Tidbits

Today's sunrise was beautiful. It was foggy when I woke up, but then suddenly the sun began to appear.

Not necessarily related to the sunrise, I've started a new sweater for a new little niece.

Also not related to the sunrise or to knitting, here's some pictures of Henry being lovable. He's like an amazingly adorable, gigantic teddy bear. I could stare at him all day.

Blog Action Day

This year's Blog Action Day topic is the environment. Bloggers can participate by writing about the topic in whatever way suits their blog. Helping the environment is not something we can do over night. Start by choosing one thing that can make a difference.

My choice:

My friend Tess of Made by Tess fame, developed these amazing grocery totes. You take them to the grocery store so you don't have to leave with 1000 petroleum based plastic bags. They're large enough to fit all your veggies, milk and chips. I've loaded mine up to 35 pounds and not a single stitch gave loose! I love these bags, I own two myself and have given more as gifts.

The whole idea of taking your own bag to the store is common in Europe, but never really became part of American culture. Hopefully things will take off soon with people like Julia Roberts getting in on the action.

Photo courtesy of Jezebel.

For quick trips to the store for eggs or chocolate I use a Chico Bag. They're small and they fold up into a self contained pouch for easy purse storage.

So go, find a way to change something in your everyday life. These bags are a great start. In case you're not convinced, here are some frightening statistics about plastic bags from Chicobags.com:

- The average American uses between 300 and 700 plastic bags per year.

- If everyone in the United States tied their annual consumption of plastic bags together in a giant chain, the chain would reach around the Earth not once, but 760 times!

- According to the American Forest and Paper Association, in 1999 the U.S. alone used 10 billion paper grocery bags, requiring 14 million trees to be cut down.

- Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photo-degrade—breaking down into small toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food-chain when mistaken for zooplankton or jellyfish.

It's about time

Suddenly, from the shower, I hear a loud, reverberating, "Oh, man!"

What could have happened I wonder. I didn't hear a clunk or any loud noise, so he's not hurt. Did he accidentally squirt the entire contents of the shampoo bottle down the drain? Did a spider jump on his head? I walk in the bathroom.

"What happened, hon?"

"I, I wasn't thinking," he stammers. "I put my wedding ring on when I woke up this morning!"

A call to arms (pun intended)

The City of Philadelphia is in the midst of a homicide crisis. The murder rate increased nearly seven percent from 2005 to 2006, and the deaths in 2007 are trending to top 2006. A whopping 90% of the deaths are results of handguns. This led my favorite design professor to devise an anti-violence poster campaign to hang in bus shelters around the city.

With the campaign, designed pro bono, Frank Baseman wanted to bring in-your-face-attention to the growing murder rate and rampant handgun possession taking Philadelphia by storm.

After raising donations from local donors and businesses, the campaign was ready to hit the streets. Philadelphia thought otherwise. A mid-level government officer deemed the campaign too "intimidating," refusing to let it run in the bus shelters. Because staring down the barrel of a 2D gun is much more frightening than the fact that the city has become one of the country's most deadly cities.

Since that absurd decision, the story has been picked up by the Philadelphia Inquirer and National Public Radio. Now the poster is reaching a broad audience but not the intended audience.

Philadelphia needs to wake up, stop worrying about posters being scary and start worrying why its streets are scary. Shouldn't they be figuring out why its citizens have such easy access to handguns?

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Read more:

AIGA: Where Is the (Brotherly) Love?

NPR: Anti-Crime Posters Shed Light on Philly's Problems

Philadelphia Inquirer: Needed: Sponsor for a message of peace
A display too lurid for Murder City?

Sky

A lot of mornings I take photos of the sunrise. Not necessarily at the crack of dawn, but sometime after I get out of bed. We're heading to Los Angeles this morning so we had to get up early. The sky along the horizon was a beautiful mango color fading up to still midnight blue above my head. When I stepped outside I found an even better treat, a tiny sliver of moon just above the horizon with Venus and Saturn watching down on him.

I love the sky. (You can click here to see my other sunrise photos.)