I just returned home from a much needed week long break we took to see my friends and family in NY for a friend’s wedding. It was awesome. There truly is nothing like hanging out with old friends and in NY, I have many that I keep in touch with. As much as I love living in CO, it always makes me so sad to leave everyone at the end of my trip. Each day I woke up and I didn’t care about what was going on in the world and instead I saw many different people and we just laughed so much, ate great ethnic (vegan) food, played with all of the kids (my son just loved that) and just got to hang out and be me. My son got to see and understand more about his mama on this trip now that he’s a bit older and he got to play with so many cousins and friend’s children and spent quality time with my aunt who babysat him while we were at the wedding.
One of my friends who was the maid of honor gave a beautiful toast and at one point said, look around the room, see how many people (the bride) is still close with for more than 25 years. (I have been friends with the bride for 28 years already). She said this is because of the kind of character she has and the quality person that she is. I agree. The old, enduring relationships are with the kind of people that are there for you, know all about you and how you have evolved as a person over time and love you regardless of it all. This is such a rare and beautiful thing because as it is with any relationship, it takes some work and effort to maintain.
Our last day there we drove into NYC and took my son to see the new dinosaur exhibit at the natural history museum, went to Central Park then met my uncle for dinner at a restaurant I’ve been dying to go to – Pure Food and Wine. It is a gourmet raw vegan restaurant and the food was amazing – we all liked it and I have new ideas of things to try to re-create here at home. The highlight of the whole meal had to be the dessert – 3 different raw vegan ice creams. Oh.My.God. They do have a $2,000 ice cream machine in the kitchen which makes it come out like gelato. One was an ice cream cone with chocolate ice cream dipped in a hardened shell of raw chocolate, the other was a pistachio ice cream sandwich dipped in the same raw chocolate shell and the third one we tried was a chai tea ice cream pop covered in the raw chocolate shell. All so good and the ice cream sandwich tasted like marzipan which is one of my favorite desserts so I had to ask what the ingredients were and the waiter told me that it was really the Italian almond flour in the cookie part that gave it that flavor. I am so trying this at home soon! My son, Mr. Picky ate a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dinner. I figured at least it’s all healthy ingredients since he wouldn’t eat anything else on the menu. He loved it and loved the other ice creams for dessert, too. Now I need to get a good ice cream maker since I only have the REI roll it on the floor kind of ice cream maker you use for camping. Not the same.
The other great thing for me about being in NY is that it’s a very liberal state and that makes me feel right at home. CO is a “purple” state so there is more opportunity to encounter others with a much more conservative viewpoint on every single issue out there – even ones like my current congresswoman voted for that hinder support for low income children in my own town which makes me so sad for them and disgusted by her (she’s done many other actions I don’t like, either). Good thing she’s up for re-election and hopefully she won’t be back to do more damage.
On our plane ride home, there was a current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine left behind so I was psyched to read it since I don’t normally read that mag and of course, there is a big political article in it (many, many details) about “The Real John McCain.” I’ve read a lot about both candidates over the past few months and just like I pick my friends, I want to choose my candidate on the content of their character and their integrity. This article goes into detail with facts from his biography, interviews he’s given to the press over the years as well as interviews the journalist did with his fellow POW’s and other military personnel – even info about the Reagan’s viewpoint on his actions which was surprising to me. I highly recommend you check out this article as it’s the best one I’ve read about him, bar none: http://www.rollingstone.com
I really hope we can rebuild our country and focus again on the people of this country and taking care of us all so we can become a strong nation again. We are looking and acting pretty wounded right now out in the world especially because of what’s happened to our economy. We who live here are lucky to live here, it is a great nation and I am fully aware of that from having lived abroad in other countries.
I am hoping we all will elect the president that understands that and wants to help rebuild us as strong people first. I want my son to have opportunities for good health care and education that won’t cost us an arm and a leg to provide it for him and better laws to get rid of putting special interest groups first over what is safe for him (and us) to ingest and breathe in. If we had that, we wouldn’t have to go look up in the Skin Deep website about products we use on our bodies to see if the unregulated chemicals in the products we buy are safe for us or not or have a need for the Safe Toys Act or the noxious toxins that are allowed to be put into our air and dumped into our water supply, or injected into our food supply – even through the factory farm animals most people eat everyday, etc. We need an overhaul of so many systems to help us become a strong and healthy nation and the tides are finally turning where enough people are aware of and care about these issues now.
