KATHERINE MARIA PINNER, AUTHOR

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3/29/2020

Raise The Blades

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In the back of my book "The Greatest Moment In Human History," I offer the reader ideas about how each one of us can positively contribute to improving the state of the planet. One of these ideas is raising the blades on your lawn mower.

Now, how can raising the blades on your lawn mower help the planet?

The first way is by reducing water usage. When you have a higher turf, more water is retained in the soil. It does not evaporate as it would if the water were sitting on top of the mud or dirt. The water is absorbed deep into the root system and into the turf where it can be absorbed into the ground more gradually. This means less need for irrigation and human intervention. By simply allowing the rain to soak into your soil and maximizing what nature is already providing, you will reduce the time and money you are spending on watering your lawn, particularly in the hot summer months.

To do this, my general rule of thumb is this:
  1. Refrain from cutting the lawn if the temperature is over 100 degrees. At this point, the grass is stressed, and you are killing it if you try to cut it.
  2. If the temperature is above 90, cut the grass as close to sunset as you can. If it takes you an hour to cut your lawn, and sunset is at 9:00, try cutting around 7:00. This will allow the grass to cool and recover before experiencing the heat. Afternoon sun is the most intense, so the later in the day, the better.
  3. Raise the blade to the middle setting and adjust from there. I find that the middle setting on my lawn mower allows me to cut once a week. Since lawn mowers vary, start from the middle and then adjust based on your settings, keeping in mind that anything lower than 2 inches is too short.

Beyond reducing your need to water, you will find that raising the blades also reduces and may even eliminate the need for any chemical application. When the turf is thicker and taller, you will find less need for chemical intervention to keep your lawn looking green and healthy. This is because trimming the lawn very short creates more stress on the grass, thus creating an unhealthy appearance. Many people then want to improve the quality of the lawn, so they reach out to a variety of chemical processes to make the grass appear greener. If you are doing this, please reconsider. The problem may not be the grass. It may be the way you are maintaining - or rather over maintaining - it. When the turf is allowed to grow, it is thicker. The extra height will improve the grass quality, making it hardier, and, therefore, reducing the need for anything extra to help it grow.

A taller, hardier turf also means more life and protein in your lawn. If left a bit taller, you will find that insects favor grass that is a bit taller. Crickets, ants, grasshoppers, helpful beetles, worms, and other vital insects will grow and thrive in a thicker turf. These insects add vital proteins to the soil which will feed the grass organically, without the use of chemical fertilizers and other man-made products. We may not like these insects, but they’re actually very helpful for the soil. Not only do they "feed the grass," they also create tunnels through the roots and turf which aid the growth of the grass and improve soil quality through natural aeration.

Insects also act as vital food for birds. If you’re a bird watcher, having a taller turf and more insects will organically and naturally attract more birds into your lawn without the use of feeders or seeds which require more work and energy on your part, and can also disrupt the natural migration of certain species. Why not take a break and let Mother Nature feed the birds without any help from you? You may find that a taller turf can save time, money, and energy with the added benefit of allowing for the natural cycle and migration of birds as they feed off the beneficial proteins in your lawn.

Think that a shorter lawn means that you need to cut it less often? Think again. Consider that by raising the blades on the lawn mower, you may be able to cut the grass less frequently. This is because a turf that is only an inch or inch and a half tall will look like it’s growing faster than grass that may be a couple of inches taller. Therefore, the shorter the turf the more frequently you will be tempted to cut the lawn to maintain that even appearance, versus a taller turf where you won't notice the slight imperfections as much.

As if all of this isn't reason enough, cutting the lawn when it's taller and less often results in less gasoline usage. Since lawnmowers create a great deal of emissions, cutting the lawn less frequently lowers the amount of pollution emitted. When you cut your lawn, you are creating more pollution per gallon than driving your car. Cutting less often equals less environmental pollution. It seems hard to imagine, but this one simple trick of raising the blades reduces water usage, reduces gasoline usage, lowers emissions, and makes your lawn look better and healthier with less work on your part!

A taller turf also results in more water absorption into the soil, reducing run off into sewers, ridding your lawn of puddles and mud, and lowering the amount of erosion. This improves the overall aesthetics of your yard and your home.

