Yesterday I brought food to the local shelter.  Without getting out of the car I handed bags of canned goods out the car window  It is time to give back.  As homeless volunteers grabbed the bags of non perishable food I wondered what they had to be thankful for this year.  I know what it is like to be hungry but these two elderly veterans probably knew more about hunger than I will ever know.  There were no cars behind me so I asked one of them if he had been to Viet Nam.  He said he sure had been in Viet Nam and it made him thankful for being on the streets of Houston where people came out of their homes to care for destitute people like him.  He said he did not have much materially to be thankful for but he was going to be cooking a wonderful meal on Thanksgiving for many others that even had less than he had.  He then rushed off to get the bags I dropped off into the shelter waving as he disappeared. 

I have been asking people all week what they had to be thankful for this year.  I have tried to keep the conversation short but some people are hungry to tell their life story or an aspect of their history that made a mark on them.  I won’t go into the life stories but instead give a brief description of their comments.

At the bay one fellow with his surfboard said he was thankful for the wind we have had at the bay this last year.  He was young and had tattoos and clear skin.  He seemed not to have many marks in his story yet.  Another one at the bay said she was grateful there were no hurricanes or tropical storms this year that forced her family out of their home.  She went on to talk about the damage that hurricane Ike bestowed on them.  I got in my car and went further down the bay to get some pictures of turtles and pelicans.  I noticed that an elderly may was standing looking at his destroyed property on the water.  He is the same man I talked to after Ike came through and he at that time had told me that his daughter was missing.  At that time he had his teenage grandchild with him.  I stopped and chatted with him again.  He did not remember me and said a lot of people came over after Ike to chat with him and give their condolences.  HIs grandchild now lives with one of his sons and still goes to the same school she attended before her mother went missing in Ike.  He said he goes to the bay almost daily to just remember.  I could not bring myself to ask him what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving but he then blurted out that God has been with him everyday of his life and that makes it possible to keep going on and doing the right things for the people left in his life.  Over the last year I have seen him standing there in the same spot many times and it gives me comfort to hear what he is thinking about when he stands there.

As I left I was thinking about “doing the right thing for the people in our lives”  and it seemed so simple but that is what we do everyday of our lives.  Many times in the past year I have felt resentful that I was rarely acknowledged for doing the right things for my oldest daughter and grandchildren. I remembered that I was told many times in AA meetings that gratitude is an attitude that will get us through almost anything and to keep it simple.  To not get worked up about the events in the world and to keep focused on what in my life is “doing the right things” so that when I go to bed at night I can fall peacefully asleep.  The third time I went to treatment for my addiction, many years ago, they would not allow me to read the newspaper or watch the TV in the day room.  I was to no longer focus on those external things that I could do next to nothing about and instead focus on “doing the right things to remain drug free and connected with the important people in my life”. Talking to that old man brought me back to that time when I first learned that lesson.  It also brought me back to what I was thankful for in my life. 

I am thankful for the fact that I need to cook a huge meal for a group of people and that it will turn out wonderful.  I am thankful for having not only family but friends who have stuck with me no matter what.  That was brought home to me when my old boss sent me a note and I talked to her.  After I talked to her she invited me to come for Christmas.  We have somehow been connected since 1977.  When I came to Houston I got another friend and she and I have worked together almost daily since 1983.  When I moved to this neighborhood I decided I needed a friend that was not connected to work and the first person I met has been a friend since 1989. When I decide I need a friend one is always provided and they are friends for life.  That is far more than others have.  

Not only do I have friends but I have family. In the last year my oldest daughter came to her senses and got rid of the boyfriend she had brought into her home to live with her and her kids.  She decided to go back to school  and her oldest daughter signed up for all AP courses at her high school.  Now she will begin college two years early next year.  She will do this while still in high school but it gives her focus in her life.  She was able to set her goals and she is doing the right things at the age of 15 to achieve them.  Even though she has dyed her hair and seems like an alien to me much of the time. she is doing the right things and doing them her way.  12 is healthy and doing fair in school.  She is also an honor student but gets lazy about homework.  Her sister was at that age also so she will get through this stage.  My son-in-law remains sober after his treatment that he left early.  He has refused to talk to me or look at me since he got back from treatment and yesterday was forced to do both.  I had thought he was angry but instead he was full of shame for his binge and the damage it did to his children.  We talked and I could not take away his shame and guilt.  I told him to take the worst shameful moment and wrap it in an envelope to keep in his mind at all times.  Next time he feels like taking another drink he needs to open the envelope and read the documentation of the incident completely before he decides if the next drink is really worth it.  I told him that he still has 12 and that 15 might be back eventually but right now she has moved on with her life and is to fearful of him and her well being with him.  I told him to stay sober and not put the same marks on 12 that he put on 15.  I know that sounds angry and hard but he has to hear it.  I was grateful that I was able to talk to him and give him that message. 

After he left my youngest daughter called from Georgia and tried to figure out how I could be with them during the Christmas holidays.  We might work it out but I also am invited to be with two friends in different states, I still have my daughter in Houston and her two kids and I felt grateful that I had this problem of having so many loving people around me that they all wanted me to be with them on Christmas.  I have tried to “do the right things” and now as I sit back I see that the crop I grew is solid and strong.  So this holiday season I will feel gratitude for all that I have and quit wishing for more material things.

Now I need to start my pumpkin pies since Thanksgiving dinner is only 30 hours away and there is a lot of cooking to be done.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there and I hope you have gratitude in your hearts this season.  Throw away the newspaper and turn off the TV.. 

Pictures:  I am grateful that I have a front door to hang a wreath on and I did find that turtle out there…

It has been raining here and turned cold.  Well by cold I mean it is 55 degrees outside.  I am such a wimp that the heat is on.  I have been lazy all day and the only thing I accomplished was to get a new battery for the car and put it in my car.  My Honda just turned over 201,000 miles so I don’t know how many more years it will keep truckin.  Every other car I have owned was lucky to get 100,000.  At that time they always started their death walk.  Not the Honda. 

Something unusual happened on Friday.  I got a note in the mail from my old boss Mary Jane.  I worked for Mary Jane for about 4 years off and on.  At one point I left Ashland and moved back to Superior but after the demise of my marriage I went right back to Ashland.  She and I left that treatment center at about the same time.  She went to Hazelden Hanley in Florida and I went to the corporate offices of Lifemark which in the early 80’s was a huge healthcare conglomerate and later merged with AMI or American Medical International. 

After I read the note I called her and we both updated each other on our activities in the last 25 years.  She lives in a small town of about 1,300 people and the city itself is almost 3 square miles where as Houston is 650 square miles.  It is the very tip of eastern and far northern Minnesota.  It is surrounded by Lake Superior on two sides.  It would be a great place to live if you like smelt and lots of cold and snow.

Significant people in my life live around there.  My ex-husband is very close to that location and so is my youngest sister.  I have never been there but I might have to go check it out when they have their 4 month summer which is not really summer but more like fall weather. 

Anyhow we updated each other on what has been going on in our lives for the last 25 years.  I clearly remember the last time we talked and I believed it was in 1985.  I remember the exact location of the office I was in and at that time I was running a locked adolescent psychiatric and chemical dependency treatment center.  I remember because we had an admission at the same time and it was a 14 year old boy brought in by his minister father and mother.  The boy was tied up in duct tape and in the trunk of their car.  They wanted us to “FIX” their boy who had peeked in his neighbors window.  The neighbor was like 80 some years old.  I don’t know if we ever fixed the kid but we did work on fixing that family.  So anyway I remember talking to Mary Jane as this ruckus was happening outside of my office. 

That job was crazy but fun.  Working with adolescents is a real challenge.  At Christmas that year I got a call from the unit and it was a nurse trying to talk to me with her mouth duct taped shut.  One of the kids was able to get out of the quiet room and he tied up the nurse on duty but couldn’t get out of the locked unit.  This was Christmas Eve and I had my kids waiting for Santa to arrive.  I had to make an emergency visit to the center with the police and then spent the rest of the night talking to the EAP who placed the kid with us.  I wanted the kid moved to another one of our locked facilities on Christmas before my nurse quit.  Of course by then we had the kid under control and I had called in extra staff to monitor him.  I clearly remember being awakened by the EAP’s phone call at 3 in the morning.  I don’t know if I got any sleep that night. 

So anyway I am glad my old boss Mary Jane has found me.  I hope to see her before we die.  We are both getting pretty old.  She older than me… 

The picture is some shelters they are building for homeless.  They sell for $1,500 each.  I don’t think I will be buying one anytime soon but in my 30 foot shed I am finishing for the kids they want lofts in it for bed space.  The ceilings are very high and this little house gave me a good idea on how to put in bunk lofts for the kids without taking up a lot of space to do it.  I will put a ladder at each end of each loft and that will help support the weight of the lofts.  There is enough room in the shed for many lofts but I will build in 4 of them so their friends can bunk out with them.  Enough for now….Hope you are all well.

This reel is now 35 years old and in good shape. I took a couple pics of it.   It was made in Sweden and I or my husband must have bought it after our second child was born in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.  It was made before we started putting plastic parts on fishing reels.  The only thing not made of aluminum and steel is the handle grips that are black and wooden.  The line on it feels like maybe 17 pound test line.  It is stiff line and I don’t like fishing with stiff line so maybe my husband used it.  Each reel has an ideal weight of line and I will have to research what the ideal weight line is for this vintage reel.  I checked it on Ebay and the price right now is $200 for one in such good shape.  That one was missing the seal that mine has.  It looks like a crown and it must be glued on somehow.  Maybe it is welded.  Most likely welded.  It is a reel for big fish like muskie.  I don’t remember using this reel so it may have been my ex-husbands reel.  I did not do that much muskie fishing back then but he used to TRY to catch muskie. 

