by Betsy Seeton
When she talked, and she loved to talk, she picked a place in the air not far from where I’d be sitting, like she was looking through a window to the past, and she’d smile in that way sweet memories make all of us smile. She’d kind of rear back, her hands folded in her lap with one hand always clutching a tissue and her legs crossed at her thick ankles. With great pride and affection she’d resurrect her childhood. Her eyes would dart back to mine every now and then to see what reaction I might be having and then they’d head back to her imaginary window.
She had an infectious laugh. I can still hear it and it still brings a smile to my face. Born twenty five years before the 1st World War, she was the youngest of five children and full of pepper. A native of Colorado, she was a happy kid and fearless too. When she would tell me stories about her tomboy ways, I always liked that we had that in common. She spoke of riding her father’s bulls in their pasture and jumping on unsaddled horses. She was a sharpshooter with a rifle and pistol, and just as savvy with a fly rod. She could out fish any man and used to tell this story about an old guy who ran into her on the stream one day.
He couldn’t seem to catch a fish that day and when she appeared with a basket full of plump, fresh trout like she could always catch, he was quite put out with her. For more dramatic effect she’d lower her voice to imitate this man and as she did so her chin would nearly touch her chest. Then she’d blurt out what he had said to her that day, “What’s your name???!!” I don’t remember much else of that story, but it was so funny to hear her tell it because if you hadn’t been paying close attention, as a friend of mine hadn’t been one time, when she’d say “What’s your name?” in that demanding tone, my friend was completely startled and quickly but feebly muttered her name. This would throw my grandma off balance for a moment, but she’d laugh it off and continue with the story. I guess I was too busy laughing at what had just happened to follow along until she was finished.
When she’d tell me she was quite the looker in her day she’d squeeze her blue hair with both hands and her blue-gray eyes would take on a fresh sparkle. It was hard for me to envision my plump, short grandma as a young woman with long, thick auburn hair, but that’s the picture she painted of herself and there were family photos to prove it. She used to talk about the many beaus that pursued her. There was one story about her gentleman callers she was very fond of telling. It was when grandpa came to see her one day (long before he became my grandpa) and she had to sneak him out the back door while her other beau was knocking at the front door.
When she spoke about her father it was obvious how much she adored him. For a short time he was the mayor of the small mountain town they lived in, but what he was best known for was being a successful miner. The family argues to this day about what kind of a man great-grandpa was. There’s no disagreement about him being nice and loving, but there’s speculation about whether he was a gambler and a drinker partly because of the way he made and lost fortunes. Either way, he always sounded like an interesting character and someone I thought I would’ve enjoyed knowing.
I grew up sharing a room and a double bed with her through my first year in Jr. High. Looking back, I can’t believe I was that old and still sleeping in the same bed as my grandma. But it was what I’d always done so it didn’t cross my mind as being unusual at the time. And I know I was in the seventh grade when we were still sharing a bed because that was the year I had my first crush and I remember telling her all about him. He and I were friends first and briefly something more and then quickly back to simply friends. After that he fell hard for a friend of mine and she for him. But I digress.
I have this very special memory of her around Christmas time when I was about five or six. I awoke during the early morning hours of Christmas day. I was so excited to go see if Santa had come, and to maybe get a peek at the jolly man himself. Grandma was awake too. In fact, she probably woke me on her nightly jaunt to the bathroom. I was just about to get out of bed when she told me about how she’d just seen Santa that night and that he wanted her to tell me how proud he was of me. She said Santa knew I’d stay in bed like a good little girl because he’d been watching me throughout the year and he knew I was special. She told me I’d best not get out of bed for a few more hours because of course I wouldn’t want to disappoint Santa since he wanted me to get a full night’s sleep. I was amazed she actually talked to Santa and that he knew who I was. I was so glad she’d caught me before I headed out to see what was under the tree. I quickly pulled the covers over me and forced myself back to sleep content in believing that Santa and my grandma loved me very much. Grandma often told me I was the apple of her eye. I always thought that was a funny way of telling someone how much they meant, but the way my grandma would say it made me feel very special and loved.
Grandma was in her thirties before she got pregnant with my dad. She and grandpa had been trying to have a baby for over seven years and had all but given up. So when she finally got pregnant for the first time she was elated. And since she didn’t know if she’d ever have another child it was easy to understand how much she adored my father. To hear her talk my father was a prodigy. She often told the story about him getting into their 1920 Ford truck at the age of three and driving it around the block. She said he stood up to reach the gas pedal and held onto the steering wheel real tight. I didn’t know if she was being entirely accurate, but it was a favorite story of mine.
She was the first to admit how protective she was with my dad and she didn’t argue when he said if it weren’t for his father intervening on occasions, she’d have raised him up to be a real sissy.
I guess there wasn’t a drinking age in my dad’s day because grandma used to talk about serving up hot toddies on cold days and how much my dad liked them. He’d come in after a rainy day of fishing when he was about five years old and he’d shiver real good in an attempt to get her to warm him up with one of her famous hot toddies. She’d laugh when she told this story. She thought it was so cute and smart of him. I thought it was too.
I loved that my grandma had her own cabin in the mountains, and I loved staying with her when I got the chance. She heated the place with a wood/cook stove and we used a chamber pot at night and the outhouse during the day. Her bedroom was always cold at night because it was kept closed off from the heated part of the cabin, and when I was little she’d let me warm my cold feet on her stomach. I’d giggle every time because she’d make these loud sounds when my feet landed on her. Just thinking about it makes me smile. I remember cuddling with her and listening to the sound of rain hitting her tin roof. For some reason the taste of cantaloupe to this day reminds me of her because it was something she often served at breakfast when I spent the night.
Ever since I could remember, Grandma had a bad hip . She would struggle to get up whether out of a kitchen chair or from a couch. When she’d finally stand she’d take a step or two like babies do when they’re first learning to walk. It would be slow and uncertain and she’d pause between steps until her muscles and joints got loosened up. I could see her face wince from the pain and her shoulders would tighten. But I don’t remember her ever sitting around and complaining about it. She endured her pain like a champ. I remember thinking how I wouldn’t have been such a good sport.
As I think of it now I wonder if her silence was partly because she was afraid of doctors. My dad wanted her to consider getting a hip replacement but she never came close to entertaining the idea. It took a long time for the family to even convince her to use a cane. I never really thought about it before but I guess she had her stubborn ways.
Because of her hip giving her so much pain she couldn’t bend over much past her knees. As a result of this she couldn’t trim her toenails or put on her right nylon stocking very easily. For a while she learned to put the stocking on by first placing it around a piece of bent cardboard. She’d get it just so and then drop it to the floor. She’d slide her foot into it and after some finagling she’d bend just far enough to reach an edge of the stocking. With more wriggling and enough time she’d get the stocking pulled up.