To really help your lawn, you may also want to try planting a tree or two. Trees draw more water into the root system which pulls the water down into the soil and can, in turn, aid the surrounding grasses. I found this out one year as I planted a tree in an area of my lawn that was experiencing extremely poor soil quality. After planting the tree, I noticed an immediate improvement in the quality of the soil, the health of the grass, and the overall quality of that area which previously looked terrible with a great deal of water runoff and erosion. The tree provided vital shade, reduced water run off, and increased water absorption. That part of my yard is now healthy and thriving, just by planting one tree, and the tree itself adds beauty and variety to what was previously an area that was sparse and underutilized.

One final thought for those of you who are dog lovers like me. When we chemically treat our lawns, animals ingest those chemicals. Scientists are finding that golden retrievers are dying earlier, and over 80% of these deaths are related to cancer. One of the possible culprits are chemicals that are being applied to residential lawns. Golden retrievers in particular like to eat and walk on grass. When they ingest these chemically treated grasses or walk on them with their paws, these chemicals are absorbed into the golden retrievers' bloodstream and overall physiology. Some scientists are finding that these chemicals are linked to cancer and early deaths and that certain breeds such as golden retrievers are particularly sensitive to these chemicals. If you love dogs and are concerned about the health and well-being of animals and even children who may be more susceptible to chemicals, consider halting the application of chemical treatments and at the same time advocating for the adoption of some natural methods - like raising the blades - which improve the condition of your lawn organically.

Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators are also adversely impacted by the application of these chemical treatments.  They feed off of those chemicals, and this may in part contribute to what is termed "colony collapse disorder" in bees, a term which seems to imply that the bees have something wrong with them when it's really the application of man-made chemicals that is at least in part responsible for their declining numbers.  Want to help vital pollinators?  Well, it's easy.  Raise the blades!

To summarize, if you want to see more birds, help critical pollinators like bees and butterflies, have a more attractive and healthier lawn, save money, have more time for things you actually enjoy, lower emissions, decrease water usage, and reduce the amount of pesticides and harmful chemicals, consider this one simple trick. Raise the blades, and you'll be amazed at how working fewer hours and spending less money on your turf actually improves it!


Imagine if everyone today who is over-cutting their lawn used this one simple idea. It would have a huge impact on the planet. One person can make a difference. It just takes doing things differently. And just think when your neighbors see you do this how much more inclined they will be to do this as well.

Still think one person can't change the world?  Think again.

​

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3/14/2020

Cycles

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It's a good day for staying in.  I love days like this every now and then.  Rainy.  Dark.  Still.  It reminds me it's okay to take it easy.  Nature has its seasons and its cycles, and so do we.  There's no need to rush all the time.  Change is coming.  It always is when it rains like this.  Sometimes it snows.  The trees are saturated.  every inch of their bark is wet.  That must feel wonderful to a tree.  They seem happy in the rain.  They can take a long pause and let their processes flow effortlessly.  

The rain brings change without force and without self-will.  And so it is.  It's not a sharp ending.  It's a gradual shift, and every increment is a reality.  There is a very profound meaning in that if you meditate on it.  We are more tree than IT.  We are happiest in the flow.  Humans created four seasons.  We like knives and boxes, don't we.  But that is random.  It's just language.  Categories are language, and most "disciplines" are nothing more than language and motor skills.

You know how to impress someone?  Speak a language they don't understand.  Nature has many languages we don't know and are, apparently, uninterested in observing.  Because we don't speak them, we dismiss them.  We destroy them, just like the colonists destroyed the indigenous peoples, just because they were different, just because they didn't understand them.  It is a great tragedy and misfortune, the destruction of a species or group of people.

When will we seek balance?  When will we allow species to roam free as they were divinely intended to do?  Control and eradication are nothing more than fear.  We put the orangutan in a prison to observe because we fear.  We study.  Why do we do this?  Even the crocodile has the same basic skeletal structure as a human.  Even a frog and a rabbit has the same basic form and symmetry.  Ponder this some time.  You will see that all categories and sub-classifications are nothing more than language, and that they are totally unnecessary.  

The Native Americans understood this.  Some used the term "brother wolf."  The settlers found this naive.  But the Native Americans tribes were right.  And they had a better understanding of the wolf because they comprehended the similarities instead of fearing the differences.  They did not fear the wolf, though the wolf was a different species, but the settlers feared the Native Americans though they were so much the same.

We think nature is fear.  Nature has no fear.  In nature there is only threat and response, or complete and total repose.  That's it.  Humans fear.  Why?  Because somehow our evaluation went the path of reinforcing differences over similarities.  We think it's intelligence.  It really isn't.

