crooked house

Brain Hemisphere Hat

Ellen McHenry designed the pattern for this brain hemisphere hat, to be labeled, coloured, and constructed by your child. We need to do this activity -- I know I could use a little review. Via Jessica Van Dyne-Evans on pinterest.

This Life is In Your Hands. And A Spoiler Alert.

 This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone is a memoir by Melissa Coleman that got a lot of attention last year when it first came out. Coleman's parents, Eliot and Sue, were among the first back-to-the-landers of the late 60s and 70s. They moved to a plot of land in rural Maine that adjoined the farm of Helen and Scott Nearing, the couple who wrote Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World, which is the book credited with inspiring the movement. Eliot and Sue built their own home, grew their own food, and Sue gave birth to two little girls while they did it. It sounds Edenic, particularly for children, and partly, it was.  (This NYT review of the book does a good job of describing the basic events of This Life is In Your Hands and also the sort of see-sawing the book does between the poetry of the family's life, rooted as it was in nature, and an increasing sense of ominousness.)

It's easy for people who have never attempted to be self-sufficient through farming to romanticize the idea (witness the current resurgence of what Emily Matchar calls the New Domesticity, which admittedly doesn't seem as hard-core a movement) but the fact is that it makes for a very hard life. (I am guilty of romanticizing it myself -- in  high school I gave a speech on my version of "the good life" in which I would retreat with my little family to a cabin in the woods, where I would homeschool my children and we would all survive, I guess, on nuts and berries.) Coleman, who is now a nationally recognized expert on organic gardening, actually had a thyroid disorder, largely untreated, that spurred him on to ceaseless physical labour. And if I were going to try to accomplish what he did, I think I'd want one, too. From Melissa Coleman's descriptions of her mother, Sue, it seems to me that she  suffered terribly from post-partum depression and that this was horribly compounded by the relentless, back-breaking work that homesteading actually entailed, not to mention possible malnutrition.

Now here is where the spoiler comes in. Consider yourself warned. One day, busy preparing a feast for some visitors (as if she doesn't have enough to do), Sue shoos Melissa's little sister Heidi, who is around three at the time I think, out of the cabin, telling her to go float her toy boat on the pond. Heidi actually comes back once or twice, begging for attention, and Sue turns her away. You can guess what happened to Heidi down at the pond. She drowned.

Melissa Coleman doesn't blame her mother for this in the book, but she doesn't exactly absolve her, either. After reading it I was left feeling absolutely bereft for the poor woman, whom I was unable to track down via google, hoping to learn she has found some sort of peace. And I must admit I was also left feeling a bit pissed off about Eliot Coleman's (and the Nearings') subsequent success as  folk heroes.

Now of course children die. They die in car accidents in suburbia and of childhood cancers and all kinds of things. But all it takes is a short stroll through a pioneer-era graveyard to see how many children died when there was no choice for anyone but a  "lifestyle" of relentless physical labour in order to put food on the table. A lot of those deaths were from childhood diseases we can now vaccinate against (if we aren't against vaccinating) but many of them were from accidents that happened when parents didn't have the time and the energy to hover over their kids.

More On Campbell's Soup and BPA

Apparently Campbell's has announced that it is moving forward with plans for packaging free of Bisphenol-A, "regardless of [the] U.S. Food and Drug Administration's decision on the chemical, due later this month." At first I was pleased by this announcement -- maybe my kids have actually started to bankrupt them -- but after further thought, I am left wondering if the move is some kind of ploy to avoid having the FDA regulate the use of BPA. If industry regulates itself, so the thinking might go, the FDA might not bother. Or perhaps it is simply a preliminary PR move -- to avoid having to spin the fact that Campbell's, a company that constantly evokes healthiness as part of its marketing, waited until ordered by the government to remove a dangerous chemical from its products.

Campbell’s Soup spokesman Anthony Sanzio indicated to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal that the company has been working on an alternative for their can linings, and plans to switch to the alternative when “feasible alternatives are available.” He did not, however, provide a date to indicate just when that might be accomplished.

That last line is most telling. We need a date, Campbell's. My distrust of the company may seem paranoid but they've been known to be deliberately misleading about their health claims before. For instance, in a highly publicized move -- remember those commercials featuring a Campbell's factory worker standing in a room full of salt? -- they reduced the sodium in their soups in order to make it healthier and then, after sales were affected, they quietly put it back in.

If you want to let the FDA know you want a ruling prohibiting the use of BPA in food packaging NOW, please go here.

Boobie Beanie

You can purchase these boobie beanie baby hats -- or the pattern to make one yourself -- on etsy. You know, so you can protect the delicate sensibilities of those who are offended by public breastfeeding. God forbid anyone should happen to glimpse a bit of breast as it nourishes an infant.

