Health Care, The Common Good, Values and Religion

I composed seven pages last week but when I read it over realized that there's no reason to post it. People who believe in Imaginary Beings will do so no matter what I write. Also, there are positive things about Religion when it forwards values - most of which I'm in agreement with. Here's an article from National Catholic Reporter that is appropriate to the current nastiness and self-righteous "I worked so very hard so I should be able to have what I want and the hell with you because you don't deserve it" kind of thing.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_36_42/ai_n16740641/

Health care for all is crucial for the common good
National Catholic Reporter, August 11, 2006 by William J. Byron
The following is an excerpt from Jesuit Fr. William Byron's forthcoming book, The Power of Principles (Orbis Books, 2006).
We are losing a sense of working together to achieve common goals and protect the common good. Behind that loss is a reluctance to identify and articulate deeply held values. If, for example, the principle of human dignity is understood, accepted as a value, internalized and permitted to function as a prompter of personal choice, the person thus prompted will defend human dignity wherever and whenever it is under assault. Look around the workplace and the larger community for assaults on human dignity. Try to get behind the unemployment statistics. Look at urban decay. Examine the drug culture and its economic underpinnings. Ask about the physical environment within which low-income children seek both education and recreation. How about the estimated 45 million who have no health insurance? How does any or all of this relate to the common good?

In its document on "The Church in the Modern World," the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic church (1962-65) described the common good as "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily."

Another way--less abstract and far less lofty--of picturing the common good is to imagine it as an automobile tire, either the belted radials or the old-fashioned inner-tube tires. If tire or tube viewed as a whole looks integral and strong but has a cut, leak or other point of vulnerability at just one small point, the whole thing soon will collapse. Think of this as the "collapse of the common good"! One small, unattended point of weakness or vulnerability can lead to a collapse of the whole. If the wheel needs alignment, that one point of imbalance could run the whole thing off the rim (and the vehicle off the road). Patch the tube, plug the leak, repair the belt, balance the rim--or else it will all collapse. It is in the interest of the rich and powerful to assist the poor and powerless; they are all part of the same tire. It is in the interest of business to attend to the maintenance of the common good, to be socially responsible, to attend to the demands of corporate social responsibility, because any business firm is part of a larger whole....

It is regrettable, I think, that the notion of the common good is so seldom invoked in public policy debates over issues like health care insurance, minimum wage, welfare reform, immigration, foreign aid. It is doubly regrettable that business is usually presumed to be on the negative side of these debates.

It is not often that workplace health, safety, civility and compensation issues are discussed in terms both of the common good of the workplace community, as well as the good of the broader community of which the workplace is a part. In both the private and public sectors of policy making, the common good has to be factored into the decision-making process, if that process is to promote the good of all....

Anyone who takes a moment to reflect on the fact that approximately 45 million Americans participate in no health insurance program today will be forgiven for expressing outrage at this obvious assault on the principle of the common good. The obligation "to contribute" has financial implications for all of us, but not all are willing to face up to them. The right "to participate in the benefits" that a society can offer applies, of course, to the uninsured. Big business, automakers in particular along with employers in general, is concerned about the business expense of employment-based (hence employer-provided) health insurance, the predominant form of health insurance in the United States.

During the period of wage and price controls in the United States in World War II, employers offered a health benefit in lieu of wage increases. That benefit found its way into collective bargaining agreements. Today, employers want to reduce or eliminate the benefit. Those who retain it are looking for ways to have present employees pay a larger share, and past employees lose their claim to the benefit altogether.

This is a problem that will not go away; and because health care accounts for about 15 percent of our gross domestic product, the economic implications of how we handle this one dimension of the application of the principle of the common good are enormous.

Only recently have I met and become friendly with Morton Mintz, now retired from a distinguished career as a reporter for The Washington Post. He is still quite active, however, as a writer and lecturer. Mintz is puzzled over resistance in the business community to publicly financed universal health insurance. "During the 1990s," he told a Long Island audience in April 2005, "I found myself increasingly struck that corporations that would do anything for a buck would do nothing for the buck that would easily be theirs were the current system of private health care insurance based on employment to be replaced by publicly financed but privately run health care for all." ...

Mintz argues that publicly financed but privately run universal health care, including free choice of physicians on the part of patients, "would cost employers far less in taxes than their costs for insurance. Universal coverage could also work magic in less obvious ways. For example, employers would no longer have to pay for medical care under workers' compensation." He also believes that this is something that the taxpaying public would generally support. Why then does the business community have no enthusiasm for it? The opposition is, among other things, emotional and ideological, says Mintz, who spoke about this with Raymond Werntz, who for many years ran health care programs for Whitman Corporation, a Chicago-based multinational holding company. Werntz told Mintz that a single-payer solution to the health care financing crisis should appeal to Americans because it would be Medicare for everybody, and Medicare is a popular program that business endorses and draws few complaints from its millions of beneficiaries. (If Medicare-for-everybody became a reality in the United States, those who could afford it would still be free to enhance their coverage by buying private supplemental insurance, so no one would be required to have less to guarantee minimum or basic coverage for all.) So where is the problem? CEOs of large corporations see it as something "that smacks of socialism," Werntz said, and therefore as "heresy." ...The cost to the nation's private sector employers who are now providing health benefits, is, on average, about $3,000 per employee, and employers are chafing under the burden. America's big-three automakers operate in Canada as well as the United States. They know that Canada's single-payer system reduces their labor costs, relative to what they pay labor in the United States, significantly. But neither Ford nor General Motors, only Daimler-Chrysler, supports any proposal to introduce publicly financed health care insurance in this country ....

