Category: Interesting Information

Information I want to share in a non-essay form

Interesting Information: The Maine CDC Joins the Salt War

Interesting Information:  April 15, 2012

The Maine CDC Joins the Salt War

Recently, the Maine CDC ran a warning in our local paper, The Camden Herald, about the dangers of salt consumption.  Its conclusions were based on a 2010 study out of Stanford.

At best, this Stanford study can only be called junk science.  As such, it—and our government’s support of it–will only confuse people about how to eat.

First, the study uses data from the Framingham heart study.  Framingham relies on what people said they were eating–which is famously always already vexed.  Stanford singles out salt consumption.  But, what about everything else folks were eating that might cause heart disease?  Therefore, this Stanford study can only show correlation, not causation with regard to salt consumption.  Acting from correlation is famously not scientific.

Second, the 2010 Stanford study’s results are based on a computer model that predicts causation.  But, computer models only work if they are using correct data.  This data can only be based on faulty information since people are only remembering what they think they have eaten.

Third, there are many, many studies showing that salt consumption is not related to blood pressure.  Or, heart disease.  You can read an essay I wrote on the salt wars on this blog:  Mainely Tipping P0ints 38.  You can view a video refuting this government anti-salt campaign, “The Salt Guru:  Fight Feds for Salt Freedom,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re_V0pazMfc&feature=youtu.be.   And you can view the Weston A. Price’s press release on their main web page, http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=243574.  .

Salt is crucial for human health, so why is our government starting another salt war?  One reason might be industry production costs, especially when industry is using a lot of salt to mask the quality of inferior, fake foods.

We need to insist that our government be more careful about warning people about what is dangerous to eat.  We need to insist that our government does not facilitate or participate in faulty belief systems.  We need to insist that our government promotes solid science.  Otherwise, our government is working for industry and not for us.

Eat good salt, though, not the fake kind.  Buy unprocessed sea salt.

 

 

Interesting Information: Letter to Maine Senators Snowe and Collins, Safe Chemicals Act of 2011

Interesting Information:  April 11, 2012

Safe Chemicals Act of 2011

My Dear Blog Readers,

The Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 will be voted on this month.

I urge you to read the letter I wrote to my own Maine senators, and I urge you to write to your own senators about this issue.  Use whatever parts of my letter you desire.  You can copy text, google your senators, and send them information online.  All of them have email set up to hear from their constituents.  It only takes a moment.

I, personally, have lost so many loved ones and community members from cancer.  Many of these people were very young.  I know you have as well.  We have to back ourselves out of the mess we’ve made with all these chemicals.  And that will start by using real science to access the risk of each and every chemical in use.  Be aware that despite mainstream media information to the contrary–which constantly claims “cures” for cancer–these chemicals are killing us in alarming, record numbers.  The profits industry is making are not worth one single human life.

We must act together now.  Write your senators and congresspeople.

Louisa

 

 

Dear Senator Snowe and Senator Collins,

I am writing to ask you to support the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 (S. 487), sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg.  Since 1976 the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been the only legislation controlling chemical use.  However, TSCA is toothless and, as such, has been powerless to prevent the use of chemicals that are harmful to humans.  As a result, we are awash with chemicals that are causing a wide range of illnesses, including cancer. 

Leigh Erin Connealy, MD, a cancer specialist, said in a recent interview that cancer is now the number one killer of people from 1 to 85 years old and that one in two men and one in three women will experience having cancer—the treatment of which has vastly increased national medical costs.  These rates are so horrific that they are hard to comprehend. 

In LIVING DOWNSTREAM, biologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, PhD, wrote that a whole new class of very aggressive cancers is now increasing, like non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma which has tripled since 1950.  Lymphomas are “consistently associated” with the phenoxy pesticides and herbicides which are used widely on crops, lawns, gardens, timber stands, and golf courses. 

Petroleum-derived synthetic chemicals, writes Steingraber, “easily interact” with our bodies and, thus, interfere with our life processes.  Many are soluble in fat and collect in animal tissues high in fat, like human brains, breasts, bone marrows, and livers, all of which are sites where cancer is increasing. 

