Bits and pieces from my trip to Houston

 I had the best time in Houston a couple of weeks ago, at the International Quilt Festival.  I shopped full time, and in 4 days I covered all 2000 booths (well, the numbers went from 100-2000 but I don't know how many vendors there really were.)

I ended up buying some supplies for some cute projects.  I bought about $10 of colorful buttons (to go with the ten pounds of buttons I already own) and I want to make wooden letters (see above) with my grandkids or with my daughters-in-laws.

 I read two more novels on the planes.  They were both by Adriana Trigiani, she is one of my favorite authors.  (My favorite so far has been "Lucia,Lucia").  I really like her Big Stone Gap series.  I just read the third book, "Milk Glass Moon", and the fourth, "Home to Big Stone Gap."

  Here is some vintage trim I bought, I have high hopes of making some funky curtains for my sewing room and using this on them.

The House on the Strand

This is one of my favorite books.  Every five or ten years, I have to check it out of the library again.  

It is about a man renting an old house in England.  He discovers that if he takes a certain drug, he goes back into the 14th century and is able to watch the people who lived in that house back then.  He gets addicted to living in that other century.

This is written by Daphne du Maurier, she is more famous for her book "Rebecca".  

All my life, one of my unfulfilled desires is to magically be able to go back in time.  I keep hoping that during the Millenium, for entertainment, we might be able to choose a small location (a particular hill or city block, etc.) and watch a virtual movie of every single thing that ever happened on that spot for all the centuries of time.  WOULDN'T THAT BE AWESOME!  I guess thats why I like this book.  He can see what happened on the site of his house 500 years previously.

AND

Here is a trailer for a new movie:  "AGENDA: Grinding America Down".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH8LkIqu1c8&feature=player_embedded

About the planned destruction of the American way of life.

Harriett the Spy

"Harriett the Spy" was my very favorite book when I was in the 4th grade, and reading it inspired me to begin writing in my diary.  I started writing sporadically in the 4th grade, but in the middle of the 6th grade the habit stuck, and I have not missed a day for the past 42 years. ( Thats a lot of diaries!)

I just reread this book, and was struck by how outdated it is.  It was written in 1964, and kids these days would have a very difficult time relating to it.

First, Harriett has complete freedom to roam all over New York City by herself.  No kidnappers or child molesters or crime to worry about.

Second, she has a full time nanny and cook, and so do all her friends.

Third, television.  Here is just a random paragraph from the book:

Ole Golly said "I thought we might sit down here in the kitchen and play a game of checkers."

Harriett:  "In the kitchen?  But we always watch television when we play checkers....There isn't any television down here."

Oh yes, that reminded me of way back when each family only owned one TV.  How quaint that a wealthy family like Harriet's (remember they have a nanny and a cook) don't even have a TV in the kitchen.

(Remember the Monkees song "Pleasant Valley Sunday", some of the lyrics pointed out the unusual fact about Mr. Green:  "Mr. Green, he's so serene, he's got a TV in every room".)  The first people I knew who had several TV's  were Wayne's Aunt Carol and Uncle Gary, and we definitely thought they were rich.  They also had a TV in the kitchen, which was a brand new idea for me.  But I have mostly watched TV in the kitchen ever since.

Fourth, here is how they decided what movie to see.

(Ole Golly and boyfriend decide to take Harriet to the movies.)  "Oh, boy," said Harriet and jumped up from the table.  "I'll go get the paper and see what's playing."  She ran upstairs to the library and went through the paper thoroughly.  She was torn between a spooky (movie) and a spectacular about the Greek gods..she decided to choose the latter.  Anyway, it was in color."

It struck me that when I was a child we DID have to get a newspaper to find out what was on at the movie theater.  But when I was a newlywed, we started calling the theater's phone line and there would be a constant loop playing a message, listing all the movies.  Of course, later when the internet was invented, we just look online.  It has been years since I thought about those other methods.

But the added shock was that, yes, I can also remember when some movies were more special than others because they were in COLOR.

Rereading that book made me feel like I grew up in the stone age.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

I loved reading Betty MacDonald's "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" series of books when I was young.  I just bought them and read them again.

