November 3, 2023

Overview for this week.

This week I am presenting a special issue of The Flock comprised entirely with articles from our archives. I hope you enjoy it and encourage all of our readers to take a look at The Flock archives here.

1. Our first entry this week is one of our first reader submissions, an original literary work by Dino DeConcini, A Wedding in Portugal.

2. Next I want to share our first Educator's Corner participant. The actor, podcaster, and disability advocate, Keith Murfee-DeConcini. Keith is Dino's son and a real chip off the old block. We also have an update on Keith, so be sure to take a look at the link to the Marquis Who's Who.

3. Next, I am reposting two stories on a couple of hardy and unique Alaska pioneers.

4. As we near the El Tour de Tucson, it seems appropriate to revisit The Evolution of the Bicycle.

5. In Wellness we get tips from Dietician Charlotte Martin on how to find healthy choices at Trader Joe's.

6. You never know what you will find in your backyard. In August of 2022, I found the caterpillar stage of a Sphinx Moth!

8. After visiting Ireland, I looked at the American birthplace of the Irish potato in my hometown of Derry, New Hampshire.

8. Last November we did a deep dive into Indian history, culture, and religions. This week I am revisiting the culture and fashion of the sari.

9. In the past few weeks we have begun The Flock with payers for world peace, as I feel this is still greatly needed, I will end this week with those prayers

Now, to this week's Flock.

Dino DeConcini is a long time Flock reader and frequent contributor with both original works and ideas for topics to include in The Flock. He was one of the first to contribute a piece of his own to The Flock with this October 21, 2022, submission. We both greatly appreciate these contributions and encourage all Flock readers to use the links at the top and bottom of this email to contribute their own stories, ideas, or photos.

I welcome all of the flock to make contributions. Here we have a literary one from my friend Dino, who's a literary wonder. I'd like to present our first flocker literary contribution, and a literary masterpiece it is, by Dino DeConcini.

By: Dino DeConcini

I know no better way to start a trip than with a wedding, especially one like that of Antoinette Carline and Nicolas de Wolff of Los Angeles. Nicholas is the son of Harold and Julie de Wolff, very good, very old friends, in Harold's case for 50 years, starting with being roommates at Georgetown for three years.

It was a story-book event (the wedding, not living with Harold), spread over three days at delightful places in and around Cascais, on the Atlantic coast west of Lisbon. The logistics were formidable, with dozens of guests arriving on three different days from six different continents, to grace three main events: a welcoming dinner, the ceremony itself followed by a reception, luncheon and party, and then a farewell brunch. But the de Wolffs are master planners, and whatever the reality, all seemed smooth, serene and seamless to the guests.

The ceremony was held in Lisbon's Chapel of St. Sebastian, an intimate, tile­ roofed architectural gem. Its porch was strewn with rosemary, lavender and hydrangea blossoms for the occasion, its interior walls were adorned with blue and white antique Portuguese tiles depicting the death of the saint and other less grisly events, and from the choir loft, some of the Lisbon symphony's principal musicians held forth gloriously.

Keith Murfee-DeConcini was one of the first people I chose to feature in The Flock's Educator's Corner Section back in our May 27, 2022, issue. Keith, a talented actor, podcaster and advocate, is a chip off the block of his father Dino. This article below highlights Keith's advocacy for those with disabilities through his Disability Empowerment Now podcast. more recently Keith has been recognized by the Marquis Who's Who for his diligent work.

This is my dear friend Keith Murfee-DeConcini, actor, podcaster & disability advocate.

Keith Murfee-DeConcini has launched his podcast called Disability Empowerment Now.

This podcast is designed to address topics, such as social inclusion, employment, accessibility vs. inaccessibility, voting rights, and more. These topics are important to me because disability rights are civil rights and human rights, as well as an integral part of diversity.

The DEN podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts. Just "follow" or "subscribe" to Disability Empowerment Now.

Here is a 3 minute preview of the podcast, featuring Jennifer Longdon, Assistant Minority Leader of the Arizona House of Representatives, and former US Senator Dennis DeConcini, who was involved in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act:

In August of 2022, we did a deep dive into the state of Alaska. These were two of my favorite articles from those issues.

This time I'd like to feature two of Alaska's original pioneers. I was touched by each of their homes, now preserved by the National Park Service.

