Okay, no Sopranos tonight, right? Well, to keep you from having the jones attack of your life, here's the site for you:

www.sopranosuesightings.com/index.htm

A fellow Soprano-ite sent it to me and I'm sharing it with you.


Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

Another interesting email from Michael Moore to share with you!

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A Letter from Michael Moore: 'Sicko' is Socko in Cannes!

May 23rd, 2007

Friends,

Well, as you may have read by now, our premiere of "Sicko" at the Cannes Film Festival has been an overwhelming success. The 2,000 people inside the Lumiere Theater were alternately in tears and laughing during the two-hour film -- and when it was over, they gave it a standing ovation that seemed to go on for nearly 15 minutes! Many came up to me and said (and critics seem to agree) that this is my best film yet. I don't know about that, and it seems weird to compare any of these movies in the first place. But I do feel safe in saying that I am very, very happy with this film and I can't wait to show it to you when it opens on June 29th.

Cannes is a crazy place. There are film lovers here from nearly every country in the world. And then there are the people in "show business." These dark forces have virtually ruined this art form (invented by the French and nurtured to brilliance by the country I call home). There are so many bad, awful films now and less and less people are going to the movies. Many who run Hollywood believe that the American people are too stupid to enjoy a film that respects their intelligence.

At the press screening for "Sicko," the Wall Street Journal reported that hardened reporters and critics wept. Even those who have been harsh to me in the past, or who have not agreed with my politics, were moved. Aside from my stated desire that "Sicko" ignite a fire for free, universal health care (and a larger wish that we, as Americans, do a better job of treating each other with a true sense of solidarity and respect), I continue to hope that I can make a contribution to the art of cinema and give people a good reason to get out of the house for a few hours.

At my festival press conference, the only negative word came from the Canadians. Two critics didn't like all the nice things I said about their health care system. Yes, Canadian health care has its flaws, but when I asked the two critics if they would exchange their health care cards for mine, they said "No!" Of course they wouldn't. Canadians live longer than we do and their infant mortality is not as high as ours. Their system is underfunded because their leaders have been trying to push for more American-style health care.

The rest of the week has been good and I am now on my way back to the U.S. The New York Post reported Sunday that the Bush administration, in addition to going after me for filming scenes in or near Cuba, may now go after the 9/11 rescue workers I took with me to get the medical care they were denied by our own government. I couldn't make up irony like this if I wanted to, and I will do whatever is necessary to defend the human right of these true American heroes to receive the medical attention they deserve.

We've also received word that the HMO and pharmaceutical industries are gearing up to fight "Sicko." We received so many great whistleblower letters while we were making the movie from employees of these companies. We'd like to hear from you again! Send us the internal memos and any other plans you run across at the company copying machine or internet server. It will help to stay ahead of whatever they are up to, and it will also give us a chance for a bit of fun at the industry's expense.

I will soon have a special section of my website devoted to "Sicko." Until then, we'll move forward toward our June 29th release date. Hope to see you all there that weekend!

Yours,
Michael Moore
michael@michaelmoore.com
MichaelMoore.com

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hugs, Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

Do you ever read Readers Digest? I'm not an enormous fan of the magazine, rumor has it it's a front for the CIA (?), but I received a free one year subscription for purchasing a year's subscription to another magazine so I've been receiving it for awhile. Awhile---like about a year and a half. I keep receiving notices, renew now or this is it, but still it keeps arriving each month like clockwork. Now if I liked the magazine it would have stopped coming a month before my subscription ran out (smile).

This latest issue has a few cute things in it.

You know those signs you sometimes see out in front of churches with clever little sayings? Here's a few from Readers Digest:

Wal Mart Isn't The Only Savin Place In Town (from a church in Nashville, TN)

It Wasn't The Apple It Was The Pair (Arcadia, Florida)

Don't Give Up! Moses Was Once A Basket Case! (Denver, Colorado)

When The Last Trumpet Sounds We're Outta Here (Bay St. Louis, Mississippi)

Let's Meet At My House Sunday Before The Game--God (Cape Coral, Florida)


Now this was interesting: A DEET-free insect repellant in a transdermal patch that keeps the fleas, ticks and mosquitos off you for up to 36 hours. 5 for $5. www.dontbugmepatch.com

My favorite magazine, aside from the newsletter from the Human Kindness Foundation, is Utne. Next favorite is Sojourners. And Mother Earth News.

What is your favorite magazine? Enquiring mid want to know (smile).


Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

Okay, for anyone who thought I was being really hard on Dee (my cousin who wanted to borrow $250 so she could rent a blow-up house and balls for her son's birthday party--blog topic of May 21st), let me have your home phone number so the next time Dee tries to put the touch on me, I can just give her your number and she can call you and you can send her the cash via Western Union.

After Dee hung up on me she called one of our cousins with the same spiel. Our cousin said look, I'm in the neighborhood, my cell phone is going out on me, I'll be right over. When she got to Dee's, Dee laid out her story about the rental for the party. All the while she's talking about how she doesn't have any money, our cousin is looking at her newly braided hair ($325) and her freshly done nails ($35). She told Dee if the rental meant so darn much to her, maybe she should have forgone the
braided extensions and the nails. Dee didn't want to hear it. 'What I do with my money is my business!' she said. Our cousin said okay, but now you want my money so you made it my business. Dee didn't get the money from her.

I guess it would be one thing if she really meant she wanted to borrow it. To borrow means to repay. Except to Dee. She never repays, she doesn't believe in it. It's an alien concept to her.

It's gotten so bad with her that when anyone does give her groceries because she's said she ran out of bridge card (food stamps) before she ran out of month, people open all the food packages and repackage the food in ziploc plastic bags. Why? Because 9 times out of 10 what she does with the given food is take it back to the grocery store for the money so she can get her hair done, or go to the bar, or....Impossible to do with opened food.

My uncle (her father) says it's a damn shame she's so caught up in the 'ghetto-fabulous lifestyle' (that's what he calls it when folks spend money on non-essentials when they're poor).

Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

This is excerpted from the New York Times. Very interesting reading.

February 27, 2007
Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation s most profitable.

I have never seen anything like it, Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. Box after box after box are just empty. There s nobody home.

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.

Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.

As researchers scramble to find answers to the syndrome they have decided to call colony collapse disorder, growers are becoming openly nervous about the capability of the commercial bee industry to meet the growing demand for bees to pollinate dozens of crops, from almonds to avocados to kiwis.

Along with recent stresses on the bees themselves, as well as on an industry increasingly under consolidation, some fear this disorder may force a breaking point for even large beekeepers.

A Cornell University study has estimated that honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts. Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee to pollinate that food, said Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

The bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the offseason to be normal.

Beekeepers are the nomads of the agriculture world, working in obscurity in their white protective suits and frequently trekking around the country with their insects packed into 18-wheelers, looking for pollination work.

Once the domain of hobbyists with a handful of backyard hives, beekeeping has become increasingly commercial and consolidated. Over the last two decades, the number of beehives, now estimated by the Agriculture Department to be 2.4 million, has dropped by a quarter and the number of beekeepers by half.

Pressure has been building on the bee industry. The costs to maintain hives, also known as colonies, are rising along with the strain on bees of being bred to pollinate rather than just make honey. And beekeepers are losing out to suburban sprawl in their quest for spots where bees can forage for nectar to stay healthy and strong during the pollination season.

There are less beekeepers, less bees, yet more crops to pollinate, Mr. Browning said. While this sounds sweet for the bee business, with so much added loss and expense due to disease, pests and higher equipment costs, profitability is actually falling.

Some 15 worried beekeepers convened in Florida this month to brainstorm with researchers how to cope with the extensive bee losses. Investigators are exploring a range of theories, including viruses, a fungus and poor bee nutrition.

They are also studying a group of pesticides that were banned in some European countries to see if they are somehow affecting bees innate ability to find their way back home.

It could just be that the bees are stressed out. Bees are being raised to survive a shorter offseason, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. That has most likely lowered their immunity to viruses.

Mites have also damaged bee colonies, and the insecticides used to try to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. The queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago.

Researchers are also concerned that the willingness of beekeepers to truck their colonies from coast to coast could be adding to bees stress, helping to spread viruses and mites and otherwise accelerating whatever is afflicting them.

Dennis van Engelsdorp, a bee specialist with the state of Pennsylvania who is part of the team studying the bee colony collapses, said the strong immune suppression investigators have observed could be the AIDS of the bee industry, making bees more susceptible to other diseases that eventually kill them off.

Growers have tried before to do without bees. In past decades, they have used everything from giant blowers to helicopters to mortar shells to try to spread pollen across the plants. More recently researchers have been trying to develop self-compatible almond trees that will require fewer bees. One company is even trying to commercialize the blue orchard bee, which is virtually stingless and works at colder temperatures than the honeybee.

