This is It.

This week I am going for a check up with Cal, my mentor, teacher, friend, and main healthcare provider. My thyroid and metabolism has done its usual postpartum flop, so I need to get on some stuff to crank it back up again so I can begin to lose the postpartum weight I have accumulated since Jamsie was born. My hair is coming out almost by the handful at the moment, and although my energy is fairly good, I still need to get with the program.

Accordingly, I shall be starting a new program for health this week. It is a combination of the Total Health program by Dr. Mercola, and Paul Chek's Eat, Move and Be Healthy approach to healthy living. I have long wanted a systematic approach to diet and exercise, and on Dr. Mercola's recommendation decided to check out Chek's way of doing things. I have the book from the library and will be purchasing my own copy now that I have had a chance to look it over.

Teens -- It isn't Hormones, It's Brain Reconstruction

Ok, this is sort of cool and helps to explain a lot of things. I like to read about how the brain works and someone recently handed me an article about teen brains. It reiterated some information that I had heard on a science program on CBC. Basically it says that there is a period of time in adolescence when the brain undergoes massive renovations. So it isn't just hormonal surges causing your teen to be moody, emotional, irrational and hard to manage.

It used to be thought that when the brain stopped its massive growth by age 2, it was pretty well done for the rest of life. However, recent research in Canada and the US is revealing that previous notions of the adolescent brain are wrong. Adolescent brains go through a biological remodelling as part of human development that is as profound as that which babies experience. Virtually every part of the teenage brain is under reconstruction. Nodes, lobes, neurons, synapses, long strings of axons, which are the pathways for electrical signals from one part of the brain to the other, dendrites, etc., all feel the effects of this change.

Basically, what is happening is that the body is physically restructuring the brain so that it can operate as an adult. During this processthe higher reasoning processes of the front brain are somewhat interrupted or short circuited, and the amygdala, that part of the brain responsible for emotions, tends to be where they operate from.

Dr. Jay Giedd of the US National Institutes of Health was looking at the results of teenage brain scans and realized that the brains he was looking at were undergoing major changes. The grey matter was thickening and over-producing cells and then dramatically thinning down -- something that was previously thought to be over by kindergarten.

Dr. Giedd's work combined with that of Tomaz Paus of Montreal Neurological Institute and the University of Chicago's Peter Huttenlocher has found that teens experience literal short circuits in their neural wiring to their memory function and have difficulty interpreting facial expressions, instructions, and jokes during this time. This is because they are using the brain's primal fight or flight center to operate from rather than the rational center for decoding social signals, with resulting misinterpretations. Brain scans of teens who were shown a picture of a man whose face was contorted with fear showed that the amygdala, rather than the prefrontal cortex (the center for adult rational judgement) was lit up during the "reasoning" process.

Research is also suggesting that the connections between the right and left hemisphere of teens' brains is incomplete which affects their abilities to link speech and written language to thought. Synaptic gaps in the brains of younger teens makes abstract thinking, such as algebraic equations, puns, and the "grey" areas of life difficult for them to grasp.

Brain chemistry is also responsible for their desire to stay up late and sleep in late. For whatever reason, a teen usually doesn't start producing melatonin until around 10:30 at night -- just as their parents are starting to crash. They also need about 10 hours of sleep, which is two more hours than their parents need. Sleep deprivation can't be doing their brain power any good if we insist of seeing them bright and early every morning.

Think of the prefrontal cortex as the software responsible for risk assessment and impulse control. It is the last region of the brain to reach full development, and doesn't do so until their owners are past 20. Now do you know why your teens take risks and do things that make you go grey?

The disorganization of their rooms, lockers, and backpacks is a mirror of the brain disorganization in their heads. At the same time that some areas are growing rapidly, other areas are being pruned. Here is where the "use it or lose it" effect really takes hold. Teens who are allowed to become couchpotatoes with well developed video game abilities are going to lose parts of the brain that could be used for acquiring knowledge or understanding. It is therefore important to keep teens stimulated with music lessons, sports, learning languages, and other activities that will stimulate the brain and keep it making neural connections. In other words, stimulate them with the same dedication you showed in stimulating your babies and tots to maximize brain power.

I've already requested the book from my local library that discusses the research in this area. If you want to read it too, get ahold of The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids by Barbara Strauch.

My New Career

Unfortunately, it doesn't pay at all, if you are thinking in terms of monetary rewards. I have no pension, health benefits, or unemployment insurance from it. Nor is it really a new job -- it is an old one I have had for many years but never really enjoyed. What is it? Homeschool mother.

This is one of those instances where you know that a change for the better is not because of any intrinsic wonderfulness on your own part, but rather a work of grace in the heart by God.

I think one of the means that God used for the change of heart was the switch to E-Bus last year. We decided to stay with the program and this year I started off with confidence, thanks to the kudos that I got from the distance ed teachers I worked with last year. As another mother I was talking to recently said, the passing years don't necessarily engender more confidence, and may even begin to weigh on you. It is a scary thing to have the educational and vocational future of your children resting solely on your own nonprofessional teaching shoulders. Sure, dads may help out a bit, but let's face it: most homeschools are run completely by the moms who buy the curriculum and implement it. It is a constant worry as to whether or not you are doing an adequate job, wondering if you have missed something, etc.

When the burden is shared by someone else, like a distance ed teacher, then all of a sudden, there are standards outside of that of Mom that the kids answer to, and Mom gets an indirect grade that shows her whether she is being adequate in her teaching.

Last year was a bit of a learning curve for all of us and things were not done to my satisfaction -- mostly due to my own weaknesses, a pregnant brain, and not as much organization as we could have used. This year I got off to a good start, we are in a routine, and there is room to add in a few other things that I wanted to cover. I am pretty certain that if we can maintain what we have started, I will be very satisfied with what we have accomplished this year.

So now I am treating homeschooling as a career into which I am pouring all my efforts and brain power, rather than just a painful duty to get through. I have the feeling that this will be our most satisfying and productive year yet.

<
table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="350" align="center" border="0">Your Brain's PatternYour brain is always looking for the connections in life.You always amaze your friends by figuring out things first.You're also good at connecting people - and often play match maker.You see the world in fluid, flexible terms. Nothing is black or white.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

A Parable

This commentary comes from Dr. Mercola. You can read the actual article here.

Mike Adams of Newstarget writes a parable comparing art to healing.

In his story, doctors attempt to create art by analyzing what it is
made of. They analyze the inks, the colors, and the fibers of the canvas, but
when they try to create art with these methods, all they do is create colored
ink on canvas. Eventually, they declare that art does not exist because it
cannot be measured.

He concludes by pointing out the similarities between healing and art:
Neither comes from the physical matter, chemicals, and molecules, and neither
can be measured or understood as an inventory of parts.

Personal Navel Gazing


Just for fun, I took this test to find out what my personality type is. Turns out I am an Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging sort of person, or INTJ for short.

It was rather funny reading through it because so much of what the results had to say really does tend to be true of me:

INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type: INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake.

INTJs are known as the "Systems Builders" of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait combination of imagination and reliability. Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause to an INFJ; both perfectionism and disregard for authority may come into play, as INTJs can be unsparing of both themselves and the others on the project. Anyone considered to be "slacking," including superiors, will lose their respect -- and will generally be made aware of this; INTJs have also been known to take it upon themselves to implement critical decisions without consulting their supervisors or co-workers. On the other hand, they do tend to be scrupulous and even-handed about recognizing the individual contributions that have gone into a project, and have a gift for seizing opportunities which others might not even notice.