TSCA “grandfathered” or exempted more than 60,000 industrial chemicals.  TSCA wrongly presumes that these chemicals are safe unless the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proves harm.  Yet in more than 30 years, EPA has ordered chemical manufacturers to fully test only 200 of what are now 80,000 or more chemicals.  Of the few thousand chemicals that science shows for certain are dangerous, EPA has only banned or restricted the use of 5 toxic chemicals. 

Further, after a recent EPA panel convened to access the risk of atrazine to human health concluded that there is a one-to-one relationship of this chemical with human cancers, EPA has pushed off any action until 2013.  Meanwhile, more people are dying.  This lack of action seems to me to be not only lacking in consciousness, but  immoral and unethical.  Industry is still free to continue to use tons and tons of this chemical every year.  It is now in all of our water and much of the soil where food crops grow.      

The President’s Cancer Panel 2009 report states that our regulatory system for chemicals is deeply broken; that we are putting ourselves and, more importantly, our children at great risk; and that we must adopt precautionary measures rather than using reactionary measures, which means waiting until sufficient numbers of humans are maimed or killed.  The Precautionary Principle states that no chemical can be used unless it has been thoroughly demonstrated not to be harmful for human life. 

The Cancer Panel directly connects cancer and environmental toxins.  Indeed, the Cancer Panel is “particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated” and that human “exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread.”

The Cancer Panel determines that TSCA “may be the most egregious example of ineffective regulation of environmental contaminants”:  “TSCA does not include a true proof-of-safety provision”—which means “neither industry nor government confirm the safety of existing or new chemicals prior to their sale and use.”

The Cancer Panel surfaces the “catch 22” at the heart of TSCA:  it allows industry “to avoid discovering worrisome product information which must be reported by simply not conducting toxicity tests.  And, as the “EPA can only require testing if it can verify that the chemical poses a health risk to the public,” the “EPA has required testing of less than 1 percent of the chemicals in commerce….”  

In order to protect its market, the chemical industry has followed the very successful tobacco industry model, which Devra Davis details in THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE WAR ON CANCER.  The tobacco industry spent astonishing amounts of money to advertise tobacco use, to delay negative decisions, to hide negative science, to craft favorable legal decisions, to obfuscate science with problematic studies from paycheck scientists, and to fire or discredit anyone saying tobacco use was unhealthy. 

Scientists are beginning to discover that very small amounts of chemicals can cause vast human harm.  Regulatory bodies, explains Dr. Frederick Vom Saal, have determined what they believe to be safe levels for humans by using an idea dating from the sixteenth century:  “the dose makes the poison.”  Vom Saal says this premise is false, especially for any hormone, like Bisphenol A, or BPA, which is “one of the most toxic chemicals known to man.”  Vom Saal explains that recent studies are showing that even minute levels of BPA are unsafe. 

We are, Steingraber argues, “running an uncontrolled experiment using human subjects”—an experiment that has had deadly consequences since the World Health Organization has concluded that “at least 80 percent of all cancer is attributable to environmental influences.”  Cancer cells, Steingraber argues, are “made, not born.”

It is very clear that we cannot continue using untested chemicals and enjoying healthy lives.  It is very clear that we are massively harming our children and tampering with our ability to procreate successfully.  It is very clear that we must develop a political will for change.   

The Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 would  require chemical companies to demonstrate the safety of industrial chemicals and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate safety based on the best available science.  It is a step in the right direction. 

Again, I am respectfully asking you to support it fully. 

 

Interesting Information: Don’t Miss This UTube Video

Interesting Information:  April 6, 2012

 Don’t Miss This UTube Video

Spend about 7 minutes viewing this video from the tv show–whose name I’m forgetting right now–where amateur singers are judged and eliminated until there is a winner.  Be warned, you’ll have tears in your eyes if you’ve got any kind of a heart.  Tears of joy and admiration and love.

