Some parts of Earth are getting overloaded and tired. Mother Earth needs help from some babysitters to take care of her children. If you have a cat, you know there is litter box to take care of, or else a corner in the barn that needs to be cleaned out once in a while. The time has come, there needs to be some caretaking, some cleaning up after human activity in our world. If Mother Earth is tired, who will carry and sustain us? There has been enough human activity, especially the use of fossil fuels - coal, oil and natural gas - to have a dramatic impact on the overall balance for life on Earth. Other sources of energy are available. Of course, population has increased but the increase in energy use is way beyond this. Everything we do, every activity, takes energy. Every time energy is used, there is some leftover, a footprint, some waste. (This is about energy. There are many other environmental impacts resulting from human activity.) Fossil fuels came into large-scale use in the I...

Our human bodies are incredible in so many ways. Among other things there is an average body temperature of 37 C or 98.6 F   When this changes, something may be wrong and out of balance. Average Earth temperature now is 12.7 degrees C. Thousands of measurements are used for this. Beginning in the 1880’s, there were enough weather measurements to begin recording global averages. From 1880 to 1980, average global temperature increased by approximately one degree; that is one tenth of a degree per decade. Since 1980, the rate of temperature increase has more than doubled. These numbers are the baseline when there is talk of a temperature increase of 1 or 1.5 or 2 degrees. These “small” changes are huge and important for our climate and environment. Climate is our local weather - hot year, cool year, wet year, dry year, winds, seasons. Climate is also about global weather patterns. Climate change is huge and complicated and very important, It is like a large ship on the ocean. It takes...

Imagine this for a moment: every material object you own—the contents of your house, your garage, your storage locker, your cottage—is connected to you by an invisible cord. Those cords represent the energy flowing outward from you to all of these things; the energy of upkeep, of financial expense, of perhaps simply the hum of low-grade unease that you have all these things that you are not using, that are just taking up space for the most part. A few years ago, my husband and I discovered the film Minimalism on Netflix, about two young men promoting the joy of living a life free of “stuff.” Having moved our household thirteen times—a prospect that became a bigger ordeal as the years went on and our family grew— Joel and I marveled at, and frankly envied, the nimbleness with which these two young men moved through life. The film sparked in us a desire to have more of that agility and ease in life.  How much energy is leaking from each of us outward to the things that clutter up ou...

Have you ever taken note of the sources of our food at the grocery store?  Have you thought about what all is included in the price of that can of pineapple or peaches or even the pinto beans and tomatoes? It might surprise you to find that many of the common foods we enjoy and can be grown locally are actually grown and packaged in distant lands, and that the cost of storage and travel is a large part of the price we pay. Does that matter to us? Do we care about how these imported foods were raised? Do we know whether their nutritional value compares favourably with what is produced locally? What about the chemicals used? Or the working conditions and wages of the farm labourers? In the past, our parents did not have access to strawberries or fresh tomatoes in January. For those of us with a rural upbringing, fresh fruits and vegetables in January or food out of a tin were not on the daily menu. Almost everything we ate was sourced in our back yards or from friends and neighbours....

We live in an amazing and wonderful world. Think about the richness, diversity, and abundance of life: a seed grows to produce a harvest, the colours on flowers or birds, sunrise, sunset, mountains, and lakes. People are incredible. The wonder of a newborn baby, the tiny fingers and so much more; look up at the immensity of the universe. Amazing balance How we can live here on our earth is almost too much to understand. The balance for life as we know it is incredible and we are learning that it can be changed. The earth receives approximately one billionth of the energy that the sun pours into space - just right for our life systems. From the sun, the earth is only a tiny speck in space. Sunlight goes everywhere. Some of the energy that comes to Earth is reflected into space by clouds and ice, some is absorbed by oceans and land - just right for our life systems. Oceans and forests and plants breathe huge amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide all the time - just right for our life syst...

Not long ago, shopping second hand carried the stigma that you weren’t well-off enough to buy new. But that image is fast-changing.   In a recent survey, thrift shoppers reported that their money-saving motivations were less of a concern than their concern for a changing climate. Shoppers are voting with their dollars for a healthier planet, and it’s not just small potatoes anymore. In 2018 the 2 nd hand economy weighed in at $27.3 billion in Canada.* Our local MCC Thrift store is one of the finest and largest around. To learn more about the great work the Altona MCC is doing in our community, I sat down with Dave Rempel, store manager and here’s what I learned.   What sells well?   Clothing and shoes (women’s clothing is the top seller) Major and small appliances Housewares – pots, pans, silverware, dishes Furniture and collectibles Christmas trees, lights and decorations What is not sellable? Broken or food stained containers or cutting boards Chipped glasswa...

In March of 1972, Linie Friesen, Selma Loewen, Susan Giesbrecht and Sara Stoesz opened the first MCC Thrift Shop in Altona, Manitoba with an expectation the project might last “three to six months.” The shop began to thrive and produced about $1,000 for MCC during the first six months of operation. Over forty years later, their vision has grown a North American network of over 100 shops, generating millions of dollars every year for the programs of Mennonite Central Committee. Shopping at your local MCC Shop is an affordable and environmentally friendly way to support a great cause so I sat down with Dave Rempel, the current manager of the Altona thrift store recently to see how ACAN’s column could help to support their work. I thought our conversation was going to center around donations and sales. I wanted to know how to educate the public about what items they would like to receive more of or what items they wished folks didn’t drop off at all and so on, and I did learn a lot about ...