Care About Kids, Care About Fish

As a Mom, I'm used to protecting my kids from dangers in our environment. I keep my 1 year old from chewing on lead paint chips or falling down the basement stairs. I keep high fructose corn syrup out of our diet. I make sure my 13 year old has a charged cellphone with her whenever she goes on a bike ride with her sibling.

Before I spent a fall day as a volunteer for the American Conservation Film Festival, I never worried about a simple environmental danger that I expose my six children too multiple times a day. I never worried about our water.

I live near the banks of the Potomac River, roughly 90 miles upstream from Washington D.C. Since 2003, U.S. Geological Survey Biologists have found large numbers of male small mouth bass in the Potomac River are carrying immature eggs. Male fish aren't supposed to carry eggs. 

The leading scientific theory is that some kind of unnatural combination of chemicals from the area farms and sewer treatment plants are "endocrine-disruptors." Rainwater pushes these chemicals from different source-points into the Potomac River. The male fish end up absorbing these chemicals in such high levels that their reproductive system turns haywire.

These levels of "endocrine-disrupted" male fish are high and getting higher. In 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife found 82% to 100% of all small mouth bass male fish had eggs on the Potomac River. When the research was repeated on the Susquehanna River near Hershey, PA, 100% of the small mouth bass male fish  had eggs inside them.

Why should we care about the fish? I live in coal mining country. Years before we had electronic sensors or safety monitors, coal miners would take yellow canaries  in cages down into the coal mine with them. The birds had a similar, yet more senstive, respiratory system to human. If the miners dug into some invisible toxic gas underground, the canaries would die first. If a coal miner ever heard a canary stop singing, he knew to instantly run out of the coal mine as quickly as possible to save his life.

Fish inside the Potomac River are more than one of God's beautiful creatures. Fish serve as an "indicator species." When fish populations are stable, they are an "indicator" of clean water and good health. For me, if the U.S. Biologists suddenly need to invent a new term called "intersex" to describe 82% to 100% of the male fish swimming in the river that supplies my family's drinking water, then I see a clear environmental metaphor. The canaries have stopped singing around me. I need to act quickly to protect my family against cancer and other abnormal cell growth.

This Christmas, I asked my Mom to give us a $200 Water Distiller from Amazon as a present. My drinking water now has no taste and our ice cubes are clear.  I've created a Clean Water Conference inside my small hometown in Central West Virginia. I'm answering emails now from the West Virginia Sierra Club in between washing towels and supervising homework. For me me, caring about the fish is simply one more way I give love to my kids.

The Joy of Being a Generalist

Nine days before Christmas, I volunteered myself to receive 4 hours of intensive tutoring on environmentalism in one week. Tonight, a professional Geologist is putting me through my paces on the scientific background of water pollution in my community. Tomorrow, my parish priest is giving me a second 2 hour installment of the spiritual underpinnings of the environmental crisis.

I'm the Mother of six kids who range from ages 12 to 1. It's not like my Advent "To Do List" was short by any measure. This morning as I was freaking out to God, "Exactly how is this timing thing going to work?", I was reminded of the joy of being a generalist.

In this age of specialization, there is joy in being a generalist. I have the joy of immersing myself in a new field.  I get the opportunity to self-educate. I get to ask the common sense questions and discover the interconnectedness of things. I'm constantly amazed at the advanced opportunities to learn that are right in front of me, "ripe for the picking."

I live in West Virginia. We are a poor State, with a lack of a large Middle Class. Many of the classmates who sat next to me in my High School Honors Classes left the State to pursue better job opportunities. That "brain drain" has created a power imbalance that is worse than the political economies of nearby Maryland or Pennsylvania. There are a few wealthy people who are connected to the coal companies. There are a few environmental activists. There is a huge part of the population of the State who lack not only affirming educational backgrounds from our State's public schools, but also lack time. Did you know that my community's average wait time inside the lobby of our Welfare Office is over 2 1/2 hours? My State has a comparatively small part of the population with the time and ability to focus on problems outside the immediate nexus of our family's daily needs. 

