A Broad In Costa Rica

Things I Know About Chickens NOW

Last night, as I was putting the chickens to bed, I finally had to admit that, either chickens as a species are seriously lacking in the brains department, or I just lucked out and got three really dumb birds. I don't mean to be insulting to my girls, but it's a fact.

Wanting to prove or disprove my observations, I Scroogled "intelligent chickens." The top search results were animal humane sites, all using the amazing and (well) hidden intelligence of chickens as a reason not to be mean to them. We need a reason?

There were also a few videos aiming to prove chickens are not that dumb. To me, they proved some people are not that smart. Like scientists teaching chickens to watch TV. (But what do I know? Many people like to point out that I am not a scientist.) Still, I see no evidence that chickens know left from right, much less give a hoot. The smartest thing I've seen them do is figure out I'm not going to hurt them. Other than that, I can honestly say my chickens are unburdened with an intellect.

"For each 100 pounds of ration your flock eats, you can expect 45 pounds of droppings, dried weight."

Their poop production seems to be chugging right along, however. The babes (I hope) look enormous to me now and the poop tonnage is impressive. I'm going to be selling fertilizer from my backyard pretty soon. And we still have three months to go before we see an egg! I shoulda bought bigger chickens. There are a few other things I shoulda done, too. Like I shoulda:

• Read Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens FIRST, before I bought chickens. Then I would have known to

• Start them on chick food instead of hen food.

• Planned the coop and built it right the first time. It's okay, really, that we're on our fourth coop construction. "This is how I roll," as Morgan likes to say: loosely plan, execute, then discover first hand why the experts said do it the other way. If I have to plan too much, I guess I fear I'll never take the action. I probably need therapy and some drugs.

• Bought more chickens right at the start, because adding chickens to an established flock is iffy. Although Barbara said to just turn out the lights (chickens are blind in the dark), add the new chickens, leave them all in the dark for a few hours, then turn the lights back on. Chickens are so dumb they will think those new chickens have always been there. Do you think Barbara was pulling my leg?

I also would have known some interesting tidbits about eggs, too. Things I wish I'd always known, like:

A fresh egg sinks and lays flat in a deep bowl of water. The more an egg wants to float, the older it is. If it actually floats, feed it to the dog.

An egg left out on the counter ages 7x faster than a refrigerated egg. I didn't know this. In Costa Rica, we keep our eggs on the counter. I mean, we used to: now we refrigerate them.

And how about vaccination for chickens? I'm glad you asked. Some very interesting tidbits here, like:

• "Vaccination is a biosecurity measure you may or may not need. Newly hatched chicks have a certain amount of natural immunity, and they continue to acquire new immunities as they mature." Like newly hatched people do, if given the chance.

• "Vaccinate your flock only against the diseases your birds have a reasonable risk of getting..." [Emphasis Storey's.]

• "Do not vaccinate against diseases that do not endanger your flock." [Emphasis Storey's.]

Pretty sound advice there, eh?

Next week, we are going to Annie's house to see her garden and chicken coop. I've been there before, but I need to really look at her coop. I'm only building one more chicken coop so I need to get this right. Their's is huge - they have about 64 chickens. They raise chickens and rabbits for eggs and food, and almost all their own vegetables on a 10, maybe 15,000' lot. I am so impressed with that.

Isn't it telling when a 21st century woman finds it "amazing" that a family grows all their own food? And do you think one day that will be me, growing all my own food? Yeah, that's pretty funny. I would like to have goats and honeybees one day. Once I get this whole chicken thing under my belt.

Dazlious

During my four years in college, one of my majors was sociology. My secret goal was to be a good girl: a do-gooder working for change. To prove it, I spent a winter (a very, very cold winter, I might add) working with retarded adults in St. Louis. My job was to teach them to ride the city bus from home to their school. They had to be high-functioning enough to eventually ride the bus by themselves. If not, they couldn't attend the school.

I'd show up at their house in the wee hours, walk them to the bus stop, wait for the bus, get on the bus with them, show them how to pay the fare, teach them the landmarks: "When you see the McDonald's, pull the chain. Get off at the next stop." We would do this every day for at least a week. If they didn't seem to know where they were after a week, they probably weren't going to get it and they weren't going to that school.

It was the hardest job I ever had. It was heartbreaking. Not heartbreaking because of them. My clients were lovely, and unfailingly patient with me. As my friend Mark of the M.A.R.C. house in Key West would say, "Retarded people are unburdened with an intellect." To a retarded person, life is mostly simple. The heartbreaking part was me: I had no idea what I was doing. I was too young, too selfish and too annoyable to be any good at the job. I knew they were retarded, but I still couldn't quite get it that sometimes they couldn't put the simplest things together. Boy, was I dumb.

I remember a woman named Sheila. No idea why I remember her, but, if I close my eyes, I can even see her sitting next to me on the bus in her dark plaid winter hat, scarf and coat, bright eyes, pert nose, always with a half smile on her face. Serene, that's the word. I rode the bus with her for two weeks and she never looked anywhere but straight ahead. I'd sit right next to her, put my eyes at her level and stare straight ahead with her. When the Mickey D's flashed by, I say: "Look, the yellow arches! Pull the chain." She'd pull the chain, but only because I told her to. She never locked onto those arches. I even tried turning her head when I'd see them coming: "Sheila, sit a little sideways [I'd turn her body a little], look ahead [I'd turn her chin slightly more toward the front of the bus], and watch for the McDonald's. See the arches coming up, Sheila? When you see the arches coming, pull the chain." She was pliable, obedient and lovely, but every time she got on the bus, she sat and stared straight ahead. If she ever saw the arches, she never gave any hint.

I think I quit after Sheila. I had no idea why I couldn't teach her to ride the bus. If I couldn't teach a retarded person to ride a city bus, what was the matter with me? Honestly, it never occurred to me that it wasn't me. Isn't that funny? Anyway, I went back to acting, the THE-ah-tah, where it really was all about me, and ended up getting a double-major: Sociology and Drama. Go ahead, ask me about my career highlights.

Today, thirty five years later, I'm reminded of Sheila. It's late afternoon, raining (of course), I'm surfing the tube and land on a movie with Alan Rickman. It's already started, but I love his face so I watch for a few minutes. Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Ann Moss show up... two more reasons to settle in. Oooh, an accidental movie find - those are the most delicious. If you are lucky enough to stumble on Snowcake, stick around. It's a lovely off-beat movie with off-beat characters and an actual epiphany. Perfectly dazlious.

Vaccination Screed

 "Those who are unaware are unaware of being unaware". --Merrill Jenkins, economist and author

Debating vaccination on social sites takes so much time. Mostly because I have to repeat my reasoning every time the topic comes up, remember where I saw the documentation behind the apparently insane idea that vaccination is not all it's cracked up to be. No more: this is my Vaccination Screed. (Good word, huh?) If anyone wants to debate vaccines, I'd love to. They will need to read this first and I promise to read whatever they throw at me. You know, like studies proving vaccines are safe (there aren't any) and effective (none of those either). Then we can debate from a level playing field.

If you don't have kids, you've had all your vaccinations and are perfectly healthy, this post may not interest you.

If you have kids and aren't 100% on the vaccination thing, why not read up before you decide? You'll at least get a good start here.

If you've had all your vaccinations and are NOT healthy, there's a chance your illness is related to injected junk. Today's illness might be, if not cured, then much-relieved by removing the junk via chelation and bio-medical intervention.

If you follow me down this rabbit hole, you'll meet people who've cured themselves and their children of incurable disease. The funny thing is, you are not likely to hear of these methods from your doctor. In fact, your doctor will laugh at you if you mention them. As will your friends. Your enemies will have a field day. Even though none of them have done any research.

But, then, why would they? What they know about vaccination was told to them by Doctors, the indisputable Gods of the 20th century, who learned about it from a drug salesperson or journal article (possibly written by a Big Pharma ghostwriter), all verified by public indoctrination schooling and the MSM. And everyone - doctors, teachers, MSM employees, you and me - assumes there's hard science behind vaccinations. Don't worry, we'll be gettin' to that.

Oh, and don't tell me the "vaccine question has been answered." Maybe it was at one time. Back when the world was flat.

The problem is not vaccination. From what I understand, the science behind vaccination seems sound. It mimics the way you get natural immunity. Take smallpox. Put some smallpox in your body, your body attacks it, builds up antibodies, bingo: immunity. It's in the perversion of the science where one finds the root of vaccine evil:

#1. It's one thing to vaccinate against a true deadly virus, like smallpox, another to vaccinate against every little germ that comes along, like swine flu. Here's the thing: natural immunity lasts forever. Vaccine induced lasts but a few years. Many childhood diseases are more severe for adults. If one suffers the disease in childhood, one has little chance of dying from it yet gets lifelong immunity. But get vaccinated and, when immunity runs out and you get the disease, you are more likely to suffer devastating consequences, like death. Risk/benefit.

#2. Vaccines are chock-full of nasty additives: neomycin, formaldehyde, thimerisol, aluminum, to name a few. And cultivated in unappealing places: tissue from diseased monkey brains, aborted fetal tissue, rotten eggs. You are injecting this crap into your bloodstream. Um, the smallpox vaccine didn't have any of this.

#3. We vaccinate against everything, regardless of risk/benefit. Like Rubella. Rubella causes a mild rash and fever for two days. Rubella only poses a danger to a pregnant woman who may pass it to her fetus. So... why do we give infants two doses of Rubella vaccination? They are out of the danger zone. We fill infants with crap to protect pregnant women? Even though no one around them is pregnant anymore?

And why do we give two to four doses of the Hep B vaccine to infants when Hep B is only transmitted by blood? Particularly when this vaccination is no longer effective after eight years. Do you reckon your infant will be a drug abuser or prostitute? Is our blood supply so tainted we can't trust it against Hep B?

An aside: the CDC reports 99,000 U.S. deaths per year from nosocomial infections: infections which are a result of treatment in a hospital, most of which are preventable. The truth is mainstream medicine kills more people than almost anything else, yet we can't wait to bow and scrape at its feet if a new germ appears? Insanity.

#4. Is all this vaccination shutting down our bodies' natural ability to build immunity, leaving us vulnerable? MRSA came about because little germs had to get tough to fight disinfectant in hospitals. We could be setting ourselves up for a real pandemic. Maybe one day we'll all die from the common cold. Or acne.

“Immunisation programs against the flu, measles, mumps, polio, etc., actually may be seeding humans with RNA to form pro-viruses…which under proper conditions become activated and cause a variety of diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus erythematoses, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. Spare me this ‘medical miracle’.” --Dr. Robert Simpson, Rutgers University, 1987

#5. Aside from undermining our natural ability to build immunity, what is the long term effect of shooting all this poison into our bodies? Oh, no studies on that?

I wasn't born wary of vaccination, the FDA, the CDC, Big Pharma, my government and doctors. But trust must be earned and I can't think of a single thing any of those entities have done to earn my trust. Au contraire. The more I know, the less I trust.

