Sunday Wrapup--9/23/2012
The biggest article on the front page of our newspaper today trumpeted questions and complaints about the recently implemented school lunch requirements. As I understand it, the new standards mandate that specified amounts of protein, grains, fruits, and vegetables be served. A calorie limit is specified also. The standards come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and were devised by people in the fields of agriculture, science, and medicine.
U.S. Representative from our district in Kansas, Tim Huelskamp, is among those joining the vociferous complaints about the school lunch law. He has helped introduce a law repealing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, wishing to replace it with a "No Hungry Kids" act, which would outlaw caloric limits on school lunches. His position is that too many kids come home from school hungry because of the calorie limits. I am dismayed and embarrassed by Huelskamp's position, and the ignorance it shows. Kansas is on track to become the sixth most obese state by 2030, and is currently at number 13. The caloric limits are an effort to address the obesity problem nationally. Kansas is in a poor position to offer credible opposition to such an effort.
As also revealed in the news article I read today, the problem is not chiefly a caloric problem. In my sweeping-language interpretation of the news article, here's the problem: School children don't like fruits and vegetables nearly as much as they like junk food, so they often refuse much of the healthy food they're offered and throw away much of what is served. In a recent lunch, where the children were served milk, tossed salad, cooked carrots, banana, and a pizza quesadilla, the pizza quesadilla was the only solid food item not found in large quantities in the trash container. Many children had also requested "no carrots," and when one did so, often the next three students parroted the request.
Parents who get on board with the complaints are just as guilty, in my estimation, as Representative Huelskamp, of not seeing that the real problem is wholesale bad eating habits. The adults involved are first of all to blame for this. If parents enforced a strict "no snacks after school if you didn't eat all that was offered at school" policy, I'm guessing the hunger problem would subside markedly. Those who have given direction to the makeup of school lunches are being responsible in an area in which parents have failed to take responsibility.
I'm curious how many of those "starving at the end of the day" students have eaten a good breakfast, and how many of them will get a good evening meal. Those after-school snacks that parents are grouchy about having to provide--are they healthful snacks, or do they consist of the junk food that is now missing from their plate in the school cafeteria?
Things can run off the rails in a variety of ways, but parental responsibility in training children to make good food choices can mostly be reduced to a two-fold process. One part is regularly providing healthful food. The other is training the palate to enjoy healthful food. The first can be improved by education (knowing something about nutrition and food production) and enough money (to buy what cannot be grown at home). The second often involves dealing with a child's will (refusing to let children call the shots about what they eat and refuse to eat).
Anyone who is sure that the healthful eating concept is a problem limited to non-Mennonites might try teaching a high school nutrition class that includes Mennonites. I suppose getting nosy about what comes to school in home-packed lunches or what happens at home at breakfast time would be similarly enlightening. I have tried only the nutrition class teaching.
*********************
When I was in grade school at Elreka, Menney Lissy and her daughter Clara Mae were the cooks. We all had to eat everything on our trays before we could go play after lunch. Everyone got served a portion of everything, and a lot of whatever they asked for extras on. We could go back for seconds as long as the food lasted. We scraped our plates when we were done, and the whole school's leavings barely covered the bottom of a pie pan. That's how I know school lunches can be handled differently from how they are now.
********************
My sister Lois' "mapping and zapping" procedure went very well, thanks to active misbehaviors of the electrical-impulse mechanism for her heart during the procedure. Seven electrical-impulse-sending sites were disabled in a two-hour procedure. The misbehaviors at such a time are a bonus, because if the harmful activity stops for some reason, the mapping cannot be done, and treatment cannot proceed. Monitoring afterward revealed no abnormal activity.
She is still recovering from the soreness at the incision sites for two heart catheterizations in two week's time. The procedure usually takes from three to six hours, and Lois attributes the unexpectedly short duration of hers to the prayers offered on her behalf and on behalf of the "electrician" who performed the ablation.
Dr. "Val" is one of only five in the state of Kansas who do this procedure. One of the other five is also on staff at Galichia where Dr. "Val" practices.
*******************
Our local farmer's market will be extended further into the fall this year than ever before. With at least ten vendors committed to paying a lump sum up front for the privilege of participating, plans are in place for having a market event from 10:00 to 1:00 about every other Saturday until Christmas. The exact schedule has not been finalized. The location will be the same as during the summer months. It's likely that several large tent canopies with sidewall "curtains" will be set up inside the open-air pavilion to help provide protection against the elements.
In a meeting of market members after the regular market day last Saturday, people expressed the hope that extending the season will pay off in terms of people not having to start from scratch with developing a customer clientele next spring. We all know that growers would likely have been better prepared with storage crops and late season cold-tolerant crops if this had been planned earlier, but starting somewhere is necessary, and this looks like a good place to start.
*******************
I'm encouraging my comp students to post their good writings on Facebook. I'd like to link to the writings here, if possible, and certainly on Facebook. It looks like this might take some strenuous encouragement. If you know a comp student, you're officially invited to help in the encouragement department. At our school, they're all high school juniors.
