Monday, August 31, 2009

Monday's Tattler

Good Morning! It's going to be another beautiful day. In fact it's going to be a really beautiful week! Please remember to dress children in shorts and sleeved t-shirts - no long clothes yet. Morning is not the only part of the day, and kids get hot in the afternoon when they are dressed for only a couple of hours of morning. Doesn't make sense!

Classes have been finalized and your child has been assigned to a group of learners. We group by ability not by age. We have many fine learners this year. There were lots of surprises in this year's group. Many of our children are very very bright.

Last week the children were very tired from all that we do. If your child is accustomed to taking a nap, you might want to add that nap time to his bedtime routine. Children should be in bed and drifting off to sleep by 8:00. Children who linger up with parents until 9:00 or 10:00 have the most trouble with behavior. Our program is a busy and active program that demands rest at night.

Please remember your child's baby picture for the beautiful baby contest.

Please read the notes going home and please read the handbook to avoid confusion about regular and ordinary things!

Have a great day!

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Sunday's Plate

Last week I found myself in a conversation about Walmart versus Schnucks cost. I mentioned that my groceries are usually lower than most people because I shop for scratch only groceries. Very little of what I buy is pre-made. As I looked at my groceries on the check out today for both my family and the school, I looked at what is pre-made and found: whole grain noodles, corn chips (Terry is addicted to corn chips) tomato sauce, and applesauce. Of these things, I can't make one - corn chips. I bought $150.00 at the store today, and everything was food. $50.00 was mine, and $100.00 was the school's.

I bought meat, vegetables, fruit, and cheese - enough to feed forty children breakfast, lunch, and snack for five days. Tomorrow, Terry will pick up another $150.00 at Aldi's and Sams. It will include paper products and soap.

I bought two beautiful chuck roasts @ five pounds. I got three pounds of ground chuck, cottage cheese, and two other cheeses for the lasagna we will have tomorrow. I got three pounds of chicken breasts on sale for chicken pot pie on Thursday. We will have two meatless days - Wednesday we will have tuna casserole with our famous cheese sauce, and on Friday we will have homemade pizza.

We will have homemade muffins tomorrow, whole grain cereal on Tuesday, whole grain waffles on Wednesday, sticky buns on Thursday, and whole grain pancakes on Friday.

Snacks will be whole grain, home baked, all week with an exception on Tuesday. It's a grab bag day.

We serve three fruits and vegetables at every lunch and aside from the applesauce, the fruit and vegetables we serve are fresh.

If I bought this pre-made, the cost would be prohibitive. If I had to spend breakfast money on Eggo Waffles, it would cost me $16.00 just for the waffles. If I had to spend money on syrup, add another $5.00. As it is my waffles cost about $2.00 to make for forty children. And I use whole grains so they are actually beneficial to the children rather than detrimental like Eggos.

When you consider the cost of bread products, a school could literally go broke trying to supply bread products three times a day, and it's the same at home. When I shop, I shop for the very best meat and vegetables a store has to offer, and I come away with the lowest tab because I'm willing to make the bread products from scratch.

Many women will say they don't have time to do this, but the truth is it doesn't take any longer to make most foods from scratch. The key is setting up your kitchen so that your flour and your sugar are not rubber banned in the ziplock at the back of your cabinet.

Kitchens are a utility room, not a "House Beautiful never do we touch affair. "I once had a friend with white carpeting in her kitchen. She, of course, never cooked. When I look at some of the kitchens at Lowes, I wonder how it would be to cook on furniture. My kitchen at home was built in 1830 and my "cabinets" consist of a hutch made probably 1860, and an oak sideboy from 1890, and a kindergarten cabinet from 1920. I have a sink and two "Johnny on the spot make me there" cabinets that hold nothing and about 2.5 square feet of landing space on either side of the sink. Yet in this small kitchen with its brick floor, I can prepare anything for as many as fifty people simply because I've set it up so that I can grab anything I need in one second. Setting up a working kitchen means having equipment out and ready to use. If your mixer is shoved in the back of the closet behind the old dog dishes, you are not likely to pull it out to use. If your food processor is on the top shelf and you have to get a chair to get it down, and then figure out how to put it together, you are unlikely to use that either.

Food that is used often needs to be out of the original container and put in a container you can grab in a second. Flour and sugar need to be housed in containers that grace your kitchen.

Lots of women complain about the mess in the kitchen after cooking. The trick to this is the first step. Run a sink of hot soapy water and wash as you go. Clean everything up and put it away as fast as you got it out. When I finish baking, the kitchen is as clean as it was before I even started, and that's the key to keeping it going. If your product is wonderful, and it took you no time to do, and your kitchen remains clean, you are much more likely to do it again.

The cost will be much less, the product much healthier, and your bill will come a tumbling down.
Next time we'll talk about making quickie foods that taste great.

Friday's Tattler

It's been one heck of a week and weekend. We finished the week with a nice story about the War of the Angels. The kids were very impressed with the creation Bible Story, and settled nicely into creating a world of their own with clay. They played outside, and we sent part of a poem home for the children to begin to learn. It's by A.A. Milne and part of the original Christopher Robin books. I have a set my first boy friend gave me in 1956 when he left for England.

The pizza was a big hit with the kids Friday afternoon and we had all kinds of fruit and left over veggies to go with. We make white pizza with salad dressing because the red pizza hypes the kids up. If you are going to hype up a child, might as well dig out the chocolate - chocolate hype is cute and red sauce is a mean hype - no kidding.

On Saturday, we met to put in the fence and we hit a gas line first try. Now why the gas line was absent one minute and there the next beats me. But after the fire trucks came, and Vectren finally decided to arrive forty five minutes later, we were fixed and ready to abandon ship. They will come out and mark next week and we will try again.

We have kittens from the barn visiting us these days. They are gray and orange. Mom is a brindle and dad is a charming black and white. We are feeding them tuna, cottage cheese, dry cat food and baked chicken ;-}

Thursday, August 27, 2009

A Proud Moment in a Mother's Life

Comment: My son is the project manager of this site. It was his work and his crew that brought this cancer treatment plant to treating patients nine months early.

August 27, 2009

IBA AND PROCURE SET NEW WORLD RECORD IN PROTON THERAPY, OPENING THE OKLAHOMA CENTER NINE MONTHS AHEAD OF STANDARD SCHEDULE

Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, August 27, 2009 – IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A.) and ProCure
Treatment Centers, Inc., (ProCure) announced today that the ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma City, U.S.A., delivered proton radiation treatment to its first patient using IBA’s Proteus 235 proton delivery system. It took only 27 months to build the facility, install the equipment and treat the first patient, setting a world record by nine months. Patients from Oklahoma, across the country and around the world can now benefit from this technology.
Before the Oklahoma center, at least three years were needed to build a proton therapy center.

IBA and ProCure worked closely and very effectively together to reduce the development time for the four room center, which will treat about 1,500 patients a year.

“This achievement represents a new and substantial milestone for the proton therapy community. The team we have put together with ProCure is proud of this record achievement and making this technology available to patients in the Oklahoma region,” said Pierre Mottet, Chief Executive Officer of IBA. “IBA has demonstrated its leadership in the development of proton centers and its ability to equip simultaneously multiple large facilities around the world.”

“We value our relationship with IBA and can count on them to be responsive, innovative and devoted to quality,” said Hadley Ford, Chief Executive Officer of ProCure. “Getting the center built quickly is important because so many patients are waiting for this therapy, but our overriding focus has been on excellence. The result is a center that is exceptional.”

Oklahoma City is the first installation with Inclined Beam technology, which was developed by ProCure and IBA as an alternative to a gantry. The inclined beam can treat approximately 80% of the tumors treated with a gantry at only about 50% of the cost. Moreover, the treatment room requires much less space than a gantry.

With this center now open in Oklahoma, seven proton therapy centers equipped by IBA are treating patients every day in Asia and the U.S. IBA is also involved with the simultaneous construction and installation of seven additional proton therapy centers. Six of the centers are on-site installations: three are in the U.S. and three are in Europe.

Proton therapy is an advanced alternative to X-ray radiation therapy for certain types of cancerous and non-cancerous tumors. Proton therapy has superior dose distribution, depositing the majority of its energy within a precisely controlled range, directly within the tumor, sparing healthy tissues. Higher doses can be delivered to the tumor without increasing the risk of side effects and long-term complications, improving outcomes and quality of life for patients. Proton therapy has limited availability around the world, but now that patients are being treated at the ProCure Proton Therapy Center in Oklahoma, more patients can benefit from this effective treatment.

ABOUT IBA
Founded in 1986 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, IBA is primarily active in the medical industry. It develops and markets state-of-the-art equipment and radiopharmaceuticals for cancer diagnosis and treatment. In addition, it uses the scientific expertise thus gained to provide electron accelerators for industrial sterilization and ionization. Listed on the pan-European stock exchange Euronext, IBA is included in the BEL Mid Index (IBA: Reuters IBAB.BR and Bloomberg IBAB.BB).

Website: http://www.iba-worldwide.com
Contact
IBA
Thomas Ralet
VP Corporate Communication
Telephone: +32 10.20.12.48
thomas.tralet@iba-group.com

ABOUT PROCURE
ProCure Treatment Centers, Inc., based in Bloomington, Ind., was founded in 2005 to improve the lives of patients with cancer by increasing access to proton therapy. ProCure collaborates with leading radiation oncology practices and hospitals and provides management leadership and a comprehensive approach for the design, construction, financing, staffing, training and day-to-day operations of world-class proton therapy centers. ProCure’s solution reduces the time, cost and effort necessary to create a facility. ProCure is the only company in the world with a center open and treating patients, another under construction and three others in development. ProCure’s Training and Development Center is the first facility in the world dedicated exclusively to proton therapy. For more information, visit www.procure.com.
Contact
ProCure
Andrea Johnson
Telephone 312-558-1770
ajohnson@pcipr.com

Thursday's Teacher



From Teacher Magazine

Here is a really nice little article on teaching art and the importance of art.

