Mary Miller's Space

INTERESTING TID-BITS

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery........if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor"

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot........they "didn’t have a pot to piss in" & were the lowest of the low

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell - brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor….hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children; last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip an d fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt….Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) o n floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme:  Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old. (I’ve always thought it was peach porridge?)

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up…Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer...

And that's the truth...Now, whoever said History was boring!!

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/06/23/This-Potent-Spice-Taken-as-Little-as-Once-a-Week-Can-Fight-Dementia.aspx

 Great Article!

First Session

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2004

MR. FRANK CORBETT: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister bringing forward Bill No. 87. It is always nice when we make recognition of the fact that we are becoming a greener province and the idea should not shock anybody, it should be the natural way to go. So, as I get into my discussion on the title of the bill, I will be getting back to the green side

[Page 4515]

and not only how it relates to what the legislation says but, indeed, there is an arm outside the legislation that needs to be looked at to make sure that these independent producers are treated fairly by what would still amount to a monopoly.

I want to, first of all, as I said, thank the minister but also it is important that as someone who lives really in the shadow of the Lingan generating station, I have to preface some of my comments about that bill in that. The fact of the matter is that plant would never, ever have been built in these times. It was built around the guise of its next to the coal- producing mines of the Lingan Mine and then later Lingan-Phalen Mine. So those two mines pretty well were the capacity or were the prime producer of material for the largest generating station in this province.

The larger blight about that, and that's a big statement, because there's the blight that those jobs don't exist anymore and we still have the plant, but the blight is that it took away one of the prime recreational swimming areas in this province, Mr. Speaker, an area that was and still is referred to as Laffin's Cove. Some of you may know a Mike Laffin in this building, and it's probably somehow his people, but in real terms it's about the families of a member who formerly represented my riding, Dr. Mike Laffin. It comes through his family, that's where the name comes from.

MR. FRANK CORBETT: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister bringing forward Bill No. 87. It is always nice when we make recognition of the fact that we are becoming a greener province and the idea should not shock anybody, it should be the natural way to go. So, as I get into my discussion on the title of the bill, I will be getting back to the green side

[Page 4515]

and not only how it relates to what the legislation says but, indeed, there is an arm outside the legislation that needs to be looked at to make sure that these independent producers are treated fairly by what would still amount to a monopoly.

I want to, first of all, as I said, thank the minister but also it is important that as someone who lives really in the shadow of the Lingan generating station, I have to preface some of my comments about that bill in that. The fact of the matter is that plant would never, ever have been built in these times. It was built around the guise of its next to the coal- producing mines of the Lingan Mine and then later Lingan-Phalen Mine. So those two mines pretty well were the capacity or were the prime producer of material for the largest generating station in this province.

The larger blight about that, and that's a big statement, because there's the blight that those jobs don't exist anymore and we still have the plant, but the blight is that it took away one of the prime recreational swimming areas in this province, Mr. Speaker, an area that was and still is referred to as Laffin's Cove. Some of you may know a Mike Laffin in this building, and it's probably somehow his people, but in real terms it's about the families of a member who formerly represented my riding, Dr. Mike Laffin. It comes through his family, that's where the name comes from.

What we have is this pristine area that has been torn apart for the purpose of electrical generation. We're not here to debate that, because that is the past. We are here to talk about the substance of this bill and what it means. What it's purported to mean is around greener energy in this province. Well, the initiative for greener energy has to be looked at somewhat through the rearview mirror, and it has to look at cases where just recently Nova Scotia Power is just about in the throes of its final clean-up of the generating station in Glace Bay. That was really, again, something in this day and age - would that be tolerated in the middle of a residential area? Probably not. We look at Trenton, and again, would that be allowed where it's at?

