Lift Up Your Hearts!

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.)

Water supply is an issue in Florida.  We'd probably be a desert, like most places at our latitude, if we weren't embraced by two large bodies of water.  What's more, the water table is generally high, so it's easy to foul the nest with pollutants.  So what do we do about it?

I'm sure there is much being done at the state level, and I don't minimize its importance, but I'm more concerned at the moment with what can be done at the community, family, and individual level.  Our city pioneered the residential use of treated wastewater for irrigation and car washing; in addition to the usual, potable water system, each home has a source of reclaimed water.  Although the water is considered non-potable, with the exception of nitrate and phosphate levels it meets federal standards normally applied to drinking water, so it's safe—and the plants love the extra nitrates and phosphates.

The water is reclaimed and fixed-fee, but still a limited resource, so we use a drip irrigation system for many of our plants.  Our backyard is mostly landscaped with plants that are meant to survive on their own in Florida (i.e. what grows without help from us) and we allow the lawn out front to go dormant during the winter dry season.  When we do water the lawn, it is as much for the fertilizing properties of the reclaimed water as for the water itself.

We have more incentive to conserve potable water, since we pay per gallon, but that's harder to do.  If I were designing a house, and had no financial limitations, there would be wastewater collection systems in parallel with every drain, with an easy-to-use switch, so that relatively clean wastewater, such as shower drainage, would be reused—perhaps for flushing toilets, or for watering plants—while the nastier stuff would go directly to the city's treatment plant.  As it is, however, we must make do with simpler systems. There are a number of reasons I wish Home Depot sold Japanese toilets, one of which is the excellent system in which wastewater from handwashing helps fill the tank for the next flush.  But Home Depot doesn't, and our bathroom sinks are small enough that we haven't yet found a reasonable way (i.e. one we're willing to use on a regular basis) of recovering washing water.

The kitchen sink is another matter.  Ours is a double sink, and a Rubbermaid dishpan fits neatly into one side.  Water that is run while waiting for it to get warm (or cool) we catch in milk jugs and use for everything from watering our worms to rinsing our feet after a barefoot walk.  Handwashing and vegetable rinsing water—anything that doesn't get the water too gloppy—is collected and re-used, generally for rinsing dishes or watering plants.  If for rinsing dishes, it subsequently gets reused another time, for running the waste disposer.  We find this system easy to use, largely because our gardens are just steps away from the kitchen, and it's astonishing how much water can be saved with such a little effort.  I'm not sure how well it would have worked at other stages in our lives, but for now it is great.

The direct inspiration for this was actually not Florida's water problems, but a visit to relatives whose water supply is their own well with an electric pump—an electric pump that doesn't work during a power failure, of which we experienced several during our visit.  Then I learned how much a little stored water could be stretched!

Here's a perfect funding opportunity for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundatation, or anyone else who is interested in both technology and education:  Sponsor grants—available to both universities and private video game companies—for the production of really good educational games.

Although video game technology has made tremendous progress in recent years, educational software is for the most part stuck in the past.  Entertainment is where the commercial money is, but with proper funding there's no reason why the best and brightest of our video game designers couldn't revolutionize gaming as a learning tool.

The first thing we'd need to ditch is the idea that entertainment and education are separable, that the one is given as a reward for making one's way through the other.  We want neither 90% entertainment and 10% education, nor the other way around, but 100% education and 100% entertainment.

Consider the possibilities in language learning, for example.  A virtual world that is a total immersion experience, in which one's character must survive by interacting with the native speakers.  Speech recognition technology is good enough that this could be both an oral and a written experience.  One could be learning culture, geography, and more in addition to language by having the virtual world be a real country.

Imagine starting the game and finding yourself in Paris.  You could explore the city, learn to use the metro, convert your dollars to euro, explore the Louvre, enjoy crêpes at a café...all the while picking up French vocabulary and grammar in the most natural way.  I WANT THIS GAME!  Don't tell me it's impossible; I know it can be done.  And I know it can be so much fun the next generation of Americans could actually grow up culturally and linguistically literate—how cool is that?

If our friend's four-year-old son can bowl a 198 in Wii Bowling, the possibilities are mind-blowing.  Yes, I know—Wii Bowling is not real bowling, and Virtual Paris would not be real Paris.  There are some true dangers that our computer models might lead us astry if we don't remember always that they are only models.  But this is too powerful a tool not to be used for good ans well as entertainment.