A shy, obese boy of 17 and his steadfast friend bring an audience to their feet with their singing.  All preconceptions are blown away in the process.  Even Simon likes them.

http://www.godvine.com/Shy-Boy-and-his-Friend-Shock-the-Audience-with-The-Prayer-Unbelievable-1318.html

Interesting Information: Honey Laundering

Interesting Information:  March 22, 2012

Honey Laundering

With the new Ipod, I was listening to NPR the other day–the Kojo Nnamdi show on March 15, 2012–when Kojo did about a 20 minute story on honey laundering.

I was shocked!  Who knew that there is massive corruption in the honey business?  (Google Kojo Nnamdi, NPR, and “honey laundering” to turn up this episode and the others Kojo has done.)

I knew that most commercial honey was a waste of money since it’s been so heated that all its nutrients have been killed.  But, I didn’t know that it’s been cut with fake syrup that is chemically concocted to taste like honey.  This dead, adulturated honey is little better than high fructose corn syrup.  More than 3/4 of the honey sold in the US isn’t what bees produce.  What’s missing is the pollen that makes the honey…honey.  The lack of pollen means also that one can’t determine where the honey came from.

There are four culprits involved:  the Chinese, our own honey middlemen, our retailers who carry this honey, and the FDA.   And if you want to read the whole sorry tale with all it’s details AND a list of many worthless honey brands, go to Food Safety News:  http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isn’t-honey/.  I suppose we should add clueless consumers to this list of culprits–so now that you know…

The Chinese use an ultra-filtering procedure where, as Food Safety News describes, “honey is heated, sometimes watered down and then forced at high pressure through extremely small filters to remove pollen, which is the only foolproof sign identifying the geographical source of the honey.”  This procedure has allowed the Chinese to illegally dump “tons of their honey–some containing illegal antibiotics–on the U.S. market for years.”  Of course, this fake honey is ridiculously cheap.

In 2001, the Federal Trade Commission imposed a stiff import tariff on Chinese honey.  The Chinese just sent the honey to other countries and sent it to the US from those countries–after changing the color of the shipping drums, the documents and the labels.  This process is why this honey is called “laundered” honey.

Food Safety News notes that the US imported 208 million pounds of honey over the past 18 months–60% of which came from Asian countries which are traditional laundering points for honey.  India, alone, sent in 45 million pounds of honey.

Our own honey middlemen also use this ultra-filtering procedure on US honey because it extends shelf life and because customers have been conditioned to want “clean” honey that is crystal clear.  No one knows if some of these middlemen are cutting the honey they have killed with syrup…  But let’s be very clear about this cleanliness thing:  Real honey with all its medicinal and health properties is NOT crystal clear.  It can be very clean looking when extracted in a centrifuge and, then, strained through a mesh, but it might have tiny bits of wax and/or pollen intact.  That’s the GOOD stuff in the honey.

And, our retailers must know what they are selling isn’t real honey.  As do companies like Sara Lee and J. M. Smuckers, who use this imported honey in their products.

As for the FDA, it has refused to “define” what honey is for years now.  Defining honey would be pretty simple according to John Ambrose, a professor and entomologist at North Carolina State University and apiculturist, or bee expert.  The honey definition should say that honey comes from bees and that nothing has been added or removed.  (Some industrial types evaporate the moisture out of honey.)

Since the FDA has refused to act, American beekeepers are working to get individual states to pass laws that define what honey should be.  So far, Florida, California, Wisconsin, and North Carolina have passed laws.  Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, New York, Texas, Kansas, Oregon, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia are among the states working to pass honey-definition laws.

Food Safety News purchased more than 60 “jars, jugs and plastic bears of honey in 10 states and the District of Columbia” and had Vaughn Bryant, a professor at Texas A&M University and “one of the nation’s premier melissopalynologists, or investigators of pollen in honey,” test each one.  Bryant found that 76% of the samples had all the pollen removed.  These samples came from stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant, Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop, and King Soopers.  Bryant found that grocery brands labeled “organic” stood a better chance of still containing pollen.  All of the organic honey Bryant tested came from Brazil.

