Lift Up Your Hearts!

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bottom of my inbox, and that $1 off coupon that's been in my wallet for six months, several of my must-posts are enough out of date I can cheerfully hit the delete key and not trouble you with them.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George F. Will's What Fear of Liability Has Wrought has unfortunately not gone out of date.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.

Thanks to Percival Blakeney Academy for publicising Southern Utah University communicatio major Jeffrey Wilbur's direct and pithy denunciation of restrictive "free speech zones."  (Brilliant, even if he did exclude Alaska and Hawaii.)

In light of SUU officials [sic] plan to designate "Free Speech Zones" on campus, I thought I'd offer my assistance. Grab a map. OK, ready?

All right, you see that big area between Canada and Mexico, surrounded by lots of blue ink on the East and West? You see it?

There's your bloody Free Speech Zone.

Once again I wonder why people can't make their points without resorting to offensive language, but as a great deal of blood was spilled to put the First Amendment into effect, perhaps it's appropriate.

Unfortunately, free speech—like free markets—can do great damage when not moderated by ethical principles.  (Nothing complex required:  the Golden Rule would suffice.)  Stepping out from under the restrictions of a moral code invites the imposition of far greater—and often irrational—restrictions in response to real, perceived, or potential public harm.

(I'll be including some links in this post, but follow them with care if you think there's a chance you'll want to watch the movies, as they contain spoilers.)

Our church periodically holds "communication" classes, mostly designed for couples, although the tools and techniques we discuss are applicable for all relationships, so I wish it was more widely advertised.  Be that as it may, most of us find ourselves signing up again and again, not so much for the content as for an excuse and a framework for spending time together.

In the most recent incarnation of the class, we began with watching the movie, Fireproof, and are working our way through The Love Dare book, which is featured in the movie.  Although it has some good points, I can't say as I've found the book all that useful, but the movie was great.  It was so enjoyable we hastened to put the company's previous film, Facing the Giants, high on our Netflix queue.  While not quite as well-made as Fireproof, it is still excellent—take note that I thoroughly enjoyed watching a movie about football!

Why did I like the movie?  First of all, it must be admitted, because it wasn't as bad as I had expected.  I've seen my share of church-produced films and low-budget, Sunday school fare, and most of them are so poorly made they're embarrassing.  As the film progressed, however, I grudgingly moved from "not so bad" to "riveting, gripping, and amazing."  No, it's not perfect, and neither is Facing the Giants, and there are one or two awkwardly-done "preachy" moments.  But overall, both are believable, delightful stories.  It's true that events and changes happen more quickly and easily than in real life, but this is a common dramatic device and requires no more of a willing suspension of disbelief than most movie and television fare.  And unlike most movie and television fare, the characters are recognizable, more like people I know than the characters I usually see on the screen.

Movie critics, and no doubt many veteran movie-watchers, will fault these films for their positive attitudes.  "Unrealistic," they would say.  This pervasive, modern viewpoint was described (and decried) well enough over 50 years ago by C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters; here one tempter is explaining to another how to use it to his advantage:

The general rule which we have now pretty well established among them is that in all experiences which can make them happier or better only the physical facts are "real," while the spiritual elements are "subjective"; in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist.  Thus in birth the blood and pain are "real," the rejoicing a mere subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death "really means."  The hatefulness of a hated person is "real"—in hatred you see men as they are, you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a "real" core of sexual appetite or economic association.  Wars and poverty are "really" horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments….Your patient, properly handled, will have no difficulty in regarding his emotion at the sight of human entrails as a revelation of reality and his emotion at the sight of happy children or fair weather as mere sentiment.

What is truly unbelievable is how these movies were made.  Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who between the two of them cover the writer, producer, director, and some of the actor positions, are pastors at a Baptist Church in Georgia.  The instrumental scores were written by the church's music director.  While there were a few professionals involved, nearly all the work—including most of the acting roles—was done by church volunteers.  The budget for Facing the Giants (2006) was only $100,000, and for Fireproof (2008) $500,000.  For comparison, The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had a U.S. budget of $180 million, Star Wars Episode III:  Revenge of the Sith (2005) $113 million, Gone with the Wind (1939) 3.9 million. Granted, Facing the Giants is nowhere near Revenge of the Sith in quality, nor does it pretend to be—but on the other hand the latter is nowhere near 1000 times better.  I'm not knocking the value of professionals, but I am blown away by what can be accomplished by volunteers.  It was that good.

