Pictures from a walk in Williamsburg, VA

Since I keep complaining about how I can’t take any pictures, I’ve decided to post some old ones to make myself happy.  These are pictures I took three years ago at the College of William and Mary.

A stroll with my sister

Yesterday, I coaxed my sister to come with me for a walk.  I told her we would go to McDonald’s on the way, otherwise she would never have come.   I don’t know what it is with people today.  Why doesn’t anybody like walking anymore?  Or being outside?  Maybe it has something to do with overprotective parents never letting their children play outside for fear that they may get kidnapped.  (My parents are of the overprotective variety).

This is really frustrating.  Part of human nature is to be outside, to interact with the natural environment.  Yet everywhere I look around me, forests are being chopped down to make way for new developments – ugly, clustered houses that only lead to more pollution and environmental damage.  I really don’t understand why all this construction is going in my hometown, especially since its a small suburb and it can’t take any more growth.  The major road, Route 1, isn’t big enough to handle all the incoming traffic, especially when the county decided to zone a huge stretch of forest into new housing about 4 years ago, causing such a massive onslaught of traffic that it took 30 minutes to drive down a road that before only took 2.  (This is because our transportation department doesn’t keep up with housing, so the roads weren’t expanded in time to accommodate the population growth).  At the time that community was built, I was angry, not about the potential traffic that it would (and did)  cause, but because the havoc it wreaked on the environment.  Not only was Route 1 stripped of its beauty, but trees serve kinda like water reservoirs.  They hold the moisture in the ground.  On top of that, Route 1 used to be a river, so there are underground water veins all along the road.  So, once the trees were cut down, Route 1 began experiencing major flooding along where the new housing project was being constructed.  This is a sign!  Nature is telling us to stop destroying her! (Sorry, I had to get this out of my system).

Anyways, on the way back home, my sister and I spotted a man-made pond with two bridges in a scenic community called Tackett’s Mill.  Since we rarely, if ever, go on walks, and we’ve hardly been in that community, it was our first time seeing that pond.  It’s amazing what you find down the street if you ever bother to walk down there.  Again, I wish I had a functional camera.  It was really pretty there.  Lots of ducks and geese.  I could only take crappy pictures with my camera phone, and there’s no way for me to upload them onto my comp.  Once I get my hands on a nice digital camera, I’ll upload some pictures.

Another thing I noticed at Tackett’s Mill is how pretty everything looks when there’s no cars.  There’s a section of office buildings and stores that’s designed kind of like a European town with a colonial American look.  No roads or parking lots.  It’s absolutely gorgeous.  Then there’s another section that’s designed just like a regular shopping center, with a large parking lot in the center surrounded by shops, and of course it looks ugly.  If I had studied city planning, I would come up with some sort of plan so that shopping centers and malls aren’t designed with huge, ugly parking lots.  Actually, I think it would be cool if the parking lots were underground, that way above ground there would be more places for people to walk!

The Burn!!!

So I burned my left hand a few days ago while I was frying spring rolls.  If I had a functional camera I would upload some pictures, but then again I don’t think anyone wants to see my hand.  The three fingers in the middle are all red and oozing with huge blisters.  But my burn is slowly healing….slowly.

I tried soothing my burn with neosporine and this first-aid spray thing, but neither of them provided any relief.  So I just cooled my hand with running tap water, and later iced it.  Now I’m using aloe vera gel to moisturize and help heal my hand.  I also tried using blackberry leaves from this wild blackberry bush that randomly grows behind my house, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what to do with it.  I read somewhere on the internet that in traditional folk medicine they use blackberry leaves to treat burns and scalds, but no directions for how to use them exactly.  The only thing I could find was this wierd spell:

“A healing spell that invokes Brigid makes use of blackberry leaves. Dip nine leaves in a natural water source and lay them on a burn or a red inflamed area. Say to each leaf as you lay them on the wound- “Three ladies came from the East, One with fire and two with frost, Out with fire, in with frost!” (http://www.sacredhearth.com/herblore/herb/blackberry)

But I didn’t bother with the spell.  First of all, blackberry bushes are really thorny, so its hard to collect the leaves.  And second, I didn’t want to mess with witchcraft.  I think I’m gonna stick with aloe vera.

Hello world!

Yeah, so I’m going to try to start a blog and share my thoughts with the world.  I ususally suck at anything that requires constant input, so we’ll see how this goes.

I’m constantly in search of the truth and what’s really going on in the world.   I don’t follow politics that closely (I have to admit I get my news from the Daily Show), but I do pay attention to science and environmental issues, especially when it pertains to our health.  I grow more and more skeptical of modern science and medicine, and the food and drug companies, but I’m trying to keep it real at the same time.

One thing that interests me is the green movement.  I think its strange that people have always known the harm development and industrialization has caused the environment, but it seems like its only now that people are really doing something about it.  And not just the hippie minority, but the mainstream.  Why wasn’t there a green movement in the 40’s or 50’s?  Or even earlier?  There were all sorts of commentaries about industrialization and its effect on the environment early on, like Charles Dickens’ work, North and South, even Lord of the Rings.

What exactly were the older generations seeking in the name of progress?  To what point were they progressing to?

We seem to be so much more advanced (at least technologically) than our predecessors, going all the way back to ancient civilization.  I mean, we have computers, calculators, television, video games….toasters, dishwashers, refrigerators, air conditioners, we have everything they didn’t.  But at the same time, there is very little that we do know about life in ancient civilizations, and even less about life before then.  Maybe they had all the same technologies, all the same knowledge that we have, but it’s lost to us.  I always wondered what life was really like in the beginning, starting with Adam onward, how these ancient people lead their lives and what knowledge did they have?  What have we lost, and are we really better off than they were?

Yes we have civilization, and we pride ourselves in it.  But what does it mean to be civilized?  And at what price?  I bet the first peoples didn’t have to worry about mortgages, or bills, or taxes, or car payments, or school lunches, or fixing a broken air conditioner.  History books say hunter gatherers spent all day getting their food. But look at the trade-off: we have to work all day to make money to pay for things we might not even need.  In the process, we’ve destroyed the environment, directly or indirectly.  And now the green movement is here to save us, by saving the earth.  I think the best way to save the earth is to emulate our ancestors’ wisdom and return to nature, to try to live closer to the true origins of man rather than coming up with alternatives to the same techno world we now live in.