Dash For Power

“Gossip mightier than truth, study suggests.”

• This disturbing study from the Max Planck Institute in Germany indicates that “Gossip is more powerful than truth”.

• The study suggested people believe what they hear through the grapevine even if they have evidence to the contrary.

• Researchers tested students using a computer game, in which other participants were given money and allowed to give it to others in a series of rounds. The students also wrote notes, aligned next to the actual decisions made, about how others played the game that everyone could see. Results? People paid more attention to the gossip, than to the actual results of each other. Students tended to give less money to people described as “nasty misers” or”scrooges” and more to those depicted as “generous players” or “social players”, said evolutionary biologist Ralph Sommerfield, who led the study. “People based their decisions to grant money based on the remarks, even when the actul actions of the others contradicted those remarks.” Scary stuff, if this is in us, for some evolutionary reason, to trust wild raw emotion over fact. Do you wonder if the Witch Burnings could come back? Aren’t they there, in school bullying, all the time? In bombings, are they back? Think on this: if this suggests mad passions jumps forward faster than logic can resolve, we know that.

• Another study shows how anger/fear is a much more powerful energizer than smile/love. If word gets around the village that you are a witch, no matter the proof, it seems if we don’t educate our kids, you may can show your sanity certificate but the mob with the rope is not paying any attention, you may as well get on your broom and cackle. Get a black cat. Fly away. Or, power sways. When the mob, with their torches and rope, appeared in front of the jail, eager to hang the guy we knew didn’t do it, the Marshall only spoke in calm reasoning tones after he had shot the gun out of the hands of Bart and Butch, until then leading the hanging, about to inherit his ranchlands…

• It was always only then, his power shown, the marshall could shame the good townsfolk to stop being so foolish, go back to their homes, as honest men came to their senses, looked foolishly at each other, and slowly ungathered themselves as a mob and made their way, all in separate direction to their homes.

• When my middle daughter Wendy, now visiting Philadelphia, visited the south of Ireland a few years ago, she freely used her English name Dashwood and was well treated. When she went over the border into Northern Ireland, she wisely decided, if asked, her name was from my mother Alice’s, father’s name, Arthur Stack. So my wise girl scout be prepared daughter Wendy, if grabbed in an alley in Belfast and asked:

• Are you Protestant or Catholic? What’s your name? My daughter Wendy was ready: depending on their behavior, she was prepared to be Wendy Protestant Orange English Dashwood, or Wendy Green as the Stack Hills of Ireland, as she both is. And either way, she had grown much wiser than those shrivelled minds and souls that might have, but didn’t, put her through this hell, which is happening all over the world; us mad apes, our emotions still way ahead of our brains.

• And what is the gossip on the streets of Baghdad these days? The British are coming? The Americans are leaving?

Sigh. Soon, sane wisdom shall prevail. As Dr. Franklin would say, it will all be well in the end. Derek Dashwood

Our own personal “Aha” moment  may be best to savor; review, ensure-and still others may not give a damn.

• Our review of the brains and accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin was interrupted a short while ago by my middle daughter, who is in Philadelphia today, visiting the historical sites of downtown Philadelphia. She found reasonable accomodation in the nearby city of King of Prussia. What an odd name for nearby Franklin’s Philadelphia, where towns were named after native or English. Why the King of Prussia, a cousin of good King George, their oppressor? His nearby relatives in Saxony would soon enough provide England’s new Queen, Victoria, after the death of George’s foppish son King George The Fourth died early in 1837.

• And until we have heard another, I think the naming of this town was a joke. In my books on the lives of Benjamin Franklin and his experiences in England, at one point while among senior British government officials, including Sir Francis Dashwood, as Post Master General of the British Empire, and Franklin as Post Master General for North America. Franklin read out a letter that was a virtual copy of the recent, arrogant British demands on the American Colonists. Franklin, pretending he had intercepted this message from the King of Prussia, read out the phony claims of the King of Prussia to the People of England, to te assembled guests at Sir Francis’ West Wycombe and caused an uproar. It was only after some time that some of the wiser heads realized it was a clever hoax on Franklin’s part to allow the English parlaimentarians to feel how indignant they felt when they heard of these demands for taxes on stamps, tea, imposition of curfews, limits on public assembly, etc.

