Habits, Habits

In the space of 24 hours this weekend I was confronted with three lessons on the same subject. I assumed they were for me, specifically, but perhaps they will create resonance in your thinking as well. The subject: habits.

1. I was standing in my neighbor's backyard discussing his amazing and fast-growing wild blackberry patch and how to cut it back before it takes over the neighborhood. His back yard, in an angular fashion, abuts the yard of another neighbor, separated by a fence. I was struck by the odd paths that were worn in the abutting back yard. You can see them in this picture, but they are even more pronounced, and further to the right, in person:

I didn't realize what they were until the black Lab that lived in that backyard came racing down to tear along the dividing fence with my neighbor's dog while we talked (see the worn path at the base of the fence on the Lab's side). After four or five laps the two dogs gave up and the Lab loped back up toward h/er house—on the central path you see in the picture. I was amazed. This dog's world seemed to consist of what s/he saw and encountered on the paths s/he had carved into the sod. The path branches jutting off to the right must have led to a couple of other points of (habitual) interests in h/er world. But I wondered: What pleasures and new horizons must the Lab be missing as a result of h/er habitual confinements to the same paths every day? More importantly, if I could take a God's-eye view of my life, what paths would I see in my world that I trod daily—loping mindlessly along like that Lab—without thinking; paths that act as blinders to what's around me? Indeed, those paths appear in the carpets of our homes over time. But what about the unseen mental and physical paths we create in the world? Habits.

2. I was reading an interview with a former Wall Street investment guy who made a career shift and returned to medical school and became a doctor, and now combines both areas of expertise in his return to "wholistic" investment counseling. He was talking about the kinds of things that contribute to mental acuity as we age—well-known things like crossword puzzles, juggling, ping-pong, learning a new language or musical instrument, etc. But he also mentioned the importance of breaking habitual patterns—things like brushing one's hair or teeth with the "opposite" hand and getting dressed with your eyes closed in order to force the brain to create new neural pathways. Those last suggestions were new to me and spoke to the habitual parts of my life. Think how many things we do habitually (teeth, hair, dressing) that are passive; that require no new thought, concentration, experimentation, or learning, and therefore contribute nothing to the expansion of our experience, elasticity, or enjoyment in life. Habits.

3. I'm currently reading a book called Maximum Achievement by a well-known corporate speaker and trainer named Brian Tracy. (The book is great—really forcing me to think in fresh ways about where I am in life, and why, versus where I'd like to be.) I was reading his thoughts on "habits" (pp. 90-91):

Virtually everything you do is the result of habit. The way you talk, the way you work, drive, think, interact with others, spend money and deal with the important people in your life are all largely habitual. Your behavior in every area of life is based on the accumulation of all your experiences, starting in infancy. Probably 95 percent of your actions an reactions are automatic, unconscious responses to your physical and human environment

Your habits are major obstacles to your becomeing the kind of person you want to be. Your habitual ways of thinking, feeling, talking and behaving are often roadblocks that stand between where you are today and where you really want to go. They keep you "running in place" . . . .

The most dangerous habits you can form, however, are mental habits. Because of the fact that whatever you think about continually you create in your life, your negative or self-limiting thoughts hurt you more than almost anything else you can engage in. . . .

Success and failure, happiness, and unhappiness, are largely the result of habit, of the automatic ways you respond and react to what's going on around you. Changing habits that are no longer consistent with your higher purposes is one of the hardest things you'll ever do, and one of the most essential to the quality of your life. But unless you've already reached some level of excellence or perfection, you are living today with habits that you must discard if you are going to move forward. Remember, bad habits are easy to form, but hard to live with; good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with. Your job is to form good habits and make them your masters.

The good news is that all habits are learned, and they can therefore be unlearned.

Habits.

I was glad to be confronted with the dangers, and opportunities, associated with living habitually. There are good habits and paths, to be sure (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Jeremiah 6:16; 18:15). But I wonder if even the good ones can become the enemy of the best. Anything we do without fresh, conscious thinking—either reaffirmation to continue or sudden awareness of a new and better way—seems more passive than active.

This is fresh ground for me—at least as of this weekend. But I meditated on all these as I (rather mindlessly, except for continual prayers for safety) went up and down the ladders, pressure-washing the outside of my house. After hours of chewing this cud I decided it was worth passing on. (Maybe not the best image—but let me know your thoughts.)

