The stuff of learning

The kids came home today with a big fundraising packet for the school. They're supposed to sell candy, jewelry, wrapping paper and the like to people we know, with the school getting a cut and the kids getting a small gift for each certain number of things they sell. Well, this is another in a long list of things we're against, and here's why:

• We prefer to make our donations straight out. We just gave $30 to the school's library fund. This money will be used directly for the intended purpose. The school will only get a small percentage of the proceeds of the sales, with the private fundraising organization getting the lion's share.

• We don't want to bug our friends and loved ones for this. At some point in the year there will be a food drive, or a crop walk, or something else that we may want to hit up our friends for. And we don't want to waste the strong-arming on wrapping paper.

• But most of all, we don't want to encourage a focus on stuff. Buying stuff that we don't need and never knew we wanted is exactly what we're trying to encourage our kids to stand against.

DW1 was pretty upset about this, because I guess the guy who did the tap dance for this was very effective. She wanted to get the flying disk that's the "gift" for two sales. (Point 4: She should give charity because it's important to give charity, not because wants to get the flying disk. I wonder what the implications of this would be for PBS pledge drives?) We explained it to her, she didn't like it but I think she heard it. We may give her a couple of extra bucks for tzedakah in the next little bit, let her decide where to give it. It'll be interesting to see if she gives it to the school.

This week's mealplan

After making that baked burrito thing I wrote about last week, I realized that it would work with a couple of different variations - sauce or no sauce, beans or fake meat, rice inside or not, different kinds of veg. So we're going to try it another way this week - beans and rice, peppers, tomato and cheese, baked with sauce and some extra cheese on top.

Tonight DW made a spinach and ricotta pie, which was quite good. I figure one day this week I'll make the Brooklyn Pad Thai, we haven't had that for a while. Then I'll figure out something to do with whatever I bring home from the farmers' market on Tuesday.

And if I may wax lyrical for a moment: What a pleasure is a farmers' market in August! Tons of tomatoes, cukes, big, lovely zucchinis, melons. I saw okra last week, but didn't get any. This week I think I will. Gotta use what the earth gives us!

A big(ger) ride

I had to miss John B's group ride this morning because I had a Hebrew School teachers' meeting this morning. (Sunday morning leisure ends at Labor Day.) But I had a long ride of my own - from my house to Emanu-El (Central east of Woodlawn) for the meeting, then to an unveiling at the Hebrew Congregation's cemetery (21st and Oliver), and then back to Emanu-El's garage sale at the Holiday Inn on Rock and Kellogg. I guess it was about 10 miles or so. It was the longest I'd ridden since I got the bike. (Shorter than John's daily commute, just to keep it in perspective.)

It was a pleasure to ride on a Sunday because, although I still used neighborhood streets as much as I could, when I found myself on 21st or Oliver or crossing Central to get back it was not nearly as spine-tingling as it can be during the week.

I got on the bike path near Town Center East and Douglas but it seems to disappear into the morass of construction at Kellogg, where there doesn't seem to be any way to cross. I know the path continues south, but does anyone know how to pick it up south of Kellogg?

Also, I discovered via surfing to cycling related sites one called Commute by Bike, which has a lot of good tips, especially for the beginner, on how to ride in traffic, how not to be smelly at work, and like that. There's also a link to a podcast on cycle commuting that you can download from Itunes. Apparently it's preliminary to a book on the subject that's going to be out this fall. I listened today while I was doing the shopping later in the afternoon and it was 20 minutes long and interesting enough. They spoke to people from Copenhagen and Amsterdam, where biking is well integrated into the life of the city. Their focus is on taking cycling back from the sports industry, and I can certainly agree with that. Definitely worth a look.

Ad-free zone

I've been getting intermittent email messages from people asking if I would help sell their products, either by putting an ad on the site or by writing a sponsored post. I'm not sure why someone would pay to get access to my 15 daily readers (Lean Green Mom gets hundreds) but after a modest amount of reflection I've decided I'm not really interested. I'm not always 100% sure what my message is, but I'm pretty sure it involves encouraging people not to buya lot of extra stuff. The people who are reaching out want my readers to buy stuff that's supposed to save them money, but it's still buying stuff. There are plenty of other sites that can point you to coupons or whatever.

(Of course, this may just be my ironclad and dependable financial stupidity talking. I write book reviews periodically for Jewish Currents, and it takes a lot of time, and my pay from this rather threadbare outfit (financially speaking; the magazine is actually quite strong content-wise) is usually a salami from Katz's delicatessen. Now if they asked to advertise on my site, I might take them up on it!)