Published: August 26, 2009


Engaging Students Through Art


WENATCHEE, Wash. (AP) — Lighten up! That's was art teacher Terry Valdez' message to a group of teachers who work with children in kindergarten through second-grade.

Teachers used white charcoal pencils to sketch on black paper the highlights of popcorn viewed through a jeweler's magnifying glass. The exercise was a way of seeing things anew and putting them on paper with more dimension than a flat outline, said Vargas, a local artist and Eastmont High School art teacher.

It's important that grade school teachers be fluent and knowledgeable about art so they can better engage young students, who are all natural artists, he said. Today's students, in particular, are very visually oriented and technology connected.

Art, he said, is an important, but often overlooked, tool for communicating with kids in all kinds of teaching. Engaging students through art and creative teaching methods helps make student feel comfortable, he said. Art and music can help create an environment where students are more apt to learn, he added.

Teachers can't do that, however, unless they are comfortable and confident in their ability to be creative, he said.

"We're all pretty artsy until we reach about sixth grade and then start having it drummed out of us," Valdez told the teachers, who came from several North Central Washington school districts for a workshop hosted by the Wenatchee Art Education Consortium.

"Adults are really scared. They're afraid they're not good at art. It's not a question of being good or bad. It's whether they're open to art," Valdez said during a break in the class. "If teachers don't feel comfortable with art, they're not going to use it."

Julia Cantrell, a second-grade teacher at St. Rose of Lima Catholic School in Ephrata, admitted to being a good case in point.

"I'm here to learn how overcome my fear. I'm afraid of art," she said. As a teacher in a private school, Cantrell said she should have more freedom to come up with original ideas to connect with students and help them be creative. "But I'm not taking advantage of that."

She had teachers in school who were always very regulated and didn't allow that artistic side to come out, she said.

"It's an important part of teaching and I want to make sure I offer more than I was offered. Who knows, the next Picasso might come from my classroom."

Brooke McPhee, who will teach first grade at Lewis and Clark Elementary School this fall, said the sketching exercises helped her reconnect with something deep inside that is better expressed with pictures rather than words.

"It brings me back the love, the core spirit," she said. "Art is an important way to engage all kinds of learners."

_______

Information from: The Wenatchee World, http://www.wenatcheeworld.com

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Wise and Wonderful Wednesday

Rice Snack Bars from Kids Lunch Box Cards

Are rice cereal bars healthy? If you believe the big letters on the box, yes. But the small print tells us that Kellogg's, General Mills, Quaker Oats etc... don't care if our kids soak up preservatives, fillers and HFCS- a corporate behavior that, frankly, irks me. How about the picture of the product, is anyone fooled by the big words like "high fiber" or "fortified" while looking at a rice cereal bar that is covered in chocolate and rolled in candies? If they were called cereal candy bars, I wouldn't be so insulted- but they are not. At least Rice Krispies say "treat"- there are so many others that would like us to believe we are making a healthy choice.

If you must buy these bars, give them as candy bars- not as a mid-morning snack in a lunch box!
Here are our winners: Of all the brands we tried (and there were a lot), Enviro Kids Peanut-Choco-Drizzle was by far the favorite with 6 kids and 4 adults- we couldn't get enough of this one! Second & third place went to Enviro Kids Peanut Butter and Chocolate flavors ( the chocolate tastes just like Koala Crisp cereal that my kids love). Enviro Kids won hands down, and with nothing artificial, low sodium, zero trans fats and gluten free, these bars are real winners that you CAN feel good about giving to your kids when they need a snack or pick-me-up!

Tastefully sponsored by:
Lassen's Health Foods
Trader Joe's Markets

Monday, August 24, 2009

The Boss by Judy Lyden

I was reminded a couple of days ago just how emotionally hard it is to be the boss. In a rather lengthy discussion with someone I love, I realized just how difficult it is to always have to take that step away from popular opinion and do what needs to be done no matter what for the sake of the children in my care. Because of it, I am never the good guy. So once in a while I take a big step back and ask myself what am I doing? Catholics call it examining the conscience.

When you take the big life step to build a school, you really make a commitment. It can't be a spare time commitment when all your other cares are satisfied. You don't put time into the school only after your house is clean, your laundry washed, your own bills paid, your garden in perfect order, your book read, your visitors appeased, your appointments kept, your friends called, your play over, etc. If you did it that way, there wouldn't be a school.

Building a school is a lifetime of work that takes you away from your own projects and your appointments and your books and visitors and bills and doubles your work and shortens your time to spend on anything, because it's a commitment. Building a school or anything else takes the kind of selfless devotion few people can muster because self has to be given away every day, all day, in every way.

But creating a school or anything worth while is not about the self; it's not about personal interests or personal woes. It's about the students, so the focus leaves the adult and flies to the child, every day, all day.

The hope is that what you have to offer will appeal to the public. If it does, then the school grows. If it grows, then you need to take the next step, and that next step is hiring. Employing people is always a risk. The big questions are: "Will they contribute? Will they bring a positive point of view to the school? Will they really understand the goals and purpose of the school?"

The hope is that new teachers will contribute in positive ways that share the work load, bring new talents to the school, and that they will grow as people right along with the growth of the students in their care. When that happens, it's golden, and it does happen, but it doesn't happen all the time simply because people are different in their ability to be fully engaged.

In a small school, the hope is that the faculty will be united, friendly and work well together. Scripture says, "Anticipate one another." I always thought that meant, "Know someone well enough that you can intervene so that he or she does not stumble and fall if possible." This is the boss's job, but it's a job that often earns contempt rather than affection.

It's also the boss's job to balance employee's abilities. My big questions are: Will someone be able to do the job to completion or will they drop the ball? Many people will be a fire lit on energy for a couple of weeks or months, and then the fire goes out. Trying to identify that kind of person is a hard call. Some people emotionally quit after a time because they find that the limelight has gone from them to the children, and they can't stand it. Some people can't muster the energy or the stamina to keep the ball rolling. Some people come to the job with the idea it is one thing, and find quickly, it is something very other. And some people have the strange notion that "anyone can do this," and they find out quickly, it's not so.

Is the job too big? Sometimes there is simply too much to prepare for, too much to do, and too much time demanded, and someone can't spend the hours the job demands. This is a big stress point. If the team member is worth it, the boss must build a schedule that accommodates that team member and every other member of the team. A successful schedule is one that everyone says in a moment of reflection, "I love my schedule." But that doesn't last, and a boss needs to be flexible and be able to make changes as necessary.

Are there opportunities for failure? Not everyone is capable of doing every job. If someone is skilled at one thing, that does not mean they are skilled in everything, and a good boss understands that using skills is better than forcing failure. The balance is sometimes skewed when one of the members is either unwilling to acknowledge a skill because they are unwilling to participate in the extras that make a school shine, or they are simply unskilled in most things. A boss needs to keep a balance of volunteerism because most of the work cannot be done by a few; it must be shared for the sake of harmony.

Does the job at hand reach too far out into seclusion for someone to achieve success alone? Team members feel utterly alone and abandoned when they take on a project and nobody helps with the effort. Even questions about its success help. But teachers who push through a project alone find a lot of resentment when the extra work is on their shoulders and everyone else is having coffee in the kitchen. It doesn't work, and the boss must step in and delegate and once again be the bad guy.

When you know what the end product is of a year of teaching is supposed to be, will the employee be able to reach that end product? A boss doesn't keep score, exactly, but a boss is ever vigilant and always watching. And when the car seems to be going off the track, it's the boss's job to re-rail that car, and this is where more friction comes, and that makes the boss look like the bad guy again.

But someone has to be in charge and a good boss knows that that charge means charging down one of the roads - there are two- capitulation and admonishment - and the one less taken is the one that any boss worth salt must frequent. If someone is in trouble, it means the whole school is in trouble. If someone suddenly pulls away from the other members of the staff, it's a caution light, and for the sake of the school, the caution light must either return to green or go red, and that means the boss needs to play boss and cut the team member loose and bring on a new team member.

The balance in changing team members always comes with the question: For the sake of the children, should we change or hang on to someone to finish the job for the sake of continuity? Continuity in a world of change is a blessed thing, especially for children, but the truth is, when a team member is done with a job, the job should be done with the team member - for the sake of the children.

People will come and go from jobs in any situation, and that's the truth of the matter. The boss's job is to know when the team member is no longer a team member, but a team assailant and cut him or her loose, and that is what makes the boss the bad guy because nobody can know what's really in your heart.

The boss's job is never a fun job. It's like always being on a teeter totter. The demands come at you like baseballs in a throw and dunk game. But when the night slides in and you sit down with that adult refreshment, if you can look in the mirror or into your heart and know you've made the right choices for the children in your care, you can wink at the mirror and cock the bad guy hat and know that the road less taken might be lonely and misunderstood, but it's a beautiful path and one well worth taking.

Next week: The boss's appraisal of children who fit in and children who don't.

Monday's Tattler


Good Morning! Do you like the picture of "Water on Mars?"

Another week starting. It will be an interesting week with the fence down. Lot's to do inside, however. Lots of classes, lots of learning. The kids seem to really enjoy the class work and having all the teachers. The focus is on "Who am I" this week.

