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Are You Eating TOO much SUGAR

editor — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:16:04 GMT

I found this interesting video on Youtube about sugar in soft drinks.

YOU WILL BE SHOCKED!

Independence Day!!

Pami — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:10:46 GMT

I often ask myself where the time goes because one morning it is Sunday and it seems that the next morning it is Sunday again!

I remember when our nation celebrated it's 200th birthday on July 4th, 1976! We lived in the housing project that is named Washington Mill because it is right near the Washington Grist Mill that was created by our first president himself. George Washington loved the land here at Perryopolis, Pennsylvania and this great man's footsteps and some of those first veterans walked on this very soil. To even think of this is tremendous.

At that time our children were young and carefree and rambunctious. Kristy was 11, Joseph was 10, and Anna was 6. They played with all the kids in the project and when there would be a carnival or events going on we would all be there together.

From our porch all my relatives and their children would come to our house to sit out in the back yard and watch the fireworks displays put off by the town's firemen. That was a very special time for all of us each year that we got together.

On July 4th, 1976 I wrote in my journal that all the church bells in the town were ringing and resounding in celebration of our country's freedom. What a wonderful possession it is to be free!

The price for that freedom has been high in lives and the price was paid from the very first veteran and on to the very last veteran who will always be protecting this great country.

Each time I write about what this price is, my heart goes out to the lonely service person whose own heart could be pounding, hearing the guns and tanks roaring, knowing this could be his or her last day on our good God's Earth. How can we thank them enough for this price they are paying? How could we ever put a price on a life that is worth more than all the diamonds we could ever find, or worth more than all the gold in the Earth? How could we tell a mother or father their child is not coming home, or tell a child their mother or father is not coming home?

Reflect on this Independence Day! Each country has a veteran! If you are free I am sure you have an Independence Day! We can do our part to say "thank you!"

With my words, I say "Thank You for my freedom!"

Pami

(I am sure you have read about our grandson, Sean whom we lovingly raised for almost 12 years and enjoyed each second. He is just 21 and is at war's door. Please say a prayer for him. We love him dearly and our heart's go out to him each day that we live! Kristy, Sean's mom served with the Army. Joseph retired from the Army. Anna served with the Navy. Their Dad, my Eddie, served in the Army and Sean is with the Marines.)

Forum: PAMI

Alkaline Diet Will Keep You Healthy

editor — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 13:52:31 GMT

This video could help you regain your health. I have met so many people over the last couple years that are suffering from every imaginable sickness. I believe thier diet is the root cause of their suffering.

There is significant evidence that an alkaline diet can restore your body to excellent health. You will save money and you will look and feel better. What could be better than that?

Check out this important video

Forum: What is on your mind today?

Evil Consequences of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Builder — Thur, 03 Jul 2008 21:38:05 GMT

Irony? Hypocrisy? Double standard? No term fits the need to describe the situation where a person who believes in the right to life for a zygote a few days old or a fetus a few days older still is prepared to take the life of another who wants to abort it.

Most people who subscribe to the anti-abortion movement do not believe in killing the abortion doctor and cases of people of this belief killing a woman who has had an abortion are rare. But they are prepared to attach a social stigma to a woman who has had an abortion, one that would last for the lifetime of the woman and even potentially impact the lives of any children she might have in the future.

The anti-abortion or Right To Life movement bases its whole argument against abortion on the emotional issue of morality. They claim it's morally wrong to end the life of a newly conceived human. They claim it's a sin.

They have no problem eating a potato, which had more advanced life within it at the time it was wrenched from the ground than an aborted fetus. For them, killing a potato is not a moral issue, aborting a human life is. Killing one form of life, they say, is a sin, whereas killing another is quite acceptable. Perhaps because they stand to gain personally from the nutrition gained by eating the potato.

Bacteria, billions of which live within our bodies and help us hold onto the very fabric of our life and without which what we think of as life could not exist, benefit from the disposal of an aborted fetus. Starving existing bacteria and preventing the multiplication of bacterial life forms that would follow the eating of the aborted fetus are not issue for them. For anti-abortionists, that kind of killing is not on their radar. Maybe because they are the ones doing it.

