Through the Eyes of a Daydreamer's Daughter

The Chinese are suing us in the WTO because we don't import Chinese chickens. They want to force us to let them kill off yet another American industry using their usual unfair trade practices. I happen to know a lot of people whose dogs and cats died as a result of contaminated Chinese components in pet food sold in America. I don't for a moment believe that we could import Chinese chicken without Americans eventually dying from contaminated and unsanitary chicken. Even if they just feed their chickens antibiotics--as they feed the shrimp they sell here--that would be enough to produce new health risks for Americans.  Eating food containing antibiotics encourages the development of antibiotic resistant bugs We have enough of a problem with American farmers using antibiotics in livestock feed. We can't hope to control farmers in China and we can't expect the Chinese government to try to deal with the problem. As for the WTO, it makes me ...

Once again we are under threat of nuclear attack--this time from North Korea. We've lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation since I was a child and I'm having increasing trouble taking it seriously or caring. Of course, I'm too old now to die young should North Korea or someone else carry out this threat. (And I have enough food for at least a week in my basement.) When I was in grade school in Chicago, we were taught to hide under our desks if the Bomb hit our city. Later we moved to Clayton Missouri where children were given dogtags that we were required to wear to school every day; each morning the teachers checked that we had indeed worn them. My father, who did not deal well with his own anxieties, enjoyed telling us that if we were dead the dogtags would be shoved between our front teeth to identify us. The Missouri plan for nuclear attack was to send children home to evacuate with their parents.  My par...

I have to begin by confessing that my mother made clear to all three of her daughters that love was earned as a reward for accomplishment--not given out simply for being alive.  Wait-For-Me and I bought mother's teaching without question, I fear. Both of us have worked hard for assorted certificates and to get "A"s on anything in life that could be interpreted even remotely as an exam. Our-Baby (yes, she's in her fifties but she'll always be Our-Baby to us) rejected mother's teachings and spent her entire life insisting on her right to be without accomplishment even if/when failure to accomplish cut off her nose to spite her own face. The world rewards aspiration and achievement and grades of "A" as a general rule. Less obvious is the reward inherent in living in active war zones and other situations that allow you to have adrenaline addiction. The element in common is that you get to feel alive. If you aspire, you are alive as long as you haven...

I feel better to know that the Queen of England has to pinch pennies, too. Most of my adult life I earned a comfortable living. I was never rich but I didn't have to skimp on anything I really wanted. I wasn't a spendthrift exactly, but I spent freely and saved, too.  Unemployed since 2003, I've been on my private austerity plan for the last seven years. I've tried to treat it like a game. I give me points for skimping and doing without. Just surviving makes me a winner in this game. I give me points for doing better at skimping every day in every way. Still, it makes me feel better to know that the Queen is in this with me, minding her utility bills and not redecorating as she'd like. Pity that nice ladies like us have to live on the tight edge in the final years of our lives, but clever of us to manage it. And at least I can feel that I'm in good company. Misery does love company....  

A few years ago Jessie Jackson explained to the nation that the poorest African-American neighborhoods suffered because shop owners in those neighborhoods came from the suburbs and took their profits home with them at night. What those neighborhoods needed most, according to Rev. Jackson, was local ownership of commerce that would keep the money circulating in the community. Most of us heard him and intuitively realized he was right. So if Rev. Jackson was right about the impact of money draining out of a few block area of an American city, how much more right must his thoughts be as applied to the entire nation? There was more than one reason why the housing market overheated and then collapsed. But certainly every construction job that substituted Illegal Alien workers for American construction labor meant at least one less American able to buy a house while the Illegal Alien construction workers had no interest in owning homes in America. At first cheaper construction labor d...

I haven't been posting because I've been sick with something like a cold or flu for about 10 weeks. I'm starting to hear from friends and relatives that they've suffered from the same malaise: lo-grade temp, dry cough, fatigue, and maybe periods of tummy trouble at the start. I'm wondering if everyone who had these weeks and weeks of feeling crummy took the H1N1 vaccine like I did. Is this crud that's going around a milder case of swine flu or a side effect of the vaccine--or just an unrelated virus.... Modern medicine is not just expensive. You never know if it is helping or harming. But I'm a Luddite at heart.