Karen's Creamy Vegan Salad dressing

1 Cup Nayonaise ( this is made by Nasoya and is tofu based )
2 Tblsp Dijon Mustard
2 tsps Tumeric
2 cloves garlic shredded
1/3 cup water
2 Tblsp honey or maple syrup
2 tsps dill weed

optional 1 tblsp organic pickle relish, fresh garden herbs,basil, oregane to taste

Unworthy of a Green Label

If going green is to mean anything or catch on in a meaningful way it must not only be measured by a companies willingness to put on a green roof or distribute organic food. It must not only be measured by their use of energy efficient light bulbs. While it is fine to commend corporations for putting in place practices which help us all out by reducing carbon emissions, we need to stop referring them as green if they continue to have anti-family, anti-union and in general anti-employee practices.

The new green needs to be humane too. Twice this month I have seen where Wal-mart got an award for being greener than several companies which pay fair wages and offer their employees health care AND have other traditionally green practices in place. Natural Health Magazine gave them one of their top ten green company awards in their recent publication.

Wal-mart is now a part of the Twin Cities Living Green Expo, taking up a lot of floor space and ad space, while not managing to pay their workers fairly or give them health care benefits. The very wealthy owners of this mega-store have private jets which they use to come into towns and break up unions. They are responsible for burdening the hospitals of every state in which they do business because their employees use emergency rooms as the doctors they cannot afford. Essentially they fence cheap goods made with low wages abroad, forcing age-old local businesses to close in many a small town. This alone should prevent their entry into events which used to stand for something far more meaningful.

These very wealthy companies should disgust every American especially those who love following a greener ethic. These companies are not green, not by my definition. My definition of green is a company which insists on offering goods which are fair traded, locally and organicially-sourced necessary goods. They pay a living wage and give full health care. medical leave and vacation benefits to its employees. When we allow them to co-opt us because they are doing a few good things, we undermine our entire cause.

While it is true that just by their size alone they can effect a lot of green changes, they need to be told that they need to include fair labor practices in their green portrait.
These CEO’s can afford this without giving up too may golden seatbelts in their private planes.America will be a better country for it, and the Green movement will be able to attract many more members as they see that it is offers a wider umbrella. The Green movement will stand for more than green roofs and incandescent florescent lightbulbs, it will stand for people too.

Lessons I'm Still Learning from My Mom

Lessons I’m Still Learning from my Mom
( With thanks to my friends and family for your love and support)
By Karen I. Shragg

Before an illness grabs you
Like a dog grabs its favorite toy
Before it shakes you down to your very core
Leaving you with a body you barely recognize
Be sure you’ve accumulated the kind of
Friends and family who will love you beyond
The physical person to whom they’ve grown accustom
Take the time today to make one more friend
Call one more relative, make someone smile
For those who are connected to your inner beauty
Will be the ones to remind you
That to them you will always be beautiful
And they will tell you that just when
You need to hear it most
Holding your hand
Giving you courage just when you think you’ve run dry
Giving you a gift you
Need not worry about ever repaying
Because you are just collecting on an investment
You’ve made over the years
With each gesture of love
With each gift of your time
They will be there like beacons on a dark night
Lighting the way to a better tomorrow.

Some of the Best Teachers

Some of the best teachers
Don’t even know they are teaching
But the lessons are there
For us to catch and store
Away for future use
Visiting my mom in the hospital has been like that
Each day I take away a few gems
That I wouldn’t trade for all the organic tea in China
The way she accepts her situation ( bed ridden in ICU for 3 weeks
And counting ) without complaining
The way she cares about others more than herself
The way she can still make me laugh with little quips
But mostly, in a world with people wanting for so many things,
Thinking that they will be happier when they get more stuff,
I asked this grand and gracious lady what she longs for the
most right now.. and she said, “I’d like to go for a walk outside”
So if you are reading this, take the time to go for a walk outside.
Do it for yourself, do it for those who can’t, do if for my mom
Who is still teaching me lessons
Even when she doesn’t know it.

Healthy Smoothie

I've been experimenting on how to give my mom nutrition as she goes through the challenges of chemotherapy. Unfortunately she is not ready to eat or drink much yet as her tastebuds are upside down and my mother who is an admitted chocoholic doesn't like the taste of sweets... meanwhile others can enjoy this delicious smoothie which is so full of fiber and nutrition.. its great for people on the go as well as a drink to boost your immune system. (Hemp powder is available at Linden Hills Coop in the Twin Cities, other co-ops and natural food stores, its full of protein and fiber.)

