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Go to Blog » Go to Columnist Page »Personal blog for writer/editor/publisher Renee Witterstaetter-- film and publishing professional as well as agent to actors, media guests, writers and artists via Pros & Cons Celebrity Booking AND Eva Ink Artist Group. Owner of the virtual experience site: happyspacePOPcon.com. In this blog, Renee will post missives and observances for entertainment, as well as keep followers updated on the creative endeavors of both herself and her associates at Pros & Cons and Eva Ink.
Welcome to our blog!
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Happy Holidays from Eva Ink Artist Group!
Wishing all of our friends out there a season filled with PEACE!
i.e. no fighting over that last piece of fruitcake ya'll.
They'll make more. :-)
And a fantastic 2010!
Peace and Love, as Ringo would say--
From the gang at Eva Ink:
Michael Golden
Mark Texeira
Steve Scott
Renee Witterstaetter
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Eva Ink Shop--Just in Time for the Holidays!
Be sure to check out the Eva Ink Products folder on our Facebook page for all your holiday shopping, for that comics lover in your life, or for yourself
There is still time for Christmas delivery on all our books, prints and DVD's, the later featuring your favorite artists such as Michael Golden, Mark Texeira, George Perez, Bill Sienkiewcz, Steve Scott, Joe Jusko... and many more!!!!
For orders, contact me, Renee at: evaink@aol.com
Check out the Eva Ink page at:
http://www.facebook.com/gr
Best,
Renee
Eva Ink Artist Group
Eva Ink Publishing
evaink@aol.com
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
In Time for the Holidays--Give a chicken, a Goat or a Duck to a Needy Family!!
Here's another idea for the holidays and a great way to help those in need via World Vision, a non-profit organization that looks at the essentials of survival for these families and makes miracles happen.
Check Out: http://www.worldvision.org
You can give a gift of two chickens for $25, five ducks for $30, a goat and a chicken for $100, and a goat $75-- and more to needy families in other countries as well as make donations to = families in the US as well.
What is the significance of this? Give a goat for example ($75), and a goat nourishes hungry children and families with healthy milk, cheese, and yogurt. Goats also give a much-needed income boost by providing offspring and extra dairy products for sale at the market. A healthy diary goat can give up to 16 cups of milk a day. Goat milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk and is an excellent source of calcium, protein, and other essential nutrients that growing children need. Goats are practical animals — flourishing in harsh climates while producing valuable manure to fertilize crops and vegetable gardens.
Give two chickens ($25). Chickens give children and families a lasting source of nutrition and income. Fresh eggs raise the levels of protein and other nutrients in a family’s diet, and the sale of extra eggs and chickens can pay for vital basics.
Your gift of chickens will also naturally multiply to impact generations of children. Each family that receives chickens can sell the offspring for extra income or share them with other families in need. Chicks require little money, space, or food to thrive and grow — making them an ideal business venture for a single mom or vulnerable family.
Donate five ducks ($30). Give ducks to a hungry family today and they’ll benefit from hundreds of large, protein-rich eggs all year long. Extra duck eggs and hatched ducklings can be sold to buy medicine or help send a child to school.
A duck also offers valuable down-feathers, famous for their thermal insulation and padding — great for use in bedding materials and warm clothing, or to fetch much-needed income at the market. Ducks even produce fertilizer that can dramatically increase crop yields!
There are so many ways to help. Check it out.
--Renee
www.goodsofconscience.com
Hi All--Just in time for Christmas, I found this interesting article on how a Bronx priest is having locals in Guatemala spin cotton, which is then turned into trendy threads by folks in the Bronx, and which now is hitting the fashion world because the clothes are organic and sustainable. I particularly like this story because the non-profit helps folks in Guatemala earn a living, while also providing jobs in the Bronx and helping those in need including underfunded schools in the community. This is one example of people out there trying to make a difference in this crazy world, and I salute them. Check 'em out a bit more below from the NY Daily News article, from December 7th.
Best,
Renee
**********************
Bronx Priest in the Fashion World
Ahalo is not an accessory one envisions on Anna Wintour.