As Suze Orman always says, “People first, then money, then things.” I really hope we get the opportunity to finally put all Americans first instead of continuously catering to the greed of the corporations and the wealthiest 1% of Americans. If we don’t focus on the people, I think we will see lots more devastation and death with increasing global warming catastrophies doing a number on this planet as well as a bankrupt financial system and extreme amounts of homelessness and poverty all over America and the world, too since we’d be in the midst of a global depression. Yeah, happy thoughts, I know. I hope all of my American readers will take all of this into consideration when choosing who to vote for. There really is only one logical choice who will put the people first and if you don’t believe me, be sure to read the above article.
I had every intention of writing about poverty in third world countries for this year’s Blog Action Day’s theme of Poverty and about the pain and devastation those millions of people have to deal with every single day. Since our financial system is now collapsing here in America, I think it would be more appropriate for me to address the coming onslaught of many middle class families falling into real poverty over these next few years. I feel many don’t even realize yet how badly they will be affected.
The way many Americans have been living – paycheck to paycheck with credit cards as a backup in total denial that they are spending way more than they bring in so they can have their toys and keep up with the Jones’. When your entire way of living is cut off at the knees and you have not really saved any money in an emergency fund or put away any bulk food or gathered any extra blankets or winter coats to stay warm because heat is now too expensive for your home and everything else one needs to do to prepare for that “just in case” scenario well, these people are in for a rude awakening.
Every single industry will be affected in some way and will feel the effects- even the ones who say they are “recession proof.” A large economic slowdown the likes of which we have never had to deal with is upon us and will get worse before it gets better. What we are now entering is way more than just a recession. I heard it quoted this week as “We are entering a time that will rival the great depression if not surpass it.” That is one serious statement and it was made by a CEO of a Fortune 100 company.
When you lose your job and have to figure out how you will be able to keep your home with no income and no savings, the fact is many won’t be able to and will become homeless. Financial advisers tell you to save up 6-8 months worth of monthly expenses in a savings account just in case this scenario happens. Shelters in America have already seen a large rise in homelessness and people in shock and dismay that they can’t find another job. Many more job layoffs are predicted to happen in many industries over this next year and what happens then? We have millions more falling into poverty right here in America.
It is good to have a network of people you and your family know well in case you lose your job and your home and become truly homeless. Think about who you know, friend or family member that would let you and your kids stay with them until you can find some kind of work again. Families doing this will become more common over the next few years until our economy stabilizes and we can start to turn ourselves around.
Working together with others in a bad economy can help to save at least one home by moving in together and pooling all of your resources and money so you all have someplace warm to sleep at night and some food to eat. Our world is changing and we all will have to rely on each other to rebuild it. Growing food with others will be necessary as will preserving whatever food you can. It’s amazing how much food can be grown on a very small section of land in your backyard.
Children will be really affected by all of this, hopefully attending public school will help give them some sense of normalcy and a rhythm to their day. They would also qualify for the free lunch programs public schools have to feed the low income children breakfast and lunch which may even be the only food they get to eat on those days.
The sooner we can get jobs going here in the green technology and alternative energy sector to save on cost of fuel and create work for the masses, the better. I just hope our next president realizes this and works to get it going right away.
These will be trying times for everyone but for those of us who are lucky enough to keep a job throughout this upheaval, we need to remember to give back – donate food to the food banks, clothes, blankets, winter jackets to the charities that help the homeless, extra money donated on your utilities bill that goes to their program that helps low income families keep the heat and electric on while they still have a home to live in, invite a family that you know is suffering hardship over for a dinner and give them a care package to take with them, etc.
While we of the middle and upper-middle class are not used to living at the poverty level, millions all over the world still have it much worse than we do. We are not being shot at, raped and terrorized like villagers in Somalia, we have homeless shelters and soup kitchens to help us out even a little bit unlike the starving masses in Haiti who resort to eating dirt cookies and we have food stamps especially for women with infants and young children. There are even some programs like Medicare and others where if you are destitute, you can receive free medical care – especially for your children. So our poverty does not rival extreme poverty in third world countries but the emotional pain and physical toll on the body will still be felt just the same.
