An Eclectic Collection of posts, useful articles, and occasional Minor Rants, about things interesting and useful, inspiring and thought provoking, on nearly any topic that piques my interest or energizes me at that particular moment…
I have been offline a while…but it was a plan, and necessary. I needed to step back and re-evaluate, regain perspective and remember why I was doing this in the first place and not be so obsessive about blogging (I had seriously let other more important things slide). I had already come to realize that I had strayed from my original intent, but gaining 20 pounds from too much sitting that was the final straw. I immediately stopped cold and started looking for an answer. I found one, but it wasn’t cheap and it took time to get it. Ta da! My Lifespan Treadmill Desk! (For more details, Amazon is a good place to go, but I bought direct from the manufacturer.)
Lifespan walking treadmill desk
I have learned that the only way that I will change/do something hard is to put myself in a position where I can only do the right thing. So I eliminated a seating area in my living room and put in this walking desk and set up a complete work area. It is fully adjustable and is as solid as a rock, goes from 0.5 to 4.0 mph, and as I am typing I am walking 2.0 mph. I sometimes take a break and crank up the tunes and speed up (now walking 2.8 mph), just stand if I need to (harder on my feet), or slow down if necessary. For special situations I take the laptop to the couch and sit, but it is (deliberately) less convenient and comfortable. There is Bluetooth from the treadmill to my computer and I can then upload the data to an online site to keep track of my walking stats.
It is convenient because I won’t walk in the rain/snow/ice (we get enough of that around here). If the living room allowed for turning it to face the TV it would be even better, but no luck, so I just listen to it a bit more than watch it.
No comment yet on walking/weight loss progress. Later, maybe.
In the meantime, I am going to look at scheduling when I blog. I also plan to return to doing it more for me. I may update this post on those points, but for now I have other things I must do and will do them, but since much of it involves paper shuffling (see the mess on the desk?) I will be walking no more than a more leisurely 1-1.2 mph.
…you see an interesting sweater and tell the mom “I really like your sweater; it reminds me of a cross between Roman aqueducts and the colors and texture of Moorish architecture” and the other mom answers (quite seriously) “I never thought about it that way” and yet another mom looks thoughtful and says, “You know, I hadn’t noticed that before.”
I was recently reading a blogger who commented about the negative effects of watching Disney animated movies. It just happens this is a hot button issue of mine so I have decided to bring it up. “What’s wrong with Disney movies?” most will ask, thinking I am some hyper-protective, neurotic mom. Hear me out.
I find Disney animations particularly bad for girls’ emotional and mental health. I have seen too many adult women still trying to live a Disney fantasy and it is destructive! In fact, when my daughter was young I refused to let her watch Disney animations (especially fairy tales) and even got rid of any given to us, and was highly selective of the others. There was only one way it might be permitted – we had to read the original book first (and there always is, because Disney does animation and story re-writes, NOT original work) and then I had to be there and we would talk about the world view, portrayals and assumptions.
If you read the original stories before they got “Disneyfied” (and not those cleaned up children’s books you usually see in stores and homes) you will see something our culture does it’s best to deny and avoid – reality. In the real “Three Little Pigs” the two foolish pigs died and the wise one in the brick house tricked the wolf and later ate him up when he climbed down the chimney after the pig and fell into a big pot of boiling water. “Pocahontas” is so changed it has little to do with reality (pocahontas.morenus.org), and that’s just two.
In the stories told by The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, and those collected by Charles Perrault in his various “[colored] Fairy” books (blue, red, green, yellow, etc.) you will find a world of retribution, hardship (sometimes extreme), trickery and counter-trickery, unpleasant consequences due to a person’s decisions/attitudes/irresponsibility, sorrow, death, and more. Women (and men) would ignore warnings and do other stupid things and get dumped or exiled, suffer for years, lose children and family, have toads come out of their mouths, get dismembered or put to death, and so on, but there were (usually) ultimate rewards and sometimes redemption for good character and positive behavior. In short, they were lessons on the benefits of patience, kindness, faithfulness, courtesy, intelligence, resourcefulness, personal responsibility and more. Sure, there are a handful where the story lines sound sort of familiar, but most are not that way.
