Don't Look Back

 When I was little I used to love a television show called The Greatest American Hero. It was about this high school teacher named Ralph Hinkley (played by William Katt) who was out one night with his girlfriend Pam (Connie Selleca) when an alien ship suddenly swoops down out of the night sky and shoots a bright beam down onto their car. I don’t remember the exact details but basically he came away from this interaction with a bright red superhero suit that held many powers he could barely control or understand. I remember it as being molto cool with its shiny red boots, waist length black cape, and futuristic emblem emblazoned on the chest.

There was a third character, Bill Maxwell (played by Robert Culp), who was an FBI agent and was always needling Ralph to put on the suit and help him capture criminals. The problem was that Ralph was a bit timid around danger, afraid of heights, and too busy teaching. He was terrible at flying and was subjected to numerous crash landings each week. In the end he would always wind up helping Maxwell and the bad guys, of course, were always nabbed. They were the type of criminals who could never shoot straight and surrendered rather easily.

I loved this show. I loved it enough to let my mind wander and pretend that I had superhuman strength myself. I longed to fight crime. I even used to imagine how cool it would be if I were a teacher, just like Ralph, and let my kids call me Mr. H. Years later I got the Mr. H thing down but now instead of fighting crime I have settled for giving disapproving looks to people who throw their cigarette butts on the ground.

This past week I heard that The Greatest American Hero was on Netflix and that you could watch it on your computer without even having to get the DVD delivered to your house. I was pretty excited when the popular theme song rang out from my laptop…

Look at what's happened to me,
I can't believe it myself.
Suddenly I'm up on top of the world,
It should've been somebody else.

Believe it or not,
I'm walking on air.
I never thought I could feel so free-ee-ee.
Flying away on a wing and a prayer.
Who-o could it be?
Believe it or not it's just me.

But then I started noticing a few things. At first it was Ralph’s perm. His golden locks bounced everywhere when walked. And when he talked. And, really, when he breathed. Could a superhero really have such floppy hair?

The next thing I noticed was that he wasn’t all that believable as a teacher. None of the kids were learning anything. Instead, they were all just hanging out and talking. I recognized one of his students as Eddie from Eddie and the Cruisers which was pretty cool but seeing that he couldn’t act what-so-ever it left me wondering about the credibility of that movie too.

Soon, Agent Maxwell showed up and pulled Ralph away from his teaching duties to go to San Francisco to transport a key witness in an important mob case.

“We’ll put this scum bag away,” he promised.

My shoulders dropped. Did he really just say that? Scumbag? This was getting a little embarrassing. Soon Tricia walked in and started watching with me. I had already made such a big deal about how great this show was and now felt as though she would finally see me for the dork I am. But then she stayed and kept watching right alongside me. I’ve heard the best way to increase your chances of having a lasting relationship is to marry someone similar to yourself. This doesn’t bode well for her!

Soon Ralph left for San Francisco with Agent Maxwell. You might wonder what was to become of his teaching and his students. Luckily, it was all good because his girlfriend stayed behind to work with them on a Shakespeare play. She would just step right in and be the teacher.

Really?

The nail in the coffin was his superhero suit. The black cape with red piping suddenly looked awfully theatrical – more fitting for the Phantom of the Opera than a crime stopper. Worst than the cape, was the belt. I hadn’t remembered the belt at all. There, in the middle of this shiny red suit, was a dull gray belt. It looked as though it was made of felt.

Felt!

I’d like to say it got better from that point but it didn’t. The music was corny and the plotline was ridiculous. I’d also like to say I stopped watching but I didn’t. I’m no quitter.

This experience led me to wonder what other pieces of my past – things I once loved or even worshiped - would not stand up to the test of time.

I thought of making a list of them but soon found that this was kind of a depressing task. There were a lot of embarrassing skeletons in my closet.

Sometimes, though, you can’t keep that closet door shut. The kids recently found some old pictures of me. I was quickly reminded of half-shirts, mullets, and even denim shorts. You can get rid of old CDs that no longer fit your evolving tastes but pictures, they are forever.

I imagine the people, places, and experiences from our past are probably not as we remember them now. Our memories are skewed because they have been filtered by the eyes, mind, and heart of who we used to be. I, quite obviously, was a seven year old boy with terrible taste. Some things, I guess, we never outgrow.

