Dear Mike,

I havent yet seen Food Inc., although alot of my friends have seen it and say it is pretty powerful, and that it makes statements not only about GMOs and food safety, but also factory farming and the way animals are treated.

I think that if you dont want to grow your own food, there is a compromise somewhere: buy organic, locally grown food as much as possible; follow Michael Pollan’s mantra “Eat real food, mostly plants” and his recommendation that if there are more than 5 ingredients in a food, it is too processed; and remember that if you cannot pronounce an ingredient, it probably isnt good for you.

Eating real, unprocessed, clean food is a challenge in today’s world – just look at your own plate and see what percentage of your intake is fresh fruits, legumes and vegetables, and what percentage is other stuff. I know I dont score very well!

It is great that documentaries like Who Killed the Electric Car? and Food Inc. are educating us all about how corporations are attempting to rule the world, to the individual’s and nature’s detriment.

Best,
Alexandra

Hi Jonita,

Bek Nelson is not a relative of mine, but I see a resemblance!

Another actress people seem to confuse me with is a 80s and 90s soap actress who has an upturned nose like mine, and brown hair. I cannot recall her name (if anyone knows of whom I speak, please write in!). We look so much alike that an actor I was working with were on an elevator together, I got off on a lower floor and she got on a few floors later and he thought she was I!

I dont have any relatives who are actors, although some folks think that Adrian Paul is my brother. He and I were working on different projects and staying in the same Vancouver hotel, so I called him up to say hi, since people often asked me if we were related.

Luckily, I am not related to the far right politicians Rand Paul or Ron Paul. I would love to be related to Alice Paul, though! She was an important women’s rights activist in the early 1900s.

Thank you for writing in!
Alexandra

Hi Frank,

I cannot respond to that question as well as my friend Geoff Holland, who first opened my eyes to the importance of campaign finance reform. Geoff produced and wrote Jampacked and Cost of Cool with me, so he is a very smart and aware citizen of the world. I asked him to help me answer your question, and Geoff responded:

Campaign and finance reform are a little like fool’s gold. The real problem is what’s behind all the sewer money and corrosive influence. We need to fight the battle closer to the root. We need to follow the money all the way back to the multi-national corporations and the obscenely rich. Thom Hartmann explains in his splendid book, Unequal Protection, that the fundamental change that’s needed lies in repudiating two morally bankrupt legal constructs; ‘Corporate Personhood’ and ‘Money defined as free speech’.

Think about virtually every contentious social, economic, and environmental issue we’re faced with. Think how any of those challenges would be different, and how much easier they would be to fix if you didn’t have sociopaths, masquerading as professionals, wielding massive amounts of dirty money and corrupt influence. Our political process is egregiously out of control. No matter what one’s cause, we must focus together on curing the fundamental cancer sucking the life out of our common culture. Corporations are artificial legal entities. They are not persons. Until we all get that; until we all come together and do something about corporate personhood and equating money with speech, we can flail around all we want, fighting our little compartmentalized battles; at the end of the day, it won’t much matter.

Here are four books, I recommend to those who care…

Unequal Protection, by Thom Hartmann

Plan B; 4.0, by Lester Brown

Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawklen

The Real Wealth of Nations, by Riane Eisler

Thank you, Geoff! His website is www.theh2age.com

Frank, I hope this answers your question. I appreciate you contacting me.

Alexandra