Put in a blender the following:
2 cups Organic soy vanilla
1/8 cup Aloe gel
4 tblsps Hemp powder
3 Tblsps Vanilla
8 oz frozen organic peaches ( or fruit of your choice)
6 oz cherry soy yogurt
8 oz water
4 ice cubes

Shriekology:

Shriekology: Wanting to Scream Every Time Policy Decisions Ignore Ecological Realities.

Radical Rant by Karen I. Shragg Ed.d

You’ve probably heard of the term “Freakonomics “coined by Stephen D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner, the authors of the book by the same title. The subtitle of this book is,” A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.” The core message of their book is a belief that complex issues can be better understood if we just find the right perspective. That got me to ponder the question, what is the right perspective? Is there such a thing? These economists have it relatively easy. Their economic perspective is well accepted in our country and in global political discourse. People understand and accept the perspective that the economy is the glue which holds everything together.

Environmentalists rarely get that kind of attention for our perspective, one that claims that ecology trumps everything else. In an ecologically framed world you can’t buy fresh water, create soil from scratch in a laboratory and that there are limits in human terms to all of the fuels we are now rapidly running out of. The economy is certainly a critical piece to our daily well-being, BUT an even more important and bigger perspective is one that embraces basic ecology.

Therefore, I have decided to coin the word, “Shriekology” in order to name the feeling I and my fellow environmentalists get when we witness a major political decision being made that ignores basic ecological laws.

Every day our so-called leaders are making decisions that defy the laws of ecology. They do this to try to get elected/re-elected and become popular instead of telling us the truth. True leadership would help our country to steer clear of the worst of our fates. One such” leader “recently told a reporter that Minnesotans weren’t ready to reduce freeway speed limits in order to save fuel. We need the kind of leaders that get Ecology 101 and do their best to educate their constituents about ecology so we may act in our own best long term interests.

So what are these laws? One ecologist, Barry Commoner listed five of them in his book, “The Closing Circle.” He was suggesting back in the 1970’s that the growth of industry and technology were presenting huge negative effects. Commoner thought we needed to be educated about the natural world so that we didn’t let these forces destroy the very planet we depend on for life. In today’s world of seeing the world through the economic-colored glasses, they cannot be restated too often. They are as follows:

1. Everything is connected to everything else.
2. Everything has to go somewhere or there is no such place as away.
3. Everything is always changing.
4. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
5. Everything has limits.

They are very basic and indisputable from a scientific perspective. The last two represent the idea that we cannot live on a premise of growth while eating away our natural capital. Yet these five principles are woefully underrepresented and even ignored in so many ways that it can make your head spin, hence the phrase “shriekology.”

Those who want the US to drill off shore for more oil or in our The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are blinded by their desire to keep the oil flowing. They never include the carbon emissions that will result from drilling and the energy it will take to extract it, or that it too will run out someday, only postponing the dire problems that lie ahead.

Politicians and economists should have Commoner’s laws on their stationary, on their walls and tattooed on their arms before they sign bills which undermine the very rules under which we all must live. Perhaps this would prevent them from supporting unsustainable perspectives, like economics and political correctness. Often laws are passed which help out certain in vogue problems in the short term without consideration of these ecological principles.

I just recently returned from an amazing trip to Australia. The beauty of its mountainous terrain, witnessing ancient rainforest trees and world class sandy beaches made my head spin. This constant barrage of awesome beauty left me looking for a word that could describe the feeling I had of total amazement. The Aussies with their very colorful vocabulary had just such a word. They call the feeling of seeing a koala, kangaroo, wallaby and king parrot all in the same day, being ‘gob-smacked’.

I was so impressed with their conservation messages that hit you starting at each airport and greet you in your hotel and every opportunity. Visitors are constantly being told how important it was to conserve water, an extremely important resource for a country which is drying out due to Global Climate Change. One island we visited is totally run on desalinized water, a very energy consuming process. Recycling opportunities were plentiful and there was notable lack of billboard advertising polluting the gorgeous landscape. Education about invasive species were skillfully described at every one of their numerous national parks and world heritage sites. It was also evident that they hadn’t let their population run rampant. Their roads were not too crowded, their skies were not polluted and the people had a relaxed air about them.

