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Healthiness Is Most Essential

By
Frank Buchman
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“There is nothing more important than a person’s health.”

Many want more money, a champion horse, a new mansion, a fancy car, or a worldwide vacation.

While that’s fine, they are all worthless if one is not completely healthy.

However, health is a two-sided issue that includes physical health and mental health.

Sadly, physical health is often taken for granted until one is stricken by a devastating ailment. Life makes a completely negative turnaround and sometimes will never be the same again.

Likewise, a person’s senses and body appendages are often not appreciated until forced to do without. Many people must wear glasses to see and aids to hear which are not uncommon reduction of senses. Others lose their ability to smell, and taste as well as other body senses.

Losing a finger or portion of one creates an initial hardship to which one generally becomes accustomed. That is much less serious than losing an arm or leg.

Artificial limbs have been developed so people can maneuver, but it is a major hardship. Personal attitude makes a difference on how individuals acclimate to such adversity.

Likely more serious than physical health is mental health. A subject often ignored in previous generations; mental health has become a publicly serious problem for all ages.

Old age often brings on memory loss in various degrees sometimes defined as dementia or Alzheimer’s. Considerable research has been done to help reduce the complications. Most of it has been unsuccessful with early detection and treatment, infrequently giving limited positive outcomes.

A controversial issue is mental health seemingly becoming more of an issue in children. Either earlier generations did not have the problem, or they weren’t aware of it. Perhaps juvenile mental health issues were ignored or excused by “they’re just different.”

Personal opinion is that youth would have less psychological concerns if they spent less time on cell phones and computers. Those who have daily chores don’t push so many technology buttons and seemingly have an improved mindset.

Perhaps becoming a more known issue today is bipolar disorder, which several coworkers and acquaintances have been identified with. It is a serious mental illness that causes extreme mood swings and depression.

Reminded of First Corinthians 6:19: “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, honor God with your body.”

+++ALLELUIA++

XVIII–24–6-10-2024

Hybrids needed

By
John Marshall
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john marshal

Late last month the Kansas secretary of state certified United Kansas as the state’s third minor political party. Certified earlier for the next general election are No Labels Kansas and the perennial Libertarian Party.

Jack Curtis, United Kansas organizer, said the party will nominate candidates willing to work across party lines and for the election of “principled, common sense candidates.”

This has a familiar ring. All parties claim their candidates are overflowing with principles and common sense. (The Libertarians start with government squeezed dry, Ayn Rand on steroids.) United Kansas, according to Curtis, will find noble hybrids, well-founded and without strict political breeding.

This sounds a lot like the peal from No Labels, the other no-backlog party. They seem to share the center lane, their mission of common cause and mutual purpose against the backdrop of Republicans and Democrats, one a party of dogma and the other, restraint.

The Kansas Republican chairman is far right, an election denier and conspiracy theorist who has fashioned a party that would no longer welcome Alf Landon, Frank Carlson, Ike, even Bob Dole. Nancy Kassebaum and Bill Graves are off their list ‒ former governors, senators, congressmen, presidents and presidential candidates, outcasts because they don’t fit the Kansas MAGA mold.

Across the way, Democrats wring their hands. The party’s top brass, secure in the blue nests of the urban northeast, hesitate to venture further west or south beyond Shawnee or Douglas County. It’s been this way through the party’s recent state chairs, each from Johnson County.

A generation ago rural Kansas held Democratic strongholds in the west, central, south and southeast. In the Northwest, Democrat Janis Lee (Smith County) was elected to multiple 4-year terms from the 36th senate district, 10½ counties including Russell in the heart of Dole country ‒ even then a place of hybrid thinkers.

Elsewhere then were Senate Democrats Dick Rock (Ark City), Phil Martin (Pittsburg), Jerry Karr (Emporia), Mike Johnston and Bill Brady (Parsons). Prior Democrats also included Jack Janssen (Lyons), Bert Cheney (Hutchinson), Leroy Hayden (Satanta). Remember John Carlin’s decade, ’77-’87?

Beyond the northeast, the Kansas Democratic party is listless. Ninety or a hundred rural counties are Republican-dominant. Both parties pledge fealty to leaders in Topeka, think tanks in Washington, and private pockets deep with dark money.

*

By neglect or indifference, Kansans have compromised their essential position, permitting straw legislators and their out-state overlords to presuppose what is best for voting laws and our schools, what is bad about abortion, immigrants, taxes and help for the needy.

