Swimming Was My Passion

At a very young age, I discovered the water, or maybe the water discovered me. I swam like a fish at that young age. Uncle Carl always came over to visit, and he was passionate about swimming. Besides teaching me about geography and maps, he took me to lakes, the ocean, and swimming pools to swim. That was when I was a child under the age of 10. Then, we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I remember the many swimming pools there. Uncle Carl came out from California on some occasions and had fun swimming with me in these pools.

Dad was also a good swimmer and especially liked floating on his back. When we took family vacations, we both looked forward to hotel swimming pools, and other, natural bodies of water.

In high school, in Milton, Florida, where I lived many years of my life, I was on the high school swim team. My buddies and I often swam in the nearby bays, Blackwater River, and Gulf of Mexico. We had many races across lakes and rivers. We were all fish in the water. The water was our joy, our fun times, and our natural workouts.

Now, my son likes the water, as much, if not more that I ever did. He started regularly swimming at the Tallahassee YMCA, where we currently live. He also swims in the boy scouts. He even has the swimming merit badge.

Get out into the nature’s H2O. It is fun.You will experience sights, sounds and a sense of oneness with creation.

This thing called Twitter

Twitter is more than a cool social networking application. Twitter is about sharing, meeting, connecting, networking, brainstorming, all in less than 141 characters. 140 characters is the maximum amount of space you usually have for twittering. You can always post more tweets. It is a communication lifestyle. These are short, micro-blogs, that are quickly prepared, on the spot, and posted for the general public to view, or a private group. Each twitterer makes that decision. Twitter asks the simple question, “What are you doing now?” The answers are formed in innumerable ways.  You can tweet from your phone anywhere you have service, or from your laptop or PC. 

If you can’t say what you want to say in 140 characters, than it probably is not worth saying, or you need to work on reducing fluff. Twitter gives us all the opportunity to make our point, briefly, and just that: to the point. As a result of this structure, the blogger is compelled  to perfect his writing skills. 

I use Twitter to get information to the consumers, network with other professionals in my field of labor, and other professionals, to express thoughts that come to me, to provide useful tips and ideas that I think could benefit others, and to make new friends.

Twitter has a powerful search engion to help us look up people we may want to connect with, and follow. We use this search tool to find groups, companies, associations, to see who the members are, and then, we can connect with who we want to. This connecting, in Twitter terms, is called “following.” When you click the follow button, beside someone’s profile, you have just added a new contact to your ever growing network. That individual in turn, has the option of following you. Now, you two can share. You can even see who someone is following, read profiles, and click the follow button to follow someone that interest you, socially, or professionally. 

The key to success with Twitter, is to make your brief points, comments, suggestions, and ideas, interesing, fun, a pleasure to read, unique, and useful to the Twitterverse. You may get responses back to your comments, either directly, or for all to read as a post. You will even gain followers. This is good for most businesses. Followers can become customers.

Sometimes Twitterers ask questions, tell micro-stories, share recipes, discuss gardening, politics, school assignments, community events, personal recollections. Twitter is for everyone, but to be successful with Twitter, you need to feed your blog. Keep tweeting, and don’t stop. Let Twitterverse know you are out there. It really is fun, because Twitterers are fun and interesting people, that know how to use a micro-blogging platform to fit their needs in life. It is a lifestyle using a micro-blogging tool. 

I am kenfach on Twitter. Follow me. Hope to follow you.

http://twitter.com/kenfach  

Happy tweeting!!!!!

Living the Pure Lifestyle in Florida

We think of good food, healthy living, organic gardening, food coops, using the bike more, installing alternative energy systems, and how to be greener than maybe we may have already been. Better late than never, goes the old cliche. I am surrounded by green living in a very green neighborhood if you look at all the trees, bushes, and conservation zones in the neighborhood, and all over Tallahassee, and Leon County. Nature is alive and well in northwest Florida. It just makes sense to think and practice a healthier, sustainable lifestyle.

Now, where there is good, there also appears to be its opposite. Any effort to do the right think, and live a greener, friendlier, healther lifestyle is met by the enemy within and without: the petroleum based economy, homeowner association regulations, neighbors that feel sticking with the status quo is the only way to live, fear of being different, and misunderstood, and the prohibitive costs associated with going to alternative energy sources. These are obstacles that can be overcome. Good is nature, natural, and can overcome the evil lurking in the foreground and background preventing a cleaner, greener lifestyle for us.

My wife and I for years have planted the majority of our tomatoes, and other vegetables. We have set goals for our organic gardening project. Yes, gardening is a project, and a process, isn’t it?  Our goal is to cultivate 80% of our vegetable produce within one year. We have a compost bin, and a system in place to manage our nitrogens and carbons in our compost bin, and will be ready to spread the material over our new cleaned out garden bed very soon. We do not waste any kitchen food item. If we don’t eat it, it goes into our compost bin. That is less that goes to the city, or county solid waste facility, or whatever it is called. We hope to grow more blueberries, and start cultivating strawberrys, and grapes so we can add fruit to our gardening.

We are hearing about more and more people in and around Tallahassee, Florida, who are raising chickens for eggs. We would like to do that as well.  I have a friend who supply us with his chicken’s eggs, and yes, the taste is much better than what you get in the supermarkets.

Now, it would be wonderful to get a goat for goat’s milk, which is excellent. Don’t know how we can manage that in our Lakeside Tallahassee subdivision, but there are people on the outskirst of Tallahassee, for example down Bucklake Road in eastern Leon County, who raise goats and have a big quantity of them. I may drive by and speak with someone there about how they start that, or get some tips on goat raising. We may sell a property we own, and buy a lot somewhere for that purpose. Just thinking.

My wife recently bought a bread maker, and almost daily we are making delicious homemade bread. No more supermarket bread for this family. This is part of our lifestyle improvement, which we hope will continue forever.

The important element in a greener lifestyle is the element of planning. With a little amount of space, there is much one or more individuals can do to make the yard a practical vegetable, or fruit garden, and nature zone.

I learned this soil tip recently. Take a handful of earth from your garden bed, and squeeze it in your hand. If is is crumbly, that is good. The soil is healthy for cultivatating. If is is a wet ball, that is not so good. If it is sandy, and fall apart, that also is not good, healthy soil for agriculture/horticulture. I like the hand technique versus the PH soil analysis.

Now, back to organic garden planning, and picking the last remains of our current tomatoe crop. Back to learning more about our local soil, plant pests, and how tos.