FACT: The food you eat today has lost 57% of its nutritional value since the 1950's.

FACT: The food you eat today has lost 57% of its nutritional value since the 1950's.

The first time I read that I was shocked. I had assumed that as technology progressed, so would the quality of our lives, food being the most basic of things. I began to research today's food and learned so many shocking and horrifying things that to try to convey them to you here would not give the subject the detail it deserves. 

Many people know that the situation is bleak for our furry and feathered friends but we do what we can, and the biggest movement by consumers today concerns eggs.

Everyone knows by now that corporate egg farms are cruel to the hens, but most of us do not realize how cruel. If we can afford it we try to buy from the humane companies. we struggle through labels, hoping to find one that supports happy hens.

We assume companies selling eggs that say things like "cage-free" and "raised without antibiotics" raise the hens to live like this photo. Oh and if they are brown eggs, well those are even better.

The truth is that this photo is  of a businessman who has a nice home in the country and raises chickens so he and his friends can have fresh eggs. Nothing wrong with that. The problem arises when we think this picture is how the hens live on farms with the happy labels.

In case you are still buying eggs at $1.25 a dozen, take a look at the conditions your inexpensive eggs are laid under. 

The photo on the right is a typical shot of the entire life of an egg hen. They do not have enough room to turn around. The typical farm has an 18x22 inch space for every ten birds and has 250,000 to 500,000 hens. They pick out their own feathers out of frustration and some of the feathers come out from malnutrition, induced on purpose. When they are chicks, without any painkillers, their beaks have the ends burned or cut off to reduce pecking damage. The smell and disease is so bad, an outfit akin to a HAZMAT suit is worn when entering the coup. Space is so cramped the birds defecate and urinate on each other, and the dead ones are not found much of the time so the live ones around it live with the rotting carcass.

 Hens usually live about 8 years.

However, they only lay eggs for about 2 years. So what happens to them after that? Usually, they are all the same age so they can all be disposed of at once since all of them stop laying at around the same time. CO2 is usually pumped into the barn and all quarter million of them are killed at once, then put in a landfill or sold off to be rendered for animal food. This is what the more humane farmers do. 

Many times they get tossed into grinders while still alive. 

 Some farmers will pack them even tighter into wooden crates where they will die from the stress or the heat or simple suffocation on the way to a pet food plant. These birds are emaciated and at the beginning of the trip their leg bones snap. Virtually all of them. They suffer from severe osteoporosis and most have extreme deformities that are painful their whole lives. At the plant, they are shackled by the leg, hung upside down and fastened onto a moving line where their throats are slit. They are alive until they bleed out, about 5 minutes. Male chicks are suffocated because they are useless.

Not only is all of this terribly cruel, but do you really want to eat the eggs that come from these hens? Its no wonder salmonella runs rampant in grocery store eggs.

This photo is of some "fortunate" cage-free hens. They have room to walk and the area looks relatively clean, although you can see from their condition this farmer practices the same farming techniques the ones with cages do.

Here is a photo of a more common environment for a "cage-free" hen, hens that lay the eggs you pay an extra buck fifty for because "cage-free" sounds humane. All of these hens have broken bones, usually the breastplate. Why? Farmers manipulate the light and feed them low-grade food which (somehow) induces them to produce more eggs. Eggshells are made of calcium so the hen's body pulls the calcium from its own bones to make the eggs. Their lives are a series of broken bones, and you can see the conditions are not much cleaner than the caged birds. Below is the best photo I could find of a cage-free environment. But again, you will see most of them sitting, due to broken bones and lack of energy. They have their feathers for the moment, which hides their bodies. 

The next level of eggs at the grocery are "free range" eggs. You may think this is about the best you are gonna get, as far as living space. This phrase makes you think "ok, now THESE birds roam the fields and eat worms and live happily". 

Nope.

Free-range simply means they have access to the outdoors. This can be a cramped area like the cage-free hens, only with a screened in area instead of solid walls, or it can be a closed coup with holes drilled in the sides for them to stick their heads out of. It also can mean they actually do have access to green pastures, it depends on the company.

This is what the U.S. allows to be called free-range(left)...almost anything. You have to do your homework. Companies want your business and the more we complain and buy from truly humane farms, the more farms will comply and the lower our prices will be.

