Mofongo Available in eBook!

The cover was changed to this beautifully descriptive photograph. Although the book is not officially out until next week, I am telling my friends about the sneak preview ~ you can buy it now. It is a wonderful story, and food for the soul!

Amazon Kindle Edition http://www.amazon.com/Mofongo-ebook/dp/B0075EAI3I/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328647931&sr=8-2-spell

Barnes and Noble Nook http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mofongo-cecilia-samartin/1108582013?ean=2940014097529&itm=1&usri=mofongo

Olga de Amaral ~ Boundaries, Feb 4 – April 14

Last night I attended a blockbuster exhibit of the textile guilt dreams of Colombian born artist Olga de Amaral at Latin American Masters Gallery in Bergamont Station, Santa Monica. At 80, she is working in a master emotional space few people ever evolve to. 

The gallery was alive with almost 20 exquisite, woven 3-dimensional textile works using a canvas of silk, cotton, horsehair or linen, then painted with gesso and earth toned pigments, gold and silver leaf, knotted into works that are essentially unclassifiable. The artist overlaps, weaves and twists strands of fibers that transform the visual space into glittering, mirages that dance before the eye, and follow the viewer around the room. 

This ethereal luminosity produces imaginary landscapes inspired by Columbian native architecture, pre-Columbian textiles, Indian basketry, gold artifiacts, ornamentation of colonial Catholic Churches, and abstract geometries. Olga is a an important figure in the development of post-war Latin American abstraction.

Olga de Amaral has exhibited word-wide, including: Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France and the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan. Her work is included in the permanent collection of major institutions, including: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York and The Renwick Gallery of the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.

The Fed’s Men Behind the Curtain

Whiskey & Gunpowder by Jeffrey Tucker January 25, 2012 Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.

