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Oh the joys of end-of-the-semester stress. Lots is happening
and changing over here and therefore this here blog’s been a bit unloved for
the past couple weeks. So, here I go on catch-up duty. There was One Day
Without Shoes of course, but that’ll get its very own post. Then there was the
fracking rally/hearing that my environmental ethics class went to. It was an
adventure to say the least and a bit of a fail, but such is life. Basically,
there was a bill introduced in Ohio that would give local communities more of a
say in whether they wanted the fracking practice to come to their part of the
world and this bill was only getting one very short hearing. Fracking, also
known as hydraulic fracturing, is a way to extract natural gas by injecting a mix
of water, sand, and chemicals into wells under high pressure. This injection
fractures (hence the name) the shale and creates fissures through which the
natural gas can flow more easily. Sounds great right? (please note the sarcasm)
We just love making our lives easier. [Disclaimer: all of my information came
from my smart little brain and the
Gasland website.] Problem is that this
process uses anywhere from 1 to 8 million gallons of water for each time a well
is fracked and a single well may be fracked up to 18 times. That’s a lot of
water when we have no water to spare.... And, speaking of no water to spare,
oil wells may be up to 18,000 feet deep and the average water aquifer is 20,000
feet deep, so the process of fracking actually endangers our drinking water
supply because of leaking oil and fracking fluid. Yum yum yum! And then there’s
the potential for earthquakes. I mean, what do you expect when millions of
gallons of fracking “mixture,” including 80-300 tons of an assortment of
chemicals, is being injected into the earth under high pressure? If I were
Mother Earth, I’d complain too.
Then there was MS Walk at the Columbus Zoo. Cold, rain, bagels, funny
group pictures (which I sadly can’t find anywhere online yet), and
lorikeet-feeding, all in the name of raising funds for research in search of a
cure for multiple sclerosis. Oh boy oh boy!
And have I mentioned puppy therapy? It’s a thing, really truly
honestly, I swear! I’ve mentioned going to the humane society to volunteer as a
temperament tester and behavior modifier, but really, the best volunteer work
is going into each kennel with the dogs and just loving on them for half an
hour. It’s therapeutic, for you and the dog. Melodie, Liberty, and I tested
this, scientifically of course......
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| Photo credit: Jake |
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| Photo credit: Cailee |
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| Photo credit (for all pictures of Liberty): Melodie |
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