Food tradition

Blog post assignment: Write about a tradition / food / value within your religion / family.

Originally I was stumped on what to post for this blog. I wanted to talk about my Romanian heritage. Growing up in a strongly Romanian Orthodox family I was always around bread and the wine. Due to a family member recently passing away I wanted to talk about how we use food in our funeral ceremonies. During our funerals we will have rings of callah and bottles of wine. The callah is a type of bread and each ring will have 3 candles placed in it. One for the father, one for the son, and one for the holy spirit. My family will stand and the immediate family (husband, daughters, sons, and grand children) will be the ones that place their hands on the bread and the wine. We all then create what looks like a web where we have to touch the shoulder of the person in front of us so that way we are all connected to the callah. The callah in this sense represents the person body. The family members will hod the bread and move it up and down. It Romanian culture this symbolizes the persons spirit leaving the body, we will also do this with the wine to show that they will have a safe trip up into heaven. As we do this we sing memory eternal in Romanian ( memorie veșnică). This is how we honor those who have passed and how they are not with us but they are still here in our memories. We then will break the bread and drink the wine. We have to kiss the cross of the priest before we partake in eating the bread or the wine. We also repeat this ceremony at the 6 weeks of the family members passing, again at the 6 months and once more at the one year mark. 

Global Warming -- My opinion on the presentation

I remember my first time really hearing about Global Warming was in 8th grade when we watched Al Gore's movie "The Inconvenient Truth" and this movie for me as an 8th grader went right over my head. Watching this presentation on Monday I learned a lot of things that I had never known about global warming. Volcanoes cool the earth but yet so many people blame them for being a cause of global warming. So many people do not acknowledge that humans are the main cause of this warming. Just as the presenter said if it wasn't us then what is it? The Earth has been warming at an extremely fast rate, but this solar change has decreased. So what else would be the cause? Us.
I was shocked at how much a 5 degree change would change the world around us. We know what it would be like with a change that is 5 degrees lower than what it is, with that we would be under a sheet of ice. But we don't know what would happen if the Earth warmed up 5 degrees. Also we all have heard the "buy fuel effective cars" but when the presenter put up on the screen how good these cars are and their MPG rates, it shows just how much better these cars are. I think that these are great but I do want to point out that other cars that are not eco-friendly, I have a non eco friendly car but I get 33 miles to the gallon.
I think we need to do something about this but I do not think that there is an end in sight. Why? Because there are so many people that do not know what is going on. Or there are people that do not think that this problem exists. They do not want to admit that we are harming the earth. I think we need to educate people with the facts. It is the people who are older, they do not think that it exists. because they didn't have to deal with it when they were younger but now I do, and my children will have to as well.

A place at the table

Sorry I have had a lot going on... I am finally getting around to posting this. 

I attended the showing of the film "A place at the table" at the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Kalamazoo. This film is a documentary that investigates the hunger experienced by millions of Americans, something great about this movie though is that it proposes a solution to the problem. It shows America's inability to acknowledge the fact that we do in fact have hunger in our country. The film also talks about food insecurity and how many Americans do not know where they will be getting their next meal. Yet it seems that the leaders of our country think that the poor have it easy, but they are surrounded by food insecurity. Nearly 50 million Americans live in homes that do not have the ability to afford enough food. 
There are now more than 40,000 such programs in America, and roughly two-thirds of them are food pantries, where parents and their children, the elderly, and working people obtain free groceries. But these programs do not have nearly enough supplies to get food out to all the hungry people in the country. The film was quick to point out what is currently being done in the favor of stopping hunger in a country where there's more than enough healthy food to go around. Food banks, charities, and pantries, which have increased from two-hundred nationwide to a whooping 40,000 in thirty years, have been turning up to temporarily combat the problem, but a functional, long term solution is still in the works.  
The documentary also talks about something that we have in class "food deserts," which are areas where places that carry healthy food packing nutrition, vitamins, and necessary fulfillment don't exist for miles on end, leaving the only resources to be from local stop-and-shops that stock up on food filled with unhealthy fats and empty calories. 
This movie was very interesting to watch while at the Alamo because it is a movie theater where we can get food brought to us in our seats. I watch people watch this movie about hungry Americans and they would be eating food through the whole movie like it was nothing. It made me realize how much we don't really even know. Others did this without even thinking about it, the fact that they were watching a documentary about food and they were eating the whole time. 
Overall it was a very eye opening film. 

