Food notes

As my husband knows, I am obsessed with reading labels, particularly when shopping for food. I want to know what I am eating, how it is processed, so I can not buy items laced with salt and high fructose corn syrup, and chemicals I can't even pronounce. One of my personal rules, if I can't pronounce it, I can't eat it.

So, in thinking about food, isn't it odd that although we want to promote buying American with cars or clothes, but almost never with food? We want imported italian tomatoes, pasta, olive oil, swiss chocolate, french fries or toast, but do we really want American cheese - that processed tasteless mess? As American as apple pie?

The reality is that most American food is not good, it is over processed, loaded with salt and sugar, sprayed with chemicals and essentially awful.

Put side by side organic apples or cherries versus commercially process fruits and there is no comparison. But in traveling to europe there is no question that the food tastes better, unprocessed, tastier, easier to digest. So here, I don't even eat certain foods anymore, especially wheat because I can't digest it. Beef because it is so laced with antibiotics and because the cattle is fed other cattle when cows are supposed to be herbivores, our food system is a mess.

We as a culture are so divorced from the sources of our food, we just want it ready to eat and not to think about it too much. It can't last and won't last as our environment collapses around us. I guess Donald Trump will believe in climate change when it is too late.

Yellow Dog

In these days of "blue dog Democrats" people have forgotten the term, yellow dog democrats, but maybe it is time for revival.

My father, who passed away last week, was a true and proud yellow dog. Although he was financially successful, he came from nothing and never turned his back on those who were, like he, trying to achieve the American dream.

Ironically, my father was born in November 1928, the year the term "yellow dog" was born. During that presidential campaign, Al Smith, Governor of NY, ran as the democratic candidate, but was the first Catholic to do so. Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support the democratic candidate, backing instead, the republican Herbert Hoover - we know how the Hoover presidency worked out. Many in the South disagreed with Heflin's position, which evolved into the popular saying "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket."

My father was a yellow dog through and through. He despised the Democratic party's lack of organization and cohesion, but at least knew that it truly represented America, not just some narrow slice of America, economically, socially, religiously, ethnically etc .

So now we get to the Blue Dogs and Evan Bayh or we can call him "Bye". My father knew his father Birch Bayh, a yellow dog democrat. My father supported Birch Bayh for president and truly respected him. He also supported Evan, but recognized that these were, perhaps, more politically challenging times.

Thus, when I read on le web yesterday about Evan's plan to quit rather than fight, my immediate thought was wanting to discuss this with my yellow dog father. I knew that although he understood the extreme partisan ship currently in vogue in Washington, leading to governing gridlock, I also knew that my father would be as disappointed as I was that Bayh said "Bye" instead of staying and fighting the good fight. We will not win every skirmish or battle, but the key is to win the war, the war of ideas, of caring for our country and helping our people, rather than dividing and scaring them. Maybe we need to revisit the term Yellow Dog, and what the party was about in 1928, versus where it is now.

Perhaps the parallels will be apropos - the crash in 1929 under Hoover, leading to FDR's election and democratic control of congress for many years - what did the Dems get done? How did they do it? By populism, not protecting the banks and the bankers from their mistakes and fraud.

We need to get beyond the boring, divisive talking heads of CNN and FOX, and find our common ground, and move forward to rescue main street, not wall street. In 1928, yellow dogs were populists. Let's forget about the weak blue dogs and move on. Say bye to Bayh.

In memorium

I don't think I ever got the RIP part of death. Does someone really rest in peace? What happens to your mind, energy, spirit? These are the things I always have wondered about death. Having sat with my father while he peacefully expired, I can't say that I know any more of the answers but I totally understand the concept of resting in peace.

For the last fourteen months, to watch him fight every day to live, to overcome the challenges facing him after a stroke, he was not at peace. Rather, he was tortured, at the loss of his independence, no longer able to drive, or work, or dress himself, use the bathroom by himself, all the little things we all take for granted once we reach the age of 4.

Watching him as the process of death took over, as the hospice care workers tended to him and made sure he did not suffer, it was sad, but in so many ways a relief as he took he last breath and peacefully expired.

Talk to the Hand, Sarah

Watching the video of Sarah Palin, I think that I just don't get it. I don't get the fascination with her. She isn't smart. She isn't knowledgeable about anything. She offers nothing substantive. Just George W. in a skirt. Talking in platitudes about nothing.

Then we get the hand. Does she really think we're all that stupid and vapid? The oldest trick in the book to write on your hand like a child, cheating on a test? And make it that obvious? Obvious that she can't remember basic concepts and also that she knew the questions in advance so she could write the answer on her hand.

So talk to the hand grandma, no thanks, no to you, no to your shallow nothing statements that make no sense. It's even worse when you read a transcript of her statements.

Please Tina Fey, come back and do some more - talking to the hand.

A Sea of Same

Watching the President's State of the Union, I was again struck by the contrasts between the GOP and the DNC, and the GOP was just a sea of same - sameness, same people (white men), same suits (generally grey pinstripes), and same mentality rooted in the same beliefs that no longer hold true for America. The GOP does not represent the diversity of the America, the women, the children, the people of all economic levels, and most importantly religions, race, ethnicity, sexual preference etc.

To look at the sea of same - as they judged this black man who now is president, their resentment was clear. The sea of same who refused to clap, who refused to honor the office of the Presidency because this man occupies it.

In contrast, to look at the Democrats, suits of different colors, hair of all colors, suits of different colors, people of color, women, gays, jews, muslims, and so on. That is what we are in America, that is its beauty and its strength. Not sameness. Individuality and creativity. The more the GOP tries to scare us and make us all the same the more it works against them and America's best interests.

We can't be the sea of same.