The End of Food

The End of Food by Thomas Pawlick

Not to be confused with “The End of Food By Paul Roberts”, which I haven’t read, but suspect is similar in nature.
If you haven’t read the End of Food by Thomas Palwick, good luck finding it. Amazon had used copies for $128. I couldn’t even find a couple at my local library, I had to have them transfer it in from another town, with a big sticker on the front, that states if I damage this book they will charge me $125!

Palwick begins with a story about a tomato that didn’t seem right. It had the texture  of a tennis ball, not a vegetable. Being a former farmer and current journalist, he decided to look into the modern farming industry to get a better grasp at how our food is grown.

The results, obviously, were not good. Are farming industry is growing at  a unsustainable rate. every year it takes more chemicals and more land, and more technology to grow our food.

The result is that the nutritional value is lower, big time.

One example about Tomatoes are that they are picked while they are still green. Before they have flavor or any nutrients. Then they are artificially ripened with “ethylene gas in” transit to their location. Tomatoes naturally make ethylene gas, that changes the color from green to red, but leaving them on the vines until they are ripe, doesn’t give super markets enough time to sell them before the go bad.

Because of globalization, we no longer buy tomatoes from local farmers, we buy them shipped in from over a thousand miles away, if not more.

This is causing the nutrient level of our food to suffer. You’d have to read the book to get all the facts. But vitamin C is disappearing from supermarket vegetables, along with Iron, and fiber, and vitamin A, etc…

Palwick goes over all of the modern farming techniques that are depleting the nutrients from the earth, the chemicals that damage the vitamins, and the gmo seeds that are changing our foods DNA.
A good read if you can find it.

How Can The Church Help People In Hard Times?

You want to know what I want to see churches doing in 2009?

Instead of of brain storming about some new sermon series, or how to spend your marketing budget for 09.

Instead of adding another building on your campus, plastering your city your billboards, or creating a youtube channel for your church.

I would love to hear stories about churches thinking out of box on how they can help people who have already been hit hard by this economic crisis.

What about churches thinking about how you can make a better food pantry then any other church in the city, how instead of collecting money for your tithe and offerings, you encourage people to put gift cards for grocery stores and that can be handed out to people that need them.

Instead of a New members class, or another round of “Summer Cell Groups”. How about the church teaching people to grow a garden, even better, what if the church starts a community garden! or teaches people how to can food.

What about teaching people to live with in their means and how debt destroys their options in life.

What about a DIY retreat. Every church has members from all walks of life, find out who your mechanics are and have them teach people basics about keeping their cars up and running.

How about a coupon class, every church has some super thrifty ladies who make a killing off of coupons. What about some of the older ladies teaching the younger ladies how to cook! or sew!

What about taking those tech savvy people in your church and having them teach people easy ways to build a better resume, find jobs online, and how to subscribe to an rss feed of job openings in your area.

How about teaching the people in your church a skill, that they can go out and get a better higher paying job and actually improve their living conditions?

Having open community brainstorming sessions on how the church is going to survive if things get worse.

Does  the church in a depression look different then a church in the boom economy?

Eat, Spend, and Buy Local

my new attitude for this year is to Eat, Buy, and Spend local as much as I can.

Including everything from eating out, instead of national chains pick somewhere in town.

Instead of a national car chain to fix your car, find a local mechanic.

Instead of the grocery store, find a farmers market.

as Seth Godin says:

The next frontier is local

A lot national chains are closing their doors, and their 2009 outlook is dim. What does that say about Mom and Pop stores? The odds are stacked against them.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a city of cookie cutter companies.

As Jack Spearco from the Survivalist Podcast says:

Consider it your patriotic duty to support your local economy.

Talking Machine!

Emery has been an animal lately talking, which if you read the Weekly Walnut you would know.

We are trying to get him to say everyone in the families name, which is a lot harder then it sounds. Mainly because he doesn’t talk.

So a couple days ago he had 4 out of 5, and the only one he couldn’t say was Jack. He has a hard time with the “J” sound.

So Tammy told him that if he would say Jack, she would buy him a krispy Kreme Donut.

Sure enough, he said all 5 names in a row, followed by signing the word “brown” and “Big”.

Telling us what kind of donut he wanted, a big chocolate one!

My Pitch To Fox ……. American Banker Idol

This article from the New York Times has inspired me with a great idea for a new reality show, that of course only FOX would be crazy enough to air it.

“American Banker Idol”

The plot of the show is simple.

You round up all the CEO’s of America’s top banks and make them compete for our taxpayer bailout money.

There’s the press conference round, where tax payers get to ask tough uncomfortable questions about why we should trust bankers, and what should stop all Americans from withdrawing everything they own.

The Truth or Dare round, where the CEO’s either have to tell the American Public the truth about how they make money off of people being in bedt, and that banks are for-profit business that create fiat money, that has the same value as monopoly money. Or they must perform random and embarrassing and possibly life threatening task for our amusement.

