And she called me crunchy. Like granola.
Huh.
Go figure.
I've evidently become a hippie without noticing it.
It would seem that overnight I've grown into someone who wears Birkenstocks and has flowers weaved into her butt-length hair, sporting a peace sign, and wearing tie-dyed shirts.
Um. No. Not happening.
But really. Would it be so bad to be a crunchy? How hard could it really be? How much of an impact are those crazy hippies actually having?
I haven't got the foggiest.
But I'd really like to know.
I was watching a documentary on Netflix. Yes. I know. Netflix has all these amazing movie titles and I'm watching documentaries. Whatever. There's only so much Doctor Who, Sherlock, How I Met Your Mother and The B**** In Apartment 23 on Netflix. And besides, who doesn't just flip to the Discovery Channel or NatGeo and leave it there as background noise all day while you're "cleaning house" (read, "vegging out and doing nothing)? Come on! I know you've done it before . . .
Anyway . . . I was watching Vanishing of the Bees and thought it was fantastic. If you haven't watched it, go do that now. I will wait for you to finish.
Seriously. Go watch it.
Finished? It was amazing, right?! It left me being reminded that we need to be checking all the things we're buying. Read those freakin' labels, people! Where is your honey actually coming from? Is it actually really honey or is it "funny honey"? Is it organic? What about your other food? Organic? Please say yes! How have we, America, let ourselves be sucked into mono-cultural farming? Where's the biodiversity?! Bring it back, PLEASE!
Without biodiversity, we're screwed. And not in the fun, sexy way, either. We're screwed in the, "it's-the-end-of-the-World-and-there's-fish-with-five-heads-and-deer-with-eight-legs-and-you-really-shouldn't-have-laughed-at-your-prepper-neighbor-because-now-they're-the-only-one-within-twenty-miles-with-Twinkies" type of way.
Check out this amazing video on biodiversity. It's beautifully created and highly informative. Bravo to the students who created this film from the Vancouver Film School.
Let's take a step back from that tangent for a second.
Honey bees.
Right.
They're disappearing and it's most likely caused by systemic pesticides. They had this happen in France forever ago and the bee keepers rioted in the streets and picketed outside of the Bayer Company. That's right. Bayer. The people who make the aspirin you're suppose to take when you're having a heart attack or whatever. Yeah. They're killing our honey bees. And they're getting away with it in America. Anyway. In France, the legislature heard the bee keeper's lawyer loud and clear and they banned the product. And you know what? The bees are coming back in France.
If our honey bees are gone we can't grow fruits and vegetables. We can't grow fruits and vegetables. We can't grow fruits and vegetables!!!! We'll be relying on other countries (which we already do for about 30% of our produce, anyway) and the only thing we'll be able to grow in America is corn, soybeans, and cotton. All genetically modified, of course.
I don't want to eat cotton. Do you?
Honey bees are important. You can help them thrive buy planting a garden, buying organic local produce, and by writing a letter to your congressman or congresswoman.
If wanting to protect the honey bees and have my own hive means I'm well on my way to beeing (heh, see what I did there?) a crunchy granola, I guess I'm going to have to be a crunchy granola.
But no Birkenstocks for me, thanks. I like my flip flops too much.
Cheers!
LC