One Size Fits All

This is the book I mentioned previously and I’m almost 3/4 of the way done. The title of the book comes from George Puttenham who in 1589 said, "Peace makes plentie, plentie makes pride, pride breeds quarrel, and quarrel breeds warre: Warre brings spoile, and spoile povertie, povertie pacience, and pacience peace: So peace brings warre and warre brings peace."

So Puttenham wouldn’t win any modern spelling bee contests, but I love the expression. It explains history very nicely which is how I like it to be explained. But the excerpt I wanted to share today is the one below about the population increase in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries.

One of the most striking historical trends in France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was massive population growth. In 1100, about six million people inhabited the territory within the modern national borders of France. By 1300, the population more than tripled and reached a level between 20 and 22 million. The rest of Western Europe experienced a similar population buildup. We are on firm ground when it comes to tracing the dynamics of the population of England. In 1086, William the Conqueror, who wanted to know just how many new subjects he had acquired by his conquest of England, conducted a massive census whose results were preserved in the Domesday Book. Using this information, modern historians estimate that there were around two million people in England at the end of the eleventh century. Two centuries later, there were close to six million

The population increase put the productive means of the medieval society under a collossal strain. All land that could be cultivated was turned into fields. In the process, more than 30 million acres of forests - one quarter of the modern area of France - were destroyed to make room for agriculture. Land was worked more intensively by shifting from the two-field to the three-field system. Instead of letting land rest every other year, each field was cultivated every two years out of three. As a result of increases in cultivated area and the switch to the three-field system, the amount of food produced in France probably doubled during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But the number of mouths to be fed increased threefold, with the inevitable result that the per-capita food consumption declined.  

Today, according to Wikipedia, 64,473,140 people live in the French Republic. Also per wikipedia, "large tracts of fertile land, the application of modern technology, and EU subsidies have combined to make France the leading agricultural producer and exporter in Europe. Wheat, poultry, dairy, beef, and pork, as well as an internationally recognised foodstuff and wine industry are primary French agricultural exports. EU agriculture subsidies to France total almost $14 billion." According to this table based on data from 2004, this appears to be almost 29 billion USD.

My husband read this book and strongly urged me to read it. I began reading this on my commute this morning. An excerpt:

The very stability and internal peace that strong empires impose contain within them the seeds of future chaos. Stability and internal peace bring prosperity, and prosperity causes population increase. Demographic growth leads to overpopulation, overpopulation causes lower wages, higher land rents, and falling per capita incomes for the commoners. At first, low wages and high rents bring unparalleled wealth to the upper classes, but as their numbers and appetities grow, they also begin to suffer from falling incomes. Declining standards of life breed discontent and strife. The elites turn to the state for employment and additional income, and drive up its expenditures at the same time that the tax revenues decline because of the growing misery of the population. When the state’s finances collapse, it loses the control of the army and police. Freed from all restraints, strife among the elites escalates into civil war, while the discontent among the poor explodes into popular rebellions. 

From Ohio’s transportation map:

State Rock Song: Hang On Sloopy (youtube). Edit: OSU’s marching band has a version. (mp3)

State Fossil: Isotelus Trilobite

State Motto: With God All Things Are Possible

State Stone: Flint

Well with both me and my husband having years of experience in a variety of fields that indicate our brilliance and flexibility, not to mention degrees in fields that are supposedly desperate for employees - we’re both still unemployable. Or at least, no one want to bother hiring people 3000 miles away. I feel like I should have just gotten a Literature degree like I wanted to, and I would have at least enjoyed my college experience.

So I’ve decided to turn this realization into something positive. One reason why we would eventually want to go back on the job market will be to pay off our student loans and save up to buy some land. I will continue to pay my student loan while on the cross country trip, since the monthly payment is a bit less than $80. I’ll start paying more than the minimum once I get a job on the W. Coast. Husband’s student loan will be on deferment for  roughly 3-4 months. His next payment’s due date is sometime in 2010 because we’ve been paying two to three times more than the minimum during the past year which keeps pushing the due date forward.

