Jenyfer Matthews

My husband received The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini as a gift from his cousin several years ago. He never read it and had put it in a pile to bring to the used book store a couple of times, but I always stopped him saying that I would like to read it…someday.

Someday came last weekend when we went to the beach for the weekend. Not your classic beach read, I know, but then I’ve always been a bit contrary.

For instance, though it sounded interesting, I didn’t read The Kite Runner for ages precisely because so many people loved it so much. I am always skeptical about movies / books that get such rave reviews because even though something might be every bit as good as people say, once my expectations are raised, I’m inevitably disappointed. Too much hype isn’t always a good thing.

I’m glad to that I finally picked up The Kite Runner though. The first several pages of my paperback edition are filled with glowing reviews more thoughtfully written than anything I have the mental energy to come up with. Instead I’ll write a few of my gut reactions.

I was pleasantly surprised by the writing style; I’d been expecting a more challenging, obscure literary style and instead found very straight-forward and entertaining storytelling. I also found it engaging on a cultural level – though I’ve never visited Afghanistan, much of what was described in the book was similar to the culture of the Middle East, where I have lived for a decade. I don’t want to give anything away in case there is actually someone out there who hasn’t read the book yet, but it’s a wonderful human story about weakness, mistakes, regret, and redemption.

I read the book in two days and even convinced my husband that he ought to finally read it.

No reading in my immediate future – today I’m hosting an early birthday party for my daughter and having twelve 9-10 year old girls over to spend the afternoon dancing in my living room. It’s going to be a long afternoon!

I know I complained an awful lot about my weekend away. In fact, though it was a long ride, the trip would have been nice if I could have contented myself with either the mountain climb (sans migraine) OR the beach. The main source of my dissatisfaction is that I wanted to do both and only really had time for one. Oh well.

There was a bright spot though – I had a lot of time to read while sitting on the bus. I brought along my e-reader so I could finish up a book I was in the middle of, and also so I could read in bed without disturbing my son. But I also brought along a paperback: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

(Just an aside: if she had written that book with today’s attitude toward flashy pen names, do you think she’d have stuck with Betty Smith? Or gone for something like Beatrice Smythe-Whitmore?)

I got this book out of a pile of freebies a neighbor in my old building left in the stairwell – it was a familiar title and the blurb looked interesting. It’s been sitting on my nightstand for ages though. I normally only have time to read at night, and by then I only have so much mental energy left for reading books that require a bit more attention. So I’ve looked at this one every time I’m between books and have then chosen another one.

I decided that with so much time to read on the bus, it was the perfect time to turn my attention to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Though it starts out slowly enough, it didn’t take long to hook me. A good character will always suck me in, and this book is nothing if not full of good, rich characters.

It’s the story of Francie and her family, and her life growing up in terrible poverty in Brooklyn before World War I. Her father was charming and a talented singer but an alcoholic, her mother worked as a maid to hold their family together. Francie and her brother Neely started working when they were little children, collecting scraps and selling it for pennies to contribute to the family’s income. Often they subsist on coffee and the variety of meals their mother created from stale bread and little else. Ultimately, it’s the story of survival and persistence and growing up and bettering yourself, in spite of the many obstacles put before you.

There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . .survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

This quote from the book is a metaphor for Francie – and for all the poor people in the city.

Apparently, the book is nearly autobiographical as Betty Smith grew up in the area of Brooklyn she wrote about and many of the characters are based on people she knew growing up. Perhaps that’s why it felt so alive – a best seller in its time and written in clear, no-nonsense prose, it reads as well today as it did when it was published in 1943. Almost makes me long for another long bus trip so I can take in another classic.

Or maybe I’ll just skip the bus and make time to read in the daytime instead!

One of the decisions I had to make prior to my trip to Thailand was which book to bring. I know, not the top of everyone’s priority list, but as someone who reads every day it was one of the first things I thought about.

Normally I’d bring my e-book reader so I would have a selection, however I knew that the battery would require recharging shortly after my arrival and since I didn’t want to have to bring a voltage converter with me (US voltage) I decided that a paperback would be more practical. But that led to another consideration: did I bring multiple books with me or one really long one? I didn’t expect to be doing much reading once the tour really got going (and I didn’t) but I did have a nearly 12 hour flight each way and the long train ride to consider, and I don’t like to assume I’ll be able to find a book store when I need one.

Ironically, I ended up spending my holiday in Thailand reading about ancient Egypt. In the end, I chose a really long book – nearly 1000 pages – The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George.