For the Right To Life folks, the human form of life is far more important than any other life form. This may seen natural because the Right To Life people are humans. They have a vested interest in the survival and increase in number of their kind, as explained by evolution theory.

The problem--at its foundation--is that morality is based entirely on emotion. Though humans make claims based on morality they say came to them from God, God remains silent on the issue to everyone except the believers. Those believers, in most cases, belong to a form of religion. All religions, as a close examination of any of them readily reveals, were creations of humankind.

No evidence exists that any religion is supported by God. No evidence exists that any religion ever began with God as its foundation, despite the fact that hundreds of religions in the world today claim exactly that. In every religion, one or a very small number of people claim that God has given them direction. That claim cannot be reproduced by others not of the religion, nor has it been reproduced by other members of the same religion that made the claim.

God, they say, is for everyone. But God only speaks directly to one or a very few who claim they have a special relationship with him. The hypocrisy of that never seems to dawn on the believers.

Morality is a human creation, directly related to attempts by religions to influence the character and behaviour of their followers and others who are not of their belief set.

Morality is based on emotion. As scientist and author Carl Sagan said, "Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves." Or, in the case of religions that ask their followers to believe while providing no evidence to support their claims or making their God accessible to every believer, we allow ourselves to be fooled.

Abortion is an ethical issue, not a moral one. The difference is that ethical issues allow everyone to participate in the careful scrutiny of evidence and arguments in order to winnow out a conclusion or opinions, whereas moral issues are solved merely by having the leader or a religion make a statement and make it dogma for the followers of that religion. Believers of a religion are asked to believe the dictates of its dogma as well, its moral code.

Moralists claim that the abortion doctor and the woman who allows herself to be aborted are sinners and life-takers. They believe that because that is what they have been taught by the perpetrators of the morality plot.

The aborted life, they claim, has a right to life. What kind of life, they never allow to become an issue or to come under examination.

A woman aborts because she believes that she cannot provide the necessities of life to her future child. Those necessities do not include just food and shelter, as the anti-abortionists say they could be provided through social assistance. The anti-abortionists are prepared to increase the socio-economic class we know as poverty immensely by preventing newly conceived lives from being snuffed. Look at the people who are mired in poverty today and you will find families led by single mothers well represented.

Setting aside the issue of increasing the rate of poverty by disallowing abortions, let's look at the lives of the children who would be allowed to live if abortion were prevented. The children are at the heart of the abortion issue, though the Right to Life people never seem to want it to be discussed.

A child raised by a mother and/or father who doesn't want it. A child raised by a mother or father who has almost no information, knowledge or skills in parenting. A child raised by a parent who may well be scared to death of the child because he or she doesn't know what to do with it. A child raised by a parent whose only source of income is the welfare of the state. Usually the parent cannot provide the lessons of life the child needs because the parent has not experienced or learned them herself, or himself.

Everyone agrees that women who get pregnant when they don't want a child made a mistake. A mistake should not be multiplied into a living hell for a child who was raised by a parent who does not have the tools or the skills or the finances to provide full parenting to it. All because moralists insist that the mother must pay for her mistake. Must the child suffer for a lifetime as well?

My parents wanted me. It was what they had been taught young adults should do, get married and have children. However, my parents had no idea about parenting skills. I never played with another child until I was six years old. My parents never played with me themselves because they didn't know how. When I was around three, my father told my mother than I may be mentally deranged because I had invented a fictional character to play with. That character was a cow I kept behind the dining room door.

I lived in a rural area, a farming area where cattle were the most plentiful form of life I saw in the few times I was taken in the family car for some visit to town. I saw children the odd time, not usually. But the children I saw were playing. As I had no concept of what playing was, I could not create a fictional child friend. A fictional cow friend was the best I could do. The best I knew how to do.

I was also never read to, never included in an adult conversation, never included in a parent-child conversation because none ever happened. I was a prisoner of life. My parents loved me, I guess. But they didn't know how to show that love, so I couldn't be sure. They weren't mean to me, except when they almost starved me because they insisted upon leaving me at the kitchen table because I could not and would not eat canned corn and I chose to starve instead. I detested corn, while my father loved it, so he could not understand why his child should not be forced to eat it.

