My wife runs a small business.  I teach at a small independent school.  If we wanted to have medical insurance for our whole family, it would cost me 75% of my paycheck.  My salary is too high for our two daughters to be covered by Hoosier Healthwise.  

Medical Insurance is not affordable for us.  So, we are currently uninsured.  Socioeconomically, we are considered a middle class family.  Yet we find ourselves among the 50% of America’s population that hopes it doesn’t get sick or injured because it doesn’t have insurance.  

50%.  Half.  .50  1/2  

Obama Care may or may not be a good idea.  It would allow my family to have insurance.  I am not exactly sure at what cost.  Insurance isn’t necessarily my point.  I think the bigger question is how did it get this way?  And who are the people in the other 50% that want to keep it this way?  Tea Party Members?  Hospital CEO’s?  Insurance Company CEO’s?  Pharmaceutical companies?  How did the ability to afford medical care become a luxury?

The American Empire is heading down an all too familiar path, a path that most empires before it have gone down.  It doesn’t have to keep moving down this path toward self centered destruction.  Take a few minutes to step back and reflect, turn off your talk radio station and look inside yourself.  Forget the American dream or the American way or being patriotic, whatever all those things mean.  Do you know your neighbors names?  Are you friends with anyone who doesn’t think like you?  Do you know anyone who is in need?  Is there a person you know who is in need that you could help?  A brighter future isn’t in the hands of Washington.  It isn’t in the hands of your pastor, or your favorite talk show host.  It is in your hands.  We give far too much power to those who are only willing to serve their own self interests.  You have an opportunity to not give it to them.  

Think for yourselves.  Love your neighbor.  Exercise your right not to vote.      

For the last four years, I have had the opportunity to work in an urban public school.  My two children were students in this school as well.  Each year, the pressure on myself as a teacher to increase my student’s ISTEP test scores, increased.  While I knew my students, as well as my two children, were more than a test score, I worked hard to make sure we covered as many state standards as possible.  This often came at the expense of giving the children what they really needed to follow the path of healthy social, spiritual, physical, and even cognitive development. I knew in my gut, that I wasn’t okay with this trade-off.   In spite of all of this, every spring when the test scores were published, I would hope that my students, as well as my two children had done well enough to pass.  I wanted to make sure everyone measured up.  I wanted to make sure I measured up.   

We live in a culture where so much of who we are as employees, parents, spouses, and neighbors is based on how we measure up.   It is extremely difficult not to compare ourselves to others around us, especially when it comes to our children and their academic performance.  At Oak Farm, our students don’t get grades for their work, and we don’t take a standardized test every spring.  It can be frustrating to not have a number to hold on to and share at the church potluck, the neighborhood picnic, or the family reunion.  But what do that number or those grades really mean? 

The current system of education in America is 93 years old.  It was originally founded to churn out young adults who would work well in an industrialized economy, adults who would come to work, do what they are told, and go home.  Not much has changed in the world of compulsory schooling in the last 93 years.  We’ve recently seen a fanatical push to implement a better system of standardization that measures the performance of all children, teachers, and schools. Are we okay with a system of education that continues to churn out predictable, testable, adults prepared to do 1925 labor?  Is the score, or the letter grade we want just telling us how compliant our children are?  Do the standardized tests actually measure the things that matter most?

I’d like to share a story from the Green Farm House.  We recently gave a group of 4th, a group of 5th, and a group of 6th graders, math story problems from last year’s spring ISTEP test.  The 4th grade group received a problem from the 4th grade test.  This means, the problem included content that the state of Indiana thinks they should learn sometime during their 4th grade year.  The same thing was done for the 5th, and 6th grades, each receiving a problem with content that the state of Indiana thinks they should learn during their current academic year.

We were able to make three incredible observations.  The first one was the students’ mathematic understanding.  It was immediately clear that the Montessori education they had experienced to this point, had allowed them to learn beyond what the state of Indiana expected them to learn thus far.  Each group easily accomplished the mathematical components of the problem an academic year ahead of state expectations.  

The next observation was even more incredible, and was a reminder of what Montessori education is about.  Each group worked together, flawlessly, to complete their given problems.  No one was left behind, everyone contributed.  Ideas about various strategies for solving the problems were communicated and listened to with respect.  One group tried two different strategies and then discussed which one was more efficient.  The 5th and 6th grade groups came and asked to try another problem.

It was the third observation that gave me the most goosebumps.  While solving a problem about perimeter, the 4th grade group actually discovered an error in the way the question was asked.  Four nine year olds discovered what adult test writers had failed to notice or did intentionally.  They then proceeded to edit the question to a way they thought would make more sense.  They solved the problem, finding the perimeter of the shape, then for fun, went on to figure out the area, even though the problem didn’t ask them to.  I was able to experience many cool things in my four years of public school teaching.  But I never experienced anything like this.    

