conuly

Here's one - an editorial - on what is, I feel, rightly described as an "ominous new law" in Arkansas about who can foster/adopt kids. It'll potentially be like the Nebraska safe-haven debacle all over again, sounds like.

Anti-Gay, Anti-Family
By DAN SAVAGE

COUNTLESS Americans, gay and otherwise, are still mourning — and social conservatives are still celebrating — the approval last Tuesday of anti-gay-marriage amendments in Florida, Arizona and, most heartbreaking, California, where Proposition 8 stripped same-sex couples of their right to wed. Eighteen thousand same-sex couples were legally married in California this past summer and fall; their marriages are now in limbo.

But while Californians march and gay activists contemplate a national boycott of Utah — the Mormon Church largely bankrolled Proposition 8 — an even more ominous new law in Arkansas has drawn little notice.

That state’s Proposed Initiative Act No. 1, approved by nearly 57 percent of voters last week, bans people who are “cohabitating outside a valid marriage” from serving as foster parents or adopting children. While the measure bans both gay and straight members of cohabitating couples as foster or adoptive parents, the Arkansas Family Council wrote it expressly to thwart “the gay agenda.” Right now, there are 3,700 other children across Arkansas in state custody; 1,000 of them are available for adoption. The overwhelming majority of these children have been abused, neglected or abandoned by their heterosexual parents.

Even before the law passed, the state estimated that it had only about a quarter of the foster parents it needed. Beginning on Jan. 1, a grandmother in Arkansas cohabitating with her opposite-sex partner because marrying might reduce their pension benefits is barred from taking in her own grandchild; a gay man living with his male partner cannot adopt his deceased sister’s children.

Social conservatives are threatening to roll out Arkansas-style adoption bans in other states. And the timing couldn’t be worse: in tough economic times, the numbers of abused and neglected children in need of foster care rises. But good times or bad, no movement that would turn away qualified parents and condemn children to a broken foster care system should be considered “pro-family.”

Most ominous, once “pro-family” groups start arguing that gay couples are unfit to raise children we might adopt, how long before they argue that we’re unfit to raise those we’ve already adopted? If lesbian couples are unfit to care for foster children, are they fit to care for their own biological children?

The loss in California last week was heartbreaking. But what may be coming next is terrifying.

Rescuing Cultures of India, From A to Z

Rescuing Cultures of India, From A to Z
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS

TEJGADH, India — In an academy deep in the agrarian countryside of western India, five students were writing briskly in ruled notebooks. They were in their early 20s and newly enrolled, but there was no discounting the gravity of their assignment: When they are finished, the world will have five more documented languages.

One word at a time, they are producing dictionaries of languages with which they grew up, but which scarcely exist in the rest of the world. These are oral languages, whose sounds have perhaps never before been reproduced in ink.

“If we make this, those who come after us will profit from it,” said Kantilal Mahala, 21, taking a brief respite from his work on the Kunkna language. “In my village, people who move ahead speak only Gujarati. They feel ashamed of our language.”

It is not only obscure languages that these students are trying to chronicle and preserve, but also cuisines, sartorial habits and other significant elements of rural culture. Like drivers heading downtown at rush hour, the students see everyone else going the other way. A swelling class of Indian aspirants from small towns and villages like Tejgadh sees urban life and the English language as pathways to affluence, security and respect.

Had it not been for Ganesh Devy, a former professor of English literature who founded the academy more than a decade ago, the young people in this rural community might have gone down that path. He created the school, known as the Adivasi Academy, with a burning question on his mind: Why do we wait for cultures to die to memorialize them?

“There is a continent of culture getting submerged, and that’s why I wanted to take the plunge,” Mr. Devy said.

With financing from the Ford Foundation and other philanthropic groups, the Adivasi Academy tries to preserve a culture by steeping a new generation of villagers in their own quickly disappearing traditions.

Tejgadh is home to one branch of India’s vast population of adivasis, or “original people.” Sometimes compared to Native Americans and Australia’s Aborigines, the adivasis are highly fragmented, with nearly as many languages and cultures as there are clans. But there are common threads.

