The Persecution of Conservative Christians

As it stands now, Americans pledge allegiance (when they do) “Under God.” According to our money “In God We Trust.” Public officials swear to uphold their duties on Bibles and witnesses swear to the tell the truth on Bibles. Nearly all public and private institutions have Christmas Day off, and many have a week or more off around Christmas. Almost as many institutions have the time around Easter off as well. Every single President has been, at the very least, nominally Christian. There will be a woman president before there is a Muslim president and there will probably be an openly gay president before there is an openly atheist president. By virtually every rubric, America is a Christian nation. 

Unless, of course, you ask a conservative Christian. Then, Christians are under attack from a coalition of radical college professors, Hollywood elitists, liberal media, and some vague collection of other leftists. Despite consistent policy victories all over the country, especially in our schools, where conservatives Christians have forced things like intelligent design and abstinence only sex education into our, legally, secular schools, and despite everything else I've mentioned, conservative Christians in the media consistently talk as though Christians were being thrown in jail. So, when parents take a school district to court because they don't want their tax dollars spent on the recitals of words sacred to a faith that is not their own, it is not a rational concern for the appropriate allocation of scarce resources, or the simple desire for teachers to teach rather than preach, or even the desire to have a little control over the belief structures taught to their kids, but an assault on Jesus Christ himself. (Quick aside. There's a technique I like to use that is pretty good at exposing when someone is being a self-righteous hypocrite. Simply take whatever situation their discussing and replace “Jesus” with “Allah,” and imagine what the reaction would be. Can you imagine what would happen if a Muslim teacher got a bunch of students down on the ground bowing towards Mecca?) Or when someone argues that they don't want their, constitutionally a-religious, judges displaying a system of governance that opens with “Don't you dare worship anybody else but me” and only gets to “Don't kill anybody” at commandment 6, that person is not ensuring that the agreed upon jurisprudence of the United States of America is the primary method of determining cases, but attacking all of the Christian faith and everyone who believes in it. 

For an almost unnaturally rational person, like yours truly, this is absolutely baffling. Most Americans believe in angels, intelligent design, and identify as Christians. And a vast majority wouldn't trust an atheist as far as said atheist could be thrown. Why do conservative Christians believe they are being persecuted despite all the evidence to the contrary?

The idea behind childhood trauma is simple; traumatic events in a person's formative years can have lifelong effects. Things can happen to our brains when we are children that are almost impossible to change later in life. I think the primary source of this persecution complex is essentially the same thing; a series of traumas in the formative years of the culture.

Essentially, Christianity was formed when a man was tortured to death. It was Jesus's death by crucifixion, not his message, that redeemed humanity from original sin. The foundational moment of Christianity was not a man telling everyone to love one other, but a man getting nailed to a cross for doing so. For the next several hundred years, or to go with the metaphor, during the formative years of the culture, Christians were persecuted. They were harassed, tortured and killed, and the memory of this persecution stayed with the culture even after Christianity, in the form of the Catholic church, became one of, if not the, most powerful institution on Earth.

There's another layer for American Christians, as one of our founding myths is of the Puritans coming to America to escape persecution. (Forget for a second that they started persecuting people practically the instant they got the chance. Cycle of abuse, maybe, since we're going with a psychology metaphor.) From then on, many groups of people came to America to escape persecution. America was the escape hatch for minorities, both religious and ethnic, all over Europe. Furthermore, the nation was born through the trauma of the Revolutionary War, a series of events often depicted as throwing off the shackles of British oppression. In short, on top of the fundamental trauma of Christianity, American Christians, especially if they belong to one of the many Protestant sects, come from a long history of persecution.

Now, that persecution is engrained. Arguing that abstinence only education almost always leads to higher teenage pregnancy rates is an attack on Christian family values, so is the suggestion that intelligent design, not being a scientific theory and all, shouldn't be taught in science, that public school teachers should not lead their students in prayer (of course, nobody is stopping the students from praying by themselves if they want to, but, that's another essay), that all people have the right to form partnerships that provide access to a host of tax and legal benefits, or really anything that doesn't fit with their very particular socio-political philosophy.

