October, 2012 - Bettina Network's Blog

Archive for October, 2012

Cleaning Wood Furniture

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2012

I read and followed your blog on Cleaning Wood furniture from February, 2010.  If you want to refresh your memory the address is https://www.bettina-network.com/blog/?m=201002 or check on the left side of this page and click on February 2010.  I would like to make a suggestion for change.  We started using your method and got great results.  Recently, we talked to friends of ours who suggested we substitute Walnut Oil for the Olive Oil or add half and half – half Olive Oil to half Walnut Oil and then add the lemongrass oil.

We tried this with a soft cloth on a piece of wood furniture and it worked really great.  We also tried plain Walnut Oil instead of Olive Oil and that worked just as well.

Because I like Walnut Oil better than Olive Oil I think I will continue to use the Walnut Oil for cleaning and polishing wood furniture.  My friend cautioned me against using Walnut Oil because she said it ‘stinks.”  Nothing could stink as badly as the petroleum derivative oils that most use on their wood furniture.  It is amazing what we humans can become accustomed to as normal and refuse to change or find the change inferior.

I tried using lemon juice and that was phenomenal, but I don’t always feel up to squezing a lemon and mixing it with the oils.  Using just a few drops of essential lemongrass oil was simpler.  The essential oil was one addition that I thought was super.

Thanks for your blog.  It causes me to experiment and I have found several new possibilities which are healthier than what I was doing.  This Walnut Oil – Olive Oil – Essential Lemongrass Oil is one of the best I’ve found.  Its quick, easy, much cheaper than the commercial preparations – which I believe are harmful to your health and certainly ruin your hands.  What makes me angry is that I have to pay much money to have my hands and health ruined while they spend my money on marketing to get me to buy an inferior product.  This made my hands soft and beautiful as a result of oiling my furniture – who knew!  It might even mitigate my getting a manicure so often!

If your readers have a hard time finding essential lemongrass oil they might try Frontier Co-op.  Aura Cacia, whose products are offered through Frontier, sells essential lemongrass oil.  Instead of the .5 bottles, you might contact them for 4 ounces, which makes more sense with this use for the essential oil.  I love essential oil of lavendar and maybe one day I will try that when I oil my wood furniture, but for today I will stick with essential lemongrass oil.

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Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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The “Perfect” Storm

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2012

How does a Bettina home survive a storm which threatens to down power lines, flood areas and generally disrupt life as we are accustomed to living it with all that we take for granted?

To give you an idea of how we do it, what follows are a few tips from a couple of Bettina Families:

1)  We discourage your buying water in those plastic water bottles, for all the reasons articulated many places.  We notice when you go to the store,  just before a storm, the aisles are full of boxes of those water bottles, just waiting for you to come and spend a small fortune stocking up.

What to use instead?  Try natural, organic, unadulterated coconut water.  It is good for dehydration, will give you a small amount of nutrients and keeps your thirst quenched longer than plastic water and it won’t add chemicals to your system, which the plastic bottles can do by leeching out some of their troublesome chemicals into the water.  That happens especially when the plastic bottles of water are stored in warehouses at too high a temperature, which facilitates their  discharging a bit of their plastic into the water and you don’t know which are or were not so stored.

2)  For food – try the simple things, which your parents and grandparents probably knew by instinct.  Buy several dozen organic eggs (without the ‘Omega 3 added’ label.  Just plain organic eggs from cage free chickens which roam around in the sun pecking as chickens do.  Hard boil a dozen or so, depending upon the number of people in your home during the storm and put them aside in case you need nourishment without electricity.

3)  Try wild canned sardines in olive oil.  Several cans with great organic crackers as a treat.  You can also add dry organic cereal – lots of fruit – organic nuts, raisins, dried cranberries and other such foods, which are good to eat after and don’t introduce problems into your body which you will regret after the storm passes.

