The country we live in.

I have a few questions. 1. Why are there reports that homeland security has ordered 450 million hollow point rounds? http://www.topix.com/forum/city/terre-haute-in/TSOAOR36CMV61DRUQ 2. Why is homeland security moving their "deadliest Animal disease lab to K- State?" It was on a Island in New York but now it's going to be in the midwest, right in the middle of our country. I would like to know the real reason, not the story their telling all of us. http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/local_news/investigations/A-government-research-lab-will-study-deadliest-animal-diseases-at-K-State,-raising-safety-concerns 3. Why do people still believe they have our best interest at heart?

Super Tuesday, or Super depressing

Well looks like Mitt Romney is pulling away ever so slightly in the Republican presidential nomination. My wife keeps pestering me about calling this guy or that guy to get x, y and z done around the house. All I can think about is that The Ron Paul ship looks sunk. Heck I opted not to go to my sons last soccer event (thus making him miss it as well) just so I could go to the washington state caucus since my state opted not to have a primary. We only had a two hour window to be there, and my county is about 70% Ron Paul supporters. We went just to learn that even though Paul was kicking huge booty in my county he still might not get the majority of my county's delegates. See we have an automatic delegates that are assigned by precinct. Ours was a Santorum supporter even though santorum represented less than 10% of the caucus members in my area. Santorum automatically gets one of our areas delegates. Paul killed in our straw poll. Yet it doesn't look like he will get the delegates. Heck even John Stewart likes Paul. Everyone knows Paul has the best chance of beating Obama (even among Romeny and santorum supporters).

I was at a table at my local caucus with 7 other Paul supporters, 4 Romney and one santorum (though the Santorum supporter was an automatic delegate out of 4 total). So here I am amongst Paul supporters all saying they didn't think he would get the nomination (I don't either). Then, the mother statement came from one of them, "We have to support whoever gets the nomination to get Obama out of there." RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT (envision braking suddenly going at 100 plus MPH). I looked at them all and stated, "I can't do that. Not one of these other candidates holds the principals that Dr. Paul does." They really all are Obama light. Romney passed Romney care. Oh ya, that guy is not going to get rid of Obama's healthcare bill. Gingrich and Santorum are front men for the fed pure and simple. Paul is the only one who would cut the size of the federal government. He is the only candidate who can restore constitutional values. The rest of them are like switching from non filtered cigarettes to filtered cigarettes. Your still going to die from cancer. The only difference is that by voting for Romney you get to FEEL better about yourself. Truth, your voting for Obama light.

interesting article on garden beds and pressure treated wood.

Your Garden?Here’s the information to help you decide
by Ruth Lively


Lumber absorbs CCA compounds in large pressurized tanks. A couple of decades ago, lumber impregnated with chromated copper arsenate (known as CCA) was considered the answer to a gardener’s prayer. It boasted longer life than rot-resistant species like redwood, you could buy it almost anywhere, and manufacturers said the treatment chemicals, though toxic, safely stayed put in the wood. The main plus for gardeners was that the chemicals didn’t harm plants, unlike creosote and pentachloro­phenol, two previously popular wood preservatives.

But then word started seeping out that those CCA chemicals weren’t so perfectly bound up after all, that some of them, in fact, migrated from the wood into the surrounding soil. And that’s when pressure-treated wood moved into the hot seat.


Further Reading
Are Pressure Treated Woods Safe in Garden Beds?
Is Pressure-Treated Lumber Safe to Use for Raised Beds?
Coating Pressure-Treated Wood to Make it Safer
What’s bad about pressure-treated wood?

Random core samples are extracted to monitor quality. In the pressure-treating process, lumber is sealed in a tank, and air is extracted, creating a vacuum. Then a solution containing chromium, copper, and arsenic is added. Because of the vacuum, the chemicals are carried deep into the wood. Chromium is a bactericide, copper a fungicide, and arsenic an insecticide, and all arrest decay of some kind. All three are toxic, but chromium and copper don’t raise many concerns. If we don’t inhale it, chromium is not particularly harmful to us, and copper isn’t very toxic to mammals, although it is to aquatic life and fungi. It’s arsenic that is worrisome.

