Bad Poetry: Dead Tree?

Almost every year I think

"That peach tree's gone to come no more."

I turn my back on it, I blink,

and it's borne peaches by the score.

This herky-jerky winter, mild

days coaxed it into early bloom

the night before a hard freeze. Wild

trees mostly fall to such a doom.

The Feral Peach Tree's blossoms clung

on through the freeze, and bloomed still more

when it had passed. The first fruit hung

before Memorial Day. There's more

where that fruit came from. It's a tree

not seen before, nor seen again.

An evildoer slipped out free

from those who said they'd keep him in,

sprayed poison on the Feral Peach.

The branches that the spray could touch 

look dead now. Dormant, all and each.

Men have been hanged for half as much.

"The peach tree's dead," a visitor said.

Don't count on it. I think, like me,

that tree has vowed to keep its bed

and watch until the night we see

the evildoer on the ground,

by his own poison felled at last,

condemned to lie as he is found

till ninety days and nine have passed.

The tree will drop a rotten peach

to draw ants to where he did fall

and he will lie there and beseech

that someone come out, help to call,

and as he's made air so unpleasant

those who believe we should forgive

this vain, presumptuous, cringing peasant

stay in the houses where they live,

and I will call the notary,

the lawyer, and policemen, too,

to see our common enemy--

he can't repent, but how he'll rue!

And he'll learn, as his victims learned,

that doctors are no use at all

when glyphosate is what has burned

the skin that's doomed to rot and fall.

And I don't doubt the peach tree, too,

in its own way, will laugh to see,

unfailingly, the poison do

more harm to him than it or me.

Optional cut-off point for tired eyes.

The Famous Feral Elberta Peach Tree currently has three high branches, each loaded with more peaches than they look as if they could bear. Once again it's hurt, but I don't think it's dead. It has more life in it than all the other peach trees in the orchard had, together. 

That stubborn sell-out everybody loves to hate, you know, the old man who looks a bit like our late founding member Oogesti but has lately started looking "older" than Oogesti ever did, has put some obstacles in what looked like the clear path of Glyphosate Awareness. This week a local case involving pesticide vapor drift was judged in favor of the poisoner. 

So? I said to the Bad News Bear who drove up to bear this bad news. Is it not said that, when the pretty girls line up on one side of an issue, that side is about to win? All the young, pretty female Congressmen voted the right way on the Farm Bill. Spraying poison should be recognized as a violent crime against persons in another year or two. Meanwhile, even that judge who's about to retire reportedly said "Spraying on someone else's property is a different matter." I don't think my neighborhood is going to have a Bad Neighbor for very many more days. 

About the old man in Washington, I don't know. I hope he does have a soul that is capable of real repentance. I think people should be praying that he has.

As for the peach tree...you probably have to be local to appreciate this. Peach trees do not usually live long, this high up the Blue Ridge. The long hard freeze killed most. The sudden late freeze killed most that had survived that. The poison spraying? Hah. It's bearing fruit. 

Some trees are super-fertile the year before they die, but this one's been super-fertile for ten years in a row already. I think it thinks it's an apple or persimmon tree, something that's supposed to be strong and hardy. It did not get the memo that peach trees are supposed to die if you look at them the wrong way.

I doubt that anybody will get the full, rich flavor of an Elberta peach off the famous tree this year. It wouldn't be fit to eat, this year, anyway. Next year I won't be surprised if that tree is bowed down to the ground with sweet, ripe peaches, as so many times before. It does not rest for years in between crops, as other peach trees do.

Somewhere, one of the pits of one of its fruits will sprout into another tree like it. One, but probably not two. 

Bitter Clingers to Glyphosate

(This week's Petfinder Post will appear on Thursday.)

I've been mulling this since the news of Trump's loathsome executive order slowing the natural disappearance of glyphosate, which is no longer even considered effective as an "herbicide," due to the inevitable Vicious Pesticide Cycle, and is now known to feed harmful fungi and disease bacteria even though it has an "antibiotic" effect on several neutral or benign bacteria, from the Earth...

I think Glyphosate Awareness has entered a new era.

We've seen that every responsible researcher has come to accept that, if not a primary carcinogen, glyphosate certainly and obviously is a powerful pro-cancer factor.

We've seen that glyphosate predictably harms people each of us knows personally--people who are not motivated by money or politics or conformism or even that syndrome where a certain percentage of medical students tell the school clinicians they think they've got every condition their classes have studied. Glyphosate does not have a distinctive taste or scent of its own, so people usually don't know when they've been exposed until their reactions set in. People don't always even recognize when they are having reactions that are obvious to observers; their obvious reactions feature mental symptoms and they think their anxiety, depression, anger, or stupidity are perfectly reasonable, until the reaction passes. Although not everyone has an obvious physical reaction to glyphosate, by now the statistical odds of anyone not knowing a person who has such a reaction are minute. Most of us have a close relative who has been systematically tortured by these reactions since 2009. Many of us have a close relative who has been killed by them. 

We've seen that, while politicians clearly motivated by money are trying to dig up old whines about the poor pitiful farmers who can't raise crops without glyphosate, the fact is that "organic" farmers--even though their crop yields per acre are lower in weight--are producing crops that don't make people sick, are earning some small amount of profit more years than not, are keeping their land, and are, if anything, healthier and likely to live longer than city dwellers, while chemical farm workers' life expectancy is...I said "little more than half" of organic farmers', recently, on X. It was revealing. The actual figures are, with some variation among sources, 48 or 49 years for immigrant laborers who are more often used to handle pesticides because that group includes less educated and more desperate people, 50 to 58 for native-born chemical farm workers, and 75 to 85 for organic farmers. You can reasonably say that 58 is a lot more than half of 75 but the self-styled "farmers" didn't make that sort of reasonable quibble. They tweeted as if they thought that confusing activists with words, confusing the average age of present-time workers with their average life expectancy, and throwing in the odd verbal attack, would keep them happily profiteering on alleged "food" that makes people sick for another twenty years.

They are not debating ideas in order to learn facts and make informed decisions. They are intentionally harassing people who present facts.

It's time to stop talking to these people. 

Really stop talking to them.

What I'm actually calling for, let me make this absolutely clear, is nonviolent, Amish-style shunning.

When an Amish person sins against any of the church's multitude of rules--from murder to wilful persistence in wearing or using something that doesn't fit into the group's uniform--other Amish people stop talking to that person. 

Person's spouse may move back in with per parents.

Person is not served or waited on if person enters an Amish-owned business.

Person's business no longer exists, as far as the Amish community are concerned. Non-Amish people who persist in trading with the person being shunned, if any, may be warned that the business is not really Amish.

Usually an Amish person who gets this treatment is on per knees, weeping in penitence, in a few weeks. Their subculture has such a strong social bond that they don't hold out the way a few non-Amish people who have been shunned by their former social circle have done. Most non-Amish Americans who've been shunned on account of their opinions have, in fact, been able simply to move to the other side of the social aisle: before their relatives officially disowned them most Jews who've become Christians, Christians who've become Buddhists, Democrats who've become Republicans or vice versa, hawks who've become doves or vice versa, public school employees who've become advocates of school choice, psychiatrists who've recognized the dangers of Prozac Dementia, etc., have built up social networks on the other side and prepared themselves for the loss of some old relationships, even if the loss still hurts.

But what if all these people have in common is that they're clinging to profits...and the people who shun them are able to take those profits away? 

Gentle Readers, they are going to be sooo miserable. And they deserve it. And if anything can do them any good, our laughter at their tears is likely to be it. 

Enough farmers had naturally stopped using glyphosate, seeing that it made customers complain (and avoid their products) while it wasn't actually having much effect on the nastiest weeds, even by 2022 that even those of us whose bodies detect and react to glyphosate on the parts-per-billion level have been able to eat an almost balanced diet. All the rest of you have to do is shop and eat in solidarity with people like me to bring the Bitter Clingers to Glyphosate to their knees.

