Nina Jay

Thank you everyone!

Nicole: I share that feeling about wanting to be an informed citizen. It is important to the functioning of democracy, definitely.

Tereza: Congratulations on having successfully got off social media! I'm still kinda sorta following it, but very little. On those  occasions that I need to check our farm's FB messages or want to share some farm related info (for which FB is great, I must admit), I often come across news there. I try to just ignore them but it's difficult. I think social media is probably the worst way to receive news for sensitive people. I've shared news there myself... commented and ranted on them...  that hasn't done anything good for me and I don't think very many of my friends enjoyed those posts either... so I decided  a long time ago to stop doing that. And have mostly kept that promise :-)

I do think social media COULD theoretically be a good way to receive news and be an active citizen. However I think social media would have to undergo massive reconstruction for that to happen. If social media was moderated, more discussion-forum-like and paid for by not the advertisers but the actual end-users I think it could work for me. Especially if the end users' payments were used to pay journalists to write more in-depth and looking-for-solutions-kind of articles.

I'm glad you've found a good newspaper - that means they are out there! I still have to find mine. The bigger newspapers in my country have in my opinion become overwhelmingly negative. Everything is bad, the problems are huge, etc. etc.

Chris: I agree sensationalism is the biggest problem. It has become more common, I feel, in my country too. Even the not-for-profit news organisations funded by the government have had to follow this trend, so as not to lose their audience I guess?

Many people seem to like the news the way they are, that's for sure. People have said to me "just filter that stuff", "use your own judgement", "don't be so sensitive", "you live in a bubble" etc. And they are right, from their perspective. As I'm getting older however I'm more inclined to think that well, this is what I am: I am sensitive. I can't filter that negative stuff. Or I can, if I absolutely have to, but it will consume too much of my energy. Still, I agree, one cannot simply opt out either.



In addition to the posts here, I got a helpful suggestion by Purple Moosage from a forum member who hadn't yet earned enough apples to join this conversation. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing it here:

"I like government news websites, like CBC and BBC. Since they don't depend on advertising revenue, they are less sensationalist and often have nicer stories/local colour stories/science news and dont have a paywall.  I tend to look at the news in the morning, not the evening, as I handle it better, and often look at the headlines on Google news to decide if I want to read the news that day. Headlines are often enough... ok. Serial killer on trial? Do i really need to know more details or read every article? Definitely not! I also often listen to CBC radio. They have lots of news programs and science programs and comedy that isn't  as hard hitting."

I'll be trying BBC to see how it feels like!

Reading (or watching) the news is extremely taxing for me. All those bad news really affect my mood. The simple solution that I have used is to just not watch or read the news at all. This works all right.

There are lots of good arguments for not following the news if you are a sensitive person. They are summarized really well, I think, on this webpage:
Why the news is bad news for sensitive people

I'm not completely happy with this news avoidance thing, though. I would like to know what goes on in the world, a little.  Just not the way the news are written in traditional news media, because that's just too much.

I've found a few news media that I can follow without too much anxiety:

- Permaculture Magazine. It's mostly about positive things but also about the bad news. The bad news are combined with what one can do about it, so I'm not left feeling as helpless and powerless.
- our local newspaper. It doesn't have any foreign news at all, it's all about what happens in our village. There aren't many scary things happening in our village
- sites that only share funny/ happy stories


I love all of the above. Still, I feel I would like to hear a little bit about the more serious news too. And about world news. But, I need it to be in a format that's manageable for sensitive people.

Does anyone know about a news site/ magazine that's more general, has world news, but is written in the same way like I described above (Permaculture Magazine)?