The clans traditionally inhabited hilly or forested areas, where they lived nomadically, hunting and foraging. They are known for a respect for nature, for their bonesetters and shamans, for their worship of elephants and trees instead of abstract gods, for a love of art and for a lack of interest in material accumulation.

Tejgadh is home to the Rathwa clan, famed for wall paintings. When a person falls ill, the Rathwas often invite a painter to come along with a shaman. As the painter decorates the walls, the shaman enters a trance and guides his brush strokes.

In recent years some people in Tejgadh have become professional artists, one example of a deeper transformation. Modernity has been creeping in to the villages, and young people have been pouring out. But they are unprepared. They grew up speaking a language no one recognizes beyond their village, and they are inexpert in Gujarati, Hindi and English, the languages of urban employment. In the cities, they find it difficult to escape the most menial jobs.

Mr. Devy wanted to combat this gravitational force. Could adivasis be persuaded to study their culture rather than shed it, and to stay in the villages rather than flee?

In the academy’s museum, adivasi culture is depicted as if it no longer existed. The exhibits feature kitchen implements, jars of adivasi foods, hand-tossed pottery, jugs for homemade liquor. If the idea were to explain adivasis to outsiders, the museum might be in New Delhi. But the goal, instead, is to impress upon adivasis that their culture is worthy of preservation.

“If a community has a strong sense of identity and a sense of pride in that identity, it wants to survive and thrive,” Mr. Devy said. “The new economy is important. The old culture is equally important.”

The students making dictionaries were working in the academy’s principal course, called tribal studies. Students are generally taught in both Gujarati and Hindi, given the absence of books in their own languages.

Vikesh Rathwa, 27, graduated two years ago and, like most of the academy’s alumni, he chose to stay in the villages and work for Bhasha, the academy’s parent organization.

“Before, I thought I would get a B.A. and M.A. and make a film,” he said.

Immersion in his heritage changed his mind.

“Coming here made me see my household life in a new way,” he said. Now, he is writing a book on adivasi art and science. “We need to walk in step with our traditions,” he said, quickly adding, “and with technology, too.”

An article on stretching before exercising

Stretching: The Truth
By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

WHEN DUANE KNUDSON, a professor of kinesiology at California State University, Chico, looks around campus at athletes warming up before practice, he sees one dangerous mistake after another. “They’re stretching, touching their toes. . . . ” He sighs. “It’s discouraging.”

If you’re like most of us, you were taught the importance of warm-up exercises back in grade school, and you’ve likely continued with pretty much the same routine ever since. Science, however, has moved on. Researchers now believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds — known as static stretching — primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. In a recent study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, athletes generated less force from their leg muscles after static stretching than they did after not stretching at all. Other studies have found that this stretching decreases muscle strength by as much as 30 percent. Also, stretching one leg’s muscles can reduce strength in the other leg as well, probably because the central nervous system rebels against the movements.

“There is a neuromuscular inhibitory response to static stretching,” says Malachy McHugh, the director of research at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. The straining muscle becomes less responsive and stays weakened for up to 30 minutes after stretching, which is not how an athlete wants to begin a workout.

THE RIGHT WARM-UP should do two things: loosen muscles and tendons to increase the range of motion of various joints, and literally warm up the body. When you’re at rest, there’s less blood flow to muscles and tendons, and they stiffen. “You need to make tissues and tendons compliant before beginning exercise,” Knudson says.

A well-designed warm-up starts by increasing body heat and blood flow. Warm muscles and dilated blood vessels pull oxygen from the bloodstream more efficiently and use stored muscle fuel more effectively. They also withstand loads better. One significant if gruesome study found that the leg-muscle tissue of laboratory rabbits could be stretched farther before ripping if it had been electronically stimulated — that is, warmed up.

