Lift Up Your Hearts!

A recent New York Times article on the effort to promote breastfeeding includes this interesting line:

Nursing may even produce a euphoric feeling

So if you can't convince them with the overwhelming evidence of breastfeeding's benefits for the baby, try suggesting it as a new way to get high!

In honor of my father, who knew to display an iris on this occasion.

I know hurricane season began June 1, but really, we're not supposed to have to think about this till August, at least! Yet here is Tropical Storm Alberto, with the potential to become the earliest hurrcane in 40 years to hit the United States. Oh, well, my Brother the Insurance Specialist did warn me that Florida has had an unusually easy 40 years. Guess he can say, "I told you so."

On the plus side, the long-delayed rainy season may finally be upon us. My garden should be happy, if Alberto doesn't beat it into the ground.

I'm too busy playing with Jonathan to write much about him, but here are a few delightful Jonathan-isms:

I'll friz it to you and you friz it to me. If there's a word for what you're doing when you throw a Frisbee back and forth, it can't be any better than Jonathan's.

There's an emery board in there. He was looking in my travel kit, and he was right; I just didn't expect "emery board" to be in a 2.5 year old's vocabulary.

The baby's head is pressing on my bladder; I need to go to the bathroom again. His baby brother or sister is due in less than two weeks, so I guess he's heard this phrase a few times....

Oh, you DO have nipples! He took a nap with Grandma, and I had to explain to him that, unlike Mommy, I couldn't provide him with any milk. Later, he was with me when I was changing into my pajamas, and that's when he came out with this statement, an expression of amazement and perplexity on his face. Boy did that make me feel old: all the right equipment but totally useless.

While Mommy was cooking, Jonathan and I made up the Word/Horse game. We spread some of his word cards around on the floor, I get on my hands and knees and he climbs on my back. Then he directs his horse, pointing to a word and telling me to go there: Go to "Mommy," now go to "Aunt Janet," now to "loves." He made the game more interesting by asking me to make new cards for "tickle" and "fall off"; you can imagine what happens when the horse and rider arrive at those cards! He also has great fun with the difference between the cards and what they represented. For example, if I trot up to the Mommy card and say, "Hi, Mommy!" he laughs and says in a "how can you be so silly" voice, "That's not the REAL Mommy, that's the WORD Mommy!"

We went to the Orlando Science Center last weekend. Because they had three new movies we hadn't seen, we didn't have much time for the exhibits, but that's okay since we know them all pretty well. However, they do have a new traveling exhibit called Invention at Play, at which we spent all the rest of our time, and which is one of the best new exhibits I've seen in a long time, at any science musuem.

What makes it so good? Content, content, content! That's what's missing in so many exhibits these days.

My absolute favorite science museum was always the old Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. When I was in college, I worked for two summers at their research labs, which were located across the street, and nearly every lunch hour I took advantage of the tunnel between the buildings and the fact that my ID badge let me into the museum for free. That was heaven for someone who never had enough time to explore when we actually paid money to visit! You can't see much in half-hour bites (lunch "hour" was never an hour) but over a summer of days the time adds up.

While I was there, the museum opened a large addition, full of new exhibits, and I was so excited! And then so disappointed. All that space, and so little content. The old part of the museum had been focused on education, with information presented in an interesting and multi-dimensional form: hands-on activities (puzzles illustrating mathematical concepts), interactive exhibits (buttons to push), physical involvement (a large locomotive to ride, a model of the heart to walk through—my perennial favorite as a child), and detailed descriptions and explanations to read. One could enjoy it on many levels, at many ages, and there always seemed to be more to learn.

The new section, however, seemed to care more about entertainment than education. This was primarily evident in the striking reduction in the number of words associated with each exhibit. It was as if they wanted people to walk by, take in the flashy display, push a button, and move on. In the old museum I could often explore one display for 15 minutes; not so the new.

In the years since my Summers of Fun I have visited science museums in several other cities, and alas have found them to be modelled on the new (now many years old, of course) Franklin Institute rather than the old. Oh, I've certainly enjoyed them! But the low content density discourages frequent revisits, and I often feel I've been more entertained than educated, which makes me feel I've been cheated.

