Category Archives: four-leggeds

Around the Fort

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(SORT OF A PERSONAL BLOG–LOCAL STUFF)

It was announced today that Bob Dylan is coming to Fort Wayne on August 21st–he’ll be playing at the downtown baseball stadium.  Sounds like a nice time.

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FW has festivals coming out the wazoo–

Right now, there’s Ribfest going on, and in about a month, there’s the biggest –the Three Rivers Festival.  In September, the Johnny Appleseed Festival, celebrating the folk hero who planted apple orchards.  It’s kind of an “old settlers” festival.  I haven’t been to any of the festivals, so I can’t really comment on them from an experience perspective.

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In the local news, I see the link “Batman needs a home”…intrigued, I clicked on it:http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120615/BLOGS22/120619763/0/FRONTPAGE

Haha…not what I was expecting. 🙂

He’s a little cutie, eh?  He looks almost exactly like a kitty my son brought home one day.

The story goes like this:  My son used to go jogging in the area we used to live in, and he said this kitten followed him home one day.  The oldest story in the world, folks, and I fell for it….:)  The truth came out later–he said that the kitten meowed at him, and he was afraid it was going to get hit, so he picked it up and brought it home.  Not that I minded.  The other cat we had, Sammy, did mind, however. She had an issue with sharing. Haha.

Anyway, we took Zeus in and he was apparently much older than we thought–he wasn’t taken care of and it was apparent that someone had dumped him (we lived in the country).  He was such a character–full of life and such a little imp.  He was the first cat that I ever allowed to go outside on a regular basis.  All my previous kitties had been housecats…but Zeus–he heard the beat of a different drummer, as they say, and it would have killed his spirit to be indoors.  He loved the freedom of running around outdoors.  I remember once when i went outside to tend the little garden I had (organic, of course), and I played a little game of hide-and-seek with him–I “hid” behind a tree, and to his delight, would pounce when he would come running past.  Heh.

His love of outdoors was his downfall, however.  One morning, after I had taken the kids to school, he was at the back door and he didn’t look right.  He was dragging his rear end lower than normal.  I didn’t see anything, like blood on him, but I knew something was wrong, so I took him to the vet.  The vet said he was struck by a car….which didn’t make sense because there was no dirt or blood on him or marks of any kind.

So, I took him home and watched as the poor thing got worse.  I called the vet’s office and got the assistant.  When I told her I thought he was worse, and that he was panting from pain, she said that there was nothing we could do for them–you couldn’t give cats anything for pain.  I just had to wait for him to work through it.

The next day, he ate a little so I was optimistic that he was going to recover.  However, as the day wore on, his status grew shaky. He wanted to be let out, but I refused.  I would realize later that he knew he was dying and he wanted to be alone.

The next morning, just before 6:00 a.m., I heard him meow in my bedroom.  I thought he was doing better–what I didn’t realize was that he was crying out before he passed.  My daughter said “Mom, something’s not right with Zeus’ eyes.”  The light had gone out of his eyes.  We cried for the little imp that was with us only a short time and buried him in the garden that he loved.

I strongly suspect that a crotchety old neighbor hit Zeus on the back and that was what caused his death.  Zeus had always been afraid to come near me when I was sweeping the back patio area.  I couldn’t understand why…and the only thing that makes sense is that someone hit him with a broom.  My neighbor detested me because I stood up to him on a few occasions when he was trying to bully me and he hated Zeus, too.  I wouldn’t be surprised to know that he had struck Zeus.  It’s just a hypothesis…I’ll never really know what happened.  Rest in peace, little man.

 

Protests against chemicals

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The stroller brigade went to DC to protest the non-transparency of chemicals on our health and the environment. Link to info here.

Glad to see it.  I am dumbfounded on a daily basis at the apathy by those around me to the onslaught of toxins and how much damage they are doing not only to us but the environment.

People will tell me they’re taking x amount of prescription drugs, while drinking cokes, eating junk food, etc., while their bodies are already being assaulted.    One resident of the building  came outside, saying he wanted to “get some fresh air”….while dragging on a cigarette…

…I had to stifle myself to keep from cracking up laughing…

It’s just mindboggling how they don’t see any connection between how poorly they feel and the chemical soup we’re in.

I’ve noticed a change in people’s behavior when they saturate the skies with chemtrails…is anybody investigating that?

Here is a link exploring that.  There aren’t a lot of credible sources out there on this issue–but just from my personal observation, I think they are affecting people’s health.  Mercury poisoning makes one much, much more sensitive to toxins–car exhaust, perfumes, chemical cleaners, electro-magnetic fields (at one point, I couldn’t talk on a cell phone without getting a migraine the next day)etc.–and when they spray this junk in the air, I have a reaction to it.

