Make a Succulent Ball for your garden

Check this out! Make a succulent ball to hang on your porch or veranda.

see instructions at Burke's Backyard

How much per week on food according to Dept of Labor stats?

The Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out some very detailed statistics about how much Americans spend on different parts of their budget. Part of that, obviously, focuses on food. The most recent data that they have published is from 2005.

1 person in the family, one wage earner: $68 a week
2+ persons in the family, one wage earner: $121 a week
2+ persons in the family, 2 wage earners: $144 a week
2+ persons in the family, 3+ wage earners: $184 a week

Project; diy Duct Tape Dress Form

Found at ReadyMade blog
Custom dress forms be damned. Why spend an arm and a leg on one of the limbless de Milos when, in less than two hours, you can make one from duct tape for about $15 (instead of the $300—or more—a custom form would cost you)? The folks behind Threads magazine have put together a great primer on how to make a duct tape double.

Perhaps because of its irresistible body armor allure, the duct tape doppelgänger is also oddly popular among Lord of the Rings costume makers, and historical reenactors. The process requires a partner (who will mummify your t-shirted torso with tape), so invite your stitch-savvy friends over for drinks and a duct-tape dummy-making party à la The Bookish Girl. Spilling wine on your shirt isn’t a problem when you’re wrapped in duct tape!

A duct-tape dress form is quick, cheap, and simple. You'll need a couple of 60-ft. rolls of duct tape, a long tee shirt, and a little plastic wrap. Oh, yes, and someone to wrap you in tape.

Spring Time Tulips; my small bed at home and the grand fields and fields of beautiful tulips

First year for the tulips in my yard that I planted last Fall. I'm so pleased!

Tulips in Mossyrock:

I have to toss in a photo of the Money Tree plants growing at the side of the house. I mention, because I planted the seeds last spring and they grew all winter and really sprouted flowers by early spring this year. I'm astonished since I planted seeds, didn't see harvest and thought it was a lost cause. Apparantly not! I was also astonished to still be pulling up turnips in December in my garden. I say astonished because I'm not a knowledgeable gardener and so I'm thrilled when anything I plant works - in other words, lives, flourishes and yields produce, flowers or just lives at all.




When we took our recent trip from our digs on the shoreline edge of Western WA to Eastern WA, we didn't get very far East when we encountered these tulip fields belonging to a Nursery in Mossypoint. These give Mount Vernon in Skagit County a bit of a run for the money. Mount Vernon is known for the amazing daffodil and tulip fields the farmers grow there and in approximately April every year people travel to Skagit County to see the daffodil and tulip displays.



entry posted by Lietta Ruger

Epsom Salt as Plant Food

entry from the Tacoma News Tribune 'Get Growing' blog

Alert! This just in from the Epsom Salt Council. Could it possibly be true?

Just as “Milk does a body good,” Epsom Salt may be one of the most perfect nutrients for flowers and plants. And mid-to-late spring is the ideal time to nourish the soils and roots of your favorite foliage and flowers with this inexpensive and easy-to-use compound. According to the Epsom Salt Council, research indicates Epsom Salt can help seeds germinate; make plants grow bushier; produce more flowers; increase chlorophyll production; improve phosphorus and nitrogen uptake; and deter pests, including slugs and voles.

Anyone used Epsom salt? What did you think? If you haven't tried it, but want to, the Epsom Salt Council recommends these amounts:

Shrubs (evergreens, azaleas, rhododendron): 1 tablespoon per 9 square feet. Apply over root zone every 2-4 weeks.

Lawns: Apply 3 pounds for every 1,250 square feet with a spreader, or dilute in water and apply with a sprayer.

Trees: Apply 2 tablespoons per 9 square feet. Apply over the root zone 3 times annually.

Garden Startup: Sprinkle 1 cup per 100 square feet. Mix into soil before planting.

Roses & Tomatoes: Use 1 tablespoon per foot of plant height per plant; apply every two weeks.

For more details, click here.

UPDATE: WSU professor Linda Chalker-Scott has written an interesting article that takes a skeptical look at using Epsom salt in the garden. Click here to read.