Global Warming

Effects of climate change on agriculture
Agriculture is outside his area, he has looked at a lot of agriculture.
Average global temperatures: 30 second video put out by NASA. Year will change, colors indicate if they were warmer or cooler during the reference period (1950-1980).... Most places were cooler in 1984 than in 1980. This is what the thermometers tell us. Goes through 2012. We all know that the earth is warming.
First period of warming: 1900-1940
Starting in 1970 - current period of warming, much more rapid.
This winter in Michigan has been unusual.
Natural Variation cannot explain current warming.
The cause of the warming is not the same both times.
When people say it is due to natural variation they say that the earth is receiving more energy from the sun.
Recently, while Earth had been warming fastest solar change has decreased.
This warming period is different than any in the last 800,000 years.
        1. Its at least 10-20 times faster (Than in the last 8 cycles)
        2. It's happening while solar input is decreasing.
>95% of current warming is due to human activities
        1. Fossil Fuels use (85%)
        2. Cutting down Forests -- Takes away carbon sponge (15-20%)
If we remain on our current course future climate change will be severe
Will a 5 degree temperature rise matter?
YES.
We don't know what will happen when it was 5 degrees warmer
If it is 5 degrees cooler we know what happens because it makes a huge difference for life on earth.
About 40% of the Earths surface is used for cropland and pasture
-- About 25% of land surface is too dry for agriculture use.
UN food and agriculture organization estimates 1.02 billion hungry people worldwide
How might climate change affect agriculture?
      1. Increase yields due to
          -CO2 ferilization effect (corn is not effected, but it does effect soybeans, rice, and wheat)
          -Longer growing seasons
      2. Decrease yields due to
          -Increased temperatures
          -Increased droughts
          -Increased flooding
          -Decreased nutritional quality
          -Pest problems
          -Decreased irrigation
Much of the US has been experiencing a severe drought
Severe rainstorms have already become more common.
Flooding is also likely to reduce future yields.
Crop pests are likely to increase with warming
To some extent adaptation measures can mitigate the adverse effects of climate change: Irrigation, planting dates,
Next time buy a fuel efficient car.
Wind power in Michigan could supply 12 times current statewide electricity demand
A small portion of the Sahara desert could supply all of the world's electricity.
The true costs of wind and solar are already lower than coal-generated electricity.

Los Amigos

I love mexican food! It is my guilty pleasure, I could eat it all day every day. When I saw that Los Amigos was on the list of places I could go for this assignment I was excited. I have only been here one other time. I went here because this is the only place that I could find on the list that my friends would go to. We got there and the environment is warm and inviting, it was easy to have conversations with the people I went with. You can sense the difference in culture, this is because at more American type food places there is a much more fast pace feel. Where they have you come in, they bring you drinks quickly, then they take your orders, you are in and out within an hour. At Los Amigos they give you a lot of time to get drinks, then they don't make it feel rushed. We noticed it about halfway through when we were just chatting and had a relaxed environment.
I have been to Spain, this is not authentic food here at Los Amigos. It is Americanized mexican food. Loaded with cheese and a lot of fat but it was delicious. I know that the food was also made in American proportions, the burrito was the size of two of my faces. This is not the actual proportion of food for mexicans, they eat smaller meals and we give them the ideas of all the types of foods. My roommates boyfriend is Mexican and he came with us and was correcting all the food and was saying how it wasn't authentic and he could make better mexican food.
Overall I loved my trip to Los Amigos! My roommates did too, it was a great place for a great night out

to dinner where you don't want to feel rushed. The proportions are large but as a college kid on a budget you have left overs! Also the prices are not that bad, it was 9.99 for a burrito that was huge. It seems pretty cost efficient.

Video Game Discussion

I wanted to look at the deeper meaning of the commercials in GTA 4. I know that these things are making fun of real life things that we actually have in America. The sad part to think of with this game is even though they are making fun of these real like things, but this in a way is product placement. Although it isn't advertising for the actual food options it is still planting them in your head and making them think about what these commercials are really talking about. We notice product placement in movies and TV shows but we don't think twice and now it is happening with video games. I know that these product placements don't seem like a big deal, but you could really think that maybe Taco Bell, KFC, and Burger King endorsed or payed GTA to place their products. I think even if they are making fun of the face that these things are happening, the reality is these things ARE happening. 

If we didn't listen to the commercials in the game we would not have noticed what they really were about. It shows that children pay just as much attention to the sounds as they do to the action that is going on in the game. We talked in class about how Stick of Truth makes fun of people who are obese, but how is GTA any better? It isn't they might be poking fun at how bad it is for you but they are still putting the thought of taco bell and these foods we see gamers eat into their heads. I think that this is important to look at. In the game there is an attractiveness level that puts a shame on eating these foods but in the game you still eat the food. It shows that even though you eat it once it wont affect you. To many gamers they can look at it as well my character is attractive and I can eat whatever I want. This is something to look at too! People get so involved in these games that the characters become their whole lives. I think that this is a hue problem because gamers can sometimes live their life through the game and not be able to see that this is not a healthy thing to do. I think that it is important to realize this too. We could have one thing playing on the screen bashing it but it still puts the idea of this food in their head without realizing that this can still be just as detrimental. 

Do you think that even though these commercials are mocking these industries, that they still plant the idea of this fast food in the gamers heads?

Video Games

Border Patrol Game: made in 2002 
What interpretations can come across from this game?
The Jewish star is a sign of anti-semitism. It could show that Jews run the US, or show symbolism from the genocide in WW2. It might be symbolic of what we are doing to the Mexicans coming across the border.
How does this depict migrant workers?
That they are not good enough. People can make jokes of this game, they think that this is a great way to let off stress. That they are not worthy enough to be in our country.
What if the setting and people changed?
I think that the reactions would be the same same, most people feel like they are sensitive to the way the characters looked. If it were African American people there would be much more of an uproar. So many people brush immigration under the rug and find it a problem so they decide that its not a big deal. The people this game do not have that much of a voice but if it were a different group of people they would have a lot bigger of a voice. It could be related to demographic area, such as people in Texas will like this game more than people in Michigan. There is a game made by a neo-nazi clan called ethnic cleansing, made in 2002. This is a PC game that people would buy. This is not okay. All you do is shoot other races. This game was known as the most racist game in history. This game did not get popular! This game portrays that ethnic people are not wanted, students can see these while in school.
Bioshock: 2007