We may have lived in Saint Cloud then but most likely we had already moved to Bayfield Wisconsin. 

The Garcia reel was made in Sweden.  I will cover another of my reels tomorrow unless I find something to complain about….

Does anyone remember the Ugly Stick fishing pole that came out in the early 70’s.  Graphite's came out in the 60’s and they were the rod to own.  I still have a vintage graphite rod.  Union Carbide subsidized the development of the graphite rods and graphite golf clubs.  Then came the Ugly Sticks that outperformed anything ever created.  The graphite's were wood, fiberglass and graphite.  Graphite was at the time the most expensive rod ever developed.  I think Shakespeare put them out and then there were some patent battles as I recall. 

The Ugly Stick was created by mistake.  The engineers were testing strength with the graphite rods.  They blended fiberglass and graphite together and went home for the night.  The next day they tested what they had and it was far stronger than what had been selling as a graphite rod.   The brought the rod to a company meeting that afternoon and were laughe d out of the meeting because what they created was ugly.  It was a white stick and the pigment showed through.

In spite of this Shakespeare patented the ugly rod and at an annual fishing show hung heavy items from the rod.  It was a contest and the ugly stick beat out every other rod.  Even the French and Italian made very expensive rods. 

You can still get Shakespeare Ugly Sticks that cost anywhere from $40 to $250. In fact I believe they are probably still the best selling rod out there.  We just have not found a way to improve on the Ugly Stick in all these years.  We all still use graphite rods mixed with fiberglass.  I am interested in rods but mostly I am interested in reels.  I have a lot of reels and some of them are in pretty bad shape. 

The problem is that salt water tears everything up and then add throwing stuff on top of them in the trunk and now you have the picture.   I brought my ugly sticks and fiberglass rods to Texas with me and of course my old reels.  I have a vintage Johnson 17 tangle free which I had bought to replace my Johnson Century that I began using as a child in the 50’s.  You can’t really find a 17 tangle free anymore.  Johnson still makes the Century and they continue to be a top seller.  I might even get one for old times sake and because they are great reels.

The other reel I am working on cleaning today is the Daiwa Silvercast 208 RL.  It is in real good working order but at saome point I will get the Goldcast.  I read that the Goldcast is even better.  In either case you will have a hard time tangling the lines on these reels.  They are close faced reels but I still prefer an open faced reel.  I have one in the car and I still have my fathers reel.  Now he has been dead since 1971 so you know that is real old.  I have no idea when he got it but I am sure it was in the 50’s or 60’s.  It is in the shed so I will get it out tomorrow to take a better look.  In fact I will continue this tomorrow when I have a chance to get a good look at all my reels…

BTW I caught 3 sand trout's on Sunday.  Everyone was snagging sand trout.

Just another fishing lesson... 

Friday and Saturday nights are the worst.  Last night my daughters house had 9 teenagers in it overnight.  My daughter was out on a date and I ended up supervising all those kids.  There were 3 extra cars in the driveway and one had a flat tire.  Luckily they were all girls.  At 11:30 a man showed up with his foreign exchange student who apparently had been invited.  He wanted to make sure there were no boys, drugs, alcohol, and nobody was piercing or cutting themselves.  I told him he had pretty much covered the field and nobody was doing that.  He took a look at the house and the kids and then asked if I was going to be there the entire time so they were not left unattended.  I reassured him that I would and after he drove out of the driveway I handed over $40 for pizza and went to my house where I went to sleep.  When I woke this morning I found that 12 had hid her purse in my house. 

All these kids were part of the drama club at the high school and had just finished a performance.  They have another one tonight and today they are judging talent contests in local middle schools.  They showed up at my house at 7:30 this morning for breakfast.  It is a tradition that I always make the morning meal.  They gulped down half a gallon of Sunny D,a quart of milk, a pound of bacon, 18 scrambled eggs, and 12 pancakes.  A few extra kids showed up for breakfast and I don’t know if the extras actually slept at my daughters or if they just dropped in to go with the other drama queens and have a bite to eat. 

Finally everything is settling down again.  It made the dogs tired and they are passed out in my house.  I am sneaking out while the sneaking is good.  Been wanting to go fishing and rain is coming.  It is now or never….  Later

  I have been sober and drug free 38 years today.  I was very lucky and used alcohol and many drugs for only 10 years.  I was 24 when I found recovery.  I had already been in treatment two times and had actually completed the 30 day program in a hospital once.  The third time I stayed only a few days until I got the drugs out of my system.  I went straight to an AA meeting.  For the next year I practically lived at that AA clubhouse.  I was there almost every day and maybe everyday.  I brought my three year old with me many of those days.  I seriously wanted to remain drug free.  I had frequent dreams of getting high but I never jumped out of bed again to rush out to get high. 

I lived in St. Cloud, Minnesota and was terrified about going into a bar or being around any kind of a drug. Near the end of that first year my family had a get together.  All of us kids wanted to get together at the lake cabin my parents owned.  I have four brothers and sisters and we all arrived on a Friday evening in big mosquito and bear country.  It was near Akin, Minnesota and my father always said if we spit across the lake we would be in Canada. I now know we were pretty far from Canada but as kids we always believed him.   All my siblings stayed sober for the weekend but then they were not addicts like me.  On Sunday we were out on my parents pontoon boat just motoring around fishing when a speed boat came zooming by.  They were zig zagging and screaming.  It was a bunch of teenagers throwing empty Hamm’s beer cans in the lake pretty fast.  Our neighbors were a kind elderly couple and they were sitting on the lake by their cottage in a small row boat.  They always did that in the evenings. 

Wrong place, wrong time.  The speed boat never saw them and cut their row boat in half.  We were sitting fishing not far from them.  They had been asking us how many we got, etc.  After they were sliced in half my youngest brother was by the motor.  He frantically tried to start the motor and pulled the cord right out of the motor.  He had a lot of adrenalin pumping.  My other brother and I were always the strongest swimmers and both of us hit the water.  I don’t know how but we got the wife ashore.  The husband was still able to swim.  The wife had a huge streak of red in the water.  Brother ran and started his car and they put her in the backseat.  We had no phone service out in the country and I jumped in my car.  Brother screamed at me when they stopped at a bar.  He wanted me to go inside and get more help and call an ambulance. 

I know this sounds crazy but I would not go in the bar.  I was terrified of entering a bar.  Instead he had to go in and I grabbed extra towels in my car and we tried to slow down her bleeding.  Her spleen was hanging out and I knew she was not going to make it.  I am sure her husband also knew and by now she was unconscious. (actually there was not much blood flowing anymore because she had probably already bled out-she was dead not unconcious) It would take to long so brother came running back and jumped in the car and drove like a madman to a hospital.  I followed behind but did not drive near as fast as he drove. 

 The hospital pronounced her dead and I can remember sitting next to husband in the waiting area.  Brother was sobbing but hubby was just in shock.  Even after they came out and said that she died hubby was still praying that she would make it.  We prayed right along with him and finally he gave that up.  Hubby wanted to go back to his cabin but instead I was able to get a phone number out of him for a son.  Brother and I sat with the in shock man until after midnight.  His family was racing out of Minneapolis to be there.  There were a lot of tears and chaos after all the children arrived and I don’t know how many times we explained what happened. 

It was a strong reminder to me about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.  I was fortunate in that my children did not become drug addicts or alcoholics.  Many times the children of an addict become addicts.  Instead my oldest became co-dependent and married an alcoholic who she denied was an alcoholic for 10 years.  They are now divorced for many years and he went to treatment about a month ago but would not stay and went back home. 

12 wants to go to his house for the weekend and her mother will not let her.  She wants to have a dad and he called and told her that “they” said it would be good for his recovery if she stayed at his house on weekends. 12 wants to do anything possible to support his “recovery”.

Before going to treatment 15 had been in the car with him and he parked on a bridge overpass.  He was drunk and had tried to maneuver the car to put it in drive, hit the accelerator and land in the river below them.  15 was totally freaked out but kept her wits about her.  He was flooring his new beamer but could not get it in drive for some reason.  It was a clutch car and she thought that the clutch had something to do with it.  (but of course the clutch has nothing to do with that)  Since he could not get it in drive she convinced him that she could do it and they traded places in the car.  He fell on the pavement trying to get back into the passenger side door and she learned how to shift that night as she got the car turned around ( that is a miracle, she had never driven a car she had to shift and use a clutch at the same time and she did it without instructions)   He had thrown her cell phone out the window before he began his suicide/homicide attempt.  She just left him passed out in the car until the police showed up with her mother.  Another motorist sat with her and tried to settle her down while she waited for her mother.  She fell apart and was shaking uncontrollable as she told her story.  When the police arrived they could not charge him with yet another DWI since he was in the passenger seat and the car was not running.  My daughter refused to take him home and left him there in his car.  They had to bring him for public intoxication and tow his car.

