moandgo:

Tonight’s Dinner Conversation

Me: So anyway, there was so much bird shit on my car, it was like they had a vendetta out for me or something.

Mo: So did you wash it?

Me: I had to. It was ridiculous. And not only that, there was a ton of tree pollen crap all over it, too. And washing it wasn’t even enough to get it clean. I had to pick out the little tree pollen things out of the wiper blades. You know, between the blade itself and the wiper arm? They get stuck in there. And in the vents, too.

Mo: You know what that makes you, right?

Me: What?

Mo: Fastidious.

Me:

Mo: What?

Me: Nothing.

Mo: What.

Me: Um, I believe it’s pronounced “fas-TID-i-ous.” Not “fas-TIDGE-ous.”

Mo: <smiles>

Me: Shut up.

My Favorite Iced Tea Recipe: Lipton Green Tea with Mangosteen and Peach

Boil 32 oz of water. Wait 3-5 minutes for water temperature to decrease a bit. Put 1/3 cup of stevia into a glass pitcher * or stainless steel pot. Add 6 tea bags and pour boiled water over them. Steep 3-4 minutes (tea gets bitter if you steep too long). Remove bags. Let cool at room temperature for an hour or so, then cover to protect the flavor and refrigerate.

SOME GLASS PITCHERS WILL BREAK IF YOU POUR BOILING WATER IN THEM

*You can easily break a glass pitcher by pouring boiling water into it – this can result in burns and cuts. Test your pitcher in your sink, before trying to make the tea in the pitcher! Do this by pouring boiled water slowly into the pitcher in an empty sink. Why? It is easier to clean glass out of an empty sink, if it breaks, than from your counter and floor. And think of the time saved not having to go to the ER! The only pitcher that I have found to be safe is one I bought at K-Mart. (not on the website, sorry) I think it is pressed glass (pressed glass has “seams”). Test it first!

Some things I think about………

I love the taste and smell of this tea, and the fact that it has so many anti-oxidants, flavanoids and so little caffeine. And making it with natural stevia, makes it calorie and chemical free, too. While the recipe is easy enough, dealing with all the tea-bag waste is another issue entirely.

I could be entirely wrong about this, but I suspect that not many folks drink hot peach mangosteen green tea. I’ve tasted it hot - ugh. If I’m right that most folks are using Lipton’s Green Tea with White Mangosteen and Peach to make iced tea, then Lipton seems not to have considered a number of things about this product’s real-life-usage.

For example: the tea is sold in boxes containing twenty tea bags – a number indivisible by six. Six, is the number of bags they suggest you use in the recipe for iced tea on the box. That’s dumb. The box could easily hold four more bags. The box is covered in cellophane, then each tea bag is individually wrapped in paper and each bag has a string and tag held in place with some kind of paper glue tape. This glue tape often fails to hold the string on, but it will adhere to the tea bag paper well enough to rip it open if you are not careful while unfurling it from its envelope. Grrr.

For awhile, I unthinkingly threw the tea bags; strings, tags and all, into the pitcher and poured boiling water over them to make the tea. Then, in a quiet moment, considering the physical properties of things, I realized that the boiling water melts the glues and inks and dissolves them into my tea. Yum. Then I did the math on my glue and ink consumption.

I use about 1,560 of these particular tea bags a year, so when I think of the inks, dyes and chemicals in all those strings, tags and glue, and it seems prudent to keep them out of my tea, and therefore out of me. I’m sure the tea bag paper has been bleached, and even if the inks on the tags are soy-based, and the adhesive tape is organic, I really don’t want to ingest it

But doing the right thing; removing all those components and putting some parts in the trash and other parts in recycling is labor-intense and time consuming - especially when I did the math and realized that I dismantle 80 boxes of this tea a year. I shudder to think what impact my “tea footprint” will have on the earth, which I would like to leave in a better condition than I found it. And, I am only one customer of perhaps millions. That’s a big, unnecessary pile of waste, not to mention the  resources, energy and people-power used to produce all the bags, tags, string, glue and tape.

I think that if Lipton were really smart and committed to the people they serve and the environment, they could sell the tea in old-fashioned loose-tea form and include a free tea ball with the Lipton logo on it in each package of tea. They could still use a cardboard box to keep their retail shelf real-estate, with a wax-paper bag inside to hold the tea – like the kind Celestial Seasonings uses to hold their string-less, tag-less tea bags.

Most of us would store our tea in air-tight containers once we got it home. Perhaps Lipton could sell a promotional air-tight container at the start of the campaign as well.

If Lipton provided a tea ball in every box of tea for a year or two, even if only for the best-selling super-fruit teas, I think green tea drinkers would self-convert from bags to loose tea in short order - especially if the product were competitively sized and priced.

If green tea drinkers are who I think they are, Lipton could after some time, convert all their super-fruit teas from tea-bag based products to loose tea, without loss of market share – because having tasted them all, I can safely say that this is the best-tasting, diverse, healthy, reasonably priced, widely available line of green tea out there.

