Bianca Serecin

The PETA Files | Human Remains Found in Meat Wrappers

biancaserecin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:35:34 +0000

The PETA Files | Human Remains Found in Meat Wrappers.

Aug09

Human Remains Found in Meat Wrappers

Posted at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Meat is murder, and disturbing new facts released last week about the case of convicted British Columbia pig farmer turned serial killer Robert Pickton show just how dead-on the saying is.

The Province reports, “In Pickton’s freezer were eight packages of meat both chunked and ground, some wrapped in plastic, some in butcher’s paper. These were the last remains of Inga Hall and Cindy Dawn Feliks.” The provincial health officer also warned in 2004 that the remains of some of Pickton’s victims may have been mixed in with pig flesh sold from his farm.

It should go without saying that no one—whether they have two legs or four—deserves to be tortured, killed, cut up, and eaten, and that’s why PETA ran this billboard in Edmonton after the murders:

So … who are you having for dinner? I think I’ll stick to food that didn’t have a face.

Posted by Lindsay Pollard-Post

To-Go Ware | Bamboo Cutlery | Reusable Lunch Bags | Stainless Steel Lunch Boxes

biancaserecin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:32:56 +0000

via To-Go Ware | Bamboo Cutlery | Reusable Lunch Bags | Stainless Steel Lunch Boxes.

Help Ben Hardt Release 3 Albums In 9 Months! by benhardt — Kickstarter

biancaserecin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:24:39 +0000

via Help Ben Hardt Release 3 Albums In 9 Months! by benhardt — Kickstarter.

Pa. bill would legalize marijuana as therapeutic option

biancaserecin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 01:22:04 +0000

Pa. bill would legalize marijuana as therapeutic option.

Pa. bill would legalize marijuana as therapeutic option

Sunday, July 11, 2010

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press

A medical-marijuana user smokes a water pipe in Portland, Maine, where the state on Friday awarded six of eight licenses to dispensaries.

They’re lighting up joints in Bryn Mawr and Squirrel Hill after putting the kids to bed.

At Abay, an ultra-hip eatery in East Liberty, pro-medical marijuana activists are recruiting and organizing new members over martinis.

And in Harrisburg, some legislators are pushing for passage of a bill that would make Pennsylvania the 15th state to legalize medical marijuana — if New York and Maryland don’t beat them to it.

Pot is hot.

Long known as America’s most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is no longer just a habit for aging baby boomers reliving the ’60s. Fragile multiple sclerosis sufferers and chemo patients swear by it. In the movies, positive images abound: In “It’s Complicated,” Santa Barbara matron Meryl Streep gets stoned to hilarious effect, while on television’s “Nurse Jackie,” Edie Falco helps a chemo patient fashion a bong for his joint.

While U.S. marijuana use has shown a consistent decline since the mid-1990s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, that trend has stalled, with prevalence rates the same in 2009 as they were five years ago.

And back in the real world, affluent forty-somethings are lighting up after work, giving new meaning to “Happy Hour.”

Just ask Lisa (not her real name).

“Let me shut the door,” she said during a telephone interview from her Downtown office where she works for a financial institution. A self-described “urban professional and mom” and wife of a successful lawyer, she likes to sit in her sleek, granite-and-maple kitchen in Squirrel Hill on Friday nights and de-stress with a joint.

“I do it once a week,” Lisa said. “It’s a nice release from the week’s tensions, and I can feel my body calming down — and it’s less calories than wine,” she added with a laugh.

Even as the drug war continues to rage along our nation’s borders and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s website declares marijuana to be “dangerous,” even as Congress refuses to repeal its declaration that smoked marijuana is without “current medical benefit,” recreational use of marijuana has continued unabated in this country.

Now, California — the first state to allow medical marijuana use — will vote in November on a ballot initiative legalizing all pot use.

A new RAND Corp. study released last week found, however, that while legalizing marijuana could increase consumption, it would also cut the drug’s price by as much as 80 percent — making it unlikely that the cash-strapped state will realize projections for $1 billion in revenue.

If legalization regulating and taxing the sale of pot passes — and a recent California poll found support for the measure at more than 50 percent — other states will surely follow.

Just not Pennsylvania.

A recent Franklin & Marshall poll found that 81 percent of Pennsylvanians supported making medical marijuana legal — up from 76 percent in 2006. But a medical marijuana bill was introduced only a year ago in the state House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor oppose it.

The measure has not come up for a vote in either chamber. Still, medical marijuana’s passage in Pennsylvania is only a matter of time, said Mark Cohen, D-Philadelphia, sponsor of the House bill.