My favorite art form is pen and ink.  In pen and ink, you see the form and structure.  There is no distraction.  When observing skeletons, it's much the same.  Walk through a natural history museum, and you will see the form and structure.  Try it sometime.  Walk around and see if you observe the pattern.  Look at two human skeletons side by side.  There is no black and white.  There is no male or female.  There is no hair color, eye color, etc . . .  You won't notice them on a dog or cat or dinosaur either.  But what you will notice is that we are not so different.  We are essentially the same.  Then what gives us the right to over-populate the planet, conquer, displace, or eradicate another species or even another group of people so much like ourselves?

Some day we will scale it back.  That would be the true march of progress:  get our trash out of the ocean, clean our air, sleep like normal human beings again, eat actual food with seeds in it, and, for God's sake, let other species live where they were intended to live. 

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3/6/2020

H2O, How I Love You!

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Water is amazing. Yes, water, that magical substance that we all seem to take for granted. I was thinking about water one day and why humans need water. When we look at the chemical composition of water, it’s H20. That is two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule. It seems obvious what we use oxygen for, as it drives every major process in the body. We also breathe oxygen.  Because we breathe oxygen, it seems to make sense that we could also drink oxygen. 

But hydrogen?  What the heck do we use hydrogen for?  And what the heck is hydrogen for that matter?  

For those who remember their history, you may recall that the Hindenburg was a blimp that the Germans flew sometime in the early 1900s. The blimp was full of hydrogen.  Why did the Germans fill the oversized hot air balloon with hydrogen?  They did it so it would float.  You see, hydrogen is over 90 times lighter than air.  Not only that, it is far lighter than even helium, which is used to fill mylar balloons for birthday parties.  Hydrogen floats.  That's great.  However, there is one major drawback to filling blimps with hydrogen, and that problem is that hydrogen also burns . . . really fast!

When the blimp launched, there was spark or flame somewhere on the blimp that triggered a fire.  Because hydrogen is highly flammable, the entire blimp disintegrated in a matter of seconds.  Film from the incident shows the zeppelin disintegrating in about 37 seconds!  The hydrogen made the blimp go up in an unbelievably short amount of time, far less than you would expect.  Why did it burn so fast?  Because hydrogen is not only super light, it's also a super fuel. Oh yes.  It's like a can of pure weightless energy.  Hydrogen can be used to power race cars and rocket ships . . . provided they don't explode or catch fire.

If this fuel is more potent than gasoline, why would our bodies possibly need hydrogen? This seems strange.  It would be like drinking liquid gasoline which would poison and kill us.  And yet all life relies on water, and, therefore, hydrogen.  Very odd indeed.

When we (or trees or birds or insects or other mammals) drink water we are consuming two hydrogen molecules to every one oxygen molecule, and that hydrogen is more flammable than gasoline.  Amazing that it is made stable by the single oxygen molecule, and amazing that we are able to drink it and actually use it.

How do our bodies use hydrogen? Hydrogen is a lubricant like many other forms of fuel such as gasoline and petroleum products. Therefore, it lubricates our joints and muscles.  Beyond that miracle of chemistry and biology, hydrogen also serves a very important function as it is the major fuel for life.

Scientists estimate that over 80% of the universe is made up of hydrogen! It is literally everywhere.  When you are flying an airplane over the ocean, you are actually witnessing a huge pool of hydrogen.

When we talk about being thirsty, we say we are "dehydrated." The words hydrated and dehydrated come from the word hydrogen. What does it mean to be dehydrated?  It literally means that your body doesn't have enough hydrogen in it!  

If hydrogen is a super fuel, a super powerful form of energy, then it serves to reason that many electrical and neurological processes in our bodies require hydrogen to operate optimally. In fact, hydrogen may even be the thing that generates our inner "spark," the actual essence of life itself.  Perhaps it is the real fountain of youth.  This may even be what Nikola Tesla was referring to when he said that energy is literally all around us all the time.  If he was talking about hydrogen and hydrogen makes up 80% of the universe, then he was right!

Why is water the most perfect liquid for all life on Earth? It is because of oxygen and hydrogen, so drink your water, because water is energy.  Your body needs it.

Water, . . . so simple and yet so powerful.  It is quite possibly the most perfect, most potent energy energy drink known to humans. 
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    Katherine Maria Pinner lives in St. Louis, Missouri.  She is the daughter of Croatian parents, Mirko and Sylvia.  She received a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and a Master of Arts in English.  She currently works as an innovation consultant, helping businesses and people achieve their full potential.  She holds numerous professional certifications in her field.  Her greatest passions are for speaking, writing, education, and the environment.

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