Here’s more of what Bryant found:

100 % of honey from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmace had no pollen

77% of honey from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had no pollen

100 % of honey packed in small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had no pollen

But, EVERY ONE of the samples from farmers markets, co-ops, and “natural” stores like PCC and Trader Joe’s had the “full, anticipated amount of pollen.”

Why is it so important to retain the pollen in honey?  It’s where the healing possibilities are located–maybe in some combination with ingredients in the honey that we don’t even know.  Dr. Josept Mercola’s web site has a number of articles on the healing properties of honey.  Real honey with all its pollen can heal wounds and can heal infections like MRSA.  Two articles to look for are “The Sweet Golden Treat That Can Help Wipe Out Deadly MRSA” and “The Honey You Should Never Buy–It May Be Tainted with Lead and Antibiotics.”  See http://articles.mercola.com.

DO NOT USE dead honey to treat wounds; it can make them worse.

BUY LOCAL HONEY.  We buy almost 100 pounds of local honey a year.

Tell your local stores you want REAL honey and won’t buy fake honey.  Tell everyone you know NOT to think that this fake honey is good for them.  It isn’t.

Interesting Information: New Harvard Study on Red Meat and Cancer = Junk Science

Interesting Information:  March 17, 2012

New Harvard Study on Red Meat and Cancer = Junk Science

I was quilting and listening to NPR news the other day when I heard a story about there being a “new” study that linked red meat and cancer.

Information about the type of study came late in the story, and I’d be willing to bet that what most people heard was “Harvard” and “red meat causes cancer.”

Before emoting on this blog, I poked around a bit and found out more information.  Here’s the press release from Harvard:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2012-releases/red-meat-cardiovascular-cancer-mortality.html

And, here’s a story from Business Week:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-03-12/a-hot-dog-a-day-raises-risk-of-dying-harvard-study-finds

***

Now, before you panic about your grass-fed red meat consumption, let’s do a bit of thinking together…

First of all, the study uses QUESTIONNAIRES to determine what people are eating.  This kind of methodology is famously inaccurate and, thus, unscientific.  You can poll 121,342 people, as this study did, and it’s still unscientific because it is always already inaccurate.  People lie for their own reasons or don’t remember exactly.

Second, CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.  One famous example of this kind of thinking–leaping from a perceived association to hard fact–would be the very wrong connection between high cholesterol counts and heart attacks.  Do you know how many people have been seriously maimed by taking statins?  I don’t know, but I’ve written a Tipping Points essay on how they waste muscles in the body.  Since Big Pharma and our docs have made a fortune making statins and/or dispensing them, you can bet a LOT of people have been harmed.

Third, the so-called “killer” red meats here are PROCESSED red meats (hot dogs), bacon (not a red meat and made with nitrates), and FAST FOOD hamburgers (notoriously poor quality hamburger, which is probably full of pink slime).  This study is NOT covering high quality red meats, like grass-fed beef, which is free of disease and which is chock full of high-density nutrients.  The distinctions between types of red meat are NOT made in the study’s announcement.  Rather, all red meat is just lumped together and damned.

So, you can bet that if folks are eating a lot of hot dogs and fast food hamburgers, they are also drinking SODAS (full of sugar) and ordering FRENCH FRIES.  How many people eating a fast food hot dog or hamburger are going to order water with a slice of lemon???  Or, NOT order some french fries?

By the way, it’s not all that hard to find good quality–as in nitrate free–bacon and hot dogs.  And to find hot dogs not padded with soy.  And grass-fed beef is getting real traction in the market now.  Yes, it costs more.  It takes longer to bring the cow to market.  So, savor this beef  fully and cook with ALL the beef parts, not just the hamburger and the steaks.

Here’s a quote from the “Business Week” article, by Betsy Booren, the director of scientific affiars for the American Meat Institute Foundation:

All of these studies struggle to disentangle other lifestyle and dietary habits from meat and processed meat and admit that they can’t do it well enough to use their conclusions to accurately recommend people change their dietary habits….What the total evidence has shown, and what common sense suggests, is that a balanced diet and a healthy body weight are the keys to good health.