“There’s real momentum” for the bill, said Mr. Cohen, whose father suffers from Crohn’s disease. The time has come, he believes, to expand medical options to alleviate patient suffering, citing research that has found marijuana can be therapeutic in treating Crohn’s, cancer, glaucoma and other debilitating conditions.

Karen would agree. A restaurant manager in Westmoreland County who asked that her real name not be used, she has suffered from bulimia for the past 10 years. In addition to therapy, she’s found that marijuana is more effective than antidepressants at soothing her stomach and increasing her desire to eat.

“I was on Xanax, but it irritated my stomach, and it’s easy to get hooked on, whereas with marijuana, if I miss a day, it’s not the end of the world,” she said. “I’m not going to go out and rob a bank so I can get some.”

All of this may be true, but what really seems to be driving the bill is the need for new revenue. The RAND report notwithstanding, a tax on medical marijuana could add millions to state coffers that weren’t there before. Plus, the fact that so many other states have passed similar laws — most recently New Jersey, on whom Pennsylvania’s law is based, plus pending approval by New York, Maryland, Minnesota and New Hampshire — may improve the bill’s chances, he said.

“Combined with New Jersey, that will mean we’re all but surrounded,” said Mr. Cohen.

Still, he hastened to add, Pennsylvania will not follow California’s example in administering the law.

In Los Angeles, dubbed “The Wild West of Weed” by Newsweek last fall, medical marijuana dispensaries have popped up on every corner. There have been robberies and shootings at the cash-only shops, and otherwise healthy young people with “back pain” are wangling permission from unscrupulous doctors to obtain the drug.

Under proposed legislation, Pennsylvania’s program would be far more restrictive, Mr. Cohen said, with jurisdiction over it assigned to the state’s Departments of Revenue and Health. It would permit personal cultivation of up to six plants and would establish a distribution system regulated by the health department.

“Pennsylvania has a very active medical board of licensure,” he said, “and I’m sure nothing will happen like California, where you’ve got doctors located a few steps from the beach.”

Still, it would face a likely veto from whoever occupies the governor’s office. Both Democrat Dan Onorato and Republican Tom Corbett oppose medical marijuana legislation, and many law enforcement officials remain adamantly adverse to it — even if police in the Pittsburgh area and Philadelphia don’t pursue cases involving first-time offenses and small amounts of the drug as aggressively as other drug cases.

The tendency is to work them out as summary offenses, said Mike Manko, a spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., adding, however, that “any time a drug case comes in, even at preliminary hearing level, they’ll always check with our narcotics unit to make sure this isn’t someone known to them.”

In Philadelphia’s jammed courts, marijuana arrests are usually the last cases to be heard during the day, and because an arresting officer can’t wait for hours, the judge usually just throws out the case, said Lynn Abraham, that city’s former district attorney and a vocal opponent of efforts to loosen marijuana laws, including medical marijuana.

“Why is it that in California most people using it are 20 to 35 years old? Give me a break. Is this what we want to become in Pennsylvania?” she asked. “A pleasure palace? Yikes. We’re just going to turn into a bunch of spoiled, self-indulgent dope heads.”

Others in the field of drug addiction oppose the bill for different reasons. Medical marijuana’s efficacy should be determined by scientific research and the FDA approval process, not by politicians, said Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director of Gateway Rehabilitation Center.

“I do believe marijuana has medicinal properties, so let’s evaluate it like other medicines,” he said.

That’s just the problem, pro-pot activists said — federal drug policies don’t allow research into smoked marijuana.

Because marijuana is classified by federal statute as a Schedule I drug — along with heroin — researchers are prohibited from providing it to study participants , although compounds extracted from cannabis can be used in clinical trials. Marinol, a synthetic version of pot’s active ingredient, THC, is available by prescription for relieving nausea, and Sativex, which contains THC and other cannabinoids, is undergoing FDA scrutiny. If made available, it may be so effective for MS and cancer sufferers it may make the medical marijuana debate moot.

Scientific research into marijuana’s risks has found that smoking marijuana does damage the lungs, and it can impair brain function for longer periods of time than alcohol while driving. And while pot is not considered physically addictive for most adults, pot smoking can be risky for young people.

A current study at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry has recruited 20 people — half of them heavy pot smokers — to explore whether smoking marijuana under age 14 increases the risk of schizophrenia, as has been indicated in some studies.