They try to make it okay to kill the children. They say that the little sisters if you save them your weakness is your heart. This is a sexualized child, they make the little girls okay to kill. So many people saw them as an unlimited resource. You can either lead people to a better life or you can kill them and ruin the world. Similar to the jungle because you can fire everyone who makes the money for the family. Little sisters and big daddy... gender stereotypes, sounds like a pimp with big daddy, like a pimp and their hookers. The good ending, all the little girls they end up killing the main boss. You find the submarine, you take the little sisters and you get married and they are your children. You see all the little sisters at your funeral and are happy. Negative ending: the little sisters help you, you kill all of them. It is a little kid and yet it graphically shows us killing them. You rip out the part of her that holds the atom. They go on a rampage and kill everyone in the bad ending. Was the number 1 game in 2007.
South park game: Stick of truth 2014 -- March
Makes fun of child obesity. You are the new kid on the block, all of your power ups are junk food. The only healthy thing in the game in water. It shows that this is what the children use to fuel themselves. You can buy all of these things at vending machines if you need to. The whole game is full of it so you do not need to use it right away. Shows how fatty food can be pushed onto our children. They make taco bell the root of all evil and they put a taco bell to cover up the alien. They are portraying that hey its a fast food place but safe to eat even off the ground. You can see all the sexual things, and there is nothing that is private. This is a game that you buy for 60 dollars. The game is rated M. Yet parents are the ones that buy video games. You can see everything on youtube. So many people can watch the whole game on there. These videos have had over 1 million views a day. The game was censored in Europe, middle east, africa, russia. The windows version has not been censored. The German game hides anything of the Nazi party. On one side south park is a satire. On the other hand how far can this mocking go?
Grand Theft Auto: First release October 1997
Majority of the class has played or heard of it. Not much popularity until Grand Theft auto 3 series. very loosely follows the godfather, set in vice city florida. 3 different games. This game is based loosely off of real places. There was not a "white" character until grand theft auto 4. Focused mainly on xenophobia, and food in grand theft auto four. Very detailed game worlds. They parody american culture. Cluckin' Bell. Mainly based on Taco Bell and KFC. They talk about enhanced meats.... they talk about how it was taken to court about how bad the meat was. They play advertisements for this in the games. The games are meant to make average people feel empowered. They say screw you to all the people who would protest these places. What is the quality of the food that we get from places where we can get food for a dollar? This is questioning what we do and how we all actually eat. This can relate to the show that is man VS. food. They have you eat huge burgers and people can die from eating all this food. It can address the fact that we DO NOT have portion control in America. We love gluttony. We don't know how to control how much we eat. In the game it shows how much the food at these places cost. In the game the healthy option is the most expensive food ideal. There is an attractiveness rating in them, they say the slim ones are the ones that are attractive in the game. Borders a distopian society. They have something called the statue of happiness. It is surprising because there is so much of this stuff on our TV now, and we don't even pay attention to them.  There is awareness of the failure of our culture but no one chooses to do anything. What is the idea of the American dream? Niko came from a european country to have lots of money and women and this is not what happens.

Matilda: eating sweets and sinful nature, pleasure from powers. TV dinner and the culture of that.
Cheaper by the Dozen: Breakfast scene where they do the assembly line

Blog post options: 

1. Look at Burger shot commercial and clucking bell commercial and analyze them. Go deeper than it's making fun of America. Find the "Why" it is taking this approach. Propose one question. 
2. Find a satirical approach to food/food problems (something not presented in class) and analyze it. Find the "why" not just the "what"

Edible story group discussion

We think that the main character Robert was hit in the head and that is how he lost his memory and his sense of taste and smell.Aguesia is the lost of taste and anosmia is the loss of the sense of smell. The main character in the book has this, he loses his job and he becomes a food critic. He is losing feelings for his wife and she him. 

Then there are fitness freaks who are obsessed with muffins with a substance in them. They created a muffin club that are obsessed with losing weight. 

 There is a politician that leaves his fiance who is a mexican woman whose slow cooking apparently holds him hostage from his politics. -- He had sex with her and she will not let him leave until he has tried menudo which is a soup that takes a long time to cook. 

There is a couple who have very different food tastes -- he likes fancy things, and she like beer and hot dogs. They are very in love but it seems to bother Emma that she has a different food taste than Howard. 

There is a woman that is afraid of cremes brulees and she thinks that everyone in the world is trying to poison her with them. 

