Reflection

When I first signed up for this class I wasn't sure I was going to like it. I like Dr. Maluso, and I like Sarah, Logan, and Casey so I agreed to take it more for the good company than the course material. The three main components were literally three subjects that I extremely unfamiliar with: technology, the environment, and feminism. I would say that I was excited to learn something new - but I wasn't. I hadn't ever really had an interest in any part of what the course material seemed to involve. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised.

I've had to blog in previous classes, but I never really liked it. It was always about really dry material. I never played with fonts or colors, I never added in any pictures, and I never spent time trying to come up with clever names. Blogging is actually pretty fun, and I really enjoyed it at the beginning of the term. As the term went on I became more involved in the website and less involved in my blogs, but I did enjoy watching the movies.



I tend to ignore the news, and I scroll over political jargon on my news feed. I'm just too busy for it most of the time. It's not that I don't want to care about farmer's being blackmailed by the large production companies, it's just that I'm so far separated from it that it just seems like an unnecessary burden to take on. But that's the problem, isn't it? People like me don't stop to take the time to become educated on important topics because they just don't want to be bothered, and then they never get fixed. Now that I've seen some of the videos and learned about some of these things, I'm going to be conscious of them all the time. I think it took these videos to make these problems human for me. Underneath the politics and the protests and the things that I feel like I can't change, there are people who are suffering - and that matters to me. While I didn't necessarily like watching all these videos and caring about all these new terrible matters, I'm really happy that I did.

Then there's the website building. That was a challenge to say the least. I don't like computers, I don't like calculators, I don't even like TVs that have too many channels or smart remote controls - I like to do things myself. So I was uncomfortable with trying to make a website because it seemed like a whole lot of frustration to me. But, because I knew it was going to be hard for me, I made myself get used to it. I spent hours upon hours messing with fonts and codes and templates and pictures and photoshop and a bunch of other things that I never would have known how to use if it weren't for this class. I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I did figure out how to navigate our site pretty well if I do say so myself. I don't want to ever make a website again, but if I had to I definitely could, and that's a valuable skill.

Now on to our adventure. I had a blast during this term. We had our ups and downs as a group because group projects are stressful, but we made some pretty spectacular memories. We were really fortunate to have the opportunity to take a hands on approach to our website. I really hated hunting. It was cold and boring and I couldn't remember to stay quiet, but it was pretty awesome that we caught a turkey - and let's not forget about the goats. I will be telling people about Nugget and Babbette for years. Our fishing trip was fantastic (for me). I really love the ocean, and just being on the water makes me feel a thousand percent better than I did on land - always. Poor Sarah and Logan had to deal with my entire family for two whole days, but I think they enjoyed the craziness that is the Gillis Sisters - and some Mother's Day Mudslides.

Our adventure was awesome, and it led to a pretty awesome website. I am extremely proud of all that we did. We were lucky to have stumbled across a really perfect idea for our personal interests, and the creativity just kept flowing. Our finished product is probably not even half of what we had originally talked about trying to incorporate. I couldn't have asked for a better group either. Each person really had something unique to bring to the project.



 Over all I would say this class was a success. I'm really glad that I took it, even though it wasn't super sure that I would like it. I learned a lot of cool stuff, and I have some pretty wonderful memories that I'll take with me.

Food Inc.

On Friday in class, we watched Food Inc., a documentary directed by Robert Kenner starring Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) and many other well known people in the area. The movie wasn't super surprising for me. Last year in Plants and Peoples with Dr. Egan we watched King Corn, which was similar in a lot of the facts that were shared. We learned about the monopoly of corn in the food industry, and a little bit about the monopoly Monsanto has over farmers, so I knew a little bit about the topics before I saw the movie - but that didn't make it any less upsetting to watch. Needless to say it might be a few years until I eat my next burger, and I'm just refusing to remember anything that might have been said about chickens.

