THE HYPOTHESIS

The aging eye filters out blue light, affecting circadian rhythm and health in older adults.

THE INVESTIGATORS

Dr. Martin Mainster and Dr. Patricia Turner, University of Kansas School of Medicine.

For decades, scientists have looked for explanations as to why certain conditions occur with age, among them memory loss, slower reaction time, insomnia and even depression. They have scrupulously investigated such suspects as high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and an inactive lifestyle.

Now a fascinating body of research supports a largely unrecognized culprit: the aging of the eye.

The gradual yellowing of the lens and the narrowing of the pupil that occur with age disturb the body’s circadian rhythm, contributing to a range of health problems, these studies suggest. As the eyes age, less and less sunlight gets through the lens to reach key cells in the retina that regulate the body’s circadian rhythm, its internal clock.

“We believe the effect is huge and that it’s just beginning to be recognized as a problem,” said Dr. Patricia Turner, an ophthalmologist in Leawood, Kan., who with her husband, Dr. Martin Mainster, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Kansas Medical School, has written extensively about the effects of the aging eye on health.

Circadian rhythms are the cyclical hormonal and physiological processes that rally the body in the morning to tackle the day’s demands and slow it down at night, allowing the body to rest and repair. This internal clock relies on light to function properly, and studies have found that people whose circadian rhythms are out of sync, like shift workers, are at greater risk for a number of ailments, including insomnia, heart disease and cancer.

“Evolution has built this beautiful timekeeping mechanism, but the clock is not absolutely perfect and needs to be nudged every day,” said Dr. David Berson, whose lab at Brown University studies how the eye communicates with the brain.

So-called photoreceptive cells in the retina absorb sunlight and transmit messages to a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (S.C.N.), which governs the internal clock. The S.C.N. adjusts the body to the environment by initiating the release of the hormone melatonin in the evening and cortisol in the morning.

Melatonin is thought to have many health-promoting functions, and studies have shown that people with low melatonin secretion, a marker for a dysfunctional S.C.N., have a higher incidence of many illnesses, including cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

It was not until 2002 that the eye’s role in synchronizing the circadian rhythm became clear. It was always believed that the well-known rods and cones, which provide conscious vision, were the eye’s only photoreceptors. But Dr. Berson’s team discovered that cells in the inner retina, called retinal ganglion cells, also had photoreceptors and that these cells communicated more directly with the brain.

These vital cells, it turns out, are especially responsive to the blue part of the light spectrum. Among other implications, that discovery has raised questions about our exposure to energy-efficient light bulbs and electronic gadgets, which largely emit blue light.

But blue light also is the part of the spectrum filtered by the eye’s aging lens. In a study published in The British Journal of Ophthalmology, Dr. Mainster and Dr. Turner estimated that by age 45, the photoreceptors of the average adult receive just 50 percent of the light needed to fully stimulate the circadian system. By age 55, it dips to 37 percent, and by age 75, to a mere 17 percent.

“Anything that affects the intensity of light or the wavelength can have important consequences for the synchronization of the circadian rhythm, and that can have effects on all types of physiological processes,” Dr. Berson said.

Several studies, most in European countries, have shown that the effects are not just theoretical. One study, published in the journal Experimental Gerontology, compared how quickly exposure to bright light suppresses melatonin in women in their 20s versus in women in their 50s. The amount of blue light that significantly suppressed melatonin in the younger women had absolutely no effect on melatonin in the older women. “What that shows us is that the same amount of light that makes a young person sit up in the morning, feel awake, have better memory retention and be in a better mood has no effect on older people,” Dr. Turner said.

Another study, published in The Journal of Biological Rhythms, found that after exposure to blue light, younger subjects had increased alertness, decreased sleepiness and improved mood, whereas older subjects felt none of these effects.

Researchers in Sweden studied patients who had cataract surgery to remove their clouded lenses and implant clear intraocular lenses. They found that the incidence of insomnia and daytime sleepiness was significantly reduced. Another study found improved reaction time after cataract surgery.

“We believe that it will eventually be shown that cataract surgery results in higher levels of melatonin, and those people will be less likely to have health problems like cancer and heart disease,” Dr. Turner said.

That is why Dr. Mainster and Dr. Turner question a practice common in cataract surgery. About one-third of the intraocular lenses implanted worldwide are blue-blocking lenses, intended to reduce the risk of macular degeneration by limiting exposure to potentially damaging light.

But there is no good evidence showing that people who have cataract surgery are at greater risk of macular degeneration. And evidence of the body’s need for blue light is increasing, some experts say.

“You can always wear sunglasses if you’re in a brilliant environment that’s uncomfortable. You can remove those sunglasses for optimal circadian function, but you can’t take out the filters if they’re permanently implanted in your eyes,” Dr. Mainster said.

Because of these light-filtering changes, Dr. Mainster and Dr. Turner believe that with age, people should make an effort to expose themselves to bright sunlight or bright indoor lighting when they cannot get outdoors. Older adults are at particular risk, because they spend more time indoors.

“In modern society, most of the time we live in a controlled environment under artificial lights, which are 1,000 to 10,000 times dimmer than sunlight and the wrong part of the spectrum,” Dr. Turner said.

In their own offices, Dr. Mainster and Dr. Turner have installed skylights and extra fluorescent lights to help offset the aging of their own eyes.

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WASHINGTON — The government’s attempt to reduce childhood obesity is moving from the school cafeteria to the vending machines.

The Obama administration is working on setting nutritional standards for foods that children can buy outside the cafeteria. With students eating 19 percent to 50 percent of their daily food at school, the administration says it wants to ensure that what they eat contributes to good health and smaller waistlines. The proposed rules are expected within the next few weeks.

Efforts to restrict the food that schoolchildren eat outside the lunchroom have long been controversial.

Representatives of the food and beverage industries argue that many of their products contribute to good nutrition and should not be banned. Schools say that overly restrictive rules, which could include banning the candy sold for school fund-raisers, risk the loss of substantial revenue that helps pay for sports, music and arts programs. A study by the National Academy of Sciences estimates that about $2.3 billion worth of snack foods and beverages are sold annually in schools nationwide.

