Bettina Network's Blog - Table Talk at a Bettina Network Home

Coconut Oil and Alzheimers

June 16th, 2011

We had a great discussion around the breakfast table on Coconut Oil. I pass it along to you. You can put it in Bettina’s Blog, if you like. Maybe other houses in the Bettina Network of bed & breakfast homes would like to start the discussion around their breakfast tables to see what surfaces.

The conversation came from my having seen a segment of the Dr. Oz show which had Dr. Mercola on as a special guest. Thanks to you, I now subscribe to Dr. Mercola’s newsletter at mercola.com so he was no stranger when I saw him on Dr. Oz. The topic of Coconut Oil came up and to my surprise, they were very positive about it.

I am from the generation which was told Coconut Oil is bad and you shouldn’t use it ever. It was put in the category of trans fats and could wreck everything from your heart to you liver to your total health and decrease your life expectancy. I listened to that, in spite of the fact that my great-grandmother used nothing but Coconut Oil. I am, you see, from the generation of people who trashed what they were told growing up in favor of what they hear from their peers and the spin on everything the marketing people spread around the globe. It has taken a couple decades, but I am a reformed family negater and am doing my best to recover the information and wisdom which had been passed on to me by various family members. The longer I live, the more I am shown their wisdom and information was real and long lasting. It stood the test of many generations and is still very viable.

I am a part of the women who have just been liberated, who are roughly akin to first generation immigrants who discard their culture, their language, their family’s wisdom in favor of what they find in their new country. Maybe I have just started to pass that ‘newbie’ space and am moving on to recovering who I am and who the women were in my family. I owe them a lot, which i did not repay nor acknowledge. Trying to say thank you as I recover what I’ve almost lost and grieving over my actual losses of the wisdom and stories the woman in my family tried to pass on to me is overwhelming for me right now. The damage sexism has done to women continues to add-up. I do my best to hold it up for the next generation to see and understand.

I first came upon Coconut Oil in a new light at my daughters house. They had this huge container of Coconut Oil, which they used for everything. I was appalled and was sure they were destroying their health and worse, the health of my grandchildren.

When a guest started talking about the Dr. Oz show and Coconut Oil – I had seen the same show and was doing research into Coconut Oil because of the conflict between my daughters using Coconut Oil; the information I was raised with; and the prevailing information about Coconut Oil out in the ether.

Dr. Mercola talked about Coconut Oil being something which possibly could reverse Alzheimer’s. Which to me meant it could probably also reverse my forgetting nouns and proper names. The conversation around breakfast was fairly heated because one gentleman decided only people who were uneducated could really seriously consider using Coconut Oil after everything ‘science’ has discovered about ‘these foods’. As he talked I immediately defended Coconut Oil because he set off an old feeling which arises when people talk about ‘these people’. Is this a minority food? Is this food threatening to some industry which doesn’t want or like the competition?

I checked out Bettina’s Blog and found we have an article on the blog about massaging after a shower with Coconut Oil. Wow! Ahead of the curve?

As the conversation progressed, we heard – if the guests were correct – there is no ‘good science’ around Coconut Oil being a very negative food which raises your cholesterol. The tests which the marketing people push, were done with partially hydrogenated Coconut Oil – so the Oil iself didn’t stand a chance. The test results were pre-determined to make it look bad.

When one uses Organic, Expeller Pressed and whatever other words were thrown out during breakfast, it turns out Coconut Oil is a good food. All the words meant that Coconut Oil should be bought and used unadulterated without being processed and without being full of additives or hydrogenated. So off I went to buy my Coconut Oil and try the massages, adding Coconut Oil to everything I cook – although I can’t quite get into taking four tablespoons of the Oil daily for the Alzheimers cure – it sounded pretty gross and I am hoping that with no Alzheimers nor dementia in the family I will avoid that one.

I should read Bettina’s Blog a little more diligently so I don’t pass over breakfast conversations like the one you put out on Coconut Oil and Massage. I am going to massage my scalp with Coconut Oil and let it sit for a time before washing my hair. Maybe it will reverse the beginnings of hair loss I am experiencing. It can’t do any harm and I am way ahead of the game if my hair starts to grow in thick and shiny and beautiful. Isn’t that what was used in the Hawaiian Islands for generations – before the U. S. introduced them to all this other stuff – and they were healthy and beautiful people with thick, shiny hair?

Ed Note: Thank you for this article. I would like to add a brief conversation we had over breakfast about using Coconut Oil in a Latté by putting it in the milk before the milk has air whipped into it. The taste is supposed to be excellent, but I must put in the caveat that we have not tried this. The person who told us about this use for Coconut Oil used skim milk. We are not fans of skim milk because we think it is an unhealthy way to go so when we try it, we will try it with whole milk – raw if possible, as untampered with as we can find if we can’t find raw milk.

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Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

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Tags: coconut oil, DR. MERCOLA, Reversing Alzheimers
Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Health and Beauty | No Comments »

Estate Sales and the Environment!

June 9th, 2011

It is no secret that the Bettina Network is expanding into estate sales/auctions/etc. It is one of the things that just about every Bettina Host Family enjoys and uses to maximize the profit from their bed & breakfast, to help the environment and to enjoy a day out going from one sale to the other “kibbitzing”.

As we gave some thought and discussion to this phenomena we realized that we have not been to a department store, hardware store, shopping mall, etc for quite a long time. The only place we shop, other than estate sales, is the grocery store and we generally only buy food at the grocery stores because things like aluminum foil, bags, paper products, etc. even clothes, shoes and some toiletries can always be found in a house sale for very little money.

The last sale we went to was full of hand crocheted pot holders, dish towels, place mats, and an exquisite hand embroidered table cloth. Over $700 in the stores, but $50 at the house sale. Someone’s grandmother probably spent a couple years making the table cloth and it was hardly used – kept for special occasions – except special occasions for us turns out to be breakfasts and we really use those table cloths and other table accoutrements.

We had been given a pot holder as a gift not long ago along with an oven mitt by friends of ours who were very excited about the new materials on the market. I put a hand crocheted pot holder and this new, red, greasy looking but not greasy feeling pot holder side by side and started to research the two on the computer. What I discovered was the new red pot holder was made from petroleum products and the hand crocheted pot holder was grown and spun from cotton. What a difference!!! Why go to the trouble of trying to drive less to save gas and do all the other things we are being encouraged to do to limit the amount of oil we use when new products are constantly coming on the market which are made form petroleum. Products for which we have perfectly acceptable materials out of which they have been made for generations.

Even products that our parents and grandparents used without thinking for cuts, burns, etc. are made of petroleum – ie Vaseline ‘Petroleum’ Jelly. What is wrong with using aloe very gel or juice or the entire plant? It is one that can be put on a cut or burn or bruise with good results and you can drink a glass of it with or without water to double the affect.

I am sure you and I could go down the list and find many products to eliminate so we don’t overwhelm our bodies and environment with oil products and used the real things instead. What a new, clean way to live.

