Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter 8

There would have been more news in this newsletter if I hadn't been sick yesterday. Not too sick to work around the house, but definitely too sick to be out in public. I really thought it might have been a virus, because several people mentioned being sick yesterday. Then this morning, after finally getting some sleep, swallowing some food, and not feeling urgently sick (it had finally rained a bit), I saw the browned-out grass along the road...

The Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter is published weekly by Priscilla King, c/o Boxholders, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322. It’s available free, in plain text as an e-mail or attachment. Printed or audiocassette versions are available for the cost of production. (Audiofiles are free to anyone who can convince me that s/he is blind and can’t read a document aloud using widely available software.) Reprinting, recirculating, and sharing this information at the reader’s own expense is encouraged, provided that all sources of material are credited.

1. WHY AREN’T OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS DOING THE LIVE CHAT?

Although I’ve certainly invited my elected officials to the live chat on Tuesdays, 2-3 p.m. Eastern time, and I’m sure you’ve invited yours, seriously, how many elected officials actually want to be caught participating in a Twitter Live Chat? How...Trumpy. My State Delegate does officially tweet during the state legislative session, but only about what’s going on, on the floor, and it’d be downright unpatriotic to expect him to look at tweets about anything but bills; when he’s at home, earning his credibility by being a good neighbor and lawyer, he’s mostly offline. Your people are busy too, and their eyes aren’t getting any younger.

We need to make it easier for them. Your elected officials receive stacks of printed material from industry lobbyists, along with free samples and social invitations and all sorts of goodies some people think they ought to refuse to take. They receive more stacks of printed material from partisan lobbyists like Friends of the Earth, who have the right idea about glyphosate but tend to bundle it together with a lot of other ideas that some of us might not endorse. They hire help to sort, file, maybe even read this stuff. Many of these helpers have young eyes, which helps, but even young eyes can’t stare at computer screens all day long.

Here’s what you can do: Print and mail your Newsletters to your elected officials (they are supposed to recycle mail that doesn’t come through a post office in their districts). Or, if you want to be flashy, you might even choose to fax the Newsletters to them. Elected officials you don’t know personally probably prefer faxes, tedious as those are to handle, because some of them still remember the year some lifeform even lower down the scale than Bayer’s goons mailed out first-class letters with nasty stuff in the envelopes. If you don’t want to inflict faxes on the world or burden the congressional office buildings with envelopes, you might want to experiment with printing key information on single pages you can fold and send through the mail—stamp and addresses on the front, content below the fold.

Visit your elected officials’ web sites to find out more about their systems for handling incoming messages. If their web sites sort messages by topic, you should do that too. If you get a reply from a staffer, cherish this attention from an Official Expert on the Topic, and address follow-up correspondence to that person. If you still have a land phone, I’d never recommend putting your phone number on the Internet, but I would recommend sharing it with legislative staff. They may get unlimited free or cheap long distance calls, and if incoming calls aren’t costing you money, that’s definitely the way to talk with them.

2. WHY “GOOD” BRANDS LIKE KELLOGG’S AND LOMA LINDA ARE STILL TOXIC

Monsanto bought pieces of a lot of food brands before selling out to Bayer. Although these brands aren’t officially Bayer brands...here’s why Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is full of glyphosate and GMO: Ben and Jerry sold out, years ago, to Con Agra, which sold out to...The precise current ownership of some of these corporations is debatable, since this list was compiled before the merge, but basically, if it’s a huge nationwide brand found in all big-chain supermarkets everywhere, it’s probably tied to Monsanto and it probably contains glyphosate. And if the people who originally produced it, when it was something safe to eat and even nutritious, are still alive, like Ben and like Jerry, they’re probably very unhappy with what’s been done with their original, excellent idea.

https://vocal.media/feast/food-brands-owned-by-monsanto

3. NO SPRAYING WITHIN 2 KILOMETERS OF A RESIDENCE

Quebec was where, in the 1980s, a map of Parkinson’s Disease was found to show a weird resemblance to a map of “pesticide” use. Quebeckers have not forgotten this, much as some people wanted Parkinson’s Disease research to forget it (the map appeared on Michael J. Fox’s web site, temporarily, and was pulled down). (The map was discussed in Oliver Sacks’ Case of the Frozen Addicts, book and movie.) Daphne Cameron reports on a bold, forward-thinking move to demand a ban on all “pesticide applications” within 2000 meters of a residence. Opponents of the proposal are already claiming that, if it’s enacted into law, it’ll be used to interfere with the sale, maintenance, or reclaiming of rural houses in order to give greedheads more acres they can legally poison...We all need a ban on spraying any poison within ten miles of a residence, and we also need a ban, just to keep the greedheads from grabbing for more small farms, on marketing any “food” that contains any trace of any “pesticide.”

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/environnement/201909/05/01-5239878-pas-depandage-de-pesticides-a-moins-de-2-km-des-residences-reclament-des-organismes.php

Incidentally, the article above mentions that the pesticide most likely to have been involved in Parkinson’s Disease was an older one than glyphosate, known as paraquat. Paraquat, Cameron claims, has been used to produce symptoms of that disease (neuromuscular spasms) in laboratory animals.

4. GLYPHOSATE AWARENESS SALUTES ROSEMARY MASON

The United Kingdom has its own Queen of Glyphosate Awareness: Rosemary Mason.

https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/09/officials-ignore-pesticides-and-blame-alcohol-and-biscuits-for-rising-rates-of-disease/

Because Glyphosate Awareness is non-partisan even about US politics, this newsletter hereby refuses to add any further comment on the relevance of Dr. Mason’s paper to current UK politics. Actually I think Colin Todhunter’s said it all. For those who’ve not been following British news lately, some background...Where do we need to begin? Britain joined the European Union many years ago. Some people in Britain want to dissolve that alliance. Our President likes this because he thinks it’ll lock the UK into an exclusive trade deal with the US. Some people in Britain fear that, if that deal went down, it would subject them to, among other things, toxic US food. Since they don’t have a glyphosate ban their fears are beyond the scope of this newsletter. Here’s a sample British explanation of what they do fear (quite rightly I’m afraid).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-us-trade-deal-food-standards-chlorinated-chicken-gm-brexit-a9060876.html