The Invention at Play exhibit, while not quite up to my old Franklin Institute standards, has a significantly better content/fluff ratio than usual. In addition to all there is to see and do, there is a lot to read, which is why we were able to spend so much time enjoying the displays. Definitely an exhibit for all ages to enjoy!

(Did you know that kevlar, used to make bullet-resistant vests, is also used in many other products, including hockey sticks, heat-resistant gloves, and canoes? The exhibit includes a full-sized, kevlar-based canoe that weighs only 36 pounds.)

Oh, and about the movies. Once again, my complaint is lack of content:

• StarQuest Take a look at some of astronomy's most common questions. Where did the planets come from? What is a black hole? How do you find a constellation? How will the sun die? Plus much more. Sounds good, but the question most seriously considered by the movie was the whereabouts of an escaped hamster. The lame subplot was nothing but an annoying distraction. Maybe they answered all those good questions in the latter part of the movie, but by then I was sound asleep.


• Aliens of the Deep Did you ever see the TV show, 48 Hours? Where they take an hour to cover 10 minutes' worth of material? Aliens of the Deep has the same problem. Lots of shots of deep-diving vehicles maneuvering underwater, and interviews with people telling us much they love their jobs, but almost no explanation of what they actually learned from the explorations.


• Greece: Secrets of the Past This one was great! Lovely pictures, great history, lots of content. The only one of the three films worth watching.

Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World, by Lee C. Camp (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003)

Because I believe Mere Discipleship to be an important book for Christians who are seeking more from their faith than "fire insurance," I want to deal with some of its problems first. There was enough that I found really annoying that I want to get some of it out of the way, so anyone who feels as I do will be encouraged to read past that and receive the good therein.

A minor point, but still important to those who love good books: I don't like the style. The overuse of "unnecessary quotation marks" is like fingernails on a blackboard to me. (Irrelevant question: how long before people no longer know what that expression means?) So too does the repeated use of the phrase, "Constantinian cataract" or "Christendom cataract" to describe the impairment of vision he says has afflicted the Church since the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine gave Christianity both legality and status. It's a clever image, but grows thin, and doubly annoying in phrases like, "this is yet another question that flows from the Christendom cataract," flipping the meaning, briefly, from eye problems to waterfalls. And why does the book continually use the term "nation-state," instead of the more commonly-used "nation"? It seems deliberately inflammatory. These minor problems shouldn't deter a reader any more than a prophet's shabby clothes should justify ignoring his message; I want to encourage people to see past it, and acknowledging the problem can sometimes help.

More serious is Lee C. Camp's very obvious pacifist and anabaptist beliefs. I'm sure that to him these follow logically from his basic approach to the Christian life, but many (including me) could benefit from his ideas who have come (at least so far) to different conclusions. It would be a shame to reject the whole package as an all-or-nothing deal.

Finally, Camp seems to set up a straw man to knock down. Having grown up in the Deep South, he can be forgiven for railing against the blind patriotism he saw in that place, at that time. But his experience is so far different from my own as to make that part of the book outdated and nearly irrelevant.

Enough with the negative. I wish I could express the positive as easily. But that which is good—whether I agree with it or not—is deeper than I can express, at least not without a more careful re-reading of the book. (Much of my first reading was done on the long plane flight home from Japan and under the influence of jet lag.) Besides, I don't think it's fair of a reviewer to try to express in a few words what it takes the author a whole book to say. Instead I will end with a few quotes, and invite anyone who reads Mere Discipleship to raise particular points for discussion, for there are many.

I write not so much to instruct as to understand, to make more sense myself out of Christ's call to follow him. I write to share my deep suspicion that our Western culture continues to pervert the word of Christ. I write with a sense of burden, suspecting that even the religious rhetoric that appears to take Jesus so seriously has domesticated him, cleaned him up, made him respectable so as not to embarrass us good church-going folk with our agendas of upward social mobility and social "responsibility," and in so doing has limited the answers believed to be possible or sensible or respectable to that commonly asked question, "What would Jesus do?"

[With the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus,] a decisive turn has occurred in human history—the kingdom of God is now in our midst—but its final and ultimate triumph lies yet in the future. The work of God, in forgiving sins, healing disease and affliction, overcoming alienation and estrangement, defeating injustice and oppression—this long-anticipated work of God has now broken into human history and will be completed at the [second coming] of the Lord.