We needed paint this week – and found the exact color we needed at a house sale; I have several very elegent designer dresses from a house sale; a much needed comfortable chair for one of our bedrooms at a yard sale and many, many pillows.

How do you deal with cleaning the things you buy? We throw the pillows in the washing machine on ‘sanitize’ and then into the drier and they all come out beautiful. We cleaned the chair with an upholstery and rug cleaner and on top of that put the pillows on the chair into the drier on ‘sanitize’ and we were off to put the money we saved under our mattresses:)

Now which bed & breakfast are we talking about? And are you going to strip the beds and look under every mattress from now on when you stay at a Bettina Home to see if you can find which one is being used as a bank?

Send us your ideas as to how to live a life without all of the oil, petroleum, and other horrible products which create health problems for us in the future – and – how to find and use those natural products which are still on the market, although for most you will have to go to house and estate sales, especially if you want to find real cottong (which was grown in a field full of sunshine) or real silk which was spun by the butterflies, etc.

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Is Deodorant/Anti-Perspirant Necessary?

May 23rd, 2011

We have had quite a time of it with this topic. It all started when we received a request from a guest to please follow up on how to live an organic life without smelling when you give up, especially anti-perspirants.

Several of us took up the challenge. We will never be the same and we will never have the same friends again. People looked at us funny! They moved away from us when we were in meetings during our trial time! We had great and as you can guess, hilarious discussions about this. One bottom line result for all of us – we now know who our true friends are. The others dropped away because they wouldn’t come close to us until this was over – and from them, they said “we love you, but don’t come near me until you have regained your senses and started wearing deodorant or anti-perspirant again – nothing personal, they just couldn’t stand how we began to smell!!!”

Here is what we found – and you have to remember this ‘scientific’ experiement was done by just a hand full of people – women and men:

1) Much to our chagrin, the men didn’t smell as ‘ripe’ as the women throughout this experiement. We don’t know why, that is just what we found. Maybe they cheated and didn’t go to tennis and other heavy activity occasions so they wouldn’t smell and alienate their friends and co-workers.

2) Our bottom line discovery is that it is possible to go without deodorant and anti-perspirants, but it does not happen overnight. You have to work up to it or go around smelling until you have your bodily reactions under control.

Diet has a lot to do with how we smell. And I mean – smell bad.

Lots of fast foods, grease, beef or other animal proteins raise your smell level to almost intolerable by someone sitting or standing next to you if you went two days without a bath or shower. You can do that if you use deodorant. In fact, we found that is probably why people use the stuff because they can go a week without bathing or showering, use anti-perspirants and get by tolerably well.

We tried the suggestion of one persons friend – to use Tom’s deodorant, but we found while it didn’t have the bad stuff in it, it also didn’t work. It worked well for only one person. It left the rest of us smelling bad within an hour or so.

Without using deodorants or anti-perspirants it is imperative that you bathe daily – or shower daily.

The adjustments you have to make to your diet to go without deodorants and anti-perspirants are also good for your weight. I didn’t weigh myself during this time and only stepped on a scale this morning and found I had lost a very appreciable amount of weight. Probably, thinking about something else and concentrating as hard as we had to with this experiment, kept my mind off food and my hands out of the chocolate.

We realized the answer to this question had to be that deodorant and anti-perspirant were not necessary because our ancestors didn’t have the drug companies churning out these products, nor did they have all the tv ads making you feel like a really dirty swamp if you didn’t use them – so – something kept our ancestors from smelling and kept them close to one another without a negative reaction to their mutual body odors.

We found many helps:

1) If you must eat animal protein, use beef, chicken, etc. as though it is a condiment rather than the entire meal. A little bit goes a long way and your body stays ‘fresh’ smelling longer. We don’t know why, we just know that was our experience. We also conjectured if this was the reason anti-perspirants came along and why as humans we are needing stronger and stronger products to keep us from smelling loud and wrong as our diets go further off kilter.

2) Bathe or shower daily – preferably in the morning – so you can get the perspiration or dead skin cells or whatever accumulates overnight, off your skin giving you the best chance at not smelling all day. Of course, there are the overachievers in every group and a couple of us bathed before bed and in the morning while another person bathed in the late afternoon before going out for the evening, at night when she returned and again in the morning. You will recognize her – she is the one whose skin has turned colors from the chlorine in the water.

3)There are ‘helpers’ we found, which we believe, increases your health level and reduces the likelihood of your smelling bad as you participate in life. The biggy is organic, virgin, cold pressed or expeller pressed coconut oil. To give yourself a massage with coconut oil – or if you don’t have the time for an all-over massage to rub coconut oil under your arm pits after bathing, helped a lot. If you also used a couple drops of essential oil after you massaged the coconut oil under your arms you are almost guaranteed not to smell bad, but to smell like whichever essential oil you chose. I liked rose oil. Someone else used lavender oil, and there is the renegade who used rosemary oil. Her smell was a little different, but you got used to knowing when you smelled rosemary oil it was your friend and not stewed chicken on the stove. One used cinnamon oil and one used nutmeg oil, but all of the results were the same; bad body odor was banished.

A second good result came from the person who used organic aloe vera gel either as a massage all over, or when she didn’t have time for a massage, only under her arms. She also used essential oils – only a drop or two under each arm – over her basic massage medium.

We all found that it takes time – from a couple weeks to a month to get good results living without deodorant and/or anti-perspirant. Probably, we guessed, because you have to detox your body of the things which cause you to get that ‘ripe’ odor.

So our conclusion is that you can live very comfortably without either deodorant or anti-perspirant. It takes thought and care and paying attention to your diet and your body and bathing daily, but it is worth it to get ride of those toxins. You know that whatever you put on your skin is in your blood stream in seconds. So if you can’t eat it, don’t use it in your body. AND – there is not a deodorant nor anti-perspirant on the market that I would eat or drink.

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The Royal Wedding at Breakfast

April 20th, 2011

Wouldn’t you know the Royal Wedding would not escape a Bettina breakfast table. It was a great and very funny discussion. Basically, how to cure the world’s ills using the 30 to 60 million dollars it is estimated will be the cost of this wedding. Homelessness, poverty, hunger, etc. could all be cured well within that amount of money.

Skeptics will question that possibility, but we were sure it could happen. It boggled the mind of everyone at the table that a wedding could cost that amount of money in 2011 – or rather that any one, any country, any institution would spend that kind of money on a wedding, especially in a time when the world is awash in so much tragedy; so many people living in the streets because of earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, and more – not even beginning to call up those who live in the streets all the time.

It makes the “good works” done by the royals look like so much cover for lives led on a level that is beyond human decency. As one person said – who are they that they take the right to themselves to use that much of the world’s very limited resources on such a senseless extravaganza. When these extravaganza’s were in vogue and the thing to do because that was the way of the world, it was done to scare people and so impress them with the power of the throne that they would not dare revolt they would be afraid to even consider another way of life. What then, does it mean today?

What does it mean when Charles raises money for his charities when he doesn’t even put his own tooth paste on his own tooth brush to brush his own teeth? That almost ended breakfast because none of us could eat we were laughing so hard at the description of how this grown man lives.