To raise the body’s temperature, a warm-up must begin with aerobic activity, usually light jogging. Most coaches and athletes have known this for years. That’s why tennis players run around the court four or five times before a match and marathoners stride in front of the starting line. But many athletes do this portion of their warm-up too intensely or too early. A 2002 study of collegiate volleyball players found that those who’d warmed up and then sat on the bench for 30 minutes had lower backs that were stiffer than they had been before the warm-up. And a number of recent studies have demonstrated that an overly vigorous aerobic warm-up simply makes you tired. Most experts advise starting your warm-up jog at about 40 percent of your maximum heart rate (a very easy pace) and progressing to about 60 percent. The aerobic warm-up should take only 5 to 10 minutes, with a 5-minute recovery. (Sprinters require longer warm-ups, because the loads exerted on their muscles are so extreme.) Then it’s time for the most important and unorthodox part of a proper warm-up regimen, the Spider-Man and its counterparts.

“TOWARDS THE end of my playing career, in about 2000, I started seeing some of the other guys out on the court doing these strange things before a match and thinking, What in the world is that?” says Mark Merklein, 36, once a highly ranked tennis player and now a national coach for the United States Tennis Association. The players were lunging, kicking and occasionally skittering, spider-like, along the sidelines. They were early adopters of a new approach to stretching.

While static stretching is still almost universally practiced among amateur athletes — watch your child’s soccer team next weekend — it doesn’t improve the muscles’ ability to perform with more power, physiologists now agree. “You may feel as if you’re able to stretch farther after holding a stretch for 30 seconds,” McHugh says, “so you think you’ve increased that muscle’s readiness.” But typically you’ve increased only your mental tolerance for the discomfort of the stretch. The muscle is actually weaker.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don’t experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls “an excitatory message” to perform.

Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it’s relatively sports specific. “You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,” says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA, home to the Olympic marathoners Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. For runners, an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and “form drills” like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Athletes who need to move rapidly in different directions, like soccer, tennis or basketball players, should do dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. “Spider-Man” is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall. (For other dynamic stretches, see the sidebar below.)

Even golfers, notoriously nonchalant about warming up (a recent survey of 304 recreational golfers found that two-thirds seldom or never bother), would benefit from exerting themselves a bit before teeing off. In one 2004 study, golfers who did dynamic warm- up exercises and practice swings increased their clubhead speed and were projected to have dropped their handicaps by seven strokes over seven weeks.

Controversy remains about the extent to which dynamic warm-ups prevent injury. But studies have been increasingly clear that static stretching alone before exercise does little or nothing to help. The largest study has been done on military recruits; results showed that an almost equal number of subjects developed lower-limb injuries (shin splints, stress fractures, etc.), regardless of whether they had performed static stretches before training sessions. A major study published earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control, on the other hand, found that knee injuries were cut nearly in half among female collegiate soccer players who followed a warm-up program that included both dynamic warm-up exercises and static stretching. (For a sample routine, visit www.aclprevent.com/pepprogram.htm.) And in golf, new research by Andrea Fradkin, an assistant professor of exercise science at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, suggests that those who warm up are nine times less likely to be injured.

“It was eye-opening,” says Fradkin, formerly a feckless golfer herself. “I used to not really warm up. I do now.”

You’re Getting Warmer: The Best Dynamic Stretches

These exercises- as taught by the United States Tennis Association’s player-development program – are good for many athletes, even golfers. Do them immediately after your aerobic warm-up and as soon as possible before your workout.

STRAIGHT-LEG MARCH

(for the hamstrings and gluteus muscles)

Kick one leg straight out in front of you, with your toes flexed toward the sky. Reach your opposite arm to the upturned toes. Drop the leg and repeat with the opposite limbs. Continue the sequence for at least six or seven repetitions.

SCORPION

(for the lower back, hip flexors and gluteus muscles)

Lie on your stomach, with your arms outstretched and your feet flexed so that only your toes are touching the ground. Kick your right foot toward your left arm, then kick your leftfoot toward your right arm. Since this is an advanced exercise, begin slowly, and repeat up to 12 times.

HANDWALKS

(for the shoulders, core muscles, and hamstrings)

Stand straight, with your legs together. Bend over until both hands are flat on the ground. “Walk” with your hands forward until your back is almost extended. Keeping your legs straight, inch your feet toward your hands, then walk your hands forward again. Repeat five or six times. G.R.

