Natural Clothing Blog

One can say – nothing; we say – everything. There are probably millions of us around the planet, aghast, upset and worried about the amount of devastation caused by Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Our technological incompetence in face of true catastrophes, the loss of lives, both human and marine, strips away the temporary narcissist faith in our control over the universe.

We were celebrating the Earth Day with our company in our small town, when the news reached media, 41 years after the 1969 Santa Barbra oil spill, which contributed to founding Earth Day itself. Together with number of local organic farms, businesses and organizations, we were acknowledging the accomplished progress in protection of the environment. The oil spill put a different perspective on that – are we really moving forward? There are some, like British The Dark Mountain movement, which see this civilization already past the point of return. As much as unreal this seems – look at the gone ancient cultures: ancient China, the pyramids, the Coliseum in ruins. Civilizations do rise and fall and mostly they destroy themselves.

Nature and our relationship to it are worth a double look each day. Acts of nature are often unpredictable, acts against nature are not. Drilling through 5,000 feet of water and then 13,000 feet of rock are acts of greed, arrogance and unfounded confidence in the superiority of our technical knowledge and equipment. There is nowhere else to point the fingers than ourselves. Our blind love of oil, which Dana Lyons sings about in “Lubricate the Red, White and Blue” feeds 97% of our cars, trucks and plains. When we walk around in conveniently non-wrinkly, easy to wash polyester derived directly from oil, carry our oil derived shopping bags, we condone the price of the event like this one over and over again.

We have reached the state of the illusionary technical expertise which cannot answer the most basic question: “How do you reverse it back to the way things were?” We are so smart combining the chains of polymers but once synthesized, we don’t know how to degrade them. We can split an atom but we have never figured it out how to put it back together. We feed our children Genetically Modified foods, ignoring all the warnings. We give the free ticket to mad scientists to combine plant DNA with fish DNA, spike our soy, corn, wheat, sugar with cancer producing insecticide molecules and most of the time don’t even know it and don’t ask. There is no one on earth able to reverse the loss of 96% of our soy, large percentage of cotton and corn to GMO crops. Most of us don’t even know that we are not eating food anymore, we are eating the largest science experiment in history of humanity, only called “food”. Our grandchildren will tell us if we gambled right. In a meantime, we observe with astonishment the rising of illnesses, “food” intolerances, rash and eczema where our chemical laden clothes touch the skin. Just like when Chernobyl blows up, when drilling rig explodes, we look with surprise at damage created, saddened and always clueless how to reverse it.

At this point there are no perfect solutions, only compromises but first, it is crucial to recover our lost reverence to nature, our respect for natural resources. We need these for thousands more years. Maybe we should not drill the hole if we don’t know how to plug it. A petroleum engineer involved in the spill supposedly said in a radio interview “It just seems like every now and then, you can’t win against Mother Nature.” Correction – you can never win against the Mother Nature. That’s not the direction we want to keep going.

Please, keep doing your part in taking steps, no matter how small or challenging they might be in supporting the eco-friendly efforts and groups which try hard to not work against Mother Nature. We are in it together.

Do you remember the 70’s  - with leaded gas cars, polluted skies, and when rivers caught fire?  Look how far we have come! When Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson created this movement in 1970, 20 million Americans joined the protest. Today Earth Day Network expects 1.5 billion people to be part of global events and programs.

The green community of Snohomish invites you to join us in celebrating Earth Day’s 40th Anniversary. On Thursday April 22nd, 1 pm – 6 pm, local green businesses, farmers, and organizations will display their products and services in KlaHaYa Park, right off historic First Street by the Snohomish River. Various businesses along First Street will also be participating.

Recycling Queen Karen of Snohomish Farmers Market, Full Circle Farm, Flying Tomato and Caruso Farm will present their green ways and eco-friendly methods. Cedar Grove Compost will share secrets of successful composting and Earth Wise Excavation explains how earth work can be done sustainably with care for the environment. Natural Clothing Company will display organic clothing of hemp, organic cotton and other natural fibers, along with information why are organic textiles important for you and even better for the planet! The Boys and Girls Club will display art made from recycled materials. Sip organic coffee from Java Inn while sampling certified organic skincare products from NYR Organic Skincare. Rowdy Rascals Toy Store will demonstrate which toys are safe for your youngsters. Come and meet Chris from Wolf College as he describes his fascinating camps and classes on survival skills and his fascinating camps and classes on surviving in the mountains, wild cooking and herbology and more. SongCroft is a self sufficiency school and a family farm run by Marilene Richardson, who is not only Master Gardner, Certified Permaculture Designer but also an originator of Foundation for Sustainable Community. Check out www.NaturalClothing.com/Earth_Day for a other exhibitors, like Esoterica Candles – all natural soy wax candles, hand-crafted locally.

Each exhibitor will answer the question: how is your business/organization sustainable? The answers might be as varied as the issue. Is it organic? Energy efficient? Recyclable? Reusable? Compostable? Helpful to future generations? You can ponder on that and your own definition at Grilla Bites Cafe, which offers delicious food with lots of organic choices and non-gluten or non –diary options. Grilla Bites composts its trash, serves as a pick up place for the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program and is a great gathering spot for the community. Join us there after the event for great food at a special Earth Day discount and appropriately enough – Dirt Cake! Also, a showing of the 20 min video by Annie Leonard “The Story of Stuff”, will be a great finale for an amazing day!

Thursday’s Earth Day event is sponsored by Natural Clothing Company and Grilla Bites Café with help from City of Snohomish and Historic Downtown Snohomish.