The experience reminds me of my reaction to Alex and Brett Harris's Do Hard Things.  Surely we expect too little of ourselves.

A brilliant student, Marcus sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As. Marcus puzzled over why some of his classmates struggled, and his parents told him he had a special gift. In the seventh grade, however, Marcus suddenly lost interest in school, refusing to do homework or study for tests. As a consequence, his grades plummeted. His parents tried to boost their son’s confidence by assuring him that he was very smart. But their attempts failed to motivate Marcus (who is a composite drawn from several children). Schoolwork, their son maintained, was boring and pointless.

The story above is from a Scientific American Mind article entitled The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. (I've changed the name because in the original it is "Jonathan."  Apologies to any Marcuses who might read this.)  I insist that Marcus was probably right:  most seventh grade schoolwork is boring and pointless.  Be that as it may, the article investigates a question I have wrestled with for decades:  Why do so many bright students fail of their promise, surpassed sooner or later by their apparently average, ordinary classmates?

My own conclusion is that children who meet no challenge in their early schoolwork miss the opportunity to struggle early in life, when they are best able to learn from the experience. Eventually, even the most intelligent person will encounter a problem that does not admit of easy solution.  An average student will learn while still very young that answers aren't handed to him, but must be wrested from the universe with much study and effort.  The gifted student may not encounter this harsh reality until college or graduate school, when his approach to learning and problem-solving is already well established and may be difficult or impossible to change.  Hence my frustration with the American educational system, which in the main deprives young, smart children of the opportunities they need to develop one of life's most essential skills:  perseverence in the face of difficulty.

The article suggests another dimension to the problem, and what's better, an approach to counteracting it.  "Helpless" students have a fixed mind-set about intelligence, viewing it as something inborn and generally unchangeable.  "Mastery-oriented" students believe intelligence is malleable, and have what the authors call a growth mind-set.  Unfortunately, telling our children that they are smart, and allowing them to be labelled as "gifted and talented," encourages the former view.  We would do well, instead, to praise them for hard work and persistence, and emphasize to them that the brain, like a muscle, grows with exercise.

[M]ore than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

[C]hildren...who coast through the early grades [in school] under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted....hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

The students with a stagnant view of intelligence were presumably unwilling to admit to their deficit and thus passed up the opportunity to correct it.

Mind-set can affect the quality and longevity of personal relationships as well, through people’s willingness—or unwillingness—to deal with difficulties. Those with a fixed mind-set are less likely than those with a growth mind-set to broach problems in their relationships and to try to solve them....After all, if you think that human personality traits are more or less fixed, relationship repair seems largely futile. Individuals who believe people can change and grow, however, are more confident that confronting concerns in their relationships will lead to resolutions.

How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about math geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up a child by telling him  or her how brilliant and talented he or she is, our research suggests that this is misguided.

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, [we] gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”  We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

[Some colleagues and I] recently designed an eight-session workshop for 91 students whose math grades were declining in their first year of junior high. Forty-eight of the students received instruction in study skills only, whereas the others attended a combination of study skills sessions and classes in which they learned about the growth mind-set and how to apply it to schoolwork.

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

As the semester progressed, the math grades of the kids who learned only study skills continued to decline, whereas those of the students given the growth-mind-set training stopped falling and began to bounce back to their former levels.

Teaching children such information is not just a ploy to get them to study. People do differ in intelligence, talent and ability. And yet research is converging on the conclusion that great accomplishment, and even what we call genius, is typically the result of years of passion and dedication and not something that flows naturally from a gift. Mozart, Edison, Curie, Darwin and Cézanne were not simply born with talent; they cultivated it through tremendous and sustained effort.

There is a place for what used to be called salty language in our discourse.  As a seasoning, however, it is more like Dave's Insanity Sauce, and the extent to which it is poured out today only proves that our societal tastebuds have been destroyed.  Why can't people—especially intelligent, articulate people—communicate without being offensive?

