Road Trip or Bust!

It's almost time! Time for New York again! Dad, Heather, Morgan (my wonderful boyfriend), Dana (his wonderful daughter) and I are heading to good ole Chemung County for a few days. Before we get there, we are stopping by a state park on Lake Erie to see the ocean-like freshwater basin. Dana has never layed her eyes on a Great Lake.

Rather than shelling out for a hauty hotel, we will be brinhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6491415451148354090ging our camping equipment to travel in a "Life is Good" fashion. Camping on the beach, how nice. Let me see if my computer skills are reaching the whiz level by adding in a picture of Geneva on the Lake, Ohio. We'll be staying at a 65 year business called Ralph's Place Camping with beach front sites.

Awesome, it worked. That is a pic of some winery up there near where we'll be. We want to spend some of Saturday swimming and hiking and whatever else in this area.

Sunday is when we swing on into Elmira. Here is my plan, which probably will shift a bit of course.
Sunday see Grandma and Grandpa Novick (Uncle Bobby is in town that day).
Monday visit with people, see some Elmira sites.
Tuesday go up to see the Glen, falls, and Uncle's place on Cayuta.
Wednesday we'll say goodbye, not sure if morning or afternoon, but then we'll head on to either stop in Barton, or continue on through to Delhi near the Catskills.
Thursday spend some hiking and hanging in the parks that I worked in and with friends that I worked with. Camp out on the Little Delaware River on the Lucky Dog (organic) Farm where my friend lives and works. http://www.luckydogorganic.com/lucky-dog-farm-hamden-new-york-catskills-organic/
Friday we will be heading down along the Susquehanna River, through Lancaster County PA, stopping by oddball roadside attractions in Scranton and Amish Country. Then make it down to southern Virginia to see Foamhenge (a realistic replica of Stonehenge made out of foam!) and to camp near the Jefferson National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains/Hills.
Saturday gotta hurry back home to Memphis to get the car in by 5!

Please contact me and let me know when you can visit, it will be hard for us to go to everyones house, so maybe we can all get together in a central location. Go get with your extended family members, and come up with a plan! hehe.
My e-mail is charityn@wiredwizard.net or charity.novick@memphistn.gov (2nd is my work e-mail).
I am on Facebook all the time so you can catch up with me there, or call me... but you have to e-mail me to get my number.
Love ya!

"Green" Egg Dye

Dying eggs 20th century style most often uses a little food coloring, vinegar, and water. Historic egg dying, pre-food coloring, used vegetable dyes rather. I've been looking at the ingredients of your generic brand food coloring to see if it has any contents that are harmful to the environment or your health.

The ingrediants label:
water, propylene glycol, fd&c yellow #5, fd&c red #40, fd&c blue#1, citric acid, sodium benzoate.

The ones that I'm unsure about are the glycol, colorants, and the preservative sodium benzoate.

What is propylene glycol? Glycols are alcohols, so I don't think it will be that hazardous.

Material Safety and Data Sheet (MSDS) describes it as a colorless, tasteless liquid that may cause eye and skin irritation. Wear safety glasses and gloves. A little further down: Hazardous if ingested, do not induce vomitting. MAY AFFECT GENETIC MATERIAL!

Further DOWN:
Ingestion: Prolonged or repeated ingestion may cause hyperglycemia and may affect behavior/CNS (symptoms
similar to that of acute ingestion). http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Propylene_glycol-9927239

We use this a lot, even if it's a little at a time, for so much that we put into our bodies. I had no idea until now!

Coloring Agents Red, Blue, Yellow:

Blue #1: MSDS Chronic affects from low doses over a long term says -
Ingestion: Prolonged or repeated ingestion may cause hyperglycemia and may affect behavior/CNS (symptoms similar to that of acute ingestion). The acute sympomts for high doses in the short term are:
Ingestion: It may cause gastrointestinal tract irritation. It may affect behavior/central nervous system(CNS depression, general anesthetic, convulsions, seizures, somnolence, stupor, muscle contraction or spasticity, coma), brain (changes in surface EEG), metabolism, blood (intravascular hemolysis, white blood cells - decreased neutrophil function), respiration (respiratory stimulation, chronic pulmonary edema, cyanosis), cardiovascular
system(hypotension, bradycardia, arrhythmias, cardiac arrest), endocrine system (hypoglycemia), urinary system (kidneys), and liver.