The Fed’s Men Behind the Curtain The debate about the Fed is under way, and thank goodness. But as with many policy debates, there really shouldn’t be a debate at all. That’s because, if you think about it, the idea of central banking makes no sense. We don’t have a government-created central repository that plans and manages shoe distribution. The market takes care of that. We don’t have one for cabbage, keyboards or curtains. Somehow, we get books, clothes, tree-cutting services and everything else we need and want without a central planning agency that manages the quantity available, fixes the prices of the products and bails out the firms when they overextend themselves. Why should money and banking be any different? Money is a commodity. Banking is a business. They both originated in the market, not the state. They should have been left that way, so that the quality of the product could be subject to market discipline. In a market economy, things work themselves out. There is supply and there is demand. Entrepreneurs take notice of profit opportunities and jump in to pull the two together. This is how the world works for us. This is how it has always worked. This is how we get our software, coffee, sheet music and beef. It’s how we get our cars, the parts that keep them running and the gas that fuels them. The world is man-made in every respect, and the hands that made it productive, efficient, dynamic and socially beneficial operated within the market matrix. The simple relationships of learning, exchanging and competing gave rise to a glorious system that manages to sustain a global population of 7 billion people. The Fed is a nonmarket institution, much like public housing and the space shuttle. It is a Dark Age creation that still exists for no apparent reason. By Dark Age, I mean, of course, the world before 1995, when the Web — meaning all information — became accessible to the world. Before that, the world remained mostly in the dark, when government controlled the information we could access and private truth had to be shared through paper sent through the government mail system. During the Dark Age, only geniuses like Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek knew that the Fed was a hoax. Most everyone else imagined that the people at the Fed were doing magical, wonderful things inside hallowed walls so that the economy would be stable and grow. Its board of governors was populated by people who knew the economic future and held the power to steer it in a way that benefited everyone. Thanks to the digital age, we now have access to what really goes on. In the last 12 months alone, we’ve been inundated by reports of what actually goes on at the Fed. In 2006, according to released transcripts of its board meetings, its wise men were busy reassuring themselves that absolutely nothing was fundamentally wrong with real estate and that all other economic structures were humming along beautifully. It is fascinating to read those candid transcripts. Far from being an open forum for discussion, Greenspan and Bernanke preside with all power to determine results, practically daring any of their subordinates to disagree with the consensus they arrive at beforehand. The Fed economist sometimes pops up his head to say that all is not well, but it’s like a game of Whac-A-Mole: He gets the hammer on the head every time. It’s the worst case of bad corporate management you can find on record. It makes Dilbert’s world look like a paragon of management success. There is no openness, no truthfulness. If the chairman makes a joke, you must laugh. If the chairman says all is well, you must agree. If the chairman says he knows the future, you must be in awe of his insight. All dissent must be coached within a puffy framework that raises only a slight and probably irrelevant concern, and it is still likely to be punished. Then there is the problem that it is not entirely clear, even to the people in the room: what precisely they can do about anything. They know what they are doing is important and want to believe that they have tremendous power. But here’s the problem…The Fed really has only one significant power: to create the conditions intended to encourage a change in the supply of money and credit. That’s a huge power, but it is not a precise one. The money supply is a lot like an unruly child. Lots of times, the kid will obey you. Sometimes, and unpredictably, it will not. It depends on the mood, the context, the prevailing temperament, the rewards and punishments. And even when the kid obeys, the results are not always what you intend. The council of parents can meet and plan all day, but in the end, the kid has a mind of its own. Two notable examples follow. In the early 1930s, the Fed was desperate to expand the money supply as a matter of both policy and practice. There was no intention to let the supply collapse, as Murray Rothbard has shown. The problem was that the Fed had to depend on the banking system to make it happen through the loan markets. But the system was broke, and it never happened. The same thing happened again from 2008 and forward. The Fed did everything possible to manufacture a far-reaching monetary inflation, but failed to make it profitable for the banking system to cooperate. Contrary to the Fed’s wishes, it never fully materialized. Their efforts only ended up subsidizing failure and preventing a much-needed and deep market correction. The sheer power of the Fed was in full display in 2008, and all the public records indicate what it was used for. The Fed provided liquidity for its friends. They said that they did it all for the nation, but it is unclear that the nation got anything at all from the deal. What is clear is that its friends survived and thrived, whereas many institutions should have gone belly up, as the capitalist system would dictate. That’s the essence of its power and the core of what the Fed does. This is nothing new at all. It’s just that it is now on full display for all the world to see. And this is one reason that the Fed is now under fire as never before. The digital age has pulled back the curtain. Instead of the mighty Oz, we find a few people pulling levers with smoke and mirrors. Before 1989, the world was strewn with such central planning agencies. They were all over Eastern Europe and the old empire called the Soviet Union. Then one day, the whole thing melted away and the absurdity and arrogance of the central planners were revealed to the world. The Fed is no different in structure from these institutions. The whole thing is based on a lie that it takes government power to have a good monetary system. In what sense is it good? The depreciation of the dollar since 1913 has been catastrophic for prosperity. The dollar is now worth less than a nickel. Savings have been expropriated. The Fed’s interest rate policy has negated any real advantage of saving money. Business cycles have become national, international and extended, rather than local and short-lived as they were in the 19th century. The moral hazard that the Fed has built into the system is that financial systems no longer take proper account of risk. In the digital age, the opportunity costs of the money monopoly have been huge. We might have had a competitive money system emerge by now. It could have been based on gold, silver or any other commodity. But the market has not been allowed to work. The Fed, working with the government that created and sustains it, has cracked down hard on every attempt by the market to make something better than the Fed-managed dollar. People now languish in jail for the crime of trying to restore money and banking back to the market. What is the worst cost of the Fed? It has made the federal government, no matter how big it gets, beyond failure. This is the ultimate moral hazard. It has puffed up the leviathan state beyond anything that should ever exist in the world. It’s not taxes that have done this. It is the Fed. In this way, it has made itself the ultimate enemy of freedom itself. And as goes freedom, so goes human rights. The whole catastrophe is no longer possible to ignore. Ron Paul has made it a political issue. Newt Gingrich has jumped on the bandwagon to scrap the Fed. The former CEO of BB&T gave an interview in which he said, “As long as the Fed exists, Congress can effectively print money. And it doesn’t matter whether they are Democrats or Republicans, they would rather print money than tax people. They want to spend because that effectively buys votes, and they don’t want to tax people because that loses votes.” The problem of ending the Fed is not a technical one. It is not much of an intellectual one, either. It takes only a few minutes to figure out that the whole thing is rooted in myth. The problem of ending the Fed is entirely political. The government is dependent on its powers. So yes, it makes some sense that the political class and its friends — let’s call them the 1%, for short — think the Fed should exist. The rest of us should know better by now. Regards, Jeffrey Tucker Executive editor, Laissez Faire Books

Working on e-Book of Mofongo Latest Novel by Cecilia Samartin

I’m excited about creating the e-book and promoting Ceci’s new novel Mofongo, and related cookbook Mofongo-Food for the Soul, on her Cuban family recipies.

Sebastian dreams of being like the other guys, being able to run like the wind across the football field and kick the ball in a perfect arc, right into the goal. But a heart defect means that he must stand on the sidelines. Sebastian finds his venue in the kitchen at Abuela Lola’s house, and together they prepare dinner with exotic dishes from the grandmother’s home country of Puerto Rico. This brings a split family together around the dinner table. “A meal prepared with love not only nourishes the body but also,” says Abuela Lola. Mofongo is Samartin magic at it’s best. This is a story about dancing with death, about how small victories build a beautiful life of love and longing through the generations and hearts bursting in so many ways. Mofongo shows that the distinction between joy and sorrow are fragile, but almost invisable.

http://www.ceciliasamartin.com/books/mofongo/

Milton Becerra

Art is a transition from this world to the spiritual world where the artist creates. Milton Becerra’s world comes from the earth and Pre-Columbian tradition with the organizational grid of the modern world to hold it up for reconsideration. This installation at Latin American Masters Gallery in Los Angeles was surround sound in visual dimensions, centered by rock.