The Front Porch Republic recently highlighted a lecture from 2004 featuring James Howard Kunstler.  His occasional use of a particularly offensive four-letter-word keeps me from embedding the video here, but anyone willing to take the risk can see it on the FPR site.  That I mention it at all is due to a suspicion that Kunstler may have a few good ideas, and the fact that I have one son-in-law who is interested in urban architecture and another who is interested in anything that promotes community life.

I do not share Kunstler's distain of suburbia.  I approve of yards (back and front) where children can play without constant supervision and where families can grow their own fruits, vegetables, and flowers (and even, in the right neighborhoods, their own chickens); of quiet streets where neighbors walk and chat after dinner while their children organize kickball games; of tiny wild places where birds and small animals can prosper.  If this is not everyone's view of suburbia, it is the suburbia in which I grew up, and I will not have it tarred with the brush of scorn.

Also I wonder about his approval of stores built to the sidewalk's edge.  When we moved from Florida to Massachusetts I remember feeling quite claustrophobic for just that reason, as if the buildings were crowding and jostling me more than my fellow pedestrians.  With that exception, I can see the appeal of his approach to urban planning, especially in contrast to the sterility of blank walls and parking lots.

There is a city near us called Winter Park, one of the older cities nearby, and I've often said it's the closest we'll get here to a European feel, with its cafés and coffeehouses, its central park area, its old apartments and its farmer's market.  Unfortunately, the character has been changing over the years as big chains buy out the little stores, but some of the community feeling remains, perhaps because the architecture is unchanged.

Green is as green does.

[Quoting Desperate (Green) Housewives] The greenest people are totally unhip and unlikely to be photographed for the Times or a glossy magazine. They’re still wearing their clothes from twenty years ago. They aren’t keeping their home spa-worthy clean. No need to worry about polluting the air with chemicals, if you aren’t dusting every five minutes. They aren’t constantly renovating their kitchens and bathrooms, all of which uses enormous amounts of energy and resources; they are still living with the Formica numbers from the 70s. They aren’t jetting off to Europe to browse the Paris markets; they go bowling in the next town over. They aren’t constantly shopping for new things and tossing out the old things.

Barring the bit about jetting off to Europe (is it okay if the purpose is to visit family?) the author could have been peering in our window.  Good to know we're cool if not hip.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Did anyone else grow up with that phrase hanging around their living environment—as counsel, as a warning, as a reprimand? I did. We sure didn’t live it as well as we might have, but still, I heard it recited often enough, from my parents and grandparents and church leaders and others, to accept it as the Gospel truth, long before I read any of the philosophy or politics or economics that persuaded me of its correctness on their own. Basically, the message is that the way to prosperity and happiness—at least insofar as the material world is concerned—is to live conservatively and renounce extravagance and stick with what you have and know.

[R]eal environmentalism begins with “tending to” our environment, rather than upgrading it or ourselves in the name of continual betterment, and supporting those moral causes and political campaigns that are actually trying to make tending to our families and jobs and neighborhoods more possible, rather than selling us on constantly retraining and retrofitting ourselves and our world.

Sons of Liberty, 2009

A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of Kansas secessionists. The participants were rowdy, complaining of economic gigantism squashing them flat and bureaucratic thugs hounding their every move. They were all sick and tired of worker-ant existence in the hive-mind of American groupthink and they wanted out....Kansas patriots fomenting disunion? No, though there are a few of those kicking around these parts. These were local farmers organizing a farmer’s market....[T]he Spirit of ‘76 showed up in force. Damned were the federal busy-bodies who tell local farmers what they can and can’t sell; condemned were the centralized agents of agri-business who want ID chips implanted in livestock; mocked were the credentialed witch-doctors from the department of agriculture who own the brand “organic.”

All that was left undone was a patriotic march to the local Enormo-Mart to dump the limp and faded out-of-season tomatoes imported from South America into the local pond (which isn’t quite Boston Harbor, but it would have served). And while there was no Declaration, it was clear that these small growers wanted out–out of forced participation in the economic union of cheap mass production, central planning, credit money, and the ignorant consumerism they despised.

