Lift Up Your Hearts!

A U. S. Department of Agriculture study has determined that watermelons stored at room temperature^* are far more nutritious than those stored in the refrigerator. Apparently its power-packed carotenoids, lycopene and beta-carotene, continue to develop after a fully-ripe melon is picked, but the process is slowed by refrigeration. What's more, refrigerated watermelons spoil faster.

The news about watermelons makes me wonder if a similar process is going on with tomatoes, which are another rich source of carotenoids. Conventional wisdom says tomatoes should be stored at room temperature rather than in the refrigerator. This means we have to eat them rather quickly here in Florida, but I can attest to the superiority of their unrefrigerated flavor.

In 1971 I worked with researchers at the University of Rochester who were studying the algae blooms that were making a mess of Rochester, New York's Irondequoit Bay. At the time, the limiting factor for algae growth in the lake was phosphorous, and household use of detergents containing phosphates had fueled an algal population boom. Thanks to such research, low-phosphate detergents soon became. I presume the effect on the Bay was salutory, though I graduated and lost track of the researchers.

I know I’m an independent sort of blogger. My need is to write, and I use the blog format because the LifeType software is so easy to use, is very flexible, and allows comments. The only reason I'm familiar at all with commercial places like LiveJournal, MySpace, and Blogger is that I have to venture into that territory to read some of my friends' blogs. So I'm really clueless about the whole blogging community thing, especially memes and tagging, which generally seem pretty silly to me.

However, a friend has this on her blog, and I like it, so I'm going to do it. I won't tag anyone, but I'd love to read your responses if you want to put them in a comment here, or on your own blog if you have one.

Note: I could answer every one of these points with "The Bible," except possibly #7 (though in some moods, who knows?), but that would be rather pointless, so I'm going to leave it out and consider other books.

1. One book that changed your life:

All books change my life, one way or another. For the moment I'll single out Marie Winn's The Plug-In Drug, because that opened my eyes to what television does to children and other people. Liberating ourselves (i.e. learning to use the tool carefully and sparingly) from that mind-numbing, time-wasting device was one of the best decisions we've ever made.

2. One book that you've read more than once:

Almost any book worth reading is worth reading more than once. (Maybe my memory is just too poor.) But a good answer would be everything George MacDonald wrote. I have the complete collection from Johannesen, thanks to my very generous father, and there is enough goodness packed into even one book to merit re-reading many times.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:

Hmmm, I might have to break my resolve and say the Bible. I would have plenty of time for uninterrupted study (if I weren't too busy trying to secure water, food and shelter), and being marooned would certainly provide plenty of opportunities to test my faith. Practically speaking, however, I'd look for something called How to Survive on a Desert Island.

4. One book that made you laugh:

Most recently, Holy Humor by Cal and Rose Samra of the Fellowship of Merry Christians. I was reading while Noah was sleeping on my chest, and I had to stop because the upheavals kept waking him.

5. One book that made you cry:

Books generally don't make me cry. Music does, but not books. Unless I'm crying because there are so many good books and I'll never be able to read but a tiny fraction of them.

6. One book that you wish had been written:

Updates from authors on how their views have evolved since they were set in ink. John Holt did this beautifully with the revised version of How Children Learn. I particularly would like to know how C. S. Lewis's view of women changed after he married Joy Davidman. I know it did, but that was within a few years of his death, and after most of his books had been written.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

As a writer, it's hard to wish any book unwritten; that would seem like wishing someone's child had never been born. But there are many books I wish I had left unread. Books change the mind, and foul images and foul attitudes are nearly impossible to expunge. Unfortunately, a visit to the children's section of your local library will most likely reveal a sizeable collection of such books.

8. One book you're currently reading:

Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. I can't comment on it because I haven't finished, but I'll post a review when I have.

9. One book you've been meaning to read:

The complete works of Francis Schaeffer. I've read several of his books, but I have the whole set on my bookshelves and I'd like to fill in the many missing pieces. Reading The God Who Is There as part of my Lenten discipline two years ago, I was struck by how many things it explains now that I didn't understand back in the 1970's, and even more by how it agreed with what I was reading in John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education. When an evangelical Protestant theologian living in Switzerland and a self-described lapsed Catholic schoolteacher from Pittsburgh tell me the same things, perhaps I had better listen.

