burning oranges mid-recession

in the end i did get a job at whole foods, in the bakery department. every night we throw all the baguettes, boules, doughnuts, croissants, dinner rolls, sandwich pockets, bagels, and scones in biodegradable trashbags and leave them in Receiving where Salvation Army is supposed to pick them up the next day. Salvation Army rarely comes and even then, i wonder what they do with the breads since the local chapter doesn't have a kitchen. my coworkers often skip Receiving and toss everything in the dumpster along with the other 2 shopping carts full of expired sandwich bread, mini cookies, cake slices, etc. i don't know why the 2 shopping carts of food aren't donated. every night when i open the great metal door to the great metal room that houses our dumpster--locked from the outside and surrounded by a fence-- i have visions of oranges burning in the Grapes of Wrath.

excerpt:

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene spayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the river and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must dill in the certificates—died of malnutrition---because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

end excerpt.

i think about printing 50 copies of this and sticking it in all the bosses' mailboxes, jerry maguire style. instead what i usually do is bag a loaf of quinoa-flax bread for my lover, a loaf of pain rustique for my grandfather, a loaf of old-world sprouted grain bread for myself, cranberry pecan rolls for one cousin and almond croissants for the other. this is considered stealing at whole foods--even though the goods can no longer be sold--and so i have to carry the stuff out in a paper bag acting like i bought it during my break. i think about what i would say if they fired me for stealing trash. i think about burning oranges. once i get home i lay out the goods on the kitchen table with post-its on top of each one so that my mother, who is still out of a job, can deliver the stuff to my two cousins and my grandfather. yesterday my grandfather emailed me:

	from	LEEROMAN@aol.com
to		alissa.romanow@gmail.com
date		Mon, May 10, 2010 at 6:33 PM
subject		(no subject)

Lissie, darling, you've pulled a J.C. on me and provided me with enuf loaves to feed the multitude! Thanks much. I do in fact have a sufficiency for awhile- will let you know when I run out. love, grandpa

from alissa.romanow@gmail.com to LEEROMAN@aol.com date Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:32 PM subject Re: (no subject)

hi grandpa,
does that mean i pulled a Jesus Christ on you?
glad to hear you're stocked up well in case of apocalypse. i hope you are well and send you love.
lissy

from	LEEROMAN@aol.com
to		alissa.romanow@gmail.com
date		Tue, May 11, 2010 at 12:16 AM
subject		Re: (no subject)

Sure, you know the fishes and the loaves at the sea of Galilee that fed the multitude.

end email conversation. too bad i am not feeding the multitude. and neither is whole foods. i was reminded of a colleague who was recently fired for stealing hours. she has 3 kids and a husby out of work. someone evidently thought Whole Foods Market would miss that money more than she. when do people stop thinking about people and start thinking only of rules? do they feel a whole country of their brains stop glowing? have they seen the movie Brazil?

if i were curating my day (w blog as gallery) i would put all of this in the dada trash heap with my A.Word.A.Day newsletter, whose theme this week is "words derived after mythical places." monday was utopia (noun: 1. An ideal place or state. 2. An impractical scheme for social or political reform) and tuesday is cockaigne (noun: An imaginary land of luxury and idleness. From Middle French pais de cocaigne (land of plenty), from Middle Low German kokenje, diminutive of koke (cake). Cockaigne was a fabled place of ease and luxury, a land overflowing with milk and honey where food fell into your mouth by itself. It was an imaginary place a medieval peasant could aspire to, a place away from the harsh reality of life). and i would throw mccain's latest t.v. ad in the show too, just for good measure.