Tangentially related, here's an article for those like me, who think that video games and computers must be bad for the eyes.  They probably are, under the wrong circumstance, but a University of Rochester study showed they can also be used to improve vision.

People who used a video-game training program saw improvements in their contrast sensitivity, or the ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray....The training could be beneficial to people who have amblyopia—commonly known as lazy eye—and those who have trouble seeing while driving at night.

Researchers studied two groups that played video games for 50 hours during a nine-week course. One group played action games such as "Call of Duty 2" and "Unreal Tournament 2004." Another group played non-action games such as "Sims 2," which doesn't require precise, visually guided aiming actions. People who played the action games showed enhanced contrast sensitivity compared with those in the non-action game group, with improvements ranging from 43 percent to 58 percent, according to the study.

"When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it, and we've seen the positive effect remains even two years after the training was over."

Researchers suggested that the video game training's effect could last for years and could be a useful complement to other eye-correction techniques such as eyeglasses, contact lenses, or surgery. The study, which was funded by the National Eye Institute and the Office of Naval Research, noted that not all action games have such a benefit to the visually impaired. 

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 Internal Revenue Service has released tax statistics for 2006.  You can view them yourself, at the IRS site.  Having neither the time nor the mental energy to sort it all out, however, I'm glad the tax folks at J.K. Lasser have done the job already, and I'm going to take their word for it.  You are welcome to take my word for their word, if you'd like.

How rich—or poor—do you think you are?  Are you paying your fair share of taxes?  What about the other guy?  Forget, for the moment, comparison with the rest of the world—how do you compare with your fellow Americans?  Statistics are slippery things, so take these as you will.  Bear in mind, also, that the percentages given here are based on the number of income tax filers; anyone who did not file an income tax return for the year 2006 is not counted, and neither is any money made in  underground economy.  AGI = Adjusted Gross Income, Line 37 on Form 1040.

		Share of Total	Share of Total	Average
% of Filers	AGI Threshold	AGI	Income Tax	Tax Rate
Top 1%	$388,806	22.06%	39.89%	22.79%
Top 5%	$153,542	36.66%	60.14%	20.68%
Top 10%	$108,904	47.32%	70.79%	18.86%
Top 25%	$64,702	68.16%	86.27%	15.95%
Top 50%	$31,987	87.49%	97.01%	13.98%
Bottom 50%	under $31,987	12.51%	2.99%	3.01%

A few intereting things to note.  For simplicity, I'm using terms like "income," "taxes," and "population" loosely; remember that the statistics are for AGI, Federal income taxes, and those who file Federal income tax forms.

• Half the tax filers have an AGI of under $32,000.
• The bottom 50% earns less than 13% of the total income, while the top 1% earns 22%.
• Forty percent of all income tax revenues come from the top 1%.
• Half the population (more, when you count non-filers) pays less than 3% of the taxes.

Three diverse takes on China:

Although written nearly a year ago (note the line, "Assuming that the global economy does not decline now, it will at some point"), George Friedman's geopolitical analysis of China (via InvestorsInsight) is perhaps frightening, perhaps reassuring, but certainly fascinating.  The concluding summary provides an introduction to the ideas, though it by no means does justice to the long article.

Geopolitics is based on geography and politics. Politics is built on two foundations: military and economic. The two interact and support each other but are ultimately distinct. For China, securing its buffer regions generally eliminates military problems. What problems are left for China are long-term issues concerning northeastern Manchuria and the balance of power in the Pacific.

China's geopolitical problem is economic. Its first geopolitical imperative, maintain the unity of Han China, and its third, protect the coast, are both more deeply affected by economic considerations than military ones. Its internal and external political problems flow from economics. The dramatic economic development of the last generation has been ruthlessly geographic. This development has benefited the coast and left the interior—the vast majority of Chinese—behind. It has also left China vulnerable to global economic forces that it cannot control and cannot accommodate. This is not new in Chinese history, but its usual resolution is in regionalism and the weakening of the central government. Deng's gamble is being played out by his successors. He dealt the hand. They have to play it.

The question on the table is whether the economic basis of China is a foundation or a balancing act. If the former, it can last a long time. If the latter, everyone falls down eventually. There appears to be little evidence that it is a foundation. It excludes most of the Chinese from the game, people who are making less than $100 a month. That is a balancing act and it threatens the first geopolitical imperative of China: protecting the unity of the Han Chinese.

