Secondhand Nation

Deconstructing The Grocery Store

 

Figure 1: Grand Grocery Co, Lincoln Nebraska by John Vachon.  Source: Library of Congress.   

Thanks alot, Micheal Pollan.

As household errands go, I used to really enjoy a trip to grocery store.  Now my nerd ass can't even pick up a few groceries without internal dithering over the offerings of each aisle.

A few days ago, I visited my local Rainbow, which I normally don't visit (I prefer Cub Foods) but it is close to my daughter's preschool and gas ain't cheap.

I went in to pick up some fruit and cereal and spent 45 minutes contemplating the astonishing array of ludicrous food products that come boxed, packaged, canned and stacked, marketed to our hungry famine genes and sure to make us fat. 

Once you've read Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals , every single motherfucking choice in the grocery store is freighted with politics.  (And Pollan's gone and written a new tome called In Defense of Food:  An Eater's Manifesto, which I tremble just thinking about.  Jesus, man!  Can't you let the ramparts of my fragile world stop shaking before you unleash more?) 

Oh, don't throw out that "Just Go to the Farmer's Market!" tagline to me.  I live in the heartland, where we grow corn that gets processed into fruit roll-ups and fattening syrupy fillers, where our farms are currently under 2 feet of snow.  Ain't nothing local to eat right about now, cepting twigs and dogshit supplied by my annoying neighbor's bug-eyed Basenji, who've we've renamed Silent But Deadly.

Among my ponderings:

• To buy bananas or to let growing leg-pain-having child suffer the liver-crushing wrath of ibuprofen every night, when bananas help relieve these torments of youth?  Those feminists were right.  The political truly is personal.  And it's waking me up every night screaming in pain.
• Frankenfood?  What the fuck is this?  Toaster strudels, Disney-embossed fruit leather, instant pasta bowls, pesto-flavored crackers - what would  my great-grandmothers think of all this shit?
• Why must everything be fortified with something else?  Breakfast cereal made from whole grains and enhanced with decaffeinated white tea extract - why not just drink white tea and boil up some oats?  Granola bars fortified with Omega-3 acids?  We've gone totally crazy with our ideas of what food should be and that's why Americans have no national cuisine to speak of.  Instead we're bereft amidst the legions of marketing campaigns for foods that don't taste good, don't resemble food and usually end up making us unhealthy.
• Dieting experts have been recommending recently that we shop around the perimeter of the grocery store, eating "whole foods" like vegetables, fruits, cheeses, meats and grains.  Shocking, isn't it?  That what keeps you fit are actual plant and animal products that are more resistant to the greedy clutches of marketing campaigns?  The majority of the store is dedicated to food products that are bad for you, that are packaged wastefully and that line the pockets of Big Ag. 

Figure 2:  Negro Grocery Store, Black Belt, Chicago, Illinois by  Edwin Rosskam.  Source:  Library of Congress.

I often think about Cargill when I grocery shop.  When I worked there, looking at the directory of departments was sickening.  For example, here are some department names: 

Sweeteners.  Sauces, Oils and Dressings.  Juice. Cocoa and Chocolate. Texturing Solutions. Animal Nutrition.  Meat Solutions. 

I don't know about you, but personally?  I have never had a problem that requires a "meat solution." 

Insert dirty penis joke, I know.  But really, the only "meat solutions" I can think of would involve avoiding BSE, E.coli, and the exploitation of workers.  None of which Cargill, with its global approach to food distribution, can fix for me.

And texturizing?  Ugh.  That just means, hey, let's stick some of our surplus corn product into your yogurt/cracker/ice cream and thus stretch it out further and change the mouthfeel so you'll slobber down larger quantities.  Saves us money while you get less and spend more!  Woo! 

What this means to me is that there is a huge refrigerated case full of yogurts I don't want to buy.  They are covered in Disney characters and packaged in non-recyclable plastic and filled to brimming with high fructose corn syrup, starches and other junk that has nothing to do with milk.  In fact, all I want is the plain yogurt, please, and that is the most expensive one, even when compared to the brands that brag "Enriched with Vitamin A" or "Live Acidopholus Cultures!" on the container.    

Figure 3:  New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  Stairway with display of a sample of the foodstuff collected by one household Uptown from Red Cross food distribution in October.  Source:  Wikimedia Commons. 

So go live in California, some might say, where you can pick oranges off trees and live the good life.  Quitcher bitchin about grocery shopping!

