Why I am not in church today

I can’t believe the odasoity of some people! After what Jim Thomas did to us, they have the nerve to ask us to go back to church! Jim Thomas for those who haven’t been reading my blog very long, is the Old Orchartd Beach town manager who forced us out of our home and off our land. Land that had been in our family over 300 years! Land that was settled by the original found of the Town and my several greats grandfather Thomas Rogers! Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop those greedy, high poluting, money grubing land monger bastards took everything away from us and forced us to live homeless on the streets until hud finally got us into an apartment!

We had to live on the streets in a tent for 8 months! And it wasn’t even a tent, it was a trap and so cinder block. And it was during Maines sub-zero winter of 2006 when the temp went down to -15 below zero. My fingers froze and are now stiff as a result, and I can draw any more, and it’s hell for me to pick up a pen a write now. Me and artist and writer, not only did he steel our home, he lost me my career!

People at church know about this, and yet they have the odassity to actually ask me to come back to church! Come back to church! Why, so I can sit there next to Jim Thomas? So I can meet up with him the hall? Or his croony secritary and her husband, whov’e been hounding the hell out on us? I’d have to sit for 3 hours with those thieving bastards! They stole or house. And why? What was there reason? In the words of Ken Shoop:” Because this is Old Orchard!”… huh? what? What the hell kind of a reason is that???

They tried to take our animals! My babies! My cats and dog and birds! We had fight like hell to keep them. The members of that church put us through hell and back and they expect us to want to go to church????? They did that to us and they really don’t know why I stopped going to church????

“Do you want to go to church?” oh yes, of course I’m just dieing to go back to the church that help steel our home from us. The church that seperated me from my family, and my animals, and destroied my book collection, and stole my grandmothers stamp collection, smashed my records, puverized my grandmother clock, they seperated me from my brothers and my animals and they can actually think I want anything to do with going back to church!!!!!!! …. oh yes, I’m just dieing to go back to that church! What the hell are they thinking? “but They’ve changed, they backed off”…. yeah, right, they backed off after they tforced us out on the streets and ruined my hands so I can’t draw and write anymore. They cbacked off after they got our land. Of course they backed offf. What need is there for the 2 years of harassment and vandalisim anymore now that the have the land? Answer me that one! The only way I want to go back to that church is if Jim Thomas, gets up in front of the ward and apologiges in front of his peers and prints up a public apology in at least 5 big newspapers and returns our land to us. Than and only than well I want to go back to that church, and even than I’m not sure I’ll want to go back.

All I have is this to say:

Going to church on Sunday does not make you a Christian anymore than sitting in a garage on Saterday makes you a car!

It is what you say, that makes you a Christian.
It is what you do, that makes you a Christian.
It is how you treat others, that makes you a Christian.
It is what is in your heart, that makes you a Christian.
It is love for one another, that makes you a Christian.

It is who you are,
not where you are,
that makes you what you are!

Old Orchard Beach

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Happy La Kermeese!

Happy La Kermeese!

I’m watching them set up for the block party right now. We got front row seats to the concert and fireworks and we don’t even have to leave to house! Can’t get out the front door right now, cause there’s a Slush Puppy machine and a hot dog stand in the sidewalk. The radio stations are setting up in front of my bedroom window. Such exicentment going on. I love it.

Wondering: Are any of you guys going to be here tonight?

For Those who don’t know, it’s a French festival celebrated in Maine. It celebrates the peace between Maine and Quebec and the mixed heritage of everyone that lives in the area. It’s headquarters are in Biddeford Maine, which is a predominaty French town, and they close off all of Main Street and the off streets and turn the entire city into a giant carnival.

It looks like the entire population of Quebec is here right now, you should see the traffic!

A green frog is the symbol of the festival, and everyone has got frogs on their shirts and frog hats, and kids are winning stuffed frog prizes at the game stands.

This is our first year living in Biddeford (we used to live in Old Orchard Beach on the other side of the river), so we’ve never gotting to see it like this before. We’ve only seen it after it was open. It opens in a half hour, but they started setting up last night, so we’ve been watching the whole thing.

They have fireworks off the bridg at 9. We are in the first house off the bridge, overlooking the river, so the fireworks are going to be shot off just a few feet from my window. That ought to be interesting.

EDIT:

They just started. Right now they are singing the National Anthem of the US, they’ll do the Canadian one next, and the one for Quebec. Everything the announcer says gets said twice, once in Engligh nd than again in French.

EDIT:

Only in Biddeford! There’s a guy with a “trash pick up claw” going around picking up the trash that is grewing steadily on the streets. An elderly man with a cane just came walking by, waked the trash-picker-upper with the cane, and now the two men are duelinging, with cane and trash-pick-up-thing, like it was a sword fight.

EDIT:

I’m back again. Had to go out and watch what was going on out there. The fireworks just ended. Oh it was just amazing! The La Kermeese fireworks are the largest fireworks display in Maine… 4th of July has nothing on La Kermeese. The fireworks are so big andthey shoot them up so high that they can be seen over most of Southern York county. So we always see them no matter where we happen to be when they go off each year. But this year we are living in the first house off the bridge, right on the river’s edge, so this year we got to see them up close. And boy did we see them up close! OMG! I’ve never seen fireworks so close before. They were shooting them off about 50 feet from our front door. I went out on the front porch to watch them. OMG! It sounded like there was a canoon in my brain! That thing they shoot fireworks out of is SO LOUD! Even with tens of thousands of people all talking at once and the big band music playing (live band too!) I couldn’t hear them, all I could hear was the firework’s canon-thing.

But seeing it was amazing! OMG! It was like we were right inside of the fireworks! They were going up straight over our heads. I’ve always seen fireworks from a distance, far off, away from the crowd; kind of on a hill “looking down” at the fireworks. But this time I was right underneath them!!!! Boy is that ever a change of perspective! Watching them fan out from underneath, was just undescribably amazing! I wish you guys could have seen it! I’ve never seen anything like that before!

Well, it’s all done down, so I cam back in. The fireworks lasted a full half-hour, and ended with a big “atomic bomb” looking mushroom display that just kept going up higher and higher. It was beautiful! Now the band’s playing again. It sounds like an old 1800′s ciruse out there, they are playing the old carousel/carvial type music. Like what you hear on a merry-go-round, only it’s being played live by a real band… and boy is it loud!

I love La Kermeese.