Further Tales of A Tonsillectomy

Before we brought Luke home from the hospital, we were instructed to make sure he drank enough. "He must pee four to five times a day!" the nurse said. "If he is not, he is dehydrated and must come back to the hospital! Also, there is a risk that the scabs at the back of the throat will rip open and he will start bleeding! Bleeding requiring an emergency trip to the closest hospital!" She also told us not to let him shout or move around too much for two weeks, which could also result in excessive bleeding. The risk is greatest, she told us, during days four to ten.

Have you ever tried to keep a six-year-old boy from shouting or moving around? If not, imagine trying to keep the wind from blowing or the sun from making its way through the sky. You might as well try to keep Kim Kardashion out of the news.

However, we managed, through great effort, also bribery, to keep him mostly quiet and mostly still until yesterday afternoon. Day seven, for those who are counting. (Like me. I am not only counting the days, I am counting the hours and the minutes until I can safely send the child back to school.) Yesterday afternoon, Luke was standing on the landing at the top of the stairs, chatting to me as I was changing Vivi's diaper on the living room floor below -- I am always changing a diaper at these moments -- when suddenly a squirrel leaped toward him from the banister above his head.

We are having a problem with squirrels getting into the attic from some holes we cannot find in our admittedly decrepit roof. Theo, one of our cats, had chased this one down the attic stairs. Luke is afraid of the squirrels because we have made quite a fuss about our distaste for them being in the attic.  And because, let's face it, they are freaky little buck-toothed rats with long bushy tales. And this was a big one. When this squirrel leaped  toward him, the poor boy screamed more loudlyand for a longer period of time than I have ever heard anyone scream. He stopped only to take a breath and then screamed again and again and again and again to similar full-throated effect. While he was screaming he leapt bodily down the full flight of twelve stairs.

So far, luckily, there hasn't been any bleeding, at least not as far as Luke is concerned. I am afraid a blood vessel may have popped in my brain, however, as I am not feeling at all well today. Fee free to send flowers and chocolates.

One Boy, Sans Tonsils and Adenoids

He looked so peaceful, for a few hours. And now, even though he's on morphine, it's very, very hard work to keep him in even a seated position for any length of time. (He's supposed to on bedrest for a week.)

Kasha

Vivi likes kasha!

When I was little, my mom used to do a Slovak finger play that involved "kasha" or porridge. I can't remember the exact words and I certainly can't read Slovak but I think it might have been this one -- it was a bit like "This Little Piggy," in that it involved the adult lightly gripping, with her forefinger and thumb, each of the fingers of the child's hand as each line was recited. After the last line, during which the littlest finger was gripped, the adult's fingers ran up the child's arm and tickled him or her under the chin:

The mother mouse was cooking porridge,
In that colourful pot,
To this one she gave a little on his spoon,
To this one she gave a little in his bowl,
To this one she gave a little on his plate,
And to that one she gave some on his wooden spoon.
But she did not give any to the small one,
Cause there was none left.
So she sent him to the pantry to eat some jam.

Apparently the word kasha, in Eastern European cultures, refers to any type of porridge, which is a dietary staple there at least a thousand years old. In American English, the word kasha usually refers to buckwheat groats and buckwheat was certainly one of the oldest kinds of  cereals used to make porridge in Eastern Europe.

As a result of trying to eat much more healthily here in the crooked house, we've been shopping more often in the organic section of the grocery store, which is where I came across a packet of organic kasha, the roasted buckwheat kernel kind. Although we ate a number of Slovak dishes when I was growing up, I'd never tried this. Vivi and I whipped up a pot this morning, and ate it with a spoonful of honey and some milk. It was, suprisingly, delicious! (As the very healthy-looking, slightly strange-smelling grain boiled away in the pot I was already mentally going through the list of words I expected to use to describe its taste -- they included "terrible," "awful," "no good," "very bad," and, of course, "yuck." I was astonished to be wrong.) We will have to try some of the many, many, many other recipes for kasha -- sweet or savoury; breakfast, lunch, or dinner; main or side -- found here.

Pretty word, too, isn't it? Kasha. I expect a celebrity will use it as a name for a baby any day now.

Bisphenol-A, Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup, and the Imminent Collapse of the Global Economy

Dear Denise Morrison, President and CEO of Campbell's Foods:

I am writing to warn you of a change in your consumer base that is bound to have grave repercussions for your company.

A recent Harvard study has revealed that concentrations of the chemical bisphenol-A rise around 1000 percent in people who eat one bowl of canned soup per day. Bisphenol-A is often used in the manufacture of plastics but your company and others who put food in cans apparently use it to make the material that lines those cans. I do not know exactly what this amount of bisphenol-A does in the human body and it appears that scientists do not exactly know, either, but they are making a lot of guesses that don't sound at all good. Apparently the chemical is an endocrine disrupter, which means it messes with one's hormones and has therefore been linked to cancerous tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders like learning disabilities, ADHD, and cognitive issues, as well as problems with heart disease, obesity and diabetes, and sexual development.

