S.O.S.: This is a global call.

You better make a stand
You better make it now
Take back your rights from the IMF, World Bank and Monsanto

When they wage war on you, you lay asleep
When they poison your food, you choose to drink
There's poison in the well!
- Anti-flag

While I was down in Florida last week, for the first time I started to notice advertisements for the genetic engineering company Monsanto, who "pledges to be part of the solution." Perhaps, if you define "the solution" as pumping bodies full of genetically engineered foods while the profits of food items (which are steadily increasing due to the price gouging of seeds sold by said company to farmers) are pumped into the hands of one corporation, and our already dwindling farmland is wiped out even more. We shop at grocery stores because it is a) convenient and b) cheap. I am terrified to see how "cheap" food will be in ten years, even 5 years, as farmland disappears more and more. We all know the basic principle of supply and demand. Monsanto won't care, they will have what they need--control of the seeds (our food), control of the government which essentially taxes and regulates agriculture (our food) and control of the people who do the farming, because they can no longer afford to farm any other way.

When a friend of mine and I went to the Green Festival about a month ago, we met Joel Salatin, the author of Everything I Want to Do is Illegal, here. He wrote about his hardships being a small farmer, trying to deal with the restrictions and fees and taxes that the government places upon them. We told him about our Practical Environmentalism class and he was really excited that we were learning about these issues. He signed copies of his book for us and wrote, "Thank you for being part of the solution."

Monsanto is not part of any solution worth being a part of.



Our farmers, and more generally, our global food system, is in crisis. There are videos about this topic all over the Internet and books everywhere. I suggest beginning with this one, or this one if you are in the mood for something "lighter".

I mean, our government can be very corrupt, both sides of the aisle and in between. Government is corrupt all over the planet. This shouldn't be condoned, ever, but when the corruption really strikes a nerve with me is when it comes to issues of our planet, and specifically, our food. Food shouldn't be treated as a special interest. It's a requirement for life. If our food system falls apart, which it inevitably could if these genetically engineered seeds replace biodiversity and natural growth, the human species would cease to exist.

That isn't alarmism, it's just fact.

Happy Green Bean Casserole Day

Did you eat mindfully?
I tried and think I did well.



After writing my column about mindful eating on Monday, I really did try to eat slowly and carefully and with at least a speck of grace yesterday on Thanksgiving. Particularly during dessert. It is really almost inhumane how much we stuff ourselves on this day. We eat mashed potatoes and squash and green beans and stuffing and yams and corn and cranberry sauce and rolls and gravy and wine (and turkey, if you do) and then we sometimes have seconds--and then we clean up and then we eat MORE. It's gluttonous!

So this year, in light of my column and just generally what I always try to do but often fail at, I took about three or four bites worth of only what I really like. Except the green bean casserole, which is my favorite. Haha. I was still very full at the end--certainly not ready to go for a run around the block--but I wasn't ready to roll over and pass out either. And I tried some of this pumpkin cake thing my mom made for dessert. She got the recipe from Paula Dean, so needless to say it was the richest dessert I have ever tasted. I don't usually like pumpkin things (hate pumpkin pie--blech) but that dessert was darn good. Way too rich to eat more than a couple bites.

Then, I loaded up the dishwasher, mopped the floor, went back home with my parents, walked a couple miles around the neighborhood with them, then fell asleep on the couch watching Home Alone. Thankful.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoys their break (if they are on one!).

What 7-year-olds can teach us about living slowly

If you are a young person--still in college, just out of college, fresh into the workplace, on the job hunt, or whatever--you should read this feature story from the Post. To me, this story is about re-evaluating what is really important in your life, and mostly, it is about slowing down in your life and accepting that what makes you happiest may not be what other people are telling you should make you happy.

Today, in my Practical Environmentalism class, my professor asked us, "What does it mean to you to live your life slowly?"

Hands shot up, as they always do in that class, because it is the best class I have ever taken and everyone that takes it is in love with it, because it always just makes you think so much and learn so much.

For me, living slowly means living in the moment. Not driving myself crazy thinking about what I should have done in the past or what I am going to do in the future. Just being here, now.

