End of Year- Things I've learned this year

I am a poor speller because I mispronounce words so frequently.

One can use folded grape leaves in making pickles instead of using alm.  Alm, some believe, has too much aluminum.

Only white people under 30 voted for Obama.

There is a phrase out there "Oprah t.v. look"  I guess it means you are really ugly but you can have a t.v. look.  I bet I have that-the no makeup and then the groomed make up look.

When served Chinese carry out and your husband pulls over the plate of fortune cookies and process to eat one after another not stopping to read the fortunes, it is time to acknowledge the his Alzheimer has processed to a new level.  Also, the man need more cookies in his life!

I miss my trips to Chicago that I had for years.


I am so happy my children and grand children have the gift of languages.  I think I skipped up my portion and gave it to them.

There is a point in my life when the curiosity of newness and adventure have been replaced with contentment with the familiar.

My backyard is the spot I am at most peace, find endless wonder and mentally   can redesign and improve each year.

The persimmon on my tree this fall was such a surprise I actually smiled at its sight.

Chickens offer a rhythm to life that is enriching. They are amazing, they are curious, they are great followers and change eating habits of the adults around them.

Kindness is under rated and intelligence is over rated by society in general and maybe me in the past.

Some people think life's purpose is find a goal, I believe it is find what lessons are to learned.  I was born in this life time to learn certain lessons about being a better individual.  Some people were put into my life to teach me patience, forgiveness and understanding while others were to show examples of greed, bullheadness or ignorance.  How I handle each is my lessons for this life time.  It would be hard to learn all this one time around, so reincarnation makes sense to me.

I do believe in God and angels.  Angels are easy if you have had children, you have seen examples the angels have worked hard to keep them safe.  My God is not on billboards or in commercials or in buildings, very personal.

Routating vegetable crops is much harder than it appears.

People in past centuries were just of bright, ambitous and smart as we are today. Greed, political corruption in some form is part of the human beings and is ususally connected to power. 

Earth will survive and recover even if the human race goes though a period of decline and die off.

Notes on Dieing and Death

Hospice is an old fashion way of dieing in the modern world.  In a world often lacking in family or far from family these angels among us work their profession on total strangers. Being cared for and looked after by kind and concern people with skills and knowledge is the highest form of humanity.  Today with use of modern drugs there is no need to suffer any pain. I believe in the states like Washington with the right of suicide the medical community is very conscious of being concern about the individual's comfort level. The old fashion religious idea of suffering pain and offering it up to atone for one's sins nothing more that a control means or ignorance.

I have witness the last couple months the hospice program and have the highest regard for it. I understand the new health bill will include the option of understand the choices at the end of life including stopping all medical treatment but comfort level medicines.  Some have mislabel this for political reasons but in fact it is the very humane and compassionate.

At some point, each thoughtful individual writes his personal story about how he came into being and how he exits this life and what is beyond.  I would imagine if there is not a 'beyond' in the story it would be a frighten end of story but for those of us with a beyond story, it is simply a process.  Helen Keller expressed it in perhaps my favorite way, "When I die it will be like walking into another room, only for me, I will be able to see and hear."

Really in some way, aren't we all a little blind and deaf?

Do it right this time - History

       When the founders of this country decided it was more important to keep all the 13 colonies together instead of forming two countries they compromised on one very big issue, slavery.   At that point, they kicked the issue down the road and it came up about a hundred years later.

        So the northern and southern states faced the issue in the civil war a hundred years later.  Now there are some southerners that say the war was over states right and not slavery.  Well, that is simply not true.  Slavery is gone and we still have issues about states rights vs. federal rights.  So I guess the states issue was not the issue in the civil war.

         Now in the last few years we have some more historians wanting to rewrite history again in the glory of the Confederacy, we have a fresh crop of modern day racists.  They have forgotten who drained the swamps, planted the tobacco and cotton, who nursed their babies and who were the free sex slaves.  These white men laugh about coon hunting as a sport and their lovely wives sit like brainless models.
     
        Personally, I think it is time to cut the south free.  Let them form their own country, these white folks don't believe in science or education in general.  It is seen in Texas daily. They look backwards instead of toward the future of development of the whole human race.  Their lily white, Anglo Saxon skin is the only ticket that counts.  They hide behind the Christian veil of religion to practice the hatred of blacks, Mexicans, Jews and Catholic and now Muslims. After sharing Christian prayers together in either their mega churches or their little community churches they remind each other about the ways use to be and how it should be that way again.

            "Don't remember segregation being that bad."

            Haley Barbour is talking about running for president.  He should know a lot about the federal government his state ranks in the top five states most years on Federal Taxes Paid vs. Federal Spending Received by State, 1981-2005 according to Tax Foundation.  These old boys from the south cost too  much money and they hold up the country from progressing into the next century.  Cut them lose.  That Mason Dixie line is a great starting point.

An old piece from the NYT.
            

This being Mississippi, race is a factor in the campaign, but mainly because neither candidate has offered much to black voters. The Republicans have tried to remind them that in 1964 Mr. Stennis sponsored legislation to export Mississippi blacks to states that wanted to practice integration.
But the racial sensitivity at Barbour headquarters was suggested by an exchange between the candidate and an aide who complained that there would be ''coons'' at a campaign stop at the state fair. Embarrassed that a reporter heard this, Mr. Barbour warned that if the aide persisted in racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks.

      Cut them lose!  It is time to let them live on their own.  We don't need to support the South.

Ginseng Tea

         Dr. Andrew Weil had a interview in the Sun Magazine this month.  I have always followed his views with interest.  He has an approach about good health that includes the body, mind and spirit as a unit to be cared for.  Along with that he believes that integrative medicine meaning that all fields of traditional, modern, herbal, witchcraft, shamans, eastern and western ideas are useful.  Weil stresses preventive approaches more than curing an issue is the answer to good health. One of the biggest myths American believe is that we have a great medical system, the facts are the opposite and we rank low in terms of developed nations.  Pharmaceutical and insurances companies have basically bankrupted our health care and allowed our country to avoid genuine  good care for its citizens. 
         Dr. Weil's original interest was botany.  He makes an interesting point about plants.  By taking herbs we get the whole good of the plant and not the isolated benefit that pharmaceutical companies like to use.  The pull and the push as he calls it, the increase of energy and the decrease of toxics for instance maybe from the same plant.  Of course, unlike Europe we do not have regulation or quality control on our vitamins or medicinal herbs in this country.  Profit margins are more important than quality for the consumer.
         This article reminded me of the virtues of ginseng again, Weil calls it a magic energy tonic. In my travels in Wisconsin I went to Wausau and saw the fields of ginseng growing and the big corporative that farmers used to price and sell they roots for here and aboard.  I actually planted some at the Stone house but of course moved before I harvested it. 
          The Korean grocery store locally sales little drinks of it with a root inside to enjoy.  I also purchased ginseng tea.  It was a nice reminder for me to start enjoying ginseng again.
         

Hens

My morning routine these December days is to let open my chicken coop door by the time I pour my second cup of coffee.  I've usually read my overnight emails, checkout my three or four favorite websites for the news by this time.

My five ladies always greet me with their quiet low tone clucking and pacing along the fence, once they figure out it is not a food drop but the opening of the coop door they run inside the coop and out to freedom.  Their release follows one of two routines.  The first what I call the slow dance.  It is the deliberate three scratch across the yard.  They prefer open soil so they tend to circle the back yard along the fence and espaliered apple trees.   Occasionally they hopping up on one of the raised beds where three remaining permacultured kale plants survive.  I allow that this time of the year because the bed are covered with decaying Japanese maple leaves and old straw/bedding of theirs.  I have two raised beds that are covered with plastic hoop house for my kale, lettuce and chard that I grow all winter. Another newly planted strawberry bed that has re bar wire on it and they do like that bed.

The other manner in which they exit the coop is a fast four steps out and a long low flight across the lawn to the other side of the yard near my grape arbor.  This is the perfect picture of freedom to me.  In a total of 30 seconds they has expressed the total joy of life without a fence or enclosure.  One of them gets the idea and the others follow with wings spread and flopping barely two feet off the ground.  The area over there offers them the opportunity to scratch along what was last years strawberry patch and what will be my potato patch next year. 

Their routine is to be out until they get bored and then they all come to my back door and sit, drop feathers (sometimes we track into the house).  Patiently  they waiting for me to come out and walk them back to the coop.   They always follow immediately and go in gladly.