Will you miss a lot of foods you've always loved? I still do. I have found Mott's applesauce to be a safe food, although processing destroys the Vitamin C and I've not found a safe brand of fresh apples. (If you do eat apples, even if you live in Michigan and you traditionally bite into those peels, it's a good idea to peel apples thickly; the inner part of the fruit may be less damaged by glyphosate vapor drift.) I've found it safe to eat peeled oranges--but I like orange peel. I've not dared to eat any commercially grown green leafy vegetables. You have to raise your salads in your kitchen or back yard, and if you don't get a lot of sunshine your selection of salad greens may no longer include lettuce. I've not chosen to risk eating any kind of berries yet, either, because berries, cherries, and other fruits that don't have thick rinds just soak up glyphosate vapor drift like little sponges. So do carrots. So does celery. 

But I have been able to eat some oranges, pineapple, bananas, melon, even commercially grown peaches; some beans, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, peas, cucumbers, squashes, and lentils, in addition to onions, garlic, rice, and nuts. So should you be. Vitamin supplements aren't as good as food but should prevent deficiency diseases long enough to leave supermarkets and their suppliers sitting on a lot of alleged food nobody's buying. 

Let them cry. Let their families break up as they lose what they've made of their family farms. 

Don't wait on them in stores or restaurants. 

Block them on social media, in order to activate shadowbanning algorithms. If you happen to see a point that needs to be addressed in something they've said, address the point after blocking the Bitter Clinger. 

Walk out of religious services if they walk in. Without making your usual donation. 

Withhold membership dues from social clubs if the clubs don't drop Bitter Clingers from their membership.

Don't see Bitter Clingers as patients.

Don't trade with businesses that continue to employ them in any capacity.

Don't talk to the Bitter Clingers. That's all. Until they confess that they're not fit to own land and use their savings to compensate people who are willing to accept the financial loss involved in reclaiming the land they've poisoned. Repentance for actual physical deeds is not an emotional matter. Ignore the emotions until they've shown sincere repentance with more actual physical deeds.

All these people, or things that nature intended to have been people, care about is money so the effects of seeing their streams of income dry up should be valuable to other Bitter Clingers as examples. It's not absolutely necessary to laugh out loud in public when a Bitter Clinger commits suicide, as some of them will do, but it may be good for the other Bitter Clingers if we do.

I'm posting this after having had a sort of vision of an alternative future in which Bitter Clingers were allowed to roll on, in the way Trump and Kennedy seem to imagine they can be, and groups of their neighbors, armed with everything from machine guns to pitchforks, beat on their doors. In the group I was watching a Bitter Clinger came out to the door and tried to duck back inside. People beat on the door until the frame began to crack. The Bitter Clinger came out onto his porch. The crowd shouted, "Bring out your daughter," and a man stepped forward carrying a sack, unzipped the sack, and threw the dead body of a child right into the Bitter Clinger's face. The Bitter Clinger gasped, "No, not my daughter! Take me!" Then his wife was on the porch and the crowd shouted, "Take him back!" and threw a bleeding, broken body into her face. 

Justice denied tends to lead to violence and to further injustice.

Justice can be served, I believe, if enough people decide simply to stop speaking to the Bitter Clingers. Including "speech" on social media, or in the form of trade. 

Make the farmers themselves demand a ban on all open-air spraying of any chemical with a formula other than H2O, so that nobody will feel as much hated as they feel this summer.

Hurt their feelings so that nobody has to do more permanent damage to them.

Meet the Blogroll: Bethany (Vegan Venus)

I am not a vegan. I live and share food with obligate carnivores. However, before glyphosate, I phased in and out of being vegetarian or vegan; I still enjoy individual vegan meals. 

Grandma Bonnie Peters originally wanted to have a blog where we'd write about all the delicious gluten-free vegan meals we cooked and ate, when she and I were "best case" celiacs. When being "Celiactivists" mean primarily being active, healthy celiacs. When I was paying my bills by writing for Associated Content, a height I reached within a year after posting there that "of course I didn't depend on AC to pay the bills! No one could!"...so I didn't have time for blogging, but there were a few ominous signs on the horizon...

A teenaged writer from India, writing for AC just to show off her English, described having gone from being sensitive to wheat to being sensitive to everything. She didn't write for long, God rest her. And people in Africa, where the celiac gene does not exist, started complaining of pseudo-celiac symptoms. AC was interested in articles about life with celiac disease because the numbers of reported cases of celiac disease were exploding, worldwide. What could Irish and Irish-American celiacs who'd been living comfortably with the celiac trait for years say to all those people? 

GBP and I noted flares of celiac symptoms, increasingly, between 2009 and 2015. We received review copies of books that argued that people just might not have been meant to eat grain, that genetically modified wheat might be the problem, or selective breeding of wheat was, or this, or that. What worked out for us when tested was that glyphosate was to blame for our symptoms. Entirely and alone. Increasing use of glyphosate had probably had something to do with my developing celiac sprue, traditionally a late-stage symptom Irish celiacs used to develop after middle age if at all, around age 30. While all sorts of chronic conditions and general malaise had defined the lives of at least three previous generations in the maternal bloodline in our family, and those symptoms were a textbook case of the Irish celiac trait and our symptoms disappeared after the year or so it takes for celiacs to recover from a lifetime of eating wheat products, we also had pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate that were worse than our celiac reactions to wheat. 

I'm told that not all celiacs have pseudo-celiac reactions to glyphosate. I've never actually met any of the ones who reportedly don't have those. 

Well, that story's been told here. Anyone who's managed not to read it can use the search bar on this page to search this site for "glyphosate" or "Glyphosate Awareness." I'll probably never be famous for anything else but I am the Principal Revolting Hag of Glyphosate Awareness. Worldwide. I do it so The Nephews don't have to do it, I hope.

(Mary Daly, the glorious, uproarious Revolting Hag of Boston, often affirmed that the different meanings of "Revolting Hag," a female activist who rejoices in increasing age, and "revolting hag," a repulsive female, is easy to hear in speech. I've always been sort of glad I never met her and tested this. But it's easy to see the difference in writing. I used to intend to become a Revolting Hag and now I've become one. Anyone who thinks I'm a revolting hag can go and take a long walk off a short dock.)

But I digress. Enough about me. This post started out to be about a blogger I e-met on Associated Content, just before it fell apart. Her screen name was Bethany. She, too, moved to Blogspot and started the Vegan Venus, or sometimes Veg*n Venus, blog. 

https://vegnvenus.blogspot.com/

There's not much of it. 

But there ought to be. 

One day soon, please God and Robert Kennedy and the survivors of the late lamented Dr. John McDougall, a plant-based diet is going to be a healthy, delicious, and frugal option again. No, all the people who've taken vegetarian or vegan vows and remained healthy, slim, active, and even good-looking in their nineties weren't lying. Yes, although in a world where most plant-based food is loaded with toxic chemicals some people feel good on a carnivore diet with only the occasional "seasoning" of garlic or onion, food crops were not always genetically modified to survive absorbing appalling amounts of toxic chemical, and people used to feel even better on a cleansing, healing vegan diet with only an occasional "feast" of eggs or fish. We will make that possible again.

I don't know whether Bethany will revive the Vegan Venus blog when it becomes possible to talk about the health benefits of a plant-based diet. But I hope she does. I added this blog to my reading list just in time to watch it die. I hope to see it return to active life.

Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth: Belated Post for 8.7.25

A contributor to a blog I follow felt that some presidential policy moves he does not support show that "Trump has failed" and, if even populist Trump was not aligned with his views, he "was done."

Well, that was during the heat wave. Exhaustion was a very natural and logical feeling to have. 

A reaction from a stouter heart followed, here:

https://ncrenegade.com/stop-whining/

Can I think of more specific encouragement for, specifically, Glyphosate Awareness people, and, more generally, all who support more individual rights including the right to make our own health-supporting decisions, especially in choosing minimally contaminated food and water? Of course I can!

What follows started as replies to specific comments and questions from people discussing the "I'm done" post. (No link to that post; having been encouraged and taunted by that community, the author concluded that he wasn't trying to leave the country or give up activism altogether, just scaling back his activity to a more balanced and weather-appropriate program, so there's no need to take up any more of his energy.) I've tried to organize them into a logical order. That is why they are late.

I'd like to call out Dave DiGerolamo's post because I think doing so highlights something we do at this web site. We don't dictate or demand. We form alliances with people who are working toward a common goal, even if we and they have other goals that may be different. 

