This Jeff is what I have - (combination level 7 & 8) - Eight has happened first for some reason. http://www.richsfoxwillowpines.com/Articles/addicted.htm I'm no Taxonimist. I'm still learning. I started with the cultivars and am now graduating toward learning both Genus and species. Believe me, I'm the last of people who should call The Missouri Botanical Gardens. lol I'm really not your man dude. I'm a street player. A pimp ,lol, I do like to read however. Also, you just know when you found your life man. That happened to me with the physical and mental work involved my first day on the job at a plant nursery. I never stopped working from that day in March of 1998. Here I am again. I've just awakened, it's 5:19 in the morning, and the first things I do are "read" on this forum and begin another day of what's to be mostly plant related until dinner at which time, I sit down at about 5:30 and I'm asleep by 8:30, 9, 10 o'clock. I appreciate the vanity. You're just assuming I know more than I do unfortunately. This conifer interest began with small garden conifers (mainly). Write them yourself Jeff - that's how to get things done. When they don't write you back. Go to them in person. Educate yourself first man. All the information you ever want to know is here. I like you, believe that. Best Regards, Dax

Is this it? Red, White, and Bleu What do we eat when we eat meat? by Bill Buford December 3, 2007 Text Size: Two butchers (and one pigs head) in the Rungis Market, on the outskirts of Paris. Photograph by Jonathan Becker. Keywords Meat; Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hugh; "The River Cottage Meat Book (Ten Speed; $40); Picard, Martin; "Au Pied de Cochon"; Reynaud, Stéphane; "Pork & Sons" (Phaidon; $39.95) Is it possible that meat is now openly enjoying a renaissanceÂthat itÂs finally cool to be a carnivore? If so, it has been a long time coming. Meat-eaters, having already ceded the moral ground to vegetarians (no one has ever really come up with a persuasive rejoinder to the claim that a warm-blooded, pain-feeling creatureÂs life shouldnÂt be taken for your supper), have more recently had to accept that their diet is probably the source of much of the worldÂs heart disease and much of its obesity. That diet is also sustained by an industry that is just flat-out evil: the factory farms, the egregious economies of waste in fast food, the ghastly genetic manipulations of chickens and turkeys, the pigs raised in no-room-to-move confinement, the reckless use of antibiotics and growth hormones (as well as the frightful possible consequencesÂearly breasting in children, difficult-to-defeat superbugs), the contamination of fields and rivers by noxious excrement runoffs from feedlots the size of small nations, the tricks and shortcuts adopted by supermarkets (cheap animals fattened on cheap grain, butchered by high-pressure hose, and packaged at their bloated maximum weight). And yet, at a time when things could not seem worse, there is a generation of people (in their forties or younger) who are thinking hard and philosophically about their food and are prepared to declare: Enough! IÂm a meat-eater and proud of it! Three books by authors from three backgroundsÂa farmer, a chef, and a pig-slaughtering, bacon-loving descendant of butchersÂare remarkably alike in their gleeful chauvinism about being carnivores. The farmer is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a British food celebrity. He is forty-two, principally a journalist and television host by trade, who wears inexpensive horn-rimmed glasses so familiar to his British audience that they are now a piece of instant anti-branding branding. The look, like his dress (muddy Wellington boots, soiled linen jacket, the mess of the occasional apron) and his long, sometimes washed, hippyish brown hair (often pictured dangling in his face and over the dishes he is preparing), conveys a no-nonsense disregard for appearances and petty courtesies and an earnest commitment to a higher truth. This literary personaÂthe thinking manÂs amateurÂwas created for him by accident, in 1989, when he discovered that it was probably the only thing he could be. Unemployed after earning a "useless" degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford, Fearnley-Whittingstall had accepted a friendÂs invitation to apply for a job chopping vegetables at the River Café in London. The restaurant was between identities: no longer what it had started out to be (a canteen for the Richard Rogers architectural firm, next doorÂone of the chefs is married to Rogers) but not yet the dining destination it has since become. For twelve months, Fearnley-Whittingstall was in culinary heaven. He had never learned so much so quickly. He discovered the seasons, and their bounty, and was paid to make food from it: could things get any better? They couldnÂt, because he was fired. He was told that, actually, he wasnÂt good enough. He was disorganized, and incorrigibly messy: he was Pigpen in the kitchen. For Fearnley-Whittingstall, it was a heartbreaking momentÂheÂd discovered both his calling and his inability to follow it. In a variation of the pedagogical imperative (those who canÂt, teach), he concluded that if he couldnÂt make a living in the kitchen he might be able to make one writing and broadcasting about it. He embarked on a new profession, and was increasingly surprised by the passion of his convictions. He was now a man more and more committed to what he saw as the greater good: principally, food that hasnÂt been ruined by supermarkets (which, in his eyes, represent the single most