A recent study in Scientific American addressed literacy rates in the United States.

We are fortunate enough to have few people in this country who are profoundly illiterate–unable to read, for example, stop signs and other basic information. But a growing number of Americans are what Chris Clarke calls socially illiterate, able, for practical purposes, to read, but incapable of reading and analyzing complex material. Someone who can, in other words, read the shop manual for a ‘68 Chevy, but is not capable of digesting the information in 1968: The Year that Rocked the World. Currently, it is estimated at 1/3 of Americans are probably socially illiterate.

This is distressing to me. It concerns me that only 66% of Americans are capable of a task which I think everyone should be able to do. Reading comprehension and critical analysis are a vital part of being alive. This is what distinguishes us, as a species, from others–our ability to distribute and propogate information, to share across many boundaries, and to emerge elightened and enriched.

What’s causing illiteracy rates is a post for another day.

Of greater concern to me is that even people in higher office apparently have difficulty with their reading comprehension, as displayed in the recent debacle around the release of the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.

Bits and pieces of the report were leaked, and Bush hotly argued that it was for political reasons, that the content of the report had been twisted by the opposition, and that actually the report supported his position that we are winning the war on terror, and that being in Iraq is the right thing to do.

Well enough. But he was so confident in his point, even after apparently reading the report, that he decided it should be declassified and opened to all, so that we the people could see the truth of his words.

Well, as it turns out, Mr. Bush is wrong. The report does not support his assertions–indeed, it refutes them in a pretty major way. The terrorists are winning, becoming more scattered and isolated over the globe, which makes them more difficult to round up. The war in Iraq is serving as a rallying point for militant causes, and indeed the whole world is becoming rapidly destablized. Terrorist attacks, the report threatens, are going to grow in physical and geographical scope from here on out.

Being in Iraq, it turns out, is the wrong thing to do, because of the fear of Western domination. While “democratization” might at first affect the public’s view on the whole affair, in the long term it’s leading to instability, and opportunities for radical fronts to move in. And bomb things.

Far from being optimistic about our future, like Mr. Bush is, the report is actually rather gloomy. The jihadist movement, as the Times article above points out, is actually outstripping Mr. Bush thanks to the internet, global instability, and its resourcefulness. America may be directly responsible, in many ways, for the rapid global spread of terror. (The study doesn’t say that–I’m just hypothesizing, since the report faults growing instability for the spread of terrorist movements, and the United States is very, very good at destabilizing things.)

The way I see this, there are a number of options:

1. Mr. Bush read a different report and got confused
2. Mr. Bush read the same report, and the evil left wing baby killers did a bait and switch
3. Mr. Bush read the report…and didn’t understand it

Already, Mr. Bush appears to be backpedaling, and saying that our presence in Iraq is not responsible for the growing terrorist threat: we weren’t in Iraq in 1993, during the World Trade Centre bombing, or in 2000, when the USS Cole was attacked…or even on 11 September, 2001, he whines. What he doesn’t seem to understand is the clear conclusions that have been drawn in the report: that globally, the threat of terrorism is worse than before, and that globally, we may be facing an epic crisis.

I recommend that we institute a new examination for all nominees to public office which tests their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, because we cannot have someone who is socially illiterate dictating public policy. I don’t know about you, but it scares the willies out of me.

[illiteracy]
[Iraq]

Given that it’s the day for Friday Cat Blogging, I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about a serious animal related topic: what happens to animals in war zones.

As I hope my readers are aware, an alarming chunk of the world is at war right now–many parts of Africa are experiencing periods of prolonged violence, the Middle East is being torn apart from within and without, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia are experiencing systemic violence, and there are many other nations too countless to mention.

The tragedy of war is that so many innocents suffer, and there are many humanitarian organizations aimed at easing suffering throughout the world’s war zones. I applaud their worldwide efforts to help their fellow humans, and I wish more energy, time, and money was being dedicated to the bystanders of war. However, many of these organizations lack the facilities, funding, or ethical drive to assist animals, who are abandoned by the thousands to fend for themselves in bombed out villages, heavily mined areas, and other dangerous places. Most of these animals are going to die, nameless casualties of human violence.