It wasn’t long though before she asked me to help. I’d like to say that I volunteered to help and maybe I did; I’m really not sure. I just remember how there were times it bothered me to always be the one who had to put on her stocking. She wouldn’t ask anyone else or let anyone else help her but me. As I sit here today thinking about how I clipped her toenails and put that stocking on, I can only hope I never let on that I was put out by those chores at times. I loved her very much so I hope that my love concealed any irritation I was feeling.
She started smoking when she was fifty years old. It was after the unexpected heart attack and death of grandpa. I never met him, but his death left a huge void in grandma’s life, so she came to live with us soon after that. She smoked Kent cigarettes and she always used to tell me that she never inhaled. She really believed she wasn’t inhaling even when as she was saying it the smoke would pour out of her nose. I used to giggle at her about that one. Even a child knows when someone is inhaling a cigarette. She used to hold the cigarette between her forefinger and middle finger and often propped that same hand up near her face when she took little naps. The smoke would rise up into the front of her hair and turn it yellow.
Something grandma used to do every day was the section in the local newspaper with the scrambled words. She was very proud of her two year college education and was a whiz at grammar and spelling. She used to teach grammar school and she always corrected me if I spoke incorrectly. Every now and then I’d get to help her unscramble a word if she found herself particularly stumped, which wasn’t very often. I still think of her when I see that section in the paper. And when I unscramble the words from time to time she’s never far from my mind.
Another thing grandma liked to do was play cards and she even liked to gamble a bit. Every summer she got together with some ladies in the area and they’d play a game called Spite and Malice and bet with stacks of pennies. I always thought it cool to have a grandma who’d bend the law by gambling even if it was just for pennies. She was always available to play a game of cards with me. In fact, I don’t recall her ever being too busy to play with me.
I used to pull pranks on her. She'd be doing the nightly dinner dishes and I'd sneak in the kitchen and move something or take something. While I hid to watch her reaction, I could barely contain my giggles. For years, I had no idea she was playing along with me. She had me believing I was a successful trickster. One time I rolled the portable dishwasher out of the kitchen and she pretended she had no idea what happened to it.
Her favorite television shows were Red Skelton and any of the Lucy shows. She watched other shows but those were the ones I remember the most. She also liked the Red Fox show, which no one in the family understood.
People liked my grandma a lot. She had a real pioneer spirit having been born in Ouray, Colorado and raised out west in the Rocky Mountains. Being a fisherwoman and a sharp shooter set her apart from a lot of other grandmas. And she knew how to pan gold which a lot of people were fascinated by. She was rich with Colorado history, which made for good story telling. But like a lot of young kids I didn’t appreciate as much as I should have the wealth of information she possessed. I remember the high lights like her being the first woman to come into the mining camp in Taylor Park over Tin Cup pass on a horse drawn sleigh. What I wouldn’t give now to ask her more questions about those days.
She had a secret code for I love you. She'd squeeze my hand once for each word. So no matter where we were, she could reach over to me and gently squeeze my hand three times. I passed that down to my own children. I don't know if she made it up, or if was started by someone who loved her, but the code lives on.
I don’t know that she ever believed man really landed on the moon. Deep down I think she wondered if it weren’t somehow just a big hoax. She used to tell me the older she got the dumber she felt. She didn’t understand all the advances having to do with technology. (I have some understanding of what she meant by that as I grow older.) Having lived in the days of oil lamps, horse and buggies, outhouses, and telephones that routed through operators, by the end of the seventies life bore only a fossil-like resemblance to what she grew up knowing.
My grandma died the same month and year as Elvis Presley. I was twenty years old that year and her death hit me pretty hard. She was the first person in my life to die. I’d had great-aunts and uncles die, but no one I loved with all my heart the way I did my grandma. Every child should have the opportunity to know a grandparent the way I did. She shaped me in ways I’ll probably never fully know, but I’m certain I’m a better person because of her. And I know my life was so much richer for having her be such a big part of it.
I think it was Joe Campbell who said, "The world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves." I wonder if people can even hear themselves? The vast majority are on their computers with their TVs blaring in the background, and tweeting or texting at the same time; so busy trying to connect with others, yet never slowing down and quieting their own lives or minds enough to be in touch with themselves. They seek to fill through social media what they would do well to fill just in getting to know who they really are and what they truly want their lives to be.
Fear also plays a role in creating detours that take us away from ourselves. Fear can be cleverly disguised as pragmatic, sound, rational reasons why we can't or don't make changes that would help us live more soul feeding lives. Fear even keeps our lives overly busy and preoccupied so we don't respond to our discontent whether it's in our relationships, our jobs, or our health.
"I'm one part feather in the wind and one part gypsy ..."
I've been meditating for a few years and am still such a beginner. I meditate in different ways and it's rarely in the lotus position with hands on my knees and index finger and thumb forming a circle. I'm not a routine kind of person, so I don't have a set time. I don't eat to a clock and I don't meditate to one. I do occasionally time my meditations to track my progress, yet that's a bit of a misnomer, because progress sounds too clinical and sterile.
Being able to be in my head and take a journey through thoughts feels like a special gift. Sometimes I visualize a particular setting. I won't go into details because it's oddly personal, but sometimes I'm in the nineteenth century. Clothes are drying outside on a breezy morning hanging from a clothesline and from there my thoughts explore the town, the people and whatever. Sometimes I'm down by the river along the forest's edge. Other times I'm in the here and now just reining in my thoughts toward stillness.
Sometimes meditation music plays on the computer. Other times it's silent. Still other times, it's just being still, being quiet, just being. I flow with whatever I happen to feel on a particular day, at a particular moment. I've tried a schedule. I've tried a format. It doesn't work for me. I'm not wired that way. I'm one part feather in the wind and one part gypsy. I've tried being something else like more anchored, more conventional, more normal or just plain more. But it's not me. I get root rot if I can't move around and if I'm living by a clock and calendar. But I digress.
Whatever method of meditation I choose on any given day isn't what's important and isn't the point. Mediating is. I need a certain amount of undisturbed time each day to feel the calm, the quiet, and my breath. It's part of keeping my balance.
There are parts of me that change and grow, and with age and time, I like more of what I see happening on the inside, which is what helps me accept what I see happening on the outside. Meditation has played a big part in this feeling.
A blog on ageing is soon to come!
[This is a re-post from September 9, 2009.]
This was the first time I've ever seen these pine grossbeaks in my yard. These birds look a bit tropical to me instead of something you'd see at 10,000 feet in this dry Colorado mountain climate.
You can still see the frost on the leaves. (20 degrees this morning!) I took this photo out my kitchen window as I was reheating my coffee. I'd just finished the entry below about trophy hunters. What a nice way to wash away those thoughts. I had four birds land in this willow. Two red males and two mustard colored females. I just watched as they ate at the leaves and looked for bugs. I didn't immediately grab my camera. The branches bowed and swayed from their weight.
Finally, I snapped a few pictures. A photo like this doesn't begin to capture the essence of seeing these wild birds fly into my yard to feast on the natural folage. I don't expect it will even make anyone pause to really look at it. In a world so fast paced, with the ability for grand special effects, the joy of these very simple little things are seldom appreciated. (I've been there.)
It's hard to even express how something so small is so delightful. People see birds everyday. Why or how could that be special? But it was. It is. It's okay that others might not get it. Experiencing it is enough. Just thought I'd try and share -- maybe plant a seed. Maybe remind you to go a little slower sometimes. Maybe then you'll begin to notice the smaller, simpler, joyful things in your own life and it'll add some good stuff the way it does to mine.
If you can sort out what's true about nutrition, the causes of obesity, the ins/outs of sugar addiction, fat consumption: is it good or bad, what types of grain are good to eat, if any, then please weigh in. I find going to the grocery store a purely painful process, as much for my thin pocketbook, as for what's healthy and what's not. I find it reprehensible that GMO foods aren't labeled. I want to avoid not only GMO, but companies campaigning against labeling. How can this even be an issue?!
Every product in our country comes with overdoses of labeling and yet we have to fight to know what's in the food we're buying? So crazy. It's a sick commentary on our capitalist society. And if you think it's not about money -- all about money -- then you must not be paying attention. Other labels try to deceive the consumer with obscure scientific words, or claims of being natural when they aren't, so I don't know who or what to believe.
I've cut out most all breads, most all of the time, but I forget all the reasons why. I know I started thinking about bread differently when I read about human hair as an ingredient that came under the name L-cysteine. Google it if you don't believe me.
"Traditionally L-Cysteine is produced from feathers, pig bristles and sometimes even human hair. These days L-Cysteine can also be produced synthetically but apparently human hair remains one of the richest sources of this amino acid – it makes up about 14% of your hair - and there is a small industry in China making the additive from hair clippings."
Which oils are good/bad? Eat butter or margarine or neither? Is the new thing now to eat more fat after being told to eat low fat? I hear reduced fat is horrible, but is it? What are all the names of sugar I'm supposed to remember so I don't buy something loaded with it? Thankfully, I'm a vegetarian so I don't have to worry about buying toxic tuna or hormone ridden meats shot full of antibiotics. I also gave up milk this last year so I don't worry about the controversy of the ill effects of from that.
Some schools of thought recommend cutting out most fruit because of the sugar. How much fruit is healthy? The debate rages on. Who am I to believe?
All I know right now is to eat many different organic vegetables. I've cut way down on my fruit consumption. (I love fruit though.)I don't have to know anything about meat since I don't eat it. I have two dairy products to finish cutting out of my diet and I eat little of either one right now. I don't have an issue with eating eggs from a local farmer down the road where I can see how the chickens are treated. I'm sure there is a school of thought that says I shouldn't eat them. People ask where I get my protein from. Aside from all kinds of nuts, green veggies have a good amount of protein, so do beans. (8 vegetables that are the highest in protein.)
Off and on I work to stay away from sugar. Right now, I'm in the stay-away-from-it phase. In fact, this whole post began all about sugar addiction. I just know that the less I eat sugar, the less I crave it. I've also read many articles about the negative affects of it. But if I could feel good about eating it, I'd eat some every single day. Clearly, it IS addictive.
Are you addicted to sugar? Dr. Mark Hyman wrote an article in the Huffington Post that you can read called 5 Clues You're Addicted to Sugar. Click to READ.
THE MYTH according to Robert H. Lustig, M.D.:
"If you eat it, you better burn it or you'll store it."
The consensus among the major health organizations (USDA, AHA, AND, ADA) is that we should aim for less than 1500 mg of sodium per day, and definitely not more than 2300 mg. (source) Dr. Lustig says the reason Coke has so much sugar in it is to mask the amount of salt in Coke designed to keep you thirsty. Every 8 oz of Coke has 19 mg. of sodium.
Dr. Lustig is challenged here by Alan Aragon. Aragon opines what he believes is true about Lustig's presentation and what he argues is not factual. Personally, I don't know which person to believe. For every article anyone can supply me about any food item, I can easily come up with contradictory information to bolster the opposing argument. I simply don't know what to believe.
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
The tell-tale signs that the end is near are evident in the plump, curling petals, but the beauty and signs of a life well lived is equally apparent. So while it was a beautiful rose it is also still a beautiful rose. Just as there is beauty in youth, there is also beauty in age. (This is a re-post from May 26, 2011)
Old is when regrets take the place of dreams.
The roses below were fresh birthday flowers less than two weeks ago. Maybe it's the artist in me that appreciates them as they've aged. I love their texture, the shapes, and all the earth tone colors. Far from looking like the roses we traditionally cherish, I still see so much beauty in them.
How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?
It is possible at any age to discover a
lifelong desire you never knew you had.
Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their
beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their hearts.
I complain that the years fly past, but then I look in
a mirror and see that very few of them actually got past.
We've put more effort into helping folks
reach old age than into helping them enjoy it.
~Frank A. Clark
I am old enough to see how little I have done in so
much time, and how much I have to do in so little.
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover
that your high school class is running the country.
"The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't say much. "
~ Germain G. Glidden
If you think I missed a blog entry yesterday, here it is from my other website. I manage this site and www.gettingintouchwithnature.com where my photos are posted and I keep a daily 'photo blog' of my latest captures. Below is the first part of yesterday's blog. To see photos and read the rest of it click on the image below or click here.
Here's a photo I took on the Mt. Everest trek in Nepal of some marvelous yaks. You could click here or on the yaks to see more photos of yaks and Nepal in another article I wrote about these amazing animals.
21st Century Health Challenges for Honeybees
excerpts from an article by Donald Studinski*
"You hear repeatedly that the decline of the honeybee population is the result of a complex set of factors. For example, in this report, our government tries to explain how the issue is just too difficult to understand." ~ Donald Studinski
Studinski goes on to say, "It’s clearly the case that many factors affect honeybee health. However, the emphasis placed on confusion is meant to distract you from the primary contributor: the massive use of poisons. These impact the nervous and immune systems of insects and render them more vulnerable to the remaining factors that can affect their health—all while making a fortune for the poison manufacturers." [source]
"....a fairly simple take away (from Studinski's article): We are rewarding chemical companies with tremendous wealth for covering our planet in poison, and the honeybees are warning us that something terribly wrong is taking place in our environment."
What are systematic poisons?
By their very nature, they are prophylactic. Don Studinski explains, "That means they’re used to prevent the pest problem in advance, rather than taking the IPM approach. I say this because in many cases it’s used as seed coating—not to treat a pest problem but to make sure the plant is poison to any pest before it even grows. Systemic poisons are also very long-lived. The aerobic half-life of imidacloprid is 997 days. That’s nearly three years before it metabolizes into half as much poison. And because the poison is water soluble, it travels well. Any contaminated soil will in turn contaminate the plants growing in that soil. This includes not just weeds, but also food crops." [source]
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
About Don Studinski
Don Studinski, dba Honeybee Keep, is a permaculture enthusiast and member of the board of directors at Living Systems Institute (LSI) where he applies permaculture philosophy to beekeeping. Honeybee Keep manages Colorado's first Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) apiaries: LSI in Golden and Cottonwood Farm in Boulder. As a beekeeping mentor, Don provides advice and counsel for students throughout the United States, teaches classes and performs public speaking events. He writes extensively about beekeeping on his own website and for a variety of others, including Bee Culture magazine, Peak Prosperity and Honeybee Haven.
