I read this on the ESPN web site last night and had to copy it here. Bill Simmons is a sportswriter for the magazine and web site. He is really funny except at times I get lost with his American pop culture references. I was reading his column on his Week 5 NFL predictions and came across a bit from his wife. She occasionally writes in his column and it had me laughing aloud when I read it. Yes, I feel your pain Mrs. Simmons. We are going through the final “destructo” phase with Ocean.
“There needs to be a word for babies that aren’t really babies anymore: Nine to 12 months, when they can’t walk or talk, but they can stay awake for hours, pull a shelf of books down on their heads and stick their finger in electric sockets. I vote for “Destructo.” Our boy hit the Destructo phase six weeks ago. He used to be the easiest, happiest kid! He could play with the same toy for an hour. He could sleep in restaurants or be smuggled into movies. No more. Now he gets his kicks from sticking his face in a dog bowl, or opening a drawer, pulling out all the clothes, then opening and shutting it until he slams his finger.
You don’t want to travel with Destructo. We flew cross-country two weeks ago and I am still drinking two glasses of wine every night to recover. OK, three. All right, it’s a whole bottle. It was just me and him on the way back. Think about holding a 25-pound fish that’s wiggling to get back into the ocean for six hours as the fish emits bloodcurdling screams and you’re stressing that everyone hates you. Does that sound like fun? The one silver lining was the 12 different times we went to the bathroom. Destructo really liked the sound the toilet made when it flushed so I kept flushing it even though I was probably harming the atmosphere. When toilet flushing is the highlight of any trip, you know you’re in trouble.
Some tips if you’re ever on a plane with me and Destructo. First, don’t empathize by telling me, “I know how it is, I just flew with our baby for 12 hours, although he slept the whole way.” Great! I’m glad your perfect kid slept the whole way and mine didn’t! UP YOURS! Second, don’t say, “Don’t worry about us, we’re used to this.” What does “this” mean? Being tortured? Just read your Vanity Fair and shut your piehole. Third, don’t keep glancing back sadly like you feel bad for me! Just don’t! Fourth, if he falls asleep, don’t walk by me and say loudly, “He finally fell asleep, huh?” Unless you want a dirty diaper stuck in your carry-on bag. Fifth, if you’re the pilot, don’t interrupt us every few minutes because you’re excited that we might get in four minutes early, or that we’re flying over the Grand Canyon when it’s pitch-black. You’re lucky that door was locked. And sixth, when it’s over, don’t pretend that Destructo was good as I’m holding clumps of my own hair in my hands and staring into space like a mental patient.
Here’s what you can do: If you’re the flight attendant, keep bringing me wine like the nice lady did throughout our flight. I don’t know where you are, honey, but thank you again! And thanks for not judging me as I stumbled off the plane like Heather Locklear. No jury would convict me.”
My rule for counting countries is that I have to be on the land outside of the airport grounds for it to count, regardless of how long I am in the country. The following are the countries I have been to in no particular order:
It was great news to hear that some high profile hostages were rescued from the FARC yesterday. Included were ex-presidential candidate Ingrid Bentancourt and three American military contractors. The photo below is from the Washington Post and shows the three guys in 2003. They have been held captive for years.
I lived in Barranquilla, Colombia from 1992-97 and have strong feelings about the situation.
The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is a guerrilla movement against the Colombian government. There insurgency has gone on for decades and they controlled big portions of the country. The movement started because of the inequalities in Colombian society. In Colombia and other Latin American countries, the gap between rich and poor is immense. The majority of population is poor. A hard-working and talented individual has a difficult time in bettering his/her life and that of his/her children. There are many ideas on whose fault this is. There is not a strong community consciousness in Latin America. It shows in the lack of infrastructure and aid to the less fortunate of the society.
Throughout the decades of struggle, FARC has relied on kidnapping, drug trafficking, and terror to fund and promote their cause. This has caused great tragedy to thousands of lives of ordinary Colombian citizens.
In recent years the US government has greatly aided Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe in his fight against the FARC. The Plan Colombia funnels money and technical military assistance into the country and Colombia now ranks only behind Israel in US foreign aid. Uribe’s father was killed by another guerrilla group in Colombia and he has been relentless in his fight against them. The plan is working as in the past year, many top commanders have been killed and the FARC is in disarray. The latest success in rescuing their “top” hostages is another serious blow to the organization. It looks like their days are numbered.
A few months ago I listened to the interviews with released hostages. The Venezuelan government did a deal that got several hostages free. The interviews were shocking and they described life in captivity. No medical attention, chained to trees in the jungle, etc. I can only imagine the horror and sadness with them and their families. Worse yet, there are still over 700 people being held by the FARC.
I really hope that the FARC and other groups are wiped out. I also hope that Uribe and the leaders of Colombia, continue to receive US aid. Not only to wipe out the terrorist groups, but more importantly to assist in getting rid of poverty. If the US would concentrate more on this instead of anti-drug aid, Latin America and the US would both be ahead.
I just finished reading Pollan’s latest book. I highly recommend it to everyone! The book is a follow up to “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” This book gives advice to people on how to escape from the Western Diet. The Western Diet being the highly processed, unnatural foods for sale in supermarkets. The Western Diet is also the culture surrounding food, or lack of culture. Americans spend less time and money on food than all other countries. They are over fed but undernourished, filling up on sugars, corn and soya derivitives. He goes to great lengths to document the evidence behind Americans’ poor health how it relates to our poor diet. The unprecedented rising rates of diabetes, heart disease, and cancers are caused from the low nutrition, highly processed food products that make up the majority of Americans’ diets. The first part of the book he goes through the history of how we came to this point. The second half, which I will describe here, is advice for people who want to escape the Western Diet.
