The Sum Of All Fears - Anxiety and Stress Management

Croc feeding. Wave. Note person falling in background The Upper Yangtse carnivorous mosquito was accidentally introduced to California from China in 2007. Their range is only spreading slowly, according to California state officials. The big mosquitos flourish in wet places such as the Sacramento River Delta. South American leaping tarantula. Often found on bananas in store displays. My dentist.

Pop-Up Book Of Phobias

Fear of very loud noises......... or falling bridges. Agyrophobia: Fear of Crossing the Street A knock on the front door at about 11:15 PM. Who's there......? Arachibutyrophobia - Fear of Peanut Butter Sticking to the Roof of your Mouth. This bizarre disorder seems to be a fear that is quite easily worked around: don’t buy peanut butter. However, for a child who is forced to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day, one can see how it might cause severe trauma in later life. Here is the testimony of one alleged sufferer: “Whenever I’m around peanut butter I start to sweat excessively and my body starts convulsing. The roof of my mouth becomes coarse and itchy. I drool. I can’t live with this fear anymore. Somehow I must satisfy my thirst for peanut butter. This craving must be quenched without me going into a full blown panic attack or eventually losing my mind”

Down Memory Lane - I Remember The Great 1957 Swiss Harvest

Now, in my 68th year , on this April 1, 2010, I happily look back on some pretty good landmarks, ruminating from my LazyBoy, with good puppy Sparky. In 1957, for example, I got my first car, a beautiful black Ford hardtop convertible... ... and discovered both girls and drive-in movies. As the song says, "It was a very good year for small-town girls....". These were the early happy days of Elvis... Also in 1957, the BBC ran this delightful human-interest piece about the Swiss harvest on English TV. Truly heartwarming and totally amazing! Just turn up your speakers and click on this image: Added to Quicklist < Click Here Added to Quicklis

Easter Hare

The Easter Bunny or Easter Hare (sometimes Spring Bunny in the U.S.) is a character depicted as rabbit bringing Easter eggs, who sometimes is depicted in an anthropomorphic way (eg. with clothes). In legend, the creature brings baskets filled with colored eggs, candy and sometimes also toys to the homes of children on the night before Easter. The Easter Bunny will either put the baskets in a designated place or hide them somewhere in the house or garden for the children to find when they wake up in the morning. The Easter Bunny is very similar in trait to its Christmas holiday counterpart, Santa Claus, as they both bring gifts to good children on the night before their respective holiday. It was first mentioned in Georg Franck von Frankenau's De ovis paschalibus (About the Easter Egg) referring to an Alsace tradition of an Easter Hare bringing Easter Eggs (and the negative impact of too much egg consumption).

The Easter Bunny as an Easter symbol bringing Easter eggs seems to have its origins in Alsace and the Upper Rhineland, both then in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation, and southwestern Germany, where it was first recorded in a German publication in the early 1600s. The first edible Easter Bunnies were made in Germany during the early 1800s and were made of pastry and sugar.

The Easter Bunny was introduced to America by the German settlers who arrived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country during the 1700s.^[4] The arrival of the "O_ster Haws_e" (a phonetic transcription of a dialectal pronunciation of the German Osterhase) was considered one of "childhood's greatest pleasures," similar to the arrival of Kriist Kindle (from the German Christkindl) on Christmas Eve.

According to the tradition, children would build brightly colored nests, often out of caps and bonnets, in secluded areas of their homes. The "O_ster Haws_e" would, if the children had been good, lay brightly colored eggs in the nest. As the tradition spread, the nest has become the manufactured, modern Easter basket, and the placing of the nest in a secluded area has become the tradition of hiding baskets.

Eggs, like rabbits and hares, are fertility symbols of extreme antiquity. Since birds lay eggs and rabbits and hares give birth to large litters in the early spring, these became symbols of the rising fertility of the earth at the Vernal Equinox.

The saying "mad as a March hare" refers to the wild caperings of hares as the males fight over the females in the early spring, then attempt to mate with them. Since the females often rebuff the males' advances before finally submitting, the mating behavior often looks like a crazy dance; these fights led early observers to believe that the advent of spring made the hares "mad."^[6] This bold behavior makes the hares, normally timid and retiring animals, much more conspicuous to human observation in the spring.

Rabbits and hares are both prolific breeders. The females can conceive a second litter of offspring while still pregnant with the first. This phenomenon is known as superfetation. Lagomorphs mature sexually at an early age and can give birth to several litters a year (hence the sayings, "to breed like bunnies" or "multiply like rabbits"). It is therefore not surprising that rabbits and hares should become fertility symbols, or that their springtime mating antics should enter into Easter folklore.