I was really excited to write this blog, because over the weekend I've seen numerous facebook posts about marches and protests on Monsanto. There were Marches on Monsanto in 52 different countries on Saturday. The push in these marches was to require all GMOs (genetically modified organisms) to be labeled in food. There are people who believe that GMOs can be harmful to our health, and the people are protesting for the right to know what's in their food. As of right now the Food and Drug Administration does not require companies to label GMOs on their packages, but some states have passed legislation to make food companies label GMOs in their products - however the U.S. Senate has rejected a bill to allow states individually require the labeling of GMOs. (I'm not totally sure how these two things fit together, but that's what it said on the website) I think that Connecticut and Vermont might have passed the laws before the bill was rejected? Legal/political jargon - it's a bit over my head.

Anyways, it's a great thing that people are finally starting to get pro-active about what's in their food. Many other countries have in fact banned Monsanto and its seeds, and if the people are able to keep protesting and not purchasing foods with GMOs in them, we might be able to get the U.S. there too.

WE killed the electric car

In class on Tuesday we watched Who Killed the Electric Car, which I have to admit, was more interesting than I had anticipated. The movie was about the introduction of the electric car. It seemed pretty fantastic. It didn't run on gas or oil, it was cleaner for the environment, it didn't cost as much to repair, and it had enough charge in it for a normal day's worth of commute. It had a lot of perks, but it wasn't perfect. It didn't charge instantaneously, which can be nerve wracking to someone who's used to being able to fuel their car as quickly as they can type in their pin number. It also wasn't able to run for hundreds of miles on a single charge. The electric cars that we learned about in the movie got anywhere from 60 to 120 miles per charge, and for some people - that's just not practical.



I wanted to see what electric cars look like now in comparison to what we saw in the movie from 2006. The Model S, by Tesla Motors is a nice looking SUV that runs on energy alone, and it gets 265 miles per charge. That would almost get me back to Massachusetts, which is 306 miles away, and takes more than one tank of gas. It has zero carbon emissions and can get from 0 to 60 in four seconds. It seems like a no brainer, but unfortunately it's really expensive. They advertise its monthly price instead of the full price, and they calculate it as "after gas savings". That was a bit of a red flag for me. When I looked into it more, I found that it is actually a $62,000 - $72,000 car. Now, I'm not the best when it comes to car prices. I nearly had a stroke when my boyfriend paid $10,000 for a 2011 with practically no miles on it. For someone who has 76 cents in their bank account, $70,000 for a car seems like an outrageous purchase. At prices like this, I'll never be able to drive an electric car. (although, I was looking for the most updated with the highest miles per charge, there could be cheaper cars out there.)


Let's pretend it's a perfect world, and money isn't an issue, and everyone can afford an electric car - what would happen to the world? There's the obvious perk that we wouldn't be dependent on the middle east for fuel, but what else? What about all those jobs? What about the gas station owners and the auto mechanics out there? Even if they changed gas stations to charging stations, there wouldn't need to be nearly as many. While I can definitely see the positive things that electric cars would do for the world, I also worry about what would happen to the already rough economy. 






A big portion of the movie was about politics and having the wrong people in the right places so that they could maintain control over the auto and fuel industries, and that is positively infuriating - we know what the problem is and we know how to fix it but we pick people to make decisions for us who won't change it. There's definitely a feeling of hopelessness about it.






I think about the future a lot. I think about how our generation is going to be portrayed in history books. I wonder if we're going to go down in history as the smartest and most selfish fools who ever lived, or the people who saved the world.

The Cove

So the other day in class we watched The Cove, a documentary by the OPS (Oceanic Preservation Society) - and it was one of the more heartbreaking movies I've ever seen. It featured Ric O'Barry, who was actually the trainer on the 60's television hit series, "Flipper". Flipper was really the beginning of the dolphin craze, because Flipper (or Kathy) captured the hearts of Americans and raised the interest in dolphins and their intelligence. That's when Sea World began it's whale and dolphin shows, and vacation spots began advertising "swimming with the dolphins".

At the beginning of the documentary Ric O'Barry talks about the incredible regret he feels because he didn't realize that he was creating a monster. He told a terrible story about how he believed Kathy the dolphin committed suicide in his arms, and that night he was arrested for the first time for trying to free the other dolphins on the set. This awesome picture from creative commons made me curious about the webpage on Ric O'Barry's shirt, so I looked it up, and it has a ton of information about the present movement on the dolphin massacre happening in Taiji, and the rest of Japan. Check out SaveJapanDolphins.org to see some interesting news stories.




