Wednesday, 6 December 2017

I finally took care of some shopping and errands today.
I am so tired, even after a nap earlier.
This MAY be short... but you know what happens when I get started!  :-)

I couldn't believe the news tonight... the photos of the California fires by Los Angeles, the general area I grew up in.  They said the winds would be fierce tonight... and continue through to the weekend.  I guess the only blessing is that the wind is blowing toward the ocean... well, I'm not sure, really... I just remember one of the reports said the fire went all the way to the ocean.

It was my favorite spot, the ocean.  They haven't shown a single map of the exact areas.  When I was a young driver, I use to drive all over the area trying to get lost... discovering places I never would have known existed... and never really getting lost.

The news stated that a very wealthy area was being destroyed.  That the Getty Museum is in danger.  It gets confusing when they say there are four separate fires in the same area.  I find it hard to figure out exactly where they are talking about.

I hurt for all the people who are suffering these losses.  Insurance may replace the buildings, but it can never replace memorabilia and things we never realized were so important to our life until they are gone.  I was telling my son this morning that you never get over the losses... you remember something you had, and then you remember it is gone.

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Now that my shopping is done, I can focus on my other activity plans... like getting Christmas done!  :-)

I finished my Christmas giving today... the stuff on my lists.  It feels great to have that done.  I always say that if I had a lot of money, I could shop all the way through Christmas Eve... this is my FAVORITE time of the year.

I have already watched IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, WHITE CHRISTMAS, and MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET. Today I found a CD of Christmas music at the Salvation Army Sale.  I also found a VHS copy of LADY AND THE TRAMP !!!  It think it is the last one of the Disney animations I wanted to find.  I will watch it when I think I can stay awake that long!  haha  I hope the tape is good.  You never really know until you get it home and put it in the machine.

I actually bought a newer DVD at Walmart on Black Friday that won't work in my older machine.  Now I have to decide what to do about that.  I haven't had problems with any other DVD, so I have to assume it is a new way they are making them.  It was made in Mexico... do you think that is a problem?

I was looking for just the right size of appliances for myself today, and trying to figure out how much money I will need to eventually buy them.  I am checking on full size food processors, very small electric skillets, the small frig with a separate freezer section that I mentioned before, and some kind of SMALL slow cooker.  Later I need to buy a vacuum for myself. I am also searching for the perfect rug for my kitchen space.  I want to find new kitchen towels, but haven't decided on the two colors I want.  I like to get two colors so I can alternate them while using them.  It helps me to keep the old and new ones figured out.  :-)

I am still sorting through my belonging to purge the things I don't need to keep anymore... maybe because I found something better.  I am also sorting to create my crafting section of similar items from my kitchen/food use items.  It is getting really interesting.  All of this leads to storage issues.  I decided I am going to paint my crafting items to make sure they are separate and don't somehow get mixed into my food bowls and pans, etc.

As each space gets figured out, I begin to know what kind of furniture or storage shelving might work best for the long term... like my decision to get the 6-cube shelf.  Now I want to find a 2-cube shelf or some kind of crate system that can be rearranged when I want to make it different.  With only two windows, plant space is premium... also, being able to open the window for air circulation while I am doing some crafts is essential.  Once I get rid of the big fridge, I can move my work tables around to make more space for my bigger projects.

I am really so happy to be able to work on these issues.  I hope that GOD will bring me even more space and money in the future.

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Well, time to go for today.
I still have to do my December Membership Drive post.
It is easier to get this post written first.

In Christ,
Deborah Martin

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May GOD comfort those who are suffering in Los Angeles because of the fires.  The numbers seem to be in the thousands.  Only GOD can control the wind... I hope He has mercy on us all.

May Israel be safe.  May the media not incite violence with the way they report on the issues.  May the innocent not be caught in the middle of this conflict.  May we begin to realize that violence is not the way to solve our problems.

May GOD provide for me and WT and the future needs of His people... everywhere.
Amen.

Tuesday, 5 December 2017

Today was a kind of catch-up day... getting letters written and into the mailbox... to my sons in prison/jail, my mother, paying a bill and adding a letter to it, sending out two prayer requests... that was enough for one day. 

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I watched FORKS OVER KNIVES again... trying to really cement the info into my brain. (The animal protein that was tested and produced a link with cancer was in dairy form.)  I really want to buy copies of these documentaries, but I just can't afford to.

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Then a trailer for a documentary called SAVING CAPITALISM came on and I ended up watching it, too... I recognized the main character, but it must have been a long time ago that I watched it. The really sad part about documentaries like this is the constant political theme about the rich needing to support the poor by giving their wealth to the government...that people don't have a right to be extraordinarily wealthy because they use it to do harm to everyone else.  There are so many small concepts that get repeatedly stated until they seem to be a truth.  Money has a lot of problems in our societies, but the greater issue is the morality of our people... if someone is moral, they won't misuse their wealth or abuse people.  I tried to think of the reasons I didn't like this one, but the real problem is that its theme is more rhetoric to support the agenda of one political party.

