Kaivalya’s Neighborhood

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With us all diligently slapping hand sanitizer on our hands to kill 99.99% of everything that might make us sick.....   where do all the killed germs  go?

These have nothing to do with dead things on hands - I just thought they were pretty.  Taken on walk around the neighbourhood next to ours on the weekend:  

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Like most of the country, I have sat by horrified and deeply saddened by the incident that took place at Ft. Hood last week.  I have been further saddened by how Major Hasan has been portrayed as some fundamentalist Muslim on a religious mission of some sorts and the ensuing death threats against Muslims in the Ft. Hood area.  Whatever the reasons motivating Maj. Hasan, of which I am sure there were many, none of them justify further killing or threats of any kind.  Hate begets hate.  If we all, or even a few of us, respond to this incident by targeting Muslims because one of them made a horrendous decision not in line with their faith, the chasm will grow and more horrible incidents will ensue.  As Ghandi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

So, I am writing to propose a way to refocus those energies and to respond to the situation with love.  Show our troops some love and get yourself educated on S.1963 - the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009.  The goal of the bill is to increase mental health services to veterans.  Our veterans are suffering tremendously and the VA, and the rest of the country for that matter, are woefully ill-equipped to manage the severity of the problem.  We are sending these people out on multiple deployments in a war zone unlike any other before.  Whatever your political take on the wars, I think we can all agree that we need to take care of our veterans.  I support this bill, but encourage everyone to do their own homework on it.

If you discover you support it, please call Senator Coburn's office and ask him to remove the hold from the bill.  He alone is preventing the bill from leaving committee and reaching the Senate floor for a vote.  The Committee on Veterans' Affairs has a statement about it here.  Senator Coburn has his rebuttal  here.  If you believe the bill should be supported, please call your senators and ask them to support it.  If you don't know how to contact your senators, go here.

I have hesitated for some time to post this because too often well-intentioned posts about how to offer support to our troops get thread-jacked by those wanting to debate the validity of the wars.  I am the daughter of a veteran who served in two wars and I am proud of my dad's service.  I am also a flaming liberal who vehemently opposes the wars.  If I can separate the soldier from the action, then you can, too, and I respectfully ask you to do so here.  If you want to say anything hateful, discriminatory, or negative, please make your own post.  I don't post publicly very often because it's easier to deal with my small community.  But, our troops are part of the larger community and we ALL need to come together to support them.  It isn't enough to put a ribbon on the back of your car and wear an American flag pin.  The heart of our country is action and I am asking you to take some positive action today to help support our troops and turn the events at Ft. Hood into a forceful, positive response from the country in support of our combat veterans.  Many thanks.

When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery.  After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery.  But oh look!  Hippo Mouth has a resident!

 

 

 

Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by.  But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:

 

and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....

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I am scared of squirrels.   Irrational I know and I'm annoyed at myself for being afraid of such a cute looking little thing. 
I'd never seen a "real" squirrel until my first day here and when I saw them I raved over their sweet little faces and bushy twitching tails. 

My second day here I met a kamikaze squirrel.  Instead of running away from me it ran straight at me and stamping feet and noise did not deter it.    It only stopped when I ran away and then, looking over my shoulder,  I swear I saw it smile. 

This fear is especially pathetic as I come from the land of more than a few of the world's top 10 deadliest snakes, the small Funnel Web Spider and the Blue Ringed Octopus. I have a healthy respect for these but am not particularly terrified of them.

But squirrels...  I give way to even if it means walking onto the roadway; I give wide berth to trees where I spot a squirrel and I never stand still in a park!

We don't have any squirrels in our little yard;  I suspect because of all the pepper (chili) plants we have around but yesterday I noticed a neighbour is actively encouraging them ....   I would never be able to leave the house if this was at my front door!

This little girl was having a feast.  Of course this was taken from well back on the sidewalk! 

