, the name imposed by Spanish conquistadors) are fighting to permanently shut down a coal mine; in Nebraska, indigenous leaders and local ranchers have joined forces to try to block the final leg of the Keystone XL pipeline slated to bring carbon-dirty tar sands from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast. But Williston is not one of those places.
It's hard to know whether Williston, for all its technological prowess in extracting fossil fuels from the earth, is a window into the nation's future — or a last gasp from its past. Certainly, the sharply divergent opinions of what to make of the oil boom catch something of the country's increasing polarization over what the coming years ought to hold. On one side, supporters of the boom see a domestic energy revival as exactly what America needs: more places where anyone who wants a job can work, where technological superiority carries the day, and where riches (never mind whose) are there for the taking — especially if you are a man, or white, or both. On the other side, opponents of the oil frenzy consider it the latest methane-gas-flaring incarnation of the worst American traditions: unbridled greed, resource plunder, and violent machismo. The latter is becoming an increasing problem as non-native oilfield workers flock to the local reservations of the Three Affiliated Tribes, where they are immune from prosecution by tribal governments. As one told the Atlantic, "You can do anything short of killing somebody."
In Williston, a single term catches both views: workers here overwhelming call this place "the Wild West."
Just beneath the sense of giddiness and possibility in this frontier outpost of America's new energy empire lurks loneliness of an almost indescribable sort. Since the boom began, at least 15,000 workers — mostly men — have descended on Williston alone. When you meet them, it's clear that most carry the residue of half-lives from someplace else: photographs of their children, memories of ex-wives, accents bred in Minnesota or Liberia. "You can almost see the lost-ness, the desperation in their faces," Marc Laurent told me. He's the manager of the Aspen Lodge & Suites where I first stayed, before the cost of housing got the best of me and, like almost all newcomers to Williston at one point or another, I resigned myself to living in my car.
Buck was one of Laurent's guests and exactly the type of man he was describing. A house framer, I first met him wandering around the Aspen's dirt courtyard looking hangover-haggard. He had once had a wife — "back home" — but it didn't work out.
Within minutes of meeting, he invited me out to lunch — and then to be his roommate. Just to save money, he clarified. (I declined the offer.) We spoke on the unfurnished wooden walkway that connected a series of row-house motel rooms that had arrived pre-assembled on a tractor-trailer less than six months before. He explained that he'd been here about eight months, mostly framing the single-family houses that companies were putting up as fast as possible.
A jowly man of sagging posture, Buck said, "I'm just trying to rebuild myself." His words conjured up for me an image of him attempting to frame himself, measuring the length of his arms, the angle of his shoulders until, finally, he hammered himself back into shape. There was something desperate about the way he and others like him had come here. So many, after all, flocked to this town because they needed the work, because their local economies had collapsed in 2008 and had never really come back. They weren't, however, looking to pour themselves a new foundation in Williston. Instead, as so many reassured me, after a few years, after the money was made, they would leave.
A sense of rootlessness gripped me as the weeks stretched on. Sometimes what I was learning left me feeling dizzy — like the commonplace estimates I heard that the Bakken boom could easily last another 20 years. Or that energy companies were now developing plans for deepwater fracking in the Gulf of Mexico. Or that the county of Tulare, California, had run out of tap water in that state's never-ending mega-drought. But most of time I just felt numb. When one of the bouncers at the strip joint where I worked later told me that the dead boy's head had cracked open "like a cantaloupe," I found myself not caring all that much because he hadn't left me a tip.
"I've been thinking maybe I'll just stay in North Dakota for a while," I told my best friend's answering machine before walking into a waitressing shift about a month into my trip. I was making good money at Whispers. I had made at least a few friends I knew were not pimps and I'd gotten the hang of living out of my car. I spoke to my parents less and less frequently and my memories of the East Coast seemed to be fading. I had, it seemed, become part of oil country — and it was becoming part of me.
My friend, however, was not impressed "No, don't do that," he said on the phone the next day. "You need to come home."
So, about a week later, I stuffed my glove compartment with my Staples spiral notebooks and headed east, past orange flares licking the black night, past the tangled-metal refineries of Indiana and Ohio, past fracking-well pumps pecking at the fields of Pennsylvania, burning gasoline the whole way, the memory of Williston never quite receding.
Laura Gottesdiener is a freelance journalist finally back on the East Coast, just in time for her brother's wedding. The author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home, her writing has appeared in Mother Jones, Al Jazeera, Guernica, Playboy, RollingStone.com and frequently at TomDispatch. She is currently working with Zuccotti Park Press on a book about climate change and displacement.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me.
Copyright 2014 Laura Gottesdiener
Photo by Fotolia/Dave
In the journal Fertility and Sterility, Japanese researchers found that in the hottest recorded summer, 2010, there was a dramatic increase in female births, whereas the coldest winter, 2011, produced more baby boys. This correlation in climate and gender fluctuations is still far too preliminary to construe as fact, but further studies have also shown that extreme outside stresses tend to favor girls: male fetuses are especially vulnerable when the mother experiences air pollution, chemical exposure, and extraordinary stresses, such as war or economic hardships.
Denmark also experienced a decline in male population from 1951 to 1995, presumably due to environmental hazards. Another study looked at the famine in China during the Great Leap Forward (1959-1961) and found that women were more likely to give birth to girls in those turbulent years. It's worth bearing in mind, however, that these connections could be arbitrary, with scientists potentially examining narrow windows in history that conveniently encourage this evidence. Still, a Swedish study provides more support that women thrive in natural selection, saying that mothers' bodies are evolutionarily programmed to give birth to girls, in addition to affirming the link between girls and rising temperatures.
Data from Finland and New Zealand did not show consistent connections between climate change and the death of male fetuses, although neither country experiences extreme temperature shifts like Japan. Japan has also warmed at a greater rate than the global average throughout the last century. Still, anthropologists would like to see how this data would fare in developing countries, where amenities that affect temperature changes—shelter, air conditioning, central heating—aren't as prevalent.
National Geographic explains the basic principles of global warming in this video:
Hope can be powerful in leaving behind the mess of the old order and taking action.
There have undoubtedly been stable periods in human history, but you and your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never lived through one, and neither will any children or grandchildren you may have or come to have. Everything has been changing continuously, profoundly — from the role of women to the nature of agriculture. For the past couple of hundred years, change has been accelerating in both magnificent and nightmarish ways.
Yet when we argue for change, notably changing our ways in response to climate change, we're arguing against people who claim we're disrupting a stable system. They insist that we're rocking the boat unnecessarily.