We are a country in trouble, and there is no magic answer.  Human nature wants to "blame" someone - someone else! - so each side of a problem creates lists of things the other one should be doing differently.  The ordinary people have to deal with the results of this never-ending conflict of wills in government and business.

One example was a fast-food worker who said she brought home about $1200/month and then had to pay 900 dollars of that for her rent.  The real percentage of income for shelter (rent/mortgage and utilities) is 30%... so her rent should be no more than $360 a month... but the blame gets put on the corporation she works for because it is part of a big corporation... no mention is made that it is a franchise business, owned by a small person, and that even franchise operations from huge international corporations often struggle to get by. 

The worker was a cashier and assumed that the business made a lot of money because the cash drawer was full when she worked.  Her wages were stated to be 12.50 an hour, and at FT 40 hours a week with apx 4 weeks to a month her gross wages would be $2000.  So she pays taxes on her wages and her employer pays taxes on her wages.  Owners pay a lot of other expenses too...  all the cash in the sales drawer is not profit.  If you want to build a business, that also takes money.

At $12.50 an hour her wages were a lot higher than minimum wage.  In the film there was a segment showing a battle to get a higher minimum wage, up to $15/hour.  They won that battle in the film, but I don't remember if it was the same worker.

We have a lot of different problems in this economic issue... everyone is trying to survive, but sometimes it doesn't seem that way.  Another issue that was brought up was the overpayment of executive salaries.  This is a serious issue, but the responsible activists to change it are the shareholders of the companies... that is their job, their problem... that is why there are shareholder meetings, boards with members voted into the position of watching over the finances of the company, etc.  It isn't the government's job to regulate the wages of the businesses in America.

"Too big to fail" is a different issue... bailouts are another issue... and tax incentives are also another separate issue.  I was impressed by one comment shown about tax incentives for corporations, made by Bill Clinton... saying that companies have to make their decisions about salaries, but the government doesn't need to provide tax breaks to corporations just because they make bad decisions and overpay their executives.  I think the film was talking about the billions of dollars in tax incentives that corporations are given and also comparing some of the lower-waged worker salaries with the executive incentives that were allowed because of biased government legislation in their favor.

My solution to these issues, many of them, is to change the tax structure away from income.  I have shared about this before.  My idea is to get rid of all the taxes that exist, except ONE TAX that everyone pays :: a permanently limited sales tax that is shared by all three levels of the US government at 30% each, with the final 10% being allocated to international expenses.  What a change that would make in all of these controversies!  I think it would take a national action, like they did with the ERA, to make the government comply.  We all know that legislators won't reduce their money, their benefits, or their power unless they have to.  :-(

Pray I win the lottery!  :-)
I will get it started !!!

I have other ideas for government change, too...  but not here, not now...  check some of my other writings for them, or wait for the topics to come up again.  We know I will repeat them then.  :-)

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I was able to see a news program today... and was shocked to hear there is another huge fire in California, with lots of housing areas in jeopardy or already destroyed.  It is going to be a long week as the winds are still going to be fierce, spreading the flames for many more acres.  Nature doesn't play favorites... good people suffer in disasters.

The bigger issue is the added costs these disasters put on any budget... local, state, national.  There is no way to stop the costs, but if the money runs out, what will happen?

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I watch a business show as often as I can... it's called NBR (Nightly Business Report) on PBS.  They often share the value of money all over the world and it is based on the US Dollar ( I am pretty sure).  Our dollar doesn't have the value of a dollar anymore... it is steadily going down... it was about 92-94 cents the last times I watched.  I'm not sure how anyone figures these things out, but I know printing your own money whenever you think you need more, and operating on a debt basis, isn't fiscally sound.  When I discovered my Social Security payments are actually made like credit card charges, it changed my entire view of the soundness of the economy. 

I can see why the various governments are slowly changing their actions on many fronts because their finances are very strained.  I suspect that is why marijuana is becoming legal, and who knows what other detrimental decisions will be made because of the financial stresses within governments.  The long-term effects will one day become a greater burden than the immediate desire for increased tax incomes.

It is my hope and prayer that GOD will provide for Working Together and myself so I can create other options for the poor, and those who will soon become poor.  Social services depend on donations.  If there is no one to donate, what will we find when we are in desperate need.

Even big corporations depend on customers, people with enough money to purchase their products.  Stock wealth is just a current paper amount... it can change in one day... become worthless if there is an economic collapse.

I'm not sure how anyone can prepare for these things, but the housing bubble is just one recent example of how traditional responses are going to happen.  I kept saying that none of that had to happen -- the banks could have worked with the home owners, they didn't have to foreclose.  We need to find better ways to respond to things like that.  My issue is that I don't know how many of these decisions were forced by government regulations.

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See what happens when you watch documentaries!
Your world changes.
You become aware of things you don't normally think about.
They can force change in your life.

I stopped putting milk in my coffee today.
That is the first change I am making because of FORKS OVER KNIVES.