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One path being worn in my yard is to my compost bin. Checked the temp Sunday and things are heating up:

Stunningly Beautiful Music

The better your speakers, the better this sounds, so turn up whatever you listen through to hear the soft sounds at the beginning and the deep harmonies throughout:

The Sad State of America

This is an example of numerous intelligent critics who see a dim future for America in light of the current (and a couple previous) administration's fiscal and economic policies. This video plays automatically when loading the blog, so I'll take it down after a few days since it becomes an annoyance by its always-on status after being shuffled further down in the blog. After removing the video player in a few days the video can be seen here.

Economy Car

Last time I bought gas for my car I set the trip odometer in order to check my mileage. Refilled my tank today with 7.304 gallons after driving 246.2 miles, which results in 33.71 mpg. And those are all in-town, stop-and-go miles, so I'm assuming highway mileage would be even better. I like it!

I drive under 60 mph (usually), skip at least one of the lower gears when I can, start and stop slowly, and keep my tires inflated. Signs of old age, I guess, but I think these all contribute to better mileage.

Every time I begin thinking about replacing my 1987 Honda I realize I'd be driving something that would likely not get as good mileage as I currently get. So I press on. Am really thankful for the divine blessing of a car that meets my needs so economically. Thank You, Lord.

Bicycle Ballet

Well, so much for my being able to ride around in the street on a two-wheel bike without falling over. These girls at some kind of 2009 bike competition in Europe (Holland, I think) are astounding. The bicycle is such a huge part of European culture—especially Holland and Belgium—that riding one is an art form. The bikes the girls are performing on are fixed-gear bikes with no brakes. That is, if you peddle forward you go forward; if you peddle backward you go backward. The riding on one wheel thing is something to behold:

Tobacco Hornworm

Discovered two of the biggest tobacco hornworms I've ever seen on a tomato plant today. I would have called these tomato hornworms before doing a bit of research. The tobacco and tomato hornworms are nearly identical except for two things:

Tobacco hornworm: a reddish horn on the tail and white diagonal stripes on the body.

Tomato hornworm: a black horn on the tail and white (horizontal) "V's" on the body.

These are obviously tobacco hornworms given the reddish horns and white diagonal stripes. They both attack the same kind of plants (mainly tomatoes and potatoes, but also eggplants and peppers) so you may see one or both kinds. I left these alone in hopes that their natural enemy, tiny parasitic braconid wasps, will come and lay eggs on their backs. The eggs hatch and the larvae bore into the hornworm's skin and feed off its body fluids, sealing its fate. The larvae then emerge and create scores of tiny white cocoons which mount vertically on the hornworm's back. The cocoons eventually "hatch" new parasitic wasps which are great for the garden. I'll try to get pics of that if it happens. (Have some from years past but they aren't digital so can't post them.) If they don't become a host for the wasps they eventually fall to the ground, burrow underground and pupate over the winter, hatching into a new brownish-patterned hornworm moths that lay eggs on plants the following year, starting the cycle again.

This one was huge -- nearly four inches long (inside the red ellipse):

This one was shorter, about three inches. The poopy-looking stuff is exactly that -- or frass, to be more exact:

Here's what they do: strip tomato branches perfectly clean of leaves. The hornworms, because of their coloration and the thick foliage of their preferred plants, are extremely hard to spot. But looking for stripped-down branches, and the pills of frass on the tomatoes and branches, is a sure sign a hornworm(s) is lurking:

Wilbur, Dogue de Bordeaux

A couple of quick pics of Wilbur, Sammy Koenigsburg's French Mastiff (dogue de Bordeaux). He's the sweetest thing you ever saw—loves to come right up for a scratch-'n-rub as long as you're willing to indulge him. Don't know if he would provide a barrier to intruders, but I wouldn't want to find out. Without a reference point in these pics, it's hard to get a feel for his size. He is HUGE:

The chickens roam around oblivious to Wilbur's looming presence:

Yard Scenes

Just some quick scenes from around the yard. The buckwheat around the dogwood tree was about ready to flower when I took these pics, and has now flowered. It's a cover crop that will add biomass and nitrogen to that little patch of earth in anticipation of some cool-weather crops this fall:

Some Brandywine heirloom tomatoes looking healthy:

Blueberries (darker pine straw mulch) and tomatoes (wheat straw mulch) along the back fence (all growing poorly, if I do say so):

Compost "bin" slowly gaining mass:

The ambient temperature was 80 and the interior temp of the pile was only 94 -- not enough mass yet to generate considerable heat. It should get up around 130 degrees if it ever gets cooking correctly (which it probably won't at the slow rate I'm adding raw material):

I trimmed the decimated leaves (from the cabbage butterfly caterpillars) off the kale and it's coming back! And I haven't seen the white butterflies around for about a week so I hope this new growth will last into the Fall:

A burgeoning aloe vera plant:

A wasp and butterfly (moth?) on the buckwheat:

The First Sane Words . . .