In the broadest terms, what INTJs "do" tends to be what they "know". Typical INTJ career choices are in the sciences and engineering, but they can be found wherever a combination of intellect and incisiveness are required (e.g., law, some areas of academia). INTJs can rise to management positions when they are willing to invest time in marketing their abilities as well as enhancing them, and (whether for the sake of ambition or the desire for privacy) many also find it useful to learn to simulate some degree of surface conformism in order to mask their inherent
unconventionality.

Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel. While they are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on a relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations.

This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the
social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less
understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types
consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are
usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well,
which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete', paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness.

Probably the strongest INTJ assets in the interpersonal area are their
intuitive abilities and their willingness to "work at" a relationship. Although
as Ts they do not always have the kind of natural empathy that many Fs do, the
Intuitive function can often act as a good substitute by synthesizing the
probable meanings behind such things as tone of voice, turn of phrase, and
facial expression. This ability can then be honed and directed by consistent,
repeated efforts to understand and support those they care about, and those
relationships which ultimately do become established with an INTJ tend to be
characterized by their robustness, stability, and good communications.

I have to tell ya, I think that this is a pretty good assessment of me. I can be a dunderhead about relationships unless I work at it. I frequently read books about human behaviour to enable me to figure out what is going on with people, rather than just "knowing" how to do it. I also am not good at making small talk -- a skill I need to work on.

The fact that I am in alternative healthcare, especially that which deals with meridian based therapies is also a testimony to the fact that I tend to approach things in an unconventional manner. I want to know why things work, and if they can be made to work in other ways. This has lead to some interesting discoveries with application as to how I treat people with problems. Makes life interesting and fun.

This probably is of no interest to anyone outside of me, but I thought it was kind of cool.

Sorry for the mess ups on the formatting. I can't seem to fix it.

Hardness of Heart and the Insatiable Nature of Coveting

I have been busy in my attic in the past week, organizing and cleaning and getting things ready for school. The attic has a large room lined with bookshelves down two sides and has a chalkboard and bulletin board on the end wall, a large desk for me, and two very large tables for the children to work at. All this activity has meant that I haven't had much time for being on the computer, watching tv (not that I watch it much) or even listening to the radio. My activities have limited my exposure to what is happening down south with those who have suffered from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

There is nothing like a tragedy or even a near tragedy for making the important things in life stand out.

So here I am, sitting in a comfortable home, surrounded by so much stuff that keeping it in order is a challenge, able to eat enough food that I am overweight, and having enough clothing that could keep me clothed for several weeks before I ran out and needed to wash them. Is my heart happy? Am I satisfied? I should be, and when I stop to think on all these things, I am. But how easily I forget and fall into the sin of covetousness.

We tend to think of coveting as an inordinate desire for more things, at least I used to. But it is more subtle than that. Look at what the Westminster Larger Catechism has to say about it:

Question 146: Which is the tenth commandment?

Answer: The tenth commandment is, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.

Question 147: What are the duties required in the tenth
commandment?

Answer: The duties required in the tenth commandment are, such a full contentment with our own condition, and such a charitable frame of the whole soul toward our neighbor, as that all our inward motions and affections touching him, tend unto, and further all that good which is his.

Question 148: What are the sins forbidden in the tenth
commandment?

Answer: The sins forbidden in the tenth commandment are, discontentment with our own estate; envying and
grieving at the good of our neighbor, together with all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his.

It isn't merely wanting something of our neighbor's, or even wanting more that we can get legitimately; it is being discontented with our own estate. For me, this discontentment often takes the unhappy form of murmuring and complaining about my housework, nagging the children to clean up, and being generally grumpy while the work is in progress. I also fail to encourage where I should because I am harder to please than I ought to be. Then I get upset with the children for being the same way when they do their own chores.

I have been trying to imagine what it would be like to be without a home, food, decent shelter, water, proper sanitation, and exposed to the elements and criminal acts, as well as seeing my children in a similar situation with me, or worse yet, not knowing where they were or if they are alive. When I think on this, it makes me so thankful that life is so good for us, and I am humbled because of the mercy and lovingkindness of God to such undeserving people as we are.

And then I get busy and forget again.

Sighs...

No wonder we are told over and over in Scripture to remember God's benefits to us. We all have attention deficit disorder when it comes to the kindness of God and the gratitude we owe Him because of it.

Children and World Tragedies

Barbara Curtis, a mom of a large family, always has worthwhile things to say. I recommend going to her blog and reading this post on ways to help explain Hurricane Katrina to children.

I have the feeling that this is going to rival last year's tsunami in impact. I want my children to have compassion for those who are suffering, and Barbara's suggestions provide practical means for doing this.

A Headline We Will Probably Never See....

Asia Rushes to the Aide of US in the Wake of Katrina

The Veneer of Civilization is Thin

They say that a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina brings out the best in people. It also brings out the worst.

Law enforcement efforts to contain the emergency left by Katrina slipped into chaos in parts of New Orleans Tuesday -- with some police officers and firefighters even joining looters in picking stores clean...

Inside the store, one woman was stocking up on make-up. She said she took comfort in watching police load up their own carts. "It must be legal," she said. "The police are here taking stuff, too."

How Time Has Flown...

I just realized that I have been blogging for three years now. Amazing.

A Book I Intend to Read...

Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill by Bob Whitaker is one book I intend to get ahold of and read.

It seems like every second person I meet is on some form of antidepressant. There is a rising tide of mental illness in North America, and aside from the usual causes of overwhelming guilt caused by unredeemed sin, one of the contributing factors appears to be the very drugs they administer for depression.

Whitaker
starts by debunking the effectiveness of these massively hyped wonder drugs -- antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, and the new atypical antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa. His research shows how they often are barely more effective than placebos in treating mental disorder and depression, despite the glowing adulation they have received in the mainstream media.

But he goes on to make the startling claim that these new psychiatric drugs have directly contributed to an alarming new epidemic of drug-induced mental illness. The very drugs prescribed by physicians to stabilize mental disorders in fact are inducing pathological changes in brain chemistry and triggering suicide, manic and psychotic episodes, convulsions, violence, diabetes, pancreatic failure, metabolic diseases, and premature death.

Whitaker originally was a highly regarded medical reporter at the Albany Times Union and also wrote off and on for the Boston Globe. A series he co-wrote for the Boston Globe on harmful psychiatric research was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. When he began his investigative research into psychiatric issues, Whitaker was still a believer in the story of progress that psychiatry has been telling the public for decades.

He said, "I absolutely believed the common wisdom that these antipsychotic drugs actually had improved things and that they had totally revolutionized how we treated schizophrenia. People used to be locked away forever, and now maybe things weren't great, but they were a lot better. It was a story of progress."

That story of progress was fraudulent, as Whitaker soon found out when he gained new insight from his research into torturous psychiatric practices such as electroshock, lobotomy, insulin coma, and neuroleptic drugs. Psychiatrists told the public that these techniques "cured" psychosis or balanced the chemistry of the brain.

But, in reality, the common thread in all these different treatments was the attempt to suppress "mental illness" by deliberately damaging the higher functions of the brain. The stunning truth is that, behind closed doors, the psychiatric establishment itself labeled these treatments as "brain-damaging therapeutics."

The first generation of antipsychotic drugs created a drug-induced brain pathology by blocking the neurotransmitter dopamine and essentially shutting down many higher brain functions. In fact, when antipsychotics such as Thorazine and Haldol were first introduced, psychiatrists themselves said that these neuroleptic drugs were virtually indistinguishable from a "chemical lobotomy."

