A Real Magazine. News, Writing, Interviews from LadybugBooks.com.

LadybugFlights, Looking Back from June of 2002

Whispering Along the Dead Sea
Muhammad Nasrullah Khan from Bahawalpur, Punjab, Pakistan

It was a beautiful March evening; a light layer of cloud veiled the sky. Crimson sunrays came out of that thin veil like blood falling through the coffin of some innocent man. I was sitting alone on a stone-made chair on the sad beach of the Persian Gulf. For many days I could not sleep. Staying awake was my only option.
So I watched the sea and he watched me.
I started writing a letter, which would never be posted. It was addressed to my disloyal beloved:
“Dear Shehla,
I am thinking of you with my blank mind and spiritless eyes. See, the dead waves of this dead gulf mock my helpless condition. Far away the yellow moon is coming up to add to my eternal sadness. He will be my fellow this night; we both will wipe out our tears to make a place for more. Moon also seems to be ashamed of his existence, rising without a natural bloom, begging God to reduce his duty.
This is the second month of my exiled life. You know I was not exiled by any authority or dictator, but by hunger. My land has become barren and now vultures rule there. As I saw the movements of vultures over me, sniffing the stinking smell of my half-dead body, I crept out of their reach. But I had to run in such haste, while carrying the weight of my own dead-body, that my panting would be shifted to many coming generations, if I am fertile. Now I am at the richest place in the world. It is the land of Prophets and it is believed that God showers His entire blessing on this land. I don't know what was the blunder made by our ancestors that God has turned His eyes away from us forever. I have seen weeping mothers crying for help, but his anger does not seem to be melted. Definitely the sin of our ancestors was very severe.
See? Now the moon has come into some spirits and the dead waves are also showing some movements to prove their potency. Far away the sparking light is becoming very near. I am sure it is some ship loaded with the fruits of some poor country, leaving behind a few coins on the blank and dusty hands of poor farmers. How funny it is that the hard work under the burning sun gives them nothing except a few coins and dust.
Do you remember how these natural sights fascinated me? I could spend whole nights dreaming of such scenes, but what has happened to me? Is this the feeling of disorientation, which has sucked all my emotions, or is it the feeling of failure?
I am even unable to judge my own condition. Things seem to be empty; everything is past now. I am so much stuck to the past that I am unable to move further. I am stuck to the past but time is dragging me towards the empty future. I know time is more powerful than my feeble resistance.
So let me put my past on paper because I have heard that words are beyond the reach of this bastardly time. Let me vomit my emotions on paper. Let me surrender my hopes once and forever. Let me put this killing pain in this dead sea. I promise, I won't remember you again. Believe me now, I want to be free from these bloody scars of love; let me sing this bloody song a last time; let me put out this holy poison; otherwise it will kill my soul. Believe me now. I want to live in the deep and dark sea of forgetfulness. I am sick of that! I want a normal life. I am sick of all the heartache and stupid strife.
Do you remember it was the month of spring when I met you in the bright light of noon? How did this fatal relationship start? Well, I will blame you. But that is not true. Somehow, I just seemed to be less real than the rest of the world. I know I was a penniless writer, fighting, and writing for the poor creeping creatures of my country that was my dream. Yet there was something in those dirty streets and withered faces, which gave me the sense of ownership. But how could you conceive the pleasures of sitting in the muddy huts? How could you ...”
Somebody called me and I stopped writing. I heard a masculine voice: “Hello brother, do you have a lighter?”
I looked at the man and found something very familiar. ‘I have seen this man somewhere,’ I thought.
Suddenly an image of my very old friend appeared my mind. Yes it was Shahnawaz – a man who was thrown out of our own country many years ago when we were students.
“Can you please sit here with me? I am feeling lonely,” I requested of him.
“Why not friend? But I am sure you are writing something very personal, if I am not wrong, a letter to a very dear one.”
“Yes, once dear,” I replied.
“Oh, it is sad. But, my friend, never forget that everyone nobody can be sincere forever.”
From his mysterious smile, I confirmed he was Shahnawaz. Nobody else could give such a smile. He left Pakistan many years ago. Those were very long and suffocating days for our country. Our Army had conquered our own land once again, full of motley wickedness.
Everybody in this world has some resemblance to somebody, but our Shahnawaz was the only one of his type. We were young and patriotic with ambitions to die for our country. Though we were very poor, we were yet very rich in sincerity and love. Shahnawaz was an openhearted man in the cold and dried-up mob. He was a tall, strong man, with wonderful wisdom and intellect, but innocently open and honest. He could see those personal faults which are normally kept hidden.
Inspite of his rare wisdom he was not cloaked with clever words and pretended virtues. He seemed to be a child, grown-up into a man without learning anything about worldly manners, or maturing into hypocrisy. He often reminded me of a story of childhood in which an absent-minded king was addressing his ministers, without wearing clothes. He was a philosopher king and forgot to put on his robes. But nobody dared to tell him that he was naked. Many ministers praised his wonderful dress.
Suddenly a child entered the court and started laughing saying: “Oh, see the king is naked.” Shah was that innocent child. Sometimes, he seemed to me The Idiot of Dostoyevsky.
One day he stopped the most pretty but blunt girl of the campus on the center of a public path and said: “Excuse me?”
The lady gazed at him with her angry eyes and replied: “Yes, you are excused.”
“Thank you very much,” Shah said with his eternal innocence.
“For what?” the lady asked with more hot temper.
“For being so beautiful.”
She nodded to him with her serene smile as if he were of her long time acquaintance. She wanted to say something but Shah had moved forward as if nothing had happened. He did not know that she was titled The Queen of The University, and people were chased her for single smile.
But our Shah was indifferent to all these petty desires and lustful dating. That one sentence of our Shah made her crazy and we often saw her roaming around the department as the dogs come at the smell of bitch.
As is the case in all Pakistani Universities, professors are selected by nepotism; our professors were also shallow drums. Their stupid rhythmless noise depended on the guidebooks, which they used to hide in the dice. Once we threw that dice in the side-canal of campus. No professor dared enter the classroom, until new dice was provided.
Those clever and cunning professors kept a sharp eye upon the talented students. They were small people and could not tolerate students who werer superior them. How could those small professors see some students stride over their heads? So they started their dirty tricks against our Shah. But our Shah also rose above them with his ingenious and pure thoughts.
When they gave themselves out as wise, their little sayings and warmed-over truths made the Shah excited like the small child and he could not help saying: “The King is naked!”
Those small-minded people have the same nature everywhere in the world, they are like the wild wolves. When they are hungry they attack each other to tear each other into pieces. But when they have a common threat, they unite against the common enemy. We saw those wild professors sitting together with their empty heads and open mouths, planning against Shah. How could the simplicity of our genius be compared with their diversity? They knew well how to combat knowledge, because knowledge was the greatest threat to their survival.
As normally happened, their evil plans worked out and Shah was expelled from the university.
Later we heard about Shah from newspapers. Yes, he took another great step! He joined the revolutionary political party of our country and became an active political worker against the martial law government of that time. Soon he was arrested, as we were expecting, and was put behind the bars.
In those days, special events for the people of Pakistan were the flogging of 'political criminals'.
One day there was an announcement of the flogging of one rebel. We went to see that live scene of the justice of our government.
The man in chains was our Shah. He had become thin and pale, yet we did not find any gesture of defeat in his face. A black fat man flogged him. We heard the sounds of whips on his naked body, but there was no crying or screaming. I ran away.
Even in the seclusion of my room, I could not stop his image shining through the window – shining and winking at me, fixed in the pale light of that dark night of my country. I saw him crying: “See! The king is naked.”
In the midnight I retaliated with him loudly: “Yes, the king is naked! You are right but I have very old and poor parents. I love them and I want to act like a normal loving son. My own and my parents’ lives are more precious than my land. If I am here, land is here. If I am perished then what of land or country? Leave me, Shah; go away. Let my conscience sleep. Life is more important than conscience.”
After that we did not hear anything about him for a long time. We were sure that he would have been murdered in a corner of some dirty jail.
But to my surprise, here he was, roaming along the solitary tracks of sea as I wrote a letter, without seeing anything lost somewhere in his internal sea.
“So you are enjoying memories of past?” he spoke out with his everlasting childlike smile.
“Yes, Shahnawaz, but how did you come out of captivity and where did you go after that horrible period?”
He looked on the isolated patch of cloud, threw a stone in the dancing waves, and said: “One night we were thrown out of jail, there was no more space for new criminals. We were thrown on the borderline of a northern country. They asked us to cross the borderline in ten minutes.
“‘We will shoot you if you don’t go across the border line,’ one of them shouted. We knew they meant what they said. I was baffled for a moment. But you know, at the brink of death, bravery loses its meanings. So I also ran away like a jackal was twisting my tale.”
I could feel torture on his face. He stopped talking for a while, lighting his cigarette. Then again he started. “And then began a new odyssey of misery, roving and struggling with destiny. No help from anywhere, not even from heaven! I was broken completely with my family. I remained in Russia for six months. The only refuge for socialists like me.
"There I faced another disillusionment. People wanted to get rid of their so-called socialism. They were crying for justice, and soon we saw the statue of Lenin falling on the dust under the feet of mob. These were the death-like days. I had forgotten the taste of food. My rags were too shabby for any occasion. I fed my soul on hunger.
"Then I got a chance and reached the USA. For a while I had a roof over my head and a piece of bread. What was my fault? Only that I dreamed of free land? Well, I still dream of that. But my dream is almost at the deathbed. I was at that time intoxicated by a romantic dream. My heart is now dead; the brutish fire of poverty has burnt its wings. Behold, truth was my crime! I spoke truth and punishment was inevitable.”
I could see his barren wet eyes, in the dim light of moon. “But how did you come here?” I was anxious to know more.
“Due to this belly; due to lack of money. After many years when the dictatorship was over, and the man who claimed himself God on the earth was called upon by the real God, I returned to my land. But there was nothing left behind. My father had died and my mother had become an invalid.
"I returned with hopes as there were new elections, but it was another shock for me, the final disillusionment in my life. I could not find jobs in my own country; my own land refused to give me a livelihood.
"The same people with different faces appear again and started filling their lusty stomachs, I found them eating and vomiting; again eating and vomiting!
"Now I was not alone, I had my wife and small son Wali with me. I could not see my son in hunger, and came here to this country to earn something. So this is my life! For few coins I am away from my wife and son.
"Two years ago when I left, my son had started speaking. When I entered the airport, I saw his hand innocently moving as he had learnt to give the gesture of bye bye and ta ta. I saw those hands and told him: 'Yes my son we are born to say bye bye!'
"By now he can walk and speak, and when he sees airplanes he starts crying: 'Baba - Father - bye bye ta ta.'"
There was a silence again. I had no words to console him. I stood up, said good bye to Shahnawaz, tore that letter into pieces, threw it in the impotent waves of the Dead Sea and said to those sinking pieces: 'bye bye - ta ta' … and took my way to face another dirty day.