The gospel invites us to participate in the kingdom of God, that long-awaited rule of God, in which the rebellion, with its corollaries of lust and violence and greed and self-seeking, is undone.

Throughout the biblical narrative God calls his people to embody an alternative vision of community life: the people of God live a community ethic that stands at odds with the unbelieving peoples that surround them. Through being a "peculiar people," the people of God can bear witness to the will off God, as well as bring about transformative change for the cities in which they dwell. Only by being what God has called his people to be can his people really bring about good for the cities in which they dwell.

The primary characters in the flow of history are the weak, apparently insignificant characters chosen by God to walk in obedience to God's covenant promises.

"Church" is not about showing the world how to be "religious," but showing the world how it is supposed to be a world that reflects the intentions of its creator. …The church embodies the new social order, the new-world-on-the-way; the church exists as an outpost of the coming kingdom.

A "cultural Christianity," in which many people ascribe to the "Christian faith," but few walk in discipleship, showing the world what God created the world to be—this is apostasy.

The gospel is not merely a "belief system," giving mental assent to "sound doctrine" so that one might "go to heaven." The gospel calls us to participate in the kingdom of heaven, to embody the will of God on earth, empowered by the Holy Spirit to do so.

How often have I preached that we should forgive those who do not merit forgiveness—the murderer, the warmonger, or the terrorist who has decimated or oppressed some third party unknown to me—and yet am offended and resentful when someone doesn't like me or my preaching?! Third-party "forgiveness" is cheap.

It will not do…simply not to kill our enemies. To adopt a stance of refusing to kill our enemies, of course, would be a radical conversion for the Christian church in the Western world. But even such a radical transformation would not be sufficient. It will most certainly not do to hate the war-makers and their military-industrial complex. It will not do to scoff at nationalism and patriotism. Instead, following Christ means we embrace both centurion and zealot alike, calling each to the life-giving way of the kingdom, in which we celebrate the grace and abundance of a God given freely and extravagantly to us all.

This Memorial Day I honor my grandfathers, who served our country in World War I.

Howard Harland Langdon, 219th Aero Squadron

George Cunningham Smith, Sr., 5th Engineers, Co. B

Click here for a previous tribute.

During my lifetime I've watched the Deaf community teach the world to see them as people, rather than as people who can't hear. This was brought home most forcefully to me in the story of the two young children, one deaf and one hearing, who met one day, and each went home to report the other's disability. The hearing child explained to his mother that his new friend could not understand him when he spoke, while the deaf child expressed to his own mother his amazement that his playmate could not understand him when he signed.

Today's Orlando Sentinel showed me that blind people are beginning to accomplish the same feat. An article on teaching very young blind children to use a cane describes an encouraging departure from the conventional model of mobility for the vision impaired. In the old, vision-centered model, young children are taught to depend on those who can see to lead them around, and only later learn to use a cane. This trains blind children in habits of dependency at a stage in life which for most children is the golden age of mobility. The new method introduces the child to using a cane at an early age, even as young as when he first learns to walk. In this way the skills needed for independence come naturally and thoroughly. According to advocate Joe Cutter, retired from the New Jersey Commission for the Blind, "What matters isn't the vision you have. What matters is the skill you have. You have to observe your own movement, do it solo, to get those skills."

In her Christianity Today article, "Faith Like a Child," Scottie May reviews two books on children and faith: O. M. Bakke's When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, and Rich Lusk's Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation. In the process she offers some challenges for today's churches as they seek to integrate children into the life of their community.

When our children were young, we willingly let them leave the worship service and follow the mob of other young people to what was called Children's Church. This practice has long been common in Presbyterian-like churches, where no one wants to subject children to a 40- to 60-minute sermon. (Whether or not adults should have to endure a lecture of that length is another issue, but at least it's easier to bear without having to deal with one's frustrated offspring at the same time.) To my dismay, however, even liturgical churches, with their shorter sermons and plenty of action to keep children participating, have embraced the idea of shunting them elsewhere for at least part of the service.

(Young parents will criticize me for changing my thoughts on Children's Church only after our own children were too old to participate, and of course I can't answer them, except to say that if I could start over I would put more effort into finding a church that views children differently.)

At first my primary concern was that churches not follow the world's practice of separating children from their families. Thanks to Dr. May, however, I'm RETHINKING our whole approach to teaching children about God.