A recent Slate article by William Saletan highlights another destabilizing factor in China:  the bitter consequences of the government's one-child policy.  Bizarrely, the author manages to find a postive twist, but he can't change the facts.

Sixteen million girls are missing in China. And now we know what happened to them: They were aborted because they weren't boys.

Worldwide, the number of boys born per 100 girls ranges from 103 to 107. (The numbers later equalize due to higher male mortality.) Among Chinese children born from 1985 to 1989, the number of boys per 100 girls was 108, close to normal. But among those born from 2000 to 2004, the number rose to 124.

[T]he boy-girl ratio escalates radically among children who were born second or third in their respective families.....For third births, the sex ratio rose to over 200 in four provinces.

Two hundred boys for every 100 girls. The number is mind-boggling.

[T]he "one-child" policy [limits] family size but allows exceptions, with variations from province to province, for couples who have only daughters. Essentially, the exceptions give you a second or, in some cases, a third chance to have a son. That's why, as couples approach the family size limit or the exception allotment, the boy-girl ratio goes up. You get the ultrasound, and if the fetus is a girl, you abort it and try again for a son.

The government...has openly expressed concerns about the consequences of large numbers of excess men for societal stability and security....The old problem was too many children. The new problem is too few girls. Without enough girls, the boys become unruly.

Finally, for a less depressing look at China, visit the Virtual Forbidden City.  I haven't downloaded it myself yet, but include it here because I hope to get to it, eventually—and because I know there are those of my readers who will immediately pull out their virtual passports.

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between IBM and the Palace Museum in Beijing, China....[It] is the world's first online virtual world dedicated to a country's cultural heritage. This is presented as a three-dimensional replica of the square-kilometer palace grounds called The Virtual Forbidden City. The project partners' goal was to create an experience that is as authentic as possible by being true to important Chinese principles of balance and harmony.

Rather than being an isolating virtual experience, the Virtual Forbidden City allows visitors to see and interact with each other and with a wide range of volunteers, staff, and automated characters. To welcome the broadest range of visitors, a simple, easy to use interface guides interactions with the Virtual Forbidden City. As they explore the Virtual Forbidden City, visitors can choose to simply observe the buzz of activity, participate in activities that provide insights into important aspects of the Qing dynasty, or even take guided tours that uncover new insights into the stories of the Forbidden City.

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.

I awoke this morning to e-mails from two family members, each containing a link to a video.  They seemed as unrelated as can be...until I realized that each is a powerful statement of how we underestimate the abilities of ordinary human beings—from frumpy housewives to scruffy street children.

I'll admit it:  I did not get through Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent performance dry-eyed, her triumph over the sneering judges being overlaid on some pretty deep emotional memories associated with that song.

The lecture could have been better organized, especially at the end where the speaker is clearly running out of time, but the autodidactic abilities of these children will astound you.  And maybe frighten you, when you consider what a double-edged blade the Internet is.

I'm sure you're all waiting on the edges of your chairs for news about our worm farm.  I'm getting more and more excited, as they are finally beginning to make garbage disappear.  I made the mistake of thinking of this as an out-of-the-box working system:  having taken the plunge and bought the Can-o-Worms, I could no longer bear to throw away kitchen garbage.  However, this was like buying a brood of newborn chicks and expecting free-range eggs for breakfast the next morning.  After filling up and freezing two large bags of scraps, which I labelled "worm food," I gritted my teeth and returned to former disposal habits. The worms are settling in, eating their plenteous coir fiber introductory bedding, and growing.  For now, they are teenagers without teenage appetites.  A fully mature system should be able to handle five to eight pounds of waste per week, but for now I must be patient.

They've shed their post-transplant shyness, however; when I lift up their moisture mat I can see they are happy and active.  And they're finally beginning to turn garbage into gold, albeit in small amounts.  Already we're harvesting fertilizer in the form of the liquid that drains from the bottom—it's not as good as it will be, I'm sure, but enough to keep me enthusiastic as we wait.

Is anyone else as frustrated as I am with Word's so-called Title Case (called "Capitalize Each Word" in Word 2007)?  I haven't actually found any use for that option; in general, only the more important words of a title should begin with uppercase letters.

