Think Globally, Act Locally

I enjoyed this and some of it resounded with me (the co-sleeping, not so much. But who am I to say?)

Christine Gross-Loh: Have American Parents Got It All Backwards?

Allergic Living article on Increase in Allergies

Interesting article, below, on something I've been puzzling over.

Our children have been raised with pets (dogs and hamsters) and have spent lots of time outdoors from their young years. They ride their bikes and play in the dirt and the creek. At home, we are tidy people, I guess, but we aren't Purell devotees. For the first couple years of my kids' lives (Sarah's first 9 months), we lived near a free farm-animal petting zoo, which I loved and frequented with them probably about once a month. The two boys ate traditional baby food, but everything Sarah ate as a baby came straight from my plate (and she is, interestingly, the least picky eater). My children have lived and traveled all over the country and world, including the Far East.

So why do all three of my children have more severe allergies that David and I do (and our parents and siblings)? Maybe we overexposed them. Or...it may be that all of this was not really enough exposure. Perhaps this article holds some clues:

"Martinez was intrigued. What, he asked, would happen if von Mutius took into account the sizes of her East German and West German families? The data were incomplete, but it was the less allergic East Germans who clearly had more children per family. She and Martinez followed up with a study comparing family sizes and allergy in Munich and Leipzig (and a neighboring city)."

Also

"[Studies] reveal what’s termed 'the farming effect,' a phenomenon that protects against allergic disease. Von Mutius and her colleagues have narrowed the effect down to three key factors: livestock (specifically cows, pigs or poultry); type of fodder (for instance, whether it’s fresh grass or hay); and drinking of raw farm milk."

 LINK: WHY ARE THERE MIGHT BE MORE PEOPLE WITH ALLERGIES TODAY

A Pro-Choice Advocate Confronts a Picture (not Photo) of a D&E Abortion

HERE

Taranto Confronts Gosnell

Well-written, thoughtful, and such an interesting look into the mind of a pro-choicer becoming, more and more, a pro-lifer. HERE

Our Own American Gulag

As my sister-in-law aptly and wryly says, if you are a baby, abortion is like real estate these days, "Location, location, location."

Here is Douglas Wilson on Kermit Gosnell's American gulag:

LINK

Love

I have seen this attributed to CS Lewis. I seem to recall reading the source of this quote, but I have forgotten which book or essay it was. 

'The rule for all of us is perfectly simple.  Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.  As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets.  When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.  If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more.  If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.'

May I suggest two things to read in light of the Gosnell abortion trial in Philadelphia:

1. The short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," by the great Flannery O'Connor.

2. This quote, attributed to CS Lewis, is a good reminder for those of us looking upon the revealed squalor and horror of an abortion clinic:

"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."