two tests

I've always said I was about as white as it gets (something I take no particular pride in) and now it seems I was right. My sister sent away for one of those DNA tests to see where we originated. The results came back 100% northern and western European.

57% England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland

32% Germany, France

8% Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden)

2% European Jewish (Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Israel)

1% Finland

So, boring, and no great surprise as all the family lines that my sister, who is into genealogy, has pushed back (as far back as the 900s in Denmark in one line) have been from those very countries (with the exception of the last 3%). So the few family uncorroborated stories of some Native American in the mix are just that, stories, and my guess is that the European Jewish is from the German heritage and the Scandinavia is from Vikings that settled in England et al. Interesting that they separated Finland from the rest of Scandinavia.

-------------

The second test is for the soil that I bought. I spent $140 on 4 yards of vegetable mix dirt from a reputable dirt yard and everything I plant in those raised beds, dies, or if it doesn't outright die, it turns yellow and does not grow and drops it's leaves. I thought the tomatoes and peppers and squash and japanese eggplant were nipped and stunted by the late frost we had soon after I planted but the new tomatoes and squash are faring no better. So I went down to the extension office yesterday and picked up some soil sample bags and will send them off to A&M for analysis. I expect that it will show that the dirt is too 'hot' and that the compost hasn't cured properly yet. Hopefully it will mellow out for the fall garden.

earth day

I try to make every day earth day. It is, after all, the only planet we've got and we rely on it for our sustenance...our water, our food, the very air we breathe. So why, are we as a nation, doing our best to destroy it?

I take that back. That's not fair. There are many many people like me doing their best to save it, to nurture it, to counteract the unrestrained greed that poisons our water, land, and air.

Not satisfied with poisoning the three basic elements, the greed of Big Business is now poisoning our food. I'm referring to genetically modified food crops. These GMOs have been genetically altered to contain pesticides and herbicides, to exude pesticides and herbicides. The idea was that if the plants could fight off the weeds and insects that feed on them, farmers would have to use less herbicides and pesticides. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is happening. Nature, as she will, has evolved weeds and bugs that are resistant to these GMOs. Farmers are having to use more, not less, poisons in their fields.

So now, not only is our food awash in poison, it contains poison.

Monsanto, the company that brought us Agent Orange, while not the only company involved in this, is the main mover behind GMOs. They will tell you that GMOs are perfectly safe but they are lying. They have infiltrated the FDA so that the government agency tasked with the responsibility to protect the food supply now turns a blind eye toward GMOs. But the fact is, GMOs are not safe. They are killing us slowly.

There are so many independent studies out there showing the long term effects of consuming GMO foods including but not limited to accelerated aging, massive tumors, infertility, obesity, and organ damage. A recent study showed that nutritionally, GMOs are severely lacking.

These GMOs have been in our food supply for 20 years and they did it without telling anyone, without conducting long term studies, and burying any evidence that showed they were not safe. Nearly all of this country's corn (88%), cotton (90%) and soybeans (94%) are genetically modified. You can pretty much guarantee that any packaged food that contains corn or soy products sold in this country, unless it is labeled organic or non-GMO, contains these foods.

I urge everyone to educate themselves. Many countries have banned GMOs or limit their use or require labeling at the very least. Unfortunately, the United States is not one of them.

If these foods and the pesticides and herbicides are so safe, why are they wearing bio-suits?

Do an internet search with these search terms: what are the long term effects of eating GMO foods.

At the very least, ask yourself, if GMO foods are so safe, why the companies that engineer them and those that use them in their products are spending millions of dollars to prevent labeling in this country. There are already over 40 countries that ban them, require labeling, or restrict them in some form or other but the United States is not one of them.

The best way to avoid GMOs is to avoid any processed or pre-packaged food. Eat and cook fresh but be aware that GMO fresh corn and zucchini squash is on the market. Grow as much of your own food as you can. Buy organic and non-GMO labeled foods as often as possible. I know how hard that can be because as a working artist, my income often does not allow for organic foods but anyone can cook from fresh and even growing the least amount of food for yourself helps.

And start reading the labels if you don't already do so. See how many of the listed ingredients are food and how many are chemicals, how many forms of sugar are in every product. If the chemicals out number the food, it's not food. Sugar is not food. Because, if this goes unrestrained, our children will not have any grandchildren. Already we are seeing more food allergies, more autism, more cancer, more infertility, more obesity, more diabetes.

