Oh, please don't feel bad! It makes me feel good to know someone "gets" it. The whole situation is such a mess. Yes, the Yale man expressed the academic viewpoint. Maybe I'm deluding myself, but I think he might be open to considering data that contradicts it. The consumer groups trying to educate the public sabotage themselves sometimes, I think. After hanging out on their message boards for some time I backed off because it's hard to know what to believe. They often blame everything on ticks. They may be right, but it sounds like lunacy at times. Also, they place a lot of importance on going to Lyme-literate doctors (LLMDs). Unfortunately, anyone can call himself--or herself--an LLMD. I discovered that the ones in my area (within 100 miles, none close) don't take insurance, and all charge big bucks. And I didn't see anyone posting about being cured. Post after post talked about switching meds, adding meds, trying a new med, going for IV meds, adding supplements, giving up certain foods, exercising, reacting to meds, feeling better, feeling worse, noticing no changes, etc. It was dizzying. My own doctor is a good guy. He admits he doesn't know much about tick-borne illness, but he reads what I give him and trusts my judgment. So I learn all I can (which is how I found myself talking to the Yale researcher), but there are no clear answers. I was on Doxycycline a total of 5 months. Doxy is the least risky of the recommended antibiotics. I'm sure I'll be on it again this spring or summer. It helps, but it's not a cure. The best book I read on the subject is Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic. The author, Pamela Weintraub, is an experienced medical journalist whose family was severely affected by Lyme and its co-infections. She goes on antibiotics periodically as symptoms return.

Jasdip, we would never let the animals go hungry. The shelter in Galveston has continued to donate to me because I took in several of their unadoptable cats, and they have been very good to me. When we don't have food, we buy it. Actually, Mare, she dumped me. I am glad to be rid of her, but was strapped by the food issue. Now though, she has given her "permission" that my wildlife can have food. The donors never realized that 90% of the donated food went to me because my animals are all alive. Dead animals don't eat very much. Actually, she has taken to "farming" out most of the animals brought to her, so they are in better hands because most people who take them to raise, really want to do right by them. Oh, Lord! The pig situation!! I had Pig Sue...spayed, big pet. She was stolen but not before Pig Lee showed up....wild...and later, Pig Newton. Pig Lee was too wild to get spayed and by the time she was tame, too big. She and Newton had many children....I think we have sold about 40 of them so far. Her oldest daughter, Delores, and she had 11 pigs this spring. They are all big enough to go now and as much as I hate to see Pig Lee go, I can't keep having all these baby pigs. Pig Newt weighs about 600 lb. He is wild but he will take food from my hand. I don't try to pet him though, because he could be dangerous, especially if he got scared. The horses and donkeys and mule are fine........however, we may be welcoming a little mule foal in a few months. My donkeys were fighting, so had to separate them until we could get them gelded. Due to having to keep them in pastures that didn't adjoin, Amos went in with the mares. I didn't worry too much about him breeding the mares, until I saw him breed "my mare"....Mariah. I am not 100% sure she settled, but I have been watching her carefully.....and from what I know about such things, I think so. I could have her checked by the vet, but I will know soon enough. I wouldn't care if one of the other mares had a mule foal, but if it happens, it will probably be Mariah. Here is a picture of Pig Newton.

Yeah, but I doubt LMA thought so. As Emory mentioned, she was brought up in a state of semi-starvation a lot of the time, with the family living on the produce of their apple trees and the occasional loaf of graham bread. There was a very prevalent belief in that group that whiteness = purity, so the lighter anything was, the better it was. That applied to people, too. A blue-eyed blonde was innately spiritually superior to a brown-eyed one, a dark-haired person with blue eyes would be the next step down in temptation to be bad, and so on. Poor LMA was the dark-haired, dark-eyed kid, so Bronson used to do things like putting this always-very-hungry child in a room with an apple on the table, telling her that only a very wicked child would eat it without permission, and then leaving the two of them (the apple and LMA) alone together all day. Of course, starvation would eventually win out and then the rest of the family would return to mourn over her ineradicably evil and selfish nature. There were other weird manifestations of this in their circle, too. Sophia Peabody, the sister of one of Bronson's teaching assistants (and eventually Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne), was practically incapacitated as a girl by terrible headaches, which I suspect had something to do with the fact that her mother kept her (an already semi-pure blue-eyed blonde) on a diet of only white foods: white sugar, white flour, milk, and occasionally white meat chicken, those being the purest and therefore the best foods. At any rate, LMA certainly appreciated the sacrifice of the luxurious Christmas breakfast in the book in a way few other people ever could.

Thank you everyone. I think we are getting out of here at a good time. The loop 610 goes around Houston. Beltway 8 goes around that, and way out beyond that loop is the Grand Parkway. It isn't completely finished, but a part of it is being built a few miles from where we live. It then goes through Kemah and Seabrook, which is on the bay, where Jody keeps his boat. It eventually ties up with part built in Baytown, and continues on around Houston. There is a bridge between Kemah and Seabrook, and it is going to be replaced with a 6 lane bridge. We went to a funeral today and came back that way to check the boat. The traffic was backed up for miles. On weekends, it is worse. It is a nightmare. Makes me really want to go live somewhere that has a much slower pace. Jody is thinking about moving his boat closer to the Louisiana border, and shrimping out of there.