Chris Jordan

I discovered photographer Chris Jordan's website a few days ago. These photos are from his exhibition "An American Self Portrait -Running the Numbers". His stunning art portrays American culture through the lens of statistics.

- 28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes (equal to the flow of a medium-sized river).

Light Bulbs; A zoom in towards the 320 000 Light Bulbs, which equals residential electricity wasted (due to bad wiring, electronics in sleeping mode).

Plastic Bottles - two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes. Designed for a useful life of a few years, if that. Made from a material that stays around for hundreds of years (unless it gets incinerated whereby it releases toxins). That doesn't sound like the smartest product design to me.

A detail from "Prison Uniforms". 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005. The U.S. has the largest prison population of any country in the world. And some of the prisons are private, for-profit businesses.

You can check out more of his photos here. Enjoy!

Miracle

There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.

Merino

Sheep like this guy in the picture are my dear friends this time of the year. This morning the thermometer displayed chilly -29 degrees Celsius.

My survival tip? Merino Wool from head to toe. It keeps me warm and dry on chilly days like this:

Icebreaker Socks
Patagonia Wool Top
MEC Merino Light Weight Long John's

You can go to Patagonia's footprint chronicles to see what it takes to produce their merino wool top (select Wool 2 Crew). Its journey starts with Merino sheep in New Zealand, the fabric is then made in Japan before the product hits stores in North America. I appreciate Patagonia's effort to bring some transparency into their supply chain and to report the sucess stories as well as the areas that can be improved. I wish more companies would do that.

Stay warm...

Amazon

One of my goals at work this year is to write a paper on "Certified Wood" - shedding some light on what the Forest Stewardship Council is all about. So I have been reading lots about forests, causes for deforestation, I found out that logging is just one small part of the problem. Forests converted into agricultural uses, to produce for example soy and palm oil for food production and biofuel and cattle ranching are even bigger threats to the Amazon and Indonesian forests (the 2 deforestation hotspots globally) than logging.



I have also learned that civil rights violations go hand in hand with deforestation. Millions of tribal people call the forests their home, so when the forest gets destroyed, so goes their home and their life style. Check out the video below for a visual refresher of our rights. And please send me some focus energy, so that I finish the paper soon.

kANNAda Day

Here are a few pictures from yesterday's Citizenship celebration. Now I am officially a dual citizen. One step closer to becoming a global citizen :)

Jamie and Jen in the first picture, Kurt and Deanna above showing their support by sharing a smile. The judge also commented on sharing smiles: it appears to be one of the traits that are expected from good Canadian citizens...

Nervous Annie - a few minutes before the big moment.

The Officials

Vik - wearing the traditional Maple Leaf Bindi and Malynne

Karen, Brit and Rebecca. More pictures on Vik's blog including a bonus video and check out flickr! By the way, all the Canadians in these pictures got an "honorary mention" of the judge for their good cheering performance!

Some suggestions for future improvements to the ceremony, such as adding guys dressed up in beaver suits to the event, came up over breakfast, but overall the ceremony was well received by us.

Sculpture in Downtown Calgary - honoring the Dinosaurs, I believe. We are grateful for all the lovely fossil fuel Calgary thrives off.

And as gifts are appropriate for a once in a lifetime situation as this one, I couldn't resist treating myself to a Patagonia Down Jacket. Super toasty and super light weight - perfect winter jacket for "climatically challenging" Canada - as the Judge called it. I chose their new color "Espresso", which according to my recent color consultation is a good color for me (I am not surprised - with that name - it must be a good color for me).

A bientot!

Spoonfed

Last weekend I went to Leona's Do Be Clean Open House, where we were also spoiled with soup.

Carmen served her home made soups, which she also delivers in glass jars around the city. Served with yummie dill crackers. If you are Calgarian and feel like handing over your soup power to Carmen, check out her website here.