Don Marsh

Hundreds of thousands of American workers are paid the minimum wage.  It’s $7.25 nationally and $7.35 in St. Louis.  While the perception may be that minimum and low wage jobs are mostly held by teens, the vast majority, 75 percent, are adults over the age of 20.

Recent local news reports have highlighted protests by minimum wage earners.  They are demanding that their pay be nearly doubled.  The campaign is called “St. Louis Can’t Survive on $7.35.”

UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Michael Pollan has devoted a good deal of his career to examining the food we eat in today’s society and the hazards of much of it.  Four of his books are New York Times Bestsellers and have received many other accolades: Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World.

Magdalene is a residential program which provides services to women who are involved in prostitution, trafficking and addiction.

The program was founded in 1997 by Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

When anonymity is one of the major tenets of the best known addiction recovery organization, it seems incongruous that Greg Williams, a person in long-term recovery from drug abuse, is urging others like him to publicly disclose their status.  He believes that is the answer to counter the stigma that is still prevalent toward addiction and treatment for it.  He is so certain that he is right that he has devoted months of his life to “The Anonymous People,” a film documenting the many “game changers” as he calls them, people who are willing to be open about their success with recovery.