Diary of a Mad Triathlete

15 in 1 Million

2009-03-28T21:23:00.001-05:00

If I tri'd right now, I suspect I'd be one of these 15:

Study: Triathlons can pose deadly heart risks

By Marilynn Marchione, AP Medical Writer | March 28, 2009

ORLANDO, Fla. --Warning to weekend warriors: Swim-bike-run triathlons pose at least twice the risk of sudden death as marathons do, the first study of these competitions has found.

The risk is mostly from heart problems during the swimming part. And while that risk is low -- about 15 out of a million participants -- it's not inconsequential, the study's author says.

Triathlons are soaring in popularity, especially as charity fundraisers. They are drawing many people who are not used to such demanding exercise. Each year, about 1,000 of these events are held and several hundred thousand Americans try one.

"It's something someone just signs up to do," often without a medical checkup to rule out heart problems, said Dr. Kevin Harris, a cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. "They might prepare for a triathlon by swimming laps in their pool. That's a lot different than swimming in a lake or a river."

He led the study and presented results Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Florida. The Minneapolis institute's foundation sponsored the work and tracks athlete-related sudden deaths in a national registry.

Marathon-related deaths made headlines in November 2007 when 28-year-old Ryan Shay died while competing in New York in the men's marathon Olympic trials. Statistics show that for every million participants in these 26.2-mile running races, there will be four to eight deaths.

The rate for triathletes is far higher -- 15 out of a million, the new study shows. Almost all occurred during the swim portion, usually the first event.

"Anyone that jumps into freezing cold water knows the stress on the heart," said Dr. Lori Mosca, preventive cardiology chief at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and an American Heart Association spokeswoman. She had no role in the study but has competed in more than 100 triathlons, including the granddaddy -- Hawaii's Ironman competition.

Cold water constricts blood vessels, making the heart work harder and aggravating any pre-existing problems. It also can trigger an irregular heartbeat. On top of this temperature shock is the stress of competition.

"It's quite frightening -- there are hundreds of people thrashing around. You have to keep going or you're going to drown," Mosca said.

Swimmers can't easily signal for help or slow down to rest during swimming as they can in the biking or running parts of a triathlon, said Harris, who also has competed in these events. Rescuers may have trouble spotting someone in danger in a crowd of competitors in the lakes, rivers and oceans where these events typically are held, he added.

For the study, researchers used records on 922,810 triathletes competing in 2,846 USA Triathlon-sanctioned events between January 2006 and September 2008.

Of the 14 deaths identified, 13 occurred during swimming; the other was a bike crash. Autopsies on six of the victims showed that four had underlying heart problems. Two others had normal-looking hearts, but they may have suffered a fatal heart rhythm problem, Harris said.

A search of the Minneapolis registry and the Internet found four other triathlon-related deaths from 2006 through 2008 beyond those that occurred in the officially sanctioned events.

"While not a large risk, this is not an inconsequential number," Harris said.

Fundraising triathlons have enticed many runners to try to expand into areas like swimming, which they may not have learned to do very efficiently, to benefit particular charities, Mosca said.

"They're really recruiting people to do these events," she said. "It can be a recipe for disaster."

Doctors offer these tips to anyone considering a triathlon:

--Get a checkup to make sure you don't have hidden heart problems.

--Train adequately long before the event, including open-water swims -- not just in pools.

--Acclimate yourself to the water temperature shortly before a race, and wear a wetsuit if it's too cold.

--Make sure the race has medical staff and defibrillators on site.

----

On the Net:

Heart meeting: http://www.acc.org

American Heart Association: http://americanheart.org

Registry: http://www.suddendeathathletes.org

Clanking Along

2009-03-23T19:05:00.002-05:00

It was a pretty rough week -- ran five miles a week ago on Monday, then slacked off all week. Felt MS-y as hell all week, with sore muscles, dizziness, spasms, exhaustion, the whole deal. Primary doc is sending me to a neurologist for more workups.

At least the eye doctor didn't turn up anything.

But I digress. A bit of a busy week on the home front, harvesting chickens. We only had one Headless Flopper out of a couple dozen. The kids were appropriately horrified by the whole process.

Got out and ran a 5-K tonight. Felt a bit like the Tin Man, rumbling and clanking along Raponda Lake Road. It's a bit cold, wind chill dropping down to zero tonight. It'll be spring here one of these days.

A Running Fool

2009-03-10T14:43:00.003-05:00

I'm getting there. Slowly, but getting there. A dozen miles here, a dozen there ... and pretty soon, you're at 30-40 per week. It's slow, and it's frustrating, but I feel a bit better every time I run (although after a four-mile run early this morning, I'm pretty wasted. Still getting a bit of energy back, and a ton of of work done at the day job).

And here's my personal moment of Zen. It's epic viewing, if you haven't seen it:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Economic Crisis

Sue Me, I'm Sad

2009-03-03T14:05:00.003-05:00

Stuck in Town Meeting for most of the day. Sigh. Trying to get some work done. So far, it's two big and good votes (keep a penny tax for economic development in the Valley, much needed, and throw some money to the non-profit day care center by the library, also much needed).

Lot to do today. Lisa is basically half-handed after the second hand surgery, so I'm running amok. Lots of day job things to do, animals to feed, fires to keep going, meetings to endure, miles to run.

On a sad note: If you've ever driven across Texas for hours and hours and hours, you listened to Paul Harvey. And while you might not have agreed with everything he said, the man had a voice. Calming, even while you disagreed violently with him -- something you can't really can't say about most other talkers. Here's the top half of the NYTimes obituary:

Paul Harvey, who captivated millions of American listeners for nearly six decades with his homespun radio news reports and conservative commentaries, delivered nationally on weekdays in a stentorian staccato, died on Saturday at the Mayo Clinic Hospital near his winter home in Phoenix. He was 90.

Mr. Harvey, who lived in the Chicago suburb of River Forest, died with his family at his side, Louis Adams, an ABC Radio Networks spokesman, told The Associated Press. No cause was given.

Mr. Harvey, who joined ABC in 1951, was forced to suspend his broadcasts for several months in 2001 by a virus that weakened a vocal cord, but he returned to his Chicago studio and remained on the air until recently.

In his heyday, which lasted from the 1950s through the 1990s, Mr. Harvey’s twice-daily soapbox-on-the-air was one of the most popular programs on radio. Audiences of as many as 22 million people tuned in on 1,300 stations to a voice that had been an American institution for as long as most of them could remember.

Like Walter Winchell and Gabriel Heatter before him, he personalized the radio news with his right-wing opinions, but laced them with his own trademarks: a hypnotic timbre, extended pauses for effect, heart-warming tales of average Americans and folksy observations that evoked the heartland, family values and the old-fashioned plain talk one heard around the dinner table on Sunday.

“Hello, Americans,” he barked. “This is Paul Harvey! Stand byyy for Newwws!”

He railed against welfare cheats and defended the death penalty. He worried about the national debt, big government, bureaucrats who lacked common sense, permissive parents, leftist radicals and America succumbing to moral decay. He championed rugged individualism, love of God and country, and the fundamental decency of ordinary people.

“You can almost hear the amber waves of grain,” the comedian Danny Thomas told him.

Mr. Harvey was unapologetic. “I have never pretended to objectivity,” he once said. “I have a strong point of view, and I share it with my listeners. I have no illusions about changing the world, but to the extent that I can I’d like to shelter your and my little corner of it.”

He loved human-interest stories, and the one-liners he tacked on to them. “Nudists in Lakeland, Florida, are upset that outsiders are sneaking a peek through a hole in their fence,” he intoned. “The police promise to look into it.”

Or: “A man called the I.R.S. and asked if birth control pills could be deducted. The I.R.S. worker, not missing a beat, came back and said, ‘Only if they don’t work.’ ”

Or: “White House occupants come and go. They are just like diapers. They should be changed often, and for the same reasons.”

In a format virtually unchanged over the years, his style was stop-and-go, with superb pacing and silences that rivaled Jack Benny’s. He spoke directly to the listener, with punchy sentences, occasional exclamations of “Good heavens!” or “Oh, my goodness!” and pauses that squeezed out the last drop of suspense: the radio broadcaster’s equivalent of the raised eyebrow or the knowing grin.

He was a wordsmith, too, banging scripts out on a typewriter, and rightly or wrongly was credited with inventing the terms “Reaganomics,” “skyjackers,” and “guesstimate.” Listeners came to expect stock cues: “Stay tuned for the rest of the story,” and “May I have your undivided attention for just a moment.”

More Snow. And Ice.

2009-03-02T16:17:00.002-05:00

Took Lisa down to the hospital for her second hand surgery today. Enjoyed my first ice-slip of the entire year -- right down on the elbow. Ouch. Hurt like hell.

Thinking today is maybe not such a good running day, after all.

Here's my fun thought du jour, courtesy of Ben Sargent:

The Skating Rink

2009-02-27T22:59:00.004-05:00

Went for another 5-K tonight. I'm dragging in the mornings, so it seems to make sense. At least, it usually makes sense, but not so much tonight. It warmed up something wild today, temperature in the low 50s, then started raining late afternoon. It had cooled off quite a bit by 8p when I dropped 10 dozen eggs off at the market and started out running on Raponda Road. This limited my choices; I could run on an icy road, I could run in snowdrifts, or I could run in ankle-deep, muddy water.

The good news is, I only fell down once.

Based on tonight's run, I'd say mud season is coming early. I know better, though. We haven't had a single nor'easter this winter -- at least, I don't think we've had one -- which means it's going to be a rough March. Still, it feels really good to run, and it even feels really good to run in the rain. For some odd reason, running in the rain makes me feel like I'm going to be a runner again.

In other news, we're adjusting to the new chickens. We got 65 of them -- 25 production Reds, 35 Aruacanas, and five Buff Orpingtons. The first few nights were rough; the peep-peep-peep coming from the brooder in the bathroom doesn't make for great sleeping. But I'm getting used to them again.

Other animal news. The kids in the dairy goats are starting to kick. We've lost one Nigerian doe; poor girl hung herself in a hay net. My lead milk goat, North Star, miscarried. But we've still got three does in the family way, and you can feel the little kids occasionally. For some reason, they get a little more active when Stink, the famous border collie, wanders into the goat barn.

(Why is Stink famous? Check this out.)

Busy week ahead. Lisa and I went into Brattleboro today to find a jeweler who could cut her wedding ring off her finger. She hasn't taken it off forever, so it had to be cut off before her carpal tunnel surgery on Monday -- the second of two. Anyway, the jeweler directed us to the fire department, and we had a trio of firefighters snip the ring. Because this is her second surgery in the last month, she'll be dealing with roughly half of one hand. So it's going to be a busy week or two while she gets her hands back.

Running at Night

2009-02-26T22:40:00.001-05:00

A long time since I had a night run. Seems like I've run in the early morning forever. But I tried it on Wednesday, and it worked out OK. A bit slow, but still OK. Lots of stars, not so much ice.

Trying to keep pace to do 12 miles this week.

A Good Sore. I Hope.

2009-02-23T22:25:00.004-05:00

Starting running again always hurts. Always.

It's sore, but it's a good sore.

Blew the snow off the driveway, all 650 feet of it, at lunch. That was my workout du jour.

Cold outside, below zero with the wind chill. I'll try running tomorrow, hope for less wind.

And, as always, less triteness in the blog.

Held for Questioning

2009-02-22T18:18:00.002-05:00

So I've been feeling hugely bad for the last ... hell, the last two months or so. Doctors looking into things, poking around, trying to figure what's wrong. Everything from semi-benign little owies like low calcium, thyroid imbalance and weight gain (!) to things we'd rather not talk about, places we really don't want to go.

The consistent advice that I've gotten, though, is that I need to exercise. I've been sleeping 12-14 hours per day, feeling tired all the time even so. This morning I got up and ran, 5K. At least, I started to run 5K. But I was interrupted.

Held for questioning, as it were.

I'd made about a mile down a lakefront road about 815a this morning, hoping to beat a big snowstorm and still have time to get to the hardware store for a new bathtub stopper (part of another diagnostic test. Really). It wasn't too bad; I was stumbling a bit, but there wasn't heavy tourist traffic, it wasn't too windy, and it hadn't started to snow yet. I was feeling OK, even after the three marked and one unmarked state police cars converged on me.

Understand, four state police cars in one location in Vermont can only mean one of three things: Community event with free food, lunch break, or very bad news. Predictably, it was the latter. They were looking for a short (me) male (me) in his mid-30s (me, about a decade ago) in a blue sweatshirt (me again) with a beard.

It was a bit frosty, so I was wearing a neck warmer that covered my face. I couldn't help but notice the hands on the guns. One of the morals of the story: Keep your ID with you. I handed over my driver's license and sat while they ran it. A few questions later, I was back on the road, plodding along. Turns out the aforementioned short, bearded, young male in the blue sweatshirt had been threatening an ex-girlfriend. The troopers were ... professional, but made me very happy I didn't have a beard.

Got enough health problems going on without lead poisoning.

I'll catch up more later.

An Afternoon in the Life

2008-12-07T20:42:00.003-05:00

It occurs to me that late afternoons are busy. Today was typical:

I took a bucket of spoiled fruit and veggies to the pigs around 4p, then got the goats out of the shed and helped them jump the electric fence. They wandered over to share the lettuce with the pigs while I went to the car and got some mulch hay for the little pig house. It's supposed to be cold, wind chill around -15. We really don't want the pigs to come down with pneumonia two weeks before the butcher makes it here.

The pig's water tub was frozen, so I flipped the ice out and poured an eight-gallon bucket of water into it. We threw some more grain and corn into a bucket and gave that to the pigs. With the goats and pigs occupied, we moved along to the chickens and other goats.

First thing is feeding the broilers, lifting a 50-pound sack of grain and dumping about a third of it into the feeder. I also refilled the watering fount and a five-gallon water bucket for the ducks, then gave everyone a scoop or two of loose whole corn. Lisa dumped about five pounds of lettuce into the pen, and we were done with the broilers.

(Hopefully, we'll be really and truly done with the broilers soon).

We got 18 eggs out of the laying henhouse and put grain in their feeder. We gave the Nigerian goats grain, fresh hay and water, and threw about 10 pounds of lettuce to the laying hens and turkeys. Then we cleaned up the Nigerian buck's hooves -- he's got problems with his feet -- and poured a bucket of water into the laying hens' waterer.

I went to the market to get a pig bucket and scooted by the grocery. By the time I made it back, Lisa retrieved the big goats from the pig pasture and milked the doe. She also gave them fresh hay, grain and water.

Time from start to finish? About an hour and 15 minutes. And that doesn't include shoo-ing the border collies out of the way periodically.

A Nice Story

2008-11-28T15:01:00.002-05:00

I don't think I'll ever make 30 years, but it's nice to see a kid who's so proud of her dad:

Last month, my dad celebrated the 30th anniversary of his running streak.

In other words, he has run every day for 10,987 consecutive days. The last time he took a pass -- he was feeling a bit sore after a marathon -- was Oct. 30, 1978.

Obsessive doesn't begin to describe it.

When he travels overseas, my dad, who is 66, plans layovers so he can get in a couple miles around the concourse, lest he miss a day to the time-zone shift. During blizzards, he wraps his feet in plastic bags, pulls galoshes over his sneakers and screws in cleats for traction. Then he waits for a snowplow to pass his front door, so he can follow in the freshly cleared path.

My father, Dr. Harvey B. Simon, practices internal medicine in Boston and teaches at Harvard Medical School. Rationally, he knows that running 10 miles a day, every day, for three decades is not great for his ever-more-creaky body. He'd never advise his patients to do it. In fact, he's written several health and fitness books stressing the virtue of moderation in exercise. And yet....

He's run with broken toes and the flu and a nasty infected heel and near-crippling back spasms. He goes out before dawn in every kind of weather; he's become such a fixture in the neighborhood that a couple times when a freak thunderstorm has rolled in, strangers have driven out to find him. They didn't know his name. They just knew he'd be out there, plodding away, and figured he might appreciate a ride home.

My dad isn't alone in this nutty obsession. The U.S. Running Streak Association lists 31 members who have been running daily for 30 years or more. The reigning champ is a running coach out of California by the name of Mark Covert. He hasn't missed a day since he was 17. He's now 57.

Every streaker has a story of inspired persistence -- or, viewed another way, lunacy. One tells of holding his catheter aloft as he hobbled out after surgery. Another ran on a cruise ship -- during a tropical storm.

Ronald Kmiec, a concert pianist in Carlisle, Mass., jogged for four days through severe chest pains, until his wife dragged him to the hospital. Turned out he'd had a heart attack. He was so determined to keep the streak alive, he asked the nurse to take him to a treadmill. She nixed that idea, and his streak ended one day short of 32 years. (Undaunted, Mr, Kmiec got right back on the road and completed his 35th consecutive Boston Marathon five months later.)

Why do they do this? All kinds of reasons. Some streakers say they commune with God during their daily runs. Others think through knotty problems at work. The run structures the day; gives a sense of order to a hectic life.

As streakers grow older, their accomplishment also represents a triumph over aging. You don't give in to aches and pains; you conquer them. You don't wallow in anxiety; you lace up your sneakers. You feel, if not invincible, at least indomitable, and it's not hard to see why; if you're still doing at 66 the same thing you did at 36, you must be doing all right.

My dad started running for health reasons after my mom ordered him to lose weight. He has a family history of heart disease, and he soon found that regular exercise kept his cholesterol and blood pressure under control. I'm sure that's one motivation for the streak.

But the main reason, truly, is that he loves getting out there in the first rays of morning, letting his mind drift, with nothing to do but take the next step. He started the streak, he says, because he got tired of spending every cold, dark morning debating with himself about whether to go out. "I figured, why waste time debating? I'd just go out every day," he says. "So I did."

When people ask why he doesn't take just one day off, he shrugs and says, "I like to run."

Asked how he's kept at it so long, he responds: "Left, right, left, right."

His stride, never all that fluent, has broken down over the last 100,000 miles to the point that he now has what the family politely refers to as a "distinctive gait." His hip hurts. He's slow. And still... left, right, left, right.

When he hit 25 years, my dad talked about pulling a "Cal Ripken Jr.," after the Baltimore Orioles infielder who benched himself one day when he was perfectly healthy, putting an end to an incredible streak of playing in 2,632 consecutive games. Mr. Ripken had wanted to end the streak on his own terms, not wait for injury to force him out. My father said that sounded good. But I knew in my heart he'd never do it.

The streak is too much a part of him.

I worry about that sometimes. He's proud of his streak, and I think his running longevity -- the fact that he's prevailed against injury, weather and all the rest -- has strengthened his spirit. He's a born optimist, but the streak has made him even more confident, even more resilient.

What will happen when it ends?

On one level, I know that's a ridiculous question. The streak does not define my dad. He still practices and teaches medicine; he still writes and edits. He and my mom take art history courses, study music, volunteer, travel.

But still, I worry.

In running -- in streaking, in particular -- my dad has found an outlet to express personality traits that might otherwise stay submerged. He's a humble and reserved man, but his streak is such a goofy accomplishment that he's given himself license to celebrate it.

For his 10-year anniversary, he threw himself a 10K race -- a "ten-athon." He carried the invitations on his runs, because he wanted to hand them out to all the friends he knew only by first name -- fellow joggers who would fall in with him for a few blocks or a few miles every week. My dad made some good friends this way; there is a true camaraderie on the streets at 5 a.m.

When I was 8 or 9, I started running with him, too -- after he'd put in 10 or 12 miles on his own. It was my best chance to spend time with him. When I flagged, he'd keep me going by recounting the latest Red Sox game in dramatic, play-by-play detail. I'm quite sure he made most of it up, but I was always riveted.

Running with me let my father indulge his screwball sense of humor. One year, we ran in a road race just before Thanksgiving, and though it wasn't supposed to be a costumed affair, my dad talked me into dressing like a chef, with a giant tin-foil cleaver. He put on a turkey costume and as per his instructions, I spent the entire 5-mile route a few steps behind him, waving the cleaver and shouting: "Come back here, you turkey!"

I haven't run with him for years, but he recently sent me a ratty T-shirt he found in my childhood room, from a road race we ran in 1983. I often wear it when I work out, and I think back with a smile on all those runs with dad.

The U.S. Running Streak Association requires members to run at least one continuous mile a day to remain on the active list. (It's all based on the honor system, but as founder John J. Strumsky Jr. asks, "What would be the point of lying?") The association also keeps an honor roll of retired streaks. As I glanced over it, the fourth-place entry caught my eye. Lawrence Sundberg, a retired schoolteacher from Farmington, Conn., had clocked a streak that lasted exactly 30 years -- from New Year's Day 1977 through New Year's Eve 2006. It looked to me like he had pulled a Cal Ripken, and when I called, he said that was it exactly.

"With something like this, either it's going to end you, or you're going to end it," he said.

Mr. Sundberg said he spent six months mentally preparing for the end, and when the appointed day came, he was ready -- though he did startle awake at 11 p.m. and briefly contemplate keeping the streak alive on a moonlit run.

In the two years since, Mr. Sundberg says he has missed just four or five runs. "I still go out at 5:30 a.m. most days," he said. "But I don't have to."

He's adjusted so well that I consider urging my dad to talk with him.

But then.... My dad likes to run. He's happy out on the sidewalk at dawn. Left, right. Left, right.

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

It's Been A While

2008-11-22T20:38:00.003-05:00

... but I've been busy. Odd how busy you can become when your company announces plans for layoffs in the spring. And unlike every other company in our industry, mine doesn't have plans for buyouts, which traditionally have eased the pain of getting fired.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Spent a chunk of this afternoon with the chainsaw, taking down a few final trees. I'll spend most of tomorrow hauling them out of the woods, dumping them on the driveway, loading them in the Outback, taking them up the driveway, throwing them out of the Outback, and stacking them underneath Will's window.

If nothing else, a good upper-body workout.

The End Is Near

2008-11-07T14:33:00.001-05:00

Root cellaring in New York? The end, indeed, must be near ...

November 6, 2008

Food Storage as Grandma Knew It

By MICHAEL TORTORELLO

IN a strictly technical sense, Cynthia Worley is not transforming her basement into a time machine. Yet what’s going on this harvest season beneath her Harlem brownstone on 122nd Street, at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, is surely something out of the past — or perhaps the future.