Don’t forget to join us on Saturday, April 24th, 9 am to 4 pm – for the City of Snohomish Spring Clean-Up. Join us at the Boys and Girls Club, 402 Second Street, for sign up and assignments. Bring gloves, rakes and enjoy a day of fun and community spirit helping to make the city more beautiful. This yearly event is sponsored by City of Snohomish, Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, Kiwanis Club and the Snohomish Parks Foundation. There will be lunch served by the Snohomish Lions Club. The Household Clean-Up is held at the City shop yard, 1801 First St where City of Snohomish residents can dispose of household waste items.

There might be no uniform definition of “sustainable” but it is simple to recognize when one really cares about their environment. Our community certainly does –come and see!

Well, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine does not think that soaking, spraying, waxing and injecting food with chemicals is any concern for their food study. Completing extensive review of previous studies on organic vs. conventional food they found “no evidence that organically produced foods are nutritionally superior to conventionally produced foodstuffs.”  Of course the review rejected many existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences because it did not meet their criteria.

So let’s be clear: get yourself a fresh bowl of strawberries, spray with Raid, grease up your lunch salad with motor oil – it does not really change their nutritional value. Bon Appétit!

Hello…

Read Organic Consumer Association much better stated article http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18745.cfm

I delivered yesterday some Tee shirts to a group of kids at the foothills of Cascade Mountains.  Children were completing a survival week run by Wolf Camp from Snohomish,  Washington. Sitting in a comfortable shade of a  large tree, the small group of youngsters demonstrated the actual skills they learned that week and shared their stories.  Presentation  was very impressive: how to make a wood bowl using the fire coals, which native plants are safe to eat, a tea out of pine needles was shared, we saw how to build a warm shelter using forest  debris. But the most exciting part came when the boys showed us how to start the fire. No matches, of course… It took less than 10 minutes using their handmade tool of tied sticks (even though  the original attempts took couple of hours, we hear…).  They shared then how their appreciation changed for fire and water, their meaning to life, driven by their first hand experience. It was very touching.

Adults gathered in circle looked with pride at the camp participants, grateful for sharing this experience and applauding, just like their kids when the fire was born.  At the same time it was hard not to reflect on  how far we are now from appreciating the most fundamental basis of survival. Majority of us have shelter in warm houses full of asbestos insulation, we have stores full of neat cardboard boxes full of well preserved particles called food and fire flowing at will by flipping a switch. Don’t misunderstand me – I would never express any interest in living in a cave again. Proponents of sustainability by giving up any and all progress are unrealistic and ineffective. It would not resolve much for our civilization as it is.

But to disconnect completely, as we do now,  from understanding, caring and valuing the actual sources of shelter, fire, water and food – is counter-survival. It leads to abuse of Nature close to the point of no return  - putting toxic debris, sprays, sludge in waters, air, soil and consequently in our foods – escapes rationalization. We create modified plants, our food sources, so they would withstand these toxins and then feed it to our children and our animals. We put enough preservatives in “food” so it can stand on a shelf for weeks, how are they suppose to magically decompose in our stomachs?  We spray cotton crops with toxins so insects can’t touch it and then we sleep on it.  Any logic here?

Let’s start by waking  up every day and as we look up to the sky for the sun, let’s give our thanks to the trees for still being there for us, despite everything; to soil still willing to bear us plants, despite everything; to the life around us still willing to persist and forgive us and share with us. Let’s don’t forget to thank the fire for still willing to be born.

A young girl at the fair asked: “So what is your clothing? Can you eat it? I thought organic means that you can eat it safely?”

Well yes, maybe not it it but wear it safely since it has no toxins for your skin or the planet! To us simply means it is not poisoned: by pesticides, insecticides, dyes with metals or PVC in it.

What does it mean to you?

Life without poisons.  That’s what the “Green Lifestyle” means to me.

I  actually came across that wording  on some Italian site and it seemed like an obviously awkward translation of their expression. “We don’t use poisons on our food”, they said. It stuck to me and I cannot get it unstuck. Every time I eat beautiful “conventional” (not organic) food, wear the conventional “normal” clothing, their beauty might as well come from toxic veneer, their great texture from gene engineering. The more you learn the more you see the percentages, like GMO corn at 70%, toxic cotton at similar range. A bio-scientist /artist (?) in Chicago crossed Petunia with his blood DNA. Called it Edunia. Cute, hmm…

Even though I am quite fanatical about life without poisons, I can see that one could go nuts looking for the potential hazards everywhere. Where do you draw the line? Does your line fluctuate like cosine function or is it straight and bold ? Do you think we are doing better because of the awareness growing with the green movement or are we getting behind because of damage already existing?

Welcome to my first post on Natural Clothing Blog! Wow, writing a blog is probably highest achievement of my technical skill… First things, first though – forgive me if my grammar is off. Being born on a different continent, I have an excuse, even though it is getting weaker and weaker the longer I live in USA (28 years coming soon). Spell checkers are great for spell but so so for Polish/English grammar…

Two – I have lots of ideas and thoughts which I would like to share with you but… most of all, I would love to know more about You!

What part of green movement makes sense to you? In your mind, if you have to go an extra mile (or extra dollar) to live organic, what would you say?

a)Organic clothing is a bit over board right now. With my budget being so low I don’t buy much period, I would rather not spend more on organic food, even less on clothing.

b) I have mixed feelings. I am a bit concerned, I hear about toxins used on a lot of crops but we don’t live close to any agricultural fields, I don’t see them sprayed. And after all, it washes off in a laundry, doesn’t it?

c) I am really concerned, I noticed my skin (or my spouse, kid) more and more sensitive to soaps and shampoos, maybe clothing should be free of chemicals, too. I definitely don’t want to eat sprayed fruit or veggies. I’ll buy organics even though I have to pay more.

If above options don’t fit, can you share any of your own thoughts on organic food or clothing?