Critical Thinking Skills

In February 2016, while delivering a victory speech following the Nevada caucuses, Donald Trump proclaimed his love for the various demographics that led him to victory.
As part of that list, he exclaimed, "I love the poorly educated."

Why would anyone say such a thing? Poorly educated people often lack critical think skills and thereby make perfect patsies for shysters and con artists ( or the current administration, as is the case today).

I always try to accentuate the positive....it is getting more difficult by the day.

I was thinking of the Statue of Liberty...

What might she have to say about the current state of affairs in America today? We are currently watching the erosion of democracy and a blatant push by the administration towards autocracy. If you can't confirm that on your own, you are not using your critical thinking skills.  

Critical thinkers are able to make better strategic and more effective decisions based on the evidence in front of them, not what they’re told by others or assumption they made. It’s never a good thing to simply accept what you’re told as fact. Within all arguments there should be facts and evidence, which can then be used to form your own opinion. Evidence is important to critical thinking.


The Statue of Liberty (SOL)...an American symbol for justice and liberty...I'm thinking she might say..."SOL is right! If we keep going down this path, we will all be "Sh*t Outta Luck". 
 

Hedge Apples...who knew??

A update on the hedge apple post...

FYI - I am happy to share hedge apples with anyone who has an interest and no access. All I ask is that you pay postage. It will be the end of August before their ready. Just let me know.

Read the original post here.

One reader commented with some excellent information and the research to back it up!

Thanks for all the good info, Brian! Scholarly articles promote critical thinking! Below are conclusions and URL's to some of the articles Mr. Barnabas provided, as it relates to Tetrahydroxystilbene glucoside or TSG (found in hedge apples):

3 - "Tetrahydroxystilbene glucoside not only prevents, i.e. at an early stage, the learning-memory deficit in AD-like model, but also can reverse the learning-memory deficit in the late stage of AD-like model. Thus, TSG could be considered among the future therapeutic drugs indicated for the treatment of AD."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16901557

4 - "TSG, which shows effects and mechanism in part like atorcastatin, is a major constituent with blood-lipid regulating effect of P. multiflorum and can be explored as a potent medication for hyperlipidemia. Effects on LDL-C and AI, as well as on gene expression of TSG were first reported."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17455469

5 - "In summary, the data showed that THSG possessed an anti-inflammatory effect, which was perhaps related to the inhibition of COX-2 enzyme activity and expression in RAW264.7 macrophage cells."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17613621

6 - "In conclusion, THSG possesses the antagonistic effects on oxidation of lipoprotein, proliferation and decrease of NO content of CASMCs, which partially explain the mechanism of anti-atherosclerosis of Polygonum multiflorum Thunb."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17701557

7 - "In conclusion, THSG exerts protective effects on experimental colitis through alleviating oxygen and nitrogen free radicals level and down-regulating iNOS expression."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17963744

8 - "In conclusion, hippocampal synapses count and synaptophysin expression decreased in aged rats, which may be one of the mechanisms involved in learning-memory deficit. TSG reversed the above changes in aged rats, suggesting that TSG may be beneficial for the treatment of Alzheimer disease or cognitive impairment in old people."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17935895

9 - The results suggest that the ability of THSG to trap reactive dicarbonyl species makes it a potential natural inhibitor of AGEs (advanced glycation end products. Many studies have shown that AGEs play a major pathogenic role in diabetes and its complications.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20104848

10 - "These findings indicate that the protective mechanisms of TSG on diabetic nephropathy are involved in the alleviation of oxidative stress injury and overexpression of COX-2 and TGF-β1, partially via activation of SIRT1."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20854812

11 - "Our data demonstrate that TSG promotes LTP induction and this effect may contribute to the enhancement of learning and memory seen in animal models."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20951128

I'm not a doctor, so I don't understand all of this science lingo - but it looks to me like the hedge apple may have more health benefits that I ever suspected. Medicine - straight from the source - Nature!!
Thanks again for all the good info Mr. Barnabas!

This is your legacy, Donald Trump

Make America Great Again????

I really just can't make the connection with the slogan of the administration in the White House right now. This country has a rich history of some really unethical actions, even by today's standards. 

The audacity to think a human being has the right to own another human being.

The forced removal of indigenous peoples from their ancestral homelands.

The antiquated idea that women could not vote or own property because women are somehow inferior to men.

Let the good old boys run things the way they used to? Say what you really mean Donald Trump - "Make America White Again" 

Trail of Tears...Not so great!!

