“If You Don’t Learn To Love Each Other, Things are Going To Get Much Worse!”

Valiant Thor and his gorgeous entourage

Russia is killing the Ukraine, and the spirits of the rest of us. 

How often do you find the Pope quoting you? Random remarks you spout off in the kitchen or bathroom while listening to “the horror and gore report,” otherwise known as “the news?” One of my personal rants at the news that only my family gets to hear - “I thought we were done with war.” All this business of soldiers and guns and bombs and weeping and bleeding. Then, I heard the Pope say so, recently, at the beginning of Lent, the time of purification before Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ - “I thought we were done with war.”

But, I’m paraphrasing - here is what the Pope actually said in his own, more eloquent, words -

“The truth is that ‘never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely.’ We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility of a ‘just war.’ Never again war!”

 

“We are called to love everyone, without exception; at the same time, loving an oppressor does not mean allowing him to keep oppressing us, or letting him think that what he does is acceptable.” 

“On the contrary,” the pope said, “true love for an oppressor means seeking ways to make him cease his oppression; it means stripping him of a power that he does not know how to use, and that diminishes his own humanity and that of others. Forgiveness does not entail allowing oppressors to keep trampling on their own dignity and that of others, or letting criminals continue their wrongdoing.”

From Pope Francis to aliens - Yes, aliens have a stake in our survival as a planet and a species. 

First, aliens cannot write music. For music, they come to Earth. (That’s a joke. However, it could be true. We clearly have something they don’t; they have a vested interest in keeping earthlings well and functional.) Next, aliens harvest Earth’s force, usually leaving a crop circle behind as evidence. If humans were to disrupt the ki flow of Earth’s energy by nuclear annihilation, aliens might not be able to use the force. That’s a pretty simple breakdown of a process which most people have never heard of; even alien watchers have not figured out why aliens leave crop circles for us to decipher or why aliens come here at all, or if aliens are actually humans from the future. We do know that UFOs appear near nuclear power plants and nuclear weaponry. Warnings? What it all means is - Earth’s force must remain the same! We cannot destroy ourselves!

An over-simplification of Absolute Death. We are flirting with Absolute Death. I do not think our souls can survive nuclear war. If they are matter at all, physical in any way, then our souls will explode and dissipate.  

Elliot on the Red Phone

Mr. Robot, Season 2, Episode 1, final scene: An episode that was crammed full of hacker delights: bar codes to scan, Easter egg doors to open, and some choice low-tech hints that no one noticed. I was watching. This is what I saw: Eliot is in the front hallway of an old rooming house. There is a red phone on the wall. In these old rooming houses, a community phone was in the front hallway; no one had their own phone in their room. The red phone, any child of the Cold War will tell you, sat on the President’s desk and was a direct line to the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, i.e. somewhere important in the world leader vein. The phone rings. Elliot picks it up and says, “Hello?” The voice asks, “Is it really you?” (Now we know Elliot is of extreme importance.) Elliot asks, “Who’s this?” The answer: “Thor. Valiant.” 

Fade to black. I’m shaking on the sofa. Who is getting this? No one. Obviously, someone in the writing department knows their shit. (I tried to comment and tell a writer of an Easter egg article about the low-tech stuff I knew, including the meaning of “red wheelbarrow” on Elliot’s composition notebook - from a poem by William Carlos Williams, about getting back to a simple life, but she fucking hacked the shit out of me to show her appreciation of my efforts. Lucky, I know a few things and I deleted her traps. As well as my comment on her article. Taking my ball and going home, fuck you very much.)

The Red Wheelbarrow

by

William Carlos Williams

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Who was Valiant Thor?

Here is the unofficial story: 

A Visitor at the Pentagon

On March 16, 1957, a strange craft landed in a farmer’s field in Alexandria, Virginia. Local police arrived on the scene with guns drawn, expecting the worst. They were surprised to find what appeared to be an unarmed man stepping out of the craft. They were even more surprised when the man asked to speak with the President telepathically. It must have convinced them, so they immediately took him to the Pentagon. Over the next few days, the visitor would receive his meeting with the President and a fully furnished apartment deep within the Pentagon.

