When I was a kid, there was school and there was yard work. School, I was always told, was my job. Yard work, meanwhile, was an involuntary obligation imposed on me by my father, who every Saturday morning could be found pruning hedges, pulling weeds, and planting vegetables in the terraced gardens he built in the backyard. It was hot, difficult, hellish work.

But I obviously grew up in a house that had a yard, and now that I live in New York City, I think back often on those halcyon days of sweaty, back-breaking, dirt-smudged labor with great yearning. Oh, to spread mulch again. What could be better?

In cities across the country, gardening is finding its way into school curricula, and for the most part it's been lauded for teaching kids about healthy foods and where they come from. Indeed, this explosion in green thumb education is largely due to Michelle Obama's efforts to change the way American children eat through educational initiatives and, of course, her own organic garden on the White House lawn.

But at least one person argues that for many first-generation Americans, whose parents made great sacrifices to raise their children in a country where they wouldn't have to break their backs in menial agricultural jobs, such a curriculum is tantamount to a life sentence of hard labor.

In her review for the Atlantic of Thomas McNamee's new biography of Alice Waters, the famed owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley and a champion of teaching kids about gardening in school, Caitlin Flanagan points out that the California school system is largely failing despite the flourishing gardening programs they offer.

And this, she suggests, will only reinforce the American version of a caste system. In other words, guess what happens when the state's hispanic students graduate from high school, practically illiterate, with only one skill set? Agriculture.

Flanagan's argument has some merit, but I wonder if it might lose steam the further from California you go. In New York, immigrants don't tend to work in agriculture; they drive cabs and work in restaurants, issue driver's licenses and clean buildings. For their kids to learn a thing or two about real food and where it comes from surely won't condemn them to lives of zero opportunity. It might simply teach them, and their classmates, that Cheetos and Gummi Bears aren't food at all.

[Image: NYTimes.com]

The late Brittany Murphy's husband, Simon Monjack, and her mother appeared on Larry King Live last week to try and set the record straight on Murphy's surprising, tragic death in December.

Murphy, just 32, was found dead in her home, and almost immediately speculation ran to drug overdose. Murphy, however, who was diabetic, claimed that she never abused drugs, and that even caffeine would "make her heart explode." Monjack assures the public that no drugs were found in Murphy's system, and with heart-wrenching emotion he relates the scene of his wife's untimely death.

Of course, some will say that Monjack and Murphy's mother are merely trying to protect her, but if that's the case, these two are pretty darn good actors.

There is a reported rise in people simply walking away from their mortgages. To me, that's pretty darn scary. And what's more, considering that the Obama-backed refinancing program isn't all it's chalked up to be, I can picture more people doing this. And why shouldn't they? Businesses do it without much repercussion. Well, the big stick in this picture is our credit history. Walk away from your mortgage and who knows what the future has for you?

The credit risk is high and akin to smashing a mirror on purpose -- back out of a mortgage and get yourself seven years of bad credit. There's also the theory that by walking away from your dream home that is underwater, you start to sink your neighbor's dream as well. That's a lot of guilt to manage.

On a recent NPR segment, a caller named Bill said he thought that paying one's mortgage was the morally correct thing to do. Brent White, law professor from the University of Arizona, responded, "I think this works to the advantage of lenders who actually understand that a contract is not a moral document, it's a legal document."

What I don't understand is how an abandoned business doesn't impact the value of my home, but a foreclosed condo does. The inequality in the economic landscape between businesses and individuals continues to grow and grow... At least in our awareness of the inequality anyway.

[Image: New York Times]

To say that the Internet has revolutionized modern life is like saying that refrigerators keep things cold. It's so obvious by now that even commenting on it seems dated, something that might have been interesting 10 years ago but is now simply taken as fact.

Of course, with every revolution come a few casualties. And in the age of 24-hour cybersurfing, second lives, and a website for just about every vice known to man, addiction specialists are starting to link compulsive Internet use to depression. And like other forms of depression, this uniquely modern form can be rather hard to diagnose.

Remember when the phrase "always on" entered the vernacular? In the late 1990s, it was a luxury to have quick and reliable Internet access in your home; today, it's practically viewed as a right to have it everywhere you go.

I spend several hours online every day; I have to for my work. But while I'm online, I'm not just working: I check email, play Scrabble, look up random topics, peruse old friends' Facebook photos, and absorb an enormous amount of information without seeming to retain much of it. When I get offline, I feel a wave of well-being wash over me. And what happens within 20 minutes? I find myself back online.

I suspect this describes most people I know, including those who work in offices where they are ostensibly "always at work." But are we depressed because of it? We may be, or maybe we spend so much time online because we're depressed. Like most chicken-or-the-egg questions, this is probably the wrong question to be asking. Better we should ask ourselves if our "second lives" are eclipsing our real lives, and if so, are we worse off for it?

Internet addiction and its psychological effects have been studied for years. Since 1995, the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery has been treating people for the affliction, whether self-diagnosed or determined by a doctor. Studies are conducted on Internet addiction every few years, suggesting that nothing we're seeing now is necessarily new. But with broadband, a limitless cyberspace, and handheld devices that make it all just a finger-tap away, Internet addiction may be getting a lot more serious. And it could well be making a lot of people depressed.

In 2007, MacKenzie Funk wrote an article for Harper's about her experience at a treatment facility for Internet addicts in China. There, patients were brought back to Earth after having all but lost their minds from a near-constant online existence. Many of them had stayed up for days at one of China's Internet cafes, glued to role-playing games and developing avatars through programs like Second Life, itself a subject of study by Internet addiction researchers.

And that was already three years ago. Are we, indeed, faced with an even greater problem today?

The efforts to help Haitians in the aftermath of the earthquake that tore apart their lives last month are too many to count, proof that when people want to band together and help those in need, anything is possible.

In addition to the major efforts, through groups like Partners in Health, the Red Cross, and Dine Out for Haiti, smaller benefits have been cropping up throughout the country to do their part in rebuilding a devastated country and its people.

On February 20th, New Yorkers will have the chance to run for Haitian relief, in a 4-mile foot race sponsored by the New York Road Runners Club. Though most NYRR races cost $20 for non-members and $17 for members, this one is $40 for everyone, reminding entrants that they're not just there to run a PR (personal record) or complete their first race. The NYRR has also made it possible to participate in the race without leaving your toasty bed, or even being in New York City, that Saturday morning: you join the field as a "virtual runner" for $30.

On February 8th, Chicago's Hope for Haiti -- not to be confused with the nonprofit organization Hope for Haiti or Hope for Haiti Now -- (I said the efforts were too many to count) will host a telethon/concert featuring the rapper Common, the Grammy Award-winning singer Tarrey Torae, and the gospel singers Donald Lawrence and Marvin Sapp.

Then, of course, there is the 20-song "Hope for Haiti Now" album, the first digital-only record to top the Billboard album charts, featuring songs by Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, and Justin Timberlake. And let's not forget the Quincy Jones-produced remake of "We Are the World" featuring a who's-who of the music world, including Kanye West, Celine Dion, Carlos Santana, Harry Connick Jr., and Barbara Streisand, among a few dozen others.

Such widespread devotion to a cause offers hope not just for Haiti, but for humanity as a whole. It proves that collective altruism is still possible, and that our species may not be so self-serving after all. If you know of other efforts to aid the relief effort where you live, please drop a comment so that others can join the cause.

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