Week 41 and learning a new skill

It has been warm here for us the past couple of weeks. Day time temperatures in the high 30's into the 40's. A lot of the ice has even melted off, so no more surprises as you walk when there is a skiff of snow to hide that ice.
That will change in a day as we have snow and cooler temps headed in.

We found a used 25 inch weaving length table loom at a second hand store for very little (less then $25.00) so I am going to learn to weave.  It is an old Montana table loom and the company is out of business.  I had wanted to pick a instruction book up on it but thats out as their add says they have nothing in stock and want to sell the business.
I have always wanted to try this but could never afford one.
Wish me luck lol.
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New 51 Week Storage Ideas Week Forty One


This is for two (2) people so buy according to your family’s size.

Non-food list:

Comfortable hiking or walking boots or shoes
Socks: 6 pair at least good socks, plus 3 pair of warm (wool) socks
Compass: If you or family had to walk cross-country a compass is very needed
Bicycle repair kit: 2, that’s if your have bike for members of the family.

Food list:

Dried milk: 5 to 10 pounds
Instant or dried Potatoes: 5 to 10 pounds

Recipes:

Patatiskorv (Swedish Potato Sausage)
4 and ½ pounds raw potatoes
2 pounds beef
2-½ pound pork
1-tablespoon salt
1-tablespoon pepper
1-tablespoon allspice
2 or 3 onions chopped fine
Grind meat twice, potatoes once. Mix with seasonings and stuff mixture into casings. (You can also fry up without being in casings.) Do not fill casings to full because the mixture expands when boiled. Pierce casings in several places to prevent bursting while cooking. Boil gently 1 hour. These can be kept in brine for some time if kept in a cool place or freeze with out brine.



Preparedness:

Read up on or attend a class on Hypothermia and how to avoid it, CPR or first aid class.

Week 40 & Gully washers of rain

It stayed at 38 all afternoon yesterday and rained solid all day coming down in buckets. Going to the chicken coop up hill and coming back down was an adventure. There is around an inch of mud and loose ice on top of frozen ground.

It is almost 6 AM and it may have stopped raining; the wind is howling enough that I can't tell by just listening.
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New 51 Week Storage Ideas Week Forty


This is for two (2) people so buy according to your family’s size.

Non-food list:

Toilet paper: 24 to 36 rolls, you can never have enough TP
Vitamin C: 1 large bottle or 2 mediums


Food list:

Shortening: 2 cans, shortening is very long lasting; as in years.
Honey: 1 or 2 large jugs
Herbal teas: 4 boxes Peppermint, ginger and Chamomile are good for tummy troubles. There is a wide assortment. Can be very soothing and warming. Also mints grow very well about anywhere pots included.

Recipes:

Chili Sauce: Great Aunt Ella Walker Antigo Wis.
12 med tomatoes chopped
4 onions chopped
2 cups vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 teasp. ground cloves
1 teasp. allspice
3 tsp. cinnamon
2 teasp. nutmeg
2 teasp. salt
3 or 4 mangoes (optional) or use apples
1 red hot pepper
Combine all ingredients and cook down. Seal in hot jars, can in pressure canner.

Enchilada sauce
2 cans of 8 oz each tomato sauce
¼ to ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8-teaspoon garlic powder
Heat to simmering.

Kay's 3ed birthday.

Warm fFont & Turkey Bones.

Yep a warm front came in yesterday with high winds.
Snow all morning then sleet in the night. It is supposed to get into the mid 40's and rain.  That should melt off those sheets of ice out there, that would be nice.

The Christmas tree is down and packed,  took all of the stuff off of it yesterday after DJ and his two children left. Dave and I took the tree apart after eating supper last night.

I have turkey broth to can today from cooking the bones and scraps of our turkey.  Always good to have. Replaces chicken broth in things and a great quick broth to heat when you're under the weather.

I will get week 40 up either later today or tomorrow morning. With Christmas and all the company it isn't written up yet.

Merry Christmas everyone & week 39

New 51 Week Storage Ideas Week Thirty Nine


This is for two (2) people so buy according to your family’s size.