I say: rock that boat. It's a lifeboat; maybe the people in it will wake up and start rowing. Those who think they're hanging onto a stable order are actually clinging to the wreckage of the old order, a ship already sinking, that we need to leave behind.
As you probably know, the actual oceans are rising — almost eight inches since 1880, and that's only going to accelerate. They're also acidifying, because they're absorbing significant amounts of the carbon we continue to pump into the atmosphere at record levels. The ice that covers the polar seas is shrinking, while the ice shields that cover Antarctica and Greenland are melting. The water locked up in all the polar ice, as it's unlocked by heat, is going to raise sea levels staggeringly, possibly by as much as 200 feet at some point in the future, how distant we do not know. In the temperate latitudes, warming seas breed fiercer hurricanes.
The oceans are changing fast, and for the worse. Fish stocks are dying off, as are shellfish. In many acidified oceanic regions, their shells are actually dissolving or failing to form, which is one of the scariest, most nightmarish things I've ever heard. So don't tell me that we're rocking a stable boat on calm seas. The glorious 10,000-year period of stable climate in which humanity flourished and then exploded to overrun the Earth and all its ecosystems is over.
But responding to these current cataclysmic changes means taking on people who believe, or at least assert, that those of us who want to react and act are gratuitously disrupting a stable system that's working fine. It isn't stable. It is working fine — in the short term and the most limited sense — for oil companies and the people who profit from them and for some of us in the particularly cushy parts of the world who haven't been impacted yet by weather events like, say, the recent torrential floods in Japan or southern Nevada and Arizona, or the monsoon versions of the same that have devastated parts of India and Pakistan, or the drought that has mummified my beloved California, or the wildfires of Australia.
The problem, of course, is that the people who most benefit from the current arrangements have effectively purchased a lot of politicians, and that a great many of the rest of them are either hopelessly dim or amazingly timid. Most of the Democrats recognize the reality of climate change but not the urgency of doing something about it. Many of the Republicans used to — John McCain has done an amazing about-face from being a sane voice on climate to a shrill denier — and they present a horrific obstacle to any international treaties.
Put it this way: in one country, one party holding 45 out of 100 seats in one legislative house, while serving a minority of the very rich, can basically block what quite a lot of the other seven billion people on Earth want and need, because a two-thirds majority in the Senate must consent to any international treaty the U.S. signs. Which is not to say much for the president, whose drill-baby-drill administration only looks good compared to the petroleum servants he faces, when he bothers to face them and isn't just one of them. History will despise them all and much of the world does now, but as my mother would have said, they know which side their bread is buttered on.
As it happens, the butter is melting and the bread is getting more expensive. Global grain production is already down several percent thanks to climate change, says a terrifying new United Nations report. Declining crops cause food shortages and rising food prices, creating hunger and even famine for the poorest on Earth, and also sometimes cause massive unrest. Rising bread prices were one factor that helped spark the Arab Spring in 2011. Anyone who argues that doing something about global warming will be too expensive is dodging just how expensive unmitigated climate change is already proving to be.
It's only a question of whether the very wealthy or the very poor will pay. Putting it that way, however, devalues all the nonmonetary things at stake, from the survival of myriad species to our confidence in the future. And yeah, climate change is here, now. We've already lost a lot and we're going to lose more, but there's a difference between terrible and apocalyptic. We still have some control over how extreme it gets. That's not a great choice, but it's the choice we have. There's still a window open for action, but it's closing. As the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Society, Michel Jarraud, bluntly put it recently, "We are running out of time."
The future is not yet written. Look at the world we're in at this very moment. The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline was supposed to be built years ago, but activists catalyzed by the rural and indigenous communities across whose land it would go have stopped it so far, and made what was supposed to be a done deal a contentious issue. Activists changed the outcome.
Fracking has been challenged on the state level, and banned in townships and counties from upstate New York to central California. (It has also been banned in two Canadian provinces, France, and Bulgaria.) The fossil-fuel divestment movement has achieved a number of remarkable victories in its few bare years of existence and more are on the way. The actual divestments and commitments to divest fossil fuel stocks by various institutions ranging from the city of Seattle to the British Medical Association are striking. But the real power of the movement lies in the way it has called into question the wisdom of investing in fossil fuel corporations. Even mainstream voices like the British Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee and publications like Forbes are now beginning to question whether they are safe places to put money. That's a sea of change.
Renewable energy has become more efficient, technologically sophisticated, and cheaper — the price of solar power in relation to the energy it generates has plummeted astonishingly over the past three decades and wind technology keeps getting better. While Americans overall are not yet curtailing their fossil-fuel habits, many individuals and communities are choosing other options, and those options are becoming increasingly viable. A Stanford University scientist has proposed a plan to allow each of the 50 states to run on 100% renewable energy by 2050.
Since, according to the latest report of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, fossil fuel reserves still in the ground are "at least four times larger than could safely be burned if global warming is to be kept to a tolerable level," it couldn't be more important to reach global agreements to do things differently on a planetary scale. Notably, most of those carbon reserves must be left untapped and the modest steps already taken locally and ad hoc show that such changes are indeed possible and that an encouraging number of us want to pursue them.
We can do it. And we is the key word here. The world is not going to be saved by individual acts of virtue; it's going to be saved, if it is to be saved, by collective acts of social and political change. That's why I'm marching this Sunday with tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of others in New York City — to pressure the United Nations as it meets to address climate change. That's why people who care about the future state of our planet will also be marching and demonstrating in New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, Kathmandu, Dublin, Manila, Seoul, Mumbai, Istanbul, and so many smaller places.
Mass movements work. Unarmed citizens have changed the course of history countless times in the modern era. When we come together as civil society, we have the capacity to transform policies, change old ways of doing things, and sometimes even topple regimes. And it is about governments. Like it or not, the global treaties, compacts, and agreements we need can only be made by governments, and governments will make those agreements when the pressure to do so is greater than the pressure not to. We can and must be that pressure.
I lived in the same apartment for 25 years, moving into a poor but thriving black community in 1981 and out of the far more affluent, paler, and less neighborly place it had become in 2006. A lot of people moved in and out in that period, many of them staying only a year or two. Those transients always seemed to believe that the neighborhood they were passing through was a stable one. You had to be slower than change and stick around to see it. I saw it and it helped me learn how to take a historical view of things.
It's crazy that anyone speaks as if our world is not undergoing rapid change, when the view from the window called history shows nothing but transformation, both incremental and dramatic. Exactly 25 years ago this month, Eastern Europe was astir. Remember that back then there was still a Soviet bloc, and a Soviet Union, and an Iron Curtain, and a Berlin Wall, and a Cold War. Most people thought those were permanent fixtures, but in the summer of 1989, Hungary decided to let East Germans (who were permitted to travel freely to that communist country) stream over to the West.
