our Olympic Gold connection

This good news comes from an old standby business-systems supplier of ours, Client Marketing Systems (The Leader in CRM Software Since 1985) in Pismo Beach, California. Our cousin Katie Smith is at the Olympics on the women's basketball team (and blogging it, too), and now here comes another outstanding women's Olympic connection, Stephanie Brown Trafton.

Dear Tim,

Since you are part of our Advisors Assistant family, we want to share our excitement over Olympic Gold Medal Winner Stephanie Brown Trafton.

Stephanie Brown Trafton is the sister of one of our programmers, Nate Brown, who has worked for our company for 12 years.

Stephanie won the GOLD MEDAL in the womens' discus competition in Beijing on Monday.

It's the first womens' discus Gold since 1932.

You've probably seen Stephanie on TV already. She's been all over the news and on the TODAY show. She was the underdog. She came from behind to win the Gold, and they're saying it's the biggest upset of the 2008 Olympics.

We're so excited and happy for Stephanie. We've been watching her work very hard for many years - and it really paid off.

Hip-Hip Hurray for Stephanie Brown Trafton!!!!!

Warm regards,

Carol Dempsey
Client Marketing Systems, Inc.
880 Price Street
Pismo Beach, CA 93449
800 799-4267

Change of Address for Stephen Post

President's Corner Dear Friends: The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love continues as a non-profit registered in Ohio. However, the address for the Institute has changed to PO Box 1516 Stony Brook, New York 11790 In addition, the preferred email for me is now post@stephengpost.com. I can also be reached at stephen.post@stonybrook.edu. The preferred telephone contact point is 216-926-9244 (cell), or as backup, 631-675-1268. I will continue to send out newsletters monthly. Yes, I have moved from Cleveland to New York, where I serve as Director, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate care, and Bioethics, Stony Brook University (SUNY). Thank you very much. Stephen G. Post, Ph.D.

	Institute for Research on Unlimited Love PO Box 1516 Stony Brook, NY 11790 -US post@stephengpost.com www.unlimitedloveinstitute.org

Stephen appeared on Meet.The.Bloggers a little over a year ago.

WORTH Magazine: getting more useful each month

First Person Worth--WORTH Magazine grows more meaningful, for me, by the month; the editors are beginning to broaden the focus to include all of society and the impact proper deployment of wealth can have on the common good. Christy Mack's profile in an issue earlier this fall gives some insights into what giving really means, a lot along the lines of what we are hearing from Steven Post and Jack Ricchiuto. Her particular focus is integrative medicine. Read the whole thing, she has some good insights, one of which is--

For me, philanthropy is not about giving back. It is about sharing a part of who you are, whether it is your wealth or your wisdom, experience, knowledge, talent, skill or something as simple as a smile.

eaters speak: commodity farmers are welfare queens

Weed It and Reap - New York Times -- The politics of food are becoming more apparent, thank goodness, as we begin to question how subsidies affect the public health and ask why we pay so much to enable being porky and diabetic. This op-ed piece provides a very useful perspective on what we subsidize, and how it costs us in so many other ways as well. Our MTB talk with Phil Nabors of The Mustard Seed Market touched on this last fall, and we've talked with Maurice Small and Niki Gilotta since, about what it takes to be healthy and sensible about food.

The op-ed contributor, Michael Pollan, is a very good writer who skewers with wit and garnishes with wisdom. As the NYT briefly points out, Michael Pollan, a contributing writer at The Times Magazine and a professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and the forthcoming “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” Here are some samples, but read the whole piece:

Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico. . . .

. . . . But as important as these programs are, they are just programs — mere fleas on the elephant in the room. The name of that elephant is the commodity title, the all-important subsidy section of the bill. It dictates the rules of the entire food system. As long as the commodity title remains untouched, the way we eat will remain unchanged.