Glyphosate Awareness is not and should not be the story of anybody's life. It's important to all people who prefer being healthy to being sick and/or prefer being alive to being dead, whether or not they realize how important it is...but it's not even an ongoing organization. It's not going to become anybody's full-time paid job. We agree that poisoning people for profit is evil and must be stopped. 

We want a ban. Secretary Kennedy has done an heroic job of getting people to agree to things voluntarily without a formal ban. That's also good. In the case of poison sprays we may need a formal ban, but it's certainly best to begin by encouraging farmers who sincerely want to raise good food to take their first fearful steps voluntarily, if that can be done.

Technically, a ban on glyphosate will be the official end of Glyphosate Awareness. I've come to feel that, because the corporations have shown such lack of concern about human lives at even a slight risk to profit, we need to be fighting for a ban on all outdoor use of poison sprays. Whether we're fighting for a ban on one specific chemical that harms us personally, or on all outdoor spraying, once we get that ban, we disperse. Whether you have one more idea in common with Bernie Sanders, or with me, or with anyone else who's helped to spread Glyphosate Awareness, or not, is up to you. We are not a cult. We are a diverse group of people who've managed to agree on one thing. 

But, in a more general sense, we are all activists. We are all committed, in whatever way we understand it, to doing what we've been called to do to resist evil in this world.

DiGerolamo begins with "civil disobedience." I especially like the examples he gives. Many of the things we're opposing are neither laws nor politicians nor political systems. Evil often operates through peer pressure--specifically, market pressure. 

"I just sold my first load of early corn. When do you expect to sell your first load out of that unsprayed, mixed-crop field of yours? You'll never make a profit on that field. Taxes are going to eat you up if you don't start farming the modern way. Plant bioengineered corn that can resist it and then drown your field in pesticides!"

"It's cruel to take the chance of letting children develop natural immunity to measles! Do you want your children to suffer? Do you want them to grow up blind?"

"It's crazy to try to live without a car in this world! It's dangerous, walking in traffic! It's career suicide because people aren't going to hire someone who doesn't have reliable transportation to the job, even if you say that your feet are reliable transportation to a job one mile away. Think of what you're doing to your children..."

Etc. etc. etc. I've only been hearing it for sixty years. I'm not saying I was old enough to understand it for all of those years, but I was certainly hearing it. My parents disobeyed the social mandate to become dependent on motor transportation everywhere. It cost them jobs; it cost them some people's approval. I grew up. I learned how to drive a car. I drove a few cars other people owned. I owned a couple of cars other people drove. Finally I both owned and drove the same car all by myself like a person with no consciousness of the reasons not to join the car culture, for about six weeks. Since then I've disobeyed the social mandate to depend on motor transportation, and I'm likely to walk in situations where my parents would have used a taxi service.

Not that I am nagging anyone else to choose a car-free life. Not that I think motor vehicles are altogether evil. It's our overuse of them that is evil. By walking when it's feasible we can reduce pollution, improve our health, and avoid the kind of local warming that provides the pretext for left-wingnuts to scream about global warming calling for global dictatorship to save the planet.

But everyone feels called to resist evil in this world according to a different set of priorities. This is probably an indicator of what we're best qualified to do. I'd like to try to avoid quarrelling with others in the broader movement about priorities. Some things Robert Malone has said recently have offended people who liked his book. Some people see gene splicing itself as a bigger hazard than "pesticide" spraying. When dropping facts on an anti-vaxxer didn't convince her immediately that glyphosate is more dangerous to the public than vaccines are, I understood the feelings people express. We want to shake or slap the ignorance out of some people. We feel as if they were the enemy. These feelings are not helpful. Balkanization, being divided and conquered, is one of the aspects of evil we need to resist. If we abandon our mutual goal and fight against each other, there's no chance of reaching the goal.

(Why is glyphosate more dangerous to the public than vaccines? I mean the vaccines that everyone can agree have done more harm than good...Still, it's possible to avoid vaccines. It might have cost some people their careers, but we could say no to the jab. It's not possible to avoid glyphosate. If your reactions are disabling, you can give up social eating, give up most of your favorite foods, give up open-air exercise, become a total agoraphobic crank, and still spend a lot of days being sick. This should not be possible, of course. That's what we're fighting against.)

I try to respect everyone's differing priorities, and I'd like to encourage everyone else to do that. People usually have reasons for their priorities. If you live in a place where the climate is naturally hot and you know people who won't survive if it gets hotter, climate is probably your priority, you may even listen to those calling for global dictatorship, and you probably aren't even reading this web site regularly because you think we're insensitive to the dangers of climate change. This kind of thing is annoying but inevitable. We have to work through it, to reach our goals.

So, as someone asked in the comments, who will lead and guide us? 

Only the Great Spirit will. Only the Great Spirit can. If we place our faith in a fellow mortal, even if that person never disappoints us, that person is mortal and will grow old and die. 

Speaking of which, many of us are already pretty old. This is not all bad. Old people can be fearless. We can say:

If I live another fifty years, I'll still have a long list of things I want to do.

If I die tomorrow, I'll still have had a longer and better life than most humans have ever had.

I am not afraid of Hell.

But where does that leave the young? Sometimes I count how few of the previous generation in my extended family are still alive, and I wring my hands and pray--"God, she's eighty-five years old now, he's ninety--oh please let them stay active for another fifteen years!" This is true even for two cousins I've never met who don't feel rich because they're not in the top one percent of America's richest, but they are in the top five, and it's not inconceivable that they might remember that their mother's wealth came from dividing some land in a way that cost my grandmother money while it made their mother rich, and consider leaving some money to me. Just as fellow celiacs who want to support Celiactivism, the larger and much more pleasant cause that will remain after Glyphosate Awareness is over, they might consider leaving some money to me. I could use the money. I'd still prefer that they remain alive. I hope the young feel the same way about us...but, regardless of how anyone feels, we will not always remain alive. My generation, who identified as "the young" for so long, are becoming "the old." 

I don't recommend that the young be publicly identified as leaders in Glyphosate Awareness because the corporations who embody our enemy are so evil. People who are or might become parents of young children should not do things that might deprive those children of parents. I recommend that the young practice leadership skills with their children and in "safer" organizations like neighborhood watch and PTA-type groups.

I don't share, and don't think we should feed attention to, the perception that the young are unfit to survive after the old. It has always seemed to people who've lived long enough to have read all the books in their large personal libraries, and been tested by adventures, and developed craggy faces with interesting scars, and come to understand how many things are of more enduring interest than sex, that the young are uninformed, weak, pasty-faced, hormone-addled blobs of glup. What the young are is young. They will outgrow it. Some people don't seem to have revisited their high school or even college yearbooks lately. Young people I see remind me very much of the ones who were young along with me, back in the day. ("Aaaack!") I don't know that we should slack off in order to make room for them to grow. I think there's still room for them to grow and mature on their own. Still, a little reminiscing about our own experience of being clueless and pasty-faced ought to reduce any distress we feel about leaving the world in the hands of the young. They will mature. Younger generations always have matured, and always will.

The young will, eventually, lead the resistance against evil. Trump won't be here. Kennedy won't be here. We the technorati, the early adopters of privately owned computers, the bloggers and social media networkers, won't be here. They will have to be led by the Great Spirit, just as we do.

In questions like "Who will lead..." I hear the disparity between what might fairly be called a fascist, or at least authoritarian, way of thinking and a more democratic, or American, or biblical, way of thinking. People will have a king if they want one. Some people do. But God's perfect will was that people receive orders directly from God, and not feel a need for kings.

For literal, physical combat, of course, strategies and drills are useful. Strategies for physical combat often do rely on members  of a team to lead a multi-person strategic move. "When A sees X happening, A gives the cue to B to..." This web site recognizes a place for combat in this world but this web site is utterly unqualified to organize or even encourage physical that could become violent. We are all about nonviolent strategies that are best implemented by individuals, usually acting as individuals. A March Against Monsanto may be fun for its season but it's when individuals stop buying Monsanto-Bayer and similar products that the corporation has to take notice. 

For purposes this web site has anything to do with, therefore, the little personal choices are the important ones. Why organize anti-glyphosate rallies, where we're likely to be deliberately sprayed or worse and where we do the corporations' profits no harm at all, when just not buying things actually hurts the corporations that have poisoned  us? Don't buy things made by corporations that also make glyphosate--or other "pesticides." 

