a little help from my friends

Things have not been going so great for me lately. But Simon's dogs are pitching in and giving me words of encouragement (thanks to Joanne). This is Polar (aka P-Boy):

And then there's the Buddha:

There must be some mushrooms growing around his doghouse in the summer.

An Alaskan Husky Christmas Story

written by Simon McLoughlin
[I decided to take the day off and post Simon's letter about naughty doggies...]

Thought you might all appreciate this story.

Got home from town last night about 5p.m. it was pitch black being day after winter solstice. Had come from Freddies w/ Christmas day groceries. Whilst shopping spied some reindeer sausage meat and thought -oh a treat for dogs!

 When home I divide the 4 sausages into 11 equal amounts under interior light of truck then walk over to dogyard in the dark as headlamp elsewhere. I reach blindly into the opening of each kennel waiting for the dogs teeth to gently differentiate between my fingers and the reindeer meat. All going well until I am at far end of dogyard. I reach into Brownies kennel and long delay before I expect the wet muzzle to extricate the goodie from my hand w/ fingers intact. Over 30 seconds go by normally it'd be .3 secs and goodie would have vanished.

I feel deeper into kennel and all I can feel is empty space. Brownie is not home he has vamoosed w/ 6 feet of chain and 4 foot of 1/2" diameter rebar w/ a 1 foot 90 degree angle on end.

I walk over to give Polar his goodie  but no goodie for him as he is not a goodie and has blasted off too.

I immediately think of you Joanne and your summer experiences w/ the same two reprobates.

I find headlamp and begin wandering trails nearby calling and whistling into the black night. When I return to dogyard 20 minutes later here comes Polar running seemingly innocently to his kennel dragging 6 foot of chain.

I remove Polar's chain and then let the indomitable Porky off to help w/ search for Brownie.

With snomachine running we set off looking for Brownie. Polar runs immediately to cabin door and clueless to plan at hand. He wants to be on the couch next to the blazing woodstove in a warm cabin.

No sign of Brownie after searching nearby loop trail over the frozen Goldstream Creek.

So we  return to yard empty handed. I decide to clip Porky and Polar back to their kennels and drive snogo [translation: snowmobile] up towards road looking for the elusive Brownie.

I am now up at Goldstream store -still empty handed so go inside to ask store worker if anybody has come across a dog dragging chain and steel on his merry way. JACKPOT !!! I have a phone number for a woman who found Brownie down at peat ponds caught up in trees going nowhere fast! She extricates him w/ Polar onlooking then loads him in her truck w/ her other two dogs she was out walking trails with.

Polar declines offer for a ride and does what he does best...pisses off..!! [translation: takes off]

Sooo it's now 8 p.m. and I just arrive home with Brownie in the cab of truck and can finally give him his Christmas goodie and a happy ending to another unplanned winter adventure.

[NOTE: if you wanna see pictures of these reprobates, click Lassie's picture on right]

The Croissants of Shame

[compiled from several emails sent today]

Hi Everyone,

If you were following the news a couple hours ago you heard that one of our fellow students took his own life on campus.

The Newsminer gave the student's age: 48. By that definition, whether he'd heard of us or not, he's a non-traditional like us.

We all know how stressful student life can be. Especially at the end of the semester and the end of the year--when the fun weather and darkness sets in along with the projects and tests and grades and all that fun sh!t.

I've been reading all semester for my comps. I took my writtens the week before Thanksgiving. I got feedback from a couple of my committee members, and successfully got through some rewrites before the week was over.  On Tuesday of this week I went to take my scheduled oral exam. I got there early and sat outside the conference room for a half hour. After what seemed like ages my advisor finally came out and told me that the committee decided I wasn't ready to take the orals, because some of them were not satisfied with my written answers. 

I was completely shocked.  It was all I could do to hold back tears.

In hindsight, I should not have been subjected to that. I should have been contacted beforehand by each person who felt a rewrite was in order. Well, Thanksgiving week came and went, and blah blah blah. It (and I) fell through the cracks.  It really sucked. I spent $ on breakfast items for them, I had to request an outside examiner weeks before, and the poor fellow showed up just to have his time wasted. Worst of all, my advisor had emailed all my friends the day before to announce that she was throwing a big party for me (with CHAMPAGNE!) on Wed night to celebrate my advance to candidacy. She had to email them all back and explain why the party was being cancelled. That REALLY sucked--now everyone knew!! And so I went home in tears with my bag of croissants, and wondered whether I should continue being a UAF student or just give up and fling myself and the croissants over the Goldstream Creek Bridge.

Before I left campus that day, however, I met with the members of my committee who were not satisfied with my written answers, and we discussed the issues. They gave me a framework for rewrites.  I just sent rewrites to one of them a little while ago, and I am in the process of rewriting for the other. 

If all goes well, I should be able to reschedule my oral exam for early January.

Sounds easy. But it wasn't.  I was doing everything I could to hold it together. My advisor had hugged me and apologized. It wasn't her fault.

