Blog Reader’s Quilts: February 4, 2015
Judith lives in New York.
We met on my blog, and we chat back and forth on email.
Judith sent me these pictures of two quilts she will be hanging in a quilt show in Cooperstown, NY.
The are so pretty…
I thought you’d enjoy seeing them:
Thanks, Judith!
Keep up the good, good work!
Interesting Information: February 4, 2015
So, first of all, who’s lying?
An industry shill, of course.
Does this work? Yep.
You might want to go back to my Tipping Points 7 Essay about raw milk lies, as it details just how effective industry can be when promoting lies. Back in 1945, when the developing milk industry was trying to eliminate competition, they hired a writer to create stories about an “epidemic” of undulent fever, said to be caused by drinking raw milk. The writer even made up a fake town where the “epidemic” was said to occur. And sixty years later, when I started drinking raw milk in Maine (and loving it), my mother, then in her 80s, raised the undulent fever risk. She had stopped drinking raw milk, a victim of the scare tactics of industry. One of my fondest memories of her when I was a child was her standing on the back porch of my grandmother’s home, her long legs bare in the heat, her wild black hair curling every which way, as she dipped a steel ladle into the tall silver can of milk that had just come from the farm, pouring the milk into a glass, and drinking it all down in long, delicious swallows. She used to drink buttermilk like that, too. And clabber, or soured milk, was one of her favorite things to drink back in those “old days.”
Industries lie all the time.
And they do get away with it.
Here’s a really, really good debunking of industry lies about pesticides and bees. I’m assuming you know that if we lose the bees, we lose an enormous amount of the food we so take for granted.
(Thanks Beedy Parker for sending this article along.)
One tactic industry uses was learned from the cigarette industry–and I have Tipping Points essays on that topic as well. By claiming “the science isn’t clear,” when it is really clear even though objective scientists are being fired and demonized, industry can keep the issue unresolved–while they continue to make tons of money. Neonics are extraordinarily toxic. Period.
Do take a moment and read this very interesting article.
Shedding Light on Three Big Lies About Systemic Pesticides and Bees.
Poems: February 4, 2015
I asked Jeanine Gervais, who lives in the northern Boston area, which has also been slammed with snow, to write a poem about winter for the blog.
Note: a “snow farms,” I just learned are the places (like empty parking lots) where cities/towns are putting snow to get it off the streets.
By Jeanine H. Gervais…inspired by my friend, Louisa P. Enright
It has been snowing for years now
or so it seems
The sky a milky white
warns us
more to come.
Blankets of snow will silence everything.
There is no escape:
TV weathermen with anxious voices reminding us
of record snow fall…school closings…stay off roads
sand and plow trucks have been deployed.
Why do they broadcast TV newsmen
on top of snow mounds,
then too breathless to give reports,
like we need to see snow mounds
we have the real thing.
We have our own snow farms, too.
It takes 15 minutes to put on four layers
the windchill factor minus 17 degrees
to find the mailbox glued shut
but it doesn’t matter because mailmen who deliver in rain, sleet, and snow,
don’t. I miss my mail.
The Boston Globe newspaper tube
a frozen cannoli,
glare ice hides
under baby-powder snow.
I hear the roofs heave,
salt is eating my car.
Friends from Florida and Arizona
send emails
with cute remarks
but that’s okay,
we can take it.
We had to jump off merry-go-rounds,
such a gift.
February 2, 2015
Louisa Enright's Blog 