Thousands of people, tired of life in the totalitarian east, fled. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, as well as East Germany, were already electrified by a resurgent civil society and activist communities that had dared to organize in the face of repression. At the time, politicians and pundits in the West were making careers out of explaining, among so many other things, why German reunification wasn't going to happen in anyone's lifetime. And they probably would have been proven right if people had stayed home and done nothing, if they hadn't begun to hope and acted on that hope.
The bureaucrats on both sides of the Berlin Wall were still talking about the possibility of demilitarizing it when citizens showed up en masse and the guards began abandoning their posts. On that epochal night of November 9, 1989, the people made whole what had been broken. The lesson: showing up is half the battle.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been so unnerved by developments in the Soviet Union's Eastern European holdings that she went to Moscow, two months before the fall of the wall, to implore Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to prevent any such thing. That was early September 1989. "No dramatic change in the situation in Czechoslovakia can be expected," predicted a Czech official two months before a glorious popular uprising, remembered as the Velvet Revolution, erupted and abolished the government in which he was an official.
There are three things to note about those changes in 1989. First, most people in power dismissed the possibility that such extraordinary change could happen or deplored what it might bring. They were comfortable enough with things as they were, even though the status quo was several kinds of scary and awful. In other words, the status quo likes the status quo and dislikes change. Second, everything changed despite them, thanks to grassroots organizing and civil society, forces that — we are now regularly assured — are pointless and irrelevant. Third, the world that existed then has been largely swept away: the Soviet Union, the global alignments of that time, the idea of a binary world of communism and capitalism, and the policies that had kept us on the brink of nuclear annihilation for decades. We live in a very different world now (though nuclear weapons are still a terrible problem). Things do change.
Maybe, in fact, there's a fourth point to note as well. That, important as they were, the front-page stories about the liberation of Eastern Europe weren't what mattered most all those years ago. After all, hidden away deep inside the New York Times that autumn, you can find a dozen or so articles about global warming, as the newly recognized phenomenon was then called. And small as they were, anyone reading them now can see that so long ago the essential problem and peril to our world was already clear.
The thought of what might have been accomplished, had a people's movement arisen then to face global warming, could break your heart. That, after all, was still a time when the Earth's atmosphere held just above 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide, the maximum safe level for a sustainable survivable planet, not the 400 parts per million of the present moment ("142% of the pre-industrial era" level of carbon, the World Meteorological Organization notes). In other words, we've been steadily filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and so imperiling the planet and humanity since we knew what we were doing.
In that fall a quarter of a century ago, the world changed profoundly right before our eyes. Then we settled back into the short-term, ahistorical view that things are really pretty stable, that ordinary people have no power, and that the world can't be changed. With that in mind, it's worth looking at Germany today. Maybe because Germans know better than us that things can change for the worse or the better fast, that the world is not a stable and settled place, and that we do shape it, they have been willing to change.
At one point last spring, cold, cloudy Germany managed to get almost 75% of its electricity from renewable sources. Scotland — cold, gray, oil-rich Scotland! — is on track to achieve 100% renewable electrical generation by 2020 and has already hit the 40% mark. Spain now generates about half its electricity through clean and renewable sources. Other European countries have similar accomplishments. In fact, many of the changes that we in the United States will be marching for this Sunday have already begun happening, sometimes on a significant scale, elsewhere.
To remember how radical this new Europe is, recall that most of these places were burning coal not just in power plants or factories but in homes, too, not so many decades ago. Everyone deplores the horrific air of Beijing and other Chinese cities now, but few remember that many European cities were similarly foul with smoke and smog from the industrial revolution into the postwar era. In December 1952, for instance, the "Great Smog" of London reduced daytime visibility to a few yards and killed about 4,000 people in three days.
A decade before that, in response to the war Germany started, North Americans radically reduced their use of private vehicles and gasoline and planted more than 20 million victory gardens, producing vast quantities of food by non-industrial means. We have done that; we could (and must) do it again.
At least, we don't burn coal in our homes any more, and in the U.S. we've retired 178 coal-fired power plants, phasing out many more, and prevented many new ones from being built. The renewable energy sources that were, people insisted, too minor or unreliable or expensive or new are now beginning to work well, and the price to produce energy in such a fashion is dropping rapidly. UBS, the European investment giant, recently counseled that power plants and centralized power generation are no longer good investments, since decentralized renewables are likely to replace them.
Of course, Germany and Britain are still burning coal, and Poland remains a giant coal mine. Europe is not a perfect renewable energy paradise, just a part of the world that demonstrates the viability of changing how we produce and consume energy. We are already changing, even if not fast enough, not by a long shot, at least not yet. The same goes for divesting from fossil-fuel investments, even though dozens of universities, cities, religious institutions, and foundations have already committed to doing so, and some have by now actually purged their portfolios. The excuse that change is impossible is no longer available, because many places and entities have already changed.
If you want to know how potentially powerful you are, ask your enemies. The misogynists who attack feminism and try to intimidate feminists into silence only demonstrate in a roundabout way that feminism really is changing the world; they are the furious backlash and so the proof that something meaningful is at stake. The climate movement is similarly upsetting a lot of powerful people and institutions; to grasp that, you just have to look at the tsunamis of money spent opposing specific measures and misinforming the public. The carbon barons are demonstrating that we could change the world and that they don't want us to.
We are powerful and need to become more so in the next year as a major conference in Paris approaches in December 2015 where the climate agreements we need could be hammered out. Or not. This is, after all, a sequel to the Copenhagen conference of 2009, where representatives of many smaller and more vulnerable nations, as well as citizens' groups, were eager for a treaty that took on climate change in significant ways, only to have their hopes crushed by the recalcitrant governments of the United States and China.
Right now, we are in a churning sea of change, of climate change, of subtle changes in everyday life, of powerful efforts by elites to serve themselves and damn the rest of us, and of increasingly powerful activist and social-movement campaigns to make a world that benefits more beings, human and otherwise, in the longer term. Every choice you make aligns you with one set of these forces or another. That includes doing nothing, which means aligning yourself with the worst of the status quo dragging us down in that ocean of carbon and consumption.
To make personal changes is to do too little. Only great movements, only collective action can save us now. Only is a scary word, but when the ship is sinking, it can be an encouraging one as well. It can hold out hope. The world has changed again and again in ways that, until they happened, would have been considered improbable by just about everyone on the planet. It is changing now and the direction is up to us.
There will be another story to be told about what we did a quarter century after civil society toppled the East Bloc regimes, what we did in the pivotal years of 2014 and 2015. All we know now is that it is not yet written, and that we who live at this very moment have the power to write it with our lives and acts.