I don't think there should be an end to refrigeration or survival in cold climes.  I just think it's a damn shame that 95% of that building we know as the grocery store is full of shit that makes us unhealthy, fat and/or sick. 

Food that we can afford, that is free of chemicals and unhealthy bullshit, is nothing less than a human right.  Bugger off, Big Ag, with your grandiose notions of "Nourishing Ideas. Nourishing People."  You're making a shit load of money because you're making us sick. 

Thrift Store Employee Burnout, Part I: Recognize the Signs

Figure 1:   Reject clothing, sorted and baled, no doubt, by overworked and underappreciated thrift store employees.

Thrift Store Employee Burnout (TSEB) claims millions of underachieving lives every year.*  It's a tragic cluster of symptoms that can cause individuals to engage in destructive behaviors like drinking head-achey pink wine or paying full retail prices.  In a series of hard-hitting, shocking posts, we'll examine the scourge that is TSEB and offer steps to recognize it, combat it and ultimately, overcome it.

Signs You Have Thrift Store Employee Burnout (TSEB)

1.  When you see bowls of potpourri set out as air freshener, you immediately sniff their contents.

2.  You have bought or seriously contemplated buying food in a discount dollar store.

3.  You can recite all the house brands of Wal-Mart (Ragged Glory, George, Metro 6) J.C. Penneys, (St. John's Bay, MixIt, Worthington) and Herbergers (Relativity, Studio Works).

4.  You have made or tried to make a skirt out of unsold neckties.

5.  Customers chomping on chicken wings while shopping or arguing with a sales clerk starts to seem like a brilliant way to multitask.

6.  The first thing you think when you see an old friend is a) would I recycle her entire outfit for rag scrap?  b)  could I put that purse at $9.99 even if it is a clearly fake Gucci knockoff?

7.  You dream about making garden furniture from broken cross country skis and bowling balls.

8.  You can predict, just by looking at the person who donated a bag of items, whether it will contain a)  fake flowers b) crappily-printed books about Jesus c) stained pillows embroidered with geese wearing sun bonnets   d)  a shaving cream warmer

9.  You are intimately familiar with all of Ron Popeil's products and their relative marketability

10.  You take Claritin every single day, even though you don't have allergies, and still sneeze every time you walk into work.

*Not actual "lives."  "Lives" here refers to joie de vivre, personal satisfaction, ability to find meaning in work and life, et cetera.      

Welcome to The Devil's Workshop, Now Exclusively Featuring Sustainably-Harvested Bamboo: The Perils of being a 'Lazy' Environmentalist

Figure 1:  "Thank god I didn't bother to recycle that dumb old plastic water bottle!  Think of all the time that would have taken me away from my main pursuit of concocting sustainable methods of being the hippest navel-gazer on the planet...!"

It's Wednesday and I'm feeling bitter as hell.  Perhaps it's the fact that we overslept and missed preschool.  Perhaps it's the lovely gray bullshit atmospheric aura that seems to hang around like a freeloading relative sleeping on your couch.  Perhaps it's because my blog is little, bitchy and fierce, all adjectives stemming from its intrinsic lack of cash-making and scene-stealing.

So, awash in all this dismality, I birth my irritation with a blog/book/phenom The Lazy Environmentalist.

I had heard tell of this book first from some green blogs, Treehugger, probably, and my first thought was, Great.  No matter that so much environmental degradation has come from our lust for convenience and easiness.  Let's just promote the idea that changing our habits for the greater good is yucky and hard and subscribe to the idea that we can fix things by buying some carbon credits or a sweater made by Tibetan monks from repurposed silk or, Cod forbid, by blogging.

There's something elitist about the New Green that bugs the hell out of me.  The insistence on having life exactly the same way, with the same conveniences and luxuries (which are truly the same thing in some instances) by just slapping some no-VOC paint on it and calling it Green, Sustainable, Eco-conscious, making it instantly Good.  If you've got enough money and style, you need not fuss your pretty little head about such mundanities, like basic materials recycling.  To quote Lazy Environmentalist founder Josh Dorfman,

"I won’t always place my empty water bottles in the recycling bin. Why?  Because, frankly, it’s a pain and there’s nothing fun about it."

In other words, let's do this green, earth-saving thing, but only as long as it's sexy and scintillating. 

What's that, you say?  It's made by Prada and a Swedish design team?  Fabulous.  I'll take three.  And hook me up with some carbon credits, while you're at it, Jeeves.

"No guilt trips," promises Dorman.  "Never any sacrifice." 

