Blogroll Me! The Witch Of Hebron is the lastest book from James Howard Kunstler. It is the sequel to World Made By Hand. I have been on the library's waiting list for this for several weeks, and I picked it up yesterday. It promises to show what life will be like in a slow collapse scenario. I can't wait to get started on this. Doomer books are my favorite.
Blogroll Me! I confess I can not even imagine a picture for writers block...or in this instance bloggers block. But I am there. It is not that I don't have things to share. I really do. I am a busy woman....with much more room to operate these days. I promise you I am gonna make some really cool things. But some days all I can do is lament on the last few years of my life and all I could have done. I have to wonder what that was all about. I am ready to keep on going...that is the best I can say about what I can do right now.
Blogroll Me!I was there! I should have known then...but i didn't...oh well
I am sick with wanting And it's evil and it's daunting How I let everything I cherish lay to waste I am lost in greed this time, it's definitely me I point fingers but there's no one there to blame
I need for something Not let me break it down again I need for something But not more medicine
I am sick with wanting And it's evil how it's got me And everyday is worse than the one before The more I have the more I think: I'm almost where I need to be If only I could get a little more
I need for something Now let me break it down again I need for something But not more medicine
Something has me (Something has me) Oh something has me (Something has me) Acting like someone I don't wanna be Something has me (Something has me) Oh something has me (Something has me) Acting like someone I know isn't me Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed
Temporary is my time Ain't nothin on this world that's mine Except the will I found to carry on Free is not your right to choose It's answering what's asked of you To give the love you find until it's gone
I need for something Now let me break it down again I need for something But not more medicine
Something has me (Something has me) Oh something has me (Something has me) Acting like someone I don't wanna be Something has me (Something has me) Oh something has me (Something has me) Acting like someone I know isn't me Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed Ill with want and poisoned by this ugly greed
Blogroll Me! I am thankful for 1. my freedom. 2. The roof over my head 3. The food on my table 4. My cat 5. My truck 6. Linden Metalsmithing Guild 7. My health 8. My Grandmother 9. My abilities 10. Second Sight
I don't always remember how constructive making a gratitude list is. The exercise is worthy though. It can get me unstuck. I realize I don't always get what I want when I want it. This year I am sad to be separate from my loved ones. But I am getting stronger and healthier every day. My feet are healing. I am beginning to see how I have been spared once again from a life direction that I would not have been able to abide. For those of you who know me well, you know I can't stand being in the company of thieves. Had I stayed where I was, I would have been consumed and confined with thieves. My higher power has once again spared me from that kind of life. I didn't see it when I first started moving out this summer. There are things I didn't see for the whole 6 years I spent on Deming Avenue. But I am finding out things now that make it clear that hoarding was the very tip of the iceberg. I am grateful that I have enough stuff that I don't have to steal in order to get more. I am grateful that the "stuff" I am made of isn't material.
Blogroll Me! I can't afford a real one...so I must improvise. I had to drill two holes in the cap and insert two eye screws. Then I used the awe as a pry bar and wrench handle. This was a tough cap. I couldn't afford the proper wrench, nor the time to find it and buy it. I am grateful to be able to be flexible and open to new ideas around me.
Blogroll Me! I gotta find one of these! Or I have to find something that will work instead. This is the wrench that removes the plastic caps on the 55 gallon plastic barrels I use for rain barrels. I am up against it again.....weather is gonna rule me. Hope I can find one of these soon.
Blogroll Me! I have a Craigslist Ad out for Pet Sitting. I forget there are other ways to get the word out. This month was booked solid. I still have some time in December. These 6 felines have dined on my porch since I moved in. I had mistakenly thought they were abandoned by the previous owner. But no....they just have a couple different favorite porches that they visit every day. They are very well cared for and it is my hopes that someday the ones who are afraid of me will come as well. If you are in need of a pet sitter, please consider hiring me. I have references and I am willing to take care of multiple pets and plants. I am also willing to barter.
Blogroll Me! I woke up this morning and looked out my window and saw something I haven't seen in years...Fog. What an amazing phenomenon. I had forgotten how mysterious it looks. I had forgotten about fog altogether. As I recall fog is caused by the air being colder than the ground. What wonderment.
Blogroll Me! One of the blogs I follow daily is a blog called Sue's News. I met Sue a few years ago when we were converging for a benefit for her Nephew who had been violently beaten 1/2 to death here in Columbus. In spite of the awful circumstances of our initial meeting, we have found that we have much in common and much work to do. Check out Sue's News by clicking on the link provided in the right column of this blog...or click here.
eBay user harpel is willing to part with an entire trailer full of sorted Lego pieces for a minimum of $20,000. From his listing:
Let’s cover what is here in this lot. Well, first of all every theme you could ask for. And pretty much every piece Lego has made. I spent years separating and organizing 1000’s of lbs of Lego. I weighed everything in their containers and it all came to around 1158 lbs not including the metal cabinet with Lego instructions.