Fourth, don’t be fooled by slippery math.  I’m beginning to think of this kind of math exercise as “medical math.”  The study’s writers claim that their analysis showed that people who ate red meat–excuse me, who ate processed hot dogs, bacon, fast-food hamburgers, sodas, and french fries–had an increased risk of 16 percent risk of getting cancer.  Well, the study included 121,342 people, and 9464 people died from cancer.  That’s 8 % of the total.

Here’s more math.  That 16% is part of an unnamed total risk of cancer.  If that total risk is 8%, then you have to take 16% of the 8%, which increases the 8% by 1.28%, which makes the total 9.28%.  That’s a whole lot less that 16%.

Fifth, the study recommends eating more plant-based foods and other forms of protein.  Yet, plants are NOT nutrient dense.  And, they add in a lot of fiber and a lot of sugar (fruits, grains!) which we don’t handle well.  In short, we can’t digest cellulose.  We do not have the enzymes to process cellulose, and too much of it puts a lot of stress on our bodies.  As I’ve discussed in many of my essays now–see the essays on Gary Taubes’ WHY WE GET FAT, for instance–we can get every single nutrient we need, including all 8 essential fatty acids, from meat.  We could stop eating all carbohydrates and thrive.  That’s not junk science; that’s real science with MANY quantifiable test results behind it.

Are there micronutrients in vegetables and fruits that support health?  Probably.  Go slow with fruits, however.  They have a lot of sugar.  So, that’s why I really like the Paleo diet, as it mixes high-quality meat with veggies and fruits.  The Paleo diet drops grains, legumes (a poor source of protein and a problem to digest), and dairy.  I have access to high-quality raw dairy, and I do include it.  Do take a look at the Dr. Terry Wahls video posted earlier on this blog.

The suggested protein alternatives each have problems.  Fish is full of mercury in, increasingly, levels that are not healthy.  We’ve cut our fish consumption down considerably.  It’s now a real treat.  Commercial chicken, besides being utterly tasteless, is full of arsenic and has been fed a lot of GMO soy and corn.  We avoid commercial poultry and buy organic if we’re forced to buy commercial chicken.  We’re lucky here in Maine to have access to pastured chickens for meat.  But, if you find your local farmers and ask, you can probably find some free-range meat chickens.  As for nuts–give me a break.  Nuts are NOT protein dense.

Sixth, here’s another scientific fact for you:  only red meat contains sufficient quantities of vitamin B12 in forms your body can use.  If you lack B12, or no longer can process it from your foods, you’ll get dementia.

So, I agree with Rob Wolf, THE PALEO SOLUTION, about this kind of “science.”  It’s junk.  It’s a waste of time, money, and energy.  It has no core principles at its heart.  It’s why people are so confused about what to eat.

Shame on you, Frank Wu!!!

Damn junk food for the problem it is, yes.  But don’t participate in the correlation in place of causation problem.  And don’t lump grass-fed beef into this study and say so clearly.  Grass-fed red meat is totally different from commercial pink-slimed meat produced in CAFO lots.  Don’t confuse people like this.

And, shame on NPR for even reporting on this story.  It amounts to advertising “facts” that anything but.

Interesting Information: Apple Ipod Touch Replaces Sirius/XM Satellite Radio

Interesting Information:  March 11, 2012

Apple Ipod Touch Replaces Sirius/XM Satellite Radio

I am a talk radio junkie.

And, when we moved to Maine eight years ago, I discovered that the local NPR channel did not carry Diane Rhem.  AND, that the local NPR channel carried CLASSICAL MUSIC all morning.

Mercy!  What was I going to do!

The solution at that time was getting a subscription to Sirius/XM Satellite Radio, which had multiple NPR channels and all kinds of other political and news channels.  I found that I rarely listened to anything but NPR, however, so the hundreds of channels were pretty much wasted on me, especially as I did not like the music on the Sirius/XM’s music channels either.

