Food Safety Modernization Act

The Common Room calls it CPSIA for farms. As far as I can understand it, for the sake of food safety, only certified-safe food will be allowed to be sold. It makes me wonder if the food co-op raid in Ohio a couple of months ago is only a foretaste of what we can expect to see all over the US.

A birthday

Almost spring today! That is, the calendar says three days to go, but I think it's here already. I'm sitting on a hill on campus, overlooking the baseball field, where there is a game going on--spring training, I think. The sounds from it come up the hill a little delayed: I'm hearing the clap of the ball in gloves and the dull clink of the bat (they use aluminum bats) a moment after I see things happen. I was going to post a picture of my view, but my phone won't cooperate. It's working now!

We are studying Elizabeth's reign in humanities right now (which always makes me think of summer for some reason). Shakespeare is putting on plays at the Globe and Sir Francis Drake's navy just held off the Armada in the Channel. England is happy with their victory, happy with their new Anglican religion, and happy with their Queen. "Now is the winter of their discontent turned to summer by this bright sun--" --of York, Shakespeare said, but I think it can be said of Good Queen Bess as readily as Edward IV. (Or was it V? bother.)

Well, I don't want to write a long post, because if I do it will be all rambling and wambling, but I couldn't let the day pass without mentioning a birthday. Rusticanda has been around four years today! Quite a bit has changed since then--I'm in college now, and brother J is in highschool, and brother L is almost a teenager, and Miss M--well, she's become Miss M :D. We've taken trips, read books, discussed much, and seen seasons change--and now this blog is chock-full of good memories. So--a happy birthday to it! and I hope it sees many more full, changing, blessed years.

The End of Gardening?

The CPSIA lead-certification law was just the beginning; now the government, prompted by Monsanto, plans to outlaw food co-ops, organic farming and backyard gardening.

Look up this bill on google: HR 875

Or, start with these links:

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=12671

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-s-dream-bill-HR-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090309-337.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1566685/food_safety_modernization_act_hr_875.html

Tree Idenitification

We're starting the Outdoor Hour Nature Challenge. The first week, we're to look for a couple of things to research and identify. We found a tree - the only one in our yard that's never been identified - and a mossy ground cover.

The tree is going to be difficult now. I looked up winter twig identification, but the twig is budding and you're not supposed to use new shoots, which is what the twigs are. But the buds aren't opened to leaves that can be identified. So I guess we're at a dead end until the leaves fully sprout. This is the tree we'll be watching come spring - the dead leaves under it, the trunk, and a budding twig. It has long pods with black flat seeds, my son says. It could be honey locust. Or some kind of willow. Or not.





And here's the other thing we're going to identify. It's from a patch of almost flourescent green mossy ground cover. This is one tiny plant pulled from the patch. It's less than an inch long, roots and all.



I'm guessing it's climacium, a moss that can be a ground-cover. Look at this picture - it looks very much like our specimen.

Bookish glee

You can tell a lot about someone by what makes them excited. So I guess this post will say a lot about me. But-- I had a very cool moment in humanities class today. We've been studying the Renaissance, and last class my professor (who is a bibliophile) was telling us about his collection of books. Today he brought in one of his old books for us to look at. And when I say old, I mean it: this was a 1525 edition of Theophylact's Gospel commentaries, in Latin, with the original leather binding. It was in beautiful condition: the paper was heavy, the print was clear, the binding was worn but intact. My professor got it as a gift from a friend who found it at a library booksale, somewhere in Illinois, for the bargain price of $1. (It's worth tens of thousands!) I got to look at it after class and read a little of it. The page layout looked just like one of Howard Pyle's books, with the decorative caps and ornamental title illustrations and side-note summaries. It was hard to realize that I was holding something printed before the founding of the US, before the Pilgrims, before Queen Elizabeth, before Shakespeare. That must be something like how the scholars of the Renaissance felt, when they were rediscovering classical writings and having fresh conversations with old manuscripts.

Dr. Seuss Meets the CPSIA

This is funny! It begins--

"In the town of Beddubble, far out on the Moor,
There lived a small tot, who was not more than four.
Little Annabelle Ruth (her close friends would recall)
had swallowed the string off a dilly-dunk ball..."

