Anniversaries and new beginnings

Gene is lifting up his beard so we can read the t-shirt

This picture was taken yesterday morning when Gene came to the coffee shop before heading to the airport. Every June and July he fishes for salmon with his crew in Alaska. His shirt is from a saloon called the Salty Dawg in Homer Spit, Alaska. We all gave him hugs and lots of wishes for a good season and a safe return. We will all miss him until he comes home, especially Paula, since they have spent the last year or so together, either at his place or hers. This means we won't see her until he comes back, since she's not an early riser on her own.

Leo and his dad on the bus

Last week on my way to get a massage, I saw these two get on the bus, and the seat in front of me had just been vacated, so guess who came to mug my camera? Leo said they were on their way to a different coffee shop than the one we frequent, so he could have a biscotti. And his dad Robert could have an espresso, I suspect. I had a wonderful massage and then caught the bus home.

Roses outside the public library

Yesterday as I was returning a very interesting book to the library, I saw these pretty roses and after sniffing and appreciating them, I snapped their portrait. The book is Pandora's Lunchbox: How Processed Foods Took Over the American Meal. I saw the author, Melanie Warner, interviewed on some talk show not long ago and mentioned the book to Norma Jean. She of course got on the list at her library and read it when it became available, and I forgot to. She was reading it during our last video chat and I immediately snagged it from my library. The link above will take you to an interview on Grist with Melanie, where she is asked some questions about what she discovered during her 18 months researching the fast food industry.

I was not learning much that I didn't already know, until I discovered where my vitamins are processed, and how. Did you know that Vitamin D3, essential for those of us who live so far north, is processed in China from Australian wool? Yes! The lanolin is shipped there and irradiated to create the vitamin. I checked my own brand of D3, and it says it is processed from wool oil. Eeewww! But once I got over the initial shock, I also learned that very few of the vitamins I consume are processed in this country, because of the environmental damage to land and air. China doesn't have those same regulations, so there you are. How revolting.

I also learned about GRAS (generally recognized as safe). From that article linked above, here's a quote from Melanie:

In a glaring regulatory loophole that dates back to 1958, the GRAS system also happens to be voluntary. It’s perfectly legal for companies to keep the FDA in the dark about new additives, and consequently there are some 1,000 ingredients the FDA has no knowledge of whatsoever, according to an estimate done by the Pew Research Center.

 The closer one can get to eating food that has not become processed Frankenfood, the better. I think I've eaten my last bit of brand-name foods that I thought, once upon a time, were GRAS. And reading labels has become my thing. Not that I didn't read them before, but I wonder when I ate my last French fry? They will never pass my lips again.

I wondered why today's date kept nagging at me. Not only is it my grand-niece's birthday (she's three), it's the thirteenth anniversary of my terrible skydiving accident. And I'm still doing it (skydiving, that is). Sunday I made four wonderful skydives with my friends, and we were gifted with a fantastic day where everything worked just as it should. I had even forgotten the upcoming anniversary, until today's post needed to be written and I pondered the date.

We have a few days of rain in our forecast, and unfortunately one of them looks like Thursday, so the next post is likely to be soggy. Until then, however, I'll be enjoying the afterglow of Sunday and obsessively reading food labels.
:-)