If I could quickly share with you everything I've learned since August 2008, I'd do it. But, as a pro-vaccine friend said to me recently when I quoted a tiny bit of data on polio, "You can't just pick 2 or 3 years out of a hat and call it a trend. You need to look at all the data. That is science, not opinion." Nor can you squeeze over a year of constant study and information overload into a single post. Although I've done my best.

"The CDC would be the last place in the world to go for information regarding health. The CDC is a government bureacracy funded by theft (taxation that has reached confiscatory levels) and run by white collar criminals who regularly misinform and misdirect the public while creating pandemonium in the marketplace (unnecessary destruction of livestock, recalls etc) and conspiring to incite public panic on an almost daily basis, in violation of the Constitution of the United States."--Dr Duffy, Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine

Perhaps you think Dr. D is a little hard on the CDC. Finish this post, follow the links, watch the videos. Then we'll talk.

And science? Forget science, there is no science. I almost LOLed at another friend's link to the CDC because "that's where all the science is." Not LOLed at my friend, but at how foolishly we presume the CDC makes recommendations based on science. There is no vaccine science, much less on the CDC website. None. Hard to believe, I know. Go look, like I and thousands of parents have. You won't find any. In fact, the vaccine truther's current rallying cry is "Show us the science." Should be easy, right?

"My suspicion, which is shared by others in my profession, is that the nearly 10,000 SIDS deaths that occur in the United States each year are related to one or more of the vaccines that are routinely given children. The pertussis vaccine is the most likely villain, but it could also be one or more of the others." --Dr. Mendelsohn, M.D.

Take SIDS, for instance. On vaccines and SIDS, Wikipedia says:

"Vaccination does not increase the risk of SIDS. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: From 2 to 4 months old, babies begin their primary course of vaccinations. This is also the peak age for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The timing of these two events has led some people to believe they might be related. However, studies have concluded that vaccines are not a risk factor for SIDS.[108]"

Hey, studies, whaddya know! But, oops, the CDC's 108-link goes to a Page Not Found. I found the CDC's main SIDS page. At the bottom is a link for SIDS and Vaccinations. I clicked: Page Not Found. That CDC is such a tease. Could you just post the studies and end the debate??? Or could it really be coincidence that SIDS occurs at the same time as primary vaccinations? So far, "coincidence theory" is what vaccine pushers rely on for proof: "Millions would have died without this vaccine."

But back to me. I have 100s of sites bookmarked: information, documents, yahoo groups, personal stories, videos, podcasts, you name it. The info is dripping out my ears, puzzle pieces painting an unholy alliance. Is today's vaccination policy rooted in profit or public health? The profit is ginormous, the corruption well-documented. There is no proof these vaccines are safe or necessary, and a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Call me crazy (many do), but I'm going with the evidence.

Both of my sons were born perfectly healthy. One had a a seizure after the first Hep B vaccine. He is fine today. The other mysteriously developed asthma at three. No doctor has a clue why. They know what drugs to prescribe to mask the symptoms. They know how to warn me about the dangers of not taking the drugs. But they don't know why it happened, or how to control it, other than with drugs.

Funny, with a little research on the internet, we learned from other moms how to control asthma with diet and very little drug intervention. We are hoping to cure it with chelation. It sure won't hurt him. How come no doctor ever took us down this path?

We didn't give any more vaccines after Mo's seizure. Not that I knew what it was really. I just never liked the vaccines, the seizure was scary and I was too disorganized to pay attention to a vaccine schedule. I'm sure I could have been frightened into giving them all, particularly if the boys had gone to public school. Thank goodness Hal insisted on home schooling.

"Anything that implies that immunisations are not the greatest medical advance in the history of public health is ignored or ridiculed. Can you imagine the economic and political import of discovering that immunisations are killing thousands of babies?" --Dr. Douglass M.D.

The government who helps force these vaccinations upon us refuses to do any meaningful study. Why is that? I say follow the money. If they did a study and found out vaccines cause more harm than good, the backlash would be ginormouser. Picture Congress being visited by over 3,000,000 enraged mothers (of vaccine damaged kids), then sued, collectively and individually. Yummy.

Here's a taste of where I've been lately. There are 100s more links in my bookmarks folder:

FLU:

• Desiree Jennings got a flu shot
• Swine Flu: Cases Overestimated?
• There is ton of info on swine flu right now. You will easily find that the regular flu vaccine has been debunked everywhere: it has only been shown effective in people over 65 and even that is shaky.
• Am. Lung Assoc. flu & pneumonia surprising facts.
• • Page 4: "For the second year in a row, pneumonia and influenza together remained the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2005. Pneumonia consistently accounts for the overwhelming majority of these deaths. In 2005, 61,189 people died from pneumonia and 1,812 people died from influenza."
  • Page 4 bottom: "For the 65 and over population, pneumonia and influenza are the sixth leading cause of death. Close to 90% of deaths due to these diseases occur in this age group. Very few deaths are attributed to influenza in the population under age 55. As seen in the 2005 mortality statistics, the highest death rate for influenza is in those over age 85."
  • Page 9: See actual number of deaths from flu alone.
  • From the American Lung Association
  • CDC on flu
• Why would anyone bother to get a flu shot? Why has the CDC not challenged the "flu kills 36,000 people a year in the U.S." lie? Flu kills almost no one. Pneumonia kills old people. What a scam. All to sell drugs... unless you can think of another reason?

SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME:

• Scandals & wrongfully convicted
• Sean's case
• On one of the videos listed below (think it's the first one), you'll hear the story of a family that proved their "shaken baby syndrome" was caused by vaccination.

HEP B:

• Ian dies after Hep B vaccine, good info. Brace yourself for the photos. If I'd seen this before, no way would I have had my boys vaccinated. Fair warning.

GARDASIL: Barabara Loe Fisher always has the facts.

More GARDASIL:

• Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
• Even CBS has questions
• Teen girl dies of tumor, not vaccine... So the coroner is saying she would have died that morning regardless of whether or not she received the vaccine. Within 2 hrs of her jab she was dead, but the vaccine is not implicated at all. This is such a fantastic lie, I'm amazed anyone believes it.
• If you go to the CDC website and read about Gardasil, you'll see the word "may" everywhere: as in "may" cause cervical cancer, "may" prevent cervical cancer, blah blah blah. They don't know. Or, they are lying.

Here's a little info on Merck, who brings us Gardasil. The case against Merck is so damning, it is hard to believe the CEOs are not in jail.

• Largest health care fraud settlement in DOJ history
• Dumped vaccine and chemical waste in public water supply
• Medicaid "mistakes"
• Fosamax
• Hiding negative test results for Vytorin
• Skimped on taxes (although the IRS goes after big pockets routinely)
• Vioxx 27,000 dead and lawsuits galore
• Recalls 2.1 million doses of childhood vaccine
• Drew up a list of doctors to be neutralized for criticizing its drugs

Why would anyone take a drug made by Merck?

FDA & Big Pharma:

• Mercola on FDA
• Dr. Weil is threatened by the FDA, FTC over immune-boosting supplements. But Merck is allowed to stay in business.
• Mercola on FDA & Big Pharma's cozy relationship
• Who's on the FDA's Advisory Committees?

SV40: cancer-causing DNA virus that was - whoops - put into a polio vaccine

POLIO: Already on the way out before vaccine developed: 1952 saw 58,000 cases; 1953 less than 35,000; first vaccine introduced 1955. Google it, it's everywhere.

First places I go for vaccine information:

• Barbara Loe Fisher's NVIC.org
• Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Stan Kurtz at GenerationRescue.com
• Mercola.com
• Whale.to (a clearinghouse of info so includes the "out there" stuff)
• Yahoo groups: AustimMercury, frequent-dose-chelation, GFCFKids, adult-metal-chelation, mb12valtrex

Two moms who cured autism with mercury chelation (using Andy Cutler's protocol) and bio-medical intervention:

• Moria
• Dana

GREAT DOCUMENTARIES:

• Vaccinations - the Hidden Truth
• Are Vaccines Safe?
• Vaccine Nation
• Prescription for Disaster
• Making a Killing: on the psychotropic drugs we give America's children... from age 2

MISC SITES:

• Excellent faqs re. diseases we vaccinate against on this home school mom's page.
• Tattling on the vaccine industry
• Vaccine liberation
• Shirley's Wellness Cafe

I'll add to this page as I find new information so it's all in one place. If anyone can prove vaccines are harmless and good for us, sign me up. I am ready to be wrong. Then we can move on to discovering why our children are sicker every year in every way, in lockstep with increasing Big Pharma intervention. Coincidence?

Why do I care? My vaccination decisions have been made. The thing is, I've been made a fool of on the vaccine front to line someone else's pocketbook. That makes me angry. I also don't like people thinking I'm stupid. (So... I risk looking stupid to prove I'm not stupid. Really: this is a smart thing.) Injustice makes me nuts. I don't want anymore kids damaged or killed by vaccines. And I need people in my camp in order to force the government to take a hard look at the vaccines they are mandating. Before they really mandate them and take away my choice in the matter.

I really hate being manipulated. Do not try to scare me into being vaccinated against every germ that comes down the pike. Besides, it's smarter to butch up for a little lifelong immunity. As long as it's still my choice, that's the path I'm taking.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent busybodies. The robber barons' cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis

Quentin's Masterpiece

Forget Kill Bill: Inglorious Basterds is the one. Feel good movie of the year.

And, hey, if I had a million dollars, I would bet it all that Brad Pitt is Robert Redford's biological son. Gotta be.

This is the second excellent movie this week, by the way. We rented Star Wars Trek: The Future Begins. It was EXCELLENT - great fun! I could watch it again. You know there's going to be a II with these cute youngsters. William Shatner will always be my first love, even as a geezer... Still, I'm looking forward to the next star date. iViva larga y prospera!

Chicken Fever

I got it bad. I'd rather hang out with my chickens than almost anything. They are so cute, they don't ask for much other than food and water. I'm pretty sure they like it when I'm there. They don't run away (too much) when I put my hand out to put them down for the day or up for the night. They come to the sound of my voice. They listen when I talk. (Oh, they like me!) Here's what they look like now:

My friend Barry lent me his Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens. Talk about a wealth of information! I've learned so much and I'm only halfway through. We had the book at the farm in Live Oak but must have sold it when we moved here. Thank goodness for those who came before me and are willing to share the details!

My maid told me last week that I have two boys and one girl. Bummer. She knows from the tail feathers: in the photos, I point out Ethel's great big ole tail feathers. She says those are girl fanny feathers. Oops. I'm hoping she is wrong. This week, if you look close on the photos, you can see that Lucy and Eva are growing those same feathers. I'm hoping that means we got all girls. What am I going to do with two gallos [GA-joce, roosters]??? Someone suggested I eat them. Eat Lucy and Eva? Yeah, like that's going to happen. I'd have to be really hungry.

Did I just say that? NO, I won't eat them. I'll give them away. Maybe I'll keep one. Just until it starts to crow. Baby roosters learning to crow are pretty cute, too.