And so we have women (and men) with “sanitized” and “politically corrected” stories in the back of their minds who then live in denial, wonder why life isn’t “happily ever after,” becoming miserable, cynical, and maybe even embittered, or any combination of those. Oh, and how is my daughter? Seventeen, realistic, down-to-earth, happy and no stupid relationships, yet. I’d say that’s a good start.
I dedicate this to my nephew, who is otherwise a good guy, and has good sense about many other things, but really needs to get a grip on his testosterone when it comes to motorcycles and vehicles because he had a bit of a wreck and needs some minor surgery to fix a broken bone:
“There are three kinds of men:
The one that learns by reading.
The few who learn by observation.
The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
–Will Rogers
(FOLLOW-UP 8/19/12: Those 2 weeks were too busy to do much, but for those who are waiting, I am working on it diligently and hope it will be done to at least a useful extent in a week.)
(NOTE as of 7/30/12: Given the number of hits this article regularly gets, I am conceding to apparent demand and actively working on a much longer post/article with exhaustive visual identification of as many squash types as I can find. I hope to finish it in a couple weeks while juggling a visit with parents during that time. Given its length, I will see if I can post it as a separate page.)
There are many beautiful varieties of pumpkins and winter squash, but it is hard to keep them all straight. I own some little guidebooks that identify trees and ferns by a series of questions about their features, eventually identifying those plants with considerable accuracy, but there isn’t anything similar for pumpkins and winter squash. You would think that what constitutes a pumpkin or a winter squash would be clearly understood and defined, especially by those who make a living growing and selling them, but that is usually not the case, and I have found out that information on the web is rife with errors (especially the pictures!). According to The World of Gourds (an extremely informative and accurate site):
Sorting out all the varieties of edible cucurbits with their correct species identification is very difficult, although it is nicely summarized in Hortus Third by L.H. Bailey and E.Z. Bailey, 1976. A more updated summary is given in Cucurbits (Crop Production Science in Horticulture 6) by R.W. Robinson and D.S. Decker-Walters (1997).
For the benefit of those interested in identifying and growing the different species (particularly if you want a variety with seeds suitable for toasting ), More
An oldie, but goodie. If you know and love it, get out the tissues.
Now, if you loved that, you must read this poem; it moved me to tears! I only wish there was an “I am in awe!” button. I would put it in whole, if I thought I had the right, but I am going to try “Pressing” it, because this blogger has some other seriously awesome stuff.
Before we moved to New York state many years ago we never thought of it as a beautiful place since we illogically equated the whole state with New York City. Then when we first drove in we were unreasonably surprised to discover how beautiful it was!
Well, that hasn’t changed. Recently we dropped our son off at a Civil Air Patrol Encampment near Albany and decided to take the scenic route back along Route 20. As it turned out, we wished we had allowed for an extra day because it was so beautiful. Being out of practice with leisurely road trips we didn’t stop nearly as often as we should have to photograph the interesting things we saw, and we really needed an extra day because we ran out of time and daylight! One particular place we saw was so interesting that we turned around and went back.
It began with a friendly wave…
Then we noticed the tree that the dog was looking at and realized…
…aliens had landed!
However, the M&M guy assured us the visitor was harmless,
although he couldn’t vouch for these two characters.
Paddington and Paddington, Jr. assured us we would get a better reception from the two ladies, who were a chatty pair.
They were friendly and helpful, and in turn said we should next go meet and talk with the Woodman across the way.
We were greeted with open arms and he introduced us to his friends, the Yard Guard.
A spider led the company while an ancient Soldier stood at his post and let her host, a slightly disquieting experience given her size.
When we left, we looked back on the faithful Soldier keeping his eternal silent vigil.
Kilroy was there to watch us as we left to continue our journey homeward on Scenic Route 20,
and a sunflower gave us a saucy wink good-bye, and we wished we could have stayed and visited longer.
Ever noticed that when you water your lawn/garden it politely says “thank you,” but essentially doesn’t look much different unless it was drought stricken to start? But then it rains, and it’s like the plant version of the “Hallelujah Chorus”! The plants not only perk up, but they practically leap up and suddenly you have new growth, flowers or a need to mow your lawn. Most people notice, but otherwise don’t think much of it, but some of us look at this dichotomy and think “What? Isn’t my water good enough for you? What does rain water have that mine doesn’t, or is it the chlorine slowing it down?”