I shocked myself when I decided to get hens.  It was the last thing in the world that would have crossed by mind.  But with the encouragement of friends I did it and now I have to say these birds added only positive notes to my life.

Tax breaks for all

Sometimes I talk to friends of mine from the Midwest and they seems to be living in a different country than the one live in.  They are convinced that the life style of American is going to continue as it has for the last thirty years, that both of the invasions of the last ten years were justified and all the problems are solvable with less government interference and more capitalism.  The cost of two billion dollars a week in Afghanistan is not on their consciousness but extending food stamps, VA services or unemployment payments makes them want less government.  

I begin to feel that I am the one of the edge of reality.  I am the one reading the wrong blogs on the Internet, watch the wrong channels for the daily news and truly, it is a waste of time, reading international newspapers.

Dmitry Orlov writes about the collapse of the United States and he speaks with much wisdom and some international first hand knowledge. He thoughts are available for free and one doesn't even have to get a copy of any his books. 

This, I know from reading him.  I would not want to live in the South or the Southwest, there is so much racism and when times get tough, people get angry and with so many guns, crime and  violence are the results.  Probably 90% of the food one would eat in a collapse economy is grown locally.  Remember the oil peak a few years ago and the U.S. imports most of it fuel, if the country as little or no credit, there will be long lines for gas.  Knowing the skills that our grandparents used daily will be of value and it will be the difference of living comfortably or just surviving. 

Sadly, this week not one adult stood up and said that this country doesn't need tax breaks for anyone.  China, Saudi Arab , Iran are among the ones loaning the money for this silliness.   When is truth to power and the public going to be spoken?  Who will listen?

the bright light of wikileaks

 Huffington Post this morning explore the Wikileaks Issue.  The blow back that concerns the US and world governments, world institutions of finance and people of power are addressed.  Shockingly, many in the American population do not even know who Mr. Julian Assange is, what he has done and what motivates him.  Unless, our citizens value truth and facts and question what is told to them, these ignorant citizens will take down this whole country.

In the 1930's Germany and the United States each went though a depression.  The Germany followed a conservative leader and the United States followed a liberal leader.  One country turned to fascism and the other remained a democracy.  The United States and Europe are about to go though another economic turn down, Aristotle line about power is very important for all of us to remember.  

 From the HP.......
""""""""""""We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years." -attribute­d to D.Rockefel­ler 1991

And here's the most important quote you'll ever read...

"What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do." -Aristotle"""""""""

Fishes and Loaves

I have just finished a book about growing food and the development of empires and the collapses of empires in relationship to food supply.   Civilizations developed and modern cities could be organized because of three things that happened around food growing.  History repeated itself time after time and  it looks like we are in the change over period right about now. The authors of  Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas have written a very readable story with the title  EMPIRES OF FOOD.


The first important thing that is necessary for a good food surplus is that it is grown by tilling virgin soil.   Tilling virgin soil means constantly clearing forest and moving the crops to unplowed ground.  Crops need the nutrients of good soil.  Nitrogen is the one element that is absolute necessary.   A major break though was discovered by the Haber-Bosch process after WWI.  Too long to explain here but the end results were that nitrogen/fertilizer could be made out of oil.  The world now oils it fields instead of using compost or animal manure. 

Second major item for food is long period of mild weather that produced consist dependable yearly crops.  Climate does change over the decades and although we currently  have experienced little of it in the last fifty years that seems to be changing in the last three or four years. We have all heard the stories about the dust bowl of the last century.  Another period of history that is not mention often is the Little Ice Age of the seventeenth century.  Actually, weather patterns have changed many times over the centuries but  I don't think it is often mention as the cause of people dieing off  because of crop failures. 



The third issue is the specialist farmer.  This farmer has the oranges groves of Florida or Brazil, the corn fields of Kansas or raises the rice in the Himalayas of India, that extra produce is stored for lean years or transported to the markets around the world.

The success of these three working together has produced the current population growth, the variety that we have available at our local food market. "But none of these factors were sustainable in the long term.  Virgin land loses it potency, climates change, and the specialized farms are, by nature, vulnerable to misfortune. "

The authors explore man going from the hunter-gather to the modern day Slow Food Movement.  They discuss the health of man eating different grains and vegetables, beer, wine and tea and the effects on culture and explain that a just a half degree temperature drop in spring, shrinks the growing season by ten days. Surprisely,  there is one culture that has survived over the centuries doing food production in a manner that works and it is on Bali 

They conclude the book with holding up a mirror to our lifestyle and offer some options for a safe passage to the changes that are about to happen again in history.

Tale of two stories on Saturday

The year is 1940, a poor Dakota family heard there were jobs in Seattle so they moved and the father immediately found work at a factory building things for the war effort.  They rented a three bedroom home.  The parents slept on the sofa, the five children slept on the floors of the living room and the hallway.  The three bedrooms were rented out for income.  Those three renters also got first chance at the one bathroom, the use of the kitchen and the eating table.  They needed the money to make everything work.

No one in the family thought anything but how lucky they were to have a safe warm roof over their head, plenty of food and the head of the family with a job.

The state of Washington is cutting one billion dollars of spending before June.  After June there will be a cut of 5 billion dollars from the state budget.  I imagine my granddaughter will no longer be in a Gifted and Talented program at the public school and my brother's hospice program will be seriously changed.

Department heads of the state have been told to look for duplicates and individuals that can do two jobs.  Unemployment benefits from the state will no doubt be rescheduled  even as new people become unemployed.

I remember reading about a plane load of pallets of cash being flown into Baghdad in the early year of the war. Bundles of hundred dollar bills wrapped in clear plastic being thrown around as footballs.

That was the day, in my mind, we became a banana republic.  The nation's compass broken for good.

Bread lines in History

I started to read a book last night about finding meaningful ways of spending the last quarter of one's life.  It was written by a very well educated person and writer of many books.  It appeared very dated immediately.  The fear of changing times was missing.

It is silly sometimes the little short sentences that stick in my mind and the big overview is alittle like a cloud, it's there but hard to get a handle on it.  I have been fortunate to have a few different times in my life to visit Versailles.  Location, size and beauty of gardens are what is remembered but like a cloud if is in the end hard to put in words. I found it easier to understand when I heard this, "The new French Government began selling the contains of this palace with an auction every single day of the year for four years straight.  Of course, the French people would not buy because they did not want to be associated with the monarchy so most of the contains went to foreigners."

At a time when the price of wheat went too high to make the daily bread, the French people decided that the ruling powers had to change.  Today we have banks too big to fail much like the palace too big and important fulled with noble men too important to throw out.

When the price of wheat is too high and the bread lines get too long, the men of Wall Street  will be throw out of power.



 

The Miracle File

I have been so busy with family matters in the last month or so I have not follow though on the fall duties of my garden beds.  I did manage to build a couple frames and cover two raised beds for the wintering over of kale and some other greens but that was about it until last week-end.

Fruit growers believe in raking up all fruit tree leaves because they can host non desirable bugs and diseases over the winter.  I used the sunny day last Saturday to organize this project.  The high winds finally had made the branches bare.  The fifth trip though the back gate of the yard to dump leaves I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  I stopped in total disbelief -it was a persimmon!

I planted this tree six years ago because of the fond memories of a winter spent in Palo Alto and a tree that I grew to love while walking by each day pushing a baby buggy about ten years ago.   The corner house was originally a farmhouse and the tree was probably over fifty years old.  The house remained along with the tree but the land had became a neighborhood of tiny bungalows one of which I lived in for that winter.  The tree had so much fruit that some of it dropped on the sidewalk and, of course, coming from a long line of hunter-gatherers, I immediately would pick up all the persimmons on my pathway.  As a woman from the Midwest, I had not enjoyed persimmons often in my life but I found a real taste for them.

That first spring of buying trees for the new house in Olympia I let a man talk me into buy a Meader persimmon tree.  I viewed it as a long shot of ever producing fruit for me but it was the moment of romantic taste buds, I planted my tree.  Over the years with so much disappointment connected with my  non-producing peach trees, I passed my persimmons tree and sort of smiled at the silliness of planting it.  I also realize where I planted the tree it would not shade my gardens so it could stay and by the time it grow two stories tall I would not be gardening this plot of ground.

That one sweet persimmons was sweet, perfectly shaped and consumed in total by me.  Many things each years in gardening are disappointing but this year my gardening was a success.  2010 was a real successful year.