If you want to become active or just keep abreast of the situation, visit these FB pages and visit their websites:

Occupy Monsanto

Organic Consumers Association

Millions Against Monsanto

GMO Free USA

Eat Deets

I'm confused

(I apologize for the length of this post but I hope you read it to the end.)

Some of my readers may be aware of the battle going on in California over proposition 37, the effort to force food manufacturers to label their products that contain GMO foods and their derivatives as such, the most common of which are corn, soy, canola, sugar beets, and cotton. New GMO foods are being introduced all the time and at an alarming rate.

The main modification, and by modification I don't mean hybridization but genetic manipulation, adding genes to the genetic code of a plant from a totally alien source, is to cause these foods to contain in themselves pesticides and herbicides. The stated purpose being to make stronger and more resistant food crops that need less pesticide and herbicide applications or more drought tolerant. Sounds great only it doesn't really work. Farmers are finding they need to use more and more herbicides and pesticides because we all know Nature will breed a stronger weed or bug in response and in this case, she has. It does however, cause us to ingest these poisons.

Monsanto, the company that brought us Round Up and Agent Orange among other highly toxic substances is the main company behind the ruining of our food supply. I'm not going to go into all the dangers here or how they paid off the FDA to allow these foods without any testing or the backroom deal they made with the Bush administration or the independent tests that have shown that being far from safe, these foods cause infertility, accelerated aging, allergies, obesity, and compromised immune systems among other things. We are already suffering from the hormones in meat and we know many of these effects don't peak for several generations so it's our children and our grandchildren we are damaging by eating these foods.

I encourage everyone to do their own research and not to trust any tests or research that comes from Monsanto or any of their affiliates. You can hardly expect them to publish any information that puts their own products in a bad light. We also know from experience that they aren't above doctoring the results of their research.

You might recall we were told cigarettes were safe by the tobacco companies even though they knew all along they weren't. We were told plastic was safe but now we know that plastic leaches heinous chemicals into our food and bodies and in pregnant women are passed to the fetus. We were told flame retardant chemicals were safe but now we know that those chemicals leach into our bodies as well. We were told pesticides wouldn't affect us but they were wrong. We were told artificial colors and flavors and preservatives in our food were safe and now our food has become a chemical soup and is killing us. We were told to use anti-bacterial agents on everything to be healthy but all it did was compromise our immune systems and attacks our muscle function. And with the rise of all these chemicals in our food and environment, there has been a corresponding rise in autism, allergies, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, obesity, and a host of other ailments.

50 countries either ban or require labeling of GMO foods. The United States is not one of them.

This is all very important but it's not really what my post is about because I'm not at all confused about GMOs. I am definitely against them and want the US to ban them. At the very least, I want them to be labeled so that I can avoid eating them.

Not surprisingly, the Big Food companies are donating millions of dollars to the fight against labeling, against prop 37 in California, not because, as they say, it would be too costly to change labels. That is belied by the money they are willing to spend to fight it. They are fighting labeling because they know that they would lose a substantial amount of revenue. Recent polls have shown that 70% of the population wants these foods labeled and/or out of the food supply altogether.

Also not surprisingly, organic foods which started out as a 'hippy dippy' thing have hit the mainstream. As people become more educated about what is being done to their food, the demand for organic and natural foods has been rising steadily and is now the fastest rising market sector.

And again not surprisingly, proponents of prop 37 and of labeling in general have called for boycotts of the companies who are donating money to fight against it and this is where my confusion lies.

Because some of the donors, and big donors, also have organic and no-GMO divisions. I have no idea how Big Food (Dean, Kraft, General Mills, Kellogg, Cargill to name a few) came by their organic businesses. I don't know if they were bought by hook or by crook or if they originated with the parent company. But I am satisfied that they make available a choice I can feel can good about buying or at least not be fearful of buying.

Some pro-labeling and no-GMO groups are calling for a boycott, not of the tainted foods of these companies that have donated large sums to fight prop 37, but their organic and no-GMO divisions.

Huh?