Of course, the persecution complex is not without its practical uses; it is very politically convenient. It is one of the ways to defend an idea or policy against criticism, without actually arguing against the criticism. Instead of dealing with facts or rationale, many conservative Christians (or at least the pundits and politicians who purport to represent them) simply point out that the critique is part of a general persecution of the Christian and conservative belief systems and, thus, somehow, inherently illegitimate. (Of course, if an African American makes a similar argument about something, that person is using “the race card,” but well, one can only have so many aneurisms.) Simply put, the rhetorical technique removes the entire mechanism of argument. (And what is Democracy without argument?)

There are many layers to the depth of this problem, only one of which is the political convenience. For example, if you happen to belong to a “Christian” religion that believes the only just society is one in which fundamentalist Christian values rule all aspects of society; if for example you believe teachers should be required to lead their students in Christian prayer, than there are certainly groups, forces, and people working against the fruition of your vision. Like me. With something as important as religious faith, it's not hard to see how “conflict” is interpreted as “persecution.” Furthermore, these cultural beliefs are deeply and personally ingrained. If you've ever doubted how character traits based in religion become ingrained in an individual's personality, ask a Catholic about guilt. You'll learn all about it.

There are aspects of this problem that are simply beyond the forces of intentional social change. But it would be nice if American media spent a little more of their time checking the facts asserted by pundits or politicians. Or perhaps, providing some global perspective on the whole “persecution” issue by covering, I don't know, any of the situations in the world where people are actually being killed, (which, though this might be my liberal elitist upbringing, is different from being disagreed with) for who they are or what they believe. Women in Saudi Arabia, for example, or dissidents in North Korea. China threw Ai Weiwei in jail, and I gotta believe that being thrown in jail is a requirement for being persecuted.

As usual, my argument comes back to the media, to what journalists do and don't do, what they spend their limitless time on and what they don't. What we need is an hour of analysis and context for every hour of “news” instead of this constant assault of new event. Without pundits, opinions, and debates, journalists provide history, background information, and verifiable facts about the previously reported events. And then, with the context of the issue established and a grounding of verifiable fact, you have the pundits and politicians debate and interpret the news. Then, when a pundit or politician says something incorrect, the journalist can make the correction. Sure there will still be bias, still be spurious claims on persecution, but I have to believe, this format will make it easier for people to distinguish argument from evasion and true claims on persecution from political bluster and culturally formative traumas.

Jason Varitek and the Art of Calling the Game

One of the gospels of the New Testament of the Boston Red Sox (Praise be to Tito) is that Jason Varitek is the greatest game caller in the history of the game. I'm a believer and I'll get to why later, but I think “calling a game” is one of those concepts baseball fans never bother to explain to anybody else. What, exactly, does a catcher do when he calls a game, and why is it important?

At its most basic level, a catcher “calls the game” by telling the pitcher what kind of pitch to throw. Simply put, it's really hard for a catcher to catch a pitch if he doesn't know what's being thrown at him. Depending on the catcher and the pitcher, this process can be dominated by one or the other, or be a fluid decision making process.

Catchers are sometimes also responsible for telling the pitcher when to try to pick off a runner, or when to throw a pitch far outside the strike zone to make it easier to throw out a runner they expect to steal. Occasionally, catchers will be responsible for arranging the infielders, but usually the short stop or the manager does that.

Calling a game is one of those things that is very easy to do adequately, but very difficult to do greatly. In any situation, there are lots of pitches and locations that will work, but as with all things, there is only one “best pitch in the best location.” And knowing what that one pitch is very complicated indeed. It involves all the statistical stuff that has now come to dominate baseball; the batter's average against particular pitches, in particular locations, in particular situations, cross-referenced with the pitcher's various statistics.

But it also involves a psychological contest with the batter who, at least the professional level, knows all those statistics as well and knows the catcher knows those stats; the dark arts of getting into an opponent's head. There is no better way to guarantee a strike, or at least guarantee that a hit won't happen, than for the catcher to call for a change-up, when the batter expects a fastball.

But along with all that, the catcher needs to constantly assess the ability of the pitcher; is he getting tired, is his curveball working, does he have enough energy for the high heat. And if there are any problems, the catcher is the first person responsible for figuring it out; is the pitcher tipping his pitchers, are his mechanics off somehow, like he's dropping his elbow or stepping too far towards 3^rd base or something like that. And, of course, a pitcher's problems can be caused by the pitcher's own emotions; is he frustrated with the umpire over a call or concentrating too much on one particular aspect of his motion or distracted by something else in the universe.