About the author:
I live in a country where people are afraid of life. Their sleep has lost dreams. I want to reawaken their oppressed dreams; I want to share their woes; I want to share the suffering of their shrieking souls. Humanity is dying and I am trying to put a few drops of water on its dry tongue so that it should face death bravely. My writing is the echo of their flagging hopes and raging desires.

Read this feature from past issues.

Kentucky Bluegrass Vacation
Jan Wallen

Have you ever thought about a vacation, remembered and smiled about the wonderful experiences and good memories you had for days and days? And kept on smiling?
I'm still smiling every day - and it's several weeks after I returned home from vacation in Kentucky. It truly is one of the best vacations I remember ever.
What was so good about this vacation? A big part of it was going to Whitesburg, KY to see friends we hadn't met yet. Let me tell you how it all got started . . .
We love bluegrass music. I've loved it since I learned about it years ago when I was in Europe and people asked me about traditional American music. I didn't know a lot about it. I grew up in Colorado and heard a lot of what's now called Western Swing and other western style music, and the classical music that my father loved. So to be able to answer questions about traditional American music, I learned about bluegrass, and loved it.
One day Gus found a radio station on the Internet that played really good bluegrass music hour after hour. It wasn't one hour on Sunday afternoon for "the bluegrass show", as we hear in New York. It was WMMT 88.7 FM, and we started listening more and more. One Saturday morning they were having a fundraiser. I called to join, since we listen and love the station and the music they play. The DJ answered the phone, to my surprise. I told him "This is Jan Wallen from New York". We had a short conversation, and he was surprised that I was calling from New York to join WMMT. I joined, and asked if they had a festival in the summer - they do. It's the Annual Seedtime Festival in early June.
A couple of months later, we were listening again, and they were broadcasting a live concert from the Appalshop Theater. The Larry Sparks band was playing that night. He's a favorite of mine, so I was really excited to hear the concert. We heard the Emcee tell the to go to the lobby to buy Larry Sparks' CDs, to support the band. Then he said that Larry had only 3 of his Christmas CDs left, so be sure to go get one before they were gone.
At that point, I disappeared from the dinner table and called WMMT. The Emcee answered the phone, to my real surprise. I told him I was Jan Wallen from New York. He recognized my name (!). I said I sure would like to have one of those 3 Christmas CDs that Larry Sparks had left. The Emcee was Jim Webb, and he offered to go down and get one for me. I accepted his offer, sent him a check, and he sent me an autographed CD. What fun!
So . . . we decided to go to their music festival. I didn't know anyone from Kentucky (that I knew of), until we decided to go to this festival. I started telling people about the vacation we were planning, and almost everyone was from Kentucky, or their family was.
We drove from the Hudson Valley, New York, to Whitesburg, KY, and decided to make a stop in rural Virginia to visit a friend of Gus' from the Navy whom he hadn't seen in 40 years. When we were there we experienced quiet like none we'd every experienced. You could hear the breeze blowing through the grass. We were so intrigued by the quiet, (we don't get that much quiet in New York, especially in New York City) that we stopped on the road to listen. Pretty soon a woman came driving up in her golf cart and said, "I had to come and see if you-all were all right. You were stopped and I didn't know if you broke down or if something was wrong." We assured her we were OK, and were simply listening to the quiet. That would not have happened in New York!
When we got to Whitesburg, it was early enough to go to the Sing and Potluck Supper at the Indian Bottom Baptist Church. We got directions, got lost, and eventually got to the church. We'd never been to a service or sing like that. We, of course, didn't know anyone there, though everyone was very friendly and we felt very welcome. The food was delicious, and we talked to a man who'd grown the blueberries in the cobbler, and his wife made the cobbler. The potluck was a unique experience for Gus, who grew up in New York. They don't have potlucks there, so he'd never experienced one - so this was a real first for him.
Every day brought more new things - things to see, do, enjoy and experience. There are so many, I can't mention them all. There were sights, sounds, food, smells, museums, history, and wonderfully friendly people. It's coal country there, and I hadn't smelled coal since I visited my grandparents' house years ago. And there were so many things we'd never see or experience at home in New York.
We got to the radio station and met our other new friends. They wanted to interview us on the radio, and welcome us to Whitesburg and WMMT. We met L'il Debbie, who does the bluegrass show every Thursday. She interviewed us, and we really had fun talking with her. That night, there was a concert in the theater. While we were waiting for the concert to start, one of the performers came up to us and asked us "Are you the people from New York?" We were surprised at that, and then realized that everyone around us knew everyone else, and we were the only ones that were "new' there. When we said yes, we were, the people sitting next to us said they heard us on the radio. Everyone made us feel welcome. What fun!
I do want to mention the wonderful Bed & Breakfast we stayed at, The Old Company Store and Highland Winery in Seco, KY. SECO stands for Southeast Coal Company, which used to be there. The B&B used to be the SECO company store. I highly recommend it. The accommodations are excellent; the delicious homemade breakfast including cakes, biscuits and gravy, eggs, bacon, fruit and more (plenty of coffee, too) was such a treat. All cooked by Sandy. When you go there, say hello to Jack and Sandy, the owners.
There's more to the vacation - more memories, experiences and smiles. And soon there'll be the movie! Gus is making a DVD of the pictures we took (literally over 1,000 of them) and adding music, starting with good "On the road" type music. It was truly one of the best vacations I've taken. Ever.