I first posted this back in March of 2011 before marijuana was legalized in Colorado. With more interest now in hemp in general, I thought it deserved a repost.
by Betsy Seeton
Hemp may be one of the least understood or perhaps most misunderstood plants on the planet. That needs to be qualified by adding in the United States. Never has there been a plant been more demonized or idolized than hemp. Again, in the United States. It’s perhaps as politically charged a word as ‘healthcare’ or ‘war’ is in a presidential debate.
If I were to rate the challenge of hemp research, the way river rafters rate rapids on a scale of one to five, five being the most challenging, I'd have to say that navigating through the river of articles on hemp, trying to distinguish fact from fiction, has clearly been a five.
Just the mention of hemp probably conjures up for many of you, colors ranging from tan to beige and you see clumsy, thick, coarse cloth or rope, that is, of course, if you’re not thinking about the drugged out culture of the 60’s and envisioning a marijuana leaf stamped across the front of a hemp made t-shirt. Well, you’re in for a surprise. Hemp has a rich history and is a vast resource that quite arguably could contribute to creating a more sustainable environment around the globe. Some actually refer to it as a miracle crop.
Click image below to see more pictures of hemp being farmed.
Some basic facts first. Hemp is thought to be native to Central Asia and has been cultivated for over ten thousand years. Bits of hemp fabric, some of the oldest relics of human history, have been found in tombs dating back to around 8000 B.C..
Some fun trivia. Thomas Jefferson made some of his first drafts of the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper. Both Jefferson and George Washington grew hemp and Ben Franklin owned a hemp paper mill. Jefferson sold the dried stalk of hemp to the U.S. Navy as outfitting material. The Gutenberg bible and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderful were both printed on hemp paper. The first Levi jeans were made from hemp and Betsy Ross made the first American flag using hemp fibers.
Hemp was commercially grown in Colonial times in the U.S. up through the 1930’s. After the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 it continued growing throughout the United States with increasing governmental regulation making it more and more expensive. During WWII, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Agriculture promoted the “Hemp for Victory” campaign through a black and white film encouraging the U.S. to grow hemp following the Japanese cutting off the supply of Manila hemp. The Federal government even subsidized industrial hemp for farmers who grew more than a million acres. Illinois was the largest supplier at that time.
Industrial hemp is a distinct variety of the plant species cannabis sativa L, otherwise known as marijuana. Because of hemp’s importance in the fabric made for sails during Colonial times, the word "canvass" is rooted in "cannabis". Industrial hemp usually contains less than .03% of the drug inducing agent, THC. Marijuana, on the other hand strives for 3% - 5% and higher. Most agree that you’d get sick before you got high trying to smoke industrial hemp.
The growing conditions of each are vastly different. Marijuana needs space, while industrial hemp thrives only in very densely planted populations. They also differ in what gets harvested and when. Nonetheless, the United States is the only industrialized nation to classify industrial hemp as a controlled substance. Anyone in the United States wanting to grow industrial hemp must register with the DEA as a Schedule I manufacturer. The permitting process and security precautions mandated for growing the plant are extensive and the end result is very expensive. Colorado introduced legislation in 1995 to allow farmers to grow industrial hemp, but it failed to pass. Nine of sixteen other states passed legislation calling for study, research or production of industrial hemp. It passed in Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Virginia.
Approximately thirty one countries around the world distinguish industrial hemp from marijuana; Canada, France and China, being the largest suppliers. However, legal constraints have prevented industrial hemp from being grown on a large scale in most developed nations.
As a fiber for fabric, hemp is longer, stronger, more absorbent and warmer than cotton. It also is highly absorbent to dyes and aids in blocking harmful UV rays. Hemp is used to make high quality linen and when blended with other fabrics, it creates a stronger, longer lasting product that retains softness. Hemp fibers are mildew and microbe resistant, which in addition to clothing, make them great for the production of sails, tarps, awnings and carpets.
As a fashion designer who’s considering hemp in your green clothing line, it’s always good to know as much as you can about the plant behind the product. Hemp can grow well without pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Consider that cotton uses up to 50% of the pesticides sprayed in the world. Hemp uses much less water to grow than cotton and the end product is more biodegradable.
The bark of the hemp stalk contains the bast fibers, which are among the planet’s longest, natural soft fibers and very rich in cellulose. Unlike cotton, hemp grows in many climate zones and grows rapidly. Germination to maturity takes 90-120 days. Average height at harvesting time is two to four meters. 150 plants can grow per square meter. This density increases fiber production and helps choke out weed growth, which is one reason pesticides aren’t needed.
Hemp produces more pulp per acre than timber and because it uses fewer chemicals in pulp processing than timber, hemp results in less wastewater contamination. The long fibers in hemp mean it can be recycled more times than wood-based paper. It can also be bleached using gentle hydrogen peroxide versus chlorine based compounds and dioxins that are both quite toxic.
The biocarbons in hemp can be processed into a wide range of biomass energy sources.
Hemp is used to make a huge variety of products. One article claimed as many as 25,000 but I don’t have time to count. Suffice to say there are dozens of applications for industrial hemp. It’s used in such things as margarine, salad oil, soap, cosmetics, lip balm, lotions, sunscreen, lubricating oils, and food supplements. The oil from the hemp seed is used in making inks, fuel, solvents, paint, and varnish. It’s used to make paper, sails, tarps, pet food, insulation, and building materials like fiberboard. Hemp hurds are used to manufacture cellophane, plastic, cement blocks and even used as in a substitute for fiberglass.
Hemp is touted for its exceptional vegetable protein and considered by some to be more digestible and longer lasting than soybeans. Supposedly, unlike soy, hemp doesn’t have to be cooked or fermented to be digestible.
From many angles and especially as a fiber for making great fashions, I give industrial hemp a green light for its versatile features, including its soft touch and its light carbon footprint .
1. I did not know this about a box of tin foil.
2. Kangaroos are only the size of a jelly bean when born and are very under-developed. They climb into the pouch, attach to a teat and finish their development in the pouch rather than the uterus.
3. I learned the difference between a vole and a mole.
4. 15 COOL THINGS ABOUT COFFEE
5. This is more in the category of 'found interesting' but I put here nonetheless. Click on the image below to read the 13 activities. The first part of the page has a short blog about When It's Hard To Be Kind, which is also worth a read.
6. I did not know Amazon has a video on demand service similar to Netflix. I'm trying it out free for the month (I don't own a TV) and have discovered a new show I'd never even heard of called JUSTIFIED.
7. Alfred Bernhard Nobel (of the nobel peace prize) was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer. He was the inventor of dynamite in 1866. Here's a link about Alfred Nobel for young children.