The Mission of Valiant Thor

According to Valiant Thor, he was sent here by a galactic council upholding the tenants of Jesus who was considered by Thor to be an intergalactic God, Savior of All Life Forms, to convince humanity to shy away from their use of nuclear weapons. Thor, and his group of alien assistants, all in the form of gorgeous human beings, hailed from the nearby planet of Venus. Thor convinced President Eisenhower to create a council against the use of nuclear weapons. However, the committee was repeatedly blocked by members of the CIA and DOD. 

Thor had to leave Earth defeated. His conclusion: Earth is more interested in making money than living in peace.

War and Reparation are BIG BUSINESS! Bigger than any other business. First, government contracts to kill, then government contracts to re-build. Until we break it, humanity is trapped by its leaders in this destructive and meaningless pattern. 

Remember, we always become friends again with our enemies - think Japan. The stupidest exchange ever had to be Hiroshima for Pearl Harbor. Isn’t it so much better to exchange sushi, sake, and technology instead of bombs, death and destruction?

Makes war obsolete.

I haven’t even touched on the constant African wars - the Congo, Nigeria - where men use more low tech weaponry, not any less deadly, to destroy. 

The Pope says we should not allow the oppressor to oppress us, but rather share some other options for him to achieve his goals. Negotiation. Talk. Friendship. There is no need to kill. No need to destroy. 

Or is it simply the desire to show the world one’s POWER? Who will be left to read history? Who will witness your power when the world is gone? Is there any power without a witness?

Virgin Mary

wearing her blue mantel of Peace

One more warning:

Came from Jesus's Mother, the Virgin Mary. Fatima, Portugal, 1917. Three young shepherds, Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto witnessed a vision of the Virgin Mary that spoke to them and gave them predictions of our fate. She showed the children a terrifying vision of hell.

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out...When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine... (World War II) and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.” 

On 25 January 1938, The New York Times reported "Aurora Borealis Startles Europe; People Flee in Fear, Call Firemen." The celestial display was seen from Canada to Bermuda to Austria to Scotland, and short-wave radio transmissions were shut down for almost 12 hours in Canada.

As a result of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis announced he would consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It didn’t make the news. God has become a dirty word on network TV.

Jesus’s mother warned us: “If you don’t learn to love each other, things are going to get much worse!”

The blue of Mary’s mantel has always represented Peace. 

Let us take up that blue mantel for purely practical reasons.

Peace is Life.

Yes, they killed John Lennon, but they did not kill his message.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2022

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

Pre-Pre Natal Care for Women and Men - Get Ready For Your Baby!

 

Did you know that childbirth is supposed to be an orgasm? No pain. Only ecstasy. 

This body that we nurture every day nurtures us back. We are stuck in it. And sometimes, it’s scary. But it doesn’t have to be.

I’ve written about health many times and it all boils down to something we all learned in school. Again, I’m saying it - it seems to me there are only two kinds of people in the world, those who paid attention in school and those who didn’t. Maybe you had a loser for a teacher and you coasted but you missed out on a lot that could be useful to you now. That loser had a lot to teach you.

In all of the pandemic, I only heard the WGBH Boston journalist, Adam Reilly* say what we all learned or should have learned in school (I’m paraphrasing) - “All you really need to do to strengthen your immune system and be healthy is to eat real nutritious food, get enough sleep and exercise.” 

That’s three things.

And, nobody does it.

I was lucky. I was brought up Italian, eating only whole foods from the Italian market in Haymarket Square, Boston. My grandfather and my uncle used to go every week and come home with wheels of cheese and hunks of prosciutto that the family shared. Every day was a fresh loaf of bread. Fresh fruits were abundant. My mother even foraged for dandelion greens. My grandmother grew her own arugula, tomatoes and red pepper in a tiny backyard garden in East Boston. 

My mother cautioned us to never eat anything from a factory! Candy was kept on a top shelf. Anything packaged was suspect.

I was thirty-one years old and eight years macrobiotic when my daughter was born. She popped out after only four hours of labor; she was pissing, pooping and screaming! I won’t say it was painless, it wasn’t. I did it without drugs and there comes a point, where, like Catholic saints, you pass the pain and drift into nothingness. 