Family Stories - Part Two

This is the continuation of an earlier family story post (found just below).

My father had stories, too. I wonder if it’s an inherent part of being a male that makes you want to tell stories. My high school wrestling coach used to tell us all the time, “Twenty years from now, when you’re sitting in a bar, no one’s going to care how you did in Mascoutah or Cahokia or Alton. All they’re going to want to hear is ‘How’d you do at state?’” Even then I knew he was wrong. I was pretty sure no one would ever care about any of it. At best, some guy might listen in and offer up a “Huh, isn’t that something?” only to ensure that you’ll half-listen to his own lame story of supposed athletic prowess. But I guess he was right about one thing. We’ll always want to tell the stories.

Not a single one of my father’s stories were ever about a great accomplishment. Instead he told stories of angry sisters and even angrier commanding officers. Over the years he probably told me dozens and dozens of stories from his childhood but I can only remember a small handful now.

There was the time he and his brother John and cousin David went out into the woods. He grew up in Arkansas and, from what I imagined, was surrounded by thousands more trees than people. The three of them used to get into trouble all the time. They grew up in a time and place where kids seemingly just disappeared for the better part of each summer day. So long as they made it home for dinner in one piece there didn’t seem to be too much concern for where they had been or what they’d been doing. There were a whole host of stories that began this way, with them heading off into the woods. However, the only one I remember involved a snake. A really big snake. Unlike me, who grew up in a city and afraid of most living things, they were country boys and fearless. My uncle John reached down and snatched the snake up by the tail and proceeded to violently beat its head against a tree until it was dead. I can’t imagine why in the world he would do this other than to fight the boredom of growing up in rural Arkansas. Perhaps that’s why the story stays with me. Because I just can’t understand it. Years later, when I would sleep over with his son, my Uncle John would come in and set his black leather belt on a chair if we got too loud. It sat there all night. Long and limp, just like a dead black snake.

Another story that I enjoyed much more involved a carefully placed doll, a rocking chair, and a long piece of string. My Aunt Elaine had the misfortune of growing the only girl in a family of three boys. Although she was oldest, it did not shield her from what must have been years of cruel taunts and pranks. In this particular story she came into her bedroom one night only to find an unexpected form sitting in her rocking chair. Slowly, the chair began to rock – on its own – and she screamed. She tore out of the room in a panic and headed straight to my grandparents. All these stories ended with the boys getting into trouble but never seeming to care too much.

My dad also told of the time his company was ordered to stay out of the Mess Hall because it had just been mopped. They were only days away from boarding a plane for Vietnam and he decided he really needed a candy bar from the vending machine – in the Mess Hall. Sure enough, he was caught. His commanding officer not only reprimanded him but physically assaulted him in doing so. He wound up being held back from his flight because another officer had caught word of what had happened and was requesting an investigation. My dad wound up going later on another flight. What started as a funny story ended quite differently. Everyone on his original flight was killed.

The only other story I recall is that when he took my mother out on their first date they went to a restaurant so greasy that you slid right in through the door. At some point he looked at her and told her he was going to marry her. Given that he was rarely a serious guy I can only assume she thought he was joking. But he wasn’t.

And that’s it. My four stories. Well, there are actually fragments of a few others. He overslept and missed my birth… He also forgot, once, to give my mom a phone message. Someone in her family had died and she found out days later from someone else... He begged my grandparents for a trumpet. They went out to get him one and came back with a piano instead. He hated it and referred to it as “the trumpet.”

Looking through these few stories I remember, I realize now that none make him look all that great. Despite possessing all the kindness and patience in the world, the stories he told about himself generally (though not always) made him look like an idiot or a jerk. And it occurs to me that my own stories are much the same. Self-deprecating.

I wonder if you learn just as much about a person from the stories they choose to tell as from the stories themselves?

Family Stories - Part One

When I was in college I would stop by my grandfather’s house on the way to class every few weeks to pay him a visit. My grandmother had died of a stroke a few years before and, although my uncle now lived with him, he was alone for much of the day. His cataracts had failed him many years earlier - and the subsequent surgeries had only served to make his vision far worse –so he spent his days largely confined to his house in near darkness.

His only outings were to walk his daily mile. For this he had mapped out a path from the front porch, around the oak tree in front of the flower beds, back up the driveway, and then across the sidewalk to the porch again. It was a small route that the average person could easily have walked in under fifteen seconds but took him at least three times longer. He had calculated the distance of this walk and determined that if he did fifty-seven laps it would equal a mile. And that’s what he did. Fifty-seven laps. Every day.

The daylight probably did him some good given that all he could see inside his house were the blurry outlines of the furniture and walls. I would have expected him to keep the curtains and blinds open to see better but he didn’t. No matter the season or time of day he kept them sealed tight. The house sat in grim darkness. Perhaps it wouldn’t have helped anyway.

To read something, he needed the print to be produced in three or four-inch block letters and held up close enough to his face to smell the ink. Even then, there was a little guess work to be done. Next to his telephone sat a notebook with important phone numbers written with this over-sized script, in case of an emergency.

He spent much of his day listening to CNN or slipping on headphones to listen to books on tape. An organization for the blind sent him new tapes each week. He particularly enjoyed the historical pieces. I assume he listened to each book only once but to hear to him recount the lives of the Wright brothers or George Meade in excruciating detail would leave you to wonder if perhaps he had them on a continuous loop. It’s odd but, at eighty-two years old, his mind had slipped in so many ways yet he was a living encyclopedia when it came to telling stories about our nation’s history.

These were not the only stories he loved to tell. He also enjoyed spending what seemed like hours-on-end talking about the people, places, and events from his own life. His own history. I didn’t recognize many of the names, and only a small handful of the places, so I generally received these stories with mild interest. In all honesty, they bored me.

He would sit across from me in his chair just talking away about something from the deep past while I sunk into the couch letting my eyes wander around the room. Shelves and shelves of books, mostly mysteries left behind from my grandmother’s vast collection. And owls, too. There were owls everywhere, also left behind. Not one for decoration and unable to see any of it anyway, I’m sure the idea of changing a single thing in that room over the past four years had never occurred to him. The only changes I was able to notice, as I sat distracted from his stories, was the fact that a small number of things were missing – taken by siblings, children, and grandchildren as mementos of my grandmother.

Eventually my attention would move to the cat. I don’t remember its name so much as its smell. Probably the smell came from the neglected litter box that sat in the back of the pantry but I would forever associate it with the cat itself. Small and gray, it seemed to have a never-ending flow of hair tufts falling out; leaving themselves to blow across the faded brown carpet- stained from years of grandchildren, dogs, and, yet, other cats. As with each the cats that preceded it, my uncle had played rough with it from the time it was a kitten and now the slightest movement of a foot or arm would serve only to invite an ensuing attack of claws and teeth. I sat motionless. Except for my eyes.

It was easy to let my eyes explore the house while my grandfather continued on with his stories. I was nothing more than a faint blob in his distant sights. “Huh!” I would respond from time-to-time. “Really!” It was rather like being on the receiving end of a one-sided phone conversation. Sit and let your mind wander, providing an occasional mutter of comprehension or surprise to satisfy someone else’s need to be heard.

All-the-while, my grandfather sat and shared stories about the Browns and Bakers and Hasses that stretched across Middle America from North to South, Michigan to Arkansas. He talked about marriages and children, sicknesses and deaths, good times and trouble. He shared his history.

I didn’t realize it at the time but he was sharing my history too. And now, I couldn’t tell you a single solitary piece of it.

All I have to tell is what that house looked like. How it smelled. How I wished more than anything he would turn down the television and open up a window. How vicious those cats could be.

Everything I knew – everything I cared about – came from the present. Not the past.

That’s how youth works.

Moving On

One of my very favorite writers, Rick Reilly, recently published, according to his own calculations, his one millionth word. Even more impressive is the fact that he’s not counting his eleven books or two screenplays. No, this total has been accumulated from just his columns for Sports Illustrated and, later, ESPN The Magazine.

His most recent column, the one that pushed him over the million-word mark, is also his last for ESPN The Magazine. It seems that with success comes new opportunities (i.e. more and more television). He is stepping away from what has been his regular gig for many years (long enough to be named National Sportswriter of the Year twelve times!) to try new things. As he explains: “I'm going to try my hand at a weekly 90-second essay on "SportsCenter" beginning this spring. I'll still write longer pieces for The Mag, write my ESPN.com column, host "Homecoming," cover golf for ESPN and ABC and anchor "SportsCenter" once in a while.” For a man who once wrote a piece detailing how much of his week’s work was spent lying on a couch or putting golf balls around his office while trying to think through his next column, it seems he’ll now be quite busy.