Write down the names of the eggs your grocer sells and search the internet to see how they really operate. If there are no photos beware. Be an educated consumer and you can find what you want. Of course, finding a local coup with a dozen or so hens is the best. 

You know exactly where your birds are from and how they are being treated. It should go without saying by now that the quality of the eggs you feed your child is affected by the environment the hen is raised in. 

Look for the Animal Welfare Approved label. This label means there was no forced molting through starvation, (a practice done to increase egg production) they have not had their beaks cut or burned,  they have continuous access to the outdoors, and are able to nest, perch and dust bathe.  Certified Humane is another label you can trust. Standards of other programs vary.

Here is a link to The Humane Society page that lists, by food, companies that meet the standards of and carry the above labels. This is not comprehensive so if you are interested in a brand at your store I still recommend doing your homework.

Humane Society Food List

I did some research and found that Mercy For Animals meets my criteria for an active, worthwhile charity. These folks are very busy but are not extreme like PETA can be.

Egg production is probably the least appalling food process there is. It gets worse from here. More on that later, or you can pick up any book on the food industry and learn.

Trump's Immigration Policy Again Exposes His True Self

Trump is currently enforcing, to the letter, a decades-old immigration policy whereby he is separating children, some as young as 18 months old, from their families and putting them in separate detention centers. Even this brutal law, that no administration has ever fully enforced until now, says the detention period can be no more than 20 days and the children are to be put in foster care immediately.

Trump, as usual, is playing party politics, lying, and passing the buck, saying that the DEMOCRATS are at fault here and they need to pass better legislation. Last time I checked, all 3 branches of government were Republican controlled.

The silence on this matter from the Republicans is deafening. I have heard a brave few speak out, ( ones who are retiring soon anyway)but have heard no plans for change or real pushback on this. Instead, everyone seems to be fascinated with the Stormy Daniels nonsense.

These are not "thug Mexicans", but rather, they are refugees, evacuating dictatorships.  People from places like Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Columbia are literally "fleeing" for their lives. They do not have time to prepare for the "welcome" at our border and most do not sit and watch TV or have cell/ internet access where they can even be warned of what is happening.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced what he calls a "zero tolerance" policy in Arizona. He said the Federal Government would criminally prosecute anyone crossing the border, including those seeking asylum.

When did we stop being America?

Apparently in June of 2018, when The United Nations labeled Trump (Excuse me, Drumpf, not Trump, his family changed there name when they came to this country) of being a human rights violator. Read that again. An American president is being labeled a human rights violator by the rest of the world. I do not care what your politics are, this is wrong, be you Democrat, Republican, Christian or Athiest.

How much more of our democracy are we going to let this man take away? How much longer are we going to abide by the Dictator's Playbook and allow him to control us with fear, charges of fake news, and blatant lies that no one seems to care about? If you think I am being an alarmist, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) tried to tour one of these detention centers and was turned away. OUR representative in the government was not allowed to see inside a detention center.

I remember when he first became president, Bill Maher warned us that the worst thing that could happen would be that all his craziness, his mental instability, lies and senile antics would become 'normal" to us. Guess what folks, welcome to his "Great Again" America.

I will end this blog with a series of pictures. Please take a look and then tell me this man should inhabit the White House and not a prison cell.

The March and a Change of Opinion

As I lay here on my bed, endlessly contemplating my broken foot and these four walls, I am watching the March For Our Lives in Washington today, looking for my husband and my daughter and sisters-in-law in the crowd. My TV is offline so I am watching on my computer. I am wishing I am there with them and hoping to get a tee shirt out of it.

I see an ocean of people, more people than I ever could have imagined would show up. They have come from all over. I know because just my people alone are from Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.

The stage, the mega-TV screens everywhere, the concert-worthy amps…it all smells too much like a party.  This is not a march, this is a gathering of young people who have no idea how to march without being entertained. This is a damn concert. My blood is boiling….they are sending no messages here, they are gathering for yet more Millennial self-indulgence.