Nutritionists say that school vending machines stocked with potato chips, cookies and sugary soft drinks contribute to childhood obesity, which has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about one in every five children are obese.

No details of the proposed guidelines have been released, but health advocates and snack food and soft drink industry representatives predict that the rules will be similar to those for the government’s school lunch program, which reduced amounts of sugar, salt and fat.

Those rules set off a fight between parents and health advocates on one side, who praised the standards, and the food industry, which argued that some of the proposals went too far. Members of Congress stepped in to block the administration from limiting the amount of potatoes children could be served and to allow schools to continue to count tomato paste on a pizza as a serving of vegetables.

Nancy Huehnergarth, executive director of the New York State Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Alliance in Millwood, N.Y., said she expected a similar fight over the vending machine rules.

“I think the food and beverage industry is going to fight tooth and nail over these rules,” Ms. Huehnergarth said.

But representatives of the food and beverage industry say they generally support selling healthier snacks and drinks in schools.

“But we are a little concerned that they might make the rules too stringent,” said James A. McCarthy, president of the Snack Food Association, a trade group in Washington.

Mr. McCarthy said the industry supported nutritional snacks and was working with the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, headed by the former president, in an initiative called the Alliance for a Healthier Generation to establish voluntary guidelines for healthier foods in schools.

The foods include baked rather than fried potato chips, dry-roasted nuts and low-sodium pretzels, Mr. McCarthy said.

Christopher Gindlesperger, director of communications for the American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and Pepsi, said his industry had also worked with schools to reduce or eliminate sugary drinks and replace them with healthier alternatives.

“Our members have voluntarily reduced the calories in drinks shipped to schools by 88 percent and stopped offering full-calorie soft drinks in school vending machines,” Mr. Gindlesperger said.

But a study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine released this month shows that despite industry efforts and those of others, snacking behavior among children remains largely unchanged. One reason is that healthier snacks were being offered alongside less nutritious offerings.

Between 2006 and 2010, the study found, about half of the schools had vending machines, stores and cafeterias that offered unhealthy foods.

The availability of high-fat foods in schools followed regional patterns. In the South, where rates of childhood obesity are the highest, less nutritious food was more prevalent. In the West, where childhood obesity rates are lower, high-fat food was not as common, the study found.

Health advocates say the study points to the need for national standards.

Jessica Donze Black, director of the Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, gave the food industry credit for trying to reduce sugary drinks and fatty snacks, but said the voluntary guidelines did not go far enough.

“What we have is a fragmented system where some schools do a good job of limiting access to junk food and others don’t,” she said. “We need a national standard that ensures that all schools meet some minimum guidelines.”

Still, some school districts question whether students would buy healthy foods offered in vending machines and school stores. Frequently vending machines with healthy alternative snacks are ignored, and children bring snacks from home or buy them at local stores off-campus during lunch periods. Roger Kipp, food service director for the Norwood school district in Ohio, said children could be persuaded to eat healthy foods and schools could still make a profit.

Two years ago, Mr. Kipp eliminated vending machines and school stores in his district and replaced them with an area in the lunchroom where they could buy wraps, fruit or yogurt. Children ate better, and the schools made some money.

“It took a while, but it caught on,” Mr. Kipp said. “You have to give the kids time. You can’t replace 16 years of bad eating habits overnight.”

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A man from the past, hero for today’s Sustainable Living Movement

Written by ELIZABETH FIEND

Two different strains of fungi and a submarine are named after him. He was a man of great spirituality and faith, but subscribed to no specific church. He was recruited by Booker T. (though the MG’s weren’t around yet) and started out growing green onions. Aids to both Gandhi and Stalin asked for his advice. There are rumors that in an unimaginable act of racially-motivated violence he may have been castrated, and other rumors that his disinterest in female companionship simply implied that he was gay. Either way, he was doing it even before there was a word for it.

But he did not invent peanut butter.

That’s Dr. Booker T. Washington, the founder of Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute. The it is ‘chemurgy.’ And the man I speak of is George Washington Carver, whom I absolutely adore.

George Washington Carver knew the importance of the small family farm and of community service; he believed that we should look to nature for advice instead of trying to tame it to our will; he knew that eating healthy, nutritionally sound home cooking was vital to good health and that wastefulness is a bad thing.

Although his contributions were born of economic necessity, his ideas are my ideals.

Here is a man whose work exemplifies so much of what we’re trying to get back to today. If he was alive now he’d be a guru to the sustainable movement, the slow food movement, the holistic movement, the recycling, conservation and environmental movements. He understood the interconnectedness of things, and that ignoring this would have disastrous results.

He also would have brought something key that is missing in these movements: He would have brought poor people into the fray. Much of today’s progressive movements center around with the middle class and wealthy white people because, unfortunately, they’re the ones who can afford the “luxuries” of healthy food, clean energy and organic cotton.

But Carver saw that the poor are the ones most affected by bad food options, high energy prices and lack of education. He believed that the poor would benefit most from a less wasteful world. He was a naturalist at heart and observed that nature did not waste anything, and he tried to do and teach the same.

George Washington Carver, a dynamic man, was born at one of the most dynamic times in American history, 1864 — the final year of the Civil War. Born a slave but emancipated by his first birthday he struggled, as all blacks did, to find and define his place as a free man in an environment forced to change yet woefully unprepared for the challenge.

At first, things were going well but then the assassination of Abraham Lincoln coupled with the subsequent death of his Reconstruction Acts, and the rise again to power of the upper middle class white supremacist, this time called the Redeemers, what little gains given to the former slaves were lost and decades of unrest and attempts at acclimation into the mainstream followed. Even today.

But the world was a stimulating place for a man like Carver. He grew into adulthood at the same time exciting new intellectual fields and ideas were opening up at home and abroad. Darwin was doing his thing. Agriculture was just beginning to emerge as an actual scientific discipline. Mendel founded the science of genetics.

However, the future was not that bright for the poor, minorities and the uneducated. Two things happened at once. The plantations that had previously relied on the cheap source of slave labor now had to develop new ways to turn a profit. And, industrial capitalism was born. Along with these, social fragmentation.

