Letters to the Editor
Malusinka
Published Letters: 350 Editor's Choice: 49
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Fruit is a bettter bet
[Read the article: Your very own climate change Victory Garden]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Vegetable gardening takes a lot of work. If you like to do it (I do), it counts as leisure. If you don't, it's a tedious chore.
Most shrub fruit (red and black currants, gooseberries, blueberries, etc) take very little work. They're decorative. I don't see why more people don't have a few bushes. (And for everyone who lives in a state worried about Pine blister rust, there are immune varieties of currants)
Equally, fruit trees are low effort if you're willing to eat less than perfectly round, unblemished, chemically doused fruit.
Raspberries and blackberries can be weeds.
Fruit is expensive, too. You save a lot more money with far less effort harvesting a pint of blueberries than you do raising potatos or onions.
As a side point, while home grown strawberries are delicious, they are not low work, in my experience.
Anyway, someone who has no light in the backyard and no time to garden should plant a few blueberry or currant bushes in their front yard. (Blueberry for acid soil, currant for alkaline.)
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With all due respect Ramon
[Read the article: Malthus is in the air]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Experiments with central planning have proved that Friedmanite free markets do a hell of a lot better job of allocating resources and solving problems than governments that plan heavily.
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Universal Health care
[Read the article: Race and the white coat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]would solve the problem of fewer African-Americans having health insurance. And please, no silly solutions like penalizing people for failing to buy insurance or cooking up some other scheme. The US has plenty of socialized medicine, Medicare, Medicaid and the VA hospitals. I vote for Medicare.
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Gymnastics is a judged sport
[Read the article: "Why do these men want to coach little girls?" ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The injuries come from an excessive reliance on ever more risky tricks, needed in a routine. The sport could, just as easily, focus on grace. When someone does a complicated tumbling run on the beam, she needs a pause to set it up. It used to be, judges penalized those pauses. Award the maximum points for easier moves and penalize pauses and girls will get injured less often.
After all, Ice skating (another judged sport) banned flips and sommersaults as too risky.
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When I did HS gymnastics
[Read the article: "Why do these men want to coach little girls?" ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]the girls who were most likely to win got all the coaching attention and the not so good gymnasts didn't get time on the equipment. Yep, we were pretty competitive.
Also, we had weigh-ins. No comment was made about weight, but the coaches allowed us to create our own pressure. Over 100 lbs was a no-no. I am 5'8" and large boned. No one ever discussed what a good weight for me was. Looking at old pictures of myself, I realize when I was under an 'elephantine' weight of 130, I was too thin. But, the social pressure was to be 100. So even without overt pressure, the issue was there.
I avoided weigh-ins, but the whole thing put me off a sport which I enjoyed and which had made an athlete out of a coach potato.
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Eating Weeds
[Read the article: Your very own climate change Victory Garden]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I spent some time eating the edible stuff around my house (then in the Boston area) including dandelions.
My conclusion: edible does not equal delicious. Dandelions are bitter. Stinging nettles are reasonably good, but have a sort of weedy flavor and are hard to prepare with out getting stung.
In my experience, if an edible plant is common and commonly ignored as a foodstuff, there's a very good reason for it.
Further, most weeds are prolific. Mint, which has plenty of culinary uses and makes unarguably lovely tea, will crowd out anything else in its area within a few growing seasons. If you want to harvest kilos of mint and not much else, sure leave it be.
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I noticed that you didn't ask for advice, but explanantions
[Read the article: My husband constantly upstages me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The first thing that leaps to mind is that hubby is very insecure. He's afraid of failure, that's why he sabotaged his business life. What if he really tried and turned out to be average?
Second, you're successful. You're probably not Bill Gates. You're probably average, but he sees you get recognition for your acheivements that he doesn't get (because he sabotaged them for fear of being 'average'.)
Now that you have a life and he's destroyed his own, he probably has come to be seen as 'Husband of -' instead of 'self' by most of your circle. So, now he has additional proof that he's inadequate on his own.
He's lost confidence in his own judgement, so your opinions, friends, ideas are his only source of worthwhile opinions, friends, ideas.
Further, as he takes over your plans, you look for something else. You're moving away from him. He clings tighter to keep you, turning a minor not-quite-enough-space problem into full-fledged suffocation.
And perhaps, he pursues your dream to prove to you that he's worthy. Maybe he does it to keep you with him instead of being caught up in something else.
So, that's my two cents on the psychology. What to do about it? I'm less than sanguine on the chances he'll reform. Since my theory is that his behaviors are caused by low self-confidence, it's possible that you could increase his confidence by praising him, which might reduce his negative behaviors.
I don't want to play blame the victim, but I mention this because if your response to him plays some role in your problems, then there's more hope for the relationship (which you seem to want to save) than if you are super-humanly tolerant and he is a vulture:
I suspect you harbor some resentment (you have every reason to), so that when he took over your dream (friends, ideas, opinons), you might not offer much positive feedback. Maybe you even make snippy little comments, digging away at his already inadequate self-esteem.
Anyway, I second Cary, you need a therapist, either to help you get away from this albatross or to help you change the dynamic in your marriage to something more positive.