I started yesterday by waking the boys to do a little school before heading to the gym. We went to the gym and then to a friend's house for the day. I took care of her kids as a favor. Today I also started by waking the kids, saying do a little school work and then we will head to the gym. So maybe, just maybe, forcing them out of bed will help get them into the day. The problem is that they still don't go to sleep any earlier...maybe after a week of GET UP!! that will change. Last night I read a bit out of a scholarly journal I have been receiving. It is an educational journal, but this article I read last night was about agrarianism. Here is an excerpt: "In 1941, the Prairie Farmer, America's oldest farm periodical, celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. The centennial cover features a drawing of the iconic twentieth-century "new" farmer: tall, young, and slender. Bulky overalls have given way to tailored city clothes; the straw hat to a fedora. In the artist's words, "he is a strong, virile, keen, friendly, forward-looking citizen standing in a field of gold." Importantly, there are no horses or mules in that golden field. Instead, a tractor tills the ground. "Modern machinery has straightened the farmer's back," the artist happily reports. More boldly, an ad on the inside cover features a slender farm wife in stylish garb beaming over four happy children, with her husband on a tractor in the background. It declares that "every new MM machine put into action on your farm brings you closer to FREEDOM, and closer to the young folks for whom you are farming." At that moment, American farmers and their families still numbered about 29 million souls. The average farm was 160 acres in size. "The Prairie Farmer's cover for September 2007 features a photo of the occupational descendent of this archetypal industrial farmer. The twenty-first-century farmer is fairly old, paunchy from lack of exercise, standing by his only son, and working 1,700 acres in corn... All the same, American farmers and their families now number fewer than 2.5 million souls, 91 percent below the 1941 figure, while the average farmer approaches 65 years of age. Industrial agriculture has achieved its real end: not freedom and an abundance of children, but efficiency through the substitution of machines for people." I am hoping to reread the article soon. It seemed very interesting, but at that late hour not a whole lot was sticking in my head. In-laws come tomorrow, co-op starts this week, two weekend trips are planned, and so the article will have to wait a while. Sigh.