America had seemed like a vast track of unspoiled, unlimited natural resources and natural splendor just a few years prior. But out west land was already turning to dust bowls and in the south, fields were depleted because of an over-reliance on cotton.

While most agricultural researchers were headed towards industrialization of farming, Carver cared most for the people who were so low that industry didn’t even touch them. He devoted himself to the man farthest down.

In his work Carver concentrated on ways to help save the family farm, to preserve soil quality, to eat better, to discover more ways to reuse or recycle natural materials so less money had to be spent. He was into organics because fertilizers were too expensive for the poor to purchase. He developed farming methods that didn’t rely on heavy machinery.

In fact, he was exploring exactly what we’re coming to learn today is wrong with our agribusiness and farming methods; our attitudes towards wastefulness and careless abuse of the environment; our diet.

He floated the idea to use acorns — plentiful, free and a nuisance — as animal feed. He experimented with ways to make faux marble from green wood shavings and rope from cornstalk fibers. He developed paints, stains and color washes from clay and minerals in local soil and from native plants. All done with this in mind: cut down on costs, promote new local industry and small business, waste nothing.

And he taught people how to do all these things. Through his post at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute he not only experimented and conducted classes he wrote and distributed newsletters too. But he didn’t stop there. He also came up with the idea of a mobile education center which he called the Jessup Wagon, so that he could bring training straight to the farmers who needed it most.

He urged crop rotation, switch out from tobacco and cotton to soil-healing, nitrogen-fixing plants like peanuts and sweet potatoes. Then he worked out ways that farmers could have added value from these new crops. By 1939 peanuts, which had never been grown much in the South, were a $200 million industry.

He developed recipes like sweet potato chips and wrote the pamphlet “How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption.” He even led cooking classes to help and educate farmers’ wives.

He understood nutrition and the need for a balanced, varied diet. He devised ways to preserve food by drying it so people with meager means could obtain and maintain a hearty diet. He saw value in the homemade. He was into local plants, wild foods and the medicinal value of plants. He was into self sufficiency.

Carver called his work stovetop chemistry. It wasn’t until the 1930s that a real word was designated defining the division of applied chemistry that was concerned with cooking-up industrial uses from organic substances, chemurgy. Henry Ford just loved him for this and they would occasionally pal around.

During his life his fame, went up and down with the economy. During the world wars and the Depression his ideas were in vogue. Save, save, save. Reuse everything. Make something out of nothing. Here he was in his realm.

But when the economy was in an upswing, people doubted his contributions. Some even wondered if he was a scientist at all.

He was a smart guy, maybe a genius. But because of the color of his skin he had to struggle to educate himself; he had to sit at the back of the bus and had to stay in the servant’s quarters in fancy hotels even though he was the key-note speaker. He never received adequate funding or payment for his work. Today he’s trotted out in 5th grade classes as a great African American. But I think he should be regarded as an inspiration to us all and as a great man, period.

PEANUT COOKIES
by George Washington Carver

3 cups flour
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 cup sweet milk
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cups ground peanuts

Cream butter and sugar; add eggs well beaten; now add the milk and flour; flavor to taste with vanilla; and the peanuts last; drop one spoonful to the cookie in well greased pans; bake quickly.

On George Washington Carver’s tombstone: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

For More Information:

George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol by Linda O. McMurry [book]

You can see more of George Washington Carver’s recipes in this 2005 cookbook The African-American Heritage Cookbook: Traditional Recipes and Fond Remembrances From Alabama’s Renowned Tuskegee Institute by Carolyn Quick Tillery.

About Tuskegee University

About the Civil War

Categories: George Washington Carver, George Carver, sustainable living, African Americans, science, agriculture, Civil War

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Source: Science Daily.com

Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

A simple program involving color-coded food labeling and adjusting the way food items are positioned in display cases was successful in encouraging more healthful food choices in a large hospital cafeteria. The report from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers will appear in the March American Journal of Public Health and has received early online release.

“We found that labeling all foods and beverages with a simple red, yellow and green color scheme to indicate their relative healthiness led patrons to purchase more of the healthy and fewer of the unhealthy items,” says Anne Thorndike, MD, MPH, of the MGH division of General Medicine, who led the study. “We also found that moving items around to make the healthy items more convenient and visible led to further improvement in the nutritional quality of items purchased.”

The study authors note that most current point-of-purchase efforts to encourage more healthful food choices focus on labeling the calorie content of food, which will soon be required for many restaurants and food service vendors as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However, calorie information is only useful if people read and comprehend it — which requires understanding their own calorie needs, accurately estimating serving sizes, and having enough time to consider and act on the information provided. Studies by psychologists and behavioral economists also have noted that individuals tend to maintain their typical behavior patterns and are more motivated by actions with immediate, rather than long-term rewards.

In the MGH cafeteria, color-coded labels indicate the healthiest sandwich choices (green), along with those designated less (yellow) and least (red) healthy.

To find a simpler way to encourage more healthful food purchases, the research team — including leaders of the MGH Nutrition and Food Service — devised a two-phase plan. In the first phase, which began in March 2010, color-coded labels were attached to all items in the main hospital cafeteria — green signifying the healthiest items, such as fruits, vegetables and lean meats; yellow indicating less healthy items, and red for those with little or no nutritional value. Signage in the cafeteria encouraged customers to consume green items often, yellow items less often, and to consider other choices for red items. All cafeteria cash registers were programmed to record and identify each purchased item as green, red or yellow; and additional nutritional information was made available in the cafeteria throughout the six-month study period.

For the second “choice architecture” phase, which began in June 2010, displayed food items were rearranged according to principles of behavioral economics. This phase focused on cold beverages, pre-made sandwiches and chips — popular items likely to be purchased by customers who have little time to spend and may be more influenced by location and convenience. Cafeteria beverage refrigerators were arranged to place water, diet beverages and low-fat dairy products at eye level, while beverages with a red or yellow label were placed below eye level. The sandwich refrigerator was also arranged to put green items at eye level while red or yellow items were placed above and below. Racks of chips had yellow items at eye level and red items below, and additional baskets of bottled water were placed near stations where hot food was served.