One link I read said that the chemtrails contain aluminum and barium–those two metals are hazardous to one’s health–so I went looking for more info on it and found this.

I’m afraid that it will be like the onslaught of diseases after  introduction of chemicals–mainly cancer that takes many years to manifest.  I can say, as a canary in the coal mine, my reaction is a warning of how it is affecting folks who are not mercury toxic…

 

Farm bill 2012

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Environmental Working Group’s take on Farm Bill 2012. (hat tip to organic consumers)

Instead, legislators created an expensive new entitlement program (called “shallow loss”) that guarantees nearly 90 percent of the income of farm businesses already enjoying record profits. It also leaves untouched a bloated $9-billion-a-year crop insurance program that pays about 60 percent of farmers’ crop insurance premiums, no matter how large the farm, and sends billions to crop insurance companies and their agents.

Most of the benefits of these proposed programs would flow to the big five commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, rice and wheat) that provide feed for livestock, raw material for processed food and corn ethanol fuel for our cars. Not only would these proposals be highly inequitable and wasteful, but the new revenue guarantees, combined with unlimited insurance subsidies and high crop prices, will create powerful new incentives for growers to plow up fragile wetlands and grasslands and erase many of farming’s recent environmental gains.

 

I like that it at least adds monies for food stamp recipients to purchase locally grown food at farmer’s markets.  Great idea.  I actually made the suggestion to our housing authority folks to help us get some land to plant our own vegetables to raise organically.  *crickets*

 

Link to Craig Cox, of Environmental Working Group’s statement on it here.

The smiley face of Monsanto

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I was listening to our local radio station over the weekend, and heard this radio ad of “America’s Farmers”.  My ears immediately perked up and I listened for the reason behind the ad…political? PR? Raising awareness?

I found it at the end of the ad, when they quietly disclosed it was brought to you by….Monsanto.  Um-hmmm…

Here’s the website:  http://www. americasfarmers .com/  I’m not linking to it for obvious reasons.  I’ve made spaces in the addy, so you’ll have to close them up to look it up in your browser.

The website is just *this close* to equating farming with patriotism…

I clicked on the “Hear their stories’ link, and to the right is a paragraph with the sentence “They get up everyday just to ensure we have food on the table and clothes on our backs. and they do it without being asked.”  They do it because they get PAID for their work.  They do it so they can put food on the table and clothes on their own families’ backs.  They do it without being asked?  WTH does that mean, really?

I clicked on the “Meet the Families” link.  The first family are the Boyds:  Will and Wendy, and their children Wilson, Weston, Waylon, and Wenslie….(I already don’t like them because of being cutesy while naming their kids.)  Let’s see…they’ve had the farm for five generations…that would put them back in the times of slavery… and the farm is in Georgia….hmmmm….and they are politicians with being a County Commissioner, along with being deep in the Farm Bureau, which is no longer representative of the farmers, but a part of the political machinery….kind of like the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA–or Bossy Indian Around).  So…yeah, don’t see a lot of free thinking here who would question Monsanto or their motives.

The rest of the families basically all say the same thing–Farming is not a job, but a way of life.  Yep.  Anyone around here (Indiana being a big corn producing state) knows somebody who’s a farmer and how farming IS a way of life. What they don’t understand is how they are destroying that very life by supporting an organization that couldn’t care less about messing with nature.

Four years ago, I worked on an organic farm for one summer, and if my adrenals didn’t start crashing, I would have loved to have gone back and worked on another farm the next summer.  It’s great being outdoors tending to the plants.  No one is around–just you and the quiet….and the birds perched nearby singing or the occasional grasshopper or flutterby’s that happen in your path.  Watching clouds form and wondering how long you can push it until you need to run for cover…being caught in a rainstorm… or at lunch time, sitting by the “wild” pond (i.e., it’s not been made “pretty” by landscapers…nature “scaped” it).

Farm families know their survival depends on the family working together.  I fail to see how Monsanto ties into that.  If anything it’s the opposite—  Ask Percy Schmeiser, or any farm family that has been sued by Monsanto. What Monsanto means to say…is that they support chemical farmers, but sue organic farmers…

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organicconsumers.org has this up–more legal tactics by Monsanto.  Their legislators need backbone transplants….

More here on the changes in tadpoles after exposure to RoundUp.

Here’s another link from organic consumers about an organic farmer and their trials.  It sounds like a good book.  From the little tidbits mentioned in the article, she “gets it”–that all things are connected–the earth, the animals, etc.