Yeah, but some of us have corporate giants as “neighbors.” I can choose from Hershey Foods (based in Hershey), Utz snack foods (based in Hanover), Rite-Aid (based in Camp Hill), Musselman’s apple sauce (based in Biglerville), and who knows how many more. All of these meet the 150-mile rule for local foods, in fact, so it’s a little weird to be able to count Hershey bars.
I know what you’re saying, and I agree with you. I feel fortunate to live in a community with small service-oriented companies who actually want my business and who want to make me happy. And I’m happy to pay a little extra to get it, because I know I’m supporting local people and doing my bit to keep my money here.
I just think it’s cool to be able to support the regional economy by buying common, nationally-distributed products.
I don’t dislike this person, she’s nice, but she fits the category of people the OP is describing. She’s a a retired botanist/biologist, very VERY green (and we both work for an environmental company), and super liberal. She’s a part time employee of our company and she accompanied me on a “site walk” about 40 miles south of town.
On the way, she used her cellphone to call the contractor and subcontracter that would be working on the job, and meeting us for the site walk. Then, about 20 minutes later, just before we get to the site she says “oh, that’s disgusting, look, they put in a new cell tower”.
I think perhaps you’ve misread the handbook. The benefits I’ve always heard to “buying local” are reducing carbon emissions and other pollution from trucks and boats shipping food gazillions of miles away from where it was farmed, while getting the “freshest”* in-season food possible and supporting local small businesses and co-ops. Sticking it to The Man is a fun bonus and an utterly symbolic gesture. Even if the Hershey plant is in your backyard, buying from them provides none of these benefits.
*Please, don’t bring your stinking “facts” into the conversation, like how nutrients degrade quickly after the plant is picked and sitting in the sun at the farmer’s market, while the Jolly Green Giant flash freezes his veggies practically in the field, preserving more nutrients in many cases than fresh vegetables available anywhere. This is about Truthiness, not facts.
**'Cause co-ops are good, but corporations are evil, dude. The bigger, the eviler. No, don’t ask me why. Stop thinking so much and just *feel *the truth, Sister!
(This post makes me feel like a traitor to my people. Really, there are some *great *people in this subculture. It’s the few total dipsticks that make my teeth hurt.)
Wait, a post above reminded me of the real reason I hate hippies. Dreadlocks on white people.
Listen, you goddam dirty hippies. White people are not allowed to wear dreadlocks. It’s a fucking scientific fact, you could look it up. What, it’s not fair that only black people can wear dreadlocks? Hey, was it fair when your ancestors kidnapped their ancestors and forced them to work on the plantation? No, it wasn’t fair. So suck it up, and cut off those filthy nasty disgusting white-guy dreadlocks.
I remember going to the Further Festival in the 90’s sometime. We rode up to Atlanta in my friend’s hippie roommate’s hollowed-out VW van. I sat on a cooler of beer the whole way, with no AC. Just raging, blast-furnace, South-in-Dog-Days heat. We were stoned completely off our asses and had been drinking homebrew for 3 days. Still, the music was…well, hippified. Irritating. I wanted to punch Bob Weir in the crotch. Los Lobos was cool, though.
Anyhow, I settled on the grassy hillside, hopeful for some enjoyable music. The smell of patchouli and BO was overwhelming. Still, I was steady. Evrything was cool.
Then this FUCKING hippie kid settled somewhere upwind of us, with aggressive body odor and a handful of burning sage that smelled like someone set fire to Satan’s pubic hair. We moved. No good. In desperation, turning green, I sought the kid out and asked him to please put out the sage, since I was getting physically ill.
He called me a fascist.
I sat down on the grass, defeated, roasting in the merciless heat, dehydrated and strung out, and puked up my guts.
Finally, something like an excuse to tell my current favorite hippie story.
Christmas before last (so, uh… like '05?) the Charlie Brown Christmas Special was on tv and the oldest boy (9 at the time) was coming down the stairs just in time to hear Lucy at her psychiatrist booth telling Charlie about the spirit of the season. “What is she, some kind of hippie?” asks the boy.
*Wendel brought it to life in his guest room bath tub
It was a special project for his 4-H club
But it broke loose out in the middle of the night
And now it’s eatin’ flower children left and right
All the punks are gonna scream yippee
'Cause it’s the thing that only eats hippies*
Fair enough. But you’re taking my dashiki off my cold dead torso! (I mean the last part figuratively, please don’t hurt me.)
One of the wierdest things I’ve seen, also in Little Five Points ATL, was skinheads with red shoelaces (a skinhead thing) and swastikas on an army surplus jacket- and dreadlocks. I also remember watching a skinhead on the ATL news give a speech calling for white unity- “Like the Three Musketeers said, 'One for all and all for one, if you’re white stand with us! Three Musketeers and all those times it’s all about white people and white power saving the world!” and remember laughing for wondering if he’s ever seen a picture of Three Musketeers author Alexandre Dumas (whose hair is courtesy of his African slave grandmother).
This is a gimlet. To give someone the “gimlet eye” is to give them a particularly penetrating glance, as if you are drilling a hole through them with a gimlet.
