Astroturf vs Grass Roots

Here is a useful link to lefty organisations, some real; grass roots, most only astro turf.

More Help For GC 2009

When it all gets too much, just hand out this card:

Pot Pie

When I was a boy my mother would often make dinner by reheating frozen pot pies in the oven. That's not a criticism. To this day, I love chicken pot pies. The problem lay in that Mom buys things that are on sale or have the lowest price without regard to quality. I am prone to similar behaviour. This apple did not fall far from the tree.

As a child I noticed that the pot pies that were completely encased in crust were usually pretty good. The ones that were chicken cobblers, that is without a bottom crust were always awful.

We recently picked up a large box of pot pies at a discount warehouse. They are fully encrusted and are quite tasty. One of them is a satisfying meal. The other pot pies do not have a full crust and, as was true in childhood, are less desirable. They also do not fill me up. After consuming one, I'm always hungry. Which means that an hour or two after mealtime I find something to snack on. The snack is always something unhealthy and is usually something I do not really want.

I think that modern religion can be analogized to pot pies. Real religion, that is to say historical and orthodox Christianity is self contained and is spiritually satisfying. It provides a varied experience. Modern religion, that practised by many mainline churches, is religion without a complete crust. In an effort to make it available to more people, the ingredients have been reduced and cheapened. It provides less calories and nutrients, so that it can never fully satisfy. Its consumers either abandon it for fast food religion or supplement it with unhealthy spiritual snack food.

Like all analogies, this one breaks down if pushed too far. But it does explain why lowering the cost of faith does not actually result in more adherents.

When Change is for the Worse

Growing up, my mother, being a prudent shopper, generally went for the bargains. The exception was ice cream. My father was born and raised in Philadelphia and he had his priorities. All ice cream had to be Breyer's.

So my taste memory of what ice cream ought to taste like has been and always will be what Breyer's tasted like in the sixties. In the last few years though, I've wandered away from Breyer's. My formerly strong adherence to that ice cream is now tattered and torn. It's not because my ice cream preferences have changed. Quite the contrary, I still prefer vanilla ice cream made from cream, milk, sugar and chopped up vanilla beans (Blue Bell Brown Rim for those who wish to try some). Rather, it's because Breyer's has changed. Formerly owned by Kraft, a large food conglomerate, they have passed to Good Humor, which is owned by Unilever, a large conglomerate. Kraft had recognized that the appeal of Breyer's lay in nostalgia and perceived quality. Unilever has added stabilizers, reduced package size and swapped out ingredients. Presumably in an effort to stay current and to modernize the brand.

In their advertising, Breyer's had made an explicit promise to be all natural and to be of high quality. The Breyer's family had stood behind that guarantee from 1866 to when they sold it in 1926. The successor ownership was careful to retain the pledge until the sale to Unilever in 1993. Today the Pledge of Purity has been modified to cover only the ice cream itself (not any mix ins) and only on certain boxes. The carton size has been reduced from 1/2 gallon to 1 and a half quarts. I am almost certain that they are incorporating more air into the mixture as well. It seems a lot lighter than it used to.

I don't buy Breyers much. When I buy ice cream, it's generally to relive my childhood. Breyer's ice cream no longer takes me there. The Mint Chocolate Chip (the favourite of both my father and myself) isn't especially minty and the chocolate chips are cheaper in quality. Today, I buy Haagen Dazs. But it's heavier and they also use unique ingredients. For vanilla, we go with Blue Bell Brown Rim. Or we just make the ice cream ourselves.

I didn't change. My ice cream changed. And that change was not for the better.


Addendum: Both Sally and I adore this. It is unbelievably good. But it's not showing up on their website anymore so it may have been discontinued......

Synchronicity and Grass Roots

The blogosphere has been abuzz with various discussions of fake 'grass roots' anti-firearms organizations for a while. The groups are usually dubbed 'astro-turf' organizations by their detractors. I'd been gestating a post on the subject when I saw an unrelated post over at StandFirm about the Dean of Seabury-Western's latest sermon.

The sermon, which appears on his blog, is on the old idea of 'living for the moment'. Which is generally good advice and is biblical. But the phrasing of his sermon reminded me of the old sixties song "Let's Live For Today" by a band called The Grass Roots. My curiosity piqued, I turned to Wikipedia to learn more about the band. And astonishingly enough, the Grass Roots would have been more accurately called the Astro-Turfs. And it all comes full circle.....