Book Review: Merchants of Poison

Title: Merchants of Poison 

Author: Stacy Malkan

Publisher: U.S. Right to Know

Date: 2022

Length: 103 e-pages

Quote: "Character assassination has been deployed against countless scientists since. But industry goes after more than just the scientists; companies and their public relations proxies also attack journalists, public interest groups, and anyone raising concerns about their products as a key tactic. These attacks serve two purposes: they work to undermine the credibility of those raising concerns and, at the same time, they can have a chilling effect, causing many to think twice about putting themselves in industry crosshairs."

Right. On.

Regular readers have been following the Glyphosate Awareness movement from this web site's point of view. During the months when this web site was forced into dormancy by local Internet access issues, Stacy Malkan wrote this hard-hitting account of the movement from the point of view of the people who were still actively, publicly, on line, taking the character assassination from Bayer. This book documents the activities of the verbal hitmen, the sneaky front groups, the corporate mergers and name changes, how Donald Trump's pet chemical company got to be ChemChina while formerly uninvolved Dow and DuPont got in on the side of glyphosate as Cortiva, why McDonalds and Nestle food never became really safe to eat, and more.

Some people who were very active in the movement in 2018 really have dropped out due to personal illness, fears, or other concerns. I'm sure many people thought I was one of them. Malkan mentions only the most visible people in the Glyphosate Awareness movement, with heroic respect for the privacy of people who've chosen different public focus points, gone underground, or just not said "Hey, I want to be in this book." 

(Spoiler alert: Rock fans should know that Neil Young did want to be in this book, and he is. It's very interesting that you can't listen to the whole album on YouTube, although you can listen to this song: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fXbhoJNmLQ)

There are questions that remain unanswered. I know that a third cousin of mine, who inherited a nice piece of land and ruined it, has been coveting my whole neighborhood since about 1990, with sociopathic intensity. I know that this disgrace to the phrase "Virginia gentleman" has been reckless with "pesticides" at home, though I'm not sure exactly how much this contributed to the fact that his parents, his one legitimate child, his wife, his brother, and his sister, all died within the years when glyphosate use peaked. I know that this man has admitted harassing my closer relatives, including my parents, and his wife's relatives in the neighborhood, including the younger man who has been hounded into the role of "Young Grouch." I know that the harassment of the Young Grouch, by this man he trusted as an uncle, included deliberate placement of dead animals, one of whom was my beloved cat Heather, in a road where the Young Grouch would drive over them. I have seen him shooting animals out of season in broad daylight; I have seen a man of his build killing animals while trespassing on my property at night. I know that harassment of me, personally, included deliberate damage to my roof and water line, other property damage, and the deliberate destruction of fruit trees and flowers on my property, with glyphosate, with a specific intention of making me physically sick, as well as sick at heart to lose plants and trees that were family heirlooms. I knew that that sort of harassment would be a possible consequence of public speaking or writing about glyphosate, all along. It's not only the opportunity to chat live with foreign clients that motivates me to work at night; it's also the opportunity to watch for any indication that my Professional Bad Neighbor is trying to carry out threats he's made to burn down my house. What I don't know, would like to know, and may never know, is whether Bayer was directly involved in these attacks, or whether my sociopathic third cousin did it entirely on his own initiative. Some stories, though true, should not be published in books until all the facts are in. 

While corporate news media, regrettably including Twitter, have been paid to ignore the facts, it is safe to say that everyone who's involved with Glyphosate Awareness has taken some abuse from corporate greedheads who imagine they will be able to bully their way out of paying for their misdeeds, forever. At the very least we've all been publicly insulted by the corporate enemies of humanity and censored by the sellout media. Most of us have had to deal with more than that, and with more than publishers' backing out of book deals, too. The sellout media don't want you to know. While they scream on and on about the "racism" they invoke to explain the consequences of quarrels and brawls between people of the same ethnic type, the sellout media are hoping against all hope that you won't ask questions about the real institutionalized abuse, including violent physical abuse, of people who interfere with the sales of profitable products.

Which has, incidentally, racial components. Genes associated with ethnicity, like the Irish celiac gene, help to determine how individuals tend to react to glyphosate. "Black people aren't celiacs," said a Black neighbor of mine; "what about sickle-cell anemia?" I've seen no formal studies but it's safe to say that glyphosate does not help  anyone living with sickle-cell anemia. There are also international issues, which this web site generally does not discuss, of rich countries (with more White people) trying to force more use of glyphosate on poor countries in Asia and Africa. If we want to talk about hatecrimes against Asians, what about the use of tariffs and trade deals to inflict glyphosate on Thailand. There's an instructive little first book of glyphosate science out there, printed in Uganda, available as an e-book free for the downloading. It contains photographs of how that stock image of White farm laborers spraying glyphosate shows them wearing masks, gloves, and HazMat suits, but the corresponding image of Africans shows Black laborers wearing...shorts. Why would Black field hands need shirts, they're only going to work in the field and get dirty...

Anyway, Merchants of Poison is a relatively bland, journalistic account of the unassailable facts about how Bayer and other corporations closed ranks, after "Roundup" was finally pulled off the market in 2020, and moved to get more of this poison into the world's food supplies. Monsanto became Bayer, Syngenta became ChemChina, Dow and DuPont became Cortiva; all three became even more enmeshed in efforts to make the whole world dependent on glyphosate, and later on even deadlier poisons, to raise genetically modified food for all those billions of babies the greedheads don't want to stop begetting.

(What would happen if women agreed that babies don't deserve to be born into a glyphosate-poisoned world? "Enforce the ban now, no spraying this spring, no traces of glyphosate in anything sold as food by July, or no chances of making any more babies." Just a thought. For women who want to have one healthy baby.)

While we don't see a screenshot of Bayer's current strategy for dealing with tweets from people involved in Glyphosate Awareness (I test Twitter from time to time--currently it seems to be the "5 tweets per hour," even if those tweets are all about verse forms and flower pictures, that alerts Bayer's goon squad to trigger robot censorship), we do see a snip of the strategy Monsanto used prior to its merger with Bayer. Real Twits in the Glyphosate Awareness movement can testify that the only thing that's changed is Twitter's current willingness to be manipulated in this way.

We learn the names of "scientists" who should, henceforward, be considered disqualified for any jobs in which the ability to read or write would ever be useful. 

We see the greedheads hard at work, trying to disparage those who propose better ways to deal with "weeds" while placing preliminary claims on their ideas.

(Shouldn't they be allowed to use their existing marketing networks to promote better ideas? Of course they should. Provided that they pay the individuals who suggested those ideas...including full compensation for the damage done to those individuals that motivated us to think of the improvements. Before proposing steam weeders, similar to carpet steamers, I logged every pseudo-celiac reaction I had since 2006. One million dollars per bleeding episode would be a suitable place to start. Malkan quotes Bayer's halfhearted endorsement of another proposed improvement from a man who should demand no less.)

We learn how Marion Nestle and Nassim Taleb, neither of whom has been prominent in Glyphosate Awareness, ran afoul of Bayer's troll squad.

The main text of the report ends with an unfortunate appeal to the United Nations as the source of ideas that could have been cited from Wendell Berry or Robert Rodale or, for that matter, Herbert W. Armstrong, but the book is hardly even half done. Tables, fact sheets, and hundreds of endnotes make it worth paying for--although a little expression of moral support for RTK may still get you a free e-copy.

