Three things that are on my mind right now

Colorado school meals

Chicken at the grocery store

So much to distract us

Colorado

In Colorado, the Healthy School Meals for All program is at risk of coming up short on the money required to keep the program true to it’s name. I was reading about it in a really good article in my local paper.

Colorado is one of a eights states that have universal free meal programs for their students. Universal means everyone is included, and students don’t have to meet certain requirements to be eligible for the program. Making the program available to everyone, and eliminating eligibility requirements, stops the discrimination and shame sometimes felt by lower income students, and it also reduces the work required for parents to enroll their children.

And, it also fulfills what should be a basic human right. The right to food. Particularly in a country where at least 50 percent of the food we produce is never eaten, and ends up rotting in landfills instead. But, I digress.

Regardless, the program is under threat, and if lawmakers can’t figure out how to secure the necessary funding, and close a $40 million dollar gap, then the program won’t be available to all, and will need to be renamed to the “Healthy Schools Meals for Some.”

Lawmakers have proposed two funding options that will be ballot measures for all Coloradans to vote on this year.

Option 1 - Allow the government to keep taxes that are required to be refunded to tax payers “due to the state’s cap on spending,” a requirement enshrined in the state’s Tax Payers Bill of Rights. Or;

Option 2 - Raise taxes on individuals making more than $300,000 per year (which is the same way they raised money for the program in 2022).

When I was training for my first Ironman I did all of my running with two guys. One of the guys took charge of planning the routes because he hated running out and backs, and would always say “they are so unimaginative.” Which is how I feel about these lawmakers. Unimaginative.

So, I’m proposing that we all write in a third option.

Option 3 - Instead of funding Israel’s and Ukraine’s wars, we take the collective billions we will have sent overseas, and use it to feed ALL our STUDENTS. Instead of spending $1 trillion dollars on the military, we cut the military budget, and use it to feed ALL our STUDENTS.

There’s this clip of Senator Murphy that I just love from the day he went out to protest defending USAID and closing the building. You can watch the clip, but he said “The people get to decide how their tax money is spent, Elon Musk does not get to decide.”

It made for good theater, but you could tell that not even he believed what he was saying. He knows we don’t decide. Because if we did decide, we would have things like free universal healthcare, and we would also provide free meals to ALL of our CHILDREN, without scrambling for funding every year.

Chicken

Normally, I get my chicken from a farm about 3 hours away from my house. All the meat they raise is done so out on pasture. Which means the animals spend most of their lives outside, grazing, pecking, and scratching, free to express their natural instincts, free to eat from the earth. But for the last couple of months they haven’t had any chicken meat to sell.

Why?

Because when you’re a small family farm operating in the Colorado mountains pasture raising your livestock, it is just not possible to have broiler chickens all year long. There is a certain seasonality to it, that differs from the large factory farms raising their animals in close unsanitary conditions indoors.

So, I’ve been buying chicken from the grocery store. Because while I’m aware of the seasonality, I still want chicken in the winter months. But, I try to be very selective of what I buy. Most times the highest quality I find is organic and free range. Which translates roughly to the chickens were fed an organic feed, likely still full of grains (grains are cheap), and they had access to the outdoors, but they likely spent their lives inside (chickens don’t just go outside, kind of the way people don’t anymore either).

But when given the choice between no chicken or organic free range, I’m choosing the latter every time.

However, I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the meat section at the grocery store today and saw what looked like real deal pasture raised chicken. And I was ecstatic when I saw that it was only $8 / lb. The chicken I buy from the farm is over $10 / lb, plus a delivery fee. But that is the price I pay for better meat, healthier and happier birds, and to support my local farmer.

When I stepped forward towards the chicken today another lady also stepped forward. We smiled and exchanged hellos. Out loud I said, “I’m so happy to see pasture raised chicken here. It’s the first time I’m seeing it.”

“I’m here for the chicken that’s on sale,” she said, “actually, I don’t know what the difference is.”

Sensing a teaching moment I took a deep breath and explained the difference between organic free range and pasture raised. I went further to explain why $7.99/lb was such a good price.

She looked at me and said, “that does sound better, but you can’t beat the price of this chicken.” She then proceeded to bring her package of on sale chicken closer to show me the price. “One pound of tenderloins, for $8… Well that can’t be right,” she said.

I walked away as she stood there unsure of what to do. Either way, I gave her something to think about.

Distractions

It’s a wonder how we get anything done. With all of the distractions and choices, I often fail to comprehend how the world is still running. It’s just so easy to distract yourself from things you need to do, but also thing you want to do (and sometimes these things are the same).

It’s like, if I sit down at my computer, before I do anything else, I check my email, check my stock portfolio, check my website, and check my YouTube page. Not because I “want” to, but because those are the things that give me that feel good dopamine hit (regardless of whether or not the news is good). I also know subconsciously that at least one of them is going to send me down a rabbit hole that will keep me from doing the thing I sat down to do. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad.

My phone is no better. Thankfully I’ve been off social media for around two years now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t waste time on my phone. Emails, text messages, WhatsApp, photos, and checking the stock market (again) are all efficient ways to burn time and distract myself from being productive. 

So often I find myself asking, “What was I going to do?” My phone usage report the other day said I picked my phone up 49 times by early afternoon. To do what?!

So, I’ve been trying to re-wire that circuit in my brain to prevent myself from losing focus. Rather than waiting until its too late, and I’ve forgotten what I intended to do, and I have to spend time re-tracing my steps, now I take a moment when I open my lap top or pick up my phone and I ask “What do you want to do?” I sit on it, let it marinate, and a few moments later the answer usually comes to me.

“Colorado Movement Lab. Look them up, and see what they’re all about.”