Yet the Vogue editor's discovery of a fashion designer who happens to be a priest is causing miracles in his Bronx parish and beyond.
"It was an act of God, it really was," says the Rev. Andrew More O'Connor - the fashionista priest of Holy Family Church in Castle Hill.
"I was helping a young woman and her fiancé prepare for their marriage and she said I'm an editor at Vogue; I'd really like to see your clothing line."
That would be Goods of Conscience, made from organic soft cotton cloth hand woven by the Mayan Indians in Guatemala - O'Connor calls it "social fabric."
Seamstresses tailor it right there on Castle Hill Ave. into unexpectedly chic wraparound blouses, black sheaths and even men's suits.
So the bride-to-be, Devon Schuster, Vogue's market editor, went down to the workshop to take a look. "The next day, this is where the act of God comes in," O'Connor says, "Anna Wintour told her staff, 'We can't do the dresses we were planning on for our Cameron Diaz cover story.'"
Cameron is the Queen of Green and only wants clothing made from sustainable grown fabrics - something that's hard to find in the high-fashion market. So Schuster piped up and told Wintour about O'Connor's line of clothes.
"So they called me up and Vogue picked up some of the collection and flew it out to Los Angeles," O'Connor says. "It was all dependent upon whether Cameron Diaz wanted to wear it.
"She did. She loved it. You can see it in the photo. She looks so happy and comfortable, which I liked. And Ms. Wintour wrote a very generous editorial on us."
In her editor's note in that issue, Wintour declared that of all the clothing Diaz modeled, "the neat pair of checked shorts from the charitably minded fashion company Goods of Conscience [is] my personal favorite."
Talk about divine intervention.
"It gave us fashion 'cred,'" O'Connor laughs.
Sales - which ran around 350 pieces a year - spiked. In two years, the company has earned tens of thousands of dollars. Another major star has chosen to wear the comfortable yet elegant clothes in her next movie, the priest hints.
Designer Tory Burch is another O'Connor fan. "I will support anything Father O'Connor does," Burch says. On Dec. 10, Burch's staff will hold a Christmas party and give gifts to all the kindergartners in Holy Family School, which, despite having non-donating multimillionaire Jennifer Lopez as an alumnus, struggle to pay the tuition.
If you're picturing multicolored serapes, re-envision.
At a show at the Greg Lord Studio on W. 26 St., the other night where Swift Technique played, fashionistas sporting $300 shades raved about a cowlneck blouse that reverses to a bateau; khaki trousers draped like gabardine with a peekaboo of tattersal; a man's deep blue shirt with indigo and the very cool "Bronx Blazer," with lapels that snap over the throat.
O'Connor isn't doing all this to compete with Marc Jacobs. The nonprofit Goods of Conscience is creating jobs in the Bronx, funding domestic violence projects in the parish, and helping cure desperate poverty in Guatemala, where the 48-year-old priest was stationed on a religious retreat. "There is 80% malnutrition among the Indian communities of Guatemala, the worst in the northern hemisphere, even worse than Haiti," O'Connor says. "A lot of people wonder, how can I help the poor? People wearing these clothes, they're helping, but not in a condescending way. They're glorying in the workmanship. And the craftsmen and women are earning a living."
Look good, do good, feel good. Fabulous! And Amen.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Cancer From the Kitchen?
My Mother has survived Breast Cancer twice...I feel fortunate to still have her with me today. But, women in the United States are at high risk due to "environment." But not just women, we all are at risk. Please read this article from the NY Times, and consider tossing out all plastics in your home that are labeled 3,6 and 7.
--Renee
Cancer From the Kitchen?
The battle over health care focuses on access to insurance, or tempests like the one that erupted over new mammogram guidelines.
But what about broader public health challenges? What if breast cancer in the United States has less to do with insurance or mammograms and more to do with contaminants in our water or air -- or in certain plastic containers in our kitchens? What if the surge in asthma and childhood leukemia reflect, in part, the poisons we impose upon ourselves?
This last week I attended a fascinating symposium at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, exploring whether certain common chemicals are linked to breast cancer and other ailments.