Arsenic is everywhere. If this gray, metal-like element is combined with oxygen, chlorine, and sulfur, it’s considered inorganic arsenic. If carbon is part of the combination, then the arsenic is organic. It’s the inorganic forms that worry people. The arsenate used in wood treatment is inorganic. Compared to organic arsenic, inorganic arsenic is much more likely to accumulate in living tissues, where it interacts with cell enzymes and impairs metabolism. Organic forms of arsenic don’t appear to do this, and are largely excreted before they can do us harm.

We’re exposed to arsenic—mostly organic forms—every day because very small amounts are present in all soil, water, and food. We typically eat 25 to 50 micrograms (a microgram is a millionth of a gram) of mostly organic arsenic a day. Low levels of arsenic are in everything we eat. The biggest source is shellfish.

Inorganic arsenic also may be present in foods due to residues in the soil from the days when arsenic was an approved pesticide. One reason root crops tend to accumulate arsenic is that minute particles of soil stick to the root’s skin, even after a brisk scrubbing. Peeling root vegetables before eating them gets rid of that arsenic. Still, there’s no need to worry about normal levels of arsenic in foods. The amount is so small it’s not harmful.

Soils contain both organic and inorganic arsenic. Background levels of arsenic in soil (amounts due to geological weathering, not to human contamination) typically range from 0.1 to upwards of 10 parts per million (ppm), and up to 40 ppm is considered tolerable, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Above that level, detectable amounts start showing up in children’s urine, because kids ingest dirt.

Water contains background arsenic too, but there might also be arsenic from contamination. The current EPA limit for arsenic in drinking water is 50 parts per billion.
In large doses, inorganic arsenic is strong poison. Ingesting 1 to 3 milligrams per kilo­gram of body weight can be fatal. Lesser amounts can cause nausea and diarrhea, lower production of both red and white blood cells, and give you a pins-and-needles sensation in your arms and legs. Inorganic arsenic is also carcinogenic, increasing the risk of lung, skin, and other cancers.

But as USDA heavy metals expert Rufus Chaney points out, what constitutes an acute toxic dose isn’t really relevant to gardeners. What we want to avoid are chronic toxic doses, which can lead to disease. Chronic exposure means every day for a lifetime. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry (ATSDR) in Atlanta, we can ingest up to 0.3 micrograms of inorganic arsenic per kilogram of body weight per day and not be harmed. The average American woman, who weighs 132 lb. or 60 kg., would have to eat more than 18 micrograms daily all her life to see any ill effects. Before you get alarmed, remember this is inorganic arsenic we’re talking about, not the organic types predominant in our diet. And, an ATSDR spokesperson points out, 0.3 microgram is a low estimate for the maximum tolerable dose.

Testing for arsenic leaching and migration
I sent soil samples from a 3-year-old CCA-framed bed to a lab for testing. I took three samples at various distances from the wood—immediately adjacent, several inches away, and in the middle of the bed. For a control, I sent soil from a bed that’s never been in contact with pressure-treated wood. Only the soil very close to the treated wood shows a higher-than-background level of arsenic.
The data on leaching
So how much arsenic leaches into the soil from CCA lumber? More to the point, how much gets taken up by vegetables? And how much winds up in the mouths of children? There have been a lot of studies looking at the first two issues, but in trying to organize the facts into meaningful information, I discovered definitive answers can be elusive. I can’t tell you whether or not you should use pressure-treated wood. What I can do is explain the results of pertinent studies and give you the information you need to decide for yourself.

CCA-treated wood does have good resistance to leaching, but there is some loss of chemicals. In a study of utility poles of varying ages, wood scientist Paul Cooper of the University of New Brunswick in Canada found uniformly high CCA retention, clearly indicating that large amounts of preservative had not leached out of the wood. There appears to be an initial surge of leaching during the first rainy season, and then the wood settles down to a slow release of small amounts, decreasing slightly over time.

All three CCA elements are more liable to leach at a pH of 3 or below, far too acidic for growing vegetables. At levels of 4 and up, pH has no effect.