5. ON THE DARK CONTINENTS, THE DENIAL CONTINUES

This unenlightened, outdated article published in South Africa echoes the stale whining we find in North and South America. Hello, Johannes Richter? The claim that glyphosate contributes to cancer is not based entirely on mouse studies, any more. It is based on more ominous, longer-term human studies. There’s no rational way to deny that most of the documented glyphosate reactions promote the growth of cancer, but the statistical debate at this point is between a study that suggested that people who handled glyphosate were much more likely to get two rare forms of cancer than other people, and another study that suggested that, maybe, they weren’t. (All the studies suggest that glyphosate exposure may indeed reduce an individual’s risk of developing some slow-growing cancers—very likely by causing the individual to die from other reactions before the cancers have a chance.) Glyphosate Awareness encourages editors to stop publishing this kind of display of ignorance.

https://croplife.co.za/pesticide-use-in-the-wine-industry-placed-in-context/

6. QUIRKY LOSES THE CONCEPT

I posted at Quirky.com the idea that the inventors there invent workable boiler and steamer devices for delivering safe, well controlled jets of steam or hot water to targeted plants, rendering pesticides obsolete. How funny to find that that page isn’t showing up on Quirky.com any more. They say people can bat ideas around into marketable forms...apparently they want to limit those ideas to cheap joke gifts.

7. GLYPHOSATE HARMS FISH

When glyphosate is sprayed near the bodies of water where fish can still live, in North America, it’s not uncommon to find fish floating or beached downstream. Here, in a scholarly journal whose print date is scheduled for November, is the write-up of a study of exactly how glyphosate harms the next generation of itty-bitty fishies:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166445X19301559

8. BEEKEEPERS ABUZZ

Beekeepers (who’ve chosen to post a video rather than a useful document) are suing “the Trump Administration” for failing to ban glyphosate already. Nice try, beekeepers. I think we’ll have more luck leaning on Congress, to regulate a misguided executive branch, rather than suing the President, but some people don’t like their Congressmen and want to sue somebody. Meh. In addition to suing manufacturers of glyphosate, we could sue the un-neighborly, stubborn, stupid people who’ve continued to spray the stuff since this summer’s TV ad blitz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlriaH0s8ks&feature=youtu.be

9. GLYPHOSATE-TAINTED VACCINE CAUSES “ANTI-VAXXER” REACTIONS

This is news? Maybe. Some of us might have thought that “anti-vaxxers” are just people who don’t like needles, or who, having got through life well enough when only seven vaccines were recommended for babies, aren’t sure why seventy vaccines may now be pushed upon the modern baby. Wrong, says Robert Kennedy (Junior). Several of them became “anti-vaxxers” because they or their children reacted to a specific batch of vaccine that was tainted with glyphosate.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-response-to-the-message-of-measles-what-the-new-yorker-wouldnt-publish/

10. CAN A WOMAN CLEAN UP THE BULLYBOYS’ MESS?

Bayer hires former Johnson & Johnson chief Marianne DeBacker, Ph.D., as “head of business development and licensing of pharmaceuticals.” At least we can hope that DeBacker won’t be as sexist as some Bayer employees have shown themselves to be. For more than that, Ben Adams doesn’t offer much hope...

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/j-j-s-de-backer-jumps-ship-to-bayer-to-seek-out-r-d-pacts-but-after-monsanto-don-t-expect

11. AUSTRALIANS START SUING BAYER, TOO

Copycats. Though probably right.

https://www.9news.com.au/health/roundup-cancer-weed-killer-glysophate-farming-agriculture/e7e7ef5c-7f21-4f63-ada8-ddae8f341b9e

Teen'Zine Crosses Line

This post is for John Horvat at returntoorder.org . I don't know that the editor of a teen'zine site is going to be impressed by non-subscribers' pronouncements about a pro-teen-sex article being an offense against God. I do remember, though, that there are teenagers who might appreciate a frank discussion of the fact that some teenagers want to obey the law that orders them to practice abstinence until they reach the magical eighteenth birthday that's supposed to make them old enough to become parents.

Here's the e-mail I sent the'zine, which does not deserve the publicity of a link:

"
Dear Editors,

In a world where it's treated as a crime if anyone over the magic age of 18 touches a teenager's back, you're *encouraging* teenagers to think about boinking their hearts out, buying birth control pills, considering prostitution? I'm a Protestant and don't usually feel as censorious as the Catholic correspondent who complained about the August sex article seems to do, but you should be encouraging teenagers to sublimate, sublimate, and sublimate some more--not to get themselves and the people they usually find attractive (who are over 18) in trouble that may ruin their lives even 30 or 40 years later.

Believe it or not there actually *are* teenyboppers who appreciate help distracting themselves from their hormone surges. Not because they think having hormones is a sin; because they want to do something besides become teen single parents. I was one, once. I know teenagers today who would prefer that magazines try to stir up whatever hormones we baby-boomers may still have, toward one another, and tell teenagers how to pass tests, get jobs, avoid being manipulated into silly quarrels...things their hormones are not already screaming at them nonstop for three days of every month, or, when the male hormones take over, every seven seconds of every day. They don't WANT to be jailbait, or single parents, or used to ruin someone's career. They would prefer to get on with their own lives.
"

Teenaged readers are hereby encouraged to set up alternative screen names your friends won't recognize and debate this anonymously, on Disqus, below, or on Twitter. Those of us who want help to practice self-control, whether tempted by sex, food, alcohol, angry outbursts, fears, procrastination, laziness, or whatever else, don't need to be teased about it, but we would appreciate not having temptation shoved in our faces.

Which is why, as a teenager, I seldom read the printed magazines that used to consist of "Darling, you are growing up" or "Look at this stranger's face, it's supposed to make your heart throb" or "Buy this so you'll look sexier in the sponsor-approved way" pieces. And I don't recommend them to today's teenyboppers, either.

Here's a book by a fellow who felt the same way. I didn't come to the same conclusions he does, because he and I grew up in different subcultures that used the word "dating" in different ways; as a teenager I liked dating, Seventh-Day Adventist style, meaning you go to a school or church thing with a friend of the opposite sex, free of charge, and if you had a particularly nice time you shake hands. But Joshua Harris, Wendy Shalit, and other writers are onto something. If adult society wants teenagers not to be single parents, we have to stop trying to use sex to sell them stuff, too. Fair is fair.

