My sister has disseminated histoplasmosis caused by working on a small scale chicken farm. She is legally blind in one eye due to the lesions which are untreatable in her case, and she is developing lesions in her other eye. It’s a widespread disease in North America but most people are asymptomatic. Those who deal with poultry droppings are at a greater risk.

I’d like to know if any safe-handling routines would mitigate this risk and if there would be bylaw control over cleanliness for backyard coops before I sign any petitions supporting the cause. Needles in the middle of your cornea are not my idea of fun.

in WWII, you had to grow some of your own food because MASSIVE amounts of food and material had to be shipped to soldiers overseas for a war effort. Everyone piles on Bush for not calling on Americans to “sacrifice” more, but that isn’t what people think works in a ‘recession’. Look at the old Jimmy Duranty “give a man a job” NRA piece. He tells the rich guy to stop driving his own car and hire a chauffeur.

2. It would have rallied people around a common cause and group of ideals that could have permanently changed the course of human behavior. It’s easier in a time of crisis for a leader to say “Now is the time that we all come together and do what is right for our communities” because people want direction during those times.

That’s why people wanted Bush to ask for the things that mgfarrelly suggested.

I live in the city. Small house, small yard.

And it is Hell, nor are you ever out of it!

I really do believe that if we who are able were to spend more time growing our own food, it’d help out the country on the whole. Less consumption, healthier food, more outdoor activity. Indeed, how can we lose?

Farmers who grow it will now typically say they grow “rapeseed”, however. In fact there used to be, in some small town in the Carolinas (IIRC), an annual Rape Festival that included a parade and the crowing of a Rape Queen and Rape Princess. (You don’t want to try googling any of that.)

Imagine if the President had called on Americans to conserve energy, to reduce/reuse/recycle, to shop local and decrease reliance on fossil fuels?

Sad that, for a lot of people, the wake up call was the economy tanking.

I would have done it.

Maybe if this recession lasts longer, people will start to realize that there are other ways of dealing with the world.