Well, here it is--Friday again and April is almost half over.  How the time has flown.  I know I say that often but tis true for me.  The weather turned colder here--not freezing cold but cold.  We had rain yesterday.  At least a couple of inches, which we do need.  Illinois just west of Chicago have flood warnings posted.  They had a couple of 10 and 12 inch snowfalls over the couple of weeks around April 1 and I am sure the ground did not have enough time to thaw.  Then they got more rain than we did over the last week.  They say we should have warmer temps Sunday.  I hope so because I really want to get started in the gardens.

Here is an amusing item--unless you are a woman intent on defying time.  Those of you who have visited here often know I am not such a woman.

The author of this little piece is so right but he doesn't take it far enough.  It isn't just the switch from the peculations of those occupying the corner offices to the alleged gaming of the social safety net by 'welfare queens.'  How much of the news is really news any more?  We get maybe a line or two about a real news story and then five minutes dissecting the latest round of Dancing With The Stars.  If someone wants to watch the program I don't mind but I do mind when it invades the news I want to watch.  I guess Psy has a new 'music' video out.  I would rather not know about it but I can't get away from it.  It is on the (s)news program.

The news last night had another segment on how much food the 'average' American family wastes each day, week, month, year.  While I can agree that modern Americans have been conditioned to waste way too much of everything (not just food.)  But I feel that focusing on the individual or individual family ignores all too much of our wastage.  How about laws that prohibit farmers who can't sell a crop profitably from donating it to food banks?  Forcing them to sell at a loss or plow under is a big waste.  Or what about the frequent (and seemingly more frequent) recalls of food for bacterial or other kinds of contamination?  Some of the companies hit with such recalls over the last couple of years had been running dirty operations for months if not years before the FDA or other agency shut them down.  That is not only a threat to consumer health and safety but a criminal waste of food.  They estimated that the so-called Average family wastes 23 lbs per week.  I would guess that at least that much (that is 23 lbs x the number of families per day) is wasted in our industrial food processing system.  Why don't our lamestream (s)news media address that wastage?

About a month or so ago I read accounts from Australia concerning shortages of powdered baby formula because Chinese visitors were buying it up and sending it back to relatives.  Evidently, Britain has also had that problem--to the point that some suppliers and stores are putting a limit on how much can be purchased at any one time.  I saw a BBC piece awhile back which included complaints from British customers who were upset with the restrictions because they couldn't buy enough from their usual supplier to meet their needs.  Often they had twins or they only shopped once every or twice a month.  The phenomenon stems from the scandal of a couple of years ago involving melamine laced formula sickening and killing babies.  I would say, from stories like this one, that consumers still don't trust the Chinese producers.