Edible stories

When I started off reading the book Edible Stories by Mark Kurlansky I felt very lost and found it hard to get into. When reading the first 50 pages I felt that they weren't connected in a way. I think that the "novel in 16 parts" is a lose way to tie a bunch of different stories together very loosely. The common theme through the first 50 pages was food, as it should be seeing as we are in a food related class. The main character is Robert. In the first few pages of the book they explain that Robert has lost his memory and wakes up with his foot in a hole. He also lost his sense of smell and sense of taste. I could not imagine losing my sense of smell and taste, I love food so much. I mentioned the large relationship with food in my first blog post. When he works on retaining his memory and making a life for himself, he decides to be a food critic, and everyone values his opinion. How would they value his opinion because he can't taste the food that he is eating. This seems to confuse me.
In another chapter there is a woman who is dating a man who  is seemingly perfect for her. The only problem is that this man loves fancy food, while she would prefer to have a hot dog and a beer. I do see why this can be a problem because this would make it hard for th
em to go on dates to get food. I think that to some people this difference wouldn't be a huge deal. Yet if you have a large love of food then it will be very hard for you to share something that you love with someone who doesn't understand why you love it.
I think the book can get better but I am not sure if I like it or not yet.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games.... where do I begin? Katniss, the narrator, the main character, when she describes herself to us through the book you can't help but root for her. Although as a class we discussed that we knew she was going to be in the hunger games. I find it interesting that as readers we can't help but root for her, but through the whole story Haymitch is telling her that she needs to be personable for people to root for her. The idea of having the hunger games is just awful to me, is man that self centered that they cannot remember a war, or what happened to district 13? That is like forgetting what happened in World War 2! Forgetting what we did and the things that happened to people. The hunger games is supposed to symbolize everyone fighting against each other and that no matter what almost everyone dies. Katniss Everdeen decides that in the end she can go against the system in the hunger games, which are set up by the capitol. There is usually only one winner in the hunger games and it goes to those who have trained their whole lives for this. This would symbolize those countries that work all their lives to be warriors. To me this takes you back to Athens and Sparta, where they trained boys all their lives to be warriors. This was thrown out because this didn't work, so why would we bring this type of society back to districts. In the end Katniss will throw off the system by trying to save not only herself but the boy from her district as well. No one in the history of the hunger games has shown compassion, it is because so many are trained to kill. To the capitol this is not seen as an act of compassion, it is seen as an act of defiance. 

To me this one act of compassion inspires people. It obviously is going to inspire people. People are sick of watching people they know die at the hands of the capitol. This act of compassion shows just how wrong the capitol has been. They see that this is used as a tool to keep the down in fear of the capitol. 

Burned Out....

This is my post that can be about anything. It's halfway through the semester and I am sure that every student is starting to feel this way. I think Professor Webb can even tell, he is letting us write a blog post on whatever we want. I have always wondered how do we stop students from feeling like this? There are some of us.... myself included, that go to school all year around. Some take summer classes, and are seriously in school all year around and their longest break in the year is winter break. Many college students don't go anywhere for spring break, but even if they do most are loaded down with homework. We would think that professors wouldn't want us to get this burned out feeling. Over break I have 3 projects, I have 3 due this week. The burn out rate for college students is extremely high during the spring semester because students get spring fever. This spring fever can help to bring out procrastination in students as well. I think since the month of February started I have seen 40-50 Facebook status's about spring break, it was still a month away at that time.
Now don't get me wrong I love the topic of food in ENGL 1100 and I want to do something to help the cause but I feel that my brain is just circulating the same ideas now. It is so hard to be passionate for a cause when you feel like you can only bring 5 ideas to the table. I love to be creative and help out but I feel like my brain is so fried.
I think this is something that people experience on a regular basis in every aspect of life. I think people get burned out from their jobs, and get burned out from everyday life. I think thats why we all set our sights so high on vacations, because it is our chance to escape. This is something I think about on a regular basis.

The Jungle Ch 6-13

I really liked that I could continue reading this book without any gaps in knowledge.
I really can't believe that the family had no idea that they were getting swindled. It took their little old lady neighbor to tell them. They now know that their rent will be closer to 20 dollars. We would kill for 20 dollar rent now a days. Jurgis and his family also find out that their new house is made of not so good materials and that it is 15 years old. The fact that Jurgis's wife and his son have to get jobs to even attempt to support the family is crazy. It is because the major wa
ge earners in past families have been killed or become seriously ill. That doesn't say good things about the working conditions in Packingtown.
You see Jurgis's family begin to get sick and not be able to take work off in the start of chapter 7. They have to keep going to work because they need to be able to afford their house. The working conditions only get worse in Packingtown because of the snow and the lack of heat. This causes so many men to become alcoholics. To me this seems like s
uch a bad idea, like why would they want to do this if they know that money is already tight for them. It makes me happy to see that Jurgis will resist the temptation so he can provide a great life for his wife.
In chapter 8 Jurgis's daughter Marjia begins to date Tamoszius, he is a fiddle player and uses his music to liven up this families life. It helps uplift the family and helps them to forget the poverty that they are facing on a daily basis. As the courtship continues, Tamoszius proposes to Marjia and she says yes. They will live with the family in the attic. I know that the time this is something that many people did, but I could not imagine being newly married and still living with my parents. What I think causes this is Marjia's factory that she works at closes down. Also Jurgis gets a cut on his hours. This is something that so many of us can relate to. It's hard when a family member goes through this. They all join unions. To me unions can be a good and a bad thing.
In chapter 9 Jurgis begins to learn english and he will then become a U.S. citizen. This is great because now they cannot look at him as an immigrant he is now in my own opinion their equal. He was before but now they cannot look down upon him, they never had that right but now they should have no excuse. Sadly they still take advantage of him and tell him how to vote and who to vote for. He get's paid two dollars for his trouble but this is not a good thing. He doesn't find out until after he goes through all the voting that he had been used and abused by the man. He learns that his company makes meat that is not healthy for the people, that they are using sick cow meat.
Chapter 10 Jurgis finally gets a backbone and goes to the land lord and asks for all the hidden expenses. He gets the breakdown of all that he spends on expenses for his house. The seasons change, all it does is rain in the spring and in the summer the factory is extremely hot. I really hate how Packingtown works because Jurgis's daughter gets her job back and loses it 2 months later. I mean what the heck? This girl is a hard worker but why not just keep her on. His wife hates where she works because she works with a lot of prostitutes. Jurgis and his wife have another child, a baby boy. They already had 12 mouths to feed, why not make it 13. Ona has to return a week after having a baby, this will kill her health and the baby boys.
In chapter 11 they learn that banks aren't always safe for their money. Marjia puts her money in the bank and then she learns that their is a run on the bank. So for her to save her money in the safest way possible she sews her money into her clothes.
I feel bad for Jurgis and his family in Chapter 12 because Jurgis sprains his ankle and can't work for 3 months, this has got to be hard on his family. He begins to take out his anger on his family. They send Jonas's little boys to go work in the newspaper areas so that they can learn the tricks of the trade.
In the final chapter I have to read, chapter 13, I think it is sad that most of the family is happy when a family member dies. Only one person is sad, I understand that this person was a cripple, but they should be sad that he has passed. Jurgis will not help pay for the funeral. I had respect for him in the beginning but slowly I am losing respect for him.