According to Encyclopedia Britannica - The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation during the 1830s of Eastern Woodlands Indians of the Southeast region of the United States (including Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole, among other nations) to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Estimates based on tribal and military records suggest that approximately 100,000 indigenous people were forced from their homes during that period, which is sometimes known as the removal era, and that some 15,000 died during the journey west. The term Trail of Tears invokes the collective suffering those people experienced, although it is most commonly used in reference to the removal experiences of the Southeast Indians generally and the Cherokee nation specifically. The physical trail consisted of several overland routes and one main water route and, by passage of the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act in 2009, stretched some 5,045 miles (about 8,120 km) across portions of nine states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee).

The roots of forced relocation lay in greed. The British Proclamation of 1763 designated the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River as Indian Territory. Although that region was to be protected for the exclusive use of indigenous peoples, large numbers of Euro-American land speculators and settlers soon entered. For the most part, the British and, later, U.S. governments ignored these acts of trespass.

In 1829 a gold rush occurred on Cherokee land in Georgia. Vast amounts of wealth were at stake: at their peak, Georgia mines produced approximately 300 ounces of gold a day. Land speculators soon demanded that the U.S. Congress devolve to the states the control of all real property owned by tribes and their members. That position was supported by Pres. Andrew Jackson, who was himself an avid speculator. Congress complied by passing the Indian Removal Act (1830). The act entitled the president to negotiate with the eastern nations to effect their removal to tracts of land west of the Mississippi and provided some $500,000 for transportation and for compensation to native landowners. Jackson reiterated his support for the act in various messages to Congress, notably On Indian Removal (1830) and A Permanent Habitation for the American Indians (1835), which illuminated his political justifications for removal and described some of the outcomes he expected would derive from the relocation process.

This is your legacy Donald Trump

Maybe this is when America was great??

Greenwood, Oklahoma was known as the Mecca for black enterprise. It was a district featuring 108 black-owned businesses, two theaters, two black schools and 15 doctors’ offices. With Tulsa being segregated by north and south, there was only one place you could go if you were black and wanted to establish a name for yourself. For many, that safe haven was Greenwood. It became so prestigious that Booker T. Washington coined the term “Negro Wall Street of America.”
On May 31st, 1921, Greenwood was destroyed. 50 square blocks were decimated, burned to the ground by angry white mobs. Many homes and businesses were looted in one of America’s worst race riots. The cause: white outrage over a false sexual assault allegation.

The Tulsa race riot of 1921, occurred between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a white mob started attacking residents and businesses of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in what is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States. The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, at the time the wealthiest black community in the nation. More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 39 dead, but the American Red Cross estimated 300.

The riot began over a Memorial Day weekend after a young black man was accused of raping a young white female elevator operator at a commercial building. After he was taken into custody, rumors raced through the black community that he was at risk of being lynched. A group of armed African-American men rushed to the police station, to prevent a lynching, where the young suspect was held and a white crowd had gathered. A confrontation developed between blacks and whites; shots were fired, and some whites and blacks were killed. As this news spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. Thousands of whites rampaged through the black community that night and the next day, killing men and women, burning and looting stores and homes. About 10,000 black people were left homeless, and property damage amounted to more than $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property ($31 million in 2018). Some black people claimed that policemen had joined the mob; others said that National Guardsmen fired a machine gun into the black community and a plane dropped sticks of dynamite. In an eyewitness account discovered in 2015, Greenwood attorney Buck Colbert Franklin described watching a dozen or more planes, which had been dispatched by the city police force, drop burning balls of turpentine on Greenwood's rooftops.

Is this when America was great?

Happy Winter Solstice

Sometimes the best thing I can do in a day (or a year) is keep my mouth shut. Can't let this day pass without notice! 

Poinsettia Sap for Warts

I keep a poinsettia plant year round. The one growing in the house now is on it's fourth season. Not difficult to do, just like any other houseplant - sunshine and water - added bonus - the sap from this festive beauty beats chemical wart medicines - hands down!!

A small poinsettia like this will run about $5.00 in my neck of the woods. It will eventually lose it's red leaves (usually by mid January) and spend the rest of year just green, but still very useful. We learned of  using poinsettia sap (or milk as we call it) about 10 years ago when our oldest had a terrible plantar wart on his foot. After four attempts by the podiatrist to chemically remove the wart to no avail, he was just as frustrated as we were with conventional treatments failure to resolve this painful growth. The podiatrist is the one who told us he had once heard that poinsettia sap had been used to treat plantar warts.  Thankfully the last visit with the doc was just before Christmas and we were desperate to try anything - our local big box store had plenty of festive poinsettia's on hand.