A TomDispatch regular, Rebecca Solnit has 16 books out, the latest of which is the indie bestseller Men Explain Things to Me.
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Photo by Fotolia/Jaroslav Moravcik
The People's Climate March is designed to serve as a loud and pointed reminder to our leaders that the next great movement of the planet's citizens centers on our survival and their pathetic inaction.
Reprinted with permission by TomDispatch
On Sunday, September 21st, a huge crowd will march through the middle of Manhattan. It will almost certainly be the largest rally about climate change in human history, and one of the largest political protests in many years in New York. More than 1,000 groups are coordinating the march—environmental justice groups, faith groups, labor groups—which means there's no one policy ask. Instead, it's designed to serve as a loud and pointed reminder to our leaders, gathering that week at the United Nations to discuss global warming, that the next great movement of the planet's citizens centers on our survival and their pathetic inaction.
As a few of the march's organizers, though, we can give some sense of why we, at least, are marching, words we think represent many of those who will gather at Columbus Circle for the walk through midtown Manhattan.
We march because the world has left the Holocene behind: scientists tell us that we've already raised the planet's temperature almost one degree Celsius, and are on track for four or five by century's end. We march because Hurricane Sandy filled the New York City subway system with salt water, reminding us that even one of the most powerful cities in the world is already vulnerable to slowly rising ocean levels.
We march because we know that climate change affects everyone, but its impacts are not equally felt: those who have contributed the least to causing the crisis are hit hardest, here and around the world. Communities on the frontlines of global warming are already paying a heavy price, in some cases losing the very land on which they live. This isn't just about polar bears any more.
But since polar bears can't march, we march for them, too, and for the rest of creation now poised on the verge of what biologists say will be the planet's sixth great extinction event, one unequalled since the last time a huge asteroid struck the Earth 66 million years ago.
And we march for generations yet to come, our children, grandchildren, and their children, whose lives will be systematically impoverished and degraded. It's the first time one century has wrecked the prospects of the millennia to come, and it makes us mad enough to march.
We march with hope, too. We see a few great examples around the world of how quickly we could make the transition to renewable energy. We know that if there were days this summer when Germany generated nearly 75 percent of its power from renewable sources of energy, the rest of us could, too—especially in poorer nations around the equator that desperately need more energy. And we know that labor-intensive renewables would provide far more jobs than capital-intensive coal, gas, and oil.
And we march with some frustration: why haven't our societies responded to 25 years of dire warnings from scientists? We're not naïve; we know that the fossil fuel industry is the 1 percent of the 1 percent. But sometimes we think we shouldn't have to march. If our system worked the way it should, the world would long ago have taken the obvious actions economists and policy gurus have recommended—from taxing carbon to reflect the damage it causes to funding a massive World War II-scale transition to clean energy.
Marching is not all, or even most, of what we do. We advocate; we work to install solar panels; we push for sustainable transit. We know, though, that history shows marching is usually required, that reason rarely prevails on its own. (And we know that sometimes even marching isn't enough; we've been to jail and we'll likely be back.)
We're tired of winning the argument and losing the fight. And so we march. We march for the beaches and the barrios. We march for summers when the cool breeze still comes down in the evening. We march because Exxon spends $100 million every day looking for more hydrocarbons, even though scientists tell us we already have far more in our reserves than we can safely burn. We march for those too weak from dengue fever and malaria to make the journey. We march because California has lost 63 trillion gallons of groundwater to the fierce drought that won't end, and because the glaciers at the roof of Asia are disappearing. We march because researchers told the world in April that the West Antarctic ice sheet has begun to melt "irrevocably"; Greenland's ice shield may soon follow suit; and the waters from those, as rising seas, will sooner or later drown the world's coastlines and many of its great cities.
We don't march because there's any guarantee it will work. If you were a betting person, perhaps you'd say we have only modest hope of beating the financial might of the oil and gas barons and the governments in their thrall. It's obviously too late to stop global warming entirely, but not too late to slow it down—and it's not too late, either, to simply pay witness to what we're losing, a world of great beauty and complexity and stability that has nurtured humanity for thousands of years.
There's a world to march for—and a future, too. The only real question is why anyone wouldn't march.
Eddie Bautista is executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. LaTonya Crisp-Sauray is the recording secretary for the Transport Workers Union Local 100. Bill McKibben is the founder of350.org and a TomDispatch regular.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook and Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me.
Copyright 2014 Eddie Bautista, La Tonya Crisp-Sauray, and Bill McKibben
Image courtesy bjaglin, licensed under Creative Commons
Issues like climate change and race are usually framed individually but they are part of a connected system.
The link between climate change and race may not be immediately apparent, but at least one organization is doing something to connect the dots. In light of the racial tensions stemming from the killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, 350.org's Executive Director May Boeve stated, "We believe unequivocally that working for racial justice is a crucial part of fighting climate change."
The reasons behind such a statement are many and varied. For one, organizations advocating for racial justice, "could use some of environmentalists' passion around conservation and the preservation of life" Brentin Mock writes for Bridge the Gulf.
Additionally, climate change has and is expected to disproportionately affect people of color both domestically and internationally. In cases like Hurricane Katrina, the disaster quickly became an issue of race and racism, ranging from accusations of "looting" to at least 11 shootings of African-American men by white men in the days following the storm. In at-risk countries like Bangladesh, the potential for climate change "acts as a threat multiplier" wherein people face food and housing insecurity, as well as social and political instability. At the center of these situations is an imbalance of power where those with the most resources (including money, weapons, and connections) usually win out.
Furthermore, in many ways, the two issues are related by economic priorities which tend to favor profit over everything else—the environmental, the ethical, the future of our communities. Oil companies profit despite disasters such as Deepwater Horizon (where Vietnamese communities in the Gulf who relied on the fishing industry took a particularly hard hit, not to mention the environmental and health effects), corporations like Halliburton contract out armed guards to protect their extraction sites abroad, weapons companies profit in the billions from police departments that acquire tanks and teargas (like the kind deployed in the Ferguson protests), and privatized prisons make money off of discriminatory drug laws.
Lastly, a threat of suppression or actual violence to one group is a signal to anyone else who may want to speak out. In the U.S., such acts can have a "chilling effect" which is intended to quiet the use of our First Amendment rights including the right to free speech and the right to assemble.
So what can be done to bridge the divides between movements? Deirdre Smith, 350.org's Strategic Partnership Coordinator says it will take a deeper understanding of institutional injustices, a drive to develop stronger alliances, and an acknowledgment of privilege. And although she recognizes that, "we have a lot of learning to do about how to come together," in doing so, collectively, our voices will reach farther, be more resilient, and do more to tip the balance of power.