Remember what a doctor I quoted in an earlier blog post said? Drugs are things that if given to a healthy person, makes them sick.

A Warning about 4-H

It can make you and your children very sad.

I guess one of the reasons that 4-H exists is to help develop youth in rural areas to have some expertise in farming. Part of a farmer's job is to sell what he raises, usually for consumption, which is great if you are raising carrots and peas, but traumatic if you are raising things that exhibit personality. The more personality something has, the harder it is to contemplate it on your dinner plate.

This year Hannah and Ben both raised a pig and a goat each and Ben raised a rabbit. Ben worked with his goat so well that it grew very attached to him and followed him around like a puppy. Hannah's wasn't quite so well trained, but they were very amusing to watch and you could definitely see that they had different personalities.

As part of the 4-H program, if you raise an animal in imitation of farmers, you must auction it off. As the time for loading the animals up for the trip to the butcher's drew near, faces got longer and longer. In the end, there was hardly anyone who wasn't crying, either because their "pet" was going away to be eaten, or because they were in sympathy with the kids.

I think next year we will have dairy goats instead.

In Search of the Perfectly Clean Home

Ok, so it isn't perfect, but it is a great deal cleaner than it was a few days ago. With only six children at home (five of mine and a grand-daughter), and two extra neighbor children, I have had to do a great deal of the cleaningk while being ably assisted (somewhat) by my youngest kids.

Something the anti-QF crowd doesn't understand because they likely won't experience it is that the more kids you have, the more organized and efficient you can become. What this means is that even though I am down a quart with kids at the agricultural fair, I have been able to clean the downstairs thoroughly and keep it that way even with eight kids here, ranging in age from 13 to 2 months old. Moreover, I did it in a relatively short time.

I couldn't have done this twenty odd years ago when I first started out having kids, but it is a job that you grow into as time goes by and children get added to the mix. I didn't do much today (cleaned the kitchen, made meals, cut Garnet's hair, washed windows, did lots of dishes, swept and washed the floor, several loads of laundry, cleaned the bathroom and my office, fed the baby, played with the baby, caught two free range draft horses of my neighbor's and returned them to secure paddocks, etc.). The thing is, if I had really been motivated, I could probably have all of this done by noon (with the exception of the draft horses and feeding the kids who like to eat more than once a day) and had the afternoon for goofing off. Instead I decided to take a more leisurely pace with it and spread it out over the day.

No, it isn't perfect, but it's good enough.

I couldn't resist re-posting what I found on Tammy's blog, heheh.  

In Search of the Perfect Peach

I just finished licking the peach juice off my fingers of the most indescribably delicious and delectable peach I have eaten in the past ten years. It was brought to me in a basket with three other peaches with instructions given to the bearer that they were to be delivered to me and me alone. These peaches came ripe off the tree of the brother of my next door neighbor, who generously wanted to share this rare booty with me. Why rare? Most fruits and veggies are picked before they are ripe and before all the normal phytochemicals are in them. This accounts for much of the tastelessness of most of the produce we are forced to eat thanks to modern agricultural methods.

How I wish that all our fruits and vegetables were allowed to ripen the good old fashioned way. Maybe our kids would want to eat them then.

In Search of the Perfect Baby

Christians who are in favor of birth control as a form of good stewardship should be aware of the fact that the very same arguments they use as an excuse for limiting their families are the same ones used for aborting them. They should also know that their arguments contribute to the building pressure to abort and destroy "imperfect" babies in the name of "good stewardship." Just because we can do something is no argument for deciding whether or not we should do it.

Families with a history of cancers and other inherited diseases may soon be able to ensure their babies do not have the genes responsible by opting for IVF instead of natural conception.

Fertility regulators are considering whether to widen the rules which already allow parents to ensure babies are not born with faulty genes that will inevitably lead to conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease.

This would enable clinics to offer parents the opportunity to prevent their offspring inheriting genes for conditions that may develop later in life, even though not all people with the genes will ever get the disease.

The move is likely to prompts ethical debate for two reasons. First, it might encourage families with no history of fertility problems despite other family health problems to seek IVF. Secondly, it would mean the destruction of embryos capable of forming life with no guarantee that genes they carried would be responsible to later disease.

Will someone please tell these clowns that life is terminal? No one (with only two notable exceptions that I can think of) gets out of it alive. The possibilities of pain, disease, disability, imminent death, economic hardship, and the stunting of parental aspirations and self development are not sufficient argument for denying anyone the chance of life.

My Kids Are Tops

This weekend is the local agricultural fair complete with horses, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, cows, and other farm type animals. Both Hannah and Ben have their goats and pigs entered in the 4H projects. Hannah won Grand Championship in Goat showmanship and her goat was the Grand Champion goat. Ben got Reserved Champion goat.

When it comes to swine, all of Ben's vast experience in keeping his bedroom in the condition of a pig stye has paid off handsomely. His pig won Grand Champion pig, and Ben won the Grand Champion swineherd ribbon as well. Not sure how Hannah did on that one. Probably not as well since she tends to be neater. One of the competitor's pig didn't do so hot. She had trained it to expect a good scratch all over every time she touched it with a stick. So instead of doing what a pig is supposed to do in these competitions, it would invariably lay down and practically roll over begging to be scratched, almost like a dog would.

Rumor has it that Sam has won second place with his rabbit. We'll see if rumor was correct when I pick them up in a little while.

August Book Finds

Yesterday I went to Value Village and perused the book aisles. Their books cost more money than those I find at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store, but I generally can find some books that I would really like to own. Here is a partial list of what I found:

The Heart's Code by Dr. Paul Pearsall. If you are interested in the discipline of psychoneuroimmunology , or how the emotional/psychological aspect of human life can influence the health and function of the body, then this is one book you will want to read. It contains an authoritative and comprehensive summary of some of the important scientific findings related to the emotions and cellular memory. I read this book a few years ago and it contains stories about heart transplant recipients who took on some of the traits and preferences of their heart's donor. Most people don't realize this, but their hearts have a "brain" in them that has something in the order of 80 million neurons which is as much as some parts of the cerebral brain contains. This brain in the heart is capable of storing information as well as transmitting it to the head and in some experiments has even over-ridden the head's instructions. Ever have the experience of knowing something "in your heart?" It kind of sheds an interesting light on some of the Scriptural instructions to guard our hearts, etc., at least for me.

The G-Index Diet by Richard N. Podell, M.D., F.A.C.P This is a "diet" book based on the use of the glycemic index, which is an approach to eating that I advocate and need to implement more consistently. I am going to be using this approach and starting back to the gym tout de suite et maintenant, s'il vous plait! If you don't know about the glycemic index, this is an index that tells you how fast a particular food breaks down into blood sugar. The lower on the index something is, the slower it breaks down to sugar and the slower and less of a rise in insulin levels your body experiences. Since you are producing less levels of insulin, you are also giving your body less of a signal to store food energy as fat instead of burning it for energy. Get it?

How to Have a Smarter Baby: The Infant Stimulation Program for Enhancing Your Baby's Natural Development by Dr. Susan Ludington-Hoe. This isn't so much for Sweet Baby James as it is for my own information and use with children I see in my practice. But if James benefits, so much the better. I would get this book and read it even if I didn't have James because it contains information in an area I am really interested in -- how to stimulate brain growth. Some of this information may still be applicable to older children and even adults, given the plastic nature of the brain.