At the end of the study period, sales of green items had increased significantly, while sales of unhealthy “red” items decreased. More specifically, during phase 1, sales of all red items decreased 9.2 percent — with red beverage purchases dropping 16.5 percent — while green item sales increased 4.5 percent, with a 9.6 increase in green beverages. In phase 2, red item sales dropped another 4.9 percent compared with phase 1, with beverages dropping by 11.4 percent; and while sales of green items decreased 0.8 percent in phase 2, sales of green beverages increased another 4 percent. A comparison with two satellite cafeterias where these measures had not been instituted revealed that these changes were much more pronounced in the cafeteria where the study was conducted.

“We believe this intervention was so successful because it was simple and easy to understand quickly. The labeling did not require any special skills and could be easily interpreted when a customer was in a rush,” Thorndike explains. “The ‘choice architecture’ intervention was much more subtle and took greater advantage of the convenience factor. Any of these strategies could be easily translated to other food service environments.” An assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Thorndike adds that all elements of the program remain in place, with the color-coded labeling extended to other MGH food service locations, and future analysis is planned to see whether the observed changes are maintained over time.

Additional co-authors of the report — which was supported by the National Center for Research Resources and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute — are Lillian Sonnenberg, DSC, RD, LDN, and Susan Barraclough, MS, RD, LDN, MGH Nutrition and Food Services; Douglas Levy, PhD, Mongan Institute of Health Policy at MGH; and Jason Riis, PhD, Harvard Business School.

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Source New York Times     Written By MARK BITTMAN     Posted by Elizabeth Fiend

Americans eat more meat than any other population in the world; about one-sixth of the total, though we’re less than one-twentieth of the population.

But that’s changing.

Until recently, almost everyone considered their dinner plate naked without a big old hunk of meat on it. (You remember “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner,” of course. How could you forget?) And we could afford it: our production methods and the denial of their true costs have kept meat cheap beyond all credibility. (American hamburger is arguably the cheapest convenience food there is.) This, in part, is why we spend a smaller percentage of our money on food than any other country, and much of that goes toward the roughly half-pound of meat each of us eats, on average, every day.

But that’s changing, and considering the fairly steady climb in meat consumption over the last half-century, you might say the numbers are plummeting. The department of agriculture projects that our meat and poultry consumption will fall again this year, to about 12.2 percent less in 2012 than it was in 2007. Beef consumption has been in decline for about 20 years; the drop in chicken is even more dramatic, over the last five years or so; pork also has been steadily slipping for about five years.

Holy cow. What’s up?

It’s easy enough to round up the usual suspects, which is what a story in the Daily Livestock Report did last month. It blames the decline on growing exports, which make less meat available for Americans to buy. It blames it on ethanol, which has caused feed costs to rise, production to drop and prices to go up so producers can cover their increasing costs. It blames drought. It doesn’t blame recession, which is surprising, because that’s a factor also.

All of which makes some sense. The report then goes on to blame the federal government for “wag[ing] war on meat protein consumption” over the last 30-40 years.

Is this like the war on drugs? The war in Afghanistan? The war against cancer? Because what I see here is:

a history of subsidies for the corn and soy that’s fed to livestock
a nearly free pass on environmental degradation and animal abuse
an unwillingness to meaningfully limit the use of antibiotics in animal feed
a failure to curb the stifling power that corporate meatpackers wield over smaller ranchers
and what amounts to a refusal — despite the advice of real, disinterested experts, true scientists in fact —  to unequivocally tell American consumers that they should be eating less meat

Or is the occasional environmental protection regulation and whisper that unlimited meat at every meal might not be ideal the equivalent of war? Is the U.S.D.A. buying $40 million worth of chicken products to reduce the surplus and raise retail prices the equivalent of war?

No. It’s not the non-existent federal War on Meat that’s making a difference. And even if availability is down, it’s not as if we’re going to the supermarket and finding empty meat cases and deli counters filled with coleslaw. The flaw in the report is that it treats American consumers as passive actors who are victims of diminishing supplies, rising costs and government bias against the meat industry. Nowhere does it mention that we’re eating less meat because we want to eat less meat.

Yet conscious decisions are being made by consumers. Even buying less meat because prices are high and times are tough is a choice; other “sacrifices” could be made. We could cut back on junk food, or shirts or iPhones, which have a very high meat-equivalent, to coin a term. Yet even though excess supply kept chicken prices lower than the year before, demand dropped.

Some are choosing to eat less meat for all the right reasons. The Values Institute at DGWB Advertising and Communications just named the rise of “flexitarianism” — an eating style that reduces the amount of meat without “going vegetarian” — as one of its top five consumer health trends for 2012. In an Allrecipes.com survey of 1,400 members, more than one-third of home cooks said they ate less meat in 2011 than in 2010. Back in June, a survey found that 50 percent of American adults said they were aware of the Meatless Monday campaign, with 27 percent of those aware reporting that they were actively reducing their meat consumption.

I can add, anecdotally, that when I ask audiences I speak to, “How many of you are eating less meat than you were 10 years ago?” at least two-thirds raise their hands. A self-selecting group to be sure, but nevertheless one that exists.

In fact, let’s ask this: is anyone in this country eating more meat than they used to?

We still eat way more meat than is good for us or the environment, not to mention the animals. But a 12 percent reduction in just five years is significant, and if that decline were to continue for the next five years — well, that’s something few would have imagined five years ago. It’s something only the industry could get upset about. The rest of us should celebrate. Rice and beans, anyone?

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BY ELIZABETH FIEND
Serves 4 as lunch or main course, 6 as a side salad
Time: 20 minutes

Category: Vegetarian Recipe

This salad is all about contrasts.
The pears are served warm, making this a great dish to serve on a chilly, rainy day. The sharp cheese, crunchy nuts and creamy honey-lime dressing each stimulate different taste buds providing satisfaction and a feeling of fullness. I’ve divided up one serving between the cheese and nuts so even thought you’ll be eating cheese AND nuts (both contain fat) you will be getting just the right amount of fat and protein.

There’s an optional fun part in this recipe for the kids too. Instill in them a love for vegetables by having them cut the cucumber slices into stars with cookie cutter.