Because we’re leaving in the Fall, we might run into rough weather somewhere in the middle, and I’ve been playing around with some ideas.

One idea was to hang out with friends in Colorado being the dirty, smelly, unemployed bums that we will be. Maybe we’ll get some temp jobs, but if the economy is heading south, who knows how the temp market will be. This will mean that we’ll just be burning through our savings. 

Another idea was to head south into New Mexico or Arizona and work on a farm in exchange for room and board. This will give us some useful skills and knowledge and we can keep our savings intact. But are farms busy in the late fall/early winter in the South West? One farmer that I contacted said that there would be work to do, and he wants a 2 week minimum committment. But then what do we do during Christmas season when everything shuts down? Enjoy the desert scenary? Peak into Mexico and hope the border patrol ignores me? Continue to San Diego and then head north?

Some of the farms in the Northwest that need help all year round are located on islands. Which would be a bit of a problem since I can’t swim. I know I should have learned to swim all those times my husband dragged me to the public pool or the beach, but not only does water scare me, but I also find it icky - and the Atlantic isn’t exactly clean either. And I have issues with wearing a swimsuit.

Then of course is the Greyhound option. Some of my readers are getting a bit too excited about my trip and I need to manage these expectations. So please calm down and remember that I am really wimpy and a scaredy cat. We can all celebrate my accomplishment and get excited after I wind up on the Pacific coast in one piece. 

Edit: Another option is house sits. Pick up dog doo and mail in exchange for a free room and/or board.

I’ve been thinking about God for a very long time. And since its one of my many favorite topics I’m going to jot down some of my thoughts for future reference.

— 

If you want a label, I consider myself to be an atheist. I believe that when I die I will disintegrate into the soil. Unless I am burned to a crisp…in which case I will wind up blowing in the wind.

Anyway.

Karen Armstrong has been very instrumental in solidifying my thoughts on religion and the concept of God. Because of her writings I’ve come to a satisfactory answer on the role of religion and the concept of God and, the origin of the idea of a God. In a nutshell, today I believe that God represents all that is good about humanity and that goodness lies within every single person…unless they’re schizo I suppose. I imagine that the full realization of that goodness is what amounts to enlightenment - what Gautama Buddha is most famous for having attained. I am not entirely certain about this since I am not actually enlightened. I expect to have a halo around my head when I am enlightened and hope to blog about that feeling in the future.

I was feeling fairly despondent about many things when I arrived at the conclusion that one of the main reasons that so many people go around raping and pillaging the planet and its inhabitants is because they do not believe they possess that goodness in themselves…they possess some sort of self-hatred and they externalize that self-hate by crapping on everything. And since these people do not believe that they possess any goodness within themselves, they project it into this mythical being: God. God is wonderful, all-knowing, all-loving, all that is wondeful and great. I’ve read accounts of fundamentalist religious people believing that its okay to crap on Planet Earth because heaven will have a bountiful supply of everything, including free energy and paved streets of gold. That sentiment really bothered me, and I meditated on my feelings for a long time and finally came up with the conclusion that:

a. these people are delusional

b. these people possess alot of self-hatred and since I tend to ride that boat occasionally - I found it to be very sad.

— 

I’ve been doing metta meditation for the last several months and I’ve been doing it on myself. Several months ago, I was meditating and I saw this young woman (I guess I saw her in my head - its a bit hard to describe). I tend not to make eye contact with people, so I avoided looking at her. But I snuck a glance again  and found her looking at me with this incredible love, and kindness. And she was very beautiful. I freaked out a little bit because I am apparently a bit homophobic, but then got confused because the woman I was looking at was myself. First thought I had was, "wow! I’m pretty cute!" Then I cursed myself for the stray thought and continued looking at her, and I had this feeling or knowledge that she would take care of me and that she loved me very, very much. Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love had a similar experience as I did. So its not something I am unique in experiencing.

I don’t have some grand conclusion about that experience  but shortly after that, I realized how this God idea originated. I am not a goddess (although you may feel free to pray to me and send me lots of money and email me your bank info), but I have finally come to a satisfactory conclusion about God which I stated above. Its a bit hard to describe, but I finally feel at peace.