We should all be raising as much of our own food as we can. How much land we have, and what it will produce, naturally determines how much that is. Corn and beans need a certain amount of sunshine to grow. Chickweed and violets need less. The commercial food industry have taught us that we need the standard commercially grown vegetables that need a lot of sunshine. Corn and beans and tomatoes and suchlike are very good, but if your glyphosate reactions indicate that most of the commercial produce is still marinated in glyphosate or some other chemical that makes you ill, and most of your favorite fruits and vegetables are never going to grow on your property, you may be amazed to discover how nutritious and how tasty chickweed and violets can be. Actually, most of the native "weeds" we pick out of our gardens are nutritious, and taste good, too, when eaten in the right season and quantity. 

We do need to keep voting. There may be slots on the ballot where writing in the name of a famous dead person, a cartoon character, or a vegetable makes sense--if it won't get the election done over, at the very least the Lesser Evil will know how many people voted against him. Generally it's good to vote for the least of the available evils, or against the greater ones. Elections have been decided bmuch y one vote in one precinct. Why waste yours?

We need to add talking and writing to voting. We are the technorati. We have to educate the people who didn't form a habit of reading at school. Personal relationships with these people are not always part of communicating with them. We can run for local office, and write letters to local papers, like good traditional activists. Those things boost our signals. So does being a good customer, when we can. So does talking with people at church dinners, or drinking coffee (or beer) with them when we meet them in town. Doing some sort of useful community service is very good, and might become important in an emergency,  too.

Everything we do does not have to be serious and goal-oriented. That can be a formula for burnout. When I was doing the Twitter Live Chats, which required much advance reading, quick learning, quick thinking, even in languages I can't properly be said to speak, so each one was a real workout for the brain, I found refreshment in reading, re-posting, and writing the sort of light content I call "the fluff." So did my followers. After a heavy chat we'd head for Twitter pages that specialized in pretty nature photos, cute pets, cartoons, and short light poems. So this web site, now that it's sponsored to do so, features butterfly pictures on Mondays, adorable adoptable pets on Tuesdays, and poems on Fridays. I try (don't always manage) to make time to read the Meow and Messy Mimi blogs daily, the Mirror and Barkley and Poets & Storytellers blogs whenever there's a new post. Refreshment is encouragement, too. If your refreshment consists of painting landscape pictures or piecing beautiful quilt tops or polishing and cutting stones, you're not letting the side down; you're lifting some of us up. "The fluff" is important too; it reminds us of what we're fighting for.

Left-wingnuts call everyone else fascists because that is what they say when they feel frustrated, but are we fascists? Then we should try to avoid talking like them. Historically, fascists liked to classify people as strong or weak, winners or losers, and look for what they saw as strong, winning leaders. Like Mussolini--oh right. If we want to be or to follow better leaders than Mussolini, it may help to reflect on St Paul's meditations in 2 Corinthians. We all have strong and weak points, strong and weak moments, and it may even be true in activism as it is in spirituality, "When I am weak, then I am strong." 

Surely the "weakest" thing an activist could do would be to die in an accident mid-struggle...wouldn't it? Yet there are laws in force today that bear the names of people in whose memory they were, more or less, enacted. There are "Amber Alerts" because the previous system failed to save a child called Amber. Martyrs have tremendous posthumous power. Of course people who are clearly willing to be martyrs, but survive, have even more. That is why we have a President Trump and Secretaries Kennedy and Gabbard. Like them or not, everyone can see that they're not afraid of becoming martyrs. 

Many people in cyberspace have had the privilege of education that gave us "strong" voices. Oh, we're so privileged. Most of us had a lot of help toward getting our educations. Anyway, other people merely lurk and never post a comment because they don't think they're able to type anything that would be up to our standard. They merely do their blue-collar or pink-collar jobs. I have seen plumbers, mechanics, and hairdressers reach people who wouldn't listen to us overeducated computer nerds and geeks  Lurkers can be doing more good than bloggers know. (Of course, some lurkers are also hackers and spammers, but maybe a little information rubs off even on them.) 

A couple of local lurkers have come forward to tell me they're dyslexic. (So am I but the kind of dyslexia that runs in my family interferes with speaking more than it does with reading.) When the instructions for something they want to do are written down, they have no trouble, but they don't want to try to read whole books. They used to be called functional illiterates. I call them intelligent people who cope well with physical obstacles to learning. They are called to teach their own audiences. They are old enough to know who those are.

Whoever is reading this...you're only one person. No other person is going to stand with you every time you have to take a stand in life. You may be the only one saying something at a particular place and time, but if what you're saying is true, then you are not alone--the Truth is with you. Deal with the fact of our existential solitude as human beings, and then appreciate the fact that we can connect. We can relay information--by writing letters on paper, or by word of mouth, if the Internet fails. I've looked at the statistics shown on the inside of this web site and thought, as bloggers do for the first few years, "And how many of those twenty-nine readers even vote in Virginia?" Then I've also posted "Print this article to claim a freebie/discount at a sponsor's business" and had tourists come in, all the way from Australia, carrying their printouts. You never know whom you may be reaching. 

Some things can be known. For example: real, honest "conservatives" may hold grudges against people who did something to them, but otherwise they're not haters. That "conservatives are racists" routine the Left love is an example of what, in the slang of my youth, we called weaselling--loudly denouncing someone else for doing something by way of distracting attention from the fact that you are doing the same thing, often to a greater degree. (("You shut your blank-blank bleeping foul mouth and stop using that kind of blanking blinking language!") Hating large groups of people is stupid. Most conservatives are not stupid, or at least not all that stupid. I'm still mentally processing Margaret Roberts' research-based bombshell: Timothy McVeigh, who was clearly able to work with people from different backgrounds, made all that noise about his White Supremacism and promoted a novel about people who murder their neighbors apparently just for being Jewish, because he was being paid to make concern about the Waco disaster look bad? It's worth a second look at anyone who posts racist garbage on a "conservative" page. 

In theory even White Supremacists have bodies that react badly to glyphosate, so they can benefit from Glyphosate Awareness too, but I personally want nothing to do with anyone who does not appreciate those of The Nephews who are legally Black as much as those who are legally White. In fact hateful remarks about any ethnic group that includes a friend or relative of mine, which includes most of the ethnic groups on Earth, tend to bring out my Inner Mama Bear. 

We need to shun hateful or violent people. (We can pity them and pray for them if we like.) We should practice good will toward everyone else. To the extent that it's possible, without compromising ourselves by supporting things we really can't support, it is desirable for activists to make ourselves known for kindness, loyalty, and generosity. 

Urgent Link for Tennessee and Other State Residents

As regular readers have been warned already, having a high profile in Glyphosate Awareness can be dangerous. This is a timely link everyone can use to sign a group petition that will be forwarded to your State governors. If you just sign the form with your screen name and e-mail address, the only risk is that you'll be asked to send money to organizations working on the issue. 

Not to me. Never to me. You're welcome to send money to support this web site, buy hard-to-find books, commission blog posts on topics of your choice, ask me to proofread and/or review book manuscripts, ask me to ghostwrite books or contribute to anthologies, etc. As a movement publicly led by me, Glyphosate Awareness does not want your money. We want your talent. We want your time and energy. We want you to have a high profile and speak out publicly about the cause if, and only if, you can say:

"My name is ......

I am [specific age over 50] years old.

If I live another fifty years, I'll still have a long list of things to do.

If I die tomorrow, I'll still have had a longer and better life than most of humankind.

I am not afraid of Hell."

If that's where you are, you probably have done or are doing other things for the cause as well as rewriting the basic petition text to add facts your Governor needs to know. You probably have your own favorite links to documents your Governor and staff need to see, about the toxicity of glyphosate and the why-insult-weasels character of Bayer; you can search this web site or MomsAcrossAmerica.org for more links.

If you are or could become a parent, we want you to avoid buying or using glyphosate, avoid buying or using Bayer products, buy and eat food that is "clean" of "pesticide" residues, sign this kind of mass petitions when they circulate, and vote for people who support these petitions too, but not call attention to yourself. Your children come first. People whose income is based on products that kill human beings aren't always scrupulous about harming human beings in more direct ways. 

