OPEN LETTER TO HEALTHCARE ADMINISTRATORS

         Just what "industry" are you involved in, or rather what "industry" do you think you're involved in? The entire premise for the allowance of it taking up space in the fabric of society is the second half of the defining word in the title of "Healthcare Industry". It is existent totally resulting from the need of some to CARE for the ills and injuries of the rest of society's individuals and can provide no value to society without that CARING. 
        The entire function of all commercial endeavor in all societies is to provide value in exchange for value. 
        Given the premiss for it's existance, it is obvious that the prime asset of any organization operating as a healthcare institution is the people working within it to provide that caring. All of that increasingly complicated and expensive aparatus and infrastructure in much of that industry today is just it's set of ever changing TOOLS. Those TOOLS are of absolutely zero value to anyone absent caring people applying informed and caring use of them. All value any healthcare institution can trade for value (profit from) arises from the caring and abilities of it's people to use that set of tools for the good of the institution's customers, the injured and infirmed of the communities in which it operates. 
        The industry in which it operates is fully defined as a  people on people enterprise. 
Employees in healthcare don't usually arrive in their jobs by accident. They are, as a whole, caring individuals seeking a caring environment in which to make a life of caring for the ill and injured around them. As such they are extraordinary members of society. Any erosion of your respect, in fact or inferrence, for that reality threatens the ability of your institution to provide it's only marketable product, those individuals' ability and / or  will to provide a quality level of care to the ill and injured of the comunities in which your organization operates. That threatens the institutions'very continued existance. 
  Therefor be wary. Use maintenance of the respect mentioned as a prime criteria for evaluating cost cutting measures, eliminating recognition programs and events or elimination of incentives or oportunities for employees to serve the community to close budget gaps and include affected employees in those decisions' formation whenever possible or you may start down a path toward having no budget to save!

CORN GLUTEN: MAGIC STUFF?

    As the story goes, decades ago some university agriculture student just happened to notice that along railroad tracks where hopper cars had spilled corn, there were no annual weeds growing! He or she apparently convinced their university faculty to research this phenomenon. The result was the knowledge that the gluten in corn creates a sort of germination barrier on or very near the surface of the soil. Where that barrier exists weed seeds can't germinate into weed plants. Out of this knowledge have sprung a number of "organic" weed control products based on corn gluten. As it so happens the corn gluten is also a very good source of slow release nitrogen. That makes it an excellent lawn fertilizer/ weed control product base. 

    The first product of this kind I'd ever heard of was WOW (for without weeds) sold by Gardens Alive, an online and mail-order seller of organic gardening, household and pet management products. I've been buying and exclusively over-seeding my lawn with their Turf Alive grass seed for as long as I've known about them. Their grasses send roots 4' to 6' deep and carry a grub killer producing beneficial fungus (endophyte) that keeps the lawn pest free as well. I water the lawn maybe once or twice a season on average and it stays green way deeper into drought than anyone else's on my block..
    Well on to what's new! This season I noticed my Ace carrying lawn care products by "Jonathan Green Organics". I have been using a mix of Ringers Lawn Restore, Milornanite, Ironite and limestone pellets exclusively, seasonally adjusting proportions for almost 2 decades. All of which I have been buying at La Grange Park Ace Hardware. This week's flier from them shows Jonathan Green Organic Weed Control plus fertilizer. It is advertised as a corn gluten based product. I'm going to give it a try.
    There are a couple of cautionary notes  to include here. Corn gluten is exclusively a pre-emergence weed control product. That means it won't have any effect on established perennial weed plants.  As an effective pre-emergence product it will interfere with the germination of grass seed you have spread and any grass plant that has has yet to establish itself. I believe it's mechanism is to suppress root development in the soil's surface fraction of an inch where seeds germinate and new plants begin to establish themselves. 
   Well on to the Ace to get some!