Midday update on happy day I'm having

What a great day! It's warm and cool at the same time. The sun is hot and bright but the air is cool and breezy. Perfect. I launched myself into the daylight toward town this morning on a wave of optimism and joy. Heading to the Post Office I checked my box and Lo! another Netflix flick was in, "Mostly Martha." It's the original version of the recent remake with Catherine Zeta-Jones, "No Reservations." I bought a paper copy of the local newspaper, Madison County Journal, always a good read, and then headed to Cup of Karma Cafe for a muffin.

A few gal pals were in there so I stopped briefly by the table to say hi, [they are so nice!] and I then eagerly headed to the counter to choose a muffin.

This must be done with all pomp and circumstance, for I lay my kudos down at the Muffin Altar of Greatliness. The chefs bake them on site and I don't know what they do, but they are the best muffins in the world! Which kind, you ask. All of them! It does not matter. Today I got a blueberry bran and along with my thermos of coffee I'd brought, then headed to the Comer Farmer's Market.

Ahhh! The joy of buying fresh produce that's organic, local, and this early in the season will never fade. Never! I bought the cutest baby turnips, purchased for the sole reason that they were:
1. cute
2. $1
3. cute
and some freshly picked lettuce. Lunch: salad. But first, a mini-drive.

On Saturdays, I love turning on the music, feeling the breeze on my cheek, placing a thermos of coffee in the beverage holder, and driving unknown roads. Stopping at yard sales, pulling over to enjoy a scene, finding farm stands ... sadly, though, my rambling days have been long-curtailed due to the price of gas, but today I decided to take a tiny, tiny detour home. The Lystra Church and Cemetery was calling.

Old Lystra Curch Road is around the corner from my house, down a long red dirt road with no houses around and very quiet deep in the country. The property is reputed to be haunted, and though the church is no longer standing (torched by vandals) the cemetery is there in the middle of a hilly clearing. The grass is grown up high and only the taller gravestones poke above the grass and wildflowers. Others are tilted crazily due to frost heaves, or broken and deliberately pushed over. I snapped some interesting and if I say so, nicely composed photos but the sun was high and they are all washed out with hard edges. I am going back at dusk for better light. Ghosts notwithstanding! The ghost stories for Lystra are pervasive and constant so I will not linger. But at high noon with the drone of bees and wildflowers waving in the gentle breeze I took my time and walked all the way in, passing through the dilapidated gate with ease.

Here are a couple of photos, of the ones at dusk come out better I'll post them tomorrow in a separate entry.

View from here

I am so blessed to live in northeast Georgia. I awaken each day to a raucous chorus of birdsong, off-distant rooster, occasional hum of a hay tractor. As I traverse my normal route to the county seat and thriving town of Danielsville for groceries, here are a few of the scenes that I pass by.

New road cut behind the High School winds over a hill and through grassy fields on both sides. Where it ends and I must take a left or a right, this is the view in front of me.




Horses! Fields! Farms!


My driveway with the ever-popular photo of fences. It's deep in and curves so that I am far back from the road, a local road which only ever hosts tractor traffic and the occasional car anyway...

I see the devastation in Myanmar and China and in other places in Central US with tornadoes and I count my blessings. I have traveled to the Bronx, to Quito Ecuador, to Mexican border towns, and I count my blessings. I see the snow totals in Maine and the heat wave in California, and I count my blessings. I don't do that enough, so today I take a look around and I say thank you, God, for such a beautiful world and for putting me smack in the middle of the gorgeous beauty that is Comer Georgia.

Compare and contrast

As the US and the world economy teeters on thin ice, the effects are not only felt but are seen. In California, foreclosures are up 327% over 2007. Where do all those people go? Tent City.

ONTARIO, Calif. -- Each day at an Ontario homeless encampment, hundreds of people line up for meals or whatever food local churches and volunteers may bring. "They're in a survival mode," said volunteer Paul Varner." During the last six months, more than 400 homeless people have pitched tents near Ontario Airport, creating a "tent city" that sprawls across vacant lots and side streets.

While Americans are giving up luxuries like homes and food and going into 'survival mode', George W. Bush unveils the hardships he has been through during his tenure saying that he had to give up email .

For the ninth straight week, gas has smashed the previous week's record prices and is now at $127 per barrel. While Americans at home suffer economic woes and soldiers abroad arrive in caskets, President Bush in solidarity with American soldiers at war,

made his own sacrifice: giving up golf.







I'm sure these guys appreciate the gesture.

Welcome Gray news online newspaper!

My old hometown has a news outlet again! The recent times have not been kind to the news industry. Large cities have seen the consolidation of several newspapers, and where several editions existed, winnowed down to only one. However, small towns have suffered greatly, for the large dailies hardly cover small town news at all, and the small towns that had their own papers, have seen their small paper either fold or be gobbled up. That happened in Gray, Maine, when The Monument was purchased by Current papers (I was the publisher of The Monument). The Gray News was bought by Donato Corsetti. Both new owners operate from another town than the home town. The Monument's and the Gray News's gradual dilution and eventual absorption into the new owners' town events and news finally occurred, as these things always do, leaving a news hole for the citizens.

