stolen From Suz!

You Walk Through Life

Your journey through life is steady, conventional, and calm. You're likely to stop and smell the roses every chance you get. Your life is simple but bountiful. You believe that it's important to have good morals. You always do your duty, and work comes before play. You value stability at home and at work. You do your part to smooth things over the best you can.

How Do You Travel Through Life?

Color Test

http://www.humorsphere.com/fun/8787/colortest.swf
Color test....These are the things we're supposed to do to remove the cholesterol around our brain & try to slow up Alzheimer. I think it took me 4 times before I could finally tell this brain of mine to concentrate on the color & not what it said. A great test, do it until you get 100%. Bet you can't get 100% on the first try! But I'm rootin' for ya. This is pretty neat! See how you do with the colors! Have fun! It takes an average of 5 tries to get to 100%. Follow the directions!
It's harder than it seems, as it should be! A brain waker-upper for today!

A Book For This Week

Hidden In Plain View

by

Jacqueline Tobin

Amazon.com Review

When quiltmaker Ozella McDaniels told Jacqueline Tobin of the Underground Railroad Quilt Code, it sparked Tobin to place the tale within the history of the Underground Railroad. Hidden in Plain View documents Tobin and Raymond Dobard's journey of discovery, linking Ozella's stories to other forms of hidden communication from history books, codes, and songs. Each quilt, which could be laid out to air without arousing suspicion, gave slaves directions for their escape. Ozella tells Tobin how quilt patterns like the wagon wheel, log cabin, and shoofly signaled slaves how and when to prepare for their journey. Stitching and knots created maps, showing slaves the way to safety.

The authors construct history around Ozella's story, finding evidence in cultural artifacts like slave narratives, folk songs, spirituals, documented slave codes, and children's' stories. Tobin and Dobard write that "from the time of slavery until today, secrecy was one way the black community could protect itself. If the white man didn't know what was going on, he couldn't seek reprisals." Hidden in Plain View is a multilayered and unique piece of scholarship, oral history, and cultural exploration that reveals slaves as deliberate agents in their own quest for freedom even as it shows that history can sometimes be found where you least expect it. --Amy Wan 

Review

From the Forewords:

"Tobin and Dobard have taken quilt scholarship to another level. They have revealed that quilts are at once sources of pleasure, information, and meaning and are central to understanding the history of people of African ancestry in North America." 

--Floyd Coleman, Ph.D.

"Jacqueline Tobin is to be applauded for being in the right place at the right time, and having enough faith to go back again and again to listen to the story of one family's effort to encode knowledge in their quilt tops. And one salutes her partnership with Raymond Dobard, whose knowledge of quilting technology is so outstanding. Their persistence--is vital to our understanding of African American culture and its myriad contributions to American life."

--Maude Southwell Wahlman, Ph.D., author of Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts

"By engaging in a vast amount of research, authors Tobin and Dobard have established a significant linkage between the Underground Railroad effort, escaping slaves, and the American patchwork quilt."

--Cuesta Benberry, author of Always There: The African American Presence in American Quilts -- Review

Jacqueline L. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard present the fascinating theory that slaves created quilts coded with patterns to help one another flee to freedom. -- The New York Times Book Review, Andrea Higbie 

(I just finished reading this book this evening.   While it is based on conjecture,  it is a fascinating concept.   I recommend it!   Click on the author's name and the title to learn more!)

A Book From Last Week

 AT RISK

by 

Patricia Cornwell

From Publishers Weekly

Cornwell's latest-a stand-alone thriller that was originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine-is likely to disappoint even diehard fans of her bestselling Kay Scarpetta novels (The Body Farm, etc.). This time, the action is set in Boston, where an attractive and ambitious DA, Monique Lamont, seeks to use a new anticrime initiative to propel herself into the governor's mansion. Lamont plucks her top investigator, Winston Garano, from a special forensics course to probe an obscure cold case, but the detective's inquiries suggest that his boss may be playing a duplicitous game. The writing, pacing, characterizations and plot are far from Cornwell's best work, and the solution to the old murder mystery is anticlimactic. 

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 

(This is the book I finished up listening to this past week.   I listen to audio books while I commute to and from work.  It was okay but I was not overly impressed with it.  It kept me awake.  Click on the author's name and the title of the book to learn more about it.)

Ping!