The space itself is nothing special: Whitewashed granite walls run the width and depth of the room, 16 feet by 60 feet. A forgotten owner tried to put in a cement floor, but the dirt, which takes a long-term view of things, is stubbornly coming back. “It’s basically a sod floor,” Ms. Worley said.

What’s important is that the shelves are sturdy, because Ms. Worley and her husband, Haja Worley, will soon load them with 20 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of onions, 30 pounds of butternut and acorn squash, 10 heads of cabbage, 60-odd pints of home-canned tomatoes and preserves, 9 gallons of berry and fruit wines, and another gallon or two of mulberry vinegar.

The goodies in the pint jars and the carboys come from the Joseph Daniel Wilson Memorial Garden, which the Worleys founded across the street. The fresh produce is a huge final delivery from a Community Supported Agriculture farm in Orange County, which they used all summer. Packed in sand and stored at 55 degrees, the potatoes should keep at least until the New Year. The squash could still be palatable on Groundhog Day, and the onions should survive till spring. Ms. Worley, who counsels and teaches adults for the New York City Department of Education, and Mr. Worley, a neighborhood organizer and radio engineer, will let their basement-deprived friends store vegetables, too.

The Worleys, like a number of other Americans, have made the seemingly anachronistic choice to turn their basement into a root cellar. While Ms. Worley’s brownstone basement stash won’t feed the couple through the winter, she said, “I think it’s a healthy way to go and an economical way.”

According to a September survey on consumer anxieties over higher fuel and food prices from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames, 34 percent of respondents said that they were likely to raise more of their own vegetables. Another 37 percent said they were likely to can or freeze more of their food. The cousin to canning and freezing is the root cellar.

Stink

2008-11-06T15:29:00.004-05:00

I noticed I had a good picture of Pepper, but none of Stink, the border collie. His real name is Flash, and he does not look like a Stink here.

But trust me on this one:

Not So Much in Vermont

2008-11-06T14:40:00.002-05:00

Back from a week in Texas, helping out the father. Long story, but he's OK. In my absence, Lisa acquired two Nigerian dwarf goats, which are excellent for cheese. Well, the doe is great; the buck probably won't be much help, unless I want to market Stink-to-High-Heaven cheese to the masses. We'll use him as a breeder, I'm thinking.

Too much catching up to do. But I was charmed by this NYTimes piece today. It's true; I used to run in the city and was always amazed when I made it home safely. Even in Central Park. Never got beaned with a Krispy Kreme, though:

November 6, 2008

FITNESS

Road Runner Rage

By CHRISTOPHER PERCY COLLIER

JEAN KNAACK couldn’t keep a lid on it. While on a six-mile run near her home in Maryland, she raised her water bottle and expelled its contents onto the passenger-side window of a car.

Ms. Knaack, a 115-pound runner, had been jogging on the sidewalk when the vehicle had come within inches of hitting her. The driver had blindly pulled out of an adjacent parking lot, and Ms. Knaack responded with the aggressive squirt, coupled with a few choice expletives.

She did not anticipate what happened next.

The driver pulled the rest of the way out of the parking lot and into the street, whipped around in an intersection, got out of the car, and confronted her. Amid of flurry of profanities, the motorist threatened to strike her with a beer bottle. “The fact that he was so specific really scared me,” she said. “My heart rate shot sky high. I felt like I was going to pass out.”

Even though Ms. Knaack was a seasoned runner — she’s the executive director of the Road Runners Club of America — and is knowledgeable about proper training technique and nutrition, she never got the memo on what do when an angry or negligent motorist takes a workout sideways. That’s because there really isn’t one.

While road rage between cyclists and motorists has drawn some attention lately, adversity has long existed between runners and motorists “on a low level,” says Brent Ayer, the head running coach at Hood College in Frederick, Md., who, years back, was pelted with a jelly doughnut while running.

Not that it’s always the driver’s fault. “I watch runners cut through intersections, cross in the middle of the street, and crowd cars,” Mr. Ayer said. “We are not entirely blameless.”

Another Inspiration Heard From

2008-10-23T18:52:00.001-05:00

A really inspirational story. Well-written, too.

Running for my life: 1 woman's race against time

By LINDA STOWELL, Associated Press Writer – Sat Oct 18, 12:38 pm ET

PHILADELPHIA – The routine was the same as always — the exact way I have grown accustomed to dealing with the hours before a big race. But on that November morning last year, everything else was different.

I had awakened before the sun and come downstairs to all of my running gear, laid out perfectly the night before, exactly as planned. There it all was: bottled water, my fanny pack, gels to eat along the way, my precious iPod with its playlist calibrated just for me. Exactly as planned.

I had even pinned my number to my shirt in advance. Alone, in silence, I ate a banana and a granola bar and half a bagel. Exactly as planned.

I thought to myself: I need this routine. I need to be a robot today.

Nearly five years before this day, before I started running, I had been diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer in my left shin. Then, much later, came the thyroid cancer; they found that one looking for more melanoma. I was 51 and I had two forms of cancer. Now here I was in the middle of chemotherapy — weakened, scared, with more chemo scheduled for the following day. And I was heading out to run a half-marathon on the streets of Philadelphia.

What was I thinking?

I arrived at the starting gate and joined the pack of runners. The sun was coming up. Nearby, I could see the city's art museum, where Rocky climbed the steps in triumph so many years ago.

I never heard the starting gun, but the people ahead of me began to move.

I clicked my iPod. My song came on — "Gonna Fly Now," Rocky's inspiration. Appropriate for Philadelphia, for this race and for me. The tears started coming, as they often do when I begin a run. I brushed them away because I didn't want to irritate my contacts.

And then I ran. Exactly as planned.

I was running for my life, in a sense, though I knew that competition was really unfolding inside my body, far beyond my control. I was running in affirmation, in defiance. I was running to prove that I could, to show that I was not defined by the clusters of renegade cells that were growing within me.

To deal with something in my life that has not, in any conceivable way, gone exactly as planned.

___

I haven't always been a runner. Cancer made me into one.

Two cancers, actually. They're unrelated, which is good. There are two of them, which isn't.

The National Cancer Institute estimates that among the 10.1 million cancer survivors that were alive as of January 1, 2002, about 8 percent had more than one form of cancer diagnosed between 1975 and 2001. Three cancers is "almost unheard of," one doctor told me. I guess I should be thankful for that.

This year, 62,480 cases of melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, are expected in the United States and 37,340 cases of thyroid cancer. While my melanoma was a recurrence, I still saw it as unfair: Fewer than 100,000 people in this country got one of those cancers; I, a regular tennis player and nonsmoker, got both.

The melanoma begat two surgeries — one to take it out and one to make sure it hadn't spread. What's more, I was informed that I could develop lymphedema, a sometimes painful swelling of the leg due after surgery that happens because the lymphatic system has been compromised.

"Unless you want a fat leg, stay on the couch with your leg up. No running and very limited exercise," one oncologist, considered among the best melanoma doctors in the world, told me.

Then, I was not a runner. I'd been intrigued by it and thought I might try it someday — whatever someday might mean. But to be told, at 46, never to run, made me realize that I was too young to be sentenced to a lifetime on the couch.

So I took up running. I started slow and short, built up, pushed myself, gained endurance. I won't say it was easy, but I won't whine, either. I ran my first 5K a year later, then a 10K, then two half-marathons.

My decision to take up running produced varied reactions from my doctors. Most were supportive. Some were concerned. One shook his head and told me not to do it. My brother Bruce, a crack marathon runner, said what many others echoed: Go for it. If you can't do it, your body will tell you so.

His words reassured, but only to a point. Because somewhere along the way, I had stopped trusting my body.

___

When it came to running, at least, my body didn't betray me. So I ran. And then I ran some more.

As I did, I felt thankful that the drugs and surgery hadn't stopped me. And as I ran my physical and metaphoric races, I began to realize that my chosen sport and unchosen condition shared many of the same traits.

Runners, for example, seem to have their own language — PR/PB (personal record, personal best), chip time (finishing time recorded by a small electronic chip), and distances of races like 5K, 10K and of course the 26.2-mile marathon. Cancer, too, has its own language, and terms like PET scan vs CT scans (imaging tools that help doctors pinpoint the location of cancer), stages of cancer, clinical trials and recurrence have become daily conversation points for me.

Runners cheer each other on. The fast ones who finish first populate the sidelines, cheering for those of us still running. Cancer patients do the same thing. During long and frightening days in the cancer center, you see people holding hands and clinging to each other.

Me, I usually huddle in the corner with my work e-mail, trying diligently to forget where I am. When I do talk to my fellow patients, I always hear good news — like the guy with lung cancer who was there alone because his wife couldn't handle it. He wasn't complaining; he was focused on his next vacation and on a recent Eagles game he'd seen.

His goal was not to worry his wife. Mine was more finite. I wanted to race and, like any runner, to win. And I did.

OK, it wasn't winning in the traditional sense. I didn't come in first that day last November; in fact, I crossed the finish line that day way in the back. But for me, it was a more towering personal victory than I could ever have imagined.

My close friend awaited me at the finish. Around the country, my parents, sister and brother were tracking me on the race's Web site. When it crashed, my sister tracked down my friend to find out how I was, how I looked and if I had finished. My brother the doctor, my brother the marathoner, told me later that he was "sweating bullets."

Early this year, two months after I finished the race, I finished chemotherapy. My first post-chemo scan was in April. I would have done just about anything for positive news. And I thought I had done everything right.

On April 15, exactly one year from the first recurrence, the scan showed "uptake" — one of the words thatcancer patients don't want to hear.

It means doctors are seeing "something" — maybe scar tissue, maybe a reaction to the shots, perhaps more cancer. In my case, the uptake was in both the thyroid and melanoma sites. That meant it could be a simultaneous recurrence of both cancers. Every doctor I spoke to said that would be all but unbelievable. And yet suddenly possible.

The news came back a few days later. The good: I did not have both cancers again. And the bad: The melanoma was back.

A day later, I ran. It had become what I do, how I fight back, how I shake my fist and press forward despite feeling like an unseen enemy is always following, always chasing.

It was a local race, only five miles, and I finished. I knew, however, that my metaphoric run — the one against an unseen enemy that just wouldn't go away — was only gearing up.

During the Chicago Marathon last year, which was held in brutal heat, a young man dropped to his knees a half mile before the finish line. Another runner ran by him, stopped, took a few steps back and said something to him.

The first man struggled to his feet. Together, they ran to the finish line.

I still wonder what the runner said to the man who was down that inspired him to get back up. I could use some of that.

___

I began this story with a run, and I end it with one. But first I must tell you about what happened in between.

It is not a happy ending. But neither is it entirely bleak, and in that I find hope.

For me, the summer of 2008 was not a good one. From May to August, I did not run at all. Radiation therapykneecapped me and a debilitating round of chemo made sure I stayed down. For the first time, I lost a significant amount of weight — 15 pounds.

I now feel as if I know what it's like to be in a coma. I called in sick for four days — something I never do — and slept for 15 hours each day. Nothing I ate stayed down.

I was enveloped by my illness. It was controlling me. The fatigue was so intense, the sleep so deep that it was as if a chunk of my life was sucked away. I rose only to take a shower. One afternoon I tried to make tea and slept through the kettle's whistle. I awoke to the kettle burned dry to the stove and belching smoke. I had few conversations; that took too much energy. A trip to the grocery store was overwhelming.

One night around 5 p.m., as I was getting back in bed and closing the shades, I saw neighbors firing up their grills for a summer dinner. I felt as if I was slipping away from the world I knew. I would ask myself: Is this what it's like to die?

One recent day, I met with my doctors. They told me I looked frail. I felt frail. But I responded in a way that, by now, will probably not surprise you:

I ran.

The morning I did, in August, was exactly three months after surgery and 19 days after my treatment ended.

What, I wondered, would happen? I felt slow and stiff. I felt thankfulness and I felt hope — hope that I could do the run after all, hope that the drugs had worked and the cancer was gone.

I powered up my iPod. The same song came on as I had heard during that run last year — a day that now feels as if it happened a lifetime ago. I listened to the lyrics, and they penetrated my brain:

"Won't be long now. Getting strong now. Gonna fly now."

My goal was to run a half-mile without stopping — a small goal in the running world but a big one in the universe I now occupied. The one that mattered most.

I ran two miles. Yes, it took more than a half hour. Yes, it was difficult. But I expected it to be harder. And I didn't expect it to be quite so ... exhilarating. I was not shuffling around, not in a hospital bed or sick from drugs or closing the blinds at 5 p.m. and leaving the world behind. I was outside, and I was running.

I wish I could tell you that the surgery and the drugs worked. But I don't know yet if that's the case. I am setting smaller goals these days, in both my running and my life. My aspirations are more compact than they once were, but they still loom large. My reach, I hope, still exceeds my grasp.

I'd be lying if I told you my future wasn't cloudy. But aren't all futures? My two races are, today, being run in parallel fashion. I am racing against cancer and against my own clock. Under the most adverse of conditions, I am becoming a decent runner.

Few things unfold exactly as planned, it turns out. And now, though I am weakened, I am stronger, too. I can handle more, appreciate more, understand more about the world around me. I can cope with the unknown, too; I'm not happy about it, but I am capable.

And I fight. It's an old metaphor, but it's all I have. I'm fighting to become a runner and a healthy person, and giving up either fight is not an option. I may be in the back of the line for the moment, but I am running two races. I am a dedicated runner now, and I plan on finishing both.

Exactly as planned.

Mild Aggravation

2008-10-20T01:42:00.001-05:00

Busy weekend. Started on the pig winter house. Lost the tape measure somewhere. Also lost the hose nozzle that goes to the pig pasture. And lost two chickens -- it looks like a fisher cat peeled back some of the poultry wire around the coop and killed them. I stapled it up as best as I could, but suspect I won't sleep too well tonight, listening for clucking roosters.

Gotten reacquainted with another book project tonight. More when there's a contract. I suspect I'd better sell books for pleasure before people start buying them for fuel.

Down into the 20s tonight. The cold is coming.

No. 17

2008-10-16T10:42:00.004-05:00

The oldest boy turned 17 today. Sigh. Seems like just yesterday that I was screaming at the lost midwife at 2 a.m. on the telephone:

"You're next to a convenience store in Houston? Well thank you very much! That fucking helps us out a lot! Narrows it down to a billion, doesn't it?! But oh, wait! I've got directions. My check for you is next to another convenience store also in Houston -- you can find the fucker there!"

Lisa was in labor for oh, 35 minutes. Start to finish. Not much fun for her. Shorter, but much more intense. She wasn't terribly sociable. The midwife made it to the door just as John came out.

With the exception of a three-month stretch of colic, he's been good ever since.

Harvesting

2008-10-14T18:06:00.002-05:00

Harvesting potatoes, tomatoes, beans and carrots. While trying to keep goats out of harvest.

Taking goats for long walks. Fence charger blew up during the last storm. Enough voltage to keep pigs inside the pen (thank God) but not so great for goats.

Dealing with crazed tourists wanting more green eggs. I offered to hook them up to a battery charger to amp up production. They wanted to know if that would actually work.

Columbus Day Weekend. It's the second -- or maybe third -- craziest-making holiday of the year.

How Cool Is This?

2008-10-09T04:45:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I wish we lived a little further north:

October 8, 2008

Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town

By MARIAN BURROS

HARDWICK, Vt.

THIS town’s granite companies shut down years ago and even the rowdy bars and porno theater that once inspired the nickname “Little Chicago” have gone.

Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.

With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism.

Rob Lewis, the town manager, said these enterprises have added 75 to 100 jobs to the area in the past few years.

Rian Fried, an owner of Clean Yield Asset Management in nearby Greensboro, which has invested with local agricultural entrepreneurs, said he’s never seen such cooperative effort.

“Across the country a lot of people are doing it individually but it’s rare when you see the kind of collective they are pursuing,” said Mr. Fried, whose firm considers social and environmental issues when investing. “The bottom line is they are providing jobs and making it possible for others to have their own business.”

In January, Andrew Meyer’s company, Vermont Soy, was selling tofu from locally grown beans to five customers; today he has 350. Jasper Hill Farm has built a $3.2-million aging cave to finish not only its own cheeses but also those from other cheesemakers.

Pete Johnson, owner of Pete’s Greens, is working with 30 local farmers to market their goods in an evolving community supported agriculture program.

“We have something unique here: a strong sense of community, connections to the working landscape and a great work ethic,” said Mr. Meyer, who was instrumental in moving many of these efforts forward.

He helped start the Center for an Agricultural Economy, a nonprofit operation that is planning an industrial park for agricultural businesses.

Next year the Vermont Food Venture Center, where producers can rent kitchen space and get business advice for adding value to raw ingredients, is moving to Hardwick from Fairfax, 40 miles west, because, Mr. Meyer said, “it sees the benefit of being part of the healthy food system.” He expects it to assist 15 to 20 entrepreneurs next year.

“All of us have realized that by working together we will be more successful as businesses,” said Tom Stearns, owner of High Mowing Organic Seeds. “At the same time we will advance our mission to help rebuild the food system, conserve farmland and make it economically viable to farm in a sustainable way.”

Cooperation takes many forms. Vermont Soy stores and cleans its beans at High Mowing, which also lends tractors to High Fields, a local compositing company. Byproducts of High Mowing’s operation — pumpkins and squash that have been smashed to extract seeds — are now being purchased by Pete’s Greens and turned into soup. Along with 40,000 pounds of squash and pumpkin, Pete’s bought 2,000 pounds of High Mowing’s cucumbers this year and turned them into pickles

For the past two years, many of these farmers and businessmen have met informally once a month to share experiences for business planning and marketing or pass on information about, say, a graphic designer who did good work on promotional materials or government officials who’ve been particularly helpful. They promote one another’s products at trade fairs and buy equipment at auctions that they know their colleagues need.

More important, they share capital. They’ve lent each other about $300,000 in short-term loans. When investors visited Mr. Stearns over the summer, he took them on a tour of his neighbors’ farms and businesses.

To expand these enterprises further, the Center for an Agricultural Economy recently bought a 15-acre property to start a center for agricultural education. There will also be a year-round farmers’ market (from what began about 20 years ago as one farmer selling from the trunk of his car on Main Street) and a community garden, which started with one plot and now has 22, with a greenhouse and a paid gardening specialist.

Last month the center signed an agreement with the University of Vermont for faculty and students to work with farmers and food producers on marketing, research, even transportation problems. Already, Mr. Meyer has licensed a university patent to make his Vermont Natural Coatings, an environmentally friendly wood finish, from whey, a byproduct of cheesemaking.

These entrepreneurs, mostly well educated children of baby boomers who have added business acumen to the idealism of the area’s long established hippies and homesteaders, are in the right place at the right time. The growing local-food movement, with its concerns about energy usage, food safety and support for neighbors, was already strong in Vermont, a state that the National Organic Farmers’ Association said had more certified organic acreage per capita than any other.

Mr. Meyer grew up on a dairy farm in Hardwick and worked in Washington as an agricultural aide to former Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont. “From my time in Washington,” Mr. Meyer said, “I recognize that if Vermont is going to have a future in agriculture we need to look at what works in Vermont, and that is not commodity agriculture.”

The brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler have found something that works quite well at their Jasper Hill Farm in nearby Greensboro. At first they aged their award-winning cheeses in a basement. Then they began aging for other cheesemakers. Earlier this month they opened their new caves, with space for 2 million pounds of cheese, which they buy young from other producers.

The Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont is helping producers develop safety and quality programs, with costs split by Jasper Hill and the producers. “Suddenly being a cheesemaker in Vermont becomes viable,” Mateo Kehler said.

Pete Johnson began a garden when he was a boy on his family’s land. Now his company, Pete’s Greens, grows organic crops on 50 acres in Craftsbury, about 10 miles north of here. He has four moveable greenhouses, extending the growing season to nine months, and he has installed a commercial kitchen that can make everything from frozen prepared foods and soup stocks to baked goods and sausages. In addition he has enlarged the concept of the C.S.A. by including 30 farmers and food producers rather than just a single farm.

“We have 200 C.S.A. participants so we’ve become a fairly substantial customer of some of these businesses,” he said. “The local beef supplier got an order for $700 this week; that’s pretty significant around here. We’ve encouraged the apple producer who makes apple pies to use local flour, local butter, local eggs, maple sugar as well as the apples so now we have a locavore apple pie.”

“Twelve years ago the market for local food was lukewarm,” Mr. Johnson added. “Now this state is primed for anything that is local. It’s a way to preserve our villages and rebuild them.”

Like Mr. Johnson, Mr. Stearns of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Wolcott, who is president of the Center, knew he wanted to get into agriculture when he was a boy. His company, which grew from his hobby of collecting seeds, began in 2000 with a two-page catalog that generated $36,000 in sales. Today he has a million-dollar business, selling seeds all over the United States.

Woody Tasch, chairman of Investors Circle, a nonprofit network of investors and foundations dedicated to sustainability, said: “What the Hardwick guys are doing is the first wave of what could be a major social transformation, the swinging back of the pendulum from industrialization and globalization.”

Mr. Tasch is having a meeting in nearby Grafton next month with investors, entrepreneurs, nonprofit groups, philanthropists and officials to discuss investing in Vermont agriculture.

Here in Hardwick, Claire’s restaurant, sort of a clubhouse for farmers, began with investments from its neighbors. It is a Community Supported Restaurant. Fifty investors who put in $1,000 each will have the money repaid through discounted meals at the restaurant over four years.

“Local ingredients, open to the world,” is the motto on restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows. “There’s Charlie who made the bread tonight,” Kristina Michelsen, one of four partners, said in a running commentary one night, identifying farmers and producers at various tables. “That’s Pete from Pete’s Greens. You’re eating his tomatoes.”

Rosy as it all seems, some worry that as businesses grow larger the owners will be tempted to sell out to companies that would not have Hardwick’s best interests at heart.

But the participants have reason to be optimistic: Mr. Stearns said that within one week six businesses wanted to meet with him to talk about moving to the Hardwick area.

“Things that seemed totally impossible not so long ago are now going to happen,” said Mr. Kehler. “In the next few years a new wave of businesses will come in behind us. So many things are possible with collaboration.”

No. 300

2008-10-08T23:42:00.000-05:00

A busy, busy month.