The explanation for this is straightforward. We would not need all these nutrition programs if the commodity title didn’t do such a good job making junk food and fast food so ubiquitous and cheap. Food stamps are crucial, surely, but they will be spent on processed rather than real food as long as the commodity title makes calories of fat and sugar the best deal in the supermarket. We would not need all these conservation programs if the commodity title, by paying farmers by the bushel, didn’t encourage them to maximize production with agrochemicals and plant their farms with just one crop fence row to fence row.

And the government would not need to pay feedlots to clean up the water or upgrade their manure pits if subsidized grain didn’t make rearing animals on feedlots more economical than keeping them on farms. Why does the farm bill pay feedlots to install waste treatment systems rather than simply pay ranchers to keep their animals on grass, where the soil would be only too happy to treat their waste at no cost?

However many worthwhile programs get tacked onto the farm bill to buy off its critics, they won’t bring meaningful reform to the American food system until the subsidies are addressed — until the underlying rules of the food game are rewritten. This is a conversation that the Old Guard on the agriculture committees simply does not want to have, at least not with us.

five easy choices

Five Easy Ways to Go Organic - Well - Tara Parker-Pope - Health - New York Times Blog -- Here are five ways to quickly begin to experience the benefits of a cleaner diet. I really appreciate the one doctor's comments about our "buying into a whole chemical system of agriculture" if we're indiscriminate in our food-buying choices. I also remember how with the kids, ketchup was it's own food group, and the article acknowledges that, "For some families, ketchup accounts for a large part of the household vegetable intake." Absent from the discussion here is mention of fillers and stretchers, like high fructose corn syrup.

This is a good read; click through. They also link to another interesting organic-food-info source: "For a complete list of Dr. Greene’s strategic organic choices, visit Organic Rx on his website."

#4

Task Lamps in the Spotlight - New York Times -- I'm fascinated with lamps and light. Without good lighting, you have trouble living in the world of books, art, and ideas. With good lighting, the world opens up.

I also think that paying attention to having good lighting is important for maintaining our full functionality for as long as possible.

I think I really want #4, Richard Sapper’s Halley Compact lamp.

Geri gets second in the crit

There are some events called The Island Games going on right now on the Isle of Rhodes. Our son-in-law, Geri Mewett, just placed second in the Men's Individual Town Centre Criterium, also known as "the crit." It looks as though there were four of them all bunched up there at the finish.

We're looking forward to the individual time trials and the subsequent men's individual road race.

Back here in the States, Geri rides for the Hincapie Team out of Charlotte, NC.

Stephen Post: why good things happen to good people

On Flag Day, June 14th, Stephen Post, PhD, professor of bioethics over at CWRU School of Medicine, met with the bloggers to talk about his new book, Why Good Things Happen to Good People: The Exciting New Science That Proves the Link Between Doing Good and Living a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life. His co-author is Jill Neimark, a distinguished science journalist. This man is a professional. He's also a friend of Sir John Templeton and the "featured grant" this month on the foundation's website.

In this conversation, Gloria and I were joined by McKala Everett of Exploring Wellness and Jack Ricchiutto of Designing Life; George was off at a board meeting for his new neighborhood.

We covered the Stephen's background with Sir John Templeton and The National Institute for Health Care Research and got a comprehensive and utilitarian definition of "love" as being what it is when the happiness and security of someone else means as much to you as your own hapiness and security. We also got a Zen joke: What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? "Make me one with everything."