Of course, in most games, a catcher has to catch for different pitchers, often different pitchers with entirely different repertoires and personalities. Think about another common situation Jason Varitek would have to deal with. Let's say he's been catching soft-spoken, classy, professional, cancer survivor John Lester for a couple of hours and the Red Sox have a 4-2 lead going into the 9^th inning. It means he'll be hopping on the express train to crazy town because “My dog ate the World Series Ball,” “I don't care if anybody steals on me,” lazer-eyes, dancy pants, Jonathon Paplebon is coming in. (A little off topic, but imagine what it feels like for Saltalamacchia to spend a couple of hours knocking knuckleballs out of the air and then see Daniel Bard about to throw a 100mph fastball at him.)

To put this another way, a great game caller needs to be a statistician, a strategist, a pitching coach, and (sometimes) a therapist all at once. In some ways, this is one of those skills that is almost impossible to accurately assess. Because the physics of baseball ensure that batters get out the vast majority of the time, it's hard to tell the difference between adequate and excellent. But Jason Varitek was the best at it. Here's why.

The Red Sox pitching staff did not have much success at the beginning of the season. In fact, the beginning of '11 was historically bad. The transition from Jason Varitek as the primary catcher to Jarrod Saltalamacchia upset the entire pitching staff. The staff eventually settled down, though Josh Beckett still won't pitch to anybody but Varitek. This is an indicator, because teams change catchers all the time, without having such a drop-off in performance. For the Sox, this drop off was caused by going from the best game caller in the game to somebody else. It would have happened no matter who ended up doing the bulk of the catching; any of the Molina family, Joe Mauer, Jorge Posado, maybe even (Praise be) Carlton Fisk.

The most concrete statistic for this argument is that Jason Varitek has caught more no-hitters than any other catcher in history; four. Furthermore, he caught them for four different pitchers, unlike Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Lou Criger, and Johnny Edwards (all catchers who caught 3 no-nos), who caught multiple no-hitters with the same pitchers. Furthermore, they were four very different pitchers. Clay Bucholtz in his second professional start, Hideo Nomo with his unique wind-up, Derek Lowe the sinker ball pitcher, and John Lester, the fastball/curveball lefty. He has also been one out away two more times, once with Josh Beckett and again with Kurt Schilling. Had those happened he would have caught twice as many no-nos as anybody else. Red Sox fans of the last decade will know, that 'Tek has guided many pitchers hitless through six, seven, and eight innings.

But perhaps the best argument at how good Jason Varitek is at telling pitchers what to throw next is when his pitchers ignore him. The most famous moment has to be when Schilling shook off a call and gave up a hit, with two outs in the ninth inning, of what would have been his only no-hitter. But I think a lot of Papelbon's struggles last year came from him being convinced, despite what Varitek was telling him, that his fastball was totally gonna blow the batter away.

Finally, when was the last time you heard an announcer, coach, player, or sports writer talk about calling a game? It was probably in reference to Jason Varitek. And the first time? It was probably in reference to Jason Varitek. Essentially, he is the only catcher in recent memory who has been able to draw attention to calling games at all. Calling a baseball game is one of those invisible activities whose results are always debatable. Because there are so many factors, it is almost impossible to know whether the call was the important part of the strikeout. (Ooo look, a real world lesson.) But something congealed around Jason Varitek. Certain statistics implied something atypical. He earned only the third captaincy of the Boston Red Sox. And his place as the greatest game caller in baseball is now gospel.

The Alcoholic, The Marshal, and the Process of Morals

One of the amazing things about books, is that different books can ask the exact same questions in radically different ways, bringing us a little closer, through each version, to answering, at least for ourselves, some of the intractable problems of human life. On some levels, Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry and Warlock by Oakley Hall couldn't be more different. Under the Volcano is a poetic meditation on self destruction, focusing its philosophical and emotional considerations on the ultimate deterioration of one man, Geoffrey Firmin, the alcoholic British Consul living in Mexico. Warlock is a gritty Western with rustlers, sheriffs, gamblers, and gunfights, exploring the nature of law, order, and chaos in a young society. One is about a person living with himself, the other about people living together. They're very different books, but they find their way to the same difficult question.

Geoffrey Firmin's alcoholism is debilitating. Occasionally, he drinks himself sober, but he can never sober himself sober. He starts suffering symptoms of a very dangerous withdrawal after only a few hours without a drink. At one point, his body is so incapable of control his brother needs to shave him. The novel takes place on the day when his wife, despite everything, comes back to him. Though her return would be where the Hallmark channel mini-series ends, it's just another day of spiraling in and out of coherence and brilliance for Firmin.

