Jacquie and RaeDi ~ 1954
I posted the articile "Most doctors avoid saying it’s the end."
I posted a article from the A/P from the msnbc health/news web site, in the Group: Government - Religion, Owner: William Henry Allain. The forum was Health Care.
The California Assembly just passed a bill to require that health care providers give complete answers to dying patients who ask about their options. The bill now goes to their state Senate. I have been watching this bill closely - lots of posts from Americans coast to coast on this subject. Most agree health care providers should inform their patients. The American Society of Clinical Oncology at a conference in Chicago eariler this month, where a federally funded study was presented, society president Dr. Nancy Davidson, a cancer specialist at John’s Hospital in Baltimore, said she was uspset at its findings. That most doctors were not having honest talks with their patients.
Read the article and the facts about this study on what happens to patients if they are or are not asked what kind of care they’d like to receive if they were dying.

“My Very Special Friends Indeed"
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"Our Coon Cat"


"Mother Calliope Hummingbird Feeding Her Young"
The Calliope is the smallest of area Hummingbirds.
"The Littlest of Nests"
By RaeDi - May 2008
The sun was out and it called to me
I grabbed my sun glasses, blanket and a tall glass of ice tea
Collecting my two books, a drawing pad and camera in hand
I arrived at the hammock placed under the Apple trees
Settled my drink and amble reading material with my paper and inks
The table was just the right size for all of my needs
I situated the blanket in the hammock just so
Thank goodness I had remembered to bring my small pillow
It took less than a few minutes for all to be just right
I lay there listening to all natures calls and her songs
Oh, I stopped to listen what had I just heard
Again I heard to my delite followed the smallest of notes
I spotted it up in the Crabapple tree
A mother hummingbird feeding her young, I could see all three
There in the branches was the littlest of nests
The faint series of their light chip notes
Their songs and the site of the lichen-moss nest
Covered in cobwebs, sitting tightly between two limbs hugging the trunk of the tree
Protection she had found in this Crabapple tree
In just a few days they would all fly free
I lay back in my hammock thinking what a great day
The sun still shining, I’d close my eyes and listened to the music that nature was providing for me
Right there in my backyard it is all there for me, everything I could want and everything I would ever need
For my Spirit Sis, Peg. We together discovered this nest. We were very quite so as to not upset the Calliope and her young. It took each of us back to when we fed and protected our young against any harm that might come their way.

"The Blue Tit"
As I walk along my life’s pathway there are few things of which I can say, "This will give me happiness as long as I live." But I can rest assured that anytime I take the time to look around and take a walk with my eyes as well as my spirit open up to what is truly around me each and everyday I will see that happiness completely surrounds me. If I don’t take the time and enjoy what is at my back door, I am the one to lose. This enjoyment is there for the taking. Each new day brings a new sunrise and beauty in ever corner of my world. At days end is the beauty of the sunset and the magic of the stars and moon as far as one can see. The sounds of nature and the colors of each season all of which has a newness to each and everyday that I take the time to watch and listen. My Maker has colored my world with every color in the rainbow. He has filled the air with every note that is. Not one thing has been withheld from me. I am the one who has to take the time to look and listen to all that is. It is pure delight when I see the birdnest with eggs and the Robin singing her songs for the whole of nature to hear. Since childhood I have had one constant in my life and that is my love of nature. Wanting to know the names of all the trees and plants and birds. As a child I would sit and draw everything that crossed my path. I found at a very young age that my spirit was one with nature. My love of God and the teachings He has shown me everytime I take the time to go for a walk in the woods, or on the beach, up mountains high, by rivers edge, and in the desert too. It didn’t matter where, He is everywhere, He is everthing. This is where I go to recharge my spirit. Nothing is greater than the smallest of all. When my spirit is in pain this is where I go to heal. Here recently my spirit has been bruised and very weak. I find my time I spend in my back yard, just listening to nature’s song, and seeing her beauty and with each breath her pleasing fragrance of her flowers and freshly mowed grass has helped me to heal a little each time I am able to just sit there and let my spirit recharge. I am finding that the fragments of my spirt are mending and I am growing stronger each and everyday.
"Recharging My Spirit"
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By RaeDi
In my spiritual center as I walk amongst nature
It puts me first in preparing my heart
For those I greet as they pass my way
The abundance of my spiritual gains is there for giving
If I allow the daily grinds and souls in strife
With hate, unhappiness, those souls of emotional drain
What I feel is spiritual pain
My center must love and respect all of nature
Nature is not just human, it is all that is
As a keeper of others it not only feeds my spirit
My gains are vast, some unknowing
The good I do for others feeds my own spirit
Comes with it an understanding
Of God and what he wants of me
Being, in His woods, on His beach all of this He has created
This walk, this journey for spiritual recharging-growth
I in His presence, exposing my thoughts and my heart for what it is
There I am one with Him and one with His love
He allows my spirit this understanding
The giving of oneself
To those in need, balances my spirit
Who am I? Why am I?
The gifts I receive are for giving, helping and loving of all His creatures
Every living thing....

