Even though today was Memorial Day, we certainly did not get a day off. We started the day by going to the Memorial Day Service at the cemetery in Radcliffe. It was really interesting since I haven’t been to hardly any. It was much more churchy than I expected, but it was short and sweet. There were so many fallen soldiers in that tiny town! I heard the name Friest once and the name Espe twice. It was really cool to hear names that I’d heard before. It really was a beautiful ceremony.

Going back to the obesity issue, we read a chapter in Paarlberg’s book yesterday and today about the politics of obesity. I agree with him much more than I did with the Fed Up movie. He recognized that there was an issue, but he also recognized the implications that come with regulating it. He specifically mentioned how important it is for people to have choices, which is something I mentioned in my previous post as being really important to me. I liked how he examined different ways of addressing the issue along with their pros and cons. The only thing I didn’t like was his use of the term “weak policies” in regards to policies with less regulation. Weak has a negative connotation and I think that it would have been better to instead refer to them as less regulatory policies to avoid the judgmental tone, which I believe was his goal..

The rest of our day, besides a short trip to Ames and wonderful food by Dolana, was spent watching two movies. The first was called “Symphony of the Soil” and was about different types of soil, our impact on the soil, the consequences of our actions, and how we can help. It was really eye opening to me to see what a huge difference there is between organic and no-till practices and conventional factory farming. It really put yesterday’s encounter with Glen into perspective. The second was called “Ocean’s Frontier” and was about the impact that the entire country has on the health of our oceans. We’ve talked about the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico before but I really didn’t know that the oceans on all sides of us were being affected. It was also really cool to see Denny Friest, a familiar face, in the movie, talking about what farmers in Iowa are doing to reduce their negative impact on the water. I appreciated his opinion and everything he is doing to help the environment, but I personally don’t think its enough. He seems to be almost completely focused on the water while ignoring the soil aspect. He specifically mentioned that if farmers were more open minded they would see that there are better ways, but directly went against this in his adamant denial of no-till farming. I thought it was hypocritical of him and kind of put him in the group of farmers that he was complaining about. I did enjoy both movies, though, and I’m very excited to meet the famous Annette tomorrow.