Tom DeWeese on "Developments" We Do Not Need

After posting our Congressman's latest, I next found this e-mail from Tom DeWeese. It's a fundraiser but it exposes the problems built into many "development grants"--people who want to destroy small farms and rural communities, and herd people into slums. "Planners" want to replicate the conditions that made (some of) our ancestors leave old Europe, to replace the conditions that allowed our more recent ancestors and us to enjoy better lives than people do in Europe. Let's be clear: Some people who think this way may also be socialists and/or Europeans, but basically it's about money. They want to make money on those slums. This is the kind of "development" we need to avoid, in the point of Virginia and everywhere else, however alluring the grants may seem to be.

"
The attack on private property is growing across the country at a frightening rate. And the target is single-family homes – most likely -- your home.

I have warned in recent weeks that Sustainable Development/Agenda 21 advocates are now calling zoning for single-family neighborhoods RACIST!

Minneapolis, Minnesota became the first city to end single-family zoning as the Mayor called such protections “self-segregation” devised as a legal way to keep black Americans and other minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods. Unbelievable!

Seattle, Washington followed Minneapolis. Other cities are looking into such plans. The federal agency HUD is pushing such plans under the Obama program called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). And city after city are taking HUD grants that force them to impose such plans.

So, attacks on single-family homes are racing across the nation.

Now Oregon is about to become the first state to eliminate single family zoning across the state...

The speaker of the Oregon House, Rep. Tina Kotek, says this action is urgent because Oregon has a “housing crisis.”

That is bunk!  Oregon has a government-made crisis. 

For over 20 years Oregon has been enforcing “Urban Growth Boundaries” (UGB) around its cities. This is part of the Sustainable “Smart Growth” policy.

As I have told my audiences around the nation, under Smart Growth, planners put an artificial line around the city and declare NO GROWTH will take place outside that line. That’s “Urban Sprawl!” And the planners insist that urban sprawl is a danger to the environment because it encourages the use of automobiles, strip malls, and the need for infrastructure like roads and power.

We used to call that building an economy until the Sustainablists declared war on human society! 

Here’s what they didn’t count on. The UGBs assure the area of the city doesn’t expand. But what happens when the population does? The only way to grow is UP!

That means there is no room for single family homes with backyards for the kids. According to the rhetoric of the Sustainablists the only solution is to flood single-family neighborhoods with duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and “cottage clusters.” They call this “up zoning.” Says Oregon House Speaker Kotek, “The state’s housing crisis requires a combination of bolder strategies.”

I love how these control freaks always use the words “bolder”, “innovative”, and “master plan” to make their destructive policies sound urgent and brave!

The truth is they are pushing their own political agenda, and when they get caught by their unworkable plans, they pretend to offer a solution to their own idiotic regulations -- which they created.

For example, Portland Oregon has long been the poster child – the shining example -- of the genius of Smart Growth praised in government and environmental meetings across the country.

Smart Growth is an utter failure as property rights have been destroyed, housing costs have skyrocketed and now there is a housing crisis!

Why? Because over the years, under Smart Growth, Portland’s population has grown by over 80%. But legislators have only allowed the Urban Growth Boundary to expand by no more than 6%!

NOW PORTLAND HAS A HOUSING CRISIS AND SO WE MUST ABOLISH SELFISH, RACIST, SINGLE-FAMILY HOMES!!!

Imagine what these policies will do to your property values – your equity – all that you have worked for?

Most people could quickly figure out the problem and dump such destructive policies. But WHY can’t your city councils and county commissions see the lies?

Because they are surrounded – inundated – with special interest Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) - private groups with their own private agendas.

The worst offender of this is the American Planning Association (APA). They, or affiliated planning groups, are in nearly every single community in the nation. They have the plans and the ability to get your local officials to apply for specific grants from HUD, EPA and other federal agencies to put it all in place.

I have fought the APA in city after city. I have exposed their lies and their tactics, exposing their direct ties to Agenda 21. As local citizens heard my warnings and took action to stop such plans in their communities, the APA panicked.

The APA rushed to create an “Agenda 21 Myths and Facts” page on their website. They did all they could to hide any connections between their planning and Agenda 21. Their planning was all local, local, local, the APA insisted.

They assured communities that planning “protects private property…preserves and protects its value.” They said “planning preserves neighborhoods, providing certainty to homeowners…”

Well, do you think calling single family home owners “racist” and destroying single family zoning protections “preserves” neighborhoods --- or destroys them? When they build an apartment building in your neighborhood will you feel “protected?”

The truth is the American Planning Association is part of the Planners Network. The network is officially part of a group called the Organization of Progressive Planners, which is, “an association of professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic and environmental planning…” That is Agenda 21!

On the website. www.plannersnetwork.org, you will find in its Statement of Principles this quote, “We believe planning should be a tool for allocating resources…and eliminating the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society…because the free market has proven incapable of doing this…”

That is social justice. Anti-free enterprise. Anti-private property. That is what every planner, working in every American city, believes!!

And the APA is digging in to promote more of Agenda 21/Sustainable Development policy which they deny exists.

Right now, the APA is sponsoring a webinar series for planners and elected officials. Here are some of the subjects they are addressing.

“New examples of cites approaching the challenge of climate change in creative and innovative ways,” including “rethinking transportation, to greening city buildings, to protecting against sea-level rise…” They go on to say the speakers at the webinars will offer guidance which “contextualizesinternational, national, and state mandates and goals.”

This is NOT local. This is NOT protection of private property. This is why you are seeing such reorganization of our local communities and counties across the nation.

The American Planning Association and its NGO co-conspirators are using their LOCAL planning lies to bring every city in the United States into compliance with UN Agenda 21/Sustainable Development policy.

Let me be very clear about where this is all headed.

Single-family homes are the greatest example of private property ownership. Private property is the greatest means for individuals to build personal wealth through the equity earned. That’s why America grew so fast!

As private property ownership is destroyed, the wealth of the nation is diminishing. Now we are hearing some economists worry about a lack of housing starts in the building industry that could lead to an economic crisis.Yet, these “experts” rarely mention the true culprit – Sustainable Development, Smart Growth government tyranny!     

Now, as we see more and more housing moving toward the high-rise stack and pack rental properties, a new attack is growing – this time against private owner landlords.

New government regulations are raising taxes on landlords, along with higher building costs. But now, many communities are starting to impose rent controls, because it’s not “fair” to make people pay so much for their homes!

