Growing Your Own

Brought to you by Peter, whose post Santa the Spy reminded me of yet another Ray Stevens classic:

(direct link to the vid on YouTube)

O’course, Lobo and I never filled the snolfs’ heads with the Santa myth ... and now that they’re old enough, they see the snooping, nannying connection between “Santa” and the state. They don’t care much for either one. :-D

A friend sent me the link to this and I found it appalling. Of course, today, there's a plethora of such stuff to admire in our world, but this particular article is one which I think the denizens of Sunni's Gulch might find up their alley, or down their back road, or something.

It's about a SWAT team making a raid on a family in a small town in Ohio for having the temerity to operate a food co-op. Enjoy!

See HERE

A ramble from early October mentioned in passing the FDA guidelines for melamine in foods. Surprise, surprise—they’ve tweaked them again!

For context see this.

A few days ago Annie and I ran into a woman who we hadn't seen in two or three years. I will refer to her as "D". D, unlike most of the people we know, is a libertarian. We were making the standard small talk including the usual chit-chat about out daughters. Annie mentioned that Ayn, who is now 16, has been working full time since February and that she went to Paris in August to meet with some friends she made on-line. D was, well, shocked. "You let her go!?" I was very surprised by this reaction, given that she is libertarian. Annie, who handles these things better than I do, simply said, "we raised her as a libertarian, it would not have made sense to tell her she could not go." The objections continued along the lines of "But she is only 16 and does not have good judgement/experience/etc". At some point I got involved and, perhaps rudely, pointed out that this applies to most adults, that we did tell our daughter these things, and that she decided to go anyway. Continuing, I asked if we should have used force to stop her. D was rather flustered and muttered something to the effect that she should not have been allowed to go, then made an excuse to get away from us.

I feel an urge to clarify something. It’s probably superfluous after this ramble, but given the response around the web to my comment yesterday, made in an old thread, I want to be as clear as I can be.

Over the years I've been asked thousands of times how to decide what to give elderly people for birthdays, holidays and especially Christmas. As a nurse, I had close contact with thousands of elderly people, and most of them received lots of junk they could not use and which was basically meaningless. They don't need more "things." They have all the bath soap, dusting powder, perfume, naughty nighties and socks they would need for another 50 years. This is especially true of the gentlemen.

So, here are some suggestions:

“A person’s a person, no matter how small,” wrote Dr. Seuss many years ago. And while there is truth in that observation, it is just as observably true that in aggregate, children are fairly different from adults in aggregate. (And of course, taken individually, each child is unique, just as adults are.) The important question, it seems to me, is “How are children different?”, because I think how one treats a child may stem from how one answers that question.

It seems to me that a general answer probably leans toward one of two positions:
1). Children are quantitatively different from adults—meaning they lack a great deal of skill and experience at living, and so, as they mature and have more experiences (and are allowed/encouraged to learn from them) they gradually become more like adults; and
2). Children are qualitatively different from adults. Neurological–developmental research has revealed that the human brain undergoes at least two significant growth spurts—one just after birth, and the second during adolescence. Perhaps even more importantly, the second growth spurt is not merely an adding of neurons and neural connections; it is a refinement of pathways, culling those that have not been used and strengthening ones used frequently. So, in a very real sense, a child’s brain is fairly different from a grownup’s brain.

Which is the more important aspect in responding to a child, in helping it grow and mature? I don’t know that they can be teased apart, only in part because of the confounding variable of time that is required by both processes; experience is also a crucial element in neural development, as many, many animal and human studies have demonstrated. But it seems to me that, if more individuals knew of that second growth spurt, and grokked what it implies (I’m not sure I fully do, for the record), the way children are approached and depicted in our culture would change dramatically.

Or maybe my brain is just rambling incoherently, trying to avoid the impending immersion into the chaotic world of finance and economics.

Okay, now that the unexpected excursion to Weirdsville is over, perhaps those of us interested in the issues that were raised in that post can consider and discuss the subject without distractions and personal attacks.

I know I’m far from the sharpest reptile slithering around, but even after a supposed clarification, I am still at a loss to grok Francois Tremblay’s recent post, Why Hierarchies Are Immoral.... Perhaps someone here can help enlighten me.

It was Billy Joel who wrote a song some time ago about love relationships ultimately being “a matter of trust”. While that’s true, the larger point—and the reason the song has been repeating in my mind for a few hours now—is that all relationships are built upon trust. Every contract, formal or informal, every market transaction, happens because there is some degree of trust between the participants. It appears to me that trust is such a deep, implicit part of that most of us probably don’t recognize its role, unless something happens to disturb it and therefore bring it to our attention.