Well, here’s the answer, and it isn’t the chlorine:
Composition of air
Most people think that air is primarily oxygen, since this is the gas we need to survive. However, the major component of air is nitrogen – 78.09% of it! Nitrogen is completely inert, meaning it the under normal conditions it has no positive or negative effects on our bodies (unless you scuba dive, but that’s not part of this topic). Oxygen is only about 20.95% of the air we breathe, with the final 0.96% made up of trace gasses such as carbon dioxide (0.03%) and argon (0.93%).
So what does this have to do with plants? Nitrogen is a natural fertilizer, and when it rains it washes out of the air and fertilizes the plants as well as giving them a drink. (What a cool way God has designed to both water and feed the plants!)
Why doesn’t the atmosphere doesn’t contain a higher concentration of oxygen? It wasn’t designed to, for (at least) 2 excellent reasons:
Breathing pure oxygen for extended periods of time leads to oxygen toxicity;
oxygen is a potent accelerant, so if there was a greater concentration in the air, fires would be more common and more intense.
As Bill Nye, the Science Guy used to say, “Now you know…!”
And if you enjoy this kind of thing, there’s a fun video called “Strange Charm” (but not about computers) in a previous post at http://wp.me/s2ajxN-videos.
Want to hear some old-fashioned doo-wop type of harmony? Go check this out. This is an old link that I am delighted to say that still works after all these years! I tried to embed it, but you can’t do it that way, so this is a screen shot.
BTW, just so you know, some people with high security levels (like me) will have some kind of message show up saying the site is untrusted or insecure (“Get me out of here!”). Have no fear, my computers are always squeaky clean (years virus/trojan free), even though I go and play this every so often. The reason is that the site is old and basic enough that it doesn’t have some of the new “stuff” on the newer sites, so just allow an exception and go have fun “playing the horses.”
Some suggested “climate change” but I am a bit of a history geek, and the Dust Bowl of the 30′s is something most of us actually know very little about, but if you talk to some very old people they will tell you it was pretty bad. Here are some places to start (all links are safe and secure – I went there myself and checked):
Observed precipitation in the great plains region of North America 30ªN to 50ªN, 95ªW to 105ªW (boxed area on maps) compared with precipitation calculated from an atmospheric general circulation model forced by observed sea-surface temperature data. The calculated precipitation has been smoothed to remove fluctuations with periods shorter than six years. The thin black lines are 14 different simulations. The variation shows some of the uncertainty of the calculated precipitation. The green line is the average of the 14 simulations. The maps show the anomaly of precipitation averaged from 1932 to 1938.
That being said, here are some helpful suggestions I gleaned from Garden’s Alive! (“Getting a Grip on Grasshoppers!”) about natural grasshoppers controls: http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=775. Yes, it is a commercial site, but they have “environmentally responsible products that work,” to use their own words. Here are a few suggestions with a few brief quotes from the page:
Nosema locustae, “a microscopic protozoan parasite of grasshoppers. Often just called ‘Nosema’, it is currently available under a variety of brand names, including ‘Nolo Bait’ and ‘Semaspore.’ It’s a living organism with a relatively short shelf life, so it’s best to buy it just before you use it—which would be in the Spring, when you see the first baby hoppers in their “nymph” stage; a half-inch or smaller. (It doesn’t have much of an effect on adults). Your local county extension agent should be able to identify the right time for your specific region.”
Fowl: Domestic – Guinea fowl (very effective!) and chickens. Native – attract them (specific suggestions in article).
Spun polyester row covers. ‘Nuff said.
Tilling: “Tilling your soil early in the Fall and again in Spring will expose many of those eggs to predators and desiccation.”
Heavy mulch: Grasshoppers lay next year’s eggs later in summer and heavy mulch (at least 2 inches of old hay, straw, wood chips, shredded leaves, etc.) applied over the winter will prevent many of next year’s young from being able to emerge from the soil (I leave mine on year-round).
