I remember when I was a kid things were a lot different than they are now. The pressure to fit in was the same, but the urgency wasn't the same. We moved a lot when I was growing up. I think the longest I spent in any one school was 3 years. When I was Junior High age we moved to a much bigger community than I'd ever been in and I started smoking cigarettes because everyone else seemed to and I wanted to fit in. I was almost 12 when I started smoking (I quit in 1991). The teenage girls that I've had the opportunity to associate with since I started helping out with our store have given me an interesting perspective on today's youth and the pressures they face. Many of these girls smoke pot, many of them have tried alcohol in some form or other and most of them have either started having sex or have decided to call themselves gay. I'm not sure how many of the gay crowd really are or if it's just the "in" thing. I'm sure they'll decide at some point, but my thoughts for today revolve around the girls who have decided to become sexually active as teens. I do have some advice for these girls. I'm sure many of you also have some advice and I welcome your comments to this missive.
First and most importantly, if you're not ready to have sex, Don't. Just because some of your friends have and maybe one of your friends is pregnant, doesn't mean that it's expected!
If you know your parents are going to go completely bonkers if they find out, you can be guaranteed they will find out.
Pregnancy is a very real and very possible outcome. Are you sure that you want to deal with boy for the rest of your life? You will be connected to him by this child.
Are willing to share custody? It will probably mean that you would need his permission to relocate. You not going to be accepted a college scholarship in California and even if your family moves to Florida you may be stuck in NJ.
Who is going to pay for this child's needs? Diapers, formula, clothes, toys, doctor bills are just a few of the expenses. Are you ready to get a job and hire a babysitter? Most parents work, including your own, they're not going to be able to watch your child all the time. You're not going to be able to hang out with friends or spend hours on facebook if you have a child. Most of your friends aren't having a baby this year and they're going to be hanging out at the mall, not home watching you care for your child. Are you willing to give up new clothes and electronics in order to buy your child diapers?
Now about this boy; What is his earning potential? Can he afford child support payments? Is he even willing to admit that it's his baby? If he says it's not his, then all of the expenses are your own. maybe it would be a good idea to find out how much the average Labor and Delivery charges are at your local hospital. Do you have that much in savings? Can your parents afford to help you with the expenses of this family? Please consider these things before you decide. Sex is fun when you are with someone that you love and trust implicitly. For a night or just to get that pesky virginity thing out of the way means many very real considerations. I haven't even touched on the number of young people with STD's and yes, they're real. Syphilis is forever, even with penicillin. That is if you're not allergic to penicillin... Maybe you could Google "syphilis" before you decide to have sex... If you don't feel comfortable talking to your parents, talk to some other adult!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Green Living in the Real World
We're in the process of closing some of our web sites and consolidating our links, and in honor of Earth week I thought I'd re-post some of the Green Living articles here. Enjoy!
An Earth Day Challenge
I am an old hippie and a life time pagan (with brief periods of adulthood!). I was raised in Southern NJ and had no idea that the rest of the country was not as pro active as we were in the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle). This Challenge is and invitation to find ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. It will run for as long as it takes to get everyone into a mind-set of environmental activism.
This is the Challenge:
We make a lot of routine purchases all of which cost of extra money. These are marketed for the convenience. Many of them we've grow up with, but have you ever stopped to consider the fact that before these items were mass produced and mass marketed, our grandparents did just fine without them?
Re-evaluate all of your routine purchases of disposable products (this is harder than it sounds!). Which of these items really need to be disposable and which can you substitute for a reusable?
How many of your routine purchases include more packaging than product? Can you buy that item in bulk and reduce the amount of waste? Can you reuse the packaging, such as butter containers?
Do you compost organic waste? This is much more efficient and cheaper than chemical based fertilizers, and it's free!
Have you considered a rain barrel? Recycled rain water is much better for your plants than the chemical laden water provided by your municipality, and this is also free!
Do you donate items that you no longer need rather than send them to the landfill?
Going Green
I thought I'd start a list of the things we've changed in our lives in order to cut down on the amount of trash going into the landfills and save money at the same time. Maybe you can add to this list. I'm certain that there are still many things I haven't thought of that can be added!
Cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.
Rags instead of paper towels.
Hankies instead of tissues (except when there is a respiratory infection)
Bread wrappers and other "clean" plastic bags instead of "zip lock"
Butter and plastic ice cream containers instead of store bought plastic containers.