15 says she will never be alone with her dad again no matter how long he says he is sober and she was freaking out that 12 was planning on going to his house this weekend.  15 has not been the same since and is now in therapy to try to be able to sleep a full night without having bad dreams.  Sometimes I lay in her bed and tell her Indian stories until she falls asleep.  I then sneak back to my house. 

So on my 38 year anniversary date I sat at the bay with my grandchildren.  As we were walking back to the house there were 4 deer in a neighbors yard.  I had my camera and took pictures.  I told them the story of the Deer after I got the pictures:

One day Fawn heard Great Spirit calling to her.  Great Spirit was on the top of Sacred Mountain.  Fawn immediately ran towards Sacred Mountain but found a demon guarding the mountain.  The demon was trying to keep all the beings from connecting with Great Spirit.  The demon knew he would gain in strength if he could keep Fawn from connecting to Great Spirit.  If the demon gained power over Fawn he could scare her off the path.

When Fawn saw demon she was not afraid but curious.  Demon was as ugly and disfigured as could be but even though demon was breathing fire and made disgusting sounds Fawn was not afraid.  She asked demon to please allow her to pass saying she was on her way to see Great Spirit.  Demon became even more ferocious but Fawn stood her ground and her eyes showed love and compassion for even a demon. The demon was astounded by Fawn’s courage and no matter how hard he tried Fawn continued to state her intent to see Great Spirit.  To the demons dismay his rock hard hating heart began to melt. He shook and his whole body shrunk down to the size of a walnut.  Fawn continued her journey to Great Spirit and is to this day known for her bravery and gentleness and for clearing the way for all beings to go to Great Spirit without having to fight off the demon on their way. If they stray from the path the demon will be waiting for them. 

The deer represents the need for all of us to find the gentleness of spirit that can heal all wounds and tells us to stop pushing so hard trying to change others and be our own gentle selves.  Deer teach us to be  as warm and caring as a gentle breeze and forgive those around us that have strayed off the path.  Stand our ground and don’t stray off the path with them but also do not condemn or judge those struggling with a demon. To stay on our own path, center ourselves, focus on serenity and Great Spirit will help guide us up the mountain. 

As we were talking about this story the deer did not get up to run away and we were amazingly able to walk very close to these wild deer.  15 coughed and the deer finally wandered off. I was unable to get all the deer together because by then we were to close and I only had a zoom lens with me.  I also got a snowy white egret at the bay.  I liked it because you can see a mirror image in the water.  The kids asked the significance of the mirror image and all I said was “you are another me as I am another you”.  They will think on that one a long time.  Actually it meant that the water was calm and Grandfather was getting low in the sky and allowing Grandmother Moon to take over for the next shift.  When they come back with their complicated explanations of the mirror image i will tell them about the calm water, Grandfather Sun trying to go to bed for the night and Grandmother Moon clocking in. 

15 has had her hair dyed pitch black.  I asked her if she is trying to look like and Indian and she said no she wants to look like a vampire.  She said if I believe in miracles, ghosts and aliens then I surely should believe in vampires.  These kids now a days are really into vampires but she played a vampire in the school play.  I guess it went to her head.  Well that’s it for now and I hope you are all fine out there…

http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

I love this guy!

From the Survival+ point of view, all the ideological positions on "healthcare" which are being sold like commodities are laughably detached from reality. "Healthcare reform" has nothing to do with either socialism or capitalism. Socialism is the Veterans Administration system (owned lock, stock and barrel by the government and run by the government) which offers remarkably cost-effective if basic care to millions of vets, and capitalism is cash-only clinics like those offered in Mexico, India and Thailand and in some Wal-Mart walk-in clinics.

The entire "healthcare reform" enterprise is not about providing care to all--that is the sales pitch. It is about milking the entire populace so more of the national income is transferred to the "healthcare" cartels and State (central government) Elites.

Here are the three key realities which are not addressed by "healthcare reform":

1. The "healthcare" cartel (and thus its partner the State) is not interested in health because health is horribly unprofitable. People who eat well and are mentally and physically fit have no need for costly procedures, treatments, tests and pharmaceuticals, hence they cannot generate revenues or profits.

Managing diseases is what's profitable, so the system is oriented not at prevention or nurturing health but at enabling chronic disease which is very profitably managed with pharmaceutcals, surgeries, etc.

2. Once the connection between service and customer is broken and the money to pay for all products and services is printed or borrowed in essentially unlimited quantities, ontologically (inherently) there are no possible price controls. This is why an elderly gent like my friend's father can enter the hospital with a non-life threating issue (gallstone), receive treatment which didn't really resolve his health issue and then Medicare is billed $120,000 for one week of "care" regardless of the efficacy.

When the service is "free" (that is, payment is borrowed/printed in unlimited quantities), then the cost of care will necessarily push up to the ultimate limit of the system's ability to pay. Medicare and Medicaid already exceed the Pentagon's budget, and they are growing three times faster than the long-term trend rate of the U.S. economy.

3. There is no "fair" way to ration care; the U.S. simply rations it by essentially random "legal lottery" payouts/jackpots/penalties and other regulatory means. The bottom line is "healthcare for all" without limits is unaffordable everywhere--it is simply more unaffordable in the U.S. system. The wealthy in rationed-care systems simply opt out and go buy "unrationed care" elsewhere, cash on the barrelhead.

The dirty little secret of supposedly "model" State healthcare plans in Europe and Japan is that they are running up against the limits of what those economies can afford. If you disagree, go ask the State finance ministries of France, the U.K., Germany and Japan for their 10 and 20-year projections of national healthcare costs.

No nation can increase healthcare spending 6% while its underlying economy grows 2%. In a mere 8 years, healthcare costs will rise over 50% while the GDP will rise (at best) 15-20%. That is the essence of unsustainability.

Medical Care Prices Are Rising Faster Than Overall Inflation (BusinessWeek)

The U.S. spent an estimated $2.4 trillion on health care in 2008, about 16.5% of gross domestic product and a 6% increase from a year earlier. Medical care prices are rising faster than overall inflation, and the burden on consumers continues to grow.

When everything is "free to all" then technologies and medications quickly reach marginal returns: yes, this drug is only effective in 15% of the case, and yes, it costs $10,000 a month, and might actually hurt some patients; but since the State is paying for everything, why not give it to everyone who might be helped? And if it's restricted, then isn't that rationed?

The "healthcare" cartels' goal is to carve off a greater share of national income for themselves. This isn't capitalism; it's monopoly capital-crony capitalism, the very opposite of free-market capitalism. The State's political class is a willing partner in this transfer of wealth to Elites because it welcomes the hundreds of millions of dollars in donations offered up by tort attorneys, Big Pharma, and all the other players milking the "healthcare" system for billions.

So who ultimately pays for "free" "sickcare"? The productive middle class and working poor. Healthcare which doesn't actually improve health but simply profitably manages chronic illnesses is in essence a stupendous tax on the productive class of the nation. The healthcare cartels are delighted that "healthcare" has climbed from 6% of GDP to 17%, and they will be delighted to see it rise to 20%, then 25% and 30%, until at some point it bankrupts the nation, as it most certainly will for the above reasons.

Until the State collapses in insolvency, "healthcare" acts as a giant machine which diverts money from the middle class and working poor into the coffers of the sickcare cartels and their State-Elites partners.

You want a system that works? Then depoliticize and de-cartel the system entirely. Jettison the entire sickcare system and revert to cash-only for every product and service, and offer a voluntary VA-type system which people can opt into if they choose to pay the insurance and co-payments (which VA does not have) and live with the defacto rationing of long waits and basic care which is limited by the budget alloted. There is no "entitlement," only whatever care which can be distributed for a given amount of money. Thus it's not the budget which can rise but the efficiency of the system in doing the most possible with a set sum of money.

This is the only sustainable way to provide care without bankrupting the nation.

These two systems--"pure socialism" and "pure free-market capitalism"--can co-exist quite amiably as long as people get to choose from a range of imperfect choices. If health were more profitable (to providers and to consumers) than managing disease, then entirely different choices and incentives would arise.

In the US over 50% of homeowners or renters are not allowed to hang their clothes outside to dry.  Home owners associations have a great deal of power over our rights.  Some neighborhood also restrict rain barrels, outside vegetable gardens,  and solar panels.  My youngest daughter lives in one of those neighborhoods and the neighborhood she lived in before moving to Georgia also had the same restrictions.  She and her husband prefer living in highly controlled neighborhoods.  In her neighborhood she has to get permission to change the style of her mailbox and get permission to paint her house.  A committee decides if the paint color matches the profile of the community.  In their house one of the bedrooms did not have AC ducted into it.  It was a huge room that was like 20 by 20.  They were not allowed to use a window AC unit according to the neighborhood association.  They did not want to tear down the sheetrock and redo the room with the ductwork and then increase the capacity of their AC unit.  It would have been an expensive proposition.  Their backyard is huge and empties out into a forest.  Nobody could see the rear of their home unless they were lost in the woods and came up over the privacy fencing all around the yard.  I told them to go ahead and put a window unit in and to hang their laundry outside if they wanted to.  They were to frightened to do so and really wanted to fit into their uppity neighborhood. 

