Ok no one has addressed whether the cost of supermarket food is the real cost of producing good quality food. It's not. The price tag at the supermarket doesn't include the cost of land degradation by conventional agriculture, pollution by driving or flying food long distance, inhumane treatment of animals, and the fact that farmers and farmworkers don't get a living wage. Yes, it's possible to produce inexpensive flavorless tomatoes that are picked green by machines, gassed, and trucked thousands of miles. It's possible to produce ecologically devastating monocultures of genetically modified corn cheaply enough, especially when you can put high fructose corn syrup into every processed food on the shelf. It's possible to produce chicken to sell at 99 cents a pound if you cut off their beaks, stuff them into tiny cages with lights on 24/7 and "harvest" them at 6 weeks. What you calculate for your home garden costs (and you should add your labor) is pretty close to what it really costs to produce high quality healthy food. And it is worth every penny. Food is one of the basic necessities of life, yet Americans have been taught to consider that it should be the cheapest thing in our budget. The average American spends less than 10% of their income on food (the world average is around 30-40%; probably 50% in the developing world). This is false economy. I don't object to paying the real cost to get as much of my food as possible from smaller scale diversified local farming (including my garden).

If you don't have a local bookstore, you can order it from Amazon.com.

Bryces Mommy, I thought about your dream last night. Perhaps there's a message in that dream concerning your guilt. "I was so happy to see him but then something happened where he needed me more then ever but I couldn't reach him to save him." As horrifying as the dream was, perhaps this was to give you peace that your being there might not have made a difference. Life leaves us with so many unanswered questions. There's a true story that someone once told me that makes me cry every time I repeat it. A young mother of 3 lost her husband in some kind of accident. She related this years later, when she had remarried and her children were almost teens. "I was the only woman to ever lose her husband. I WALLOWED in my grief. One day I looked up to notice my little children, sitting quietly in a row on the sofa, watching, waiting for Mommy to stop crying." She went on to tell how she told them to get ready and she quickly dressed and left the house with them. From that turning point she began to heal. I could not at that time identify with her loss, but I identified with the children. Now I still can't imagine her own sorrow, but I can understand the paralzying feeling that grief brings. I know the need to tell and retell one's experiences, and the need to stop and cry before you can continue with a simple task. This might be a Christmas during which you could focus on grandparents or older friends without children around, and they on you. Your husband hurts, too. Encourage each other. We need to hear more about this precious child. When he learned to walk. When he learned to talk. Details of him in the winter, in the spring, with his Grampa, with the cat. The Real Bryce, never to be forgotten. Nell

Breezygirl, it should work the same in Ipad 1 if your system is current. .? Historically, I've only been able to get my pics to upload using the Direct Link wrapped in the symbols as is hopefully showing up in the pic below. I think this method is what throws my pic bigger and makes the text of all other entries smaller. Here's what happens when I try it both ways - Direct Link and Http: Using IPad 2 & a photobucket app, here's what does (or doesn't happen) when I just insert the HTML code from photobucket link list: . Here's what I get when I use the Direct Link code from the photobucket menu, and wrap it in the symbols to the left of http, and to the right of jpg