Fannie Quigley cooked and helped the broken spirits of those who had traveled very far through snow and ice to this beautiful land hoping to find gold. She lived well past the end of the trail and staked her first claim in 1900 during the Klondike Gold Rush. The greater hope of all who came was to find gold in these mountains, and they are loaded with gold. Some prospectors were lucky and struck gold in the hills of Alaska. And as my husband just reminded me, including us. There is Fort Knox where America keeps its gold, however it pales to what’s in the mountains of Alaska.

When Dick Proenneke was 51, the retired marine got in a bush plane and had himself dropped off in the wilderness where he homesteaded and lived off the land. He fished, in the Twin Lakes, sometimes frozen, next to his small log cabin. He built his log cabin from the pine trees that grew up on the small square of land that became his world. He kept copious notes on weather, the rare visitors, wildlife and the changing seasons. The national park service maintains this now refurbished former home of Dick Proenneke. When i was there I felt he was there to, welcoming curious visitors.

From: National Park Service

Born and raised on a Nebraska homestead near Wahoo, Nebraska, Frances "Fannie" Sedlacek was used to a hardscrabble life. Her parents Vencil and Josephine Sedlacek were immigrants from Bohemia. They had arrived in America in 1866 and settled in Nebraska to file a homestead claim shortly before Fannie's birth in 1870.

The 1870s and 1880s were difficult years in Nebraska. The Panic of 1873 led to a four-year economic depression and falling farm prices. This was worsened with droughts, plagues of locusts, blizzards. These and other hardships from her childhood would help prepare her for life in the Alaskan frontier.

Staking a claim in August 1900 on a stampede to Clear Creek, she met and soon married Angus McKenzie. In January 1903, Fannie left Angus and set off on an 800 mile hike down the Yukon River ending up in Fairbanks. She made her way to the remote Kantishna Hills near Mount McKinley (now Denali) among the hundreds of hopeful prospectors in 1905.

From National Park Service

Richard Proenneke, whose friends called him Dick, is an icon of wilderness values and an inspiration to those who value simplicity, direct connection with nature, self-reliance, and ingenuity.

"I have found that some of the simplest things have given me the most pleasure. They didn't cost me a lot of money either. They just worked on my senses. Did you ever pick very large blueberries after a summer rain, walk through a grove of cottonwoods, open like a park, and see the blue sky beyond the shimmering gold of the leaves? Pull on dry woolen socks after you've peeled off the wet ones? Come in out of the subzero and shiver yourself warm in front of a wood fire? The world is full of such things."

- Dick Proenneke

Dick first visited Upper Twin Lake in 1962 at the invite of his friends Spike and Hope Carrithers of Kodiak, Alaska. Proenneke continued to vacation with them at their cabin on Upper Twin Lake in subsequent years. After an eye injury that threatened to leave him blind in the late 1960s Proenneke wanted to put down roots far from civilization by building his own cabin amid the natural beauty of the Twin Lakes region.

Poster advertising ‘La Francaise Diamant’, c.1905 / French School

It's one year later and the El Tour de Tucson is just around the corner again, so it just seemed right to include this article on the evolution of the bicycle from our September 30 2022 issue.

With the El Tour de Tucson coming up I thought it would be fun to look at the evolution of the bicycle. My personal favorite is a 12-year-old custom Fuji. I still love it and it's my racing bike of choice. I was reflecting on the evolution of the bicycle here's what I've found.

From: Bridgeman Images Blog, By: Bridgeman Team, May 31, 2017

According to some historians it is almost 200 years since the first documented bike ride by Karl von Drais in 1817 and the city of Mannheim in Germany is planning to celebrate this bicentenary with a major exhibition. The answer to the question of who invented the first bicycle often depends upon the nationality of who you ask as over the years many people have contributed ideas and developments. 

Replica of Baron Von Drais’ Bicycle (the Draisiene) / Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, USA

Let’s take a look at the evolution of the bicycle, showing the craze for cycling is nothing new.

1493: the Earliest Bicycle Sketch…

It has been said that Leonardo da Vinci was the first person to ever visualise the concept of a bicycle but was unable to construct it. News of a bicycle-like sketch is said to have been discovered during the ten-year restoration period of the Codex Atlanticus in the 1970s that had not been seen for 500 years.

Since 1998, Hans-Erhard Lessing, a Professor of Physics, has claimed it a fraud and leans towards the more popular opinion that the bicycle originated in the 1800s in Germany.