Whichever tier of activism you belong on, you should sign this group petition:

https://pirg.org/take-action/tell-your-governor-we-need-strong-pesticide-protections/

A form will pop up asking for money. You decide whether to use it or close it. USPIRG will stop sending you e-mail if you want them to. I think their e-mail is interesting--most of it gives information and doesn't ask for money.

Bad Sign on the Tennessee Border

I don't cross the Tennessee border on Route 23 very often any more. I walked down that road almost daily, just ten years ago, when I had friends and clients on the Tennessee side.

Now they're all dead. 

They weren't young people; some were only "retired" and some were positively geriatric patients,  which was why they hired help, but although their reactions varied, they all had Bad Days at the same time. They all showed reactions to one thing. For about ten years we had no idea what that thing might be. Then Jeffrey Smith mentioned in an e-mail that it might be glyphosate--and all the pieces fell into perfect place. There was no possible room for doubt. Whether they were celiac, pseudo-celiac, cardiac, diabetic, arthritic, or had some other chronic condition, all of them felt worse, were more "disabled" by whatever conditions they had, and were apt to feel grumpy and disagreeable, after exposure to glyphosate. 

More than that, some of them had children and grandchildren whose reactions were worse than theirs. The child who never showed any lack  of empathy, but had vision and hearing impairments, seemed "brain-damaged" or "autistic" to other people when exposed to glyphosate. The man who'd broken a knee walked with more of a limp when exposed to glyphosate. The woman who'd wanted a baby lost the fetus when exposed to glyphosate. It wasn't even so much that people my age had cancer--it was that their kids did.

I don't think any of Mother's friends died of COVID. Most of them died before COVID. Most of them were older than Mother was, and although Mother's death at eighty-five was indeed untimely, most of her friends were one step away from nursing homes before they died. They gave thanks if they died before being sent to nursing homes. Glyphosate probably was not the cause of their death, although it may well have been the cause of Mother's death. Glyphosate most certainly was the most conspicuous cause of their illnesses and suffering during their last years--more conspicuous than sugar, or wheat, or even alcohol, even when those were known to be symptom triggers. 

As long-term readers know, it was only in 2018, after standing in a bustling open-air market and watching a whole crowd react to glyphosate vapors in their several ways, that I started taking this concern seriously as a Celiactivist. I realized that glyphosate specifically, not genetically modified foods generally, was the great universal symptom trigger in 2015 but I still had to see to believe how much harm this poison was doing to everybody, from geriatric patients to primary school children. 

So I'm  not writing this post to judge those Tennessee farmers who plan to be spraying "herbicides," glyphosate and even worse poisons, on the land before planting in the next few weeks. You've all heard arguments for and against glyphosate and the other poisons. By chemical companies' salesmen you've been told that you can't expect good crop yields without these poisons.

Would I lie to you, Tennessee farmers? My parents farmed. My parents tried planting fields, the first year after all chemical use was discontinued. Planting acres of soil with perfectly good seeds and getting hardly enough of a "crop" to provide the whole family with a home-grown side dish at meals. Picking the dozen or so ears of corn, finding the earworms in each ear, taking all that hard-won corn to the animals and buying corn at the store from farmers who still sprayed poison. Enduring the kindly meant lectures of people who wanted to cling to their "pesticides." Living on the wages of one part-time job in town, or moving back to a city to do jobs they loathed. No, the first few years when your farm is breaking an addiction to that Vicious Pesticide Cycle are not going to be good years. Yes, you'll be very lucky if you don't hear piteous whines from the children: "If you really loved us you'd stay in the city so we could have nice things like all our friends have."

Deal with it. Because while Kennedy's mission in this world is to clean the poisons out of the food supply and thereby bring those lean years upon you, Trump's mission is to crank up the economy to the point where you can get those part-time jobs to keep the land while it recovers. You've seen the bumper stickers, "Please send us another 'boom'--I promise I won't waste it this time." Keep that promise. Trump's economic plan is not sustainable but, if we don't waste its benefits, it may get us through the inevitable decline that comes with the end of the Waste Age. Within ten years of breaking the Vicious Pesticide Cycle you can expect to see good crops again. 

You had fifty years to choose to heed what my father tried to show you about breaking the Vicious Pesticide Cycle. Yes, there's a cut-off point for everything. Yes, the people demanding glyphosate-free, glufosinate-free, neonicotinoid-free, paraquat-free, dicamba-free, non-GMO food are demanding something similar to bricks without straw from you. Yes, we feel sorry about this...but there are limits to everything, and at least you can deal with the resurgent monster weed problem, in the first year or two after you stop spraying toxic chemicals on the land, by applying hot water to the weeds. Steaming a weed to death leaves nothing on the land but water that actually helps other plants grow. Yes, you should anticipate a total ban on all "herbicides" and go herbicide-free now. No, you can't expect a lot of sympathy for the pressure to switch to safer weed-wilting technology. Breaking the "insecticide" addiction will be much worse, and you need to start that now, too.

But every economic cloud has a silver lining. In this case, we're talking about longer and healthier lives for farmers. Currently, because of contact with chemicals,  life expectancy (and insurance expenses) for farmers are hardly better than for coal miners. Do organic farmers enjoy longer and healthier lives than coal miners? Absoflippin'lutely. So who's bringing the average for "farmers," generally, so low? Would you like to stop being at such high risk for so many horrible diseases? Would you like to stop having many of the diseases you now have? 

Farm women these days...I remind so many of you of a grandmother or great-aunt you had, just a little-bitty thing who stayed slim and active through middle age, old age, even very old age. You wish you'd taken after her, you say wistfully, looking down over your billows of flab. Even before you had the baby you sprouted up fast and then, right away, you started slowing down, feeling that it was better to buy a size larger clothes every year than to force yourselves to exercise. Well, you got some exercise; not all the work on a farm has been motorized and mechanized yet; but your thyroids...it's a gene...

Stop. Please. Yes, there's a specific gene for thyroid dysfunction. Mother had it back when normal women were slim. I have the gene, too. Did you know that even dysfunctional thyroids can be brought under control with the right diet and exercise regimen? The dysfunction actually flips; Mother's thyroid tended to slow down; mine tends to speed up, but people can actually choose whether to run our thyroid metabolism at a fast, slow, or average pace. Controlling that sort of thing becomes much, much easier when you're not exposed to glyphosate.

Some of you have a different gene for a milder thyroid dysfunction that doesn't flip. Good for you--it's even easier to control, without even taking pills, although the pills you might take would be cheaper than the ones Mother used to take. But yes, that too. You too can be trim, strong, full of energy, and as much of a "hottie" as you want to be, at thirty or fifty or seventy. 

Can we talk, Tennessee farm women? Southerners don't have whole different standard vocabularies we use when talking to people of different generations, as some Asian people do; we say "you" to any person of any age, but we say it with different tones and manners. I have heard a lot of you speak to me as if you thought I was the age of your daughters. I am closer to the age of your mothers. It was understandable. You're fatter than I am, you move more slowly, you feel worse more of the time. You needed glasses before you were old enough to fit into standard eyeglass frames. The skin on your faces sags off the bones and wrinkles and wobbles in that way that actually shows ill health, but is often confused with the look of old age. You blame the way you look and feel on your age, so then you look at me and think I look younger than you are. I do not look young. I look fifty or sixty years old. I am what a well-preserved person of grandparent-age looks like. You do not look old, either, really; you look unhealthy. You have no right to be so "old" when some of you aren't even forty years old yet, but you are. You are going to experience reverse aging when that total glyphosate ban goes into effect. You are going to look and feel the age you really are. Some of you have the kind of hair that turns white earlier than mine, and some have the kind that stays black longer, but nature intended the work you do on your farms, with your men and your children, to be fun--and so it will be.

People in Glyphosate Awareness do not want you to be poor and miserable, Tennessee farmers. We want you to be strong and healthy, to enjoy the job of raising food that keeps other people healthy. We want you to look as good as you feel and feel as good as your work is. 

Many of you inherited land that was already stuck in an addiction-like vicious cycle, and you've kept it in that cycle. You've been enabling the addiction when you had a mandate from Nature to break it. You will have to break the addiction. That never has felt good and probably never will, during the withdrawal stage...but it/ll be worth it when the land is healthy again. 

