Lift Up Your Hearts!

I don't know why anyone would want to annoy a worm, but apparently lemon balm does the trick.  I had some less-than-perfect leaves that I didn't use in making my lemon balm tea, so I fed them to the worms.  Rather, I put the leaves in their bin; feeding was out of the question.  The next time I checked, all the worms were huddled on the side of the bin furthest from the leaves.  They didn't seem particularly unhappy, but they didn't return to the other side until a few days after I removed the offending foliage.

The worms have completely devoured their Carnegie Mellon t-shirt moisture mat, except for places—stitching, and part of the design, I think—that were not natural fiber.  Therefore, since they are now more mature, and have clearly excelled in their majors of eating and excreting, I hereby declare that they have graduated, and confer upon them a new moisture mat.

It's possible they may end up in grad school—we have a couple of University of Rochester t-shirts that are getting on the worn side—but for now they are enjoying their venture into the wide invertebrate world.  (Or not so wide.  We still insist they stay in their dorm-turned-apartment.)

What a wonderful bird the frog are
When he stand he sit almos';
When he hop he fly almos'.

He ain't got no sense hardly;
He ain't got no tail hardly either.
When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got—almos'.

When the kids were young, we listened (and listened, and listened) to Mitzie Collins' incomparable Sounds Like Fun record (yes, it was an LP record) of children's songs.  Before we left Rochester, Heather had the privilege of attending a friend's Chanukah party at which Mitzie was the featured entertainer.  Janet was too young to attend, but in one of those amazing twists of life returned to Rochester for college and ended up working as an intern with Mitzie, and playing in some of her concerts.

So it was not all that surprising that this brief song should hop into my mind this morning, as I sat on our porch swing in the semi-darkness and watched a large, yellow tree frog's progress.  He started about 10 feet away from me, and his first movements were tentative; perhaps he was checking me out.  I must have passed, because he then leapt closer, and in less than a blink of an eye transported himself from the ground to the table next to me.  We watched each other for quite a while, but then I turned my head to look at the source of a noise behind me, and when I turned back, he was gone.  After some searching, I located him:  he was clinging to the back of a chair further away from the table than the table had been from the ground.  Then, as I watched, he apparated to the metal frame of our sliding glass doors, then used his sticky, splayed feet to navigate around the glass itself.  My suspicion is that he was attracted by the light.

"Fly almos'" isn't strong enough language to describe the frog's wonderful motion.  He was in one place—then in another.  I'm almost certain that a video, replayed in slow motion, would show that he passed through the intervening distance...but that's not what my eyes saw.

What a wonderful bird the frog are!

It's officially summer here, whatever the calendar may say.

We can pretty much count on temperatures in the 90's, afternoon thunderstorms have returned, the brachiation ladder has been reinstalled over the pool, the water temperature is up to 75 degrees, showers with unheated water feel really good, the A/C is on, hurricane season has begun, schoolchildren are visible during the day, and vitamin D production is 'way up.

Sounds like summer to me.

We're now officially into hurricane season, which means I'll be paying more attention to the Tropical Weather link on the sidebar.  The last two months of weather have been quite interesting.  April was lovely:  we were able to enjoy open windows and doors, using neither heat nor air conditioning.  (Yes, I know—I used to believe air conditioning was for wimps.  That was before I lived in Florida and learned the inverse relationship between sweltering temperatures and productivity.  The "lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer" only work if you don't have summer temperatures most months of the year.)

We weren't far into May before we turned on the A/C, but May's claim to fame this year was its rain.  As U understand it, an unexpected low pressure system stalled over Florida, and day after day after day sucked water from the Gulf of Mexico and deposited it on Central Florida.  Orlando had 14 inches of rain, breaking the previous record for May of 10 inches back in 1976.  Daytona Beach had almost 22 inches!

Although the surprise innundation (our rainy season doesn't usually begin till the end of the month) did some damage, flooding even non-flood zones, overall it was a very welcome break in our drought.  Now we seem to have settled back into the regular summer pattern of afternoon thunderstorms, and I must get back in the habit of remembering that outdoor work needs to be done in the morning.

The young lady at the grocery store was right:  a chopstick makes a great cherry pitter.

Until I was nine years old, I lived in a small house with a yard that was small by American standards, but large enough to support four beautiful trees:  two spruce, one maple that was the delight of my heart and the joy of my tree-climbing days, and one cherry tree.

