In well over 20 years of being a scientist, and as a seeker for many years before that, I have to agree with your sentiment that god is in everything, but, truly, are you sure?

I have thought many times that the incredible beauty and truth I found in science made me feel more immediately connected with the future I hoped touched a godliness, but still, learning to be an atheist has served better.

As an atheist, I am learning to think without fear, I am understanding more about my world without the perversion that religiosity has imposed upon my emotional life.

I am enjoying, as an atheist, the mythologies I have read, rather than trying to compare and contrast them with the mythology of Xtianity that was inculcated into my brain as a young child.

I prefer, as an atheist, to not wax poetic about god, using science, no matter how beautiful that histological slide looks under the microscope, no matter how that electron imaging stuns me, no matter how joyful the birds play in my trees in winter.

It is all so cool.

But does that mean that a god (or gods) demands fealty just because it makes me feel good?

Perhaps not.

More importantly, which may be to the point, the Republican Conservative Christian demand to perpetuate ignorance of science so as to not disturb the fragile and fungible status quo of an earth history of only 6,000 years and a story of all creation arising in a matter of less than a week, is weak, it is very, very, weak as an exultation of god, any god.

While House Republicans Prove the Clown Car Holds More than Prez Candidates...

The Do-Nothing Republican House of Representitives, while attempting to obstruct progress on the simple issue of over-taxing the lowest-income Americans, has completely missed the fact that the EPA of the Obama Administration was successful in promulgating rules to regulate toxic mercury emissions. Finally.

This is good regulation because preventable impacts of mercury pollutants on birth defects and learning disabilities, as well as respiratory illnesses, have a positive impact on our economy and the potential of people to be productive citizens.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/the-meaning-of-mercury/?nl=opinion&emc=tyb1

Holiday Hot Clam Dip for Bread

Hot Clam Spread for Bread

12-ounces chopped clams
1 to 6 cloves garlic (tsp of butter)
1 bunch green onions
2 Tbs fresh cilantro chopped
1- 8 ounce pkg cream cheese
2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbs Horseradish sauce
Baguette French Bread or Bread Bowl

- slice or dice garlic and heat in butter
- drain clams of juice and heat with garlic
- slice green onions and mash in a medium bowl with cream cheese, cilantro, Worcestshire and horseradish sauces; stir in clam-garlic mixture and mix thoroughly.
You can add salt and up to two tablespoons of lemon juice, if you prefer.

Bowl: Remove soft bread from inside bowl and fill with mixture. Cover and Bake at 350 to 370F for 20 minutes. Uncover and broil for two minutes. This can be used as hot dip.

Baguette: slice and spread dip on each slice then broil for two minutes under high.

My Mom is So Funny, page 9

My Birth Story:

My sister says: " I always thought our birthday stories were great indicators of our later personalities."

Summer 1955, hottest day on record for the Puget Sound area. Cut to the Hospital Maternity Wing, where halls & rooms are overflowing with pregnant women at term or nearly so. Some are actually in labor, others are not but very much want to be.

EM, the mother-to-be: “My baby’s coming, I think it’s time for me for me to push.”

Nurse Midwife: “No, we are not moving you to the Labor Ward. It’s not your turn.”

EM, looking up, incredulous: “I don’t think my baby is interested in whose turn it is. I can feel the head.”

Within 10 minutes, her new baby Bretta arrives in the pre-labor-room staging area.

EM: “Would you like me to go into the labor room and show them how it’s done?”

Nurse Midwife: “No, you have done quite enough already.”

Wild Horses Couldn't Drag Me Away

Can I be your wild horse? he asks.

Do you know what you are asking? I say.

He says, yes... do you know what I am asking?

No, I say,
Either you want to be my pony or
you want me to ride you.
I just have to adjust to the idea of
just using you for sex but not
sleeping all night with you.
It's not a bad thing - I just don't want it to be a short-term thing.

So, tell me what you're asking.

I beg of you - I've wanted you for so long.
I know you have wanted me.
I know you.
But I don't know you.
I don't think it will last,
but that doesn't matter - because
why,
why do I think I'm entitled to a sex life?
It isn't an ordained right, it isn't a godly promise,
It is just lust, it is just desire.
A biological drive, a bent that will get me into more trouble than not.

Chances are I won't take the safe path
I will anticipate your first kiss
I will anticipate your fingers in my lady-stuff
I will anticipate how you hold my hips
I anticipate how you will be deep inside me
I am in you and you in me and we...

