ShirleyGram

September - October 2022

AFFIRMATION:

I will strive to nourish my connection to Nature and strive to hear, and understand, the messages she brings me.

I’ve been in California for a while now, enjoying the beach, and the weather, when it’s not too hot. Most of all I’ve enjoyed connecting with friends I hadn’t seen since the Covid outbreak.

I’ve noticed that I’ve become more aware of what others are really feeling, often despite what their words are trying to convey. I find myself being less judgmental of others and still presenting myself with lessons of patience, at which I think I’m improving. I’ve almost come to the conclusion that the time in isolation might have acted as a catalyst for me opening to a deeper realm beyond the physicality of our world.

I find I still hermit quite a bit, reading more, watching documentaries and old musicals, and spending time with my Rat Terriers. My personal life, since Covid, seems simpler, even as much of the world acts as though it wants to be involved in some sort of conflict.

I hope you have come through the pandemic with a sense of contentment, too. Just imagine what would happen if that sense of inner peace moved from person to person and enveloped the globe.

No one expected the survival of the Atlantic puffins because in 1902 there were only two remaining. Located on small islands off the coast of Maine, an effort has been underway for 50 years to conserve the terns and puffins. That effort has produced a stable breeding colony of thousands of birds. Many felt the warming temperatures and a lighthouse manned for decades by the U.S. Coast Guard had created the decline of the birds.

The lighthouse was automated in the late 1970s and temperatures began to moderate and even cool. Man was no longer interfering with the feathered population and it was a perfect time for the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge, an Audubon Society member, to bring puffin chicks from Newfoundland. That project began in 1972.

Today there are more than 1,300 pairs of puffins across several islands, mostly on Eastern Egg Rock, Seal Island, and Matinicus Rock.

The project was the first one in history that restored a seabird to an offshore island, and it wasn’t a guaranteed success. In 2009 the puffin breeding pairs fell to 47, while only 16% of all tern chicks reached adolescence. As the weather continued to cool over the years, more and more chicks reached adulthood. The broods were growing in number and the project has been declared a victory.

These friends came together to help the environment by collecting more than 1.05 million gallons of paint from landfills. They rescued used, partially filled cans, refilled and remixed them to give each one a new lease on life.

Cat Hyde and Kate Moree wanted to make a difference by repurposing waste material, while making money at the same time.

Since settling on paint and co-founding Seagulls in 2004, the pair has collected around 300 tons of paint each year from the landfill. “We started by just collecting half-used paint tins in the back of my car,” Cat said.

Their company now employs 14 staff members who manage 10 volunteers in their English hometown of Leeds, Yorkshire. The team collects and then sorts the good and bad paint and re-blends it with new colors requested by customers—all at an affordable price of 75% less than in the stores.

After three years of separation from her mother, a pair of elephants has been reunited, thanks to the goodhearted people of Elephant Nature Park in Thailand. The baby elephant, named Me-Bai, had been taken from her mother over three years ago and forced into the Thai tourism industry.

Elephants are often taken as young calves from their mothers to work in the so-called ‘entertainment industry’, usually in the form of elephant riding or as performing animals. Elephants have long lives. Asian elephants like Me-Bai live between 60 and 80 years and, because of the entertainment industry, can spend their lives away from their natural habitats and other elephants.

Me-Bai was made to work all day and night, giving rides to tourists. Still a baby and was years away from maturity, which is considered 17.

Me-Bai was rescued by Elephant Nature Park and the animal charity set out to find her mother. After a few weeks of detective work, the team found her mother, Mae Yum, and the pair was reunited. (It looks to me like they’re smiling.)

The Elephant Nature Park is dedicated to rescuing elephants like Me-Bai who have suffered at the hands of humans. It was established in the 1990s, and sits within 250 acres of rainforest, 60 km from Chiang Mai, Thailand. The co-founder of the park, Sangduen “Lek” Chailert travels all over Thailand to provide education to elephant trainers and others in the hope that these majestic beings can live in their natural habitats, with minimal human contact.