Here is the bottom-line goal of this attack on private property and single-family homes. If we lose this battle against Sustainable Development/Smart Growth policies, then, eventually all housing will become government controlled. There will be no private homes or condos. Only government housing!
 
A free society cannot survive that!

This is the tyranny that I have dedicated my life to stopping! The American Policy Center (APC) is the leading organization in the nation fighting to save private property.
"

With all that information I think the APC deserves a link, but their buttons were messing up the formatting of the whole page...donations will be accepted by americanpolicy.org.

Morgan Griffith on Rural Development Grant Workshops

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

USDA Rural Development Grant Workshops

Encouraging economic development and providing essential government services in rural areas come with challenges. The many rural areas of Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District are no exception.

In order to draw more jobs and investment and to more fully provide those services, it is important that communities know what resources they have at their disposal and how to best access them.

One of those resources is U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development. The mission of this agency is to serve rural Americans through loans, grants, and loan guarantees, as well as technical assistance.

Many communities in the Ninth District have already benefited from Rural Development programs. For example, I recently announced that it had approved a grant of $30,000 to the Dickenson County Public Service Authority to study the replacement of certain water lines. This grant indicates the type of quality-of-life improvements Rural Development supports.

My office is hosting two workshops during October in partnership with Rural Development to help communities navigate the process of applying for grants.

The first will be held on Wednesday, October 9, at 1pm at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in Abingdon. It will focus on Rural Development’s Broadband ReConnect Program, which offers loans and grants to help fund broadband service in rural areas. The program lends a hand to rural Americans as they pursue the ever-expanding number of economic and cultural opportunities found online.

The second will take place on Friday, October 11 in Bassett and will address the broader array of opportunities funded by Rural Development. Details on location will be announced closer to the date.

I am glad to be hosting these workshops to better inform you about the resources available to our communities. Working with our partners in the Federal Government such as Rural Development, we can bring new opportunities to rural Virginia.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405, my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671, or my Washington office at 202-225-3861. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"

Morgan Griffith on Federal Funding for the Opioid Crisis

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

More Resources to Fight the Opioid Crisis

On September 4, the Trump Administration announced the release of $1.8 billion in funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to help communities around the country fight the opioid crisis.

$20.4 million of that money will go to Virginia in support of efforts here in the Commonwealth.

The federal funds come from two sources. The first, State Opioid Response grants, were originally created, authorized, and reauthorized by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on which I serve. They are awarded by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration and go to state governments for their prevention, treatment, and recovery services.

Overdose Data to Action grants, awarded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), help collect information on overdoses, supporting the development of better policies.

Virginia’s portion of these funds will be split between the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services and the Department of Health. By supporting efforts to combat addiction and overdoses at the state level, HHS is providing flexibility for states and communities to find the solutions that match their circumstances.

These funds are the latest resources devoted by Congress and the Trump Administration toward turning the tide in this deadly epidemic. Encouraging signs of progress can be found. CDC Director Robert Redfield recently observed that the provisional overdose death count in 2018 declined by 5%, the first decline in two decades.

Virginia has been deeply affected by the opioid crisis, with enormous quantities of pain pills pouring into some of our cities, towns, and communities. If these provisional numbers are confirmed, the decrease in overdose deaths is certainly welcome news.

Nevertheless, now is no time to become complacent, as the crisis shifts away from prescriptions pills and heroin that characterized it toward synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. From my place on the Energy and Commerce Committee, I will continue to support policies that will make a difference in the fight and conduct oversight to make sure they are carried out properly.

"

Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter 7

Here's the text of Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter #7:

The Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter is published weekly by Priscilla King, c/o Boxholders, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322. It’s available free, in plain text as an e-mail or attachment. Printed or audiocassette versions are available for the cost of production. (Audiofiles are free to anyone who can convince me that s/he is blind and can’t read a document aloud using widely available software.) Reprinting, recirculating, and sharing this information at the reader’s own expense is encouraged, provided that all sources of material are credited.

1.THE EPA FALLS SHORT

This week’s big news, though no big surprise, was that the United States’ Environmental Protection Administration failed to ban glyphosate. Environmental organizations are already churning out form letters for US citizens to send to our Members of Congress, urging the EPA to do its job.

Glyphosate Awareness once tweeted to the EPA that just restoring levels of glyphosate contamination in food to pre-2009 levels would probably make a lot of people suddenly feel more than ten years younger. We received a reply, “Thanks,” from an unknown Twit. We can’t take credit for it, but after all our comments the EPA went ahead and re-licensed glyphosate use at something similar to pre-2009 levels, allowing farmers and gardeners to continue spraying this poison on fields, but supposedly not “approving” it for use as a desiccant (i.e. spraying it directly on food).

This should bring some people relief...temporarily, anyway. If farmers comply with the current EPA rule, which we’re told many are not, then it should become safe to eat fruit and vegetables again. For how long? Who knows?

We will, of course, continue to need to document every symptom everyone reports during the days after fields, roadsides, etc., are poisoned with glyphosate. We will, of course, need to complain bitterly and begin filing lawsuits against those who recklessly endanger our health.

Glyphosate Awareness does not officially recommend violent retaliation.It would be such a pity if random persons, call them John Stiles and Richard  Miles, suffering from allergies recognized the stupid farming practices of another person, call him Bill Giles, as a cause of such allergies, tackled Giles, and poured a 32-ounce spray bottle of “Roundup” down his throat, after which Giles was paralyzed and unable to roll away from the puddles of blood-flecked froth that continually formed in the bed where he lay for the next forty days. It would be a pity because in some states, although a jury trial would probably ensure no real loss, Giles or his heirs would have a right to sue Stiles and Miles. State legislatures need to correct this. Spraying poison is a violent crime against anyone downwind or downstream of the site.

2.UNPAID FOOD ADS

Glyphosate Awareness positively celebrates food producers that at least try to deliver glyphosate-free food. We note that some of them, like Ben & Jerry’s, have failed to meet this goal. Others, like the whole Riviana rice empire (which now packs Zatarain’s, Success, and Mahatma brand rice products), have succeeded with some products not others: while Success Brown rice and some Zatarain’s flavors are at least low enough in toxicity that I can eat them without immediately becoming sick, others, especially rice mixes containing beans or soy products, lag behind. Some, like General Mills and Bob’s Red Mill, may be trying to “work to rule” and advertise products that may be lower in glyphosate content but are not really 3-G-Free.

