Random Thinking

Michel discovered this interesting site called Local Harvest while going through one of her magazines, (Alternative Medicine, Prevention, etc.) You put in your Zip Code (sorry – US only) and it gives you a list of organic farms, farmers markets, and even restaurants that sell local produce.

As the site says, “Use our website to find… sources of sustainability grown food in your area…” We found a couple of farmers’ markets in our area and we will be checking them out this summer. We try to be organic and vegetarian (well, some of us do the latter) and we have relied on Whole Foods as our source of fruits and vegetables. The fresh food there is always delicious but it isn’t locally grown normally. And around here, you can’t count on the farm stands to actually carry local produce (you have to go out east to get that).

The other interesting thing on the site is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). I had never heard of this before but it sounds like a very neat idea. The theory is that farmers can’t rely on two things, (1) getting a crop and (2) getting people to help them pick their crop. CSA works by committing people to buy the farm produce before it is grown and in some cases commits them to helping on the farm. In exchange, the farmer gives you a fair share of his produce each week. Here are a couple of examples in our area: The Golden Earthworm Organic Farm and Sophia Garden. A typical farm might charge $600 per year and ask for 15 hours of farm work. In exchange, you get a weekly basket of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables depending on the time of the year and what is currently being picked.

How many of us have gone to “pick your own” orchards or farms and not complained about the hard work because of the high quality of the produce you get when you pick it yourself? CSA gives you an opportunity to make a difference in your community by supporting local growers using organic growing methods. It’s too late this season to participate (farms have a limited number of shares that they sell) but we ill definitely be looking into this for next season. I think this can be a good family outing and provide Beth and Mikey with some interesting experiences.

Tags: farming, organic faming, local harvest, CSA

I’ll admit that I despise Ed Zander. He has been CEO of Motorola since 2004 and he has done nothing but destroy a once great company. Plus, he caused me, along with 6,000 other hardworking Americans, to lose their jobs. In fact, Zander has been the lay off king since he took over Motorola. And yet, he still can’t turn all these lay offs into profits!

The problem is that lay offs mean you are getting rid of an asset… the people who work for you. Plus you are demoralizing the people who still work for your company. The best and the brightest are going to look at your focus (and Zander’s focus is always the next quarter) and wonder if it makes sense to move their skills and knowledge to another company with a CEO who has a vision. Back in 2005, Zander fired 2,000 people from his hand-held division and oddly profits from that division disappeared and Motorola has no new products coming out for at least another year.

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The freaky thing is that this looks more like me than the photograph I used.

Anyway, you can turn yourself into a Simpsons character, too! Just us the Simpsonizeme machine.

h/t to Bryan Appleyard over at Thought Experiments.

And here’s Beth…

And here’s Michel…

And here’s Mikey…

Tags: Simpsons, Springfield

I first saw this on Debra’s blog and then on Susan’s blog so I figured I should give it a try. The end result was this:

Your attention to detail, appreciation of how things function, and awareness of the world around you make you a REALIST. You trust others, care about them, and are slow to judge them, making you CONSIDERATE.

The test itself is rather long and I have a feeling that if I take it multiple times over multiple days that I will get different results. Or not. Anyway, it makes these pretty pictures:

Canine unit takes a bite out of crime

Criminals are rarely noted for their brains but…  two men and a woman broke into an abandoned nursing home to steal copper wiring and pipes.  Apparently they missed the sign that said, “Caution!!! Gainesville Police Department K-9 training facility – Keep Out.”  But they did learn a valuable lesson… running away from a bunch of dogs trained to track down criminals is not a good idea.  The three were quickly captured by the K-9 unit.  One had a superficial dog bite on his butt.  The others were uninjured.

Things are looking up a little bit. Michel’s mom has been sleeping better with the pain medication. She needs to have the kidney stone broken up but she feels better. Michel’s dad is doing better and is anxious to get out of the rehab hospital and come home. Mikey is more like his old self although his mouth is still sore. He’s in the family room watching Finding Nemo for the 80th time in a row. I just heard him bouncing up and down so he is full of energy right now. As long as I keep giving him Tylenol he seems to be OK.

As for me, I have a job offer so I can stop worrying about being one of the unemployed masses. I start work on August 6th at the new company which is about 2 miles from my house. This will be the shortest commute I have ever had in my working life. The company is called Clever Devices and manufactures technical products for the transit industry. I have to wear a suit to work which means I need to get out and buy a few. I haven’t had a job where I had to wear a suit since I worked in the World Trade Center. I am looking forward to work so that I can get some rest. This being home stuff is wearing me down.

In Cold Blood
by Truman Capote

It started with a few sentences in the back of The New York Times about a seemingly senseless murder in Kansas. Truman Capote read this brief article and decided to invent a completely new genre of writing, the non-fiction novel. This book is the result of Capote’s research with Harper Lee and moved the murders of the Clutter family from the back of The NY Times to the front of the bestseller lists.

The book starts by introducing us to Herb Clutter and his family. Capote builds a description of a decent, kind, generous, respected, and hardworking family. Although Capote built a reputation as a flamboyant character, he shows enormous respect for the Clutters. Inter-weaved with his description of the Clutters is his description of the two men, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, who are about to destroy this family. The suspense builds as the killers get closer and closer. Capote then skips ahead to the discovery of the bodies and we are left knowing what happened but not how or why.

