The BIG Balance

The business complex where I work is a little odd and a lot inconvenient because the bathrooms are not in the office suites but outside in shared space (which we are required to lock upon entering and exiting). What I’ve noticed is that folks have no problem keeping the lights off while they are using the facility. I have no problem with that, as long as they don’t have a problem with me turning them on when I walk in.

I started wondering if this behavior had to do with the lack of effort on their part, or was it for the greater good of conserving energy? Did they keep their televisions off when they were in other rooms? Did they unplug their toasters and cell phone chargers when they weren’t using them? If this was the case, I say, GOOD FOR THEM!

But then I had a second thought that this may not be the case. They could very well be the type of people who kept a cell phone plan when they didn’t own a business but were heavily in debt. Or the people who drove new Lexuses and lived in one bedroom apartments. Or have their homes go into foreclosure rather than renting out their guest bedrooms.

This is a very interesting (and scary) time where we have to decide on how to balance our daily necessities and desires with environment conservation. What I am becoming critically aware of are my own contradictions, like spending $4 on coffee, but trying to save 20 cents on trash bags. It’s making me think a bit more – projecting, even how a decision of die-hard conservation affects my own freedom. Today I just threw out a big stack of legal documents, but I recycle plastic bottles…None of this is as simple as it seems.

Kelly Herring, a contributor to my favorite newsletter ETR, and founder of Healing Gourmet, dropped a little gem about organic food and it's prevention of breast cancer and a thought we might like to consider when buying food grown in other countries. Enjoy!

We've long lauded the benefits of choosing organic foods over those that are conventionally grown. Not only do organic foods taste better, they are higher in nutrients and free from metabolism-disrupting chemicals.

And it turns out that "eating organic" is especially important for children. One example: A study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that women who were exposed to relatively high levels of DDT prior to mid-adolescence were five times more likely to develop breast cancer than women with lower exposures when they were young.

While DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972, unfortunately we're not safe from its negative effects. DDT is still used in other counties (including Mexico) on crops that are imported into the U.S. and end up on our plates.

Local farmers' markets and your own backyard offer affordable options to keep the poison off your plate and protect your children's future health.

Family of Assailants of Turkish Wedding Massacre Flee for Their Lives


According to recent news reports, relatives of the eight people charged with the involvement in the killing of 44 people at a wedding in south-east Turkey have fled their homes in fear for their lives.

“Even though we are innocent, they (the villagers) are accusing us. If the gendarmes were not there, they would kill us. We are not safe, we have to leave,” said one of the villagers.

The attack took place at a wedding in the village of Bilge Koyu in the Mardin province. It is estimated that 200 guests were in attendance. Ferhat Ozen, deputy governor of Mardin Province, said the assailants stormed into the house where attendees had gathered, and fired automatic weapons and threw hand grenades.

Among those killed were the bride, the groom, his parents and four-year-old sister; along with six other children and 15 other women (three of them were pregnant). Some of the guests hid under dead bodies until the attackers left. BBC reported that the Turkish government has said that the attack on Monday was a result of feud involving two families that goes back about 20 years.

Seventy children in the village lost one or both parents in the massacre and are receiving psychological treatment for trauma.

It was reported that 12 families, totally more than 100 people loaded their belongings under guard on Wednesday and left Bilge Koyu out of fear of revenge attacks.

According to AFP, Turkish officials discovered that the weapons used in the Bilge Koyu wedding massacre were issued by the state, and that several suspects were members of the “Village Guards,” a militia force set up in 1984, comprised of local Kurds armed and paid by the government to help fight Kurdish rebels.

The Village Guards have been successful in dispelling rebel activity, however, they have also been accused of illegal activity such as drug smuggling, rape, kidnapping and murder. Human rights advocates have long called for the disbandment of the 70,000-strong force, arguing that they abuse their status.

On Tuesday, according to BBC, villagers said that the assailants were members of the Celebi family who wanted the bride, Sevgi Celebi to marry one of her relatives.

Over the weekend I thought I’d let my hair down and splurge a little on a movie, so after my daughter’s drumming lesson, we headed over to the $1 movies and saw Confessions of a Shopaholic (based off the books by Sophie Kinsella). Yeah, I know, it’s not usually my type of movie, but it was the next thing playing by the time we got there, and honestly, I couldn’t beat the price.

As you can guess by the title, the movie is about a shopaholic who gets laid off from her job and incidentally lands a job as a journalist at finance magazine. Although she gets her own column called “The Girl In The Green Scarf,” the main character, Rebecca Bloomwood (played by Isla Fisher) doesn’t know the darndest thing about finance as she is up to her eyeballs in debt. However she fakes it pretty well, that is until a slinky pesky debt collector named Derek Smeath (played by Robert Stanton) stalks her both over the phone and in person until he completely humiliates her at the height of the movie. She loses the trust of her boss (played by Hugh Dancy) and her best friend (played by Krysten Ritter) but of course, she’s not finished… she’s there girl in the green scarf…DUH. I hope I didn’t give too much of it away.

I expected to roll my eyes at this movie and shake my cynical head at it’s stupidity, but I couldn’t. It was actually a pretty good flick – especially for $1.50. I’m going to tell you this and I swear I’ll kick your teeth in if you tell anyone, but in one part of the movie I actually got all misty and choked up! Darn that PMS!