One on bike sharing programs in Europe

European Support for Bicycles Promotes Sharing of the Wheels
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

BARCELONA, Spain — In increasingly green-conscious Europe, there are said to be only two kinds of mayors: those who have a bicycle-sharing program and those who want one.

Over the last several years, the programs have sprung up and taken off in dozens of cities, on a scale no one had thought possible and in places where bicycling had never been popular.

The sharing plans include not just Paris’s Vélib’, with its 20,000 bicycles, but also wildly popular programs with thousands of bicycles in major cities like Barcelona and Lyon, France. There are also programs in Pamplona, Spain; Rennes, France; and Düsseldorf, Germany. Even Rome, whose narrow, cobbled streets and chaotic traffic would seem unsuited to pedaling, recently started a small trial program, Roma’n’Bike, which it plans to expand soon.

For mayors looking to ease congestion and prove their environmental bona fides, bike-sharing has provided a simple solution: for the price of a bus, they invest in a fleet of bicycles, avoiding years of construction and approvals required for a subway. For riders, joining means cut-rate transportation and a chance to contribute to the planet’s well-being.

The new systems are successful in part because they blanket cities with huge numbers of available bikes, but the real linchpin is technology. Aided by electronic cards and computerized bike stands, riders can pick up and drop off bicycles in seconds at hundreds of locations, their payments deducted from bank accounts.

“As some cities have done it, others are realizing they can do it, too,” said Paul DeMaio, founder of MetroBike, a bicycle transportation consulting company based in Washington, D.C., that tracks programs worldwide. “There is an incredible trajectory.”

The huge new European bicycle-sharing networks function less as recreation and more as low-cost alternate public transportation. Most programs (though not Paris’s) exclude tourists and day-trippers.

Here in Barcelona, streets during rush hour are lined with commuters and errand-goers on the bright red bicycles of Bicing, the city’s program, which began 18 months ago. Bicing offers 6,000 bicycles from 375 stands, which are scattered every few blocks; the bikes seem to be in constant motion.

“I use it every day to commute; everyone uses it,” said Andre Borao, 44, an entrepreneur in a gray suit with an orange tie, as he prepared to ride home for lunch. “It’s convenient, and I like the perspective of moving through the streets.”

The expanding program in Barcelona is typical of so-called third-generation programs, which rely heavily on technology. (In its first generation, bike-sharing involved scattering old bikes around the streets, where they could be used for free; second-generation programs accepted coins.)

Here, a customer buys a yearly membership for about $30 and is issued a smart card that allows the rider to remove a bike from a mechanized dock. The first 30 minutes are free, with a charge of 30 cents per half-hour after that. A bike must be returned to any bike rack in the network within two hours or the card may be deactivated.

Most programs in Germany and Austria work on a different system; members receive cellphone text messages providing codes to unlock the bikes.

Copenhagen and Amsterdam have had devoted bicycling commuters for many years. But the new programs have created the greatest transportation revolution in central and southern Europe, where warmer climates allow riders to ride comfortably year-round. The shared bicycles in Barcelona, Lyon and Paris are heavily used, logging about 10 rides a day, according to officials in these cities.

In North America, issues like insurance liability, a stronger car culture, longer commutes and a preference for wearing helmets have slowed adoption of bicycle-sharing programs. None of the European programs require helmets. Still, Washington and Montreal are experimenting with small projects, and Chicago, Boston and New York are studying options.

Perhaps the best indication that bicycle-sharing has arrived is this: Shanghai, which 10 years ago was trying to eliminate bicycles from some of its boulevards to make way for cars, opened a pilot bike-sharing stand last month.

In most European cities, advertisers have been given contracts to set up and maintain bicycle-sharing programs in exchange for the rights to sell advertisements on city-owned structures like bus stations.

“We provide a turnkey program,” said Martina Schmidt, bike-sharing director of Clear Channel Outdoors, which now runs programs in 13 European cities and recently started its first American program, the one in Washington. “We give the city what they’re looking for, and they give us space to sell.”

