Phyto Kinetic: Urban Jungle Garden-Roofed Buses

Phyto Kinetic: Urbam Jungle Green-Roofed Buses

How would you like to be transported to work in a moving garden? If Marc Granen has anything to do with it, you may be able to. The landscape artist, who is based in Bescano, Spain has developed a green roof for buses called Phyto Kinetic. Since green spaces are so valuable for human environments, and since cities just don’t have a lot of open space, Granen came up with the idea of using areas that already exist to create that green space, even if they are on four wheels. In a city like New York that has thousands of buses, adding the Phyto Kinetic system to each one would create over a 100,000 square meters of air-purifying green space in the city. www.marcgranen.com

WATER: Know Your Source!

Our tap water system, I am sure was intended to be a good thing (convenience), but unfortunately it’s not the best in drinking for optimal health. Why?

1. Fluoride
Our water is highly fluoridated. There’s the argument that fluoride is needed for “healthy teeth”, this is untrue. In communities where fluoridation has been discontinued, dental decay has not increased, rather decreased.

2. Prescription Drugs
An Associated Press investigation showed that a vast array of pharmaceuticals – including antibiotics, mood stabilizers and sex hormones – have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans. Treatment facilities are not required to test for drugs or filter them out.

3. Dead water
In it’s natural form, water structures itself and holds information. Tap water has been recycled (via machinery), and is filled with chemicals to “purify” it from the waste (feces and urine), toilet paper, tampons and what ever else people flush down the toilet and sinks.

4. Chemical Pollution (Chlorine)
Many public water supplies add chlorine for purification, which can make some chemicals or drugs more toxic. You may think that the government, EPA, and other agencies are looking out for this danger, but the fact is- the Safety Water Act, designed for the public’s safety, only tests for nitroglycerin and that is because it can be made into explosives. They do not test for any other drugs in tap water. Chlorine is a respiratory irritant, in it’s gas form irritates mucus membranes and in liquid form burns the skin.

Spring Water:
Naturally, water comes from a spring which is any pure occurrence where water flows onto the surface of the earth from below the surface, and is thus where the aquifer surface meets the ground surface. Well water and spring water are similar in the sense that they are both produced from natural aquifers located around rock beds and soil. The difference is that spring water continues naturally to the surface and well water has not gone through the full life cycle.

Benefits:
Spring water lacks chemicals, waste, has never touched plastic (which further leach chemicals), and is far more beneficial to the environment. Pure and simple – higher health accompanied by a higher state of consciousness to be gained. Our bodies consist 80% water, built starting from the cellular level optimized with highly structured, super clean, and freshly harvested spring water.

Check out http://www.mountainvalleyspring.com to locate your local glass bottle spring water supplier.

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NYC Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program

New York City Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Health Commissioner Thomas Farley announced this week that New York will launch a new chapter of the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program, or FVRx, a program that allows doctors to “prescribe” fruits and vegetables to families at risk for obesity and diet-related illness. Patients can receive a dollar per day for each member of their family—a family of four could receive $28 per week—to redeem at New York City farmer’s markets. Each month, patients meet with their doctors for prescription renewal and to have their weight and BMI measured. Hospitals will try to retain participants for at least 4 months.

FVRx is a program run by Wholesome Wave, a Bridgeport-based organization working on hunger and food issues across the northeast. Wholesome Wave launched their pilot FVRx programs in 2011 in Massachusetts, Maine, California and Rhode Island. The program was then expanded to Connecticut, New Mexico, Texas, and Washington, D.C. in 2012.

Lincoln Medical Center and Harlem Hospital Center are the first two medical centers to launch the program; each aims to enroll up to 70 patients in the FVRx program. FVRx is a next step in ongoing efforts by GrowNYC, the NYC Department of Health, and the mayor’s office to increase access to local and healthy food to New York’s low income residents.

Heartbeats of Fiji

Ben is searching for purpose. Masi is following a dream. From separate islands, yet connected through music, their paths crossed at the Fiji Beat Making Lab. Ben is the type of musician the world needs more of. Bringing the worlds of art and activism together—he’s an artivist.

Beat Making Lab builds studios in cultural centers around the world and trains youth musicians in the art of beat making. Follow their journey at http://www.beatmakinglab.com

Hemp in America

Hemp is a tall, gracious annual plant that can reach heights over twelve feet. Although hemp (cannabis sativa) and marijuana (cannabis sativa var. indica) come from a similar species of plant, they are very different and confusion has been caused by deliberate misinformation with far reaching effects on socioeconomics as well as on environmental matters.

Industrial hemp grows differently than THC-containing cannabis. Hemp is typically grown up, not out, because the focus is not on producing buds but on producing length of stalk. In this way, hemp is a very similar crop to bamboo. The stalk contains the fiber and hard, woody core material that can be used for a variety of purposes, even carpentry.