I started this book only knowing bits and pieces of world history during that time period – I knew that Cleopatra had been involved with both Caesar and Mark Antony for instance, but wasn’t sure how all that came about. Reading this fictionalized account written from Cleopatra’s perspective was a wonderful way to learn more about those tumultuous times – with more than a dash of romance thrown in. I read a third of the book on my way to Thailand and dove back into the story every time I had a chance.

Cleopatra was a brilliant politician and even though I knew the story would not have the ending I really wanted – total destruction of Octavian – I eagerly read to the end. I admired the strength of will it took for Cleopatra to leave her children and end her own life rather than be a pawn for Octavian in Rome.

I had thought that if I finished the book during my travels, I could always abandon it and find something slightly less bulky to read. Halfway through there was no question this book had earned a spot on my keeper shelf. It will be a while before I tackle it again (!) but it’s also one of those rare books I think my husband will appreciate as much as I did. He likes to take long books on vacation too!

One unexpected effects of reading this book is that having read about the elaborate jewelry and clothes that Cleopatra wore, I find myself wanting to larger, bolder jewelry. Think I’ll start a trend?

One of the perks of working at the library is being able to borrow books, some of which I stumble across as I’m re-shelving the returns. I just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (2001), a book I first found last spring while it was on reserve for a class. I thumbed through the foreword while working at the circulation desk and was hooked from the first paragraph so of course I grabbed it last week when I found it back in regular circulation.

As fascinating as The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Fast Food Nation book is not about calories and fat content and reporting how unhealthy fast food is. It’s a dense read, each paragraph – each sentence – is simply brimming with information, starting with the history of fast food restaurants in the post World War II period. A classic example of the American dream, the men behind these modern empires started out with next to nothing but an idea and managed to take the idea of cheap food and kitchen efficiency to startling new levels.

But that’s just the beginning. The book goes on to describe how once these new restaurants took hold and gained popularity, they had a tremendous impact on farming, ranching, and meat packing industries. So voracious was the fast food industry’s appetite for potatoes and beef that the only way for the agriculture industry to keep up was to themselves apply many of those same principals of efficiency to their own products in an effort to keep up with the demand.

You might assume that with such high demand would come higher prices, but it didn’t happen that way in farming. In an effort to keep up and make more money, each farmer worked independently to produce a greater yield. So successful were they that it drove prices down. Of course it’s not that simple either – over the years huge agro-companies have grown to mammoth proportions and diversified, crushing individual farmers and ranchers in the process.

What made this book so interesting to me was not only the lesson in national economics but the human casualties in the industrialization of such large sectors of American society, starting with the people who work in the restaurants. The fast food industry typically only pays minimum wage and has actively (and successfully) fought any increases in minimum wage for years in an effort to keep their profit margins higher. And who usually works at these jobs? Unskilled workers, often teenagers, but also recent (or illegal) immigrants, all of whom are vulnerable members of society. Restaurant managers often receive annual bonuses for keeping labor costs low and they have established methods to do so. At best they “stroke” an employee, giving them praise and inculcating a feeling of being an important member of the team to manipulate employees into agreeing to work longer than their scheduled shift, with no extra pay. At worst, managers have been caught deliberately scheduling shifts to start and stop at busy times, forcing workers to stay over time during the rush, again with no extra pay.

Parallel situations have developed at slaughterhouses and meat packing plants as well. In an effort to maximize profits, the line speeds in both slaughterhouses and meat packing plants have increased – a dangerous practice from both the perspectives of the workers who are often injured by the knives they wield and the machinery they work with but also for the end consumer who may well end up with tainted products as a result of poor safety practices. Meat packing used to be a fairly skilled and highly paid profession. With industrialization, the big businesses have turned it into just another assembly line job, paid the minimum they can get away with and staffed with unskilled workers who have few other choices. As you might expect, the injury rate at a slaughterhouse or meat packing plant is high – not only from lacerations or accidents with machinery but also from repetitive stress injuries. Plant managers often receive bonuses based on low injury rate so many injuries go unreported on any official records.

If the working conditions of the people don’t move and disgust you, let’s move on to the animals. Aside from the much less than humane treatment they receive in the industrial feedlots, what the cattle are fed is horrifying. Cattle are ruminants and as such are intended to eat a variety of grasses. In feedlots they are fed whatever will fatten them up the fastest. In the past that list has included livestock wastes such as the remains of dead sheep and dead cattle and millions of dead cats and dogs purchased from animal shelters until the FDA banned such practices in the wake of fears over the spread of mad cow disease. Current regulations however still allow cattle to be fed dead pigs and dead horses as well as dead poultry, cattle blood, and waste products from poultry plants including sawdust and old newspapers that have been used as litter and which contain chicken manure, a source of dangerous bacteria, and parasites such as salmonella and tapeworms in addition to antibiotic residues, arsenic and heavy metals. (pp. 202-203).

