Headlines

I wish, oh I so sincerely wish, that we could get a newspaper every day!

One very nice thing about visiting my parents (or Mom-in-law, for that matter) is the paper, dropped off at the edge of the driveway each morning. Which, despite its' bright orange plastic covering, has been known to get caught up in my Dad's snowblower... but not for a long time. Really.

While visiting my folks, I read two articles about homeschooling. One, closest to my heart, was about unschooling and the benefits it brings. I enjoyed the other as well; written by an in-house opinion columnist, it reviewed the California homeschooling crisis, playing out right now in the state courts, and ended with: "Allowing parents the freedom to teach their own children? Now, that's what I call "good citizenship."

For a fairly conservative paper, I found much to agree with in it during this visit -always a bleeding-heart liberal, I think I'm becoming distinctly more libertarian, at least where schooling and food are concerned. (More on both of these subjects, I feel sure, in future posts...) Anyway, this visit was a far cry from those in the past, where I swore and/or shook my fist at the paper at least once per section.

Here's one thing that cracked me up, though. During my visit, the paper had a 3-part article on dangerous pharmaceuticals found in water supplies all over the country, complete with analysis of the harmful impacts on people and wildlife. The picture painted was downright scary, but I had to smile at the juxtaposition of these with an article entitled "Backlash squeezing dairy hormone." This article detailed the formation of AFACT, or "American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology," a "new advocacy group closely tied to the agriculture company Monsanto."

What, I'm sure you're wondering, is this group advocating for? The "right to use" Posilac, a bovine growth hormone, to stimulate cows to give more milk. Evidently, these poor farmers are getting slammed by all us anti-technology people who don't want to drink recombinant bovine somatotropin in our daily dose of milk.

Or have it end up in our water.