The church seems to be looking around more and more at cultural practices for ministries with children. Generations ago, contests and prizes were introduced into children's Christian education. More recently, children's ministers have begun to emulate contemporary media in order to attract children to their church's programs. In many settings, the leadership now realizes that a "wow"-filled program for children is an effective way to entice parents to attend, often resulting in rapid church growth. All too often, this is an uncritical adoption of current cultural practices with children.

Christian education adopted a schooling model a couple of centuries ago, and this model implicitly teaches that knowledge is essential to faith. With Lusk's explanation of faith as "relational trust," that relationship is somewhat of a mystery, defying intellectual explanation. "One doesn't understand a mystery; one experiences it." On this point, Lusk concurs with the findings of several researchers in children's Christian spirituality—that children need to know God, to experience God, before (or at least at the same time as) learning about God. What might this mean for parents and church ministries? Evangelical churches are experienced in teaching children about God, but do these churches help children experience God?

What I think this means is that we should RETHINK our approach to Children's Church, and to Sunday School as well, not just for children but also for adults. Yes, we need classes that are attractive to newcomers, and classes that deal with specific problems and relationships, and most definitely we need classes in theology and the truth about God. I'm not against reason and knowledge; in fact, I would have our studies be a lot more rigorous and intellectually challenging that they usually are.

However, I think our greatest need is for something along the lines of an apprenticeship model. Our children need to see our faith in action much more than they need to know the facts about our faith. What does it matter if you know the grammar and vocabulary of a language, but can't communicate with your neighbor who speaks that language? First, learn to communicate; after that, the grammatical studies will make much more sense.

What does the Christian life look like? What does it mean to be a Christian, not in terms of what one professes to believe, but in one's actions? What does it mean to love God and our neighbors? Our children need, not classes, but to engage life with the church in such a way that they see us worshipping, praying, confessing, forgiving, struggling, and serving. They need to be beside us, as the weaker of us need to be beside the stronger, so that they can take their own tentative steps in an environment that is both supportive and real.

Perhaps the model we should consider for Christian Education should be less a school and more a Gypsy band, where the young child is merely given a small-sized instrument and welcomed into the group. His beginner's squawks are not loud enough to affect the sound of the band; they are overwhelmed by the strength of the more mature players. But as the child listens and experiments in this safe enviroment, he learns more about making music, and faster, than if he'd been confined in a class with other beginners until he was considered old enough to join in the real work.

Perhaps hardest to deal with will be our own painful awareness of how inexperienced we are at making this kind of faith music. All the more should our children see us working to do better. We're not fooling them, anyway.

(As to our own children, who know all too well how poorly we implemented this philosophy in our own family, I can only ask forgiveness, and remind them that a child's job is to build on what his parents did right and improve on what they did wrong.)

Yep, hurricane season is almost upon us, though I doubt there'll be much to be concerned about before August. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts an above average season, with 13 - 16 named storms, four to six becoming Category 3 or higher.

As NOAA National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield said, "One hurricane hitting where you live is enough to make it a bad season."

I rode my bicycle to church! One of our two churches is still out of reach, 20 miles away and much of it not well suited to cycling, but the other is only 10 miles distant and almost all of the ride is along a lovely bike trail, so this weekend I decided it was within my reach. On Saturday I made a dry run, in order to know what time to leave home Sunday morning. Turns out it's almost exactly an hour's ride, give or take a minute or two where the trail crosses major highways. I was psyched; If Janet can ride an hour each way to church, so can I!

The first time I biked that distance the last half of the trip was so miserable anyone who saw me had a right to doubt my ability to make it home. This time I felt so good I made a two-mile detour in order to pick up something at Home Depot. I eagerly awaited repeating the trip Sunday morning.

My expectations were well-founded. The trip was delightful, even though the early-morning fog meant I had to take a little extra time at some of the intersections. Traffic may be sparser early on a Sunday morning, but what cars are there tend to go a little faster, and be less prepared to see a bicyclist, especially one materializing out of the fog.

I arrived at church in time to cool down a little, and change into more appropriate clothes. One might argue that a t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers shouldn't bar one from church, and I'm sure I would have been welcomed; but I'm equally sure that my wet t-shirt wasn't a good idea, and I know my fellow choir members appreciated the fact that I changed and applied the deodorant I had thought to bring with me.