Jan Wallen is the creator of the Turn What You Know into Cash Flow Now™ System for successful speakers, coaches, consultants and business owners so they can make more money from what they already know. She is host of her own Internet Radio show on Moosemeals.com, Turn What You Know Into Cashflow.
To get lots of strategies, tips and proven techniques you can use right away to make more money from what you already know, visit Jan's Web site and subscribe to her free ezine.

Read this feature from past issues.

A Documentary Film: The Best Medicine
Changing the World for Women’s Health
A confluence of circumstances came about so that the timing of the appearance of Al Gore’s film documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” about the threat of global warming produced a worldwide groundswell of citizen and government activism. “An Inconvenient Truth” put global warming on the world’s agenda.
I believe that a confluence of circumstances has come about so that a documentary film about the price the world is paying for gender inequality and the hope that true gender equality could offer in the future for people, for the planet, and for peace and stability must be made. It has to be a film for the ages which, when people leave the theater or watch the DVD in their living rooms, propels them to action because of the knowledge, insight, and inspiration they have gained. If done right, it would win every award in the book!
The reaffirmation of ICPD with its call for universal access to the highest standard of reproductive health and to affordable family planning, the United Nations Population Division’s prediction of a human population reaching 9 billion people by 2050, the framework of the Millennium Development Goals, the Women Deliver conference, the realization among many governments and private citizens that we are really at a tipping point, all this points to the need for such a film.
Stephen Lewis, former UN Ambassador to Africa for AIDS said these words at the 16th International Conference on AIDS last summer in Toronto, Canada: “I challenge you to enter the fray against gender inequality. There is no more honorable or productive calling. There is nothing of greater import in this world. All roads lead from women to social change.” My way of saying that is: “When the world takes care of women, women take care of the world.” The world is doing a terrible job.
The Lancet’s comprehensive series of articles in 2006 on the “sorry state” of reproductive health care and on family planning as the “unfinished agenda” did a great service. As the series pointed out, people are often loath to deal with matters of sexuality often for deep religiously based or culturally based reasons. Women suffer from this reticence. The film might gently demythologize the treatment of sexuality as taboo. Several authors writing for the Lancet series have expressed interest in this documentary film idea.
We must be honest and lay the blame where it resides, i.e. on gender inequality. The underlying reason why over one half million women die in childbirth every year, why about 4 million babies (born to unhealthy mothers) die in their first month every year, why female feticide and female infanticide are so prevalent in several countries, why 40 women per minute seek a usually unsafe, often illegal abortion is because of gender inequality. Gender inequality is also at the root of all the ills we talk about such as the shortage in poor countries of healthcare workers and teachers, the drastic cut in the percentage of population assistance going to family planning, the feminization of poverty, the separation of AIDS from reproductive health, early marriage, female genital mutilation, obstetric fistula, systemic violence and rape against women, and sex trafficking. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything on the mental health cost of girls and women internalizing a belief that their gender is inferior. It has to be tremendous.
It also is one of the main reasons why women’s participation and influence in government decision making is lacking and why women lack legal protection against discriminatory laws. This has huge implications for health. Can anyone doubt that if women were equal partners with men at all levels of governance, priorities might be different? Would the world be spending nearly $1 trillion on arms every year and in comparison paltry sums on education and health?
Gender inequality is also at the root of the terrible discrimination against girls and women regarding access to education. Women and girls don’t count. Illiteracy breeds poverty which breeds ill health. A global mindset perpetrated by individuals, governments, religions, cultures, and customs is wreaking havoc on girls and women who, after all, will be, or are, the givers of life and the keepers of civil society. As the Women Deliver web site states “The health of a nation can be measured by the health of its women”. The health of the world also and the world is not healthy.
We all know this. How do we effect change? My dream as a grassroots activist and a frequent “goer” to really good movies is to see a documentary film made which would through stories (stories are the key), solid information, music, and song give a huge impetus to a worldwide grassroots movement for the women and girls of the world, for their education, health including reproductive health and family planning, equality and human rights. I think this film, not didactically, but through stories would show that investment in women pays off for the women themselves, for their families and communities. The reaction of people would be: “Oh, I see now! I understand.” And they wouldn’t even know what “hit em”.
For those who need more than “it is the right thing to do” as a reason for supporting the world’s women, education and health must be shown to be indispensable development tools, ultimate preservers of the environment, and contributors to peace and stability. Indeed the film could show that all overseas development assistance and within-country budgets must support education and health first, above all else. Educated healthy people generally make good decisions and a decent life for themselves.
I have been visualizing this film for years. I can see it, hear it, feel it, taste it. It would appeal greatly to people throughout the world. More than conferences, more than news coverage, more than speeches and web sites, the kind of film I envision with the stories it would tell would do more than any single one thing to affect attitudes and actions by ordinary people, by governments, and by the United Nations. It could, by encouraging normal everyday people to take a stand, change the world for women’s equality, education, health, and rights. And writing for The Lancet, I must say that it just might be the right prescription, the BEST MEDICINE for a world in need.
Any takers?
Jane Roberts, a retired French teacher, is cofounder of 34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund and author of the book 34 Million Friends of the Women of the World, Ladybug Press. In 2005, the 100th anniversary of the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, she was one of 1000 grassroots women throughout the globe nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize a project under the patronage of UNESCO in Bern, Switzerland.
Jane Roberts has informed us that the documentary film idea is wending its way through channels and has the support of Allan Rosenfield, Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, of Linda Harrar, award winning documentary film maker with PBS, of Nafis Sadik, former Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund and current UN Ambassador to Asia for AIDS. This article was submitted to the LANCET, the British Medical Journal to coincide with the Women Deliver Conference in London in October. Although the Lancet will not publish it, it shares a vision with which LadybugPress is in wonderful agreement. We think it is time for such a film.