Indeed, were humans being abandoned to uncertain fate in the numbers that animals are, I imagine there would be a global outcry. Sadly, much of the world doesn’t view animals as living on an equal footing with humans, as deserving of respect, protection, and assistance. Even in the United States, we don’t care for animals as well as we should–thousands of animals were abandoned during hurricane Katrina, for example, often by loving owners who were forced to do so by “rescue” personnel. Millions of animals are euthanized here, and countless animals are abused, every day.

Most organizations who do work with animals in war zones end up euthanizing them, due to the instability of the area and the impossibility of saving them. Euthanasia is, sadly, the best option in these cases, although it’s a great tragedy to kill healthy, otherwise adoptable animals. The people who abandon animals are often left with limited choices–their homes are bombed in the middle of the night, for example, and they flee. Unable to locate their animals, or transport them, they leave them behind and hope for the best. Sometimes the best is a humane and rapid exit from the world.

Most of the time, I simply become angry and sad when I read about animals in war zones. And that’s why I was pleased to see that Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, teamed with Beirut for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, just staged a massive airlift of animals displaced in the Israel/Hezbollah conflict to the United States, and eventual adoption after rehabilitation. Almost three hundred dogs and cats were plucked from the war zone and eventual death for a second chance at life.

On the one hand, I was sad to think of the millions of animals euthanized in the United States, and around the world, every year, and the energy and effort that went into this very costly airlift that could have been dedicated to spay/neuter programs, vaccination efforts, and other widespread means of improving animal welfare. My utilitarian viewpoint argues that we should be using our resources for the better good of all, rather than a lucky few.

But on the other hand, I was deeply pleased to read that some animals did escape the war zone, and that they will live happy, fulfilling lives in gentle homes free of violence. I have long admired the work of Best Friends, which also adopts and cares for permanently disabled animals rather than rejecting or euthanizing them, as most shelters do. I hope that you are all aware of the tragic misnomer behind “no-kill” shelters, who have the luxury of refusing animals whom they know will be unadoptable, or of euthanizing special-needs animals.

The airlift represents a huge, multinational organization plan, from donation of cages and rescue vehicles to the plane itself, and the flight staff. It shows that there are people who care, deeply, for animals, and are willing to go to great lengths to help them. It gives me some hope for humanity, to see such efforts undertaken on the behalf of others who cannot speak, and will confer no financial or social benefit to their rescuers.

There’s still a lot of work to do, starting with humane education from the ground up, with evacuation procedures which include animals, with a total rethinking of the way we handle, deal with, and think about our furred, feathered, and scaled brethren.

Each of us can make a difference, though, by donating to causes like Best Friends, your local humane society, the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Humane Society of the United States, Fund for Animals, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or like organizations. You can help by donating time to your local humane society, socializing animals, walking dogs, playing with kittens, or helping out in the office. You can help by raising kind, respectful, loving children who also care about animals. You can help, also, by adopting animals in need of homes, altering them, and providing them with vaccines–and by urging others to do the same.

A tenet of the freedom of choice movement also holds to the animal rights movement: every animal a wanted animal, every animal a loved animal. Some day, perhaps we can stamp out the scourge of abandoned, abused, homeless animals with love.

[animal rights]

Mr. Bell is, like, so over this scene.

[cat blogging]

What happens after the fall, when we are trapped in burned out cities, utterly disconnected from our rural sources of food, let alone the commercial agriculture supply chain which reaches, sometimes, for thousands of miles? What happens as we wander desperately through parks, trying to figure what’s edible and what’s not, longing for protein while pigeons sweep overhead?

Brendan Kiley pondered this very issue in The Stranger this week, with interesting results. (I should warn my readers who are more faint of heart that the article is quite graphic, and at times rather gross. So if it’s early morning, you think bunnies aren’t food, or you don’t like facing the realities of meat, please don’t click that link.)

Brendan has prior animal murder street cred, having grown up in Alaska on wild-caught venison, fish, and other things. And he wondered, seriously, what would happen when people were forced to fend for themselves, when the time comes that food isn’t delivered to us in sterile packages in the supermarket. He decided to become an urban forager (for game, alas, not vegetable matter), and write about the experience.

He had another reason for this project:

Non-vegans, I told my friends, were hypocrites to not have confronted the reality of eating meat and wearing leather by killing an animal with their own hands.