Continuing on from Lincoln's Cottage we wandered into an area that we might not have been authorized to enter given we did not have visitors passes....    The Old Soldiers' Home. Written under the clock is SHERMAN

The Old Soldier's Home was founded in 1851 when it was called the Armed Forces Retirement Home.  At that time the US Congress legislated a "military asylum"  for invalid and disabled soldiers of the US army.   The Soldiers' Home was officially recognized as being of historic significance in 1974 when four buildings built before the Civil War were designated National Historic Landmarks.    The Soldiers' Home is the last remaining example of three original military asylums established in 1851.

The entrance to the Home is guarded by miniature cannons:  

    We saw things we might not meant to have been photographing (Yes, it was fully operational).   The grounds are really lovely:    We found an amazing tree propped up on one side     A WWII  vet out for his morning stroll asked where we were from (this is when an Australian accent comes in handy) and talked to us at length about this tree which he called a Missouri Hedge Tree (though I couldn't find such a tree in a quick Google search).  After telling us it was the largest hedge tree around he wandered off:    We found an interesting tower:   -  the sign says DO NOT USE LADDER We then left the grounds and walked to the nearby US National Cemetery which will be the final resting place of many of the men in the Old Soldiers' Home:     So many graves: 

Our weekend walk was a little damp as we wandered along Rock Creek Church Road: 

to President Lincoln's Cottage at the Old Soldiers' Home.
The site is 3 miles north of the White House and Lincoln used this as his summer retreat from June-November in 1862-64. I have to say that living fairly close to this cottage I have not noticed a noticeable difference in temperature between downtown and home but still Lincoln enjoyed the "cool breezes" on the hill.  He "commuted" from the cottage to the White House daily and enjoyed the relative peace of the cottage during the Civil War.    Lincoln's route took him right past our street: 
On July 7, 2000, President Clinton declared the Lincoln Cottage, and 2.3 acres of surrounding land, the President Lincoln and Soldiers' Home National Monument.  This was in honor of the site's notable role in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

The recently restored Lincoln's Cottage with the beautiful Old Soldiers' Home in the background: 

There is a tour of the interior of the cottage -  we intend to go back and do that -  but this time we went through the small but interesting museum.  

Next I need to sort my Old Soldiers' Home photos and its history......

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So, what do we do for Halloween?   Well, we had some friends over after lunch, and now we sit here filled with dutch courage, waiting for the assault on our door.   

This is our second Halloween in the house.   Last year I bought candy though I didn't have any idea if kids actually braved the 'hood to come out trick or treating.   We got about 30 kids before we ran out of candy. 

This year I bought more of the nasty stuff (that just means that it is candy I will not eat - Reese's cups, tootsie rolls and some sort of Hershey multi-packs).    It is drizzling with rain;  I hope kids still come otherwise the manservant is going to be whacking on some weight - and that would be a horror!    :-)

Some of our neighbours have decorated their houses: 

Get your free download of this most excellent boppy fun song.

Includes lines like "others try topping us, keep coming up short like Webster Papadopolis"

RIGHT HERE

You can get the "unwashed version" which I think includes Chase Utley's parade F-bomb.

Well, here it is, let's see:

 

Thanks for the free download and the great song!!

Also, thanks to Arbed for alerting me to this awesomeness from someecards:

 

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My laptop has had to be airlifted to intensive care....   over the weekend just after I had downloaded my photos from the Arboretum it developed some very weird hieroglyphic type scribble over the desktop.   I have a mac which is almost 3 years old and have never had a problem with it till now....  luckily it is still just within warranty!   Usually when things breakdown it is a couple of weeks after a warranty expires. 

So, until that comes back I am in a form of timeshare on the manservant's machine...... 

Luckily I had not quite deleted my Arboretum photos from a memory card as there is no guarantee they are going to come back still on the laptop and that would've been very depressing!    So here is the rest of Sunday's outing.

We left the Ellipse where the Columns are:  

And headed further down the road:  And then went down a track which was muddier than it looks:  And just took in nature:  Then it was time to head out of this wonderful place:
Get well soon little laptop - I miss you! 

Okay, it's anti-cat but it's still funny.  I liked the part where he was talking about what would happen if there were seeing-eye-cats.

 

I know, "Cats for Clunkers" doesn't really make sense for this, but don't give me grief about it, I didn't make it up.