Glyphosate Awareness does not currently have any test results for Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn.

We have found good results for Barbara’s brand cereals, Arrowhead Mills grain products, Xego fruit bars, and Joolies dates. All of these are available online (for outrageously high prices, of course) if not in stores near you.

3. CALIFORNIA ORDERED TO STOP LABELLING GLYPHOSATE A CARCINOGEN

In California, the legislature ordered that labels on glyphosate product warn people that it may cause cancer. The EPA ordered that California withdraw this order, on the grounds that glyphosate has not been confirmed to be a primary carcinogen. (The primary cause of many kinds of cancer is believed to be a virus.)

https://www.verisk3e.com/resource-center/blog/us-epa-and-california-remain-loggerheads-over-labeling-glyphosate-carcinogen?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=VeriskSM&utm_content=922019

It would be helpful to consumers if Californians blanketed product labels, and entire stores, with the full text of the EPA’s very own early study of the effects of glyphosate exposure on human emergency hospital patients, including the photos of skin lesions if possible.

4.GLYPHOSATE AND PARAQUAT BLAMED FOR DEATHS OF SUGAR CANE WORKERS

While the report mentions Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba, it doesn’t specify how many countries in South and Central America have lost over twenty thousand sugar cane workers, altogether, to kidney failure linked to exposure to glyphosate and paraquat. It is written in German.

https://www.presseportal.de/pm/70663/4363559?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

5. BOILERS AND STEAMERS, THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE?

People need to move away from the whole idea of spraying poison over an entire field, to the idea of carefully removing unwanted plants. Build a better boiler, and you’ll make glyphosate, paraquat, dicamba, chlorpyrifos, and all the other abominations in this class obsolete.

I’ve posted one idea at Quirky.com: https://invent.quirky.com/invent/331141 . Real inventors need to improve this idea. This one is for Jane Doe to remove stubborn crabgrass from the edge between her lawn and curb—a hand-held mini-steamer/boiler that would screw onto the garden hose, heating only the water she needs for the task. Because steam tends to distill into hot water that would be likely to drip onto Jane’s hand, this product would need to be used carefully.

Real inventors need to work on bigger and better ideas. We’re already seeing boilers fitted onto railroad cars, where a simple machine can spew out enough heat to keep railroads vegetation-free. We could start building in-between-size boiler robots to run through cornfields, too.

6. ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, STILL NEEDS GLYPHOSATE AWARENESS

We have six weeks to help this city understand that the company that offers many city residents steady jobs needs to realign its entire company policy.Please be both gentle and thorough before the trial scheduled for mid-October.

Morgan Griffith: Back After Labor Day

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

Monday, September 2, 2019 –                                

Labor Day

On the first Monday of September, Americans observe Labor Day.

Americans are a hard-working people. From farms to factories to mines, we are willing to take on difficult tasks to support our families and provide goods and services people need and want. It is appropriate that we take this late-summer day to celebrate the industriousness and dedication of American workers.

According to U.S. Census data, the industry that employs the most people in Virginia’s Ninth District is educational services, followed by health care and social assistance. Still very significant, manufacturing is in the next spot.

One of my priorities as a Member of Congress is supporting economic development in our communities. The right policies will help create and maintain good jobs.

To hear what’s on the minds of workers and job creators, I visit businesses and service providers as I travel the Ninth District. During the month of August, I toured quite a few to witness firsthand what goods and services they provide. Among those I visited were the Mar-Bal Plant in Dublin, ABB Inc. in Bland, Appalachian Plastics Inc. in Glade Spring, Southern Fishing Company in Martinsville, and Mountain Empire Older Citizens Inc. (serving Lee, Wise, and Scott Counties and the City of Norton). Last week while touring Camrett Logistics in Fairlawn, I had the opportunity to speak with many of their workers. 

America could never have become the great nation it is without the strength and spirit of its workers. We should always remember that fact every day, especially on Labor Day.  And we should honor the hard-working men and women of America.

Serving You

During the August district work period, I presented Navy veteran Johnny Nolen with a Good Conduct Medal at his home in Martinsville. It was long overdue since he had originally earned it 50 years ago in the summer of 1969.

Mr. Nolen had not received his Good Conduct Medal because his length of service was miscalculated. He apparently should have received credit for some of his early enlistment time and time while he was recovering from an injury he received on his ship.  A friend told him he should contact my office. 

After he contacted us, we inquired with the National Personnel Records Center. Subsequently in checking the records, it was discovered that Mr. Nolen did indeed deserve the medal.

His case highlights the work my office does for constituents of Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District. In many instances, we have been able to secure the medals earned by our veterans, ranging from this Good Conduct Medal to the Silver Star.

If you have questions or face difficulties with federal agencies or programs such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, Medicare, the Internal Revenue Service, and more, the caseworkers who work in my offices and go to traveling staff office hours are able to assist. If you are in need of a passport, we can help. 

My staff can also help navigate the process of applying for grants from the Federal Government or seeking a nomination to the U.S. Service Academies.

A case with a federal agency can be opened on your behalf by contacting my office either by phone or website or attending traveling staff office hours held at least once each month in every county/city that doesn’t have a bricks and mortar office. Our bricks and mortar offices are located in Abingdon and Christiansburg. Before we can get to work on a case, you will need to fill out a privacy consent form.

In Washington, we can set up tours of several national landmarks, including the Capitol and the White House. Some of them can be booked up months in advance, so contact my office early if you are planning a trip to the nation’s capital.

Constituents can also order American flags, including ones that have flown over the Capitol.

It is my honor and privilege to assist you in your interactions with the Federal Government. If I can help you in this way, please visit my website or call my offices.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405, my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671, or my Washington office at 202-225-3861.  To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.  Also, on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"

I really need to make sure more of these messages go online. I know some readers look for them...

Another Free Shopping Spree at Michaels

It's that time again...the time when I post about what I did with that Michaels store giftcard I got for filling out Yougov surveys.