Lots of good advice here! I've suffered from back pain for a long time. I have better times and worse times, but it's always there. Things that have enabled me to keep gardening are:

- learning to keep my feet a shoulder width apart when I shovel anything or turn compost: this position somehow "automatically" helps me to use the correct muscles and I can keep working at least twice as long before I start to feel the pain. At which point I stop, take a break or do something that involves me walking around for a while. Like gathering all the tools I've left all over the yard

- making all my garden beds about 75 cm wide (30 inches) so I can stand over them and harvest/ weed.  I got the tip from Curtis Stone's videos last year and did this conversion last summer. Many more working positions have become possible for me now that I've changed to narrower beds. (My beds used to be the "standard double-reach" 120 cm). Changing positions often helps in itself, as many have said. But the biggest thing for me is avoiding that reaching position.

- hugelbeds can help too.

My main point is: don't despair, even if you have back pain, there's ways to keep gardening regardless!

Many people have said to me: shouldn't you stop gardening since you have that back problem, aren't you afraid of it getting worse. But the worst episode I've ever had with my back so far was in the middle of winter, after an intensive work project involving lots of sitting in front of the computer. So I'd say for me, sitting is the worst thing I could do and no gardening-induced back pain can compete with that pain.

In response to Gail Gardner's wish for  charts for other countries that speak and write their own versions of English:

A very unofficial table, based on my experiences. I do believe it's a pretty widely held understanding though that typically Finns tend to say what they mean and mean what they say. However, we are careful about saying anything too strongly. Especially the positive stuff has to be downplayed. (I myself am a bit abnormal in this respect: I tend to say positive stuff more freely than what is the norm here.)

What the Finns say	What most Finns mean in my experience	]
I hear what you say	I hear what you say, you don't need to shout
With the greatest respect...	I'm trying to disagree politely
That's not bad	That's good
That is a very brave proposal	That is a very brave proposal
Quite good	Very good
I would suggest...	I'm pretty sure this is the way you should do it, but it's your project not mine
Oh, incidentally/by the way	Another important point
I was a bit disappointed that	I was disappointed that
Very interesting	Extremely interesting
I'll bear it in mind	I'll try to remember/ I don't know what to say because I haven't thought about it much
I'm sure it's my fault	I think it's partly my fault and partly your fault, but you need to acknowledge your own part, I don't want to criticize you
You must come for dinner	I want to invite you for dinner
I almost agree	I agree in part
I only have a few minor comments	I only have a few things I don't like, most of it was good
Could we consider some other options?	I don't like that idea

Thanks for the update, Melanie! That's excellent news!

I don't think S. Bengi was trying to be rude but I understand how it must have felt that way to you. I've heard that same saying (or some other version of it) from experienced cattle men/ women and I think it just means that in big cattle heards, over the cause of one's life long career, there are many you can't save and even the vet can't save. It's sort of like "sometimes sh*t happens no matter what you do" of cattle keeping. That's why the vet bills need to be kept in check in so far as not spending more money on an animal than what its monetary value is and sometimes not calling the vet but putting the animal down, if it looks like too expensive a case. For the person with a small herd that kind of thinking sounds cruel, but it may be just common sense if one has, say, a hundred-head herd.


Please correct me S. Bengi if that guess of mine was wrong.

Hope all continues to go well for your calf!

Thank you Eric for your post,  a very enlightening and helpful one in my opinion.

Eric Hanson wrote:  I hope that other readers can discern from my post that I only wanted to be able to encourage civility in discussion--never an attack

I'm just one reader but I believe you only wanted to contribute to free exchange of ideas. I didn't sense any ill will whatsoever.

The Staff replies in this thread have been very enlightening for me, too. They reveal to me the practical side of this whole issue. I got a glimpse into the massive amount of work that the moderators have. I now see this discussion in a different light, ie. not philosophical, but practical.

For me the most efficient solution is do wake up early. I hate waking up early but if I force myself to do it, and force myself to start working right after I've had my first cuppa, I get a lot done.
If I don't get anything done in the morning, I very probably don't get anything done in the afternoon either. Another energy peak for me is about 18 o'clock so I might get something done in the evening even if the whole day has been devoted to not doing much anything.

Have you noticed any rhythm in your energy/ concentration/ getting stuff done  -levels?

