Shy of a Load
“Cults, Conspiracies and the Twisted History of Sleepytime Tea” by Megan Giller may well keep you awake. Celestial Seasonings had somewhat predictable beginnings in the hippy movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But besides free love and illicit drugs, that period saw lots of spiritual explorations and offbeat theories.
The herbal tea founders were inspired by one called “Urantia.” It is definitely strange. And unsettling, the opposite of Sleepytime, which My Beloved and I have enjoyed a few evenings a week for many years. The story is in the online Van Winkle’s, an electronic publication about all matters relating to sleep, produced by the new online mattress company Casper.
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Next week, the Career Development Center of the University of Arkansas is hosting a “Media, Communication and Design Career Fair” in the campus union. It is posted in the emailed daily newsletter of University Headlines. The write-up, published today, lists “advertising, public relations, graphic and Web design, broadcast radio and TV, communication, editing and writing, marketing, recruiting and account management.”
Does anyone see “news” or “iournalism” in there? Maybe they’re implied, if you squint, but otherwise, nope.
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Roberto A. Ferdman posts his long-form Q-and-A in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog with Bill Marler, a lawyer who works in issues concerning food-borne illness. Marler is fascinating, and the question-and-answer format is perfect for “Why a Top Food Poisoning Expert Won’t Ever Eat These Foods.”
Here’s that list from the posting: “raw oysters and other raw shellfish, raw or under-cooked eggs, meat that isn’t well-done, unpasteurized milk and juice, and raw sprouts.” But Marler’s explanations are what’s helpful in understanding not just what can ail you but how business and government put things this way.
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Elsewhere in food: Hellman’s is introducing on its label a vegan mayo (which without eggs not even vegan-me can call mayonnaise). Evidently, it’s running to join the growing crowd. The Food & Drug Administration in late 2015 allowed the company Hampton Creek to keep the second word of its vegan spread Just Mayo on the jar, with a couple of label changes. This article from Fortune.com explains: “Mayo Wars: How Big Food Is Getting in on Egg-Free ‘Mayo’ — Unilever Is Launching an Eggless Spread to Take on Hampton Creek’s Just Mayo.”
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Long and thorough. Lots of articles in newspapers and magazines do one without the other. Long can be chatty, full of anecdotes but ultimately containing minimal content. Certainly copy can be thorough without being lengthy — that’s the journalist’s job, just the facts, folks. This century, The Atlantic magazine has been moving from good to great on these fronts. The periodical this week was honored with the National Magazine Awards’ 2016 Magazine of the Year.
It ran this article on TM by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz last November. I read it through at the time, and there it is on Twitter again today. “Mantras Before Math Class — After Growing Up with Transcendental Meditation as a Spiritual Practice, the Author Visits Public Schools Where It’s Being Used as a Simple Tool for Stress-Reduction and Well-Being.”