If you too would like to receive occasional giftcards, YougovUS is easily the best survey site you could join. They don't waste your phone time, don't send you masses of spam, and almost never even send you one of those smarmy, phishy "surveys" that ask a lot of questions about you and then lock you out of finishing the survey. Most surveys are short and simple; a few might even give you ideas for blog posts. (If you blog about shopping and want to mention SEO-friendly topics for Google, Amazon, or Yahoo sponsors, Yougov is a steady stream of ideas.) Young people who buy a lot of stuff get a lot of shopping surveys and may earn giftcards on a monthly basis. Older, more frugal people earn a few giftcards each year. You can sign up all by yourself, but both you and I get bonus points if you use this link to sign up:

https://today.yougov.com/refer/brglBv6yISldXGeAQbYXBg/

I've been doing one or two surveys a week for about as long as this web site has existed, and as a knitter I've used Yougov to cover all my yarn buying needs. That's a rule I've set for myself. I filled a room with wonderful yarn bargains, years ago, and have knitted only just over halfway through it, but like most knitters I still enjoy looking at the new stuff and usually see something I want to take home, so I allow myself that pleasure whenever Yougov sends me a giftcard from Michaels.

If you're not a crafter, you're not limited to Michaels. You can choose giftcards from several participating businesses, including food stores, restaurants, sporting goods stores, clothing and shoe stores, theaters, hotels, hardware stores, Amazon, and now you can even ask for cash to be transferred to a bank if you have an account you're willing to connect to the Internet (which I don't recommend).

Anyway, I lucked out on the trip I made this weekend. All yarn was on sale. I had planned to buy this yarn, in three shades of blue, for the anti-bullying blue hat campaign:



The regular price is about ten dollars a pound, so for three pounds I'd expected to use the $25 giftcard and pay about $5 in cash. But, during the sale, I was able to throw in another pound of yarn and pay only about $1 in cash. What fun. Thank you, Yougov. Thank you, Michaels.

Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter 6

The Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter is published weekly by Priscilla King, c/o Boxholders, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322. It’s available free, in plain text as an e-mail or attachment. Printed or audiocassette versions are available for the cost of production. (Audiofiles are free to anyone who can convince me that s/he is blind and can’t read a document aloud using widely available software.) Reprinting, recirculating, and sharing this information at the reader’s own expense is encouraged, provided that all sources of material are credited.

1. WHY THE IMPOSSIBLE BURGER WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO DIGEST

Vegan meat analogs are nothing new. George Washington Carver and Jethro Kloss worked on some of the earliest ways to mix grain and legume proteins into a “nutritionally complete” vegan protein loaf. In the early twentieth century, researchers from Loma Linda University, at Loma Linda Foods, and the Kettering College of Medical Arts, at Worthington Foods, marketed some commercially successful, highly palatable, wheat-soy versions of “Numete,” “Protose,” “Proteena,” “Veja-Links,” “Bolo-No,” “Wham,” “Skallops,” “Big Franks,” “Little Links,” “Chicketts,” “Turketts,” and others. In the 1980s Morningstar Farms (a division of Worthington) brought out Breakfast Links, Breakfast Patties, Grillers, and Scramblers, followed by other “Textured Vegetable Protein” products that sold well enough to be stocked by big-chain supermarkets.

Since most of these products were wheat-based, most contained monosodium glutamate, and some also contained milk or egg, they were unacceptable to many vegans. Specialty “veggie burgers” became quite a fad at the turn of the century. Grandma Bonnie’s Allergy-Ease Veggie Burgers were made of rice, beans, potatoes, squash, sometimes tomatoes, herbs, and salt for a nutritious, low-fat, hypoallergenic vegetable protein patty. Boca Burgers contained a little more salt and fat but were also totally gluten-free, vegan, and hypoallergenic. Other “veggie burgers” that contained either wheat or soy were also marketed. While none of these products tasted much like the ground and grilled beef patties known as hamburgers, they were intended to be equally fast and tidy to prepare.

Now, a company calling itself Impossible Foods proudly presents the Impossible Burger, a bioengineered soy product that they claim has been made so “meaty” it even “bleeds juices” onto the grill. They’ve even invested enough in this thing to get national fast food chains to offer the Impossible Burger; other Veggie Burgers have been available only in locally owned restaurants. Their promotional drivel even presumes to call the Impossible Burger “clean food.”

We really need a federal law about this. If “organic” food might be allowed to contain 1 discernible part per billion of any chemical “pesticide residue,” which had better be borax, tobacco, or chrysanthemum, then “clean” food should have to be proved to contain ZERO “pesticide residue.” One part per billion of glyphosate in something advertised as “clean food” should be grounds for a million-dollar lawsuit.

And no point for guessing: the Impossible Burger started with “Roundup-Ready” soybeans, so it oozes glyphosate.

Don’t eat it. Don’t touch it. Don’t use utensils that could have touched it. The Impossible Burger is not only not “clean food”; it’s poison.

https://www.goodstuffnw.com/2019/05/impossible-burger-industrial-scam-with.html?spref=tw

2. BUT OTHER FOODS HAVE BECOME POISON, TOO

Basically, if you want to eat truly “clean” food in any part of North America, you need to have (or be very, very nice to someone who has) a genuinely organic, “pesticide”-free farm. In the supermarkets? Deep-sea fish, eggs, chicken, and turkey are likely, but not guaranteed, to be fit to eat. Beef and milk are likely to contain glyphosate. In the produce department, garlic and onions typically need less “protection” than other food and are likely, but not guaranteed, to contain very little glyphosate. Grains, beans, seeds, greens, and fruit are likely, though not guaranteed, to contain enough glyphosate to cause people who show celiac or pseudo-celiac reactions to gush blood.

While a lot of people are going to say “Well, I have to eat something; if it kills me it kills me,” those of us who can get clean plant food—even if it’s unconventional plants like dandelions—can potentially help other people survive by just saying no to all commercial produce that’s not certified “3-G-Free.” Supermarkets typically make it easy to ignore the fruit and vegetables sections. Do that. Here I stand to testify that many of us will feel better if we eat raw wild vegetables picked out of our never-sprayed gardens rather than glyphosate-tainted lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, apples and carrots. And the farmers need to know that spraying poison on food is just not an option they can use to increase yields, ever any more; that sprayed veg are going to lie somewhere and rot while people risk short-term nutrient deficiencies to eat clean, glyphosate-free diets.

