Latest Hydroponic Crop

Betty,

Maybe you and Dave might look in a different direction (please insert tongue-in-cheek emoitcon here).

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2010/01/29/pkg.marijuana.super.store.ktvu?iref=allsearch

Ann

Dear Ann,
I have nothing against marijuana except that it is not legal. This area that I live has had so many big marijuana farms confiscated that there is now a regular fly over. When we first started setting up this hydorponic farm, we attracted a lot of air attention. Now, it is once a month. It is a matter of time until tissue culture will put a new look on marijuana production in the US.

David and I are not in the business. We grow strawberries, greens, and one day, tomatoes.

Alice,
I have grown my last pea for at least two years. I have canned them in jars and everytime I open one, I think or your dear heart.

Love,
Betty

It's okay Betty.  We're not going to rat you out.   How much is "Big Bud", anyway?

Dear Lin,
I do not know that. When my children were in their teens, I discovered a grow light in the closet and one lone plant looking a little yellow. My neighbor's son was inventive and put his little plant on the roof of his house. His parents saw it when they drove into the driveway. He was grounded for a long time. That is when all his friend's parents noticed that their oregano jars were empty. He was rolling it and selling oregano for a dollar smoke. He is now the best fisherman charter on the west coast of Florida.

I do not know what all the hoopla is about marijuana. Cigarettes are a million times worse for a person's health, and booze is a million times worse, too. Yet, here they are, legal to buy and any child with a little sneaky way can drink all they want out of their parents bottles and add a little water to the bottle to replace it.

Legalize it and I will grow it.

Love,
Betty



That is so many years ago.

Dear Alice,
I have always wondered where the expression, "shake a stick at' came from. I have looked it up and people shake sticks at lots of stuff. Some thought that each shake of the stick was a count of one and so that if you were counting you could not shake your stick as many times as were needed to count the item you wished to count. I agree with this theory.

Some thought that it was more devious than that.

I agree that prescription drugs do kill more people even if you just count the people they were prescribed to. I am not a drug user. Unless one counts the high blood pressure stuff. I would, however, like to have a small supply of antibiotics. I am checking into pennicillin for pigs. Doctors are so illusive.

Love,
Betty

I had a friend during my married stay-at-home-mom days who kept two 12-inch rulers hanging in the closet, one painted red, the other painted white. When her son misbehaved, he got one light swat with the white stick. If he did something seriously wrong, he got one light swat with the red stick. Before long, when he saw his mom heading for the closet, he would begin to cry and say, "White stick, Mommy; please, please, just the white stick!"

Ann

Dear Ann,
I bet that kid does not allow any rulers in his house! But at least she had her own sticks. That is better than sending the kid off to cut their own whipping branch. I do not think people loved their children then. They just had them, controlled them with violence, and had very little to do with them at all. That may have been because they never were children themselves, or they had too much work to do and the little brats were always hungry.

When was it that people became humane to their offspring?

Now, we are even humane to our pets! Thank God.

Alice,
Pet meds are all done the same as for humans. They have to be just as pure. 500 milligrams of Pennicillin for a pig is the same as for me. I just want the emergency supply.

Love,
Betty

Love,
Betty

Betty,

This poem was in one of the Lit textbooks we were using when I first started teaching thirty years ago. It was a real eye-opener for me. I had always thought my "spankings" were deserved.

Quote :

The Whipping

The old woman across the way
is whipping the boy again
and shouting to the neighborhood
her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
pleads in dusty zinnias,
while she in spite of crippling fat
pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling
boy till the stick breaks
in her hand. His tears are rainy weather
to woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony vise
of knees, the writhing struggle
to wrench free, the blows, the fear
worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I
no longer knew or loved . . .
Well, it is over now, it is over,
and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged--
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear.



Robert Hayden

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-whipping/

When my children were little, I was still of the mind that a light swat was not inappropriate under some circumstances. David taught me otherwise, when his automatic reaction was to turn around and slap me on the shin. It was then that I realized that it wasn't just about the physical pain, it was about a child's anguish and rightful anger. I realized I was teaching that violence is an acceptable way of solving problems.

The white stick is the same as the red stick.

Ann

All this hitting of children can be blamed on "spare the rod and spoil the child", an edict put forth some 2000 years ago.

Add to that little spew of words the bovine tendency to stay in the same rut the last generation beat on their way to enlightenment and it is no surprise that people still feel right in assaulting their young. Enlightenment comes slowly, generation to generation and often skips a few.

Love,
Betty

DEar Alice,
You know, as you say, we lived through it. When I was young, teachers were allowed to hit you with belts or wooden paddles with holes in them. Often, teachers just did not like you because you stunk or were poor or peed your pants in first grade and they used those lethal weapons on you because you were there and they were there and they took they agression out on you. No compassion at all. When you went home, I got beaten again. I have a scar on my right eye from one teachers correction and the bed post at night.

I do not want to hurt anybody or any animal. Violence has been beaten out of me, for sure. I would not pass it on.

Love,
Betty

Dear Alice,
I have had an idea to write a book. A short book..
Not about me or my childhood, but using some of it as fodder for the story. I considered that I might start it on WIP. I might write the whole thing there.

Not a gloom and doom epistle, but life through a young girl's eye who has no control over her circumstances, but a great deal of hope and a tendency to dream impossible stuff.
Love,
Betty

That is such a cool idea. Girl of the Limberlost is popping into my head as a source of possible inspiration, although you don't really need anything but your own experiences and insight.

Those books by Alice Miller say that one outlet for the abused is creativity, where the negatives can be channeled in a positive direction.

You, Betty, are the perfect example.

Ann

A good idea Betty. I'm in the process of doing something similar with certain aspects of my childhood.

Please write it Betty.

I can't wait to read it, Betty.

Love, Carol

Thank you all for the encouragement! I have been thinking about how to begin and just how and what to write about all day. I thought I could do it like Wooffer is written. Each chapter a kind of mini story like the Wooffer stories are. Each standing alone, yet all going together as the book.

What do you all think of that plan?

Love,
Betty