Survival of the fittest!"
We had a bee problem this summer. They decided to do their drinking at the horses waterer and at my patio fountain. We have a nice little pond below the house but they didn't like its temperature as much. The kids couldn't play on the patio, and the horse was hesitant to drink. We moved the fountain outside by the parking lot and covered the horses water for three weeks, watering him multiple times a day with a bucket. Eventually, they moved down to the pond. Two days ago I went out to water my tree and noticed a lot of dark stuff in the defunct fountain. It was thousands of baby tadpoles. Seems the bees abandoned the no longer running water but the local toads found it perfect!

I have a friend visiting from the town I lived in in Australia. It is a small outback town in South Australia on the Eyre Peninsula. He told me that because of the heat, the bees saturate their bodies with water and return to the hive where they fan their wings furiously creating an evaporative cooler for the queen's eggs. I find this all amazing. This same friend was stung over 80 times two years ago when we were hiking at Catalina State Park. We stopped to rest by the stream under a tree, and suddenly were swarmed by bees. I started running up a nearby hill with the dogs, but he just sank under the water, thinking they would move on. They didn't, and since he had to breath, they stung him all over his head, having previously stung his legs and arms. What a mess. In the end I ran back down and dragged him out and he sprinted away with me. They didn't follow us.

I do respect bees and realize how essential they are to our environment, but I am more wary than I used to be. Even the dogs pay more attention when they hear them around.

Sunshine

The last message on this blog was from Dylan, age 7, Tucson, Arizona

igota ballofwacks icanmake cool ships and space ships. i can make a ball iuse it toroll on thegrownd and iusethe ball to boll.

I love the sound of children playing. I'm in the bedroom of our summer cottage checking my email, and the neighbor's trampoline and gym set is inundated with neighborhood children. I come here in the summer because it is in the White Mountains and it is quiet, rainy, and beautiful in July. I thought I might take a nap, but the children came out to play and filled the air with laughter and chatter, screaming and chaos. It was so refreshing. There is no adult anywhere near. The house with the play equipment belongs to a retired couple with ten children and many grandchildren who are currently down in the valley for the birth of a grandchild. But they don't mind, and the kids love to go over. They traipse through our yard and play frantically until someone's mom yells and they have to leave, or until someone gets hurt and they all escort him or her back home to get mom's ministrations. There is something wonderful in the voices of children playing, unfettered, on their own, in the forest air of mid summer.

Sunshine

I went to see Michael Moore's "Sicko" last night and I was impressed. Having lived in countries where health care is free and where I had to use the medical help they provide, I do know that there seems to be something fundamentally missing when the richest nation in the world can't manage to provide everyone health care. I have seen friends and family bankrupted by the cost of medical care. I have seen young people follow the medical profession in order to live lives of incredible affluence, not because they have an innate need to help others. Many of Moore's detractors point out that you have to wait in an emergency room in France, and Canada, and that is true, but the wait is almost always shorter, and more important, the final care is more thorough, and FREE!

I think the idea of caring for one's brother, whether that person is rich, poor, of your same color, religion, cultural and educational class, has been lost in the race to the top. Compassion for ones fellow human beings should not be a question of who and why, but of when and where. We can afford health care. We did, after all, at a presidential whim, spend almost a trillion dollars on a war which has killed many of our brave young men. Can't we also spend a trillion dollars to save our own people?

The movie points out that it is not just the poor who suffer from lack of health care, but the middle class as well. The horrifying depiction of the greed of the HMO's is too shocking to be silently accepted. Where are our protests? Where is the American protesting in the streets like the French? The gentleman from England said it best, keep people afraid, and poor, and they will not participate in a democracy and thus they will not help each other to create a government for the people. How right he was. We are indeed afraid, and many of us are indeed, poor. Now is the time to act. May God help us take care of our brothers!

Sunshine