I’ve used Reilly’s writing quite a bit in my classroom over the past few years. He has one of the most easily identifiable voices in print today. He flawlessly creates essays that can either touch your heart or raise your blood pressure while remaining playful with heaping doses of humor and sarcasm.
His final column is titled Someone Stop This Man. I’ll share just the first few paragraphs. It’s amazing but you can get a full glimpse of his playful, yet highly effective, style in just the first one hundred seventy-four words. Enjoy.



Someone Stop That Man (Excerpt)
By Rick Reilly, ESPN The Magazine, March 10, 2010

I am not generally a spiteful man. I pat toddlers' haircuts, donate to the glee club and mostly greet the world with open arms.

But when I think of coach Greg Wise of Houston's Yates High School, I become darker than Johnny Cash's closet.

The things I would like to do to Coach Wise would curl an executioner's toes. For starters, I'd like to see him dipped in seal butter and dropped into a polar bear's cage.

Coach Wise is the hammerhead who believes it's his right to toast other basketball teams by 100 points. Sometimes more. He thumped Lee High School this season by 135 points, 170-35. Wise's team was up at the half, 100-12. And full-court pressed to the very end!

Wise is to sportsmanship what tsunamis are to beach chairs. So far this season, he's beaten teams by 135, 115, 99 (twice), 98, 90 and 88 points. Trying to get to 100 points in a crushing of Westbury, his players intentionally fouled to stop the clock.

I'd like to clock him.

Lonely

I received an e-mail this week from the father of a former student. His daughter, Elaine, was in my third grade class just a few years ago. Elaine was a small girl - with an even smaller voice - who had the ability to look up at you, wrinkle her tiny freckled nose,and offer up a genuine smile that could fill your heart with enough warmth to last an entire day. She was as kind and gentle and thoughtful as any person - big or small- I've ever known.

About half way through the school year Elaine told me that she was going to be moving to Ohio. Although she had no idea when exactly this move was going to take place she was certain that it was coming before the end of the school year. She said it would most likely be right around our Spring break in late March.

The thought of Elaine leaving was very difficult for me. While each of my classes tend to be pretty close, this particular group was extremely so. We considered ourselves a family - a fact that was oft-repeated by many of us to those outside our classroom walls. I remember thinking ahead to what her last day might be like - saying goodbye to such an important part of our daily lives - only to find my nose begin to burn and my eyes start to water. I found it was easier to avoid thinking about it at all. Somewhere inside I hoped something would change and that she would stay.

That hope was dashed a few weeks later when Elaine came in and declared, during Class Meeting, that she would be leaving two weeks before Spring Break. Quickly I began doing the math in my head and calculated that she had only about six or seven weeks left with us. As she finished talking about her move she lifted her head to look out at everyone and we could see that her eyes were red and that small tears were slowly falling down her cheeks. The room became silent and we all looked around unsure of what to say. I wanted so badly to say something reassuring or meaningful but I feared I wouldn't be able to get the words out without crying myself.

The weeks passed and no more was spoken of Elaine's move. Probably many of the kids - as kids are so good at doing - had put it behind them and had given it no more thought. But, for some of us, we were making a conscious effort not to think about it. Eventually, though, the time came. Soon, Elaine's final day was less than a week away. Unable to put it off, I had to figure out how we were going send her off. I knew it had to be something special and heartfelt. Something she could take with her and never forget. Something that would let her feel how much we loved her and would miss her.

After days of wracking my brain I finally decided to take a favorite book of ours, Patricia Mac Lachlan's All the Places to Love, and have each of the kids sign it. Inside, I wrote a letter to Elaine explaining how I felt that our classroom was a place to love as well and how important her role had been in helping this to happen. During her final minutes in our classroom we all sat in a circle and passed the book around. As each child received the book they made a wish for her. One that she could take with her to her new home and to her new school.

I sat and listened to all the kids sharing their kind thoughts and warm wishes and I began to worry about what I would say. I had been thinking it over for days but, as tends to be the case for me so many times, hadn't come up with the words that would convey how I felt. Soon the book was to my immediate right and then passed into my hands. Elaine, by this point, was already crying fairly heavily as her good friend Michael wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She looked up at me, held my gaze, and waited.