destructive influence on the way we eat). That commitment has now been expressed in nine television series, three specials, and ten books. One of the first, "The River Cottage Cookbook," is based on Fearnley-WhittingstallÂs experiences living in a house with some land, the home-away-from-home that he established in Dorset, in rural southern England, where he set out to plant vegetables and raise livestock. He started with a cow named Marge (he has since stopped naming the creatures he kills), and soon acquired enough animals never to have to buy anything but diapers and detergent from a supermarket again. "I reckon that two pigs, two lambs and a beef steer will put meat on the table about five times a week for a family of four," he writes, with the pride of a man who, at harvestÂs end, has met the challenges he set for himself at the beginning. He urges others to do the same: "Most of the meat we eat comes from industrially farmed animals who lead miserable lives and are fed on inappropriate diets." And though he recognizes that few people have back yards roomy enough for, say, a cow, he figures that just about everyone with a porch should be able to raise a couple of pigs. (You imagine the English suburban future with a cloud of porcine poo, like a London smog from the fifties, hanging tenaciously over the Home Counties.) "The River Cottage Year" was next, a month-by-month Christmas card of a book, with multicolored pages, progressing from green to yellow to purple, followed by Fearnley-WhittingstallÂs magnum opus, "The River Cottage Meat Book" (Ten Speed; $40), a five-hundred-and-fifty-four-page effort to get down on paper every thought he has had in his work with animals as food. The cottage of the title, meanwhile, has moved to Devon, is no longer a cottage as such, and is nowhere near a river. It is a great agrarian laboratory ("Even if I donÂt live at River Cottage anymore, I like to think that River Cottage lives with us"), with classroom kitchens (courses include "All About Chickens" and "Hugh Cooks Christmas"), a working farm, a modest mail-order business (hemp oil, nettles soup, nettles beer, and pig-in-a-box), a greenhouse, and sheep, saddleback pigs, saddleback boar, a herd of Devon Ruby Red cattle, and some Nubian goats. For Fearnley-Whittingstall, it seems, the most compelling meat comes from a cow, and, to this day, one of the great meals of his life is a standing rib roast he ate four years ago with his family on Boxing Day, the first that had been carved out of an animal he had fed and looked after himself. But meat from just about every other animal is discussed as wellÂthe obvious quadrupeds, domestic and wild fowlÂplus various pieces of offal, including lungs ("lights," in British butcher parlance), brains (a nightmare to extricate and, besides, one animalÂs taste pretty much the same as anotherÂs), and the other bits between nose and tail ("I usually have a cooked ear or two in the freezer"). Most of this is photographedÂillustration is an essential feature of the bookÂbut so, too, are the meats as they are being consumed. Fearnley-Whittingstall, itÂs evident, is still messy. We see a half-eaten steak, the fat congealing; a cassoulet after everyone has helped himself to it; a plate rim smeared with grease; a sideboard stacked higgledy-piggledy with dishes, cutlery, leftovers, and wineglasses cloudy from finger smudges. There is a dog: licking fat that has dripped from a table where a pig has been carved up or sitting on a bench with Fearnley-Whittingstall, having just had a bite of his homemade pork pie. Advocating the flavors of bird jellyÂthe juices that set after a chicken has been cookedÂFearnley-Whittingstall tells us about the happy "discovery" of the roasting pan "a day or so later" and eating up its unwashed, solidifying, crusty remains. I found myself wondering, DoesnÂt anyone do the dishes down there at the cottage? Fearnley-WhittingstallÂs occasional efforts to explain butchery, like boning a leg of lamb (encouraging his readers not to bother with a professional but to do the "hatchet job yourselfÂitÂs quite easy to improvise"), reveal a tolerance for chaos ("ItÂs a bit tricky to explain") that may be without precedent among people who make a living from preparing food. For all the disarray, there is a coherent ideology. It is evident in the opening pages, an eleven-photograph sequence that shows the author taking two cows to slaughter. The pictures are not sensational, but they are unflinching. The first is of the animals boarding a trailer, the floor covered with hay, backed up against a corral (a dirt road, a wooden gate, early-summer foliage, a green-diffused light, Fearnley-Whittingstall, in his familiar Wellies, coaxing them along). Then: a captive bolt gun pressed against the top of an animalÂs head. Then: the animal on its side on a concrete floor, collapsed, blood starting to pool. It is raised by its hind legs and hung upside down to drain blood. It is skinned, a thick white fat being peeled off the body in a single rug piece. This is followed by a tug-of-war removal of the unwieldy, instantly expanding intestines, like a white plastic trash bag filled to bursting, and the sawing of the carcass in half, the moment when conventional butchering begins. There is little accompanying text, apart from a rhetorical aside:Why is it considered entertainment when a predator kills another animal in a wild-life film, Fearnley-Whittingstall wonders, "whereas the final moments of human predation of our farmed livestock are considered too disturbing and shameful to be made available even for information." The