"Dynamite and detonating caps were much in demand in the construction industry. Because of this, Alfred was able to put up factories in 90 different places. He lived in Paris but often traveled to his factories in more than 20 countries. He was once described as "Europe's richest vagabond." He worked intensively in Stockholm (Sweden), Hamburg (Germany), Ardeer (Scotland), Paris and Sevran (France), Karlskoga (Sweden) and San Remo (Italy). He also experimented in making synthetic rubber and leather and artificial silk. By the time of his death in 1896 he had 355 patents." Source
8. In 1905 Bertha Von Suttner was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
9. I'd like to read this book. Leo Tolstoy compared the effect Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had on the abolition of slavery to the effect "Lay Down Your Arms" was having towards the abolition of war. "This popular novel introduced thousands of readers of her time to the arguments of pacifism. Written in an autobiographic style this book tells the story of a woman raised in a military family who becomes opposed to war and sets out to document rational arguments against the patriotic reasons nations put forward to justify their wars. Set in the second half of the 19th century, the story begins when she is a young woman in Austria who falls in love with a young officer in the army." Source
10. The will set up to establish the Nobel Peace Prize was not so peacefully accepted by relatives and was contested for 4 years.
"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel
The quote by Mark Twain was something similar to what my mother taught me. It always stuck with me. The following are my thoughts on anger. They've served me well.
When someone treats us rudely or incorrectly judges us, we feel disrespected. Lack of respect makes us feel unappreciated. Lack of appreciation boils down to feeling undervalued. Peel one more layer back and what we have is feeling misunderstood. No one likes that. Being misunderstood is wholly contrary to the core of being human. Even if we don’t agree with one another, we want to feel understood and we want to understand.
The desire and need to communicate are both inherent in our nature. And at the center of successful communication is establishing mutual understanding. So when something happens or something is said that dismantles, distorts, or disrupts “mutual understanding” the result is pain, often first experienced as anger.
Anger may be the mind’s defense mechanism to stave off impending pain the way adrenaline will strengthen the body and put it on high alert preparing for a fight or flight response. A healthy mind and body will let go of the anger and the adrenaline will subside in order to resume functioning in normal range versus a sustained ‘heightened ability’ range.
Anger is fed when emotions are ignored and by avoiding rational thought. Anger actually shuts down some of our brain’s ability to correctly process information, so rational thought isn’t an option in the heat of anger.
"Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry
In a healthy person, anger is typically short lived. But some people intentionally buffer themselves from pain by focusing on their anger. (You might experience passive aggressive behavior versus outright anger, but anger is central to what they feel.) Others keep the pain continually at bay through a relentlessly tight grip on anger. This persistent anger is actually unprocessed pain. This is key. It’s key to understanding angry people and it’s the key point I want to make. So let me repeat that. “Persistent anger is actually unprocessed pain.”
I encountered an angry person the day I wrote this article. I know him well. He is someone who has a lifetime of unprocessed pain. He has been a broken soul since childhood. When he unleashed his anger on me this morning, I did not feel a need to reciprocate. I immediately recognized that I was being misunderstood and misjudged, and knew that his own brokenness was manifesting his anger. He has been an angry person most of his life, yet to the public eye, he has kept his anger often hidden. It correlated into being an unhappy person, but he also hid that through other emotional plays.
When he lashed out at me today, my reaction was to bypass anger and go straight to my pain. I was momentarily stunned as he sped off in his car. We’d been at a gas station. I was standing next to my parked car when he yelled at me. At one point, he actually puffed up physically and got nose to nose with me, poised to strike, like I’d seen him do when he wanted the other guy to know he was prepared to make his point with his fist. I didn’t flinch because he’d never raised a hand to me. I just knew he was over the top with anger.
"In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already
A witness to all this stood near my side as completely confused as I, knowing that I’d done nothing to provoke such a reaction and even tried to offer words in my defense but was also quickly shut down by his spewing wrath.
Amidst the proverbial dust left by his speeding tires, I began to tremble. Tears rushed like a flood, so quickly in fact, that they simply fell from my eyes without the normal roll down my cheeks. I’d collapsed into the driver’s seat, and sat engine off, eyes blurry trying to figure out what triggered his outburst and to make sense of what felt like a stopover in the Twilight Zone. A thousand and one things flew through my mind flashing like poorly edited movie trailers. I took a few deep breaths and exhaled with some loud guttural sighs and somewhere between the stream of consciousness and analysis, I found some composure and then came the strength. I never once felt anger. It never occurred to me to cuss him out. I never thought of vengeance. It was a crazy display of misplaced emotions. It doesn't excuse it... only half way explains it....
When I realized his anger was not my problem or I should say, I wasn’t going to let it become my problem, my pain subsided. Those thoughts aroused an inner strength and I stopped dissolving. I wasn’t going to let his dysfunction take me down. All this came in the first fifteen minutes following the explosive scene. I drove a couple of hours back to my home and even took a long route that I hadn’t taken in years and photographed some birds along the way and enjoyed the beautiful mountain scenery. Letting go can feel like a gift we give ourselves on days like this.
My cat is not much of a hunter or as I've heard it called a "mouser". She has caught little critters, but her thing is to play with them. She doesn't set out to kill and eat them. This morning, and this is a first, she brought me a baby vole. It was injured from a slight puncture wound on the left side of the cheek, but only dazed and scared.
I was on the phone with my daughter at the time. She knew why I was hanging up and she immediately emailed me and said she'd find out what the best thing to do would be. She grew up with a cat who used to drop all kinds of little animals in her bedroom that we tried to nurse back to health.
I love all animals and this little creature was so cute. I teach my dog not to attack other animals and he knows what I expect of him, though I've seen him chase moving wildlife when he thinks I'm not watching. But he knew to be gentle when I showed him the vole. That's the wording I use. BE GENTLE. I say that over and over. So he sniffed, but would not have dared open his mouth to hurt the tiny life. And my cat, Sweetie, didn't want to hurt the vole either. In fact, the vole crawled up under her tummy and cuddled beneath her tail for awhile. Pictured above is the vole on her head and my kitty just let the vole sit there!
My daughter called me with great contact information. She found a wildlife rehab person in my area who would have taken the vole if need be and would have treated the wounds. She also found a vet I could email photos of whatever animal was injured and I could get an identification plus medical care for free if needed. I was so impressed. She's incredible at problem solving! She's loved animals since she was a young child.
The advice my daughter had for me was to release the vole back into the bushes in a protected area from the elements so she/he could stay warm. For now, I put some clothes in a cardboard box and put her where she could crawl into a hole in a tree or dig into the ground. I think she might still be in a little shock and need some extra warmth before venturing out on her own. I hope she finds her way back home or to safety somewhere.
*Update: It's been a couple of hours and I checked on the vole. The box is empty, which is what I hoped. I will believe she is going to heal and get on with living.
Researchers at the University of Georgia and the National Geographic conducted a study ....