So far I have not noticed any tumors growing on my children but there is still plenty of time. And while I believe they are geniuses, I hate to think that they might have been just that much more intelligent, talented and well-behaved. It is not difficult to conjecture that, if my children had never ingested any canned foods, by now they might be working as highly paid child actors, like Dakota Fanning or Haley Joel Osment. We're talking about the loss of millions of dollars of family income here.

I have become convinced that canned foods are at the root of the disharmony suffered by many families as a result of the poor performance of the children. I do not know what Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, fed her children but I now suspect she wouldn't have have had to push them so hard to practise their musical instruments if she had completely avoided serving them canned food. Because they probably wouldn't have had to practise so much. I'm guessing that, by now, her children would be supporting her -- and she wouldn't have had to write that embarrassing book in order to put them through college.

Furthermore, although my current goal is to slow my own children's sexual development for as long as possible, there is a slim chance that, once I am dead, they may wish to begin dating.

The Harvard study I reference above and and others like it have have led me to finally make the decision to stop feeding canned goods to my children. This is the event that is bound to have dangerous financial consequences for your company. Currently, my children eat 13 trillion cans of Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle soup per week. This is an estimate, of course, but not a very rough one. Let's just say my children eat a lot of that soup. In fact, they do not eat much else – perhaps a bowl of Kraft dinner now and then, or the odd chicken nugget. (And I ask you, what chicken nugget is not odd? What part of the bird do these uniformly pale lumps come from, exactly? But I realize that this is not your area of expertise as your lumps of chicken are pinkish, blotchy and veiny and are not encased in a tidy bread-crumb coating.)

It may surprise you to know that my two small children, aged two and six years respectively, ingest so much of your product and, in fact, you may be doubly shocked when I inform you that the younger child, my daughter, eats only the carrots. My son, however, will deign to eat the broth and the noodles and the other vegetable-like substances you include -- but not of course the weird chicken, we give that to the cat -- so so you could say that between the two (or three) of them, they lick the platter (bowl) clean. Of course, not literally clean. Nothing has been clean in this house since they were born.

As you can probably tell from the fact that your company has not already gone bankrupt, I have not yet completely stopped feeding the children your soup as I anticipate a few possibly unsurmountable problems as a result of this move. First, I am unsure whether my children will ever eat anything else. As an experiment yesterday, I tried to feed my daughter real carrots, boiled to a soft consistency. Although to me they looked and tasted almost exactly like the carrots in your soup, she refused to eat them, perhaps because they did not have that faint undertaste of plastic to which she has become accustomed. I fully understand, though, that this is not your problem. I am also fairly confident that, as their mother, I can somehow manage to meet their nutritional needs in some other way, perhaps through the use of Flintstones vitamins mixed in with a barley-based pablum  in order to create the sensation of fullness.

However, I trust that you will share my concern about the imminent collapse of your company, once I stop my weekly purchases of approximately 13 trillion cans. And I am even more deeply concerned about the effect that the collapse of your rather large company will have on the already fragile global economy, which is why I am ccing the President of the United States, the Head of the European Union, and whoever is in charge of that weird hybrid of communism and capitalism in China. (I'll google it.) Because I plan to implement the radical change of no longer feeding Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle soup to my children THIS EVENING AROUND 5pm EST, I fully expect the world markets to tumble dramatically tomorrow morning. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the globe is plunged into a bleak economic (and mental) Depression, one to rival that of 1929, by Friday evening.

I am sorry. I realize that the Christmas season is an unfortunate time of year for bad economic news. But I have to bite the bullet here – the health of my children must come first. During the Great Depression, many people raised their own chickens and grew their own vegetables. I plan to do both. I assure you that I am not looking forward to the extra work, especially since I'll probably have to perform many other tasks I have never done before, like darn socks or even knit them from scratch. And I am determined to figure out how to grow noodles as well, so that I can make my children our own version of a Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup. Although it occurs to me as I am writing this, that while I'm making these changes for the sake of my children's health, I might as well attempt to raise slender chickens instead of chunky ones. At any rate, my version of Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup will not contain any Bisphenol-A.

I just wanted to give you a heads-up.  

Sincerely,

Stephany Aulenback

P.S. You could always start using cans that don't contain any Bisphenol-A and save both of us a lot of trouble. Apparently this company does. 

 

 

Surviving on Wartime Rations

Carolyn Ekins is attempting to lose one hundred pounds by following a British wartime rations diet -- she eats only what would have been available to the British people during the second world war. I wrote about it for The Awl.

Odd Book Title of the Week: Chicken Poop for the Soul

In Chicken Poop for the Soul: A Year in Seach of Food Sovereignty, author Kristeva Dowling writes about her efforts to produce all her own food from scratch. On my library list.