It didn’t go as intended—which was a given before we’d even set off—but our weekend away was nonetheless filled with a lot of pleasure. The snolfs got to try their fishing poles, at long last; but, not having tried to learn anything about their equipment nor the fish in the waters they were plying, didn’t get so much as a nibble. Snolf the First was especially frustrated, because his supposedly better reel kept tangling the line when he’d try to rewind, but Darlin’ Daughter’s willingness to share her rod offset that frustration quite nicely. They learned how to cast fairly quickly, and did pretty well at it. They apparently chose the most garish of lures they have—a big red and white stripedy thing—and it looked comically out of place in the clear, cold water of the lake. Maybe the fish were as amused as I was; all the same, the snolfs enjoyed themselves, and I enjoyed watching their antics and seeing their happiness.

We had other kinds of fun as well, but I won’t bore everyone with a detailed recounting. Suffice to say that we found more interesting things to explore than we had time for, and we intend to return to the area.

Lobo and I were each a bit preoccupied in our own ways by the doings of humans in the world at large, and that was hard to shake over the weekend. Yet, nestled up in the mountains, trying to avoid human interaction as much as possible, we too were soothed by the music of wind in pines or rushing rapids; we enjoyed seeing birds of prey coasting on thermals; in short, nature provided a welcome balm.

And I wonder how it is that regular individuals—not the petty tyrants who administer and bureaucratize and dictate the rules and regulations by which we’re supposed to order our lives; in being such creatures they show they have no soul left to reclaim or rejuvenate—can so seemingly placidly plod along with those restrictions and orders.

How can someone breathe deeply of fresh, clean air; take in the breathtaking beauty abundant in nature; feel a child’s small hand slip into theirs as they walk side by side; how can any person observe or even think about the countless ways the world displays its beauty, even amongst man-made jungles, and then turn to become a cog of the state?

How do people who see the glories and the wonder–full potential of our world willingly go off to kill others in some faraway place? How can they blind themselves to the potential of those faraway places, or worse, trash the beauty there?

What does the state offer that is so powerful, so enticing, that people willingly turn their backs on their own dreams and goals, and become its thralls? I do not think most people are intrinsically that evil, nor that stupid, to choose such a deal with such a devil. But its siren songs sing to them in ways I cannot hear; or perhaps more accurately, I heard but never stopped questioning, and hence the song held no charms for me.

I may be nothing but an aging idealist, yet I cling to the belief that many people’s eyes could be opened if they would just look a little harder, or have a key question dropped into their minds. While I often ask “why”, it seems to me that for many, pointing out the contrast between a life as it is, and that life as it could be—as it was meant to be, free from busybody interference and coercive intrusion—by asking “how” might be the right key.

When I wrote in the introductory column to the most recent Sunni’s Salon that “we aren’t holding high hopes for a bumper crop of anything but lessons learned”, I wasn’t indulging in false modesty. And it is now official—as reports start to come in, even friends with self-professed brown thumbs are reaping their rewards. So, how does Sunni’s garden grow? Let’s go out to the patch to review the sorry state of affairs.

Well, not quite. Our daughters have both taken off, Ayn for Paris and Ada for the beach. Annie and I sort of feel we should take advantage of this and do something out of the ordinary. But what? Anything we want to we can do when the girls are here. If we are going out and they are home (which in the case of Ayn is becoming rarer and rarer) we tell them and ask if they want to come along. Unless it involves an expensive restaurant, the answer is usually "no". They have their own lives and are far too busy to tag along with a couple of old folks.

So we will probably just follow our normal routine, maybe go check out a new restaurant, but that is about it. It turns out that we are quite content with our lives and do not have a great need to escape.

With the girls gone the house feels empty. It is funny because since Ayn has been working she is almost never home, and Ada seems to be on a 30 hour day, so we sometimes go a couple of days without seeing each other. Even so, we know they are around.

Ada will be back in five days and Ayn in two weeks, it will be good to have them back and I look forward to hearing all about their trips.

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately ... some things you can guess about, others you’ll likely hear about here eventually, and some issues that will never be mentioned publicly. Suffice it to say that stuff was starting to weigh fairly heavily on me. But today I found a surefire cure for that weight.

Take one Darlin’ Daughter, add an awesome older brother (that’d be Snolf the First), a fun loving wolf, and lots of water. Slosh around well, and leave in the sun to get warm [viz., D.D. wanted to go to a water park]. Then add good pood, lots of presents, and chocolate cake with ice cream.

The result? One birthday very happily celebrated, and a tired but happy family.

The picture has little to do with our day ... for those of you who know my Darlin’ Daughter, you may recall her fondness for snails—and that’s a version of her animal totem the snail is hitching a ride from. She squealed in delight when I showed her the picture this morning, so I thought some of you might like it too.

[Addendum: I posted this late Monday night my time, but the site’s time zone is apparently different ... hence the difference between the header date, and the time stamp on the post itself.]

Summer is in full bloom here on the prairie and with it, as every year, come back memories of my childhood almost always spent with either set of grandparents. They are my fondest memories from my childhood and interestingly they have something in common- a kind of freedom provided by the old and the wise in my family.