Salad Ingredients:
½ pound spring salad mix
¼ head endive – tear off and discard ends; break into bite size pieces
1 cucumber (see below for treatment)
1/8 lb gorgonzola cheese – break into pieces
3 pears (any kind) – cut into slices
½ cup walnuts – break into pieces

Dressing Ingredients:
1 tablespoon honey
3 tablespoons lime juice
Blend above with a spoon or small whisk until honey is dissolved, than add:
½ cup buttermilk (or 3/8 cup soy milk plus 1/8 cup lemon juice)
2 stalks scallions diced
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste

Instructions:
Mix dressing ingredients until blended (use a small plastic container with a lid for easy shaking)

Mix together spring salad mix and endive in a large bowl

Peel / slice ½ cucumber
Optional: For a beautiful presentation cut cucumber slices into stars with a cookie cutter
Kids love to do this, it’s a great way to get them interested in vegetables too
Dice remaining cucumber and add to dressing

Coat greens with dressing

Gently blend the nuts and cheese into the greens

Top with cucumber stars / slices

Just before serving, microwave pears for 1 minute (or until heated, but not cooked)
Place warm pears alongside cucumbers

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Written By: Heather John     Source:  Los Angeles Times Posted By: Elizabeth Fiend

I can’t hear the word “plastics” without thinking of “The Graduate.” When the film was released in 1967, plastics may have represented the future, but today we’re faced with the past — what to do with all those used wrappers, bottles and baggies.

It turns out a lot of that plastic is finding its way into the cafeteria trashcan. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the average school-age child generates 67 pounds of lunchtime waste each year, much of which comes from packaging. That translates to an estimated 110-million-plus pounds of waste a year in Los Angeles County schools alone. We spend a good deal of time talking about what goes into our kids’ lunchboxes — the organic, the sustainable, the healthful. But what about the lunchboxes themselves?

Because I am what my friends politely call “obsessive,” I spent hours researching containers for my preschooler’s lunch, polling parents about practicality and e-mailing manufacturers about BPA, or Bisphenol A, a chemical that can be found in many containers and that some researchers believe may have adverse health effects.

The conclusion? Most eco-friendly containers are a pain in the neck. Many can’t be put in the microwave, or they require hand-washing. What working parent has the time? And so, I began my quest for the ultimate lunch solution: low-maintenance, waste-free containers that were reusable, functional and BPA-free. No plastic baggies.

I didn’t know that packing a 2-year-old’s lunch would produce so much angst.

I already had purchased a $12 L.L. Bean lunchbox — almost identical to the model I carried some 30 years ago. A representative from L.L. Bean’s assured me that the lining was BPA-free. Although I probably could have found some irreproachably eco-friendly lunch bag made of organic hemp and tied with ribbon woven from fallen banana leaves at a fair-trade local farm, sometimes the greener option is to reuse what you already have. The good news about the polyurethane-coated nylon exterior of my L.L. Bean lunchbox: It’s free of phthalates, which have been linked to hormone problems in children. It’s also durable, which means I won’t toss it into the landfill after a couple of uses.

“People don’t think about the fact that it’s equally as bad to throw out decent products in order to upgrade to slightly better products,” says Dana Kellin McCrane, who designs jewelry under her Dana Kellin label. A mother of two, McCrane co-chaired a green team at her children’s Oakwood School in North Hollywood last year to raise awareness about packing waste-free lunches. “Our green team does the research on products and presents the info to the other parents. We found that parents really want to do this.”

But the products have to work for kids too, she adds. Can your child open the container? Is it spill-proof?

One company that rates highly on McCrane’s list is Lunchbots, which sells food-grade stainless-steel containers that are dishwasher safe. I had seen these on the shelves at Whole Foods but hadn’t given them a second thought until I was sitting down to lunch in Little Tokyo, staring down at a beautifully arranged bento box. Could I find a miniature version for my son?

Several eco-friendly, bento-inspired products are on the market, including PlanetBox, Laptop Lunches and Goodbyn. Even though their plastic was BPA-free, I decided stainless steel seemed the most durable option.

The winner: a Lunchbots Duo compact stainless-steel box with a divider. It fits perfectly into his lunchbox alongside his Sigg water bottle, cloth napkin and stainless utensils.

I use one side of the Lunchbots Duo for a main course, such as a sandwich, and on the other I use two nonreactive silicone 2-ounce pinch bowls to hold fruits, veggies or cheese cubes. To keep food from spoiling, I tuck a reusable Kids Konserve nontoxic ice pack with a sweat-free cover made from recycled plastic bottles in the inside mesh pocket of the lunchbox.

Reusable silicone muffin cups also work as dividers. They are dishwasher safe and won’t leach chemicals into your food when heated. I like baking a batch of whole wheat macaroni and cheese in these cups for individual portions that can be frozen and safely reheated.

“Packing waste-free is not about spending a lot more money,” says Paige Rodgers, co-founder of Fabkins, which produces organic cotton napkins designed for kids. “Look at what you already have, think about buying in bulk to reduce package waste, and you’re saving both money and the environment.”

In fact, looking around your home is probably the greenest path to packing waste-free.

“Bandanas make great napkins,” says Sara Stein, co-owner of the S.PR fashion public relations firm and mother of two. “I am not about what I need to go out and buy but more about what is already in my house that I can reuse.”

At her daughter’s preschool, Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center, packing a waste-free lunch is recommended but not mandated. Stein says she’s not militant about plastics but tries to take a practical approach.

“There are some mornings when I don’t have time to pack lunch,” she says. “I might stop by the grocery store and ask them to fill up my daughter’s thermos with mac ‘n’ cheese, but that’s one less plastic container used.”

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Source: Mother Jones    Written By Kate Sheppard     Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

In 2006, Congress quietly passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a sweeping new law that classified many forms of animal rights campaigning as terrorism. Now the law’s critics have taken to the courts to try to kill it. In a case filed last week, five activists argue that AETA violates their rights by criminalizing constitutionally protected actions.