No disposable plates, cups, forks, etc.
Reusable cloth shopping bags, even Walmart has these now but you'll have to look around to find them.
Aluminum foil , which can reused and recycled, instead of plastic wrap.
We buy our drinking water from a local spring for 20c a gallon and refill travel mugs, instead of buying bottled water.
Reusable coffee filter screen instead of paper coffee filters.
We also compost all of our organic waste and use it on the garden.
We have a rain barrel and water the garden and indoor plants from that.
We freeze leftovers and reheat them at a later time instead of buying "microwave meals"
We bring our own place settings to pot luck dinners, complete with cloth napkin!
Also. They now make form fitted cloth baby diapers. These are also water proof and very cute. A great option instead of disposable diapers that will be in the landfill for 500 years!
Six Principles for Green Living
by Dr J Mercola www.mercola.com
Living by “green” principles can be extremely satisfying, but how do you do it? Surely, it’s not by purchasing more “green” products, because buying and using more “things” is all part of the problem.
1. Strive for Simplicity: More stuff means more complexity; more upkeep, more keeping track, more things to do. In global terms, it means more wasted resources.
2. Fairness: Much of our consumption-driven market is based on unfairness. If everyone along the chain, from a Bolivian granny making hand-woven grocery bags to the Wal-Mart worker, actually were paid what you’d expect, that hand-woven grocery bag would be out of most people’s price range.
3. Community: If you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending a local farmer’s market, you’ve experienced something few of us do these days: an encounter with a part of your community, an actual living and breathing person, who made that which you’re about to buy.
4. Sustainability: A system is sustainable when the negative outputs of that system are accommodated and turned into positive outputs. However, most of our global production is not sustainable.
5. Planning: Planning means looking ahead toward a desired outcome. It also means thinking a little bit about the community that isn’t here yet and dealing fairly with them. The decisions we make now will create the conditions our grandchildren and their grandchildren will have to deal with.
6. Transparency: Planning, community, fairness, and ultimately sustainability require transparency, but most decisions these days are made behind closed doors
The Hemp Revolution
Does it make sense to ban a crop in the United States that can have a large, positive economic and environmental impact and is completely harmless? That is exactly the position of the hemp advocates.
Because hemp is a relative of marijuana it is lumped by law into the illegal drug category. It is against the law to grow it, although some products made from it can be imported from other countries. And most importantly, industrial hemp is not marijuana. It contains just 0.3 to 1.5 percent of THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its drug-like effects. By comparison, marijuana contains 5 percent to 10 percent THC. Smoking hemp is not going to make anyone high.
But what are some of the benefits of this harmless crop?
*For starters, Hemp can make take-out containers, and save our landfills from styrofoam.
* The fiber from the hemp plant possesses strength and durability, resists rotting and is easier to bleach than wood pulp, which means whiter paper at lower cost. That would be a boon to the book-publishing industry, to cite one example.
* Hemp oil was used to lubricate the engines of Navy fighter planes in World War II, and hemp activist Woody Harelson used it to power a diesel vehicle to demonstrate the benefits of it. It can also be fermented into an alcohol-based fuel, offering a potent and truly renewable energy source.
* Hemp won't put an end to the logging industry, but it would spare some forests from being cut down for paper products.
* Unlike trees, which take years to grow to the point at which they can be harvested, hemp plants can reach a harvest-able state within four months. For paper manufacturers and users it could provide a cheaper source of pulp than trees, which take too long to renew.
Happy Earth Day!!
An Earth Day Challenge
I am an old hippie and a life time pagan (with brief periods of adulthood!). I was raised in Southern NJ and had no idea that the rest of the country was not as pro active as we were in the 3 R's (reduce, reuse, recycle). This Challenge is and invitation to find ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. It will run for as long as it takes to get everyone into a mind-set of environmental activism.
This is the Challenge:
We make a lot of routine purchases all of which cost of extra money. These are marketed for the convenience. Many of them we've grow up with, but have you ever stopped to consider the fact that before these items were mass produced and mass marketed, our grandparents did just fine without them?
Re-evaluate all of your routine purchases of disposable products (this is harder than it sounds!). Which of these items really need to be disposable and which can you substitute for a reusable?
How many of your routine purchases include more packaging than product? Can you buy that item in bulk and reduce the amount of waste? Can you reuse the packaging, such as butter containers?
Do you compost organic waste? This is much more efficient and cheaper than chemical based fertilizers, and it's free!