The Jungle

So this saved as a draft instead of posting last night... oops... sorry guys

The way the book starts is it gives a background of Jurgis and his family. He came to Chicago from Lithuania, while in Lithuania his wife Ona's father had died and left the family in a large amount of debt. The family had lost their farm and had very little savings, this is when they began to speak of traveling to America. Something that was very interesting to me is that Jurgis and h
is extended family (12 of them in total) all came to America. Jurgis finds a Lithuanian man that he had heard had made a great fortune, and this mans name is Jokubas. Really he was struggling to get by, he directed them to an overcrowded boarding house. From there he set out to go get a job. To me this is really interesting because we can see that the working conditions from the beginning were not even that great in America which immigrants thought of as the place of dreams. Sinclair shows how that this fantasy was so childish and that they didn't really know what it was like.
Something that I can relate back to our class is the start of chapter 3. This is where we see Jurgis taking a tour of Packington. He see's cattle all put together and living in horrible conditions just waiting to be killed at the end of the day. It talks about how spoiled and diseased meat is snuck into the actual meat that people are eating. This scares me because how do I know that this still isn't happening today? It honestly made me want to become a vegetarian. Jurgis works for 12 hours a day and makes a little bit over two dollars and he was happy with this. You can also see Americans taking advantage of the immigrants by when they went to go look at apartments the ones they see isn't as nice as the one that is pictured in the advertisement. They did this without Jurgis and they signed a rental for it and it shows just how mean people were then to these workers that do not know about their rights. It's crazy to read because when the lawyer is the guys friend you know that they are going to take advantage of you. Jurgis makes a friend that tells him all about the corruption in Packington. I think this is Sinclair showing America through true eyes.

New RSO

Becoming an RSO:

• Follow the RSO registration steps in the handbook
• Name
• Logo
• Faculty Advisor
• Elect officers
• Leadership positions
• Constitution/bylaws
• There is a constitution layout for WMU constitutions attached
• Equal opportunity statement, we don't discriminate
• We will have to re-register the RSO every fall 

Educate People: 

• Invite people to come give talks
• Educational events
• Can get funding through WSA allocations, partners with them or CAB and will get the name out there of the RSO and event
• Colleges in the US where students go to dining halls, they save leftover food and provide it to those in the community in need. 
• This can help WMU to become even more sustainable... by having less waste

Things to do:

• Make people aware
• Food pantry on campus
• Other food needs & other issues in the community
• Create an RSO
• What is being done?
• What more can we do?
• Food waste
• Food availability

Cajas de carton

I can relate to the beginning of the article because for a summer I took my campers to the strawberry fields and you never really see anyone out picking them in August. It makes me sad that the workers work sun up to sun down and barely make any money. These are the people who work the hardest and yet they make like no money. It was 12 hours a day 7 days a week every week, how are these fair labor conditions?
It is really sad how they move out of their shack and into a labor camp, when you hear labor camps it will trigger the memory of World War II and labor camps. They had holes in the walls where they live, his father would plug them. It hard to read and know that this is something that is going on in our world today. These working conditions are things that occur today in 2014. They also had only one mattress, this is something that we as Americans don't think of, we think that it only happened during the great depression, but it is happening now as well.
The working conditions where they work, man I don't know how they do it. The workers are doing work out in weather over 100 degrees. Water makes them sick if you drink it so fast, this is
because it is so hot. Something I didn't take into account is that these workers are young and they aren't going to school. We are taught now that you can't really get anywhere in the work force without a college education. When he got to go to school it was mid November. As an educator this makes me so sad, because by mid November these classrooms have formed a community and they have started learning and building on the foundations that the students have. When Francisco comes into school almost 2 months late you can imagine how far behind he will be.

Modest Proposal: Lack of Healthy Food

Disclaimer: One of the biggest problems that our class has discussed is the lack of healthy food. We were challenged to write in the style of Johnathan Swift's Modest Proposal on one of the problems identified. This is a satire!

We know that the increase of these fast food places has helped to increase the lack of the healthy food that people will eat. So many people will pick more of the fast food because it is cheaper. Also this lack of healthy food will help to cause the people who do not eat healthy will become obese. Well I propose a way to fix this is to increase the price of these fast food options because this will then help us to push the people to start to eat healthier. If we rase the price of a McDonalds cheese burger to 12 dollars then this will help people to go out and buy healthier food. Or if we make the dollar menu at McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell etc. a 10 dollar meal and jack the prices up from there then it will cause all the healthy food to be eaten. I know so many people in America and around the world love fast food, I mean it is right there all the time. But if we raise the prices in the Fast Food industry then we will be able to eliminate fast food places all together.
Yes this will kill millions of jobs, but now it will force those people to go out and get jobs. If they refuse to get jobs then we can take away all benefits, and by all benefits I really do mean ALL of them. This will force them to get jobs or a college degree. Ultimately raising the price of food in the Fast Food industry will help us to get rid of all of the people that are too lazy to do anything with their life. This will reduce the population size significantly! I mean we are running out of space on the earth aren't we? This means that we will have enough resources again and we will no longer be abusing our earth. Also with obesity on the rise this will help slim our country down. So what if you love cheeseburgers, maybe in the end we will tax all fatty foods just so the country can get skinny. If there are those that do not want to give up the fast food and will continue to pay the prices they will eventually run out of money and resources and die. This will also help to make our population smaller so that we can take care of our earth.

