Labor rights and fair trade groups have been putting pressure on Hershey for several years to improve its practices in West Africa, where chocolate farms use forced child labor for agricultural work.
The International Labor Rights Forum scheduled an advertisement to run during the Superbowl. More than 100,000 people have signed petitions and written to Hershey asking the company to change its practices. And they've just announced that by the end of 2012, they will use independently certified chocolate in its "Bliss" products.
Hershey sells more than two dozen brand names (including Dagoba and Sharffenberger, in case you thought they were still independently owned), and the Bliss line accounts for a relatively minor portion of Hershey's $6 billion on annual revenues.
So keep the pressure on. Sign the petition here, if you're so inclined, or go to the Hershey's web site and send them a note directly. Meanwhile, when you're buying chocolate (or coffee or tea), look for the Fair Trade label.
02 February 2012
01 February 2012
Time Travel
Back in 1987, Shanghai had a lot of loudspeakers mounted on high poles throughout the residential areas of the city. Music would flow from them, and announcements I couldn't understand, and every morning at 7, music accompanied by counting.
Outside the building I lived in, a group of women would gather each morning and do tai chi to the beat of the music. I wanted to join them, but between the hour (I'm not a morning person) and the fear of not being able to communicate with them, I never did.
It's one major regret about my time spent teaching English there, from August 1987 to July 1988. The other is I've lost touch with all of the Chinese people I knew there, particularly our friend Xiao Ye, a fellow English teacher.
I did a lot of interesting other things.
When some American hikers were arrested on the border between Iraq and Iran, and people talked about idiotic young people, The Mate and I remembered that we went some places in China where we weren't supposed to go, simply buying tickets to small towns, taking the train, getting out, and walking around -- all completely illegal. That's how we saw the Great Wall, in a run-down spot in the middle of nowhere, far from the sections outside Beijing reconstructed for tourist consumption.
We visited Xian, more legally, and saw the Xing Xi Huang warriors in situ during the archaeological excavation. We traveled north to Harbin, in the former Manchuria, in the depths of winter, walked across the frozen Songhua river, looked at fabulous ice sculptures. We ate all kinds of interesting things, both in restaurants and purchased at the markets and cooked at home. We walked and took local buses all around Shanghai and other cities we visited, and got to know them from the ground up.
On my morning bike ride along the East River, there's a section under the FDR Drive where, if it's raining, a group of women gathers to do tai chi, accompanied by scratchy music from a boombox. Each time, it brings me back to that year in Shanghai.
Today, one of the women was wielding a sword. I wished I'd learned enough Chinese to stop and chat with her, maybe find out if women traditionally do tai chi with swords in China, or if this is a recent innovation.
Outside the building I lived in, a group of women would gather each morning and do tai chi to the beat of the music. I wanted to join them, but between the hour (I'm not a morning person) and the fear of not being able to communicate with them, I never did.
It's one major regret about my time spent teaching English there, from August 1987 to July 1988. The other is I've lost touch with all of the Chinese people I knew there, particularly our friend Xiao Ye, a fellow English teacher.
I did a lot of interesting other things.
When some American hikers were arrested on the border between Iraq and Iran, and people talked about idiotic young people, The Mate and I remembered that we went some places in China where we weren't supposed to go, simply buying tickets to small towns, taking the train, getting out, and walking around -- all completely illegal. That's how we saw the Great Wall, in a run-down spot in the middle of nowhere, far from the sections outside Beijing reconstructed for tourist consumption.
We visited Xian, more legally, and saw the Xing Xi Huang warriors in situ during the archaeological excavation. We traveled north to Harbin, in the former Manchuria, in the depths of winter, walked across the frozen Songhua river, looked at fabulous ice sculptures. We ate all kinds of interesting things, both in restaurants and purchased at the markets and cooked at home. We walked and took local buses all around Shanghai and other cities we visited, and got to know them from the ground up.
On my morning bike ride along the East River, there's a section under the FDR Drive where, if it's raining, a group of women gathers to do tai chi, accompanied by scratchy music from a boombox. Each time, it brings me back to that year in Shanghai.
Today, one of the women was wielding a sword. I wished I'd learned enough Chinese to stop and chat with her, maybe find out if women traditionally do tai chi with swords in China, or if this is a recent innovation.
31 January 2012
Some Drawbacks of Commuting by Bike
So, I've recovered from the latest with remarkable speed, and I'm a little shaky but back at work.
I've commented on some of the advantages of commuting by bike and train, but there's also the occasional downside:
Helmet Hair
NJ Transit toilets
Dirty shoes
I go through a whole lot of deodorant
... and it's still never enough
Hockey fans
Helmet headaches
Still. I like water, and I get to look at more of it on the train. I sit on the east side of the car and look at the Raritan Bay, with Sandy Hook and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in the distance, and on a clear day, the talls buildings of the Brooklyn waterfront. The car commute goes over the Driscoll Bridge, but if I'm looking at the view I'm in trouble.
