Many people possess a fundamentally erroneous conviction that buying used products is demeaning, embarrassing, or vaguely unthinkable. This reveals an intrinsic but not indelible flaw in contemporary society. In actuality, there are multiple advantages to patronizing thrift shops, two particularly preeminent ones being the economic and ecological benefits.

There is no denying the fact that second-hand items are cheaper. One can buy a shirt at a thrift shop for eighty-nine cents that would cost twenty-seven dollars at the Gap across the street. A pair of name-brand jeans may be marked at four dollars as opposed to forty-four. Thrift shopping is an exceptional option for saving money and reducing that spent on clothes, if only so one can pay for an extra night out at the movies or feel comfortable with the more expensive menu item at dinner. 

Saving money is not only beneficial for those who are wanting in it; there are always superior applications for those ten bucks one spent on the burger, fries, and milkshake after the soccer game. Three on a milkshake would be fine, leaving seven for later. One of the principle objections to thrift shopping is that it presents the appearance of a want of money. However, if this view could be invalidated by society's actions, these inhibitions could no longer prevent such a beneficial source from augmenting the homes of wealthier Americans. Even in our capitalistic environment, one can pay for experiences rather than bare material goods. One can stimulate the economy in a more interesting and, ultimately, long-lasting way. That pair of ten-dollar socks will wear out in a couple years and those sixty-dollar jeans will definitely sprout holes, but the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower will last one a lifetime.

Equally important as the financial reason is the environmental aspect. Buying second-hand significantly reduces resources required to furnish one's home and lifestyle. The energy used to produces and transport goods wastes various substances and spews pollution into the air, water, and earth. The materials these goods comprise must come from somewhere, and there is a limited supply of each and every one of them. The items discarded in a convenient bin or tossed in the trash hog precious space in landfills, which are already struggling to fit into our share of the Earth.

The purchase of pre-owned goods drastically reduces consumption of resources, one's carbon footprint, and the pollution for which a person is responsible. Is the erroneous ideology prohibiting this action really going to stop us from pursuing this brilliant solution?

Today a 20 alarm fire at Roy's Furniture store caused every El line passing by to be closed until further notice. Naturally, a phalanx of disgruntled passengers tumbled out of the Clark and Division Red Line stop and piled onto buses until there was hardly room for a peanut, let alone a backpack-toting, novel-grasping interloper like me. Despite this, it is clear to me that the City of Chicago took the proper action in closing the El lines.

While it caused significantly more traffic than would otherwise have been present, it prevented the possibility of many dangerous accidents. The furniture store/warehouse in question was situated directly adjacent to the train tracks, and according to the news reports on the radio, it was a terribly dangerous fire. Being so close to the El tracks, the effect it could have had on the support was an important aspect to consider, as well as the sparks produced by trains that zip by.

When I was in Italy once with my family, we saw a forest fire consuming an evergreen woods on a hill. Helicopters fluttered overhead, dumping water on the fire in a valiant attempt to conquer it. Meanwhile, cars continued to drive along the road, cutting directly through the glowing trees, parting a flickering red sea. Seeing this, my family continued on our way and passed through as well.

In the United States, liability and lawyers with incredibly high salaries prevent such actions. In other countries, the Red Line would have continued to run, and possibly worsened the situation. However, it may not have, and its closure certainly impeded the commuters fighting their way home during rush hour today. Is "better safe than sorry" the way to go, or does the occasional risk round out life to perfection?

The hum was low and melodious, a crooning moan that seemed to ripple through the dusky depths. A grey-blue monstrosity, bulbous and corpulent, floundered lackadaisically, flopping back and forth in an erratically rhythmic dance. It had been fitfully whipping back and forth for ages now, and the strain was beginning to show, manifested in the waning of energy in the whaps, in the keening groan that emanated from the bowtie form, in the palpable despair that had settled comfortably over the twin forms, siamese sisters hulking on the crumbling ledge.