As you might know, I just LOVE wacky silly names (a la Dr. Suess) so I also enjoy the names in "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle."  Here are some of them:

Ermintrude Bags
Calliope Ragbag
Paraphernalia Grotto
Cormorant Broomrack
Worthington and Guinevere Gardenfield
Wetherill Crankminor
Pergola Wingsproggle
Jasper and Myrtle Quitrick


AND


Just a quick question:

Why does the Department of Homeland Security need 450,000,000 rounds of hollow point bullets?

( March 12, 2012)
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atk-secures-40-caliber-ammunition-contract-with-department-of-homeland-security-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-dhs-ice-2012-03-12?reflink=MW_news_stmp

If you Google "homeland security hollow point bullets" you will see many articles about this.  I, with many other people, am wondering about the nefarious reasons behind this. 

Our friend's novel: "Silverheels"

A man in our ward, who is a good friend of ours, has written a novel, and it is out as an ebook.

Read Ken Kuykendall's blog post, and see if you might be interested in buying a copy of the book.  It sounds hysterical, I've got to read it soon (but I don't have a Kindle so I can't yet)

http://www.silverheelsbook.com/

General Conference, Library Book Sale

I love the annual Wake County Library book sale, but unfortunately for me the cheapest days this year fell on conference weekend.  I won't shop on Sunday, so I had to go to the next-cheapest day, which was Saturday.

I arrived at the state fairgrounds a half-hour early to stand in line with my little grocery cart I brought from home.  I shopped from 10 am to 11:45, and bought about 20 books.

I stood in one spot and turned from left to right to take these two pictures.  

Thats a lot of books!

Then I drove to Seth's and Janette's apartment (they live closest to the fairgrounds.)

I watched the Saturday morning session of conference with them, and enjoyed watching Tessa crawl all over the room.  She has learned to crawl and to clap her hands since the last time I saw her.

I was impressed with the cute "fans" they had folded and hung up all over their living room wall. 

And see that gumball machine?  Seth made that in woodworking in middle school.

1999

Oh, back to my story.

Immediately when that conference session was over, I drove back to the fairgrounds and shopped for another hour and a half, and bought about 20 more books. (Hardbacks were $2, paperbacks were $1.)  I was SO THANKFUL that I brought my little grocery cart, I saw other people carrying cardboard boxes or heavy totebags full of books, and that looked painful.

Then I zoomed home and got there exactly three minutes late for the afternoon session of conference.

It was a hectic day, but I am so glad I was able to do it all.  I could have used another 2 hours at the book sale, though.  I really only got to look through about 7 subsections of Non-Fiction  (I love non-fiction), I didn't have time to look at any fiction or children's.

Buchanan's book "Suicide of a Superpower"

This book looks fascinating.  Here is a synopsis of each chapter.

