Threat of disappearing of the Post Office is another assault on things we take for granted to make up our world and its daily routine.  As an individual and as a business - Natural Clothing Company, we love our Post Office for its history, dedication, friendliness. It's definitely not perfect but it has so much value than faults. Unlike other mailing services, Post Office and a mailman is a part of the culture like a teacher and policeman.

As a business, we are happy to ship 98% of our packages through Priority Mail of postal service. When we researched which service to use, which transportation methods are the most ecologically friendly and the best financial value for our customers – Post Office was on a top of the competition. The most important factor is that the Post Office already delivers to ALL the households and businesses around U.S. There are no additional trucks, routes, fuel, personnel created to deliver packages with the mail. They use Cradle to Cradle certified packaging, use soy inks, many of the Post Office vehicles in our area are hybrid. There is much more info you can find at http://about.usps.com/what-we-are-doing/green/welcome.htm

There are many times when I would not pull my car out into driveway because of ice, sleet or storm but the Post Office mail shows up. The service at the counter is always kind and friendly even at the end of the day. At least in our small Snohomish Post Office, the employees are my personal models of fantastic customer service.

Our town just recently decided to discontinue its own police force (will contract it instead) for budget reasons. It really is a time to stop and look - how far we are willing to go to destroy the main points of stability of our communities. Especially at times when the confidence in many institutions (banks, corporations) is gone and it will take decades to rebuild that. I am sure that if we all look together at the value of what makes communities strong, we can find better solutions than just closing what needs fixing instead.

Once you look more carefully, it seems that the problems of Post Office were not created by institution itself only. Check the website http://www.savethepostoffice.com. It is written and administered by Steve Hutkins, who has no affiliation with the U.S. Postal Service—he doesn’t work for it, nor does anyone in his family.  Like millions of Americans, he just likes his local post office, and he doesn’t want to see post offices being closed. In the video posted there, Sam Sader describes a bill passed five years ago by Bush administration which greatly contributed to current Post Office problems. Take few minutes to watch it here and decide for yourself.

The more entertaining clips can be found on Colbert Report http://www.colbertnation.com/. Where he hosts Philip F. Rubio,  assistant professor of history at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and long term worker of Post Office, as well as the author of "There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality".  You can read the article written by him at http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/09/opinion/rubio-postal-service-matters/index.html .

What do you think? If we let Post Office fail, who will be next? We would love to hear from you.

Ok, something different.

Green business does get tendency to get bit serious and self righteous (correctly so, of course ). So on the lighter side… No hemp, no organic cotton, not even bamboo at Oscars last night but still fun to see glitter once in a while. These gals work so hard to earn the right to be there on this special night.

So short and sweet: which one is your favorite dress? Which one is the worst?

“Mom, why do they keep talking about the war? Is it coming?” I remember asking anxiously. It was  Cold War and living in communist Poland, nothing was granted. My parents, my teachers, my neighbors has still not recovered from going through devastation of Second World War, my grandfathers were dead, killed there. I remember that in my grade school class there were a couple of “odd” kids, who had still living grandfathers. The rest of us had just grandmother and that was a norm. Our grade school teacher survived Auschwitz concentration camp. The warnings about what to do if you find an old grenade, were part of our education – many years after the war ended.

Not that the Poland was a stranger to war. Located between Germany, Russia and Austria through history, it spent its thousand years of existence  involved in more wars than one wished to remember. One thing is quite clear to me: no matter who was the attacker and who was a defender, since the roles changed a lot, nobody really won. The atrocities stopped occasionally but the memories in people’s mind did not. It continued into other generations.  Just like the war did not die for our soldiers coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan, did not die for parents of the ones who has not returned.

21^st September is an International Peace Day.  It was set up in 1981 by United Nations and devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace. The slogan “Peace = Future” says it all. Probably every single economic, social and moral problem could be resolved if we took our attention away from fighting and proving others wrong and turn to true solutions in peace.