The ride home was hotter, but it didn't matter because a cooling swim was awaiting me at home. It soon became obvious that despite how great I felt after Saturday's trip, my body hadn't fully recovered from that 22-mile exertion. By the end, I was hurting! Even so, I made the return trip in an hour, so I must not have let my exhaustion slow me down any.

I can't say I was much good for the rest of the day; the most ambitious thing I did was order pizza and drive out to get it. But it was worth it! I've been riding enough lately that the shorter trips leave me a bit unsatisfied; I needed this weekend's challenge.

When we lived in Rochester, New York, we had one car and could go for days without using it. We rode our bicycles to work; we walked to the grocery store, the bank, the post office, the doctor, and to church. Rochester's public transportation was (and probably still is) minimal, but its buses did get us downtown, and to the dentist, and a few other places we wanted to go.

I don't claim any particular righteousness for these ecologically sound actions, as much of my motivation came from the driving phobia I had at the time (that's another story); what matters is that they were possible, even convenient.

Then we moved to Florida, to a semi-suburban housing development with over 900 homes, and suddenly nothing was convenient. Soon we had not one but two cars, and everything but a visit to the near neighbors required buckling ourselves in and driving away. I lamented the lack of "natural exercise"; with a one-story house and no longer relying on my feet for transportation. most of the exercise that was just a normal part of life disappeared.

Not that this season of life was all bad; all that driving probably did a lot to help me conquer my phobia. But lately I've been RETHINKING, and have discovered that I can make a few delightful changes, right where I am. There were two major catalysts in the process: One was our trip to visit Janet in Japan, where we could see and experience walking and biking distances for which, back home, we would have jumped into the car. The other was making the decision that, at my stage of life, it is critical to my health to get much more exercise than I have been, even if it means sacrificing other worthwhile projects in order to make the time. (Actually, exercise is critical at every stage of life, but it's much harder to accomplish when you have a young family to care for.)

I began making a point of walking and/or biking every day, a procedure which generally took about an hour and a half. At first I didn't go anywhere in particular, just around certain blocks in the neighborhood, or along the bike trail that conveniently cuts through our subdivision. At some point a light dawned, however, and my vision of what was within walking or biking distance suddenly expanded greatly. As long as I was devoting 1.5 hours/day to exercise, there was suddenly little incentive to drive somewhere if I could make the round trip on foot or bike in less than that time.

What is now within easy reach? Several grocery stores, two health food stores, some pharmacies, our favorite Vietnamese/Japanese restaurant (and many others), the pool store, the library, Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, Sports Authority, half a dozen parks, the post office, our dentist, many smaller stores and a large mall. I've already written about taking the car in for service and biking home; one way, that ride was only 15 minutes longer than my 90-minute window.

I still need the car, sometimes even for short distances. I haven't figured out how to carry five gallons of chlorine, or a 4x8 sheet of plywood, or even a pizza on my back. My trips to the grocery store must be more frequent, because I can't carry as much as the car's trunk can. But what do the extra trips matter if I would be spending the time exercising, anyway?

My newfound freedom is less accessible to those who have small children, large families, or live where to bike or walk to work would have them arriving drenched with sweat. But it's worth RETHINKING. Employers are paying much more attention these days to employees' health, promoting fitness and offering incentives for smokers to quit. How about adding bicycle racks to the employee parking and providing shower and changing facilities? (Bike racks are ubiquitous in Japan, but here I usually have to appropriate a fence or signpost.) If more attention were paid by city planners to the safety of bicyclists, whole families might cycle to the grocery store. (Then those extra mouths to feed could help bring home their own bacon!)

What chiefly needs RETHINKING, perhaps, is the association in many people's minds between non-automotive transportation and poverty, or even criminality. ("There's a man riding his bike for transportation rather than sport; he must have had his driver's license suspended.") I'm not certain I agree with those who pray for lower gas prices; perhaps our society needs this incentive to RETHINK how we get from here to there.

Several months ago, our local newspaper (or perhaps it was Parade Magazine; I don't recall) asked readers for their one-sentence suggestions for promoting positive change. I did not formulate my response soon enough to enter the contest, but knew almost immediately that it would be in the form, not of one sentence, but of one word: RETHINK.