Chapter 1: The Passing of a Superpower “We have accepted today the existence in perpetuity of a permanent underclass of scores of millions who cannot cope and must be carried by society -- fed, clothed, housed, tutored, medicated at taxpayer’s expense their entire lives. We have a dependent nation the size of Spain in our independent America. We have a new division in our country, those who pay a double or triple fare, and those who ride forever free.” Chapter 2. The End of Christian America  If [Christopher] Dawson is correct, the drive to de-Christianize America, to purge Christianity from the public square, public schools and public life, will prove culturally and socially suicidal for the nation. “The last consequence of a dying Christianity is a dying people. Not one post-Christian nation has a birth rate sufficient to keep it alive....The death of European Christianity means the disappearance of the European tribe, a prospect visible in the demographic statistics of every Western nation.” Chapter 3. The Crisis of Catholicism  “Half a century on, the disaster is manifest. The robust and confident Church of 1958 no longer exists. Catholic colleges and universities remain Catholic in name only. Parochial schools and high schools are closing as rapidly as they opened in the 1950s. The numbers of nuns, priests and seminarians have fallen dramatically. Mass attendance is a third of what it was. From the former Speaker of the House to the Vice President, Catholic politicians openly support abortion on demand.” “How can Notre Dame credibly teach that all innocent life is sacred, and then honor a president committed to ensuring that a woman’s right to end the life of her innocent child remains sacrosanct?” Chapter 4. The End of White America  “[W]hite America is an endangered species. By 2020, whites over 65 will out-number those 17 and under. Deaths will exceed births. The white population will begin to shrink and, should present birth rates persist, slowly disappear.” “Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being over-turned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution -- to “insure domestic tranquility” and ‘make us a more perfect union’? Or have we imperiled our union?” (Page 134) Chapter 5. Demographic Winter  “Peoples of European descent are not only in a relative but a real decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West.” (Page 166) “Not any Iranian weapon of mass destruction but demography is the existential crisis Israel faces....By mid-century...Palestinians west of the Jordan river will out-number Jews 2-1. Add Palestinians in Jordan, it is 3-1.” “In a startling development of history, Russia’s population has fallen from 148 million in 1991 to 140 million today and is projected to plunge to 116 million by 2050, a loss of 32 million Russians in six decades.” Chapter 6. Equality Vs. Freedom  “Those who would change society begin by changing the meaning of words. At Howard University, LBJ changed the meaning of equality from the attainable -- an end to segregation and a legislated equality of rights for African-Americans -- to the impossible: a socialist utopia.” “Where equality is enthroned, freedom is extinguished. The rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society.” “A time for truth. As most kids do not have the athletic ability to play high school sports, or the musical ability to play in the band, or the verbal ability to excel in debate, not every child has the academic ability to do high school work. No two children are created equal, not even identical twins. The family is the incubator of inequality and God its author.” Chapter 7. The Diversity Cult  “The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality,” Wattenberg trilled.4 Yet, one wonders: What kind of man looks with transcendental joy to a day when the people among whom he was raised have become a minority in a nation where the majority rules?” “Historians will look back in stupor at 20th and 21st century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.” Chapter 8: The Triumph Of Tribalism  America’s war of revenge against Japan was a race war. Newsreels, movies, magazines, comic books, headlines treated “Japs” as a repulsive race whose extermination would benefit mankind....Only well after the war was over was it re-branded a war to bring the blessings of democracy to...Japan. We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse. Chapter 9. ‘The White Party’  “Through its support of mass immigration, its paralysis in power to prevent 12-20 million illegal aliens from entering and staying, its failure to address the “anchor-baby” issue, the Republican Party has birthed a new electorate that will send it the way of the Whigs.” Chapter 10: The Long Retreat  “We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from the Gulf states to defend the Gulf states. We borrow from Japan to defend Japan. Is it not a symptom of senility to be borrowing from the world so we can defend the world?” “Are vital U.S. interests more imperiled by what happens in Iraq where were have 50,000 troops, or Afghanistan where we have 100,000, or South Korea where we have 28,000 -- or by what is happening on our border with Mexico?...What does it profit America if we save Anbar and lose Arizona?” Chapter 11: The Last Chance  “We are trying to create a nation that has never before existed, of all the races, tribes, cultures and creeds of Earth, where all are equal. In this utopian drive for the perfect society of our dreams we are killing the real country we inherited -- the best and greatest country on earth.”

More mansions about to bite the dust

When I was a teenager living in Oklahoma, the oldest mansions in our area were built around 1910.  (Oklahoma didn't have any buildings like that until after the Land Rush settlers had made a little money.)

When our family took a vacation eastward my senior year, I saw the riverfront mansions in St. Louis and I was hooked.  I just loved old houses, especially Victorian ones.  One of the essays I wrote for my college entrance packet was how I was going to become an expert on Victorian architecture and planned to write a book about it.  (Didn't happen.)

Anyway, as you probably all know,  I still love to put creatively shaped houses on most of my quilts.  I just really like to look at houses.

I taught quilting in Saginaw, Michigan a few years ago, and while there, one of the quilt guild ladies very generously presented me with an expensive hardbound picture book of all the great mansions that had been built in Bay City, Michigan during the boom of the lumber business there in the mid-to late 1800's.

As I looked at all the gorgeous, huge homes, over and over I saw above the photo/drawing:  "Razed 1928" "Razed 1945", etc.  I was amazed how much treasure had been invested in these beautiful homes, which were inhabited for about 40 to 50 years each before they were demolished.