Tortie Tuesday: Bad Behavior? No, Serena's Behavior

Just to annoy the whimsy-impaired, a Cat Sanctuary Animal Interview:

PK: Someone asked me a question that surprised me, recently. "What do you do about your cat's bad behavior?" 

Serena: Say whaaaat?

PK: Exactly. You were born in the office. You accepted your human godmother, me, as naturally as you did your mother, Samantha Scaredycat. You learned the rules by watching Samantha. You never have done much of anything I'd call bad behavior.

Serena: Of course not. Well, I know I've done things you didn't like.

PK: So you have. As a young kitten, you went through that stage some kittens go through, when they're about two months old, of squatting on the floor to show the humans what a mess you can make.

Serena: Of course we do. It's a thrill for a kitten, being able to do that all by itself, after all those weeks of having to wait for someone else to groom our bottoms so that we can get rid of bodywastes. We want the people who've groomed our bottoms, or seen them being groomed, to know that we're taking care of ourselves now! It's a big event for us, and it's disappointing when you say things like "bad" and "naughty" and "don't." I've even heard of humans so thickheaded they'd shove a kitten's face into its mess.

PK: Ivy, whom you don't remember, was the communicator cat who explained that to me and kept me from packing kittens off to be barn cats somewhere else. The first few times I saw kittens do that, I thought they were doing it out of spite.

Serena: Why would a six-week-old kitten want to "spite" anybody? Older kittens and cats will leave something to bury where humans will find it, sometimes, out of resentment. But how can you not see the pride and joy of a kitten who's showing you that it's able to take care of itself, in one way at least?! I didn't squat on the office mat out of spite. I wanted you to share the thrill! It felt so good to have control of my own bottom! 

PK: It also helped your case that you were sensible enough to choose a plastic mat to display your creations on. You were spending time outdoors by then. I thought you'd have taken care of your excretory needs in the sand pit. I know Samantha had taken you there.

Serena: Yes, but I wanted you to see and celebrate too. You're family!

PK: Samantha didn't let you show her what you could do twice, either.

Serena: No. Now that I'm a grandmother, I do know that kittens' first little puddles and piles do smell nasty, to everyone but the kittens themselves. You do have to make it clear to a kitten that you don't like that sort of thing. But at least you didn't hit or kick me or shove my face into the puddle...

PK: Or put you into a cage and start calling everyone, demanding that someone take you away. Even at that age, you understood things most cats don't. I said, "You're old enough to do that, so you're old enough to go outside to do it," and took you outside. You understood right away. I believe you're an intelligent animal; you have reasons for what you do.

Serena: I appreciate that, since I do have valid reasons for what I do. Even the time I don't remember very well, when everyone says I ran around the office in circles and threatened to bite you. The reason for that was that I was delirious from food poisoning. Nothing smelled or sounded or looked or felt the way it ought to have done. I thought I wanted to bite you but I couldn't tell exactly where you were. 

PK: Why do cats bite vets and other humans who are trying to help when they're sick?

Serena: You can't see? We feel bad. Everything hurts We want everyone to leave us alone. And it may be a survival mechanism for some disease germs to give even infected humans an impulse to bite, to get the germs into other creatures' blood.

PK: A man who had rabies and lived said that the disease made him want to bite other animals, but not his fellow humans. So that may well be. There are diseases that have an urge to do things that spread the disease as a symptom. 

Serena: And I know you're accustomed to cats who never got enough snuggling because they had siblings, but I'm sorry. I got all of Samantha's attention and had nobody to play with for a long time. If you want to show how much you like me, play a good, fast, rough game with me! 

PK: Cats like you are often misunderstood. You don't want to cause pain...

Serena: We don't know why God didn't give you adequate fur. coats. A person can't even bite you without tearing your skin. But that's all right. You don't have to play with me the way another cat would play, much as I'd enjoy that. You can throw or dangle things for me to chase. You can chase me. I've heard of cats who would slap or nip their humans and run away, just to get the humans to chase them. \

PK: That can't be much of a game. The humans are angry, and if they catch the cats they're likely to want to punish the cats. 

Serena: It's not much of a game but it's all some cats can get their humans to play. 

PK: You don't attack me when you want to be chased, but you claw at the door when you're surrounded by acres of perfectly good trees.

Serena: You don't hear when I claw at trees or dead wood. I often do, but when I'm talking to you I claw at your door so you can hear me. Even if all you do is shout "Stop it." At least that means you remember that I'm out here wanting something from you.

PK: Some humans who have lived in this house would have sent your away for less. 

Serena: And what did they do about mice?

PK: They spent a lot of money on traps and poison baits. And lived with mice, anyway. A house without a hunting cat is unsanitary. 

Serena: Well, there you are. You're an inferior species who can't catch your own mice, so you have to take whatever was hand out and like it.

PK: Not quite. Most cats don't have enough sense to use birth control--very similar to humans--so we don't have to put up bad behavior. Cats can be re[;aed/ 

Serena: But a new cat is likely to understand less, forgive less, and want less to please than a cat who's spent her whole life looking after her human. Now, I use snuggling as a reward, and let you hold or stroke me only when you've done something I particularly like. Some cats, like my adoptive brother Traveller, will take all the cuddling they can get. There are some honest disagreements among cats, like how much we want to snuggle, that can give humans the idea that they can get away with anything if they can find the right cat. But they are wrong. Start with the fact that the cat they didn't understand might have been expressng dissatisfaction with their behavior, but had probably built up some trust, understanding, even affection for its ungrateful humans over the years. A new cat does not have those feelings or that understanding. And it can probably tell that the previous cat's trust has been betrayed.

PK:  Is "betrayed" too strong a word for what happens when humans just don't feel able to understand, or cope with, a cat's behavior?

Serena: It depends on the relationship, I suppose. I would never have confused you with my mother, but some cats really do feel that their humans are like mothers to them. Sometimes "betrayed" may not be strong enough. All they were doing was trying to show their humans some part of what they were feeling, and the humans threw them out in a strange place, a wilderness full of strangers and predators, or one of those death camps called "pounds" and "shelters." 

PK: Oh, such a guilt trip!

Serena: Well, you must admit humans have a lot to feel guilty about. 

PK: I suppose we have. While our Most Photogenic Pets feature usually gets pictures from "rescue" groups that usually say they don't kill animals, it's hard to predict what will happen to shelter animals who are not adopted in a few months. Sometimes it does happen that a shelter animal stays with a foster family who really want to keep it if they can, and sometimes that eventually becomes possible. Or the animals may be sent to other shelters that have different policies. 

We can only advise readers: If a foster human seems to be clinging to an animal, the person probably has some hope of adopting it, which means the animal is probably happy where it si. That's nice. Keep looking for an animal who wants to be adopted by you. 

If you can't adopt these animals but wish you could? Sharing is caring. It makes no difference to the animals whether you tweet or repost the link to this page, where readers can meet all of our Photogenic Pet picks for the week, or to the animal's own web page, where they can meet the humans who are currently responsible for the one animal who interests them. Ideally, of course, you'd share both! 

