I’m back in Arizona again and spring is in full force. The desert has come alive with flowering trees, cacti and plants. Whenever the wind stirs the air is full of heavenly fragrance and it is magical. Birds are abundant as they make their way north.
I’ve taken a few shots of the desert in bloom, my favorite season to be in Arizona as everything comes to life.
Havana is a phenomenal place for street photography. The once elegant mansions in various states of decay and renovation, the colorful people and attire, and the never-ending photo opportunities could leave you snapping shots all day long.
In fact, there are few places (besides Paris and Antigua, Guatemala) that I’ve found so incredibly photogenic as I did in Old Havana. I could have spent days there just walking the winding streets and taking pictures of every day life. To catch of glimpse of the colors, sounds and feel of Old Havana, check out this collection of street shots below. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: This post is a part of a sponsored awareness program and campaign by Seventh Generation to raise awareness and demand change to the Toxic Substances Control Act by April 30, 2014. All the research for this post was provided by Seventh Generation but all the views below are my own.
As a mom, advocate and someone who cares deeply about our planet, I have joined an exciting new campaign sponsored by Seventh Generation, a leading producer and distributor of environmentally-safe household products, to raise awareness about the hundreds of toxic chemicals in our products that are hurting our families and our world.
Toxic chemicals are a great concern of mine. I take pride in the fact that I read product labels carefully and always try to buy environmentally friendly and safe products to use in my home. This applies to every product I by: Food, household products and toiletries such as shampoo, conditioner and soap. I honestly thought I was doing a good job by keeping nasty, toxic chemicals out of my body, my families bodies and the environment.
Yet like most consumers, I was wrong. I was unaware that of the 85,000 synthetic chemicals introduced into the American market since the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed in 1976, only a mere 10% of them have required testing by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Therefore, that means thousands of synthetic chemicals are currently being used in our products that we have no idea whether or not they are safe to our bodies and our planet.
This has been a very long winter. It has been known as the coldest winter in 30 years with 50 days below zero degrees (our average is 20). Even our local weatherman Paul Douglas made fun of our unbearable winter with a badge we could wear that said “I survived the worst winter ever”. Although it is technically spring, sadly our winter is long from over.
Yesterday feeling the effects of a long, harsh winter on a whim I drove to downtown Minneapolis and headed to some much needed color and inspiration at the Macy’s Secret Garden Show. As I rode up the escalator to the eighth floor auditorium, I could smell the delicious fragrance of flowers that became happily overpowering as I headed to the entrance. I was entranced by that long forgotten smell.
As soon as I stepped inside The Secret Garden I was in heaven. My pure white world exploded into vibrant hues of pinks, reds, yellows and orange. Those long forgotten pleasures to the eyes that brought a smile to my tired soul.
Come, take a walk with me through Macy’s Secret Garden. Close your eyes after and inhale the sweet fragrance of a million flowers.
Cuba has never been known for its cuisine and we were warned to expect lots of beans and rice, and unexciting meals during our week-long trip to Cuba. I found it surprising that Cuban food in Cuba would be so bad as I have eaten at a local Cuban restaurant here in Minneapolis countless times and have always loved the flavor of my meals. I decided to remain optimistic and see for myself without passing judgment.
I was unexpectedly surprised that not only was most of the food I ate in Cuba delicious, like Cuba itself cuisine was in the midst of a revolution.
A delicious meal we had a a gastronomical school in Havana where servers, cooks and staff are honing their skills.
Author’s note: A modified version of this post was published today as well on Elephant Journal. To see this post click here.
This Saturday, March 22, is World Water Day – a day delegated by the United Nations to recognize the importance and need of safe water around the world. In honor of this important day, I am thrilled to be working with the Mom Bloggers for Social Good and WaterAid to help raise awareness of the desperate need for safe drinking water and sanitation around the world. Safe water and sanitation transforms lives and is one of the keys to bringing people out of poverty.
What it’s all about. A Day. A Message. A Vision for Change. “Every drop Every Day”.
Every day, millions of women walk miles to fetch water, often carrying a child too. When the child gets too heavy to carry, they are left at home, often unsupervised. Photo credit: WaterAid.
Did you know that 783 million people do not have access to safe drinking water?
Step back and think about this statistic for a moment. What would you do if you were not able to simply turn on your faucet and fill up your glass or pot with clean, safe water? How would you manage and care for your family?
To most of us in the Western world, the thought of not having instant access to clean, safe drinking water is literally unimaginable. However, for 11 % of the world’s population, this is a tragic reality. When you combine having unsafe drinking water with poor sanitation, it leads to diarrhea which kills 2,000 children every single day. Something completely unthinkable to many of us.
Millions of people are trapped in a world in which clean, fresh and safe water is not even a remote option and sanitation is also lacking. In fact, 1 in 3 people worldwide or 2.5 billion people – do not have access to a safe, private toilet. Not having safe water and sanitation lead to dire consequences and sadly reinforces illnesses, disease and death while significantly contributing to poverty.
In honor of bringing attention to the importance of safe water and sanitation for all, WaterAid has asked that we share our #WaterStory. When I was in India this past May with Mom Bloggers for Social Good, I saw firsthand how safe drinking water and sanitation needs impact people living in extreme poverty. I spent a scorching afternoon with temperatures climbing almost to 120 degrees Fahrenheit touring one of WaterAid’s work sites. Here is my story.
My Water Story:
Behind the beautiful, lavish parts of Delhi always lies the most abject poverty imaginable. I have read several books on the slums of India and thought I’d know what to expect when I saw them in person. Yet nothing I’d ever seen in all my years of travel could have prepared me for the stark reality of desperation, misery and despair of walking through a real live slum in the heart of India’s capital.
Women sitting outside the American Embassy near the Vivekananda Camp, an unauthorized slum in Delhi, India.
In the background of the lush green, beautiful grounds of the American Embassy lies the Vivekananda Camp, one of many unauthorized slums that surround every single part of Delhi. We visited this slum as part of our tour with WaterAid, a global NGO that provides safe drinking water and sanitation to areas around the world that do not have access to it.
The stark contrast between the neighboring American Embassy and the Vivekananda Slum were almost too hard to morally comprehend. These two places represent the immense contradictions and inequalities that can be found all throughout Delhi and India as a whole. One of the greatest inequalities ever seen anywhere in the world is right there staring into your face, making it impossible to not feel deeply distraught.
In the Vivekananda Camp, a slum of approximately 500 households, there is no running water, no sewer lines and people live in absolute dire circumstances. Thanks to WaterAid, improvements to sanitation have been made by the building of a Community Toilet Complex (CTC), a compound containing 20 toilets for women, 20 for men and a few for children as well as a couple of showers, providing some sort of dignity in a place where dignity hardly exists.
The Community Toilet Compound (CTC) inside the Vivekananda unauthorized slum.
The entrance to the CTC which is a pay per use system costing 1 Rupee ($0.02) per use for women, 2 Rupees per use for men and free for children. The charge is used to maintain the facility.
Inside the women’s CTC. This one is a clean facility. Others have run into problems with clogged sewers. Each CTC is managed and monitored by a community worker from FORCE, a local NGO. Therefore, when there are issues with a CTC it can be resolved.
This concrete wall was added to the women’s toilet and shower area to provide privacy from the peeping Toms.
A Vivekananda women using the CTC (left) and a FORCE Project Coordinator on the right.
Vivekananda Slum.
Less than a third of people ( 772 million people) have access to sanitation in India, and 90 million people in India do not have access to safe water per WaterAid. Over 186,000 children under five die from diarrhea every year. With 17% of the world’s population (over a billion people), the water crisis in India is only getting worse and is becoming life or death for millions of people.
This post was written on behalf of my meeting with WaterAid India and our tour of the Vivekananda Slum. All statistics are sourced from WaterAid. All photos are mine.
What you can do:
Just in time for World Water Day, WaterAid is teaming up with Mom Bloggers for Social Good and Global Team of 200 member Jennifer Barbour March 16 – 23 to get a firsthand look at community involvement around water, toilets and hygiene education stands to revolutionize life within the Latin American Caribbean region.
We’ll be meeting up with inspirational women and girls who are eager to share their own #waterstory: a telling example of how smart investments around safe water and toilets can drive entrepreneurship, empower women and improve the health and wellbeing of entire communities.
Follow the journey on Jennifer’s blog and on social media using #WaterAidNica, then join us for a special World Water Day Twitter chat on Friday, March 21, 1pm ET, where Jennifer will be sharing her experience and welcoming your questions about all that she’s seen.
Despite Cuba’s archaic, exceedingly slow and pricey internet services I managed to share a few shots on Instagram of this gorgeous colorful country. Here are some of my favorites that live, breathe and feel the amazing photographic moments of a week in Cuba.
A morning walk in Old Havana
Author’s note: Many readers have asked lots of questions about Cuba and why the US continues to have an embargo after 50 years. America’s relationship with Cuba is a fascinating albeit complicated topic. My goal for this post is to briefly outline the complex history between Cuba and the United States. It is a daunting task and by no means am I an expert. All the information used to write this post was gained from my people-to-people visits, interviews with Cubans, and reading and research on Cuban-American relations. I feel it is hard to explain Cuba without explaining her long fight for freedom and revolutionary past. – thirdeyemom
I saw this man in Trinidad and he fit the bill of my image of a true Cuban.
