Adapting to Our Environment or Harming It? :: Comparison Compare Comparative Essays

Adapting to Our Environment or Harming It? I went to do my Thanksgiving shopping on Monday. I figured that if I bought the turkey, turkey stuffing, and pumpkin pie at the beginning of the week, I would avoid the long lines that build up in supermarkets the day before Thanksgiving, while not having to freeze and unfreeze the turkey. I was in aisle 4, trying to decide whether my family would prefer microwaveable Stove Top stuffing or the kind you actually insert into the turkey’s insides when I remembered that I also had to get canned cranberry sauce†¦ my favorite! I quickly grabbed the Stove Top and headed to another aisle when, right next to the coconut milk, eagerly waiting for me to notice them, were six cans of tamarind nectar. I just had to grab the 12-ounce cans to read the words: â€Å"Excellent source of Vitamin C!† It is amazing how I had never noticed the tamarind nectar cans, yet every time I go to the supermarket I see the coconut milk. I know that if Dr. Graham had never pointed out the Tamar ind tree in class, the tamarind nectar cans would have never popped out at me. My mind wandered off to last Friday, when I stuffed an unripe tamarind seed in my mouth. It tasted like hard lime candy and I did not like it. How easy it is, I wondered, to go to a supermarket where everything is ripe and ready for you to buy! Even the water comes pre-packaged in attractive bottles. Living on a mangrove island in the Ten-Thousand Islands must have been frustrating. The water had to be collected, drop by drop, in a high-maintenance cistern, the fruit and vegetables had to be gathered after they had taken their time to get ripe, even the sugar had to be grown in canes, collected, and then made into syrup: it did not come in convenient 1-lb or 5-lbs bags. Just imagine how labor intensive a meal such as the one in Thanksgiving would have been! I can just imagine Mister Watson working the land where the sugar cane is growing, while Netta scrapes the salt off the Black Mangrove leaves to flavor the mashed potatoes, and the Frenchman gathers some Agave plants to make te quila. Meanwhile, turkeys brought from Key West are running wild, waiting for their death in a few months.