Hmmm, I bought one of those Laura's Lean Meat grass-fed cattle steaks to cook tonight, and it was much tastier than supermarket steaks usually are. Happy cows may be the way to go.

Yay Allyson!

So neighborgirl T's spring break was last week. Her school got her signed up for a tour of colleges (mostly, historically black but not exclusively.) So she spent the week driving down in a bus to Florida, hitting schools in VA, NC (maybe Georgia) and FLA, culminating in a trip to Universal and Disneyworld. She called to tell me all about it. She wants to go to one of the Florida schools ("they have PALM TREES everywhere!") because it has the best pre-med program. She knows cause she asked about it at every school.

I'm so proud of her, because she can be such a shy thing, and here she was, 13, travelling without parents for the first time, meeting with college students and profs, and yet she overcame the shyness because she wanted it so bad.

I need to find a way to support programs like this because for so many kids like her and her peers here in city schools, college is so much not even an option they don't even dream about it. And she's one of the lucky ones because she's got a dad who is determined she'll go to college because he didn't.

That is so cool, sara. Go T!

I need to find a way to support programs like this because for so many kids like her and her peers here in city schools, college is so much not even an option they don't even dream about it. And she's one of the lucky ones because she's got a dad who is determined she'll go to

Very cool. There was a story on the news here about a similar program for Chicago Public Schools students where they raised donations to send busloads of kids around to schools during spring break. It's a fantastic idea.

There's this town in...Alabama? (I don't have the article handy. El Dorado?) in which an oil company promised to pay the tuition (I think equiv to the state uni fees, but I don't recall) of every.single.graduate. They announced it to an assembly of the super-academic students first. When those kids went back to their classes and announced it, the other kids were all "whatev, you aren't talking about us." When it was made clear that it meant them too, pandemonium broke out. The trick, in the future, is that the kids in that town never take that amazing gift for granted.

Arkansas: [link]

I need to find a way to support programs like this because for so many kids like her and her peers here in city schools, college is so much not even an option they don't even dream about it. And she's one of the lucky ones because she's got a dad who is determined she'll go to college because he didn't

sara, please let her parents know that both she and her parents are welcome to give me a call, I'm happy to talk with them about colleges in general, and I will do some gentle Howard recruitment :)

Tivo just sent me an email about a special deal -- HD tivo, lifetime subscription, $700, free wireless adapter. great deal, I shoudn't do it, it don't need it. but my current tivo doesn't communicate well with the cable box, and I often miss shows because the channel doesn't change.

Seriously, I will, Vortex. She's a great kid.

This was all a lead-in to the announcement that, at the next conference, they would schecht (ritually slaughter) a goat, which led to controversy in the Jewish/progressive/environmental blogsphere for MONTHS.

Maybe it would have been less controversial if they'd let ita kill it.

I've caught fish that I've eaten - I just never killed and gutted them. (I don't think I've kept a fish I've caught since high school.)

There was a Jewish sustainable food conference about a year ago where one of the speakers asked "How many of you are vegetarian, but would eat meat if you had personally killed the animal?" and "How many of you eat meat, but wouldn't if you had to see the animal die?" and got a pretty decent number of hands raised for both.

I've been thinking recently that as a meat eater, I should become more familiar with the way the animals I eat are slaughtered. (A common vegetarian critique of meat-eating is most meat-eaters are only familiar with the meat as it comes prepared or packaged for them.) So it's sort of a "If I'm going to be responsible for the deaths of animals, I should be more familiar with what goes into their killing, so I can make an educated decision on whether it's OK...." But so far, I haven't done much along these lines. (Other than watch my dad kill and gut fish.)

my current tivo doesn't communicate well with the cable box, and I often miss shows because the channel doesn't change.

If you read the fine print on that email, it says that the Tivo HD boxes have CableCARD built-in, so you wouldn't need a set-top box anymore.

(Yes, I'm tempted to spend my tax refund on this instead of paying off credit cards.)