The good news is that Starchild Abraham Cherrix and his family finally found a judge brave enough to lift the lower court order that would have forced him to undergo chemotherapy for his cancer. The bad news is that it's a temporary reprieve; he'll have to fight the battle again in court next month.

This is not a diatribe against chemotherapy, which has been life-saving for many. But the right to make medical decisions, large and small, belongs to the individual, or in the case of a minor, his family. The courts should never have become involved in the first place, since Abraham and his family agree. Maybe they are wrong. Maybe their alternative treatment will lead to his death, and chemotherapy would cure him. But we have the right to be wrong. Even if a person chooses no treatment at all, prefering a shortened life to the agonies of therapy, that decision should be between him and his family.

If it weren't so serious, it would be amusing to consider the statements made by "experts" who insist that a 16-year-old is too young to make his own life-or-death decisions. You can't tell that to a genealogist. At that age, many of our ancestors were married, having babies, fighting in wars, and traveling thousands of miles away from home—and doing it quite capably, I might add.

I can't recommend the movie Lost in Translation to anyone I know. It's an R-rated film with an uninspiring story and scenes you'd rather not have in your mind. However, we watched it the other day and I enjoyed it very much, because it is set in Japan. It was fun to hear the crosswalk music (not Comin' Through the Rye, which you can hear in Swing Girls, but the tune for the other direction. I would never have noticed it in the movie if we hadn't been to Japan. It was also wonderful to be able to recognize some of the spoken Japanese words, though I was embarrassed by how much katakana I have forgotten.

If you live in the United States, you may never have a chance to see the movie, Swing Girls. It is presently unavailable in this country, and if you get it in Japan you need either a region-free DVD player or a good friend in the A-V business. But this is the movie to see for the best glimpse into Janet's life in Japan short of spending a very long time in an airplane. You'll see a school that looks very much like hers, from the physical layout to the students' uniforms to their voices and actions. Although the movie was filmed in a different area of Japan, the scenery is much the same. You'll even get to hear the crosswalk music, that famous old Japanese tune, Comin' Through the Rye. I loved the crosswalk music, though Porter thinks it would drive him crazy if he stayed in Japan very long. There's a different tune for crossing in the other direction, but I don't know what it is; it does sound a little more as if it might really be a Japanese song.

Home Education Magazine has a great article by Deborah Markus called Being a Cheerful Rebel. Sometimes being a nonconformist feels great, and sometimes it just feels lonely. Sometimes you love explaining your lifestyle choices to others, and sometimes you wish they'd just mind their own business. But ready or not, the questions will come, and Markus has some good suggestions for preparing to meet them. My favorite is

Don't Apologize: Stand strong. If you don't seem firmly convinced of the rightness of your course of action, why should anyone else? Especially someone who's never heard anything but conventional wisdom on the subject, all of which disagrees with you?

St. Peter knew something of the pressures of being outside the mainstream, and he had good advice, too:

Always be preparied to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear.

[R]esistance entails conceiving of parenting as an act of rebellion against American culture. For example, for parents merely to remain married is itself an act of disobedience and an insult to the spirit of a throwaway culture in which continuity has little value. It is also at least ninety percent un-American to remain in close proximity to one's extended family so that children can experience, daily, the meaning of kinship and the value of deference and responsibility to elders. Similarly, to insist that one's children learn the discipline of delayed gratification, or modestly in their sexuality, or self-restraint in manners, language, and style is to place oneself in opposition to almost every social trend. Even further, to ensure that one's children work hard at becoming literate is extraordinarily time-consuming and even expensive. But most rebellious of all is the attempt to control the media's access to one's children. There are, in fact, two ways to do this. The first is to limit the amount of exposure children have to media. The second is to monitor carefully what they are exposed to, and to provide them with a continuously running critique of the themes and values of the media's content. Both are very difficult to do and require a level of attention that most parents are not prepared to give to child-rearing.

None the less, there are parents who are committed to doing all of these things, who are in effect defying the directives of their culture. Such parents are not only helping their children to have a childhood but are, at the same time, creating a sort of intellectual elite. Certainly in the short run the children who grow up in such homes will, as adults, be much favored by business, the professions, and the media themselves. What can we say of the long run? Only this: Those parents who resist the spirit of the age will contribute to what might be called the Monastery Effect, for they will help to keep alive a humane tradition. It is not conceivable that our culture will forget that it needs children. But it is halfway toward forgetting that children need childhood. Those who insist on remembering shall perform a noble service.

