The Thing About Apples or Two Ideas Collide

My blog dashboard is about as cluttered as my desk. There are 20-30, 200 word starts that have fizzled out in mid sentence. How's that for inspiration? The problem for me is that I don't want to fact check or put up something erroneous when I'm in the middle of making a grandiose assumption about human nature. This is why I prefer to write fiction cause I can just make the shit up as long as it's logical within the rules of my universe.

Those of y'all that manage to stay on top of your blogs should know that I envy you. There's some good content floating around on these interwebs, a lot of it free, a lot of it very entertaining, so I advise you, dear reader, to take a look at some of the links over thattaway ------->

...after I lull you to sleep with my diatribe. Or before. Either way. I'm easy like that.

There are few things I enjoy on this earth more than a crisp Granny Smith apple. It's a lunchtime ritual for me that always starts with peeling the origin sticker off, taking the first bite then deciding if it's worth it or not to continue. I did say crisp, see. I know a lot of tricks to determine an apples worthiness beforehand but you can never rule anything out until the actual taste test. Until your teeth break the skin it's just a guessing game.

The thing about apples is that a lot of stuff goes on under that skin, one of which is pesticides. I'm too lazy to source the article but apples are one of the worst offenders when it comes to retaining pesticides. Not that this is the apple's fault. It just the nature of their design. Unless you're fully kitted out with the latest testing gear, the average consumer doesn't stand a chance of knowing what they're putting into their body.

So what does one do? If you're concerned about turning your body into a toxic waste receptacle you can go organic, which is what I did. Organic apples don't keep as well though, go figure. When nature has its way and they're allowed to degrade as they should, it leads to a shorter shelf life. This is fine, it just means that the end user needs to be a little more selective and not ignore the little voice warning you that a ball of mulch lurks underneath that green skin.

On Monday, I sat down to lunch and peeled the origin sticker off, shocked to see that it said "New Zealand/Organic." Maybe I wouldn't have been shocked if I didn't live just on the other side of Stevens Pass from the Apple Capital of the World.

So I'm munching on my apple, feeling a bit like Paul McCartney might have the first time he laid eyes on his hybrid Lexus. Okay, not quite. I'm sure Sir Paul didn't feel even a minor twinge of guilt but I did. It got me to thinking about a speech I heard by Arundhati Roy about the EVVVVEEEELLLLSSSS of globalization. I'd recommend listening it to yourself (and her other stuff because she's a freaking genius) but I'll pharaphrase: Globalization has absolutely nothing to do with the consumer and everything to do with the profit.

Seriously, please explain to me how an apple that comes thousands of miles via container ship, offloaded at the port by union longshoreman, then delivered to a wholesaler by a truck be cheaper than one that's only a hundred miles away still on the dern tree?!

Well, I'll tell you how. The only way that apple could be cheaper would be to reduce the production costs, which means paying the workers less. Considering their competing against migrant farm workers in America, imagine how much less that means they're getting paid.

I can't stomach that, organic or no. I don't want to eat New Zealand apples when I could drive to Wenatchee and load up my car with crates of apples. I don't want apples from halfway across the world when they may as well be in my backyard already.

Is there a solution? I don't know. Maybe it's time to buck up and wander down a Farmer's Market to see what they're all about.