Can anyone put an attribute to the following quote?

A friend sent it to me today. It was sent to her by her niece. If anyone can identify the quote, please send me a reply. This is for all our friends who are fierce women!


Live your life in such a way that
when your feet hit the floor in the
morning, Satan shudders & says...
'Oh shit...she's awake!!

Isn't that great?

Solar cabin in the woods...

Thinking small isn't such a bad thing when it comes to housing. This link will find you visiting "Lamar", at his self-built cabin in the woods. If you have a yen to get away from it all, and don't want conventional housing for whatever reason, challenge your building skills, need a bit of country in your life, you'll want to check out this link:

http://www.freewebs.com/simplesolarhomesteading/index.htm

Incidentally, take note of that ventless heater. I have two of them that run on propane. They are wonderful for saving on your fuel bills. I got rid of the central heat and air, and I have saved more than half on electric and propane. And yes, I have carbon monoxide detectors.

Yesterday's itch to paddle -

I hadn't been on the water for a week. With the gas prices, my convictions say don't drive to town and I'm doing my best, but getting a little buggy.

So I wheeled my kayak across the street under the cover of clouds, and a breeze that was turning the leaves. It would be a short paddle, because I didn't want to chance being struck by lightning on the water.

The short paddle was bare bones. Since the neighborhood male gator has been quite vocal, I took my cell phone in the Pelican case. No camera. And wouldn't you know it...there went a white heron and a few seconds later, a blue heron. The turtles were sitting on their floating logs and never bothered to move. There are gazillions of snail eggs in all stages of hatching, including some sterile, sunbaked white clusters.

I met the neighbor finally, who has a stunning tree in his yard. It's called a Princess tree, and it's a fast grower. Imagine foxgloves in tree form. Dick (Clark) says the hummingbirds love them.
His is pale mauve. He planted it last year, and it's about 12 feet tall. I need one. They're beautiful.

I found a blueberry "tree" (it overhangs the creek), and on it were huge, succulent blueberries, the likes of which I've never seen. After checking for snakes in the branches, I brought them home in my funny red hat.

The beavers have never returned to the hammock where they were building a dam. The flood took care of that. The wise ones probably have moved off to a better place. I hope so.

And then I came upon a little green heron. It came from behind and left and settled on a lilypad. Had I had a camera, I would be showing you a photo of it catching a small fish while standing on a floating log. It may be the same one I've seen before closer to the house. As I drifted, it lost some of its fear.

I should always have my camera, rain or shine, every time I go anywhere.

Dreams of Cuba

and a visit will probably not be realized in my lifetime. I will have to content remembering the tales of my grandmother, told to me as I sat on a little railroad step while she sat in her chair by her bedroom window, or over the dinner table. Stories of privilege, sugar plantations, arranged marriages, travel by horse and carriage, her mother's sixth sense for finding scorpions on the tile floors; of dictators, and losing the LaPiedra sugar fortune to the betrayal of family members; the bark of the ceiba tree, like gray satin, she would say, and her mother's silk slippers, which she always wore until they immigrated to America.

I have just been to today's Cuba with Olivier Vin, a talented, young photojournalist from Europe. I have seen through his eyes, the Cuba one never sees. There are places other than Havana, and while he captures that well, he takes us into the interior. He documents well the contrast of the two classes, the opulence and the grinding poverty, and the spirit of its people as well as the beauty of the countryside.

If you are curious about Cuba, here's a link: www.heymana.com. He can also be found at www.jpgmag.com, where I hang out as well.

Thank you, Olivier.

On medical marijuana -

Here's a link to an interesting article. http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85205/

Let me tell you, in a few simple sentences why I am a proponent of medical marijuana.

My father (the man in the red and black plaid jacket with his fish of a lifetime which links to an Amazon Short story about the catch, and his brother, John) was 86 when my mother found a "pimple or boil" on his back that wouldn't heal. The doctor biopsied it, and it was cancer. That summer, Sloan Kettering in New York performed the most vile of mutilating surgeries on him, that dear old man, and when we read his record at the hospital, we found it had spread. That was August.

On his 87 birthday in October, the cancer had spread to his lungs. Late in November I was called. Mom said to come - it was consuming his brain, and he was on hospice care. I flew to New York, and when I burst into his room at their senior citizen apartment, the little bird in the bed, the shadow of my father, didn't know who I was. Mom had to coax him to remember me.