Don't call it dangerous

A modest amount of controversy on Cycling in Wichita regarding whether and when to ride on the sidewalk. If you follow the links from the post, you'll see that it seems to be pretty acceptable behavior within certain parameters (riding in the right direction, walking across intersections, taking care of pedestrians). It's also legal in Wichita, I understand, except in a certain area downtown.

The controversy is in the comments. I commented that just the other day I had to ride from my office at Woodlawn and Central to the Starbucks on Rock and Central for a meeting. There is no other way to get there than directly along Central, which is a four-lane road, no shoulder, with a 40 mph speed limit. I considered this dangerous, so I rode on the sidewalk. Coppercorn jumped all over my s**t saying that I shouldn't say it's dangerous, it's not, she does it all the time, and linking to a how-to ride in traffic page.

Well, to each his or her own, I guess. I can't even imagine how I would move from riding in the right lane on Central across the 40 mph traffic to the left hand turn lanes at Rock to get to the Starbucks. I have chosen, and most of the people I have spoken to have chosen (even experienced bikers) to stay off the main roads, especially at rush hour peak times. For instance, I was able to take Tara home from my meeting, it parallels Rock between Central and Douglas and lets me out meters from the entrance to my street. But on the other hand, I do ride on Douglas during the morning rush, at least the 200 or so yards from Rock to the first entry point into the Rockwell neighborhood, which is the back way I take to work. It's a major road, but it's not Central.

All I know is, if my wife found out that I was riding on Central at 5 in the afternoon a car wouldn't have to kill me, because she would.

Another quick and easy meal

From the Vegetarian Times cookbook: a can of black beans, some chili powder and garlic, cooked for 10 minutes, mushed with a masher, spooned into tortillas with chopped tomato, onion and cheese, rolled and baked at 400 for 15 minutes. Easy-peasy, very tasty. Served with a side salad.

Dinner and TV

I want to recommend a book to you - it's called Dinner Diaries and it's by Betsy Block - she's the mother of two young kids and she's wondering, through all the noise and the conflicting information, about what to feed them. She devotes individual chapters to looking at nutritional needs and supplements, the plusses and minuses of eating fish, school lunches, local produce, etc. - a lot of what I talk about here and some of what I haven't gotten around to talking about yet. Her kids and her husband are all picky eaters in their own way so that complicates her task, which of course we can relate to as well. I was kind of annoyed at the amount of pork she relishes consuming - she's Jewish, and it seems to mean something to her, but kashrut is something she doesn't give a single thought to. But despite this, I do recommend the book.

One thing in the category of what she talks about that I haven't much yet is advertising directed at children. There was a wonderful book on this subject a few years ago called Consuming Kids by Susan Linn. (She runs the Center for a Commercial-Free Childhood.) She describes and decries the big business that is advertising to children, in which psychologists and other professionals are hired and billions of dollars are spent to figure out exactly which buttons to push to train our little ones to develop brand loyalty, consumer "needs" and the talent to beg and nag for what they want. The best time to do all this is when the parents aren't around to explain or deny, which is why there is so much advertising in schools and on the internet these days, particularly on "free" sites. This has contributed mightily to the lack of exercise, the obesity, the unhealthy eating habits, not to mention the consumerism that have become part and parcel of childhood in American today.

The reason I haven't felt the need to write too much about this is because we have an extremely restrictive television policy at home. Our kids basically watch TV twice a week - a movie on Saturday night, and then one show during the week. It's almost always a video, so we can avoid the advertising.

It so happens that in the last couple of weeks, perhaps exhausted by the summer, I've been a little lax in this. We've watched a little more TV this week because the Olympics were on and I wanted them to see some of it, and then last week for some reason I let them watch a couple of things on Cartoon Network. I watched with them, and boy, did I see what we'd been "missing." Clothing, games, movies, but especially food food food - the ones that stood out were for sugar cereals and a kind of bottled water (it may be flavored, it wasn't clear) that comes in a pouch. Pouches, in case I need to say it, are the worst form of conveyance, because they are not recyclable or biodegradable, but there is no profit to be made from a glass of tap water.

Can I just pause here for a radical moment and decry the fact that the worst things for you and for the environment are exactly the things that get the most advertising and the most attractive packaging in this society?

Oh, boy. If there was anything that made me understand why we've made the choices that we've made, for ourselves and for our kids, it was this hour of commercial television. There is just so much that is wrong that can be fixed, or at least ameliorated, by the absence of TV. Sedentary? Bad eating habits? The "beggies"? Have trouble having dinner time conversation? The first answer is to lose the TV - or if not lose it, then severely restrict it. And no TV in the kids' rooms!

This is only the first step, but it's the most major single step one can take.