This came to me without the author byline. If anybody has further information, please let me know.
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The Dark Side of Homegrown Vegetables - Part I
[a response to CBS news, two-part series on A dark side to homeschooling and Home schooling nightmares aired October 13 & 14, 2003]

Good evening, I'm (NAME-OF-ANCHORMAN).

You've seen the success stories: A prizewinning pumpkin at the state fair grown in backyard suburbia. Your Aunt Mary's squash casserole that melts in your mouth. Smiling faces out in the sunshine surveying freshly tilled earth. Indeed, there are millions of Americans today who garden in their backyard with nothing but the best of intentions. Unfortunately, there is also other stories; stories about backyard gardening turned deadly, even fatal. (NAME-OF-REPORTER) has this report...

(Photos from a high school yearbook of a smiling young lady)

Reporter voiceover: At 17 years of age Amy X. had everything in life to look forward to. Validictorian of her senior class, active in glee club, volunteer at the local hospital every weekend. Her sister remembers...

(Amy's sister talking from the living room of her house)

Amy's sister: "She could always make me laugh, I could sit and talk to her for hours. We never argued. I don't think she ever had a mean thought in all her life. Everybody loved her."

(Photo's of a college age man)

Reporter voiceover: Unfortunately for Amy, after she graduated from college she met and fell in love with this man, John Y. At first, at first it seemed a perfect match.

Amy's sister: "They were definitely a fun couple. You would always see them together holding hands."

(Photo of a young couple at their wedding)

Reporter voiceover: At first, it was a storybook wedding leading to a happily ever after marriage, but then something went wrong.

Amy's sister: Yes, in those first few months I'd run into Amy at the supermarket. She would be picking up and looking at their tomatoes very carefully. John loved fresh tomatoes, you see. Anyway, she would always go on and on about how fulfilled she felt as a wife, how much she loved John.

(long pause)

An then, after a few months, I stopped seeing her at the grocery store. I would call her up and ask her what was wrong. She'd just laugh and say how John was starting to grow his own tomatoes in our back yard. I could tell something was wrong, because I'd suggest we get together and see each other, but she's always say she was too busy...

(longer pause)

... and NOW I'LL NEVER SEE HER AGAIN!!!

(Amy's sister turns away from the camera and hides her face, tears streaming down her face)

(Reporter in the middle of a large backyard garden)

Reporter: Yes, here, in their suburban backyard, John started his garden. At first it was only tomatoes and green beans, then he went on to lettuce, broccoli, squash, you name it. Only John Y. had a terrible secret he was effectively hiding from everyone: John really didn't like tomatoes. He was just using his garden as an excuse to prevent Amy from going to the grocery store. He then started ordering all his canned goods over the internet, and having them delivered straight to his door by UPS. Pretty soon Amy was not going to the grocery store at all. And then the beatings started...

(Cut to a young, competent-looking police detective)

Detective: We had several neighbors call us up with complaints about noise, but none of them were specific enough to be able to issue a search warrant. We had the idea that something was going on, but without any actual evidence... (shrugs) We spoke to Mr. Y. several times.

He was definitely a typical controlling personality type, we knew that. There just wasn't anything we could do, until it was too late, until we found out that she had been murdered.

(Photos from the crime scene, along with voiceover description of thesensational details of the grisly murder. Cut to footage of a defiant John Y. being led away in handcuffs.)

(Amy's sister, again sobbing)

Amy's sister: If it hadn't been for gardening, my sister would be alive today!

(Detective's office again)

Detective: I've seen other cases like this one, but this one haunts me. Usually, when a victim of wife abuse goes to the supermarket, we get some witnesses who are able to tell us about the huge bruises they see on her face. This time, though, there was no one there to see it. There was just nothing we could do.

(Reporter again in the middle of a large backyard garden)

Reporter: Home gardening has been legal in this country for many years, and most home gardeners are normal people who garden with the best of intentions. Yet experts warn that an alarming number of people are using gardening as a means of maintaining social isolation in order to hide their spousal abuse.