reader understands the point. Meat comes from an animalÂa banal connection that has been obscured by the way supermarkets prepare and present our foodÂand the animal has to be killed. If you fear the sight of a carcass, you shouldnÂt be eating from it. This opening sequence informs the rest of the book, implicitly posing the question: Is the meat youÂre eating good enough to justify killing an animal? (Sometimes I wondered if the author wasnÂt a closet vegetarian, after all.) The question also seems to have informed Fearnley-WhittingstallÂs winningly capricious life, the way his desire to know more about what he was eating led him to experiment with one animal, then a dozen, then a farm, then a bigger farm, without any sense of limits. Who knows what will be next? The author doesnÂt. That author, at least as he presents himself in these pages (where his sentences sound as though they had been screamed into a microphone while being filmed during a gale), is manifestly a passionate, good-hearted slob of a philosopher, distinguished overwhelmingly by his skepticism. Our meat has been ruined by the people who produce it: How can you believe them? Trust no one! Find out for yourself. And the bookÂs satisfactions are not in its many meat preparations (including steak-and-kidney pie, Lancashire hot pot, beef in stout, shepherdÂs pie, and a version of sausages in batter called Flying Toad in the Hole with posh gravyÂeach a revival effort and each definitively without appeal) but in the glimpses of the author amid his own farm animals, prepared to test every received opinion about meat and how you cook it. Why do people baste birds? he asks. ItÂs useless, crisps up only the skin, and doesnÂt penetrate beyond it. Why do cows eat so much grain if it isnÂt good for them? A cow, he then discovers, will eat virtually anything, its passivity being the reason it has been so successfully domesticated, and abused. (Scientists have found that feral cows return to eating grasses, the diet of their genetic forebear, the aurochs, and one that their digestion is designed to accommodate. Grass-fed beef, a rarity in the United States, is healthier, better-tasting, more exercised, and has superior marblingÂthe integrated development of fat in the animalÂs tissuesÂthan grain-fed, but requires more land than do animals in a pen.) Are testicles worth eating? Yes! What happens when you remove fat from two kinds of meat? They taste almost the same. Why does store-bought beef exude water when you cook it? Because it is (a supermarket trick) wet-aged rather than dry-aged, making it heavier, but less good. Where can you age meat? Anywhere thatÂs coolÂon a rack in your refrigerator, a pantry, a porch in December (or a New York fire escape in winter, I discovered, after leaving a wild turkey on one for eight days). How do you roast a pig on a spit? Fearnley-Whittingstall tried, and characteristically botched a half-dozen animals before finally nailing the technique, and, in the event of your ever having to cook one, you will want a copy of his book nearby. The chef is Martin Picard, forty-one, a French-Canadian, native of Montreal, round and pudgy-soft with curly, dark, unkempt hair, a scraggly beard, and a rug of chest hair, and the proprietor of what might well be the most immoderate, unreservedly unhealthy eating establishment in North America, Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon. PicardÂs book, "Au Pied de Cochon," is not a book, exactly, but an "album": it has no acknowledged author but, rather, a list of recipe writers, photographers, an illustrator, and an interviewer on a copyright page; no title but only a logo; and no conventional publisher, having been "produced" in both French and English editions by Picard himself. It is an unabashed celebration of meat and animal excess and the commitment to filling up your stomach to stay warm during winter nights: a hymn to saturated fats. There is no cookbook like it, because its aim is to representÂwith cartoons and wacky biographical sketches of suppliers and step-by-step picture instructions of one improbably meaty, glisteningly unctuous dish after anotherÂthe buzz and magic and self-destructive aura of a restaurant that is like no other. You look at the menu and think, You donÂt go there to eat; you go there to die. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall expressed a hope that, one day, chefs would learn to butcher again and buy the whole animal, which they would be compelled to cook in new ways. (Restaurants get venison fillets, pork tenderloins, and rib-eye steaks in individual shrink-wrapped packages, and prepare them within a predictable range of variations.) Picard hasnÂt needed the encouragement. He makes black puddings and trotters, and a round, bloated piggy stomach servedÂin a surf-and-turf pairing inspired, no doubt, by some Newfoundland fisherman with animals running around his porchÂin a lobster sauce. He prepares venison tongue three ways: with a tarragon sauce, in a pot-au-feu, and pickled. He sensibly uses pork stock in many dishes, though itÂs an ingredient you almost never see in cookbooks. His fatback is fried and served in a paper cone. He does unspeakable things with foie gras: using it in hot dogs, pizzas, hamburgers, or as a giant, door-stopping wedge atop French fries, melted-cheese curds, and a "gravy" made with pork stock, egg yolks, cream, and even more foie gras. (The dish, a local favorite called poutine, may sound disgusting; IÂve eaten it and can attest that it is much worse than it sounds.) Picard is not high-end. His genius, according to Anthony