If you are reading this post, you probably are.

Stop it. You’re being creepy.

***

1.) Bird’s eye view aka the God View.

If you want to feel good about yourself, next time you’re in an elevator with mirrors on the ceiling, look up! See? Instant image boost!

This angle works extra well with suggestion of cleavage and casual or surprised facial expressions.

2.) Baby blocking. Use a baby (dogs work, too) to block out most of your body. Not only does this hide parts of yourself you may not feel so good about, it tells the world that you are too busy focusing on another being to worry about such superficial things as keeping your rack perky and bum tight.

Note: If you don’t have access to a baby or a dog, you can always use a glass of wine.

Or a cake.

3. Use framing to carefully accentuate your best features and draw attention away from those you feel less positive about.

3.) Contrast helps! Also, do purse your lips. It makes it look like you have cheek bones and reminds you to stick your chin out.

5.) Remember, lift that neck UP and OUT! No timid turtles around here!

6.) Focus on your best feature. Like your eye. Or maybe your ear.

4.) If all else fails, you can always steal a picture of a Hawaiian sunset from the web. By doing so you are telling your friends, screw you, I am too busy enjoying the beautiful sunset and looking outward to concern myself with petty things such as my many chins.

I hope this tutorial was helpful. Any additional tips and suggestions are welcome. Love Kat

My first yoga teacher was a woman named Patricia. She was probably in her mid-50s. She was a kind of dippy, fading blonde woman with big droopy blue eyes and a soft voice. She’d have us move our bodies into all kinds of interesting shapes and then while we were standing there holding it, she’d say something like, “Feel your skin,” or, “We’re all stardust, you know,” or, “Relax your tongue.”

Her yoga poses were far from perfect and in the plebian setting of the Y, trying to balance on one foot or touch my toes felt safe.

It took me about 3 weeks to be able to touch my toes and a little bit longer to be able to hold tree pose for as long as I wanted without falling over.

In the past 15 years, yoga as an industry has really taken off. It is no longer thought of as a kooky, new age-y practice outside of California and everyone I know thinks they ’should do some yoga.’

I decided to become a yoga teacher last year because I have found that it is an easy way to check in with the best, most true parts of who I am. I don’t know how or why this is so. Somehow, by paying attention to my inhalations and exhalations for about an hour while I move my body into this shape and that, I am a better person for the rest of the day. I wish more people had access to this simple, accessible magic.

Most of my yoga teachers have had lithe bodies and incredible flexibility and strength. I have a strong, healthy body, but I have never been lithe, or particularly flexible. I have cried over my weight and bulk when trying to twist my legs around each other during garudasana (eagle pose), to rest my 185 lbs on my head during tripod headstands, or to do poses that require a lot of floating. But then I look at old pictures of yogis in India, from before yoga was fashionable. Many old yogis were pot bellied Indian guys with short stringy arms and legs. And I think of Iyengar, the founder of the Iyengar method of yoga. He was born sickly and survived malaria, tuberculosis and typhoid together with malnutrition during his childhood. This is the man who brings us one of the main forms of yoga.

Yoga is for everybody, and I want to teach yoga to people who ‘don’t do yoga’, who ‘don’t have the right body for yoga’. To those who are afraid of yoga and afraid of going a yoga class, I want to be their Patricia, their gateway teacher.

Nothing lights me up more in life than helping people get access to their greatest, truest selves and learn to live from that place. Yoga is a great, dogma free tool to get into that space.

And so, I’ll be a freshly minted Yoga Alliance trained teacher with 200 hours of teacher training under my belt at the end of January. I’ve been practicing on my neighbors and will be ramping up the schedule in the coming year.

Namaste!

I plugged Google Ads into my Baby Elephant Takes a Bath video after National Geographic Wild and Web Soup picked it up for one of their shows and now I’m making, like, 50 cents a day on it.

If this kind of action keeps up, shooting that little video will have paid for my plane ticket to Thailand in just five years!