What infuriated and disgusted me the most in this book was the underlying greed that was at the root of all of the worst practices in these industries. Here is a short list of examples that jumped out at me:

• No source of potential revenue goes unnoticed. In 1973, amid a bitter union organizing drive in San Francisco, the labor commissioner discovered and ordered a McDonald’s to stop accepting tips at its restaurants, since customers were being misled: the tips being left for crew members were actually being kept for the company.(p.76)

• Taxpayers are subsidizing the fast food industry’s high turnover rate. Through federal programs, fast food chains have claimed tax credits up to $2400 per each new low-income worker they hire. A 1996 investigation by the US Dept of Labor concluded that 92% of these workers would have been hired anyway and that their jobs were part-time, provided little training, and came with no benefits. The extremely high turnover rate in the industry simply means that the fast food companies can claim this credit for each new low income worker they hire. (p. 72-73)

• Pressure for ever increasing profits often drives companies to criminal activities. In 1989, ConAgra was found guilty of having systematically cheated chicken growers in Alabama: by tampering with trucks and scales and over an eight-year period 45,256 truckloads of full-grown birds were deliberately misweighed to make the birds seem lighter at ConAgra processing plants in the state. (p. 159)

• Meat processing plants deliberately recruit and exploit vulnerable groups. In September of 1994, GFI America, Inc. – a leading supplier of frozen hamburger patties to Dairy Queen, Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, and the federal school lunch program – needed workers for a plant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It sent recruiters to Eagle Pass, Texas near the Mexican border, promising steady work and housing. The recruiters hired thirty-nine people, rented a bus, drove the new workers from Texas to Minnesota, then dropped them off across the street from People Serving People, a homeless shelter in downtown Minneapolis. (p. 163)

• The school lunch program in the US might be the most dangerous place to eat. A 1983 investigation by NBC News reported that the Cattle King Packing Company – at the time, the USDA’s largest supplier of ground beef for school lunches and a supplier to Wendy’s – routinely processed cattle that were already dead before arriving at its plant, hid diseased cattle from inspectors, and mixed rotten meat that had been returned by customers into packages of hamburger meat. Cattle King’s facilities were infested with rats and cockroaches. (p. 218)

• Just cleaning the meat isn’t the answer. Steven Bjerklie, the former editor of Meat & Poultry, opposes the idea of irradiation to sanitize meat because he believes it will reduce pressure on the meatpacking industry to make fundamental and necessary changes in their production methods and allow unsanitary practices to continue. “I don’t want to be served irradiated feces along with my meat,” Bjerklie says. (p. 218)

• Eating at home isn’t necessarily safer since the meat is still processed at the same places. Anyone who brings raw ground beef into his or her kitchen today must regard it as a potential biohazard, one that may carry and extremely dangerous microbe [e coli 157:H7], infectious at an extremely low dose. The current high levels of ground beef contamination, combined with the even higher levels of poultry contamination, have led to some bizarre findings. A series of tests conducted by Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, discovered far more fecal bacteria in the average American kitchen sink than on the average American toilet seat. According to Gerba, “You’d be better off eating a carrot stick that fell in your toilet than one that fell in your sink.” (p. 221)

In the end, I can’t help wondering why. Why is it so important to squeeze out every single penny in profit at such a high cost to the employees and to national health? These corporations make billions of dollars in profit every year, would it really hurt any one of them to ensure better working conditions for their employees and enforce stricter safety measures? To allow farmers and ranchers to make a decent living? To feed cattle grass instead of other dead animals and biohazardous trash? The politicians who are out there shouting their patriotic slogans and calling for tax breaks are the same ones who are in the pockets of these big companies and often benefiting tremendously from turning a blind eye or flat out ignoring what is really going on. With the franchising of these restaurants internationally, the US is not only exporting a business model and a type of food, but all of these associated injustices as well. I’m not suggesting that all fast food restaurants should all be driven out of business, just that as powerful as they are, they need to take more responsibility for the power they possess.

If all of that wasn’t enough to turn your stomach, think about this: the fast food industry deliberately markets its product to children. Not only so the children will push their parents into coming to the restaurants and spend money as frequently as possible (have to collect ALL those toys after all), but also so that they can inculcate brand loyalty at an early age and thus ensure the next generation of customers. Americans are already some of the fattest and unhealthiest people in the industrialized world. Somehow fast food doesn’t seem like such a bargain anymore.

I finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma last weekend, but I wanted to take a little time to think about it before I wrote, to formulate something thoughtful to say other than “You must read this book!” – because this book does nothing if not make you think.

Where In Defense of Food examined the cult of nutritionism and shed light into the mystery of processed food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma examines food chains – exactly where does the food we eat come from. The food chains Pollan looks at are industrial, organic / alternative, and hunting / gathering.

I probably would have been a flower child had I been alive in the 60’s – I’m pretty skeptical by nature, particularly of politicians and big business. It really wasn’t such a huge surprise to me to read about what exactly goes on in the industrial farming world or the motivations behind it, and yet it was horrifying just the same. The toll that mono-agriculture takes on the environment, on the livelihood of the farmers, and ultimately on the public’s health is nothing short of stupefying – because all I can ask myself is why on earth do we go along with it? The answer goes back to money, big surprise. It all starts with growing corn and myriad of things that the food industry can do with that one cheap crop – run through a mass spectrometer, Pollan found that a much larger percentage of a McDonald’s meal is actually made up of corn than you would think, including 100% of the soda. If you are now wondering what’s so bad about eating corn, not only does it take a tremendous toll on the land to endlessly grow the same crop, but remember that many of the Western diseases like heart disease and diabetes can be linked back to the modern industrial diet – of processed corn.

The next food chains he looked at were organic and alternative. If you think that because you eat organic vegetables you’re exonerated from supporting the industrial food complex, think again. While organic farming does indeed spare the environment from a load of toxic pesticides (always a good thing) the fact is that most organic farming is done on an industrial scale in California. Pollan points out that from the moment a head of organic lettuce is picked it must be kept chilled to a precise temperature until it leaves the grocery store. So, when you factor in all the energy consumed in chilling and then transporting that lettuce from California across the country (or in some cases, the globe) to its final destination, that same lettuce isn’t really so “green” anymore. And it’s not really so much better a system for the animals involved in it either. Kind of makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, there are a few small alternative farms such as Polyface Farm in Virginia, run by Joel Salatin. He follows a really wild and crazy farming practice where he lets animals and plants co-exist in mutually beneficial patterns. He doesn’t call himself an organic farmer because based on government guidelines, he isn’t. He isn’t for instance using approved and tested feeds such as using “Feed #2” on their chickens. Instead he calls himself a “grass farmer”. He has a well orchestrated system of rotating his cattle and his chickens through his pastures, letting the grass, the cows, and the chickens all follow their natural predilections. Sounds like a great system, right? But because the chickens are out in a pasture eating “unidentified” grass and grubs, etc they cannot legally be called organic. Fortunately, Joel Salatin doesn’t care, nor do most of his customers. The fact that his cows and chickens have a much better quality of life – not to mention diet – is more compelling for them than a government stamp.

I think the food chain discussion that I found most interesting though was the hunting / gathering one. I love gathering “free” food – I can remember one summer in North Carolina when I found a blackberry patch of mammoth proportions. I was out every morning, in spite of the heat and bugs and thorns, gathering as many berries as I could get. I even dreamed about berries. That was the year I taught myself to make jam. Last summer I spent a lot of time eating beach peas, fresh from the pod. There’s nothing I love quite so well as gathering. Pollan’s description of mushroom hunting has almost got me wanting to go out try it myself, but I’m still a little scared of making a mistake at that activity and frankly I don’t think many mushrooms grow in the desert!

But it was the discussion of hunting that was most interesting. I long ago decided that though I didn’t think I could bring myself to go out and personally kill an animal, it didn’t make any sense to reject eating game just because someone else had done so. If I was going to eat a cow, why not a deer? After reading this section of the book, I’m actually more positive about hunting now. Not that it’s something I think everyone should do instead of grocery shopping (not sustainable) but because at least a deer has had its time in the forest, following its natural instincts to eat what it’s supposed to eat, and lived a quality deer life – as opposed to a cow that has been fattened in a feedlot eating a diet of corn, animal by-products, and antibiotics (a diet cooked up by scientists to build bulk faster) all consumed while standing in a pond of feces from the hundreds of cows quartered with it. Where’s the quality of life in that scenario?

One of the things I like the best about living in Egypt is that the whole country is like a big farmer’s market. On the whole, the farmers don’t use much if any pesticides because they can’t afford them. Most of the food available is grown within a couple hours drive of Cairo and is transported in small pickup trucks – and in many cases by donkey cart. I buy locally when I can because not only is it fantastic stuff, but it is cheaper than imported produce and also supports the local economy. Long before reading this book, living in Egypt brought to my attention the beauty of eating what’s in season here and now.