These local matters are nationalized hard right or far left, take it or leave it. The natural loyalty of the local citizen is made far more difficult with hints that only a confessed, hardened party orthodox is rewarded. This removes loyalty itself from the realm of free choice.

As puritan orthodoxy gains strength, our state and nation lose strength. The loss is neither irreparable nor unusual. It’s the fallout of war clouds, a gathering acrid mist that announces another election campaign.

United Kansas and No Labels hope to find skippers to guide us through the mists, political mongrels who offer a loyalty to the common good and shared purpose. They will need patience and muscle for the task, returning politics to the local agenda and government to local legislators ‒ and dusting off that welcome sign for the likes of Landon and Ike, Dole and Kassebaum and, perhaps, Bob Docking and Bill Roy.

Redneck Garden Remedies

By
Steve Gilliland
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What do you get when you mix equal amounts of water and cider vinegar in a jar with a drop or two of dishwashing soap? According to a friend of ours, you get a redneck fruit fly trap. This time of the year along with all the fresh fruit and veggies from our gardens also comes those pesky tiny fruit flies that buzz around our produce. This concoction draws them to the scent of the cider vinegar and the dishwashing soap eliminates water surface tension so that when they land in the jar they sink straight to the bottom. She says it works great!

An effective hillbilly mouse trap can be made by filling a five gallon bucket a couple inches from the top with water, smearing peanut butter on the upper lip of the bucket or pouring grain or livestock feed to float on the water, then leaning a board at an angle from the floor to the top of the bucket for a ramp. Mice searching for an easy meal will attempt to hang onto the rim to get the peanut butter or lean out over the water to eat some floating feed and ultimately end up in the drink.

After hearing from my brother last night about all he has to go through to protect his garden from deer and other critters where he lives deep in the southern Ohio woods, I referred to a book by America’s Master Gardener, Jerry Baker, entitled “Bug Off” in which he presents bushels full of down-home remedies for keeping all manner of critters, especially raccoons, rabbits and deer, out of gardens and truck patches. I realize a couple of these may not be realistic to try, but here goes anyway.

· Raccoons are the bane of the sweet corn patch. Jerry recommends corralling all the electric fans you can barter for at garage sales, then, using outdoor extension cords place them all around the garden and run them on high all night for several nights in a row to dampen the coon’s interest.

· Evidently raccoons hate the smell of both bleach and ammonia, so fill old margarine tubs with either liquid and place them among your most vulnerable plants.

· As a trapper, I know that coons’ have very sensitive feet and this hindrance uses that weakness against them. Around the perimeter of the garden, lay a three-foot-wide strip of broken pot shards, jagged stones, thorny rose or bramble canes, wire mesh or anything else sharp or prickly and coons will refuse to cross it. This one requires the most work but will last the longest.

· Rabbits can devour a patch of greens’ overnight. Much of Jerry’s advise for deterring rabbits centers around fencing where practical, and making your yard or garden less inviting by removing nearby cover, growing plants rabbits don’t like and luring them away from the garden with plants they can’t resist. He does however have a couple novel suggestions.

· The first is a spray he calls his Hot Bite Spray, concocted from cayenne pepper, Tabasco sauce, ammonia and baby shampoo. He guarantees that any critter who tastes this stuff will never come back for a second bite (contact me for the formula and directions.)

· The other suggestion is to buy a ferret, or make friends with someone who owns a ferret and offer to babysit. ((: ((:

· Someone recently asked me how to keep deer away from his grapes and berries, and a friend of mine in Minnesota who operates a full-time animal control business recommended electric fence about waist high around the patch. Jerry Baker takes that one step further and

says to smear the fence with peanut butter. The smell of the peanut butter will cause them to smell it or lick it, resulting in a zap to the snoot or tongue, and they will never return.

· Instead of washing or tossing your husband’s old smelly socks and sneakers, hang them around your truck patch. Jerry calls this a classic deer-chasing trick.

· We trappers use all manner of strange animal scents and smells, and Jerry says that urine from any major predator will send deer running. Coyote urine is readily available, and a little sprinkled around your garden will never be noticed by you, but the deer will surely flee.

