Happy Halloween :)

:) It's the Great Emoticon Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! Happy Halloween

No need for costumes or ghost stories, there's plenty in the real world to be afraid of:
We're still in Iraq.
Britney Spears is a parent, of two!
George Bush is still President.
Global Warming.
Dick Cheney is still Vice President, and he's still hunting with friends!

That tangle of Morning Glories

A touch of frost the other night did the Morning Glories (Ipomoea tricolor) in.

Here's what they looked like last month.

Our tool today will be the blue handled clippers.

Morning Glories are an evil climbing plant. Spiraling around anything they can reach out and grab.

These were so strong they broke off the top of the wooden trellis they were growing on.

The spent plant material ends up in the other end of the garden in the compost bin.

Hard to believe that big bush came from just 4 plants. I see a similarity in the Bush Administration, with ideological roots of just a few neo-cons, growing and twining their way into every part of government. The Democrats taking over Congress are the freeze, and the upcoming Presidential election will be the clippers. Unllike the LipsYard garden, this particular vine is just trash for the curb, and should never be composted or recycled.

Just a coincidence that it was Halloween

Yes, that is 60 guys dressed as Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, and Ghepetto. No, it's not a Halloween thing. It's Barbershop! My weekend was spent in Rochester, MN for the Land O'Lakes District Contest. LOL is WI, MN, ND and half of Canada. Most of the other choruses dress in tuxedos and sing, we entertain in full costume!

Our chorus, Midwest Vocal Express, won the championship for the 2nd straight year.



Here I am in a little more detail, being a bad little boy having a cigar. We're currently ranked 7th in the world, where we're known as "The Greendale Chapter," because that's where we're chartered to.

Pumpkin-Palooza

Every year there's a pumpkin walk in Mukwonago, just a short stroll from the LipsYard.

Different community groups donate carved pumpkins for the display.

This is the first time I'd ever seen Kermit the Frog done in pumpkin.

Sponge Bob Square Pants, too!

Your dollar at the door goes to charity, and this year, the small admission fee went to fund a Seniors Taxi.

This one reminded me of our little bat adventure in the attic earlier this year.

Here's the scariest pumpkin we've ever seen. The sneering Cheney. Boo!

Bush Burning

Another sure sign that fall is here: the Burning Bush (Euonymus alata.) Green all season long, it turns this beautiful crimson when the temperature starts to cool.

Here it is with it's neighbors in the LipsYard, the Hydrangea and the Sand Cherry (Prunus pumila.)

Here's another Bush, burning through your tax dollars in Iraq, has just asked Congress for another $46 billion dollars. Look over to the left of this blog to see how much we've spent so far. He even questioned anyone's support of the troops if they vote "no." "I know some in Congress are against the war and are seeking ways to demonstrate that opposition. I recognize their position and they should make their views heard. But they ought to make sure our troops have what it takes to succeed."

Coming home alive would be a success, too, wouldn't it?

Turning over an old leaf

Suddenly it's fall. The LipsYard is starting to get covered in leaves, like this Maple (Acer saccharum.)

Leaves and grass clippings make a good mulch to till into the garden. To collect the leaves, I switched blades on the trusty Honda mower and attached the collection bag. Our lawn has kept it's color well into October, don't you think?

The leaf and grass mixture is turned into the garden with our Troybuilt 'Pony' rototiller.

Putting in the leaves and grass now, will make it easier to till and plant next spring.

This is similar to all the presidential candidates out campaigning already for next year, 'loosening the soil' of voters minds, getting us ready for the onslaught next year.

May I Service your Berry?

Here's a dab of fall color for the weekend, courtesy of our Serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea.) Its a small multi-stemmed clump which produces white flowers in early spring, edible sweet fruit appears in summer. Foliage is deep green prior to turning orange in fall. Birds love it.

Perhaps the color will start coming back into the President's cheeks, once he get's over the beatdown he took in Capitol Hill testimony from Attorney General candidate Michael Mukasey on the legality of tourture bye the CIA. The first day was pretty harsh on the Bush administration, who must have gotten to Mukasey that night and told him to tone down the independent of the President stance, because the next day, he was a much different, and more compliant to the status quo kind of guy.