Mintz and those he has been talking to about this problem think that access to affordable, high-quality health care should be regarded as a "public good," like highways, fire protection and police, all of which get paid for by the public purse, One of his allies in the drive to convince business that single-payer is in the cost-saving self-interest of corporations is Deborah Richter, a Vermont physician. She believes that making this "a practical issue works. Trying to win support for it by making it a moral issue never works." I find that sad; Mintz finds it puzzling: "By resisting the merger of practicality with morality that universal health care embodies, corporate America is blowing a supreme opportunity, to do well by doing good. Enlightened self-interest this is not." ...

For better or worse, all of us in the human community are in the same boat. All of us have to work to keep it afloat and pull our respective oars if progress is to be achieved. Growth-minded, tax-resistant business decision makers who believe that "a rising tide lifts all boats" are challenged now to partner with the public sector in making sure the health care boat remains in the fleet. This challenges business creativity to be of service to the common good.

Reason, not just religion, stands behind this assertion of the Second Vatican Council's constitution on "The Church in the Modern World": "The obligations of justice and love are fulfilled only if each person, contributing to the common good, according to his [or her] own abilities and the needs of others, also promotes and assists the public and private institutions dedicated to bettering the conditions of human life."... Spread out between justice and love is the notion of the common good, which without justice and love is simply unattainable.

Regis University in Denver houses an Institute on the Common Good. It describes its purpose as providing a "forum for the discussion of significant social issues among knowledgeable people representing diverse perspectives." Wisely, the institute favors conversation over argument, because there are no winners or losers at the end of a thoughtful conversation, just better-informed participants. The institute brings people together to listen and speak to one another "with mutual respect in the hope that understanding might replace mistrust and consensus might be reached to serve the common good." This suggests the importance of other principles under consideration in this book, if the common good is to be served. Without participation, there will be no conversation. Without respect for another's human dignity, there will not be much listening. Without wide participation and attentive listening, no consensus will be formed, and without consensus, the common good will not be served.

Should room be made in all of this for the principle of patience? Without it, the common good will remain a desirable but elusive reality.

[Jesuit Fr. William J. Byron, past president of the University of Scranton and The Catholic University of America, teaches corporate responsibility at the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola College in Maryland.]

Uninsured Children

9 million U.S. children do not
have health insurance.

UNINSURED POPULATION BY AGE

18-24 19%
Under 18 21%
55 & older 8%
45-54 12%
35-44 18%
25-34 22%
18-24 19%

Note: Table made from pie chart.

UNINSURED CHILDREN BY RACE

Hispanic 22%
African-American 14%
White 8%

Source: Campaign for Children's Health Care @2006 CNS

Note: Table made from bar graph.
COPYRIGHT 2006 National Catholic Reporter
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

July 30 through August 3 2009

July 30
Our cellar is humid and it smells like mildew so I'm putting in a HEPA filter air cleaner machine. Using our local Freecycle I found one that just needed a new filter, although filters for it cost a lot.
 
I don't like to go down there much since I'm allergic to mold. I'm lucky I don't have the great sensitivity that some people do or I would probably be in hospital by now since our library is down there. I had bad asthma after going down there last night but thanks to corticosteroid inhalers I was able to get my breathing back to normal within an hour. 

It's really, really humid here.  Rain, threats of rain - I think we're living in a rain forest.  Climate change!  How can anyone think that this is normal.  Poor Pacific Northwest is having a really bad time - always thought I'd love to live in Seattle but even Seattle is over 100 degrees.

I mow the lawn if we get a rain-free day and I'm not busy doing something else that can't wait, like windsurfing on a good wind day.  I always feel good from all the sweating, probably because it removes heavy metals that I've accumulated from the city water we drink and wash with. I feel better afterwards and the day afterwards.  Some days we take more than one shower.  I like the water cool in the summer and that's even better for us since you apparently absorb fewer heavy metals when water is cool.

They will all be cold showers now as we turned off the furnace because it's putting out black smoke. The neighbor across the cove from us called the Fire Dept. today and they came down our street with a tanker truck looking for the fire.  At the time no one could find the source so they left. It turned out to be our house as a neighbor noticed a few hours later the smoke coming out our chimney.  I'm sure Bil can fix it but there are too many other things we want to do. for example, get the new trailer hitch attached so we can pick up the used industrial sewing machine we bought last week.  We just had our hitch delivered by UPS so we'll go Monday.

Monday:
The hitch was heavy 3/8" steel (we wanted something that would be sturdy) with two flanges which had to line up to four bolt holes on the bottom of the car itself.  It had been bent in transit probably and the holes didn't line up on the car.  

Luckily we had a grease pit. Or unluckily since I almost killed myself falling into it two summers ago while guiding hubby to fit the car into our tiny garage for an oil change and I was in FRONT of the pit walking backwards and fell into it backwards - no wonder they are prohibited by law. Our old garage was built before the law against "grease pits", which is about 4 1/2 feet deep X 3 X 4 1/2 feet. The hitch weighed about 39 pounds and after wrestling together with trying to line up the four holes we realized it wouldn't and couldn't.

We then bought a 12 ton bottle jack and some 1/8" angle iron, two 48" x 1/2" threaded pipes to define the fulcrum for the bend and 22 1/2 "  black iron pipe of 1  1/4 " diameter which acted to extend the 12 ton bottle jack.  Since the hitch metal was elastic which was a surprise to me, it needed to be bent a little further than expected and then spring back but it was close enough after that first and only bending adjustment.  After waiting several minutes to make sure it stayed re-bent, we hunkered down again and after some little struggles lining it up were done around 10 pm last night.  