Parrot Porn

Costa Rica Real Estate Steal

I promise not to bore you with all the listings on my real estate site, but here is a 10% price reduction on an already well-priced brand new home: 3 bed/2 bath, 1650sf, 3/4 acre lot, spectacular views, hour from the beach, hour to my house... who could ask for more? All for $135,000. Plus, the seller is motivated. (Not "sales pitch" motivated, actually motivated.)

Who Needs Roosters?

This is a short video (really short if you skip forward) on what gets us out of bed in the wee hours:

P.S. After the video is my cry for help. Ok, "cry for help" is possibly a little dramatic. But "looking for advice" has no punch.

Cry for Help: I love shooting video - it's fun and the editing is fun. But I shot this with my point and click and it shows. I need a step up in video cameras, hopefully for under $300. Can anyone make a recommendation? I've been to those "compare and buy" sites and even joined a pod/video casters yahoo group. Lots of good suggestions there, but, once I buy something from here, I have it for life. A first-hand recommendation would be lovely. Thank you!!!

Chicken Challenges

Even though we weren't quite ready, we got us some chickens. I just couldn't wait and I figured, like anything else, having chickens would make us ready. Three little week-old chicks. The guy at the store said they were all girls. Perfect! After I got them home, however, I read that you can't really "sex" them until they are quite a bit older than a week. Somewhere between birth and 12 weeks... I have more research to do on when I'll know. Or how I'll know: does a boy chicken have a penis?

Let's be honest: I have more research to do on every single aspect of chicken farming. Jen sent me this site today: Down To Earth. Wow: an abundance of down to earth info!!! I've learned so much already and it's not even 10am.

Every time I read new information, I have to go out and fix what I didn't know was broke: move the chicks to the box where it's warm or change the water set up or build a fence or put newspaper under them... In the past two days, I've been out there building or unbuilding at least once an hour. Sometimes for an hour. But so far so good: those three chicks are alive and I've had them 24 hours already. Here's how I spent my day:

So: Lucy, Ethel and Eva have joined our family. Since I mistook Zsa Zsa for Eva, naming one of our new chicks Eva is my way of making it up to her. I wonder if she would appreciate this. And, yes, I can tell them apart. I think.

Chickens are sure funny birds. They aren't smart like we think of smart (hence the moniker "bird brain.") But they do three things very efficiently: eat, poop and chat. I like efficiency. They sorta track to me when I talk and, if I've been talking to them for a few minutes, they don't run away completely terrified when I go to pick them up. Pretty cool.

Everyone should have chickens. Pretty much everyone can have chickens, even in Key West. I  looked up the code:

Sec. 10-11.  Keeping fowl or wildlife.
The city shall not accept or be responsible for the keeping of any nondomesticated fowl or wildlife. Live poultry may be kept by any person in the city, provided that such poultry is kept in accordance with the following conditions:
(1)   All live poultry shall be kept in screened coops or pens which are maintained in a sanitary condition free from odors and free from fly breeding.
(2)   All food used for poultry shall be kept in a suitable container with a tightfitting cover so as to be inaccessible to rats.
(3)   All poultry droppings shall be removed from the coops or pens at least every 24 hours, tightly wrapped, and disposed of as provided by sections of this Code regarding disposal of solid waste. Droppings shall not be used for fertilizer.*
(Code 1986, § 53.17 found here, search "chicken")

I'm thinking chicken revolution here. At least it sounds peaceful! Speaking of sounds, you don't need a rooster for eggs, only for more chicks. I heard enough 3am crowing in Key West to last a lifetime. Maybe if I could find a 5am rooster, who only crowed once, I'd consider it...

*Ginnee and everyone else says chicken poop makes great fertilizer but you have to compost it. Alone, it's too "hot" and will damage the plants. A compost heap is on the list!

Auriculotherapy

Unless you just looked that up, I am enjoying a nanosecond knowing about something very few people do. I can't tell you how this pleases me. [Sad, I know, but we have to get our yayas where we can these days, eh?]

Here's the scoop: Auriculotherapy is ear acupuncture. Like reflexology, it's based on the premise that all body parts and organs have reciprocal points in the hands, feet, ears and, to some extent, the scalp. Due to stress, injury and/or over-use, these points get blocked with energy and bunched up connective tissue, resulting in discomfort at the referral body part. These blockages are released via touch: tapping, pressure, or needles and the pain disappears. For some reason, this makes sense to me.

All my mainstream friends, like the ones who never met a pharmaceutical they didn't like, are shaking their heads, wondering what I've gotten my self into now. I, on the other hand, have rarely met an alternative therapy I didn't think had merit: EFT, acupuncture, chiropractic (yep, still considered alternative), polarity, all massage, salt glows, hypnotherapy, aromatherapy, homeopathic medicine... even diet and exercise.

Judging from the looks of norteamericanos, not to mention an increasing number of ticos, healthy diet and exercise must be considered alternative and, therefore, suspect. Plenty of them have decided not to engage in such risky behavior. As Hal quipped the other day, "Ask your doctor if getting your fat ass off the sofa is right for you." (I'm feeling superior since I walked up my mountain this morning.)

The rationale seems to be, "Why exercise, why cut out sugar and Mickey D's when there's chemotherapy and Lotril if things go wrong? Soon to be had for free! Why take Vitamin D3 and C when a vaccine is available for flu? Could you hand me that remote?"

Alas, despite my healthy and superior lifestyle, my neck is a mess. Coincidentally, the mouse-hand side of my neck. Too much clicking. It's been going on for awhile now. A few weeks ago, after my massage course, I had a lovely, deep Connective Tissue massage from Robbie that really did it good. Unfortunately, she lives too far away to get regular massage, so I've been engaging in pain-preventive practice: sleeping on a single, fairly flat pillow, doing yoga and stretching, including Urdhva Dhanurasana (back bends, which feel so good). That all helps, but I'm still mousing too much and preventing too little.

Enter Gene McDonald, local auricular therapy master. Gene was recommended to me by Vicki Skinner. Before I had a chance to call him, he called me. He wanted to see about getting a listing on my Costa Rica Blue Book. Then he offered me three auriculotherapy treatments, free. Hey, I like free stuff! I got myself over to his house and hopped on his table.

It was amazing: he takes a tool (you can see it in his hand) that has a tiny metal point. He finds the "hot spots" on your ear, then holds the point to it, applying pressure till you say, "Hold it right there, Eugene!" I think the tip vibrates but I'm not sure. He holds it there for about 10 seconds or so, then moves on. The whole session takes 20 to 30 minutes. It can hurt when he touches a particularly sensitive spot... there's no way around it. But, hey, it worked so beautifully, I went back three times. And I'm a wuss. Every time I left, my neck was pain-free with more mobility. Even now, a week after my last treatment.

I like the idea of acupuncture and I've certainly had my share of it. But auriculotherapy proved demonstrably more effective. To tell you the truth, I never felt different after an acupuncture treatment. Even though the therapist always swore my yin was now more in line with my yang, I could never swear to it. I always felt the same, convinced I probably just wasn't "in tune."

In contrast, after 20 minutes with Gene, I felt better every time, like with massage or aspirin: pain-free. I appreciate that in a healing treatment. If you live here and have pain, go see Gene for $30. If you don't live here but have auricular therapy there, give it a shot. Remarkable stuff: all that healing from a teeny tiny point on your ear. I wonder how they figured this out.

(You can get all Gene's contact info by clicking this link!)

Backyard Chickens

Mood Music:

Perhaps we're taking this gardening thing too far, but - drum roll, please - we're gettin' chickens this week!!! For eggs, not dinner. I'm not up to wringing and waxing... yet.

But, baby-o-baby, I am all excited by the chicken idea. Even more than Hal and the boys, which is surprising. Guys like dirt and hammers whereas I like stores and traffic. I mean, I love the idea of farming: being outside in all that sunshine and fresh air, the smell of horses, barnyard sounds, eating fresh vegetables we grew in our garden. I don't even mind a passing whiff of manure. (Good thing since I live in Costa Rica, eh?) But I can't see actually living in the country. In fact, I'd like to live in Manhattan. That's not on the horizon at the moment, so backyard chickens will have to do. Don't question my logic. I've cut back on my hormones and questioning me can be harmful to your health. If backyard chickens float my boat, we're havin' us a couple.

The first thing, of course, is to construct a coop. Over the last few weeks, I have gently coaxed, prodded, begged and finally hounded Hal and the boys to get the coop started. I'm even less of a carpenter than a cowpoke and I needed help getting the box started. Just started. How hard could it be to help me build a basic box??? I mean, they said they wanted chickens, too. But whenever I mentioned getting started on the coop, "it was not a good day."

So I picked a good day: Friday. On Friday, I picked a good time: 3pm. I gave everyone an hour's notice, plus a 10 minute countdown. I think that was very generous and accommodating of me. Then, at the appointed time, when no one showed up in the garage to get started, I said in my biggest, most pleasant yet still firm mommy/wife voice, "IT'S TIME TO BUILD THE F%^#$%ING CHICKEN COOP! LET'S GET GOING."

You'd think I'd asked them to build me a Ford 9N from found materials. The whining, the glaring, the pouting. And that was just Hal! OK, just kidding. Hal was not too bad, just kinda grumpy. But the teenagers, OMG. I think they are pretty cool most of the time, but this coop thing turned them into snarling monsters. What the heck? Together, the three of them were just hideous.

I was determinedly cheerful the first 30 minutes, then I broke and started to cry. I know I'm a trained professional and all, but these were real (hormonal) tears... Whatever, it worked. They all felt bad about being such insufferable jerks, and actually got enthusiastic. By the time we were done for the day (two hours later), they were thinking of better ways to do everything and - gasp - having fun.

It's not just my family that goes through this routine, right?

That was Friday. We got half the coop done - all very satisfying! Since that was relatively painless, when we got back at it yesterday, we didn't have to go through the entire routine. Just a coupla glares, a skosh of whining, then we skipped right to the enthusiastic part.

Good thing we stopped at the halfway mark on Friday, though, because I discovered a few critical details about coop-building between Friday and yesterday.

First of all, the floor of the coop needs to be screened so I don't spend my life cleaning up chicken poop. Tears may get me a little carpentry help, but no amount of hysteria or threats will get anyone else cleaning up that mess. So I screened what was going to be the top and flipped it over making it the bottom. I thought of that all by myself.

Secondly, it needs to be off the ground, at least a half meter, not three or four inches like we had originally planned.

"Planned." What a concept. That's our comprehensive coop plan to the left.

So we added legs. Then a door. A roof so they don't roost on the top. Then I really went to town and painted it pink. It's going to house girl chickens, right?

We built the whole thing out of scrap materials. If you are gardening, farming and animal husbandry-ing to save money, you can't spend too much on the set up. Yeah, I'm thrifty, too. Who knew?

As in all real estate decisions, location is crucial. Particularly when there is poop involved, like with la jaula [ha-OO-lah, cage]. We wandered about the yard considering possible locations: protected from the elements and predators, yet easy to get the eggs.

