Apple Is Shaking the Tree Again

Apple, Inc., releases its new tablet computer today. One of the anticipated features is that the tablet will serve as an e-reader like Amazon's Kindle. But leave it to Apple to create a pricing model that may be more attractive to publishers:

Got Milk? (Got Ethics?)

The Tuesday night (Jan 26, 2010) edition of ABC News' Nightline program aired an undercover segment on inhumane practices in the factory-farming dairy industry. Contrary to the bucolic ads you see on television about "happy cows" luxuriating in green fields, the life of the average dairy cow in America is anything but happy. The 5,000 cows on the New York dairy farm featured in the segment NEVER see grass. They spend their entire artificially-inseminated, miserable lives pregnant (so they continually lactate), crammed into giant manure-filled barns producing milk—until their milk production begins to fall after a few short years, at which point they're carted off to the slaughterhouse after living only 15 percent of their natural life span. Their horns are burned off and tails cut off without anesthesia, and in spite of their obvious pain with these procedures the farmer-owner said, "I don't see what you see" when asked if he thought the procedures hurt the cows. It's amazing what we humans are capable of not seeing. If you drink milk or consume dairy products, please watch the Nightline report and consider whether your pleasure is worth the pain it causes.

And if you think you need milk for calcium to prevent osteoporosis, consider this: America consumes more dairy products than any nation in the world while at the same time having the highest rates of osteoporosis of any nation. If you want calcium try consuming dark green vegetables like bok choy which has much higher levels of absorbable calcium than milk. The primary causes of osteoporosis are the acid base of the Standard American Diet (caused by meat, dairy, and excess grains) which causes the body to leach calcium from the bones to restore the body's ideal slightly-alkaline pH, and the lack of healthy (weight-bearing) stress on bones due to sedentary lifestyles. Moderate bone stress increases bone density and plant-based foods keep the body in a slightly alkaline (ideal) state.

Cow milk has one purpose in nature: to feed baby cows. If you aren't a baby cow you don't need milk (in spite of what uninformed, white-lipped celebrities ask you in their ads).

Kudos to Nightline for tackling this issue. You can see the Nightline video here.

It's Inevitable

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” Ludwig von Mises

The Bible calls it reaping what you sow (Galatians 6:7).

'Ya Gotta Love Broccoli

George H. W. Bush ("I'm President of the United States and if I don't want to eat broccoli, I don't have to!") notwithstanding, most folks love broccoli. It's taste, texture, and nutrition are good enough reasons, but there's also this reason: It battles its way through the winter freezes unscathed.

I cut this head this morning—and just in time. It was right on the verge of flowering (due to the recent warmup in temps) as you can see from the myriad swollen buds. This head made it through many nights in the low twenties a couple weeks ago, unprotected most of the time. A few nights I covered the cabbage and broccoli with plastic buckets or garbage bags, but stopped when I figured the temps had dropped too low. What troopers! Who could ask for a more lovely head of broccoli, or know what extremes it withstood so I could go out this morning and cut it.

When my crisper in the refrigerator is too full for something like this head of broccoli, I'll put it in a large zip-lock bag, seal the zip all the way across except for an inch, pooch out the inch-long space so it's open and I can get my mouth around it, and suck the air out of the bag, sealing it tight. Oxygen is the great oxidizer of foods, so keeping perishable items in bags with the oxygen sucked out keeps them crisper longer in the "open" part of the refrigerator:

If you never grow broccoli you never avail yourself of the residual treats the plant provides: After a head is cut, the plant will send up small heads at the leaf nodes which can be picked and thrown into a salad or stir-fry—or snapped off and eaten like candy right on the spot as my granddaughters do in their garden. Because the head I cut this morning was overdue for cutting, the side shoots had already formed:

Vegan Cookies at Starbucks

I'm likely the only American who has never set foot in a Starbucks, so I would have missed this if I hadn't seen it on the web: Starbucks is now carrying a line of (reportedly) delicious vegan cookies. Read about them and see pics here. (Thanks to vegan.com)

Fact and Fiction

Around Christmas, Diane Rehm broadcast (on her NPR program) her interview from a couple years before with Mary Chapin Carpenter to discuss MCC's just-released CD of Christmas songs. I have always liked MCC but wasn't familiar with the album so tracked it down, loved the sample cuts, and ordered it—and it's wonderful. Every song is mellow, thoughtful, and respectful of the true spirit and meaning of Christmas. Since she wrote most of the songs, she gives the impression that she really believes the Christmas story—speculation on my part.