Parents, don't forget to read your handbooks! Especially review the section on clothing dos and don'ts.

September is coming and we will be off on Labor Day. Otherwise it's a full month.

Don't forget to bring your baby picture for the Beautiful Baby Contest. It starts the First of September!

If you have put in an order for Scholastic, I will send that in this week. It's new for me too, but we will get there!

Please note the garden and all the work that Jeremy and Rhonda Ross did this weekend. It was a fantastic weekend with them. They are marvelous people. Terry could not stop saying how wonderful they are. It is always a pleasure to have parents like Jeremy and Rhonda at the Garden School.

Have a great week!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Teaching Thursday


From Teacher Magazine at www.teachermagazine.org

Published: August 17, 2009

Jamming to Learn Grammar


Comment: Here's a great way for young people to learn grammar. Believe it or not, it will be more and more important for people to succeed if they know how to use the language properly. Grammar is something parents hand down to children. So this might be a family gig.

NICHOLSON, Ga. (AP) — Crystal Huau Mills knows it's tough for 9-year-olds to focus on learning nouns and verbs — grammar can be too boring and technical to hold the attention of an energetic third-grader.

So, to get the young scholars excited and to help them memorize a confusing and boring subject, she wrote a song.

Three years later, what started out as one song has grown into "Grammar Jammar," a 42-minute DVD based on a compilation of Mills' jams teachers and parents can use to relay basic grammar skills to children in kindergarten through fifth grade.

"(Grammar is) like learning a different language, with all the different rules and the parts of speech," said Mills, who taught for five years at Benton Elementary School in Jackson County. "It's a lot to take in, and it's not very exciting."

Students in her third-grade class struggled to recognize different types of nouns, so she wrote the first song to explain the difference between proper nouns and regular nouns, then recruited friend and musician Bryan Shaw to blend her words with a catchy tune.

"(Shaw) pretty much took my words from an e-mail and turned them into a song," Mills said. "He's good at that. He can take your words and twist them around and write the music for it. We kind of did that one song after another, and before we knew it, we had 13 different songs."

Shortly after Mills debuted the songs in her class, other teachers started using them to help students with their grammar.

"The tunes are just so catchy that (students) want to sing along with it, but at the same time, they don't really realize that they're learning grammar," said Ashley Watkins, who teaches kindergarten at Benton Elementary. "It's a great tool to introduce and reinforce those concepts that they have to learn."

As they took the state-mandated Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, students mouthed words to the songs before bubbling in answers, said third-grade teacher Laura Becker.

"I saw it being really effective in that way," Becker said. "These kids really remembered the songs."

Eventually, Mills produced a script combining the songs into a school musical.

In the musical, Mills acts as a teacher frustrated with an apathetic class of students. When she falls asleep, her unenthusiastic class transforms into a crowd of eager students, and inanimate objects like clocks, globes and flags come to life.

One performance caught the eye of Justin Carter, owner of Justin Wayne Casting in Athens, a casting company for independent films.

"I saw people who would not necessarily like theater or the arts really just get into it," Carter said. "They really responded well to it for just a little school production. That's how I knew it had potential. It was a good starting point."

In May 2008, Mills and a mostly volunteer crew of performers started work on the "Grammar Jammar" video. The crew spent three months taping at places like the cafeteria of Prince Avenue Christian School and North Oconee High School.

In an early part of the video, Mills' students dance at a '50s sock hop to a song about subjects and predicates.

In another scene, a life-size bottle of ketchup sings to students around a cafeteria table about imperative sentences.

"Imperative is a command like, 'Go to school.' It ends in a period or an exclamation point," the condiment explains.

Mills started college as a theater major but switched to education in her freshman year at the University of Georgia.

She started teaching at the Jackson County school in 2003, and decided to keep her passion for the performing arts alive, acting in plays at several local theaters and running an after-school drama club for students.

"There's not enough music or performing arts in the classroom or the public schools any more," Mills said. "So that's how 'Grammar Jammar' came to be. I see a need for the arts in education, and I saw that need and figured kids learn better through songs, so why not help that along?"

In July, Mills debuted "Grammar Jammar" at the Athens-Clarke County Library and took the DVD on the road to promote it at the Southeast Home School expo held in Atlanta.

The producers are selling the video and have a Web site, GrammarJammar.com, where parents and teachers can order copies.

For her next project, Mills is attempting to adapt a student workbook to go with the video.

"I see it going many places," Mills said. "Children's books, picture books ... who knows — maybe even a Saturday morning special on PBS."

Bryan Shaw, Grammar Jammar's lead musician, sings about subjects and predicates — "two parts to every sentence" — as Crystal Mills plays the part of the teacher. Danny Conkle is on base and Charlie Garland on guitar.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Wonderful Wednesday

From Food Navigator at Foodnavigator-usa.com
Healthy eating 'disorder' on the rise
17-Aug-2009

Comment: One of the best books I've ever read about food said, "Eat the widest variety of food possible." Over the years we have been told that one food after another is not good for us for one reason or another. The point is to avoid eating great quantities of anything, but at the same time enjoying everything. There is a place for McDonalds; a place for beer; a place for greasy pizza and chocolate cake. There is even a place for soda pop - it's good for kids on long trips because they don't have to pee! The other point is to keep an eye on balance. This can be done with the eye: is the plate filled with color or is it a "yellow" plate? Chicken nuggets, French fries and corn or applesauce is a yellow plate. It lacks something green or red; it lacks nutritional balance.

This article is about imbalance and the desire to maintain a "perfect" diet. A perfect diet only exists in the mind. A good diet allows for enjoyment. I truly believe that God did not intend for us to take the pleasure of eating and reduce it to either a chore, or a bland affair. Eating is supposed to be a delight, so let's keep that in mind as well as keeping in mind that too much, too many treats, too many calories is not balance, it's imbalance.

Related topics: Science & Nutrition

An obsession with healthy eating is on the increase, but cutting out of large number of foods, or foods that contain certain ingredients may increase the risk of malnutrition.

According to a report in The Guardian newspaper, Britain is currently experiencing an increase in the number of cases of orthorexia nervosa, a psychological condition whereby sufferers restrict the consumption of sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods. They also cut out any foods which contain artificial additives, or have come into contact with pesticides and herbicides.

Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association's mental health group, is quoted by The Guardian as stating: "Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food but orthorexics can be overweight or look normal. They are solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly 'pure'."

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

A Good Preschool Program by Judy Lyden

This is the highest physical bridge in the world.

Guess what is the highest emotional bridge in the world?

A good preschool program!

A great preschool program, and that includes kindergarten, is a program that children WANT to go to. It's a program that at its very nature is fun. Fun in child means learning and finding out about things and getting to do - all by myself.

A good preschool program should be safe, and children should feel they are cared for and secure - that mommy and daddy left me in a good place where I can grow and laugh and enjoy my day every day.

So how do you know that a program is going to be fun and safe? Look around.

Every building is different. When you enter, will the child think he's at the doctors? Will he think "no no!" Look at his face. What is he thinking? When a parent brings their child to school for the very first time, a child should be ready to embrace whatever he sees, and if there is nothing to embrace, perhaps the ideas being put forth from the school are not centered on the child but on the adult, or the board of directors, or the affiliate who is absent, or someone in an office locked safely away.

A good preschool is inviting. It draws a child gently from his parent's hand and leads him - all by himself - into a world of play. It is bright, there are windows and many lights, the room is filled with growing things, it is filled with toys that are organized and ready for play.

A good preschool program involves many things including some primary care. Washing hands, learning to use a new bathroom, sitting at the table, joining in group activities and listening are all part of primary care. Parents looking for a program should ask about these things. Sending a very young child to the bathroom to wash his hands will not produce clean hands. It will produce an absent child. Children need to be shown - away from home - how to do all these things - away from home.

Once primary care rules are set and followed, the education can begin. Look around again. Are very young children in desks? Are desks really appropriate for young children? Desks say "isolation." Should very young children be isolated from one another or do children learn better and more when they work together? With no pre-knowledge to draw from, children will always learn more working together. Ask yourself: if you went to a foreign country and were asked to build a well, and you were told to do it "all by yourself" would you have more success by yourself or with a group of people with many ideas and many points of view?

An appropriate work station for very young children is a long table where they can sit or stand according to the work at hand.

So how much of the day should be spent at this "table?" Not a lot. The very idea that someone would encourage a three, four or five year old to sit for long periods of time is an idea that should never have been thought in the first place. Threes, fours and fives are quick learners and twenty minutes at a time is enough "table time." Then they need a break to do other things.

But those other things do not necessarily mean random play. The directed parts of a good preschool program are carefully orchestrated to play into one another, to compliment one another and encourage more from the child. Science, fine arts, social studies, geography, foreign language, math, reading, word power, are just some of the activities of a good program that are mixed and matched through the day with sit and stand and move and stay and talk and listen times that make sense.

A good all day program will begin with a community meeting or a circle time. In that time certain things will be accomplished: The children might review, might tell each other what they learned the day before. They might reveal what happened at their house the night before. They might acknowledge a birthday or that they got new shoes the day before. Together they might pray if prayer is something that's important to the school. They will salute the flag, sing the Star Spangled Banner or an American song together because this is something to be learned early. The activities of the day might be announced by the teacher, and in a few minutes, children will move on to other things.

During the day of a good program, there will be a story, poetry, nursery rhymes and fairy tales told because these are a part of a good education. There should be plenty of art and plenty of free play that allows children to use the art supplies. Art is not a self taught gig. It's a teach me show me then...I can do it all by myself. And art should be admired and complimented by a teacher. It should be respected enough to go home with the child.

