Backyard Habitats for the Birds

Image via Wikipedia It’s the beginning of the dead of winter for us North Texans. The nip in the air has turned to ice.  Your plants are either dropping leaves, hibernating or at least shivering.  Why would you want to start thinking about reshaping your yard now? Actually this is the best time to plant certain trees and shrubs.  And it is as good a time as any to think through what you would like your yard to become.  So I have some information on Texas Parks and Wildlife’s “Texas Wildscapes Gardening for Wildlife” that I want to share. It’s amazing how this is similar to the first chapter of Scott Edward’s book “Creating a Bird Friendly Backyard Habitat.” The book is published by T.F.H. Publications. Bio-what? First let’s look at what Scott says.  The simple mix of trees and shrubs that accompanies many backyards caters to the needs of a handful of birds, but that’s where the list of needs ends.  Scott wants to eliminate the monoculture of backyards and plan for biodiversity.  This means you increase the odds of attracting many other species that call your piece of property home. Now the word “biodiversity” showed up in one of the articles written by the Texas Parks and Wildlife called “Eye on Nature,” a publication of the Wildlife Diversity Program.  In that article on which I first laid eyes on the word “biodiversity,” the term was used in reference to bugs. Ugh.  But listen to these statistics.  Howell and Webb in 1995 list nearly 1,000 species of birds for Mexico.  Correll and Johnson in 1970 list nearly 5,000 species of plants for Texas.  By contrast, we don’t even know to the nearest thousand how many species of insect reside in Texas.  Drees and Jackman in 1998 estimated around 30,000 species of Texas insects!  I will talk more about insects in another blog post. You don’t want mono- Back to Scott’s book.  A “monoculture” is biased towards one type of grass, tree or shrub (I wonder if that is politically incorrect?).  This doesn’t promote “biodiversity,” which is one of the key concepts of a successful backyard habitat. Biodiversity means that the needs of the birds are as varied as the species of birds that populate the world, each one fitting into a niche in its ecosystem.  The more variety you provide in your habitat, in terms of trees, shrubs, flowers and grasses the more variety of birds and other wildlife, including bugs, you will attract.  And that is a good thing, even with the bugs. So the first step is to look at your property and its existing features.  That’s what the Backyard Wildlife Habitat called step one.  Texas Wildscapes assumes you have done this and goes on to the next step, which is to learn about the plants native to our area.  You need to know this after you learn what is in your yard so you know whether what you have is native or is introduced. Read this as “native and adapted” Texas Wildscapes says that introduced plants are not good substitutes for native plants used by wildlife.  Furthermore, some of the introduced plants require higher maintenance than those that are use to growing under our strange conditions.  High maintenance includes lots of watering, fertilizers and pesticides.  Some of these maintenance items are hard on us and all of them are hard on our environment. As you check your backyard, note your birdfeeders, bird baths, dead and dying trees, brush piles, wood piles, areas of standing or flowing water, soaker watering system, bird houses, compost pile, rock piles or rock walls and the percentage of St. Augustine grass in your yard. All the above, except the St. Augustine, are good things you might already have going for your wildlife habitat.  Birds and animals need food, water, cover and places to raise their young.  If you have some of the things in that list, except the grass, you have much of what you need already.  And if you see that you are missing some of these elements, they are easy to add. New info I know that most of you probably already have much of the makings for a backyard habitat in your backyards besides the plants.  But you also have to know which plants are native or have adapted so well to our area that there is some question about whether they are native or not and which are introduced. To qualify for the Texas Wildscapes, you have to have 50% native plants in your backyard.  That’s quite a lot. On the other hand, I can see getting rid of some of the St. Augustine grass.  Weeds are doing that to me on their own.  I need to find out if the stuff taking it over is native or not.  But in any case, maybe I should allow these lower maintenance weeds to have its way with some of the yard. What do you still need? Scott says that once you have a clear idea of what there is to work with, make a list of any elements of habitat that might be missing or in need of enhancement. When it comes to plants, an idea I’ve mentioned before is creating a multilayered effect.  Offering tall, medium and short plants grouped together in a tiered arrangement are very appealing to wildlife.  To do this you have to know the plant’s height at maturity.  A four-inch potted plant can turn into a ten-foot shrub.  If you know how a plant is going to grow to, you can avoid planting it in the wrong location. Scott adds that when you think about the future, remember that you want to have a good view of what your wildlife is doing.  So plan your plantings accordingly.  Put the low shrubs, vines and ground cover close to where you will be looking and slowly build your way to the tallest trees. A  good book to acquaint yourself with some of the native plants that grow in our area is Texas Wildscapes: Gardening for Wildlife by Noreen Damude and Kelly Conrad Bender. Related articles Building A Back Yard Wildlife Habitat (glenns-garden.com) Creating a Wildlife Bird Garden (brighthub.com) Read more at media-ann-such.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/el41

Poverty, Age and Suicide

Looking at people dealing with their first cycle in poverty and we see  interesting corrolations between poverty, suicide and age.