Sometimes seeing new art marks a transition in your life, and Becerra’s art, marks that for me. Moving into new spaces on the earth, within myself, growth beyond confining ideas of what painting is. New global and universal ideas that hang on the wall, rock, centered, bound by confining thread that suspends and give GPS coordinates to three-dimensional space. Thrilling!

http://latinamericanmasters.com/

http://miltonbecerra.com/intro.html

Runaway Government Spending

By Steven Marc Brooks, Economist, Letter to the Editor of the Kansas City Star

The federal government could not have wrecked the economy if only a few simple, common sense measures were employed.

First – government should not be allowed to print money through the Fed or any other means. This is what makes possible endless wars and subsidies to voting blocks to re-elect politicians.

Second – all government accounting should be on the books. We in business employ accrual accounting which takes into account future liabilities of all kinds. There would be no entitlement crisis if transparent accounting and limits to borrowing were enforced.

Third – the Federal government should be limited in what it can borrow from all sources. Else, they will borrow to fund boondoggles again to buy votes.

The government must be made to rely on taxation to finance its grand plans. If we had been required to raise taxes to fund entitlements, required to pay in current dollars for wars and had to pony up for subsidies to our fellow citizens we would have rebelled at the increase in the tax burden and put congress’ feet to the fire.

Instead, we have allowed liabilities of all kinds to accrue beyond what we can pay and on which we will default.

Alleviating Suffering

Last weekend I visited my friend Bob Fogli in San Juan Capistrano. Fogli has a company called Total Health Enhancement that makes all natural and organic nutritional supplements that actually work for humans and horses. Fogli is one of the most fascinating people I know, describing biology and chemistry in terms I can understand, he is a natural supplement formulator.

Although this might sound like a product endorsement, it is a validation of a life dedicated to alleviating suffering. Bob has a product that eliminates the pain of sickle cell anemia and it is used by Doctors Without Borders in Africa with amazing results. Because of this, a very famous day time talk show hostess is doing due diligence on it now and plans to showcase the results on OWN.

Because his products help with blood flow they are used to treat diabetes in humans, and laminitis in horses. There are products that eliminate gastric ulcers throughout the entire digestive tract, not just the stomach. There are products for joints, the immune system, pain, wound healing, pulmonary support and nerve calming.

What Fogli has figured out, is how to increase the production of Nitric Oxide (NO) in the body. Nitric Oxide is a building block of our bodies, it’s a gas that promotes cell-to-cell communication, it’s also a potent vasodilator and a neurotransmitter. That means it is a delivery system throughout the body and brain, so if you group this with herbs and minerals that the body needs, the absorption is almost immediate.

In addition, the formulations Fogli has come up with, increase the production of healthy mucus throughout the body which makes the for smooth blood flow, digestion, and overall healthy movement of all body systems. Nitric Oxide also acts as a relaxing factor to the smooth muscles of the vascular system. A sense of well being and relaxation can be felt almost immediately.

Recently Fogli created a natural muscle mass builder to replace steroids that were banned in racehorses. Because of this one product, Bob Baffert, a top racehorse trainer, endorses his produces and has all 140 of his horses at the California tracks alone, on this product and one that eliminates pulmonary bleeding. Trainers across the country have caught on, and Total Health Enhancement is providing what no other company has figured out how to do, make a product that works!

Johns Hopkins Update on Cancer – Good Nutrition in Prevention

Johns Hopkins Update –

Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins:

 

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer 

cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have

multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients

that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after 

treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the

cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable

size.

 

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a 

person’s lifetime.

 

3. When the person’s immune system is strong the cancer 

cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and

forming tumors.

 

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has

nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic,

but also to environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

 

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing

diet to eat more adequately and healthy, 4-5 times/day

 

and by including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

 

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing

cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells

in the bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract etc, and can 

cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

 

7.. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars 

and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

 

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often

reduce tumor size.

However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

 

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from

chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either

compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb

to various kinds of infections and complications.

 

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to

mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy.

Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer

cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply. 

*CANCER CELLS FEED ON: 

a. Sugar substitutes like 

NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made

with Aspartame and it is harmful

. A better natural substitute

would be Manuka honey or molasses, but only in very small

amounts. 

Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in

color Better alternative is Bragg’s aminos or sea salt.

 

b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the

gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer cells are being starved.

 

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. 

