![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So I decided to write the hospital scene later, when I've figured out how to make it short, and skip ahead to the next chapter (this only means I'm skipping a couple of paragraphs). I sent him around to a bunch of little shops with his bruised up face and he didn't get any work, so now he's off in the Stockton area harvesting tomatoes. He's starting to consciously plan on keeping people from wishing around him as much as he can. He's going to fail. People in the fields are going to wish a lot, and fervently, because they're tired, hurting, hungry, and disappointed.
I wanted to check on some details of the tomato harvest, and I ended up here:
Photo Gallery of the San Joaquin Valley
People should pay more attention to how their food is made. We've made such a point of having cheap food in the United States that we've institutionalized starvation for the people who actually grow the food (as opposed to the people we call the growers, who are the managers and owners of the farms, and at the same time we've degraded the food that people eat.
I'm not sentimentalizing systems of the past. It's always been the case that the people who grow and prepare the food are squeezed as much as humanly possible. Iceland's Bell depicts the people of Iceland living on fish heads and fins because the fish and whale go to Danish traders. There are shocking contrasts between the starving farmers and fishermen and the monopolists and officials, mostly Danes. I mean shocking. I am old enough, and have seen enough and read enough, that I am seldom truly surprised, but I never cease to be shocked.
Here's something I didn't know about before:
Florida Tomato Boycott
I am uneasy about boycotts for exactly this reason. There is so much noise in the world, most boycotts are never publicized nearly enough to get past the noise and get enough momentum to have a decent effect. Personally, I'd like to see the tactic suspended by common consent for some number of years, and I'd like to see some other tactics developed. This is not because I'm inconvenienced by them. I wouldn't mind that. It's because it hurts to see so much effort go into outdated tactics.
On the other hand, the realtively new tactic of presuring the fast food chains to demand the changes in the food processing and agriculture industries looks really productive. McDonalds has been transformed from an entirely exacerbating influence to a mixed one, which has led the world in some positive changes. Not to say that they aren't still pretty problematic.
So my guy is out there harvesting green-ripe tomatoes (that's what they're called!) and he's going to confront a bunch of unavoidable, difficult wishes that will expose him, and he'll flee again. This is chapter four.
Chapter five -- the trucker, and the man at the bar.
Chapter six -- the Boss enters the picture. So I have the rest of today and the next two days pretty much mapped out.
After that it's the Boss for two chapters at least, and a whole chapter for the invasion, and then a chapter for running and hiding and trying to avoid wishes again, and a chapter for the crazy man in the Tenderloin apartment, and a chapter for the next invasion, and a transition chapter, and then -- Candelario, which starts the second half of the book.
Going to play a little and then write some more, at least 500 more words.
I wanted to check on some details of the tomato harvest, and I ended up here:
Photo Gallery of the San Joaquin Valley
People should pay more attention to how their food is made. We've made such a point of having cheap food in the United States that we've institutionalized starvation for the people who actually grow the food (as opposed to the people we call the growers, who are the managers and owners of the farms, and at the same time we've degraded the food that people eat.
I'm not sentimentalizing systems of the past. It's always been the case that the people who grow and prepare the food are squeezed as much as humanly possible. Iceland's Bell depicts the people of Iceland living on fish heads and fins because the fish and whale go to Danish traders. There are shocking contrasts between the starving farmers and fishermen and the monopolists and officials, mostly Danes. I mean shocking. I am old enough, and have seen enough and read enough, that I am seldom truly surprised, but I never cease to be shocked.
Here's something I didn't know about before:
Florida Tomato Boycott
I am uneasy about boycotts for exactly this reason. There is so much noise in the world, most boycotts are never publicized nearly enough to get past the noise and get enough momentum to have a decent effect. Personally, I'd like to see the tactic suspended by common consent for some number of years, and I'd like to see some other tactics developed. This is not because I'm inconvenienced by them. I wouldn't mind that. It's because it hurts to see so much effort go into outdated tactics.
On the other hand, the realtively new tactic of presuring the fast food chains to demand the changes in the food processing and agriculture industries looks really productive. McDonalds has been transformed from an entirely exacerbating influence to a mixed one, which has led the world in some positive changes. Not to say that they aren't still pretty problematic.
So my guy is out there harvesting green-ripe tomatoes (that's what they're called!) and he's going to confront a bunch of unavoidable, difficult wishes that will expose him, and he'll flee again. This is chapter four.
Chapter five -- the trucker, and the man at the bar.
Chapter six -- the Boss enters the picture. So I have the rest of today and the next two days pretty much mapped out.
After that it's the Boss for two chapters at least, and a whole chapter for the invasion, and then a chapter for running and hiding and trying to avoid wishes again, and a chapter for the crazy man in the Tenderloin apartment, and a chapter for the next invasion, and a transition chapter, and then -- Candelario, which starts the second half of the book.
Going to play a little and then write some more, at least 500 more words.