Law & Order, South Bend, Mexico, Patience and Extradition

blogged by my husband, Arthur Ruger to Willapa Magazine


from an article published in Seattle PI Fugitive's capture turned into mission.

For 13 years, accused drug kingpin eluded the law -- until last week

I took this picture last year from out the back door at the office where I work in South Bend. About 50 yards from that door the Willapa River flows from my right westward to Willapa Bay, less than 3 miles away. Almost in the center of the photo on the river's left bank you can see the large bright roof of what is now South Bend Packers, a seafood processor. That's the "fishhouse with no ice" mentioned in the story.

[Excerpts] and my comments.

Friday, April 6, 2007
By COLIN McDONALD
P-I REPORTER

He was the most prolific hashish smuggler the Northwest has ever seen, say U.S. marshals and federal investigators.

For years, they say, Jeffery Jay Warren orchestrated the rapid movement of the drug from Southeast Asia by ocean freighters, a fleet of Willapa Bay "fishing" boats and trucks. Tons of the illicit cargo were hauled through Washington en route to East Coast and Canadian markets.

... A coast-to-coast bust in 1994 nailed most of Warren's operatives -- but he managed to elude capture. Since then, a copy of Warren's wanted poster slowly yellowed on the bulletin board in the Marshals Service's Seattle office.

... His pursuers chased down tantalizing rumors of the kingpin's whereabouts: his favorite haunts, the luxury resort towns in coastal Mexico where he was reputed to be taking residence. The trail led investigators across the globe. There was evidence that Warren had been traveling extensively in South America and Europe. He apparently liked being near the ocean and in warm climates.

... He's now sitting in a jail cell in Mexico City facing extradition to the U.S. -- and a possible life sentence.

... When the indictment was handed down in 1994, 16 people -- including Warren -- were charged in connection with the drug-smuggling ring.

Two years earlier, federal agents had estimated the ring had moved 40 tons of hashish through the fishing port of South Bend in southwest Washington. The estimated wholesale value: $120 million.

... "These guys had been dumping big loads for at least four years," Lanier said.

He called them "old hippies," now in their mid- to late-50s, who had been smuggling marijuana and hashish into the country since the 1970s.

But the smugglers had their act together. Using fishing boats and an old fishing dock and warehouse at the head of Willapa Bay as a false front, Warren's team of ship captains, deckhands, truck drivers and radio operators moved the drugs from ocean freighters sitting hundreds of miles off the coast to waiting semis. Within a week, the drugs would be in New York.

Everyone I spoke to who lived in the area at that time remembers this big drug bust. Several chuckled when they said that the local police had no clue what was going on because the tight-lipped Feds weren't telling nobody nothing.

Others however thought that locally there was some other problem where the county knew what was up but didn't tell the city of South Bend or something like that. Either way, it doesn't seem to have been much the local's show.

Locals thought the fishhouse with no ice was odd but didn't ask many questions. The strangers paid for the equipment and service with crisp $100 bills.

That fishhouse is not much more than 1/4 mile from my office and I've been walking to it as part of the exercise regimen I use during my breaks now for a couple of months.

A co-worker said that as a teenage she went walking in the evening with her mother and sister past that ice-less fishhouse every night and they thought it was not only strange with no ice, but also strangely mysterious in that lighting was either absence or seriously restricted for a warehouse doing late-night and early-morning fishing operations.

She also remembered learning that there was a house up on the hill above the riverbank that was always dark but from which the crooks had been keeping lookout with with binoculars while watching for Coast Guard vessels and law enforcement.

"The (fishing) market was bad and anyone who came in and wanted to make a go of it got treated real good," said Jerry Benning, retired Pacific County sheriff. In 1994, Benning was the local law enforcement contact for the federal agents who raided the warehouse.

"By the time we got there, there was nothing but empty sacks," Benning recalled.

Which makes more sense than a city police department totally kept in the dark about something like this. My own impression is that the locals had the more difficult local job in keeping a lid on the whole activity long enough for the Feds to make their move.

