My students had an eye-opening moment the other day when they looked at the comments on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s site. Comments there are consistently vitriolic, generally offensive, and occasionally funny.

One thought, if they made me king of all media: each article would have two sets of comments, one from named, registered folks where a reasonable effort was made to verify their identity, followed by a second section of comments for anonymous users. There is a place for reasoned debate but I’ve not found any place where allowing anonymous comments has produced anything but bile. And this way people could chose which section they want to read.

1. Heard this quoted for the first time yesterday, this amazing pacifist proclamation:

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

2. Which reminded me of this Bob Dylan, sung by Tom Petty:

1. Sweet Olive (grown by Quality Greenhouse, sold by Greensgrow)

2. Lizzano (grown by Quality Greenhouse, sold by Greensgrow) May be more of a container plant but going to try with stake.

3. Mini Charm (grown by Quality Greenhouse, sold by Greensgrow)

4. Black Cherry (one of Mary’s Picks from Greensgrow)

5. Garden Peach (another of Mary’s Picks from Greensgrow)

6. Cherry Roma (starting from seed, seed from Seed Savers)

7. Mexican Midget (also from seed, seed from Seed Savers)

I don’t read the editorial page enough to know if this writer would normally get under my skin, but I loved this editorial.

She (his mother) wasn’t just teaching school lessons but life lessons. For her, it was about more than facts and figures. It was about the love of learning and the love of self. It was the great entangle, education in the grandest frame, what sticks with you when all else falls away. As Albert Einstein once said: “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”

She showed me what a great teacher looked like: proud, exhausted, underpaid and overjoyed.

Big day of planting:

one row of carrots in front of the basil in the front yard.
one row of radishes in front of the carrots in front of the basil in the front yard.

Kara played little house on the prairie and sprinkled corn down into the side yard. I pushed the seeds 2″ deep and covered with a bit of compost. We’re again looking to try the three sisters so we sprinkled the seeds instead of putting them in rows.

backyard:
*yesterday we made our cantelope mounds; I had one watermelon and and one melon plant from a Lowe’s discount rack that were already in the ground.
*our beans are up. We planted peas today along the same wall and cucumbers on the back wall.
*In the middle bed, we planted our store bought herbs (two basil from Greensgrow and two basil from Lowe’s). I put these in the middle of the bed and we’re going to plant tomatoes along the side (I read somewhere that it’s good to put tomatoes and basil in the same bin.)
*In the right bed, we planted four rows of lettuce: Green Leaf, Arugula, Green Oak Leaf, and the Red Sail.

I’ll try and post some pictures tomorrow.

Stephen King, lots of curses, but thought this paragraph was particularly money; it’s a response to the question of why it’s not enough for rich folks to give money to charity:

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.

Sunday AM:

I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me…

When I was listening to this, I thought about this song from Bob, about Ruben Carter:

Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
It’s my work, he’d say, and I do it for pay
And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise

When I think about teaching or about the general choices made in my own life, I’ve been lucky (or wise ?) to almost always be doing what it is I want to be doing. I’ve rarely spent much time just gettin’ paid. How do you explain this to your kids or other people’s kids without sounding like a crazed old man?

John 10:11-15

Man…sat at Gold Standard this morning and watched the election drama go down. The sheer number of Muhammad supporters wondering around the neighborhood — I passed multiple vans — as well as the collection of folks outside the polls was impressive. And sad. So frickin’ sad.

I can only hope that each of these individuals has been politically active BEFORE today, that this new “activism” has not been activated by money alone. It’s a smart political move — take on incumbents in elections that don’t necessarily see a big turnout — but it’s revolting to think that this infusion of money will actually work.

What’s sad is that the money spent supporting Muhammad would buy the Philadelphia Reads book for every high school student in West Philadelphia. And if you were to start adding up the rest of the money spent across the state…

I’d always thought of myself as a hack gardener because I didn’t plant from seeds. I’d usually buy a bunch of plants at the PIC plant sale and/or the various big box stores. Sometimes they’d do well and sometimes not so much…

I thought about starting plants indoors but I couldn’t find anyone who had a lot of success with this process or at least anyone who didn’t have a full (read:expensive) set up. I’m sure it’s possible.

Today we went out to plant. I dutifully looked in my square foot garden book and felt like I did a pretty good job helping the kids sink the pole bean seeds 1″ deep and 2″ apart. We planted near a trellis that I’d already mounted. Easy when the seeds are big (the Kentucky Wonder Pole and the Climbing French “pole beans”) but when we went out front to plant the basil seeds…a different story. How are you supposed to “plant” these? We made two long furrows about 1/4″ deep, tried to sprinkle the seeds in, and then covered with some compost mixed with dirt. (Picture below). We put the chicken wire on to keep the cat away.

I guess when you get 250 seeds for $1.75, you hope that you get ten good plants and you’re still waaaayy ahead of a trip to Lowe’s.

Anyway, April 20th: pole beans planted, two rows of basil planted.

Coda: We had an awesome architect come to school to talk about food, gardening, and building design. His major point: we can recognize almost any brand name, millions of different structures, but usually have no idea what a particular plant looks like. I realized that if I were confronted by twelve seeds I’d have no chance on most of them; who knew that Basil seeds would be so frickin’ tiny. And I haven’t even opened the carrot packet yet which is scary ’cause I’ve heard those are even smaller.

Re-reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma with my students and got to thinking: yeah, I can try and eat real food, not food-like substances. But I thought about another approach that might be helpful:

Don’t bring anything contained in plastic into your house.

For us, this would mean the following:

we would have to buy our meat at a butcher so it would come wrapped in paper. Not easy but between Whole Wallet and Wegmans, we could probably do it.

we would have to buy our bread at a bakery. We have two terrific bakeries within a mile of our house — Four Worlds and Metropolitan — so that’s within range. Of course, we’d have to convince our kids to eat bread with “things in it” but again, possible.

fruits and vegetables are probably the easiest and the no plastic prohibition would encourage this because these can be bought loose. We love orange juice but I’m betting I could find enough juice oranges to make this work because orange juice is expensive. Or we could just buy orange juice in a glass container.

pasta — harder. Almost all the pasta we buy comes in a box with a plastic sleeve. I have a pasta machine but I am not making pasta on a regular basis. Have to check the packaging next time I’m in the store — does at least one pasta company trust that people know the difference between vermicelli and spaghetti enough to have all cardboard packaging — or see if there’s a place to buy dry pasta (I don’t think our local coop has enough dry pasta to pull this off) We could buy rice in big sacks — do those sacks have a big of plastic in them — so that’s within range.

Then we’re left with all the snack foods — pretzels, dried bagel chips, chips, granola bars — which we could certainly, certainly live without. Some, like granola bars and bagel chips, I could make with enough free time. And none of these foods are necessary.

Not only would this approach help with eating, it would address our trash each week. Even after recycling and composting, we still have a single garbage can that we manage to fill up each week. Some of that is cat litter, some of it is wasted food that I can’t compost, but nearly all of it is non-recyclable plastic.

Just an idea that I’m sure someone else had first.