I grew up in a family where I was wanted, but my parents had no parenting skills. I can honestly say that it took me 60 years to recover from my first six years with no parenting and no contact with other children. Many unwanted children of today may not recover.

I didn't become a criminal, though my background provided me with the potential for it. I considered it as an occupation at one time, but chose against it. Not because my parents talked me out of it, because they never gave me parent-to-child advice. I chose not to be a criminal because I didn't know how and didn't have the mentor to show me. There was no right-wrong decision made, just a utilitarian one based on the cold hard facts: I had no way to learn how to be a competent criminal.

Almost every criminal behind bars today can be shown to be and have been in their formative years backward or slow in both social and emotional development, the same problems I had growing up and in my first few decades as an adult. Almost everyone who takes Prozac, other mood altering prescriptions drugs, illegal drugs or an excess of alcohol on a regular basis can be shown to have deficiencies in their social or emotional development (often both).

Somehow, I missed all that. I was lucky in that way. But I lived for most of my life in a kind of prison that someone who has not experienced it could never understand. I was not a real person. Not real enough.

That is the kind of life that anti-abortionists would create for far more people than live it today, if abortion were banned and unwanted children or children born to parents who lack parenting skills and sufficient financial means to raise them adequately were allowed to happen. They could have social or psychological problems. They could have axes to grind.

The effects on the health care and social services systems of people with social and emotional deficiencies or malformations in our communities is so staggeringly large that it may not even be possible to calculate it. The consequences of having these people in positions where they can influence political decisions such as those relating to war or capital punishment is unknowable. The imagination allows us to consider how our society has been influenced by people who grew up in families where they did not receive proper assistance with their social and emotional development. Few do that because it's uncomfortable.

Where a political decision could affect whether or not people with low levels of intelligence are born and allowed to be supported for their lifetimes by the social systems of our communities, the decision is somehow clear. Where children will be born into families that don't want them, can't support them financially, do not have the parenting skills to raise them properly and that will condemn them to a life of incompleteness and social and emotional ineptitude, the decision seems to be made harder by those whose investment in the abortion issue is purely emotional. Emotional. Let every child conceived live, no matter what the consequences.

All it takes to become a parent is the ability and circumstance to have sex with someone of the opposite gender. For those who oppose abortion, that too is sufficient background for them to raise the children that result from those few moments of hormonal excitement.

Each of us must consider the ethics of this issue. However, as someone who spent 60 years learning how to be a child, learning what an adolescent of 16 should know but having agonized with the lack of skills and knowledge for so long, the morality of bringing an unwanted child into the world is clear to me.

Now consider what I passed along to my children, and they will pass along to their own kids. Knowing nothing about what a child should learn and what a parent should do while I was raising my own kids, I will tell you and they would tell you that I failed them badly. However, that confession doesn't make them better parents. We do not even have the social structure in our society to provide them with what they need to know as parents. Why I lacked in knowledge, they will lack as parents as well.

The question surrounding abortion should not be whether or not a conceived fetus should be allowed to have life. The question should be what kind of life they would have if they were allowed to be born. Not good.

In the courts, ignorance of the law is not accepted as an excuse for violating that law. In life, ignorance of parenting skills and child development is accepted as sufficient reason to let a child be born and raised in a social and emotional prison.

The same people who cry that science must never be allowed to produce cloned babies or to use genetic manipulation to produce children of superior skills or intelligence will happily and eagerly permit young adults who are ignorant of parenting skills to raise children who may be socially and emotionally defective or underdeveloped for life.

The existence or non-existence of life is not the critical issue surrounding abortion. The most important criteria have to do with the quality of life to which unwanted children would be subjected.

That is cruelty as egregious as genocide or murder. That is inhumane treatment of our fellow humans.

From a morality standpoint, abortion--a one-time event--is the main issue. Ethically, preventing abortions of unwanted children is an issue that extends over many lifetimes and generations.

Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are socially and emotionally developed as much as they are intellectually and physically developed.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Forum: What is on your mind today?

Pouring Rain!

Pami — Thur, 03 Jul 2008 19:59:32 GMT

Both of us are watching the rain! Jezebel is lounging lazily at her place here at the window and I am watching the walking trail becoming covered with water.

No wonder everything looks like a Tropical Rain Forest, although I have never seen the Tropical Rain Forest, I can imagine from looking at these trees and green plants!

The Sumac trees seem to be growing about a foot a day, it seems. The hillside beside the house is full of Sumacs again. There is a wild rose and the lilac bush trying to force them out, but these Sumacs are fast growers.

Lightning has been flashing and thunder booming so loud it is actually shaking the house.

They say a typical rain storm lasts about 15 minutes but this one seems as though it has been going on a lot longer.

Happy Day.

Pami

Forum: PAMI

Rainy Summer

Sue08 — Thur, 03 Jul 2008 11:47:42 GMT

Well I woke up this morning to the sound of rain drops on the roof. More rain for us here in Ontario. We seem to have had so much and the reason I can tell is because our pond is still full. Normally by July the pond would have dropped at least 2 feet and it is still brim filled full of water! It has been great for the garden and flower pots, I think I have only watered maybe once this year so far. The flowers and veggies are nice and tall and lusciously green. I do hope we get a good amount of sun so the flowers will start to bloom and my tomatoes develop.

I listened to the news and the forecast for next week is hot and humid with sun, so that at least is good news.
The other morning there was a Hawk sitting on my bird feeder? Can you imagine, we have tons of them flying around but to have one come right to the feeder was absolutely wonderful to see.

It is only July but the garden centers are selling off all their supplies...I love wind chimes and found some wonderful copper ones on sale for only $8, I have put them down on one of the pine trees and love to hear them tinkle in the wind. I also managed to pick up a couple of cheap bushes and have to get them planted...I am trying to add some colour to our green landscape here.

Well happy growing and Happy July 4th to all of you in the US.

Sue

Forum: What is on your mind today?

Water Company Report.

Pami — Thur, 03 Jul 2008 00:42:51 GMT

Do you get a report from the water company telling about your water supply? When you receive your next report check it out and see what your water authority is saying to you about your water supply.

This report lets you know what was checked and what parts per million or billion of contaminants like septic tank run off, for instance, or naturally occurring minerals, or fertilizers from farmland, or just whatever the water collected before it entered the river or streams or springs or wells that the water comes from before it reaches our spigot.

Even bottled drinking water may be expected to contain at least small amounts of some contaminants. Even the fishermen are told to eat only ONE fish a week because of PCBs in the water.

Do you know some of these facts?

Parts per million (ppm) or Milligrams per liter (mg/1)
One part per million corresponds to one minute in two years or a single penny in $10,000.

Parts per billion (ppb) or Micrograms per liter (ug/I)
one part per billion corresponds to one minute in 2000 years,or a single penny in $10,000,000.

Maybe we should use some sort of water purifyer in our homes. Even the pitchers with the filters, or the one that connects to the faucet, and if affordable the more expensive ones.

It is something to think about. BUT, in the meantime it is good to know what one part per million or billion means to us when we take that refreshing drink of Cold, Clear, Water!

Forum: PAMI

934 Views

Pami — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:23:24 GMT

I can not figure out how one article written back in February of this year about an icy morning in Southwestern Pennsylvania would obtain so many views.

I am thinking it is a glitch in the clicking buttons or something.

Just wondering.

Forum: PAMI

Household Tip!

Pami — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:19:08 GMT

My friends Beth and Barb sent me this tip a couple days apart. (I have to tell you I didn't even understand it in the beginning until I attended Barb's reunion and we all got to talking about it and she showed me where this little arrow was.)

I've been using aluminum foil for more years than I care to remember. Great stuff, but sometimes it can be a pain. You know, like when you are in the middle of doing something and you try to pull some foil out and the roll comes out of the box. Then you have to put the roll back in the box and start over. The darn roll always comes out at the wrong time.