That poor student. I know how he felt. I came close. [I didn't tell anyone about that part]

When I got home, I sat in my house and cried for hours. I didn't eat or drink or light a fire, and the house got cold. I thought about driving up the Elliott Highway some ways past Fox and pulling over and just walking out into the snow. I thought about the thirty thousand dollars in loans and scholarships that would need to be given back. And I thought about my Dad, who went to college on the GI Bill after surviving the final campaign through Europe during WWII. I emailed him and he called me; we talked for over an hour.  

When something like this happens, it's not good to internalize your feelings. It may be embarrassing for others to know, but holding back the pain can seriously damage one's health and prevent us from going forward, which is what being a student is all about.

My advice to you guys, if this should happen to you, is to keep your chin up.  Also, don't harbour angry feelings. Faculty are human, miscommunication happens, holiday weekends happen, and sometimes everything comes together to create the Perfect Sh!t Storm of Humiliation hitting you, the student, in the face. Allow yourself one day to scream your head off, cry your eyes out, eat Ben n Jerry's, whatever [my Dad's advice]. The next day, get up and do your student thing as usual. Day by day it will get easier.  I talked to my girlfriend in California (a UC Davis non-trad) and we ended up laughing about my croissants of shame which I ended up giving to my neighbor's sled dogs (that felt good). The day you laugh again, you will be out of the hole.

I'm not saying you will be the way you were before. No. You won't ever forget it, and certain things may trigger bouts of tears for a while. But (my Dad again), you must let go of the bitterness. 

If you continue to feel resentment it will poison an otherwise awesome education opportunity that you worked so hard to be part of. And I'm sorry to say, it can poison your whole life from that day forward. 

If you want to use this group as a forum for this kind of support, please feel free.This group is whatever you want it to be. We all have a voice, we are all in charge. And I wish this group to be a safe place to fall for all of us.

OK, so I had my horrible experience on Tuesday. Today I am feeling much better. Writing this, I am feeling much better.  It helps to let it out. University is meant to stimulate our curiosity and develop our intellectual skills, and I often feel I learn more from my mistakes than I ever could by doing something "the right way" which, remember, is often subjective and consensus-based. By that logic I ought to be a frickin' genius by now, but oh well...

Albert Einstein's teacher supposedly told his father that the kid was an idiot who would never amount to anything. (and they didn't have Title IX back then when Einstein was a college boy...)

We all know student life is peer-oriented and can be very judgey and cliquey.  You can't stop someone from judging you negatively, but remember, judgments like that are fear-based, and very different from the constructive criticism that shapes a student into a critical thinker, a skilled writer, an impassioned and highly skilled doer. In the culture of academic excellence it's easy to feel inadequate, and the quickest ego boost for low self-esteem is to look down our noses at someone else. But don't forget that you are individuals.  Nobody can place a value judgement on another person's individuality. What you have is unique and irreplaceable, it's really your hard currency. Each one of you struck me as a kind of maverick when I first met and talked to you. This is what is so interesting to me--perhaps that's why we're all in this Non-Trad boat together!

So continue to be the awesome Non-Traditional mom/dad/grandparent/soldier/community leader/artist/mountaineer/philosopher/engineer mavericks that you are. And make friends with some sled dogs just in case you need to ditch a wasted committee meeting breakfast in a hurry :-)

And please have a wonderful break.

Your friend,

Diane

Last weekend before comps...

OK, I'm ready. I think.

Ogodogodogodogodogod!!!!!!!!

my orange morning

Simple Green: Not simple, DEFINITELY not green!

Warning:  this is gonna make you really mad. At least I hope so.

Taking a break from studying for comps, I decided to Google: Is Simple Green safe for washing dishes?

I had run out of dish soap (I use the natural stuff, the stuff you get in the Organics section of Fred Meyers), and I thought: why not make a simple solution of baking soda, water, and Simple Green?

I did, and it was fantastic. With my limited supply of funny-colored water, I have to say my dishes never looked cleaner.  The solution was much thinner than dish soap, however, so I ran out after a week or so. No problem: I have a gallon of Simple Green under the sink. It will be months until I run out!

I bought this jug of Simple Green from our local Home Depot about a year ago, and I’ve been using it in an old spray bottle to clean my countertops, walls, etc. It does an amazing job of removing grease. Some time ago, I’d heard that SG is not all that great for the environment.

But I kind of pushed that aside and went on with my life.

The other day, looking at the late afternoon sun winking on a perfectly sparkly water glass sitting in my dish drainer, I felt a wave of X-Files skepticism: This stuff was cleaning my dishes really well, AND kind to the environment? Too good to be true.  

I googled “Simple Green MSDS”, and downloaded it (you know, the Material Safety Data Sheets: the comprehensive label for any chemical product listing its reactivity, flammability, and of course its ingredients).

Simple Green is a mixture of 78% water, and 5% each of the following:

2‐butoxyethanol


Ethoxylated Alcohol

Tetrapotassium Pyrophosphate

Sodium Citrate

It also has 1% or less each of “fragrance” and “colorant”

OK, so what is this first one, this 2-butoxyethanol?