He was haunted by hallucinations that frightened him profoundly. He had some pain. We went to the family doctor together, Mom and I, to be told by this charlatan that he would not give my father stronger medication than codeine with tylenol, because he didn't want him addicted. Addicted to what? He was 87 and had days to live! I was so stunned, I said nothing. We felt defeated.

The neighborhood, made bleaker by sleet and snow, melting in the streets, was bad. From the window or the balcony, I watched drug deals go down at night, in the vestibule of an old house by the bus stop on the corner, illuminated by a single lightbulb. I should have shown up to buy something for my father. I could have made him brownies, or mixed it into his mashed potatoes, which was about all he could eat. He didn't have breath to smoke anything. Two days after Christmas he died in the swivel chair in his bedroom with me at his side, my mother scrambling across the bed to him.

Pot could have saved Dad some of his misery caused by the hallucinations. Palliative drugs could have been administered for pain and anxiety.

Marijuana has its place, not only for cancer patients but for people with eye disease, such as glaucoma, MS and a myriad of other illnesses. And narcotics need to be administered more freely for people suffering from pain.

The war on drugs is a sham. It brings money to the prison system, because that's big business.

There's a lot wrong with how we treat medicinal herbs and narcotics when it comes to illness. We are demonizing medical marijuana and necessary pain relief because of government paranoia and perpetuating the myth of the war on drugs and causing the suffering of people who truly need them.

NORML has been fighting to enlighten us on the use of medical marijuana. The link is here:
http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3376

Just my two cents. I hope I live to see a more compassionate and equitable handling of the total "problem".

Oh, yeah - And now Ted Kennedy's cancer has relevance here. You might want to read this.
You can bet your life that the Senator will get anything he needs - legal or illegal.
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/86256/

Interesting quote to ponder.


To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

-Henri Bergson

May is here...

This means...my birthday (oh, goody! Now that I'll be 65, I get a free fishing license!), I have to start paying Medicare (nearly $100 out of my SS pittance), my son's and daughter-in-law's anniversary, my grandson's birthday (he's 2!), my daughter-in-law'd birthday and Mother's Day.

Gas is up to at least $3.59.9, food went up about $20 each time I go into town to the Grocery Outlet (affectionately called the "Groc Out" because where else can you find pig brains in a can), but every other day I am out in the wild blueberries, and leaving some for the birds. I will make jam this year.

The beautiful day just outside my window is calling me to the creek. The scent of jasmine is heavy in the still air this morning, and I have hummingbirds coming to the feeder by the bedroom window. They are little ruby throats, and they are having a grand time deciding whether to sip from the jasmine that is tumbling from the porch, the old-fashioned buddleia, which is purple, or the feeder that sits on the pvc pipe I stuck in the ground.

Hummingbird nectar is 1/4 cup of sugar to 2 cups of boiling water. Mix until dissolved and cool.
Clean the feeder daily and refill. Meanwhile, the Four and Twenty Club comes regularly to the feeders in the backyard, and so do the squirrels. A pair has brought their three children to the oak in front of the kitchen window. The others stay further away.

There are chickadees, thrashers, kingbirds, bluejays, cardinals and a few titmice who are regulars. I love to watch the parents feed the babies.

Keep the cats in, it's baby bird season!

I'm Italian. I love pizza. It's a genetic thing.

But what happens if I should want to order a pizza to be delivered in a year or two? I'm telling you,
at the rate we're going, it could happen!

http://aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

It's funny. But...not that funny. We're scrutinized and surveilled from every angle. This could become reality.

MORE CRAPOLA!

I don't want chemicals in my food (bwa-hahahaha). I don't want my food genetically engineered, cloned or irradiated or tampered with in a manner that is harmful to humans. Clean, healthy food is all I want, and which hasn't been available for a very long time. I know this. I want American food for American people, processed correctly, produced to American standards (which could be improved). Then my friend in Seattle sends me this. Back to square 1! Please take time to view the video, as well as read the text. It's a long video, but it's worth it.

I do not use pesticides on my acre. I will not take the chance of contaminating humans or pets, my well or the creek across the street. I am extremely careful.

We need to know what we are using in our yards, in our gardens, in and on our crops.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/05/01/this-company-may-be-the-biggest-threat-to-your-future-health.aspx?source=nl

TV for food junkies (and bad boys) and may I ask a favor?

