Change

Last Thursday I made a few important (maybe insane) decisions.  For my American Short Story class, we had to read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.  Reading the story before class made me sick to my stomach.  When we began to discuss it, the feeling came back tenfold.  I feel guilty (good job, Ursula! you succeeded.) about the entire situation.  We are all informed of the awful things that happen in the world, at some time or another.  Sometimes it takes films like Blood Diamond to reach certain people, but there aren't many adults in our society who are unaware of horrendous situations around the world.  

My professor started out by saying, "I don't know who made these jeans, but I can bet it wasn't an adult."  That hit home for me and when he started explaining that his wife's best friend from the east coast decided, along with her husband, to only purchase American-made products, a light went on.  They have successfully purchased clothing, gifts and anything else they may have needed since January first of 2012, that was made in America.  I realize our country isn't perfect, but we have to start somewhere and promoting products that aren't made by impoverished children chained to sewing machines is a good place to begin.  I am a little ashamed to say that I used to think, "Well if it's that bad for the adults working in those places, they can leave.  They have minds, they can decide to change their lives."  The fact is that most of them don't; and I got a pretty severe reality check in taking the opportunities in this country for granted.

I don't want to sound preachy, but I'm hoping to enlighten someone else, who may have had the same mind sets.  

The second big decision I made is to not eat meat if I don't know exactly where it came from.  Adam and I are lucky enough to have aunts and uncles with family farms.  Venison is my exception; it's not like people pump a bunch of growth hormones into deer.  It will be fairly easy for us to make this a habit (the eating out part will be much harder).  It seems as though all mass produced food is much different than we think.  All of the fillers and chemicals used make it a pretty scary things.  We should really know what we're putting into our bodies.  I watched Food, Inc for the second time on Thursday night.  While it's obviously a biased documentary, it doesn't take much to prove their point.  Something to think about, anyway.

I've been doing well so far with both changes.  If I can't find something I think I need that's made here, I convince myself I don't need it.  I have been having a little bit of trouble with the meat end of things.  All I want is bacon when I work, but I just remind myself that as soon as I get to a butcher, I'll have some.  I think it'll be cool to look back on this post in a year and see what I stuck to and what else has changed.