Why Butterflies? Why USPIRG?

The people currently running the US Public Interest Research Group sent out an e-mail last winter asking people why we support the group, to whatever extent we do. I can't afford to send them money but I did start a Zazzle Collection dedicated to their campaign to protect monarch butterflies. 

Google used to like Zazzle. I used to post Zazzle merchandise images here. Google and Zazzle coding haven't always worked very well, so I stopped. You need to go to Zazzle and see the whole Save The Butterflies Collection, anyway.

When I started the collection it was pretty well unique. No longer. Zazzle is growing, worldwide, and there are all kinds of butterfly images. I hold no copyright on the slogan "Save the Butterflies." Lots of people are dedicating proceeds from their collections to the butterfly-related projects and organizations of their choice. People are doing cartoon butterflies, fantasy-color butterflies, repeating prints with butterfly silhouettes, butterflies with Bible verses, anything you can think of. Zazzlers are not in competition against each other--the site blocks that by doubling the "royalty" payments when Zazzlers market other people's merchandise. I tweet links to other people's butterflies. I've invited them to add their butterflies to my collection, but many of them are working in aid of other projects. All I can say is that you might want to research what they plan to do with money if you buy their designs. Otherwise it's fine by me. 

Regular readers already know why butterflies and why PIRG, but for occasional visitors and those thinking "I thought this writer was 'conservative'" and/or "In real life this writer doesn't seem to like insects much"...(I do protest when people kill valuable insects for no good reason. I don't like handling them, and have no problem with the biblical mandate to wash the germs and the sensation of contact with insects off my skin, quickly, before touching people or food or anything.) Here's what I sent them: 

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Well, my parents weren't exactly beatniks, but they did live on the road before they started having children, and they did collect books from minority points of view, even the flakiest. I recognized Ralph Nader's name in grade four. So I had some idea what sort of organization gave me my first real job not funded by College Work-Study before I started...I'd had mononucleosis and wasn't strong enough for the job, but I was glad to be offered it. Loyalty has remained.

It's important to mention that my Glyphosate Awareness activity started independently of the Monsanto boycott, although I was in that for a while—bought some lovely yarn to avoid knitting with cheap Monsanto acrylic. I am a true genetic celiac, one of those Irish families, so for a long time I thought I must have ingested a bit of wheat when I had unexplained celiac reactions. The first clue that wheat was not the only trigger came from an e-friend in India, a half-grown child who I don't think lived to grow up, writing in 2008 that she had pseudo-celiac reactions to everything she ate. I was enjoying being a best-case Celiactivist at that time, just sharing recipes and encouraging people to discover all the lovely healthy food that is naturally gluten-free, and yet anomalies kept feeding back to Mother and me. People in Africa with no Irish ancestry were having pseudo-celiac reactions. People were having liver reactions to BT corn, which does not noticeably bother me, also. Jeffrey Smith e-mailed that the trouble might be GMO rather than wheat. It was 2016 before an e-mail to Zatarain's Rice products got us investigating the possibility that it was "pesticide residues." 

It's not exactly fun, but it is a blessing to science that I have unique, distinct reactions to gluten and glyphosate. Even true celiacs' reactions are often more cryptic. I tested myself in various ways. DID NOT test Mother or the younger generation, what kind of monster would do that? But I tested myself, kept a journal, and noted that everyone else I knew was having some other kind of reaction when I had my unexplained celiac-type reactions. I noted that there had been some "times of horror" when everyone I knew was miserable and a lot of animals were dying, and they correlated precisely to times when road verges had been sprayed and it hadn't rained for a few days. I barely recognized glyphosate as being the name of a chemical in 2016, but that was what was making me sick. And making my friends ill. And killing our animals, tame and wild.

In March 2018 life really gave me a wake-up call. I was downtown, working our open-air Friday Market, before and after glyphosate was sprayed nearby. Melodrama. I stood in that crowd and watched neighbors and visitors wilt. Then I went up to the cafe to cool off, rehydrate, and blog, and there was a link to the studies at epa.gov that were being used to suggest that glyphosate was "safe." I read those studies, and they suggest the exact opposite to me. The blog post that contains links and summaries to the ten EPA documents was titled "This Web Site Loves Vegetables. Here Is Some Spinach." It was meant to be ironic--I love spinach but for some time it had been another thing I could not eat. 

