This summer, my garden has provided me with such pleasure. I’m not a great gardener. Heck, I’m not even a good gardener. But somehow, herbs managed to grow as well as some carrots, tomatoes and…weeds. Lots of weeds. Here’s a young girl who took her gardening a bit more seriously:

Alexandra Reau, of Petersburg, Mich., tended to her rainbow chard.

Lawn mowing and baby-sitting are standard summer jobs for the enterprising teenager. Alexandra Reau, who is 14, combines a little bit of each: last year, she asked her dad to dig up a half acre of their lawn in rural Petersburg, Mich., so she could farm. Now in its second season, her Garden to Go C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) grows for 14 members, who pay $100 to $175 for two months of just-picked vegetables and herbs.

While her peers are hanging out at Molly’s Mystic Freeze and working out the moves to that Miley Cyrus video, she’s flicking potato-beetle larvae off of leaves in her V-neck T-shirt and denim capris, a barrette keeping her hair out of her demurely made-up eyes. Who says the face of American farming is a 57-year-old man with a John Deere cap?
Read more at The New York Times

Last night, I watched an episode of The Dog Whisperer, where he discussed the most aggressive dogs. The show’s staff polled thousands of people, who came up with German Shepherds, Rottweillers and of course, pitbulls. Interestingly, Cesar Milan, the show’s host, disputed each one of those claims. He determined the most aggressive being was the human who trained them! Good for you, Cesar! So true.

Here’s a wonderful story about a special German Shepherd (watch the video!):

Buddy, a German shepherd, was with his owner, Ben Heinrichs, when his family’s workshop caught fire. Once he and Buddy were safely outside, Heinrichs turned to the dog and said, “We need to get help.” He didn’t expect Buddy to actually do anything about it, of course. However, help is exactly what the shy dog brought — in the form of an Alaska State Trooper, reports the Anchorage Daily News. The dog’s heroic act was caught on the trooper’s dashboard camera.

Buddy had gone off into the woods, and Heinrich assumed the pooch was hiding. In fact, Buddy had run out to the road, where he caught the attention of Alaska State Trooper Terrence Shanigan, who had been alerted by concerned neighbors when they saw a fireball erupting in the distance. Shanigan was having difficulty finding the fire due to the winding country roads. That’s when Buddy suddenly appeared. On a hunch, Shanigan followed the dog and arrived on the scene just in time. He was able to talk the fire department through the difficult directions, and they put out the flames just before the fire spread to the family’s home.

Buddy is being presented with an award from the Alaska State Troopers today, including a silver plated, engraved dog bowl, reports “Today” via the Associated Press. We’re willing to bet he’s getting more than a few extra cuddles and dog biscuits.

Source: Paw Nation

I’m particularly excited about this series of quotes. The more I study ancient history, the more I realize that we’ve been facing the same issues for a long, LONG time! These quotes most definitely stand the test of time.

Let our old sages guide you today!

“Every man is the architect of his own future” - Sallust (86 -35 BC) Roman Historian

“Your life is an expression of all your thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180) - Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher

“Men are not troubled by things themselves, but by their thoughts about them”.
Epictetus (C. 55 - C. 135) - Greek Stoic Philosopher

“He has half the deed done who has mad a beginning”.
Horace (65-8 B.C.) - Roman Poet and Satirist

“First say to yourself what would you be; and then do what you have to do”.
Epictetus (C. 55 - C. 135) Greek Stoic Philosopher

“The nature of man is always the same; it is their habits that separate them”.
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) - Chinese Philosopher

“Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them”.
Plato (428-327 BC) - Greek Philosopher and Prose Writer

“They can do all because they think they can”.
Virgil (70-9 BC) - Roman Poet

“Where fear is . . . happiness is not”.
Seneca (4BC - AD65) - Roman Philosopher and Playwright

“Give me where to stand and I will move the earth”.
Archimedes (287-212 BC) - Syracusan Mathematician, Astronomer and Inventor

