Ninety Eight Year Old Molly Is Like A Kid With A New Toy...

Hi from Molly. I'm in Warlingham. How is the weather where you are?
Typing those few words in her first ever email on her friend Penny's ipad was another life changing event for ninety eight year old Molly.
She's seen many changes in her long life and now she's discovered the internet for herself.
Molly, this post is especially for you. It comes with love from the other side of the world. Thankyou for your delightful email.
The weather here is windy and wet at the moment and the sea is wild and wonderful.
Molly is like a kid with a new toy says Penny. She can't believe how much fun it is and now wants a device of her own.
This lovely lady who takes no medications whatsoever has some thoughts on longevity. Don't eat too much, eat raw food every day and don't bath too much.
Baths wash your vitality away.
A good tip for clean living. Thankyou Molly...

The Facekini. A Fashion Statement That's Having It's Day In The Sun...

Women, mostly middle aged, in China's eastern city of Qinddao have been wearing these things for years to save their skin from the sun's powerful UV rays.
And now the Facekini is threatening to become a fashionable must-have in the West.
New York's CR Fashion Book have taken the ugly appendage and turned it into a fashion statement for models who want as little sun as possible. On their faces.
Or want to rob a bank perhaps...

Dear God Of Small Miracles...

Please let there be enough.
I promise, if there's enough there I'll be very good and won't waste it on trivial pursuits.
Or should I be talking to the God of Big Miracles.
Yes I know there was a time when a fool and her money were soon parted but now it seems to happen to everybody. I'm aware there's no great shame in being poor but I have to tell you,
it's very inconvenient.
And while I know that money can't buy me happiness I'm sure it can make poverty
much more pleasant...

They Have Escaped The World. They Each Live In Their Own World. In Nature's World...

They have escaped the world.
They have escaped to live in their own worlds.
They have escaped in order to find sanctuary in the world of Nature.
And who can blame them.
Danila Tkachenko uses documentary photography as his genre.
His 'Escape' project focuses on the individual and society. And his subjects do not live in conventional society. They have escaped.
Perhaps to be trapped in another.
Danila researches the experiences of hermits, recluses who live sometimes for decades alone with nature. These folk live or exist in some people's eyes, in makeshift dwellings, mostly in the forests of Russia and the Ukraine.
Does the individual freed from the social environment become closer to their true self Danila asks. What happens to a person's personality when their 'social mask' is gone?
The answers are not offered. And do not matter.
Many will not envy their lack of creature comforts but they might well envy their simple, peaceful and resourceful way of life.

Gary Harrington, Aged 64 And Resident Of Eagle Point Oregon, Is Serving 30 Days In Jail For Collecting Rainwater On His 170 Acre Property...

You don't need me to tell you that the world is mad but I will. Once again.
Gary Harrington, aged sixty four, Oregon's most notorious criminal and a resident of Eagle Point is currently serving, I can't believe this, currently serving thirty days in Jackson County jail for collecting rainwater on his own property.
Quite a lot of rainwater as you'll see here but it rains a lot in Eagle Point and Gary
doesn't want to waste it.
And just to sweeten the deal,
he's also been handed a $1,500 fine.
All this in The Land Of The Free where they have the world's biggest prison population.
In some US states it's illegal to have solar panels on the roof of your home. In others it's illegal to have a clothes line on your property to dry your laundry. In others you can go to jail, and people have, for having a vegetable garden in their front yards. Or their back yards.
The world is just getting way too stupid...

Breaking News. A Child Fell Out Of A Tree And Broke It's Leg. Trees Are Dangerous Said The Bureaucrats At Regina Beach. We Must Cut The Trees Down...

Is it me or does this story prove that the world really has gone stark raving mad.
A child fell out of a tree and broke their leg at Regina Beach in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
Hardly a big deal. The child and its parents will cope with the minor accident without counselling or psychiatric help. The child will probably grow up and have kids of its own who will climb trees.
If there's any trees left.
There are children in the Middle East and other war zones having their heads and limbs blown off by mortar shells. But that's another matter.
The trees are dangerous. We must protect our children said the Sasketchewan Ministry of Parks, obviously more nervous of being sued than the happiness of the Regina Beach Residents.
We've done a risk assessment and this tree in particular is a safety hazard said the bureaucrats.
As you might well imagine, this ridiculous situation went down like a ton of bricks with the locals and they gathered in numbers and prepared to stand by their beloved trees around the clock to prevent them being cut down.
The Parks people are re-assessing
the situation...

Saturday 23 August 2014. Brando Wildboy Yelavich Becomes The First Person To Walk The Entire New Zealand Coastline...

I'm back! he called with a huge grin on his face a few meters from the end and the crowd of family, friends and supporters cheered him on.
He'd left there exactly six hundred days earlier.
Brando had climbed his Everest and strode into the history books and the country's folklore becoming, on Saturday August 23 at 3.45pm,
the first person to ever walk the entire coastline of New Zealand.
He had walked the talk.
He had dreamed it and he had done it.
And as we watched, instead of coming up the hill, he raced down the steep sandy slope, took off his pack and clothes and ran into the embrace of The Tasman Sea that had looked after him and fed him on his way south all those days ago. Then, to our cheering, he made his way up the final slope towards us.
My young friend had invited me to spend his last night before the final few kilometers with him at Tapotupotu Bay, just to the east of Cape Reinga. There was no way The Flying Tortoise wasn't going to be there.
A film crew were there too, making a doco about Wildboy for the New Zealand ADHD Association on how he'd quieted his demons and resolved the issues surrounding ADHD and his Dyslexia. They pall into insignificance now.
Throughout his journey his words and deeds inspired many thousands of young and not so young children with similar issues.
And those without any.
I arrived at Cape Reinga at the northern tip of Aotearoa New Zealand, The Land Of The Long White Cloud. My country. And couldn't stop the tears from flowing.
I knew it was a spiritual place but I wasn't ready for the strength of emotions and the profound affect actually being there would evoke in me.
If I didn't know better I would swear I had Maori ancestry. And I would be proud to.
The Cape is a place where The Tasman Sea
and The Pacific Ocean meet, their respective currents doing battle and causing much turmoil for seafarers.
Many were the reasons for tears of joy to flow on Saturday and flow they did. It was an emotional homecoming for the boy who left there all those days and experiences ago. While the crowd of well wishers watched, they realised the wayward boy had become a wonderful, confident, personable and articulate young man.
His parents Todd and Donella, his sister Brooke, his Grandparents, his Uncles and Aunts his girlfriend Ngaio, all of us there and those who couldn't be, have cause to be immensely
proud of Brando.
There were people there, and many too who weren't, who've been proud to met Brando on his walk and think about him as being the son they'd have liked to have had, but never did.
I am one of them...