Thoroughly Modern Millie

I went to the bank yesterday. In my line of business, contracts are irregular but not infrequent, which means that checks need to be run to the bank irregularly and fairly frequently. In the interest of saving time, I often let client checks pile up for a week or so before running deposits--the joke is that the way to make a pending check arrive is to deposit the others.

While I was handing checks to the teller for deposit, she asked if I was aware that they had added a shiny new feature to the mobile banking app--I could now deposit checks from my home office--she thought I might be really interested, since I seem to be in so often.

Sure enough, after that bank visit and picking up Little One from school, and getting some more ice cream (Jr. Firefighter is home from college for the summer, and this wreaks havoc on frozen inventory), I swing by the mailbox on the way up the drive, and there it is, another check.

Oddly enough, I find myself torn: Yes, it is a good idea to reduce trips, with all those pesky carbon emissions, traffic congestion, and such. Yes, it is an ease of burden for the busy to be able to take care of errands in a few seconds. Yes, reducing the amount of paper reduces cost, both environmental and administrative.

But. When I walked into the bank, the manager looked up from his desk, and greeted me by name. I still remember when he came to this branch as a teller, long before Little One was born. I think of the times a trip to the bank counted as human contact, during those years as the tired mother of two young boys. I think of the time that same bank manager flagged a transaction because he knew I wasn’t in Texas (having a spa day and buying a flat screen TV) because he had seen me just an hour ago (and he knew I wasn't a Red Door kind of girl). I think of the phone call from my mother's bank when something didn't seem quite right with her, and I wonder if my bank will still be around to provide that same human connection and safety net. Can the mobile app call my kids when I'm 84?

I could get on my high horse and justify a drive to the bank since the carbon emissions don't apply to me in my electric car (and it's true), and discount my contribution to congestion since I try to combine trips. But it's still a car on the road, and an electric car is at best a compromise (maybe I should get a bicycle). So I take the newly arrived check, endorse it "for mobile deposit," snap pictures of it, and send it off through cyberspace. And fight the urge to email the bank manager just to say hi.

Vegetable alchemy

"Wow, mom, you did magic!" exclaimed Little One as we left the farmers market this afternoon. And I did feel a bit like a medieval alchemist, transforming juicy fruit into root vegetables.

It started back in early spring, when we had a glorious stretch of sunny and warm. I looked out at the mass of bees and blossoms on the plum tree and thought to myself, "it's going to be a good year for plums (and apples)." As it turns out, I was right.

But it was also a good year for strawberries and raspberries, and somehow the finite resources of empty jars and shelf space dwindled long before we got to plum jam season. In our house, it's the last hurrah of summer when we pick the late-ripening plums and add foraged blackberries, a sort of bookmark on the jam shelf: once you get to the plum-based jams, you know that season has come to a close.

So what to do with the excess plums this year? It turns out the answer was staring us in the face, as we have joined an informal online group that arranges shared buys of various local produce. I put out an offer, and a few people responded. It's a perfect match: we still had plenty of fruit to use up every last jam jar, and the excess was magically transformed into a handful of bills.

Yes, the bills were the intermediary that I traded for the spuds, but it somehow felt direct, taking the same worn three bills that had been pressed into my hand only a few hours prior and pressing them into the hands of the farmer, so, yes, I agreed with Little One that it was indeed magic, transforming purple plums from the front yard into purple potatoes on the supper table.

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The post script to this, is of course, that money is a kind of magic, based on mutual trust in a system. In a time when we hear terms like mortgage-backed derivatives and bankrupt brokerage firms bantered about, it's a good reminder, seeing how those leathery slips of paper can represent real value. It's pretty easy to follow the trajectory of those dollar bills, but how much of our economy is that firmly based in the real and tangible? Yet another compelling reason to keep it local.

Hail to the ch(i)ef

Newspapers the world over are hailing Michelle Obama for her frank talk on childhood obesity, its causes and what we need to do to tackle it.

"It's time we all had a wake-up call. Our kids didn't do this to themselves. Our kids don't decide what's served to them at school or whether there's time for gym class or recess. Our kids don't choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions, and then have those products marketed to them everywhere they turn. And no matter how much they beg for pizza, fries and candy, ultimately, they are not, and should not, be the ones calling the shots at dinnertime. We're in charge. We make these decisions." (http://bit.ly/9u2K6j)

This kind of statement, at a prearranged press event, is inevitably followed by thunderous applause. But are we really in charge? Do we really make these decisions?

It seems incongruous to me that the wife of the president should be tackling the problem from the same side as the rest of us, when she presumably has access to the ears of one of the most powerful men in the western world. Think about it: if our kids aren't the ones deciding, then who is making these decisions? Are parents really the ones choosing "tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions?" Are parents the ones "calling the shots at dinnertime?" The answer is yes and no, for while we are the ones who have to say 'no' to pizza for dinner, we as a society have stripped parents of a great deal of authority over their childrens' diets. And we as parents must assume some responsibility for allowing it to happen.

