Photos of a fawn

This morning when I let the dogs out into the yard around 5 am, I noticed two does - one an adult, one a yearling - across the road. It took a few minutes to see the tiny fawn. If this fellow was over six hours old, I'd be surprised.



The funny thing was the behavior of the yearling. She desperately wanted to meet her new sibling - "Aww mom, can't I just see??" - but mom wouldn't have it (thus demonstration that humans aren't the only ones hormonally crazed immediately after giving birth). Every time the yearling got too close to the fawn, mom could chase her away a few feet. Very funny to watch.

Anyway, this afternoon I noticed some strange behavior by a solitary doe in our pasture. Normally deer aren't out mid-day, but this girl was. She bounded away in great agitation, then stiffly trotted back to where she started from - classic behavior of a mother with a hidden fawn. I grabbed the camera.

Newborn fawns, as everyone knows, have no scent and thus their survival strategy is to collapse into a tiny ball at the first hint of danger and lay perfectly still. Mom usually dances out of sight, perhaps to lure predators in her direction and away from the fawn. This fawn scrambled under the wire of a fence and then dropped. It was so well camouflaged that even though I knew where it was, it took me a few minutes to find it.










I didn't want to get too close, so these shots aren't the clearest. Nor did I want to stress the mother by my presence for too long. About an hour after I took the photos, mom came and retrieved her tyke.

A stimulating story

A friend sent this to me.
_______________________

It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. It is tough times, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter, and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.

The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the pig grower.

The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town's prostitute that in these hard times, gave her "services" on credit.

The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.

The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything. At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the rooms, and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town.

No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government and the State of California are doing business today.

Words to live by

This is something we should all read at least once a week, written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio. [See UPDATE below.]

"To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more."

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first pay check.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time... time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.
_______________________
Update: Oops, my bad. A reader sent in the following correction:

Please know that Regina Brett, author of 50 Life Lessons, is not 90 years old (don't feel bad - that misinformation is all over the internet), but she is indeed wise. She is actually 53 years old; she is the senior metro columnist at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland (Ohio's largest weekly newspaper); she was a finalist in both 2008 and 2009 for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary; and she has a book based on her 50 Life Lessons coming out in April of 2010. You can check out her website by going to http://www.reginabrett.com where you will see that all I've written here is true !! Regina also recently wrote a column for The Plain Dealer about "internet aging, which you can read here. And finally, you can also read all of her past columns, including the columns nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, at http://www.cleveland.com/brett

Moving day for chicks

Don's spent all week working on the chicken coop. Those thirty cute widdle balls of fluff have metamorphosed into noisy stinky housemates, and he's anxious to get them into their own home where they can be noisy and stinky to their hearts' content.

The coop started like this:



And ended like this:



He made a door:



Right now the coop is just shell. We'll add insulation, ramps, nest boxes, and all the other bells and whistles as the summer progresses. But for now we just want to get the chicks out of the house.

Here they are, huddled in scared masses in a corner. Within an hour they were perfectly at home in the coop.



Matilda was completely puzzled by the peeping coming from the building. She kept craning her head closer and closer until it was fully inside the building. (You can't see it, but there's a screen in front of the door to keep chicks in / cows out.)





Here's what it's looking like in the greenhouse. I need to start transplanting everything, but the garden still isn't fenced. Now that the coop is done - or at least functional - the fence is next.

Christian one-liners

• Don't let your worries get the best of you; remember, Moses started out as a basket case.

• Some people are kind, polite and sweet-spirited until you try to sit in their pews.

• Many folks want to serve God, but only as advisors.

• It is easier to preach ten sermons than it is to live one.

• The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but mosquitoes come close.

• When you get to your wit's end, you'll find God lives there.

• People are funny; they want the front of the bus, the middle of the road, and the back of the church.

• Opportunity may knock once, but temptation bangs on your front door forever.

• Quit griping about your church; if it was perfect, you couldn't belong.

• If the church wants a better pastor, it only needs to pray for the one it has.

• God Himself does not propose to judge a man until he is dead. So why should you?

• Some minds are like concrete -- thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

• Peace starts with a smile.

• I don't know why some people change churches; what difference does it make which one you stay home from?

• A lot of church members who are singing 'Standing on the Promises' are just sitting on the premises.