But ta-da!  The Internet comes to the rescue, again.  Allen Wyatt's WordTips has a macro that will do what is needed.  Here it is, modified slightly—I added "an" and "and" to the list of words that should not be capitalized, and removed "is"; I was taught that all verbs, even small ones, are important enough to be capitalized.  It's easy to change the list to suit your needs, and I may modify it further through time.  If the excluded words occur at the beginning of the title, they are left in uppercase.

Sub TitleCase()
    Dim lclist As String
    Dim wrd As Integer
    Dim sTest As String

    ' list of lowercase words, surrounded by spaces
    lclist = " a an as and at but by for from in into nor of or the this to with "

    Selection.Range.Case = wdTitleWord

    For wrd = 2 To Selection.Range.Words.Count
        sTest = Trim(Selection.Range.Words(wrd))
        sTest = " " & LCase(sTest) & " "
        If InStr(lclist, sTest) Then
            Selection.Range.Words(wrd).Case = wdLowerCase
        End If
    Next wrd
End Sub

I'm no Word macro expert, but found this easy to install in Word 2007.   On the View tab, click the arrow under Macros.  Choose View Macros, then change the macro name to "TitleCase" (without the quotes) and click Create.  Visual Basic opens up with your macros, including one at the end for TitleCase.  Replace the rather empty text there—from "Sub Titlecase ()" through "End Sub"—with the macro above.  I added a button for the TitleCase macro to my Quick Access Toolbar, and now it's ready whenever I want it.

SFSignal asked of several present-day science fiction writers, "What non-sf/fantasy books would you recommend to someone whose reading was predominantly in sf/fantasy?"  I found the responses notable for two reasons:

One of the respondents was John Kessel, whom I remember from the Science Fiction Society of the University of Rochester.  (I remember him as Jack, rather than John, but that could be either a no-longer-used nickname, or my own faulty memory.  In any case I'm sure it's the same person.)  Although an avid SF fan for much of my early life, I've been away from the genre for a long time and have read none of Kessel's books, but it was a pleasure to see that he succeeded in turning an avocation into a vocation.

The most delightful response to the question, however, came from John C. Wright.  It is neither typical of the responses nor what most people would expect from a science fiction writer.  I excerpt it here for those of my readers who care very little about science fiction but a lot about book lists and good reading. 

[I]t is a common experience to come across readers, especially readers of the generation after mine, who have read science fiction and fantasy so exclusively that they do not know what it is that they are reading. For them, the book is taken out of context, and is not part of that great conversation where the books of one generation speak to the books of another. The reading of the science-fiction-only reader becomes insular, and he does not recognize what he is reading. This kind of reader is the kind who thinks the trite ideas of Kurt Vonnegut are profound, merely because he has not come across them before in mainstream books, and (more to the point) has never come across the rebuttals. With fantasy the insularity is even worse: the fantasy reader who has not read the original ancient epic poems of which modern fantasy is merely a variation or imitation runs the risk of being unduly impressed with a watered-down and modernized version of a rich and ancient literary tradition.

He may be addressing current generation science fiction/fantasy readers, but what he says about lack of understanding of context and the "great conversation" probably applies to 95% of the American public, myself included.