All you do is break off a leaf and you will immediately see the milky looking sap of this festive winter favorite. Touch the sap to the wart and let dry. Do this two or three times a day and within just a few days you will notice the wart getting smaller. It has been our experience that you can stop applying the sap after a day or two (depending on size of wart) and will be pleased with the result. This wonderful treatment from mother nature is not just for plantar warts, but has worked on all kinds of warts, over the years, in our family.

I am not a expert but as I understand it - a member of the Euphorbiaceae plant family, poinsettia’s cousin is the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis), from which latex is harvested. Like the rubber tree, poinsettia also has latex sap.

A word of warning - **If you have a sensitivity or allergic reaction to latex, poinsettia sap may be problematic for you**.

In years past, many believed poinsettia to be toxic, however, today we know that a 50 pound child would have to eat some 500 poinsettia leaves (or bracts, as they are called) to become sick enough to die. They have quite a bitter taste so this scenario is not very realistic. I think it is more helpful to think of poinsettia as a non-edible plant, but not necessarily toxic.

My research also revealed that poinsettia sap has been used as a depilatory for hair removal.  Now I can't speak from personal experience about this application, but given the success we have had with warts, I may give it a try on a couple of persistent chin whiskers and follow-up with the results.

Poinsettia - Not just for Christmas anymore!!

Periwinkle

Periwinkle is a medicinal flower and herb that has been used for thousands of years due to its antibiotic, antibacterial, analgesic, and hypotensive properties. Periwinkle contains an alkaloid known as vincamine which is known to be highly beneficial for tinnitus (ringing in the ear), presbyacusis (hearing loss due to aging), vertigo, headaches, glaucoma, and strokes.
Periwinkle also has vasodilating, blood thinning, and memory-enhancing abilities which makes it excellent for dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and short-term memory loss. It also contains potent anti-cancer compounds and is often used for leukemia, neuroblastoma, lymphomas, Hodgkin’s disease, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and Wilm’s tumor.

Periwinkle has anti-inflammatory properties and is a great natural remedy for rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, and atherosclerosis. Periwinkle tea is wonderful for easing anxiety/nervousness, reducing heavy menstruation, improving memory, and for reducing blood pressure.
To make the tea, simply add 2 teaspoons of fresh or dried herb to 2 cups of hot water and allow to steep for 15 minutes or more, sweeten with raw honey if desired. Topically, periwinkle can help disinfect and stop the bleeding in wounds. Simply crush fresh periwinkle leaves (or soak dried herb in a small amount of water for 30 minutes) and apply directly to the affected area and wrap with a clean bandage.
It also is highly effective as a mouthwash for canker sores and bleeding gums. Periwinkle herb can be found in tea, tincture, extract, and salve form online or at your local health food store.

Healing Benefits of Periwinkle

Medical Medium

medicalmedium.com|By Medical Medium at medicalmedium.com

Wine Glass Lamp Shade

Came across this in a file folder that has been stored away for 20+ years....Oh what possibilities with the scrapbook paper choices we have today!!

The little shade is 4 7/8" tall and 7" on the top curve. The bottom curve is 14 1/2".
The flexible thing is...since you can make them, you can make what ever size you want!

And, of course, they are so cute, not everbody forgot about these. Found all sorts of possibilities on the web.

 

Just never know what you might find in the woods...

From Ugly, Old Desk to Fresh New Poolside Table

Been using this old school desk as a work table for several years. 

Looking pretty poor and pitiful.

We have a small above ground pool, the kind with the inflatable ring. This little desk is the perfect height beside the pool (for a cold beverage or citronella candle) and love the little cubby for keeping things like eye glasses and phones out of the direct sun.

With a can of spray paint, a tube of clear silicone and some tiles scavenged out of an old garage, this little desk is getting a makeover.

It took the silicone several days to dry, but I think it's ready to take its place next to the pool. 

Fighting Misinformation

Hemp Could Save the World

Transcript of Hugh Downs' commentary on hemp, for ABC News, NY, 11/90: 

Voters in the state of Alaska recently made marijuana illegal again for the first time in 15 years. If Alaska turns out to be like the other 49 states, the law will do little to curb use or production. Even the drug czar himself, William Bennett, has abandoned the drug war now that his "test case" of Washington, D.C., continues to see rising crime figures connected with the drug industry.