Lunch should be a terrific part of the day. Children should look forward to eating something really outstanding. This is probably the biggest possibility for quality food in the child's life. It's not a morning pop tart in the car. It's not a quick burger in the car on the way home. It's a time when children can sit with friends and talk and joke and have a great time. It's "out to lunch" with friends - a truly joyous occasion for fun.

At the end of a day, a child should be delighted to see mom and dad because he has learned so much he can't wait to tell them. He is learning to speak about his day, about his thoughts, about his ideas because there is always something new going on at his school.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Monday's Tattler


Good morning! It should be another hot, hot day. Miss Leigh is back from vacation, and Miss Elise is taking a couple of days break.

We are still working on rules and the way we do things. Children are learning quite nicely about lines, waiting our turn, sitting quietly, and staying put at the table during meal time.

This year all the kids are eager to learn. They are ready and waiting for everything and anything the teachers have planned for them. There have been some real surprises this year. Some of our youngest are some of our best students. They know a lot and learn very quickly. It should be a powerful year.

Yesterday I arrived at school with groceries - what else - and I found Austin's parents trimming a lot of excess vegetation from the yard. They were volunteering to help with what has become a huge problem. I can't thank them enough. Austin's parents are wonderful people. We thank them very much for all their help.

This Saturday the new fence goes up. We are very excited to see what this is like. We have needed a fence for a long time. It should be a really nice addition to our playground.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Sunday's Plate

This is from Food Navigator which can be found at foodnavigator-usa.com

I liked this article yesterday and more today. I went to a lovely party last night. The food was really good and the hostess put a lot of effort into making all two hundred guests feel very much at home. I noticed the menu was mostly high fat, and it was high fat, I think, because that's what most people eat and are satisfied from eating.

High-fat diets linked to poor mental function

By Stephen Daniells, 14-Aug-2009

Related topics: Science & Nutrition

High consumption of fatty foods may reduce both cognitive function and physical endurance, according to results of a rat study from Oxford University.

Animals fed a high-fat diet for nine days could run 50 per cent less far than their counterparts fed a standard rodent diet, while they also made mistakes sooner in the maze task, suggesting that their cognitive abilities were also being affected by their diet.

The study, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the FASEB Journal, has potential implications for people eating lots of high-fat foods, as well patients with metabolic disorders. It also draws attention to formulations in the food industry, with reduction of fat in products a growing area of interest to food manufacturers as consumers continue to seek out low-fat and low-calorie versions of their favourite foods.

The standard diet-fed animals obtained 7.5 per cent of their calories from fat, while the high fat diet-fed animals obtained 55 per cent of their calories from fat.

“The high-fat diet, in which 55 per cent of the calories came from fat, sounds high,” said lead author Dr Andrew Murray, “but it's actually not extraordinarily high by human standards. A junk food diet would come close to that.”

“Some high-fat, low-carb diets for weight loss can even have fat contents as high as 60 per cent. However, it's not clear how many direct conclusions can be drawn from our work for these diets, as the high-fat diet we used was not particularly low in carbs,” he added.

Study details

The researchers initially fed all 42 rats the standard diet, and measured their physical endurance using a treadmill, while their short-term or 'working' memory was tested in a maze. Half of the animals were then fed the high-fat diet, and their endurance and cognitive performance tested for another five days.

According to the data, after only 5 days on the high-fat diet the physical endurance of the rats decreased by 30 per cent, compared to animals on the low-fat diet. By the ninth day, the animals were running 50 per cent less far.

Furthermore, their performance in the maze task also decreased. The number of correct decisions before making a mistake dropped from over six to an average of 5 to 5.5.

“We found that rats, when switched to a high-fat diet from their standard low-fat feed, showed a surprisingly quick reduction in their physical performance,” said Murray. “After just nine days, they were only able to run 50 per cent as far on a treadmill as those that remained on the low-fat feed.”

An investigation of the metabolic changes revealed increased levels of a specific protein called the ‘uncoupling protein’ in the muscle and heart cells of the high-fat diet-fed rats. This protein reportedly ‘uncouples’ the process of burning food stuffs for energy in the cells, reducing the efficiency of the heart and muscles. The researchers also noted an increase in heart size in the high-fat diet-fed animals.

Dr Murray has since moved to Cambridge University and is continuing his work in this area. His new team are now carrying out similar studies in humans, looking at the effect of a short term high-fat diet on exercise and cognitive ability.

Commenting on the study, Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation said: “We look forward to the results of the equivalent studies in human volunteers, which should tell us more about the short-term effects of high-fat foods on our hearts. We already know that to protect our heart health in the long-term, we should cut down on foods high in saturated fat.”

Source: FASEB Journal
Published online ahead of print, doi: 10.1096/fj.09-139691
“Deterioration of physical performance and cognitive function in rats with short-term high-fat feeding”
Authors: A.J. Murray, N.S. Knight, L.E. Cochlin, S. McAleese, R.M.J. Deacon, J.N.P. Rawlins, K. Clarke

Friday, August 14, 2009

Friday's Tattler

I'm late as usual. Lots of things going on over the weekend to keep me away from writing.

We had a really nice week. The kids are super delightful and full of energy and so many are so bright. We have several little artists and several very fine orators. The plays should be magic this year. We have some great writers, some math artisans and a lot of the kids are familiar with the idea of planets and stars. It will be an outstanding year.

This past week we focused on the hows of doing things in a group. Many children come to school thinking that they know how to use a potty, how to wash their hands, how to sit at a table, how to listen to a story, and the truth is, they have the home experience of "when I want and if I want" and at school that all has to be re-arranged to be "now." So this week we taught "now."

Biggest problem was putting our toys away when we are finished playing and not drifting off to some other toy and leaving a mess behind. We talked about toys and where we play with them, where they are returned after play, how one toy is played with at a table and on the big floor, and "drifting." Drifting is the carrying of pieces of a toy through the school. It's all very new and all very exciting, and the children have learned a lot in a short time. We will continue to work on this the entire month of August.

All in all a very good start. This week our focus is on "Me."

Please remember to dress children in shorts, short sleeve (with sleeve) shirts, socks and shoes and underwear.

Children who go to bed before 8:00 do best.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Teaching Thursday

Mrs. St. Louis found this from
July 2009: Art and Science Integration

Scientists and artists are equally curious about and delighted by the world, although many educators view art and science as opposing disciplines. The opposite is true, however, especially in elementary classrooms, where students are learning to study their surroundings and can benefit from the creativity inherent in both.

Science Leadership—Make your life as a curriculum leader a little easier—use these ideas for your own professional enhancement (and feel free to pass them along!)

  • Enhance Your Content Knowledge—Sublime Science: (Look up sublime Science HERE.) One shortcoming in integrating art and science is that many of us have shallow understandings of art, which leads to superficial connections between art and science. This article explains that one way to more deeply connect art and science is to consider art in its broader form—aesthetics, and in this case, the sublime.
  • Get Parents Involved—Send parents to the Activity Sheets section of Smithsonian Kids' Family Page, from Smithsonian Education. They can download and print activity sheets that include word and number games, art exercises, and fun quizzes. With each activity, kids learn about something new, from the anatomy of the giant squid to the history of chocolate.
  • What Does Good Science Look Like?—Art and Science Grow Together: The interdisciplinary connection between science and art is easily made in the elementary classroom using plants as focus organisms. This article explains how observing, dissecting, growing, drawing, and painting plants can be used at multiple grade levels to teach science concepts and art techniques.

Wonderful Wednesday

Bee-Tees are t-shirts that teach. These are fun and the kids will love them.

Each one is adorned with a bumble bee image and a saying - bee unique, bee patient, bee good, bee yourself, etc.

The line enables children to carry out their spirit and helps encourage positive character. It gives parents the opportunity to discuss character issues as they are helping their child get dressed in the morning.

For their website, go HERE.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Foundation of the School Year by Judy Lyden

Every year we move from a relaxed summer program with old pro kids who know how to do whatever teachers ask to a new school year where new children don't know to stop and listen to a LOUD school bell. Every year we face the same problems of re-building and building the foundation for a successful new school year.

This first step to that foundation is cooperation. Cooperation cannot be explained, understood or practiced in a day. It takes a while; it takes a kind of trust and affection which makes very young children WANT to be one of many. The child is outside the limits of their family experience, and it's time to join another group. Children eagerly look at the new group and either like it or disdain it. Bright colors, lots of toys, lots of smiling faces encourage children to step into the new situation with enthusiasm. But more than any of these is the word safety. Safety is the thing most children are looking for, and safety does not come out of chaos but from a trusted order.

Order from chaos means cooperation in a school setting. Cooperation with very young children means communication. Teachers can never be vague. "It's time to pick up your toys and get ready for breakfast" is a fine command to a group of children who have done this for months, but a group of children who have never done this haven't a clue what that means or even if they have to do it simply because they have never done this before. Being precise is the job of the teacher at this point. "The bell is ringing. It is time to stop what you are playing with, look at me, and listen to what I say." Even this does not always get the attention of the children who are playing for the first time.

"Put down your toys, stand up and look at me" is the next command.

"Stop walking, stand still and look at me," is the third command.

"Stop talking, look at me and listen," is the next command.

When all the children are finally standing and listening which might take a few minutes, the teacher repeats what she has said, "It is time to pick up the toys YOU are playing with and put them where you found them. If you are playing with puzzles, the puzzles go over here. If you are playing with blocks, the blocks go here, if you are playing in dress up, please pick up all the clothes and dishes and put them here and here. Now GO!"