~~EK

Bear Attacks in Old Orchard Beach, Maine

You know, it was about 5 years ago when I first told Old Orchard Beach police that there was a bear in our yard, but because I didn’t have pictures, they just laughed and said there was no bear in Old Orchard Beach. Yes, tell that to the bear that routinely makes her weekly visits to our brook for a drink. Or tell that to the “bear tree” that marks her territory some 100 feet behind The GoldenEagle. Tell that to my terrified hens, who refuse to lay eggs after the bear has been by. But, who am I too know a bear, I only grew up in the Ross Forest, on land settled by Thomas Rogers (my ancestor and founder of this town) , making friends with every wild animal out there: from the bobcats to the coyotes, both of which btw the way the police also told me did not live in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Uhm-huh. I believe you, I’ll just go on seeing these animals in my yard and keeping my pets under lock and key, and I’m NOT cutting a hole in my wall to allow the cats to roam free in bear, coyote, and bobcat country no matter how bitchy they get.

But why am I telling you this. Well, for those of you in Maine, you already know, but for those of you not in Maine, well us Maine folks awoke this morning to the news reports announcing: BEAR ATTACKS IN OLD ORCHARD BEACH! My question is what’s with all the exclamation points? So those bear that no one believes visit my back yard every week are now attacking the neighbors? So what. Took five years and an attack on humans before the police would believe me? Oh yeah, they believe me now…. they’re out there hauling around big bear traps behind the police van. My question: why didn’t you do that five years ago, before you got yourself a whole herd of bears. Five years ago, you only had a pair of bears out there, now; there have been about 2 cubs each year since. There isn’t just one bear in Old Orchard Beach anymore, there’s about 10 bear, at least there are about 10 bear that I know of, who knows how many I haven’t seen yet.

Why are the bear attacking? Why now? Do you really have to ask? King Realty just cut down some 50 acres of forest on the Ross Rd. Not one, but three new sub-divisions just started up on Portland Ave. We’re talking close to 200 acres of Ross Forest that no longer exists. What would you do if a bunch of big yellow rigs came in and decimated your home? Wouldn’t you attack the people who did it? I know I would. Why did those idiots think it’s unusual that the bear are “out to get them”? They cut down the forest, they build a house on the bear’s home, and than they wonder why a bear is sitting on their front porch? How stupid can you get?

I saw, take down the bear traps, and let the bear stay. To the people moving in: You’ve seen Maine, leave us in peace and go home. Keep Maine green: shoot a developer.

Lots of love to the bears, and lots of hate to the Town officials of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, from Wendy C. Allen; here’s to hoping the next attack the bears make is on the town hall.

Work From Home, Is It Possible?

Work From Home, Is It Possible?

Everyone asks this question, and for those of you with this goal, you prob’ly find yourself asking it more than most people.

Yes, it is, and not really that hard to start either, though most find it hard to keep going. First you have to ask yourself, what is it you want to do?

The most successful work at home jobs are the ones you created yourself…my uncle started working at home in the 1960’s building clay bricks, and building houses for people out of them…today he owns a multi-million corperation that not only builds houses but also building brick churches, but he still runs the buseness out of his home, and he works longer and harder than the average non-home worker.

My mom worked at home too, she was a professional seamstress, sewing fancy dresses for little girls, christening gowns, and cloth dolls. At one point she bought her own brick and mortar store (the house next door to us) and was selling to summer tourists (in Old Orchard Beach we see an average of 2 million tourists each month), but the shop proved to be a bigger home business than my mother had expected. She had no time to sew the crafts anymore, which was her passion, so after 3 years, she shut it down and sold her items to other shops on consignment instead. Now she is hoping to build a web site and move her opperation online by next year.

My dad, he worked at home too, he was a rought driver for the local newspaper, delivering the Portland Press Herald, the Sunday Telegram, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times to over 1000 customers 7 days a week 365 days a year, with not one single day off for the past 21 years… his annual gas costs are over $5,000 each year, and he goes through 3 to 4 cars a year, his annual income was under $12,000 a year.

Another uncle of mine works at home, as a real estate agent. He at one point cliamed to own a multi million dollar alpaca farm in Astrailia. (I can’t verify that as I have never been to Austailia, so never saw the farm myself). Last I heard he had given up on the real estate business in favor of yet another work at home business he had set out to create. Don’t know the details on that, or if it succeeded or flopped.

And yet another uncle works at home, buying juck from yard sales and reselling it at flea markets. His income is average of $10,000 a year, but he does this as a side-line hobby. If he set out to do this full time instead of part-time in his spare time, he could easily triple that figure.

I work at home: I am a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and I own a small press publishing house which I built myself from the ground up.

So in answer to your question, does work at home exist?

Yes, it does, but it is not a get-rich-quick-scam-artist-work-at-home; that type of work at home well banckrupt you quicker than you can blink. REAL work at home is when you take a skill and use it to help those around you. If you are hired by a business, they pay you for your product/service. If you start your own business, you get paid when your customers pay you. It may look like a private or small business to the world, but it is in fact you working out of your home and thus working at home. However, it is hard work, long hours, no vacation, you get dirty, you get tired, and in the long run, not working at home would have been much less stressful and much easier.

In short working at home is not a get rich quick scheme. Working at home IS NOT getting paid to take survies. Working at home is not, clicking on ads on Google. Working at home is you getting a business lisnce and settingup shop, either online or brick&mortar, and selling your product or services to your customers. Most people are not cut out for the hard labor and long hours of working at home, but for those of you who are, it’s the best thing you could ever do..

Remember:

Employers ask you to fill out a job application, and will ask for past job referances, your SSN, and your criminal records history.

If you did not fill out an application, you did not apply for a real job.

If you filled out an application, but paid for the application form, you got scammed!

and if you can’t find a business to work for: start the business you want to work for an be your own boss in your own home.

We know this, saddly from experiance.

Back in the early 1980’s my mom saw just such an ad in a magazine. BIG promises of lots of money. She sent the money in, for not one ad but 2 differant ones. The first promised big bucks for sewing baby bibs, the second for making beaded earrings. Both ads were pretty much the same: send in a certain amount of money and they’d send you the supplies, you make the items and send them back to them, they sell them. Simple, sounded great, my mom had at one time been a seamstress, she thought she could sew up a storm of baby bibs for a legit company to sell them. That’s what we all thought, we should have read the fine print…or rather, we should have taken a notice that there was no fine print to read! Or maybe that it was a P.O.Box and not an actual address that was listed in the ad, that should have tipped us off.

Well, the supplies came, most of it cheap junk that we could have gotten cheaper and better quality at a dollar store, my mom haveing been a profesional seamstress thought that useing this absolute crap to make these items seemed pretty stupid and unprofessional but, that’s the items the company used so that’s what they sent…alarm bells should have gone off than…we should have realized that no REAL manufacturer, is gonna use such poor quality supplies to make their goods.

Well, we (my mom, my dad, and me) set out to sewing baby bibs and beaded earings. Comes time to send the items back and low and behold, the P.O.Box had been cancled, the “company” turned out to never have existed, and we were stuck with a bunch of stuff we couln’t use or sell.