Read this feature from past issues.

Tina is still in the Algrave this month. Her mother has begun radiation therapy and Tina will not be heading home until next month. While she is away we we have been enteraining guest columnists and Richard Kuhns is one of those who is generous with his information.

Get the Most from your Elderly Parent's Doctor
Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E.

Having elderly parents can be a medical challenge and a lot of stress for the children. In fact some elderly parents seem to think life is about having the best doctors and their self worth is actually determined by the number of doctors and specialists that they see--a subject that deserves it's own article.
My mother started having symptoms of an irritable stomach and bowel along with fatigue twenty years ago. I took her to a reputable iridologist (reads the iris of your eyes) who made dietary adjustments (removed fruit and sweets from her diet) and started her on various supplements. Seems that my mother's diet got skewed--she prefers fruit to protein and after several years of overdoing it with fruit, it fueled her symptoms.
The dietary change and nutritional supplements got her back to normal for a few years until she once again began abusing her diet with coconut syrup and fruit. The symptoms were very similar to what she had before. By now the iridologist had moved away and I have to find another iridologist or a new physician for her. I didn't live with my mother so I wasn't privy to her diet but suspected her symptoms were diet related. She, on the other hand, was certain she had some kind of infection similar to what her mother died from fifteen years before.
Finally I found a doctor and took her for weekly visits. It was a twenty minute trip and I soon became frustrated. To cut to the chase I began sitting in on the visits and within two visits it became evident that my mother had a severe case of Candida Albicans. I guided the doctor into having her remove the coconut syrup, sweets, and fruit and within a month she was feeling better once again.
Three years later, my mother's symptoms returned along with a urinary tract infection. The doctor we had seen was no longer in practice and we had to find another one. He was young and I hoped would be nutritionally oriented--he wasn't. He ordered a ton of tests--upper and lower GI track which showed nothing. He treated her for the urinary tract infection with an antibiotic (as I expected) and she responded by having panic attacks in addition to all her other symptoms. Ultimately he decided she was suffering from depression and prescribed Prozac. She became more fatigued with more episodes of panic and continued stomach problems. I didn't sit in on these sessions and in hind sight wish I had.
I suggested she look at her diet and again she was convinced she had an infection and needed to be hospitalized. Ultimately she got fed up with the depression diagnosis and we went searching for a nutritionally oriented physician. This time I decided I would accompany her in every session. With my direction, the doctor ordered tests to once again confirm the presence of Candida Albicans. Six months and a dozen doctor visits later, my mother's panic symptoms were gone along with all stomach and GI track issues. However, the fatigue continued even after many nutritional supplements and chelation therapy with EDTA.
My mother stayed away from sugar to the extent she believed herself to be diabetic--for a while, but her energy never returned.
Another year or two passed and her diet again shifted to carbohydrates in the form of fruits and cookies from the health food store. The fatigue worsened and her stomach symptoms again reappeared. She wouldn't listen to my dietary advice as she was certain she had this mortal infection. I met with her doctor privately before her session and shared my point of view regarding her diet--he agreed. During the visit he questioned her about her diet. She was eating primarily carbohydrates with no vegetables and little protein. He "read her the riot act." She began adding veggies and protein and began feeling better.
Her regular doctor wasn't available for her next med check (Armor Thyroid) and she saw one of the other affiliates in the same office. She never went back to the doctor who read her the riot act, began bad mouthing him as being a bad doctor and she continued being fatigued.
Her new doctor was new to the field of medicine and easy to work with. I suggested a test for Lyme disease and he concurred. We ordered a test from Bowen Labs at 1200 S. Pinellas Ave., Units 11 & 12, Tarpoon Springs, Florida 34689 (Phone # 727-037-9077). Chronic Lyme disease often shows up negative with standard tests. Bowen uses microscopy and finds it when it's often missed by standard laboratory techniques. Sure enough the tests came back positive and antibiotics were started.
Unfortunately, she couldn't tolerate the antibiotics nor the naturopathic remedy of cat's claw to replace antibiotics. About this time she met a man who recently lost his wife. She had an obvious renewed interest in life and with a fairly strict diet her energy returned--love conquers all.
With the passing of time, for various ridiculous reasons, she didn't allow the romance to develop--fearful of what others would say. Nothing I could say would make a difference--her limitations are owned by her and her alone which could be the subject of another article.
Feeling much better, her diet began expanding to include more fruit and carbohydrates and within six months I took her to emergency at the hospital. Again she was certain she had a mortal infection and was discharged after a half dozen negative tests.
Now, you'd think that with all her past experience with diet, she'd be open to getting back to a healthy diet. However, her memory was significantly compromised. she had trouble remembering anything for more than a few minutes--a symptom of Lyme disease.
Again, I worked with her doctor in shifting her diet away from carbohydrates. But what's left to eat? She dislikes meat of any kind (especially fish) and thinks eating two broccoli crowns a week is adequate.
At wits end, I ordered a Vita Mix and began making her a drink comprising of a clove of garlic, a red beet, stalk of celery, and a carrot. I told her doctor of my plan and he suggested I add protein powder, Pro Biotics and Intestinal Support with L-Glutamine (nutrients for the intestinal track), I went one step further and added a dropper of cat's claw (for the Lyme disease).
After six weeks of shifting her diet towards meat protein, her daily vegetable drinks, and coral calcium, her memory improved dramatically and even in the absence of romance, her energy returned.
Instead of wanting to see her doctor every day for relief, she now looks forward to her daily vegetable drink--a quart a day. About the doctor: She wanted to tell him he was the best doctor she ever had until her last visit--the first one I missed--when he basically gave her the "brush off" and rushed her out the door. "He was totally a different doctor when you are there. I think he's afraid of you," she said to me.
Now, I'm not an intimidating type of person and the point is that if you want the best of care for your elderly parents accompany them in the visits with the doctor, look at their diet to make sure it's not lopsided (older folks regress to child like preferences), and the drink I make with a Vita Mix will be healthy for every one--you as well as your parents.

Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E. NGH Certified is one of the few engineers who has traversed the physical to the mental universe. He operated the Biofeedback Center of NJ and Hypnosis Consultants for nearly twenty years during which time he conducted stress management programs for corporations such as AT&T and IFF. He appeared on various radio and TV shows such as the Arlene Francis WOR radio show, Joe Franklin…
His website www.dstressdoc.com has programs using stress management and hypnotic techniques for self improvement. His other site (www.PanicBusters.com) is focused for the professional wanting to dramatically improve success in the treatment of panic/anxiety and agoraphobia.

Read this feature from past issues.