But then a red headed young man angrily takes the stand and tells us we are about to get real. He is very angry and he doesn’t look down at notes, yet he is so eloquent he must have them, or maybe memorized key phrases? He tells us we must arm our teachers, arm them to the teeth. The camera pans across confused, annoyed faces in the crowd. This is not what we came for! We don’t want our teachers armed! But the man/boy finishes. He wants teachers armed with pen and paper so they can teach, not fight off killers, and the crowd roars in approval. OK! Now this is a march! He goes on to say how this is not what our founders meant for the 2^nd amendment, tells us how it feels to be taking a test and wondering if there is a shooter lurking the grounds, about how his sister will never have a decent birthday again since she spent her last huddled under a desk in moral fear.

He says that this is not a concert, not a parade, there are no huge floating Macy’s Donald Ducks out there, these monitors and this stage are not part of this march. He explains, the only thing with a screen we need is this, and he holds up his cell phone, telling us to spread the word. He went on and then a few other spoke. But at that point, that man, with that speech, made me proud. His words whipped up that crowd far higher than the music and the stars did. He showed everyone that this generation is not here for a day of entertainment, they are here to fight for their lives. Having said that, I now realize even the entertainers came on stage in street clothes, sang their songs and left. No self-aggrandizing speeches, they did their jobs and left. I also tend to forget that for my generation this may be a concert setting but for these people it is what they know, how they communicate and these things have many uses. Sometimes getting older smacks you in the face.

I know many Millennials. I know the reputation they have. Some of it is true, most of it is not. What I am seeing today surpasses anything I have seen.

Martin Luther King is what I saw today. These kids are real and what they are doing takes more effort and more guts and more organization that any generation I have seen in my over half a century here. No, more than I think have ever existed in America. My husband and his sisters are there, along with my Millennial daughter. I see passion in her, I see that fire, that urge to fix this, to do what is right. I do not see that, to that extent, in the rest of my generation who is there. Yes, this is important to my family, the older crowd, and they mean everything they are shouting but the passion of youth, the hope of the young, that is fading a bit in us. My daughter and her peers have that and more, she has what we

never did: a colorblind way of organizing things. They are all one. Black, brown, gay, trans, they identify themselves not by these things, they identify themselves as individuals. Individuals that happen to belong to a certain age group that realize the weight of the world IS on their shoulders, that previous generations have shit on them and now they are expected to fix it and fix themselves at the same time. These Millennials have almost overcome the obstacles of race and gender and sex issues, they are not as burdened with this. They are many of the negative things older people say about them, there is no denying it, but a lot of that is because older generations do not understand or do not like what these kids stand for. I see people trying to make everyone equal, no matter what differences they have from one another, an obstacle my generation rarely gets past completely. We have resigned ourselves to the idea that nothing will change and whether we are right about this or not, these kids have the selfishness, the heart, the stubbornness to get what they want and lucky for us what they want is good.

People who have problems with them either do not understand what they are about or cannot accept it. Yes they have problems…they need better manners, they need more patience, less entitlement, they need more fun and they need to accept people who do not agree with them on a personal level. But I cannot help but think many of these negatives, and the others, will, in the end, be their strengths. Their unwavering moral compass  will save the environment and hopefully give us a better democracy and a better society.

I have a dream.

My dream is that this is just the beginning. That these young adults become habitual voters and protesters and elected officials. My dream is a string of presidents as good as or better than Obama. I won’t be around to see much of it but just knowing the world actually could be a better place because of this generation gives me peace.

Welcome, New Hippies, don’t let us Old Hippies get in your way.

New Year New Look

I decided to move us Musers to a new lounge, the last one was getting stale.
Many thanks to my friend and talented artist  Brenda Marks for allowing me exclusive use of one of her moving pieces for this blog. I believe it sums up everything I have been feeling for the last year.
Be sure to read the caption.

Silence

I have been silent for about a year now.

For anyone who follows my blog, I am alive and well, just not in the mood to write.

It is all because of Trump. Every day I am more infuriated, more astonished, and more terrified. It would be nice to write about it but so many writers, much better than myself, have written about him ad nauseum...what could I possibly add?

As for tackling other subjects, it seems the few I come up with that are not overshadowed by Trump, seem even more trite than my usual blogs because the world is on the  brink of disaster.

So until this man is not the focus of everything, I cannot think of anything to write about.

Any ideas, Dear Reader?