AETA, which replaced an earlier, weaker law called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA), prohibits anything done “for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise” or that “causes the loss of any real or personal property.” (The earlier version of the law only covered “physical disruption” to operations.) The law also prohibits “economic damage” to an enterprise, which includes loss of profits and pressure put on any investors or other companies that do business with the animal enterprise. Even the definition of “animal enterprise” is so broad that it could be construed as covering any institution that has a cafeteria selling meat or cheese products, argues Rachel Meeropol, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is backing the plaintiffs in the case filed against Attorney General Eric Holder.

“Basically, the law is saying if you cause an animal enterprise to lose profits, then you’ve committed a terrorist act,” Meeropol says. “The whole point of many protests is to cause a business to lose profits, to convince the public that a certain company doesn’t deserve to be patronized.”

Faced with the possibility of terrorism charges for engaging in many forms of protest, a number of activists have decided to curb their activity.

Sarahjane Blum, the cofounder of the anti-foie-gras group Gourmet Cruelty [1], is the lead plaintiff in the suit. She has spent years documenting ducks and geese that are too fat to walk or breathe in videos and photographs, posting them online. In 2004, she was charged with burglary for removing birds from a New York farm, though the charge was later downgraded and she was sentenced to community service. Blum, 33, now worries that otherwise legal activities—like picketing a restaurant that serves foie gras or running education campaigns—could lead to her being deemed a terrorist under the AETA. The law’s broad reach means Blum’s no longer comfortable participating in or encouraging much of the work that helped prompt California lawmakers to outlaw foie gras [2] in the state starting in 2012.

“It’s impossible for me at this point to speak freely,” she says. “I feel, and I am, censored. I am censoring myself.”

One federal judge has already endorsed the idea that the government’s use of AETA has been too broad. In 2009, four protesters in California were charged under the law for allegedly chalking a sidewalk, handing out fliers, and engaging in protests at the homes of researchers that use animals. Ronald M. Whyte, a federal judge in California, threw out [3] the charges, finding that they were too vague and included constitutionally protected actions.

The US Department of Justice has used the older version of the law successfully in some cases. In 2004, a group of animal rights advocates were convicted and imprisoned under AEPA. One of the convicted activists, Lauren Gazzola, is a plaintiff in the suit against the updated law. Gazzola, 32, was a US coordinator of an international campaign against animal product testing known as Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty [4]. The campaign started in the United Kingdom and targeted the animal testing lab Huntingdon Life Sciences, which tests a variety of pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and other products on animals. The SHAC campaign gained traction in the late 1990s after undercover video was released showing Huntingdon employees in the UK punching beagle puppies in the face. It eventually expanded to the US to target a Huntingdon facility in New Jersey.

Gazzola worked with other US-based activists to organize demonstrations, write press releases, and run SHAC’s websites, which advocated for and published reports on a variety of protest activity targeting Huntingdon, its employees, and companies that had done business with it. That included publishing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Huntingdon employees and other people who had done business with the company. The actions SHAC posted on ranged from legal nonviolent protests to property destruction. In its indictment [5], the government argued that the SHAC website encouraged people to commit violent acts and gave them the information they needed to do so.

In March 2006, Gazzola was found guilty of six felony charges, including stalking and conspiracy to violate AEPA. Gazzola was never personally involved in any illegal protest, she says—just in writing and speaking about protest actions, and posting accounts from people who did engage in those acts. Nor were the other five SHAC activists charged with actually committing violent acts. But government prosecutors made it clear that they believed they were shutting down the activities of a group that promoted terrorist acts. (Mother Jones covered the case [4] in 2006.)

Gazzola served over three years in a federal women’s correctional institution in Danbury, Connecticut, and another five months under supervision at halfway house. She’s now in the middle of three years of federal probation, and for next 20 years, part of her salary will be garnished to pay restitution to the companies her actions affected. She works a communications associate at the Center for Constitutional Rights and is finishing up a graduate degree from Antioch University that she began while in prison.

Although the government locked up Gazzola and other SHAC activists under the the older statute, in 2006 Congress decided to strengthen the law and rebrand it as the “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.” The new version passed in the Senate in September 2006, where it was touted by cosponsors [6] Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) as necessary to “enhance the effectiveness of the U.S. Department of Justice’s ability to prosecute animal rights extremists.” It passed the House without a roll-call vote several weeks later, and President George W. Bush signed it into law on Nov. 27, 2006.

AETA was passed specifically to cover a broader range of groups and activities than its predecessor, says Will Potter, a reporter who has covered the attempts to classify various forms of activism as terrorism in his blog and book [7] Green Is the New Red. “They’re really trying to scare the hell out of people,” he says.

Gazzola and the other activists involved in the case say they want to resume their work on animal rights campaigns—but not if that means being labeled terrorists. “It’s a real problem when you’re not sure if your protest activity is protected or terrorism,” Gazzola says. “Under AETA, protest and terrorism are conflated. They’re one and the same.”
Source URL: http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/12/are-animal-rights-activists-terrorists

Links:
[1] http://www.gourmetcruelty.com/
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/us/in-california-going-all-out-to-bid-adieu-to-foie-gras.html?pagewanted=all
[3] http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/judge-dismisses-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act-indictments-against-activists
[4] http://motherjones.com/politics/2006/01/americas-1-threat
[5] http://www.scribd.com/doc/5496568/SHAC-Complete-federal-indictment
[6] http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=7929e3ca-7e9c-9af9-78e6-8049c2e67205
[7] http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/

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Recently BiG TeA PaRtY threw a Sustainable Living “Tea Party” at Playa Del Fuego (an East Coast Burning Man) – hundreds of people stopped by to read our posters and share their own ideas on sustainability. Our homegrown and home-blended wormwood iced tea was a hit. Many asked for the recipe and how-to for homemade herbal iced teas. Here’s the low down:

I grow my own herbs, if you have some earth I recommend this sustainable pastime. Gardening and growing some of your own food (and beverages!) is a rewarding endeavor. Otherwise, dried herbs are available for sale on the internet.

GROWING HERBS:

•    Herbs are easy to grow. Know your climate and soil — choose plants accordingly. Herbs will be perennial (long lasting), annual (just one season) and sometimes in-between like biannual and short lived perennials.