What does it mean when our media goes rushing to England to cover this extravaganza, searching all around to make it more than it is, spending lots of money and media space while totally not covering those in England who don’t have enough to eat or a decent place to sleep, while gilded horses and carriages are riding about and people are yelling and screaming with joy over the fact that they are being ‘royally’ screwed.

We went from high hysteria with laughter to serious discussions about how long this kind of obscenity can last. Why do so many people follow the high and mighty when their own lives are in trouble because of the resources taken from them to pay for such unnecessary frivolity and show of power and money.

What makes it even more not understandable is the fact that this all takes place in a Christian Church! WOW, did that ever get comment! Exactly what is happening in that Church that all of this is what it is about and what it takes as its “ministry”? They probably even have a mission to the poor – which probably makes up about one-half of one percent of the total amount spent on other things.

The discussion was mostly about what ‘they’ have and what ‘others’ don’t have. It was about the demeaning of the human being – both royal and servant to the royals who do the ‘care taking’ of the royals by running their baths, brushing their teeth, etc..

(You can leave this next part out, but it just totally disrupted breakfast and it took a good five minutes before we could calm down from the laughter this generated).

We wondered who was the servant to the royals who wiped their —— . And we wondered if the American media might get a ‘live’ interview with that person so the rest of us could see whose job it was to do this! We also wondered if this was done with paper or with washable rags. We hoped it was with washable rags so there would at least be some redeeming environmentally friendly result.

I think you get the picture. How we got such raucous laughter out of all of this I don’t know, but it was a pretty funny breakfast and one I have not been able to get out of my mind. None of this was upfront for me. I even watched some of the media coverage leading up to the big day. After that breakfast I have been totally sensitized in a way I hadn’t been before. Long Live the Bettina Network!

Ed Note: We put your blog in as you wrote it without eliminating anything. It was astounding to us. As a result of this breakfast and what was discussed – much of it we hadn’t thought of before either, we are putting the Royal Wedding in Bettina’s Hall of Shame.

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Posted in Bettina's Hall of Shame, Breakfast Table Talk, Making Connections | No Comments »

Beautiful and Elegant Skin!!

April 9th, 2011

well, we have once again stumbled upon one of the fountains of elegance! Can’t say youth because that is a fallacy! Everything that looks good is called “young”. That is a bad habit we should break – soon! Try this and when you look in the mirror you will see reflected back, a more beautiful you.

The youth of today are already out of control with an abominable arrogance. How did they get it? All the marketing of “youth” would make the strongest young person arrogant. We use ‘young’ and ‘restore your youth’ to market and advertise products almost as much as we use ‘sex’. The most common tag line in advertising is to try this and that – it will make you look and feel ‘young’. That makes the strongest young person arrogant. And we wonder what’s wrong with our ‘youth’ today!!!

This beauty secret is something we’ve known about for generations. Many of us had a tough brush with this growing up. COD LIVER OIL!

What does that have to do with beauty and elegance? Try it on your skin and see what happens!

Another breakfast discovery at one of the Bettina Network bed & breakfast homes!

Take a capsule of cod liver oil – one with oil on the inside, not a solid capsule – clip off the end and squeeze out the oil into your cupped hand. Very gently rub this oil all over your face as you would any face cream. Let it stay on your face at least 20 minutes, preferably longer, and voila! a change for the better that can be seen. Only make sure you aren’t going out soon after because folks will begin to move a little away from you when you enter a room and sit down. You will smell like cod liver oil.

We tried it for several weeks and people we met were commenting on how great we look! We put it on at night before going to bed so by morning when we splash cold water on our face to get a little blood flow going in the cheeks, the smell of cod liver oil is gone.

Sorry, the royal wedding is having an affect on my language – the royal ‘we’ will probably be around in everything I write until all this hoopla has died down! My children try to say that royal ‘we’ has been around a lot longer, but I just ignore them.

This beauty treatment did bring back some controversial memories, which I suspect many of us share. I remember my grandmother giving me cod liver oil on half an orange and telling me it was just an orange and good for me so eat it. She claimed it would keep me beautiful. One look at that very oily orange and you knew you were being conned. One taste of that orange and you just about gagged on everything you had recently eaten. What she should have told me was to take that half-orange soaked in cod liver oil, rub it on my face, let it stay for a goodly amount of time, and I would always be beautiful!

What struck us as we tried this cod liver oil on the face was the fact that unlike other oils which tended to bother our eyes if we weren’t careful and put oil too close to our eyes, cod liver oil didn’t do that. We could put cod liver oil under our eyes and on our eyelids and there was no stinging, burning or other negative side affects. We don’t know why, we are just reporting on the results of our experiments. You might find that to be true or you might find some other affect.

What also struck us was the fact that the cod liver oil was absorbed into our skin fairly quickly. There was no oily residue even when we put on lots of cod liver oil.

We decided this would be one of our beauty regimens. Dry milk, vitamins A and E one day, coconut oil a second day, aloe vera gel a third day, royal jelly a fourth day and cod liver oil capsules on the skin on the fifth day. If that doesn’t create an amazingly beautiful person – on the outside – we don’t know what will. Try it, you’ll like who you see reflected in the mirror in about three to four weeks. Remembering that natural remedies don’t work immediately, although if 1) your skin is dry and has been neglected for some time, or 2) you have been spending lots of money and time on cosmetics which at worst dry out your skin and at best do nothing for you, you are likely to see some immediate results – both in the money left in your pocket book for you to spend and when you look at your face.

We haven’t tried it, but I suspect this would make a great all-over massage treatment. In which case you really want to stay away from other people until you have given yourself a great cod-liver oil massage; let it stay for an hour or so; and have rinsed yourself off in the shower with luke warm moving to cold water. This might even be good for your health!

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Industrialization of Information

April 7th, 2011

What follows is a summary – as best we could – of a very interesting breakfast conversation in one of the bed & breakfast homes in the Bettina Network, inc. It is a woefully inadequate summary, but it is one we think you will understand from the bits and pieces we picked up.

“Our ancestors lived through and saw their lives dramatically changed by the Industrialization of Agriculture. Some good, but a whole lot not so good, has come out of that still-ongoing movement.

We moved from a pastoral, family oriented, farm society in which we knew where our food came from; we knew how it was grown; we didn’t eat food very far from its source; and we created much of what we needed. From that era we have moved to a society where we eat food which has been processed so much that we don’t know what it was originally; have to read the labels to find out what’s in the food being sold; and when we do we discover food is the last ingredient on the label, most of the other ingredients are words we can neither read nor pronounce. The dilution, pasteurization, manipulation of real food has happened while we were all looking in another direction.

Huge machinery has been designed and built to produce things like potato chips, bread, cookies, jam, rice, pasta and to make vegetables into things we could never imagine and wouldn’t eat if we hand’t been introduced to some really grotesque abominations from childhood. Healthy real foods have been processed and industrialized into out of control and life denying addictions. Animals are being raised and slaughtered in ways that make science fictions’ most abominable and ruthless monsters cry at the thought of what we do to the animals with which we share this earth.