Bought the new goat. She's an Alpine, giving us about two quarts of milk every day. Will loves the stuff. John hates it. I saved up enough milk to make a two-pound wheel of goat's milk cheddar over the weekend that's ready for aging. I'll provide a report when it's ready.

Garden worked out OK. The corn was flattened by what was left of Hurricane Ike, but we have more than 100 pints of tomato sauce canned and ready to go. We've got about 50 pints of salsa verde with tomatillos and onions from the CSA. We've got about 50 pints of carrots and about 50 pints of green beans. We've got onions, scallions, blackberries, blueberries, peaches, nectarines, celery, broccoli, bell pepper, herbs and pesto in the freezer. We'll soon have 50 broilers -- they're getting huge -- and three pigs.

I'd say we're ready for winter, but not quite.

The chainsaw blew a piston, and fixing it ran about $200. I took a few days of vacation from the Day Job to finish up this week. The blade was getting a bit dull -- that'll happen when you pinch it in a tall beech tree, like I did -- so I took it to the shop for a quick sharpening. Turns out the replaced piston now needs replacing. Ack. Anyway, at this rate, I'll have our winter wood done by April or so.

We're certainly not ready for the Greater Depression.

But it's not winter just yet, nor has the Greater Depression totally kicked off. And it is gorgeous. The leaves are peaking in southern Vermont this week:

A nice story from this week's WSJ that reminds me I need to get off my ass:

OCTOBER 7, 2008, 9:52 A.M. ET

Crash Survivor Scores Rare Triathlon Invite

Wall Street Exec Trains for Legendary Ironman Race

By JEN MURPHY

A.C. Morgan will line up among 1,800 other racers to test his body's physical and mental limits in Kona, Hawaii at the Ironman World Championships Saturday. The grueling race is the Super Bowl of triathlons, consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run in crosswinds that can reach 60 miles per hour and temperatures that can reach 95 degrees with 90% humidity.

A.C. Morgan

A.C. Morgan, seen during a triathlon in Rhode Island in July.

Ten years ago Mr. Morgan wasn't even sure if he'd ever walk again. A plane crash left him with two broken vertebrae in his neck and 30 percent of his body covered in burns. "I had a 50-50 shot at life," Mr. Morgan recalls. "I had to learn everything all over again -- how to brush my teeth, walk, go to the bathroom." Mr. Morgan's entire left arm was burned except for one spot. "I have a complete outline where my Timex Ironman watch was. It is the only spot on my arm where I have hair." The outline reminded Mr. Morgan of Timex's old ad, "It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'." He called the company to pitch himself as the subject of its next ad only to discover the campaign had been discontinued. But company representatives said if he ever wanted to do the Ironman he should call back. Mr. Morgan recalls thinking, "I can't even go to the bathroom by myself."

Before the accident Mr. Morgan had competed in sprint triathlons. After physical therapy he returned to the gym five or six days a week to lift weights and ride the Lifecycle bike for 30 minutes. In 2006, Mr. Morgan found himself listening to a client describing how he had competed in the Ironman and it made him remember the Timex offer. He wrote the company to retell his story of the plane crash and his watch "tattoo." In June 2007 he received a surprising call from Herbie Calves, Timex's vice president of sports marketing, asking whether he wanted an Ironman World Championship number for 2007 or 2008. He opted for 2008.

The 38-year-old Mr. Morgan, who co-manages U.S. equity sales trading at J.P. Morgan in New York, has since reprioritized his life to focus on training. He lives in Darien, Conn., and is married with two children. He stands 6-foot-1 and weights 180 pounds.

The Workout
Sponsorships allow many Ironman competitors to train full time. Mr. Morgan doesn't have that luxury. Before he began training for the race, he awoke at 4:30 a.m. to catch the 4:50 a.m. train to midtown Manhattan. Now, he wakes up at 3:20 a.m. three days a week to ride, run or swim for an hour before work. In January, Mr. Morgan hired a personal trainer who creates workouts he can download to his Blackberry. He can call her any time he has questions or needs motivation. "The other day I wasn't feeling the 22-mile run and she tells me, 'Think 22 miles plus 100% humidity on black lava.' I pay for that," he says. In addition to his morning workouts, he sometimes tacks on an additional run or bike ride after work, depending on what his trainer recommends.

On weekends, Mr. Morgan swims at his local YMCA and bikes 100 to 120 miles, followed by a 30- to 40-minute run. In bad weather, he puts his bike on a trainer so he can cycle inside while watching episodes of the HBO comedy "Entourage." According to the Ironman media guide, the average competitor trains between 18 and 30-plus hours per week: about seven miles per week swimming, 225 miles per week biking and 48 miles per week running. Mr. Morgan says his typical week sees him swim five miles, bike 150 to 170 miles and run 30 miles. To prepare himself for race day, he competed in two half-Ironmans, one in May and one in June.

Sample Workout

Mon. – Rest day

Tues.-Thurs. – 60-minute run, bike or swim

Sat. – Bike 120 miles followed immediately by a three-mile run.

Sun. – 20-mile run; swim.

Mr. Morgan hit a hurdle last October when he developed plantar fasciitis, a painful inflammation in the foot most often felt in the heel. "I can't get rid of it," he says. "You really have to walk away from [training] for it to heal, but I can't afford to." He goes to a doctor in the city once a week for laser treatment to break down the scar tissue and has also ordered custom orthotics for his sneakers. He stretches daily to ease the pain.

The Diet
Eating more and more often is Mr. Morgan's new dietetic challenge. "I could go home and eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's every night and still lose weight," he says. Mr. Morgan estimates that he has lost 15 pounds since he started training. To maintain his energy, he tries to eat every three hours. In the morning he has Raisin Bran topped with a banana and skim milk, followed by a cup of coffee and an energy bar. After his workout he has a recovery drink. He eats lunch at his desk, usually a turkey sandwich on whole wheat, which he orders in. "I probably eat chicken, vegetables and pasta seven nights a week, 365 days a year," he says.

Many athletes drastically change their diet during training. "I don't have free time to weigh everything and I'm not a bad eater," says Mr. Morgan, who instead paid Trismarter.com, a company that specializes in designing nutrition and exercise programs for triathletes, to create a diet plan specifically focused on the two days leading up to the race and the race day. He says it recommends hydrating every 10 minutes during the cycling portion. Mr. Morgan set his watch to beep every time he needs to rehydrate or refuel, ingesting calories from Gu, an energy gel, and Fig Newtons. During the run he ingests Gu every hour and drinks water or Gatorade at every mile marker.

The Cost
Tens of thousands of athletes try to get one of the coveted 1,800 spots through a lottery or by winning a spot at one of the qualifying events held around the world. "Spots are sold on eBay for up to $60,000," Mr. Morgan says. Timex covered the majority of Mr. Morgan's costs, including the $300 entry fee, and provided him with his jersey, hats, and a Timex team Trek bike.

Since January, Mr. Morgan has bought four pairs of running sneakers, costing between $80 and $110 per pair. After his wife pleaded with him, he also bought a new pair of cycling shoes, which he wears without socks. Triathlons are a gear geek's dream sport. "It's like a different version of golf," he says. "I could come home every day and go on one of 30 sites and buy a new water bottle holder or Gu or visor." Timex supplied Mr. Morgan with his bike, which could run from $3,000 to $20,000. He spends $250 a month on his personal trainer and paid $300 for his Trismarter.com nutrition evaluation. Membership at the YMCA is about $100 a month.

The Effort
Mr. Morgan says his biggest issue is time management. Making time for family and staying on top of his game at work have been a challenge. "I'm struggling to prioritize it all," he says. "My wife is so done with this." He works out at 4:30 a.m. on weekends to get in his training before his family wakes up. Mr. Morgan started at J.P. Morgan in June. "Any time you start in a new environment you have to prove yourself again," he says. "If I had been there six years it might be easier to take more luxury, but I pride myself on my work ethic and am one of the first people there in the morning."

The Benefit
Mr. Morgan's family and friends will join him in Hawaii to cheer him on. They are staying four days after the race to enjoy Hawaii. "I may not move the first two days," he jokes. Mr. Morgan says one of the professional triathletes gave him his best advice yet: "He told me the biggest waste is running down hard that last mile to the finish line. He wasn't telling me to walk but just to slow down and absorb it because I'm proving the impossible possible."

Write to Jen Murphy at workout@wsj.com

Is It Just Vermont People?

2008-09-19T08:51:00.001-05:00

We're off to look at another goat this weekend. But here's something interesting from today's Wall Street Journal ...

For every person paralyzed by fear or blissfully in denial, there was another leaping into action to preserve what amounted to the fruits of a lifetime of work.

Carolyn Sloane, a 43-year-old paralegal in Wallingford, Vt., officially marked the end of the bull market by investing in cows. Ms. Sloane has been playing the stock market since 1989, but the rattling of Wall Street, she said, gave her a "desire for hard assets." She recently sold all of her stocks and bailed out of mutual funds, and put part of the money in certificates of deposit. But she also wanted the kind of assets she could see in her own yard, so she bought three cows, two of which were delivered on Sunday.

"This is my commodity play," she told perplexed relatives.

Her plan is to breed the cows, black-and-white Belted Galloways.

"When they have offspring, that's your dividend."

An Update

2008-09-17T23:45:00.002-05:00

Feels like forever since I've blogged.

They say dogs become a lot more like their owners over time. This is probably true, unless you own border collies. Then, I suspect, you become a lot more like your dogs over time. Today was very much a Pepper sort of day.

Woke up around 545a, giving myself time to take a shower. Dropped the boys off at school and was in Brattleboro by 730a. Picked up some groceries and bought a couple of new tires to go with the snazzy new windshield I needed to pass inspection. Drove by the feed store on the way out of town and picked up eight bags of pig, chicken and goat feed.

Home by 930a, at the inspection station by 10a, where I realized ... I didn't have my registration.

Most non-border collie humans would've punted. Gotten it another day. Nope. I ran into Bennington, on the other side of the state, and got the car registered. Stopped by Wal Mart to grab a new pair of jeans and some miscellaneous things -- new oven light, drinks for the kids, light bulbs, etc. Home by noon, plugged away on the day job until 6p, chasing stuff in circles. Fed chickens and got two dozen eggs. They've been on a tear this week.

Ran out with Lisa to get the pig bucket -- pumpkins, corn tortillas, tomatoes and lettuce, a real cornicupia! Fed pigs, fed goats. Back to the day job for a few hours.

Hell, I wish I just had to chase sheep.

It Seems Appropriate

2008-09-05T13:16:00.002-05:00

Just had to cut-and-paste this quote from a blog:

"The four verbal nonvirtues are lying, divisiveness, harsh speech, and
senseless speech."

-- The Dalai Lama

New Arrivals

2008-08-28T18:19:00.002-05:00

He-baa (the one with horns) is the Alpine; She-baa is the La Mancha.

Wowzers.

2008-08-28T18:12:00.003-05:00

Puts my little issues into perspective, no?

August 29, 2008
U.S. Open ’08
Triathlete? Ball Girl? Amputee? All of the Above.
By JOSHUA ROBINSON

After every few dashes across Court 14, Kelly Bruno reached down to her right leg and flicked at something. It was a gesture so slight and so fleeting, she could have been swatting away a bug. It was also the only thing she did that was not in the protocol for a United States Open ball girl — nowhere does it mention popping the pressure valve on a prosthetic leg.

Bruno was born with several defects in her right leg and has been an amputee since she was 6 months old. By 18, she had turned herself into a track star among disabled athletes, with her own sponsorship deals. And as a world-class triathlete and Ironman competitor, she has raced in some of the most grueling events on the planet.

Now, at age 24, Bruno has scaled back her training for three weeks to shuttle back and forth across a courts at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to scoop up balls at the net. In a job done correctly only by those who are barely noticed, Bruno has stood out by blending in.
“It’s definitely harder than I expected,” she said, flashing an easy smile. “For me the running is not as tiresome, but I didn’t think standing was going to be so exhausting.”

This coming from a woman who began her journey to the Open after a brutal 0.9-mile swim in jellyfish-laden waters, a 24.9-mile bike ride and a 6.2-mile run at the sun-baked New York City Triathlon in June. John Korff, the triathlon’s organizer and a member of the United States Tennis Association board of directors, suggested that she try out to be a ball girl to give disabled athletes more exposure.

Getting My Goat(s)

2008-08-27T21:19:00.003-05:00

Insanely busy day.

Up early this morning to clear out the rabbit shed and make room for goats. Worked in the morning.

Off at lunch to check the school bus schedule, pick up a pig bucket from the market and dicker with Gordon for fresh, local, organic wild blackberries. (My wholesale price is $3.75 for 10 ounces). Worked in the afternoon.

Wrapped up around 530p and headed to Springfield to get the girl La Mancha (Sheba) and boy Alpine (Heba). Brought them home. The border collies are in love with their new friends. The goats, not so much.

First day of school tomorrow. First fruit CSA pickup. Introducing goats to pigs. Blackberry delivery. Pick up some more pine shavings for the goat shed. Fix the pig watering bucket. Continued lots of work on the day job. It'll be a busy one.

False Alarm

2008-08-26T19:45:00.001-05:00

No school tomorrow. It starts Wednesday for seventh graders, and Thursday for eighth through 12th graders. So, false alarm.

My boys claim they'll survive the trauma of another day of vacation.

Going to see if we can possibly pick up goats tomorrow.

Almost the Season

2008-08-25T17:44:00.005-05:00

A question from a colleague reminds me that I haven't blogged in a while -- all manner of things going on. I'll try to list them sequentially:

*** New boss at work. Always fun trying to figure out what they want.

*** Major eruption of vegetables. We have picked 64 pounds of blackberries so far this year. We've got more than five dozen jars of carrots and green beans; a couple dozen jars of potatoes (already!); strawberry and peach jam; about a dozen jars of home-made salsa; and a couple dozen jars of bread-and-butter pickles.

The tomatoes haven't been totally washed out, lots of dry beans are coming up, our sweet corn is doing well, the potatoes might wind up being all right, and the chard and kale have exploded. We might do some fall broccoli, although we've got plenty in the freezer -- next to the five dozen bags of frozen pesto, celery, onion, scallions and bell pepper.

*** Quest for firewood. I took a week off just to cut firewood, and only made it five days before the chainsaw crapped out. I used a generic brand of two-cycle oil with an ethanol mix, and it ended very badly. I got maybe -- maybe -- three cords of good wood before the Dolmar blew a piston and head gasket. Repair is going to be about $260. Sigh.

*** The 50 broiler chicks are outside in the small coop. Obnoxious as hell, too. I'll be doing the universe a favor when I fill my freezer (bought a used Montgomery Ward 16 cubic footer for only $60!) with them. The 15 feather-footed bantams are still in the bathroom brooder, so I haven't yet gotten rid of the peep-peep-peep sound in the house.

*** Planning to get out Wednesday and pick up two dairy goats, a La Mancha doe and wether. They're only four months old, so it'll be a while before we get any milk. We're hoping they'll do some more clearing that the Three Little Pigs have missed. We'll breed the doe later this fall and hope for milk by early spring.

*** The kids start school on Wednesday, which means I'll be back into a morning running groove. The best thing about morning running is that there aren't any excuses; you run, and you're done. Can't put it off. And it'll be gorgeous here soon, which means I need to get going on more bike time.

*** I finished a book draft. We'll see if it's worth publishing. More about that later, though. On to the next book project ...

No Country for Middle-Aged Men

2008-08-13T16:18:00.002-05:00

... just watched "No Country for Old Men" on DVD.

Wow. I'm having West Texas flashbacks.

If Terrorists Get Carders ...

2008-08-01T11:12:00.003-05:00

I feel safer already. This was delivered yesterday:

Get Off Her Ass, Already

2008-07-31T22:00:00.000-05:00

For some reason, a bunch of bloggers are beating up on this poor woman. But I'm betting we've got more canned green beans, carrots and peach preserves than she does.

Maybe.

July 31, 2008

She’s Ready: Just Add Water

By STEVEN KURUTZ

Cummington, Mass.

ONE Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, as cable news channels carried bulletins that two government-sponsored mortgage lenders might go bankrupt, Kathy Harrison stood in the kitchen of her two-story, 19th-century farmhouse here, about 20 miles northwest of Northampton, laying out herbs from the garden.

With commentators throwing around phrases like “mortgage meltdown” and “peak oil,” the American economy seemed, at least to some, at the edge of an abyss, but all was calm in the Harrison household. Two loaves of bread, baked fresh that morning, sat on the counter. Mrs. Harrison’s daughters, Karen, 14, and Phoebe, 5, were laughing and playing dress-up, while her husband, Bruce, 62, stood at his wife’s side.

Plenty of Americans, to be sure, have kept their cool in the face of the recent crises, believing that troubles bubbling up around them will not, in the end, be all that severe; or will not touch their own lives in a significant way; or, if they are and if they do — well, that’s a bridge to cross later. The obvious peace of mind in the Harrison household is of a different order, and has something to do with the provisions Mrs. Harrison has stockpiled throughout the house, which include cans of powdered milk; several hundred pounds of wheat berry, oats, flour and rice; water purification tablets; shelves of toothpaste and toilet paper; a solar oven; packs of hermetically sealed seeds; and other items to sustain the family in an emergency.

Mrs. Harrison believes in home preparedness, and after readying her own home for a worst-case scenario — be it a flood or a nuclear or bioterrorist attack — she has written a book, “Just in Case: How to Be Self-Sufficient When the Unexpected Happens” (Storey Publishing, $16.95), to help others do the same.

Written in the information-rich style of a manual, the book is full of practical tips. What affordable bedding preserves heat best? PrimaLoft comforters, according to Mrs. Harrison’s informal tests. What company makes “the Cadillac of nonelectric lamps,” using kerosene? Aladdin, Mrs. Harrison notes.

Her wisdom is delivered in a tone of pioneer optimism. “In a time of crisis you want to start the day with a good breakfast,” she writes, introducing a recipe for something called cornmeal mush. The book, which draws on Mrs. Harrison’s wide reading in the literature of preparedness, as well as books on narrower subjects like canning, cheesemaking and felling trees, is notable for discussing what to do in the event of a chemical attack without detouring into panic-mongering territory.

“I don’t expect someone to drop a nuke on me,” said Mrs. Harrison, 56, an energetic and upbeat woman who calls herself a prepper rather than a doomer. “But after 9/11 — and certainly after Hurricane Katrina — I realized that, holy smoke, the cavalry doesn’t always charge in to rescue you.”

I'm Not The Only One Who Thinks This Is Weird.

2008-07-31T14:53:00.001-05:00

From today's NYTimes:

Deaths Draw Attention to Triathlon Swim

Sonny Tumbelaka/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Participants of the Indonesian Triathlon in June.

By CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN

Published: July 31, 2008

WHEN 60-year-old Donald Morehouse and 52-year-old John Hobgood Jr. died in different triathlon events last weekend, they became at least the seventh and eighth triathletes to die during competition this year. Those deaths came just one week after Esteban Neira, 32, died during the New York City Triathlon.

While this does not imply an epidemic — triathlon deaths remain rare — the deaths do share a puzzling resemblance: Like all of the triathlon deaths recorded by USA Triathlon at its sanctioned events in the last two years, they happened during the swim portion of the event, which also includes biking and running.

It is always striking when an athlete dies during an endurance competition, especially a young or well-conditioned athlete presumed to be at the peak of fitness. When Ryan Shay, a 28-year-old marathon champion, collapsed and died during the Olympic marathon trials last fall, even his closest friends and family were shocked. (Tests later determined his death was brought on by an irregular heartbeat that stemmed from an enlarged and scarred heart.)

But what makes the triathlon deaths more mysterious is that they all occurred during the first part of the race. Deaths during marathons tend to be more evenly distributed over the course of the 26.2 miles, with the largest grouping in the last mile, said Dr. William Roberts, a professor of family medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School and the medical director of the Twin Cities Marathon, who has studied marathon deaths in the United States.

An initial autopsy on Mr. Neira was inconclusive, and the New York City Medical Examiner’s office is awaiting further test results. The death of Mr. Morehouse, at the Spudman Triathlon in Burley, Idaho (an event not sanctioned by USA Triathlon), was ruled an accidental drowning after an initial autopsy, said Scott Slaymaker, the chief executive of Slaymaker Group Inc., where Mr. Morehouse was a top executive. (The family did not want to pursue further tests, Mr. Slaymaker said.) Mr. Hobgood’s death, at the New Jersey State Triathlon, was also ruled an accidental drowning after an initial autopsy, said Lt. Carl Walsh of the West Windsor Township Police Department, with further toxicology results pending.

Hundreds of thousands have taken part in triathlons over the last four years, and with just 23 deaths recorded by USA Triathlon since 2004 (not including last weekend’s deaths), the timing could be a statistical anomaly. But this much is clear: 18 of those 23 deaths occurred during the swim.

“There have been some striking similarities among recent fatalities,” said Kathy Matejka, the director of event services at USA Triathlon, which does not track the number of triathlon participants. At least seven of those who died this year, she said, were men with “some measure of experience with the sport.”

Despite these similarities, a precise cause of death remains elusive in many cases. News reports suggest that at least three of this year’s deaths were linked to heart problems, but it is unclear whether those problems were primed to happen imminently or may not have happened until later without the race as a trigger.

No one knows why deaths are more common during the swim portion of triathlons, but researchers have some intriguing theories. Public accounts of this year’s fatalities indicate that the athletes seemed outwardly healthy, and in some cases autopsies turned up no obvious cause of death, such as blocked arteries.

The combination of apparent good health and a negative autopsy suggests a death caused by abnormal heart rhythms, said Dr. Pamela Douglas, a Duke University cardiologist who has studied triathletes.

Evidence suggests that swimming may trigger a certain type of cardiac arrhythmia caused by a genetic condition called long QT syndrome, said Dr. Michael Ackerman, a cardiologist and the director of the Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. About 1 in 2,000 people are born with a heart condition that causes a glitch in the heart’s electrical system, and the most common of these is called long QT syndrome, after the tell-tale interval on an electrocardiogram.

The long QT heart recharges sluggishly between beats, setting up the potential for a skipped beat, Dr. Ackerman said. When the problem strikes, a heart’s electrical system can go haywire, degenerating into a possibly fatal arrhythmia.