• And tonight, my daughter is staying in the city of King of Prussia. By the time I had read this and phoned her back, her line was busy. I tried to explain to two people at the front desk that I would like to tell them, my daughter, anyone do they know how Ben Franklin probably named your town? Before I lost the connection, I was told no Mr Franklin, no Sir Dashwood, staying here. Sorry. Maybe that was where good George-Washington’s men had their latrines and would say they had to go pay their respects to the king. Do you think?

Well, if you know a better reason why just near where Washington and his Americans crossed the Delaware, caught those Prussian soldiers drunk on Christmas eve, and adding to insult, named a town after their King after killing them or chasing them away,  let us know. As an aside, my English Irish ancestry has loops through America, some of my blood came up from Pennsylvania and upper New York State one and two hundreds years ago. Yet my west coast Canadian daughter, born here in Victoria Canada, has just been told down in the Carolinas that they can tell she is a Yank. Boston, right? Or New Jersey? And in Texas, they thought she was from Minnesota. We Canadians think we have evolved so differently from our Yankee roots. Well, we do have medicare for all, and less guns. Otherwise, sigh, and smile.

Here’s to our very brilliant Dr. Franklin. He won many minds to the American cause, but…not the King of Prussia, that’s a joke. right?

Derek Nein Prussian Dashwood

Benjamin Franklin discussed Newton with Americans in December 1757.

• Poor Richard’s last Almanack discussion of the year 1757 was entitled “Of The expected COMET”. Franklin is discussing what we know as Haley’s Comet, and at this earlier date this is what is known, and gets passed on to a rural people eager for knowledge:

• “The great Blazing-star or Comet, which appeared in 1531, 1607, and 1682, is expected by Astronomers to return and appear inthis Year, or the next, for its Periods are somewhat unequal, nd so cannot be exactly ascertained like the planets which are moreregular and better known. ….

• “As these huge tremendous Bodies travel thro’ our System, they seem fitted to produce great Changes in it.” Franklin then discusses at some length a Mr. Whiston who “has gone a good way towards proving that the Comet of 1688, was, in one of its Revolutions, the Cause of the Deuge, by coming so near this Earth as to raise a vast Tide in the |Abyss, by which the Shell was broke, and the whole overflowed; the Comet towas then in its Approach towards the Sun, and he supposes its Atmosphere crouded with the watery Vapours it had gathered in those incoceivably cold regions, into which it had fled off in its Aphelion, and so produced the mentioned Rains.” That’s it?

• And in the next sentence Dr. Franklin then jumps from this quack to Sir Isaac Newton to go from hoodoo to science.

• “The same Comet Sir Isaac Newton has calculated, when in its Peihelion December the 8th, was heated by its Nearness to theSun to a degree 2000 times more hot than red hot iron, and would require 50,000 Years to cool again. This same Comet, Dr. Halley observed Nov 11, was not above a Semidiameter of the Earth from the Earth’s Way; so that had the Earth at that time been in that Part of its Orbit, something very extraordinary might have happened either by Water or Fire.”

• “Should a Comet in its Course strike the Earth, it might instantly beat it to Pieces, or carry it off out of the Planetary System. The great Conflagration may also, by Means of a Comet, be easily brought about…for, if one should meet with us in its Return from the Sun, all the Disputes between the Powers of Europe would be settled in a Moment; the World, to such a Fire, being no more than a wasp’s Nest thrown into an Oven.”

• “But our Comfort is, the same great Power that made the Universe, governs it by his Providence, And such terrible Catastrophes will happen till ’tis best they should.—-”

• “In the mean time, we must not presume too much on our own Importance. There are an infinite Numbers of worlds under the divine Government, and if this was annihilated it would scare be miss’d by the Universe.”

• “God sees with equal Eye, as Lord of all, A hero perish, or a Sparrow fall,

• Atoms, or Systems, into Ruin hurl’d, And now a Bubble burst, — and now a World!  ”

Thank you, Dr. Franklin. You have become an Icon of American success stories around the world, through the Ages.

Good Night, New Year’s 1758 coming up. Oh, I can hardly wait. But early to bed, says uncle Ben.

Poor Derek Saunders

History has many examples of someone’s insight at a vital moment, guided by their readings.