“Learn what you are and be such”.
Pindar (522-438 BC) - Greek Poet

“What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do”.
Aristotle (383-322 BC) - Greek Philosopher

“Our life is what our thoughts are make it”.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180) Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher

“As a man thinks in his heart, so is he”.
Solomon (10th Century BC) - King of Israel & reputed author of Biblical Books

“When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself”.
Plato (428-327 BC) - Greek Philosopher and Prose Writer

“What we are is what we have thought for years”.
Gautama The Buddha (560-480 BC) - Indian Spiritual leader and Founder of Buddhism

“How unhappy is he who cannot forgive himself”.
Publilius Syrus - (1st century BC) - Latin Writer of Mimes

“Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be a time. Let it first blossom then bear fruit, then ripen”.
Epictetus (C. 55 - C. 135) Greek Stoic Philosopher

“Practice yourself for heaven’s sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater”.
Epictetus (C. 55 - C. 135) Greek Stoic Philosopher

“Perseverance is more prevailing than violence and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little”.
Plutarch (C. A.D. 46 - C 120) - Greek Biographer and Essayist

Source: TrevorCrookBlog

I just read this great article/review from Josey Vogels that I wanted to share with you. It’s about properly grieving the end of a relationship in order to move forward, baggage-free:

“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

“Time heals all wounds.”

“Get over it.”

You’ve heard ‘em all right? Russell Friedman and John W. James say jaunty phrases like these are the worst words of advice for handling a breakup. “The attempt to soothe is always well intentioned but rarely helpful,” say the authors of Moving On: Dump Your Relationship Baggage and Make Room for the Love of Your Life.

Despite its oh-god-not-another-one-of-those-books title, this is one of the best relationship books to have crossed my desk in a while (and trust me, a lot of them cross my desk).

Rather than spend a lot of time splicing, dicing and trying to spice up the failing relationships we’re currently in, Friedman and James, founders of the Grief Recovery Institute have applied techniques they’ve used to help clients deal with death to help people deal with the one thing they rarely do when they enter into a new relationship: That is, properly say good-bye to all the other crappy relationships that have gone before.

“A breakup is the death of a relationship,” says Friedman. “And just as when someone dies, you’re suddenly robbed of all the hopes, dreams and expectations you had for the future with that person.” Then we drag all that disappointment, anger and resentment (because of course, the relationship death was all the other’s person’s, right?) into our next relationship. After a few rounds of this, it’s no wonder so many of us can’t make the damn things work. In fact, says Friedman, the 50% divorce rate is nothing compared to the 70 per cent of relationships that fail outside of marriage.

Friedman and James partly blame our society’s discomfort with feelings of sadness.“By the time a child is 15 years old he or she will have received more than 23 thousand messages that sad or painful feelings should not be communicated to others,” they write.

Pet fish dies? Don’t worry honey, there are plenty more fish in the, er, pet fish store. Hurt son? Suck it up and get over it. All that stuff we learn about feeling bad or sad gets packed into the suitcase and hauled into adulthood and into our relationships.

Relationship ends? Don’t worry; you can get a new one. Heart hurtin’ like someone’s shoved it full of broken glass? Suck it up and get over it.

But the new fish/relationship isn’t a replacement for the old one, say the authors. Relationships aren’t replaceable or interchangeable. Each is unique and need to be experienced, completed and mourned differently.

And that old, “time heals all” bit? Friedman and James liken this advice to expecting time to fill a flat tire with air. To take the analogy further, imagine you continue driving on that flat tire while you’re waiting for time to fill it up again. It would make driving in a straight line really hard and eventually, you’d destroy the rim and the wheel.

So just like you need to take action to fill up your tire before you can more forward (like call a tow truck or use a jack and fix it yourself), we need to take action in order to refill our emotional flat tires and move forward into healthier, happier relationships.

The action the authors suggest is something they call the “past relationship review,” an exercise that forces you to formally review past relationships and be honest with yourself about the good, the bad and the ugly of each one. But the process isn’t just an intellectual one. “We know people who can recite a doctoral thesis on what happened and who did what to whom but still aren’t emotionally complete,” says Friedman.

