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In 10 days, it will be my one-year anniversary of receiving my kidney transplant. As the date nears, I have been spending a little time looking back on the 12 months that have passed since then, and, at the urging of my closest friends and family, I have begun to consider the changes that have occurred since October 6 of 2009.
I don't really understand why we NEED genetically altered things in our world. Not enough salmon to go around? Eat something else. Not enough other stuff to go around? Grow your own or -gasp!- don't eat. That's how it used to work, but now that we've mastered creating creatures and plants out of laboratories, the adage of 'make do' seems to have disappeared from our culture. Hey, if you want to eat GE salmon, go right ahead. But shouldn't we at least be given the option of reading on the label of that salmon that it has been created by man, not nature?
This GE salmon is the first genetically engineered fish for consumption that is about to hit the US market. The argument around its release into the food system is mainly focused on the labeling of said salmon, and the FDA is standing strong on the platform that says 'no negative impact to salmon, environment, or man from consuming the salmon has been found.' So, they have fought violently against simply putting on the fish a label that tells consumers it has been genetically engineered. They don't want us to know? What are they hiding?
It all sounds pretty fishy to me, and I certainly won't be consuming any weird-science salmon. However, even if you don't mind eating it, wouldn't you at least like to be granted the decency and respect of your own personal intelligence to see some type of identification on that salmon that allows you to use your free will to make a choice about what you put into your body?
Hmmm...
When I was in high school, I did a lot of 'hanging out'. Hanging out didn't revolve around a set schedule, it was just me and a friend or 2 sitting around talking, or maybe playing some Nintendo or watching some TV. For the past decade, though, it seems my ability to hang out has diminished sadly, and I find myself trying to multi-task while seeing friends or family or over-booking my schedule to allow myself more productivity. The thing is, just hanging out can be good for your health.
At the market on Wednesday this week, a farmer and I were talking about canning, as I was purchasing potatoes, beans, and garlic in mass quantities for 'putting up'. She asked me what else I was doing to be sustainable, and I felt a little stumped by her question.
In my last post, I described some challenges I have encountered since I recently decided I wanted to learn to run. I try to imagine I am in the home stretch of a triathlon when I am having a hard time getting motivated on the treadmill, like this past Tuesday. It seems to work, and it takes my mind off my tired legs and helps remind me to control my breathing. I was hoping to use the same method of self-motivation on Wednesday, when I took my first Spinning class.
I've never been a runner. I hated gym class as it was during my entire junior and senior high school career, but I reserved a special type of hatred for those days that our thick-legged, angry gym teacher would announce that we were running for class that day. So I am a little befuddled as to why I am currently trying to learn to run as an addition to my regular work-out routine.
The few times as an adult that I have attempted to run for any length of time have yielded varied, although consistently horrible results. I remember clearly the last time I "ran", if it could be called that, because it was really a fast, loping walk that lasted approximately 3 minutes. I went with a set of friends who were training for a triathlon- one was a distance marathoner, the other a self-proclaimed gym rat and police officer, and I gave up nearly instantly on trying to keep pace with them. That was 2 years ago.
This year, feeling stronger and more energetic than I have in years, I thought about training for a triathlon 
myself, but hesitated, being unsure if I could ever run the distance required for even a 'sprint tri', a shortened version of the regular tri's. To gain confidence, I sought the advice of a veteran runner, and carefully examined my own stride to help identify the right type of shoe when the time came to get serious.
In the meantime, I have been experimenting on the treadmill at the gym, walking for a bit, then running a few minutes, then walking again. It has gone better than I had anticipated, and I have hope for once that I would be able to learn to run better, making that first triathlon a little bit closer to reality.
Summer is slipping away before our eyes- I have already purchased my first few pie pumpkins at the Farmer's Market, and yesterday morning's walk found me crunching atop yellowed, fallen leaves along my neighborhood streets. But although the coming Fall inevitably leads to our long Michigan winter, I have more than a few reasons to be joyful this year for the changing of the guard outside my windows.
