Posts

Water-Is what we drink as clean as we think

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Today was a little shocking for me. I am here in France visiting family when a friend arrived with a special machine for testing the quality of water This machine is called a Water Electrolyzer and is sold as a "simple and effective water quality apparatus by the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A) of the United States. I happened to have two bottles of water which I had not drunk in my bag for her to test.  The first bottle contained water taken from a water tap at Dubai airport when I passed through just over a week ago on my way to France. I had an empty plastic bottle in my backpack which I filled in case I got thirsty  while waiting to board the plane to France. The second bottle was purchased from the local supermarket in Prades called SuperU. The water also contained peach flavouring and is a local brand. The method for testing is indeed simple. You put the water you wish to test in a glass that has enough space for the two prongs on the small machine to be inserted. Y...

Choice. Risk. Death

My daughter shared a Facebook post today of a nurse who was sharing publicly her hurt at losing her job  because she is being forced by Government mandate to vaccinate and was unable to get a vaccine exemption. She has 19 years experience. As a nurse I would presume she knows not only how to take care of patients but also herself. She has made a personal choice about her own body and health, but because of the attitude this government and some other governments have taken over mandating health and essential workers to vaccinate or lose their jobs, she is being fired. Crazy behaviour by so called democratic nations when we need all our nurses whether they are vaccinated or not since everyone can get and spread covid and potentially require hospital care or die.  It is my view that those that wanted to vaccinate against this virus have done so by now. They like many others have made this choice and I have no problem with that choice for each of them. Why cant those that do not w...

Early City Morning Song

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                                                                                                               Tui Photo, Courtesy of Helen Parkes Early City Morning Early morning on an Auckland Street A tui sings and it’s such a treat To hear such sounds within a city With all its concrete which is not so pretty As cars wiz by and I wait for a bus I can feel the urgency that comes from us Humans who are needing to start the day Involving work where they have no time to play The busyness of a city life With all its fuss and workplace strife Those on the bus sit silent and still Like hospital patients who are feeling ill But at 5am it’s hard to feel Bo...

Who Fights For Plants

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Who Fights For Plants .................................. ....We live in a world where there are people who fight for animal rights or citizen rights but who fights for the rights of plants to grow where they will, to not be cut or harvested before they go through their own natural cycle-i.e to make flowers, then seed, to die and come again if they are in the right spot. Humans take plants for granted. We do not notice them particularly, pull ones out of the ground which we call weeds, control them through cutting their limbs as in the case of fruit trees so they can make us more fruit or so that the shape and size fits our specifications. However without plants our species would die along with many other organisms because w e eat either  plants  or other organisms that eat  plants . Plants provide  us with food, fiber, shelter, medicine, and fuel.  The basic food for all organisms is produced by green  plants . In the process of food production, oxygen is r...

Negative or positive...depends on the mindset you choose

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Produce from the garden         The painting on the Dairy This year certainly has been challenging on many levels for all of us in the “western dominated world countries” as we have been forced to face up to the uncertainty that third world nations have lived with for a very long time...look for example at the challenges for so many African people’s...hepatitis, malaria, HIV, Ebola diseases and even worse starvation and war with all the violence that comes with that state.....now Covid -19 just to add more problems to the mix. In NZ and elsewhere we can witness how media manipulate and exacerbate fear and politicians using that same fear to control and regulate their citizens.  Even more unsettling for me observing this years events is witnessing also people’s reaction  to Covoid-19 and seeing not only the acceptance by those citizens at the loss of their freedoms, but seeing the emotional condemnation of any citizens who don’t accept this loss of freedom o...

Beltane or Halloween? It depends where you live.

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 More and more New Zealand children, with the support of their unfortunately "uninformed" parents along with those commercial  businesses wanting to make a dollar, are celebrating the Wiccan festival of Halloween or Samhain or All Hallows' Eve as it is properly called in the Northern Hemisphere on October 31. As a Wiccan myself for over 30 years and therefore someone who considers this day as one of my eight sabbats (special celebratory days), I am getting more and more irritated at the misuse of this festival and particularly as it is being celebrated in this country of NZ at the wrong time of the year. I have written using this blog about this issue back in 2014, but because nothing has changed and society continues to refer to this day as Halloween, as though we were citizens of North America enjoying the late Autumn instead of living in the Southern Hemisphere in late spring, I decided to inform people once again. Here it goes........................... Al...

A Woman's Lot in 2017!

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I am proud that NZ was the first country in the world to give women the vote in November 1893, but here we are today in June 2017 hearing on our news that a young girl at primary school can not attend her school because she is menstruating, and that the school is unable to provide her with a suitable receptacle to place in her used pads/tampons etc. The same school also suggested that she go on the pill (at age 10) to control her menstruation. Only by her parents funding a receptacle  is their daughter able to attend. What is wrong with our leaders-is it male stupidity and ignorance still dominating our systems. The inability of this school in the 21st century to adequately deal with one of their students developing into womanhood just beggars belief. Women have been menstruating at various ages-younger and older-since our species evolved. And then there is the third world problem that is also affecting many NZ young women-the astronomical cost of sanitary products mak...