Our two weeks are up and Art is off to Alberta again. The weather was not nice until the end of his time home. It feels more like spring now but I'm sure it won't last. It's too early yet for us to move into the warm weather but Art packed his shorts and his soccer gear because the weather is nice in the Fort. Oh my, the winter is long on this coast and although I've mostly made my peace with it, I really miss living in places with longer summers.

My brother, Rick, was here for a couple weeks. He found it cold, which it was, he's used to that warm BC weather. It was nice to see him and I know my parents enjoyed his visit and we're hoping he comes back soon. We got to hang out and do lots of catching up with family we don't see that often. This is a picture of me, my Aunt Audrey and Rick the night before he left.




Josiah and Papa

Hannah and I



Rick, Aunt Avis and Mom

These pictures were provided by my Aunt Avis as my camera is still among the missing. Art located my lost birth certificate and the missing package of underwear while he was home but unfortunately the iPod and camera are still lost.

I had sent a couple of Globe and Mail articles around a few weeks ago regarding some research that had been done on the dangers of plastic. In case you didn't read it you can access it at www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070406.wbisphenolA0407/EmailBNStory/Front/home but you would have to purchase it now. It's an important article though and a must read. One of the things that Art and I have been working on has been the issue around bottled water. For any concerned parents there is another helpful link sent to me by another concerned mother at
www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=77083

We drink a lot of water in our house and it comes from plastic bottles. Art is the only one who drinks the water from the tap. I have heard all the arguments for and against tap water and yet I still don't feel comfortable drinking it and I don't give it to my kids. But after this article I found myself weighing the good against the bad and wondering if maybe in my case the fluoride was the lesser of the two evils. Then I was reading an article this past weekend on Vitamin D deficiency and came across an interesting link to some research done on the fluoride issue. I tried to attach the link to my blog but was unable to so I'm going to give instructions on how to get there. In the sidebar there is a link to a site called the Vitamin D Council, click on this then scroll down to 'Items of Interest' and click on Statins and Vitamin D Deficiency, scroll down to a link on the right hand side of the screen called 6 degrees (there's a picture of a cute little girl) and then click on 'watch my video'. It's only about 30 minutes but very informative and is an interview with the author of a book called The Fluoride Deception. So after doing more research we found that there are only two ways to get the fluoride out of your water and both are expensive but when you watch this video you'll probably agree that it's worth it. It was interesting and shocking to hear about the research done by a neurotoxicologist, Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, of the Forsyth Dental Centre in Boston, showing that small doses of fluoride in water given to lab rats produced the same symptoms as ADD and hyperactivity disorder and that it appears to be linked to lowered IQ levels in children as well as problems with memory. She was subsequently 'let go', smeared and not able to obtain funding for any more of her research projects. Another important fact from the video is that 98% of Western Europe has rejected water fluoridation. If you believe your water is safe then what prompts such a drastic move by the Europeans?

Feel free to leave comments, I'd love to hear what you're thinking.

One more thing, I wanted to make special mention of a few important Nova Scotians who passed on in the past month. The first was Ransom Myers, a reseracher at Dalhousie University, who documented the decline of many ocean species including the cod on the east coast of Canada. He worked for DFO while I was still there in the 90's. He published many papers on the declining fish stocks and was censored when he blamed the government's inability to manage the stocks properly instead of towing the line and blaming good old Mother Nature. He finally packed it in and left although the bullying followed him to Dal where researchers were threatened that their funding would be cut if they continued to buck the government. As quoted by Ransom Myers from an article in the Nova Scotian, "This atmosphere of fear is really unconscionable in a democracy." And in reference to the destruction of the cod stocks, "-we destroyed a biomass larger than the Amazonian rainforests-". I heard an interview on CBC radio just after he died that originally ran last year where he told of leatherback turles off the coast of Nova Scotia as big as VW bugs which are hundreds of years old and I was stunned. The leatherback is an endangered species and probably the closest kin to the dinosaur. The week before he died he published a paper on sharks and how they are heading in the same direction unless we make some serious decisions. Ransom Myers died of a brain tumor on March 27 at age 54.

Then there was Jocelyne Couture-Nowak who was the teacher from Truro who was killed at Virginia Tech. Although she wasn't from Nova Scotia she spent a great deal of time here left a mark by opening a francophone school in Truro.

And on a very personal front Norman Phillips, the husband of my friend Rhonda Munroe's mother, Doris and Frank McAvoy, the father of one of my oldest friends, Frances McAvoy both died this month. The families of all are in my thoughts.