• One such was at the outbreak of the American Revolution, or War for Independence from the British, when 13 disparate colonists, scattered and with their old farming muskets, began to face off against, and be mowed down, by better equipped, newer rifles with longer range and better accuracy, the British, then Hessian German hired guns were more than coming, they were here.

• John Paul Jones, an American patriot, had made it to France, where the French were promising arms, ships, munitions, anything to annoy the British. Told to wait at the port of Brest, Jones cooled his heels for several months, more anxious each day as the bad news of British successes kept coming; New York City taken, Philadelphia, Boston on and off, General Washington’s rag tag volunteers without winter shoes, winters such as Valley Forge ahead…and yet John Paul Jones sat in Brest, sending messages, receiving promises. Until:

• John Paul Jones, who like many Americans, had read his Poor Richard’s Almanacs, recalled a short piece of advice by Richard’s author, Benjamin Franklin. John Paul Jones had his “Aha” moment as he remembered-

• If you wish it done, send…

• If you wil have it done, go…

• John Paul Jones got on a horse, was soon banging on doors in Paris, demanding interviews, his wild frontier manners sweeping doors open. Within days, John Paul Jones was back in Brest, upon his new worthy ship to take on the British. As it had been French donated, Richard’s Almanac inspired, he playfully, to everyones amusement and satisfaction named the legendary fighting ship of the American War of Independence, “Bonhomme Richard”, which with it’s master served its new nation very proudly. As do many today.

• But in Paris, this name was hugely popular as “Le Good Dr.” Franklin’s writings were well known throughout France. And to ensure France as an ally, Franklin, then Jefferson wooed the leaders, and even more through the drawing rooms of Paris the blessing of the wives of the powers in a France that within decades would have it’s much more violent revolution, inspired by, but horribly more bloody, than the more gentlemanly American revolution.

• Those of the old order in America were sent to Canada, not gulliotined as in France.

• Thanks, Yanks; Jeffersonian fair minded logic, not mad French passion.

 So, those Americans destined to become Canadians hurried past Buffalo for the north, and created Toronto. We survived. Now Toronto may be buying the Buffalo Bills. What goes around, comes around. The Toronto Toonies? Better than the Headless Horsemen of Paris.

To bed, practice my cheers. Then shuffle off to Buffalo.Head first.

Derek Dashwood

Also on that page, J.P. Jones may have recalled was the timeless “God helps those who help themselves”.

And so to bed. D. A. Dashwood

“A Positive Outlook matters little in cancer battle, study shows”. What can we learn from this?

• Perhaps like you, my first reaction is one of sadness that we apparently couldn’t affect a disease ravaging inside us.

• But, on reflection, even as I began to read details of this study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who followed 1,093 patients with head and neck cancer, and found no signifigant difference in survival whether someone scored high or low on an emotional well-being scale, I began to see the upside, and then found their words verifying my thoughts. “It’s disappointing”, said Dr. James Coyne, professor of psychology at UP, “but on the other hand I think a case could be made that people are made to feel guilty-they are told explicitly, or implicitly, that you’ve got to toughen up, you’ve got to have a fighting spirit and that’s not true.

• The study has just been published in the journal, Cancer. The theory is that negative emotions stress the body and batter the immune system. It contrasts a 1989 study by Stanford University School of Medicine’s Dr. David Spiegel that showed breast cancer victims lived 18 months longer with a positive attitude. In later, more extensive studies on this, Dr. Spiegel and others were unable to replicate those results, but the impression had been placed in people’s minds. This by Sharon Kirkey for CanWest News.

• What this does not then discusss, so we will now, is if we can’t smile ourselves healthy, can we read and learn which foods, and drugs, are best for that specific cancer we, or our loved ones, have? We think yes, it is what we have been talking about, so let’s discuss this and watch the new studies sure to follow this study. Let’s start with one type of cancer, there are hundreds: any cancer through the eating to exit department of our bodies, our plumbing. Cancers can be described as similiar to peach leaf curl on a peach tree, or on grape vines. Moisture, sometimes laden with fungals, collect on peach or grapes leaves, and are quickly picked off and disposed of, not allowed to fester on the ground. They are a similiar type of cancer, and in our orchard or back yard we can witness how a healthy leaf twists and curls in an agonized cancerous death grip. And the grape vines that most successfully have flavenoids that attack the leaf curl and repel it is in the darkest red wines, with Cabernet Sauvignon as champion. The wines have even more cancer fighting potency that the grape uice they were made from. So with your glass of red wine, check our news about which foods fight which cancers, or heart disease, pursue all foods that will attack your specific cancer, and eat them daily, hourly. All the darkest, brightest colors.

