February, 2013 - Bettina Network's Blog

Archive for February, 2013

Health and Beauty Tips – Who Holds Truth?

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2013

We had a wonderful breakfast with a small group of ladies all over 80 and I am under 35.  It was not what I was used to, but I am going to change my lifestyle.  I learned a lot, laughed harder than I ever have in life, and have some new values to put in place.

I wanted to take notes to write a blog about this breakfast, but didn’t want to offend the ladies or look too commercial or whatever was going on with me.  I am new at this blog business – I can write, but how do you get the information without being obvious?

What I learned is that you can’t.

I kept running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room and back, trying to make notes.  As really great things came up, I would run into the kitchen to add the discussion to my notebook.  I don’t know how reporters cope.  I wanted to be a part of the conversation, yet I also wanted to document it.

We did talk about everything.  On one of my trips to the kitchen, when I arrived back in the dining room, one of the women presented me with a pencil and paper and suggested I stay at the table and take my notes.  They didn’t mind, but my back and forth was maddening.  They were laughing uncontrollably and had been since I started these back and forths, but I didn’t realize they were laughing at me and my antics.

Relieved – what follows is that breakfast:

I loved the way one of the women – at 83 years old – had almost no wrinkles and more energy then I have ever had.  I sat next to her because I wanted to know her secrets.  She said she didn’t have any.  She just kept the lifestyle she had as a young person and didn’t take part in the food, cosmetic, housing revolution which she witnessed over her lifetime.  She thought it was all quite dangerous to one’s health.

She smelled of roses – and there was her first secret.  She used organic essential oil of roses and no perfume.  The oil was in her rinse water when washing her clothes and not on her skin when she got dressed.  I will probably never be able to pull that off because a quick trip to the internet and Yahoo-ing ‘Essential Oil of Rose” put me into a state of money shock.  Organic Essential Oil of Rose I didn’t even bother Yahoo-ing because I knew that would be even further out of my financial reach.

So what else could I copy?

None of the ladies used commercial cosmetics – no lipstick, no lotions, no makeup – like foundation, etc.  They took care of themselves out of their refrigerators and their cabinets.  I knew that was the coming thing – I didn’t know that was the past thing.  I knew my grandmother used stuff out of her kitchen, but I didn’t pay attention to what she was doing or using.

One lady used beta carotene capsules for lipstick and a little red for her face here and there.  She clipped a capsule of the beta carotene and used it on her finger.  I knew about that from an article on Bettina Network’s Blog about using beta carotene to color your hair, but hadn’t thought about it for lipstick.  She gave me a couple capsules and I tried it.  The color was a bit orange.  It looked great on me so I am a convert.  I don’t know if it would do well on everyone, but it is going to be my choice from now on.  I notice it changed colors as the day progressed and didn’t last all day, but then neither did the lipstick I wore.  I carried the lipstick in my pocket book and reapplied it during the day.  I don’t know how I can do that with beta carotene, but necessity is the mother of invention and this is all new to me so let’s see what happens.  It is worth the effort to get this down to a great new habit.

The comments and sharing I liked best were from the woman with almost no wrinkles and some 83 years old.  She did this “hot and cold” thing.  She splashed water on her face in the mornings when she woke and it was first warm to hot water and then very cold water.  When she took her shower in the morning, it was without soap – in fact, none of the ladies used soap or soap substitutes – water was all they used on their bodies.  She said she showered in the mornings,  first in a warm shower and while standing in the shower she gradually turned the water to cold – showered a few minutes under very cold water and then turned it back to warm again.

Her friend objected because she used this hot and cold water thing, but she got out of the shower after turning the water to cold.

Apparently, this was big when they were my age, which is when they got these beauty tips.  One read – and had her collection of Prevention Magazines  in her basement.  Hers are from the time before Prevention Magazine was sued and taken over by the Meds (their words, not mine).  They all used to read the magazine religiously, but cancelled their subscriptions after the law suit and it became, according to them –  “an arm of the AMA.”  The hot and cold business was something either someone wrote in about or the magazine wrote an article on and it became big in their circle at the time.  Not many people they know today still adheres to the regime, but they do and they look fantastic.

My great-great grandmother used to do this – but that was because she didn’t have hot and cold water in her bathroom.  She lived well into her 90’s and looked great.  I don’t know why I didn’t follow her example – probably because I was quite young and not worried about health or beauty.  My mother clearly did not follow the family example and today one hears all kind of ugly comments made during many commercials about looking like, acting like, wearing clothes like your grandmother.  The one that comes to mind is “your grandmother’s jeans”.  I guess I was made for this breakfast conversation because I like Jeans that fit and don’t hang around my hips on their way to below my butt.  Isn’t there somewhere a history which says the Jeans being foisted on young people today are clothes that were worn in jail to let your fellow inmates know you were up for prostitution?  When we lose our history, we lose ourselves.

We acknowledge that it looks obscene when we see young men in the “ghetto” wearing pants which show the crack in their butts, but nothing is said when young white women wear the same jeans which show the crack in their butts.  That is considered high fashion.  As a young white woman, keep those butt-crack showing jeans and all those marketing promotions away from me.  I will look to my grandmother for advice, hints and more.