This is a sentiment I have long agreed with, myself—I’ve written about it elsewhere before. I strongly believe that anyone who eats meat, ever, should be fully prepared to slaughter, dress, and “deal” with it. Meat doesn’t come in sanitized packages, it comes from living, breathing animals and we should respect that. We have lost our connection with the animals we slaughter for food. Very few butchers exist, anymore, and those that do are hampered by USDA and FDA restrictions. It’s actually quite a challenge to find humanely raised and slaughtered meat. (If you care about humane slaughter, I recommend buying kosher and supporting the Humane Slaughter Act. If you are about humanely raised meat, buy locally from people you can actually meet, who are not afraid to take you on tours of their farms and talk about the animals they raise. Or you could not eat meat. That’s always an option, too.)

There is a growing awareness in this country that factory farming of animals is morally repugnant, and that we need more transparency in our food supply. A growing number of people are turning to small local farms for their meats and other animal products—farms they can visit, with farmers they can meet. Farmer’s markets are exploding around the country, with some of the largest in urban areas, which to me is a very good sign. Our whole food system is in for some major reforms, which I applaud, because it’s high time that we remembered and respected the source of our food.

But as Brendan writes, there’s another side to killing your own meat, and that’s knowing how to do it. Humans, in many ways, are over domesticated. Are you capable of harvesting your own meat and vegetable products? Can you find edible things in urban areas, and survive on them? Are you prepared, truly, for the zombie uprising?

Urban foraging sounds foolish, like some sort of indulgent hipster project, but it might make the difference between life and death, someday, somewhere. Knowing which plants are safe to eat and what kind of preparations they need is a helpful thing, and I’d love to see colleges and universities offering foraging classes–not only because people would learn about biology and interconnected systems and so forth, but because those skills would be valuable later (unlike, say, a Bachelor’s in Anthropology).

In the 1960s, there was a big push to “return to our roots” and recapture agrarian ideals. I think we’ve all realized at this point that it’s not going to happen. Partly because there are too many of us. There’s not enough room for us to retreat to the pastoral dream, because the pastoral dream is being eaten alive by our housing developments, highways, factory farms, and CAFOs. Partly, though, most of us lack the feral note and determination that it takes to live off the land.

What will happen to us all?

[urban foraging]

So I was reading Grand Rounds this week (it’s well worth a read, by the way, although extremely long), and one of the featured posts gave me food for thought.

The post was about an advertisement for non-alcoholic beer, using a “pregnant” woman as the selling aid.

The ad, at first glance, looks like a lot of beer ads–bikini clad chick, tanned, long hair, smouldering eyes, beer…and a belly. A clearly photoshopped belly, because the rest of her certainly doesn’t look very pregnant. The sight caused such cognitive dissonance that I had to close my eyes, blink firmly, and reopen them just to check that I was, in fact, seeing what I thought I was seeing.

“Drink beer while you’re pregnant, and look like this,” the ad screams.

Hrm.

Well, upon closer examination it turns out that the copy is, in fact, for non-alcoholic beer, which is an improvement. I know a lot of my pregnant friends are really missing the joys of beer, and they are looking forward to having a few sips after the little bundle of joy pops out. (Consumption of alcohol while breast feeding is still harmful, though not as dangerous as it is during pregnancy. And why buy formula when you can get the milk for free? And trim off the pregnancy weight, if you’re into that kind of thing.) I suppose if you’re craving the beer flavour, non-alcoholic might be a good way to go. (Disclaimer: I’ve never consumed non-alcoholic beer. For all I know, it tastes like camel’s urine. Anyone want to fill me in?)

But this ad troubles me, for many of the same reasons it troubles Jenifer.

For starters, pregnant women don’t look like that. I mean, I like pregnant ladies. I think they look really cool, and it’s odd for someone who loathes children to say this, but I kind of have a pregnant lady fetish. They fascinate me. But your body undergoes changes with pregnancy, and that’s a fact of life. I think some of these changes are really neat–the healthier skin, and smirk, and so on, but then again I’ve never been pregnant so I haven’t dealt with some of the more unpleasant side affects, like having to pee all the time. Some pregnant women really struggle with this, and ads like this showing a model-trim anoretic body with a belly probably don’t make them feel any better. I mean, I’m not pregnant, and I would love to look like that model.

