Spring planting, part 1

I've been avidly reading the Auld Farmer's Almanack ( available on-line, pls observe modern spelling rules), trying 2 figure out what's starting from seeds, and what kind of sets I have to buy over ye next couple of days.

Getting lined up with the moon would be impossibly complex were it not 4 ye Almanack's handy, dandy planting by the moon chart.

Tomorow carrot seeds get startd in the house, & I'll have until 3/5 2 get the seedlings planted outside. Also leek sets, which'll go outside immediately.

Everything else goes in Wednesday: cukes, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes.

Potatoes & onions R already growing.

Parsley waits 'til Friday.

Celery stalks @ midnite. 

tarot reading

A 2-line couple's reading from November 23, 2014.

I'll analyze the bottom line first (hers), as it contains 2 trumps.

The sun is the birth of my partner's latest grandchild, the first born 2 her last child (her baby) and his wife, on November 24. She had known for some time that this baby would bring great joy to everyone, herself especially.  6 Hearts is the karmic love card, & tells her there is a price 2 B paid for things said & done in a love relationship, not necessarily the current one. The empress is a fulfillment of some sort, usually worldly, not aescetic. Having recently begun working, & finding herself well-liked and already considered indespensible, she's happy as I've seen her in a long time.

The 3 clubs at the top indicate a person living entirely inside his head. The 9 is the final stage of a particular approach 2 life, and is due to a new Parkinson's medication, Neupro. The deuce is the card of fussin & fightin, &  is closely related to the 6 hearts below it (this is a couple's reading). The 6 spades is the way-shower's card, sometimes called the John the Baptist card. I'll be teaching again soon, but what subject I'm not sure.

It's a complex spread, and like all others has to ferment in the mind of the interpreter 4 a few days before meanings become clear. 

Click on the photo for a larger view.

today menu!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/parkinsons-recovery/2014/03/11/parkinsons-relief-was-in-the-supermarket-for-glen-pettibone

labour day

On Labour Day, this past Monday, I took a
Parkinson's-induced fall and broke rib #9 on the right side (left in this picture). It's the last & smallest one w/ cartilage at both ends, the 3 floaters below it.

There's nothing the medical people can do for a busted rib. Patients are told 2 rest & stay quiet, & breathe deeply, 3 things that R tuff 2 do when you're in a lot of pain. Broken ribs R what drs. call a "pain management" problem.

I knew all this from a little cursory internet searching, and went to the urgent care place nearby where they took the X-ray & prescribed Percocet. Supposedly a heavy-duty pain killer, it gave me nothing but an  unpleasant "downer" high and constipation. So this morning I went to a regular hospital emergency room where they gave me a big old dose of Dilaudid, a synthetic morphine, & prescribed Toradol.

I'm sitting here now feeling 4 ft thick, drinking warm apple juice to try to unplug my gut, & feeling ø pain. They say 3-6 weeks, which'll be doable if I can cut back on the downers in a few days. Have U ever felt like someone else but U didn't know who?                                                                                                                                  

The strangest thing about all of this: when the pain was most intense, I felt intensely glad 2 B alive.

1/2 rations

I haven't posted anything here for a long time, and I wanted to stop in and tell you about my latest experiment.  Parkinson's disease is a trade off all the time. If you take enough medication to suppress all the symptoms you're left with side effects. Cut back on the medication and symptoms return.

The side effects of too much Sinemet (artificial dopamine, or L-dopa) taken with marijuana or not, is that you don't feel like yourself. Too much ganja creates problems of its own, mainly you're dopey &; kind of blissed out. Plus, something I'm taking == I don't know what -- has screwed up my immune system.

That's probably theSinemet too; I always look to the pharmaceuticals I'm taking to figure out why this or that bad thing is happening. I don't think the Turmeric is behind recent outbreaks I've had, although I suppose the B- or  D-vitamins I take might be implicated.

I simply don't know. But I can tell you, cutting your med in half is very interesting. You start showing symptoms,  and at this stage of the game, 7 yrs in, those are: I walk with a shuffling gait, there's mostly mumbling instead of speaking, and occasional drooling -- things which endear a 70 -yr old man to every buddy.

So you can either travel stealthily, medicating heavily at 3 hour intervals, and be somebody else (I   never did figre out who), or you can skip the meds and just be yourself, which scares folks out in public, as they really don't understand it.

However, after 2 days on half rations, I've decided this is the way to go.

©∂†ß0X3®

usa today

War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. 

--Emmanuel Goldstein; The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical  Collectivism

A Whispered Tale by Siegfried Sassoon

             S. Sassoon

I´d heard fool-heroes brag of where they´d been,

With stories of the glories that they’d seen. 

But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well 

In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell, 

Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace,

Endured experience in your queer, kind face, 

Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes, 

And both your brothers killed to make you wise; 

You had no babbling phrases; what you said 

Was like a message from the maimed and dead.

But memory brought the voice I knew, whose note 

Was muted when they shot you in the throat; 

And still you whisper of the war, and find 

Sour jokes for all those horrors left behind.

(World War I began on this date 100 years ago. The poet Sassoon survived it.)