The Big Fix is Back!
Area Veterinary Clinics Offer Spay and Neuter Discounts during February’s Month-long Campaign

Noah’s Ark’s CCSNAP (Caring Community Spay / Neuter Assistance Program) and area veterinary clinics are sponsoring our 9^th annual spay/neuter event for February, National Spay/Neuter Month. Our local event is called “Friends Don’t Let Friends….Have Litters,” and is another event in their ongoing efforts to ensure that every dog and cat in our area has a home.  The local veterinarians, listed below, have all agreed to offer discounted spays and neuters for the entire month of February, 2010!

Why Spay or Neuter Your Pet?

Spaying or neutering is one of the greatest gifts you can give your dog or cat. These routine medical procedures not only help control pet overpopulation; they also prevent medical and behavioral problems from developing, allowing your pet to lead a longer, healthier, and happier life.

Hundreds of dogs and cats in our area, however, are not so fortunate. Because there are not enough loving homes for them all, unwanted animals are often dumped in the countryside, left to fend for themselves all alone.  Many are precious kittens and puppies less than six months old – the products of animals not yet spayed or neutered – and many won’t survive.

But there is some very good news—the tragedy of pet overpopulation is a “fixable” problem. If each of us takes responsibility to spay and neuter our pets, we can put an end to the heartbreak of homeless animals.  And remember: a first litter can happen as early as six months of age!

Building on Success

Community support is the key ingredient to the success of this spay / neuter campaign.  There are several ways you can help: Spread the message that pet overpopulation is a “fixable” problem. Tell neighbors, co-workers and friends about the February discounts. Provide transportation for someone who needs help bringing their animal to and from surgery. Make a donation so this important program can continue (All donations are tax-deductible and can be sent to Noah’s Ark Animal Foundation, Attn: CCSNAP, P.O. Box 748, Fairfield, IA 52556).  And obviously, make sure your own pets are spayed or neutered.

To make an appointment for your dog or cat, call the following veterinary clinics directly.

In Brighton, call Drs. Anson & Vittetoe: (319) 694-2815
Fairfield Animal Hospital: (641) 472-6983
Fairfield Veterinary Clinic: (641) 472-2455
Henry County Veterinary Clinic: (641) 385-8034
Richland Veterinary Clinic: (319) 456-6321
Sessions Veterinary Clinic, Bloomfield: (641) 664-1815
Sigourney Veterinary Clinic: (641) 622-2940

Working together, we can create a world where every dog or cat has a home.

Laura Cohen is Director of Noah’s Ark Animal Foundation and is available for interviews and more information on spaying and neutering. Call her at 641-472-6080 or 919-4182.

On the web: Visit www.NoahsArk.org for more information on our CCSNAP program.

[Note: this article was originally posted in July 2009.  It is now updated with the complete recipe - include at the end of the article - for making the Artisan Free-Form Loaf.]

My bread habits have come a long way in the past forty years. I started with Wonder Bread. In the 80s I moved on to a Whole Wheat bread which was basically the brown version of Wonder Bread from a nutritional standpoint. In the 90s I discovered real Whole Wheat breads (thanks to local co-op grocery stores) and explored the tastes of fresh baked artisan breads. And now, thanks to my wife, my family is learning that sliced bread isn’t the greatest invention after all. Instead, our family is now baking all of our bread ourselves, and what may surprise most people is that it’s relatively easy to bake enough healthy, great tasting bread to feed your family.

Over the past several months we’ve been buying fewer and fewer loaves of sliced bread, and baking more and more bread at home. Two weeks ago we decided to stop buying bread at all, and switch entirely to baking our own bread. So far it’s going well and I don’t miss store bought sliced loaves. Our routine is to prepare a high moisture no knead dough once a week, store that dough in the fridge, and use portions of it to bake bread (or pizzas) as needed throughout the week.

Baking all of your own bread may sound like a lot of work, and while it is more work than putting a loaf of bread in your cart at the grocery store, it isn’t as labor intensive as you might imagine (as I thought until recently).  Of course we were helped greatly by a book that was featured on The Splendid Table titled Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.  The book provides detailed instructions and techniques on how to bake an Artisan Free-Form Loaf.  It’s what they call their “master recipe”, which once mastered contains all the skills required to bake the dozens of other recipes in the book.