I’m just inventing a term here because I don’t know if someone else has already come up with these thoughts and given it a name.

Over the past several years, I’ve been educating myself on some very useful matters: where my food comes from, peak oil, American history, monetary policies of the U.S., societal issues such as race relations, feminism, etc. I happen to like American history because its fairly new, and the effects of many events are still affecting people today. Indian history is very exciting and everything, but I started learning about it in third grade about what stuff was like in the B.C. era. Can you imagine the dates to keep track of? The battles that were fought? Which dynasty screwed over some other random dynasty? Lineage going back over a thousand years? In a nutshell I hated history because it was soo tedious and lengthy. But U.S. history is small and tiny and, learning about 10 key facts will make one seem like a genius in mixed company.

But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about how I wish I lived in this magical world where I didn’t have to worry. Where everything was safe. Where the food was not contaminated, the people were not jerks, where the poultry and meat farms were not horrid places for the animals living in them.

I was at a regular grocery store recently and was despairing over how little I could buy at the store. The Eat Local campaign has been successful and thus produce available with the "eat local" stickers, but the produce was not organic. I couldn’t just pick up any old fruit or veggie. I couldn’t pick up any meat because it came trucked in from god knows where. And was Bessie satisfied with her life before her head was chopped? I couldn’t tell. The organic milk was from Horizons, not some local farmer who was a pasa member. I know in time things will change, but why was there a change to this industrial/corporate environment where everything is so sterile?

And I do live in a crappy neighborhood, but why can’t I just walk out without stressing out on whether some random perv or jerk (always male) who will bother me? Why can’t I walk outside on the sidewalk barefoot instead of worrying about random nails and crushed glass from bottles that are broken every single night by nut bags? Why can’t I ride my bicycle without having someone yell or curse at me? Or buzz me and then hit on me?

One of the many reasons I’m interested in a bicycle trip across the country is because I’ve heard that it might restore my faith in humanity.  I have very little faith in pretty much anything which doesn’t add much to my self confidence, but I’m hoping to get across in one piece without hating everyone on the planet and cursing it to hell.

From husband’s email:

Under Tiberius, the Roman Emperor, there was a financial panic.

This was caused first by Tiberius seizing property for "crimes against the state". Then he took the money from the treasury and used it on orgies.

Taxes were high. He spent little money on public works.

Interest rates on loans were limited to 1.5%. People ignored the rule. Tiberius ruled that they were to uphold the law and he gave people 1.5 years to get their books in order. The result? People called in their loans. Why loan out money for so low interest. Since all loans were called in at once, there was a panic. There were limited coins.

Land prices went almost to nothing.

Tiberius had to rescue the bank by loaning it 1 million coins at 0% interest to pay out to borrowers to exchange securities for land.

 
Edit: Here is some more info from what looks like an excerpt in The Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome by William Stearns Davis.

I’ve been reading Hope, Human and Wild by Bill McKibben. Its not too bad. But I wanted to write about my thoughs on Kerala…often brought up by environmentalists (including McKibben) as the golden standard to aspire to.

I’ve been in a very pessimistic mood lately, so this post is going to reflect that pessimism. This post is also poorly written. So please put your grammer rules aside for now.

I am very familiar with Kerala - a state in India. For one, I was born there. I’ve also lived in a small town in Kerala for a while. But I hated the place. Yes the food was lovely, the resource consumption is as low as everyone says it is. The weather was tolerable despite the heat and humidity, mainly because of all the trees that make the place liveable. And the water is delicious! But the people…well its what makes a place. And for the most part its the people that made me despise the place.

While I realize that the norms and customs of a community is what makes up a community I dislike the notion that an outsider or someone who deviates from those norms and customs can be ostracized, burned at the stake, etc, etc. While I’ve only become mildly obnoxious in the last few years, in general I am not a rebel. I like to follow the rules and overall am an all round do-gooder.