I took a couple vacation days to stay home and play house.   So far this beginning of the harvest season I have put up 26 pints/3 quarts of peaches and 9 quarts of tomatoes.   Today as I was peeling tomatoes it threw me back to when I was a child and my mother would can tomatoes.   She would sing the Potato/Tomato song.  

One More Quiz

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you lovable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

The Sesame Street Personality Quiz

A Burger?

You Are a Burger

You are a down to earth person and a straight shooter. You don't fall for fads or trends. You are stable and a bit old fashioned. Tradition and loyalty are important to you. You are a good friend and you like to have a good time. You find it easy to kick back. You're not one to make waves in life. You're happy just to be a part of the fun.

What Kind of Fast Food Are You?

A Song For Sunday

5th Track On A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Lyrics:-

On the turning away
From the pale and downtrodden
And the words they say
Which we won't understand
"Don't accept that what's happening
Is just a case of others' suffering
Or you'll find that you're joining in
The turning away"

It's a sin that somehow
Light is changing to shadow
And casting its shroud
Over all we have known
Unaware how the ranks have grown
Driven on by a heart of stone
We could find that we're all alone
In the dream of the proud

On the wings of the night
As the daytime is stirring
Where the speechless unite
In a silent accord
Using words you will find are strange
And mesmerised as they light the flame
Feel the new wind of change
On the wings of the night

No more turning away
From the weak and the weary
No more turning away
From the coldness inside
Just a world that we all must share
It's not enough just to stand and stare
Is it only a dream that there'll be
No more turning away?.

From My Mail Bag Tonight

PBS- Healthcare Crisis: Healthcare Timeline

http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/history.htm
In order to know how we got to the place we are today in health care I think it is important to know the path we took to get here. This time line shows what happened during the 1900s in the US in regards to health care.

Stolen From Suz!

Your Word is "Peace"

You see life as precious, and you wish everyone was safe, happy, and taken care of. Social justice, human rights, and peace for all nations are all important to you. While you can't stop war, you try to be as calm and compassionate as possible in your everyday life. You promote harmony and cooperation. You're always willing to meet someone a little more than halfway.

What's Your Word?

Poem For The Week of 8/12/09

My Symphony 

by

William Henry Channing

"To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich;

to study hard, think quietly,
talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds,
to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely,
await occasions, hurry never.

In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.

This is to be my symphony."

(A friend of the family passed away on Saturday afternoon and she had chosen this poem for her funeral.  Click on the poet's name to learn more about him)

Book For The Week of 8/12/09

Crocodile On The Sandbank

by

Elizabeth Peters

"Amelia Peabody is Elizabeth Peters' best loved and brilliant creation, a thoroughly Victorian feminist who takes the stuffy world of archaeology by storm with her shocking men's pants and no-nonsense attitude! 

In this first Egyptian mystery, our headstrong heroine decides to use her substantial inheritance to see the world. On her travel, she rescues a gentlewoman in distress - Evelyn Barton-Forbes - and the two become friends. The two companions continue to Egypt where they face mysteries, mummies and the redoubtable Radcliffe Emerson, and outspoken archaeologist, who doesn't need women to help him solve mysteries - at least that's what he thinks!"

( I just finished listening to this on audio today and totally enjoyed it! Be sure to click on both the title and the author's name to find out more information.)

Da Vinci

This post is from the online multiply book group we had.

While Mysty is on vacation I thought it might be fun to learn some about Da Vinci himself.  This looks like a good video series.   If it posts right I hope to watch it in segments as it is long.  I thought others might enjoy it too.

ABC's Of ME Stolen From Heidi's page

A - Age:  soon will be 52

B - Bed size:  Queen

C - Chore you hate:  cleaning the bathroom

D - Dog's name:  No dog  I  have a bird named Simone

E - Essential start your day item:  Yoga

F - Favorite colors: Navy blue with maroon

G - Gold or Silver: GOLD

H - Height: 5'7"

I - Instruments you play: A little  Piano

J - Job title: LPN

K - Kid(s): 2 Boys and 1 girl

L - Living arrangements:  Divorced with mortgage

M - Mom's name: Charlotte

N - Nicknames:  No one calls me one right now.  From the past my grandfather called me skeezicks. 