• So, really, the pressure is off. If you have cancer, and the next time someone tells you to smile when you are having a spasm, throw the night clock at them-in your mind only please, no caretaker abuse. Then ask for a plate of prunes, plums, fresh berries, and oh, yes, a glass of red wine. Leave the bottle. Our point here is that this new study allows you to rely on your more coldly logical brain study and tell you which plums, wines, grapes, eggplants are best. Not going into your emotional brain and exhausting yourself smiling, when you finally now know the best way to deal with a cancer in us to be apply every healthy food and lifestyle in additional to medicine’s best new application for what ails us.

So, together, we will fight all evil diseases, and to frown is sometimes OK. Derek Dashwood

We are in the midst of a world wide post industrial revolution.

• Even while war and tensions take the headlines; behind the headlines, people are studying, learning, applying the Anglo American model of hard work and industry to use one’s brain to one’s best ability. And challenging the existing world order, as never before. China and India are graduating more engineers than America or Europe. Japan takes out the most patents on new scientific discoveries. Asia is clearly regaining its position as befits it’s population and history as a giant among giants in the modern world, again as in the historic world.  

• America and Britain remain the economic models to the world. After 1776, and especially after America achieved it’s Independence, a sulky Britain refused to allow any of the amazing, evolving Industrial Revolution products, all in the process of being invented or applied, to knowingly be released to American hands. But those Yankee hands, and brains worked over time, and with a theft here, a new migrant with a blueprint there, one inspiration after another saw the gentle lands of Ben Franklin’s America began to spin with wheels in New England making cloth from cotton or wool, rather than importing from England; many other innovations, soon into the new century Mr. Fulford’s steam engine puffing up the Hudson River, gun makers creating machine perfect pistols and rifles, Daniel Boone over the mountains into the wilds of America, a survey point being made on the West Virginia Pennsylvania Ohio border to begin the survey of North America; heady times.

• Near this point, a few decades later, a Mr Proctor and his brother in law Mr Gamble would combine their talents as soap makers for a hard working, sweaty, growing America. Being 99.4% pure- it floats! began a tradition and kept a hard working America puritan clean. By the time of Davie Crockett, the wigged gentlemen in the original coastal colonies could see the merit,and profit, of this expanding base of “civilization”, even to encouraging a re taking of the Alamo and determining the Rio Grand as the southern border. In this mix, give or take the way of lives of nomad peoples everywhere, to accept and be absorbed, or stand back and become sidelined in the refuse pile of history, an eternal victim claiming justice.

• My personal best hope is that somehow the black aboriginals living in huts in the Australian desert, or native peoples throughout the Americas, all Africans, find their best peace with their local governments, but most of all rather than wear their old outfits and dance their old dances, that they do what my family did and adapt, learn, study, get on with it, live with the new masters and find a way. We native Saxon Ashwoods sold our best firewood, ash, for a modest premium, to the King’s Men. To burn it oneself was to risk having one’s hand cut off, this was superior wood, this Ash, hot burning, no smoke, no ash, this was saved, collected, and sold to only the King’s Men who dared not burn it themselves, but delivered it to the King’s Royal Woodbin. Then wool. Then woollen products. Then barrels of brandy and sherry from France and Spain. Then exotics from Turkey, then spices from the Orient, silks, each appealing to a richer class of client. Now, think through your computer the way a cowboy and his horse knew each other, set your sights wisely, step at a time, and conquer your world, creating a better world in your wake.

• For my father’s family, it was the brutal conquest by William, the enslavement of the Saxons and Celts. 1066 was not a happy year in Old England. Only in their renamed Normandy a few centuries, those Norsemen Vikings, recent converts to French, came and conquered our fair England under Good King Harold at Hastings. For a century, it was hide, slaughter, run, burn villages, hide. That bastard William. He was very sensitive about being called that, as it was a fact. He was entitled to the throne of England, but not by legal marriage. To write in French “William the Bastard” on a wall in Normandy was to guarantee all the villagers would be tortured to find the writer, who would then have his arms and legs cut off, hot tar poured in the wounds to keep him from bleeding to death, and left to the mercy of the village.