Today's Cat Category is "Domestic Medium Hair." This is a trait that occurs when short-haired cats and long-haired cats have kittens together. The coat is more manageable than a long-haired cat's coat, fluffier than a short-haired cat's coat. Kittens may look like true long-haired cats at birth, but grow up to look more like short-haired cats. 

Zipeode 10101: Charlize from Brooklyn 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/charlize-59426509/ny/brooklyn/little-wanderers-nyc-inc-ny1560/

All the shelter has to say about her is that she's been vaccinated and seems healthy. She's a clear winner in any cute picture contest, but I should mention that this picture, cute though it is, was my second choice. 

Zipcode 10101 Alternate: Drizzy from Brooklyn 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/drizzy-46300478/ny/new-york/paul-the-cat-guy-inc-ny1376/

He's described as friendly, possibly a social cat, described as a kind uncle sort of cat who likes to play gently with kittens...and FIV-positive. It is probable that all the resident cats here between 2007 and 2018 have been FIV-positive; it doesn't keep them from being strong and healthy--when young--and active and very, very lovable. In fact it's possible that, because social cats are so willing to share food and look after one another's kittens, they're at higher than usual risk for FIV. FIV itself does not make the cat ill so for the first year, or five years, it may be happy and healthy. Sooner or later, though, it will have an unusually hard time with some sort of infection (or with vaccines) and you'll know that, even if the first infection can be treated with antibiotics, this cat is not going to win any prizes for longevity. FIV-positive cats' average lifespan is 5 to 7 years, instead of 10 to 15. FIV is so named because its effects on cats parallel the effects of HIV on humans in some ways. It is a separate virus, not transmitted to humans and transmitted through saliva or milk rather than sex. Most "poz" cats got FIV from their mothers; it is rarely transmmitted by biting or coat grooming, and might potentially be transmitted by sharing food.  

I try to feature FIV-negative cats, but readers who've liked what I've been able to write about Burr, Sommersburr, and Mackerel the Social Cat Who Started It All By Taming Humans in the Alley, just might find Drizzy to be that kind of cat. Even though he'll probably break your heart, and can't even leave an heir, you will be richer in spirit for having known an actual literal tomcat who'd make a good role model for some men.

Zipcode 20202: Atlantis the Purr Machine from Arlington 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/atlantis-purr-machine-59318009/va/arlington/home-alone-feline-rescue-va219/

Actually he's not the most photogenic medium-hair cat seeking a home in the Metropolitan Area this week. The real contest winter was a pale "Torbie" kitten called Aria with grey tabby stripes on a pale buff background. She's already been spoken for, though, so here's the red ribbon winner. Atlantis is described as a smart, tough fellow who commands respect and you'd better deserve his respect, too. He reportedly "broke out of" one shelter altready. In foster care, he soaks up a lot of attention and might be jealous or mean to a smaller cat. He's part Maine Coon and most cats are smaller than he is. He is at least reported to tolerate his foster humans' dog. He will own you if he has any time for you at all. If you want to be owned by a lovable tomcat with a big purr and a fluffy coat, you might want to present yourself for Atlantis's inspection. He gives audiences in Falls Church. I think I'd take the Metro as it sounds as if he may be planning to keep his foster humans.

Zipcode 20202 Alternate: Tia from D.C. 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/tia-59754519/dc/washington/humane-rescue-alliance-foster-homes-dc03/

For those who might not be up to the challenge of adopting Atlantis, Tia is said to be just a normal, lovable Tortie who likes to hug her human and likes to climb on top of things, possibly the better to practice pouncing on her humans, though she's not reported to be doing that yet. 

Zipcode 30303: Mouse from Douglass County 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/mouse-59732200/ga/douglasville/douglas-county-animal-shelter-ga299/

Those Georgia shelters are getting serious. We razzed them about posting photos that make it hard to be sure that the animals photographed are in fact cats (or dogs, in alternate weeks). This week their page was full of photos that are unmistakably cars. They noted also that encouraging foster care, in which the organization supplies some of the animal's needs for as long as the foster family agree to show the animal to potential permanent adopters, got some cats placed fast. They continued to encourage foster care, and the first five pictures on which I clicked all opened pages that said the cats were in foster care and being adopted, apparently by their foster humans. Georgia has a certain reputation for being the home of people who talk slowly but catch on fast. 

So, this fluffy Amber-Eyed Silver Tip is still available. Obviously a pet looking for the right person to be a pet to, poor little Mouse is still in the county shelter. Walk in, say hello, and if she does the traditional nonverbal routine of "Please, please get me out of this dreadful place!" you're hers. 

There is a perception, and anyone initiated into cat adopting by our Founding Queen Black Magic would never dispute it, that the combination of black or black-and-white fur, white skin, and amber eyes indicates at least the potential for an unusually lovable pet. Obviously a cat will respond to the experience it's had but the Amber-Eyed Silver Tip may be genetically programmed to make good experiences especially likely Not everyone shares this perception...but those who dispute it all seem to belong to cats of some other physical type. All I know for sure is that Magic was the perfect first cat for me. I have a permanent bias. Any animal that purrs and cuddles and keeps vermin out of the house is easy to love, regardless of color, and I even found it easier to adore sturdy, healthy Serena than weary, sickly Traveller--but there's something special about an Amber-Eyed Silver Tip. 

This was Serena's one and only good pose. Generally she thinks cameras are a kind of soccer ball. She was imperious before she was three months old, and grew more so with maturity.

This was Traveller's only recognizable pose. The look of fierce concentration on his baby face was because, in crouching down to snap this picture, I had created a lap, however small and slanted, and Traveller never let a lap go to waste. He was preparing to leap. Traveller was a sickly, dyspeptic kitten who couldn't keep up with Serena for all of two years, but he did his very best, while he lived. They were inseparable. 

Book Review: Minnow Knits

Title: Minnow Knits

Author: Jil Eaton

Date: 1996

Publisher: Lark

ISBN: 0-937274-96-8

Length: 128 pages

Illustrations: color photos by Nina Fuller Carter

Quote: “I still love fresh, unusual colorways and...I still include pantaloons in my collections.”

Need I mention that, in handknitting, the colors (and textures, if used) are what make the “fashion”? What keeps this collection so delightfully evergreen is that it’s written to encourage updating. Eaton provides information about gauge (crucial) and yardage (yours may vary, but yardage is more reliable than weight) for making these baby and toddler outfits with this year’s yarns. Gauges vary, so you will always be able to use this book to make something in the latest colors for each of the children you dress.

Instructions explain how to make eleven different hats (twelve if you knit the hood from the hooded jacket), a full dozen sweaters, three all-in-ones (one with long legs and sleeves, one with legs but no sleeves, one with neither), three pairs of pantaloons, one cap-sleeved vest, one skirt, one plain jacket, one hooded jacket, and five dresses, for children from infants to (typically) age eight.