Photo by Rachel, licensed under Creative Commons.
California's severe drought prompts innovation.
California is in the midst of its third consecutive year of drought conditions while water usage remains relatively unchanged or has even increased. However homeowners are now under restrictions that prohibit hosing off driveways and lawn water runoff, with violations costing up to $500. With the introduction of an app called Dropcountr, readily available regulation of water use may help prevent those fines. The app monitors daily use so users can see long-term patterns (such as more use on weekends). It also warns users if it suspects there is a leak and it shows water usage in houses similar in size for comparison. Dropcountr CEO Robb Barnitt said, "The first response we get from folks is, 'Wow, I had no idea that I used that much water.' That's really the first piece we're trying to deliver—transparency and visibility. It's really tough to gain much insight from your water bill." The company is working to broaden the number of utility districts the app is available for and is also coordinating with property management companies in an effort to expand the app to renters.
Another solution is the slightly absurd idea of lawn painting which allows homeowners to save water while maintaining curb appeal. It's a consideration that is quickly gaining popularity throughout California with new companies offering the service popping up, and established ones seeing sales increases of 60 percent. Each paint jobs lasts three to six months and costs about $175 for a 500 square foot lawn. The paint that is used is nontoxic and once it dries, it doesn't run. One San Bernardino resident remarked, "It became a real eyesore…I heard about a service where people paint your lawn so it looks like the real thing and thought, why not? We've had lots of people stop over and say it looks good."
Now that homeowners have some innovative options to utilize during the drought, it's time to focus on controlling the wildfires that have resulted, regulating Nestle's water bottling plant in Southern California, and finding ways to protect Napa Valley's vineyards to avoid a wine shortage.
Photo by Robert V, licensed under Creative Commons.
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In my last post, I explained how my back yard had been allowed to languish for years while the plant matter overtook it. My landlords and I spent days (over a period of weeks) removing trees and shrubs and weeds, using chain saws and stump grinders and elbow grease. (To see photos of the Great Cleanout in progress, check out my "Back Yard Makeover" board on Pinterest.) But that was just one of the first steps in its transformation. Next we had to get the soil in shape for planting.
Bringing in heavy machinery to regrade the yard had been ruled out because of cost, but the design I came up with nevertheless required some extensive recontouring. I proposed repurposing the concrete wall blocks that were being used to line the ornamental bed as edging for the new vegetable garden. This helped correct an awkward junction with the neighbor's property, since the retaining blocks helped stop soil from washing down into their driveway. But it necessitated bringing in a chain saw to muscle out a stump that was in the path of the wall blocks. After about a day's hard labor—did I mention that this area of the yard also concealed buried rocks and bricks?—the veggie garden now has a nice clean edge. I knew we could have allowed the garden and the lawn simply to butt into each other, but I also knew it would bother me whenever I looked at it. In the future, I'd like to add another layer of blocks so that the veggie garden is level, since right now it slopes on each side. But I'll have to save up to buy the blocks. In the meantime, at least it is segregated from the lawn on the side that faces the house.
Our next task was removing some of the soil in the long, thin planting bed to make space for the lawn to flow onto and off of the sidewalk. But where to put the soil? We could have carted it away, but it came in handy to solve another problem with this yard: the drastic changes in grade from one part of the yard to another. As we dug out parts of the ornamental bed, we used the soil to fill in the lowest points of the yard that had tended to get waterlogged, as well as to soften the grades in the areas where the slopes were steepest.
Which left us with another problem: Large patches of bare soil that had to be covered with grass. At this point, my landlords were probably thinking they should have just bulldozed everything and put down sod. But they had to cover those bare patches, so after comparing prices of sod vs. seed, they decided to sow seed and cover it with grass seed mat. And that probably would have worked brilliantly, if I hadn't given them this piece of advice: Put down a layer of compost before sowing the grass seed. They diligently followed this advice, spending a day screening a truckload of municipal compost and applying it to the bare patches, and then sowed the seed. And then they faithfully watered twice a day for the next few weeks. The municipal compost proved to be full of seeds for yellow nutsedge, the pernicious weed commonly known as water grass or nutgrass, which simply adores being watered twice daily. It is now threatening to overpower the new turfgrass. Sigh. Sometimes it ain't easy being green! I am hoping that this weed becomes less of a problem once we cut back on the watering regimen, but we may be dealing with it for some time now that is has gained a foothold. I am looking into using dry molasses to control it organically. If any of you have had success with this, please let me know in the comments below. And stay tuned!
Once the contours of the yard were established and the outlines of the lawn filled in, one of the largest tasks remained: Preparing the soil of the main ornamental bed for planting. As I mentioned in my previous post, this bed had been given little attention for the past two decades or so, and was therefore full of stumps surrounded by colonies of weeds, chief among them Canada thistle and field bindweed. We knew this when we started. What we didn't know was how much else was hiding underground. My house was built in 1910, before the advent of indoor plumbing in the neighborhood. I suspect that what remained of the privy was buried in part of the garden. What's more, municipal waste disposal didn't exist either, and part of the yard had apparently been used for burning/burying household trash. As I began to dig the bed, I uncovered bricks, large rocks, broken glass, car parts, and children's marbles, among other things. Some had probably been dumped into the outhouse when it was retired. This was obviously going to take longer than I had thought. I realized the whole bed would have to be double-dug if the plants were going to have a fighting chance. The soil itself was fine—a perfect texture, the consistency of chocolate cake—but it was just so full of stuff! Here's what a patch of it looked like before screening:
And here's a small patch about 3 feet square, after about 2 hours of double-digging and screening:
This is when my landlords began working to earn their Merit Badges for Gardening Under Duress. Since I fold like a cheap lawn chair when temps hit the 90s, I was out of commission for at least a week during this last heat wave, so they stepped in and double-dug the entire bed. I suspect my landlady's son has earned enough good will points to last him the whole summer, if not the year. He helped her on some of the hottest days this year—or ever—for our area. Whew! I kept reminding them that this only needed to be done once, but I still felt guilty.
Well, not too guilty. I wasn't exactly idle while all of this was going on. I was choosing the plants for the new garden.
I know what you're thinking: "That's not work; that's the fun part!"
Obviously, you have never seen my spreadsheets:
In my next post, I'll explain the method behind my obsessive-compulsive madness!
Tags: compost, double-digging, garden planning, grass, landscaping, lawn, new bed, nutsedge, soil, soil preparation


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London Fashion Week is fast gaining a reputation for a really fresh take on prints and textiles, not least thanks to the talent of the duo behind Peter Pilotto.