Their suggested process, if done honestly and openly, allows you to “complete” past relationships by forgiving your exes for their shit and apologizing for your own so you don’t end up dragging all that “unfinished emotional business” into subsequent relationships.

But he was a bastard and I’ll never be able to forgive him, you say. Forgiving doesn’t condone the person’s behaviour, says Friedman. Not forgiving, however, makes it impossible to move on. “Not forgiving keeps you in prison and not them,” he says.

In fact, forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. “It’s only for you, to set you free,” says Friedman.

Which is why the authors are so adamant about the fact that none of this process be shared with your exes. They mean it. This is strictly a personal exercise. Suddenly calling him up to tell him you forgive him for being such a jerk isn’t going to inflate anyone’s tires.

Friedman likens the process to scraping old paint off a house to prepare it for a fresh coat.

And, once you’re ready for it, they’ve got some great advice for making that fresh coat last.

For more info or to order the book, go to relationshipbaggage.com.

Here’s a piece one of our writers, Beth Mann, submitted to Open Salon about the miracle elephant, Mr. Shuffles:

Mr. Shuffles is a miracle elephant.

After almost 2 years in his mother’s womb, the vets could find no vital signs and he was presumed to be stillborn.

At a press conference, the staff at Taronga Zoo in Australia announced the sad news.

Katharina Theodore was one of the first keepers in the elephant barn the morning after Porntip, the mother elephant, gave birth.

“We went to greet all the elephants, walked up to Porntip and she didn’t react at all.” Theodore said.

“She seemed to be in a stupor and so I started to cry literally. I noticed blood on her legs and the bulge that was holding the calf was missing. So Gary and I walked into the paddock and we found a calf.

“I was kind of happy that at least she’d expelled the calf and I was thinking that’s great, we can move on and look after her.

“And then, mind-blowingly enough, the calf raised its head.”

20 vets and keepers quickly went to work, round the clock, administering to the calf who they feared suffered brain damage.

When Mr. Shuffles was well enough to take his first steps, they were heavy and unsure, like that of an old man, hence the nickname “Mr. Shuffles.”

He was officially renamed Pathi Harn in a ceremony held by Buddhist monks to celebrate his Thai culture. This caused a minor uproar online (by people like me) who really, really like his nickname.

Parthi Harn is the Thai word for miracle.

Pathi Harn is getting stronger day by day, feeding heartily from his mother and playing with his cousin, Luk Chai .

And while his beautiful Thai name reflects his regal status which he rightfully deserves, he will always be known as Mr. Shuffles to many.

He’s a little wide-eyed and goofy - a creature who has gone through something. A creature who is happy to be alive.

Follow Mr. Shuffles on Twitter.

Sources:
Brisbane Times
ABC News Australia

That’s right - after years of debating and in-house feuding, the United States of America has passed a healthcare reform:

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to pass a landmark healthcare reform bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Under the legislation, health insurance will be extended to nearly all Americans, imposes new taxes on the wealthy and bars restrictive insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

They represent the biggest change in the US healthcare system since the creation in the 1960s of Medicare, the government-run scheme for Americans aged 65 or over.

President Barack Obama:

“It’s a victory for the American people.”

Damn straight.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Source: BBC News

With Spring right around the corner (insert huge sigh of relief), it’s time to “green” your life. This could mean many things: a good spring cleaning, planting your garden, some new clothes, an exercise plan - anything that brings you back to life after a long winter!

Here’s a few Spring suggestions you may want to take into consideration:

Check out these tips from a Gimundo article:

1. This year I’m eliminating any chemicals from my garden and planting all organic plants. It’s a little more expensive and a little harder to find, but it’s a lot healthier for your kids if they play in your yard to get rid of those awful fertilizers full of chemicals.

2. My spring cleaning will be done with lots of vinegar, baking soda and plant derived cleaners. Get rid of those old cleaners that are made with petrochemicals, unnatural fragrances and use products that bring a healthier environment to your home. Did you know that your indoor air could be causing health issues to you and your family?