Even in Maine, the secret to getting the adorable children who model these knits to look so happy, wearing them indoors, is that most of the sweaters are knitted in cotton. Gauges between 4 and 5 stitches per inch identify the minority for which the cotton yarn that’s always available in Wal-Mart or Michaels will work. Several patterns call for a gauge of 5.5 stitches per inch, which you might recognize as a gauge you can match with the “baby” acrylic that’s often available at good prices at Michaels, but beware. Babies will happily sleep under acrylic blankets and some teens and adults will wear acrylic sweaters, but at the age for which these designs are intended., when the choices are (a) sitting still and looking cute in acrylic, (b) running about and sweating and coughing in acrylic, or (c) running about with no winter wear at all, you know children will pick (c) every time. This is part of what the poet Stanley Kiesel called kidness. (Definitely not to be confused with kindness.)

I remember an especially adorable acrylic cardigan I received in primary school. I agreed with my elders that the fluffy yarn, suede elbow patches, and soft shade of blue were lovely and made this sweater precious. Then I went out on the playground, got into a game, hung the lovely cardigan up on a fence post, and never saw it again.

Years ago a certain scheming sister of mine left thirty pounds of unbearable cuteness in a little jersey shirt at that year’s location of the Internet Portal. The building was chilly; the outdoor air was cold. The child looked longingly at my display of sweaters and hats. The child snuggled into a sweater and hat in the right size, made of acrylic. The child toddled around the store all day waving and smiling to everyone and being the best little sweater model ever seen. So I said to this child, “You have been a Real Trouper. You have earned that sweater and hat. They are yours to keep.” The child took them home and, later that week, wore them to the park on a milder day, and we never saw them again.

If you want to see your work on your favorite children again and again, all winter, it’s worth the extra time and money to find cotton yarn that knits up to 5.5 or even 6.5 stitches per inch. (What about 3.5 stitches? One suggestion that works for many people is “Knit that snowproof hood in bulky acrylic and wear it only when snow is falling,” but you could also knit with two strands of lighter yarn held together .)

The colors of cotton tend to mellow with washing. To give kids who like bright primary colors (and us “Winter” types) a reasonable amount of time to wear cottons that are watermelon-red and flag-blue and black and purple, manufacturers tend to do what they call “overdyeing” cotton yarn. Colors will look bright and deep on the shelf and may rub off on your hands. This cotton is designed to be used in one-color pieces that are laundered a few times before wearing. If you use it in multicolor designs, a useful trick to know is that you can pin a skein or a few skeins of overdyed cotton inside a piece of white cotton fabric (e.g. a pillowcase) that you think would look better in a pastel color and then run it through the washer and dryer. I once laundered some overdyed red cotton in the same wash load with a white cotton blouse with nylon lace trim, and produced a lovely icy-pink blouse with snow-white lace that retained that distinctive color contrast for years.

A question Carol LaBranche used to ask about children’s pattern collections was: Can you make parent-child outfits using these patterns? Small children and adults have different body shapes, so you’d need to be careful. You could, for example, knit the “Yikes! Stripes!” snow pants suit, using the instructions for the 4-year-old child’s size as a beginning point, to make snow pants for a skinny adult at 4 stitches per inch, and very cozy they’d be. You’d want to change to the instructions for the 2-year-old child’s hat size; hat size change only slightly as a child grows up. You could begin the sweater with 70 stitches across front or back waist, increasing to 82 for the main body, and 72 stitches at the top of each sleeve, decreasing to 40 or even 30 around the wrist, and picking up 84 stitches around the neck. You could make pants legs with 76 stitches around the ankles and 172 stitches around the hip, and knitted suspenders. I often use children’s patterns to make distinctive adult sleepwear in this way. Of course I measure them against adults’ clothing to get the lengths right. Fitting knitwear to the hip area is always a challenge, but if they’re meant to be baggy pajamas fitting should not be a problem. 

Health Food Tip #1: It's Not All or Nothing

Last week a couple of people replied to Ann Corson's recommendations, as they had been posted at a lively blog/forum, with the "Not everyone CAN do that" argument. 

One development of the argument was especially helpful, although the person thought I wouldn't find it helpful. This was someone who'd been in the same situation I was when I started having to consider health concerns in the grocery store. I started shopping for health in my twenties, and I had the fantabulous blessing of being a foster mother, or adoptive sister, to a teenager who was eager to show how competent and responsible she could be, rather than to a baby, or babies, who have to be fed according to their own special needs. This respondent was approaching the question in per sixties,  as an empty-nest landowner who was accustomed to producing and preserving healthy food but wasn't up to doing that alone. 

This is the respondent's comment in the discussion of the Corson article. I hope Blogspot displays it in a different font, because otherwise it looks very similar to what I said to my mother and to my doctor when both of them concurred: "You need to try Jethro Kloss's 'elimination' diet." 

"

...Most of my entire life I have eaten healthy by choice, grown a good portion of my own food...hardly used any pesticides in our gardens...hardly ever ate any processed stuff and very rarely ever went out to eat. Took vitamins and other supplement and we pretty much never ever got sick. But all of that is a lot of work outside of having a regular job and a fairly normal life. So when people say things like she did above... You must drink plenty of fresh, clean water. Your diet should consist of organic whole foods, 100 percent grass-fed meat, free-range poultry, wild-caught fish, plenty of green leafy vegetables, nuts, healthy fats such as coconut oil, organic olive oil, grass-fed lard and butter, limited grains, minimal fruit sugars, and a complete avoidance of GMO, pre-processed, or highly refined foods, especially those high in added sugars. I want to know just WHERE she thinks someone who lives out in the boondocks is supposed to FIND all these wonderful things she insists upon. We were not ones to go 'on-line' and order everything either...All the produce from Mexico is pretty much awful, and now of course no matter how bad the quality of anything is, the prices are outrageous.

"

Now, Jethro Kloss's audience were recovering from the Victorian Era. Not all of them had modern or even water-flush toilets, and some of them lived in cold climates. So it seems that a lot of them would happily avoid as many trips out to the old cold outhouse as possible, and Dr. Kloss spent a lot of his time telling them about the benefits of "elimination" of bodywastes. For just about every disease he mentioned in Back to Eden, his plan of treatment began with "Give the patient an enema." The "elimination" diet aims at flushing the toxins out of the body, too. But it's about "eliminating" foods that impede the flushing process. Basically you eat fruits and vegetables, raw if possible, and drink water...

"In the city? In winter? The fruit and vegetables in the stores aren't any good and they're so expensive, and I won't have time to cook once I go back to working fourteen hours a day, which is the goal after all. Jethro Kloss's patients were in a hospital. The special foods and herbal medicines were brought to them on trays. I can't afford to go to a hospital, even if even the Seventh-Day Adventists did the Kloss program any more..."

Anyway I wouldn't have been likely to be admitted to a hospital. I wasn't healthy but I wasn't yet sick enough to spend days in bed. Well, one day, one 24-hour period, with flu. After having mononucleosis for most of two years, I was too ill to work on one day in the rest of the 1980s. 

It was an especially nasty strain of flu. Washington doesn't have enough senior citizens at best and we lost many of the ones we had to complications of that virus. It seemed to come with all sorts of complications. After the flu passed people could be divided into groups based on their complications. My slightly older housemate had bronchitis. I had viral arthritis, the kind that occurs when a virus causes inflammation in the joint tissues. If you look up the symptoms of viral arthritis in a book, they're just like the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which is enough to make anyone consider the benefits of euthanasia. There is a clear consensus on what viral arthritis feels like--it feels like having red-hot wires run through your thumbs, or whichever other joint is affected that day--and when you think about its being chronic and carrying on until your fingers shrivel up into horrid twisted claws you can't even use to roll your own wheelchair...