Imagine relaxing by the river with a rod and reel...and catching full-sized fish that are fit to eat, instead of knowing that your river barely supports sunfish and carp and they never grow to eating size. 

Imagine feeling romantic rather than exhausted at the end of a long day of farm work with your Partner for Life.

Imagine Junior without the learning disorders, Princess without the eating disorders, and The Teenager growing strong biceps, a manly chest, a deep voice, and rejoicing in young manhood instead of fretting that it might have been meant to be a girl.

Chemicals have done you a lot of damage, Tennessee farmers. When you stop exposing yourselves (and other people) to those chemicals, it is going to feel like the Kingdom Coming and the Year of Jubilo. You too will feel like singing along with George Harrison, as an e-friend's got me doing when I recover from a glyphosate reaction: "All (I've) got to take is (a walk) to make it blow away, blow away, blow away!" Goodbye and good riddance to those chronic disease conditions!

There may have to be a year or two when we have to buy our plant-based foods from more sensible farmers in Mexico, and they may cost ounce for ounce as much as gold...but then will come the years when Tennessee farmers are raising and selling "gold," too, before the land recovers completely and the prices of things like strawberries and tomatoes stabilize.

You too have a right to live to be 90 or 100 years old, Tennessee farmers, and you too have a right to enjoy every one of those years. You have a right to grow old without hearing that anyone you know personally has cancer--such a rare, bizarre disease. You have a right to live in a world where the normal end of life is that people's hearts stop in their sleep some time after age 95. You have a right to do as well by doing as much good, and enjoy as much good time in this life, as Jimmy Quillen or Dolly Parton.

But where there are drugs, there are pushers. The pushers of American farmland's addiction to the Vicious Spray Cycle are out there, putting up signs like the bad sign currently disgracing the Tennessee border on Route 450--you know, the one urging farmers to "Stand with glyphosate."

Stand with cancer?

Stand with Crohn's Disease?

Stand with autism?

Are any real Tennessee farmers so glyphosate-damaged you can believe that kind of idiocy?

I know, I know. I've seen it on Twitter--where I also know that it was coming from chemical company spokesmen, because Real Farmers do not waste sunny summer days on Twitter. "Agriculture isn't gardening, Priscilla, dear.  We don't have time to hand-pick weeds and insects away from crops."

Well, if you don't have enough respect for the ecology in which you're raising crops to deal with weeds and insects in a mindful way, without causing harm to anyone but the nuisance species, you may not be the ones who need to be doing agriculture. There's nothing really wrong with selling farm land to someone who cares enough about farming to do it in a mindful, sustainable, natural way. Agriculture must become more like gardening. It must get back to its roots. Abundant crop yields are good but the essential goal of agriculture is healthy crop yields.

Stand with strawberries, Tennessee. 

Stand with corn.

Stand with potatoes.

Stand with tomatoes.

Stand with beans.

Stand with peaches.

Stand with cherries.

Stand with milk.

Stand with eggs.

Stand with turkey.

Stand with quirky little artisanal crops like "wild" persimmons, watercress and land cress, pawpaws, morels, and dandelion shoots.

Stand with the fuel that runs bodies through the kind of lives you want your children to have.

Stand with eating the "weeds"--most unsprayed native plant species are edible, some quite tasty, and many are at their best when they pop up in the places where you don't want them.  Glyphosate positively encourages, through the Vicious Pesticide Cycle, the most unlovable weeds--kudzu and Spanish Needles, Bermuda grass and jimsonweed--but nature intended Tennessee to be blessed with such "weeds" as land cress, dock, dandelion, spring-beauties, ground-ivy, chickweed, chinquapin, catnip, pennyroyal, boneset, queen-of-the-meadow, ladies-thumb, ground cherries, cleavers, clovers, millet, and (at worst) smilax. Native "weeds" are not to be wasted, much less to be poisoned. Most of them belong in salads; the rest are valuable as medicines. They are meant to be received with gratitude, used, and enjoyed. 

Stand with solid bones, strong muscles, vigorous hearts, and generally with bodies that are built to last through ninety years of good hard work that feels satisfying, not debilitating, every day..

Stand with good health and good life, Tennessee.

Stand with a total ban on all "herbicide" sprays this summer, with bans on all poison sprays soon to follow and strict limits on use of "insecticide" powders and oils.

Tell the chemical salesmen to go and drown themselves in vats of glyphosate.

Web Log for 2.17.25

Only one topic, but such excellent links!

Glyphosate Awareness

A whole bundle of links came in the e-mail from US Right to Know.

We need to stop fighting Mexico's choice to block GMO corn and admit that it's not the first time our good neighbors to the South have shown better judgment than we've done. Tell'm, Secretary Kennedy. Tell the Secretary, Gentle Readers. Viva Mexico!

https://usrtk.org/gmo/new-scientific-analyses-mexicos-restrictions-on-gm-corn-glyphosate-health-risks/ 

Follow the science. (Free for the downloading. If someone tries to claim that your attempt to raise per Glyphosate Awareness is politically motivated, or paid, or even fear-based, you can cite pages and sources.)

https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/DOSSIER-MAIZ-2024-ENGfinal-5.pdf

If this "webinar" goes as planned, you'll even be able to watch scientists discuss it on video.

https://www.healthandenvironment.org/che-webinars/96960/

Doxing the doxer:

https://usrtk.org/pesticides/jay-byrne-meet-the-man-behind-the-monsanto-pr-machine/

Link for 11.8.24

It started out as a web log, but picked up only one link...

Health

People are claiming for the "carnivore diet," "meat three times a day," the same benefits people have claimed for the low-fat, vegan, complex-carbs-based McDougall Diet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehy-Vnkvz3c&t=1860s

Well, I'm biased. I've never had any of the major chronic diseases, like arthritis and diabetes, that either diet is supposed to cure, so I can't speak to that, but I can say that I feel groovy on the McDougall Diet assuming clean fruit and vegetables--which you can't take for granted these days--and lose my appetite on any diet that calls for a lot of meat, butter, and eggs. Which way of eating more natural food and less overprocessed junk appeals to an individual may be genetically predetermined.

But how can a high-fat, carb-free, high-protein diet offer any of the same benefits of a low-far, high-complex-carbs, low-protein diet? Our bodies adapt to the natural food available, to some extent, but how could radically different balances of nutrients relieve any of the same chronic conditions? 

I have a guess. You can have minor recurring symptoms like heartburn, indigestion, irregularity, and that sluggish brainfogged feeling, on any diet if you don't drink enough water and get enough exercise. You can have a major chronic condition that's caused or aggravated by reactions to chemicals in processed foods, maybe monosodium glutamate; that would be relieved by almost any planned diet of natural foods, though bacon... Or it could be the glyphosate. In the 1980s people who ate the McDougall Diet felt great, and many were in fact healed of chronic conditions. Today people who follow the printed instructions for the McDougall Diet feel terrible, and many have flare-ups of chronic conditions. And when they went on uncensored Twitter and tweeted about how much better they felt within days after going to some place that banned glyphosate spraying, or at least banned spraying on food, everything became crystal clear. 

If you feel ill when you eat plain raw fruit and vegetables, and better when you eat a lot of meat, butter, and eggs, I'd recommend assuming it's the glyphosate. Our primitive ancestors did not eat meat every day, though if they domesticated fowl they might have enjoyed an egg for breakfast every day. They might have ungratefully called vegetables starvation rations, but they would have had more vegan days than meat-feast days. That people are trying to live entirely on meat tells us something about the chemicals sprayed on crops these days, not about the benefits of a plant-based diet in et per se. If fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains were unsprayed, these people might feel even better on a plant-based diet than they now feel on a meat-based diet. 

I wish the best to Dr. Berry (though now the idea of a science-fiction "doctorberry," a fruit with some sort of medicinal benefit, is stuck in my mind). I don't believe eating meat at every meal is sustainable for the human body, but meat and eggs contain far less glyphosate than sprayed foods so it's possible that some people need to do a cleansing "carnivore diet" before gradually reintroducing plant-derived foods to find out which ones are clean enough to be tolerated. 

God have mercy on us.