1. The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. These are the seminal works of which all successive Western literature merely forms a footnote. The fantastic elements, gods and monsters, curses and destinies and princes in disguise, the fall of mighty cities in the ruin of war, and all which form the backbone of modern fantasy, are present in their original forms here. These elements here serve a strong literary purpose usually absent from a tale of wonder.
2. The Aeneid of Virgil. The Roman poet and magician Virgil had a sense of history absent from blind Homer: his hero served a fate that would shape the world. It would be difficult to read about Conan of Cimmeria, Gandalf the White, Jommy Cross, Michael Valentine Smith, Paul Atriedes , or Ender Wiggins without an appreciation of the archetypical tale of a hero's journey, from the destruction of Troy, across cursed and monster-haunted seas, to the underworld and back again, through Punic love and Palatine wars.
3. Various Greek tragedies: Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone; Euripides: Hippolytus, Bacchae. These are the mighty and majestic writings of which modern fantastic literature is at best a variation on a theme, or, at worst, merely a pale imitation. One could make the argument that all science fiction follows in the footsteps of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (indeed, this is the gist of the argument made by Brian Aldiss). Frankenstein, also known as Prometheus Unbound, is a riff or reversal of Prometheus Bound. With apologies to classical scholars, I will not recommend any Greek Comedies: their influence on successive generations have been minimal.
4. The Biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Chronicles, Kings, Psalms, Job. A reader would be grossly uninformed not recognize the overwhelming impact the Biblical writings have had, not merely on the religion of Europe, but upon the literature. The basic difference between Greek and Biblical epics can be seen in the contrast between Oedipus and Jacob, or between King David and Prince Orestes. The ancient Greek cannot escape his fate; the ancient Jew can repent and choose again. No Greek hero would have spared King Saul when finding him asleep in a cave, as David did, for example.
5. The Peloponnesian War of Thucydides. There is no point in reading or writing military SF if you do not have an idea of why battles are fought. No writer has ever been clearer on the causes of war. Merely reading Starship Troopers is not going to tell you what the military is all about.
6. Paradise Lost of Milton. The Puritan poet pre-empts the entire field of English epic poetry in this work, and he suborns the motifs and tropes of Homer and Virgil, reversing the role of heroics to display the difference between Christian and Pagan themes. The modern world view which you, dear reader, have absorbed with your mother's milk, has been influenced, like it or not, by these themes, so you might as well know whence they come.
7. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The Modern SF tale is a variation of the traveler's tales of old, a genre that Swift expropriates for his own didactic and satiric purposes. Merely reading Stranger in a Strange Land is not going to tell you what satire is all about.
8. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This is the original for Asimov's Foundation, and is one of the books that founded the literature of history. At the same time, I might also recommend some of the historical novels of Alfred Duggan, such as Knight with Armor or Little Emporers. I have read far too many fantasy novels by writers whose knowledge of the Middle Ages comes from playing Dungeons and Dragons, and a little bit of realism comes in handy.
9. Plato's Timaeus and Critias. The origin of the Atlantis story. Also, the first attempt to use fiction as a vehicle for presenting a political theory.
10. Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia. All Utopian and Dystopian SF springs from this fountain. It makes for interesting reading, since what is being described is a Puritan, and not a Communist, communism.
11. Plutarch's Lives, especially : "Caesar," "Cato the Younger," "Antony," "Brutus."
12. Dante's Divine Comedy. This is what Niven and Pournelle were copying in their Inferno.
13. Tolstoy's War and Peace. Obviously.
14. Mallory's Le Mort d'Arthur. Modern fantasy should know its roots.
15. Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Again, modern fantasy should know its roots.
16. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is good practice learning how to read and to write a good book. Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is the germ from which endless SFF stories of time travel, first contact, and high-tech meets low-tech derive.
17. Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar and various Sonnets. If you have not read the Bard, you are a Philistine.

I cannot end the list without giving honorable mention to Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton, and Napoleon of Notting Hill by the same author. These are not science fiction, but they pass close enough that our watchmen on the boundaries can see them plain without a spyglass. Napoleon of Notting Hill, by no coincidence, takes place in the year 1984. In both these books we see some of the conventions and assumptions common to science fiction turned on their head to comical, and even philosophical, effect. (For example, the opening line of Notting Hill contains what could be a warning for science fiction writers: The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at one of the games called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.)

The reason why it is important to have a grounding in these great books, whose fame will never pass away...is that perspective matters....The modern reader who reads modern books by authors who only read modern books runs the risk of merely accepting the assumptions of the modern age without examining or questioning them. Since we live in an age particularly addicted to narrative propaganda fastidiously divorced from reality or reason, this danger is not harmless.

An unexamined idea is not worth having! (This is an idea of mine I have always accepted without question.)

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.

Looking back at my Lenten disciplines for 2009, I find it was a surprising exercise.  While I can't say I was perfect in keeping them, two worked so well I intend to continue the practices.

The computer goes off at 9:00 every night.   When I stick to a 10 p.m. bedtime, my life goes much better, but that's not always easy, especially when I'm in the middle of a project and "just one more thing" can lead to midnight or beyond.  Not only are most of my projects computer-oriented, but for some reason computing is one of those areas where I blink and two hours have passed. If I get nothing else from this discipline, at least I'll be better rested.

