The bubble-headed bleach blonde comes on at 5:00, she can tell you about the plane crash with a gleem in her eye. It's interesting when people die, gives us dirty laundry.--Don Henley, Dirty Laundry
On The Farm (info from tvturnoff.org)
TV Facts
Americans watch an average of more than four hours of TV a day, or two full months of TV a year.
40% of families always or often watch TV while eating dinner.
Only 14% of 12th-graders who watch TV six hours a dayor more achieve proficiency on reading tests, whereas 52% of students who watch an hour or less do.
By age 18, American children will have seen an average of more than 200,000 acts of violence, including 16,000 murders on TV.
Virtually all 3,500 research studies over 40 years show a link between watching media
violence and committing acts of real violence.
The proportion of overweight children has doubled since 1980 due, in part, to sedentary leisure time activities such as watching TV.
TV Undermines Family Time
Many people feel that they do not have enough time to spend with their families.
In fact, according to a Newsweek poll, even 73 percent of teens would like to spend more time with their parents. Although often overlooked, television plays a crucial role. In the average American household, the TV is on for 7 hours, 40 minutes a day, and 40 percent of Americans report always or often watching television while eating dinner. What's more, most family members watch different programs in separate rooms. Families who watch little or no television, on the other hand, often find that they have more time to spend with one another in more engaging and interactive activities.
TV Harms Reading & Academic Performance
Excessive television-watching harms reading skills both by displacing them from
our daily lives and, according to some experts, by affecting the physical structure of the brain. Researcher Susan B. Neuman of the University of Lowell put it succinctly more than a decade ago, reading scores diminished sharply for those students watching more than four hours a day and today's data continue to support her conclusion. In 1998, 52 percent of 12th-graders who watched an hour or less of TV a day achieved reading proficiency, whereas only 14 percent of those watching more than six hours did. Only 27 percent who watched four to five hours read proficiently.
TV Encourages Violence: The debate is over
The evidence is overwhelming: violence on TV promotes violent behavior in real life. Of more than 3,500 research studies on the effects of media violence over the past 40 years, 99.5 percent have shown a positive correlation between watching violence on TV and committing acts of real-life violence. Watching glorified and consequence-free violence time and time again on television influences behavior, especially among children. Television's lesson is an enduring one. According to Dr. Leonard D. Eron'Äôs 32-year study, watching television violence at age 8 was the strongest predictor of aggression later in life, stronger even than violent behavior as children. The more violent television the subjects watched at age 8, the more serious was their aggressive behavior 22 years later, at age 30.9. In addition to promoting violence, TV also desensitizes viewers to real-life violence and distorts viewers' perceptions of how dangerous the world really is. Television violence dulls the emotional response
to violence and its victims.
In the Kitchen
Your food will taste better without a TV in your kitchen.
Dill pickles
Blueberry Boy Bait, a traditional Maine summer dessert, was Ruby's birthday cake.
The farm in summer.
Flowers and herbs in raised beds.
The garden
"The lower forty" overlooking the pond.
Nice cabbage!
Sue pouring bluberries into the winnower.
A closeup of the blueberries going in.
Dan checking the output.
The finished product: fresh, clean blueberries!
Mustang - Appaloosa cross Sienna.
Back to school.
Kid Watch
Haley 11 years 1 month
Laddy 9 years 8 months
Max 7 years 6 months
Ruby 3 years 2 months
