Category Archives: Health

People doing cool things

Today I attended a talk by Robert S. Lawrence, the director of the Center for a Livable Future, focused on food production, diet, environment, and human health.  I can’t help but love it when lots of research supports my dietary choices.  The talk caused some squirming among those in the audience who might have different relationships to meat.

Nosing around the CLF website led me to their blog, which features a “Resource” list on the right side of the page.  I found The Green Fork and the Eat Well Guide.  You can use the Eat Well Guide to find local/organic/sustainable food in your area AND (my favorite part) is that you can use it to plan a trip and it will show you all of the food options along your route!  I will definitely be using this in the future.  I also look forward to checking out some of the other cool resource links when I have more time.

Can anyone loan me a respirator?

Yesterday I reported for breathing second-hand smoke duty, AKA jury duty in the city of Saint Louis.  You see, despite city code* and state policy** FORBIDDING smoking in this building, someone at the top blatantly disregards the laws, along with the health of anyone who enters the building, by allowing smoking areas inside the building to persist.

When I received my summons a month ago, I promptly wrote a letter to the jury supervisor stating that I would be happy to perform my civic duty if the building were 100% smoke-free and asking to be excused from jury duty until and unless the Civil Courts building complied with city code and state policy.  My request was summarily denied, and so I reported as scheduled and discussed my “hardship” with a judge.

The judge and the jury supervisor put on a huge show, with the judge pretending that he had NO idea that there was a smoking lounge in the building — “Michael, is that true?” — that ended with the judge telling me that no, I could not be excused, I needed to go back upstairs to the jury pool, and that if I believed a law were being violated, I should call the police.

Right, like the police are going to come and shut down the smoking lounge.

Them: 1
Me: 0 (and a day of breathing second hand smoke — big time yuck!)

But this fight is not over!

*St. Louis City Revised Code Chapter 11.23 Part II
**State of Missouri Administrative Policy SP-11

Worth it?

Monday night, on his way home from work, my husband was hit by a suburban assault vehicle sport utility vehicle.  He was proceeding straight and had the right-of-way, and the oncoming driver turned into him.  The man who could have killed my husband was talking on his cell phone at the time of the collision.  Was the call really that important? 

<Step onto soapbox>
The number of distracted drivers I observe on my daily bike commute alarms me.  Distracted driving endangers ALL other users of the road — pedestrians, bicyclists, and others in cars.  We overestimate our ability to engage in other activities while operating large, fast moving machines and in doing so damage or destroy other lives.
<Step off soapbox>

Positive framing

I love this excerpt from a blog post by bike commuter and advocate Mighk Wilson:

“We are citizens who often drive bicycles.  We are confident road users who pose very little danger to others, and only rarely are we seriously hurt ourselves.  We are highly competent and predictable.  We work to make our public roads safer for everyone, especially pedestrians and children.  We are healthy and positive because we get regular moderate exercise; we engage positively with our community, instead of being walled-off behind steel and glass.  We believe anyone can quickly learn to bike competently and confidently on our roads, and offer a variety of fun and effective ways for people to do so.  Many of us wear helmets because they are cheap insurance to protect against the rare head injury, but we don’t get too worked up if others don’t wear them.  We encourage federal, state and local governments to treat us as vehicle drivers with the same rights and responsibilities as all other drivers, and not as second-class citizens who are “in the way.”  Please come join us!”

Here is the link to the entire entry on Mike’s blog: http://mighkwilson.com/2009/10/which-cycling-politics-doom-or-possibility/