The work of Peter, and his partner Christopher De Vos, is best known for their high tech digital print techniques and a winning way with draping fabric that is almost clinically modern, round the body in a completely sensual away.
This season their mission was to explore the territory where science and nature meet. So, simple coats were made from both soft and very tactile wools, laid alongside panels of shiny silver leather. Skinny pants were tailored to follow the form of the leg in dazzling fluorescents with side seams sitting out like fins.
Craft-y paisley prints were blown out and combined with a kaleidoscopic effect of sharp geometric shapes. And through all of this, colours ran like a rather elegant living room palette: blush pink, moss green and toffee brown.
Those flashes of silver were offset with trims of fur to give the high tech a tender edge.
With a growing presence on the red carpet and hot ticket status at the shows, these two designers are becoming a really thought provoking presence on the London catwalks.


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When ground to a fine powder, this bark makes an excellent flour extender and can be used in a variety of recipes. Some writers claim that it has a food value equal to that of oatmeal and have recommended it as a wholesome and nourishing food for invalids and children.
The demulcent, emollient and wound healing properties of slippery elm are due to its mucilage content. The mucilage is viscous fiber that lowers the bowel transit time, absorbs toxins from the bowel, regulates intestinal flora and soothes the lining of the digestive tract.
The demulcent effects are also active when the herb is used externally as a poultice or in an ointment.
The most popular use of slippery elm is as a demulcent expectorant. This property is explained by the ability of tannins to combine with mucous and precipitate it.
Slippery elm decoctions are consumed hourly to coat the throat and allow the tannins to congeal the mucous build-ups, thus facilitating the expulsion of excess mucous. Beware of respiratory formulas based on slippery elm that are in capsules or tablets to be swallowed as this negates any demulcent action on the throat.
Contains mucilaginous compounds that decrease the thickness while increasing the production of mucosal fluids. These compounds soothe inflamed tissue, decrease bowel transit time and absorb toxins from the bowel. It also contains astringent compounds that shrink inflamed tissues. Slippery elm has been used to treat asthma, bronchitis, colitis, coughs, weak digestion and inflammatory bowel disease.
Slippery elm is an amazing, mild-flavored, highly nutritious herb. It is used in many combinations and poultices not only because of its medicinal properties but also because of its cohesive quality that helps hold the other herbs together.
Has been used in the following:
This mucilaginous herb also helps absorb toxins in the bowel. In fact, it is very soothing to the entire digestive system. It is useful especially for diarrhea, bowel weakness or as a mild nourishing food for sick children. Since the herb is slightly sweet, it is one that children will often take readily if it is mixed in some cereal, applesauce or fruit juice. We have also blended it with fruit juice and used it to make a "mock" chocolate drink by mixing it with hot milk and honey.
Uses: We add Slippery Elm to many food recipes (hot cereals, sauces, gravies, meat dishes, vegetable dishes, stir-fry, baby food and formulas, waffles and pancakes, ice cream, etc.). Of course, it's also a great medicine for any digestive and colon related conditions. It can be used to benefit men, women (including before, during or after pregnancy, and nursing) and children. It can be used as often as you would like.
Voice of Experience: Slippery Elm is a fantastic herb to "slip" into dishes on a daily basis. It exponentially boosts the nutritional content AND adds the wonderful medicinal benefits. Try it in various dishes in small amounts. You won't be disappointed.
Storage: Like many other bulk foods, Slippery Elm stores fairly well. It should be kept in an airtight container and stored in a dark, dry, and cool place (no refrigeration is required).
Questions?: Check out Frequently Asked Questions.
June 8, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Hi, I have followed your site for years. I have a question. I have been taking slippery elm for IBS with wonderful results. Now, I just found out that I am pregnant, and I have stopped taking all my herbs. (miss them dearly) Is slippery elm ok to take? I've searched the web and get conflicting results. We live in the boondocks, no herbalists around here! Please help. Thanks
October 14, 2011 at 2:40 pm
I'm not sure if you've delivered your bundle of joy yet, but I just met a young lady who purchased the herb "Red Raspberry" leaves which promotes strengthening the wall of uterus and entire female reproductive system. Additionally, I read that it:
• Alleviates morning sickness and nausea. Has been used as a preventative for hemorrhaging during labor. Assists labor, makes delivery easier and relieves after pains. Tones and regulates before, during and after childbirth.
• Increases and enriches milk for lactation, can be combined with marshmallow tea.
• Raspberry tea is mild and pleasant to taste. It is good for stomachaches and bowel problems in children. For diarrhea in babies.
January 6, 2013 at 7:53 pm
I see that slippery elm is an ingredient in throat coat tea. I had a cup this morning and was about to have my second cup when I read not to drink it because I am pregnant. Trying to figure out what could happen it seems slippery elm is why I wasn't supposed to drink it but nothing is telling me what the side effects are. What could happen?
Posted by Unknown on 17th Oct 2013
This continues to meet a need that I have for healing in the digestive system. I can't be without it!
Posted by Tracy Johnson on 16th Oct 2013
I bought this product for my dog, she has had a mast cell tumor, so the vet suggested that I keep her on pepcid ac all the time, so I started giving her slippery elm powder in her meals and it really seems to have helped her. This is the first time I have purchased from More Than Alive and their product is great and fast delivery, I will definitely order from them again.
Posted by Sebrena on 14th Oct 2013
Hi Joy,
I appreciate you checking to see if my order arrived OK, and it did. I love this product as is does everything I hoped it would for my digestive system. I use as a tea three times a day and it keeps my IBS symptoms calm to non existing. I'm very pleased with how timely I received my package and look forward to ordering more and other items from your site.
Posted by Judy on 20th Aug 2013
I can't say enough for Slippery Elm! I was having symptoms of something serious happening in my digestive system and could no longer eat. I went on a liquid diet, drinking at least 5 cups of Slippery Elm mixture a day. I was able to start eating again and healing is taking place. I just received my shipment of Diamotaceous Earth and that also has been helping me. Thank you for these wonderful products!


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Afternoon Tea
Good news: I turn 30 this weekend! More details on my feelings on all of this later, for now, let's discuss my party. It's simple and keeping with tradition. For the past 3 years, I've celebrated my birthday with my favorite girl I've met so far in my life: My Ella Bean. I always tell her she's lucky she has two brothers to tease her and put her in her place and rough her up a bit. She needs that when she has a mom like me around always gushing how fun she is and how she truly has such a good heart and is such a pleasure to be around. Since she turned 3 years old that is. From then on, I've been spending my birthday with her. I look forward to it each year.