I came across a book written a few years ago titled, The Impact of Identity: The Power of Knowing Who You Are, by Irina Nevzlin. The author explains how our beliefs are constantly challenged, more so now than ever before, and that if we are unaware of our identity, those challenges can be devastating. Her book suggests ways to establish a resilient identity that can flow through most any experience to have a more fulfilling life. You can learn more about it here: https://tinyurl.com/49u5ftuk

In Iceland, homes, offices, and greenhouses are heated from geothermic energy that is harnessed from steam and hot water that is generated by the many volcanoes in this land of fire and ice. Most of the world does not have a supply of volcanoes available but geothermal heat can be found almost anywhere.

In the UK renewable energy is now generating more than 40 percent of electricity. Most of it comes from wind turbines and solar panels. But now, a deep well, geothermal project near Cornwell, is expected to export energy to the grid.

Geothermal energy is best described as the heat within the earth, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). In fact, the word geothermal comes from the Greek words for Earth and heat.

The energy produced has long been used for heating buildings and recently to produce electricity. Because heat is continuously produced under the crust of the Earth, it is considered renewable energy. The deeper you go—the hotter the temperatures—the more power will be produced.

Geothermal energy is already being used in the UK to provide heat for high profile buildings in London including the City Hall and the Royal Festival Hall. There are shallow geothermal projects in the works in the UK that go from 25m to 5.2 kilometers below the surface.

The depth of reaching this heat can be a challenge but it is a constant, renewable, natural source of energy that apparently does not damage Nature, as wind turbines can with bird kills and elevated heat. Geothermal energy also does not present a disposal problem, as do solar batteries.

This is possibly an avenue for the production of power that should be explored more.

Forest farming is an ancient and sustainable way to grow food. Although it’s currently a trend that is starting to become very popular, it actually dates back to ancient times, according to the organization Food and Trees for Africa. While modern agriculture tries to shape nature, food forests offer a way of growing food that cooperates with the natural world.

Biodiverse food forests were used in the past to provide the Hawaiian Islands with plentiful food and medicinal herbs, but those days of abundance disappeared when colonists began cultivating sugar cane and pineapples. Large one-crop plantations took over most of the island’s fertile land, leaving behind depleted soil.

That’s beginning to change. Farmers are restoring Hawaii’s ancient food forests. On Maui, one of the largest islands of Hawaii, forests on the mountains used to provide food sovereignty for the island. Now between 85 to 90 percent of the food is imported, according to the state’s government.

With agriculture dominated by industrial farming and, due to few restrictions on the use of pesticides, the state became the place where biotech GMOs flourished. Couple that with degraded soil, and small-scale natural farming is difficult in what was once a tropical paradise. Nonetheless, the farmers wish to return to ancient native methods of producing and harvesting food and medicinal plants.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) have invented a biodegradable battery that is printed onto paper. The paper battery could revolutionize single-use electronics, and it turns on with droplets of water.

Because humans are using electronics for more things than ever before, there is a huge environmental effect, especially with battery technology. Batteries that are sent to landfills can release toxic chemicals into the ground, such as mercury, cadmium, lead, and nickel, which has detrimental effects on our water supply.

It’s estimated that our use of batteries will increase 11 fold between 2020 and 2030. And at the same time our reliance on single use micro-devices is set to expand dramatically within the next decade.

The Empa battery has the potential to decrease the environmental toll of batteries, particularly from single-use devices, and possibly be more cost effective. It’s printed using a modified 3D printer, which prints the battery using their recipe of carbon, cellulose, glycerin and table salt.

When water is added, the salt dissolves and releases charged ions. At the negative terminal, the ions come into contact zinc causing it to oxidize—essentially causing it to rust, and release electrons.

The battery can store electricity for hours and has been used to power a small digital clock in a prototype. It can withstand thousands of cycles of charges and discharges, be stored for years without use, as well as survive freezing temperatures. It’s also shock and pressure resistant.

