If anyone knows who took this photo, please leave a comment. It came to me in an email with no credits. You can see the collection at http://www.greatpetnet.com/776/where-do-cats-sleep/.
I think this is a wonderful shot.
Four years ago today our neighbor Leigh Ann dropped off an orange kitten at our home. We were going to take care of her while Leigh Ann and Chris were on vacation. They had rescued her from a parking lot the previous week. She was born in a colony of feral cats and was completely wild when her angels swooped in and got her.
She's been with us ever since. She is the only grateful cat I've even known. It's been a great joy to watch her grow up.
Here's her story: Fast Food Kitten - Sweetie Wildcat Arrives.
FYI: Her eye color changed from blue to orange! Her claws are much sharper than our two Siameses. The only place outside she wants to go is onto our deck and sometimes she jumps up to patrol the roof. She eats a lot and often. She's a lap cat and a bed cat. She'll snatch a moth out of the air and eat it.
I'm eating a lot of peanut butter (Trader Joe's Organic Crunchy) these days. Ann's garden is producing an amazing number of cucumbers now, so I eat cucumber slices with a dab of peanut butter for lunch.
Here's some interesting info on peanuts, from the World's Healthiest Foods web site (sponsored by the George Mateljan Foundation).
Link: Health Benefits of Peanuts
In addition to being every kid's (and many grownup kid's) favorite sandwich filling, peanuts pack a serious nutritional punch and offer a variety of health benefits.
Your Heart Will Go Nuts for Peanuts
Peanuts are a very good source of monounsaturated fats, the type of fat that is emphasized in the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet. Studies of diets with a special emphasis on peanuts have shown that this little legume is a big ally for a healthy heart. In one such randomized, double-blind, cross-over study involving 22 subjects, a high monounsaturated diet that emphasized peanuts and peanut butter decreased cardiovascular disease risk by an estimated 21% compared to the average American diet.
Here are the completed raised beds (except for a watering system). Missy likes being photographed – she's a fox. You can see much more of Ann's garden at www.InspiredGardening.com.
Ann and I wanted to expand the food production space in Ann's garden. We decided to remove a row of flowers along the west side of our garden and add four raised beds. I'm the Chief Bed Engineer (CBE) and she's the green thumb. Here's a photo history of the bed building.
I used 12' x 12'' x 2'' yellow pine boards - untreated (it's an organic garden). I brushed two coats of linseed oil on the wood to improve its resistance to rot and termites.
The beds are 24" wide. The most difficult part of the process was leveling the bed boards, since the terrain runs from northwest to southeast.
Our cat Blue inspected the beds after completion. Our cat Missy did soil tests.
Here's the construction process.
Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Listen hard.
Practive wellness.
Play with abandon.
Laugh.
Choose with no regret.
Continue to learn.
Appreciate your friends.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.Mary Anne Radmacher
Thanks to Ann
Ann and I left Woodstock, GA, at noon on Saturday. The temperature was 95 degrees.
We turned north onto I-77 from I-85 at Charlotte. The temperature was 99 degrees.
We stopped in Cana, VA, at the Willow Glen Farm B&B. The house was amazing, the food excellent, and Bob and Carol were gracious and interesting hosts.
After the great breakfast on Sunday, we drove north on Highway 52 to Fancy Gap and turned right onto the magical Blue Ridge Parkway.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a wonderful place to drive after spending hours dodging collisions on the interstate highways.
We passed beautiful Mabry Mill, where hometown friend Clift Mitchell fell in the pond about 50 years ago.
We drove east through Floyd County to Cannaday Gap, where we dropped down into Franklin County to Endicott.
We drove east to Ferrum. At Ferrum College, we turned north onto Ferrum Mountain Rd towards Callaway. We continued north to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We turned northeast on the Parkway. Several miles later we turned left onto a barely visible double track. When we stopped to open the gate to drive into a pasture, the temperature was 74 degrees with very gusty winds. We drove through the pasture to Jack and Marie's home.
We had a tasty and healthy lunch with Jack, Marie, Jackson, and Katie. It was great to see them and I wish we had had more time to visit.
We returned to Franklin County and looked at some property with Clift, Linda, and John G.
At 3pm, we left for Atlanta. We stopped at the Floyd Country Store in Floyd. I got a blackberry milkshake and we chatted with Woody and Jackie for a moment.