Just as IBM founder Thomas J. Watson promoted his THINK motto, so would I have bold RETHINK signs featured prominently in every household and office. The ability to THINK, a good and noble faculty not commonly developed nor exercised, enables one to build solid structures on an established foundation. To RETHINK, one must first examine, and possibly dismantle, the foundation itself.

RETHINKING challenges assumptions so basic that we think no more about them than a fish considers the wetness of the water in which he swims. It delves deeper into why we do what we do and considers whether or not there might be a better way. RETHINKING says with John Holt, "We ought all to keep asking ourselves, 'Where are you trying to get, and are you getting there?'" and with Grace Murray Hopper, "The most damaging phrase in the language is 'We've always done it this way.'"

RETHINKING is not rebellion, although it may sometimes lead to rebellious actions. It is emphatically not the strident, youthfull cry that the older generation has it all wrong and nothing will do but to rip up the foundations of society and start over with his own, wiser generation. For such a person, to RETHINK is to reexamine, not what his parents think is normal and right, but the values and assumptions of his peers and compatriots.

Moreover, once the process is complete, the RETHINKER may return to the old foundation, just as it was, with this crucial difference: he is now certain it is a good and solid place on which to stand and build. The goal is neither the rejection nor the justification of our assumptions, but an examination of those things that are so much a part of our nature and experience as to be nearly invisible to us.

What might need RETHINKING? Almost anything, and nearly everything. Here are a few suggestions upon which I hope to expand eventually.

• School/Education What is the purpose of school: education? civilization? child care? Do our schools accomplish this purpose? What do we mean by education? What do we want for our children? For other people's children? What does an educated person look like?


• Medical Care What is health? What do we expect from our doctors? What do they expect from us? What kind of health insurance actually promotes health? When is it more dangerous to go to a hospital than to stay away? Whence the sudden appearance of new threats to our children, such as severe peanut allergies? Would we be healthier if we spent more time looking at what goes right than what goes wrong?


• Transportation Are there workable alternatives that will alleviate the problems of crowded highways, pollution, lack of parking space, and high fuel prices? Is it realistic to break out of the one man – one car model we've grown up with? What assumptions about how to get there from here can be challenged?


• Marriage With all the fuss about who can get married to whom, perhaps it's time to do some serious (re)thinking about just what is the purpose of marriage. Being able to obtain certain advantages bestowed by the government? Formalizing a companionship? Access to sexual privileges? Providing a stable home for children?


• Childbirth What were the circumstances under which your grandmother was born? Your mother? You? Your children? If you are like me, they're vastly different. Is one all bad, and another all good, or can we learn from them all? What does an ideal childbirth look like?

What can help the RETHINKING process? Certainly a major asset would be spending time in a foreign country, or otherwise getting to know another language and culture. They don't call it "culture shock" for nothing, the realization that a large group of people has apparently gotten along just fine for centuries with a completely different set of assumptions from yours. Likewise we could deliberately seek out the writings of people who have given thought to a particular issue: those with whom we are inclined to agree, and especially those with whom we exepect to disagree. A study of history would no doubt also be helpful, taking care to avoid what C. S. Lewis called the chronological snobbery of assuming that no one in the past has anything of real value to say to us today. It hasn't always been done "this way."

There's nothing like a little foreign travel to open your eyes, and while we were in Japan my eyes discovered xylitol, which appeared to be a popular sweetener. Normally I wouldn't have given it two seconds worth of attention, as I loathe artificial sweeteners. I make an exception for chewing gum, but otherwise strive to avoid all versions of Saccharine, NutraSweet, Splenda, etc. and get really annoyed when they're included in a product without their presence being announced in big, obvious letters.

But xylitol was something popular in Japan and not here, so I did a little investigating. What I've found makes me astonished that it's not widely available, and very popular, in this country. I'm still looking for the down side, so maybe someone who reads this can fill me in. Here's what I've learned so far:

Xylitol is a sugar alcohol (rather than a sugar), present naturally in the human body, and found in a surprising variety of plant materials, including raspberries, mushrooms, and cauliflower. The most commercially useful sources are corn cobs and birch wood. (Xylitol is also called "birch sugar.")