Well, the assumption I guess, is that you weren't buying the GMO products already but this just doesn't make sense to me. These are the products we want. I understand that a portion of their profits go to the parent company and that the parent company uses those profits to fight labeling. On the other hand, some of their profits also go to support national organic and no-GMO initiatives and if we make these divisions unprofitable, how long do you think those products will remain available to us? Not everyone lives in an area where there are small or family owned organic alternatives. So if we won't eat the GMO foods and we aren't supposed to eat the organic and no-GMO foods available to us that are owned by these big companies, what the hell are we supposed to eat?

It makes more sense to me to boycott the GMO foods (which is just about everything on your grocer's shelves) and buy the organic and no-GMO. You know, carrot, stick. Let them know what kind of food we want by what we buy. When the other stuff stops selling, perhaps they will be more inclined to get rid of the GMO food.

You don't get very good results when you only use the stick. Not with animals, not with children or adults, and I doubt it works any better against a company. When they see where their profit and loss originates, that is how they will be persuaded. Unless of, course, our government actually grows a pair and stands up for the people for a change, and not their handlers, and bans them altogether.

In the meantime, of course, it's always better to buy from a smaller operation when you have the choice. And that goes for buying any product, not just food, from a small business or family owned operation or artist.

earth day

Image via http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2009/02/02/where-can-kids-get-their-hands-dirty/

Today is Earth Day and instead of my annual screed against plastic, that all pervasive material that does not biodegrade but only breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces causing birds and fish to starve to death, creates islands of trash in the oceans, fills our landfills to the point where our trash has to be shipped out elsewhere, and leaches toxic chemicals into the food and drink stored in them; we're gonna get dirty.


But first...

We already recycle everything...plastics # 1 – 5 and 7, paper and cardboard, aluminum and tin and steel and glass. We compost our kitchen waste. We take our own shopping bags to the store. We buy products in glass containers preferably. We wash out and reuse ziplock bags. We don't buy products that are over packaged and the two of us still end up with a large size grocery store plastic bag of trash about every four or five days and most of it is plastic or is coated with plastic.

OK. I had to get a little one in there.

This year I'm thinking more about the earth and our connection to it and how, as we separate ourselves from it more and more, we suffer physical and emotional ailments. I've thought for a while now that the human race is going insane from this modern life and our immune systems are suffering. Surrounded by concrete and buildings and artificial lighting, we spend our days and nights in artificially conditioned air, rarely coming into contact with the natural world.

Oh, the cities have parks and green spaces and the occasional tree studded along the sidewalks but mostly we only see them as we zip by in our cars, our lives too rushed to take the time to stand amongst the beauty of nature, barefoot, in actual physical contact with the planet, to breath in the scent of growing things.

We seem to have forgotten that we are not separate from nature, that we evolved out in the natural world and that our health and well being is still dependent on continued contact with the earth.

We prevent our children from playing outside out of fear of injury or lack of time to supervise them, we discourage them from getting dirty. We tamper with our food spraying it with poisons or genetically modifying it or adding chemicals and colors that were never meant to be ingested. We sterilize our environments with anti-bacterial cleaners. We eschew any kind of physical labor or exertion preferring a machine to do the work. We pump pollutants in the the very air we breath and the water that is essential for life.

The result is that although we have conquered certain diseases like small pox and polio, we have seen cancer, asthma, allergies, autism, diabetes, obesity, and depression, among others, skyrocket. Our immune systems are compromised. We are living longer but are we living healthier when we have to take a handful of pharmaceuticals everyday to maintain the balance of life?

Finally, studies are being done to show how dependent we are on the natural world for our health and well being, something that I have known instinctively, something that we should all know instinctively.

In the last several years I have read articles about studies supporting the importance of contact with the earth. Most basically is our immune system. We need to be exposed to bacteria and dirt to be healthy. It is how our immune system builds up it's defenses to disease and illness, how it learns to ignore germs and pollens.

The lungs of toddlers who don't go outside to run and play and instead are kept quietly indoors do not develop fully and are much more likely to develop asthma. Children who don't go outside to run and play and get dirty have weakened immune systems and tend to get sick from every bug they meet. Girls especially are at risk of this because while our society expects boys to go and rough and tumble in the dirt, we expect little girls to be clean, quiet, and lady-like.

Another recent study has shown how important dirt is to our emotional health as well. There is a bacteria in the soil that helps produce serotonin in our brains. Working in the soil, getting dirty, gives us a natural high. We feel better about the quality of our lives and are happier. Working in the soil has always been my favorite part of gardening and now I know why. But even a simple romp in the park will help you with the beneficial effects of dirt.