Cooper has also studied compost bins made of CCA wood, and found that organic acids formed during the composting process cause more leaching. This not only brings more contaminants into the soil or compost, but also compromises the integrity of the lumber. Neither result is desirable, so Cooper does not consider pressure-treated wood suitable for making compost bins, although he doesn’t object to using it in gardens. Finished compost has a near-neutral pH, so adding compost to CCA-framed beds isn’t a problem.

Once arsenic is in the ground, it doesn’t migrate much. Where there is leaching, arsenic levels drop quickly with distance from the wood, usually reaching background levels within a few inches in raised beds.

Some people have voiced fears that leached arsenic will find its way into groundwater, but Cooper’s utility pole study found no evidence to support such concerns. Groundwater samples taken from close to the poles had very low levels of CCA components. According to Stan Lebow, a wood scientist at the USDA’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, “The potential for any CCA chemicals getting into groundwater from garden use is pretty much zero. They just don’t move that far.”

If you use CCA lumber...
The chemicals in pressure-treated lumber are pesticides, so you should handle the wood with the same precautions as befit any potentially hazardous material.

Protect yourself while working with CCA wood. Always wear gloves, eye protection, and most important, a dust mask. Long sleeves are a good idea, too. Wash yourself and your clothes afterward. Finally, clean up every speck of sawdust you can (a shop vac does the best job). Drilling and sawing over a paved surface makes dust retrieval easier. Bag up sawdust and wood scraps and send them to the landfill. Don’t consider these steps optional.

Never, ever, burn CCA-treated wood. Burning sends some of the arsenic up in smoke, which can be inhaled. The ash, too, contains high concentrations of arsenic.

There are things you can do to CCA-treated wood to minimize leaching or migration. Scrubbing the wood with detergent or power washing it will remove surface residue. If possible, let the boards weather for several months after they’ve been cut and drilled before assembling. Studies show the greatest amount of leaching occurs the first rainy season. Always predrill holes for screws, which will prevent cracks in the wood. Cracks are places where preservative can leach. Lining the inside of the bed with heavy-duty plastic before filling it will create a physical barrier to any CCA compounds moving into your soil. Painting exposed wood surfaces with water-repellent finish, paint, or stain will protect your skin if you lean or kneel on the sides. And if you have small children, it will also prevent CCA compounds moving from little hands to little mouths.

Finally, you can take advantage of arsenic’s tendency to not travel far in the soil. To keep the arsenic in place, refrain from mixing soil along the perimeter few inches of the bed with soil farther in. Avoid growing spinach and root crops, particularly carrots and radishes, close to CCA-treated wood. Consider planting a band of compact flowers along the edge of the bed.

The story on arsenic and vegetables
There have been three major studies of vegetables grown in arsenic-enhanced soils, one by E.A. Woolson (United States, 1973), one by C. Grant and A.J. Dobbs (Britain, 1977), and one headed by T.W. Speir (New Zealand, 1992). All measured arsenic’s effect on plant growth and arsenic content of the harvest.

At certain levels of concentration, arsenic interferes with plant growth, but it’s impossible to generalize about amounts. Availability to plants varies from soil to soil, and sensitivity varies from crop to crop. Beans are fairly sensitive, while carrots and tomatoes tolerate arsenic well. Very small additions of arsenic can actually increase yields. Also, there’s no correlation between a crop’s sensitivity to arsenic and the ability to absorb and translocate it to edible plant parts.

Available arsenic—meaning arsenic in a form plants can absorb—is a much more important measure than total arsenic. Typically, background arsenic is either pretty much insoluble or is tied up in a complex relationship with minerals and organic matter. For example, in the Grant and Dobbs study, soil with 24 ppm total arsenic had 7 ppm available arsenic. At 14 ppm total arsenic, available arsenic was undetectable.

Arsenic accumulates in very small amounts in vegetables, but generally in parts we don’t eat. Grant and Dobbs grew green beans, carrots, and tomatoes for their test. Crops grown in soil with 24 ppm total arsenic had the following arsenic levels in the edible parts: green beans, 0.29 ppm; carrots, 0.11 ppm; and tomatoes, 0.14 ppm. These, too, are total arsenic levels, and as Rufus Chaney pointed out, much of it would be organic. Carrots, for example, grown in soil with no added arsenic contained 0.05 ppm arsenic.