Dr. Ackerman’s research team has identified several genetic forms of long QT, and one seems especially bothered by swimming, he said. He’s not sure why, but sees clues in a Japanese study several years ago that found that irregular heartbeats occur more commonly during swimming than during the same level of aerobic activity on land.

“It’s not that swimming is horrendously dangerous and running is not,” he said.

“We know that swimming is one of those triggers,” Dr. Ackerman said, “but it’s not going to be the absolute trigger.” An expert could detect most cases of long QT syndrome on an electrocardiogram, he said.

In any type of competitive racing situation, Dr. Douglas said, the adrenaline rush at the start could aggravate conditions like long QT syndrome, because adrenaline and its related hormones can make the heart more prone to arrhythmias. Physical exertion won’t create a heart problem where none existed, she said, but it can create problems for people with underlying cardiac disease.

Sudden fainting remains the classic warning sign of an underlying arrhythmia problem. “If you faint while running a race and your heart snaps back into sync 10 or 30 seconds later, you wake up,” Dr. Ackerman said. “If it happens in the water, even if your heart regains rhythm 30 seconds later, now you’re underwater.”

Many triathletes point to the swim as a triathlon’s most stressful segment. Most swims take place in open, often cold, water with hundreds or thousands of other swimmers vying for position. “Nothing can prepare a newbie for the start,” said Russ Evenhuis, a triathlete in Olympia, Wash. “It can be like jumping into a washing machine. You will get swum over, kicked, hit and banged into.”

A triathlon’s open-water swim hardly resembles the pools where most triathletes train, said Neil Cook, a New York City based triathlete and coach. “There is no wall 25 yards away, you can’t see the bottom and the 50 to 150 people around you are more than you’ve probably swam with in total during your training,” he said. “Oh, and you are wearing this wetsuit that’s tighter than a girdle.” Raise your heart rate and blood pressure under those conditions, he said, and “any weakness you have will become apparent.”

FABIAN QUESADA, 42, of Brooklyn prepared for the New York City Triathlon by taking part in an open-water training session with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. Still, he had a bout of anxiety his first time in open water. “Even though the wetsuit keeps you buoyant, it’s very restrictive, and you panic because it’s tight,” he said. “It can be an overwhelming experience.”

Triathlons normally brief participants on safety procedures, some of which are standard practice. For instance, “If you’re in the water and you have a problem, you’re supposed to stop and raise your hand,” said Dr. Doug Hiller, the chief medical officer for the International Triathlon Union, the sport’s worldwide governing body.

Ms. Matejka of USA Triathlon said her organization is committed to safety and will ask its experts to look for lessons in this year’s deaths, but as of yet, the group has no major changes planned.

“Speaking as a 20-plus-year triathlete, I wouldn’t change a thing,” said Andrew Hunt, the medical director for USA Triathlon.

“Do I think open-water swimming is inherently dangerous? No I don’t,” he said. Regarding the number of swim deaths, he said last week: “You can’t just look at the numerator, you have to look at the denominator — my guess is that that number is probably in the six figures. Six out of a hundred thousand isn’t that many.”

But no one really knows what the denominator is, because USA Triathlon does not keep records of race participants. While the number of USA Triathlon members has risen from 53,254 in 2004 to 100,674 in 2007, that doesn’t account for everyone who races because nonmembers can buy a one-day license for individual events.

There’s no way to regulate away risk, Dr. Hunt said, and some triathletes say that’s part of the appeal. “We want to push the limit of our comfort zone and experience life,” said Joe Bator, 37, of Boston. “Sure we want to minimize those risks,” he said. “But when it is time to race and put on that number, we need to be willing to push just a little bit more and get just a little bit more uncomfortable. If we don’t, we will never know what we are capable of achieving.”

Vicki Vila contributed reporting.

Time for Mandatory Wetsuits?

2008-07-28T10:46:00.002-05:00

I'm wondering. They do increase buoyancy, and if folks are going to die during triathlons, it looks like most of them will die during the swim leg. Sigh. I'm thinking I'll need a good coach before I get back into the water.

Search under way for missing triathlon swimmer

by Tony Hagen/The Times
Sunday July 27, 2008, 3:42 PM

WEST WINDSOR -- Police and rescue workers were searching Sunday afternoon for a 52-year-old township man who failed to emerge from Lake Mercer in the swim portion of the New Jersey State Triathlon.

Police revealed no other details of the West Windsor man's identity. Police said his fiancee reported him missing after the triathlon.

Martin Griff / The TimesRescuers search for missing swimmer in Lake Mercer Sunday.

The third annual Mercer County triathlon held at Mercer County Park was expected to draw 2,500 competitors from 42 states and other countries and up to 7,000 spectators.

There were two separate races in the triathlon. One consisted of a 1.5 kilometer swim, a 23 mile bike ride and a 10 kilometer run. The second, shorter race included a 500 meter swim, an 11.5 mile bike ride and a 5 kilometer run.

The missing contestant had entered the shorter race. The search was expected to resume Monday.

Martin Griff / The TimesTriathlon contestants in the swim portion work their way across Lake Mercer.

In the more challenging race, swimmers were expected to enter the water at Mercer Beach and swim a roughly rectangular course that stretched down the center portion of the lake. The shorter course followed a 90 degree angle that led from one beach to the parking area.

What began as a gala event for the county and a revenue generator ended in chaos as severe storm activity overturned tents set up for the occasion and scattered debris across the areas established for the event.

Multiple Border Collies

2008-07-27T22:01:00.004-05:00

We only have two, but it feels like more.

And for that matter, what should a group of border collies be called? My vote still: If a bunch of turkeys is a raft, and multiple quail is a covey, then it just has to be a fuckery of border collies. They're making everyone modestly crazy. Pepper has decided in her old age that she's scared of thunder, and Stink is being ... stinky. Smelly. Etc.

Bunches of spare food in the freezer. We got about 15 pounds of very ripe bananas from the market for $3; Lisa mashed them, made three loaves of banana nut bread, and saved the rest for later. Also have 15 half-pints of peach preserves. And a bunch of bread-and-butter pickles.

Baby chickens are doing well -- all 65 of them. And the younger flock has started to lay -- little, marble-sized eggs, about two-three every day.

Wish it would stop raining. Sigh.

Takes a While to Get to the Point, But Gets There

2008-07-21T18:26:00.002-05:00

Rolling Stone, doing some entertaining campaign coverage ...

It's a Class War, Stupid

Election season will be packed with distractions, but the real issue is becoming a matter of life and death

Matt Taibbi

Posted Jul 15, 2008 2:05 PM

I am a single mother with a 9-year-old boy. To stay warm at night my son and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile them on the kitchen floor. I'd hang a blanket from the kitchen doorway and we'd sleep right there on the floor. By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it in the tub. I'd like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the capital building... we are certainly a country in distress.

— Letter from a single mother in a Vermont city, to Senator Bernie Sanders

The Republican and Democratic conventions are just around the corner, which means that we're at a critical time in our nation's history. For this is the moment when the country's political and media consensus finally settles on the line of bullshit it will be selling to the public as the "national debate" come fall.

If you pay close attention you can actually see the trial balloons whooshing overhead. There have been numerous articles of late of the Whither the Debate? genus in the country's major dailes and news mags, pieces like Patrick Healy's "Target: Barack Obama. Strategy: What Day is it?" in the New York Times. They ostensibly wonder aloud about what respective "plans of attack" Barack Obama and John McCain will choose to pursue against one another in the fall.

In these pieces we already see the candidates trying on, like shoes, the various storylines we might soon have hammered into our heads like wartime slogans. Most hilarious from my viewpoint is the increasingly real possibility that the Republicans will eventually decide that their best shot against Obama is to pull out the old "He's a flip-flopper" strategy — which would be pathetic, given that this was the same tired tactic they used against John Kerry four years ago, were it not for the damning fact that it might actually work again. (I'm actually not sure sometimes what is more repulsive: the bosh they trot out as campaign "issues," or the enthusiasm with which the public buys it.)

Naturally we'll also see the "Patriotism Gap" storyline whipped out and reused over and over again. There will also be much talk emanating from the McCain camp about "experience," although this line of attack will not be nearly as fruitful for him as it was for Hillary Clinton, mainly because the word "experience" in McCain's case also has a habit of reminding voters that the Arizona senator is, well, wicked old.

The Obama camp, playing with a big halftime lead as the cliché goes, is going to play this one close to the vest, sticking to a strategy of using larger and larger fonts every week for their "CHANGE" placards, and getting the candidates' various aides and spokesgoons to use the term "McCain-Bush policies" as many times as possible on political talk shows.

Obama will also use this pre-convention period to do what every general election candidate does after a tough primary-season fight, i.e. ditch all the positions he took en route to securing the nomination and replace them with opinions subtly (or sometimes not-so-subtly) reconfigured to fit the latest polling information coming out of certain key swing states. Both sides as well as the pundit class will describe this early positioning for combat over swing-state electoral votes as a "race for the center" (AP, July 3: "Candidates Courting the Center"), as if the "political center" in America were a place where huge chunks of the population tirelessly obsessed over semi-relevant media-driven wedge issues like stem-cell research and gay marriage, even as they lacked money to buy food and make rent every month.

The press, meanwhile, is clearly flailing around for a sensational hook to use in selling the election, as the once-brightly-burning star of blue-red hatred seems unfortunately to have dimmed a little — just in time, perhaps, to torpedo the general election season cable ratings. They are working hard to come up with the WWF-style shorthand labels they always use to sell electoral contests: if 2000 was the "wooden" and ?condescending? Al Gore versus the "dummy" Bush, and 2004 featured that same ?regular guy? Bush against the "patrician" and "bookish" John Kerry (who also "looked French"), in 2008 we?re going to be sold the "maverick" McCain against the "smooth" Obama, or some dumb thing along those lines. Time has even experimented with a "poker versus craps" storyline, feeding off the incidental fact that Obama is a regular poker player while McCain reportedly favors craps, which apparently has some electorally relevant meaning — and if you know what that something is, please let me know.

We're also going to be fed truckloads of onerous horseshit about the candidate wives. The Michelle Obama content is going to go something like this: the Fox/Limbaugh crowd will first plaster her with Buckwheatesque caricatures (the National Review cover was hilariously over-the-top in that respect) and racially loaded epithets like "baby Mama" (that via Fox News spokeswhore Michelle Malkin, God bless her) and "angry black woman" (via self-aggrandizing, cop-mustached Chicago-based prune Cal Thomas). Next, the so-called "mainstream" press, the "respectable" press, which of course is above such behavior, will amplify those attacks 10 million-fold via endless waves of secondary features soberly pondering the question of whether or not Michelle Obama is a "political liability" — because of stuff like the Thomas column, and Malkin's quip and the endless rumors about a mysterious "whitey" video. Cindy McCain, meanwhile, will generally be described as a political asset, as the pundit class tends to applaud, mute, stoned-looking candidate wives who have soldiered on bravely while being martyred by rumors of their mostly absent husband's infidelities. It will help on the martyrdom front that McCain launched his political career with her family money and drove her into an actual, confirmable chemical dependency. As long as she keeps gamely wobbling onstage and trying to smile into the camera, she's going to get straight As from the political press, guaranteed.

Some combination of all of these things is going to comprise the so-called "national debate" this fall. Now, we live in an age where our media deceptions are so far-reaching and comprehensive that they almost smother reality, at times seeming actually to replace reality — but even in the context of the inane TV-driven fantasyland we've grown used to inhabiting, this year's crude cobbling together of a phony "national conversation" by our political press is an outrageous, monstrously offensive deception. For if, as now seems likely, this fall's election is ultimately turned into a Swan-esque reality show where America is asked to decide if it can tolerate Michelle Obama's face longer than John McCain's diapers, it will be at the expense of an urgent dialogue about a serious nationwide emergency that any sane country would have started having some time ago. And unless you run a TV network or live in Washington, you probably already know what that emergency is.

A few weeks back, I got a call from someone in the office of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders wanted to tell me about an effort his office had recently made to solicit information about his constituents? economic problems. He sent out a notice on his e-mail list asking Vermont residents to "tell me what was going on in their lives economically." He expected a few dozen letters at best — but got, instead, more than 700 in the first week alone. Some, like the excerpt posted above, sounded like typical tales of life for struggling single-parent families below the poverty line. More unnerving, however, were the stories Sanders received from people who held one or two or even three jobs, from families in which both spouses held at least one regular job — in other words, from people one would normally describe as middle-class. For example, this letter came from the owner of his own commercial cleaning service:

My 90-year-old father in Connecticut has recently become ill and asked me to visit him. I want to drop everything I am doing and go visit him, however, I am finding it hard to save enough money to add to the extra gas I'll need to get there. I make more than I did a year ago and I don't have enough to pay my property taxes this quarter for the first time in many years. They are due tomorrow.

This single mother buys clothes from thrift stores and unsuccessfully tried to sell her house to pay for her son's schooling:

I don't go to church many Sundays, because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there. Every thought of an activity is dependent on the cost.

Sanders got letters from working people who have been reduced to eating "cereal and toast" for dinner, from a 71-year-old man who has been forced to go back to work to pay for heating oil and property taxes, from a worker in an oncology department of a hospital who reports that clinically ill patients are foregoing cancer treatments because the cost of gas makes it too expensive to reach the hospital. The recurring theme is that employment, even dual employment, is no longer any kind of barrier against poverty. Not economic discomfort, mind you, but actual poverty. Meaning, having less than you need to eat and live in heated shelter — forgetting entirely about health care and dentistry, which has long ceased to be considered an automatic component of American middle-class life. The key factors in almost all of the Sanders letters are exploding gas and heating oil costs, reduced salaries and benefits, and sharply increased property taxes (a phenomenon I hear about all across the country at campaign trail stops, something that seems to me to be directly tied to the Bush tax cuts and the consequent reduced federal aid to states). And it all adds up to one thing.

"The middle class is disappearing," says Sanders. "In real ways we're becoming more like a third-world country."

Here's the thing: nobody needs me or Bernie Sanders to tell them that it sucks out there and that times are tougher economically in this country than perhaps they've been for quite a long time. We've all seen the stats — median income has declined by almost $2,500 over the past seven years, we have a zero personal savings rate in America for the first time since the Great Depression, and 5 million people have slipped below the poverty level since the beginning of the decade. And stats aside, most everyone out there knows what the deal is. If you're reading this and you had to drive to work today or pay a credit card bill in the last few weeks you know better than I do for sure how fucked up things have gotten. I hear talk from people out on the campaign trail about mortgages and bankruptcies and bill collectors that are enough to make your ass clench with 100 percent pure panic.

None of this is a secret. Here, however, is something that is a secret: that this is a class issue that is being intentionally downplayed by a political/media consensus bent on selling the public a version of reality where class resentments, or class distinctions even, do not exist. Our "national debate" is always a thing where we do not talk about things like haves and have-nots, rich and poor, employers versus employees. But we increasingly live in a society where all the political action is happening on one side of the line separating all those groups, to the detriment of the people on the other side.

We have a government that is spending two and a half billion dollars a day in Iraq, essentially subsidizing new swimming pools for the contracting class in northern Virginia, at a time when heating oil and personal transportation are about to join health insurance on the list of middle-class luxuries. Home heating and car ownership are slipping away from the middle class thanks to exploding energy prices — the hidden cost of the national borrowing policy we call dependency on foreign oil, "foreign" representing those nations, Arab and Chinese, that lend us the money to pay for our wars.

And while we've all heard stories about how much waste and inefficiency there is in our military spending, this is always portrayed as either "corruption" or simple inefficiency, and not what it really is — a profound expression of our national priorities, a means of taking money from ordinary, struggling people and redistributing it not downward but upward, to connected insiders, who turn your tax money into pure profit.

You want an example? Sanders has a great one for you. The Senator claims that he has been trying for years to increase funding for the Federally Qualified Health Care (FQHC) program, which finances community health centers across the country that give primary health care access to about 16 million Americans a year. He's seeking an additional $798 million for the program this year, which would bring the total appropriation to $2.9 billion, or about what we spend every two days in Iraq.

"But for five billion a year," Sanders insists, "we could provide basic primary health care for every American. That?s how much it would cost, five billion."

As it is, though, Sanders has struggled to get any additional funding. He managed to get $250 million added to the program in last year's Labor, Health and Human Services bill, but Bush vetoed the legislation, "and we ended up getting a lot less."

Okay, now, hold that thought. While we're unable to find $5 billion for this simple program, and Sanders had to fight and claw to get even $250 million that was eventually slashed, here's something else that's going on. According to a recent report by the GAO, the Department of Defense has already "marked for disposal" hundreds of millions of dollars worth of spare parts — and not old spare parts, but new ones that are still on order! In fact, the GAO report claims that over half of the spare parts currently on order for the Air Force — some $235 million worth, or about the same amount Sanders unsuccessfully tried to get for the community health care program last year — are already marked for disposal! Our government is buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Defense Department crap just to throw it away!

"They're planning on throwing this stuff away and it hasn?t even come in yet," says Sanders.

According to the report, we're spending over $30 million a year, and employing over 1,400 people, just to warehouse all the defense equipment we don't need. For instance — we already have thousands of unneeded aircraft blades, but 7,460 on the way, at a cost of $2 million, which will join those already earmarked for the waste pile.

This is why you need to pay careful attention when you hear about John McCain claiming that he's going to "look at entitlement program" waste as a means of solving the budget crisis, or when you tune into the debate about the "death tax." We are in the midst of a political movement to concentrate private wealth into fewer and fewer hands while at the same time placing more and more of the burden for public expenditures on working people. If that sounds like half-baked Marxian analysis... well, shit, what can I say? That's what's happening. Repealing the estate tax (the proposal to phase it out by the year 2010 would save the Walton family alone $30 billion) and targeting "entitlement" programs for cuts while continually funneling an ever-expanding treasure trove of military appropriations down the befouled anus of pointless war profiteering, government waste and North Virginia McMansions — this is all part of a conversation we should be having about who gets what share of the national pie. But we're not going to have that conversation, because we're going to spend this fall mesmerized by the typical media-generated distractions, yammering about whether or not Michelle Obama's voice is too annoying, about flag lapel pins, about Jeremiah Wright and other such idiotic bullshit.

Bernie Sanders is one of the few politicians out there smart enough and secure enough to understand that the future of American politics is necessarily going to involve some pretty frank and contentious confrontations. The phony blue-red divide, which has been buoyed for years by some largely incidental geographical disagreements over religion and other social issues, is going to give way eventually to a real debate grounded in a brutal economic reality increasingly common to all states, red and blue.

Our economic reality is as brutal as it is for a simple reason: whether we like it or not, we are in the midst of revolutionary economic changes. In the kind of breathtakingly ironic development that only real life can imagine, the collapse of the Soviet Union has allowed global capitalism to get into the political unfreedom business, turning China and the various impoverished dictatorships and semi-dictatorships of the third world into the sweatshop of the earth. This development has cut the balls out of American civil society by forcing the export abroad of our manufacturing economy, leaving us with a service/managerial economy that simply cannot support the vast, healthy middle class our government used to work very hard to both foster and protect. The Democratic party that was once the impetus behind much of these changes, that argued so eloquently in the New Deal era that our society would be richer and more powerful overall if the spoils were split up enough to create a strong base of middle class consumers — that party panicked in the years since Nixon and elected to pay for its continued relevance with corporate money. As a result the entire debate between the two major political parties in our country has devolved into an argument over just how quickly to dismantle the few remaining benefits of American middle-class existence — immediately, if you ask the Republicans, and only slightly less than immediately, if you ask the Democrats.

The Republicans wanted to take Social Security, the signature policy underpinning of the middle class, and put it into private accounts — which is a fancy way of saying that they wanted to take a huge bundle of American taxpayer cash and invest it in the very companies, the IBMs and Boeings and GMs and so on, that are exporting our jobs abroad. They want the American middle class to finance its very own impoverishment! The Democrats say no, let's keep Social Security more or less as is, and let that impoverishment happen organically.

Now we have a new set of dire problems in the areas of home ownership and exploding energy prices. In both of these matters the basic dynamic is transnational companies raiding the cash savings of the middle class. Because those same companies finance the campaigns of our politicians, we won't hear much talk about getting private industry to help foot the bill to pay for these crises, or forcing the energy companies to cut into their obscene profits for the public good. We will, however, hear talk about taxpayer-subsidized bailouts and various irrelevancies like McCain's gas tax holiday (an amusing solution — eliminate taxes collected by government in order to pay for taxes collected by energy companies). Ultimately, however, you can bet that when the middle class finally falls all the way down, and this recession becomes something even worse, necessity will force our civil government — if anything remains of it by then — to press for the only real solution.

"Corporate America is going to have to reinvest in our society," says Sanders. "It's that simple."

These fantasy elections we've been having — overblown sports contests with great production values, decided by haircuts and sound bytes and high-tech mudslinging campaigns — those were sort of fun while they lasted, and were certainly useful in providing jerk-off pundit-dickheads like me with high-paying jobs. But we just can't afford them anymore. We have officially spent and mismanaged our way out of la-la land and back to the ugly place where politics really lives — a depressingly serious and desperate argument about how to keep large numbers of us from starving and freezing to death. Or losing our homes, or having our cars repossessed. For a long time America has been too embarrassed to talk about class; we all liked to imagine ourselves in the wealthy column, or at least potentially so, flush enough to afford this pissing away of our political power on meaningless game-show debates once every four years. The reality is much different, and this might be the year we're all forced to admit it.

Another Swimmer

2008-07-20T21:51:00.002-05:00

This event just wouldn't be my idea of fun: High humidity, jellyfish and 3,000 other people in the water? No, thanks.

Throw in another swimming-related death, it just seems like a spectacularly bad weekend.

July 21, 2008

Man Dies in New York City Triathlon

By KATIE THOMAS and SHARON OTTERMAN

A 32-year-old man competing in the New York City Triathlon died Sunday after being pulled unconscious from the Hudson River on a day when competitors battled heat, humidity and stinging jellyfish along the course.

Organizers did not identify the man because his family members, who live in Argentina, had not been notified. Bill Burke, the race director, said rescuers pulled the man from the river about three-quarters of the way through the 1,500-meter swim portion, which ended near the 79th Street Boat Basin. The swim is the first of the event’s three phases and is followed by a 40-kilometer bicycle ride and a 10K run that finishes in Central Park.

