Weekly Photo Challenge: Forward!
Tag: photos
$aving of the Green – Blog Carnival
I’ve been writing about saving money (saving resources, saving the ecology, etc.) for years, but all that work is scattered around on this site, and rather hard to find amidst over 700 posts.
Now I’ve been invited to help a fellow blogger create a “carnival” which is basically a collections of bloggers using the same topic. Rather than rewrite so much content, I am creating this list as my entry in her project.
Saving resources in a sort of do-by-self way has been the theme of our great country for many centuries. We were not always motivated by the same exact ethic when we scraped and made do, but we always just could never feel right throwing away perfectly good stuff.
I guess it came too hard. My mom always reminded me of all the starving people in some far-away place. Many of them have since moved here, but still, how cruel to throw away that last bite of food on the plate, when they would do almost anything to obtain it for themselves! Ahem — except work, that is.
Well, and then there are the ones who have managed to get the food off our plates, but that’s another subject.
The facts remain, though. If you own a patch of dirt and some seed, you can eat. If you bother with putting food up in jars, you can save our tin resources. If you eat leftovers you save food. If you grow your own, you save money on groceries.
In other words, whether you save out of poverty, stubbornness, habit, frugality, guilt, or greed, DO join in this grand, centuries-old fad and $AVE something!
Now, enjoy the list, and don’t forget, several others are contributing on other sites you can find here.
- Heating your home with free, renewable, all natural fuel.
- Raise your own chickens. Teach your chickens.
- Protect your chickens. Protect them again. And again. Again.
- Admire the eggs. Enjoy the eggs.
- Eat the eggs.
- Tend your garden. Tend it some more. Get the children to help.
- Can, bottle, or jar the results of your garden–a five-post series. Note: the series begins on this link, but continues for five days.
- Freeze the results of your garden. The beginning of another series, on care and use of the freezer.
- Grow herbs and craft them. Lavender and catnip. Harvest. Crafts. Benefits. Landscape with herbs. Keep the doctor away.
That’s all for now. I probably lost some, so let me know if you find them. Thanks.
. . . They Brought to Him Gifts . . .
The first recorded baby shower in the world, perhaps, was when the Magi brought to Joseph and Mary, and their new baby, Jesus, three amazing gifts from their traveling treasure chests.
What? No gift card for Baby Gap? No.
Gold.
- Gold cannot be canceled and is the standard for all worth. Just as Jesus is.
- Gold never tarnishes, never rusts, never becomes corrupt in any way. Again, like Jesus.
- Gold is the decoration of kings, the drapery of kings, a symbol of kings. Which is what Jesus is: King of Kings.
No Lysol Spray? No.
Something much nicer and much more meaningful.
- The aged sap of the boswelia bush, obtained by beating and cutting it, frankincense was considered as precious as gold. Okay, so Jesus is more precious.
- Frankincense was both appealing and purifying. As is Jesus.
- Priests burned frankincense to mingle with prayer; it is a symbol of prayer. Jesus is our High Priest and ever lives to pray for us.
No Mennen’s?
No. Something much more foretelling.
- Myrrh was a valuable resource from the Middle East, a fitting gift for such an extraordinary birth as Jesus’.
- Myrrh was a healer and lifted pain. It was offered to Jesus in a drink during His crucifixion.
- Myrrh speaks of death and was combined with aloes inside Jesus’ burial shroud.
- It’s bitter properties also foretold the rejection Jesus would face.
How could these three wise men have known their gifts were perfect?
Probably the same way they knew when and where to find the Babe.
They paid attention to the things of God.
We should try it.
_____________________
Image via Wikipedia
The Gift of Poverty
If poverty is a help to right living, then this girl was a saint.
I’ll call her “Sharon”. She lived out in the country near us, in a rental cabin meant for hunters. Termite-infested, cold in winter, hot in summer, wet during rains, it provided only privacy for Sharon’s family: her jobless parents and her little sister.
When, after my second son arrived, the carry-in meals were too much food for us, we passed some of it on to this poor family. They returned every single one of those empty Cool-Whip cartons, spotlessly clean. The only time they ever asked us for money, it was for food, and when Sharon’s mother had finished shopping, she brought me the change she had not needed.
Sharon was trying hard not to become a dropout and to keep away from the problems inherent to youth those days. It was easy for me to like her quiet and confident ways. Although there was about ten years difference in our ages, she showed me the kindnesses of friendship and sometimes would visit with me over the phone. She always ended each call by mentioning some difficulty she or her family had encountered and I counseled her briefly. Only after I converted her plight into a prayer request, would she say good-bye. How that impressed me!
Sharron married right after high school and soon was expecting her first child. She still called me occasionally and eventually asked me to visit at the new house her teen husband had built her. What a building! Constructed totally of 3/8” plywood, top to bottom, in and out, and walls painted in the latest style – with a feather duster. It was too hot in there for me, but the small wood-burner was kept at a low roar for the baby’s warmth.
One day I answered my door to find Sharon standing there with something to give me. She said they had to move and wanted to tell me good-bye. On the porch floor beside her stood a diminutive table her husband had made of scrap lumber, mostly 1×1’s. It was as simple as a plywood house, but well-made and painted with a feather duster.