It's the same with bathroom lines, lines for recess, lines for going out, the dining table, play stations, art, washing, and classroom order. Everything needs to be a "Stop, Look, and Listen" before we act foolishly and destructively. Remember we are creating order from chaos.

If a teacher sends a room filled with newly schooled children to the bathroom without a lot of guidance, the chaos and the chance for an accident is begging to happen. Here is a picture of typical boy's chaos in a bathroom: Fifteen children will all race into a bathroom designed for four. Because there are not enough toilets for fifteen, ten children will have their pants down looking for a toilet. Children don't count. Many can't count. Many are not even aware of one to one correspondence - one toilet to one child.

In chaos, some children will actually urinate on the floor or the other children. The sink becomes a play zone. The first child will not relinquish the sink and will end up spouting water at all the other children. The toilet paper becomes the next toy and is ripped from the roller and goes flying across the room. In less than three minutes three children will have fallen and cracked their heads. Two children will have pushed other children into the commodes. The room is on fire with fighting and tears.

So the wise teacher lines up the boys and monitors the bathroom letting enough children into the bathroom as there are toilets. She will wash each child's hands to show him how to do it. She will talk to him about his hands as she washes them. She will send every child to a commode one at a time while the line waits at the bathroom door. Order ensues from chaos, children learn by doing the first time.

Ditto with playground lines. When a teacher announces it is time to go outside or inside, there should be a whole set of directions about how to do this. Stickers on the floor help to guide children to make lines inside. Paint splotches on the patio or walkway help children form lines outside. Making the crowd quiet is a first step to going quietly into the building. Quiet children stay quiet. Noisy children stay noisy. Noisy children don't listen and often hurt one another.

When children are finally quiet in line, the next step is to tell them what you expect. "It is time to go into the building, wash our hands and sit on the carpet in such and such a room." Now it's a given that sequencing is not a child's strong suit. The only thing that helps sequencing - doing one thing, then another, and then a third, like go into the building, wash your hands and sit down - is only done when practiced. Practicing means from the first day, and that means teacher direction. No teacher should send children into a building without back up. One teacher needs to be waiting in the bathroom, one in the place where the children will go. No child should ever be sent in from recess without a plan to wash his hands.

Teachers need to work together, verbalize constantly with one another and be in agreement about what the goals are and how this is to be achieved. If one teacher is not concerned about how quiet the children are, and another does not care how a child washes his hands, and a third doesn't care how they sit in a classroom waiting for the next activity, there is chaos and chaos leads to accidents and the inability to actually get to the next activity. Teachers must be on the same page.

When planning a school year with very young children, setting the priorities and building the foundation of behaviors always comes first. A group of children who knows how to enter a building, how to use the toilet quietly, how to find their place, how to sit and wait patiently for the next activity will learn so much more than a group of children who push one another, scream, and run around with no sense of where they are to be and what they are to do.

The mistake many teachers make is the assumption that this comes out of the air. It does not. It comes from very hard work done by united teachers who all know the rules and want the children to learn them as well. School is a community of participants. It is not a sea with many primitive islands. Rules take communication between every member of the school. It's too far to shout between islands.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Monday's Tattler



Good morning and welcome to the first day of school in the 2009-2010 calendar. It's going to be hot today, so please dress children in cool clothing. Shorts, short sleeved shirts with sleeves, athletic shoes and socks!

This week we will stay at school all week. We will be reviewing lines, sitting, quiet, eating, toileting and washing - important things to learn or review. The approach to a class, or lunch, or just arriving in the building quietly makes a big difference in a child's ability to listen later.

Here's a tip for parents: Don't carry your child from your car to the door. Your child feels much more independent walking. Carrying your child pulls him back to a toddler age and all the expectations he had as a toddler. By letting him walk, he tells himself, "I am a preschooler, and I can do this all by myself."

On the menu this week is spaghetti, breakfast for lunch, pizza, chicken legs, and fish sticks - all kiddie friendly foods. Lots of fruit this week.

We will be doing a lot of combination classes this week to figure out where everyone is academically. We won't make this decision until later this week.

Please make sure you get your health form and your food program forms to school this week.

Lots to do. I hope it's a great week for parents.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Sunday's Plate

Milk guzzling children may live longer, says study
From Foodnavigator.com
By Guy Montague-Jones, 29-Jul-2009

Consuming plenty of dairy products at a young age may lower stroke risk and lead to a longer life, according to a 65-year follow up study.

Some studies have suggested that dairy rich diets contribute to heart disease because of high levels of saturated fatty acids and cholesterol. But new research published in the journal Heart and funded by health charities suggests that children who eat lots of milk and cheese may live longer.

The study will be welcome news to the dairy industry which has been campaigning for some time about the health benefits of milk and other dairy products in the face of some opposition from consumer groups and health researchers.

Studying data from the Carnegie (“Boyd Orr”) survey of diet and health in pre-war Britain, researchers from Bristol University and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research looked for links between dairy consumption during childhood and mortality.

Tracking the lives and the dairy intake of 4,374 children between 1948 and 2005, the researchers found that 1,468 (34 per cent) of them had died, and 378 of those deaths were caused by coronary heart disease and 121 were due to stroke.

Study conclusions

Analysing this data, the scientists claimed to find no compelling evidence that high intake of dairy products was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or stroke deaths.

Professor Richard Martin, one of the authors of the study, told Dairy Reporter: “This finding was all the more compelling because the children in the study were drinking high fat milk.”

Not only did the study suggest that dairy rich diets in childhood do not contribute to heart problems later, they found that higher childhood calcium intake was associated with lower stroke mortality.

In addition, children who were in the group that had the highest calcium intake and dairy product consumption were found to have lower mortality rates than those in the lower intake groups.

“Children whose family diet in the 1930s was high in calcium were at reduced risk of death from stroke,” said the study authors. “Furthermore, childhood diets rich in dairy or calcium were associated with lower all-cause mortality in adulthood.”

Martin said the study is one of the first to look into dairy consumption at mortality over such a long period.

Call for more research

The Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Bristol University said studies on other study populations should be conducted to confirm the conclusions and look into factors such as socioeconomic differences that may skew the findings. Nevertheless, he said wealth was controlled for in the Heart study.

The UK-charity Stroke Association also called for more research. Spokesperson Joanne Murphy said: “This is an interesting study, but we need to take a further look to really assess the benefits of milk in reducing the chances of dying from stroke.”

The findings of the Heart study, which was funded by charities including Welcome Trust, British Health Fund and World Cancer Research Fund, go against some previous research that has linked high dairy consumption to heart disease and other health problems.

The Harvard School of Public Health says: “Many dairy products are high in saturated fats, and a high saturated fat intake is a risk factor for heart disease.”

Source: Heart

Published 2009; doi 10.1136/hrt.2009.168716

“Childhood dairy and calcium intake and cardiovascular mortality in adulthood: 65-year follow-up of the Boyd Orr cohort”

Authors: J C van der Pols, D Gunnell, G M Williams, J M P Holly, C Bain, R M Martin.

Sunday's Plate

Here's the recipe for the cookies we had on Friday. It makes a double batch: Making a double batch means having a slice and bake ton of cookie dough in the freezer:

mix together:
2 sticks of butter
1 cup of canola oil
3 eggs
2 tsp baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2-3 cups coconut

add a little at a time:
1 cup oats
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
.5 (1/2) cup soy flour
.5 cup mung bean flour
.5 cup cranberry bean flour
.5 cup brown rice flour
.5 cup chickpea flour

Subbing "odd flours" for regular flour =3 cups white or whole wheat flour.

But see what you ate and enjoyed it. Miss Judy has trouble eating beans, so using bean flour, which lowers cholesterol and adds a lot of extra vitamins is a green light. I find baked goods using alternate flours tastes better and lighter and nuttier without the nuts. If you want some alternate flours, just let me know.

Friday's Tattler

We had an enormously good time at Pounds this past week. It was clean, cool, and once Mr. Mike got the fire started, Miss Rhonda made some outrageously good hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch. Each child knew what he could and couldn't do, and the afternoon crept by with a lot of fun. The lake is shallow so the kids who still can't swim had a lot of room to play. The sandy part is wonderful because there is no goo on the bottom...

I noticed that some of the non swimmers really swam for the first time. Jasmin really swam her way around the lake. Jack H, who always seems to go too deep had a ball going up to his neck and scaring Miss Judy with his great big grin. He loves to go under and paddle around. Addie and Skylar and Mara and Haidyn swam out deep with the blow up toys and Emily, who is still learning to swim went with them and did a great job.

The parents who came with us were a great team and I heard one parent say, "This is a lot more fun than going to work." I could not help resorting, "Yeah, I know, and I get paid for this."

One of the children asked me as she was paddling around, "Why do we have to do field trips?" and I said, "Because Miss Judy likes them, and I'm the boss," and she got a great big grin on her face and said, "Me too." So we're agreed.

All in all a great finale to summer and a great time by all.

A great big thank you to parents who came and helped. The Garden School staff could not do this without you.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Thursday's Teacher


From Teachermagazine.org

Published: August 3, 2009

Comment: I can think of several of our students who have passed through the GS who belong here.

Academy Caters to Profoundly Gifted Students

RENO, Nevada (AP) — Back home in Boise, Rachel was too bright for her own good. She was isolated from girls her own age who only wanted to talk about boys and shopping, and cut off from her teachers who seemed to regard her as an annoying brat.

