People bartered their expertise. My PEI grandfather was the local animal husbandman and my grandmother the local midwife in the farming community where they raised potatoes and turnips, livestock and vegetables, and whatever grains they needed. The community generated their own fiddlers, pump organist, callers and pipers for socials; their own carpenters, cabinet makers, and team labor to build barns, houses, the school and church. They built their own boats to dig oysters and haul lobsters.

 Everything was recycled. Grain bags turned into jeweled quilts, old clothes were turned into hooked or braided rugs, compost was returned to the soil. Those who had electricity used it sparingly; lights were never just left on unless they were being used by someone for some purpose.

 Gifts were handmade- something knitted, sewn or carved, canned, baked or built. Each community was an autonomous unit that prioritized a certain quality of life and respect for the good earth and all its creatures.

 In the shift to thinking globally, we’ve sacrificed quality and respect for all of life and allowed that priority to be replaced by whatever makes the most money for whoever gets there first. ‘We’ and ‘they’ used to equal ‘us’. Today, ‘we’ and ‘they’ seem like totally separate entities.

 When Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, he gave it to the public. He said he had a job and didn’t need the money. He clearly considered himself a part of the community.

Unfortunately, as new vaccines and remedies and seeds are developed today, that attitude has turned into the greed of not only wanting more money, but claiming entitlement and putting restrictions out that prevent benefits to others. Many countries are hard pressed to come up with the money to prevent disease.

 Today, we need to raise our biosphere consciousness and look at what has worked in the past and learn from it. We have the technology to develop autonomous municipalities, build energy efficient buildings that can generate more energy by recycling everything, grow our own food, protect our water supply, and prioritize quality education.

We can shrink the excessive transportation expenses for globalized produce and products. We can be mindful of our personal use of energy.

 The good news is that we have the technology to keep each other well. The bad news is that we have limited time to wake up, recognize, and use it wisely.

Winter rains often mean ice patches on ski trails and scuttled plans to ski, snow shoe, or even to just go downtown. We wonder whether the lake or pond will freeze enough for safe skating.

 We relax again when a gentle storm brings down a fresh new blanket, especially if it’s cold and light- easy to shovel! Kids get excited by wet snowfalls at warmer temperatures and imagine the snowmen, igloo, fort or snowball fights if enough snow falls!

 There’s something very comforting and reassuring about hearing and feeling the crunch of snow underfoot that puts winter back in kilter when the snow finally arrives. The deeper the snow, the warmer the house feels.

 Snow is part of the wonder of the wildness in life. Something in us softens when we view forest changes in winter, whether on a drive, or on foot. We imagine bears in their dens. We wonder how the deer and moose can stay warm sleeping on the snow. We look for signs of the other four leggeds who come up from subnivean burrows, and leave their tracks behind them before darting back down again. We wonder who did what when different tracks cross.

 Even if we never enter the woods, it’s reassuring to know that the forest is there. Our wilderness continues to ground us, despite whatever is happening elsewhere in the world. Writers like Wallace Stegner encouraged us to save whatever is left of our forests, not just for recreation but to know the silence of the forest, have the sense that we are kin to the other animals, a part of the natural world. And we can keep a healthy sense of perspective in the process.

 Some of the ways we can keep each other well is to be considerate of our forest kin, value the diversity among them, and protect their habitat.

 Currently, the Forest Society needs our help to protect the Balsams property sale. Contributions can be mailed to Forest Society, 54 Portsmouth St., Concord, NH 03301 or to  http://savethebalsamslandscape.blogspot.com

 When I talk with other folks about this refreshing book and how the Disney philosophy could go a long way toward improving any business and even any family, some say, “Oh, but Disney’s all about acting; the staff may not really feel like keeping up a perky persona all the time; it’s their job.

 Maybe, but the idea has great potential as a means toward keeping each other well. And we learn most of our skills by first acting them out. The holidays are a time when families gather from all directions just to touch base and catch up on each other’s lives. What if we all celebrated the holidays by making it our self-selected job to be friendly, cheerful, helpful, and sympathetic to whomever we meet? Obviously, this would be a tall order for most of us on a year-round basis, but just might be doable for the holidays. And, if it carries over beyond the holidays, no problem.

 This would mean setting aside our anger, complaints, resentment, one-upmanship habits…, you get the idea. Our one goal would be to do all we can to make the people around us feel included, happy, cared for, and heard.

 This philosophy isn’t far fetched. We are in the middle of the toughest season of the year, emotionally. Our support for each other strengthens and enlightens us.  The new babe symbolizes our hope that together we can move forward  in the new year with a fresh start, cared for, and with limitless possibilities. Disney got that one right.