Barra de Potosi Fisherman Working Off of the Beach

Barra de Potosi in the state of Guerrero, Mexico is the most perfect healthy happy little village I know. I love it so much I even got married there three weeks ago. While we were down there, the local village residents and resident expats were in a state of deep concern because they are under threat to lose their reality and become a cruise ship peer or mega resort.

Please read the story below, written by Barbara Erickson, a resident of the area, and pass it on.

Our only hope to save this lagoon and village is put the pressure on with international press!

Lose an entire ecosystem for – a cruise ship pier or a mega resort?

Aren’t there already enough of those to go around?

Barra de Potosi - host to a clean healthy sea and happy people. Let's keep it that way.

The fishermen, beach restaurant owners, salt farmers and other local inhabitants of a small fishing village in the Mexican state of Guerrero are fighting just such a battle. In a David versus Goliath story the 500 folks of Barra de Potosi woke on January 12, 2011 to find out that not only was their entire ecosystem in danger, but they too were likely to lose everything; their life style is in danger of extinction.

Barra de Potosi is only thirty miles south of the mega resort Ixtapa but it is another world in every way. The three dirt streets that make up the tiny village sit at the edge of one of the largest remaining lagoons in the area of the Pacific state of Guerrero known as the Costa Grande. The Lagoon, Laguna Potosi, is home to one of the largest mangrove estuaries in the state with three distinct species of endangered mangrove trees. That lagoon, the adjoining miles of beaches and the surrounding undeveloped tracts are home to over 200 species of birds, endangered butterflies, rare mammals and reptiles, nesting sea turtles, coral reefs, breeding whales and threatened plant species.  An ecological paradise, enjoyed by thousands of visitors; locals, Mexican nationals, and foreign tourists each year.

The drama unfolded when Fonatur (Fondo National de Turismo), the Mexican national trust fund for costal development published in the Diario Oficial de la Federacion on January 12, 2011 that the public/private real estate sector of Fonatur; Fonatur Portuaria SA de CV, was granted a 25 year concession that conveyed administrative rights over the pier in Zihuatanejo and all of the adjacent waters extending to Playa Blanca and Barra de Potosi.  Imagine the surprise of the locals when the concession was made public, not one of the local population had been consulted. No public hearings were held, no environmental impact study conducted.

A meeting was called by the community leader, Alberto Bello Benitez, with the municipal mayor in Petatlan – the county seat in charge of Barra de Potosi, where over 150 people assembled to ask their government just what was going on. The mayor, Albino Lacunza Santos, dissembled. “I don’t know anything” he told the crowd after keeping them waiting in the heat for over an hour. The people however were prepared; “why then are you quoted in this article about the project” he was asked. Again he dissembled, “I have not signed anything” (turns out he did on June 9th of 2009) and “I will talk to the mayor of Zihuatanejo to find out and get back to you.” (he did not) Many of the fishermen and other locals who make their living in rhythm with the ecosystem in question were sure that there was more to the story than met the eye. “We are not blind” they repeated as they left the building. And “if the Egyptians can stand up to their government, so can we.”

The question was: what exactly is the plan that Fonatur has for this new sweeping concession? No one in a position to know was saying. It took the use of the Transparency Law by informed local journalists and activists to get the answer: a 600 meter long cruise ship pier in front of the Laguna Potosi for starters.

The small village of Barra de Potosi isn't built to support a cruise ship industry and the cruise ship docks would destroy the surrounding waters for fishing

What did this mean for the inhabitants of Barra de Potosi and the tourists that visit? Assuming that the cruise ships will stop at the Barra pier instead of in Zihuatanejo as they do now, it will mean 60 or more ships a year disgorging an average of 2000 tourists for a few hours on what is now a pristine turtle nesting beach lined with a few private homes and small hotels and a group of open air seafood restaurants sitting on the sand. Since there are almost no facilities or activities for the passengers in Barra today, the passengers probably will be motored in buses half an hour one way to Ixtapa /Zihuatanejo; already a longer journey than if the ship moored outside Zihuatanejo Bay and the passengers were ferried to the existing pier as they are now. With 50 passengers to a bus that will require 40 buses housed in a giant parking lot that will need to be constructed.  At present, there is no sewage treatment plant in the area and all the water comes from shallow wells. It is not evident what Fonatur plans for bathroom facilities for 2000 people which is vastly more than the entire population of the 9 mile stretch of beach extending from the lagoon.