In the US 6% of our household utility bill goes to our dryers.  I live in Texas and our electric bill comes out to about $4800 a year.  Now if you do the math we pay the equivalent of paying for a new Maytag dryer each year.  It took a long time but I finally convinced my other daughter to hang her clothes outside.  I strung clotheslines and bought her clothespins.  Living here in the intense heat the clothes dry as quickly on the outside line as they would have dried in the dryer.  We generally get no more than 2 or 3 days a month of rain and unless it is a tropical storm the showers come in fast and leave quickly.   This is a perfect place to hang out clothes.  I surveyed the 300 homes in our area and found only 3 other homes that had clotheslines that I could see. 

My mother quit hanging out clothes when she got an electric dryer.  She did not want to look like we could not afford a dryer.  I find out that is why many people back in the day quit hanging out clothes.  Home owners associations thought it made the neighborhood look shabby.  Of course back then there were no home owner associations because once you bought your property you could do what you wanted to do. 

The benefits of outside drying are:

http://www.acontrario.org/node/398

According to a 2001 Department of Energy Study _ only the refrigerator and heating and cooling units top the cost of a dryer being used by Americans! If all Americans switched to line drying laundry we would save 6.5 billion dollars (of consumer money), and if they line dried just half their loads we would instantly decrease residential U.S. Carbon emissions by 3.3% according to a 2007 article in the New York Times.
Line drying will make your clothes last longer and decrease the need for ironing.
There are also safety concerns: the U.S. Fire Administration reports that dryers are responsible for 15 deaths, 300 injuries, 15,600 structure fires and $99 million dollars lost to damage yearly on average (data from 2002-2004). Moreover having people outside serves as an informal neighborhood crime watch.

Alexander Lee, a lawyer in Concord, N.H., who runs a Web site, Project Laundry List, to promote hanging clothes to dry, said the actual electricity consumption by dryers was probably three times as much as federal estimates because those estimates did not take into account actual use at laundromats and in multifamily homes.

I just read where Ontario is handing out free clotheslines to anyone willing to become eco friendly by solar drying their laundry. 

In the last year state lawmakers in Colorado, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont have overridden these local rules with legislation protecting the right to hang laundry outdoors, citing environmental concerns because clothes dryers use at least 6 percent of all household electricity consumption.

Florida and Utah already had such laws, and similar bills are being considered in Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia, clothesline advocates say.

.A new documentary is coming out called “Drying For Freedom. a Film About Clotheslines.  http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/boston/new-documentary-drying-for-freedom-a-film-about-clotheslines-093774 

The above is a link to the 5 minute trailer.  You will turn off your dryer after watching it….

.

Shortly after class, an economics student approaches his economics professor and says, “I don’t understand this stimulus bill. Can you explain it to me?”

The professor replied, “I don’t have any time to explain it at my office, but if you come over to my house on Saturday and help me with my weekend project, I’ll be glad to explain it to you.” The student agreed.

At the agreed-upon time, the student showed up at the professor’s house. The professor stated that the weekend project involved his backyard pool.

They both went out back to the pool, and the professor handed the student a bucket. Demonstrating with his own bucket, the professor said, “First, go over to the deep end, and fill your bucket with as much water as you can.” The student did as he was instructed.

The professor then continued, “Follow me over to the shallow end, and then dump all the water from your bucket into it.” The student was naturally confused, but did as he was told.

The professor then explained they were going to do this many more times, and began walking back to the deep end of the pool.

The confused student asked, “Excuse me, but why are we doing this?”

The professor matter-of-factly stated that he was trying to make the shallow end much deeper.

The student didn’t think the economics professor was serious, but figured that he would find out the real story soon enough.

However, after the 6th trip between the shallow end and the deep end, the student began to become worried that his economics professor had gone mad. The student finally replied, “All we’re doing is wasting time and effort. Even worse, when this process is all over, everything will be at the same level it was before, so all you’ll really have accomplished is the loss of what could have been truly productive action!”  Source- http://blog.theconspirator.org/

The professor put down his bucket and replied with a smile, “Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill.”

Keep your powder dry and pantry full.

One of the needs that is arising out of the downturned economy is boarding homes. Boarding homes are almost unheard of now. It used to be that when Pa died Ma turned the old house into a boarding home. She was able to generate enough money to pay the property taxes, buy food, utilities, etc and have a little left over. She was used to feeding a big family and so nothing really changes for her after Pa dies. She rents the bedrooms by the week initially because that way if she ends up with someone she does not want she can throw him out after the first week. She has control of the kitchen and prepares the meals. If a boarder does not show up for the meal it is his or her problem.

You can keep hold of your home, even if one or both of you get laid off. More and more people won’t have any place to live. They can’t afford houses, even now, so they rent apartments. But very few apartments are being built, what with the credit contraction, so prices there are rising. People will be coming to you. Give a married couple a slight discount ( the cost of two boarders, minus a little ), since two are staying in one room.

Another big consideration is the communal eating/cooking. You are factoring in the food with their rent. Together, their two costs constitute a bargain for them. For the home owner, there is profit without out of pocket expense. You can cook cheaply because you have the time and equipment and knowledge to cook from scratch. Plus, you can buy at a Costco, Sams or Restaurant supply place for a discount. Your boarder can do neither. While he pays you less than what it would cost him, he pays you a lot more than what it cost you. It is a win/win. You are already giving him cheap shelter by only allowing them a room. Then, you give them a cheap way to eat because you are splitting the bulk cost of food and energy. If you are baking twenty loaves of bread at a time, the cost per loaf energy wise is much more negligible. Granted, a single person could bake an entire ovens worth and freeze the surplus. They could buy meat in bulk and freeze. They could crock pot. But, most of them can’t do it, out of ignorance or out of lack of equipment investment. You are providing a service most can’t match on cost.

You turn into a house bitch and keep your home quiet and orderly. You are providing something that your boarders are dependent on and cannot find a better deal short of the homeless shelter. You can even provide wireless internet for an added fee and for nothing you can put an antenna on your house and have all bedrooms wired for a TV. So each boarder can have a TV in their room for an additional fee.

I tried to check rates online and only found one local and they only rent out rooms for $16 a day. There were 5 boarding houses in the Houston area and they would not disclose their rates over the phone and they all had long waiting lists. I am sure there are others unlisted but that just demonstrates the need for boarding houses.

Onto another subject: I have many readers who are not commenters and I guess we all have that. I have some that have been reading for years and occasionally emailing me. A few days ago I made a comment about not knowing how to make my own soap and I was surprised by the number of people that make their own soap. Here is a list of recipes that I got as a result of that post. (this came off of another blog post from someone but they did not leave the link so I also can’t leave you the recipe link)

Laundry Detergent
1 bar soap, finely grated (I use whatever is cheapest but make sure it's white or it could color your clothes)
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1/2 cup baking soda
Mix all ingredients together. Use 1-2 tablespoons for each load.

Everyday Surface Cleaner (works on anything)
1 part water
1 part vinegar
Combine in spray bottle

Heavy Duty Surface Cleaner (for grimy messes)
1/4 cup white vinegar
1 cup water
1 tsp borax
10 drops orange essential oil (optional)
5 drops lemon essential oil (optional)
Mix all ingredients in spray bottle, spray on mess and wipe away.

Glass Cleaner
1/2 cup ammonia
2 cups rubbing alcohol
1 tsp dishwashing liquid
water
Mix ammonia and rubbing alcohol in a 1 gallon container. Fill almost to the top with water. Add Dishwashing liquid and mix. Top off with water if needed.

Carpet Cleaner
*test a small area first
1 part laundry detergent
2 parts hot water
Scrub into carpets and let dry completely
Vacuum.

Floor Cleaner
3/4 cup white vinegar
1 gallon hot water
Combine ingredients. Mop or sponge onto floor. Use towels to dry floor immediately.
Toilet Cleaner
Sprinkle with baking soda and lemon juice
Let sit about 10 minutes and scrub with a toilet brush
Oven Cleaner
1 tsp liquid dish soap
1 tsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp bleach
1 qt warm water
Mix all ingredients, spread over oven surfaces. Allow mixture to sit for 45 minutes. Scrub and rinse well.

Bathtub Stains
2 lemons
1/4 can cream of tartar
Wet surface. Sprinkle with cream of tarter. Rub with cut surface of lemon.

Laundry Pretreatment
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup ammonia
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup laundry detergent.
Combine all ingredients, mix in spray bottle. Let mixture soak into clothes for 5 minutes, then wash as usual.

I had other emails with recipes for making your own laundry soap:

1 cup grated Fels Naptha bar soap
1/2 cup A&H Super Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax Laundry Boosting Powder
Mix and store in an airtight container (I use an old gallon ice cream bucket) and use 1/8 cup per load. That's all! I quadruple the recipe.

Next Recipe

1 cup grated Fels Naptha bar soap
1/2 cup A&H Super Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax Laundry Boosting Powder
Mix and store in an airtight container (I use an old gallon ice cream bucket) and use 1/8 cup per load. That's all! I quadruple the recipe.

Recipe 3

1 Cup Grated Soap *
1/2 Cup Washing Soda (NOT baking soda)
1/2 Cup Borax

Mix together and use 1 Tablespoon per load, 2 Tablespoons if it is a really soiled load.

When I get home from Georgia I will make my own laundry soap!

PS:  The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered all city departments "to conduct an audit of unused land--including empty lots, rooftops, windowsills and median strips--that could be turned into community gardens or farms."