“Other swimmers noticed the gentleman in the water, and they were actually waving and signaling for the nearby jet boats to come assist them,” Burke said.

He added: “We did have life support on the boats that were monitoring the swim course. There’s medical staff on those boats, so if the guy had a situation in the water, he’s getting the best medical care.”

About 15 minutes elapsed between the time rescuers brought the man to the dock and his placement in an ambulance. The man was one of nearly 3,000 competitors in the nonprofessional divisions; the race also included about 40 professional triathletes.

It was not known how long he was in the water before rescuers found him, but he was pulled from the river around 8 a.m., about a half-hour after the final wave of 30- to 34-year-olds left the dock at 98th Street.

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner, said an autopsy would be performed Monday.

At least three other people have died during the swim portion of triathlons since early May: a 38-year-old man in the Gulf Coast Triathlon in Florida, a 46-year-old man at the Hy-Vee Triathlon in Iowa and a 45-year-old man at the Pacific Crest Triathlon in Oregon.

The death Sunday was the first in the eight-year history of the New York event. Burke said that at least four competitors were taken to local hospitals with heat-related illnesses, and that two others sustained broken bones.

By 8 a.m., when most of the 3,000 competitors had begun the event, temperatures had reached 80 degrees, with high humidity in Central Park, according to the National Weather Service.

By that time, the top competitors had just completed the race. Greg Bennett of Australia won his fourth consecutive New York City Triathlon, with a time of 1 hour 46 minutes 30.9 seconds. He finished 63 seconds ahead of Stuart Hayes of Iowa.

An Australian also won the women’s race, with Liz Blatchford finishing in 1:58:34.9, nearly two minutes ahead of Becky Lavelle of California.

Brent McMahon, a member of Canada’s 2004 Olympic triathlon team, was among those affected by the heat. He was in second place in the men’s professional category when he collapsed a few feet from the finish line. He was attended to by medical personnel, then crawled across the finish line, placing fifth, and fainted. Burke said he had since recovered.

Burke said that competitors were required to attend a 30-minute safety briefing and must sign a waiver stating that they know how to swim, but they do not have to prove that they are physically fit in order to participate. Heat exhaustion or dehydration is always a risk for competitors on such a muggy day.

It's Been A While

2008-07-20T21:45:00.003-05:00

Caramba! It's been a busy summer.

New bosses at work. Lots of things to plant, weed, harvest and feed. Fifty broiler chicks and 15 feather-footed bantams coming in the mail this week. Near-catastrophe avoided this morning; I chopped down about 100 pin cherry trees in the back pasture without knowing that they're toxic to pigs. Moved them before the leaves could wilt and pigs could get poisoned.

Going for an occasional run, but not so much lately. Hoping to take a week or so off soon and get firewood for the winter. Hoping to make more cheese; my first big cheese came out kind of dry, so we used it in the 42 servings of pesto that are now in the freezer, along with basil from the CSA, local sunflower seeds and olive oil.

Boys are being teen-age boys, skulking about at odd hours. Collies are being collies, skulking about at odder hours.

More later. It's just been Too. Damn. Busy.

Ouch.

2008-06-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

I'd be sooooo pissed.

400 miss the start of Seafair Marathon
By Nancy Bartley
Seattle Times staff reporter

Four hundred runners, many of whom had trained for months to run Sunday's Seafair Marathon, found themselves stranded miles from the starting line without buses to transport them — an organizational snafu that angered runners and has race officials promising to make amends.

The runners were expected to be at Bellevue's Downtown Park at 5 a.m., when the buses were scheduled to begin moving participants to the starting line at Husky Stadium in Seattle, said Seafair spokesman Dan Wartelle.

But more people showed up for the final 6:45 a.m. shuttle than organizers expected, and 400 of the 4,800 registered for the race were unable to get from the park to the stadium.

Runners were to begin at the stadium, run across the Highway 520 bridge, and complete a 26.2- or a 13.1-mile course for either a full marathon or a half-marathon, ending at the park. It's the first time the race has been routed over the bridge.

Longtime Seattle runner Lisa Richardson, 37, had trained for months for the full marathon, hoping to requalify for the Boston Marathon. She arrived in Bellevue shortly after 6 a.m., thinking she had 45 minutes to catch a shuttle. But she found that when some of the earlier buses weren't full, runners' friends and family members had boarded, and runners arriving later were out of luck.

"They couldn't get me over to Husky Stadium. It's the worst case of poor planning — an absolute joke," Richardson said.

Race officials did bring her and some of the others to the 13-mile point and let them run half the route. But for those who've trained for a marathon, a half is a poor substitute. And those who planned to run the half-marathon had trained for the terrain in the first 13 miles of the course, not the last half.

Cool Stuff

2008-06-29T19:37:00.005-05:00

So I've not been posting for a while. Busy with work. Busy with children. Busy with garden and fruit trees and bushes and other life-like things. We regret the inconvenience, as they say, and to atone, here are some very cool things:

*** Dara Torres. The woman sounds like a complete emotional basket case, but good for her for making the Olympic team at 41 -- and good news for middle-aged sloggers (and we know who we are). As an aside, I'd like my abs back. It appears she stole them:

An excerpt from the story:

UPON HEARING THAT TORRES is likely to make the Olympic team at age 41, many people have the same question: How is this possible? Kinesiologists counter with a different query: Why are you so surprised? “Dara is extremely impressive, but she’s not as unique as people think,” says Michael Joyner, a competitive athlete and anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic who writes scholarly papers about aging and sports. “Ted Williams hit .388 when he was 39. Jack Foster did very well in the Olympic marathon when he was 40. Karl Malone earned a triple-double in an N.B.A. game at 40. Jeannie Longo won a French time-trial championship in cycling at age 47.” Torres’s events — short swims — are also well suited to competitors of advanced age. Compared to, say, running, swimming is more technique-intensive and produces fewer injuries. Sprints are also kinder to older athletes, in that strength falls off more gradually than aerobic power. In April, at 37, Mark Foster, a freestyle sprinter in England, came out of retirement and earned a spot, for the fifth time, on the British Olympic swim team. “For those of us who pay attention to this stuff,” Joyner said, “Dara’s performance is unusual but not totally unexpected.”

So why do we assume a middle-aged swimmer must be all washed up? Because for nonelite athletes, sporting achievements fall off precipitously with age. Body composition changes toward more fat and less muscle. Strength and aerobic capacity decrease as well. But a primary reason that athletic performance degrades in adulthood is changes in priorities. People tend to devote more time and energy to jobs and families than to sports. Even committed athletes downgrade their workout goals from achieving personal bests to staying in shape. Academics refer to this reduction in physical activity as hypokinesis. The phenomenon is not limited to humans. A 1985 study showed that rats with unlimited access to running wheels exercised less as they aged. “But look at people who maintain activity levels,” says Joel Stager, a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University. “It’s a different story! A lot of what we assume is aging is just progressive hypokinesis. How many people at Dara’s age have maintained their training consistently? I’m going to say there are very, very few.”

Even childbirth needn’t be a sports-career killer. In 1972, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, E. Zaharieva published a study of 13 women who were pregnant and then competed in the 1964 Olympic Games. Most resumed serious training between three and six months after giving birth. All said, Zaharieva wrote, “they became stronger, had greater stamina and were more balanced in every way after having a child.” Last September, Lindsay Davenport was back on the pro tennis tour and winning just three months after giving birth, while in November, Paula Radcliffe won the New York City Marathon less than 10 months after having a baby.

So how long can peak athletic performance last? Hirofumi Tanaka, the director of the Cardiovascular Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, found that both elite and nonelite runners and swimmers could maintain personal bests until age 35, after which performance declined in a gradual, linear fashion until about age 50 to 60 for runners and 70 for swimmers. Deterioration was rapid from there. Tanaka also found that swimmers experienced more modest declines than runners and that swim sprinters, like Torres, experienced the smallest declines of all. At Yale University, Ray Fair, a runner and an economist, crunched statistics on aging and peak athletic performance and created what he calls the Fair Model. The model provides a table of coefficients that enable an athlete to take a personal-best time and compute how long he or she should expect to take to complete that same event at a specific point later in life (assuming he or she has continued to train at the same level). According to the Fair Model, a woman who swam a personal best 24.63 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle at or before age 35 should expect to clock 25.37 seconds at age 41. “I am struck by how small the deterioration rates are,” Fair wrote in a paper titled “How Fast Do Old Men Slow Down?” “It may be that societies have been too pessimistic about losses from aging for individuals who stay healthy and fit.”

*** Next. Russell Means profile in the Washington Post. Eh, Russell -- have your tribal people get with my tribal people and see who got screwed over first (and longest). And general note to the part of your frontal lobe that deals with PR issues: Don't call the white reporter a racist. At least, not before the story runs. Your Dolce and Gabbana shades will be mentioned.

At our first interview, over breakfast, Means was surly from the get-go. Within five minutes of shaking my hand, he accosted me for my "[expletive] white racist arrogance. There's only one reason you people came to this continent," he said. "Greed! We Indians have our spirituality. We have our land, but Americans have no culture except greed."

I changed the subject, asking Means how many Lakota backed his independence claim. "That's not germane," he barked. "In all my years of international relations, not once has anybody ever questioned my sovereignty. Even if I am only speaking for myself and my brother, and I'm not, my sovereignty exists. It's spelled out in the treaties."

Eventually, I'd learn that Means has only six or eight active Lakota supporters scattered throughout North and South Dakota. Many other Lakota quietly share his contempt for the U.S. government; some even long for a return to the hallowed days of Lakota independence. And, while Means won 46 percent of the vote when he ran unsuccessfully for Pine Ridge tribal chair in 2004, he has not endeared himself with his desperado-style secession.

*** Interesting Ben Stein column in the NYTimes on wage deflation and the price of oil. Wish it were all that simple, but it's a good point, nevertheless:

But the trend is dismal. The average private worker now earns very roughly $600 a week, not counting fringe benefits. For this worker, gasoline might well account for close to one-tenth of his or her earnings. If the price of gas goes up 25 percent, the effect is serious. To put it mildly, people making $600 a week do not have a lot of leeway on spending.

As I see it, the problem is not the price of oil generally. (I think that the price will decline somewhat before long, but the long-term trend is very much up.) The problem is the stagnation of wages. Please bear in mind that the numbers I gave are averages. Skilled workers make much more. Lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, accountants, dentists — they all make more. ( I just paid two dentists a total of more than $10,000 — I am not kidding — to have one poor old tooth get a root canal and a crown, and I’m not finished with that miserable tooth yet. I paid for 90 percent of it out of my own pocket. I do earn more than the ordinary citizen, but nothing by Wall Street standards.)

But, obviously, a heck of a lot of workers make less. Imagine what it means to minimum-wage workers for gasoline to surge past $4 a gallon.

What is to be done? The federal government can do little to make the price of oil fall in the short run, except, perhaps, for one basic thing: balance the budget. The world price of oil is denominated in dollars. The dollar is weak for many reasons, but a big one is the immense budget deficits run by our government. If President Bush and Senators John McCain and Barack Obama were to stand together in front of a camera and solemnly swear that they would balance the budget in four years, even if it required tax increases on people earning millions, the dollar would rise against the euro, and oil would fall in dollars.

*** Final cool things. Went by the co-op to get some cheese, and they were giving away Silk, which (I think) is basically soy milk. They were giving away a lot of it because it was close to expiration. So we got 35 gallons of free Silk. Bad news is, it's no good for cheese or ice cream. Good news is, the pigs love it.

Went by a flea market last week and found an extraordinarily sharp crosscut saw for $20. Also, a first-edition copy of "Remember the Alamo" by Robert Penn Warren. Sweet.

Youngest son made it to Arizona and back for the national youth leadership conference. Seemed to have a good time. Is still skeptical of adults in power. This is generally a Good Thing.

I'm off for a few days to get some serious day job stuff done.

The Three Little Pigs

2008-06-17T21:18:00.000-05:00

This Kills Me, Too. Just In A Different Way.

2008-06-16T08:14:00.001-05:00

This Just Kills Me.

2008-06-16T08:11:00.003-05:00

From the Daily Mail:

Pig in Boots: The world's only porker who is afraid of mud

By Beth Hale
Last updated at 8:31 PM on 10th June 2008

You can't get much happier than a pig in muck, or so we are told.

But when this little piggy arrived in the farmyard she showed a marked reluctance to get her trotters dirty.

While her six brothers and sisters messed around in the mire, she stayed on the edge shaking. It is thought she might have mysophobia - a fear of dirt.

Owners Debbie and Andrew Keeble were at a loss, until they remembered the four miniature wellies used as pen and pencil holders in their office. They slipped them on the piglet's feet - and into the mud she happily ploughed.

Now she runs over to Mr Keeble so he can put them on for her in the morning.

Busy. And Busy. And Very Busy.

2008-06-15T21:53:00.003-05:00

No kidding. Haven't posted in forever.

Been to New York. Been to Boston. Bought rhubarb. Cleared out more garden for corn, beans and squash. Fixed chicken fence. Yelled at collies. Talked with boys. Planted blueberries. Got peach and pear trees. Found a free canner driving to the feed store. Built garden trellises. Worked on a book. Lots of day job stuff.

Since I don't have any pig pictures yet, here's a cool story until then:

A post-petroleum world

On this Andover farm, little worry about fuel or food prices

By CHELSEA CONABOY
Monitor staff

June 15, 2008

With gas at $4 per gallon, most people in New Hampshire can feel their wallets draining along with their car tanks. Not Nelson Lebo. He doesn't have a car. He's not worried about the cost of home heating oil either. And soaring food prices? Not much of a problem.

Lebo, 40, lives in a 1782 farmhouse in the woods of Andover that he has dubbed Pedal Power Farm. He heats it with wood cut from the property. He gets around on a bicycle. He grows much of his own food and buys locally otherwise. He gets his electricity from solar panels.

Lebo is no typical homesteader, content to stay tucked away in the woods, living off his land. He thinks he has ideas the rest of us could use. And he's ready to share them.

"I've been living in a post-petroleum world for the last 18 years," he said. "Everyone else is going to start living in a post-petroleum world next year."

Lebo has been a fixture in Andover since he was hired to run Proctor Academy's environmental program in 1991. He stopped working at the private school last year because of a herniated disk, but he still manages the organic gardens there. He was a part-time dorm parent this year.

But his teaching days are far from over. Let Lebo talk, and he will engage you for hours - he verges on ranting - about energy policy, American consumerism and the design principles around which he has built his life. One thing you won't hear much of is a holier-than-thou attitude.

A Bad Child

2008-06-04T22:39:00.003-05:00

Took the youngest up to Norwich College this evening to be honored as one of the top 70 middle school kids in the state. It was nice -- his principal, guidance counselor and one of his classmates were there, too. There was a little banquet and a speech by Barbara Cochran, who won the 1972 Olympic gold medal for downhill skiing.

Actually, not so much a speech as an exhortation. Do well. Work hard. Behave. Set goals. Declare victory when goals are met. And so on. A nice talk, anyway.

She finished her speech, and they started lining up the kids for photos with her and the governor. The child showed me his napkin:

"Goal: Do Not Trip On Stage and Fall On Governor."

We howled. He made it through the presentation, no tripping on stage.

Holy Crap.

2008-06-03T18:00:00.000-05:00

Here's hoping everyone had their helmets on (though it doesn't look like it):

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- A car plowed into a weekend bike race along a highway near the U.S.-Mexico border, killing one and injuring 10 others, police said.

The 28-year-old driver was apparently drunk and fell asleep when he crashed into the race, said police investigator Jose Alfredo Rodriguez.

A photograph taken by a city official showed bicyclists and equipment being hurled high into the air by the collision.

Rodriguez said Juan Campos was charged with killing Alejandro Alvarez, 37, of Monterrey.

Authorities said the wreck happened 15 minutes into the 34-kilometer (21 mile) race Sunday along a highway between Playa Bagdad and Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

Campos said he is an American citizen living in Brownsville. The U.S. Consulate could not immediately confirm that.

"We are looking into the incident in terms of whether American citizens were involved," consulate spokesman Todd Huizinga said.

How I Spent My 2008 (Summer) Tax Rebate

2008-06-02T23:05:00.003-05:00

Devil pig photos tomorrow. But for today, here's another of my contributions (or maybe my children's contributions? Arab investors' contributions? Random Chinese bondholders?) to the American economy, courtesy of the rebate check that arrived last week. Only a few more months until I wish I'd gotten this baby in, oh, March or so:

Labels. Annoying and Silly Labels.

2008-05-27T05:08:00.001-05:00

So, if you're concerned about peak oil, you've got to be a "survivalist."

Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare

By SAMANTHA GROSS – 2 days ago

BUSKIRK, N.Y. (AP) — A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.

That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.

Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.

"I was panic-stricken," the 50-year-old recalled, her voice shaking. "Devastated. Depressed. Afraid. Vulnerable. Weak. Alone. Just terrible."

Convinced the planet's oil supply is dwindling and the world's economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn't prepare.

The exact number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining momentum in the last few years.

These energy survivalists are not leading some sort of green revolution meant to save the planet. Many of them believe it is too late for that, seeing signs in soaring fuel and food prices and a faltering U.S. economy, and are largely focused on saving themselves.

And if you want to grow more of your own food, you must be a "localvore."

Growing the zero-mile diet

With fears of GMOs and widespread carbon guilt, cultivating your own veggies is poised to be the new competitive sport

FIONA MORROW

May 23, 2008

VANCOUVER -- So you've bought into the 100-mile diet. Eco points to you. If you're looking for serious ethical kudos this season, however, you're going to have to dig even deeper - literally.

Serious locavores are working on a zero-mile diet, courtesy of the old-fashioned vegetable garden. As Canadians break ground in many parts of the country this month, concern over the carbon footprint of the global food trade is inspiring them to reach for their spades. And the hunger for a diet free of genetic modifications means the demand for organically grown and heirloom varieties has never been so great.

Dan Jason should know. The owner of Salt Spring Seeds has been promoting an intense local diet for 20 years from his home on British Columbia's Salt Spring Island. After he was interviewed by Vancouverites Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon for their groundbreaking book, The 100-Mile Diet, Mr. Jason was struck with an idea.

"I thought, 'What is this 100-mile diet? We should be aiming for a zero-mile diet.' "

I'm just saying: Whatever happened to people? Yeesh.

Memorial Day Weekend

2008-05-26T22:06:00.005-05:00

... a nice, three-day weekend. Lots of sun. Not so much rest. Cleared about 750 square feet of garden by hand, with the amount of potato-sized rocks getting steadily larger. Really didn't even need flat rocks for paths -- just tossed the dug-up rocks into the middle of the garden for a path. Bitch of a job, but I plugged away and listened to Bill McKibben's Wandering Home on the iPod to keep from going insane.

So far, the garden seems to be happy. The chard is going great guns, and the onions are shooting up. Carrots seem to have survived, broccoli, peas and kale are pushing up. Not sure about potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers or melons, since they've just been planted. Next move is to put the Three Sisters -- beans, corn and squash -- into the just-cleared garden. If there's time to clear any more, it looks like we'll throw in some sunflowers and maybe more potatoes. You can never have enough potatoes.

The animals all seem happy. The collies are actually respecting the invisible fence. The tails on the pigs are getting curlier by the day, which I understand means that they're happy. Even the chickens are mellowing a bit.

Weekend was a real washout for a lot of the locals. The market where our eggs are sold was doing OK, not as good as last year, but OK. The rest of the area looked like a ghost town. I guess $4 gas will do that to a tourist economy.

All in all, it just felt like a nice calm day before a really wicked storm.

This is Obscene

2008-05-23T14:25:00.003-05:00

You don't have to be Potter Stewart to call this one. Not. In. My. House. No freakin' way. It goes to the pigs, chickens or compost pile.

By ANDREW MARTIN

Published: May 18, 2008

Grocery bills are rising through the roof. Food banks are running short of donations. And food shortages are causing sporadic riots in poor countries through the world.

Skip to next paragraph

Multimedia

Graphic

Food, a Shrinking Burden

You’d never know it if you saw what was ending up in your landfill. As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

Grocery stores discard products because of spoilage or minor cosmetic blemishes. Restaurants throw away what they don’t use. And consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. An update is under way.

The study didn’t account for the explosion of ready-to-eat foods now available at supermarkets, from rotisserie chickens to sandwiches and soups. What do you think happens to that potato salad and meatloaf at the end of the day?

A more recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans generate roughly 30 million tons of food waste each year, which is about 12 percent of the total waste stream. All but about 2 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills; by comparison, 62 percent of yard waste is composted.

The numbers seem all the more staggering now, given the cost of groceries and the emerging food crisis abroad.

Cold, Wet and Rainy

2008-05-21T20:50:00.002-05:00

Only been able to plant one of the apple trees. Still waiting to take Lisa's tomato and pepper plants out of flats and put them into the ground. Also need to dig up another 300 to 500 square feet of garden. Here's how it works:

1. Break sod into squares with pitchfork
2. Pull big rocks from ground
3. Get on hands and knees, pull up sod
4. Pull big rocks from ground
5. Turn soil over with pitchfork
6. Pull big rocks from ground

See the pattern? Pre-Columbian gardening, that's us.

The pigs are cracking me up. They sleep late. When I go to look at them in the morning, they've usually burrowed under the hay, and all you can see are little curly pig tails sticking out of the hay. The really good news? They're eating less grain that I'd expected. They've been around a bit more than a week, and haven't gone through an entire bag.

(I expect that'll change).

They eat a ton of leaves off bushes, and they're doing very well with old veggies and fruits from the market. We went to pick up the pig bucket tonight, and were warned that we'll need to start making daily trips very soon, when watermelon and fruit sales pick up.

I'll hope they do, and not just for the piglets' sakes -- I worry that this is going to be a slow summer for folks who depend on tourists. Four dollar gas ain't nothing to sneeze at, and I don't think it's getting better any time soon. Saw a story today where some analysts said oil might get as high as $140 this year. Given that it's at $132 today -- up from $129 yesterday -- um, yeah. I think it might hit $140 at some point this year. Like, before Memorial Day.

