Apropos of nothing ...

[Guest guest]

Hi folks!

Just a short note to say I'm back to the land of the living. Well, I guess

they are alive where I was before but you folks are more interesting. I was

in LA visiting my mother and taking my daughter to Disneyland, and the

experience prompted much interesting thought internally. Disneyland is

interesting because a large part of it (Frontierland and Adventureland) is

nominally about " how people used to live " and they have very highly paid

and talented artists and construction workers creating things like

treehouses that COULD have been built from scratch, which got me all

motivated to build a new " chicken house " using tree-poles (we have lots and

lots of pole trees! and they fall down a lot).

The chicken house motivation also came about because something is predating

my chickens, and while I was gone 3-4 got eaten (and maybe the young peacock).

Which got me thinking of you Suze, and the issue of calcium and

meat-eaters. Whatever is eating the chickens (probably a bobcat or coyote)

is leaving lots of scat. And the scat is FULL of feathers, bones (like, a

whole paw), and fur. So I'm thinking: this meat eater is really getting as

much calcium as it can handle -- it seems to be eating a lot of small

mammals (besides my chickens!) including their bones. I don't know if the

ancestors of dogs did the same thing, but I'm betting they did, probably

our ancestors too. Which I've heard, but it really makes an impression when

you see the real thing. Who needs calcium supplements when you are snacking

on whole bones?

Anyway, after 11 days of being [sort of] politically and socially

correct I just had to share that observation, as this is likely the only

place I can share it and anyone will have the slightest interest! I somehow

survived without my kefir-beer, but scoured LA until I found a Korean store

and stocked up on Kimchi.

Which leads me to one other thing I wanted to share: there is some news

around that Korea is one place where SARS has NOT hit. The Koreans (and

some scientists) are thinking that the reason is Kimchi. The Koreans eat a

LOT of kimchi, and they are thinking the garlic is protective against SARS.

We are thinking maybe it isn't necessarily the garlic: kimchi has so much

stuff in it (not to mention live bacteria and likely bacteriophages) that

it's hard to say one agent is protective. But to have a whole country NOT

get a disease (and a lot of Koreans travel to China, they say) is an

interesting statistic, and very interesting for those of us who are

probiotic-vegie-lovers.

-- Heidi

(back in her 5-acre-wilderness north of Seattle, with Kimchi and Kefir-beer

and back on her soapbox).