Letters to the Editor
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Maybe Waylon had the right idea way back in the '70s
So baby let's sell your diamond ring
Buy some boots and faded jeans and go away
This coat and tie is choking me
In your high society you cry all day
We've been so busy keepin' up with the Jones
Four car garage and we're still building on
Mabye it's time we got back to the basics of love
Chorus:
Let's go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us fuedin'
like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry's train songs
and blue eyes cryin' in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
ain't nobody feelin' no pain
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living within one's beans
I am so happy about this article and happy about the positive non-snarky responses. Scaling back can be beneficial in many ways. It can help with our striving monkey minds; it can lead us to rely more on our relationships for meaning and sustenance; and it can really help reduce consumption and improve the health of the planet.
I live in the pea and lentil capital of the United States, Moscow Idaho. I want to make a plug for the lentil, which cooks up much faster than many beans and can be used in a wide variety of ways. It's even entertaining: in August, Pullman Washington hosts the National Lentil Festival, with recipes music, kids events and even a parade. I can't remember whether there is a lentil queen....
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Amen, Sophie. Lentils are manna from heaven.
That lentil festival sounds like fun (there's booze too, right?). Lentils are great. Even though they cook up fast without soaking, I still like to slow cook them. Just this week I threw a pound of red lentils into ol' Betty (my crockpot) with carrots and carrot greens and celery and onions and spices, and water, and let it cook all day. That night we had an amazing lentil soup. Add a loaf of crusty bread and a bottle of red wine, and it was heaven.
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Also, about shopping -
in addition to eating beans or some other non-meat meal once a week or more - my advice is to keep out of the glamorous grocery stores full of 20 kinds of goat cheese, prime cuts of meat displayed like jewels, $15 birthday cakes, 30 kinds of bread, blackberries in winter for $5 for a handful, king crab legs and endangered fish species laid out in the seafood area for $10 a pound and up. You know that store. Don't go in there. Try shopping at Aldi's, Save-more, Sam's Club, BJ's Warehouse, Costco. Even the dreaded Super WalMart can save you real money. And learn to bake bread, it's not hard! I can make a no-knead loaf of ciabatta for pennies that you would pay $3 for. All over the internet you can find the recipe for slow-rise artisan bread you can tinker with, adding things, and it looks and tastes like the $5 designer bread. Try it! It doesn't take long, it's not hard, and it will go great with that big batch of soup you made on Sunday!
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Heather definitely needs to confine the snark to bad TV...
...because she comes off like a frivol-headed "poverty day-tripper" here. :P Bottom line--she's not going to be starving on the streets if she gets tired of beans and opts for something else. She's making the _easy_ decisions now--but she's not yet worrying that a hospital won't deem her eligible for charity care to cover a neccessary operation. Nor is she looking at choosing between food and gas--or letting insurance/credit card bills slide for a month because her car or something around the house broke down. The "Wow, being poor can be _so_ cool!" tone to this piece is not only annoyingly self-congratulatory, it's borderline condescending.
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@Marco Polo: care to share that ciabatta recipe?
If it's no-knead bread, you've got my attention.
I shop at "that store" all the time because it's three blocks from my house, hence I score karmic hippy-dippy points by not driving, but even there you can buy good stuff at a decent price if you shop their sales. Besides, they have bulk organic beans and grains, and so far the best produce outside of a farmer's market or your own yard/porch/windowsill, so it's worth it. But yeah, the $5/pint berries in winter, or $2.39 small bunch of mint (saw it tonight) absolutely is asking too much.
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@Notwhoyouthinkitis
Yeah, Indian Fry Bread is good stuff. Making your own is cheap and easy, as well...
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All snark aside, this recession
...should be laid at the door of every neo-con Grover Nordquist wannabe out there.
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yup
metaphor and irony is the new truth-telling. Heidegger is upset. Wittgenstein is I told you so.
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recessions are a bummer
My personal recession was a number of years ago...food stamps and a lot of peanut butter. The experience was very anxiety-inducing, and I really didn't see it as a way to expand my culinary creativity.
These days I'm one of those people who buys the gourmet pizza and $8 sushi pre-packs at Whole Foods.
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Happiness is what we all seek specially the lovers of money.
a helter skelter disorganised drivel about a truth she is vaguely aware of.
Happiness is what we all seek specially the lovers of money. economic contraction may dilute that love. Of all the perceptions of reality we have, the most important, [if we have enough to eat and adequate shelter,] is our opinion of our self. The values and criteria we apply every day to others are the basis upon which we judge ourselves and the most explicit level of this is an existential absolute of honour and loyalty which seems to have developed only in humans. Happiness is closely related to self acceptance and a realistic good opinion of our self reinforces the acceptance of our inner self. Our opinion of our self is always there. Thoughts come to us all the time and we are either relaxed about what comes to mind or made tense. My opinion of myself is always with me. Escapable easily by choice but always hanging there so that the choice must be made every moment. As if a mirror has accompanied me like a shadow always challenging me to look – [if we look maybe it will be dr hyde]. [Maybe in the reflection in the water i would see a swan,].
The problems and concerns of life are dealt with in the context of our self-opinion. By that every decision we make is made easier or harder. If we realistically feel that we are true to our values we feel more courage to face difficulties and take risks. If happiness is closely correlated to goodness, it makes sense to earn a high opinion from yourself.
Among the vast majority of humans, truth, honour, and respect for other human lives are foremost professed values. This is evidenced by the words of almost every occupant of a leadership role. Living in this milieu these are often the values we apply. Others may do different from how they say or believe but we are under our own control and we must choose.
If doing right pays, is there then any reality in altruism? If you accept my theory do you exclude the possibility of unselfish acts done for no benefit or gain including the earning of a good opinion of oneself? You must be the judge of this – i don’t know. To test this you might consider “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend”. Though he may be given it back the soldier in a real sense gives up his life when he goes “into the valley of death”.
Despite the neo-con polemicists who do hand stands to show that suicide bombing is a good economic choice because, they say, the surviving family will be given as much money or more than the dead person would have earned in so many neo-years such “Greater love”, may be altruism. Of course the value he may feel of the greatness the sacrifice of his life may outweigh even the human wish to live.
Much more than intimations of human equality are found in each of our experience of existence and this is expressed in the wide profession of human rights. After birth our most important discovery is other humans. How we treat them is fundamental to the our opinion of ourselves.
Never in all of history until today has there been as great a number of deaths where the actions of other humans are involved. 25000 people die each day of starvation related causes, more than died daily in WW2 , 4 times more than the holocaust and more than the bubonic or the black plagues. This is a staggering 1 in 10 of all deaths.
If our contentment and happiness is correlated with a good opinion of ourselves we are fools if we allow ourselves to be voluntary contributors to such a tragedy. Under traditional capitalism we treat our fellow man as unequal to the extent of maintaining an economic order which includes paying out amounts so large that they rank almost 3rd to defence and social security and which contribute to depriving him of the wherewithal of existence. The argument for egalitarian capitalism is that by foregoing the economic gain involved we will gain a benefit deep within ourselves, a subconscious peace of mind, more valuable than any material gain. Inner contentment has a value comparable to the latest ‘must have’ fashion.