Bird by Bird

I first read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird—Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Pantheon Books, 1994) in February, 1999. I read it again in April, 2003. And now I'm reading it again. Besides the Bible and Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest, there are few books I have read more than once. Even if you don't write for a living, Bird by Bird is worth your time. A couple reasons why are these I read this morning:

On not needing to know the whole story before you begin . . .

E. L. Doctorow once said that "writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard. (p. 18)

On writing characters that are real—warts and all . . .

My Al-Anon friend told me about the frazzled, defeated wife of an alcoholic man who kept passing out on the front lawn in the middle of the night. The wife kept dragging him in before dawn so that the neighbors wouldn't see him, until finally an old black woman from the South came up to her one day after a meeting and said, "Honey? Leave him lay where Jesus flang him." And I am slowly, slowly in my work—and even more slowly in real life—learning to do this. (p. 46; no, "flang" is not a typo)

Veganism: "Most Principled Position"

Mark Bittman has written six books on food and is a columnist at The New York Times. In a recent online live chat with "CBC Books" he took a question from musician/songwriter Moby who asked, "What do you think of veganism and factory farming?" (Moby is a vegan.)

Bittman's reply:

I think veganism is the most principled position one can take when it comes to eating; there is no need to eat animal products at all, and - aside from processed food - they are the most damaging foods produced, both from a personal and a global perspective.

Having said that, I think veganism is a very tough sell. And I would rather see millions, tens of millions of people significantly reduce their consumption of animal products than see tens of thousands eliminate them.

As an aside, let's also remember that one can be a vegan and still eat junk. So my advice remains - eat plants above all else, eat unprocessed or minimally processed plants whenever possible, and eat these foods at the expense of everything else, particularly animal products and junk.

Another Reason to Plant a Garden

If you still need a reason to create your own Yard Farm (home garden), maybe this prediction from Jim Rogers, one of the world's best (and most conservative) commodity investors, will help: "Sometime in the next few years we're going to have very serious shortages of food everywhere in the world, and prices are going to go through the roof." He (along with many others) sees another rise in petroleum prices in the near future to coincide with food shortages—and the two are linked. The world's commercial agricultural systems are petroleum based: farm equipment runs on petroleum, fertilizers and pesticides are petroleum based, and petroleum is used to transport food an average of 1,500 miles from field to fork. Couple that with the fact that commercial farmers, who live on debt, can't get bank loans because banks aren't lending . . . it does not a pretty picture paint.

Who will be least affected? Those who grow and harvest their own food in their own back (and front) yards. (Fifty feet from field to fork.)

You can read more about Jim Rogers here (he has a record of being presciently accurate about these mega-trends) and read the short article with his predictions here.

Flax Bread

In the Jan/Feb (2010) issue of Hallelujah Acres' HealthNews magazine is a recipe for flax bread. I tried it and liked it. It's all raw and comes out very flat and thin, suitable for use as a wrap or eaten by itself. (Requires a dehydrator.)

Because of the flax this bread is loaded with Omega-3 EFA's and the flax and apple add loads of fiber.

2 cups ground flax seeds

2 cups water

2 apples, peeled, cored, quartered

1/2 tsp. cinnamon (I also added 1/2 tsp. of nutmeg -- add more of either to taste)

1 cup raisins

•Grind the flax seeds in a coffee bean grinder.

•Put apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, and water in a blender and blend well.

•Pour apple/water slurry into a large bowl and add the flax seed meal and raisins (make sure raisins aren't clumped together)

•Stir all ingredients together thoroughly and let stand for 30 minutes.

•Put 1/4 to 1/3 of the mix onto a Teflex sheet (I didn't have Teflex so used wax paper) the same size as a large dehydrator mesh sheet. Put the Teflex/wax paper onto the mesh sheet and put into the dehydrator. (I filled up five shelves in the dehydrator with the mix resulting from the recipe.)

[Note: the mix is thick and can be hard to spread out on the Teflex/wax paper. I used a rubber/plastic spatula continually dipped in water and it made smoothing the mix out much easier. Make the spread about 1/8" to 1/4" thick with no holes.]

•Dehydrate at 105 degrees for two hours.

