Thursday, October 09, 2003


internal view of the coffee crisis

"the desperate state of the coffee industry becomes apparent as you rattle at a snail's pace past hundreds of hectares of diseased and abandoned coffee plantations."

this article from papua new guinea (how cool is this? we are reading the pacific island newspapers these days with more ease than you could have ever imagined, thanks to the internet!) describes how the coffee crisis looks from the inside.

and what's interesting is they don't seem to blame the global market, but rather corruption, power-hunger, and greed in the ministry that oversees national coffee production.

faced with the coffee crisis, what do farmers do? the paper reports that it's the same thing they are doing the world over: growing illegal drugs.

"it has created a home-grown drug culture, where for many it is easier and much more profitable to service the ever-growing drug markets of the cities than it is to re-develop a coffee garden."

fascinating question: do you feel oppressed by yoga advertising?

since i can frankly -- after 4 years of yoga 5 or 6 times a week -- do the poses madonna does in her commercial, as well as the titibasana and padangusthasana demonstrated in the article (albeit not with my legs quite so high yet), i don't.

i decry the over-commercialization of yoga, but i don't let it get me down, or let it be used against my psyche as part of the american perfection-and-beauty trap. yoga should actually rescue you from that!

i never found yoga aspirational, although i do strive to learn new poses to help keep myself interested and mentally challenged. i never expected to end up with ana forrest's body or serena williams' arms, tho' actually that does slowly seem to happen with a regular and vigorous practice. . .

posted by fortune | 10:16 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments