So Black Friday is becoming a ghost of its former self. Good thing I would say. I never participated in the commercial/consumerist frenzy but I do have relatives who used to plan their Black Fridays as though they were generals going to war. Now if we could only see a similar decline in other commercial "holidays."

I have a lot of reservations (if not downright antipathy) about industrial food production. Just this morning I read of a large recall of ground turkey products because of possible contamination with metal fragments. Sorry I didn't note the site. It is sad in a way that, to me anyway, that I now think of a recall of 300,000+ pounds of ground meat as simply "large" and not huge. This little piece from the Guardian is titled "Goodbye--and Good Riddance--to Livestock Farming". I don't think any more of this author's stance than I do industrial farming or food production. The industrial system reduces all "inputs," whether animate or inanimate, to mere numbers on a balance sheet. The abuse he mentions is embedded in the system. My grandparents had a small, mixed crop farm for most of my childhood and adolescence. I can assure you that their animals were well cared for with numbers limited to what well rotated pastures would support. I once owned horses and, with others, had the great misfortune of renting land from an absentee farmer who over grazed the land horribly. He made it difficult for us to maintain our horses in healthy condition but we did manage it. I read blogs written by small farmers and homesteaders who write about their animals and all of them pay close attention to maintaining a number of animals their land can support and making sure the pastures are not overgrazed. The pollution problems he mentions come from overgrazing and/or from feedlot operations both of which are encouraged by the industrial agriculture system. And switching to faux meat soy products won't solve problems. Soy is grown in monocultures with generous applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides (which adds to pollution) and which require plowing and cultivation which result in the loss of a lot of topsoil each year. And since he notes that he can't tell the difference between "quorn" based minced or faux chicken, I will note that I really don't want to eat a macerated vegetable product treated with chemicals to create the texture of meat and flavored with what ever chemicals will simulate the taste. I don't know if I would be able to tell the difference but--and this is key--I don't care if I couldn't tell the difference. I don't want the chemically adulterated imitation "foods" the industry produces and am busily getting rid of them in my life.

I thought it was interesting that #45 said, while in Puerto Rico, that the Puerto Rican debt would have to be cancelled but I take everything interesting or sensible he says with a big dose of salt--enough to endanger my blood pressure. All too often those sensible mumblings are refuted soon after and that appears to be the case here.