I have Faith in a Seed

I think of the seeds every day. They’re locked away in their envelopes, in Ziploc bags, in a large cookie tin, in the cold basement. Held within these many layers, deprived of light, water and warmth and temperature fluctuations, they are kept suspended.

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I am rereading Thoreau’s Dispersion of Seeds. It was published for the first (and so far only time) in 1993, in a lovely volume called Faith in a Seed.

Thoreau was writing around 1860, when most people in the States believed that plants spring up spontaneously, not from a root or a cutting or a seed. It’s so hard for us to imagine that people ever thought such a thing. But Thoreau could, though he was one of the few arguing against it (this was part of his larger, Darwinian argument against Agassiz’s “immutable species”).

Thoreau drew this interesting comparison between the American vs. the European idea of a seed.  He writes (on page 1):

We are so accustomed to see another forest spring up immediately, as a matter of course, when one is cut down… never troubling ourselves about the succession, that we hardly associate seeds with trees, and we do not anticipate the time when this regular succession will cease and we shall be obliged to plant, as they do in all old countries. The planters of Europe must therefore have a different and much more correct notion of the value of seeds than we… we know only that [trees] come out of the earth when we cut them down, as regularly as the fur grows on the hides of animals after the summer has thinned it.

Old country versus new country, a place where man has to plant versus a place where Nature sows… I came to this country ten years ago and I live constantly with this Old-New comparison. Look around you, is your America still that New World? Or has it become Old?

What a privilege, what good luck, to be able to read this text!

I have faith in a seed too. The seeds in my basement seem dead, but I believe they will live and flourish. I believe that nature is forgiving. If I make a little mistake, I believe she will correct it. If I make a big one, she will give me another chance, here, in my New World.

Cooperative Boardgames: Max

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One of our Christmas gifts was this game, Max, made by a small family-owned company called Family Pastimes that makes only cooperative games (they even print and make their own boards and boxes).

We must help get the little Creatures safely home before Max, the Tomcat, catches them. In an exciting way, children learn logic, consultation and decision making. An important issue to discuss is also raised: we don’t like Max catching those Little Ones, yet we recognize that he is a natural hunter. How do we resolve this in our minds and hearts? Let’s talk it over.

The game is just at Amie’s level.  She isn’t getting the strategy yet, but a game like this – not too simple, not too complex – is just what will help her understand the necessity of thinking ahead. The duration of the game is also well within her attention span… so there’s time for one more, of course, or two…

It’s also very engaging. Amie gets very concerned about the little creatures – a bird, a chipmunk and a mouse. So much so that she calls Max back to his porch (with a treat) even when he isn’t anywhere close to being a threat. So much so that she tries, very clumsily, to manipulate the dice, which decide who gets to move ahead, the little ones or Max. When I told her she has to leave it up to the dice, she tried hard, but soon I caught her again.

– Amie, we shouldn’t cheat.

– Shhh, Mama! Max didn’t see me do it!

How is that for immersion! I had to put a stop to it after three games. She was getting too excited.

I heartily recommend it anyone with a three to four-year-old, or older child. Also check out Family Pastimes’ other cooperative games: they have them for all ages. Of course I’m putting “Harvest Time” on our urgent wish list!

(I hope this company won’t be adversely affected by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.)

Winter Wednesday: Snow

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The theme of last Winter Wednesday was snow and well, no shortage of snow around here: a whole lot fell last night and more is on the way.

I requested the book, Discover Nature in Winter, from the interlibrary loan, but it hasn’t arrived yet. But Barb mentioned the following experiment: melt and filter different kinds of snow (new and old), then look at the particles left behind, through a magnifying glass or a microscope.

We were in luck today: the snow that fell was the fluffiest I’ve seen so far – it was a joy to shovel. I scooped some up into a glass, taking care to compress it as little as possible. Then I filled up another glass with some old snow that was underneath – the difference between the two layers was very pronounced. That made two glasses of snow:

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And one interested little girl who came a-peeking:

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6:07 pm

– What are you doing?

– Experimenting!

– O can I help?

We talked about how these glasses of snow looked exactly the same. What would happen if we let the snow in them melt? And what would happen if we packed it down?

