Easter · Eco-Chick

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Eco Fashion Basics: An Ode to the Perfect Little Black Dress

Wearing my Carol Young LBD at the Mini Exhibit at the Go Green Expo in LA.

It is only this year, my 32nd, that I have truly understood the value of the Little Black Dress. Of course I have heard the legend; what woman hasn’t? This mythical raiment could be worn anywhere, tarted out or demurely cover up, achieve figure flattery whether one was surviving on a diet of tropical fruit and raw macadamia nuts or daily chocolate bars and creamy pastas nightly. A frock that would work equally well with flats or heels, could be thrown in a bag and would never wrinkle, and be made of fabric that would dry quickly after a drenching but keep you from perspiring in the blasted sun (and could even hide said dampness when it inevitably made its moist mark). And of course it had to be impossibly chic.

This Little Black Dress from the very specialized boutique, Little Black Dress Shop

Frankly I had more faith that unicorns still existed in some ruddy-mudded and tangled corner of Eastern Europe.

art, car, corn, dress, Easter, eco fashion, ecofriendly, Europe, fabric, farm, Fashion, fruit, natural, skin

Jesus is Coming…Look Green! Green Easter Tips, Products Labelling, Electric Cars, and Zombies

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by Starre Vartan · 04/09/09

autos, beauty products, Easter, electric cars

Eco-Chick Does Mountain Jam

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by Brianne Goodspeed · 05/31/07

With festival season upon us, my friend, Amy, called a few weeks ago to tell me that I was going to meet her and her friends at Radio Woodstock’s Mountain Jam in Hunter, New York on the first weekend in June.

I’d already seen the lineup (with Gov’t Mule and Phil Lesh & Friends headlining) and would have gone for Michael Franti and Ozomatli alone, except that I now spend my Friday and Saturday nights squinting over IPCC reports, wondering if apocalypse is upon us or merely looming. At some point during George Bush’s tenure, I got incalculably old.

Ozomatli

Amy told me that if I didn’t meet her in New York, she was going to come to my home and kidnap me. I knew she wasn’t kidding. I met Amy ten years ago when we were both Americorps volunteers working and traveling through the Deep South for ten months. We spent the first nine months in mutual antipathy, as we worked side by side in Little Rock, Charleston, and the mountains of eastern Tennessee. I wondered why this Philly girl was so obnoxious—she never stopped singing—and she wondered (out loud) why New Englanders were so uptight. Then, I think it was on a balmy evening in July when we both went to pay our respects at Duane Allman’s grave in Macon’s Rose Hill Cemetery that Amy and I finally discovered we had more in common than we realized.

I was 19. She was 20. And during our final month in Dixie, we raised hell.

So, when she called a few weeks ago, I didn’t actually take much convincing. It seemed fitting that a show produced by guitar legend Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule), would reunite a pair of (now old) friends. I hustled up a Prius, hosed down the cooler, and told Amy that I would meet her there, adding that I had to do some work by reporting back for Eco-Chick on the environmental vendors and the festival’s green initiatives. Now in its third year, Mountain Jam is partnering with Community Energy, which will donate wind energy credits to offset 100% of the electricity used at the show, and Rock the Earth will be on hand to educate show-goers about environmental issues.

Amy just laughed. “Uh-huh. Well, if you get to meet Michael Franti, you’re taking me with you. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll take all my clothes off. I’ll get naked right there.”

spearhead01_sm

So Mountain Jam is this weekend and tickets, as of right now, are still available. Stay tuned for Eco-Chick dispatches, and if you see me there, give me a holler. I’ll be the blue-eyed girl with the notebook and the naked friend.

book, Bush, car, clothes, community, Easter, Eco-Chick, electric, electricity, Energy, farm, Home, prius, produce, spa, travel, wood

IPCC Report

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by Katie Kish · 04/07/07

Map

Well, IPCC’s (intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2nd report of four came out Friday (thats a pdf link…) It is by far the most comprehensive and heavily reviewed word on climate change. They don’t conduct experiments or get funded by companies… It is a collaborative effort put together in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N Environmental Program to combine and summarize the absolute best information that we have on climate change and what will happen in the coming years. There are three working groups that put together different aspects of the information; Group 1 – the relevant science Group 2 – the potential negative and positive effects climate change will have on nature and the economy and how to adapt Group 3 – options for change. In other words, this is the report to trump all other reports on climate change. And this year they’re releasing another assessment… If you missed it, the report on relevant science was released in February.