The Experience of Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger Anything by Sheila Kitzinger on the topic of childbirth is worth reading and should be read by expectant parents. It is sad the way that birth has been medicalized in North America into a disaster just waiting to happen and has been co-opted by a system concerned primarily with disease and things that go wrong. Sheila helps you to see things the way they should be. I am collecting her books when I find them to pass on to my daughters.

More Alike Than Different by Lee Bussard This book was written by a man who is disabled and I picked it up because I am appalling ignorant about the lives of disabled people and want to know more.

A Treasury of Handmade Gifts by Kate Yeates I always have this dream of sitting down and doing some arts and crafts with my girls. Maybe this book will help me to actually do it.

Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne This is a read aloud for Garnet and Elodie.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.

Harvard Classics -- These are some of those nicely bound hard covers of classic authors that are dark green in color and embossed with gold. I picked up one which contained works by Bunyan, Izaak, and Walton and another with works by Ben Franklin, Woolman and Penn.

There were a few others, but this is all I feel like commenting on for now.

Below are a few recent photos from our trip to Edmonton.

Bethany at the picnic 

Sam in Edmonton 

Garnet being a goof. 

Daughter Hannah is growing up 

Here is my son Trahern 

This is my son Ben. Isn't he cute? 

This is a family photo with the three eldest missing, and the addition of Milly S, a dear friend who helped me drive the crew to Edmonton. 

This is Elodie having a picnic snack on our way home from Edmonton. Please note the health food. 

This is a picture of me holding my son James as he was being initiated into the Visible Church through the waters of baptism. My beloved pastor, Greg Price, did the deed. 

This is me with Willena, aka Rambling Rose. See my sidebar for a link to her blog 

An August Evening Musing

I haven't felt much like blogging or being on the net lately. Part of the reason is that life has been very full in recent days and there just hasn't been the time. But tonight I feel like writing for no particular reason other than the peculiar kind of pressure in my chest that requires this sort of an outlet to relieve it.

It has been over eight weeks since James made his debut. At present he is laying on a nursing pillow on my lap, gazing up at me as though life held nothing finer than laying in his mother's arms. Was there life before James? It is hard to remember. It feels like he has always been a part of me.

I love this part of childrearing. For a short time, the sun and moon set by me and all that is needed for happiness to be complete is a full belly of mama milk and a constant cuddle. Already his little hands reach for me at night and if I am not found he awakens. If happiness consists in being needed, then my cup is full.

At the other extreme, I am letting go of another son. He didn't realize it when he left home that I was quite prepared to set him free in due time. I didn't realize that due time would come so soon is all. And now it has been over four weeks since I have heard from him or seen him. He doesn't call. He doesn't come to church. We are a noisy bunch when we get together and he has gotten used to quietness and was stressed out by us the last time all the children were together.
Leaving and cleaving is something that all young men are called upon to do and I have never aspired to the role of "smother mother." I know my time with him is over and it is time for him to sift through what he has been taught and take ownership of it for himself. I also know that he is just as much under the eye of God now than he ever was. But letting go still remains hard to do and the silence is hard to endure.

Almost as hard to endure is watching yet another son struggle with life. All of us are feeling an emotional letdown after our time of fellowship with the brethren in Edmonton. I can't help thinking there is more to this than mere anticlimax. Counsel is offered, and hugs are supplied. Signs of grace are there, but the conflict of learning to subdue and mortify the flesh can sometimes overwhelm. I remember my own struggles in this regard. All one can do is stand on the sideline and watch and shout encouragement to him and pray that the Lord will keep one which I have committed to Him.

Summer is almost over. The lazy days of relaxation never did materialize. I did do some homeschooling, but that has fallen by the wayside as other activities took over. Last week was devoted to travel and visiting. We also had a large barbeque party at our home on Saturday for business associates and customers in our business. Sunday was devoted to fellowshipping over a meal after worship. Today I went to have my hips adjusted by the chiropracter and then spent the afternoon trying to find some suitable clothing for Hannah to wear to the agricultural fair that is being held this week. She is going to be showing a pig and a goat as part of her 4H projects and needed black jeans and a white shirt to do it in. Every day this week will see me up before the crack of dawn to take the kids to the fairground and then back again in the evening to pick them up.

Next week I am planning on taking the kids to Barkerville. This will be both a fun and an educational day for them. We will pack a picnic lunch and the digital camera and take pictures of all the buildings, get brochures, and make notes on the history of this gold rush mining town in the heart of the Cariboo Mountains. The results of this project will be turned into something they can use for their social studies work for school. At some point I plan to get back to work on their plant unit study this month as well.

I sat down this afternoon and made a list of projects I need to complete this month before school starts in September. They are, in no particular order:

1) Make up an anti-candida protocol handout complete with guidelines, food suggestions, and recipes.

2) Organize the attic/schoolroom bookshelves. We have new bookshelves and I need to pack some books into them and clean things up.

3) Organize and clean out my closets and get rid of some things and switch over clothing

4) Get the remainder of the school curriculum organized and make up some posters of what our schedule should be.

5) Make a poster of our house rules.

6) Do some reading on my nutritional course from the University of Miami School of Medicine.

I also made a mind map of the things I want to spend my time studying. I recently acquired some materials on how to desensitize the body of allergens using a laser pen set to a specific frequency. I have been experimenting with it and have found that it is also useful for relieving muscular aches and pains. I can literally soften knotted muscles within a few minutes using it. This made it on to the mind map as well as doing more work understanding allergies, particularly in relation to children and the role it has to play with autism and ADD/ADHD and brain disorders. Brain function was on there as well as neurological re-training programs that help to balance brain function and increase mental capacity for children with learning disabilities. I have been speculating about focusing on a particular area of practice and find myself drawn more and more to working with women's and children's health issues. Fortunately, some of the training I have came on DVD's so I can fold laundry as I educate myself.

They say a change is as good as a holiday, but I don't know. I seem to have exchanged one treadmill for another one. I enjoy what I am doing for the most part, but it is taking its toll. I feel exhausted and I am still experiencing post partum bleeding -- a sure sign that I am doing too much. Too bad I find it so hard to follow my own advice.

Well, my scattered flock is back from their various activities just in time for family worship and Laundry Mountain awaits folding. The pressure feels relieved so I guess I'll end this post.

Covenanter Conventicle

Why the long silence? I just spent a wonderful five days driving to and from Edmonton with the days in between spent fellowshipping with brothers and sisters in the Lord. It has taken me a few days to catch up on laundry and sleep and I am still running somewhat behind.

I think the highlight of the entire weekend was our worship service. We came in and sat down and I looked around me during the service and felt overcome by love of my brothers and sisters in Christ. It is always good to spend time with the Lord's people no matter where they may be found, but the delight is sharpest and sweetest when you are with those of like mind and heart. To sing psalms together, to sit at the Lord's Table communing with Him and with each other, to see my son admitted to the Visible Church were but a foretaste of Heaven's delights. What joy awaits us when we are all gathered together before the Lord, only this time with no presence of sin to divide us from each other and from our loved ones who own Christ but not our covenants.

I do have some regrets -- the weekend flew by so fast and there were so many wonderful people to meet and get to know, that I never did get to spend the time with each of them that I would have liked to. I regret that some friends I have known well and loved now live far away. In at least one instance I was overcome by tears upon seeing a well loved face that I hadn't seen for a while. The regrets were more than made up for by all the benefits however. My family was billeted in the same home as my beloved pastor, Greg Price, and his wife, Lovely Lonna. He is a man with a true shepherd's heart for God's flock and he never fails to endear himself to me or my family when we are with him. I count him one of the greatest of God's mercies to me as there isn't a week that goes by when I am not challenged, encouraged, edified, rebuked, and uplifted by his sermons.