I hope we can all learn a big lesson from this – don’t live above your means. You can be happy with less and there is a real art and satisfaction to living simply on the Earth in harmony with nature. I hope you all will get to keep your jobs and homes and will help your local community out in whatever way you can.
Attachment Parenting is based in the practice of nurturing parenting methods that create strong emotional bonds, also known as secure attachment, between children and their parent(s). This style of parenting encourages responsiveness to children’s emotional needs, enabling children to develop trust that their needs will be met. As a result, this strong attachment helps children develop the capacity for secure, empathic, peaceful, and enduring relationships that follow them into adulthood.
This month of October is “Attachment Parenting Month” over on the Attachment Parenting International website and at events in many different locations. The theme this year is “Giving Our Children Presence.”
From API:
“More than ever, parents are seeking to offer their children every possible advantage, and research confirms the immense emotional, social and cognitive benefits to children from receiving one-on-one, unstructured time with their parents,” said Barbara Nicholson, author and Co-founder of API. “Today’s busy schedules can be quite an obstacle for families seeking quality time, and Attachment Parenting Month, with its theme of “Giving Our Children Presence,” emphasizes the importance of – and ways to achieve – these moments.”
From Dr. William Sears about Attachment Parenting:
“Attachment Parenting is moving above the radar,” said William Sears, MD, noted parenting author, speaker and founder of AskDrSears.com, who wrote his first book about Attachment Parenting in the 1970s. “In nearly 40 years in pediatric practice and parenting our own 8 children Martha and I are seeing the long term benefits of attachment parented kids. They are caring kids who thrive on the quality of empathy. They are able to get behind the eyes of other people and imagine the effects of their behavior on others. They are high touch children in an otherwise high tech world. There’s no doubt our world needs more AP kids.”
API will promote all AP Month events through its Attachment Parenting Month Central web site, apmonth.attachmentparenting.org, where organizations and families can register their AP Month events, donate money or join API, find nearby AP Month activities, and review what the experts have to say about the importance of presence.
On this United Nations’ International Day of Peace, may all of your lives be happy and blessed with peace. I really and truly hope that our next president really be committed to serving the betterment of the people and truly believes in peace and peaceful actions first and foremost. Our world really can’t take much more. May they embrace the idea of serving the greatest good for all.
I Tivo the Oprah show and usually watch the shows that interest me when I work out. Yesterday, I watched probably the most difficult episode ever and I wanted to delete it after the first few minutes and not watch because it was so horrific and upsetting. But I didn’t, I made myself watch it to learn what I could do to help stop such heinous acts from repeatedly occurring.
The show was all about pedophiles in America called “Fighting Internet Predators.” It is unbelievable how many there are online (over half a million) and how they network with each other everyday and what they do. Oprah was very explicit in this show, no sugar coating at all. The experts interviewed on the show that work with tracking these men online, seeing the videos and dealing with the abused children -some of who are just INFANTS – well these people said they even need some therapy to deal with all the horribleness they have to witness everyday at their jobs. One man , Flint Waters of the Wyoming Internet Sex Crimes Against Children Task Force created software that is able to track the men who are sending out the images (whether videos or photos) to their homes and go in and arrest them. The problem they are having is they are underfunded so there is not enough police to assign to jobs like this. He said when he goes home at night, the unfinished work on his desk are innocent children that will still be raped by these men and probably that night, too. He has trouble with that everyday. I’m sure some women are involved as well but this show didn’t focus on that.
They said that it’s such a big market for these addicts that they are now going into filming live, on demand videos of the rapes happening and it’s becoming increasingly more brutal. One expert said you would hear the little girls giggling from the man tickling and playing and then she’d start screaming from the pain of the rape &/or torture. Some of the perps were the fathers, a close relative, family friends, the child’s friend’s father or a coach or teacher. Only a very small percentage were stranger abductions.
