Friday, August 16, 2013

Good Things

I seem to be going through a dry patch as far as blogging is concerned. Leah recently wrote about her ambivalence around showing stuff she's crafting, and I feel similarly about writing about...well... our life. But I wanted to try, because today we got an unexpected gift certificate for Amazon and I wanted to say a massive THANK YOU to whoever sent it- I felt like we're extraordinarily, supernaturally taken care of, even when it comes to somewhat frivolous things like cameras.

My time away in Greyton was very good, not only for the PhD. Being away from the boys was also awesome, and I came back happy to be reunited. Eug and my parents did well without me, and Eli is breastfeeding as much (more?) as ever.

I guess I wanted to acknowledge that we're going through a time where we feel super blessed, and that I'm very grateful for it.

On a totally unrelated note, today I went to a talk in which I learned that turkey tails (fatty, gristly meat that the U.S. consumers don't want) are "dumped" on the Pacific island food markets, contributing to obesity. When Samoa in particular, tried to legislate against it, they came up against the WTO. There were a bunch of other examples of similar dumping. I'm sure there's a post there, but I don't know where to start? Sustainability? Health? neocolonial stuff? the WTO (neocolonial stuff)? So I'll give it some time. Feel free to jump in!

3 comments:

CB said...

Fun fact. You know those 'authentic African' lapas all over with thatch roofs? Most of the thatch is water reed imported from England, due to bizarre - o trade regulations.

Concrete Gardener said...

ha! I learned recently that most of the cheap supermarket chickens in SA are from Brazil. Same thing.

Darren B said...

Hey Jo:

Glad to hear that you had a nice time away. I'm sure the reunion was hug-filled.

With regard to our "dumping", I'm reminded by an article in the Guardian, which talked about how while America is using less coal, we're exporting a lot more cheap coal to other countries.

Great we're polluting less!

Not really, because now we're dumping all that cheap coal around the world, so our neighbors can pollute. Anyway, maybe not as disgusting as turkey parts, but same principal.