We headed west on Highway 221. At Hillsville, we took I-77 south. We encountered a traffic stoppage at Statesville. We detoured onto I-40 West and took Highway 321 South to I-85, after losing an hour to the traffic jam.
We arrived home at 11pm. The temperature was 88 degrees. Hot 'Lanta indeed.
Continue reading "Beautiful Images: Two Views of Palouse Falls" »
More than once, after a few hours packed like sardines in a metal can breathing the same stale air a hundred times over, it’s occurred to me that the crabby oldsters who insisted that humanity was not meant to fly may have had more of a point than most of us suspect.
John Micheal Greer, A Guide for the Perplexed
United we stand, divided we fall....
Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal describes a critical flaw in the polarized, media-driven two party system in the United States. Excerpts below.
Link: The Case for Getting off Base - WSJ.com.
Both conservative media and liberal media are alike in that they have to keep the ratings up, or the numbers up, or the hits. If they lose audience, they can lose everything from clout to ad revenue. Because they have to keep the numbers up, they have to keep it hot, which actually has some effect on the national conversation. The mainstream media is only too happy to headline it when a radio talker says Sonia Sotomayor is a dope. The radio talker may be doing it to play to his base, but the mainstream media does it to show that Republicans are mean, thick and angry.
On left and right, on cable and radio, political hosts see gain in hyping the story, agitating and exciting their listeners. All of this creates a circular, self-enclosed world in which it gets hotter and hotter and tighter and tighter. (I remember when the liberals of the Democratic Party were like this, in the '80s. They talked only to themselves, and reinforced each other's views. It took them years to recover.)
Must the Obama administration micromanage General Motors, institute a new health-care system, and institute a new energy regime? Must they mow down the opposition, shutting them out of the development of important bills? Well, the base likes this.
Can the radio host or the freelance policy maker calm down, become less polar and more thoughtful (yawn)? That would leave his base turning the dial and maybe going elsewhere. Can the big left-wing and right-wing Web sites commit apostasy, rethink issues? In general, bases don't like that.
Everyone is looking to the base, the sliver, their piece of the pie, their slice of the demo. You wonder sometimes as you watch: Who's looking out for the country?
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire. Writer Larry McMurtry referred to Abbey as the "Thoreau of the American West".
Desert Solitaire is regarded as one of the finest nature narratives in American literature, and has been compared to Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and Thoreau's Walden. In it, Abbey vividly describes the physical landscapes of Southern Utah and delights in his isolation as a backcountry park ranger, recounting adventures in the nearby canyon country and mountains. He also attacks what he terms the "industrial tourism" and resulting development in the national parks ("national parking lots"), rails against the Glen Canyon Dam, and comments on various other subjects.
Abbey's abrasiveness, opposition to anthropocentrism, and outspoken writings made him the object of much controversy. Conventional environmentalists from mainstream groups disliked his more radical "Keep America Beautiful...Burn a Billboard" style. Based on his writings and statements—and in a few cases, his actions—many believe that Abbey did advocate ecotage or sabotage on behalf of ecology. The controversy intensified with the publication of Abbey's most famous work of fiction, The Monkey Wrench Gang. The novel centers on a small group of eco-warriors who travel the American West attempting to put the brakes on uncontrolled human expansion by committing acts of sabotage against industrial development projects. Abbey claimed the novel was written merely to "entertain and amuse," and was intended as symbolic satire. Others saw it as a how-to guide to non-violent ecotage, as the main characters attack things, such as road-building equipment, and not people. The novel inspired environmentalists frustrated with mainstream environmentalist groups and what they saw as unacceptable compromises. Earth First! was formed as a result in 1980, advocating eco-sabotage or "monkeywrenching." (From Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey)
Eric deCarbonnel at Market Skeptics writes:
1) America's most powerful, too-big-to-fail banks are turning in their TARP money.
2) They are repaying TARP funds to escape:a) Legal limits on bonuses for their top 25 employees.
b) Rules prohibiting golden parachute payments for executives when they leave.3) Stress test were flawed and banks still need this money.
4) Banks are returning TARP funds equal to less than a tenth of the taxpayer assistance they have received.Bank executives deserve huge bonuses for the skill with which they have fleeced taxpayers.