Poor Dr. (John) McDougall was too old to wrap his mind around this, but I'd like to see Craig McDougall work with it to move us all forward. Vegan diets harm people who can't buy or even grow glyphosate-free vegetables! Berry talks very frankly and specifically about the extent to which his digestion controlled his "testosterone-poisoned" emotions, and I'd like to see psychiatrists pick up on this, too.

Letter to Governor Youngkin

Finally, Virginia considers a glyphosate ban on the State level. I'm surprised, because Virginia is usually frugal about these things and other State and local governments have been told that bans on various poison sprays were unenforceable until backed by federal law, but, enforceable or not, I think a glyphosate ban needs to be part of our law. USPIRG circulated a form letter--two paragraphs with ample room for comments. PIRG's paragraphs appear below in bold; the rest of the letter is mine. The PIRG petition was apparently sent and pulled down on Sunday; I'm sorry I didn't check that and post the letter on Sunday. The PIRG webform for State-level petitions includes fields for a street address; only people who live and vote in Virginia have any business writing to Governor Youngkin,

"

Yes, this is a form circulated on the Internet, but if regulation of toxic chemicals is being restored to the State level, I'd like to correspond further with the office of the Governor. I have a lot to add. 

Glyphosate has been known to be a potential carcinogen for almost a decade. But some formulations of Roundup being used to grow our food and to kill weeds in public spaces still contain this toxic chemical. 

Bayer is taking action to make sure it can't be held responsible for the harmful impacts of Roundup. To protect our communities from dangerous toxic chemicals, I urge you to ban the use of glyphosate-containing products.

Bayer promised to withdraw original Roundup (almost pure glyphosate plus preservatives and scent) from the market in 2020. It brought the product back to the market in 2021 and is currently selling at least two versions of "new" Roundup. The version advertised for suburban lawn care is a weaker concentration of glyphosate. The one sold for agricultural use is a real hell's brew of five "herbicides" plus that old familiar scet, which is also known to be toxic.

Once sensitized to the issue by observing the diversity of glyphosate reactions in an open-air market, I can hardly go anywhere without seeing and hearing evidence of the damage New Roundup for Agricultural Use is doing in my rural community. (Note that the name and address on this webform are for a business not an individual; if you want to know who I am and where I live, in real life, that can be arranged.) Friends and relatives react to it; people in Wal-Mart discuss their reactions to it; TV and Internet advertising reflects the shifting demand for OTC meds for reactions to it. 

Basically what people can expect from exposure to New Roundup feels like any combination of symptoms of measles, mononucleosis, and food poisoning. Some people are disabled by it; some work through it. I have one neighbor who admittedly wants to "run people off" the neighborhood in order to buy land cheap, who deliberately sprays Roundup when it is most likely to harm the rest of us. I'm a celiac with reactions that include internal bleeding. I am being deliberately tortured by this neighbor. I'm younger than he is and can ee his body deteriorating faster than mine. But we currently have a local law that if I say out loud on the street what most people say about this man's behavior on the Internet, I can be charged with disorderly conduct--but when he literally tears strips of bleeding body tissue out of me, the law does nothing.

So I think we need some tight restrictions on outdoor spraying of *any* chemicals. And I think Bayer needs to fund studies of samples taken from patients with all chronic bleeding disorders, and to compensate the patients whose samples show that their bleeding is aggravated by exposure to glyphosate. 

"

Things I Wish More People Talked About Openly

Topic suggested by Long & Short Reviews: 

https://www.longandshortreviews.com/miscellaneous-musings/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge-for-August-14-2024/ 

Sometimes I wish more people talked openly about our glyphosate reactions. Most people do have a consistent pattern of reactions to this ubiquitous chemical, though many people don't recognize it. Most people don't think of themselves as chemical-sensitive. With glyphosate, especially, people's reactions can include almost anything. Glyphosate affects humans most directly by killing friendly bacteria in our digestive systems. Nobody feels that happening, directly. What we feel may be noticeable minutes or hours later and usually involves a physical weak point. Our weak points may have causes and triggers that have nothing to do with glyphosate, yet exposure to glyphosate triggers reactions that may be more serious than our reactions to the original causes or triggers. 

People often say, "I used 'Roundup' for years and I never noticed a reaction." They might feel offended if they were told that others noticed their reactions, though that may be the case. Glyphosate reactions can include mental confusion, learning disabilities, and mood swings. They can also include tiresome little physical reactions that people think they're concealing from others, like stomach gas, an unsteady walk or a stiffness that makes us "look old," blurred vision, or shaky hands. 

People who are being paid by chemical companies often say, "The (corporate-sponsored) 'science' says glyphosate has very low toxicity..." That's based on animal studies that selected for the species least likely to show reactions, and when you look at the actual studies, anyway, the studies show that most animals DID show reactions, but each animal's reaction was different so each reaction could be described as statistically insignificant. Thousands of animals suffered and died to get those cherry-picked results showing that at least the animals didn't all develop the same kind of cancer. I've debated on this topic, before the corporations prevailed on Twitter to block the topic from view, and "won"--once even in a language I don't actually speak. Corporations have spent a lot of time choosing statistics that seem to support the conclusions they want, but however well the numbers may seem to add up, those statistics do not accurately reflect reality. The facts are pretty clear to an open mind, and they just don't support the conclusions the corporations want them to support. 

My clinching argument is: "If (name of corporation) really believes glyphosate is safe, they can always test a half-dozen samples from any patient who has an internal bleeding disorder and see whether the level of glyphosate in each sample correlates with the level of bleeding." I say that because my observation of my celiac disease certainly does show a correlation--deadly precise. I believe that, if there are patients whose internal bleeding varies and is not correlated with glyphosate exposure, it would be worthwhile to find out what is going on inside them, so the corporations really ought to fund those tests. They can afford it; glyphosate has been incredibly profitable. But for some strange reason no chemical company has ever funded any such studies. They prefer to cling to their studies of mice and dogs.

It should be noted, though, that there is a well documented pattern in which some fertile females, of many species including humans, don't react to various toxins because their bodies store toxins in placentas of what then come out as defective, often stillborn offspring. There is also one in which people who don't show immediate reactions to various toxins tend to be the ones who, perhaps because they're more likely to expose themselves to greater levels of those toxins, develop cancer later on. Some people really don't show immediate glyphosate reactions. I don't think those people can be considered lucky.

And it's hard to tell when we've been exposed to glyphosate. Food manufacturers refuse to test for it (tests are expensive) or warn us about it on labels; many foods, including "natural, healthy" favorites like celery, strawberries, and spinach, are still likely to contain enough glyphosate to make people sick. Very few restrictions have been placed on people's spraying glyphosate into air and water. "Roundup" sold for "lawn care" has a trademark scent that breaks down quickly in the air and, if it's noticed, is easily mistaken for cut grass and/or pool chlorine. (This scent is produced by a chemical that's been shown to be toxic all by itself.) Glyphosate sold for public or agricultural use has no odor or taste. Home gardeners very often sell or share food they believe they have "organically grown," but the food products have absorbed enough glyphosate from routine spraying of nearby road verges that they still make people sick. Tracing the source of glyphosate exposure can make people feel that the situation is hopeless.

Finally, as the Vicious Pesticide Cycle completes its round, farmers are observing that spraying glyphosate actually breeds more kudzu, jimsonweed, and Spanish Needles. Corporations have had to Do Something. What Bayer ("Weasels of the world, unite") has done is to bring out New Roundup for "lawn care," which is supposed to be a weaker solution of glyphosate, and New Roundup for farm use, which is a fearful concoction of glyphosate plus four more "active" poisons, some new and some known carcinogens. Exposure to New Roundup (for farm use) is generally agreed to be an unpleasant experience for anybody. I described my first reaction as "measles and mononucleosis and food poisoning, all at once." That's a description most people who are old enough to remember measles seem to relate to. People who didn't notice reactions to plain glyphosate notice reactions to New Roundup.

Nobody wants to talk about their glyphosate reactions. When they're not little things we want to believe nobody's ever noticed that we have, they're disgusting, like the celiac and pseudo-celiac reactions that have been more frequently reported every year since glyphosate's been on the market. If polite people have to mention celiac reactions, all they're ever going to say toward defining their terms is "Look it up." They're certainly not a topic people would want to bring up on a date, or in a job interview, or in a sales presentation, or at church, or on any social occasion. If we call friends and say "Do you have five minutes to talk about recurring, disgusting symptoms?" most people will probably say "Isn't there anything else at all you'd rather talk about?" 