Today I saw this slide show on CNBC, ten mansions which are probably going to be demolished sometime in the future.  You can see that they are/were beautiful, too, once.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42362346/?slide=1

A couple of years ago I really enjoyed reading the book  "Rubble- Unearthing the history of Demolition" by Jeff Byles.  But it was painful reading the story of the demolition of Pennsylvania Station in 1963, to make way for Madison Square Garden.  With no regard for the beautiful statues or marble and granite decorations, the whole structure was bulldozed and dumped.  Adam read it too, and that book really hurt both of our feelings.

It is amazing to think of the millions of structures that have come and gone in the history of the world.




(Change of topic)

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/this-is-what-happens-when-establishment-control-of-the-media-cracks-for-a-moment  Here is a video of what happened on CNN when the two female news anchors interviewed a CIA official about the war in Libya.  If I was a body language expert, I think I could learn a lot from the defensive ways the two women started waving their arms or folding their arms as they got into an argument with the man.

She Got Up Off the Couch- Book Review

It was funny! It was sad! It made me remember my childhood in the 1960's and 1970's! What a great book!

She Got Up Off the Couch and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana, by Haven Kimmel.

She also wrote "A Girl Named Zippy". I will be reading that one as soon as possible, I can't wait!

Here are some of my favorite sentences and paragraphs from She Got Up Off the Couch.

"On the day of (Melinda's) wedding...I went limp as a rag doll and allowed myself to be manipulated. I was bathed,...I did as I was told. I moved and felt like a zombie, only without the flesh-eating joy that seems to drive zombies around neighborhoods like Jehovah's Witnesses." p. 55

(When mice fell out of the original high ceiling onto the new dropped ceiling.)

It was mice, and from the sound of it, about fifty of them....It sounded as if they were all getting off a big mouse bus, happy and friendly and looking forward to their vacation. p. 96

"Howard was old, too, but he was craggled and shambling and his nose looked as if it had melted and been reattached at the School for the Blind." p. 200

(Commenting on photos in the newspaper showing a couple's wedding photo alongside their 25th or 50th anniversary photo.)

This was a tradition I was highly against, because it was very disturbing....Oh, here we are when we were young and still had our own hair and both of our arms! And here we are now---the only thing keeping up upright for this picture is the fear we will land on our colostomy bags! p. 211

"She looked in general as if her husband had run off with both her best friend and her coonhound." p. 232.

The Future of the Book

Here is a link to a video, showing how digital books can use all sorts of outside links and websites to make them even more than just a reading experience. I thought it was fascinating.

(I have corrected the link, thanks to Adam.)

http://vimeo.com/15142335

Not My Type of Quilting

I just saw a book review of a new quilting book:

Marsha McCloskey’s “Feathered Star Quilt Blocks” books #1 and #2.

The tag line on both books is "Really Hard Blocks That Take a Long Time to Make".

This is the exact opposite of my idea of fun.


If you want to buy one, you can get a copy of Feathered Star Quilt Blocks I and Feathered Star Quilt Blocks II along with Marsha’s rulers from Feathered Star Productions.


To change the subject, here is a funny bumper sticker: "Pray for Obama Psalms 109:8"

Amazing Travel Stories, Women in the 1800's

I learned the most astonishing facts from this book, "No Place for a Lady- Tales of Adventurous Women Travelers" written by Barbara Hodgson. She took quotes from the many first-person travelogues which were written by women in the 1800's.

Here is the story of a bad hotel:

In a New South Wales hostel, Louisa Anne Meredith found sheets so black that"half a dozen unwashed chimney sweeps occupying the same bed for a fortnight could not have left evidences of a darker hue". After much grumbling, the hostess gave her a set of cleaner ones...then the maid came back "If you please, ma'am, Missus wants them sheets you pulled off your bed, for a gentleman as is just come in!"- Louisa Anne Meredith, author of Notes and Sketches of New South Wales (1844)

These women did not believe in packing light:

Alexine Tinne and her mother, Harriet Tinne set off in 1862 to explore the Nile, etc. They left Cairo on Jan. 1862 with servants, guards, maids, and "a horse, a donkey, five dogs, heaps of baggage, including camera equipment and food for a year." After leaving the boat, they travelled overland with "102 camels and numerous donkeys to carry their gear."