3. QUANTIFYING THE OBVIOUS: GLYPHOSATE AND COLORECTAL CANCER IN THE YOUNG

And in the older, no doubt...Robert Kennedy traces the links between exposure to glyphosate, which is known to cause colorectal tissue damage in a minority of all living creatures studied, and colorectal cancer. Yes, the more times you tear strips off any part of the body, the better chance cancer has to grow in the damaged area.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/child-health-topics/known-culprit/glyphosate-and-colorectal-cancer-in-young-adults/

4. THEY CAN’T GO BACK...

Monsanto/Bayer want to keep us in the box of thinking that the alternative to one “herbicide” spray is another “herbicide” spray. They’ve been warning for a long time that if we get glyphosate banned, farmers will “have to” use dicamba (the active ingredient in “Spectracide”), “which is even worse.”

“Worse” may vary—if your body forms bleeding ulcers every time it’s exposed to glyphosate, as mine does, you don’t think the nose and throat irritation dicamba causes to everybody, impartially, is worse. You think “What fun to be suffering only as much as the people who sprayed the poison are suffering,” and actually you suffer less, coughing for a few hours, than you would from the bleeding ulcers. However, all spray-on poisons harm other living things, including other humans, typically without their knowledge or consent. All spraying of poison on plants or soil should be recognized by our legal system as a violent crime.

In my neighborhood some people tried switching from “Roundup” to “Spectracide.” The whole neighborhood coughed, sneezed, and rasped alike. The people who were less aware of their reactions to glyphosate, who almost want to believe that dizziness and fainting and vomiting are normal parts of the aging process rather than that they need to move their lazy bones to weed their gardens, rushed back to “Roundup.” Here’s a study that may show why the resulting reactions, this summer, have been even worse...Why I didn’t just see blood in the toilet bowl as usual, but saw nothing but blood in the toilet bowl for nine days, after eating one little can of spinach (which used to be something I ate while recovering from celiac reactions. Why John Doe didn’t just feel queasy after drinking one little V8, but had to bolt out and lean over the porch railing. Mixing these two poisons apparently aggravates the effects of both.

https://sustainablepulse.com/2019/08/21/new-study-finds-glyphosate-increases-volatility-of-dicamba-herbicides/

5. IF YOU KNOW ANYONE IN ST. LOUIS, SEND THEM THESE NEWSLETTERS

It’s no longer news: Bayer’s persuaded the judicial system to stage the next big Roundup cancer trial in Monsanto’s old home town, St. Louis, Missouri, where they hope juries will think of Bayer as a big part of the local economy rather than a foreign corporation that, if it cares whether Americans live or die, probably prefers Americans dead. We have about another month to show the “Show Me State” that we actually want Bayer to be kept alive, and profitable—under new management that will steer Bayer back to forms of “weed control” that are ethically acceptable, such as building hand-held and highway- and railroad-adapted devices that spray steam on target plants. 

Status Update: Pause to Catch Breath

So I've been sick. Very sick, though not in a great deal of pain. Inside parts of the body take a beating from any celiac reaction. Prolonged celiac reactions can cause them to stop functioning, temporarily, which is what was going on last week, or permanently for a few days before death. Celiacs never know which bad time will be their last one so these things are always good for a certain amount of drama. Will we be back to business as usual next week, or will we be dead? Until a person is most definitely going to be dead, the symptoms never give much of a clue. I was feeling just a bit sluggish and grumpy, and knowing that I was feeling sluggish and grumpy because I might start feeling extremely sick for a day or so and then die. It's an interesting experience. I only wish certain world leaders of business and government could share it. Does anyone else out there enjoy the mental image of Donald Trump doing Twitter in the bathroom, tweeting "I wonder if I'm ever actually going to sit on the toilet and use it again"? That's sadistic enough for this web site, so let's move on.



My insides were able to repair themselves and resume functioning--this time--though they're not quite back to normal yet.

The damage was done by spinach. Vegetables are the staff of life, when they're not full of glyphosate. I saw things online about how the natural phytochemicals in vegetables may help the body recover from glyphosate poisoning. Grandma Bonnie Peters affirmed that she was sticking to her beloved vegetables, and she was still walking about. I was sticking to my resolution to eat only plants that grew on my own property, and some of those were tainted by glyphosate vapor drift too. I was tainted by glyphosate vapor drift whether I ate anything or not. And then I was walking down the road, and I came to a whole sack of canned vegetables that had been dumped out along with a card notifying the dumpers when they could get another load of food from the local food bank. As this web site observed a few years ago, rural communities are lavishly supplied with fresh vegetables in August. People whose neighbors are likely to leave sacks of fresh new potatoes on their steps at night don't even want to bother carrying in canned potatoes. So I left the cans of potatoes where they were, but I took home a can of spinach--a name brand I used to like--and ate it. I like spinach. And did that can of spinach ever "bite back." In fifty years of celiac life I've never been so sick before.

Lesson learned: We need to be vigilant about the fact that what we've always thought of as healthier eating has flipflopped, in the last few years, into being dangerous eating. This summer I've talked to someone who had no reason to distort the facts, who said that when his children worried about his not eating enough fruit and vegetables, and brought him some tempting juicy apples, he ate two apples and was "sick as a dog." I've watched someone drink a nice healthy V8 and have to run out and get rid of it within minutes. And one little can of spinach has all but literally tied me in knots for most of this month. Do not eat fruit or vegetables you did not personally raise in a place separated by at least a half-mile of trees from poison-sprayed areas, such as public roads, Gentle Readers.

Anyway I kept working, on the principle that if you are going to die next week you might as well get as much as possible done this week. This is a useful thought for celiacs because most of us are going to survive a few life-threatening crises, and it pays to keep working through them. I wrote most of a book for one e-friend, and proofread the manuscript of another one for another e-friend, and agreed to write a nice review of a book by a friend of an e-friend whose judgment I trusted...

Ulp. I don't trust that e-friend's judgment so much any more.

It is a superbly well written book. It took me right into the consciousness of a character who, at the time when I was born, would have been certified insane. During the years when I was growing up, part of the definition of a Real Liberal was someone who defended the right of characters like this one, who aren't violent and can usually do some sort of job, to live as normally as they choose to live and not be certified insane. And it left me feeling that, in fact, the character is insane.