For a number of reasons, I have not paid a great deal of attention to the war of words over "healthcare" reform. Ever since watching one of last fall's presidential debates between Obama and McCain, and the subsequent election of Obama, I have tuned out, for this reason: In that debate, the moderator asked both candidates whether they considered "healthcare" a right or a responsibility. Obama said "right" while McCain said "responsibility." With Obama now in the White House, his view that healthcare is a right is the primary reason I have tuned out of the current debate. That view can only lead to more massive government programs to provide said right while giving citizens an excuse to opt out of the responsibility for creating their own healthful lifestyles.

But I have seen one set of sane words from a Senator that expresses what I believe about America's health crisis—that it is due to lifestyle choices for which we are largely responsible. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin (Iowa) recently published a paper titled "Fighting Disease, and Remaking America as a Wellness Society." You can read the entire paper (alas, full of proposals for umpteen pieces of legislation) for the details, but the opening paragraphs of his paper are worthy of commendation. I find it amazing that this view has not been heard elsewhere in the debate. Perhaps it has been—as I said, I haven't been listening that much.

Harkin writes:

The wealthiest nation in the world ought to be the healthiest nation in the world. But we're not. In fact, the U.S. ranks a dismal 24th in life expectancy, and we lag on many other health measures, as well.

The problem is that, while the U.S. spends far more on health care per capita than any other country, we spend it unwisely. More than 75 percent of all U.S. medical expenditures are accounted for by chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stress, and depression—man of which are preventable by changes in diet and lifestyle. Meanwhile, we spend peanuts on prevention—less than five percent of health care spending in the U.S. goes toward the prevention of chronic disease. In short, we don't have a health care system in America; we have a sick care system. And this misplaced emphasis on "sick care" is a major reason why there has been a shocking 78 percent increase in family health care premiums since 2001.

In my opinion, we don't hear the words "preventable by changes in diet and lifestyle" coming out of Washington more often because so many politicians' campaigns are funded, and their ears bent, by powerful food and agribusiness lobbyists. It's commendable that Harkin, a senator from one of the breadbasket states in the Union (Iowa), had the courage to print such words. May his tribe increase.

When Friends Become Your Food

Trace Ramsey is a thoughtful small farmer, photographer, and commentator living somewhere around the Pittsboro (Raleigh-Durham) area of North Carolina. He publishes occasional commentary with pictures on his blog, and I took the opportunity to post a response to today's post, "What Happens When Your Friends Become Your Food."

The post title explains the dilemma Trace is wrestling with: raising and caring for three little piggies that he knows he will one day kill and eat. Along with beautiful pictures of his pigs and their lush, natural habitat provided by Trace, there is honest and compassionate reflection about the tension created when you make friends with beings you intend to eat. But Trace says clearly that the answer is not to treat the animals as non-sentient "farm machines," because they aren't. Instead, he wrestles with a genuine problem, and I commend him for the public revelation of his thought process. His conclusion is a call for animal farmers to take responsibility for the meat meals they produce for themselves and others, responsibility manifested in how the animals are raised and cared for.

Here is the comment I left on his blog -- I offer it here in hopes of continuing the dialog:

Hi Trace,

Enjoy your photography and commentary! And I appreciate the thought you have put into the dilemma of killing and consuming your piggie pals. That thought process alone sets you apart from the vast majority of animal farmers in the world. You are definitely to be commended for creating a lifestyle for your pigs that lets them express all their porcine sensibilities — their “pigness,” as Joel Salatin likes to say. The pictures of your co-laborers on your farm gives evidence of the healthy life you’ve provided for them.

Could I add another thought here (as a vegan)? I think the very fact that you care about the dilemma you’ve created (killing that which you have “created” and grown to care for) is evidence that harvesting animals for food is an unnatural act. It’s easy to grow to feel the same way about a pig as we do about a dog or cat. They all enjoy belly rubs and ear-scratches and demonstrate pure pleasure that a tomato plant or tractor can not. You are certainly accurate to conclude that farm animals aren’t machines. It’s why we don’t kill and eat our pet dogs while they do in other cultures. There is obvious a lot of cultural confusion about what to do with animals we grow to care about. I think your sensitivity to the needs and ultimate end of your pigs is evidence that something in you/us wants NOT to kill them and eat them.