But of course, the long term goal will be to provide tourist facilities in Barra de Potosi. The concession gives Fonatur the ability to expropriate land which it then would try to lease or sale to large businesses, so the plan undoubtedly will include a large shopping center that will lease space for tee shirt and cheap souvenir shops, and chain restaurants.  The plan may also include seizing land and then trying to lease sites for large hotels, but cruisers don’t stay in hotels and cruise ships are not attractive to those who might. Not to mention, the Fonatur resort of Ixtapa is only 30 minutes away with mega hotel rooms going empty.

The existing seafood restaurants – enramadas – for which Barra de Potosi is famous and which attract many tourists (lots from Ixtapa) on day trips are all located on land that is a federal concession.  They do not own the land and now Fonatur has exclusive jurisdiction over the area and can move out all those small local businesses with no compensation to the local family owners.  Even if some are allowed to remain, the quaintness that draws visitors will be gone and in the 300 days a year when there are no cruise ships, there will be no way to earn a living. The restaurants currently owned and worked by the local inhabitants will disappear.

The local fishermen also will be impacted.  Now they land their boats on the beach and they sell their catch to the local restaurants.  Fonatur will own the beach and there will be no local restaurants to buy their catch. There could be fancy chain restaurants, but they are not likely to support the local catch or the local fishermen.  The fishermen’s livelihood will be wiped out.

The inevitable pollution from the cruisers will destroy the natural sea salt drying operations that form another backbone to the local economy. Fonatur’s development will draw an influx of construction workers with temporary jobs who inevitably remain even after their jobs are gone, so the community will have to bear an influx of poor outsiders further disintegrating the sense of community.  Although few of the people of Barra de Potosi ever received more than 6 years of education, they have all figured out that, despite the promises of the government that Fonatur represents their great salvation; the reality is that their entire village and way of life will be annihilated. They are the David, Fonatur is Goliath.

Once the extent of the pier project was known, the fight was joined. Fonatur continues to deny that the plan includes a pier in Barra de Potosi. This despite the published plan. The local population has joined forces with the Zihuatanejo fisherman collectives to fight together to keep their modest lifestyles alive. On March 31st more than 1000 people marched through the street of Zihuatanejo to oppose the concession. The Mexican press has started to cover the story. Biologists, some who have worked in the area for years are uniting to press for protection of the valuable ecosystem. Mexican Wild Coast has published a call for protection. Environmental lawyers are being consulted. A Facebook cause page has been created. Will mangroves, rare birds, nesting turtles and small time fishermen prevail? The record in Mexico in not a good one.

The Lagoon behind Barra de Potosi would be destroyed if Fonatur gets its way

Wallace Stegner, one of the great environmental writers of the twentieth century quoted Thoreau and wrote; “In wildness is the preservation of the world, whose echoes will reverberate a generation later and will probably be felt for generations to come. We simply need that wild country available to us…for it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.”

Will David win? One can only spread the word and hope that Mexico is not wedded to old models of development and corruption and disregard for its humble people and valuable natural resources.

Thank you!
Barbara

The beach is beautiful, healthy and pristine in Barra de Potosi. Please keep it that way!

A few weeks later, I showed Joseph. We agreed that it is dumb to buy an old fiberglass boat.

Especially when her motor doesn’t work and she has been sitting in the rain for 49 years.

Her name was Daphne. She didn’t run but she might be fixable. I was in the market for a practical aluminum clunker. A tin can with a good motor to get me out to the fish and back.

But she had the sweetest lines.

And so, when Joseph pulled up to my birthday party with Daphne in tow and handed me the title, I screamed like a winner on The Price is Right. I started picturing what outfits we’d wear to match our sweet little 1961 Dorsett.