Most important is how we have adulterated our food supply. It wasn't enough to turn our food into a chemical soup, now we are genetically modifying it to disastrous results. Study after study is linking GMO foods to infertility, immune system disfunction, accelerated aging among other things. Europe has started banning GMOs but unfortunately the US is still being bought by the GMO big business.

So go outside today. Embrace your Mother, literally. Get dirty and start a garden. Boost your immune system, eat real food, be happy and healthy.

Remember...refuse, reuse, recycle.

links to previous earth day posts and anti-plastic rants:

2010 earth day

2011 earth day

2011 plastic awareness challenge

2011 death by plastic

links to articles referred to above:

GMO health risks

get dirty to get joy

chemicals in plastics linked to obesity and diabetes

the secret of her life

Well, the media has descended on my little country town. Several weeks ago there was a fire at an egg production warehouse in the next (smaller) town down the road and tragically one of the volunteer firefighters was killed when the burning roof collapsed on him, an event worthy of media attention but not the reason the media has descended on us.

No, the reason for all the hoo rah is a lawsuit filed against his widow by his mother and ex-wife trying to block her from receiving any and all benefits (like the $600,000 death benefits, life insurance and joint property). Basically, they want to run her out of town on a rail.  A little tarring and feathering might not be out of order.  Why, you might ask, would they want to do this?

Allegations have been charged and rumors have exploded.

They were getting a divorce, were living apart, property was settled and they were only waiting for the court date. The widow denies this.

The marriage was not lawful in Texas since she is genetically a man, born as a male with a male name. She claims she was born with a birth defect that was surgically remedied later in life.

The deceased husband did not know about her 'history', that it was revealed to him during a child custody hearing and that was why he was divorcing her. She claims he did know, that the surgery happened after they were married.

And on and on it goes.

Pretty hot stuff for a small town in Texas.

Rather than repeat it all, here's a decent report on what's happening. 

And though her parents claim she was born with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome or AIS*, she was obviously a boy at birth and was raised as a boy as she herself admitted in a video she made in her early 20s, a boy who wanted to be a girl and who started dressing and living as a girl in her teens and who admitted to wanting a sex change operation.

*AIS is a condition in XY babies that makes them insensitive to androgen (male hormone) and are born with outward female genitalia (a blind pocket vagina) but no uterus or ovaries and with testes that do not develop or descend. This condition is not usually discovered until puberty. Sometimes a partial syndrome (PAIS grades 2 – 4) results in both a vagina and a micro penis.

It turns out that this type of thing is not so uncommon. It happens in about 1 out every 20,000 births, with PAIS/1 or 2 happening in 1 out of every 200 births. My son knows a woman who was born with this condition, who is genetically a male with a male brain, but because it is easier to change the anomalous genitalia to female than male, that's what the doctors recommend. And so it is done. They don't know, of course, if the baby is male or female unless they do genetic testing or until puberty so they just rely on social conditioning and upraising to make these babies female. It doesn't always work. My son's friend likes girls just like any hetero male with a male brain. That makes her a lesbian in our society, but she is not, not actually.

There must have been a time in our human history before we became so 'civilized' when we did not make these individuals pariahs and accepted them however they saw themselves. It's a shame that as civilized 'religious' human beings we now strive to make these individuals ashamed and undeserving of human and civil rights.

Whether the widow was truly AIS or was simply (if that can ever be called simple) a complete male with a female brain, whether her husband knew before the marriage or not I suppose will come out in the upcoming court case. Regardless, I don't see her having a future in this town. And although the ex-wife and the mother and their lawyer claim that this is strictly a legal affair, citing Texas law that makes same sex marriages illegal, it is definitely about the money and about the hate and about the fear. It's definitely not about love or about who we know we are.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about AIS...it's causes, appearances, socialization, treatments, etc...here's an excellent site. 

to boob or not to boob

When I was 15 my mother got a boob job. While I was still waiting for the boob fairy (a long and ultimately disappointing wait), full of angst as only a 15 year old girl can be, my mother went out and bought herself a pair. Her need to be the center of all male attention caused her to indulge herself almost as soon as the silicon implants were invented by a pair of Houston plastic surgeons. Her and all the strippers.