I have just about everything planned except for afternoon tea. It's also become a birthday tradition. Three years ago we went to Crown and Crumpet in San Francisco. Have you ever been there? It felt very Sophia Coppola and her movie Marie Antoinette. Part classic tea room, part rock n roll. I wish I could live in it. Last year we had afternoon tea in the Palm Court at the Plaza. Love that too for completely different reasons since it was so traditional and polished.
I want to try a new tea shop this year. Any suggestions? I should have planned this sooner. I hope we can still get a reservation! I can't wait to tell you all my birthday plans. I've shamelessly included so many NYC cliches! Would you expect any less from me?! I love NYC cliches!
20 comments:
Hi Sharon,ReplyDelete
I'm a fellow New Yorker (no kids...yet) and I've been reading and loving this blog for months! I have to suggest you ladies check out Alice's Tea Cup. Way way way more casual than the other places you've been, but adorable, charming, and so sweet. I would like to go there with my own mom and I'm a grownass woman of 26. There are several locations in the city- check it out! If not for your birthday, another time for sure.
Cheers, Liv
Well happy 30th! I too, will be turning 30 this year. I love "Alice's Tea Cup" http://alicesteacup.com/ and I like the one on the East Side at 81st :) It's whimisical and fun, with delicious food, too. Wherever you end up, I hope it's awesome!ReplyDelete
Hi- found you through Joanna's blog and have enjoyed reading, especially because I can see from your pics that we live in the same beautiful neighborhood (and I'm also a recently married, recently 30!). Your family looks adorable! Wanted to say that Alice's Tea Cup is really cute; there are a few locations but I prefer the location in the lower sixties. Enjoy and happy birthday!ReplyDelete
There's also tea and sympathy in the west village, but I've never been so I' trust the other commenters over me. Happy happy birthday!ReplyDelete
- Gyða GunnarsdóttirMarch 30, 2012 at 6:30 PM
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHARON. Enjoy our day with Ella.ReplyDelete
I echo the Alice's Tea Cup recommendations. I've been to the one on 73rd and thought it was charming!ReplyDelete
I've been wanting to try the Russian Tea Room, they have an afternoon children's tea:ReplyDelete
- Erin WiggerMarch 30, 2012 at 6:30 PM
Lady Mendl's Tea Salon on Irving Place near Union Square is adorable! Tucked inside a little brownstone it's very old-fashioned and girly.ReplyDelete
What a great idea! I now have an insane urge to dress up fancy and drink tea.ReplyDelete
Happy 30th!! I just turned 30 and it's so much fun!! I can't believe you're only 30 - you seem like you have it wayyyy more together than i do! Maybe it's the extra child?! Oh well, have a lovely high tea with your darling girl!ReplyDelete
- Meggie SimmonsMarch 30, 2012 at 6:30 PM
They all beat me to it but Alice's is the best! Their chai tea and pumpkin scones would make any birthday girl happy. Happy 30th!ReplyDelete
I am so happy to see other people suggesting Alice's because I wrote the very first comment on this post this afternoon, but it has disappeared....I'm guessing it's because I referred to myself as a growna** woman who still enjoys tea with my mom haha. Anyway, I just said I have been enjoying your blog for months now. I'm a fellow New Yorker (no kids yet) and think you will really enjoy Alice's!!!ReplyDelete
- Gaby [The Vault Files]March 30, 2012 at 6:30 PM
Love Afternoon Tea, I used to go a lot with my friends while living in Kuala Lumpur, it was such a joy, we always felt so polished and glamorous ;)ReplyDelete
This is so beautiful. Brought tears to my eyes. I hope my little bean is with me every year on my birthday. I have to share my princess though--that's the hardest part. This is so cute. I love that you share tea! When you find a spot, let me know so I can make sure to visit when I come to NYC :)ReplyDelete
Your blog is so heart warming. I just love it.
Alice's tea cup is simply lovely! It's so fun for everybody involved!!!ReplyDelete
And while I know this next one may seem silly, the American Girl Store is delightful! It's so cute and a very girly thing. I've always loved it (my sister and I have gone since I was seven and she was five) and my mom says it's quite fun for her too. I think Ella will be delighted, as will you.
This weekend is my son's birthday, I guess I will always remember yours now! Happy Birthday! To turn 30 was ok for me, 31 felt sad for some strange reason. Hope you have a great one!ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday! Catching up on old posts, so you may have already picked a place but I love Podunk Tearoom. 231 E. 5th Street in the East VillageReplyDelete
- CarolineMarch 30, 2012 at 6:31 PM
We might be a little late but Alice's Tea Cup on the UWS is gorgeous! There is also a book you can buy called 50 Places to Take Tea in NYC ... perhaps it can be one of your birthday pressies!ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday!
- Stephanie GibsonMarch 30, 2012 at 6:31 PM
Alice's Tea Cup is my recommendation too!ReplyDelete
Of course, you have Alice's but I would also recommend the tea salon of Mariebelle Chocolates in Soho. Have you been? Tucked behind the shop, gorgeous mirrored/pinky place with a massive chandelier and delicious offerings.ReplyDelete


text: Lulia, could you post a transcript? I know I'm not the only one with hearing issues, but mine derive from the destruction of nerves in my ears as a youngin' who got the mumps back when the earth cooled, and vaccines weren't available, leaving me much difficulty when listening to voices of the male persuasion due to the low tone of the voice. I lipread to hear most men. And it's not an option here. Also, the music is drowning you out.


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Artistic and elegant, this mixed metal cuff bracelet will garner compliments every time you wear it. A freeform onyx cabochon forms the centerpiece for overlaid sterling silver vines that curl beguilingly on to a brass backing in a hammered cuff design. Dress it up or dress it down, it's perfect for the most elegant occasion or everyday wear. Bracelet measures 1-1/2" at widest point and fits an average-sized wrist. Made in America with gemstones from around the world.
In daylight or darkness, the garden arbor is the ideal place to linger over thoughts of poetry and romance. The colors of night and day come alive in the choice of black onyx or yellow jasper, and highly polished brass is the shimmering canvas upon which lush sterling silver vines curl magically.
Like all fine jewelry, Carolyn Pollack Sterling Silver Jewelry should be handled carefully. Store jewelry in a plastic bag, dry and wrapped in tissue paper, when not being worn or displayed. Clean sterling silver with a silver polishing cloth when necessary, but never subject to chlorine, silver dips, chemical solutions or ultrasonic cleaners, as these substances can cause the genuine gemstones to discolor. Never wear jewelry in a swimming pool.