...Cash-filled suitcases

Speed and deception was at the core of Warren's operation.

His group could unload 45 tons of drugs in an evening and have it in and out of Washington in less then 12 hours, authorities say.

U.S. Highway 101 runs right through South Bend North-to-South. As it has always been, day or night, it is not surprising to see semi-trucks backing refrigerated trailers into one of several fishhouse docks or pulling out with them and heading off up the road.

The group would send out decoy fishing boats so the Coast Guard wouldn't know which boat to track, said Fran Dyer, a retired agent from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, who started working on the Warren case in the early 1990s.

"They were very good fishermen, but there is a hell of a lot more money to be made in moving 50,000 pounds of hashish in one night than fishing," Dyer said.

There wasn't anything in the article that indicated how many, if any, of those originally arrested in the raid were locals to Pacific County. But as an alternative to the shrinking seafood markets that have continually gotten smaller and smaller, I can see a few easy recruits responding to another more lucrative way to put food on the table, keep the roof overhead and include perhaps some genuine excitement.

40 tons of hashish?

May it would have been like Pacific County's West Coast version of moonshine.

Maybe the feds should have used this to help out:


Grampus or Pike on the Willapa River, at Raymond, Washington, circa 1912.
The A class subs were fitted with a bow fairing to improve sea keeping, this can be seen by the dark shadow area forward of the conning tower.
Both submarines were placed in reserve in 1912 at Bremerton. This photo was probably taken on the trip up the coast to Bremerton. The stern of the USS Chattanooga can be seen in front of the sub.

Photo provided by Steve Hubbard of the Pacific County Historical Society , Washington State

From Through the looking glass: a photo essay of submarines 1900-1940

Subprime Lending Crisis: Millions of Families Face Losing Their Homes to Foreclosure

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/04/1343214

Subprime loans have led to one million American families losing their homes in the past decade, a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending has found. In the last ten years, the subprime loan industry has emerged as a major, and controversial, player in the housing market. We speak with an attorney at the Center for Responsible Lending.

---

Subprime loans have led to one million American families losing their homes in the past decade. This according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending. In the last ten years, the subprime loan industry has emerged as a major, and controversial, player in the housing market. Under a subprime loan, customers with low credit ratings are offered mortgages in return for high interest rates. Proponents have advocated subprime financing as a way for low-income residents to own their first home. But new figures suggest the subprime industry is having the opposite effect.

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that between 1998 and 2006, about 1.4 million first-time home buyers purchased their homes using subprime loans. But the study also finds that the number of projected subprime foreclosures in that same period to be a whopping 2.4 million. This means subprime lending results in a net loss of home ownership for almost one million families.

Here in New York, the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project put out a report showing foreclosures rose fifty percent last year -- with more than 9,000 homeowners facing the loss of their homes. By the end of this year, foreclosures are now on track to rise to fifteen thousand.

• Keith Ernst, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending.

---

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Subprime loans have led to one million American families losing their homes in the past decade. This according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending. In the last ten years, the subprime loan industry has emerged as a major, and controversial, player in the housing market. Under a subprime loan, customers with low credit ratings are offered mortgages in return for high interest rates. Proponents have advocated subprime financing as a way for low-income residents to own their first home. But new figures suggest the subprime industry is having the opposite effect.

The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that between 1998 and 2006, about 1.4 million first-time home buyers purchased their homes using subprime loans. But the study also finds that the number of projected subprime foreclosures in that same period was a whopping 2.4 million. This means subprime lending resulted in a net loss of home ownership for almost one million families.

Here in New York, the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project put out a report showing foreclosures rose 50% last year, with more than 9,000 homeowners facing the loss of their homes. And in this year, foreclosures are on track to hit 15,000.

We now go to Durham, North Carolina, where we’re joined by senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending, Keith Ernst. Welcome to Democracy Now!

KEITH ERNST: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, in the last few months, we have seen many news articles basically about the lending companies and the financial crisis among some of these subprime lenders, and we’ve seen some coverage of the impact on homeowners around the country, but could you put this crisis in context, from your perspective, what is happening around the country?