It wasn't embarrassing enough for her to have done it at all, she had it done during the summer and we spent our summers at the beach where we had a vacation home. My mother could never be called demure and she paraded around in her bikini (or what passed for one in 1965 Houston TX) before she even got the bandages off. And back then there were a lot of bandages. They made a big 'X' across her chest so if I had had any hope of people just not noticing that she went from flat chested to having a couple of cantaloupes, they were dashed. The bandages might as well have been a neon sign saying 'look at me'.

Nowadays, of course, a boob job is no big deal. Nobody even bats an eyelash but in 1965 they were mostly unheard of and since my mother didn't have the good grace to be furtive about it I had to endure the snickers of the summer teenage boys and girls. To say I was mortified would have been putting it mildly.

So while my mother was busy flaunting her new boobs, I became a life long member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee. I gave up wearing a bra around 20 because at that time they didn't make one small enough to fit me and I refused to wear a training bra all my life. Even the padded bras tended to crumple under my shirts. Most guys have bigger boobs than me.

The only time I ever had boobs was for about four or five years when I was pregnant and nursing. They were enormous. There's a picture somewhere of me nursing my daughter and my boob was bigger than her head. By the time I weaned my son, I was ready for the boobs to go away. Later in my life when I started going to the gym regularly I developed what I referred to as 'faux' cleavage.

There are some advantages to having very small breasts. The above mentioned not having to wear a bra and not having to wear tight binding tops when I exercise or participate in athletic activities. I've never had a back ache from carrying around all that weight on my chest. I've never been embarrassed by having an errant boob slip out of a top that barely conceals them. They will never ever sag and guys look at my face when they talk to me.

Of course, there are disadvantages too. Dresses and women's blouses don't fit me very well and me in a bikini is a joke but I eventually got old enough where that part of my body in a bikini was the least of the problem with wearing one. Getting a mammogram is an exercise in futility, frustrating for me and the technician. When I was young and going to clubs guys never ever asked me to dance and because I didn't have big boobs I had to develop other ways of attracting guys' attention. Oh wait, that might be an advantage.

And my mother's boobs? They didn't sag either, being a bag of goo, but by the time she was an old lady, they had slid down to her belly button. That right there is reason enough for me to never get an implant.

to the seventh generation

There was an interesting program on genetics on Nova last night.  When they started the human genome project, to map the DNA of human beings, the scientists thought we would have the most genes of any living creature.  Turns out we’re not that complex.  We don’t even have as many genes as some plants.  Scientists also thought that once they had the genetic code, that the mystery would be revealed.  Turns out we’re not that simple.  Why was it that two people who share the exact same genetic code, as identical twins do, can develop so differently.  Why one is normal and the other is autistic, why is one healthy and the other gets a terrible disease, why is one happy and productive and the other suffers from debilitating depression?

They have discovered now that some of our individual DNA, collectively our genome, come with chemical markers, the epigenome.  These markers turn genes off and on so that even in identical twins who have the exact same genome, their markers can be different.  And they accumulate as a person ages, or rather, the effect of these markers accumulates through aging causing greater and greater differences.  We all have them but they became apparent in the study of identical twins.

These epigenomes are inherited of course, but they are also environmentally created and attach themselves to the genome.  For instance, exposure to chemicals, pesticides and insecticides.  Didn’t we all, as children in the 50s, run through the clouds of insecticide that the city sprayed at night, because we were told it was harmless to humans?  Harmless to us perhaps but certainly not to our descendants.  

Other environmental factors come into play as well like feast or famine.  It was determined in one study that if your grandfather suffered through famine when he was about 10 years old it had a beneficial effect on the lifespan of his grandchildren.  If he had plenty during that age then his grandchildren were more likely to develop a life threatening disease and lived for a shorter time.  Similarly, if your grandmother suffered feast or famine while she was still in the womb, it had an effect on the health and life span of her grandchildren.

Our food supply became more and more adulterated in the 50s and 60s with the addition of chemicals, colors, preservatives and refining and it correlated with the rise of cancer, diabetes and allergies.  Our parents didn’t suffer nor did we of my generation for the most part but now look 3 and 4 generations later with the accumulation of these chemical markers on our genome, these ailments are rampant.

The hope, of course, is that we can use this new knowledge to mitigate some of the effects of the pollution of our environment and food supply on our genome but in the meantime, maybe that old biblical curse isn’t so far-fetched after all.