LAVENDER HEALS BODY AND SOUL, THEY SAY

Very validating to have old friends respond to my previous post, and to know that the windmills are still turning, even if not very often. 

We've stopped trying to get everything on this house done here overnight, and have started to spend some time enjoying ourselves.  Last weekend both of Gail's sons and their families came from Denver for a visit.  It was exhausting, but delightful, to have those four little urchins around the house.  I hope to get some pictures into this entry later. 

Then, today - a gorgeous perfect day, washed by last night's furious rain, cool but sunny, blue skies with heaps of white clouds around the edges, the mountains clear and crisp in the distance -  we went out to The Village of Los Ranchos for the Lavender Festival.  We spend most of the day out there, going from venue to venue on the provided shuttle.  Arts and crafts (Gail bought me a beautiful silver bead as an early birthday present), plants galore, great food, lavender lavender lavender.  Lavender soap, cookies, lemonade, sangria, cookbooks, lotion, essential oil, ad infinitum. At Los Poblanos Ranch we were able to cut our own bunch of lavandula grosso and bring it home.  I would have loved to cut lavender all day, it was so heavenly out there among the plants - the smells, the bees and butterflies. Los Poblanos is a place that merits a post all its own, and maybe someday I'll do one.  Suffice it for now to say that I think it may just possibly be heaven. Having so much fun today has worn me slap out, and I think a tall glass of iced tea and a long nap are what comes next here.

(And, Paulette, I just want you to know there was a group of Red Hat ladies at the festival, often in the same place at the same time as we were - and they were having an absolutely illegal amount of fun!  No wonder you are into this!)

A VOICE FROM OUTER SPACE

At least that's how I feel.  Lost in space perhaps.  A friend just emailed me that this journal was gone, no longer available.  And I found that broke my heart... so I came to see if it was true.  Is it?  Is there anyone anywhere who can still access it?  Besides me?

Re the previous entry about putting my books on halfbooks.com, it happened and then it was over.  I only sold five or six books that way, then we had a book sale, as part of the six yard sales we had before moving.  The books that didn't sell that way were donated to the Lewes Library, and they were very happy to have them.   So, that felt good.

We've made the move, the hellacious drive across the country in two vehicles, me driving a twenty-six foot Penske truck, Gail in the Toyota Matrix with all three animals.  I'm just glad we didn't decide to move to California!  New Mexico was quite far enough.  Maybe a little too far.  The last day's driving was done on sheer willpower.  We've been here almost three weeks now, unpacking, looking at replacement furniture for that which we sold pre leaving Delaware, having work done on the house in order to make it our house, just trying to adjust to such a new altitude and climate.

To add Scylla to Charibdis, yesterday I had the first serious car accident of my long life.  A woman ran her stop sign and broadsided me on my side of the car, the driver's side.  I was fortunate to emerge with only shock, cracked ribs and chest contusions, as well as wildly elevated blood pressure and fury.  But it adds another layer of crap to deal with, insurance and car rental, collision people dragging the car away - and in all probability, looking for and buying a new car.  The poor little Matrix looks like it's totalled to me, thought we'll have to wait for the official opinion.

I don't have the time for much researched posting on The Blue Voice right now, so perhaps I'll be back here, just writing from my life, for a while.  If anyone reads, that's good.  If not, it's still an outlet. 

MARIGOLDS GOES COMMERCIAL! SORT OF.

In the extremely unlikely event that anyone out there is still reading this journal, I salute thee.  And want to let any journal friends (former journal friends?) know that we are in the throes of sorting and reaming and packing out this big old Delaware farmhouse, in preparation for moving to a slightly-less-old adobe house in the East Valley, in Albuquerque, NM.  In order not to have the 79 boxes of books we moved here from Massachusetts eight years ago, I am putting some that we can bear to part with on eBay, for sale.  As AOL has already turned Journals into advertising space, I thought I'd just play right along.  If you'd like to see what we have for sale, come visit my "shop" on eBay:  Maisie743. 