The previous day hubby had finished re-wiring the trailer which had been vandalized a previous year (torn out) by some neighborhood child(ren).  Bil made a slight mistake and had to re- do it again but when the electric was hooked up to the original Honda Civic it had been set up for, it worked fine (the Honda's hitch is rusted out and can't be removed/repaired/redone).

We found out this morning that the brake lights wouldn't work when hooking the same wiring to the Toyota because this newer car is wired to use 3 rather than 2 circuits for the lights (Honda 11 years older). Rather than go out and get what we need to fix it, we drove it as is to Fall River, Massachusetts - a couple of hours away.  Picked it up, not easy - 150 - 200 pounds - tied it onto our trailer standing straight up and arrived home around 3 this afternoon with the machine intact. Now it's installed in our sunroom on cardboard - until we get something to put under the metal legs.  

I've had weird dreams lately.  I've read that the 3 mg of melatonin that I sometimes take to get to sleep is possibly causing me to have weird dreams "disturbed sleep" they call it and they are so right.  I will split the pills and try less tonight.  It's hard to get the room the right temperature and I'm fiddling with the fan all night it seems. Possibly pre-menopause, I'm either too hot or too cold.  

I don't take asthma meds everyday anymore as my asthma is better for some reason (maybe vitamin D or fish oil or grape seed extract - which one?).  I know when I need it - start getting breathless - and hopefully it happens during the day instead of at bedtime so I can get a better sleep.  I was taking Singulair and fluticasone every night.  If I encounter some mold when dust is added to it I have a major reaction and need lots of medicine and right away.  It's hard to keep the dust down with all our cats even though they're not all indoors so I vacuum almost every day.  

Bil will probably fix the furnace (again) very soon.  I have no trouble taking cold showers (after the first 60 seconds you get used to it) but he can't deal with it for some reason.  I went without heat and hot water in the 1990s before he came into my life so it's not too awful.  I went without a lot of things after my first marriage ended - it was a good experience for me because I got used to having things less than comfortable and less than perfect - not an easy lesson but valuable. Like those aches and pains that take years to accumulate, little aggravations added slowly over time, I don't notice as much of the negatives now as I used to. 

My cousin M saw a rabbit of mythological proportions and photographed it. Like many people, I would feel blessed by such a sight.  Maybe it is a hare.  I've heard of people selectively breeding them for size but they are all show rabbits and not allowed to run free.  Unless of course some concerned humane individual decides to liberate some! We got our cat Ironing Board Nellie from a man who collected exotic rabbits but really didn't care much about keeping them and his other animals comfortable in hot weather, which really disturbed me.

Hard to believe people can be so cruel - the ignorance or sickness of the soul. A huge ring of cruel people in New Haven CT thought that watching birds fight to death and by suffering was enjoyable. It happens every day all over the world. The cruel Imaginary Being opens its suffering-devouring maw and eats the pain of these creatures. Human beings think they too should enjoy this kind of thing, and perhaps they do enjoy watching these powerless pawns of animals suffer in the human-arranged arena, like they believe their imaginary being possibly sets up their own sufferings, and go to church on Sunday with no guilt, since Their imaginary being said Nothing about this being a crime and in fact gave Mankind license to do whatever they thought fit with the beasts and birds.

The ringleader of the miserable finch-fighting gang's wife apparently turned him in to the police who finally acted, for whatever reasons of her own to stop these sufferings. I imagine that slaughterhouses are also feeders of the terrible imaginary gods that devour suffering, beings who have been created by human beings who believe they've been given license to do what they will with all the animals of the earth.

Have to admit my own self-righteousness and justifications here, having been a vegetarian for close to 40 years. However, I've recently added fish occasionally to my diet due to worries over the inbalance of Omega 6:Omega 1. I've been doing a lot of reading attempting to be armed with knowledge to keep the both of us and our animals healthy by eating a better diet and leaving out unnecessary ingredients and habits like makeup and nail polish, which is contaminated with phthalates, endocrine disrupters and more.

Considering the assaults on my health by myself in my own ignorance for years when I was younger, I'm trying very hard to be fair to the people who in ignorance have abused animals. Will they grow up and realize that animals with emotions are feeling creatures worthy of respect or at least allowed to live unmolested?

I've tried hard to live without questionable chemicals as well as without judgment. I have failed. I have fears that it may be too late for me but I'm hoping not.  I don't even like to use detergent but it seems a necesity. And mold, since I'm sensitive to it, is only killed by bleach. Occasionally I will use diluted liquid bleach - even with the windows open I try not to breathe it in and always wear gloves.  

I have led an exceptionally stupid life - things I did for love, I thought. I had a boyfriend in 1999 who wanted me to wear fake nails and bleach my hair platinum. I did both of these things and more for him thinking that he would love me. He only loved himself.  My hair and nail chemicals likely polluted my body more than anything I'd done in the past 20 years, as they were both ruined for months afterwards.

Anyway here are the photos from our recent sewing machine acquiring trip, with trailer photos also before and after.

Ambition and Gardening

Ambition
I have it locally in the yard - don't seem to have a burning desire to get a new job, since receiving paychecks and benefits to July 1 there seemed little necessity. Going through the motions, and it’s hard work. I’ve neglected landscaping our yard for years, because it’s also hard work and when I worked I wanted to have fun in my spare time. Fun as in windsurfing, bicycling, roller-blading, reading and watching films.

I didn't find time to work on the yard in the past other than trim or uproot the most egregious of plants, the wild roses and ragweeds. This year I had the time and decided that I'd rather be hurting my back at home than working somewhere doing something I don't care for. The difference is that I can see the improvement here - it looks great so far.