Rachel's mother Jae Ellison wondered if her daughter, with so much brain power, would even graduate high school.

Today 16-year-old Rachel is headed to MIT after graduating from the Davidson Academy, a free public high school on the University of Nevada, Reno campus that caters to the profoundly gifted — those who might be considered geniuses.

With so much attention on the federal No Child Left Behind Act, advocates for exceptionally smart kids often complain that the brightest students, too, are being denied the opportunity to realize their potential.

"Schools don't handle odd ball kids very well," said Jane Clarenbach with the Washington, D.C.-based National Association for Gifted Children. "The more highly gifted you are, the bigger problem you present to your school district."

The Davidson Academy and its not-for-profit umbrella organization, the Davidson Institute, were founded by education software developers Bob and Jan Davidson.

Their former company, Davidson & Associates, was known for the popular Math Blaster and Reading Blaster software series of the early 1980s. They co-authored the book, "Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds."

The Davidsons donated more than $10 million toward the academy. It opened in 2006 with 39 students. When classes begin this fall about 100 are expected at the school, which focuses on the individual needs of students who are grouped by ability level rather than age.

More than a dozen specialty high schools for gifted students operate around the country, and many colleges offer classes for bright young students, Clarenbach said. There is no set definition for what makes a student gifted, or highly gifted, or profoundly gifted, let alone statistics on how many there are, she said.

To be accepted at Davidson, students must score in the top 99.9 percentile on IQ tests or at the top of their age groups on aptitude tests.

Teaching young wizards and keeping them engaged in learning is not as easy as it sounds, experts say. Years ahead intellectually of the students their own age, it can be challenging to stoke their academic fire while harboring fragile adolescence from emotional meltdown.

"At some point it does become a problem because they have less in common with their age peers and more with their academic peers," Clarenbach said.

It was that dilemma that brought the Ellison family to Reno, where Rachel's brother, David, also attends the academy.

In Boise, Rachel attended six different schools, sometimes three in one day, to find classes that challenged her. Hanging out at the mall was not her idea of fun. In her spare time, Rachel is writing a seven-volume novel.

Being around intellectual equals at Davidson, she said, exposed her to a social network she lacked. The academics, she said, may have been her main reason for coming to Davidson, "but my favorite part has definitely been the social atmosphere."

Not all students who enroll find success at the academy, said Colleen Harsin, Davidson's executive director.

"Many of our students have not had to study before," Harsin said. "Certainly, it's easier to be top in your class."

To ease the transition, students are accepted only at the start of a school year. The brightest of the bright tend to become acquainted through special summer programs and online seminars, Harsin said.

This summer, 49 students, ages 13-16, attended the Davidson Institute's summer program, an intense session in which two college classes are completed in three weeks.

"My friends just ask me why I'm going to nerd camp," said Janet Holmes, 13, from St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

But these kids say they would rather be studying then hanging out at the water park.

"We're intellectuals. We're accepted here," said Jackson Wagner, a 16-year-old from Dearborn, Michigan, who's thinking about becoming a philosopher.

UNR Professor Eric Herzik said his young political science students are intelligent, analytical and engaging. "There's a lot more participation," he said.

In another classroom across campus, instructor Michael Leverington orchestrated a computer class that had students acting out complicated problem-solving exercises. Then, this summary: "Let's do some metacognizing here."

The key to teaching gifted students, experts say, is allowing them to proceed at their own, accelerated pace.

"If you have students who are just really self-motivated, and say, 'you don't have to stick to this curriculum, just go,' they will," said Matt Bowden, spokesman for the Center for Talented Youth at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

The center has been recruiting sharp young minds for 30 years, and, like other similar programs at Duke, Northwestern, and the University of Iowa and elsewhere, conducts annual "talent searches" for the highly inquisitive.

Over the past three decades, Bowden said about 1.5 million students have gone through John Hopkins' talent search or its summer programs offered for children as young as second grade.

Recognizing young talent early in their scholastic career is key, Clarenbach said.

"The doodling, fidgeting, looks like a bad kid when it's really a bored kid," she said. "These are serious things, because if a teacher turns them off early, who's going to turn them back on? We lose lots of kids that way."

Wednesday's Wonder



Two Stories BOTH TRUE - and worth reading!!!!

STORY NUMBER ONE

Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago . Capone wasn't famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.

Capone had a lawyer nicknamed "Easy Eddie." He was Capone's lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie's skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.

To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well. Not only was the money big, but Eddie got special dividends, as well. For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day. The estate was so large that it filled an entire Chicago City block.

Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him.

Eddie did have one soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly. Eddie saw to it that his young son had clothes, cars, and a good education. Nothing was withheld. Price was no object. And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was.

Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn't give his son; he couldn't pass on a good name or a good example. One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done.

He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al "Scarface" Capone, clean up his tarnished name, and offer his son some semblance of integrity. To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great. But, he testified.

Within the year, Easy Eddie's life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street . But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he could ever pay Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine.

The poem read:

"The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop, at late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will. Place no faith in time. For the clock may soon be still."



STORY NUMBER TWO

World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare.

He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific.

One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission. After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank.

He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship. His flight leader told him to return to the carrier. Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet.

As he was returning to the mother ship, he saw something that turned his blood cold; a squadron of Japanese aircraft was speeding its way toward the American fleet.

The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless. He couldn't reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger. There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet.

Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes. Wing-mounted 50 caliber's blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another. Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent.

Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible, rendering them unfit to fly.

Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction.

Deeply relieved, Butch O'Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier

Upon arrival, he reported in and related the event surrounding his return. The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch's daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had, in fact, destroyed five enemy aircraft.

This took place on February 20, 1942 , and for that action Butch became the Navy's first Ace of W.W.II, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor.

A year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29. His home town would not allow the memory of this WW II hero to fade, and today, O'Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man.

So, the next time you find yourself at O'Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch's memorial displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It's located between Terminals 1 and 2.

SO WHAT DO THESE TWO STORIES HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?

Butch O'Hare was "Easy Eddie's" son.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Saying Goodby by Judy Lyden

Every year at two separate times we say goodbye to children leaving the Garden School. It's always a sad occasion because these wonderful children will be missed. In May, some children leave to spend summer with family or in another camp because they have outgrown us, and other places offer older children. When some children get to be the oldest, some reach out for older child mentors, and here, that's impossible.

At the end of summer, the rest of the graduating class moves off to "Big School." Parents cry, we tear up, the children look between teachers and parents not really understanding that they won't be coming back to school here or exactly what that means - for sure. They are always welcome to visit, to spend a day, but after "Big School," it's hard to come back and find much to do. They've done it all, and now it's time to reach out and do something new.

And this is what should happen. We are not supposed to stay the same. We are not supposed to stop. We are supposed to move forward. That's what we have been teaching our children from the beginning. We don't expect them to be three for years, or four, or even five for ever. When A.A. Milne says, "Now I think I'll stay six now for ever and ever," that's not about staying still, it's about engaging life to the fullest, about remembering that at six, we can look out at the world and embrace it for all it's good and never even notice the bad. And that's the way life should be.

Every time I hug a child and say, "Well, off to bigger and better things," I mean it. I expect that all our wonderful Kindergartners will do bigger and better things every single year for the rest of their lives. Should I expect less? Not a chance.

Last week, one of my beloved families with five children came to visit. The boys were big and the little girl was nearly as tall as I am. They were gracious and friendly, but they admitted that the toys and the building looked very little. "You spent a whole year here playing," I said, And the boys looked around as if they were trying to remember what it could have been like in our little building.

Every parent who cares wants something good for their child, and after their child is spoiled at the GS for all the special attention and all the "Judying up" of their time, it's hard to think what they will get in the next school, but no matter what, they are moving forward, and that's a good. They have made their mark here, and it's time to make it someplace else.

Worst scenario? A teacher you don't like? Your children will have to endure teachers they don't like right through college. It's unfortunate that some of them will have to endure a teacher they can't relate too, but this too is part of being in the bigger world, and it is something they need to think about and find a way to do their best no matter what. Parents know this and children will find it out sooner or later. The fact that they are as well behaved as they have been at the Garden School will only help them understand how to cope with what ever it is that they must face in the bigger world.

Best scenario? Our little princes and princesses, who are the very best children in the world, will all go off to big school with the confidence that they can and will be at the top of their classes, they will, and they will set the world on fire.

The Garden School is only the launching pad. The child is the rocket, and parents are the fuel.

Now! Last minute tips from grandma Judy:

Tip for parents seeking children to take reading seriously: If you want your child to read well and be interested in books, then you need to set the example and read. Turn of TV or the radio and pick up a book, and keep picking up books.

If you want your child to be honest, be honest.

If you want your child to be kind, be kind.

If you want your child to be courteous, be courteous.

If you want your child to have splendid manners, have splendid manners.

If you want your child to be courageous, be courageous.

If you want your child to be generous, be generous.

If you want your child to speak well, speak well.

Apples don't fall far from the trees. We all teach, we all set examples for young children.

Remember, parents are the PRIMARY teachers of their children. That's you.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Monday's Tattler

Good Morning! It's time for another and a last week at the Garden School Summer Camp. It's been a great summer, and hopefully, we will will finish out with three good days of swimming.

Monday is a regular school day with spelling words and class time.

Tuesday is a swim day at Newburgh Pool.

Wednesday is our last swim day at Newburgh Pool.

Thursday is a regular school day with a spelling test.

Friday is our last field trip for summer. We will be going to Pounds Hollow Lake for a cookout and a splash in the "big pond." This lake is a marvelous adventure. It's wide, sandy and there are facilities that flush!