Ecstasy.

But it’s not about pain or no pain. It’s about health.

A friend of mine delivered her ninth child herself behind the counter of her natural food store. Health.

Every time I see a commercial for children in a cancer ward, I shudder, because NO CHILD SHOULD HAVE CANCER! No, nor any other degenerative disease.

It is my opinion, and you can take it or leave it, that eating junk food as food causes cancer. “White bucket” fast food restaurants, where the ingredients come out of white plastic buckets instead of out of the garden or from the farm. Anything made in a factory - artificial “food-like substances” (Michael Pollan*, author, nutritionist and chef) that we eat as our daily food.

Feed yourself and your children real nutritious food! Everyone must learn how to cook! Every man, woman and, yes, every child as soon as they are able! 

Cooking is not an inconvenience. It is an opportunity. A chance to get better, to be better, to feel better!

NYC Mayor Eric Adams healed his diabetes and the blindness in his left eye 

by changing his diet 

What is good nutritious food? Here is the Food Pyramid we learned in school. It changes sometimes, but the basics remain the same. In macrobiotics, we lean more toward whole grains and vegetables with occasional servings of chicken, fish, dairy and eggs.

Here’s what to do for good pre-prenatal care and it’s the same for everyone’s everyday health. You don't have to be macrobiotic to be healthy! Get as close to this as you can!

Pre Pre Natal Care For Women and Men: Get Ready For Your Baby!

1. Learn to cook real whole foods. When you are a young adult (think high school!) stop all junk food as food. Junk food is a cheat meal, only for fun, not for food. Children cannot develop properly on a diet of sugary breakfast cereal, pizza and hot dogs. Not in life or in the womb - you must pre prepare for pregnancy to give your baby the best chance at health! 
2. No drugs, limit alcohol. 
3. Cut your sugar intake in half - or more!
4. Get enough sleep. This can be hard when you work and commute. But you must try.
5. Exercise. Keep your body as strong as possible. Keep your blood circulation pumping! Your own good quality blood made from good quality food is the best healing medicine for you!
6. Drink plenty of water! Water is the only drink that can truly hydrate you! Dehydration can sneak up on you.  It has many, many symptoms that can be dangerous!

Drugs, alcohol and sugar take from the body. Obviously, no hard drugs which can take your life as well as your baby’s life. Use other medications in moderation at all times. (Check with your doctor.) Nowadays women do not drink alcohol when pregnant. Many women also stop coffee. My mother never heard of these restrictions. I did drink coffee and everything was fine. I was advised by my European macro friends that European women drank good quality beer while pregnant to ensure plenty of breast milk. So, I drank the best beer I could find at the time, Pilsner Urquell. I had lots and lots of milk! I was also advised to eat a fermented soy product called natto for skin health. “No stretch marks,” commented the intern who cared for me. The doctor wouldn’t come down to the delivery. He said since it was my first, there was plenty of time. An intern and several nurses attended me. Initially, I had planned to use a mid-wife with doctor/hospital back-up. However, the doctor felt my hematocrit (number of red blood cells) was too low for mid-wife conditions. I studied what that meant and adjusted my diet to change my condition - I reduced my coffee intake and I made a hearty miso soup for my lunch everyday, bringing my hematocrit up to an acceptable level. The doctor couldn’t believe I had done it.

Be advised - 

Pre-Prenatal care also applies to boys and men! When they eat, young men are preparing the quality of their sperm which contains the program of their good or bad health. When they eat, they are creating the quality of their health which they are passing to their child! How many young men do I see leaving the convenience store at lunch time with a huge bag of chips and a huge bottle of Coke! Not a nutritious lunch for a working man! We could go into the eating habits of our mothers and fathers which also influence the quality of our health. Again, I was lucky. My parents’ generation did not have a lot of junk food around and most of it was too expensive for them to buy. That’s no longer true.

We are further and further away from that naturally healthy generation. Possibly four generations removed. In many cases, we could go back to great-great-grandmothers before we reach someone who cooked real nutritious food every day. And THAT effects our health, our children’s health and our future children’s health! The good news is, the body reacts quickly and powerfully to good food and good habits; we can reverse most damage that has been done.