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Strange, the new snow was very easy to push down. Its volume was reduced drastically. Not so the old snow. So we got to talk about “compact” and “dense” again. The new snow was very soft and fluffy. That meant there were many air pockets or empty spaces in between the snowflakes or ice crystals, lots of air that was were squeezed out as Amie packed it down.  The snow crystals in the old snow were already packed much closer together, with less air or empty space between them, so it was harder, much less easy to compact even more.

– So (I asked Amie when she had packed both glasses as much as her little fists could stand), is there as much snow in one as in the other?

– No! she said. (It was plain as day, looking at the one glass, still 3/4 full, and the other, only 1/4 full.)

– But, remember, at the beginning they were as full, no?

– Yes.

– How come?

– I don’t know, she said.

I have to laugh at this point. Really I’m not going to pretend that my 3-and-a-half-year-old gets all of this! She just likes playing with the snow. But she did listen, and we did continue our explanations, because we want her to get an idea of this experiment, and of how important and fun it is to experiment, and of how much we value her opinion and think she is capable of understanding.

So the glass with the new, fluffy snow had been filled with more air than snow, and the glass with the old, hard snow had, in effect, a lot more actual snow in it. It also weighed more.

But nothing explains it like a picture, and she and I sat down to make one.

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We returned to our melting snow throughout the evening – Amie often pulling on my sleeve to drag me over. Very soon it was obvious that the new snow was melting much, much faster.

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6.38 pm

Why would that be? There had been much less snow to begin with. And even after compacting there had probably been a lot of air in it still, which warmed up and melted the snow from within. By 7:14 the new snow had all melted. But the other glass was still half full:

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By 9:30 that the old snow too had melted. By then Amie had gone to sleep. I kept the two glasses, with saucers on them, in the kitchen for her to see in the morning. So… to be continued!

A Gift of Self-Sufficiency

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Snow fell during the night and a good part of the day. It stopped by 3 and I set out. I used the tiny electric snow thrower that was given to us via FreeCycle, for about half the driveway, and shoveled the other half. Took me 2 1/5 hours in all for about 1000 sq.f. and 4 inches of snow. Thankfully it was very fluffy, so more air than water.

As I was shoveling, a couple strolled by on a winter wonder walk. The woman gave me an encouraging smile. The man frowned and said: “Why don’t you hire a plow, it’ll be done in two minutes!” “True,” I said, “only this is my gym workout, for free”. Her laughter was appreciative. His was skeptical.

I am proud of my self-sufficiency. And it really is not just about that: my two-hour workout made me healthier, so that might add at least another two hours to my life, or make two other hours fitter. At the very least it’ll deepen two hours of my sleep tonight.And the fitter I am, the more self-sufficient I will be…

It’s a gift.

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On another note: half of the seeds arrived! We all gathered around to take the neatly stacked packets out of the box. The other half are on back order and are promised to arrive soon. Only one seed is out-of-stock, the Arnica, so I’ll have to find another supplier for that.

I’m also looking for a source of French Green Lentils. Or can I just plant the lentil I buy at Whole Foods? There is no information about where those come from, whether they’re hybrids, etc. Or are those too treated, to husked, so no longer viable? Any advice?

Sick – Not Me!

Amie has a cold. Dripping nose, little cough. No fever, but I’m thinking that might come tomorrow, and I’m sure she’ll be staying home from school. But all in all I am quite happy with her health since coming to live here.  She has been sick less often and less severely than when we were living in our little basement apartment in the city.

Not so for us grownups. We’ve never been sick so often, especially DH, who caught a cold last week a mere week after he had recovered from one. A couple of weeks ago I was so sick he had to stay home from work to take care of things. We’re stressed, we don’t exercise enough…

But I’m fighting. I’m telling myself I’m strong. I will not be sick. I’m impervious. I’m strong. Not me!

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

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A new law will be coming into effect on 10 February, called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). It demands that all products for children aged 12 and younger be tested for lead and phthalates, and that those that haven’t been tested yet are considered hazardous and may not be sold.