Today, the big industry is the food industry with processing taking place on nearly every food item available and those which are not now in the processing industry are being pushed there by the ever increasing and more ridiculous requirements of the FDA – i.e. the edict that raw almonds have to be pasteurized before they can be sold because of the fear of mold negatively affecting those who buy and eat raw almonds. Almonds, which have been sold and eaten raw for thousands of years with no bad effects on those who have eaten them.

We are a society with increasing kinds of illnesses happening from this processing, genetic expansion, experimental development from the corporate farm.

The same type of thing is happening in the information arena. We are digitizing, organizing, exploding the information available to the average person. We are organizing people into social networks and feeding them all kinds of information which is becoming a necessity instead of a some-time thing. Where is that going? How will that affect everyday people? What will it do to how we live and what is considered necessary for modern survival?

It is bizarre with some of the equipment, which has become indispensable. If you are of an age, you went about your life without a cell phone and felt very secure in where you were going, how you were going to get there and some smattering of what to do in case of an emergency.

Today, many children hyperventilate at the thought of their parents going around without a cell phone. They feel and articulate that they have no emergency outlet if something horrible befalls them. These are parents who didn’t know anything about cell phones and let’s not even mention grandparents.

If you moved from one city to another, you found your way around and found your way to the local library, city hall and other places to become acquainted with your new surroundings. Today, many feel stripped naked if they move and don’t have access to their computer and Google, Yahoo or some other search engine. They absolutely can’t function without it.

The first thing many of us do when meeting someone new is to “Google” them to see what is on line about them; click on their address to see what kind of house they live in, etc. We don’t feel comfortable with another human being until we have “Googled” them.

We moved on from there in a very lively debate, but I think you get the gist of the breakfast conversation. – Huge amounts of money is being made taking what was in the public sphere and putting it in the technology sphere making money on this information in the process. Much more will gradually be put into some form of this informational industrialization with many more making obscene amounts of money manipulating what was free.

In the process we become more and more tied to machines and the developing technology as we get sicker by the minute from what this technology and its developing delivery utensils are doing to our bodies. They irradiate, and do all kinds of other things to us, our genes, our bodies, our environment, our lifestyle AND the food we snack on while engaging in and enjoying this newfound power. The Industrialization of Information ties into and promotes the Industrialization of our food industry. One promotes the other. And where will it all end? In the industrialization of yet another part of this society? Or in leaving this world to robots which will be the only things which will be able to survive the atmosphere and environment we are creating.

Maybe we need a group to look into and study this, presenting their findings globally in a webinar which will compete with another study groups’ webinar encouraging us to go back to the primitive life before all of this happened and outlining how to do this.

We won’t be able to run off to Vermont as one could do to escape much of the Industrialization of Food because Vermont is well into the Industrialization of Information. Those who are going back to the ‘old ways’, the ‘non-consumer’ ways by running off to Vermont usually do so taking with them their technology toys. So we will have to find another safe haven to which we can escape when we have made millions from this new Industrialization and find it too difficult to sustain ourselves as humans through old age in the world we created.

Ed. Note: Hmmmm, isn’t that the Christian definition of sin? Probably the definition of sin in many of the world’s religions

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Posted in Breakfast Table Talk, Guest comments, Making Connections | No Comments »

A Political Breakfast Conversation

March 17th, 2011

Neither politics nor religion are off-limits at the Bettina breakfast tables. I have tried to report on several, but some I didn’t understand as one or another host family tried to give me a synopsis of breakfast table conversations they thought were particularly interesting.

This one was very relevant and timely and amazing as it hooked so much together. I understand this breakfast lasted until after 1pm and the host family made lunch to keep everybody well fed. They must have been exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. Wonder what happened to all of their plans for the day! A stay at a Bettina Network bed & breakfast can lead to some interesting and unexpected places.

This came about because the subject, at breakfast, changed to closing down the government. A couple was concerned as to what affect it would have on their jobs and if anyone else had the same concerns.

Because a couple people were older, they remembered when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House with designs on becoming President and the national political scene looked very much the way it looks today. He led the threats to close down the government if his/their conditions weren’t met by a certain date. Today, so many years later, the same threats have emerged and ‘voila’ Newt is once again thinking of running for President. The conversation outlined the parallels between then and now and amazement went around the table that so many people are following Newt down that same tired, worn-out road once again.

The result of that was the presidency was lost to the Republicans and the Democrats stepped up to the plate. A few Republicans were elected in the interim time, but the big prize was lost. People were kind of disgusted. We suspect those feelings will or already have returned.

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So Much To Do – So Little Time

March 11th, 2011

“After reading your blog on Rev. Gomes and looking at my own life – this may be a morbid post, but it is where I am at the moment and I think it needs to be said.

It is great being a host family in the Bettina Network. Bed & breakfast has focused my life and used all of my talents. Sometimes, I really didn’t understand why I was going through so much upheaval and unhappiness as I tried to get life together. I tried several careers, but none seemed to fit. Each one didn’t like me – so I moved on to something else. With bed & breakfast, its different. I like this career. It allows me to use every talent I have.

Funny thing about that – I started with a very different set of lifestyle values. I needed to have a perfect house and garden. I knocked myself out 24/7 trying to make sure the house was absolutely spotless. If a guest came along who knocked into the wall with their luggage going to their room I was right there within an hour with a little sandpaper and paint to take away any indication that humans had passed on that stairway. I was a nervous wreck.

Now, I am thoroughly enjoying myself and understand this business a lot better. Guests are returning at a higher rate and we are all a lot better off because of my epiphany.

I realized my home is not a funeral parlor. It is a place for real-live-functioning-people, who want most of all to find ‘home’ away from their actual home. There is enormous stress in traveling. We all experience it and want it to stop, but then we travel again and have high moments of enjoyment, but the stress is never very far away.

My home has become that ‘home’ away from home – if I can be a bit immodest. My focus has changed. My concern is about the guest and not the house. The Bettina people told me to make that my focus when I joined the Bettina Network. And, they said, I would have a much fuller and better experience than if I made the house the focus.

Probably because I didn’t understand what they meant I said – yes, yes – and went about making the house the focus. I now have a bed & breakfast HOME, which is different from a bed & breakfast house and everyone is happier for the transformation. It is still clean and looks very nice, but not the hyperness of yesterday nor the fussiness of how I used to be.

Thanks folks – Bettina folks and guests too! You have changed my life for the better and I look forward to a long career as a bed & breakfast host family in the Bettina Network and a researcher (which is what I do in my spare time). I owe all of you for enriching my life beyond what I expected.

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Hail Mr. Gomes

March 1st, 2011

The Rev. Professor Mr. Peter Gomes – internationally known as Harvard University’s pastor – died February 28, 2011. He was 68 years old.

The Rev. Gomes was such a presence within “the college” and its environs that to say he will be missed is truly an understatement.

I first met Peter Gomes – an elegantly dressed young man, complete with watch fob – in the mid to late 1960’s when he was a student at Harvard Divinity School. He has been a friend ever since.

