I have just downloaded Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire from the library. I’m so excited!
If you’re not familiar with Michael Pollan, well, join the club! I ran across his work recently through another blog or two and can safely assume that we share a common belief in the role and purposes of food, “nutritionism” and the “American way”.
From his site:
“Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires – sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control – with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulop, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, the plants have also benefited at least as much from their association with us. So who is really domesticating whom?”
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On another note, I’ve been reading John Robbins’ Diet for a New America, which has convinced me to purchase eggs & milk from local dairies instead of brick & mortar stores. I’m really starting to feel that the dollars I deliver to other businesses are more important than the votes I place at polls. Don’t fret; I still vote, but it’s the daily vote with my dollar might be a more immediate method of distributing my opinion across the land.
This is only capitalizing on my steadfast opinion to not shop with big corporate machines that deliver their fundraising dollars to political parties that choose to oppress rather than liberate and dumb down rather than educate.
Shop local. Shop quality.