That’s what I’m grateful for this morning. Oh, and farmer’s markets. What it is about farmer’s markets that just makes me feel so good? All that healthy produce. Flowers. Honey. 
All those beautiful fruits and vegetables and people milling around as though they have all the time in the world to select just the perfect zucchini. It feels indulgent but healthful, right?
Today, I get to combine all those with a bike ride to the farmer’s market nearby. My Sunday ritual, of sorts. It must be said that I have the coolest bike ever. 
I was tired of hunching over my hybrid bike so I went in search of something with more comfort and a bit more style. I was sold when the guy said he had the perfect bike for me — a cross between Mary Poppins and Barbie…and he was right. Not everyone can pull off a pink bike with white tires, seat and basket (with a bell, of course), but I really rock it. Obviously. Every time I’m out, I get compliments on my bike and even though I suspect the *real* bikers in their slick gear are semi-mocking me, I REALLY DON’T CARE. I cruise around my fair town, back straight, head high and I am queen of all I survey.
I’m grateful for these incredible blue skies and this week is a good time to reflect on how we got those (and how we keep them!). I try to stay away from politics in this blog, but I want to use whatever forums I have to say I want clean water and clean air and cleaner power plants. I don’t want industry dumping toxic waste into our streams and coal companies tearing the tops off mountains to extract more fossils fuels. You only have to go to places like China to realize how grateful we should be for the foresight our leaders had to preserve the environment through regulation. When I used to travel there often, I saw what unregulated industrialization did to the air — people wearing masks, grey skies that never show blue, a hot haze hanging over everyone and everything and smog so thick you can’t see five feet in front of you. On one trip, they shut down the Beijing airport for three days because of dangerous smog. It’s serious and it’s real. And the lack of confidence in government institutions is why you don’t drink the water from the faucet and why my colleagues asked me to bring baby food when I visited, just to be safe. That’s what regulation means and I’m grateful for it. I can eat meat that I know is safe. When I buy organic, I can believe it is truly organic. We take these assurances for granted, but that is a grave mistake.
So I give thanks today for blue skies and bicycles and being an American and believing that we can do better, together.
Boonedoggler 