On our way to check out the backyard, we saw the perfect spot right outside the bars. There's an overhang, the chickens have access to the entire backyard so plenty of room to range. Plus there's that huge bougainvillea across from the coop that should provide shelter from hawks. Besides an occasional kitty, I think a hawk is the most likely predator. I guess we'll see about that...

And I can easily cut in a backdoor to harvest the eggs. Oh - those boxes in there are from Pricesmart. Instead of bags,  you get a box to carry out your groceries. We save them just in case... turns out, they are perfect for nesting boxes. And disposable... I like that!

The only things left to do are:

1. Figure out a way to prop up the door. I'm thinking bungie from the top. We have a zillion bungie cords around here somewhere. At night, I'll use the entrance log to hold the door closed. Although maybe I don't need to do that? Since I don't have a handy copy of Raising Chickens for Dummies, I'm piecing together the requirements for backyard chickens from a variety of sources. Today, I got the distinct impression that chickens like to sleep on the roost outside. Hmmm. What I don't know about chickens would fill an encyclopedia. If they made those anymore.

2. Add a roost which should be simple. I'm going to mount a 2' 1x4 between the coop and the bars so they can roost under the overhang. I'll add a chicken escalera using chicken fencing.

3. I need about 9' more chicken wire to put up along the inside of the bars so the chickens can't squeeze through into the garage.

4. Chicken feeders and feed.

5. CHICKENS!!!

Big thanks to a couple of buddies who sent me photos of their coops:

And a big thanks to BackyardChickens.com and the new yahoo group CRGardening for all the help and advice, too. There are surely going to be more questions from time to time! Apparently I'm the last expat to think of having chickens...

Who knows, maybe the next step is buying the farm. Er, a farm. I think even Zsa Zsa grew to like farm life.

*That's our old Ford 9N from the property in north Florida that we sold to finance our extravagant lifestyle in Costa Rica. We named the tractor Nancy after my old mom, seen here ridin' high.

So Many Topics, So Little Time

After Monday's long post, which clearly took me hours to put together, my dear Key West friends Pat and Viktor wrote me saying I must have too much time on my hands. Whoa nelly, I wish. If I had plenty of time, I'd be blogging. But the truth is, I have too little time because - drum roll please - I actually have to frickin' work now. Tell me again why didn't I marry a rich guy? Love? What a dumb reason to get married.

Anyway, working takes up way too much time. I'm working on website maintenance for a guy, working on my new Costa Rica real estate site, and working on getting tenants for houses in Key West.

Speaking of which, finding new tenants in Key West has become quite the challenge. Florida is losing population for the first time in decades. Seems like most of them are moving out of my properties, too. Over the summer, I've had four out of five properties empty. And, for the first time since 1995, I lost two properties just because we couldn't get a tenant at the rent the owner's wanted. Both are still empty. Big bummer for all concerned.

The other thing that is still taking up my time is politics. I thought it would be good enough to twitter and FaceBook my political thoughts and ideas so I wouldn't take up my Costa Rica blog with U.S. politics. But I spend too much time debating buddies over there to have time left for blogging over here. Sigh. Time for Plan B. As soon as I make up a Plan B.

Another place I spend too much time late at night is on those yahoo groups. Like everywhere else it seems, 99% of the other members are liberals. Good practice for not taking anything personally, lemme tell ya. But a friend wrote me today, asking about my weltanschauung*. She said (and I've deleted personally identifying data in case you were thinking of stealing her identity):

"One of the things I have experienced spiritually, and continue to experience, is 'losing' my affection/love/loyalty/conviction about ideas/plans/things that I once held fast and basic. Something about being in this shifting mix has impacted me and my convictions.

It's only fair, I 'spose, that I'd be impacted, since I've been a part of - if not pulling the rug out from under, at least shifting the rug - for a number of folks. I realize my whole weltanschauung is in play.  From your posts I know that you've mentioned a major shift in your life, too." [There's an understatement.]

Wow, I'd never heard of weltanschauung before. What a great word! And what an excellent question. Good questions are too few and far between, if you ask me. Here's my answer:

"I hear you. I'm there, too. Only, I don't know what I thought about in college... much of those days are lost in a fog of drinking and smoking pot. I've been sober now for 21 years, my spiritual life has grown out of that as opposed to a church.

I don't think I learned anything other than theatre arts at LC, certainly no book learning. I just wasn't interested. My political education started in earnest about 10 years ago. My husband is one of those rare souls who remembers everything he's ever read. He knows how many bullets were fired in every war, why we fought (why we really fought as opposed to what's in the history books), who was president when, who was king when, the details of the Roman Empire, for God's sake... Otherwise our household might be devoid of facts other than what Google produces!

My particular weltanschauung has been shaped over the past few years by:

#1 getting sober. That changed me immeasurably so, in effect, it shapes every decision I make. I grew up. I found a spiritual life.

Then #2 becoming a parent. Good grief, that's hard but changed me in all the good ways.

#3 being married to a Libertarian and really smart guy. There's an education.

And #4 Discovering just how corrupted our system of government has become, thanks to our friends at the you-know-what. Without going into the sordid details, once a person has been violated and the underbelly of the system exposed for what it is, you can't go back and pretend anymore. Our government is in serious trouble. When Dino [a guy on the forum] says the lunatics are in charge of the asylum, he couldn't be more correct. Only he thinks it's limited to the Republicans.

To me, if you are not at least shifting rugs, you aren't really doing anything. I'm a rug-shifter from way back."

I forgot to mention #5. That would be my friends' effect on my life. Friends from Key West who are still part of my life. Clients from that life who shared a big part of their lives with me. My new friends here somewhat - there just hasn't been time for them to affect my weltanschauung  significantly. Blog readers, certainly. You guys don't hold back. Fellow inmates at all my personal asylums. And my family: as they've changed, I've changed.

So here's my question. Maybe I'm asking because I'll be 54 in four days and being older has certainly made me wiser. Not "wise" per se. Just wiser. Thank goodness something happened after all those years! So, I wanna know: what's shifted your weltanschauung?

* Pronounced VELT (world) on shau (to look at) oong (German ending that makes this a noun). You say it like two words: Velt on-SHAU-oong. In case you want to use it in a sentence.

21 September: International Day of Peace and My Baby Brother's Birthday

Dear Tuck,

Happy 53rd Birthday, Big Guy. September 21st is the 264th day of the year. This leaves only 101 days left to celebrate your birthday. As Jim Byrd said to Chuck Barris, "Jesus Christ was dead and alive again by 33. You better get crackin'."

Just so you know you aren't celebrating alone, September 21st is also:

• Independence Day, Malta
• Independence Day, Belize
• The Nativity of the Theotokos in Russia
• Mabon Neopagan festival of Mabon
• In ancient Greece, it's the eighth day of the Eleusinian Mysteries, when the secret rites in the Telesterion finish and the feast, Pannychis, begins
• National Pecan Cookie Day
• Biosphere Day
• Idaho Spud Day
• International Flower Day
• National Rich Villain Day (Celebrated on Larry Hagman's birthday. He played the role of J. R. Ewing on the TV series 'Dallas.')
• Saint Matthew Feast Day - A tax collector before he became a disciple of Jesus, Saint Matthew is patron saint of accountants, bankers, bookkeepers, tax collectors, custom officers, and security guards.
• Watticism Day (In 1983, Secretary of the Interior, James Watt slandered minorities in a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce when he said that his committee had "a black, a woman, 2 Jews, and a cripple.")
• World Gratitude Day