One of the reasons I like the U.S. is because people in general tend to leave you alone. This is coming from my experience of living in a city, suburb and the country.They chalk up your eccentricities as eccentricities. But there isn’t an overall pervasive negative vibe following you everywhere you go if you’re slightly odd. If you speak English with a slightly different accent you aren’t mocked. You’re just asked to repeat yourself (and occasionally treated like a special exhibit at the zoo). You can wear almost type of clothing anything and not be bothered about it for the most part. Your neighbors won’t come over and call you a slut for wearing shorts in 100 degree weather (and you are wearing shorts in your own house…not walking around town with it). 

I am not quite sure how to put this. But, everytime a white person walks around in India they are treated as a god (one reason my husband is quite eager to visit India). White skin is prized. So I can’t imagine a white person having a terribly negative experience in a place like Kerala.  Maybe they might wind up as victims of theft or pickpocketeers…but their attitude and behaviour won’t be mocked. But if those same attitudes were somehow part of someone’s personality (say…me)…then life will be hell. Speaking the native language with a slightly different accent will get giggles and mockery every single time. Wearing jeans will be seen as a huge act of rebellion that will need to be curbed.

I can’t remember what else made my life a living hell seeing as I have a terrible memory. But I wonder if its worth it to live in a community with a very low rate of resource consumption and give up any semblance of a personality in order to fit in.

I recently commented on Penelope Trunk’s blog that my blog was an intersection between ethics, money and the life. So I was very pleased when I encountered a passage in Secrets of the Temple that shed some light into the relationship between money and food from a historical perspective.

My current knowledge of the U.S. food system begins in the Dust Bowl era as described by Timothy Egan in Hard Times. But I wondered about what the food system was like before the dust storms became a regular feature of the midwestern landscape. The excerpt below gives me some insight into that question, along with the reasons behind  why people from the southern states still bear resentment toward northerners or other outsiders. The excerpt also sheds light on why the Civil War is still a hot button topic for many. Reading arduous’ recent post on perceptions by rural people and/or southerners reminded me to post this excerpt:

Across the cotton states, small farmers existed in a state of virtual peonage, their everyday lives held in bondage by the crop-lien system, an American version of the medieval usurer. In every hamlet, the "furnishing merchant" provided farm families with staples and supplies and took a lien on the farmer’s cotton crop as security. If a farmer bought something for cash, he paid one price, but if he purchased on credit, he would pay 25 to 50 percent more. At the end of the season, when his crops were sold and his account settled, the "furnishing man" would add another 33 percent or so for interest. The real interest rate, thus, approached or exceeded 100 percent. There was nowhere else to turn; other merchants or banks would not extend credit to someone who was already indebted. With falling cotton prices, it was impossible for farmers to "pay out," and so the merchants took notes against the farmers’ land. As the debt mounted and forfeiture was inescapable, tens of thousands of farmers - eventually millions of people - "decended into the world of landless tenantry," as Lawrence Goodwyn wrote. They became hired hands, sharecropping on the farms they had once owned, or displaced immigrants who streamed to the cities. This wholesale liquidation was entwined in the South’s bitter memory of Reconstruction, the legacy that led Populist legislators, once they had gained power in places like Arkansas, to write stringent prohibitions of usury into their state laws and constitutions.

Usurious lending also afflicted farmers in the Middle West, though less dramatically, as they struggled to stay ahead of falling prices. The age of mechanization was opening and farmers were advised that the only way to maintain their income levels was to increase their efficiency - to produce greater yields from the same land and labor. The new machines they purchased on credit typically carried annual interest rates of 18 to 36 percent - chattel mortgages they would have to pay off in steadily appreciating dollars. When the farmers went to ship their grain, the railroads squeezed them further with arbitrary freight rates. "The farmer in the West," Goldwyn wrote, "felt there was something wrong with a system that made him pay a bushel of corn in freight costs for every bushel he shipped."