KEITH ERNST: Of course. You know, for years, the subprime market has been this just burgeoning industry, and the lenders have been making loans to millions of families. And for a while, it looked like things would go on smoothly, but as housing prices softened and weakened, what we saw was the weakness in these mortgages they were making exposed to the light of day. And essentially, now the sad ramifications of this is an uptick in foreclosures, sometimes in places that haven't really seen a spike in foreclosures in years, places like New York and California and Northern Virginia, where, you know, for all intents and purposes, we’ve been in a boom for the first half of this decade.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the -- your group issued a report at the end of last year projecting what the potential impact would be over the next few years in terms of foreclosures. Could you talk about that?

KEITH ERNST: Sure, that's right. So we projected that more than 2.2 million -- now 2.4 million families -- will lose their homes ultimately to foreclosure as these mortgages come to a halt, or at least as these mortgages play out. And that's deeply concerning. These are families who, in many instances, this house is their primary asset. It’s how they’re holding their wealth. It’s their nest egg for retirement. And those homes are a just tremendous jeopardy right now, and largely this is because of the shoddy underwriting that's taken place in the subprime market in recent years and these so-called mortgage resets, where a borrower’s interest rate could go from 8% to as high as 12% just two years into their mortgage. And this results in a payment increase of 30% to 40% on their mortgage. Families who are just sort of struggling to get by day to day are faced with this just insurmountable hurdle two years into the mortgage. And, you know, what they’re finding now is that foreclosure may be the only option for them.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith Ernst, can you explain the difference between a prime and a subprime loan?

KEITH ERNST: Of course. You know, for years, borrowers in this country could only get a mortgage if they met fairly narrow underwriting criteria. You know, they had to put 20% down on their home. They had to have stable incomes. And, you know, they had to have a relatively blemish-free credit record.

Over the last ten or so years, what's happened in this nation is that lenders have gotten more flexible in who they're willing to lend to. And in principle, this is a good thing, because it means that families who need to tap into their wealth, whether it's to send a child to college, to pay for a medical procedure, or, you know, for other purposes, can do that. And that, in principle, is a good thing. But what's happened in the subprime market is that lenders have gotten overly aggressive, made loans that borrowers simply can’t afford, and that’s sort of the story today.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you talk about the role of major banks in this whole process? I did a story in the New York Daily News last week about the role of Credit Suisse First Boston in repackaging these loans in the securities industry, and they actually had a whole division called their NINA department -- “No Income, No Asset” loans that they were repackaging.

KEITH ERNST: Right. One of the interesting stories here underneath all of this is how these mortgages came about in the first place. You know, we like to think, or I think most Americans think, that mortgages are made by banks and depository institutions, but especially in the subprime market that's not the case. They're largely made through state-chartered finance companies that don’t have any bank deposits, and so they don’t have any bank regulators.

Where do they go for their money? They go to Wall Street. So Wall Street will supply them the money to make the loans, will buy the loans from these lenders, and then will repackage them into securities and sell them to investors. Now, again, in principle, that's fine. It can make low-cost capital available to families who need mortgages. The problem comes when the insatiable appetite builds for more and more mortgages and lenders get reckless with regard to the quality of the mortgages they’re originating.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith Ernst, what kind of regulation, federal regulation, is there of this, and also local regulation?

KEITH ERNST: Right. You know, Amy, the regulators are really -- they’re just scrambling to catch up now. What we’ve seen is the federal regulators just this spring have come out with proposed subprime lending guidance that would require lenders to insure that borrowers can afford their mortgage when those payments jump up, so not at the initial introductory rate, which is only going to be in effect for two short years, but at the fully indexed rate, the rate that’s going to apply after the introductory period is over. And we think that's a tremendous step forward.

