The Listening, Reading, and Watching Roundup (May 2022)
Stuff that I found intriguing, inspiring, or just fun.
I found myself heading down several reading rabbit holes this month! Not all the time, but sometimes I allow myself the bandwidth for ‘related articles’ to catch my attention and suck me in. There are definitely a few of those mixed in here!
Nutritious GMO Tomatoes
For instance….apparently, tomatoes are going to be getting a vitamin D boost soon via gene-editing. (This makes them genetically modified crops of course). I am 100% going to explore this in more detail soon, because it’s one of those immensely interesting dilemmas that has much to do with where we put our priorities in the next chapter.
Many of us are deficient in vitamin D - about a quarter of the USA for example, and as much as 40% of the European population. And if you are vegetarian or vegan - a trend that is much better for the planet on several levels - it’s harder to get sufficient vitamin D because plants aren’t such a great source of it.
So, on the one hand a fruit/vegetable that is more nutritious sounds good. On the other hand, it’s genetically modified. I know that safety of GMO foods has been proven multiple times, and that’s not really what bothers me so much. What bothers me about messing around with food in a lab is that we give power over our food and our crops to corporations or governments.
Don’t get me wrong, we need corporations and governments to be involved. We can’t possibly produce, transport, store, and sell food at scale without them, but I am uneasy if we go down a route that makes it difficult for farmers to save their own seeds and produce food the way they want to. Anyway, much more on this another time. Suffice it to say, I went down a rabbit hole with this one! I also learned the word: biofortification. (I now consider this what I’m doing at the gym. So much better than ‘working out’.)
Here is the original research paper if you’re interested in the details. And here’s a related research article on vitamin D deficiency (side note: not perfect agreement on what constitutes ’deficiency’, which is itself, interesting.)
No need for eight glasses a day!
Speaking of the gym, I saw a woman there the other day with a water bottle that, I swear, was as large as her head. Bright green. The bottle, not her head. I was instantly water-shamed: quickly calculating my average daily water intake relative to her jug. So, when I saw this 4 minute TED video (not a TED talk) with Jen Gunter, explaining why we don’t need to drink the legendary eight glasses of water a day, it caught my eye. (Hurrah! Bottom line: drink when you’re thirsty. Your body will tell you. Who knew?!)
And then I went down a rabbit hole to view Gunter’s TED talk at TEDxWomen asking why we don’t talk about periods - a very funny and fabulous 11-minute talk in which, at 46(!), I learned some things. Isn’t that crazy? Which is her point of course. It’s a man-appropriate talk too :-)
America and Guns
Like the rest of you, I’ve also been reading news and commentary on the horrific shootings in Uvalde and in Buffalo. It’s unfathomable to me that our legislators will not accept that 80-90% of us (depending on the specific question you ask), including the vast majority of gun owners, would actually prefer better background check systems and safety measures for gun ownership. We are more divided on other measures, but my goodness, let’s at least start there.
Here is a great resource for some stats on our gun problem.
Here’s the link to HR8 - the proposed legislation to require background checks for private gun sales in the same way that we do for dealer-sales. (Why is this even controversial?) It passed the House last year, but hasn’t even been accepted for a vote in the senate. And then….May 24th, the day of the Uvalde shooting, the bill was read, and added to the legislative calendar. Good. We shall see if it gets the votes, or even stays on the calendar, but good.
This is such a great magazine. Wonderful writing and storytelling, it’s culture-revealing and creating.
This article caught my attention from earlier this year: The human disputes and ecological confusion around preserving the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana. This is a quote from near the end of the (long but beautifully told) story: “Ecosystems are dynamic. Restoration, then, is always arbitrary. We have to decide what conditions to restore. The fight in the Atchafalaya is not against nature, but among humans who disagree about what to build next”
And then this article on Erika Council: Biscuit Whisperer. The article is called ‘Still She Rises’ - I love it.
And finally, I mentioned this in a post earlier this week, but I want to give you the link again because all that’s been happening lately has made me go back and dip into this book once more:
'The Time is Now', by Sister Joan Chittister.
She is a nun, a prolific writer, a social activist, and in this book, calls on us to be modern-day prophets. While she writes from a place of faith and spirituality, I think it is just as relevant to those who don’t consider themselves spiritual.
Her call for courage is one I am trying better to heed.
Have a good weekend everyone.
Just wanted to say how much I enjoy your dailies! The breadth of topics and quality of writing is inspiring but I cannot fathom how you get so much done. btw, I love my Tens (but not for cramps) and take my daily vitamin D (vitamin pronounced 'proper', the English way)while monitoring my water balance by color, which I was surprised was not mentioned in the Ted talk.