I grew up between the city and the mountains my whole life. My father hunted every year providing us with our yearly source of red meat with elk and venison. I was no fan of the overly cooked steaks. My mom and siblings and I had to help my father pack out the meat. He built a wood shack we called the meat house where he hung the animals to finish skinning them. He did all the processing and packaging himself. It was part of my father's contribution toward keeping food on the table for our family. We didn't have a lot of money. Even though I'm vegetarian, I understand hunting from the perspective of "needing" the food. I do NOT understand killing for sport and trophy. How does a rational, healthy minded person look at killing that gorgeous lion and pose for a "look at how powerful I am!" photo? What kind of twisted ego and heartless soul is that?
When I was a child, my parents and I would visit this rich oil family who had a summer cabin near us. They went on African Safaris (this was in the 60's) and I remember seeing pictures around their place with the Mrs. and her elephant gun sitting on the leg of a huge and beautiful (but quite dead) African elephant. I was horrified and confused as a child that someone would fly half way across the world to go to a continent (that I longed to visit) for the purpose of shooting one of the most gorgeous, emotional, intelligent animals on the planet for any reason, much less as a trophy and for some lousy photographs.
It's barbaric that trophy hunters feel what I can only guess is a sense of triumph and empowerment by killing and then capture their kill for posterity and ego showings by posing for photos with their dead victims. In the 21st Century man vs. beast?! Come on! Are there people out there who admire these killers? I won't even go into the whole stuffing and wall mounting the poor animal. That's a whole other level of creepy and aghast. These people must have such empty, egocentric souls. Okay. Enough. Now off to reheat my coffee and take a few slow, deep breaths.
*A repost blog from 2011
I've been working on several articles today, but didn't finish one. I'm researching about 'tribes' in relationship to business. I was also working on the history of animals as entertainment since the Roman period.
"He came out to San Diego to work on a
It was December and I was meandering around the docks in San Diego photographing boats and birds and whatever caught my eye. That's when I happened upon an elderly, homeless man. Something drew me to him. I can't really explain it; never quite experienced something quite like it before.
He was sitting on a cement half wall by the harbor. I sat next to him and drew out his story. He'd been in San Diego for 41 days and most of it was spent in the hospital following a stroke. He used his fingers to count the days. He had come from North Carolina where he'd worked in the timber industry, but after some timber contracts weren't renewed, he lost his job. He also had been a cook for many years. He'd been homeless for about 4 years and later in the conversation he made it clear that he was NOT an alcoholic nor a drinker at all and didn't use drugs.
He came out to San Diego to work on a fishing boat, but had a stroke instead. The job was filled when he got out of the hospital. He told me where he makes his bed at night and how he uses a tarp and blanket. He said he can deal with the cold, but it was the hunger that was really hard.
With his head hung low, he told me it was embarrassing to sit with a sign begging for money. He'd made 25 cents by the time I talked with him. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The other day he had about $20 accumulated and some skateboarders rode by and stole his cup.
People will occasionally give him food, but it often comes with strings. He explained that without teeth, eating was hard for him. Recently, some chips left his gums bloody, yet he said if he turns down what people offer him they chastise him. They snidely remark, "You must not be that hungry!" (Snidely is my word. It describes what he was trying to say.) He guessed they figure someone hungry should have no choice. Another story had him recently eating very spicy food (a gift) that made him sick because his stomach can't take it. He ate it because he felt obligated but decided he'd never do that again. He'd rather go hungry than eat something that made his stomach hurt worse than it already did.
Then he added that the other reason it was hard to eat was that after his stroke the doctors diagnosed him with prostate cancer. He didn't seem to understand the impact of his illness only that it answered why he was losing weight. Oddly, he wasn't upset. He was matter of fact like someone responding to a parking ticket. He wasn't getting treatment for it. He had no money. He just shrugged. He often said, "God will provide for me."
He proudly talked about being Cheyenne and how his grandmother was at the Sand Creek massacre. About living on the streets he said, "I don't make friends with the others," he said. "They stab me in the back and want money for booze."
People don't look him in the eyes and few ever talk to him, but he doesn't judge them for it. I normally don't carry cash, and seldom give homeless money anymore, but this guy was different.
I dug out a $5 bill and 4 one dollar bills. I knew that he would buy a meal with it - something he could eat and would like. It was money that would make a difference. It didn't have to be money that would be a solution -- just $ that would make a difference was enough. I'd never looked at it quite that way before. The whole experience showed me a side to the homeless I'd not understood or encountered before. I've met homeless who want to be homeless and actually enjoy the culture of living on the street. Others are running scams or are some kind of addict or mentally ill. This man, for whatever series of events in his life that led him there, was different. Maybe a lot of others are different too. Hmmm..
The interesting and uplifting thing was how he was dealing with everything. He had no bitterness. He was full of God and faith. His tone, even when mentioning the hardship and how people treated him badly, was not touched with resentment. There was forgiveness in his voice. Real forgiveness. He kept saying he was okay and it wasn't all bad. He wasn't out to hurt anyone. He wasn't angry or self absorbed. He was out there with his sign asking for money for food because he saw no other way and yet he was full of forgiveness about his situation and about the people around him who were not going to help. Even when I handed him the little bit of money, he looked me in the eyes and asked, "Don't you need that?" I replied, "Not as much as you do." Only then did he reach for it. His body visibly seemed to relax. I could see relief come over him because he knew he was going to eat that day. He had missed getting a meal the day before.
As I left him, he thanked me for talking to him. He was also grateful for the money. I was left having learned about a life in someone else's shoes - someone I could have easily walked past without ever knowing. I felt grateful for the lessons and the experience.
*This is a repost and the photo of the man is from my travels in Asia. I didn't want to take the man's photo and make him feel like an object. It didn't seem respectful, but for this story I wanted an image to go along with it and this one of the man from Laos fit perfectly.
Wow! Did you know that you can access all kinds of books online that are no longer under copyright protection?! I'll leave you to explore for yourself and will make this a short blog so I can spend my time reading and exploring what's out there! Let me know what you find and I'll share what I discover!
Internet Archive & OpenLibrary
The Internet Archive includes the full text of more than 2.5 million e-books, including works of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts, and academic books. This includes e-books supplied by the Library of Congress. Books can be read online or downloaded and read in a variety of formats, including Plain Text (.txt), PDF (.pdf), ePub (.epub), Mobipocket (.mobi), Kindle (.azw), DAISY, and DJVU (.djvu). E-books from the Internet Archive can also be found throughOpen Library , an Internet Archive initiative devoted to texts.
Google has partnered with more than 20,000 publishers and authors, and several major research libraries, to makes their publications discoverable through Google Books . While only limited text "snippets" can be viewed from books still protected by copyright, one can access the full text of many public domain books. Use the Advanced Search page to limit your search to full-text or public domain books. Books are available in PDF (.pdf) and ePub (.epub) formats.
