March 2008 archive

I took these during a summer jaunt to a local art gallery and garden. I remember it well because my father and his wife were visiting and it was about 105 degrees out and I had to snap them quickly while they fanned themselves in the shade of the garden.

They seemed much happier when we went into the air conditioned gallery to see the exhibit. My father confessed to me that he thought I was exaggerating about the heat in August. He told me on the phone the other day they really enjoyed their visit but would remember “that damned heat for the rest of their lives.” I figure living in Memphis is good training in case I really do end up in Hell.

Thanks for looking. Remember don’t rec pony party. Hang out, chit chat and then go read some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.

I am so excited I finally gave in and bought myself a gigantic Le Creuset dutch oven. It cost a gallon of blood and a few dollars, to. However, now I can take another shot at some classic French cooking. I found the a great version of a coq au vin recipe this month’s Gourmet magazine but the weather has warmed up so as soon as it gets chilly I will take my shot.

Most classic French cooking is pretty non fancy….

Not sure about that accent…..

Morning type music….

Thanks for looking. Remember, don’t rec pony party. Hang out… chit chat and then go read some of the excellent offerings on our recent and rec’d list.

Due to the soaring prices of food, especially wheat, corn, rice and other cereals, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is drafting plans to reduce the number of nations receiving food aid as well as the amount of food supplied.  

Please allow me to intrpret the Administrations words, in plain English.

Due to the price of the War in Iraq and the graft being paid to officials in Pakastan, Iraq, and various other shady dealings that are going on under the cover of “state secrets”, we will be unable to continue sending food to starving people in other countries.  Our greed is such that the rising cost of food is cutting into our personal profits, and that will never do!

From the Washington Post:

USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year’s end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India.

Officials said they were reviewing all of the agency’s emergency programs — which target almost 40 countries and zones including Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Honduras and Sudan’s Darfur region — to decide how and where the cuts will be made.

As if it even needs to be said, our thanks should be going out to Dennis Kucinich! For standing up for Single Payer Not-for-Profit Health Care for all. For calling on the withdrawl from NAFTA. For standing against the war and occupation in Iraq, and not voting to fund this catastrophe. And for standing up to Dick Cheney and W by calling for their impeachment.

This is an Open Thread:

so you look into the land and it will tell you a story

story ’bout a journey ended long ago

if you listen to the motion of the wind in the mountains

maybe you can hear them talking like I do

Saturday’s Headlines: Obama Walks a Difficult Path as He Courts Jewish Voters : Airbus, Northrop Grumman win Air Force tanker contract: New Israeli raids on Gaza kill 18 : Turkey urges PKK to end struggle: Kremlin accused of fixing presidential poll: Prince Harry withdrawn from Afghanistan after cover is blown: Double jeopardy for Japanese ‘killer’: In Kenya, U.S. Added Action to Talk of Democracy: A Lawmaker Whose Nation Dislikes Her Friends

White House ties troop levels to Iraqi elections

A senior official says withdrawals must stop this summer to ensure security at the polls. Doubts are also cast on Army plans to shorten combat tours.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration believes a halt in troop reductions in Iraq after July is needed in part to ensure a large enough force is present to provide security for local elections, a senior administration official said Friday.

By tying troop levels to Iraq’s provincial elections, officials in effect established a new milestone to guide U.S. policy during President Bush’s last months in office. And by linking them to the elections, the administration is increasing pressure on the Iraqis to actually hold the balloting.

Iraq’s presidency council, consisting of three top officials, vetoed legislation this week that set plans for the provincial elections, which the U.S. regards as one of the benchmarks of political progress in Iraq.

White House blocks inquiry into construction of $736m embassy in Iraq

The Bush administration is blocking an inquiry into the delay-plagued construction of the $736m US embassy in Baghdad, a senior Democrat in Congress said today.

Henry Waxman, who is chairman of the oversight committee in the House of Representatives, asked US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice today to explain why her department certified the embassy as “substantially completed” in December despite inspections that reveal continued deficiencies in the facility’s water, fire alarm and kitchen systems.

The Baghdad embassy, which stands to become the largest US diplomatic facility in the world, had an original opening date of mid-2007. But the project stalled amid ballooning cost estimates as well as charges of corruption and shoddy work by the private contracting company overseeing the project.

 Sandalwood and sage was the first thing to hit my consciousness, I opened my eyes and felt a lick at my hand. The tongue was too large to be a cat’s so I deduced I was still with Hecate, or had returned to the wrong body, always an inconvenience. Sitting up caused a large amount of spinning.  