(Cut to a man identified as Gilbert Z., president of the local chapter of the home gardeners association. Gilbert Z. has a bad hair cut and looks uncomfortable being on camera.)

Gilbert: ...there are only a few isolated instances; I know of thousands of gardeners who are really nice people. I don't see how this is connected to gardening...

{Gilbert's statement is obviously a sound bite captured from the middle of a long interview.}

Reporter: No one knows exactly how many gardeners there are out there, much less how many are actually abusing their wives. Until now, there has been no federal mandate to collect data on gardening in America. Its an environment that allows men like John Y. to thrive.

(Cut to footage of John Y. being taken into court.)

John Y. is currently serving 5 years in prison, since the charges against him were plea-barganed down from murder to manslaughter. John Y.'s lawyers declined our request for an interview.

In tomorrow nights report, NAME-OF-REPORTER will tell how nationwide, wives are being put in danger, even killed, while gardening.

{You now have 24 hours to imagine just what is meant by the word "while". You probably now have this mental image of a husband and wife out together in the field, the wife smiles and says, "Honey, could you pass me the shovel?", and then the husband grabs the shovel and hacks her to death with it. What you actually see in the next report, though, shows that "while" simply means that they beat their wives and they happened to have a garden at the time.}

The Dark Side of Homegrown Vegetables - Part II

Good evening, I'm NAME-OF-ANCHORMAN.

It is estimated that there are BIG-NUMBER of homes in America today that have backyard gardens, and the overwhelming majority of these people have only the best intentions at heart. Yet home gardening is essentially unregulated. NAME-OF-REPORTER has uncovered dozens of cases of gardening husbands who have been convicted or accused of wife abuse when no one was there to regulate them.

Reporter: John Q. shot his wife one night and buried her in the backyard. Yet since his wife hadn't been seen in the grocery store in months, no one noticed.

Charles R. had his wife chained up in the attic for over a year, away from the prying eyes of people at the local grocery store who might have turned him in.

Both men were home gardeners.

And then there is the imfamous cases of Bob S. and Harry T. Both had large vegetable gardens at the time of their conviction.

Detective: The genuine gardener is a person who grows wonderful vegetables. There is, however, a subgroup within this group that is only using gardening to cover up their wife abuse.

Gilbert Z.: ...I don't see any trend here. There's no connection. These are definitely isolated cases that have nothing to do with the gardening community...

Reporter: Yet no one knows exactly how many cases there are, because at present there are few government regulation covering home gardening. Home gardening is legal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with only the requirement that the gardener refrain from growing marijuana, opium poppies, and certain types of mushrooms. All but seven states have no zoning restrictions outside of major cities which require reporting gardening activities to local governments. No states require FDA approval, permitting, and monthly inspections of each and every home garden, or any other requirements that are currently in place to cover commercial farming activities but for some strange reason have not yet been applied to people who just want to grow a few squash at home. Until these garden inspections start uncovering hidden cases of wife abuse that are not being uncovered by the grocery stores {darn that fourth amendment anyways} this cycle of violence will undoubtedly continue.

John Q. now faces life in prison. The question remains for us how to prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again ever anywhere no matter what the cost.

{Oh, and I note in passing that even though dozens of cases have been related which involve those "convicted or accused of wife abuse", only four cases were mentioned which actually involved conviction. How many of the rest were spurious unsubstantiated accusations remains a mystery.}

"To abandon hope of speaking truthfully about reality is to abandon the adventure of life."

--Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth, 1991, p. 4.

Read it in the book with me own eyes.

No source for this one:

By the time you get your shoulder to the wheel, your nose to the grindstone, and your ear to the ground, it's usually time for lunch!

Not to mention time to see the chiropractor.

"Against every great and noble endeavor stand a million mediocre minds." --Albert Einstein

Carmen Leal sent me this today. "As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

What was the cartoon line? "We have met the enemy, and he is us."