We learned a lesson. It wasn’t a very big investment, less than $100, but it was not money well spent…or maybe it was, because it taught us to look at these scams with open eyes and questioning minds.

We learned a lot of things:

We learned to read ads more closely.
We learned to question “companies” with ONLY a P.O.Box.
We learned to ask the company for a job application form.
We learned to ask for a history of the company.
We learned to do a background check on the company.
We learned to never pay money to get a job.
We learned to REAL manufatures don’t put ads in magazine classified.
We learned to that most manufactures only hire local residants, so that the employee has to bring the items right in to the factory to be inspected, before the company well accept and pay you.
We learned that REAL jobs assembling items for manufactures, are rare and few and far between, and that you could be on a waiting list for years before they need enough help to get all the way down to your name on their list.

Now we have the internet, and it seems that with it came millions more ways to scam people out of their hard earned money. Every day thousands of new Work-At-Home, Get-Big-Bucks websites are added to the net. A Google search will bring up millions upon millions of them.

When I look at these sites, with their promises of BIG MONEY. I laugh. You see I own more than 200 web sites, 12 fanlistings, and 13 private message boards. I know how to build a website, quite well, maybe not to proffessional standards, but pretty darned close, and than I see these scam sites: many of them are made useing Geo-Cities, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink, and countless other “free home pages”. Right off the bat that fact alone should set off a RED WARNING ALARM in any person, but it seems that many people do not even notice this fact, and send their money in.

A REAL company would not be useing a “free home page”…a small craft shop run by the sweet little old lady next door, might use a free home page to sell her knitting and cloth dolls, but she wouldn’t be asking you to send money to make money…no she’d show you a picture of her dolls with a price for each one. The Goth girl down the road might use a free site to peddel her homemade velvet capes, while the Wiccan next door lists home made soap on her MySpace. These are people like me and you who are working at home and selling what they make. These people are legit, and you’ll notice they never ask you to pay for a membership before they allow you to buy their products. These people are small business owners working from home.

The free sites that ask you to spend money to make money… those are the ones you got to watch out for. Those are the scams.

If you see a site made by a free home page site, and offering you lots of money for doing next to nothing, run for the hills, because there is no company that is going to use a free web host to seek out workers. Not a single one.

My hope in writing all of this is that it well help you to weed out the scams from the real work at home jobs.

To all: Good luck on your goal.

~~EK

See more progress on: work because I like to, not because I have to

Stolen Items: Please be on the look out for them!

Stolen Items! Please be on the look out for them!
Current mood: angry

On April 26, 2007 our home in Old Orchard Beach Maine was broken into, several items were stolen. Among other things, the thieves stole an antique stamp collection that has been passed down in our family for nearly 100 years. There were 2 bound books, and several pages torn from a third book stolen, as well as a glass/cardboard case. The descriptions of the items that have been stolen are as follows:

 

One stamp album is a red cloth bound book dating from the 1920/1930 eras, containing stamps dating from 1890′s – 1950′s. Many of the stamps are from Japan and it’s neighboring South Pacific region as my grandmother was best friends with the wife of the ambassador of Japan, who was living in the South Pacific at that time and sent the stamps back to Maine to my grandmother, Helen Ricker Allen. In addition to these the album contains several hundred stamps from this era from nearly every country in the world that had stamps at that time. My grandmother was quite young at the time and knew nothing of stamp collecting, as a result the stamps are glued down, not hinged, onto the pages, with the duplicate colors of them pasted one on top of the other. This fact along with the date and size of this collection makes it stand out among old collections, so should the thieves attempt to sell it to you, you well have no difficultly in mistaking it.

 

The second album is not so unique and may be more difficult to trace, though we hope that the thieves attempt to sell them both at the same time. It is a plastic ring binder from the late 1960′s era, quite common, and contains the basic colorful world stamps that are so often found in world collections of this era. The torn out pages come from a second identical plastic ring binder album. These belonged to my mother as a child.

 

The glass/cardboard case is a butterfly case, whose butterflies long since rotted and were replaced (by me) with another item. The glass/cardboard case contains a one of a kind hand carved heirloom that has been passed down in our family since the 1930′s. The item is a hand carved wooden weaving comb (or hair comb) from a tribe in Papua New Guinea (believed to be Chimbu, but the exact tribe is unknown). Along with the comb is a negative of the solider (my dad’s uncle) who brought the comb back with him from PNG during the 1930′s. Also in the case is an index card on which I hand wrote the info about the comb and the solider.

 

These items are dearly beloved and greatly missed; both have been in my family and passed down for generations. We want them returned, and are contacting as many local dealers and appraisers as we can find and requesting that they be on the look out for anyone selling or requesting an appraisal on items fitting this description. If you see these items please know that they are stolen goods and call the police immediately! Make sure that you get the description of the bearer of these stolen items and if possible their names, so that you can give this information to the police. In addition to stealing these items the thieves did considerable damage to our home, using a crowbar to tear the lock off the door, and than trashing the house, including breaking and antique gold/glass anniversary clock that my grandmother had brought with her from Germany and smashing many 78′s. We are seeking to prosecute these vandals and thieves once we know their identity, but mostly we want the stamp album and the PNG comb returned safely back home where they belong.

I am trying to send this notice on to as many dealers as possible, but it is a daughting task, and ask if you could help by passing copies of this letter on to any of your associates, fellow dealers/appraisers, and collectors. Any help you can give us in tracking down these stolen items would be greatly helpful.

 

If you should find them, Please contact me:

 

Wendy C. Allen

Harassment Continues and Grows Worse by the day…

Oh, man! It’s been like a week since I was last here, sorry guys, but real life has kept me offline for a bit, the harasment has increseased at an alarming rate, as has the daily bouts of vandalism we have to content with. It’s down right sickening coming home to this every day. As usual we came home tonight to find pack-boxes now unpacked and strewn all over the yard. Once again, the vandls tore stuff out of the tent and just threw it. Stuff, like usual is broken. More items have been stolen.  This time, not only did they tear the lock off the front door, but they tore the front door off the house. They tore the door off the outhouse as well. I think today’s round of vandalism has to rank at the most destructive yet.

We still do not know who is behind this. All we do know for certain is that it is obviously someone who knows when we are and are not home and that the police well do nothing for fear of loseing there jobs as a result of threats from the town manager.

We are not gone from home on a regular schedul… one day we well leave at 7AM and get home at  noon, another day we will leave at 4PM and get home at 5PM… other times we leave at 9PM and get home around midnight… there is no set pattern, no work schedule, every day is differant, sometimes we leave in the monring, sometimes noon, sometimes  night… some times we gone 20 mins, sometimes we are gone for hours… who ever it is that is doing this vandalism, they live in seeing distanct from our comings and goings otherwise they would not know the exact time we are gone each day, and we only have 3 neighbors in seeing distance. One a peacful eldery man who I could not see doing anything like this… the others… related and one of them on the  town counsel, and works closely with the Town Manager… uh-huh! alarm bells are ringing on that one! but, as I said we have no  proof as to who is doing this, so we do not know who to sue for the damages.

