WTF? These Stories Just Keep Piling Up & Now They're Getting Awfully Close To Home & When I Say "Awfully", I Mean JUST AWFUL. How Dare The Gov?

RAiD ON RAWSOME FOODS iN VENiCE

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.

"I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?"
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RAiD ON VENTURA WOMAN'S FARM

When the 20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door at 7 a.m. on a Wednesday a couple weeks back, Sharon Palmer didn't know what to say. This was the third time she was being raided in 18 months, and she had thought she was on her way to resolving the problem over labeling of her goat cheese that prompted the other two raids. (In addition to producing goat's milk, she raises cattle, pigs, and chickens, and makes the meat available via a CSA.)

But her 12-year-old daughter, Jasmine, wasn't the least bit tongue-tied. "She started back-talking to them," recalls Palmer. "She said, 'If you take my computer again, I can't do my homework.' This would be the third computer we will have lost. I still haven't gotten the computers back that they took in the previous two raids."

As part of a five-hour-plus search of her barn and home, the agents -- from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, Los Angeles County Sheriff, Ventura County Sheriff, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture -- took the replacement computer, along with milk she feeds her chickens and pigs.
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Retail Therapy - Me Go Shopping With You And Bran Van 3000

A Little Help From My Friendship Bracelet Kit @ ModCloth:


Sporty Zip Bikini @ Top Shop:


Sass & Bide Coup De Grace Jeans @ ShopBop:


Liberty of London Everything @ Target:


1970s Janice Wainwright Jersey Set @ Shrimpton Couture:


Cynthia Vincent Gladiator Wedge Sandal @ Target:


Raw And Living Foods : The First Divine Act And Requirement Of A Holistic Way Of Life @ Amazon:


Wrap Superstar Dress @ ModCloth:


Thousand Reflections Sandals @ Anthropologie:


Dr. Andrew Weil's Plantidote Mega Mushroom Face Serum @ Origins:


ClareBare Organic Bamboo Jersey Garter @ Etsy:


Roxy Music's Country Life @ Amazon:


Stuck Universal Bath Plug @ PlasticLand:

Book Nerd

I like road trips- they're the perfect excuse to wrap my brain around a good book for long periods of time w/out interruption, which is basically my idea of heaven. I'll get around to posting pix of our Vegas-Phoenix trip here in a day or so, but, until then, I gotta gush about the pages that kept me company during all that driving.



I got this book, Raw Food : Life Force Energy, at this lil strip mall cafe, Go Raw, in Vegas & devoured it almost as fast as the vegan enchiladas I ordered for lunch. I'm not sure if I'm buying the bit about food combining & colonics (you wanna stick that hose where?!), but the rest of author Natalia Rose's advice rang true & I immediately put the light to heavy & quick exit foods theories into practice.



I read a lot. In fact, I get kinda crazy about it & have at least five books in rotation at any given time. I just never know what I'm gonna be in the mood for, so I finish them in this trippy-weird cyclical fashion. I dunno- think what you will, but it works for me! I also tend to stalk books I want for a long time before I actually buy them. Lisa Rogak's A Boy Named Shel : The Life & Times Of Shel Silverstein is one such victim. I loved Silverstein's poetry growing up (Where The Sidewalk Ends!) & think it (along with a heavy dose of Charles Bukowski & gobs of Dorothy Parker) had a lot to do with the formation of my style as a poet/lyricist. We also have the illustration thing in common, and, once I found out that he was a prolific song-writer (he wrote Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue"), I was a goner & he became an official hero. There were just too many similarities between us, even though & of course, he did it all much bigger & better than lil ol me. So, I finally bought that book & started it on our trip. It's damn good. Shel Silverstein was quite the character- love that. And Lisa Rogak just cemented herself a new fan.