I think a free society should have room for books--not necessarily in public libraries where children might find them--that fully express the consciousness of people who are definitely different from most of us, or from anyone we'd want to know. I think the danger in a book like The Turner Diaries, which also expresses that kind of viewpoint, is that such books can confuse or frighten the very young, not that they'll "convert" any normal mind to thinking the way characters like Turner think. I think it's good for educated adults to read things that help us understand the way these people think. Who knows whether, if German libraries had stocked copies of The Turner Diaries, the German people would have recognized that putting Adolf Hitler in charge of anything more momentous than the perspective on one of his paintings was a Very Bad Idea, and how much good a Very Bad Novel might thus have accomplished, or how much good a different but also Very Bad Novel might accomplish today.

[For those who don't remember: The Turner Diaries is the one with the neo-Nazi narrator who writes, among other things, about going for a Sunday afternoon walk in the park with friends, meeting a neighbor family, and opening fire: "I got one of them, my pal got two, my girlfriend got the mother and baby, but the old grandfather ran away." The world needs to know that that kind of consciousness exists, but yurgh.]

I just feel very, very squirmy from the cognitive dissonance...of recognizing...that people like the friend's friend exist, and have a right to write about the way they think...but for most purposes they probably really are what I'd have to call insane.

It reminds me of the experience of reading The Turner Diaries, or of reading Surfacing, only in a different way from either of those.

Surfacing ticked me off, on the first reading, because as the nameless narrator's guilt reaction builds up to its explosion point she starts babbling about "Americans" as the embodiment of all that is evil in the beautiful Laurentian forests. Theoretically this particular hang-up was chosen, like the character's temporary anorexia in The Edible Woman, as an obvious index of the character's loss of contact with reality, because nobody really hated the United States all that much. (Prozac Dementia has since added a whole new dimension to hate in both the United States and Canada; Surfacing was first published in 1972.) Reading in 1992, I could very easily imagine people (like Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein, back then) hating the United States all that much; I was not amused.

After giving myself a year or two or three, I found myself accepting that the character in Surfacing becomes hysterical about "Americans" (by which she means greedheads) and flees into the woods in a crazy fantasy of becoming a pure-souled Canadian bear, or whatever, because she's racked by guilt about having let herself be bullied into "choosing" abortion. All of us American literary critics accept that, in print. Funnily enough, in real life I've never talked to a U.S. literary critic who was really comfortable with Surfacing. We'll grant that, Canada being part of the American continents too, the character's temporary phobia of "Americans" is an acceptable way of fictionalizing what might in real life have been a phobia of men or germs or food or who knows what; that the rest of her mental breakdown narrative is credible enough to convince us that Atwood observed a real woman having a real mental breakdown; that her spiral into real temporary insanity is something that might be caused by guilt about having "chosen" abortion...Ouch. We want to believe that people who might consider "choosing" abortion are sane enough to be respectfully left alone with their horrible "choice." We don't like the ramifications of a beautifully written novel convincing us that "choosing" abortion might be either a symptom or a cause of what may be nonviolent, or temporary, but is certainly insanity while it lasts.

So this friend of a friend has written another brilliantly horrible, horribly brilliant novel, and now I've promised to think of a tactful, tasteful way of introducing it to American book lovers...and that task leaves me feeling wan and inclined to wail, "But I've been sick." Cognitive dissonance bites.

Can I procrastinate a little more with a quick phenology note? So far this week I've seen a beautiful red-tailed hawk, the usual butterflies (Tiger Swallowtails, Red-Spotted Purples, Wood Nymphs), a relatively small (only five inches, not six) Carolina Mantis, the usual flowers (Queen of the Meadow, dayflowers, Ladies' Bedstraw (the perfumy kind), myrtle, chicory, jewelweed), one of the usual caterpillars (Anisota senatoria, the Orange-Striped Oakworm, in its next to last skin where the stripes are mostly yellow) for late August--and one unusual thing: a small but ripe pawpaw fruit. Those usually start forming on the trees in late August but don't ripen and fall before mid-September.

And peaches, of course...I have a little feral peach tree, an unplanned descendant of some less hardy Elberta peach trees that snowstorms broke down long ago.  It survived last winter's Big Snow; without even being braced back into position, it grew back to a reasonably upright angle. It is bearing like mad. Its fruits are about half the size of the ones sold in supermarkets, at best, and tend to fall off while green, but this year it has an excuse for dropping so many underripe peaches. It can hardly hold its branches off the ground under the weight of the bigger, riper ones. Most years having a peach tree in Virginia is pure self-indulgence: the flowers are pretty in spring, and some people like the look of the trees, but if you want to pick a bushel of peaches you have to drive further south. I have heard that it's either one year out of ten, or one out of twelve, when a peach tree is worth propping up after it collapses under snow. Either way, this is the year.

Human behavior does and doesn't qualify as phenology...Tuesday morning, a little before 3 a.m., I woke up sneezing. "Drat and blast, they must've sprayed glyphosate on the railroad again." Then the situation got worse--I smelled smoke. I got up and checked that it wasn't coming from any electrical wires inside the house before I found the source of the smoke. It was that college kid from down the road. Likely the kid woke up sneezing or feeling sick too, and sneaked out to be sick privately without disturbing his parents. Well, the kid's wandering up and down the private road is no problem, and even his dog is all right as long as the dog stays with the kid, but I hate the smell of marijuana.

And then, for once, the local weather did the most convenient thing it could have done in this situation. It poured rain. The kid got a nice cold shower as he hurried home, and the poison along the railroad soaked in, leaving lots of browned-out privately owned gardens near the railroad but nice clean air to breathe, and I continued to recover from the last bout with poisonous vapors rather than getting worse.

Yesterday I heard some good news: a busload of tourists had asked the travel agency, particularly, to stop at the cafe in Gate City. Our fame is spreading. "They'll probably want to talk to you, or some of them will," someone idly speculated. It was not as if that was part of the tour. It was not as if any visitors who wanted to talk to me, in particular, wouldn't have been able to e-mail or tweet about it.

"Hmm. How big is this bus?" If it had been the size of the last tour bus I saw--ten or twelve people--I would have wanted to come in and watch the tourists' reactions to my picturesque little town.

"Thirty-five or forty people."

The cafe seats thirty-six. The table where I like to plug in the laptop will seat two people, but the laptop takes up more than half of the table.

"I think I'll come in late," I said, "so all the tourists can sit down and sip their coffee."

So I did. I didn't see any tourists when I strolled in, about 11 a.m. I did see a beautiful reduction in the stack of souvenir T-shirts, though, and I hope the tourists are enjoying their new shirts and other souvenirs.