Selling books is really hard for me, and selling them to friends would make it all easier.  I will be listing more as we go through them; it's an ongoing process, so check back in from time to time.

 

BEAUTY IS NOT OPTIONAL

Hello Journal, hello any readers who still might meander by this abandoned mine of a journal.  I sent a link to this post of mine on The Blue Voice, and she loved it so much I thought I'd put it here in the hopes others might see it.  I've been posting heavily over there on the issue of the Refuge and the budget bills in both House and Senate.  The House's dropping drilling in the Refuge was a big step, but the battle is far from over.  It's still in the Senate bill, and once the House gets a bill together in some form, there will have to be a reconciliation between the two.  Keep up the pressure on your members of Congress, let's defeat this proposal entirely.  And I thank you.

Post from The Blue Voice

Beauty is Not Optional
“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with clasped hands that we might act with restraint, leaving room for the life that is destined to come.”
Terry Tempest Williams

This is a photo from a spectacular photgraphic collection on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by Subhankar Banerjee. Please look at these photos; send them to your friends. Send them to your members of Congress. They are sublimely beautiful glimpses of the place that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska (an oil drilling enthusiast) calls empty and barren. Mountains, tundra, caribou herds, snow geese, lakes, autumn color, delicate spring flowers in the snow, native people and their age-old ways of life.
This beauty speaks for itself. Banerjee has brought things I will most likely never see close enough to deeply touch my soul. We cannot let this place be ruined. No amount of oil is worth this. The areas of oil extraction on the North Slope have had some 500 oil spills since that area was opened. Let's leave this one untouched.

Start here, World Without Borders, to read about Banerjee, then click on the photograph to go to the ANWR page. Many resources to access there, or if you are in a hurry, you can go directly to the photos here, Arctic Refuge Series.
"The Arctic Refuge belongs not to the multinational corporations and their minions in public office but in public trust for our inheritors; indeed, for all mankind around the world." --Peter Matthiessen, from "In the Great Country," in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land

ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER

Because I want this to get the widest possible reading, I'm cross-posting this from The Blue Voice to this journal.  After I'd written the piece I discovered another site, The Coming Influenza Pandemic, a blog devoted entirely to news and information on this subject.

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WHAT THE HECK IS A PANDEMIC?

Probably everyone else knew this, but I'm just finding out that this has been "Pandemic Flu Awareness Week" in the blogosphere - Oct. 3 to 9, so I'm not quite too late. This is probably the reason for all the recent news coverage on the avian flu. I've certainly become aware, thanks to the daily headlines - "pandemic" is a pretty scary word. So, I had decided I needed to get down to some serious research on the subject. And just about the first thing I found had everything I needed. Everything we all need.

The site is the Flu Wiki. And your first question may be: What the heck is a "wiki?" From the site, their answer:

A Wiki is a form of collaborative web page that allows anyone (including you) to edit any page on the site. Wikis offer collaborative problem-solving, and allow diverse, decentralized participation. The open nature of the wiki format has shown itself able to develop surprisingly effective and sophisticated products, such as the Wikipedia. Whether it will work to fashion new solutions to a complex public health problem remains to be seen. This is in the nature of a grand experiment. We hope you will join us in it.

Please check this out. All I have read indicates that we are as unready for an epidemic of this flu (or, okay, a pandemic) as we were for a hurricane like Katrina. This wiki is full of answers to our questions, scientific information, things you can do.

The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies. Our goal is to be:

• a reliable source of information, as neutral as possible,
• about important facts useful for a public health approach to pandemic influenza
• a venue for anticipating the vast range of problems that may arise if a pandemic does occur
• a venue for thinking about implementable solutions to foreseeable problems.

