7gen Bloc

Here's the thing: All the bravado and mental preparation in the world melts into a big puddle of nothing when your first child gets placed into your arms. In my case, courage and certitude were vanquished by an unholy mix of icy fear and incendiary joy. Amidst it all came the sudden revelation that I was a rank parenting amateur of the first magnitude who'd suddenly been handed the ball in the Super Bowl of Life.

Here in Vermont's northern Champlain Valley, the first big frost came last week to mark the end of a long and fertile gardening season. We've pulled up the last of everything except the root vegetables and the cabbage. Today the first snow fell, but inside we're still enjoying the fruits of summer and will be for several weeks to come.

Did you know that babies are born with more than 200 man-made industrial chemicals in their blood? Did you know many of the consumer products we use, from cosmetics to foods to household products, contribute to this phenomenon? When you look at a label on a cleaning product, do you truly understand what you are reading as well as you do when reading a food label?

Before he died, we made regular trips to visit my father. While it was always great to see him, it'd drive us nuts in some ways. For example, in his town there was no recycling, and each day, like clockwork, we hauled giant trash bags to the big row of garbage cans out in the alley.

Here in my undisclosed location in the Vermont hinterlands, it's blissfully easy to lock out the world and throw away the key. Just keep the radio off, the TV unplugged, and the computer offline, and you've got yourself a nice little media blackout that reduces the world to the view out the window. Lately, it's been tempting.

Nosedive. Freefall. Meltdown. Pick the description of your choice. It doesn't matter what we call it. By just about every metric that matters, the U.S. and global economies appear to be knocking on the door of financial apocalypse. And that may just be excellent news.

Earlier this year we let you know that a new edition of The Better World Shopping Guide would soon be available, and now we are posting to let you know it is. I've been using these kinds of books since the 1990s to help me figure out which companies I would buy from, and which I wouldn't. The new edition doesn't disappoint. Pocket-sized so it's easy to carry around, and at-a-glance easy-to-read, it grades companies with a simple A to F. The grade encompasses human rights, the environment, animal protection, community involvement, and social justice.

It's early autumn here in Vermont, and though the leaves have only just begun to turn and warm days remain, we're already thinking about the coming winter. Wood for the stove arrives this week. Doors are checked for cracks. Windows are closed for the season. Already I miss the fresh breeze through the house and can feel the air inside getting stale.

I've always found fascinating the things that people are willing to spend money on. Because so often they seem to make so little sense. People buy pricey motorized toys and flat screen TVs while the mortgage goes unpaid. Grocery carts fill with empty processed foods when cheaper whole foods taste better. Billions of dollars march off to war while schools crumble and health care slips out of reach.

We've all heard the news: type 2 diabetes is epidemic and the situation is going from bad to catastrophic with some 24 million people, or about 8% of the U.S. population, diagnosed as diabetic and, according to CDC estimates, another 57 million suffering from the blood sugar changes that precede the disease. Suddenly, a huge swath of our population has developed or is at risk of developing this dangerous condition. What's going on?