By all indications this was a country that studied and embraced Commoners’ laws of ecology. There was one exception. When I teased them about wanting to move down under especially if we couldn’t vote our current political party out of office, they welcomed me with open arms. You see they think they need more people. So much so that October 17th is National Babies Day. Women are offered a baby bonus to help increase Australia’s fertility rate. I flew by my pit stop of gob-smacked-dom and landed right into the world of shriekology. In my shriekological moment I just wanted to scream, “AND WHERE DO YOU PROPOSE TO GET ALL THE WATER THOSE NEW AUSTRALIANS WILL NEED? A country could potentially shut down unnecessary jobs like in the fast food industry to free people up to work in agriculture. In an ecologically dictated reality an increase in population will create more problems than they solve. One result will certainly be turning their water shortage into a crisis.

I didn’t actually shriek when I reacted to this genuinely nice welcome to move to the southern hemisphere, but I did confront that sentiment in as polite of a way as I could. “Do you see water as a limiting factor to the number of people Australia can sustain?” I asked. The question did not resonate. In typical shriekology fashion, each person replied that there aren’t enough people to do all the work and help with the economy.

As we work to try to keep our nature centers afloat we need to be sure that the basic laws of ecology are a core part of our message in our programs and signage. Otherwise we will lose our voices from all of that shrieking we will be forced to do.

So You Want a Job in Recreation

So You Want a Job in Recreation?
A Reality Check of our Field

by Karen I. Shragg Ed.d.

Having a career in recreation has a great ring to it. It sounds like so much fun. I’ve been teased about college courses I must have taken in order to get my job. Titles like “Under Water Basket Weaving,” “How to Run Bingo Games for Seniors, and the like. I’ve also had people tell me how lucky I am to work in a place where people come to have fun. I always agree. But how do we tell them our secret? What is our secret? That we all put in some incredible hours to accomplish often Herculean tasks of jobs that would be assigned to at least a dozen more people in any other profession. It is also not well known that we really are professionals who have gone to real universities taking professional classes that we rely on in order to be trained for the job we do.

The other side of the secret is that we could never be adequately prepared for what we are asked to do in our coveted positions. If we were adequately prepared, our university class descriptions would sound something like this:

Recreation 101: How to juggle the demands of running new special events while completing your regular schedule with no additional staff. Or Recreation 102:
How to advertise your new programs to new audiences with no new money for advertising. Recreation 103 might sound something like: How to convince your spouse that it would be fun to work on real holidays and take comp time next year for them.

From special event planning to meeting with neighborhoods in preparation for a new park design, our jobs in recreation test the boundaries of 80 hour two week pay periods more often than not.

One of the reasons we are not unionized is probably because union bosses would snarl at the thought of having its members required to get up at 3 am to get a marathon off the ground. They’d march right to city hall to complain about how we had to spend 16 hours on a Saturday making sure Halloween happened for thousands of guests.

In our profession, we work to make people enjoy their holidays. That means we’ll be spending our Fourth of July, on the back of a float waving to parade goers while promoting our friend’s group. New Year’s Eve means you’ll be hiking in snow up to your thighs putting out luminaries instead of going out with your friends. Easter will find you up to your eyeballs in plastic eggs and chocolate.



In this field we are challenged with providing engaging experiences for people of all ages in a wide variety of activities with small budgets. That means we call on all of our relatives and friends to help us with our special events, offering to feed them and give out volunteer t-shirts as our eternally grateful thank you in exchange for their generous offer of time


So you want a job in recreation? That’s terrific, it’s a great field with many daily rewards. I know I wouldn’t want a career in anything else. It’s just that it would be nice to retire the idea that we don’t work very hard or that it doesn’t take a college degree to do our jobs. Once the word is out, we’ll be teased less and respected more. The public will better understand what it took to put in the skate park, run the sandcastle building contest and put on that Memorial Pay picnic for thousands. The complaints, though not many, would all but vanish if they just knew even a little bit about all the meetings, phone calls, emails, volunteer coordination and physical work it took to pull off even one of our yearly goals.

How do we tell them all that goes into our secret without sounding like we are whining? We’re not about to do that. We’re too busy trying to hold our programs together in tough budget times when what we do is perceived to be non-essential services.

We know the value of what we do, how we serve a public with activities that enriches their lives, that’s why we do what we do, and put in the hours that is required to get the job done. We know at the end of some very long days, the world is a better place because there was a new ball field to play on, a new dance class to take and a summer camp to attend.

We know that recreation deserves a better stature in society for the way we keep kids engaged in meaningful after school activities and give families wholesome inexpensive things to do on weekends. We know that recreation provides immeasurable benefits that greatly influence the quality of life in our communities. But we’re not telling, that’ll be up to you.