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BACK TO THE FRIENDLY POSSE AT AOL

And now it is September, and glorious halcyon weather, with blue skies and warm breezes all day, cool nights that are prefect for sleeping.  I'm finishing up my third week back at work, teaching every day, all my classes full to the brim.  We're having a surge in our ESOL student numbers, mostly due to Korean families coming in increasing numbers.  They are at once a difficult and an easy group to teach - very willing and anxious to learn (easy), already very educated (easy) but shy and unwilling to open their mouths (difficult), trained in their country not to ask questions or "bother" a teacher (for me ultra-difficult, I thrive on questions - it's how I know they're thinking, learning), afraid to make mistakes (again, very difficult). 

But these are the loveliest of people.  Before South Koreans started coming to Delaware in large numbers, as they are now, I had no aquaintence with this nationality.  Now I am in love with every one of them.  Darling people with big hearts, willing to help and share, devoted to family and to higher education for their children, hard-working, and amazingly loving.  They don't stay in this area long, is the only problem.  After their time of indentured servitude to the chicken processing plants is over, they move on to Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, large urban areas with Korean communities and good jobs.  As soon as I get to know a student, or a whole student family and become really close to them - they move on.  My heart keeps getting broken. 

The past two weeks have been full of so much sorrow and anguish about the effects of the hurricane on the Gulf Coast.  It has been a time of pain for everyone, I know.  If you knew and loved the city of NOLA, you surely mourn for its devastation.  My sister in Dallas is helping with the refugees who have gone to that city, filling her car with bottled water and Pampers to take to Reunion Arena.  This is a crisis that will not be quickly finished or forgotten.  Those who have been displaced may never be able to go home, or at least not for several years.  I've written at The Blue Voice about my thoughts on this, you can read some of them here:  Of Refugees, Pampers and Beer.   I've also been writing on the connection between this violent hurricane and unnatural causes, namely climate change as a result of our pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, this is one of those pieces, The Semi-Random Nature of Weather.

My heart is tired of contumely, why don't we have an adminstration that can bravely and manfully accept and acknowledge their faults and failings and pledge to make things better - instead of this bunch of whiny beaureaucrats (that can't possibly be how you spell that, can it?  oh well, I'll check later.)  who can only duck and cover? 

So, I've been missing my AOL posse pretty badly, and am determined to spend more time here where it feels warmer and safer than out there in the big blog world.  I need a little down time from all the hollering and yelling.  I love The Blue Voice, love my fellow bloggers, and most of the commenters.  Not all of them, however, that's for sure.  I've learned to simply ignore the raving right wingnut voices when they make their wacko comments and be grateful for the thoughtful comment posts of many others.  I do miss the friendly spirit here, and the way I can just ramble on about nothing or anything.  As in this post.  And more to come.  Hugs and kisses to all. 

PLEASE DO COME BACK!

Here we already are in August, the month of crape myrtles in flamboyant pink/fuschia/deepred bloom, cicada music rising and falling in the heat, the Perseid meteor showers, family company and birthdays.  It took the summer so long to get here, it's hard to believe it's almost over.  Teaching summer classes made it all go by in a haze of lesson planning, paper reading, lots of iced coffee and not much fun.

I seem to have all but abandoned this journal, as well as my other AOL journals.  Again, with teaching two summer intensives I only had time to blog at The Blue Voice.  I hadn't thought it would be like this, that I'd have to make such a hard choice.  Being part of a group presses my Responsibility button, and I have felt the need to keep my end up.  I thought that readers who cared about the environment would come and read my posts at the Voice, but with only a couple of exceptions, that does not seem to have happened.  If you are reading this, but not coming to TBV and reading my posts, I'd love to have you explain why - what is keeping you away?  We have a new format, the posts are no longer strung out to their full size on the front page - you don't have to plow through the entire length of posts you may not care to read (though of course I would hope you'd want to read them all!) to find one you are interested in.

Anyway, there are several series I have done there that I want to link to, make it easy for AOL readers to just come read those entries - because they are things that I think are important.  I will begin with the two Exxon entries, fervently hoping that I have not completely lost those readers who used to come here for environmental news.

Exxpose Exxon, Exxpose Them!

A Tiger in Your Think Tank