I wiped away my own tears and said, "Elaine, my wish for you is that you have a teacher that loves you with all their heart."

And then I broke down.

Elaine began crying even harder and I reached over, put my arm around her, and kissed her on top of her head.

"Ewwww!" Drew called out. "Mr. H, if I ever have to move DO NOT do that to me!"

Suddenly everyone started to laugh and the heavy cloud was lifted. Some of the kids came over to hug Elaine and give her small gifts to remember them by. I walked her down the hall to After Care and said a final goodbye.

"We'll keep in touch," I promised her. "You'll see. You can't get rid of us that easily!"

We did, too. Every few weeks we wrote her letters to tell her all about what was going on in the classroom. Once or twice she wrote back and we passed her cards and letters around for all to read.

Finally the end of the year came. Knowing that I was going to follow this group to fourth grade, saying goodbye in June wasn't too bad. Probably because it wasn't a "goodbye" at all, but a "see you later." We made plans to meet over the summer to read books at the library and to have dinner together before the school year started back up. Everyone happily marched off into summer comforted to know what lie ahead the following Fall.

A few weeks into the summer I was back at school meeting with my new fourth grade teammates. We were hard at work making plans for the coming year when the phone rang. I answered it and was told that I needed to come down to the office. Elaine's grandmother had called and wanted me to call her back. Something had happened.

My heart sank. I was suddenly filled with fear. I rushed down to the office so that I could borrow some privacy in an unoccupied office. I dialed.

"Hello," a voice answered.

"Hi. This is Chris Hass. From Bookman Elementary."

"Oh, hi Mr. Hass," the voice said. "Thank you for calling back."

"No problem," I said. I wasn't sure what to say. Should I ask if something's wrong or just wait for her to say it?

"Well," she said. "I'm sorry to say that Elaine's mother has died. She committed suicide a few weeks ago."

I felt myself go numb.

"You know she was very sick," she explained. "She had her highs and her lows and had really been struggling lately."

Elaine's mother had suffered from bi-polar disorder.

"How's Elaine doing?" I asked.

"She's doing alright," she answered. "But she's confused. And sad. And angry."

"I can imagine," I said. But, of course, I couldn't.

"It happened just before Elaine's birthday," she explained. "Which made it even worse - if that's possible."

"I am so sorry," I offered. "Thank you so much for letting me know. Let Elaine know I will write her very soon."

"Thank you," she said. "You meant so much to Elaine and she really misses all of you. We thought you should know."

We chatted for a few more minutes but most of the rest of the conversation has vanished from my memory. There's a good chance I lost focus as many thoughts swirled around in my head. Later that evening I wrote a letter to Elaine. For certain, it was the most difficult thing I had ever written. What do you say to a child who has lost a parent?

The following year I received a envelope in the mail from Elaine. She had written me a really sweet card and included her fourth grade school picture. Although a bit bigger, she looked just the same. She explained that she really liked her school and still loved to write. I took the card to school and shared it with everyone.

It had been nearly a year since I last heard from her when her father e-mailed me this past Sunday. He explained that she is doing well in the fifth grade. She talks about us from time to time and credits much of her love of writing to the things we did together in our classroom. I would like to believe that's true but Elaine was the type of kid best served by pointing the right direction and getting out of her way. She was more than capable, and motivated, to find the answers on her own.

Her father explained that she just finished up a poetry study in her classroom. She had to write and publish five different types of poems and then select one to share with her classmates and all their parents during a "Poetry Slam." (What a great teacher!)

Elaine chose to write and share a poem about her mother. It was written in swirling lines of text that flowed gracefully about the page. I cannot do the visual element justice here but I just have to share the text.

Lonely
Why?
Why have you left?
Into the sun
gone with the wind
forever
never seeing you again
except in my memories.
Will I see you
again in the future?
This I can't
be sure of
but hopefully
we will meet again
so that I may
hug you again.
But until then
I'll look back
into the past
at all of
the fun
that we
used to
have
together.
Your love
still
remains within
me.
So maybe,
just maybe,
you
aren't
gone
and you
haven't
left me
all
alone
forever.

I doubt there are many other professions out there that allow you to truly live the way teaching does. Every year there are so many amazing kids with remarkable lives and thoughts and questions and feelings. They become a part of you. They make you a better person. Elaine made me a better person.