The cherry tree produced a gorgeous display of blossoms every year, followed by an abundant harvest of cherries.  These were sour cherries, the kind used most often for pies, though to my child's tastes they couldn't get much better than straight from the tree into my mouth.  The abundance, however, was more than I could consume, even had that been allowed, so I remember hours of sitting around the table with my family, pitting cherries to freeze for future pies.  Despite the work, it was a delightful time because we were all together, working and talking and laughing.  It is nonetheless a pity that we didn't discover the delights of Chinese food until after we had left the house and its trees behind.

The aforementioned young lady was standing at a table in the produce section, offering samples of cherries and Häagen-Dazs ice cream.  I gladly took the cherries, but passed up the ice cream—not, I hasten to add, from any virtue, but because the carton displayed was banana-something-or-other.  But when she suggested Honey Bee Vanilla instead, I acquiesced.  My favorite ice cream remains the Swiss Mövenpick, but the smallest scoop of Honey Bee Vanilla in a tiny cup, graced with a couple of pieces of California Bing cherries...and I was nearly transported to Switzerland.

She did her job well:  I left the store with two pounds of Bing cherries and a pint of Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Vanilla.  How could I refuse?  The cherries were on sale; the reason I was near her table was that I was considering buying them already. Häagen-Dazs ice cream is another story:  I've raised my standards of ice cream from the el cheapo variety I once enjoyed, but only as far as Edy's Double Fudge Chocolate Brownie or similar, and then only if there's a really good sale, preferably two-for-one.  Häagen-Dazs is rarely in my price range.  In this case, however, not only was the Häagen-Dazs on sale, but the delightful young lady handed me a coupon that brought the price of the pint down to 50 cents if I bought the cherries.  Sold!

Honey Bee Vanilla is exquisite by all itself.  A little experimentation at home proved that it also does wonderful things for fresh raspberries.  And as soon as I finish this post I'm going to introduce my darling and hard-working husband—who has already today been on the roof to fix a leaking skylight, and torn the lawn mower apart to determine why it has gone on strike just in time for the opening of mowing season—to Honey Bee Vanilla and Bing Cherry Heaven.

The purpose of the promotion is in part to raise awareness of the threats to the honey bee population.  Learn more at http://www.helpthehoneybees.com.

Oh, yes.  Back to the original point.  In preparing the cherries for our upcoming treat, I used a blunt-ended chopstick to remove the pits.  Piece of cookie.^*

 

The people who sold us our worm farm gave us this advice for giving the worms a special treat:  put some melon in their bin.  Red wiggler worms love melon, they assured us, and will mob any pieces you give them.  On the way home from church yesterday, we bought a watermelon from a local farmer.  It was red, sweet, dripping, and delicious...and I couldn't wait to share the remains with the worms.

When I last checked, they hadn't shown any interest, possibly because I froze the melon pieces first, so they would also provide some Worm A/C.  I'll check again tomorrow.  However, I can report that they are going absolutely bananas for their Carnegie Mellon moisture mat.

 

On the left is what it looked like when I first put it in the bin, not quite two months ago.  On the right, what it looks like now.  If you click on the picture and enlarge it, you'll see a few worms (red-brown), some melon (green and pink), a lot of castings (brown), and the shredded-paper bedding showing through a large hole that they have eaten through the middle.  (The green is another piece of cloth on which I place the frozen water bottle for cooling; I've pulled it aside so you can see the hole.)   What you can't see is the masses of worms swarming under and through the mat; "infesting" would be a good word.

It's true:  Worms love melons.  But they can't spell.

In Switzerland you must bring your own bags to the grocery store, or buy them there.  We've tried variations on that theme here, with little success.  Thirty years ago one of our stores in New York started using cardboard boxes instead of bags, and paid five cents for every one you brought back and reused.  That the store went out of business not much later was probably not due to that particular policy, but it certainly put an end to it.  At one time or another the stores here in Florida would pay a nickel for each reused bag, and some still do.  But, frankly, five cents isn't enough incentive one way or another.

Then several stores began selling reusable "green" bags.  A good idea, but I couldn't see buying them, even for the low $1 price, when we had plenty of bags at home I could use—especially since the new bags are made in China.  I don't boycott Chinese products altogether, but their dominance makes me nervous, and I like to find alternatives when I can.  Besides, it just seems ridiculous to ship products halfway across the world in the name of protecting the environment.  Despite having bags at home that would do, however, I never got around to making the switch...