Despite the legal trend against marijuana, many Americans continue to buck the trend. Some pro-marijuana organizations in fact tell us that marijuana, also known as hemp, could, as a raw material, save the U.S. economy. That's some statment. Not by smoking it--that's a minor issue. Would you believe that marijuana could replace most oil and energy needs? That marijuana could revolutionize the textile industry and stop foreign imports? Those are the claims.
Some people think marijuana, or hemp, may be the epidome of yankee ingenuity. Mr. Jack Herer, for example, is the national director and founder of an organization called HEMP (that's an acronym for "Help End Marijuana Prohibition") located in Van Nuys, California. Mr. Herer is the author of a remarkable little book called, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, wherein, not surprisingly, Mr. Herer urges the repeal of marijuana prohibition.

Mr. Herer is not alone. Throughout the war on drugs, several organizations have consistently urged the legalization of marijuana. High Times magazine for example, The National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws or NORML for short, and an organization called BACH--the Business Alliance for Commerce in Hemp.

But the reason the pro-marijuana lobby want marijuana legal has little to do with getting high, and a great deal to do with fighting oil giants like Saddam Hussein, Exxon and Iran. The pro-marijuana groups claim that hemp is such a versatile raw material, that its products not only compete with petroleum, but with coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, pharmaceutical, timber and textile companies.[1]

It is estimated that methane and methanol production alone from hemp grown as biomass could replace 90% of the world's energy needs.[2] If they are right, this is not good news for oil interests and could account for the continuation of marijuana prohibition. The claim is that the threat hemp posed to natural resource companies back in the thirties accounts for its original ban.

At one time marijuana seemed to have a promising future as a cornerstone of industry. When Rudolph Diesel produced his famous engine in 1896, he assumed that the diesel engine would be powered by a variety of fuels, especially vegetable and seed oils. Rudolph Diesel, like most engineers then, believed vegetable fuels were superior to petroleum. Hemp is the most efficient vegetable.

In the 1930s the Ford Motor Company also saw a future in biomass fuels. Ford operated a successful biomass conversion plant, that included hemp, at their Iron Mountain facility in Michigan. Ford engineers extracted methanol, charcoal fuel, tar, pitch, ethyl-acetate and creosote. All fundamental ingredients for modern industry and now supplied by oil-related industries.[2]

The difference is that the vegetable source is renewable, cheap and clean, and the petroleum or coal sources are limited, expensive and dirty. By volume, 30% of the hemp seed contains oil suitable for high-grade diesel fuel as well as aircraft engine and precision machine oil.
Henry Ford's experiments with methanol promised cheap, readily renewable fuel. And if you think methanol means compromise, you should know that many modern race cars run on methanol.

About the time Ford was making biomass methanol, a mechanical device[3] to strip the outer fibers of the hemp plant appeared on the market. These machines could turn hemp into paper and fabrics[4] quickly and cheaply. Hemp paper is superior to wood paper. The first two drafts of the U.S. constitution were written on hemp paper. The final draft is on animal skin. Hemp paper contains no dioxin, or other toxic residue, and a single acre of hemp can produce the same amount of paper as four acres of trees.[5] The trees take 20 years to harvest and hemp takes a single season. In warm climates hemp can be harvested two even three times a year. It also grows in bad soil and restores the nutrients.

Hemp fiber-stripping machines were bad news to the Hearst paper manufacturing division, and a host of other natural resource firms. Coincidentally, the DuPont Chemical Company had, in 1937, been granted a patent on a sulfuric acid process to make paper from wood pulp. At the time DuPont predicted their sulfuric acid process would account for 80% of their business for the next 50 years.

Hemp, once the mainstay of American agriculture, became a threat to a handful of corporate giants. To stifle the commercial threat that hemp posed to timber interests, William Randolph Hearst began referring to hemp in his newspapers, by its Spanish name, "marijuana." This did two things: it associated the plant with Mexicans and played on racist fears, and it misled the public into thinking that marijuana and hemp were different plants.
Nobody was afraid of hemp--it had been cultivated and processed into usable goods, and consumed as medicine, and burned in oil lamps, for hundreds of years. But after a campaign to discredit hemp in the Hearst newspapers, Americans became afraid of something called marijuana.

