Don’t blow green to eat green
One hundred twenty-five dollars for a week of food (“Eat Better, Cheaper,” May 22 cover story)? No way. I’m on Weight Watchers and eat very well on less than $40 per week. It’s all in where you shop. I can go to Aldi’s and get a whole week’s worth of produce for around $15, plus they have canned goods for 40 cents per can. These people that are spending $100 per week on food are getting ripped off, plain and simple. I find that I actually spend LESS on food now that I’m watching what I eat.
Katie Rysz, 31, Uptown
Eating healthy on a budget
This is in reply to “In defense of junk food” (Reader Powerpoint, May 24).
It may only cost $6 plus tax to feed your family of six if you limit them to one dollar-menu burger each, but they will still be hungry afterward.
I bought a pineapple (whole, fresh) at Stanley’s on Monday for 98 cents. That is a penny cheaper than the burgers [the letter writer] suggests low-income families should eat to save money. I would contest then that low-income families (such as mine) should pinch pennies by eating healthy.
After all, you can serve more than one person with your 98-cent pineapple. If one is worried that this is in fact not a healthy meal (as one should not live on pineapple alone), perhaps [you] could make a dinner for a family of six with one pineapple (98 cents), a head of lettuce (98 cents), tomatoes (grown free on my windowsill, eight plants originally costing $1.29 for the seed pack), beans (99 cents a pound) and rice ($1.29 a bag) — with water to drink. I think that comes up cheaper and leaves one full and quite possibly with some leftovers.
Kristina Davis, 23, Logan Square
Hairiness is good
I have never agreed with the need for women to use makeup, high-heels, and whatever else they perpetuate as being “beautiful” (“The truth about hairy,” May 19).
Makeup, surgical alteration and shoes should not at all have any import into a woman’s being. Where hair grows on a man also should not have any import into a man’s being.
If a man is hairy of body, that is how he was created. If a woman (for a straight man) has a problem with body hair anywhere that she does not want, then she has a problem of her own (not of his), and if she lets that prevent her from meeting the partner for her, then that is just sad. If a man has a problem with a potential partner that is hairy, the same applies for him.
Men are hairy. Women are too. That is natural. Anyone that wants to alter nature has more issues that need to be addressed.
Rob Russo, 45, Andersonville
The late trains
I’ve lived here for eight years and I never thought I’d see the day when the buses are more reliable than the trains. It’s true! CTA reps can say all they want — that it’s only because of the renovation project — but that is a joke and an absolute lie. Some of the waits have nothing to do with that; they could possibly post some signs here and there to inform the customer and get rid of the overpaid pensions that they do not deserve.
Timothy Griffin Jr., 34, Albany Park
Poetry inspired by the CTA
As a struggling, transplanted poet/writer riding the CTA since August 2004, I have been writing a play that chronicles the lives and voices of the many Chicagoans that ride the “L.” (“CTA leaves its mark on books, music,” May 22 column by Kyra Kyles.) I reach into my creative well and find inspiration when I’m riding the “L.”
Here are some portraits from my performance piece, entitled, “Conversations On The EL”:
The world is a stage and we are all key players … I’m not a naysayer … just reflecting on the fact that for 52 years I have been Black … having entered this terrestrial theater from the terra cotta of my mother’s womb … no one moved out of the way to make room for me … just a dribble not a drop in this sea of humanity … but still I thirst.
So drink with me from the urban well and let me share with you some conversations from The EL.
Elbert Tavon Briggs, 54