Woolson tested green and lima beans, spinach, cabbage, tomatoes, and radishes. Radishes and spinach took up the most arsenic, but even in soil with enough arsenic to reduce growth by 50%, the spinach had only about 1 ppm arsenic and the radishes about 8 ppm. After the experiment, Woolson found available arsenic in the soil had been reduced in “barely significant” amounts, indicating the plants had removed very, very small portions.

In general, plants tend to hold what arsenic they accumulate in their roots, typically in the fibrous roots. Uptake into plant tops and fruits is very small. (As always, there are exceptions. Carrots, radishes, and spinach all tend to store arsenic in their edible portions.)

For example, beets are good arsenic accumulators, but most stays in the tail-like root, not the bulbous part you eat. In Speir’s experiment, beets grown on soil with 66 ppm arsenic contained less than 10 ppm arsenic after being completely dried. To put this in perspective, at fresh weight—the way vegetables are actually eaten—that concentration would be only about 2.5 ppm. And if you remove the skin, you also remove much of that arsenic. An interesting footnote: In the Speir study, crops were grown in soil containing CCA-treated sawdust. Because sawdust has a huge proportion of surface area, it leaches chemicals at a very high rate, so in effect this is a worst-case experiment.

I went to several scientists to get their take on the data in the various reports.

Les Bourquin, a food safety specialist at Michigan State University, says, “Consumers as a whole would like to have zero risk. The classic example is, you’re safer in an airplane than you are in a car. But most people are more comfortable driving a car because that’s where they’re in control. There are some things we do in our lives that put us at much greater risk” than eating foods grown in CCA-framed beds. Bourquin feels that from a food safety standpoint, microbial contamination like E. coli 0157:H7 is of much greater concern. “Compared to microbial risks, arsenic exposure doesn’t seem a big problem.”

Rufus Chaney at the USDA agrees with Bourquin about food safety. “There’s no evidence that food safety is impaired by growing vegetables around CCA-treated wood.” According to Chaney, high levels of inorganic arsenic in soil will kill a plant before there’s enough arsenic in the plant itself for you to consider not eating it. Far more important is the risk of potential transfer of arsenic to skin and mouths, particularly for children, whose small bodies don’t tolerate arsenic as well as ours do. Chaney points out that persistent leaching, however small, means that arsenic is continually coming to the surface of the wood, where it can easily be transferred to us or our children when we touch the wood. “There’s just no way around it,” Chaney says. “For me, this is the overriding reason not to use CCA.”

ACQ, a New Alternative
Public concern over potential hazards of CCA has led the industry to look for safer, less controversial preservatives. A few years ago, one of the producers of CCA came out with a preservative touted as environmentally sound. ACQ®, which stands for alkaline copper quat, is a mix of copper and a quaternary ammonium compound, nicknamed quat. Small amounts of copper and quat do leach, but nothing in ACQ is considered hazardous by the EPA, and no ingredient is a known or suspected carcinogen. The maker, Chemical Specialties, Inc. (CSI), uses only recycled copper in ACQ. The wood is expected to last as long as CCA-treated lumber.

I first heard about ACQ four years ago, but had never found a place to buy it. Why, I wondered, was it so unavailable if it had so much to recommend it? The first version to go on the market contained no water repellent and had to be treated by the buyer to minimize cracks and warping. In late 1997, CSI came out with a version, ACQ Type D, which has a built-in water repellent. The company hopes the new formulation will be more attractive to lumber retailers and consumers. ACQ-treated wood is about 10% more expensive than CCA because it contains more copper.

All photos: Scott Phillips
From Kitchen Gardener 15, pp. 55-59

RFID, another reason to hate it.