All of that – plus more – which would take me a book to write about – made me think about all the marketing that goes on around products that cost a fortune and deliver next to nothing.  I have been going along with their story and buying some of their products because the ads attracted me.  After using ”stuff”  for a few months and having nothing except buyers remorse.  I think before I do anything else I am going to look at the person recommending some kind of cosmetic to me to see if they use it and how they look as a result.  The people I look to will not be the 13 year olds who model these products –  I want to know what the 80 year olds are doing when they look fantastic, healthy and full of energy with few wrinkles. There is nothing holding truth like seeing results and I have not been getting any from the $300-$400/month I have been spending on cosmetics because I saw an add which made me think it was truth – and finding out it was clearly hype.

This was my first morning on my new regime.  I splashed my face with warm to hot water and then a lot of cold water before I had coffee.  A nice feeling – and I looked better than the person who usually straggles down for coffee early in the morning.

I also took my first hot/cold shower this morning.  After I finished my coffee I tried standing in the shower under warm water, gradually turning the temperature up to hot (but not too hot, I am no martyr for beauty) and then turning it all the way to cold.  It was an unusual experience.  It takes a little getting used to, but I thought of those women and how great they look.  I am going to slug it out until this is as normal to me as it is to them.  They are going to be my inspiration. And – the biggy – the cost is only of the water, which I would have to pay for anyway.

My first Bettina Network Blog!  Hey editors – you don’t have to copyright this under my name, its a gift.  My next blog, however, will be a different story.  Although, maybe I would like the term I just coined under copyright or whatever I need to do to claim it!!!!  I think Yahoo-ing will give Google a run for its money in the search world.  I love Marisa Meyer.

Ed Note:  The highlighting of “Yahoo-ing” was done by the editor. It was an interesting word and since our author saw it as her creation we thought we should give it a boost.

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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.

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

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

A Tribute to The Rev. Patricia Riley Colenback (1931-2013)

Sunday, February 24th, 2013

taken from “Alla Bozarth-Campbell’s – From Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey, Paulist Press 1978

Bakerwoman God

 
Bakerwoman God,
I am your living Bread.
Strong, brown, Bakerwoman God.
I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf.
 
I am your rising bread,
well-kneaded by some divine
and knotty pair of knuckles,
by your warm earth-hands.
I am bread well-kneaded.
 
Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God,
put me in your own bright fire.
I am warm, warm as you from fire.
I am white and gold, soft and hard,
brown and round.
I am so warm from fire.
 
Break me, Bakerwoman God!
I am broken under your caring Word.
Drop me in your special juice in pieces.
Drop me in your blood.
Drunken me in the great red flood.
Self-giving chalice swallow me.
My skin shines in the divine wine.
My face is cup-covered and I drown.
 
I fall up
in a red pool
in a gold world
where your warm
sunskin hand
is there to catch and hold me.
Bakerwoman God,
remake me.
 

And how many times, Pat,  did you say these words over others…………………..

                              “Give rest, O Christ, to your servant Pat with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.”

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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.

 
 
 
 

My Nose Survives Winter

Monday, February 18th, 2013

copyright 2013 Bettina Network, inc.

I have been a loyal guest, staying at Bettina Network homes for a very long time.

Last year, I went to the kitchen in one of my homes very early in the morning and found the host bent over the kitchen sink with her head in a pot of steaming water.  Needless to say I was amazed and waited in the doorway to see what this was about.

She had a pot of boiling water, just off the stove, and was letting the steam from the water over her face.  When she finished, after about a minute, and poured the water into the sink, of course, we had to talk.  I made the coffee and she spilled the secret.  Every morning when she wakes she boils a pot of water – “ed. note in a glass Corning pot” – puts her head over the water for a minute or two because this is the way she keeps her nose hydrated during the winter so it doesn’t get dry and give her a hard time with a little bleeding on those very dry days.

I tried it when I went home and found it works.  I have always had problems with dry nose during the winter.  When I blow my nose during the day it always comes with a little blood on the tissue.  That didn’t happen this year.  Thanks to my experience in the Bettina Network.

If you want a great place to stay in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. try this house and ask for the “doll room”.  I thought it was great and enjoyed my stay immensely.  My return visit this past weekend was a lovely surprise.  Some of the rooms inside the house have been redone and the doll room has some upgrades.  My daughter and I always stayed in that room.  Now she is too big to play with dolls, but she gave in and had a grand time playing with the dolls because the room now also contains a doll house to go with the dolls in the room.

I hope you write a blog on the room which has had its walls upholstered with the most beautiful fabric – and is well padded under the fabric.  I could make many comments about that, but I will refrain.  Just write about how you upholstered those walls.  It is so much nicer than wallpaper and so lush.  If I weren’t so committed to the doll room – where I play even when my daughter does not join me – I would ask for that room, but I just peeked in and loved what I saw.

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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.

2013 The Jubilee Year

Friday, February 8th, 2013

copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2013 for Marceline Donaldson

We declare the year 2013 to be the Year of the Jubilee and a holy, joyous, history making, sin forgiving year!