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth:  tests when I was a teenager

P - Pet Peeve:  when people leave their shopping carts out of the rack 

Q - Quote from a movie:  Tomorrow is another day

R - Right or left handed: right

S - Siblings:  one brother and two sisters

T - Time you wake up: 9:30 am 

U- Underwear:  yes

V - Vegetable you dislike: beets 

W - Ways you run late:  unusual things like a flat tire 

X - X-rays you've had: my foot once

Y - Yummy food you make:  pies

Z - Zoo favorite:  turtles

Madame Alexander First Ladies

Series Three 198

In 1976 Madame Alexander began to produce what is known as The First Ladies series to commemorate our bicentennial. While they only used a couple of doll molds they fashioned the hair and gowns after the ones worn for the inaugural balls. Six series of six dolls were made from 1976 through 1989. I have obtained a few shown here.

Communication With Dementia Patients

I have always wanted to read some of Naomi Feil's work.  And someday I will.  But in the meantime,  here is a video of her in action.

I would also like to see the television special this site talks about. 

In The News This PM

WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — A married man who planned to rendezvous with one of his handful of lovers at an eastern Wisconsin motel instead found himself bound, blindfolded and assaulted by a group of women out for revenge, according to court documents.

Four women, including his wife, eventually showed up to humiliate the man, who ended up with his penis glued to his stomach in a bizarre plot to punish him for a lover’s quadrangle gone bad, according to the documents filed in Calumet County.

Now it’s the women who face punishment, perhaps six years in prison, and at least one said Monday the story has gotten twisted and she’s embarrassed.

“I am disturbed. I am upset. I am having a hard time handling life; an emotional wreck,” Wendy Sewell, 43, of Kaukauna, said in a telephone interview from her home. “I am ashamed.”

Sewell, Therese Ziemann, 48, of Menasha, Michelle Belliveau, 43, of Neenah, and the man’s wife are charged with being party to false imprisonment, a felony. Ziemann also is charged with fourth-degree sexual assault.

The women are free on $200 cash bails. Investigators say all the women but Belliveau were romantically involved with the man. Online court records didn’t list defense attorneys for any of the women Monday.

The Associated Press is not naming the man’s wife to protect his identity as an alleged victim of sexual assault.

The women’s plot for revenge unfolded last Thursday at the Lakeview Motel about 30 miles southwest of Green Bay in the tiny village of Stockbridge near the scenic shores of Lake Winnebago.

Criminal complaints filed Friday allege the man agreed to be bound with “sheer sheets” and blindfolded with a pillowcase for a “rub down” by Ziemann. She instead cut off his underwear with a scissors and summoned the others to the room with a text message.

Ziemann struck the man in the face, and used Krazy Glue to attach his penis to his stomach when the other women arrived, according to the complaints. The man told investigators he also was threatened with a gun. Ziemann told investigators she didn’t have a gun but may have told the victim, “Do you know how much I want to shoot you?”

He started screaming and the women rushed off fearful that he could get loose and hurt them but allegedly took his wallet, vehicle and cell phone.

Ziemann told investigators she met the man online through Craigslist, fell in love and paid for his use of a room at the motel for the past two months. She said she gave him about $3,000. Then last Wednesday, she learned from the man’s wife that he was married, had other girlfriends and was “using them for money.” She expected the money to be repaid, according to the documents.

During Thursday’s confrontation with the man, Ziemann told investigators Sewell asked him, “Which one do you love more?” and the man’s wife made a derisive remark about him being scared.

The man got free from the bed by chewing through one of his bindings, went outside and borrowed a telephone from the motel owner to call police.

The davinci code By Dan Brown

A post from our Multiply online book group.

Hey all,

I loved this book. What made me want to read it was actually having seen the movie.  I want to state upfront I am a  strong  Christian and I know this book has been the center of debate by many on the christian front because of many of the ideas that are presented in this book.    I want to do a few things a bit different. I am going away for a week next week.  I would LOVE for this time for any of you all to PLEASE feel free to ask your OWN questions about the book..  Things you want to know what others thought..  I will leave  that as  a question when I am done.

I am simply going to start with a few simple questions and when I get back on the 17th I will get much more into this book.. If anyone is interested I am heading onto Angels and Demons.. later.

1. Did the controversy behind the book in anyway effect the way you viewed the book when you started out reading it.

2. When you were done.. did you either understand the controversy or wonder why there was so much behind it?

3. did the book answer questions for you?

4. did the book leave you with questions.. for instance were there any Characters you wanted to know more about like Da vinci, maybe the agrippa( the extra books of the Bible that are not actually in there?) 

5. If you haven't seen the movie are you wanting to now?

6. are you interested in Angels and Demons?

7. did you at all know any of the significance of some of the simbolism in the book previously and how it was used in many cultures and had more than one meaning?