Now last May, it looked like we were about to become fish barons. We were about to start delivering Alaskan sockeye salmon for our fisherman friend fresh from the airport to New Seasons Market. And Joseph’s son was planning on fishing in Alaska again this year. I had just met a really neat couple with a tuna boat who invited me to fish with them this summer. I got the okay from two magazines to write stories about tuna fishing in Oregon. And now we had a boat. A river of fish was about to swim through our house. I wondered if we should have bought a bigger chest freezer.

I posted an ad on Craigslist: “Will Trade Fish for Boat Repair”

A guy named Mel responded. He’s retired. Fixed motors for 40 years. Loves fish. Knee’s hurting, can’t catch his own right now.

I towed Daphne down to his place.

I liked Mel right away. And I could see that he is an excellent mechanic. His wife told me he once built a motor for Buddy Ebsen when he lived down in Newport. And he did a little boat work for John Wayne, as well. I liked the way Jordan felt instantly safe with him the first time she met him. And I liked his dog. Even though he is retired, he had about 30 boats sitting in his yard in various states of repair.

He declared Daphne’s motor DOA.

But it was too late. I already loved Daphne like a brain dead child and I knew Mel could save her.

“Do you think you could help me find and put a new motor on her? I could pay you in fish.”

Mel deferred like a man who has spent the last 40 years around dead and dying boats. But there was nothing he could do. He was my boat mechanic now. I unhitched Daphne next to a menagerie of other sick boats.

Originally, I just needed a kicker motor. Something to propel us around the Columbia where we could anchor and fish. But then I saw an ad about Daphne from a 1961 magazine. A happy driver in a captain’s hat pulls a delighted skier behind him. We would need a very strong motor to pull me around on skis. At least 40 horsepower.

Our fisherman friend decided not to ship fish to Portland after all. Last year’s freezer burnt fish started looking more valuable.

I found a motor that looked like it would work. It came with a leaky boat and part of a fish finder. Mel, Joseph and I drove down to Salem to meet the owner. Mel approved, I gave the guy $550 and we trailered my second boat to Mel’s place. I gave Mel a couple of last year’s precious fish to get him started.

I talked to Mel about once a week for the next eight weeks. Since he was newly retired, he was traveling and catching up on hobbies a lot of the time. And since I had paid him with freezer burnt fish, I couldn’t exactly hurry him along. By the end of July, Daphne had her new motor on. Mel had torn out the seats while he was at it. They were heavy, waterlogged and rotten. The seats from the other boat were better. I needed to find someone to put them in for me. Mel doesn’t work with fiberglass. He’s a mechanic. And he’s retired.

Unwilling to spend another dollar on Daphne, I decided to do the work myself. But then we went camping and worked on our house for the next four weekends. The kitchen, living room, guest room, bedroom, dining room, studio and garden look great. Daphne languished in the driveway with a motor and no seats.

This year’s albacore run turned out to be good, but hard to get to. The fish ran farther out than usual at first, and then the wind and waves came up every time I had a free day to go fishing.

My parents came to visit in mid-August. They offered to bless our new house with a little sweat equity. We had already taken care of most of the little things (painting, window trim, a vegetable garden) and weren’t ready to get started on a new bathroom, kitchen remodel or other big project. And so I asked my dad if he could put the seats into Daphne.

But I forgot. Retired Coast Guard captains don’t consider bailing wire and duct tape to be adequate boat repair equipment. And they don’t like it when their daughters go fishing in rotten boats. And so, Captain Audley went to the hardware store for a few days, and then thoroughly reviewed every inch of Daphne’s hull with the end of a screw driver, listening for rotten wood. Thump thump thump. It turned out the poor thing had Crohn’s Disease. He opened her up and started tearing her guts out. I couldn’t watch.

My mom and dad broke their visit in half with a few days of sailing in the San Juans and visiting with family in Canada. I couldn’t stand to see Daphne sitting there all exposed. And so I filled her excavated holes with wood filler, fiberglass and epoxy, screwed the seats into place.

My parents returned and were a little surprised to see all that progress. The next day, we went to dinner at the top of big pink, the tallest building in Portland, and the place where Joseph and I had our first date. Joseph showed up in a suit and I got all nervous. He got down on one knee and I said yes. We told my parents we were going to try having a baby together. My Dad went to the boat store and bought life jackets, a whistle, a flashlight and a fire extinguisher.