Yeah.  Because Maude knows that's what got us into this enormous ecological mess -all that sacrifice.

As demonstrated by many a mother, guilt is terrifically powerful and if it makes you recycle or use fewer resources, then I'm all for it.  I'm afraid the environmental situation requires folks to get past their personal feelings and buck the fuck up.  Toss your goddamned plastic water bottle (!) in the recycling, even if it doesn't happen to have a joystick that tickles your dick attached to it, and realize that nobody is blaming you for the situation of global warming.  It's been a long time coming, so the blame is rather diffused, anyway. 

Unfortunately, you are living in what the Chinese cliche lovers would call "interesting times."  So it's up to you to become a better planetary citizen - too bad, so sad!

Sorry, but you don't get to stay in a state of perpetual infancy anymore, even if it isn't your fault.  Thus, a bit of sacrifice, a loss of convenience and a decided lack of fun. Suck it up, First World Cry-Babies.  Because there's a whole lot more to unlearn. 

So chalk up my crotchety finger-wagging to the fact that, unlike some of my hip and sexy counterparts, I don't have a line of stylish sustainably-sourced furniture, a satellite radio talk show, a book deal, or even an income-generating blog.  But know this.  On the occasions that I deign to buy plastic, at least yours truly endeavors to summon every last bit of her human courage and triumphantly manages to toss it in the right disposal bin. 

Photo:  Idle Moments by M.B. Parkinson, New York, 1896.  LC-USZ62-83777

And now, for my favorite topic: LAUNDRY

Figure 1:  My frozen urchin of a clothespin bag. 

I hate most housework but I love love love doing the laundry. 

I love making my laundry soap, I love folding laundry, and I especially love hanging laundry.  If it's free, it's me, so using the sun for power makes me bubble like cheap champagne. 

But in the winter?  I confess to seeing a pic a long while back of a woman hanging laundry in a huge snow drift. Impressive eco chops, no?  So I dutifully  bought a pair of good winter boots at a thrift store and got ready to climb the drifts in search of free energy.

Figure 2: Not only do my clothes suffer from constant stain drippage, they also get subjected to polar temperatures. 

The main problem with outdoor laundry isn't that it's cold, or that navigating snow drifts is difficult, or that my neighbor's damn ugly bug-eyed dog keeps shitting in my lawn and the pristine blanket of white snow just makes that fact all the more clear. 

It's that you need a perfect combination of windy + sunny in order to get your clothing at all dry and that's not easy to get in Minnesota.

So, First thing.  Weather Is A Factor, Just Like In Summer Drying.  I can't believe I just typed that.  But for all our anencephalic or Martian readers, expect to become even more intimately connected with your local forecast than before.  Otherwise you are looking at frozen jeans and shirts stacked like arctic pancakes in your brittle plastic basket, which will thaw upon returning indoors.

Second thing?  You'll need something to set your basket on, lest it get encrusted with snow.  I usually keep a chair in my yard for this purpose anyway, as I hate bending over and what not.  Right now it's frozen in position.  NIIIIICE.

Figure 2:  Helpful chair that prevents bending over.  Which both saves your back and your neighbor's eyes if you have an unsightly ass.   In the case of my neighbor, I don't give a shit.  Stare all you want, pervo.  Just keep your shitting bug-eyed dog outta my yard. 

Finally, consider Domestic Blowback.  Not to be waved off is The Husband's potent dislike of line-dried clothing, which he generally grumbles about in balmier weather as being too crunchy and coarse.  This rachets up to a fierce hatred when his socks are brittle and icy. If you're dealing with hostile locals, consider using the dryer for their duds and save the Laura Ingalls Method for your clothing.

(As much propaganda as I've deluged him with, he's not buying my argument that stiff bath towels are better for skin exfoliation, which they are.   Hello, the coarse mitt used to scrub your bod after you heat up in the sauan in a traditional Turkish bath?  An air-dried towel works similarly.  Jeez.  I can't help knowing everything about everything.  It's a curse.)

For crappy winter weather (also known as "most of the time) I use an indoor drying rack.  I keep mine in my gacky furnace room, where it is warm and there's space to hog up that nobody else wants to occupy.

There endeth the reading.  Go forth and launder sustainably!

Refab Vocab

Eco-tistical:  adjective. Describes individuals who get intensely sanctimonious about environmentally-sound practices and behaviors.  As in:  "Thelma keeps rummaging through my trash pointing out all the things I could have recycled;  she's totally eco-tistical these days."