The largest North American heron, with a head-to-tail length of 91–140 cm (36-55 in), a wingspan of 167-201 cm (66-79 in), and a weight of 2–3.6 kg (4.4-8 lbs), it is blue-gray overall, with black flight feathers, red-brown thighs, and a paired red-brown and black stripe up the flanks; the neck is rusty-gray, with black and white streaking down the front; the head is paler, with a nearly white face, and a pair of black plumes running from just above the eye to the back of the head. The feathers on the lower neck are long and plume-like; it also has plumes on the lower back at the start of the breeding season. The bill is dull yellowish, becoming orange briefly at the start of the breeding season, and the lower legs gray, also becoming orangey at the start of the breeding season. Immature birds are duller in color, with a dull blackish-gray crown, and the flank pattern only weakly defined; they have no plumes, and the bill is dull gray-yellow.

This was the heron I got a picture of yesterday morning.  That is a big fish he got and he is handling it like he is going to bring it some where else to eat it.  I got 4 shots of this giant before he decided he had to let go of the fish in order to escape my camera.  He was very aware of my presence and did not want to leave the fish behind.  He finally dropped it and walked away very rapidly.  He watched me for quite a while and when I got far enough away he went back to snag the flopping fish.  I left him alone at that point.

Everyday that I go out I know I am going to get some unique picture.  I just don’t know what it is going to be until it appears in front of me.  It is like gambling and suddenly hitting the jackpot.  I get an immediate rush when I see the target.  This was a great rush!  This was an absolute giant of a bird.  After getting that bird I rode another few miles in a high…I then decided to focus on flowers and shot about 18 varieties of flowers. (go to my album to see them)  My high lasted almost all day.  I went out again at 6 pm until 8 pm but did not expect to capture much and did not.  I was out for the exercise. 

It was 120 degrees in the sun and 99 in the shade and it did not bother me.  Sometimes I can just handle that heat and ride for many miles and other days it tears me up right away.  Yesterday I had no problem with the intense heat but I stopped every mile or so and drank a lot of water.

While I put up an antenna on the house 12 was playing and got her foot in a mess of fire ants.  Her foot is still swollen and we put lots of drug store stuff on it to fix her.  Her mother will give her a Benadryl before she goes to bed.  I gave her one and she slept for 2 hours.

I got one of those boxes people are supposed to use if they don’t have cable TV.  I went to Sam's and got a good antenna after trying a cheapie rabbit ears one.  Now with my over the air antenna I get about 50 channels.  I did this because when we have storms the cable goes out and sometimes for days at a time.  Of course if there is another hurricane the cable will be out for weeks or months.  So I have a little TV that can be recharged by the sun and we can just hook it up to the antenna and have news.  I set up a switch box at the antenna in line and can switch all the TV’s from Cable to the antenna.   Just flip the switch and you have digital TV.  I mean 50 perfect clean channels of TV.  It sounds better than it is.  12 of the channels are in Spanish, 14 are church stuff, 8 are selling stuff all day long, 3 are weather all day long, 4 are cartoons all day long, and the 11 of them are regular channels.  There is one channel that is movies all day long and all night long.  I sat and watched a couple of OLD movies today and really liked them.  Not bad at all for free…

If I wake up in time I will get the sunrise tomorrow.  Two days now I missed Grandfather Sun and I better get back out there on time. 

Update:  I overslept again.  At 11 twelve and her best friend came over.  They were starving to death.  12’s mother made fish for dinner and they would not eat it.  I also would not eat over there.  When my daughter’s boyfriend is done putting all those Mexican spices on everything you cannot tell what you are eating.  Still this morning their house totally smells like garlic.  So I again made dinner during the night and got all the kids from over there to eat.  They were all grateful.  She and her boyfriend live for themselves….  So I am going out right now since the sun is not shining.  It will overcome the clouds shortly but I need to get out and back in 2 hours so I don’t cook.

Have a great day everyone…

Living along the coast post Ike I have learned a lot about tent cities. Our tent city is now gone. It got really big. A few months ago people started just building their own small shelters on their property while they continued to try to get FEMA and Texas Windstorm help in rebuilding their homes. We got proportionally a fraction of the help that Katrina people got and it was because we were in neighborhoods that were not totally poverty stricken. About 1/3 of the structures are now rebuilt and some are still looking the exact same as they looked the day Ike hit. We now have shanties that people live in.

People decided it was safer to hide out on their own property rather than live in tent cities. For a while they were getting FEMA trailers but the city of Seabrook (the 2^nd hardest IKE hit area with Galveston being the worst)Seabrook decided it was an eyesore so they then passed some rules saying that the FEMA trailers could not be in Seabrook anymore. The ones that were there were grandfathered in. One of my best friends has one of them right on Main Street or I should say 2^nd Street.

As a result of this people stayed in tents on their own property for quite a while and as winter came they built small shanties hidden in the back of their property. The city began to inspect these structures and they even showed up at my house. Remember I built my small house in 2005 and did it without anyone really knowing about it so I had no permits, etc. Well the inspector showed up and I told him it is a mother in law house. It is on my daughter’s property. I did not try to hide anything and told him I did my own electrical and plumbing. Told him my dad and brothers were always in the electrical and plumbing business so I pretty much knew how to do all of that. I followed code and he could find nothing wrong other than to say I should have a fire alarm on the ceiling. Five bucks later I had that on the ceiling. He told me I should have had a permit to run the waste into the street hook up but that it happened so long ago there was absolutely nothing they could do now. He thought my house was really cute and well built.

Other people are not nearly as fortunate as I have been. We now have a lot of doubling up of families. Families that either are related to each other or neighbors now sharing the same structure. That is not only because of Ike but also because of the collapse of the economy. There is a lot more unemployment than is being reported. Only 25% of the unemployed in Texas are reported. That means that we actually have almost a million people unemployed now. On my street alone there are 4 houses with extra friends or family living in them and campers all over the place with people living in them. One in 7 US homes are in foreclosure or they are close to it now. 1 in 10 previous working people are now unemployed. Actually it is 1 in 5 because we do not report many of these unless they are currently receiving benefits. Pretty soon I will fall into that category and no longer be counted.

We have one elementary school where over 1/3 of the kids are homeless. They live on the streets with parents or in a shanty under a bridge or in some other unstable environment. So daily over 200 homeless kids show up and it is pretty sad.

For the most part these people are invisible in this country. Nobody wants to see them and so they don’t see them. In Dallas a few years back a group showed up to try to help feed homeless and it created a big stir. It became illegal to feed the homeless because they felt it would increase the homeless. I blogged about that back in I think 2005. I do know that there are active churches in Dallas trying to help.

  The homeless here move around a lot. They can get arrested in Houston if they are living on the streets. Consequently, it is not a good lifestyle as you never know where you are going to sleep. There are homeless shelters but they have rules. Many in Houston are religious type of things and you have to be able to tolerate a certain number of hours of indoctrination before you get something to eat. After a while people figure out it is easier to dumpster dive for food.

So in answer to your question Marge, yes we still have cities of homeless people. They are not all from here; your homeless people find their way to Texas because they would freeze to death in Iowa, Minnesota, etc.

 We have a huge tent city near Harlingen Texas. That is the River Grande Valley. Every time I have gone into Mexico I cross there. The $111 million tent city, between a federal prison and a county jail, is used by the government to hold captured

non-Mexicans until they are sent home. Previously, most such detainees were released into the United States before hearings, and a majority simply disappeared. Civil liberties and immigration law groups allege that out of sight, the system is bursting at the seams. In the Texas facility, they say, illegal immigrants are confined 23 hours a day in windowless tents made of a Kevlar-like material, often with insufficient food, clothing, medical care and access to telephones. Many are transferred from the East Coast, 1,500 miles from relatives and lawyers, virtually cutting off access to counsel. Instead of calling it Gitmo we call it Ritmo. Most of the Mexicans caught are just thrown back over the border. LOL… There are over 30,000 non Mexican’s in our new tent city jails or other locations in the US but I believe most are in Texas. For each person there you pay $78 a night to keep them there. That is where your taxes are going.

Comments on this prison from:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1433

Detainees are subject to penal system practices, such as group punishment for disciplinary infractions. The tents are windowless and the walls are blank, and no partitions or doors separate the five toilets, five sinks, five shower heads and eating areas. Lacking utensils on some days, detainees eat with their hands.
Because lights are on around the clock, a visitor finds many occupants buried in their blankets throughout the day. The stillness and torpor of the pod's communal room, where 50 to 60 people dwell, are noticeable.

Goodwin described a group of women who huddled in a recreation yard on a recent 40-degree day with a 25-mph wind. "They had no blanket, no sweat shirt, no jacket," she said. "Officers were wearing earmuffs, and detainees were outside for an hour with short-sleeved polyester uniforms and shower shoes and not necessarily socks."
Perhaps more troubling, lawyers said, large numbers of immigrants have been transferred from Boston, New York, New Jersey and Florida, far from their families and lawyers. Because some immigration judges do not permit hearings by teleconference, detainees are essentially deprived of counsel.
Immigration violators in the United States are held on civil grounds and have no right to appointed lawyers. But federal guidelines call for providing them law libraries, telephones and phone numbers for legal aid.

We had a real problem with the general population of the Rio Grande Valley during Ike. They thought it was headed for them and most of the people refused to go to shelters as they thought that ICE would pick them up and send them back to Mexico.

Also did you see on the news that we are sending about 13 Gitmo detainees to a small island and paying the island like 100 million dollars to take them. That is where you tax money is going.

It just gets crazier….