Katherine Petherick had packed a piano, which had been manufactured in two parts for easy transport (travelling from Cairo to Khartoum 1861).

Some unusual wedding customs (YIKES!):

1864, Olympe d'Audouard travelled to Egypt. Her book "Les Mysteres de l'Egypte devoiles" 1866. Audouard attended a Coptic wedding, realized the customs were rather different from what she expected, so when asked if she'd like to stay for the post-marriage rites, she readily agreed and watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as the husband entered the bridal chamber and, in the presence of a score of women, including herself and her maid, ceremoniously deprived his new wife of her virginity....

Pest control for boats:

Harriet Martineau wrote "Eastern Life, Present and Past" 1848. She cruised up the Nile in a boat, at this time boats were often sunk before the trip commenced. The sinking was to kill bugs infesting the boats....

I was dumbfounded by the following story. Okay, maybe I understand the sewing, but why the ironing and starching?

On board, Harriet Martineau and her friend Mrs. Yates, occupied themselves by sewing and ironing...This was so diverting that Martineau recommended that a lady think of "putting up a pair of flat-irons among her baggage. If she can also starch, it will add much to her comfort."

All in all, a very eye-opening book. I just love to read the strange-but-true.


Also, I read this great article today in the Telegraph. " The Stunning Decline of Barack Obama: Ten Key Reasons why the Obama Presidency is in Meltdown". Leave it to the Brits to tell it like it is.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100050412/the-stunning-decline-of-barack-obama-10-key-reasons-why-the-obama-presidency-is-in-meltdown/

The Not so "Great and Terrible" series

(This is off the subject, but I watched the season premiere of Project Runway on Thursday night and I COMPLETELY disagreed with the judges. I cannot believe they kicked off McKell from Utah, her little dress was cute though immodest. I cannot believe they kept the idiot in the derby hat who just turned a kimono around backwards and stapled it. And I can't believe they kept the hispanic guy who dressed his model as a Dubai pole dancer. And the winner's dress--UGH! It looked like a shirtwaist dress I had in the 1980's, with metallic fabric added as shoulder pads. What were they thinking?)



I was all excited to read the "Great and Terrible" series by Chris Stewart (no relation), and I read Volumes 2-6 in only a couple of weeks.

Yes, they were exciting, and they were about the end of the world and nuclear war, and an ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack, but they were not what I wanted.

I still think "One Second After", which was written by non-LDS writer William R. Forstchen, described the end of the world better than the LDS author Stewart did in the "Great and Terrible" series.

Forstchen included all the suffering from not having food, and the ways people tried to provide food and shelter and protection for themselves and their families. Stewart gave the main characters backpacks full of food and then they got food from the army, so the scarcity of food played little role in the plot.

Forstchen and Stewart both included the people breaking up into tribes because the government was destroyed, but Forstchen described it in more detail. And I was fascinated by Forstchen's description of the jury-rigged solutions the people came up with to communicate, fight a war, kill game, purify water, cook food, build latrines, and transport goods. Stewart's people basically travelled on foot carrying their supply of food until they got transported by government helicopter. The main characters did not have to find ways to communicate with one another, because they had miraculous spiritual promptings to guide them to each other. (Thats good, but I want to know what to do should the miraculous promptings fail to arrive.) He never described how to obtain food, water, and sanitation while they were under attack.

And it really annoyed me that Stewart left a lot of plotlines just hanging there. What happened to the money and the gold that they buried near their car? Whatever happened to the man who was trying to find Azadeh to give her the $12 million? What happened to the blonde rich girl? I have no idea why he went into such detail to put those people into the story if he totally forgot to ever mention them again.

"The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron

I love this book. It has a lot of exercises in creativity, that especially help when you have a mental block. She says funny stuff, too.

"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. I think of making love and making art as being very parallel. Even the most amateur attempt can be thrilling."

Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way"

Books: "The Great and Terrible" series

I just read two books which have given me the serious freak out.