That’s all I am going to type for now. But the chapter goes on to say how farmers had to obtain loans from local financial organizations which then asked banks and financial organizations (investment houses?) on Wall Street to back their loans. Since the currency in existence was backed by gold (Chile recommended this short documentary that is well worth watching to get the general idea of currency backing), any sort of loan guarantee had to have backing in gold as insurance…even though collateral was often taken from the farmers in the form of land. Since it was banks in NYC that made or broke the farmers in rural areas, there was a growing resentment that has never quite gone away. In fact the ongoing subprime crisis stems from decisions made from lower level flunkies all over the globe to the higher level paper pushers sitting in Wall Street firms again affecting millions of people including those living in rural areas. So I can see how one can be resentful toward those at Wall Street.

I believe a commenter on Boston Gal’s Open Wallet had recommended "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country". I started reading this book a few days ago since its due back at the library next week (I’ve already renewed it past its limit). The book is over 600 pages along but its a fantastic and very informative read. The author, William Greider, describes the spiritual malaise that usually precedes a huge change. Karen Armstrong also wrote about this general discontent that more or less led to the founding of the religions: Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. According to Secrets of the Temple, many people are suspicious of the motives of the Fed primarily because its a large, secretive body that has a great deal of influence over a wide variety of people. This lack of control and knowledge causes some to come up with…some sort of idea (however bizzare) to explain this entity. An excerpt that explains the theories of these people:

To modern minds, it seemed bizarre to think of the Federal Reserve as a religious institution. Yet the conspiracy theorists, in their own demented way, were on to something real and significant. Economics was the essence of scientific rationalism; the Fed’s analytical techniques were the opposite of metaphysical speculation. But the Federal Reserve did also function in the realm of religion. Its mysterious powers of money creation, inherited from priestly forebears, shielded a complex bundle of social ritual, transactions so powerful and frightening they seemed to lie beyond common understanding.

I think people seem to want a few things in life whether they are able to articulate it or not: happiness, cleanliness (as described by George Carlin) and some semblance of order and control over their own lives. When these desires are in any way threatened people try to regain those desires in a manner that makes sense to them.

Coming with ideas and believing them without a context of history seems a bit foolish. I don’t know what to think about the Fed. I have no idea what it is they actually do. Its seems a bit silly to be fearful of an entity if their presence has been a constant in one’s own lifetime. I can see fear coming arising from new things or developments…but something that is old?

I’m in a foul mood today. This is probably due to all the "news" I’ve been reading since yesterday. Warning: negativity and pointless pontification ahead.

There are many claims and even studies showing the correlation between educated women and delayed pregnancy.  So I’ve been very curious on how much my education played a part in me not wanting to have children (although, after yesterday’s bus ride I don’t even want to be in the same vicinity as anyone under 20…but that’s a different story). I’ve had sex education classes twice: the first one was on the mating of frogs given in biology class when I was 13 and second one had to do with humans, taught when I was 15. The frog sex class was a snooze fest and has probably played a huge role in why I’ve never liked studying biology in an academic environment. The human sex-ed class was given  under the watchful eye of a nun, who I thought looked like a cow (it was how she was depicted in my cartoons of her).

The sex-ed class taught me only one method of pregnancy prevention (in addition to abstinence), the rhythm method, also called the calender method. But I never relied on it because I couldn’t keep track of when it was safe for me to have sex: Is it before my period? After my period? During my period? I decided the safest method was just to avoid it altogether and thus escape the stigma associated with a teenage pregnancy. I was 19 when I discovered the pill and unless I am sterile, it was 100% effective.

Depending on the hour, I sometimes feel like a genius or a complete idiot. So one of my biggest fears regarding pregnancy was cash flow: how do I provide for the kid if the dad is a dud? How do I provide for the kid if the kid has developmental problems? Not having money or a reliable support network is one of the reasons I kept putting off my child rearing abilities. Did this decision come about because I am educated? Or because I am sensible and have the ability to think about the future? Are they related? From what I know, my gene pool isn’t particularly spectacular and there are plenty of over educated people in this world that are related to me and are missing some light bulbs. Does sitting in a classroom listening to some bore drone on and on put a hamper on one’s desire to mate without contraceptives? If someone has any papers to recommend that address these questions, I’ll be happy to read them.