“Molasses is a favorite folk cure that may help right now. Back when I was editor of ORGANIC GARDENING, a Canadian reader reported great success from spraying the perimeter of her garden with a dilute mixture of molasses; apparently, it clogged the pores of hoppers hit by the spray and ones who ate the sprayed plants. Several other readers recommended molasses traps: Mix one part blackstrap molasses with ten parts water, fill wide-mouth jars and buckets a third of the way with this mix and place around the infested area; the hoppers hop in but they can’t hop out.”
Neem – “Spraying those plants with neem—a natural pesticide made from the seed of a tropical tree—is virtually certain to protect them. In fact, our good buddy Bill Quarles, director of the BIRC—the Bio-Integral Resource Center in Berkeley, California—tells us that neem’s pesticidal properties were first investigated because neem trees were the only plants spared during locust attacks. Bill says that ‘grasshoppers would rather starve to death than eat a plant that’s been sprayed with neem.’ ”
A fistful of locusts – or lunch?
BTW, a little know fact: According to the Bible (Leviticus 11: 20-23), locusts are the only insect that may be eaten: “Every flying insect that uses four legs for walking shall be avoided by you. The only flying insects with four walking legs you may eat are those with knees extending above their feet, [using these longer legs] to hop on the ground. Among these you may only eat members of the red locust family, the yellow locust family, the spotted gray locust family and the white locust family. All other flying insects with four feet [for walking] must be avoided by you.”
Perhaps it was God’s way of giving the people something to eat (in addition to a little culinary vengeance) any time locusts ate their crops.
Anyone ever tried them and have any comments or recipes?
The old saying “a penny saved is penny earned” is absolutely correct for you canmake a lotof money collecting pennies!
Apparently our increasingly corrupt and inefficient government is actually, seriously looking at yet another way to sneakily pick our pockets, all the while claiming it will “save money.” They must think we are sheep who are too “dumbed down” to think it through and challenge them. Are they correct?
Well, for those who are new to my blog, or who may not have read it before, I did the easy math and wrote a short article with a simple chart showing what would really happen. Hold on to your wallet and click here for that post: Eliminating pennies makes no cents and no $en$e.
I visited the garden this morning and was pleased to see that the asparagus seeds are sprouting – nice surprise! However, not all is well in Mulch Land. I discovered that squirrels have bitten the top off some corn plants - yes, the plants. I was surprised that this happened to me, but at the same time not actually surprised that it happened at all. If you ever have the opportunity, take a chew into the stalk of a corn plant that is still fresh and growing and you may be surprised to find that it is mildly sweet, which is why the squirrels did it. Farmers who raise both cattle and corn taken fresh harvested field corn and chop up the whole stalks into silage, which is kept in silos and then fed to the cattle, who love it (and it smells wonderful!).
Anyhow, I don’t have a field of corn, just about a dozen plants, so I can’t afford the sacrifice. I had to do some hard thinking about how best to handle this since this won’t stop anytime soon. I considered creating some kind of barrier, but that is not practical. I then thought of unpleasant smells. I checked some fish emulsion and kelp emulsion I still have around, but found that they were “deodorized.” Then I found some moth crystals I still had around and sprinkled a bit near each plant – we will see if that works, otherwise I will have to resort to making a hot pepper spray from some wickedly hot chili peppers (chile pequin – http://tasteoftx.com/recipes/chiles/pequin.html), which requires some caution, and I would prefer not to do at this time.
Has anyone successfully dealt with this problem and/or have some suggestions that don’t involve shooting or trapping (too much time or trouble, and I’m disinclined to do either, anyway)? Please let me know. I’m not horribly annoyed yet, but then again I don’t want to become so.
That’s us. We still have one really big box the kids (ages 14 & 17) want me to keep. It has still further uses (bunny hideout, pigeon palace, cat castle, a place to “chill,” cooler than a tent, and so on.
It’s been dry all over and most gardeners (and farmers) are concerned and watering regularly. Western New York has also been dry, although we have had a few days when small fronts have come in from Canada over the lakes bringing scattered pop-up showers which, although welcome, have only been a drop in the proverbial bucket.
I began gardening late this year – I do every year, but I have finally made my peace with it. As long as we homeschool, the ideal planting time of late April/early May falls close to the end of the school year with co-op lessons, end-of-the-year mandatory testing (NY…), reports and other required NY paperwork (blah, blah, blah…).