On a personal note, I am a product of the Western Diet. I remember eating a diet of Wonder Bread, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and Cocoa Puffs. Being outside of the US, has improved my diet, but I am making a committment to eat better and for my family to eat better. As Pollan writes, “In order to eat well, we need to invest more time, effort, and resources.”
Advice to “Escape from the Western Diet”
EAT FOOD…
Don’t eat anything my great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.
Avoid food products with over 5 ingredients, unfamiliar or unpronouncable names, or containing high fructose corn syrup.
Avoid “low fat” or foods making health claims.
Shop the peripheries of the supermarket, stay out of the middle. Walls on the outside are the dairy, produce, meat, and fish.
Buy food outside of the supermarket (farmer’s markets, etc.)
Eat foods when in season.
Get to know the food producers.
Eat whole grain rice, flour, bread, and sugar. Refined grains are less nutricious than whole grains.
Eat as many different foods as possible.
Organic fruits and veggies have a higher nutritional content due to better soils.
MOSTLY PLANTS
Be a “flexitarian” that is someone that is mostly vegetarian, but will eat meat, fish occasionally.
Look for “pastured” label on meat.
Buy a freezer and stock up on fruits/veggies when in season or buy 1/2 a cow/pig. Freezing does not diminish nutritional value.
Eat wild foods like game and greens.
Take a multivitamin after age 50.
Drink wine with dinner.
Eat traditional cultural foods.
Not Too Much
Pay more and eat less - eat better quality foods.
Be like the French and don’t take seconds.
Eat meals together, children learn manners, conversation, portion size, etc.
Do all of your eating at the table.
Don’t buy food at a gas station.
Don’t eat alone.
Smaller portions, smaller plates, more vertical glasses
I took this screen shot from a talk by Alisa Miller, the CEO of Public Radio International. It shows a world map according to the amount of coverage US media outlets by country. The two big areas are the USA (purple) and Iraq (yellow). Those two countries compose over 3/4 of the stories the American viewing public sees. I believe this covers television, prints, and internet American media outlets. This is one of the causes of Americans being ignorant of international issues. And worse still, the international coverage that is shown, just barely hits upon the topic or country, with no depth at all. Even sadder, the biggest news item of that big purple spot in February 2007 was the death of celebrity Anna Nicole Smith.
Of course this is not to say that all Americans are ignorant of world events and other cultures. When I am in the US, I watch the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, or follow internet web sites of the New York Times international or CNN international, etc. But most average and undereducated Americans don’t have a solid understanding of most other countries. I would bet that the majority of people in my hometown of Caspian, Michigan could not find Serbia on a world map.
As the world shifts from a USA dominated one, to a more global spread, it is more important that Americans understand what is going on outside of Hollywood and People magazine. You can watch the entire video by clicking here.
I listened to the interview with author Gonn Iggulden about his book, “The Dangerous Book for Boys.” I bought this book last year and have enjoyed doing some of the activities with my sons Owen and Oliver. I highly recommend it.
The book is a response to the movement in education and society towards safety. Parents are overly protective of children. They have taken out most risk in the lives of children and this has especially hurt the healthy development of boys. Education has also moved in the last 30 years in this philosophy also. Teachers are very cautious when planning activities and field trips because fear of a student being injured and possible litigation. Increased media coverage has also given parents and exaggerated fear of all the possible dangers that can befall children outdoors.
“Better a broken arm, than a broken spirit.” Interviewer Glenn Reynolds (instapundit.com)quotes from the response of early 1900’s educators against the notion that playgrounds are unsafe. This book is riding the pendulum swing in our society and education that the movement towards providing a totally safe, protected environment has hurt our children and having a bit of risk in their lives is good for them. I can’t agree more. I see many over protective parents, especially mothers, coddling their children to the point for hindering their development. My brother and I both have sons, and we often talk about how we don’t want our boys to grow up to the soft, pale, video game playing boys. We see it in the students that we work with. I learned from the interview that the original boy scout manual was written because the author believed that Americans were turning soft like the Roman empire. He was right on, and the trend did not stop, although scouting is a fantastic program. I am constantly fighting against “passive entertainment” of television and video games. It is so much more pervasive than when I was growing up. Getting the boys outside and doing stuff is a challenge these days!
The Iggulden brothers both are former teachers and feel the same way I do. They have done all the projects in the book and anything they couldn’t do, they left out. The book was a best seller in the UK where they are from and the American version is a hit too. They had to change the book slightly for the USA, getting rid of cultural references and history that don’t apply to us.
As a school administrator, I am on the front lines of helping this generation of boys to develop into functioning and healthy men. I know that over protective mothers mean well and they think what they are doing is best. But there is a balance between negligence and living in the plastic bubble. I believe our education system and society swung too far in the direction of plastic bubble. For example, a few years ago I had a day care mother suggest the children take their own sand to school for the playground so they would catch bacteria from the other children playing in the sand box. This is unhealthy and we need to give young people more responsibility and more “active entertainment” time. I am trying to do this with my sons and will try to promote this with the students and parents I work with. For more information you can go to the authors’ web site (www.dangerousbookforboys.com) and you can also listen to the interview from April of 2007 below.
Pictured above is one of my favorite authors, Michael Pollan. He is a science and environmental journalism professor at Cal-Berkeley. I read two of his books, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” and “Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education.” His latest book that I will read this summer is “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”
All of his books changed the way I looked at the subject he was dealing with. The last two books, Omnivore and Manifesto, deal with our choices in the food we eat and how it is produced. I highly recommend his books. Below are two links, the first is a video of a talk he gave in March of 2007. It is on the Ted.com web site and there are other speeches with a nature theme on the page. The second link is to his web site.
