Originally posted by PrplHrt
Do you know what is missing here? What all your "information" has done for you?
It has destroyed the simple joy of living.
Rake the leaves with dad. Let's have a bonfire in the backyard. It's an ancient rite, fire is. On a cool fall day you stand around a smoky pile and
talk about school or football and together you enjoy the warmth.
Ah yes, the good old days. The joy of simple living.Darn it! Why can't we use immigrant children to work 12 hours a day in factories anymore? And
force African Americans to sit in the back of the bus. Sigh..
Where women were not allowed to attend college if they were engaged or married,and the only socially acceptable job was being a housewife. So you got
to get married at 20 and start pumping out kids.Whether you wanted too or not.
Oh those days, where kids had to constantly participate in drills where they hid under the desks under the threat of the cold war.
The only people who lament the good ol days are white guys.
I have spent more then my fair share of time outdoors, and I never sat around a barrel full of burning leaves. lol!
Yup, you can't have a chat about football around a wood fire, it has to be leaves!
I certainly don't equate burning leaves with the simple life. We take walks around the neighborhood, sit on a rocker on the porch, and go and have
picnics. And get ice cream on Friday nights.
Enjoy your knowledge of particulates and smoke inhalation and carcinogens and lung cancer and whatever else is rattling around in that packed head of
yours. Enjoy the "knowledge".
Someone seriously needs to read: "Who Moved My Cheese". It is about dealing with change.
Funny how people lament that people were nicer then. That people took care of each other. but yet revolt when you tell them that something is bad for
air quality,bad for the environment, and bad for their neighbor's health.
"We should be able to create carcinogins just becuase I like it!!"
Even if there weren't chemicals, the leaves are covered with mold. I have also heard horror stories of people ending up in the hospital because a
moron couldn't tell a tree leaf from poison ivy, and burning poison ivy is dangerous.
I have raked plenty of leaves with my kid without an insatiable impulse to burn them.
You know what is the simple life?
We compost stuff. Then every spring, when I start my vegetable garden, my kid learns how life breaks down into soil. We use that soil in the garden.
He gets to learn how gardening works, he knows where food comes from, and it is not the grocery store. We add worms and learn why they are needed. He
loves picking strawberries and peas from the vine. We get our milk from the dairy, delivered in glass bottles, do you?? Once I got heavy dairy cream
and we made ice cream with the strawberries that we grew. It was divine! This weekend we will go to the farm and pick apples.
THAT is the simple life.
So yes, my kid gets to learn AND I don't have to poison him with carbon monoxide and give him black lung from smoke. We save the fires for camping.
And he learns about conservation, instead of everything being useless and disposable.Which will define the older generations, since we are cleaning up
the messes that they made with this line of thinking. Thank God it is dying out.
Life must be a blast at your house. No candy, all vegetables and the toilet is always yellow.
My kid will tell you that I am the coolest parent in the world.
I would take him to the river to swing on a 2 story rope swing till it was cut down. We go explore abandoned buildings, where the kids break the law
and trespass, but have to wear masks because of all the asbestos. Yup, those good ol buildings full of asbestos and lead.
My kid eats plenty of candy, because he also eats vegetables willingly because he has the satisfaction and pride at growing them himself. I guess we
should of just burned stuff instead. If he does his homework without a fuss, he gets a Hershey Bar.
It is those buildings and the pollution of previous generations that cause so much cancer now. My bff's father died a long and horrible death as a
result of agent orange. My grandfather and his brothers died of lung cancer from working in refineries as kids. The age 18 smoking restriction wasn't
set till the 1980s. There is also higher incidence now because of better education, better detection, and more people having access to health
care.
And yes, when you live on septic, if it is yellow you let it mellow. Funny how a generation that harps on family values, thinks that one of them
should be waste and pollution, instead of conserving what you have.The depression era folks could give you a lesson.
So why are people raking leaves in the first place? Because they want their yards to look nice.Fact is, if you really wanted a nice lawn, and NOT
destroy the evironment, leave the leaves. Nature's way of fertilizing for billions of yea