The sisters had flailed with all the energy they could muster, had shoved each other away, and though valiant, their efforts had produced no results. The dimness had grown dimmer and the pressure seemed heavier. Each of them could feel the ticking of their hearts, a slow beat that was winding down as a snarling shark circled above, patient but vigilant, waiting, a buzzard of the seas.

The ancient anchor line, twisted with ephemeral flickers of lacy algae and mysterious sea weeds, was remained durable and unyielding despite forty-five minutes' worth of efforts from the powerfully muscled mammals. Their lives ticked in unison now, their oxygenon waning with the moribund sun hundreds of feet above. Their assays slowed, then stopped altogether, their tails entwined more thoroughly than ever they had imagined, and finally, following the lead of the pivoting predator, they waited.

The bowtie collapsed in on itself as the seconds clunked by, each longer, heavier, more painful than the last. The twin forms approached one another for the first time, reconciled to their shared future. The two slippery faces converged as if their shared breath could flow between them, support two at once, or bring them up together. The two were ready, curled up far below the glistening surface, too far, fatally far.

The pressure muffled the snap, but the immediate freedom did not go unnoticed by the former captives. The blade of the rusted anchor pointed a mocking finger at the chagrined shark as the whales spiraled upward, higher and higher, to the flickering surface of life.




I typed this last night in the span of approximately fifteen minutes, perhaps so many as thirty, as I eagerly awaited a call to dinner. I then submitted it for a contest on figment.com (an excellent website, by the by, if one is interested in writing, young adult fiction, or a superb selection of writing contests), which might have been an unwise decision. Having (I assume) read it, you surely could tell that it was raw, unedited, pure first draft material. Yet, I submitted it with the vague and rather dispassionate reverie of winning quite a few intriguing books.

The impulsive nature of many contemporary people is at once both concerning and exciting. An impulsive world is one in which spontaneity, the progenitor of serendipity, reigns  and the unexpected could very well become quotidian. However, a world in which people are prone to taking action without properly cogitating over the potential consequences is one in which tragedies can be spawned in seconds, turmoil in ten minutes, an outcry in an hour. Ought one to rely solely on actions well thought out, then, or is the occasional instance of impulsiveness indispensable for a fully functional society?

When I was thirteen, I decided one day that I would pierce my ears and I did. Today, they are still visibly punctured and occasionally ornamented with globs of metal and plastic gems. However, this is an infrequent occurrence and I often find myself vaguely wondering why in the world I decided to do such  strange and useless thing. Fortunately, this was a relatively negligible action, but it reflects the way of life for much of society.

Impulsive decisions can have long-lasting consequences. A second's hit on marijuana could lead to a life-long addiction. A minute's purchase of those really really really cute shoes could lead to a downward spiral of credit card debts. It is what a person does in those impulsive moments that shapes one's life and today we live in an environment in which these split-second choices are constantly available to us.

Society now needs to learn how to deal responsibly with these impulse-tempting opportunities that are so copious in quantity these days. Humanity needs to adapt to face this new challenge. People now need to take an extra second before speaking or acting in order to conquer the prevalent threat of instantaneous lousy decision-making. 

If we do not take preventative measures and overcome this widely ignored or invisible issue, humanity will not be able to stay afloat in the dangerous seas of internet, credit cards, and infinite possibilities. I would think about this blog post carefully before believing it if I were you.

When I was in second grade, my teacher wanted to impress my mother, a pediatrician, at some potluck party we were having. She approached my mom with a frog-sized smile wrapped all the way across her face and proclaimed with pride: "You should be happy! Little Tommy here was so healthy, he brought fruit for the class! Look, fruit snacks!"

Suffice it to say, my mother was underwhelmed.

This is a common and little-known issue in American society: the meters-deep belief, set as concrete and supported by a hardy foundation of wishful thinking, that fruit snacks are good for one's health. Let me tell you a secret: they aren't.

