Mass Produced

I was amazed when I learned about the job of an industrial designer. I had never before thought about who designed egg cartons or sets of forks you could buy at Kmart, or run of the mill flashlights. I was so used to seeing products packaged in supermarkets and sets of objects in department stores, that it didn’t even occur to me that their design was given any consideration.

The Drawl. Dodge City. Stirrups.

White people

White People


The issue, and even the concept of race and heritage, is incredibly muddled in the US. You can go about explaining it away—theres more than enough to debate about the generation-lasting psychological effects of a diverse set of immigrants driving out a population and setting in often unfriendly terrain. That’s not to mention putting slavery in the mix. But however interesting the causes of why people in the states often claim their distant heritages as their own may be, the fact of the matter is that this is one trait that unites the United States. African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Japanese-, Asian-, Hispanic-Americans, the hyphenated list goes on and on. What this seems to point to is a drive to identify and distinguish yourself within a larger group, combined with a search for individuality.

OK--I like George Bush

I don't like them very much, but for historical reasons

What can that possibly mean? I’m not an apologist at for the US government and its foreign policies at all, but the phrasing of this particular response definitely threw me for a loop. And I really found this comment a rather humorous one. The first thing that came to my mind was the thought of the Boston tea party. Could he still be sore about that—I mean--can anyone really hold a grudge for that long?

Much is made about the “special relationship” between the US and the UK leaders since Churchill and Roosevelt, but we don’t often think about the post-colonial nature of this relationship. I wonder, how much has this informed the way we interact? How much of the past is still in our present?

Food

Writing these pieces, I have found myself reflecting quite a bit on food—fast food, burgers, etc. I always start by thinking about how much food means to me—about how much I appreciate it and how much I use it. Food is both a joy and a refuge for me. I eat to share company and I eat to distract myself from stressful situations. I remember one Christmas time, there were a couple of really difficult things happening in my family. I sat and ate tub after tub of a mayonnaise based salmon dip, to distract myself from what was going on. When my friend Bruce recently died, I was a bit more lucky in that there were two big bags of grapes right in front of me instead of salmon dip. The grapes were gone in a matter of minutes. The relationship between a person and food consumption is both fundamental and highly cultivated. I live in testament to this.