Due to the huge amount of landscaping I've done in the past months I've developed carpal tunnel on both sides. This comes and goes depending on how much I'm willing to cut back outdoor activity in our yard. And that depends on the weather. If it's windy enough but not too windy (10-18 mph, and not too gusty) I will be windsurfing which uses different muscle groups. If it's calm I'll probably be outside in the yard and, depending on which side of the house the sun is on, in the front or back yard.

Removed a huge amount of poison ivy - digging, pulling up roots and falling over backwards when they let go is not much fun. I can see why I didn't do hardly any landscaping for more than a decade. The poison ivy was growing in the straw we bought a few years ago and also in the neighbor's pine bark mulch. It obviously doesn't die when composted.

The wild roses - the thorns are very hard to remove when you get stuck. Even leather gloves don't prevent them piercing your fingertips. When I think of the song that my elders sang around the piano while I was growing up - My Wild Irish Rose, it's my opinion that Chancellor Olcott who wrote the song in 1899 had never struggled with any wild rose that took over his yard in Buffalo, New York. Being a songwriter who sang in minstrel shows from his early years, he probably didn't do a lot of gardening. Possibly he romanticized that Emerald Isle which I also do, having never been there.

Like my wishful desire to believe in god and an ultimate Reason for everything, I would love to believe in elves and fairies, as my imagination runs with them through primeval forest in a land of dreams - that Emerald Isle of the mind. I would romanticize pagan religion if I weren’t so much of a cynic and realist in true life. I’d rather believe in fairy tales than the real world, which seems rather drab and run by and inhabited by so many screwballs, who do so many stupid things, myself included. However, reading Faerie Tale by Raymond Feist sent an atavistic thrill through me that elves might truly exist. Suspension of disbelief - a reasonable explanation for our inability to prove they exist! The rational area of my mind says no, it's that area of the brain that throughout history manufactures fantasies and interprets them as religious experience.

Respectable studies found people with temporal lobe epilepsy may experience a variety of symptoms including obsessive preoccupation with religion rather than real life, and the intensified, narrowed emotional responses characteristic of mystical experience. Through further research, scientists established that some circuits in the temporal lobe are involved in religious experience. We’re hard wired for religion so it’s no surprise so many people are so mired in it. It’s a convenient fantasy to believe there is a purpose in our lives and we all want to be special in some way. If we’re god’s chosen, that satisfies that. If our loved ones go to heaven after death, it’s not so awful that they died. We will never know it is not true so why not believe it is?

The psychology of belief is a realm in itself. Since I haven't read a whole lot on this subject, it's clear that I am selecting information that supports what I want to believe. Like religious people who select the information from their Book that supports them and ignore that which they don't want to look at (for example, the willingness and blind faith of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to the god, and the killing of the first born innocent sons in Egypt in Ezekiel by the angels as being reasonable behavior from a just and loving god).

Other religions are just as if not more bloodthirsty - humans sees gods in their own images depending on their consciousness, and it's a process of evolution over time. I believe that a jealous god is an inferior god - less consciously evolved, as is one that rewards blind obedience. At least be more evolved than the mass of humanity god! This has been going on for millennia. Humans have been evolving from being psychotically insecure, peevish children that really did descend from apes. The more some people deny their animal origins, the easier it is to see - they doth 'protest too much'. Humanity is hugely, if not fatally flawed as they continue to kill their thinkers and religion-deniers, their creative people, burn down libraries and ban books. Some even kill cartoonists! It’s very hard for human beings to think critically and bypass those tricks we use to further our own agenda at the expense of reality. Which "revealed testaments" do you use to guide your prejudices?

For many of us in the modern world, those testaments were selected to be put in the final Bible at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.- years after the birth of Christ. Their impetus and result was the desire to concentrate power in the hands of a few men. Like we trust Insurance companies and Big Pharma to do what's best for us now, humans at the time possibly knew it was not a just system, but they had not much choice but to allow it. In 325 AD their lives would have been forfeit if they publically disagreed. Their descendants accepted the revealed Truth, possibly reluctantly but knew the penalties if they did not. The men who choose these testaments were men with prejudices, egos and unconscious axes to grind. They saw nothing wrong with what they were doing - they justified controlling others in the name of religion as being best for everyone. Control freaks, they didn't know what a control freak was and possibly never examined their own motives. Evolved consciousness? They didn't even have a word for the concept! Petty, tyrannical, childishly immature and willing to kill you if you didn't do what they wanted. These 'pious' and self-righteous individuals made the decision to select some and ignore other texts written by men claiming divine inspiration who were probably temporal lobe epileptics at best, and madmen with with corrupt agendas hoping to cement power for themselves. They were able to push the god button then just like they do now.

If you are interested in knowing more than what you are told by your ‘superiors’ such as priests, pastors, talk show entertainers, patent medicine salesman, and Fox News type talking heads (obviously you think they're superior or you wouldn't use them to justify your thinking the way you do!) you study histories of religions and peoples. You learn that virgin birth, miracles, rising from the dead three days later, communion (eating the godhead), and the afterlife, among other things were not new to Christian religion. I won’t even get started talking about how Islam and others are similarly flawed.

A few madmen invent new religions that catch on among the ignorant who later burn down libraries because after all they can't read and haven't the understanding of critical thinking. For example, we still teach our children even in these supposedly enlightened times to think sloppily. Child asks you where did God come from. Do you say He always was and always will be? If you believe that, you are the victim of madmen from the past and your children are learning how to think critically from those madmen.

