Marlakins

We were booked with American Airlines, but it turns out that AA is managed by Alaska Airlines?  Uh, I don’t get it.  And I also didn’t get who is this guy on the tail of all the Alaska planes?

It took me a while to see it, but maybe that black ring around his head is part of his Eskimo suit?  Or should I say Inuit suit?  Well, if anyone knows more about that, would be interesting to me to know.

So we arrived in Mexico City and stayed at the Emporio Hotel on the Avenue Reforma.  It was  a really quick trip, but we managed to get in a few sites like The Anthropological Museum, The Guadalupe Shrine, and the ruins of Teotihuacan.  I’ll share some of those pics once I get them uploaded and I can sort through them (yeah, that’s what I thought about my Philippine pictures that are still not up!  Ha!  One of these days I’ll try to post pics of our trip to the rice terraces).  Until I get those pics up, here’s one that Brian took of me at the breakfast buffet at the Emporio Hotel.

The breakfast was very good.  The green drink in front of me was a combination of cactus, celery, grapefruit, and a little bit of orange.  Interesting, huh?  First time I’d had that, and it was pretty good!  The little quesadillas on the side had cheese and cactus in them.   We had heard about the cactus to eat, so we wanted to try it.  The taste of them reminds me of cooked green bell peppers.  It turned out to be a very satisfying breakfast and really held me over during our tour trek.  Lots of walking and climbing!  All worth it, tho. . .   And everyone was so kind!

Marlakins

I’m only half way through Pasternak’s book, but I can definitely say that she is an excellent writer.  As usual, I never know at first if anything I’m reading is true or not, so I do like to look up other sources to see what they say about the topic.  In particular, Pasternak’s book deals with uranium mining in Navajo territory.   For anyone who may not know where Navajo territory is, it’s in the four corners region of where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah meet, thus it’s name, four corners.  Now, I’ve been to Taos, New Mexico, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park in Utah, and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, but I’ve only been to the airport in Denver, Colorado.   I’ve always thought it would be nice to one day visit Four Corners.  After reading about the uranium mining done on the Navajo reservation and how it was never cleaned up properly, I don’t think I want to go there anymore, sigh.  It’s a really sad thing to think about how the Navajo reservation was poisoned like that considering the Navajo were trying to help with the cold war effort of mining for uranium and earlier for vanadium.  Not only were the Navajo “not” informed of the dangers of radiation exposure, then were purposefully monitored (in secret) to see how the human body reacted to radiation exposure.  Basically, they were used as both slave (they only got a small portion of what the uranium was worth) and guinea pig (according to Pasternak, the Manhattan Project was interested in understanding the risks their scientists were taking with radiation exposure).  To add insult to injury, it was the Navajo Code Talkers that helped the U.S. take Iwo Jima, yet their land and people were knowingly exposed to dangerous levels of radiation through their mining.  The Japanese were never able to crack the code because they didn’t know the Navajo language.

So I wanted to see what other sources there were regarding the uranium mining in Navajo territory.  I found videos such as this one on the subject.

While Pasternak’s book hasn’t discussed it (I’m only half way through the book, so she might mention it later), it seems there were other Indian reservations that were involved with uranium mining.  Here’s another video on the subject.

Frankel mentioned Crow Butte, so I’m assuming that’s in Washington State.  But I’ve seen other videos mentioning mining with the Lakota Indians, so I think that’s also South and North Dakota.  The rush for uranium was during the 40’s to 70’s, but some mines continued on longer.  Yet, to this day, it seems that those sites have never been properly cleaned up and people continue to be exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.

After watching some of these videos, I came across this one wherein McCain and several other politicians are trying to continue uranium mining in Arizona.  Either McCain is mistaken about his information regarding the safety of uranium mining or he is just out-right lying, I don’t know, but he’s definitely pushing to commence uranium mining.   They mention the Arizona Strip, which sounds like it’s along the Arizona-Utah border.

I know that the nuclear issue is very controversial, but after Fukushima, after Chernobyl, after Three Mile Island, after Windscale, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the multitude of studies showing the dangers and harmful effects of radiation, when will we learn?  I don’t understand how anyone can think nuclear power is safe.  From the mining of uranium ore to the spent fuel rods that they don’t know what to do with, nuclear power is dangerous.  They talk about opening uranium mines for jobs, but are we willing to pay our lives for those jobs?  Many, if not most, of those guys who mined uranium didn’t even know they were in danger until it was too late.  What people do to each other is really appalling.  If we only followed God’s golden rule to love one another, we wouldn’t be deceiving people into working in dangerous conditions.  Instead of loving one another, we love money and power.  But God sees everything.