Well, I would like to share this with you. Yesterday I went to throw out an empty Reynolds foil box and for some reason I turned it and looked at the end of the box and written on the end it said, "Press here to lock end". Right there on the end of the box is a tab to lock the roll in place. How long has this little locking tab been there? I then looked at a generic brand of aluminum foil and it had one, too. I then looked at a box of Saran wrap and it had one too! I can't count the number of times the Saran warp roll has jumped out when I was trying to cover something up.

I hope I'm not the only person that didn't know about this.

I IMMEDIATELY WENT AND PUSHED IN ALL MY TABS...HA

Have you ever seen these little tabs? I hadn't.

Thanks Beth and Barb!!

Happy Day!

Pami

Forum: PAMI

What Kind Of World Do We Have Really?

Builder — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:41:03 GMT

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession to their character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and poet (1803-1882)

Think about it. That person who is so negative about the world, isn't he also a pessimist about his own future and his place in the world?

The loving mother who dotes on her children also looks on the world as a loving place, with bad guys being the exceptions not the rule.

The happy person sees happy people around him and finds happy situations even when reading world news.

The violent person can cite not just violent experiences from his own family while growing up, he can show you violence all around his community and the world.

A trusting person believes that the world operates on trust, while untrustworthy people are few.

Is your opinion of the world a confession of your character, as Emerson claimed? While the two are related directly, I believe that the relationship goes the opposite way to what Emerson stated. We see in the world people like ourselves. Those who are not like us seem to be the exceptions. When we don't see people like ourselves in our immediate world, we look for them in other places. Sometimes that means a move, a change of job or a change of partner.

Even in the face of apparently overwhelming evidence to the contrary, people will believe about the world what they want to believe. An optimistic person will see the world as a positive place. Nothing will console a negative person about what a hell-on-earth we live in and how no one should bring up a child in the present conditions.

Is the world really a great place with enormous possibilities? Or is hell something we live through each day of our lives?

It depends on what kind of person you are.

If you don't care for the world as it is, change your attitude toward yourself and those around you. You world will gradually become a marvelous place.

You don't have to take Emerson's word for it. Think about what you think of the world in general and about what you think of your own life.

It's true that life is what we make of it. It's also true that your world is what you make of it.

Live the life you want your life to be. The world around you will follow your example.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children with positive attitudes toward themselves and their world and need the tools to make it happen.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Forum: What is on your mind today?

Solar Powered Clothes Dryer

Sue08 — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:50:17 GMT

Hi

I wanted to write and tell you about a conversation I had last week with some people who are concerned about our environment, about our lakes and streams and the rising costs of energy and what we can do to help.

Small simple things came up such as "my wife all ready uses natural solar power to dry our clothes all year round, even in Canada" This brings up the subject of hanging your clothes outside to dry. It definitely will save power, money and energy consumption. Why then is it that some townships, municipalities etc ban people from having a washing line outside? It drives me crazy just thinking this. They actually want you to use a dryer in the middle of a hot and humid summer...putting more consumption on an all ready over taxed grid system. This brings in to debate recent newspaper articles of building gas powered energy station, which in return would pollute our environment even more.

What is wrong with hanging clothes out, they smell nicer, it takes a little more work but the saving are enormous. Yesterday on a cloudy but windy day I managed to dry 4 loads of laundry in about 5 hours. I don't know what is wrong with some policy making towns people. Makes me glad I live in the country.

Other things we can do to help our environment, recycle, plant trees on our properties, collect rain water in barrels to use for our gardens. Wash your car on your grass as opposed to the driveway so the soaps do not get into the water table.
Use energy efficient appliances, this brings to mind the Soapless Revolution in washing your clothes in cold water and no detergent, check out this video to see it in action.

We can also help by not purchasing some of these disposable cleaning products, that you through into the garbage after one use. What happened to good old mops and cloths that you wash and reuse? Paper towels must be one of the worst that fills our garbage like crazy, do we really need them? Think of the savings if you used cloths again.