The Obama administration has declared it will not use federal money to prosecute low-level medical marijuana cases as long as the defendants are complying with state law. But federal drug policy remains unchanged and marijuana’s legalization remains so politically fraught that it makes “any rational approach unlikely,” said Peter Cohen, a physician and an adjunct law professor at Georgetown University who has written extensively on the issue.

“It will be interesting to see what the Department of Justice does should recreational marijuana be legalized,” he said. If California makes all pot use legal, “at that point there will be a direct conflict between state and federal law, and the Obama administration will probably have no choice but to take action against California’s legalization.

Patrick Nightingale, a local attorney and head of the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said his group isn’t using medical marijuana as a stalking horse for future legalization of all marijuana use.

At a recent meeting with medical marijuana supporters, he vigorously urged recruits to get involved with efforts to lobby legislators for passage of a medical-use bill.

It was, in fact, the proverbial smoke-filled back room — in this case, the cave-like Abay bar in East Liberty — where incense curled languorously from ashtrays and mostly young, healthy-looking people lounged on banquettes. Carefully balancing a martini, Mr. Nightingale walked through the state’s legislation and asked for volunteers.

A lot of people raised their hands, and, in fact, public reaction across the state in favor of the bill has been overwhelming.

“I’ve been here 25 years, and I’ve never seen more public reaction to any bill,” said Leon Czikowsky, an aide to Mr. Cohen.

No surprise there: Pro-pot activists are a highly vocal, well-organized, well-funded constituency, as the Obama administration found to its chagrin during the transition after the 2008 election when it created an online site for people to submit ideas to the president under a “crowdsourcing” model in which the “best-rated” ideas would rise to the top.

The highest ranking idea? Legalization of marijuana — along with revoking the Church of Scientology’s tax-exempt status.

Kina Grannis – Together {Live}

biancaserecin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:06:16 +0000

YouTube – Kina Grannis – Together (Live).

Mother-of-Pearl Buttons From the Banks of the Mississippi

biancaserecin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 02:30:05 +0000

Mother-of-Pearl Buttons From the Banks of the Mississippi :: Etsy Blog.

Mother-of-Pearl Buttons From the Banks of the Mississippi

Pearl buttons are cooler than plastic, and not just because they bring a tiny gleam to the dresses and shirts onto which they’re stitched. If you put your pearl button up to your cheek and then do the same with a plastic one, you’ll notice an actual difference in temperature.

That’s just one of the things I learned when I visited the Pearl Button Museum in Muscatine, Iowa. I also discovered that pearl buttons are heavier than plastic, and that they make a different sound as they slide through your fingers.

As a transplanted Californian who spent her childhood obsessively collecting shells, I’d always assumed that lustrous, white mother-of-pearl buttons came from the ocean. But there was a time when 37 percent of the world’s buttons (in 1905, that was 1.5 billion buttons) came from the glossy inner surfaces of freshwater mollusk shells harvested by citizens of this small town on the Mississippi River.

Muscatine’s downtown today is a sleepy place

with brick buildings on a quiet main street just a block from the river. The Pearl Button Museum isn’t large: on a single floor you can see the flat-bottom boats used to harvest mussels and the machinery to cut, drill, and polish the button “blanks.” You can try your hand at sewing buttons on a card, dip your fingers in buckets of buttons, and count out a gross (144 buttons) with a specially indented wooden paddle.

Historical photos provide insight into a town in which half the workforce (including many children) contributed to the button industry. After the mussels were collected — a process known as clamming — men and women worked in camps along the water heating and opening the mussels, removing the meat and any irregular-shaped freshwater pearls (called “slugs”) they were lucky enough to find. Hundreds of men worked in the cutting shops, cutting blanks — the basic shape of the button — from the shiny inner surface of the shells, while others operated machinery that carved designs on the blanks and drilled the holes.

Image courtesy of the Muscatine History and Industry Center

Women shaped fancier buttons against rotating emery wheels and removed the dark surface or “bark” on buttons by machine; sorted buttons by color, iridescence, and size; and sewed them onto cards. The dozens of factories in town ranged from the Hawkeye Button Company, that once employed 800 people and had offices in New York and St. Louis, to myriad mom-and-pop operations.
The riverbanks and alleys of Muscatine were piled high with leftover shells. Tons were crushed to create street surfaces, fertilizer, stucco, and even gravel for the bottom of fish bowls. Kristin McHugh-Johnston, director of the Muscatine History and Industry Center, said that even today, when she’s working in her garden eight blocks from the river, she sometimes digs up a shell from which buttons were cut.

