Crying over spilt milk

OK, I admit I'm touchy about this subject: the new, square milk jugs. I loved them from the moment I saw them at Costco. I appreciate their space saving design, as well as the milk's fresher taste (it reaches the market a day sooner from the dairy). Apparently, some people dislike the new jug, because they say it spills too easily. I think it's simply resistance to change.
With the following information, liberally quoted from today's NY Times, I rest my case:

"[t]he shape of old-fashioned milk jugs prohibits stacking them atop one another. The [milk]crates take up a lot of room, they are unwieldy to move, and extra space must be left in delivery trucks to take empty ones back from stores to the dairy... About 100,000 gallons of water a day are used at his dairy to clean the crates, Mr. Soehnlen said.
"But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.
"The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam’s Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam’s Club store to two a week, from five — a big fuel savings. Also, Sam’s Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80."

Food for Thought

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.

When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.

-Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), R.C. Archbishop, Brazil

Holy flashing?!

These newly introduced signs are for clergy and other religious officials in England, not flashers. By displaying the proper insignia, they no longer have to worry about being ticketed or towed while visiting parishioners.

Nature's road crew

I have learned to appreciate vultures, though at first they repulsed me. Without vultures, county workers would have to bulldoze the prolific roadkill: deer, turtles, squirrels, opossums, birds, chipmunks, skunks, raccoons, groundhogs, an occasional fox.
Ever wonder why vulture heads are small and bald? Small, so they can plunge into all sorts of carcasses & ribcages. Bald because decaying body matter & bacteria would adhere to feathers and put the vulture at risk of infection.
Make sure to mention this at your next dinner party.

photo: mkbilyk

Waste not, want not

A child born in the developed world

uses 30 to 50 times as much water

as one in the developing world.

photo: Ly Hoan Long, Vietnam (from Times Online)

Watch what you say

Ever muttered to yourself, "A trained monkey could do this job"?

Well, maybe it can...

Uncontacted

Survival International, a London based organization that advocates for tribal people worldwide, has denied that photos taken of red-painted Amazon Indians aiming arrows at a helicopter near the Brazil-Peru border are a hoax. A "lost" tribe is different from an "uncontacted" one. Because the Brazilian government has been aware of this tribe for over 20 years, it falls in the second category. In fact, the government has mandated measures that protect the tribe's lifestyle.

Food chain

The coyotes were out last night, yipping, howling, celebrating a kill on the hillside just beyond our fence row. I lay in bed listening, wondering what animal they've chased down, hoping that our cats were safe in the barn.

Food chain is a deceptively sanitized term. In reality it means one animal kills another and eats it.

Solstice

A Bolivian priest makes an offering to Pachamana (Mother Earth) during a celebration of the Summer Solstice in La Paz.




photo: Gaston Briton (from Times Online)

This just in from CNN

The Mount Vernon (Ohio) School Board has voted to terminate the employment of an eighth-grade science teacher, who used an electrostatic device to mark a cross on the arm of one of his students. Previously, he was reprimanded several times for refusing to move his Bible from his classroom desk and for teaching creationism alongside evolution.

British crop circle

This is the most complex crop circle seen in Britain. It appeared this month [June] near Barbury Castle in Wiltshire. Retired astrophysicist Mike Reed saw a photograph of it and made the mathematical link to pi. He said the crop pattern "shows a coded image representing the first 10 digits of pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter...The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up...the little dot near the centre is the decimal point."

As yet no one has claimed responsibility for the circle's creation.

photo: Apex

Morning swim - Columbia, NJ

photo: mkbilyk

White House propaganda

The letter I received from Nancy Theis, Special Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence, dated May 29, 2008, on official White House stationery states, "As the President has said, the United States does not engage in or condone torture [my italics]...[he] also strongly supports the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by United States personnel anywhere in the world."

1. Will Theis one day write a Scott McClellan like memoir, bemoaning her naivete?
2. Did her college history courses skip Joseph Goebbels?
3. Does anyone care that we, the taxpayers, are funding such propaganda?
4. If the torture is "outsourced" to another country, does it not count?

Stormclouds - Warwick, NY

photo: mkbilyk

Christ of Poland - Washington, NJ

photos: mkbilyk

Dawn - Columbia, NJ

God couldn't be closer.

We need only listen, notice, be.

photo: mkbilyk

Route 611 S to Easton, PA

photos: mkbilyk

"Relax, honey. You're gorgeous."