The series is called "The Great and Terrible" series, by Chris Stewart. The person I borrowed them from did not own Vol. 1, so I just read Vol. 2 and Vol. 3. Janette's mom recommended them, and told me it was fine not to read Vol. 1. They were written by an LDS author, and I think Vol. 1 sets up the main characters in the pre-existence. I don't think it ruined the story at all to miss that volume.

Wow are they good books! Chris Stewart is a military guy, so he knows all about how the military works, and the plot is absolutely believable, the way the various secret combinations are plotting to destroy America.

Vol. 2 ends with Gaza and Washington D.C. both getting nuked. I am dying to borrow Vol. 3 as soon as I can. I want to see how the main characters survive with no government, no gasoline, while they wander across the nation trying to get to safety.

The titles are: Volume 2: Where Angels Fall and Volume 3: The Second Sun.

One thing I enjoyed about the books is that he flashes back and forth from the real world, and then to the spirit world and shows us what the evil spirits are doing all around the evil people, and then shows us what the angels are doing to try to protect the humans. It is great imagery, just exactly what I can picture in my own imagination.

Life around here

We spent July 4 at Isaac and Rachel's house. The little kids went to bed at 8 pm, so we watched a Roman candle burn when it wasn't even dusk yet. But they still enjoyed it.

I am happy that Janette, Seth, and Wayne, and Patti's bookclub, have all read or are currently reading "One Second After" by William R. Forstchen (about a fictional ElectroMagnetic Pulse attack on the U.S.A). I guess its my role in life to recommend books which scare people with "what if?" scenarios.

I keep making Tara clean up more stuff out of her bedroom and store boxes in the attic. All the boxes Seth took out of the attic when he and Janette moved back to North Carolina have now been replaced, plus some.

She signed up for her classes at BYU on Monday night at midnight.

As soon as she leaves, I am planning to make her bedroom into a guestroom/grandkids' toy room/food storage room. This will be the first time that a kid has left a room vacant when he/she moved out to college. Always before, the kid was sharing a room with someone.

In case you haven't seen him lately, Zac has grown a beard. He is not making the progress I would like on his Eagle project, but I am trying to stop pushing him. HE is the one who is supposed to be learning leadership, not me.

Wayne asked "What do you call the end of a shoelace?". I didn't know, so he looked it up on the internet.

The answer: It is called an aglet. Just in case you were wondering.

Eliminating Shelving

We took care of Elizabeth and Thomas on Monday and Tuesday while Isaac and Rachel took a two day trip to Charlotte. I decided I am too old to be a mom. Wow, those little kids really wore me out.

I had some shelving units in our kitchen next to our kitchen table, where I prepared and stored all my seminary lessons for the last 4 years. Since they were empty, the little kids pretended they were bunk beds.

Today I spent a long time cleaning out more shelves, and moved them out of the room. Maybe we can start using our kitchen table again, instead of having lesson plans all over it.




On Monday night, we walked over to Rita's, to buy Italian ice from Tara, who is an employee there.






Also, Janette's mom, Jill, recommended these books written by Chris Stewart, The Great and Terrible series, which you can buy at Deseret Books. Does anyone have them, and can I borrow them?

These are the titles:
1- Prologue- The Brothers
2- Where Angels Fall
3- The Second Sun
4- Fury and Light
5- From the End of Heaven
6- Clear as the Moon.

Bartering in our Future?

I had highly recommended the book "One Second After" in this blog on 4-14-2010, so my friend chose it for her book club to read.

She said the whole group was enthusiastic about the book, which is a fictionalized account of what happens in North Carolina when several ElectoMagnetic Pulses are caused by nuclear bombs exploded over the U.S.A. I was interested to find out that each of the women of the book club, after reading the book, unanimously said "We want to buy a gun."

One of the fascinating things in the book is that after both the government and communication system fail, the barter system blossoms. One of the favorite bartering items in the book is bullets.

My sister said some women in her ward were canning cigarettes to use as barter. (I wouldn't do that.) And others were canning M&M's.

I wouldn't know what kind of gun to buy if I wanted to buy one, and I also wouldn't know what kind of bullets to buy if I wanted to store them for bartering.