But it's coming too late for many families. Many families are finding that their mortgages are resetting and are in trouble now. You know, that's at the federal level. We’ve got that regulatory action. Congress is looking into bills to protect borrowers from these sorts of practices and also from other sorts of predatory lending practices, like putting borrowers in loans with abusive back-end prepayment penalties that can cost thousands of dollars if they try to refinance, you know, the month before these payments reset, while they can still -- while they’re still current and can afford their mortgage, and other similar abuses. And in the states, they're starting to take a look and ask, “How can we really help protect the borrowers in our backyard?”

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, you’ve been doing a series of pieces in the New York Daily News, and you’ve been profiling families. Tell us about some of them.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, and I’d like to ask Keith Ernst about that. For instance, there was one woman that I profiled, Sandra Barkley, who's part of a whole lawsuit now against a big developer in Brooklyn. Here was a woman who was working for the New York City Housing Authority, was barely making about $24,000 a year, and these predatory lenders got her into a home where her mortgage payments, monthly mortgage payments, were higher than her total gross income. There was a lawyer that they supplied to her, who sat at the closing for this home and actually told her to sign these papers, and because -- what I’m finding is that the appraisers, to some degree, are involved in over-appraising these houses. There are crooked lawyers that are in cahoots with some of these lenders that are allowing their “clients” to sign these mortgages that they could not possibly pay.

And you were mentioning the interest rates. Well, I have a story in today's Daily News about an elderly couple who was basically forced out of their home -- they weren't even in the market for a home -- and put into two mortgages totaling about $600,000. One of them, the interest rate can go up to 18% on one of the mortgages, and the other is an interest-only mortgage. They are guaranteed not to be able to pay the $4,000 payment that they had, when before they were paying $1,200 a month.

So where are the regulators in this situation, where these lawyers, the appraisers and the brokers are being able to manipulate and bamboozle folks into these kinds of loans?

KEITH ERNST: Right, well, first let me just say that, you know, those family stories you’re recounting are not at all unusual. And it goes back largely to what are the incentives in place to originate these mortgages. If we think, you know -- I think we should recognize that there are powerful incentives, that brokers and loan originators make thousands of dollars on each mortgage and, in fact, make more on larger mortgages, and so there's incredible incentives to provide borrowers with the largest mortgage they’re willing to take out.

Now, as that demand has grown in recent years, we have seen skyrocketing rates in mortgages with less than full income documentation. Some are these so-called liar loans, where the income is just put down on the application. Many times, borrowers have told us, when we showed them their paperwork, that they had no idea that income was reported. Now, their signature was on the bottom of the paper, but that signature was put on there at the blizzard of closing, where they were told to initial here, sign here, sign there, initial here, about 1,500 times. And so, you know, what's happened is these mortgages -- there are tremendous incentives to originate them. Borrowers are looking to the person opposite the table from them as an expert who can help provide them with some guidance, and the person on the other side of the table just doesn't have their best interest at heart.

Now, “Where have the regulators been through all this?” is a good question. I think the federal regulators are scrambling to catch up now. State regulators are likewise following suit. And Congress is taking a look. You know, unfortunately, I think the reality is that it often takes a crisis like this to provoke us to take action to protect people.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith, we have to break, but we’re going to come back to this discussion. Keith Ernst is an attorney, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending, speaking to us from Durham, North Carolina. And when we come back, we'll also be joined by Danny Schechter, “the News Dissector.” His latest documentary that's opening tonight in New York is called In Debt We Trust.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Keith Ernst, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending in Durham, North Carolina. We're also joined in studio by filmmaker and journalist Danny Schechter, who has a new film called In Debt We Trust. Your response to the subprime lending and this unprecedented number of foreclosures in the country?

DANNY SCHECHTER: You know, Amy, when we talk about this, I think of a phrase we used to use back at ABC when I worked there, it’s called “MEGO,” and that refers to “my eyes glaze over.” Whenever people hear about economic issues, they sort of tune out, because it sounds very complicated. What this reduces itself to is a crime. We're talking about a crime -- CSI, crime scene -- and we're part of this crime scene. We're talking about a cesspool of corruption implicating some of the biggest banks and financial institutions in the country, inattention by the regulators. 52% of the agencies making these loans are not even regulatable, because they're not federally regulated organizations. We're talking about millions of Americans who can't make their bills, who are squeezed beyond belief.