Ecological affects are nill. Of course it doesn't list the affects from the processing of the color and the propylene glycol.

You know what, I'm not even going to go on about the rest of the colors or preservative, which I will leave up to you to do espcially the sodium benzoate (ick!). It's really enough for me to just jump right into the beautiful vegetable dyes.

At my very cool job, we make vegetable dyes for students on field trips to use to dye eggs. It is very easy, but just a little more cleanup than your handy bottles of poison. We make a beautiful yellow, red, and blue then let the eggs sit in the colors for just a few hours to soak up the dye and voila!

So what did we use?



photo from:

http://www.herbsociety-stu.org/DyeingEggs.htm

Chopped up purple cabbage, beets, and yellow onion skins. Boil these veggies and watch as the colors seep out.

I remember as a kid, I got beet juice on my fingers when, instead of eating them, I picked them up to hide in the trash. But that color was soooo pretty! So just let the veggies boil for about 15 minutes, then cool, and drop the eggs in.

You may want to do small amounts so that it is easy to store all this in the fridge, vegetables do have a funky odor, then you must put the vinegar in, eeew, so put it in the fridge to avoid wrinkling your nose all day. Check out the link above for cool ideas on kick-ass design ideas that are all natural for your eggs.

Naturally, it's probably best to get the vegetables have been grown organically, or in your own backyard to avoid all toxins.

Go Green! Hoppy Spring, and Easter.

The Fear of God

Thank you State Park Official for putting the fear of God in already timid minds. I am taking that statement from Drew. We'll have limbs falling on our heads if we take off into Shelby Forest! Rescues have been made before, women have broke their necks being out in storms like this! Most left, but a few mad, courageous hikers stayed behind to brave the elements. We walked, we slid a little in mud, we survived. Nothing like a day of cool, clear sunshine to ice this mud pie with irony.

Working with Teens.

This is my first blog, and I am at work, so I am keeping it short.

What is the best way to connect with teenage city girls? I find that with most groups, a quick way to get attention and affection with interest is through humor. This weekend, my second job the "Great Outdoors University" is taking a group of teenage city girls out to the woods. Daunting for many. Luckily I have some exposure through my teenage sister. To make sure they have a good time, you have to allow them to connect to you and to their surroundings. Often, a goofy attitude can at least remove some of the stress of them meeting you and being in a small group away from home. Sometimes, it's annoying. So then, a different side of ones personality is useful.
Knowledge of the natural world is definitely something I feel the need to share sometimes, but scientific knowledge can get boring, and the GOU offers courses, not classes. Lecturing on a hike is NOT cool. The best responses come from the "wow" material. "Peanuts have been called goober peas in the old south because an African word for peanut was 'dguba'." I just call them yum. It's the quick quips that stick.
Finally, one of the other ways that help me to show kids how to connect to the woods, is to show them how to have fun in it. My experiences include log walking like on a balance beam, climbing slippery rock and dirt ravines, getting my feet wet, and looking for little crawlers. Most of the kids we bring out have never had the opportunity for these experiences.
Besides being young with some knowledge of pop culture, neither being afraid of this demographic nor appearing like an authoritative figure is what loosens these kids up into a more "natural" state of mind.
When a good time makes an impression, the kids we work with are eager to come back. As we have heard from many letters that we have them right for one of our activities, every single person there has something good to say about what we do. Not just good words and memory tidbits, but profound prose even in the shortest of paragraphs and incomplete sentences. We see that we have connected with them, and they have opened their mind to being outside and away from the city.