Book Proposal Finished, Junk Food & Stress, Jerry Falwell Farewell

I finished the book proposal for Family Coven: Birthing Hereditary Witchcraft। I couldn't have done it without Cam and Crystal - they are my girls! Cam worked hard at the editing, which is nice since she edits a newspaper for a living and Crystal wrote a Family Coven perspective I was missing, which was also nice.

I can't believe it is done। I was standing with Stone talking about sending it off and my heart felt like it fell right out of my chest and onto the dinning room floor. All I have to do is run it to Staples and have it printed. Then I am off this weekend to get some wise advice from published authors. Next week I may make changes and then I am mailing it off.


This stress has caused me to abandon my diet completely. At least I am still walking everyday. Does anyone have any suggestion about how to avoid junk food eating during times of stress?


In other news, Jerry Falwell died this week। I read an excellent post by a woman I know and respect about not bashing Falwell. She support a view that was pity on Falwell and all he didn't learn this lifetime. I have thought about this a lot this week. I even went and read some death articles about him. Then I found out one of my very good friend's mother passed away after a long battle with a serious illness. I never had the pleasure of meeting the Mother; however, you can't met her daughter without knowing mom was a powerful woman.

I considered these two deaths so close together and light years apart spiritually। Mom and daughter were close and loving. Mom was supportive and tolerant. Daughter is grieving a genuine grief of the one who has lost much. The grandson is now without an opportunity to know that part of his legacy.

Jerry Falwell was instrumental in legislating hate. Worse still, he preached it from the pulpit condemning to hell anyone who would dare challenge his theology. He was an oath breaker of large proportions. He would be happy if people like myself would shut up and die.

I have asked myself how fair it is to feel such pity and sadness when I think of my friend and her Mother, then turn around and feel a since of relief that a man who advocated hate and damnation is gone.

I've decide it is fair। Men like Falwell, when left unopposed, spread like wildfire। They burn down religious freedom with the same deadly consequences as the forest fires have done in my home state of Georgia। I can't help but think of the memoirs I read of people who were just regular Germans during the rise of Hitler. One professor wrote that he said nothing when national pride seem to mask prejudice and he said nothing as signs went up that began to slide the dials of prejudice to utter hate. He sat silent when they fired his Jewish colleague. When the government demanded the Jews wear stars, he hung his head and remained silent. When rumors spread of death camps and killing of Jews and those who sympathized with them, he rushed home at night and locked him and his family away, an attempt to bar the door from the truth. When they drug his neighbor into the street and shot him in the head, it was too late for any word to be said. He goes on to say that regular Germans didn't hate Jews or even want them dead. The crime of the average German was apathy.

I do not reveal in the loss of life; however, I will not be silent about any man whose hate and bigotry inspired others to the same. I will not pretend he was some nice guy with ideals that were off. I will not be apathetic. I hope his death is a sign that we are now moving toward less organize religion involved with our government, that the United States is moving away from the theocratic state President Bush has all but endorsed from his Oval Office. I hope this means that when people feel the need to object, they will have one less person condemning them to burn in hell forever simply because they do not agree with the "Moral Majority."

Plastic Bags - Picasa - Mother's Day - My Birthday

I am really excited today about two different products I just happened upon in the past 48 hours. One product saves the environment at a great price and the other product helped me find photos I had lost in the vast space of my own hard drive.

My girlfriend, Penne brought a ton of things over to celebrate my birthday on Saturday in re-usable grocery bags from Kroger. I asked her how much they were and she said they were $1 at Kroger!

So, today, on my way to do my bi-weekly shopping, I stopped in and bought six bags to try them out. I have been using canvas bags that I bought from Hobby Lobby and Ingles. I have already ripped the handles right off some of the Ingles canvas bags and, because of the color, the other bags are beginning to look, well, yucky. My Ingles bags cost me $4.99 a piece. I bought them over several weeks of shopping when I decided to cut my own grocery bag dependency.

When I sat down to write about them, I went to the website advertised on the side of the bag called Bring Your Own Bag (BYOB). I was ecstatic about the website, the great information they give and the idea in general.

These BYOB bags are the greatest! They have a true rectangular bottom, a little zipper pocket on the inside and sturdy handles. I took my six BYOB bags and didn't use any of my other canvas bags at all - now that is my bi-weekly shopping trip there. Further they fit into the cart so nicely. They are just the right size! I know I sound like an infomercial. I don't care. I love the environment and I love the fact that this is now available and for such a great price! Let me give you some statistics that I have learned from BYOB.

Did you know? (these facts are from BYOB)

P It takes plastic bags 15 to 1000 years break down in the environment

P Plastic bags photodegrade ~ breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways, polluting our soil, rivers, lakes and oceans.

P Production of plastic bags requires vast amounts of oil.


P North America goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually.

P Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals dies every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.

P Each year an estimated 500 billion - 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That translates to over one million per minute.

P If 1 person uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 250 bags per year.

P If a family of 3 uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 750 bags per year.

P If a family of 4 uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 1000 bags per year.

P If a family of 6 uses BYOB bags, they will save the use of 1500 bags per year.


Another great thing BYOB does, is a form they have on their website that you can print out, fill out and give to your local grocers. My only complaint is that the form is done in color with lots of graphics. BYOB obviously isn't remembering how much color ink costs the average consumer and forgetting the impact empty cartridges have on the environment. Still, you can print it in black and white or simply copy the letter itself into Word, or whatever you use, and print it plain. This is such a simple thing that we can all do. You guys get to Kroger and buy those bags! For $10 you can physically contribute to saving the environment. The environment is worth $10 to you, isn't it?

The second product I am excited about is FREE! That's right, complete free! Picasa is a program I downloaded after following some links on Blogger। I downloaded the file initially to make it easier to put pictures up on Blogger. Unfortunately that feature is no longer available because of incompatibility between Picasa and the new Blogger programs.

HOWEVER! The program completely rocks! It will scan your hard drive and download any jpg you have. It places these pictures in a library that shows thumbnails of the pictures and allows you complete management. You can delete files completely from your computer or simply tell Picasa to ignore a file you know you won't need to reference.

The greatest things is this: it puts your pictures into the Picasa library BY DATE! That means my Birthday pictures are the first ones I see and then the other pictures are available by year and folder. With the Manage Folder tool you can manage the folders your pictures are in and manage the way they are saved. You can edit pictures in Picasa, too! Easily set your favorite picture as your desktop background or order prints right from the program! Using a program called Hello! you can share your pictures with friends via the Internet. All in all, I have been really pleased, even though I can't use the program the way I wanted to.

Mother's Day was today and my family went grocery shopping with me, helped me make my favorite meal, cleaned the kitchen, water my plants and let me take a nap, all in all, a very nice day indeed. A friend of mine found out she was loosing her mother to her fight with brain cancer today. I can't get the frantic sound of her voice out of my head. I could feel her panic at the thought of not having a mommy anymore. I have been sending her lots of energy and experiencing the feelings of overwhelming sadness I felt in her soul.

My birthday celebrations are officially over. Yesterday my girlfriend, Penne, threw me a wild party. We had a beautiful piñata that was shaped like a star. We had bubbles at the party along with balloons and a helium tank which is just fun anyway. Tony, Connla, Penne and I all took a whack at the piñata. Since we were outside, we attracted a crowd of kids so we invited them to whack it to. It took Tony taking his cedar staff to the thing to bust it open. It was a sight! I got glow-in-the-dark bracelets from the piñata. I can't wait to share them with my friends at gathering we are all going to at the end of May!