I’ve known women who have had no formal education (can’t write their name in any language, nor have been told about contraceptives or the calendar method) and are attractive and self-confident and have chosen not to have kids. These women were/are working low paid service jobs. Did their decision to not have kids come about because of their common sense or because of education?

The reason I am having these thoughts is because when I read stories and see pictures of women and their kids starving in Africa or whereever…I wonder, didn’t they think before they decided to have sex and get pregnant? Its not like they were living luxurious lives before they encountered food shortages. What is with this drama of selling kids to ensure that they have food? Why didn’t they think before they got pregnant? Would sex-ed have helped?

My husband says that one reason some cultures might be resistant to sex-ed lessons could be because of previous problems arising from listening to…lets say Western Society. So there is some fear and/or doubt involved with it. And it might be hard to seperate fact from BS and one example I can think of is…listening to someone tell you to use condoms vs. listening to someone telling you not to buy cheap U.S. subsidized grain that is GMO laden. And I am sitting here with access too all sorts of reading material so I have no way of really understanding what some of these women are going though. Okay. But still…it really bothers me to see starving kids…if I were living amongst rampant malnutrition I would ensure that I have razor blades in certain holes so as to prevent unneccesary accidents. Or punch myself repeatedly if my belly started to bloat up. I have friends without kids who echo my sentiments, and ones with kids that think I am some sort of monster. I am incredibly money minded…so all my thoughts revolve around it. But I’m still wondering why aren’t these women thinking about the future at least for a little while. I wonder if consensual unprotected sex has stopped in areas right now where there is water shortages, food shortages or random violence. I guess I’ll know in nine months.

I’m currently reading Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage by William L. Rathje and Cullen Murphy. To claim that the book is  compelling would be an understatement. 

Yesterday evening I read the section on two U.S. food shortages, beef and sugar, that occured in 1973* and 1975. The garbologists found a very odd occurence resulting from the shortages…that more food was wasted during the shortages than before. An excerpt:

In the months after the beef shortage ended, the rate of beef waste (cooked and uncooked, but not counting fat or bone) amounted to about 3 percent of all the beef bought. During the months of the shortage, in contrast, the rate of waste was 9 percent. In other words, people wasted three times more beef when it was in short supply than they did when it was plentiful. 

This conclusion seemed perverse, but the data, when checked, seemed solid. Eventually a Hypothesis was put forward to account for the odd behavior: the practice of crisis-buying. When confronted with the widespread and sometimes alarmist coverage of the beef shortage in the local and national media many people may have responded by buying up all the beef they could get their hands on, even if some of the cuts were unfamiliar. Of course, they didn’t necessarily know how to cook some of those cuts in an appetizing way. More important, they didn’t necessarily know how to store large amounts of meat for an extended period of time. The inevitable result in either case: greater waste.

The general proposition drawn from the findings about red meat — that wastage of a food increases when that food is scarce — was unexpected, but in the context it seemed reasonable. The reaction among nutrition educators and home economists when this result was reported, however, was somewhat muted, their criticism being that the hypothesis was probably not broadly applicable to a wide range of foods.

 

Fate smiled on the Garbage Project in the spring of 1975 by unleashing a sugar shortage. As the price of sugar and high-sugar products doubled, the wastage of those items in Tucson’s garbage tripled. Because Tucson is only sixty miles from the U.S. border with Mexico, where the price of sugar had remained stable, many Tucsonans stocked up with sugar that they bought south of the border. Mexican sugar, however, is not as highly processed as American sugar; it is browner, and it turns hard quickly. Before long, hard, brown bricks of Mexican sugar began appearing in the garbage. Some Tucsonans began buying Desserta and other unfamiliar products made from sugar substitutes, such as cyclamates; the reviews were plainly evident in the form of unconsumed discards.

Also prominent in the trash were items containing sugar that had crystallized during the course of long-term hoarding. In sum, the behavior of people in the midst of the sugar shortage corroborated the findings about red meat. The sugar shortage, more sharply than the beef shortage, also drew attention to the role that unfamiliarity with a food plays in the wasting of that food.