Fruit snacks are sugar, water, and chemicals that are mixed together at the right temperature and proportions as needed to create little gelatinous lumps in the shape of strawberries, bananas, or My Little Pony unicorns. There is nothing wrong with eating fruit snacks, but they are candy and ought to be recognized as such.

Fruit snacks are called fruit snacks because they are flavored (using chemicals) to taste like sweeter versions of fruits and to make them sound healthier for young, innocent children and misguided second grade teachers. They are designed to appeal to kids, with fun colors, exciting different shapes (you can get Barney, and Sponge Bob, and even Hunger Games shapes! If you're really a cool cat, they have Lion King flavors!), and probably some enthusiastic television commercials. They do this because in general kids like candy and parents like (the idea of their kids eating) fruit, so this one little snack can capture everyone's interests! The marketing is rather brilliant, I admit.

There is nothing wrong with snacking on candy every once in a while. If it makes you happy, go for it! However, it is wrong when one deludes oneself into believing that the candy is good for one's health. This is along the same lines as claiming that pizza is a vegetable because it has tomato sauce. I actually get all my daily meat from barbecue potato chips, and my dairy comes from french toast (I put milk in the batter, I swear!). Candy is perfectly fine to the point that one actually recognizes it for what it is. The problem with fruit snacks is not their nutritional value, or lack thereof, but the self-deception so entwined with their presence in American lunch boxes.

This deception leads to many other problems in American society, including entitlement and obesity. People who refuse to face the fact that no, fruit snacks are NOT FRUIT will most likely eat them rather than real fruit and will be nutrient deprived and possibly end up obese. For a country in which 2/3 of the people over overweight and 1/3 are obese, one would hope that the general populace would take a bit more into consideration when grocery shopping or eating meals, but clearly this is not the case. Furthermore, self-deception is a one-way path to ego-centricism, narcism, and entitlement, three ideas that this society could indubitably do without. If one can delude oneself as to the nature of small colored candies, what is to prevent that same person, and that person's kids, from convincing themselves of other "truths" that are preferable to reality? 

The misconceptions regarding fruit snacks are evidently more than just an incorrect belief but a malignant leech on society's virtue and general quality. Allowing false ideas like this to spread is akin to lying or to poisoning the populace and allowing people to look incredibly stupid in front of people whose respect they might desire.

So go ahead and eat your fruit snacks if you like them, give them to your kids for DESSERT, sell them to raise money for your environmental club, but please, please, please do not claim, believe, suggest, imply, assure, reassure, hint, think, say, feel, wish, wonder, explain, consider, or spread word that they are fruit.

In our world today, everything will give us cancer. We should not drink from number seven water bottles; we should not eat cooked foods; we should not not have a twin. They get more outrageous as one hears about more and more. In fact, here is a tidy list of that which is "proven" to give one cancer as one hears on the web, courtesy of John Brignell at Number Watch http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cancer%20list.htm :