This was really hard to write, I felt like I was being very mean.

Guatemala - Malnutrition

Living in the United States today we really don't think about those in need around us. We don't think about the fact that in other countries there are children and adults that are not getting enough food. It only will cross our minds when we see a World Vision advertisement for children in need. There is another need out there besides not having enough food, there is a problem in Guatemala where the children are not getting the right kind of food. Malnutrition, these children are eating but their bones are not getting calcium for the children to have strong bones. Half of the children in Guatemala had chronic malnutrition. Some areas within Guatemala the chronic malnutrition rate is as high as 90%. Guatemala is a very prosperous country is terms of gross domestic product, so why are so many people malnourished?

In 2008 nearly half of the children that are under the age of 5 are stunted in their growth. This issue is close to my heart because my cousins are adopted from Russia and they were stunted as children. The large Mayan cultures in Guatemala are the ones that have the most malnutrition. Yet the largest hunger hot spots are in the places where the civil war was the most intense. Many would say that Guatemala is not just one big country but multiple countries. They would be divided into th
e rich areas and the poor areas. In these poorer regions the malnutrition rates are much larger.

I do agree with the article, malnutrition is not made public unless they have the right picture to guilt people. Yet the underlying issue is poverty! The people of Guatemala do not have the money to get the access to the correct food. The rich communities are the ones that do not have high malnutrition rates. They also don't distribute food to these areas that are deserving. The areas that are in the most need are so isolated that many people even in the country of Guatemala do not know that this issue is even present.

A Modest Proposal

I was disgusted by the ideas that were presented in A Modest Proposal by JonathanSwift. In this satire he proposes that to solve the issue of children being a burden to their parents in poor families we should fatten up the undernourished children and feed them to the rich Irish land owners. Who does this? Who in their right mind would ever think that this is okay?!?!?! Swift goes on to propose that children of poor men should be sold into the meat market at a year old. Sweeney Todd much? I think that even just these two ideas alone are disturbing.

Swift goes on to say that his proposal will combat overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families and the expense of child bearing. He also says that selling children into the meat market will help give these poor families a little extra money. To me this is awful, he is promoting cannibalism and he is promoting selling children for money. How is this a good practice? How is this promoting a good life style? He is encouraging people to eat the children and sell them! We abolished the selling of humans when we abolished slavery, and we thought it was bad then, but swift is saying it should be okay, and that if a person needs to that they can sell their own children.

The author also thinks that this will help family mortality, that husbands will love their wives more. Uhhhh this man had a child with his wife and then sold it, how is this going to make him love her more? I really don't get that. Swift also states that this will help the families to value their children, they are selling the kids because they can't afford them, and then are going to eat them. How does this create value? I mean I guess it gives these children a monetary value if their parents were to sell them, but how would it make them feel valued as a person? It really won't. It will make the children fear for their lives if the family ever falls below or near the poverty line. To me the proposals will stir up fear in these children rather than value.

Overall this really upset me and got me really heated, my boyfriend and I even had a huge conversation over this and how crazy it is.

Loaves and Fishes

I have heard about this organization long before taking this class. The mission of Loaves and Fishes is to help end hunger in the community. I think this is a great trip for our class to make because we have already talked about how at the end of the night places that serve food should give what's left away. We would agree with loaves and fishes in the sense that they want to provide people with good high quality food.
This program has been around since 1982, I think this is something that can benefit the Kalamazoo community, and I'm sure it was a very big help during the recession a few years ago. Something that I really like is that Loaves & Fishes has a program called Grocery Pantry. In 2012, Loaves & Fishes fed nearly 127,000 people through the Grocery Pantry Program. There are 5 different programs in total that I can find on the website under the get help tab.
The main way that Loaves & Fishes gets the food that they distribute is through donations from the community. They receive either food donations or money donations. They are still able to give away 2 million pounds of food annually, and all of this food that they give away are things that are higher quality foods. The best form of donation that Loaves & Fishes can receive is money, it helps them to keep the lights on and keep their buildings staffed. Also as a pre service teacher I found it intriguing to see that there are lessons and quizzes for teachers to use in their classrooms about poverty.
As I stated early I had heard about Loaves and Fishes before, I have donated money to them through many Greek Life organizations. I am going to find this experience very insightful because I will finally be able to see where it is that my money is going. It is a great way to give back, even if you don't feel like you are doing that much you can make a great impact on the life of someone else.

Dinner of Trimalchio

To be extremely honest... I struggled with reading this and staying interested in it. I found myself lost for a good portion of the reading. Overall this passage is about a group of people going to dinner at Trimalchios house.  Trimalchio is not nice towards his guests's he picks his teeth at the table... with a silver toothpick of course! He plays a game in the middle of the feast, and yet no one really seems to care that their host doesn't know what manners are. Trimalchio distracts his guests with all his flashy decorations in his feast. I think that the guest have to wait for Trimalchio to catch up in courses..... this means that he stops the meal for himself, I mean what kind of host does that? Reading that, yes I had to look up some meanings, but I was really upset by this fact.

