Six New Baby Orcas

The Salish Sea (the new name for Puget Sound and the surrounding waters) is the home to the Southern Resident killer whale population. Recently listed as endangered, they finally have some good news to share - six new baby orcas born in the last year including one just spotted last week! That's not a baby above, that's one of the orcas from L pod - more about her below...

Three orcas also went missing (presumed dead) in the last year which takes their total to only 88 orcas, but it's great to see their numbers rising rather than plummeting as they have in years past. Although there are many potential causes for their decline (boat noise, toxicity, decimation through capture), the availability of salmon is considered the current leading issue for the survival of the orcas. For those of you who haven't known me a few years, these orcas are very near and dear to my heart. The Southern Resident population should technically be 89 if you include Lolita, the one surviving orca from the nearly fifty orcas captured in the 1960s and 1970s. For more info on her, take a look at my Seattle Times articles on Lolita and the history of orca captures. That's her at the top of this post.

Here's a picture from a whale watching trip a few years ago of the one baby orca I've seen in the wild - J42. Have you ever tried taking a picture of a moving animal with a time-delay on your digital camera? Much harder than it looks...

The new baby J47 belongs to J35, a very young mother at the age of 12. Orca life spans and reproductive ages track very similarly to humans so becoming a mother at age 12 is a concern. The good news for these family-centered orcas is that J47 also has a grandmother, aunties, and a few other baby cousins to guide her. Fifty percent of orca babies die before reaching the age of one so J47 will need all the help he or she can get. In addition to the main issue of food supply, baby orcas also test very high in toxicity. All orcas, since they're at the top of the food chain, have toxicity issues, but the babies bear the brunt of it. When they're mothers nurse them, the maternal fat stores pass the toxicity to the babies.

Interested in learning more about orcas? The Southern Resident orcas are the most studied whales in the world and there are some great resources: Center for Whale Research, Killer Whale Tales (this group offers programs for schools), and Orca Network.

Good luck to the six new babies!

Don't Chew On That

Ever since the lead warnings have been coming out about toys, I've been thankful that my children are past the age of chewing on toys. I can't for the life of me understand why we make products for kids with harmful chemicals - oh wait, that's right, it's all about money. Cheap, appealing toys = fat profits.

If your kids are at the baby/toddler stage, it is a real concern since ingesting the lead is where the real danger lies. It isn't just swallowing small pieces - sucking or chewing on it repeatedly can lead to lead poisoning. In addition to educating yourself on the issue, I would consider buying a lead testing kit (available at most hardware stores now). I did this when I was concerned with my son's lunchbox and it did test positive for lead. I just learned that baby bibs are also on the frequent offender list. Cotton bibs may not be as convenient, but may warrant another look.

What surprised me in the news today was an article about kid's jewelry and how the lead has been replaced by another dangerous metal called cadmium. This carcinogen was found at high levels in 12% of the jewelry purchased recently for testing. These are the charm bracelets and pendants that little kids love - and love to suck on. I know I have seen my own children with pendants from their necklaces in their mouths. The one that I keep thinking of is the little paint-scratched ghost my son used to wear. It's gone now, but I'm guessing it would test positive for something bad. While cadmium is currently legal, the Consumer Product Safety Commission just announced an investigation today that could change that in the near future.

An article called Keeping Your Kids Safe from Lead in Kid's Products on the Sierra Club website had some interesting tips including avoiding vending machine toys and fake glossy pearl necklaces, and being aware of the issues of lead in toy jewelry.

I know it is one more thing to worry about, but I see this as a 3-step process. At a minimum we should be keeping the toys, necklaces, etc. out of their mouths. The next step is educating ourselves enough to keep the dangerous products out of our homes. I just added the CPSC alerts to my Google Reader account so I'll get notified of child product recalls. And, finally, the most important step is to get the companies to stop making this stuff in the first place!