Well, the thought was horrible enough to make me think that trying the immunity-boosting diet had to be preferable to being crippled by arthritis or calling Dr. Kevorkian, so I tried it. 

The fruits and veg weren't good by Scott County, Virginia, standards. And also that was my rationale for having slipped into a habit of buying pre-packaged, over-processed, novelty-and-convenience-type food. I did always buy some fruits and vegetables: the cheap and easy ones--oranges or canned pineapple, iceberg lettuces, radishes, parsley, cans of beans and vegetable soup. I was a vegan at the time, and ate nuts as a protein food. But it was sort of fun to try all the different simple-carb pastries instead of baking bread or cooking rice. After all, doughnuts and Danish and cookies and cakes baked from packaged mixes and sugary cereals were grain products just like boring old sliced bread, and sandwich bread from the supermarket wasn't very healthy either. And there was, at the time, a local specialty brand of gumdrop-type candies made with real fruit juice, and a couple of brands of odd-flavored soda pop ditto, that I liked. \

Well, on the elimination diet, you don't eat baked goods. You eventually get to phase zwieback bread back in, if it's whole-grain, cut thin, baked hard as a brick, and eaten without any kind of lubricant like butter or jam, but no fresh, spongy, yeasty bread, and no sweet baked goods whatsoever. 

My first healthy shopping excursion was something my adoptive siblings didn't want to miss. Celery was recommended. I bought celery, wailing amusingly all the way. Carrots were coming into season, and radishes. I bought carrots and radishes. I bought parsley because I like it. I bought cans of supermarket corn, peas, beans, and tomatoes. Rice was on the list of things I could have once a day, preferably for breakfast, along with oatmeal. Rice-a-Roni was on sale. I did not actually buy rice, as either Dr. Kloss or my own Dr. Okon understood the word. I bought ten different flavors of Rice-a-Roni. I didn't buy any leafy green vegetables except an iceberg lettuce. Oranges and tangerines were past their peak; I bought canned pineapple, although back then the "juice pack" pineapple was packed when it was ripe and tasted as sweet as the sugary version. Pineapple juice was affordable back then, and V-8 was safe in those pre-glyphosate days, but my diet plan specified whole fruits and vegetables, no juices or soups.

The diet started with a 48-hour fast on water only, to get the flushing process started. Then for the first week I could eat one plant product per meal, three meals per day. The diet plan did not allow snacks between meals but my doctor, anticipating that I'd have snack cravings because I was cutting out all that refined sugar, said I could always eat a celery stick. I must have gone through three or four whole celery stalks that week. Celery really does contain a phytochemical that helps reduce inflammation and pain. Worked for me. 

I was not eating anything like a balanced diet. I was also cheating; Rice-a-Roni is a mix of white rice, white-flour pasta--mostly pasta--and monosodium glutamate. And after the first week, when the plan allowed an egg or a handful of nuts early in the morning, I also sneaked back to soybean sausages. The best ones were made and bought by Seventh-Day Adventists; I was living in the Adventist neighborhood, where the whole collection of soybean sausages were in all the stores. They were full of wheat gluten and monosodium glutamate. I had them for breakfast, often, with my definitely-not-health-food "rice." 

But it worked. It wasn't even a gluten-free diet, yet--but it was better for me than the diet I'd been eating, with all those cookies and pretzels and overprocessed wheat flour products. 

The results were spectacular. I was still growing, as most people in their twenties are; after reaching our full heights we take a few more years to reach our full healthy weights. In eight weeks of immunity-boosting, I gained one pound, but everyone could see the flab melting away as the bones and muscles grew. At the end of those eight weeks my measurements were 35-19-32. My face lost the haggard, jaundiced look that I considered really ugly and merely looked juvenile. Energy and joie de vivre came back, to a degree other people found positively annoying. I really was bounding out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to have time to run a mile before breakfast. 

The arthritis basically disappeared in the first week. During the second week I relapsed, ate some of those fruity gumdrops, and had another flare of pain. After that I stuck to the diet, flushed out the virus, and, after the eight weeks were over, could even eat sugary stuff again without having more pain--though, oddly enough, I'd got through the sugar cravings and didn't want sugary stuff any more. I felt better than I could remember having felt in my lifetime.

One thing I've always liked about the McDougalls is that, while they recommend a best-case health-food diet that's not going to be an easy transition for most people, they emphasize that eating a healthier diet is not all or nothing. 

In my twenties, I would have done much better to have gone gluten-free, but I didn''t yet realize that that was necessary or believe it was feasible. Just cutting back on the refined flour and sugar--not even cutting either of them completely out--was enough, at the time, to yield results that the whole neighborhood noticed. Youth was on my side. I wouldn't get equally good results from the same diet as an adult///but I would have got some benefit.

If you do the McDougall diet, which is basically vegan, or the Corson plan, which encourages using animal-derived foods of a quality most people aren't going to get every week, or even the Sinatra diet, which is a normal balanced diet of tasty food that involves a lot of cooking time and freezer storage space, going all the way with it is likely to yield the best results in the least time. Of course. 

If you can't go all the way? You go as far as you can. 

One of the reasons why people hire private nurses is to have someone cooking the food on a special diet plan--most often a diabetic diet, sometimes a gluten-free or vegan diet, or something more unusual. When I met my husband, I cooked McDougall meals, which are low in protein and high in complex carbs, because his brother had Parkinson's Disease and a low-protein diet is important in treating that disease. Just as I'd had a flare-up of pain when I went off the immune-boosting diet, my future brother-in-law would have more tiresome "parkinsonisms" when he treated himself to a hamburger or a bowl of chili...but when he ate the diet the doctor recommended, he had better control of his hands and feet. 

Will any diet cure cancer? That seems very unlikely. Will a healthy diet improve the health and spirits of a person who has cancer, whether the person's case is terminal, or will go into full remission and allow the patient to die old from something else? For most patients it will. If you have cancer, by all means do what works. I'd hesitate to say that a diet cured cancer but I've certainly seen people, like George Malkmus, for whom the right diet certainly fed a long, healthy, happy remission. How many days in remission people can get by working their health program, nobody knows. 

My husband switched from McDougall to Sinatra plans, after his brother died. We had ten very good years in between what, in hindsight, had to have been the initial flare-up of multiple myeloma, and the final one. Would we have had more good years if he'd stayed with the McDougall diet, or if the neighbor hadn't used "Roundup" on his garden and persuaded my husband to use it just once? May never be known. I remember my husband began to notice something badly wrong, but kept working through it, for four or five months after using "Roundup" on the stubborn weeds at the edges of the lawn. The neighbor was an old man, a great-grandfather. He died the summer after my husband did.

There will always be a mix of pro-cancer and anti-cancer, pro-health and anti-health, factors working on us, all through life. When we're young the balance is usually on the side of health. After age 80 the balance is usually on the side of illness and death. We are mortal. This is not likely to change.

But meanwhile, every pro-health factor we can add is likely to do us some small amount of good. 