Read the full story

I was chatting with Lori Schaefer over at Agri-Plastics the other day and we got to talking about Thanksgiving and, ultimately, food.

This meandered into food quality, when Lori asked me if I had ever heard of Vande Rose Farms.  I told her I hadn’t, and she almost wept when she told me about how wonderful that their beef and pork products are. OK, so I’m exaggerating about the weeping, this IS an article about food though and you know how people get about their food

She went on to tell me that the best restaurants in the country serve their meat, and that not only is it all-natural, hormone free, etc… But they can also trace each piece, each package, to the animals which the meat came from in the first place. “Whoa” I replied. “Yeah” she responded.

The next likely question was where a mere mortal such as myself could purchase this magical meat, and her first answer was – Hy-Vee. “Hy-Vee?” I responded. “Yup” she replied.

She explained that Hy-Vee sold their bacon: Vande Rose Farms Artisan Dry Cured Bacon. Found in the section with the other 39 types of bacon. I thanked her for this tip and rushed over to Hy-Vee (because what Jewish boy from NY doesn’t like bacon? Talk about forbidden fruit – yum!)

It wasn’t easy to find, there were dozens of packages of Oscar Meyer, Hy-Vee, and other sordid brands of bacon. Many of which I must say, as a bacon connoisseur (ok, not really),  DO taste good. But are they good and good for you? This is where the comparison ends.

For $4.99, certainly more than the price of the other stuff, I purchased 340 grams of the most incredibly yummy bacon that I’ve ever had really. They call it Iowa Duroc Heritage Breed Pork. It has been procured since 1850, and the pigs are raised without growth promotants, fed all natural grains, no antibiotics, and no added phosphates. Of course there is some processing, but there are NO artificial ingredients.

With trembling hands, I rushed home to cook my bounty (Ok, I really ate it the next morning.)  Was it as good as Lori had proclaimed? Would this “healthy” bacon taste better than the other 38 types on the shelf?

The answer is a resounding “yes.”  My wife and son loved it too and as such, we’re hooked. Incredible taste, probably well-cared for animals, and created in a manner that is more aligned with the health concerns of so many of us today.

I highly recommend this bacon. Now where do I go to get a Vande Rose t-bone?

In my last post, I discussed how Shawn and I strive to move away from punishing our children, and instead, focus on treating them with the same respect we give one another.  Choosing to live by this philosophy has forced us to reexamine nearly every interaction we have with our children on a day to day basis.  Do we put limits on how much television they watch?  Do we censor their video or computer games? Do we monitor what they eat? Do we have a chore chart? Do we enforce a bedtime?

In short, for us, the answer is no.  We don’t really do any of those things. Let me explain why. One thing we discovered is that it’s not really possible to control what any other person does, including your children.  You may be able to control the way they behave in front of you, but you cannot control their actions, thoughts, behaviors when you aren’t around.  I’d rather focus on supporting them as they learn to navigate within their own comfort zones, rather than forcing them to live within mine.

€œBut you need to be the parents,€ is a phrase Shawn and I have heard many times.  Living consensually doesn’t mean my children are allowed to do anything they want to, regardless of the consequences.  But it does mean that we try and extend them the same trust and respect as individuals that we extend to each other.  Just as I couldn’t imagine telling Shawn what he could or could not eat, or when he had played his video game long enough, I couldn’t imagine forcing my children to eat or not eat or stay awake or go to sleep when I wanted them too.  So, Connor has the freedom to choose how he spends his day.  He chooses what he when he wants to eat, how he spends his free time, how much television/video gaming he does, when he goes to bed, etc.