Suicide

On February 19, 2009 The New York Times published an article by Patricia Cohen entitled “Midlife Suicide Rises, Puzzling Researchers.”  Cohen quotes from “a new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently published by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”  The study shows that the suicide rate among 45-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied.  For women in this age bracket the rate rose 31 percent and for men the rate was 15.6 percent

This is a great increase when compared to the less than 2 percent suicide rate for 15-to-19-year-olds, who have been the intense scrutiny of news attention and prevention resources. Cohen said, “For officials it is a surprising and baffling public health mystery. . . .

The question is why.  What happened in 1999 that caused the suicide rate to suddenly rise primarily in midlife?

For health experts it is like discovering the wreckage of a plane crash without finding the little black box that recorded flight data just before the aircraft went down.” I believe that the answer lies in the realm of poverty spells. We have seen that the foreclosure rate began increasing around the year 2001.  This means that economic problems in the home began some time before.  Even though the economy may not have been in cinque with the spell, this is one way to look at the outcomes.  Economic peaks and troughs for the time around 1999 indicated that there was a peak in March 2001 followed by a trough in November 2001, following 9-11.  Standard and Poors  500 had a peak in August 2000 and a trough in September 2001.  While it appears that the state of the economy in 1999 was on an upsurge at that time, let’s look at some poverty figures for 1997-1999.

The U.S. Census Bureau published “Dynamics of Economic Well-Being Moving Up and Down the Income Ladder, 1998-1999,” issued April 2005, using SIPP data.  From  1997 to 1998 32.9 percent of the sample had a decrease in income of 5 percent or more.  In 1998-1999 the percent was 34.4.  Looking at the age groups 45-64 in Table 1 shows that 36.2 percent had an income drop of 5 percent or more.  This is above the average.  Could the major drop in income be the trigger for the rise in suicides? That’s the way it looks

The Elderly

Another area we need to look at historically is poverty spells of the elderly, particularly elderly women, since they live longer than men.  In “Changing Social Security Survivorship Benefits and the Poverty of Widows” by Michael D. Hurd, State University of New York, Stony Brook and NBER and David A. Wise, Harvard University and NBER, publish date unknown but after 1990, Hurd and Wise state that: Social Security is the most important component of the income of most elderly families in the United States.  In 1988 Social Security benefits were 45.9 percent of the income of elderly unmarried women (Grad, 1990).  One-third  of unmarried women relied on Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income; 20 percent had income only from Social Security.  It is not surprising, therefore, that the drop in Social Security benefits at the death of the husband could have large effects on the economic status of the surviving widow, particularly those at the lower end of the income distribution, and that the incidence of poverty would be high among elderly widows (p.1). Hurd and Wise show that the transition to widowhood increases poverty.  Among couples with incomes above the poverty line in 1975, the poverty rate of the surviving widows in 1977 was 37 percent.  Hurd and Wise spent the rest of this article seeing how the lowering the amount of Social Security to couples could positively impact widows.

An article on the AARP website on January 28, 2008 was “Low-Income /Poverty: Older Persons Find it Hardest to Exit Poverty;” Research Report; Ke Bin Wu; AARP Public Policy Institute; May 2001.  Wu used the PSID to track the long-term poverty status of the same individuals over the 1982-1992 period.  Some of his conclusions were that escaping from poverty was more difficult for older than for younger age groups. For example, for an older person who was in a poverty spell of one year, the probability of exiting from poverty was 35.2 percent compared to 40.3 percent for a person under age 65. . . . .over one-third of older persons who were ever poor completed their poverty spell in one year, and about 58 percent of older persons who were ever poor remained in poverty three years of fewer.  On the other hand, nearly 31 percent of completed poverty spells of older persons who were ever poor can be expected to last ten or more years. . . . the exit probability was 44.6 percent for older men but only 32.1 percent for older women who had spent one year in poverty. It readily becomes apparent that there is a link between poverty, age and suicide. For more information, see Amazon.com’s Related articles Faith Leader Says Poverty Fight Overshadowed By Politics (npr.org) USA’s poverty rate reaches highest level in 51 years (usatoday.com) Read more at media-ann-such.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/el3c

