How many loaves do you have?

Originally posted Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 2:19am

A few more thoughts from my summer.
Nestled in my copy of last week’s The Boston Sunday Globe there were not one but two copies of The Boston Globe Magazine and one copy of The New York Times Magazine. Now what is that about?
I recently read a short article about George B. Boedecker, Jr., the man behind those luxuriantly ugly yet hideously comfortable shoes everyone loves to hate, Crocs. It was of course his brilliant idea to take a special plastic and make an entire shoe out of it. Anyway, I learned in the course of reading that there is a publication in this fair world of ours called Injection Molding Magazine. While Injection Molding Magazine does not come nestled inside my Boston Sunday Globe every week, I find the mere fact of its existence worrisome enough.
This summer I’ve started brewing my own iced tea at home, but I don’t drink enough tea to know if that’s weird or not. Once I get the water boiling, I find it effective to just dump a whole mess of teabags right into the teapot and then pour the scalding tea-water straight into the pitcher.
I went to the grocery store the other day and was amazed by the variety of tomato sauces there. The cheapest brand was selling at a rate of ten for ten dollars, and I’m no mathematician, but I think that works out to around a dollar a can. The most expensive gourmet brands were nine times as much for a similar-size bottle. Nine times.
This reminds of the sad situation going on in Zimbabwe right now. Zimbabwe used to be one of the most dynamic countries on the continent, a mini-South Africa, before Robert Mugabe and his ruling party, Zanu-PF, drove it into the ground over the past 28 years. Despite apparently losing the presidential election to his longtime opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe refused to admit defeat, and a run-off election was scheduled. Tsvangirai, however, pulled out of the run-off at the last minute, citing the violence and intimidation taking place in the country. As of this writing, final results from the one-candidate election have not yet been reported.
Anyway, inflation is so bad in Zimbabwe that the New York Times reported last Sunday that a loaf of bread now costs 30 billion Zimbabwean dollars. And this is not even magical bread we are talking about. Imagine how much, in Zimbabwean dollars, a single loaf of bread would cost if it happened to resemble Elvis Presley or the Virgin Mary, assuming that that made a difference to starving people.
If a loaf of bread were to cost 30 billion American dollars, it had BETTER be able to reach outer space under its own power. And cure cancer. And make women fall in love with me. If it could do those three things, I would consider it well worth the money.

One final completely unrelated thought, an addendum to my thoughts on the book of Hosea from a few weeks ago: I found out not too long ago that Hosea 11:1 is quoted in Matthew as a prophecy concerning Jesus’ childhood, which I thought was sort of cool.

Hosea 11:1
1 When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.