Humans have been abdicating responsibility for independent and critical thought because they've been taught to do so. As children we're given silly answers to serious questions that stifle real thinking. We teach our children to think sloppily, and then are surprised when they grow up and get stuck in strange cults or sick relationships where they willingly believe any sufficiently convincing madmen or con artist. Even now we'd apparently rather listen to the talk show hosts on TV and radio ramp up our adrenalin and outrage us with unfounded claptrap than do real research on our own. The killings of non-believers, liberals (and even killing of an abortion doctor in AMERICA land of the FREE of all places, and in his CHURCH? it's almost a metaphor!) the hundreds of thousands if not millions of hate crimes worldwide where people are willing to kill or maim those who don't believe what they do, who dehumanize others, and their rationale why: they chose to listen and act on words from those they thought were more intelligent or enlightened than they are - they must know on some unconscious level that they have lost the capacity of critical thinking since if you don't use it you lose it. They act on the words of priests, ministers, mullahs, talk show entertainers, mainstream newsmen, lobbyists and other madmen.

America was founded on ideals that are so progressive and LIBERAL. That all men are created equal. That we all have the rights. Some right-wingers have been saying that liberals and/or atheists don't deserve to have equal rights as other Americans, and some say that they shouldn’t even have the right to live. Believers risk being tools in the hands of these inferior people that know how easy it is to manipulate by pushing the god button and will do so. Believers don't even know it's being pushed because they no longer can think critically - the muscle is flaccid and can barely be coaxed into twitching. And perhaps the manipulators even do this for what they believe are righteous reasons. The end justifies the means!

From the Dictionary on my Mac:
liberal |ˈlib(ə)rəl|
adjective
1 open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values: they have more liberal views toward marriage and divorce than some people.
• favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms: liberal citizenship laws.
• (in a political context) favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform: a liberal democratic state.
• ( Liberal) of or characteristic of Liberals or a Liberal Party.
• ( Liberal) (in the UK) of or relating to the Liberal Democrat Party : the Liberal leader.
• Theology regarding many traditional beliefs as dispensable, invalidated by modern thought, or liable to change.
2 [ attrib. ] (of education) concerned mainly with broadening a person's general knowledge and experience, rather than with technical or professional training.

My small knowledge and experience is also biased in its own ways. I am ignorant also but at least I realize I am ignorant! I have to be vigilant that I'm not seeing what I want to see. I'm aware that there are other ways of looking at it. If you read this far you are confronting your own biases along with mine. I welcome comments!

Back to the wild roses. They smell rather noxious, look rather non-descript, and their stickers grab you as you walk past. They strangle whatever grows besides them - they can be seen as the greedy psychopaths in their world who consume too much of earth resources and starve out all others. The wild Irish rose could be a nicer plant on the Emerald Isle if it exists.

The gorgeous wild beach rose that survives within 1/4 mile of here has no thorns. It smells sweet and is a beautiful shade of dark pink. Its fruits can be made into a vitamin C rich tea that probably contains all kinds of healthy polyphenols and anthrocyanins. I read that rose hips and seeds contain vitamins C, E, B, and K, tannin, pectin, carotene, malic and citric acid, flavonoids, fatty and volatile oils, and proteins. There are as many as 300 chemical constituents in rose oil, though only about one-third of these have been identified. That's quite an interesting plant!

Our vegetable garden has been washed out several times due to the downpours. Less than 20 miles away a town had to release water from a dam when over 5 inches fell in one evening. Basements needed pumping and cars were flooded in parking lots. It was unexpected and over in a few hours.

When 20% chance of rain is predicted, we’ve seen downpours. I've planted seeds several times that were washed out the following evening by such "possible showers". It's amazing to me that anything at all is growing. There are tomatoes, pak choy, cilantro, melons, beans, onions, lettuce and cabbage that are doing well. Grubs were a problem for a while until we found Sluggo which helped greatly until it rained again. Since we gave the remainder of the container away and the local distributor is only open until 6, we had them again for a while. I'm still waiting for a day it doesn't rain to put the granules down again - it's predicted every evening this week.

We are lucky to have neighbors from Laos – a rather heroic couple who came over in the 1960s after almost drowning in a 7-year flood in their city with their children on their backs. They have helped me with identifying what is a weed as opposed to a vegetable or an herb. They've shared seeds with me - some, due to the language problem I've identified as A Smooth Melon and A Wrinkled Melon, A Spicy Green for Soup, etc. We went with them to a service in the local Buddhist temple - a profound experience for me. I felt extremely awake and aware there and almost religious. Like the Friends Meetinghouse in British Columbia back in the 1980s and Pendle Hill in Wallingford, PA, moments of clarity activating that temporal lobe can be a great inspiration for believing in the numinous. The Friends have a huge number of worldwide outreach programs, retreats, actions and publications – if I were religious I’d probably want to be a Friend. That way you can believe whatever you want and not get locked into “just one, please and this one only” idea of god, goodness and morality. I think the Unitarians may be the same but I don’t know.

Religions can help humankind’s lot when they bring together people for a common and beneficent purpose. Whether there is anything beyond the shared purpose matters not, at least to me – not really. It's the standing together and love for all. As long as they're not excluding others - gays, unbelievers, and other sects - they do more to help than harm. The aims of the millionaire talk-show hosts like Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity and O’Reilly - self-serving bullying buffoons that lie well with a smile to a naïve audience – are to blame and remove any responsibility they or their ilk have for the ills of the nation and world. The aims of the truly religious will be not to chastise and blame but to understand the reasons why and then attempt to help or change what is.

Listened to the CDs from the library: Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth about a year ago. This is something I resisted for a long time - years. Three people known personally to me told me that he was worth reading, and I had read elsewhere that The Secret was all about success and was greatly unwilling to read such garbage. Like Tony Robert type stuff, I am really Not Interested and in fact I'm hugely prejudiced against reading that kind of thing. It was a struggle for me finally to say to myself, "what can these intelligent people see in that charlatan? I need to read him so I can tear his twisted philosophy apart to them!" and I listened to A New Earth. It radically changed my view of Tolle, and also opened my eyes to valuable perceptions. WHat an insightful individual! Hubby and I listened to his CDs and received so much that was useful and overwhelmingly worthwhile that we bought a couple sets to hear again. A New Earth was well worth the $20!