~~EK

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animal rights, bad habits, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, disabled, Discernment, discrimination, EelKat, EK, Family, fear, Future, geography, government, harassment, help wanted, humans, in need of help, Jesus, lies, Life, local government, my thoughts on…, Old Orchard, Personal, politics, Power, stealing, tent, thieves, Town of Old Orchard, unprotected, unsafe, vegetarian, war, wisdom, World, York county, Communist blacklist, Communism in America, the communist town of Old Orchard Beach, Jim Thomas the Communist, Will Watson the Communist, down with Communism, fight for your rights, make America the land of the free again, 1964 Dodge 330, angry, animal rights, animal welfare, animals, anti-elder abuse, antiquies, author’s rights, authors, bantams, belief, beliefs, Biddeford, birds, cats, chickens, Christ, Christianity, church corruption, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, crime, criminal, criminals, cruel, cruelty, danger, disabled, discrimination, dogs, evil, evil men, faith, Family, farm animals, farm life, fear, Garden by the Sea, geography, God, government, government crime, harasment, harassment, hell, help wanted, Holiness, Holy Spirit, humans, in need of help, Jesus, LDS, lies, Life, life blogging, local government, Maineland, Mormons, my thoughts on…, news, ocean, ocean life, Old Orchard, police, police corruption, police threats, politics, Relationships, religon, seniors, sin, sinner, sinners, social change, stamp collecting, stamps, stealing, Stolen House, stolen items, strange but true, strangers, tent, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Theology, theology beliefs, thief, thieves, thoughts, threats, town hall, Town of Old Orchard, vandelism, vandels, villain, war, weather, Winter, World, writer, writer’s rights, writers, York county

Update on The Lockdown & More Harassment & Vandelism

We spent the last 2 days calling everyone under the sun, trying to find out what the hell is going on, but we can’t get through to anyone; they are just giving us the run around again, putting us on hold, directing our calls to someone else who in turn directs them to someone else, who has no idea why we were directed to them and hangs up with a “Sorry”.

Well, since no one well tell us what’s going on, we just went ahead and broke down the barricade. Well wonders never cease? Now that we’ve gotting back in to see the damage, I can honesty say I hope these jackasses die a long slow death. The bastards stole my grandmother’s stamp collection. They tore the pages out of a second stamp book, keeping the pages that had stamps on them. They also stole the comb my dad’s uncle brought back from PNG when he was one of the soliders who was there and discovered that people lived their back in 1937. They also stole the photos of the uncle. They smashed my other grandmother’s gold and glass anniversay clock that she brought to America with her from Germany. To top it all off the bastards took my records and it looks like they used them for frisbies, they are strewn from one end of the house to the other, several of them broken.

We still don’t know who is behind this, but who ever they are I hope they die soon, so that they well have a longer time to burn in hell.

~~EK

Harassment Update: Lockdown?

I’m not sure I understand what it is they are up to this time, but now we are not allowed on our land??? We are being told it is being auctioned off! ?????? WHAT! Aren’t we supposed to at least get a 30 day notice or something? I don’t get it.

~~EK

Update: The Stolen House of Maine

Interesting thing happened today. We got home about 2 hours earlier than usual. We may now have a suspect in for who has been moveing stuff around the yard and opening the hen gate these last couple of weeks.

For those of you who remember the “Stolen House of Maine”  Our house, the one that so long ago was the start of the years of harassment that our family has had to withstand. It all started in 2001 with a house. Our house, the one that made front page news the day we came home to find an empty lot: our house as my long time readers already know, was cut in half and than moved 50 miles away where it was sold to a man who in turn sold it to something else. This resulted in a grueling 3 year court battle between us and the pastor who stole our house: Pastor Bernard Elliot of The Arundel Christian Tabernacle. Since the court battle we had not heard from him, but today, his wife Evelyn, stopped out front of our “still houseless” yard. We do not know why she was here, she drove off when I started down the driveway to see what she wanted. It dose raise the question, of just who exactly it is behind the harassment we have recieved from our very “religious” town manager,  Jim Thomas . (and ours is not the first they have done this to, they have a long history of doing this!)

I just have to wonder why are the Elliot’s back? What do they want with us? Haven’t they done enough damage already? Why won’t they leave us alone? These people are the ones who lefts pictures of guns on our door, way back in the summer of 2002. The Elliot’s are the ones who paint balled our car. They are the ones who took an axe to signs that stood on our land. They are the ones that caused us to need police protection for 3 long and terrifying years. Three years that my family spent in such terror that we dared not go to the store, because these people were stalking us, we meet them everywhere we went. That was yearws ago. We thought they had stopped, but when they did, that’s when the town manager and his crew started harassing us instead. We had thought that the two things, these two very differant episodes of unexplained harassment had been two seperate incedents. Now it seems that they are together, one and the same that the harssment from the town has been nothing more than an extention of the harsement from the Elliot’s.

Why? Whay are they doing this? What reason could they possibly have for this torture?

Spring is here

Today my  little brother found a snake under a board. Cute little thing, not quite out of hibernation, cause I picked him up to move him, and he stayed coiled up. We moved him over to the woodpile where he wouldn’ be in danger of being stepped on. You can tell that spring has arrived when you see a snake, because they won’t surface untiol after the danger of frost is past.

National TV-Turnoff Week, April 23-29

Today is the first day of  National TV-Turn Off Week, April 23-29

I have decided to write a list of 101 things for you to do during this week of no TV, should you decide to take on the challange.