In looking for information about the farm she and her husband live on in Virginia (I've been looking at Virginia farms for sale lately—more speculation on my part) I came across articles about a (rare these days) concert Carpenter played at in Jackson, Mississippi, that I would have given a LOT to have witnessed. I can find no record of it having been recorded or filmed for sale—it may only be a memory to be cherished by those fortunate enough to have attended.

The concert was held at Belhaven College on April 17, 2009, in honor of the Centennial anniversary of the birth of Southern novelist Eudora Welty (1909-2001). Along with Mary Chapin Carpenter, three other daughters of the South, singer-songwriters all, performed: Kate Campbell, Caroline Herring, and Claire Holley. All four were invited to perform because of their appreciation for Welty's impact on their own understanding of the South as reflected




in their songs. The latter two, Herring and Holley, I am not overly familiar with, but I have all of the dozen or so CD's Kate Campbell has released. She writes and sings of the Old South the way Eudora Welty knew it, lived it, and loved it.

Eudora Welty spent her whole life in Jackson, Mississippi, and was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (among many other prizes). Consistent with my own shallow knowledge of Southern novelists (Faulkner, O'Connor, et al), I had never read anything by Eudora Welty. I knew that the email program I used for many years on the Mac was named Eudora in honor of her—actually, in honor of a short story she wrote, "Why I Live at the P.O." (P.O. -- email -- get it?) Never, that is, until I read her One Writer's Beginnings (pub. 1983).

In an article about the concert, Mary Chapin Carpenter related how she came to read the book:

The book is a bible, a talisman of sorts. I has meant so much to me. I was living in a scummy little apartment trying to be scrappy and eke out a living, when a very dear friend of mine quoted the very last line of the book. Our conversation was about struggle, and after I heard the quote I ran out and got it. I basically devoured it and found myself returning to it over and over again through the years. To this day I recommend it to any person I meet who is trying to establish a creative life within the requirements of making a living. It reaffirms what I am trying to accomplish for myself. Sometimes you are not sure of what you are trying to do; you are just trying to be happy.

In "the last line of the book" Eudora Welty wrote, "As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within." So I bought the book and "basically devoured it" as MCC had done.

One Writer's Beginnings is a small book—the transcripts of three lectures given by Welty in 1983 to inaugurate a new lecture series at Harvard University. The three lectures—"Listening," "Learning to See," and "Finding a Voice"—trace how Welty found her Southern-novelist voice growing up in Jackson. Having grown up in the South, albeit a half-century later than Eudora Welty, I loved reading about a culture I had known slightly in my grandmother's deep-in-Dixie town of Marion, Alabama. It made me realize that, sadly, most of what we know today about the South in that era is negative—and rightly so, in some ways. But there was much to honor and enjoy as well. The book is not about the South, but it is about Eudora Welty growing up there and how she learned to write—and most of her novels and short stories betray her deeply Southern roots.

And it was easy to see why she was the first living writer to be included (1998) in the Library of America series of works by American literary giants. She told the story of her life in a voice that made me want to begin reading her fiction.

Her parents both had "mountain" roots, having moved to Jackson to begin their family with no prior connections there. As a child, Welty accompanied her family back to "the mountains of West Virginia" for visits. I loved this retelling of how her mountain heritage imbued her with the fierce independence that characterized her life as a writer: (As a child she had tumbled down a mountain ravine . . . )

It seems likely to me now that the very element in my character that took possession of me there on top of the mountain, the fierce independence that was suddenly mine, to remain inside me no matter how it scared me when I tumbled, was an inheritance. Indeed it was my chief inheritance from my mother, who was braver. Yet, while she knew that independent spirit so well, it was what she so agonizingly tried to protect me from, in effect to warn me against. It was what we shared, it made the strongest bond between us and the strongest tension. To grow up is to fight for it, to grow old is to lose it after having possessed it. For her too, it was most deeply connected to the mountains.

When she was old, widowed, ill, and losing her sight, my mother one day announced to me she would be very glad to have the piano back in our house. It was the Steinway upright she had bought for me when I was nine, so far beyond her means, and had paid for herself out of the housekeeping money, which she added to by buying a Jersey cow, milking her, and selling part of the milk to the neighbors on our street, in quart bottles which I delivered on my bicycle. While I sat on the piano stool practicing my scales, I imagined my mother sitting on her stool in the cowshed, her fingers just as rhythmically pulling the teats of Daisy.