Back to the piglets -- I'm wondering if I should introduce them to the collies. I'm not utterly stupid; I know that nothing good can come from this. But I just know that Stink in particular would enjoy playing with pigs.

Maybe it'd be a name thing.

The Good Old Days

2008-05-20T18:50:00.004-05:00

Personally, I think $12-$15 per gallon is a bit optimistic, near-term. I've been telling folks that $4 gas is cheap (hey, can you get a gallon of milk for $4? No? Rest my case), and I'd brace for $7 by late 2009.

Here's a transcript snippet of Robert Hirsch on CNBC:

HOST: You know, we've been talking all morning long about energy prices. Watching crude oil prices touch above $127 for the first time overnight leads a lot of people to start wondering about peak oil and the peak oil theory. You've been writing about peak oil for some time, so did you see this coming?

HIRSCH: Yes we did. Not quite the way it's turned out, but this is not a surprise.

HOST: You say, "not quite the way it's turned out". What's happened that's different from what you were predicting?

HIRSCH: Well, I wasn't particularly predicting. I'm a student of this and have focused on what we do about the problem after it really hits. Peak oil--the idea is that it would hit a sharp peak and then production in the world would hit a sharp peak then drop off. And what's happened is that we hit plateau in world oil production, and that plateau has been ongoing since about the middle of 2004.

HOST: Dr. Hirsch, there are a lot of people when we talk about peak oil who say there are going to be technologies that are always developed. There will be new ways to get oil, whether it's from coal, whether it's from the oil shales, and they say that means we will never actually hit peak oil. What do you say to those people?

HIRSCH: They're incorrect, and the reason that they're incorrect is that they don't understand the magnitude of the problem and how long it's going to take to bring substitute liquid fuels on and to introduce energy efficiency on a massive scale. That's something that we analyzed and it takes decades. And the reason, simply, is that the magnitude of the problem is enormous.

[McTeer says we should drill more.]

HOST: Dr. Hirsch, what do you say to that--the idea that we should be drilling in places like ANWR and drilling offshore. Would that solve this problem of a plateau in oil production?

HIRSCH: There's no single thing that's going to solve this problem because it's as massive as one can possibly imagine. And the prices that we're paying at the pump today I think are going to be the good old days because others who watch this very closely forecast that we are going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon. And then, after that, when world oil production goes into decline, we're going to talk about rationing. In other words, not only are we going to be paying high prices and have considerable economic problems, in addition to that, we're not going to be able to get the fuel when we want it.

Glad I planted one of my apple trees this morning. A little work on the garden, too, but not much. Too busy with the day job.

I Don't Get Out Nearly Enough.

2008-05-19T20:46:00.004-05:00

Duty called. Had to drive to Boston early this morning for the Day Job. Put on my coat and tie, and went out before leaving to check on the pigs. Saw three curly little tails sticking out of the hay and remembered, I needed to get them some corn.

Stopped by the feed store en route to Boston and picked up two bales of hay, two bags of chicken feed, and a bag of corn. Nothing unusual about this, other than throwing hay into the Outback while wearing a coat and tie.

Made it to the city without too much incident. Met up with a coworker who was a bit taken aback by a colleague with hay in the car. He probably doesn't live in Vermont, I thought. Stopped to get some fast-food on the way out of town (hey, I was starving). The guy at the window peered into the back of my car. "You raise cows or something?" he asked, genuinely puzzled. Certainly he doesn't live in Vermont, I thought. Stopped for gas in southern New Hampshire. Came back from grabbing a Coke to find four people standing around my car, wondering if my bike and kayak racks were somehow related to the hay in the back of the car. They confessed; they were tourists from Missouri.

Drove back into Vermont. Stopped for groceries. No one stared. Ran by the market to pick up a pig bucket -- I'm giving the local grocer a break on green eggs in exchange for a bucket of old fruits and veggies every day or two. Again, nothing unusual about a guy in a coat and tie with hay and animal feed in the back of the car (although I'm sure the pig bucket added a certain je ne sans quoi to an establishment owned by a British gentleman). Anyway, nothing to see here, folks, move along.

I guess the moral of the story is, people who don't live in Vermont are strange. Or something like that.

Speaking of people who don't live in Vermont. The blog has been getting a lot of attention from Texas, almost certainly due to the latest triathlon tragedy. One reader was concerned that I was blaming the guy who died. Well ... no. But I'm not hugely crazy about huge events. And I think it's simple math. Bigger the event, bigger the chances for trouble.

Just philosophically, I don't think everyone should be able to enter a triathlon. Or a marathon. I'm not even sure I shouldn't be banned as a menace to others for my swimming/flailing in the water. Not to be elitist, but I think the sport would mean more if there's a minimum bar. Not a hugely high, Boston Marathon-like one, mind you -- but a minimum, so nitwits like myself don't try to enter one when they're woefully out of shape and hurt themselves or others.

This is NOT to say that the Conroe triathlete who died was out of shape, or a danger to anyone. I don't know -- maybe if there hadn't been 1,000 other people in the water, something could have been done. Or not. I don't know. But I do know a lot of these events are just too damn big. That's all. I'm just sayin'.

I'll step off my soapbox now. It's hard to stay on the soapbox anyway, when the Wall Street Journal has this to say about your neighboring town:

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- Policeman Robert Perkins received a complaint the other day. A man was standing near the tourist information kiosk in this quaint New England village, in the nude.

Officer Perkins spotted the perp and issued a warning: Keep your clothes on, or risk a $25 ticket. The man "was unaware" that being naked in town was illegal, Officer Perkins says.

Shefali Anand/WSJ

On a blackboard in downtown Brattleboro in November, some residents expressed their opinions against the ban on public nudity. NOTE: Some photos in this gallery include nudity.

In fact, until just a few months ago, public nudity was perfectly legal here -- as it still is in many Vermont towns. However, over the past two years, Brattleboro, pop. 12,000, has experienced sporadic outbreaks of naked bicycling, naked hula-hooping, and nakedness in general. That, in turn, triggered a period of civic navel-gazing, both literally and figuratively.

Last month's incident by the tourist kiosk was the first report of public nudity after months of wintry weather. But now that spring is in the air, Officer Perkins says, people are starting to wear less clothing. "We'll see if they take it all off," he says.

Brattleboro's troubles started in August 2006, when three young men went skinny-dipping in a swimming hole outside of town, then decided to see what would happen if they went into town and got naked there.

So the three headed to Harmony Parking Lot -- a popular hangout for kids just off Main Street -- and took off their clothes. "It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing," said Chris Corry, 20 years old and a member of the group.

... Love the Journal to death. Really. But "Brattleboro's troubles?" What the hell, it's Belfast or something? Summer=People take clothes off. Winter=People put them back on. No troubles here.

Chance of snow showers tonight, wind blowing like a damn Banshee out of the north. Damn, will it never end? At least I haven't yet planted the two apple trees or blueberry bushes I got over the weekend.

Sigh.

But a cool site here, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Here's hoping I never need them (and I probably won't, since I'm not selling or even producing raw milk). But knock on wood, anyway. And read Salatin's book, Everything I Want To Do is Illegal.

I'll shut up now.

Coolness.

2008-05-16T19:49:00.001-05:00

They're heading our way ...

May 17, 2008

Chasing Utopia, Family Imagines No Possessions

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and RACHEL MOSTELLER

AUSTIN, Tex. — Like many other young couples, Aimee and Jeff Harris spent the first years of their marriage eagerly accumulating stuff: cars, furniture, clothes, appliances and, after a son and a daughter came along, toys, toys, toys.

Now they are trying to get rid of it all, down to their fancy wedding bands. Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

“It’s amazing the amount of things a family can acquire,” said Mrs. Harris, 28, attributing their good life to “the ridiculous amount of money” her husband earned as a computer network engineer in this early Wi-Fi mecca.

The Harrises now hope to end up as organic homesteaders in Vermont.

“We’re not attached to any outcome,” said Mrs. Harris, a would-be doctor before dropping out of college, who grew up poverty-stricken in a family that traces its lineage back through the Delanos and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Mayflower settler, Isaac Allerton.

Mr. Harris, 30, who dropped out of high school and “rode the Internet wave,” agreed, saying they were “letting the universe take us for a ride.”

They are not alone.

Gilt Trip

2008-05-14T20:10:00.003-05:00

So, we finally got the three little pigs. One girl, two boys. They're in a pen while we get the grounding rods straightened out -- not enough of a charge to keep them in the fence. We'll have it together tomorrow, Friday at latest. Funny little animals.

Been busy as hell this week. Trying very hard to get the garden put together, but we're interested in farming crops, not rocks. Sigh. There are a lot of them down there. Also been engaged in a ton of Will chaffeur-ing. I had to take him to Rutland for a meeting for his June youth leadership conference in Phoenix, and Lisa and I got him from Rutland again a few days later for another meeting. Fortunately, the weather has been more or less gorgeous.

More on the triathlon death in Houston (maybe a week or two ago). Awfully sad. Sometimes, these things just happen for no good reason. I'll still argue that the swimming leg is the most dangerous part of the sport, with or without heart problems.

The death of a Conroe man who was stricken while swimming in a triathlon last weekend resulted from drowning, but a heart problem also was a factor, according to an autopsy report.

Randolph Wray Parnell, 51, was competing in the 500-meter swim when he was found floating face-down in Lake Woodlands on Saturday.

An autopsy, conducted Monday by the Southeast Texas Forensic Center in Conroe, showed that Parnell drowned, but that dilated cardiomyopathy was a contributing factor, said Edie Connelly, Montgomery County Precinct 3 justice of the peace.

Parnell was one of about 900 competitors in the CB&I triathlon at Northshore Park in The Woodlands.

He had been training and competing in triathlons for 11 years, family members said, and this was his third year competing in the CB&I triathlon.

Survivors include his wife, Sharon, and son, Mason.

You Can Do It. We Won't Be Around to Help.

2008-05-05T23:27:00.000-05:00

Cheap, but it pretty much says it all. The Home Depot in Bratt has been run off. I've got mixed feelings. It had a big and cheap selection, but wasn't local. Most of the employees were nice and helpful; some, not so much. The reason they gave for closing the store -- seems like $11 million wasn't enough -- just struck me as shameful. So I don't know that this was so much about a small town victory as much as corporate asshattery.

I'm just finishing up a very long day at work, so more later. But here's the AP story, by way of the Boston Globe:

In Vermont, small shops beat Home Depot in customer battle

Wayne St. John (left) of the family-run Fireside True Value sold a lawn tractor last week to David Dunn of Dummerston. (Jason R. Henske/Associated Press)

Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By John Curran Associated Press / May 4, 2008

BRATTLEBORO - When a Home Depot set up shop across the street, Fireside True Value hardware store owner Wayne St. John knew it would probably take some of his customers away.

Again.

2008-05-04T20:51:00.005-05:00

I don't know, but I think 1,000 people swimming together might be too many. I'm wondering if the sport might not be better off with some sort of pre-qualifications across sports. Something like, you can enter if you've run a 5K in 24 minutes or less in the past year, or swum 500m in 10 minutes or less, that sort of thing.

Here's the story from the Conroe Courier:

Conroe triathlete dies

Elliott Cochran
Courier Staff

05/04/2008

Email to a friendPost a CommentPrinter-friendly

A Conroe resident died while competing in the swimming portion of the 2008 CB&I Triathlon at Northshore Park in The Woodlands Saturday morning.

Randolph Parnell, 51, an experienced triathlete, competed among 1,000 participants in the race. He died from undetermined causes in the swimming portion of the race, according to officials at press time.

Chris Nunes, director of parks and recreation for The Woodlands, said rescue personnel were present at the time of the incident, and information and details of the occurrence are ongoing.

“We’re still collecting a lot of information and debriefing our staff,” he said. “There were personnel on site as part of the race, including between 12 and 14 lifeguards in individual kayaks and on the shore, as well as The Woodlands Fire Department on one of their rescue boats.”

The triathlon included a 500-meter swim, a 15-mile bike ride and a 5k run.

Bret Strong, a participant in the event and friend of Parnell, said Parnell appeared to be prepared for the event, and was enthusiastic.

“I talked to him a little before the race and wished him luck; he seemed happy and ready to go,” he said. “We’ve known him and his wife and their son for 18 years now. When we first moved to The Woodlands, they were one of the first families we met.”

Parnell previously competed in the 2006 CB&I Triathlon, finishing 281st overall, and 25th in the male 45- to 49-year-old division.

The body was taken to Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital.

Some Days Just Suck

2008-05-02T18:59:00.000-05:00

And that's all I'm saying about that.

Pig Things, Part Two

2008-05-01T08:45:00.002-05:00

But we're really not all screwed until we start stockpiling animals.

Courtesy, today's WSJ:

As Food Prices Rise, Shoppers Stock Up
By GARY MCWILLIAMS and DAVID KESMODEL
May 1, 2008; Page D1

Ross C. Powell has found a novel way to counter rising grocery prices. He started an informal food cooperative out of his garage.

The San Antonio project manager is currently stocking up on inexpensive beef, anticipating meat prices will follow dairy, egg and grain prices higher. "It's a hedging strategy," says Mr. Powell, a 48-year-old father of three. He recently installed a 22-cubic-foot freezer in his garage to go along with the shelves he built for deeply discounted food staples. Neighbors who once dismissed his frugal ways as overkill are now joining him to make bulk purchases of meat.

Even as rising food prices have triggered protests in developing countries, Americans are rediscovering the economic virtues of a well-stocked food pantry and storage freezer, and embracing discount and wholesale retailers for cut-rate meals.

Stockpiling staples such as rice, meats and canned soup is coming into vogue again as food inflation and $3.60-a-gallon gasoline have consumers cutting the frequency of shopping trips -- and loading up carts when they do shop. Sometimes shoppers are prodded by fears of impending food shortages, though none have yet materialized in the U.S.

The Department of Agriculture predicts a 4% to 5% increase in food prices this year, nearly twice the rate for 2005. The largest increases are forecast for fats and oils, estimated to rise 8% to 9%, and cereals and bakery products, projected to jump 7.5% to 8.5%. That's on top of existing increases: A dozen large eggs cost $2.20 in March, up from $1.63 a year earlier. White bread now costs $1.35 a pound, compared with $1.16 a year ago.

For most Americans, stockpiling fell out of favor decades ago as the rise of lower-price supercenters, wholesale clubs and discount chains curbed food-price inflation. Customers who made a trek to discounters -- Aldi Group, Costco Wholesale Corp., or Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- no longer needed to stockpile. The new competition forced grocery chains to push down costs, helping to drive down food inflation through the 1980s and 1990s.

Today, the impact of some countries banning rice exports has prompted stores to limit purchases of certain foods, including rice and cooking oils -- and that has helped to trigger a return to 1970s-style stockpiling. Consumers witnessing food inflation in their weekly trips are responding by buying more than their immediate needs.

"It's not prices going up that kicks off this behavior," says John Rand, director of retail insight at consultants Management Ventures Inc. "It's the fact that prices go up in a predictable fashion."

Lynn I. McDermott, a 51-year-old Brewster, Mass., real-estate agent, has used a freezer for stockpiling heavily discounted frozen foods. "In the past, if it was a killer sale, I'd buy a few. Now, when they're on sale, I'll buy a lot," she says.

Pig Things

2008-05-01T08:14:00.004-05:00

Got a call last night from a guy who can sell us three Yorkshire piglets, so I spent a couple of hours early this morning on the fenceline, trimming brush. I'll put the electric fence up this weekend and assemble a quick, pallet-shack for the beasts. Also have to get a trough and watering barrel. Lot of stuff to do.

On the goat front, the Southern Vermont Dairy Goat Association is right up the road from us. I've been doing some back-and-forth with them, and one of their members may be selling a couple of yearling goats. They wouldn't be ready for milking until fall, but ...

Need to rent a rototiller in the next week, too. We got flurries yesterday (!) and the last freeze shouldn't be for another couple of weeks, but we'll have to have everything in the ground by then. I've done just about enough hand tilling to last, oh, a lifetime.

Hoping to get back on the running track next week. Looks like physical terrorism is just about over.

A quick tip of the hat to Frances Bolles, Don's child (Don was the Arizona Republic reporter who was killed in 1976 by a car bomb planted by some major assholes, one of whom is 78 and asking for parole. And shouldn't get it). She's right about the cute little centerpiece in the Newseum:

She's married and has a son. She's a successful author and career development expert. Nearly 32 years have passed and still, at any moment, it's once again June 2, 1976. Like when she read that the recently opened Newseum in Washington, D.C., has her father's bombed out car on display.

“That is just grotesque,” Frances said. “I can't tell you what pain it is knowing that people are going to walk by and gawk. It reinforces the idea that my father is a footnote, and I rail against that. Over time, a victim is forgotten so that in something like a clemency hearing the focus goes to the person who is living rather than the person who was killed. My father was real. I don't want anyone to forget that.”

Back to the day job, aka making little rocks out of big rocks.

The Timing Might Not Be Right.

2008-04-29T17:22:00.004-05:00

Understand, we have one of the least industrial agricultural setups in the world. No desire to start a CAFO. But with food prices going the way they're going, my hunch is that getting the average consumer into this idea is going to be an uphill slog.

Study: Factory Farming Taking Toll on Health, Economy
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; 5:47 PM

Factory farming takes a big hidden toll on human health and the environment, is undermining rural America's economic stability and fails to provide the humane treatment of livestock increasingly demanded by American consumers, concludes an independent, 2 1/2 -year analysis that calls for major changes in the way corporate agriculture produces meat, milk and eggs.

The 111-page report released today, sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, finds that the "economies of scale" long used to justify factory farming practices are largely an illusion, perpetuated by a failure to account for a raft of associated costs.

Among those costs are human illnesses caused by drug-resistant bacteria associated with the rampant use of antibiotics on feedlots and degradation of land, water and air quality caused by animal waste too intensely concentrated to be neutralized by natural processes.

Several experts said the report, by a commission of experts with varying backgrounds and allegiances, is remarkable for the number of tough recommendations that survived the grueling research and review process, which participants said was politically charged and under constant pressure from powerful agricultural interests.

In the end, however, even industry representatives on the panel agreed to such controversial recommendations as a ban on the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals -- a huge hit against veterinary pharmaceutical companies -- a phase-out of all intensive confinement systems that prevent the free movement of farm animals, and more vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws in the increasingly consolidated agricultural arena.

"At the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex -- an unhealthy alliance between the defense industry, the Pentagon and their friends on Capitol Hill," wrote Robert P. Martin, executive director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Production, which wrote the report. "Now the agro-industrial complex -- an alliance of agricultural commodity groups, scientists at academic institutions who are paid by the industry, and their friends on Capitol Hill -- is a concern in animal food production in the 21st century."

The report, "Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Production in America," comes at a time when food, agriculture and animal welfare issues are prominent in the American psyche.
Food prices are rising faster than they have for decades. Concerns about global climate change have brought new attention to the fact that modern agriculture is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas production. And recent meat recalls, punctuated by the release of undercover footage of dairy cows being abused at a California slaughterhouse, have struck a chord with consumers increasingly attuned to the realities of where their meat and dairy products come from.

The report acknowledges that the decades-long trend towards reliance on "concentrated animal feeding operations," or CAFOs, has brought some benefits, including cheaper food. In 1970, the average American spent 4.2 percent of his or her income to buy 194 pounds of red meat and poultry annually. By 2005 typical Americans were spending just 2.1 percent of their income for 221 pounds per year.

But the system has also brought unintended consequences. With thousands of animals kept in close quarters, diseases spread quickly. To prevent some of those outbreaks -- and, more often, simply to spur faster growth -- factory farms routinely treat animals with antibiotics, speeding the development of drug-resistant bacteria and in some cases rendering important medicines less effective in people.

The vast majority of U.S. antibiotic use is for animals, the commission noted, adding that because of the lack of oversight by the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies, even regulators can only estimate how many drugs are being given to animals.

The commission urges stronger reporting requirements for companies and a phase-out and then ban on antibiotics in farm animals except as treatments for disease, a policy already initiated in some European countries.

"That's a good recommendation. A strong recommendation," said Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which released its own report last week documenting billions of dollars in farm subsidies to factory farming operations and annual federal expenditures of $100 million just to clean up their ongoing environmental damage.

The Pew report also calls for tighter regulation of factory farm waste, finding that toxic gases and dust from animal waste are making CAFO workers and neighbors ill.

So. Not. Good.

2008-04-28T15:39:00.003-05:00

At $200 bbl, US gasoline is about $7 per gallon. Not. So. Good. Here are some of the ugly details from the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4200dc9e-1521-11dd-996c-0000779fd2ac.html

The good news is that we extended the garden another 30-40 feet on Sunday. Took some of the pressure off the indoor flats, putting some broccoli and kale into the new bads. We're going to keep expanding until we run out of space, probably rototill the back yard and plant a mix of squash, beans and corn along the driveway.

The Saturday was a little more entertaining -- spent it learning to make cheese at Ricki Carroll's seminar in Ashfield, Mass. Went home and promptly started a big batch of cheddar, which is currently aging under cheesecloth and an asparagus steamer (keeps the cats and mice out) on a high shelf. I'll know how it comes out in, oh, two months or so.

Anyway. I'd recommend Ricki's class highly. The only downside is, there's not an opening until September. And they're crowded. Very crowded. Must've been 40 people at this one. It was an interesting group, though. Most of the people younger than me were in it for the sustainability issues -- they want to be able to make more of their own food when they have to make it. The folks older than me were more, eh, it's something fun to do in retirement.

Still scratching my head a bit about that one. But I did get a fair amount of supply -- some more cultures (thermophilic and mesophilic), propionic Shermanii for the Swiss, more salt and calcium chloride, and some butter muslin. All in all, I was restrained. Seriously.

Got a lot to do this week, barely time to take a break from the day job. But just saw the FT story and thought, yeeesh. I'm only commuting upstairs and downstairs, and thinking I'd better get more livestock. And one of these crosscut guys, since even a chainsaw is about to get mighty damn expensive:

http://www.lehmans.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=26&itemType=PRODUCT&iMainCat=836&iSubCat=847&iProductID=26

Raining like hell, and supposed to get back down into the low 20s by midweek. Springtime in Vermont ...

The Doomers Are Out This Week

2008-04-24T21:28:00.002-05:00

... and how.