Yes, you heard that right. He even kept the instructions.
If you’re within 500 miles of Frontenac, Kansas, he’ll even drive it to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay the shipping. Of course, if you’d like to pick it up yourself, he’s also willing to part with the trailer that houses the lot of them, for a mere $2,000 more, if that makes your life easier.
Now, $20 per pound is a bit steep, considering that Lego offers its basic brick sets at $30 for two and a half pounds, but we’re guessing the extra $8 or so is due to the fact that this lot is full of minifigures and modern non-rectangular pieces from licensed sets like Star Wars, Batman, and Harry Potter. Also, Lego does not offer pieces in bulk in the US. Also, did we mention that he kept the instructions.
While we don’t currently have the means (in the sense of either money, or storage, or motivation) to take advantage of harpel’s offer, we can still appreciate some of the gems in his listing:
I am also currently going through the lot putting sets together by inventory. These will be bagged and set aside for ease of construction. I am doing this for fun while I am on vacation.
I stopped counting mini-figures at 2358. There are more here, I just got tired of counting.
We also highly recommend checking out the extensive photos of his collection.
Blogroll Me! I found my Blue Belt Certificate the other day. It brought back a lot of memories because I had to work very hard for a couple of years to earn it. Recently, I was befriended (refriended) on Facebook from a woman who was interested in stories from women about violence and how some of us have dealt with it. In my case I was being stalked by a weirdo. I had so much fear in me that I was unable to go to work or even leave my home. Karate gave me my life back. It got me unstuck. My Sensei told me that my Blue Belt was equivalent to many peoples Black Belt. Thankfully, I have never had to find that out. My recent involvement with Taiko Drumming was further martial arts training. Many folks do not realize that Taiko Drumming only became entertainment in the 1950's. Before that it was a martial art form that served to warn the people. These giant drums would warn of typhoons, or invaders. I am honored to have had the experience of both Karate and Taiko.
Blogroll Me! I got a good start today (Monday) on my relief carving of the rising sun. It was just a board that I have been carrying around for awhile not knowing what it would be used for. And of course the book of The English Sunrise that I have also been carrying around for quite sometime. I just never know when something like this is going to emerge and converge. I guess the creative process is like a stew. It needs to cook for awhile! It was great to sit in with the old woodcarvers. They are a wealth of information and talent. Now that the empty bowls project is over, I can concentrate on my other projects. I am still waiting for a miracle grant from The Ohio Arts Council, so that I can get the Linden Metalsmith Guild up and operating.
Blogroll Me! Several years ago while living in Maine, I purchased a copy of a book called The English Sunrise. I am going to use the pattern of the sunrise on a flat woodcarving. I have not been able to bring myself to carve something that is human or animal.
Blogroll Me! I have been trying to install my 3rd rain barrel this week with the set back of being ripped off on Craigs List, and buying the wrong size hole saw bit. Sometimes no matter how hard I try, it just isn't enough. I have been concerned that the ground will soon be too hard for me to level out. I don't need a leaning barrel. I don't really have enough cement blocks to raise any of them the right height. I will be happy if I can get this rain barrel in place before a serious winter rain visits me.
Blogroll Me!Here is an ad from Craigs List I responded to and got an unworking electric drill. This guy ripped off the wrong chick. I know someone with the police department that is gonna give this man a call and give him an opportunity to give me my money back. In the meantime dudes other items can be found on Craigs list by entering Tools4U. Lets have some fun with this thief! I had "officer Ames" give him a call, and my phone has been ringing with all this strangeness since she called him and gave him 24 hours. I am borrowing a drill for the day because of this guy!
Every homeowner needs a reversible, Variable-Speed Drill like this in his toolbox
3/8" portable electric drill has a keyless chuck for easy bit changes, and the variable speeds between 0-3000 RPM give you all the versatility you need for drilling or driving. Smooth-running ball-bearing motor is designed for a long service life.