Non-food list:

Pepto Bismol: 2 bottles and 2 boxes of tablet type to carry easily.
Candles: 12 large or emergency types
Chap stick: 2 of the brand you like best


Food list:

Condiments: This helps get rid of food boredom. Some like bbq sauce can be homemade but sometimes it is nice to have a bottle to grab if you don’t have any made up. You pick those you and your family likes. Here are a few ideas.

BBQ sauce: 2 bottles
Mustard: 2 bottles
Worcestershire sauce: 2
Hot sauce: 2
Teriyaki sauce: 2
Horseradish: 1 or 2 jars depending on how much you use
Taco sauce: 2

Chili sauce: 2
Garlic chopped: Not dried: 2 small to medium jars
Pickles: As many as you like
Olives: As many as you like
Any others you may use

Recipe:

Bar B Q Sauce
1 large chopped onion
½ cup catsup
2 c. tomato sauce or soup
2 c. water
1-tablespoon butter
1 minced globe garlic
½ cup Worcestershire sauce
1 and ½ tablespoon Brown sugar
½ cup vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon Mustard, can be dry mustard also if that is all you have
In a saucepan add first 9 ingredients. Simmer 10 minutes. Then add salt, pepper and mustard. Then simmer until thick, about 20 minutes or so.


Emergency:

Have you placed a winter car kit in your car? Or made sure you have winter clothing in your 72 hour kit?
 
Hope you all a Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah :).

Week 38 and Frosty

We had our fill of ice and frost lol.

Hiding under this loose layer of white is several inches of ice; gotta watch how you walk around out there.
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New 51 Week Storage Ideas Week Thirty Eight



This is for two (2) people so buy according to your family’s size.



Non-food list:

Envelopes: 1 box each of business and regular


Spiral notebooks: 4


Pens & pencils: Package of each


Tape: 2 each of scotch, packaging and masking

Food list:

Dried cranberries: 1 or 2 bags, Ocean spray has some good ones. Or if you would like to buy bags of regular cranberries at this time of year then you can freeze, cut and dry or can them your self. Or those that like the canned jellied cranberries 6 cans.


Brown sugar: 25 pounds


Vegetables: 10 cans

Recipe:

Cranberry Jell-o Salad (Dad doesn’t like cranberries, celery or nuts so I didn’t get to make it much)
1 large package cherry or strawberry Jell-O
2 c. boiling water

Combine stir well and add
1 package cooked cranberries or 1 can cranberry sauce
2 c. small marshmallows
1 c. drained pineapple bits
1 c. walnuts bits, optional
½ c. celery diced, optional


Chill until firm.

News on my sweet sister in law.

Since this past trial talked about those chemicals HAVE been found in a well to the homes in their area.

My brother has sold so many of thier things including his professional tools to make bills.
If this company would just have helped many of these people and put out some money to cover some of thw hospital bills instead of the multi millions they have paid lawyers (big time lawyers who come into the trials in pacts of 6 or more).
One of the people who have already passed away was one of their own and worked with this deadly stuff in their lab.

‘Our day in court’



By KEVIN P. CRAVER - kcraver@shawmedia.com NWHerald.com

http://www.nwherald.com/2011/11/17/our-day-in-court/amxyn2q/

Created: Sunday, December 11, 2011 5:30 a.m. CST

Sandy Wierschke of McCullom Lake was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2006 and was given nine months to live. Wierschke is one of the 33 blaming her illness on the Rohm and Haas plant and is still dealing with the lawsuit. "It's just ruined my life," she said. "I don't know if I'll be around to see (daughter) Stephanie get married or my grandchildren." (Lance Booth – lbooth@shawmedia.com)


Sandy Wierschke was not in good shape when she attended the opening of the first individual trial in the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits.


She sat in her motorized scooter in a Philadelphia courtroom on Sept. 20, 2010, just three days after leaving the hospital. The wrap she wore covered up the work that doctors did on the right side of her head, using parts of her thigh and stomach to replace bone and tissue that had died from the radiation used to fight the glioblastoma multiforme cancer in her brain.


Wierschke, her husband, Tim, and her daughter Kimberley wanted to show support for Joanne Branham, the first of 33 plaintiffs as of today alleging that the Rohm and Haas plant in neighboring Ringwood tainted their groundwater and air with carcinogenic vinyl chloride and caused a cluster of brain and pituitary tumors. Branham’s husband, Franklin, died of glioblastoma in 2004.