The story that I found to be the most interesting was one from November of 2012, reporting a public protest of the dolphin hunting in Tokyo. This was huge news because before the release of this movie, many people in Japan were totally in the dark to the dolphin hunting. It was extremely covered up and controlled by the government, but The Cove managed to raise enough attention to make people not only upset about this slaughtering, but angry enough to stand up and do something about it. This is huge because it was the first protest including Japanese citizens. Of course, they weren't met graciously and extreme nationalists went as far as to spit on the pro-dolphin posters.

At the end of the movie Ric O'Barry stood in the streets of Taiji, (?) I think, with the television on his front the same way he walked into the IWC (International Whaling Commision). The ending of the movie showed how little the citizens of Japan knew about the dolphin hunting. The beginning talked about it a little, explaining how it would seem to the world as if Taiji loved whales and dolphins with its museums and boat tours. I think this protest is a sign that the people of Japan are becoming aware of the atrocious actions fishermen are taking towards these dolphins - and they're not ok with it.

Let's forget about the fact that hunting the dolphins is cruel, the more horrifying aspect of these killings is that they are pointless - in my opinion at least. They're no good for food, they're completely saturated with mercury, a point which was justly shown in the movie when the figure head who continuously supported the dolphin hunting tested positive for mercury poisoning.

On the SaveJapanDolphins website I also found a super upsetting article about how the methods of dolphin slaughter are, in fact, inhumane. Well...I could have told you that, but what I couldn't have told you is that they've re-modified their method of killing the dolphins. Even though the movie ended with the bad guys being fired and poisoned and relieved of their positions guarding the Cove, it seems as though that did not last long. The previous method (which was said to be "new" and "humane") of jabbing a lance into the throats of the dolphins (which was supposed to cause "instantaneous death") has been re-vamped to something even more horrible. On top of that, since the release of the movie, the fishermen have upped security, and now there is a large tarp covering the entire cove to keep people from seeing what goes on in there. The "new" method they've adopted is pulling the dolphins under the tarps and stabbing them behind the blowhole. They continue to screech and flail about for minutes on end. There's a really terrible video of it that was taken by a kind of second generation OPS group from Germany. If you'd like to check it out, click here.

Sometimes I think I'd be better off knowing things like this, because I feel like there's nothing I can do to stop it. The more movies we watch in class the more I feel like the government completely owns us - and that industry is vastly more important than the individual, or the earth even. But... I guess knowing is the first step, and I hope to see more protests going on in Japan full of people who are sick of feeling like they can't change things.

'Til next time!

Ithaca Farmer's Market

Two Saturdays ago Logan, Sarah, and I went to the Ithaca Farmer's Market. I was really excited to go because I love Ithaca, and I'll take any excuse to take a trip up. I also really like farmer's markets. There's a really peaceful vibe and lots of fun stuff to look at and try. Ithaca did not disappoint.


We got there right at 9 o'clock, so it was pretty empty and the tables were still being set up. There was wine, paintings, photography, ceramics, wood work, blankets and clothing, sauces, flowers, vegetables, meat, eggs, home made apple cider donuts, coffee, and tons of other home made and organic goods. We stopped at a bunch of different booths, and most people were super friendly and happy to answer any of our questions.

One of the first booths we stopped at was the Culinary Kiosk, which specializes in home made sauces. They also specialize in coffee, tea, garlic, herbs and spices, dry beans, and other gifts. I didn't personally try any of the sauces or salsas because I eat like a small child and don't like anything with flavor, but Sarah bought a jar of peanut sauce for her mom (since it was the day before Mother's Day) and she said she loved it. The products looked fantastic and the owner was great, so I promised I would give a good recommendation!

Another awesome booth that we stopped by was the Windsong Farm booth. I was drawn to it immediately because it said "A sustainable local farm" and I wanted to ask questions about the sustainability.  I also wanted to feel the sheep fur samples that they had on the table. David Stern, the owner, told us that they weren't able to be 100%  sustainable, because it's extremely hard, but that they try to be as sustainable as possible. They use the manure for fertilizer, and they make blankets and clothes out of the sheep fur, and they use everything they have before making any purchasing.