This is our last day for those children who are moving off to public and private first grades.

This has been an outstanding summer and we appreciate all the work that our parents put into our little school. Congratulations go again to Austin's mom for her kindness in supplying a lot of treats. A thank you goes out to Morgan's mother for her work on the grass and for supplying a lot of our melons! A thanks goes to the Bowen family for the sodas for our trips. Thanks go out to Nathan's mom for all the cupcakes!

And a great big thanks goes to all our parents who volunteered to go and help. This means so much.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Sunday's Bonus!


I love this article. It's the best article I've read all year. It's from The American: The Journal of the American Enterprise Institute. Terry sent this to me and I relish what it says. Yeah American Farmer and all your wisdom!

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals

Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is. This is something the critics of industrial farming never seem to understand.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

I’m dozing, as I often do on airplanes, but the guy behind me has been broadcasting nonstop for nearly three hours. I finally admit defeat and start some serious eavesdropping. He’s talking about food, damning farming, particularly livestock farming, compensating for his lack of knowledge with volume.

I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food. Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is.

But now we have to listen to self-appointed experts on airplanes frightening their seatmates about the profession I have practiced for more than 30 years. I’d had enough. I turned around and politely told the lecturer that he ought not believe everything he reads. He quieted and asked me what kind of farming I do. I told him, and when he asked if I used organic farming, I said no, and left it at that. I didn’t answer with the first thought that came to mind, which is simply this: I deal in the real world, not superstitions, and unless the consumer absolutely forces my hand, I am about as likely to adopt organic methods as the Wall Street Journal is to publish their next edition by setting the type by hand.

Young turkeys aren't smart enough to come in out of the rain, and will stand outside in a downpour, with beaks open and eyes skyward, until they drown.

He was a businessman, and I’m sure spends his days with spreadsheets, projections, and marketing studies. He hasn’t used a slide rule in his career and wouldn’t make projections with tea leaves or soothsayers. He does not blame witchcraft for a bad quarter, or expect the factory that makes his product to use steam power instead of electricity, or horses and wagons to deliver his products instead of trucks and trains. But he expects me to farm like my grandfather, and not incidentally, I suppose, to live like him as well. He thinks farmers are too stupid to farm sustainably, too cruel to treat their animals well, and too careless to worry about their communities, their health, and their families. I would not presume to criticize his car, or the size of his house, or the way he runs his business. But he is an expert about me, on the strength of one book, and is sharing that expertise with captive audiences every time he gets the chance. Enough, enough, enough.

Industrial Farming and Its Critics

Critics of “industrial farming” spend most of their time concerned with the processes by which food is raised. This is because the results of organic production are so, well, troublesome. With the subtraction of every “unnatural” additive, molds, fungus, and bugs increase. Since it is difficult to sell a religion with so many readily quantifiable bad results, the trusty family farmer has to be thrown into the breach, saving the whole organic movement by his saintly presence, chewing on his straw, plodding along, at one with his environment, his community, his neighborhood. Except that some of the largest farms in the country are organic—and are giant organizations dependent upon lots of hired stoop labor doing the most backbreaking of tasks in order to save the sensitive conscience of my fellow passenger the merest whiff of pesticide contamination. They do not spend much time talking about that at the Whole Foods store.

The most delicious irony is this: the parts of farming that are the most “industrial” are the most likely to be owned by the kind of family farmers that elicit such a positive response from the consumer. Corn farms are almost all owned and managed by small family farmers. But corn farmers salivate at the thought of one more biotech breakthrough, use vast amounts of energy to increase production, and raise large quantities of an indistinguishable commodity to sell to huge corporations that turn that corn into thousands of industrial products.

The biggest environmental harm I’ve done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides.

Most livestock is produced by family farms, and even the poultry industry, with its contracts and vertical integration, relies on family farms to contract for the production of the birds. Despite the obvious change in scale over time, family farms, like ours, still meet around the kitchen table, send their kids to the same small schools, sit in the same church pew, and belong to the same civic organizations our parents and grandparents did. We may be industrial by some definition, but not our own. Reality is messier than it appears in the book my tormentor was reading, and farming more complicated than a simple morality play.

On the desk in front of me are a dozen books, all hugely critical of present-day farming. Farmers are often given a pass in these books, painted as either naïve tools of corporate greed, or economic nullities forced into their present circumstances by the unrelenting forces of the twin grindstones of corporate greed and unfeeling markets. To the farmer on the ground, though, a farmer blessed with free choice and hard won experience, the moral choices aren’t quite so easy. Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety. Are people who refuse to use them my moral superiors? Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river.

Finally, consumers benefit from cheap food. If you think they don’t, just remember the headlines after food prices began increasing in 2007 and 2008, including the study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations announcing that 50 million additional people are now hungry because of increasing food prices. Only “industrial farming” can possibly meet the demands of an increasing population and increased demand for food as a result of growing incomes.

The distance between the farmer and what he grows has certainly increased, but, believe me, if we weren't closely connected, we wouldn't still be farming.

So the stakes in this argument are even higher. Farmers can raise food in different ways if that is what the market wants. It is important, though, that even people riding in airplanes know that there are environmental and food safety costs to whatever kind of farming we choose.


Pigs in a Pen

In his book Dominion, author Mathew Scully calls “factory farming” an “obvious moral evil so sickening and horrendous it would leave us ashen.” Scully, a speechwriter for the second President Bush, can hardly be called a man of the left. Just to make sure the point is not lost, he quotes the conservative historian Paul Johnson a page later:

The rise of factory farming, whereby food producers cannot remain competitive except by subjecting animals to unspeakable deprivation, has hastened this process. The human spirit revolts at what we have been doing.

Arizona and Florida have outlawed pig gestation crates, and California recently passed, overwhelmingly, a ballot initiative doing the same. There is no doubt that Scully and Johnson have the wind at their backs, and confinement raising of livestock may well be outlawed everywhere. And only a person so callous as to have a spirit that cannot be revolted, or so hardened to any kind of morality that he could countenance an obvious moral evil, could say a word in defense of caging animals during their production. In the quote above, Paul Johnson is forecasting a move toward vegetarianism. But if we assume, at least for the present, that most of us will continue to eat meat, let me dive in where most fear to tread.

Lynn Niemann was a neighbor of my family’s, a farmer with a vision. He began raising turkeys on a field near his house around 1956. They were, I suppose, what we would now call “free range” turkeys. Turkeys raised in a natural manner, with no roof over their heads, just gamboling around in the pasture, as God surely intended. Free to eat grasshoppers, and grass, and scratch for grubs and worms. And also free to serve as prey for weasels, who kill turkeys by slitting their necks and practicing exsanguination. Weasels were a problem, but not as much a threat as one of our typically violent early summer thunderstorms. It seems that turkeys, at least young ones, are not smart enough to come in out of the rain, and will stand outside in a downpour, with beaks open and eyes skyward, until they drown. One night Niemann lost 4,000 turkeys to drowning, along with his dream, and his farm.

Food production will have a claim on fossil fuels long after we've learned how to use renewables and nuclear power to handle many of our other energy needs.

Now, turkeys are raised in large open sheds. Chickens and turkeys raised for meat are not grown in cages. As the critics of "industrial farming" like to point out, the sheds get quite crowded by the time Thanksgiving rolls around and the turkeys are fully grown. And yes, the birds are bedded in sawdust, so the turkeys do walk around in their own waste. Although the turkeys don't seem to mind, this quite clearly disgusts the various authors I've read whom have actually visited a turkey farm. But none of those authors, whose descriptions of the horrors of modern poultry production have a certain sameness, were there when Neimann picked up those 4,000 dead turkeys. Sheds are expensive, and it was easier to raise turkeys in open, inexpensive pastures. But that type of production really was hard on the turkeys. Protected from the weather and predators, today's turkeys may not be aware that they are a part of a morally reprehensible system.

Like most young people in my part of the world, I was a 4-H member. Raising cattle and hogs, showing them at the county fair, and then sending to slaughter those animals that we had spent the summer feeding, washing, and training. We would then tour the packing house, where our friend was hung on a rail, with his loin eye measured and his carcass evaluated. We farm kids got an early start on dulling our moral sensibilities. I'm still proud of my win in the Atchison County Carcass competition of 1969, as it is the only trophy I have ever received. We raised the hogs in a shed, or farrowing (birthing) house. On one side were eight crates of the kind that the good citizens of California have outlawed. On the other were the kind of wooden pens that our critics would have us use, where the sow could turn around, lie down, and presumably act in a natural way. Which included lying down on my 4-H project, killing several piglets, and forcing me to clean up the mess when I did my chores before school. The crates protect the piglets from their mothers. Farmers do not cage their hogs because of sadism, but because dead pigs are a drag on the profit margin, and because being crushed by your mother really is an awful way to go. As is being eaten by your mother, which I've seen sows do to newborn pigs as well.

I warned you that farming is still dirty and bloody, and I wasn't kidding. So let's talk about manure. It is an article of faith amongst the agri-intellectuals that we no longer use manure as fertilizer. To quote Dr. Michael Fox in his book Eating with a Conscience, "The animal waste is not going back to the land from which he animal feed originated." Or Bill McKibben, in his book Deep Economy, writing about modern livestock production: "But this concentrates the waste in one place, where instead of being useful fertilizer to spread on crop fields it becomes a toxic threat."