Here in Barcelona, the Bicing program has had its glitches, reflecting, in part, its unexpected popularity.

On Barcelona’s outskirts, users complain that the program’s racks, each with up to 36 bikes, can run out toward the end of the morning rush hour, leaving customers temporarily stranded. Likewise, docking sites downtown are sometimes full, so riders have to search for parking.

Car owners complain about the removal of parking spots to accommodate new bike lanes; the city has about 80 miles of lanes, after rapidly expanding the lanes in the past two years.

Barcelona’s downtown business district is in a geographic bowl, compared with most residential neighborhoods, so while many people want to ride downtown to work, fewer want to ride bikes home. Directed by controllers at a command station, Bicing’s 100 employees use trucks to rebalance the system, taking bikes to where they are needed.

City officials seem a bit overwhelmed.

“For the moment, it will not grow anymore,” said Ramón Ferreiro, an official with Bicing. “We now have to consolidate and start working so that maintenance is adequate, and improve the system at all levels.”

Even with the growing pains, José Monllor, a graduate student, says he now rides to class instead of driving his car. “It stays in the parking lot,” he said of his car. “It’s stupid to drive.”

The impact of bike-sharing on traffic or emissions is difficult to quantify because converts include people like Mr. Monllor, who would have driven, as well as those who would have taken public transportation.

Officials in Lyon, one of the first cities to institute a large technology-driven bike program, estimate that bike-sharing has eliminated tons of pollutants since its inception in 2005. But more than that, they say, it has changed the face of the city.

“The critical mass of bikes on the road has pacified traffic,” said Gilles Vesco, vice mayor in charge of the program in Lyon. “Now, the street belongs to everybody and needs to be better shared. It has become a more convivial public space.”

And one on the demise of bake sales. (Ana's school is having a bake sale soon. I wrote in to ask if they would like apples. LOTS OF APPLES. We've been getting a peck a week from the CSA lately. CSA ended this week. That's a lot of apples we're drowning in.)

Bake Sales Fall Victim to Push for Healthier Foods
By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

PIEDMONT, Calif. — Tommy Cornelius and the other members of the Piedmont High School boys water polo team never expected to find themselves running through school in their Speedos to promote a bake sale across the street. But times have been tough since the school banned homemade brownies and cupcakes.

The old-fashioned school bake sale, once as American as apple pie, is fast becoming obsolete in California, a result of strict new state nutrition standards for public schools that regulate the types of food that can be sold to students. The guidelines were passed by lawmakers in 2005 and took effect in July 2007. They require that snacks sold during the school day contain no more than 35 percent sugar by weight and derive no more than 35 percent of their calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat.

The Piedmont High water polo team falls woefully short of these standards, selling cupcakes, caramel apples and lemon bars off campus in a flagrant act of nutritional disobedience.

“I know obesity is a big problem, and it’s good the school cares,” said Sam Cardoza, a senior who briefly became a successful entrepreneur last year when chocolate chip cookies were banned from the cafeteria. “At the same time, you shouldn’t stop a kid from buying a cookie.”

California is a hatchery of food trends, but its regulations are not the country’s strongest.

A study of 500 to 600 school districts nationwide found that many now have policies that limit the amount of fat, trans fats, sodium and sugars in food sold or served at school, with the strictest rules directed at elementary schools, said Jamie Chriqui, a senior research scientist with the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The idea is that policy interventions to reduce consumption “will do for junk food what smoking bans and taxes did for tobacco,” Ms. Chriqui said.

In California, sports drinks, which can contain almost as much sugar as soda, are still allowed in middle and high schools, but sodas, including diet sodas, will be banned from all schools next year. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Kentucky has the strictest regulations on school nutrition, with sugar and sodium limits on beverages that eliminate most standard sports drinks.