While Muscatine takes pride in its button heritage — a 28-foot tall bronze sculpture of a “clammer” hoists his clamming forks above the downtown riverfront — the museum displays acknowledge that creating these pearl lovelies was a dirty, dangerous, and low-paying business. Advances in button-making machinery ensured Muscatine’s reign as the “Pearl Button Capitol of the World” for decades, but eventually Mississippi mussels were fished to scarcity and freshwater and ocean shells were shipped to Muscatine for cutting. Plastic buttons, zippers, changes in fashion, and foreign competition led to a decline in the industry. The last Muscatine pearl button was cut in 1967, though production began to slow in the 1930s. There are just three button companies in Muscatine today, all producing plastic buttons and other plastic products.

Most pearl buttons now are made in Asia from clam, mussel, agoya, and abalone shells. Designs are cut with lasers and dyed buttons often receive a polyester coating to protect their surface. Elaborate fusions of rhinestones, plastics, and pearl create elegant buttons, unimaginable in Muscatine’s pearl button heyday.

Still, when I’m at a flea market or antique shop and happen upon those simple, shiny vintage disks, I feel a thrill of pleasure: finding a Blue Bonnet or Lucky Day brand button card adorned with a drawing of a laughing baby or the placket of a manly shirt reminds me of all that I’ve learned about pearl buttons (and about my adopted state). The cool surface of the lustrous discs assures me that this is the real thing

Vintage Ocean Pearl Buttons
from gatheredcomforts

A lifelong sewer/knitter and former weaver/spinner, Linzee Kull McCray, a.k.a. lkmccray, is a writer and editor living in Iowa. She feels fortunate to meet and write about people, from scientists to stitchers, who are passionate about their work. Her freelance writing appears in Quilts and More, Stitch, Fiberarts, American Patchwork and Quilting and more. For more textile musings, visit her blog.

Thanks to Linzee for sharing this little-known piece of craft history.
Was your town once a source for unique goods? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Vintage Pearl Buttons | The Collectors Series

“Excuse me while I light my spliff”

biancaserecin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:59:40 +0000

‘The New Marijuana’: Where Do We Blow From Here? : NPR.

In less than a generation, marijuana has gone from a forbidden drug in America to a readily available commodity. It started when California legalized medical marijuana in 1996, launching a trend that’s now spread across more than a dozen states.

Today, as a result, pot has never been easier to get — and without the risk of relying on some shady street-corner dealer.

Los Angeles, for example, is infamous for having more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks coffee shops. These are the storefronts that sell medicinal pot, typically offering an assortment of designer varieties with names such as Super Bubba Kush, Granddaddy Purple and Hollywood OG. At Venice Beach, one dispensary has become something of a tourist attraction by using carnival-style pitchmen to lure in customers.

You can’t legally buy medicinal pot in California without a note from a doctor, called a recommendation. But anyone suffering as much as a hangnail can find a physician who’ll say yes. It means that virtually any adult Californian who wants weed can get it. And while Los Angeles is moving to drastically reduce the number of dispensaries there, no one imagines that medical marijuana will suddenly become scarce after the crackdown.

From The Series

On Morning Edition: When California voters decide this fall whether to legalize marijuana for everyone 21 or older, it’ll be largely because of the money and efforts of a 47-year old Oakland businessman named Richard Lee. He made a fortune in the medical marijuana business and invested more than $1 million to bankroll the petition drive that got the pot issue on California’s November ballot.

On All Things Considered: Fourteen states and the District of Columbia allow people to use marijuana to treat a wide variety of ailments. Each law is different, but if you look at them in chronological order, a pattern emerges: The laws are becoming stricter. The states passing laws today include more regulation than the early adopters did.

What impact is this new accessibility having on public policy, law enforcement and marijuana consumption? And as California now prepares for a statewide ballot referendum that could make recreational pot legal for anyone 21 or older, are we seeing the start of another movement that could sweep the country?

These are some of the questions we explore in an extensive collaboration between NPR News, Youth Radio and an assortment of member station journalists in our weeklong series, The New Marijuana.

Many states have tough standards for deciding who gets to buy, sell and grow medical marijuana. But in California, the place where the national movement started, the law is so ambiguous that cities and counties are left to set their own guidelines. In Los Angeles, the lack of a coherent and sustainable policy led to the unfettered rush of marijuana dispensaries that only now is being brought under control.

But while some cities see the expanding marijuana industry as a threat, Oakland looks at medicinal pot and sees dollar signs. City officials there licensed four dispensaries that gladly tax their products and pass along the revenue to Oakland.