Review of FOOD MATTERS

FOOD MATTERS, a film that rates 4 star I think on the Netflix rating system, should be seen by everyone so you can judge for your self and then quickly forgotten as a film that was mislabeled and overrated.

First, the misnamed part.  It is not about food. the quality of food, different types of food, the choices of food, the production of food.  It does not explore the  four societies that successfully have little heart disease or cancer or the reasons that many of it's citizens experience longevity.  Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, Calif. and the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica are not even mentioned as the examples of healthy centers on the earth. 

The film does say our food is sprayed too much, travels too far and is too cheap to be of quality.  Then the experts promote vitamins, raw food drinks and other therapies for diseases.  After a little research on the individuals speaking though out the film I get the feeling they belong on the back of a buckboard wagon selling snake oil.  Well, in a way they are doing the modern day version of that if you read their websites. They are all about self promotion.

Andrew Weil, Micheal Pollan and Carol Deppe are people that speak thoughtfully about quality of food and choices that make health easy to understand.  I strongly recommend that you spend your time with these people and skip this film.  I find it sad the film did not interview these people.

More on THE NEW GOLDEN AGE

          My attitude about current events has totally changed since reading THE NEW GOLDEN AGE.......it will play out as the social circles of history have for the last thousand years, that is simply a fact.  Briefly, I wrote about it the other day on my blog, let me add a couple more thoughts.
            Now as the news is bad---go to Raw Story and just read the headlines--I am happy that things are moving along in the direction of fast collapse.  This next year will be very sad in this country as the states one by one will face huge cuts in social safety net services.  Poverty and human suffering will reach a shocking level. It is necessary for the 'warriors' of the future to find their voices and the population unite against the wealthy elite and their greed.  It will be a swift change once it starts and it will affect the world.  Barta explains that US is not the power of the Roman armies but we are the economic power of the world and once the change happens here it will spread around the world.  Because of our history of democracy we will not have the bloody revolution of China (they were at 80% illiteracy, opium dens, poverty of unseen portions)
        Obama is too much the intellectual, we need a George Washington or a Eisenhower.   We, as citizens, will all drop labels for ourselves and others and unite to change the power structure of greed and ruling elite.  It will be a struggle but it is going to happen in the time frame of the next five years.

           In the meantime, Barta suggests people save don't spend.  Stay out of the stock market, make contact locally as much as possible.  Have a little gold or silver (I would say also an oversea Canadian bank account! maybe) Be debt free as much as possible. Be ready for the new golden age that is coming.

Guns, Germs and Steel

           I read this book a few years ago but in the past week I have watched the National Geographic program based on the book.  Of  course, it has been a few years since I read the book but I found the film wonderful and even more informative.

            Netflix has been a strange new force for our evenings in this house.  I have heard so many people talk about it for the last couple years but I am using it in a very personal way. I became addicted to Dr. Martin--British PBS show late last season and now have watched all of the past shows.  I am exploring all the documentaries Netflix offers.  Botany of Desire, The White Camel, a few biographic titles.  A line I will not forget was from Joan Baez bio, "I believe in humanity more than a flag". About nine years ago,  I was in a Trader Joe's store in Palo Alto one week-end afternoon and she was in there shopping.  No mistaking her.  She was with it seemed her sister, the family lives in the area I understand.  I have always loved her voice but now I understand her personality and what has been driving her for years.

           The trouble with me is that good comedy movies--I could use a laugh - are hard to come by in my opinion, like the Jack Nicholson stuff.  I have over the years gone to the movie houses to see them.  Today's teenage stories bore me so I have searched for foreign films or documentaries.  Fortunately, Netflix has a huge list.

        What's his name, the Dr. Martin guy, had a travel series on PBS about the islands around England.  His true personality is the opposite of his character he plays on Dr. Martin.  It was fun to see.

      



           

The New Golden Age

        The book with the above title is about the only positive thing I have seen, heard or read in a long time.  Ravi Batra is an unusual man because his education crosses so many difference disciplines of study.  His reputation of understanding economics, patterns of social change and reviewing the large picture of history is a rare talent.

         It makes perfect sense if you read his conclusion in the last chapter of the coming changes that are due in the United States.  Yesterday I heard that the Recovery Act covered 2009 and 2010 so many more social safety net programs will be dropped after January.  The individual states will have more and more cuts that will make poverty gallop across the nation.  In this new world a reality that will finally show all the Republicans, the Democratic, the Tea Party members, the liberals, the conservatives, the gays, the gun owners, the Christians, the Muslims, the immigrants, the rural southern and the high tech geek, we all are the victims of misrule by the acquisitve class, the ruling elite.  Up to this time, the ruling elite have been able to divide and distract the general population with issues so the low wages, the high debts, the injustices, the lack of health care, the unfair tax system were not the main issues.

       History is the map that shows how all of this will happen and some individuals from the warrior class will step forward and lead the way.  This is because as Batra says in the book"it will take extreme courage and valor as  no one in the elite class will surrender power on a silver platter...but their defeat is preordained by the law of social cycle."   

        This book  was published in 2007 and Barta predicts this upheaval could last from 2009 to 2016.  We surely live in interesting times.



         

Frost

      Tonight maybe the first night that my backyard will get frost.  We are to have a sunny day and a clear sky tonight.  I have the hoop portions in place for my two raised beds that I will garden this winter but I have to work on the cloth or plastic to cover them sometime during the day.  The little trick is all in the anchoring, the winds will be the undoing, I have found.

      This mornings news is particularly troubling.  The numbers of uninsured in this country is what, 54 million?  The GOP want to dismantle whatever is in place for the children of this country and a couple states want to do away with Medicare for seniors, one of them is Texas.   What happened to the sense of compassion or empathy with the citizens of this country?  Now the Catholic Church is debating if helping the poor is a liberal left wing idea at the up coming bishops meeting?  Bush is rewriting history on each show he appears about his motivation of going to war. 
Really, I have to ask myself, do I want to life out my life in this country.

       I am working on organizing my art studio so I have a place to zone out.  Anyone that has done something intensely in the creative field or in sports know the place that one goes to in the pursue their field.  I have to have everything in place, cleaned, subject matter ready, pencils and paints ready, my radio with my painting CD.  Yes, it is a habit of mine that I start each painting session with the same CD, have for years.  it is an old one of Carly Simons.  I move into a zone with her.  It has been a while and I have to get the eye, hand brain connection going again.  I have come to the conclusion the world doesn't need more paintings only I need the mental place of creating them.

First Hand

        During the last couple years I have heard about the sick state of our health care in this country from all the elections business and the health care bill. I seen those people stand in line and the microphone and telling the sad family stories. In the last six months with my brother's cancer I have seen some of this first hand.

         My feeling is that as a country we have decided that good health is the privilege of the wealthy.  It is not a right of average citizen.  The good religious view that God blessed the rich and the rest were not blessed by God so they are just left out.  It is about being worthy of more because you are of the wealthy class.  A child born into a household of means is cared for in sickness better, the price of care makes it so.

          The individuals of both political parties that govern us at all federal and some state levels are holding their positions  of because of insurance companies, the drug companies and the high tech medical companies. They dream up imaginary systems of holding back service by using words like 'observation' version 'admitting to the hospital' or drug availability defined by the 'donut hole'.  These are short hand for corruption of the system.  Or the most classic in the world, pass a bill in Washington, D.C. for all the citizens in the country but do not tax to pay for it, let the individual state fund the bill.

          The media has done a wonderful job of telling us we have the best care in the world.  None of the world organizations prove this out.  Our number in the developed world are mostly the lowest.  Now if we were a medieval society or a banana republic our number would make sense.

        

The next two years

          "All coconuts around the Gandhi museum were taken down." I smiled when I read that sentence.  I remember my trip to Hawaii and talking with a local at a lovely park she pointed out that all the coconuts are taken down regularly because of a death a baby years ago in a buggy.  The child was under one years of age out with a grandparent and a coconut killed the child.  The state passed a law to protect all walkers in the future.  I remember the story thinking as the pain of that grandparent.

         Currently, the ability to spread false stories in our media is so prevalent that I am seriously thinking of taking a two years vacation from the world.  The president's trip is the current one I am referring to in this case.  The only part of the story true is about the coconuts.