 The carol, sung in community with others, seems to tell the story of how we all wish our world to be. In the best of all scenarios, this is how it would be, with everyone relaxed and singing as one voice.

 While that may be our intended focus, we are distracted from that yearning as we are caught up in advertising that encourages us to make each other happy by buying things to give each other. One TV ad showed a brand new little white car decked out like a package with a big red bow on top. The woman receiving the gift from her man was thrilled. As they embraced, a bigger, classier car drove by, and her look changed to disappointment and his to shame. Suddenly, the little white car was no longer good enough.

 Just as suddenly, that ad seemed like a crime committed against the season that tries to figure out how we can realize Peace on Earth.

 At the other extreme is O. Henry’s classic, “The Gift of the Magi,” which captured the essence of gifts of love that were much more than enough. (Easy to Google if you need a refresher.) The difference is between an insatiable need for more that can never bring peace, and a deeper need to love that makes peace possible.

 This year, I see hopeful signs that people are waking up in our country and around the world. More people are speaking up, organizing to get their message across, and being listened to, however small the steps toward peace may seem to be. Situations that were once reacted to automatically with censure and violence now include more listening responses as communities attempt to see the big picture and reframe their agendas to provide a peaceful, safe, enriching life for all people, especially children.

 We can go a long way toward keeping each other well and generating peace by continuing to speak up where necessary and listening respectfully to each other.

 Water is clearly the most valuable substance on earth. We cannot live at all without water and we can’t enjoy optimum health without consuming enough unadulterated water.

 Dehydration is associated with most of our diseases and conditions. One hundred years ago, many of the diseases and conditions prevalent today were practically nonexistent. Since then, consumption of water has been replaced by excessive reliance on coffee, tea, soda, beer and more, so that it is not unusual for a person to only drink 8 oz. or less of  water daily.

 However, in order for our body systems to function realistically, we need to consume half our body weight in ounces of water daily (including what we consume in our foods.) Water has no substitute. The above drinks mentioned are all dehydrators. They move right through our systems as quick stimulants without sustenance. Excessive sugar in sodas is converted and stored as fat. Sugar substitutes in diet sodas stimulate our appetite as much or more than sugar, hence our obesity problem. Excess protein in beer can’t be stored by the body; it’s converted to fat as well.

 Think of all the ways we use water. Drink it and water helps the body make plenty of enzymes to digest our food, provides enough liquid to turn the food we eat into a digestible slurry. Water can warm a chilled body and cool an overheated body. Water can relax strained muscles, heal injuries; it can be skied, skated and sailed on; bathed or swum in. We cook with it to soften and blend our foods. Water helps plants grow, provides for diversity and homes for fish…. The list is endless.

 Water is the number one issue that towns, states, and countries throughout the world must deal with currently and is already cited in water wars in our southwest and great lakes, as well as Palestine, for starters – all with the potential for disaster. Daily, in the news, we see how long term, limited clean water threatens lives throughout the world.

 Here in NH, it’s not too soon to check up on our rivers, lakes, aquifers and wells, to be sure that our water stays free of contamination. The NH Dept. of Environmental Services (DES) has volunteer programs to test lake and river water quality. See www.des.nh.gov.

 Local Conservation Commissions are concerned about failing septic systems and the need for people to do the right thing with garbage, gasoline, oil, sewage, etc. To be informed and do our part in our own communities, a good place to start is to attend our hometown Conservation Commission meetings and find out what we each of us can do to assure safe water. Time and place are listed on the internet and at local town offices.

 If we want to keep each other well, before it’s too late, we need to stay ahead of potential shortages and contamination so that we and our offspring can all enjoy cool, clear, safe water both now and in the years to come.

 Big clumps of snow bundled up on beech tree leaves, their weight bending branches to the ground. When morning sun hit the leaves, we were in for a breathtaking glimpse of nature at its finest, lighting up iridescent yellow and brilliant burnt orange leaves draped in snow. Yet, by the Monday, snow slid off and branches eased their way back up. The light show went on for days, depending on what time we saw the sun hit the leaves.

 I marveled at yet another lesson from nature: Storms may come and slow us down, but after the storm it’s time to stretch up and walk in the light that follows.

 Here in NH, whether we walk around the house or on the road where we live, in nearby woods or downtown, in the Walter-Newton Preserve, Smart’s Brook, Pikes Peak or the Rattlesnakes, Welch-Dickey or Mooselauke, the constant natural changes draw us in as we move about.