"The Emancipation Oak"
A historic tree located on the campus of Hampton University in what is the city of Hampton Roads, Virginia. The large sprawling oak is 98 feet in diameter, with branches which extend upwards as well as laterally, as if offering refuge. It is designated on of the 10 Great Trees of the World. In 1861, Miss Mary Smith Peake (1823-1862) taught children of former slaves under the tree, which was 3 miles outside of the protective safety of Fort Monroe, and held night classes for adults. In 1863 the Virginia Peninsula's black community gathered under this tree to hear the first Southern Reading about President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
One of it's many students was a young son of a former slave by the name of Booker T. Washington.

"Orca Whale"
"Futher Information on Whales"
Cetaceans, whales and their allies have blowholes that are set high on their head, their forelimbs are modified into flippers, their horizontal tail is called the Fluke, and they are absence of hind limbs. Filter Feeders are called Baleen Whales, they filter plankton. Tooth Whales they feed primarily on fish, squid, and to the lesser extent on other invertebrates.
Here in the Northwest we have Pilot Whales (like but smaller than the Orca), Minke Whale, Gray Whales, Orca Whales, and the Humpback Whale and North Pacific Right Whale which are seen off the coastal waters here in the Pacific Northwest. The other whales visit us down in the Puget Sound. I have over the years seen them from the jumbo ferries while commuting to Seattle; the Captain will usually announce over the Intercom "A Gray Whale is on the starboard side of the vessel." It is so funny for the newbie’s and visitors on the ferry they all make a mad dash to the starboard side of the ferry. You just hope that the Captain refrains from then saying "A Orca has been spotted on the port side of the vessel." (You have to realize these ferries can have up to 360 cars and up to 1500 passengers on board. That is alot of weight running to one side of the boat, I know that it won’t list to the side - but I always pictured this cartoon of the ferry dipping side to side by the whale sightings!)
The Northwest Orca has a huge following of Whale watchers. Individual Orcas can be identified from a good photograph of the animal’s dorsal fin and saddle patch, taken when it surfaces. Catalogues have been published with the photograph of each of the Orcas. This has enabled all the local Orca population to be counted. It is a special sighting when you get to see Mother and a new calf. Each new season the past several years we have had the pleasure of these sightings, as well as sighting of a newly birthed calf with its Momma.

"The North Pacfic Right Whale"
"Humpback Whale Fluke"
"What Takes My Breath Away"
By RaeDi
You can be on a Charter Boat, Whale Watching Boat, for those of you who have a yacht that will do. (Federal Law requires that you stay at least a quarter of a mile away from the whales.) It doesn’t matter, even just walking along the beach. But when you see it, it is so awesome. Usually it is the water shooting skyward up from the blowhole. When the wind is blowing just right you can feel the salt water mist following the breeze on your face. The blast from the blowhole is sudden and dramatic and can be heard from great distances, and is distinguished by the variety of Whale. Over the years I have been blessed with several whale sightings of my own. Just walking on my beach. I have on several occasions seen differnt kinds of whales. Watching the whales breech the water leaves you feeling a mixture of awe and wonder, the display of the whales at play is so enthralling. I am always captivated by the sight and sounds of these special creatures. Nothing can mesmerize me like seeing a whale and the one thing that takes my breath away is when the whale brings it fluke (tail) high, high, extending higher above the water when going for a deep dive. The impressive enormous size of the fluke gives one the true scope of how very large the whale truly is. I will never tire of watching whales and my favorite sighting is of their fluke towering high above the water, knowing that this massive creature with its grace will be going down from the surface for a very deep dive. I have one sighting that I will never leave behind; it will be with me until the day I pass on. I was flying into Anchorage, ALaska several years ago. The weather was very clear and sunny. I had a window seat and was watching the Alaska Mountains, looking at them you could see where the tree level stopped and the mountains were still being forced towards the heavens. I remember they had had a dusting of snow. To me it looked like our Maker had taken a paint brush with white paint and had done a quick stroke of the brush over the tips of the mountains. It was beautiful and then something else caught my eye, even more breathtaking. There in Cook’s Inlet I saw around two dozen or more Beluga Whales in Ballet. There quite gracefulness, and eloquent moves around the inlet sharing this water with so many sisters and calves was as smooth and with such dignity, like someone was choreographing this whole scene. I couldn’t get over how poised the whole scene was. I wanted to just stay right there in time and watch the wondrous site. I love the Ballet, but this is the best show by far I have ever witnessed. When I think about it now it is like it is right in front of me again. I was so captivated, it has been retained in my mind for all of time, this evidence of what I had seen years ago, and I have no doubt that this view in my mind will never take leave. I now often wonder at all the things that I have seen, in the short minute of time I have had here on this earth, what will we see when we move on. How blessed that must be. I don’t think that even I have enough of an imagination to be able to even have a peak. When I see the whales it not only takes my breath away I am enchanted in ways that has never beeen duplicated.

"The Beluga Whale"