Moose and Mother as Muse

It's like something important dropped from my hands, crashed to the kitchen floor, shattered to a thousand sparklies and it's gone. You can expect something for a long time, and know it's coming, even want it, yet still not be quite prepared. Just like that, it was dropped and gone.

I called the nurse after I washed and lotioned and dressed her, after I painted her nails, put her lipstick on and did her hair, so she'd be ready; the nurse called the chaplain.

Chaplain Fran came right over, but before sitting down to her prayers, a tiny moose walked under the window - a moose far, far too young to not have a mama nearby.

A moose represents movement to and from this world, movement in the void, truths acknowledged that were denied, parts of the hidden self that are found, strength and self respect, and unseen speed.

With unseen speed she was gone, even if we both knew for weeks it was coming, but like seeing the bullet train I can only remember the Doppler effect.

The tiny moose is back this morning, looking hungry; it is not quite light yet. Something scared it back between the houses; the wind is up, and it has lain down next to my crawl-space vent. Something about it taking shelter at my house comforts me, even more than knowing my mother is free of the in-valid body that had trapped her for the last forty years.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." If that is true my mother was the strongest person I ever knew. Making the step to trust me, to come from her lifelong home to live with me in Alaska was a huge step; the trusting me, I mean. In the last two years she told me many things about her I never knew - even one or two things I think she had never acknowledged to herself.

Lucky me - I was not her favorite child - yet we have had a lovely time.

Farming Chickens at Forty Below

Farming at Forty Below

Well, it's not really forty below, yet, but that's the low end of the range I heard it would be this week, here, due to the wind chill.

Wind chill caused by really high winds, of course; maybe not hurricane level but 40 to 50 mile-an-hour gusts that turn last week's 24 inches of new snow into ice-balls of grit that cut my eyes with a thousand knives. Try crossing the street in traffic with your eyes closed; either way, open or shut, it seems dangerous.

Mom's Home-Health Nurse had asked me yesterday how my hens were doing in the cold.

This is an exciting subject for me (I hear my dad saying, "Simple Things for Simple Minds") but it is so important - how do you manage farm animals in an environment that is normally outside their biological temperature range? I have a modicum of success at this process; my hens are only five months old and I have one which laid her third egg this week; last year I was getting seven eggs a day from eight hens. How do I do that?

Gather, children, and you shall hear, of low-temp composting; winter with no fear.

Seriously - if the power goes off, and my hens are under lights, the cold might kill them or at least frostbite their tender parts.

Does the power go off in this huge metropolis, the Gotham City of Alaska, the population center of the earthquake capital (the clitoris of the world) "South Central Alaska," otherwise known as Anchorage? Yes. More than we would like it to - we are vulnerable to coastal, sea-borne weather; maybe not as much as those cities on the Aleutian Islands, but enough to keep us on our toes.

I digress. Winter low-temperature composting is not only easy, and practical, it is obviously a lifesaver. Well-planned, it can work for large animals, too.

My dad, my beloved dad, was a practical guy, an engineer, energetic, busy, always on-the-go, always trying things, a gadget man, a man's man, "Ace" they called him, during his semi-pro hockey days, a winner, a handsome man, a lady-killer hopelessly devoted to my mother.

He was also an organic farmer, following the principles taught by Rodale's Organic Gardening magazine, and even maintained his hydroponic greenhouse for years.

My dad bought me chickens, let me raise them and sell the eggs to the neighbors - he bought the feed and let me keep the profits - I was a teenager, but, What A Guy! to let me have that kind of fun.

It was in the Rodale magazine that I learned that the immune system of chickens does better in deep litter. The concept of 'deep litter' is that you keep adding bedding to the barn, not removing the old bedding, at least not all of it, as long as those chickens are in that area. For practical reasons, you only need to maintain it to three or four feet deep.

As the chickens live and scratch, eat and drink, and obviously, defecate, the litter begins a low-temperature composting process, developing the appropriate microorganisms that will maintain the hens immune systems at a healthy level. The additional advantage is that it keeps their barn at a comfortable temperature of 60 degrees F, when our outside temperatures, for example, right now is at minus nine Fahrenheit.

An additional concern with chickens, as with elderly quadriplegic mothers, is hydration. I take advantage of the composting process. I partially bury a three-gallon bucket in the litter, adding two gallons water each day. The dirty water is added to the litter - because a proper compost relies on moisture, as well as the waste matter of carbon (hay, sawdust, shredded paper) and nitrogen (fecal matter and kitchen scraps). The brilliance of this plan uses the habit of hens to scratch and turn the bedding, adding air to the process.