You can read the rest here.

E.M. Forster: The Machine Stops

I'm at the beginning of this short story, which was written in 1909. It's about a world in which people live in a safe, enclosed bubble and communicate, listen to music, do whatever they want - at the touch of a button.

The CPSIA bill made me wonder aloud with Tim how far the government intends to go in creating a safe environment for children - will it end by children being raised in hermetically sealed padded rooms? (Of course, the padding would need to be phthalate-free . . .) After all, even the world itself is made of dirt, and who knows how much lead might be in dirt.

And Tim said it reminded him of a short story he had to read for AO. It's here; I've only just started it. But I'm finding it eerily possible of the direction we could be going in:

"Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs . . . she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere - buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. "

"Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking?"

I wonder what, in 1909, could have given anyone the idea that this kind of thing could ever be possible, even in the imagination?

The New Book Banning

From an article by Walter Olson (thanks to Katie for posting this)

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article:

"It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse."

"Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or “sequester” from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn’t we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?"

You Can't Buy These Books Anymore

Thanks to the CPSIA ruling that went into effect today, any and all products marketed for children age 12 and must go through an expensive test to be certified as being under specific limits for lead. This includes books printed before 1985, even though no child has ever been harmed by lead from a book. Thanks to our government, these books are now considered hazardous substances, and, since they haven't been republished after 1985, they are no longer legal to sell anywhere, at any price. One thrift store was seen boxing up their inventory of used books and throwing them away. It's no longer legal to distribute or sell them. They can't even give them away without risking a hefty fine.

What is your local thrift store doing to comply with this law? Do you know what your library plans to do with their children's section?

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I Went to the Animal Fair; a book of animal poems, some classic, some contemporary. This book hasn't been reprinted since the 1960's; used copies will no longer be allowed to be sold.

Richard Halliburton's classic book of fascinating places; for many, a cherished childhood favorite that inspired a life-long desire to travel and see the places he wrote about. Children will no longer thrill to his description of the Golden Gate Bridge or Hoover Dam because this book hasn't gone through the certification process now mandated by law. Existing copies are now considered hazardous substances--illegal to distribute.

A book that explains scientific heroes of discovery through history and basic scientific laws for pre-teen boys. Since it doesn't comply with CPSIA's post-1985 rule, this book can no longer be purchased.

The third book in the series about a charming, mischievous Chinese boy. The first two books have been reprinted in paperback, but this one hasn't been reprinted - and any existing copies are now illegal to sell.

A page from The Tasha Tudor Sampler - it includes three books in one little volume. All the pictures are just as sweet as this one - but this book can't legally be sold anymore.

Poetic Knowledge - the rest of ch 2

I finally finished ch 2 of Poetic Knowledge, although I'm not sure I understood it fully, and I'm not sure I'm any better off for the few things I did understnd.

Taylor emphasizes the ability of "estimation," which is the innate ability of knowing what's normal and good, and being aware that something isn't right without actually going step by step through a rationlization process. It's talking with someone and sensing that the person isn't quite right. It's like a sixth sense. Maybe it includes social cues? Little Red Riding Hood's power of estimation failed her when she met the wolf who asked her where she was going, and she wasn't alarmed.

He gives a definition of "fear" as "the consciousness of ignorance in the face of some reality."

Poetic knowledge is like the power of estimation: it's the ability to recognize and discern from sensory input without going through a conscious thought process - like the guide Charlotte Mason wrote about who saw vultures circling overhead and knew there was a lion nearby.

There are two kinds of will. There's the passive kind that recognizes instinctively and appreciates when it comes across something good - as if there's something placed inside us that knows good/beauty from bad/vulgar. And there's the active will that chooses between one action and another - this is the will that CM spoke of. The two wills are different in that one is a will of being, and the other is a will of doing. The passive will recognizes good instinctively and loves it, and desires it, but not in a conscious, rational, deductive way.

And there's this concise definition of poetic knowledge: "poetic experience where all the knowing powers are functioning prerationally with reality."