As for the newly released report – The future does not look so bright. The report given by hundreds of scientists says that there will be big problems in Asia, Sub-Africa and Small Islands, but that North America and Europe are not off the hook either. Increases in heat waves, loss of food production and water resources, more severe storms and erosion are all already happening. It is the poorest of the poor countries that will be getting hit the hardest, but also the poorest of the poor in affluent countries will also feel the extremely detrimental effects. Those who can’t afford health care, or water to be shipped to them. Those whose houses can’t stand up against extreme storms and can’t afford to pay a lot of money for groceries.

Some scientists have criticized the report saying that it was too watered down and not “striking” enough – so really, if what you’re about to read is the “watered down” version… imagine how catastrophic the …properly watered (?) version would be.

“We’re no longer arm waving with models,” said Dr. Parry, who identified areas most affected as the Arctic, Sub-Saharan Africa, small islands and Asia’s sprawling, crowded, flood-prone river deltas. “This is empirical information on the ground.”

The report said that climate patterns were shifting in ways that would bring benefits in some places — including more rainfall and longer growing seasons in high latitudes, opening Arctic seaways, and reduced deaths from cold — but significant human hardship and ecological losses in others. (NYT)
…
“These impacts have been known for many years, and are now seen with greater clarity in this report,” he said. “That clarity is perhaps the last warning we’re going to get before we actually have to report in the next IPCC review that we’re seeing the disaster unfolding.”

What sort of impacts? I’ll do a recap…

Africa, agriculture, Animals, arctic, Australia, biodiversity, car, cities, climate change, death, Easter, eating, Europe, fall, fish, flooding, Food, health, health care, labor, model, models, NYTimes, oil, reduce, resources, rum, soy, summer, Target, urban, water

Step It Up 2007 and Sea of People

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by Starre Vartan · 04/02/07

Feeling like you just can’t curb your carbon emissions much more, and wondering what else YOU can do about global warming? The next step is getting the government on the bandwagon, and Step It Up 2007 is doing just that, through public action:

This April 14th, tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country at meaningful, iconic places to call for action on climate change. We will hike, bike, climb, walk, swim, kayak, canoe, or simply sit or stand with banners of our call to action: “Step it up, Congress! Cut carbon 80% by 2050!”
The campaign will culminate on Saturday, April 14th, a national day of climate action, when Americans, representing voting districts throughout the country, will voice their support for this bold and necessary commitment by gathering together and making their voices heard in hundreds of local demonstrations.

There are events going on all over the country. You can find out what’s going on in your local area here.

I’m going to be volunteering to help out in the local NYC event, the fabulously named Sea of People.

New York City’s coastal location makes it particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and more powerful storm events that will result from unabated warming. In combination, these factors could result in the periodic flooding of coastal parts of our city later on in this century. Permanent inundation could result with the collapse of either the Greenland or Antarctic ice shelves, which would lead to a 10 to 20 foot rise in sea level. Such a rise would greatly reconfigure the map of our city, sinking much of lower Manhattan beneath the water. While this may be several generations off, action to avoid such an outcome must begin now.
The Sea Of People project combines the dynamics of a mass rally with the expressive power of an interactive artistic installation. Following a 12 Noon Rally in Battery Park on Saturday, April 14, thousands of participants, dressed in blue, will stretch north in two columns along the projected eastern and western 10-foot waterlines that may one day redefine lower Manhattan under the ten-foot sea level rise scenario.

For inspiration, check out this amazing video of the island of Manhattan going down…. reminds me of the end of the first Planet of the Apes movie…