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.

 

 

 

Calling All Renaissance People

Which is it?

 

"Are we hopelessly fragile victims of events beyond our control, or are we powerful creators harboring dormant abilities that we are only beginning to understand?"

 "Both questions have the same answer.

 "Yes."—Greg Braden

 

On the one hand, we are told that we are frail beings who live in a world where things just happen. On the other hand, ancient and cherished spiritual traditions tell us there is a force that lives in every one of us that assists at the darkest moments.

 No wonder we are confused.

 Sometimes we think we make no impact on the world, and what we do doesn't make any difference.

Yet, think of it this way, leading-edge people do make a difference. 

Let's say that one person buying an electric car doesn't change the carbon imprint of the planet much. But carmakers look at what people are buying.

 

One person putting solar panels on their roof only impacts the world a smidgen. Still, solar panel makers listen and change their way of making solar cells and selling them.

 

Hospitals must have listened when women demanded to be awake and aware when they delivered their babies, and they proved that husbands wouldn't faint in the delivery room. While I was hauled off to a delivery room that looked like a surgical theater, my daughter gave birth in a bed with a drop-down foot and was never moved on a gurney when she was doubled over with contractions. 

 

Used to be only hippies were into organic foods—now look at the grocery stores.

 

Used to be, we thought in terms of this table is hard, solid. This glass of water is just that, a physical object. Now we look at things a little differently, like everything is made up of molecules and atoms and magical DNA strands. And that between it all is space.

 

Recently, I picked up Greg Braden's book, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief.

 

 Two assumptions that have been basic to science for the last 300 years have been:

 

1.     The space between "things" is empty. New discoveries now tell us that this is simply not true."

2.     "Our inner experiences of feeling and belief have no effect on the world beyond our bodies. This has been proven absolutely wrong as well."

 

"Paradigm-shattering experiments published in leading-edge, peer-reviewed journals ( ? ) (question mark mine) reveal that we're bathed in a field of intelligent energy that fills what used to be thought of as empty space."

 

The thought is that this field responds to us and thus rearranges itself in the presence of our heart-based feelings and beliefs.

 

"In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe—the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of the world"—Greg Braden.

Could this be true?

 I knew that scientists now put forth the idea that space isn't nothing. It has something in it. When I read Braden's statement that that something is where our thoughts, feelings, our very consciousness works, I was astounded.

 I am wondering if this time is a time of renaissance. (Rebirth) Remember how Florence, Italy pulled the world out of the dark ages and into a Humanitarian era?

 A competition to sculpt bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery did it. Lorenzo Ghiberti won the competition and became the arch-enemy of Brunelleschi, the architect of the Duomo, the Dome of Florence's The Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral.

 Brunelleschi won the Duomo competition with an egg trick. He asked the commission if they could make an egg stand on the table. They couldn't. He smashed the egg into two pieces, placed one piece on top of the other, and the egg stood.

 He used that principle to build the dome, a dome on a dome. And the builders began. At that time, there was no technology for constructing such a thing, so it was left unfinished until someone came up with a solution.

 It took 142 years to build.

And Brunelleschi had to endure Ghiberti as his co-superintendent. (With many fights, I might add.)

 

Ghiberti's bronze doors are an exercise in perspective, with items close, middle and far, including vanishing points, all in exquisite Frescoes. 

 I did not know there were three Davids in Florence, Italy. The oldest was sculpted by Donatello in 1400. It is of a prepubescent nude male and cast in bronze. It was a classical nude that a generation before would have thought to be shameful. 

Now it is considered art.

 Florence had moved art out of the churches and into rich people's courtyards.

 A celebration of life occurred. Art for art's sake. 

 What does it take to push people into a new paradigm?

 Could it be that is what's happening now? The trouble is, since we are in the thick of it, we can't see it?

 In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "We will send a man to the moon and bring him home safely by the end of the decade."

 "We choose to go to the moon," he said, "not because it's easy, but because it is hard."

Sure, we were in competition with the Russians, but Kennedy also invoked the pioneer spirit of Americans, emphasizing that we choose our destiny rather than have it chosen for us.

 The engineers, scientists, and mathematicians didn't know how to do what Kennedy requested. But they set out to do it.

 And they did.

 So, dear ones, if there is a space within objects that looks empty but is not, let's fill it with good stuff. That we heal this pandemic, that the world's people see that we are stewards of the planet, not takers from it, and that "Swirled Peas" do exist.

 Here’s what Obi thinks of my blog.