Branham filed suit against the Philadelphia-based company in 2006, at the same time as two of her former McCullom Lake next-door neighbors, who also developed brain tumors. While Rohm and Haas has acknowledged that a plume of volatile organic compounds is oozing from a closed 8-acre waste pit at the Ringwood site, it vehemently denies the idea that pollution reached village wells, tainted the air or sickened anyone.


Joining the Wierschkes in the audience were five other plaintiffs’ families.


“I wanted them to see what I’ve been through,” Sandy Wierschke said. “It was tough, it was really tough, seeing [Branham] was having a bad time.”


The fact that Sandy Wierschke, 49, is still alive is no small feat – doctors who diagnosed her in 2006, days after the first lawsuits were filed, doubted she would live through the year. She can now count herself among the 3 percent of people who survive within five years of a glioblastoma diagnosis.


Sandy Wierschke wants to live to see her day in court. But more than a year after that trip to Philadelphia, Branham’s case – and by default, the others – are up in the air.


Stopped cold


The Branham trial was expected to last 10 weeks. It lasted five before the judge angrily ended it over the testimony of the plaintiff’s epidemiologist.


Richard Neugebauer had testified for plaintiffs that the rate of glioblastoma in the McCullom Lake area is three to five times higher than the county and state. But his testimony crumbled during a two-day cross-examination by Rohm and Haas attorney Kevin Van Wart. His questioning poked holes in Neugebauer’s testimony, from his methodology to the inclusion of plaintiffs who lived elsewhere.


Judge Allan Tereshko adjourned the trial for the day to allow Neugebauer to sort out the questions raised. Neugebauer had submitted 21 changes to his analysis when the court reconvened on Oct. 21, 2010. Tereshko decided to end the trial before plaintiff’s attorney Aaron Freiwald could call his remaining witnesses, and called Neugebauer’s testimony, among other things, “an attempt to deceive the court.”


“It is as close as I have come sitting on the bench for 20-plus years to having a report that may be tantamount to fraud on the court, and I will not allow this testimony to continue,” Tereshko told the courtroom.


Freiwald asked for a mistrial, while Van Wart asked Tereshko to dismiss the case against Rohm and Haas. Tereshko sided with the defense and granted the motion to dismiss Branham’s case on April 27, 2011, almost five years to the day that it was filed.


Tereshko’s 49-page ruling alleged Neugebauer “manipulated and disregarded” information to ensure that the study concluded that a cluster existed. Van Wart has gone further, alleging in court documents that both Neugebauer and Freiwald attempted to manipulate the data.


“Once he was subject to cross-examination at trial … Dr. Neugebauer’s brain cancer cluster analysis was shown for what it really is – an elaborate ruse that rested on deception, manipulation of data, and patently false assumptions,” Van Wart wrote in a motion for sanctions filed last December. “Plaintiff’s counsel was an active participant in this ruse.”


Freiwald begs to differ in his appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court – the equivalent of the Illinois appellate court – both on the merits of his case and the idea that either he or Neugebauer did anything dishonest. In a May 2011 appeal, Freiwald called Tereshko’s ruling “a product of emotion and bias, rather than a considered review of the evidence.”


The controversy, Freiwald argued, was with Neugebauer’s first epidemiology study in 2008, which analyzed cancer rates based on the plaintiffs at the time, not his updated 2010 study based on Illinois State Cancer Registry data. The appeal states that most of the changes were clarifications or minor adjustments.


“The court made an emotionally charged and improper leap, egged on by defendant’s counsel who immediately characterized Dr. Neugebauer’s report as an affront and evidence of misconduct,” Freiwald wrote.


In his appeal asking for a mistrial, Freiwald argues that Tereshko’s granting of a nonsuit before the plaintiff rested her case violates court rules. Judges typically grant nonsuit if they conclude – after plaintiffs have rested – that the evidence presented does not support their case.


Freiwald had yet to call his expert toxicologist, Gary Ginsberg, when Tereshko ended the trial. Van Wart argues that the toxicologist’s testimony was moot with Neugebauer’s testimony struck, but Freiwald counters that Ginsberg’s report reveals multiple sources for his conclusions. Freiwald also argues that Tereshko erred in striking the testimony of Neugebauer and the plaintiff’s expert neuropathologist, both of whom survived pre-trial motions to exclude them.