True power remains with individuals. Ultimately we have the power to shape and even change lives. It is unleashed when families with young children control access to or eliminate television in their homes; when those children are educated at home or in private schools where their family's beliefs are upheld, not in state schools where the values of the state are taught; when people stay married in good times and in bad; when quality time with children is quantity time; when people are valued more than things; and when parents, not children, rule.

We always expected our children to surpass their parents; after all, they have the advantage of standing on our shoulders, and of learning from our experience. And there's no question that they have, particularly in the academic and spiritual domains.

Not that we were ever all that revolutionary. We followed most of Neil Postman's prescriptions, and those of Cal Thomas, though we were already well established in that lifestyle before we read them. Getting along on one income, and refusing promotions that would have disrupted family life were becoming unusual, even in those days, but not radical. Perhaps had we stayed in the Northeast, our Christian faith might have raised some eyebrows, but not in the South. The decision that we had better things to do than watch television, and our devotion to classical music, certainly set us apart. But more than anything else, what set our children on their radical paths was homeschooling. You don't question the basic assumptions of society in one area without opening others to inquiry; you don't teach your children to think differently about education and expect them to conform blindly in other areas; you don't give them a taste of freedom and think they won't look for other ways to loose their chains.

Heather and Jon chose to reclaim childbirth the way we reclaimed education. They paid a high price for their convictions, which made it all the more difficult for us to recognize how right they were. But, after much struggle, we came around with enthusiasm.

Thus it is that I am trying to maintain an open mind as Janet explores her own non-conformist path, which I will tentatively call reclaiming vocation, unless maybe it should be "reclaiming life in general." I find myself disagreeing vehemently with some of the literature she has shared with us, and some of it could scare me if I let it. But the homeschooling and home birthing communities have shown me that wherever there is a fringe, there is also a lunatic fringe, the existence of which does not negate the value of the basic idea. And from those with whom we have little else in common, we can still learn much.

With that in mind, I recommend checking out Ran Prieur's essay on dropping out of our crazy modern lifestyle. You can spend quite an interesting time wandering around his site. Many of his notions are just plain nuts, but there's gold amidst the dross. I like his insistence that you have to prepare intelligently for freedom.

The goal is not to get out of the prison, but to get out in a way that enables you to stay out. Be patient. Think ahead. Getting free is not like walking through a magic doorway—it's like growing a fruit tree.

Nor does he advocate throwing everything out, just what you don't need and don't want. He plans for his wilderness home, with no other externally-supplied utilities, to have satellite-based Internet service.

He has some good advice—as far as I can tell—for buying land.

I do think he's wrong about the benefits of "mindless" jobs and the advisability of separating vocation and avocation, employment from the rest of life. I think earning your living doing something you enjoy is an important and worthwhile goal. However, I agree there's no shame in doing low-paying or "lowly" work if it enables you to do whatever you find meaningful.

I've mentioned before that Jonathan is highly verbal, especially for a two year old boy. I hate stereotypes and the judgement of individuals by the average characteristics of a class they happen to belong to, but people will insist that boys aren't verbal creatures, so I like to mention the obvious counterexamples.

As for genetics—let's just say he reminds me a LOT of his Aunt Janet. His play is often accompanied by a long, running monologue about what the characters are doing, be they people, animals, vehicles, or Power Rangers.

[An aside on the last. Jonathan has no Power Rangers of his own. I couldn't tell you what they are, other than they clearly relate to some TV show or other, and I'm not about to try to win favor in his eyes by buying him anything of the sort, for which Heather is grateful. But a good friend of his is lending him two Power Rangers and two motorcycles while the friend is out of town—that's a pretty amazing friend—and Jonathan is enthralled. They are the toys of the moment, whether he is making them ride around on the coffee table, or dropping them on me to wake me up when I pretend to nap, or bending their limbs into impossible poses. (Whatever the Power Rangers actually do as superheroes, they really should have gone into ballet.) I wonder if part of boys' reputed preference for sound effects over words is due to the nature of their toys. Each of these characters "speaks" when you push a button on its belt, but only one of the utterances is speech—"Let's go, Rangers"—the others are just noises.]

