Category Archives: Other

Food-like substances

I recently read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.  Pollan recommends eating “real” food, which he defines in detail (if you want the details, read the book).  It’s a safe bet that eating real food will be better for you and better for the planet.

Enter the health fair I worked last week.  Since I knew I would be working late, I lack a good excuse for being ill-prepared, but I found myself in desperate straights, food-wise, with a bag of Sun Chips in my hand.  There I was, a health educator, working at a health fair, eating chips.  Suffice it to say that I consumed said chips surreptitiously.

To further torture myself, I could not help but look at the nutrition label, which broke Pollan’s, “less than five ingredient,” guideline by, oh, about 30 ingredients.  This included some special ones like Yellow 5 Lake (artificial color) and the ever ubiquitous, “natural flavor” — ingredients that clearly put this “food” outside of the real food realm.

Christmas wishes

In our country of material abundance and excess, may you find true happiness in what matters most — relationships with others and the world.  May you give generously from the heart and walk lightly on the earth in the New Year.

Still here . . .

. . . and biking.  That is to say, I biked all around the town on Friday morning, running errands.  Friday afternoon I hopped on the big blue bus to KC, MO for a girls’ weekend with my mom and sisters!  Taking the bus to KC instead of driving the car was the only particularly green part of the trip, although I did have my reusable silverware ready for the hotel breakfast.  Oh, and we ate at a cool vegetarian restaurant that sources local and organic as much as possible, Eden Alley.

Between the new job and the trip, I’ve been a bit out of the blog loop, which may not really get resolved until Friday.

Can anyone loan me a respirator?

Yesterday I reported for breathing second-hand smoke duty, AKA jury duty in the city of Saint Louis.  You see, despite city code* and state policy** FORBIDDING smoking in this building, someone at the top blatantly disregards the laws, along with the health of anyone who enters the building, by allowing smoking areas inside the building to persist.

When I received my summons a month ago, I promptly wrote a letter to the jury supervisor stating that I would be happy to perform my civic duty if the building were 100% smoke-free and asking to be excused from jury duty until and unless the Civil Courts building complied with city code and state policy.  My request was summarily denied, and so I reported as scheduled and discussed my “hardship” with a judge.

The judge and the jury supervisor put on a huge show, with the judge pretending that he had NO idea that there was a smoking lounge in the building — “Michael, is that true?” — that ended with the judge telling me that no, I could not be excused, I needed to go back upstairs to the jury pool, and that if I believed a law were being violated, I should call the police.

Right, like the police are going to come and shut down the smoking lounge.

Them: 1
Me: 0 (and a day of breathing second hand smoke — big time yuck!)

But this fight is not over!

*St. Louis City Revised Code Chapter 11.23 Part II
**State of Missouri Administrative Policy SP-11

Oh, the people you’ll see

Observed on the bus:

A man eating sunflower seeds and throwing the shells on the floor of the bus.  Since when is that okay?

A woman looking very uncomfortable as the stranger next to her nodded off.  Ever so slowly, he slumped to the side in her direction, and she had nowhere to go.  The look on her face was priceless.  Trapped and terrified of the strange head about to touch her.  Unfortunately, I lacked a camera to capture the moment for you.