• Knowing this, many in England lost their lives fighting losing battles against this bastard. Some thought and learned.

• My father’s geneology shows that my father’s paternal family were Saxon-Celtic “Ashwood”, as we were dwellers of the Ash Woods in middle Dorset; we likely fought against the Romans at Maiden Castle. But now this new French speaking Viking king, how can we deal with him, rather than have his soldiers keep coming by, burning our villages, raping our women? Work with them. By 1200 our family of Ashwood had been principal agents to sell the noble, best fire burning, ashwood to the King, and were thus nobly granted that the famiily name would now be “d’Ashwood”, or in it’s French connotation, “The Ashwood”, that is, all other Ashwoods followed us in royal order. By 1300 our name had been adapted, as was happening to a merging new English language, to Dashwood.

• We think this is how the world should keep evolving, supply the wood to the new king, get along, all soldiers know you are OK, bring the cart, now its firewood, later it became spices from the orient, by the Glorious Restoration after the death of Cromwell, Sir Francis Dashwood , his family a founder of the East India Company trading through the South China seas from the 1600’s, who had donated one hundred thousand pounds to recruit an army for the new king, as Lord Mayor of London walked arm and arm into London with the new King. Spit happens. If we were still sitting in our Saxon fort, spitting at the outside world, would this have happened? Ask Sitting Bull.

Practising my up dated Paul Revere: “The Chinese are coming.” What do you mean, they’re here. They own the bank?  Sigh. Hi ho, we owe, it’s off to work we go. Same old, new landlords. Work, man. I am. You too. Remember Benjamin Franklin: It will all be fine in the end. As long as you hold up your end. We English speaking men of North America (he was PostMaster General) must hang together or we hang separately.

So, as Men’s Health (who includes Canada in their U.S. edition) would cheekily agree: we men of North America are indeed well hung in our resolve to hold up our end when we agree with a cause. Right. Applause. Do our duty, Boy Scouts to the end. Yanks with guns over here, Canucks with hockey sticks over there. Otherwise, bro’s to the end. Where’s those Russians? Oh, right, there. Yikes. Nice Ivan. Such big teeth when you smile. Trust, but Verify, Dr. Franklin would agree, in dealing with those lacking a tradition of democracy.

Peace and Progress, Democracy R Us. Derek Dashwood

Scholars debate: how did America come to be so uniquely successful in the nations of the world?

• It seems that brain changes happen to those open to it, and certainly this has happened, and is happening today, in the brains of millions of “new Americans” as they have participated in the growing of America. The success of America in accepting new people is unique in the history of the world- millions of people “discovering” a dream land beyond the seas, or these days over the Rio Grand, but going there and making their dreams realities. People still come to America, and still apply their brains differently, and became more broadly based in their intelligence, when they “pass through Ellis Island” or nowadays “over the fence” and into America. How did the first modern democracy come to be a sea to sea nation speaking the same language? Will it stay English speaking? Perhaps, although with Latin Americans arriving by the millions, like Canada with its French, America may have a second language issue over the next century as well. Although with engineers from India, Korea, the world, and Mexico, eager to be “American”, as around the world more are learning English than any other language. A billion people now speak “English”, from those 6 million English plus 300 English speaking in America  around 1677. As events in the world have evolved, English is now being taught to hundreds of millions around the world, who know that English is the language of the new global economy.Those 16 English speaking wretches at Jamestown had no idea what they were starting.

• Location helps. Being based in the moderate middle zone on a continent directly west of a large population base continent, Europe, gives America it’s ”location, location, location” for any restive masses in teeming, overcrowded towns. From a population of 3 million at the time of the revolution to 300 million now, America holds an appeal, unique in the history of the world that continues to draw those who want a better life. But scholars have pointed out, consider that in 1600 there were six million English speakers in the world. By 1608 16 of them still survived in a swampy fort called Jamestown. By 1620 a shipload more English speakers arrived, thrown off course into becoming Bostonian Puritans, founding Harvard, creating the modern American ethic of work, cleanliness, the right to bear arms of course in case the English come back, each man his own rights, his home his castle. You know. Although even Dr. Franklin included the right to beat the wife or child as needed. Beatings was what Franklin knew until age 12 in Boston. Some habits are less noble than others.