...until a dear and practical family member gave me three Trader Joe's bags for Christmas.  Knowing my aversion to Chinese bags, she found me some made in Vietnam—not much better, perhaps, but at least an alternative.  They were better than our existing bags:  the right shape for groceries, and one was even insulated for cold items.  Soon I was hooked, and even acquired some more (Chinese) bags when our store offered them "free with purchase" on a couple of occasions.  They live in the back of the car and are thus always handy, which is a good thing because if I had to remember to bring them with me I'd forget half the time.  On the occasions when I walk to the grocery store I still follow in the tradition of my father, and use my good ol' L.L. Bean pack basket.

There's no economic incentive to use the reusable bags, not even the aforementioned nickels.  I know myself:  I wouldn't continue the practice if it were difficult or awkward.  But it's not.  The reusable bags are a lot more fun to handle than the floppy plastic ones:  they're sturdy, hold more, stand upright, and don't accumulate in large quantities that must be returned to the store for recycling.  What amazes me is how many of those plastic grocery store bags I'm now saving.  After only a few months of using the new bags, I deliberately left them in the car for one trip because I had run out of plastic bags at home.  Such a situation would have been unthinkable last year.

Our worms now have more living space:  we put the second level onto their condominium/college dorm.  There's still a small amount of uneaten food in their first level, but that section is full, and I think they need more food.  They've been munching on their Carnegie Mellon t-shirt moisture mat, and while I know they will eventually consume it no matter what I do, I'd rather tempt them with kitchen waste.

(This is a follow-up to previous posts:   Options In Childbirth: A Personal Odyssey; The Trial; The Trial, Part II; and The Trial, Part III.)

I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea what Judy or her lawyer really think, but that doesn't stop me from pondering what happened in Judy's trial.  It has been an interesting look into our criminal justice system.  We know, personally, good policemen and excellent prosecutors who work hard for truth, fairness, and speedy justice, so any negative comments are not a blanket indictment, but food for thought.

• I can't help wondering if Heather and Jon were treated differently because they lived in the city, rather than in a wealthy suburb, where the police might be more likely to find themselves facing a lawsuit for interrogating a cold, naked, hungry, and exhausted woman immediately after a traumatic birth and in the midst of unimaginable grief.
• I learned that if you are accused of a crime the police can take away your computer, no matter how essential it is for your for your daily life and business, and no matter how much personal and irreplaceable data is on it.  Memo to self:  buy an "emergency" computer, make frequent backups of all data, and figure out a search-warrant-proof hiding place.  I'm not planning to get in trouble with the police—but who does?
• The proceedings were dragged out for seven years, prolonging the agony for Heather and Jon, leaving Judy and her family in limbo, and incurring great financial costs to both Judy and Allegheny County.  Why not, since there was little incentive for the powers that be to move it along?  The prosecution got what it wanted in the interim—Judy prohibited from doing her work—so why should they rush to judgement, and risk losing their case, as they did?  Delay increases lawyers' fees, and even ordinary civil servants go to work and go home and get paid, independent of whether any one particular trial takes seven years or seven days.  The only person with any incentive for speedy justice was Judy herself.  And in the cases where the defendent knows himself guilty, even his desire would probably be to delay the verdict.  No wonder our court system is overwhelmed.
• I learned something of how frustrating it is for those who know better to see false evidence enshrined as truth.  In this case, the medical examiner, who exhibited an obvious prejudice against all midwives, testified—and his word was taken as authoritative—that the injuries he found on Isaac were due to Judy's efforts to assist the birth, despite the verifiable fact that all injuries except for one (a small mark on the back of Isaac's head) corresponded exactly to the locations of the various injections, sensors, and other bodily indignities that were part of the attempt to save Isaac during his two-day stay in the hospital.  I wish this testimony had been properly contradicted during the trial, but it was apparently not part of the defense attorney's strategy, so it was left to become "truth" forever. (See Jon's comments after this Daley Ponderings post.)
• Knowing that the judge was also a medical doctor, I wondered at the decision of Judy's attorney to go with a non-jury trial.  There is a strong and often acrimonious division between physicians and midwives, especially traditional midwives who work independent of a doctor's control, but even nurse-midwives feel the sting.  My guess is that he knew the integrity of the judge, whereas juries can be swayed by emotional appeals.  The judge clearly wanted to throw the book at Judy, and, had he had the authority, at Heather.  (What he thinks about Jon he apparently kept to himself, but I doubt it's complimentary.)  However, in an exercise of that increasingly rare commodity, judicial restraint, he ruled according to the law, contenting himself with a tongue-lashing from the bench and imposition of the maximum allowed penalty ($100 fine) for the most minor charge of practicing midwifery without a certificate, a grey area in Pennsylvania's law.  (See the ruling in midwife Diane Goslin's case.)
• While I had been hoping for an enthusiastic endorsement of the rights of Pennsylvanians to be attended in childbirth by the assistants of their choice, and of the value of traditional midwives in retaining critical knowledge that is rapidly being lost in an overly-litigious and highly medicalized society, I consider this case a solid victory for midwives, because a judge with an intense desire to convict Judy ruled that Pennsylvania's law would not allow him to do so.