This Wellness article from September 30, 2022 was very popular with The Flock.

The elder of my good friend Lisa Martin's two girls, Charlotte, a trained dietitian, has made a difference in the lives of many who wish to eat a clean, fresh, and healthy natural diet.

From: shapedbycharlotte.com, By: Charlotte Martin, MS, RDN, CSOWM, Feb. 10, 2022

Trader Joe’s is THE mecca for healthy, affordable food products, which is why dietitians (like me) love it. However, finding them while navigating the narrow aisles and sifting through millions of food products can be a bit overwhelming. But not any longer, with this ultimate healthy Trader Joe’s shopping list (updated for 2022) at your fingertips!

Healthy Trader Joe's Shopping List

Call me crazy, but I’d choose shopping at Trader Joe’s over DSW any day of the week. I feel like a kid in a candy store when I’m walking down the aisles of Trader Joe’s. You really can’t beat their low prices and wide variety of can’t-find-anywhere-else food items (hello, cauliflower gnocchi).

I took five, hour-and-a-half-long shopping trips to put together this healthy Trader Joe’s shopping list. Did I get stares (more like glares) as I took pictures of every single food item in this post. Yes. Did I care? Also, yes. But still, I carried on for you, my friend.

Look at what I found in my back yard! This is the caterpillar stage of a Sphinx Moth. These big guys can devastate a tomato plant in one evening. This will eventually grow into a Sphinx Moth, a large moth indigenous to Southern Arizona. The mature moth is also known as the Hummingbird Moth due to its resemblance to a Hummingbird. We'll be looking at more Moth's in future issues of The Flock.

Chrysallis Phase

New Hampshire State Historical Marker in front of the First Parish Church,

East Derry mentions the first potato.

From: Nutfield Genealogy, January 3, 2013

Every school child in Nutfield (now Londonderry, Derry and Windham, New Hampshire) can tell you that in 1719 the Scots Irish settlers planted the first known potatoes in America right here in what is now the town of Derry. The common planting field was located alongside what is now the Route 28 bypass in Derry. There was a large wooden sign there in the 1960s marking the spot, but it has long since disintegrated.

I also think the story of the potato is interesting. Just remember that potatoes are a new world vegetable, just like pumpkins and squashes. The first Spanish explorers brought the first potatoes back to Spain and Europe from South America. The potato was so popular that it spread all over Europe quickly. Then in 1719 the potato made it to North America. What a migration story!

From: Google Arts & Cultures

Malika Verma Kashyap explores the lesser-known side of the iconic garment

The sari (often spelled ‘saree’), is a garment traditionally worn in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It can be an heirloom passed down through generations, or a purely functional garment worn every day. It’s seen on streets and runways, and has influenced fashion designers across the world. Much loved and yet often misunderstood, here are nine facts you might not know about the sari, as seen from India.

I am ending this special issue of The Flock articles from our archive with an article from our October 13, 2023, issue, just three weeks ago. This article was a response to the violent attack on Israel and a plea for all of us to pray for world peace. I am including it in this issue because I believe it is still relevant and that we all need to continue to pray for peace for all the peoples of the world.

With the violent attack on Israel this last weekend, it has been brought to my attention that regardless of your nationality or religious affiliation, it's time to pray for world peace. So, I would like to present some prayers for world peace in this week's Flock. The first I've included below is from the Devon Faith & Belief Forum and is not associated with any one religion. Following that, I am providing a link to a collection of prayers for peace from the world's major religions that was compiled by Xavier University.

Being mindful of the interwoven nature of all things, and of the brevity of each life, let us treat everyone as our friend. Letting go of our fear, anger, prejudice and intolerance, let us find that beauty is everywhere and that every life is a precious gift. At peace with ourselves let us be at peace with the world.

From: Xavier University

The following link includes prayers for peace from Christian, Buddhist, Baha'i, Hindu, Jainist, Jewish, Muslim, Native African, Native American, Shinto, Sikh, Sufi, and Zoroastrian faiths.

Don't Be Shy: Share Your Stories!

I'm looking forward to sharing more of your personal stories - oral, written, or otherwise, as we enter our second year. I'd so love to present them to The Flock, hit a mailbox below to share your story.

Holualoa Ed Fit Wellness & Culture 2

520-818-4433

View as Webpage