Friday, March 28, 2014

pork chop

I walked a mile for this pork chop and then had to cook it. Then clean up the mess I made cooking. So I totally deserved it. And I was starving. Starving, I tell you, starving. Always starving. I do not know why I keep doing that. Unless maybe it is the walk-a-mile, cook, and clean up part of it, if the whole thing were not so involved I would probably be fatter. 



Insty on Norman Borlaug

Plus, note this from Borlaug: “(Most Western environmentalists) have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things.”

Boy, I sure do. I know what that is like. It occurred to me a long time ago at the FRB where they feed a young guy steadily and reliably without any gaps that I had forgotten what hunger feels like and so did everyone else. Nobody there missed a meal in decades. So I tried it, and it hurt. It reminded me of being a little kid and feeling that all the time. 



Statue by Ben Victor.

Just a few days ago when I saw this I bookmarked a page, this one
http://www.senate.iowa.gov/democrats/who-will-design-the-borlaug-statute/
They were looking for an artist to design a statue. That is what my post was going to be about. Maybe they want a statue for another place too. I don't know, but I do not think they could do better than this. I do like this a lot. 

I had not heard of Norman Borlaug before this. Looking for information, his name is associated with wheat so Google images page fills up with photos of wheat. I look for wheat photos all the time. I keep a file of wheat photos to use for projects, paintings and pop-up cards. I'm especially interested in how a whole field looks when it is green. 

There is one early photo of him proudly holding up a wheat specimen, and I've looked at so many photos of wheat now that I can tell the specimen is not that great compared to modern day wheat. It' is a thing with them to get the wheat stalk to hold as many kernels as possible, as many as 60, I think. It showed me how far they have come. 

One of the pages I just left said the statue is placed next to the statue of Rosa Parks, and isn't that fitting that...

Stop!  How so? Don't tell me. Let me guess. Food is a civil right and he fought for civil right of having food. Thus, it is fitting they are next to each other. Right? Do I win? 

Or perhaps Norman Borlaug  had a team of activists set up a dramatic episode in advance with media ready and legal teams prepared, and with protection and support through the produced ordeal and with determination all the way through until significant legislation is passed, politicians flipped, and the general modus operandi of an entire political party reversed in the process to one of clear cynical power grabbing. Together in perfect harmony because they are so similar, bookends if you like. Or maybe that was the best open spot for a statue. 

I love the wheat in that statue. 

I am convinced grain abundance is the reason Americans are fat. Sugar too. But not dietary fat. Feedlots prove it to me. A cow is out there eating salad all day, then grain feedlot, boom, fat cow. Same with people. But that is not Norman Borlaug's fault.

At the pork chop store today right off a fat girl was digging into alluring display avocado dip. As I mentioned  I was starving, she said something to somebody else, "I'm back" dipped a chip then disappeared, then reappeared and dipped a chip, disappeared, reappeared and dipped a chip and disappeared and reappeared and dipped a chip and disappeared, and I'm thinking "..." 

Berkshire pork chop. Finest of all the chops. That guy is a convincing salesman. The pork chop is good but not that good. But I figured, hey, after all that, what the heck. My meal is incomplete. It lacks something apparently basic.

5 comments:

chickelit said...

I'm glad Borlaug finally got a statue in D.C. He did win a Nobel Peace Prize before they got wacky, but it was over 40 years ago and many many people have forgotten him.

He had humble beginnings, too.

Nice catch, Chip.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Hey, you made it.

Chip Ahoy said...

Whew. I know. I was beginning to think I was banned.

ricpic said...

I don't get the always starving schtick. You got a freezer, right?

Anonymous said...

who saved over a billion lives: “(Most Western environmentalists) have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things.”