Bourdain, who has written an introduction, is in his recognition that "now, right now, is the perfect time to give the whole world of fine dining the middle finger." In fact, his middle-finger salute is directed not only at the world of fine dining but also at vegetarians, animal-rights defenders, anti-gun lobbyists, and anyone opposed to the killing of animals. Picard is not earnest. He is cheeky and provoking. The book opens with a photograph of him in a boxerÂs stance (the gloves, the trunks), in the restaurantÂs meat cooler, ten carcasses hanging from meathooks, where he is squaring off against a dead pig before an audience of his bare-chested male staff, sitting in deck chairs, wearing sunglasses and swimsuits (and surely freezing). It ends with Picard in the woods, squatting in an outhouse, and reading the volume we have in our hands. In between, there are various photos, all of them irreverent, with animals or creatures as props: of two men wearing sea urchins like sunglasses, or pig heads arranged in a vat of boiling water so that they seem to be screaming, open-mouthed, in pain, or freshly killed birds in a mock courtship. At a time when animals are abused by industrial farmers, manipulated, mismanaged, malnourished, and generally disrespected, this sort of thing is akin to a hunterÂs putting a cigarette in the mouth of the just-shot trophy buck and taking a picture. Like Fearnley-Whittingstall, Picard depicts animals being killed and gutted, but his images are more confrontational and involve considerably more blood and a blade he wields himself. "Whether you uproot a carrot and bite into it, or slaughter a deer and cut it into steaks," he writes, "it should be remembered that each effort to procure food is inherently tinged with violence: it is the passage from life to death, and back again towards life." Picard is not, however, an uncritical meat-eater. Like Fearnley-Whittingstall, he has a particular fondness for game: the least ruined of all animalsÂmeat before it was corrupted by the unnatural selection of livestock cultivation. (Our meat is determined largely by what an animal eatsÂbreed is a very minor considerationÂand a wild animal is likely to have the least manipulated diet of all.) Picard knows that his love for pigs, the animal traditionally used in many Québécois preparations, is potentially problematic, because of the abuses in the pork industry. But he is also convinced that bad meat comes from animals that have been badly raised; that you find good meat by finding good producers of it and patronizing them. He gets his pigs from François PirsonÂs farm in nearby Saint-Grégoire. He gets his chickens from Jean-Pierre Clavet in Yamachiche. The approach is one that all of us can follow. Find good suppliersÂdowntown, in the next town, by mail order, or on the WebÂget to know them, and stick by them. You should always know the first name of the person you buy your meat from. Picard rarely offers beef in his restaurant, because he has yet to find a producer he trusts. The butcher, Stéphane Reynaud, forty, is a butcher not by trade but by upbringing, being the nephew and grandson of butchers in the village of Saint-Agrève, on the Ardèche plateau, in southern France. He now runs a restaurant just outside Paris that specializes in pork, but he is always home for the annual slaughtering and butchering of a pig in winter. Although European Union regulations (as well as the practices of modern hygiene) prohibit butcher shops from killing anything on the premisesÂonly certified slaughterhouses are authorized to kill an animalÂthe annual pig slaughter in a small hilltop village goes largely undetected. The event gives Reynaud a chance to reminisce about a pig killing thirty-three years before, when, accompanying his grandfather to a local farm, he sat on the imitation leather seat of his truck and witnessed for the first time the festivities surrounding the event. The temperature then, as now, was considerably below freezing. The pig then, as now, weighed four hundred pounds, and produced six and a half feet of blood sausages, sixty cooking sausages, fifty cured sausages, fifty Ardèche sausages, forty-four pounds of pâté, eighteen pounds of roasting pork, two cured hams, and two pork bellies. The only difference between the two occasions is in the beverage: eight glasses of wine for Reynaud today; two cups of hot chocolate for the seven-year-old, plus a late-morning snack of sliced bread with butter. But the bounty of the pork preparationsÂfrom the blood sausages to the belliesÂgives the book its structure. "Pork & Sons" (Phaidon; $39.95) is the story of killing a pigÂthe kind of killing that has been done every year for a very long timeÂand the many things you can then eat afterward, and it is distinguished by an unusual tranquillity of purpose. In this respect, it is different from the Picard or the Fearnley-Whittingstall. It is a cookbook, showing you the five, or ten, or sometimes twenty recipes for each category of pig-slaughter preparation: autumn fruits (apples, quinces, pears, and a splash of Calvados) with your blood sausages, for instance, or in a tart made with fennelÂingredients that might still be available when your blood sausages have just been made. Or summer ingredientsÂarugula, say, or sun-dried tomatoesÂfor the hams, because a properly cured ham needs some time and you wouldnÂt touch one before then. But there are affinities among the three books. Reynaud, too, includes a photograph of an actual slaughter, although it is minuscule, the details barely visible, along with one of the bloodletting: he, too, seems