A big energy sucker for me,  the biggest by far, is relationship trouble. If I have a row with my husband or if I sense that he's not happy about something and there's tension in the air, I can't get anything done until there's harmony in the house. It's one of my most annoying qualities I think, from another person's perspective as well as my own. I do of course feed the animals and the kids and do what's absolutely necessary for survival, but that's it. I can't concentrate on anything other than the relationship problem. Of course there's still some "work" stuff I can do, the easy stuff, and if I happen to have some easy work then that may get done. Something like simple text editing or translation I can do without much concentration. But all the stuff that's demanding for me like  household maintenance, book keeping, logistical planning, organising, calculations, maps ... no way.

Another big concentration killer is the sense of lacking direction. Maybe it's a bit similar to what Dave Burton wrote about, worrying about things not mattering. I often feel I'm going around in circles and not in touch with what it is that's really important in life. When I was young this was a fairly constant nagging fear. Now it's more like an occasional cloud over my head. The sky clears and I feel in touch with my purpose but the clouds still reappear later. Maybe it's just part of who I am and not something that can be changed.

I really like this suggestion to use "I have a different position" instead of "I disagree". I'm not so much into semantics, I'm mainly interested the spirit of discussion. Some words have a better "vibe" to it than others and if they mean about the same I try to go for the version that's more likely to create neutral or positive feelings in the other person. I think this is an excellent example of it as these two phrases mean  exactly the same (to me that is) but the longer version just has a better aura to it.

I'm thankful for these suggestions from Paul  because it might have taken me years to figure out something like this on my own. Particularly as English is not my native tongue. I could very easily pick up a phrase that although perhaps linguistically correct just doesn't send the message that I wanted to send.

It's a good thing that the calf eats, I'd make sure he eats something, however little, because ruminants can't take fasting very well, they need to have at least some small amount of feed in their digestive system all the time. Force feed him little hay if you have to. There's some instructions on it I'm pretty sure, if you google. The thing to caution against when force feeding is feed getting into the lungs.

I'd also try and force feed him a small bottle of paraffin oil (available from farm/ feed stores) to lubricate and help get the possible intestinal obstruction moving. If you can't find paraffin oil, any vegetable oil will do. But paraffin is better because it is not absorbed by the intestine.

I'd keep him warm and rub his belly too. Electrolytes are not a bad idea, if you give them with lots of water. Make sure he drinks as much as possible. Give him clean, fresh, warmish water several times a day  to encourage drinking. If it helps, you can mix some syrup/ apple juice in it, to encourage him to drink more.

If you notice some signs of abdominal swelling then that could be a sign of bloat and you need to get help really fast. We keep a bottle of "Cuplaton" in our emergency cabinet all the time. "Cuplaton" is a product that you can give to babies to prevent/ ease colic, it also works for bloat, it's available from all farmacies here. Sorry I don't know what the product name is in the US. For a baby you give about 3 drops with milk. For a cow you give a whole bottle (50 ml). In an emergency if the swelling is getting really bad, the only thing you can do is punch a hole in the stomach, you can get instructions on this too if you google. It has to be in a specific spot.

Hope the vet arrives soon and all goes well!

Ben Zumeta wrote:I am also drowning in a sea of acronyms at work, so maybe he’s mentioned it enough that most people who aren’t cerebrally saturated with them would remember PEP, or VORP, but if the book is for the beginner it would help to spell it out. One way to help overcome acronym illiteracy would be to make sure each component part is explained in the prior sections in such a way as to make their integration seem the obvious next step.  

That's my situation too, drowning in a sea of acronyms at work.

Could there be a page somewhere where it's convenient to find, where all acronyms are explained?
I'd also love it if on that same page there were some basic measurement conversions there, for the measures used in the book. Like 1 mile = 1.6 km, 1 pound = 0.453 kg, 1 acre = 0.4 hectares, 1 gallon = 3.8 liters.

P.S. I'm going to buy the book anyway, no amount of acronyms will deter me. I gotta have that book!