Howdy folks,
Well anyone who knows me and my faith in Jesus Christ knows I'm not a fan of RFID technology. Sure in the right hands it could be useful and beneficial to some, but I FIRMLY believe the risks it carries to our freedom out weighs any benefits it might have. I'm specifically thinking about Rev. 13:6 but this video also shows other issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUz6oe6AlFs

Beneficial foraging books

The opening paragraphs are designed to assist others avoid some of the pit falls I made in purchasing wild food literature. You can skip this and go directly to the individual book reviews if you choose. Please note that this review is of multiple wild food books. I prefer authors that work with the plants they are writing about, and don't just repeat things they read from another book (yes some wild food authors actually do that). I also prefer books with good descriptions, lots of photos of each plant to make identification easier, and to cover the plant from identification to the plate. That's my bias, here is my review.

I'm just a guy who likes to forage and enjoys the learning and nutritional aspect of wild foods. My main purpose for writing this review of multiple wild food books on one review is to assist others coming to wild foods for the first time (like I was three years ago), and to hopefully help them avoid some of the easily avoided pit falls I made in the literature I chose. At first I wanted books with the most plants in it for my money. It made sense to me at the time but ended up being a grave mistake. Books that devote one picture and a brief explanation to a plethera of plants helped me identify some plants in one stage of growth, but did next to nothing that would have allowed me to use them as food. Example, most books will show you one picture of the adult plant. Many times that's not when you want to harvest it. No one would eat a bannana that was over ripe and pure black and call banana's in general inedible due to that experience. Yet many who have sampled a dandelion have done exactly that. As I've learned from John Kallas, one has to have the right part of the plant (this includes proper identification of the plant), the plant has to be at the right stage of growth, and it has to be prepared properly. If you can't do those three things you shouldn't be sticking the plant in your mouth. Now on to the individual books.

Wild Edible Plants By John Kallas: 6 stars because it deserves more than 5

Instead of having hundreds of plants with one picture and one paragraph of information Kallas gives you less plants in far more detail and unmatched photography. If I could give this book to everyone in the United States I would as it is the best book I have found on the market. His descriptions of the plants are spot on and easy to read, his multiple full color pictures of each plant covered are the best I've seen in wild food literature, and he covers each plant from seedling to the dinner plate in stunning detail. If I could only own one book on wild edible foods this would be the one. No book can give you everything you need as a forager. That being said John does a superb job of plant selection in that most people in north america will be able to find all these plants within a mile of their home. For a guy taking care of two children under 3 years of age this book allowed me to forage while staying close to home. Consider this a must own. John also runs wild food adventures in Portland Oregon which offers wild food instruction in that area.

Nature's Garden By Samuel Thayer: 5.2 stars the second must own, and it too deserves more than 5 stars.

If I could only own two wild food books this would be the second one on my shelf next to John Kallas book. The section on Oaks and acorns are worth the price of the book by it self let alone the numerous other plants in it. Mr. Thayer uses color photographs at various stages of growth just like Kallas does. After you own Kallas book you will be hooked and Nature's Garden is the next logical progression in your journey. Other reviewers have covered Sam's brilliant rebutal to Jon Krakauer's propagandist poison plant fable of how Chris McCandless died. Chris died of starvation not a poisonous plant. Sam actually has this section of the book posted on his website for viewing (go to foragersharvest dot com), and is worth reading even if you don't buy the book. I really benefited from Sam's sections on the different wild lettuces, elderberries, thistles, and many others. On top of that Sam has the most engaging writing style of all the wild food authors I've encountered. Not only are his pictures only second to those of Kallas, his descriptions are spot on, and reading his books are like reading one of your favorite novels.

Foragers Harvest By Samuel Thayer 5 stars

I prefer Thayer's Nature's Garden over this book for my area. That being said I can't really say anything bad about this book. Good descriptions, excellent pictures at various stages of growth, good selection of plants, and done with accuracy. This book was to my knowledge the first of it's kind back when it was released back in the mid 2000's. To my knowledge it was the best book on the market then, and has only been surpassed by his follow up book Nature's Garden and Kallas Wild Edible Plants. Being the first book in this motif it (unjustly I might add) received numerous attacks by a few disgruntled souls on amazons book review section. One must remember Thayer was revolutionary in this field when he released this book, and people had a hard time adjusting. As my friend Stephen T. McCarthy once posted, "All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Well anyone who has used Sams books should understand the advantage of covering less plants in more detail than covering many plants with little to no detail like the over-hyped gimmick books that litter the wild food market do. I few things I really liked about this book include (but are not limited to): descriptions and photographs on cat tail, wapato, service berry, stinging and wood nettle. The canning section is solid for the beginning forager like I am. This in my opinion still fits the must own catagory.

Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus 4.5 stars

Line drawings that are OK. Descriptions of the plants are excellent. Recipes are added by the author, plus his enthusiasm and good nature jump out at you through the page. I mostly use this book in conjunction with other books, and I never use it for it's photographs or line drawings. Not that their bad. Just not enough for a total novice in my opinion. Now his descriptions are excellent and should not be ignored.

Nancy J. Turner, "Food Plants Of Coastal First Peoples" and "Food Plants of Interior First Peoples" I'll give it 5 stars for ethnobotany and 4 stars as a foraging book.

If you live in the pacific northwest these books are MUST HAVES. A thorough grouping of the plants used by native americans for food in the pacific northwest. Why I only give it 4 stars is that it is essentially put in a field guide format which is very limiting when trying to use a plant for food. Plus while Turner is the queen of plants and uses in the pacific northwest, you'll only get a tenth of what she knows on any given plant. Kallas and Thayer go into much more detail, have numerous pictures, and lead their readers toward success. With Turner you'll get one good picture in one stage of growth. Through experience I've found that just isn't good enough. She does have more plants in her books than Kallas and Thayer but when you cover them in less detail that is to be expected. To be fair to Nancy I don't get the impression that these were designed specifically for foragers. All this being said I own them and wouldn't give them back if you paid me double what I paid for them.

Linda Runyan, The Essential Wild Food Survival Guide 3.8 stars, a good book.

Well first I do have some issues with this book: I'm not fond of the line drawings or black and white photos, she does edibility tests on wild foods and discovered many of them that way (which I'm not a fan of), and some of her descriptions are lacking in my opinion. All that being said she cans her wild foods, dries them for winter use, and lives off of wild edibles all year long successfully. She shares a lot of this knowledge with the reader in this book, and being a nurse myself I'm also able to relate to her thinking in a lot of ways. Plus her stories of using cat tail fluff as stuffing for a couch only to find out that it was infested with insect eggs was hilarious. She tells you all the mistakes she made so you don't have to repeat them. She will tell you to use two other good field guides along with hers. I would plan on not using hers at all for the pictures. I have issues with her lack of oversight on the pictures. I'm sure some will disagree but when Linda tells you in her video (by the same name) that her chickweed picture isn't very good it does bring to mind credibility questions.

Edible Wild Plants a North American Field Guide, by Elias and Dykemann. 3.5 stars

At one point in my very early stages I thought this book was the bomb. However, I would identify a plant, find it at times accidentally for the most part, and go "now what?" And that is the weakness of the field guide format in wild food literature (Thayer and Kallas do so much more for you). This book is almost the opposite of Linda Runyans in some ways. She doesn't give you good pictures but gives you some good details on what to do with the plant after you find it. This book gives you some good pitures, a brief description, and then says "your on your own kid." In Samuel Thayers "Foragers Harvest" he gives great descriptions between wood nettle and stinging nettle (both are edible when properly prepared). Thayer also happened to point out that this book actually has a picture of wood nettle and call it stinging nettle. I checked up on this, and lo and behold he was right. They have two pictures and one is wood nettle and one is stinging nettle. They are both listed as stinging nettle in the book. This tells me that the authors might not know all the plants as well as they should. Don't get me wrong I still like the book. But it does prove that wild food authors don't always use or know the plants their writing about.

Honorable mention goes to "Abundantly Wild" By Teresa Marrone. It is a wild food cook book. The pictures in the book are not great (though oddly beat many of the photos in supposed field guides) but I have read a few of the recipes and they look promising. I'll write a review about a year from now once I've put the book to the test. Until then I'll let you read the reviews on this book and make up your own mind.

Arrested for feeding the homeless??????