to recognize that weÂre losing our connection to our animals. The way he addresses the issue of quality is remarkably understated and telling. "You donÂt get good hams without good pigs," he writesÂitÂs his only instructionÂand the implication is that, if you donÂt know what a good pig is, you know enough to find out. His book is written in the quiet confidence that you will be reading it only if you are interested not just in meat but in the whole animal it comes from. About halfway through my reading, I stopped. The book had made me want to cook what it was describing. What I then purchasedÂtrotters, knuckles, a shank, the bellyÂnow seems absurd. You donÂt go shopping for leftovers; I should have bought a whole pig. Other preparations, consisting of the animalÂs more conventional parts, made more sense: a shoulder stewed with Venetian-trader ingredients (dates, apricots, saffron, and cinnamon), or one cooked as a confit and served with grapefruit and preserved lemon. I still havenÂt done anything with the recipes for feet and earsÂclever ways of making something out of very littleÂbut noted them, because you never know when you might need them. My only disappointment was in a piece of neglect for which the publisher is probably to blame. It is also evident in the Fearnley-Whittingstall. All these books, recognizing our supermarket-induced ignorance, make an exaggerated, outsized effort to teach us the cuts. This, Picard tells us, is what a pork loin looks like, and he shows us a photograph. These are the twenty-seven famous cuts of beef, Fearnley-Whittingstall tells us in the British edition of his book, and he includes precise pictures, along with a diagram illustrating exactly where each one comes from. These are all important cuts in a pig, Reynaud tells us in the original French edition, and sets them out in a series of perfectly detailed cartoons. In the American edition, though, Fearnley-WhittingstallÂs twenty-seven cuts have been replaced by a blocky, useless diagram of seven sections of a cow: it teaches us nothing, and serves only to compound our ignorance. In ReynaudÂs American edition, there are, incomprehensibly, three illustrations of the loin, each vague and each different from the others. In the recipes, the various treatments of the shoulder are reduced to a Boston Butt, that obscure piece of American pig butchering, which is not a whole shoulder but only the fatty top part of one. (Frankly, I had no idea what a Boston Butt was, having assumed that it came from the rear.) What none of these writers acknowledges is probably something that all of them discovered right before their books were published: that there is no universal, accepted practice for cutting up an animal, that it has always been nationally and sometimes regionally determined, and that there is not, therefore, a universal set of butcherÂs terms that can be translated from one language to another. Maybe, in this respect, Fearnley-WhittingstallÂs instructions for butchering a piece of lamb are the most sensible after all: the only way youÂll learn is by hacking into it, and so you may as well brave the mess. ItÂs the first step toward understanding that meat comes from an animal, and that good meat comes only from a good animal. â¦

Mary, If you purchase a property that is now owned by a lender because they worked out a "short sale" with their mortgagee there will be no consequences to you as a buyer. If the lender has a beef...it's with their mortgagee. Many "shorts" are negotiated to be non-recourse & dach...I'd sure recommend you try hard to accomplish that. I'm not a REA but have a good idea why you're not seeing the words "short" and/or "foreclosure" on the MLS. 1.) The lender always has a fiduciary duty to the mortgagee. 2.) If it's REO, it's no longer a foreclosure so there's no reason it would be advertised as such. 3.) To advertise a "short" would, IMO, violate the fiduciary duty thing & potentially leave the lender exposed to a liable suit...not something a good lender would ever risk. What you are likely to see advertised is "bank owned" or "lender owned" or "relocation company owned", etc. Nobody potentially gets hurt by those choice of words. Auctions... No, they most likely do not have a price listed in case someone wants to purchase it outright. If there were to be a normal sale it would be between the mortgagee & the potential buyer but NOT the lender. The lender is required to present the property to the public via the auction process since that's the standard for "fair market value". Not all states allow phone bids. Most of the states where I've conducted auctions for lenders the potential purchaser had to be on site registered & with a bidding number in hand in order to be qualified to bid. If a successful bidder fails to close within the specified timeframe they can be held liable for breach of contract. It's best to have all of your ducks in a row before bidding at a foreclosure auction. Frequently, I bid a property in at what we had outstanding including unpaid interest, fees, taxes, insurance, etc. but not always. In down markets, if I had an active bidder & we reached within 10% or so of my target amount I'd let the property go. I also did dozens of absolute auctions where I didn't bid at all so technically the property could have gone for $1.00. Those were in cases where I knew there were problems that could potentially be costly for the bank. An example, is one home (build in the 1930's) that was used as a gas station in the 1950's. I chose to auction absolute rather than risk an EPA fiasco. That property sold for around $30K & I was grateful to get it! Don't remember what our loan amount was but it was certainly more than $30K. /t

