Who watches the watchers?

What did the FDA know and when did they know it? From contaminated ingredients in pet foods -- and now animal feed as well -- to arthritis drugs linked to cardiac arrests in humans, food and drug safety issues have been making a lot of headlines lately.

But not to worry -- there's a federal agency that protects consumers, isn't there? An objective, well-funded, taxpayer-supported agency, free from bias and corporate influence, that monitors food processors, regulates the drug industry, and ensures that we are all safe.

Yeah, right. You get a pony.

But not to worry -- you don't take any prescription drugs, you don't have a pet, none of this affects you. What about your chocolate? What's it going to take before enough of us care about this to start making noise? Lindsay's recent post contains links to an FDA consumer response website and to more information about this issue.

Actual consumers need to learn how to respond to this kind of thing, because this particular issue -- which affects the very definition of chocolate -- is being advanced by "consumers" who happen to be part of the problem. "Big Chocolate," the LA Times editorial calls them. And even if you're not afraid of Big Ag or Big Pharma, maybe this looming threat from corporate candy interests will give you pause.

There's more to it than meets the eye, though. The whole system is deeply flawed. The FDA is insufficiently funded, and supported in too great a part by fees from the regulated industries (follow the money -- who gets paid and who gets screwed?). Financial conflicts of interest within the regulating bodies are too common. And the agency has very little it can do with respect to enforcement unless and until it becomes too late.

This recent article offers some constructive suggestions for reform of the agency -- at least in the drug safety arena -- that would certainly increase consumer safety and reduce corporate influence.

Gotta start somewhere, or the next chocolate Jesus is going to be made out of that waxy, cruddy chocolate-esque stuff they make those bunnies and santas out of.

An anniversary

It was three years ago yesterday, not today, that my beloved dog Kuba left this planet, or whatever it is that happens to dogs when they die. In case you missed it, here's what I wrote about all that a couple of years ago; I have nothing to add at this time. It hurts less and less as time passes, just like they tell you it will, but it still hurts.

I have, however, been thinking more and more about how I could maybe make room in my heart for a dog of my own, even though I have plenty of dog love in my life. It would be kind of nice to come home to a house that isn't empty. A big, grumpy dog with a wagging tail. No puppies. I don't have the time or the patience for a puppy.

Famous last words, I know.

Poetry month again

There's a lot of really good poetry out there, if you like that kind of thing. But this is my blog, so I am going to publish my very own poetry, because I can. If you want good poems, go somewhere else. I'm choosing this one because my sister the mailman asked me for a copy of it and I had to type it out anyway. It's about our grandmother.

Sanka

I was allowed to have as much Sanka as a 5-year-old can drink, and I liked it better than my mother's coffee: a scary, thin, and bitter brew.

My grandmother always had Sanka, which required no angry-smelling electric percolator. Just a pyrex saucepan with a pouring spout, all clean and clear and filled with water over the blue gas flame until the bubbles broke the surface.

The dull brown granules of Sanka are at the bottoms of the two mugs I have chosen from the shelf. Sanka never sparkled, at least in those days, like the dark, nearly black crystals of, say, Folgers or some other brand.

My grandmother's then-steady hands would splash enough water into the mugs and we'd stir & stir & stir to dissolve the coffee. A few grains were inevitably left undissolved and bitter at the top after even the most vigorous stirring; you had to wait until they melted into dark oil slicks on the surface and then stir again.

We never spoke of this.

Then we'd add Coffeemate or Cremora, or sometimes plain old milk. Sugar for me, Sweet & Low for her. The whole procedure was very tidy and had much to recommend it in the way of ritual.

The drinking of the Sanka was accompanied by the watching of television, or the exchange of gossip among the older women present: my mother and a couple of aunts or sometimes the neighbor ladies from the highrise. My mother and my aunts drink Pepsi.

I always made sure I had toys or a book to read. The soap operas especially made me uneasy. My grandmother called them her Stories, and she gave them up every year during Lent. She never managed to get that monkey completely off her back. She always picked them up again after Easter, her penance done.

The lives of the people in her stories were at least as real to her as the lives of her children. She certainly had more information about them; her children couldn't be relied on to visit every day, and they were often impatient with her when they were there.

"Don't cry, mom," they'd say, and she'd cry anyway, Then she'd talk about her stories, she'd talk about people and places none of them had seen in 30, 40, 50 years.

She'd mourn, one by one, the deaths of
her husband,
her children,
her sweetheart,
her friends.
Deaths by emphysema,
by alcohol,
by cancer,
by time.

Maybe it's not technically a poem, but that's how it's labelled and filed. When I read it to my sister recently, it reminded me of another story about my grandmother, which she asked me to write down for her too. So here it is.

