When I lived in Iowa City, I shopped at the New Pioneer Co-op, a fine little grocery store that sold all sorts of good things, including organic produce, vegetables, and an ass-load of soy shit. As Edan is still technically a member of the Co-op she gets their amazing newsletter every month. This month featured a letter to the editor from a longtime New Pioneer Co-op member. It reads as follows:
"Dear Members:
I stopped drinking cow’s milk and started drinking soy milk about five years ago. Because Silk brand soy milk is the most available throughout the country that is the one I started drinking.
And all that fancy California advertising on the box also helped me decide. But then, after I learned more about Silk soy milk, I switched brands. I understand that the soy beans used to make it come all the way from China, in powder form, they tell me, to be made into soy milk in California to be transported all over the country. The cardboard container shows the picture of
a soy bean field being irrigated with water from a windmill. I am waiting for the picture showing a gigantic cargo ship transporting the soybean powder from China to California being powered
with windmills. Now I buy the Organic Valley kind, although this kind is only in the Iowa City store not in Coralville.
Thing is, the soy milk that comes from China tastes better than the one from ... Wisconsin? And I will never understand... how can they grow the soybeans in China, transport the mall the way to here, and still be able to sell the milk for a lowerprice than the more local one?
After thinking about it for about two years, I finally bought a slice of cheesecake at the coop. The first bite was okay, but I couldn’t eat it all. The taste of boiled egg is too strong for me.
I have been a member of New Pioneer for about fifteen years, and I have been thinking ... I would like to start a campaign to get us to stop selling bottled water at the stores. We are just not
practicing what we preach on this.
Yours,
A fucking lunatic
Holy fucking shit. Come clean, dude. You're actually Sam Lipsyte, right? There's no way that letter is for real, right? Right?
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2 comments:
As a member-owner of the Willy Street Co-Op here in Madison, Wisconsin, I can assure you that that shit is for real. There are no crazies like Co-Op crazies. Every time we walk through the door, Mike says "Boycott Co-Op!" One of these days I fully expect to get shot. Don't even get me started about when I wear my fur-lined coat. I mean, it's zero degrees, people.
Oh, I don't doubt they exist. I just wonder whether any of them have as tenuous a grasp of narrative unity as this fellow. I get the feeling he'd been saving up these ideas for some time before they found their way to paper.
Congratulations on your nuptials, by the way.
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