On This Day In History 21 September:
• 0019 Death of Vergil
• 0454 Roman Emperor Valentinian III assassinates Aëtius, the supreme army commander, in his own throne room.
• 0687 Conon, Sicilian Pope (686-87), dies
• 1066 Battle at Fulford: Norway king Harald III Hardrada beats British militia
• 1192 English King Richard I the Lion hearted, captured
• 1217 Livonian Crusade: The Estonian tribal leader Lembitu and Livonian leader Kaupo are killed in Battle of St. Matthew's Day.
• 1327 Edward II, King of England, 43, is murdered by order of his wife.
• 1348 Jews in Zurich Switzerland are accused of poisoning wells
• 1397 Beheading of Richard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey
• 1435 An agreement between Charles VII of France and Philip the Good ends the partnership between the England and Burgundy in Hundred Years' War.
• 1435 Treaty of Atrecht: Philip of Bourgondy vs French king Charles II
• 1451 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa orders Jews of Holland to wear a badge
• 1520 Death of Selim, Sultan of Turkey
• 1520 Suliman "the Lawgiver" ("the Magnificent") becomes Sultan
• 1522 Martin Luther first published his German translation of the New Testament. His translation of the entire Bible was completed in 1534.
• 1529 Turks under Suleiman I lay siege to Vienna
• 1589 The Duke of Mayenne of France is defeated by Henry IV of England at the Battle of Arques.
• 1591 French bishops recognize Henri IV as king of France
• 1621 King James of England gives Canada to Sir Alexander Sterling (it's nice to be king)
• 1648 Battle at Pilawce: Bohdan Chmielricki's beats John Casimir
• 1673 James Needham returns to Virginia after exploring the land to the west, which would become Tennessee.
• 1676 Benedetto Odescalchi elected as Pope Innocent XI
• 1677 John and Nicolaas van der Heyden patent the fire extinguisher
• 1745 A Scottish Jacobite army of the Pretender Prince Charles Edward Stuart commanded by Lord George Murray routs the Royalist army of General Sir John Cope at Prestonpans.
• 1756 John Loudon McAdam was born. He invented macadam pavement for roads. The Macadamia Nut was named for him.
• 1765 Antoine de Beauterne announced he had killed the Beast of Gévaudan.
• 1776 5 days after British take NY, 1/4 of city burns down
• 1776 Nathan Hale, spied on British for American rebels, arrested
• 1780 American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives British Major Andre plans to West Point
• 1784 America's first daily newspaper, The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser was first published. The paper will be the continent's first daily news source.
• 1792 France's National Convention, via a proposal by Collot D'Herbois, abolishes the monarchy and declares France a republic. Its 1st Republic is celebrated widely by the beheading of a few thousand random French. France is up to Republic #5. They switch on occasion of installing dictators, monarchs or getting invaded by Germany, or, hey, it’s time to do something different.
• 1798 George Read, US judge/signer (Decl of Independence), dies at 65
• 1814 "Star Spangled Banner" published as a poem
• 1827 Joseph Smith, Jr. is reportedly visited by the angel Moroni, who gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which Smith has translated into The Book of Mormon.
• 1837 Charles Tiffany founded his jewelry and china stores
• 1860 In the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Baliqiao.
• 1864 Confederates claim victory at Rossville Gap (although they lose the war) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chickamauga
• 1872 John Henry Conyers of South Carolina becomes 1st black student at Annapolis
• 1883 First direct U.S. to Brazil telegraph connection
• 1885 Dutch demonstrate for general voting right
• 1893 The first successful American-made, gasoline-operated motor car appeared on the streets of Springfield, Mass. It was designed and built by Charles and Frank Duryea.
• 1895 First auto manufacturer opens-Duryea Motor Wagon Company
• 1897 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon had written a letter to "The New York Sun": “I am eight years old. Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in "The Sun", it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?” Editor Frank Church wrote the response that was printed for the first time on this day: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
• 1898 Empress Dowager Cixi seizes power and ends the Hundred Days' Reform in China.
• 1899 A painting of a dog listening to a record player was purchased by the Gramophone Company, parent of RCA Victor, for use as a trademark.
• 1903 1st cowboy film "Kit Carson," premieres in U.S.
• 1904 Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce Native American chief who led his people on a 1,600 km (1,000 mi) journey to escape the U.S. Army, dies of a "broken heart" on the Colville Reservation in Washington at about the age of 64.
• 1906 Yankee 1st baseman Hal Chase's 22 put-outs ties record
• 1913 1st aerobatic maneuver, sustained inverted flight, performed in France
• 1913 Turkey and Bulgaria sign peace treaty in Constantinople
• 1915 Stonehenge is sold by auction for 6,600 pounds sterling ($11,500) to a Mr. Chubb, who buys it as a present for his wife. He presents it to the nation three years later.
• 1917 Variety reports that producer George Tyler has found the new star for his upcoming production of Pollyanna in Rochester, New York. It is Helen Hayes.
• 1919 33rd U.S. Womens Tennis: Hazel H Wightman beats M Zinderstein (61 62)
• 1921 Pope Benedictus XV donates 1 million lire to feed Russians
• 1922 President Warren G Harding signs a joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine
• 1928 "My Weekly Reader" magazine made its debut
• 1929 1st legal pass in Canada was thrown by Gerry Seiberling and 1st reception by Ralph Losie of Calgary Altomah-Tigers against Edmonton
• 1929 Fighting between China and the Soviet Union breaks out along the Manchurian border.
• 1930 Johann Ostermeyer patents flashbulb
• 1931 Britain abandons gold standard; pound devalues 20%
• 1933 Trial against Marinus der Lubbe opens
• 1934 A large typhoon hits western Honshū, Japan, killing 3,036 people.
• 1934 St. Louis Card Paul Dean no-hits Brooklyn Dodgers, 3-0
• 1936 Spanish fascist junta names Franco to generalissimo/supreme commander
• 1937 "The Hobbit," Oxford University professor J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien's tale of Middle Earth, is published by Allen and Unwin at London. Hobbits were well known as both gourmets and gourmands.
• 1937 Women's airspeed record set at 292 mph by American pilot Jacqueline Cochran.
• 1938 A category 3 hurricane, "The Long Island Express" aka The Great Hurricane of 1938, struck Long Island, New York, with steady winds to 121 mph, gusts to 186 mph, and a storm surge 17 feet above normal high tide. There were 600 fatalities, 63,000 homeless after 8,900 buildings were destroyed, and damages of $306 millions, the equivalent of $15 billions in 1998.
• 1938 Winston Churchill condemns Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia
• 1939 Reinhard Heydrich meets in Berlin to discuss final solution of Jews
• 1939 Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu is assassinated by pro-Nazi members of the Iron Guard.
• 1941 The German Army cuts off the Crimean Peninsula from the rest of the Soviet Union.
• 1941 U.S. launches its 1st Liberty-ship, "Patrick Henry"
• 1942 116 hostages executed by Nazis in Paris
• 1942 British forces attack the Japanese in Burma. Detachment 101 harried the Japanese in Burma and provided close support for regular Allied forces
• 1942 In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazis murder 2,588 Jews.
• 1942 On Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazis sent over 1.000 Jews of Pidhaytsi (west Ukraine) to Belzec extermination camp. They also ordered Konstantynów Jews (Poland) to permanently evacuate Konstantynów and move to the Ghetto established in Biala Podlaska, meant to assemble Jews from nearby 7 towns among them: Konstantynów, Janów Podlaski, Rossosz, Terespol, and 3 more.
• 1942 The U.S. B-29 Superfortress, the largest bomber used during World War II, made its debut flight in Seattle, WA.
• 1942 Transport nr 35 departs with French Jews to nazi-Germany
• 1943 Arundel (Solomon Island) in U.S. hands
• 1943 Soviet forces reach Dnjepr
• 1944 General Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines as promised during World War II
• 1944 Last British paratroopers at bridge of Arnhem surrenders
• 1944 U.S. troops of the 7th Army, invading Southern France, cross the Meuse River.
• 1946 After being tested on a regional basis, "The Second Mrs. Burton" was heard for the first time on the entire CBS radio network. "The Second Mrs. Burton" fared very well, having a relationship with the network for 14 years.
• 1946 Indians play their final game in League Park, ending a 55-year stay
• 1947 Chart Toppers: Peg o’ My Heart - The Harmonicats | That’s My Desire - The Sammy Kaye Orchestra (vocal: Don Cornell) | I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now - Perry Como | Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette) - Tex Williams
• 1948 "The Texaco Star Theater" on NBC-TV chose this night to make one of its oft-appearing hosts the permanent host. Milton Berle stayed on as the regular host until 1967. He was so much a part of "The Texaco Star Theater" that it became known as "The Milton Berle Show".
• 1948 The serial "Life With Luigi" debuted on CBS radio. Luigi Basko was played by J. Carroll Naish. Naish, an Irish-American, became typecast as an Italian immigrant, and went on to play the same role in the TV version in 1952.
• 1949 Chinese Communist leaders proclaims People's Republic of China
• 1949 Federal Republic of [West] Germany created under 3-power occupation
• 1950 George Marshall sworn in as the 3rd Secretary of Defense of United States.
• 1951 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1951 Emil Zatopek runs 15,000m in record 44 min, 54.6 sec
• 1951 US Marine Corps mounted the first combat use of helicopters as troop transports in Operation Summit. The 224 Marines were landed at two sites on Hill 884 within mortar range of Communist defenses. From the staging area to the landing was eight minutes, compared to nine hours for a ground march.
• 1953 Allied forces form West Germany
• 1954 1st nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, commissioned. Later becomes the first submarine to get to the North Pole and cross the Arctic Ocean submerged.
• 1954 Kleffens appointed chairman of General Meeting U.N.
• 1955 Boxing fans all over the world held their collective breaths as Archie Moore, the light heavyweight champion, knocked the heavyweight champion, Rocky Marciano, to the floor on this night. But the champ got up ... just as he had done in every fight before this ... and went on to defeat Moore. Rocky Marciano was the only world champion at any weight to have won every fight of his professional career (1947 to 1956). 43 of his 49 fights were won either by KO’s or because the fight had to be stopped.
• 1955 Chart Toppers: The Yellow Rose of Texas - Mitch Miller | Maybellene - Chuck Berry | Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - The Four Aces | I Don’t Care - Webb Pierce
• 1955 Last allied occupying troops leave Austria. War’s been over for ten years. They clearly needed an exit strategy.
• 1955 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test
• 1956 Randolph Tucker Richardson enters the world of the living. His mother begins monumental, at times revolting, life-long celebration that continues to this very day.
• 1956 Yankees set dubious record, stranding 20 men on base Mantle hits a 500' plus homer but Red Sox win 13-9 in Fenway
• 1957 Famed trial lawyer "Perry Mason" came to TV. The creation of attorney/novelist Erle Stanley Gardner, "Perry Mason" found fame first as a series of novels, then as a CBS radio series (1943-1955). TV’s "Perry Mason", which continued for 9 seasons (TV’s longest-running lawyer series) on CBS, starred Raymond Burr in the lead role. Della Street was played by Barbara Hale.
• 1957 German sailing school ship Pamir sails Atlantic Ocean
• 1957 Pote Sarasin forms government in Thailand
• 1958 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1958 1st airplane flight exceeding 1200 hours, lands, Dallas, Texas
• 1959 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, continuing his U.S. visit, reaffirmed his country's desire for friendship with the United States in a speech during a dinner at San Francisco's Palace Hotel.
• 1961 Earle Dickson died. He invented Band-Aids for his wife, who had frequent kitchen accidents, cutting or burning herself. He worked for Johnson & Johnson, who soon began manufacturing Band-Aids.
• 1961 For some reason, folks want to swim the English Channel. However, Antonio Abertondo swam the channel both ways. He did it nonstop in 24 hours and 25 minutes.
• 1961 Maiden flight of the CH-47 Chinook transportation helicopter.
• 1963 Chart Toppers: Blue Velvet - Bobby Vinton | Heat Wave - Martha & The Vandellas | Sally, Go ’Round the Roses - The Jaynetts | Abilene - George Hamilton IV
• 1964 Constellation (U.S.) beats Sovereign (England) in 20th America's Cup
• 1964 Malta becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
• 1964 Reds Chico Ruiz steals home, beats Phillies 1-0. Phillies start a 10 game losing streak that gives Cards the pennant
• 1964 The North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world's first Mach 3 bomber, made its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.
• 1965 O Kommissarova (U.S.S.R.) sets women's longest parachute jump (46,250')
• 1965 Singapore admitted as a part of the United Nations.
• 1966 Jimmy Hendrix changes spelling of his name to Jimi
• 1967 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1968 R.T. Richardson III becomes the smallest player on the GRC Varsity football team. Every week, he courageously shouts, "Put me in, coach, put me in!" Thirty minutes later, every week, under the tearful eyes of his adoring mother, he is carried off the field.
• 1969 Donna Caponi Young wins LPGA Lincoln-Mercury Golf Open
• 1969 New York Jet Steve O'Neal punts 98 yards against Denver Broncos
• 1970 "Monday Night Football" made its debut on ABC as the
• 1970 ABC-TV debuted "Monday Night Football", with Howard Cosell, ‘Dandy’ Don Meredith and Keith Jackson. The Browns defeated the New York Jets 31-21 in Cleveland.
• 1970 Luna 16 leaves Moon
• 1970 New York Times starts first modern op-ed page. They choose Benedict Arnold as their patron saint.
• 1970 Oakland A's Vida Blue no-hits Minnesota Twins, 6-0
• 1970 Tuck signs up for karate lessons. When asked why, he says, "So I can kill Earl (his older brother)." Everyone laughs.
• 1971 Tuck breaks 15 boards with his knuckles in the backyard. We are all impressed. The next day, Earl signs up for karate lessons.
• 1971 Chart Toppers: Go Away Little Girl - Donny Osmond | Spanish Harlem - Aretha Franklin | Ain’t No Sunshine - Bill Withers | The Year That Clayton Delaney Died - Tom T. Hall
• 1971 Coca Cola introduced the plastic bottle.
• 1971 John Lennon and Yoko Ono are Dick Cavett's only guest
• 1972 Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos issues Proclamation No. 1081 placing the entire country under martial law.
• 1972 TI 2500Semiconductor developer Texas Instruments released its first three calculators, the TI-2500, the TI-3000, and the TI-3500. The TI-2500 (the "Datamath"), which is a four-function, full-floating decimal point system with an eight-digit LED display, would become a break-out success. They were the first patented calculators to be released. Price: $119.95 (TI-2500), $85 (TI-3000), $100 (TI-3500)
• 1972 U.S.S.R. performs underground nuclear test
• 1973 Jackson Pollocks painting "Blue Poles" sold for $2,000,000
• 1973 Nate Archibald signs 7 yr contract with NBA Kansas City Kings for $450,000
• 1973 New York Mets go into 1st place (at .500) after trailing 12 games
• 1974 U.S. Mariner 10 makes 2nd fly-by of Mercury
• 1975 Jo Ann Washam wins LPGA Portland Ladies Golf Classic
• 1976 In an assassination widely credited to the secret police of Chile, Chilean opposition leader Orlando Letelier and his American secretary are killed by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Chilean socialist government of Salvador Allende, overthrown in 1973 by Augusto  Pinochet.
• 1977 President Carter defended budget director Bert Lance as he announced Lance's resignation. Lance had been accused of a series of illegal acts in banking.
• 1978 Falcon Almahurst, driven by Bill Haughton, sets the all-age world record for pacing on a half-mile track by winning in 1:55.2 at the Delaware County Fairgrounds in Ohio.
• 1978 Two Soviet astronauts set a space endurance record after 96 days in space.
• 1979 Chart Toppers: My Sharona - The Knack | After the Love Has Gone - Earth, Wind & Fire | The Devil Went Down to Georgia - The Charlie Daniels Band | You’re My Jamaica - Charley Pride
• 1980 Donna Caponi Young wins LPGA ERA Real Estate Golf Classic
• 1980 LA Ram Johnnie Johnson scores a 99 yard interception
• 1980 Richard Todd of New York Jets completes 42 passes in a game (NFL record)
• 1981 Belize (British Honduras) gains independence from U.K.
• 1981 For 191 years, the U.S. Supreme Court had existed without a woman sitting on the bench. That changed as Sandra Day O’Connor was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 99-0 vote.
• 1981 Steve Carlton strikes out NL record 3,118th (Andre Dawson)
• 1982 2,251 turn out to see Expos play New York Mets at Shea Stadium
• 1982 Amin Gemayel, brother of Lebanon's assassinated president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, was himself elected president.
• 1982 Devils beat Rangers 3-2 in exhibition; 1st hockey in Meadowlands (NJ)
• 1982 National Football League players began a 57-day strike, their first regular-season walkout ever.
• 1982 STS-5 vehicle moves to launch pad
• 1983 11 killed in anti Marcos demonstrations in Manila
• 1983 David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross," premieres in London
• 1983 U.S. performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1984 NASA launches Galaxy-C
• 1985 Michael Spinks defeats Larry Holmes and becomes first light heavyweight to defeat the reigning heavyweight champion
• 1986 38th Emmy Awards: Golden Girls, Cagney and Lacey and Michael J Fox win
• 1986 Delegates to the 35-nation East-West security conference in Stockholm, Sweden, agreed on information-sharing measures designed to reduce the risk of accidental war in Europe.
• 1986 Miami Dan Marino passes for 6 touchdowns vs New York Jets (51-45)
• 1986 New Orleans Saints Mel Gray returns kickoff 101 yards for a touchdown
• 1986 New York Jets beat Miami Dolphins 51-45 in OT; record 884 passing yards
• 1986 Patty Sheehan wins LPGA Konica San Jose Golf Classic
• 1986 San Diego Padre Jimmy Jones pitchs 1-hitter in his major league debut
• 1987 3 Belgian minesweepers depart to Persians Gulf
• 1987 A US helicopter gunship disabled an Iranian vessel, the "Iran Ajr," that was caught laying mines in the Persian Gulf; four Iranian crewmen were killed, 26 wounded and detained.
• 1987 Chart Toppers: I Just Can’t Stop Loving You - Michael Jackson with Siedah Garrett | Didn’t We Almost Have It All - Whitney Houston | Here I Go Again - Whitesnake | This Crazy Love - The Oak Ridge Boys
• 1987 NFL players called a strike, mainly over the issue of free agency. (The 24-day walkout prompted football owners to hire replacement players.)
• 1988 Mike Tyson smashes TV camera outside his Bernardsville New Jersey home
• 1988 The Soviet women's gymnastics team won the gold medal at the Seoul Summer Olympics, with Romania placing second and East Germany, third.
• 1989 General Colin Powell was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
• 1989 Hurricane "Hugo," packing winds of up to 135 miles-an-hour, crashed into Charleston, South Carolina leaving a trail of destruction calculated at over eight billion dollars.
• 1989 Poland's Sejm (National Assembly) approves prime minister Mazowiecki
• 1990 During a meeting of the Supreme Soviet, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev scolded legislators for dragging its feet on an economic rescue plan, and asked for sweeping new emergency powers to stabilize the economy.
• 1990 Faye Vincent turns down White Sox bid to reinstate Minnie Minoso, 68,
• 1990 Oakland A's Bob Welch becomes 1st 25 game winner in 10 years
• 1990 Pirate Bobby Bond is 2nd to hit 30 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season (so he can play in 6 decades) because it is a publicity stunt
• 1991 "I Adore Me Amore", by Color Me Badd, rose to #1 on U.S. singles charts. The hit, from their "The Best of Color Me Badd" LP, was number one for two weeks.
• 1991 An 18-hour hostage drama ended in Sandy, Utah, as Richard L. Worthington, who had killed a nurse and seized control of a hospital maternity ward, finally freed his nine captives, including a baby who was born during the hostage situation.
• 1991 Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union.
• 1991 USA Basketball announces "Dream Team" for the 1992 Olympics
• 1992 Former defense secretaries Melvin Laird and James R. Schlesinger told a congressional committee the Pentagon had known American airmen were alive in Laos at the end of the Vietnam War and were not returned.
• 1992 President Bush addressed the UN General Assembly, offering US support to strengthen international peacekeeping.
• 1993 Klamath Falls, Oregon earthquake 6.0 caused two deaths and approximately 7.5 million U.S. dollars in damage.
• 1993 The police drama "NYPD Blue" premiered on ABC TV.
• 1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends parliament and scraps the then-functioning constitution, thus triggering the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.
• 1993 Ukraine government of Kutshma resigns
• 1994 Howard Stern Radio Show premieres in Ft. Lauderdale / Miami, Florida on WBGG 105.9 FM
• 1994 Prosecutors from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties announced that child molestation charges would not be filed against singer Michael Jackson; however, the case would remain open until 1999.
• 1995 House Republicans unveiled partial details of their plan for Medicare aimed at achieving $270 billion in savings over seven years.
• 1996 Christie Brinkey gets married for 4th time
• 1996 John F. Kennedy Junior married Carolyn Bessette in a secret ceremony on Cumberland Island, Georgia.
• 1996 President Clinton and Republican rival Bob Dole agreed to face off in two debates without Ross Perot.
• 1996 The board of all-male Virginia Military Institute voted to admit women.
• 1996 The New York Times reveals that the December 1995 crash of American Airlines Flight 965 in Colombia may have been the result of a programming error. Pilots of the plane evidently selected the first beacon option on the plane's autopilot system to guide the plane to its landing site without manually checking that the option given was the correct destination. As a result, the plane ended up one hundred miles off of its intended course, and it subsequently crashed in a disaster that resulted in 159 deaths.
• 1997 Liselotte Neumann wins LPGA PING Welch's Championship
• 1997 Mike Piazza is 2nd to hit a home run out of Dodger Stadium
• 1997 New York Yankee Cecil Fielder hits his 300th home run
• 1997 Saying their persistent demands for a special investigation had been vindicated, senior Republicans insisted Attorney General Janet Reno seek appointment of an independent counsel to look into White House fund-raising activities, a day after the Justice Department revealed it had begun a preliminary review
• 1997 Tim Herron wins Texas Golf Open shooting a 271
• 1998 Hurricane Georges roared through Puerto Rico and the northeast Caribbean.
• 1998 Olympic gold medal track star Florence Griffith Joyner was found dead at her home in Mission Viejo, California; she was 38.
• 1998 President Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony was publicly broadcast; in it, Clinton tussled with prosecutors over "the truth of my relationship" with Monica Lewinsky.
• 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, a 7.6 magnitude, rocks Taiwan, kills 2,295
• 1999 The House Banking Committee opened an inquiry into allegations of a huge money-laundering scheme involving the Russian mob and the Bank of New York.
• 1999 The United States Postal Service honors nine Broadway composers and/or lyricists by unveiling the Broadway Songwriters postage stamp series today at New York City's Broadhurst Theatre. The six stamp designs include composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (pictured together), lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe (together), composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira Gershwin (together), lyricist Lorenz Hart, composer-lyricist Meredith Willson and composer-lyricist Frank Loesser.
• 2000 David Ingraham notches win No. 4,000 by driving Juststeponthegas to victory at the Farmington Fair in Maine.
• 2000 Federal prosecutors announced that Jason Diekman, age 20, was charged with hacking into the NASA systems at Stanford University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Diekman was also charged with the theft of over 500 credit card numbers and using them to make more than six thousand dollars of purchases.
• 2001 AZF chemical plant explodes in Toulouse, France, killing 31 people
• 2001 Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 km of Comet Borrelly.
• 2002 International Day of Peace recognized by the United Nations as a full day of ceasefire and nonviolence.
• 2003 Galileo mission terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter's atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.
• 2004 Construction of the Burj Dubai starts.
• 2004 President George W. Bush, defending his decision to invade Iraq, urged the U.N. General Assembly to stand united with the country's struggling government.
• 2004 Punk rock band Green Day releases its critically acclaimed album American Idiot.
• 2004 The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People's War and the Maoist Communist Centre of India merge to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
• 2004 The death toll in Haiti from deluges caused by Tropical Storm Jeanne topped 700.
• 2004 Yusuf Islam, formerly known as singer Cat Stevens, was taken off a London-to-Washington United Airlines flight because his name had shown up on a government "no-fly" list.
• 2007 The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) announced that the day prior, it had filed the first copyright infringement lawsuit in U.S. history to be based on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The suit, filed on behalf of two principal developers of the BusyBox, Erik Andersen and Rob Landley, alleges that Monsoon Multimedia failed to provide recipients of its firmware with access to its underlying source code as stipulated in the GPL governing BusyBox, which the company implements in its firmware. BusyBox is an application that provides a set of Unix tools popular among Linux distributions.
• 2008 "Mad Men" became the first basic-cable show to win the top series Emmy; "30 Rock" and its stars Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin won comedy awards.
• 2008 Baseball said farewell to the original Yankee Stadium as New York defeated Baltimore 7-3.
• 2008 Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two last remaining independent investment banks on Wall Street, become bank holding companies as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.
• 2008 South African President Thabo Mbeki announced his resignation.
• 2008 The United States took back the Ryder Cup with a 16½-11½ victory over Europe.
• 2009 Randolph Tucker Richardson celebrates his 53rd birthday, making him the same age as his slightly older, wiser and noticeably better-looking sister for one week.