West Virginia is the starting place of 44 rivers. We are one of the leading States in energy production. In the past 15 years, we have had major State Leaders arrested for corruption. We also live in an environmental climate that is so one sided that my husband recently found out that it was illegal for him to rent solar panels for our house.

As a Sanguine, my answer to all of this drama is to throw a party. In four weeks, I'm taking an environmental film called "Elk Water Blues" to my hometown in Central West Virginia. I'm helping to host a WV Clean Water Conference on January 19, 2016.

I'm amazed a people's generosity of spirit. I'm throwing a party for our environment and people are coming. We've already reserved 50% of the 250 tickets we have available for this event. Even more incredible, there is already real networking and intra-departmental dialogue that is happening behind the scenes. All of this impact came from my decision to attend one movie at the American Conservation Film Festival two months ago!

My urge to everyone during this busy Holiday Season is to use this upcoming time of rest! Go see a movie! Look up a classmate you haven't heard from forever on Facebook. Be brave. Call up someone who you admire and say "Can you answer some of my questions for me?" 

Generalists are needed! The world needs more adults who voluntarily give themselves extra homework assignments. My life is so much richer for taking crazy intellectual risks. Christ is waiting to be born inside all of us!

Happy Advent!

Use Ethical Chocolate for Christmas Baking

from Maria (age 8)

The sweet taste of chocolate hides a bitter truth. Most chocolate purchased in the United States comes from Africian farms that use child slaves. Many children are kidnapped from their families and forced to work far away on small cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast. Children from age 8 to 16 are forced to spend all day with long knives, called machetes, to hand pick the cocoa pods used to make chocolate. These children work 80 to 100 hours a week. They never go to school. They are fed a poor diet. They can easily lose a finger or a hand in an accident. They are often beaten. They lose valuable time in their childhood to play, to dream, and grow in healthy adults.

Please consider a boycott of all chocolate that is made with child slave labor. Many chocolate companies are working hard to end child labor. Chocolate that is stamped with a Fair Trade, UTZ Certified, or Rainforest Alliance logo come from good chocolate farms. My Mom and I find affordable chocolate for baking and eating at our local Aldi's grocery store. We also buy Fair Trade Chocolate from Amazon online.

If you go to the grocery store and don't see UTZ certified chocolate for sale, please ask a clerk. Many people don't know about the child slavery problem.

My whole family loves chocolate. Sticking to this chocolate boycott for more than 16 weeks has been hard. We've developed our own "in pinch guidelines" for our family.

We decided that under no circumstances will we buy chocolate made from Hershey. This chocolate company has headquarters only a few miles from our house. Hershey's has one of the biggest gap between their family friendly corporate image and what they are actually doing to hepl end child slavery in Africa. One of the things that hurts our hearts the most is that Hershey offers a free boarding school to help needy American children, meanwhile the company engages in practices that hurt the same age children in Africa. All kids matter! For our research, it appears that Hershey single handly pushed back the deadline for anti-child slavery guidelines for All American Chocolate Companies from 2015 to 2020.

We do like Nestle. Nestle is not yet 100% Fair Trade, but the company has a good, transparent website that describes their anti-child slavery efforts in detail. Nestle is working hard to encourage all small farmers in Africa to send children to school instead of the cocoa fields.

Another company we like is Mars. Mars is attacking child slavery as part of its wider corporate sustainability effort. While Nestle has a lead on targeting child slavery as a problem, Mars is a world leader on responsible corporate behavior.

As a family, we work hard to buy UTZ certified chocolate or find other options to chocolate. "In a pinch" we buy Nestle chocolate chips and Twix bars. We have two family members who greatly miss Reese Peanut Butter Cups. Under our current family decisions, we can't buy a Hershey Chocolate Product until the full anti-child slavery laws come into effect in 2020. That's a long time to wait for a favorite chocolate bar! Ethics aren't easy. Stay tune for updates as we try to make our own subsitute Reese Peanut Butter Cup using Fair Trade Chocolate.