Discipline 1 was downright pleasant, except on days when my evenings were taken up by other things, like choir practice; then I felt entitled to at least a few minutes of computer time after getting home.  But even then the rule kept that time short.  I enjoyed having the excuse to stop work, and it dovetailed nicely with Discipline 3:

I'll spend between a half hour and an hour reading each day.  Preferably the longer time, though I haven't managed it yet.  I know; that's hardly a sacrifice.  But I've noticed that over the last several years my reading has become even more fractured and fragmented than it was when I had small children at home, if that were possible.  I read blogs, articles, and news stories online; I listen to audio books in the car as I run errands, I skim magazines.  I read books in five-minute gulps as I can throughout the day—on visits to the "reading room," while eating, while falling asleep at night.  What I'm missing is concentrated time on a single, book-length topic, and I have a very large stack of quality books—many recently purchased and one overdue at the library—on which the derivative of my progress is negative.  I'm hoping that a short, but consistent, dedicated time will reverse the trend.

Finding concentrated reading time during the day was more difficult than I had hoped, but turning off the computer an hour before bedtime led naturally to reading afterwards.  It was especially enjoyable because Porter often joined me.  I finished G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils (oops, not reviewed yet) and made good headway on Thomas Dubay's Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer.  I'm almost halfway through that one, and without the Discipline I quite likely would have set it aside, as it is more difficult and less inspiring than I had hoped.

It was Discipline 2 that was most revealing.

I'm giving up reading and/or working puzzles while I eat.  Most of you will find this odd, but it is a real sacrifice for me.  I agree wholeheartedly with C. S. Lewis, who said, "Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably." There's no reason not to combine them; I'm doing this because it's a great pleasure I can dispense with for 40 days as an exercise in self-denial, without troubling anyone else or falling terribly behind in my work.  Exception:  Porter and I sometimes do puzzles together during meals; for obvious reasons I'm not abstaining from them.

This was unbelievably hard, and the strength with which I resisited it tells me I've hit an area in my life that needs work.  Whenever I had food or drink in front of me, I cried out, body and soul, for a book or a puzzle—as an addict must cry out for drugs.  It's amazing how many ways I devised to cheat:  working on the computer I justified if I didn't let myself read articles, blogs, or e-mails; going through my Penzeys catalogue needed to be done so I could place an order, even though it involved reading the spice descriptions; we watched movies during dinner; I would clean the refrigerator while eating, organize the cupboards while eating...anything but sit-down-and-eat-and-nothing-else.  Such a waste of time to do nothing else!  Once I even caught myself adding words to my crossword puzzle between bites, because, after all, I wasn't actually eating when I put pencil to paper.  It was easier when I had someone else to eat with; alone, I was miserable, until I finally discovered I could diminish the craving by taking my meal onto the back porch and enjoying the lovely spring weather.  Even then I couldn't stop Li'l Writer Guy from working—that's going to require an intense course in meditation techniques, I suspect.  I lived for Sundays:  On the Sabbaths I released myself from this Discipline—though I usually continued the others.

I could probably lose 30 pounds by forcing myself to do nothing but eat when I am eating.  I'm thinking of marketing the Full Attention Diet.  ("Fad diets are not the answer to your weight problems—FAD is!")  The rules are simple.

• Eat whatever you want, whenever you want.
• While you are eating, do nothing else.  No reading, no watching TV, no working, no walking around—just eating.  The only exception is for mealtime conversation, with which nothing should be allowed to interfere.  You may eat while listening attentively to what other people have to say.  (It goes without saying that you don't eat when you are the one talking.)
• Don't eat mechanically; take time to enjoy the flavors and textures of your food. This should be easy, since you'll have nothing else to do.
• Give yourself time between meals to enjoy the other pleasures that you normally associate with eating, so you won't be tempted to view mealtime as the only time you have for them...and to keep eating so you can keep reading....
• Brush your teeth after every time you eat.  The reason for this last rule is to minimize the read-between-bites syndrome.  Trust me; if there's a loophole, I'll make use of it.

From the frequency of my posting recently, my overwhelmed readers can see I'm hacking away at a hugh backlog.  Here's another  in the Casting the Net series, which makes the job easier for me, if not for you. The good news is, like the can't-pass-this-up offer at the bottom of my inbox, and that $1 off coupon that's been in my wallet for six months, several of my must-posts are enough out of date I can cheerfully hit the delete key and not trouble you with them.