Acetaldehyde, acrylamide, acrylonitril, abortion, agent orange, alar, alcohol, air pollution, aldrin, alfatoxin, arsenic, arsine, asbestos, asphalt fumes, atrazine, AZT, baby food, barbequed meat, benzene, benzidine, benzopyrene, beryllium, beta-carotene, betel nuts, birth control pills, bottled water, bracken, bread, breasts, brooms, bus stations, calcium channel blockers, cadmium, candles, captan, carbon black, carbon tetrachloride, careers for women, casual sex, car fumes, celery, charred foods, cooked foods, chewing gum, Chinese food, Chinese herbal supplements, chips, chloramphenicol, chlordane, chlorinated camphene, chlorinated water, chlorodiphenyl, chloroform, cholesterol, low cholesterol, chromium, coal tar, coffee, coke ovens,  crackers, creosote, cyclamates, dairy products, deodorants, depleted uranium, depression, dichloryacetylene,  DDT, dieldrin, diesel exhaust, diet soda, dimethyl sulphate, dinitrotouluene, dioxin, dioxane, epichlorhydrin, ethyle acrilate, ethylene, ethilene dibromide, ethnic beliefs,ethylene dichloride, Ex-Lax, fat, fluoridation, flying, formaldehyde, free radicals, french fries, fruit, gasoline, genes, gingerbread, global warming, gluteraldehyde, granite, grilled meat, Gulf war, hair dyes, hamburgers, heliobacter pylori, hepatitis B virus,  hexachlorbutadiene, hexachlorethane, high bone mass,hot tea, HPMA, HRT, hydrazine, hydrogen peroxide, incense, infertility, jewellery, Kepone, kissing, lack of exercise, laxatives, lead, left handedness, Lindane, Listerine, low fibre diet, magnetic fields, malonaldehyde, mammograms, manganese, marijuana, methyl bromide, methylene chloride,  menopause, microwave ovens, milk hormones, mixed spices, mobile phones, MTBE, nickel, night lighting, night shifts, nitrates, not breast feeding, not having a twin, nuclear power plants, Nutrasweet, obesity, oestrogen, olestra, olive oil, orange juice, oxygenated gasoline, oyster sauce, ozone, ozone depletion, passive smoking, PCBs, peanuts, pesticides, pet birds, plastic IV bags, polio vaccine, potato crisps (chips), power lines, proteins, Prozac, PVC, radio masts, radon, railway sleepers, red meat, Roundup, saccharin, salt, sausage, selenium,  semiconductor plants, shellfish, sick buildings, soy sauce, stress, strontium, styrene, sulphuric acid, sun beds, sunlight, sunscreen, talc, tetrachloroethylene, testosterone, tight bras, toast, toasters, tobacco, tooth fillings, toothpaste (with fluoride or bleach), train stations, trichloroethylene, under-arm shaving, unvented stoves, uranium, UV radiation, Vatican radio masts, vegetables, vinyl bromide, vinyl chloride,  vinyl fluoride, vinyl toys, vitamins, vitreous fibres, wallpaper, weedkiller (2-4 D), welding fumes, well water, weight gain, winter, wood dust, work, x-rays.


So, get started, off you go! Why are you still here? Didn't you know reading blog posts has been proven to increase your risk of cancer? Beware that hot tea, and those vegetables? Now work, that's a scary one, and brian stations? my goodness, don't get me started on the dangers of those!

Contemporary Americans go about life in a blinding fog of rubbish information and fear, muddled ideas and misleading statistics. Obviously nobody wants to die of cancer, or to have cancer, and I have the greatest sympathy for all who struggle through the throes of this most unfortunate family of sicknesses. However, I refuse to allow that to detract from my enjoyment of life.

Some proven risks are reasonable and avoidable, and even sensible. Number seven water bottles with BPA in them are not advisable because BPA is actually a proven carcinogen, and is also a mutagen that feminizes boys as an estrogen imitator. This is credible, well defended by reliable sources (and my definition if reliable is rather rigid), and is not a major inconvenience. When companies stopped manufacturing water bottles with BPA, I accepted this and took care not to drink from an old bottle after water had been sitting in it for long. However, I did not throw out every bottle I had; I just took a bit more care in using them and gradually acquired newer, supposedly safer ones.

Many of these supposed carcinogens, on the other hand, are utter nonsense. Kissing, hot tea, chinese food, and pet birds are the last things I would be worried about in our world. Let's face it: every single on of us will die. Yes, I will die. You, dear Reader, will die. We will probably die faster if we avoid certain substances listed above, each of which many believe to be a carcinogen. Some are downright contradictory: sunlight will give you cancer but so will sunscreen. Is one to assume, then, that one cannot go out in the sun but must hibernate all day or crawl around in tunnels like naked mole rats in order to avoid cancer, and instead become prone to some dangerous gas, perhaps, or radiation?

