Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

I’ve had more teeth / gums stuff, with my dentist prescribing a helping toothpaste - which turned out to have fluoride in it. It all felt like a low grade chronic infection, uncomfortable. Reiki could improve it, but it just wouldn’t seem to go away and stay away. And of course, in Louise Hay, teeth are about decisions.

Everything seems to come back to writing and the books that are in my head.

Nonetheless, I was asking for a solution, a cure, a fix. As often happens, I’ll get messages/mentions/see an ad/a friend will make a comment - all those recently were about MSM. I was at Clifton Natural Foods, looking for toothpaste, and found TriMedica’s Pure MSM toothpaste (they also make an MSM lotion). It felt wonderful - warm and comfy - better than any toothpaste ever.

So my search began in earnest. I looked it up here and there, checked out wiki, googled it and found some good alternative sites. My favorite, as always, is Prescription for Nutritional Healing. ‘Remarkable therapeutic properties’ was one of its first comments. And the list of dis-eases it affects is also remarkable. It detoxes, nourishes hair, skin and nails, relieves pain and inflammation, reduces allergy problems, promotes gastrointestinal health and aids immune function. Plus benefits for heatburn, arthritis (most sources mentioned joint improvements), lung problems, migraines and muscle pain. Seems like our food processing really damages MSM, which is naturally present in many foods, but not in our diets now.

I found Source Naturals tablets - remarkably inexpensive. Most good health supplements are, aren’t they? I gave the tablet a moderate chew - too big for me to swallow. The inflammation pain began to subside quickly. By the end of the first day, my whole mouth was - warm and comfy. I was amazed. Life is already back to better than normal, and I think I’ll put MSM on my list of stuff to take every day. I’ll keep you posted as I observe other good changes.

All the googling turned up the fact that the toxicity level is the same as water, but there are cautions to start slowly, to avoid too-rapid detoxification.

It’s already an interesting year in the back yard and in the woods. I think I’ve mentioned that the chipmunks woke up in mid-February - the earliest ever! Usually, it’s a warm day in mid-March when they pop out and start to dart around. Too cute, with those little tails straight up in the air. Theirs and the wrens’ are always pointing to the sky. The goldfinches are ahead of schedule, too. Already well on their way to being gold again.

But the winter aconite (a January version of buttercups) are at least a month behind - just started showing off this week - and the snowdrops have sprung up fast, but still way later than the norm.

The squirrels have gone into hiding this morning for some reason, but the birds are all out and about. So there is a flicker on the patio eating the peanuts.

And the rain this week brought a usual small problem. One of the window wells for the basement always fills up with water when it rains, so I go out and bail it out. I was running late (I’m doing better - have got my lateness down to 3 or 4 minutes!), but didn’t want the water to get any higher. So I was done, and ready to head back into the house, put on good boots and get started on the rest of the day - when I noticed a small movement in the water. A worm caught in the flood. I decide I’m doing to ignore it - I’m late, it’s a worm. Got inside the back door and realized that rationalization wasn’t going to work. So I climbed down in, picked up the worm and laid him/her in the leaves covering the day lilies. Should have just given up in the first place!

Happy Spring, Every One!

My friend Carolyn and I finally celebrated Christmas last week! The place we chose for dinner was Hugo, the upscale restaurant in Oakley, that bills itself as sophisticated Southern cooking. Since Carolyn is a unique and orginal caterer, and I love food in most of all its manifestations, we wanted to try it out.

Hugo is located in what used to be Pho Paris, which moved to Covington and is now out of business. That dining room always seemed cold and not very welcoming to me - too full of how important it was, it felt to me.

Hugo felt a bit upscale and a bit formal, but overall comfortable, welcoming, easy. It is indeed Southern cooking, as can be seen from the menu - some fried food, but not over the top. But sides included turnips, grits and other regional possibilities. And many kinds of meat. There were two vegetarian appetizers - fried tomatoes and corn fritters - so Carolyn and I had both of them. The service, presentation - and the food itself! - were just excellent. A great salad perfectly dressed followed. Carolyn chose a pork entree. I picked a couple of sides I liked, on the server’s advice. She passed those on to the chef, who created my very own entree with those ingredients and others of his own choice. Exquisite - and it included the turnips.

We had, of course, to have dessert. All in the interest of research. I picked the fried bread pudding because I just couldn’t imagine what that might be. It was as addictive as we suspected. The other dessert was scrumptious, and included cranberries, but I cannot remember what it was called.