• We were called to be witnesses, not lawyers or judges.

• Be ye fishers of men. You catch them - He'll clean them.

• Coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymous.

• Don't put a question mark where God put a period.

• Don't wait for 6 strong men to take you to church.

• Forbidden fruits create many jams.

• God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

• God grades on the cross, not the curve.

• God loves everyone, but probably prefers 'fruits of the spirit' over 'religious nuts!'

• God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage.

• He who angers you, controls you!

• If God is your Co-pilot - swap seats!

• Don't give God instructions -- just report for duty!

• The task ahead of us is never as great as the Power behind us.

• The Will of God never takes you to where the Grace of God will not protect you.

• We don't change the message, the message changes us.

• You can tell how big a person is by what it takes to discourage him.

• The best mathematical equation I have ever seen: 1 cross + 3 nails = 4 given.

Economics 101 (socialism in action)

Don't believe me when I say socialism doesn't work because it takes away incentive? Consider the following real-life example of economic theory put to work (this is one of those forwarded emails - I italicized certain lines):
_________________________________________

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade, so no one would fail and no one would receive an A."

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset, and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around the students who studied little had studied even less, and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too, so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Parental rights

I received an e-alert from ParentalRights.org. If you don't want some stuffed shirt in Europe or the Middle East telling you what you can and cannot do when raising your kids, you'd best get your fanny over to this website and sign their petition.

A parent’s right to raise their children as they see fit is a time-honored American tradition, but today it is being threatened. The Supreme Court’s Troxel v. Granville decision in 2000 undermined a 75-year heritage of Constitutionally-protected, fundamental parental rights, which 8 of the 9 justices abandoned. At the same time, a growing body of international law fuels activist judges to legislate foreign standards from the American bench, while treaties such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child would subject parental decisions to government oversight and international review.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (MI-2) has proposed HJR-42, the Parental Rights Amendment, to stop the erosion of parental rights in American courts while simultaneously defending our laws from international invasion. Please, visit parentalrights.org to learn more about the Amendment, and to join their email network by signing the petition to protect parental rights.

To honor those who served...and are serving

It is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the veteran, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the veteran, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.



It is the veteran, not the community organizer, who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is the veteran, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the veteran, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.



Remember - only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, Jesus Christ and the American GI. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom.

Teacher in the trenches

Sometimes people want to blame all the ills and evils of public education on teachers. Sometimes teachers are part and parcel of the problem, but many (possibly most?) times they're not. Here's a letter I received from one such person:

I was very interested in some of your comments on homeschooling. For several years, I home-schooled my four children until going through a (very unwanted) divorce. Since I was going to have to work, I thought it would be better to put the two still at home into public school. The difference between the older two who were completely homeschooled, and the two who had to go into public school is very apparent, especially in respect for education and in respect for others.

I know there were a lot more factors at play than the difference in education. They moved from a stable family to a broken home, older sister went to college, older brother moved out to get away from Dad – all in the space of about a year. And it is also true that they are the children of two people, so I am not the only influence on them. But I spend part of every day sick to my stomach at the decisions I have made, or that have been made for me. Have I ruined their lives by the decisions I have made?

After having trouble finding any kind of financially rewarding work in the area where I live, having no retirement savings, etc. I decided to go back to school. Since I had always loved school, had taught a couple of years in small religious schools, and had homeschool experience, I majored in Elementary Education, thinking that was something I would love, and that I would be able to save most of my pay toward retirement. I now question the wisdom of this decision. The school settings I go into are appalling. How can I conscientiously do the things I am required to do as a public school teacher? To say nothing of put up with what teachers have to put up with?

The wild and untamable students rule the schools and form district policy. In the local school district, rather than do whatever it takes to control students, the teachers and principals are being forced to allow more and more behavior to go unpunished. ‘Referrals’ numbers are supposed to come down, and statistics are more important than the students, so... It takes the kids about two days to realize that they can get by with today what they could not get by with in the past. Bullying, disrespect, and violence run the schools. I have seen veteran teachers so frustrated they hop up and down in anger, or just quit trying and sit in a chair.

The students who are in school to learn are left completely unprotected and untaught. Under the guise of a free and equal education for everyone, no one is getting a challenging and rewarding education, and no one is physically or emotionally safe, ever. The focus of daily activity, conversation, faculty/staff meetings, principal meetings, school board meetings is the students who are out of control. The blame ends up in the laps of the classroom teachers.