Here are two more of her wonderful writings. She posted on several boards. Not sure where I got these, but I sure miss her. She was a jewel! If these don't make you proud to be living in the US, I guess nothing will. God bless her! Memories of a Cuban-German-American July 4th Celebration. Written by Marlen Thu, Jul 5, 01 DH and I are naturalized American citizens so this is a very meaningful day for us. As we have done since moving to South Florida in 9/96, we had a big family BBQ. This years was at Cousin YÂs, the family sweetie (I am using initials to protect the guilty). She has a lovely home with a back-yard pool so off we went in our red, white and blue outfits, the tri-color collars on the dogs and me wearing my Statue of Liberty pin! I am in charge of desserts and, of course, brought apple pie, but I also brought Cuban flan and a big Black Forest cake as the German contribution from DH. I also brought German red cabbage and lots of bratwursts (we have changed from hot dogs to brats to attain a more German culinary balance). Although I can walk short distances, I went in my wheelchair so people would look at me pitifully and get me food and drinks without me lifting a finger. Upon arrival we learned that cousin LM, the family grill man, had injured his hand playing tennis, and before I knew it DH had been elected to take his place. I know just what a big mistake that is, but I didnÂt want to argue and I figured I could load up on the salads and desserts, and I had left-over meatloaf at home. So fate took its course. Cousin Y has 2 birds, 2 guinea pigs, a rabbit, a turtle and 6 dogs, all Rottweilers. With my 4 dogs, the animal kingdom was well represented, and that doesnÂt even include the family kids. The celebration was taking hold as various people were using parts of the furniture as bongo drums a la Ricky Ricardo singing Babaloo, and somebody had brought maracas. Once we all had arrived, we proceeded to officially declare the beginning of the festivities by singing the Cuban and American National Anthems. The first year DH was asked to sing the German Anthem but he did not know it, so we decided instead to honor Germany by drinking more beer. This year I also recited Bonny GrannyÂs poem which elicited thunderous applause and will become part of our tradition by popular request. Uncle G, the family clown, always comes in costume. Last year he was Kate Smith and this year he dressed as Uncle Sam. True to character, he went around asking everybody for money. Not to be confused with Uncle P, the family loser, who needs no costume to do that. It was time to organize the family conga line and I was chosen unanimously to be the lead. This is a great honor, but I know they were just doing it so I would not run anybody down with the wheelchair. Even DH joined in with his apron and chefÂs hat, although he is to dancing what I am to intergalactic travel. He looked like a German marching band member. Nephew L, the family idiot, kept doing steps like NÂ Sync but his father bopped him in the head and he became a Cuban conga dancer real fast. South Florida is in the middle of the worst drought ever, so naturally it started raining and thundering. Fortunately, the back porch is covered and we bunched ourselves under its roof. Thankfully, we all wear deodorant, although nothing could be done about the wet dog smell. Then it was time to eat, and DH threw open the grill lid with a great shout of "Baaaaam" a la Emeril Lagasse. We all stared at the quarter pounders and brats, which now looked like black meatballs and Little Smokies. Everyone rushed to line up by the Cuban roasted pork as I rushed to DH with a platter so he could plate his burnt offerings. I figured I could get rid of it all when he went inside to tinkle - after all we had more than 10 animals on the premises, not counting the kids. After eating, the sun came out again and the kids dove into the pool along with assorted dogs, and Cousin H in her tiny bikini, her being the family slut (oh, stop it, you all got one too!). As the women sat and gossiped, the men gathered yet again to plan the liberation of Cuba. Thus, my 40+ years in exile. Judging from all the beer they drank, the best they can do is piss on Castro. Nephew C, the family juvenile delinquent, jumped out of the pool and shouted, "LetÂs roll Aunt Marlen into the pool!" and headed towards me. Such a fun kid! I laughed uproariously and in my mirth, I accidentally ran over his foot with my wheelchair so his mother rushed him inside for medical attention. The party wound down and there were lots of goodbye hugs and kisses. Some-body tell Ricky Martin IÂm the one "Living La Vida Loca." A Fourth of July greeting from your resident Cuban Posted by Marlen on Thu, Jul 4, 02 My fellow Americans: My husband Karl and I are naturalized American citizens. He emigrated to the U.S. from Germany at the age of 8, as I did from Cuba at the age of 11. Independence Day has always had a special meaning for us both, even before we met. If you were born in the U.S., you are blessed with a citizenship which is sought by millions of people the world over, and one of them was me. When I knocked on the doors of this great country as a shoeless child refugee seeking freedom on 11/11/1961, you opened your arms to me and let me in. You gave me a shot at the American Dream, which I have achieved through hard work, honest sweat and a firm belief in the American Way. And on 11/9/1971, two days shy of 10 years after I arrived, you bestowed