Why I Choose Not to Eat Beef

So the latest beef recall, due to worries about e. coli was announced on the news today. 2 tons, approximately are being recalled and will be destroyed somehow. What a waste of good food. That number seemed so high that I got curious and did the math. I might not be completely correct, but these are the figures I came up with. 2 tons equals 14,000 pounds of beef. It takes ten pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, which means that in this recall, not only were 14,000 of meat wasted, but 140,000 pounds of grain were too. That equates to 2,24,000 ounces of grain. Based on a one ounce serving of grain and the 6 serving minimum that the average person is supposed to get each day, I calculated that in a one day time frame, 186,667 people who would otherwise go hungry somewhere in the world, could have been fed. And of course you could have fed a smaller amount of people for a longer time.

It just makes me look at a Big Mac in a really different way when I look at it like that.

Answering the Call of Duty

Jury duty that is. I got a summons in the mail on Saturday to go to jury duty at the end of March and immediately started grumbling and trying to figure out how to get out of it. I've always had a fear of doing jury duty and getting stuck on the murder trial that will take months to do and years of therapy to get over, but according to their website, that's not what Municipal court handles, so I was less fearful of it.

Then this morning I was looking at the news headlines of what's going on in Libya and the Middle East right now. People are continuing to be slaughtered in their quest for the freedoms we take for granted. And I realized that something as simple yet possibly annoying as jury duty is in fact a freedom. It's what we do so that we can have a fair justice system, it's being a part of the system. It's what I do so that hopefully one day, should the need ever arise for me to have a jury, there will be a group of my peers who actually pay attention and do their job properly to grant me justice.

So I decided that I will attend my jury duty without a grudge or a feeling of being put-upon. I will embrace the experience in honor of those who are fighting and dying for the chance to do what I am being given the opportunity to do.

The Fight for Freedom

I've been watching and reading about what's going on in the Middle East right this very minute. It is exciting, and sad. People are dying in the fight for freedom. It's real. It's real people fighting for rights against leaders who don't want to give up their power and want to keep them oppressed.

I look at these people in awe, and wonder what I would do if faced with the same situation. I have never had to really fight for anything in my life. Things are just given to us here in this country. And when we do fight for things, it's done within the system, and rarely does it result in people being set on fire or trampled by camels or shot at from helicopters. We really do have it easy here, no matter how much we like to play the martyr.

The people fighting this fight are true heroes. They are willing to fight for freedom, and are literally willing to die for it. Some people might say it's brave to take up arms to fight for what you want for your country, but I think it's far braver to face a gun with open arms, and take a bullet for your people. It is something I don't think I could ever do, even if I was fighting for something as important as the freedoms we take for granted here.

So I would like to thank a couple different groups of people tonight. First I would like to thank the men and women who serve our nation so that I can remain the coward that I am and not have to do it myself. I would also like to thank them for keeping our freedoms safe so that I can write these words freely and not fear being arrested for them. And second, I would like to thank the brave men and women around the world who are currently fighting and dying for their freedom and the future of their nations. You are far braver than I am, and you will not be forgotten. And I hope and pray with all of my heart, that it will not be in vain. Spring is coming! May it bring better days and a freer future for all...

I'm so tired of it all

The fighting, the name-calling, the mudslinging. I'm as liberal as they come, but can we stop with the nitpicking of people on the opposing political side? Yes, Sarah Palin is not my choice for President, and never will be, but do I need to exhaust my life with tearing apart everything she says and does? No. All that does is make me look like a petulant child, and that is never good for politics.

I think I'm going to try to walk the walk and talk the talk of being a kinder, gentler participant in politics. I will not yell and scream and point fingers. I will try to remain calm and appeal to common sense. I will focus on what I think are the good points of all parties, instead of the negative. Because I can't waste my life anymore on this garbage. It's just not worth it in the end.

Scary Day Today

Today there was an assassination attempt in Arizona. Six people were killed, including a nine year old girl. At least as many more were injured, including a Congresswoman, who was the target. This is the first assassination attempt I can recall in my life. I was alive when Reagan was shot, however I was too young to have been affected by it. Today was scary. It makes you stop to think about the actions you take in your life. Do I go to that rally or do I just stay home? It's safer at home after all...But as with terrorism, if we alter our lives because of what people living their lives on the fringe do, then they've won. They've accomplished what they set out to accomplish. I cannot grant people like that to have that control over me.

And this isn't about Republican/Conservative vs. Democrat/Liberal. It isn't about guns and gun control. Just this week another horrifying act of violence took the lives of several people involving only gasoline and a blow torch. This is about fear and anger and acting out on that. When a person lets that fear take over their life, hiding the guns won't stop them.

If you look throughout history, at times when assassinations take place in our country, most of them happen during times of great turbulence and social change. It is an unfortunate sign that our country is moving in the right direction, and there are those who are terrified and cannot handle it, so they lash out violently. Perhaps they think they are the only ones who see what's really happening and it's up to them to stop it. I can't presume to understand what goes on inside their minds.

This is a time when I have to remind myself that we live in a country that allots us the freedom to hold differing political opinions, and thought processes. It would be nice if the inhabitants could remember this too...Let us continue to hold our opposing thoughts, because this is how we have always been and always shall be. But let us also be civil to one another, and honorable in our actions, because that is where change for the better comes from.

50 Christmases

On the 50th anniversary of my Grandmother Juanita's passing(who died on Boxing Day), I wrote a little story for my family. This was the 50th Christmas since my Grandfather Del's passing(who died in the spring), and I wanted to do something to acknowledge it too. But I just couldn't figure out what, and then life spun out of control this year and I wasn't able to do anything. I felt sad, and a little guilty about it, but that's life sometimes.

Tonight at church, I thought about him. Right as the candles were being lit and we started singing Joy to the World. I thought that it was sad he wasn't there singing and raising a candle with us. And then I glanced at my family sitting in the rows in front of me and caught a sideways glance of my cousin, M, who is the one who most physically resembles Grandpa Del, and I saw him. For just a moment, I saw him. And tears came to my eyes and fell before I could stop them. And I saw that he, and my grandmother, though they are no longer with us, are in fact with us. And in us. They are a part of who we are.

And as I thought about this again after another fun Christmas Eve party with my family, I had another realization: This, the 50th Christmas since my grandfather's passing, was the first Christmas in my recollection, that all four of his children were at that church service together. It may have happened before and I was too young to remember, or maybe before I was born, but I thought it was eerily appropriate to have all four together again this particular year.

Merry Christmas, to my family, here and in the beyond.

Classism, Better or Worse than Racism?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNhaLUT520

The above video is one of the top viral videos of 2010. Every time I see anything related to it, I feel uncomfortable laughing at it. The people in this particular story are African American, but they are also poor. I realized that we as a society feel it's ok to laugh at poor people, whether they hail from the ghetto or the trailer park. Skin color doesn't really matter. Physical evidence of one's class level, such as missing teeth or garish make up are considered laughable. How a person speaks, denoting their education level and educational opportunities, are a cause of great hilarity.

I've definitely been guilty of this, and am coming to see that it's not funny. It's cruel. Why should I make fun of somebody else's opportunities in life? Why should I see them as a joke and less of a person than I am? Would I want somebody who was in a higher class than I am to laugh at me? No. So why should I do it to anybody else? This is something I am going to try and work on in the future. It's a bad habit, which can be hard to break, but I will make the effort from now on.