Consequently, living slowly is better for your mental stability and your health, and the environment. I could write volumes on this, but I won't. I may later. Not now.

That being said, I don't live slowly enough. I don't really live all that slowly at all. In fact, I feel I have become accustomed to a fast-paced life full of stress and lack of real intimacy, to the point where it is almost the only place I feel comfortable at.

Last night, I was spontaneous and went out for drinks on a Thursday with some girlfriends, something I never do on a Thursday night, or any night lately. It was fun, we played shuffleboard at Atomic and I am awful at shuffleboard so that was funny. Then, it started torrentially downpouring and thundering as we were leaving, and we saw someone's hubcap scrape off on the sidewalk and another woman bump into two cars while trying to parallel park. It was like a movie, there was lots of laughter.

Then, I got home and found myself in the worst possible mood. I thought of all the work I wasn't doing while I was out spending time with my friends for once, and I got mad at myself. I got mad at myself for trying to slow down and enjoy my life a little.

Tonight, I spent my Friday eating sushi from Mei Wah then watching Horton Hears a Who with the 7-year-old boy I babysit, Danny. I thought about working on one of the several papers that are due next week while he watched, but instead I shut my laptop and stuck it in my bag. I am really happy I made that decision.

I loved the movie. Steve Carell and Jim Carrey made it even more hilarious, obviously, but everything was just really well done and it was a feel-good movie that also gave you a lot to think about. It made me think about the state of our world right now. The Mayor of Who-ville is the metaphorical Al Gore, or, in reality, he is the entire collective of rational people in the world that can take the fact that it should not be thunder-storming in the middle of November in Washington, DC and come to the conclusion that something bad is going on and we must do something about it. There is more about kind of what I am talking about here.

My favorite part of the night was when I sort of accidentally said out loud, "This movie, it's like a metaphor for our world today." Danny just looked over, nodded, and replied, "I know."

Get back to sharpening your oyster knife!

I have to blog about this oh-so-philosophical moment.

So this morning, I woke up and thought, "I should blog...although I don't really have time...but I should...oh what the heck...wait, do I have time? Grr, why am I too busy to blog??" (Yes, these are the types of daily conundrums and internal dialogues that plague me, apparently.)

Remember last week when Slate came out with that hilarious little piece that provided probably too much insight into the minds and lives of the googlers who are doing the googling in the world?

So I decided to turn to the All-Knowing Google bar, hoping like heck it'd give me all the answers I needed in life.

I typed, "I am too busy" and was totally surprised and confused at what popped up:



Weird, I thought. So I visited the Google suggested links.

Turns out this line is from a quote by Zora Neale Hurston in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”, in The World Tomorrow (May 1928). The full quote reads:

I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Hm. I think I might like that. And so it basically means, in that context, she still sees that the world is her oyster, the world is full of opportunity and is totally at her disposal, regardless of her skin color and how it has the potential of keeping her from accomplishing things, from getting to that precious pearl, that fortune and success that awaits her.

But I think what Google is trying to suggest to me is that the world is my oyster, so I better get back to sharpening my knife. (aka I better get back to work, stop complaining about how busy I am--everyone is busy--and stop asking the Google for help, because the Google is busy sharpening his oyster knife too, you know, and he can't be bothered much longer with my Google-Suggest games.)

The Fourth Kind: entertaining if you can suspend disbelief

Against my initial best judgment, a friend of mine convinced me to go see The Fourth Kind. I had very low expectations, and although I wasn't blown away by the movie, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.



Basically, the movie is about a female therapist in Nome, Alaska named Abigail Tyler, whose husband is killed right in front of her but she can't explain how. The movie uses some case study recordings and video, some with patients, some police footage, and then it has the dramatized version sometimes alongside it, sometimes just in place of scenes where they don't have footage. Abigail starts hypnotizing her patients and releasing their subconscious memories of encounters with aliens. This basically causes people to kill their families and themselves, presumably to escape the torture that awaits them if/when they are abducted.

There is just so much room for these people to either a) actually be mentally deranged--and they have these visions of being abducted by aliens as a coping mechanism for their unfathomable feelings of depression--all while underneath that layer of consciousness that the hypnosis is able to trigger, there is a whole new layer that is just too painful for them to access ....or b) coordinate with each other to make all these therapy sessions up, etc.