Secondly, alcohol is damaging to babies. I disagree with the hard line “all booze is bad” take on things, because I don’t think small amounts of wine and beer are very harmful, and there is some medical research to agree with me. But on the other hand, I don’t think we should be promoting the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy, and non-alcoholic beer ads climb a slippery slope for me, personally.

It is, as Jenifer says, a fantasy, and it’s a fantasy I don’t like. Most of the time ads just confuse me. Sometimes I get it and chuckle. And sometimes, I’m confused and then I’m offended–I think this ad falls into the latter category.

Thirdly, everyone knows non-alcoholic beer is for lamers anyway. Clearly the beer companies realize this if they’re targeting ads at pregnant women, for Pete’s sake.

[pregnant]
[non-alcoholic beer]

So, I was driving a car the other day (something already a bit unusual for me) and my phone rang (something that almost never happens). I happened to be in congested traffic, and I looked for a good spot to pull over, but by the time I had, the call had gone to voicemail.

It turned out to be someone looking for someone else (as it all too often is), and they seemed highly offended that I hadn’t picked up when they were calling.

“Well,” I said, “you see, I was on the bridge.”

“Well, isn’t there signal on the bridge?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, “but the thing is…I was driving.”

“Well, you still could have answered!”

No, you see, the thing is, I couldn’t have answered. Why? Because drivers on cellphones demonstrate higher levels of impairment than people driving while intoxicated. Because there’s a mountain of clear evidence which suggests that it is very, very unhealthy to drive while using a cellular phone. There are even some interesting reasons for why cellphones are more dangerous than, say, talking to a passenger. I know personally that driving while using a cellphone is dangerous, because one of my more foolish friends from college recently died while driving distracted.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the masterminds behind Car Talk, have accrued quite a collection of evidence on driving while distracted if you don’t believe me.

I fail to understand why people answer cellphones while driving. I mean, I fail to understand a lot of other distracted driving, also, but people who use cellphones and drive just infuriate me. It’s clearly dangerous–not just to you, but to the people around you. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that a car is a very large, very heavy object with a lot of momentum, and that being hit by one can really hurt you.

Or kill you.

I have a love/hate relationship with cellphones. As a matter of fact, I don’t have a landline–I only have a cellphone, because I live a mobile life, and it’s handy, and it’s cheaper. But I don’t consider myself always available by phone, though I often am. My phone is always on vibrate, and I often neglect to answer it. Not out of spite, or disinterest, but because I’m doing something else–like driving, enjoying a meal with a friend, having a serious conversation with a coworker, or just enjoying life. I think we don’t realize, sometimes, that cellphones haven’t been around that long, and we’ve managed to get along without them all these years.

Cellphones save lives. They really do. But they also destroy them at the same time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out with people, or at a dinner, or at the movies, or hosting people in my home…and they’ve leapt to answer their phones. For a social tool, I see a lot of social situations being disrupted by cellphone use. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve nearly been hit–on horseback, as a pedestrian, and as a fellow driver–by someone talking on a cellphone. By someone who couldn’t wait a few moments to pull over and safely make or accept a call.

It’s always interesting to witness the ways in which technology is integrated into our lives. In the case of cellphones, I do see a number of positive benefits–but I also see a danger. As a society, we’re growing more isolationist, more interested in ourselves, less interested in interacting or contributing to the lives of others. I think it’s important to step back and evaluate the role of technology in our lives when it becomes as all-consuming as cellphones are.

Kids, hang up and drive. And if you’re calling someone and they reveal the fact that they are driving, hang up on them. In addition to being illegal in a growing number of locations, it’s also really, really stupid. So stupid that I’m not even going to use profanity to illustrate my point. I can’t afford to lose any more readers!

[cell phones]
[driving]

On my fruitless quest for spinach on Saturday, I pondered the Escherichia coli outbreak tied to spinach, and the way in which we handle disease outbreaks in the United States. I also thought about industrial agriculture, and the ripple effect that occurs when we take plants and animals drastically away from their natural state. If nothing else, I hope this recent outbreak is sending a clear message that we need to reconsider the ways in which we produce, handle, and package food.

Laurie Garett wrote in The Coming Plague that “humanity will have to change its perspective on its place in Earth’s ecology if the species hopes to stave off or survive the next plague.”

