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"Turn again to life"

by Mary Lee Hall

If I should die and leave you here a while,
be not like others sore undone,
who keep long vigil by the silent dust.
For my sake turn again to life and smile,
nerving thy heart and trembling hand
to do something to comfort other hearts than thine.
Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine
and I perchance may therein comfort you.

"Part of the One Life"

"You are not separate from nature. We are all part of the One Life that manifests itself in countless forms throughout the universe, forms that are all completely interconnected. When you recognize the sacredness, the beauty, the incredible stillness and dignity in which a flower or a tree exists, you add something to the flower or the tree. Through your recognition, your awareness, nature too comes to know itself. It comes to know its own beauty and sacredness through you."

--Eckhart Tolle

Photos by Anthony F. Chiffolo

"You need nature as your teacher"

 

"You need nature as your teacher to help you reconnect with Being. But not only do you need nature, it also needs you."

--Eckhart Tolle

Photos by Anthony F. Chiffolo

"The whole world belongs to you"

"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."

--Lao Tzu

Photos copyright Anthony F. Chiffolo

"Lady butterfly"

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

 

--Maya Angelou

“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.”

 

--Hans Christian Anderson

Lady butterfly

perfumes her wings

by floating

over the orchid.

 

--Basho

 

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

 

--Richard Bach

Real Cost of Bottled Water

Bottled Water: wholesale price/gallon in 2011: $1.21 (http://www.bottledwater.org/economics/real-cost-of-bottled-water )

Poland Springs home delivery: $1.93/gallon (http://www.polandspring.com/#/home ).
Crystal Springs home delivery: $1.20/gallon (http://www.water.com/shopping/budget-plan-select-quantity.jsf ).

"I decided to do a little math to see exactly how much the cost of bottled water purchased on the street compares to what comes out of the tap in New York City. By my calculations, filling a 16.9-ounce bottle with genuine NYC tap water costs about 1.3 tenths of a cent, compared to $1 to buy bottled water (95 cents if you return the bottle for the deposit, which, based on the number of bottles I see in the city's trash bins, not many people do.) If you were to refill a 16.9-ounce bottle with city tap water every day for a year, you'd pay 48 cents. Let me repeat that: That's 48 cents for the entire year! (Okay, it might be a little higher if you run the water until it gets cold.) In comparison, buy a $1 bottle of water every day, and you'd pay $346, sans the deposit. That's more than 700 times the cost of tap...."
--Anthony Giorgianni, July 12, 2011,  http://news.consumerreports.org/money/2011/07/a-dollar-for-a-bottle-of-water-what-would-martians-think.html

Photos by Anthony F. Chiffolo

Comparative Prices

U.S. Gasoline Prices (http://gasbuddy.com/GB_Price_List.aspx ):
--Low: $3.579/gallon--Mississippi and South Carolina
--High: $4.325/gallon--Hawai'i

U.S. Milk Prices (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost ):
$3.428/gallon U.S. average in July 2012

Photos by Anthony F. Chiffolo

There Is No "Easy" Button

"The hard facts are these: If we sum up the easy, cost-effective, eco-efficiency measures we should all embrace, the best we get is a slowing of the growth of environmental damage ... Obsessing over recycling and installing a few special light bulbs won't cut it. We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss. Which is a pity, since Americans are at their best when they're struggling together, and sometimes with one another, toward difficult goals ... Surely we must do the easy things: They slow the damage and themselves become enabling symbols of empathy for future generations. But we cannot permit our leaders to sell us short. To stop at 'easy' is to say that the best we can do is accept an uninspired politics of guilt around a parade of uncoordinated individual action."

--Michael Maniates, Professor of Political Science and Environmental Science, Allegheny College

Photos by Anthony F. Chiffolo