It’s a type of synthetic chemical known as an organic compound. Organic because it’s made with carbon, not because it’s harmless to the environment. It’s composed of 6 parts carbon 14 parts hydrogen and 2 parts oxygen (and when I say MADE, I mean this molecule does not occur in nature, it was made in a lab). It’s mainly used as a solvent in a variety of industrial applications because it’s great for removing oily substances. Ironically, it’s used in fracking as well as in oil spill cleanups: 

(Hey Bernie, I got an order for 50,000 gallons for the Alberta Tar Sands, and another 50,000 for Prince William Sound--Hooters tonight, my treat)

It’s made from butanol, itself a very toxic 4-carbon alcohol that's widely used in a bunch of commercial applications (Hey Joe, the Simple Green people just gave us another order for 500,000 gallons of butanol--Hooters tonight, my treat)

The molecule is a sturdy-looking little thing, but don't let that fool you. If you made a 2-butoxyethanol using balloons, it would look like a dachshund with many bumps along its back and sides (the C-H bonds) and a big head made out of oxygen and hydrogen (the reactive part).

Once this stuff hits the air, it forms a bunch of different peroxides (molecules with reactive oxygen - oxygen bonds), many of which are very flammable if not downright toxic.

But, it degrades in a few hours into presumably harmless compounds. Thus, the Simple Green people are allowed to label it “biodegradable.”

Furthermore, it takes a relatively high amount to kill lab animals. This is known as the LD-50 test. LD stands for “lethal dose,” 50 refers to 50% of the test population.  They basically give the animals enough of the stuff until 50% of them die. We do this in the US for every chemical substance used in industrial, medical, commercial, and home purposes (exceptions are products that specify not tested on animals). For rats and rabbits, that comes out to 5g of 2-butoxyethanol per kg of body weight (5g is about a shot glass). Since your average laboratory rat weighs about half a kilo, that's about 1% of its body weight; presumably it would act pretty quick and painless. For a rabbit (2-6 kg) a bit slower. And probably squirmier.

Thus, the Simple Green people are allowed to label it "non-toxic.” 

In other tests it wreaks biological havoc. If it doesn't kill them, it effects their neurological systems, causing loss of equilibrium and coordination. It causes skeletal defects in their litters, it reduces their red blood cell counts, and causes lesions in their livers, spleens, and bone marrow. And it causes cancerous tumors in the forestomachs of rodents.

It enters the body via inhalation or absorption through the skin (all those times I washed my dishes bare handed, OMG!!), and once there, it breaks down into substances called metabolites that clog up our biological filters, including my favorite filter, the liver. Concentrations of these metabolites are toxic.

Should I skip my glass of wine tonight?

I am sure I’ve poured at least a shot glass of concentrated Simple Green into my dish soap bottle, and added water to make a nice, foamy detergent for my dishes, counter tops, and dish cloths, which I’ve rinsed liberally in the stuff, over and over and over.

Needless to say, I never made it to the other ingredients.  I threw away the bottle of “dish soap” and the tainted sponge, wrote in big black magic marker on the jug of Simple Green “DO NOT USE, CONTAINS CARCINOGENS” capped it tightly and stuck it in the farthest corner of my cabinet where it sits from now on, lurking like an evil green time bomb.

How THE FUCK were we supposed to know, especially if they slap a label on that says “Simple Green is a safer alternative to toxic cleaners, bleaches, and solvents”

One website says that OSHA does not regulate this product as carcinogenic to humans because humans lack forestomachs.

Another website says the US EPA classifies the chemical as a Group C, Possible Human Carcinogen.

New Jersey by the way. They’re not taking any chances. They’ve got pages and pages for you to read.

----

I consider myself pretty savvy—I research lots of things (it’s kind of my default mode as a student)—but I’m really angry. This company has deliberately deceived millions of unsuspecting people by saying their product is safe, simple, and green.

You have to ask yourself: why do they put this horrible chemical in their product?

Simple: Green.

It costs very little green to manufacture, it cleans really well, and it makes them lots of green.

Lots.

Look around at your friends and family. Count how many have/have had cancer.  Are you really surprised cancer is so common? Don’t argue with me it’s because modern medicine allows humans to live longer and diseases of old age like cancer are a natural consequence of longevity. Bullshit. Cancer is getting children, teens, adults, the elderly, men, women, black, white, fat, skinny, athletic, sedentary, rich, poor, you name it. Like it or not, we eat, sleep, breathe and absorb these manmade poisons day in and day out. These and hundreds more.

OK, I admit this is not a very scientific thing to say. I'm reacting more as a human being than as a scientist. But...I lost my mom and my aunt to cancer. I was told I have to be very careful because of my family history. Yes, Blah, Blah Blah....

And, I’m fucking sick of it. Yes, I drive a car. I fly in planes. I live and participate in a fossil-fueled world. But can’t I at least have a say in what I decide to use in my home?

Physicians for Social Responsibility says cancer is the SECOND leading cause of death in the US.  And—news flash--it’s largely preventable. 75 to 80% of cancers diagnosed in this country are believed to be from exposure to carcinogens in the environment.

Where's that (sparkly, sparkly) glass of wine. Sorry liver.

Q: why do flies always drown themselves in my water glass?

A: Murfleas Law


Click here to see delightful images of dead flies having fun