Green Thursday: My biggest fans

Here's a tip to help you save on your heating and cooling bills: ceiling fans. We've got four in the LipsYard house that run all the time. In the spring and summer they spin counter-clockwise so the air blows down, causing a "wind chill" effect.

In fall and winter, flick a switch and they spin clockwise, forcing heated air (that's lighter) down the side walls for a comfortable warmth all over. Modern fans will drastically save on your energy bill up to 40% in the summer and 10% in the winter, using only as much as energy as a 100 watt light bulb. A ceiling fan can pay for itself very quickly; it costs only a penny an hour to run a ceiling fan versus 43¢ an hour to run a central air conditioner; or 16¢ an hour to run a room air conditioner.

Every Green Thursday we post information vital to the environment.

By the way, congratulations to Al Gore on winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to educate the world about global warming.

The phone goes VoIP

No more land-line for the LipsYard household, We've gone digital phone, or VoIP. That stands for Voice over internet protocol, a real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol. We get to keep our same phone number, but now our calls go out over the same cable that brings us TV and high speed internet access.

This modem does dual duty, providing broadband access to the internet, and digital phone.

This is our distribution panel to the different phone outlets in the house.

And this is the brains of our new phone system. VoIP gives up Caller ID for free, so I went out and got a set of 4 phones that are Caller ID capable. Because the phone and cable TV come from the same company, Caller ID even shows up on the TV screen! We also get free long distance.

I also thought that since our calls were now converted to packets of data, that we would be immune from warrantless wiretaps by the government (not that we have anything to hide, but as Ben Franklin said; "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Alas, Cheney wins again, as VoIP providers have to comply with the FBI just like other phone companies in providing access.

More friends gone

Yesterday, we found our Spider friend missing, today, the hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)feeder hangs in the breeze, devoid of the speedy little fliers. They've gone south for the winter.

We miss all our wildlife, just like President George W. Bush must be missing the support he used to get from his military commanders.

Over the weekend, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, described the Bush Administration as "incompetent" and labeled the Iraq war a "nightmare.""There has been a glaring, unfortunate, display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. As a Japanese proverb says, 'Action without vision is a nightmare.' There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight."

Gen. Sanchez, the most senior retired general to speak out against the war, criticized the White House for continuing a "desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory. ..." The general specifically mentioned President Bush's surge of 30,000 troops, describing the policy as a "desperate attempt" to evade the realities of a failed foreign policy in Iraq.

The former U.S. commander further argued the surge was "a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan" and charged the Bush Administration with failing "to employ and synchronize the political, economic and military power.""Who will demand accountability for the failure of our national political leaders involved in the management of this war?" General Sanchez asked. "In my profession, these types of leaders would immediately be relieved or court-martialed."

Goodbye Old Friend

Oh no! Remember our little lady spider friend from an earlier blog? READ HERE. The Black and Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia) has gone missing. It could be the colder weather, or perhaps a predator got to her, maybe just natural causes. She was ALWAYS there, just around the corner of the garage. Now all that remains is the egg case, 2 feet off the ground, firmly attached to the siding. Next spring, let's hope that something hatches, and calls the Daylilies (Hemerocallis) home.

Green Thursday: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

94.5 WKTI is bringing Breast Cancer Awareness Month to the forefront with our Bras for a Cause event, Friday, October 12 at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee.

Following is a great article that addresses some environmental causes for breast cancer.

Breast Cancer: It's Not All In The Genes
by Catherine Zandonella, M.P.H (She lives in Princeton, New Jersey, and writes for New Scientist, The Scientist, and Nature.)

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and before it ends an additional 14,800 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with the disease. Roughly one of every nine women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. While genes play a role in many cases of breast cancer, roughly 70 percent of diagnosed women have non-inherited cancer. For these, we have to look at what we do and the world around us.