The next section of the book inter-weaves the movements of the killers with the story of the investigators trying to discover their identity. Slowly we learn more and more about the nature and background of these two sociopaths. Meanwhile, the investigation struggles forward until a lucky break leads to the capture. At this point, we finally learn what happened the night of the killings in the words of the killers themselves. The final section details the trial and ultimate punishment of Hickock and Smith.

The book is brilliantly written. Although there have been questions about the complete accuracy of the story (Capote never took notes during interviews and the book has no footnotes) it is still a compelling and frightening book. The combination of creative writing with journalism created a new genre of writing and makes every other “true crime” book read like a high school project. Capote pulls his readers into the story creating empathy for the victims (the dead as well as the living) while letting us see into the minds of the killers as well as Hickock and Smith were ever able to see into themselves. This is a book that is a classic, a literary masterpiece even if it isn’t an example of perfect accuracy. It is a must read.

Tags: book review, Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, Clutter Family

To Kill A Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

The most amazing thing about this book is that even though it is fiction written more than forty years ago about events that took place more than seventy years ago, it is as relevant today as it was during the Civil Rights struggles of the late 1950′s. One need only to read about the Jena Six to realize that we have not come as far as we might like to think.

The cover of the book says this is a story of “growing up” and “human dignity” and this is true. Harper Lee described it as a love story and this is true as well. But it is also a story of hatred and not just racial hatred. It is the story of the hatred those who are more refined feel for those below them; the hatred of those who are poor for those who are even poorer; the hatred of the poorest whites for the blacks who they feel are below them. The lowest white man in town, who is constantly drunk, lives on welfare, mistreats his children and forces them to pick through the town dump for food still expects to believed over the word of a hard-working, honest black man. And when someone refuses to believe his lies, his anger knows no bounds. It is a story of not just racial prejudice but class prejudice as well.

But beneath all this hatred is a story of love and innocence and of growing up. Growing up deep in the South during the heart of the Depression, Scout, her brother Jem, and their friend Dill learn a lesson about the hearts of men, that although there is darkness in men’s souls that there is also a brightness that can be reached.

Harper Lee has written a beautiful and believable story. None of the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes, rather they all feel like real people. When Scout and Jem are welcomed at Calpurnia’s church, when Atticus stands in front of the sheriff’s office to protect Tom, when Jem must read to Mrs. Dubose as punishment for destroying her garden, when Scout, Jem, and Dill try to coax Boo Radley out of his house… each of these events build a complex story of childhood and innocence and losing innocence. At the end of the story, Scout says, “Atticus, he was real nice…” and Atticus replies, “most people are, Scout, when you finally see them,” and that is the ultimate moral of this story.

Tags: book review, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Jena Six

Today was the big day for Mikey. Today was the day Mikey had his dental surgery at Schneider Children’s Hospital. We were supposed to be there at 6:30 but the alarm didn’t go off so we didn’t wake up until 5:50. No problem… we quickly got ready and Michel went in to tell her mom we were going but her mom wasn’t well. So Michel stayed home with her mom and I took Mikey to the hospital.

Michel’s mom ended up in the ER with a kidney stone. Mikey and I got to the hospital 30 minutes late but it was not a problem. We did our paperwork and then waited. Dr. Charlie came in around 8AM and gave us the rundown and then we spoke to the anesthesiologist. He explained everything they were going to do with Mikey. He gave Mikey some Versed to relax him, waited about 10 minutes, and then they took Mikey in around 8:30. They gave him some gas through a mask and he fell asleep in less than a minute.

They kicked me out so I went down to the cafeteria and finished my book. I got back around 10:30 and they had just finished. They pulled three teeth (2 baby teeth and one adult molar). They bonded his front teeth and added metal crowns to his back teeth. The whole thing went perfect. Dr. Charlie was wonderful with Mikey… he really treats him like Mikey is his own son.

Mikey slept for two hours in the recovery room. We finally got out of there at 2 PM. Michel and her mom came home a little after we got home. Michel’s mom was feeling much better but needs to follow-up with the urologist. Just another typical day at our house.

The weather this morning on Long Island has been amazing. It has rained harder and longer today that I can ever remember it raining and I have lived here for my whole life.

I had to take Mikey to see the dentist for a pre-dental-surgery check and then I had to take him and Beth up to AHRC. Today is Beth’s first day of doing volunteer work at Mikey’s school. Normally to get from Dr. Charlie to AHRC would take at most 20 minutes. It took us one hour and 20 minutes.

The difference was because of the rain and flooding. Rain was knocking down trees which knocked down power lines which knocked out traffic lights. Also many of the areas under the Expressway and Parkway overpasses were flooded and closed. Two major east-west roadways, Northern State Parkway and Jericho Turnpike, were both closed right where I needed to go. I ended up on the Expressway service road and it was completely stopped because a traffic light wasn’t working. We spent an hour creeeping along a distance of about 2 miles.

Anyway we finally got there and Beth was only an hour late for her first day. I spoke to the woman Beth is going to be working with (her name is Karen and she has a PhD and Beth will be helping with her research program) and today Beth is going to be in the kindergarten working with kids with autism. I think she will have a lot of fun. I have to pick her up early because we have to go to the doctor this afternoon to get medical clearance for Mikey’s surgery tomorrow. So Beth’s first day will be “get in late, leave early”. Good way to make that good first impression, eh?

Tags: rain, global warming, weather, traffic, Long Island