Lipton has gone through the trouble to become “Rainforest Alliance Certified”, signaling their interest in protecting growers, workers and the earth. I think that’s great, but I think they can do better. A change to loose tea could set Lipton apart by honoring the value system of its tea drinkers while improving profitability and environmental impact at the same time.

Potential for Backdraft Continues to Smolder

As I watch the numbers of my previous Tumblr post climb into the 800s, it reminds me of what I think is really going on with this whole contraception/abortion/war-on-women thing. Potential for Backdraft.

Republicans keep saying that the “War on Women” is a liberal, left-wing-created figment of our imaginations. Maybe that helps them sleep at night. But I sense that there is a fire burning in the hearts and conversations of women all over the United States. Widespread and smoldering, glowing and growing in the dark and quiet, embers starved and waiting, needing only the slightest exposure to air to leap to flame.

So far, women have been mostly polite and well-behaved about it all, speaking forcefully, but diplomatically on the issues. Watch Patty Murray (D-WA) as the very voice of reasoned logic. Watch our male elected and public figures say stupid things, seemingly oblivious to the fact that everything in our world is recorded now—and will therefore be replayed. Thanks to the efforts of the women of our congress, we successfully defeated the Blunt Amendment.

Undeterred by the failure of the Blunt Amendment, Republicans soldier on, sponsoring anti-women legislation in state after state, and chipping away at our 40 years of progress in American society.

They are so clueless to the danger. They are not seeing the seething and smoldering they have engendered in women. They seem not to understand that all we need at this potential flash point is the tiniest bit of oxygen and one more public, stupid, tone-deaf comment about abortion, women’s sexuality, women’s rights to contraception or birth control, and FOOM! Backdraft.

The fire will rage on through November 6, 2012, when we go to the polls in a female tsunami, quenching that fire. I say with some level of pride that women decided the last presidential election, and no doubt we will decide this one, too. We are a force to be reckoned with. Be part of it!

Techno-Rape by Proxy

Am I the only one who can see that requiring women to submit to a trans-vaginal ultrasound prior to obtaining a legal abortion amounts to sexual assault by state legislature? What else could you call it?

Could it be any clearer that the intent of the law in both Texas and Virginia, and Governors Perry and McDonald, respectively, is to punish and humiliate women who are already in a vulnerable position both physically and emotionally?

To require that a phallic-shaped probe larger than your average dildo be inserted into a woman to determine fetal age—while at the same time directing her to watch the screen so she can understand the reality of her pregnancy—is techno-rape.

Consider the fact that some of the women seeking abortion are victims of rape or incest to begin with and are now required by this law to be re-traumatized. Never mind the fact that it is not medically necessary. Never mind that there was no consent on the part of the woman. Never mind that physicians have testified to the medical non-necessity of trans-vaginal ultrasound for the purposes of determining fetal age.

I am well past the age at which these issues affect me personally. But I am still a woman; I am still a human being. And this legislation offends me—so offends my very personage—that I must speak out.

Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, surely you can see that to subject any woman to this treatment—under ANY circumstances—lowers our status in this country and in our culture. If you can’t see that, then perhaps you should leave your membership card to the human race at the door—you aren’t fit to be a member. And that goes not just for the males, but for any females who cannot see the incredible misogyny inherent in this new assault on women’s sexuality. It affects all U.S. citizens in terms of our ethical standing in the world.

A woman seeking an abortion does not need to see video of the contents of her uterus to understand what she is doing. She is there to have an abortion. That very fact implies that she knows she is pregnant. There is no medical reason to do trans-vaginal ultrasounds—abdominal ultrasounds could just as easily and less traumatically determine fetal age. I can’t help but see this as rape—by proxy.

To the people who supported these laws I say simply: Shame on you. To the thinking men and women who oppose such punitive, arcane and sadistic treatment of women, I say: Where is your outrage? I’m not hearing it.

I thought that the presence of hundreds of women standing silently at the Virginia State Capital, as state legislators filed past to vote on this, would shame the legislature into behaving like human beings. It did not.

And they are not done with us yet. Today, March 15, 2012, the U.S. Senate is debating the Violence Against Women Act, and it is expected that there will be opposition to it by Senate Republicans.

Are they insane? Certain Republicans seem to be concerned that some illegal immigrants and some same-sex partners may inadvertently benefit from the protections this law might provide. These cowardly legislators are afraid of looking pro illegal-immigration or pro same-sex marriage.

That prospect is so politically terrifying to them that they are willing to throw women under the bus and leave them without the protections of the Violence Against Women Act.

Voting is our only weapon. How about a grassroots campaign to create a human voting tsunami on November 6, 2012? I propose that we organize and show up at the polls in physical groups of at least 10. I don’t even care which way you vote; just be counted. Our lawmakers need to know that we are paying attention. This is everyone’s battle.

Start making dates with your friends to go vote. Have coffee or dessert or brunch, or drinks afterwards or whatever it takes to make it an occasion to vote. How great would it be to go to the very crowded polls this year and see all those female faces? If you aren’t registered to vote, get started on that today. Just do it.