Other Famous People born September 21st:
• 1051 Bertha of Savoy, German queen and Holy Roman Empire Empress
• 1328 Hongwu Emperor of China
• 1372 Frederik I van Hohenzollern, monarch of Brandenburg
• 1411 Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, claimant to the English throne
• 1415 Frederick, III as Holy Roman Emperor, IV as King of Germany, V as ArchDuke of Austria
• 1428 Jingtai Emperor of China
• 1452 Girolamo Savonarola, Florentine monk, preacher, reformer. A Dominican from 1474, he was famous for his religious zeal. For 14 years he led in the reformation of Florence, before attacks on Alexander VI led to his excommunication. In 1498, he was convicted of heresy, hanged and burned.
• 1559 Cigoli, Florentine painter, architect, and sculptor
• 1645 Louis Joliet, French-Canadian explorer of the Mississippi River
• 1706 Polyxena Christina of Hesse-Rotenburg, queen of Sardinia
• 1756 John Loudon MacAdam, Scottish engineer and road-builder, created mcadam road surface (asphalt)
• 1758 Christopher Gore, 8th Governor of Massachusetts
• 1760 Ivan Dmitriev, Russian statesman
• 1788 First Lady Margaret Taylor (Smith) (wife of 12th U.S. President, Zachary Taylor)
• 1819 Princess Louise Marie Thérèse of France
• 1840 Murad V, Ottoman Sultan
• 1842 Abd-ul-Hamid II, Ottoman Sultan
• 1849 Maurice Barrymore, Indian-born patriarch of the Barrymore family
• 1853 Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1863 John Bunny, American film comedian
• 1866 Charles Jean Henri Nicolle, bacteriologist, discovered that typhus fever is transmitted by body louse, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• 1866 Author and historian H.G. (Herbert George) Wells (The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Outline of History)
• 1873 Papa Jack Laine, American musician
• 1874 Gustav Holst, composer, was born in Cheltenham, England. Holst's instrument was the trombone, though he also played keyboards. One of his best works, a concerto for two violins, is seldom played because one of the parts was made simple enough for one his students to play.
• 1895 Juan de la Cierva, aeronautical engineer who invented the autogyro
• 1896 Walter Breuning, American supercentenarian
• 1899 Frederick Coutts, the 8th General of The Salvation Army
• 1902 British publisher Sir Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, the first low-priced paperback book
• 1912 Chuck Jones, cartoonist The Road Runner, Pepe Le Pew, Wiley Coyote
• 1912 György Sándor, Hungarian pianist
• 1916 Françoise Giroud, French journalist and politician
• 1918 John Gofman, American Manhattan Project scientist and advocate
• 1926 Donald A. Glaser, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1929 Sándor Kocsis, Hungarian footballer
• 1931 Larry Hagman (actor I Dream of Jeannie, Dallas, Staying Afloat, Ensign Pulver, In Harm’s Way, Fail-Safe; son of actress Mary Martin)
• 1933 Dick Simon, American racing driver
• 1934 Leonard Cohen (singer, songwriter group The Army, Famous Blue Raincoat, Joan of Arc, Avalanche)
• 1935 Henry Gibson (Bateman) (comedian Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In; Nashville)
• 1935 Jimmy Armfield, English footballer and manager
• 1936 Diane Rehm, American radio talk show host for National Public Radio
• 1936 Yuriy Luzhkov, Russian politician, mayor of Moscow
• 1941 Dickey Lee (Lipscomb), singer Patches, I Saw Linda Yesterday, Never Ending Songs of Love, Rocky; songwriter She Thinks I Still Care)
• 1941 Jack Brisco, American professional wrestler
• 1941 R. James Woolsey, Jr., Central Intelligence Agency director
• 1942 Sam (Samuel Edward Thomas) McDowell ‘Sudden Sam’ baseball pitcher Cleveland Indians [all-star 1965, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971], SF Giants, NY Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates; led American League in strikeouts five times in six years)
• 1944 Fannie Flagg, American actress and novelist
• 1944 Hamilton Jordan, U.S. President Jimmy Carter's original chief of staff
• 1944 Steve Beshear, Democratic Governor of Kentucky.
• 1945 Jerry Bruckheimer, American film and television producer
• 1945 Richard Childress (auto racer; racing car team owner six Winston Cup championships, one NASCAR Truck Series championship, 79 victories)
• 1945 Shaw Clifton, the 18th General of The Salvation Army
• 1947 Don Felder (musician guitar, singer group The Eagles One of These Nights, Lyin’ Eyes, Best of My Love, New Kid in Town; solo LP Airborne)
• 1947 Marsha Norman, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright ’Night Mother [1983]
• 1947 Reggie Rucker (football Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Super Bowl V)
• 1947 Stephen King (author Pet Sematary, Christine, The Duel, Misery, The Stand, Carrie, The Shining)
• 1949 Artis Gilmore (basketball Chicago Bulls holds league record for career field goal percentage [.599], Kentucky Colonels Rookie and Player of the Year [1971])
• 1950 Bill Murray (Emmy Award-winning comedy writer Saturday Night Live; actor Stripes, Ghostbusters series, Groundhog Day, Mad Dog and Glory, What About Bob?, Scrooged, Rushmore, Cradle Will Rock, Scout’s Honor, Hamlet, Charlie’s Angels [2000], Speaking of Sex, Osmosis Jones, The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost in Translation)
• 1950 Brent McClanahan (football Minnesota Vikings running back Super Bowl IX, XI)
• 1951 Aslan Maskhadov, Chechen rebel leader
• 1952 Anneliese Michel, German exorcism victim
• 1953 Arie Luyendyk (racecar driver Indy 500 winner [1990, 1997]; People magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People list [1992])
• 1953 Mike Collier (football Pittsburgh Steelers running back Super Bowl X)
• 1954 Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor, British musician (Motorhead)
• 1954 Randolph Tucker Richardson, Attorney, Playboy (former), #1 Dad
• 1954 Shinzo Abe, Japanese politician
• 1954 Rock musician Philthy Animal (ex-Motorhead)
• 1955 Mika Kaurismäki, Finnish director
• 1955 Richard Hieb, American astronaut
• 1956 Jack Givens, American basketball player
• 1956 Ricky Morton, American professional wrestler
• 1957 Kevin Rudd, 26th Prime Minister of Australia
• 1958 Bruno Fitoussi, French poker player
• 1958 Movie producer-writer Ethan Coen ("Fargo")
• 1959 Danny Cox, American baseball player
• 1960 David James Elliott (actor JAG, Police Academy 3 Back in Training, Knots Landing, Melrose Place, Clockwatchers, The Shrink is In)
• 1961 Nancy Travis (actress Fluke, Body Language, The Vanishing, Chaplin, Three Men and a Little Lady, Loose Cannons, Married to the Mob, Three Men and a Baby, Harem, Almost Perfect, Duckman)
• 1962 Rob Morrow (actor Numb3rs, Northern Exposure, Quiz Show, Tattingers)
• 1963 Angus Macfadyen, Scottish actor
• 1963 Cecil Grant Fielder (baseball Detroit Tigers 1st base; Toronto Blue Jays)
• 1963 Curtly Ambrose, Antiguan West Indies cricketer
• 1964 Jorge Drexler, Uruguayan singer and composer
• 1967 Faith Hill (singer LPs Take Me as I Am, It Matters to Me, Faith; sold eleven million records, eight #1 singles, ten #1 videos)
• 1967 Rock musician Tyler Stewart (Barenaked Ladies)
• 1968 Ricki Lake (TV talk show host; in films Serial Mom, Hairspray)
• 1971 David Joseph Vetter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vetter
• 1971 Luke Wilson, American actor
• 1972 Jon Kitna, American football player
• 1972 Scott Spiezio, American baseball player
• 1973 Vanessa Grigoriadis, American journalist
• 1974 Bryce Drew, American basketball player
• 1975 Doug Davis, baseball player
• 1981 Nicole Richie, American socialite
• 1982 Danny Kass, American snowboarder
• 1982 Eduardo Azevedo, Brazilian racing driver
• 1982 Parvati Shallow, American reality-show contestant
• 1983 Actor Joseph Mazzello ("Jurassic Park")
• 1983 Anna Meares, Australian cyclist
• 1987 Ashley Paris, American basketball player
• 1987 Courtney Paris, American basketball player
• 1987 Jimmy Clausen, American football player
• 1988 Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistani politician
• 1989 Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins, American skateboarder

