Please help me in celebrating David Suzuki's 75th birthday

Dear David,

Ignorance is bliss (at least in the short run) and the truth about where we’re headed is -- to put it mildly - inconvenient. But while the world turns a blind eye, you rise up and speak out. In that calm, composed way of yours, you devote your life to lifting the veil of denial off the eyes of our self-consumed society. How you manage to hold on to the hope that people will come through and turn things around, I’ll never know. And it is the reason why in my eyes, you are one the greatest leaders of our era.

With great admiration,

Erica Leibner

In honour of David's birthday, my goal is to raise $1000 for the David Suzuki Foundation. Funds raised will support various work to protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life. One of these projects involves urging the cosmetics industry to list ingredients on products so people know what they are putting on their bodies and can avoid toxic chemicals. I firmly believe in this cause, and that there is no excuse for the cosmetics industry to be selling us products that are making us sick.

Ignite Imagination

Hi all,

Sorry I've neglected this blog for so long. I'm ready to get back in the saddle though, and intend to use this space for stuff that's too personal or in-depth for facebook or twitter.

Got a fantastic forward this morning from mummy dearest that I really love. It especially speaks to me at this moment in time, as I've decided I want to focus on pursuing my career in writing so that I can put my meandering mind and outlandish ideas to good use.

While her daughter is sound asleep, the mother of the little girl in these pictures creates an alternate universe from whatever she can find around her. Like this woman, I too like to have fun with fiction. So here's the story I came up with, as a result of being inspired by these photographs...

Once upon a time, a woman found the perfect way to incorporate her personal and professional life. Originally, she did this as a hobby, until it took off and become profitable (massively profitable, so that she and her daughter were able to move out of their stingy 1 bedroom apartment and to a beautiful bungalow by the beach, where they listen to Melody Gardot and eat expensive vegan marshmallows all day). In my mind (my presumptuous mind - you can blame it on "creativity"), thanks to her new found fame, she was able to quit her day job (she probably just did it to pay the bills) and now indulges in doing what she loves most. Her passion and outstanding propensity to create these beautifully poetic "scenes" has made her famous and given her the opportunity to "live to work," not "work to live."

Here is a link to her blog: http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/

I'm looking really forward to reading it when I get a chance!

Have a great day, all. And please "follow" by blog if you can. I know it needs a massive makeover and I promise that along with the content, I'll be improving the look and logistics of it.

xx

Me.

City Bandit Coolness

I am thrilled to report that I have been invited to work as a freelance contributor for City Bandit, an unbelievable lifestyle website that seeks to help sexy, cent-savvy, trendsetting chickas in Montreal and Toronto find the most wicked steals and deals in their city.

As always, I will stay true to my clean, green, cruelty-free principles and try my best to cover the products and places that live up to my high standards.

Hope you enjoy this new forum for my work and get some good tips on some great places to go and things to do in your city.

Sweet dreams and plenty of blissful Zzzz's...

Er

www.citybandit.com

A Do Gooder’s Epiphany

This morning on my way to work I got to thinking about what we owe life. The sun shining on my face, my favourite dinky top 10 tunes blasting, it dawned on me how lucky I was to be here in the world, enjoying such a simple yet exceedingly pleasurable moment. “Don’t we owe it to LIFE to lap up every one of the precious moments we are lucky enough to experience, no matter how simple or seemingly insignificant, as fervently as possible?” I thought.

Now don’t get me wrong…if there is anyone whose life philosophy is to consider the implications of our actions, it’s this girl right here. With practically every decision I make, I do the calculations necessary (sometimes using my fingers, and sometimes with my blonde head cocked to the side in deep concentration) to figure out precisely what type of an impact, for example, my choice to buy a tube of toothpaste (“who produced it? Was it tested on animals? Did the employees in the toothpaste factory receive fair wages?”) will yield.

But I wonder…have I been missing something all along?! Is there something to be learnt from the hedonistic, self-serving, happy and seemingly carefree people I have been known to abhor?! Is there some truth to the belief that sometimes, ignorance is in fact bliss?!

I think that there just might be. That isn’t to say I am about to abandon my philanthropic aspirations or that I am encouraging you to romp pompously through life as though you are the Queen of England, with your nose in the air and you hand on your hips. All I am suggesting is that it might be a good idea for us altruistic souls out there who are determined to save the world, one good deed at a time, to not lose sight of our right (scratch that, our RESPONSIBILITY) to put the burdens we so often carry on our shoulders aside every now and then. We need to remind ourselves that sometimes it is nothing short of necessary to fold up our worries, place them on the top shelf of our closets, and paint the town red (in the figurative sense and not the literal one, which would have us fretting about how spray painting on public property is illegal and could land us with a ticket costing more money than we have in our bank accounts).

Swine Flu - Yet Another Example of How Things Have Gotten Out of Hand

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/swine-flu-antibiotic-abuse-agribusiness-greed.php?dcitc=TH_rotator


Words of wisdom all around but no one ever seems to listen...

It's enough to make me sigh but that don't seem like it would make it feel better
The words are all around but the words are only sounds and no one ever seems to listen
Instead they'll say
Well how could we have known?
I'll tell them it's not so hard to tell, if you keep adding stones soon the water will be lost in the well

-Jack Johnson, "Traffic in the Sky"

Earth Hour Recap

Apparently, Earth Hour this year was a great success...not to mention a ton of fun.

To check out the before and after pics of some of the world's most famous landmarks, go to http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/earth_hour_2009.html and simply click on the images (the Eiffel Tower pre and post Earth Hour was definitely my fav.).

Enjoy!

Er

EARTH HOUR 2009

On March 28th, vote EARTH by switching off your lights for one hour instead of global warming by leaving your lights on.

The results of the election are very important, as they will be presented at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen later on this year. The WWF's goal is to get one billion votes for Earth, to tell world leaders that we have to take action against global warming.

This will be my second year hosting an Earth Hour Cocktail/Pre-Drink Party and let me just say that aside from it being a great opportunity to spread the green word, it is also a wonderful excuse to get together with your friends and enjoy some good old-fashioned face time with those you love (free of the distracting influences of blackberry, twitter, facebook, and so on). So start collecting those candles, buy the booze, and prepare for an intimate night where you will be surrounded by your favorite people and provided with the relief of not having to worry about anyone seeing you get drunk to the point where you can't walk straight.

Earth Hour = Best Holday EVER.

Peace, love, & Earth Hour.

Er