Give a Day Get a Disney Day

Earlier this year, my son's class had a woman from United Way speak about service. She asked if they had ever volunteered and my son told me he said "no." That seemed surprising to me, since I feel like we volunteer all the time, but that made me realize that it's really me volunteering - timing at swim meets, teaching Sunday school, scoring at baseball games, organizing the school spelling bee. They are the recipients of many of these efforts, but not the actual volunteers. Sure, they've carted food to the Food Bank or donated money/books/supplies through various community drives, but I can't name any real work they've done.

I would like to change that this year. My children know the causes that are important to me, and I want to expose them to more of this in a hands-on way, but I would like them to also develop their own interests and passions.

If you're interested in getting your kids to volunteer, there's also an added incentive this year. Give a Day Get a Disney Day is offering a free day at any Disney park for each person (minimum age 6) who gives a day of service to their community through the HandsOn Network, a group which will link you to local opportunities. There are restrictions and limits, so make sure you read all the rules.

So far, I haven't found a specific opportunity that works for us, but they do have extensive listings of organizations that can be contacted - everything from our local zoo to EarthCorps. The website allows you to sort the options by your interest - Animals & Environment, Health & Human Services, etc. Of course, if we do earn our Disney tickets, I imagine that will leave them wanting to go to Disneyworld, won't it?? Maybe my younger son would fare better on the Dumbo ride this time around.

Dark Days Challenge Week Seven

Week Seven brought a Pumpkin Soup and Acorn Squash Meatballs to my table, but also led me to the realization that I'm leaving the Dark Days Challenge behind in 2009. I've learned a lot over these past seven weeks, but also figured out that the challenge wasn't completely working in my family.

In retrospect, I really needed to have my whole family on board with the idea before I committed to the challenge of one all-local meal each week. My kids are not huge veggie lovers so throwing them something like leeks and kale in the same meal was a bit much. My husband, who cooks a lot, was also starting to resent all the weird looking vegetables popping up in his fridge and on his plate. He has gotten into the spirit of eating locally, but wants it a little more on his terms and I can go along with that. For my part, cooking has never really been my thing and the added stress of trying to make every single ingredient local was definitely more work (particularly in the winter) than I had anticipated.


On the other hand, it has brought about a number of great changes that I plan to continue. I'm shopping weekly at a co-op with great local food and I've found substitutes to some of the non-local fruits that I once deemed essential. My local pears are working just fine in my smoothies instead of bananas shipped from thousands of miles away. I'm keeping my Community Supported Agrigculture (CSA) membership with Klesick Farms and looking forward to my next delivery tomorrow. To find a CSA near you, click here.

I'm still eyeing the one sunny, flat spot in my yard and trying to figure out if I can convert it to a garden next year. It currently holds the jungle gym, and we're trying, as a family, to decide if the kids are ready to give that up. I'm thinking maybe we could compromise and do a garden with a little skateboarding track around it. Hmmm...

One last note... I was very inspired to write this last Dark Days post after watching Iron Chef America last night. You know eating locally is gaining some traction when one of the hot reality shows pairs up with First Lady Michelle Obama to support the message. The show featured Iron Chef Flay/White House Super Chef Comerford vs. Iron Chef Batali/Super Chef Legasse and the secret ingredient was anything from the White House garden. The First Lady showed them around the garden where the chefs had their choice of the winter vegetables - sweet potatoes, kale, leeks - all the same things showing up in my local farm box this month. If you're interested, the 2 hour special airs again at 8pm on Thursday, January 7th.

A Winter Day at the Zoo

OK, the holidays are over, the relatives have returned home, but the kids are still out of school. What to do when everyone is climbing the walls - how about a trip to the zoo?

My boys and I went to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle yesterday and had a great time seeing all the animals. We went in search of red pandas, armadillos, snakes, and penguins. Along the way, we also enjoyed the porcupines, flamingos, elephants, night monkeys, and the fat-tailed gecko that we got to touch! The best part is that the zoos are relatively empty this time of year so you get a front-row view of all the animals.

We learned a few interesting facts too... Fat-tailed geckos (who looked two-headed to us since their tail looks a lot like their head) can drop their tails if they are under attack and the tail will grow back. Flamingos sleep on one leg to keep the other one warm (I thought they were just showing off their amazing balance on those teeny, tiny legs). We also learned there is only one armadillo that can roll completely into a ball to defend itself. That just so happened to be the Three-Banded Armadillo that we were looking for in the Night Exhibit, but we're fairly certain that tan-colored ball on the ground was him.

