Some of you may have heard of this by now. The daughter of a friend of mine recently had a 100 Mile Lunch day at her school to make kids more aware of where their food is coming from. Check out the website of this group in Vancouver, Canada.

The 100-mile Diet
http://100milediet.org/home/
"When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically traveled at least 1,500 miles from farm to plate. That's a total disconnection from where our food is coming from. What would it be like to eat locally for one year? We drew a 100-mile circle around our home in Vancouver, Canada. The 100-Mile Diet was born."

http://100milediet.org/getting-started-guide/

The 100-Mile Index provides a statistical snapshot of our world’s globalized food system. The numbers are fascinating, troubling, funny and sometimes, just plain strange. Have a read and send them to a friend. Help grow this movement.

• Minimum distance that North American produce typically travels from farm to plate, in miles: 1,500
• Number of Planet Earths’ worth of resources that would be needed if every person worldwide lived like the average North American: 8
• Planets saved if all of those people ate locally: 1
• Ratio of minutes spent preparing food by English consumers who buy ready-made foods versus traditional home-cooking: 1:1
• Estimated number of plant species worldwide with edible parts: 30,000
• Number of species that currently provide 90 percent of the world’s food: 20
• Share of each U.S. consumer food dollar that returned to the farmer in 1910, in cents: 40
• Share that returned to the farmer in 1997, in cents: 7
• Ratio of prisoners to farmers in the U.S. population: 5:2
• Percentage of fresh vegetables eaten in Hanoi, Vietnam, that are grown in the city: 80
• Percentage of all tomatoes in U.S. that are harvested while green : 80
• Major river dams constructed to irrigate California, now the world’s number five agricultural producer: 1,200

Eating locally is not only good for the environment, it supports the local economy. Check out the website for tips on putting this plan into action, and consider hosting a 100 Mile Thanksgiving this year.

Ciao and Chow!

"Even now, I remember Mrs. Sweatt as the embodiment of every sad love song ever written; she believed every musical statement of what love did to you when it went wrong, how it was like a poison without an antidote, how you'd never breathe right again. Most people feel that way only when the music plays; all her days, Mrs. Sweatt's heart was tuned to some radio frequency crammed with tragedy. Even that night in Provincetown (sitting on the sea wall, walking to the bar, drinking whiskey) she sounded like she was singing her sad, particular lyrics: Can't blame it on Cape Cod, guess I'll blame it on the boy."

"Despite everything, I never felt jealous at weddings. I longed for love, yes, but I never saw that love was in greater supply at weddings than in butcher shops or department stores. The sight of a couple furtively holding hands beneath a restaurant table was more likely to remind me of the hopelessness of my life than any number of ladies dressed in giant christening gowns recitng words to become joined to a man in a rented suit. I do not like public ceremony, not graduations, not weddings; not pep rallies, nor church. Perhaps I simply do not understand trying to share one emotion (love, relief, faith, pep) with a quantity of strangers."

"I want to hear about your past," he said.

"My past," I told him, "is a series of practical jokes carried out by bored and nasty-minded boys."

"Oh," he said. It wasn't the answer he'd wanted.

But for some reason I couldn't help but elaorate.

"Every now and then, I get offered a chair, and I think, nope, not going to fall for this again, but of course I do, and when I go to sit down, it's been pulled out from under me."

"But your heart was never broken," said James.

"Not my heart," I said, "I never landed on my heart."

"People think that money is the hardest thing to ask for, but take my word for it: it's the easiest...people can tell you no and there's no hard feelings, or they give it to you and it's yours to spend. You ask for anything else in this world, and what happens? The answer might be no, or the answer might be a lie, or the answer might be a can of worms you don't want to open. Ask for a compliment, ask for love, ask for an explanation or an apology--either you don't get it, or what you get's counterfeit. But money: if it exists, you might get it, and it'll be as good as the money you get anywhere else..."

But, finally, it was the passage below that really touched me and made me think about the nature of love the most.

"On the bus ride home, I faulted myself. I should have known to stay, I thought. I should not be a coward. My love for James until this day had always been troublesome. I didn't think I was any good at it. No good at talking to people in general and sometimes him in particular. He could make me feel uncomfortable, because I did not always understand him. I did not understand myself when in his presence.

The rest of the world fell in love, and the physics baffled me. I could see it happen--God knows, all around, I saw falling couples--but I did not understand the emotional gravity that allowed their descent.

And then, like Newton, I felt it smack me over the head.

Those people had made a decision, and then they fell; they did not find themselves hip deep in love and wonder how they got there. For years I'd waited for someone to love me: that was the permission I needed to fall in love myself, as though I were a pin sunk deep in a purse, watiing for a magnet to prove me metal. When that did not happen, I'd thought of myself as unlovable.

But now, with James lonely in his hospital room, I realized that waiting like that was hopeless. I could wait forever and he might never know to love me back and I would live and then die with a tiny awful feeling that could have been love, had it ever seen light or oxygen...

...I did not love him like a brother. I did not love him like a son. And though I loved him because of his body, it wasn't his body I loved, not the body of some man I dreamed would hold me, a body containing secrets that would somehow transform my own...

...I loved him in a way that I have never and will never love anyone ever again, in a way I suspect--Peggy, always greedy--few people love, or have been love. I loved him because he was young and dying and needed me. I loved not only his height, but his careful way with any hobby, his earnestness, his strange sense of humor that always surprised me. I loved him because I wanted to save him, and because I could not. I loved him because I wanted to be enough for him, and I was not.

I loved him because I discovered that day, after years of practice, I had a talent for it."

I'm not sure why I connected to this passage so strongly, but I've thought about it over and over. Perhaps I could identify with her sentiments. Like Peggy, I'd often waited for people to love me first, to prove that I was lovable, and give me permission to love them back. But recently, I've realized that you can make a conscious choice to love, in spite of the fact that love may never be returned to you. You can love in spite of imperfections and often, in fact, because of them. Sometimes you may love against your better judgment, because it feels like the right thing to do, and so you do it anyway.

And finally, sometimes you love because you sense that your love is needed, but more importantly,...

...because loving someone else fills a need within you.

1. Ziploc Bags are Male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.
2. Copiers are Female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again. It's an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can wreak havoc if the wrong buttons are pushed.
3. A Tire is Male, because it goes bald and it's often over-inflated.
4. A Hot Air Balloon is Male, because to get it to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under it, and, of course, there's the whole hot air part.
5. Sponges are Female, because they're soft, squeezable, and  retain water.
6. A Web Page is Female, because it's always getting hit on.
7. A Subway is Male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up.
8. An Hourglass is Female, because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom.
9. A Hammer is Male, because it hasn't changed much over the last 5,000 years, but it's handy to have around.
10. A Remote Control is Female. Ha! You thought it would me male, didn't you? But consider this - it gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying!