Phew!
I’m working on a feature story about a guy who has tested milk for nearly 59 years. And it’s a stinky process.
This guy goes to area dairy farms and weighs the milk each cow produces. He also takes a sample, which is sent for testing and then all the information is stored for each individual cow on a computer. It’s basically a really good management tool for dairy farmers that tells them how to breed cows, when to sell them, et cetera et cetera.
But while on the farm with him, I must admit it’s a bit smelly. Because it’s still chilly, the cows are kept in dry barns where they will be “happier” and produce more milk. This means they are much, much dirtier. They lay in their own poop and are caked in it. If you know anything about cows, they poop all the time (or at least is seems like they do based on the cow plops I hear while on the job…). The odor even seeps into my hair and clothes, which means I come home smelling of cow and get whiffs of it if I don’t take a shower right away.
So when on the site where the milk tester is doing his job, the farm owners show us around the place… which means stepping in poop. Now I’m not squeamish by any means. The only thing that really freaks me out is parasites that prey on humans, so stepping in poop that is basically digested hay and grain is no problem. But thank God I thought to change into my crappy scrub shoes. They REEK of cow manure and I don’t honestly know if I’ll be able to keep them after the story is done. Thank goodness they were already old and ratty.
But it’s interesting to see the process. As kids, my sisters and I drank a lot of milk. It was one of our favorite drinks and from what I remember, we had it with nearly every meal. I still love milk and I think chocolate milk is the best drink in the world. I can’t remember it, but my parents took us to a farm that demonstrated where milk came from and they thought we would never drink milk again. I never think about where milk or other food comes from. I just go to the store an pick it up out of a cooler or off the shelf. It’s somewhat odd to see the very first step of the process in getting my milk to the store because I quite simply never think about it. It makes me wonder where some of my other food comes from and how it starts out.
Just something to think about.
The Glass Castle: Read this book!
This book had been on my reading list for eons. Jeannette Walls writes the memoir of her complicated and oddly strengthening childhood in this book that finds itself on reading lists everywhere.
I found myself routinely shocked by the situations the author’s parents forced her and her siblings into. Her drunkard father, Rex Walls, keeps the family moving so often, the kids are hardly able to form attachments. They are each allowed to bring only one thing with them on their moves, leaving everything they had accumulated (a small number of things at that) behind. But I was also struck by the fact that though her father made her childhood a living hell, she still loves him and it shows in the book. For a long time, Jeannette still hung onto her father’s old dreams that had also become her own.
Her mother is less hurtful, but certainly no less responsible for the condition of her children’s lives growing up. She is quite a free spirit, always wanting to make her mark in the artistic world. She looks at her children’s struggles as necessary to reap the so-called benefits of hardship. Rose Mary Walls is a self-proclaimed “excitement addict” and never seems to struggle with the constant relocation. In fact, she doesn’t seem to have too much trouble with even the constant lack of money and food.
It says something about human nature and the ability to love those that hurt you. Even when the author finds her way out of poverty and into New York City, she still finds herself quite concerned for her parents’ welfare. When the same people who never really fought to make her childhood all it could be follow their children to the Big Apple, she still finds herself looking after them and trying to make sure they had a place to stay and enough to eat. Though the majority of people certainly love their parents just for the simple fact that those two people are their parents, I know a few people who have completely severed contact with a parent with far less reason than Jeannette Walls had. It makes me wonder if forgiveness is something that has been a little forgotten over the years.
Though parts of it are heart-wrenching and difficult to take in, I really enjoyed reading this memoir. There’s something about the perseverance of the human spirit despite all seemingly impassible obstacles that always makes for a good read. I can only hope to have a pittance of the strength young Jeannette Walls had as she was forced to shoulder burdens far beyond the abilities of even some of today’s well-off adults. It’s one of those books that I feel pretty much everyone should read at least once, and saving it for a time when you think you can’t keep your nose above water can prove inspirational. If a child can make it through hell and back, you certainly can, too.
Please share this!
The power and control wheel
Okay so I want to blog about a certain situation that happened, but I won’t out of respect for the person whom I absolutely love more than life itself. So instead, I’m posting this here for all to see.
This power and control wheel was passed out in my women’s and gender studies class. I was shocked at how many of the categories and tactics I’ve seen used against people I love and care for. And I know some of the people I’ve shown this to since then have also been floored based on their current relationships. So I’m putting it out there for all to see because everyone – man, woman or child – needs to know.
So many people don’t understand that domestic abuse isn’t just about physical violence. There’s so much more to it, and this wheel sums it up completely in my opinion. And since I’ve also made a few realizations close to home, I’m putting this out there with no hesitation.
It honestly makes me ill to think that there are people I know and love being controlled like this. And it makes me even more ill that they search for ways to justify it, even though they admit it’s wrong. I know it’s not easy and that I can’t speak from personal experience about the difficulties of abusive relationships. But because I love those people so much, I’ll do everything I can to help them get out of the situation until I literally can do no more.
Please show this wheel to all of those you know. Education is the first step toward lessening domestic violence and this wheel is truly a HUGE eye-opener. Don’t be passive. No one ever deserved to be treated that way, regardless of past problems or indiscretions or how much they try to justify it. And this wheel could be the tool to start the process of getting those you know out of such situations.
The newspaper’s demise?
I’ve recently been working with my college newspaper, The Eastern Echo, to increase its readership. In this day and age, it’s hard to compete with all of the electronic media that deliver news on an almost instantaneous basis. Our 3-day per week publication does also put everything online, but we just don’t see the readership. It has been declining for years and it’s become a huge worry.
I think a lot of it is going to come down to design. We’ve got to find ways to drive students and community members to the paper instead of to other sources like other print media, TV and the Internet. Newspapers are just so boring compared to the heavy graphics and full color of the electronic media. And since we’re not in a Harry Potter storybook, the photos can’t move in print like they can electronically. Print media seems to be falling behind more and more, creating an ever increasing gap between print and electronic.
Do I think newspapers will die out? No. They’ve survived radio and television. Why wouldn’t they survive the Internet? It’s a matter of adaptation. Newspapers and the like have got to face their fears and redesign. They’ve got to offer something that can’t be found on the Internet, radio or television. Newspapers need to localize like no other and tailor the format of their stories to their readers specific needs, likes and wants. They’ve got to go full-color and pump up the graphics. A reader doesn’t want to dig through the full story unless they’re fully invested in it. So newspapers have got to provide a ton of ways for the reader to get the same story with as few words as possible.
There are people doing it. I’ve mentioned The Northwest Iowa Review before. That particular paper has been quite successful, even with electronic media being the much flashier, and admittedly stronger, competition.
My newspaper is cutting down to 2 publications per week. We just don’t have the resources to keep publishing 3 times when the third issue of the week is read so little. But we are also looking at going full color once our printer installs a new piece of equipment. But as helpful as that may be, we can’t get very far unless redesigning comes into play. Words on a page make everything gray and boring. We need more and better photos along with graphics and sidebars. If we are able to redesign successfully, we will draw more readers and, in turn advertisers. We will start making more money through that process and then can afford to make the paper an even more successful publication.
Would you rather…
Post your answers in a comment to the following “Would you rather” questions:
1. Lose your sight or your hearing?
2. Find out your significant other is related to you by blood or that he or she used to be the opposite sex?
3. Live on the moon or on mars?
4. Be trapped on an island with your arch-enemy or by yourself?
5. Have the ability to fly or x-ray vision?
6. Be cursed to talk constantly or be constantly itchy?
7. Continuously walk barefoot over up-turned push pins or completely lose a limb?
8. Have dinner with your worst nightmare or sleep with a giant slug?
9. Be hit over the head with a hammer or drop a cinder block on your foot?
10. Be damned if you do or damned it you don’t?
Racial divides? Think again
It’s always seemed curious to me how people refer to races. I’m just about as white as they come without being albino. How does that classify me? And why in the world should I be classified by the fact that I’m white? What the hell does race mean anyway?
Race is a socially constructed idea. There’s actually scientific proof that there are less genetic differences between “races” than there are within a certain “race.” I can only think that the idea of race was placed into our society in order to deem ourselves superior to others. Africans were enslaved for supposedly being inferior. Millions of Jews were slaughtered for supposedly being inferior. There have been genecides and wars over such a silly concept as race.
But race is such a part of our society and our collective thinking that it’s hard to get past. We’ve been raised knowing that there are significant differences between “races” – a false ideal that much of the world still believes. Here at home in the USA, the main difference seems to continually be white versus black. But few people know that since slavery and the interactions between masters and their slaves, our genes have intertwined. Most, if not all, Americans have African American blood running in their veins, even if only a drop or two.
Think about it.
Definitions
Speak: v. to utter words, talk; speak out (or up) – to speak clearly or freely; speak to – to respond to, deal with, etc.
Yourself: pron. a form of you, used as an intensive (you said so yourself), as a reflexive (you hurt yourself) or with the meaning “your true self” (you are not yourself today)
Speak yourself. Think about it.