Beekeepers have endured two major mite infestations since the 1980s, which felled many hobbyist beekeepers, and three cases of unexplained disappearing disorders as far back as 1894. But those episodes were confined to small areas, Mr. van Engelsdorp said.

Today the industry is in a weaker position to deal with new stresses. A flood of imported honey from China and Argentina has depressed honey prices and put more pressure on beekeepers to take to the road in search of pollination contracts. Beekeepers are trucking tens of billions of bees around the country every year.

California s almond crop, by far the biggest in the world, now draws more than half of the country s bee colonies in February. The crop has been both a boon to commercial beekeeping and a burden, as pressure mounts for the industry to fill growing demand. Now spread over 580,000 acres stretched across 300 miles of California s Central Valley, the crop is expected to grow to 680,000 acres by 2010.

Beekeepers now earn many times more renting their bees out to pollinate crops than in producing honey. Two years ago a lack of bees for the California almond crop caused bee rental prices to jump, drawing beekeepers from the East Coast.

This year the price for a bee colony is about $135, up from $55 in 2004, said Joe Traynor, a bee broker in Bakersfield, Calif.

A typical bee colony ranges from 15,000 to 30,000 bees. But beekeepers costs are also on the rise. In the past decade, fuel, equipment and even bee boxes have doubled and tripled in price.

The cost to control mites has also risen, along with the price of queen bees, which cost about $15 each, up from $10 three years ago.

To give bees energy while they are pollinating, beekeepers now feed them protein supplements and a liquid mix of sucrose and corn syrup carried in tanker-sized trucks costing $12,000 per load. Over all, Mr. Bradshaw figures, in recent years he has spent $145 a hive annually to keep his bees alive, for a profit of about $11 a hive, not including labor expenses. The last three years his net income has averaged $30,000 a year from his 4,200 bee colonies, he said.

A couple of farmers have asked me, Why are you doing this? Mr. Bradshaw said. I ask myself the same thing. But it is a job I like. It is a lifestyle. I work with my dad every day. And now my son is starting to work with us.

Almonds fetch the highest prices for bees, but if there aren t enough bees to go around, some growers may be forced to seek alternatives to bees or change their variety of trees.

It would be nice to know that we have a dependable source of honey bees, said Martin Hein, an almond grower based in Visalia. But at this point I don t know that we have that for the amount of acres we have got.

To cope with the losses, beekeepers have been scouring elsewhere for bees to fulfill their contracts with growers. Lance Sundberg, a beekeeper from Columbus, Mont., said he spent $150,000 in the last two weeks buying 1,000 packages of bees amounting to 14 million bees from Australia.

He is hoping the Aussie bees will help offset the loss of one-third of the 7,600 hives he manages in six states. The fear is that when we mix the bees the die-offs will continue to occur, Mr. Sundberg said.

Migratory beekeeping is a lonely life that many compare to truck driving. Mr. Sundberg spends more than half the year driving 20 truckloads of bees around the country. In Terra Bella, an hour south of Visalia, Jack Brumley grimaced from inside his equipment shed as he watched Rosa Patiño use a flat tool to scrape dried honey from dozens of beehive frames that once held bees. Some 2,000 empty boxes which once held one-third of his total hives were stacked to the roof.

Beekeepers must often plead with landowners to allow bees to be placed on their land to forage for nectar. One large citrus grower has pushed for California to institute a no-fly zone for bees of at least two miles to prevent them from pollinating a seedless form of Mandarin orange.

But the quality of forage might make a difference. Last week Mr. Bradshaw used a forklift to remove some of his bee colonies from a spot across a riverbed from orange groves. Only three of the 64 colonies there have died or disappeared.

It will probably take me two to three more years to get back up, he said. Unless I spend gobs of money I don t have.


Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company


hugs, Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

I don't know if you remember me telling you about this or not, but last year I attempted to give my cousin Dee (not her real name) a car, a used Chevy Blazer that I had. For ages she had been crying to everyone that if she just had a car she could improve her life--she could find a nice place to live for herself and her child, she could get a job, etc. The only thing holding her up was the lack of a vehicle.

My cousin Dee is a lazy woman. She's 26 this year. She's had one job in her whole life, a three month stint at KFC, and this was six years ago.

The family has tried helping her for ever. People went out of their way to try and get her to go to Job Corp, to enlist in the military, to get a job, etc. She resisted everything. She has never wanted to do for herself, all she wants is to hold out her hand and have people do for her.