After hooking up the Sirius radio and stringing the receiver through my underground quilt room window, I spent many hours trying to find the sweet spot where I could get uninterrupted reception.  That actually took months as it was totally counterintuitive that the spot would be at the back of the house which, itself, backs up to a steep hill and forest.

After only a few years, the speakers in the portable radio blew out.  But, I soldiered on.  Buying a new radio was around $200.  And, the yearly bill for Sirius/XM runs about $170, once you add in their tacked on “music royalty” fee.

Then, last month, Sirius/XM DROPPED one NPR channel and stopped all the A-level programs, like Diane Rehm, on the other.  What remained was so NOT what I wanted to hear.

I was furious!

I realized Sirius/XM was probably in serious financial trouble.

What was I going to do?

Giovanna McCarthy came to the rescue.  Get an “internet” radio.  Better yet, she wrote after doing some research on my behalf, get an IPod Touch, and you can put your music on that as well.

Let’s back up to the music thing.  Back in the 1980s, I made a whole lot of tapes with music that I dearly love.  Tapes, folks, not CDs.  These tapes are now brittle, worn, have bad sound, and so forth.  But, not long ago–while peeling all the garlic actually–I popped in one of these tapes, turned it all the way up, and sang my way through a tedious job.

I realized I wanted my music back.  And I knew that I’d be able to hear fine with ear phones.  (I have VERY serious hearing aids and VERY serious hearing loss–as does my middle sister.  We think it may have been drugs taken as children or some chemical contamination on various Air Force bases.)

The Ipod Touch, with it’s Cloud feature and it’s Itunes, would let me get the music back and store it reasonable.

AND, it downloads CDs you already own, too!

I ordered it.  And, ordered a portable speaker with a docking station for the quilt room.

I had a frustrating few days as I tried to climb over the technical hurdles.  After all, I’m several generations behind all this new technology.  But, I have the system up and running, and I’m listening to Diane Rehm and all of NPR, and so much more.  I can even listen whenever I want–not just on the broadcasting schedule!  It even carries Facebook and my email.  I’m sure I have only “touched” the surface of what all it will do.

I’m slowly finding, on Itunes, my lost music.  Most of it, anyway.  So far I’ve only replaced one tape.  There are some old songs that have not made it into CD form that are now lost to me except on Utube:  Lacy J. Dalton’s “China Doll,” “Golden Memories,” and “Ain’t Nobody Who Could Do It Like My Daddy Could”; Tom T. Hall’s “Over the Rainbow,” and David Frizzel and Shelly West’s “Two Sides.”  Lost, in this age of archiving everything…

But, this morning, I downloaded and stored three of my favorite CDs–which I never listen to since the player is upstairs and I am, often, downstairs in the quilt room.

A whole new world has opened up!

Oh happy day!

Interesting Information: Dr. Terry Wahls

Interesting Information:  March 11, 2012

Dr. Terry Wahls

I pulled out this paragraph from Tipping Points 41:  Part I, The Paleo Diet.

I wanted to highlight how Dr. Terry Wahls has used the Paleo diet to stop the degenerative nature of her MS and to heal her body.

The video embedded in this paragraph is a “must see.”  It’s about 19 minutes.  Please take the time to watch it.

Dr. Terry Wahls, MINDING MY MITOCHONDRIA:  HOW I OVERCAME SECONDARY PROGRESSIVE MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (MS) AND GOT OUT OF MY WHEELCHAIR, is a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine.  In 2003 she was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS) and soon became wheel-chair bound.  When mainstream medicine could not slow her disease, she started to research how nutrition could help the mitochondria in her brain.  Within eight months of starting a hunter-gatherer diet, she could walk again with a cane.  Today, she rides her bike, rides horses, and lectures worldwide on what she has learned.  Take a look at her short, informative lecture at a November 2011 TED (The Technology Entertainment and Design) conference, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc. 

Interesting Information: CSA Time

Interesting Information:  March 8, 2012

CSA Time

 Two of my nieces are well into finding and eating local foods.