Two of her children had played this piano, I practicing my lessons and my brother Edward all along playing better by ear. When her grand-daughters came along, the piano was sent to their house to practice their lessons on. Now, all those years later, Mother wanted it under her roof again. Right now! It was brought and, the same day, tuned. She asked me to go directly to it and play for her "The West Virginia Hills."

I sat down and remembered how it went, and as I played I heard her singing it—singing it to herself, just as she used to while washing the dishes after supper:

O the West Virginia hills!

How my heart with rapture thrills . . .

O the hills! Beautiful hills! . . .

This one moment seemed to satisfy her. Once from her wheelchair, afterwards, she tried to pick it out herself, laying her finger slowly down on keys she couldn't really see. "A mountaineer," she announced to me proudly, as though she had never told me this before and now I had better remember it, "always will be free." (pp. 60-61)

It's easy to see Welty's mother reaching out, through the familiar refrain of a cherished song, for the past she had known; the freedom she had known in the mountains of West Virginia. We can't turn back the clock, though we try—nowhere more so than in the deep South. And no one sings with more understanding and pathos about that passing era than Kate Campbell, herself the daughter of a Mississippi preacher, Southern-born and bred.

I wish you could hear Kate's voice and melody in your head as you read the words to her song "Petrified House"—the sad picture of a Southern woman locked in the past, refusing to admit that her way of life was passing away:

She sees the world through yellowing lace

The world hasn't seen her since seventy-eight

Except for the nephew who used to look in

To bring her her chocolate and tonic and gin.

She lives in one room of a mansion downtown

With nothing but strip bars and strip malls around

It used to be three miles to those big stone gates

'Til property taxes just whittled it away.

She believes somehow that nothing has changed

Even though Sherman left Georgia in flames

Cotton's still king and the south didn't fall

As long as wisteria climbs up the wall.

She won't read the paper and won't watch the news

She thinks it's all lies made up by New York Jews

Her daddy said no matter what the laws say

Down here we've always done thing our own way.

Some day that petrified house will fall down

Like everything it will return to the ground

Whatever it stood for will all be condensed

To one paragraph on a plaque by the fence.

(copyright 2001 Large River Music)

But from what I read, it was Kate's song "Look Away" that brought the Jacksonians to tears when she played and sang it at the Centennial concert. Kate later talked about what inspired "Look Away:"

I remember seeing Eudora on public television one night and there was a photograph of the mansion in Windsor, Mississippi, behind her. I remember her talking about the New South and the Old South and along the way she said, "You know, not everything was bad and it doesn't really matter where you are from, there is good and there is bad." She was talking about the Old South and she said 'it really wasn't all about hate.' I, too, cannot believe that the history of the south is all about hate.

I can imagine a deeply Southern audience weeping at what has been lost and what was never known about the region they love as they listened to the plaintive lyrics of "Look Away:"

I can still recall the night

Lightning burned the mansion down

We all stood in our pajamas

On that hallowed wouthern ground

When the flames had turned to ashes

Only blackened bricks remained

And sixteen stately Doric columns

There beneath a veil of gray.

And it's a long and slow surrender

Retreating from the past

It's important to remember

To fly the flag at half-mast

And look away.

I was taught by elders wiser

Love your neighbor, love your God

Never saw a cross on fire

Never saw an angry mob

I saw sweet magnolia blossoms

I chased lightning bugs at night

Never dreaming others saw our way of life

In black and white.

Part of me hears voices crying

Part of me can feel their weight

Part of me believes that mansion

Stood for something more than hate.

(copyright 1995 Fame Publishing Company)

I don't pine for the Old South; like Eudora Welty said, there was good and bad. I wish my own mother, who grew up in the deep-heart of Dixie, hadn't confused me by telling me as a child not to refer to black women as "lady." It's what the Old South taught her. But I would give a lot today to ride again from my grandmother's house into downtown Marion, Alabama, on the junk wagon of the beloved Negro "Doc," pulled by his faithful mule. A kinder and humbler man, from what I knew of him, I've never known. From his wagon we'd jump down and go into the drug store to sit at the counter and sip dime limeades in crushed ice through a straw—all by our child-selves, no adults scanning for predators or abductors. And I would give a lot to climb mountain-sized magnolia trees, see the stars, and chase the lightning bugs Kate sang about—the parts of the South that weren't about hate. I haven't seen a star or a lightning bug in years—and don't know why.

