Wind

It is quite serious here these days. Trees down, branches strewn around, and the ever present feeling that something is going to land in your eye and you are not going to like it. Yesterday Nick, Lu, Jewels and I took a long walk down to the river. Everything was green, the river which is generally a trickle seemed full and the tall prairie grass looked very appropriate in the wind gusts. I love the little things that trigger Little House on the Prairie memories.

In other news, this makes me happy. I haven't yet attended a Church of Stop Shopping Event, but I've heard about them for years, and appreciate their efforts to bring attention to the malling of NYC. Relatedly, the World Monument Fund published their 2008 list of endangered places, and Main Street Modern, USA is included. It seems that Main Streets are also threatened by the pull of the big city. This is something I've been thinking about (inconclusively) all year. Hopefully I'll move to Portland and find that they have the answer to keeping communities vibrant without too much gentrification, but I know that's a pipe dream.

Finally, here is a really neat photo essay about how families eat for a week around the world. It seems natural to include a short update about my no-corn-syrup experiment. To be honest, soda is hard to refuse and I've been finding myself buying diet soda because there's no corn syrup, but obviously there are other bad things, so it seems like a pretty lame move on my part. The other thing I haven't been able to refuse is ketchup, which is essential in some ways and has corn syrup as the second ingredient. As I had thought, the trick seems to be planning ahead and reading labels, things that I should theoretically be doing anyway. If I were to stock up on a few essentials and make sure that I have corn syrup-free snacks and condiments on hand, it wouldn't be too bad. Sometimes this makes me angry since it shouldn't be so much effort to find food that doesn't contain something that is bad for you. Also, it was interesting to notice (although not surprising) that in England things that contain corn syrup here, don't there. Gotta love ag policy.