Our Job as Citizens

As a nation operating under the concept of self-rule, we the people have to talk coherently about the issues. Mass shootings doesn’t solve our problems, but rather exemplifies our current failures as citizens. How did we get to this point?

Does the 2^nd Amendment really grant the right to assault rifles and 100-round ammo clips? No, it does not. Nor do gun hoarders constitute a “well regulated militia.”

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

How did we not understand that waging a drug war against our own people would embed domestic violence in our society? Did we learn nothing from alcohol prohibition when, for fifteen years, underworld gangs selling illegal alcohol used their wealth to purchase weapons and political protection? How could Reagan and Congress think it was a good idea for “surplus” military weapons and equipment to be sold to our city police forces and used in commando tactics within our neighborhoods? How could we not see the horrible outcome of spending more money on prisons than education?

https://money.cnn.com/infographic/economy/education-vs-prison-costs/

We have to talk about immigration—what will stop the mass migration of people to our borders? For over a century, our corporations have been aided and abetted by our military to plunder Latin America for its natural resources and cheap labor. We have blood on our hands in the same tradition as Spain for its 300-year devastating occupation of the same lands. Doesn’t it make more sense to invest more heavily in helping solve problems in these countries so the people don’t have to leave home in order to have an economic future free from violence? What kind of future are we creating for ourselves by destroying Latino families and traumatizing innocent children?

We have to talk about climate change. How can anyone still believe this is fake news? Are there truly so many people who don’t grasp the science of this issue that our entire nation’s public policy can get away with denying climate change exists? What happens when water supplies dry up, crops die on the ground, and there isn’t enough food?

https://www.who.int/globalchange/mediacentre/events/2011/social-dimensions-of-climate-change.pdf

The impacts of climate change will increasingly affect the daily lives of people everywhere in terms of employment and livelihoods, health, housing, water, food security and nutrition, and the realization of gender equality and other human rights. Impacts are expected to hit those living in poverty the hardest, partly due to their more prevalent dependency on the very natural resources affected by climate change and also because they have less capacity to protect themselves, adapt or recuperate losses.

New York Times: A Quarter of Humanity Faces Looming Water Crises By Somini Sengupta and Weiyi Cai Aug. 6, 2019

We have to talk about population—we can’t continue blindly producing more people who need food, jobs, and a place to live when all of those resources are simultaneously shrinking.

In 1950 there were 2.5 billion people on the planet. Now in 2019, there are 7.7 billion. By the end of the century the UN expects a global population of 11.2 billion.

In 2015, there were approximately 141 million births. In the same year, around 57 million people died. It’s clear why the global population is increasing: there are many more births each year than there are deaths. Around 2.5 times as many.

https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

If we think we have an immigration problem now, just wait.

Each of us bears a responsibility to learn the facts on these and any other issues facing us as individuals, communities, and as a nation, engage in discussion with others with the goal of finding common ground, and then participate in the implementation of solutions through community action and voting.

My Personal Consumerism, Part I

A beige plastic spoon rest I’ve used for the last twenty-plus years is now ignominiously stained and warped by more than one close encounter of the worst kind with a stove burner. It contains three shallow cradles where spoons can rest in between stirring whatever I might be cooking. Being well versed in the Gospel of Consumerism, I recently decided to replace it.

This was a job for Amazon.com, where a total of 41 PAGES of search results offer an array of elaborate spoon rest choices. One might find a metal spoon rest with all the features of a fish, or elephant, or sea horse. A multitude of spoon rests have been created with colorful mosaics, period art, or clever or poignant statements about love, life, or food. Spoon rests in solid colors and various shapes abound as do rests that aren’t really rests, but rather exercises in various aspects of geometry by which a spoon might stand on its nose or recline at an angle.

Some of the rests feature an ingenious slotted holder whereby drippings from said spoon might settle below the actual spoon, in essence creating two surfaces to later clean instead of only one. Or consider the utilitarian grater spoon rest for your garlic, cheese, or spice grating in addition to use as a spoon rest. (below) Others form such a textured and convoluted surface that one might never fully clean it.

Despite the enormous array of color, design, and material, none of these elaborate and in many cases outrageously expensive spoon holders offer the key features provided by my humbly stained, warped plastic spoon holder: a nesting place for three spoons. Virtually all but one or two of these models now available in the vast warehouses of kitschy kitchen gadgets offer a place for only one spoon.

I wasn’t aware that cooking in the modern era had been streamlined down to one pot. In my world, there might be simultaneous preparation of mashed potatoes, green beans, and braised steak with onions, each of which would deserve–indeed, demand–its own utensil.

Yes, there are exceptions. One product offers space for two spoons. It retails at the popular Wayfair.com site and sells for ‘only’ $33.99.