In my inbox is an email from our farm's neighbor, who raises thousands of hogs in close proximity to our farm, and several of my family member's houses as well. The email outlines the amount and chemical analysis of the manure that will be spread on our fields this fall, manure that will replace dozens of tons of commercial fertilizer. The manure is captured underneath the hog houses in cement pits, and is knifed into the soil after the crops are harvested. At no time is it exposed to erosion, and it is an extremely valuable resource, one which farmers use to its fullest extent, just as they have since agriculture began.

Pollan thinks farmers use commercial fertilizer because it's easier, and because it's cheap. Pollan is right. But those are perfectly defensible reasons.

In the southern part of Missouri, there is an extensive poultry industry in areas of the state where the soil is poor. The farmers there spread the poultry litter on pasture, and the advent of poultry barns made cattle production possible in areas that used to be waste ground. The "industrial" poultry houses are owned by family farmers, who have then used the byproducts to produce beef in areas where cattle couldn't survive before. McKibben is certain that the contracts these farmers sign with companies like Tyson are unfair, and the farmers might agree. But they like those cows, so there is a waiting list for new chicken barns. In some areas, there is indeed more manure than available cropland. But the trend in the industry, thankfully, is toward a dispersion of animals and manure, as the value of the manure increases, and the cost of transporting the manure becomes prohibitive.

We Can’t Change Nature

The largest producer of pigs in the United States has promised to gradually end the use of hog crates. The Humane Society promises to take their initiative drive to outlaw farrowing crates and poultry cages to more states. Many of the counties in my own state of Missouri have chosen to outlaw the the building of confinement facilities. Barack Obama has been harshly critical of animal agriculture. We are clearly in the process of deciding that we will not continue to raise animals the way we do now. Because other countries may not share our sensibilities, we'll have to withdraw or amend free trade agreements to keep any semblance of a livestock industry.

We can do that, and we may be a better society for it, but we can't change nature. Pigs will be allowed to "return to their mire," as Kipling had it, but they'll also be crushed and eaten by their mothers. Chickens will provide lunch to any number of predators, and some number of chickens will die as flocks establish their pecking order.

In recent years, the cost of producing pork dropped as farmers increased feed efficiency (the amount of feed needed to produce a pound of pork) by 20 percent. Free-range chickens and pigs will increase the price of food, using more energy and water to produce the extra grain required for the same amount of meat, and some people will go hungry. It is also instructive that the first company to move away from farrowing crates is the largest producer of pigs. Changing the way we raise animals will not necessarily change the scale of the companies involved in the industry. If we are about to require more expensive ways of producing food, the largest and most well-capitalized farms will have the least trouble adapting.

The Omnivores’ Delusions

Michael Pollan, in an 8,000-word essay in the New York Times Magazine, took the expected swipes at animal agriculture. But his truly radical prescriptions had to do with raising of crops. Pollan, who seemed to be aware of the nitrogen problem in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, left nuance behind, as well as the laws of chemistry, in his recommendations. The nitrogen problem is this: without nitrogen, we do not have life. Until we learned to produce nitrogen from natural gas early in the last century, the only way to get nitrogen was through nitrogen produced by plants called legumes, or from small amounts of nitrogen that are produced by lightning strikes. The amount of life the earth could support was limited by the amount of nitrogen available for crop production.

In his book, Pollan quotes geographer Vaclav Smil to the effect that 40 percent of the people alive today would not be alive without the ability to artificially synthesize nitrogen. But in his directive on food policy, Pollan damns agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels, and urges the president to encourage agriculture to move away from expensive and declining supplies of natural gas toward the unlimited sunshine that supported life, and agriculture, as recently as the 1940s. Now, why didn't I think of that?

Well, I did. I've raised clover and alfalfa for the nitrogen they produce, and half the time my land is planted to soybeans, another nitrogen producing legume. Pollan writes as if all of his ideas are new, but my father tells of agriculture extension meetings in the late 1950s entitled "Clover and Corn, the Road to Profitability." Farmers know that organic farming was the default position of agriculture for thousands of years, years when hunger was just around the corner for even advanced societies. I use all the animal manure available to me, and do everything I can to reduce the amount of commercial fertilizers I use. When corn genetically modified to use nitrogen more efficiently enters the market, as it soon will, I will use it as well. But none of those things will completely replace commercial fertilizer.

Norman Borlaug, founder of the green revolution, estimates that the amount of nitrogen available naturally would only support a worldwide population of 4 billion souls or so. He further remarks that we would need another 5 billion cows to produce enough manure to fertilize our present crops with "natural" fertilizer. That would play havoc with global warming. And cows do not produce nitrogen from the air, but only from the forages they eat, so to produce more manure we will have to plant more forages. Most of the critics of industrial farming maintain the contradictory positions that we should increase the use of manure as a fertilizer, and decrease our consumption of meat. Pollan would solve the problem with cover crops, planted after the corn crop is harvested, and with mandatory composting. Pollan should talk to some actual farmers before he presumes to advise a president.

Pollan tells of flying over the upper Midwest in the winter, and seeing the black, fallow soil. I suppose one sees what one wants to see, but we have not had the kind of tillage implement on our farm that would produce black soil in nearly 20 years. Pollan would provide our nitrogen by planting those black fields to nitrogen-producing cover crops after the cash crops are harvested. This is a fine plan, one that farmers have known about for generations. And sometimes it would even work. But not last year, as we finished harvest in November in a freezing rain. It is hard to think of a legume that would have done its thing between then and corn planting time. Plants do not grow very well in freezing weather, a fact that would evidently surprise Pollan.

And even if we could have gotten a legume established last fall, it would not have fixed any nitrogen before planting time. We used to plant corn in late May, plowing down our green manure and killing the first flush of weeds. But that meant the corn would enter its crucial growing period during the hottest, driest parts of the summer, and that soil erosion would be increased because the land was bare during drenching spring rains. Now we plant in early April, best utilizing our spring rains, and ensuring that pollination occurs before the dog days of August.

A few other problems come to mind. The last time I planted a cover crop, the clover provided a perfect habitat in early spring for bugs, bugs that I had to kill with an insecticide. We do not normally apply insecticides, but we did that year. Of course, you can provide nitrogen with legumes by using a longer crop rotation, growing clover one year and corn the next. But that uses twice as much water to produce a corn crop, and takes twice as much land to produce the same number of bushels. We are producing twice the food we did in 1960 on less land, and commercial nitrogen is one of the main reasons why. It may be that we decide we would rather spend land and water than energy, but Pollan never mentions that we are faced with that choice.

His other grand idea is mandatory household composting, with the compost delivered to farmers free of charge. Why not? Compost is a valuable soil amendment, and if somebody else is paying to deliver it to my farm, then bring it on. But it will not do much to solve the nitrogen problem. Household compost has somewhere between 1 and 5 percent nitrogen, and not all that nitrogen is available to crops the first year. Presently, we are applying about 150 pounds of nitrogen per acre to corn, and crediting about 40 pounds per acre from the preceding years soybean crop. Let's assume a 5 percent nitrogen rate, or about 100 pounds of nitrogen per ton of compost. That would require 3,000 pounds of compost per acre. Or about 150,000 tons for the corn raised in our county. The average truck carries about 20 tons. Picture 7,500 trucks traveling from New York City to our small county here in the Midwest, delivering compost. Five million truckloads to fertilize the country's corn crop. Now, that would be a carbon footprint!

Pollan thinks farmers use commercial fertilizer because it is easier, and because it is cheap. Pollan is right. But those are perfectly defensible reasons. Nitrogen quadrupled in price over the last several years, and farmers are still using it, albeit more cautiously. We are using GPS monitors on all of our equipment to ensure that we do not use too much, and our production of corn per pound of nitrogen is rapidly increasing. On our farm, we have increased yields about 50 percent during my career, while applying about the same amount of nitrogen we did when I began farming. That fortunate trend will increase even faster with the advent of new GMO hybrids. But as much as Pollan might desire it, even President Obama cannot reshuffle the chemical deck that nature has dealt. Energy may well get much more expensive, and peak oil production may have been reached. But food production will have a claim on fossil fuels long after we have learned how to use renewables and nuclear power to handle many of our other energy needs.

Farming and Connectedness

Much of farming is more "industrial," more technical, and more complex than it used to be. Farmers farm more acres, and are less close to the ground and their animals than they were in the past. Almost all critics of industrial agriculture bemoan this loss of closeness, this "connectedness," to use author Rod Dreher's term. It is a given in most of the writing about agriculture that the knowledge and experience of the organic farmer is what makes him so unique and so important. The "industrial farmer," on the other hand, is a mere pawn of Cargill, backed into his ignorant way of life by forces too large, too far from the farm, and too powerful to resist. Concern about this alienation, both between farmers and the land, and between consumers and their food supply, is what drives much of the literature about agriculture.

The distance between the farmer and what he grows has certainly increased, but, believe me, if we weren't closely connected, we wouldn't still be farming. It's important to our critics that they emphasize this alienation, because they have to ignore the "industrial" farmer's experience and knowledge to say the things they do about farming.

But farmers have reasons for their actions, and society should listen to them as we embark upon this reappraisal of our agricultural system. I use chemicals and diesel fuel to accomplish the tasks my grandfather used to do with sweat, and I use a computer instead of a lined notebook and a pencil, but I'm still farming the same land he did 80 years ago, and the fund of knowledge that our family has accumulated about our small part of Missouri is valuable. And everything I know and I have learned tells me this: we have to farm "industrially" to feed the world, and by using those "industrial" tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task and leave my grandchildren a prosperous and productive farm, while protecting the land, water, and air around us.

Blake Hurst is a farmer in Missouri. In a few days he will spend the next six weeks on a combine.