Matthew 25:40

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Since you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.”

Marlakins

To view Dr. Kaku’s argument click here.

One thing that stood out to me is how Kaku states that a lot of those bright minds are going back home.  I recall when I was in the Philippines one discussion was regarding encouraging graduates to stay in the Philippines and help to bring up their own country rather than exporting their minds and skills to other countries.  It also reminds me of the portion in the Bible that states that people will go back to their own countries.

Jeremiah 51:9

“We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her, and let us go everyone into his own country: for her judgment reaches unto heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.”

Some people argue that America is Babylon.  See America, the Babylon by R.A. Coombes.  I know others think Babylon is the Vatican or the Catholic church, but I don’t think so.  Coombes description makes more sense to me.

Marlakins

According to the video, Australia has 40% of the world’s uranium.  I didn’t know that.  I also didn’t know that the U.S. is Australia’s biggest customer for their uranium.  I knew that some uranium mining was done in Niger, and that the process leaves a lot of contamination in the land and surrounding areas.  So for those who think that nuclear power is clean energy, think again.  We’re talking about damaging the land before the uranium is even reprocessed.  Plus it’s very costly to refine and uses a lot of energy in the process.  Greenpeace put out a video called Left in the Dust–Uranium Mining in Niger showing a bit about how Niger has been negatively affected by uranium mining.

Is it true and/or how severe is it really?  As a lay person, I don’t really know, however, from what I’ve read and heard, I think nuclear power is a Faustian bargain.  Unfortunately for our generation, I think it’s too late.

Marlakins

Fortunately, I had everything on the list.  The only thing I needed to do aside from get my butt to class on time was make sure that my wheel was in good working order.  I pulled it out and dusted it off.  It still had yarn on a couple bobbins, so I decided that I should get that yarn off, and at the same time practice some spinning to make sure I could do it still before the class came.  I decided to spin enough to make a 2 ply yarn.  And am I glad I did that!  First of all, I never really knew how to work my wheel properly.  So fiddling around with it forced me to learn how to change bobbins and start a fresh bobbin.  I also pulled out the Lazy Kate that came with the wheel when I bought it and figured out how it was supposed to be assembled.    When, I felt I had spun enough to make a two ply, I tested out my Lazy Kate for the first time.  So far so good!  I was actually learning something!  Here’s the yarn that I got off of the wheel from that exercise. While I was able to get these two hanks from the yarn I had sitting on the bobbins, I still had a little bit more, so wanted to spin more singles to get the rest of the yarn off.  I dug in my closet and found that I still had some yarn that I was spinning on my drop spindle.  I don’t even know how many years it was sitting in there.  But I decided why not ply it with the other white I had left on the bobbin?  Eh, so I did, and this is what came out. . . ha! Ah, yeah, you see why I wanted (needed) to take a proper spinning class? But being the pack rat that I am, I still didn’t want to waste this material, so I decided to try to knit it up and see if it would knit okay.  I made a test little piece, then decided that I could make little pouches out of it.  I was going to a gathering with some of my mom’s senior citizen friends and I had picked up little trinkets that I planned to give to the ladies.  I thought putting them in little pouches would be nice.  Here’s what they looked like in progress. And here’s a picture of the completed pouches.   I sewed little pieces of fabric for the portion with the drawstrings. I pretty much taught myself how to spin after only a few minutes in the store where I first bought my drop spindle.  So, I never felt very confident that I knew what I was doing.   I still wanted to learn, so when I saw the Popular Wheel Mechanics class taught by Judith McKenzie McCuin offered, I knew that was the class I needed.  And boy oh boy am I glad I took that class!  Judith is a wealth of information, and a lovely, lovely lady to boot!  What a knowledgeable woman, and a gentle soul!  I liked her very much, but I’ll talk more about that later.  Suffice it to say that I learned a LOT in her class (both what I should be doing, and what I’ve been doing wrong, wah) and am now raring to spin! If anyone is interested in spinning, check out anything by Judith McKenzie, you won’t be disappointed. Marlakins

~Martin Luther King

Age of Deception Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times by Mohamed Elbaradei

To End All Wars by Adam hochschild (same author of King Leopold’s Ghost, which I thought was an excellent book)

Cultures of War by John W. Dower

Fallout, The True Story of the CIA’s Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking by Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, authors of the Nuclear Jihadist