There are now instruction manuals these pedophiles put out teaching the men on how to groom both the family as well as the child you want to molest to get away with it and “desensitize” them. One part Oprah read said to use the pacifier for the under 2 year olds or a pencil for the 3-5 year olds and have them try to draw or write with it in them to make it go in further. There are also animated and cartoon videos using familiar characters produced by the child predators to show to the kids to teach them about molestation and “keeping it a secret.”
Needless to say, I was horrified and angry and bawling my eyes out. I want to do as much as I can to help save these kids from being subjected to further abuse and torture for no other reason than for mentally sick men to get off on.
Here is what we all can do right now to help these innocent victims – contact our senators who will be voting on this act on September 26th, 2008. We don’t have much time so please call both of your senators and just ask them to vote “YES” on passing Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act. We can also spread this message to everyone we know to help get this act passed and stop these brutal attacks on children.
Here is some more info from Oprah.com about this Act:
The PROTECT Our Children Act will:
Authorize over $320 million over the next five years in desperately needed funding for law enforcement to investigate child exploitation.
Mandate that child rescue be a top priority for law enforcement receiving federal funding.
Allocate funds for high-tech computer software that can track down Internet predators.
Act Now!
Your U.S. senators will be voting on the bill soon, so it is crucial you contact them immediately.
Go to www.senate.gov to find contact information for the senators in your state. Search for your senator by name or state by clicking on the arrow from either dropdown menu. Contact information is provided here. To send an e-mail, click on “Web Form” below his or her name, and e-mail your letter to make a difference!
Call Your Senators
If you choose to contact your senators by phone, be sure to tell them, “Vote yes on Senate Bill 1738—The PROTECT Our Children Act.”
Write to Your Senators
If you choose to write a letter, fax, telegram or e-mail, you may use the following sample letter—and modify it how you see fit.
Dear Senator:
I know that you believe, like I do, that we must do everything possible to protect children from sexual predators. That is why I am asking for your help.
Last year alone, U.S. law enforcement identified over 300,000 criminals who were trafficking in movies and pictures of young children being raped and tortured. Experts say that one in every three of these criminals has local child victims. Child pornography trafficking over the Internet has given us a trail of evidence that leads straight to their doorsteps, but the vast majority of these children will never be rescued because investigators are overwhelmed, outnumbered and underfunded.
As your constituent, I urge you to do everything in your power to pass the PROTECT Our Children Act (S. 1738, Biden-Hatch). This bipartisan legislation passed the House 415-2, but it is now the victim of petty partisan politics.
Now that we know where these children are and how to protect them, there is no excuse for the Senate to fail to take action this session.
(Your name here)
Instructions for How to Copy and Paste the Letter
To copy and paste the letter into your senator’s web form at www.senate.gov, point your mouse arrow at the beginning of the text that you want to copy. Click your left mouse button and hold it down. While holding the left mouse button, drag your arrow to the end of the text that you want to copy. Release the button. The text should be highlighted. Place your mouse arrow over the highlighted text, click your right mouse button once and let go. A new menu should appear. Select Copy from the drop down menu. When you get to the message form field for your senator at www.senate.gov, point your arrow at the beginning of the message field that you want to copy your text to and right click with your mouse. Click Paste from this menu. Submit your form and help our children!
This is a new documentary film brought to you by Producer-Directors James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch.
Here is the synopsis:
With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what’s wrong with our malnourished bodies, it’s no wonder that modern society is getting sicker. Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide “Sickness Industry” and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for curing disease naturally.
Great trailer – check it out above. On their website, you can order the movie or download it for just $4.95. I recommend anyone suffering from any kind of illness, even cancer, should spend the 5 bucks and really learn some important info from the many experts interviewed that can potentially change their world in 80 minutes.
“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food” -Hippocrates
When I was a senior in college in the late 80’s, a group of my college and high school friends got in our cars and caravaned down to Washington DC from our assorted schools in upstate NY just so we could take part in an historic march on Washington for women’s rights. It was about not overturning Roe v. Wade, keeping abortion legal, keep the power of the right to choose in the hands of each and every woman, keeping government out of a woman’s body.
