Thank god Earth Day is over. I couldn’t take much more of it. Everyone wearing their “environmentalism” on their sleave like a badge of superiority.

Don’t get me wrong, doing common sense things to reduce “waste” in all its forms is a good thing. It tends to lead to living a simpler life. Go back a couple generations and your great-grandparents were masters at it. Not because they were trying to minimize their carbon footprint, or trying to save the polar bear, they did it because it made sense and it cost less. Now we have an “environmental elite” that is hell bent to inform anyone how righteous they are and how bad you are if you don’t follow their lead. And what a lead. How about the couple who invited us to dinner and then proclaimed how their new Hybrid car was going to save the planet. When we told them that we were shopping for an SUV, the bigger the better, to take kids, hockey gear, mother’s-in-law, dogs, friends, etc., the host couple could barely hide their sneers. This while they feted us with grapes, salad greens, avacados and all manner of foods that were TRUCKED or FLOWN in from California and beyond. They also had the nerve to talk about their latest trip (by air) while one of their children ate a “Lunchable”. I am sure that every light bulb was on in the house. The fact that we try to buy local vegetables, rarely eat imported fruit other than bananas, use a wash line to dry clothes quite frequently, and can’t remember the last time we stepped foot on a plane (that is more financial than idealistic) didn’t matter. This couple wouldn’t know a clothes pin if it was pinching their ear, but the fact that we didn’t kneel at their feet and thank God that they bought a Hybrid was reason enough to put us in the “Flat Earth Society”. The non-believers.

Well, to my immense joy, Sobey’s has stated (at least at the local store level) that they will not ban plastic grocery bags, or make customers pay for them. Yeah! Wooohoooo! As I have stated before gettting rid of grocery bags is a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that does not exist. Where this policy has been put in place elsewhere, production of plastic bags has increased, to fill all of the other uses that plastic grocery bags take up when they get into the home. Somebody at Sobey’s has their head on straight and is doing the “RIGHT THING” even though it may cause the ire of “environmentalists”. Sobey’s you have a brand new and life-long customer now.

I wonder how long bags will be banned in other stores when they see a drop in spending in their stores. Think about it. It is quite easy to be going down the isles and pick up spontaneous purchase after spontaneous purchase if you know that when you get to the check out their will be plenty of plastic bags for all the extras. You have to start thinking about the extras when you only have so many of those reusable bags at your disposal. Is that sweater for the son or daughter worth having to buy another bag at the check-out? Who knows? So you probably will put it off for another day. Maybe, when it hits stores in the pocket book, they will come to their senses.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

Craig Simm died on Tuesday. I will miss him.

Now we have families having to declare bankruptcy to cover their travel, child-care and miscellaneous expenses while a loved one is getting medical treatment out-of-province. Wonderful. We as the government don’t have the money to help these families or we didn’t know it was a problem.

But we have hundreds of millions going into new schools and repairing existing schools. Can someone please explain to me how we get into a position where schools need millions of dollars in renovations to bring them up to snuff. School boards should be shot. Who of us as a home-owner lets their dwelling deteriorate to the point that it requires major repairs to be livable? Nobody. You keep up to date with yearly maintanence. Apparently they don’t believe in that at the school board level.

Can you also explain to me who believes that amalgamating smaller schools into larger ones is a good idea. It may be economically advantageous, but I don’t believe it leads to a better education. Who can say that they get better service from a bank call center than they got from their own branch? Bigger is not always better. I would trade all of the computers, gym equipment and overhead projectors for a small school where my children have a close community bond with their teachers.

But our children don’t have that choice do they. And families don’t have a choice about whether they can afford to get treatment. And my friend who is losing his battle with cancer didn’t have a choice either. He just got it. Instead of blaming everyone and everything, he met it head on and gave it his best shot. He inspired me. I am glad that I was able to see him mask his pain with a smile or a quick wit. I am glad that I saw him keep his dignity through it all. And I am most glad that I think he called me a friend.

So forgive me if I sound bitter. I am. We live in a time and place where the amazing people and things that they do become overshadowed by stupidity and mismanagement. Let us not forget those amazing people and let us do something to honour them by making things better.

Let us not forget.

A Sad Sour Kraut

Here you go. There is some control being put back into the oil market. The rise in prices over the past few weeks, especially in gasoline futures, is starting to be tempered by the reality that demand still remains weak. This means that the “investors” ( it is a nicer term to use than specultators ) who have been running up prices, are finally being pushed out by the actual users. With refineries only operating at 81% capacity and inventories sky high, there is every reason for prices to drop. Yeah! Sorry OPEC.

If you have a chance to read the latest (April) Reader’s Digest, go to the article about the people around the world that are doing amazing things for the environment. Thankfully there is only one mention of the greenhouse gas/global warming fiasco. The rest of the stories are about invdividuals and organizations that are doing real stuff. Saving ecosystems and habitat and educating people about the value of the environment and species at risk. Great stuff. Yeah! Again!

See, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

A Sour Kraut

I am really getting annoyed by some of the emails that are sent to me. You know the ones; “don’t ever heat any food or drink in plastic – This is how Sheryl Crow got breast cancer…”, “eat fruit but only on an empty stomach, if not you will get cancer…”, or my favourite “a breakfast of bacon and eggs with coffee causes cancer but bacon and eggs with tea does not…” and last but not least “women will probably feel a pain in their jaw if they are having a coronary before they feel a pain in their left arm…”.

The last one may be good advice, who knows. This information is picked off the internet willy-nilly and packaged as the God’s truth. How in the heck does Sheryl Crow know that she got cancer from drinking out of plastic bottles? Has she been doing research on tour that the medical community should know about? Personally I think she got it from Lance. Honest. When you look at genetic progressions any disease that adversely affects the ability to reproduce, even at miniscule levels like a one percent reduction, that disease should have been weeded out of our genetic makeup hundreds of thousands of years ago. So if its not hereditary, then maybe it is infectious. That’s why I think she got it from Lance. I should put out an email!

And then we have fruit. Eat fruit only on an empty stomach. Do you think that our ancestors, you know the ones roaming the plains and highlands 20,000 years ago made sure that they ate fruit on an empty stomach? They ate whatever they could get their hands on whenever they could eat it. And probably, it was usually on an empty stomach. But, I don’t think that that fat laden diet resulted in cancer and the wholesale demise of our species. They were too active trying to survive.

This generation’s arrogance amazes me. We have only been here for fifty years, yet we feel that nothing came before us and everything that happens today is the most important thing ever in all of history. As a result we know everything and what is best for everyone. A little common sense and humility might be a good thing.

I had the priviledge of having two grandfathers and one grandmother, who were the salt of the earth. Maybe you did too. These were people who took nothing for granted other than they knew that they would get out of life exactly what they put into it. They had common sense coming out the wazoo. As a result they lived lives that would seem foreign to most of us. They worked harder than you and I can imagine. They ate food that they mostly grew or raised themsleves, fished and preserved stuff for winter. And now that food is has too many fats or not enough good cholesterol. I can just imagine their reaction if I told them that coffee with their bacon and eggs is bad for them. Pa would say “baloney”, which according to rum-runners was part of a seasickness cure partnered with mayonaise and two slices of bread.

Maybe we should spend less time believing everything we read on the internet and more time walking, working outside and being more active. Who knows, we might actually gain some common sense on the way.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut.