LILL’s LIST

Almost everyone knows that bees are disappearing. Almost a third of the honeybees have disappeared in the US in the past three years. This is not good news for our food supply or the environment. While scientists work on the causes of Colony Collapse, as they call it, what can we do to help the bees survive?

I asked myself that question yesterday when I was walking in my backyard, listening to the loud hum of thousands of big, fat honeybees. They were all over the old apple trees that dot our sixty acres. Whenwe moved here, we thought of cutting them down, because they’re not much good for producing usable apples.

With their scraggly branches, skimpy blossoms and tiny, misshapen apples, they added nothing to the landscape. Or so we thought. We were on the point of offering them to our neighbor for firewood, when we realized that the trees were an important part of the ecosystem that surrounds our house. The deer eat the apples. Wild turkeys feed under the trees, probably getting grubs and insects that are attracted to the trees. Sometimes the turkeys roost in the apple trees.

And then there are the bees. Every spring, each tree is loaded with honeybees, gathering pollen for their hives. True, there are many wildflowers, flowering bushes and wild cherries for the bees, but the apple trees supply a major part of their pollen needs. So we decided to let them stay and pruned them - even topped some of them. They started to come back and blossomed profusely instead of skimpily. More and more bees visited, which encouraged the apples to blossom more.

Now, there are probably twenty to thirty good-sized trees on our property, all providing pollen and shelter for the bees and other creatures. Birds nest in them. We have a pair of beautiful red Cardinals in one and two Pine Grosbeaks in another. They furnish us with enough usable apples to make a batch of applesauce each fall, and also feed the deer and the squirrels through most of the winter.

When I walk beneath the backyard apple trees and hear the humming of the bees, I feel like I’m making a positive contribution to the environment. I’ve always been fond of bees, but now I feel a new urgency to protect them and do everything possible to make sure that they remain to do their important part toward preserving life, both human and Apian, on earth.

If you’d like to learn more about Colony Collapse and what you can do to protect and support the bees, The Natural Resources Defense Council has much more information on the subject.

• Leave a comment... (1)

I’m a former smoker. In spite of my alleged intelligence, I smoked from the time I was 18 until I quit at the age of 38. I quit for two reasons: I wanted kids and I wanted my husband to quit so that he wouldn’t have a heart attack at 40. Oh yes, and I knew that smoking would probably kill me, even though the tobacco companies said it probably wouldn’t.

The continued to say that well past the time that everyone knew that THEY knew that they were lying through their big, shiny white teeth. In court, documents revealed that the tobacco companies had known about how lethal smoking was and had not only covered it up, but also added extra nicotine to cigarettes, so that smokers would be more addicted and stay hooked.

Finally, way past the time it should have happened, the courts awarded former smokers or their survivors $200 billion in reparation. It couldn’t bring back the people who had died from smoking or ease the pain of those who lived with the ravages of lung cancer’s chemo and radiology or with emphysema. It did signal the beginning of the end for Big Tobacco though.

According to, Conspiracy, an article in the June 2008 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Big Oil may soon find itself in the same position as Big Tobacco did during that court case. Kivalina, a tiny village on the coast of Alaska, is dying - eroded away by the results of Global Warming. Two lawyers who worked on opposite sides of the Big Tobacco court case, have joined together to represent the town against several oil companies. If they’re successful, Big Oil may have to pay for some of the damage to the earth that has come about because of greenhouse gas emissions.

True, almost everyone on the planet is responsible for Global Warming and greenhouse gas emissions, because we all contribute to it with our homes, cars and all that we do that uses power or fuel. Taking us all to court would be impossible, but why is it that Big Oil is being held responsible for something that we’ve all brought about through our lifestyles and activities?

The difference between consumers and Big Oil is that the oil companies have conspired to keep the truth about Global Warming and the effect of oil and gas on the environment from the public with a deliberate campaign of misinformation. It’s a conspiracy, claim the two lawyers,  Steve Susman and Steve Berman. With think tanks and organizations that attempted to cover up and refute the truth about global warming.