Watch Your Language - LOL

LOL is an acronym that dates back to the very early days, right back there with the original smiley face :-). It stands for laughing out loud, essential in those days when computers were attached to each other over phone lines that communicated at 300 baud. I have happily used it ever since, but my level of facility with has not grown much since then.
The other day I heard a radio program that many people use text messaging for much of their communications, and and that a wide variety of new terms are surfacing to cut down on the number of letters needed. Many of these can be found at NetLingo, which, according to PC Magazine is "a living computer glossary devoted to the often cryptic and comedic vocabulary of the internet, which is evolving at record speed." Time to learn a little bit about it.
Remember getting Error 404, that frustrating message from the browser whenever it can't find what it is looking for? Now 404 stands for -- "I Haven't A Clue" :
A translator is always a big help in learning a new language. I found Lingo2Word translate from lingo to Plain English and back

O w@ a btifl AM -- oh, what a beautiful morning
O w@ a btifl dy
Ive a btifl feelN
everything's goin my wA

Now you may think that these new words are a travesty on the English language, or else you may feel that they are the best thing since sliced bread. In either case, don't email me, because as an email packrat I may have to declare email bankruptcy any day now. (Check out the Urban Dictionary if you 404 )
In any case, av a 1dfl dy

Read this feature from past issues.

The Turn Signal on the Bus

Last week, the turn signal in my SUV began clicking much more rapidly than normal whenever I signaled a right turn. I figured someone (read, someone under four feet tall) had bumped the wires as they exited through the front door. I also found out the light was burned out in my back brake light/signal light. I didn’t connect the two until the patient mechanic at the dealership let me know the rapid clicking was the car’s way of letting me know the light was burnt out. To add to the problem, my rear brakes were also worn out.
It was an afternoon spent three hours killing time waiting for the light to be repaired, the brakes replaced, and the oil changed. Both kids were cranky, tired, and doing the equivalent of rapid clicking. Due to the wait required, I couldn’t do much to fix things. But, I did file the incident away for more thought. Three hundred dollars later, we left tired and hungry but with a fully functioning and safer vehicle.
When both of them start squirming and whining in the grocery store, what can I do to fix the situation? Instead of continuing to walk the aisles with my list, why don’t I just head to the checkout and try another day? When they are both so tired that their eyes start drooping, why do I continue driving them to more errands or add yet one more activity to the day? I immediately took my SUV to the dealership at the first hint of any problem. I didn’t want to get a ticket for no brake lights. Why don’t I listen better to their same early warning system?
To borrow some lines from the song, the wheels on the SUV just keep going round and round. The babies on the bus do indeed go wah-wah-wah and the mommy definitely does say sh-sh-sh more often than not. I have decided to change our version of the song by paying better attention to the signals, rapid or not. We took a vacation week from the parade of errands and kid events. We took showers late in the day and ate Oreos for breakfast. I read silly books in the middle of the day and ignored my email until everyone was sleeping. We all danced and sang to the Wiggles when everyone still woke up at 6:00 AM.
In a few short months, Joel will begin kindergarten. There will be schedules and plans and homework and lunches to be made. There will also be more opportunities to watch for the signals to slow down, listen, and turn off the car and wait. Whether these are rapid signals or silent ones or even the loud door slamming situations; I have learned in just the past few days to watch more closely.
We even sang a few choruses of “The Wheels on the Bus.” I couldn’t quite figure out how to include “The Turn Signal on the SUV goes blink-blink-blink.” It was a much cheaper lesson to learn than the visit to the dealership. As I write this article in the semi-dark, there are no clickity-clacks in the background. It is peaceful for the moment. I hear only faint snores and find myself humming the bus song as a lullaby.

Read this feature from past issues.

This Old Bag

My purse is remarkable. When zipped, it's a rather attractive handbag. When unzipped, it's a yard sale.
Keeping too much junk in my purse is my feeble attempt at organization. But stuffing an assortment of pens, wrappers, snacks, random keys, and cash register receipts into a small bag doesn't seem to be giving me the ultra-organized effect I'm shooting for.
Part of the problem is that I save all my receipts and carry them around in my purse. That's why at any given moment, I have enough receipts to choke a horse. (How many receipts does it take to choke a horse? I don't know and, frankly, I haven't had the heart to figure it out since the cow died.)
But this is what happened the other day. I was in Taco Bell waiting for my number to be called. I place my order, and they gave me my receipt which I absentmindedly dropped into "The Purse" and by the time I fished out number 59, they were serving number 63. When I showed them my receipt and demanded an explanation, they summoned the manager. He solemnly studied my receipt, and politely informed me that - as a rule - Taco Bell didn't honor receipts from The Gap.
Last summer I had my purse stolen right out of my car. (I forgot to lock the door, roll up the window and switch off the big, red, blinking arrow that was pointing to it.) Luckily I wasn't carrying cash, but the thief did get away with my credit cards, my driver's license and whatever proceeds came of the yard sale.
So I went out and immediately bought a new purse and resolved to keep it clutter-free, but within a couple of weeks not only was my purse back to its prior bulging state, it was 5 pounds heavier than the old one.
Then I tried a really small purse. So small, in fact, the only things that would fit in it were my cell phone, and my pocket book. I figured how could I go wrong? And yet, when my cell phone would ring, I could never find it in time to answer it before the caller gave up.
I recently saw on the science channel where scientists now believe there are thirteen dimensions. Apparently there's the one we live in and the other twelve in my purse.

Read this feature from past issues.

Dr. Doris Jeanette

Reclaiming Your Feminine Power


THIS MONTH:

Poetry Corner

The Way of All Flowers

I took the flower home to deck my room fill and surround my thoughts with feelings soft and colorful put it in water to drink moved it this way and that fussed over it to stand and serve attend my being I looked, I saw, I gazed I was so proud to own this companion we lived together for some days I basked in its beauty magnetized, mesmerized lit up my universe, desk and soul, then it drooped I could not see its face color faded, the petals curved in and tarnished turned brown and rusted water smelled, murky and sad my flower wilted and died though she was dying when first I brought her into the room I wrapped her in newspaper I could not trash her with all the other refuse
Shimon Weinroth

If you were engaged by Shimon's poem listen to his MooseMeals.com program The View From Anywhere. If you would like to chime in, go listen and send him your comments!

Read this feature from past issues.

If you have something you would like to contribute on the subject of abuse or overcoming abuse, please contact us. We are hoping to find someone to take on this topic and inform our readers. Let us know if this is you!

Get information on Domestic violence and violence against women at LadybugBooks.com
We invite any of you to contribute on this subject. We feel it is important to continue the discussion of domestic violence.
Read this feature from past issues.

Exceptional Women are Our History and Our Future:

LadybugFlights, Looking Back from March of 2000

Doing Women's Work: A Tradition of Midwifery
from Canadian Correspondent Donya Gulak
American humorist Erma Bombeck called motherhood the "second oldest profession;" perhaps she should have said the third oldest, for surely the services of a midwife would have been required to make motherhood possible.

The practice of midwifery is traditional in that it has been around for a long time, certainly much longer than the medical profession as we think of it today has been in existence. Unfortunately, in Canada there is also a traditional mistrust between doctors and midwives. Doctors have been accused of wishing to treat pregnancy as an illness and thus profit from medical interventions some say are unnecessary. Midwives have been denounced as unsafe and ill-trained. However, the two groups are gradually breaking down the barriers between them.