3. Open your windows and let the fresh air in. Wash your windows with a mixture of half vinegar and half water, usually this will improve your indoor air quality and leave your windows spotless.

4. Is it time to clean out a few clogged drains? Here are some helpful tips for a more natural way to clean drains. Throw away those chemicals; they go straight to our water supply.

5. Time to go green with your hot water heater; your water heater uses a lot of energy to keep water hot 24/7. Check out tankless water heaters or called hot water on demand systems.

Source: Gimundo

Here are a few others I came up with:

6. If you’re in need of new clothes for the Spring, check out your local second-hand store or Salvation Army first. Not only are you saving money, you’re “precycling.”

7. Fix up your bike. A bike that’s had a little tune-up is more likely to be used. Put it in an easy, accessible place. Remind yourself that it’s time to get on the bike and not hop in the car. Put a basket on your bike for even more flexibility.

8. Back to the washing machine: most clothing does not need tons of detergent or hot water. Move over to eco-friendly detergent, use less of it and use cold water.

Much has been said about Gabourey Sidibe’s weight. Being one of the heaviest women in Hollywood in a place to blatantly encourages thinness at all costs, it’s no surprise.

But Gabourey has maintained her positivity in the face of naysayers. And she has consistently kept her focus on her talent and positivity, not her weight.

While she lost the Best Actress award to Sandra Bullock, today we celebrate somebody in the media spotlight who is non-traditionally radiant and throws a wrench in what we consider “beautiful.”

That’s positive news!

“I used to get hurt so badly. Any bit of criticism, I would cry. But at some point I just realized, I count more than anyone else, or anybody’s opinion, because I’m living my life — I’m captain of this ship, without a first mate. And I really, really like who I am. I really, really dig me.”

- Gabourey Sidibe

Global warming and greenhouse gas issues seem to be terms we hear on a daily basis anymore. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It seems as if the biggest players don’t do anything, then how can we can up with a universal answer? On top of that, we have a crew of naysayers who don’t believe the problem exists in the first place.

You may not be the size of China but there are things you can do today to reduce your carbon imprint, such as ditching water bottles and unplugging appliances and riding a bike instead of driving. Remember, we’re all in this one together - every step counts!

China has finally taken a step forward and considering they are some of the biggest producers of greenhouse gas, let’s hope they stick to their word. According to Reuters:

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Sunday it will spell out greenhouse gas emissions goals and monitoring rules for regions and sectors in its next five-year plan, with monitoring to show it is serious about curbing emissions.

The Chinese government said in November it would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activity, emitted to make each unit of national income by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

That goal would let China’s greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, but more slowly than its rapid economic growth.

The policy was a cornerstone of Beijing’s position at the Copenhagen summit on climate change late last year when governments tried with limited success to agree on a new global treaty on fighting global warming.

The United States and other powers said China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from industry and other human activities, should have offered to do more to bring its domestic ‘carbon intensity’ goal into an international pact that would reassure other governments.

China said it and other poorer countries should not be obliged to take on internationally-binding emissions goals, and officials said Beijing would take steps to show the world it was serious about enforcing that goal.

Now the leading committee of China’s national parliament has gone some way to showing how the government plans, saying officials will carry out an ‘inventory’ of greenhouse gas emissions in 2005 and 2008, using that as a yardstick for setting emissions reductions goals across areas and sectors.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, or parliament, said the government would put in place a ’statistical monitoring and assessment system to ensure greenhouse gas emissions goals are met,’ Xinhua reported.

Those goals will be made part of the country’s next five-year development plan, starting from 2011.

‘Relevant departments and regions will form action plans and medium- and long-term plans to cope with climate change and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, based on the targets and requirements set out by the State Council’, or cabinet, the report said.

Scientists widely believe China has passed the United States as the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter, but Beijing does not release any recent official emissions data.

China’s most recent official inventory of emissions was submitted to a U.N. agency in 2004 and covered the year 1994.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by David Fox)