•Take sheets out, flip the bread over and peel off the Teflex/wax paper and lay the bread directly on the dehydrator mesh sheets and dehydrate for another 1.5 - 2.0 hours at 105 degrees. (The thicker the spread of the mix, the longer it takes to dehydrate.)

•Take out before they get crisp and you can easily roll the sheets into wraps.

Here's what mine looked like:

Coming out of the dehydrator, the edges are ragged:

I used a pizza cutter to trim the ragged edges and make them into "square" pieces . . .

. . . resulting in a nice piece of thin flatbread (with scraps left for snacks):

Here are all the pieces trimmed:

Stored in a quart-sized ziplock bag (along with the edge scraps) ready for the refrigerator:

I'm thinking half of one of the sheets, covered with a thin layer of almond butter, covered with a large lettuce leaf, with a banana cut lengthwise on top of the lettuce leaf, and rolled into a wrap would make a filling lunch. And it's all raw!

The Manhattan Declaration

On November 20, 2009, a 4,700-word statement called "The Manhattan Declaration," signed by some 150 Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Evangelical leaders, was released to the public at a press conference in Washington, D.C. This is the opening paragraph from the press release:

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 20, 2009—Today a group of prominent Christian clergy, ministry leaders and scholars released the Manhattan Declaration, which addresses the sanctity of life, traditional marriage and religious liberty. The 4,700-word declaration issues a clarion call to Christians to adhere to their convictions and informs civil authorities that the signers will not—under any circumstance—abandon their Christian consciences. Drafted by Dr. Robert George, Dr. Timothy George and Chuck Colson and signed by more than 150 Orthodox, Catholic and evangelical Christian leaders, the Manhattan Declaration was made public at a noon ET press conference held in the Lisagor Room at the National Press Club.

Following is a summary of the purpose of The Manhattan Declaration from the web site:

A CALL OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Participants in the writing, signing, and publishing of this document are asking like-minded Christians to affirm their agreement with its intent and principles by reading the statement and signing it here.

"What Just Happened?!"

At the church I have been attending of late, the pastor, Dr. Munro, usually prepares questions for the older children (who attend the preaching service) to discuss when they go to their respective classes after the service is over. The questions help the children discuss what they heard in the sermon. The children discuss the questions with their teachers and sometimes draw pictures that represent their impression of the sermon.

At present Dr. Munro is doing a short series on the Christian doctrine of the Rapture of the Church—the belief that all believers in Christ will be removed from the earth (the deceased first, followed by those alive) to meet Christ in the air above the earth. (The event itself is described in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; the dynamics in 1 Corinthians 15:50-53.) This is not the Second Coming of Christ, but an event that removes all Christians from the earth (Revelation 3:10) prior to a time of great judgment that comes against those who have rebelled against God. If you are not familiar with the biblical teaching on the Rapture (Christians differ, as you might expect), Dr. Munro taught last week that it is an event that takes place instantaneously—the common view among evangelical Christians who hold to this doctrine. One moment, Christians are here on earth; the next minute they have vanished.

Well -- today he shared with the congregation a picture drawn by a fourth grade boy who heard last week's sermon. He should have shown it on the large video screens, but didn't—he just described it:

The boy turned his paper horizontally and drew a vertical line down the middle, separating the page into two equal-sized panels. Both panels were a child's rendering of the inside of the vast Calvary Church sanctuary—rows and rows of pews.

In the left-hand panel there was a clock on the wall that showed the time: 10:47 a.m.—the middle of the worship service. The pews were filled with innumerable circles representing the heads of those in attendance. The place was packed; not an empty seat anywhere.

The right-hand panel showed the identical scene of clock and pews. Only this time the clock read 10:48 a.m.—one minute later—and the pews were all empty except for a few scattered people on the back row. Above one of the heads of the people on the back row was a cartoon-like speech bubble, pointing to one of the people. Inside the bubble were the words, "What just happened?!"

This fourth-grader was communicating two things: One, he understood the nature of the Rapture to be the instantaneous removal of Christians from the earth—10:47 they're here, 10:48 they're not. And second, at such a young age, he had picked up the idea that folks who sit on the back row in church aren't really Christians at all—that they would be left wondering "what just happened?!" after the Rapture.