Feeling better. Have the cheesemaking class on Saturday, and will hopefully rent a rototiller on Sunday. The crud is just about gone, and the shoulder feels a tad better. Been going hammer and tongs at the day job, at the expense of enjoying some truly gorgeous weather.

Here are the reads du jour, beginning with the quite inspirational and winding up with the utterly doomed (but yes, I did go to the co-op tonight and get a 25-pound bag of brown rice. And no, the Brattleboro Food Co-op was not limiting its customers).

First, the inspirational:

April 23, 2008
Starting His Retirement With a Splash
By PETE WILLIAMS

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Jeff Conine could have filled the first months of his post-baseball career with golf, fishing and travel — the usual pursuits that a 41-year-old with financial security might enjoy.

Instead, Conine, a 17-year veteran of six big-league teams, has spent long hours swimming, cycling and running in preparation for an ambitious triathlon schedule that will culminate in the Ironman world championship in Kona, Hawaii, in October. Several former teammates, accustomed to the less rigorous conditioning of baseball, have questioned his sanity.

“Guys in my position are supposed to sit back and relax, not do something ridiculous like this,” said Conine, who lives in South Florida and will make his triathlon debut here Sunday at the St. Anthony’s Triathlon.

The race attracts more than 4,000 competitors and is considered the kickoff to the sport’s national calendar. As an Olympic-distance event (0.93-mile swim, 24.8-mile bike ride, and 6.2-mile run), it is a small fraction of the grueling Ironman distance race, but longer than entry-level sprint triathlons.

Conine spent the final six weeks of last season with the Mets and is best known for his role as a first baseman and outfielder for the Florida Marlins teams that won the World Series in 1997 and 2003. A longtime follower of the Ironman world championship, he was inspired to take up the sport by David Samson, the Marlins’ president, who finished the event in 2006.

Conine, who stands 6 feet 1 inch, finished last season at 220 pounds, heavy by triathlon standards, and until recently had limited swimming experience. But he was regarded as one of baseball’s better athletes, having played professional racquetball as a minor leaguer.

He certainly looks the part, having been told for years that he resembles Lance Armstrong, a likeness that seems more pronounced as Conine loses weight while training.

Though baseball is an anaerobic sport with short bursts of activity, unlike the long aerobic nature of triathlon, Conine believes the experience of playing a mentally taxing sport over a 162-game season will ease his transition.

“It’s all about being mentally tough,” he said. “With long-distance triathlon, it’s all about knowing when to push your body and when to rest and persevering through these boring six-hour rides and three-hour runs.”

Next, the amusing:

Green Acres II: When Neighbors Become Farmers
Suburban Arugula Is Organic and Fresh, but About That Manure...
By KELLY K. SPORS
April 22, 2008; Page A1

BOULDER, Colo. -- When suburbanites look out their front doors, a lot of them want to see a lush green lawn. Kipp Nash wants to see vegetables, and not all of his neighbors are thrilled.

"I'd rather see green grass" than brown dirt patches, says 82-year-old Florence Tatum, who lives in Mr. Nash's Boulder neighborhood, across the street from a house with a freshly dug manure patch out front. "But those days are slipping away."

A growing number of suburban Americans are earning extra cash by growing food in their backyards.

Since 2006, Mr. Nash, 31, has uprooted his backyard and the front or back yards of eight of his Boulder neighbors, turning them into minifarms growing tomatoes, bok choy, garlic and beets.

Between May and September, he gives weekly bagfuls of fresh-picked vegetables and herbs to people here who have bought "shares" of his farming operation. Neighbors who lend their yards to the effort are paid in free produce and yard work.

A school-bus driver, Mr. Nash rises at 5 a.m. and, after returning from his morning route, spends his days planting, watering and tending his yard farms and the seedlings he stores in a greenhouse behind his house.

Farmers don't necessarily live in the country anymore. They might just be your next-door neighbor, hoping to turn a dollar satisfying the blooming demand for organic, locally grown foods.

Unlike traditional home gardeners who devote a corner of the yard to a few rows of vegetables, a new crop of minifarmers is tearing up the whole yard and planting foods such as arugula and kohlrabi that restaurants might want to buy. The locally grown food movement has also created a new market for front-yard farmers.

"Agriculture is becoming more and more suburban," says Roxanne Christensen, publisher of Spin-Farming LLC, a Philadelphia company started in 2005 that sells guides and holds seminars teaching a small-scale farming technique that involves selecting high-profit vegetables like kale, carrots and tomatoes to grow, and then quickly replacing crops to reap the most from plots smaller than an acre. "Land is very expensive in the country, so people are saying, 'why not just start growing in the backyard?' "

And on the "we're doomed" front:

Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs."

(Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash.

Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

Postscript

2008-04-20T19:53:00.002-05:00

It's occasionally good to get some positive reinforcement. Good Pollan article in today's NY Times Magazine:

You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Le Crud

2008-04-20T19:39:00.003-05:00

It's coming, I know it. Weird feeling at the back of the throat, check. Starting to feel a bit snotty, check. Run-down feeling in general, check. Occasional dizziness, check.

Sigh. I don't need this.

Didn't stop me from getting up and going to town on the chicken run. I had a bit more chicken nastiness than anticipated -- 32 wheelbarrow-fulls, to be precise. Dumped it all close to where the back garden is going. Lisa raked it out.

Given the way the shoulder is feeling (bad), I'm thinking we're going to wind up renting a rototiller for the bulk of the garden creation. Just a little too much manual labor right now.

After I finished the chicken run cleaning, I did a little bit more work on it, mostly measuring for the new door and reinstalling some perches. The plan is to finish up the door, put the netting over the top, and then proceed with a duck rodeo. Yee-haw.

Also put up a clothesline and trimmed about 50 more feet of brush along the fenceline. Nasty, sticky thorns that took forever to get done. At least I got to listen to the frogs and owls while doing it.

Here's to hoping the Emergen-C kicks in.

Smells Like Crap

2008-04-19T22:23:00.005-05:00

Must be crap.

Wow. Gorgeous day today. Believe I got a sunburn (too bad I'm so damn fat). Anyway, we fixed the frame of the chicken run. Didn't take as long as I was afraid it'd take. Cleaning out the inside of the run, though, was another matter. Imagine a 12 foot by 12 foot space, about six inches deep in hay, chicken crap, and chicken piss.

Oh, and it's been sitting there all winter.

I piled up about a cubic yard of the stuff before punting for the day. Went to town on the back fence, clearing brush along the soon-to-be fenceline with a pair of loppers. Shoulder was just absolutely killing me by the time it got dark.

Made dinner for the kids, did all the dishes, started everyone's laundry, and did some general sweeping, dusting and other cleaning around the house. Lisa baked bread, worked on the garden and did some cleaning. Watched the Jazz beat up on the Rox until midnight -- I think they're already done this year -- and went to bed.

More chickenshit tomorrow.

I'm Back, and Tired

2008-04-18T20:22:00.005-05:00

... so a couple of days in Washington, and I'm beat. I didn't run, I didn't exercise, I didn't do tourist things -- although I was there for the pope's visit -- I just worked. And my shoulder (wah!) feels like hell. But it's gorgeous weather out there. Spring's here. Finally.

First things first. Rockets, in six. They just can't lose to a team that plays defense like this:

The Jazz. Like Indiana Jones: "The Jazz. I hate those guys." The Rox need another 22-game streak, although (I think) 16 would do quite nicely.

Wendell Berry has an awesome essay in this month's Harper's. I'm going to reprint a few relevant snippets. If you don't have a subscription, get one. Between the Index, Berry, and this months' Kevin Phillips story on how the government cooks economic numbers, this month's issue alone is well worth the $16.97 annual subscription price:

And so, in confronting the phenomenon of “peak oil,” we are really confronting the end of our customary delusion of “more.” Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice. To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice and a viable one if we can recover the necessary political sanity.

Of course it makes sense to consider alternative energy sources provided they make sense. But also we will have to re-examine the economic structures of our lives, and conform them to the tolerances and limits of our earthly places. When there is no more, our one choice is to make the most and best of what we have.

No. 250

2008-04-14T19:37:00.005-05:00

I hadn't run this weekend, so I woke up this morning and decided to be unkind to myself. Did eight miles. Felt pretty good, too. I just kind of zoned out and relaxed, something I really do need to do a bit more. It started out cold, but by the time I finished (no global warming jokes, please), it was mild. Headed into Brattleboro and got some chicken feed and corn, milk, and a new shovel to replace the sorry, busted-ass implement that couldn't lever a 15-pound rock out of the garden.

Plugged away at work all day, taking a break at noon to get Stink out of the pond and pull taps out of the maples. It's been cold at night, so I believe we'll go for one ... more ... half-gallon. We can stop any time we want. Really. We've already got 5 1/2 gallons (and would have had six, if we hadn't let one batch boil over and burn). But we can stop. Honest.

You don't have to agree with him, but give Kunstler props for another hilarious rant:

A President Hillary will also go a long way to defeating the popular delusion that a world ruled by female humans would be heaven-on-earth. (It would be more like one of those chaotic single-parent households in Section-8 housing, ruled by a harried and distracted mom, with a shadowy man in the background molesting the little ones while she was off working at the WalMart.)

Better get to sleep at a reasonable hour. I'll have an insanely busy next few days. Off to The Big Apple and Our Nation's Capital. Sigh. Haven't even packed, and I'm already quite certain that I'd rather be sitting out on the front porch with Gray Kitten on my lap, watching the ducks torment collies and the chickens scratch in the dirt.

This is Sad

2008-04-14T11:57:00.001-05:00

And it happened in the next town up the road from us.

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- An autopsy was planned Monday on a 2 1/2-year-old girl found dead after her mother and 6-year-old sister drowned in Wardsboro.

Police, meanwhile, continued their probe into the actions of Nicole Waring, 40, of Wolcott, hoping to determine why she avoided a would-be rescuer and plunged into the 36-degree waters of Wardsboro Brook carrying her 6-year-old daughter, Dakota Waring.

The bodies of Waring and her older daughter were recovered Saturday. Autopsies indicated deaths consistent with drowning, according to Vermont State Police.

Grace Waring's autopsy was set for Monday. Still unclear is how the toddler ended up in the water, although police believe she was with her sister and mother before that.

"We have the results of this incident, in that we have three untimely deaths," said Lt. Kraig LaPorte, a Vermont State Police trooper in Rockingham. "The focus of the investigation now is `What brought these events together to occur?' That's what we'll be looking at. Hopefully, we'll have some answers."

He said police knew of no reason why Waring -- who disappeared with the girls from her parents' home about 1 a.m. Saturday -- would be afraid of police or trying to avoid them. According to police, a Vermont State Police sergeant tried to rescue her from the brook but she ignored his pleas and entered the roiling waters of the brook before being swept away.

A woman who answered the telephone at the home of Waring's parents declined comment on the deaths Monday.

Flashback Time

2008-04-13T20:35:00.003-05:00

Pretty busy weekend.

Got two more months of co-op hours out of the way, working cheese early Saturday afternoon and bagging late Saturday afternoon. Bad weekend for it -- the weather was just gorgeous, and I kept wanting to be outside.

Made it home in time to take Will to a school fund-raiser for his Arizona trip. Went into Keene and got a few needed items: A new wheelbarrow wheel (solid, not inflatable), a good rake, some liquid solder, and a clothesline.

Woke up late Sunday and spent pretty much all day either gardening or cleaning. The garden is coming along, slowly. We've got a space about 10 feet wide by 75 feet long, so far. It'll go another 10 feet or so, then widen out to a patch that's about 15 feet wide by 100 feet long. The problem right now is equipment: I broke a shovel handle and a pitchfork handle. I was pissed.

Fixed the electric fence. I'm hoping it'll at least shock the crap out of Stink the next time he goes chasing the ducks. He's developed a bad habit of going into the pond after them. He won't catch them, but he'll become a very stinky Stink after splashing around the pond for 30 minutes. I caught him by luck earlier this week, turning a leash into a lasso and grabbing him from about 10 feet away. Pretty slick, if I say so myself.

It was beautiful Saturday, but I wasn't so happy on Sunday. Snowing. Not accumulating, but snowing. Damn. On the other hand, it's hard to sulk about weather when you've just finished reading The Worst Hard Time, by Tim Egan. It's a hell of a story -- a man-made weather disaster on top of the Great Depression.

For those of you who don't know (which should include just about anyone who reads this blog), I went to school on the High Plains, on the southern edge of the Dust Bowl. I'm reasonably familiar with the north Texas and Oklahoma panhandles where most of the dirt got kicked up, and I've seen my fair share of dust storms. You could tell who the freshmen were at my school; their cars hadn't been sandblasted yet, and they were still trying to wear contact lenses.

Anyway, you spend any amount of time on the Plains, and you hear old-timers talk about how bad things used to be. You'd see a dust storm coming from 50 miles away, rising about 10,000 feet in the air, and some old-timer would shake his head and mention that when he was growing up, a storm like that meant everything was clear.

The Dust Bowl was such a traumatic part of growing up for so many folks that it really interested me. I'd ask relatives about the Depression, just general "what was it like?" questions. Always got the same answers. My mother's mom lived in east Texas and just muttered about how those poor folks in West Texas got the sorriest deal on the face of the planet. Grandmom (my dad's mother) lived in north Texas during the worst of it. She'd smile, and say, well, it was bad, but everyone was so poor that it just didn't matter. Granddad would just look pissed off.

My great uncle and aunt, who lived in the town where I went to school, were a little more forthcoming. Aunt Mabel would shake her head and say things like, it was just horrible and a mercy that more folks didn't die. Uncle Clendon would just look pissed off.

A few years later, when Uncle Clendon wanted to make some salient point about how I maybe needed to apply myself a little more at school, he mentioned one thing that happened to kids without college educations during the Depression. He and some friends were trying to get a job doing warehouse work in north Texas. Turns out there were four or five openings. About 100 men showed up to apply for the job. The owner didn't have time to sort everyone out, so he made it simple: Work until you drop. Last five standing get the job.

Clendon got one of the jobs. But, jeeez. Worst, hard time, indeed. I'll probably have nightmares about dust storms for a week at least.

Bob Greene Died.

2008-04-11T09:24:00.001-05:00

Didn't know him, but sure respected the work:

April 11, 2008
Robert W. Greene, Journalist, Dies at 78
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:31 a.m. ET
MELVILLE, N.Y. (AP) -- Investigative journalist Robert W. Greene, who led reporters from across the country in an effort to uncover corruption in Arizona and who twice helped Newsday win the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, died Thursday. He was 78.

Greene, who spent 37 years as a reporter and editor at Newsday, had been ill for some time and died in a Smithtown hospital of complications including congestive heart failure, the newspaper reported.

''His doggedness in pursuit of hidden information inspires reporters here at Newsday, and across the country, to this day,'' said the paper's editor, John Mancini.

The longtime journalist won his first Pulitzer in 1970, for exposing land scandals in a Long Island town. Four years later, he helped a team of reporters win for a series that traced heroin from growing fields in Turkey to the streets of Long Island.

In 1976, Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed by a car bomb as he worked to expose organized crime. Greene, who had helped found the Investigative Reporters and Editors group, led a team of volunteers from the organization in a five-month project to complete the slain reporter's work.

At the time, he told the IRE board the project could make people ''think twice'' about killing journalists.

''We are buying life insurance on our own reporters,'' he said, according to IRE's Web site.

The project was met by resistance from some in the journalism community who did not believe reporters should crusade on behalf of one of their own. The work of the reporters, some of whom used their vacation time for the project, resulted in a 23-part series that was published nationwide. More than a quarter-century later, the IRE continues to be an important teaching organization.

Former Newsday editor Howard Schneider recalled Greene as an imposing figure.

''For much of his career, he could outthink, out-hustle, out-report, outeat, outdrink and outwork any other journalist in the country,'' Schneider said in an e-mail. ''But if his excesses were occasionally unbridled, they were driven by his passion to get a good story and root out the bad guys.''

Before arriving at Newsday in 1955, Greene was a staff investigator for the New York City Anti-Crime Committee. At the request of Robert Kennedy, he took a yearlong break from the paper in 1957 to become an investigator for the U.S. Senate Rackets Committee.

Survivors include Greene's wife, Kathleen Greene, and his son, Robert Greene Jr. Greene's daughter, Lea Greene, was killed in 1989 during a break-in at her home.

Five-Oh

2008-04-10T18:00:00.000-05:00

Thought real hard about skipping the run this morning. My shoulder was still stiff, I didn't get to bed until 11a, I had a lot to do at work, and it was likely to be the last clear day until the middle of next week. Then I had a thought:

Pansy.

So I dropped the boys off at school and did five miles. Went to physical therapy -- the therapist said my shoulder and neck were pretty stiff. Felt much better after some stretching and ultrasound.

Came home and picked up about five gallons of sap. It looks as though the end is near, as far as the sap season goes. The syrup is becoming progressively darker -- not quite Grade C, but close. I believe even after propane and paying for buckets, spouts, felt, etc., we'll just about break even with five gallons or so (and at $50/gallon, it's pretty steep).

Plugged away at the day job, called about some pigs, got my eggs together for market, and ordered pig waterers. It looks like it'll be raining too much this weekend to get the electric fence installed in the back pasture, but we'll see. House needs serious cleaning, anyway.

Where We Live

2008-04-10T17:00:00.000-05:00

From today's Reformer:

Thursday, April 10

BRATTLEBORO -- With the first warm week of spring here, wildlife experts are reminding bird lovers that it now is the time to bring in their feeders.

"With the weather we're having this week, I've already heard of a couple of bears wandering around. One already came by a bird feeder," state Wildlife Biologist Forrest Hammond said.

Although people like to see the birds as long as possible, he said, "now there's a lot of natural food for them. They don't need the feed like they do in the wintertime. It's more important to prevent bears from beginning a life of crime simply by taking in your feeders."

Young bears are more apt to go out to feeders, particularly if they got away with it the first time, Hammond said. "Individuals could play a role in educating the bear by making loud noises, trying to scare the bear enough so that it wouldn't want to try to approach the next house."

With the stronger winter, "there may be more bears than normal visiting bird feeders because there was not as much late fall nuts available to them before they went into the den," Hammond said.

Some Shameful Shit

2008-04-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

... to quote Gus Haynes.

I didn't run this morning -- shoulder still hurt. Slept late, possibly because I was up working until 1a or thereabouts. Shoulder feels a bit better, but meh. Plugged away at the day job, mostly.

No wonder people are pissed. Here's some truly shameful shit:

April 9, 2008
Economic Scene
For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t
By DAVID LEONHARDT

How has the United States economy gotten to this point?

It’s not just the apparent recession. Recessions happen. If you tried to build an economy immune to the human emotions that produce boom and bust, you would end up with something that looked like East Germany.

The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500.

This has never happened before, at least not for as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?

In the second half of the 20th century, the United States passed the test in a way that arguably no other country ever has. It became, as the cliché goes, the richest country on earth. Now, though, most families aren’t getting any richer.

“We have had expansions before where the bottom end didn’t do well,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist who studies the job market. “But we’ve never had an expansion in which the middle of income distribution had no wage growth.”

More than anything else — more than even the war in Iraq — the stagnation of the great American middle-class machine explains the glum national mood today. As part of a poll that will be released Wednesday, the Pew Research Center asked people how they had done over the last five years. During that time, remember, the overall economy grew every year, often at a good pace.

... followed by this. I'm appalled that if you eat seven eggs a week, you've increased your chances of death by 23 percent. Apparently, six is just fine, though.

Sigh. I'm going to have to start peddling my product on street corners ... dodging law enforcement authorities. Following today's "The Wire" motif, I'll have to hook up with some of the other distributors and get a little Prop Joe-style co-op going.

As the late, great Clay Davis might phrase it: Sheeeeeeeeee-it.

Seven or more eggs a week raises risk of death
Wed Apr 9, 12:19 AM ET

Middle-aged men who ate seven or more eggs a week had a higher risk of earlier death, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Men with diabetes who ate any eggs at all raised their risk of death during a 20-year period studied, according to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The study adds to an ever-growing body of evidence, much of it contradictory, about how safe eggs are to eat. It did not examine what about the eggs might affect the risk of death.

Men without diabetes could eat up to six eggs a week with no extra risk of death, Dr. Luc Djousse and Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School found.

Oh, but wait!

Men who ate the most eggs also were older, fatter, ate more vegetables but less breakfast cereal, and were more likely to drink alcohol, smoke and less likely to exercise -- all factors that can affect the risk of heart attack and death.

Jinx.

2008-04-08T18:56:00.002-05:00

Working late tonight.

Got up, did a slow three miles. Spring (and mud season) is certainly here. Felt like it was in the high 40s by 7a. Came back home, started the sap boiling, and went to physical therapy. I'm getting to the point where I can start thinking about only once a week, which would be nice, from the day job perspective. Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again.

Jinx.

After therapy, we ran by the feed store and picked up materials for an electric fence. All we need now are four pigs and two dairy goats. Also got some more seed under the theory that seed is cheap, food is expensive.

Made it home early afternoon, just in time to grab about 15 gallons of sap from the buckets. I was carrying a full five-gallon bucket in the woods and slid into some slush. My head went one way, legs went another. Down on the shoulder.

See: "Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again."

Fortunately, I didn't slip on ice. I slipped on slush. Which meant I landed in slush. It was an owie, but not a painkiller owie. Toted the sap to the burner and went upstairs to work for a few hours.

Come dark, and I'd forgotten to chase my roosters into the barn. They got into this whole rooster competitiveness deal, no one wanted to be the last one inside, so I had to get them running. And I did. I ran four of the five into the barn, then started chasing the last one. He ran between my legs, I pivoted on an icy patch. Head went one way, legs went another. Down on the shoulder.

See: "Of course, I told the therapist, this just means that I'm going to slip on ice and screw it up again."

Again, I was pretty lucky. Another owie, but I fell harder on my arm than my shoulder. We'll see how it feels in the morning, but I think I'll be OK. As long as I don't slip on the ice and screw it up again.

In matters unrelated to slipping on the ice and screwing it up again, I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I'm not hugely enthralled with the gossip side of the journalism business, but damn! She can write. Powerful stuff. Makes me wish she'd get out of the celebrity racket and start doing narrative journalism. Incredible read. Five stars.