1. Go for a walk on the beach.
2. Read a book.
3. Write a book in 7 days.
4. Volunteer at the local  animal shelter.
5. Do a crossword puzzle.
6. Dress up like a pirate.
7. Buy a camera and use it.
8. Play an hours-long game of Monopoly.
9. Grow a crystal garden.
10. Catalog your book collection useing the Dewey Decimal System.
11. Plan a family budget.
12. Go on a camping trip.
13. Plant a vegetable garden.
14. Watch the stars.
15. Sew, knit, or crochet a blanket for a cause (Snuggles, Linus Foundation, etc.)
16. Raise a family of sea monkeys.
17. Answer all those unread emails.
18. Pay your bills.
19. Start a petition.
20. Take your family out to a fancy resturant.
21. Look for BigFoot.
22. Take in a foster pet.
23. Spend a few hours browsing in your local library.
24. Donate pet food to a local shelter.
25. Take a walk around the block.
26. Have a chat with your mom or dad.
27. Go fishing.
28. Organize your DVD collection.
29. Build a personal website.
30. Write a short story for a fiction magazine.
31. Volunteer at the local  soup kitchen.
32. Go sight-seeing.
33. Put the pictures into the photo albums.
34. Throw a “Just-As-You-Are” party.
35. Attempt to prove aliens are real.
36. Visit a local museum.
37. Take your family to an all you can eat buffet.
38. Invent something new.
39. Start to tackle the list of projects that has been getting longer.
40. Head to an amusment park.
41. Take a cruise.
42. Sew a new dress.
43. Get a family photo taken.
44. Take a child to the zoo.
45. Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a while.
46. Attend an art show.
47. Vacuum the car.
48. Refinish an old piece of furniture.
49. Write an article for a non-fiction magazine.
50. Go boating.
51. Start a blog.
52. Attend a book reading.
53. Solve a mystery: play a game of Clue.
54. Visit with someone in a nursing home.
55. Go to the circus.
56. Head to your local swamp to pick fiddleheads.
57. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
58. Take a hike in the woods.
59. Visit an art gallery.
60. Open an online store (Zazzle, CafePress, etc.).
61. Take swimming lessons.
62. Quit smoking.
63. Plant a tree.
64. Cook a gourmet dinner.
65. Help your child with his/her homework.
66. Play a game of basketball.
67. Go birdwatching.
68. Wash the windows.
69. Get a makeover.
70. See a play.
71. Repaint your living room.
72. Read a story to a child.
73. Paint a masterpiece.
74. Go on a picnic.
75. Read a comic book.
76. Start a new career.
77. Organize a family reunion.
78. Study up on your family history.
79. Go on a diet.
80. Sing a song.
81. Write a poem.
82. Bake a cake.
83. Go horseback riding.
84. Set up an aquarium.
85. Write a letter to a prisoner.
86. Take up a new hobby, such as stamp collecting.
87. Spend the week looking for UFO’s.
88. Go rock climbing.
89. Dye your hair blue.
90. Wax your car.
91. Redecorate your bedroom.
92. Play video games with your child.
93. Write a business plan for your dream job.
94. Take dance lessons.
95. See a ballet.
96. Buy a box of crayons and draw.
97. Design your dream-house.
98. Make home-made ice-cream.
99. Dress-up and go to the opera.
100. Take you family out to a movie.
101. Visit a haunted house.
102. Write a list of a 101 things you can do.

Quote: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” —Groucho Marx 

Harassment Continues…

Once again we came home to find that someone had tresspassed onto our land and let the hens lose. You know, I’m really getting sick of this. Whoever is doing this, it is not funny, and the fact that it happens again and again, makes it go beyound annoying. I’d really like to find out who is doing this and why. I don’t take to kindly to people endangering my pets.

~~EK

Twighlight Manor Research: Two Heads

Those who know my Twighlight Manor series,  know that it’s prime villain, The Red Dragon (as he calls himself) is a man with 2 faces and 4 arms; a conjoined twins born during the 1600′s and treated like animals, who as adults became the mass murder (s) behind the bloodbath that took place within the walls of The Manor, forever marking it as a cuesed house. While the series’ most notorious and bloody villain, I do not use him very often in my stories. I am currently working on editing “Love, Lust, Madness” , and (spoiler) The Red Dragon has resurfaced in this story, after not being used in a Twighlight Manor story, since Sir Roderic’s “accident” in 1984.

Well, seeing how I’ll being useing the Red Dragon once again, after so long of not writing about him, I decided to do some research into his “deformity”  in hopes of learning possibly why he was born as he was, and to thus better write about him. Well, in 1984 I had not the internet, so I was very limited in my research about his birth. In the end I was only able to find referances to this type of birth happening twice, both in Russia, and both in the early 1900′s, and this info came to me from Guiness World Records. Now I have the internet and just seconds into my search I cam across info about Abigail and Brittany Hensel. OMG! I have never seen real pictures of anyone like this before! When I created the Red Dragon, I had no idea that it was even possible that anyone could be born like this! I don’t know why, but seeing these girls, just changed my way of thinking about The Red Dragon. I have had a hard time writing him into my stories, becaused his deforminty seemed so unplusible. I think I may start useing him more often

~~EK

pet food recall update: HUMAN FOOD BEING RECALLED!!!!!!!!!

Remember when I wrote this post and questioned what would happen; the effects of farm animals eating tainted food ; being a poultry farmer, my post focused on chicken not pork, but news that corn was now effected, and chickens eat corn one thing lead to another and I started questioning what we feed our chickens…. PORK from pigs that have eaten tainted food, has now been added to the recall!!!
Reading this post lead me to:
Pet Food Contamination Scandal Spreads to Pork, FDA Opens Criminal Investigation.

You know what this is staring to sound like? Biological warfare.

New Book Projects, Job Searches, & Seventh Sanctum

You may have noticed that the past couple of days, I have not been posting as often as I was; from 4 or 5 posts a day to about one every other day. There is a reason, quite simple. I got an idea for a new book, and spent the last few days researching it. As ever, one thing lead to another and now I’ve got ideas for three new books and have been working on them all at once. Of course, me writing longhand means I wasn’t online, meaning I was not here to blog. Sorry.

Other reason, is I’m still out searching for a job type job, but have yet to find one. As usual I am told that businesses just won’t hire someone who had never been to school, or someone my age who has never had a job before. (Apperantly, 7 years as a door to door salesman for Avon, doesn’t count as a job, nor does 27 years of writing… or so I’m told by interviewers.) It is getting quite depressing, as I have been seeking a job since May of 2006 and now May 2007 is just around the corner and still all of my endless applications and interviews have turned up nothing. I’m now having a hard time finding places that I have not yet applied to. I feel like I’ve run up against a brick wall, cause I’m still intent on finding a job, yet I can not find any place that I have not already been turned down.

Well, after a day of searching classified ads and online job searches, I have given it a rest for the night and am back here to say hi to you all and let you know what I’d been doing and thinking. Columbo is on TV right now, so I’m gonna go watch that now, after which I’ll be heading to Seventh Sanctum in search of some ideas for my 3 new book projects. Seventh Sanctum is such a great site, I get loads of ideas from them. If you haven’t checked them out yet, be sure to do so.

~~EK

Treespassers OR Harassers?

I am getting really sick and tired of this. Once again we came home tonight to find that vandals  have been here. This time they took a wheelbarrle and left it across the path AND once again they have opened the gate and I found myself spending 2 hours looking for missing hens and roosters. I wish I knew who it was that is doing this. One hen got killed by a hawk because of these bastards. They are in a fenced in yard for a reason! To keep them safe from predators! I want my hands around their necks, and I want to know why are they doing this to us. Where is the logic in any of this? What is wrong with these people? Who the hell are they? What do they want? Sick bastards who  ever they are. Sooner or later they’ll slip up and we’ll chatch them in the act.