Though there are some hints at the kind of formative events talk therapy is supposed to reveal, the most coherent, or at least intentional explanation for Firmin's alcoholism is a willful self-destruction. Essentially, he argues that his self-destruction is not a consequence of his drinking, but the point of his drinking. He seeks a kind of self-determined salvation through the ultimate bottoming out, a wholly unique kind of heaven by conquering the depths of hell. (In a way, Under the Volcano shares themes with the work of Jean Genet, particularly Our Lady of the Flowers, but that's another essay.) To me, the important question is not, “Can one achieve salvation through degradation?” but, “How do we know if someone else succeeds in doing so?” Even if we accept that such a course to salvation is possible, as Firmin claims, and even if ultimately Firmin states he has reached this salvation, since it is such a personal, individual, self-centered cosmology, how could we verify his statement?

Warlock is a fictional mining city near the border of Mexico, about a day's ride from Bright's City, the county seat. A gang of rustlers lead by Abe McQuown is the primary, but far from only, source of conflict and lawlessness. For some reason, the authorities at Bright's City refuse to provide Warlock with a professional sheriff and so Warlock must make do with amateur deputies. Eventually, the trouble from McQuown's band is too much and the Citizens' Council (i.e. the property owners, wealthy, and other respectable folk) hire a famous gunman named Clay Blaisdale to be their marshal. A series of conflicts and confrontations lead to Blaisdale shooting and killing several members of McQuown's band, two of which he was not sure were guilty of the crimes he shot them for.

The events and conflicts of Warlock raise many questions about the nature of order in society. What is the minimum level of “law” needed for the law to actually work? What use is righteousness if it is impossible to maintain? What is the value of law when it must be enforced at gunpoint? How much law is there in Warlock? Changes every day, depending on who was paying attention. When it is right to shoot first? You only know after all the shots have been fired.

What joins the two books is the problem of moral assessment. If salvation is possible through self-destruction, what is the moral weight of the Consul's actions towards that end? Ultimately, the Consul inadvertently injures or kills Yvonne, but the Consul did everything he could to assure that he was the only one destroyed. If justice and law are so fluid and confusing, who is the most moral character in Warlock. Tom Morgan comes to be seen as the embodiment of evil in the town, but everything he did, he did to help his friend, Clay Blaisdale, marshal and hero of Warlock. Furthermore, throughout the book the Judge, a raging alcoholic asserts that to be righteous, one must always be right, and that every action after being wrong is tainted with moral compromise.

In both books, before we even get to deciding who is morally right and who is morally wrong, we have to figure out how how we are going to judge. Do we take Firmin at his word, believing that his self-destruction is truly intentional and if not, how do we determine what his true intentions are? And how do we assess his salvation if he achieves it? What is the value of order in a town like Warlock, and what risks are worth taking in pursuit of it? If people have to die to create that order, should it matter who kills them and why? What is the most important thing in these two situations?

Of course, these books are about questions not about answers, so you're not going to find real guidance in either of the books. In a way they almost act like case studies, testing our moral aptitude by presenting intractable challenges. They reveal our own moral processes to ourselves by forcing us to make difficult moral evaluations, so even if we don't ending up knowing for sure who is right and wrong, we still end up knowing more about the processes of morality, and I believe that is progress.

The Red Sox at the Trade Deadline

The Sox are in an interesting position in terms of personnel moves as the trade deadline approaches. They're at the top of the AL East with the best offense in the bigs, with at least two contenders for AL MVP and one serious contender for AL Cy Young (anyone remember the last time Beckett gave up a run?). Right now, their best players are playing so well, that their weak links aren't really causing a problem. Of course, every team wishes they could have this problem, but that makes it quite a challenge to find the perfect missing piece that will lead to a World Series Title. Here's what I think they shouldn't, probably should do, and definitely should do in terms of personnel changes.