But let me back track: the seeds of the decisions that are making our children obese are not being made at the dinner table. The decision isn't even been made when a parent goes shopping. The decisions aren't even being made by that supermarket manager placing the order to stock the shelves. The people were pushing the buttons and turning the nozzles and driving the forklifts in the food factories are also not the ones making the decision ( we could say they're just following orders). No, the decisions are being made for us all in board rooms across the country, by people who can afford to circumvent the system that they themselves have created.

A couple of months ago I ran across a photograph of a younger Barack Obama teaching a class. What struck me was not that he was free of gray hairs, but what he was writing on the blackboard in front of him. The title of his diagram was "Relationships Built on Self Interest." He already understood the powers driving much of our society. And during his campaign he was the one who dared admit to the revolving door between business and government regulatory bodies that was creating a web of conflicts of interest so tangled that he himself seems incapable of dismantling them. And he promised us that he would stop this revolving door, where former agri-business executives assumed roles of responsibility within government agencies charged with regulating the selfsame businesses, and where people leaving these agencies find themselves offered lucrative positions in the same businesses.

I took heart when he took office and his first appointees seemed to buck this trend, and was nothing short of thrilled when the wind seemed to be changing, bringing with it proactive recalls driven by the FDA, rather than the empty gestured voluntary recalls. But the fresh wind of change seems to have lost some momentum. Appointees from business made it onto his lists after all, and recall notices from the FDA are leaning more toward the characteristic language and patterns that we know all too well.

Michelle Obama is proposing saving our kids by re-empowering parents. Indeed, she seems to be thinking along the same lines I was 10 years ago, when I had a small child to feed, and was unsatisfied by the choices being presented to me. My decisions at the supermarket were already made for me, so I had to find some place else to assert my parental choice. For me, it was a step by step process: I started by shopping the outside perimeter of the supermarket, reading labels, and asking questions, and eventually moved outside of the big box altogether. The gradual evolution has taken me to the point where even the coop seems to be a bit of a compromise, as I find I much prefer to press coins in the earthy palms of farmers' hands than swipe my debit card through a PIN pad device.

I and many like me are essentially doing an end run against the food industry (and they don't like it, judging from the rules they keep trying to get pushed through--think labeling). We're shopping at farmers' market, signing up for CSAs, and even planting vegetable gardens. I am very glad that Michelle Obama has started this conversation. And I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that she, like all the other strong, thinking mothers out there, is having this conversation with her husband. Because only if both parents are pulling in the same direction will the children be healthy.

Trust funds

As I read books and watch videos about where our food comes from, it becomes evident to me that the driving force behind it is just plain greed. Huge, wealthy companies are squeezing everyone, from farmers to consumers in order to stuff their pockets fuller. It is easy to become discouraged, to feel that one person can't make a difference, that we are powerless to change things.

When Number One Son was but a wee babe, we joined a group of mothers and toddlers. It was wonderful to feel part of something. As years passed, we brought many a meal to welcome a new baby or support an ailing family member--we even cleaned house for one mom on three months' bed rest. One of our members suggested a babysitting co-op as a natural extension of this good will. We all agreed it would be ideal to have a trusted friend to watch our kid, not just in dire straits, but for such luxuries as a teeth cleaning or an evening out with our husbands.

The first step involved distributing coupons representing 1/2 hour of sitting, ten per person, a kind of currency for sitting. When you sat, you earned, when you dropped your kid off, you paid. Sounds simple, but as it turned out, the formalization spelled doom. Too many moms 'spent' their coupons, and then dropped out, leaving the rest with handfuls of useless scrip. The co-op fizzled, and mistrust poisoned the group.

Fast forward to the present day: we are part of a small school community, where no such formal system exists. Yet our kids--for we see ourselves as the villagers who must raise them--are constantly in motion between families, passed hand to hand with small-town casualness and trust. After one particularly harrowing experience that landed me in the hospital for five days, it took a series of calls, from friend to friend to locate my little boy, well-fed and playing happily at a friend's home.

My heart is warmed by this community, a rarity in this world. We all trust that it will even out in the end, and certainly no one is keeping score. If one of us drives more than the other, we are still content, for we're making it one less car on the road. We all win.

I am encouraged when I see small signs of this kind of trust and calculated abandonment of greed. The paper tells me about a café in Kirkland, Terra Bite Lounge, where the menu bears no prices. You pay what you feel the meal was worth, and as you are able. The owner isn't worried about getting stiffed--his vision is based on trust, not greed. It all evens out in the end.

The CEO of Whole Foods announced that beginning this year, his salary will be $1/year. He states simply, "The tremendous success of Whole Foods Market has provided me with far more money than I ever dreamed of and far more than is necessary for either my financial security or personal happiness." And he's working to spread his gospel of conscious capitalism.

The unfortunate reality is that we live in a world driven by money, especially big money. But that doesn't mean we can't do the right thing. Many voices remind us that we can vote with our dollars, and not enough of us do. But I think we can do even more by not opening our wallets to begin with, but by opening our hearts and homes.

The IRS doesn't care much for this kind of attitude, as it leaves less for the taxman. But if you look at the grand scheme of things, we wouldn't need as much government funding--at least for peaceful pursuits--if we were watching out for each other instead of watching the bottom line.

It all evens out in the end.