This body that we were given. This body that we nurture will nurture us back.

If we don’t take good care of our body, it will seem to attack us one day when we least expect it.

But, it’s not an attack, it’s our body reacting to what we gave it.

Give your body goodness. Get ready for your baby!

©Patricia Goodwin, 2022

• I am not affiliated with journalist Adam Reilly, nutritionist Michael Pollan, or Mayor Eric Adams, and they have not endorsed me in any way. 

• I am not a doctor, nor a medical professional. I’m just a person who has enjoyed the benefits of a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle for nearly 50 years. I’m 70 years old and not on any medications. When something goes wrong, I am able to consider what caused it, make adjustments and watch things heal. However, by law, I am required to say that any advice you see in my blog is not meant to be followed without first checking with your doctor.

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

***Disclaimer: The information on this blog is not meant to substitute for medical care. Please consult your physician before beginning any new dietary guidelines. 

Nostradamus Says, “Wash Your Hands!” and “Don’t Eat Meat!”

Nostradamus

When my daughter first went to school, I asked her many questions about her first day, including if the teacher had led them down to the bathroom to wash their hands before lunch.

She looked at me as though I had just suggested something very weird, like did they all jump off the roof?

“No,” she said.

“No!” My turn to be astonished. “You didn’t wash your hands before lunch? How about after lunch?”

“No.”

I felt like a very fussy old lady who’d been taught by a bunch of other fussy old ladies. (That could be true. But, fussy old ladies are often right.)

I have recalled this incident several times during the news about the coronavirus. I know that children are doing very well with the illness because they are exposed to so many germs every day that their immune systems have responded to that exposure by getting stronger. Yes, they are getting well faster than other more vulnerable groups like the sick and the elderly. But, generally speaking, they do get sick a lot! My daughter was never sick until she started school. Then, she got sick every few weeks from something that was going around the classroom. 

Of course, she also got well. Often, not easily. A few times, I slept with my face on her bed to listen to her breathing. I wiped her brow with a cold face cloth, her neck, the inside of her elbows, to reduce fever. Of course, I used medicine too. And diet. As a practicing macrobiotic, my child has been macrobiotic since before birth. We ate and still eat very simply at home: brown rice, vegetables, beans, sea vegetables, occasionally fish when good quality fish can be found. When she was sick, I fed her simple, clean foods to get her well and strong, usually brown rice and veggies, and fruit.

But, why is this article titled “Nostradamus Says Wash Your Hands and Don’t Eat Meat?”

Nostradamus, besides being a prophet, was also a renown physician. Born in 1503, in France, the son of a grain merchant, Nostradamus was well educated in both Hebrew and Christian religions as well as Latin, Greek, astronomy and mathematics. At the age of 14, he entered medical school at Avignon where he pretended to learn all the wrong things in order to pass. As the son of a grain merchant, I like to think Nostradamus had a background in good quality food and cooking. He certainly had strong common sense. Nostradamus couldn’t hang around medical school and wait for his degree; he had to get out there - medieval France and Italy - and cure the Bubonic Plague. Nostradamus cured the Bubonic Plague, which had originated from flea bites from flea infested rats, using hygiene: he burned the infected clothing and bedding of plague victims; he encouraged them to wash and keep themselves clean at a time when washing was thought to be dangerous - one’s skin could fall off! He also used immune-strengthening Vitamin C that he had garnered from rose hips; he made his own rose pills and preserves. In order to keep their blood clean, Nostradamus advised his patients to not eat anything unclean, which in those days was a Biblical reference to animal food, that is, meat or anything coming from an animal, such as eggs or dairy. Lastly, and this is vital, plenty of fresh air!

PETA published an important letter today from their Australian Director saying this: 

“The virus, an anagram of carnivorous, appears to have emerged from a fish market that was also selling wild animals such as beavers, porcupines and snakes in the city of Wuhan, in central China. The 2002-2003 SARS pandemic was similarly traced to civet cats. In these markets, urine, faeces and other bodily fluids from live, wild animals end up mixing with blood from butchered ones, providing ideal breeding grounds for viruses and bacteria.