And this is not just an issue for regulators. This is an issue for progressives to respond to. We need a movement here to try to take up these issues of economic justice in America, because we're not paying attention to it. And this cuts across racial lines. It cuts across ethnic lines. It cuts across also political lines. We’ve set up Americans for Debt Relief Now, an organization like Bono does in Africa for debt relief. We need it in America. We have a website stopthesqueeze.org, as a way to fight back, as a way for people who are in debt to stop being demonized by the media, which is what’s happening now, and to be recognized as the victims they are.

AMY GOODMAN: Danny, we're going to lose our satellite in Durham, North Carolina, and I just wanted to ask our guest there, Keith Ernst, about the federal laws -- for example, the possibility of a reintroduction of the Prohibit Predatory Lending Act that was introduced, I think, two years ago.

KEITH ERNST: I think it's clear that legislation will be introduced in Congress, and we're hopeful that it will move forward this time. You know, it’s been talked about for years now. And we're hopeful that this year can be the year that legislation can move forward and help borrowers, because, you know, as your guest there is saying, it's sorely needed now.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Keith, could you talk -- because one of the things -- those of us who have a little bit of a historical memory on the housing crises in America recall that this country goes through periodic crises on speculation and abuse in housing from the HUD crises of the 1960s, the savings and loans crisis of the ’80s, and now we're confronted now in this decade with this huge crisis, and it seems like many of these characters just reappear with new companies and new banks or new lending procedures, but the same kind of scams. What can be done on a more consistent level, as Danny is raising, to be able to protect people who do not necessarily know all of their rights in terms of lending, especially when it comes to homes?

KEITH ERNST: Right, well, I think you're right that, you know, we’ve seen many episodes in, you know, not-too-distant memory, where mortgage lenders have essentially been betting people's houses, you know, so that they can make profits. And that’s what ties all of these cycles together, is the mortgage lender says, “Hey! You know, take a loan from me. Don't worry about it. In two years, if you need to refinance, we'll be able to get you out of this loan.” And, you know, eventually that house of cards comes crashing down.

Now, moving forward, what can be done? I think, you know, the law should recognize the reality. Borrowers look to the person sitting opposite them at the table -- most, usually nowadays, in subprime market, a mortgage broker -- as an expert, as someone who’s helping them pick out their best mortgage. Sadly, this often could be -- you know, could not be further from the truth. And so, what the law should do is recognize what borrowers expect and need, which is that the person who's helping provide them a mortgage actually do just that: help provide them a mortgage that meets their needs.

AMY GOODMAN: Keith Ernst, we're going to leave it there. I want to thank you for being with us. We'll link to your website at the Center for Responsible Lending, speaking to us from Durham, North Carolina.

Still Cooking Thai - the Asian grocery store where I live.

I know, I know - I've neglected my blog(s). Quick update to my little adventure of learning to cook Thai (vegan Thai) and yes we are still eating pretty much strictly Thai. I won't add the latest recipes to this post, but I will be adding them to the blog shortly. It's been a month now - my - a month has passed since I began converting us to vegetarian. I've been cooking vegan Thai recipes for a month now. Thai cooking is not meat free, and I have been using the vegan Thai recipes at Vegweb. No sense adjusting to Thai food with meat only to remove the meat later, so this is what we now know to be Thai cooking - the vegan way. (No, it wasn't my plan to go vegan religiously; vegetarian yes, but not vegan, so this is more the convenience that Vegweb offers in providing recipes from people who are vegans!)

Update 1) I made Spring Rolls, which are NOT egg rolls, although I wound up also making egg rolls because initially I had purchased the wrong kind of wraps. So egg rolls are egg rolls and the wraps include a combination of flour and eggs and the recipes for the fillings vary, but essentially you wind up cooking the little dumplings in hot oil. I wondered as I was dipping them into the basket of cooking oil how this isn't much different than french fries or fried chicken parts.
And yes they were good, tasty and I enjoyed the egg rolls, but I digress.