Initially, when I first met Peter, I thought he was one of the faculty – he had such an incredible bearing. And indeed, upon his return to Harvard in the beginning of the 1970’s, after his graduation and after spending a couple years at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Peter had indeed become an officer of the college. This was the start of his career and tenure at Harvard’s Memorial Church.

Peter’s impact at Harvard has been felt in so many ways: his teaching and preaching; his writings and not least of all, the weekly gatherings of the community for tea at his home. It is a home filled with antiques – each with their own history. It was a proper setting for a man who loved life and surrounded himself with so much beauty and elegance.

Needless to say, the Rev. Prof. Gomes’ involvements in the social and political issues of the day were felt beyond the walls of Harvard Yard and are already being recalled in notifications of his death.

Looking back on Rev. Gomes’ life, it is as minister to the college which marks his major contribution. Beside Sunday worship, his pastoral role was expressed through Memorial Church’s varied programs throughout the seasons and festivities of the school year; not the least of these being daily Morning Prayers and talks in the chapel; the pastor’s role as confessor, counselor and friend to student and faculty alike; and – who can forget Mr. Gomes in his varied roles during commencement festivities.

It is all of these good and happy memories which help overcome our sense of loss and sadness and bids us offer a farewell shout:

SALVE! PETER GOMES!

I will miss you!

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Use Those Fruit Skins After Breakfast!

January 22nd, 2011

We discovered an elegant way to use the skins from the fruit we have for breakfast. Sometimes we serve oranges – different kinds – having taken off the skins and separating them into segments, putting the segments on the plate as beautifully as possible. Normally, we put the skins in the compost after breakfast, but this day, we julienned the skins, put them in one cup water and one cup organic turbinado sugar and let them cook until the temperature reached 240 degrees. What a great discovery! Oh, before I forget – we put the water and sugar in a pot with the fruit rind or skins and didn’t stir – we didn’t touch it, we just let it do its thing until it reached the proper temperature.

When the mixture reached about 220 to 240 degrees, we took the skins out of the syrup, put them in a pan of organic turbinado sugar and mixed them around until the skins were well coated. We took them out of the sugar, put them on a plate laying them out very carefully and let them sit overnight. The next morning the skins had hardened on the outside, were soft on the inside – not too soft, but sill recognizable as oranges – and enjoyed them on a little of everything. They were great to add a lovely touch to dessert dishes. We also put them out, in a cut glass candy dish, for snacks. We served bread pudding and decorated each plate with a few candied orange peels.

We took the syrup left from boiling the orange skins and used it to make Bettina’s Marshmaples – only without maple syrup in the dish we are going to have to rename those ‘sort of’ marshmallows.

This was a great find. Not only did we now have a use for something we would have – not thrown away, but composted – we had also found a way to add a lovely touch to breakfast and other meals with snacks inbetwen.

Onward and upward. We have been looking for ways to use the left over ginger root after we boil it to make ginger tea. What better use than this? After all, candied ginger costs quite a bit at the store and it is usually neither organic nor made with a really good sugar. So we put the Corning glass pot back on the stove, added one cup of water and one cup organic turbinado sugar and dropped in the sliced ginger, which had just been used to make ginger tea.

After about 15 – 20 minutes, the syrup reached 240 degrees and we took out the ginger root. We used the leftover syrup to make Marshmaples and they were also sensational. Marshmallows that taste like ginger. The orange rinds produced Marshmaples which taste like oranges. We have discovered something really great and alleviated the kitchen of leftovers that would be thrown out or composted. The flavor of the Marshmaples are real – not produced by using synthetic flavorings.

And we have found a way to use what would have been left-overs. As days move along, we hope to have lots of the candied fruit rind to offer guests and visitors as idle snacks to be eaten while talking, reading or just looking for something to ease that food craving and our dishes will begin to take on another look as we decorate with candied fruit peels.

P. S. We searched our cookbooks for recipes for this candied peel and found one major difference between their recipes and ours. All the recipes we found suggested you first ‘blanche’ the rind – in other words put the rind in cold water, bring the water to a boil, let them in the boiling water about a minute. Some went so far as to suggest you do this two or three times before candying the rind. A couple recipes suggested you bring water to a boil, put in the rind for about a minute before using them the way we did. We disagree. We didn’t know about blanching so we didn’t. We have tried making candied fruit rind the cookbook way and it tastes like a medium of some kind was used to produce another way to eat sugar. And in each recipe you had to add flavoring to the water and sugar to get the rinds to taste again. We just put the rind in the water and they came out full of flavor and had flavored the syrup so we could use it for other things. I can see using the syrup as a flavoring for a lot of different dishes.

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Beauty in 2011

January 19th, 2011

“This is the year I throw out my cosmetics and follow organic beautify treatments. Not organic cosmetics, but organic foods used the way I have been using cosmetics.

I was part of a fantastic breakfast conversation at one of the Bettina Network bed and breakfasts which talked about – basically – only using on your face, skin and hair, those products that you would eat because within seconds what you put on your skin shows up in your blood stream.

I was the one denying this and talking about the block your skin has from products getting any further than just on the surface – certainly not getting as far as your blood stream. And then, when I got home I looked up what we were talking about and realized folks must have thought me really ignorant because I didn’t really know anything about the topic. I didn’t let that stop me from spreading ignorance. I don’t normally act like that, but these are emotional topics and everyone thinks they are experts. I thought I knew everything there was to know about cosmetics, etc. because I spent a few thousand dollars a year on cosmetics and here I could have had better results spending only a couple hundred for everything.

I’ve gone over Bettina’s Blog and found some of the things talked about and have tried a few. The one that has produced the best result for me is the virgin organic coconut oil. That is the one I objected to over breakfast because over the years, everything I heard about coconut oil was telling me to stay away from it because it was bad for your health. Imagine my amazement to hear folks talking about how great it was over breakfast and their experiences with it. And just think how uninformed I was and sounded, especially since I insisted I knew what I was talking about.

This letter is my way of ‘eating crow’ from my bad behavior at breakfast. I hope you will share it by putting it in Bettina’s Blog. If you don’t I will thoroughly understand. Also feel free to edit it anyway you feel necessary, in case you have space requirements.

The woman whose beauty regimen I have been following, was very quiet at breakfast, but she did describe how she uses coconut oil all the time. She looked stunning. She is not a great beauty – sorry – but she had this aura around her, which apparently comes from her beauty regimen. She uses coconut oil as an all over massage after her bath (yes, Virginia, she takes a bath – that freaked me out) – who in this day and age takes a bath.

Once I got over her bathing instead of showering – I could hear her again – she massages with coconut oil and uses it to give her scalp and hair a real good massage as well. Another quiet person around the table suggested coconut oil was being touted as being good for Alzheimer’s and for thyroid problems. Since I am at that change of life stage, the thyroid sounded good to me. I don’t have a thyroid problem, but I am at the age where that is possible, so I massage my neck every day with the coconut oil – hitting the spots where I think my thyroid lives. I know about thyroids thanks to Dr. Oz.