          Dr. Ravi Barta has had a life time of predicting the future in economics and social change, the list is long and is record speaks for itself.  This past week he said we are in for a very difficult for the two years ahead and then there will be a revolution of some sort in this country.  The crazy times will end and we will live in a golden age. I sure hope he is right.  This period of legal corruption, oil speculation, inhuman wars, living under false slogans will come to an end.  I have ordered his book THE NEW GOLDEN AGE to truly understand the events and so I will recognize the signs as they happen. 

 

Life and the gift

      I am in the middle of helping my brother find his way to the end of his life.  That make sound a little straight forward and cold but in fact he needs lots of help and I am experienced.  I have helped a couple other people I loved very much find the route.

      In a way, he is the most difficult--I have never heard of him reading my blog, so I feel comfortable writing this frankly but even if he read this I would not change a word.

       Someway in my thirties I figured out that each one of us have a contract  to live a lesson driven life. I, for instance, may have a issue with patiences or charity of time so this life is fulled with opportunity to give of my time or maybe generous of teaching. Even at my age, I am not sure that I have found the true purpose of this life or that whatever is ahead is more important than the past, imagining my growth and the possibilities are endless.

       During all of this, I believe the circle of probable people I have known from different time periods are all in my circle of people in this life.

       I suppose this short cuts some religious beliefs of my family and friends but then of course we all have many lives to live learn the secrets of the universe at our own rate. All of this is a reminder of that time is a gift, along with good health and the awareness to each day.
   

Gardening Books

       Personally, I am happy for the fall rains and the change of seasons.  It takes me indoors and I start reading more, have time to paint and cook with research of new recipes.

        The Resilient Gardener is written with a west coast gardener in mind but it would provide wisdom for every gardener regardless of what zone of the world they live in.  Carol Deppe, the author,  explanation about global warming, climate change, weather pattern shifting are the best words on the subject I have ever read.   Because she is well educated and has a deep sense of history she does write with clarity that is not often seen.  Few authors have such a depth of  gardening experience and her strong personal opinion, I find that the most charming part about this book. 

         I have skipped around a lot with the book so far but what I find is the theme that if we have a few springs that are too wet, too dry or winters of this sort, one should be prepared and have the knowledge to survive the unusual.  Deppe explores what is best to plant for food value, how to store and preserve the harvest best and why seed saving is very important.  This book is way beyond the magazine pretty picture garden or two pots of tomatoes on the patio.  This book is about taking charge of food needs as most of our ancestors did.  Even if one is not at the stage thinking or have the time to focus on growing that much food, it is still a read that worthy of your time.  She is uniquely aware person that only occasionally we have a chance to meet, even if it is on the printed page.

China

        Ken, my son, has returned to China for a couple weeks to study at a clinic of acupuncture.  Return is loosely used term, his first trip was as part of a family trip in 1983.  We went right after it was open for general tours, that was after the medical doctors and teachers and before McDonald chain restaurants got there. My curiosity was enough that I took three semester of Chinese culture and history at the local college before we went.  My husband was not the less bit interested but did not want to be left behind, both children would rather we do a return trip to England.  After our three week grand tour of that year, I have to say it was one of the smartest travel decision I ever made.
         Shanghai Ghetto is a documentary that I got from Netflix last week.  It was well done and reminded me so much of that first trip to China.  Some German Jews realized early on that they were not safe in Germany, a few thought all of Europe was not safe and then there were a group that had no passports.  Japan at that time occupied Shanghai and invited them to take refuge in China, where much of the world needed papers or were simply not taking any Jews.  The Japanese respected the Jewish culture and were open to helping them.
         Shanghai was the financial capital of the Far East in early 20th century, the riverfront was faced with beautiful building of the day and it shipping port was world class.  The Germans lived in the poorest neighborhoods with shortage of food, no jobs and lived many to a room.  After the war they realized how lucky they were to have left early.
         All of Bund was still in place if not a little dusty in 1983.  I remember walking by the Peace Hotel for a couple blocks and seeing the only stop light in China.  There were only black Russian cars for very high ranking officials, all the populate traveled by bike or bus.   Someone's description was "it likes walking in a snow storm",  the crowds on the street.
         In this area now is a eight lane highway elevated, the city has Ikea, Walmart and Star bucks on all major corners.
          Ken's trip to China has made me think about that early trip.  John, my husband never thought much about the culture, history or food but he related to the people the best of anyone on the tour.  One  afternoon in a tea factory  he sat in a low stool and took over a guy's job in over a huge steel bowl drying tea leaves.   The factory stopped and the laughter of the Chinese could be heard behind their hands covering their mouths.  Both of my children learned Asian languages and have traveled in and out of the region their adult lives. 
         I have, by luck, been back to China every ten years since that first trip but I have to say I appreciate what I experienced on the first trip the most.
         Recently, Ken told me that in the next ten years there is a prediction that backpackers will be common in China.  The transportation system, the number of people using English as a second language all encourage that future.  

   

the planet and different places

    The blessing about getting older is that the end of learning doesn't stop.  I have been encouraged by my daughter to see a film COVE for over a year and I resisted all this time because of the violence I thought I would see.  Finally tonight I saw the film.  It was an education about dolphins and Japanese culture in general.  It was mostly about a group of individuals that came together to show the world about the value of sea life.  I would say that anyone that doesn't see this film is missing something deeply sacred about this planet and uniquely beautiful about dolphins.
      http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/afractal/afbook.htm
So often I believe western intelligence as being so superior.  As I grow older I understand a world of views that are different and totally centered from a place I do not recognize, cultures strange to my heritage.  There are places of equal genius and if I was more open, I probably would smile and even laugh at the wonder of it all.  The above site was passed on to me by my son, some woman were just lucky in who they know.

Gourmet Peasant Food

I have spend most of my afternoons in recent weeks when there is sunshine cleaning up the garden for winter which means I am harvesting the last of what is out there, saving seed pods and planning for the winter survival of my greens mainly kale and a few root crops.

 As I slowly move from picking the green tomatoes to taking down the bean vines to pulling a few carrots or beets, I imagine how I will use the items at dinner time or lunch the next day. 

Three ideas I recently used, in this pursuit, I will share here.  Boiled beets sliced with roasted walnuts and blue cheese with a touch of olive oil and a splash of lemon juice.  Another luncheon recipe is black bean soup, I always soak my beans over night and then it takes less than twenty minutes in a small Indian pressure cooker to thoroughly cook them.  Add chopped onion and garlic after a little sautéing  along with roasted tomatillos, sea salt, cilantro and you have a flavorful meal.  I use the Cuisinart to make the whole soup creamy.   But my recent best is a meal of goat cheese on Artisans bread with a drizzle of good honey on the cheese, a hand full of grapes and a half of pear, it was over the top.  Now is you add a rustic table or a street cafe scene with a glass of wine you could be in Paris or on a small Greek isle.  The food is so simple, fast to make and rich in flavor.

Why states must take the lead

I never heard of the man until he died, Hermann Scheer.

He was one of the people responsible for all the solar panels on homes in Germany.  Completely organized, paid for and creating more energy that the country did ten years ago without going in debt on a national scale.  Scheer help organize world wide education on the subject of energy and did his last interview with Amy Goodman days before his death.  It is worth reading because he highlights the problems that the United States has with progressing into the future on this front.

Scheer understand American politics probably better than most of us.  He points out that three presidents have tried to change our energy focus but have been stopped, Carter, Clinton and Obama.  On the federal level, the oil companies along with coal and nuclear corporations stop it.  They are the ones that say they are researching the future available options, fund the research and then delay the progress for their own greed.   

The only way this country can move toward energy efficiency is for states and large cities to act independently and start their own programs.  It will always be blocked on the national level.  Teddy Roosevelt was the last president that have the power to break up a corporation when he broke up Standard Oil.  Obama is not working with a majority (southern Democratic are the same of  GOP) and in Washington money rules.   If we all understand that 36,000 lobbyists (up from 350 at the start of Reagan years) write the laws and finance our elections we grasp the nature of politics.

Tomatoes

     The last two years I have grown my own tomato starts partly because I have found an easy method and this enables me to purchase any variety that appears special on the page of a seed catalog.  The end results is that I have more plants usually that my garden can really handle or that a harvesting person in the fall wants to deal with as in freezing or canning.

       My screening process of picking the seeds in the spring include lists of other's favorites particularly list from people and site that are in the Pacific Northwest.  Our summer's are too cool to really grow tomatoes so it is a challenge most summers but last summer even made that scale lean more to the impossible.  Sungold is always the exception, it comes though, sweet as candy and first to ripen.