The Resurrection egg is a jewelled enameled and rock crystal Easter egg made by Michael Perchin under the supervision of the Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé before 1899. Long considered a Fabergé egg, it does not bear an inventory number. It has been postulated that the Resurrection egg is the missing surprise from the Renaissance egg.The egg depicts Jesus rising from his tomb, and is the only Fabergé egg to explicitly reference the Easter story.

Happy Easter

Leipreachán - Beware of consorting with faeries on Saint Patrick's Day

Today Is St. Patrick's Day Aside from St. Patrick and Corned Beef & Cabbage there be leipreacháns to consider today:

A leipreachán is a type of faerie, usually taking the form of an old man, clad in a red or green coat, who enjoys partaking in mischief. Like other fairy creatures, leprechauns have been linked to the Tuatha De Danann of Irish mythology. Popular depiction shows them as being no taller than a small child. A leipreachán counts his gold The leipreachán is said to be a solitary creature, whose principal occupation is making and mending shoes, and who enjoys practical jokes. According to William Butler Yeats, the great wealth of these faeries comes from the "treasure-crocks, buried of old in war-time", which they have uncovered and appropriated. According to McAnally the leipreachán is the son of an "evil spirit" and a "degenerate faerie" and is "not wholly good nor wholly evil" A jug of Irish Whiskey and a leipreachán

"Feuch an rógaire 'g iarraidh póige, Ni h-iongantas mór é a bheith mar atá Ag leanamhaint a gcómhnuidhe d'árnán na gráineóige Anuas 's anios's nna chodladh 'sa' lá."

i.e.--

"Look at the rogue, its for kisses he's rambling, It isn't much wonder, for that was his way; He's like an old hedgehog, at night he'll be scrambling From this place to that, but he'll sleep in the day."

Says Yeates, "Do not think the faeries are always little. Everything is capricious about them, even their size. They seem to take what size or shape pleases them. Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, and making love, and playing the most beautiful music. They have only one industrious person amongst them, the lepra-caun--the shoemaker. Perhaps they wear their shoes out with dancing. Near the village of Ballisodare is a little woman who lived amongst them seven years. When she came home she had no toes--she had danced them off."

Some things to see at the Autry

Museum of the American West

4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, CA

Patsy Montana's Guitar

Wood acoustic guitar made by the Larson Brothers, circa 1937. Made for Patsy Montana at her request for a guitar similar to a Martin guitar. This became one of the brands of guitars the Larsons made along with the Maurer and Prairie State.

Click on the campfire image to hear Patsy Montana sing Cowboy's Sweetheart. Recorded on August 16, 1935. Ruby Blevins aka Patsy Montana was born in Beaudry, Arkansas in 1908. In 1929 she travelled to California to study violin at the U. of the West. She won a local talent contest yodeling, singing and playing her guitar. Her prize was a spot on The Breakfast Club on KNX 1070, Hollywood. She travelled to the Chicago World's Fair with her brothers in 1933 to enter a watermelon and to meet two pen pals who claimed to be from from Muleshoe, Texas; Millie and Dollie Good. Mildred and Dorothy were really two farm girls from the Illinois plains. While in Chicago, she auditioned for a singing role but began giggling during her song. The talent scout thought it was part of her act and fell in love with her style. She won a place as the singer for the Prairie Ramblers on Powerful WLS 890 in Chicago. The Prairie Ramblers would accompany her on her ARC, Decca, and RCA Victor recordings. In 1935 she had a million seller with "I Want to be a Cowboy's Sweetheart"-the first female artist to acheive that level, and did it in the middle of the depression. Patsy worked with Gene Autry and made a movie with him in 1939-Colorado Sunset. She also worked with Red Foley and her old pen pals Millie and Dollie Good who now billed themselves as The Girls of the Golden West. Patsy was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1987 and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1996. She died in 1996 in California. Gene Autry and his cow-punching pals swallow their pride when Smiley Burnette spends their land stake on a sissy dairy ranch, but it's a man's job after all when racketeers demand a payoff from them. With screen Tarzans Buster Crabbe and Elmo Lincoln.

The Cowboy

Throwing Rope

Eight-strand, 7/16 inch, herringbone braided rawhide reata, attributed to Luis Ortega, mid-1900s (Museum of the American West, 86.2.114)

Saddle

Single, Mexican-rigged, Mexican or Charro-style saddle (20th Century) (Museum of the American West, 86.7.4.1)

Changing Horses on the Pony Express

Painting by Frank Tenney Johnson, CHANGING HORSES ON THE PONY EXPRESS, 1927. (Museum of the American West, 90.142.3)

PASASE EL BEATO APARIZION A VIVIR A MEXICO Y PASO CONSUS CARRETAS POR LAS PLATAS DE REAL DE ZACATECAS Blanket chest, circa 1825. Dress spur, Buermann Manufacturing Company, late 19th to early 20th Century