By whose authority? – by our own.  Isn’t that how such things happen!!!!

Generations from now, the historical cry will be reported and everyone will forget it was declared by one little person in a tiny corner of Massachusetts in danger of being crushed by Harvard University.

Why 2013? —————– Why not 2013!

The year Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of these United States. A man of African and Colonial American origins.  He not only models what African Americans can accomplish, he also models that ‘half-breeds’ can be brilliant, successful, achieve beyond everyone’s expectations and really – how can you tell his racial background from just meeting him?  Doesn’t his smile wipe all of your doubts away?

His election – his person – does not go through years of ancestors stolen from Africa and forcibly put into slavery.   He comes from the combination of the Africans who escaped being brought over as slaves and the very middle-class White Americans who brought some of his family/tribe/countrymen over to do their work for them – for free.  And, in spite of that ancestry he is just as nice and kind and smart and thoughtful and….as he can be.  The progeny of the original enemies in these United States – the original American oppressed and oppressors – those who stole the freedom of generations of human beings so they wouldn’t have to do their own menial work and those who were stolen and lived for generations outside their own country, culture, language, until they no longer could recognize from whence they had come.

This Jubilee Year, which we are declaring, also comes 50 year after Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement which broke out in this country and partially freed some of us from sitting behind signs on buses; drinking from water fountains which were never clean; going to the back door of restaurants and paying the same price for contaminated food handed to us out the back door which we then had to find a place to eat;  travelling and wondering just where we were going to sleep the night because hotels, motels, inns, were not welcoming and did not allow Blacks to register; going to inferior segregated schools; not being allowed into institutions of higher learning except for those established ‘for colored patrons only’ and on and on and on.

We are a step beyond slavery, but still not free!  A more qualified African American woman was passed over for Secretary of State in favor of a qualified, but less qualified White Male from a very Patrician American family – complete with trust fund, hundreds of millions of dollars and a phalanx of supporters in his chosen profession protecting him and making sure anyone threatening his path to his chosen goal was dutifully destroyed – or at the least – with reputation mangled.

With BHO’s election to the presidency we should proclaim this a great year of celebration. No, he is not perfect.  No, I don’t agree with all of his stands on things.  No, I suspect he has more than a little bit of sexism in his soul and it has popped out and will probably continue to do so.  No to a lot about BHO, but YES, I will shout and loudly proclaim this celebration and the debt we owe him for stepping out and moving all of us out of a less equal time.  If I knew about ram’s horns I would probably continuously bother all of my neighbors by playing several, all year.

This Jubilee Year, which we are proclaiming, is a year of unmitigated joy, but also a year of universal pardon for all of the sins of the past.  It is time to put slavery, its manifestations in today’s society, its ruination of the lives of some of my and your ancestors (be they White, Black, Green, Pink, Brown or Purple) in the past and look to the future which this year proclaims possible.  A future that is about all of us – that sees us working together to bring about a world free of the horribleness of the past.

In this Jubilee Year:

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to stop manufacturing foods and other processed goods which are harmful to us!

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to take global warming seriously and stop polluting the planet and to stop doing all the other things which are turning our living rooms into our toilets and our bodies into garbage disposals and composters at the expense of our health!

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to learn to settle their grievances without resorting to killing another human being – raping women and children – blowing up buildings out of their self-righteous hatred – playing games which hurt others, but relieves their own anxieties and covers from them the fact that they are mortal and one day will die.

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to take responsibility for each other.  No one should sleep on the street or in other than a bed, have warm clothing, enough food to eat and be able to live without the fear of another human being.  We are, afterall, more alike than different.  We are our brothers and sisters keepers.  We have heard those messages from childhood as have our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and much further back into history, heard them also, but we still have not put them into practice in our lives.

We need to call on our brothers and sisters to do at least one good deed each day for someone in need.

We need to dismantle our class structure which raises us up to believe some of us are better – as a part of a group – than others of us.

We need to dismantle what is left of racism.

We need to dismantle what is left of sexism.

We need to totally dismantle ageism.

And we need to do all of that and more before December 2013 so we can all end the year feeling great about ourselves and each other.  So that no matter where we are in the world it is a safe place and if we need anything the people in that place will move to supply whatever ‘it’ is.

According to Leviticus 25:10 “Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land; for it is the year of the Jubilee.”

This needs to be a year of great goodness – great deeds – great acknowledgement of our common and shared humanity each one equal to the next, no one greater than another.  We should work hard to keep this Jubilee Year and at the end, maybe we will have created habits which carry over into 2014.

50 years ago – at the beginning of this cycle of this Jubilee year

  • John F. Kennedy and Medgar Evers were assassinated and W. E. B. DuBois dies!
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. writes his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ and later in the year gives his famous “I have a Dream Speech”, during the March on Washington.
  • Hoses and Police dogs turned on protestors and are nationally televised for the first time
  • Children’s crusade brings about a form of settlement – Birmingham juvenile court inundated with African-American children and teenagers arrested while protesting
  • 16th Street Baptist Church bombed killing four young girls – out of which came Condoleeza Rice
and out of all of this and much more in the celebration year, the sabbatical year, has come Barack Husein Obama.
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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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