So, there were more blog posts, more e-mails, and that was how I got in touch with other people who'd been writing about glyphosate. People I knew were in the Monsanto boycott, Ruth Ozeki, Neil Young, Zahara Heckscher, didn't think glyphosate was more heinous than Monsanto products generally. Vandana Shiva was the only name I remembered from that list who showed interest in Glyphosate Awareness, and later Anna Lappe and Ralph Nader. I e-met Carey Gillam, Stacy Malkan, Tamara Lebret, Michael Balter, Robert Kennedy, Mary Holland, allies in England, France, Spain, Germany, even Uganda of all places, and Vietnam, only after I started the Twitter Live Chats. I've never met any of them in real life, though Z Heckscher was a close friend, another former USPIRG fundraiser. I read insinuations from the enemy that I, or other people, don't know what we're talking about and only got into Glyphosate Awareness because of Gillam's "fear-inducing" journalism. Bosh!

By 2020 it seemed to me that all Internet-literate people had as much Glyphosate Awareness as they were willing to have, and the need was to reach people who don't read articles about chemicals on the Internet. Sometimes it seems that we lost ground, sometimes that our grassroots have been spreading and growing. I think it was Balter who suggested the "creature features" to maintain awareness of glyphosate as an evil thing in the shadows behind articles about pretty, lovable things. I did that series about butterflies, sponsored by the Nature Gift Store; it's led into weekly butterfly blog posts and of course the "Save the Butterflies" Collection on Zazzle.

Youall really should check out the "Save the Butterflies" Collection. I think they have everything on which monarch butterfly photos can be printed, by now, plus other butterflies, some of the flowers of their food plants, and last night (I work at night) I put up the first of a series of kids' products with caterpillars. All profits from those printables go to USPIRG! The hard part is getting sensible people to order such expensive shirts, calendars, yoga mats, etc., but 5 to 10 percent of everything is yours.

I'm working on a "Celiactivist" book as well. It gets intense at times. I wrote a book I call Two Thousand or Less, about living on my annual income, in US dollars, as an Internet writer; I intended to put it on Amazon, then thought it was good enough for a print publisher, and am still looking for a print publisher who agrees. I have one about sociology under consideration in England, and then the one I really believe is most important is still growing here in the US. So much work and no money in sight.

If you still send students from door to door in DC, or other cities, I've got everything for them to mix and match on Zazzle, and I'd love to see pictures of them ringing doorbells in their butterfly-motif shirts, hats, clipboards, binders, and water bottles. They may also want to check out the "Afridrille" canvas shoes on Zazzle, though they're not suitable for the butterfly photos. (I don't know whether our African allies have been able to use Zazzle.) 

So many of us "Spoonies" of the world have nothing to lose but our chronic disease conditions, and we have the world to win...

Final answer to the question: I don't really like activist organizations that become institutions, truth be told. They're sincere but, after one campaign, trying to keep the group together, pay office expenses, etc., eats up a lot of money and takes a lot of energy away from either fighting another battle or getting back to peace. Glyphosate Awareness has no office, has no officers, asks people to do things rather than send me money, much as I could use some money. Still, there are a half-dozen or so nonprofits I support when I can: Habitat, Heifer, ADRA, the Salvation Army, and also PIRG. I'm neutral about some of your campaigns but I have to support anyone who's working on getting glyphosate banned.

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Repeating for emphasis: Glyphosate Awareness DOES NOT TAKE MONEY. I ask you to donate your time and talent. There is NO profit in it for me. You will be asked to pay for anything I have to pay for, such as physical mailing costs, but that's ALL. Glyphosate Awareness is a movement, not a career or an organization. I want this campaign to win and be done. Forever. 

You can send money to this web site. That's encouraged. You can send Amazon giftcards online, even internationally afaik, or you can send a US postal money order to the mailing address. Both e-mail and real mail addresses appear below the giftcard selection widget at the bottom of the screen.

You don't have to ask for anything in return for money, but it shows more respect for yourself and me if you do. (When people "just want to be the giver" I laugh at them for thinking they can monopolize all the self-esteem in this world.) You can still order anything advertised at this site or on Amazon through me, even though I still don't have a physical store with a business account, as this web site has always intended to have, to protect your privacy and accept your cash payments. You can commission an ad post or a post on a topic that interests you. You can buy a treat for the cats.