In 1998, while drafting a law to legalise midwifery in the province, the Quebec Health Ministry gave the following definition of a midwife:

A midwife is a person who has had training in midwifery recognised in her country, has passed all the relevant courses and has acquired the necessary qualifications to be recognised or licensed as a midwife. A midwife must be able to provide supervision and give women the necessary advice and care during pregnancy, labour, and the post-partum period, to help during a birth under her own responsibility, and to promote proper care of new-borns and infants. This care includes preventative measures, detection of abnormal conditions in both mother and child, seeking medical help as needed and performing certain emergency measures in a physician's absence. The midwife plays an important role in health education, not only for women, but for the family and the community. Her work must include prenatal education and preparation for the role of parent and must cover certain aspects of gynaecology, family planning, and child care. The midwife can practice in hospitals, in clinics, in private homes, or any place where her presence is required.

I found this an impressive definition, even more so when I began to examine its wording more closely. I could see that it reflected some of the hard fought battles both that have occurred and that are still being fought in this province over the status of midwives.
In 1990, the Quebec provincial government approved the practice of midwifery in two circumstances : in birthing centres that were affiliated with community health centres and in hospitals. By 1994, women could legally have access to midwives in some six birthing centres across the province that had been chosen or set up as pilot projects. In June 1999, the practice of midwifery was finally legalised when the province passed a law authorising midwives to set up their own professional order.
I spoke to Raymonde Gagnon, the co-ordinator of the Maison de Naissance Mimosa Birthing Centre near Quebec City. This birthing centre is in a beautiful old house in a quiet location. There are eight midwives on staff there, each of whom take care of about 40 patients per year. Gagnon was an obstetric nurse before deciding to become a midwife, "...because of the approach. Birth is not just a physiological event, but also a spiritual one. Being a midwife enables me to follow and help a woman through the entire process."
I also spoke to Hélène Dugas, who is an obstetric nurse as well as being a member of the Accompagnantes organisation, a group of birthing companions who accompany women and/or couples during childbirth in hospitals. While they are not necessarily midwives, they are very knowledgeable about labour. For example, they can suggest techniques in non-medicated pain relief such as massage, or advise women on different positions to facilitate the birth. While the organisation is mainly concerned with women, they are there to help men as well. "Often the fathers-to-be are not allowed to live the experience of becoming a father because they are expected to be the coaches, the experts. We enable the man to experience becoming a father while the woman is becoming a mother," says Dugas. She has been involved with various community-based women's health organisations and has closely followed the midwifery debate. However, she has given up her dream of becoming a midwife because she says that at 44, she cannot afford to take several years off from her job to do the necessary training.
I asked Gagnon how midwives were chosen for the birthing centre pilot projects in 1994 ; after all, they were not even legally recognised at that time. She answered that the midwives had undergone a rigorous testing procedure including interviews, written exams and letters of recommendation. She didn't volunteer much about her own training as a midwife beyond mentioning her previous nursing experience. Perhaps because of the hazy legality that existed until last year, such a question is best avoided. Dugas was more forthcoming : "Some of the midwives here were self-educated, and some had received their training in other countries." Canada, along with South Africa, has the dubious distinction of being the last industrialised countries to recognise midwifery as a profession.
Gagnon mentioned the philosophy of midwifery more than once. "Birth is a natural event, not a sickness... about 95% of women have normal, trouble-free pregnancies that don't require medical intervention." The training decided upon by the Order of Midwives is given at the Université de Québec à Trois-Rivières; it is a 4-year Bachelor's degree. Dugas told me that the Order had decided on this university precisely because there was no faculty of medicine there, which just shows how deep the official divide is between doctors and midwives. Gagnon says, "MDs opposed the formation of the [midwives'] professional order, though they have since modified their position... As a profession, [the doctors'] position is that it is unsafe to give birth outside of hospital. In practice, of course, we collaborate well with individual doctors."
If further proof of continuing mistrust was needed, we have the fact that midwives are still not practising in hospitals, though Gagnon say this is just a matter of time, until the Order decides how to word the proposition so that it will be adopted. Because the Order is still so new, there is a lot of infrastructure to set up. For example, the Admissions Committee, in charge of deciding who will be recognised as a member, has not yet been formed. According to the wording in the law, this committee will be "composed of 8 people including : 3 recognised midwives, a nurse with perinatal experience, an obstetrician-gynaecologist... 2 university/college representatives appointed by the Ministry of Education and a woman who has used a midwife's services." Dugas, on the other hand, says that the delay is partly due to such structural details, and partly due to the fact that doctors do not want to give up this area of responsibility ; they want the midwives to work in hospitals on the same basis as nurses, in that final decision-making power stays with the doctors. Midwives want to be entirely responsible for their patients, and if a doctor's intervention is needed, they would hand over control as one professional to another, not as subordinate to superior. Home births are also on the horizon, according to Gagnon, but perhaps even farther distant than midwives in hospitals.
The process of legally recognising the centuries—, even millennia-old practice of midwifery in Quebec is fraught with political battles and power struggles. To complicate matters even further, because health care is a provincial area of responsibility in Canada, standards and status differ in all of the ten provinces. However, considering how almost everything that concerns women's health, bodies, and/or rights becomes an issue of public concern in every country of the world, perhaps one shouldn't be surprised.

Read this feature from past issues.

A little bit in writing about what's happening at
LadybugLive.com, MooseMeals.com, and TeenTalkNetwork.com

Serious and Entertaining
We have it all
NewVoices has long been a center for our online audio stations, LadybugLive.com, MooseMeals.com, and TeenTalkNetwork.com.
Now, it is also a cooperative for writers. Author Members are all professional writers (or writers whose work is of professional quality). Our members have linked their sites to this place and work cooperatively to have their work, including their professional bios and summaries of works in progress, seen by the potential publisher, agent, or other user of such quality work. And all publishers have to do is select an author, topic, or writing type from the list. We are as interested in fiction, poetry and essays as in non-fiction from the qualified expert or capable investigative reporter.
All of the authors we present have been vetted for quality and reliability, and if you apply to offer your work here, our editors will read a minimum of three sample pieces and look at your biography for both expert status and practical experience. There is no charge to writers for this service. We want potential publishers to be able to count on the quality of the work they will find on these pages, but that does not mean that new writers need not apply. Experience is importance, but quality work requires both an ongoing and an initial, preparatory, comittment that are weighed in our decisions. If you are new and working to a professional standard, you are perfect for our pages.
Just like our authors, our illustrators are professionals, or amateurs who meet a high standard of quality, in search of a publisher. We consider this a special offering, something publishers will not find anyplace else because we know how important photographs and illustrations can be to articles, stories, even poems! We ask our members to post not only their work but the availability of work in progress, such as a series on nature subjects (name the medium and other details) will be available... or photographs of an event, area, or in a specific category are or will be available... This in addition to a slide show or other samples of their work.
Our free-lance members are available for assignment or on a contract basis. Each page or website will have available at the link information specifically designed to answer a publisher's questions, to fulfill their needs.
It is as simple as that! Are you ready to get started?

Artists and writers who participate at NewVoices do not pay a fee for this service. This is a service supported by NewVoices.com and LadybugPress to help writers. Many of the writers and artists who are members here contribute to this service through their cooperative efforts. Members are expected to participate in outreach efforts to bring interested parties to this page and to prepare their materials on their sites in a professional manner that well represents the quality of writing and marketing this group stands for. Writers are also expected to help each other by passing along contacts and information, when they can, to other members. If you do not have a website as yet, please contact us about hosting, designing, or maintaining your site.

