Funny, Sometimes You Read a Story and Exclaim: “What?!” And You End It With an Embarrassed, “Oh.”

 

I’ve eaten my words more than once.

 

 

“Donkey cheese at $600.00 per kilogram, about $500.00 a pound.”

 

When I read about Donkey cheese, I couldn’t believe people would pay $500.00 for a pound of cheese, but after watching the video about the only farm in Europe that makes Donkey cheese, I said to the farmer, “You go, man.”

 

Donkey cheese is made using the milk of an endangered donkey species - fewer than 1,000 are alive. (I hope they aren’t stealing from their babies. However, since they are milking them three times a day, that will up their milk production, so maybe they can feed both.)

 

It all started in 1997 when Slobodan Simic’, a former member of Parliament, saw the Balkan donkeys being mistreated. He was so mad he bought all 1,000 of them and created The Zasavica Nature Reserve. The farm has 300 acres now.

 

Simic’ decided to milk the donkeys and make soap as it is good for the skin. At least Cleopatra thought so, she bathed in it. Simic’ found he had more milk than he needed for soap, so he decided to make cheese. 

 

The donkeys are well cared for, and they wait for three months after the baby is born for it to have its fill of mother’s milk. Simic’ is the only man, plus one other, who knows how to make cheese from Donkey milk. (Somebody in American said they made cheese from Donkey milk, but hey, this is my story, and it’s what the interviewer told regarding Simic’s cheese.) Making donkey milk cheese is a complicated process. It is low in fat, so they add 40% goat’s milk, plus Casen and bacteria to help the milk coagulate, which is necessary for cheese making. Watch the video. it’s fun. (At the bottom of the page.)

 

It costs Simic about $100,000 a year to keep and feed the donkeys, but he only makes about $30,000.

 

He deserves the price. 

 

The trouble is you must buy it from the farm—a ticket to Serbia in the Balkans would really up the price. It isn’t sold outside the farm because it is illegal in Europe to sell unpasteurized products. The catch is, it needs to be unpasteurized to make the cheese.

 

 

I'm Eating my own words—again:

:

I have screamed and yelled, saying I would not be a Real Estate Agent. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t like the bureaucracy involved. I didn’t like the expense of getting started. I didn’t like that the agency—you must be assigned to one--took the lion’s share of the profits if you made a sale, and they expected you to be a bird dog to find clients. And people resent paying a broker a commission when their job is by commission only.

 

So, what am I doing now? 

 

I’ve committed myself to 150 hours of study (Yipes) to be a Real Estate Agent. 

 

Haha. The state told me I needed to begin again after letting my license lapse. (After the first hour of study, I had a headache.)

 

I do need a refresher course, for laws go through my head and out the other side. They don’t follow Einstein’s proclamation of “Don’t memorize anything you can look up.”) And, they say, “Trust me, somewhere on the test, you will need to know how many feet are in a mile and how many square feet are in an acre. (5, 680, and 43,560). Do you really think a client would ask me that?

 

 

 “Can you keep your cool when others have lost theirs?” 

 

This question was posed by one school in their intro, “Is Real Estate for You?”

 

I knew that they had a handle on what it took to be a broker. (The term in Oregon is Broker. It’s Agent in many other states.) 

 

Buying a house is often one of the biggest investments a person will make. It is stressful and often frustrating—That’s when the broker must keep their cool

 

Why did I change my mind?

 

Glad you asked.

 

My daughter has kept her license active for more than three years. After three years, a Broker can become a Principal Broker and have their own agency.

 

Thus, I can work for her. We would be a team, and she would be responsible (as the Principal Broker) if I made any mistakes.

 

See, people would get two for the price of one.

 

And isn’t it fun to move into a new house? Think of all the clutter you have an excuse to dump.

 

Back to the donkeys:

 

Pule cheese, aka Donkey Cheese:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOq6FEu12bs

 

Rerouted—the Balkans

 

Eva Zu Beck, a young woman interviewer, visits The Zasavica Nature Reserve. There you can see the acreage and the friendliness of the donkeys and her trying to milk one: 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WN7QN1nZpk

 

I think I ought to sell the cheese. You can try to save people money, or you can just go for the top. Hum. I wonder what the postage would be.

 

 

 

Blind Runner Runs Marathon Without Guide People or Dogs

 

                                                         Oregon Grape, snip from video*

 

Imagine this—One morning, you and your colleges are called into the conference room and presented with this question.: “Can we give a blind runner the freedom to run without a guide dog or a guide runner?”

 

Wow. What a challenge.

 

This morning I searched for “Happy stories” because I felt what is being thrown at us is fear, conflict, and horror.

 

Yesterday I mentioned to a friend that I wanted a happy story. She said, like kitties and puppies.

 

Yes, I love kitties and puppies. So many happy or at least tender-hearted stories are about animals--a dog sleeping with a deer, an Alaskan Husky romping with a polar bear, an elephant reaching his trunk to a kitty stranding on a rock in the middle of a stream. (You know the kitty was rescued, someone took the picture.)

 

This morning I found one about humans.

 

Blind Thomas Panek believed he was born to run and had raced with the aid of a guide runner, but he felt he was always following someone. For a marathon, he used a three-dog relay. But he dreamed of running independently.

 

The designers came up with an app, phone, headphones, and a stripe painted on the road. The device could tell the runner when he veered right or left. 

 

On a run through a forested road, Thomas broke down and cried for before, he said, he was always dependent upon someone. 

 

This gave him freedom.

 

Human ingenuity. 

 

Project guidelines. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/blind-thomas-panek-runs-half-marathon-with-google-app/

 

Do you have a happy story to tell?

 

Tell me. 

 

And if you would help me get 100 subscribers on my YouTube channel, I can change the URL to custom. 

 

That way, I can remove my actual name and give it a simple name to share and to find. (I must also include a picture and have a banner. I’ve done that. Now I need subscribers.) So far, I have 87 views. Perhaps you don’t want to listen to me for 9 minutes—but the forest is pretty. The latest video is of a trail in the Cascade Range of Oregon. It’s a short walk down to the McKenzie River. And I am happy I got my audio aligned with the video and a roar of the river at the end. 

 

You know how rushing water can be calming and exciting all at the same time. I wish that for you.

 

Carry on,

Jo

 

“In the fall of 2019, I asked that question to a group of designers and technologists at a Google hackathon. I wasn’t anticipating much more than an interesting conversation, but by the end of the day, they’d built a rough demo that allowed a phone to recognize a line taped to the ground and give audio cues to me while I walked with Blaze. We were excited and hopeful to see if we could develop it into something more.” --Thomas Panek

 

New 

July 27. 2021

Jewell's Happy Trails #3                                                       Jewell's Happy Trails #2

 McKenzie River Trail                                                          Marcola Hills, Oregon

 

                                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jewell's happy Trails #1

 

This video is in my channel.  I left 

it raw and uncensored  because 

I liked it being off the cuff. 

Perhaps it needs shortened a bit.