Lets start by understanding that though a beautiful looking surface and ideal for kitchen worktops it is quite soft and marks and stains easily if not prepared properly.
There are all sorts of preparations for cleaning it and sealing it and so on.  However a good pure vegetable based detergent, or a specialist hygienic stone detergent will clean off any surface muck and marks. Ensure the surface is spotlessly clean  and then let the surface dry.
Once dry, take a dry cloth and slowly rub in boiled linseed oil (there are two types of linseed oil, but you need the boiled variety, inexpensive and available at hardware and DIY stores) this will deepen the colour of the slate and remove all marks and light scratches.  Unfortunately deep scratches will need to be ground out by an expert stone company like stone interiors ( http://www.stoneinteriors.co.uk/ ).
Once you have oiled the surface you need to allow this to dry and harden overnight , you newly revived slate surface will now have a protective layer, and as the odd mark is made again over the months and years a little rub over with the boiled linseed oil will keep it in tip top condition and continue to protect it.
—–

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Mullah Nasrudin began a long journey armed with a saber and a spear. Along the way, a bandit armed with nothing more than a cane jumped him and took his belongings from him. When he arrived at the next city, he told his friends of his misfortune, and they asked him how it was possible that he, armed with a saber and a spear, could be overcome by a thief bearing nothing more than a cane…..

Mullah Nasrudin began a long journey armed with a saber and a spear. Along the way, a bandit armed with nothing more than a cane jumped him and took his belongings from him. When he arrived at the next city, he told his friends of his misfortune, and they asked him how it was possible that he, armed with a saber and a spear, could be overcome by a thief bearing nothing more than a cane.

Nasrudin explained: “That was the problem; I had my hands full with the saber and the spear. How could I have gotten out of that mess triumphantly?”

Now see how this story is worked out by the following

The Grammarian.

Mullah Nasrudin is a boatman. One day, he’s transporting a grammarian in his boat. Along the way the latter asks him: “Do you know grammar?”

Not at all, replies Mullah.

Well, allow me to tell you that you’ve lost half your life! disdainfully replies the scholar.

A little later, the wind begins to blow and the boat is swallowed by waves. As the boat is about to sink, Mullah asks his passenger: Do you know how to swim?

No! answers the grammarian, terrified.

Well, allow me to tell you that you’ve lost all your life!

Both these stories tell us , using humour, that knowledge is useless unless we can apply it, and when we apply it it has to be to reality.
           
An example of this may be those that know the kama sutra off by heart or have an endless nowledge of graphic pornography but are incapable of having a loving relationship or giving real sexual satisfaction.

 So I ask you What do you know? What techncal knowledge do you possess, what artisitc skills? Could you communicate them to another? Do you need instruction?

…being taught is important, but we need to ask ourselves the point of the acquired knowledge and know how to get rid of the useless.
I feel that a better purpose is to use knowledge to develop personal skills that I can percieve and understand in depth and apply to reality, instead of collecting thousands of facts and figures that I’ll never apply to anything.

What good are all those theories , what good is any wisdom, if I never apply them? It’s like hiding behind this knowledge, but doing nothing.

There is the story of the man who walk by the road came upon a stone on the top of this stone was written turn me over and find true knowledge, under the stone the man found written, why do you seek to know more when you have not used or understood what you already know!

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Sometimes I wonder what it is I believe, if anything, and at times I look within and see only the black maw of the empty space. The sense of loss of questions unanswered, of the frailty of human and I suppose my life, all come about and turn on me. However the thing that has rescued me recently is in a name, strangely it is my own name….

The story of King David is an extraordinary one, he is the greatest of Kings even Jesus is called the Son of David and of the Line of David. He is a man brought from nothing to be a King of his people. Yet he is frail, tempted, not so good really, and throughout his story there is one other name that crops up it is the name NATHAN, which means a gift. In the beginning Davids gift is the friendship, companionship and love of jo-nathan (Jonathan) who stands by him and offers him a greater love than David has ever known, but this Jonathan is killed.

The second Gift is that of the prophet Nathan, a questioner of David, a friend to him, in that he re-fathers him, when David commits the sin of taking another mans wife, he tells him he is wrong, and lets him know that he can’t get away with this kind of crappy behaviour.

These two gifts are on the one hand the love one needs for oneself, affirmed by another and the questioning and guidance one needs to keep on the right track.

