When it comes to root health, pots with gas permeable walls carry the day. Terra cotta clay pots are better than plastic or vitrified clay pots and fabric pots are better than terra cotta clay. The reason is greater gas exchange through container walls and the fact that an increase in gas exchange comes with an increase in evaporative water loss, which can be a lifesaver when using water retentive media. There will still be a PWT in these pots, and for any given medium it will the same ht in a pot with rigid sides as in the fabric or air pots at container capacity. Container capacity is a measure of how much water the grow medium in a pot or container holds at the moment it has stopped draining after having been watered to the point of complete saturation. The ht of the PWT and how long it affects root function is usually key/critical in determining what opportunity a plant will have to realize as much of its genetic potential as possible (within the limiting effects of other cultural influences). The factor that most affects the ht of a PWT is the size of the particles from which the medium is made. So, reducing the duration of PWTs limitations increases the opportunity for plants to realize a greater measure of their genetic potential. But wait! There's a more important consideration. If you place your fabric containers directly on the ground/soil, from the perspective of hydrology it changes the fabric container to a raised bed; this, because water is free to move through the fabric between the grow medium and the earth, with the earth acting as a giant wick. This means, because of the increase in the force of adhesion in the mineral soil beneath the pot (due to a mineral soils much larger o/a surface area on a per volume basis), water in the soil will be pulled downward with enough source to overcome the capillarity holding it perched in the container. As long as you don't place the fabric container on coarse sand, peastone, or other large particles, the earth will likely pull all perched water from most media one is likely to use in a container. I've mentioned this and the fact that healing in your pots situating them directly on top of soil turns them into raised beds. the only caveat being it's essential that there is a 'soil bridge' so there is continuity of the soil column between the soil (earth) and the grow medium in the container, through the drain hole(s), so water doesn't have to jump an air gap to exit the container. This applies more to pots with rigid walls and is not a factor when discussing fabric containers. Al

Our aging crisis: the need for a dignified death - September 14, 2013 : 6:14pm In his final published work, “Mortality,” written while succumbing to esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens captures in one sentence the unavoidable truth of the dying process: “I don’t have a body, I am a body.” No one understands this truism quite as well as journalist Katy Butler, who witnessed the prolonged process of dying that her once-formidable, war-veteran father underwent after suffering a stroke in 2001, devolving into dementia and then finally dying from pneumonia seven years later. As doctors pushed life-support surgeries, new medications and cutting-edge interventions, Butler and her mother didn’t pray for a cure. Instead, they wished for his death, all of which is chronicled in her troubling investigative memoir “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” The “end-of-life crisis,” or as Butler calls it “the caregiver crisis,” has hit epidemic levels as the number of Americans over 85 doubled to 6 million since 1990. Baby boomers, like Butler, must now wrangle with what to do with sick elderly parents, asking questions of themselves they probably thought would never be fathomable: What can be done when a person lives too long? And has science gone too far in its mission to ward off death? Through her experiences with her father, Butler is unwavering in her answers. “Our optimistic science-worshiping culture wants to medicalize aging and make it nothing more than a collection of specific diseases that medicine can prevent or fix,” she writes. “But no matter what deal we make with the devil, nature outwits us. Dying can be postponed, but aging cannot be cured.” These are bitter pills to swallow and many might fall in the trap of citing Dr. Kevorkian, death panels, and agism in health care as reasons why these end-of-life conversations should never start. But Butler argues that this very fear, our culture’s unwillingness “to engage with death until it is in our faces,” is what has gotten us so deep in trouble in the first place. For example, 75 percent of elderly patients would rather die in their homes, yet 44 percent of them will die in hospitals, she writes. Last-ditch defibrillators, surgeries for incurable cancers and chemotherapy that only buys a few days continue to be the norm; while what she calls “Slow Medicine” �" home and palliative care �" remains on the fringes and is rarely covered by Medicare. Meanwhile, about a third of Medicare patients will have surgery in the last year of their life and a tenth will have a surgery done in the last month of life, she writes �" costing us an estimated $158 billion to $226 billion in medical overtreatment costs. But what is perhaps worse is the emotional and traumatic toll continual care for a dying relative takes on the survivors, which is the true core of her book. When Jeffrey, Butler’s hyper-intelligent Wesleyan history-professor dad, who lost his left arm while fighting in Italy during World War II, suffered a stroke at the age of 79, he was reduced to something much, much less: “With the memories, mind and reading comprehension of a highly educated 80-year-old; the spoken speech of a 4-or 5-year-old; and the physical dependence of a boy of 6.” He could comprehend his shortcomings, and it made him “miserable,” she writes. At one point, he even commented that he had “lived too long.” The stroke devastated not one, but two lives. “The day before [the stroke], my mother was a talented amateur artist and photographer, a woman of intimidating energy, and a spectacular housewife . . . After the stroke, she cared for my father the way she cared for my brothers and me when we were 3 or 4.” At 77, her mother had become one of the 29 million “unpaid, politically powerless, and culturally invisible family caregivers,” while Butler herself joined the 24 million baby boomers now tending to sick parents. When it became necessary for Jeffrey to undergo hernia surgery, his cardiologist suggested that they implant a pacemaker. The family agreed, unaware of the downsides of what was such an (they would only later find) unnecessary preventative treatment. Now, Jeffrey’s heart would tick on, long past his time should have been up. “Not having a pacemaker would not have guaranteed my father a quick or easy death,” she writes. “But having a pacemaker deprived him of his best chance for one.” Despite the surgery �" or perhaps because of it �" Jeffrey quickly got worse. Like about one third of those over 80, he suffered from dementia. His eyesight went, then his mobility. He began misspelling words. Then he began to see things that weren’t there. He became bladder and bowel incontinent. “I woke up some morning in a fury. Why had his doctors not let nature take its course? If the pacemaker had never been implanted, I thought, my father might well have been out of his misery, and so would my mother and me,” Butler writes. The family begged his cardiologist to turn off the pacemaker, but he refused. Other cardiologists refused, as well. In 2008, Butler’s father contracted pneumonia. Knowing that sending him to the hospital would only prolong his suffering with “life-saving” procedures, they avoided calling 911. He eventually became sick enough to be accepted into hospice care, where he finally died. Here is a link that might be useful: Our aging crisis: the need for a dignified death