[Author Michael] Pollan issues this simple dictate: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The harping of a food-scold?  Perhaps. But Pollan fleshes his commandment out well, especially the first third. By “eat food” Pollan actually has in mind something quite revolutionary, because you can’t buy “food” most places. Walk into your local Mega-lo-Mart and what you see is not food—it’s processed corn syrup and assorted chemicals and “nutrients” packaged in plastic and shot so full of preservatives it will never rot.

Food rots. If it doesn’t rot, it’s not food. That’s a good principle to live by.

[S]elf-provisioning is dirty work done by sun hardened men who obtain...membership in the rarefied league of freemen who can pretty much tell anyone and everyone, as circumstances may require, to go to hell without concern for the consequences (taxman excepted). That’s the feed store definition of freedom in Jefferson County, Kansas, though it’s not taught much in social studies textbooks. Only such men—rich or poor, barber or builder, clodhopper or shopkeeper—know true equality, for they know and honor the true measure of the other....[T]he food problem in this country described and catalogued so aptly by Pollan is ultimately a symptom of the much more disturbing problem: that the league of freemen has dwindled to near extinction.  The important questions start not with what we eat but with who we are.

Where does Stephanie find these things?  I'm four days late but have to share this anyway.  If their country is no longer quite as pristine as when I visited 40 years ago, it's not the fault of these intrepid and dedicated Swiss!

Or, if you wish, in Russian, Dutch, or Italian.  Enjoy!

I know—the last thing you need is another blog to read!  And the one I’m about to recommend had several authors and consequently great risk of overwhelming your feed reader.  Especially since nearly all the posts are thought-provoking and well-written.

The Front Porch Republic is new—the first posts were on March 2 of this year—but has already produced so many shareable articles that it deserves its own post.  Treat yourself and subscribe to the Front Porch Republic; they have a Comments RSS feed as well, though I can’t usually keep up with it.  A mark of the quality of this blog (and its readers) is that the comments are so far above the “Your a &%$#& moron!” level seen all too often on websites without benefit of sufficient editorial oversight.

Knowing that most of you would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of meaty reading available there, however, I will continue my practice of sharing excerpts.  Here are a few by way of introduction:

Architecture matters.  I knew I missed our front porch; now I know why.  It’s a much easier way to interact with the neighbors than cleaning up after a hurricane.

[In his essay, “From Porch to Patio,” Richard Thomas] explores the social implications of the architectural practice of building porches on the front of homes and its eventual abandonment in favor of patios behind the house…. As with any central feature in our built environment, this is more than merely a passing fashion trend or a meaningless design change:  the transition from porch to patio was one of the clearest and significant manifestations the physical change from a society concerned with the relationship of private and public things—in the Latin, res publica—to one of increasing privacy.  The porch, as a physical bridge between the private realm of the house and the public domain of the street and sidewalk, was the literal intermediate space between two worlds that have been increasingly separated in our time, and hence increasingly ungoverned in both forms.

Why entrepreneurs, the self-employed, family farms, small businesses, and craftsmen are the bellwethers of liberty.

In 1913…Hilaire Belloc looked forward and anticipated our moment. He argued that what we today call corporate capitalism was fundamentally unstable and would eventually cease to exist.

The instability would be caused by the slow but inexorable concentration of property into fewer and fewer hands. As property became concentrated, power also would become concentrated, and concentrated power is a threat to the state unless, of course, it is co-opted by the state. Furthermore, as property became concentrated, the security of individuals would be threatened. People would find themselves in the precarious situation of living paycheck-to-paycheck. Because they possess no capital, they would not be able to provide for themselves in the way that a small farmer or craftsman could. They would be completely dependent upon their wages, and when economic crisis struck and wages were threatened, the insecurity of their situation would become acute. In such a time, it is not hard to image the people clamoring for a solution, rejoicing over a new kind of leader who promises change, if only he is empowered. Yes we can.

According to Belloc, the most obvious solution to this economic instability, the path of least resistance, is the acquisition by the state of the major economic interests, e.g. collectivization. This is sometimes called socialism, and, according to Belloc, it is the most natural course. But socialism is not benign or even honest, for the collectivization of property under the authority of the state results not in a more just society but one characterized by glaring inequalities and the loss of freedom for most. As Belloc puts it, “in the very act of collectivism, what results is not collectivism at all, but the servitude of the many, and the confirmation in their present privilege of the few; that is, the servile state.”