However there is a 3rd gift which I would like to bring myself and this is about this dark place within us. We live in a society of cures, maybe this place does not need curing , maybe it is apart of who we are. In this world of things, it is the important place of no thing (nothing) and it has its purpose. Look at the gaps between paving stones on the pavement or sidewalk, look at the gaps between floorboards, they are there for a reason, when they heat up they expand and if the gap was not there they would buckle and warp and bend and break and be no use to anyone. The Gap is there to expand into, it does not need to be filled as many do -with drugs and alcohol and food- it just needs to be valued. That gaping maw of darkness we sometimes glimpse inside ourselves is merely the sum of the spaces between the building block, the paving stones and the planks that make us who we are. if it were not there how could we be filled with joy, passions, life, spirit or even sadness and pain.

Accept the love and the guidance and acknowledge and welcome the place of no thing….for we are all potential King Davids.

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Hidden
Naomi Shihab Nye

If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has
swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.

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What a great poem, so refreshing, or not if you havn’t slept.

CLINOPHOBIA
Fear of Going to Bed

Nathalie Anderson

Here’s the toad. Here’s the edge of the well. Steeped
leaves, steep water. Still noctambulist.
Bolt hole. Bed rock. Never see, never go
under. Yes you will. Shut eye. Drowse. Drown.

Cock light. Burrow. What’s quick? What’s mired? Quilt
crawls. Flicks. Licks the dust. Gulch. Gully.
Bed fast. Bed fellow. Never stir, never
stare. Yes you will. Twitch toad. Rattle bones.

Oh toad. No kiss, no golden ball. No one
loves you. Yes it will. Quilt’s rucked, rumpled.
Something seethes. Something shivers. Jaws unhinge.
Yes you will. Like stone. Kick toad. Leap frog.

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I heard Maya Angelou being interviewd on the Radio one day, and she really blew my mind with what she had to say, this is an amazing inspired poem.

—UnderThisSeparatorIsLatterHalf—

A Brave and Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

~ Author – Maya Angelou ~

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I have written about Eczema, now heres Asthma. I have suffered with asthma most of my life, less and less as I have got older, and now mostly as an allergy or if (rarely) I get a chest infection. I have tried many different things to help and found successes, if you want t know more see the whole article.

Years before I read of a study done in the old divided Germany, the study looked at the incidence of asthma. What they found was in West Germany asthma occured at a greater rate per head of population than in East germany. Oooh this looked bad Communism was winning at something. Well they eventually found the answer. standards of living in the east were much lower, apartments did not have double glazing, and fitted carpets, where they did incidents of asthma increased.

The conclusion was that modern style of living increased asthma. We live in sealed boxes, lacking fresh air kept at constant temperatures, with carpets and fitted flooring that trap dust and allow dust mites to flourish (dust mites are one of the major direct stimulants to an asthma attack)

So fresh air, and a clean house are good for you.

My mother also practised breathing exercises with me, breathing out is as important as breathing in. Physical fitness can help, so taking regular exercise and practising yoga or something similar ought to help. As to relaxtion techniques of any sort…asthma is exacerbated by tension and panic, as this restricts the way we breathe.

Look to your diet, is there something there that you are allergic to or intolerant of, I am allergic to brazil nuts, and intolerant of hazel nuts. I avoid processed and chemicalised foods. I try to eat organic or “not messed about” this is especially important in common foodstuffs like milk and wheat. I try to drink organic milk or soya replacement, I try not to eat wheat and if i do it must be stoneground or spelt flour. an old Miller who worked at one of the last Windmills in Sussex told me that when you grind wheat it heats up, Millers would tell how well the grind was going and how fast the stones were grinding according to the heat of the wheat. If it was getting too hot, they geared the grinding down. Modern wheat grinding is often done in steel rollers, I am told the wheat gets very hot, in past times this would have been considered SPOILT, as too many toxins would have been released into the flour…enough said.

Check your environment, dust is a killer for asthmatics, and often hair (animal or human) too. Keep your environment as dust free as you can, clean up regularly …its a start…use an ioniser and air filter.

OK homeopathy and acupuncture have helped me enormously, but if it gets bad use that inhaler (SALBUTAMOL/VENTOLIN)…and make sure its not out of date….ASTHMA CAN KILL YOU. I may not like allopathic medicine but it can stop you dieing and thats important.

Vitamin supplements and foods that support the immune system are a help.

If you have a young child with asthma, cranial osteopathy can really help, as many of the muscular reaction formations in asthma can be ameliorated by a series of sacro-cranial treatments. Also don’t use suppressant drugs, my experience was the more I used cortisone treatments on my eczema the worse my asthma was. I never gave my kids the ubiquitous CalPol because it contains the analgesic paracetamol, which suppresses symptoms, I also avoided getting them inoculated (see other articles about this on my site). They are ill but it is rare, and I beleive this is because they have been fed on good food, had a healthy environemnt and not been drugged. This has allowed their immune systems to build a strength of their own.