Restating the Obvious

2008-04-07T14:15:00.000-05:00

From today's NYTimes:

April 7, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Grains Gone Wild
By PAUL KRUGMAN
These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.

I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

There have already been food riots around the world. Food-supplying countries, from Ukraine to Argentina, have been limiting exports in an attempt to protect domestic consumers, leading to angry protests from farmers — and making things even worse in countries that need to import food.

How did this happen? The answer is a combination of long-term trends, bad luck — and bad policy.

Let’s start with the things that aren’t anyone’s fault.

First, there’s the march of the meat-eating Chinese — that is, the growing number of people in emerging economies who are, for the first time, rich enough to start eating like Westerners. Since it takes about 700 calories’ worth of animal feed to produce a 100-calorie piece of beef, this change in diet increases the overall demand for grains.

Second, there’s the price of oil. Modern farming is highly energy-intensive: a lot of B.T.U.’s go into producing fertilizer, running tractors and, not least, transporting farm products to consumers. With oil persistently above $100 per barrel, energy costs have become a major factor driving up agricultural costs.

High oil prices, by the way, also have a lot to do with the growth of China and other emerging economies. Directly and indirectly, these rising economic powers are competing with the rest of us for scarce resources, including oil and farmland, driving up prices for raw materials of all sorts.

Third, there has been a run of bad weather in key growing areas. In particular, Australia, normally the world’s second-largest wheat exporter, has been suffering from an epic drought.

O.K., I said that these factors behind the food crisis aren’t anyone’s fault, but that’s not quite true. The rise of China and other emerging economies is the main force driving oil prices, but the invasion of Iraq — which proponents promised would lead to cheap oil — has also reduced oil supplies below what they would have been otherwise.

And bad weather, especially the Australian drought, is probably related to climate change. So politicians and governments that have stood in the way of action on greenhouse gases bear some responsibility for food shortages.

Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.

The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a “scam.”

This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But it turns out that even seemingly “good” biofuel policies, like Brazil’s use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.

And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.

One more thing: one reason the food crisis has gotten so severe, so fast, is that major players in the grain market grew complacent.

Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.

This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.

What should be done? The most immediate need is more aid to people in distress: the U.N.’s World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more funds.

We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake.

But it’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.

We'll Miss Him

2008-04-06T20:39:00.001-05:00

Moving Day

2008-04-06T19:22:00.002-05:00

One of those days where I'm going to want to get to sleep early.

Slept late, but it didn't help much. Got up, threw on some running clothes, and did six miles, which is as much as I've done in ... well, in a long time. Didn't feel too bad, other than just setting the stage for dragging most of the rest of the day.

Ran into Brattleboro for feed hay, mulch hay, rabbit food, grower pellets and corn. Stopped by the grocery and got some kid food -- cereal, pork chops (99c/lb!), ziti noodles, and all things dairy. I was tired and hungry and lusted after a couple of McD's quarter-pounders, but I had a couple of thoughts that saved me:

1. Do I really want to be this fat any longer than I have to be? and

2. Am I such a tool that I need to spend money, much less calories, on this reputed food?

No, and no.

So I came back home and gathered sap. Only about three gallons today. Either it's slowing down, or the lack of sun makes a big difference. Part of me hopes it's slowing down -- we've made three gallons so far this year, and should make a couple more. I think five gallons is a good first year.

Lisa and I grabbed old chickens from the small coop and threw them in the barn. Most weren't too pleased about it. Then, I went upstairs and put leg bands on the small chicks so I can identify them next spring and took them down to the small coop, eight at a time. They really weren't too pleased about it ... but I've got my bathroom back, anyway.

Dishes, laundry, a few other things, and I'm ready for bed. But before I crash, it should be noted that We Are Trendy (Although Not in a Swiss-Family Robinson Sort of Way):

April 6, 2008
Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism
By ALEX WILLIAMS

THE traditional face of survivalism is that of a shaggy loner in camouflage, holed up in a cabin in the wilderness and surrounded by cases of canned goods and ammunition.

It is not that of Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley. Yet in Mr. Biggs’s new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom,” he says people should “assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure.”

“Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food,” Mr. Biggs writes. “It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.

Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down.”

Survivalism, it seems, is not just for survivalists anymore.

Faced with a confluence of diverse threats — a tanking economy, a housing crisis, looming environmental disasters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — people who do not consider themselves extremists are starting to discuss doomsday measures once associated with the social fringes.

Bad Dog. Very, Very Bad Dog.

2008-04-05T19:41:00.003-05:00

Slept all morning. Got up in time to fix the large chicken run (more or less), empty sap buckets, do laundry, boil some more sap and help drag the not-so-Great Pyr out of the pond ice.

Silly girl wandered next door to eat some Labradors. I went over to get her and was escorting her home. Almost to the house, and she broke back the other way, across the pond. Fell through about halfway and couldn't get out. Tried breaking ice with a long stick so she could swim out, but she wasn't too interested. Lisa had to jump in and drag her out.

Bad dog. Very bad dog.

Really Good Journalism, Part Three

2008-04-04T17:02:00.000-05:00

... and then I'll shut up. But this CNN Money special (America's Money) hit home, too:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/news/0803/gallery.real_stories/

Very good stuff.

Ran three miles this morning in some pretty slushy rain. Got by the feed store as it opened to buy egg cartons and bird leg bands for the chicks, plus more propane for the sap. Loaded up on eggs, had a physical terrorism appointment (and I'm feeling much better this afternoon).

Worked like hell on the day job; only took a break to escort Will to his annual checkup.

Eh, Who Needs Food?

2008-04-04T17:01:00.000-05:00

Farmers worry proposal to cut Agriculture Department could take garden out of Garden State

By Tom Hester Jr.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:40 p.m. April 1, 2008

TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey farmers are starting to worry that their state lawmakers are about to take the garden out of the Garden State.

Gov. Jon Corzine is proposing to make New Jersey the third state without a Department of Agriculture as he looks to slash spending amid chronic state budget problems.

Some argue the move will chase away farmers who persevered for generations while New Jersey grew into the nation's most densely populated state.

“Ultimately, the quality of life of all of New Jersey's citizens will suffer,” said William Griffin, president of the New Jersey State Board of Agriculture.

New Jersey would join Alaska and Rhode Island as the only states without an agriculture department, said Charles W. Ingram, spokesman for the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.

In those states, he said, agricultural services are handled by environmental agencies, and that's part of what Corzine is proposing.

His administration contends the move would save $4 million by having the environmental protection and health departments take over the agriculture department's functions.

Those savings would hardly put a dent in the state's $33 billion budget and “would send the worst kind of signal,” said Mary Jo Herbert of the Hopewell Heritage Farm.

Brutal. Just Brutal.

2008-04-04T17:00:00.000-05:00

I'm not an enormous fan, but this really hit home:

Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?
By Dana Milbank

Friday, April 4, 2008; A03

Meet Alan Schwartz, welfare recipient.

As the chief executive of Bear Stearns, he's getting rather more public assistance than your typical welfare mom -- specifically, $30 billion in federal loan guarantees to help J.P. Morgan Chase take over his firm. But then, Schwartz has had rather more than his share of suffering of late.

As his firm collapsed, he was forced to forgo his entire 2007 bonus, leaving his compensation for the past five years at a paltry $141 million, according to Business Week. Things have become so bad that, the Wall Street Journal discovered, Schwartz has had to rent out his 7,850-square-foot home on the ninth green of a suburban New York golf course -- leaving the poor fellow with only his 17-room, seven-acre home in Greenwich, his condo in Colorado and the athletic center he built for Duke University.

Schwartz's tale of woe tugs at the heartstrings all the more because he and his colleagues at Bear Stearns were, he believes, blameless for the bankruptcy of two hedge funds and the subsequent collapse of the 85-year-old investment bank. "I am saddened," Schwartz told the Senate banking committee yesterday. He was saddened that Bear Stearns was undone by "unfounded rumors and attendant speculation," despite its impeccable balance sheet.

"Due to the stressed condition of the credit market as a whole and the unprecedented speed at which rumors and speculation travel and echo through the modern financial media environment, the rumors and speculation became a self-fulfilling prophecy," Schwartz told the senators. "There was, simply put, a run on the bank."

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) asked the corporate-welfare recipient whether he shares any blame for his indigent circumstances. "Do you believe that your management team has any responsibility for the company's collapse?"

Schwartz could think of no missteps -- not even his decision to remain at a conference at the Breakers in Palm Beach while his firm was imploding. "I just simply have not been able to come up with anything, even with the benefit of hindsight," said the blameless chief executive, escorted into the hearing room by superlawyer Robert Bennett.

Fortunately for Schwartz, he had a sympathetic audience in the banking committee, whose members have received more than $20 million in campaign contributions from the securities and investment industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. "I want the witnesses to know, and others, that as a bottom-line consideration, I happen to believe that this was the right decision," Chairman Chris Dodd (D-$5,796,000) said before hearing a single word of testimony.

"You made the right decision," Sen. Evan Bayh (D-$1,582,000) told the regulators who worked out the loan guarantee.

"The actions had to be done," agreed Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-$6,162,000).

Only a minority of senators, particularly those with smaller pieces of the campaign-cash pie, dissented. "That is socialism!" railed Sen. Jim Bunning (R-$452,000). "And it must not happen again."

To the extent the lawmakers objected to the Bear Stearns bailout, they worried that the Fed's actions would create a "moral hazard" -- an economic term of art -- that, as Shelby put it, "encourages firms to take excessive risk based on the expectations that they will reap all the profits while the federal government stands ready to cover any losses if they fail."
Shelby's notion was a curiosity for the senators, who don't often spend a lot of time worrying about moral hazards. No fewer than five other senators invoked the phrase. "I think the moral hazard was minimized," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, one of the witnesses, reassured the senators.

No moral hazard, however, would interfere with the lawmakers' compassion for the beleaguered Schwartz and his fellow witness, J.P. Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, who had given a combined $260,000 in political contributions in recent years -- a small part of the $1.7 million their co-workers contributed in this election cycle alone. That's a sizable handout -- but a good investment compared with the $30 billion federal hand-up.

"On behalf of all of us here on this dais, our sympathies go out to your employees," Dodd told Schwartz after his opening statement. "There's no adequate way we can express our sorrow to them for what happened. Obviously, shareholders, same sort of feelings, but obviously the employees particularly. It's a particularly hard blow."

Of course, some might consider $30 billion an adequate expression of sympathy, but Dodd was apologetic as he gently probed Schwartz. "You both will have forgotten more in the next 10 minutes than I'll ever probably understand about all of this," he told the witnesses, but didn't the irregular trading at Bear Stearns mean than "more than just rumors" were behind Bear Stearns's demise?

"You could never get facts out as fast as the rumors," Schwartz explained. "It looked like there were people that wanted to induce panic."

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) reminded Schwartz that two of the firm's funds went bankrupt in 2007. "It caused concern, not only here but on Wall Street," the senator said. "Did that dramatically alter your behavior?"

Evidently not. "I'm not sure I understand the question," Schwartz answered.

I Cannot Disagree With Michael Pollan

2008-04-03T20:29:00.001-05:00

A good point from the NYTimes (although truly, I just need to eat less. A lot less):

April 2, 2008
Some Good News on Food Prices
By KIM SEVERSON

WHILE grocery shoppers agonize over paying 25 percent more for eggs and 17 percent more for milk, Michael Pollan, the author and de facto leader of the food intellectuals, happily dreams of small, expensive bottles of Coca-Cola.

Along with some other critics of the American way of eating, he likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.

And if American staples like soda, fast-food hamburgers and frozen dinners don’t seem like such a bargain anymore, the American eating public might turn its attention to ingredients like local fruits and vegetables, and milk and meat from animals that eat grass. It turns out that those foods, already favorites of the critics of industrial food, have also dodged recent price increases.

Logic would dictate that arguing against cheap food would be the wrong move when the Consumer Price Index puts food costs at about 4.5 percent more this year than last. But for locavores, small growers, activist chefs and others, higher grocery bills might be just the thing to bring about the change they desire.

Higher food costs, they say, could push pasture-raised milk and meat past its boutique status, make organic food more accessible and spark a national conversation about why inexpensive food is not really such a bargain after all.

“It’s very hard to argue for higher food prices because you are ceding popular high ground to McDonald’s when you do that,” said Mr. Pollan, a contributor to The New York Times Magazine and author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” (Penguin Press). “But higher food prices level the playing field for sustainable food that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels.”

The food-should-cost-more cadre wants to change an agricultural system that spends billions of dollars in government subsidies to grow commodities like grain, sugar, corn and animal protein as cheaply as possible.

The current system, they argue, is almost completely reliant on petroleum for fertilizers and global transportation. It has led to consolidations of farms, environmentally unsound monoculture and, at the end of the line, a surplus of inexpensive food with questionable nutritional value. Organic products are not subsidized, which is one reason those products are more expensive.

As a result, the theory goes, small farmers can’t make a living, obesity and diabetes are worsening, workers are being exploited and soil and waterways are being damaged. In other words, the true cost of a hamburger or a box of macaroni and cheese may be a lot more than the price.

A Honking Busy Day

2008-04-03T20:17:00.002-05:00

Yeesh.

Up at 6a. John to the bus at 630p (Will was sick). Ran 4 miles. I need to run. A lot. Getting very stout and round. Back in the car, to the feed store for hay and propane refills for sugaring. To the grocery for milk. To the dry cleaners. To the barber shop for a haircut. To the recycling center with a garbage bag of cans.

Back home, at my desk by 1015a.

Worked like a dog on the day job until 3p. Went to the library to download files, to the post office to send some work-related correspondence. Came home, took care of chickens. Hauled sap in buckets to holding tanks. Went for a walk. Back to work on the day job.

Saw geese. Felt the sun. Liked it.

Higher Food Prices?

2008-04-02T14:53:00.002-05:00

Didn't run this morning. Woke up and felt really cranky, creaky and tired. Lot to do on the day job front today, so I skipped the Wednesday run. I'll do Thursday and Friday. Honest.

So why are food prices higher? I suppose Slate has a pretty reasonable explanation, although there's not nearly enough recriminations and accusations involved:

explainer
Why Are Global Food Prices Soaring?
Energy costs, investment in ethanol, bad weather in Australia …By Juliet LapidosPosted Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 6:31 PM ET

The U.N. World Food Program's executive director told the Los Angeles Times that "a perfect storm" is hitting the world's hungry, as demand for aid surges while food prices skyrocket. Cost increases are affecting most countries around the globe, with prices for dairy products up 80 percent, cooking oils up 50 percent, and grains up 42 percent from 2006 to 2007. (For more specifics on how prices have changed since 2000, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has a handy chart.) Why are groceries getting so expensive all at once?

Energy prices. The global food system is heavily dependent on petroleum, not just for shipping goods from one location to another but also for production, packaging, and processing. As the price of oil rises—crude oil is currently hovering at around $100 a barrel—so do the costs of planting, harvesting, and delivering food.

High oil prices have also created a secondary problem: The burgeoning interest in biofuels. In 2006, 14 percent of the total corn crop in the United States was converted into ethanol; by 2010, that figure will rise to 30 percent. When the production of corn intended for human or animal consumption decreases, prices go up. Why does this local shift in policy affect food prices around the world? The diversion of American corn into energy has a ripple effect for two reasons: First, the United States is the world's largest corn exporter, accounting for about 40 percent of global trade, so when corn-as-food production decreases here, costs go up everywhere. Second, when the price of corn increases, farmers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere who use the crop to feed livestock look for cheaper alternatives, like wheat or sorghum. These alternatives, in turn, become more expensive.

Another factor is the improved standard of living in rapidly developing countries. The demand for foodstuffs like meat and dairy is on the rise in China and India, sending costs skyward not only for those items but for the grain used as cattle feed. Finally, weather deserves a share of the blame. Australia has seen bad droughts six years running, and last year there was major flooding in Argentina. Since both of these countries are major dairy exporters, milk and butter are pricier than they used to be.

We're on a bit of a sustainability run this week -- made mozarella (finally! not ricotta!) last night, and Lisa baked some nine-grain bread. We're taking turns wandering out to the grill today to check on the sap that's boiling down. Figured we'd best do something when the sap stash got to 64 gallons. Which, depressingly enough, is good for two gallons of maple syrup.

I'm thinking it'll come in handy, though, when sugar prices go up. Gotta have something to flavor the border collie, who's about to be roasted for crimes against man and ducks.

Flaming Chickens, Hayseeds, Smart Collies and Rising Sap

2008-04-01T08:06:00.005-05:00

Busy weekend; cranked out another half-gallon or so of maple syrup. Hauled trash to the dump, mailed syrup to family, cleaned house, bought bulk at the co-op. Took John to school Sunday morning at 6a to catch a van for a field trip to New York.

Headed out aroudn 8p Monday to pick John up from school and smelled something ... strange. Strange and gross. Wandered around the basement door, trying to figure out what the hell. It most likely wasn't the car (at least, shouldn't have been, since (a) the car hadn't been used all day, and (b) I put an un-Godly amount of money into fixing it). It wasn't anything inside the house, since the smell didn't get really bad until I stepped outside.

And I could see a little bit of smoke, even though it was dark.

I called Lisa, and she sniffed around before pointing at the small coop, where smoke was clearly coming out. I ran to get a big bucket of water. Very bad images of burnt chicken, etc. Got lucky, though -- a red heat lamp had fallen directly into the feeder, and the nasty smell was burning poultry feed.

Kicked snow all over the feeder and hauled it out of the coop. Ran to pick up John from the school, apologized for being late. I'm guessing a lot of my urban acquaintances wouldn't have teachers who understood perfectly that a chicken coop fire could be an issue.

I spoke with John:

"How was New York?"
"It was a good opportunity to get the hay out of my hair."
"With your hair, who could tell?"
"I'm speaking metaphorically."

Ran three miles this morning, and it's getting hot. Supposed to get up to 61 today. So after my run, I put on mud boots and sloshed down to the maples. Had 17 gallons of sap, which means we'll easily make another gallon. Yikes.

The collies will miss the snow. Their favorite game (besides the ever-popular "Chase the Duck") is to leap into the air and snap at kicked snow. We played it for a bit yesterday while I was walking to the faucet to get water for the chickens. I stopped to fill up the water bucket. Stink and Pepper just stood there, quivering. After a minute, Stink got impatient. He put his nose into the snow, flicked it into the air, and jumped up. He looked at me for a minute, then did it again, a couple more times.

I kicked snow up, and they jumped. You could see the thought bubble in Stink's head:

"What a clever human!"

Lots and lots to do with the day job.

A Big Run

2008-03-27T21:09:00.004-05:00

No, not that kind of big run. A sap run.

It warmed up quite a bit today, almost 50 degrees. So the sap was just pouring out of the maple trees (relatively speaking). Lisa had to run to the feed store and get another garbage can to store the sap.

All told, we've got about 35 gallons to boil down this weekend. Here's hoping it won't be too cold.

And here's the southern Vermont update:

Southern Vermont[3/27/08] Sugar makers in Southern Vermont are experiencing a season of extremes. Those at lower elevations, especially in Bennington County, are having what may turn out to be their best year ever. Syrup is light, flavorful and plentiful. Woodsheds are empty and sugar houses are filling with drums of Fancy and Medium Amber syrup. Producers are beginning to make some Dark Amber syrup, just in time for this weekend.

Those at higher elevations in the Green Mountains are still struggling through 2-3 feet of snow and their season is still in its early stage (Hooray! That's us!). Most report excellent quality and are hoping for slightly warmer weather.

In Shaftsbury, we have now boiled 14 nights and have made what we consider to be a full crop with more sap expected over the next five days. The same is reported by sugar makers in Rupert, Sunderland and North Bennington. Sugar houses will be welcoming visitors this weekend, particularly on Maple Sunday - remember to wear boots 'cause it's mud season!

Diary of a Mad Triathlete

15 in 1 Million

Clanking Along

A Running Fool

Sue Me, I'm Sad

More Snow. And Ice.

The Skating Rink

Running at Night

A Good Sore. I Hope.

Held for Questioning

An Afternoon in the Life

A Nice Story

It's Been A While

The End Is Near

Food Storage as Grandma Knew It

Stink

Not So Much in Vermont

Road Runner Rage

Another Inspiration Heard From

A really inspirational story. Well-written, too.

Running for my life: 1 woman's race against time

Mild Aggravation

No. 17

Harvesting

How Cool Is This?

Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town

No. 300

Crash Survivor Scores Rare Triathlon Invite

Wall Street Exec Trains for Legendary Ironman Race

By JEN MURPHY

Sample Workout

Is It Just Vermont People?

An Update

It Seems Appropriate

New Arrivals

Wowzers.

Getting My Goat(s)

False Alarm

Almost the Season

No Country for Middle-Aged Men

If Terrorists Get Carders ...

Get Off Her Ass, Already

She’s Ready: Just Add Water

I'm Not The Only One Who Thinks This Is Weird.

Deaths Draw Attention to Triathlon Swim

Time for Mandatory Wetsuits?

Search under way for missing triathlon swimmer

by Tony Hagen/The Times Sunday July 27, 2008, 3:42 PM

Multiple Border Collies

Takes a While to Get to the Point, But Gets There

Rolling Stone, doing some entertaining campaign coverage ...

It's a Class War, Stupid

Election season will be packed with distractions, but the real issue is becoming a matter of life and death

Another Swimmer

Man Dies in New York City Triathlon

It's Been A While

Ouch.

Cool Stuff

The Three Little Pigs

This Kills Me, Too. Just In A Different Way.

This Just Kills Me.

Pig in Boots: The world's only porker who is afraid of mud

Busy. And Busy. And Very Busy.

A Bad Child

Holy Crap.

How I Spent My 2008 (Summer) Tax Rebate

Labels. Annoying and Silly Labels.

Energy fears looming, new survivalists prepare

Growing the zero-mile diet

With fears of GMOs and widespread carbon guilt, cultivating your own veggies is poised to be the new competitive sport

Memorial Day Weekend

This is Obscene

Multimedia

Food, a Shrinking Burden

Cold, Wet and Rainy

The Good Old Days

I Don't Get Out Nearly Enough.

Coolness.

Chasing Utopia, Family Imagines No Possessions

Gilt Trip

by Tony Hagen/The Times
Sunday July 27, 2008, 3:42 PM