“Before, it was the chips, the Hostess cupcakes, the Little Debbie doughnut sticks,” said Ginger Gray, the director of school nutrition for the Kenton County School District in northern Kentucky. Now, only pure fruit juice and low-fat or skim milk are allowed. The district’s most popular dish is whole-wheat stromboli made from scratch, Ms. Gray said, adding that she leans toward foods that families can cook at home. “You’re teaching them habits for life,” she said.

The regulatory focus on school nutrition has been gaining ground nationwide in recent years, amid concerns over childhood obesity and a lack of access to healthful food. Sixteen states have set standards for so-called competitive foods that compete with meals, like à la carte cookies, cinnamon buns and soft drinks. And, yes, this even affects bake sales.

In Chula Vista, Calif., near San Diego, sales plummeted at Hilltop High School’s multicultural food fair, an annual fund-raising event for the foreign language and global studies departments that has traditionally featured bratwurst, breadsticks with marinara sauce, apple pie and root beer floats. “This year was really hard,” said Jade Wagner, a senior, referring to the half-bratwursts and nondairy diet root beers.

If bake sales are out, “healthy” fund-raisers, like carwashes and balloon-o-grams, are in. In Oakland, Calif., new traditions are replacing old ones: a “Healthy Halloween” vegetable platter for kindergartners at Montclair Elementary; power bars and apple slices at the after-school homework club at Crocker Highlands Elementary; a Caesar salad-making class, a weekly organic produce stand and “nutrition breaks” replacing snack breaks at Peralta Elementary.

In Berkeley, birthplace of California cuisine, food served at school is free of bovine growth hormones, irradiation, hydrogenated oils and known genetic modification.

Birthday celebrations are not immune from nutrition watchdogs: around the country, there is growing pressure to forgo cupcakes in favor of nonfood treats.

“I don’t think all celebrations need to be around food,” said Ann Cooper, the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley school district. “We need to get past the mentality of food used for punishment or praise.”

In Guilford, Conn., the school district’s health advisory committee has decided that birthday parties belong at home. At A. W. Cox Elementary, birthdays are celebrated with an extra 15 minutes of recess, special pencils or a “birthday book club” with commemorative inserts. “The children have totally refocused,” said the principal, Merry Leventhal. “They’re happy to celebrate in these other ways.”

A recent study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale found that, contrary to parental fears, children were not compensating for the absence of sugar or fat at school by raiding the refrigerator at home. “Some people think that kids have this internal potato chip monitor, but there’s no evidence of that,” said Marlene B. Schwartz, the center’s deputy director. “People really do eat what’s in front of them.”

In California, bake sales are waning because ingredients cannot be regulated. Sales are banned during school hours but may be held a half-hour before or after school.

The ban on bake sales has not been met with universal enthusiasm. The Piedmont Highlander, the school newspaper, editorialized about “birthday cakes turned into contraband” and homemade goodies snatched from students “by the long arm and hungry mouth of the law.”

Even some nutritionists question whether banishing bake sales is the best approach. “It concerns me we’re not teaching moderation,” said Stephanie Bruce, the president of the California School Nutrition Association, who works in the Ontario-Montclair School District in Ontario, Calif.

Melissa Luna, considered the über-mom of Crocker Highlands Elementary in Oakland, said that sometimes calories mattered less than the importance of a cause — like the bake sale organized to raise money for Christopher Rodriguez, a student who was shot and paralyzed last March by a stray bullet from a gas station robbery while he was taking piano lessons across the street. The sale, attended by members of the Oakland Raiders and Oakland Athletics, raised $30,000.

In Berkeley, Anna X. L. Wong, a kindergarten teacher at Jefferson Elementary, incorporates “good foods” versus “bad foods” into the curriculum and offers her students healthy snacks, including edamame — her version of preventive medicine.

“We talk about the word ‘courage,’ ” Ms. Wong said of her young students. “That means being brave enough to try new things.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 14, 2008
An article on Monday about strict nutrition standards for public schools in California that are threatening school bake sales misstated the results of a study of school nutrition policies. The study surveyed 500 to 600 school districts nationwide and found that many of them — not all — had policies that limit the amount of fat, trans fats, sodium and sugars in food sold or served at school.