Swept away

A record shattering flood in Iowa?! In Iowa City, where I have hotel reservations (one block from the Hardee's above) tomorrow night and all next week?! I am stunned as well as disappointed. I’ve been looking forward to this trip, this time away, this opportunity to attend a University of Iowa writers workshop since March. But what’s my disappointment compared to what Iowans are experiencing?
Before canceling my airline reservation to Cedar Rapids, I searched the Internet for a disaster response team, thinking I could volunteer counseling skills or manual labor, but nothing’s been pulled together yet. First comes rescue and recovery. The University is closed until June 29, possibly later. They're now building sandbag barriers against the Iowa River, which won't crest until late Monday or early Tuesday.

A flood in Iowa? How can that be? Eight inches of rain have fallen. It was a wet spring, and the ground was saturated. Thunderstorms are predicted again tonight and tomorrow.

photos by Dave Schwarz

To love and be loved

After twenty years of listening to the yearnings of people’s hearts, I am convinced that all human beings have an inborn desire for God. Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and our most precious treasure. It gives us meaning. Some of us have repressed this desire, burying it beneath so many other interests that we are completely unaware of it. Or we may experience it in different ways – as a longing for wholeness, completion, or fulfillment. Regardless of how we describe it, it is a longing for love. It is a hunger to love, to be loved, and to move closer to the source of love.

from “Addiction & Grace,” Gerald G. May, M.D.

Be still and know that I AM

Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.

Meister Eckhart
photo: mkbilyk

In loving memory of Mao Mao

"Nearly a month after China's devastating earthquake, the Wolong Nature Reserve had its first panda funeral today.
Nine-year-old Mao Mao, the mother of five at the breeding centre, was discovered on Monday - she had been crushed by a wall of her enclosure after the river behind it swelled with landslide debris."

from DailyMailOnline, June 10, 2008

Delusion

A delusion is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception. (Wikipedia)
The Times (UK) reports that "President Bush has admitted that his rhetoric made the world believe that he was a 'guy really anxious for war' in Iraq...I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric. Phrases such as 'bring them on' or 'dead or alive,' he said, 'indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace.' http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world
Statistics to date:
US military killed - 4,096 (reported by Dept. of Defense)
US military wounded - 30,033
Iraqi deaths - 84-92,000 (Iraqbodycount.org)

Draw your own conclusions.

O Mystery

Lord,
I cannot fathom or hold you;
I can only ask you
to take hold of me.
I cannot grasp or contain you
in a formula or tradition;
I can only ask you to fill me with yourself,
and make me part
of the mystery of your presence
in the world.

Angela Ashwin

Behave...

Behave, Mr. Bear. You've been tagged twice.

In this county, it's "three strikes, yer out."

You and I both don't want to know what out means.

Jason Brooks

I recently discovered Jason Brooks, a British artist, who is both photographer and painter. This oversize portrait (yes, it's a painting) of Sir Paul Nurse, a Nobel prize winning scientist, was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London. It was installed in the gallery in May, 2008.
Brooks painted a 9' x 7' portrait of a tattoo artist (detail below) that also hangs in the NPG.

Full service

Nothing excites our dogs Parker and Maggie like Barbara's arrival Monday morning. She picks up our garbage and delivers dog biscuits.

Wrestling with God

When we wrestle

with God

we're already in God's arms.

Yes

Confess your hidden faults.
Approach what you find repulsive.
Help those you think you cannot help.
Anything you are attached to, let it go.
Go to the places that scare you.

Pema Chodron

Peaceful Purposefulness

"Continual focusing, and then refocusing, on desired outcomes

is the master key to success...try peaceful purposefulness. "

– David Allen, Huffington Post, 1/28/08

photo: mkbilyk

Love the look

OK, I admit I have a “thing” for novelty:
innovative thinking, unusual products,
creative technology.

Small wonder I fell for foot gloves,

shoes that protect your feet

while providing the benefits of barefoot running.

So ugly they’re cute.

"Slutbucks"?!

The Resistance, a Christian group based in San Diego, found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style logo for Starbucks Coffee. Mark Dice, group founder, stated in a press release that the new image "has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute...The company might as well call themselves Slutbucks." (reported by Startime.com, 5/16/08)

Hmm...wouldn't Starsluts have been catchier?

Collateral damage

"[W]e spend more in six months in Iraq ($54 billion) than we've spent in 30 years on the National Cancer Institute, which funds most cancer research."
Jonathan Alter, as reported in Newsweek, June 2, 2008

We hold these truths to be self-evident