Celebrate that day and make it known. Let’s all put together our strong intentions for Peace.  You can check out International Day Of Peace.org for a list of events in your area. If there is none – make it! Organize the get-together in your town. It does not have to be a huge campaign. Print a poster, put it in the window of the car. Tell a friend and neighbor. Get together. Wear Live in Peace Tee shirt. Take any small action you can.

Every newspaper, TV and radio is filled with “the news” about the violence and crime. These are not true news. Let’s fill it with real news – news of Peace.

Saw a huge eagle circling above the house. Like a good Momma Hen, I ran outside to protect my (remaining) chicken. I shook a stick at the Eagle yelling courageous “Shoo…”. He could care less, of course. The true majesty of his flight, seemingly without any movement, made me jealous

One can say – nothing; we say – everything. There are probably millions of us around the planet, aghast, upset and worried about the amount of devastation caused by Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Our technological incompetence in face of true catastrophes, the loss of lives, both human and marine, strips away the temporary narcissist faith in our control over the universe.

We were celebrating the Earth Day with our company in our small town, when the news reached media, 41 years after the 1969 Santa Barbra oil spill, which contributed to founding Earth Day itself. Together with number of local organic farms, businesses and organizations, we were acknowledging the accomplished progress in protection of the environment. The oil spill put a different perspective on that – are we really moving forward? There are some, like British The Dark Mountain movement, which see this civilization already past the point of return. As much as unreal this seems – look at the gone ancient cultures: ancient China, the pyramids, the Coliseum in ruins. Civilizations do rise and fall and mostly they destroy themselves.

Nature and our relationship to it are worth a double look each day. Acts of nature are often unpredictable, acts against nature are not. Drilling through 5,000 feet of water and then 13,000 feet of rock are acts of greed, arrogance and unfounded confidence in the superiority of our technical knowledge and equipment. There is nowhere else to point the fingers than ourselves. Our blind love of oil, which Dana Lyons sings about in “Lubricate the Red, White and Blue” feeds 97% of our cars, trucks and plains. When we walk around in conveniently non-wrinkly, easy to wash polyester derived directly from oil, carry our oil derived shopping bags, we condone the price of the event like this one over and over again.

We have reached the state of the illusionary technical expertise which cannot answer the most basic question: “How do you reverse it back to the way things were?” We are so smart combining the chains of polymers but once synthesized, we don’t know how to degrade them. We can split an atom but we have never figured it out how to put it back together. We feed our children Genetically Modified foods, ignoring all the warnings. We give the free ticket to mad scientists to combine plant DNA with fish DNA, spike our soy, corn, wheat, sugar with cancer producing insecticide molecules and most of the time don’t even know it and don’t ask. There is no one on earth able to reverse the loss of 96% of our soy, large percentage of cotton and corn to GMO crops. Most of us don’t even know that we are not eating food anymore, we are eating the largest science experiment in history of humanity, only called “food”. Our grandchildren will tell us if we gambled right. In a meantime, we observe with astonishment the rising of illnesses, “food” intolerances, rash and eczema where our chemical laden clothes touch the skin. Just like when Chernobyl blows up, when drilling rig explodes, we look with surprise at damage created, saddened and always clueless how to reverse it.

At this point there are no perfect solutions, only compromises but first, it is crucial to recover our lost reverence to nature, our respect for natural resources. We need these for thousands more years. Maybe we should not drill the hole if we don’t know how to plug it. A petroleum engineer involved in the spill supposedly said in a radio interview “It just seems like every now and then, you can’t win against Mother Nature.” Correction – you can never win against the Mother Nature. That’s not the direction we want to keep going.

Please, keep doing your part in taking steps, no matter how small or challenging they might be in supporting the eco-friendly efforts and groups which try hard to not work against Mother Nature. We are in it together.