That reality then begs the question, Why should we? There is nothing in animal flesh that we need for good health that is not available in plants (with the possible exception of vitamin B-12 which, if we didn’t sanitize and cook our field crops, we’d get plenty of from the naturally-occurring bacteria that produce B-12)—and much that we don’t need (saturated fat, cholesterol, etc.). Therefore, eating animal flesh ultimately boils down to appetite and economics: Meat (fat) has a taste humans grow to like, and raising animals free-range is perhaps economically motivating.

So if taste and economics are the two main reasons for eating animals, we’ve only complicated our dilemma: We have now elevated our taste and pocketbook as higher values than the existence and pleasure of other sentient beings. In other words, we have to say to our porkers (chickens, cows), “I don’t need to kill you in order to be healthy, but I’m going to kill you because you taste good and you’re worth more to me dead than alive.” Ouch! No wonder we feel conflicted about the act.

Please don’t take my thoughts as adversarial, Trace. As I’ve said, I commend you for the public and deliberate way you’re working through your relationship to the animals you’re raising. I hope other animal farmers will learn from your example and that your commentary will stimulate further helpful and healthy dialogue on what is, at best, a complicated issue.

Ultimately, of course, I wish the human race could learn to co-exist with the non-human species in a non-confrontational way. Idealistic, perhaps, but as a Bible reader I see that peaceful coexistence was the pattern in the beginning (Genesis 2:19-20) and will be in the coming peaceable kingdom (Isaiah 11:6-9). Both man and animals were apparently created to be vegan (Genesis 1:29-30), though that pattern has been maligned through the ages. But I still think it represents the ideal to strive for. Dilemmas are not always avoidable, but the original plant-based pattern for living allows us to avoid the self-imposed angst we feel about loving, then consuming, our non-human friends.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts and providing a forum for feedback and discussion. Best wishes in all your endeavors and efforts to create a food “system” that is sustainable and satisfying to all its participants, human and non-human alike.

Chipotle's Business Model

Because I eat out so rarely, I had never eaten at a Chipotle fast-food restaurant. I've been aware of them for years but never knew there was anything different about them other than that seemed to be growing rapidly. But after watching the following video—they buy pork, chicken, and beef from sustainable natural farmers like Joel Salatin—I looked a bit closer and discovered there was a Chipotle in Matthews. I ordered and paid for a vegetarian burrito online and scheduled a pickup time following church on Sunday—worked like a charm. The burrito was great—my only preference would have been for brown rice instead of nutritionally deficient white rice—but otherwise it was very good. Nice to see a major fast-food chain going the extra step to use food sources that are outside the factory-farm system for raising animals. Unfortunately, neither the video nor anything on their web site (that I saw) suggests they are using organically grown ingredients on the veggie side of their model. Hopefully they'll get there. (I also like Chipotle because they co-sponsored a pro-Tour bike racing Team, at least for a year—haven't heard anything about their sponsorship lately.)

Anybody have any other experience/information about Chipotle? My enthusiasm for Chipotle's business model (their animal food sources) shouldn't be misinterpreted as support for their animal-based menu. Rather, I take note of it as evidence of a rising level of consciousness in the culture about the place of animals as "beings" rather than as commodities. That's a step in the right direction. The next step will be, once animals are recognized as "beings" by the whole culture, when the culture experiences the revulsion of slaughtering and consuming sentient beings. So we acknowledge small steps as they occur. And Chipotle has definitely taken a major step in a positive direction by sourcing their animal products from farmers who treat the animals well, doing less harm to the animals and the people who eat them.

Happy Birthday, Soldier

My father, Robert Daniel Kruidenier, had cancer not taken his life prematurely, would have been 95 years old this past Wednesday, August 12. Pausing today to honor his memory, especially for my children who didn't get to know him very well. I found this picture online a couple years ago taken somewhere in China in the CBI Theatre (China-Burma-India) in WW II -- members of the 29th Fighter Squadron -- American pilots who were training Chinese pilots to fight against the invading Japanese. (Several of the men in this picture are Chinese.) He came home with no pictures of that period of his life and am thankful that someone had posted this one online. He did make it home with his A-1 military issue flight jacket, worn in this picture, which we still have. The P-40 Tomahawk in the right rear was the plane he flew; we do have pictures of him in other settings strapped into this workhorse. He is in this picture only because he survived the sinking of the British troop transport ship he was on in the Mediterranean, the H.M.T. Rhona, as he made his way to the CBI Theatre. He later worked closely at N.A.S.A. with the German scientist who developed the plane-mounted torpedo used to sink the Rhona. That sinking was the first successful deployment of the torpedo in the war, a fact that the U.S. military kept quiet since they didn't want to advertise the success of this new German weapon. Daddy and the German munitions engineer had a good (nervous) laugh about the ironies of life and war many years later.