I’ve been using it for a few months and feel great, – I look much better – and my skin and especially my face have taken on the brightness and healthy look of the woman who I admired. I love the soft sheen her face had and that is what I’ve been trying for. Some of the other stuff talked about I haven’t yet tried. The use of beta carotene on your lips instead of lipstick struck me as really great, but so far I have been going without lipstick. Once I get the coconut oil down, I will move on to the beta carotene and then the aloe vera as an alternate massage to coconut oil.

There is so much I heard around that breakfast table that today sounds really great to me – I really regret getting up on my high horse of knowing it all and not really listening. I could have learned so much more.

Thank you for providing this forum. I’ve added a lot of good habits to my daily life which I had no knowledge about before staying at your bed and breakfast. Do all of your homes have this kind of breakfast? If so, I will never travel another way. To visit friends and pick up good habits which will last a lifetime and make me look really good, what more could I ask. Thanks also for putting up with me – I wasn’t the best breakfast conversationalist. a bit too pushy, but I am really nice deep down. When I’ve made a nute of myself I always apologize. In this case, please accept my apologies and my thanks for what I took away from your bed and breakfast.”

Ed Note: We published the letter we received in its entirety with no edits.

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Sew Creative

January 16th, 2011

Sew Creative
14 Elliott Street
Beverly, MA. 01915
phone: 978 524 8848 fax: 978 524 8858
web site: www.sewcreativebeverly.com

Hours: Tue – Sat 9:30am – 5:30pm; Thursdays until 7pm, Sundays 12-4pm, closed on Monday.

A guest sent us an email suggesting we add “Sew Creative” to Bettina’s Blog. She also sent a review of the shop and urged us to put her review in the Blog. We were intrigued and went to visit. It was everything she described.

Her review follows:

“During a recent visit to the North Shore, where I spent several days in a Bettina Network home, I spent one morning looking for sewing, quilting, arts and crafts stores, – since this is my interest and I always like to see what’s out there when I get the opportunity to visit other cities.

I literally stumbled over ‘Sew Creative’ and almost didn’t stop because I was rushing to meet a friend for lunch. I doubled back, however, called my friend and she met me at Sew Creative.

It is a wonderful, warm, friendly shop which contains everything you need, to do all kinds of quilting. Yards and yards of beautifully printed cottons; all the findings – like thread and equipment you might not have or run out of; patterns, and more- but mostly the people who own and work in the shop are unbelievably helpful. They have classes and regular times when you can just show up and sew with like- minded people.

There is an Embroidery Club, a Quilters Boot Camp, which gives you the basics of quilting; a ‘Girls Night Out’ which is $20 and gives you five hours of uninterrupted sewing time to work on a project of your choice and get expert help. The projects include quilts, clothing, using sergers, machine embroidery and some general sewing. There are also classes for kids with no adults allowed.

What is shameful is that there are so few such stores around today where one can buy the beautiful materials I used to buy on a constant basis, whether I needed them or not. I have quite a stash, but my heart goes out to those young people who won’t know the joy of finding an exquisite piece of silk for a beautiful suit to take home and sew or stash the material away for rainy days. They won’t know the excitement which comes from discovering that all the pieces of material you have so carefully stored away – after making a project or cutting up an outfit you can no longer wear – are enough to make a divine quilt. With the pieces from old outfits, it is especially wonderful to discover you have the kind of clothes and pieces of material which you can use to make a memory quilt.

When I return to Massachusetts I will always make Sew Creative one of the stops during my stay.”

Ed Note: We sent someone to Beverly to check out Sew Creative. It is as described and we had a lovely late morning stay. We also added Sew Creative to Bettina’s Menu of Events.

We had an unexpected bonus from that trip. Our ‘checker’ found material we were looking for to use to upholster walls. That has been a request from a couple of our bed & breakfast host families, but we haven’t had the time to go searching for just the right under-cloth to use. We will give you a write-up on wall upholstering in another blog – mostly because our host families wanted to know how to do it to save on their heating bills.

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Time to Get Back to Work

January 15th, 2011

Well, 2011 is well on its way to becoming 2012 and before that happens it is time for us to get back to work.

We have a few emails from our bed & breakfast guests who read Bettina’s Blog.

Let’s start the New Year with a great suggestion for baking.

“I was in the kitchen one morning when my host family was making breakfast. They baked a wonderful sour cream breakfast cake. I would love to have the recipe.

Although the cake was really good they had a hard time getting it out of the cake pan. It eventually came out, but not as pretty as they had hoped. I gave them a suggestion, which I decided to also send to the blog. It is one which has served me well over many years – and I never have and never will use that spray stuff you see being put into baking pans on the cooking shows.

When I start to bake a cake, the first thing I do is oil the pan with organic butter and put it in the refrigerator until I have finished with the cake batter and it is ready to be poured into the pan. I have never had a problem getting my cakes out of the pan. Once out of the oven, let the cake cool about five minutes (no longer) and then put a plate over the cake pan invert it and the cake will come right out of the pan.”

Ed. Note: We tried this several times and it worked beautifully. Needless to say we passed this suggestion on to the bed & breakfast host family who was mentioned as having a hard time getting their cake out of the pan.

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Looking for Homes to join the Bettina Network

January 7th, 2011

From now through March, 2011 we will be scouring the country for new homes to add to the Bettina Network, inc.

If you have a home you would like to use to accommodate bed & breakfast guests, call us to find out more about the possibilities.

We have homes ranging from two bedroom apartments, where the host family lives in one bedroom and uses one bedroom and bathroom for bed & breakfast guests, to large mansions. We are looking for farms, ranches, off-the-beaten track places, interesting host families, etc. Do you have a dairy farm and want a little help? Try bed & breakfast with guests who would love to spend a few days working on your farm.

Call us and let’s discuss putting your home in the Bettina Network! Are you an artist and want to stay home to develop your art – try having bed & breakfast guests to pay your overhead while you give yourself time to develop as a full-time artist.

We have accommodated host families who are very wealthy and want to break out of their closed circle of friends to know more about the world – to those who were facing foreclosure and bed & breakfast was survival and a way to maintain a home they were about to lose.

Call us to find out more about the possibilities and how this road could be your yellow brick road – except instead of the wizard at the end of the road, you could find knowledge, understanding, wisdom, fun, a world view you couldn’t get no matter how long or far you travelled and extra income. Keep your home private, but at the same time open it to world travellers to let them see how you live and you find out about them over breakfast.

617 497 9166
800 347 9166 toll free
email – bettinanetwork@comcast.net
web site – www.bettina-network.com

We look forward to hearing from you and exploring the possibility of your becoming a part of the Bettina Network in 2011.

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

December 24th, 2010

WE wish you much joy, happiness and love!

We wish for you the care and comfort
   of being surrounded by friends, family
   and those who need you and yours!

If we could give to you any gift in the universe, we would give you the joy of giving! Why? To to be able to give, you must know how to love – must be able to love enough that you give without thinking about what is being given back to you! It is the gift of this holiday season, the one for which it was created!

TO GIVE –
   is the ground on which the Bettina Network is built!