I think you look at the generating station in the Strait, it's in a more industrial setting, but still, you're taking away a primary piece of physical infrastructure there and you're putting it in amongst many residents. These are just some of them, but they're all coal-generating - coal-fired I should say, not coal-generating - coal-fired generators. I think if we just step back a bit and remember the construction of the Point Aconi power plant, that was - I think, in the lifetime of most members of this House - one that we can more readily relate to. We know that there was a fair amount, I would say a large amount, of public input into that project.

I guess the debate still rages of who won it. Obviously the folks who didn't want it there will tell you that they lost it. The other idea is that some of the things that they did say at the time didn't come to fruition as of this date. We haven't seen a real problem with the lobster stock because of the water they were using to cool down the out-takes on the turbines, so we don't know about that yet, what effect that has had. I think it's fair to say, at this point, it's negligible.

[Page 4516]

Nonetheless, that was probably the first power plant where we saw there was any large piece of scrutiny, and it did have the fluidized bed combustion technology, which made it different. Again, typical to Cape Breton, it had the component of jobs and the jobs in construction factories, so these were items that had to be held up to see whether this was worth it. These were all, again, coal-burning situations. Now, as we know, because of where we get our coal or where Nova Scotia Power gets its coal, they're also, at Point Aconi, using pet coke or petroleum coke products at that site because of its fluidized bed.

When we talk in essence of the bill and how NSPI will be as a customer to these wind-powered generators, I have to wonder, back a bit, before we get too far into the numbers, and say this corporation has preferred a tax structure when it comes to dealing with municipalities.

[5:15 p.m.]

One could argue very well on either side, does this corporation pay its fair share of municipal taxes? I'm sure NSPI, or Emera, would say here's our books, we pay the equivalent value of taxes throughout the province for real property that we have. With that said, the real problem isn't do they pay their fair share, it's is the allotment allotted out fairly? I guess I'll use the one I can use best and that's what's right next to me - I see the problems on Lingan Road going to the Lingan generating station - I live on Lingan Road - and seeing this road being beaten every day by these huge trucks.

It's pretty much a residential area but we have these trucks coming down and the faults that are happening with this road are directly related to the amount of heavy traffic generated by NSPI. Yet, when we, as taxpayers in that area who use that street, try to get access to it, we're put somewhere on the list. If government said, we're getting this pot of money from you and we realize that we use roads in around Point Tupper more because of Nova Scotia Power or Lingan Road or to the Trenton Works, then we have to allot more money to you to work those roads. That's something I would like to see.

Moving on and talking a bit more about Nova Scotia Power, we're looking at a laudable effect of going from 8.5 to 13.5 by 2010, what portion will actually be green. That's good. Could be better, but it's good. I also realize this isn't the package, this is to kind of whet your appetite a bit to see where everybody is on it. But the reality is, for those producers to be stable they need a fair rate of return from Nova Scotia Power. We can call them the largest buyer or whatever, but Nova Scotia Power is.

What we need is an open view of what Nova Scotia Power is doing with some of these folks. They have a base rate of $68, minus 2.73 per cent - this is for the eastern area - which gives you an energy rate of $65.27. I'm amazed when we see when they're buying wind power at that rate that they get to use location adjustment. I live, as the people in most of my community live, with bad roads, soot, dust and everything from the Lingan generating station, but do we get cheaper power or rate adjustments because of where we live? No, basically the people in Clare would get the same prices I do, but yet when they're buying it,

From the conclusions of the Swiss, Russian and German scientific clinical studies, we can no longer ignore the microwave oven sitting in our kitchens. Based on this research, we can conclude:

1). Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term permanent brain damage by "shorting out" electrical impulses in the brain [de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue].

2). The human body cannot metabolize [break down] the unknown by-products created in microwaved food.

3). Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.

4). The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual [long term, permanent] within the human body.

5). Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food are reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.

6). The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.

7). Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths [tumors]. This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in America.

8). The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.

9). Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.

10). Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence.

Have you tossed out your microwave oven yet? :)

After you throw out your microwave you can use a toaster oven as a replacement. It is nearly as quick, and much healthier