A vacuum is soon filled and a new online paper focusing on Gray Maine was born today: Maine Home Town News. It's substantive, easy to navigate, a pleasure to read, and a generally great job! What a relief to be able to read credible home town news again. Visit Maine Home Town News early and often!

Moranic morans

I know, I know, I'm way late on this. Everyone in the universe has seen it by now. I downloaded it in March and it got lost in a folder and I only found it today cleaning it out.

But it's still funny.

A demonstrator at a pro-war counter-protest on in St. Louis, MO

grocery shopping receipts

Commodity prices are much in the news but more importantly in the peoples' hearts as they try to shrug off the growing dread that appears in their stomachs as they drive to the grocery store.

I've made a vow to make do with less and the be mindful of the money I've been blessed with. I won't spend more than $20 per week for perishable groceries. I want to buy local and not drive more than 4 miles one way. I chose to designate my local grocery store, a mom and pop, as my grocery center. No more Wal-Mart, or chain stores. The guy at "The Marketplace" holds great specials each week and it is the specials that I stick to when I go.

Last week I spent $19.23. This week's receipts:
yogurt, milk (gallon on special $3.29), mushrooms, squash, tomato, green beans, mango, banana, cuke, pepper, marinade sauce, bagels (on special). Total $18.44.

I did go next door to the Dollar Store and bought SOS, cleaning wipes, and nylons. I still have tofu and eggs for protein left over from last week. And before anyone gets feeling too pitiful for me that I am not buying plump chickens and steaks, I choose not to eat red meat and seafood nowadays is just too suspect with the pollution issues and mercury issues. As Americans, I believe we eat too much and we buy too much and we waste too much. When I was traveling on the sailboat and the camper van and abroad, I learned that we need much less than the American commercials tell us we need.

$18.44, not bad!

The Sichuan Earthquake, many photos

Incredible, heartbreaking photo array of The Sichuan Earthquake. I pray for these poor citizens, and for the brothers and sisters in Myanmar, and those in the US who have been so affected this week from the terrible disasters and storms.

Keep in mind these photos are not of the epicenter...but of surrounding areas...and yet these are already not for those who lack compassion. God only knows of the horrors at earthquake ground zero.

LOL I love savvy political strategists

Obama yanked the news spotlight away from Hillary by timing the endorsement of John Edwards to the 6:00pm news cycle. Brilliant. On so many levels.

However, my initial comment about the mainstream news being too focused on the US Presidential race stands. There are other items that can and should claim our attention, particularly in the face of peoples' utter despair in so many storm damaged countries and states.

There is nothing else going on in the whole world...

...except the Democratic primary fight and Hillary Clinton.

I turned on the cable news stations to watch Bush's remarks in Israel, to see where the new storm in Indonesia will track, Chinese earthquake rescues, any further news on the attack on Israel by a long range rocket, and whether the severely cracked dam in the Chinese province has given way. And also to catch the financial news regarding commodity prices, housing market, and the DOW, not to mention the newly released figures showing insolvent banks. And the science news from NASA about their newly discovered supernova. To name a few.

I've had the "news" on (mute) for six hours now as I write and prepare for church lessons tonight and do dishes and finish a collage and do some research for a letter for a client ... and flipping between Fox news, CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, only CNBC has had anything of worth on all day. The other three ... well, just call them the Hillary channel.

Now I know why I never, ever, even remotely like, watch, need, or use television during the day and never, ever, even remotely flip to the "news" channels at night. Not when you have YouTube, and newspapers from around the world to click onto with my trusty laptop, and forums. The cable news guys don't even know they're dead yet. But cable news IS a dead parrot.

He ain't heavy, he's my [alien] brother

The news is coming fast and furious these days. Some of it I just cannot resist!! In an interview published Tuesday in Rome, it seems that if you are a Catholic it is OK to believe in aliens. Wow, this from the organization that tortured Galileo for saying the sun and not the earth is the center of the galaxy. Imagine trying to translate a bible into Romulan. Anyway, it reminded me of a fantastic visit to the Museum of the History of Science in Florence Italy. Galileo's telescope is there, among many other scientific wonders. It's encased in a glass box but if you squat down and put your eye near the glass you can see through it. I didn't see any aliens.

Being Baptist, bible believing and born again, when I "look up" it will not be to spot aliens, it will be because of Luke 21:

"25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."
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News from the Vatican:

It's OK to believe in aliens

Vatican City (AP) - The Vatican's chief astronomer says that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God.The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. The interview was headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother." Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom.

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Note the hilarious headline on Drudge, "This is an Ex-candidate." I knew exactly what it meant and I laughed all the way over to get my second cup of coffee. Upon settling back at my comfy chair and reading the article, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank likens Hillary Clinton's candidacy to the shop owner in Monty Python who insists the parrot is not dead. This made my day! I love analogies, as you can tell. I urge you to watch the sketch, think of the shopkeeper as Clinton Campaign manager Terry McAuliffe and the customer as everyone else in the universe.

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I just made a really really great breakfast hash. I microwaved a small potato, diced a quarter of an onion, a celery stalk, and a slice of bologna. Saute it all for a while till things get crispy. Throw in a bit of shredded cheddar and an egg, stir till egg is just this side of cooked. Yum yum.