“Don’t rush it. I told the cats not to worry and to blow the candles out as it would be awhile.”  My cats could be pyrokinetic when the mood suited them; fortunately for me they never use it to express displeasure. They would also keep the wards up so no entity would get into my room and cause havoc. I would have to really thank the dragons if they had chosen to hang around.

“Thank you Mother. What happened?”

” I showed you the truth. I wasn’t sure if you would survive the psychic backlash but I had to risk it as explaining the process would never have worked.”

“Wait, what? Gods come from Stonehenge!!!! Don’t let the New Agers know, they’ll tear through the rest of it trying to find which part of which stone goes to which deity and argue over who’s got the more authentic rock.”  That caused several giggles and tongues lolling in doggy laughter. “I think the alcohol I had earlier absorbed the backlash, but somehow I still have a world class hang over.”

“Naomh’an, you of all people should know alcohol and magic do not mix! In this case however it may have saved you, who knows what would have happened if you had seen that while in complete control of your mind, your normal barriers may have fought it so much that it could have damaged you.”

“Why did you take that risk Mother? Either I am way more important than I thought or I mean a lot less to you then you have led me to believe.”

“Naomh’an, dear one, you mean more to me then you should know at this point. If I had told you about that would you have believed it? Would it have made as much of an impression? Most important, would you have learned the truths that you know now? ”

“All I know now is that nothing I knew before was right.”

“Notice the first thing you said, “Gods come from Stonehenge”. How did you know it was a god?”

“Nothing else made sense I guess, you’re a Goddess and we were talking about deities when we went there.” I was shaking from psychic shock and she was quizzing me. Think, Caitlin, think, what had just happened.  The faces and shapes in the fog, what did they represent. The stones were obviously a focusing point but of what. “Those people in the fog, the

babble about the veil between worlds is more then babble isn’t it? Those were other worlds, dimensions and planes.” Hecate nodded and handed me some tea.  ” So people do create gods? How? This is much worse then the chicken and egg high school philosophy stumper isn’t it.”

“Yes it is. We think we know how it started but even we do not know because every deity was created and can be a creator. Every plane, every dimension, every realm has energy. Energy cannot be stagnant, it must move, must grow, must become something. Perhaps the first sentient being just manifested, we do not know. What we do know is that the nature of energy is to create; the created life form loses some of its connection to the original current of nature. Over time, as life forms become more complex they feel less of the original link to their  “mother” for lack of a better term. They then start trying to recapture that connection through creating religions and myths, as those myths gain more believers, they become thought forms. The more energy that is poured into a thought form the more power it gets until finally the thought form manifests from the quicksilver as you saw. The believers decide the form. Once it manifests it goes to it’s plane and provides the connection to the source.  All thought forms start off weak, with little ability to affect much other then to serve as a conduit for its followers to touch the source. The longer the thought form exists and is fed energy the stronger it becomes. Many of us have faded back into the source or have taken on other forms as believers die out or change the forms in which they believe. We take on the nature of our creators, some of us were created to kill, to heal or to conquer. The ones of us that were originally created by conquering races have used the ability to shift forms to gain more followers; as a result they have become powerful enough to create new worlds. When they do this, they supplant the natural forces of creation and usually the worlds they created self-destruct over time because they were never stable. This has happened many times. ” She stopped to let me absorb.

“So what does this have to do with vampires?” I was too mentally exhausted to absorb, I just wanted a simple answer.

“Sometimes, thought forms are so strong that they can take beings from one realm or world and transplant them onto a world they created. It is easier for a thought form to remain strong if it has a base of strong believers with it. The presence that I felt was not of your world, was not summoned by a witch nor is it from any realm I know.” Then she shimmered and I was back in my body, all my limbs had fallen asleep.

 

A Hokkaido Shimbun reporter who was arrested for molesting a female hotel employee admitted the allegations, saying, “I was drunk and don’t clearly remember what I did, but I’m sure I committed the crime.”

A Kyoto court ordered a 26-year-old man to pay ¥670,000 in damages to a woman he punched in the face after she repeatedly told him to remove his bag from an unoccupied bus seat so an elderly passenger could sit down.

A Nagano-to-Tokyo shinkansen was delayed for 37 minutes after an 80-year-old passenger traveling in the Green Car without a ticket punched a conductor in the jaw.