Anyhow, my usual routine depends on “volunteer” plants, select nurseries for specific plants, and seeds of some vegetables that don’t mind (or even prefer) starting later. So I thinned out and/or moved some volunteers, purchased and put in a few vegetables and dibbled a few holes for late-purchased seeds (Baker Creek). The mechanism is simple: I pull back mulch and plant, wait until the plants are large enough, then push it back. Because I was late, and it’s been hot and not raining my husband has been spot watering in the morning, but when I first started and pulled back the mulch the soil was still moist, and the worms were just at the surface of the soil under the mulch happily turning straw and hay into soil gold. On the other hand, own lawn doesn’t look as good as my neighbor’s lawn (you can see it in the back) because he waters his, but we haven’t watered ours.
Today I wandered about in the garden in my bare feet (I love the feel of the top layer of dry mulch). I pushed it back up to most plants, dropped some spare mulch on some thinner places and did some random checks in the open places between plants, causing worms to flee. All good. Other than my husband using a watering can to water of certain places and one good watering of the strawberry bed in the middle (it got quite thin there and was drier and I couldn’t re-mulch until the berries were done), the rest is fine. I pulled about 5 little weed upstarts and took some more pictures.
This is just the main vegetable garden as of today, I have five other narrow ones around the yard. This one has tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, corn, scarlet runner beans, eggplant, broccoli, collards, cilantro, Russian purple fingerling potatoes, bush zucchini, bush buttercup squash, cucumbers and okra (I also put in some asparagus seeds but don’t expect anything this soon). The “volunteers” in this garden are the strawberries, collards, cilantro and potatoes. In my other beds I have leeks (volunteer), garlic, basil, parsley, peppermint (volunteer), cilantro (volunteer), black raspberries (volunteer), dill, walking onions (volunteer), chives, more okra and strawberries (volunteer) and sunflowers.
I will try to post other pictures as it progresses, for I know it will fill in surprisingly.
30 minutes left EST. Here is a site where you can easily check to see if you are infected: http://www.dns-ok.ca/. It’s a Canadian site, but it still works because it’s in English (the American site is not working).
It had been a sultry early summer day in the city, and we had spent most of it in air conditioned comfort. My husband was asleep upstairs because he worked nights. The children had been outside playing in the sprinkler and wading pool, occasionally coming in, but usually remembering to close the screen door of the foyer each time before opening the kitchen door to keep the cool air in and flies out.
I went out to pick vegetables for dinner, brought them in, finished final preparations, and then called the children to eat. While cooking, nothing had been unusual so as I prepared to serve dinner and saw two fat flies buzz by, it wasn’t out of the ordinary – this kind of thing sometimes happens in warm weather – but they would disrupt dinner.
I got the swatter, killed them in the windows, hung it up and prepared to serve dinner…and two more flew by.
Annoyed, I got the swatter and hunted them down. I put them in the garbage, turned to the stove…then two more flew by.
Odd, but it was only two. Perhaps we hadn’t been careful enough with the door, but why hadn’t I seen them before? I grimly pursued and eliminated them, and as I dropped them in the garbage…two more flew by.
I rapidly searched the air. Where had they come from? How many was that now – eight? With that many flies they should have been buzzing everywhere before! I pursued them with mounting intensity.
In the midst of the fray an idea I had been suppressing became a conscious thought: a few days ago we had found a particularly large slug in the garden and, instead of killing it we brought it inside and put it in a terrarium with a lid to observe it. Somehow (??) it had escaped and we hadn’t located it yet. No… I dismissed the thought.
The uncanny pattern continued. They came by two’s. Relentlessly.
I would eliminate a pair…then two more would fly by.
I moved plants and other items away from the windows to allow for clear shots. As my eyes darted around the room after each skirmish, I started muttering “OK, where are the next two?” for they appeared without fail.
The children were now crying that they were hungry, but I was past attending. It all became a blur. When my husband came down at 8:30 p.m., the remains of over 20 flies were in the waste basket…then two more flew by.
I paused just long enough to quickly serve the children, but for me there was no time; the battle wasn’t over. I strove on. My husband grabbed the other swatter and joined the fray by taking a position in the living and dining room.