Or there’s this streamlined offering from Amazon.com (below) for only $9.99, if one wishes one’s ladle and spoon handles to become airborne.

Yet another option is the silicone ‘utensil rest’ item which would hold up to five utensils, essentially filling the entire space between left burners and right burners at its 7.3 x 6.7 x 1.5 inches dimensions. The warnings include: “Don’t clean it with abrasive soap or scouring pad, hand-wash recommend. Don’t heat it directly by fire. Don’t pull and impact it violently or scratch it with sharp things. The sudden change of temperature must not exceed 240 centigrade while being used.”

One must admire the energy and creativity invested in this vast array of spoon rest options. Yet I despair.

Why can’t I get a new spoon holder just like the spoon holder I already have?

Well, I could, kind of. By Google searching for “triple spoon rest,” I located one that looks just like my old one and ‘only’ $4.94. But overall, consumer ratings put it at 2.4 stars out of 5. Here’s one review of it:

I had one just like this from the same company that I bought years ago. So when it finally gave up the ghost, I wanted to replace it with the same item. I really like how big it is and that I can put multiple spoons on 1 rest. (If you are really cooking you use more than one utensil). I found this on Amazon and was pretty excited to be able to replace mine with an exact duplicate. Well, the shape and size are the same, but wow!! What happened to the thickness and quality!!?? It is so thin compared to the one I bought years ago. In fact, I washed my old one over and over in the dishwasher. This one came out partly melted the 1^st wash.

So that’s a big NO.

I also found one for three spoons made of stainless steel. It’s an ideal concept for a stove-top item. HOWEVER, the piece is 10 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches. Ten inches long? WHY?

This disappointing array of consumer options has brought me to a new understanding. I should respect my old spoon rest and keep it. Its stains are markers of our years together, the many pots of chili and vegetable soup, the hours of simmering pot roast. Its misshapen profile serves as a reminder of neglectful moments when my attention to cooking gave way to refereeing kids or lingering on a too-long phone call.

After all, I too show the marks of my years, kind of warped around the edges from close encounters to heat of a different kind. And other life drama.

With more than 20 years of faithful service to its credit, why should I replace the venerable old servant with something that doesn’t fit my needs, costs too much, and would be bereft of any memory whatsoever?

Consumerism instilled by vast corporate effort turns every item and every occasion into a compelling need to spend money. As the years go by, more and more of our past ends up in the landfill for no good reason other than an infection of consumerism. It must be new! It must be shiny! By what other blood would the corporations of the world flourish if not our pervasive consumerism?

So I won’t participate, at least, not for this item, not for this moment. The old spoon rest will maintain its pride of place on my new stove top.

(More on the new stove in my next blog, My Personal Consumerism, Part II.)

Now It’s Drone Bees

I recently read a news report that Walmart is investigating the use of drones in pollinating agricultural crops.[1] That just about knocked me out of my chair, but then, on reflection, I saw the Walmart dream: total control of our food supply.

Granted, the bee die-offs are a serious problem for farmers, a result—according to most experts—of our love affair with poisoning our food. You see, spraying herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides on our crops to kill off pests like, well, anything that hurts the crop, also kills off the bees. Without pollination that bees perform so expertly, we’ll have no food.

How clever of Walmart to attempt some redress of this terrible problem! Their concept is to enlist drones with “sticky material or bristles” to spread pollen as they move from plant to plant. Of course the elephant in the room is the obvious question: if poisons used in agriculture are killing the bees, what are they doing to us?

Already we’ve heard—and mostly ignored—reports that frogs and other amphibians are experiencing reproductive deformities[2] due to environmental pollutants like Round-up’s glyphosate, now banned in Europe, and atrazine which is applied to tens of millions of acres of corn grown in the United States, making it one of the world’s most widely used agricultural chemicals. A powerful, low-cost herbicide, atrazine is also the subject of persistent controversy.[3]

“Atrazine demasculinizes male gonads producing testicular lesions associated with reduced germ cell numbers in teleost fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, and induces partial and/or complete feminization in fish, amphibians, and reptiles,” according to years of study by scientist Tyrone Hayes whose reports on his research are the target of relentless attacks by atrazine’s primary manufacturer, Syngenta.[4]

Atrazine is just one of many chemicals in wide use across the United States known as endocrine disrupters, “shown to disrupt reproductive and sexual development, and these effects seem to depend on several factors, including gender, age, diet, and occupation… Human fetuses, infants and children show greater susceptibility than adults… in diseases such as cancer, allergies, neurological disorders and reproductive disorders.”[5]

Then there are the hundreds of other chemical cocktails we are forced to routinely ingest not only in our food but also in our drinking water. Tens of thousands of chemicals are released into the environment in products ranging from shampoo to toilet bowl cleaner, few if any of which have been tested for potential harmful effects on human health and which, at last count, only a handful are tested for or removed from drinking water supplies. Not that anyone has any idea how to remove them from the water. This is part of the don’t ask, don’t tell philosophy of the chemical industry which is not required by law to test human health effects unless and until some harm is proven.

