The back story:
A good portion of my family is good farm stock. My mother used to tell me I was from really good "stock." Which is how you'd refer to cattle and so every time I fell ill or seemed genetically inadequate I used to wonder what the hell was wrong with me, after all how can such fantastically strong genes produce such a wussy? That's another story. The fact is I was always sort of in love with the farm culture in my family.
The family farms were one of my favorite places to be when I was growing up. The stories passed down from one generation to another or just from the remaining live generations were my childhood novels. My grandmother spent the summer she was 9 at the top of their windmill reading Gone With the Wind.
I could barely stomach that book when I read it at 15, I was suitably impressed by the windmill story and up until the windmill went with new development I would look at it nostalgically every time we drove out to the family cemetery. We have a family cemetery - that in itself is kinda cool.
My great grandmother introduced me to genetically engineered food. She introduced me to the concept. She told me a story about how a group of investors (she was self made) had been invited to a dinner where everything from the salad course to the mousse desert were made from white fish. Then, they were all served strawberries. "Strawberries?" Strawberries, she said. "As big as your head." Then she laughed. "As big as your HEAD?!" Well as big as the plate anyway. "How big was the plate?" It was a desert plate.
I believed her. She was not the joking kind. I believed her utterly. The conversation used to haunt me.
I asked her "Is that good, is this good, is this the future?" You tell me. You're the future, is it good?
I was clueless. All I knew is I had this weird gut reaction against it.
I knew pro-GM food folks. I heard the stories about food so large it could feed a family, and I thought but it is the same amount of food that feeds a family now, just one strawberry instead of hundreds of little ones. I was still not sold. The GM food grows out of its season, has the forced-grown lack of smell and is harder to kill - in the long run making it cheaper to produce. But...but...it has no smell.
The fact that I was in love with America's farm culture didn't help. Waves of grain used to sooth my soul. I would drive up north, towards Nebraska and the beauty of the endless fields of The Breadbasket of the World would just sing to me. It didn't help my feelings towards GM foods that Americas farms were murdered in the night during my youth.
When I moved to England, I lost touch with it to some degree. America is still hyper-strung when it comes to some of this stuff. The English, believe it or not, or more likely to be overtly against these things and have less of it around them. I heard stories like
this one on a myth basis - was it true - had things become that bad?
When I came back to America I felt desensitized to American culture and disconnected from my people.
I was away 8 years. That both does and doesn't sound like a long time. 8 years is a generation. 8 years is longer than the catholic church takes to show you the man. 8 years is nearly a decade. 8 years in American culture is time for so many things to seep in and change on a day to day basis that by the time a person gets back the face of things have changed. You changed my money! You added color and weirdness to the bills! You put stuff on nickels and pennies, like the quarters weren't enough. I was sure this was a ploy to get people to spend less change "oooo it's a buffalo nickel, I like these." You changed the junk food. You changed what stores had and hadn't survived. Fox News - you have to be kidding me, right?
I felt like you all had been pod snatched. I didn't get a long well at first when I came back and I still have my moments.
Like the night I cooked dinner and cut into a green pepper and found - no seeds.
I actually was hit with revulsion. I took it back to the store as defective. The guy looked at me like I was nuts. Nothing was wrong with it. They order green peppers like that. Why? People don't like seeds, so they were grown out of producing seeds. Is there something wrong with you people?
To stem the flow of culture shock I was feeling I immediately switched to organic food. Later, it became about my children and their health. Some things matter more to me than others. I like organic milk, especially for the girls.
So I once again (in saving my own senses) became inured to what was going on around me. Until one day the kids at all the strawberries. They ATE my strawberries. I didn't get ONE.
So my husband, because he loves me, went later that night to the open grocery store and got me strawberries.
Which is where Part 2 comes in.
