You already know about my admiration for Haitians and their strength of Spirit. You can also imagine how the challenges facing Haitians have been lying heavily on my heart since returning from our visit with partners there.

Since tomorrow is Earth Day, posting a quiz.  If you have children it is a good way to alert them to conservation.  If you don't have children, take the quiz anyway - it's fun.

EARTH DAY QUIZ.
1.  What is an ecosystem?
a) It is a place having unique physical features—including air, water and land—supporting plant and animal life.
 
b) It's a process to name newly discovered plants and animals.
 
c) It's a popular computer game.

In another thread 

Mary Ann Hodge, the Chair of the Environment Committee of First-St. Andrew’s United Church of London, Ontario, was kind enough to send along her news release this week describing how they at First-St. Andrew’s have taken up the Moderator’s challenge. In their words, they have

EARTH HOUR - lights out at 8:30 pm., Saturday, March 27th.

A record Earth Hour is looming with more countries now signed up for the event than for last year’s globe circling lights out for climate action.

With Earth Hour just a week away, do you have any plans? 

This will be my third year to participate.  Past years I have turned off and/or unplugged as many things as possible.  It helps that I have an airtight stove, so have heat.

Nice to watch the flames in the dark.

has anyone used cloth diapers?  i have used disposable in the past and would like to use cloth this time around.  any advice/experience?  i am looking at a delivery service called happy nappy (unlimited diapers for about $23.00 week).  thanks :)

While preoccupied with death on another thread, I started to surf the web for an image of a shroud.  Lo and behold I discovered this website and I was really glad I did.

http://www.naturalburial.coop/about-natural-burial/

Support Earth Hour - In 2009 hundreds of millions of people around the world showed their support by turning off their lights for one hour, Earth Hour. In 2010 Earth Hour will continue to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. ...
At 8.30pm on Saturday 27 March, 2010, the greatest show on Earth for action on climate change will take place in homes, office buildings, town halls and public spaces across the globe as lights go out for Earth Hour 2010.

Earth Hour Canada (Official)
http://wwf.ca/earthhour/

From The Blue Marble - MotherJones

Blame Canada
By Kate Sheppard
Tue Dec. 15, 2009,

You used to be able to count on the United States to be the bad guys at United Nations climate conferences. But this year, while the Obama administration's pledges aren't as ambitious as some might like, the US government is more willing to combat global warming than it has been for years. That's left our northern neighbor, Canada, to emerge as the summit's major stinker.

Well, the predictable happened.

The world worked up its hopes that its primary institutions would do the responsible thing and stop the threat of destruction of our beloved civilization.

It failed.  Did we have to go to political science and history classes to see it coming?  The nature of the beast, shown to us repeatedly over the centuries, but we lived in 'hope' that the beast was something that it is not.

An illusion squashed by its own demonstration.  We are so disappointed our hope turned from illusion to its actual reality.