To give, unconditionally, is to gain the ability to see truth.

   Give of yourself to others. You can afford to stop when you see someone in need
   – it won’t ruin your life or your career.

   Order your life so that much of it is engaged in giving!

   To give is a natural part of to live.

   To give does not mean giving billions to institutionally structured charities – they will only continue this society
moving in the wrong direction.

   To give is a direct act.

There are the homeless – why can’t we give them homes?
   There are the hungry – why can’t we feed them?
   There are the addicted – why can’t we expect them to give to others?
     There are those without proper clothing – why can’t we clothe them?

there are those who need little things to facilitate their lives – a ride to someplace they need to be, but don’t have the ability to get there – a conversation with someone who will really listen – honest feedback on what they are doing which is leading them down the wrong path – friends to be with because they have none and don’t know how to change that – a circle of people with whom they differ so they can understand what life means to those in a different place –

The sin we commit,

which wrecks havoc in this world,

is what we do to shore up our identity as better than ‘those people’.

We are particularly careful of our time, so we give to those in places where we think we will benefit. We work so hard to have the ‘right’ friends, the ‘right’ job’ to live in the most ‘correct’ neighborhood, to have our children go to the ‘best’ schools. We do what we can to keep those out of our neighborhood who would lessen our self-esteem. All of this is tragically life consuming.

Instead, see those in need, dying, grieving, lost. don’t push them aside –
You have time!!

We are rushing toward a horrific end —
we are becoming more isolated.

We are terrified of the germs we might catch from one another
We raise children to inherit FEAR.
Our industries make billions trading on FEAR

We spend billions trying to stay young.
But, in reality,
we only manage to hide from ourselves,
for a little while,
the fact that we will grow old and die.

AND SO WE WARP OUR LIVES.

We keep the sick, the maimed, the dying, in another place so we can go about our lives as though we are immortal and always young and healthy!

Keep those who are old away from us! “Assisted Living?”
We don’t want to see them change!

We wish for you the ability to get out of the crowd working hard to store up treasures which moths and rust do corrupt and into which thieves can break through and steal,

for where your heart is, there also is your treasure.

We wish for you a beautiful world. One in which the flowers are neither all lilies, nor all roses, no matter how beautiful those flowers may be. We wish for you a world full of millions of different flowers – blooming profusely.

We wish for you a world of people who take the time
   to care for one another –
   who even take the time to care for the stranger.

We wish for you a world and a life full of
   the love and the joy which comes
   FROM GIVING!!!

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IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Holiday Greeting | No Comments »

From a Guest on Cayenne Pepper

December 21st, 2010

“Before I get swept away by the holidays, I want to thank you for a wonderful blog. Keep up the good work, I’ve used so many of your ideas and I am very grateful. Some have been real life savers.

We also had a wonderful stay at a bed & breakfast in Harvard Square Cambridge for about the umpteenth time. Each time I don’t think it can get better and each time something new and different happens that makes me want to return soon.

This is about your blog on Cayenne Pepper. I read it, thought it was interesting, but didn’t follow through until I returned to the bed & breakfast, which now keeps a bottle of cayenne pepper at the door as you come in or leave. They do it because several guests have requested the cayenne pepper, since that is the last thing you would think to pack and I’m not sure it would get through security anyway. (By the way your blog on “Security at the Airport” is a stitch – probably because there is so much truth in it that it is really funny).

I got into the habit of sprinkling cayenne pepper in my shoes everytime I went out and it saved my life. Travel is hard on my feet and I come home with aching pinched feet. My own fault from the shoes I insist on wearing. This time, I had no problems, walked all over and found lots of energy without aching feet. I don’t know what the cayenne pepper does, but I’ve used it constantly since returning home and it has changed my way of living.

Thank you! By the way I was at the table when the folks from Canada talked about Cayenne Pepper as they sprinkled it in their running shoes several years ago before going out the door to join the hordes of runners for the Boston Marathon. It has taken this long for me to take up the suggestion, even though I saw the guy come back who didn’t have to crawl into the house and crawl up the stairs to his room. He was still walking upright and stopped to talk to me without seeming to be exhausted. Well, I now know how that feels.

enjoy your holidays and thank you so much for the ideas in Bettina’s Blog. hope you continue it for many more years and I can read it for many more years. As soon as I get a minute I am going to go over that blog for other ideas that might help me get through life a little easier.”

ed. note: Thanks for your comments. It is nice to know someone is out there reading and benefitting from what we write.

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1-800-347-9166 inside the U. S. or 617 497 9166 outside or inside the U. S.

Posted in Guest comments, Making Connections, Reader Feedback, Travel Bettina Style | No Comments »

Holiday Tradition and Health?

November 29th, 2010

Isn’t it amazing how our holiday traditions, which go back the furthest, have some connection to health?

We have recommended the web site www.mercola.com in the past as a great newsletter. We hope you have subscribed to this newsletter, which is loaded with research and good information about health, nutrition, etc. It often comes up across the breakfast table and we are delighted to get emails from guests who discovered it on their own and are recommending we write about it in Bettina’s Blog.

The latest information we gleaned from this newsletter (with a guest pointing the way) follows. We hope you think about this when you hang a piece of mistletoe in your entry hallway:

…“certain natural substances can help to restore proper cellular communication. For instance, Dr. Popp found that mistletoe appeared to restore biophoton emissions of tumor cells to a normal level!. Interestingly, even conventional medicine confirmed that mistletoe extract does appear to have a beneficial effect on cancer, with one study published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine showing that mean survival rates nearly doubled among breast cancer patients who received mistletoe extract.”

Before you write to ask – no we don’t know who Dr. Popp is, we received the above quote just minutes ago from a guest with the message that “we should look into our traditions with an eye as to how and why they came into being and what message they are transmitting to future generations. Are they short-hand for more than what we realize?”

Enjoy your holidays and research those holiday traditions you keep alive year after year with the above in mind.

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Posted in cancer, Health, Holiday Greeting | No Comments »

Brooklyn, N. Y. Co-op For Rent

November 26th, 2010

A beautiful co-op apartment – in an elegant building with doorman – located in the Prospect Park West neighborhood – close to the Botanical Gardens.

$3,000/month with heat. One bedroom, living room, bathroom, kitchen, dining room or den. In great condition having been painted and renovated less than one year ago.

Available starting December 1st for one year. No fees.

Call the Bettina Network for more information. Toll free 800 347 9166. Outside the United States call 617 497 9166 or email the Bettina Network, inc. at bettina-network@comcast.net

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

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This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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IF YOU ENJOY OUR BLOG, USE OUR SERVICES TO BOOK ACCOMODATIONS WHEN YOU TRAVEL!

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Posted in Apartment for Rent | No Comments »

SECURITY AT THE AIRPORT!!!!

November 24th, 2010

Are you a sexual pervert? Have you been convicted of sexual abuse against children? Are all of your thoughts about sex and sexual abuse against others? Are you listed in all the public places as a sexual predator and on the governments sexual predator listing? Have we got the perfect job for you!!!! Apply immediately for a job in security at your local airport.