The unlikely alternative is what Belloc calls the “distributist state.” It is characterized by widely distributed private property so that the general character of the society is shaped by individual property owners. By “property” Belloc means “capital.” That is, property that can be used to make a living. When a critical mass of citizens possesses capital and are therefore economically independent, a stable situation exists. According to Belloc, private property is the only means of achieving security with freedom. Collectivization does, in fact, provide security. The price, though, is freedom.

The choices are stark. The Obama administration likely will continue to seek ways to nationalize the economy unless and until the American people rise up and demand a different direction. Do we even remember this better way? Can we imagine a world of free men and women who own real property and do not look to the state for happiness or economic security?

From a related post:

Here we can see the curious state of affairs in our waning republic: Democrats tend to be suspicious of big business but they trust big government to rein in abuses; Republicans express suspicion of big government but no fear of economic centralization. Both are half right but half blind. Here is a principle that we would do well to grasp: concentrations of power in any form are a threat to liberty. It may be too late for this generation to see this vital truth, or if seeing, to do anything about it. But nothing is inevitable, and there are hopeful signs that people are beginning to think seriously about the importance of localism, human scale, limits, and stewardship, the very things woefully lacking in the current spending orgy. While a return to these ideals is still only in its infancy, change is afoot. This represents a glimmer of sanity in a world succumbing to the apparent security promised by centralization.

Tobacco farming and community life.  My antipathy towards tobacco products is well-known, and I thought Barbara Kingsolver inexplicably inconsistent when in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle she decried our unhealthy farming practices yet bemoaned the loss of small tobacco farms.  I still can’t rationalize subsidizing such an unhealthy crop, but here’s another side to the story.

[E]very community must be bound together by something it shares—and for the ties to bind strongly there need to be several somethings.  Here in Henry County, when everyone used to raise tobacco, everyone had the crop’s seasons and its demands in common.

My state is one of the few that still has a good number of small farms, and for years here tobacco was the mortgage crop.  It made keeping those small farms possible for many families, and it was a vital part of a farmer’s mixed use of his land.  The federal tobacco program and the Burley Tobacco Growers’ Co-op acted as a brake for the small farmer on the pitilessness of the international market….Today farmers here and in the several burley-growing states are free from any buttressing power between the small growers and the supranational tobacco companies that buy their crop.  They are free to contract with the companies directly (and typically do, as otherwise there is no guarantee their crop will sell), and in one of those rhetorical equalities that is so unequal in fact, the companies are likewise free to set the price and limit the production, in a world market in which it is cheaper, of course, to grow tobacco in Brazil.

But my point is not only that farmers in my area have lost a good source of revenue.  We’ve also lost a shared experience intimately tied to this place in which we live.  Tobacco gave us something in common…tobacco was our common language…. [I]f the weather for curing was wet, everyone waited.  If blue mold hit the county, everyone compared their losses.  And everyone had a near-disaster story from working high in the rafters of the barn, to be retold every fall.

[W]ith the end of the program, most of us took the buyout and quit.  The relative few farmers who still grow tobacco grow significantly larger crops now, which is a different sort of operation.  People were growing something like two to twelve acres; now farmers often grow forty, or eighty, or even more.  This is factory farming, and there is no way a family can manage it alone.  There is too much to cut all at once, and hang all at once; it requires jobbed-in crews of migrant labor.  Raising a few acres of tobacco was good and satisfying work….Toiling under the pressure of eighty must be something else.

So it is that here in Henry County we have lost the bond that tobacco gave, and one important part of our shared history is only history.  And at times of real disagreement….we find we have fewer acres of common ground.

(My personal favorite tobacco farm is not in Kentucky, but Virginia.  The Claude Moore Colonial Farm lives in a time warp—1771—and raises tobacco along with other heirloom crops and livestock.)

The Front Porch Republic—I’m reserving a rocking chair, as I plan to be a frequent visitor.

Observant readers may have noted a new category of post, which I’ve labelled “Conservationist Living.”  When considering a title for this particular type of post, my first thought was “Green Living,” but that’s too trendy and not really what I mean.

