Anonymous

 I have said it before: all people are entitled to their opinions, but when someone comes here to bemoan all politicians as corrupt but refuses to put their name to their comment, they will be deleted. 

He had a lot of emotion but stated no reasons for that emotion. He invoked the name of 'slick willy' but offered no explanation as to why he was focused on that presidency while overlooking current events. Decrying all politics as corrupt allows a person to avoid taking a stand. 

The comment was deleted. 

What is happening now cannot be normalized. It shouldn't be normalized. It is a time to speak up and to speak out. It is time to own your words. If you can't do this, then do not think your comments will join the words of those who do have that courage. 

Isn't it Moronic

I processed my first batch of tomatoes. Probably 3/4 of a bushel. I turned part of that into a nice pot of 'scratch' spaghetti sauce with my own fresh basil. Tim loves that. 

The rest of it just went into a pot and after cooking down, I used my immersion blender to give a quick whisk. Vòila! 12 pints of tomato sauce. 

Tim made a great discovery over the weekend. He stopped in at Albert-Down-The-Road's perpetual garage sale. There was a newish upright freezer for $150. We have a chest freezer that is probably 35 years old that runs perfectly, but it is inconvenient to dig through, and sometimes things get lost, requiring prolonged digging through frozen stuffs while standing on my head..

We will use the upright for meat storage and the chest for vegetables. In the great sorting, we think we have come up with the perfect organizational system: large Aldi shopping bags! We used crates but the plastic did not stand up to the cold. 

The most exciting thing? Today I am picking up six chickens.

I have a nice picture but blogger is not 'taking' it.

Finally.

Another point

This is something I noticed during yesterday's protest: people were not only tooting and giving us thumbs up, they were hanging out their car windows cheering for us. That has never happened before.

It is changing. 

I just feel like it is changing.

Points To Ponder

Options

 The measles have been brought into the Amish community, brought back from a Lancaster horse auction. The Amish do not vaccinate. 

 I know that Mattie is afraid. She called me to say that her oldest son had been exposed. We discussed it.  They take quarantining very seriously. Since they had a family member exposed they were all homebound. 

Tim and I predate the vaccine, but we both had measles as children. We are immune. We can also not carry it. We made a deal that the answer would always be yes. If they wound up with measles, they could count on us if they needed anything. We would run it to them. 

14 days has passed and no one in the family got the measles, but it is still going around. Pennsylvania had its first measles deaths in 35 years, both cases in Lancaster, one of them an infant.

Last night, my phone rang. Levi had questions about my opinion on the vaccine. I was a little surprised. He listened. An 'English' had told Mattie's sister that the vaccine had made her son 'slow, like Down's syndrome'. I pointed out that the first dose of vaccine is given to babies, and that developmental delays may not have been recognized. "That's true," Mattie said. I said 'Everyone has to decide for themselves, but I will always follow the science."

Long story short, we ferried everyone to the health department today. The nurse there was very patient, the paperwork completed, and 10 Amish were vaccinated.

When we got them back home, a buggy pulled in. They visited at the wagon and when they came back, Levi said they told him that they heard of a man who got the vaccine and he got measles, and got them so bad he is in the hospital. 

He looked afraid. 

It will be okay. I am sure that the man got the measles from a person, not the shot. They will get their boosters in 4 weeks. I think it will be a powerful example in their community to see an entire family vaccinated, not braindamaged, not worried about catching the measles.

Maybe people in their community will say, 'I heard about this family that got the vaccine...'

I am about to become very busy here. 

This is my raised bed of romas and San Marzanos. 

I will close with a few words of wisdom:

Plots

 The big focus today is his big bluster about renaming Lake Ontario. 

It just seems like that ridiculousness pales in comparison to this mystery:

Trump and the Kremlin both denied knowledge of it. Let's be real though. Russia is at war. Military aircraft flying over Moscow would not have gone unnoticed. I don't think the director of the CIA would have risked his own safety, the safety of his staff and the safety of the military personnel without prior contact and the official okay to do so.

Don't even ask me to comment on 22 tons of Argentinian beef that was rejected by China because it had unacceptable levels of antibiotic and amoebas. That is a lot of beef that is looking  for a place to go. 

If only there was a country who was looking for a place to buy cheap meat to ease a beef shortage at home...

Joanne's Charity of Choice

 If anyone wishes to know Joanne's charity of choice it is listed in her obituary.

 https://share.google/jFoSH3dINJaHp3TMb

Thanks to Runnin' Rose for her email.