Saturday, July 17, 2010

Response to Healing CRANE - Ten Ways to Prepare...

Health to you through these hot, muggy, and beautiful days in Southern Indiana! Our local Farmers Markets are thriving. Our sister site, Local Food Bloomington has recently published Local Food News and finally begun posting images taken over a few years from visits to the Bloomington Saturday market. Click here to check out the Farmers Market Photo Gallery.

Thank you for your responses. I am always interested in any response to what is included in the Healing CRANE Newsletter. I also appreciate learning when links are not working! The last issue touched a few of you readers, creating a couple of different responses. Based on what is received, I am sure there are other thoughts that readers just don't have time to make to let us hear. We had one individual who did not like some of the information; while a few others asked that we keep the articles coming with references to health and medicine in response to "Medicine After Oil" by Daniel Bednarz, published to Orion Magazine July/August 2007; and other topics concerning societal transitions. Most readers understand that all aspects of our health and wellness are connected to the health of all systems supporting our day to day existence, and yes, that includes petroleum products. Following is the opening to the article by Bednarz. You can read the rest in the newsletter.

"The scale and subtlety of our country’s dependency on oil and natural gas cannot be overstated. Nowhere is this truer than in our medical system.

Petrochemicals are used to manufacture analgesics, antihistamines, antibiotics, antibacterials, rectal suppositories, cough syrups, lubricants, creams, ointments, salves, and many gels. Processed plastics made with oil are used in heart valves and other esoteric medical equipment. Petrochemicals are used in radiological dyes and films, intravenous tubing, syringes, and oxygen masks. In all but rare instances, fossil fuels heat and cool buildings and supply electricity. Ambulances and helicopter “life flights” depend on petroleum, as do personnel who travel to and from medical workplaces in motor vehicles."

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A few readers were put off by the language used by James Howard Kunstler in "Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society" (Alternet).

Following is an exert from another of his articles, "Making Other Arrangements - A wake-up call to a citizenry in the shadow of oil scarcity" published January/February 2007 in Orion magazine.

"AS THE AMERICAN PUBLIC CONTINUES sleepwalking into a future of energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones people have just before awakening. It is a particularly American dream on a particularly American theme: how to keep all the cars running by some other means than gasoline. We’ll run them on ethanol! We’ll run them on biodiesel, on synthesized coal liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on electricity, on used French-fry oil . . . !

The dream goes around in fevered circles as each gasoline replacement is examined and found to be inadequate. But the wish to keep the cars going is so powerful that round and round the dream goes. Ethanol! Biodiesel! Coal liquids . . .

View (and join in) the lively discussion that followed online publication of this article.http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7/

We are in a time of global transformation and uncertainty. We know that resources are disappearing, and we know inside that we will have to make some changes. With imminent changes before us, it seems that close examination of health and wellness practices and systems; how we want to transition resources and services utilizing realistic plans is a great idea.

May we find common ground to travel upon, and meet many supportive people along the way.

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