If Thomas Jefferson Could See Us Now . .

He’d be starting a revolution! He’d be drafting a new Constitution! He’d be throwing somethin’ in Boston Harbor! Where is Thomas Jefferson when we need him? How pissed off were Tom and the boys before they took action?!

I am not being unpatriotic. I love my country and all the principles it was built on. But I detest my government for tearing them apart. Tell me honestly – what is the last thing our government did that made you proud to be an American?

>>>Is it the war in Iraq that has no purpose, and therefore can never be “won” (but for which thousands of people will continue to die trying)?
>>>Is it our Attorney General who fires and replaces judges across the country that don’t align with his boss’s point of view?
>>>Is it the White House administration who has the audacity to tell the American people that they will discuss that issue as long as they don’t have to swear to tell the truth!?
>>>Is it the fact that our government refuses to commit to an international agreement to reduce the burning of fossil fuels to reduce green house gases and save our plant from ourselves?
>>>Is it the fact that while we spend millions upon billions of dollars to supposedly free the Iraqi people from suffering, we neglect the entire city of New Orleans here at home?
>>>Is it the arrogance of our President (with a lower then 30% approval rating) who sits on his thrown and dictates to Congress what they may and may not propose in a bill?

Go ahead, pick one? Or do you have more to add to this list, because I assure you this is a partial list. It might be bearable if at the same time I could point to even just a few things that I felt like our government is doing really right. But honestly, I can’t think of one.

Why is this allowed to happen? At what point did the American people get so removed from our government that they can get away with these atrocities and we just sit around listening to it on the news, shaking our heads. How did we allow ourselves to become so complacent?

Well, that’s just the thing -- we did let this happen. For generations we trusted our government to take care of us and we stopped watching the shop. We stopped paying attention, because it was easier to go play and have fun and leave the work of running our country to our elected officials. Meanwhile they took the power we handed them and ran with it. The power (and greed) went to their heads and they lost track of who they work for and what they were hired to do. And apparently so did we!

But we gave them that power; we can take that power back! But we have to be willing to take responsibility for it. Not just take action. Not just be outraged. We need to take back the power and then we need to manage the power. We need to be involved, and stay involved, in our government so that this can never happen again. We need to learn from our mistakes and make them known so that future generations don’t make the same mistakes.

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today he would undoubtedly be ashamed of our politicians; and perhaps more ashamed of us for letting it happen.

The World is Going to Hell in an Egg Carton

High on the list of “things that make me nuts” is the packaging of mainstream eggs. I know that I am dating myself here, but I remember when most all eggs, brown or white, came in cardboard-like egg cartons. They were obviously a paper product; recyclable and no-doubt biodegradable. This was before our culture was concerned with, or even more then moderately aware of, the importance of recycling and the use of biodegradable packaging. But now that we are all keenly aware of the harm we humans are causing this beautiful planet we call home, it has become nearly impossible to buy eggs in anything other than a styrofoam or three-layer plastic container. Does anyone besides me find this completely ironic, not to mention arrogant and ignorant?! (Have you ever noticed how often arrogant and ignorant go together?!)

I enjoy eggs – great source of protein, lots of ways to prepare them and no one had to die for me to eat an egg. And years after all that bad press, now the FDA has come out to say that it turns out they don’t really have all that cholesterol they used to warn us about. (Makes you wonder if it’s true or if the corporate egg producers bought off some high official at the FDA?!) So I have been buying eggs for many years (even back when they were high in cholesterol); usually brown eggs – because I bought that advertising gimmick about how “brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are fresh” – not that it mattered, most of the dozen was going to sit in my fridge long enough to not be fresh by the time I ate them no matter what color they were! Then a few years ago I started noticing the label “cage free” – oh I liked that! Happy little free chickens running around a barn yard laying eggs – happy chickens must lay happy eggs! These were the eggs for me! And then for a short time I was conflicted about “cage free” eggs vs. “organic” eggs. Hmmm – well I like the idea of organic, but if it was a caged organic chicken then it was not necessarily a happy chicken, and then I felt like I had to choose between my organic preference vs. the quality of life the chickens had who laid the eggs – and for me, the chicken won. (For reasons I can’t explain, I have never seen an egg carton marked “organic AND cage-free.”) So it’s cage-free for me.

But a year or so ago I faced a more serious problem when searching the egg department of my grocery store – it had nothing to do with what color they were, or whether there were hormones involved, or how happy the chickens were. No, it was a much more serious problem – it was all about what the eggs were packaged in. Practically over night all of those cardboard egg cartons were replaced with styrofoam cartons – one of the most environmentally toxic packaging materials known to man. Even McDonalds had already stopped packaging their burgers in it because it is SO bad for the environment. A product that has been banned from use in several California cities because it is so evil! And there my happy chicken eggs were, all looking up at me from underneath this horrible layer of expanded polystyrene. There was one other option – there was one company (who happens to offer cage-free eggs) that packages in a carton that consists of THREE layers of molded plastic. Which is also bad, and a rediculous amount of packaging, but at least it was recyclable.

I am sure that those styrofoam and plastic egg cartons, save the big corporate egg producers big bucks in the long run - maybe they are 2 cents cheaper to buy or use; maybe they have 5% less breakage. But what about our planet?! Don’t they care that they are breaking our planet?! But they are not the only guilty party – don’t forget all the consumers who find the convenience of purchasing their eggs in the grocery store more valuble then the world they are leaving behind for their children. There are alternatives to buying big-time coproparate eggs – you can get fresh eggs from farmers markets, food co-ops, CSAs, and local farmers, if you are willing to go out of your way.

So, my point is, forget the old philosophical debate about the chicken and the egg – we need to work on the packaging!