• Climate wise, America is Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold. Only China and Europe also enjoy this distinction, if you study a globe. Russia is too cold, Africa too hot, to encourage the creation of an America on only that factor. With global warming, some colder nations such as Canada see their crops being grown further north, while equatorial regions stifle. But in the minor ice age of the 1600 and1700’s- Ben Franklin reported 3 oxen were roasted on the frozen Thames River in London in the 1680’s. Few French arrived in Quebec-Canada in the north after Voltaire’s  comment that Canada was a frozen wasteland, saving the rest of Canada for Americans loyal to the king, as events turned out. After 1759, all North America north of the Rio Grand was under English control. An English speaking continent could happen, as visionaries such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson imagined. Until the Americans got all revolting, as the English King would say.

• Americans still loyal to England created modern Canada, pouring over from Buffalo to found Toronto and settle this new ”Upper Canada”. As well, New Englanders faithful to the English King fled north to create Canada’s maritime provinces. And, since then migrants arriving in North America north of the Rio Grand have adapted to speak English, and have based their democracy on the English principles, in Canada with a British-French adaptation. The English language, common civil rights, and legal traditions of innocent until proven guilt would govern north of the Rio Grande on the North American continent. Not so to the south.

• South of the Rio Grand, before and after the Alamo, there was little sense of democracy, or a free people, from Mexico to the southern tip of South America. Spanish conquistadors, and Portugese in Brazil, came as conquerers, not to move their families and their lives. They enslaved the people, put them in gold and silver mines, built palaces for themselves, separate from the enslaved proud Incas, Mayans.

• But in America, from John Smith and Pocahantas, to the arrival of the Pilgrims, many smaller idealized new world religious groups settled, usually disbanding. But America was for the dreamer who heard how he could have his freedom within civil limits of neighborly behavior. There were no princeling overloads, every man could get ahead on his own honest merits.

• The pamphlets of Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac were were known through Europe, translated into many languages. Local lords handed out copies to their serfs for the advice that hard work, frugality and industry would pay off. For the serfs, it became a message to go where this famous 12 year old had moved to Philadelphia and worked himself up from poverty to self made gentleman.

• By the time the French created and donated the Statue of Liberty with it’s words inscribed “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” America had been doing a fine job of just that since 1608. America’s acceptance of each new wave of migrants was rewarded by them quickly assimilating, creating and pouring out from New York with their accents but their determination, by yiminy, to become good Americans. History shows that they did, and created a magnificent nation by their honest hard working efforts. They did a fine job of turning themselves into models after Benjamin Franklin. We could read his words again every now and then, thrift, hard work, eat lightly.

• Of course, the vision of Thomas Jefferson to purchase the Louisiana Territory, almost to the Pacific, and then send Lewis and Clark right to the Pacific, helped. And within decades, settlers, many with new New York City accents were pouring into the Oregon Territory. And the British Governor of the Hudsons Bay Fort stayed on to become an American, and the first Governor of the new state of Oregon into the Union. Again, some left Fort Vancouver and founded British Columbia’s capital Victoria and place their fort there, inside Canada.

• And sweeping aside British, Spanish, Mexican claims, Americans swept west across these lands. It was the people themselves created the sea to sea nation, with their enthusiasm, their brains exploding with new sights, new visions. When Jedediah Smith arrived at the Spanish Mexican presidio in Los Angeles, one more route to the west, soon had wild American settlers with gold pans creating the Great Bear Republic, and soon, California.

• The Chinese think Chicago plays a major role in the miracle of America. Once America’s first major engineering marvel-the Erie Canal- was complete, ocean going ships could unload onto barges in New York City (at that time smaller than Philadelphia) and go up the Hudson River, turn west near Albany and barge through upper New York State, bypassing Niagara Falls, entering the Great Lake system at Buffalo, and make their way through three of the five Great Lakes to Chicago.

• The miracle about Chicago, discovered by French in canoes in the 1600’s, was that you could paddle south down the river networks and only have to drag your canoe a short distance through sandy dunes to enter a stream that would take you all the way down to the French settlement at St. Louis and all the way down the Mississippi to the Gulf at New Orleans.