What They Shouldn't Do: Get a right fielder. I know a lot of people like to hate on J. D. Drew and it is absolutely true that he never lived up to his expectations or salary. But J.D. Drew makes very few errors and though he also doesn't make any great plays either, you don't need a superstar in right field at Fenway to contribute to the success of the Sox. What you need is a player who can judge how the ball is going to bounce around in the corner and Drew is pretty good at that. Furthermore, there is value to a batter near the bottom of the order who sees a lot of pitches. (Though, even this attribute has been waning a bit with Drew lately.) Obviously, you want .400 hitters top to bottom, but given that's impossible, it's useful to have someone 7-9 who makes the pitcher throw strikes. Drew is not ideal, but he is fine for right field and the Red Sox don't need another big bat. Furthermore, the Sox have outfield prospects, not only Reddick, who seems to have earned the starting job anyway, but also, Nava, and Kalish. Why spend money and resources for a big name player to solve a problem that isn't much of a problem, especially when the solution might already be here?

What They Probably Should Do: Make a bid for Jose Reyes. A month ago, I would have said there's no point in going for Reyes when Jed Lowrie is the shortstop of the future, but Lowrie can't seem to stay healthy. Scuttaro has done fine as a backup, but only as a backup. What the Red Sox really need at short stop is a player who can take away hits. Ellsbury and Crawford can do it in the outfield and Pedroia can do it at second, but Scuttaro can't and I'm not sure that a healthy Lowrie can either. Though it's not possible, the current Red Sox plus Astrubal Cabrera win the World Series. Reyes isn't as good in the field as Cabrera, but nobody else is either, and Reyes will add even more batting depth to the line up. Also, the Sox won't have to fight the Yankees for Reyes. The Mets won't give him up for nothing, but at least there's unlikely to be a bidding war. Of course, the Mets still might ask for more than the Sox are willing to part with, and Jed Lowrie might finally get healthy, and the Sox would still be World Series contenders if someone else got Reyes, but there would be a lot of second guessing if they didn't go for Reyes and also didn't win the World Series.

What They Absolutely Should Do: Pick up a couple veteran pitchers on the waiver wire. The Sox shouldn't need pitching. But Bucholzt's injury is nagging and mysterious and that is not good. Furthermore, after Lester and Beckett, the other pitchers have been good, but I can't say they've been World Series Championship good. There's always the chance Lackey could do something special in the post-season, and Wakefield gives you a chance to win pretty much 3 out of 5 starts, and, of course, Bucholtz could get healthy, but a couple of cheap options couldn't hurt. If they can find somebody who can start and come out of the pen even better. Ultimately, 15-30 good innings at the end of the season while key pitchers (including middle relief guys like Aceves and Wheeler) rest could be absolutely vital, especially against the elite pitching the Sox are likely to encounter on the way to a World Series.

Right now, the Red Sox don't have to really do anything at the trade deadline. Not only are they first in the A.L east, but they have perhaps the deepest offensive line up the game has seen in quite a few years. Furthermore, their every-fifth-game players like Varitek and McDonald are contributing about as much as you could expect from off the bench players. And given the market, there really isn't a player out there, the Yankees could get to completely turn the dynamic around. So, ultimately, the Sox might be best served by standing pat at the trade deadline and picking up some bargains on the waiver wire. As we learned from Dave Roberts' steal in 2004, sometimes a single, small contribution from a bit player can lead to a championship.

What Went Wrong in American Food?

In some ways this essay is a little out of date. Over the past few years, American food culture (at least in some places) has slowly been drifting away from the steak, potatoes, and processed convenience food full of sodium, high fructose corn syrup, and chemistry sets of preservatives, that was contributing to our national epidemic of obesity, while having the added bonus of greatly contributing to climate change. CSAs and farm shares are becoming more accessible. Non-profit organizations are finding ways to bring fresh food to the poor, who too often have to eat the cheapest of the cheap. More restaurants are committing to seasonal sustainable menus. Foodieism has trickled down an increased focus on what and how we eat. But obesity is still on the rise, so, even though obesity has many sources, our food problems are far from solved.

And all of this is recovery from an unhealthy, unsustainable, practically joyless food culture that prized convenience over flavor, cost over quality, and predictability over passion. We became a nation of reheaters. My question has always been, what went wrong? We had the two fundamental sources of a great cooking culture; diversity and poverty, and though “America” is an extremely young culture, especially in terms of food, we had already developed some fantastic new foods, from barbeque to potato chips. But then, well, here's what I think happened.