Now that Daphne was ready, I registered her and took the mandatory six-hour online Oregon Boater Safety course. The cautionary videos were graphic and entertaining. The test was pretty hard for a poor test taker like me, but I got by with a little help from the internet.

Our maiden voyage was excellent, glorious and fun. The water was silky, the wind was calm and the sun came out to kiss our cheeks and noses. Even with three large people in her, Daphne popped right up on plane and handled beautifully. The houseboats of Sauvie Island were wonderful to spy on from the Multnomah Channel. The barges added excitement to our boating adventure. Everywhere, people were fishing for salmon. When we were refueling, my phone fell in the river and I lost everyone’s number, but it didn’t matter. Not only were we engaged, with maybe a baby in our future – we were afloat!

My dad and Joseph spent the next few days patching tiny holes, covering them with gel coat, and fussing over Daphne. My mom transformed the front garden. I caught up on work. We were all beside ourselves with excitement.

I was supposed to go tuna fishing a few days later. But the wind started blowing 20 knots and the trip was called off. It was sunny and calm and 82 in Portland. The Willamette was glassy. But Joseph was working and the truck was getting worked on, so me and Daphne were stuck on land.

I spent the day at Fisherman’s Marine Supply talking to the 20-year-old fishing specialists behind the counter about how to catch fall Chinook from a little boat in the Columbia. They told me the fish are big, angry and plentiful right now. They’re biting wobblers. Blue is this year’s hot color. I walked out with a river fishing rod with 25 lb. test line, a handful of 6 – 10 oz weights, little green beads, a few specially customized wobbler lures, a 300 foot rope attached to Daphne’s little anchor on one end and a big orange buoy ball with a special pulley system attached and annual fishing licenses for me and Joseph.

Joseph met me at a restaurant by a harbor. I wanted to be on the water. I bounced on my knees on the chair and excitedly regurgitated everything I had learned about how to kill fish around here.

I leapt out of bed early the next morning, fully dressed and ready for battle. We drove 20 minutes north to St. Helens, where the fishing specialists told me to go. Two old fishermen pulled their sturdy aluminum boat out of the water. They were dressed in hunting clothes. They had caught their limit – one Chinook apiece. I was so happy for them.

We put Daphne in, puttered away from the harbor and found out that it is called the Mighty Columbia for a reason. The sun was not in a kissing mood and the wind was up. We banged against the current and I worried about my patch job.

With no experienced captain and only an Oregon Boater Safety course, the advice of a pair of 20 year old boys and a few hours of Googling, ‘how to catch fall Chinook in the Columbia’, under our belts, we headed towards the nearest hog line – a crooked line of five boats fishing on a promising ridge in the river.

One boat had just moved out of the hog line and while one guy reeled, the other stood ready with a net. We watched as they scooped the fish. It was a big one! I cheered and gave them the victory sign across the water. Now it was our turn.

What we thought we would do was to drop our anchor 300 feet upriver from the place in the hog line where we wanted to end up, then reverse back into place, drop our line with a 10 oz lead and customized flashing wobbler lure to the bottom and wait for the tip of our line to hit the water. When that happened, we would set the fish, cast off the buoy and one of us would move the boat out of the hog line so that the struggling fish wouldn’t get all tangled up in surrounding fishing lines while the other one of us reeled in the fish.

What really happened was we pulled up about 300 feet in front of one of many hog lines and started bickering about how and when to drop the anchor. Meanwhile, with the anchor dangling in the water about ten feet below the boat, the mighty Columbia carried us past the first hog line and toward a second one. I cranked backwards on the throttle but the boat just wouldn’t go backwards fast enough and we soon lost the ability to adjust our speed at all. The motor quit, the anchor dangled precariously and waves smacked into the back of our boat, which began to fill with water over the top and through a hole in the transom.