Microbes, you see, are resiliant things. They’re been around a lot longer than we have, and they have evolved supernaturally fast methods of adaptation to new environments. This is bad enough, but in many ways we humans of the first world are actually helping them along: with the widespread and unregulated use of antibiotics in cattle, by crowding together in dense urban areas, by farming industrially, by living the way that we do. Escherichia coli, in particular, is quite the unique bacteria.

The first thing to know about it is that all of us carry it. Right now, billions of them are swimming about in your colon, helping you to digest and process food. All animals carry along these bacterial helpers along with other intestinal flora. It’s when Escherichia coli strains jump between species that we begin to see issues.

One of the most virulent Escherichia coli strains, for humans, is O157:H7. It first came to the attention of humans in 1982, and it’s been popping up at ever greater frequency ever since. The roots of 0157:H7 are quite interesting, and I note that they aren’t being very thoroughly covered in the media sensationalism over the Escherichia coli outbreak. Indeed, many news sources are being purposefully vague about the origins of this particularly nasty strain. This is a great pity, because 0157:H7 kills, and it’s of human origin, and I suspect that if consumers fully understood this that something might actually be done about it.

0157:H7 came about by taking advantage of a new, human generated biological niche–the highly acidic stomachs of cows.

Cow stomachs are not meant to be acidic. Indeed, a number of health problems can be traced back to this acidity, and Michael Pollan points out in The Omnivore’s Dilemma that it’s a good thing we slaughter cows early, because otherwise they’d die from the unusual level of acid in their stomachs. In fact, cows generally have a neutral pH. But grain-fed cows develop unnaturally acidic stomachs in an effort to process this food. Consequently, the coliform bacteria (like Escherichia coli) in their intestines evolve to deal with the higher level of acid–since these cows are heavily medicated, the bacteria also develop antibiotic resistance. Every time a cow poops, and that poop enters the water supply, humans can get sick. When cows are slaughtered and the meat isn’t treated with care–humans can get sick.

The FDA and USDA tell us to cook our meat thoroughly to avoid contamination, and they tell us to wash everything intensively. Washing may not actually have an effect, but it sure makes us feel better! They also spend billions of dollars on abatement programs, paying farmers to line manure pools to prevent them from leaking.

But there’s a simpler solution: let cows eat grass, which they’re meant to eat anyway. Indeed, a week of a proper grass diet can eliminate 0157:H7. Stop feeding cows antibiotics and breeding super-bacteria. Let cows live in clean, healthy environments so that their hides aren’t covered in bacteria laden shit. Slaughter livestock with care and respect, taking precautions at each step of the way to avoid contamination.

Why are people getting sick from spinach? Because manure gets used as fertilizer, and that manure might carry Escherichia coli. Organic standards include heavier use of compost, and aged manure in which most bacteria are already dead, so don’t go pointing the finger at organic agriculture. Because cows make up a big portion of the population in California, and those cows shit in the waterways which irrigate the spinach, along with a huge amount of other types of produce–it happened to be spinach this time, that’s all. Because thanks to the commercialization of farming, a small amount of tainted spinach can contaminate 70% of the national supply when it enters the processing plant. This doesn’t just apply to spinach, but to any salad green.

There’s no way to completely sterilize the food supply.

You want to avoid Escherichia coli, Campylobacter, Salmonella, and other of our microbial pals? Don’t eat.

If you’d like to reasonably reduce your risk of food borne illness, use your common sense:

• Eat locally produced food. Meet your farmer. Tour the places where your food comes from. Eating organic (or beyond organic) is a good way to avoid a lot of risk factors for food-borne illness, like excessive antibiotic use, raw manure fertilizer, and the like.
• Use separate cutting boards for meat and other animal products and vegetables, if you’re a meat eater. Use wood (which has naturally resistant properties) or glass–not plastic, which becomes useless in terms of disease resistance as soon as it’s scored with a knife.
• Wash all your produce well before eating.
• Wash yourself–make sure that you wash your hands thoroughly with hot water and soap before handling and eating food.
• Eat local animal products, especially–don’t consume animal products that result from factory farming. Eat grass fed beef and truly free range eggs.
• Make sure your fridge is being kept at the proper temperature, and dispose of food which feels “off” to you.
• Eat at restaurants which also use locally produced food, not corporate chains. In addition to the various ethnical issues which surround corporate food, these chains process food in huge batches coming from numerous places, meaning that a sliver of contamination can spread broadly across the food supply.
• Eat spicy. I’ve travelled around the world and eaten in some scummy places and never gotten foodborne illness, because I eat foods prepared fresh, locally, with a hell of a lot of peppers. I’m not sure if there’s a scientific link here or any kind of solid evidence, but it’s a family tradition.
• Lobby for reforms in the way our food is grown, handled, and processed.
• Use antibiotics and other like medications responsibly–only if you actually need them, and make sure to follow the full course all the way through, even if you begin to feel better.
• Do your best to find a glass abattoir, because it’s time for transparency when it comes to your food.
• Don’t let fearmongering influence your stomach.