~EK

“Where do you come from?”

When people ask me that question I never know how to answer and usually I say something like this:

I was born in Maine, USA;

my dad’s grandfather was Cherokee; his other grandfather was the serveral greats grand son of Thomas Rodger, friend of Capt John Smith and founder of our town, settler of the land on which we still live)

my mom’s mother was Kickapoo;

my mom’s dad was Canadian; his mom was British (and her dad was Capt John Drake… several greats grandson of Sir Francis Drake the Dragon) and his dad was Scottish

I can go on like this tracing my ancestors all the way back to the 1300′s… several inter racial marriages one after the other for a period of 700 years… so what am I? A hell of a mixed up mess  born and raised in the mixed up state of Maine, living on land that has been in our family for more than 300 years… I just tell people I’m a Maine-iac and leave it at that.

~~EK

Submission Guidelines for Moonsnails

 

Basic Submissions Guidlines:

This is a quick overview of our basic guidelines. See our fully detailed guidelines for each seperate genre on our Submission Guidelines website.

Status:
Moonsnails is currently accepting submissions

Title:

Moonsnails Magazine

Magazine Format:(projected)

Quarterly: 6″ x 9″, 96 – 132 pages per issue;
60 lb bright white paper, B&W text; 10pt glossy laminated perfect bound full color cover

Circulation:

world-wide though print on demand

Contact Info:

Wendy C. Allen, editor-in-chief, twighlightmanor@yahoo.com

Submission Format:

Send in body of email, 12pt Courier or Times New Roman or Send at attachment .RTF 12pt Courier or Times New Roman.

Payment:

copies only at this time; buys one time rights, (the right to print story in one issue; author retains copyright)

responce time: 2 – 6 months

Needs:

Short stories up to 13,000 words.

Literary Genre fiction. Cross-gen OK.

Rarely uses poetry. Poetry used only if it can be considered a full-fledged story, complete with characters and plot. Never accepts free-verse.

Genres Accepted:

Sci-fi, Fantasy, Gothic Romance, and “mild” Horror

Sub-Genres and Cross-Genres Accepted:

Action, Adventure, Alien Invasion, Alien Realms, Alternative Histories, Amateur Detective, Americana, Ancient Civilizations, Animal Stories, Biographical Fiction, Christmas, Classic Literature, Colonial America, Cryptozology, Dark Fantasy, Dragon Tales, Easter, Ethnic Fiction, Espionage, Faerie Realms, Fairy Tales, Family Sagas, Fantasy, Folklore, Frontier Sagas, Furries, Futuristic, Ghost Stories, Gothic Romance, Halloween, Hard Science Fiction, Haunted Houses, High Fantasy, High Seas Adventure, Historical, Horror, Humor, Inspirational, Kung Fu, Literary, Mad Scientist Sci-Fi, Mermaid Tales, Military, Mystery, Murder Mystery, Paranormal, Pirate Tales, Psychological Thiller/Terror, Regional: Maine, Regional: Quebec, Romance, Science Fiction, Serials, Short-Shorts, Slueths, Space Fantasy, Space Travel, Spiritual, Sword & Sorcery, Supernatural, Suspence, Thiller, Time Travel, Twilight Zone style, UFO stories, Unicorn Tales, Utopian Realms, Victorian, War, Western, Wizard Tales, Young Adult.

Things Rejected:

Rejects all stories that contain:

abortion, animal abuse, child abuse, cutting, death glorification, depression, depressive self-pity, drinking, drugs, elder abuse, erotica, expose`, gore, hatred, hunting, politics, pornography, sex, smoking, swearing, suicide, vulgar verbology, and stories about “how my teenage years were crap”.

Stories must be family friendly and rated PG-13 or less

Poetry Needs:

We focus on short stories, thus rarely use poetry.

Sometimes accepts poetry, at best it’s only 4 poems per year, IF it tells a story and has strong characters. Same as fiction needs, seeks longer “epic length” story poems akin to Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlin, Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven or Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs & Ham. Prefers long rhyming poems with strong characters and a strong story plot.

Poetry Rejects:

Same as fiction rejects, plus: Does not accept free-verse poetry, haiku, short poems, poems without characters, poems without plots, meaningless ramblings, odes to…, poems without rhythem, or any other type of poem that does not tell a complete story from beginning to end.

Cover Art:

Usually done “in-house”, but well consider submissions of full-color photography or paintings, covering any genre. Always seeks beach and ocean themed photos or paintings. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered. Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list. Buys one time rights.

Art & Inside Illustration:

Usually uses spot illustrations and copyright-free/public domain illustration, but well consider submissions of B&W, pen & ink, line art only … no pencil, no shading, no grey-scale, no color, our printer well not accept them. All illustrations must be 4″ x 6″ or smaller and camera ready. Do not send originals. Email files as atactment. Files must be compatible with MSWorks, MSPaint, or MSPublisher 97, .jpg files prefered.  Note that we can not accept .tif files, our email treats them as a virus and deletes them. See fiction for needs & rejects list.

Advice:

Best advise: buy a copy of Brian Froud’s Faeries. Use it as though it were our Submissions Guidelines. Treat it as your Writer’s Bible. Use it to create believable fantasy characters. Never go anywhere without it. If you want to write for us than consider Brian Froud your new best friend, read everything he ever wrote. Study every painting he ever did. Watch every film he ever created. Watch the 2 movies written by Brian Froud: Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Read the Retief series by Keith Laumer and The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. We like that kind of sci-fi best.

Watch Star Trek (the original series), Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, X-Files, and Tales From the Dark Side. Let them inspire you. If your story would make for a good episode on one of them, than we want to see it!

We like to see strong characters. Character driven stories. Well written plots. We like fantasy realms, dreamscapes, and alien planets. Creativity is always welcomed. Pirates are always good, we need more pirates. Always seeking stories about Mermaids, Sirens, Dragons, Unicorns, or other creatures of the Realm of Fay. We like to see characters that Brian Froud would have created.

Let your imagination run wild.

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Twighlight Manor Press Home Page

Business Plans: Moonsnails Magazine: We’re Back!

In fall of 2005 Twighlight Manor Press announced that it was planning the release of a new magazine, which at that point was untitled and it‘s genre unknown. Our original idea was to keep it local; local writers, local sales, local flavor to the stories. Market research, however showed us that that would be a very unprofitable venture that would doom our magazine to failure before it’s fifth issue. We had to rethink out plan.

Over the next several weeks we threw around ideas and finally decided that the magazine would be a fiction “literary journal”. At first we planned on “all good fiction”, but than after studying the market, realized that this was virtually a bottomless pit, that would result in more manuscript submissions than our tiny staff of four would be able to handle.