Although the McDougalls can sound a bit evangelical on Twitter, in their books they and Dr. Sinatra recommend not making your healing diet a burden to yourself and others. If you eat with other people every single day you may have to learn to sit at the same table eating a different meal, though at least your meal can be one that the other people will want to share. If you see someone once in six months and they want to take you to a great restaurant, really great restaurants have salad bars, but you don't have to pick and whine the way some "dieters" do. Think of yourself as a primitive hunter-gatherer, the McDougalls advise. They ate the way nature intended us to eat. Mostly they gathered edible plant material, and when they trapped an animal they feasted. If your visiting relatives want to treat you to a steak dinner, enjoy a steak (you can order a small lean one) with your veg. 

How well the occasional lapses work depends on what you're trying to recover from. Nobody has to stay on the "elimination diet" forever, and many people are able to recover tolerance for foods they have to stop eating for a few years. If you work the McDougall Plan for a few years you'll be eating mostly vegan meals with a "feast" of animal protein once a month--we do need some animal protein, though it can come from eggs or yeast instead of a living animal who had feelings, if you have a special concern about the animals.

If you can work with either the Sinatra or the McDougall diet, you have it made, really. Both diets give specific menu and recipe plans that really walk you through the first few weeks. Both involve a fair bit of cooking with raw unprocessed produce, but you can get into the habit of cooking on weekends and freezing portions of food to eat during the week. The recipes are almost idiot-proof and reliably delicious. If you offer those dishes for the vegetarian or health-conscious people at a church or family gathering, you will need to prepare enough for the carnivores who will wander over to the vegetarian and/or health-conscious table. 

There are more rarefied refinements of the Sinatra and McDougall diet plans for people with special needs. Both plans leave abundant room for options like gluten-free, purine-free, or low-sodium. You can cook delicious meals, and notice major improvements in health, if you follow either diet's shopping lists at Kroger, Safeway, Giant, and probably even at the cheap chains. 

Actually, when people start seeking for what they can no longer just run out and pick out of the garden, they tend to find it. I found a real 1960s-granola-style health food store in Hyattsville, later, and got onto the long lists of some farmers in rural Maryland who delivered unsprayed veg, and even met someone who used to drive down to "the markets" for deals on meat and fresh fish. But my own amazing results came from eating a pathetic, additive-laden approximation of a healing diet, shopping at Giant, and buying the fresh fruit instead of the pretzels or candy from the streetcorner vendors to whom I wanted to show due respect.

Speaking of Giant reminds me of a wonderful idea more of the "upscale" supermarkets can and should be using. I'll blog about that next week.

Meanwhile, the more comments people care to share about their experience of shopping for clean food, the merrier. 

Book Review: Approval Addiction

Title: Approval Addiction

Author: Joyce Meyer

Publisher: Warner

Date: 2005

ISBN: 0-446-57772-3

Length: 255 pages

Quote: “[I]f a person is an approval addict, he or she will have an abnormal concern and an abundance of thoughts about what people think of them.”

Joyce Meyer links her “approval addiction” to her abusive childhood. I suspect it may also be linked to her extroversion. As a result I find it hard to relate to or evaluate this book. I believe it may actually be what a former approval addict, which Meyer says she was, told herself in order to succeed in a controversial ministry, which Meyer obviously has done. As such it may be valuable.

To me it sounds like the general free advice some churchgoing types used to throw around, not with a noticeable benefit to anybody, but with the effect of making young people feel unfavorably judged. How could we possibly seem to need both this piece of free advice and that one, and then that other one… Meyer admits that the second half of this book contains general psychological advice not specifically for approval addicts, which she says she found helpful after she was free from approval addiction. I find it hard to imagine how she found it helpful. I find the combined effect of the two halves of the book, in fact, a bit schizophrenic. First readers are told not to compromise their standards, to act independently of whether others give or withhold approval, and then they’re told that now they’re free to be doormats, accept all the blame and fault-finding others dish out so lavishly at the churches where this kind of advice is uttered…and keep claiming that they’re forgiving everything, automatically, that no harm done to them is worth taking any notice of, when in fact they’re not even being told how to pardon anything but just being told to sweep everything under the rug and (fake) smile smile smile until they either go insane or walk away from these hotbeds of verbal abuse that call themselves churches.

Attention tooth-baring churchgoers! A real smile is an involuntary spasm of the eye muscles. Bared teeth, in the absence of that real natural smile that can’t be forced or faked, are not a smile. Even though our mouths will open wide, baring our teeth, in a grin underneath a real smile if we laugh out loud, the grin without the real smile is not a happy or “friendly” look. It’s a threat display, the facial expression of a rabid dog. If God had wanted everybody to have to look at your teeth all the time God wouldn’t have given you lips.

A story Meyer tells as an example of the wonderfulness of what she calls forgiveness is instructive, all right—mostly for what Meyer seems to want to ignore about it.

On pages 107-108 Meyer quotes an account of an old woman in the courtroom where a man has just been convicted of the murders of her husband and her son. The old lady is Black; the murderer, who has confessed, is White; the murders were motivated partly by race bigotry. The old lady is asked, “How should justice be done to this man?” The narrator does not mention a spark of malice in the old lady’s eye, although I find it hard to imagine one not being there, as she says she wants the murderer “to become my son…to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining in me,” and she wants help to limp arthritically across the courtroom and “take Mr. Vanderbroek in my arms and embrace him.”

Such extravagant, melodramatic acts of pardon always incorporate a little subtle revenge. Here is a hate-crazed bigot who has always felt entitled to vent all his hostilities on Black people, placed at the mercy of several very angry Black people, sentenced by law to accept “mothering” from a Black woman. (He’s probably felt that he’s outgrown all need for mothering and become superordinate to all women too.) He’s always felt that he’d be defiled if he had to sit a foot away from a Black person on a bench, and now one of them is proposing to take him in her arms! Is there any doubt that all the Black people in this courtroom are loving every minute of this scene? Talk about heaping coals of fire on the head of a thoroughly defeated enemy. The pleasure this story gives readers, as well as the people involved, is both vindictive and sadistic.

If Joyce Meyer had been endowed with the capacity to think through ideas like these, rather than just repeating what was preached at her, I’m sure Approval Addiction would be a better book. As things are…I think the contents of this web site will prove beyond all doubt that I do not suffer and have never suffered from “approval addiction,” so I can’t judge this book. It may be helpful to its intended audience.

Not everyone looks at the photo on the front cover, the tired eyes above the tense ugly grin aggravated with loud-enough-for-TV lipstick, and thinks “That poor woman needs a long vacation before she tries to talk to anybody,” either; my feeling is that when you look like that picture it’s time to go home. Meyer had, at the time this book was published, 51 other books in print. She admits that a lot of this book has been recycled from the others. Surprising? Not. Even if it serves its intended audience well, Approval Addiction is at best an example of what happens when writers try to publish too much too fast and become tired.

Book Review: Hollow

Title: Hollow 

Author: Jazalyn

Date: 2020

Publisher: Jazalyn

Quote: "A ghost spirit of dark's universe falls in love with a ghost spirit of light's universe." 

They can't meet or consummate their love; they pour out their emotions through some sort of never-quite-explained equivalent of social media. Though the poems in this e-book are arranged in a sequence as the ghosts recognize that they are at least communicating, there's not really a plot that can be resolved, according to the constraints of this piece of fiction. It's a pretext for a series of poems about adolescent yearnings for love at an age when love can't be fully consummated. 