It’s about time that lead and phthalates are banned from children’s products – manufactured in the States or imported from abroad – and that the manufacturers have tests to show their safety. But this well-intentioned law suffers from two problems:

  1. It applies to any and all “consumer product designed or intended primarily for children 12 years of age and younger”: from toys and clothing to books, games, sports equipment, furniture and DVDs.
  2. It applies not only to products being made right now and after 10 February, but also to products that are already on the shelves. This means it doesn’t just put manufacturers on the spot, but retailers (or resellers) and second-hand sellers, as well.

Consider that

Lead testing promises to be expensive — from several hundred to several thousand dollars per test, depending on the product. And each batch of each item must be tracked and tested, making compliance brutally expensive for items with small runs. (source)

No wonder the law in all its generality is creating a panic. For instance, for a while there it seemed as if many thrift stores and second-hand shops were going to have to close.

But there may now be good news for them. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the law,  drafted a Memo to clarify the law. “The commission does not have the authority to change the law but can decide how to interpret it” (source).

As for second-hand children’s products – thrift stores, consignment shops, and other used-goods stores:

Sellers of used children’s products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standards. (Memo)

How about the retailers whose entire stock is bound to become contraband? Those that sell clothing and toys made of natural materials such as wool or wood (not painted) may be off the hook, for the Commission is considering giving also them an exemption (source).

All others may have to consult their lawyers. For them too, the CPSC seems to bending the rules a little, in what to me two  rather confusing paragraphs:

  1. The new safety law does not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold. However, resellers cannot sell children’s products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit. Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties. (Memo; my emphasis)
  2. While CPSC expects every company to comply fully with the new laws resellers should pay special attention to certain product categories. Among these are recalled children’s products, particularly cribs and play yards etc. (Memo; my emphasis)

Does this mean (“while”) that that only those “certain product categories” should be actually tested?

Can the small shops afford to run these tests on their suspect stock? Many can’t, like Amanda Christina of Hearts and Trees, who will no longer be able to sell her homemade art, handicraft and nature study kits.

And what about children’s books, for instance? From a Boston-based article on this matter:

This Wednesday, Amazon.com sent a general letter informing its vendors that, if they did not certify their products by January 15, the items would be returned at the sellers’ expense…

To make matters worse, even publishers that have already had their products tested for lead will be forced to retest…

“All of us are totally in the dark,” says Terri Schmitz, owner of the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline. “I can’t make a decision, because I don’t know what the regulations are. We’re all sort of in limbo here.” (source)

You may even find the shelves of your childrens’ library empty…

To be continued, no doubt.

Go to Cool Mon Picks SaveHandmade for more information, resources, and a way to respond to this law.

She’s My Little Sample

A while ago I was telling an older acquaintance about how few clothes we need to buy for Amie. We have several generous friends who have daughters a year or so older than Amie and who gladly pass on some clothing.

– I love hand-me-downs, I said.

To which my acquaintance whispered:

– Ssshh, you don’t want Amie to hear that she is wearing those! Its embarrassing!

I was so confused by her reaction that I didn’t respond. But why should I have been confused? Of course hand-me-down clothing is regarded somehow shameful in this society, that is, Western society (my acquaintance is a European who has lived in North America for thirty years). Yet I am now so comfortable in this life of “less is more” that I had managed to forget it altogether.

Or had I?

As we were packing to visit one of those generous friends over the holidays, Amie wanted to bring a special gift for the daughter. My first reaction was to think of where to buy what. But Amie’s reaction was different:

– I can give her this, Mama! she said, holding up her puppet frog in triumph.

Her little friend had enjoyed playing with it when she was over at our house. It was the best gift Amie could give her friend: something of her own, something they had played with together, something that she herself also enjoyed and was joyfully willing to sacrifice, all of which made the gift so much more meaningful than a toy fresh from the shelves of a shop.

I felt so proud of her, and I hope I can foster this attitude toward gift-giving and her own toys and clothes, so that it will stand up to the pressures of society and her peers – all of which she is still mercifully oblivious to.

Now some of these clothes that I get from friends are samples from a well-know store where we can’t even afford to window shop. These are fantastic clothes, well-made in the US, beautifully designed. But they have “SAMPLE” stamped on them, and in the most conspicuous places too, like on the seat of the pants or the back of a sweater.

This morning I dropped Amie off at her preschool and one of the teachers remarked on how amused they were at her pants the other day. One look and I knew it had been kindhearted: no, they hadn’t been laughing at my child. I said:

– Well, you know, she’s my little sample!