¡Variable speed: 0-3000 RPM
¡Reversible
¡Keyless chuck capacity: 3/64" to 3/8"
Motor: 120V, 3.1 amps
Overall dimensions: 9-1/2" L x 2-1/2" W x 7" H
TO SEE OTHER TOOLS, GO TO CRAIGSLIST MAIN PAGE & TYPE KEYWORD: TOOLS4U
Location: COLUMBUS
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
Blogroll Me! My cat Syd likes to sit in the bay window and watch the activity outside. I have been letting him go outside for a little while each day in hopes that he will get used to our new home. He has been pretty timid so far. I leave the door propped open so he can make a quick escape back inside where he is safe. I hope to spend the day outside today with him as this weather holds.
Blogroll Me! Yesterday, I sowed some Morning Glory seeds and also some Black eyed Susan seeds. Indian Summer is visiting us in Columbus Ohio right now! I decided to take advantage of the wonderful weather and plant in my flower beds before winter sets in. The photo was obtained by Google images and entering both Black Eyed Susan and Morning Glory in the search bar.
I started moving in here the last week and a half of August. It has been my goal to make this place into a home. There is much tweaking to do in addition to just regular household chores to maintain the upkeep of "house". But there is a supernatural kind of tweaking that needs to happen in my brain and heart to make this space "home". Rain barrels are in place on two corners of this house. There are no outside faucets, so when I need to water my plants next year, I can be confident that there will be plenty of water for them. Today I will take advantage of the gift of Indian Summer and try to tighten down the outside of my home. I am a power drill, and a hole saw shy of being able to install my third rain barrel on the back corner of the house. I have been searching Craigs list and Freecycle for this tool. I know I will come across the right one For years I have relied on others and their power tools to come through for me. A power drill is keeping me from finishing my chores. I need to find and buy one. It may just be one of those "next, best, first, right things to do".
Blogroll Me! My bat house is finally finished and ready to hang. I chose an ebony stain as I am learning that bats like it warm. I need to find a perfect location near water that has the most solar exposure and at least 15 feet above the ground. I have been told that my chances of getting a bat tenant are better in the spring. But maybe I will get lucky and be able to hang it during Indian Summer.
Blogroll Me! I follow James Howard Kunstler's weekly blog and I particularly like to follow his Eyesore Of The Month. I got behind as I have been packing and moving since about the 4th of July. Here is July's eyesore. I can only imagine that now that Ohio has voted to let in the casinos that this is what is in store for us as well. And here is what James has to say about it.
Looming balefully on the landscape in Bensalem, Pennsylvania: the new Parx casino featuring three super-giant video screens designed to entice feckless idiots with no remaining income stream to squander their dwindling cash resources on surefire swindles within. Thanks to reader Christopher Paquette, who says, "Parx has been open for less than a year and they have already been fined for gaming violations. A few days before father's day, a local man was arrested for leaving his 15 month old son in a locked running car for over an hour while he was inside playing the penny slots." In the later stages of the long emergency, yet to come obviously, gambling will be recognized as the social evil it is and relegated back to the dark margins of life, where it belongs. It is never a good thing for the state to promote the idea that it is possible to get something for nothing.
Blogroll Me! My ancestor Robert Henry HendershottheDrummer Boy of the Rappahannockis featured on my blog pages on my Fathers side of the family. I was assigned the task of family genealogist by my Grandma Joy (Patton) Hendershot. I think my ability to drum may be somewhat genetic. I know I come by it naturally. I would love to find out who Robert Henry's mother was. I can not find a reference to her. If there is Native American bloodlines on my fathers side of the family, I would suspect her linage. Maybe something will turn up that will reveal this mystery.
Blogroll Me! I am a fan of freecycle. I look at what is offered everyday and I offer something at least once a week. The goal is to keep stuff out of the landfills by posting on the site. Main rules: Everything must be FREE, legal, age-appropriate You must be an Ohio resident and 18+ to join It is encouraged your first post be an OFFER DO realize we are high-traffic, you may want Daily Digest or Special Notice DO read FC_Guidelines and the FAQ in the Files section before posting to eliminate post returns Emails/IDs MUST be family friendly ONE subscription per family/household please ZERO tolerance for the following: animals, money, trading, alcohol, drugs, weapons, spam, intangibles, harassment
I find that this is the easiest way not to hoard. If I don't need it and I am not using it, then why not give it to someone who does and who will use it.
Blogroll Me! Yesterday my burnout oven was vented making it possible to do lost wax casting in my studio. This is a first for me. I had an outside upstairs porch in Newark that I set up my burn out oven. But the centrifuge was in my kitchen around the corner in those days and that is just too much space in between the two machines. The burn out kiln produces harmfull fumes for several hours and several metalsmiths have paid the ultimate price by ignoring that detail. Back in my Newark days, I held my breath when I checking the kiln. I was a smoker, so I pretty much knew my lungs were trashed anyway. I felt the risk was worth the product I was pursuing.