       Now the physical problems of dealing with 75 or more large green tomatoes faces me.  My tiled widow ledge in the dining room is covered with piece of cardboard and unripened tomatoes with a new box of tomatoes picked yesterday.  I will roam around the internet to find out the last thoughts about dealing with these green balls.

        In August when I saw this problem coming I decided that next year I will built a hoop house over a couple of my raised beds and create the  warm temperatures for this vegetable to grow.  The secret about tomatoes is the night temperature.  Tomatoes grow at night along with egg plants and corn, night shade plants. The little secret about corn is it grows day and night.  I am not interested in corn! 

       I did have enough tomatoes to can and freeze some of the winter.  With some help of the greens ones I may even make it to part of spring.  I have found an Italian store in Seattle that sell tomatoes sauce in glass jars as  I have stopped purchasing anything in cans and grocery store tomatoes are tasteless.

things just get stranger in the world

Gore Vidal has a interesting piece over at RAWSTORY.   Of course, some will find it uncomfortable to read it or will simple go for a personal attack about the man.  Sadly, he is not taken seriously by the majority of Americans, he can write and think at the same time.  This article is followed by some thoughtful comments.

"Even our Army marches in Chinese boots" that pretty much sums up our present day America and our state of affairs.

The $144 billion bonuses given out to men that work on Wall Street that created nothing, the computers moved money faster this past year so the men paid themselves higher. The piece of 60 minutes last Sunday night showed the works of the computer and any investor, any retiree, any stock holder surely now knows it is simply a matter of time and it will all crash to nothing.  The computers know nothing about the product of the stock, the CEO, the earnings, the competition and the future.   

The Jews of Europe developed the habit of owning jewelry in the form of gold and diamonds because they realized they were always at risk and had to be able to run and had to have something of value to survive.  In my heart and head I listen to that piece Sunday and felt the senseless nature of today's investment chatter.  Most of us are like the Jews of the '30's in Europe, we are at risk.

A number that is not recorded is that of people leaving the United States.  It would be interesting to see that figure for the last 25 years.  I can not help but think that more and more people with means has to have overseas homes.

New Trends, Good and Bad

Some of the things that is happening with the computer age is positive but it is balanced by trends that spread things quickly that are false and then are made believable.

I enjoy the truly rich availability of reading about gardening and hints that others post about their successes and methods of they use in different parts of the country.  Now it is also not unusual to read about a person in England or Australia.  Kitchen International, Mother Earth plus many individuals blogs constantly encourage me as a home gardener.  It adds to my knowledge that I get from my local gardening group and all the library books I page though. 

The many food blogs make owning cookbooks almost out of date.  I gathered a couple new site from this morning's NYT, food52 and Smitten Kitchen are two such blogs.  After clicking around them a few minutes anyone would be inspired to get cooking something more than ordinary for dinner.

My daily routine on the computer is also to read a few national and international news reports and commentators, that sort though the world out there for me.

This morning on http://www.countercurrents.org/polya101010.htm
which I check four or five times a week gave out numbers that would embarrass even the devil if he read them about the evil of war in the last ten years.   War is old, it has gone on as long as humans walked the earth, the difference is the machinery that is employed now.  A graduate from West Point on C-Span talked about it a couple weeks ago.  Eye ball to Eye ball, 10% soldiers in WWI could kill, jumped to over 50 % in Vietnam currently US soldiers will kill over 90 % now.  The difference is training.  The other difference is the distances and the speed add to the bombs from the sky.

What the hell are the voters in this country thinking?I have given much thought to it and I believe it is brainwashing what else can explain the power.

A gathering of old bachelor men, for example, who lie and cover up some of the most public exposed crimes of the last forty years of the Catholic Church still put out table in the back of the church spreading instructions on how to vote.  In the current situation in much of the country this Church is telling people how to vote! For starts, it in itself is against the constitution and who would look to such a corrupt organization for guidance?  

It is politically using religious institutions to sell their point of view, the right is making fools the people that most need protection from our government and strong laws in place to protection them.  These chaste "virgin bachelors" get up there and talk about sex -- weather it is birth control , abortion or gay people.  Sex is the subject.  Thinking people have to ask is this any different than in a fundamentalist Arab country?  Same goes for the Southern Religious groups. That lot have a real problem with fidelity.    Sex is always the sin not poverty, not war, not injustice for the less fortunate, just sex.  I live in a country that votes on sex and believes in greed and war! 

Last weeks news had a man running for office in Ohio that plays games in Nazi uniform, a face book bimbo in Delaware going for the Senate and a fire chief watches as a man's house burned down with three of his animals in it.
All three of these individuals want less government in our lives.  

I guess we need more people in suburbia with food stamps, more closed libraries, less police and fire departments.  Look to California for a picture of our future.

In the garden

      Warm sunny fall days are the best days of the year.  Somehow I know no matter how great the light is, how comfortable the skins feels at the moment this are treasured times because in a week, in a day or for sure in a month there will be a new weather pattern and it will be very different.  The mornings are beginning to be foggy and darker.  The evenings are most often clear and the sky bright with stars.
      I built the first hoop house over one of the raised beds doing in a way that allows more room for the kale to grow this winter.  There is no reason not to try another bed to provide spinach and other winter crops so I will be doing that in the next day or so.  If all the current kale varieties survive the winter we will have all we need. 
      Surprisingly, the apple were better than I first thought.  They fill two pile so I got well over 10 gallons of apples of about three or four types.  Liberty is my favorite eating apple this year.  I have some apple scab but it is simple to peel and the favor is all there.
       I was told that if I staked up the potatoes plants the potatoes will continue to grow and since there is no hurry to take them out of the ground in the climate I will harvest as needed until the weather turns really wet and cold. I made up some shoe strings for the grandchildren one noon and it proved to be a master  hit, must double the  amount.  I added a little Hawaiian sea salt and herbs and it was as good of food I have ever tasted.
       The tomatoes are coming in and every third day I pick enough that I have to figure what to do with the cherry size.  I have canned some pint jars I have dried some and put them in olive oil and this latest bunch I think I will put on a cookie sheet and freeze them.  It has been a record poor year for tomatoes.




 


 

'tis election season

""Champions of globalization like Thomas Friedman tell us that in a few generations these workers will have a standard of living similar to ours in the United States. But ecological footprint analysis shows it would take more than six Earths to give everyone in the world the level of consumption Americans “enjoy.” Of course, we have only one planet, and this one is overheating.""

Thomas Friedman has spread the gospel well.  Ship jobs overseas and all can live like Americans. I guess, I want him to define which Americans he is talking about.



The strangest collusion this election season of " no tax wealthy" group and the Christians that would like to rewrite the Constitution of the United States is beyond my understanding.

At times, developed societies are pointing fingers at the birth rate of of the undeveloped world and concluded that to save the planet, birth rates have to change in other parts of the world.  There are too many people to feed and there is not enough land, water and land to produce the food.

There are many ways to look at the birth rates.  The birth rate of toasters, refrigerators, computers, i-phones, cars, aircraft carriers,  mega-houses show a birth rate that is just as important as human reproduction.  These rates of human consumption is destroying our planet at a faster rate with no attention being paid to use of minerals, labor or capital.  The me society that has created a wall of protection for consumption is ignoring the facts and are self servicing.
 The capitalistic system does not work-- it is the arm band of the 'no tax wealthy'.  The world of money/banking/hedge funds were not allowed to fail in the fall of 2008.  Case closed.

By definition,  Capitalism is to  increase proportionately to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits. They did not manage that and it has failed as a form of economic system in this country.  Wall Street capitalist say that the world economy will be shut down in three days and the government bailed them out to save them.  But now these same wealthy individuals believe we should not raise their taxes and the nation should continue to go in debt for them.

Thinking about reinvestments, a new code on taxes much like the '50's would help that situation for the middle class in these United States and stop the shipping of our resources in R & D, manufacturing and capitol beyond our shores.

The other half of the political side are the Christians.  They ignore the fact that is not a Christian nation but a secular nation.  All religions are welcome and practice here, we do not have a state religion.  Therefore, their moral codes are theirs to practice  but no one is free to force others to follow your personal beliefs. I don't want any of their moral code in my country's constitution.  The Golden Rule is enough for the majority.

Then they is the idea of going back to the founding fathers.  Are they including the slaves, the child labor, the lack of rights for women?  Back to 1776 is what this would mean.