In the typical local public school classroom I do not use anything I learned at the College of Education. The training I need is for how to do crowd control at a state prison without the support of the warden. The teachers have been left hanging in the wind and the kids are in control. In many cases these kids have the full support of their parents! It is not uncommon for a teacher to be cursed for trying to ‘tell a child what to do.’

I have direct experience in several of the local schools. It is the exception rather than the rule to find a teacher who, with the support of her principal, is making her classroom a safe haven where no bad behavior is tolerated, and learning takes place in a loving, peaceful environment. I know of only one in the entire school district. I am sure she has no idea she is basically homeschooling 30 students!

Now I am graduated (with plenty of gray hair), wondering how to find a job in the middle of years of massive education cuts under our governor who touts herself as an “education governor.” I’m fearful I have taken the wrong path, and am in debt for nothing. I still love education, and genuinely like working with children of all ages, but am feeling hopeless about American education as an institution.

If you made it all the way through my venting session, I really appreciate it! Thanks for being a spot of sanity in the midst of craziness!

Homeschooling poll

I've been asked to post a poll on the subject of the shifting ratio of boys to girls being homeschooled. According to Henry Cate, "A recent report found that since 2003 to 2007 the ratio of boys to girls being homeschooled went from 50-50 to 42-58. I've created two polls for people to indicate how many boys and girls people are homeschooling." He's asked homeschoolers to answer his poll.

Also, he's asked for "any insight you have into why parents might be more likely to homeschool girls, than to homeschool boys. Please leave any thoughts you have."

Spring has sprung

We're getting some wonderfully warm weather around here! Last year our final snowfall was on June 12(!!). Not this year. We've been in the high 80's all week and most of us in northern Idaho are gasping from the heat.

Planting season is in full bloom for everyone. Here's a long-distance shot of our neighbors planting their garden. Two families are sharing this garden and this morning, before it got too warm, they pulled everyone together and got the seeds in the ground.



It's windy today. Here's the breeze snapping the clothes on the line. Why anyone uses a dryer in the summertime is beyond me - these were dry in half an hour.



You can see the way the prevailing wind blows by how skewed the branches of this young pear tree are:



I'm on a race against time - planting the garden vs. fencing it. I have to get the garden planted, but Don also needs to build a chicken coop because, frankly, the chicks STINK up the house and they're getting BIGGER. So he's been concentrating on the coop rather than the garden fences.



I'm taking my chances that we'll get the fencing up before the potatoes and corn (which I just finished planting this morning) start to sprout.

Here's Don carrying fence poles:





I've given up hope on my berry patch. When I planted it four years ago, I just chose the wrong spot - it's too weed-infested and I just can't keep the weeds at bay. Nothing is thriving. It's almost embarrassing to show these pics:







So what I'm doing is transplanting everything into the orchard (which will have the high fence around it to keep the deer out). You can't see much, but these are raspberries:






Raspberries are basically weeds and will grow just about anyplace. Blueberries are a bit fussier and I'll have to build blueberry beds before I can transplant them. I don't know if the blueberries will survive being transplanted this time of year, but frankly I don't know if they'll survive another year in that weed-infested berry patch either. We intend to turn the old berry patch into a pigpen next year - with better fencing, of course.

And look at this! I picked up a bunch of old wire closet shelves at the Habitat for Humanity store in Coeur d'Alene for $1 each, and Don installed them in the greenhouse this morning. At last everything is off the floor!



The little joys in life.

Stop SPENDING, dammit!

Something's been on my mind lately. It's only half-formulated (which, some may argue, describes my brain in general) but here it is. I dunno, this may eventually segue into a WND column.

For the past sixteen years, ever since we started our home woodcraft business and have been self-employed, we've been forced into frugality. It's become second nature. Our income has been unsteady and unpredictable for many years, and there is no finer way to hone the art of thriftiness than by literally not knowing where your next dime is coming from.

Through it all we've maintained an excellent credit record. We pay our bills - sometimes by scraping at the edge of disaster - but this has allowed us to achieve our dream, which is to live and raise our kids in the country. Our good credit allowed us to get a good mortgage rate when we bought this home six years ago.