And Famous Exits on this date 21 September:
• 1798 George Read, American lawyer and signer of the Declaration of Independence
• 1832 Sir Walter Scott, Scottish writer
• 1906 Samuel Arnold, Lincoln conspirator
• 1974 Walter Brennan, American actor
• 1974 Jacqueline Susann, American novelist
• 2000 Bryan Smith, the man who ran over Stephen King

But you and I are still kicking! Love you, bro. Have a great day!

P.S. I hope you read everything, because there is going to be a quiz.

"You had your eyes done? [Pause.] Really?"

I kid you not: a woman I really like, who I consider a friend, said this to me at lunch the other day. To her credit, she looked a little chagrined... but she didn't take it back. She waited for an answer!!!! Am I wearing a sign that says, "Abuse me, please. My ego is way outta hand."?

So, no, I am not 60 yet (although it's creeping up: I'll be 54 in about 3 weeks and, yes, I'm a little depressed about that). And, yes, I've had my eyes done. Please, whatever you say, do NOT mention my weight, do NOT ask me if I would consider voice lessons, and do NOT ask me if those giant handsome boys are my grandchildren. Otherwise, we can talk about anything at all. Thank you.

Is It Mahogany or Is It Pine?

This billboard is popping up (no pun intended) all over the place lately. Must be a new ad campaign. Talk about putting it out there.

Sign says: "Achieve a Grade 4 woodie with Viagra." First, what is a grade 3 woodie? And is that a graphic for a...? Yeah, it's gotta be. It reminds me of the "0 to 60 in under a minute" commercials.

Click on a picture to make it bigger.

For what it's worth, I appreciate the unabashed freedom to say it like it is. Why beat around the... OK, yeah, I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole.

LATER THAT SAME DAY:

After I posted this morning, in the comments, Chuck directed me to the following video. Cuba Gooding, Jr. does a Cialis commercial? Looks like it:

My husband informs me that "he that would pun would pick a pocket." Thanks, honey. Let's just say I'm having a lowbrow day.

22 August 2009

Seen in Pricesmart... Since there are no major holidays (besides, hello, Costa Rica's Independence Day) between now and Christmas, LET'S GET STARTED!

Luck

First, a little background music to set the tone: right click here and click on open in a new tab or window. The song should start playing automatically. Perfect song: Vive Ya [So Live, Already!]

"Don't minimize the importance of luck in determining life's course." - Alex Trebec

Man, you can say that again. All the best things have happened to me while I was out looking for something else.