 Before we left the farmer's market Sarah bought some cute flowers for her mother and a gyro from one of the stands, and then we went out and looked at the pond. I really liked this tree so I took a picture of it. On the other side of the three there's a compost, and a trash - but just about everyone was using the compost because most of the food products were either not on any kind of plate, or on something recyclable. The whole environment was so chill and so relaxed, and the pond was gorgeous. There were families, and dogs, and a little boy rocking out on his violin with a tip jar at his feet. I would definitely go back, and I would definitely recommend it to friends. I'm also going to look into farmer's markets near me.

 Last but not least, Buy Local! It helps your community and gives you something awesome to do on the weekends!

Ecofeminism in Avatar

The other day the assignment for www.women.com was to watch Avatar, keeping in mind the sources e-mailed to us by Dr. Maluso concerning ecofeminism. The first source she sent to us was an article called "Ecofeminism: Women and the Environment" for the most part this article is talking about the rising rate of breast cancer and how products that we use daily can be dangerous for us - specifically cosmetics and plastics. The article was interesting, but most importantly it defined ecofeminism as "a feminist approach to environmental ethics." I actually didn't know what ecofeminism was  - I mean, I could have guessed it through a basic understanding of the English language, but it was good to have it written in stone.

The other source we were supposed to look at was "How Ecofeminism Works" which is great, because I love How Stuff Works pages. This page went into a little more detail about how feminism and ecology are connected. The article emphasized how women were connected to the earth, and how the oppression of the planet was similar to the oppression of women. You can definitely see how this idea of women and nature has been developed through history. Demeter was the goddess of the harvest, and she was said to be the being that brought fertility and life to the Earth. If you think of it that way women and the earth are definitely connected,  because they both bring life and sustenance. That's a pretty powerful statement, to connect the oppression to the environment with oppression to women, but it seems to fit. I've never heard her called "Father Earth" after all.

So anyways, bringing this back to Avatar, there's definitely examples of ecofeminism throughout the story line. The most obvious example of this is Neytiri, who was so comfortable in her skin and so at ease with the environment. She showed Jake Sully how to manipulate his body and the earth so that they would work together. Neytiri is an extremely powerful woman and she is constantly shown as being connected to nature.

The other woman in this movie who is an example of ecofeminism is Grace. She is so interested in this world and so connected to them - she is by far the expert on the tribe, and for some time she seems extremely powerful. However, when money and greed become more important to the men on her team, she gets pushed aside as they seek out to destroy the Na'vi tribe.

When you look at this movie from an ecofeminism perspective it seems like the men have no right to the land because it's part of the women - so therefore they have to take it and oppress both the women and the environment. I'm overdoing it a little bit here, but it gets poetic the longer you think about it I swear!

Scavenger Hunt

So on Tuesday we went on a super awesome scavenger hunt at Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum. It was a ton of fun, and we found a lot of interesting things. We started out by the pond, and we took pictures of dew on the leaves, and a goose on the water, and my reflection in the water. Then we went onto the blue trail (something blue) and found a "Red Oak" tree (something red). We also saw three or four deer, but they were pretty far away so our picture might not be great. We kept walking along the blue trail, and then we cut through the woods onto this big field, and we took a picture from the top of the hill. We also took some pictures of a pretty cool tree (and me trying to climb the really cool tree).

After we moved on from the field we switched over onto the yellow trail where we found a makeshift stopsign, some pretty awesome "Caution Zombies Ahead" litter, our "baby" trees, and all sorts of other fun stuff.


After we came back from the trail we went into the museum to see if we could check off the last few things on our list. It was really cool in there. There was lots of interesting taxidermy, some big snakes, and to my horror a really gigantic frog. We were able to cross off everything on our list, and it was great to get to spend the beautiful day outside.

Fracked Either Way

On Monday in class we watched "Gasland" which is a documentary by Josh Fox about the negative effects of fracking. Fracking is a big deal around this part of New York, because we fall near the gas shales. Our assignment for this blog was to fact check two points from this documentary. I'm not going to talk about whether or not it's good for the environment - it's not, and I'm not going to talk about whether or not it's really affecting people's lives, homes, animals, and health - it is. I hate digging through the muck trying to find out how large corporations can see the bubbling water or the faucets that literally catch on fire and then say that fracking isn't having any effect on the drinking water. I just kind of wonder what all the nondisclosure agreements were about if nothing happened.




