Occupy Meals-On-Wheels! Re-post

So I have this dream... And it is not just that I would sell or give away breads and such. My dream is to start-up an independent meals-on-wheels program. With, you know, edible, actually nutritious, food. I don't know how it is in your community but here in A2, despite having some real money, a lot of really great and dedicated volunteers, and a partnering with U-M, they are sending out thousands of pounds of inedible, visually unappealing, patently institutionalized, and wastefully packaged, food. Every person that I have worked for that got meals-on-wheels usually threw away something like 10 lbs. (or more) of food a week PER PERSON! Styrafoam, plastics, and all of that sort of thing as well. It was dreadful to watch. But people who are food insecure, or unable to cook, will not leave the program as they are fearful that they might eventually need it enough to eat some parts. So I have watched it pile up in refrigerators and then get thrown out when the pile took over.

Anyway, it seems to me that a way to help solve this is to have a privately run program. So that someone would have the authority to say "we're not sending out any gross, institutional food". Have it be heavily soup/stew based, as nutritionally soup is a god-food. As well as that many of these potential clients (the elderly, the sick, the disabled) have various health issues that make chewing, swallowing, digesting, etc. problematic anyway.

The current program is so committed to meats as the primary protein source that they absolutely sacrifice quality to quantity and end up serving huge quantities of very disturbing, mostly inedible, meats from extremely dubious sources, what a waste! This could be managed much differently and still appeal to most folks who want some meat.

I am not completely opposed to some tinned foods. I have seen tinned peaches prolong life and the desire to live! I am not opposed to meat, I am an omnivore. I just think that with the dietary knowledge we now have that there has to be a better way to do a protein delivery system. That with the technologies available there should be less waste in packaging. That people who are struggling with food insecurity should have a resource that is viable, edible, nutritious, enjoyable, a source of pleasure, something to look forward to instead of being burdensome and guilt inducing because one wants some security but simply cannot physically or emotionally partake of most of what is given.

Occupy Meals-on-Wheels! That is my goal.

I Love A Chicago Party, Not THE Chicago Party

Dude you are really sucking at this POTUS thing. I even dragged my nonvoting partner to the polls to vote for you. I really believed in about 1/2 of what you promised which you totally haven’t even begun to deliver on an 1/8th. Everyone thought you were so fresh. What you are proving yourself to be is a typical Chicago democratic party machine politician. Let’s just call you prez Daley from now on shall we?
If you want a second term you better pray some messiah-like independent doesn’t raise up and run against you because you totally ripped off your constituents when you cast yourself in that light .
You really don’t get that we’re no longer straight party people do you? My Dad insists that you’re just cagey, but he’s a staunch Dem. I am not burdened with that loyalty nor are a lot of people my age and younger. From over here it looks like you suck worse than Clinton and only minutely less than Bush.
God I am so sickened of politicians bullshit.

Intuixiety

Here’s the thing about my brain, body, connection:
I was trained to try to work my intuition like a muscle. I’ve written about that before but that was YEARS ago, I don’t expect you to look it up. Anyway, I have worked at this working from intuition thing for a very long time, since I was about eighteen, and that, my friends, is a very long time. But what has happened in perhaps the last fifteen years or so, is that now that I no longer self-medicate for painful shyness, depression, social and other anxiety disorders, some of the physical sensations I had learned to associate with the “pay attention” signals from the realms of the mothers, are now mixed with my ever increasing, anxiety based physical symptoms. This now occurs at a level which makes it quite difficult for me to sort out whether, when I get a certain butterflies, nervy, slightly nauseous feeling is it a phone call from the psyche or a chemicals gone wrong, message.

This is one of the reasons that I take so little of my properly prescribed medication. I always am trying to sort out which way the wind is truly blowing. The funny thing about that? That I am required to get drug tested on a fairly regular basis to ascertain that I am actually taking drugs! This irony is certainly not lost on me.

So the question for me becomes, as it probably has been since the beginning, is how much of myself will I lose if I take psych meds? This whole issue is really “up” for me right now, as I finally reached the decision to put my little (cat) girl in Prozac. What a hard decision that was. Sorting out the power and control issues incumbent in forcing psych meds, that I have refused myself, on another being... Not comfortable at all. But she has been a victim of severe anxiety for such a long time that I have decided to at least try it for awhile and see if she becomes a happier creature. The perpetual question: will she lose some essential self-ness?

The Myth of Independence

Nigel just reminded me that it is the anniversary of this blog. I’m pretty sure we’re talkin’ six years here. And somehow it has survived. Granted it was on it’s deathbed for quite awhile as I was feeling oppressed by trolls. But for now they’ve gone away and the underside of my bridge is (for now) a cool and shady place to hang out by the water again. Apparently I can’t flourish well in sunlight being forced off my own little, slice of heaven, real estate. I assume they’ll show back up. I’ll cross my bridge when that comes to it.

Here’s the thing about “Independence” day; we only gained that independence by being able to depend on people like Lafayette (ergo countries like France). There is no real independence especially in the modern world. The Randsian ideal of the self-made man is a complete myth. If Howard Roarke designed, built and engineered a skyscraper all by himself, with his bare hands, using tools he made himself, I’d like to see it.

Especially in this era of specialization. The right hand has no fricking clue how the left hand does it’s job, only that it passes the piece over to be finished also not knowing what that will entail.

If you think you can survive without anyone or anything please walk naked and weapon less, with not one supply, into the woods right now, stay there completely alone and cut off for ten years and when you come out I promise we’ll give you a book deal.

*Oh did I also mention only people who spontaneously arose fully formed, and were never suckled, nurtured or taught, need apply.

O da ghee-La

I am totally in love with this picture

LFMCoF # 19

While boiled, buttered & salted, cabbage with caraway seed is a fairly standard Eastern European peasant food, the same cabbage with cumin seed is rather a nonstandard eye opener. Moral of the story: Best to keep caraway, cumin and fennel seeds in different parts of the spice rack.

Mock rockin' 2011

The mock orange just gets more fantastic every year. The scent is what the pure lands smell like, I just know it.

The three incomparable C's

Yesterdays market smelt of small children and Sno-cones
Flowerscent had to compete so it stayed to the outskirts
Nodding and smiling to all people I knew
I had three incomparable C's laid out on the stoop
Tried getting through to the hospital
and oblivious dads parked squalling infants in my face

Yo Thor Jones!

Wake up it's supper time!!!

Guess who got a new camera???