That's what the corporations are banking on, as they continue frantically marketing glyphosate while paying off the cancer victims. Bayer is actually pushing "Roundup" in order to have enough money to pay the cancer victims! And these corporations have leaned heavily on news media and social media companies to suppress this whole topic. And they have smeared, harassed, even physically attacked people who persist in talking about it.

So, are we going to let the corporations get away with that? If you don't want to let the corporations keep selling poisons while knowing they cause chronic disease symptoms and contribute to cancer, then you need to have those unpleasant conversations. They're disgusting...and they're embarrassing...and they just might save the life of someone close to you. We have to keep talking to each other, and putting pressure on health care providers and on elected officials, to get glyphosate and similar poisons banned. 

Regular readers know that celebrities have talked and are talking about these topics--although what they've said is being suppressed. The Glyphosate Awareness movement has room for everybody--entertainers like Neil Young, politicians like Robert Kennedy, activists like Ralph Nader, as well as universities like Purdue and, not to suggest that they have any business dictating policy to any government, the World Health Organization. (If the Devil had a body, that body would probably have glyphosate reactions and we'd have room for it in Glyphosate Awareness...WHO is the next thing.) 

Glyphosate Awareness is a grassroots movement, NOT an organization that raises funds/ I don't want your money and I'll denounce anyone who does (though writers have a right to ask people to pay for books, and politicians have a right to ask people to donate to campaign funds--those are separate things from Glyphosate Awareness). We want your activity. We have documents; you can find them online (a good curated collection of documents in one place is at MomsAcrossAmerica.org) or order printed copies, at cost, from this web site. We ask you to share the information in these documents in ways that seem right to you.

In fact, because people in Glyphosate Awareness have been smeared, harassed, and attacked, I recommend that students and parents maintain a low profile when sharing this information. If I live another fifty years, I'll still have a long list of things to do, and if I die tomorrow, I'll still have had a longer and better life than most humans ever had. I can take the heat. Robert Kennedy can. Vandana Shiva can. If you're over age 50, you can too. If you still have, or still think you might have, children at home, we want you to share information and sign petitions, but you need to raise those children first. 

Bad Poetry: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Last night I was out with a friend who wanted to roll down the car windows and enjoy the mild breeze stirring the heavy, humid air. I warned: "Somebody's sprayed poison. I don't know where, but close enough."

"You can smell it, y'mean?"

"No, feel it. My eyelids are itching."  

This led to a discussion of how different people can tell when we've been exposed to glyphosate or, even worse, to New Roundup, which adds four other "active" poisons to glyphosate. 

"By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

All count arthritis as a curse.

Sprayers make it even worse."

"By the burning of my eyes,

Something wicked this way flies.

Glasses are not what I need;

From poison sprays I must be freed."

"By this burst of violent rage,

Evil seeks me to engage.

Not a word of blame I'll say

To my family this day."

"By the anguish of my soul,

Evil seeks me to control.

I need no pills for 'depression.'

They need active opposition."

"By this sneezing and this cough,

Evil's near and not far off.

No flower's pollen, no pet's dander,

But the greedhead goons who slander."

"By the spinning of my head

Something wicked's being said.

Local climate change is real,

But poison sprays are what I feel."

As a mnemonic rhyme this could go on for a long time. Let's just remind everyone...If it feels as if you have "Long COVID," if you don't remember mononucleosis, and pinkeye, if you don't remember measles, and food poisoning, all at the same time, you have probably been exposed to New Roundup. You will probably feel miserable and not get much done for about a week. There is a cure...it's called a BAN!

One of the Recipes for Grandma Bonnie's Veggie Burgers

During Grandma Bonnie Peters' lifetime, the recipe for her Veggie Burgers was an official trade secret. I don't know whether she wrote it down or memorized it. I know that the Veggie Burgers that were sold in stores were made in industrial quantities and shipped out frozen. So this is not the recipe for the popular sage-flavored version some readers may remember eating. The proportions for a family meal's worth of any recipe are different from the proportions for the industrial version. 

Actually, because it was fresh baked, this version tasted better. Actually, finding the recipe brought back long-buried memories of the fun we used to have, cooking with vegetables, before 2009 when most commercially grown vegetables started to have glyphosate sprayed right on the part people ate. Will we ever be able to trust and enjoy vegetables in that way again? 

These Veggie Burgers were developed specifically for use with a low-protein diet. For me, the key to enjoying them is to recognize that they're "burgers" in name only, or resemble hamburgers only in their size and the ways you could heat up pre-frozen ones. They are a vegetable loaf designed for patients eating a low-protein, low-fat diet. The onion and potato give them a savory flavor people on such diets tend to miss, but in protein and calories they're closer to the bun than to the hamburger. If a low-fat, low-protein diet has not been recommended for you, as it was for the patients who inspired GBP to market Veggie Burgers, you can eat these "burgers" with a bean soup or even a meat stew.

Anyway, this was something close to the recipe for Grandma Bonnie's Allergy-Ease Veggie Burgers, in a size you can easily make at home. Some recipes for veggie burgers can be quite elaborate. GBP had worked out a few recipes that were as easy for her to throw together as a vegetable stir-fry or a pan of cornbread.

Ingredients for Family-Size Batch of Sage Veggie Burgers

1 can green beans (a pint-sized can)

2 cups your own vegetable stock

1/2 cup sunflower seed kernels

2 tablespoons oil

2 teaspoons molasses

1/4 cup of a safe soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Aminos

 

1/4 cup dried onion flakes

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon paprika

2 teaspoons sage

1 cup rice flour

1-2 cups Betty Crocker Potato Buds (potato flakes) as necessary to make a dough

Salt

Method for Family-Size Batch of Sage Veggie Burgers

Heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. Grind the sunflower seed kernels and finely chop the green beans. This is most easily done in the blender or food processor. Drain the beans, saving their liquid to add to your vegetable stock pot or jar, and put them in the blender container.

2. Measure in two cups of vegetable stock. GBP used whatever vegetable cooking and canning liquids she had. Supermarkets sell vegetable stock, but I don't think GBP ever used it. It tends to contain added salt and monosodium glutamate and may contain glyphosate residues. Carrots and celery are key ingredients of traditional vegetable stock; they also soak up glyphosate like sponges. 

3. Blend these ingredients almost completely smooth. Then combine with the others in the blender or in a mixing bowl. Use enough potato flakes to make a wet but cohesive dough. Taste, and add up to a teaspoon of salt as needed. GBP said salt probably wouldn't be needed if you used soy sauce.

4. Shape patties. You will have six burger-sized patties, which will fit nicely on a baking sheet you can oil or line with your Silpat baking sheet liner. 

5. Bake 20 minutes, then turn the pan and check for browning and doneness. They will need to bake 5 or 10 minutes more.

6. Although people who eat wheat could eat these burgers in buns, the burgers are breadlike and make a very bready sandwich. GBP served them with a hot soup, vegetable, or bread and a cold lettuce-tomato-cucumber salad. 

Is It Safe to Make These Veggie Burgers Yet?

The commercial conglomerates refuse to tell you whether commercially sold vegetables, even the ones misleadingly labelled "organic," have been sprayed with glyphosate or something else that may cause symptoms. You have to be vigilant. Know your reactions and, if you have a reaction to vegetables, don't use that kind again. 

However, people have been complaining about and not using glyphosate-sprayed veg for several years now, and most companies have taken heed. My experience has been that green beans are usually fit to eat these days. Potatoes are riskier, but often safe. Rice and spices are usually safe to eat. If you have good sources of unsprayed vegetables, it's safe to enjoy these Veggie Burgers. Soy sauce is the ingredient in this recipe that is most likely to be contaminated. If you can't find glyphosate-free soy sauce, substitute a a little more vegetable broth and use the full teaspoon of salt.

And if GBP had not clung to the idea that "vegetables are so good for us, we should keep on eating them even if they're poisoned," she might have lived longer. So be careful about using vegetables. I love vegetables and recommend eating them when you can, but stop using them if you find that they contain glyphosate or other poisons.