So I hope that answered your question about our tent city problem here…

I feel like a kid again with all my freedom. I spend about 3 hours a day riding my bike and on some days more than that. I did not go out this morning. When I opened my door the heat and humidity left me gasping and for the first time in weeks I did not go out after waking up. It will be in the upper 90’s today with humidity matching the temperature. When I go outside for my bike rides I am soaking wet within 15 minutes. I wear a band around my forehead so I can see. If I don’t do this the sweat pours into my eyes. I carry a gallon of water in my rear basket and if I forget to do this I will have a screaming headache by the time I get home from the dehydration. Even with that said it is worth it. I see all kinds of wildlife and last night I saw an alligator gar. Texas had tried to exterminate these ugly fish but they failed to do so. They believed that the gar was a vicious fish that would eat people. That has been proven wrong but it did not stop them from exterminating and gill netting most of the gar population.

They failed and I am glad they did. The alligator gar looks like an alligator but it does not attack people unless people threaten it. It eats the food it takes whole so it would take a 300 pound garr to eat a person. Yes they used to get that big and eventually we will have the big ones again. Catching one of these big ones will feed a family for a very long time. Remember we have stark poverty here and even in the cities half our children go to be hungry here. So a persons ability to catch a big fish was important and still is important.

The garr I saw was only about 20 inches long so it was a baby. I talked to fishermen along the waterway and they also said they have seen the gar coming back. The gar have two sets of teeth and they are razor sharp teeth. So taking them off your hook is a serious business. There is a good chance you will get snagged by those teeth if you are not careful. Fishermen started saying the gars attacked them but it was incidents where they were taking off the hook. Being from up north where we got big northerns and huge muskies we always used a pliers type of tool to get the hook off. I have never seen a fisherman use one of those here.

It is important to let the big fish take your bait and swallow it before setting the hook. When the bobber takes off, follow it until it stops. This is the fish positioning it to swallow. When the fish starts to move off again is the time to set the hook. Whole mullet is a preferred bait, and many believe in scaling the bait before using it.
Never bring a gar of any size into the boat until you are sure it is dead. Gar especially big ones can really hurt you with those needle teeth. Gar don't consider humans prey but there is one reported attack on a person in Lake Pontchartrain. The person (girl I think) was dangling his/her feet in the water when a large Alligator Gar mistook here splashing foot for a fish. It bit but thankfully let go. Actually that has been proven to be an alligator bite.

Yuppie fishermen use a bow and arrow to snag the gar. They are special bow fishing gear that you buy. You can get set up for about 200 bucks to be a bow fisherman. I have spear fished before on Lake Superior and I assume it is basically the same principle. We would set up our teepee on the ice and watch our fish hole. When a big Muskie went by we would shoot off the spear that had a line attached to it. Only Indians were allowed to spear fish as I recall since we needed to fish to survive on the reservations.

Eventually I might add a bow fishing outfit to my survival gear. I have plenty of fishing gear but no spear or bow fishing gear.

I tried to take a picture of the gar but it was dark against a dark background and it did not work. Gar are excellent to eat. Cleaning them is hard since their scales are like made out of steel.

I will go out again on my bike ride at about 6 pm and be home by 8 pm. Here are some pics from last night….

Look at that picture of the 4 wheeler type of homemade vehicle.  Now look at the rear view mirror.  You can see the guys face perfectly in it.  Odd picture so I threw it in.

  It is the spring and I am getting some great pictures. Today I got an alligator. It is an American Alligator that almost went extinct a few years ago. They are back strong now. He was in the bay and I walked about 15 feet from him in the water. That was really dumb but I felt like nothing would happen to me and nothing happened. The waves were pretty choppy so it was hard getting a good picture of him. I snapped several pictures of him and then some men got involved and lassoed him. The cowboys got the rope around his neck and another one was able to grab his tail. They dragged him into the sand.

Within minutes there was a crowd of 40 people around. He was snapping and rolling and the guys were trying to control him. I was telling them to get the kids away and to let him go. I saw a police officer a block away and so I jumped on my bike and told him what was happening. He said it was not against the law. I pointed out to him that there were children running around the alligator but he was young and flustered as he turned away trying to ignore it. I then rode my bike to a neighbor’s house and told him to go down there and rescue the alligator. By now they were poking it with sticks, etc. This was a baby alligator. He was probably about 6 feet long. When he is an adult he will be 15 feet long and weigh 1.000 pounds. Right now I doubt he weighed more than 250 pounds and he was ungainly on land but a swift good swimmer in the water.

I couldn’t hack watching it anymore so I came home. The cowboys were feeling strong and brave showing off to the crowd.

Here are some pics of the poor baby. I will go down at sunrise tomorrow and I hope he is long gone an d does not try to get so close to humans ever again.

This is a really rare bird. It is obviously a Kingfisher but I don’t know what kind it is. It flew like a Ringed Kingfisher and had the same colors but it is not a Ringed. There is no ring around it’s neck. So I sent it to our local bird watching club and they might know what kind it is. There are about 30 different Kingfishers that have been seen but there are no pictures of them. So maybe this is going to be a first.

I had been sitting in this spot for about 20 minutes meditating and not moving. I suspect since I had my big hat on that blended into the brush I was unseen. As a result he landed close to me and I got off about 5 shots before he left. His wing span was about 30 inches and he had a loud squawk. So if you know his name give me a holler.

This one was near him and I had my eye on her for about 15 minutes before she decided she had enough of me. She is a Snowy Egret. They are a dime a dozen here. I was actually out looking for a Roseate Spoonbill. Since Katrina they have been a dime a dozen here but I have not seen any this year. Ike may have convinced them to go back to Florida. I visited all my old haunts and no sign of him or hardly any of the big sea birds.

As you can see our old fishing pier was taken out by Ike. It goes out a quarter of a mile and a lot of fish were caught off of her. I don’t know when or if she will be replaced. So I just rode around in the woods along the trails.

I then got back on the road and I and a guy in a pickup stopped for this huge snake. He was at least 10 feet long. I had my camera on macro so it is not a good picture. The guy’s motor was running and the snake quickly went under his truck and got into the front hood of his truck. I don’t know what kind of a snake he is but he was very long. Certainly taller than me or the guy standing across the street. He also was a quick mover.

The last picture I got was a turtle. He was pretty far off and pretty big.

If it is not raining tomorrow I will go out again. Hope you all are having a good day….

Cheryl

I got up before sunrise and was outside looking for pictures. I was on my recumbent bike peddling down the road and began chasing two deer. Deer and other wildlife cannot tell you are a human on a recumbent bike and will stop to get a look at you. In this case I was downwind so they saw me before I saw them. Even with that they stopped to get a look before running off. I chased them for 3 blocks along the bay and was only able to get two presentable shots. I got a lot of other shots but in the dark if they were running it turned out to be a blur.

After I got the deer I went down to the bay and took pictures of the sunrise and birds. I then went half a mile up towards the main road and what to my wondering eyes should appear? A quail standing in the grass watching me. I again ride right up to him and snapped his picture. I believe this is the first time I have seen quail in a residential neighborhood. They are good to eat.

I swung by the chemical plant that is less than a mile from my house and got a picture of that. It is totally out of place being so close to the ocean and in a residential area. We fought it for years and we fought them building the port right next to us but it all depends who the local politicians are and basically we got sold out after a 15 year fight. The people with the means moved to another area on the bay hoping to not be affected by the changes. Most of the families in our 300 house subdivision stayed.

Well this is pictures of my photo bike ride and I will go out later today and get other pictures….

Look at this gecko.  I was walking on my deck and he had another gecko’s head in his mouth.  They were fighting and I could almost hear them snarling at each other.  I ran in my house to get the camera to snap some very unusual pictures but by the time I got back out there the other gecko was on the other side of the deck snarling at the winner.  The winner ate whatever they were fighting over and I still got a rare picture because the winner had so much work trying to get the prize into his belly that he could hardly move.  These are not monsters but tiny.  He is about 6 inches long from head to end of tail.  I now have an overpopulation of these things.

The neighbor did not want the raised planter.  She is always lamenting how she missed gardening now that she cannot get down on her hands and knees to weed, etc.  I guess she just complains in order to exercise her mouth because when given the chance to go do her gardening again she turned it down.  So I will make use of my small back yard behind the shed.  I have used all my other space.  I decked out my entire area and have a 30 foot by 4 foot flower garden along the side.  I can always convert it to a potato or bigger vegetable garden later.  I have used every bit of scrap treated wood I have been able to find that is in good shape and added onto my deck to the point that everything is decked out now.  After the hurricane people have been collecting on insurance and throwing out perfectly good lumber.  That and I tore apart my daughters deck or a portion of it for the fencing after they sold the back half acre of land.  She has that decking and they will expand their deck along their side of the house. 

Now my decked runway between my house and shed is 45 feet and the width varies from 5 feet to 12 feet.  I then built a garage/shed for my bike and that is 5 feet by 9 feet.  My bike is almost that big.  I have the raised portion of the deck and the sides up.  I now need to build the door and the roof.  Today I am building a ramp that is 8 feet by 6 feet.  I need to get my bike up on the platform and it is to hard on my back to try to lift it.  I have done it many times and can’t continue.  There is to much threat of injury to my back.  The pictures look pin cushioned and they are due to the camera angle.  You can tell I used all kinds of sizes of treated lumber and some pretty new and some old.  Treated lumber is supposed to last 50 years even if it is underwater. 