The car I tried to give her, she never got it because she lied about having a drivers liscense. I shouldn't have been surprised, she is a known pathological liar.

I haven't spoken to her in some time. It gets tiresome when you only hear from a person when they want something. And she always wants. She wants rent money, money for new clothes, money so she can go to a concert or Cedar Point (the amusement park in Ohio), money so she can go to the bar, etc.

So I was surprised when she called me the other day. Said she needed a really, really big favor. Her son's 5th birthday was coming up, she'd been spending and spending, and she needed some help. For what, I asked, thinking maybe she needed groceries because she'd spent all her money on a present for him. No, that wasn't it. She needed $250 to rent one of those big blow-up houses with the balls in it for the party

This coming from a woman who 1. doesn't even have a yard, she lives in an apartment in a crack infested neighborhood, 2. is on welfare and still doesn't have a job, 3......

Her girlfriends are all throwing big birthday parties for their children this year. One of them, who happens to be the number two woman of the cousin I was telling you about who was shot and stabbed in the past year, and who has two kids by him, recently hired a Dora the Explorer impersonator for $300 to come to her daughter's party. And she plans on hiring some football player lookalike for her son's birthday party this summer.

Apparently these expensive birthday parties are all the rage in the
'hood among the poor folks. All the ones who've had them so far, at least the ones I've heard about, don't have a pot to piss in, as the saying goes. Many of them live in a back bedroom at their mama's house with their kids. No car, no job, nothing positive going on in their lives. If they have their own apartments, they don't have furniture. Or their kids don't have enough to eat. Or....you get the drift.

No surprise, I didn't give her the money for the blow-up house. I suggested, and of course it fell on deaf ears, that since he's five years old a cake, some ice cream, a couple presents would be more than adequate. And if she really wanted to get wild and crazy for the party, add some paper hats and balloons, and bbq some hot dogs (feed the kids). She hung up on me.

Such is life.

Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

Received this from Michael Moore.

"Sicko" Is Completed and We're Off to Cannes!

May 17, 2007

Friends,

It's a wrap! My new film, "Sicko," is all done and will have its world premiere this Saturday night at the Cannes Film Festival. As with "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," we are honored to have been chosen by this prestigious festival to screen our work there.

My intention was to keep "Sicko" under wraps and show it to virtually no one before its premiere in Cannes. That is what I have done and, as you may have noticed if you are a recipient of my infrequent Internet letters, I have been very silent about what I've been up to. In part, that's because I was working very hard to complete the film. But my silence was also because I knew that the health care industry -- an industry which makes up more than 15 percent of our GDP -- was not going to like much of what they were going to see in this movie and I thought it best not to upset them any sooner than need be.

Well, going quietly to Cannes, I guess, was not to be. For some strange reason, on May 2nd the Bush administration initiated an action against me over how I obtained some of the content they believe is in my film. As none of them have actually seen the film (or so I hope!), they decided, unlike with "Fahrenheit 9/11," not to wait until the film was out of the gate and too far down the road to begin their attack.

Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, launched an investigation of a trip I took to Cuba to film scenes for the movie. These scenes involve a group of 9/11 rescue workers who are suffering from illnesses obtained from working down at Ground Zero. They have received little or no help with their health care from the government. I do not want to give away what actually happens in the movie because I don't want to spoil it for you (although I'm sure you'll hear much about it after it unspools Saturday). Plus, our lawyers have advised me to say little at this point, as the film goes somewhere far scarier than "Cuba." Rest assured of one thing: no laws were broken. All I've done is violate the modern-day rule of journalism that says, "ask no questions of those in power or your luncheon privileges will be revoked."

This preemptive action taken by the Bush administration on the eve of the "Sicko" premiere in Cannes led our attorneys to fear for the safety of our film, noting that Secretary Paulson may try to claim that the content of the movie was obtained through a violation of the trade embargo that our country has against Cuba and the travel laws that prohibit average citizens of our free country from traveling to Cuba. (The law does not prohibit anyone from exercising their first amendment right of a free press and documentaries are protected works of journalism.)

I was floored when our lawyers told me this. "Are you saying they might actually confiscate our movie?" "Yes," was the answer. "These days, anything is possible. Even if there is just a 20 percent chance the government would seize our movie before Cannes, does anyone want to take that risk?"