Successful composting depends on the four elements: fire-earth-air-water. Earth is the bedding, the carbon base, and nitrogen; water is self-explanatory; air is provided by the constant turning by the chickens, and fire is the biological process of microorganisms that actually break down waste turning it into usable soil.

Low-temperature composting creates a higher quality product. A compost process that exceeds 110F will cause the desirable components to be turned to ash, rendering potential nutrients unusable to your plants.

The last two parts of my hen management is light and nutrition - hens need a minimum of 14 hours of daylight to ovulate, that is, to lay eggs, and a feed that contains at least 16 to 20 percent protein. I use a red heat lamp for the light - chickens are less likely to pick at each other under red light than a regular white light - not sure why.

from here to there

My ex-husband's daughter just had a baby girl. She sent pictures, so I made a couple of comments about who she looked like, then asked the new mommy how she's doing.

I got an answer right back, a good one. This stepdaughter was so bright, and had so many struggles; a child of divorce without any privileges; of deprivation and values I didn't approve of; of conflicts between me and that.

It is so hard to become part of a relationship that had ended before you knew it existed, but somehow, years later, I helped the girl and she's honored me ever since.

The new mommy answers, "It varies from time of day. Tired, overjoyed, frustrated, satisfied. Its a roller coaster. Just when I feel I'm starting to get the hang of something the game changes. It is very exhausting to try to always be two steps ahead.

I must say that the my mom and you made it look easy. I would have never guessed that neither one of you were given a manual at the start."

I broke into tears... 24 years just flowed, a river, a deluge, a perfect storm. I answered her immediately.

Oh, please, honey, I fell in love with you when you were four years old and got a beesting.

You'll always be in my heart - that's where the manual is hidden.

When you would be totally frustrated (long before your sisters were born) and would twirl to the ground in your cutest of dresses, well, what could we do but laugh... and forgive.

Yup... there's a lot of good stuff in getting older, but you have to start with that silly baby.

I will always be grateful to your dad for knowing how to wrap a baby snug in that tiny blanket so she doesn't cry.

I'm pretty sure he did that for you, and that is all you have to do for Ellie.

Hold her tight and EVERY DAY tell her she is loved, she is smart, she is strong, and she is beautiful.

Then she will ask you questions.

Then you listen.

Then you reflect to her what you know.

Then the love comes back to you in droves.

And that is what family is... being aware.

I love you to the moon and back, Alice. (look it up)

Yup. I done good. Three perfect daughters, with good lives ahead of them, and now, the next generation come, with bells on..

Who Cares Anymore About Sarah Palin?

As anyone in range of the so-called Lame Stream Media knows by now, Joe McGinniss' long awaited reprise of the salacious story of Sarah Palin, half-term Governor of Alaska, Dominionist Christian, and social-network political playa-cum-pitbull, was published today as The Rogue.

So far I like the book - although we've heard most of the stories before, there seems to be a little more in-depth and a little more in-context with the character of "The Valley," where Mrs. Palin's hometown of Wasilla, the world's longest strip mall, is located, and, of course, now we have Joe's word that each item has been verified by several sources.

Comparing The Rogue Sarah with Herman the Rogue Yak was pretty funny.

I'm waiting to get to the part where he shows what he said was the coup de grace, what really made Sarah quit - I'm betting it was something more deeply unethical than what has been described before - but who knows; Teflon Sarah seems to get away with a lot.

Amazing, also, too, how Republican activist Andrea McLeod got most of the credit for the more than 20 charges of ethical breaches, as well as the brunt of vilification, when it was another Palin long-time friend and neighbor Zane Henning who had filed three of the ethics charges that stuck good.

Many people, according to Joe, stopped by the house he conveniently rented next to Sarah Palin's home, to offer him a variety of arsenal, of powerful guns to defend himself from the rabid, foaming, slathering sycophants Sarah was inciting to hate the author with her angry lies and distortions.

It makes it seem like everyone in Alaska has a houseful of guns, which is patently not true.

Jay Cross was one who offered help but I didn't like how he made Jay sound like a hick - I've known the Crosses many years and I don't think he sounds like that; characterizing Jay as having a good sense of propriety and a heart of gold is accurate, though.

I am also surprised at how many of these people I have crossed paths with through the years, underlining a fundamental truth about Alaska: it is a very small town.

.