And now I am giving thanks for having enlightened friends and instant access to information. If you're interested, here's my response to the story
Boycott Big Oil? Prepare to Give Up Your Lifestyle

I'm Prepared to Give Up the Petroleum Lifestyle. How About You?

No Lake of Fire For Me, Thank You Very Much!
by Brenda Shoop

Prepare to give up your lifestyle if you decide to boycott Big Oil! That was the title of the AP article by Seth Borenstein published Friday, June 11 2010. After much hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing about how miserable it might be to switch shampoos; skip all the way to page two, and there toward the middle, a chemistry professor says, "there's a whole world of low-dose (health) effects" associated with petroleum exposure.

He goes on to say that many of these chemicals are disrupting the human hormone system. Another research scientist states that these are substances that don't appear in nature and "they accumulate in the human body, they persist in the environment. The problem is science isn't quite sure how bad or how safe they are," he said.

Maybe we should give up our "petroleum lifestyles". Our oil-hungry Consumer Nation has the most unhealthy population in the world. Could these two be related?

We can help our planet heal itself, if we stop being like mosquitoes on her skin, and learn to coexist with what's around us. I know I've heard this before.  Why didn't I listen? Could the hippies have been right? We don't need oil, they told us. Hemp is the answer!

Maybe hemp is the answer. It has been the true above-ground renewable equivalent to things petroleum all along; ecologically beneficial, not harmful.

These are the facts: we already know that hemp is safe; we know that hemp is sustainable and renewable; we know that hemp replenishes unhealthy soil; we know we can grow hemp without fertilizers and pesticides; we know that the hemp seed contains the best complex proteins available in a plant; we know that hemp is naturally fire-retardant; we know that hemp clothing lasts a long time.

We also know that hemp was made illegal by the very same forces that are conspiring to destroy our world today: Pride, Greed, and Selfishness.

There's no excuse for ignorance any longer. We have instant access to information now via the internet. We can find the real truths that have been kept from us for so long.

Pride, Greed and Selfishness created this Lake of Fire. We get to decide, by our everyday choices, how we will respond to this wake-up call. Our time is so precious these days, but isn't it worth our collective future to spend some time acquiring the information needed to make informed choices, instead of just believing that the "guys in the ties" have all the answers? It is time for us to learn how to educate ourselves and make informed choices, without always looking to the government to tell us what's right or wrong.

And yes, it was uncomfortable when we switched from the bottle to solid food way back when, but sometimes discomfort is what we need in order to push us to grow up. All I'm suggesting is that it's way past time for us all to wake up, realize that things are not what they seem, inform ourselves, and find out our own truth, instead of following someone else. Even me.