When you no longer need the battery, it can be simply popped into a compost bin and within two months it will have completely degraded to non-toxic, non-harmful matter.

I wonder how long it will be before they create a paper battery for EVs? It would certainly be easier and safer to dispose of and less costly.

We only have one meteor shower in October. The Draconid shower, whose maximum is on October 8th and 9th is a real oddity, in that the radiant point stands highest in the sky as darkness falls. That means that, unlike many meteor showers, more Draconids are likely to fly in the evening hours than in the morning hours after midnight. This shower is usually a sleeper, producing only a handful of languid meteors per hour in most years. But watch out if the Dragon awakes! In rare instances, fiery Draco has been known to spew forth many hundreds of meteors in a single hour. That possibility keeps many sky watchers outside—even in moonlight—during this shower.

 

October’s Full Moon on October 9th, is called the Hunter’s Moon because it is also particularly bright and is in the sky for a lengthy period of time, giving hunters the opportunity to hunt at night. This is the month when the game is fattened up for winter and is the time original peoples laid in a store of provisions for the long, cold months ahead.

Other nicknames include: the Drying Rice Moon, the Falling Leaves Moon, the Freezing Moon, the Ice Moon, the Migrating Moon, the Dying Grass Moon and the Travel Moon.

The images and knowledge that the Webb Telescope is bringing to the world continues to leave me enthralled! The image of the Tarantula Nebula is stunning and the description they provide (below) makes me wonder what else they might discover!

“In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust. The most active region appears to sparkle with massive young stars, appearing pale blue. Scattered among them are still-embedded stars, appearing red, yet to emerge from the dusty cocoon of the nebula. NIRCam is able to detect these dust-enshrouded stars thanks to its unprecedented resolution at near-infrared wavelengths.

"To the upper left of the cluster of young stars, and the top of the nebula’s cavity, an older star prominently displays NIRCam’s distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artifact of the telescope’s structure. Following the top central spike of this star upward, it almost points to a distinctive bubble in the cloud. Young stars still surrounded by dusty material are blowing this bubble, beginning to carve out their own cavity. Astronomers used two of Webb’s spectrographs to take a closer look at this region and determine the chemical makeup of the star and its surrounding gas. This spectral information will tell astronomers about the age of the nebula and how many generations of star birth it has seen.

"Farther from the core region of hot young stars, cooler gas takes on a rust color, telling astronomers that the nebula is rich with complex hydrocarbons. This dense gas is the material that will form future stars. As winds from the massive stars sweep away gas and dust, some of it will pile up and, with gravity’s help, form new stars.”

NIRCam was built by a team at the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center.

The image is courtesy of: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

Autumn offers new tastes for our palate. Herbs and spices provide incredible health benefits, add new and unique flavors to our favorite dishes, and can enrich our homes with new fragrances. Don’t shy away from growing spices at home; they’re simpler to cultivate than one might think!

When we use herbs and spices we have planted, we also increase their health properties, because they are picked moments before they are consumed. And each has a unique flavor because they are grown more mindfully than conventional farming.

* Ginger can be planted both indoors or outdoors, and is a versatile, powerful, and delicious addition to dishes. Ginger is an ancient elixir known to reduce nausea, muscle pain, inflammation, and reduce blood sugar. Throw it in Asian dishes, such as stir-fries and curries, in soup for a fun zest, or in a shake for an extra kick.

* Cumin seeds are harvested in fall. Cumin is known for its digestive properties, iron density, and for its potential ability to fight diabetes. Sprinkle ground cumin on legume-rich dishes, such as lentil soup for ultimate flavor.

* Thyme is a hardy winter plant that grows wonderfully in well-drained soil. It’s an immune-boosting plant with antifungal properties and is ideal in a tasty stew.

* Rosemary is another low-maintenance, hardy plant that often grows wild. Rosemary is known for its relaxing aroma and antiseptic properties. It’s delicious infused in olive oil, sprinkled on potatoes, or baked into breads.