The spinach fiasco has been eye-opening in a lot of ways, and alas most Americans probably won’t take any actual lessons from it. (My lesson: maintain a small garden, somewhere, anywhere, so that when my food supplies are under threat I have a backup.) This is an outbreak of our own making, and given the growing density of the human population and our continuing refusal to behave responsibly because in the short term, it costs more, we can expect to see epidemics like this on the rise. Outbreaks like this are only going to get more virulent and more frequent until we act–and the longer the wait, the more secure the microbes will be.

[Escherichia coli]
[spinach]

I popped out to check the mail yesterday afternoon and returned with two very interesting letters, both from the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which uses a sun, mountain, and water as its logo. I wasn’t aware that any of these things were toxic, personally, but then again you learn something every day.

The first envelope was a “Work Notice.” Apparently, Georgia Pacific (under the supervision of the board) began “winterizing” procedures at the former mill site on the 18th of this month, and starting on Monday trucks will be removing materials from the area.

Winterizing includes putting an interim cap in areas that were excavated (presumably to keep it from filling with water over the rainy season). For dry parts of the excavation, the cap will have a clay liner and the area will be filled with clean soil and “vegetated.” Doesn’t sound very “interim” to me if they’re planting stuff on it, but what do I know. For portions of the excavation which have gotten soggy, a “semi-permeable material” will be covered with crushed rock and concrete (hopefully not contaminated concrete from the site) and then will be covered with the same clay liner/vegetation affair.

Debris removal is what interests me.

Concrete, the hotly contested ash pile, and other soil and debris are being trucked out of the site to one of two landfills–Kettleman Hills if it’s “hazardous”, and Keller Canyon if it’s not. I love how landfilles have names with “Hills” and “Canyon” in them, conjuring up an image of some pristine natural area which is now being filled with our toxic garbage. This is pretty much how we handle toxins in this country–we truck them somewhere else. And we truck them very specifically–the complete truck route, including the route they will take on the mill site, is detailed in this work notice.

Citizens are assured that the Board is on it with the dust control in numerous places. Long time citizens may remember the immense problems we used to have with dust when the mill was open, the thick layer of grainy foulness that settled on everything, and the newer residents, being easily riled yuppies, are probably concerned about their Lexi getting dirty. (Or, perhaps, toxins being borne about town in the dust.) The Mendocino County Air Quality Management District is apparently supervising the air quality and will be able to halt operations if the air quality exceeds their standards. Given the time of year, the air quality in Mendo already exceeds the standards of most reasonable people anyway.

Full documentation of the plan is availble at the library or in the Berkeley Regional Office of the Department of Toxic Substances Control Board. We’re also provided with direct contact information for several staffers on the board, who are presumably being deluged with calls from people named Earthspirit and Wind Dancer as I write. There’s a separate listing for media inquiries, assuming the Advocate ever grows a pair and actually attempts some real journalism.

The second letter was sent out to inform us all that the Department of Toxic Substances Control has officially taken over at the mill site, and they are soliciting public comment. There’s a multi page survey attached, even.

In Spanish, also.

Apparently these people are serious about public comment, so I filled it out and sent it back, and I also listed myself as a point of contact when they asked “…planning on talking with community members to learn more about any issues concerning the environmental condition of this site. Would you be willing to talk with us?”

In general, the questions are pretty generic, asking about one’s level of interest in the site, whether or not community groups have been formed, and, interestingly, where I get my news. They probably want to make sure I’m not a dirty Commie.