A little humility is in order here--all the KKK were Christians if history is correct. Are the children of these Protestants and Catholics now worried about the Muslims terrorists?

That one percent that get 99% attention?

Many Catholics today fearing Muslims, that same one per cent of radical Muslims, they must think for a moment.

Historically speaking, Catholics are ones that have to remember their cooperation with the Nazi during WWII turning over birth certificates, marriage information knowing fully that information was used against innocence people that resulted in their death.  In Italy, in Poland, in France, in Spain the church knew about the Jews being taken away, where was the courage of speaking out? Moral courage is the stock and purpose of religion.   A review of history would teach humility and less finger pointing.

Socialism is a negative term in today's elite society. All Christians know that Jesus was a socialist, if it is defined by caring for those in society that are hungry, ill or lacking skill sets or of humble means.  So is this the group of Christians are uniting with the 'no taxes for the wealthy' group to spread the true spirit of Jesus in the current political scene in America. 

I just don't get it!

There may not be a great choice in this election but there is a better choice.

War, Peace and Illustions

Politically, some people are aware of what is at the stake with this fall's election.  If the GOP take control of the House they have promise to use their majority power to investigate Obama  and make Obama weak as a president so he loses the next election.  The nation will be forced to relive the Clinton years of suffering the endless personal exploration of a personality and not the legislation of congress and the problems of a nation in crisis.

Other than a renewed effort to extend the tax breaks for the top one percent, the GOP,  I have heard have no plan for the economy, no jobs program, no investments on the national scale to help the unemployed, no help to the states that are burdened with financial problems- if only each state had it's own currency and printing press!

The party of NO,  GOP voted against extending the benefits for the unemployed, passage health care reform, any jobs program.  The 99's will become what? Question is, what middle class person would vote against themselves, ones that can't stand the color of brown skin.

Glenn Beck, saint to the Tea Partiers, sounds like he just wants God in power and some how we will go back to this magical period of honor and greatness. My question what period was that? Beck's answer seems to be when white men were in charge.  It was not about God in charge, God hasn't gone anywhere.
God did not free the slaves in this country, win the right to vote for blacks or women, end child labor, give forty hour week or create a pension plan.  No paved roads, no equal education or chicken in the pot came from God, it was the hard work of humans.  If I read my history it was a leader with dreams and a group of courageous followers that believed in a better future  made these changes.  Actually, it was a small percentage of people that made those miracles.

Thank you ladies, for my right to vote!

The good news and the bad news are shouting out today.  Imagine a day when John Le Carre and Cuba's Castro basically say the same things. Bin Laden and Al Queda are CIA false front operations.  Boy, are we dumb suckers in the American public?  Add to that, Karzai has CIA agents in this cabinet.  Reminds me of the old Three Stooges movie, who's on first? who's on second?

Imagine  today, I realize that the true reason modern war will never work again is as simple as the camera on a phone?  This century could be the shift in human history.  Going from the sword to the gun to the tank to the bomb further and further away from the victim is the history of warfare.  If you kill civilians, you have lost!  In the eyes of the world, killing the women and children, you can not win a war.  Now the world is fulled with cameras on cell phones recording all deaths.  People have to be trained to kill, even mafia shots victims in the back of the head, they don't want to view the face of the dieing. Only two percent of the population, the psychopaths are emotional able deal with it. The camera are the eyes of humans watching.

I linked on my blog to a insightful lecture by Paul K Chappell, West Point Graduate, served two years in Iraq.  He explores the future in a positive way with more hope that I have heard in years.

Shorewood, Wisconsin Health Care Story

 A True Story about 'a health care system' in United States. The ending has not happened, the person is still under the same conditions , it is an email from a friend in the area. A couple years ago I saw a t.v. story about a Kaiser hospital dropping off people in L.A near a homeless shelter, at the point, I knew for sure, it was unusual.  Is it really?  Reading this I understood the shock and surprise seeing this first hand.  This not a ghetto, this is Shorewood!

"""The antics next door will probably kill me if not the man.  He came home from the hospital at 2:30, afternoon, via ambulance -- to an empty house wearing JUST A DIAPER -
apparently they had a cover on him in the chair but it fell of or he took it off.  Leg very
swollen, infected, boot on the foot.

He called ME ON LIFELINE at 4 -- I was working -- didn't get the call -- who gave them my
name and number and why would I be the first call.

They say he is "competent".  That must be why he called me at 4, when I got there didn't
know why he called me and then since he's so aware, that's why he thinks having his foot
on the ground is "elevated".  man o man o man o ma.  I CANNOT tell you how much time
I spent on the phone and how many people now I'm sure think I'm a class A bitch and I
don't care.

I said to the "nurse" at the Jewish whatever group that are his social workers/caretakers,
so this is an example of your standard of care apparently -- she said of course not!  Ha! 
Then called back and said "his team" was fully aware of his situation.

I said great.

No dignity - I was to be the first one to see him -- only in diaper - how embarrassing for
him and quite frankly for me

He aid that came not until 6 had no clue what the boot was for, the swelling was from, if
she could stand him -- which by the way is hard on a good day with two palsied legs,
much less did she know anything about the infection/elevation of leg and what a diabetic
diet meant.

Called Columbia Hospital -- what the heck are you thinking - -a. switch of staff - don't have his
chart - called back -- said his "people" knew about the release.

Talked to social worker -- didn't answer - talked to someone without a clue - said they'd
check it out on Monday - asked her her name, asked her to document my call, said I was
reporting them to the Department or Regulations and Licensing, the attorney from the
state whom I was with yesterday - and I will.""""

flow of money

  The average annual Social Security benefit is $13,000.  Those living on that benefit are living on a little over a thousand a month.   It is less for a single women because of unequal pay, average benefit is $11,000 a year for a career time of work.  Of course, women outlive men in our society for many women are living on less than a thousand dollars a month.  Imagine a life of being a part time worker and mother, her's benefits are half of that. The little talked about forgotten fact about Social Security is that it is capped at $160,000 for earners.  Why should Bill Gates not pay in to it like the local fireman?  If this one rule was changed, the benefits for all would double and media would have to stop talking about it going broke.  Imagine the change in our total economy is money was out there in the market place.


While some politicians target the sick, the needy and the old they continue to consider the Pentagon budget untouchable. One declared war and another undeclared and more intelligent agencies that the public has a clue about are rat holes eating up our resources . Then the favorite, an unfunded tax break for the top one percent of wealthy has put us as a nation into financial collapse.

It is amazing to hear people say it can not get worst, logic says otherwise, $600 billion trade devastate each year with no tariffs in sight, nothing is going to change. 42,000 factories have closed since the year 2000.  Our dollars are all going overseas.

Job loses, state and city cuts, mortgages defaults this adds up to a depression not a recession.   There is no hope and cheerfulness in this society  for 95% of the population. 

Cleaning the thought table

If America is the melting pot of the world does that mean that when the pot boils the scum raises to the top?

Congress has time to explore the possibility of a single base ball player that may have lied about drug uses and no time to understand the TARP money used to save the financial institutions a couple years ago? For years the administration had economists  sit before congress and say the economy was fine. Then one week-end the banks needed 750  billions of dollars to save the banking systems around the world. Who needed it, who did it save, who did it profit? Who paid?

 GM is making profit now but it is hiring no one?

No time to investigate why the Army Core of Engineers have not really fixed the levees of New Orleans against a flood.  It is this the Army Core of Engineers that Congress wants and has designed?

Why a half billion raw eggs in this country are produced and laying around in warehouses?  The eggs are six months old but stamped eat in two weeks on the grocery shelves.

Our fighting force left Iraq this past week, but 50,000 soldiers remain along with of 72,000 contractors of the pentagon, daily on our bill as taxpayers. All lightly covered by media and ignored by most, unlike the start of this war.

The religion of Muslims, the brown skinned Mexican has replaced the Jews, the gypsies and the communists of the 1930's for the dominating Christians of the western world for this economic down turn.  We can paint the blame game with fresh paint for the failure of the free market system and the greed of the elite.

As Frank Rich points out in his NYT article Murdocks' News Corporation, Fox network,  the second largest investor in the business is a Saudi from the royal family.  Money of New Corp. recently invested in a Saudi media company. The hypocrisy does not end there, Petraeus is working to win Muslim hearts and minds while in the U.S. Muslims are called very filthy name in the book.  Maybe the whole smoke screen is really about some GOP politicians in NY that don't want a conversation about their vote against health care this election cycle.  Really it is not a mosque it is culture center and it is not at ground zero.  Fox hysteria again focus the country on the wrong issue.

