Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet

BY KAT

I just got back from a trip during Spring Break, and I'm feeling really inspired.

There were a lot of challenges to my psyche, but I'd like to focus on one: a book.

The book is called "Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet" and I only got halfway through it because it belongs to someone else and I was borrowing it--but even just the first half is really amazing.

One part in particular caught my attention. The authors go to Brazil, and meet up with members of the MST, a group dedicated to re-dividing land, taking land that is not being used from rich landowners and re-allocate it to poor landless who would use the land to feed themselves. When asked about how he can continue with his work, one of the persons interviewed has an interesting response.

He said that people need to be shaken out of the naive belief that nothing will ever change, that they are incapable of making change. This idea is something that is taught to them from childhood to keep things from changing, to allow people in power to stay in power. Maturity, he claimed, comes when people shed off this naive belief that they can do nothing, and take the responsibility to do something.

Isn't it interesting, the author (Franes Lappe) notes, that in the USA we have the opposite idea: the people who believe they can change things are the ones who are "naive," and with maturity supposedly comes cynicism and a sense of powerlessness, that nothing you can do will ever matter and therefore you shouldn't even bother.

Reading this made me feel really, really happy. I believe in activism; I believe in people gathering together for a good cause; I believe in the feminist movements of the past, and I believe that one cannot just wait for someone else, someone "better" to get the job done--that if I don't do it, I can't expect someone else to, and the likelihood of it happening is slim. I'm tired of cynicism; I believe submitting to the belief that things won't change is admitting defeat and pushing away personal responsibility to do what's right.

I can't wait for my $3 copy to arrive from bigwords.com, and I think everyone should read this book :D

Blog copy-paste.

BY KAT

I receive a lot of blog emails, and two stuck out at me this time that I thought would provide interesting reading (for those of you who may be bored or searching a method of procrastination)

This first blog is about how pop culture has been "sympathizing with pimps"--

When rappers Three 6 Mafia won an Oscar for their song "It's Hard Out There for a Pimp" in 2005, it further diluted the ugly reality of pimps, turning them into a pop-culture phenomenon, writes Human Trafficking guest blogger Michele Clark. It might seem funny, but glorifying pimps at parties and awards ceremonies endorses the modern slave trade, and we should be fighting rather than emulating pimp culture.
Is it still hard out there for a pimp?

This second one is concerning a weird environmental practice: killing mountain lions to allow more deers to thrive, so that hunters can kill more deers. Twisted logic? I think so.
WTF 101

I put the links because I think these people are much more educated in the subjects than I am, and have already made their blogs--so they're likely to be far better than any re-hashed version I could come up with.

Inventing an Illness

By KAT (aka Frog)

Does that time of the month make you irritable? Bloated? Full of mood swings? Does this occur to you every month? Well, guess what--you may not be suffering from PMS, but rather, PMDD (premenstrual disphoric disorder)!--And guess what, there's a treatment!

Or so sellers of Prozac would like you to think.

When Prozac's patent was running out, they were somewhat desperate to find a way to keep selling it. Their solution: give it a new name--Sarafem; paint the drug without changing the internal material a new color--from green to pink and purple; find a new target audience, preferably gullible--women; and at last, make up a new sickness: PMDD.

What surprises me the most is that they somehow got away with it--Prozac is not something to be played--in my opinion, Depression is an over-diagnosed condition in the USA, and there are many other ways that would be more effective at treating it. Side effects of Prozac are very real and very dangerous, especially if someone takes it with other drugs--such as coffee. I was on Prozac for awhile, but then I had to stay up late for a test and drank a few teas--and WHAMMO, stuck with a Panic Attack that lasted an hour. As it turns out, I love coffee much more than prozac, and have since discontinued any kind of drug for depression.

For more on Sarafem:
http://www.youtube.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3xqCtDdNNQcom/watch?v=b3xqCtDdNNQ

Introducing the Northernmost Californian...

Hello, my name is Kelli and I am likewise honored to be in this group of bloggers. Thus far Kyla is our common link, and rightfully so: from the moment I met her, I knew there was little doubt that she was not only passionate about the world and her journey in it, but also about making connections with people. I am a thirty-six year old wife and mother of two, and while I was Kyla's high school English teacher, I believe we are all at the age where we are peers now.

A little about my background may be in order. I was born and raised in southern California, in a conservative bedroom community north of San Diego, nestled between three towns with military bases. My hometown gained notoriety in the 1990's for the schoolboard's opposition to sex education and the teaching of evolution, and is much the same today. I escaped after high school to an area more in keeping with my liberal views, and further molded much of my world view through my many experiences at UC Davis as a part of a demolition crew, peer counselor, Women's Conference volunteer, and individual major (Cross Cultural Women's Literature.) I became an English teacher and married after college to a wonderful man, and our dreams became each others'. While we have lived all over northern California, we now work hard at building our dream of family and home on a little piece of land at the north end of the Great Central Valley.

In my professional life I have fulfilled all goals but one: to get my Master's degree. I am now learning a great lesson: in my rare year out of the classroom, I am able to meditate on the feminist conundrum of "having it all" and being super woman. I am working to strike a better balance between work and family, between living the life that I want to live and giving to the people I want to give to as well as myself. I am a part of this blog because of Kyla's invitation, and also because I care deeply about many of the issues thus far introduced and discussed. I am a part of this blog because I enjoy writing and the open exchange of ideas, and look forward to the promised rants and discussions we have here as we explore the London-Cali Connection.

This little piggy went to the ocean...

I think PETA would be perhaps 8 million times more effective if they used advertisements like this:

Kingsford Goes to the Beach

PETA-peeved

By Kat (aka Frog)

I really, really hate PETA. (people for the ethical treatment of animals)

It's not that I have something against animal rights or vegetarianism; on the contrary, I am a vegetarian, slowly moving towards veganism, and I think the current system of animal exploitation to get meat is really horrific, on an animal-rights scale as well as on an environmental and human-rights scale.

But PETA really gives us vegetarians a bad name.

I was inspired to write this rant as I'm working on my paper for my anthropology class, the prompt being, "who are you?" and my response being, "A vegetarian."

To me, one cannot be a vegetarian without also being an environmentalist, a believer in human rights and civil liberties, an active participant in the political process, and someone who otherwise challenges the traditions and expectations society as a whole lumps onto a generation. For me, this challenging of the status quo is intricately linked with my existence as a female; I challenge the world's belief that eating meat is a necessary component of a good life and I challenge the stereotypes and expectations tied to my gender identity and my class.

PETA however, does not apparently agree with my idea of vegetarianism as a "challenge" to existing social norms--they pose naked women in their advertisements to encourage people to go vegetarian, on the premise that "no one will listen to our message unless we sell them sex." Why is it that "sex" always has to be a naked female, and not a male? Why is it that their message sounds apologetic, as though they know what they're doing is wrong, but they do it anyway to supposedly compete or fit in with the barrage of other advertisements we're faced with all the time.

Who is really going to pay attention to animal rights when women's rights are being undermined? Is anyone going to pay attention to the message of the advertisement when they could salivate over a human being turned into an object? It seems to me that by including "sex" in their advertisements, they actually glamourize the products which they try to condemn--if they had pictures of hurt animals, in my opinion, their advertisements would be more effective.

This is a strategy PETA's been taking for awhile, and this frustration against them has been slowly festering for awhile now. I was looking PETA up to help show in my paper that not all vegetarians are the same, and the brief search for more information about PETA was enough to inspire a rant. Their superbowl ad was supposedly so sexist that it couldn't even get aired--but there is speculation that was what PETA was after.

While I was browsing that page and filling up with ire, I saw another link that showed they at one point dressed up like KKK members to compare an organization which selectively breeds dogs to the KKK. Of course, the organization that selectively breeds dogs doesn't rape, torture, maim, or slowly kill the animals with which they work, which shows once again that PETA is merely interested in shock value and not facts.

It's your fault, PETA, that when I tell people I'm vegetarian they think I'm part of some freakish cult; it's your fault that when I say "I don't eat meat" I'm treated as though I'm a child going through a cute rebellious phase that I'll grow out of when I grow older; it's your fault that people think vegetarianism is a joke.

You're a bunch of hypocrites.

Outraged at Prop 8

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

As a Californian, I'm especially outraged that Proposition 8 recently passed, banning same sex marriage. This is not only unconstitutional, it is a breach of human rights and human dignity.

How is it that a heterosexual couple can feel justified in ordering a member of the LGBTQ community to a life without love? "God made me straight and He made you gay, so I get to enjoy my sex and my love, but your challenge is to remain celibate for life." Yeah, that's not bigoted.

And IF homosexuality is a choice, what's wrong with that?

Gay couples are certainly not the downfall of the family. Divorce is. Gay parents will not be the downfall of their children. Abuse and neglect and bad parenting and divorce and intolerance will be.

Separation of church and state. I believe in that. If a religion does not want to recognize gay marriage as legit, whatevs, that's up to the sect. Don't marry them in your church. But making it illegal is breaching minority rights.

I believe in this life we each have a different path to happiness. If you find something that brings you a bit of happiness, follow it. It is right.