 Perhaps this is nature’s way of keeping our circulation moving, protecting us against unwary attacks of flu, colds and stiff joints. The air is crisp as it singles out the hairs in our nose. We feel the crunch of snow or frozen leaves underfoot, (or wheels) and we know the seasons are changing for sure.

 One thing that doesn’t change is our need to keep everything moving with regular exercise. our circulation to pass smoothly to every cell in our bodies.

 “Exercise Extends Life!” is in the news, the object of multiple university studies, most recently the Univ. Medical Center in Rotterdam. Researchers there recommend 15-30 minutes of walking each day.

Exercise also extends the quality of life! Our regular habit of exercising whatever still moves can only be an asset that keeps our systems flowing through any obstacles.

 Today, the Colorado River  is in trouble and can’t even make it to the sea, much less deliver its quotas. Each year, about 10 million tons of salt enter the system, but virtually none reaches the ocean, according to environmentalist, Fred Pearce, (When the Rivers Run Dry.)

 The Hoover Dam held the expectation of clean water and endless power. Now, 80 years later, we learn that the actual cost of building and maintaining large dams has far greater financial, commercial, ecological, and maintenance costs than the power or clean water they generate.

 Dams have always been opposed by native people everywhere, not only because a dam usually means displacement of great numbers, sometimes millions, of native people. They opposed going against the flow of nature. Dams were an insult to sacred rivers of the earth. Now, the need for us all to revere nature’s plan for river waters is clear.

 Native peoples knew that fish need to swim up river to spawn and that dams would prevent this. The Grand Coulee and other dams on the Columbia River destroyed one of the world’s largest Salmon fisheries. The produce would have been worth more than the electricity generated by the dams.

 Native peoples knew that nature purified water with waterfalls, rapids and fast moving water and were careful to respect natural laws.

 Perhaps the greatest delusion humans have is the sense that we can prevail over nature. We had to learn the hard way that when we build huge dams:

1. Fish have difficulty reproducing.

2. Those fish that do survive in manmade lakes are poisoned with mercury rising from decomposing vegetation in the lakes for 20-30 years, and cause health problems for the humans who eat them.

3. When soil is irrigated with sprinklers, there is a tendency to overwater, waste water through evaporation, and wash chemical residues from fertilizers and pesticides into the groundwater and aquifers.

4. Rivers absorb these wastes in their sediments.

5. Sediments build up behind dams where the water stagnates, grows warmer, and is not fish friendly.

6. Full reservoirs increase vulnerability to devastating floods.

7. Rivers begin to run dry and to be unable to complete their journey to the ocean to deposit accumulated salts.

 All of this and more prompted Daniel Beard, retired commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation (which has built more dams than any other body in the world), to declare, “No more dams!”

 We do need to dream up new ways of accessing green energy. But let us not be naive enough to think, with today’s abundant research on the effects of dams, that corporations won’t still try to build them. We know that the way corporations continue to make profits at any cost is to invest enormous sums to hide unfavorable research,  generate misinformation, and control land.

 Here in New England, we have abundant water.Quebec is already smarting from the effects of too many dams in their province, simply to produce power for Hydro-Quebec, despite public protest. We do need to explore other ways to generate power for our future needs. We can save ourselves time, money, and grief by safeguarding our waters and not supporting hydro power that has the potential to threaten our NH rivers.

 The research is there; we’ve been forewarned. Here’s to keeping each other well!

It is taking us a long time to recognize the pattern regarding human rights that is being repeated the world over. Corporations, based on profits at any cost, have millions to spend on misleading propaganda while avoiding health, safety, and environmental provisions.

Hydro-Quebec has already managed to ravage much of it’s own formerly pristine province. They’ve put 215 dikes and dams in the James Bay project alone, displacing communities, and flooding hunting and trapping lands in violation of government treaties with the  Cree  Nation.

 Their later agreement in 1975, allocating acreage and a cash settlement to the Cree Nation, does not restore the fish habitat, the beautiful rapids and diversity that an environment needs to remain healthy. Thus far, in Quebec, only 2 of their 16 largest rivers flow freely today. Gone are the rapids in those rushing rivers that drew white water enthusiasts and vacationers to Quebec. 

Hydro-Quebec’s newest misleading propaganda for the Northern Pass (NP) project is found under the guise of MyNewHampshire.com. There, we can screen through beautiful pictures of NH rivers and forests by clicking on folks who assure us that all will be well for NH with the NP.