upon me a very great privilege by granting me American citizenship in what I believe is the greatest and most generous country on earth. And I swear I have lived my life discharging every single one of my civic duties and responsibilities as an American to make sure I am always worthy of the great honor you have granted me. And I have also kept close to my ethnic roots while learning about others' ethnic roots, because I don't believe we are a "Melting Pot." I am part of a big American mosaic: each little piece beautiful in its own right, joining with others closely to form a wonderful and unique work of art. And so later on today, as usual, I will let my four male dogs out in the backyard to take care of business, except today they will be wearing red, white and blue bandannas. And as they have done every day since shortly after 9/11/01, they will lift their rear legs and take a leak over a photo of Osama bin Laden which we have tacked on their favorite tree at the appropriate level. And as usual, we will attend our family's Cuban-German-American Fourth of July celebration along with the 47 members of our family and friends who are expected to attend. Except this year, Karl and I are bringing a very special honored guest: our dear widowed neighbor Sarge, a WW II decorated veteran of Polish decent who is bringing pierogies to add to the buffet table which shall include hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwursts, German beer, Ginger's lemonade, black beans and rice, Cuban roasted pork, Amish cole slaw, German potato salad, flan, carved watermelons and 9 homemade apple pies made by me. And I shall wear my red, white and blue pantsuit, and over my heart I shall wear the lovely patriotic pin with which Flamingo gifted me, and which has been part of my outfit almost daily since I received it. And the fiesta will begin as we all stand and face a very special U.S. flag given to me by President Ronald Reagan, and we shall sing the National Anthem with various accents, but also loud enough for both bin Laden and Castro to hear it. And we shall remain standing and place our hands over our hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and sincerely mean every word of it. And we shall observe a minute of silence in remembrance of all the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice so that freedom may ring throughout this great land, today and always. And I am going to hug and thank every veteran I run across including Sarge and my own husband. And we shall ask Sarge to lead our traditional conga line around the pool. And we shall listen to Ray Charles' America the Beautiful and Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA. And one of the crazy uncles, who always shows up in costume, will probably get a skin rash from all the green paint on his person as part of his Statue of Liberty outfit. And I know the kids will run around pulling on his toga which is actually an old green bed sheet. And he could not come up with a crown so I gave him an old green Happy St. Patrick's Day hat to wear which will probably slide off his old Cuban green-painted bald head. And for a torch he'll shine a green flashlight on everybody's face while screaming "Give me liberty or give me death" and we shall all try to kill him. And I'll join others in complaining about taxation, crooked politicians, the weather and the high cost of gasoline and health care. And we'll come up with magnificent ways to liberate Cuba and get Osama. And the babies will need their diapers changed and so will the two old great-great aunts. And I am going to wave the flag until my arms fall off. And I wish for each of you what I shall enjoy today: a day filled with American patriotism and pride, family, friends, food, fun and fireworks. And I thank you, my fellow Americans, for allowing me to be here to be part of it all. God bless America. And may God bless all Americans, like you and me. A Fourth of July greeting from your resident Cuban Posted by Marlen on Thu, Jul 4, 02 My fellow Americans: My husband Karl and I are naturalized American citizens. He emigrated to the U.S. from Germany at the age of 8, as I did from Cuba at the age of 11. Independence Day has always had a special meaning for us both, even before we met. If you were born in the U.S., you are blessed with a citizenship which is sought by millions of people the world over, and one of them was me. When I knocked on the doors of this great country as a shoeless child refugee seeking freedom on 11/11/1961, you opened your arms to me and let me in. You gave me a shot at the American Dream, which I have achieved through hard work, honest sweat and a firm belief in the American Way. And on 11/9/1971, two days shy of 10 years after I arrived, you bestowed upon me a very great privilege by granting me American citizenship in what I believe is the greatest and most generous country on earth. And I swear I have lived my life discharging every single one of my civic duties and responsibilities as an American to make sure I am always worthy of the great honor you have granted me. And I have also kept close to my ethnic roots while learning about others' ethnic roots, because I don't believe we are a "Melting Pot." I am part of a big American mosaic: each little piece beautiful in its own right, joining with others closely to form a wonderful and unique work of art. And so later on today, as usual, I will let my four male dogs out in the backyard to take care of business, except today they will be wearing red, white and blue bandannas. And as they have done every day since shortly after 