HERD ABOUT IT?

by Ana Grarian

Ana is currently very lonely while her computer spends a luxury rehab vacation with the Geek Squad. This keeps me from posting as well as researching new articles. While I wait with trepidation for my beloved laptop to arrive back home I have been doing some reading.

“Stolen Harvest” by Vandana Shiva is an excellent collection of articles on the “Hijacking of the Global Food Supply” by corporate giants like Cargill and Monsanto. Vandana writes with stunning clarity about the effects of these international parasites on her beloved India and we can see how we have been steered toward choices here in the US which fed the beast. I will never look at soybean products in the same way. Reporting on chemical companies that have renamed themselves “life sciences” industries has shed some new light on what has happened to my Alma Mater at Cornell.

On a far happier note I have also read “Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology” by Eric Brende. Eric and his wife lived for 18 months in what he called a “mini-mite” community. A community that lived similarly to Mennonites or Amish, but was made up of a broad spectrum of people, some like him, who came to learn a simpler life. I was happy to read his self-effacing story of learning how not to wear himself out with the chaos of “normal” life, and his considered understanding of his neighbors customs.

I recommend both books. One will keep you awake with a simple joy. The other will keep you from sleep with night terrors over the fate of our world and its people.