Here’s a recent message from niece Lauren Howser Black about buying into a local CSA, or Community Shared Agriculture:

We are pretty sure we’re going to join our friend’s CSA this summer. They are Mennonite and farm a pretty big piece of land. We met them through our local farmer’s market where they sell wonderful, organic produce. It runs from June-October and we can get a box each week. I really like the idea of trying to eat what’s currently in season, as I have never done that before. They grow everything from greens, varieties of herbs, peas, beans, squash, tomatoes, melons, raspberries, root vegetables, etc. I also love the idea of supporting local farmer’s. When I pick up our basket this summer from them at the farmer’s market, I can also purchase local eggs, cheese, and meats. Our goal is to find ways to cook and enjoy whatever we get in our weekly basket, even if we’ve never had it before. We’re excited to try this out. 

Lauren’s sister Nancy Howser Gardner is also doing some sort of CSA.  She put a picture of a gorgeous basket of food on Facebook the other day.

Our CSA is Hope’s Edge, which starts up here in Maine in mid-June.  We’ve belonged for about 7 years now, and I can’t imagine summer without going out to the farm each week and collecting our beautiful, healthy, organic, fresh food.  Hope’s Edge has never failed us, no matter the weather conditions.  Farmer Tom is a member of our greater family!

A Community Shared Agriculture program asks you to give them a set amount of money yearly.  We give Farmer Tom a little of our half-share costs in the fall, so he can buy seeds, supplies, and so forth.  We give him the rest in the early spring.  And we get a bounteous amount of food in return.  The only risk is if the weather or some other growing condition affects some of the crops, you don’t get that piece of the harvest for that year.  It’s always worked out for us.

This year we’re also doing a local cheese CSA, which will be picked up at Hope’s Edge on our pick-up day–Appleton Creamery.

And, we’re continuing with Cheryl Wixson’s CSA, which contains ready-to-use organic products that are so fun to have in the kitchen.  You can see blog entries on Wixson’s kitchen elsewhere here.

My wish for you today is that you find and support a local CSA or a local farmer’s market this year. 

Interesting Information: Maine’s Olympia Snowe Retires and Rush Limbaugh Verbally Strikes A Young Woman

Interesting Information:  March 4, 2012

Maine’s Olympia Snowe Retires

and

Rush Limbaugh Verbally Strikes A Young Woman

Olympia Snowe is a grand person, smart and caring of her constituents.

Her voice of reason will be missed.  In Maine.  In America.

She is leaving the Senate because she feels she can no longer be effective in the polarized world of American politics.

***

Rush Limbaugh went on a rant that attacked a young woman with an opinion different from his.  He called her a slut, a whore, and a prostitute.  On air.  To a national audience.  He asked that she make tapes when she had sex and show them to the world.

***

 How did we get to such a place in America where one party’s desire to unseat a President trumps all the other business of the country?  Where a man who has been married four times, who illegally took drugs, and who sells hatred daily can call a beautiful, educated young woman such vile names in public?

Parker J. Palmer surfaces one answer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS:

Palmer, a Quaker, suffered from life-threatening depression.  Eventually, he figured out our modern culture cleaves us into two pieces–so that the essence of our self is separated from how we live our lives.  Here’s his discussion of his problem–which is one answer to what is happening in America today (37-39):

We can reclaim our lives only by choosing to live divided no more.  It is a choice so daunting–or so it seems in the midst of depression–that we are unlikely to make it until our pain becomes unbearable, the pain that comes from denying or defying true self.

 Secularism denies true self by regarding us as raw material.  Moralism–the pious partner in this odd couple–achieves the same end by translating “self” into “selfishness” and insisting that we banish the word from our vocabulary.  The whole problem with our society, the moralists claim, is that too many people are out for themselves at the expense of everyone else.  This New Age emphasis on self-fulfillment, this constant “cult of me,” is the root cause of the fragmentation of community that we see all around us.  Or so the moralists argue.