Dr. Philip Landrigan, the chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Mount Sinai, said that the risk that a 50-year-old white woman will develop breast cancer has soared to 12 percent today, from 1 percent in 1975. (Some of that is probably a result of better detection.) Younger people also seem to be developing breast cancer: This year a 10-year-old in California, Hannah, is fighting breast cancer and recording her struggle on a blog.
Likewise, asthma rates have tripled over the last 25 years, Dr. Landrigan said. Childhood leukemia is increasing by 1 percent per year. Obesity has surged. One factor may be lifestyle changes — like less physical exercise and more stress and fast food — but some chemicals may also play a role.
Take breast cancer. One puzzle has been that most women living in Asia have low rates of breast cancer, but ethnic Asian women born and raised in the United States don’t enjoy that benefit. At the symposium, Dr. Alisan Goldfarb, a surgeon specializing in breast cancer, pointed to a chart showing breast cancer rates by ethnicity.
“If an Asian woman moves to New York, her daughters will be in this column,” she said, pointing to “whites.” “It is something to do with the environment.”
What’s happening? One theory starts with the well-known fact that women with more lifetime menstrual cycles are at greater risk for breast cancer, because they’re exposed to more estrogen. For example, a woman who began menstruating before 12 has a 30 percent greater risk of breast cancer than one who began at 15 or later.
It’s also well established that Western women are beginning puberty earlier, and going through menopause later. Dr. Maida Galvez, a pediatrician who runs Mount Sinai’s pediatric environmental health specialty unit, told the symposium that American girls in the year 1800 had their first period, on average, at about age 17. By 1900 that had dropped to 14. Now it is 12.
A number of studies, mostly in animals, have linked early puberty to exposure to pesticides, P.C.B.’s and other chemicals. One class of chemicals that creates concern — although the evidence is not definitive — is endocrine disruptors, which are often similar to estrogen and may fool the body into setting off hormonal changes. This used to be a fringe theory, but it is now being treated with great seriousness by the Endocrine Society, the professional association of hormone specialists in the United States.
These endocrine disruptors are found in everything from certain plastics to various cosmetics. “There’s a ton of stuff around that has estrogenic material in it,” Dr. Goldfarb said. “There’s makeup that you rub into your skin for a youthful appearance that is really estrogen.”
More than 80,000 new chemicals have been developed since World War II, according to the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai. Even of the major chemicals, fewer than 20 percent have been tested for toxicity to children, the center says.
Representative Louise Slaughter, the only microbiologist in the House of Representatives, introduced legislation this month that would establish a comprehensive program to monitor endocrine disruptors. That’s an excellent idea, because as long as we’re examining our medical system, there’s a remarkable precedent for a public health effort against a toxic substance. The removal of lead from gasoline resulted in an 80 percent decline in lead levels in our blood since 1976 — along with a six-point gain in children’s I.Q.’s, Dr. Landrigan said.
I asked these doctors what they do in their own homes to reduce risks. They said that they avoid microwaving food in plastic or putting plastics in the dishwasher, because heat may cause chemicals to leach out. And the symposium handed out a reminder card listing “safer plastics” as those marked (usually at the bottom of a container) 1, 2, 4 or 5.
It suggests that the “plastics to avoid” are those numbered 3, 6 and 7 (unless they are also marked “BPA-free”). Yes, the evidence is uncertain, but my weekend project is to go through containers in our house and toss out 3’s, 6’s and 7’s.
December 7th, 1941
The date should not be forgotten, nor a time when our country came together and put aside religious, cultural and political differences and worked together for a common good....100% sure for perhaps the last time in our nation's history, that our goal was right and unquestionable.
Just wanted to remember the date, with a moment of silence....in honor of all of our veterans, of this and every war. And for those that did not come home...
--Renee
Cutest Kitten in the WORLD!
My new blog post is running behind with all the holiday stuff such as working out at the gym, practicing my zydeco dancing and trying to get Christmas cards out.
So, in the meantime, I offer you this: The cutest kitten in the WORLD! Just click on the link below! :-)
Smiles,
Renee