social responsibility.

two sites i find fairly interesting are Petfinder and Local Harvest. the former is a site for shelter groups that's sponsored by purina and bissel and a few other major corporations. it's where we found our cat, and where i found the group i volunteer for.

Local Harvest is another cool site which allows you to find local farms, farmers' markets, or co-ops in your area. maybe it's the fact that i live vicariously in philly's food scene, but one of the main themes that's been coming out in the last few years has been an emphasis on fresh, local food. and i'd rather pay a little more and support my local farmer, who's more likely to use sustainable, humane, if not organic methods, than to give monsanto more money for their ridiculous patents. we already get our eggs from a local poultry farmer, so i thought i'd look around a little. using the site, i found a farmers' market right down the street from my parents which i finally got to visit last saturday. now i have fruit. yum.

i'm all for buying local and adopting a pet who would probably be killed otherwise. maybe a cat from a shelter doesn't have the cachet of a CFA purebred, but now he's got a good home and a healthy, happy life. and so the plums i bought are little spotty and uneven on their skin; i also know they were tree-ripened and not sprayed down with chemicals by underpaid workers, picked early, and loaded onto a ship somewhere. hey, if the oppurtunity to do something that much better for the world is there, i'll take it.