They tried to influence scientists and experts and anyone else who might be persuaded to go along with their assertions that Global Warming was just hype or just a cycle that the earth goes through - not man-made at all. Nothing to do with us, they told consumers and government panels. Just a natural fluctuation the planet goes through every so many million years.

Well, we didn’t all buy it, but they kept trying, well past the point where almost no one with any credibility believed it. Just like Big Tobacco, they behaved like a five year old caught with his hand in the cookie jar, who denies that it’s happening, even while it’s apparent that he’s lying. It doesn’t work for kids and it doesn’t work for big companies either. Not when it gets to the point where most of us have seen proof that what they’re saying just isn’t true.

I’ll be following this case with great interest. It may be thrown out of court or it may be the first step toward holding the oil companies accountable for conspiring to trash the earth for just a while longer, so that they can wring every last drop out of their industry before they segue into the renewable energy sources that they know have to replace oil. Stay tuned.

• Leave a comment... (0)

My daughter needed a sheet set for her new full size bed, so off we went to one of those linen stores where aisles full of sheets in all sorts of fibers quickly had us totally confused. She’s ten, so the main thing she cared about was getting the color she wanted in her bedding - something that would match her new Pink Webkinz frog. I’m a little older and wiser, so I was concerned with getting sheets that didn’t contain toxic chemicals.

I was delighted to find some very pretty pink Modal sheets with a tag that assured us that they were made from beech trees from sustainable tree farms where no pesticides or toxic chemicals were used. They were wonderfully soft and silky and my daughter fell in love with them, so we took them home, washed them and put them on her bed.

I was so happy with our purchase that I told a friend about it and she asked me if I’d looked up Modal fiber on the net or done any research on it. I was ashamed to admit that I hadn’t. (Sheesh! I do research for a living.) I was even more ashamed to admit that I’d trusted a tag on a sheet, rather than doing my own investigating.

So I looked up Modal and found that it isn’t quite as innocent and natural as the tag implies. Yes, the beech trees are raised without pesticides or other synthetic chemicals if the Modal comes from the EU. (Ours did.) But the manufacturing process includes using caustic chemicals to break down the fibers, similar to the way rayon, another “natural” but not organic fiber, is made. True, there were probably no residues in the sheets, but there was also no assurance that they hadn’t been dyed with harsh, synthetic dyes either.

Some Modal is dyed with non-toxic dye and some isn’t. As a skeptic, I tend to think that if it doesn’t say non-toxic dyes, it probably was dyed with synthetic ones. Unfortunately, our sheets didn’t say they’d been dyed with non-toxic dyes, so I’m just hoping that whatever dyes they used don’t leach out of it over time. Obviously, I have some more investigating to do, although the sheets are on the bed. They were very expensive and I’m convinced that they have to be healthier than non-organic cotton or polyester.

All this research led me to wonder about other so-called natural fibers like bamboo, hemp and Tencel, which is made by the same company that makes Modal. From what I can glean from the Net, unless the garment is certified organic, there’s no guarantee that it’s any more natural than any other fiber that is produced through a chemical process that uses chemicals - usually caustic chemicals - to break down the fiber into a pulp that is then spun into threads. The company that makes both Modal and Tencel touts its award-winning manufacturing process which - in the case of Tencel - recovers 99.5% of the solvent, but then where does the other .5 percent go? Into the fibers?

I understand that there are two types of bamboo fabric and fibers - one that is made from whole bamboo that is spun into fibers and one that is processed into pulp first. The former is considered more natural than the latter. Tencel is reputed to be made with fewer chemicals than Modal, but still uses a solvent in the pulping process. Hemp, cotton and bamboo are only really “natural” when they’re certified organic and untreated with formaldehyde or flame retardant or any other VOC.

It’s a case of “caveat emptor” but when hasn’t the buyer had to beware of misleading claims. All I know is that I’m going to be much more careful from now on when I’m choosing fabrics for clothes or bedding. If it’s not organic, I’ll assume that it has something in it that I don’t want next to my skin or on my family’s beds. Hmm, sounds like I’m going to be waiting for sales to be able to afford any future natural fibers, because organic garments and bedding are really pricey, and now I have a better idea of why they cost so much.

• Leave a comment... (0)