Van Wart last year filed a motion with Tereshko asking that Freiwald and Neugebauer pay for Rohm and Haas’ trial expenses, and that Freiwald pay for the court’s costs for the jury trial. That motion is essentially on hold with the appeal – both sides are waiting for a briefing schedule.


The case is not the only setback that the courts have dealt the plaintiffs. A U.S. District Court judge in March 2010 denied certification for a class-action lawsuit forcing Rohm and Haas to pay for medical monitoring and property value reimbursement for McCullom Lake residents. A federal appeals court this year upheld that ruling.


However, a number of eligible residents did get access to screening through a 2008 settlement with Modine Manufacturing, located south of the Rohm and Haas plant. Modine was blamed in the original lawsuits for polluting groundwater, and contributing to cancer cases, with the industrial solvent trichloroethylene. The company paid $1.4 million for medical monitoring while denying culpability – two more plaintiffs were diagnosed through Modine-funded screening.


Day by day


Sandy Wierschke credits her family for giving her the support that she says has kept her alive and beating the odds. Others have not been so lucky.


Plaintiff Jim Booth, a former McCullom Lake resident diagnosed last year with glioblastoma, died in March in his Johnsburg home at age 61. Ringwood resident Frank Weisheit, who lost his wife, Judy, to the same disease, died several weeks earlier at age 68.


Others have relapsed. Plaintiffs Lance Kuhns and Scott Milliman again are fighting oligodendroglioma, a brain cancer that affects about one person in 300,000. It is the same rare brain cancer with which Branham’s former neighbors, Bryan Freund and Kurt Weisenberger, were diagnosed.


Freund, who still lives in McCullom Lake, has not been doing well. He has been suffering bad seizures, like the ones seven years ago this month that revealed his brain tumor.


“I really take it day by day,” Freund said. “You never really know. I still have headaches all the time. At this time last year, I was doing pretty well.”


The Freunds and the Wierschkes hope that the Pennsylvania courts overturn the nonsuit and allow them to plead their cases before juries, and to give Joanne Branham a second chance at the same opportunity.


“We just want her to have her day in court,” Tim Wierschke said. “We know this is more than just coincidence. We want a jury to decide this. We want our day in court.”


About this series


“Coincidence or Cluster” is the Northwest Herald’s ongoing investigation of the McCullom Lake brain cancer lawsuits.

Week 37

Hubby has been home ill.  He came home from Spokane WA last Saturday night with a very bad cold.  He is headed to work tomorrow. We will see how that goes for him.

I have been asked already when I am going to start making the Christmas cookies. I said next week. :)

I finsihed writing Gray's Heart, After The Dying Time II.  Hate to say I have been two years writing it. Boy does time fly. I see the costs are more this year to have the books printed :(. Here is the link if you would like to take a look.

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/grays-heart/18726791?productTrackingContext=author_spotlight_695947_

Okay here is Week 37

New 51 Week Storage Ideas Week Thirty Seven


This is for two (2) people so buy according to your family’s size.

Non-food list:

For those that have animals:


Dog Food: 2 bags


Cat food: 2 bags


Something to store water in: Anything from 1 to 5 gallon closed containers. Smaller ones are easier for some of us to pour from. 5 – 1 gallon or 2 - 5 gallon. 2 liter pop bottles work also.

Food list:


Pancake syrup: 2 large bottles, or 4 small if you don’t use up a lot at a timeTomatoes canned: 10 cans diced or whole, either regular or stewed, whatever you prefer, medium to large cans



Vegetable soup: 10 cans

Recipe:

Smothered Steak


1 pound of meat: round steak, venison or elk
1 can cream of mushroom soup (I know it isn’t homemade)
1 can vegetable soup
1 can of water
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix soups, water and salt and pepper together. Put your meat in your frying pan and pour over the soup mixture. Simmer for 3 hours.


Emergencies:

Do you know where and how to shut off your natural gas? (If you have it)


How about your electric box, do you know where that is and how to shut your electric off?