Random thoughts.

A brain dump of random thoughts bouncing through my head.

The joys of ADD squirrel!

So I had a doctor's appointment today & on the way home I stopped at a roadside stand run by the Amish. Good people. Good food grown without chemicals and at a reasonable price. What I paid $13 for would have cost me much more at the store and how much of it would have gone to the farmers that grew the food? How much of the price I would have paid have gone to Wall Street? And granted, $1.50 for 6 cookies is a little steep. But look at those boxes of cookies on the store shelves and what is in them. If you can't pronounce it, should you be eating it?

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My fried lives in Cattaraugus County. His big recent thrill was through his public library. Remember that place? That building with books that people pretty much ignore now? Except for the fact that studies show that what you read in a book stays in your brain longer than anything you read on-line or on a tablet or other device. So pick up a book and remember something. Any wonder why computers are being used in schools and why kids suck on tests? Could it be the technology?

Back to the library story – The library system that the library belongs to worked out a deal with a bunch of local museums. Sign out a pass and receive free admission to a local museum. So he went to the Seneca Museum in Salamanca. Spent a couple of hours there and really enjoyed it. Nice little place that will be expanding in the future. They are building a new museum site that will have an actual long house and potentially a small village. He can't keep quiet about this trip. There are other places he wants to go to as well. And the Seneca Museum is having a festival around Labor Day. That and a ton of fall workshops and talks. Every museum has a niche and a specialty. Stop in and see what your local museum is doing.

So, check out your local library. See what they have to offer that the news media isn't telling you about. I don't even think this is on their web site. I'll have to check. After that, I'll have to check out the book sale his library is having. They can have some real jems and at a good price too.

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Another friend saved a kitten that was pretty much abandoned by its mother – the kitten had pneumonia. He took it to a cat shelter and paid them to nurse it back to health. He gets it tomorrow. He already has 4 cats. This makes 5. If he doesn't get the kitten fixed, he'll be broke. The kitten is male, his other cats are all female.

He received grief for saving the kitten. After all, look at all the starving children in America. Or here in WNY? His comeback is a classic: And US foreign policy during the 1990's led to the deaths of 500,000 (that's half a million) Iraqi children. This was strict US via the UN imposed controls on imports of food and medicine. We starved them to death. How do you feel about that? Boy do they walk away fast. I think they got more exercise trying to get away from him than from running off their mouths. I imagine he could extrapolate that out to Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the list goes on.

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Another friend is getting into First Nations issues. The treaty rights of the First Nations peoples and the US (and Canadian) governments' willful violation and abrogation of these treaties. He has a button that he wears on his backpack “Break a Treaty – Break the Law.” People on the street seem to support it. Now if we could only get the government to. Actually the treaty isn't broken, it's only been violated. If it's broken, then the government has no obligation to abide by it. So do we need to stop talking about broken treaties and start making a stink about treaty violations?

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I like how the Buffalo News covers the First Nations opposition to the North Dakota pipeline. Specifically the Sioux Tribes. And then tries to undermine their claims despite science that shows pipelines to be as dangerous as rail or trucks. How come we never hear about local opposition to pipelines in the first section of the newspaper?

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Farmers markets are interesting places to go. It's nice to meet the farmers and get a better price for the food. And I see more selection, variety of things. I was driving through the south towns and ran into a small market in Franklinville. A few vendors. More hot peppers than I see at stores in Buffalo. And you can smell the hot. I saw squashes that I have never seen before. One looked like an alien octopus from a bad sci-fi flick. Evidently you boil it, saute onions in butter (which you could also buy at this market), toss them together and it is supposedly quite tasty. And local BBQ sauce with no corn syrup. I don't understand the anchovies in it though. Must be a family recipe. And real maple syrup. Not that chemistry experiment that sits on store shelves. If I eat a slice of the blueberry pie that I bought I won't go to sleep tonight. But that Amish soap made with goats milk is supposedly incredible and lasts very long. I'll have to let you know how long.

Thus ends the ramblings.

And my mind is clear.

Thank you. Good Night. And Good Luck.

Bad luck sucks.