Another thing we decided early on, was that, we wanted to stand out on bookstore shelves. Looking at other magazines sold at a local bookstore, Nonesuch Books in Saco, I discovered something. Rack upon rack of magazines, where all the same: 8×11” glossy and flimsy issues, that would not stand the test of time on a bookshelf, given them a shelf life of just 3 weeks. (This short shelf life was according to a study I found online.) According to that study, only a few magazines would be shelved and saved to be read again and again for several years. These magazines had good content and a sturdy binding. I went to Nonesuch Books looking for magazines with good content and study bindings, and was amazed at how few there actually were. In the end I found only three, out of the hundreds of magazines the shop had on the racks. By the end of this stage in our study we came to one conclusion: this magazine, was NOT going to be a 8×11” glossy; instead it would read like a book, with crisp white paper and a square bound “paperback” cover.

After some more market studies, we came to the conclusion that rather than focusing on fiction in general, we would instead use the same rule we use for writing: Write what you know. In our case it would translate into: Publish what you read. All four of us are sci-fi buffs. Sci-fi movies, sci-fi TV, sci-fi comics, sci-fi books… well it seemed only natural that we would thus choose sci-fi as the genre for the new magazine.

By January of 2006 we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do with the magazine. On Space Dock 13 (the website) we announced that the magazine was a defiant go, and we were planning it’s release later that year.

With our genre in mind, we set out the name our new magazine. After several weeks of debate, only one thing was agreed upon: that the magazine must have a sci-fi sounding name and that it should reflect our local home base, namely that we are on the world’s most beautiful beach: Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

In April 2006 we introduced the world to two new websites. The first was the message board for writers: A Writer’s Desk. It was our hope that through here we would find new talent seeking to be published in our magazine. A message board built entirely to promote the magazine, today it stands on it’s own and has no connection to the magazine at all.

Our second Website was of course the homepage for our magazine. We had finally decided on a name, and that name was: Moonsnails. After a walk to the beach that cold April, me and my three brothers returned home with tote bags filled with Old Orchard’s most beloved seashell: the Atlantic Moonsnail. Later that day, while sorting the shells on the lawn, it hit me: Moonsnails was the perfect name for our magazine, it kept the local flavor and it sounded sci-fi. Later that week Moonsnails homepage went online.

By the end of April 2006 we were getting quotes from various printers, both local and online. Announcement went out with the news that Moonsnails would see its public release in September of 2006. We were off and running, and than came May 9, 2006 and the flood that washed away all of our plans, destroying everything we owned and bringing Twighlight Manor Press to an instant standstill. We lost everything, the building was condemned, and nothing survived. As far as the business was concerned, we were back at ground zero.

That same day, as a result of the flood, my dad went into a coma. In July of 2006, my dad awoke from the coma and returned home disabled and in my care. In September of 2006, instead of releasing Moonsnails, we found ourselves in the midst of fight to save our land from a local land shark. The result was my dad’s return to the hospital. In October of 2006, a fire swept through. What little we had that survived the flood, was destroyed in the fire and we were faced with fighting out Maine’s frigid winter in a tent, a fate that did not sick well with my disabled dad’s rapidly failing health.

In January of 2007, things took a turn once again, this time in our favor, and we found our selves with electricity, heat, and a roof over our heads, for the first time since May 9, 2006.

Reunited with my computer, I was amazed to find, that in spite of the flood, in spite of the fire, the hard drive remained intact, and with a few minor repairs, it runs as good as new. It looks like hell, a bent mangled mess, but who cares, all my files are still here! All my plans and templates, all those months of research and market studies: they had survived! With that knowledge in hand I set out to pick up the pieces, and once again, plans are underway, full speed ahead, to bring Moonsnails into production.

And that brings us to today. Nether flood, nor fire, nor cold of winter, could stop Moonsnails. Moonsnails rises once again.

~EK

Spring In Maine

It’s a nice warm spring day in April in Maine. I bet you can tell, that is if you can see through the driving snow outside your window. Yep, it’s April, and right on schedual is our annual snowstorm. Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop must be ripping their hair out right now.  More snow mean longer snow on the ground and a longer time we got to stop them from stealing the Goldeneagle (my 1964 Dodge 330 which they have said must be junked as soon as the snow melts, otherwise the town of Old Orchard Beach well fine us $2,500 a day for each day we refuse to remove it.)

For those of you who do not know The Goldeneagle is the heart and soul of The Twighlight Manor series. If not for this car, none of the books would ever have been written. Back in 1978 when the first volum was written their were 4 characters: EelKat, Sir Roderic, Emporer Blue, and Captain Goldeneagle a.k.a Etiole. Captain Goldeneagle was the character based on this car, the character that would go on to be the most celebrated and most contraversal of the entire series: Etiole. The car itself has been featured again and again thoughout the series. It is an icon with fans of the series. An icon who is now threatened on the latest method of harassment that Jim Thomas and Ken Shoop have brought down on our family. (and ours is not the first they have done this to, they have a long history of doing this!)

First they put my dad in the hospital in a coma.

Than they force us to live in a tent during Maine’s sub-zero winter.

Than they threaten our pets.

Now they threaten my car.

And I continue to wonder: when well this end? When well someone put a stop to this man’s reign of terror? Why does everyone turn a blind eye to what they are doing?

~~EK

Communist blacklist, Communism in America, the communist town of Old Orchard Beach, Jim Thomas the Communist, Will Watson the Communist, down with Communism, fight for your rights, make America the land of the free again, 1964 Dodge 330, angry, animal rights, animal welfare, animals, anti-elder abuse, antiquies, author’s rights, authors, bantams, belief, beliefs, Biddeford, birds, cats, chickens, Christ, Christianity, church corruption, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, crime, criminal, criminals, cruel, cruelty, danger, disabled, discrimination, dogs, evil, evil men, faith, Family, farm animals, farm life, fear, Garden by the Sea, geography, God, government, government crime, harasment, harassment, hell, help wanted, Holiness, Holy Spirit, humans, in need of help, Jesus, LDS, lies, Life, life blogging, local government, Maineland, Mormons, my thoughts on…, news, ocean, ocean life, Old Orchard, police, police corruption, police threats, politics, Relationships, religon, seniors, sin, sinner, sinners, social change, stamp collecting, stamps, stealing, Stolen House, stolen items, strange but true, strangers, tent, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Theology, theology beliefs, thief, thieves, thoughts, threats, town hall, Town of Old Orchard, vandelism, vandels, villain, war, weather, Winter, World, writer, writer’s rights, writers, York county

Treespassers

We came home today to find that someone had tresspassed onto our land, let the hens lose, moved to lawn chairs from one side of the yard to the other, dragged our trash barrels from the back yard to the front yard, uncovered the Goldeneagle, and appaerently “threw” our shovels, rakes, and hoes out into the garden. I have no idea who did this or why, but I must say it does not make me happy to know that they did this.

