Spectacles and Retrospectives

I am an avid reader of Consumer Reports. For three main reasons: 1.) I enjoy reading how human beings quantify and classify human-made products. Typically the products reviewed within the pages of this publication are items of luxury, the focus of the (perceived) American Dream. Televisions, stereos, Mp3 players, vacuums cleaners, refrigerators - these are the things that are dissected in Consumer Reports. These are the things that belong. 2.) I feel that as a person with monetary power (a power that only a minority of the world possesses) I have a responsibility to myself and to the larger global society to be informed when I make a purchase, especially a large one. 3.) My Aunt Jody read Consumer Reports religiously. As well as Reader's Digest (I read that, too. I have since I was about 9 years old). She was one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered. Reading what she read makes sense. Having qulified that this is a publication that I enjoy and...

My mom was our primary caretaker and lived (and continues to live) with severe gastrointestinal illness. The human experience centers around food. The focus on food becomes more intense during the winter holidays.  My experience with food has been different for as long as I can remember. My mother is forever on special diets that vary in substance, nutritional content, naturally ingested and/or artificially administered. In my world it it "normal". Even as a child, I was preceptive to the fact that this was not "normal" to others. Others (those who do not have experience with gastrointestinal  disease or illness) are uncomfortable with things out of their realm of experience. They often react by staring or doing a number of things that make the experience of food a strained emotional event, something that the breaking of bread (whatever that is to you) should never be. This is not to say that questions can not be asked. They can. And they should. As with all convers...