Class Warfare in the grocery store

Heather and I have spent a lot of energy lately pursuing a diet of more natural and organic foods, looking to remove the chemicals in our lives as much as possible. This started with the birth of our first daughter and looking to provide her with the best foods and drinks. Organic produce, organic milk, and more. We inevitably found that our children's eating pattern models directly after our own eating pattern and started to more and more push ourselves to eat more fresh, natural, and chemical free foods. We also have been putting more of an eye to environmentally conscience products, buying detergents like Seventh Generation, aiming for local foods when possible, and avoiding some of the farmed fishes that have apparently been a problem. We are near the end of this journey with just a couple of items remaining to be changed out once we finish the last of our previous supply.

This journey has come at an expense, both to our wallets and our cravings. The cost of eating natural has nearly doubled our food budget. We still are looking for alternatives when we want certain things like a Cherry Coke. In the end we have been blessed with the means and will power to work through this transformation. However, one thing has been paining me for the last couple of months. If natural and organic foods are better for you, then why sell any others?

There is a fundamental issue if these foods are indeed healthier for people...that issue is with the fact that most natural and organic foods are priced such that lower income individuals cannot pay for them. I believe that this needs to be a new battleground for those concerned with the lower income earners rights to pursue a healthy life.

The far left pundits would say the establishment targets the poor as shown by things such as more fast food establishments in poor neighborhoods. Frankly, the right to prepared food is not my concern and I do not believe a low income individual has the right to eat at the most expensive restaurants.

The far right pundits would say that all foods in the grocery store are governed by the FDA and they have established firm rules to ensure people's health. I think that is crap. The FDA hasn't been doing enough and America is getting fatter. Children are going through puberty faster. Something is not right.

The bottom line in my opinion is that the government needs to step in enough and start declaring all of the chemicals we are throwing at our children to be bad and create some new rules for food producers. I don't want them to wait until its too late as they did with the tobacco industry. I want them to make a decision based on the best information and start to influence the industry. The health of my children's generation depends on it. The health of those who cannot afford to do it themselves depends on it.

My political position disclaimer: I do not believe in class warfare in the Robin Hood sense or that we should balance out incomes so that someone who is uneducated and not trying in life (see the guy in "Swing Vote") would make the same as a top CEO. However, what I do believe is that all Americans have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and when the system fails to provide that right then the government should step in as minimally as possible. Amongst other things with the right of life comes health, right of liberty comes freedom of oppression and the right to bear arms, and with the right to pursue happiness comes family, religion and education. I believe that ideally in a capitalist environment all of these needs can be met by entrepreneurs and charities however I acknowledge that the right to life and specifically health care has not been met properly through these means and while I agree with the government getting involved, I believe they should do so as minimally as possible to solve the current issue.

Private school is expensive

Heather and I not thrilled with the state of the public schools here in Raleigh. Our neighborhood has been redistricted so we pass other schools to get to our kids and things don't match my expectations coming from a great school district in Pittsburgh. There are some great charter and magnet schools but they are pretty much entirely by lottery, so we have to hope we get selected. If our kids are not selected for a magnet or charter school, we can enter a lottery for our very nearby year round school or go to the traditional school. The other options, of course, are private schools or homeschooling.

We just recently have started to research private schools. We have a bias towards the nearby North Raleigh Christian Academy (NRCA) where many people we know have gone. We also have several secular schools like Ravenscroft. I actually found a great list of private schools that includes teacher to student ratios. The problem is we just have realized how expensive these can be. Excluding the new family fees, NRCA is about $8000 and Ravenscroft is $17,000 for grades 1-5. Since Madelyn and Anna will be back to back school years, this would be around $1350/mo for NRCA and $2850/mo for Ravenscroft. Wow! How do people do this? Ravenscroft is more expensive than my alma matter, University of Pittsburgh, is right now. Both are more expensive than Pitt was 10 years ago when I was in college.

Anyway, Heather and I were hoping we could figure out how to make this work but so long as we have a mortgage we don't see how we can. So, I guess for now we concentrate on getting rid of the mortgage and trying to get the right charter/magnet school.

Vote for my wife

So, Heather's blog randomly got selected as one of Nickelodeon's best local blogs. Take a minute and go vote for Raleigh Mom at this site: http://gocitykids.parentsconnect.com/parents-picks/raleigh-durham-nc-usa/best-raleigh-durham-local-blog.