Cuba is a place of perseverance, pride and frustration. In order to get an understanding of how today’s Cuba evolved, it is essential to dig back in time and examine Cuba’s turbulent past and struggle for independence after years of colonial rule.
Like many parts of the world, Cuba had an indigenous population who were living peacefully before Cuba was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1492 during Columbus’ first expedition to the Americas.
The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492-1500. Source: WIkipedia Free Commons
One of the true joys of going on a people-to-people tour in Cuba was the fascinating look inside the real life and culture of Cubans. Our first cultural visit occurred on the very day we arrived in Havana after a charter flight from Miami that morning. We were met at the airport by our fabulous, charismatic Cuban guide Abel, and taken to see the work and community art of Cuba’s most celebrated ceramic artist, José Rodriguez Fuster, at his outdoor ceramic fantasyland “Fusterlandia”.
A step inside “Fusterlandia” is like taking a walk inside a Disneyland of art. The entire community surrounding José Fuster’s studio and home is decorated in Fuster’s unique style of mixing painting and ceramic and it is utterly surreal.
As a mother and advocate who cares deeply about our planet and is extremely concerned about global climate change, the debate about palm oil is extremely important to me. Earlier in the year, I wrote about palm oil on behalf of Rainforest Action Network in the following post here and argued that large food manufacturers must put an end to using conflict palm oil in their food. Sadly, palm oil is found in nearly 50 percent of the packaged foods on our grocery store shelves, and it is also the leading cause of orangutan extinction and rainforest destruction in Indonesia and Malaysia.
After learning about the negative impact of conflict palm oil, I made a personal choice to ban buying any products or brands that use conflict palm oil in their products. Like my issue with chocolate (read my post “The Dark Side of Chocolate”), ethically I feel it is a decision I had to made. I said goodbye to my favorite peanut butter and also stopped buying Cheese-Its for my kids. When they asked me why I explained what conflict palm oil is doing to our environment and why it is critical that we speak up about it.
Speaking out against conflict palm oil has definitely lead to some exciting changes. Earlier this week, Mars Inc. a 30 billion dollar US snack food company, heeded the pressure of advocacy groups such as Rainforest Action Network and announced a sweeping new responsibly palm oil procurement commitment plan that promises to eliminate rainforest destruction, human rights violations and climate pollutions from their supply chains or be dropped by 2015. (Read full press release here).
Given the new developments in the palm oil debate, I wanted to feature a guest post about palm oil along with a recent US Scorecard released by the Union of Concerned Scientists about the recent push for debate about conflict palm oil.
Infographic courtesy of Rainforest Action Network
I have dreamed of going to Cuba ever since I was a teenager standing at the edge of Mallory Square in Key West, Florida. There near the end of the square lies a certain landmark that boosts we are at the southernmost part of the continental United States and that Cuba lingers only 90 miles away.
For five years straight in the early 90s, I traveled with my family to the Florida Keys over the Christmas holidays to escape the long and brutal winter in Minnesota. We spent every New Year’s Eve in Key West, a town known for its margaritas, Jimmy Buffett and the end of the road before Cuba. I always wondered what this forbidden island was like.
Landmark in Key West Florida. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Free Commons.
Sadly, American tourists have been unable to travel freely to Cuba ever since the US-imposed embargo that severed Cuba from the United States in 1960. Deemed by many as an absolute failure, it is surprising that the blockade or bloqueo as the Cubans call it continues. But that is an entirely different issue in itself.
After a recent trip to Cuba, I discovered that Cuban life is all a matter of perspective. As I mentioned in my last post “A Taste of Cuba“, the country is perhaps one of the most fascinating places I’ve been given its eclectic mix of history, culture and politics. What makes Cuba so incredibly interesting is that almost everything has been magically frozen in time since the Cuban Revolution over half a century ago.
One of the most prevalent examples of this reality can be seen in Cuba’s architecture. Once gorgeous buildings and mansions of a rather decadent era are today in various states of decay as time leaves her mark. Some have been beautifully restored to their previous grandeur while others are slowly but surely being regentrified. For me, it is all a matter of perspective as to whether there still remains beauty in the peeling paint, the crumbling facades and the deteriorating walls of Cuba’s phenomenal past.
Here is an old Spanish Colonial mansion found in Old Havana and typical of the 18th century, in the process of restoration. Let’s take a look and judge for yourself.
The remains of a once glorious past.
The stairs to the top.
