STAN'S BLOGS

[It's not my intention to slight or promote Christmas celebrations] Every year as the Christmas season approaches I get the strangest, uneasy feeling that "I just don't want to participate!" I seem to instinctively know that there's something wrong. Something is just not right with the way America is celebrating this holy holiday; or maybe it's that I want to feel that it's an optional thing, with no shame attached for not indulging in material consumption, overindulgence and frenzy—and I don't. I certainly don't have anything against Christmas, love the man they call Christ as much as anyone, I enjoy the lights as I walk though my neighborhood at night, look forward to the stock market's Santa Clause rally, but is this really the way He would have wanted us to remember his birthday? While doing some research to back-up my suspicions I came across this by the Christmas Resistance Movement , "You know holiday shopping is offensive a

Thirty years ago I sat through a semester of Nutrition 101 while attending American River Community College —I still have and use the text book, Better Homes And Gardens: The Family Guide To Better Food and Better Health by Ronald M. Deutsch. Thus began a life long pursuit of finding the perfect diet . Although Nutrition 101 was an elective class, I did have a particular interest in things organic and healthy and I already was a "Captain Carrot," or known today as just Cary Nosler , radio show fan... That class unexpectedly opened up to me a view of the "traditional American diet" that would never fade away. I started my adult life in the late 60s and early 70s when many of my generations neo-cultural, mind-expanding "boomers" were beginning the process of transforming their lives to accommodate jobs, "the draft" and family. Influenced and guided 1 by a friend named Sue, my wife at that time made homemade whole grain bread every other day, prep

[I'm a journalist, pure and simple; I don't support war nor do I protest it, I learn from those that do and report my experience] There's been lots of talk lately about the U.S. conflict in Iraq being just "another Vietnam." The difference is... we failed with Vietnam War , we won't fail in Iraq. We, the United States , haven't won a war since World War II—a war being defined as a major, long-term military conflict (i.e., Korea and Vietnam). We need to stay out of wars altogether, I think everyone will agree, but if that's not going to be possible, then we sure need to win one... And that's exactly why Iraq WON'T fail. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Downing Street memo , attempting to spreading democracy in the Middle East (if possible) in an effort to fight terrorism presents some possiblity, but has yet to be seen." Since the begining of this invasion (call it what it is), I've spent a lot of time on trying to understand and

Winter is almost here in the U.S., but for the quake survivors of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province winter means more than just a threat of sky-high heating bills... For these already devastated Pakistanis it means foreshadowed serious illness and death resulting from inadequate shelter or, in some cases, no shelter at all during the coldest months of the year. After losing an estimated 87,000 family members, friends and neighbors in the Oct. 8, 2005 earthquake, much of Pakistan's North West Frontier and disputed Kashmir population, as well as neighbors in India's disputed Kashmir, were left homeless or with sub-standard living conditions. The temperature right now in Balakot, Pakistan (Elevation: 3215 ft / 980 m, near the quake epicenter) is 58F and it will plunge to as low as 39F by tomorrow. The Seattle Times states, "Pakistan's army said it was constructing 5,000 shelters a day out of corrugated metal for the 3.5 million people left homeless amid fears