•    Make sure you really know what you’re growing because you’ll be ingesting these plants. Purchase plants and seeds from reliable dealers. Often, plants will be mislabeled at lesser garden centers.
•    In my experience it’s best to purchase perennials as plants; annuals are usually cheaper to grow from seed.

HARVESTING AND DRYING HERBS:
•    When possible, harvest herbs on a dry day in the morning to get the most impact from the plants natural flavoring – their oils.
•    Always leave at least one third of the plant intact when harvesting (except annuals, eat it all as frost approaches as it’s going to die soon anyway).
•    Since my herbs are home grown and I don’t use any chemicals in my yard, I don’t wash my herbs (as drying them is the goal) instead I dust off any dirt with my fingers and inspect for dead bugs, feathers etc. which I remove.
•    Tie the herbs in small bundles and hang them upside down in a dry and aerated location away from direct light until they’re dry.

AFTER HERBS ARE DRY:
•    For eating and seasoning: remove the leaves and flowers from the stems and store away from direct light in sealed baggies or containers with tight fitting lids.
•    For tea: you don’t have to be as careful about removing the stems, but most teas will taste best with a minimum of woody material (wormwood is an exception, see “Wormwood Tea” at the end).

CREATING TEA BLENDS:
•    Basically, any herb/plant you eat can be made into tea. Edible flowers are great for tea as well. Click here for my article on edible flowers.

•    The herbs you use for your tea are entirely up to you and are only limited by your imagination and taste buds. I have a flair for blending flavors and put a great effort into creating, in the summer a refreshing beverage and in the colder months a comforting drink. For iced tea, I avoid white cane sugar whenever possible as it’s nutritionally void. When making a pitcher of tea I prefer to sweeten iced tea (when necessary) with 100% white grape juice. This doesn’t impart much flavor to the tea, but does add a sweetness that most iced tea drinkers prefer. The addition of some lemon or lime is a welcome touch.

MAKING TEA:
Making tea from home grown herbs is the same as making ‘regular’ tea. Boil water; warm tea pot by swishing around some of that hot water in the pot; add 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of dried herbs for each cup of tea; brew for 1-5 minutes; strain; enjoy hot or, allow to come to room temperature and then chill (this prevents the tea from becoming cloudy).

WORMWOOD TEA:

Wormwood is a desirable plant to many today because of the slight psychoactive properties from the chemical thujone. Thujone isn’t going to knock your socks off and you’ll be disappointed if you think this will be like taking a drug. Instead, thujone is a mild stimulant and creates a sense of well being.  Current science says thujone increases and randomizes the firing of neurons in your brain. This tends to make you a bit more imaginative, old things look new, everything looks crisp. It’s very smooth and there’s no crash that I’ve noticed. Combine with alcohol and the effect is magnified. For more on this check my article on Absinthe.

WARNING: Do not consume wormwood if pregnant. Wormwood has a long history as a midwifery herb used to promote contractions.

GROWING WORMWOOD:
It’s 100% important, vital, I mean it, to make sure you have the correct wormwood as there are several types of wormwood. Artemisia absinthium is the Latin name of the plant you want. Only purchase from a reliable dealer. I purchased my seeds online from The Thyme Garden. http://www.thymegarden.com/
Wormwood is kinky and likes to do it in with the lights on. I.e. the seeds need light to germinate. Here’s how I do it: Start with a planter that’s at least 8” in diameter (too small of a planter and it will dry out); water thoroughly; broadcast (that’s fancy farmers talk for spreading the seeds) the seeds on TOP of the soil; cover the top of the planter with clear plastic wrap; wait; when you see seedlings emerge, remove plastic wrap and grow as any other plant.
I use this method because the seeds won’t blow away and it ensures you know which plants are the wormwood.

WORMWOOD TEA INGREDIENTS:

From what I have researched and experienced the most concentrated thoujone is in the woody stems of the plant. Wormwood is a VERY bitter herb, the stems even more so, and it takes some work to make a pleasant tasting beverage from this plant. A good start is to think of the flavors of Absinthe – mint and anise.
•    To make wormwood tea use about 1 teaspoon of dried wormwood per cup of tea and throw in a 3” woody stem while brewing (like a cinnamon stick).

•    Add 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon per (cup of tea) of additional herbs to improve the flavor. If you’re making a pitcher of tea add several different kinds of herbs to create an exciting beverage. The Wormwood Tea I served at Playa del Fuego was flavored with sage flowers, lemon balm, lemon thyme, anise hyssop flowers, mountain mint, ground fennel seeds and lime juice. Since wormwood is a very bitter herb I sweetened the tea with organic white grape juice and agave nectar. I served tea to 150 people and used up my entire stash of herbs from last year’s harvest. But you were all worth it!

PHOTOS by Elizabeth Fiend. From top of page to bottom: Alice in Wonderland; Fresh cut herbs on my backyard table; Herbs drying in my dining room; Yes, this is what wormwood looks like; Sage flowers.

For further reading check out this interesting and fun site from a fellow Playa del Fuego  plant lover and grower EatMoreToadStools.com

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High levels of a dangerous chemical, BPA, are being found in the urine and blood of people who eat canned food. BPA is used as an epoxy to line cans. As of now there’s only one brand of canned foods, Eden, that doesn’t contain this hormone-mimicking, possibly cancer causing chemical.

See two articles below, the first about the dangerous of canned foods the second from the company Eden detailing how they’ve solved the BPA problem. Posted By Elizabeth Fiend

Source: My Health Daily News.com and Eden Foods

Soaring BPA Levels Found in People Who Eat Canned Foods

Eating canned food every day may raise the levels of the compound bisphenol A (BPA) in a person’s urine more than previously suspected, a new study suggests.

People who ate a serving of canned soup every day for five days had BPA levels of 20.8 micrograms per liter of urine, whereas people who instead ate fresh soup had levels of 1.1 micrograms per liter, according to the study. BPA is found in many canned foods — it is a byproduct of the chemicals used to prevent corrosion.

When the researchers looked at the rise in BPA levels seen in the average participant who ate canned soup compared with those who ate fresh soup, they found a 1,221 percent jump.