The floor is on fire

As a kid, I had a great imagination. One of the things I used to pretend is that the floor was on fire and I needed to move my feet as quickly as possible to keep them from burning. This morning, I found myself playing a similar but opposite game.

So, we just remodeled our master bathroom. Pictures will follow this post. In remodeling, we added a new shower, new vanity, tile floors, and a new throne. We also debated adding a heated floor. See, my mom has one of these in her place and doesn't find it overly useful. After having talked with our contractor, he said they were very useful so long as you have a thermostat...which my mom doesn't have. So, we went with it. Installed is a Nuheat thermostat. Until today, I was questioning the value.

Well, last night got into the 40s here in Raleigh...for the first time since we had our new bathroom. Well, that floor got cold. Unfortunately, not all the floor is heated and, in fact, I need to walk to the "cold" section to get my towel for the shower. I found myself dancing over that ice cold part...like the floor was on fire.

Dryer Vent Booster Fans

Since we moved into our house in April of 2005, we have never had a perfectly working dryer. See, when we bought the house we bought a new washer and dryer as the person who bought our previous home had wanted ours. The GE dryer we had worked okay at first but just would not work on bigger loads like the same model we had at the previous house would. It got worse and worse where even a small load of laundry would have to be dried more than once. Eventually, it was obvious that the dryer had died at less than 4 years old. Before having a new one installed, we got Sears to come out and clean our dryer vent while cleaning the carpets. The things the technician said made it clear to us that the problem is only partially the dryer.

In our house, the washer and dryer are in a small closet in the middle of the house on the second floor. The vent goes up into the attic and out the roof. Overall, I have measured this vent at over 20 feet with a 90 degree turn at the very beginning and one 30-45 degree turn in the attic. Because of the position of the vent, the hose connecting the dryer to the vent also has a 90 degree turn. Thanks to our friend Scott, he got me looking into dryer vent booster fans.

Yesterday we had a Dryer Vent Booster Fan installed at out house by our friend and contractor Scott Smith of RWS Construction. The fan I choose was the Suncourt Centrax 4" booster fan. I did a lot of research on these devices and this was my favorite. I found this iaqsource.com site to be the best in terms of information and it includes one of the largest lists of these devices.

As near as I can tell, there are a variety of differences between these devices. The basic differences, if I were to sum it up, are the power of the fan (cubic feet per minute or cfm), the way the switch works, and how protected it is from lint. For switches there were three types, manual, pressure sensing, and current sensing. Reading reviews of these devices at various places including Amazon led me to believe that the pressure sensing swicthes could cause the fan to be turned on at the wrong time (like a hot muggy day or a windy day) or not turned on at the right time. I decided immediately after reading all of the problems that I would stay away from these. This left the current sensing or the manual switch as my remaining options. I focused in on the Suncourt because of its price and the current sensing switch. When reading the iaqsource page on the Suncourt, I saw the following:

Boosting may be necessary when the total duct length exceeds the following:
No Bends - 25 feet
1 Bend - 20 feet
2 Bends - 15 feet
3 Bends - 10feet

Another important fact about this device included that it was UL tested meaning it was safe and should not catch on fire.

So, its installed, operates very quietly, and hopefully in a year I will write more about how I like this device. It took Scott about four hours to install but it is my expectation that the savings in electricity (and from broken dryers) that this device may give us will be fully worth it.

A sad reminder

I never knew Kristi Walker, but I wish I had.

Heather and I were a part of a group called Triangle Leadership Forum and "graduated" from that in 2006. It was a meaningful experience that to this day has sculpted our marriage, parenting, and my leadership at home, work, and in church.

Chuck and Kristi Walker were taking that same Triangle Leadership Forum journey to be completed in 2010. On October 22nd of 2008 we got an email about Kristi and asking us to pray for her. She remained in our prayers for the less than four months she had from diagnosis until she passed. I didn't know Kristi and knew little about her situation. I knew she was a young mother and had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

In the past few days I decided to learn more about Kristi and her situation just because I didn't know much. I read her obituary and found she was just 6 months older than me, a mother of three boys, and a local to Raleigh. Here is a professional blog on Kristi that tells women, even young women, why they need to get screened. For a mother of three young boys to have passed all I can remind myself is that God is in control and has a reason. Also - women should get checked consistently and early.

I am not sure why I am writing this other than I think that as many people our age as possible should hear this story. I will try to come up with something more cheery to blog about next.

Madelyn walking

This video of Madelyn walking is the great news of the day. She is 10 months old and just took her first journey over 3 steps and did it on video! I am a proud papa!