I recently read an article in Psychology Today that demonstrated how words of poetry could be used to heal. It suggested that you:

“Prepare a fresh sheet of paper and a comfortable pen. Write the words “I confess” in bold, at the top of the page. Underneath, fill the paper with scribbled prose and lyrics related to your passion or confession. Try to use vivid imagery and descriptive metaphors that arouse all five senses at once. Don’t be afraid to go deep, speak from the heart, and bear your soul on the paper.

“It doesn’t matter if the words that come pouring out of the pen, and out of the heart, are publishable. Their biggest impact won’t be on the reader, but rather on you, as the poet.

“For decades, poetry therapy has been a popular tool for doctors, and therapists alike. As far back as the American Civil War, Walt Whitman utilized poems about courage and combat to inspire and heal wounded soldiers.

“Doctor-poets, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Carlos Williams empathized with patients and kept their own mental faculties in check through the power of prose. Yale and Harvard’s Medical Schools teach aspiring future doctors to connect to healing forms of writing as well.

“In the past few years, a number of studies have emerged, corroborating what lyricists have known all along. The very process of engaging with poetry is transformational and has real-world benefits.

“According to researchers, Xiang and Yi, “Whether it is coping with pain, dealing with stressful situations, or coming to terms with uncertainty, poetry can benefit a patient’s well-being, confidence, emotional stability, and quality of life.”

“Another study, quoted in this article, followed a group of 44 pediatric patients who were hospitalized. After these children participated in poetry therapy and were encouraged to read and write rhymes, their mental health showed demonstrable improvements. These patients felt happier, calmer, and less fearful. As per the study, for the children “poetry was a welcome distraction from stress and an opportunity for self-reflection.”

With everything the world is experiencing, it might be a beneficial experiment.

We know that dogs are happy when they see us but a recent study indicates that dogs cry “happy tears” when their owners come home. A scientist whose own pup welled up with joy whenever they reunited inspired the study.

Dogs have tear ducts designed to flush dirt from their eyes, but the process had never been linked with emotion—until now. Professor Takefumi Kikusui decided to investigate after his poodle had puppies and he noticed the dog’s face changed when it nursed the babies. It had tears in its eyes.

That gave him the idea that oxytocin might be causing the watery flood—and dogs, like humans, may produce tears when they are flooded with emotion.

Oxytocin is known as the maternal or “love hormone” and he knew from earlier observations that oxytocin is released in both dogs and their owners during interactions. So, he decided to run an experiment to see if it brought dogs to tears.

Prof. Kikusui, of Azabu University in Japan, used a standard test to measure dogs’ baseline tear volume before reuniting with their owners. They found the volume indeed went up by 10% when the animals got back together with their favorite human.

Interestingly, oxytocin did not increase when it was a person they didn’t know well.

“We had never heard of the discovery that animals shed tears in joyful situations, such as reuniting with their owners, and we were all excited that this would be a world first!” said Kikusui, whose study was in the journal Current Biology.

Some very special polar bears are living in southeastern Greenland on freshwater fjords without access to the sea. Since polar bears typically hunt in seawaters, astonished scientists now have hope that polar bears may be able to adapt to diminishing sea ice according to the study published in Science.

Scientists grew to understand that polar bears are resilient. This particular group has adapted to living at the edge of glaciers, which are available to them year-round. Other polar bears, who rely on sea ice for hunting platforms, only have access to the frozen areas for approximately 100 days a year.

This particular group of polar bears have lived in the region for several hundred years; isolated by mountains and the ocean currents, several hundred live in the fjords with access to hunting all year. During summers, they are able to hunt in slushy, fresh waters.

They are smaller than other polar bears, with adult males weighing 560 pounds and the females weighing 400 pounds. In contrast, male polar bears in the Beaufort Sea weigh an average of 1,000 pounds and females weigh half that. The University of Washington’s Applied Physics lab and NASA have collected data during the last seven years and the researchers used radio collars to track the bears in nature and were able to get DNA from fur tufts.

“We knew there were some bears in the area from historical records and Indigenous knowledge. We just didn’t know how special they were,” said co-author Kristin Laidre, from the University of Washington.