The ventilation in my present studio is a converted spray booth originally for ceramics. When the switch is on the fumes are sucked out of the studio and into the atmosphere. In this instance under my front porch. I am just a couple of details away from being able to open shop.
BlogrollMe One of the items that I lost during my move was my Fostex x 24 Multitracker. It was a freak accident where speakers got vibrated off the top of the washer dryer stack and came down crushing my recorder. This was a special recorder in that it played all my mixed studio recordings of myself and friends. It records at 1/2 speed compressing the sound. While this makes for a great like professional studio recording, it makes it impossible to play on a regular cassette recorder. So when the unit was destroyed it made it impossible to play those Fostex tapes.
The other thing that a multitrack makes possible is that my Les Paul Electric guitar can amp through my stereo speakers if I plug it into the front of the Fostex. So when I lost my X-24 I lost my ability to amp my guitar. This was something I could not do at my last residence as we were limited on space. So I was very upset to lose this unit. It was the second such unit that was destroyed. I am happy to report that I won an Fostex X-28 on eBay November 2nd. It won't be exactly like my X-24 but I will be able to play my old tapes and amp my guitar. Who knows the X-28 might be an upgrade from the X-24. I will certainly be happy to review it when it gets here. For sure I can say that they are vulnerable because they are plastic!
Blogroll Me! I am lucky to live next door to the owners of Frijolito Farm. The farm used to be next door but is now located nearby. I get fresh eggs and processed chickens that are raised locally and fed local food. They are happy chickens right up till their last day. I snagged this picture from Facebook and here is what Wayne says about the eggs.
What makes our eggs different than others you'll find at farmers markets in central Ohio: our hens get several buckets full of fruit and vegetable scraps every week from the Greener Grocer at North Market. Much of it is organic or locally grown. You just can't get eggs this tasty from chicken feed alone.
Blogroll Me! A friend sent me this in an email. It is from CNN
Editor's note: TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas worth spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its website. Julian Treasure, the author of "Sound Business," is chairman of UK-based audio branding specialist The Sound Agency and an international speaker on sound's effects on people, on business and on society.
(CNN) -- Most of us have become so used to suppressing noise that we don't think much about what we're hearing, or about how we listen. Yet our well-being is now being seriously damaged by modern sound. Here are 10 things about sound and health that you may not know:
1.) You are a chord. This is obvious from physics, though it's admittedly somewhat metaphorical to call the combined rhythms and vibrations within a human being a chord, which we usually understand to be an aesthetically pleasant audible collection of tones. But "the fundamental characteristic of nature is periodic functioning in frequency, or musical pitch," according to C.T. Eagle. Matter is vibrating energy; therefore, we are a collection of vibrations of many kinds, which can be considered a chord.
2.) One definition of health may be that that chord is in complete harmony. The World Health Organization defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" which opens at least three dimensions to the concept. On a philosophical level, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras and Confucius all wrote at length about the relationship between harmony, music and health (both social and physical). Here's Socrates: "Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful."
Watch an interview with Julian Treasure
3.) We see one octave; we hear ten. An octave is a doubling in frequency. The visual spectrum in frequency terms is 400-790 THz, so it's just under one octave. Humans with great hearing can hear from 20 Hz to 20 KHz, which is ten octaves. Video: Julian Treasure: Making life sound better RELATED TOPICS
* Hearing Loss and Deafness * Health and Fitness * Plato * World Health Organization * Environmental Issues and Protection
4.) We adopt listening positions. Listening positions are a useful set of perspectives that can help people to be more conscious and effective in communication -- because expert listening can be just as powerful as speaking. For example, men typically adopt a reductive listening position, listening for something, often a point or solution.
Women, by contrast, typically adopt an expansive listening position, enjoying the journey, going with the flow. When unconscious, this mismatch causes a lot of arguments.
Other listening positions include judgmental (or critical), active (or reflective), passive (or meditative) and so on. Some are well known and widely used; for example, active listening is trained into many therapists, counselors and educators.
5.) Noise harms and even kills. There is now wealth of evidence about the harmful effect of noise, and yet most people still consider noise a local matter, not the major global issue it has become.
According to a 1999 U.S. Census report, Americans named noise as the number one problem in neighborhoods. Of the households surveyed, 11.3 percent stated that street or traffic noise was bothersome, and 4.4 percent said it was so bad that they wanted to move. More Americans are bothered by noise than by crime, odors and other problems listed under "other bothersome conditions."