Tribune-Review article, with Heather interviewed

Post-Gazette article, with Jon interviewed

KDKA report, with misinformation including number of subsequent children

I have no more information yet than is in this Post-Gazette article, but it looks as if the seven-year ordeal is finally over.  If it's not the vindication and ringing endorsement of birthing rights I was hoping for, it's probably the best we could have hoped for from a judge who is also a doctor.  I'm not sure how he managed to convict Judy for not having a license, since Pennsylvania doesn't license Certiied Professional Midwives, but I can't imagine Judy will not pay the $100 fine and move on.  Other midwives have pled guitly to worse in order to stop the torture and expense.

Perhaps the Amish, who rely on non-nurse midwives like Judy, will—if reluctantly—push harder for better midwifery laws in Pennsylvania.

Judith A. Wilson, 53, of Portersville, was found not guilty by Common Pleas Judge Donald E. Machen of the most serious charges [involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment], but found guilty of practicing midwifery without a certificate. She was fined $100.

Life has not stopped for us, no more than for Judy, in these seven years, but it is very good not to have this sword dangling over our necks anymore.

I hope to learn more—news reports, especially initial ones, being suspect—and will fill in here when I can.  Thanks to so many of you for your earnest prayers for us all.  (Earlier posts on this subject are The Trial, Part II; The Trial; and Options In Childbirth: A Personal Odyssey.)

Others, I'm sure will list more exiting benefits of gaining a husband, and I'm certainly not despising companionship, children, and being able to file a joint tax return.  But it's also really, really nice to have someone around who will

• Do any work that involves heights greater than can be reached with a step stool,
• Open the pickle jar, and
• Remove the dead rat from the backyard.

The Orlando Opera Company has announced that it will be no more as of May 1.  We join with the Orlando arts community in mourning the loss, but I retain hope.  We lived through the demise, many years ago, of the Florida Symphony Orchestra, and now we have the great Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in its place.  True, it was a long comeback, and we lost several fine musicians when the FSO closed its doors, but good music is too important to stay down for the count.

Banks are changing, newspapers are changing, and so is the nonprofit arts community....There is an audience for opera in Central Florida. We need to figure out how to serve that audience. It’s an art form that has survived for hundreds of years, and we know it will survive now.

—  Margot Knight, president and CEO of United Arts of Central Florida

Around here, we try to reuse sheets of paper that still have one good, blank side, which sometimes results in amusing or confusing combinations, as one wonders, "Is the back side of this page important?"  Or even, "Which is the operative side here?"  Yesterday I was browsing through my book of recipes—okay, my random collection of pages of all sizes and shapes stuck haphazardly in a notebook—when I came upon the recipe for "Nancy's Great Cookies."  On the back was a list of words, probably though not definitely in Heather's handwriting, which would make it quite an old list.  Although the words seemed random, I immediately realized that they were not.

Breathes there the man—or at least the American—with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!:  at, all, and, ball, bit, bump, cold, could, did, do, day, it, I, in, house, him, how, jump, go, looked, like, little, mat, made, not, nothing, on, one, out, play, sally, saw, sat, said, so, something, shine, sit, sun, step, that, two, the, too, then, to, there, us, we, was, went, wet, with, wish.

Like the Internet itself, YouTube reveals the secrets you thought you'd left far behind you.  Even when they're not secrets.

In this case, the past lives of two church friends (one from a former church, one present) have been revealed.  Not being a rock'n'roll kinda gal, neither The Producers nor Johnny Winter meant anything to me, but I got a kick out of seeing Kyle and Floyd in their previous incarnations.