If all these separate cases of alien contact were happening all over the place, why don't we hear about it from other countries? And how could the government cover it all up so well?

I think someone should make a movie about a conspiracy theory related to this whole aliens idea. But one where this whole alien sighting underground ring of people are exposed as being con artists. Maybe it's already been done. Has it? I'm sure it has.

The problem with dining out

[Sidenote--anyone know who makes these videos with the graphics and that music and the flowiness and text? just wondering, I have seen them everywhere lately and know they must be done by the same place.]

According to this video, 66 percent of people are eating out less. To this, I say, "Excellent news!" Because more likely than not, these are people who can't afford to be eating out as much as they used to (and in fact, they probably couldn't afford to be eating out so much when they were eating out, they just are coming to realize now how they must change their habits.)

The problem with this video is it makes the viewer feel like he or she is doing the economy a disservice by not going out to a restaurant at least once a week. In fact, if they are cutting back in order to live within their means and not rack up credit card debt each month, they are helping themselves and our economy in the long run.

I would like to add, I enjoy dining out just as much as the next girl. There is something really wonderful about sitting at a table with your family, friends, spouse or dating partner while drinking wine and talking and laughing and trying new foods and enjoying the ambiance and watching other people do the same all around you. It's a treat. It's fun to try new places with different types of food you've never had, and it's fun to go to your old, favorite places where you know you'll love the food. Dining out is an experience I enjoy, and I know I am not alone in that.

But, along with the 66 percent this video mentions, I have a budget I need to stay within and frankly, dining out just doesn't fit into it every week. Furthermore, the less I eat out, the more special it becomes. I think the last time I ate at a restaurant was about a month ago with a friend, at a place called Founding Farmers (no, actually, I didn't intend to plug them, but their food is delicious, prices are fair, the building is LEED-certified, and the food comes from local farms--umm, restaurant dream come true much!?)

Why do we care about beefing up the restaurant industry anyhow? More and more people with college educations are losing their high-paying, stable jobs and turning to food service jobs just to stay afloat. More young graduates are sleeping on the floor while working for minimum wage at these restaurants, when if the economy was actually where it should be--if we hadn't ended up in this financial mess due to improper spending, they could be getting paid internships and not having to work these part-time waiting jobs.

If you want to beef up an industry that's REALLY struggling, buy a subscription to the print version of a newspaper you read! (Make sure you recycle the newspaper. heh.)

We can't keep putting band-aid's over the problem. We can't keep frivolously pumping our money into things that bring us no added value. I say, if you can afford nice meals out once and a while, go for it. If you can't, stay home and whip up something in your own kitchen.

Thriving Off Two Hours of Sleep Per Day--For Life?

This guy makes some interesting points about sleep.

He says that we waste a whole lot of time with our traditional sleep method of 8 hours at night (or 4 or 5 for most of us...), because the most important part, in fact the only important part, of our sleep cycle is the REM cycle, which is when we have dreams. This is when our brain actually is rejuvenated.

He suggests breaking up our sleep, or "hacking into our brain" so that each time we fall asleep, our brain is expecting us to only get a 20-minute sleep session, so it sends us straight to REM, straight to rejuvenation. Do that enough throughout the day and you can trim out all the unneeded hours of unconsciousness.

It is true that my best, most vivid dreams always come from those little cat naps I take in between this or that activity, and I always wake up feeling refreshed from them.

Maybe I will experiment with this over Thanksgiving Break or something. That way if I screw up and don't "fit in all my naps", I won't end up crashing and sleeping through an exam. Or falling asleep on the metro and waking up in Silver Spring at midnight on a Tuesday night.

The Fructose King of Condiments

What coal is to our atmosphere, sugar is to our bodies. The silent killer, in a sense.
I think that is basically what this man is saying...


Granted, this is nothing new. People have been talking about high fructose corn syrup for the last couple years, actually, long enough for the high fructose corn syrup industry to rally up its own troops in response. (Gotta love America.)

