August 21 through August 23

Aug 21

--thought I’d try drying some berries or fruit of some kind haven’t done it yet though.

--Rep convention next week: Dems this weekend. Thank heavens all this political running will be over after going on for 2 years now. At least it will be over in 2 months.

Russians are digging in in Georgia, not moving out at all. WE signed missile shield thing with Poland and Czech government—Russians said they’d be very unhappy about that and they are showing it. Telling NATO they’ll no longer cooperate with them in any way at all! Not good the sounds of this

We are surrounded by the six THINGS, my six divisions anyway, that are coming together to get us in modern Western society. From left to right (yes, some political significance there) :
Climate change
Peak Food – agriculture, transport and prices and availability
Peak Resources—Mining, Forests, Water resources, many material related to manufacturing and production of all the goods we use
Peak Oil & Energy—, natural gas, electricity generation, gasoline, kerosene (Airlines fuel), heating oil, petrochemical products
Peak Money-SS, Healthcare costs,
Geopolitics & Politics—Iraq, Russian in Georgia.
Now that we’re surrounded they will all start to go up, in price and scarcity in availability …. Walling us in?

August 23, 2008

Got Mom’s blood work drawn this week and got her to see our dr, too. She’s only 96 lbs!! Her color and everything looks good, her hair looks good and her sense of humor is goo and she says she’s not feeling any pain anywhere. I’m always afraid weight loss means a form of her breast cancer has come back—but that hasn’t happened in past weight loss scenarios. She still dresses herself and gets her colors and patterns right. She asked me over and over, of course, how old, is so and so “gone”, why is she the last to die (!) and can she still take care of herself personally. These are questions she’s all asked me before so it’s no surprise. I’ve been seeing her more regularly and I sense she wants me to see her more often.

I now do what I never thought I would do with preparing food for myself; I get up in the morning and ask myself “What shall I cook in the sun oven today?”!! LOL! It’s so funny that this solar cooker has been the catalyst for being interested in cooking and fixing better food for me.

I went to the yoga studio last night to see the last installment of the Mahabharata—India’s epic poem that was put in this film form about 10 years ago. It was interesting and I could follow the main characters anyway in the story line since the second installment was shown almost a month ago. There were about 5-10 of us and we might form a small discussion group to talk about it. The whole Mahabharata is like 7 times longer than the Iliad or the Odyssey.

I figure the story with so many characters is like a Russian novel, you just have to keep going in the story and sometimes review the characters listed in the front of the book and you’ll understand more and more as you go along.

Monsoon has gone away and the heat is on today. Hopefully we will have one last round of monsoon storms that makes it here to the Valley of the sun before monsoon season is gone. It’s gone soon after Labor Day which is next weekend.

Cheers,
Shamba