8.  What are the things YOU want to know..
Mysty

From My E Mail Bag Tonight

This was quoted in one of my yoga newsletters and I wanted to share it with my contacts.   If any one knows who originally wrote it let me know and I will gladly give credit to them.  

"Water is a great teacher that shows us how to move through the world with grace, ease, determination, and humility. When a river breaks at a waterfall, it gains energy and moves on, as we encounter our own waterfalls, we may fall hard but we always keep moving on. Water can inspire us to not become rigid with fear or cling to what's familiar. Water is brave and does not waste time clinging to its past, but flows onward without looking back. At the same time, when there is a hole to be filled, water does not run away from it in fear of the dark; instead, water humbly and bravely fills the empty space. In the same way, we can face the dark moments of our life rather than run away from them.

Eventually, a river will empty into the sea. Water does not hold back from joining with a larger body, nor does it fear a loss of identity or control. It gracefully and humbly tumbles into the vastness by contributing its energy and merging without resistance. Each time we move beyond our individual egos to become part of something bigger, we can try our best to follow the lead of the river."

A Poem For This Week

The Circle of Chairs

by

Bernice Rendrick

For my aunt, Clara Majors

In her dry goods store a haphazard

collection of of chairs circled

the coal stove: peeling wicker

from the sun parlor, a blurred

needlepoint beyond its prime,

an oak rocker with a broken arm

and a kitchen pine of many Joseph coats

that served faithfully six days a week.

Miss Clara climbed the ladder, her thin

arms pulling muslin and gingham

from rainbow shelves.  As women rocked

and gossiped, flannel thumped 

across the counter, and tatting shuttles

flew like tongues.  Apron patterns were

traced on tissue,  while wool,  harsh

as a scratchy throat, was folded

into brown bags.  Daisy chains were looped

and linked, bluebirds opened wings 

on baby bibs.  In spring, satin whispered

across the measuring plank and from

 the island of linens a bride's gift

of sunbonnet pillowcases was chosen.

A recipe for jonquil cake traveled

the circle as buffalo nickels roamed

from the cash register to children's

pockets, quarters turned up in 

birthday hems, until the chairs

emptied, and Miss Clara leaned the

CLOSED sign against the pale mannequin.

Hunched over her books at the desk

she tried to balance, always

came up short.  Pushing worrisome

wisps of grey hair into the net

she'd order more yardage and thread

knowing they'd soon need Easter clothes. 

(click on the poets name to learn more)

Book For The Week of 8/2/09

The Da Vinci Code

by 

Dan Brown

Publishers Weekly

What if Jesus Christ had a tryst with Mary Magdalene, and the interlude produced a child? Such a possibility-yielding a so-called royal bloodline-provides the framework for Brown's latest thriller (after Angels and Demons), an exhaustively researched page-turner about secret religious societies, ancient coverups and savage vengeance. The action kicks off in modern-day Paris with the murder of the Louvre's chief curator, whose body is found laid out in symbolic repose at the foot of the Mona Lisa. Seizing control of the case are Sophie Neveu, a lovely French police cryptologist, and Harvard symbol expert Robert Langdon, reprising his role from Brown's last book. The two find several puzzling codes at the murder scene, all of which form a treasure map to the fabled Holy Grail, where proof of the Jesus bloodline supposedly can be found. As their search moves from France to England, Neveu and Langdon are confounded by two mysterious groups-the legendary Priory of Sion, a nearly 1,000-year-old secret society whose members have included Botticelli and Isaac Newton, and the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. Both have their own reasons for wanting to ensure that the Grail isn't found. Brown sometimes ladles out too much religious history at the expense of pacing, and Langdon is a hero in desperate need of more chutzpah. Still, Brown has assembled a whopper of a plot that will please both conspiracy buffs and thriller addicts. (Mar. 18) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

(I just finished listening to The Da Vinci Code on audio this past week and really enjoyed it.   I always wanted to read it and since Booksamultiplyin is discussing it this month I grabbed the opportunity to make this the time.   It is a great book!   Very exciting plot and extremely thought provoking.  The one thing that I found very unrealistic is that the heroes went for about two days or better with no sleep,  no shower and no change of clothes,  yet they were still solving word puzzles like they had just got up all refreshed and well rested.   Listening to the book made we want to learn more about Da Vinci and his work.  Although I am probably one of the few who hadn't read this book already,  if you have not,  you must!  A great read! Don't forget to click on the authors name and book title for more information.)