And there's also the aforementioned East River, along which I get to cycle every morning and evening.
I've commented on some of the advantages of commuting by bike and train, but there's also the occasional downside:
Helmet Hair
NJ Transit toilets
Dirty shoes
I go through a whole lot of deodorant
... and it's still never enough
Hockey fans
Helmet headaches
Still. I like water, and I get to look at more of it on the train. I sit on the east side of the car and look at the Raritan Bay, with Sandy Hook and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in the distance, and on a clear day, the talls buildings of the Brooklyn waterfront. The car commute goes over the Driscoll Bridge, but if I'm looking at the view I'm in trouble.
And there's also the aforementioned East River, along which I get to cycle every morning and evening.
29 January 2012
Meet Me On The E Train
I've been reading Interborough Rapid Transit: The New York Subway: Its Construction and Equipment, written by anonymous in 1904, on my Kindle.
Now there's an unexpected consequence of owning that machine. I'm too cheap to pony up $9.95 or more for a Kindle version of a book I can find used for under $4 (with shipping), so I've been browsing the free collections. I also just read The Call of the Wild, and last summer I tried to read The Count of Monte Cristo while on vacation. (I think I got through about half of the tale, which in printed editions frequently runs to three volumes.)
But recently, I was browsing specifically for books about the New York City subway, and found Randy Kennedy's Subwayland in a used paperback, plus a hardcover history of the subways initially written as a doctoral dissertation. Plus the 1904 tome. (Is it still a "tome" if it's digital?)
It's full of incredible, wonderful details about things like the materials used to construct the stations, the methods used for tunnelling under the Harlem and East Rivers, and the trestles used to hold up the surface trains while the subway was being built underground.
Made me remember how the The Mate and I used to meet up on the subway. This was back in the 80s, before cell phones. (Also before Metrocards.) I'd call him right before I left the office, then board the E train at the front of the front car. When the train pulled into West 14th Street fifteen minutes later or so, he'd be waiting at the front end of the platform, and he'd look for me before getting on.
We'd ride together to Canal Street, eat chicken or frog legs (this was also before we went vegetarian) at Pho Pasteur on Baxter Street, maybe stop at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory or the Chinese supermarket on Canal, and then walk home.
Now there's an unexpected consequence of owning that machine. I'm too cheap to pony up $9.95 or more for a Kindle version of a book I can find used for under $4 (with shipping), so I've been browsing the free collections. I also just read The Call of the Wild, and last summer I tried to read The Count of Monte Cristo while on vacation. (I think I got through about half of the tale, which in printed editions frequently runs to three volumes.)
But recently, I was browsing specifically for books about the New York City subway, and found Randy Kennedy's Subwayland in a used paperback, plus a hardcover history of the subways initially written as a doctoral dissertation. Plus the 1904 tome. (Is it still a "tome" if it's digital?)
It's full of incredible, wonderful details about things like the materials used to construct the stations, the methods used for tunnelling under the Harlem and East Rivers, and the trestles used to hold up the surface trains while the subway was being built underground.
Made me remember how the The Mate and I used to meet up on the subway. This was back in the 80s, before cell phones. (Also before Metrocards.) I'd call him right before I left the office, then board the E train at the front of the front car. When the train pulled into West 14th Street fifteen minutes later or so, he'd be waiting at the front end of the platform, and he'd look for me before getting on.
We'd ride together to Canal Street, eat chicken or frog legs (this was also before we went vegetarian) at Pho Pasteur on Baxter Street, maybe stop at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory or the Chinese supermarket on Canal, and then walk home.
27 January 2012
Parsing Disability
Monday, I ran 2.5 miles. Wednesday, I biked nine, and lugged my bike up and down stairs in train stations. Thursday, I failed the Stairs Test coming out of a subway station. (The Mate: "Hurry up, we're going to miss the light." He looked back, and realized I was having trouble getting up the stairs That's how suddenly it came on.)
The ADA doesn't list medical conditions. It defines disability, thus:
I got on a bus yesterday, panting as I struggled up the three steps in. It was full. Aside from the fact that I was clinging to a pole and gasping for breath, I apparently appeared able-bodied (whatever the hell that might mean) to the people sitting at the front of the bus.
Above their seats, signs glued to the windows: "Please give this seat to an elderly or disabled person." One of the letters, I can't remember which one, is replaced by a heart, whose cuteness at that moment was too precious.
The sitters all looked pretty able-bodied to me, but who knows?
Nobody stood.
Is walking down the street a major life activity? Climbing a set of stairs? I think so. I'm impaired in my ability to do these things, today. Doc is on deck for this afternoon, which means two more bus trips, each punctuated by a change of buses, so four buses in all.
On the outbound leg of the trip (retrieving The Offspring from Hebrew school), the bus had been empty, and I had a seat. I wondered: if someone came in with a walker, a cane, some other physical object denoting impairment, would I be obliged to give up my seat? I moved farther back in the bus to avoid the problem.