It's Never Too Early to Prepare For a Career

Amplify’d from media-ann-such.com

Overwhelmed by the maze of career options your high school counselor, parents, and scout leaders have told you that you would be good doing? High school is hard enough as it is without the added pressure of choosing a career path. However, your future career starts with the choices you make today. While your counselors and parents have good intentions, sometimes you need to explore your career options on your own. Career fairs, internships, volunteer positions, and other options tailored to career-oriented teens can help you learn about what’s available while also providing you with the opportunity to discover your passions. Don’t forget to look in books like Amazon’s Now What?: The Young Person’s Guide to Choosing the Perfect Career by Nicholas Lore. Step 1 How do you find out what is available—Career Fairs. Your school counselor might not have thought of this, but maybe you should go to some job fairs. They happen in many larger cities regularly with opportunities you might not have considered. Most people attend job fairs to interact with representatives of employers they are interested in. The normal idea of a job fair is not to ask for a job but to develop relationships that might lead to a job. You are not at that stage yet, but making the contacts will help you make a decision. Job fairs often cater to a certain type of occupation. If you are not interested in being a teacher or a truck driver, you might not want to attend those fairs. On the other hand, you might learn about jobs within one of these fields that you are interested in. So don’t make any snap judgments. At the job fairs you want to attend, get a list of the employers who will be in attendance. Look up the companies on the internet to learn what they do, what products they manufacture, their goals and needs. Prepare some questions based on your research. These should be open-ended so you can learn more about the jobs these employers offer. For example, you might ask What do you look for in candidates? What key skills, education and experience are highly desirable? What tips for success could you give me for getting hired in this field? When you get to the fair, get a map to help you find the companies that interest you. Expect lines in front of the employer’s tables. When it is your turn, greet the representative with a firm handshake, good eye contact and a smile. Maintain a positive attitude and ask your questions. Remember that you are looking for the kind of career you will work at for the majority of your life. Don’t talk about yourself, talk about the jobs. Be sure you get business cards, brochures, fact sheets and anything else the representative has. Take a few minutes between visits to make a few notes about the position, the company and whether you would consider working at such a business. After you return from each fair, write thank-you notes.  You never know who might remember you in a few years. Then organize all the material you received. These two suggestions are very important. Step 2 Exploring career options—Tests, volunteering, and internships. You have narrowed down what you are interested in to a few sorts of jobs, but you still don’t know specifically what career you are interested in. Several options are available to help you decide. Sites on the internet and your school offer tests that can help you determine what sort of job you would be a fit for. This doesn’t mean that you have to do any jobs some test suggests, but this will give you a way to narrow down the field even more. You can take short courses in a particular career in high school, which is another way to determine if this is where you want to work. You can also volunteer to work at an employer’s business. There are also internships, summer jobs and co-op programs through your school. You can receive educational credit and sometimes even a salary while working in a field related to your study. You can use this experience as a part of your resume as well as getting firsthand experience while still in school. Step 3 Choosing the right career—getting down to brass tacks. When you get down to the final decision, you still need to make more decisions. What kind of career would you like to spend your life doing? How much time will education or training take? Will the career be around in five years? You have looked at many options through job fairs, you have discovered what sorts of jobs you might be interested in, and you have gone to classes or worked at various businesses.  Now it’s time for you to consider your likes and abilities. Here are some questions that you should be able to answer based on your experiences. Where do you want to be in five or ten years? What sorts of responsibilities do you want? What kind of job security do you want? What kind of work environment do you want? Is there work you do not want to do? Do you want to work for myself or someone else? Do you want to work with others or are you happier working on my own? When you attended the job fairs, you learned how much education you would need to do certain jobs. If you did not find exactly what you wanted, you now have the tools to go online and look at job wanted sites and see exactly what a position you are interested in expects of a prospective employee. Even if you know you are not going to work at that business, you will be able to think about whether you have the time, money and talent for such an education. Next, you need to determine whether the job is going to be around in the next five to ten years. While blacksmiths are still available, the need for them has greatly decreased.  Could your prospective job be done by a machine? Is this an old or a new industry? Do they have plenty of competing industries? What technology does this career use? Could it be outdated soon? When you are certain you have found a career that will go into the middle of this century, you are closer to your decision. Other things you might consider before making that final decision are whether this is a job that takes more than 40 hours a week. Does it mean travel? Will you have to relocate far away from family? And then there is the money. What will the income be with this career? Certain careers top out at certain pay scales. Are you going to be satisfied with this cap? What are the benefits in this career? How long will it take to get promotions? Another book to help you make sense of all this is from Amazon: Career Match: Connecting Who You Are with What You’ll Love to Do by Shoya Zichy and Ann Bidou. Now it’s time for you to look at colleges and see which ones have studies in a particular field that interests you. Do you need to attend a four-year college or can you attend a technical school and get certified in the field. Look at the class offerings and see if you are interested enough to study biology or advanced computer languages.  What will your education cost?  How long will it take?  How long will it take to find a job after graduation? By working on this plan you will be able to decide what career is right for you, what education you need now and what higher education you will need. Career fairs, internships, volunteer positions, and other options tailored to career-oriented teens can help you learn about what’s available while also providing you with the opportunity to jump on your career path. Related articles by Zemanta High School Student Transition Planning (brighthub.com) Social Networking Your Way to a New Job (nytimes.com) Get an Awesome Internship (onlinecollege.org) Six Things You Can Do This Summer to Get Ahead Next Semester (distance-education.org) Virtual Career Fair for Our Nation’s Finest Being Held on the Milicruit Virtual Career Fair Platform (prweb.com) Tagged Under : Business, College, Education, employers, Employment, High school, high school counselor, Job fair, Job Search, Research, volunteer Read more at media-ann-such.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/cva2

