From the email inbox — and a wag with whom we regularly converse – a response to last week’s “At Large” about gardening being a road to greater food independence:
“In this world of instant gratification, growing a garden seems quaint. The younger generations seem to gravitate toward ventures that require an app for that. These folks wouldn’t have a clue how to plant a garden if it wasn’t for influencers on You Tube.
“I am old enough to remember my parents talking about ‘Victory Gardens’ during World War II. Growing up, I remember my stay-at-home mom planting both flowers and food when I was a kid. While she still loves gardening, she is not able to keep up with tending to it like she used to.
“As for me planting a garden, I am Mr. Brown Thumb. My wife tried planting some stuff decades ago, but because of her arthritis, it was more work than she wanted to deal with.
“I don’t know if you have visited any of these ‘farmers markets’ but there are very few actual farmers involved. Most of these merchants are small businessmen and women, many of whom are selling other people’s products. It is nice to see that these folks are willing to make a go of it because the old days of the neighborhood corner store and the produce truck are a distant memory.
“It is actually a good thing one of Adam Smith’s thoughts have survived the centuries because if we were all still jacks of all trades, the planet would be a lot poorer.
“The downside of specialization is that, because of prosperity, the society as a whole is currently able to support more individuals who are jacks of no trades.
“Which brings me around to your third paragraph: When it comes to giving away food, have you noticed that it has become an industry? Notice, too, that the food bank has its own boxes printed up with its logo on them. Have you also noticed that the food distribution events are all drive-though affairs? Even my municipal library has a food pantry in its lobby.
“Years ago, I saw [commentator] Monica Crowley make the observation that in most of the world, the bottom quintile of the population is starving to death, yet here the bottom quintile is suffering the most from the effects of obesity.
“Poverty is a relative thing, but at what point do we run out of other people’s money?”
Ancillary to my favorite wag’s points and counterpoints, comes this vignette from my local grocery store fowlmonger:
This weekend, I complimented him for putting out some good old-fashioned chicken breasts with the skin on and the meat still attached to the ribs. The taste is unparalleled, on par with the kind of chicken dinners that moms and grandmoms once made.
But, “Don’t get used to me having them,” he cautioned. “I can’t sell ‘em. And the minute we get these in, we have to mark them down in hopes of trying to sell them.
“Nobody knows how to cook anymore,” he lamented. “They want their chicken without skin and without the ribs and they either eat out or eat in, their food delivered by Door Dash.”
It may be a matter of convenience (for which we all pay higher prices) but it’s a sad sign of the times, indicative of our growing dependence on others to prepare and cook our food.
And, unfortunately, it’s a mindset that creeps into this nation’s public-policy making – expecting the government to do more and more for us when we should be doing more and more for ourselves.
Another email from a wag with whom we’ve never conversed chastises us for our position opposing a $15 million minimum wage. This being a family column, it is edited to preserve decorum:
“If a business can’t afford to pay it’s [sic] workforce a LIVING wage (which is FAR above $15, I assure you) then it SHOULD NOT BE IN BUSINESS!
“Thanks for clearly stating how easily bought you are,” the correspondent then engages in an ad hominem attack. “It makes it so easy to completely disregard every [expletive deleted] opinion you have.”
While we welcome all viewpoints from our correspondents, this one, as H.L. Mencken liked to say, “indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.”
Or at all, we can only conclude.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