You can't be a nearly six foot American woman traveling alone through Asia for five months and not come away without some stories to tell. Just try buying a pair of shoes in a size 10 anywhere in Asia. It can't be done. I was headed to Indonesia and badly needed a pair of sandals. On my layover in Bangkok, arriving from Kathmandu, I had an entire staff at a shoe store running around holding up every variety of goofy looking men's shoes for me to nod or shake my head at. I'm not joking. I had seven or eight clerks, all under five foot two, trying to find a pair of sandals large enough to fit me that weren't too god awful ugly. (Women's sizes rarely went past a size 7.) The staff actually clapped when I held up the winning pair of green and black Tevo like sandals.
When I was in Hanoi, I needed a second pair of jeans for my six day motorcycle trip through NE Vietnam. Women clothing sizes don't go past a 2 over there. So my quest for something that would fit landed me in a men's clothing store. The woman sales clerk, whose head didn't quite arrive mid way up my arm, only knew a couple of English words. One was "man" and the other "no-no". She lost her breath laughing at me while I tried on several pairs of men's jeans all the while shaking her hand from side to side saying, "No-no" trying to enlighten me by pointing out the jeans were for a man. I give her credit for containing her laughter to a mere giggle when it came time to ring me up. I was thrilled to find a pair that I could actually zip up and that went past my shin bone.
“Why struggle to open a door between us when the whole wall is an illusion?”
Most of my experience with thought painting began the year my daughter was put on life support many times over while waiting for a liver transplant. When faced with the thought of a child dying, it forces you to find ways to not go insane. Then there was the foreclosure on my beloved log home and a bout with cancer. Then there's the injustice and actions of dark hearts around me who have kept my daughter from being with her little girl and are keeping me from seeing or talking to my own granddaughter. Learning how to not live in darkness was vital to my survival. I had to learn how to control, or in essence how to paint a better world for myself with thoughts.
The average human brain has hundreds, if not thousands of thoughts per day. Sometimes single words will trigger a chain reaction of thought in the brain because of the way we have experienced life. If I got violently ill, for example, due to eating a poisonous mushroom, my reaction to just the word "mushroom" is going to be vastly different than a master chef who specializes in brewing mushroom sauces.
Of course, we know brains can be trained to respond differently, and be taught to think differently, but it takes vigilant practice and constant awareness to make this shift. If our thousands of thoughts per day are painted with conclusions of doom and hopelessness, then you can imagine the domino effect of negativity that happens.
Thoughts are so powerful; they define our sense of reality for each of us. (That concept is actually quite deep and will make a great future blog.) Our thoughts communicate with our cellular body every day and significantly affect it. In fact, stress is a major contributor to heart disease in the U.S. (Note the word: dis-ease)
I'm doing vasts amount of research, and this topic is part of the "new" that I want to explore as this new year begins.
“All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”
I want to share what I've been learning to do over the past couple of years, and something else I learned to do back in 1999. Both are serving me well. The first is training my brain to stop a negative thought from entering my brain. I'm reminded of a honey bee hive. There are designated gate keepers at the hive's entrance whose single goal is not to allow any foreign bee from entering the hive. These gate keepers guard the entrance to the hive like tough bouncers and they will fight to the death to stop an intruder.
I'm not nearly so dramatic or aggressive, but I am adamant when a negative thought creeps in (and thoughts can be so slippery) about shutting that voice down as soon as my awareness awakens. Sometimes it's a future thought filled with angst. Sometimes it's mulling over the past. I'm getting surprisingly good at shutting out unwanted thoughts and bringing my them back to the here and now.
If, for instance, as I'm typing this and my mind wanders off to how I'm going to pay some bill that is coming due, I will grab hold of the worrisome thought by the proverbial throat and tell myself that it's 9:30 at night and there's nothing I can do right now, so stop conjuring up emotions related to the problem.. If that thought wants to crawl into bed after I've closed my eyes, I shut it down again. Sometimes I even chant something like "good thoughts, good thoughts, good thoughts" over and over.
As you're reading this article I imagine your thoughts have wondered away several times. You might be thinking "this is nothing new" or a word you read triggered your own thoughts to trail off and then you come back. Try something right now. Take 5 minutes (go ahead and time yourself) and do nothing but sit with yourself (music on is fine) and just let your mind ponder and wander, and mentally keep track of the places it takes you. If you've never done this, it will be very interesting! How many judgments did your thoughts make? How many times did you go into the future? What color are your thoughts? Dark? Light? Start learning about your own brain and thought processes.
Practicing this day in and day out has made it more automatic, and fewer and fewer negative thoughts have formed. There's a time to face the music of course. And with that hypothetical bill I mentioned, the fact remains it does need to get paid, but the emotions and problem solving associated with taking care of it are best played out at the moment when I can actually do something about it. By not worrying before hand, I save myself all kinds of unnecessary stress and angst that would have colored me blue and depressed.
You've probably heard the old adage, "Don't buy yourself trouble." It's good advice. Life dishes out plenty quite freely, so avoid adding to it whenever possible. Start by being aware of what you are thinking when you don't even know you're thinking. If you're feeling off kilter, off balance, or low and bleak, trace your thoughts backward. How you feel is DIRECTLY related to what you're thinking. The thoughts could have been swirling around in your subconscious for hours and you aren't aware of it. Thoughts are the only reason you feel. Period. Discover what you're thinking if you want to feel different. And then begin thought painting. Paint the world you want. It's worked fore me and I've suffered from depression.
DEALING WITH DIFFICULT PEOPLE
There's been a very mean spirited person in my life who seems to feed on creating drama and pain for some of the people I love in my life. She redefines what it means to be controlling and manipulative and it has been very destructive to my loved ones and me. She must be a very tortured, unhappy soul to need to lie and feed on the misery she causes others.I suspect a lot of people have someone like her in their lives.
Dealing with this person takes immense letting go. She's not worth engaging. She can't be trusted. I believe karma will come her way one day. She has woven quite a deceptive and dishonorable life. One day maybe I'll have the choice to not have her in my life, but that day is not here yet. So I let go of her evil doing and her mean ways. Or I try to. I try to let go of how unjust she has been. I focus on maintaining good thoughts, healing thoughts and pray that the universe will do what is right.
I don't look too far ahead and I don't do a lot of "what if" thinking. I stay more in the moment and try to take each day as it comes without dwelling on a theoretical future. Starting a new day free of worry and dread gives me a fresh start and the needed energy to face the things in life that demand strength and positive thinking.
Understanding that the human race is strange and on many levels "not get-able" is helpful. Letting go is something I do every single day. Life is full of things that don't make sense; things that are unfair and unjust. I can't control much, but I can, to a large extent, control how I react and how I respond to what I can't change. I do a lot of letting go to achieve that.
All of these techniques and thought patterns help me restore balance. I find time for nature, for laughing, for being in the company of good-hearted people and staying in touch with those I love.
I'm expanding my "painting" to include some new techniques. Look for new blog posts coming up on that!
I've run out of time for going into the other thing I want to share that I started doing in 1999. I'll make that another blog. It's about how to tame your critic.
