Wal-Mart Going Local

Talk about your conundrums.  What happens when all of those (us?) Wal-Mart* skeptics are faced with the reality that feeding the big blue machine or buying locally produced food are one in the same option?  Well, with today's announcement from Wal-Mart that they plan on buying and selling $400 million worth of produce grown by local farmers within its state stores this year alone, it looks like that's where we are headed.  As you might guess, the world's largest retailer hasn't suddenly turned locavore they are simply doing what they do best - watching the bottom line.  Wal-Mart is the nation's largest purchaser of produce and it takes a lot of diesel to move all those fruits and veggies around.  The closer to the register they can buy the more money they save.  

There are undoubtedly some within the local food movement who will be troubled by Wal-Mart's move into the arena but I'm not one of them.  Wal-Mart isn't about to sign up for our CSA, nor are they going to undercut the market of customers who are interested in it.  By and large they will still be buying from the large factory style farms but they will be doing a better job of logistics and distribution--they will be using less fuel, which isn't bad for anyone.  There will undoubtedly be some smallish to medium size farms who are able to enter into the game as well by providing niche crops.  How will it affect the farmers' price of that previously "premium priced" local produce?  We'll have to see.  How will it affect the local food movement in the long run?  We'll have to see there as well, but I'm not above thinking that it could be a boon nor am I naive enough to think that altruistic motives are a requirement for benefiting the greater good.  Wal-Mart's efforts at greening its stores was the catalyst that a lot of other retailers, businesses, and corporations needed to take seriously their own efforts at reducing their environmental footprint.  Perhaps their entry into local food production could have a similar catalyzing affect on struggling local food systems.  I don't care how anti-Wal-Mart you are, if you can get them talking about "food miles" on their own website that has to make you smile a bit, even if its a largely ironic grin.

* Does the new logo mean that the hyphen is out?

Billy Collins on Bugs and Company

Billy Collins writing in the WSJ:

I think what these animations offered me besides some very speedy, colorful entertainment was an alternative to the static reality around me that dutifully followed the laws of the physical world. The brothers Warner presented a flexible, malleable world that defied Newton, a world of such plasticity that anything imaginable was possible. Bugs Bunny could suddenly pull a lawn mower, or anything else that might come in handy, out of his pants pocket, and he wasn't even wearing pants. Flattened by a 500-pound anvil, Wile E. Coyote could snap back into shape in a heartbeat. A box containing a pair of Acme rocket-powered roller skates would arrive in the desert with no sign of a delivery service (though you suspected it would be called Ace Delivery).

Plus, characters could jump dimensions, leaping around in time and space, their sudden exits marked by a rifle-shot sound effect. Anticipating the tricks of metafiction, these creatures could hop right out of the world of the cartoon and into our world, often Hollywood itself to consort with caricatures of Eddie Cantor and Marilyn Monroe. Or Bugs would do the impossible by jumping out of the frame and landing on the drawing board of the cartoonist who was at work creating him. This freedom to transcend the laws of basic physics, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry. Robert Bly developed a poetics based on the notion of psychic "leaping," where the genius of a poem is measured by its ability to leap without warning from the conscious to the unconscious and back again. Bly's short poem "After Long Busyness" provides an example of leaping by association and captures the skittish motions of thought:

I start out for a walk at last after weeks at the desk.
Moon gone, plowing underfoot, no stars; not a trace of light!
Suppose a horse were galloping toward me in this open field?
Every day I did not spend in solitude was wasted.

I adored Looney Tunes as a kid and still find them the most entertaining cartoons on television.

Elmer
The mailbox in front of the neat cottage
spells out the unfortunate name.
This morning the homebody
is singing in his sunny kitchen
dum-dee-dum, waiting
for the tea water to boil.
Later he will have his nap,
the enormous pink head
rolling on the pillow
dreaming again of the wabbit,
the private carrot patch.
Waiting by his bed
is the shotgun and the ridiculous hat
for he is the human.  

Occasionally Music: Melody Gardot

I had forgotten about Melody Gardot until she arrived in my daily podcast subscription via KCRW's Today's Top Tune.  (Ah, KCRW, definitely in my top ten list of things I miss about living in LA)  The song reminded me of what a great voice she has and what an interesting story she has.  Both first came to my attention via NPR:

Four years after a serious car accident, Melody Gardot used the experience as a springboard to musical success she might never have achieved otherwise.

The singer, now 23, was hit by an SUV while riding her bicycle. Her injuries were serious and left her unable to sit up for more than 10 minutes. She suffered short-term memory loss and acute sensitivity to light and sound.

Gardot had played the piano before the accident, and a doctor suggested that she use music as a kind of recovery therapy. Since she couldn't sit comfortably at the piano, she picked up a guitar. Now, she's a professional musician, and her debut full-length album is called Worrisome Heart.

. . . .

Since the accident, Gardot has struggled with short-term memory loss, which forces her to write and record compositions before she forgets them. Furthermore, her heightened sensitivity to light and sound — which, despite hearing devices and sunglasses — makes performing somewhat difficult. But she says she still finds it enjoyable.

Here are a couple of tracks courtesy of YouTube:

Rebuilding the Hearts of People

I like this bit from a recent post on Roger Ebert's blog:  

One of the most prolific and intelligent contributors to the comments section of the blog is Soloman Wakeling. I wrote in curiosity, asking to know more about him. He replied that he is a 24-year-old law student from Australia, and that one of his problems is, "I read too many books." There was one thing he said that I felt I needed to write about in the blog: "I find your work is filled with an essentially humanitarian philosophy, dealing with concepts like redemption."

The first half of his statement I hope is true. The second part is certainly true. Let us set aside all of the films that are essentially entertainments (although they have their uses and pleasures, too). I am thinking now about the remaining titles, which deal seriously with human lives. The ones that affect me most deeply are the ones in which characters overcome something within themselves or the world, and endure.

It brought to mind two films that I've been tracking in hopes of seeing them at some point.  Both are set in Rwanda and deal forcibly with the events surrounding and emerging from the genocide of the mid 90's.  The first is a film about revenge and the second is a documentary about forgiveness, yet the both seem to be ultimately about the search for redemption.

Here is the trailer for Munyurangabo:  

And here is the trailer for the short documentary As We Forgive:

I think the lessons of Rwanda will become more, and not less, important in the future.  The people of Rwanda have much to teach us and I am glad that these film makers are giving them a voice. 

Ford, sure, but Starbucks?

Ford is no surprise, but Starbucks closing 500 stores and cutting 7% of its workforce . . . maybe this recession thing is for real.

Peak Miley?