Humans do not thoroughly understand cancer, which is the root of much of the fear associated with it, as with the fear of darkness, which evaporates when one turns on the light (oh, that monster with the sharp teeth was actually my old prom dress and the baseball bat I used in third grade!). This mystery leads to the creation of many myths and superstitions associated with the poorly understood disease, hence the long (and, for the most part, ludicrous) list and ideas circulating the internet of parts of everyday life that are sure to give one cancer.

Humans are prone to believing the particularly shocking nuggets of (mis)information they hear or read, an effect magnified by the internet's heaping dump of lousy information. This goes for twisted stats and trimmed truths, for pretty lies and ugly almost-truths. These supposed carcinogens could potentially give one cancer, if they are, in fact, carcinogens (as some in fact are). However, would it not be better to get cancer and die sooner having lived life to the fullest, munched on cooked food, enjoyed a cup of hot tea in a cozy living room on a rainy night, partied at a barbecue with the sweetly smoking meat cooking on the grill, or avoided scurvy by biting into juicy fruits?

Every moment of life is a risk. When one does something as simple as sit down in  a chair, there is the slight possibility that the chair breaks and one falls through and gets seriously injured. Despite this, most people are perfectly content to sink into the recliner after a long day's work. Most of these risks are so slight as to be negligible, certainly not worth our while to worry about them needlessly and detract from our quality of life. The same applies to the massive list of accused carcinogens above. A person could pass through one's entire life in a state of terror of every item on that list (which would be impossible because it is rather self-contradictory in parts) and could die from a piano falling on one's head. 

Instead, one could realize that, yes, it is a bad idea to get an X-ray every day, but occasionally they are necessary and the X-ray at the dentist, or when one has a broken bone, for instance, will not be the difference between life and death. Agent Orange is a carcinogen, true, but one is not going to be exposed to it in every day life unless something changes extraordinarily in the next few years. Sausage. Really? Okay, sorry Chicagoans, there goes your hot dog fanaticism.

Is that really a rational response? No, of course not! Eat your sausages, drink your hot tea and coffee, wear your sunscreen (yes, please do; I say this as a redhead!), DEFINITELY wear deodorant, use toothpaste, and even drink from the occasional number seven water bottle. I can assure you, these will not kill you, and if they do in fifty years, you will have enjoyed your life a lot more than you would have if you'd tried to avoid them throughout those sixty years or so.

Now excuse me, I still have to finish my cup of coffee and orange juice, eat my morning toast and fruit with breakfast sausage to the side, put on deodorant and go to work, where I will get little exercise and maybe gain weight with all the shellfish and red meat I am enjoying so I can come home and sit in my reclining chair, drink hot tea, and stroke my pet bird, looking out the window at the glittering leaves and sparkling blue sky while listening to the cheerful chirp of the birds as I talk on my mobile phone to my beloved brother as the clock ticks and ticks.

I happen to know that yesterday (Saturday the 5th) was an SAT date. These generally consist of hundreds of surly teens swarming around a school lobby or hallways, their eyes drooping (after all, they had to get up around six! on a Saturday!), a handful of spearlike number two pencils dangling from negligent fingers. Some are nervous and sweaty, water bottle glued to the fingers with force and perspiration; some ambivalent or sleepy, slouched in a chair, eyes staring out at the past or the future. Nobody is happy to be there.

The SAT, despite its fall from supremacy brought about by the shiny-new ACT revolution, is one of the great determining factors of a person's future. A teen that performs well may get into the college of their dreams while one who does not may get into their last choice, or nowhere at all. Some will handle this well and still wax to their full potential, but many will take the devastation, the sense of an imminent loss of any exciting future, as a low-struck blow that knocks them off their feet.

Most people hate the SAT, but in actuality, it stand for one of the greatest bastions of America's value of freedom and opportunity. The SAT, while daunting to almost ny American youth, pales in comparison to the French Bac, for example, a test that, dozens of times more than the SAT, entirely forms the teen's future.