 What Hydro-Quebec doesn’t say is that the Northern Pass power line is only Step one in the destruction of our rivers, land, and forests. Step two will be to dam up our rivers for more power, as demands rise.

 Reporter Will Braun, in Canada’s This Magazine, gives us the chilling results of Canada’s 60 years of dam building: “Clean energy does not damage the environment, the ecosystems of rivers and forests, or native communities. The eventual dams that go with hydro-power mean pouring tons of cement into free-flowing rivers in addition to tearing up huge swaths of land for the power lines and raising ecosystem and human rights havoc.”

 Think about what dams would mean to our communities and environment should the Connecticutand Androscoggin Rivers become part of the game plan. We have made it clear that the tourist industry is what we need to focus on in Northern NH. People come here from all over the world to experience our natural environment. Here is where people can hike, ski, camp out, canoe and kayak, sail and relax, away from the hectic pressures of living in a frenzied world.

 To keep pace with our culture, we need to develop alternative kinds of green energy right here in OurNewHampshire that  provide for future needs, yet do not compromise our health and well being. Hopefully, we will be able to Stop the Northern Pass project and find better, innovative, long range plans to enjoy and share with the rest of the world.

Ayurveda promotes many water practices to see that this 28’ long pipeline, which makes up our plumbing system, gets flushed regularly. When we are fully hydrated, hormones regulate the opening and closing of the tract’s valves.

 Here’s a quick review of the system, which begins in the bowl of the mouth. There,  salivary glands flood our food with enzymes to begin breaking down starches and the chewing itself stimulates our bodies to continue to manufacture more enzymes further on down the line.

 Chewed food moves down the pliable tube of the esophagus and through the first valve (lower esophageal sphincter) to the stomach. In the stomach, hydrochloric acid squirts the food to break up the tough stuff before it exits the stomach through the second valve (pyloric sphincter) to the small intestine. There, the gall bladder squirts the bolus of food with detergent (bile) to break up fats, and the pancreas squirts bicarbonate of soda to neutralize the acid, plus more enzymes to work on proteins and carbs. The goal is to break down food to particles that are tiny enough to pass through the wall of the intestines.

 Next, this slurry of food moves through the rest of the small intestine, where more enzymes do their best to finalize the breakdown and absorption if they are supplied with enough water.

 The intestines look like a jumble of tubes but are structured more like a big umbrella. If you took them out, you could stretch them in a rough circle like the rim of an umbrella. A thick membrane (mesentery) forms the dome. It contains several veins (like spokes) that lead  to a big vein, represented by the umbrella handle.

 To get the full benefit of our food, we need to chew it well and add plenty of water so the fine slurry can slip right through the intestinal wall to the smaller veins in the mesentery and right on through the center to the big portal vein that goes to the liver. The liver then decides what nutrients to send where and our circulation takes care of that delivery system.

 What remains of the slurry moves on to the large intestine, where water is absorbed for other tasks, and final wastes exit the last valve (anal sphincter.)

 Now for some of the water practices: Indians commonly start the day with a slow cup of hot lemon water. This effectively opens the valve to the intestines, clears the stomach of any leftovers, and stimulates the bowels to move.

 Many who practice yoga rise early enough to down 2 cups of water. They then spend a half hour or more doing bending and stretching exercises before breakfast and heading for  work. This practice effectively flushes the entire digestive tract. In retirement, the practice becomes even more important.

 So, what’s the big deal with all that bending and stretching? Unlike household plumbing, which follows pretty straight, direct routes, human plumbing has all sorts of nooks and crannies and other systems to contend with. Remember that when the umbrella is closed up, the intestines curl around, up, and over each other. Forward, back, and side stretches massage the intestines and other organs. Other forms of exercise, like swimming, running or walking, to the point of working up a sweat, have a similar flushing effect.

 Few of us are disciplined enough to drink 6-8 glasses of tap water, much less intentionally work up a sweat or exercise every day. But that doesn’t mean we can’t give our bodies a treat regularly and enjoy the benefits that a good flushing with water can bring. Noticing the effect helps us to develop the habit.

 Caution: When we actively increase water intake away from meals, we need to add ¼ tsp of mineral rich sea salt per quart of water so that our body won’t leach minerals. Water taken with meals that already contain salt can be taken ‘straight’.

 Sometimes it helps to call a friend, take a hike, or join a swimming or exercise program. Other times, it helps to keep a journal of after-effects. Perhaps breathing is better, joints move more easily, aches and pains subside, or better yet, we feel fully charged and ready to meet the day!