How incredible that Sharon, so poverty-stricken, could even consider gifts for others! It almost brought me to tears.
I have loved the story and the person behind that small gift for a long time. It served well as a fern stand, outdoors when the weather was mild, and indoors when it was too hot or cold for ferns. It soon needed repainting and always bore the colors of the exterior of our houses, wherever we lived. I kept it proudly on display right by the front door and often told the story of this gift.
If you are thinking you’ve already read this story here, before, you’re correct. Oh, BUT – there is a new twist in the ending. Before, I had said what I thought was true, that it had finally sort of decomposed in the ensuing 30 years, but I was wrong. The little table still lives! While visiting my oldest son, not long ago, I spied it on the deck behind his house, still holding up, still holding potted plants, and I (TADA!) photographed it for you all to see: The lovely little table from “Sharon”.
Be a Gift
Joi and her husband were poor. He was a sacker in a small grocery while she raised their four children in a two-bedroom house and they both worked on college degrees at the same time.
Although we were good friends, Joi was a constant source of inadequacy in me. Her scratch cooking, home canning, crocheted doilies, and hand-sewn quilts, all worked on my sense of accomplishment. She would even blend soy beans in her blender for soy milk.
And then turned it into ice cream.
How did she always fill the gaps among their possessions with cheer? How did she know all about healthful eating before the age of computers? How did she know about herbal healing before the herbal renaissance? How play piano beautifully? I would never catch up!
The day came when Joi and her husband completed their degrees and moved to the land of employment. I lost touch with her, but not exactly; I still can feel Joi’s cheer in my life.
One time, for my birthday, she brought me a huge surprise. Simple and cherishable, just like Joi, the gift brought me happiness, that day. Enveloped in kitchen linens was an enormous steaming loaf of bread. You’ve never seen one that big. I was so excited. With it was a bag of spinach from her own garden, immaculately cleaned.
What fun we had loving that sweet gift to pieces, literally! These delicious additions to my birthday supper may seem like an odd gift to you, but Joi knew what it would mean to us, and we saw the love in it.
If I had washed and washed a big bag of spinach and then given it away I’d be missing it. But Joi just smiled her cheery best. If I’d had the aromas of homemade bread floating through my house, for naught, if I’d known that bread was going to someone else’s house, I’d have handed it over very longingly, not cheerily like Joi.
In a way, you could say Joi was the gift.
Pro Bono (that means “free legal”) Work Offered to Easterners
Been asked to share this from NOVO Law Firm PC:
My heart is breaking as I look at photos of the damage from Hurricane Sandy – water in the streets, electrical fires, Tatiana’s fallen façade, flooded basements and disabled vehicles – so many dreams are in shambles. I hope you have all made it through safely and started the return to normal.
While my home and office remain without power [ . . . ] I am beginning to have some reception and have mobilized my staff to assist those who are less fortunate.
Please feel free to email or call me at 917-226-6405 (by the way, I do not have your telephone contacts at the moment). Also, please collect the contact information for everyone who suffered serious damages and wants help. We will need their name, address, telephone, email and a brief description (loss of motor vehicle, flood-damaged basements, injuries, loss of business, etc.). Make sure to tell everyone to take photos before they clean up and repair.
I will help everyone pro bono to apply for government aid/compensation and to submit insurance claims. Via email, I am able to assist as early as this week. Feel free to share my information and this offer with anyone that may need it.
Okay, everyone! Take photos before clean-up, if you think you need legal help, and if you need help with getting legal help, who knows? These folks might be it . . .
State Senators Seek A.G. Opinion on Marijuana Vending Machines
Dear Friends,
Today The Arkansas Family Council held a press conference announcing they are working with State Senators Jeremy Hutchinson and Johnny Key, who are seeking an opinion from Attorney General McDaniel on whether or not the proposed Issue 5 would open Arkansas up to marijuana vending machines.
Marijuana is dispensed through vending machines in California. Some people are trying to get Connecticut to permit vending machines under its marijuana program. Vending machines seem to be the future of the ‘medical’ marijuana industry.
These machines are basically high-tech snack machines that sell marijuana and marijuana-infused food instead of potato chips.
Having read the measure, I don’t think there’s anything in Issue 5 that would prohibit vending machines. Hopefully Attorney General McDaniel’s office can shed some light on how widespread vending machines might become if Issue 5 passes, next week.
For instance, if Issue 5 passes, can a marijuana dispensary put a vending machine offsite somewhere? Can a dispensary in Magnolia or Jonesboro contract to put a vending machine at a convenience store across town? Can a dispensary put a vending machine out front for people to use in the middle of the night, when the dispensary is closed?
We don’t sell beer out of vending machines. We don’t sell cigarettes out of vending machines. I don’t know why anyone would be comfortable selling marijuana out of vending machines.
You can see the website for the marijuana vending machine (“Med Box”) popular in California here: http://www.thedispensingsolution.com/
Related articles
- Marijuana Vending Machines Coming to Arkansas? (arkansasmatters.com)
- Finally, Heathy Products in a Vending Machine! (maryannemistretta.wordpress.com)
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