The newspapers I've been reading over the past few days have mentioned a court case involving Rupert Murdoch, in Britain, and the frequent misdemeanors by his staff at the Sun. Apparently, those who worked for him have used an impressive variety of highly illegal and arguably immoral means to seek stories and chase down tales and someone has drawn a line.

Freedom of the press is one of the defining characteristics of the United States, with a fancy amendment proclaiming this privilege in the Bill of Rights. Freedom of the press allows for incased transparency in political proceedings and helps the general public gain a greater perspective on the world. It is a cornerstone of democracy, permitting voters to make informed (and influenced) decisions. However, is there a point beyond which this freedom has gone too far?

Some scandals are important to reveal to the public. Watergate, while devastating to Americans and the voter turnout for the next few elections, was a key piece of knowledge that all Americans of the time had the right to possess, thanks to freedom of the press. It is an American's right to know when their elected president has betrayed them and turned against not only basic American principles but the Constitution.

Other scandals might be less important. Whether or not the star in that movie is pregnant with this singer's baby seems to interest the general public, but hardly affects their wellbeing. In fact, the greatest effect of this sort of "news" is the disillusionment with America's heroes, role models, and stars, or, worse, an acceptance of immoral behavior. Those under the public eye, including politicians, celebrities, and extremely rich software company CEOs ought to possess an added awareness of the consequences of their actions, but the 24/7 media coverage does not help.

If a normal person does something morally unsound, very few people notice. It does not have any real significance, except perhaps in the lives of two or three people directly affected by the immoral deed. However, if a public figure commits the same questionable act, it is suddenly the business of the nation. Does it really alter the abilities of a politician to lead if he happens to have four wives? So long as he does not brandish them in everyone's face and preach the dire necessity of a harem for every man, his private life has no effect on his business one. In fact, that is one of the most important principles of the workplace: to keep the private life as separate as humanly possible and perhaps a bit more.

When investigative journalism turns from significant scandals with a marked effect to mindless, personal snippets revealing the secrets of someone's life, it is clear someone does not have enough to write about. There are tons of newsworthy events occurring every minute of every day. There are environmental issues and devastating diseases and wars and genocides and who knows what else? We certainly don't, since our reporters spend their time on celebrity nonsense.

The problem is that in the end, the press is a business and therefore has to print what sells. This is fundamentally wrong. In a democracy, the press is a public service as essential as the police or the firemen. If the government subsidized the press it could become less preoccupied with the rubbish people would rather read and focus on real news. The disasters attract some attention, but rarely do the inspirational happenings or the simple positive stories make the cut, nor do chronic issues, which lose their place to acute accidents, action-packed drama and court cases that are deemed most likely to attract the public interest.

The public does not need more drivel extrapolating the personality type or love life of some celebrity based on the brand of tomatoes she buys at Jewel (or, my goodness, is it Whole Foods??). No, what society needs is at least one solid source of true news, subsidized by the government, unmarred by worthless babble, balanced by writers from different biases so as to present the most accurate, informative, and all-around useful news source possible.

Even in today's society, there are some who prefer to read real news, as unbiased as possible, and the government should help, if only as a self-perpetuating measure to maintain public interest in the public interest.

Many people go on and on about how one ought to save paper and hug trees and generally spews all sorts of information with varying levels of accuracy and fervency. However, after all this wasted energy (which, if you think about it, is rather environmentally unfriendly; think of all the calories worth of methane-producing livestock and pesticide-consuming vegetation one needs to make up for that), it generally makes absolutely no difference.

People argue that trees are a renewable resource, and that we aren't running out of paper. They argue that a sheet or two of paper makes no difference in the world, and that they are supporting the paper industry and the livelihoods of thousands of people worldwide. I agree with many of these points. I also have a few other ones that transcend these and indubitably reveal exactly why one ought to try to use less paper (for example, printing out every single post I have written since February would be exactly counterproductive to this goal).