Overwhelmingly, human diseases start with the abuse of animals. Hunting and the appropriation of animals’ habitats has led to diseases such as Hendra and Ebola. The 2009 H1N1 epidemic started in pigs. Measles originally came from cattle, and whooping cough from dogs.” 

And what about that recommendation of fresh air? I can’t help thinking after stories of some of the quarantine situations I’ve read about - including a room in Vietnam that had no running water and no toilet - cruise ships, isolation rooms, army tents, that people being held together, sick and not sick, breathing the same stale, circulating air are just getting more and more sick. One passenger of a docked cruise ship said, “We’re sitting in a petrie dish.”

I mean, Nostradamus was curing the plague in 1536! He was telling people to wash their hands nearly 500 years ago! In Vienna, almost 400 years later, Dr. Semmelweis  couldn’t get doctors to wash their hands after examining cadavers - before they put these filthy hands up inside of women who’d just given birth. The doctors said, “Why wash our hands, they’re just going to get dirty again!” 

Dr. Semmelweis suspected that the death rate for childbirth in his hospital was being exasperated by infection from the examining doctors’ germ-ridded hands. After all, the midwives, who washed their hands frequently, did not have such a high infection and death rate among their new mothers. No one would listen to Dr. Semmelweis who died of the very infection he spent his life trying to prevent.

We are also vulnerable during this time from infections that occur only in hospitals that are resistant to any known antibiotics - resistant, ironically, back to PETA’s warning - because we consume animal products from animals that have been fed so many antibiotics every day, the bacteria become resistant. Why are these animals - usually cows, pigs and chickens - fed antibiotics? Because they live in filthy unnatural conditions with little or no fresh air, often in feces and urine, a veritable disease soup.

Recently, on the PBS talk show Greater Boston, an informative gem readily available to us online and on TV, Stephanie Leydon, WGBH News, talked about super bugs mutating and becoming resistant to drugs, saying, “100 years ago during the Spanish flu outbreak, it wasn’t the flu itself that caused most deaths, but bacterial infections.” https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2020/03/11/coronavirus-surprised-the-world-but-doctors-have-been-sounding-the-alarm-on-another-global-health-threat-for-years

And, here we are. 

There are many sites for information on the coronavirus, much of it erroneous, so I’m going to advise going to the CDC for all coronavirus questions. I cannot speak to you as a medical professional, so I’m going to speak as a mother and as a friend.

We all wash our hands at home. We take off our shoes when we come in the door. I wash my hands whenever I touch something from the outside and before (and after) I touch food. 

The Triangle of Good Health: Nutrition, Sleep, Exercise has always been a basic part of my life and it’s so simple, though not always easy to implement. Often, we can’t get the sleep we need, nor do we have time to exercise. However, nutrition should never be allowed to slacken. Here is a good base for every day nutrition: the Healthy Plate:

Though recently re-emerged from Harvard, this simple plate has been with me since elementary school. I have, since then, updated my protein from meat to a healthy vegetable protein of beans, or occasional good quality fish. (Our fish supply has also been usurped by factory farms, so it is not as easy to find good fish as it used to be. Be careful: good fish looks good and smells fresh and clean; its edges are moist, not dry and curled; it smells sweet, not fishy; the flesh is white, not yellow or rubbery.)

Other sources for good healthy choices are:

Denny Waxman's macrobiotic cookbook, The Ultimate Guide to Eating for Longevity: The Macrobiotic Way to Live a Long, Healthy, and Happy Life

Denny Waxman's Up-coming Macrobiotic Lecture on the Macrobiotic Approach to the Coronavirus, sign-up link, $10 suggested donation (I am not affiliated with this program, nor do I profit from it, except by knowing I’ve given you the info!) 

Allen Campbell: Nutrition Studies Allen Campbell was Tom Brady's nutrition coach and chef. His advice on non-inflammatory foods has helped me a great deal with any occasional pain.

Please do your best and stay well and happy! And remember what Nostradamus says, "Wash Your Hands!" and "Don't Eat Meat!"

Edward Esko live online lecture on Coronavirus.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2020

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

***Disclaimer: The information on this blog is not meant to substitute for medical care. Please consult your physician before beginning any new dietary guidelines.