I have been burned by a simple "internet marketing" scam that is very frustrating and irritating.
Here's how it works:
You click on a link to a sales page that has the most amazing list of DVDs to teach you how to make $100,000 a month selling stuff on the internet.
Just so you won't perceive this sales pitch as a ripoff, you will be given this package of stuff FREE!
But... you must pay for shipping with a credit card, which is a small charge. In the fine print in the agreement, it will state that you will be subscribed to a monthly newsletter for $29.95 a month (or more).
So you receive the newsletter (some of them are well written) and see a charge on your credit card.
With some of these "marketers", you will find it very difficult to cancel the subscription. Note: The more hype you see in the sales page, the more likely it is to be a scam.
The honest marketers are hoping you will like the newsletter and continue to subscribe. The others are con artists who hope you won't notice the credit card debits. They will avoid providing a way to the subscription to be cancelled. And they will teach you how to get rich doing the same scam, using content from their newsletter!
I hope you don't fall for this scam. Free lunches aren't free.
The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don’t let it get the best of you.
Will Rogers
Link: Earth Shots » Mother Natures Canvas by Bill McFall
Photo by Bill McFall
Bill McFall says: Spring of 2007 was a great year for wildflowers in southern California if you were lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time. This was my first time at this location and had no idea it would be this good. So I felt like a kid in a candy store, shooting away for hours among this amazing display of wildflowers. I’ve been shooting nature photography for around 25 years and still get a rush when searching for a beautiful landscape. I enjoy sharing my love of nature with other people. My focus is in landscape photography.
Equipment: Nikon D50, AF-S Nikkor 55-200mm lens
We had better find a better say to sustain ourselves because we can't last long as a society if we continue to depend on oil from the Middle East or big box store items from China.
The key for survival is developing a sustainable economy that uses food we grow for ourselves, materials provided locally and energy from renewable resources like the sun.
Bill McKibben
Link: Earth Shots » Silky Smooth by Sheldon Branford.
Photo by Sheldon Branford - Middle Falls at New York’s Letchworth State Park.
I believe that modern post-industrial societies will run out of the natural resources that they depend on – especially fossil fuels – unless some drastic changes are made. In short, I feel that we are on an unsustainable trajectory.
Apparently I'm in a minority in the United States, where many of my friends feel that we can find a way (e.g., technology, invasions, government intervention, self-medication) to overcome the shortfalls caused our ever-growing consumption. Of course, many folks are oblivious to such concerns and are content as long as cheap fast food and cheap gasoline can be purchased close to home. I have some foolish beliefs is the eyes of these people.
John Micheal Greer communicates his views in essays that combine an understanding of ecology and a knowledge of history. His grasp of the rise and fall of civilizations provides an objectivity and humility rarely found in the debates in the media today. His blog that has become essential reading for me when I want some insight into the cloudy future that is rapidly unfolding before us. Below is an excerpt from an essay on his blog addressing sustainability.
As a student of ecology, I’ve learned that environmental limits play a dominant role in shaping the destiny of every species, ours included; as a student of history, I’ve reviewed the fate of any number of civilizations that believed themselves to be destiny’s darlings, and proceeded to pave the road to collapse with their own ecological mistakes. From my perspective, the insistence that limits don’t apply to us is as good a case study as one might wish of that useful Greek word hubris, otherwise defined as the overweening pride of the doomed. Still, the fact that these things seem so self-evident to me makes it all the more intriguing that they are anything but self-evident to most people in the industrial world today.(John Michael Greer: A Struggle of Paradigms)
If Mr. Greer had been my history teacher, I would have learned a lot more in school!
Cee-lo Green (Thomas Callaway) has an amazing voice. He and Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) create some great music. Josh Klinghoffer adds some creative guitar work.
Cee-lo's gospel music upbringing (in Atlanta) is evident in this performance - reminds me of Otis Redding.
Photo by Kevin McNeal
Almost A Sierra Wave - The Dalles Mountains - Washington
Link: Kevin McNeal Photography.
For more photos that inspire me, click here: Beautiful Images
Jaime Diaz at Golf Digest magazine traveled through Thailand with Tida Woods. She doesn't give interviews, but Jaime found out a lot about her in their travels. She had a tough childhood and she balances toughness and love in her own unique way. Click on the link below to read about a very interesting woman who has raised an amazing son.