Calvary Church is well-versed in this doctrine and they "got it" immediately as Dr. Munro delivered the punch line. There were waves of laughter. Thousands of people in the sanctuary wanted to turn around to see who was sitting on the back row this morning—all in good fun, of course. And in his Scottish brogue, Dr. Munro, in an "I'm just saying" kind of way, said, "Front row in church, front row in heaven!"

Okay -- you had to be there. But it was great fun. And all "out of the mouth of a babe." Amazing what children pick up when we don't think they're listening (for good and for ill).

How Not to Offend

Michael Pollan offers a wimpy defense of his use of the word "mostly" in his now-famous motto about how we should eat: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." With the word "mostly" he succeeded in offending both the meat-eaters and the vegetarians/vegans. He called "mostly" a "compromise." He says, "You can't please everyone"—yet it appears that's exactly what he was trying to do; mollify the multitudes without taking a stand. The sign of a great politician (or perhaps a really wise man who plans to eventually remove the "mostly" in a future book—just winning the battle by inches at a time instead of all at once).

Michael Pollan is a very smart guy. But I don't think for a minute that, knowing what he knows, he believes eating any meat at all is a healthful thing to do. Until he writes a book debating the findings of Dr. Colin Campbell in The China Study I think he ought to humble himself before those who have scientific abilities he lacks. He's done amazing work in raising the subject of food and eating in the national consciousness—and has moved gradually toward a plant-based position in his books. But he should go ahead and make the leap.

If You Can Find a Better Deal . . .

In the two-plus years I've been writing this blog I've never quoted or referred to Ann Coulter. Even though she's a political conservative, I've never been a huge fan of her style—just a "different strokes" kind of thing. But her response to liberals who had conniptions over a statement made by Brit Hume on Fox recently is well worth reading. In case you missed it, Hume had some advice for Tiger Woods: (paraphrasing) "Instead of Buddhism, Tiger should turn to Christianity to receive the forgiveness and redemption he needs." Horrors! Hume said that on a television political talk show?

I laughed out loud when I saw the video of Hume's statement a few days ago, knowing he was about to be pilloried. And he was.

That was all Ann Coulter needed. She took the liberals to task who argued for the "separation of church and television" and exhorted them (and us), "If you can find a better deal [than Christianity], take it." Preach it, girl.

Her article is on the front page of her web site now. It may be moved to the running archive list on the side of the home page by the time you get there. Look for it by the title, "If you can find a better deal, take it."

Worm in the Apple

It was brought to my attention by a credit/debit card monitoring company this morning that some unusual activity had appeared on my bank debit card in the last couple days. Indeed, eight charges at three different companies: Yahoo, HostGator.com, and Apple's MobileMe -- somebody registering a bunch of domain names and setting up web sites, etc. Between my bank and the three companies, three of the four provided excellent responses to the situation. In the spirit of noting great customer service, my public thanks go to:

Citizens South Bank—my small, community based bank in Stallings, NC (cited on NBC Nightly News a few months ago as one of the most financially sound banks in the country). They immediately cancelled my card and requested a new one along with guidance on "what to do next."

Yahoo—in a matter of minutes by phone they found the bogus charges, cancelled them, and promised immediate reimbursement to my debit card.

HostGator.com—a web hosting company in Houston. Likewise, they found the bogus charge and promised an immediate refund.

But there was a worm in the Apple. Granted, this is a gazillion-dollar company, but still. There was no indication of who to call for such help on their Contact Us page. A call to Customer Service directed me to a web page where I entered into a live chat with a MobileMe agent who concluded they couldn't do anything to help. "You need to file a charge dispute form through your bank", etc etc.

Since the Apple charge was only $1.13 I'll probably not invest the time pursuing it. (The charges at the other companies amounted to hundreds of dollars.)

Kudos to my bank, Yahoo, and HostGator.com for excellent customer service. Apple—you should treat your lifelong customers more intelligently.

(Oh—and for the guy with the different accent who called early this morning to tell me about the activity on my card, sorry for not taking the call. I thought it was a telemarketer—"Hello . . . followed by 10 seconds of silence" until he mispronounced my name -- typical telemarketer signals. But I heard enough to call my bank to verify the activity. So—sorry, guy! And thanks for calling. I'll listen longer next time.)

"The Year in Meat: 2009"

I haven't been a regular reader of Erik Marcus' Vegan.com blog, but I plan to start. He not only writes this blog but is the author of The Ultimate Vegan Guide and Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, and Money.