Sounds harsh? Unfair? Not thinking about security? Ridiculous! The government is clearly operating in someone’s interest, but it is not in the interest of continuing the democracy under which we think we live and they have found a great way to do this – it is all in the name of ‘protecting’ us, in the name of ‘security’. These pat downs and machines which show you naked to someone looking through a mirror or whatever they look through at naked bodies all day long – What happens to these airport/government employees after several months of doing this kind of job? They go home and lead normal lives? Not likely? Over time, many of them will probably become sexual predators – how are you going to deal with the large increase in numbers of sexual predators in this society, created in the name of security? Whose security? The financial security of the heads of the corporations making billions from this new form of ‘security’?

Remember the name Chertoff? Think back a bit! Remember Katrina? Who made a grand mess of Katrina for which, some people say, he should have spent time in jail? Try the name Chertoff!

Now look at the airport machines. Wasn’t it Chertoff who first lobbied for them while he was in government and then went to work for the company which manufactures, distributes and sells them when he left government? A great ‘retirement from government pension plan” and look at his salary and bonuses today? Has Mr. Chertoff become a very wealthy man by sexually exploiting the American people? Is he now a very wealthy man because you are being sexually groped and your children being trained to submit to sexual predators at the airport by your government? And you are excusing this in the name of “security”? Are our memories that short?

Some people say Chertoff should have gone to jail for the way he mishandled New Orleans and other areas along the Gulf during the aftermath of Katrina, but instead he has become a wealthy man and compromised your right to privacy; your democracy; your future and the future of your children. Looking at Mr. Chertoff’s ‘progress’, I hate to think of what his third act will be?

All of this done in the name of making you secure? And listen on television to the small comments by people very willing to give up their rights and more importantly your rights, calling you names because you don’t want to be naked in the airport, oppressed by machinery and groped!

Take a look at the increase in lobbying monies spent by the companies who manufacture and sell these machines. Substantial increases in spending made before the machines were adopted. The return on investment to those companies for their money spent lobbying to get their machines installed in airports; for what they spent hiring Chertoff and his government buddies, was money well spent to increase their bottom line – and it has done that in a substantial way.

Who engineered the increase in corporate spending? Chertoff? Take a look at who these companies have hired in addition to Chertoff and then saw their business sky rocket as these ex-government employees, now corporate employees and lobbyists, brought home the bacon.

Why did the man, prominently featured on television, remove his sons shirt while going through this disgusting ritual? To keep him from being overly groped by strangers? What kind of lesson did the little boy learn from his father – who was trying to protect him – and what did he learn from the strangers groping him? Will he be more amenable to the advances of sexual predators in the future? That certainly is the message most young children are getting. Groping is government back and sanctioned – is this the message you want your children to get? Or have you thought that far in advance?

What are you going to do about it? Submit and keep on with your life as usual because its better than rocking the boat?

This isn’t about security people? This is about corporate greed and lack of corporate values and total disrespect of the American public and disrespect of those who travel on American planes.

If we are so concerned about security, why is it the TSA has never implemented a process through which every traveller is known before they board a plane? Why is the system which allowed terrorists to board planes and do damage and the airlines find out who they were AFTER the fact, still not fixed – but this sexual invasion of privacy has been very expensively implemented instead? Is there not enough money being spent on lobbyists and hiring ex-government employees to see that such a really secure system is implemented? Is this really about security or is something else going on here?

We certainly have the technology to change that and to make sure everyone who boards a plane is known!!!! What will searching individual people in such obscene ways do – the terrorists most certainly will be one step ahead and find ways around this security – or better still – find ways to use this security for their own purposes.

Why hasn’t the TSA corrected the problems which caused Ted Kennedy to be stopped because his name was on a suspect list? If we can’t distinguish between a potential terrorist and one of our own Senators, we are in a sorry state indeed. El Al has a system in place by which they don’t have to do these ‘strip’ searches and gropings – they know who is travelling on their airplanes and they did not have a 911 incident. We don’t have a clue! Names have reached the gate after suspect people have boarded planes and the planes taken off. Why aren’t you demanding better than this from your government? This is an outrage and we don’t see many of you reacting and demanding a stop to this corporate greed.

In the name of faulty and ineffective security we have become a police state in which money is being scammed and power is being constantly channeled to fewer and fewer people with the rest of us being squeezed into a very oppressed condition and are being conditioned to accept that position in the name of “security.” I have seen the oppressor and it is us. US, who do these things and US, who accepts them in the name of whatever excuse is offered. Us who picks up these lame excuses and judges others of us negatively because we don’t buy the corporate/government line. By the time you wake up and see what’s happening in this country it will be too late.

These are some of the breakfast conversations about what is happening at the airports in the name of security and it is downright scary. Especially since we don’t see America fighting back, but excusing these intrusions into our bodies and privacy. The right to privacy, guaranteed by the constitution seems to have been put into abeyance.

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This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

A Great Web Site for Those Who Cook!

November 16th, 2010

Passed around over breakfast was the web site www.ChefTalk.com.

We checked it out and it is great!!!! It claims to be “a food lover’s link to professional chefs and indeed it is.

Ask your questions and get many answers in record time. There is a section of articles. A Forum. Reviews and more. My first greeting from the site was an article on “DeConstructing Turkey Gravy.” The title made the article too tempting to skip over.

I have been threatening to make sausage and don’t have a clue. All the sausage I know about comes in some animals gut and is wrapped in plastic. I redeem myself by buying only the sausages labeled “organic”, but I still don’t feel good about the purchases so the series of back and forth question and answer on this site is really excellent for someone with very little knowledge. The site graduates from the rank beginner to the professional chef. It was nice being in such diverse company.

There are the serious/funny question and answers – like the most recent on saffron started by someone who knew nothing about saffron, but was questioning which was the very best. Whoever this was wanted to cook with saffron, but didn’t know how it tasted, how to use it in anything, but was going for the top of the line. I couldn’t help but be amused to think a cook someplace was going to start trial and error with saffron which costs – probably more than gold, instead of experimenting first and improving the ingredient when experience took over.

You won’t regret taking a look at this web site – if you enjoy cooking, talking about cooking, looking at pictures about cooking from a place which is a substantial learning center.

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

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This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com

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Posted in Bettina's Cookbook, Kitchen Equipment Review, Shopping | No Comments »

Coconut Oil and Alzheimers

Estate Sales and the Environment!

Is Deodorant/Anti-Perspirant Necessary?

The Royal Wedding at Breakfast

Beautiful and Elegant Skin!!

Industrialization of Information

A Political Breakfast Conversation

So Much To Do – So Little Time

Hail Mr. Gomes

Use Those Fruit Skins After Breakfast!

Beauty in 2011

Sew Creative

Time to Get Back to Work

Looking for Homes to join the Bettina Network

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From a Guest on Cayenne Pepper

Holiday Tradition and Health?

Brooklyn, N. Y. Co-op For Rent

SECURITY AT THE AIRPORT!!!!

A Great Web Site for Those Who Cook!

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