If you are a writer and would like to become a NewVoices author or artist, contact:
Georgia@ladybugbooks.com
Please use the subject title: NewVoices Information

Teens with Ideas for Summer Activities


     It's Not Your Same Old Radio!

"There are people who have something to say and those who have something to sell. We are interested in the ones with something special to teach the world."

For LadybugLive, TeenTalkNetwork, and MooseMeals to continue growing, we need correspondents and readers. The process is quite simple: submissions are by email. If accepted, a reader calls, either our local or our toll free number as directed in the acceptance email, to record. What will you be recording?
We are looking for: readings of original creative work, comment and commentary, and ideas for regularly appearing programming that can be done within this format. We are not able, as yet, to do direct call in shows, but shows that require listener (delayed) response are OK. All of this, of course, within the same guidelines as everything we do: Of interest to women (no particular restrictions). This format might also be ideal for some of those traditional topics, such as clothing and makeup, with a fresh "twist."

Send ideas and proposals to Georgia@ladybugbooks.com
We strive to bring you the best in women's writing.
And...
Keep up to date on what is happening at NewVoices and LadybugFlights by signing up for our monthly newsletter:

Join the LadybugLive/NewVoices mailing list

Email:

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER!

We also offer our audio programs in downloadable MP3 format for offline listening, and at the same modest subscription price — With no unwanted advertising! We know online radio is new to many of you but we also know how rewarding it can be. So, if you need help to get started, don't hesitate to contact Georgia for help... And, hey! Our hosts love hearing from you!
Our teen site, TeenTalkNetwork.com programming is safe — no porn or other unwanted promotions are attached to our files.

The Internet promised and we are delivering.

New programming is always available at:
TeenTalkNetwork.com
MooseMeals.com
LadybugLive

Read this feature from past issues.

The Federal Reserve System ( FED)

Myth and Fact

During the early 1900s banks were used pretty much as we use them today. People deposited money into savings accounts and borrowed money to build a home or start a business. When people borrowed money, banks issued banknotes that could be spent the way we spend paper money. The public valued the banknotes as money because banks promised to exchange them for gold or silver on demand.

At one time, the nation had more than 30,000 types of currency, which almost any organization, even drugstores could issue. People could redeem some currencies for gold and silver, while government bonds backed other types of currency.

Financial Panic and Bank Runs

The problem with this system is that during a run there were banks that could not redeem all of their notes on demand. Then, just as now, banks used most of the deposited money to make loans. As a result, the money was circulating in the community and the banks were not liquid. So when a bank run occurred, many times a bank had to close because it could not exchange the large number of notes presented in a single day.

Banks tried to prepare for increasing depositor withdrawals by building up their reserves of gold or silver and by restricting credit. They stopped making loans, and panic ensued as everyone scrambled to cash in their notes. Businesses had difficulty operating; the country’s economy slowed, and people lost their jobs and life savings.

Financial panics occurred frequently during the 1800s and early 1900s. A particularly severe banking panic in 1907 creating a demand for reform. People wanted a central banking authority to ensure the operation of healthy banks that might otherwise fail because of a bank panic and to supervise bank activities so banks would not engage in risky business practices that might lead to more bank failures. The public also wanted a more elastic currency and a better payment system, which would contribute to economic stability.

The need for a Federal Reserve System

To respond to this public demand for change, Congress set up the National Monetary Commission to study the nation’s financial system and pinpoint its weaknesses. One of the primary weaknesses identified was that the United States lacked an elastic currency. This meant the banking system did not have a way to supply currency if demand for it increased significantly in a short time, so panics occurred.

In 1912, the commission presented Congress with a monetary reform plan that recommended the establishment of the National Reserve Association, which would hold the reserves of commercial banks and could make short-term loans to banks to ensure credit availability.

Congress drafted the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, creating the Federal Reserve System to establish order and confidence in the country’s monetary and banking system. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law on Dec. 23, 1913, giving the Fed the responsibility of providing the country with a safer and more flexible financial system. Since the act was signed, the Fed’s original mission has expanded to include helping maintain a stable, healthy and growing economy.

The structure of the FED

The Fed is a "decentralized central bank". The Fed is governed by a seven-member Board of Governors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The Board represents the public sector, or governmental side, of the Fed.

The Fed also includes 12 regional Reserve Banks. Each regional Fed has a board of directors consisting of local citizens who represent the private sector.

The Fed receives no government funding, paying instead for its activities with interest earned from investments in government securities, loans to banks and charges for services provided to financial institutions. Each year the Fed generates enough revenue to cover its costs and turns all excess income over to the U.S. Treasury.

The Fed operates independently within the government. As in any corporation, the Fed has stockholders. All nationally chartered banks hold stock in the Federal Reserve.

Monetary Policy

The Fed’s charter is to develop and implement a monetary policy whose primary focus is price stability. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the group that establishes monetary policy. The committee comprises the seven governors and the 12 Reserve Bank presidents. The Fed chairman, who reports regularly to Congress, heads the committee.

The Fed works with other government agencies to make sure banks follow the rules and laws. This hands-on experience provides the Fed with essential knowledge for setting monetary policy and forestalling or managing financial crises.

Myths about the FED

Myth #1: The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the result of a secret meeting between Wall Street Bankers and government officials on Jekyll Island, Georgia and gave New York City banks control over the money supply.
Reality: The meeting did take place, but it was not a secret. Congress rejected the plan for a central banking system that came out of this meeting. The control over monetary policy was given to the Federal Reserve Board, a government body, not to banks.
The Federal Reserve System, or "the Fed" for short, is our nation’s central bank. Since its beginnings in 1913, the Fed’s main mission has been to establish and maintain the public’s confidence in the monetary and banking system of the U. S.
Myth #2: The Federal Reserve Act is unconstitutional. The Constitution does not give Congress the power to create a central bank. Reality: Federal and Supreme Court rulings have found the Federal Reserve to be constitutional, under the "necessary and proper" clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 19).Myth #3: The Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank that profits at taxpayer expense. Reality: The member banks in each district privately own each of the 12 Federal Reserve banks. However, the government-appointed Board of Governors controls these banks. Also, the Federal Reserve System rebates almost all of its profits to the Treasury each year, actually REDUCING the taxpayer burden.Myth #4: The Federal Reserve is owned and controlled by FOREIGNERS, who dictate monetary policy for their own benefit. Reality: This is just not true. Each Federal Reserve bank is owned by member banks in that district. Individuals and non-bank institutions, foreign or domestic, are not allowed to own shares in any Federal Reserve bank. Again, the Board sets monetary policy not the Federal Reserve banks.Myth #5: The Federal Reserve had President Kennedy killed because he tried to usurp the Fed's power by authorizing the Treasury to issue silver-backed currency. Reality: Kennedy actually wanted to phase out silver certificates, and agreed with the Federal Reserve on most policy matters. He actually favored legislation to give the Fed more power, not less.

Field Trips

A comic book series describing the FED

Basics of Economics and the FED

A video about the FED

Debunking Myths about the FED

Happy Trails, and keep your money under the bed!