On his blog he has posted a 5,000 word piece titled "The Year in Meat: 2009" which is a summary of noteworthy events in publishing, industry, media, and other venues related to animal welfare, veganism, factory farming, etc. It's a quick and easy read and is filled with more than 175 links to relevant books, films, news items, web sites, and other resources that he mentions. A quick perusal revealed things I (not surprisingly) missed via the MSM—such as the attempt by some agribusiness leaders to prevent Washington State University from making Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma required reading for 4,000 entering freshmen. When word of the censorship attempt got around, a WSU alumnus paid for the books and ensured they were made available. Or the gifts of beef by Texas cattlemen to fire houses in Texas after Austin, TX, firefighter Rip Esselstyn's vegan diet book, The Engine 2 Diet, began making national headlines.

These and many other 2009 events are covered in Erik Marcus' year-end review.

New from Kathy Freston

Author, lecturer, vegan, and Huffington Post blogger Kathy Freston has two new blog posts, both worth reading.

1. "Top 10 (Recent) Developments on Factory Farming and Vegetarianism."

In this article she highlights 10 recent developments in the world of animal welfare, things like Al Gore finally acknowledging the role of meat consumption on climate change, Martha Stewart promoting a vegetarian Thanksgiving, and others. One she could have left off—or cited as a negative development—was Cargill's new offering of a non-dairy cheese. Just what we need in the grocery store aisles—another collection of processed chemicals and "stuff" resulting in a non-food food product. Cargill's own press release doesn't say what's in it, only that it was produced by their patented "Lygomme ACH Optimum functional system." Sounds delish! Sorry, Kathy -- can't agree with you on this one.

2. "Flue Season: Factory Farming Could Cause A Catastrophic Pandemic."

This article is the transcript of Freston's interview with Dr. Michael Greger about his book Bird Flu—A Virus of Our Own Hatching (available to be read in its entirety online here). I'm a big fan of Dr. Greger who is a committed vegan and Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States. He is a published author in many scientific journals and has lectured widely on health and animal agriculture. He was even called as an expert witness in Oprah Winfrey's defense when she was sued by the "meat industry" for remarks she made about eating meat on her show (a case she won). Every year Dr. Greger surveys thousands of journal articles looking for the best research related to diet and health and presents the results in an annual DVD (three so far). (He comes at the research from a scientists perspective, but the conclusions in the research literature are always the same: a balanced, whole food, plant-based diet is healthiest.) He has a terrific, dry sense of humor and makes these annual DVD's really fun to watch. (Dr. Greger's web site is here.) In this interview with Kathy Freston he talks about how factory farming is a pandemic waiting to happen because of the ideal virus incubation conditions provided by the close confinement of animals.

Small World

Received a nice note from a lady who found the post I wrote back in August about the sinking of the HMT Rohna, the British troopship sunk by the Germans in the Mediterranean Sea in World War II (Nov 26, 1943). My dad was on that ship and was one of the few Americans to survive. (Of the 1,138 men lost, 1,015 were Americans.) The sinking of the Rohna remains the single largest lost of American troops at sea in any war.

(I smile thinking that no hardheaded Dutchman like my dad was about to let a lousy Luftwaffe pilot consign him to the briny deep—and the fact that he was an excellent swimmer. Not to mention the fact that he still had conception work to do after the War—me!)

The lady who wrote me said that her father was a crew member on the USS Pioneer, an American minesweeper that was one of the first ships to come to the aid of the Rohna survivors and which rescued most of them. She wondered if our fathers might have met. However, Daddy was rescued by a British cargo ship, SS Clan Campbell, so it's not likely they met.

Thanks to the Internet for making these unlikely connections happen—another small stitch in the tapestry of life.

[When I get a minute I'll post the article daddy wrote and submitted to Reader's Digest magazine years ago (they declined to publish it) about the sinking of the Rohna and later working side-by-side at NASA with the German scientist who developed the airborne torpedo that sunk his ship.]

"Ten Technologies that Will Rock 2010"

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch.com discusses 10 technologies -- all web and mobile related -- that should make a splash this year.