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UN.GIFT Publications
UNODC Human Trafficking in the Baltic Sea Region: State and Civil Society Cooperation on Victims' Assistance and Protection
Feb 07 2011
Download right click "save as"
UNODC recognises that global problems require not only global, but also regional responses. That's why studies like the one presented here are so crucial to understanding how best to combat this modern form of slavery. The aim of the research presented in this study is to help lay the foundation for targeted and consistent approaches in the provision of assistance and protection to victims of human trafficking through improved cooperation among State actors and civil society organizations. The research aims in particular to establish a knowledge-base on existing cooperation mechanisms, identify shortcomings and obstacles and formulate recommendations for improved cooperation. This study was conducted within the Preparatory Regional Project on Fostering NGO - Law Enforcement Cooperation in Preventing and Combating Human Trafficking in, from and to the Baltic Sea Region - Jointly implemented by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Council of the Baltic Sea States Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings (CBSS TF-THB).
Awareness-raisingChange TagAll Publications
- US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report 2014
- Walk Free Global Slavery Index 2013
- UNESCO: Model curricula for journalism education: a compendium of new syllabi
- ILO: Marking progress against child labour: Global estimates and trends 2000-2012
- IOM: A Situational Analysis of Aruba's Response to Human Trafficking
- OSCE: Trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal in the OSCE region
- EHTN Case Study: Beulah London
- OSCE: Trafficking in Human Beings Amounting to Torture and other Forms of Ill-treatment
- Report of the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo
- European Commission The statistical report on trafficking in human beings 2013
- Russian Union of Journalists, OSCE Manual on Reporting on Human Trafficking
- The Protection Project: 100 Best Practices in Combating Trafficking in Persons


text: The holidays are official! The holidays are official on Thanksgivings Eve when people are really beginning to rush around getting everything ready for Thanksgiving day. For most people, this means food. How much food? That is the question. I know in my home, there was 5 different types of stuffing, 2 types of turkey, roast beef, and 3 slightly different green bean casseroles sitting right next to the freshly picked green beans.


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Welcome to Teaching and Learning with the Faculty of Arts at Monash.
Latest News
- Staff Development is running training programs for SPSS, AMOS, and NVivo. These workshops and training programs would be of benefit to researchers and staff in ... Read more
- The Faculty seeks to provide an outstanding learning experience for our students. In recent years our coursework programs have undergone dramatic change in response to ... Read more
- The Faculty is running a 3 Minute Thesis competition for Honours students on October 6 from 2pm. The winner will receive $300 and two runners-up prizes of ... Read more
- In 2014 the Office of the Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning) will be running three series of workshops under the "Access Monash" program, for ... Read more
- The Arts Transition Programs have kicked off with a bang in semester one. The PAL program commenced with the PAL camp at Lake Dewar Lodge, Myrniong on ... Read more
- The Faculty of Arts, First in the Family program held their first Social Event for 2013 at the Monash Club on May 16 with great ... Read more


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Summer is the perfect time to take a vacation, so book a trip to your couch and get to know the officers on�Brooklyn Nine-Nine.The Golden Globe-winning Fox comedy stars�Saturday�Night Live�alum
July 12Word of the Day, Website of the Day, Number to Know, This Day in History, Today�s Featured Birthday and Daily Quote.Word of the Dayriposte \ noun \ adverb; A quick and effective reply by word or act. � Dictionary.com
Garden stools are a welcome departure from the commonplace side table
We were raised on John Wayne movies in my house
We started thinking that it would be fine if Baby Chickadee got her ears pierced
How do you solve a problem like Saul Goodman? According to Better Call Saul showrunner
AMC has given a straight-to-series order to martial arts drama Badlands, the network announced Friday.Loosely based on the classic Chinese tale "Journey to the West," Badlands is a genre-bending series that tells the...
VH1 is taking first date jitters to a new level!The cable network's new dating series Dating...
Warning: The Strain might not be for everyone.FX's new vampire drama isn't a melancholy...
Dust off that kilt! You may need it earlier than you think. Starz is making the first episode of its hotly anticipated series
True Blood alum
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You don't need PH often, while it's very useful wherever it helps. But you need to AoE often enough. And at least before heroic raids you don't need all the singe target threat of the second spec. So if you only have one spec (and maybe doing 5mans) you may want to have more focus on AoE than on either single target or utility. That may be a reason to get DW and thunderstruck but skip some incite or cruelty for example.
Others use Gag Order a lot in 5mans and want to take that. Again others swear on Safeguard or Impending Victory for different reasons.
If you are just looking for cockie cutter builds, take the second one and be happy with it. If you are looking for the right spec for what you are doing, consider every possible talent and pick the ones that cater the most to your situation.


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While some patients say a colon cleanse provides relief from bowel obstructions, health professionals debate the benefits of hydrotherapy and other colonics.
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Webster Colonic Irrigation Articles
Colonic Irrigation reviews in Webster
This place is very easy to make appointments if you want to work around your work or school schedule, they are very accomodating. The office looks very professional. It was a pretty comfortable experience all things considered. The one thing i didn't like was that the woman performing the colonic on me kept on trying to talk me into their other services or products while she was working; i felt uncomfortable and didn't appreciate the sales pitch during the colonic which was supposed to be relaxing. Afterwards while paying for the service she kept trying to sell me their products. Oh, the price for this place is around 78 bucks, i think. It was pretty pricey but i think most colonics are. They had a closed system in case anyone was wondering."
One and half day's home .Then a 911 call. Taken to brookhaven hospital.Three days in room with tests.Then to O.R.for needed colostomy . Nine day's in I.C.U.Three and half day's in regular room. then discharged. 2 months home health care . 2 more month's to recover . Tests for next seven months . Tests to reverse colostomy proved to be another dangerous operation. Another hospital and doctor saved my wife's like, all because a assistant cut the colon and never checked befor "
I've been going to Dr. working with him is easy."
This is a kind of treatment that tones the colon muscles cleans out toxins that would not be cleaned out with normal enemas or laxatives. This is a specialty and is explained by the therapist how the procedures are done. Each treatment costs $85.00 which is a reasonable rate."
She is a certified body ecologist and has detoxification programs using this therapy. She is currently exploring how to help autistic children using this therapy and a majority of her practice is helping adults with digestive issues. She uses a new open format hydrotherapy system where the patients are in the room by themselves once she has trained them with the system. I will continue to use her."
All Colonics in Webster, TX
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Delford Roth DO
N8069 County Rd F
DermaTouch RN
13519 Hargrave Rd
HC3 Wellness Center
2201 W Holcombe Blvd
Houston Health and Wellness
2550 Gray Falls Dr
Institute for Whole Body Wellness
Medical Thermal Imaging
Y'Darb Naturals
144 Kissick Ln
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