These are just a few of the more novel suggestions Jerry Baker has for keeping four-footed critters from ravaging your produce, and this book is just one of many he has published full of the same kind of down-home suggestions. Although there’s really nothing “Redneck” about any of these remedies as the title implies, I figured it might grab your attention and get you to read further, and if you’re reading this sentence, I’d say it worked! So, eat well as you continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected]

Digital Edition 06.12.24

By
tammiehoeme
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0
digital edition

Digital Edition 06.12.24

Lettuce Eat Local: On Our Way To A Tea-Riffic Summer

By
tammiehoeme
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0

Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local

“Tea makes everything better,” states one of my favorite mugs. 

Somehow it seems like both a bold yet tender asseveration, one that fits when the day is hard and tea brings your spirits up and one that fits when the day is already good and tea solidifies the cheer — so characteristic of hot tea to meet you where you are. It can be a balm to gently soothe a soul just as well as a bomb to awaken and energize a body; you can be feeling any emotion from ennui to enthusiasm to exhaustion to elation, and tea is the correct beverage. 

I didn’t mean to start an ode to hot tea, just to say that I would be hard pressed to find an example where tea doesn’t make everything better, but once I get started it’s hard for me to stop. 

It may seem out of place to laud hot tea in a week when the forecast predicts temperatures in the upper 90s, yet I suggest if you can drink coffee all year long, you can drink tea all year long.

Now, I’m not saying tea is better than coffee. In fact, I would say the comparison can only result in logical inconclusions as it is a false dichotomy. Tea is not coffee, just as pebbles are not clams (illustration of two unrelated things provided by Brian). While there are some distinct similarities, they both serve their own purposes, and “never the twain shall meet.” They are both the right answer — you don’t have to pick between being a coffee person or a tea person. 

Though I have swung between preferences throughout my life, I am currently in a season of favoring both beverages. I am inappropriately condensing the categories of coffee and tea for the sake of simplicity, as there are a world of options contained within those simple words. In fact, some teas are more like coffee than they are a different type of tea, and vice versa: a strongly brewed Darjeeling is so different from, say, a delicate peach white tea, and a latte with lavender syrup shares a lot of notes with a milk-added lavender tea. 

Clearly, I could go on. But my actual point is, I’ll drink them all. 

Yet every year, as soon as my spearmint tea patch greens up in the spring, I am all about the mint tea. I wrote about it last year, because it was also true then — and the year before, and before that, etc. I have (no joke) probably a hundred tea options stashed in my cupboard, and I “need” those too, but we hit spring and summer and my body craves the bright, refreshing panacea that is fresh mint tea. Mint is hypothetically not the best choice for nursing moms as it could potentially reduce milk production, so I limit myself to every other day, which some days feels like a sacrifice. It’s just so good every time!

We are in the midst of four family reunions in a span of that many weeks, and I have found myself craving my mint tea blend more than usual. With all the coffee, snacks, and sitting around, my stomach needs the calming reset that the mintyness brings. I am typing this in the van on the way to a reunion, and yes, I made a pot of mint tea before we left (a pot of coffee, too!). 

And mint tea is the perfect summer beverage — drink a mug or two hot and fresh in the mornings before the cool has totally burned off, and ice the remainder for the ideally refreshing and hydrating afternoon beverage. When we lived in Kenya, they told us drinking hot chai (tea) in the sweltering afternoon would cool us off, which has not rung true for me yet, but take that garden mint tea and ice it and we have got ourselves a deal. 

See? Tea does make everything better. 

 

Tast-tea Mint & Tarragon Blend

I have a history of inadvisedly throwing random herbs into my tea (sage, good; cilantro, bad), and I am wisely holding off from picking any of my growing dill or basil to add to my morning tea kettle. However, I remembered one of my favorite packaged teas is a blend of peppermint, spearmint, and tarragon, and since my tarragon is flourishing, I tried making my own version — and now I’m hooked. The background flavor the tarragon adds is hard to describe (floral, licorice-y, grassy?), but whatever it is, I like it.

Prep tips: I find my homegrown tarragon isn’t nearly as strong as what I’ve gotten in the store, so I add plenty; adjust what amounts you use to suit your preferences. If you need a source, look me up!

1 quart water

6-10 hearty sprigs of mint, peppermint and/or spearmint

1-4 sprigs of tarragon

a pinch of stevia or local honey to taste

Bring water to a boil, and pour over the herbs which you have stuffed into your tea kettle (alternately, you can steep the tea in a large glass measuring cup). I like to add the sweetener directly to the pot before I pour in the water, and then just leave the mint in there as I pour out my tea throughout the day. Ice and enjoy any leftovers. 

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