From the information garnered during the beef and sugar shortages the Garbage Project developed the First Principle of Food Waste: The more repetitive your diet — the more you eat the same things day after day — the less food you waste. In hindsight the First Principle seems simple and obvious. The waste in garbage from the standard sixteen-ounce and twenty-four-ounce loaves of sliced bread that every household buys regularly is virtually nonexistent — at most, crusts and ends; this is because common sandwich bread is used continually, meal after meal.

 So I wonder how much rice is being wasted in the U.S. today. When I first heard about the big box stores limiting how much rice one could buy, my first thought was: since when did Americans start eating rice? I thought Americans ate flour: doughnuts, cookies, pasta, bread, cakes, etc. I thought rice was more of an Asian staple. I am also confused on whether there is actually a rice shortage…I thought the governmental mandates pushing for ethanol would increase the cost of corn. Is ethanol somehow affecting the price of rice? Are rice fields being cleared to make way for corn? I am slowly making my way through the WaPo’s series of articles on the "Global Food Crisis" and I have no way of knowing how much of this is just manufactured and how much of it is real. I imagine floods and other natural disasters do disrupt any food route…but I can’t figure out why this is global. Additionally I am not entirely sure my food bill has increased from previous years. I have more or less stopped going to any brick and mortar grocery store. My purchases at local food sources such as the farmers’ market have gone way up since last year. Currently the only things I am buying from a brick store are: coffee, nuts and some herbs like cilantro which is not in season yet. Other foods (like flour) not available at a farmer’s stand is being purchased in bulk from online vendors. The per pound cost of the organic flour we use is less than $1. The rice bags I buy are purchased from the Indian grocery store where the price was the same as it was a year ago. I’ve never been to a Costco so I don’t know if rice was something that was sold there previously. I’m very curious on finding out if food waste in the U.S. has gone down because of this "crisis"…because wasting food is wasting money.

Not sure if I am inspiring people or not but….

• My neighbors have started drying their clothes out in the backyard. The adult male rides his bike (I see him all the time arriving or going somewhere on a bike) everyday

• Friends are talking about buying worm bins for composting and baking their own bread

• Friends are also either starting to bike or biking more

I was looking for info on lead. I wondered if the presence of lead in soil could get into fruits and vegetables growing in them and then give me brain damage at age 40.

A few google searches later I found that:

•  "Soil naturally has small amounts of lead in it, about 50 ppm. 200-500 ppm of lead is commonly found in city soil. 1,000 ppm is a high amount of lead in soil and is defined as hazardous waste."
• "In general, vegetables that are grown in soil containing lead do not absorb much lead. Soil with lead is more dangerous to children who play in it than to children who eat vegetables grown in it."
• One way to reduce lead in soil is to add compost or lime to it.
• To minimize absorption of lead by plants, Maintain soil pH levels above 6.5, Add organic matter to your soil, Locate your garden as far away from busy streets or highways and older buildings as possible.
• Some states have testing centers where one can send soil samples to test for lead content. There are also kits to test for lead at home.
  

Last year I tried many new fruits and vegetables that I’d never had before. While there has been studies on the time it takes for people to adjust to new foods, the asian pears I had from North Star Orchard was….unbelievably delicious! I didn’t need to convince my taste buds that they needed any "adjusting". North Star Orchard’s, Lisa Kerschner is featured in a Newsweek article titled "Farming as a Labor of Love". An excerpt:

Additionally, farmers are not always looked upon very highly. In some circles, announcing that your husband - or, worse yet, you - are a farmer is often met with looks of incredulousness. I’ve had a number of people ask why I choose to farm rather than do something more lucrative and be able to have a few vacations a year.

Last winter at a farmers-market meeting, I was asked this question by one of the market’s board members (who happens to be a banker). He had been astounded to hear about farming’s hardships year after year, both at the meetings and when he shopped at the farmers market. He emphatically threw down his pen and notes and said, "I just can’t take it anymore! Why, for gosh sakes, do you folks keep doing this?"

We all looked at each other, and one by one the various farmers in the room spoke up. Without fail, every one of us stated some version of this: "We love growing food for people."