Have you considered a rain barrel? Recycled rain water is much better for your plants than the chemical laden water provided by your municipality, and this is also free!
Do you donate items that you no longer need rather than send them to the landfill?
Going Green
I thought I'd start a list of the things we've changed in our lives in order to cut down on the amount of trash going into the landfills and save money at the same time. Maybe you can add to this list. I'm certain that there are still many things I haven't thought of that can be added!
Cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.
Rags instead of paper towels.
Hankies instead of tissues (except when there is a respiratory infection)
Bread wrappers and other "clean" plastic bags instead of "zip lock"
Butter and plastic ice cream containers instead of store bought plastic containers.
No disposable plates, cups, forks, etc.
Reusable cloth shopping bags, even Walmart has these now but you'll have to look around to find them.
Aluminum foil , which can reused and recycled, instead of plastic wrap.
We buy our drinking water from a local spring for 20c a gallon and refill travel mugs, instead of buying bottled water.
Reusable coffee filter screen instead of paper coffee filters.
We also compost all of our organic waste and use it on the garden.
We have a rain barrel and water the garden and indoor plants from that.
We freeze leftovers and reheat them at a later time instead of buying "microwave meals"
We bring our own place settings to pot luck dinners, complete with cloth napkin!
Also. They now make form fitted cloth baby diapers. These are also water proof and very cute. A great option instead of disposable diapers that will be in the landfill for 500 years!
Six Principles for Green Living
by Dr J Mercola www.mercola.com
Living by “green” principles can be extremely satisfying, but how do you do it? Surely, it’s not by purchasing more “green” products, because buying and using more “things” is all part of the problem.
1. Strive for Simplicity: More stuff means more complexity; more upkeep, more keeping track, more things to do. In global terms, it means more wasted resources.
2. Fairness: Much of our consumption-driven market is based on unfairness. If everyone along the chain, from a Bolivian granny making hand-woven grocery bags to the Wal-Mart worker, actually were paid what you’d expect, that hand-woven grocery bag would be out of most people’s price range.
3. Community: If you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending a local farmer’s market, you’ve experienced something few of us do these days: an encounter with a part of your community, an actual living and breathing person, who made that which you’re about to buy.
4. Sustainability: A system is sustainable when the negative outputs of that system are accommodated and turned into positive outputs. However, most of our global production is not sustainable.
5. Planning: Planning means looking ahead toward a desired outcome. It also means thinking a little bit about the community that isn’t here yet and dealing fairly with them. The decisions we make now will create the conditions our grandchildren and their grandchildren will have to deal with.
6. Transparency: Planning, community, fairness, and ultimately sustainability require transparency, but most decisions these days are made behind closed doors
The Hemp Revolution
Does it make sense to ban a crop in the United States that can have a large, positive economic and environmental impact and is completely harmless? That is exactly the position of the hemp advocates.
Because hemp is a relative of marijuana it is lumped by law into the illegal drug category. It is against the law to grow it, although some products made from it can be imported from other countries. And most importantly, industrial hemp is not marijuana. It contains just 0.3 to 1.5 percent of THC, the chemical that gives marijuana its drug-like effects. By comparison, marijuana contains 5 percent to 10 percent THC. Smoking hemp is not going to make anyone high.
But what are some of the benefits of this harmless crop?
*For starters, Hemp can make take-out containers, and save our landfills from styrofoam.
* The fiber from the hemp plant possesses strength and durability, resists rotting and is easier to bleach than wood pulp, which means whiter paper at lower cost. That would be a boon to the book-publishing industry, to cite one example.
* Hemp oil was used to lubricate the engines of Navy fighter planes in World War II, and hemp activist Woody Harelson used it to power a diesel vehicle to demonstrate the benefits of it. It can also be fermented into an alcohol-based fuel, offering a potent and truly renewable energy source.
* Hemp won't put an end to the logging industry, but it would spare some forests from being cut down for paper products.
* Unlike trees, which take years to grow to the point at which they can be harvested, hemp plants can reach a harvest-able state within four months. For paper manufacturers and users it could provide a cheaper source of pulp than trees, which take too long to renew.
Happy Earth Day!!
Sunday, April 18, 2010
My Interview on You, Me & Religion
http://youmereligion.blogspot.com/
also, check out my other blog
http://mystikdoveshoppe.blogspot.com/
also, check out my other blog
http://mystikdoveshoppe.blogspot.com/
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