Pollan ends his book in the most reasonable of ways – only with the idea that we look and really see where it is our food is coming from, whether it be from the forest or McDonald’s. Does reading this book mean that I’m going to change the way I eat? How could it not? One day I truly hope to have my own vegetable garden. And while I’m not quite prepared to swear off eating a burger once in a while, I am glad that I’m not a daily or even weekly participant in a cycle that demands 400 cows AN HOUR are slaughtered on an assembly line to feed it. And if I ever find myself living within driving distance of an alternative farm such as Polyface, I’ll certainly do my best to support their endeavors.

The moose quilting progresses and isn’t going so badly. Not that that is saying much – I expected it to look absolutely horrible and instead it merely looks pretty bad. And that’s just the front. (We won’t discuss the back!) The up-side is that this is to be hung on a wall in a guest room. The down-side is that it is the room that I occupy while I’m visiting so this moose will be mocking me all summer – for years to come.

Fusible web applique is a total joke. The manufacturers of the fusible web claim it forms a permanent bond. Right. So then why does it lift and peel off as I go along? It’s not just this brand or batch either – I’ve never used any that formed a truly permanent bond. Except to my iron plate of course.

End rant.

Moving on… I ran across this reader review of my book ALL THE WAY HOME the other day and it made me smile:

I enjoyed this book – it was a sweet romantic story of two people who grew up in the same town, and “found” each other long after high school. I also liked the secondary storyline of the character’s sister. It was very well written, and the characters were believable (although I felt that their falling in love was a little rushed).I’m a sucker for romances set in small-town America, with dogs and babies and Dairy Queen, so this one was right up my alley.
by: kcar08 on Library Thing

All I ever want to do when I write a story is entertain a reader. So glad they enjoyed it enough to tell others about it on a community site. Thanks, kcar08!

That is the main message of a wonderful book I read over the weekend called IN DEFENSE OF FOOD by Michael Pollan. It’s a quick read in just over 200 pages, and it’s really eye opening in that it shows you what’s right in front of your face: that scientists have been trying to identify components in food that are good for us without considering the food as a whole or its (or our) place in the food chain. Ever noticed that health advice keeps contradicting itself? And what the US food industry itself gets away with is practically criminal in the health claims it slaps on the processed creations they produce.

In most ways, he was preaching to the choir with me as a reader, but I too fall into what he calls the “nutritionism” trap by being overly focused on this or that vitamin. I don’t actually spend much time seeking out nutrition information, though I am interested in the topic, it seems to just seep in by osmosis – no wonder with how much money and research is poured into the topic by the US food industry. Most of Pollan’s suggestions for eating were commonsense: eat more vegetables; to the extent you can, eat and shop locally (farmer’s markets); shop the periphery of the store to avoid the bulk of the processed foods; and spend more money and time in eating quality whole foods as an investment in health since many of the big “western diseases” such as diabetes and heart problems can be traced back to diet. Though the focus of the book was on the American diet, it would still be of interest to non-Americans given how pervasive the American diet has become around the world over the years.

I did particularly enjoy the vindication that butter was given over margarine. I switched years ago because since I don’t use that much anyway, why not have flavor over a stick of chemicals that doesn’t even melt on toast? Seems I was right.

Reading the book really gave me a boost in my menu planning this week. One of the main things I like about Egypt is the produce. Egypt is one big farmer’s market. Though much of the produce is labeled “organic” I have no idea if anyone oversees such a label and how it is applied. But it is fresh and tasty, and we tend to eat what’s in season because that’s what they have to offer at the time (and I refuse to pay $$$ for bland imported produce, grown more for looks and portability than taste). Things are at a seasonal high at the moment with sweet corn, watermelon, plums, and grapes all available in addition to all the usual things. I spent more this week on fruits and vegetables than I have in a long time and the results so far have been tasty.

THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA by Pollan is next on my list.

I finished Gone with the Wind over the weekend. What can I say except WOW.

What. A. Great. Book.

I’m not going to say that I didn’t still get tripped up by a few technical glitches here and there, but once things got going, I just couldn’t put the book down. Scarlett is such a wonderful anti-hero. She is awful and selfish and rude to everyone around her, has no insight into human nature at all – hers or anyone else’s – and yet at the end I was still rooting for her to get Rhett back. It’s not easy to create a character like that.

Normally when I finish a book that I really enjoy, I immediately turn back to page one and start over again. This book is too long and I have too many other things on my TBR pile at the moment for me to start over with Gone with the Wind.

But it definitely has a place on my keeper shelf.