By 9:30 p.m., darkness was nearly total and we were up to 30…then one more flew by. Just one.
Victory was within our grasp! I chased it up into the fluorescent fixture where it became trapped inside. I left it to die of starvation – that was good enough for me!
The children had long since gone up to their rooms, and as I finished my own long-delayed dinner and cleaned up I wondered, not for the last time, how there could have been so many without me seeing any of them before. Just where had they come from – a bad potato, onion, or something I had missed? I had checked everything. Certainly not the windows, they were new. The enigma remained, but the onslaught seemed to be finally over.
As the trapped fly buzzed futilely in the fixture up above, one more flew by and vanished into the darkened living room.
Obama administrations EPA Is Spying On Farmers And Livestock Growers. A bipartisan group of Capitol Hill lawmakers is pressing EPA Director Lisa Jackson to answer questions about privacy issues and other concerns after the agency used aerial surveillance to monitor livestock operations.
This practice has resulted in privacy concerns among our constituents and raises several questions,” says the letter signed by Republican Reps.
(FULL RE-EDIT OF MY ORIGINAL POST) I am appalled at the speed at which our freedoms are being eroded! This re-blogged article asks why the EPA would be spying on farmers and livestock growers, but has no answers.
I do.
Check out this link to an article from about 2005-2006 (http://www.dairygoatjournal.com/issues/84/84-2/Nathan_Griffith.html). It starts this way:
"If you grow animal or vegetable crops, imagine the following scenarios:
Being subject to searches, seizures and arrests, without a warrant, at any hour of the day or night.
Having all of your records of farm transactions, crop transports, and other farm dealings declared public information (open to special interest groups and even placed on the internet) by a federal court.
Being monitored by federal agencies (or even by special interest groups) via satellite surveillance or radio-frequency ID chips.
Federal forms having to be filed for every truck full of hay you buy, stating among other things the field it came from, the names and whereabouts of the driver and the people who loaded and unloaded it .- Reported by AgClips (Feb 25-Mar 3), "The weekly e-newsletter of the regional offices of The Council of State Governments."
All this (and more) will be expedited by the new National Animal Identification System (NAIS). It will help the government keep an eye on all growers, animals, and crops used for feed..."
Want more details? Go read the rest. If anyone knows its current form and status, like just how much of this program is officially approved, it would save time, but it looks like they are already using drones for identification and counting (See para 4 under "When Will it Start?"). Big Brother is watching.
This man’s story really inspired me. So if you are having a bad day or feeling like others have it better than you, this will give you a new perspective – unless, of course, you like pity parties.
OK, while I still have time today, I want to thank Organized Living Essentials (http://organizedlivingessentials.wordpress.com/) for nominating me for the One Lovely Blog award! I am surprised and pleased at the recognition and I feel rather badly about taking so long to respond, but a recent post explains a bit of my “shoemaker’s elves” disappearance immediately after she gave it. I enjoy her blog so much and was one of the first ones I “followed,” especially since, as a homeschooling family, organization is something towards which I constantly aspire. I also could really relate to one particular part of her “About”:
“I have so enjoyed reading and learning from all of the other blogs… I have a lot of interests and passions including writing, researching, green living, creativity, digital technology, photography and most of all organizing. Through my pursuits I have learned a lot of lessons about all of these interests. It is now a natural progression to move onto sharing what I have learned by creating this blog. The time is now and the fit is right.“
Anyhow, the rules are:
Thank the person who gave you this award, include a link to their blog,
Post the award image on your site
Select several blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly and nominate those bloggers for the same award.
Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.
Well, I realized that I am still so new to serious blogging that I hadn’t had an opportunity to “meet” many other blogs (don’t let migrated posts from my old Blogspot blog fool you, I wasn’t doing much until I switched), so recently I have been happily rediscovering my usual follows and discovering others and am sharing a broad selection, combining my blog nominations with telling 7 things about myself:
Bird Light Wind – http://birdlightwind.com/. I like photography blogs and I like birds and this combines both, and I learn so much here.
I love taking pictures, but although I have an old 35 mm, it seems I never did take the kind of pictures I saw others do. I just don’t seem to have the knack, so perhaps I need to find the $$ for a digital 35 mm so I can save time and frustration.