Sometimes people look at us and think how lucky we are. They sometimes even think we're well-off financially. (They probably wouldn't think this if they actually came and saw what our house looks like and how we dress.) I've made various and sundry lists over the years illustrating some of the typical things we do to either save money, or not spend it to start with (like this one), and here's yet another partial:

• Housing commensurate with our income. Meaning, our mortgage is low. We bought a fixer-upper on twenty acres six years ago in a place with low property prices (because jobs are so scarce). Even for around here, we got an exceptional deal. This is because it took us three years to find something that matched our needs and our price range. Three years.
• 95% of our household purchases come from thrift stores.
• No meals out. Ever.
• Cooking from scratch. Pre-made meals from the grocery store are out.
• Buying in bulk. I usually get 150 lbs of flour at a time, for example. Beans, rice, etc – all in bulk.
• No new clothes. Ever. Well, with the exception of socks and underwear once a year. (See the recent exception.)
• No entertainment frills. We don’t have cable TV (actually, no TV reception at all), we don’t go to movies (ever), we don’t attend concerts (except my husband and I try to see Riverdance when it comes through Spokane every three or four years), we don’t play golf or go to “fun” centers.
• We don’t buy electronics. Ever. No CD’s, no DVD’s (except when I find one at a thrift store), no iPhones or iPods or whatever the latest whiz-bang stuff is. We didn’t have cell phones until a few months ago when two separate friends upgraded their phones and gave us their older models.
• No new cars. We have an ancient farm truck we seldom take off the property, and one small used car for running around. No car payments, of course.
• We don’t use a dryer because propane is too expensive.
• We heat with wood we cut ourselves because all other heating methods are wildly expensive. Remember that we live in north Idaho, a couple of hours’ drive from the Canadian border, so winters are cold. The average temperature in our house in the winter is about 60 degrees. When one of us gets chilly, we go stand in front of the woodstove for awhile and defrost.
• No new books. This is a tough one because books are, collectively, our weakness (we own over four thousand of them). But we seldom buy them new because, surprise, they're too expensive. Most of our books are from library sales.

Okay, that sort of puts you in a position to understand why we've been able to survive and even thrive on the uncertain income from a home woodcraft business for the past sixteen years.

This thriftiness is serving us very, very well in the new economy. We're already blackbelts in frugality. Some of the unfortunate souls who suddenly find themselves without jobs and with huge bills and a huge mortgage are in a seriously bad position - and not just because they're in debt past their eyeballs and unable to find a job.

They're in a bad position because they don't know how to live cheap. The notion of frugality completely escapes them. They continue to eat out, buy toyz, grab that morning latte, enroll their kids in expensive sports, and have cable TV. Then they bemoan the fact that they're about to lose their home.

Don't misunderstand me - I'm not making light of anyone's financial struggles. But I know a couple who are both unemployed and I want to shake them because they just don't get it. There are a couple of local jobs available - modest ones, to be sure, but at least they're jobs - but these people have no interest in applying, even as a stop-gap measure until they find better employment. They eat breakfast out once or twice a week because they don't feel like cooking. They drive all the way into the city to see a movie once a month. They buy name-brand foods at the grocery store. And then they say they're scared about losing their home (which, to their credit, is a very modest one and not some oversized McMansion).

I know another couple with massive medical bills and one very modest income. They often pay their bills by maxing out first one credit card after another. Yet they give each other lavish birthday and holiday gifts - a $100 gift card to Starbucks comes to mind - and the wife will drop $50 on paperback books because she needs to escape from their financial stress. Uh, hellOOOO?

See where I'm going with this? Why can't people who are having financial difficulties just stop spending, dammit? Why do they dig a deep hole and then complain they're in a deep hole?

I realize we've had sixteen years to learn how to be frugal and these people have had none. I know - believe me, I know all too well - what a culture shock it can be to have to adjust one's spending habits from affluence down to poverty. Back in 1993 when we left California, we left behind us joint incomes of $70,000 and went to zero (literally) as we got our home business up and running (it took six months to bring in our first dollar from the business). But the point is, we did it. Sometimes we did it by the skin of our teeth, but we did it. And we did NOT do it by buying books, clothes, electronics, restaurant meals, and movies.

Okay, I'm done. Sorry to rant, just had to get that off my chest.