It's a story about Jell-O. And it's about some other things. It takes place in the hospital after my grandmother had had a series of small strokes. I went with her on a day when the occupational therapist was evaluating her Activities of Daily Living skills to see whether she could be allowed to return home. So they brought her into the kitchen area and asked her to make a box of Jell-O. They wanted I guess to assess her ability to follow instructions, and to see how she did with boiling water.

"Who wants any Jell-O?" my grandmother asked, quite sensibly. Although, quite honestly, as a mother of twelve grown children she was really pretty tired of cooking on demand.

"Nobody really wants it, ma'am," replied the nice young occupational therapist. "We just want to see how you do in the kitchen on your own."

"So you're going to throw it away?" my grandmother asks. "Won't anybody eat it?"

The therapist looks at me. I shrug. "The nurses will eat it," she says brightly. She's met a few little old ladies before and she thinks this will help.

"Can't the nurses make their own Jell-O?" my grandmother asks. The therapist has not previously encountered someone with my grandmother's disdain for working women who can't even cook for themselves, let alone their starving families.

"Just make the Jell-O, grandma," I say. "They'll let you go home sooner."

"What flavor?" she wants to know.

"Lemon," the therapist and I say together, reading it off the box on the counter.

So, feeling a little bit put-upon by these pathetic nurses who can't make their own damn Jell-O, my grandmother fills the teakettle, puts it over the flame, and then wheels her wheelchair over to the table. She pours the Jell-O into the bowl that the therapist has placed there. She gets a cup of cold water and puts a few ice cubes in it, which the therapist writes down in her chart.

"It jells faster if you use really cold water," she says to the therapist.

The teakettle whistles, and my grandmother picks it up with the hot pad and holds it over the bowl, ready to pour. The therapist looks alarmed.

"Wait, Mrs. S__! Aren't you going to measure it?"

My grandmother puts another hot pad on the table, places the teakettle on it carefully and gives the therapist a seriously hairy eyeball.

I know how much a cup is," she said. Witheringly, I guess you could say was how she said it. And then she calmly poured a cup of boiling water into the bowl, stirred it, and added the icewater.

Chores

So I need to get a new digital camera -- just a little pockety one. My cellphone camera is busted. I wish I could show you the goofy zigzag clothesline I put up in my backyard this morning so I can dry my sheets and pillowcases in the sun. Or I could have had someone take pictures of me mowing the lawn yesterday with my girl-powered lawn mower, and the sunburn I acquired while pushing it around my small-ish front lawn. As for the back yard, I've been strategically repositioning the spreading plants (periwinkles, ivy, and even the widely-feared creeping Charlies) so that I won't have to ever mow the back yard. I may put some mint back there but I'm afraid the neighbors will get mad.

Friday tests

No instantaneous results for these tests, which are actually real studies about cognition and perecption and so on. Kind of interesting and fun, so go take a couple of them if you're bored.

Via Lindsay at Majikthise. She also has a link to the Gender Genie, which purports to determine your gender based on a writing sample. I think it's kind of bogus, but your mileage may vary.

So it goes

I woke up this morning to the very sad news that Mr. Kurt Vonnegut is in heaven now. Or he slipped into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum. Or something. He's dead, anyway.

Bless his heart.

Mr. Vonnegut famously threatened to sue the manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes for on account of they hadn't killed him despite their promise on the package to do so. Apparently he died of brain injuries sustained after falling down in his Manhattan apartment. Maybe his heirs can build a case against Brown & Williamson after all.

I make it a point to re-read as many of his books as I can every couple of years; my copies of some of the novels have worn out, but his words never do. Of his more recent efforts, this is one of my favorites. Among its gems:

"[...] But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.

And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.

When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.

Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?

Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on."

Busy, busy, busy.

Oldtime radio on the internets

Here's a story about a local AM radio station that is absolutely fabulous, and they're now streaming their signal online.

When my lovely ex-wife came to North Carolina a little over 11 years ago for a job interview, she called me from her hotel room that night, wildly excited about something. Which is like her, so I waited a bit for her to settle down and get coherent. I figured it had something to do with the interview, but no -- she was holding the phone up in front of the clock radio in the hotel room, which was turned up really really loud for a clock radio, and saying "you gotta hear this, this is amazing" over and over again as the tinny signal blasted a hole in the earpiece of my phone and drilled into my head.

I could sort of hear some kind of fiddle and banjo music, but it was pretty lo-fi, if you know what I mean. It wasn't until I came down here myself and tuned in to WPAQ on the rental car radio that I understood why she was so excited. You can't get the signal everywhere, so I'm really happy to have it online.

Be sure to check out the multimedia piece in the story [link]; the guy playing the fiddle for the inaugural webcast is Mr. Benton Flippen, sole surviving member of The Green Valley Boys, the band that played on the station's first broadcast in 1948. Cool, no?

When told that the performance was not only live on the radio, but also accessible to anyone with a computer, anywhere in the world, 86-year-old Mr. Flippen said, "Well, it's all right. Computers, they got everything else. They might as well have this."

Oh, yes indeed.