Yes, trees are a renewable resource. That means that within a relatively short period of time, one can regrow them. That is very nice to know and very encouraging. However, their renewability does not alter the major issues with forest clearing, with tree plantations, or with other methods of procuring the trees that can so easily regrow. Different methods of cutting trees exist, some of which are far better (and more expensive) than others. Clear cutting, in which one employs a large, gas-guzzling machine to devour stupendous areas of forest, leaving humongous stretches of run-off farms, whereby massive quantities of pollution are taken into rivers, polluting them, harming their ecosystems, and causing further problems downstream. This method, it should be noted, also disturbs the forest ecosystem and displaces many cute, furry, huggable bunnies and baby deer and little bird chicks in their adorable nests. If the pollution is not sufficiently distressing, surely one cannot tolerate homeless hares and destitute deer. However, clear cutting is the most efficient and cost-effective method for chopping trees, which are required for paper.

Tree plantations are an alternative to clear-cutting, an alternative that avoids displacing the cute, fuzzy critters, but they have their problems as well as the rest of us. The monoculture fostered by this method reduces biodiversity (by definition), which further harms the ecosystem that was destroyed in order to install that plantation. They consume massive amounts of water and pesticides can be applied generously, allowing toxic and harmful chemicals to leach into the groundwater, streams, and bodies of humans and baby birds. The monoculture is also dangerous because if one little beetle or disease comes along, it can wipe out every defenseless member of the population like the plague.

The chemicals and energy that go into making paper are not negligible in quantity nor significance. Paper does not come out of the tree bright, shiny white in 8 1/2 by 11 inch strips. Humans burn terribly dirty, polluting coal and nonrenewable fossil fuels in order to acquire the energy necessary to manufacture the paper people use on a daily basis. The chemicals in the dyes that permit brilliantly colourful paper are mysterious to me in ingredients and effects, but you won't find me nibbling on a neon yellow sheet of paper.

Another oft-forgotten issue is that of the post-use paper. Once one has purchased every item on the grocery list, gotten an A on the line-skipped paper or completed the very pretty pink princess picture in pencil, one might decide the slip of paper is  no longer quite so useful as it had been, and one will therefore wish to dispose of it. Many people throw it away, which then sticks it directly into a landfill from many locations, a landfill that is already bursting its seams, a landfill with the terrifying potential to leak terribly toxic chemicals into the ground, to infiltrate aquifers and permeate the groundwater. If one decides that this landfill, an entirely separate issue itself, is not the desired destination for this lovely piece of paper, one might recycle it. This is far better, as it can be reused, but still requires massive amounts of energy. Instead, one could reduce the amount of paper one uses by writing tomorrow's grocery list on the back, drawing a few more pretty pink princesses, or sticking the paper into the printer to use the backside.

Now that you are dedicated to the cause of saving paper, you are probably wondering just how you can do it. Well, you'll be happy to know that it's really not that hard!

• Write smaller. Not so small you can't read it, but small enough to get more use out of each sheet. It's not that hard, really!
• Print double sided! Many printers can do it if you click two more times, and it will save you money on paper in the long run! Mine does not do this, but it is very easy and soothing to reload each printed sheet so that I can print on the back.
• Use smaller pieces! For example, when I make birthday cards for people, I rip a paper in half, so I can get two cards out of each sheet. They will enjoy the card at least as much, and may even be touched that you were so thoughtful as to spread your good deed to them.
• Don't print if you don't have to! If you do have to, try to print multiple pages per sheet, so that instead of two pages on a sheet (front and back side) you have four or eight pages. Most items are not much more difficult to read like this, and if you believe they will be, print fewer per page.
• Doodle or work in the margins, not on separate pieces of paper. Trust me, I know from experience that this can potentially save huge amounts of paper.
• Most importantly, do not be an extremist. It is okay to print things. The paper industry and the printer industry are counting on you! Just do it in the enlightened fashion, and be aware of the consequences your actions have on the world around you.

Thank you! Happy saving!