Instead of viewers calling in voting for their favorite, viewers can easily just swipe their debt cards and the government will gladly make a donation from your taxes to your Bank of choice.

Viewers in the audience even have the option of just throwing dollar bills at the CEO’s, after all if we keep printing money as fast as we can those dollar bills will be worthless anyways, besides the fact they have lost 95% of their purchasing power since 1913.

So whats the motivation for CEO’s to compete for their banks?

I’d say a lynch mob of 300 million angry Americans is enough motivation.

The Winner gets to change their name to the “Socialist Bank of The United States” and gets all the bailout money, while the loser’s are forced to become contestant’s on my other reality show, “Credit Crunch”

After all if we are going to Nationalize all of our Banks at least the tax payers should get to have some fun.

Ohio’s Unemployment Fund Is Bankrupt

Ohio’s unemployment compensation fund is Bankrupt!

The state has been forced to borrow $500 million in federal funds, and they requested $50 million right away just to pay this weeks benefits.

What the article doesn’t tell you is that Ohio has already borrowed $550 million in November, that was suppose to cover December, January, and February! …… oops.

The last time Ohio borrowed money for unemployment was in the 2003 recession, we borrowed $342 million.

This time around the State has already borrowed over a billion, and that should only last until April, unless unemployment keeps going up, which it is.

Tack on that Forbes is reporting “Liquor sales in Ohio at all-time high”

And that equals Obama coming to Ohio to push support for his economic plan today.

This is going to get ugly

The Weekly Walnut …. Hot Off The Press

The first printing for the Weekly Walnut

This is what homes school kids get to do, instead of sitting in a chair mindlessly counting down the clock until school’s over.

Jack came up with all the story ideas, took the pictures, loaded them onto the computer, I showed him how to convert them to black and white, and how to import them into indesign.

He wrote all the stories, did the research for the Piranhas on wikipedia, and commissioned abby to draw the comic.

I simply gave him some advice when he asked, created the papers logo, and helped him format, all of which at some point he could do him self.

So lets recap, he learned to use indesign, photoshop, and iphoto, used the Internet for research, we used email to sends things back and forth between us, and best of all he got the satisfaction on Sunday morning of showing mom his first newspaper.

Home Schooling Is Becoming More Popular

Former New York Teacher of the year turned Homeschooling adovacte, John Taylor Gatto. If your thinking about homeschooling you have to read his books, especially "Dumbing us Down".

Reported by USA Today

The Rise of Home Schooling

This is one of the most positive stories I’ve read in a few months. With all the bad economic news and corruption in politics, just when you think everyone is morally bankrupt, it seems people are becoming more and more unsatisfied with public and private schooling.

Over the past five years home schooling is becoming increasing more popular as an alternative to public/private schooling. Homeschooling is up 74% since 1999 when statics were started to track the movement. Now almost 3% of all kids are home schooled.

The biggest change is that parents who home school are moving away from the two biggest traditional reason to do so, religious and moral beliefs. The biggest movement in home schooling comes as people move towards “Unschooling”.

The Rise of Unschooling

Unschoolers are parents who regard standard curriculum methods and standardized testing as counterproductive to a quality education.

My own son in first grade seemed overly anxious about weekly math test, because he wasn’t fast enough! Even to the point of tears one day as I picked him up from school. Note he didn’t miss any of the problems on the sheet, he just couldn’t get 25 problems done in under a minute! The last time he took it he got 23 done, and left the last 2 blank. The 23 were all right, but he still failed because he didn’t get all 25.

The final straw for us, was seeing the lack of education that was going on in public schools. It’s six hours a day of repetitive mindless busy work.

My Personal Decision To Homeschool

In my case, the debate to home school went on for a couple of years before we decide to do it. I personally felt homeschooling my kids only to indoctrinate them with religious beliefs wasn’t a good reason to home school, I know that will offend some people, by thats the way I felt.

I don’t judge others who do home school because of religious differences, I just see religion and education as two different things. I’m not a Christian home schooler, I’m a home schooler who happens to be Christian.

I refused to be a fear mongering person who was afraid public schools would turn my kids into monsters. Public schools do not turn kids into criminals, bad parenting or lack of parenting is a much bigger influence on kids when they are little. I felt very comfortable sending my son to school, confidently knowing that when he gets home my wife and I had a much bigger effect on how he turned out.

Example of Unschooling

My son now has a more “unschooling” approach to education. That doesn’t mean he gets to sit around and play video games all day, and eat junk food, and watch TV. In fact there was no Christmas break for our kids, they got Christmas day and New Years day off and thats it.

It just means we have a more nontraditional approach to school, we take an interest in what are son wants to learn about.

For example, I can shove reading and writing down his throat until he’s memorized a whole list of spelling words, But instead he has a curiosity about how newspapers get put together. So we are working on printing our own weekly paper. He has to write the articles, do the research, and even types the stories himself. Mind you I’m happy if a story is two full sentience’s at this point.

He’s reading and writing and typing, and learning how to use indesign to do page layout at 7! It’s no Oregon Trail, but I think this is more productive.