Polar bears are strong, being the only marine mammal that spends months at sea, yet can cover many miles running on land with powerful limbs. They can swim for days, covering over 1,000 miles, and have an incredible sense of smell; detecting seals buried under three feet of snow. They also have acute hearing and great long-distance vision.

Many assume they are aggressive, but polar bears tend to be cautious, preferring to escape confrontations. And now, thanks to this new research, polar bears are also understood as being adaptable and resilient.

Researchers predict that the ice in southeastern Greenland, where this particular group lives, may resemble polar ice by the end of the 21st century. The success of these polar bears offers hope that this species will have survival strategies as climates change.

A penguin with a foot condition has a pair of custom-made orthopedic shoes to help correct a degenerative foot condition.

Lucas is a 4 year-old African penguin who resides in the San Diego Zoo. He was diagnosed with a condition called bumblefoot, which is a bacterial infection common in birds and rodents. The condition causes inflammation in the footpad and can be fatal if left untreated.

The pair of shoes made for Lucas will prevent sores occurring on his feet. The orthopedic shoes are purposefully black, so that they match the color of his feet as much as possible. The shoes were made by non-profit Thera-Paw, who designs custom products for animals with special needs.

“The boots are cushioned and Velcroed in place, so they will help Lucas to fully participate in the colony and showcase behaviors that are more typical for a penguin—such as climbing the rocks, swimming, nesting and finding a suitable mate,” says senior veterinarian Dr. Beth Bicknese.

Since being fitted for new shoes, Lucas is walking like a normal penguin. He has also managed to find love in the form of a new girlfriend. The image is courtesy BBC

Great autumn smells will soon be filling the air. To get an early start you might want to try these essential oil recipes in your hot pot:

6 drops of orange oil

6 drops of cedar wood oil

4 drops of patchouli oil

          Or this one:

8 drops of lemon oil

4 drops of rosemary oil

4 drops of bergamot

These recipes are warming and energizing and will refresh your home.

One-quarter of Americans believe they have a clutter problem at home.

Moving from one season to another is a wonderful time to declutter your house. Make a day of it, choose a room, and remove items no longer in use.

Keep this in mind:

• If you haven’t used it in a year, you probably don’t need it.

• Don’t keep items because you feel obligated to keep them.

• Get rid of duplicates.

• If clothing items no longer fit you, they need a new home.

• If you aren’t certain if you should keep something, step back and think about it. How is it serving you?

Sell, give away, donate, upcycle, or throw away items that no longer have use. You will probably be amazed at what you collect.

CALENDAR:

September 2022 is Wilderness Month. Appreciate Nature

September 15 – International Day of Democracy

September 17 – Constitution & Citizenship Day – US

Oktoberfest begins

September 18 – AIDS and Aging Awareness Day

September 21- International Day of Peace

September 22 – Equinox

World Rhino Day

September 23 – International Day of Sign Language

September 25 – Rosh Hashana (begins)

Gold Star Mother’s Day

Daughter’s Day

September 27 – National Voter Registration Day – US

World Tourism Day

September 28 – Son’s Day

September 29 – World Heart Day

October 2022 is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

October 1 – International Day of Older Persons

World Vegetarian Day

October 2 – International Day of Non-Violence

October 3 – World Habitat Day

October 4 – Yom Kippur (Begins)

World Animal Day

October 7 – World Smile Day – Share it with someone you don’t know.

October 10 – Thanksgiving – Canada

Indigenous People’s Day

World Mental Health Day

October 11 – International Day of the Girl

October 13 – World Sight Day

October 14 – Dessert Day - yum!

October 15 – International Day of Rural Women

AFTER THOUGHT:

"The power of surrender to a guided synchronicity has been the most meaningful lesson of my life. I wish it hadn't taken so long!

Shirley MacLaine

Sage-ing While Age-ing

Atria Books, 2007

~~~

Created and Written by Shirley MacLaine and Brit Elders