Certainly not. So there we were last week, spiriting a duplicate master negative out of the country just so no one from the government would take it from us. (Seriously, I can't believe I just typed those words! Did I mention that I'm an American, and this is America and NO ONE should ever have to say they had to do such a thing?)

I mean, folks, I have just about had it. Investigating ME because I'm trying to help some 9/11 rescue workers our government has abandoned? Once again, up is down and black is white. There are only two people in need of an investigation and a trial, and the desire for this across America is so widespread you don't even need to see the one's smirk or hear the other's sneer to know who I am talking about.

But no, I'm the one who now has to hire lawyers and sneak my documentary out of the country just so people can see a friggin' movie. I mean, it's just a movie! What on earth could I have placed on celluloid that would require such a nonsensical action against me?

Ok. Scratch that.

Well, I'm on my way to Cannes right now, a copy of the movie in my bag. Don't feel too bad for me, I'll be in the south of France for a week! But then it's back to the U.S. for a number of premieres and benefits and then, finally, a chance for all of you to see this film that I have made. Circle June 29th on your calendar because that's when it opens in theaters everywhere across the country and Canada (for the rest of the world, it opens in the fall).

I can't wait for you to see it.

Yours,

Michael Moore

P.S. I will write more about what happens from Cannes. Stay tuned on my website, MichaelMoore.com.



hugs, Tawny

Yesterday I recommended that you read the book Burning Rainbow Farm: How A Stoner Utopia Went Up In Smoke by Dean Kuipers. I forgot to give you the link to a website you should check out too, www.rainbowfarmcamp.com. The site is a good read, too.

Check this link out too. http://user.aol.com/station019/farmend.htm

This is all interesting and informative. And profoundly sad and tragic.


Tawny

Blah blah blah, I don't care if you're tired of hearing about what happened at Rainbow Farm.

This is direct from that book, Burning Rainbow Farm: How A Stoner Utopia Went Up In Smoke by Dean Kuipers. Page 247.


Stephen Gaskin's "Hippie State of the Union", first deliverred at the High Times WHEE fest at Rainbow Farm:


"I come to a conclusion that gives me no satisfaction.

When a crime is so minor, having marijuanna, and the punishment is so unreasonable, taking people's homes and years of their lives as well as a very real twentieth-century shunning, one is forced to look for deeper motives.

I have come to believe that it is not the proscription of a substance but the systematic oppression of a certain kind of people. There have been a whole series of decisions made, on local, state and federal levels to the effect that any committed liberal persons are undesirable and are to be banned, harassed, discouraged, arrested and pee tested. It is a blatant use of police power to frighten and intimidate millions of people into giving up a heartfelt spiritual practice and lifestyle. As Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys said, the war on drugs is ethnic cleansing, American style."

As Gaskin said: "The oppression to which I refer is for the purpose of keeping these millions of people off balance to minimize their political power. All those 500,000 pot smokers doing time are out of the political process, present but not able to vote. The urine test is the loyalty oath of the 1990s. The hippies are this season's Jews, this season's Reds, and Newt is this season's Joe McCarthy."

Me, I don't smoke pot. Personal choice. But I think it's just a whole lot of hooey to go after pot smokers the way the government does. Seizing their property, taking thier children from them, incarcerating them.

I think piss tests are overused. Since when is a job at, say, Target, so 'sensitive' that workers need to take a piss test for weed? What people do on their own time, in the privacy of their homes, among consenting adults, is no one's business. As long as peole don't come to work high, then leave them alone.

You really should read this book, as well as the internet sites. You just might learn something.


Tawny

Are you reading anything good?

I just finished reading Burning Rainbow Farm: How A Stoner Utopia Went Up In Smoke by Dean Kuipers.

It's an incredibly detailed account of the 2001 tragedy on Tom Crosslin's and Rollie Rohm's Rainbow Farm in Vandalia, Michigan, a small rural town.

If you were interested in the tragedy that befell Randy Weaver and his family, and the Move family, then you'll find this interesting too.

It's a true story that didn't get as much airplay when it happened as it should have.

Tawny

I don't know about you but I really don't like having to tell on anyone. But today I had to.

The fellow who owns the unoccupied house next door to me hasn't cut the grass all season. In fact, he never even shovelled the snow last winter, not even once.

The grass is approximately 18 inches tall and it just looks nasty. Plus, that property has historically had a mice infestation and with no one living there, and no one cutting the grass, well, the little rodents are probably multiplying like crazy.