Hope these few tips help you prepare for the storms coming up.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

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Poetry – Valerie Gillies

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

copyright 2012 Marceline Donaldson

We experienced a wonderful, brief, impromptu concert of troubador harp music by daughter accompanying her mother’s poetry recitation.  It was a magical time.  We thought we would share with you a small glimpse of Valerie Gillies’ poetry.  She has several books of poetry, if you are interested and would like to read and know more about her work.  “Her poems are rooted in an elemental world, and take from nature a lightness as well as a terrestrial substance. At the technical level her experiments with the musical dimension of poetry increase its diversity and resonance: she sees message and form as indivisible.”

They were in Cambridge for a Celtic Conference which brings in the most interesting, talented and gracious people.  We look forward to their arrival every year.

copyright 2012 Valerie Gillies

FRUID WATER

Tune:  “Logan Water”

“Fruid Water, furthest of all from the sea,

yours is the voice that means far more to me

than the salty wave flowing up the beach

of a great stretch of ocean I may never reach.

Little I care for foaming breakfers on the shore

or the surface calm that moves so much slower

if I hear your notes that are sweeter than the surf

of all the different waters of the earth.

 

I don’t need to see the whale or sea-wrack,

the flight of the gannet, the diving of the shag,

I long to watch your trout or your owl flying low,

on your banks I hear the sudden hooves of the roe.

Each of us finds that you can quench our thirst,

stream and surrounding terrain belong together from the first.

In the face of the light you become, through your quality,

like an eye reflecting us in transparency.

 

Huge masses of water roll in the oceans,

deep currents circulate, of gigantic proportions,

but where you flow freely and trickle over stones

you play with waves in rhythm, vibrate and sing along.

Out of vapour you have come back to liquid,

you return in your course every time to Fruid.

Evaporting, loop with air currents and precipitate:

between earth and heaven you mediate.

 

Your moving form issuing from the hills

twists in strands of water changed like turning veils;

they make a rope that spirals down the glen,

new water falling through it to refresh men.

I can tell by the current as it swirls along

where it comes from, what rocks cause its tensions,

and I praise your wave shape through which the water flows,

for they remain the same, and rarely go.

 

From “The Chanter’s Tune” a book of poetry by Valerie Gillies                                                                                                                                                        Published by Canongate Publishing Limited Edinburgh Scotland

Republished here with permission of the author/poet

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Thanks for your Presidential Post!

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

I would like to add just a couple things, which I think need to be highlighted:

We read lots about minorities playing the “race card.”  No one has said one word about the races taking place today – presidential and otherwise where one person running is blatantly using the ‘race card’ against their opponent.  For example, in Massachusetts Scott Brown is heavily using race in all of his campaign ads and rallies.  So much so that his staff has taken to making tomaawk chops and the supposed Indian war cry at his rallies.  They have picked up what is really being said and they are letting the rest of us know what’s really going on by their actions.

Romney’s campaign is doing the same thing.  It was much discussed after Obama won the presidency that racism would intensify in this country because of his win.  But, no one said why or how and this election cycle we are seeing why and how.  When your opponent is minority or part minority, use the race card to highlight their minority status or do other things to incite the racism which is either active or latent in these United States.  It is how many politicians in the deep south in the 1940’s stayed in office and won office.  They kept their voting populace stirred up over race.

Your breakfasts sound fantastic.  Keep up the good work.  When I retire I am going to put my house in the Bettina Network.  I have to keep active and ageism has made me much aware of racism and sexism.  I must confess I ignored it before I started to realize my age would keep me from credit, jobs and more.  Amazing when things come home to where you live how sensitive you become to others suffering that you hadn’t even noticed before.  Forgive me my transgressions!  I am sure I was one of those letting my racism out against others without realizing it and without taking responsibility for it to make the effort to change.  Well, now I get to fight ageism because I didn’t help lessen the ‘isms in this society.

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Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

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______________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com

IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

 


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