Freebie
Hemispheres magazine (the United Airlines in-flight) is offering free downloads of eleven popular Hawaiian songs. Add a little aloha to your Friday afternoon!
Strange Conversation
Hubby: What did you guys do today?
Eldest son: I got a great skirt at the thrift store!
Halloween’s a-comin’
Public Service Announcement
If you’ve heard anything about the honeybee colony collapse, you know that the dying off of bees has the potential to impact our world and food supply pretty drastically. The good news? We CAN do something about it.
We need help getting the word out about Michael Schacker’s book, “A Spring Without Bees, How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply“.
Michael’s book is the only authoritative book out on the the major suspected cause of massive honeybee die-offs–a widely used neurotoxic pesticide. The insecticide should be technically illegal because each of the combined ingredients, nicotine and chlorine have been banned in pesticide formulas previously–the combination is extremely poisonous. They were shoved through the approval process without testing for toxicity for pregnant women or young children on an “emergency provisionary basis”. It is in most lawn maintenance or “Chem Lawn” type mixes–(the books tells you the many names of the chemical so you can know what is on the label). So the problem is not just out there in the fruits and vegetable and alfalfa fields, our children are rolling around in it and we are tracking it into our homes on our feet! France, Germany, Spain and Italy have banned this class of pesticides. In France, it took several years for the soil to recover, but the bees did come back. In addition, Michael Schacker is the only person to have designed a comprehensive plan on how to save the bees and our food supply. But Michael had a CVA and then a massive left hemipshere stroke just the day after completing the book! He is unable to tour the country or speak about all the information in the book, so my daughter Melissa and I along with a few friends are trying to do it. [emphasis mine] With running 2 companies and overseeing Michael’s speech recovery or stroke recovery, I feel I am not doing a good enough job with promoting his book and getting the word out about the real story on this.
The beekeepers are going bankrupt–and there is “domino effect” (explained in the book) to this particular environmental crisis. We have to work on this now! Rachel Carson’s, “Silent Spring” only became a best seller because it got on the Book of the Month Club and because a Supreme Court justice recommended it. Even so, it took another 10 years to ban DDT! Without a best seller, I believe we have little chance of getting the word out and overcoming the misinformation that continually replicates itself about the honeybee and the potential food and fresh produce crisis–a worldwide crisis.
From my research, email lists are the new “book of the month”. I need to get on as many email lists of people who are interested in the organic lifestyle, the environment and planetary survival as possible. If you can refer us to any lists that would be a great help. Also in your message to your email list, you can tell people to copy and paste and then email to their lists so we get a “word of mouth” campaign going. The request to send to other email lists of friends of bees and friends of the Earth should be replicated in each message.
You can help right away by buying a copy of “A Spring Without Bees” and reading it. It is not a “depressing environmental disaster” book, but rather is written in a surprisingly smart, easy style, almost like a mystery novel–you’ll see! Then you can pass the book along to a friend and ask them to put the message out on their email or urge them to buy a copy and pass it along if they wish. You can also go to Plan Bee Central online to sign up for the Plan Bee Action Plan and to find out more about what you can do to ban these pesticides. Buy a copy for Thanksgiving and give thanks to the bees for creating the food you are eating. Buy them as Christmas or holiday gifts so that people can read them over the winter and be prepared to ban locally, plant their bee garden or get their hive to replenish honeybee populations in the spring. I guarantee you will be rewarded for your efforts by meeting a lot of nice people on this journey–I have!
Feel free to–and please–copy and paste this message into your email list or send it to someone with an email list who would be interested. I am so very grateful for your interest and your help. –Barbara Dean Schacker, (his wife)
It’s Cybils Time!
Nominations are now open for the 2008 Cybils Awards. Head on over and nominate YOUR favorite new book in one of nine categories. It’s your chance to tell the world about your favorite book or author.
And So it Begins
The rain is here. The cold is here. Not the bone chilling cold that I know will shock me again in another couple of months, but the cold weather that reminds me that we are ill equipped for the upcoming winter. Long pants haven’t been a part of our wardrobe for over three years now. The heavy winter coats that I stored are laughably too small for both boys. All of our shoes are open-toed. And Evan came in today, asking for slippers. The fuzzy kind, not the rubber slipper beach kind. I daresay we’ll be forced to actually shop within the next week or so, which is nobody’s favorite activity around here.
The boys are (in shorts) reveling in the cool weather, taking the opportunity to modify their mountain bike track while the ground is soft, and without breaking a sweat.
The garden is wet and limp, with green tomatoes begging to be rescued from the cold. I managed to pick one last batch of ripe tomatoes, and the canner is bubbling with jars of salsa. The green tomatoes, once they come in, will become chow chow. I’m feeling very much like a squirrel, getting ready for the winter. If only I had such a nice coat!
Folks, Please Get Your Ducks in a Row!
Seriously. Not to sound like a broken record, but you need to make sure you’re registered to vote! You also need to know that there are some things that may preclude you from voting - like a recent change of address - and there are apparently some folks who are actually trying to prohibit people from voting.
This is important. Take the time to make sure you’re registered!
Update: Inspired by Heather to add this link which brings the claim in the aforementioned link into question. Of course, now it’s clear as mud! 
100 Most Common English Words
How many can you or your student guess? I only got 28 out of 100!
Blog Nod: Larramie
Unschooling gets a Thumbs Up
Cory Doctorow has a review of John Holt’s books, How Children Learn and How Children Fail up on the high traffic blog, Boing Boing. He seems utterly smitten with the idea of unschooling, giving a positive review of both the books and the concept of child-led learning. Tons of comments, too.
Blog Nod: COD
Political Discussion as Education
It’s a bit disconcerting to have your 15 year old start conversations that are peppered with words like Communism and Socialism. Of course, with the election running full steam ahead, I suppose it would be difficult to NOT be talking politics.
My son is a black and white sort of guy (It’s a character flaw that we’re working on - together), so many of our conversations start out with him stating that something is wrong. He’s adamant that attack ads, lies, and false promises by our presidential candidates are just wrong. He visits factcheck.org and realclearpolitics daily, and shares with me his opinions. It’s been interesting to hear his take on right, wrong, and unfair. Daily, he plops onto my bed to talk to me while I’m working (trying, anyway).
- Where does the money come from for these buy-outs?
- What exactly is the vice president’s job?
- How does the Senate work?
With these questions we’re able to start a dialog that ultimately leads to learning, often for both of us. We’ll pull up web pages, dig out books, and discuss our thoughts. It’s been really interesting to see how caught up he is in this election and how he is seeking the facts he needs to make an informed decision - even though he’s far from voting age. He is designing his own education, daily, digging what he needs out of the heaps and heaps of information out there.
So, what about Communism and Socialism? How does that fit into the picture?
One of the books he’s recently read is in my sidebar. Are You Liberal, Conservative, or Confused is a very interesting look at political labels and the original American philosophy. I highly recommend this, as well as the other books by Uncle Eric, which make American government and economics accessible and understandable to the average person.
West Wing meets the Current Election
Be still my heart. Jed Bartlett’s back, even if momentarily and in print. And he’s talking to presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Very funny.
