Traveling a different sky

 A few years ago, I heard about this woman that gave a speech in Texas but being  in labor, she needed to hurry home, it so important that her child be born in Alaska.  She got on a plane.   On the long stop in Seattle (my territory)   surprisingly with this being her five or sixth pregnancy this woman had to have known the risks, she still needed to travel. There is top medical care in TX or WA. still she was going to spent the time on planes.  She wanted his baby born in her hometown with little medical care.

Maybe it is my age, maybe it is given birth to two babies, maybe it is flying and airports or maybe it is being in labor but this woman lose my respect.  Nothing made sense after reading that story.  She is a very selfish woman.

 Now years later, I have not changed my mind.

Own IT

I would like to see individuals/leaders own their words and actions.

Jesse Kelly own your words

  

Gifford opponent, Tea Party favorite and former Marine Jesse Kelly, had organized an event inviting supporters to join him in firing M16 assault weapons as part of the campaign to “help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office.”

In the course of the election campaign, right-wing protesters would gather weekly near her office carrying signs with slogans such as “It’s time to reload” and “One way or another, you’re gone.”

During the campaign, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin put up a web page that included Gifford among 19 other Democratic members of Congress whose districts were shown with a sniper sight’s crosshairs super-imposed upon them.

At the time, Giffords condemned the tactic, warning “When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action.” In response to such criticism, Palin replied on twitter, “Don’t retreat, reload.”

After the Tucson shootings, Palin’s web site removed the page, while an aide claimed incredibly that the crosshairs were not meant to represent a rifle sight, but rather a “surveyor’s symbol.”

Beck - Own your words

Beck wants to shot Micheal Moore or maybe hire an assassin and look him in the eyes to do it.  Or poison the wine that Nancy Pelosi drinks.  His list is so long I have no interest in going on.

 

U. S Military own your Action

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.  US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.




Americans OWN IT
 
Iraqis Displaced Inside Iraq, by Iraq War, as of May 2007 - 2,255,000
Iraqi Refugees in Syria & Jordan - 2.1 million to 2.25 million
Iraqi Unemployment Rate - 27 to 60%, where curfew not in effect
Consumer Price Inflation in 2006 - 50%
Iraqi Children Suffering from Chronic Malnutrition - 28% in June 2007 (Per CNN.com, July 30, 2007)
Percent of professionals who have left Iraq since 2003 - 40%
Iraqi Physicians Before 2003 Invasion - 34,000
Iraqi Physicians Who Have Left Iraq Since 2005 Invasion - 12,000
Iraqi Physicians Murdered Since 2003 Invasion - 2,000
Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity - 1 to 2 hours, per Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq (Per Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2007)
Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity - 10.9 in May 2007
Average Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity - 5.6 in May 2007
Pre-War Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity - 16 to 24
Number of Iraqi Homes Connected to Sewer Systems - 37%
Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies - 70% (Per CNN.com, July 30, 2007)
Water Treatment Plants Rehabilitated - 22%

These displaced people were living life in Iraq until the US military invaded. They had families, they had dreams for their children and had no choice in the matter of the future.


Cost of the Wars

http://costofwar.com/en/
 

The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth. 

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.