 Ventura, Ca.  allows sleeping in the car, their ordinance is patterned after two other cities that have already worked out the details.  Welcome to the new American, the land of mansions and bedroom cars.

The free market will take care of these problems.  The money will filter down.  The rich will invest to create more jobs.  Please extend the tax break for the rich, this country has done so well with that plan.  The bedroom car communities can continue to grow.  Set up more the porta potties.

Black Rocks

           There is this young couple that purchased the house near us and it was clear to John and me that they were cashing in on the good fast loan money available a few years ago.   They rented out a couple bedrooms of the five bedroom house to friends the first few years, forgot to landscape the yard and worked really long hours.  As time past, the renters went and with a couple work Saturdays with friends help, some cast offs shrubs at the end of the season sale and from our yard, they started to landscape their lot.  A season or two later, too many bushes, a change of heart on my part, more bushes  went to  their yard. 

          Little conversations monthly happen early in the morning with the dog walking so there is a small details exchanged about our lives.  Mr. works as a grocery store manager and she is a state worker and they are the parents to the loudest four pound white dog on the street.  He is could be a star in an makeover dog show.  Recently, bad dog was joined by a new sibling.  Not sure what to will happen to the young one and if it will live. 

         It warmed my heart last fall as I saw the longest limo made come up to their house one morning.  I really thought must have something to do with the fact they are finally are getting married.  From my computer room I saw couple after couple arrive and gather and they all motored off.

         A week later Ms. told me it was a four day holiday in Las Vegas for a group of friends.  Good for them, limo to the airport.

         The couple has been employing a guy between jobs for the last couple months for yard work.  The guy has been doing a lot of detail work and we have had a couple conversations.  At first, I was afraid they were going to sell.

           Today the strangest thing happened , the gardener and his friend were removing black rocks from the property rain ditch  and after asking for the my wheelbarrow,  I asked what were they going to do with all those black rocks .

            My fruit trees now are of the Mediterranean style with black rocks at their base to gather the heat of the noon day sun and  reflect back  during the cool of the night.  I smile thinking about my warm trees.  Boy, life is good.

system of economy

              Of course, the news covers big events and rarely senses the slow moving turns in society.  One of them came home to me yesterday.  Capitalism is as a system is running out of the fuel it needs to continue.

               The kiwis I bought yesterday at Costco were soft and mushy.  They were secure in a see though square plastic container but it never occurred to me to open up the box and feel a few of them before picking that box.  Shipped too far, sat in the store too long and this produce was fit for the chickens.  Add to the view of oranges I got a few weeks ago of blue mold, these are telling tales to me.

               As it happened yesterday, my son got a call from Costco offering 50% discount this year to rejoin.  The company has expanded their policy now to accept food stamps in this state.  The family conversation is, it is hard to get out of Costco without spending $100, the three households in this family are finding it better to simply not go shopping there and saving on the household budget.

               The business model that drives large warehouse type retailers if high traffic, impulse buying, low overhead and fast turnover with little mark up. With less traffic because the consumer want to spend less and avoid impulse buying they have cut employees to check produce which in turn has turned off shoppers like me.  My trips to this store dropped last year by 75%.
           
               A few months ago I was in Walmart to get a new watch band, the lady at the department was also in charge of the shoe department which she confess to me that she knew nothing about.  The little reported fact is that there are more farmer's markets in this country than Walmart Stores. The big box model of retailing is not working. 

               The direct connection between the farmer and the consumer is growing at 20% a year.  This model of economy is user friendly and  better for the  planet.  The consumerism of the last 50 years is out of date and the change is happening but the media doesn't report about it yet.  Daily the highlights are of a world gone out of control but I think there is also a world that is moving quietly by citizens that are changing things locally and the media hasn't noticed.  A new sense of community and less is better is the replacement model of the capitalist consumerism model.

Looking at other's gardens

          Saturday I ventured with two other women and we did some garden touring.  These were eatable gardens and all the focused on raising food.  This region has become very conscious about ecology, food raising and eight Olympians  'urban farms' open up there place for the public viewing. 

           One of the clever methods of making a yard look attractive from the street is the use of espalier fruit trees along the edge of the sideway screening the vegetable garden behind it.   Another added also a line of sunflowers.  These people are dedicated and serious gardeners.  But the fun thing is they include a sitting area frequently under an arbor of grapes as their resting shaded spot.  It become clean to me that the messiest part of any garden is the herb bed.  Those herbs are so necessary but they become raggy during the season.

           One community garden was outstanding.  Instead dividing the land into small little plots for each family they farm this plot together,each donating two or four hours a week of work time.  Then each week the family gets a set amount out of the ripe production.  They had a hoop house for tomatoes, egg plants and peppers but they also have long rows of potatoes, rye, quiona and every other popular vegetable.  I saw they also raised chick peas and soup beans.  These people are becoming very conscious about the calories needed for individuals and plan not just for how many pounds they produce.  The science of good soil is also figured in their yearly plan.  They are having the national speaker come in September, Jeavor for a one day workshop.

31 years

           Today we celebrate 31 years of marriage.  We took a ride to the French bakery and settled on a piece of Chocolate Orange Cake--no Lemon Tarts today.  It is amazing I suppose, what is joyful at different ages.  It has been a wonderful relationship.

            I smile when I think of coloring my long hair that day 31 years ago and it was too dark, too black but I put it up and so I went on. My sisters said I looked fine, they were comforting.  The red germaniums placed around the yard, the immediate family gathered, the time was six, Steinbrink bought the judge and we wed.  The Murphy family was supportive and but Marge was resign, she finally lost her number two son.  The simplicity of the yard of the rented cottage really was a perfect spot.  The German baker has made petits foes  and I looked them with delight.  Surprisingly, I do not go to bakeries more than twice a year!  Guess weddings and anniversaries.

            

            

           

Time with books

         Two books that have given me some insight to myself in the last month are THE ART OF AGING  by Sherwin B. Nuland and SHADOWS ON THE PATH by Abdi Assadi.  The first is probably at your library and the second is a special order but worth it, with my second reading I will mark it with my highlighter.

          I listen to Nuland book, the first one, as a tape in the car taking John to the Y mornings but then turned around and got the hard copy to read. I am sure I have more to understand and think about.  In a way the whole book can be summarized

                   For age is opportunity no less
                   Than youth itself, though in another dress,
                   And as the evening twilight fades away
                   The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day


(final lines of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "Moritiuri Salutammus")

          Those lines are the core of aging.  The sky is filled with stars unseen until later in life.  Perhaps no one explains this better than Nuland.  He talks of three key things, the connections and caring we experience for others, the physical awareness of our own bodies and creativity. All are very demanding, require work and bring immense rewards and satisfaction.  The whole book is fulled with interviews, stories of the personal nature and the author has very strong opinion how to age with grace and wisdom.  All of us are heading in this direction, I would have it required reading in college so the seeds of ideas has time to wait for the sun and rain and the night sky.

          The second book, SHADOWS ON THE PATH uses a word that is new to me shadows, in the sense of something on our pathway that is a dark spot or an area that we don't see.  It is a short book, it has no magic quick answers, it throws out more questions, suggests many healthy- looking persons are suffering and seaching for the center.

           Assadi explains throughout the book about his personal journey but also points out the 'ism' , the marketing of spirituality, the labels, the addictions of our day.  His most beautiful moment in the book is explaining Grace---not the Christian belief, the one from God, but another one which is surrendering to life.  Surrendering to circumstances that one is totally helpless.  Both of these Graces I have experienced.

             I find the book refreshing new.
 .
          Ultimately, his message is we have to find our core, our SELF.   It is hard work and it takes years.  It is best for the world at large, our country, our family and our self.  Without this truth of knowing our true core it is the mayhem of today's society.

          

Gardening notes

About a month ago I build with pvc pipe support poles to cover my blueberry bushes.  Actually it was more stress mentally than work doing it.  It took relatively a very short morning of physical work.  It was absolutely necessary because the robins were eating them as fast as they turned ripe. 

This morning I pick two bowls of berries for us to have at breakfast.  

I notice it is about time to put up the garlic bulbs.  I will lay them out to dry for a week on the patio and then braid the soft neck ones to hang on the tool shed for a month or two. 