I've often tried to figure out a relatively painless way to give my students' writings a wider audience, and saw the possibility of a simpler way when one of the students, at his own initiative, posted on Facebook something he wrote. This approach would free me from the necessity of securing permission from the students and from the school administration, etc. if I posted on a school site, for example, as well as many of the laborious logistics of getting electronic files from their devices and accounts to my devices and accounts.
Members of this class are remarkably eager to improve their writing skills, and are churning through their writing assignments with few complaints--at least few that reach my ears. It's a lot of fun to teach such a class.
******************
Today Ellis preached. He and his family are about 2/3 of the way through their four-month stay in the states. "If you don't thank God for the privilege of being in church with so many people who live godly lives, you should," he told us. I agree. I love being with our church family in the presence of God Who is in us, among us, with us. What Ellis preached about suffering resonated with many in the audience. God must have orchestrated Arlyn's devotional this morning on a similar subject.
****************
It's time for Sadie, the scarecrow lady, to take up residence again on our front porch. We've had enough nippy fall weather to help us anticipate the change in seasons. Pumpkins and gourds at market help make it feel like Fall too.
Tomatoes are not abundant and not beautiful, for the most part. We're still getting some, and regularly selling out when we send some along to market with Shane.
***************
Recent rains have allowed some alfalfa to be cut for hay. The windrows are still skimpy because of limited soil moisture, but the rains in late August and September have made this cutting possible. Hay fields were not much more than brown stubble until then.
I overheard a farmer at market yesterday say of the meager hay crop this summer, "I've got an 18-foot header, and even when you raked two rows together, it was too little to see in the dark. I had to wait till daylight to do my baling so I could see where to drive." It's a tough call when you have to choose between inefficient fuel and time use during the night when there's enough moisture present to keep the leaves from shattering during baling--or waiting till it's light enough to see, but possibly too dry to allow the leaves to cling to the stalks.
***************
The broom (flower) is in bloom right now. It's beautiful in a vase, but is not of use for grazing. Cattle don't eat it. It's a short, umbrella-shaped plant with small bright yellow flowers over the canopy. My nephew Joseph is gathering some for me.
***************
Glenn Yoder died last week of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) in Indiana. He grew up here and had a multitude of cousins here, my dad among them, along with two sisters and many nieces and nephews. He was first diagnosed about a year ago.
A year or so before that, I had spent the night at Glenn and Amy's home when I traveled to Indiana with Paul and Edith to be at Susanna's father's funeral. At that time we talked briefly about Amy's health (She has MS.) but Glenn seemed healthy. His death seems untimely to many who knew him, although his body's deterioration made deliverance through death seem like a mercy in many ways.
***************
My age mate and cousin, Valetta, now has a grandson--Kaylene's son, Kenneth Alexander Graham, born last night in Ohio.
U.S. Representative from our district in Kansas, Tim Huelskamp, is among those joining the vociferous complaints about the school lunch law. He has helped introduce a law repealing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, wishing to replace it with a "No Hungry Kids" act, which would outlaw caloric limits on school lunches. His position is that too many kids come home from school hungry because of the calorie limits. I am dismayed and embarrassed by Huelskamp's position, and the ignorance it shows. Kansas is on track to become the sixth most obese state by 2030, and is currently at number 13. The caloric limits are an effort to address the obesity problem nationally. Kansas is in a poor position to offer credible opposition to such an effort.
As also revealed in the news article I read today, the problem is not chiefly a caloric problem. In my sweeping-language interpretation of the news article, here's the problem: School children don't like fruits and vegetables nearly as much as they like junk food, so they often refuse much of the healthy food they're offered and throw away much of what is served. In a recent lunch, where the children were served milk, tossed salad, cooked carrots, banana, and a pizza quesadilla, the pizza quesadilla was the only solid food item not found in large quantities in the trash container. Many children had also requested "no carrots," and when one did so, often the next three students parroted the request.
Parents who get on board with the complaints are just as guilty, in my estimation, as Representative Huelskamp, of not seeing that the real problem is wholesale bad eating habits. The adults involved are first of all to blame for this. If parents enforced a strict "no snacks after school if you didn't eat all that was offered at school" policy, I'm guessing the hunger problem would subside markedly. Those who have given direction to the makeup of school lunches are being responsible in an area in which parents have failed to take responsibility.
I'm curious how many of those "starving at the end of the day" students have eaten a good breakfast, and how many of them will get a good evening meal. Those after-school snacks that parents are grouchy about having to provide--are they healthful snacks, or do they consist of the junk food that is now missing from their plate in the school cafeteria?
Things can run off the rails in a variety of ways, but parental responsibility in training children to make good food choices can mostly be reduced to a two-fold process. One part is regularly providing healthful food. The other is training the palate to enjoy healthful food. The first can be improved by education (knowing something about nutrition and food production) and enough money (to buy what cannot be grown at home). The second often involves dealing with a child's will (refusing to let children call the shots about what they eat and refuse to eat).
Anyone who is sure that the healthful eating concept is a problem limited to non-Mennonites might try teaching a high school nutrition class that includes Mennonites. I suppose getting nosy about what comes to school in home-packed lunches or what happens at home at breakfast time would be similarly enlightening. I have tried only the nutrition class teaching.
