America certainly has an abundance of food (even though many Americans do not), yet we face a momentous choice of whether to pursue a food future rooted in the ethic of sustainable agriCULTURE – or one based on the exploitative ethic of agriINDUSTRY.

What better symbol of agri-industry’s vision of “food” than that ubiquitous Thanksgiving bird, the “Butterball” turkey. The Butterball has been hoisted onto our tables by huge advertising budgets and regular promotion payments to supermarkets. The birds themselves have been grotesquely deformed by industrial geneticists, who created breasts so ponderous that the turkeys can’t walk, stand up, or even reproduce on their own (thus earning the nickname “dead-end birds’). Adding torture to this intentional deformity, the industry sentences these once-majestic fowl to dismal lives in tiny confinement cages inside the sprawling, steel-and-concrete animal factories that scar America’s rural landscape – monuments to greed-based corporate “husbandry.”

As the eminent farmer-poet-activist Wendell Berry tells us, eating is a profound political act. It lets you and me vote for the Butterball industrial model or choose to go back to the future of agriculture, which is the art and science of cooperating with, rather than trying to overwhelm, nature. That cooperative ethic is the choice of the remarkable “Good Food Uprising” that has spread across the country in the past 30 years. Now the fastest-growing segment of the food economy, it is creating the alternative model of a local, sustainable, small scale, community-based, organic, humane, healthy, democratic – and tasty! – food system for all.

To take part in the good food movement and find small-scale farmers, artisans, farmers markets, and other resources in your area, visit www.LocalHarvest.org.

Let’s talk Turkey!

No, not the Butterball sitting in the Oval Office. I’m talking about the real thing, the big bird, 46 million of which we Americans will devour on this Thanksgiving Day.

It was the Aztecs who first domesticated the gallopavo, but leave it to the Spanish explorers to “foul-up” the bird’s origins. They declared it to be related to the peacock – Wrong! They also thought the peacock originated in Turkey – Wrong! And, they thought Turkey was located in Africa – well, you can see the Spanish were pretty confused.

Actually, the origin of Thanksgiving is confused. The popular assumption is that it was first celebrated by the Mayflower immigrants and the Wampanoag natives at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1621. They feasted on venison, furkees (Wampanoag for gobblers) eels, mussels, corn, and beer. But wait, say Virginians, the first precursor to our annual November Food-a-Palooza was not in Massachusetts – the Thanksgiving feast originated down here in Jamestown colony, back in 1608.

Whoa, there, hold your horses, pilgrims. Folks in El Paso, Texas, say it all began way out there in 1598, when Spanish settlers sat down with people of the Piro and Manso tribes, gave thanks, then feasted on roasted duck, geese and fish.

“Ha!” says a Florida group, asserting the very, very first Thanksgiving happened in 1565 when the Spanish settlers of St. Augustine and friends from the Timucuan tribe chowed-down on “cocido” – a stew of salt pork, garbanzo beans and garlic – washing it all down with red wine.

Wherever it began, and whatever the purists claim is “official,” Thanksgiving today is as multicultural as America. So let’s enjoy! Kick-back, give thanks we’re in a country with such ethnic richness, and dive into your turkey rellenos, moo-shu turkey, turkey falafel, barbecued turkey…

Remember when candidate Trump promised not only to wall-out all migrants crossing our Mexican border, but also to make Mexico pay for his xenophobic wall?

Well, Mexico hasn’t paid a peso… and won’t. So, he keeps running to Congress, demanding that it pony up unlimited billions of our tax dollars for his pet political project. Aside from one token appropriation, however, Congress has said: “Ummmm… no.”

But that’s no hill for a narcissistic climber. Unable to get tax money legitimately, Trump has simply stolen it, taking money from the US military budget. Ignoring the constitutional mandate that only Congress is empowered to control the flow of government money, Trump filched $6.1 billion from our military last year, snatched another $3.8 billion this month, and intends to swipe at least another $3.4 billion before the year is out.

This executive “reprogramming,” as the White House euphemistically calls its daylight robbery, is being pulled off by masking Trump’s wall obsession as a “national emergency.” The Pentagon brass has been yanking funds meant for the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, National Guard… and ultimately from our fighting forces.

Presidential autocracy aside, Trump’s massive larceny raises three other interesting issues of public morality: One, his trickery sets a precedent not only for future presidents, but also for our young people’s behavior; Two, our congress critters, especially Trump Republicans, are setting a new standard of craven meekness in the face of this direct executive assault on their authority and on our democracy; and, Three, by simply kissing off a budget loss of more than $13 billion, saying it’s in excess of the military’s needs, the Pentagon is admitting that the war machine is routinely taking way too much of the public’s money.

“Defying Congress, Trump Plans to Renew Fight for Border Wall Funding,” New York Times, March 10, 2019.