I’m interested to see how people respond to the community groups question, which goes on to ask if the respondant is a member of any of the said groups and if ou is willing to be contacted about it. Given the penchant that most “community groups” have for drama, I suspect a lot of them will say “no,” simply because they can draw out their attention mongering posters and so forth a little longer. (And because they secretly suspect that they will become victims of assassination.)

Am I concerned about the mill site (which is one of the questions they ask)? Well, yeah, inasmuch as I think uncontrolled and unknown toxins are probably not such a good thing. However, I think it’s the toxic nature of the site, paradoxically, which will save Fort Bragg from utter destruction. I don’t see anything being built there for a very long time, which means that nature may have a chance to take the headlands over, and that a little patch of (toxic) wilderness may appear.

It’s interesting to me that in the last few weeks I have interacted with a number of people who moved here because they say they liked the people and the area. I’m not sure which people they met and liked, because most of us old timers are surly bastards. And I’m also not sure how much there is about the area to like, thanks to people like them who move in and destroy it.

I find myself biting my tongue more and more in daily interactions simply because I’m so floored at how insensitive and ultimately stupid people can be. I’m amazed by the lack of foresight that goes on, and by the illusions that we all collude in maintaining–like the idea that this is a pristine area, that nothing bad ever happens here, that everything is hunky dory and a-ok. I’m in a very strange place right now because I have stepped outside the illusion–I feel like the person who wandered too far off the set and suddenly, tragically, realizes that this is all staged. And yet no one listens to me, because the idea is so preposterous.

Did you know that when California was originally settled, there were trees down to the shore? Those majestic headlands and towering cliffs? Yeah, those are covered in nonnative grasses, because they were once forested with majestic, tall, fearsome trees which were chopped down to build the cute Victorian houses that yuppie assholes buy for too much money, thereby preventing anyone who grew up here from actually buying property.

Who knows. Maybe the mill site is toxic. Maybe living next to it, walking on it, breathing in its air, has made me irredeemably bitter.

Or maybe I just woke up from a long sleep.

[Fort Bragg]
[Georgia Pacific]

…when you can’t get a fucking spinach salad.

Seriously.

So I am aware that there is an ongoing issue of foodborne illness surrounding spinach, thanks to the insane farming practices Americans use that actually foster drug resistant microbes that kill us. I know that large amounts of spinach were pulled from the market, but I assumed that since the contaminated batch had been taken out of circulation that spinach would, once again, be obtainable.

So on Wednesday I checked the Farmer’s Market. Buy local!

No spinach. Hrm.

Tonight, I went to Harvest, and not only had the salad mix been replaced with an offensive and foul looking iceberg mix, but there was no spinach. To be had. Anywhere. In fact, all of the produce in Harvest looked like shit. I had a hell of a time finding anything I wanted to eat because it was all soft, moldery, wilted, and gross. Apparently our entire produce system has broken down. Seriously. I mean, Harvest produce has never been tops, but usually I can find something. No. The asparagus was wooden, slimy, and pathetic. The artichokes were bristly and weedy looking. Tomatoes, squishy to the touch. Limes, impossible to obtain. Green onions, actually mushy. I scoured the produce section, over turning peaches hard as stones and molding berries–no dice.

So I called the Bistro, in the hopes that, culinary rebels as they are, they might have a line on some black market spinach and they could hook me up.

Nope.

Not a single delicious, iron rich leaf of spinach to be had for love or money in the entire city of Fort Bragg, apparently.

Have we all gone collectively insane, as a society? Are we not aware of the facts of life? Are we really so terrified of some puny ass microbe pieces of shit that we’re willing to forgo spinach for an indefinite amount of time?

You know what, fuck this. Seriously. Anyone, anywhere, have a top secret spinach hookup? I promise I won’t report you. I just want some goddamn spinach. I don’t want no frozen soggy oversalted spinach, I want fresh spinach quivering with life, luscious and green, full of nutrition.

My dad’s garden is all spinached out, sadly, and so are my other usual sources for produce. I don’t know where to turn for my spinach fix, but I am jonesin’. A pox on industrial agriculture.

[spinach]

I stayed up late last night reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which is quite a superb book. I would highly recommend that those of you who haven’t read it, do so–even if you don’t think of yourself as being very interested in food. (Although if you’re not into food, I’m not sure what you’re doing here.)

