Recognizing privilege

[elfs]

This morning, Omaha and Kouryou-chan are off at PAX, and that leaves me as the person to do the grocery shopping. Omaha operates out of a text document on her smartphone, but, oddly for my geekiness, I like the work of paper. She had transferred her document to my Palm, but out of habit I typeset it (using LaTeX, natch) and printed it.

It's 296 items in five nicely-printed three-column pages. Spices, meats, batteries, light bulbs, produce, dairy products, and household cleaners.

Somewhere in the world, a family has only two items on their list: "rice," and "clean water." And they may not be able to get either.

Comments

[dharawal.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on that one, my shopping list is a little smaller, based on my meagre income, BUT my shopping list still consists of all the rice and pasta I can eat, all the milk I can drink, all the tea bags that go nicely with all the water I can drink.

It may be a boring meal, but we've never gone hungry, never not had clean water, never not had 'enough'

It's those little things that stop me from whinging too much about not being able to afford to buy meat or fresh fruit or vegies.

[ewhac.livejournal.com]

Apropos of nothing, are you aware of a TeX or LaTeX template that attempts to express the rules for the Associated Press styleguide? My Google-fu was insufficient to the task.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

I had a similar situation recently. I went to Berkeley Bowl (a local grocery store that makes Whole Foods look like a corner store, in both selection and price) and filled my cart. I bought a large collection of fruits and vegetables, some organic, some sausage, eggs, artisan cheese.

I slid my ATM card and entered my PIN, then started bagging groceries. As I left the store, I realized that I had no idea how much I'd just spent-- I wasn't paying attention. I then realized that I didn't care and it really didn't matter how much a week's groceries cost-- it could have been $30, $50, $100, and none of those numbers made a difference in my life.

Privilege on several levels there.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Gad, I don't. I wish I did, but I don't really imagine I've ever had a need for it.

Mostly, I've been applying CTan's advice on book design to a sekrit project, so my LaTeX fu is high in the mindstack.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yah, I hear ya. I notice the monthly bill-- it's $400 for a family of four. But daily refills of milk, eggs, produce, fresh meat? I may as well be that guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eob532iEpqk) from the old IBM "shoplifter" commercial.