Strategy of Surf

Here we see the ESA competitor receiving some last minute coaching before heading out to her first North East Regional Women's Longboard Semi Finals... a moment of anticipation and promise. A landmark in a lifetime.

Ocean Dreaming

The day before we leave for our ocean side trip, for surfing, body boarding and diving.

In a word Anticipation!

It's early in the season, Belmar NJ will be getting itself ready for the influx of tourists in 2 weeks - when Memorial day weekend kicks off the official summer season. Belmar, NJ

The Eastern Surfing Association (ESA) will descend on this sleepy seaside resort for it's annual North Eastern Regional Surfing Competition; hundreds of surfers and their families, ESA officials and fans. On the beach; the stands will be erected, the action will begin, the spectators will cheer and surf music will fill the air.

Meanwhile - we're packing for a road trip adventure, gotta get back to it.

Just what are we drinking?

I keep hearing statistics...and I think they are begining to sink in (pardon the pun).
50% of the Pesticides used on lawns end up in our drinking water.

Common Pesticide Use Linked to Cancer

I was driving around St. Catharines last month looking for a new dive site and found signs on a beach warning against using the beach because of high bacteria content of the water.

Beaches for looking at - not for swimming - because they are too poluted by partially treated sewage.

Yes sewage treatment plants sometimes only partially treat the sewage! Each municipality has a standard water quality which they deem acceptable when releasing processing sewage. http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wwvisit.html

A couple of years ago I was ice diving in Lake Simcoe, in front of the Barrie sewage treatment plant. As we passed by the outlets from the plant; the water coming out was brown with small debris in it. That was an eye openner for me. I had always thought they completely cleaned the water, removed all solids and geez ... maybe there was a magic fairy who waved her wand over it??? Not so.

I have been taking the low visibility of the water in Lake Ontario and Erie for granted - that's just the way the water is!? Well guess what - Water is supposed to be CLEAR!!!! Just like in Hawaii, or the Bahamas. Just like the water in Lake Huron around Tobermory is clear.

Why is the water so murky? Industial and human waste products dumped and pumped into the lakes... and we are taking it for granted.

Sing praise for the humble zebra mussel for filtering the water to the point that we can see up to 60 feet under water - as little as 10 years ago you could only see 3-5 feet.

Is this OK with you? or are you drinking bottled water?

We have made advancements in medicine to enable us to live much longer and productive lives, instead, thanks mostly to industrial pollutants, one in how many will develop cancer?

Listening to a show on CBC Radio this week http://www.cbc.ca/north/story/nor-chip-health-concern.html about Fort Chipewyan in Alberta; a tiny town on the northern shores of Lake Athabaska, the water in a small local river used to run clear... then Uranium mining, pulp and paper and a hydro dam destroyed the environment - the wild life is gone - the fish have major deformities. In a town of 1200 one in 3 will die prematurely of cancer.

Water Filtration plants - they clean the water we drink? Pull water from deep in the lake far far away from the sewage plant outlets.... depends on where you live, and not likely is the answer.

The water filtration process pulls water through a series of screenings, removing sediments, and then treating it to kill bacteria... http://shoalwater.nsw.gov.au/4education/wtplnts.htm

This still leaves chemicals disolved in the water like pharmaceuticals http://www.newstarget.com/003441.html

It's one thing to think about, and that certainly is a begining, but here's the kicker - What can we do about it?

Here's a place where "action" happens http://www.ijc.org/en/home/main_accueil.htm - slowly, and here are groups who help put voices together to motivate faster action:
Great Lakes United http://www.glu.org/
Pollution Probe http://www.pollutionprobe.org/
Sierra Club http://www.sierraclub.ca/

So next time you think about pouring yourself a glass of tap water - think about it... again.

SCUBA - My dream come true

One of my life time goals has been to teach Scuba!

Years ago, I was on vacation in Grand Cayman and took resort dive with Bob Sotos. I was hooked.

It was in my blood, I became fascinated with the undersea world. First it was warm water diving - all those gorgeous tropical fish, the colourful and diverse reef life, the clear warm water... then it was just going diving.

Living in the Great Lakes area I was less three hours away in any direction from some of the worlds best fresh water diving. There was so much to see and do: Drift dives, shipwrecks, history and culture, geology, deep dives, shallow, rivers, lakes, and fish too.

What started out as just a thing to do once in a while turned into a full fledged passion.

Well Last year I became a Scuba Instructor, now I'm living my dream come true!

I get to travel, meet people, and do things underwater! You can too - Just ask me how.

Creating Community

Jane Jacobs had no professional training in the field of city planning, she was an ordinary person using her own observations of city life to formulate her philosophy about them.

Jane Jacobs life was a true David and Goliath Success story of how an ordinary person can stand up to the seemingly insurmountable steamrolling inertia of corporate America and WIN. Win, not just for herself and her family but for the greater good of her community and the whole city.

"Born in 1916 in the coal mining town of Scranton, PA, Jacobs has never been afraid to stand on her own. After graduating high school, where she claims she "didn't listen much in class. I would try to, but I would just get bored with it....I just did enough to get by, really" (Feeney, 10), she took an unpaid position as the assistant to the women's page editor at the local newspaper. Shortly after that, and in the middle of the Depression, she left Scranton for New York City.

During her first several years in the city, she held many different types of jobs, and was even subject to periods of unemployment. This experience with hard times, she claims, "...gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what business was like, what work was like" (Feeney, 33). Her first real writing position was at a metals trade paper. While working there, she also held free-lance writing positions at The New York Herald Tribune and Vogue. She worked for the Office of War Information, and it was there that she met her husband, architect Robert Jacobs. She continued her writing later when she joined the staff of Architectural Forum. "

After residing in New York City for thirty years, Jacobs moved with her family to Toronto in 1968, where she recently passed away at the age of 89.

She wrote a variety of books over the years, including The Death and Life of Great American Cities, her first published work, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, and Systems of Survival, her most recent effort. It is through these writings that she expressed her ideas about cities.

Advocating "mixed-use" in the urban fabric, meaning no separation of the different types of buildings, whether residence or business oriented, old or new. She saw cities as being "organic, spontaneous, and untidy," and that diversity and activity are crucial to their survival over the centuries.

Jacobs believed that the concentration of people in a city is essential for its economic growth and prosperity. Her original ideas gave us the opportunity to cities in a completely different light.