I Am Not Hamlet

     Let a son come forth from your loins fashioned by God; first a sphere for his head; let his hair remind one of fresh-cut straw.  Let his eyebrows resemble caterpillars lightly treading his brow and a ghostly-pale path separate their twin arches.  Let his nose be straight, of moderate length, a button for perfection, with a smear of freckles across it and under his eyes.  Let his eyes, those watch-fires of his brow be cool with grey-light, or the steely calm of the barrel of a gun.  Let his countenance emulate joy: not innocence nor yet bliss but at once both.  Let his mouth be bright, small in shape--as it were, a half-circle.  Let his lips be thin like worms, yet eager to reveal a snowy, toothy smile.  Rounded like cobble let the Designer fashion his chin.  Let his neck be a small column supporting the inchoate mind inside the head expressing boyish charm.  Let his shoulders foreshadow the man to be, perfectly propor...

I'm reading Gary Holthaus' (mostly) excellent From the Farm to the Table: What All Americans Need to Know About Agriculture and find myself burning with anger at stuff I already kinda sorta knew.  "Studies show that each year of rising agricultural exports has shown a corresponding net decline in U.S and Canadian farm prosperity" and "The traders and the corporations make more from it [farming] than the farmer does" (128-29). That, of course, is only the beginning, he goes in to treatment of migrant workers, GMOs, and the joke that is NAFTA, WTO, and other puppet master organizations.  "Of all the grain that goes down the Mississippi on barges from the Midwest, only a tiny fraction goes to least developed countries, where hunger is the greatest...These grains are shipped to those who can best afford them, not to those most in need" (158). "What can a layperson make of all this?  At least this: as farmers or consumers, we have to take with ...