A high-end evening, and quite wonderful. As were the presents we exchanged, thus ending the 2008 Christmas season. Hugo’s was a great way to do that.

Agenda 360, a plan for how we as a region move forward, was rolled out on Friday the 13th at the Museum Center. Two years in the making, the plan took Vision 2015 from Northern Kentucky as a model. Spearheaded by the Cincinnati USA Chamber, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, the University of Cincinnati and others, the work brought together political, civic, neighborhood, corporate, environmental and other leadership from the 15 counties across three states that make up our region.

The 30 page brochure looks terrific, lots of the right leaders are in place, the ideas are sound. But there was little energy in the room, and the 300 or so people gathered looked pretty much the same. A sprinkling of folk under 35, a sprinkling of folk not white, not even a sprinkling of folk without college educations and pretty safe incomes.

I’ve been mulling over what might have made this outcome different. More risk taking by the leadership, more risk taking ideas taken seriously during the many meetings, different and more fun meetings. The ideas are sound - but most civic types could have come up with them on a sunny afternoon on somebody’s deck with a couple of beers.

I’m hoping risk taking, the addition of entrepreneurs to the team now that it’s time for action, and just plain wild thinking are thrown into a cauldron, not a box - there’s no lid on a cauldron, it all just bubbles out into the air - and produce the energy to really move us forward. We’ll do fine with this plan - but we won’t get where Agenda 360 Rallying Cry says we want to go: - To transform the region, by the year 2020, into a leading metropolitan region for talent, jobs and economic opportunity for all who call our region home.

It won’t happen without a lot more energy - not a lot more work, ernest and knuckling down - but a lot more enthusiasm, excitement, fun energy.

I knew, when I saw the headline that Groundhog Phil had seen his shadow and that we were in for six more weeks of winter - that it just wasn’t true. It just didn’t feel true, which is how I get much of my information. I didn’t know it before I saw the headline, but once I did, the resonance was simply - not true.

And sure enough, signs of spring are all around. Loud groups of birds in the morning, many goldfinches on the thistle feeder - and just beginning to turn gold, a pregnant doe in the woods, and - best of all - the Chipmunks are awake. I have never ever seen them awake this early - spotted the first one on February 7. Everyone seems to know that it’s time to get going.

February 1st and 2nd are Candlemas and Imbolc, the days when the seed first stirs in the earth, when the wheel of the sun has truly turned, and long sacred to the Goddess. Great times for meditating on what you want to push up through the earth this year. I have never been able to understand what that groundhog has to do with anything. I’ll bet the beginnings of this predication has to do with The Goddess, back in old Europe. None of my books answer that question. I’ll go to wiki and google - the answer is in there somewhere. I’ll keep you posted.

So there were three of us at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company on Friday night. All of us loving theater, and attending plays often. And none of us, not even our former college English teacher, had ever seen The Seagull - which is probably Chekhov’s best known play.

Cincy Shakes has a terrific ensemble of actors, who made excellent work of this play. Like the other Chekhov plays I’ve seen, The Seagull often just appears to be clumps of people carry out actions almost at random - as though they have nothing to do with each other. This one is a variation on that theme - with one character in love with another, most all unrequited and unrelated to reality. Masha is loved by Medvedenko, but she loves Konstantin - who is loved by Nina until she falls in love with Trigorin - who is supposed to love Irina Arkadina, but pursues Nina. Masha’s mother is in love with Dorn (played by Chris Reeder, one of the founding members of the company, back for this play), who almost serves as a Greek chorus. And Sorin has never been in love with anyone, nor married - which he frequently mentions as the tragedy of his life. One really feels that he might well be the luckiest of the lot.

The play ends badly for nearly everyone - especially the seagull. Excellent theater nonetheless.

Sung Korean Bistro - at the corner of 7th and Elm downtown - has become one of my favorite restaurants. Both for its food, and for it’s proximity to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Makes for a topflight evening - an excellent and comfy dinner, then a trip halfway around the block to attend an excellent theater production.