My life plan was to marry Sean Penn, ultimate bad boy, and be a rich, famous Broadway star living between London and Malibu. I managed to screw that up by marrying a regular guy, a businessman. With a job yet. None of my other boyfriends had jobs; how did this happen? Big bonus: he also happens to be a libertarian wacko. I mean, how lucky can you get?

Then we find out we can't birth babies. ("Hallelujah," I say. Pretty lucky I feel that way, huh?) So then the universe drops Morgan and Ryan into our laps, pretty much out of the blue (thanks to Sherry, my adoption fairy godmother). You just can't get luckier than that.

"Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered." - William Shakespeare

But wait, there's more: luck sends four hurricanes in four months, stops my income, then gives us the bright idea to move to Costa Rica practically at the same moment. Then we do. Sometimes I look back and wonder how we made it through that first year. Geez, were we rubes or what? Luck had to play a part, there's just no other explanation for how we survived.

I'm here to testify that losing one's income does NOT make one feel lucky. Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite. It was Terrifying & Depressing. Especially at 50, especially with no pension or Roth or anything like that, especially looking forward to this economy (because it was clearly going to get worse before it got better) and especially when, everywhere you look, people are losing jobs and/or a good portion of their income. No, not lucky at all.

And, for most of those people, losing their mortgaged-to-the-hilt homes, too. I'm sorry, I can't drum up any sympathy for that consequence. First of all, most of my friends in the keys have been living in their foreclosure properties rent-free since we moved to Costa Rica. That's rent free for almost four years. Man, that's a lotta lemonade outta yer lemons.

Despite being overwhelmed with T&D, one could still grasp the beauty of the situation. Living rent free for four years, the benefits have to dawn on you at some point, unless you are already suicidal. So what, your credit's in the toilet? Who needs credit? What, you're going to go out house-hunting anytime soon with no job and a car payment you can barely afford thanks to Cash For Clunkers? I don't think so.

"Depend on the rabbit's foot, if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit." - R.E. Shay

Losing that overpriced mortgage is a blessing. That pile of bricks is a house, not a home and it's never going to be worth enough to justify paying that mortgage for another minute. So, ok, when your bank finally forecloses, you'll have to move. Moving never killed anyone. Move in with mom. Ok, yeah, that might kill you. So move in with your bankrupt neighbor who is still living rent free because his bank hasn't foreclosed yet.

One friend went ahead and moved because she got sick of waiting for the bank notice to appear on her door. She rented the house to a guy, so she's got income from a house she basically no longer owns. That's like gourmet lemonade.

I guess there are people who can't make lemonade outta their lemons: acceptance is not in their tool bag. Not yet, anyway. They will, of course. U.S. citizens all have boot straps and we know how to use them. It's that initial realization period that is so shocking. I know families like ours that lived comfortably, not richly, but comfortably. Unexpectedly (because, you know, it always happens to the other guy), they lose something big (a job, a pension, insurance) and suddenly life is uncertain. Questions like, "what is going to happen next, where are we going to live" come to mind. Not only does day to day life change dramatically, many of their expectations, things they worked for, planned for, simply disappear. Poof. People who lost pensions and nest eggs... to me, that would be the hardest thing to accept. Lucky us, we never had one to lose.

"Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident." - Mark Twain

Financially speaking, the luckiest thing of all is that we accidentally had a year of adventure to distract us from the reality of our situation. During that year, whenever we thought of going back, we slowly became aware that the life we left behind didn't exist for us anymore. The work (real estate) was not coming back. We could no longer afford the house we left. Sushi dinners were out of the question. Clearly, we couldn't go back. Live in Key West without sushi? Not possible.

Our T&D at losing the old life was substantially mitigated during our first year of living abroad. We were too busy looking up words from street signs and trying to understand tico directions (Va alla = go that way with a sweeping wave of the arm) to be depressed for long. Today, our T&D is more like MA&W: Mild Anxiety & Wistfulness. By now, we know we'll think of something.

Here's my ace in the hole: if things get really bad, we'll sign up to teach English in China or Korea for a year. Escape, get paid, get a free place to live. Good idea, huh? I'm only sharing it because, at this moment, it doesn't look like we'll sign up for that adventure and I don't feel right hogging all the good ideas. I highly recommend the Living Abroad tactic to mitigate T&D brought on by extremely bad news. It works like a charm.

"The harder I work, the luckier I get." - Anonymous

The other thing is to start living like you've already lost it all. We figured this out in the nick of time. Stop spending. Stop eating out every meal. Work out a trade for sushi. Watch the cooking channel. Learn to sew and fix stuff instead of throwing it away. Grow a garden. If you haven't bought that clunker for cash, don't. Save every penny. There's the hard work part of staying lucky.

Oh, and buena suerte! [BWAIN-ah SWEAR-tay = good luck.]

"Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves." - Larry King

Ocean's One

When there are no new war or history movies at our video store, Hal gets oldies. He walks back in the house all, "Hey, look what cool movies they had at the video store!" The boys and I look, then groan, rolling our eyes.

He scored this time with The Sting. Great movie, right up there with the Ocean's series for Clever and Funny. I'd forgotten most of it, naturally, so I got to enjoy it all over again. And the boys - they watched the whole thing which means the plot still isn't predictable.

You know how sometimes you get a movie you really enjoyed back in the day, you're looking forward to it, pop it in the player... but then it just seems old? Well, not Robert Redford and Paul Newman (not to mention Robert Shaw, Charles Durning and a slew of other good actors.) Still funny, charming, suspenseful, a really good story. Like an Ocean's One.
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"We never lose our gifts - only our opportunity to open them." - Flash Madden

I have a new favorite movie: Man in the Chair. Just watch it. You'll like it. Really.

An indie film starring Christopher Plummer, Robert Wagner and M. Emmet Walsh and newcomer Michael Angarano.

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"Prozium - The great nepenthe. Opiate of our masses. Glue of our great society. Salve and salvation, it has delivered us from pathos, from sorrow, the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate. With it, we anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. Those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, we accept as fair sacrifice. For we embrace Prozium in its unifying fullness and all that it has done to make us great." - Father

Equilibrium was pretty creepy, especially if you don't trust your government... It was no Matrix, but a good story, a modern day 1984. With a chilling modern-day twist. I'd see it again. Watch it, then watch Making A Killing. Then try to sleep.

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"You're 32 years old, and you've achieved nothing. Jesus Christ was dead and alive again by 33. You better get crackin'." - Jim Byrd to Chuck Barris

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind tells the life and times of Chuck Barris, game show creator (The Dating Game, Newlywed Game, many more.) Oh - and professional CIA hitman. So Chuckie Baby claims. Pretty funny movie, very odd, good acting. True? Well, it is based on his biography. You tell me.

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"To me, it's really so simple, that life should be lived on the edge. You have to exercise rebellion. To refuse to tape yourself to the rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge. Then you will live your life on the tightrope." - Philippe Petit

I pretend I live like this, "on the edge" but, of course, I don't. Not like Philippe. And after watching Man on Wire, I realize not even close. That's ok... living on that edge is costly. An impressive docu-movie, you can really taste what it's like for Philippe. Fascinating, amazing footage, worth every minute.

======

Flash of Genius got its name from a patent doctrine which held that, in order to be patentable, the inventive act had to come into the mind of the inventor in a "flash of genius", not as the result of tinkering. The movie tells the tale of one such inventor who creates a thing, has the thing stolen from him by a big rich powerful corporation, then sues to get credit. True story.

The thing is a windshield wiper, not really an item inspiring mystery and intrigue. The magical thing about this movie is Greg Kinnear. He is lovely, sweet, sad, earnest and determined. Like Philippe, he loses a lot to stay his course. Is it worth it in the end? I ask myself that on occasion.

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"A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one. This heart of Lischen's was like many a neighboring town and had been stormed and occupied several times before Barry came to invest it." - Narrator

The other oldie Hal got this week was Barry Lyndon. We watched it tonight and both gasped when we saw Ryan O'Neal. Wow. No wonder the guy is a movie star. Plus, he can act.

The boys only lasted 15 minutes into this one before wandering off, but los viejos [the olds] watched every minute. What a gorgeous movie.

Apparently "it has come to be regarded not only as one of Kubrick's finest films, but indeed as a classic of world cinema." I can believe that: it is rich in moment, color, costume, scenery, thought and deed. Not just complete like John Adams was complete, giving a full picture of the man. It was Stanley Kubrick complete. A little off-center, yet dead-on. (Yeah, Frank Rich I ain't.) Long, slow, thoughtful, terribly interesting. I was sorry to see Barry climb into the carriage the final frame. I wonder what happened next...

"It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

Arias Whips Swine Flu (Of Course)

Famous flu sufferer Arias is back in public life

[He survived. I told you so.] By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

President Óscar Arias Sánchez is back in public after a week-long confinement at his Rohrmoser home because he had the swine flu. Arias reported that he had a light case.

He was well enough Tuesday to host a performance by the Cooperativa del Colegio de Aguas Zarcas chorus at his home. Then he inaugurated the Centro Nacional de Innovaciones Biotecnológicas of the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología.

Keep reading here...

El Presidente Has Swine Flu

From A.M. Costa Rica last Tuesday:

 "Confirmed flu sufferer Arias to spend a week at home
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

President Óscar Arias Sánchez has the swine flu and will be at home in Rohrmoser at least until Monday, health officials and Casa Presidential said Tuesday.

Arias, 67, is considered in a higher risk group because he has asthma. Weighing against that is that he is in an age group that probably has been exposed to a relative of the current swine flu virus sometime earlier in life. Health officials describe his illness as mild."

It is a week later and he is doing fine. I guess. Unbelievably, his illness has not made the papers since last Wednesday. I mean, WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC, PEOPLE, and a HEAD OF STATE has the "deadly" swine flu. HELLO!!!

Ok, I'm being sarcastic. Can you tell? And have you noticed how you can't read about swine flu without the adjective "deadly"? Relatively speaking, hardly anyone has it and only a tiny fraction of those people who got it have died and everyone who has died - God rest their souls - has had an underlying medical complication. To say they "died of swine flu" is pushing the envelope. Maybe swine flu pushed them over the edge, but it is hardly "deadly" in and of itself.

And of course The Numbers of The Infected are growing: nobody's doing lab tests anymore to confirm it! You call in, you get diagnosed over the phone and whatever it is you have is chalked up to swine flu. Sadly, I've read of three deaths due to misdiagnoses over the phone: a young mother and a two year old of meningitis and a teenage girl of tonsilitis, as well as a host of prolonged suffering due to misdiagnoses.

SIDE NOTE: In the public health system in the U.K., doctors get a bonus for discovering cases of swine flu. Apparently they are backdating their records now... no one gets regular flu anymore. It's all swine flu. Pretty funny, huh?

I am truly sorry Arias has swine flu. Flu is miserable. But he is 67 years old, has asthma. He's not in hospital. He's fine, it's a mild flu. There is no panic. Could the rest of the world get a grip?