Organic

An old-time MIT man, remarked that if food is not organic, then is it metallic?

It's not inorganic, otherwise we shouldn't be eating it. Or maybe, one of the reasons we shouldn't be eating it...

Things have been called Frankenfoods, which trivializes the issue, in classic American fashion.

Perhaps synthetic is a better word to use to describe food that has been altered from its naturally occuring, genetically unmodified, chemically original, non-toxically fertilized state. Synthetic. Like nylon. A little snack of running shorts, anyone? With a side of windbreaker?

Not that I'm partially-hydrogenated fat free, by any means, but I'm aware and I'm a parent and where do all the cancers and allergies come from, anyway?

Art professor with the right lab equipment busted for being a terror suspect. With his machines at what would have been a really interesting installation at MassMOCA, he would have analyzed the genetic fingerprints of food samples brought in by the public, looking to see if the genetics had been tweaked a bit. I am quite curious.

My father, in Cincinnati, made sure to see the Mapplethorpe exhibit some years ago when Chief County Moral Authority Simon Leis put it on the busted list. My father wouldn't otherwise have been caught dead looking at art, so thank you Simon Leis, for the publicity. And thank you, FBI, for busting an artist and shining a light on bigmoney food corporations. Science to the people! Art to the people!

And wholeness to our foods.

If this doesn't convince you...

then there's no hope. From today's Boston Globe: "(BOSTON (AP) Catholic leaders in the only state that allows gay marriage are considering new employment policies that would call for the firing of workers who marry their same-sex partner, according to a published report. ..."

Ok, they want to get married, let's fire them? No wonder the institution of marriage (not to mention the whole Catholic Church) has gotten so wobbly. It's easy to cite Brittany Spears' fiasco as an indication that marriage is an institution crumbling all by itself: extending those rights can't demonstrate nearly the harm that one raging lunatic heterosexual can do.

Leaving China

I've been riding the bus to work. Last week, we got caught in a crush of traffic. A woman came to the back of the bus where I was buried in Read Chinese, a beginning Chinese character reader. My lips are moving, I'm flipping the pages back and forth to look up characters and decode the sentences. She's from China, came over in 1988. That's just before Tiananmen. Next time I see her, do I ask why she left?

The country has an incredible history. She came back again, happy to see me. I showed her the book, read a couple of sentences (badly). Must be frustrating to teach Chinese to English speakers. The pronounciations are so delicate and so unlike anything we 'mericans have to master.