*********************
When I was in grade school at Elreka, Menney Lissy and her daughter Clara Mae were the cooks. We all had to eat everything on our trays before we could go play after lunch. Everyone got served a portion of everything, and a lot of whatever they asked for extras on. We could go back for seconds as long as the food lasted. We scraped our plates when we were done, and the whole school's leavings barely covered the bottom of a pie pan. That's how I know school lunches can be handled differently from how they are now.
********************
My sister Lois' "mapping and zapping" procedure went very well, thanks to active misbehaviors of the electrical-impulse mechanism for her heart during the procedure. Seven electrical-impulse-sending sites were disabled in a two-hour procedure. The misbehaviors at such a time are a bonus, because if the harmful activity stops for some reason, the mapping cannot be done, and treatment cannot proceed. Monitoring afterward revealed no abnormal activity.
She is still recovering from the soreness at the incision sites for two heart catheterizations in two week's time. The procedure usually takes from three to six hours, and Lois attributes the unexpectedly short duration of hers to the prayers offered on her behalf and on behalf of the "electrician" who performed the ablation.
Dr. "Val" is one of only five in the state of Kansas who do this procedure. One of the other five is also on staff at Galichia where Dr. "Val" practices.
*******************
Our local farmer's market will be extended further into the fall this year than ever before. With at least ten vendors committed to paying a lump sum up front for the privilege of participating, plans are in place for having a market event from 10:00 to 1:00 about every other Saturday until Christmas. The exact schedule has not been finalized. The location will be the same as during the summer months. It's likely that several large tent canopies with sidewall "curtains" will be set up inside the open-air pavilion to help provide protection against the elements.
In a meeting of market members after the regular market day last Saturday, people expressed the hope that extending the season will pay off in terms of people not having to start from scratch with developing a customer clientele next spring. We all know that growers would likely have been better prepared with storage crops and late season cold-tolerant crops if this had been planned earlier, but starting somewhere is necessary, and this looks like a good place to start.
*******************
I'm encouraging my comp students to post their good writings on Facebook. I'd like to link to the writings here, if possible, and certainly on Facebook. It looks like this might take some strenuous encouragement. If you know a comp student, you're officially invited to help in the encouragement department. At our school, they're all high school juniors.
I've often tried to figure out a relatively painless way to give my students' writings a wider audience, and saw the possibility of a simpler way when one of the students, at his own initiative, posted on Facebook something he wrote. This approach would free me from the necessity of securing permission from the students and from the school administration, etc. if I posted on a school site, for example, as well as many of the laborious logistics of getting electronic files from their devices and accounts to my devices and accounts.
Members of this class are remarkably eager to improve their writing skills, and are churning through their writing assignments with few complaints--at least few that reach my ears. It's a lot of fun to teach such a class.
******************
Today Ellis preached. He and his family are about 2/3 of the way through their four-month stay in the states. "If you don't thank God for the privilege of being in church with so many people who live godly lives, you should," he told us. I agree. I love being with our church family in the presence of God Who is in us, among us, with us. What Ellis preached about suffering resonated with many in the audience. God must have orchestrated Arlyn's devotional this morning on a similar subject.
****************
It's time for Sadie, the scarecrow lady, to take up residence again on our front porch. We've had enough nippy fall weather to help us anticipate the change in seasons. Pumpkins and gourds at market help make it feel like Fall too.
Tomatoes are not abundant and not beautiful, for the most part. We're still getting some, and regularly selling out when we send some along to market with Shane.
***************
Recent rains have allowed some alfalfa to be cut for hay. The windrows are still skimpy because of limited soil moisture, but the rains in late August and September have made this cutting possible. Hay fields were not much more than brown stubble until then.
I overheard a farmer at market yesterday say of the meager hay crop this summer, "I've got an 18-foot header, and even when you raked two rows together, it was too little to see in the dark. I had to wait till daylight to do my baling so I could see where to drive." It's a tough call when you have to choose between inefficient fuel and time use during the night when there's enough moisture present to keep the leaves from shattering during baling--or waiting till it's light enough to see, but possibly too dry to allow the leaves to cling to the stalks.
***************
The broom (flower) is in bloom right now. It's beautiful in a vase, but is not of use for grazing. Cattle don't eat it. It's a short, umbrella-shaped plant with small bright yellow flowers over the canopy. My nephew Joseph is gathering some for me.
***************
Glenn Yoder died last week of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) in Indiana. He grew up here and had a multitude of cousins here, my dad among them, along with two sisters and many nieces and nephews. He was first diagnosed about a year ago.
A year or so before that, I had spent the night at Glenn and Amy's home when I traveled to Indiana with Paul and Edith to be at Susanna's father's funeral. At that time we talked briefly about Amy's health (She has MS.) but Glenn seemed healthy. His death seems untimely to many who knew him, although his body's deterioration made deliverance through death seem like a mercy in many ways.
***************
My age mate and cousin, Valetta, now has a grandson--Kaylene's son, Kenneth Alexander Graham, born last night in Ohio.
posted by Mrs. I (Miriam Iwashige) at
9:55 PM
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