GET A CAMEL

People swear by their own special cures for ailments or bad habits. Some people swear by the health-giving benefits of owning a dog or a cat. It has been scientifically proven that pets provide many healthy benefits besides unconditional love.

I just finished reading The Good Good Pig, by Sy Montgomery. Sy developed an unusual and adoring attachment to a pig she named Christopher Hogwood.  She claims all pigs are intelligent, sensitive souls. They love and crave company, and contact. They have a sense of humor, enjoy a good joke, appreciate music. Certainly nothing you’d expect from a relationship with a pork chop.

In her book she mentions E.O. Wilson who had ten thousand ants living in his office at Harvard. He would look at them through his microscope and could actually detect individual differences in them, much to his awe and delight.

Ants and pigs  don’t necessarily cure anything except  the blues, but Sy and her friends and neighbors clearly doted on this pig and claim to have learned much about humanity from him. Mostly that animals aren’t corrupted by greed like humans are. Now that is a truth one can count on.

But, I think if I were to get another pet, it would be a camel.

Consider that if we have a planetary holocaust, the Sheiks of Araby will outlive us all. They are used to an inhospitable land of desiccating heat; they have camels to provide transportation and food, plus dung for fuel. Camels  can live on practically nothing; you can seek shelter beside them in a sand storm, take liquid from their humps and then their milk has ten times the anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties of cow’s milk. It’s naturally low in fat, and has triple the vitamin C.  It is the closest thing to mother’s milk. Camels also have an insulin-like protein that survives the digestive tract.  I’m not sure why that is important, maybe their spit is good for you.

My advice to you is if you spot a camel in your travels, you might want to latch onto that baby.

But, in the meantime, I got another remedy in my mail from elmhurst:  “To ward off cramps in a foot or toe, take your thumb and first finger and gently squeeze the area just below the nose. This may have to be repeated for a very bad cramp or charley horse, but it works.”

Thank you for that.

And, Donna Parker questioned Elaine May’s balsamic vinegar cure for hiccups claiming her family’s cure is best because you can cure hiccups anywhere. You won’t be carrying along a bottle of balsamic on the plane or a picnic, right?  She has a point.

Donna’s cure: “Fold your hands as if in prayer interlocking the finger’s except for the index ones. Concentrating on getting the index fingers as close together without touching and before you know it you no longer have the hiccups.”

I almost wish I’d get the hiccups so I can try some of these cures!  I know for a fact that animals get hiccups, I wonder what works for them?

SOLAR COOKER VALENTINE

We returned to Thousand Trails Las Vegas for another two weeks. As it turned out, we are parked in the same spot, with the same neighbor as when we left 10 days ago. Yesterday was a sunshiney, warm day, a nice long walk and the laundry done, sets us up for another chance to play in a city that is primed for fun.
And we got information from Judy Price about how to never run out of milk. There is a product called Real Fresh, from Holland, PA. in 8 oz. containers that keeps milk shelf fresh. I’ll let you know how it works. While talking to Judy, she had never heard of a solar cooker. At one time I used one frequently and I love them. They never over-cook your food or burn anything. Food tastes so good from a solar cooker and the work savings alone is worth giving it a try.

This is a fancy solar cooker, meaning complicated, for doing a lot of heavy cooking. You can fry on this solar device which  you cannot on mine. (Pictures courtesy of Solar Cooking International.)

This smaller solar cooker is similar to the one I use.  Its obviously home made. I’ve made a couple myself, devised out of a tinfoil lined cardboard box. They don’t cook as consistently as the foil-lined cardboard box types sold by Solar Cooking International. Nor do the home made ones store well. The 501c 3 organization, Solar Cooking International,  is promoting buying solar cookers to donate to hurricane ravaged  Haiti or other parts of the world where they benefit third world peoples who have thin resources. Instead of buying candy on valentines day, buy a solar cooker for yourself or someone else. When you buy one, it provides four to a needy family in Kenya. A good way to spend $25.
They have an interesting website at:

http://solarcooking.org/

Their newsletter is always full of family stories about people who benefited from solar cookers.

CROSSING PENNSYLVANIA

Memories of Pennsylvania come back to me as we set our wheels westward pressing for home. My last visit to Pennsylvania was to a little coal town called Commodore, where we visited my husband’s daughter Kathryn McCracken. It was green and hilly and pretty. I remember also that you could not buy a bottle of milk, in 1970, on a Sunday, near Commodore. We had to drive to a nearby city for milk, I think it was Punxsutawney, a considerable distance in any case. The neighbor children in Commodore came to gawk at my husband, a man who drank beer. They hadn’t seen one before, but knew of a black sheep uncle who drank beer. Commodore is part of the  “Bible Belt”.

From Newburgh, N.Y. to Towanda PA is approximately 150 miles. We headed out early with good weather. As usual, Jim checked the tires before we hit the road. One tire had lost half its air. It delayed us an hour to get a new valve extender on the inside wheel of the motorhome. The plan is to drive 150 miles a day until we reach Murphys.
Above, we crossed the Susquehana River leading into Towanda, PA. Nice, green, hilly.  Yesterday was tough because Jim is allergic to bee stings and his leg, for the second time on this trip, swelled up and became heated and painful from a bee sting. We stopped at a drug store for benydryl. He spent the evening with ice on his elevated leg. Not fun.

Towanda has pictures of their hometown heroes on each lamppost. It is a well meant gesture but it seemed grim to me to look everyday at a banner cemetery. Heroes they are, but constant reminders, I don’t know how I would feel about that if it was my son’s picture on that lamp post?
Our intended billet for the night was too steep and we had to change plans somewhat. All in all it was one of those kind of difficult days that every traveler experiences. But, hey,  99% of the time, things go quite well. Its still happy traveling.