I regret that I allowed some to take pictures of me. I look like such a COW in my overalls! Oh well. Next time I will move faster and confiscate the cameras.

James seemed to be a hit. If it weren't for the fact that he needed the occasional diaper change and feeding, I wouldn't have seen him all weekend. Some of the younger girls did a wonderful job in packing him around everywhere. I would feed James and then look up and find one of them hovering close by waiting to snatch and run. Their tender care enabled me to visit with others more freely. James now feels that being held and snuggled all day and night and repeatedly told how sweet and cute he is, is his due and it took an entire day of forcible confinement in his car seat with only occasional breaks as we drove home to convince him otherwise.

It was brought to my attention what a little wiseacre my son Garnet has become. Garnet will be six later this month. Pastor Price, as is his endearing custom when speaking to younger children, called Garnet "honey." Garnet promptly informed him he was a BOY and NOT a honey. A little while later when Garnet was on his way to bed, Pastor Price teased him by saying, "Goodnight, Honey!" Garnet stopped in his tracks, turned around and silently regarded him for a moment before replying, "Goodnight, Babe" and then headed down to his bed. He also informed me that he has four "chicks." When I expressed puzzlement over what in the world he could be talking about, he named four of the teen girls there. Mothers take note and guard your daughters. I can see I am going to have an interesting time with him when he is older.

So now it is over and I am suffering a slight emotional let down. The good times had to come to an end, but, Lord willing, there is always next year.

Reformed Boogers

Someone has asked what is so reformed about picking your nose and eating donuts. The answer is picking your nose fulfills the duties associated with the sixth commandment, and eating donuts violates it. Please see the Larger Catechism, Questions 135 and 136.

Top Things

I get a an email newsletter from Sixwise.com that often contains useful and interesting facts. Today's email had articles which shared some things I thought I would pass along. All the comments here are my own. I have provided links if you want to read the actual articles.

Picking your nose and eating it is good for your immune system. Your finger does a better job of cleaning out the boogers than a kleenex does and the bacteria in them helps to recolonize the intestinal tract and thereby boosts immue function. Next time you see your kids picking their noses, instead of scolding them for it, join them in picking your own and set the right example!

Six most common causes of automobile accidents:

1. Distracted Drivers -- looking at scenery, kids, rubbernecking, talking on the cell phone, playing with the CD player or radio.

2. Driver Fatigue

3. Drunk Driving

4. Speeding

5. Aggressive Driving -- don't be one, and if you see one, keep well back!

6. Bad Weather

The Six Most Unhealthy Foods You Should Avoid

1. Soda Pop -- I can't understand people who buy this stuff for their kids! One teaspoon of sugar has the ability to shut down your white blood cells for about 5 hours. Most cans of soda contain 10 teaspoons of sugar! The sugar alone is terrible and we won't even discuss the artificial sweetners, colors, and other things in them. If you want to celebrate a party and want a reasonable alternative to pop, get some juice and add unflavored and unsweetened carbonated spring water to it instead.

2. Potatoe Chips and French Fries -- They are saturated with acrylamide, a highly toxic and carcinogenic compound, and transfatty acids which destroy your health through oxidized cholesterol.

3. Doughnuts -- "When it comes to health, the only thing good about them is the hole," said Carla Wolper, nutritionist at the New York Obesity Research Center.

4. Commercially Made Baked Goods -- extremely high in transfats because they are made with margarines and hydrogenated vegetable oils in order to extend their shelf life.

5. Luncheon Meats and Hot Dogs -- Nitrates and Nitrites -- these can cause pancreatic cancer in those who eat them in large quantities.

6. Canned Soup -- I won't bring a lawsuit on myself by mentioning brand names, but read the labels. Most soups contain MSG and way more salt than is good for you.

The Six Worst Lifestyle Choices You Could Make

This belongs to the "well duh" category. But people indulge anyhow.

1. Overeating

2. Smoking

3. Drinking and Driving

4. Living on Fast Food

5. Not Exercising

6. Living with Stress (and not doing anything to deal with it)

On a more somber note, the recent murder of pregnant wife and mother, Liana White, in Edmonton, Alberta has highlighted the fact that murder has become the number one reason for maternal mortality in North America. This surprises and shocks many, including journalists, who like to think of pregnancy as a joyous time and the pregnant mother as being offlimits when it comes to harm. But then, we used to think that about babies in the womb...

This is my attempt at taking an artistic shot of Elodie 

This is my Garnie baby 

This is my daughter, Tamara 

Another photo by Jody of my daughter, Bethany 

I May Be Crazy...

... or at least most people would think so. At an age when most men and women are enjoying an empty nest and the freedom that goes with it, I have a new baby and find myself wanting to enjoy this experience yet again.

It is not unusual to have the term "miraculous" attached to what is really a normal event: birth. This could conceivably be an argument for the innate knowledge we have of God's existence and the fact that all babies are made by Him with us as the normal and usual means.

To have a baby when you are young feels miraculous when you think of how this complicated and wonderful being came into existence from the joining together of microscopic cells. It feels even more miraculous when the body that produced this fresh and perfectly formed little being happens to have endured a lot of wear and tear and shows it.

I don't know if it will happen, but a Baker's Dozen wouldn't be a bad thing for this mom.

Is this or is this not a beautiful baby? I swiped this picture of James from Jody who seems to share some of the artistic photography skills of her sister Amanda. It was swiped with her permission.  

Prescription Drugs are Bad For Your Health Say Doctors...

Remember, these are all M.D.'s who are saying this.

1. "The cause of most disease is in the poisonous drugs physicians superstitiously give in order to effect a cure."- Charles E. Page, M.D.

2. "Medicines are of subordinate importance because of their very nature they can only work symptomatically."- Hans Kusche, M.D.

3. "If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good for humanity"- O.W. Holmes, (Prof. of Med. Harvard University)

4. "Drug medications consists in employing, as remedies for disease, those things which produce disease in well persons. Its materia medica is simply a lot of drugs or chemicals or dye-stuffs-- in a word, poisons. All are incompatible with vital matter; all produce disease when brought in contact in any manner with the living; all are poisons."- R.T. Trail, M.D., in a two and one half hour lecture to members of congress and the medical profession, delivered at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

5. "Every drug increases and complicates the patient's condition."- Robert Henderson, M.D.

6. "Drugs never cure disease. They merely hush the voice of nature's protest, and pull down the danger signals she erects along the pathway of transgression. Any poison taken into the system has to be reckoned with later on even though it palliates present symptoms. Pain may disappear, but the patient is left in a worse condition, though unconscious of it at the time."- Daniel. H. Kress, M.D.

7. "The greatest part of all chronic disease is created by the suppression of acute disease by drug poisoning."- Henry Lindlahr, M.D.

8. "Every educated physician knows that most diseases are not appreciably helped by medicine."- Richard C. Cabot, M.D. (Mass. Gen. Hospital)

9. "Medicine is only palliative, for back of disease lies the cause, and this cause no drug can reach."- Wier Mitchel, M.D.

10. "The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine."- William Osler, M.D.

11. "Medical practice has neither philosophy nor common sense to recommend it. In sickness the body is already loaded with impurities. By taking drug-medicines more impurities are added, thereby the case is further embarrassed and harder to cure."- Elmer Lee, M.D., Past Vice President, Academy of Medicine.