The two also differ in the areas that they can be effectively grown. THC-producing Marijuana must be grown in generally warm and humid environments in order to produce the desired quantity and quality of THC-containing buds. However, since industrial hemp does not contain these buds, and the hardy parts of the plant are the more desired, it can be grown in a wider range of areas. Generally, industrial hemp grows best on fields that provide high yields for corn crops, which includes most of the Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast United States. Furthermore, since industrial hemp can use male plants as well as female plants (since the object is not THC production), higher crop yields can result.

Hemp has the strongest natural fibres, which can be used not just to produce rough cloth, such as sails or canvass, but also durable work clothes, like the original jeans. When the plants are grown closer together the fibre becomes shorter and finer, which allows for finer textiles. Today, there are some fashion designers that are experimenting with a wide range of textiles made from hemp for their stylish, trendy hemp lines, shirts, suits, bags, jeans and more. Hemp fibres can be blended with water and limestone to create an extremely tough, light-weight, natural cement that has not only excellent insulating properties, but also shows more flexibility than conventional concrete, which makes it particularly useful as a building material in earthquake prone areas.

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Man Up! Brooklyn

363 Days No Shootings No Killings.

This week one year ago, an East NY Brooklyn neighborhood development organization, Man Up!, began to send people into the streets to figure out where the violence was going next so they could hit the pause button. Mediate. Listen. Talk.

Some workers in the project had been street criminals themselves; others had been victims of violent crime, losing partners and children to it.

“You get tired of going to people’s funeral that you grew up with, or their kids’ funerals, from gun violence in the street,” a member of the group, Athena Collins, 43, said. The father of her five children was murdered.

By JIM DWYER, NY TIMES
Click Here to Read Full Article

Seattle’s Urban Food Forest

Beacon Food Forest is a 7-acre food forest in development adjacent to Jefferson Park on Beacon Hill in Seattle, Washington. By the design of the project, and as the area is on public land, food in the edible forest section of the project will be available freely to those visiting the park.

Modern Tribalism

Tribalism & Relationships

“The tendency toward tribalism can keep us stuck in repeating negative cycles in our intimate relationships, and can wreak havoc when a relationship is ripe for transition. Tribal mentality often teaches a righteous stance in relationships: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. When we feel violated, the first thought is vengeance, rather than forgiveness.

Tribal mentality even has gender-specific undercurrents – women do vengeance differently than men. Yet for both genders, what rules the day is the tribal mentality that holds “breaking up is painful” or “betrayal warrants retaliation.”

Healing revolves around this crucial question: “Do you want to make different choices?” Are we willing to let go of old, constricting tribal patterns? Sadly, the answer quite often is “No.” Being healthy isn’t always the most appealing option. Quite frankly, in many cases, it’s not appealing at all. What is most appealing is being out of pain. Old patterns are difficult to relinquish because they do serve to relieve pain, even if it is only in the short run.

Change is terrifying for many precisely because short-term pain relief must be given up. Deep healing requires learning to tolerate the pain that comes with change. Fortunately, the growing pains that come with new behavior – with making the choices that will change your life – are often short-lived.

Thought alone doesn’t heal. Nor does action without thought. For deep healing to occur, we need the chemistry of conscious thought and direct action combined. Every thought or attitude we have – whether consciously chosen or unconsciously adopted through the tribal mind – invests a part of our life-force into that thought or attitude. This is true whether the thought is one of betrayal and vengeance, or of understanding and forgiveness.

What matters is that a whole system of consciousness – the old tribal mentality – no longer holds us enthralled. We no longer have faith in those limiting patterns of thought. Through this transformation we learn a whole new level of trust. We break the habit of telling tribal lies which bring short-term comfort but long-term pain. We develop a new sense of self-worth and of trust and honor.

In spite of all the heavy tribal conditioning, we now have hope because tribal mentality the world over is going through a vast transformation. And each one of us can play a vital role in this transformation.

With increasing numbers of individuals changing and transcending limiting tribal beliefs, the codes of the tribe are being affected. As we collectively change and evolve, the tribes around us gradually change and evolve with us. Yet ultimately, the journey upon which we are embarking is an incredible solo flight of transcending the tribe to find our own trust, honor, and new sense of self-worth and meaning in life.” – Transcending Tribal Mentality by Caroline Myss

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Meditation

Meditation has the power of making us drift into a more realistic world. When your mind is at ease, it is easier to understand who you are and the world around you. You then realize that the physical world can be somewhat of an illusion. Nevertheless, aspirations & dreams are important. There is nothing wrong with dreaming of having a successful career, an expensive car or travelling around the world. As long as chasing these dreams do not cause imbalance in other areas of your life or lead you to believe that you will be complete once you reach your goal; only then is the pursuit worthwhile!