And we both laughed.

I am writing an article on a new law concerning lead in children’s products, called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), which is about to go into effect on 10 February. It could affect thrift and second-hand shops.

Drawing Dinosaurs at the Museum

Over the holidays we made several visits to several Natural History Museums. Amie was keen to see the dinosaur bones. When she was 2,5 years old she learned that the dinosaurs are extinct. She was having dinosaur nightmares at the time and our discussions about their demise and the meanings of “extinct” and “dead” helped her defuse her fear.

So it’s the first thing she will say about dinosaurs: “They’re extinct!” But  seeing all those bones, I think, really brought it home to her. This is Amie getting up close and personal with the T. Rex in the Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

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I wish I had captured her face: she is squealing with laughter. It was also, as you can imagine, a great opportunity to talk about scale and measurement.

We especially like the American Natural History Museum in NY, which has the largest collection of real dinosaurs bones in the world – and the entrance fee is at your discretion. On our second visit we brought Amie’s friend and drawing buddy, E, along. We found a comfortable bench with Tyranosaurus Rex towering over us and the Apatosaurus – which you may know as the Brontosaurus (*) – in full view on the other side of the hall.

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We started drawing right away.

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E asked me to draw the Apatosaurus (all those vertebrae!) and she colored it in.

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Amie drew the T Rex, but unfortunately I wasn’t paying the exclusive attention I usually do and failed to supply a new, blank sheet – and sequester the finished product – before she proceeded to color the whole thing in till it became a big brown blotch.

I like this take-your-drawing-pad-along approach to the museum. It helps the child focus on one room or even one thing, especially in a huge museum. And it helps the caregiver catch his or her breath and, perhaps, get a sketch down as well.

(*) Aha: cf. Wikipedia:

Othniel Charles Marsh, a Professor of Paleontology at Yale University, described and named an incomplete (and juvenile) skeleton of Apatosaurus ajax in 1877. Two years later, Marsh announced the discovery of a larger and more complete specimen at Como Bluff Wyoming — which, because of discrepancies including the size difference, Marsh incorrectly identified as belonging to an entirely new genus and species. He dubbed the new species Brontosaurus excelsus, meaning “thunder lizard”, from the Greek brontÄ“/βροντη meaning ‘thunder’ and sauros/σαυρος meaning ‘lizard’, and from the Latin excelsus, “to exceed in number”, referring to the greater number of sacral vertebrae than in any other genus of sauropod known at the time.

But

Despite the much-publicized debut of the mounted skeleton, which cemented the name Brontosaurus in the public consciousness, Elmer Riggs had published a paper in the 1903 edition of Geological Series of the Field Columbian Museum which argued that Brontosaurus was not different enough from Apatosaurus to warrant its own genus, and created the combination Apatosaurus excelsus: ” …In view of these facts the two genera may be regarded as synonymous. As the term “Apatosaurus” has priority, “Brontosaurus” will be regarded as a synonym.”

Homestead TO DO Lists

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I can feel I’m back in the thick of things when I feel one of those big TO DO lists coming on. And boy, is there a lot to do! I decided to put these lists in my sidebar and I’ll cross out as I get things done (and for each item crossed out I will no doubt add another). Here they are, for now.

Do because necessary for planting seeds:

  1. plan garden: what to grow when and where
  2. set up seed germination areas and seedling area (buy lights, fixtures)
  3. buy seed growing supplies (flats, peat pots, potting mix)

Do because it’s easy, inside, and almost everything is right here:

  1. finish hay box and experiment
  2. count, clean, store mason jars (buy lids)
  3. collect emergence things and organize space (buy some equipment)
  4. move things from Annex into basement

Do outside when weather gets better:

  1. turn compost heaps
  2. make compost/soil screen
  3. make more compost bins (buy materials)

Research:

  1. chickens: town regulations: we can!
  2. soil amendments: which and pricing
  3. garden fence
  4. greenhouse (book from library)
  5. berry bushes, fruit trees
  6. floors and drainage (lean-to, shed, greenhouse) (get free pallets)
  7. deck
  8. terracing for slope
  9. “wetland” area: which plants, boardwalk