Radishes are finding a new importance in my diet.  A lovely Asian woman told us at the Fruit Society how she uses radishes and it open my eyes to many more ways than eating them fresh with a salt shaker like my Dad taught me.  The French Breakfast type are very large with the sudden heat, I did plant a couple rows of them about a month ago.  I stir fry them with other vegetables, I slice them into coins sizes and let them sit in a bowl of salted water for a few minutes and add them to salad, some how they are making an appearance daily now at the evening meal.

Each afternoon John and I are spending an hour or so under the grape arbor and working on our seed collection.  Ken refers to it as our Moroccan time.  John cuts or pulls the pods off the stalks and piles them in a large bowl.  I sit cross legged on the lounge with my small bowl and open the pods for the small black seeds of kale.  I let about 20 plants go to seed this spring and when it is all done I will have enough of these seeds to plant 20 acres of kale!

It is impossible to receive this age and not have heard the importance of apple cider vinegar.  The list of good it provides is all over the Internet, our usual afternoon four o'clock tea has been replaced with a refreshing tall cool glasses of ice water spiked with a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar.  One of the site  argued that a little each day is better than a larger amount infrequently.  So, two seniors sitting drinking vinegar water and saving seeds in a five star location discussing the humming bird or the sleeping dog.  Life is sweet.

Potatoes become interesting for me to plant after I read about how the commercial ones are sprayed with so many chemicals that the farmers will not even eat them.  They grow their supply separately.  This year, as I have changed and increased my garden space, I had room to grow some.  They are so easy and beautiful to grow.  I love to look at my potato patch covered with little purple and yellow flowers at this time.  All my food growing is about quality and varieties that I would like to taste so as long as the back and the knees hold out I am into it.

Once in a generation

Who is Julian Assenge?  Mr. Wikileaks. A world changer.

Now, any kid that when to 37 schools and 6 universities and is a computer hack has to be a good dinner guest, I would think.  Who is this person? A nomad.

Remember my imaginary dinner party, he is now on the list.

"'Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them,' he said of his motivation." And Assange speaks of "the vast range of small tragedies" that account for the horrors of U.S. policy overseas. Our culture today is suffused with cynicism, distancing irony, cheap sarcasm, and many other devices which insulate us from confronting and acknowledging the reverence we should feel for the irreplaceable value of a single human life. Assange's actions and the consistency of his statements about his work speak in direct opposition to a culture of death of this kind. Most of us have made ourselves unable or unwilling to see the heroes in our midst. If you are one of those people, you should ask yourself which individuals you help with your actions, and which individuals you harm. "

Assenge's world is beyond any government, any earthly home, his space in the air, on the Internet.  His courage will enable more individual to be courageous and change the world.  In the meantime, our congress voted to fund another 33 billion dollars for the war fund while at the same time misplacing 8.9 billion in Iraq. 

Planet movements- it is in the stars

  I read the other day that someone predicts the stock market will start to go down after this Friday, now that I read the following it will be more interesting than ever to watch to see if the following makes sense.

  

 

http://earthwordskyword.blogspot.com/

"Jupiter goes retrograde Friday July 23 4:54 am MST.

One of the most important events of 2010 is occurring as Jupiter, planet of optimism, joy and evolutionary growth, will now be in retrograde until Nov 18. Plant the seeds of new intentions by July 22 for projects, moves, creativity of any kind. Then during the retrograde period do the grunt work to make it happen. This usually involves getting out of old situations that no longer serve you, so that by mid November, you are truly able to move out, move in or move on. Then by mid February 2011 " Jhttp://earthwordskyword.blogspot.com/upiter returns to where it sits now in the planetary field, you are living in the new 

Imports from our companies

 Since we no longer have a strong labor movement in this country the interest of the profit of corporations is the top interests of capitalism without regard of what is best for the United States or the population of this country. In Germany, 50 % of a board of directors of any corporation is made up of the employees, so the long term health of the company is taken into consideration in all changes along with the interest of the shareholders.

Since 1970 real wages have not gone up in this country, simply put people are working more hours, more jobs and have more debt.  The change is partly the introduction of the computer, more women in the work place and more immigrates.

The tax code for corporates have changed, also, along with the social structure of companies. The old method of working one's work up in the business for thirty years and becoming the top CEO is long gone.  Bonus are paid to presidents of that producing quarterly divides, it is all about mergers and taking the factory overseas.  We can say that the Chinese export everything to this country and it is their fault but in truth 60% of those factories are part of American Corporations.  The climate of profit has made it necessary for any corporation to move oversea or go out of business.

The think tanks have created an atmosphere that pictures corporation as the victim of our tax system.  With the freedom to lobby congress and the law makers in the last 30 years nothing is less true.  Laws and the rulings of the supreme court have moved this country to produce the glidden age again. In the meantime, the CEO pay has gone from 24 times a employee's salary in 1965 to 275 times the average employee in 2007. 

We can not bring back the jobs that went overseas.  The unemployment can only be solved by massive public works programs for the common good.  This will not happen while the corporations control our  congress and the White House by funding our elections.  Package the problems any way the media wants , the facts are the facts.

Hubris

This word hubris has been around but I have notice that it is being used so much in the last couple years.  It comes from the Greek, " means extreme haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one's own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power. "  That last part probably is the most important, people of power.

The quick and easy example is BP and the way they reassure the world of their competence to handle oil gusher and the clean up of the Gulf of Mexico. The long term damage is that no oil company is now believable along with the lose of this water, the sea life, the adjoining land and the livelihood of millions of people along the coastline.

Out of touch with reality may explain it.

The Republican Party for a decade has said the science about global climate change was inconclusive.  This was also the position of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States and many leading think tanks funded by the international corporations.  Haughtiness and arrogance, joke making at the expensive of Gore and the leading scientists.  A couple degrees of temperature  doesn't matter to the planet.  Guess it is the same with the human body, except we call it a fever.

Addicted to consuming may explain it. 

Pentagon and the Intelligence communities of our government has hubris. Officially there are 16 Intelligent agencies.  But since September 11 World Center attack, the United States has built 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work.  That equals 3  Pentagons and 22 U. S. Capitol buildings, 17 million square feet of space. Yet, our government choice to ignore other government around the world that warned about the attack.   There is so much information gathering in one hundred cities in the U.S. plus sites around the world that the value is meaningless. Who is in charge?  Who benefits? 

The other hubris that is showing in recent years is Christianity. Start with the oldest form, the Catholic Church.  Those old men are more worried about saving the institution that the principles of piety and the sense of Jesus's message.  They are destroying the church  from within, "what you do to the less of them you do to me", what are these old men thinking?  The American Christian communities  has rocked with so much  money, mega churches, greed, political corruption that it would take a book to start documenting their recent hubris. 

The economy is showing all of us on all levels of society that our life style is over. We can have hubris or humility, we can be part of a mob or act individually, to survive we have to change.  The earth will not support this arrogance.

John's Birthday

    In the book ART OF AGING  by Nuland, he states that the people we love and love us defines who we are.  I was thinking about about this morning at 5:30 when John mistakenly got up too early.  Gentlely, I  told him he had an another hour to sleep and he turned off lights and when back to bed.   Later, as I was driving John to the Y, I was also reminded by a passage of the book, that we make accommodations as we age.   I am defined in many ways by John and probably need him more than he needs me. 
      His responds to my suggestions are usually taken with respect or humor or the new third way, quickly forgotten! His adjustment of letting me drive him gradually over a couple weeks went from I can drive myself, "you know Loretta I'm should be driving my truck and you wouldn't have to do this"  to "it is so nice of you to take me to the Y, are you sure you want to?".
       As long as we have enthusiasm for something we have a reason to live.  I have seen this in all my family and friends that have been around me.  Some of them it was the routine of getting up to go to Mass each day and visiting with friends, some it was the care of someone else and some it was a particular hobby or interest of gave them a purpose in life.
       A good old age is fulled with happiness. Regardless, of the limitations that surround these years, most polls show that people in their senior years are said to be very content and happy.  It is our society that is so focused on youth, ambition and acquiring things that they have failed to notice the sweetness that is presence in senior years.
       John turned 77 this month.  His vocabulary is shrinking, his need for strict routine is more apparent each week yet his life fulled with little tasks that make his life very content.  His presences fulls my life and Daisy's. 
       My interests of gardening, art and writing will be part of my life as long as my bones can move and my mind can function but these days  have a special sweetness.