Number one, the favor. If you're going to leave me a comment, please leave your email or your url so I can respond.

Number two: I was looking for a recipe today for chicken croquettes, and got to thinking about my favorite guys on the Travel Channel. They are Anthony Bourdain of No Reservations, http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods. http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Bizarre_Foods.

They'll take you around the world to holes in walls, tents, back rooms, food courts, city streets, to a fire in the desert, and between them you get sharp, intelligent, witty dialog with great food. Andrew isn't really a "bad boy" (Bourdain is), but he eats really disgusting food - things I'd never consider (he likes worms, which apparently, not a lot of cultures prepare well), and stinky tofu
which he couldn't even gag down.

Bourdain's ascerbic, a great writer (I love his blog), irreverent. Both bring the culture to you; you get the urge to pack a bag every Tuesday (here), reach for the phone and buy a ticket.

Watch then once (Bourdain follows Zimmern) and you'll be hooked.

Who's first in line for the stinky tofu?

When the jasmine blooms, fireflies light up the night...

It seems that Spring has been a long time coming. The cold weather hung on and then we were given the gift of rain. There's a little creeper of a ground cover (Partridge Berry), native here, which puts forth a pretty white flower that decided to spread itself under the trees. I found one red berry (which is their fruit), and then the spiderwort bloomed. The wisteria followed, dripping amethysts, but my vine didn't do too well this year. Colleen's wisteria, however, was again the focus of things purple on the circle. Azaleas bloomed - standing in the middle of the street, the neighbors that live directly across the county road - have made a hedge of azaleas in three colors. How beautiful to see them blaze in hot colors of pink, coral and red.

Colleen's bank across the street bloomed with tiny two-inch tall violets that are now hidden by a pile of rotting vegetation, including waterlilies, which will be burned. More on that later.

Wild blueberries, producing a bumper crop this year, are turning from green, to garnet, to the deepest, shiny blue.

But now the jasmine blooms merrily, on the fence, on the sides of the porch, in a jumble of beautiful white stars. Two nights ago, the fireflies woke and carried their lantern lights like spirits through the dark woods across the fence. They evoke the happiness of childhood; of evenings with my parents sitting in the yard, and my friends and I running gaily, catching them in jars with grass. I must confess, there was more than one we crushed and sacrificed to see the magic of their light on our fingertips.

Now I know about the chemical process that creates their twinkle, but it's much nicer just to marvel at these little beings, lighting up the night, looking for romance as the jasmine vines scent the yard with their sweet perfume.

The HSUS has a new video on dog fighting

and other subjects. In a troubled world, more cruelty.

My son's part pit bull, Gator, disappeared in a thunderstorm, right out the front door and was never seen again.

A powerful and beautiful dog, they searched for him to no avail. I always worry, in an ethnically mixed neighborhood, if he met his fate like the dogs here. I pray he didn't.

http://video.hsus.org/index.jsp?fr_story=e4225094dc9c169a934022a62d62e3e4dd609465

My grandparents loved dogs. My grandfather (the rake), took a dog from a fight and brought him home to my grandmother. This was in the Victorian days of America. She laid him on a pallet by the woodstove and nursed him with salt water. I remember her telling me that he winced terribly when she did it. "Don" had lost his fight, and his owner opened his head with an ax trying to kill him. The wound took months to heal. He was a good dog, she said, but one day he killed her French bulldog, and my grandfather took him to a farm in the Pennsylvania countryside. So the story goes. Not so different from the end the fighting dogs suffer after their wounds are healed and their impoundments are over.

Wild blueberries, a coyote and the price of rice...

There's a bumper crop of wild blueberries this year. They're along the creek, in the woods, and along my street, at the edge of the lot next door. Two days ago I gathered some; this morning I gathered more, and I always leave some for the birds. In two days or so, I'll get more, and hopefully there will be heavy ziplocs in my freezer waiting to be made into jam.

Wild blueberries are smaller than the cultivated kind, and a little bit tart. I took a walk around and some are still blooming. They look like sparkleberries. Both look like lilies-of-the-valley, the flower for those born in May. My father planted them for me when I was born. They grew in a corner under the kitchen window. Every birthday, either my mother or father picked me a little nosegay. I love them. Can't grow them here, though. It's too hot. So here I have blueberries and sparkleberries to remind me that my birthday is not very far away.