We covered a lot of ground, so I'll just give you a few excerpts from my notes to key you in to what's in the podcast: "try to stay in the flow;" "don't ignore the nearest and the dearest;" an allusion to Charles Dickens' Bleak House; "overindulge the nearest and the dearest;" the need to listen attentively; agape, bestowal, and "the quality of mercy;" "nuggets and nutshells" (Jack); The Helper's Therapy Principle and "the helper's high;" isolation versus connection; magnetic resonance; Billy Joel, and Only the Good Die Young, how it's good to be bad, and bad to be good in popular culture; making the leap from I-It to Martin Buber's I-Thou; solipsism and narcissism; Viktor Frankl and Man's Search for Meaning; Buzz Ford, MD, over at CWRU, and our mutual friend Dr. Joe Foley, a prior MTB feature; the one caveat: Don't get overwhelmed; St. Paul's Episcopal Prep School; Fordham University; the compassion hormone; iterated interactions; Arthur Brooks and Who Cares, about philanthropy; "do no harm;" "we have lost the lid on that minimalist principle;" David Cooperrider and appreciative inquiry, with business as an agent of change; unifiers and integrators; the opportunity at CWRU to do something revolutionary, and the "world civilizational conflict;" "carefrontation" and the Reverend Otis Moss; M. Scott Peck and The Road Less Traveled; not tolerating self-destructive and destructive behaviors; smaller high schools; tithes; and "entrepreneurs of goodness."

The hour went way too quickly; Gloria and I had skimmed the book prior to the talk, and now I'm digging down into it. It gives me a lot to think about. I knew we had to interview Stephen when I found he had dedicated this book to two of the people I'd like to be like when I grow up: Joe Foley and John Templeton; I'm glad we all got together and talked, and I'd like to do it again soon. Stephen's a marvelous cultural resource, and he's right in our own back yard. What he's doing is important for the world and for civilization.

lots of statistics, for the record

Mortgage Trouble Clouds Homeownership Dream - New York Times -- Now, nearly two years after we gave testimony for the Cuyahoga County commissioners and five years since Cleveland-Marshall law professor Kathleen Engel began writing her papers warning of the impending debacle, the numbers begin to appear in the popular press, and the evidence of greed is incontrovertible.

In the same edition, the NYT tells in "Buying With Help From Mom and Dad" about how the high price of residential real estate is spawning new specialties among lawyers, third-party administrators, psychiatrists, and counselors, as parents and children cope with the imbalanced behavior of committing more money to the children's housing than the children can afford. I wonder what the upshot of all this will be if ever the prices in the housing markets recede, and they find themselves in the uncomfortable condition called "upside down."

Finally, Gloria tells me that in the PD Friday, someone with insight into the mortgage and real-estate industries talked of "mortgages that are designed to strip wealth rather than allow homeowners to build up equity in their properties." It's good that all this is coming out now, while the huge intergenerational transfer of wealth from the post-WWI crowd to the post-WWII crowd is still under way.

Do you think that, if we paid cash for our housing and our cars, that the prices would moderate and approach true value?

a new tax, because universal coverage isn't free

Insurers slice rates on health premiums - The Boston Globe--Interesting story in the Boston GLOBE about Deval Patrick tuning up Mitt Romney's mandatory health coverage. There is no magic here; there are no miracles. From the pricing I see in the article, this is pretty much a market rate, and it feels a bit on the high side. I see no subsidy or benefit of volume pricing. I wonder if this is more of a welfare plan designed to support the Massachusetts health industry than it is universal coverage to spread risk fairly and bring about an improvement in public health.

Also, I would like to know from the journalist (Jeffrey Krasner can be reached at krasner@globe.com) the cost of opting out, in dollars, for the same hypothetical people for whom they quote the premiums. That would be balanced reporting. These paid writers need to start earning their keep and not leaving it up to the public dialogues of the blogosphere to extract the facts and frame the issues as they should be framed.

We need to start talking about truly catastrophic insurance coverage to cover the big bills, cash-only fee-for-service care with uniform price schedules for most other procedures, and public-health-clinics for maintenance and wellness programs. If we want to have a health tax, then instead of putting it off soley on the people, we can also put it off on anybody who sells things that make us fat or sick or crippled--vendors of soft drinks, stores that sell cheap plastic shoes, smoking supplies (again), fast-food emporiums, publicly traded corporations who load foodstuffs up with preservatives to prolong shelf life or stretch things out with high fructose corn syrup to maximize profits, dealers who sell raggedy used cars--in short, anybody who now profits from selling a product whose health benefits to the buyers have been reduced to increase the bottom line.