Compulsory Education: For most human history, people (women usually) learned to cook by watching their mother cook, who learned by watching her mother cook. Recipes weren't passed down in books, but through apprenticeship. Techniques weren't taught, they were absorbed. But with the modern education system, mom cooked alone, because the kids were at school. Many recipes, techniques, and traditions were lost because there wasn't anybody in the kitchen to watch them enacted. So, when those children grew up, got houses, and found themselves in the kitchen, they didn't really know what to do. It's not hard to see the appeal of “heat and serve.”

Better Living Through Science: When the American dream included a car in every driveway, we didn't know our car culture would eventually wreck the environment. It is impossible to predict all the consequences of our actions. The convenience foods we eventually developed had the best of intentions; to give women a little spare time. And who could blame them for finally taking the opportunity to read every now and again. We didn't know then, the effects the amounts of sodium and high fructose corn syrup and other chemicals needed to make shelf-stable foods taste like something would come with such dire consequences for our nation's health.

The Great Depression (but not for why you think): A lot of people got out of the Great Depression determined to never eat poor people food again. Americans had the money to buy pretty much whatever cuts of meat they wanted and so they bought the best cuts. If they were going to eat chicken they were going to eat chicken breasts. If pork, chops or loins. If beef, steaks or roasts. The market responded and now we have chickens that are essentially engorged breasts on legs and cows pumped with more hormones than East German Olympic swimmers (speaking of out of date statements). As dire as the environmental consequences are from the shift to choice cuts, a lot of cooking was lost. The source of the world's great food traditions are disgusting looking potential foods made palatable through technique. Oxtail doesn't look too tasty when it's just sitting there, but for most of human history it was either eat what was there or don't eat anything at all. And now we have oxtail soup. Oh man. Oxtail soup. Because we stopped eating poor people food, a lot of great recipes and techniques fell out of general knowledge.

The Unequal Distribution of Domestic Duties: Social movements are funny things, especially when they succeed. Women joined the workforce, but, for the most part, men didn't really increase their domestic workload. One result of the womens movement is that many, many women got home from work and still had to make dinner, and when they did, they had much less time and much less energy to do so. Furthermore, no one was around to tend to the all day dishes or bake bread or make pasta, or do any of the other time or labor intensive cooking that used to define daily domestic life.

What might be most instructive about our transition to a convenience food culture is how little all of these changes had to do with food. For the most part, a more general structure of society changed, and how we made food changed in response. Furthermore, all of these societal changes were, at least in terms of their intentions, for the best. The plague of advertising and the corn-centric agricultural subsidies have done their part of course, but food scientists in the 50s didn't rub their hands together in malicious glee and declare “Ha, this will contribute to an epidemic of diabetes by the start of the next millennium.” Compulsory education wasn't a conspiracy of the burgeoning microwave industry, and the organizers and activists of the feminist movement didn't conclude their meetings by saying, “And just think of it, one day we'll have the fattest kids on the planet.” Our destructive food culture was a result of people trying to make the world a better place.

As I said at the beginning of the essay, our food culture is changing for the better, but unfortunately, the changes are almost all from the top down. It's people with enough money to dine at sustainable restaurants and shop for fresh, sustainable food, with the time to consistently make it. Unfortunately, truly changing our food culture for everyone, will require more general and more drastic socio-economic changes. However, I do think, there's one food based change we can make that would quickly and greatly improve our food culture. Teach cooking in school again.

An hour or so, every month, through middle and high school would provide students with many of the basic skills needed to cook healthy food for themselves. Maybe some schools could offer an elective as well for those students who might be interested in working in the food industry. It won't replace the lifetime apprenticeship we used to learn to cook through, but it will mean all American men and women will be able to cook for themselves. Furthermore, the kids would eat what they cooked, providing a stigma-free, free meal to many hungry students.

Our food culture is improving, but there are a lot of forces, spread out through our society supporting our sodium and syrup rich convenience food culture. The physical state of kitchens in low income housing. The corn-centric farm subsidy system. Massive agri-business. The advertising assault on our consciousness. There are big picture changes that can be made, like a redistribution of agricultural subsidies, but the most effective way to improve the country's food culture starts quite a bit closer to home. The problem is not the existence of heat and serve dinners and fast food restaurants, but how much we use them. There's nothing wrong with throwing something in the microwave when you've got tickets to a game and don't have time to make anything. There's nothing wrong with getting fast food while you're on the highway. But there is something wrong with always heating and serving and getting fast food once a week. All that is really needed to revolutionize our food culture is a rational relationship with convenience foods. And, for everyone to start making their own vegetable stock. But that's another essay.