Free-Range Kids.  I've only begun to explore Lenore Skenazy's site, but I like the premise, and it goes well with this cartoon.  Skenazy found herself plunged into controversy after whe wrote a column for The New York Sun entitled, Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone.

I started this site for anyone who thinks that kids need a little more freedom and would like to connect to people who feel the same way.  We are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence.  Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned.  So here’s to Free Range Kids, raised by Free Range Parents willing to take some heat. I hope this web site encourages us all to think outside the house.

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George F. Will's What Fear of Liability Has Wrought has unfortunately not gone out of date.

Called to a Florida school that could not cope, police led the disorderly student away in handcuffs, all 40 pounds of her 5-year-old self....No official at the...school would put a restraining arm around the misbehaving child lest he or she be sued, as a young member of Teach for America was...because the teacher put a hand on the back of a turbulent seventh-grader to direct him to leave the classroom.

In Indiana, a boy did what boys [and girls, I might add] do: He went down a slide head first—and broke his femur. The school district was sued for inadequate supervision.

A volunteer for a Catholic charity in Milwaukee ran a red light and seriously injured another person. Because the volunteer did not have deep pockets, the injured person sued the archdiocese—successfully, for $17 million.

The warning label on a five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook says, "Harmful if swallowed"; the label on a letter opener says, "Safety goggles recommended."

The thread connecting such lunacies is a fear permeating American life. It is, alas, a sensible fear arising from America's increasingly perverse legal culture that is the subject of what surely will be 2009's most needed book on public affairs—[attorney Philip] Howard's Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law.

Time was, rights were defensive. They were to prevent government from doing things to you. Today, rights increasingly are offensive weapons wielded to inflict demands on other people, using state power for private aggrandizement. The multiplication of rights, each lacking limiting principles, multiplies nonnegotiable conflicts.

But in such a society, dazed by what Howard calls "rule stupor" and victimized by litigious "victims," the incentives are for intensified complaining. Read Howard's book, and weep for the death of common sense.

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Babies Know:  A Little Dirt Is Good for You, from Jane E. Brody in The New York Times.  Handwashing is a good thing, especially after using the bathroom, before preparing food, and during the time in our church service between the Peace, in which we've shaken hands with anyone and everyone we can reach, and the Eucharist, in which the bread is placed in those same hands and tranferred directly to our mouths.  Nonetheless, I agree that the germ-free life, like the risk-free life decried above, is unheathy, especially for our children.

In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.

“What a child is doing when he puts things in his mouth is allowing his immune response to explore his environment,” Mary Ruebush, a microbiology and immunology instructor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt Is Good” (Kaplan). “Not only does this allow for ‘practice’ of immune responses, which will be necessary for protection, but it also plays a critical role in teaching the immature immune response what is best ignored.”

“Children raised in an ultraclean environment,” [said Dr. Joel V. Weinstock, the director of gastroenterology and hepatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston], “are not being exposed to organisms that help them develop appropriate immune regulatory circuits.”

Studies he has conducted with Dr. David Elliott, a gastroenterologist and immunologist at the University of Iowa, indicate that intestinal worms, which have been all but eliminated in developed countries, are “likely to be the biggest player” in regulating the immune system to respond appropriately, Dr. Elliott said in an interview. He added that bacterial and viral infections seem to influence the immune system in the same way, but not as forcefully.

Most worms are harmless, especially in well-nourished people, Dr. Weinstock said.

Dr. Ruebush deplores the current fetish for the hundreds of antibacterial products that convey a false sense of security and may actually foster the development of antibiotic-resistant, disease-causing bacteria. Plain soap and water are all that are needed to become clean, she noted.

“I certainly recommend washing your hands after using the bathroom, before eating, after changing a diaper, before and after handling food,” and whenever they’re visibly soiled, she wrote. When no running water is available and cleaning hands is essential, she suggests an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Dr. Weinstock goes even further. “Children should be allowed to go barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt, and not have to wash their hands when they come in to eat,” he said. He and Dr. Elliott pointed out that children who grow up on farms and are frequently exposed to worms and other organisms from farm animals are much less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune diseases.

Also helpful, he said, is to “let kids have two dogs and a cat,” which will expose them to intestinal worms that can promote a healthy immune system.

Amen to all but the last statement, which unfortunately would discourage visits from Grandma:  having cats as pets did not teach my own immune system not to overreact to the presence of their dander.