Some environmental causes are established. Having children late in life and early onset of puberty both increase breast cancer risk. Exposure to radiation from chest x-rays during childhood and taking hormone replacement therapy are also known to increase risk. Breast cancer rates are higher in women who are obese, women who gain weight during adulthood and those who drink alcohol routinely. On the bright side, vigorous exercise for 45 to 60 minutes five or more days per week can lower breast cancer risk in all women, studies have shown. And for postmenopausal women, any regular exercise performed can help.

Recent research into other factors, however, has returned intriguing results on contaminants ranging from pesticides to tobacco smoke. Here's a roundup:

Chemicals in the Environment
Increasingly, studies are finding that chemicals common in the world around us play a role in the development of breast cancer. These chemicals may contribute to breast cancer risk by damaging DNA, promoting tumor growth, or altering mammary gland development both before birth, during puberty, and during and after pregnancy.
In a review of the studies by the Silent Spring Institute, researchers identified 216 chemicals that were linked to breast cancer in at least one animal study. These included pesticides, dyes, pharmaceuticals and hormones as published in the journal Cancer in May 2007. Twenty-nine of these chemicals are produced in the U.S. at greater than one million pounds per year, 35 are air pollutants and 73 have been found in consumer products or as food contaminants.

Dioxins
Dioxins in the fat of milk, meat and fish are among those chemicals most strongly linked to breast cancer. Known to affect mammary gland architecture in animal studies, dioxin can have long-lasting effects on breast development if exposure occurs in utero, during a time corresponding to the first trimester of pregnancy, when some women may not even know they are pregnant. If animals with altered mammary gland development due to in utero dioxin exposure go on to mate and rear offspring, the mammary glands of their offspring are also altered, indicating that exposure to this environmental toxicant can alter breast development in multiple generations, according to the June 2006 issue of Endocrinology. Dioxin can also harm breast development if exposure happens during the other two critical periods, puberty and during lactation.

Air Pollution
Air pollution contains polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) among many other chemicals linked to breast cancer in laboratory animals. "When people think breast cancer, they don't immediately think air pollution," says Julia Green Brody, PhD, a scientist at the Silent Spring Institute in Massachusetts. "But there is an increasing body of research that suggests to us that air pollution might play a role in breast cancer risk because it contains chemicals that are known to cause breast cancer in animals."

Pesticides
Another potential source of chemical exposures is pesticides. Among women living on Long Island, NY, breast cancer risk is higher in those with lifetime self-reported use of residential pesticides, a study in the March 2007 American Journal of Epidemiology found. Long-banned DDT still has a place on the list of potential exposures linked to breast cancer. Millions of American women were exposed to DDT from insect control programs in the 1940s and 1950s. The study found that women exposed to DDT in childhood (as measured by the presence of DDT in their blood donated during the 1960s as part of an unrelated study) had a greater risk of breast cancer than women born before DDT was used. Whereas previous studies of DDT exposure and breast cancer found no link, this study was able to test for DDT in the blood of women closer to the time of exposure. "Women who could have been exposed under the age of 14 to DDT are the ones that had the largest risk ... [and] nearly every women in the U.S. during those years would have been exposed," says Barbara Cohn, Ph.D., of the Public Health Institute in Berkeley, California.

The critical aspect of this study is that it addresses when exposures occurred. Evidence is accumulating that exposure during childhood leads to a greater increase in risk of breast cancer. For example, girls exposed to radiation in Japan during World War II went on to have a higher rate of breast cancer than women who were exposed as adults. "The time of exposure seems to be important," says Mary S. Wolff, Ph.D., an environmental scientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Exposure very early in life or post-natally can cause changes that you don't see if animals are exposed after birth or after pubertal development."

Second-hand smoke
The link between second-hand smoke and breast cancer remains controversial. Scientists at the California Environmental Protection Agency, however, are convinced that environmental tobacco smoke can cause breast cancer, at least for younger, premenopausal women, based on a review of the studies published in a February 2007 issue of Preventative Medicine. For reasons that are still unclear, the risk of breast cancer in women who actively smoke is not all that much greater than women who are exposed to passive smoke.