12. "Our figures show approximately four and one half million hospital admissions annually due to the adverse reactions to drugs. Further, the average hospital patient has as much as thirty percent chance, depending how long he is in, of doubling his stay due to adverse drug reactions."- Milton Silverman, M.D. (Professor of Pharmacology, University of California)

13. "Why would a patient swallow a poison because he is ill, or take that which would make a well man sick."- L.F. Kebler, M.D.

14. "What hope is there for medical science to ever become a true science when the entire structure of medical knowledge is built around the idea that there is an entity called disease which can be expelled when the right drug is found?"- John H. Tilden, M.D.

15. "The necessity of teaching mankind not to take drugs and medicines, is a duty incumbent upon all who know their uncertainty and injurious effects;and the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned."- Charles Armbruster, M. D.

16. "We are prone to thinking of drug abuse in terms of the male population and illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. It may surprise you to learn that a greater problem exists with millions of women dependent on legal prescription drugs."- Robert Mendelsohn, M.D

A Study in Contrasts

The recent terrorist attack in London has done a lot to highlight the contrasts between the American people and the British. When the Twin Towers fell in the 9/11 attack the amount of outrage, emotion, and, dare I say, hysteria, was very evident in the American people. The British people, on the other hand, maintained the stiff upper lip they are so famous for and were far more subdued, and again, dare I say, dignified in their reactions.

When I was a child, I quickly learned that if you were being picked on by a bully or teased, the best way to shorten the torture and prevent a reoccurance was to minimize reactions and assume a stoic attitude. The more you cried and wailed, the better the bully liked it and the more likely they were to try it again since they knew they could get a reaction. Maybe the Americans could learn a lesson from the British on the best way to deal with terrorism. In fact, we all could.

This is my Baby 

These are my Boys 

These are my Girls: 

Life in the Slow Lane

Days keep whirring by with what seems like increasing rapidity. It is amazing to me that it is already four weeks since James made his debut into our family. He is starting to show signs of personhood and interaction which is a delight to everyone, and his little chicken-stick legs are starting to plump up as he puts on weight from all the freshly made mama milk he drinks.

At the same time, life has slowed down for me in a number of ways. Despite my best intentions, I have not started the kids doing anything by way of school work, other than encouraging them to continue to read books and do a few math drills here and there. My eldest boys at home have been working at the local tree nursery on and off, and today my eldest daughter at home is with her older sister, Trista, doing "girl" stuff like painting her nails, buying clothes, and getting her hair done. My tomboy just turned 14 and is growing up into a young lady. (sigh) That leaves only six kids at home and to many this would seem like a lot. But my house feels empty with only six. What it will feel like in a few years when more leave I don't like to think on.

Yesterday was "town day" as I went in to pick up my weekly supply of fresh raw milk from a local farmer who has a cow I own shares in. I also did my grocery shopping and some other errands. It took me over 8 hours to accomplish all this because of the numerous pauses needed to feed James and change his diaper. You know -- summer and babies rock. The lack of clients, no school, and no schedule that needs following allowed for a leisurely day spent doing things that needed doing, but without the time pressure put on me by the typical rest-of-the-year duties. I don't know if I would like this slow pace indefinitely or could even maintain it justifiably. In the back of my mind there is this nagging little voice that insists I am just being lazy and that there is a lot of work I need to do, but for today I intend to ignore it and just enjoy myself as I feed and play with James, interact with my Littles, and dab a bit at the housework.

Energy Medicine Used to Combat Malaria

Some of the methods used for combatting malaria in the past and present have often used methods that are toxic to the environment, people, and other animals as well as becoming ineffective over time due to the ability of the malarial parasite to become resistant to these methods. Well now it looks like there is a non-toxic and effective way of combatting malarial infections in people: magnetic force fields.

"Henry Lai, UW research professor of bioengineering, says the malaria parasite Plasmodium appears to lose vigor and can die when exposed to oscillating magnetic fields, which Lai thinks may cause tiny iron-containing particles inside the parasite to move in ways that damage the organism."

"If further studies confirm our findings and their application in animals and people, this would be an inexpensive and simple way to treat a disease that affects 500 million people every year, almost all in third-world countries," Lai said. According to the World Health Organization, as many as 2.7 million people die of malaria every year. Approximately 1 million of those are children.

Now isn't that exciting? A non-toxic and relatively harmless way of treating a deadly disease that affects a large proportion of the world's population? The researchers envision a mobile truck or room lined with magnets where people can sit and read for several hours while being treated. The remedy is simple and inexpensive, and the malarial parasites are not likely to develop a resistance to it. This is the sort of thing that I think is the wave of the future -- there are all kinds of non-toxic and healthy alternatives to the more destructive and toxic way we have of doing things that have yet to be discovered.

As an optimistic historic postmillenialist, I think we will see more and more of these types of answers to what ails us and our planet being developed in the future.

Oh, Canada!

Ruler supreme,Who hearest humble prayer,

Hold our Dominion in Thy loving care.

Help us to find, O God, in Thee

A lasting rich reward,

As waiting for the better day,

We ever stand on guard.

God keep our land glorious and free!

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

~.~

Unfortunately, the guards on the watchtower have been off duty for quite some time. Now we have officially sanctioned perversion in the form of same sex marriages. Christians will soon be persecuted for so-called "hate crimes" when they protest that homosexual acts are an affront to God.

Psalm 118 reminds us not to put our trust in princes or other forms of civil magistrates. And many of the Psalms remind us that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those that dwell therein and one day His dominions WILL spread from shore to shore. I look forward to that blessed day and in the meantime keep my head down and try to plow on with being faithful.

Tagged Again!

Carol tagged me and so here is the result:

Five Things I Miss from My Childhood

1. Childhood innocence -- Life was so much more simple when I was a child. I never knew a day of worry where my next meal would come from or if a roof would be over my head and the worst thing that could happen was getting a bad grade in school. Schools were relatively safe places to be, there was little violence and no drugs to speak of. In looking back, I had a happy life then though it wasn't until later that I realized how good I had it.

2. My grandparents. I have such happy memories of the love of my grandparents on both sides of the family. Grampy Hannah had an old car whose make and model I never knew, but which would be a prize entry today in a classic auto show. I remember spending the night at Grammy and Grampy Hannah's home in Attleboro and listening to the snap of the heater in the living room, sleeping on the fold out bed in the grey sofa that used to be in our home, exploring the fascinating cave of their closet that housed not only clothing, but Grammy's stock of Avon cosmetics, and eating bedtime snacks of cereal with brown sugar with Grampy, who was diabetic. I don't have many memories of Grampy Savoy as I was fairly young when he died and our visits were confined to two weeks every summer until he died when I was in grade 2, but I have a lot of memories of Grammy Savoy. I loved the old cast iron stove in the kitchen which not only baked the most delectable homemade bread, but also served to heat the house. And going up the the Miramachi region to visit with Grandmere and Grandpere Brideau was also a treat. Grampy Brideau played the fiddle and I remember watching him play while Great Uncle Tony step danced in their kitchen and even tried a few steps myself.

3. Speaking of the Miramachi, I enjoyed my visits there to see all the relatives on my mom's side of the family when I was little. The smell of salt water, fishing off the wharf at Burnt Church, picking wild strawberries at Uncle Cecil's, and hunting for wild kittens in Great Aunt Gladys's barn and then having boiled salmon and potatoes for supper along with homemade bread and molasses -- that was the stuff of happiness. Part of the allure was also the fact that every time we travelled to New Brunswick, I got a new coloring book and crayons or some sort of craft type thing to while away the time it took to drive there from Massachusetts.