Something I did not know then that I know now:
When behind the wheel of a 1961 Dorsett, if one wants to make the boat go backwards, one need not yank backwards on the throttle. Instead, one should press the reverse button, then gingerly push the throttle into a forward position. Yanking backwards on the throttle will break the throttle cable, rendering one incapable of decreasing speed or going into reverse at all.

Something Joseph did not know then that he knows now:
When dropping anchor it is a bad idea to let the anchor dangle just below the boat hull in the water while deciding on a final resting place for the anchor. Instead, it is best to let the anchor go completely once it is overboard. Partially dropped anchors have been known to snap fingers off of deckhands, bash holes into boat hulls and cause newly minted Oregon safe boater card holders to shout out safe anchoring tidbits with the hysterical repetition of an autistic person whose favorite toothpick has just been taken away.

It turns out I forgot the fishing weights anyway.

We roared back over the waves with opposite and equal control over the broken throttle. I had the wheel and could accelerate, but when things got too fast, only Joseph, back at the motor could cut the throttle. And so we lurched back to the harbor, working as a team at last, going scary fast, then not at all, then scary fast, then not at all. Once we were back on the trailer, I watched two fisherman hoist a humungous fish out of their boat and into a wheel barrow. I found their grunts of effort to be a bit show-offy. The fishtail hung over the back of the wheelbarrow. Now I felt only jealousy and hate.

Since I had lost my phone to the river a week earlier I didn’t have phone numbers of anyone who could give us emergency boat repair advice. I called my tuna fishing friends and left them a frantic message about maybe bringing their 50’ tuna boat down here to the Columbia and getting in a hog line with me because the fish were biting like and the wind wasn’t blowing that much. Then I called my cousin Becky, who had the number for Jim, one of the best fishermen I know.

I said something like, “Hi Becky, this is Kat. I need Jim’s number right now. I’m having a fishing emergency. I was supposed to go tuna fishing and I couldn’t and then I was supposed to go salmon fishing and then the boat broke and the fish are biting right now and there is a man standing next to me with a wheelbarrow sized salmon and my heart is full of hate so I need Jim’s phone number right away. Oh yeah, and I’m getting married. But I can’t talk about that right now. We only have two more hours until the tide turns.”

Becky, whose son has the fishing sickness worse than I do, understood and had the good sense to give me Jim’s phone number first and congratulate us second.

Jim was mushroom hunting in the hills when I called. But he said he’d be home soon, which was good because we were already on the way to his house.

Jim had a cookie sheet full of chanterelles sitting on his kitchen counter and was very nice about me showing up in a panic. He took a look at the boat and pointed out where the throttle was broken. It looked like an easy fix. Something I could do with wire and duct tape. He took a look at our buoy and anchor system and declared the anchor too small, the rope too long and the buoy/pulley system too complicated. He gave us a bigger anchor, cut our rope in half and tied a couple of old buoys onto it without any complicated pulley system. He loosened the drag on my line and walked me through the proper fishing technique in a way that made a lot of sense. Getting buoys and a drag adjustment from Jim felt like getting a blessing from Triton himself. Then he fed us beer and smoked salmon, showed us his lures and we left feeling ready to go fishing again the next day.

On the way home, a boat parts store was miraculously open at 6:00 on a holiday weekend and they miraculously had a throttle cable part for a 1961 Dorsett in the back. We fixed the boat in the parking lot. I barely slept that night and when I did, dreamt about fishing. And a little about falling into the Mighty Columbia.

Joseph and I talked a lot the night before about clearly defined roles and communication as a way to improve how we deal with emergencies as a couple. In that vein, this time, when we launched the boat, Joseph would drive and I’d hold onto the bowline once the boat was in the water so it wouldn’t get away. Then he would park, hop into the boat and we’d be off.

We backed down the ramp. I asked if I should get out now. He braked and I jumped out. Daphne slid off the trailer and landed on her prop, which snapped off with a crunch as the motor pushed through the rotten transom. We attached the winch strap to Daphne, pulled her back onto the boat and drove home.

Back at home, I researched transom repair techniques. And then I called a fiberglass repair guy on Craigslist, who bid the repair at three times what we paid for her. And then I went outside to Daphne, leaned against her and cried.