I realize that many people find this hard to understand.  Let me try and explain.  Let’s take eating as an example: An infant will cry when they are hungry, and as the parent, we feed them.   It doesn’t matter if it’s four o’clock in the morning; we feed them.  As the infant gets older, we expect it to conform to a three-meals-a-day schedule, perhaps with some small snacks in between.  But what if our child is hungry two hours before dinner?  How many times have you heard the phrase, €œWait until dinner, if you eat now, you’ll spoil your appetite?€

Isn’t the reality, if the child eats when they are hungry, they will satiate their appetite?  Why did we stop trusting our children to eat when they’re hungry?  Shawn and I also try and avoid forcing our children to eat what we think they should eat.  We have tried to stress to them that food is used to fuel our body, and we have had lots of discussions about which foods provide good fuel for our bodies, and which foods might taste good, but not provide as good of a fuel for our bodies.  As a result, my children don’t eat for comfort, and they don’t overeat, because they don’t view any food as being off-limits.  They’re able to follow their bodies’ cues and eat what they want, when they want.  Knowing that cookies or ice cream is available when they want it, makes it less of a temptation for them to overeat those foods, because they know they’re available when they want them.

We follow the same guidelines with sleep.  We trust them to follow their bodies’ cues and sleep when they’re tired.  Now, I will fully admit that Connor is one of those children who get more wound up the later it gets.  Ten o’clock is pretty much his breaking point.  After several weeks of him staying up until one in the morning and then waking up at seven and being cranky and tired all day long, we sat down and talked to him about it.  He knew he was overly tired, but enjoyed having time to play Xbox uninterrupted at night after his two younger siblings were asleep.  So we worked out a compromise: He can have full access to the Xbox while the babies are asleep and can’t bother him. And, in turn, he would get to bed earlier every night so he could be well rested the next day.  We’ve been doing this for about four months, and he is in bed between nine and ten o’clock every night, and his mood has improved GREATLY.

So living consensually doesn’t mean that we don’t parent our children.  It means that we focus on parenting them from a place of respect and trust.  It means we strive to have a peaceful, joyful home. It means we focus on letting our children be who they are, and not on trying to shape them into who we expect them to be.

This short documentary film follows two extremely lively and enthusiastic pre-med students at Maharishi University, Antwan and Yahya, though a month of their experiment eating a 100% raw food vegan diet. The story of their experiences, both challenges and benefits, on the raw food diet shows if and how it is possible for a college student to survive going raw.

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[Section taken from the book  "The Sharp Knife of Forced Simplicity, Volume 1: The Numinous Rebellion"]

Problems. Despite what you may think, having problems is fine–everybody’s got €˜em, and they give us something to do. The real problem is acceptance. That is, when we start growing used to them, or even comfortable with them. In short, the danger is when it stops being €œa problem€ and starts being €œmy problem.€ Read the full story

I’ve had the extremely good fortune of being involved with the state’s youth-let anti-tobacco industry movement (”Just Eliminate Lies” or “JEL” for short) since it’s inception back in 2000. This year’s theme for the state-wide summit was “JEL Number Nine” – the capstone of which were two “street marketing” events, one in Des Moines and one in Iowa City.

As you can see, the message was “50 people will die this lunch break from tobacco use.” Fifty teenagers in black shirts would “die” when “Big Tobacco” rolled in. Overall it was well-recieved!

You can find out more about Just Eliminate Lies here – http://www.JELiowa.org

This is a reprint of a letter written by William Goldstein, General Counsel of Maharishi University of Management. This letter recently appeared in the Fairfield Ledger as a PAID advertisement. I am publishing it here for free.

June 15, 2009

Dear Mr. Rooney:

Big Tobacco and Big Cell Towers

A very significant thing happened last week. In addition to your letter to our community printed in the Thursday Fairfield Ledger, the House voted 301-97 to pass federal legislation stringently regulating the tobacco industry, following the Senate’s 79-17 vote. That marked a great achievement after a decades long battle.

But even more noteworthy is that, contrary to its competitors, Phillip Morris – the nation’s largest tobacco company – came out in support of the bill saying it was behind tough but fair regulation. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sponsor of the bill and committee chairman at the memorable 1994 hearing where tobacco industry executives denied nicotine was addictive, relished the long-sought victory:

“I think we are today at the last gasp of the tobacco industry’s efforts to protect their profits at the expense of the health and lives of the American people and to get children to take up this habit.€ Read the full story