One Writer's Beginnings helped me understand something else about myself—why I have never been a reader of fiction. Eudora Welty's father was not either. He was a successful businessman; it was from her mother than Eudora got her love of books and the stimulus for her imagination. Indeed, Eudora's father was leery (but supportive) of her desire to become a writer, what she knew she wanted to be from an early age:

My father did not bring it up, but of course I knew that he had another reason to worry about my decision to write. Though he was a reader, he was not a lover of fiction, because fiction is not true, and for that flaw it was forever inferior to fact. If reading fiction was a waste of time, so was the writing of it. (Why is it, I wonder, that humor didn't count? Wodehouse, for one, whom both of us loved, was a flawless fiction writer.) (p. 82)

I don't say that I agree with Mr. Welty, only that I identify with his shortcoming. Indeed, the value of fiction was brought home to me more powerfully than ever recently when I watched the video of a delightful interview with Eugene Peterson, author of more than 30 books and translator of the popular Bible paraphrase called The Message. A former pastor and professor, and a staunch defender of fiction as a window into the human dilemma, he made this amazing statement in the interview (paraphrase): "I believe the first two-years of every seminary degree should be spent with students reading nothing but the classic works of fiction. Only then will they begin to grasp the realities of life they will soon encounter in the faces of the people to whom they preach on Sundays."

Gulp.

I have never pridefully avoided fiction—Eudora Welty's or any other. I just always, when faced with the choice of "fact vs. fiction" in a life of limited time (à la Mr. Welty), chose fact. But if reading One Writer's Beginnings was a gentle temptation to read more fiction, Peterson's words were a severe rebuke.

One of the most enjoyable—and powerful—pieces of fiction I've read lately was by (no surprise) Wendell Berry—his short story "Fidelity" in a collection of five stories by the same name (Fidelity, 1992, recommended by my son, Daniel—later the subject of discussion with son David over the question of Berry's touching the theme of anarchism). Wendell Berry ties into Eudora Welty because he writes, not just in his more philosophical essays but in his fiction, of a time past—a time when life was agrarian, self-sufficient, community-based, and content; a time when people took responsibility for themselves and their neighbors and had no expectation of entitlements; a time when it was clearly understood that there was no health apart from the health of the land.

Award-winning Wendell Berry has spent his life living, farming, and writing in rural Kentucky. That's not the deep South, but it's another region with its own identity and culture—some negative, mostly positive—that most moderns know little of. In that sense, Berry is of the same cloth as Welty, Campbell, and others.

So—this chain of thoughts comes full circle—Carpenter, Welty, Campbell, Peterson, Berry—and me hanging on for dear life as I process yet another round of trying to grow up before I grow old. At the very least, I have been reminded that poets, minstrels, and novelists do as credible a job at recording the passage of time as do historians—probably better. I don't recall facts causing my eyes to brim with tears as they do when Kate Campbell sings or Eudora Welty writes.

The Nuts and the Creeps

From Peggy Noonan's current WSJ column:

President Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points on Nov. 4, 2008. Fifteen months later, on Jan. 19, 2010, the eve of the first anniversary of his inauguration, his party's candidate lost Massachusetts by five points. Thats a 31-point shift.

Mr. Obama won Virginia by six points in 2008. A year later, on Nov. 2, 2009, his party's candidate for governor lost by 18 points—a 25 point shift.

Mr. Obama won New Jersey in 2008 by 16 points. In 2009 his party's incumbent governor lost re-election by four points—a 20-point shift.

In each race, the presidents party lost independent voters, who in 2008 voted like Democrats and in 2010 voted like Republicans.

It's a great column. Read it to find out who the Nuts and the Creeps are.

Land of the Free?

The 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, jointly prepared by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, has been published. It ranks all the countries of the world according to various kinds of freedoms: business, trade, fiscal, monetary, investment, financial, and labor as well as government size, property rights, and freedom from corruption.

The United States, the "land of the free," ranks eighth on the list, falling from its seventh-place rank in 2009. The top 10 countries (ranked from #1 to #10) with the greatest freedom are: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, Canada, United States, Denmark, and Chile. Interestingly, all of the top 10 countries fell in their total freedom measures (not their rank) over the last year except two: New Zealand and Switzerland. This map illustrates where all the countries of the world rank (darker colors are better): (complete details of all countries, along with the report itself, are viewable at the link above)

One wonders if the voter revolt in Massachusetts earlier this week is a sign that Americans are tired of losing their freedoms to the nanny state.

(New Zealand, tucked away down in the south Pacific, is looking pretty hospitable about now. Road trip, anyone?)

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.