I was born and raised a conservationist.  I’m not sure what people might mean by that label today, but in my family it meant someone who loved the world of nature, cared for it, and used it prudently and wisely.  Conservationists loved hiking, mountain climbing, camping, and picnics.  They never threw litter on the ground and didn’t waste water.  They knew the rules of the wilderness: how to build a safe fire, pitch a tent on dry ground, keep food out of the reach of bears, dig a latrine that would not pollute the water supply, and leave.  At a conservationist’s home one was likely to find a lovingly-tended garden, with bright flowers and the best-tasting vegetables in the world—and a compost pile.

The conservationist label was broad and inclusive.  If I dared curse hunters—because the coming of hunting season meant we couldn’t hike during some of the most beautiful weather of the year, and anyway how could they kill those darling deer—I was quickly reminded that the hunters and fishermen were some of the most ardent protectors of nature because they had a personal interest in the survival and health of wilderness areas, and anyway the deer they killed provided their dinners, just as cattle were killed to supply my Saturday-night hamburgers.  When I grumbled that the rest of the state was controlled by voters in New York City whose concerns were far different from ours, I was informed that it was the votes of those city dwellers against the interests of Upstate developers that had protected our beloved Adirondack Mountains.  Conservationism had a common-sense, “we’re all in this together” feeling about it.

Not so the environmentalism that superseded it.  Environmentalism’s strident tone and us-against-them attitude was possibly the impetus needed to accomplish quickly what conservationism was achieving slowly—perhaps too slowly.  But it also opened the door to backlash, to the polarization that had some people celebrating the recent Earth Hour by turning off their lights and other electrical devices, and others marking the occasion by consuming as much power as possible.  While conservationism easily crossed the Liberal/Conservative divide, environmentalism widened the gap to a chasm.

Hence my wish to return to what I see as a friendlier, more inclusive and constructive label.  We are all in this together.  What I post in this category will include conservationist suggestions gleaned from elsewhere as well as our own very modest attempts to live and promote that common-sense conservationism of my childhood.  There will be no preaching—at least none intended as such—because we all can’t do everything, certainly not in all stages of our lives.  But we can all do something, and encourage each other along the way.

I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. — Edward Everett Hale

Today at the grocery store I bought sugar.  This is not a confession; I refuse to feel guilty for the purchase.  After all, displayed prominently on the package was this warm-and-fuzzy logo:

I wonder, though:  What am I going to do with my five-pound bag of H₂₂O₁₁?

Keep Meadows, Not Lawns.  That's the title of a Front Porch Republic post (more on the FPR later), the sole content of which is this 16-minute video:

I have nothing against lawns, per se.  We had a large yard when I was growing up, and its lawn was the perfect surface for our volleyball, croquet, and touch football games, for whiffle-ball hitting contests, picnics, tumbling runs, tag, and running through the sprinkler on a hot summer afternoon.  We didn't baby our lawn, though:  aside from mowing in the summer and clearing of leaves in the autumn it received minimal attention, but it grew tough and we grew up thinking dandelions were a positive addition to the landscape.  That said, we do need to rethink our use of the land, and the resources it costs to keep the now-common sterile, pristine, perfect lawn. Let's not overlook the fact that meadows don't require mowing, except for use as baseball fields—and for that even a teenage boy might crank up the lawnmower without being asked.

Despite the title, however, the video is less about lawns than about bees, what's happening to them, and why this is a serious problem.  It's well worth the investment of 1% of your day to watch.

Declining by Degrees:  Higher Education at Risk premiered on PBS in 2005; I watched it for the first time this week, intrigued by this Netflix summary.

Debunking commonly held notions about the rite of passage known as the college experience, this PBS documentary follows 30 students and their teachers along the path of higher education, from admission to graduation, and exposes the disappointment, disorientation and deflation many students feel—in both public and private schools. This revealing study also addresses the quality and readiness of America's future work force.