Coming back from town today, around 3 p.m., with 50 lbs. of rice, 20 lbs. of pinto beans, Purina dog chow and a few other items, I was driving along a road that runs through planted pine forest in some areas, then pretty much native hardwood and scrub in others. A coyote, still in its winter coat dashed across the road right in front of me. You don't see that often. It vanished in the trees.

Rice is a dollar a pound. Pinto beans, not quite that. Purina has gone up at least $2.00 a sack at Sam's. I buy my rice (there will be no more Basmati at Sam's), at an oriental market. Gas is over $3.61 now.

Turtles are on the move on Sleepy Creek -

The turtles are on the move, coming up to "high" ground (nothing is "high" around here), digging nests for their eggs in the sand. They work so hard. After the eggs are laid, they cover the hole and return to the water. I've rescued many a turtle from crossing roads to get to a destination. We have people here who love to run them over. Saw a dead softshell turtle on the road near town today. In my book, "Waltz" I wrote "Only a Turtle". People are so cruel. I was running to save it and this white car just aimed at it. When they are hit like that, it sounds like a gunshot. It's awful.

I once brought a broken and horribly bloody turtle I never guessed would recover to the vet. Actually, the open shell exposed its organs; I could see the spine. Everything sort of hangs from the carapace (the dome, top shell). A year later, one of the doctors asked me to look in the aviary. There it was. The shell had grown back. But how, I'll never know.

My friend, Sue Barnard, a professional herpetologist, once sent me instructions on how to reconstruct a turtle's shell in order to let it heal and grow. I really should post it here, just in case. When I find it, I'll incorporate it into this post. But meanwhile, I'll post two photos - one of the little lady whom I met yesterday, and the other of a softshell, which was taken off the road on the curve and returned happily, I might add, to the water. The other is a Florida box turtle.

Glenn Beck, talk radio host, is getting a little

worried about food shortages, too. But he's a Morman. Bless those people. Part of their lifestyle is
putting food and supplies by. Years ago I had a Morman babysitter. My son was about three. Under her bed and all through the house were food, water, medical supplies which she kept rotated and these were not just for Paula and her daughter. They were for us - the families of the children she kept, cared for and loved so much; after all, we lived in earthquake country. I'll always be grateful to her for that. Thank you, Paula - wherever you are. http://www.byub.org/livingessentials/shows/15.asp

Anyhow, here's the link to Glenn Beck's show today with a trucker. http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/8966/

Just stumbled upon my friend's sustainable living blog,

http://www.survivalistssite.com/~brendanolen/index.html which is being hosted by www.survivalistssite.com/. In these uncertain days ahead (have you noticed "holes" where stock used to be in your grocery store), some of these blogs will contain important survival and sustainability information for you and your families.

Being prepared for anything and everything isn't a foolish notion. I live in hurricane country. We have had tornadoes, too. Friends Sue and Jimmy live near Pierce City, MO which was completely obliterated in a tornado. They are farmers. She is no stranger to preparedness.

Brenda's also list mother to an excellent wild foods/herbal list on yahoo, too. Here's the link:
http://wildforager.survivalistssite.com/index.html



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Let's take a hike - In Andalucia, Spain...

on the Caminito del Rey. Bring dramamine. El Chorro is a limestone gorge in Andalusia in southern Spain, through which passes the Guadahorce river. Dammed in 1921, it forms three reservoirs flanked by pine forests.

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1438490562

The path was closed in 2000 after the death of someone who was using it.

Fortuneless fortune cookie...

Went to dinner last night and broke open my fortune cookie to find NO FORTUNE.

What does that mean?

Will I have misfortune?

Will I remain static - nothing happening either way; moving neither up, down or side-to-side? An endless, gray existence?

Will I get eaten by an alligator with an appetite for Mediterranean ancestral flesh and a penchant for yellow kayaks?

It's never happened before. The wrapper said it came from China. I need to make a trip; to go to the factory; find the person who forgot to put my fortune in the cookie.

I am very depressed.

Good bye... in case there isn't a next time - because - I have no fortune.

(Or maybe I'd better go and get a lottery ticket.)

The Nein Blog

This is a good one. The latest entry is about oil.

http://theneinblog.blogspot.com/

Martial Law in the USA

http://survivemartiallaw.com/index.html

Could it happen here? Watch the videos.