Homestead mailing list

["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 11:25 AM, bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com> wrote:
> I hope you are right that people will become riled enough to demand 
> changes; but I sure don't know what could happen that is much worse than 
> what is now happening......................bobford

Oh, you optimist! Things can always get worse.

As for the food thing -- what to eat that's good for you? -- eat the
least processed food you can. I always was pretty sure that butter was
better than margarine for several reasons, and now we find that
hydrogenated fats are one of the worse things ever devised. No
kidding...anyone with taste buds could have figured that out 50 years
ago. In the last couple of years, I've lost much of the blubber
accumulated by sitting on my butt in a sick building by not eating if
I'm not really hungry and only eating real food (you know vegetables,
beans, rice, a little meat, some whole grain bread). You really can't
go wrong with that.

Smoking is not a terrific habit, but I'm wondering if the real problem
with cigarettes are the hundreds of additives? I used to roll my own
so I could have a cigarette after dinner, but I gave that up when Jim
quit smoking. It wasn't a major penance. My grandfather smoked Camels
more or less continuously for all the years I knew him. He rarely took
the cigarette out of his mouth so the ash built up and sprinkled down
his shirt. As a child I was quite mesmerized by wondering when the ash
would fall off. He died of other causes when he was 93.

My other grandfather had no known bad habits, but died of stomach
cancer when he was only 75, after an active life of farming and eating
well.  He and his wife lived pretty much as James still does. His
family was prone to cancer (his mother died of breast cancer and all
of his sisters had it but were too mean to die -- and by the time they
got it radiation treatment was available). All but one of his brothers
died of stomach cancer, and that one lived into his 90s and his
daughter is still going strong at 92 but she has to use a staff
because she has the same balance problem that afflicted my mother
(they're, of course, first cousins) and she'll be damned before she
uses a walker (she has the best posture I've ever seen in a human
being outside of the military).

Yeah, I think people can have a healthy mindset or a sick mindset, but
it's not that simple. The brain is a lot more plastic than previously
thought. Probably so is the body. I'm still not going to be standing
in line to blame someone for getting cancer.

I'd like to read about the genetic differences that develop between
twins raised apart. I wonder if those changes affect the germ cells?
After all, we still live in a sea of radiation, and now a sea of
chemicals. Of course, somatic changes are going to occur, but germ
cells maybe less so (and they all get used up while they're relatively
young except for persons like Strom Thurmond).

Just rambling,
Marie