Watching SAVING CAPITALISM has renewed my financial quest to protect myself as best I can within my economic limite ations... building my 3-month food supply, saving an emergency fund, trying to be debt free, finding other ways to create income, and anything else I can accomplish.  It also makes me want to write more letters about changing the status quo.  I may go buy a lottery ticket, too -- hoping to win enough millions to start creating my own safety nets for the poor.

I better go for now.
I still have to make my post about WT's December Membership Drive.

In Christ,
Deborah Martin

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May the GOD we know as Christians and Jews help us to be wise, to prepare for the future even as we trust Him for the details of the day, the possibilities of the future, and the souls of those we love.

May we all see the importance of morality on our world, how deeply it affects every area of our lives, and how different life is when evil reigns.  We can't force morality within others, we can only decide to honor it in ourselves.

May our lives be blessed by GOD so that we can provide for others.  Amen.

Monday, 4 December 2017

My... another week.
Where does the time go!?

I watched a documentary called FORKS OVER KNIVES this weekend.  It has impacted my thinking even more about food choices and diseases we all think are plagues of our time.  It was so interesting on many levels.  I hope you will watch it, too.  I found it on Netflix.

The main information for our time is how a plant-based diet ( veggies, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds...) will reverse some of the diseases we have that cost a fortune in meds and kill a lot of us too early.  Heart disease, cholesterol, osteoporosis, diabetes, obesity, and I can't remember the rest... are all reversed with this eating choice.  It turns out that animal proteins (also in dairy and eggs) also have a dangerous element in them that causes cancer cells.  It turns out that your veins repair themselves with a healthy plant-based diet that eliminates these dangerous foods.  I always knew vegan/vegetarian was healthy, but never realized how it affects our health at this level.

This won't solve all our survival problems, but this film was really impressive with its data on the history of this cause-and-effect discovery. 

We do need protein, which we always think of meat as providing, and eggs, and cheese, and other similar foods, but it turns out that the level of protein found in a good rice (probably brown rice, etc.) is all you need.  This is why Asian people use to be so thin and healthy... they mostly ate rice and vegetable with a very small amount of meat for flavoring.  As healthy people all over the world adopt the commercial diet we now live on (fast food, lots more meat than we need, few fresh fruits and veggies, etc.) they become as sick as we get.

I really was impressed by the fact that erectile disfunction (think Viagra) is often the first sign your body gives that you have circulation problems (cholesterol, blocked veins, etc.)...  once you get healthy with the plant diet, that issue seems to go away naturally. 

So, guess who would be against this knowledge...  pharmaceutical companies, food industries that market meat/dairy/eggs/oil...  it is noteworthy that one of the main doctors cited grew up on a dairy farm.  It seems the powers that be in his educational connections have worked against this knowledge being shared properly... college funders rule the world, agribusiness rules the government... what are us small people to do!?

I love watching documentaries about food, pollution, and survival topics...  this is one you really must see.  If you get to the documentary section at Netflix, try to watch some of the others... like Food Inc, and Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead (something like that), and Super-size Me, and some of the others.  I don't have a list, but I wish I owned a copy of all the documentaries I like.  :-)

My search for recipes is just beginning... how do you have a salad without the usual dressings????  I'm trying to figure that out.

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I am struggling to make a post each day about the December Membership Drive for Working Together.  I don't have any PayPal links figured out yet, so I am posting my contact information at the end of each post now.  I'm hoping to figure out the issues I have associated with that problem soon.

I am sending prayer requests with each post, and sending requests to ministries I am in contact with.  I hope GOD will bless my efforts this time, so I can get things done, finally.  It's been a long wait... I feel like Abraham and Sarah waiting for the promised son.  I entered the Welfare system in 1975 (the starting catalyst for my ministry goals) and started Working Together in 1987.  There have been lots of problems along the way, and there still are.  GOD has to help me with them, so I keep praying.

Once I get these issues figured out I want to boost my posts and try to reach other Christians beyond my small current reach.  I only have December to get a response, or it will be a whole year to the next outreach.  These memberships are for 2018.  Every membership drive will be for the next year.  It is part of my faith strategy for the future of WT.

I am posting to my Working Together Facebook page, then re-posting to the other pages I know of that are Christian-related. I have problems posting right now, so I have to copy and paste, which is not the same as sharing a link.  It is another learning experience!  I hope to have this all figured out by the end of the month.

Right now I am living in Portland, but I need to relocate back to Eugene for WT... to find and establish ministry offices, etc.  This is another part of what I am trying to achieve... what I am praying for.

I hope you will share my posts with other Christians, even though I haven't yet updated my webpage.  There are still links to my other online efforts there.  The purpose of WT is still the same, and the goals of each program are still the same... The updates will be the payment links, and maybe a few small things.

http://work2gather.us

Pray for me and for WT... we all need what WT is trying to create for us.

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I guess I better go for today... I still have to do my WT post.  :-)

In Christ,
Deborah Martin

Working Together Inc
PO Box 828
Eugene  OR  97440
United States

office@work2gather.us
541.344.5248

Let me know what you think...