4. The Good News Chapel. This was the Plymouth Brethren assembly that I grew up in. At the time I attended it, it was a fairly small but active congregation of whom everyone felt like family. I have fond memories of the people there as I was growing up. I also miss Camp Berea, which was run by the Assemblies. I had a few good summers attending camp there.

5. The farmhouse in Dundas that my Dad grew up in. At various points different relatives lived there -- Grammy and Grampy would open it in the summer and I remember going to the brook with Grampy Hannah to get water in order to prime the pump for the well in the kitchen. Then Uncle Harry and Aunt Pat lived there for a while. Aunt Mae and Uncle Sherman finally took it over for good and one of my favorite things was to spend a night there in the summertime. The second floor bedrooms had windows on two walls and a cross breeze would blow in and when we built our present home, I insisted on windows on two walls for our bedrooms. The sight of the filmy white curtains billowing in the cool breeze, the feeling of generational continuity that permeated the house, the apple orchard, trips to the outhouse, the homey and comforting scent of hay in the old barn all form a three dimensional picture that still serves to give me pleasure when I think of it now.

Of course, things tend to assume a rosier glow in retrospect than what I probably experienced at the time I was actually going through it. And trips down memory lane are more fun for the person experiencing them than they are for outsiders who are only reading about them. Even so, I had fun doing this. Thanks, Carol for the few minutes of pleasure this gave me.

Remove the blog at No.1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog’s name in the No.5 spot. I've linked to their posts on childhood, with the URLs for you as well:

1. Black Currant Jam http://blackcurantjam.blogspot.com/2005/06/meme-5-things-i-miss.html
2. Allthings2all http://allthings2all.blogspot.com/2005/06/i-wanted-green-hair.html
3. Tales of a Farmwife http://alynnmusic.blogspot.com/2005/06/my-childhood.html
4. Carol's Storybook http://parentingdecisions.com/blog/2005_06.html#003616
5. Reformed Musings http://www.knoxknoxwhosthere.blogspot.com
And pick four people. Thanks!

Book Finds

Today I had to drive Ben into town to take his provincial science exam. During the two hours he was writing the exam, I went and bought myself a few crochet hooks. Then James decided a snack was in order so out to the car I went to feed him and change his enormously poopy diaper. I don't know where he puts it all, but it poured forth like yellow lava from the diaper and through his sleeper.

When I finished cleaning up the mess I still had over an hour to kill before needing to get Ben. So I drove to a thrift store I don't usually patronize and proceeded to splurge $3.50 on books. I came home with:

The Complete Father Brown Treasury by G. K. Chesterton
The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas (which weighs about 5 lbs.!)
A boxed set of the last three "Anne" books by Lucy Maud Montgomery (so my girls can have their own copies)
A complete Glycemic Index in paperback
The American Way of Birth by Jessica Mitford

Don't ask me where I am going to put these treasures as my shelves are already overflowing!

Changes on the Comment Front

I got rid of the comment server that I was using. That means all the comments from before are missing off my blog, but that's ok. I have a record of them in my email.

I don't know how to put up a thing that says "comments" at the end of a post, but if you do want to say something, please click on the time stamp at the end of the post and you can post your comments on blogger's comment thingy.

And yeah, Jerry, you were right. That is a Nine Inch Nails song that Johnny Cash was singing. Here's some commentary that came with the link that I received:

Johnny Cash video rattles viewers
By Steve Beard

One of the surprising hits on Johnny Cash's lastest album When The Man Comes Around is his rendition of "Hurt" written by the dark and brooding Trent Reznor of the hard rock band Nine Inch Nails. I hurt myself today/ To see if I still feel/ I focus on the pain/ The only thing that's real, Cash sings. The needle tears a hole/ The old familiar sting/ Try to kill it all away/ But I remember everything--a poignant reminder of his dark years in the 1960s.

"I think 'Hurt' is the best anti-drug song I ever heard," said Cash. "It's a song about a man's pain and what we're capable of doing to ourselves and the possibility that we don't have to do that anymore. I could relate to that from the very beginning."

He told USA Today, "I would have written something like that in the '60s, if I had been that good."

When the video for the song was released it became a fascinating cross-over hit, being played on MTV, VH-1, and CMT. Director Mark Romanek spliced together one of the most vivid and moving visual portraits of Cash's illustrative career. Footage was gleaned from his early years, prison concerts, walking through the Holy Land, and hopping a boxcar. Cash is shown sitting behind a piano as well as strumming his guitar in his all-so-familiar black apparel. Interspersed throughout the video is the backdrop of the famous House of Cash museum in Tennessee--sitting in disrepair, closed to the public since 1995. The museum serves as a metaphor for Cash's physical condition-which is weak and in pain.

Johnny is seated behind a grand table spread with a generous feast of meat and fish. With trembling hand, he pours a glass of red wine over the food as he sings, You could have it all/ My empire of dirt/ I will let you down/ I will make you hurt.

The face of Jesus appears; first, in a portrait and later in footage taken from Gospel Road, a movie on the life of Christ that Cash produced with his own finances in the 1970s. The graphic crucifixion scene is interspliced with concert footage and cheering prison crowds in order to poignantly emphasize that all of humanity carries the responsibility of Christ's death. Never before in the history of music videos has there been such a rattling reminder of youth, aging, and the sometimes agonizing trek through the twilight years.

"Mortality is a very unusual topic for this medium," Romanek told Rolling Stone. "But I ascribe most of the power to the Johnny Cash-ness of it all."

Trent Reznor was in the studio with Zach de la Rocha, the former lead singer of Rage Against the Machine, when he received the video. "By the end I was really on the verge of tears," said Reznor. "At the end of it, there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, 'Uh, OK, let's get some coffee.'"

Cash's producer Rick Rubin cried when he saw it for the first time. "I spoke to (U2 singer) Bono and he compared what Johnny is doing now to what Elvis Presley did in the 1950s," Rubin told the Associated Press. "Then, Elvis represented a new youth culture and it shocked and terrified everyone because culture wasn't about youth before him. Now we live in a youth culture and Johnny Cash is showing the experience of a much older generation. It's just as radical."

Life, death, drugs, Jesus, pain, joy, disappointment, and success were all wrapped together in that video-the essential elements of Johnny Cash's career and life's work. "Life isn't just for living, it's for singing about," he wrote in the liner notes for his 1977 album The Rambler. "Loneliness is real, the pain of loss is real, the fulfillment of love is real, the thrill of adventure is real, and to put it in the song lyrics and sing about it-after all, isn't that what a country singer/writer is supposed to do, write and sing of reality?"

My daughter, Trista, mother to my grandbabies 

A Touching and Poignant Piece of Music

This song by Johnny Cash brings a lump to my throat.

Counting, 1... 2... 3...

When a computer problem hit the server which hosted my blog counter which recorded the number of hits I get each day, I took the opportunity to ditch the counter. You will also notice that only a very few of my comments have numbers attached to them as well. I have no idea why that is. In the beginning when the comment thingy was set up, it faithfully counted the number of comments people left in the comments section of each post. Now it does it intermittently and not very accurately. Again, I have no idea why, not being an html savvy person. People who don't bother to ever comment may not realize that there can be a number of comments on a given post, which is not reflected by a number in front of "comment" attached to that post.

I've decided not to try fixing the problem. This is not laziness. This is because I discovered that I had a problem with "numbers envy." I would read the blogs of some people and see the amount of hits they were getting and the large volume of comments left on their posts and think, "how come this person gets so many hits and comments compared to me?" And I would sulk.