via Amplify.com

Posted via email from mullenann4's posterous

The loss of the American Dream

 Filed Under (New2Need Charity) by admin on 15-10-2010

Tagged Under : American dream, divorce, Foreclosure, job loss, middle class, Oprah Winfrey, poor, Poverty, Real estate, RealtyTrac, suddenly poor, suicide, Texas

Image by GreeneConnections via Flickr

The Oprah Winfrey Show that aired on February 13, 2008 was about a middle class family supposedly living the American Dream—five- bedroom house, latest clothes, fabulous vacations.  Suddenly the wife Sylvia comes home after a weekend away with her children to find her husband has committed suicide in the garage and she is left with only $72 in her checking account and over half a million dollars in debt (Oprah.com from the show: Suicide, Lies, Debt: A Suburban Nightmare).

Sylvia’s story of suddenly becoming poor is being played out all over the United States in one form or another.  Job loss, divorce, illness, accidents, suicide and death are descending upon the middle class with the fury of a tornado, unexpectedly drawing people into sudden poverty.  Jobs that college graduates thought were secure are being downsized or outsourced leaving the primary household wage earner jobless.  If the wage earner is middle-aged, finding a new job becomes even harder, taking longer to find.
While it is not directly stated in Sylvia’s story, the fact she had only $13,000 from the sale of items in her house indicates that her home went into foreclosure.  Since that was the case, she lost all her equity.  In a press release “U.S. Foreclosure Activity Increases 75 Percent in 2007” by RealtyTrac Staff; IRVINE, Calif.-Jan. 29, 2008; realtytrac.com, the company states:
RealtyTrac® (realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released year-end data from its 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 2,203,295 foreclosures filings—default notices, auction sale notices, and bank repossessions—were filed on 1,285,873 properties nationwide during the year, up 75 percent from 2006.  The report also shows that more than 1 percent of all U.S. households were in some stage of foreclosure during the year, up from 0.58 percent in 2006.
The article also stated that Texas is among the top ten.
Related articles

• RealtyTrac: Record Repossessions reported in September (calculatedriskblog.com)
• Just In Time For The Freeze, House Repossessions Pass 100,000 For The First Time Ever In September (businessinsider.com)

Share this on:

New2Need To The Rescue

It made a difference to these sand dollars.

