Food Fantasy

In a city with no crimes the police (+ firemen) could be making and baking wine biscotti. Public works department and the highway dept could make a gigantic spinach pie the size of the baseball field...We could use the equipment to mix spinach and roll out the pie dough.

Crop Swap

We need this here!

Neighborly exchanges of goods are nothing new, of course: In the early days of the Plymouth Colony, for instance, the Pilgrims traded English tools, clothing and other items for the Indians’ beaver fur and corn, said Patrick Browne, the executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Mass.

But today’s trades reflect food trends coursing through the body politic: At the PDX Food Swap in Portland, Ore., for example, participants share homemade vegan nut spreads; kombucha starters; organic strawberry and cabernet sauvignon jams; brined nasturtium flower buds, considered poor man’s capers; rosemary-infused butter; and homemade rhubarb liqueur.

Article

Corduroy Boy

At 3:30 AM I woke from a dream. I was dreaming about a corduroy boy in a phone booth.

Greiving Twins

I met twin girls when walking Lily down Social Street through Dunkin Donuts parking lot. One girl said can I pet your dog. We just lost our black lab. Sure I said. My sister can't touch her because it's too much for her. I said its okay. It's good to cry and let it out. Lily will help you heal.

Nat and Sophie, My Heritage

My Brighton Beach Grandma swam every morning at 7 Am in Sheeps Head Bay on Brighton Beach. Then she'd shower, dress up and take the subway into Manhattan for her job as a hostess in a restaurant. After work she'd meet my Grandfather Nat at his store, United Blower. Grandpa's store on Centre Street on the Bowery, was tiny and next to OTB. He sold fans and engines, located off Canal Street NYC. He let the Bowery bums come in to use the bathroom and he took them out for breakfast.
My first apartment was right around the corner on Mott Street between Grand and Broome. I was 17 and still in High school! I was a cashier at Gillie's 1840 on Bleeker Street. I'd visit Grandpa every day for lunch. I ate an apple and an orange at his big oak teacher's desk in his office under the portrait of his father, my great grandfather. He had the spark he's say pointing to his father, and you do too.

A Rare Buffalo

I met a medicine man on his way to the bus stop.
I admired his walking stick with dangling feathers and his snake skin and shells necklace. And earrings of shell.
We chatted Tell me about dreams and the pow wow. He told me about the dream catchers...
My art student is in his tribe. Her father is a Chief. I asked him his Indian name. I asked how he was named.
He was told to close his eyes and asked what did he see? Black he replied
Look deeper the Chief said.
I see a white dot, he said.
Good.
Look closer, what is the shape?
I see a white buffalo.
Very rare.
Come back in three days and I will have your name.
White River Hawk.
He said he missed his bus but was so happy to do so.
because he loved answering my questions.

Michelle Alexander

When people have been hurt over and over, and rather than compassion or understanding you’re given lectures about how it’s really all your fault, and that no one needs to make amends, you can lose your mind. We can wind up harming people we care about with words or deeds, people who have done no harm to us.

- Michelle Alexander, NYT Telling My Son About Ferguson.
She is the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

P's Dream

I did have a dream I remembered, although a shorty, the other night. I dreamed I was a frog, riding on a train. The door opened, and as soon as I hopped out, I turned into myself. I was with two young men who said we were all going to play baseball, a bunch of friends, waiting in the field outside. And then they said, "But you need your shoes," and we were all looking under a bed for my shoes. I hadn't any shoes on because I'd been a frog and frog don't usually wear shoes. I was afraid I would find my shoes because I can't run, so I can't run around the bases, so I can't play baseball. Actually, I only run if the ball comes toward me, so I can't even be an outfielder. I was so relieved that I woke up before I could find them.

Load an Ostrich Into a Trailer

And other freelance articles for writers

Name a Pet

Increase Horse Sperm Count

Treat Irritable Bowel Syndrome in Horses

Recognize and Treat Dwarfism in Dogs

Identify Spiders in Michigan

Start a Pug Rescue in Sacramento

Treat Feline Constipation in New Jersey

Get a Dog Vaccinated in New York City

Be a Dog Psychiatrist

Load an Ostrich Into a Trailer

Max Ernst

If you open your eyes, and look at the outside world, you can see another way. If you close your eyes and you look into your inner world, and I believe the best to do is to have one eye closed and to look inside, and this is the inner eye, and with your other eye you have it fixed on reality, what is going on in the world. If you can make a kind of a synthesis of these two important worlds, you come to a result which can be considered as a synthesis of objective and subjective life.
- Max Ernst

National Suicide Prevention

If you are in crisis, call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Link

Bread Jam and Jazz

I'm listening to WICN and lovin' it.

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald!

(I saw Louis Armstrong perform live in Hello Dolly on Broadway when I was six.)

Beautiful Tears

Bill was assigned this Ted talk to view as part of grad school and shared it with me.
This might make you cry beautiful tears. It is only 10 minutes...but an story for peace.
It IS about LOVE.

When war between Israel and Iran seemed imminent, Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry shared a poster on Facebook of himself and his daughter with a bold message: "Iranians ... we [heart] you." Other Israelis quickly created their own posters with the same message — and Iranians responded in kind. The simple act of communication inspired surprising Facebook communities like "Israel loves Iran," "Iran loves Israel" and even "Palestine loves Israel."

AMAZING
http://www.ted.com/talks/israel_and_iran_a_love_story?language=en

The Peace Factory

Here

“PEACE it’s VIRAL”
PEACE starts with the people, one person at a time. Today it’s easier than ever to connect and reach out to one another. We can talk, we can meet, and we can start a new friendship without even leaving our homes just by the click of a button. One new person, One new connection. Peace is when we see and treat each other as people. All we have to do is talk.
Projects

Peace starts from the the people,
one person at a time.