• In the middle of China a large city is being made the hub of central China, although some of the natural elements are missing-such as a free people, able to create what they will. But from here will flow major transportation links north to Beijing, east to Shanghai and south to Hong Kong. Time shall tell.

• And still this evolving America, still working on it’s strengths, realizing it’s challenges, continues to evolve. So far, coming to the aid of those Europeans twice in major wars this past century, keeping major wars off this continent has been a major achievement.

• It was the Americans at the end of World War Two who pointed out to European leaders that it was time Europe also grew up and also became a Great Nation rather than feuding little silly empires. Time they stopped being scrappy school yard bullies with each other, each taking their turn over the centuries. You can imagine a Patton snorting “Grow up, you guys. We don’t have Montana attack Wyoming every couple decades. Germany, are you listening? Shake hands with France. Buddies, OK? How many times do we have to come and pull you guys apart?” Germany, battered and dominated by a looming Russia, hugged and made up with the French you couldn’t pry them apart now. Little Belgium, Luxemburg and Holland joined the group hug, Italy too, and now Europe has expanded to take in former Russian proxies, and now has a larger GDP and population, finally, than the America it helped create. And is learning so much from.

• And since 1957, step by step has evolved into a “United States of Europe”, modelling itself much around the British American model, although so aware of that dominance that Europe tries to find its voice. Anyway, well done, America you magnificent nation. Some spills, oopsies, now and then. But the world trusts America, and know that as Dr.Franklin loved to say, all will be well in the end.

So I agree, God Bless America. 

Derek Dashwood

Do you want our artery-clogging fat bar, the 5 tsps sugar bar, or our trans fat whopper bar?

• All energy bars are not from the same caring, crafted hands that you get with us, and today’s genius, Leslie Beck, who has a regular Food For Thought column in the Globe and Mail, and, a dietician at the Medcan Clinic, is on CTV’s Canada AM every Wednesday. Her insights are always science based, but with a woman’s understanding of which kinds of energy bars kinds of us types need. Some, such as the now less heeded Atkins, had their bars with saturated fat, the least of all bars to have most essential fruits, nuts, prunes, dates, energy thick foods. Read on : Leslie breaks the bars into five categories, the first four of which are high carb high sugar bars that a serious runner would likely wear off.

• For the rest of us, we need some food energy while we go about our day and realize we are now urgently between meals and caught between a Wendy’s and a Hard Place. Lettuce talk about these modest figgy type bars, as we have just done, then zip through the fatty bars for those who don’t really want to row their own boat, as long as the stream takes us where we want to go. Then back to our thumbs uppers.

• HIGH CARB BARS

• Clif Bar, Power Bar Sport, PowerBar Harvest. Unless you want to waddle, you don’t need all these 45 grams of carbs-some pack in 5 to 8 teaspoons of sugar per bar from cane juice, syrup, glucose-fructate, fruit juice concentrates.

• HIGH PROTEIN BARS

• Isoflex, PowerBar ProteinPlus, and Detour, for people wanting to pack on muscle by eating more protein. Most people meet their needs with a wise, balanced diet. Up to 400 calories, some of these have chocolate coating,, which adds to the transfats inside.

• MODERATE CARBOHYDRATE BARS

• Zone Perfect, Rexall Energy, President’s Choice FastTrack, Genuine Health,: most provide 180 to 250 calories and 10 to 15 grams of protein. For those on moderate workouts these do a better job han the above.

• LOW CARB BARS

• Atkins Advantage, Doctors Carblite Diet- usually 200-250 calories, artifically sweetened with sugar alcohols or scuralose. Some are high in saturated fat.

• FOOD BARS - OUR FAVORITES!

• Larabar, Elev8Me!, Simply Bar, \reBar and Nature’s Path only some who take their nutrients from whole foods such as fruits, nuts, seeds and sprouted gains. Leslie, and our favorites, by a long shot. Some, such as Garden of Life’s fruit and seed bars, even contain live probiotic bacteria. Whole food bars vary in taste and calories, so you may ish to taste and sample. Look for bars with 150 to 200 calories for women and 200 to 250 calories for men.

A fresh plum would be better, but this sounds great, and fits a pocket, or a purse.

Derek Dashwood

Our Brain is a living part of us and thrives as we do. Feed it well.