While doing a Google search for a friend's blog, I came upon this exchange on someone else's blog. To be fair, I know nothing about the blogger, and haven't yet taken the time to read her other posts. My reaction is based solely on her post and the subsequent comments. But it shocked me so (and the comments even more than the original post) that I'm inviting comment here—by anyone at all, but especially by those who think they know what to expect from someone calling herself, "Little Miss Reformed."

In short, while she was working in someone else's church, she came upon a plaque that offended her. Wanting to copy down the words, she took it home, at the urging of a friend, who said no one would notice. Once finished, she decided against returning the plaque to the church, on the grounds that it was "bad theology" and could endanger the soul of whoever might read it.

Eventually she said she would take the plaque back, though I don't know if she has yet nor what the consequences might have been. I'm concerned that I saw no remorse, no repentance, nothing but trying in one place to make light of her actions, and in another to paint the situation as so serious as to justify breaking the laws of God and man. One person tried to call her on that, and was promptly denounced by other commenters for being "unloving."

It would be easy for one who doesn't care about theology, or believes theologies cannot be labelled bad or good, right or wrong, to mock or denounce Little Miss Reformed. I'm not interested in that kind of comment. But I do want to know if I'm crazy, or if the world has changed so much that someone from a branch of Christianity that pales at the thought of Postmodernism or Relativism can still have so much difficulty distinguishing right from wrong.

I freely admit that not all issues are black and white, that shades of grey are important, that legalism is dangerous, and even that there are times when we "must obey God rather than man." But this one seems glaringly clear to me: Little Miss Reformed was a guest who took away, without permission, something that belonged to her hosts. Theft, plain and simple. A violation of "Thou shalt not steal" that could land her in jail if the church wanted to press charges. Not to mention unmannerly. Nor do I think much of her reasoning that she was committing the act to save someone's immortal soul, since that kind of logic is exactly what led to the tortures of the Inquisition.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe theology can be both bad and dangerous, and that words themselves (though not the particular words that bothered her) can do great harm. But this essay, and most of the comments that followed, struck me as the work of people without a moral compass, or at least one that has been badly skewed, despite their protestations to the contrary.

What do you think? Has anyone else run into this kind of fuzzy reasoning?

When Larry Summers, then President of Harvard, dared suggest that genetic differences between men and women might, in general, predispose them to greater abilities in different fields, I had no problem with that. When he was pilloried and forced to resign, I was appalled (though not surprised) at the continuing evidence that liberals aren't necessarily liberal, those who call loudest for tolerance aren't tolerant, and "academic freedom" is an oxymoron. If the presence of a Y chromosome instead of an X can make differences that are visible and obvious, to insist that it can't possibly make more subtle differences, and to forbid inquiry into the matter, is as bad as the Catholic Church in Medieval times. Worse, because I don't think the Church ever claimed to be open-minded.

Yet as fast as Harvard tried to distance itself from Summers' heresy, there are more serious worms in its own apple.

Ben Barres is an M.D./Ph.D. professor of neurobiology at Stanford University. What makes his comments on sexual discrimination in science and academia especially insightful is that until 10 years ago, he was Barbara Barres. As a man, he suddenly found himself receiving much more respect than he had as a woman, at least among people who don't know his history. Even in such a hotbed of liberalism as Cambridge, Massachusetts, both MIT and Harvard failed the test. When Barbara was the only person in a class full of men to solve a difficult math problem, her professor suggested that her boyfriend had solved it for her. At Harvard the situation was even more interesting, because Barbara became Ben in the middle of her/his graduate studies. One faculty member (who apparently knew neither Barbara nor Ben very well) remarked, "Ben Barres gave such a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's.

It matters not a bit to me if there are differences between groups of people considered en masse, because everyone deserves to be treated as an individual. Insurance companies have some justification for considering a person in terms of his inclusion in broad classes (male, Asian, non-smoker, overweight, etc.) because that is what makes insurance work. The rest of us have no excuse, and the educational system especially; from preschool to Harvard, should be looking at individuals, not stereotypes.

The Visitation, by Frank Peretti (W Publishing Group, Nashville, Tennessee, 2003)

I believe it was Samuel Goldwyn who said, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union." He had a point. Great writers manage to convey many messages through their works, but people who start writing with a message in mind tend to write mediocre novels.