Better Choices
Disturbingly, while the incidence of new breast cancer cases has dropped recently among white females, researchers think this may be due to fewer women getting mammograms. Fewer screenings mean fewer diagnoses, and this trend is backed up by the fact that African American women have an unchanged incidence of breast cancer and have unchanged levels of using mammograms. (Another reason for fewer cases among whites is that they have decreased their use of hormone replacement therapy, linked to an increased breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women, whereas blacks have not.)

The American Cancer Society recommends that women age 40 and older should have a mammogram annually for as long as they are in good health.
Get rid of pesticides inside and outside the house and take up organic lawn care practices instead, see "Grass Roots: Easy, Organic Lawn Care" http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/121/lawn
Never smoke tobacco and avoid secondhand smoke.
To reduce dioxin intake, drink skim milk rather than whole and trim fat from meat.

Every Green Thursday we post information vital to the environment

Get yer recall right here

Last month we received notice that our Maytag dishwasher was being recalled (and it isn't even made in China!)


It seems that the Jet-Dry rinse dispenser in the door leaks down into the wiring and starts a fire. 135 have been reported so far. Here's a link so you can find out if yours has been recalled.

If you have an affected unit, you call an 800 number. That triggers a delivery of a box of replacement parts. Ours never arrived, so I called back. Seems they didn't have the county I lived in so UPS couldn't deliver (huh?) A week later the box arrived, loaded with a new door with dispenser, wiring harness, and seal gasket.


Another call then sets up the Maytag repairman to come to the house and swap the parts.


Our guy had a problem pulling the wiring harness connections off a circuit board, and it, too, was trashed.



He told us "That happens a lot." I assumed he would have another circuit board in his truck.

Wrong. He called in the order, and when it arrives, yup, you guessed it; call the 800 number and set up another service call. Until then, its doing dishes the old fashioned way.
In recent weeks we've seen lots of recalls: Tainted Beef, Chicken Pot Pies, Toys with lead paint, now these people think we should recall our government leadership.

http://www.beachimpeach.org/

Old friends flock home

Every Fall, flocks of Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) return to the the LipsYard to clean the Snowdrift Crabapple (Malus 'Snowdrift')of it's orange berries.

They start at the top of tree because it offers the most protection from predators. Flocking Robins (turdus migratorius)also get in on the fruit eating, too.

I'm guessing the folks at Blackwater (doing our country's mercenary bidding in Iraq,) feel a bit like the orange berries, getting pecked at from all directions over their questionable actions. I'll side with those doing the pecking (Congress, State dept. Pentagon, Iraqi parliament,) because we can always grow more fruit.

Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492

Happy Columbus Day (observed, it's really October 12.)

Columbus Day commemorates the discovery of the Americas in the Italian explorer's famed expedition to the West, in which he hoped to find a naval route to India. Instead, he found an entire continent that was mostly unknown to Europe, Africa, and Asia at the time. While other Europeans had sporadically visited the Americas earlier, and there are varied theories of even earlier contact by East Asians, Phoenicians, and others, Columbus's expedition triggered the great wave of European interest in the New World. Unlike the earlier visitors, Columbus aggressively popularized his discoveries and arranged for return voyages. While controversy remains about many of the actions of the era, the colonization of the Americas is still seen largely as a good thing and thus worthy of celebrating.

The first Columbus Day celebration was held in 1792, when New York City celebrated the 300th anniversary of his landing in the New World. President Benjamin Harrison called upon the people of the United States to celebrate Columbus Day on the 400th anniversary of the event in 1892.

In 1937, at the behest of the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic fraternal service organization named for the voyager), President Franklin D. Roosevelt set aside Columbus Day as a federal holiday.

Since 1971, the holiday has been commemorated in the U.S. on the second Monday in October, the same day as Thanksgiving in Canada. It is generally observed today in some schools, some banks, the bond market, the U.S. Postal Service, federal offices, and most state government offices; however, most businesses and stock exchanges remain open.