Scattered through the long narrow remaining back yard are a few pieces of useable left over lumber and PVC pipes.  Don’t ask me what I am going to do with the PVC.  I don’t know yet but in front of the house I have a lot more of it.  It is all good new left over piping from construction jobs in the neighborhood.  Now you know why I have a huge strong box on the back of my bike.  The kids used to be able to ride in it but also I can pick things up and bring them home.  The kids turned into giants.  I will find a good use for the PVC pipes.  Nothing goes to waste and everything has a use.  Now I need to find about 30 treated 2X4’s and I will have what I need to do the raised planters.  I bought the plastic planter boxes at Home Depot yesterday and now laid out over $100 on the project.  I already had about 15 other planters around that will be used.  I will do what is called  square foot gardening.  In a raised planter your production is twice as much as it would be if you were to plant it in the ground.  So theoretically this 5 foot wide (actual 3 foot because I need 2 feet of walking space) by 50 foot long space will grow enough to feed a family of 6 and that is what we have here.  The plants will be raised enough that you will weed them standing up.  The width of the planters will be 2.5 feet and underneath will be shelves of plastic containers for storage of outside equipment.  I have five 18 inch wide by 3 foot high nice Rubbermaid 4 drawer chests to hide under the planters.  They will be hidden with a fence skirting along the bottom but unknown to anyone else the fence will have inside accordion hinges that open and close. So whatever is in the drawers will be waterproofed and sealed before going into the chests.  The chests will not be on the ground but will have a platform built on the ground for them to sit on. When I get to that part I will need 50 foot by 3 feet decking.  That is 30 eight foot decking boards.   I just checked the price of new treated boards and it would come to $300.  Throw in the bottom braces under the decking and you are getting up to $400.  Then the 50 feet of fencing is another $100 and then the planter box lumber prices will be another $150.  A total of $650.  My budget is about $200 so I will get the raised planters in first and begin growing my vegetables.  Slowly as I find lumber along the side of the road in the neighborhood.   I will get the bottom framing done and then the fencing.  I already have accordion hinges but not enough of them so I will have to pay for those and I have plenty decking nails left for the job.  Sorry you all had to read this part but I was trying to figure out my construction materials and the price….  Maybe the PVC pipes can be used to hold hanging plants along the top.  The fence is 8 feet high so at 7.5 feet I can have the pipes coming across for holding the hanging plants or the racks for things like tomatoes to climb up instead of having them climb up the fence.  OK... I have that one figured out….  Enough already…

I am Reprinting this Article because it is very important information. Stay safe everyone and Happy Mothers Day.

People who venture into the woods or fields should be aware of a very serious, but underreported, threat to their health, the deer tick. Deer ticks carry and transmit Lyme disease and a half dozen other serious diseases. Deer ticks can be found in most parts of the world. They are very common in Central Wisconsin which has a large population of deer, their preferred host. Thanks to the anti-hunting nuts and poor government management practices deer can found in residential neighborhoods, including large cities.
Most people are familiar with the dog or wood tick, a large, easy-to-spot tick that feeds on human blood and is very ugly when engorged. It is however, relatively benign. The deer tick is especially dangerous because it is very small, smaller than a match head. Their size makes it very difficult to detect on clothing or on your body.

 Two years ago I was bitten a number of times while clearing land for our retreat. It was prime deer tick habitat; heavily wooded, high grasses and lots of deer. You may not know that you have been bitten by a deer tick (unless the tick is still embedded). It will however sting like a bald face hornet – and for a good 24 hours.
After I started developing the symptoms I put two and two together and did some Internet research. I suspected that I had Lyme disease. I had the classic bulls-eye rash on my hip; it looks like the Target logo. The primary symptoms were extreme fatigue and body aches. After years of outdoor work and practicing yoga I could barely get out of a chair.
I went to the local clinic. The NP took one look and said, “You’ve got Lyme”. She said she had got it earlier in the year, her husband the year before. I was given antibiotics. The symptoms went away  within three days. I thought I was cured.
The following year I was not the same, better, but still lacking energy. Over the last year I have experienced the same deep fatigue as well as many other symptoms. I had previously been very healthy. The symptoms come and go and express themselves in a variety of ways. Reported symptoms include heart, lung, visual and mental problems – it can be fatal. It is one bad bug.
I cannot say for sure what the cause of my problems is or recommend a treatment. Lyme disease is poorly understood and often misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. It is a complex issue and requires much research into the subject. Most physicians are Lyme illiterate; they don’t have a clue about the disease. One place to start is with a Google search for Joseph J. Burrascano, Jr., M.D. for information from one of the foremost Lyme experts. Also see http://www.turnthecorner.org/lyme-disease-quick-facts.htm for more information.
Prevention is the best medicine. When we have been in tick territory we do a complete body check in the evening – head to toe. Ticks prefer the torso; I have been bitten in the center of the back, hip and groin. I was recently bitten under my arm, my wife under her breast. Ticks live in tall grass, especially along human or deer paths. They are most active during the spring and early summer. A powerful tick repellent should be used around the ankles, wrists and neck. I wrap my socks with wide duct tape – sticky side out, to trap ticks; it works, but is no substitute for a full body check.
It is reported that if you remove the tick within 24 hours of being bitten the disease will not be transmitted and not all ticks carry the disease, this may be wishful thinking. If you do get a tick follow these instructions for removal: http://www.lyme.org/ticks/removal.html
Note that dogs can get Lyme. There is a dog vaccination available.
I urge everyone who visits or lives in areas with a deer population to exercise constant vigilance for deer ticks. If you are bitten you should consult a physician familiar with Lyme disease. Failure to do so can lead to serious long term consequences.- Bill S.

http://survivalblog.com/

Our local library has been closed since Hurricane Ike slammed into it 8 months ago. Not only did I use it but my grandchildren used it every week. Their school was across the street from it and after school they would go there to study or do research. They also used it for a place to go when they waited for their swim team to start or when they needed a ride and were waiting for a parent. It had a big bathroom that accommodated them switching from their school clothes to their swim suits. It was a safer place compared to the school parking lot. AT the library there was always a library worker keeping an eye on them. It is now gone and the replacement won’t be built for another 3 or 4 years.

On another note I saw this raised garden at Sam’s. I loved it but decided I could build that for pretty cheap with the left over treated lumber, etc that I have around here. I would not have the fountain in the middle. The fountain did not come with this price. As you can see when you look at the picture there is just not much to the deal. Without a fountain I could have it longer and not as wide. The bottom can be shelves underneath with doors for added garden storage. There would be a side for climbing plants and across the other 2 long sides I could put hanging plants. I need sixteen 1X2 treated boards, my boxes would be made out of the remaining fence material I have and I have plenty of hinges. I would need the screening material and that would about do it. I would build it on a deck and I just enlarged my deck so that is almost done.

OOPS..give up the idea of shelves. Underneath it needs to be able to drip. Depending how difficult it is I can then go build one for another neighbor who would give her right arm for such a thing. She has a wheelchair and a scooter. She could wheel her scooter in it and work on her plants. It would be at the right height that she could reach everything. Watering it may be a problem for her. I will have to run a double hose deal on her outside faucet (I have an extra one in the shed) and have an attachment at her height for her to reach the hose with a nozzle on the hose that she can turn on and off from the raised garden. (I also have an extra nozzle like that) Her middle section will have to be wider for her to prevent getting sprayed when she waters the top plants. Her gate would have to be a swinging gate that has a simple hook lock on it. Then there could be a place in it for all her gardening tools. I figure with what I have lying around here and the extra stuff I would need the cost would be about $150.

Now that I am writing this and thinking about it I think I will only build her one and me none. She would take great joy in gardening and she would most certainly be overjoyed to share the produce and the seeds she gains with her church people. I would have a steady stream of fresh vegetables from her and in my yard I can plant the under the ground types of plants. Things like carrots, potatoes, etc. Better yet, I would let her look at the picture and have her design it on paper for me to build. She could come up with her own measurements, etc. She would know what heights to use for her beds as it may be different from something I would use. She is always asking me what I am going to do with all this treated stacked lumber in my yard so she will not feel like I am spending a lot of money on it. I could even put a compost bin out there for her garden. Of course it would be quite small and that is all you need for something like this. Now this is exciting…..It is dark and looks like rain today. I will wander over there later with a printed set of pictures of raised garden beds. I will Google it and find other designs also.

I can tell you right now where she will locate it. She has a huge side dining room window that she can see everything from. She will want it right there where she can keep an eye on it and it is already built up with pavers so she can wheel herself over to it easily. Very cool idea!

Well I will let her come up with the cool ideas and do the building at my house and bring the various sides and pieces over there to assemble. I would rather build it in the shade thank you very much! I will let her come up with the cool ideas and let her know I want one but I don’t want the daily work involved in maintaining it which is true. Her church people will go nuts over it and they will be bringing over the right kind of dirt, etc.

Well enough already. As I work on it I will take pictures….. Neat and inexpensive project that will give someone else hours and days of joy, and give me a steady supply of vegetables and medicinal plants. Happy Mother’s Day neighbor….

Later….It is my house cleaning day..

The first car I ever bought brand new off the shelf was called a Fiat. I paid about $3,000 for it and at that time it was more expensive than an American made car. I liked it because it was small and I thought cute. My husband was trying to be supportive but I could tell he would have preferred that I buy an American made car.

