this morning i had a few things to do but weary for no particular reason i lingered in my covers reading Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. and that is how i came to buy the most expensive eggs of my life.

the premise of the book is that the american "culture" of industrialized agriculture is unhealthy on every front...for animals, humans, and the environment alike. he spends chapters explaining in pretty readable detail the different ways the food industry is doing a disservice to us all.

feeling smug in an organic supermarket...he pulls back the covers on that. what about those vegetarians and vegans out there...not nearly as morally superior as they appear at face value. his point is that the natural food chain is a complex and diverse force that doesn't just feed us...it feeds everything from bacteria and ruminants to cows and people.

what does that have to do with expensive eggs?

the further i go into the book the more uncomfortable i am with available foods. i've always had a certain intangible disdain for organic (circa whole foods stores) and reading pollan made my feelings a little more tangible. even so, for the first two-thirds of the book i felt helpless. in the face of all this damage where could i shop, what could i eat that wasn't damaging me and the space i inhabit?

right now i'm resting on chickens. of all the animals mistreated in our current system - and trust me all of them are!- he singles out laying hens...even beyond cows lying about in their own fecal matter and pigs chewing on the tails of the pig in front of them. laying hens are crowded 6 to a tiny pen where they are unable to even spread their wings. often their beaks are clipped to prevent them from pecking each other to death as they are prone to do. and, distressed as they are in this little slice of hell, they rub themselves against their wire cages until they lose all their feathers and bleed their breasts there against the metal. that doesn't even touch what happens as they near death...

so i sound like an animal enthusiast at this point. i sound like someone who doesn’t believe in the natural order of things where some animals are predators and others prey...only that's not it at all. i love my steak and chicken and boy do i love bacon...but i don't believe that my dinner has to suffer in order to be my meal. death is a part of life, it is how all animals gain sustenance whether it is the death of a plant or an animal...even so, i don't believe a chicken should have to endure a lifetime of misery so that i can have an omelet or fried rice.

so, today, i stopped at the farmers market and with measured consciousness...asked the guy selling eggs just how free range his chickens are. do they have access to a door to outside that they never actually use? no, they live outside in the grass...eating grubs and flapping their wings as chickens are wont to do.

so i sucked it up and paid the $2 for six eggs. and then i went to eatwild.com and started researching ways to make sure my meat sources are allowed the same basics of life. it's an expensive peace of mind but...if tomorrow i get eaten by a rouge tiger (which isn't that far fetched here in the bay) at least i will have had the freedom of eating what i want to eat and being left to my own devices...why can't a chicken have the same?

i've been stewing.

i didn't start off this way. at first i was panicked. turning on my television last tuesday morning i caught the blue ticker tape running under a video of obama. "obama talks about race today".

i cringed and immediately my finger pressed the off button. it was instinct. i was mortified, certain that the sneaky treacherous but oh so cunning clinton camp had manipulated him into a "black" corner. i was certain that the only thing missing was a large neon sign blinking "black man running for president, black man running for president" (and then i realized the sign was there in blue ticker tape underneath his image).

it was the beginning of the end.

later, my dad called to tell me how amazing it was. i groaned. my sister blogged about how moved she was. i wondered. finally i followed her link to a transcript and read what he had to say. and i was ashamed.

how could i lack audacity when he is so bold as to demand it even as he stood before america trying to explain what we have been unable to collectively understand since "we held these truths to be self-evident"?

i read and was moved. i saw myself and my own experiences mirrored there. i heard someone who looked like me acknowledge the nuances of fear and ignorance. i read a challenge - not a plea - for change not in the vocabularies we use in public, but the conversations we have in private.

and i didn't think he should do it.

all these months and he's managed not to be the "black" candidate, just a candidate who happened to be black. but there he was, plastered all over televisions, pundits pontificating if this was his political death knell.

only they missed the point. like i missed the point. people keep asking if this will be enough to save his political career - his aspirations to become president...only it wasn't about that. i don't believe he gave that speech to to save his bid. if that was his aim it could have been safer and riddled with lines for people to applaud.

instead he stood sober and alone, finally revealing to those who questioned, that he never once forgot who he is, what he looks like, or what his name is. he always knew he was a black man, even if america was content to pretend it didn't notice for a while.

he gave that speech because it was truth, and he is an earnest man. he gave that speech because relationships are complex and sound bites don't tell the whole story. he gave that speech because when all is said and done, he will still have to look his two daughters in the face and show them the type of person they should aspire to be.

that said...i've been stewing. stewing since tuesday because after challenging america to think and respond differently than we have always responded to issues of race, people declined ...they declined to stop a moment and ruminate on what he said. instead i read comments to articles that mangled and misinterpreted his meaning. instead i read vitriol where there was the chance for deep breaths and attempts to wade through decades of discomfort in an effort to move beyond it.

so i stew...conflicted that i hoped for more, disgusted that that hope wanes.

i've heard people reduce obama supporters to swooning masses praying at an alter to obama. i do not believe him saint. he is flesh and blood man, strength and beauty and of foibles and weaknesses - like the rest of us. but he appears to strive to be more tomorrow than what he is today, to know more tomorrow than what he knows today, to expect more of us than we expect of ourselves.

so for now, in honor of a man who strives to be what i strive to be...better...i will continue my internal struggle - encouraged me against exasperated me, trusting me against jaded me, hopeful me against everything else...and who knows, maybe tomorrow will get the "better" of me.

my pity...my empathy...is on reserve.

the "oncoming mack truck" stare of the betrayed wife may make a great photo opportunity but my heart breaks for the females not caught in rapid fire flash.

the daughters.

spitzer may have cheated on his wife but his daughters lost more than devotion.

i don't know his three teenage daughters. i am amazed at the seeming restraint of the media for not adding their, what i can only imagine as grief-stricken faces, to the front page of newspapers all over the country. instead i am left heavy with sadness on their behalf.

my father is the epitome of man for me. he represents what i base my idea of male strength and compassion on, my example of husband and partner. i know my dad isn't perfect, that has never been my expectation, but he is a good man and a wonderful father.

i can't imagine the devastation spitzer's daughters are facing (mirror images of chelsea clinton in the wake of the cigar scandal). i can't imagine how the edges of their world must have thinned and blurred and come apart at the seams. the personal betrayal, the reassessment of what is true, a distorted vision of man.

parents can't be blamed for everything... aren't responsible for all things...but i can't help but grieve for three daughters whose first vision of man/father/husband has been shattered not in the privacy of their home but on a national stage.

i pray they know grace and can extend it without damage to the fragility of the image of daddy - as daddy becomes merely a man