Miracles on the Water, The Heroic Survivors of a World War II U-Boat Attack by Tom Nagorski

War Beneath the Waves, A True Story of Courage and Leadership Aboard a World War II Submarine by Don Keith

The Nuclear Express, A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman

Yellow Dirt, an American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed by Judy Pasternak

Dinner With Mugabe, the untold story of a freedom fighter who became a tyrant by Heidi Holland

The American Way of War by Eugene Jarecki

Third World America, How Our Politicians are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington

Prisoners of America’s Wars, from the Early Republic to Guantanamo by Stephanie Carvin

Spin Control, Techniques for Spinning the Yarn You Want by Amy King

Magnificent Mittens & Socks, the beauty of warm hands and feet by Anna Zilboorg

I’m so happy to have more reading material!  I know, I know, my library has a lot of books I can read still, too!  It’s just a weakness of mine to have access to books.   Even though I was already starting to read a book–Vietnam, the Definitive Oral History Told from All Sides by Christian G. Appy, I couldn’t help but start in on one of my new books–The Age of Deception by Mohamed Elbaradei.   So far I’m finding it very well written and also very informative.  That made me curious about the quality of the other books I purchased, so I looked up the reviews on Amazon of  all the books I purchased.  I’m happy to say that most of them had pretty good reviews.  A couple had some questionable reviews, but it looks like it was because of political biases especially the reviews for Cultures of War by John W. Dower.  And then the other book that had some bad reviews mingled in was War Beneath the Waves by Don Keith.  Apparently, Keith has lots of errors regarding submarine or nautical stuff.  Otherwise, the story is good, so it seems.  At any rate, I look forward to reading all these books.

I’m one of those creatures of habit, and I hate to see changes like Borders going out of business. . . However, I’m tempted to run down to another Borders to take advantage of their big sale, but I feel guilty that I’ve already purchased enough books.  Eh, my boys also bought books, so we’ve got a whole new load here.  But Borders is having a great sale which should be over in a few days, so for anyone interested, it might be still worth taking a peek.  If so, HURRY! as the shelves were getting mighty thin. . .

Marlakins

Yes, I know the above picture is only an artist rendition.  I guess space is a huge place and it’s not the easiest task to take actual photos  that would show us the actual amount of space junk we’ve put up there.  And when I say “we,” I mean humanity as a whole, not just the U.S.  I mean, China, Russia and other countries have space programs, too.  But, I have a feeling that the U.S is a big contributor to this space junk because I know that our military has been working on Star Wars Projects and I’ve read about nuclear tests in space and crap like that.  I’ve read about how much nuclear waste we as a collective have mined and, quite frankly, man seems to be pretty capable of executing very large projects.  Even back in the olden times such endeavors like the Great Wall of China was not too large to deter man.  Although I think the Great Wall was harmless in terms of environmental pollution, but not so with other large projects likes drilling for oil, fracking, mining for various minerals and metals, biological and toxicological experiments, etc.  I know there are some who believe all this is necessary, but there was a time when all that didn’t exist and we weren’t living in caves.  Maybe life was slower without all these modern inventions, but what’s wrong with a slower life?  Modernization has made life easier for us in some regards, but it has also made things more difficult in terms of stress and lowered health quality (think of the toxic environment we are all engulfed in and what a struggle it is to find clean food free of chemicals, GMOs, etc.)

Is the space debris really past the tipping point?  And if so, I wonder what that means to us.  Maybe my generation will not find out what the true consequence is, but likely our children’s generation will.  I hope it’s not another horror story for them.

Marlakins

Here’s the other side of the table with my sisters, Brian, and me.

One thing I love about the Philippines is the drinks. . .

My favorite is the pineapple-coconut shake, yum!

Since Abe’s is a Filipino restaurant, the “Happy Birthday” song was sung in Tagalog.  Unfortunately, I don’t have  a recording of it.

Hee, this picture makes me smile to see how my mom is smiling here.  Wish Dad were here, too.

And here’s the birthday boy with his dessert.  Not as fancy as Aaron’s was, but was still tasty nonetheless.

And last picture is of Andrew after he opened Anna’s birthday card.  My sweet friend remembered that Andrew’s birthday would be during our trip away, so she made sure to send his birthday card along so that he would be able to open it on his birthday.  What a sweet friend!  Thanks, Anna!

Okay, graduation is finished, birthday is finished, we’re now home from being away for 5 weeks. . . time to hunt for a job, Andrew. . . sigh. . .

Marlakins