I found it really cool that one of the courses was a different food with a zodiac sign. I mean I am a libra and it was a bunch of cake and desserts. I love cake and that just was something that made me smile. But this theme of zodiac signs seems to continue through out the entire courses of the feast. This was something we don't really seem to hear about a lot of zodiac signs. 

Mainly I felt that the whole feast was for Trimalchio to show off the fact that he has money and lots of servants. The longer the dinner continued the more I hated Trimalchio! In chapter 49 he throws wine in the face of others and says that they can have whichever wine they want. He also starts to try to talk about myths with his guests and it shows how much he isn't educated compared to the rest of them. He also gets his mythology wrong again in chapter 52... I really think this guy is just trying to show off but isn't really able to do it well.
I feel that his guest just sat there and humored him with his over done feast, but no one had the heart to tell him that he was being a horrible host and making a fool of himself.
I found this really awesome link that explains much of the dinner, it even goes through it course by course! Enjoy guys!

My community and food

I wanted to focus my personal essay on how food helps us to build a community. I feel that this community can start when we are in preschool or elementary school, we sit in our classroom groups

or with our friends and eat lunch together. In those groups we always are trading our lunches for things that we like better. I think this can build a community. Families can build cultures around food, so why can't children build a community around it? This to me was really influenced by going to one of my placements for a class, where I am a lunch buddy for children and I watched them interact while they eat. Seeing them clump into their groups of friends and talk about something other than class is a good thing. But even when children go through the lunch line or pick their food choice for the day they consult with their friends. This to me is creating a community.
I live in a sorority house, we all have built a community around food. We all eat dinner together, it is something that I would not trade for the world. We all talk and laugh and bond, we all talk about how we hate meatloaf or how we absolutely love Tacos. Its a time where we all can decompress from our day. This is my community and I spend so much time with them, but dinner is where we just focus on us.
Food plays a big role in my social life, I think at least once a week living in a sorority house I am asked to go on midnight snack runs. Being as busy as we all are this is one of two times that we have together so we all socialize around food. My house loves to cook and bake so food is a big part of who we are. It makes me sad to know that just because my house isn't a tiny person like a stereo typical sorority that we are called fatties or A-O-eat another piece of pie. Its because be aren't afraid to indulge in somethings that we want. I think that this has also helped us to form a community just because of a negative stereotype that comes from food.

Coffee or Black Gold

I am one of those people where I cannot function without my morning coffee. That is why this documentary was so interesting to me, I wanted to know what my coffee obsession was doing to those around the world. I also was looking for ways to make my love for coffee more sustainable and see if there was a way for me to get it in a better way.

The documentary starts by asking farmers how much do you think coffee costs in the western world. None of them knew, but coffee where they were cost $0.12. It costs them 12 cents for

 coffee, yet in the western world it costs $2.90. The laughter that came from the farmers was shocking, it hit me, why do we have to charge so much for coffee while in other parts of the world coffee can go for 12 cents. We can make 80 cups of coffee from one kilo of coffee, that is just insane. These farmers are coffee farmers, they make if they are lucky $0.57, when they should be getting about $230, why are we doing this? No wonder these farmers don't want to work, or farmers are committing suicide because they want to settle their families debts. It makes me mad as a Starbucks and Biggby coffee fan to know that coffee is going for so little in these places, we charge so much for this but yet the guy who's doing the hard work is getting squat.

The farmers call coffee gold, we hear about it all the time, we see it advertised everywhere. There is a Starbucks inside Targets, and we joke that there is a Tim Hortons on every corner in Canada. Through out the movie you see Starbucks everywhere, the workers in the factories make less than a dollar a day and the World Trade Organization won't do anything to help them, they care too much about the trade than they do about helping the little guy out. We see these farmers struggle and we watch the process that the coffee goes through and yet we cannot seem to wake up and see that we are the ones that are killing the little guy in the coffee industry. 

We need to wake up and smell the coffee

Banana Republic.... Not just a clothing store

When I first started reading my second set of 100 pages in Starved and Stuffed by Raj Patel I was confused because he was talking about Banana Republics, I kept thinking about the clothing store. I wondered if they would still call themselves that if they knew what it could mean to other countries. As Patel points out, bananas were one of the first products to enter into the new food system. Yes the food system and trade treaties that lead to catastrophe for poor farmers.
Something that makes bananas so great is they can survive long shipping periods without going bad, therefore it was the best product to test on. In 1899 the United Fruit Company was founded as the largest banana merchant, but when governments or residents tried to take down the company, it struck them down. One of the biggest incidences with the United Fruit Company is when they accused the Guatemalan President for being a communist because he wanted to buy countries (Click the link and read about the Banana Massacre in Colombia) that went through this same situation with the United Fruit Company, they are not called the victims, they are called "Banana Republics". This term ruins the name of these countries.
their unused (yes, land that was not being used!) and give it to poor farmers and peasants. This caused an outbreak of war! There were over 200,000 lives lost in almost 40 years! All of this because a man wanted to buy unused land to help the people of his country. There are many other
So you haven't heard the name United Fruit Company... did you wonder why? Well it was renamed the popular name that we all know, Chiquita Banana. In the United States we barely acknowledge the horrors that have been caused by the United Fruit Company, the U.S. erased the history that it ever happened. Yet there are so many countries that are struggling to get a reputation back, or recover from the violence that occurred. We all now play the blame the victim game in the United States, I think that the U.S. should be trying to help others too, not just help ourselves.