Link: Tida In Thailand: Golf Digest Magazine.
This was a 550-pound adult male tiger at Thailand's Tiger Temple, out on an alarmingly exposed area at the bottom of a rocky canyon with only a frail Buddhist monk in a flimsy orange robe holding a stick as her guardian. By most accounts, the monastery does an admirable job of "imprinting" tigers to be comfortable with human contact, and thousands from around the world visit every year without reported incidents. This tiger, along with about a dozen others within a 50-foot radius monitored by other monks, was deep into his mid-afternoon nap.
...Without hesitation, she sidled up to the beast, kneeled down and stroked its back. After a few moments, she shifted herself toward his face with what Cesar Millan of "Dog Whisperer" fame would call "good energy." Lowering into a sitting position, she scooted forward and, yes, lifted the tiger's head into her lap. And as time stopped for her traveling companions, she happily kept it there for more than a minute.
"Tida" is an animal lover who indulges four big dogs at her home in Southern California, and as a native Thai, the tiger holds an exalted station with her.
via Bill Kruger
Source unknown: Please let me know if you know know the photographer.
I saw this on the Sundance Channel - recorded at the famous Abbey Road studio.
I was impressed. Talented muscians making strange, mysterious music. Cee-Lo has a great soul voice!
Along with DJ Danger Mouse, Cee-Lo is currently part of a collaboration called Gnarls Barkley. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo's first collaborative album, St. Elsewhere, was released on April 24, 2006 in the United Kingdom and May 2, 2006 in the United States. St. Elsewhere entered the charts at #1 in the UK, as did the first single "Crazy". "Crazy" is the first single to go straight to #1 in the UK based on digital download sales alone. The album is Cee-Lo's greatest selling venture yet, currently having shipped over 1 million copies in the United States according to Nielsen SoundScan.
A new album by Gnarls Barkley, titled The Odd Couple, was released in March 2008. Its first single released in January called "Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)".
Cee-Lo was born in Atlanta, Georgia . Both of Cee-Lo's parents were ordained ministers. His father died when he was 2 years old. His mother was involved in a car crash leaving her quadriplegic and died 2 years later when Cee-Lo was 18 years old and his career with Goodie Mob had just begun taking off. His mother's death led him into depression, as is reflected in various songs throughout his career, including "Free" by Goodie Mob, songs on St. Elsewhere, and on The Odd Couple ("She Knows", "A Little Better"). Cee-Lo attended Benjamin E. Mays High School in southwest Atlanta.
Jeffrey Goldberg's great article Why I Fired My Broker in The Atlantic delivers a big dose of bitter medicine on a timely topic: How can the ordinary investor recover?
Anyone with more than a few dollars in the stock market might benefit from reading this article.
Link: Why I Fired My Broker - The Atlantic (May 2009).
It turns out that my crucial mistake was believing that the brokers and wealth managers and cable-television oracles who make up the financial-services industrial complex actually had my best interests at heart. Or so say the extremely smart—and wealthy—people I asked to help me figure a way out of my paralysis. One of these people was Robert Soros, the deputy chairman of the fund started by his father, George. I went to see him at his office, where he spent two hours performing an autopsy on my assumptions.
“You think a brokerage should be a place you go to pay commissions for fair and unbiased advice, right?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s not. It never has been.” He then cited another saying of Buffett’s: “‘Wall Street is a place where whatever can be sold will be sold.’ You are the consumer of their dreck. What they can sell to you, they will sell to you.”
“But they told us—”
“They lied.”
He went on: “You should be disheartened and disappointed. But don’t kid yourself. You’re a naive capitalist. They were never your advisers. Do not for a moment think that a brokerage firm is your friend.”
“So who’s my friend?”
“You don’t have one. This is the market.”
“Okay, that’s Merrill Lynch. What about the others?”
“They’re not your friends,” Soros said patiently.
“What about Chuck Schwab?”
“All brokers move products based on volume and commission,” he said.
Greener by Degrees - photo by Fred First
Link: Greener by Degrees | Fragments From Floyd
Some Floyd friends went down-mountain, newcomers to full-time living in the mountains, recent transplants from much warmer, flatter climes. They discovered how far ahead Roanoke is compared to Floyd County in bud-and-bloom dates.
