Some random thoughts

Watching Obama's infomercial tonight kind of reminded me of watching The West Wing. I even got teary at the end. The joke in our house was that John cried at every episode - there was always this moment (in the first season at least) when it just got so heart-tugging, and I'd look over and he was wiping his eyes and trying to be inconspicuous, and I'd mock him relentlessly.

Anyway, bless the man, he read Michael Pollan's open letter to the next president. Here's what he said about it:

“I was just reading an article in the New York Times by MichaelPollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system isbuilt on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually iscontributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. Andin the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable tonational security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food pricesor crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and arepartly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs becausethey’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease,obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion inhealthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You thinkabout the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is trueon how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energyin a way that deals with climate change, deals with national securityand drives our economy, that’s going to be my number one priority whenI get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough tojust stabilize the immediate economic situation.”

(The full interview is here)

I'm about to head out to AAR, yay. Mostly very happy to see my family who are coming to watch Maggie while I attend my session.

I got to lunch today with a new prof at GTU who is teaching a class on (drum roll please) food and faith. Well that worked out pretty darn well. Turns out, she knows a lot more about the food side (and the socio-cultural aspects) than the faith (this she readily admits), so it's going to be a fun class to take because I'll get to learn about those aspects I don't know much about, and add to the discussion when it comes to the religion stuff. Plus it will be multi-faith, and looking at everything from gender issues to holidays, and there will be field trips...I mean, this is sounding like something that might even be worth stepping away from Maggie for. Just for three hours a week, that is!!

As for me I continue in my rather confused state, but I can't say much about where I'm at because life is just up in the air right now. Suffice to say that some days I'm a bit miserable, many days I'm OK, mostly I'm happy because mostly I'm with my daughter, and she's the light of my life. Thank God for the other moms I've met, who are getting my through all this, and for my breaks with family, which are more frequent these days. And I'm also really enjoying our church, so that is a blessing. (the ordination thing even came up recently...but I don't know how anxious I am to start down that road again)

Anyway I'm just praying John will be able to finish his degree soon and find a good job, so we can have good insurance again and he can be back teaching, which I know he misses. Though I do love having a great personal chef!

OK I'm going to get on with watching some hard-earned TV. Thank goodness Maggie went down easy tonight. Ha ha - she's like a fine wine - goes down easy, mellows with age. (or a cheese? more likely, with my genes)