Below is an article I found about police in Florida arresting those who want to feed the homeless. That's right folks. They got arrested for feeding the homeless. Not robbing a bank, not rape, not murder, not assault. No, just feeding homeless people. I'll comment further after you read the article which was found at this site: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/crime/os-homeless-feedings-arrests-20110601,0,7226362.story

By Susan Jacobson, Orlando Sentinel

1:33 p.m. EDT, June 2, 2011
Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.

Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.

The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.

"They intentionally violated the statute," said Lt. Barbara Jones, an Orlando police spokeswoman.

Police waited until everyone was served to make the arrests, said Douglas Coleman, speaking for Orlando Food Not Bombs.

"They basically carted them off to jail for feeding hungry people," said Coleman, who was not present. "For them to regulate a time and place for free speech and to share food, that is unacceptable."

Orlando Food Not Bombs has been feeding the homeless breakfast on Mondays for several years and dinner on Wednesdays for five years.

Police had not enforced the ordinance while the court battle continued. The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ruled that city rules regulating how often large groups of people can be fed in a park do not violate the Constitution.

The penalty for violating Orlando's ordinance is 60 days in jail, a $500 fine or both.

Arrest documents state that Orlando Food Not Bombs received permits and fed more than 25 homeless people at Lake Eola Park on May 18 and 23. Coleman said the group rejected the permits.

On May 25, Orlando Food Not Bombs illegally fed a large group of homeless people, the police report states. The group on its website called for members to show up that day and defy the city ordinance, according to the report.

Officers said they found a press release on Markeson when they arrested him stating that group members planned to defy the ordinance Wednesday.

Bail was set at $250 for each person arrested. Cross and Markeson were released from jail early

Thursday. McHenry wants to stay in jail and let the legal process take its course, Coleman said.

sjacobson@tribune.com or 407-540-5981

So I just have to leave a parting comment. First Susan Jacobson wrote a nice story. I don't know the political views of these groups who fed these people but I do know they shouldn't be arrested for doing it. I read an article in the new american one time concerning a women in what I believe was 1950's Russia. She harvested her last onion. Her husband just died of starvation and her children were soon to follow. The government arrested her for not turning the onion over to the state. Oh you read that right. Granted the people in Orlando might not have been anywhere close to dying at this time, but they very well could be in the future if were arresting people for giving food to their fellow man. Regardless, this article should give everyone pause.

American education or Americoned education

Having young children trying to find a real educational system for my children is of dire importance. This article went a long way to assisting me along my journey.

The below article was found at this link: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/sam-blumenfeld/5403-how-the-progressives-changed-the-way-reading-is-taught-in-our-schools


Written by Sam Blumenfeld
Monday, 06 December 2010 12:13


Many parents wonder why American primary schools don’t teach children to read in the proper phonetic manner. The answer is that high literacy is not part of the system’s social or academic agenda. Neither is good cursive handwriting and basic arithmetic. Have you noticed the decline in handwriting? I recently gave a birthday gift to a 13-year-old boy, and got back a thank-you note written in chicken scratches. He had attended the public schools of an affluent suburban community.

Now, of course, if you ask any primary public-school teacher whether or not he or she teaches phonics, they will all say they do. But the kind of phonics they teach is not the intensive, systematic kind that produces a fluent, independent phonetic reader. What they teach are phonetic clues to be used in the context of a Whole Language program that teaches children to read by the sight method.

Ask that same teacher if he or she teaches a sight-vocabulary. If the answer is yes, then you know that they are not teaching phonics in the proper way. In fact, they are teaching the child to look at our alphabetic words as Chinese characters, or little mind-pictures. Once that mode of looking at words becomes automatic, the child becomes dyslexic, that is, unable to see the phonetic structure of our printed words.

Now where did this atrocious methodology come from? It didn’t come from outer space, nor was it the result of accident. It came from an agenda developed back at the turn of the last century by some of the most intelligent men in America.

It started in the 1890s, when the Progressives began working on a new socialist agenda for the public schools that would promote collectivism through a new curriculum programmed to turn children away from individualism.

Who were the Progressives? They were members of the Protestant academic elite who no longer believed in the religion of their fathers. They now put their faith in science, evolution and psychology. Science explained the material world. Evolution explained the origin of living matter, and psychology provided a new scientific way of understanding and controlling human behavior.