I believe it was C. S. Lewis who noted that most authors' evil characters seem real enough, but they cannot portray goodness well at all. (An excellent example would be the Lord of the Rings movies, which unlike the books apparently tried to convey goodness by making the characters look stoned.) He was writing about Scottish author George MacDonald, whom he said had the opposite defect: he made goodness believable and desirable, but his villains tended to be cardboard, stock characters.

Peretti has a hard time with both kinds of characters. In his more recent books his good characters have begun to take shape, however, which I see as a hopeful sign. But his evil characters are still entirely too weird, or at best one-dimensional. In this one, the Antichrist character, Brandon Nichols, was too much like the Antichrist character, Nicholas Carpathia, in the Left Behind books, which is a compliment to neither the character nor the author. (Neither author could avoid the "Nick" reference, it seems. But LaHaye/Jenkins were there first.)

Peretti's prejudices show through too much for me, mainly I suppose because they are not my prejudices. In the consortium of pastors in this book, the good guys are the Pentecostal and Baptist ones—the Episcopalian, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc. are either bad or at best wishy-washy. The Methodist one comes out okay, but only after realizing she isn't really a Christian.... It's true he attacks some Pentecostal practices and beliefs, and one of the worst characters is a Pentecostal pastor, but once again I get the feeling he is pointed commentary. Mind you, I'm not saying there aren't Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Presbyterian pastors who are just as bad as the ones he portrays, but you get the feeling Peretti is condemning whole denominations, not just particular characters.

The Visitation started out very well, with Peretti developing the main character well and with reasonable complexity. He begins by asking some critical questions that are usually ignored, such as Why doesn't Jesus seem to be in the direct healing business anymore? and How would the world respond if he were? and What does God's presence in the world, and in our lives, look like? and How do we deal with people who respond to our problems with, "You just need to trust God more"?

I was looking forward greatly to how Peretti would deal with these questions, but it seems he couldn't sustain the effort. Suddenly the protagonist's crisis of faith is resolved (for no apparent reason), prayer becomes a magic bullet, demons are revealed, and the whole story is wrapped up with a pat answer, stock formula solution.

From what I read, people are getting tired of hearing about the benefits of human milk for human babies. Let's stop making mothers who "must" feed their children artificial milk feel bad, they say. Just tell people "breast is best" if you can do it, but let it go at that, and support them in whatever decision they make.

When we overemphasize the exceptions, we lose track of the normal, and engender dangerous attitudes. Try to view abortion as a private, agonizing decision to be left up to families faced with devastating circumstances, and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by people who want to make a horrific procedure into a good thing. Believe strongly that people with homosexual desires deserve as much respect, love, and protection of the law as anyone else, and you are pressed to agree that any sexual practice is a good and proper expression of love. Acknowledge that sometimes it is necessary for children to be cared for by people other than their own families, and soon you find that considered the norm, with researchers trying to prove it is actually better for babies to be away from their mothers.

No matter how many times we mouth "breastfeeding is best," if we continue to add, "but here's what you do if it doesn't work out," we set ouselves—and mothers—up for failure. It's not really the mothers we need to convince. What any nursing mother needs most of all is a supportive environment. When everyone's mother and sister and friends breastfed their children, nursing really could come "naturally." Now, however, with fewer role models, fewer people to say, "this is a minor glitch, you will get through it as I did," mothers are quick to believe they don't "have what it takes" to feed their babies as women have for millenia.

It's not primarily the women we need to educate. It's doctors who have no more breastfeeding experience than their patients and would rather offer the quick fix of formula feeding rather than help mothers find other solutions. It's fathers who have totally lost sight of the true purpose of human breasts (as someone put it, "Hello! We're mammals!") and view their wives'/girlfriends' breasts as merely decorative, or worse, their own possession (like the man—and I use the term loosely—who insisted his girlfriend feed their son artificially because, "No one touches your breasts but me!"). It's restaurants/churches/businesses that from some misplaced sense of propriety want to remove nursing babies from view. (Would you like to eat your meal in the bathroom?) It's everyone who will concede that breastfeeding is best for a brief time, but that a nursing toddler is somehow a perversion—as if bottles, cow's milk, and "pacifier face" were the more normal human condition.

