the change

Last night I watched Food, Inc . I had heard about most of it before - growth hormones, international mixtures of ground meat, corn feed lots for cows, e. coli breakouts in spinach. I have heard complaints about the costs of organic food, and the film explained why buying organic is worth the money because of the longterm environmental and health benefits.
By the time I got to the credits, I was feeling a lot of patriotic embarrassment. But I also felt like I did when I red Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palanciuk last spring. Invisible Monsters is full of plastic surgery, drugs, and seeming superficiality. I sat on my balcony and struggled to get into Palanciuk's story. It felt unrelatable. But I used to like Palanciuk's twisted stories and modern plots, so I must have related in some way.
While Food, Inc was an expose that makes me appreciate my family's deer-hunting, vegetable gardening habits, I kept thinking in the film about how I buy my milk from my neighbor, whose cow I hear coming down from the mountain every evening. When I help Silvia make Ciorba, I run out to her back-yard garden for herbs. Last night, one of my neighbors butchered their young bull, and sold the meat to other villagers. You can't get much closer to your food sources.
Sometimes I forget that I have a different lifestyle here. Thank you Food Inc for reminding me.