But what about the problems of evil and sin? As socialists they rejected the biblical explanation and instead believed that evil was caused by ignorance, poverty, and social injustice. Socialism, they were convinced, would eliminate all three causes of evil.

And so they embarked on a Progressive education crusade that would prove they were right and Bible believers were wrong. Education would eliminate ignorance, which would then eliminate poverty, which in turn would do away with social injustice.

The first step in their crusade was to change the way children were being taught in the primary schools. The emphasis on teaching reading had to be replaced with an emphasis on collectivist socialization. John Dewey, the philosophical leader of the Progressives, explained it all quite openly in an article he authored in 1898 entitled “The Primary School Fetich.” He wrote:

The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school life because of the great importance attaching to literature seems to me a perversion.

A perversion, mind you. To get rid of this so-called perversion he advocated using a new way of teaching reading that would turn children into little collectivists. That new method turned out to be the sight or look-say method that teaches children to read English as if it were an ideographic writing system like Chinese. To him the emphasis on learning to read phonetically in the primary grades was a perversion. And because Dewey knew that this view would be considered dangerously radical by parents and traditional teachers, he wrote:

Change must come gradually. To force it unduly would compromise its final success by favoring a violent reaction. What is needed in the first place, is that there should be a full and frank statement of conviction with regard to the matter from physiologists and psychologists and from those school administrators who are conscious of the evils of the present regime.

In other words, deceiving parents became a necessary part of the plan if the socialists were to succeed in its implementation. And psychologists, of whom Dewey was one, would be used to carry out this elaborate conspiracy of deception. Dewey then wrote:

There are already in existence a considerable number of educational “experiment stations,” which represent the outposts of educational progress. If these schools can be adequately supported for a number of years they will perform a great vicarious service.

Indeed, Dewey himself conducted such an experimental school at the University of Chicago, and the book he wrote about that experiment, The School and Society, became the bible of Progressive Education and the basis of early 20th century school reform.

And so, the major work of reform would not be done just by educators, but by psychologists, who found in education a lucrative source of support for their profession.

The new behavioral psychology was born in the laboratories of Professor Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig. His two American students, G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924) and James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944), came back to America anxious to apply scientific psychology to American education. Hall became a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University where he taught the new psychology to his student John Dewey. He later founded Clark University. Cattell introduced mental testing in education as part of the new scientific racism called Eugenics. He later founded the Psychological Corporation.

But it was Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949) who, after studying psychology under William James at Harvard, went on to become the chief implementer of behavioral psychology in American education. At Harvard he had studied the learning behavior of chickens by using the reinforcement technique, which he later decided should be used to teach children.

After his book, Animal Intelligence, was published in 1898, he became a leading light at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. His much celebrated stimulus-response (SR) technique of teaching children, based on animal training, now dominates American education. He wrote in 1928:

Our experiments on learning in the lower animals have probably contributed more to knowledge of education per hour or per unit of intellect spent, than experiments on children…. The best way with children may often be, in the pompous words of an animal trainer, “to arrange everything in connection with the trick so that the animal will be compelled by the laws of his own nature to perform it.”

In short, American children were to be taught in the public schools as if they were little animals. Of course, there is a great difference between humans and animals. Animals can be trained but they can’t be educated. Humans, on the other hand, can be both trained and educated because they are born with brains that are far superior to anything animals are born with. But to Thorndike and his behaviorist colleagues, man’s brain is just a bit more evolved than the brains of the apes. And if you don’t believe that God made man in His own image, that is, with the ability to speak language and use his intellect, then you will believe Thorndike and treat children like animals.



Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of nine books on education including NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, The Whole Language/OBE Fraud, and The Victims of Dick & Jane and Other Essays. Of NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education, former U.S. Senator Steve Symms of Idaho said: “Every so often a book is written that can change the thinking of a nation. This book is one of them.” Mr. Blumenfeld’s columns have appeared in such diverse publications as Reason, The New American, The Chalcedon Report, Insight, Education Digest, Vital Speeches, WorldNetDaily, and others