“To see an increase in this magnitude was quite surprising,” said study leader Karin Michels, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

The levels of BPA seen in the study participants “are among the most extreme reported in a nonoccupational setting,” the researchers wrote in their study. In the general population, levels have been found to be around 1 to 2 micrograms per liter, Michels said.

The study noted that levels higher than 13 micrograms per liter were found in only the top 5 percent of participants in the National Health and Examination Survey, which is an ongoing study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are concerned about the influence of [hormone-disrupting] chemicals on health in general, and BPA is one of them,” Michels told MyHealthNewsDaily.

The study is published online (Nov. 22) in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Soup for lunch

The study included 75 people, whose average age was 27. One group of participants ate 12 ounces of fresh soup every day at lunchtime, while the other ate the same amount of canned soup each day. Urine samples were collected from the participants on the fourth and fifth days of the study.

BPA was detected in 77 percent of people who ate the fresh soup, and all of the people who ate the canned soup, according to the study.

Only a few studies had previously looked at BPA levels from eating canned foods, and those relied on asking people how much of the food they usually eat comes from cans, Michels said. The new study was the first in which researchers randomized participants to eat a small serving of canned food or fresh food, and measured the resulting difference in their urine BPA levels, she said.

“We’ve known for a while that drinking beverages that have been stored in certain hard plastics can increase the amount of BPA in your body. This study suggests that canned foods may be an even greater concern, especially given their wide use,” said study researcher Jenny Carwile, a doctoral student at Harvard.

BPA and health

A 2008 study of 1,455 people showed that higher urinary BPA levels were linked with higher risks of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and abnormal concentrations of certain liver enzymes, even after factors such as age, body mass index and smoking were taken into account.

And other studies have linked BPA levels in a woman’s urine during her pregnancy to health problems in her child.

It is not known how long the levels of BPA might remain high, according to the study. However, it is also not known whether such a spike, even if it isn’t sustained for very long, may affect health, the researchers wrote.

The study was limited in that all of the participants were students or staff at one school, and a single soup brand (Progresso) was tested, but the researchers wrote that they expected the results to apply to canned foods with a similar BPA content.

“Reducing canned food consumption may be a good idea, especially for people consuming foods from cans regularly,” Michels said. “Maybe manufacturers can take the step of taking BPA out of the lining of cans — some have already done this, but only a few.”

The study was funded by the Allen Foundation, which advocates nutrition research.

Pass it on: Cutting down on the amount of canned food you eat might be a good idea, researchers say. (end article)

Only ONE Brand of Canned Foods is Free of BPA

article from Eden Foods

All Eden Organic Beans, Refried Beans, Chilies and Rice & Beans are cooked in steel cans coated with a baked on oleoresinous c-enamel that does not contain the endocrine disrupter chemical, bisphenol-A (BPA). Oleoresin is a non-toxic mixture of an oil and a resin extracted from various plants, such as pine or balsam fir. These cans cost 14% more than the industry standard cans that do contain BPA. The Ball Corporation tells us that Eden is the only U.S. food maker to date to use these BPA free cans and we have been since April 1999.

How Eden Foods Pioneered BPA-Free Cans
Interview with Eden Foods President, Michael Potter by Investigative journalist
Nena Baker, author of The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of
Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-being (enviroblog.org)

No one is more pleased to see the hazards of bisphenol A in the spotlight than Mike Potter, father of six, grandfather of four, and founder and president of Eden Foods. His company began using BPA-free cans in 1999, after two years of frustrating negotiations with his can suppliers. “It’s regrettable that the use of BPA has gone on so long,” Potter told me. “I’ve been flabbergasted as I’ve observed the lack of will on the part of the rest of the food industry to take advantage of an option we created.”

Here’s the back story on Eden Foods’ switch to BPA-free cans for its bean products: In 1997, Potter learned that new research was raising questions about the safety of bisphenol A and that one of BPA’s many applications was in the linings of cans. “Being a canner, it got my attention,” said Potter.

He asked his can suppliers — three of them at the time — if bisphenol A was in the cans they were selling to Eden Foods. “I made hundreds of phone calls to these three manufacturers,” he said. “Remarkably, I couldn’t find out if it was in the cans I was using or not.” The can companies didn’t have to disclose what chemicals they were using as long as they claimed it was a trade secret.

“I was flabbergasted that legally, it was none of my business. I had no right to know, as a consumer, a food manufacturer, a parent or grandparent.” Two of his can suppliers (who he declined to name) gave Potter “half information and half answers.” One can supplier, Ball Corp., “ascertained that I wasn’t going to go away. They weren’t going to disclose specifically what was in the linings of their cans, but they did help me understand the complex chemistry that goes on to make the linings and how that process leads to bisphenol A.”

So Potter asked what he describes as the “high-school question.” What did Ball Corp. use before the days of the formulation that results in bisphenol A leaching into canned food?

“They told me they used an enamel made from vegetable resins. So I asked: Can I get my cans with that on it, please?”

The answer was yes, if Eden Foods paid 14 percent more for the BPA-free cans. “That’s hundred of thousands of dollars a year for us, ” which is a big deal for a small company in a very competitive canned food business.

Potter felt he had no choice but to switch to BPA-free cans. “It was the right thing to do. I didn’t want BPA in food I was serving to my kids, my grandkids, or my customers.”

Eden Foods did not promote its switch to BPA-free cans 10 years ago. “At the time, consumers hadn’t heard about bisphenol A. The name itself was like Swahili.”

But with growing awareness about BPA’s laboratory links to recent trends in human diseases — a chilling list including breast and prostate cancers, increases in urogenital abnormalities in male babies, a decline in semen quality in men, early onset of puberty in girls, metabolic disorders including Type 2 diabetes and obesity, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder — Eden Foods recently began labeling its bean cans “BPA-free.”

For the moment, Eden Foods tomato products are packaged in industry-standard BPA-containing cans. “The FDA hasn’t approved any other type of can lining for highly acidic foods,” Potter said.

But Potter, who is also involved in the Non-GMO Project, is convinced that “today’s modern chemists can solve this problem” — especially if consumers demand it. “It’s not fun dealing with this stuff, ” said Potter. “But where there’s a will there’s a way.”

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