Now, however you feel on the topic of abortion, that is your right to feel that way and your opinion. But your feelings do not necessarily reflect the feelings of millions of other women who each have different circumstances to deal with in their lives to make them decide differently than you. Keeping a woman’s health, well-being, prevention education and access to services first and foremost is what is our legal right in this country and it should stay that way. One size does not fit all.
“For the first time in US history, Colorado voters will decide the issue of personhood in November’s general election. Proposed amendment 48, “Definition of a Person,” qualified for the ballot last Thursday. This dangerous amendment stands to ban not only all abortions but everyday forms of birth control. We know that when Coloradans get the facts, they will SAY NO to Amendment 48.
We are up against powerful, anti-women conservatives who want Roe v. Wade overturned and access to birth control compromised. They will spare no expense to see the job finished.”
All I can say to this is, “WTF? Twenty years later and we still have to fight for our rights”? “Bite me” is what I’d really like to tell the “anti-women conservatives” who want to take away my right to choose what is best for me as a woman.
“Amendment 48 specifies that the egg be considered a “person” in the eyes of the law even before it is implanted in the uterus. That means, effectively, that those forms of birth control that prevent such implantation would be classified as homicide under the proposal.
Even without the use of drugs, many eggs just naturally fail to implant in the uterus. Likewise, many eggs are implanted only to result in a miscarriage in the early days or weeks of pregnancy — often before the woman is even aware she is pregnant. Should a woman who suffers a miscarriage be charged with negligent homicide because she failed to protect a fertilized egg she may not have even known she carried? Should a man who fertilized an egg be entitled to file a civil lawsuit against a woman who miscarries, charging her with the wrongful death of his week-old fertilized egg”?
This proposed amendment, in my opinion, is f*cking stupid – period. As a woman who has suffered 2 miscarriages, I can tell you that it’s no picnic and there is thought that goes into what is lost, what has changed in your life, etc. Should my husband sue me now for unintentionally killing our embryos? Even if a woman needed an abortion for health reasons, she would feel the loss, there is recovery time, etc. It doesn’t go unnoticed. Should we punish that woman even more?
With so much going on in the world around us, food prices soaring, tons of unwanted kids in foster care and orphanages – malnourished and sickly and no one to love them – should we keep adding to that? Just some food for thought.
I hope my fellow Coloradans who read this join me in voting NO this coming November and spread this message to your networks. Really, who wants to approve the “Anti-Woman” Health Amendment? Doesn’t that title itself say it all?
Some friends of ours are adopting 2 children from an orphanage in Haiti called Foyer de Sion. Because of the food shortage and riots going on in Haiti, their already limited 2 meals a day of rice and beans have been cut down even further. They get hardly (if any) produce and all the children have parasites living in their bodies which rob them further of nutrition. We are so fortunate in the U.S. to not have to suffer like so many millions of people – especially children – around the world do.
The adoptive parents have joined together to get a 40 foot container filled with food to be shipped over to the orphanage to feed the more than 300 children who live there. Please consider making a donation to the orphanage using PayPal to help feed these starving kids. Please be sure to note that your donation is for the “Food Freight For Foyer Campaign”. A mere $7.00 donation would feed 63 children at the orphanage for two days; $100 would buy nearly 200 pounds of staple foods like rice, sugar, flour, and powdered milk.
If you wish to donate actual food items, the container truck will be traveling across several states in July picking up donated food. If you are in Colorado, contact me and I will be sure your donated food gets on the truck when it stops at our friends’ house. It will take 36,000 pounds of food to fill the container being sent to the orphanage. They are collecting non-perishable food items, specifically the following:
Powdered Baby Formula (any kind)
Powdered Milk
Rice
Dried Beans (any kind)
Spaghetti
Wheat
Sugar
Oatmeal and Other Hot Cereals
Vegetable Oil
Peanut Butter
Canned and Dried Meats
If you are a blogger, please consider helping to spread this message on your blog and my friend Julie at ChezArtz may reward you with a $25 Target Gift Card for doing so. Just leave her a message at that link and put the button on your blog.
If you are not a blogger, please forward this message to your friends and families and help spread the word about the dire situation in Haiti and how we can all help – even just a little bit can make a huge difference in the lives of these children.