Richard Lee, 47, the most prominent entrepreneur in the city’s “Oaksterdam” neighborhood, is now the driving force behind a new effort to legalize recreational pot in California. Lee bankrolled the petition drive that got the marijuana issue on the state’s November ballot, even though the measure most likely would violate existing federal law. He’s counting on pragmatism to prevail at a time when California faces an unprecedented fiscal crisis. It’s forcing officials to take a meat cleaver to their budgets for public schools and universities, social welfare programs and state parks.

Lee touts the fact that making marijuana a legal, taxable product could add a billion dollars a year in revenue to the state’s bottom line. Not a cure for what ails California, but no drop in the bucket, either.

What happens in the Golden State this year could have a big impact on the rest of the country. If California decides to make all marijuana legal and starts reaping tax revenue, other states may be tempted to follow, as they have before.

But then, what will the federal government do? Pot remains an illegal drug under federal law. The Justice Department, under the Obama administration, in most cases has no desire to go after medical marijuana. But it’s highly doubtful that recreational pot will get the same free pass from the feds.

Group Pushing For Legalized Marijuana In Pa.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: There is a bill in the Pennsylvania House and another in the state Senate that would legalize medical marijuana.CBS

Sun is Shining! Hooray!

biancaserecin — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:33:55 +0000

Sun is shining, the weather is sweet. Make you want to move your dancing feet. -Bob Marley (Rocks!)

Yay the sun is out today and I am getting ready to head out to work. I pulled some weeds around the raspberry and blueberry bush. Now I feel a little more accomplished today.

Some Sun PLEASE!

biancaserecin — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:28:43 +0000

Will it just stop raining and being cold!! C’mon Spring where are you hiding at? Did I miss something? The weather has been crazy the past few months, since we had winter. Winter was insane!! The amount of snow we got reached record heights and blew the minds of the people of Western Pennsylvania! So this year I decided to start a garden. Adam bought some plants to start me off for my birthday. This is so exciting! I really hope something grows. We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, strawberries, cabbage, carrots, cilantro, arugula, a raspberry bush and blueberry bush. Wish me luck. So to go along with eating healthy I wanted to have homegrown yummy food.

Had dinner last night at the Bocktown Beer and Grill and that was awesome! Adam’s brother picked up a magazine on the way out called Edible Allegheny. Well let me just tell you, I am so excited to have this magazine. It has so much information and events pertaining to local food that I was bursting at the seems with excitement! It’s great to find information regarding a healthy lifestyle.

Today I went to work and in the way I decided to stop at the Market District in Robinson to grab something to eat for breakfast. I stupidly bought fruit from the fruit/cold food bar and spent $9 bucks on a 1lb of fruit! Seriously, who does that? I could have purchased a bundle of fruit of all sorts for so much less. Remind me not do that again!

It’s been too long!

biancaserecin — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:14:46 +0000

Hello Blog world. It’s been quite a while since I posted anything. I haven’t been keeping up with this whole blog thing. I thought it would be easier. I guess I have days when I don’t know what to say or don’t think what I have to say will be interesting. Right now in my life I am focusing on food and eating healthier. I’ve discovered some products from a company called Nutiva They have hemp products such as: hemp seed, hemp oil and even hemp granola bars. Now I know what you are thinking, “Hemp, isn’t that Marijuana? Can you get high from it” Umm NO dummy! Hemp is very good for you, and obviously there isn’t any THC in it. I purchased a sample pack with everything and I have been making Hemp protein shakes, I ate all the hemp granola bars (with sunflower seeds etc. yumm), and I made a hemp Super Food shake (which I love) and I also got coconut oil. Coconut oil is great for cooking ( I’ve been using it instead of butter) and I even put it in my super food shake! It’s good for you skin and hair, and it tastes great too. I have been feeling happy and full of energy. I recommend everyone to try hemp products and you’ll feel great, I promise you! There’s so many benefits to using hemp in your daily life and replacing the bad with the good. Trust me!! Nutiva Hemp Products

Also along with Nutiva I found a Raw food enthusiast Ani Phyo she introduced me to the Super Food Shake . She is coming out with a new cookbook and I will definitely be getting it. I don’t know if I will be going on a Raw food diet, but her recipes look amazing and I can’t wait to try them.

After recently viewing the movie Food Inc. I haven’t been interested in eating meat, especially meat that didn’t come from a happy, well cared for animal. So I have decided that the only way I will eat meat is if it’s local and happy. Happy chickens, cows, pigs, everything! If you have any idea where I can go in Beaver or Allegheny county , let me know.

Eat Well, Live Well

Namaste

प्यार