~~EK

testing tags

having a problem getting posts to show up… testing to see if tags are working yet

Update on Death of Skeezics vs Pet Food recall

new items added to the recall, includeing yet another one that my Skeezics (died Dec 2006 from kidney failure) liked to eat (we still have some of these on the shelf,I just checked the codes).

http://www.purina.com/Company/Press/2007/MightyDog.aspx

http://socalmuchacha.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/pet-food-recall-items-added-330-331/

You should also read this post, which I have pasted here:

update ii : emergency pet food recall

March 24th, 2007

Well, they say they have found the culprit responsible for the emergency recall of 60 million or so cans and pouches of pet food spanning almost 100 brands of dog and cat food — numbers attributable to MENU FOODS being the sole supplier for an enormous number of different brand labels’ contents. Interestingly, “They” is not Menu Foods. “They” is New York State Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker and Dr. Donald Smith, dean of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, who issued a JOINT STATEMENT Friday after initiating an independent investigation Menu Foods played no role in.

“Rat poison.” “Cancer treatment.” “Chinese wheat.” That is what people are saying it is all about. “AMINOPTERIN,” a chemical used some places to kill rodents, and others to treat cancer patients. [I am so glad I am not a cancer patient. Or rodent.] And allegedly nowhere in the United States or Canada, two of the three countries hit. Mexico being the third.

[Someone needs to ask if aminopterin is manufactured in the United States. Plenty of stuff we allegedly do not use in the U.S. — can anyone spell DDT? — we still manufacture here, we just ship it — we say — other places. Anyone asked that question yet?]

While a majority of news reports have habitually reported nominal numbers of animals effected and/or killed by the Menu Foods incident, [anything ranging from 10-16 fatalities in most reports — based on Menu Foods’ lab reports], on March 22 THE ANIMAL MEDICAL CENTER IN NEW YORK CITY reported they were already aware of 200 cases and expected thousands of pets to eventually be affected. [ABC NEWS : DOCTORS CAUTION THOUSANDS MORE PET DEATHS EXPECTED].

That is just one veterinary facility in one city in the U.S. You do that math. The last count of self reported pet fatalities on PET CONNECTION was 1,188 deaths. [713 cats | 475 dogs]

Other contaminants mold and heavy metal have been ruled out. However, while aminopterin has been identified in recalled pet food, vets are not all convinced aminopterin is the only contaminant present : ABC NEWS : SOME VETS REMAIN SKEPTICAL :

Some veterinary experts say they are still skeptical as to whether the chemical is responsible for the kidney damage the pets endured.

“With the information that we have, none of us feel that this product fits the lesions we are seeing, but there may be information we don’t know yet,” said Lawrence McGill, a veterinary pathologist in Salt Lake City. “The feeling is that there are more questions than answers with this product.”

“Renal failure is not the expected response to these drugs,” said Susan Weinstein, executive director of the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association. She added that most rodent poisons work as severe anticoagulants — meaning they cause the rats that ingest them to bleed to death.

“Whether this particular toxin in this case can create renal failure depends on how this drug works in the body, which may be an entirely different pathway than the anticoagulants,” Weinstein said. “Because we aren’t yet familiar with this toxin, we can’t be confident of the causation link.”

Investigators also have not yet determined whether aminopterin is the only contaminant in recalled food.

“If it is not the only culprit, as I suspect, the problem isn’t over,” McGill said, adding that it is also uncertain as to whether the finding will be much help to veterinarians.

According to McGill, even if the aminopterin is the culprit, “most veterinarians have never heard of this product. There will need to be more information put out to suggest therapeutic regimens.”

There are still a lot of glaring questions here. For starters, is aminopterin the sole cause of the animal fatalities and illnesses? Why did it take a lab less than a week to identify poison in Menu Foods pet food, but Menu Foods over a month to even ascertain anything might be wrong with food after reports of fatalities reached the company from consumers and vets? And why didn’t a single Menu Foods production facility stop production during investigations or the pet food recall?

It is kind of difficult to take a company seriously that professes concern over the discovery of contaminated food on one hand, while continuing to manufacture and distribute the food on the other.

PREVIOUS POSTS ON THE EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL :

UPDATE : EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL 03.21.07 [this includes a list of recalled foods as well as links to sources for information on feline and canine renal failure and the fda’s posting on the pet food recall]

EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL 03.17.07 [this includes the original posting and discussion on the pet food recall]

IMPORTANT LINKS :

NEW YORK LABORATORIES IDENTIFY TOXIN IN RECALLED PET FOOD

HOW TO NOTIFY THE FDA OF A PET’S ILLNESS OR FATALITY

PET CONNECTION : UNOFFICIAL PET ILLNESS AND DEATH REGISTRY

ABC NEWS : DOCTORS CAUTION THOUSANDS MORE PET DEATHS EXPECTED

MENU FOODS LIST OF RECALLED PET FOODS

PET FOOD BRANDS THAT DO NOT CONTAIN MENU FOODS INGREDIENTS OR EMPLOY ANIMAL TESTING

SYMPTOMS OF POSSIBLE KIDNEY FAILURE :

• Increased water intake
• Increased volumes of urination
• Unwillingness to eat
• Vomiting
• Lethargy
• Eating litter [cats]

Animals exhibiting these symptoms should be taken for veterinary care immediately.

OTHER INTERESTING SPOTS :

Pooks posted a pretty INTERESTING PIECE on just who is selling wheat to Menu Foods — while simultaneously funding the war on Iraq and buying up the U.S. And oh yeah, who owns Wal-Mart? I do not think that proves the Chinese just poisoned all those dogs and cats. I do think it means they paid a lot of advertising dollars into FOX NEWS. The biggest propoganda arm the current White House regime has. Wow. Thanks, Chinese Guys. We really needed four more years of Bush. Zee has posted a LETTER FROM PETA about the recall. I do not approve of all of PETA’s methods. But hey, the idea is right. Protect animals. Animals cannot protect themselves.

EDITED MARCH 30 TO INCLUDE : UPDATE III : EMERGENCY PET FOOD RECALL

Posted by max

Filed in pet food recall, life with animals, all, politics

New From The Twighlight Manor Press: 2008 Calendar

Twighlight Manor Press on LuLu
Twighlight Manor Art by Wendy C. Allen 2008 12 month calendar
All art, drawings, and paintings by Wendy C. Allen, featureing the characters from the Twighlight Manor series, including EelKat, Sir Roderic, Etiole, Xavier, and more.
Price: $19.79