Spring rolls are not cooked. The wraps are actually tapioca based and flat like a tortilla. To make the spring rolls, the basic recipe is a use of a mix of vegetables (carrots, onions, bean threads, cooked tofu, mint or cilantro) wrapped in a lettuce leaf or two, then the whole thing is wrapped in the tapioca based shell. The shell is set into water for a few minutes to soften, then removed and kept softened between two clean, wet dish towels. Whle still soft, the vegetable combination of ingredients are wrapped into the shell in a kind of burrito fashion.

It's quite 'artsy' when finished, the green lettuce shows through the transparent shell. The taste is fresh and the mint or cilantro add to that sense of 'freshness'. The Spring Rolls can then be dipped into a peanut sauce and it's a quite lovely eating experience. When I sent these along with Sweetie for his lunch, he came home and reported there was a lot of ooohh la la- ing from his work buddies and I think Sweetie was kind of impressed that his wife had sent along a 'specialty' for his lunch.

Update 2) The Asian grocery store where I shop. Obviously I have made many more vegan Thai dishes since I last blogged, and the Spring Rolls get special mention because they were a labor of love and 'art'. So I have been back to the Asian grocery store for the second time now to replace some ingredients and get some new ingredients. It is still a bit of a time consuming experience as I continue to learn the various ingredients. I spend a lot of time reading what lables I can that are in English, and asking about labels that are in Asian languages with no English anywhere. It is a pleasant experience.

The Asian grocery store called Ping's Market also has a 'restaraunt' area and a limited menu of items that the store owner cooks and serves. I had the Pad Thai noodles and Spring Rolls in my first shopping trip which inspired me to actually make Spring Rolls at home. In my second shopping trip, my granddaughter (15 yr old Emo kid - by her own description of herself) was with me. I shared the 'lunch' experience with her and she was Not impressed - more like 'ugh', but it's okay, because someday when she is 35 or 48 she will remember this lunch experience with her grandmother.

The store owners are quite elderly and a younger woman, one of their daughters, was there the first time I went and again this second time. I asked her if they had the dvd that was playing on the tv the last time I was there - it was a series of Thai dancers and singers. I wanted my granddaughter to see the dancing. She went to see about the dvd, and came back with one (I don't think it was the one I wanted to see, but that is okay) which she put in. I began asking some questions and that generated conversation with her. She shared with me that her parents were, in fact, refugees, having left Laos at the time of Vietnam war, to Thailand, where they remained in refugee camp for 5 yrs. Then they crossed over as one of the many 'boat people' to America on a sponsorship by the many churches that were sponsoring Asians at that time.

She relayed to me a tad bit of a story her mother tells her. Since she was already born, and her parents were escpaping with her when she was but a baby, her mother explained how desperate survival was for everyone. Mother explained that had baby made sounds or noise, the others accompanying them would have felt compelled to drown both mother and baby. I felt empathy for how terrifying that must have been for the mother. I am not a stranger to these kinds of stories, as in our little remote community several families that are refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam have settled here. The region where we live has a sparse population of people and only a few communities among a county full of trees, wetlands, mudflats, rivers, sloughs which all feed into or out of the Willapa Bay, which meets up with the Pacific Ocean. A bit of a quiet life for war-torn refugees. I spent 16 years as a case manager with our State social services programs, so I have had my share of interviewing and helping refugee families over the years, including here where we now live.

What was intriguing to me about the story as the daughter told it is that the daughter relates more to her life in America than her life as an infant and child in the refugee camps. As Daughter shares the story with me, it seems to come across in a tone that implies the story seems a bit unreal to the Daughter. I am reminded again that now that I am into those mid-elderly years of 55, how important passing along the heritage stories are to not only my childrens' generation but their childrens' generation. I don't know what my 15 yr old granddaughter will remember about the lunch, but I hope when she is herself an adult and past the 'teen' dramas, she will remember the Daughter's story.