TED.com: Music is medicine, music is sanity
The European Union says: "Around 20% of the Union's population or close on 80 million people suffer from noise levels that scientists and health experts consider to be unacceptable, where most people become annoyed, where sleep is disturbed and where adverse health effects are to be feared. An additional 170 million citizens are living in so-called 'grey areas' where the noise levels are such to cause serious annoyance during the daytime."
The World Health Organization says: "Traffic noise alone is harming the health of almost every third person in the WHO European Region. One in five Europeans is regularly exposed to sound levels at night that could significantly damage health."
The WHO is also the source for the startling statistic about noise killing 200,000 people a year. Its findings (LARES report) estimate that 3 percent of deaths from ischemic heart disease result from long-term exposure to noise. With 7 million deaths a year globally, that means 210,000 people are dying of noise every year.
TED.com: Jose Abreu on kids transformed by music
The cost of noise to society is astronomical. The EU again: "Present economic estimates of the annual damage in the EU due to environmental noise range from EUR 13 billion to 38 billion. Elements that contribute are a reduction of housing prices, medical costs, reduced possibilities of land use and cost of lost labour days." (Future Noise Policy European Commission Green Paper 1996).
Then there is the effect of noise on social behavior. The U.S. report "Noise and its effects" (Administrative Conference of the United States, Alice Suter, 1991) says: "Even moderate noise levels can increase anxiety, decrease the incidence of helping behavior, and increase the risk of hostile behavior in experimental subjects. These effects may, to some extent, help explain the "dehumanization" of today's urban environment."
Perhaps Confucius and Socrates have a point.
6.) Schizophonia is unhealthy. "Schizophonia" describes a state where what you hear and what you see are unrelated. The word was coined by the great Canadian audiologist Murray Schafer and was intended to communicate unhealthiness. Schafer explains: "I coined the term schizophonia intending it to be a nervous word. Related to schizophrenia, I wanted it to convey the same sense of aberration and drama."
My assertion that continual schizophonia is unhealthy is a hypothesis that science could and should test, both at personal and also a social level. You have only to consider the bizarre jollity of train carriages now -- full of lively conversation but none of it with anyone else in the carriage -- to entertain the possibility that this is somehow unnatural. Old-style silence at least had the virtue of being an honest lack of connection with those around us. Now we ignore our neighbors, merrily discussing intimate details of our lives as if the people around us simply don't exist. Surely this is not a positive social phenomenon.
7. Compressed music makes you tired. However clever the technology and the psychoacoustic algorithms applied, there are many issues with data compression of music, as discussed in this excellent article by Robert Harley back in 1991. My assertion that listening to highly compressed music makes people tired and irritable is based on personal and anecdotal experience - again it's one that I hope will be tested by researchers.
8. Headphone abuse is creating deaf kids. Over 19 percent of American 12 to 19 years old exhibited some hearing loss in 2005-2006, an increase of almost 5 percent since 1988-94 (according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Josef Shargorodsky et al, reported with comments from the researchers here). One university study found that 61 percent of freshmen showed hearing loss (Leeds 2001).
Many audiologists use the rule of thumb that your headphones are too loud if you can't hear someone talking loudly to you. For example, Robert Fifer, an associate professor of audiology and speech pathology at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, says: "If you can still hear what people are saying around you, you are at a safe level. If the volume is turned so loudly that you can no longer hear conversation around you, or if someone has to shout at you at a distance of about 2 or 3 feet to get your attention, then you are up in the hazardous noise range."
TED.com: Evelyn Glennie shows how to listen
9. Natural sound and silence are good for you. These assertions seem to be uncontroversial. Perhaps they resonate with everyone's experience or instinct.
10. Sound can heal. Both music therapy and sound therapy can be categorized as "sound healing." Music therapy (the use of music to improve health) is a well-established form of treatment in the context of mainstream medicine for many conditions, including dementia and autism.
Less mainstream, though intellectually no more difficult to accept, is sound therapy: the use of tones or sounds to improve health through entrainment (affecting one oscillator with a stronger one). This is long-established: shamanic and community chant and the use of various resonators like bells and gongs, date back thousands of years and are still in use in many cultures around the world.
Just because something is pre-Enlightenment and not done in hospitals doesn't mean that it's new-age BS. Doubtless there are charlatans offering snake oil (as in many fields), but I suspect there is also much to learn, and just as herbal medicine gave rise to many of the drugs we use today, I suspect there are rich resources and fascinating insights to be gleaned when science starts to unpack the traditions of sound healing.
I hope these thoughts make a contribution to raising awareness of sound and its effects on health. I welcome your reaction, and I will check this forum and respond.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julian Treasure.
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