The third Friday of every May has been declared Endangered Species Day. It is a day to educate yourselves and your children about what animals and plant life are on the list and what simple actions you can take at home to help make a positive change for endangered species and other wildlife and fauna all around you.
One of the animals listed, the Grey Wolf, has technically been “delisted” several weeks ago. This, in my opinion, is a travesty. They need the protection from our government because it is now open season on hunting these wise and beautiful creatures who help to keep the balance of the forest and the health of the herd of other species such as elk.
I have a deep, personal connection with the grey wolf. One summer, when living on a ranch in the mountains of CO, (the same location where I met my husband and got married), I had the chance to live with and bond with a 3 year old grey wolf named Cloud that was the pet of one of my housemates. The wolf and I bonded immediately and he soon started following me around everywhere and even wanted to sleep in my room at night instead of with his dad. This did not go over well with my housemate but he worked a lot and different hours than me so I soon became Cloud’s surrogate mom.
This wolf was so smart, loving and playful and really acted as my protector, too. One day, Cloud and I went for a hike down to the creek nearby which was about 1,000′ lower in elevation so I could harvest some plants that grew there to make medicine. I got caught up in the plant world, kept wandering and wildcrafting and when I was finally done we started hiking back up and I realized, I was lost deep in the forest! I had lost the small animal-made trail we followed down. It was late afternoon, it would be getting to be dusk soon and I was worried because of the bears and mountain lions that also lived in the forest and I had seen them on occasion on the ranch property before. I started running up the mountain since I was more than an hour away from home.
Cloud wasn’t worried, he was happy being out on our adventure running with me like one of his pack and I kept saying to him, “we need to go home, where’s home?” He was the one to eventually lead me back towards the ranch, running off in one direction and stopping to look back at me as if to tell me “this way”, with his sense of direction being much better than mine!
My housemate and Cloud eventually moved out of state, I offered to adopt Cloud and my housemate said no way. I was very sad over them leaving but what a gift I got in spending so much quality time with such a magnificent animal. I will never forget him.
The northern rocky mountain states such as Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have it out for the grey wolf. The plan is for killing off 39% of the 732 total wolves that live in the wild. Many are the collared, reintroduced to the wild adults and are highly tracked and studied since wolves were exterminated to extinction in the wild.
Earthjustice and 11 other conservation groups* filed a federal court lawsuit challenging the federal government’s decision to remove the northern rockies gray wolf population from the list of endangered species. They also filed a request for a preliminary injunction in order to reinstate Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves until the court issues a final decision on the merits of this case.
The injunction states:
“We maintain that wolves should not have been stripped of federal protections so soon because they are not yet recovered in the Northern Rockies region and the state management plans currently in place are woefully inadequate, not based on current science, and do not ensure the long term survival of the Northern Rockies gray wolf.”
“Since delisting, a spate of wolf killings by a variety of methods—pursuing wolves long distances with snowmobiles, shooting wolves from the roadside, and lying in wait for wolves at state-run elk feedgrounds—demonstrates the need now, as much as ever, to protect wolves under the Endangered Species Act.”
In Native American teachings, the wolf represents the supreme guardian, the teachers, the wisdom keepers. They are loyal, family oriented, playful, loving, wise beings. They kill to survive and feed their children as other carnivores do. They don’t take more than they need and keep the sick, old and frail animals they prey on from suffering a long, strung out death of illness or starvation.
I hope you can take action and give some support – even just signing an online petition to help protect this amazing animal from cruel, senseless murder.
*Earthjustice filed the lawsuit on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project, and Wildlands Project.
If you don’t already know about the big Bloggy Giveaway events going on right now in the blogosphere, I recommend you check them out! There are many and a lot of nice things are being given away.
First, is my friend Amy’s blog, Crunchy Domestic Goddess. She is having the “Mother” of all giveaways right now with free organic tee shirts, sea glass jewelry, organic cleaning products, reusable shopping bags, reusable sandwich wraps and a tree in a box. Stop by and check it out!
Then, stop on by the very large and ever growing list (over 800 now) of blogs giving something away at the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival. My friend, Heather, from A Mama’s Blog, is giving away an adorable onesie from her store.
Check back with me in the future when I will enter the carnival to give away some good stuff, too. Good luck, maybe you’ll win something!
