Eco Response to V-Day!

Why is the common (standardized) conception of love overwrought with gold and glitter? Seems more than a limited concept of it to me. Love is dynamic and complex but also a simple and pure, very raw natural feeling. How did it get to be so expensive to be in love and why don't we find it immoral to buy it?
I think a more dimensional note on what Valentine's Day really is includes the overarching and blatant commercial and consumerism. Yes, as in people being fooled into thinking they want and need to buy pink and red trinkets, cards, chocolates to verify their love. Otherwise for those who can afford it, the bar is raised and epitomies of materialist extravagance take the form of precious stones, metals and gems. I suppose nothing says "I love you" than a blood diamond! The occasion also perpetuates the status quo by the assumption heteronormative gender roles. One answer to this has been a paperless online options such as Outgreetings.com

However, to celebrate love any day of the year is a beautiful expression that I think should be encouraged! I like to think of this as an opportunity for a creative and critical response that includes an environment friendly approach. Below are suggestions for how to manifest these concepts into genuine and thoughtful gestures as an alternative to "buying in" to the Valentine's Day extravangza. Personally, I mailed the (very dark and witty, If I may say!) ones I made out to friends! Yes, through the post - snail mail as its called.

Shouldn't a broader representation of love be accessible to children and students aswell? Adopt athe DIY ethic and include these projects in your own home and classroom to foster a creative and eco-conscious environment. Don't forget to recycle the already recycled items afterwards! Many recycled materials can be used such as paper, cardboard, paper-rolls, fabric, buttons, etc..

-make garland from recycled paper by cutting heart shapes or what ever sybmol makes sense for your idea of the day

-write a love poem on recycled materials

-draw subversive cartoons and images on cards made from recycled paper

-spark ideas of your own by taking suggestions from sites like Craftzine.com where you can check out the Subersive Vantine Cross Stitch patterns!

-make sock puppets of love...you get the idea yes?

HAPPY VD!

craftzine.com

The Olympic Spectacle

PROS:
-a sense of positivity, cohesion and inclusion among and within people, families, nations..

-a festival-like and exitement/celebration oriented atmosphere is created (because positive vibes can make a difference!)

CONS (just a few):
-a capitalist model of extreme competitiveness and commercialization of the event through sponsors, consumer products and commercials themselves we are exposed to inevitably in any form of olympic coverage

-an opening ceremony that had not been executed as such COULD have otherwise paid for so many better causes on a provincial, national, or international level i don't feel the need to list them...

-an elaborate presentation and artistic depiction of the birth of the world (the continental shift) was beautiful but oblivious to the multiple forms of decoposition, decay and death that is a direct effect of misplaced values and disconnectedness among human beings today (and therefore ironic)

-a light show of a stunning forest display when those dollars could have been spent on reforestation

-the advanced technology that came from valuable research dollars enabled the dazzling light display. This is yet more evidence of the "myth of progress" which has so poignantly been described in Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress.

-a total disregard of Vancouver's recent push to ban bottled water:

"Millions of bottles of water will be consumed during the Games in February, despite a vote last year by council to encourage use of municipal water and discourage the sale of bottled water, considered by the city to be a detriment to the environment."

-Vancouver Sun

So as I reflect on all of this after sharing the experience of watching the opening ceremony with others, spending a moment in our history together, I saw all of the honour, respect and energy being transferred. Not long ago my aunt was one of the olympic touch carriers near my hometown and we all gathered for a big family celebration I will never forget. I'm not anti-togetherness! but instead embracing unity while suggesting a very organic and different, humanitarian and eco-friendly approach to the olympics. It has such a massive potential to be alchemized into a force that does good on all fronts! Non? I noticed that this poem expresses some of the sentiment I an attempting to share!

Philosophia Perennis

by Anne Waldman

I turned: quivering yellow stars in blackness
I wept: how speech may save a woman
The picture changes & promises the heroine
That nighttime & meditation are a mirage
To discuss pro & contra here is mute
Do I not love you, day?
A pure output of teleological intentions
& she babbles, developing a picture-theory of language
Do I not play the delicate game of language?
yes, & it is antecedent to the affairs of the world:
The dish, the mop, the stove, the bed, the marriage
& surges forth the world in which I love
I and I and I and I and I and I, infinitely reversible
Yet never secure in the long morning texture
A poor existing woman-being, accept her broken heart
& yet the earth is divinity, the sky is divinity
The nomads walk & walk.