Europe, more intelligently, requires testing to prove no harm before new chemicals can be used. What a concept.

It’s such a downer to the chemical and agricultural corporations that someone might want to avoid cancer, allergies, neurological disorders and reproductive disorders. What a hero Walmart will be for its clever solution to the bee die-off, allowing for continuing and possibly increasing chemical poisoning of our food supply through the use of drones! According to the report, its grocery business will be “aided by farm-related drones, which could be used to pollinate crops, monitor fields for pests, and spray pesticides.”

If we could believe for one second that Walmart’s concern is the nourishment of Americans, we might also be sold a bridge somewhere in Manhattan. We already know from years of experience with this corporation that its objective, at least since ole Sam Walton died and left the biz to his greedy kids, is only the bottom line. Squeeze producers to make the cheapest possible product. Eliminate warehousers and trucking firms. Pay employees wages so low they qualify for food stamps. Pocket the difference, a method that propels these money grubbers to the top of the wealth lists and gives them extra spending money to proclaim their ‘generosity’ with projects like Crystal Bridges.

They care nothing about American jobs. Sam was eager to advertise that his products were made in American. His body had hardly cooled when the kids were over there making deals in China. It’s hard to find any product in Walmart today that’s made in America.

Or customer service. They can’t work fast enough to eliminate those damn middle management jobs like department supervisors. If the computer models show that a particular inventory item isn’t the very best selling product, the motto is to shit-can the damn thing. It doesn’t matter if people have been purchasing that product at Walmart for the last twenty years. Thus was the case last week when I rushed in to purchase a battery for my camera, already late for a photo-shoot appointment for a book I’m working on, only to discover that Walmart has eliminated its camera department.

Then there’s the Williams seasoning mixes we’ve relied on for chili, tacos, and spaghetti, now swept from the shelves because Walmart is rolling out its store brand seasoning mixes. Okay, now if you really want to set my hair on fire, this is the right topic. How many times have you or I visited Walmart for a particular brand-name product that we especially enjoy only to discover its shelf area filled with Walmart’s Great Value brand. I wrote the corporate CEO: “First, let me say that I’d rather live the rest of my life without chili than to buy a brand I’m being coerced to buy.”

Do I have to tell you there was no response? Oh, and by the way, there’s no online email complaint method and in order to get the snail-mail address for the CEO, you have to spend an hour dodging through multiple departments who are trained, probably on threat of death, to take your complaint and “deliver the message.” Or to direct you to the store where you encountered your problem…

Then there’s the total incompetence of Walmart’s grocery buyers who don’t know the difference between a sliced almond and a slivered almond. Since last October, Walmart stores have had only sliced almonds. Big fat bags of sliced almonds. Great Value brand, of course.

The point is, if Walmart has no idea what it’s doing with almond inventory and no sense of patriotism about supporting American industry and no honor or reliability in customer service, then what will they do to our food supply? Already we can see a hint of how that will go with their careful bait and switch methods in supplanting traditional brands with their store brands. Once they’ve got their thumb in the pie from crops on up to the shelves, we’ll be completely at their mercy.

Yes, I’ve shopped other stores. But so many of us haven’t that the other stores have one by one folded up shop and drifted into shadow. There’s no local stationery store, unless you want to call Office Depot by that name. Which they’re not. They’re as bad or worse than Walmart. No nice little note cards on thick vellum paper. Now even the standard four-squares per inch graph pads have been supplanted by the smaller five per inch, no doubt some efficiency expert’s idea of customer service. Where is McRoy-McNair with their dusty basement of old colored paper and clasp envelopes in every conceivable size?

For years I’ve made it a point to buy everything I can from anyone but Walmart. This year I’ll be especially interested in farmers’ markets in the area where I live in order to support local farmers doing things the old fashioned way. I’ll be growing my own tomatoes, peppers, squash, and niceties like dill, thyme, sage, and basil. I live in the woods where there’s still a modest bee population, and I’m planting more bee-friendly flowers like lavender, rhododendron, California Lilac, and for my cats and the bees late into autumn, catnip.[6]

It’s dangerously late in this game when they start using drones to replace bees.

~~~

[1] “Walmart imagines drone-aided farming,” Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Sunday Mar 25, 2018. 1G

[2] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2002/12/pesticide-cocktail-amplifies-frog-deformities

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4137807/

[4] https://www.sott.net/article/317851-Biologist-targeted-for-exposing-the-gender-bending-pesticide-Atrazine-poisoning-America

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3138025/

[6] Big list at http://beefriendly.ca/25-plants-for-bees-in-your-garden/