9/11/01, they will lift their rear legs and take a leak over a photo of Osama bin Laden which we have tacked on their favorite tree at the appropriate level. And as usual, we will attend our family's Cuban-German-American Fourth of July celebration along with the 47 members of our family and friends who are expected to attend. Except this year, Karl and I are bringing a very special honored guest: our dear widowed neighbor Sarge, a WW II decorated veteran of Polish decent who is bringing pierogies to add to the buffet table which shall include hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwursts, German beer, Ginger's lemonade, black beans and rice, Cuban roasted pork, Amish cole slaw, German potato salad, flan, carved watermelons and 9 homemade apple pies made by me. And I shall wear my red, white and blue pantsuit, and over my heart I shall wear the lovely patriotic pin with which Flamingo gifted me, and which has been part of my outfit almost daily since I received it. And the fiesta will begin as we all stand and face a very special U.S. flag given to me by President Ronald Reagan, and we shall sing the National Anthem with various accents, but also loud enough for both bin Laden and Castro to hear it. And we shall remain standing and place our hands over our hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and sincerely mean every word of it. And we shall observe a minute of silence in remembrance of all the brave men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice so that freedom may ring throughout this great land, today and always. And I am going to hug and thank every veteran I run across including Sarge and my own husband. And we shall ask Sarge to lead our traditional conga line around the pool. And we shall listen to Ray Charles' America the Beautiful and Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA. And one of the crazy uncles, who always shows up in costume, will probably get a skin rash from all the green paint on his person as part of his Statue of Liberty outfit. And I know the kids will run around pulling on his toga which is actually an old green bed sheet. And he could not come up with a crown so I gave him an old green Happy St. Patrick's Day hat to wear which will probably slide off his old Cuban green-painted bald head. And for a torch he'll shine a green flashlight on everybody's face while screaming "Give me liberty or give me death" and we shall all try to kill him. And I'll join others in complaining about taxation, crooked politicians, the weather and the high cost of gasoline and health care. And we'll come up with magnificent ways to liberate Cuba and get Osama. And the babies will need their diapers changed and so will the two old great-great aunts. And I am going to wave the flag until my arms fall off. And I wish for each of you what I shall enjoy today: a day filled with American patriotism and pride, family, friends, food, fun and fireworks. And I thank you, my fellow Americans, for allowing me to be here to be part of it all. God bless America. And may God bless all Americans, like you and me. A Fourth of July Greeting from Your Resident Cuban Posted by Marlen on Fri, Jul 4, 03 Today we Americans celebrate my favorite holiday. Both DH and I are naturalized American citizens so this day is very special to us. He emigrated here from Germany and I from Cuba. On 11/11/61, when I was the age of 11, the people of this great country opened their arms and hearts and took me in. I didn't ask for a handout and never got one, but I was taught that through hard, honest work I, too, could achieve the American Dream. And I learned, and I worked and I have. I wave Old Glory and hum God Bless America every day. So July 4th is the only day of the year I can actually appear normal. I'll be heading later to my family's annual July 4th celebration, wearing a brand new red, white and blue outfit and wearing the lovely pin of the U.S. with which FlamingO gifted me, and which I wear almost every day. Even the dogs will be wearing new patriotic bandannas. And we will sing the National Anthem and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, in various accents but meaning every word. And we will pray for those members of our family who are serving our beloved country in the military, and all the brave men and women who serve alongside them. Because we came here seeking freedom, and we know only too well that freedom isn't free. Special hugs and a big kiss to rabbit's son, Jerm. who is a proud Marine. Semper fi, my dear! And we will hold a minute of silence to pray for all the heroes and heroines who paid the ultimate sacrifice to preserve that freedom. And I am going to hug every veteran I run into, especially my own husband. To all the veterans and their families here at the KT, special hugs to you all. Know I will forever be grateful to you and in your debt. And I am going to overeat, have fun, bask in patriotism and be surrounded by the love of family and friends. And while I respect the patriotism of all my friends in foreign countries, I know only too well that American citizenship is sought after by many millions all over the world. And I am very lucky to have it and I can't help but be proud of it. I was granted that privilege on 11/71, almost 10 years to the date of my arrival, and I am very grateful for it. I have tried to live every day since so that nobody ever regrets having bestowed such an honor upon me. So thank you, my fellow Americans, for letting me in. I wish you all the best Fourth of July ever! God Bless America. And may God also bless you, my dear fellow Americans.