Adolescent yearnings are of course as real as anything can be, and these poems express them vividly, sometimes lyrically. None of the poems is bound to a pattern of rhyme and meter but some of them have solid enough logical structures to be singable. 

Here is another book from an interesting new writer that expresses the feeling of being a teenager, if anything, too well. Readers needed to be expressly warned against the assumption that the "different universes" motif is not just a way of saying "We hang out with different crowds," autobiographically, since we're not told much about the fictive universes or whatever it is that allows the ghosts to communicate (they don't reply directly to each other's poems).

Could this book inspire those who are starting to think about making their own special "Valentines" for their own Significant Others? It's possible. Messages of raw yearning-for-love are not positively recommended before marriage, but part of "being in love" is that feeling that the loved one belongs to a different "universe," a lighter and happier world or a darker and more interesting one or something that makes the person especially special. 

To buy this book and its two companion books, visit jazalyn.art or goodreads.com/jazalyn.  

Book Review: Ms Goose

Title: Ms Goose: A Lib-retta

Author: Tamar Hoffs

Date: 1973

Publisher: Avondale

ISBN: none

Length: pages not numbered

Illustrations: two-color (blue and yellow) cartoons by the author

Quote: “Rapping her new freedom, / Crying that it’s lewd / Cause his wife’s not safe in bed, / When he’s in the mood.”

In 1973 a lot of people thought a married woman should not have a job outside the home. Their main concern was that if married women stayed in the workforce there wouldn’t be enough jobs for men. This was true, actually, and the problem of underemployment has only grown worse ever since. Women who thought they should have a fair chance to do the jobs that were available taunted the opposition with suggestions that they really wanted to behave badly toward their wives and daughters. Since most of them did not actually want that the 1970s feminist movement spent a lot of time arguing something that most Americans now accept as axiomatic.

Hoffs set her feminist barbs to the tunes of “Mother Goose” nursery rhymes.

“Mrs. Beau Peep just could not sleep,
No one could diagnose this;
Doctors were glib, but Women’s Lib.
Gave her a new prognosis!”

In 1973 active feminists had not yet turned against the breezy expressions “Women’s Lib” and “male chauvinism.” Hoffs used both in this short book.

Though she was a wife and mother herself, and her vision for other couples was that financial equality would help them be “loving-partners,” Hoffs also liked the idea that young women who slept around with “fair-weather friends” would have a free “choice to have or have not” the resulting babies, and unhappy wives would be able to use instructions from library books to get themselves divorced. Anti-feminists were free to taunt women like Hoffs with the claim that they were the ones telling or wanting women to leave their husbands.

Er. Um. Was there ever a women’s shelter somewhere that took in a woman whose story was “I just wanted to leave my husband and children because some obscure writer in California wrote a jingle that made it sound like fun”? Didn’t women who left for unworthy reasons run off with their other men, or go directly to jails or drug treatment clinics? Leaving a spouse and children for unworthy reasons was far more often something husbands did. Feminists argued successfully that more financial independence would help women who’d been abandoned by Deadbeat Dads. While the media stereotyped men in the 1970s bellowing that they wanted to be the sole breadwinners in their families, the reality was that a lot of men felt overwhelmed and gave up trying to be breadwinners at all.

Anyway this litle book contains a few dozen excellent examples of Bad Poetry, by which I mean the art of playing with patterns of word sounds without any pretense that the result rises higher, on the scale of Great Art, than “fun.” Good Bad Poetry is not painful to read in the way that poetry that aspires to be something more than fun often is. Good Bad Poetry can include stretches of the rules of poetry, like rhyming “Modern Ms Muffet / Reads and gets tough-it ,” that make some readers scream “You can’t do that in poetry,” but it’s not pretentious want-to-be-profound, it’s not humorless, and it’s not prose. It’s not written to be declaimed on formal occasions. It’s usually written to be sung.

Ms Goose didn’t make Hoffs rich and famous, nor did it make most of the population endorse the idea of the time to make a choice about motherhood coming after a woman is noticeably pregnant, nor are these ditties the feminist songs pop singers recorded and baby-boomer women remember...but it’s an appealing sample of the style of its period, and it’s still good for a chortle.

Also, even on the acrimonious baby-choice issue, Hoffs does spell out the more liberating choice: “Early to wed, we don’t advise...” and “There was a young woman who knew what to do. / She had two little children, spaced just like she wanted to.”

Things Bloggers Are Proud of Doing

From LongAndShortReviews, the survey says bloggers are proud of doing these things:

1. Being writers. Whether they've written bestselling novels, niche-market novels, or just a steady ongoing blog...writing doesn't pay well, so if it weren't a source of great pleasure and pride we wouldn't do it! Six bloggersmentioned this.

2. The children in their lives--natural offspring, foster/adoptive children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and other young relatives. Five bloggers mentioned this.

3. Teaching or counselling others. Three bloggers mentioned this.

4. Saying no, setting boundaries, and sticking to them. It seems to me as if the tricky part of this life skill is knowing when...there are times to say no and times to say yes. Being able to do both is important. This and the other things below were mentioned by one blogger each.

5. Being a blood donor, That's something to glow about. That's one thing on this list I've not done, because I had "chronic" mononucleosis, with liver infection, before I reached the minimum weight.

6. Tipping off an older person who didn't realize he was being scammed.

7. Learning to knit/crochet/etc. 

8. Staying married. Patrick Prescott could boast of having been married for 43 years.

9. Fostering shelter animals. Marianne Arkins operates one of those animal foster homes we so often read about on Petfinder. 

10. Seeking treatment for a chronic health problem.

Now, about me...I've done most of these things too. I think one reason why I can't think of anything I've felt proud of doing, lately, is that it was so easy to reel off a Top Ten List a few years ago and I've not done anything to top those achievements since.

I have been an achiever in life. I have the sort of curriculum vitae that made older achievers in Washington say things like "Well, young lady, if you ever decide to pick a career and stick to it, you'd be an asset to whichever of those 'odd jobs' you choose." Unfortunately it made employers in my home town turn pale and say "We'll call you," and carefully not say "...if all 200 other applicants any pink-collar job opening attracts, around here, happen to have died." But yes. Dean's List at Berea, professional singer in college, offered a reward if anyone could find a better typing service and never had to pay, etc. 

I haven't felt like an achiever this winter. We lost Grandma Bonnie Peters. two years ago. We lost my Significant Other. We lost Adayahi. We came close to losing both Yona and Lisiwayu. I'm the only member of this web site who's not been in a hospital during the past year. It's been a time of grieving, not a time of achieving. I'm a writer, an aunt, a teacher, a warner about scams, a knitter, an animal rescuer, a  Celiactivist, a faithful wife until I became a widow, and an expert at saying no. Maybe if we'd won a total global glyphosate ban I'd fel proud of being a Celiactivist, even this winter, but so far we've not and I don't.

It's just been a time of feeling "lost and lonely" more than "glad and proud." 

