Saturday, December 29, 2007

the seed catalogs have arrived!!

yessirreee, it's that time again. Time to daydream about all the wonderful things I'd like to grow in my garden come Spring. Time to make plans, figure out what I want to do and weigh that against what I can realistically expect to get done. This new year, I think my resolution should be to make plans I can actually stick with. I need to spend more energy taking care of the existing plants, rather than attempting to grow new unfamiliar things. There will be squash and beans, and maybe I should get those right before working on anything else.

Friday, December 21, 2007

hawk ID anyone?

this guy was hunting, in the rain, in our backyard yesterday. Caught some sort of mouse-like creature in the neighbor's yard. He has black and white stripes on his tail and on the ends of his wings. He has a dark mask on his face, and a bright orangey-red chest.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

The Lakota "Indians" Secede from the Union!!

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US



WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said.

The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website.

The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said.

"This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said.

"It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England.

Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said.

One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference.

The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means.

Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website.

"Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC1KMTOgwiSoMQyT2LwZc9HyAgA

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Robert Anton Wilson

loved his books in the way back. hadn't thought of him in ages until I came across this article and after reading it, surfed around a bit.

"The worst thing about hospitals," says Wilson, who was rescued when his daughter managed to break into the apartment, "is that all the rights guaranteed in the first 10 amendments are immediately canceled. You have no civil rights whatsoever. And the second thing is, all the ordinary rules no longer apply--you are no longer a person deserving of kindness, you're a disobedient child who has to be reprimanded and herded around. My God, I don't know why people put up with such treatment." Wilson, we can presume, doesn't particularly like being told what to do.

"Not by people who treat me like an idiot. Not when I'm 73 years old, I have 35 books in print, I supported a wife and four kids for most of my life. I do not appreciate being treated like a disobedient 4-year-old, the way they treat everybody in the hospital."

Of course, you don't have to go to a hospital to be treated like that, but Wilson's on a roll ...

"I was an editor of Playboy, for chrissake," he cries, as though that, if nothing else, should carry some weight in this culture. "I've had plays performed in England, Germany and the United States; my books are in print in a dozen countries. Why the hell do they treat me like a child? I refuse to tolerate it. If they won't treat me with dignity, I won't go anywhere near them, especially with all the goddamned germs they got floating around there. CNN did a report on it -- the number of people who are killed by diseases picked up in hospitals is much greater than the number who are killed by cars.

"I'm never going to a hospital again. Never, never, never, never! I will lie on the floor and die before I go back to a hospital."

link

Saturday, December 15, 2007

weaned?

Youngest child has suddenly stopped nursing. Her big sister weaned very very gradually, slowly cutting back a little at a time. Littlest one had never gone an entire 24 hours without nursing, not once. If she doesn't nurse today, it will be three days. Many mixed emotions, I realize some of it (most of it perhaps) is hormonal. Elated at the prospect of bras without flaps. Proud of myself for allowing her to decide when she was ready to wean, because it's important to me that my children listen to what their bodies are telling them. And there's a melancholy feeling I just can't shake. My babies are growing up so fast.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

it's that time of year again

*sigh* No matter how many wonderful things are happening in my life right now, I feel like I'm drowning sometimes. And it looks like we'll have to use plastic to pay for the kids to have a nice Christmas. It goes against everything I believe in, but I don't want to disappoint the children. Our grocery bill has gotten simply outrageous lately! Hamburger, the cheap stuff, is up to $3 a pound. WHAT??! yeah, wasn't that long ago you could find it for less than $1/lb on sale. We gotta eat. And we can't eat just anything, it has to be gluten-free, so there's another added expense.

Think I'll give etsy another try. At least sewing will keep me busy, it's lots of fun for me, and that's one hobby I have plenty of supplies without going out and spending any money we don't have on it.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

cultural genocide

The ruling elite use money, religion, public education, and mass media to control our lives, to make us afraid, so that we choose not to make our own decisions but rather do as we are told, and believe what they want us to believe. The homogenization of people into one world government, one world religion is all about denying us the right to define for ourselves who we are, creating an underclass of slaves whose lives exist only to support the agenda of those in power.





eight minutes into the second video, it says "the worst holocaust in human history occurred not in Nazi Germany but on American soil" If you don't watch any of the rest of it, watch that part.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

"eco-friendly" gift ideas

How ludicrous the advertising has become!! Do they not expect us to realize that capitalist consumerism is antithetical to helping the planet? So they feed the sheeple "green" products which cost twice as much as the other kind, while still being shipped halfway around the globe, and being packaged in plastics that not only pollute when thrown away, but in the process of manufacture too! How stupid do they think we are?

Monday, December 3, 2007

the word of the day

realize -
–verb (used with object)
1.
to grasp or understand clearly.
2.
to make real; give reality to (a hope, fear, plan, etc.).


what if these two definitions are inseparable???

Sunday, December 2, 2007

diapers and potties and such

it's simply amazing to me, how different my girls are, them having the same parents and same environment and all. Littlest one is no longer wearing diapers during the day. Unlike big sister, though, she's been having accidents sometimes. When my oldest daughter stopped wearing diapers, that was it, no accidents, she was totally ready. Little one is doing things her own unique way, and Mommy is cleaning up the mess. But at least I'm not washing those dirty diapers every day and maybe, just maybe, I will soon eliminate that mountain of laundry that never seems to go away.