"Disappointment, disorientation, and deflation" fairly describes how I felt watching the show.  Here's what I learned:

• A college degree is absolutely necessary for anyone to get into and stay in the American middle class.
• Administrators, and consequently professors, are under great pressure to retain students; it is very difficult to fail.
• Grade inflation is rampant; only an extraordinarily terrible performance will get you a C.
• Many classes are huge, and often taught by graduate students or part-time faculty.
• Professors are rewarded for research and publication, not teaching.
• Whether because they need their time for research or for working several part-time positions, professors resort to true/false and multiple-choice exams, and assign few papers, essays, or anything else that requires much time to grade.
• Students have discovered that they can "sleepwalk" through college, doing just enough to get by, and still receive the degree that is the reason their parents sent them to college.
• Hence they have plenty of time for the real reason they're in college:  to party.  To get drunk, to get high, to indulge in as many fleshly temptations as possible.  "I don't want to be 40 or 50 years old," one student proclaimed, "and saying, 'I wish I had partied then, because I can't now.'"
• Other students are holding down full time jobs while attempting to attend school full time.  Like the partiers, they are ruining their health while gaining little from their classes.
• There is an unspoken agreement between professors and students, each to help the other "get by":  You don't expect much of me, and I won't expect much of you.
• Students whose lives have been bounded by home and high school quickly become lost in a world of little oversight, no restrictions, no rules, great freedom, and low expectations.
• Professors are demoralized by students who come to college without the needed skills and habits, who can't think, don't work, don't pay attention, don't respond, don't show up, don't care.
• Employers, who control the jobs for which most students are purchasing their degrees, are increasingly complaining to the colleges that the graduates come to them ill-prepared and under-educated.
• The cost of a college education has risen out of sight, and most students—or their parents—come out of the ordeal with a massive debt load.
• This is the sad situation with respect to our state schools.  The small minority of fortunate students who can afford $40,000/year attend private schools where classes are small and interesting, professors care about and work individually with their students, and their fellow-students are bright and devoted to intellectual pursuits.  [I do hope no one was drinking a hot beverage while reading that last point; I'm only reporting what I learned from the show.]
• When Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill providing educational benefits to WWII servicemen, the United States entered into a social contract to provide all its citizens with a college education.
• Beginning in the 1980's, we have reneged on that contract by not providing enough state and federal scholarship money.
• Merit-based scholarships are bad, because they "help those whom God has already helped."

In summary:

• College is where high school graduates go to ruin their physical, mental, and spiritual health, waste their time and their talents, and emerge four years later unfit for employment, let alone a responsible, mature place in society.
• Therefore we should make this experience available to everyone at no cost.

I could confirm several of the points made by Declining by Degrees, and refute others, but I'll content myself with standing in awe of its logic. 

I grew up on orange juice reconstituted from frozen concentrate, but I have since forgiven my parents.  It was convenient and inexpensive, and oranges did not grow on our New York State trees.  It tasted fine to me, because I didn't know any better.  Why I was so ignorant I'm not certain, since every two years we visited relatives in Florida—and this was in the days before a cooling cycle in the weather teamed with developers to destroy most of Central Florida's citrus groves.  Perhaps orange juice from concentrate simply tasted better to me because that's what I was accustomed to, much as many children who grow up with Aunt Jemima often prefer the imitation to real maple syrup.  Or maybe I simply didn't care enough, but ate what was set before me without giving it much thought.

With maturity came discrimination.  When "not-from-concentrate" orange juice appeared in the grocery stores I winced at the price, but never looked back, as it made the frozen concentrate taste like so much flavored sugar water.  (Later, when I read John McPhee's marvelous Oranges, I learned that flavored sugar water is a fairly accurate description of the product.)  It would be another 20 years before I discovered orange juice that was orders of magnitude better than the best not-from-concentrate available in the grocery stores.

My ignorance was annihilated when a friend married into a citrus grove and juice-producing facility.  There I learned that "orange juice" is not a single product with a single flavor, but varies from month to month as different varieties of orange reach their peak season.  There I discovered more varieties of orange and other citrus fruit than I could imagine, and tasted the delights of many.  Who knew kumquats are best eaten whole: rind, seeds, and all?

Real orange juice has not one but many incomparable flavors.  And real orange juice is not pasteurized.  Our friends were certified by the State of Florida to sell juice just as it came from the fruit, making the hour-plus trip to their grove worth the drive.  Alas, the forces of development overcame that grove, and I have yet to find a substitute.