Friday night, we ordered for the table the pancake stuffed with tons of veggie goodies, with a sort of Korean salsa to put on top. One of the best dishes available in this entire town. I then made a point of trying the only vegetarian item on Sung’s menu that I hadn’t had before - the vegetable stir fry with tofu. The entree choice I make almost all the time is the dolsot bimimbab - a stone bowl heated to incredible temperatures, and full of veggies, tofu, rice and a raw egg. The egg is cooked as the contents of the bowl are stirred and turned. Much of the food ends up crispy and crusty - and as much spicy heat as you desire is stirred in as well.

But Friday, I wanted to try that stirfry. It was very good. The vegetables were in just a bit of a dark sauce, the tofu was well marinated. A good dinner. But it did not replace the bimimbab as my favorite - which, admittedly, would have been hard to do.

You should give Sung a try. Easy to be an American and eat there. And the staff is very helpful.

p. s. One more thing to try - the corn tea. An interesting experience.

What a week! Most schools were closed at least three days, many four. I spent two full days snowed in - a good thing, actually, since one of the things on my plate was a major grant to write. Managed to get the drive plowed late on Wednesday, got to the office on Thursday, headed for home - and got stuck in my own driveway. Just wedged the car in sideways so it wouldn’t slide into the street, and left it there til Friday morning.

I salted and shoveled and cleaned off the car, and then surrendered, and asked my office mate to come get me - otherwise the last pieces of the grant were not going to get done in time. By the time she returned me home, the sunshine had done it’s work, and I was able to get the car up the hill and into the garage. So I could could then do more shoveling, to make getting in and out safer and easier.

Just late today - Sunday - I was able to clean off the steps - frozen into solid slabs of ice, so I wedged a big screwdriver under the ice on each step, until I saw a shift - and then shoved the ice off the steps, one by one, in whole slabs.

I’m still leaving the plastic container labeled Another Mail Box out for the mail carrier to use tomorrow, in case the steps freeze overnite.

Wouldn’t it be nice if that was it for this winter? Hope So!

What a hard Sunday morning this was! I woke up at 4:30, figured the Australian Open men’s final was just getting underway, slept til 5:30, checked the computer to see that Rafael Nadal had won the first set, and the second was just beginning. 6:30, Roger Federer had won the second set. Back to bed for another bit long - Rafa had won the third. Got up and listened to Australian radio telling me all about the fourth set, which Roger took. And then hated listening to the 5th set - where Roger was the one with the hard time, going down to defeat.

The match stats - Roger won 174 points, Rafa 173. But in tennis it depends on where the points are. It was Roger’s first serve that let him down, and his unforced errors that exceeded Rafa’s by 20 or so.

At the trophy ceremony, the last man to win the Grand Slam (winning all four of the Slams in the same year), Rod Laver, for whom the show stadium is named, presented the trophies. Also present were the four men he defeated to win his second Grand Slam. Roger, who loves history, was expressing his feelings about having Laver make the presentations when he simply broke down sobbing - Rafa and others cried, too, at the incredible match and the two champions.

So Rafa got to talk for a while, with Roger still weeping - Rafa walked over and stood with his arm around his opponent and friend. Roger tried again, and talked for just a few minutes, gracious, kind and generous as always - ending with more tears. A heartbreaking match. I am glad Roger let us share with him his strong feelings about the agony of losing such a glorious adventure.

After the movie at Newport on the Levee last night, my friend and I went to Brio’s for dinner. It was one of the early restaurants opened there, all of which are packed on Saturday evening. So we bought tickets for the early movie, and made reservations for dinner.

I had been there when it first opened, and all I really remembered was that it was way too noisy - and that the food seemed interesting. I guess I’ve gotten used to deliberately noisy restaurants (so we’ll know we’re some place that’s really happening!), because the noise wasn’t as offensive. Still absurd, but not quite as bad.

Now, the food just seems like high end mass produced American food, pretending to be from Tuscany. So it’s Applebee’s on a more expensive scale. Very fast service, food right out on the table, gluey tomato bisque. The field greens salad was very good - would have liked a goat cheese choice. The mashed potatoes - one of the test dishes I get to see what’s up in a restaurant - were very good - and enough for a family of 3 or 4. Which is one way to know this is a mass produced American place. The mushroom ravioli with winter squash was interesting - but not enough so to entice me back. All told, $30, without wine.

I had the rest of the garlicky mashed potatoes for breakfast, plenty left over even after my friend shared them with me. I heated up the rest of the soup, too - but it was much less appetizing.

To me - Brio’s is boredom central. Good food made with love is what I’m after. Didn’t find it here.