As Judy Rogers reminds us in the song, Isabelle is a Pig, "a pretty little girl who likes to pout, looks like Izzy with a ring in her snout. All the buttons and bows and (something) and lace, don't look pretty with a grumpy face." Or words to that effect. I assume that if little girls who pout look ugly, then sulking middle-aged women look worse. The way I look is of less consideration in this though than the fact that it reveals a small but ugly sin that needs rooting out.

I never have liked math and numbers. And now I have one more reason for it.

Transmogrified by Babies and Hormones

I have a solution for women who are feeling tempted to get away from home, domestic duties, and childrearing to "find themselves" in a career: have a baby and nurse it as long as possible.

Ever since I got married nearly 25 years ago, the home has been the theater of operations for my life. Domestic engineering is just what I do in addition to teaching and raising children. Once the youngest child weans, however, my thoughts begin to turn outward from the daily tasks to the wider world beyond my door. I have never had a strong pull to leave the home, being convinced that children were meant to be raised by their own mothers, but there has been a yen for the mental stimulation of things beyond potty training, the multiplication table, and teaching the alphabet. For the most part this yen was fulfilled by reading books and studying, and in later years, by interaction with others on the internet and helping my husband build a home-based business as well as running a private alternative healthcare clinic from my home office.

In recent years, I have been paying a lot more attention to what is happening to myself on a daily/monthly/yearly basis. This is not narcissim, though it may look like that to others. Rather it is observation -- in order to understand others, I should learn to understand and take note of myself and in doing so, can identify with other women and what they are experiencing.

Here is what I am observing about myself after having a baby: it has stimulated my domestic instincts to no end. All of a sudden I am going to the library and taking out cookbooks so I can try new recipes and plan meals. I nearly always cook from scratch as it is, but scratch cooking takes on a more creative flair when I am postpartum and nursing. I am also impatient about getting my sewing machine, which has sat idle for a number of years, back from the repair shop so I can sew some decent and girlish dresses for myself and my girls. Crochet hooks, patterns, and yarn have also developed a new allure as well as embroidery projects. Cleaning my house and organizing it is transformed into an interesting challenge. I'M WEARING DENIM JUMPERS!

Regarding the last, a non-nursing me would be horrified at the thought of wearing a denim jumper and looking the part of a Prairie Muffin, but a nursing me doesn't give a hoot. It is practical, hides the postpartum bulges, and with the aide of a receiving blanket, allows me to wear a dress that is more flattering than a skirt and top would be right now and still be able to feed a baby without providing a spectacle for perverts.

I think it is the oxytocin doing all this. Studies have found, in couples who are newly in love and still spoony about each other, that they produce oxytocin in their bodies. Oxytocin is the hormone responsible for boosting those lovely feelings and the desire to bond with the object of your affections. Oxytocin is also the hormone that causes the uterus to contract, as well as milk ducts, which allows the milk to flow to the nursing baby. Every time a mother puts her baby to breast and nurses him or her, she gets a lovely hormonal boost to love that child even more intensely. Mothers who have natural births un-augmented by synthetic oxytocin get not only a healthy dose of the bonding hormone, but they also benefit from all the pain-relieving endorphins that are produced in the brain, but which are not produced by the synthetic forms which can't cross the blood/brain barrier. This helps to explain the tigerish instincts of nursing mothers when it comes to protecting their babies not only from physical danger but even from the mere suggestion that their child is less than it should be.

Another side effect of these hormones is the increased sensitivity to others' sufferings. I can so easily grow hardened to the losses and tragedies of others when no longer tending a baby, largely out of self defense. But let me have a baby and the regular shots of oxytocin and other nursing hormones crumbles those defenses and changes this mama into an empathetic human who can cry over the obituaries of complete strangers. Birth, the beginning of life, has a strange way of reminding me of mortality and the end of life. I guess this is because babies can be so fragile and it is so easy to imagine the zillion ways in which their little lives can be cut off.

The transition from the strange, close, watery world of the womb to that of life outside it is a startling and drastic change through which all of us reading this have passed. The end of life is just as dramatic and more mysterious because none of us have gone there yet, though we likely know others who have. The change we went through as well as the anticipated change from life to death is one which points to how very dependent we are upon God for getting us through it. For me, at least, this dependence is both frightening, because of my lack of faith, and reassuring, because of the measure of faith I do have.

Natural birth (where intervention is NOT needed or planned for) and lactation are probably two of the biggest and best tools that God has given women for helping them be content in their covenantal and dominion-oriented tasks of raising a holy seed for God. It's really a shame when so many Christian women don't take advantage of them.

The US Center for Disease Control Covers up Vaccine Related Damage Study

If you don't find this alarming, you should. Since 2000 the CDC knew that thimoserol, a mercury based preservative used in vaccines was likely responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of children with neurological difficulties like autism, ADD/ADHD and speech delays. But instead of acting to protect children, they covered up the evidence and worked to protect the vaccine industry.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss
a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host
of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children.
According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the
agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a
mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be
responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological
disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten
told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier
studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays,
attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC
and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the
preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of
birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from
one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

...Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line.

These are your watchdogs, folks. They are supposed to be protecting the general public, not industry. Still planning on vaccinating your children? Think twice.

Why Saying "I'm sorry" isn't Enough

It is humbling having to ask your children for their forgiveness. Tonight I reacted too quickly as I am so prone to do and was inappropriate in a reaction to a childish mistake. The look of stunned hurt on the face of my son cut me to the heart, and when he returned to the kitchen after an interval in his bedroom nursing his wounded spirit, I pulled him aside and told him I was sorry for sinning against him and against God in my actions and asked his forgiveness.

Admission of wrong doing is an activity that none of us are enamoured with. The amount of time we spend justifying our wrong behavior and attitudes is reflective of the amount of pride that exists in our hearts. We just hate being wrong and having others see it, so we seek to convince them and ourselves that we had perfectly good reasons for the actions we took or the words we said. If we are pinned to the mat, very often our response is a wrung out "sorry" that conveys more of the idea of "sorry I was caught" rather than the idea of "sorry I sinned against you."

I'm no different than anyone else in this respect. I hate being wrong, and I hate admitting it. I was having a discussion with someone the other evening on this very subject. He brought up something which is an encouragement to me as far as persevering in the severe art of humbling myself. He asked me how I felt towards someone who had sinned against me and had sincerely repented and asked for my forgiveness. Did it harden my heart against them or soften it? Well in nearly all cases, it softened my heart towards them and did a lot to rid myself of bitterness. Furthermore, it cleared the way for establishing renewed fellowship.

If this is true for people outside our family, then the importance of seeking forgiveness of one's children is infinitely more important because of the close connection that should exist. Parents who admit their faults, who seek forgiveness and who make restitution for sins they committed are not likely to be objects of anger, hatred, and bitterness by their grown children.

There are very few things that are as distressing as having a child against you unless it is the guilty knowledge that it is deserved. How much better it is to circumvent that whole process while there is yet time and learn to both ask and extend forgiveness as well as set a wholesome example of Christian humility. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

You Learn Something New Every Day Department

A year or so ago I bought a bottle of Neem oil and promptly forgot why I bought it and what it was good for. Well now I know. Neem oil is a natural bug repellant that is completely non-toxic to mammals but which bugs hate with a passion. Voracious Japanese beetles would rather starve to death than eat soybean plants treated with the stuff. So if you are looking for a non-toxic alternative for Deet laden bug repellants that are harmful to you and your children, try your health food store and get yourself some Neem oil.

My Adorable Grandchildren... And of course the cuteness comes from our side of the family!