How fortunate I am that Ping's Market exists in the small town communities that have so little in the way of choices to offer. It wouldn't exist here in this remote location except that some of the refugee Asian families chose to move here and remain here. I live in a fishing village, population of a mere few hundred. Nearby towns have population of a few thousand, but nothing of the size that warrants the 'shopping mall', 'strip mall', 'box stores' type businesses. Nor would I like to see these communities catch up with 'progress' enough to desire or want to attract such businesses.

No Impact Man blog - urban New York family experiment - one year of no impact

Well good for him and his wife and their small child. He decided to put into action and action plan to reduce his family impact on the environment - in the urban setting of New York city. Instead of mouthing all the assortment of platitudes, he decided to make a committment, reduce their environmental footpring and is blogging about it.

While I self congratulate on the efforts we have made in our family towards reductionism, No Impact Man takes it further. I'll be following along with his blog and maybe commenting from time to time. It's not easy to make so dramatic a change so suddenly, so it sounds like his blogging will serve as a kind of 'how to tutorial'.

We moved away from urban setting/city to try to find more meaning in our daily lives by going backwards in time. And we did so before it was 'popular' to be environmentally conscious about the effects of global warming. We were doing fairly well with what was then termed 'intentional,meaningful, simple living'.

Then Sept 2001, then President Bush decided to invade and occupy Iraq. Two members of our family found themselves in Iraq. One was already military, the other enlisted after 9/11. We hadn't been a military family for decades, since we were in our 20s during Vietnam war and now here we were again a 'military family'. After a bit of internal ambiguity, I decided to become a military family speaking out borrowing from my own life experience as a young military wife during Vietnam war, and as what is affectionately termed a 'military brat' being raised as a child on military bases.

I threw myself into this new arena (for me) of activism, in earnest hope that with enough voices, enough counter energy, surely Americans would not want to support the creation of another Vietnam type situation. I gave it all up to trying to be among the contributors to end this war in Iraq the first year, the second year, the third year, the fourth year. Now as we move into the fifth year, I find I can not keep up that level of intensity and want to put some other of my life elements back into balance. Returning to some of the philosophies of our intentional lifestyle, I find they are now repackaged with new labels as a result of the buzz around 'global warming'.

Good, great, and I'm down with that since the more concerned citizens taking action steps towards another kind of counter revolution the better. A different kind of activism! I already have blogging outlets for my thoughtful reflections and opinions about how this Administration is managing the war in Iraq, so I don't need this blog as a pulpit or venue for expressing those concerns. Along the way of my journey these past four years into activism, I've also been exposed to and learned a great deal about environment, intentional corporatism, and the grotesqueness of full blown consumerism as thieves in the night taking from people's lives their very consciousness of meaningful living.

So Mr. No Impact Man, it's great to have run across your blog today and thank you and your family for what you are doing.

Project; Envelope Books

I wind up with left over envelopes, and I save them..for - just in case. Still have them, and there has been no 'just in case'. I also occasionally see bundles of envelopes for sale at thrift stores.

Look what some clever people at Church of Craft came up with for ways to creatively use envelopes!









and here is a tutorial with basic instructions for making accordion envelope books at Paper Source.

Project; Hanging Pendant lights from Vintage Jello Molds

Now this is an idea that might be fun to try. Making lights from vintage jello molds. I have not yet converted anything into a lamp or light, so I'm not one to give advice. Instead I'll take it on the advice of others who have converted old treasures into lamps or hanging pendant lights. A series of hanging pendant lights seems to be a trend right now.

Found at decor8 and read the post and comment for yourself, as others who have converted a lamp say it's a fairly simple process using converter kit available at hardware stores.

Project; Making Paper Beads using magazines. Doorway or Window curtain

Paper Bead Art. I never heard of it, but others have. Why it caught my attention was because it uses magazines (and I have too many) plus the suggestion that the paper beads could be strung together to form a doorway curtain (or a window curtain). While the suggestion pictured is using the paper beads as art, I would be more likely to make the paper beads as a project to use the old magazines, so I would need plenty of paper beads to then string a doorway curtain.


For the tutorial how to - see at curbly

and the paper beads are shown in this framed art piece