By 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act was passed which marked the beginning of the end of the hemp industry. In 1938, Popular Mechanics ran an article about marijuana called, "New Billion Dollar Crop."[6] It was the first time the words "billion dollar" were used to describe a U.S. agricultural product. Popular Mechanics said,

. . . a machine has been invented which solves a problem more than 6,000 years old. . . . The machine . . . is designed for removing the fiber-bearing cortex from the rest of the stalk, making hemp fiber available for use without a prohibitive amount of human labor.
Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great tensile strength and durability. It is used to produce more than 5,000 textile products ranging from rope, to fine laces, and the woody "hurds" remaining after the fiber has been removed, contain more than seventy-seven per cent cellulose, and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products ranging from dynamite to cellophane.

Well since the Popular Mechanics article appeared over half a century ago, many more applications have come to light. Back in 1935, more than 58,000 tons of marijuana seed were used just to make paint and varnish (all non-toxic, by the way). When marijuana was banned, these safe paints and varnishes were replaced by paints made with toxic petro-chemicals. In the 1930s no one knew about poisoned rivers or deadly land-fills or children dying from chemicals in house paint. People did know something about hemp back then, because the plant and its products were so common.

All ships lines were made from hemp and much of the sail canvas. (In fact the word "canvas" is the Dutch pronunciation of the Greek word for hemp, "cannabis.") All ropes, hawsers and lines aboard ship, all rigging, nets, flags and pennants were also made from marijuana stalks. And so were all charts, logs and bibles.

Today many of these items are made, in whole or in part, with synthetic petro-chemicals and wood. All oil lamps used to burn hemp-seed oil until the whale oil edged it out of first place in the mid-nineteenth century. And then, when all the whales were dead, lamplights were fueled by petroleum, and coal, and recently radioactive energy.[7]
This may be hard to believe in the middle of a war on drugs, but the first law concerning marijuana in the colonies at Jamestown in 1619, ordered farmers to grow Indian hemp. Massachussetts passed a compulsory grow law in 1631. Connecticut followed in 1632. The Chesapeake colonies ordered their farmers, by law, to grow marijuana in the mid-eighteenth century. Names like Hempstead or Hemphill dot the American landscape and reflect areas of intense marijuana cultivation.

During World War II, domestic hemp production became crucial when the Japanese cut off Asian supplies to the U.S. American farmers (and even their sons), who grew marijuana, were exempt from military duty during World War II. A 1942 U.S. Department of Agriculture film called Hemp For Victory extolled the agricultural might of marijuana and called for hundreds of thousands of acres to be planted.[8] Despite a rather vigorous drug crackdown, 4-H clubs were asked by the government to grow marijuana for seed supply. Ironically, war plunged the government into a sober reality about marijuana and that is that it's very valuable.
In today's anti-drug climate, people don't want to hear about the commercial potential of marijuana. The reason is that the flowering top of a female hemp plant contains a drug. But from 1842 through the 1890s a powerful concentrated extract of marijuana was the second most prescribed drug in the United States. In all that time the medical literature didn't list any of the ill effects claimed by today's drug warriors.[9]

Today, there are anywhere from 25 to 30 million Americans who smoke marijuana regularly. As an industry, marijuana clears well more than $4 billion a year. [This must have been a misreading of his notes--for 1990, the minimum figure would have been at least $40 billion for the entire nation. (phone interview with Jack Herer)] Obviously, as an illegal business, none of that money goes to taxes. But the modern marijuana trade only sells one product, a drug. Hemp could be worth considerably more than $4 [$40] billion a year, if it were legally supplying the 50,000 safe products the proponents claim it can.

If hemp could supply the energy needs of the United States, its value would be inestimable. Now that the drug czar is in final retreat, America has an opportunity to, once and for all, say farewell to the Exxon Valdez, Saddam Hussein and a prohibitively expensive brinkmanship in the desert sands of Saudi Arabia.

This is Hugh Downs, ABC News, New York. 

Mmmmm...Pepperoni Chips

One of our favorites and so easy to make!

 

Paper towel on microwave safe dish.

Place pepperoni evenly on paper towel.

Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Microwave.

Times vary depending on microwaves and weather you like them crispy or a bit chewy.

My 1500 watt microwave takes two minutes for crispy chips.

Ready to enjoy! So quick and easy!

Happy Spring!!

Happy Fall

Comming to Yours, Mine and Hers

Handcrafted 18" Doll Clothes