There's a place in there where he talks about what Sin really meant when it was originally used in the days of the Bible. He says that the word and concept of Sin was originally translated as "missing the mark". It was not something you punished someone for doing, but, rather this was an area that you tried to avoid like incorrect thinking, which prevented higher consciousness and a happy life, which is as far as I can tell inseparable from loving your neighbor as yourself. As well as you do to others, you will do for yourself. Hurt others and you really just hurt yourself. It was an ideal to avoid Sin like we avoid transfats. No one would die for violating it, at least not by being killed or punished by other human beings. It took very little time for human beings to distort it totally and since so few could read, the message was not only wrong but a travesty, a joke. If there were an omnipotent god he would know that humans would screw it up so absolutely abysmally and he would have remained silent rather than be misconstrued so very, very far afield.

I don't know how learned Tolle is, but I'm willing to believe practically everything on A New Earth. It doesn't require belief in an Imaginary Being, which is probably why a fundamentalist co-worker told me it was "against her religion". The kinds of things she brought in for her bookshelf at work included "Godless" by Ann Coulter. Like a lot of these millionaire writers who push the god button, she is probably a scoundrel of the first water. It's obvious that you don't need to be talented to make money by writing. You just need to be perceptive enough to know what the public wants to hear. Feed their sick or healthy hunger? I can't believe anyone would believe this kind of thing but even my own two siblings are such naive nitwits. I love them dearly and huge thanks to them for being such kind and compassionate individuals. They were powerful forces of loving kindness throughout my life, and thanks to them shaping forces. Perhaps because of my sister and brother arguing with me I learned to think critically, as a child sees through the core of truth imprisoned in religious constrictions, I was lucky to escape following those examples. I'm thinking they wouldn't agree that mine is a more enlightened viewpoint. Why is this: they are products of their upbringing, which did not include people like themselves! I was/am the critically favored child who was given much to think about due to David and Patricia. Thank you so much! I know that I'm spilling over with it here, and whether you agree or not, at least you have seen a different view from those you have already been exposed to.

For my husband's birthday in May we went bicycling in Canton toward Farmington Connecticut with son Spencer. It was about 29 miles roundtrip if I can trust my odometer. I can see how people get hurt mountain biking - there was an area with an embankment going down to the river. The helmet wouldn't have helped much as I took my attention off the trail for just a moment and almost fell over. We started from a suburb of Canton, CT called Collinsville and cycled east along the Farmington River. Crossed a half dozen roads, half dozen driveways (there were stop signs for the bicyclists to alert them!) and saw chipmunks, flowers, dogs, people walking and bicycling and some scenic falls. I think it must be a converted railway as we were over 100 feet above the river, crossing it at one point. We stopped maybe four times but for less than a minute or two.

The next day I dug up dandelions which was a waste of time since the abandoned home across the street is inundated with them. I'd have to dig up theirs also! Dug up 18 feet x 3 feet x 6 inches with a maddox the morning before the rain forced me indoors. Threw away about a hundred white grubs so they won't eat the vegetables once they are planted. The area I dug had about 20 grape hyacinth bulbs that I transplanted about 30 feet away, and a tulip bulb. Otherwise it's only grass and weeds. My Laotian neighbor says just plow the grass and weeds underneath but I separated 90% of them from their dirt and threw them in the compost.

While I was digging Bil took Jack and Stumpy to the vet's. Jack is the cat nobody wanted who had been in a car accident and was scheduled to be put 'to sleep' who bit me a few years ago, which I soaked many times in epsom salts and healed perfectly well. His front thumbnail was almost an inch long and coiled into two coils 1/8" in diameter apiece... Rachel the little neighbor girl noticed it and brought it to our attention. His paw pad was pink but not punctured - it's a miracle it didn't get ingrown. The children like to play with our cats and occasionally adopt one.

Stumpy had an infected wound on her neck that wouldn't heal - got antibiotic and a special wash. She had a stroke two summers ago after insisting on sitting in the sun for the hot part of the day. Would not come in the nice air-conditioned room. It was a weekend and a holiday so we didn't take her to the vet. She got better and is actually totally healthy and even spry and feisty now. She doesn't take sh-t from anybody, and when I say anybody I mean the younger cats who try but fail to boss her around.

I'm trying hard to go completely organic with this garden. The organic mix we used to start the seeds however was a huge mistake. It was a total waste of money and time. I tried a soil-less mix and it worked much better. We don't want to contaminate the soil or vegetation with herbicides. Everything goes into a compost pile (admittedly, it's HUGE) which we could conceivably use for soil some day to grow vegetables etc...

We're doing terracing on our hillside. Filled two huge garbage cans of soil and a half a can of stones for just the top layer that we excavated last week. That too is a project. I thought we would create terraces like Machu Picchu on a miniscule scale. I got the book out Machu Pichu a Civil Engineering Marvel by Wright and Zegarra which took about 2 weeks from interlibrary loan from Woodbridge, CT which told me how to go about it. They did have granite there, however and a different climate. I was hoping to make the terraces self-watering, as there are tall oaks and maples shading it.