I'll say this, though. There is someone else of whom I feel very proud. "Youth behaving well" is a theme at this web site, though we don't get to use it often...My Significant Other was 6'4". I'm 5'4". The faithful foster son was 6'2". We agreed that the foster son should be free to go his own way and live his own life when he chose, but neither of us wanted to put any pressure on him. But the foster son stayed with his foster father, serving as nurse, chauffeur, cleaner, cook, and yardman whenever needed, for eleven years, 

Toward "Eating Healthy" on a Budget: Step 1, a Plan

Part 1

Below is an article or pamphlet by Dr. Ann Corson, who apparently authorized it to be circulated freely around the Internet. I'm always wary of any attempt to give advice to the general public about what individuals should eat for their health, as if we were all designed to eat the same thing. We're not all designed to eat the same thing; take it from an Irish-American celiac. Nevertheless, the general diet discussed below is a good plan for most people who want to avoid or recover from COVID-19 or from the vaccine they had; it's your basic immune-system-building plan, not much changed since Jethro Kloss's time (a hundred years ago). With appropriate modifications for any special dietary needs people have, this plan has worked for thousands of people. It's what made the Seventh-Day Adventist hospitals famous. 

There is still an excellent chance that this diet will help you if you can get fruit and vegetables that aren't full of glyphosate. That's hard to do. "Organic" foods sold in the supermarket are not truly organically grown; they're sprayed with toxic chemicals, often including glyphosate. You may tolerate some of the "organic vegetables" at Wal-Mart--it'll be the luck of the draw, depending on what exactly was sprayed on them--better than you tolerate the regular veg. If so, the extra price is worth paying. In many if not most cases, paying for the "organic" stuff in the supermarket amounts to cheating yourself. You need to find clean nsprayed veg. The best way to do that is to grow your own but, of course, you probably will also have to live a mile away from any paved road, railroad, fire hydrant, etc., since most local governments think it's smart and frugal to control vegetation around those places by spraying glyphosate. You may have to get on the phone and yell at your electric power company about aerial spray poisoning of power lines, too, before you can safely eat your own home-grown plant-based food.

For optimum immune boosting you don't eat meat or milk products, but if you can't get glyphosate-free fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains, you may have to make compromises. You will not get the anticipated results from any plan to "eat for health" if what you eat contains glyphosate. Even if you don't have an obvious glyphosate reaction, you won't be absorbing nutrients from foods or supplementsas you would normally do when glyphosate is in our digestive system. 

Dr. Corson's article is long enough, so I'll post some more about making the changeover next week. I do want to make this a weekly feature. I saw on a forum, where someone had reposted the article below, a couple of wails that "Most people can't do this." I have sooo been there. I had to do the immunity-boosting diet to get back to work and pay the rent, but at first glance it seemed as if I couldn't...the "healthy" food was so expensive, and not very good quality in the city in winter, at that, and I liked things that weren't on the menu and I'd feel starved without them, and so on. I worked through this stage. So can you. But for this post let's start with Dr. Corson's article:

"

Despite all this overwhelming and frightening information, there is hope for those who received these injections either voluntarily or under duress. There are ways to rebuild your immune system, fight the emergence of latent infections, reduce the risk of cancer, manage the likelihood of blood clots, and help your body clear any circulating spike proteins.

This Is What I Tell My Patients:
Diet is most important. We literally are what we eat. The body’s only fuel to heal, replace, grow, and renew is the food you eat. You must drink plenty of fresh, clean water. Your diet should consist of organic whole foods, 100 percent grass-fed meat, free-range poultry, wild-caught fish, plenty of green leafy vegetables, nuts, healthy fats such as coconut oil, organic olive oil, grass-fed lard and butter, limited grains, minimal fruit sugars, and a complete avoidance of GMO, pre-processed, or highly refined foods, especially those high in added sugars.

Many respond well to a gluten-free diet, as gluten itself is inflammatory, and many glutinous foods contain high levels of residual agricultural products such as glyphosate. It’s also advisable for some to eliminate dairy from the diet for the same reasons.

Avoid processed vegetable oils and trans fats. Sugar is damaging to the body in many ways and should be avoided altogether, especially sugary drinks and sodas, except for that found in nutrient-packed fruits such as berries. Caffeine intake should be restricted to roughly 100 mg daily and aspartame-containing dietary beverages or foods should be strictly avoided.

It’s also important to avoid all kinds of environmental toxicities, including cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, toxic household cleaners, and non-organic personal care products and makeup.

Immune system support starts with a good organic multivitamin with trace minerals. Support T cells and NK cells with adequate vitamin D3 with K2, zinc with an ionophore such as quercetin to take zinc intracellularly where it’s needed, and vitamin C. Herbs that help support immune system function include andrographis, ashwagandha, cat’s claw, echinacea, Japanese knotweed, garlic, ginseng, morinda or noni, and turmeric. Herbs that help regulate an overactive or dysfunctional immune function include astragalus, berberine (from Coptis chinensis), curcumin, milk thistle, and scutellaria or Chinese skullcap.

Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, artemisinin (from Artemisia annua), isatis (Isatis tinctoria), morinda (Morinda citrifolia), neem (Melia azadirachta), oregano oil, olive leaf extract, star anise (Illicium verum) as well as the amino acid L-lysine can protect against new and recrudescent viral infections.

Reduce the risk of blood clotting and help break up circulating spike proteins by taking omega 3 fatty acids, fibrinolytic enzymes (lumbrokinase and nattokinase), proteolytic enzymes (serrapeptase), lipases, bromelain, and vitamin E, as well as herbs that support the cardiovascular system such as Chrysanthemum morifolium flower petals, danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza), and scutellaria. Low doses of aspirin may also be needed.

Antioxidant support can include alpha-lipoic acid, beta-carotene, coenzyme Q 10, EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate, the most abundant catechin in tea, which is also a zinc ionophore), glutathione, lycopene, lutein, manganese, NAC (n-acetyl cysteine), quercetin, selenium, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and zeaxanthin. Herbs that have strong anti-oxidant qualities include olive leaf and scutellaria. Spices such as cinnamon, clove, garlic, ginger, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and thyme are also anti-oxidants.

Cancer-fighting foods include berries, carrots, citrus fruits, cruciferous vegetables (bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, garden cress), the garlic family of vegetables (chive, garlic, leeks, onions, shallots), green tea, and tomatoes. Herbs that help protect against cancer include artemisinin, blackberry leaves, Chrysanthemum morifolium flower petals, danshen, morinda, and scutellaria.

Inflammation in the body will be significantly reduced by following all of the above recommendations. Additionally, extracts of shea nut, turmeric, green tea, black tea, broccoli, stinging nettle leaf, black cumin seed, and grape seed; herbs such as andrographis, holy basil, manjistha (Rubia cordifolia), and scutellaria; and antioxidants such as pterostilbene and resveratrol can all help reduce inflammation.

To be healthy, we must clean up our bodies by eating well, reducing incoming toxins, enhancing outgoing toxins, exercising regularly, sleeping well, spending time in nature, and reducing external stress.

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Zinc in combination with NAC are essential antioxidants used to degrade graphene oxide.

Other supplements that can be taken to assist with the removal of graphene oxide are:

Astaxanthin
Melatonin
Milk Thistle
Quercetin
Vitamin C
Vitamin D3

Binders, such as activated charcoal and bentonite clay, among others, are also potentially useful to remove metals and other toxins from the body.

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