Whole Life Times: Pretty Poison

August 2005 | From the Editor

Pretty Poison

If you were a public servant in charge of beautifying the state’s roads, how would you choose what to plant? You might seek out brightly-colored, fast-growth plants with lots of green foliage to break up the monotony of the seemingly endless stretches of pavement. Something aggressive that thrives without water. Something like… oleander. Good choice, you may be thinking—totally unaware that oleander is highly toxic to humans.

Just one leaf of oleander ingested by a child is enough to kill. Seductive as the bloom may be, this poisonous beauty certainly doesn’t belong in places where children play. But perhaps it shouldn’t be grown anywhere—even places that children don’t frequent, like highway medians—in a state plagued by periodic raging infernos. I can’t help but wonder what effect these burning toxins would have—do have—on our lungs. If you’d like more information about oleander, azalea and other poisonous plants, go to www.calpoison.org.

We count on the state to keep our highways clear, but what about our minds? It concerns me that we still get bombarded with anxiety-producing emails warning about all sorts of urban myths that can easily be debunked. Basically, they’re spam. I like to investigate suspicious in-box arrivals at the easy to use hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HoaxBustersHome.html, but there are several other websites on the Internet that shed light on urban lore.

And how many times have you been asked to sign a petition and forward it if you’re the hundredth or thousandth signer? The easiest way to check the validity of those petitions, or confirm what they’ll really be used for, is to send an email to the final destination (although I once got a petition that didn’t list a final destination email address at all!). Every time I do that—and I do it every time—a message comes back telling me the petition crashed some server somewhere a long time ago and no longer has any relevance. And yet, intelligent people, many of them college-educated, continue to pass these along, cluttering up our email and distracting us from pursuing more effective activist endeavors.

Of course the best strategy for those particularly irritating forwards that insist you unload them on 15 of your dearest friends or pay the consequences is: return to sender.

I guess that’s what some of our former friends around the world are saying to Americans these days—or at least to our foreign policy. A recent Pew poll shows that the British, 83% of whom were enthusiastic about the US back in ’99, now give us only a 55 percent approval rating. France gave us 62 percent then—a rate that has plummeted to 43. Our BackWords writer this month, Jesse Kornbluth, discovered this without looking at any poll results; he experienced it firsthand on a recent visit to Paris. But, no surprise, India and Russia are happier with us now—thousands of outsourced jobs have been a boon to their economy.

Here’s the solution to outsourcing: shop locally. WLT took a short drive to Camarillo to meet with a man who supplies a very important ingredient to our lives. You might recognize his name from several of the farmers’ markets—Phil McGrath of McGrath Family Farms. Forget any preconceptions you may have about farmers—this dude is cool! After spending a couple of hours listening to him talk about the earth, the organic crops he grows and the children he hopes to introduce to the wonders and importance of working the land, farming starts to seem like the only sane lifestyle. Sure it’s hard work and fraught with financial risk, but the benefits are extraordinary. Your air is clean, your food is pure and you’re in close touch with the earth. And you can sing loudly on the job and nobody complains!

Gas prices are going anywhere but down this summer, so opt to walk or ride your bike, and shop at your local farmers’ market (now bursting with the best of the season). Not only will you get into shape—you’ll feel great.

From my heart,
Abigail Lewis

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