A meat-based

diet

 is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little other meat, 

like chicken. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

 

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole

grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into

an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked

food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live

enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to

cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance

growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building

healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most

vegetables including be an sprouts) and eat some raw

vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at

temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C)..

 

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high

caffeine 

Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer

fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or

filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap

water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it. 

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of

digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the

intestines becomes putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.

 

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By

refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes

to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the

body’s killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

 

14. Some supplements build up the immune system

(IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals,

EFAs etc.) to enable the bodies own killer cells to destroy

cancer cells.. Other supplements like vitamin E are known

to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body’s

normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or

unneeded cells.

 

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit.

A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior

be a survivor. Anger, un-forgiveness and bitterness put

the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to

have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

 

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated

environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to

get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.

 

1. 

No plastic containers in micro. 

2. 

No water bottles in freezer. 

3. 

No plastic wrap in microwave.. 

Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well. Dioxin chemicals cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don’t freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic. Recently, Dr Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital , was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers. This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else. Paper isn’t bad but you don’t know what is in the paper. It’s just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.

Please share this with your whole email list……………………. 

Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead. 

e-TABforms Offers Active Forms for iPad, Android Tablets and all Mobile Devices

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Now there is a way to have active forms on iPads, tablets and mobile devices which link to your existing databases.

Perfect for medical, insurance, financial, and engineering fields, these forms are fully functional and work independently on your device so they can be used for real-time data collection. When you’re connected to the cloud again, they sync automatically. No hassle. No forgetting. No waiting. How cool is that? These forms are really a game changer, because they also provides a secure connection and a full audit trail. No double data entry, and no messing with the forms once they’ve been submitted. That helps stop fraud while it streamlines the workflow process and virtually eliminates mistakes.

e-TABforms is an official reseller of New England Survey Systems (NESS) custom software which automates your existing data collection, workflow, reporting, delivery of data and record-keeping — then electronically transmits the information withencryption for maximum security. 

NESS software is currently being used in clinical trials and by the Veterans Affairs, NASA, the Department of Defense, hospitals, large medical related non-profits, universities and state governments across the country. Since the software was initially developed for clinical trials, it was designed to meet the stringent requirements of 21 CFR Part 11 and HIPAA regulations. The security features exceed all industry best practices. This software can bring Compliance, Operations and the IT departments together in smooth integration.

With our system, customer information can repopulate onto a series of forms so the information gathering process is a breeze. No more tedious stacks of never-ending paper to get shuffled or lost. Signatures are captured in the form and once submitted, PDFs can be sent to any number of designated recipients and can even generate billing upon submission.

If the mobile device has the capability, photos of the recipient, their driver’s license or other photo ID, and even a check that is being submitted to open accounts can all be attached. All in one tidy spot!

Want to try it out? A trial run of your actual forms can be set up and demonstrated in a matter of days. Custom software can be created, automated and running on your mobile device in a matter of weeks, not months.

Call Judy Walker 818-434-5436 now to arrange a demonstration of your forms.

 

Art World Hero Reveals Unknown Piccasso’s

Pierre Le Guennec an electrician who worked on three of Picasso’s properties in southern France has just gifted the art world with one of the greatest stashes in history, 271 unknown works of art by Picasso he had in a trunk in his garage. The heirs of Picasso claim theft, but really who cares? Art lovers world wide can rejoice at the find. The heirs have filed suit for illegal possession of the art which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

There is a staggering variety of lithographs, cubist paintings, notebooks, sketches and a watercolor that were created between 1900 and 1932 during an especially creative period after Picasso moved from Barcelona to Paris. Le Guennec states that Picasso’s second wife, Jacqueline Roque, gave him a trunk full of art. Wow, a gift? The heirs say no way, but perhaps Roque didn’t even know the art was in the trunk. Le Guennec did says it was a gift.

Would a thief leave a trunk of  Picasso’s art work in his garage? Honestly, this is an electrician, no offense, not an art thief. Rather, a true hero. That trunk could have gotten tossed out unceremoniously. Le Guennec contacted Picasso’s son Claude to see if they were authentic and worth anything, because he really had no idea. Only to be treated as a common thief and taken to court. Le Guennec and his wife weren’t trying to sell them, they were clearing up their affairs because Le Guennec has cancer. And even if they did want to sell them, they went to the Picasso’s son first, Jesus, Claude, cut the man some slack.

In an interview that Pierre Le Guennec gave to France-2 TV, gesturing with his hands as if he were holding a basketball, La Guennac said, “It was a small pack like this, it was little drawings, little odds and ends, little pieces of paper. It could have gone in the trash.”

Aren’t we glad it didn’t go in the trash, honestly, modest living Pierre Le Guennec and his wife deserve a boat load of cash to live out their lives for giving us all a tremendous gift of surprise Picasso’s to enjoy and study.