I already have an appreciation for Michael Pollan, after reading The Botany of Desire, and this only cemented my respect for his writing style and journalistic skills. The premise of the book, for those with their heads in the ground, is that he wanted to track the natural history of four meals–a fast food lunch, a corporate organic dinner, a beyond organic meal, and a wild-crafted dinner party. The book traces the roots of all these food experiences in that order, and it’s quite revealing.

Talking about fast food and industrial agriculture, Pollan taught me a lot about the history and biology of corn, along with the inner workings of the ruminant digestive system. Much of the information in this chapter was known to me, but some of it wasn’t, and it was quite eye opening to see industrial agriculture laid out in this way, from the subsidies we pay for corn to the beef we fatten on it in overcrowded feedlots. Everything is connected.

The next section of the book concerned itself with “industrial organic,” the widespread commercialization of “organic” agriculture, and what exactly the word organic means. This seems especially relevant given the explosion of organic produce in the grocery store, and the growing debate over organic labelling. Can you really call food “organic” when it requires extensive petrochemicals to transport to your dinner table? When it’s actually harder on the land than some industrial agriculture, thanks to intensive management practices required to eliminate pests without the use of chemicals? When it’s owned by huge corporations, like General Mills? Surely every little bit helps, but as Pollan points out, depending on the source, “organic” may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Which is what brought him to the next section, on a movement one might call “beyond organic,” which is focused on producing food in a natural way, on small farms, with sustainable management practices. The farm he writes about, Polyface, is a perfect example of an essentially self-sustaining farm. Cows are moved from pasture to pasture while free range chickens follow in their wake. A wide variety of vegetables are produced, in season, while turkeys keeps pests out of the orchard and pigs root around in the woods. Unlike corporate organic, the farmer doesn’t need to truck in compost and manure–he produces it all right on the farm, with a complex and interconnected web of systems which cooperate to produce delicious, local food. (Truly local–the farm won’t ship, because they believe there should be a focus on locally produced foods and knowing your farmer.) This is the sort of thing most of us envision when we hear words like organic, free range, and cruelty free.

This was the most interesting chapter, to me, because I too believe in buying local, in knowing your farmer, and in transparency about the source of your food. In an ideal world, this is how all of us would live, but as Pollan points out, many people live in dense urban areas, where it might be impractical. Hence the rise of CSAs–community supported agriculture, where city dwellers buy “shares” in a farm and in return receive boxes of fresh produce every week. Beyond organic is the new organic, and sadly with our mushrooming population, it may never be achievable for all of us.

There’s another reason farms like this face significant challenges–because they are self sustaining, there are no profits in them to be had by the petrochemical industry, big pharma, and other corporations which profit, in a big way, from industrial agriculture. As a result, these farms are constantly under fire–not allowed to slaughter their own meat for commercial sale, for example. Even industrial organic feeds the beast to some extent, since it utilizes migrant labour, chilled packing rooms, combine harvesters and refrigerated trucks, and many of the other sundries of large scale agriculture.

The final chapter deals with hunting and foraging for food, and in many ways was the least interesting to me. Perhaps because I grew up in the woods eating things I hunted and harvested–his tortured prose and agonies over the moral dilemma of killing a pig were, to be blunt, rather boring. The whole thing felt very artificial and cutesy to me, which is odd, since I thought I was all about people foraging for their own food and getting connected with their dinner. I think I still am, I just don’t need to read about it.

Especially the moral agony over hunting. I fail to see why anyone who eats meat should have a problem with killing, skinning, gutting, and butchering an animal. I don’t want to hear about it. The neatly packaged meat in the grocery store comes with a much higher price, most of the time–a lifetime of suffering in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, wallowing in piles of manure and misery, and inefficiently butchered by uncaring (and sometimes sadistic) employees in unclean environments (which are guaranteed to spread disease, so the meat is irradiated). Killing an animal which has lived a normal life in a clean and efficient manner, with respect, seems like a situation that shouldn’t result in a moral quandry, especially if you were shovelling down cornfed feedlot steak the night before.

The book is certainly food for thought, and I know that it’s stimulating a lot of discussion about what we eat, and where we source it, and that’s a good thing. Brick by brick, the wall of industrial agriculture may fall…

[The Omnivore's Dilemma]