Amplify’d from media-ann-such.com

To The Rescue Filed Under (New2Need Charity) by admin on 12-10-2010 Tagged Under : chaity, Charitable organization, Disability, homeschooling, MHMR, mortgage, New2Need Charity, severe burns, SSI.cold front, Supplemental Security Income, surgery New2Need is a small charity that helps people in Tarrant County Texas. Here are some stories of people the charity has aided. A woman with two children had some difficulties with utilities a few years ago. Her husband was cooking with a long extension cord and their 18 month old pulled scalding food on top of herself.  The baby was burned over 40 % of her body.  She is now 5 years old and requires surgery in Galveston twice a week to help her scalp grow.  The woman is homeschooling both this child and a 10 year old daughter.  The husband had moved out and has been largely unhelpful, giving the mother a few dollars here and there. The woman became unable to use the truck because she could not keep up the payments.  She started taking the children to a church that is very involved in homeschooling.  I told her to talk to the pastor at once.  We gave her information on legal aid, but she found a lawyer who is helping her file for divorce on her own.  We suggested that she go to MHMR to deal with her own depression and to get SSI for herself and the baby.  Also we suggested several social agencies for help with rent and other needs.  She is moving forward. For information on how to take care of people with severe burns Amazon.com offers “Severe Burns: A Family Guide to Medical and Emotional Recovery” (A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book). One of the first cold fronts of the winter of 2008 came with freezing rain. A man called the charity seeking shelter for the night for himself and his two children. The place they had been staying was out of the question. The man found a woman using drugs in the kitchen and he moved his little family out of there. The day of the impending bad weather the three of them were going to stay in his truck, but the man had an accident in the truck and the person who hit them did not have any money to fix the truck. The man asked to go to a motel for the night. He suggested one he had stayed in years before. The motel did not take credit cards over the phone so I went there and paid for the man to have a room. A 30-year-old full time student with two daughters  aged six and seven and twin boys nine-months-old owed so much rent that she lost her apartment. She had lost her full time  job because of illness.  She went to a public social service who said they could not help her because she was a full time student. She had gone to her church for help, but they couldn’t help her. She called other services and got a case worker. Then her church told her they found the funds to help her. A woman who was buying her house had a good job, but had several shoulder surgeries and couldn’t work. The doctors told her it might be 6 months or longer before she could work. She had another surgery four months after she first contacted the charity. She had her mortgage modified, but even with that since she is still disabled, she hasn’t been able to keep up with her payments. We suggested she apply for disability. She is now doing that. For a book on getting your disability you can find this one at Amazon.com. “Federal Disability Law in a Nutshell”, 4th (Nutshell Series). While New2Need is small, it has made a difference in people’s lives. You can learn more about the charity at New2Need.org. Related articles New2Need Charity helps people in Tarrant County (media-ann-such.com) New2Need assisting people in Tarrant County (media-ann-such.com) Share this on: Read more at media-ann-such.com

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/cgbi

Intelligent Social Media Group News | LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=220651536&...

Here is an interesting blogger on Social Media Marketing.

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/c6p2

Television's Misrepresentation on Bipolar Disorder

Image by L.G.Mills via Flickr

Television shows are suddenly very interested in people with Bipolar disorder with an emphasis on the inability of such people to function in the world or as serial rapists or crazed killers. How can people who have the disorder protect themselves from being labeled as criminally, mentally ill? The answer is to arm themselves with information and share it where appropriate.

It is true that people with Bipolar mood disorder have continual changes in thought, energy, mood, sleep and activity particularly before they are on the proper medications. But in spite of shifting states most people, even those who do not have their disorder under control with medication, are not usually going to commit murder or be serial rapists.

 

Here is some of that good information:

• Those who take their medications have a very good prognosis. There are a number of drug and therapy techniques used to treat people with Bipolar disorder. Often it takes a combination in order to be effective.
• Bipolar mood disorder medications include mood stabilizers like lithium, antidepressants, Lamictal and otheranticonvulsants, atypical antipsychotics (hence the misinformation) like Seroquel and even Omega 3. Antipsychotics act one way with psychotics and a different way with people with Bipolar disorder.
• Because medicine can cause a reduction in symptoms or complete remission, it is important that the person with Bipolar disorder understand that he or she must continue taking the medications or there will be a relapse. While it is up to the individual to make the decision, there definitely will be a relapse without the medication. Many people can live full and satisfying lives despite the disorder, a fact that television seems to forget.
• Some things within the control of the person can help or hurt the results, such as taking the medicine as directed, understanding the disorder, having a good relationship with medical personnel and good health practices, including exercise, nutrition and a regulated stress level.
• Other factors that keep the person well include noticing small changes in one’s energy, mood, sleep and eating behaviors, as well as having a plan worked out with the doctor on how to manage these small changes before they become big ones. A person can keep a mood log to chart any changes that need to be discussed with the physician.
• Another way is to enlist the help of a close friend or family member. This person can help detect mood changes or changes in activities or behaviors that can trigger a manic episode.

With the sudden interest in Bipolar disorder on television and its emphasis on the inability of people with bipolar disorder to function in the world, people who have this disorder must learn all they can about their problem. Places where information can be found include self-help books, articles on the internet and information from their health professional. Armed with information they can prevent others from misunderstandings.

Related articles

• Bipolar disorder – All Information (umm.edu)
• Natural Treatments for Bipolar Disorder (brighthub.com)

Tagged Under : Bipolar disorder, Bipolar mood disorder, Disorders, Health, Mania, Mental health, Mood, Mood stabilizer, Mood swing

See the original and much more posted in Media-Ann-Such.com

Posted via email from mullenann4's posterous