Impairment is impairment, whether temporary or permanent, whether caused by illness or injury. I've had to invoke the ADA in order to obtain accommodations in my working conditions, in the past.
I feel sort of fraudulent about it: two days ago, I was riding a bike; today I'm flattened. But two days ago I knew today might come. And today, I don't know how long this will last, how weakened I will be before I can ride a bike again.
Wrestling. Despair comes, but I can feint, or beat it away with my fists. The wrenching of sense of self that comes when I think of myself as disabled... more difficult I started the first draft of this post with a reference to "crip days." I tried to fling out the clipped term for humor, defiance, denial. Didn't work.
The ADA doesn't list medical conditions. It defines disability, thus:
An individual with a disability is defined by the ADA as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment.What is a cane, a walker, a wheelchair? Sign? symbol? marker? indicator? signifier?
I got on a bus yesterday, panting as I struggled up the three steps in. It was full. Aside from the fact that I was clinging to a pole and gasping for breath, I apparently appeared able-bodied (whatever the hell that might mean) to the people sitting at the front of the bus.
Above their seats, signs glued to the windows: "Please give this seat to an elderly or disabled person." One of the letters, I can't remember which one, is replaced by a heart, whose cuteness at that moment was too precious.
The sitters all looked pretty able-bodied to me, but who knows?
Nobody stood.
Is walking down the street a major life activity? Climbing a set of stairs? I think so. I'm impaired in my ability to do these things, today. Doc is on deck for this afternoon, which means two more bus trips, each punctuated by a change of buses, so four buses in all.
On the outbound leg of the trip (retrieving The Offspring from Hebrew school), the bus had been empty, and I had a seat. I wondered: if someone came in with a walker, a cane, some other physical object denoting impairment, would I be obliged to give up my seat? I moved farther back in the bus to avoid the problem.
Impairment is impairment, whether temporary or permanent, whether caused by illness or injury. I've had to invoke the ADA in order to obtain accommodations in my working conditions, in the past.
I feel sort of fraudulent about it: two days ago, I was riding a bike; today I'm flattened. But two days ago I knew today might come. And today, I don't know how long this will last, how weakened I will be before I can ride a bike again.
Wrestling. Despair comes, but I can feint, or beat it away with my fists. The wrenching of sense of self that comes when I think of myself as disabled... more difficult I started the first draft of this post with a reference to "crip days." I tried to fling out the clipped term for humor, defiance, denial. Didn't work.
26 January 2012
Stereotyping, Anyone?
Yesterday, am New York ran a photo of some buff actor with a little blurb saying he had severe asthma as a kid, and now look at him.
(I pitched the issue in the recycling bin in exasperation, and I can't remember what actor it was or for what movie he's been photographed in something resembling a loin cloth.)
What DO we think asthmatics look like? Emaciated and sickly? Overweight and wheezy?
Try sprinter Jackie Joyner-Kersee, swimmer Mark Spitz, marathon runner Paula Radcliffe, football star Jerome Bettis, crazy basketballer Dennis Rodman, English-Channel-swimmer Allison Streeter, Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich.
And maybe the person in front of you on the jogging path or the one next to you at the gym. Open your mind.
(I pitched the issue in the recycling bin in exasperation, and I can't remember what actor it was or for what movie he's been photographed in something resembling a loin cloth.)
What DO we think asthmatics look like? Emaciated and sickly? Overweight and wheezy?
Try sprinter Jackie Joyner-Kersee, swimmer Mark Spitz, marathon runner Paula Radcliffe, football star Jerome Bettis, crazy basketballer Dennis Rodman, English-Channel-swimmer Allison Streeter, Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich.
And maybe the person in front of you on the jogging path or the one next to you at the gym. Open your mind.
24 January 2012
Car as Cocoon
Today, I drove to campus for the first time since the beginning of the year. After taking the train regularly since the start of last semester, it felt like a bit of a novelty to be able to stay dry, control the temperature, control the soundtrack (no hockey fans or NJ Transit announcements), control the air quality (nobody pretending they didn't notice the no smoking signs).
I can understand why so many people prefer the comfort of their own little cocoon rather than having to face the indignities of public transit.
At the same time, I will be glad tomorrow to be back on my bike and, yes, back on the train, thumbing my nose at the elements, enjoying my solitary ride along the river at the ends of the day.
And the contact I do have with humans -- pedestrians or other cyclists along my route, train conductors, other random people along the way -- is not mediated by a pane of glass or two.
I can understand why so many people prefer the comfort of their own little cocoon rather than having to face the indignities of public transit.
At the same time, I will be glad tomorrow to be back on my bike and, yes, back on the train, thumbing my nose at the elements, enjoying my solitary ride along the river at the ends of the day.
And the contact I do have with humans -- pedestrians or other cyclists along my route, train conductors, other random people along the way -- is not mediated by a pane of glass or two.
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