The next morning I went out to start it and it would not start. The dealer came and got it and brought it back in the afternoon good as new. Unfortunately it had many mechanical problems over the next month and it finally went back to the dealer permanently. I knew that a car from Italy would not make it in the climate I lived in. I ended up with a VW which ran until the floor boards rusted through and IO thought one of the kids would forget and put their feet on the floor of the car and be instantly dead as the car rolled down the road at 70 MPH. I lived in St. Cloud Minnesota at the time and due to the winter salt on the roads you could tell a northern car but the rust on it. We did not have the special stuff you pay hundreds of dollars for now to undercoat cars.

Now the American car companies have crashed and burned and the news is both Orwellian and Kafkaesque, coarsely propagandistic and twisted at the same time. Chrysler, we are told by our president, will emerge stronger, better, more wonderful than ever, etc.

Really? Based on what? Sadly, the company has almost no new models in the works, and has partnered up with another failed auto company in Europe which is essentially propped up by another government (Italy) keen on saving a relative handful of high-profile unionized industrial jobs.

All of that is for another blog….

  It seems we all shut our eyes and took happy pills and just switched the TV channel. Where are we proud Americans? The only real American car still standing is the Ford. On my father’s deathbed he told me to never buy a Ford. For the life of me I don’t know what he had against Ford’s but I suspected he was able to see into a different dimension or some such thing as he gave me his last words. I never bought a Ford. This caused me to reflect on other advice given to me by my father but I won’t go into that now. He has been dead now for almost 40 years and he died at the age of one of my living children. A very young man in today’s standards.

My father did no die a rich man but everything he had was paid for. He died in his prime and was just beginning to make enough money to take a vacation. As a child we never went on a vacation and as an adult I never went on a vacation. It just was not a big deal in our family. Before my father died his wish was to see Madeline Island in Wisconsin. That is about as spiritual as he ever got. Madeline Island was the stronghold of the Ojibwa Indians for many years. I guess he wanted to kind of go back to his roots. My mother drove him to Wisconsin and they drove his Chrysler onto the ferry and took the 10 minutes drive around the island. We laughed at the humbleness of his request to see his ancestral homelands but as I matured it became very meaningful to me in my life.

It helped me to move back to our ancestral homelands and I stayed for 10 years. I lived on the mainland of Lake Superior in Bayfield Wisconsin and could look out of my huge living room window facing the lake and daily I could see Madeline Island. One of my grandchildren is named Madeline.

All of this rambling brought me to this point. This is what happens if you don’t stay focused on the point. I guess you all don’t get to read my rant on the Big Three today.

There is so much of importance to write about and here I am rambling on memories. Like in the front page is “Appointees Gave (Governor) Perry $5 Million”. Houston and Chicago seem to have a lot in common. The home of Enron!

 I wrote this blog on Tuesday and only today posted it.  An update first.  My cut hand looks really good.  The swelling is gone and the butterfly bandages kept it closed.  I got real scared about the spider bite when it was realy hurting on Wednesday.  I put a new poltuice on it and by yesterday it was much better.  It had seemed to be getting bigger and by today it is almost closed and healed.  I still use the polutice and will until it completely closes.  Thanks for all your concerns and I am really fine. 

No I can't get insurance.  At my age it would cost more than my monthly income.  In 3 years I will qualify for old age insurance.  Medicaire... 

The deck is totally demolished now.  I have the lumber stacked up and the roofers are here today so I can't work outside.  Shingles and stuff flying around out there. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tuesday I wrote:

Within minutes of each other I had 2 minor medical problems. I have been tearing down the old 20 foot by 30 foot deck. It is easier to build a deck than tear it down. Many of the screws have rusted and you have to saw each of them off and that is a hard job. Then when you get the plank off you still need to watch out for sharp edges from either the pulled out screws or sawed off ones. Each plank is 10 feet long and pretty heavy since it is all treated lumber. I am stacking them up about 100 feet away. Long walk with something weighing 50 pounds. Then you have the undercarriage of the deck and I have found a few places where that has been rotted away. This treated wood is supposed to last 50 years so I suspect my ex son in law did not use treated wood on the undercarriage. That would be his speed. I know the first 20 feet are treated under carriage lumber because I bought all that lumber about 10 years ago. He added on the last 10 feet later. So it is the last 10 feet that I believe is not treated and probably has termites. I have a contract with Terminex so I called my guy and he will be over later in the week to treat my house and yard anyway. He will know if it is termites.

I have been carefully watching for snakes. Lots of Water Moccasins around here and under the deck it is wet after the ran we had last week, In fact it is standing water. They tend to live under the deck and if we don’t bother them they don’t bother us. You just don’t reach your hand under there without first looking. There are 2 of them under there right now and I am not fooling with them. They were not my medical emergency. Not really an emergency but incident.

First I snagged my hand on a rusty screw and it tore an inch long slit in the side of my hand. Remember the board is about 50 pounds and I could not hang onto it when it slipped. Very dirty cut with lots of blood. I sat on the deck and injury number 2. Brown recluse spider bit my leg. He is a dead spider now. He is poisonous and whatever he injected into my skin will rot the skin. I cleaned both my leg and hand with lots of antibacterial soap. Now if I had insurance I would have jumped in the car and spent a few hours at the doctor’s office. No insurance and lots of survival gear here. I put ointment on the hand and bandaged it up. It would not stop bleeding so I went to the next step. I grabbed the wound with locking clamps and had 2 butterfly bandages. As soon as I stopped the flow of blood I sprayed on another antibacterial stuff, let it kinda dry and then squeezed on the 2 butterfly bandages.

I just can’t say enough about them. Fantastic little bandages that have tightened the cut and stopped the bleeding totally. They work as well as stitches and they don’t fall off. OK the more serious problem is the brown recluse spider bite. I had vermin in my leg as bad as a water moccasin would have provided. It started hurting right away. I had bought a powder for recluse bites many months ago after being bit by one in my sleep..

The Brown Recluse Solution (in a glass bottle)

• Echinacea
  • Powerful infection fighter and natural antibiotic.
  • Effective blood purifier
  • Supports the body against blood poisoning.
• Lobelia
  • Encourages the flow of oxygenated blood.
  • Long history of effective use on insect bites.
• Plantain -
  • Powerful astringent which works to contract the skin tissue.
  • Healing, antibiotic, and styptic effect on sores and wounds.
  • Some have reported good results on Brown Recluse bites using this herb alone.

When combined...

When combining the Brown Recluse Solution with the Advanced Adsorb Powder to produce a poultice, the result is a very effective, all natural cure. Well I I had all my powders mixed up in a glass jar and just added water to make a poultice.

That problem should be taken care of and I will not need to go get antibiotics for it.

I live in a sub tropical rainforest and there are lots of biting things here. Fire ants will actually eat you if you let them. They are meat eaters and we have mounds everywhere. Millions live in each mound. They are fast and efficient. They are up your pant leg before you know you are standing near a mound. Then they all start biting at once and more are crawling up you as you swat the ones already in place. You need to strip off your clothes immediately as you run away brushing off the ones on your skin. The pain only lasts about 10 minutes….thank God! They do not survive the washing machine and that is where your clothes end up after you shake them out. As you shake them out inevitably more find you but you need to shake out your clothes before dumping them in the washer. You can tell I have lots of experience with fire ants. I never saw a fire ant or a cock roach until I got to Texas. I can truthfully say I have no cockroaches in my house. I will get a flying tree roach in a few times a year and that happens when the door is open and usually you don’t know they are there until night. I hunt and release.

In my last house I had fire ants and in my last office I had fire ants. No cockroaches… just ants. It was a new house and on all 3 floors I had ants. I would poison them and that would last a month or so and then they were back. So every month I put fire ant poison in the carpeting. That house was totally carpeted and in my new house you might find a throw rug but no carpeting ever. If you spill something or leave crumbs the ants will know it and within a few days they found a way to get in your house.

If you are killing ants outside then you take a bar of lye soap and melt it in 5 gallons of water. You pour it all around the mound. After you circle the mound you kick the mound a few times to get all the ants out of their nest and ready for battle. You then pour the lye on them and you might even kill the queen ant. You must circle their mound or they get away. Another method is destroying their scent trail. Just before a rain, or in the early evening before the ants have gone underground for the night, dig up and scatter them. Fling them as far as you can, DOWNWIND. Their scent trails will be washed out by the rain or dew. Most of them will not find their way back. This may need to be repeated several times.

 Another thing you can do is begin the 3^rd world war. It seems that fire ants from different colonies do not get along. You can try putting this to your advantage by mixing up the ants from different mounds. Colonies can be eliminated, or at least, weakened, using this method. It should work, as long as the area you live in does not have multi-queen colonies. When there is only one queen, the fire ants are territorial and will fight invading ants.

Using a long handled shovel, take a shovel full from mound one and set it aside. Take a shovel full from mound two and place it where you removed the ants from mound one. Then take the ants you put aside and put them into mound two. If you have three colonies, you can do a three way mix. Watch what happens. You should see piles of dead ants in a few days.

If you have them in your house or office then you pretty much have to use a pesticide. I would sprinkle it on my carpeting and a few days later vacuum it. I would follow the ants back to their mound and kill the ones in the mound…but even with that in a few months they are back.

Well I took my break from my wounds and now I need to get back out there and tear up the deck.