Strangers in the Valley

Ellen Bromfield Geld, daughter of Malabar Farm founder Louis Bromfield, writes beautifully in Strangers in the Valley—The Story of Malabar in Brazil (1957, now out of print) about her and her husband's search for, and finding, an old farm on which to begin their farming life in Brazil:

In the midst of it all an old house stood, almost hidden by an ancient crumbling stone wall and a grove of orange and lemon trees, bittersweet and half wild with time. Sunlight sifted through the dark feathery leaves of the lemon grove and fell soft against the house's aged yellow walls. In some places the walls had been washed away by spring rains, in others eaten through by termites; but there remained sturdy beams and dark wooden floors, tremendous rooms with high ceilings and wide stone hearths. For many years it had sheltered nothing but herds of wandering cattle, who had bumped and scratched and covered with dung everything but the most distant and ghostly of memories. How beautiful it must have been when the first Brazilian family lived there, tending the garden and the orchards and the fertile land beyond! A beautiful garden could be fashioned again back along the flat stretch of land into the very mountains and forests themselves. And the house could be rebuilt with a wide veranda all the way around and perhaps a new wing with a kitchen and spring house. Someday, if we grow old in this valley, we shall do all this.

We went often to Barreiros [the farm]. We picnicked under an old, sinuous, jabuticaba tree, which sprinkled its sweet fruit all over the ground, and ate mangoes from a tree which bore them large, soft and true yellow.

Sometimes we climbed to the summits of those mountains and looked out over mile upon mile of forest and granite-covered hills. From there we could see the dark, tortuously curving line of the River Atibaia, the green groves of eucalyptus which marched up the rim of every mountain and spread themselves in waves over every summit. And in the far distance we could see the white church steeple of the town of Itatiba. The rest of the world was wide open, so that a man could look as far as he liked without having his vision hindered by highways and signboards and ugly towns and all the clutter of a fast-growing civilization. The nearest highway could not be seen from Barreiros, and in this we discovered a host of new reasons for our coming to Brazil. [pp. 61-62]

The Gelds' own reasons for moving to Brazil were put succinctly by another Brazilian they met who gave up a lucrative career to become a farmer: "We wanted to live and not just spend our lives." [p. 152]

Vegan Outreach

Vegan Outreach is a non-profit advocacy group that uses volunteers to pass out literature in a non-confrontational way on college campuses about the abuses to animals inherent in the factory farming of animals for consumption. Since the fall of 2003, just under four million college students have been handed a pamphlet, and millions more at other events (concerts, festivals, etc.)—11 million total since 2001.

You can watch a brief slide show of this year's leafleting activity on college campuses here. You can view a .pdf of the booklet ("Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating") or order a paper copy, here.

The Source of Soy

The Cornucopia Institute is a watchdog group "promoting economic justice for family scale farming." They do in-depth research on the status of issues effecting small farmers and consumers with special attention given to the "organic industry" (which, by the way, is gradually losing more and more of its luster and integrity since being "bureaucratized" by the Federal government).

One of Cornucopia's most recent in-depth projects was to determine the quality of the soy going into the hundreds of organic soy-based products now on the market. That is, are soy products that claim to be organic verifiably organic? Are the companies producing or selling them transparent about their processes? Is the soy GMO? Has it been produced with hexane, an EPA-listed contaminant used in much commercial soil processing? Etc?

Cornucopia developed a thorough screening process for ranking companies producing organic-labeled soy products and assigned a rating based on the company's practices and their transparency in providing information.

Here is the page that details the study, provides an executive summary, and provides a very detailed scorecard for the scores of companies rated. It's easy to see how your favorite organic soy companies or product lines fared using the scorecard (by ranking or alphabetically by company/product name).

The rankings go from zero to five "soy beans," five being the best. Here are how a few well-known brands ranked:

Eden Foods (5 out of 5)

Tofurky (4 out of 5)

Nasoya (4 out of 5)

Vitasoy (3 out of 5)

Harris Teeter Private Label (3 out of 5)

Trader Joe's Private Label (2 out of 5)

Boca Burgers (0 out of 5)

Pacific Foods (0 out of 5)

Silk (0 out of 5)

365 by Whole Foods Market (0 out of 5)

Kirkland by Costco (0 out of 5)

Wegmans (0 out of 5)

The above represents a small sampling of the scores of companies profiled. Two things to bear in mind:

1. A company might have scored poorly for their unwillingness to divulge information about the sourcing of their soy as well as for the actual sourcing itself.