Today it’s easier than ever to connect and reach out to one another.
We can talk, we can meet, and we can start a new friendship without even leaving our homes, by the click of a button.
One new person, One new connection
Peace is when we see each other as people. All we have to do is talk

Make a friend on Facebook with anyone from “the other side”, from “over there” from “the enemy”. Talk to him/her every once in a while, comment on a picture, share a post…the rest will just happen
PEACE, it s easy
PEACE, it s quick
PEACE, it s…viral

ronny
They advertise war. We advertize for PEACE

Peace Factory 169 They try to make us afraid.

War is our curse. Fear rules the region.
With fear and war come poverty, racism, and fundamentalism.
Sadly, many Israelis have lost faith in peace, after years of wars and conflict. They are mainly occupied with economic issues.
But peace still needs to be the center of the debate. Peace is the key to most of our problems in Israel and in the region.

The rhetoric needs to change. We need to be talking about making peace with our neighbors, to raise our voices and say: ” Yes, we believe in peace and it has to be the priority of the next government! The times have changed. Our neighbors are not our enemies; they are our partner for peace. Let’s talk to them, let them be our “friends,” let’s hear their voices raised for peace.”
PeaceFactory167

And The Peace Factory will show the way. Because for 1year now, we are hearing those voices coming from the people of the Middle East saying they are ready for peace.

There is a new generation in Israel and in the entire Middle East, and it is up to us to break the circle to prove that there is another path, a better future. Peace.

PeaceFactory166The Peace Factory has been working to show the world that the people of Israel and Iran don’t want war and can be friends. And it is happening. The community is huge now. Those two people are saying together since March, “We are not enemies. We don’t want war. We are not ready to die in your war. We Love each other.”

We want to deliver this message to the Israeli People during the campaign. We need to show them what we are hearing and seeing for nine months now on our Facebook page people from the Middle East saying “we love you” to the Israeli People.

And not just the people of Iran. This message has reached hundreds of thousands of citizens from many other countries: Turkish, Syrians, Lebanese and yes also Palestinians…

We have to show their faces to Israel, to deliver their message of peace, to let them know that the other side is ready for peace, watching them vote, hoping that they vote for peace.

We have to make the Middle East people to believe again in peace, breaking down their fear.

Then the excuse of the “not ready for peace” neighbors will not work anymore.

We have the privilege of living in a democracy.This time, we must ask ourselves: what if the other side is ready for peace? If finally what they want is what we want too: living a peaceful daily life with our families, being able to provide good education for our kids, being able to pay the bills each month, to go to work, to buy food…..

Love Story

Amazing!
TED Speaker
Personal profile

Ronny Edry of Israel created The Peace Factory, an online movement for peace in the Middle East, when he posted a Facebook image that declared "Iranians, we will never bomb your country."
Why you should listen

Ronny Edry is a graphic designer, teacher and father. While he often posted images on Facebook without much fanfare, in March of 2012 one of his images garnered international attention. The image showed him with his daughter, along with the words “Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We heart you.” The image became a catalyst for dialogue between the people of two nations on the brink of war -- and started an online movement. Today, The Peace Factory is connecting people throughout the Middle East, giving them a voice and a face.

Edry grew up in Paris, France, and has lived in Israel since 1989. Along with his work on the Peace Factory, he is the owner and founder of Pushpin, a school for art and design in Tel Aviv. He himself graduated with honors from the BezIalel Academy of Art and Design, and he is a staff member teaching visual communication in design academies in Israel. He has received awards for his works as a graphic designer and is also an illustrator and author of graphic novels.
What others say

“It is not possible to dial an Iranian number from an Israeli telephone. It will simply not go through. That lack of communication stems from the government level, where there is no dialogue between the two countries aside from public speeches meant to carry weighty threats of war to each camp. That is why it was so difficult for Ronny Edry, an Israeli graphic designer based in Tel Aviv, to get his message across to the people of Iran.” — CNN

Catherine Russell, Singer

This woman is amazing. I just heard her on the radio.
link
Here

Drive Safely, Drive Sober

I have two friends who lost siblings to drunk drivers on Thanksgiving. They are in my thoughts. Drive safely. Drive sober.

Sugar Ray and the Bluetones

I have a crush on Sugar Ray. He is my favorite singer in New England. He's singing on my radio now!
See him live!!

Pill-Box Hat

Make your own from an old sweater....here.

Woody Guthrie

Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.
― Woody Guthrie

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
― Woody Guthrie

If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.
― Woody Guthrie

Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off.
― Woody Guthrie

Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.
― Woody Guthrie

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
― Woody Guthrie

The world is filled with people who are no longer needed. And who try to make slaves of all of us. And they have their music and we have ours. Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare. And without their music and ideological miscarriages to compare our songs of freedom to, we'd not have any opposite to compare music with --- and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we'd never know its speed, its power....
― Woody Guthrie

I know the police cause you trouble
They cause trouble everywhere
But when you die and go to heaven
You find no policeman there
― Woody Guthrie

All of you cowboys, fight for your land.
― Woody Guthrie

If you want to learn something, just steal it.
― Woody Guthrie

You will never find peace with these fascists
You'll never find friends such as we
So remember that valley of Jarama
And the people that'll set that valley free.
From this valley they say we are going
Do not hasten to bid us adieu
Even though we lost the battle at Jarama
We'll set this valley before we're through.
All this world is like this valley called Jarama
So green and so bright and so fair
No fascists can dwell in our valley
Nor breathe in our new freedoms air.
― Woody Guthrie

Do Re Mi
California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see,
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi
― Woody Guthrie

I ain't a Communist necessarily, but I have been in the red all my life.
― Woody Guthrie

Left wing, right wing, chicken wing.
― Woody Guthrie