Thanks for your service, Daddy -- wish you'd lived longer. Happy 95th anyway. (Daddy is standing, back row, fourth from the left. If you click on the picture you can see a bit larger version.)

21-Day Kickstart to a Plant-based Lifestyle

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is sponsoring a 21-day introduction to a vegan diet beginning September 8. It will include daily emails with guidance and tips leading to weight loss and better health. PCRM is extremely trustworthy and sound in its guidance. I've signed up for the 21-day journey, figuring I can always learn something new. You can do this completely privately by going here and furnishing PCRM your email address. (You can always opt out if you decide to either during the 21 days or after if you no longer wish to receive PCRM communiques.)

Saint Joel

You won't be around the organic/natural food movement very long before hearing of Joel Salatin, and for good reason. He is the icon in the movement for raising animals in a natural, humane way -- right up until the moment, as one commentator has put it, that he slits their throat. There's much contradiction in some of his words (you may or may not agree), but let's give him credit for raising healthy animals and treating them as temporary partners in the mosaic of creation. He's a clay-footed character, as we all are -- but one who has helped to change a farming system badly in need of redemption. Another clip from the movie Fresh:

It's About Life

Also from the movie Fresh -- Will Allen is a pioneer in the urban gardening/farming movement. Great views of what he's done with three acres in an urban environment. Wish the animals weren't destined for the table, but that's another horizon to conquer in this growing movement of returning to natural food and health:

Dangers of Confined Animal Breeding

Another clip from the movie Fresh -- the experience of a hog producer who raised his animals in confinement instead of on natural pasture. Because he injected so many antibiotics into his hogs to combat the diseases that arose in confinement, they developed resistant strains of bacteria. When a boar hog stabbed him in the leg with a tusk, he contracted an infection from which he almost died because it was resistant to all the standard antibiotics. He eventually destroyed his herd, started over, and has had his hogs on pasture for 14 years -- with no disease:

Fresh, the Movie

On the heels of the recently-released movie, Food, Inc., comes another movie about the place of food in our culture. This one is called Fresh and is to be released in September. It features many of the same players that all these movies do (Salatin, Pollan, et al), but that's fine -- repetition is needed to rise above the competing noise in the marketplace. Here's the trailer:

Garden O'Yore

Came across this two-picture view of the garden I had in my backyard a few years ago. Makes me tired just to look at it -- the building of the raised beds, trellises, etc. But it was definitely worth it. Both the work and the harvest were a pleasure:

Testosterone in the Kitchen

August 2, 2009 article by Michael Pollan in The New York Times Magazine on what the current spate of testosterone-laced competitive cooking shows on television says about how we view food and eating. As usual with Pollan, the article is long and encyclopedic, but the payoff is predictable as well. Read it here.

The Virtues of a Farm

For the young people a farm is a kind of Paradise. One never hears the whine of the city child, "Mama, what shall I do now?" On a farm no day is ever long enough for the young person to crowd into its meager twenty-four hours all there is to be done. That, too, is true of the good farmer himself. No day is long enough. There is fishing and swimming, explorations of the woods and the caves, trapping, messing about the big tractors, playing in the great mows, a hundred exciting things to do which each day are new and each day adventurous.

But most of all there is the earth and the animals through which one comes very close to eternity and to the secrets of the universe. Out of Gus, the Mallard duck, who comes up from the pond every evening to eat with the dogs, out of Stinker, the bull[dog], with his wise eyes and placid disposition, out of all the dogs which run ahead leaping and barking and luring the small boys farther an farther into the fields, a child learns much, and most of all the warmth and love of Nature which is perhaps the greatest of all resources, not only because its variety and beauty is inexhaustible but because slowly it creates a sense of balance and of values, of philosophy and even of wise resignation to man's own significance which bring the great rewards of wisdom and understanding and tolerance. It is not by senseless accident that the vast majority of the great men and women of the nation and those who have built it have come from farms or hamlets. . . .

The good farmer, working with Nature rather than fighting or trying to outwit her, may have what he wants of those treasures which are the only real ones and the ones by which man lives—his family, his power to create and construct the understanding of his relationship to the universe, and the deep, religious, humble sense of his own insignificance in God's creation.

With appreciation (and only slight theological quibbles) from Louis Bromfield's Out of the Earth (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1950, pp. 297-299).