These things don’t work for everyone, and you need to listen to your medical practioner as well as the alternatives…so if you have asthma or care for someone who does, may the breath of life flow in you with ease.

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It brought back memories of my own childhood and life, of the excitement of going there as a child, of putting money in the slot machines, playing on the beach or hunting for fossils amongst the piles of stones, or crabs in the rock pools. whippy ice cream with a flake and fish and chips in the paper. a visit to flamborough head lighthouse and a trip to Scarborugh or Bridlington.

The trouble is now half the population thinks it has a sophisticated palette, and THE ONLY PLACE TO GO IS TUSCANY and want tarrogon mayonaisse on their chips!

Anyhow the weather was lovely and the countryside beautiful and thats saying somehting for Yorkshire in October

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The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 .

[img align=center]http://web2.ica.net/ketubah/other/img/ecclesiastes-sm.jpg[/img]

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I will not mourn over our untimely decay, nor reproach my pale-face brothers for hastening it, for we, too, may have been somewhat to blame.
When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, their hearts, also, are disfigured and turn black, and then their cruelty is relentless and knows no bounds, and our old men are not able to restrain them.
But let us hope that hostilities between the red-man and his pale-face brothers may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
True it is, that revenge, with our young braves, is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and old women, who have sons to lose, know better.
Our great father Washington, for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since George has moved his boundaries to the north; our great and good father, I say, sends us word by his son, who, no doubt, is a great chief among his people, that if we do as he desires, he will protect us. His brave armies will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his great ships of war will fill our harbors so that our ancient enemies far to the northward, the Simsiams and Hydas, will no longer frighten our women and old men. Then will he be our father and we will be his children. But can this ever be? Your God loves your people and hates mine; he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man and leads him as a father leads his infant son, but he has forsaken his red children; he makes your people wax strong every day, and soon they will fill all the land; while my people are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide, that will never flow again. The white man’s God cannot love his red children or he would protect them. They seem to be orphans and can look nowhere for help. How then can we become brothers? How can your father become our father and bring us prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?
Your God seems to us to be partial. He came to the white man. We never saw Him; never even heard His voice. He gave the white man laws, but He had no word for His red children whose teeming millions filled this vast continent as the stars fill the firmament. No, we are two distinct races and must ever remain so. There is little in common between us. The ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their final resting place is hallowed ground, while you wander away from the tombs of your fathers seemingly without regret.
Your religion was written on tablets of stone by the iron finger of an angry God, lest you might forget it. The red man could never remember nor comprehend it.
Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors, the dreams of our old men, given them by the great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the homes of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb. They wander far off beyond the stars, are soon forgotten, and never return. Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its winding rivers, its great mountains and its sequestered vales, and they ever yearn in tenderest affection over the lonely hearted living and often return to visit and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The red man has ever fled the approach of the white man, as the changing mists on the mountain side flee before the blazing morning sun.
However, your proposition seems a just one, and I think that my folks will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them, and we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the great white chief seem to be the voice of nature speaking to my people out of the thick darkness that is fast gathering around them like a dense fog floating inward from a midnight sea.
It matters but little where we pass the remainder of our days. They are not many. The Indian’s night promises to be dark. No bright star hovers about the horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Some grim Nemesis of our race is on the red man’s trail, and wherever he goes he will still hear the sure approaching footsteps of the fell destroyer and prepare to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter. A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of all the mighty hosts that once filled this broad land or that now roam in fragmentary bands through these vast solitudes will remain to weep over the tombs of a people once as powerful and as hopeful as your own.
But why should we repine? Why should I murmur at the fate of my people? Tribes are made up of individuals and are no better than they. Men come and go like the waves of the sea. A tear, a tamanamus, a dirge, and they are gone from our longing eyes forever. Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers, after all. We shall see.
We will ponder your proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe. Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent seashore in solemn grandeur thrill with memories of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
The noble braves, and fond mothers, and glad-hearted maidens, and the little children who lived and rejoiced here, and whose very names are now forgotten, still love these solitudes, and their deep fastnesses at eventide grow shadowy with the presence of dusky spirits. And when the last red man shall have perished from the earth and his memory among white men shall have become a myth, these shores shall swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children shall think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway or in the silence of the woods they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night, when the streets of your cities and villages shall be silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled and still love this beautiful land. The white man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.

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