For that I am thankful.

Hungry for Change

Tricia and I watched an interesting documentary this weekend titled Food, Inc. Featuring authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma), the film highlights how "Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment."



The film shared:

* Approximately 10 billion animals (chickens, cattle, hogs, ducks, turkeys, lambs and sheep) are raised and killed in the US annually. Nearly all of them are raised on factory farms under inhumane conditions. These industrial farms are also dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming.

* Some of our most important staple foods have been fundamentally altered, and genetically engineered meat and produce have already invaded our grocery stores and our kitchen pantries.

* In January 2008, the FDA approved the sale of meat and milk from cloned livestock, despite the fact that Congress voted twice in 2007 to delay FDA's decision on cloned animals until additional safety and economic studies could be completed.

* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million Americans are sickened, 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die each year from foodborne illnesses.

* High calorie, sugar laden processed foods coupled with our sedentary lifestyles is growing our waistlines and contributing to serious health issues like diabetes, heart ailments and cancers. One-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese.

The entire film was very interesting but I must say that the details of how animals are raised and slaughtered were quite disturbing. On each "farm", hundreds of thousands of chickens are raised in complete darkness as they are fed a diet that fattens them up beyond the development of their own skeletal and muscular structures. Many of the chickens wind up unable to even lift themselves or walk. Yet, the "fatter, faster, bigger, cheaper" mentality chugs on as companies such as Tyson and Perdue control the industry and the farmers.

I did a little research after the film to find out what our area offers in terms of supporting more responsible and sustainable farming practices. I found:

Organization
Carolina Farming Stewardship Association
CFSA's vision of the future is that healthy and thriving communities of farmers and consumers in the Carolinas are supported by local and organic agricultural systems that are environmentally responsible, economically sound, and socially just.

Farms
Caw Caw Creek Pastured Pork
CCCPP strives to preserve traditional methods of agriculture, like masting pigs in oak forests and growing them slowly gleening crops like peanuts and English Peas, while introducing modern improvements where they are appropriate, like water lines and electric fencing.

Stores
Earth Fare, Divine Street
Earth Fare provides a healthy selection of naturally-raised and organic meats. None of their meat products contain antibiotics or hormones and Earth Fare guarantees that all of their animals were raised on a strict, 100% vegetarian diet. Most of the livestock, particularly the bison and cattle, receive a grass-based diet only to be finished on grain for 60-90 days before processing. However, none of the animals are ever confined to a feedlot, as all grain is administered on pasture. Beyond the usual suspects of chicken, turkey, beef, and pork, Earth Fare also features more exotic or hard-to-find meats such as ostrich, venison, and various poultry breeds.

Rosewood Market and Deli, Rosewood Drive
Products and Production Methods:
Beef - Grass Fed, No Added Hormones, No Antibiotic Use
Chicken - Free Range or Roaming, No Added Hormones, No Antibiotic Use
Dairy - Organic, No Antibiotic Use, No Added Hormones, 100 Percent Vegetarian Feed
Eggs - Organic, No Antibiotic Use, No Added Hormones, Free Range or Roaming, 100 Percent Vegetarian Feed
Lamb - No Added Hormones, No Antibiotic Use
Pork - No Added Hormones, No Antibiotic Use
Turkey - Free Range or Roaming, No Added Hormones, No Antibiotic Use

Farmers Markets
There are fifteen farmers markets located within twenty miles of our house.


Tricia read a book last summer that detailed how a family became fed up (pun intended) with how food was being produced in our country. They noticed that nearly nothing they were eating came from their own community - not to mention their own country. The impact of this seemed too much for them so they decided to make a change: eat only foods that they knew the very farmer or field from which they came. To do this they moved to Virginia and began growing a good portion of their own food.

While I don't see us becoming farmers anytime soon - far from it - I do think there's something to be said about being more responsible in terms of selecting the foods we eat. Each time we purchase something at the grocery store we are casting a vote; telling the companies and corporations which foods we are willing to support and which we are not. While this might seem minor, it is important to note that Wal-Mart has made changes in the some of the foods they sell (milk without growth hormones, for example) based on the voices of their customers. Obviously they were motivated by sales but the final outcome is still just as rewarding.

So I'm left to think...

If Wal-Mart can welcome change, surely there's hope for the rest of us.