...to see people discussing vegetarian eating as a reasonable option, for improving both personal and planetary health. (Ohh, MOOO. And...CLUCKS! If fish had voices I'd have to give them up too. It's coming.)

I don't want to cook either, when I come home. But I don't mind in the morning--thank the lawd for crockpots. I like frozen veggies.

My eternal hunt is balanced ONE-dish vegetarian crockpot dinners that can be assembled in 5 minutes in the morning. Hard to find--please post!

I made up one, pretty wintery, but sort of good. Serve over the previous day's grain. In crock:

1 box frozen turnip greens

1 box frozen corn

1 box frozen lima beans

2 cans diced tomatoes w/herbs (or add herbs)

cubed firm tofu or some seitan (cut salt)

2 bay leaves

salt, pepper, herbs

water

LOW ALL DAY

Sell it.

And then write how that was.

It'll be awesome.

Seriously.

We all change one choice at a time.

When I said "young girls" I was thinking 11, 12...not older teens. It's happening younger and younger. People dress their little girls in bikinis. Child porn is a pandemic.

I think adults should care about what they say and model where kids are likely to see it. Wild idea, but it's what I think.

I don't want people to be repressed and miserable.

I loathe Limbaugh, I'm an agnostic, I've been divorced twice, and you've misunderstood me.

I do think it's good to have some awe, though.

When I watch TV I think about the young kids watching it. When I read online I think about the young kids watching it. I think about kids a lot.

I just do. I know it could be a brake on some things. Maybe that's passe. No brakes.

I think we don't care enough about kids, generally, in this culture, as much as we care about our sensations. Or the lives of animals as much as burgers. Same old. Exact same.

I like Rebecca. She's witty. I love Gen-Xers.

I'm pretty bawdy, myself. I'm just careful about kids.

Somebody's reading this.

Hi, kid. Sorry.

I gave up on Mr. Keillor a while back when he kept sniggering about my chosen faith, Unitarian Universalism, and made plain he's happiest as a Episcopalian.

That's the upper-crustiest of American denominations. I have good friends who are elevated by the lovely rituals, but generally, here in the South the denomination is the social bastion of a sleepy kind of privilege. The sort where little old ladies not long ago used to refer to the Civil War as "the recent unpleasantness".

It's the privilege of eyes tight shut, fan waving in the sultry breeze, ears plugged to the sound of a lynching down the lane.

I think Mr. K. is deep-South nostalgic at heart, really. He reeks class delicacy in a lot of his reflexes, and this one, "Don't punish anyone, it's upsetting" -- is also that sort of thing.

His lack of COMMON SENSE in going vaporish about prosecution (thereby derailing an essential American self-reckoning--the very definition of hope after the Bush years) is horribly depressing.

But not a surprise.

I'm not usually so scathing but I am recurrently disappointed when someone sensitive enough to human nuance to be a charming storyteller is too blinkered to perceive the big picture.

If this WERE intended as satire...it would be blood-curdlingly cold.

Satire that succeeds reaches readers. This has just chilled them.

If GK were honestly enjoying the construction of a great piece of subtle satire...he wouldn't be coming across as so blase, so limp about things that matter so much.

He has gone far, far away from being connected to real people, or real human community. It's as though the distant fantasy figures of Lake Woebegone, conjured up so cleverly and condescendingly for so long, are stand-ins for real people, real passions.

(Well, there are no real passions there.)

But here -- there is a sense of moral outrage, never better placed. And nobody can reach him.

He is distant, detached, apart, not One of Us, an omniscient observer who's come to believe he Knows What We Need.

This is not good. This is not a sign of good mental health and this, in fact, makes me feel truly concerned for him.

Avuncular detachment can go pathological. GK is like the Outside Observer Inside, except he doesn't realize he's let go the wisp of ribbon that anchors him to the human community.

He's off on a frozen lake, chatting with phantasms. Their banter is wry and melancholy, but mugs of toddy are waiting.

It's hideous, barbaric, cruel, and insane, no matter what the gender of the young human it's done unto.

I'm horrified that she found it "amusing". Watching a 6 year-old scream in fear and she can still say "amusing"?

I will never forget a National Geographic photo I saw of a girl, about 8, about to have her clitoris cut off by an old woman. She was surrounded by other women holding her down and she was screaming in desperation up at the photographer, stretching her arm up to him, in agonizing pain and fear.

Male infants are helpless, whether in hospitals or at a bris.

It's as nauseating to me as some Mayan sacrifice.

Religious excuses, or "matching Daddy's dick" be damned.

I remember almost 30 years ago how relieved I was to have a girl, because it was clear to me I'd have taken my baby boy and run off to Canada before any bright knife came anywhere near his body.

It still makes me STEAMING MAD. And grief stricken.

Very, very, very same lack of empathy that wrecks everything, from politics to the planet...