I've been following this discussion with real interest. Last year my husband had an emotional affair with a woman he met on his commuter train. It did not get as far as the OP's adventure but speaking from the perspective of the wife...It has taken a lot of working, talking, and refocusing to get our marriage back on track. Looking back my husband has realized it was completely unreal and not the answer to our problems. Hindsight has shown him her eagerness to destroy our marriage displayed her true character just as other posters have suggested to the OP. Also, I find it difficult to believe that the problems all come from his wife. Marriage is two people. I doubt he is open to all the good advice given here. It seems he has already made excuses for his behavior and rationalized the whole sordid event to convince himself of his righteousness. Sorry to go on. It all struck a nerve

Thank you Casey, that helped energize us through the home stretch and we're now pretty much done, barring the finishing. "We" she said possessively, but to be honest my role ended when the design and shopping were done. I really have to hand it to DH for the work. Well, and I kept the kitchen cooking during construction :-) I can do woodwork, but the precision measuring and clean cutting are way better than I could have done. (The bottom drawer still needs to be adjusted just a tad to rectify the left gap, for the perfectionists out there). So here is the pretty-much finished project. (The bottom drawer still needs to be adjusted just a tad to rectify the left gap, for the perfectionists out there). One criterion having been that the drawers would look good when open, they do indeed show no plywood from the sides. In the second photo you can also see the triangle piece that connects the drawer bottom and front and supports the bottom. So far the side rails simply function as the stops, and we don't have anything yet to prevent me from pulling them out and dropping them on my foot. Working on that. Fortunately they are deep, and it's unlikely I'll make the error. The most fun of course was playing with the exotic woods to pick up the colour scheme of the kitchen. The bloodwood picks up the brick in the chimney that absurdly rises through the kitchen counter; the purple heart picks up the maroon field and backsplash tile, and the blue the accent tile ( the main field is bird's eye maple). In the third photo you get a bit more of the flavour of the kitchen, which we wanted to be consistent with even if we weren't copying the rest of the cabinetry. The blue is actually something called alowood, a softwood that is factory-stained and hardened. We were going to stain something blue ourselves so finding this at the lumberyard was a bonus. It was pretty good to work with. As many of you likely know, the purple heart is a very hard wood so the planer caused a bit of ripping from time to time, but fortunately not badly on the face we wanted to use. Also, it's actually brown when it's first cut, and turned more purple after a day or two - I gather this is usually a reaction to heat? Sun streams into the window onto the drawers, so maybe that or the light. And with Slideez, they do slide well, albeit that's empty. I don't want to put anything in them until they're finished - I think we'll use polyurethane on the inside, and we haven't decided on the best outside coating yet. Thanks again for the interest, and I hope this account is of some use to someone. KarinL