B.S.

Read this feature from past issues.

Books, Cooks, Looks & Ms. Elani

Dear Friends and Readers,
Afghanistan is more than just a news story...
A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
ISBN 1594489505

Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner, has written a new novel that travels through the last thirty years of events in Afghanistan. A Thousand Splendid Suns allows the reader to follow the lives of two generations from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to present day post-Taliban rebuilding.
Written as fiction it is still a historical reenactment of the years in Herat and the surrounding areas. By giving us Mariam we are able to follow the lives of women and the treatment that each had to to endure in order to survive. By carefully weaving characters that are brought together and torn apart by war the history of Afghan comes alive.

Born to a woman who is not a legal wife, Mariam is forced to live as a second class citizen. By her cunning ways and winning smile she is able to not only survive but conquer in a world where for a time women see only what can be gleaned from the small opening of a burka. In a path she would not have chosen she is able to gain love, admiration and above all the radiance of a thousand suns.
To read this fast paced novel is to again realize all people around the world crave the same basic things; freedom, a roof over their head, food and being loved. Mariam will give you all that and much more.

Read this feature from past issues.

YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE

Items this month
from Nancy Keenan and NARAL Pro-Choice America
SUPPORT THE ACCESS TO BIRTH CONTROL ACT
When Carrie Baker, a 42-year-old mother of two from Georgia, asked for emergency contraception at her local Kroger pharmacy, she was told that the head pharmacist refused to stock it!
Since that day, Carrie has tirelessly advocated to improve women's access to birth control, even joining Nancy Keenan in Washington, DC to help introduce the Access to Birth Control Act - a bill that would ensure that women can get birth control, including emergency contraception, at their pharmacy without harassment or delay. Watch the video of Carrie telling her story about why she's taken a stand.
Carrie didn't take no for an answer, and no other woman should have to either. Ask your members of Congress to support the Access to Birth Control Act.

NO PONY FOR YOU, MR. PRESIDENT!
George W. Bush has spent the last six years chipping away at a woman's right to choose, and when his anti-choice friends controlled Congress, he got whatever he wished for! Well, those days are over for Dubya because enough is enough. Pro-choice Americans are fed up! There will be no ponies this year for your birthday, Mr. President!
Donate today and NARAL Pro-Choice America will send your heartfelt pro-choice birthday wish to the man himself: a commitment to take back the White House and return a pro-choice majority to Congress in 2008!
But hurry, Bush's birthday is July 6, only days away!
Your contribution goes toward protecting the very rights he wants to take away - your reproductive freedom.

From the EDITOR

The Meaning of Life

Some things can't be learned until you are too old to make use of them. And some, like the meaning of life, are not about making use of the thought anyway. It isn't a new quest for me and the answer I have now is not my first or only "ah hah!" on this topic. It is though, what I think the answer really is.
Back in the 1970's when everything was a movement, I spent about a week thinking that Jesus was the answer. I was part of the anti-war movement and the feminist movement, but one week the Jesus-Freak Movement reached out and grabbed me. From nowhere! Suddenly, I was walking around campus smiling to myself and thinking "Jesus loves me." The Sunday school song of that same name ran through my head as I listened to professors saying very serious, and probably important, things. None of it mattered. I had the answer to life. Well, not exactly. Within a week the mania had passed and everything was back to normal.
For most of my life, the meaning has been to keep on working to make things better, do it right, succeed by whatever definition I or my society applied to me. This is the meaning most people use.
You can, of course, come at it from the opposite direction as the mice in Douglas Adams' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy did. The answer there was "42," but the question that fit the answer was what they were after. I always liked that idea myself; and why not 42? Most of us made it to, and past, that year in our lives so we each at a chance at the answer. There was a certain symmetry to that. But books have their day and that one moved on, was made into bad movies, and forgotten. And the number forty-two with it.
The meaning of life could be time travel, the effort to get it right by bouncing around in time looking for meaning. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. explored just that idea in many of his books and he sits in one of my overflowing bookcases, right next to Shakespeare, Saul Bellow, Camus, and Stephen Hawking—I've bounced around a bit myself. As Vonnegut found, and as most other writers have concluded given the rarity of time travel in current science fiction, revisiting the past never works. We don't learn much and if we change anything it is usually for the worse. There is a difference between revisiting and reviewing.
It's an old saying, and like most old saying there is both truth and deception in it, but if we don't learn from our past we are doomed to repeat it. That is how the meaning of life works. It is not about changing the present but about reflecting on the past. It is not about repeating though. My reflections tell me that we are pretty much doomed to repeat anyway, whether we learn from or about the past.
So, the meaning that age and reflection have gifted me with now? At the end, you will always answer "If I had known how it would turn out, I would have done it differently." There will be none of this "I did it my way," bravado for the contemplative soul. You will, no matter how it works, what talents or opportunity you bring to the game, you will always look back and think that there could have been more or better or simply something different that you would or could or should have done.
And what is the point of such a meaning without a lesson… Yes, life is about lessons; I still believe that. The lesson is that this school, your life, is for you alone. You cannot pass your lesson or your meaning on to someone else, even in your most ardent and compassionate need to save them from pain, embarrassment or failure. "If I had known how it would turn out, I would have done it differently." It is probably the one thing you have to take with you when you give up all of the toys and accomplishments that framed your existence here.

Georgia Jones, Editor

Read this feature from past issues.

At LadybugFlights we have always encouraged the participation of our readers. For that reason we have this space, a place where you can be heard. Nothing as formal as an article or a column... Just some venting, self-expression, or a chance to communicate what you are thinking on almost any topic. Send it to us and we will let you know if we can use it!

Schar Freeman has been a long time friend of LadybugBooks and we are always happy to pass on news she shares.

From a nurse:
I'll never forget the look in my patients eyes when I had to tell them they had to go home with the drains, new exercises and no breast. I remember begging the Doctors to keep these women in the hospital longer, only to hear that they would, but their hands were tied by the insurance companies. So there I sat with my patient giving them the instructions they needed to take care of themselves, knowing full well they didn't grasp half of what I was saying, because the glazed, hopeless, frightened look spoke louder than the quiet 'Thank you' they muttered.
A mastectomy is when a woman's breast is removed in order to remove cancerous breast cells/tissue. If you know anyone who has had a mastectomy, you may know that there is a lot of discomfort and pain afterwards. Insurance companies are trying to make mastectomies an outpatient procedure. Let's give women the chance to recover properly in the hospital for 2 days after surgery.
Mastectomy Bill in Congress
It takes 2 seconds to do this and is very important .. please take the time and do it really quick!
Breast Cancer Hospitalization Bill - Important legislation for all women
Please send this to everyone in your address book. If there was ever a time when our voices and choices should be heard, this is one of those times. If you're receiving this, it's because I think you will take the 30 seconds to go to vote on this issue and send it on to others you know who will do the same.
There's a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It's about eliminating the 'drive-through mastectomy' where women are forced to go home just a few hours after surgery, against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached. Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on.
PLEASE!! Sign the petition. You need not give more than your name and zip code number.
This takes about 2 seconds. PLEASE PASS THIS ON to your friends and family, and on behalf of all women, THANKS.

Read this feature from past issues.

©July 2007 LadybugBooks.com

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