The sad thing is, I'm not surprised.

During the 18 months we lived near Boston we heard a lot about the Big Dig, experienced plenty of inconvenience thanks to the Big Dig, and heard much political grumbling about cost overruns, delays, and incompetence. We didn't actually see much work being done on the project, however, and it was hard not to wonder if there was some politcal/union stranglehold on the project. Accustomed as we were to Florida roads projects, in which a "crew working" sign is usually followed by a crew working—day, night, weekends, holidays, whatever it takes to get the job done—it was shocking to see the massive construction project lying fallow so much of the time. But apparently such lack of haste did not reflect a commitment to doing the job right.

Will yesterday's partial collapse, in which a concrete slab fell from a tunnel roof onto a hapless motorist, finally cause someone to examine the entire political system that bred such tragedy? It's only the latest in a decades-long series of problems, so I doubt it.

The State of Florida has seized a woman's assets and imprisoned her because they think they can make better decisions for her than she can herself.

Lore Farrell's story should frighten us all.
Why should an 85-year-old woman be able to be forced out of her home, be forbidden to make her own legal and medical decisions, and even told what kind of shoes she can and cannot wear, just because living on her own his riskier? The Orlando Sentinel article calls hers a "sad story with no villains," but I see plenty of villainy in the attitude that gives the State such power over a person who has committed no crime. If Lore Farrell thinks the risk of bleeding to death on the floor of her own home is preferable to the living death she feels at an assistive living facility, that choice should be hers, not some bureaucrat's, well-intentioned or not.

"Babymoon" is a term that didn't exist when I was having babies. I'm not too clear on the definition even now. To some it means taking your baby with you on vacation, which to me falls into the category of "well, duh!" but apparently it's now considered a big deal.

The definition that fits best in this household is a period of time in which the new parents are relieved of some of some of their normal responsibilities in order to rest, recover, and bond together as a family. In particular, the new mother is provided sufficient help so that she can concentrate on meeting the needs of the new baby (and any other children she might have) and on her own recovery.

I wasn't sure what to think of this at first. In my day we were rebelling against the medical profession, which treated childbirth as an illness, and kept women pretty much confined to their beds for several days after birth. Inspired by the example of primitive women, who would give birth in the morning and be back working in the fields in the afternoon, we superwomen thought we could do it all ourselves.

By the time our first child was born, my own mother was dead and my mother-in-law was out of the country. Even had it been possible for someone to come stay with me for a while, however, I don't think I would have encouraged it. Having a baby was a perfectly normal event; why should I need pampering? Don't get me wrong: I greatly appreciated the days Porter took off from work to help out, and meals brought by friends were a wonderful blessing (especially since I gained some new recipes in the process). But on the whole, I was doing the whole homemaker routine on my own: cooking and cleaning as well as breastfeeding and changing diapers. That was my job and it never occurred to me to expect help. I liked it that way.

I was nuts.

I'm glad Heather and Jon have welcomed us into their home before and after Noah's birth. I'm happy to play with Jonathan while Heather and Noah nap, to take my turn holding Noah while she plays with Jonathan, to wash diapers and dishes, to make trips to the store, to fix meals. Not that I've done much of the latter yet, as their many friends have kept us well supplied with food, and Jon is a good cook as well. Okay, so I'm also exhausted, and have gained a new appreciation of why 54-year-olds are generally past the childbearing years, but I'm happy.

As a result, Heather is much more rested than I was after each of our children was born. She's sure that is speeding her healing, and I'm convinced it's keeping the dreaded postpartum depression away. Say what you want about hormones, I'd venture to guess 90% of postpartum depression is related to sleep deprivation. A happy, well-rested mother makes a huge difference to the household, and no doubt contributes greatly to a happy, contented baby.

(Far from being in seclusion for two weeks to a month, Heather and Jon have welcomed visitors from the beginning. Those who asked if they could bring meals were invited to bring enough so they could stay and join us, and some have done just that. You can tell this is a household of extroverts!)

Congratulations, Discovery! A shuttle launch is my favorite kind of fireworks, and makes a great Independence Day show as far as I'm concerned. I only regret we couldn't see this one from our front porch—but grandchildren have higher priority!