Our zoo is open 364 days a year - and I would imagine most others are as well since the animals and their keepers are always there so don't miss out on a chance to miss the crowds and get up close with the animals and their keepers.

Billions and Billions...

I remember as a child watching Carl Sagan on PBS as he talked about "billions and billions" of stars or miles or whatever the topic was for that show. Those big numbers were hard to grasp as a child - and even still as an adult today.

So much of what we hear about the Earth these days is in statistics - how many tons our carbon footprint is, how many plastic bags we consume in a year, how many acres of forest are lost every day... It's hard to truly understand the magnitude of it all, regardless of whether the numbers are in the thousands, millions, or billions.

A recent visit to the Chris Jordan: Running the Numbers exhibit at The Pacific Science Center in Seattle offered an amazing visual representation of all those numbers. Chris Jordan is a photographer from Seattle who depicts the vastness of our consumerism in striking images. When we walked into the exhibit, we encountered what initially looked like one of Georges Seurat's famous paintings with his signature pointillism technique. Upon closer examination, we realized it was actually a compilation of miniature pictures of 106,000 aluminum cans - equivalent to the number we use in the US every 30 minutes. The exhibit poster shows the picture below, but you need to see it in person to really grasp the magnitude.

The art of the photography really gets you to take a second look because most of the pictures look very different from afar and up close. What appears to be a beautiful image of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, morphs into 24,000 logos of the Denali SUV that were sold during a six month period.

Other interesting things represented in the photographs:

* The 426,000 cellphones we discard each day.

* The 2 million plastic beverage bottles we use every 5 minutes

* The 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags used every hour (this was 2007, hopefully this number is going down)

* The one million plastic cups we use every six hours on flights

* The 380,000 kilowatt hours of electricity we waste every minute through inefficient energy use

The exhibit will be at The Pacific Science Center until January 3rd, 2010 and it's just upstairs from the Cartoon Network Animation exhibit, which was another big draw for my kids. The show is also currently in Boston and will travel to Haverford, PA; Austin, TX; Santa Cruz, CA; Charleston, SC; Eugene, OR; and Bellingham, WA in 2010-11.

Recycled Trees, Lights, and Packaging

The holidays tend to be a time of excess. In case you suffered some of that in your own household, here are some ideas for recycling your way out of the mess!

What to do I do with...

The tree? If you had a real tree, remember that it is biodegradable and can easily be recycled back into the Earth. In my neighborhood, the Boy Scouts come around every year and for a nominal donation will recycle it. If you're not so lucky, you can either put chop it up for your own yard waste or look for a drop off location at Earth911.

Broken or old lights? Rather than storing away the lights that no longer work for another year, you can drop them off at participating Ace Hardware stores. They were originally offering 15% coupons for the new energy-efficient LED lights, but those are actually marked down 65% now, so you can even get a bargain on next year's lights.

All that packaging? It is a few days past Christmas, so hopefully those messes are already cleaned up, but just in case here are a few thoughts. Save the boxes and bows for reuse next year. I just stack the nice gift boxes inside each other and then toss them down in the crawlspace for next year. Remember that in most cases, those horrendous plastic clamshells that encase many children's toys cannot be recycled. Unfortunately, those must be tossed. Did you get any styrofoam peanuts in packages that arrived by mail. Most packaging stores will gladly accept those for their own reuse.

Holiday cards? Recycling is an option for the cards that don't have foil or glitter, but another possibility is to reuse them for next year's gift tags. You can have your children cut out the designs and then pack them away with the decorations until next year. If your kids really like cutting out the penguins, snowflakes, and Santas, they may even turn it into a craft project to keep them busy while they're out of school this week. Ask them to create a winter scene from all the cutouts or have them make up a story to go with it.

What about you? What sort of excess is your home suffering from after the holidays? Feel free to post your own tips in the Comments.