Before I give the impression that I hate mass-production and the fruits of the industrial revolution, thanks to the end comments of my last post, I thought I’d let The Onion illustrate the benefits of modern mass-production for me:
According to Danielle Huson of the Bay Area Historical Society, for thousands of years, raising chickens was not considered “fun.”
“Women used to do things like dye cloth, spin wool, and make candles as cost-saving measures, or because they lived too far from a major town to purchase these items,” Huson said. “They certainly didn’t do it for pleasure. In the 1800s, the average frontierswoman toiled all day long, and on the rare occasion that she had a moment of free time, she usually spent it letting her bloody calluses heal.”
Brinkworth’s favorite activity is quiltmaking, an eye-straining, finger-numbing task which originated as a way to make use of small scraps of leftover cloth.
Said Huson: “In centuries past, many women didn’t have a lot of fabric for blankets, so they were forced to make quilts out of whatever bits and pieces were lying around. Of course, to mimic these elaborate patterns, modern quilters buy yards of brand-new cloth from fabric stores and cut them up to resemble precious scraps.”
Organically fed, free-range chickens and beef are great, but since I can’t afford 10 bucks per pound for ground beef, I have to slum with the mass produced stuff.
10:46 am on May 19, 2007