#1 Halli-Who?

This was not the first I've heard of the Halliburton Loophole, but it was the first time I paid attention to what it was. Before yesterday my general understanding of the Halliburton Loophole was that it was some conspiracy theory - it sounds so outrageous that I thought there must be more to it. I thought maybe there were other regulations it had to follow or something, because it just doens't make sense. If fracking is unable to meet the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act/ Clean Water Act, maybe, and I'm going out on a limb here, but maybe it's not a good idea.  It's a real thing, a real law set in place to excuse fracking companies from having to abide by the Safe Drinking Water Act/Clean Water Act, which means that it is causing harm to the environment as defined by the law that Congress voted in. Instead of changing the fracking system to meet the standards of the law, they changed the law to meet the needs of the fracking system, at the expense of the people. My understanding is that the Halliburton loophole is still in effect, but that the EPA is striving to change the situation. The law stated that as long as diesel fuel was not used in the process, the EPA had no responsibility in the matter, and many fuel companies agreed to discontinue the use of diesel fuel in their fracking. However, many companies did not hold up their end of the bargain, so the EPA sent a guidance document to the White House in December 2011 which will hopefully regulate the use of diesel fuel in fracking and finally set real limitations for the industry and hopefully put us a step in the right direction. That was in 2011, the newest information I was able to find on EPA involvement had to do with the revision of the Fracking Impact Results in 2013.

#2 Produced Water
When I first heard the term "produced water" my first thought was what even is that? It's an extremely vague name for an extremely dangerous thing. Produced water, or wastewater, is the 20-30% of water that comes back from fracking, littered with oodles of toxic chemicals. So what do they do with this water? Sometimes they send it to treatment or sewage plants that are not equipped to deal with it, sometimes they discreetly place it into larger bodies of water such as rivers or lakes, sometimes they place it into open pits where it presents a major threat to people in wildlife in the area. There's also an extremely high rate of radiation in this water that many plants are not able to get rid of to meet safety standards, but that water is still released into water sources. For more horrifying information on produced water check out the Catskill Mountainkeeper's programs and information on fracking.

Here's where it gets tricky. What about this? What about the jobs that fracking offers to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people? What about the truck drivers and the drillers and the riggers and the traffic directors and all of the people involved in the process, and what about their families? As someone who wants to work closely to the welfare system it's hard for me to nonchalantly say that I think they should completely shut down a project that provides so many jobs, but I'd like to hold the optimistic view that a lot of jobs would be created in the clean up process. The choice seems to be between two evils, but the way I look at it is, poverty and and unemployment won't matter much on a planet that has no water.

Fortunately, Massachusetts doesn't seem to be a main target for fracking right now. I haven't seen a shale in Massachusetts on any map I've looked at, but that doesn't mean that we won't be affected. The water in this country is really connected, with many small rivers and streams branching off into other bodies of water. Fracking isn't just a problem for people who's faucets are flammable, you don't want those kind of chemicals in your water, and you can't be sure you're water couldn't be contaminated. If you want to check out more information on fracking in your area, check out a fractracker, like this one.

Litter Bugs

So on Friday we went out into the beautiful city of Elmira to pick up trash and litter in order to beautify the streets. I actually spent the majority of the time with Dr. Maluso and the wonderful Gertrude Stein to help with retrieving the bags of trash and scoping out neighborhoods in need. When I did switch out with Sarah and Logan to go with Cassie and Casey, we started at The Branch and then made our way back towards campus from Davis Street. We picked up the front lawn of a middle school that was either shut down or not in session, and then we went through some neighborhoods. We didn't pick an ideal spot necessarily, and most of the trash we picked up was small, and it was few and far between. The most common items found were scratch tickets and cigarette butts, and then crushed beer cans and glass out behind The Branch.

I try my best not to litter, mostly because I'm afraid of the karmatic repercussions, but it's sad that people can't just pick up their own trash. Elmira isn't as bad as a lot of us make it out to be, and there are parts of it that are really nice. If there was more of an effort to get Elmira clean and keep it clean, it would be a lot nicer place to be.