Drowning in craft beer
Dear well-intentioned, creatively-spirited, entrepreneurial-minded, mechanically-gifted, young white men,
Please refrain from moving forward with your impending craft brewery project, as we here in the Valley have gone well beyond the number of wonderfully local micro-brews that we’d be able to try and enjoy within our average lifetimes.
We beg you to redirect your incredibly passionate energy and expertise to one or more of the following areas that could really use your ingenuity and access to start-up capital:
1.) Climate change and the environment
2.) Institutional racism and social justice
3.) Health care and local opioid abuse
4.) Sustainable food systems and child obesity
We’re just where they want us
I’ll never forget Dr. Benjamin Spock, famous parenting expert, anti-war activist, vice presidential candidate, and zero-population growth advocate in the ’60s. He said that the population of the world was just fine — less than half what it is today — and we should keep it that way. Everyone should have only two children, tops, one to replace each parent. People were listening. Now, it’s blasphemy to talk that way. It started with Reagan’s condemnation of the Chinese downsizing policies and went on to Bush’s defunding of foreign aid to family planning clinics that preached anything but abstinence. The official line was: The best birth control is an aspirin squeezed between one’s knees.
Zero-population growth makes only too much sense in this world of dwindling resources and desperate poverty. But why the opposition? Why the right wing war on Planned Parenthood, medical insurance coverage of birth control, and abortion clinics? Here’s my theory: The greedmeisters want it that way. They want housing shortages so they can charge astronomical rents and obscene prices. They love the surplus of labor so desperate workers have to put up with lousy pay and working conditions. They love to rip our natural world to shreds as the demand for natural resources and housing starts becomes more intense. Housing starts just happen to be the number one indicator of a healthy economy.
So, talking about overpopulation is taboo now. Never mind that the most invasive species on the planet is us, and that overpopulation is the source of so many of our troubles.
Lube and communication don’t solve all sex woes
Editor’s note: This comment appeared on “The V-Spot: Fretting Over My First Time” at www.valleyadvocate.com.
Relaxation, self-knowledge, lubricant, and foreplay are all great ideas. However, every time I read one of these sorts of columns I never see what happened to me reflected or even given a mention. I had an annular fibrous hymen. No doctor ever mentioned it after a physical, I had never heard of such a thing. Didn’t know it might be a reason why I could not have penetrative sex. A few judicious cuts at the doctors office fixed me right up. I wonder if the doctor who told her to relax actually did a physical examination?