It is hard to deny, though: sugar is what is making America (and Americanizing nations) fat. And hypertensive. And tired. And depressed. And most of all, STILL hungry.

It's almost all because of sugar. And not even just the sugar we put in that occasional batch of cookies. Even the healthiest of us ingest fructose every day without realizing it.

I did a quick inventory of my roommate's and my kitchen, which has been deemed "empty" by our friends. The Kraft Light Sicilian Garlic Dressing (35 calories in 2 T, practically nothing) has sugar in it. My Nature's Own light wheat bread has sugar in it (albeit very little). The FIRST ingredient listed (therefore making it the most highly used in the item) on the box of Nutrigrain Bars is high fructose corn syrup.

And, alas. My beloved ketchup. Since I have been old enough to eat solid food, my mom has been telling me that ketchup is awful for me. She avoids the condiment like the plague. I have to hide how much I use it, like some junkie, whenever I am around her. She looks at me with this look that says, "I can't believe I raised a daughter who eats ketchup."

I inspect the bottle. She's right. Ketchup is 15 calories per tablespoon (ask me if I ever just have one tablespoon--the answer is no.) Ketchup is 100% carbohydrates, 4 grams of it, all of which come from sugar. I am looking at approximately 16 grams of sugar per day in my diet, just from ketchup (don't judge me).

I don't know, guys. I can deal with being pale, but now no ketchup either?


Fine. Ketchup, you and I are going to have to take a break apart from each other. Maybe forever, we'll see.

Practicing What I Preach

So I started writing a column for The Scene section at The Eagle this semester. So far I have written five. I have gotten a few compliments on them from people other than my mom, so that is encouraging. I even got a few emails in the first couple weeks.

I like writing columns, because it basically allows me to talk about whatever I want to talk about, kind of like a blog, but do so in a more 'legitimate' way, in printed form, in a newspaper. Also, I always bring in real research, whether it be from an interview or from the Google machine, and I always bring in my own personal connection to whatever topic is at hand. This is easy for me to do with health topics because frankly, I have done and tried it all. Good and bad, healthy and unhealthy.

It's the unhealthy things I have done that I like talking about most, which is what I did this week. When I write about my mistakes, I think it shows I'm not perfect, just like my readers, just like everyone. None of us are perfect.

[That's another thing I like about blogs, you can get off on mini-tangents and it's OK because there's no word limit.]

Anyway, I am particularly nervous, but excited for my most recent column about the dangers of tanning, because as a person who has gone tanning since the age of 15, I always knew it was bad for me, I just chose to ignore that fact. Now, it's kind of like, grow up and get over yourself. I'm not invincible and on top of that, I don't ever want to have my skin look like my mom's friends' down in Florida. Yuck.

So, in a sense, my column has been about being the change I want to see in other people. Sort of like Gandhi said. If I want my readers to change, I have to change myself. Clips aside, experience aside -- I think that is where the real benefit of writing this column will lie.

Not enough photos.

I admit defeat. As much as I love photography, I simply do not love it enough. I have not been taking enough pictures lately and I can't keep updating this blog with photos from long ago. Or even just ago. If I want to try to keep a daily blog, or even one I can update once or twice weekly, I will have t0 write about more things.

From here on out, this blog will be more like a traditional blog. I will live my life. Things, events and people will come into it. I will report back on what I think about things I enjoy thinking and talking about, which include but are not limited to: health, the environment, sustainability, financial responsibility (see this letter to the Post for a bit of my take on this topic), journalism, new media, relationships, love, personality, and food. And any and every place those things may intersect.

I am excited. Motivated. (Not busy.)

By the way, I re-titled this blog. Here is the backstory: When I was a little girl, whenever my parents would be talking about something, I would pipe in with questions or my own commentary. I was precocious. (Or annoying? I was notoriously known as Kell from Hell. On bad days.) Anyhow, whenever I tried to butt my way into grown up conversations, my dad would look down and say, "No comments from the peanut gallery." I never knew what this meant. Until recently when I researched the meaning of the phrase. Now, I am older, I have learned a thing or two. I feel I have made my way out of the peanut gallery. And I've got a couple cents I'd like to throw into this tangled web of the Internet.