I would love to hear the ways you paint with thoughts and how you train your brain. If you're naturally a happy person, I'd love to hear about how you think. If you've struggled with depression or are a half empty thinker, tell me about your thought processes. What are your current struggles?
Do you ever find yourself googling from one article to the next, going from diverse topics like The Secrets of Life in Soil, to How To Use a Car Alternator to Generate Energy, or just for the day decide to memorize all the U.S. presidents? I do stuff like this all the time.
I get reading one article and I see a reference to something that peaks my interest, and I jump over to learn more about that and then that article ignites more curiosity - perhaps a person or place -- and I'm off again. Pretty soon I have 20 browsers open.
I've bookmarked some, cut and pasted interesting points from another, turned some articles into pdf's to have as a reference at another time where I file in my DOCs folder. If I could retain all that I read, it would be impressive, but I don't. Stuff goes in one ear and slowly seeps out the other. But I love learning new things and when I'm taking in new information it's a natural high. I guess you could say it's a hobby. So, yesterday I landed on Mt. Rushmore. If I ever knew the history, I'd forgotten it. Wow! What a bizarre and fascinating story!
(A side note: one of my research detours landed me on a story about: "The only All-Woman Supreme Court in Texas was appointed by Gov. Pat M. Neff in 1925 to hear the case W. T. Johnson et al. v. J. M. Darr et al." See here for the link to this interesting article!)
I learned that Mt. Rushmore is the world's largest sculpture. The video above is marvelous in explaining and visually demonstrating how the sculpture was constructed. I've always wondered how super sized images are made to such perfect scale. Now I know! It's all done with math. A smaller sculpture is made and then a point is established on the sculpture from which all other points are measured in degrees and percentages. Those measurements are applied, as in this case, to the granite hillside in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Workers were suspended by cables sometimes on wooden platforms and sometimes just with harnesses from where they used heavy jackhammers to chip away at the granite and go to exact depths based on the mathematical calculations. Inhaling the dust from the drilled granite caused early deaths for many workers. At one point, after 18 months of sculpting Thomas Jefferson, it turned out there wasn't enough granite to complete him. They had to blast away all their work to reach a new level of granite and start all over.
Construction for the project was started on October 4, 1927 and completed in stages. "George Washington's head was started first. Due to the economic instability of the United States caused by the Great Depression, it was completed in seven years, and dedicated to the public on Independence Day 1934. Thomas Jefferson was finished in 1936. On July 2, 1939, Roosevelt's head was dedicated and lastly was Lincoln's dedication on September 17, 1937." [Wikipedia]
Probably the most fascinating and unexpected description about the project was that of the sculpture who inspired Mt. Rushmore. He was described as a "fletching blowhard, an egonamiacal genius, hard headed, self absorbed, charmer who traveled in a self-generated whirlwind." The video I've posted has interviews with people who add more adjectives and stories about his sometimes insane tactics and outbursts. He died before the completion of his project and it was finished by his son, Lincoln.
TODAY IS THE FIRST BLANK PAGE OF A 365 PAGE BOOK.
WRITE A GOOD ONE: 2014
As the new year rolls in all around the world, people are often inspired to do or not do all kinds of new and different things. We make grand resolutions, set goals, vow to make this year THE year. If last year was unusually challenging, we are imbued with renewed hope. But all the good intentions and best enthusiasm quickly fade for most of us. Real change isn't easy to sustain. Real change is actually rare, especially when our inspiration was born because of a date on a calendar. Even so, we continue year after year to try. I'm no exception. The new year is always a demarcation line for me. Like an incantation I exclaim: "THIS YEAR I" . . . and then fill in the blank. with the various changes I hope for.
I'm going to try to track my efforts. I've tried and failed at this before, but I want to see how long I can last. It might only be a few days, a week or who knows. Each day I'll post at least one photo that I've taken and I'll write something, whether it's just posting a favorite quote, a new word, or describing a night time dream, or talking about something new that I learned.
So this is my page one, 2014. New Year's Day is here. In looks and feel it isn't any different than yesterday. I woke early -- before 7 a.m. -- and as the sun debuted it was once again muted behind a dull, gray sky. The gray has been suffocating over the month of December. It physically makes me hunch my shoulders as if to shield myself from the dreariness.
Last night's dreams had me lugging around sacks of stuff, backpacks of stuff and camping out with a friend. There were two commercial camping areas. One was in a parking lot where campers were elbow to elbow beneath carports. The other spot was near the parking lot, but surrounded by trees. It had more of a forest like feeling, but campers were everywhere. I only like camping in true wilderness with no one in sight, so I was dreading the night. But I was down to my last few dollars and had no idea where I was going to get more money.
Another friend was at a strangely designed motel staying in room 219. At one point I went to see my friend, I think to drop off some of the stuff I was hauling around, but 219 turned out to the wrong room. People were everywhere, even in the hallways. I had a large box filled with chewing gum to give my motel friend, but I never did find her. The stuff I was hauling with my camping partner seemed to grow. We had to make extra trips to get everything. I was frustrated and remember thinking how I needed to downsize more and reduce what was feeling like so much clutter and unnecessary stuff since I - or we - were having to carry it. I groggily woke up after that . . .
I got my dogs fed and made coffee. True to my new changes I did not browse through Facebook. I glanced to see if my daughter posted new pics of their new rental house or messaged me, and then closed the page. I found some meditation music online and just settled in for a type of meditation that I call 'practicing presence'. It's where I focus on all my senses. I hone in on what I hear, what I feel, the tenseness in my muscles, the feel of the coffee cup in my hands, anything to do with my senses. The top of my cup was cooler than the bottom. It was one of my smooth cups. The electric heater coils made small clicking sounds. The refrigerator's motor sounded like a distant engine. I use this time to simply BE and to begin training myself to be aware of my surroundings, to live in the moment, instead of letting time pass by in auto pilot. I spent 30 minutes in practice.
It's now 8:35 a.m. and the solid gray overhead is starting to break up into clouds and blue sky. My whole day is ahead of me and I'll have to figure out what other new changes I'm going to initiate today. Maybe I'll tell about that in Page Two when I check in tomorrow. Or maybe not. . . .
I'm an artist, writer, photographer, private investigator and an activist in small ways.
"Turning indifference into making a difference."
A labor of love website devoted to animal and human rights, and better living. A place to be inspired ...
My LADYBUG book is filled with beautiful images & inspiring quotes. Click here for more info.
I visited the Tiger Temple in Thailand & later found out it is under investigation for tiger trafficking and animal abuse. Read full story. In 2015 it was raided. More than 100 tigers and protected bird species in Wat Pa Luang Ta Bua, popularly known as the Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi province were impounded by authorities following complaints that the temple was alleged to engage in illegal wildlife trading.
"The moment one gives close attention to anything,
even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious,
awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."
~ Henry Miller
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS helps people worldwide where the need is greatest, delivering emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from healthcare.
Read about life in the woods with Chippy & the crew...