2. Almost all private-label brands (TJ's, 365 by Whole Foods, Kirkland by Costco, et al) scored poorly because they have no idea where their "organic" soy comes from because the production is handled by multiple layers of "middle men" who prepare soy products for private label brands.

This research is another example of just how complicated "food" has become in our modern system—even "organic" food. I'm especially bummed about the amount of hexane my liver has probably struggled to process after polishing off several quarts of Silk Nog over the holidays. :-)

There remains no substitute for growing one's own food and eating it in as pure (unprocessed) form as possible with one's personal "beyond organic" standards of integrity.

[Two other helpful resources for understanding the "organic" food industry on the Cornucopia web site are these: a graphic showing who really owns the organic food sector (increasingly, the large agribusinesses) and an animated graphic showing the consolidations that took place in the organic food industry between 1995 and 2007. Both graphics were prepared by Dr. Phil Howard at Michigan State University.]

(Thanks to the Cornucopia Institute for the unauthorized use of the image above from their web site.)

Catching Up

Some recent pictures from here and there:

Avocado trees moved inside for the winter . . .

along with pineapple plants:

I run humidifiers in the house during the winter to keep the humidity levels up. This one has a thermostat so it cycles on and off creating a great environment for the plants. This mist is so fine that it doesn't get things damp unless it runs for a couple hours or more:

The largest aloe vera has sent up a single tall bloom stalk, something I've never seen before:

The winter broccoli is producing beautifully—the leaves take a hit when it gets down in the 20's at night, but the heads remain firm:

Tools of the earth: garden tools hanging on the outside of Daniel and Jennifer's garden shed.

Everybody got cashmere scarves for Christmas. (Daniel was especially excited.)

Ellen decided hers would make a good head-wrap for Granddaddy. (Shades of the 'Sixties.)

Ellen and Arianna did a couple duets on their recorders:

Caught the low winter light streaming through the living room windows. The secretary in the corner was the "control center" in my parents' home—where Daddy sat to pay bills; where Mama filed away her annual calendars filled in with scribbled notes of daily happenings; where I found my English maternal grandfather's leather-bound diary he kept as he walked and sang his way from Kentucky to New Orleans to win a bet that he could start with nothing in his pocket and arrive in New Orleans fed and clothed—which he apparently did. (The diary stopped somewhere near Marion, Alabama where he was distracted by a young school teacher named Fleming Cocke—whom he married in New Orleans. So I presume he made it, fed as well as wed.) The secretary shelves are filled with books not deserving of dust, the desk holds a growing collection of family pictures. The old family pictures at the lower right fill the wooden trunk that my paternal great-grandfather brought with him when he made the voyage from Holland to America to begin a new life in the land of opportunity, settling in Pella, Iowa. The picture on the wall above them—an aerial shot of the Old City of Jerusalem which I visited in 1982; found the photo rolled up in a dusty shop in the Old City; brought it home in-hand and it survived the next 20+ years until I could get it framed. Not all the corners in my world are worth contemplating, but this one is (for me).

Guess What's Missing From Your Food (and Thus from You)?

Ocean Grown is a Florida company that harvests ocean water far off the eastern coast of Florida and concentrates it for dilution (1:100) as a soil amendment and plant/grass/tree fertilizer. I visited their offices in Naples several years ago when they first began work and almost joined up I was so excited about what they were doing. I've been using Ocean Grown Solution to water my wheatgrass and garden ever since.

Why ocean water? Because it contains the perfect balance of the 90+ chemical elements found in nature, all of which should (in a perfect world) appear in the earth's crust (soil) and in the foods grown in that soil. (Different plants need and select different minerals from the soil.) Dr. Maynard Murray, the "father" of the ocean-water-as-nutrient idea, in his book Sea Energy Agriculture, described plants and their fruit as nothing more than conduits for getting minerals out of the soil into the human body (which gives new insight to Genesis 1:19: "for dust you are and to dust you will return").