C’est la Vie – https://theleanorigby.wordpress.com/. Another photography blog, but this one is special to me because the blogger (Wan-Ting) lives in Singapore. She takes breathtaking pictures in just about every place in the region except Singapore (even though it’s beautiful and picturesque) because one rarely sees the uncommon beauty in one’s own hometown and it’s common to her. I understand.
I lived in Singapore for a time and adored it. It was clean, organized, safe, well-educated, the food was great…it just didn’t have much to do for someone who was not working (it is not a leisure society). However, eating, shopping and photography are excellent and fairly affordable past-times there.
khamneithang – https://khamneithang.wordpress.com/. Khamneithang was born in Manipur, a state of India (on the map it is on the far right, bordering Myanmar (Burma). He is a Christian who lives out his daily faith with great courage and strength. In one portion of his “About Me” he writes:
“…I have seen different shades of life, at times bringing me to tears with joy and happiness; and at times bringing me so much pain that I wish I could pierce my heart with a pointed arrow, at least to touch and feel it in the hope that something could be done to it. But in both cases, it has always brought me to my knees before God.Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you…Finally, life is too short for wallowing in self-pity…”
I lived in northern India for a few years finishing high school (look just below the “M” in “Himalayas” and you will see Uttarakand, which used to be part of Uttar Pradesh – I was there). There’s a backstory there which I am not going to attempt, here. I am also an unapologetic Christian and I have read a bit about the “faith” history of the region, particularly in a book entitled “Eternity in Their Hearts”by Don Richardson and have been awed and inspired by what I have learned.
Town & Country Gardening – https://survivalfarm.wordpress.com. This blog is just chock full of gardening information – you have to see it because describing it doesn’t do it justice.
I am an avid gardener. My husband prefers flowers and ornamental additions and changes to the yard, but if I had my way (and I didn’t have black walnut trees) I would make most of it a vegetable garden. Sooo, we compromise and I try to make as many flowers as possible edible or useful. .
Cristian Mihai -http://cristianmihai.net. I just started following Cristian, who is a Romanian blogger who writes about writing (as in publishing/self publishing). Good information. So why…? (yeah, I know, I overuse the ellipse…)
BTW, after years of research I am writing the definitive book on gardening near and under black walnut trees and am in the final edit (the indices, oh the indices!). Kick me in the rear occasionally to keep me moving – this is the hardest part. I’d much rather find someone else to do that and focus on the marketing part (fun! fun!).
On the Cocoa Trail -http://onthecocoatrail.com/. Attention all chocolate freaks! Want to learn about the process from bean to bar? In part of “About Me” she writes: “I’m off to Peru to learn about chocolate in the country where it was first refined by the Incas. You will be able to learn how I get on there by reading this blog.” Check this out!
I am endlessly curious about everything, which makes my husband a bit crazy (Rough translation from American Sign Language: “There goes Mom talking to people again!”), but it serves me well as an interpreter for the deaf.
Eagle-eyed Editor -https://eagleeyededitor.wordpress.com. Another writing blog, but this is broader in scope and eminently practical and interesting. She was even “Fresh Pressed!”
As I write, I am always striving to improve, no matter if it is only writing/talking to myself. I have to say, though, I have learned more about writing from teaching it to my kids than I ever did in school.
Success is determined, not by whether you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them; and if you look at those obstacles as a containing fence they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next, and nothing can stop you.
Dr. Ben Carson
(If you wish to be inspired, watch the movie “Gifted Hands – The Ben Carson Story.” It is available from Netflix, and other places as well, I am sure.)
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; we are perplexed , but not in despair ; persecuted , but not forsaken ; cast down , but not destroyed ; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 2 Corinthians ch. 4, v. 8-11
award! I am surprised and pleased at the recognition and I feel rather badly about taking so long to respond, but a recent post explains a bit of my “shoemaker’s elves” disappearance immediately after she gave it. I enjoy her blog so much and was one of the first ones I “followed,” especially since, as a homeschooling family, organization is something towards which I constantly aspire. I also could really relate to one particular part of her “About”:
so perhaps I need to find the $$ for a digital 35 mm so I can save time and frustration.
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