• First thing, feed OJ and grain, nuts and berries, and nurture your brain daily, and think about it. Talk to your brain, and listen back.

• Your brain needs you to keep it supplied with brain food hourly during the day, and you would be wise to listen as your brain speaks to your body, you feel the growl, your body’s needs for powerful nutriton every few hours, a dark plum, bowl of blackberries.

• Read challenging articles, subscribe, or library yourself to being well read, aware of what is happening in the world. Knowledge is Power. Pick categories of interests, be interested in as much as you can enjoy. Participate, help organize family or community events, neighborhood cleanups are great times to talk and learn from others, as well as help impart what you know to the youngers, who often teach us by their good examples.

• My youngest daughter got me to stop smoking cigarillos because she learned at kindergarten that smoking kills, and she gave me some very worried talks about me dieing early, what would become  of her. How could she live without me? Well, today she is doing fine, and so am I, and we know I increased the blood flow to my brain when I extinquished the last cigarillo (actually, my daughter did, with great ceremony). Some times, allow yourself to a wiser woman.

• Healthy Brain Power Foods exist, cold water fish, fish and plant oils, the omega3 and a couple omeag 6 fatty and plant oils are vital to brillianc in thinking ability. We need those and whole grains, dark fruits and veggies hourly, to push the blood through our brain and, like our dear body, get the fat to move along out. The brain power foods are taking over.

• Along with fresh is best, frozen next, dark fruits and veggies, we need to get out into the fresh (?) air, and get in some walking. A home gym exercise system can be best if you live in a  polluted area. Mens Health says some of the worst pollutants we deal with in urban areas is the air we breath. So find out your local situation, and respond how best you can. A www.Bowflex.com home gym, in short bursts during the day, can boost blood to your brain, making clear thinking more univitable. Keep eating a plum, lunching on fish nutty fruit red lettuce salad, and if you must fight the evil baron, you will solve the case, while certain bozos stumble down the dark castle stairs…

• Und ve vill send them to Inspector Cluesau in ze morning. Servens zem right, nicht? Herr Dashwood- help, i am in ze castle valls…

Brain power mind sets seem to come out of a person what ever their genes

• Take Benjamin Franklin. Born in Boston and brought up under the stern discipline of a Puritan uncle, young Ben ran away at age 12 and arrived in the friendly Philadelphia, being founded as the city of Brotherly Love, so much more suited to Franklin’s gentle nature than the stern prudes of Puritan Boston.

• And, as it happened, Philadelphia being between the cities of the north, and those smaller towns of the south, he was now in the midst, rather than the outskirts, of this newly evolving Atlantic coastal English speaking peoples.

• Franklin created his own life in Philadelphia, keeping detailed accounts of his expense and financials, his goals, his rules. By the early 1730’s he had a successful printing shop and between 1733 to 1758 he published “Poor Richard’s Almanac”, one of America’s first and most popular printer sheets, which became hugely popular, with almanacs, and wisdom from the ancients, amazingly appropriate today as ever.

• By the time of the British conquest of Canada in 1759, and Franklin’s 1760 appointment as PostMaster General of North America, Franklin began to envision  an English speaking continent that could be the civilized city on the hill. But they learned to eat the native foods and berries.

• This view was later put into action by Thomas Jefferson’s later 1804-5 expedition through Jeferson’s newly purchased Louisiana Territory from Napoleon’s France to finance his European wars. Spanish soliders up from Mexico missed Lewis and Clark’s expedition by days as they worked up the Missouri River to the Rockies; Spanish instructions were to eliminate them. Thoughts for the ages. And although the expedition missed the Spanish, when they first encountered the legendary grizzly bear, who was feeding on a salmon in the middle of the Missouri River, their futile musket shots bouncing off the angry charging grizzly, Lewis later noted in his journal,

• “I found that the men’s earlier fascination with meeting this monster bear the natives spoke of was soon more than satisfied upon meeting the animal, and paddled very furiously backward to avoid it’s charge, their musket’s proving useless.”

Brain Power minds can grow in a variety of ways. Blood rushes help. Derek Dashwood and his Bearly Ahead of Tings Team

Look at what is, like Franklin and Jefferson in their wigs at their time: look at what could be.

Derek Dashwood and your Team up the Stream Dream Team