Deep caring about each other’s fate does seem to be on the decline, but I do not believe that New Age narcissism is much to blame.  The external causes of our moral indifference are a fragmented mass society that leaves us isolated and afraid, an economic system that puts the rights of capital before the rights of people, and a political process that makes citizens into ciphers.

These are the forces that allow, even encourage, unbridled competition, social irresponsibility, and the survival of the financially fittest.  The executives who brought down major corporations by taking indecent sums off the top while wage earners of modest means lost their retirement accounts were clearly more influenced by capitalist amorality than by some New Age guru.

But before I go too far in assigning blame, let me name the real problem with the moralists’ complaint:  there is scant evidence for their claim that the ‘cult of me” reigns supreme in our land.  I have traveled this country extensively and have met many people.  Rarely have I met people with the overweening sense of self the moralists say we have, people who put themselves first as if they possessed the divine right of kings.

Instead, I have met too many people who suffer from an empty self.  They have a bottomless pit where their identity should be–an inner void they try to fill with competitive success, consumerism, sexism, racism, or anything that might give them the illusion of being better than others.  we embrace attitudes and practices such as these not  because  we regard ourselves as superior but because we have no sense of self at all.  Putting others down becomes a path to identity, a path we would not need to walk if we knew who we were.

The moralists seem to believe that we are in a vicious circle where rising individualism and the self-centeredness inherent in it cause the decline of community–and the decline of community, in turn, gives rise to more individualism and self-centeredness.  The reality is quite different, I think:  as community is torn apart by various political and economic forces, more and more people suffer from the empty self syndrome.

A strong community helps people develop a sense of true self, for only in community can the self exercise and fulfill its nature:  giving and taking, listening and speaking, being and doing.  But when the community unravels and we lose touch with one another, the self atrophies and we lose touch with ourselves as well.  Lacking opportunities to be ourselves in a web of relationships, our sense of self disappears, leading to behaviors that further fragment our relationships and spread the epidemic of inner emptiness.

As I view our society through the lens of my journey with depression–an extreme form of the empty self syndrome, an experience of self-annihilation just short of death–I am convinced that the moralists have got it wrong:  it is never “selfish” to name, claim, and nurture true self.

There are selfish acts, to be sure.  But those acts arise from an empty self, as we try to fill our emptiness in ways that harm others–or in ways that harm us and bring grief to those who care about us.  When we are rooted in true self, we can act in ways that are life-giving for us and all whose lives we touch.  Whatever we do to care for true self is, in the long run, a gift to the world.

Olympia Snowe knows herself.  She stands on and acts out of her values.  It really scares me that she feels that things in Washington are so far gone that she can be of no more use.

Rush Limbaugh is a moral abyss.  He creates and sells the hatred of a host of “others.”  He laughs all the way to the bank.  Every day.

There can be no community within Limbaugh’s kind of worldview, for there can be no place for difference.  Is this the kind of America we all want to live within?

Not me.  Not ever.

Interesting Information: BAD! Hershey

Interesting Information:  February 24, 2012

BAD!  Hershey

The winter 2011 journal “Wise Traditions” reports that Hershey’s is buying up small high-end chocolate producers, like Scharffenberger and Joseph Schmidt, and changing their formulations.  One such change is to add corn syrup rather than using sugar.  Scharffenberger is pricey, but altogether great in recipes.  So, beware what is occurring and read labels.  If Hershey’s changes the formula, I for one will not be willing to pay the extra $$$$ for an unadulterated chocolate.

Also, Hershey’s has largely replaced cocoa butter in their Hershey brand candy bars with  PGPR, or polyglycerol polyricinoleate, which is a ” `yellowish, viscous liquid comprised of polyglycerol esters of polycondensed fatty acids from castor oil or soybean oil.’ ”  “Wise Traditions” calls this stuff “anti-freeze-like slime.”

I’m not buying any more Hershey chocolate.  Bet it’s in those “kisses” too.  Yuck!

I do buy Free Trade chocolate all the time.  So far, it’s not been subjected to the market’s self-destructive drive to destroy a perfectly good product by substituting cheap ingredients.

Buyer Beware!