I wonder what has happened to us...I remember my mother hanging out our cloths and they would be frozen solid during the winter and we would have to wait for them to defrost!! We had no such thing as central heating, taking a hot water bottle to bed was a treat.

We have become dependent on convenience and time saving products, not thinking about the resulting effects to the world we are living in. If everyone does one small thing to help the environment daily we will leave this world in a much cleaner state for our grandchildren to enjoy one day...

thanks for reading.
Sue

Forum: What is on your mind today?

The Lilac- tree

orion — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:28:53 GMT

What do you think of the lilac-tree
Said one day in the spring to me?
I am the keeper, staunch and bold,
Of the fairies' secret treasure hold.

Long ago, in the springtide's birth,
They were called away from the fresh green earth,
And they gave this charge to me to keep.
I guard it well through the winter deep

For those who like to remember the day
Of the fairy folk who were called away.
"What is the treasure?' I asked the tree;
But he only nodded mysteriously.

So I waited, and out on the houghs tree grew
Frail tiny caskets of delicate hue;
And when they unfolded, faint and rare
The sweetest fragrance stole on the air.
So now, when I see the lilac-spray,
I think of the fairies who went away.

Forum: POETRY

Brotherly Act

babyc — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:09:00 GMT

The father of an eminent lawyer, Grantville had a good deed of property, which he intended to settle on his eldest son. The conduct of his young man,however, was unsatisfactory, and as he gave no sign of reformation, the father left his estate to his second son, Grantville.

After his father's death, the disinherited eldest son became greatly dejected. He gave up his bad habits: there was a complete change in his character. His brother, observing this, invited him and some friends to a banquet. After several dishes had been partaken of and removed, Grantville ordered that one particular dish should be set before his brother. When this was uncovered, it was found to contain the title-deeds of the estate!

Grantville then said that he freely conveyed the whole property to his brother, and that he was only doing what he felt sure their father would have done had he lived to witness the change which they all saw..

Forum: BABYC

I Met My grandchildren for the first time!

editor — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:08:22 GMT

Last saturday was a great day for me. I was able to meet my two grandchildren for the first time. It was such a joy for me. I wish I did
not live so far from them. My daughter is standing next to me holding my
grandson and I am holding my granddaughter! She wanted me to read to
hear as soon as I met her so I read her a short story. My granddaughter looks
just like her mommy when she was her age...

A great day for me!

Forum: What is on your mind today?

Snake on the Porch! 7.02.08

Pami — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:54:58 GMT

Last night I opened the door to take Jezebel outside. We had just stepped out on the porch when I was this little triangle head looking at me up over the step.

Jezebel did not see him! I think she needs glasses for she does not know a snake yet. She doesn't pay any attention to them. Now, if Abbie had seen him she would have shaken him to death for she hated snakes.

I hurried and brought Jezzie back inside and got out my trusty broom. I just nudged him down over the steps until he went beside the porch along the front where Eddie has his tomato plants. When I touched him with the broom he struck at it so he is active.

So, he went back down into his little den under the porch and then I took Jezzie outside!

7.02.08
Our snake feels so 'at home' that he just coiled up on the flagstone wall and did not move when we were looking at him today. I did a Google search on Pennsylvania snakes and it said we have three poisonous snakes here and they are two rattlesnakes and a copperhead. I think this snake is called a "black rat snake" which can climb walls and feeds on insects and small rodents or little birds. I never ever saw Mrs. Robin's babies although I watched for them each day. Makes you wonder.

Did you know that poisonous snakes have a straight line through their eyeballs like cats and non venomous snakes have a pupil in the middle of the eyeball like humans or dogs? Our snake is a protected individual and we are urged to allow him to cross the road if we see him on the road and to just live in co-existence with snakes. Also to realize we must close up all openings near bottom of houses or cabins and that if we live near the woods we must realize that we will have snakes to deal with. (I already know that!, for sure!!) In August the little shiny black snakes with a white ring around their necks will wonder from where ever they come from and when I open my kitchen door they will be ready to glide right in. I keep a rug between doors to make the opening impassible. Yes, it is scary to see them come in my kitchen so we have to be ready to run for my trusty broom!

Forum: PAMI