These are the kinds of stories we need to remember in the moments we find ourselves wanting a test score or a letter grade.  These are the things that aren’t able to be measured by a test, but they are the things that matter the most.  There are stories like these happening at Oak Farm everyday.  Take the time to hear the stories, to share the stories, and to know we are all a part of creating a bright future.     

Those two glasses contain juice from three beets, a few carrots, and some ginger.  

According to our neighbor, who knows about most things food related, when you are juicing, you have to be careful with beets.  When you are a beginning juicer, you shouldn’t use more than one beet at a time.  The nutrients of a raw beet are a little too much for the beginning juicer’s belly to handle.  We used three beets.

Yep.  We pooped purple for three days.

Day one of Reboot began with me wandering around the house for 5 minutes trying to figure out what to do instead of making a pot of coffee.  I was lost.  Sitting on the back porch and reading didn’t feel the same without a mug going to my mouth every few minutes.  I am pretty sure this is a sign of addiction. 

We made our first glass of juice: peach, carrot, orange, rhubarb, blueberry, spinach.  It tasted really good.  As I drank it down, I thought out loud with Elizabeth, this won’t be so bad. 

About two hours later, we were hungry, so we made glass of juice number two.  This time we went with beets, ginger, apple, carrot.  The color of the juice was a stunning purple.  The flavor was not so stunning, but it made us feel healthy, so we drank it up. 

Shortly after glass o’ goodness number two, my head began to feel sloggish.  Not sluggish, so much, but sloggish.  I attributed this to the lack of caffeine.  Another unfortunate sign of addiction.  So I took a shower, shook it off, and we went on with our day.

The full on Reboot project officially ended at 2:30.  That sloggish feeling in my head was now joined by waves of nausea.  I thought to myself, I am in the middle of my only week of summer vacation.  I don’t want to feel like crap.  So I texted Elizabeth and told her I was caving on the coffee.  Then I headed through the Starbucks drive thru.  Unfortunately, I was past the point of anything a tall misto could do.  The waves of nausea kept getting worse.  I put a tomato, a carrot, and some celery into the juicer and forced myself to drink it.  Shortly after Elizabeth called and informed me that she was feeling great.  She had eaten a salad for lunch and was sipping an iced coffee.

Traitor.

I immediately made a bowl of oatmeal, ate it, and took a nap.  Reboot aborted.

We had another glass of juice around dinner time, which was followed by a vegetable wrap at the Tin Caps game.  Nope, it wasn’t juice, but it wasn’t a beer and hot dog either.   

As I type this, I am sipping a nice mug of coffee.  We are planning on having some juice today, we have a kitchen full of fruits and vegetables and a $300 juicer, we have to have some juice.  But we are opting for a little more balanced approach to this Reboot thing. 

So we saw this movie…and that is how it usually starts right?  That or, I read this book.  In this case, we saw a movie.  This movie was called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.

The premise is that you can change your health, reboot your body so to speak, just by drinking raw fruit and vegetable juice.  ”Just” doesn’t mean easy.  It means that’s all you take in.  Raw fruit and vegetable juice.  No chewing.  No coffee.  No solid foods.  Just fruit and vegetables slammed into the magic juicing machine, whose name is Breville.

We decided to give it a go.  We are suckers.

So the Breville juicer showed up yesterday, which led to a trip to the grocery store for all those raw fruits and vegetables.  As the cashier rang up our $72 worth of raw goodies, she asked us if we liked to cook a lot.  You should have seen her face when we told her we were going to turn it all into juice.  

Idiots.

Tomorrow the juicing begins.  Along with the caffeine headache and multiple trips to the bathroom as our intestines try to figure out what to do with all that real food.  The initial reboot can last from 5-15 days.  I keep thinking I want to try it for 30.  

We’ll see.

So we moved the food back upstairs a long time ago.  We finally called the repairman who worked some magic for about $100.  The basement fridge has been returned to its regular duty of just keeping beer cold.  

I’ve lost track of where we are in this little experiment, somewhere near or in week 3.  

Much has happened since the kitchen refrigerator stopped working.  Egypt is free.  Libya is next.  Wisconsin is in an uproar over budget cuts and the rights of state employees.  We tried to fix some plumbing on our own and ended up without a shower for two days and a bill from the plumber who had to come in and clean up after us.  

Revolution, protesting, plumbing.  No new fridge.  The basement fridge has become a regular part of our lives.  We’ve started taking cups downstairs to pour drinks into, instead of bringing the drink up, pouring, and taking it back down.  I still open the kitchen fridge sometimes, not out of forgetting, but to see if it magically started working again.

We have come up against not having any ice.  Basement fridge doesn’t have an ice maker.  This of course would be easily taken care of by purchasing a bag of ice or some ice trays and filling them with water.  Not having ice hasn’t been a large enough inconvenience to create action, neither has having a fridge in the basement.