The demineralization of the earth's soil, through wind and water erosion, poor agriculture practices, and failure to replenish, has led to nutrient-poor foods which has contributed to the lack of vitality and health in those who feed upon them. This is one of the main reasons to eat organically-grown foods as opposed to conventionally-grown—organic farmers (generally) make an effort to add back to the soil more than they take from it through composting, deep-root cover cropping (some grasses and legumes can send roots as deep as 20 feet below the surface, bringing fresh supplies of minerals to a plant's foliage which is then plowed back into the top few inches of the soil ready to be taken up new crops), remineralization, and proper tillage.

In one of their recent magazine ads, Ocean Grown produced the following color-coded periodic table of the elements, the headline stating that earth's soil used to contain every chemical element in this chart (except the two yellow ones). They then ask, "See the BLACK ones? Those are the ones listed on your fertilizer bag."

Everyone who has fertilized their yard or garden is familiar with the three numbers on the bag of fertilizer, e.g., 10-10-10. Those are the three chemicals represent by the black boxes on the chart: nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K). A nineteenth-century German scientist, Justus von Liebig, the "father of modern fertilizer," set in motion the discoveries that led to the realization that plants could grow with adequate N, P, and K alone—especially N. But what about the other 87 elements? Plants will grow without all the elements they ideally need, but not robustly. And neither will humans and other animals who feed on mineral-deficient plants. (Obviously, all soil contains some minerals. The point is that most/all soils today are unbalanced and deficient in mineral content.)

This post isn't an advertisement for Ocean Grown. But the three black boxes in the periodic table from their ad point out the deficiency of most modern fertilizers that are lacking the majority of chemical elements that are needed for healthy soil, healthy plants, and health beings. Fortunately, companies like Ocean Grown (and now others) are providing remineralizing products via ocean water, and other companies have been providing remineralizing amendments (trace minerals harvested from dried sea beds) for gardeners and farmers to add back to their soil (products like Azomite, Planters II trace minerals, and others). The more complete the mineral balance in our soil the more resources our bodies have to work with in maintaining health via the foods grown in those soils.

What Makes a Good Song?

Old Crow Medicine Show's signature song, Wagon Wheel, is a GREAT song. Okay, give 'em a pass on a few of the lyrics and then watch the audience tell you whether they think this is a great song or not—singable, memorable, unique, with a high harmony line to die for, and just plain FUN. This is from their live concert DVD filmed in Asheville and Knoxville where they are revered by a loyal fan base. Not hard to see why:

Parenting Today for Tomorrow

I'd like to commend two blog posts written by a friend of my daughter-in-law on the topic of parenting young children -- developing biblical convictions and practices today that will guide and protect children in the future.

Kelly and her husband, Jason, are the parents of twin girls and a boy, all very young. Kelly is a gifted writer (as is Jason on his blog), but these two posts of hers deserve a wide reading. If you go to Kelly's blog today you'll find they are the two most recent posts at the top of the blog. If you come across this reference in the future (when the two posts have been shuffled into the archives), here are the individual links to the two posts: Part One ("My Two-Year-Olds Are Dating") and Part Two ("Part 2: Our Two-Year-Olds Are Dating").

There are many young parents investing significantly in their children's future who may not have time or inclination to write about their priorities and practices. But when good parenting and good writing surface in the same place, it's worth taking note.

Kennedy Center Honors

The current class of five Kennedy Center honorees were celebrated earlier this fall and the ceremony will be broadcast tonight on CBS at 9:00 p.m. If you are not familiar with the Kennedy Center awards, they are a genuine education in the history of the arts in America. Every class of five represents a cross-section as exemplified by the current honorees: Bruce Springsteen, Mel Brooks, Robert de Niro, Dave Brubeck, and Grace Bumbry.

There is a wonderful retrospective with clips from previous awards ceremonies here -- it is terrific (it's a bit slow to load, but worth the wait). I got tears in my eyes just watching some of these clips. I especially loved seeing again the clip from the night Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boys, was honored -- seeing Washington's, Broadway's, and Hollywood's elite in their tuxes and gowns on their feet dancing to "California Girls," honoring this musical genius who fought his way back from the darkness of depression and breakdowns to write music once again. Unfortunately, they didn't show the finale when scores of beach balls were dropped into the audience from the ceiling. It was amazing. The older one is, the more cherished these memories become.

If you've never seen the Kennedy Center Awards shows, tonight's promises to be a good one.

Dave Barry's 2009 "Year in Review"

Read Dave Barry's summary of 2009, in typically hilarious fashion, here.