The United Fruit Co.

When the trumpet sounded, it was
all prepared on the earth,
the Jehovah parcelled out the earth
to Coca Cola, Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other entities:
The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent,
the central coast of my own land,
the delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories
as the ’Banana Republics’
and over the sleeping dead,
over the restless heroes
who brought about the greatness, the liberty and the flags,
it established the comic opera:
abolished the independencies,
presented crowns of Caesar,
unsheathed envy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carias flies, Martines flies,
Ubico flies, damp flies
of modest blood and marmalade,
drunken flies who zoom
over the ordinary graves,
circus flies, wise flies
well trained in tyranny.

Among the blood-thirsty flies
the Fruit Company lands its ships,
taking off the coffee and the fruit;
the treasure of our submerged
territories flow as though
on plates into the ships.

Meanwhile Indians are falling
into the sugared chasms
of the harbours, wrapped
for burials in the mist of the dawn:
a body rolls, a thing
that has no name, a fallen cipher,
a cluster of the dead fruit
thrown down on the dump. 

Pablo Neruda

Stuffed and Starved

On the cover of this book by Raj Patel it says THE HIDDEN BATTLE for the WORLD FOOD SYSTEM, I totally believe that this is the main message of the book. Just within the first 100 pages of the book I really do believe that there is a hidden battle and we need to help it end. A majority of the worlds population is now starving, and there are still a majority of people who are considered obese. This is where I feel the title of the book originates. This is a huge problem in our world food system, but no one seems to have an answer.



Chapter 3 hit me the hardest, it was titled You have become Mexican. As an American we hear about Mexican farmers, and we basically blame Mexico for being poor. We blame it on the corruption in the government and the drug lords, but Raj Patel believes that it is America who should be blames for Mexico being poor. Patel thinks that the problem starts with NAFTA (North America Free Trade Association), when America, Canada and Mexico all entered they believed that this would increase each countries wealth. Unfortunately Mexico's market was much worse off, we put the emphasis on consumers rather than the producers. The book uses the corn market as an example. The American government is supporting its corn farmers so that they don't end up going out of business and the Mexican corn market cannot compete with this, thus causing them to go out of business. This gives the upper hand to the American Corn Farmers while the Mexican corn farmers are down and out! The book made it seem to me that America is a bully and is pushing Mexico around by using NAFTA. In other words NAFTA is encouraging the Mexican Farmers to migrate to the city and it is stated that farmers have found themselves pushed off of their own land. The hidden battle in chapter 3 is more of America beating down the people that they thought they were going to be able to lift up.


Another thing that hit me from the book was the notion of farmer suicides. I know plenty of farmers from my home town and I had never heard of this before now. This is an epidemic that faces much of the Indian farming industry. Patel's book states that in 1990 rural suicide rates in India were 3.9 per 100,000 for men and for women it was 0.6 per 100,000, by 2000 the rate was 6.1 per 100,000 for men and 1.2 per 100,000 for women. That was a 9 year difference, the number of men almost doubled and the number of women doubled, it is becoming much more of a problem. The book tells the story of a Korean farmer, Lee Kyung Hae, his story stuck out to me with how much he went through. He was a farmer and he climbed a fence to be by where the WTO (World Trade Organization) were having a meeting, Lee pulled out a pocket knife he shouted "The WTO kills farmers" and stabbed himself in the chest. Lee did not die because he wanted to draw attention to himself, he wanted to bring light to the problems the Korean farmers were facing, "the plight of Korean farmers". Before there were free markets in India the government used to assist by giving farmers minimum support prices for crops so farmers can know what they were going to get as returns. With free trade the government has turned their backs on the indian farmers and neglected them.

These are the few things that have stuck with me from the first 100 pages of Patel's book. It has addressed many issues that I had never heard of, even though I have previously learned about NATFA and the WTO. I feel that these issues aren't brought to light, at least in the case of NAFTA the issues might not be brought to light because America is being the bully. I know I will read more than the required pages of this book because it is so eye opening.

Food and Me

My family has a culture, its a culture built around food. My mom when cooking dinner on any night of the year would cook for about 20 people. Once I asked her why she did this and she said "I cook like this because I never know who might show up, but I want to be prepared." It was like this everyday and even worse during the holidays. We would have desserts and treats around the house constantly. As a kid this was great because as a child your eyes are always bigger than your stomach. This is where I get to my second relationship with food, it was where food and I developed a negative relationship. This negative relationship was becoming someone who used food as an escape, no I don't deny it, because cooking and baking became more than just culture, they became a bad habit.I gained almost 40 pounds within two years, a culture built around food can be a good and a bad thing. I would not eat healthy food I would eat the things I call guilty pleasure foods. The things I baked or making my own sweet creations, they were never really healthy, they were just an escape. This is especially bad with the obesity rate rising in America, I eventually realized that this negative relationship was causing me to gain so much weight and being in middle school and high school the negative food relationship, between food and me, it became a negative human relationship due to bullying because of my size. I took matters into my own hands and changed my relationship with food, I looked at my culture with all the food, and just changed it to be a healthier one. Food went from being public enemy number 1 to my new best friend. I was able to not only change my relationship with food but my families relationship to it as well. My whole family has now gotten on track and eats healthier now.  I never wanted to get rid of food, but making sure the food was healthy made it easier for me to enjoy the food part of my families culture.