No substitute grove, that is.  There are a couple of stores in the area where I can usually find unpasteurized orange and grapefruit juice, and our recent visit to the Winter Park Farmer's Market yielded delightful, unpasteurized tangerine juice.  Lately, however, I've been closing the circle, putting our citrus juicer to full use and making our juice directly from the fruit.  There is not as much variety of citrus in our grocery stores as I would like, but there is some—and I can make blends.  Valencia and red grapefruit, tangelo with a hint of lemon, navel and tangerine....  Sure, it's more work, especially since I can't bear to thrown the rinds out but bury them under our backyard grapefruit tree.  But 100% worthwhile!

Now if only making my own cider were so easy.  The same lessons I learned at our friend's grove I re-learned on a visit to a New Hampshire apple orchard:  apples come in many wonderful varieties that you will never see in the grocery store, and unpasteurized cider is incomparably better than the treated kind.  Growing up in New York meant that what I lacked in good orange juice I made up for in flavorful cider.  Unfortunately, even New Yorkers have a hard time finding good cider these days—and cider is a lot harder to make than orange juice.

We must take our victories where we can find them, however, and good citrus juice is within your reach even if you live far from the groves.  Invest in a citrus juicer and teach yourself and your children that orange juice does not grow in cardboard cartons!

We're not much of a pet family.  We had a cat for a few years, but he didn't get along with the new baby.  He was old and accustomed to having all our attention; he did not like the intruder.  (A few years later she returned the favor by becoming allergic to cats.)  He left for greener pastures, i.e. other family members who returned him to his spoiled, prince of the family position.  As the kids grew older they acquired a few pets—two hamsters and a cockatiel.  We enjoyed them all, and even paid for surgery on a hamster that could have been replaced for $2.50, but I never did understand people who treat their pets like children.  I'm not saying that's wrong, just that it doesn't appear to be part of my makeup.  What's more, we tend to travel a lot, which is a lot easier to do if you don't have pets to worry about.

So...those who know us may be surprised to discover that we have recently acquired some new pets.  Many new pets:  about 2000 red wiggler worms.  They live on our back porch in their own recycled-battery-casing worm condominium.  I've been admiring these garbage-converting little guys for four years, and finally took the plunge with a visit to the Our Vital Earth worm farm in Apopka. There I met Bernie and Carl Moro, both in their 70s and more spry and active than many of us in our 50s.  They started their worm venture as a retirement project after discovering how well home vermicomposting works in Australia. You can see a news story about Bernie and Carl here.

As with all new pets, it's going to take a while to get things running smoothly, but when they've all settled in nicely they should begin to turn our kitchen scraps, dryer lint, vacuum cleaner dust (minus the occasional button and pin), and paper into fantastic fertilizer for our garden.  Animal products are out, except for egg shells, because they attract rodents, and also tend to smell up an otherwise—supposedly—odorless system.  A little milk on leftover breakfast cereal is fine, I'm told, and these amazing worms can even turn small doses of battery acid into harmless fertilizer.  But I think I'll skip the cheese, even if the Swiss do compost theirs, rather than face the prospect of rat visitors to our porch.  The occasional mole is quite enough.

This isn't a money-saving proposition, since we have fixed-fee garbage collection, and it will be a long time before our $234 investment can be returned in fertilizer savings.  But it certainly feels better to be doing something useful with our waste rather than adding to the landfill, and I'll be happy to have worm castings and worm "tea" with which to pamper our fledgling garden.  Family and friends who wish to venture into vermicomposting may be able to get away with a lower initial cost; we bought the whole package, both to get the best start we could and to support the business.  We can certainly lend out the instructional video, and if you procrastinate long enough we should have enough worms to give some away.

Here are a couple of videos about the vermicomposting system.

Update 23 May 2009  If you watched the videos, you saw the hemp "moisture mat" that covers the worms and their food.  Our unit did not come with one of those; suggestions were to use damp newspaper or an old towel or t-shirt.  We don't get the paper, so rather than raid our neighbor's recycle bin, I went the old t-shirt route.  When bagpipe music starts emanating from our well-educated worm bin, I'll let you know.