It looks and tastes much like sugar, and can be used one-for-one in most applications. (Yeast breads are a notable exception; see below.)

It is already approved and considered safe in any quantity for diabetic foods, and is a commonly-used sweetener in many other countries, from Finland to China.

The most well documented benefit of xylitol is its ability to prevent—and possibly even repair—tooth decay. As I understand it, there are several different mechanisms by which it does this. It increases salivation (as does sugar, but that's not enough to overcome the harm sugar does); it starves the bacteria primarily responsible for tooth decay because they cannot metabolize xylitol; it helps prevent plaque from sticking to teeth; and it promotes remineralization of tooth enamel.

Other studies indicate that xylitol inhibits the growth of bacteria that often cause ear infections in children.

In addition to its anti-bacterial properties, xylitol inhibits the growth of yeast, which is good news for sufferers of candidiasis, and bad news for bread bakers.

All this antibacterial and anti-yeast action made me concerned about the effect of xylitol on the "good guys," the helpful inhabitants of our intestinal ecosystem. I have found little that addresses this question, but what I did find inticates that xylitol actually has a prebiotic effect and promotes rather than inhibits the growth of beneficial intestinal flora!

Animal studies indicate xylitol may fight osteoporosis by increasing bone density.

Xylitol has a low gylcemic index, and does not cause a rapid rise in blood sugar and resultant insulin response.

Xylitol is not a calorie free sweetener, but has about 40% fewer calories than sugar.

The only side effect I've been able to find is a temporary laxative effect in people who consume large amounts without giving their body time to adjust by increasing production of the enzymes used in the digestion of xylitol.

Now for a bit of personal experience. One advantage of being past the childbearing years is that one feels freer to experiment a bit. Xylitol is not easy to find in this country. A few brands of chewing gum contain some xylitol -- though for the positive dental effects it really needs to be the primary sweetener in gum. The "sugar" section of our grocery stores offer an amazing variety of real and artificial sweeteners, but no xylitol. But on the way home I stopped in to our local health food store and found a one-pound bag, which I promptly bought. The cost was $7, so it's not going to replace sugar in great quantities any time soon. (I subsequently found a five-pound bag for $22.)

So far, I think xylitol is great! I haven't used it in baking yet, but I've found it works well in yogurt and when I want to add a little more sweetness to fruit puree. Mostly I've just used it in small amounts (1/2 - 1 teaspoon) to swish around in my mouth after eating (and after rinsing my mouth with water). I must say it's weird because it tastes as if I'm coating my teeth with sugar -- and that can't be good, right? I don't know if I'll ever be able to attest to any anticariotic effects, since my teeth are at the stage where my greatest problem is the demise of ancient fillings. But I have noticed one thing. For many years my gums have been more red than pink, which alarms dental hygienists but which dentists, having been unable to determine a cause, and having ruled out all the bad possibilties they know, have chosen not to fret over. Suddenly, after two weeks of xylitol use, my gums are pink!

So -- I throw the subject open for discussion. What do you know about xylitol? Are there bad side effects I haven't been able to discern? Why is it so uncommon in the United States?

If you want to investigate for yourself, xylitol.org isn't a bad place to start.

I like to check out Google News every morning, and I'm especially interested in their Health section. Today there were two headlines that caught my attention, and each turned out to be totally misleading.

Flying does not cause blood clots, say experts

Do you feel safer now, as you prepare for your long flight? Do you think you can relax, forget about periodically wiggling your toes, stretching your feet, and disturbing your seatmates so you can get up and walk around? Not so fast! What the article says is that low cabin pressure and reduced oxygen do not increase the risk of blood clots. The damage is done by reduced circulation caused by long periods of inactivity, whether on plane, train, bus, or car. Although the article does not address this issue, I'm guessing sitting at a desk all day isn't a good situation, either.

Considering the relative leg room offered by the other modes of transportation, it's not surprising that the problem appears more often among those who fly. To give the casual reader the impression that he's safe from bloodclots on a long flight is misleading and dangerous.

Nonsmoking Men, Women Face Same Lung Cancer Death Risk

Same as whom? The point of the article is that among nonsmokers, women face no greater risk of lung cancer than men. But the impression I received from the headline itself was that nonsmokers face the same lung cancer risk as smokers, a truly startling (and untrue) finding.