It’s Hot Out There!
Summer has once more sneaked in without a proper introduction from Spring. The last few months have been so cool and wet that none of us were thinking about summer arriving early. But here it is, in the 80’s and it’s just turned June!
I know we have to deal with whatever we get in terms of weather, and we can’t change anything by talking about it, but somehow commiserating about how hot (or cold, or wet, or dry) it is seems to make us feel better. I guess it has to do with sharing burdens.
The old proverb says a burden shared is halved. When we share those things that concern us, often we end up with two heads thinking about solutions instead of just one. But keeping it to ourselves makes the load a lot heavier.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. The events in the world around me are a huge concern. I don’t mind the not traveling so much due to the higher gas prices, because I have plenty to do right here at home without having to hit the road. But the rising costs at the grocery store, the rising utilities, rising taxes. Ultimately there is a breaking point that each of us will hit where income can’t handle outgo. There’s only so much belt-tightening one can do.
Add to that my concerns about all this absolute junk that has sneaked into our diets, much of it without our even knowing it. Our family is making a concerted effort to avoid anything that contains high fructose corn syrup. This cheap sweetener seems to be added generously to almost everything, and the health ramifications for us as consumers are alarming. It may have as much to do with the increase in diabetes as the free fats prevalent in our western diet.
And then there’s GMO’s…genetically modified foods. Nobody has tested these things to see how they impact our health long-term. The chemical companies have just foisted them on our unsuspecting population without and warning or request for permission. Almost all the big food producers are using GMO’s now. Will these GMO’s trigger allergies in people who have never had allergies? Will they produce new or worsening autoimmune disorders? Nobody knows. But nobody is telling us that this could be the risk from eating these things. Shouldn’t we be told if we are being used as a large scale guinea pig population for testing this stuff?
I think it’s time that we put our heads together to come up with creative solutions.
