Seeing the Light

In honor of the first day of hurricane season, I give you: How to Make a Solar Power Generator for Less Than $300.

The website gives some useful information.

May the storm season be so quiet, you won't need to use any of it!

Health care

The power of prayer to heal the sick is medically documented and a part of many religions. I can't -- and don't want to -- envision my great-grandmother seeing someone she loved hooked up to medical machinery. But I can easily envision her praying for someone's healing.

But what about praying for someone's suffering to end?

What about not praying for someone you know is in medical trouble because you don't like that person or the person somehow "deserved" what happened due to lifestyle choices?

What about praying for someone to get better but that person just gets better enough to be medically miserable?

If prayer has power, then people who pray have responsiblity. What do you think is that responsibility? I'll put my view in the comments. I'm eager to hear yours.

Seasonings

Our great-grandmothers knew the joy of fleeting foods.

I'd give examples of foods that were only in season certain times of the year, but I'm embarrassingly out of touch - I haven't been shopping at farmer's markets long enough to know what is in or out of season over the course of a year.

That goodness for http://www.eattheseasons.com/. The website gives seasonal food information, tips and recipe ideas. What a great idea!

Rosemary to the Rescue

A Newswise press release says rosemary, a member of the mint family and a popular seasoning on its own, also has benefits as a cancer prevention agent.

Apply it to hamburgers and its antioxidant content – rosmarinic acid, carnosol and carnosic acid – can break up potentially cancer-causing compounds called HCA that can form when meat is cooked.

J. Scott Smith, a Kansas State University food science professor, advised grillers to put a little bit of rosemary on the surface of the meat.

"Rosemary extracts shouldn’t have much of an aroma to them," he said. "Most people don’t want a rosemary-flavored burger. So if you get the extract you don’t really know it’s there.”

What a rosy solution!

Cleaning Safely, with Grandma's Ingredients

From today's New York Times:

The women in Laura Gosa’s kitchen in Jersey City fell to, blending the ingredients spread out on her counters like so many blasts from Grandma’s preindustrial past: baking soda, borax, Castile soap, lemon oil, vinegar, glycerin and other staples of the all-natural armamentarium.

These women weren’t interested in buying green products; this was strictly a make-your-own approach. It was one of more than 100 such parties held since late March in various parts of the country by Women’s Voices for the Earth, an environmental group based in Missoula, Mont., that just began the program and has another 100 parties planned. The group made headlines last year with a report that common household cleaners contained obscure chemicals — mostly in small amounts as fragrances or surfactants — that it considered unsafe.

While it is deeply serious about persuading people to consider alternatives to chemical-laden cleaning products, the parties are not merely dutiful. At another recent one in the Wall Street conference room of Divine Capital Markets, a brokerage firm, the firm’s founder, Danielle F. Hughes, served “Windex martinis,” mixed from Ketel One vodka and blue Gatorade.

Ms. Hughes said she is wary of detergents and cleaning products because she thinks they triggered her past attacks of asthma and eczema.

But she is hardly suspicious of everything made by conglomerates.

“Heck, I’m in the stock market, I don’t want everybody to stop buying everything,” she said. “But we need to lobby companies to say, Hey, tell us what’s in it.”

The rest of the story is on the New York Times website.

Waste Not

I'm a security-minded person and waste irritates me. So, those credit card soliciations that already have my name and other information printed on them make me nuts -- they are a waste of paper and ink, not to mention a drag on the mail system and potential for identity thieves.

While preparing to shred a half dozen of them today, I noticed an opt-out number to "no longer receive prescreened offers of credit." Whoo-hoo! I'd read an article a while ago about the number to call and that the number actually works, but I'd lost the article before writing it down.

I wasn't going to procrastinate this time, so I called: 1-888-567-8688.

There is only a computer voice and you have to input some pretty sensitive information -- name, address, date of birth, social security number. That last one gave me pause but, if the credit offers are based on my credit report, which is based on my social security number, it does makes sense they need the SSN to verify my identity.

Now that I've gone through the opt-out process, I'll hopefully stop getting those darned offers. The computer voice told me it could take a few weeks for the process to be complete. When it is, I think both I -- and my mailman -- will be grateful.

Mixing green with green

Like so many of us, I try to live green, but sometimes I'm afraid things touted as "green" are really no better than the energy-hogging alternatives. The recent kerfuffle over CFLs and mercury didn't help my jitters, even though CFLs were exonerated.

Thank goodness MSN is helping sort out the hype with its "Which Green Upgrades Are Worth the Extra Expense?" article. A little annoying to read since the article requires a click-through to get to each new topic, I still found the explanations ("assumptions," the article calls them) for how the reporter arrived at the money-savings to be quite, well, illuminating.

If you're pressed for time, the article's last page, a chart of potential money savings, is the quickest way to gain information.

Oh, and if you looking for me, I'll be out buying a low-flow showerhead.

A bit of a reach

It's just not natural to be as desk-bound as some of us find ourselves during the day. Luckily, there are some great guides to stretches for computer users.

Or, if you prefer something more interactive, Richard Simmons has a video guide to simple stretches that can help those of us who find outselves sitting more than we'd like to:

Breath for Inner Peace

From the Chopra Center:

http://chopra.com/namaste/meditationmoment

Nadi Shodhana, or “alternate nostril breathing,” is a simple but powerful technique that deeply relaxes the mind and body. Use it to quiet your mind before beginning a meditation session – or to calm racing thoughts and anxiety if you are having trouble falling asleep.

There are several different styles of Nadi Shodhana, but they all serve the purpose of regulating the flow of air through your nasal passages. Here is a practice you can try right now:

1. Hold your right thumb over your right nostril and inhale deeply through your left nostril. At the peak of your inhalation, close off your left nostril with your third and fourth fingers, then exhale smoothly through your right nostril.
2. After a full exhalation, inhale through the right nostril, closing it off with your right thumb at the peak of your inhalation.
3. Continue performing Nadi Shodhana for the next few breaths, following the same pattern. Your breathing should be effortless, with your mind gently observing the inflow and outflow of breath.

Rubbed Right

Ah, the wonders of alcohol! ... No, not that kind -- rubbing alcohol.

Obviously, the stuff will clean and sanitize. But did you know it will also:

• allow you to easily scratch off a sticky price sticker from metal or glass once you've soaked the price sticker (try this on plastic at your own risk)
• help you pull off a band-aid, painlessly, using the same soaking method
• make a soft ice pack -- use three parts of water and one part rubbing alcohol in a Ziploc bag. Once frozen, it turns to slush, not ice
• as a pre-treatment, remove ink stains from clothes if you soak the stain in rubbing alcohol for about 10 minutes, then throw in the washing machine
• remove marks from counter tops and walls. Try on a test area first and, if there is no damage, you can try scouring the more obvious spot