However, there ARE other things I am quite knowledgeable about. I think I could do a great job buying a large amount of feminine hygiene products and storing them in my attic. I betcha there would be a lot of women wanting to barter for those supplies.

The other thing I thought of was cloth diapers. Who has cloth diapers anymore? And even if you had cloth you could cut up to make some diapers, who in the world has any diaper pins? So last week when I was at Walmart, I bought several packages of cloth diapers, and many packages of diaper pins.

I don't want to invest in gold. I think Kotex and diapers will be better than gold.



Just a heads up:

It looks like other people are seeing bad times in the future as well. I had to read this article from CNBC when I saw the headline: "Markets About to Turn Nasty, Buy Barbed Wire"

Anthony Fry, senior managing director at Evercore Partners, told CNBC Monday....Fry is telling investors to play it safe and buy physical assets like land.

“I don’t want to scare anyone but I am considering investing in barbed wire and guns, things are not looking good and rates are heading higher,” he said.

General Honore's Advice- Texting

I just read a really good book, Survival: How a Culture of Preparedness Can Save You and Your Family From Disasters by Lt. General Russel L. Honore' (U.S. Army, retired). He was the commander of Joint Task Force- Katrina, the officer on the ground in charge of all active-duty military forces sent to Louisiana and Mississippi.

I liked the way that he stayed completely apolitical in this book. He especially explained the policies, traditions, laws and regulations that existed prior to Katrina, and how they prohibited or discouraged municipal, state, federal, and military leaders from doing what they should have done to prepare ahead of time. He had some great ideas for changes that could be made so that the next disaster of that type could be handled better.

It is amazing how much red tape and confusion existed when some leader wanted to accomplish something. And having all the communications systems knocked out made it exponentially worse.

I appreciated the fact that he knew what the people of New Orleans were going through, because he grew up poor and black in nearby Louisiana. He expressed his sympathy for the suffering people, but at the same time explained that it was a cultural thing among the poor to be patient and wait for the government to help in a disaster. He disapproved of that culture, and said that we all need to prepare in our own homes, not wait for the government.

He was very critical of the way that people don't even think about the possibilities, such as all the people who built houses below sea level instead of putting them up stilts. He blamed the local and state government for allowing those types of building codes.

At the end of every chapter he gave ten- to- twenty "Lessons Learned for Building a Culture of Preparedness."

One of the tips that I got from the book was to teach myself to send and receive text messages on my cell phone.

"Text messages were still working for many people even though the cell towers were down. There were a few cell towers out there somewhere with just a hint of life in them. They had enough power to enable people to send text messages.

Anyone who has a cell phone needs to know how to send text messages in the event of an emergency. A text message is a burst transmission and uses only a fraction of a signal whereas a voice call will eat up a lot of bandwidth.

It is especially important for the elderly or the disabled who live in areas prone to hurricane, floods, earthquakes, or wildfires to have a cell phone and be able to send text messages. Learning that simple skill could mean the difference between life and death. " page 117

"Shortly after our arrival in New Orleans, my headquarters in Atlanta began receiving text messages from people trapped in their homes...These people would send a text message to a friend who would forward it to the Times-Picayune, which would then send the message on to First Army headquarters. The message would be sent from there to the Coast Guard search-and-rescue officials with information about where these people were... " page 116.

(Not from the book) I was also thinking about communicating in a disaster where there are no cell towers left. I am really proud of my friend Patti, who just got her Ham Radio license. I am definitely planning to take that training someday and get my license too.

Do You Like My Hat?

My friend Amelia leads the singing in Primary, and she made this birthday hat for the children to wear during their birthday song. I took a picture of her son wearing it.

I just love goofy hats like this. When Tara was 6 we had a dress-up party for her little friends and everyone glued flowers, ribbons, etc. all over big hats that I had purchased at the Dorcas Thrift Shop.

We seem to have quite a hat collection at our house. When Bryce came home from his mission, I grabbed a lot of the hats out of Tara's closet and put them on everyone.



And I love the book "Go Dog Go". I was just reading it to Elizabeth the other day. Now we say to each other, "Do you like my hat?"
"No, I do not like your hat."
"Goodbye."
"GOODBYE!"