new year's flower man

So. I'm not quite sure what to do with this blog, now that the class I kept it for is over. And if my blog with the Pitt News finally gets off the ground this semester, I don't know how much time I'll have for it anyway, to research and write these posts. Honestly, what I might do is expand my scope a little bit so I'll have a deeper bag of tricks to pull from. I already sort of did this with the last post, which was not about food or health but rather eco-consciousness. But I think these things are all a little related: being concerned with the impact your lifestyle has on your body seems to go hand in hand with concern for your carbon footprint. (See: organics.)

Along that vein, it might be a little bit about money too, particularly gross overspending and overconsumption. And if I'm going to go with that, I'll share something I wrote last night, edited for context and public-sharingness.

January 1st

Driving back from my friend's house today, on 5th Avenue past Craig Street, I saw a man slumped in a folding chair on the sidewalk in front of PNC Bank, surrounded by white plastic containers filled with bunches of flowers. I couldn’t see his face for all the layers of coats and blankets, and if I hadn't seen him there almost every day, I might have not thought it was a person at all.

He is the token Craig Street flower guy, and I think I only noticed his presence today because it is New Year’s Day. As I sat at the light, I wondered why he wasn’t with family or friends, and became sad for him, sitting out in the cold snow trying to sell his flowers. I wanted to jump out of my car and buy a bunch, maybe to put in a vase on my kitchen table, but I had no cash and only 20 dollars in my checking so that stopped that. I somehow thought that if I could buy his flowers all at once, make his day out there worth it, he'd be able to go home. I began to wonder why he was out there, on the street, selling flowers, of all places. He obviously needed the money bad enough to come out on a holiday. He might not have a "real" job but he was out there, man. He wasn't taking no for an answer. He was under the scrutiny of all those passing eyes of people like me who usually saw him while going to class at a fancy university or to work in corporate cubicles on Craig Street. Despite all those clothes, he sat there naked, stripped of pride.

Although I didn’t think of it as I drove away, now I’m struck by the contrast of this man with another I encountered last night. My friend’s step dad had been complaining about how his work might call him in on the holiday, how we were to not answer the phone in case it was them. I knew he had gotten laid off earlier this year, so I didn’t ask what this new job was—although I think it might be for PennDot or something since he kept on talking about the snow and how the roads weren’t that bad and they’d only need so-and-so people. Whatever it was, his body language and disdain indicated that it was bad, that whatever he was doing was below him. He rolled his eyes at the phone when it rang (my friend's grandpa calling, not her step dad's mysterious employer) and tilted back his glass of whiskey, rubbing his belly full of the crab legs and shrimp cocktail and fondue that his wife had made for the occasion.

I wouldn't want to work on New Year's Eve or Day either. I'd rather sit inside and drink champagne and sleep in and go in the hot tub with my wife in the middle of the day because those are the things I have and I want the things I have. It's hard to give it up, even if you know you should, even if it's the difference between income and debt. Which is why I love the flower man and his little fold-up chair and mismatched bouquets. I want to sit cross-legged in front of him after I buy one and say "Teach me."

And Scariest Movie of the Year goes to...

Back to the Food Inc. post. Yes, I have seen the movie; actually I saw it earlier this fall at a lecture I had to attend for my global studies class, and never posted about it because I wanted to develop my opinions fully first (like most propaganda-doc's, such as Super-size Me or anything Michael Moore, it's a bit much to take in) so I wouldn't end up just rambling. Which.... I guess is sort of not in tune with the rhetoric of blogging... but... crap.

So now, as a punishment, I'm going to have to rely on my sub-par memory and what info I can glean from the Interwebs in order to talk about this.

In essence, the movie showcases the industrial, mechanized food industry, which is basically America's entire food industry. Wrapped up in this are several themes: the firm grasp corporate head haunchos have not just on what we eat, but on the federal regulatory commissions (FDA, USDA) in which we are supposed to place our trust, the ways in which farmers are being undermined and subjugated by laws and patents, the abominable health and safety regulations at these factory farms, the lack of worker's rights in meat factories, how much cheaper it is to buy unhealthy vs. healthy, devastating health effects of diseases like E.coli.... maybe now you realize why I was wary to write about it. I could spend a year. And wind up with a book. (And there already is one, so that's pointless.)

The movie is eye-opening, truly. It's honestly terrifying to realize how warped our food industry is, how far removed we as consumers are from the production of our food (do you know EXACTLY where a single thing in your fridge came from? What about the state? Or even the country?) and, perhaps most terrifying, that this is not a simple mistake. People in this industry are not sitting at their desks, eyes popping out of their skulls, hands glued to cheeks in an Edvard Munchian pose, screaming "WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!" Nah, they are just counting their bucks.

Looking back, I remember now that it was also the emotional impact that kept me from writing. I saw it only a couple weeks after I started this blog, and the effect of the movie was somewhat PETA-esque, in that it made me feel really really bad, but instead of just abstractly feeling bad for little baby chicks, I felt bad for my life. It was like someone ramming down my throat EVERYTHING YOU EAT IS BAD FOR YOU EVEN IF YOU THINK IT'S NOT and I was like, Jesus, I am not doing nearly enough. I mean I eat meat! And meat that is not from a tiny farm where I know for sure how the animal was raised! This was also before I started going to farmer's markets regularly, so I was like Okay so now simply buying fruits and vegetables is not enough, I have to track down where they came from. These feelings of inadequacy irked me. And I suppose that was the point of the movie: to scare you into eating healthier, or just being more conscious of what you're eating. And I totally support the latter part of that equation. I'm just not so sure about the path to it.

The one point in the film where I really remember being like Oh COME ON, was the beginning of a scene in which the words "Lifting the Veil" appeared on the screen. BUT, (and my memory may fail me a bit on the exact details of this one) right before "Veil" appeared the "e" and the "v" were switched so it said for a brief nanosecond, yes: evil. I don't think everyone noticed this, and I probably only did because I pay a lot of attention to words. And it doesn't really matter, I guess, in the larger context of the more important issues discussed, but I just sort of feel like, to me, this stuff is scary enough on its own; the facts alone are enough to make me change my lifestyle. Why do you need to insult our intelligence with the scare tactics?

So this pseudo-review ended up being more negative than I intended... most likely because the details of the movie have slipped from my consciousness but, like most things, the emotional impact has stuck with me. But in all honesty, I do encourage everyone to see it. Seriously. Just don't get hung up on negative feelings like I did. Focus on what they are actually, beyond the rhetoric, showing and telling you. Because it's really important for anyone who eats food in this country, and, unlike Super-size Me, it's not just about McDonalds--it's ALL food.

If you want to read reviews written by people who didn't wait three months, I found a list of them here. And check out Food Inc.'s website for more information. Photo from the review by the NYTimes.

Food Inc. Trailer

Funny--I posted about contaminated chicken today before I read Lukas's comment on my post about buying locally, in which he talked about health risks from eating overly processed foods.

This is definitely, definitely a concern for the conscious organic/local buyer, and one I meant to address more explicitly by now, instead of just in ambiguous references to the chemicals that are put in our food. Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to go into it, but will leave you with this: a trailer to a documentary that came out this past summer called Food Inc. While very propaganda-y and one-sided, it is eye-opening as to the present grip corporate agribusiness has on America and all the different ways it affects us: economically as buyers, as workers in these slaughterhouses, our relationship with animals, our health and weight, our relationship with farmers.... I could go on. And will, later, I promise.