Most of the news we hear about people with severe brain injuries (such as Terri Schiavo) is from a negative perspective: How long can we afford (emotionally, finanacially, and in terms of prioritizing the use of resources) to keep an unresponsive, totally dependent person alive? Would a person in such a state want to be kept alive? What does the term "quality of life" really mean, and should it be the determining factor in critical medical decisions? To whom to such decisions belong—the person (through a "living will"), the family, the doctors, the government?

Organizations that focus on the possibility of recovery from severe brain injuries through coma arousal efforts and other stimulation programs, such as the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential and the Family Hope Center, are derisively labelled as "alternative medicine" if not as outright quackery. In light of recent discoveries, however, perhaps it's time to rethink our attitude.

Things just began to settle down a bit after Noah's birth when we had computer problems to deal with, but it's now a quiet Sunday afternoon and the computers are back in busisness, so I'll try to catch up.

Once again our family participated in the game of predicting date and time of birth, along with sex, weight, and length. I succeeded in getting the sex wrong for the third time in a row, as well as being wrong on everything else. Heather was the winner, being closest on the date and weight, and tying with Jon, Porter, and BL. for length. ABL, PL, SL, BL, TL, CD, DL and Jon guessed the sex correctly. I claim victory for the time, being off by only seven minutes, but there are purists who say the time doesn't count if you don't get the date right as well.

And there are others who claim parents, especially mothers, should not be allowed to participate, or at least not counted in the standings. Below is one particularly convincing (or at least amusing) protest:

[Moms] have too much control—I am sure Heather could have gone into labor but waited until she could win. Based on non-moms, I am claiming victory as having the closest date, the right sex, and I want to check the date of the guesses just to make sure Jon didn't "Price Is Right" me to get the height and weight since he was only one ounce and half an inch over me. I made my guesses not knowing everyone else's....I think if you averaged all categories, with some sort of scoring for how far off you were in each category, but most of the weight on having the date right, excluded Mom, and made a few other adjustments, it could happen that I would win and collect the big prize.

I'm beginning to understand why one would want to be a midwife. (There must be powerful incentives that make them to be willing to endure the difficulties and even persecutions that come with the job.) Being present at an all-natural, healthy birth is one of the highest privileges I can think of; being able to help make such a birth possible must be even higher.

When it's your own grandchild being born, the anxieties and the joys go off the scale. This time the only worrisome moment—when Noah's head was completely out (Heather looked like some strange being, with a head at each end) and the midwife was working to deliver his huge shoulders—was so intense there was no time to be aware of any fear.

Experiencing Jonathan's birth was one of the high points of my life so far, and I feel incomparably blessed to be present at Noah's as well. This time I was prepared not to witness the moment of birth, because my primary role was to be Jonathan's special friend, to be with him at the birth or not, according to his desires. But—blessing on blessing—Dad-o and Grammy were able to be there as well, so Jonathan could alternate being in with us and playing outside of the room with them.

I thought my own births were "natural," and they certainly were, if compared with why my mother went through, and with what most women are offered today. "Natural" in my day meant avoiding delivery rooms, the dreaded shaving, stirrups, and above all drugs. I still had to deal with episiotomies, a hospital setting, not being allowed to eat or drink during labor, and having my baby taken from me for unnecessary procedures.

Noah's birth was what childbirth should be. Surrounded by family, in a quiet place, eating and drinking at will, free to walk around, rest in a tub of warm water, and labor in virtually any position. Gently attended throughout by an experienced midwife who knows how to guide the process, and how to ease the delivery of a huge pair of shoulders. No episiotomy, no drugs, no wristband ID's, no eye drops, no shots, no circumcision. Dad cutting the cord. Immediate and uninterrupted bonding. Going home no sooner and no later than you want to. Okay, I'll stop now. But it was so lovely!

One thing that was totally amazing and awesome to watch was how quickly an unearthly looking, squashed, purple mass became a filled-out, pink, clearly defined head. That view was from my privileged position alone, because by the time Noah was in Heather's arms (only a few seconds later), most of the change had already taken place. I guess she'll have to wait for her own grandchildren to see that.

Speaking of exhaustion, this post has taken all day to write, so I'm just going to stop for now and go to bed.

Okay, so the wider dissemination of lesser-known comic strips is not the greatest use of the Internet, but it's fun. I've featured Baldo before, but now they have an official Baldo website to include, and today's strip is worth broadcasting.