Organic shame...

It is still bright and warm, huge fluffy white clouds floating lazily across deep cerulean blue early evening skies, by the time we arrive at the church and folks start unloading the two support vehicles, bringing in their stuff for the night.

A couple of womyn are coming up from Madison with food for tonite. I'll have to figure out if I'm going to ask them if any of their food is organic - and then wonder if they really know what organic means and is. From the sodas and bottled water, crap snack food - all corporate junk - that is spread out for us, I have severe doubts.

But that is why I have my camper, so I can cook for myself.

Before I can head out the door to start cooking, I am urged quite loudly to partake of their feast. The womyn have arrived with an array of sliced lunch meat and cheese, breads and condiments, as well as a rice & veggie salad. I feel uncomfortable but I am driven to ask if anything is organic.

One of the younger womyn walkers, horrified I'm sure, rolls her eyes and tells me that it is so expense to buy organic. I agree it's expensive but add, if you're only counting cost as dollars and cents maybe, but it is very expensive for our bodies, the Mother Earth, and the farm worker to do non-organic.

Then I confess happily that I am an organic snob.

I hear this same young womon unabashedly ask our hosts if anything is gluten-free, like the bread. Talk about fuckin expensive! I see the hosts have made little signs on the food that include "vegan" and "gluten-free" but no "organic" signs.

I think about how quickly those two things became a designer health bandwagon, and how comfortably everyone has adapted to accommodate those diets, both those that do not eat vegan or gluten-free and those that do. And I marvel once more at the power of advertising and trend-setting: if only organic was set as such a trend!

Later I think about why I said that I'm an organic snob. I'm just putting myself down plus the entire organic movement. And it reinforces the false idea that healthy organic food is for rich snobbish people. I could have said that I don't eat poison - but that's not true, I have my non-organic exceptions usually in the form of sugar or dim sum - but my exceptions certainly do not come in corporate processed packages in this small church.

I decide I will tell everyone at some point tomorrow that I didn't mean to diminish "organic" food but that I should have said I have a commitment to the Mother Earth, to the farm workers, and to my body to eat organic. With pride, not shame.