We fished the outgoing tide from the shore last night on Sauvie Island. We ate fried chicken, drank prosecco, waved off yellow jackets and watched our lines. Nothing bit, but it was a relief to finally get my customized wobbler into the water.

I might get to go tuna fishing this Thursday, weather, boat and crew permitting. Jim said he’d take me out on his boat this Friday and would keep his eye out for a good aluminum hull.

I’ll be down in California for Viking duty in Granlibakken on the 17th, then working and visiting with family and friends in the Bay Area and Mendocino for ten days after that.

And then, we’ve got a wedding to plan! We’re thinking it’ll be next March in Zihuatanejo. The fishing’s excellent! There’ll be pig on a spit, accommodations to suit every comfort level and budget and me sobbing (happily) at the altar. It’s gonna be awesome. Details in October.

And oh yes, if we haven’t talked in the past week, I need your phone number. My phone number is 415-847-7295

Love Kat

You Go, C.S. You drive that wardrobe into the night with your bad self.

Click on the picture to see it big.

Same voice speaks up when it comes to losing weight. I gained a bunch of weight after eating my way through Argentina, Brazil and Italy all winter and now, in an effort to fit back into my jeans again, I am abstaining from alcohol, sugar, and most carbs (except fruits, vegetables, yogurt, etc.) So, I’ll have this great workout and eat really well, and be driving in my car, thinking about how good and clean my body feels, and if I keep this up, I’ll lose my muffin top in no time, and that little voice interjects, “MCDONALD’S FRENCH FRIES ARE TASTY!” I don’t even like McDonald’s. They kill rain forests and their food is full of chemicals and I feel like crap after I eat a meal there and then am immediately hungry an hour or two later, even though their meals are about 2000 calories each. I eat there about once every 2-3 years.

So WTF, little voice? Who is that guy and what is he doing in my head? Does he have a purpose besides sabotaging everything good? Why is he there? I don’t have answers to these questions, but maybe you do.

Thanks. Love Kat

This proposal would permit Japan to kill whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in addition to its coastal waters, putting already sensitive whale populations and non-target species at great risk.

Closer to home, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scientific Committee will meet on May 30th to decide on quotas for the gray whale, the most commonly seen whale on the Pacific Coast of North America. The IWC members have drawn up an agreement which could see a quota of 145 gray whales a year being hunted and killed for 10 years without periodic review and without current abundance estimates. Although there is no official count available for gray whale calves, the unofficial consensus based on annual whale counts for is that the number of gray whales along the entire west coast this year are significantly reduced.

The logic behind the decision was to discontinue the exploitation of loopholes which currently allow whaling nations to kills whales in the name of scientific research.  In exchange for a return to legal whaling, the whalers would have to agree to stricter monitoring of their operations, including the placing of tracking devices and international monitors on all whaling ships and participation in a whale DNA registry to track global trade in whale products. The best argument against this I’ve heard is that this is the equivalent of allowing criminals to legally kill in the streets so that we can know who is killing who and what kind of gun they are using.

May 23 is official save the whales day. Protests are scheduled to take place on May 23rd at 10:00 AM in coastal town along the entire coast of California. Greenpeace, the NRDC, and other major conservationist groups are also collecting signatures to have the proposal overturned and encouraging calls to the White House. One of the most compelling arguments that conservationists are making is that based on economic studies of the whale watch industriy, whales are more valuable alive than dead. And so, you may want to vote with your wallets and go whale watching this year in a move to save the whales. Here are my top 5 favorite whale watching trips on the West Coast.

The official discussions on this proposal are scheduled to take place at the IWC’s annual meeting, in Morroco on June 16 and 17, 2010 and during a private commissioner’s meeting at the same meeting June 20, 2010.

Who knows what goes on behind closed doors at these places or why the Obama Administration, which in 2008 promised that the would take a strong anti-whaling stance against Japan, have shifted their position. It seems like whales are just another poker chip that they are playing to keep cross cultural communications flowing smoothly. I say take that poker chip off the table.

Here are a few more good stories on the subject:

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=16010422

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/04/a-whale-of-an-exception/39627/