When I stopped in at City Hall to lodge my complaint the city official who handles zoning issues like that said she'd already contacted the property owner because, on her numerous drives by, she'd seen the uncut lawn. She said the owner had promised her he'd have a lawn service out here by this weekend to deal with the problem, and every week thereafter.

She said 'you know he's trying to sell the house and it's a slow market'..... And I said 'well, he's asking way too much for it, he'll never sell it'.

But he can at least keep the lawn cut.



Tawny

It's pretty warm here today, around 85, but the weather people on tv say it's going to cool down dramatically tomorrow. High of maybe 58, if we're lucky.

So I'm thinking I'll fix a brisket for dinner tomorrow. It's super easy and it tastes really good.

First you haul out your crockpot. You do have a crockpot, right? I have a new 7 quart fom Rival, bright red.

The brisket goes into the crockpot. I pour a little bit of Lawry's seasoned salt on top of the meat.

I cut up lots of onions. I love onions. Three or four BIG onions sliced thin. They go in on top of the brisket.

I mix up a can of Coke, regular not diet, with an equal amount of ketchup (or catsup, depending on how you spell it) and pour it over the brisket.

Crank the crockpot to high and let it cook for 6 hours or so, until the meat is cooked and tender.

Sometimes I fix mashed potatoes to go with this, along with a veggie and rolls. Sometimes I just slice the brisket thin and put it on nice bread, cover it with some of the onions and the sauce, and eat it as a sandwich with a knife and a fork.

However you serve it, it's really good.

I'll be thinking about you tomorrow night when I'm enjoying it.


Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

The other day I mentioned that my cousin, at least I think she's my cousin, a distant cousin at that, Pearlie May, her grandmother was a slave. Okay, I spelled her name wrong. It's Pearlie Mae. Mae, not May. These old southern names.....(smile).

At Big Gals birthday party she was telling us that her grandma, the slave, was so loved by the master that he built a house for her and her children (his children by her) out back of the main house and never sold her children off, nor made them work in the fields.

Now all that may be true, but I can remember my grandmama (Pearlie Mae's cousin) saying how she, as a child, used to rub salves into that woman's back and her back was all tore up (scarred) from the whip. So either she was whipped by a previous master, or the one that so loved her loved her till it hurt. You know?

I'm still trying to get with Pearlie Mae so I can record her memories.


Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

Hope you're sitting down when you read this, it's just too sad.....

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.

Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry
Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours.

Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times he still was a crusty old man and was considered a positive roll model for millions.

Doughboy is survived by his wife Play Dough, two children, John Dough and Jane Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by
his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 350 for about 20 minutes.


hugs, Tawny
www.tawnyford.com

Are you watching the Sopranos? I'll tell you, for as much as I have loved the show all these many years, I am not all that crazy about this final season. And not just because it's the last season either. I'm not getting any warm and fuzzy moments from these episodes.

Okay, this last one? It came close to being warm and fuzzy. My uncle says it's because Christoper shot and killed someone. But that's not it. I think it was the end of the episode when the whole family was sitting around the dining table kabitzing wih each other. I liked that.

Another show I watch semi-regularly is Little People, Big World on TLC. I'm not wild about reality shows but I think dwarfs are interesting and this is about a family with three dwarfs and three regular sized people.

Tawny

It's been several weeks since I last posted in my blog and I'm really sorry for leaving you hanging like that. My plan had been, sort of like a mid-year resolution, to post at least four days a week every week. I messed that up.

Okay, so my Aunt Big Gal's birhday party? It went off without a hitch, sort of. Lots of relatives showed up for it. Now they weren't necessarily there because they liked Big Gal, but more so because it was a free meal and my cousin who was doing the cooking can throw down in the kitchen.

Uncle David skirted the issue of Big Gal's less than stellar life by speaking instead about the new life that was coming into the family (cousins having babies) and the ancestors that have come and gone before us. That prompted Pearlie May, who I think is a cousin of mine, to tell us all about her grandmother who was a slave. Now Pearlie May is in her late 70's and of sound mind and it occurred to me while I was listening to her talk that someone, maybe me, needs to get with her and get her memories/stories down on tape for future generations.

There was a lot of drinking going on at the party and, while many would find that disturbing, with my family it's almost a good thing. How so? Because if they're rinking that means they're off 'that stuff' (drugs).

The party wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. I had an opportunity to talk with my cousin Gloria Jean who just opened up a hair salon and that was nice. And I talked with my cousin Earl Lee who is here from Mississippi.

hugs, Tawny