The roots on that wild rose were over an inch wide. I pulled up four feet before it broke - it's way, way, way too long to get the whole thing. Every year I just have to keep after it. I hate it! Someone once said you're closer to god in a garden. If so it's a love/hate relationship. I can get reasonably murderous about that damn thing when it grabs me while I'm carrying it to the kill area which is the huge pile of brush, far from the ground where it cannot root again. My back is in a bit of pain since I’m overdoing the gardening. Alternating times of furious gardening with achy cold fingers, tingling and numb fingers. Read a half hour this morning, then said, I'll dig up a few weeds. Four hours later I'm still digging them up everywhere and I say, might as well dig up more of that awful wild rose which I've cut it back every year I've been here and there is a huge root that seems to come from the center of the earth.

I've been rather on edge lately - I may be going through pre-menopause but have been bleeding for almost a month now. It has really gotten old... I bemoan leaving a life-long happy but underappreciated era of clean white underpants, clean white sheets, and clean white towels. While my husband labors in hot summer sunshine to finish re-wiring the 2-wheel trailer that we’ll use to transport the sewing machine we bought from a textile mill in Massachusetts on Craig list I’m washing off maggots that I spilled on me. I decided to water the plastic flytrap and instead it spilled and broke on my ankle. An odoriferous, rank aroma and disgust so terrible, an intense search for the end of the hose to turn it on, then a shower and relief!

Bil painted his two-wheeled trailer in preparation for putting in the new wiring, which the local kids picked off it somehow when we weren’t looking. He’s put in a lot of time and effort to re-wiring it and replacing the parts that were destroyed as well.

I read about bald eagles overwhelming other native birds and was upset that the horrible predatory birds are devouring the poor cormorants and other chicks of species that are peaceful. What a terrible bird to have as an American totem! I feel like that cormorant – the little predators in the area are growing up with no consideration that this is not their property to devour and destroy.

A friend sent me an article about some "pro-life" activists. She said they shouldn't call themselves that. They should call themselves what they are: anti- choice. The righteous think they have the right to define what's right and that the fetus is a life. After all you could say conceived again rather than born again because the people who wrote when the Bible was written didn’t know the difference. Written by ignorant people, it is being used by ignorant people. No matter what you think of the author of this article, and I do disagree with some of what he says, he makes a good point on http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2404 when he discusses: That Abortion Rights are Pro-Life (by Leonard Peikoff January 23, 2003). Any cell in the body can be considered viable for independent life. Does that mean we must not destroy blood in a blood test? If you go far enough, you can see what is extrapolated.

If there be a god (and I believe I know there isn't a benevolent one) and if god wants you to follow certain rules, how do you assume that this “god” is a benevolent being rather than a child molester? How do you know “He” is ruling in your best interests? What if he wants to drink your soul when you die and says you must suffer so it tastes better? Ask where this god came from. The answer is "he always was and always will be". It's a mantra of the ignorant that is over 1000 years old and rather than teaching children to think, they can be satisfied with learning sloppy thinking like this.

There's an incredible lack of awareness about celiac disease due to it not being sufficiently profitable for the drug companies to fund it. Since med schools' financing comes mostly from pharmaceutical companies in this country, many doctors know next to nothing about it while countries with single payer health care are more aware of it. I used to make pasta with chickpea and artichoke flour but it was mixed with regular flour. Buckwheat is not related to wheat but we can't find it here. We can find rice flour. Corn is okay but it's nutritionally not that great nor glycemically and many are allergic to it. Oats - there is some dissension whether they're okay. Millet is fine and there are other flours not so well known probably. Soy may be okay but there are other problems with soy in any but small quantities. I ate and cooked mostly soy products like tofu, ogari, soyburgers, and soybeans for much of my adult years until I found out that my thyroid had become underactive and went on thyroid meds. As the years pass, I believe that gluten intolerance will be found to be the root of many of our major diseases, since it prevents nutrients from being absorbed and people with malnutrition are likely to become ill. Bil may be celiac positive as he supposedly had it as a child and you don't outgrow it. He was forced to eat only bananas and he remembers it. We are in the dark ages medically – like with religion, we’re ignorant and don’t know it yet.

When we learn to address reality rather than what seems to make sense in the name of profit we'll be able to cure people of real disease. When we learn to think critically we'll see that our nation is no longer representative. We'll find out it's being run by whoever financed the elections. Lobbyists for insurance companies spend MILLIONS of dollars a day to prevent Americans from attaining reasonable health insurance. THe arguments we hear today are the same ones we heard in 1992 and 1993. The same lies. It makes no sense to educate our people - they might see that they're being lied to.

If we want an economic stimulus that will help Americans, we need to give people a free education! Get us educated to think! Every one will reach his own conclusions but at least offer a chance to think independently. Let's have a populace that neither wants nor needs advice from talk show entertainers! Take those entertainers and retire them! Give money to small businesses here so they can hire educated and creative people! When I think of the waste of minds in our country and how we don't have enough educated Americans but have to import them from other countries, it almost makes me cry.

That's it for today. I said my piece and there's more but this is enough.

http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/

http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/

Criticism, views, identifications breed violence, crimes against humanity

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

--J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp.51-52

"What has happened here [on 9-11] is not war in its traditional sense. This is clearly a crime against humanity. War crimes are crimes which happen in war time. There is a confusion there. This is a crime against humanity because it is deliberate and intentional killing of large numbers of civilians for political or other purposes. That is not tolerable under the international systems. And it should be prosecuted pursuant to the existing laws. . . .
"We're not re-writing any rules. We don't have to re-write any rules. We have to apply the existing rules. To call them "terrorists" is also a misleading term. There's no agreement on what terrorism is. One man's terrorism is another man's heroism. . . . We try them for mass murder. That's a crime under every jurisdiction and that's what's happened here and that is a crime against humanity."
--Benjamin Ferencz, former Nuremberg Prosecutor, 19 Sep 2001


Broadening Our Perspectives of 11 September 2001
by David T. Ratcliffe
September 2002
What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. . . .
Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable - that mankind is doomed - that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade - therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - and we believe they can do it again.
-- President John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address
at American University in Washington, 10 June 1963

To criticize one's country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment . . . it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing.
-- J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power,
Vintage Books; New York, 1966, p.25

Out of Work, Fun Outdoors

Most of you know that I am no longer employed since December 31st. After 12 years of working for the same company I was given a severance package until June 2009 so I'm not suffering too much. In fact I'm feeling like I'm on vacation, and maybe I'll actually accomplish things I've put off a long time and do things I don't usually have time or energy to do. I'm feeling optimistic.