On January  16th, 2010 Natural Clothing Company, invited by local Grilla Bites Cafe, presented a selection of beautiful organic clothing, made with all natural fibers. Featured were versatile hemp dresses, sweaters and pants, naturally dyed scarves and hats, organic cotton blouses and skirts as well as bamboo clothing with a popular line of reversible tops and cropped pants. Even a hat made from recycled grocery bags got well deserved round of applause.  Gracious models streaming down the runway were a local artist, a Historic Downtown Snohomish representative and local students. Annie, the host and owner of organic Grilla Bites Cafe, was also wearing eco-friendly, fair trade organic clothing from Natural Clothing Company.

The owners of the company, spoke about the benefits of growing organic crops for textiles. Organic clothing is made and grown without pesticides or chemicals, comparing it for example to conventional cotton, which uses 24% of the world’s insecticides.  Organic clothing is very safe for people with skin sensitivities because of lack of harsh chemicals in their production.

Live demonstration of reusing plastic grocery bags by Karen Erickson followed next. Then local thrift store Cinderella Closet’s young models fashioned delightful reused clothes that would not break any budget.  At the end was presentation of  Cody’s sewing skills learned from his grandmother. Cody created a line of aprons using recycled men’s shirts.

Wonderful live music was played by talented musicians from Tim Noah Thumbnail Theater of Snohomish while guests tasted organic food by Grilla Bites Cafe and sampled wine from local wineries. Aside from the delightful evening, it was a birth of ideas on how to stay focused on helping environment, have fun and create next green gathering on larger scale. After all – every day is an Earth Day on this planet! See more photos from the show at NaturalClothing Co - fashion show and join us on Facebook - NaturalClothingCo and Grilla Bites Cafe.

It is a very interesting question. Nano-technology fascinates many by binding particles like silver, with its anti-bacterial properties, with common materials presumably for our benefit. But there are also serious opponents of that technology with valid concerns about possible health dangers.  As the owner of Natural Clothing Company, I come across much of different and often very interesting information, which does not have a clear cut answers.

Take for example the Chinese Hebei Metals & Minerals Corp, a producer of fiberglass insulation, mineral wool and calcium silicate insulation. These products make an organic person like me shiver… But let’s look. The company is exploring other hi-tech applications as production and sale of the anti-electromagnetic radiation fabric, anti-static fabric and apparel. Their anti radiation material was used by for astronauts.

As many holistic people confirm, there is a growing concern about the effects of electromagnetic wave (microwave) and increased by it cell temperature on human organisms. Hence the concept of anti-electromagnetic radiation fabric was born, shielding 99.99 percent of harmful electromagnetic waves.

Hebei  other path of research involves two naturally occurring materials like bamboo fiber & silver, then spinning and weaving together. The result is an anti-bacterial fiber, which retains its properties with washing, sun etc. On a surface, sounds like natural product. Is it?

OK, my actual question is: can we really protect ourselves from ill effects of technology by increasing our use of the technology itself? Are we playing catch-22 with ourselves?

Hemp, bamboo, even soy  have inherent anti-bacterial properties serving us, as in case of hemp for thousands of years. Well, does it protect from  electromagnetic waves?  Who knows… I know the vibrations of natural fibers do increase our well-being, consciously or subconsciously.  When you put on natural fiber clothing,  your body registers something, a vibe of goodness, a breath of relief.  Maybe a solution is  a “middle path”:  we limit the offensive forces in environment, while we work like crazy to grow and process natural fibers organically. If we fast enough we might repair some of the damage to our earthly home and ourselves.  What do you think?

So let’s be clear: get yourself a fresh bowl of strawberries, spray with Raid, grease up your lunch salad with motor oil – it does not really change their nutritional value. Bon Appétit!

Hello…

Read Organic Consumer Association much better stated article http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18745.cfm

A bit of work but what if… all the towns do that? What if… all of us did that? The corporations…? What our planet will look like?

On a personal note, since we moved to the country, our joy of reusing material things increased: scraps got to animals, reused paper scraps go to compost, rich compost goes to our soil and we get these awesome vegetables. The unity of this cycle puts the soul at ease.