It snowed two or three inches from the storm that was supposed to drop six inches Saturday. I would have loved to ski nearby but there was an icy crust on the snow. Yellow was frisking around outside and you could see his feet stepping onto a supposedly firm top but then sinking down.

Yellow is an orange-tan cat we received end of June this year from a caring, sensitive young man, Carson Mueller who had seen the Day article about Bil rescuing cats. Yellow was getting into fights outside Carson's and mother's Griswold home and came to us tattered, thin and nervous. Today he is plump and healthy, and gets along well with most of the cats in our area. The difference is that our area cats are neutered and well fed. Those where he lived were wild and feral. This cat loves the outdoors and comes in only part of the day to curl up in a favorite spot and sleep. 

Everything in our life practically is about cats - a large part of who we are - why else would we share our home with so many? But it is very nice to get away from them for a while. Typing on a computer, even sitting in a chair is impossible without at least one on your lap. Eating a meal without a cat - don't even ask. We don't have a dining table in our home like most people. Dining area? Are you kidding? If you want to cook a meal, someone must pre-clean and then guard the preparation area or you're likely to get cat hair or worse in the meal. Cookies were fun - an exercise in both togetherness for Bil and me, and in "No!" between the cats and us.

We thought we'd go north, imagining that the snow beyond all snows would be found there. When we read on the net that the dog sled race was scheduled for that day, we were even more enthused. We even invited son Spencer from Massachusetts.

The air was so crisp and the scenery was beautiful: a dusting of snow on the tall evergreens, beneath them snow cold and smooth, but outside of the tree area a crust on top and beneath the snowy trails. Not good conditions but it was scenic, there was no wind, and the temperature of around 20-25 degrees made the experience pleasant if not perfect skiing. Aesthetics are enough when you reach the half-century mark. Energy level is not as great so a disappointment in snow quality doesn't disturb enjoyment as it would have a few decades past.  

The last time we skied here the conditions were ideal for cross-country skiing. The access roads closed to vehicles during the dog sled race were wide enough that several people could ski together side by side.  Back then, Spencer came with us - he was going out with Laurie then so it must have been at least five years ago.  I dated it by the fact that we were sad she missed the sled races, as she loved mushing. We had not known the races were held here so it came as a pleasant surprise.  Miles of roads were snow covered and packed down with many dog sled teams passage and later, skiers like us.  The sleds had already finished most of the races by the time we showed up. We skied from mid-afternoon to after sunset - the metal edges on Bil's ski's sparked orange fire off rocks down exciting hills. It was almost as exciting as Coronary Hill Trail in Bretton Woods, but without the worry over hitting a tree on the way down. For me, to have speed without stress over getting hurt is the higher enjoyment. The day stretched to night and moonrise. Magical.

Today the crust on the snow prevented easy steering and the hills were scary rather than exhilarating. It wasn't a waste for us as it was a relatively short drive, very picturesque and I needed the fresh air.  It was readily apparent that my asthma and allergies from our house's dust and cat dander are totally situational - I noticed a complete absence of symptoms. 

I wish we had gone to western Massachusetts where the conditions were better. Except for one thing. My ski boots had been sitting in the garage all year and were actually deteriorated with mold. Even the arch supports - I didn't know that about cork. Maybe they have seen too many decades' wear and it's time for a new pair. They no longer supported the ankles and the sensation of strain hindered enjoyment of the one-hour's worth of skiing we had. If conditions were better I may have skied longer, and the pain would have been overwhelming so we would have been irritated to cut short our trip.

The week looks like low 30's during the day, high teens at night. Our cove has ice on it except for the incursions of the Thames and a stream on the opposite end. Bil shooed some children off Saturday who didn't know any better. We skated on it last year or the year before after he drilled a hole in it to ensure it was thick enough.

He told me about when he and his family lived on a lake in Massachusetts for years - how he required at least two inches of black ice (no air bubbles) before he let his children skate on it.  When it was uncertain, he apparently forced them to skate with a rope behind them attached to a huge truck inner tube.  On the tube was a pole at least 12 feet long and an ice pick.  Scary to think you could fall in and not be able to grab the edges of the ice to get out.

We’ve been listening to BlueFM which is almost totally instrumental music in many modes – jazz, classical, new age and no commercials. Listening to it in iTunes, the name of the song and artist are displayed, and a playlist over time is available on the website. It looks like the station hails from the other side of the earth with interesting calligraphic subtitles that I don’t recognize, possibly Korean.

I am reading a book – it’s Using Your Brain For A Change by Richard Bandler that has some interesting exercises. For those of you familiar with NLP or the book I would be interested in your comments. You know my email address is stoye@earthlink.net or if you didn’t, you know now.

For the last week Bil has had some pains behind his sternum on the left side. We were worried about it except that it was not increased when he skied – surely an extremely heart pounding exercise the way he does it, if danger signs were going to show up they did not. I had suggested since he wasn’t feeling up to it we don’t go skiing but he wasn’t going to ruin a great day that way. Hey, he could have also skied slowly, but insisted on pushing the envelope. You know how he is. He is going to the VA tomorrow for scheduled blood work anyway.