My job is to move orders from tables to kitchen and then trays from kitchen to tables. Customers are in fact the major obstacle to the smooth transformation of information into food and food into money—they are, in short, the enemy.

—Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

Years ago, when I married my second husband, he proudly told his uncle, who was a valet parker at the time, that I was a writer. The uncle's response: "Who isn't?" Everyone literate "writes," and some of the low-wage workers I have known or met through this project write journals and poems—even, in one case, a lengthy science fiction novel.

—Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed

Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.

—Blaise Pascal, Thoughts

Evil, then, the origin of which I had been seeking, has no substance at all; for if it were a substance, it would be good. For either it would be an incorruptible substance and so a supreme good, or a corruptible substance, which could not be corrupted unless it were good. I understood, therefore, and it was made clear to me that you made all things good, nor is there any substance at all not made by you.

—Augustine, Confessions

Every morning I eat oats with honey and cinnamon for my first meal of the day. I would each morning grab from my spice rack the small container of cinnamon that I had purchased from the supermarket and sprinkle it across my food without a thought. Without realizing it I simply used the cinnamon as a reduced object. Then one day I picked up Giles Morton's book Nathaniel's Nutmeg. The book tells the story of the spice trade, the lengths that European traders would go to acquire tiny amounts of spices from the other side of the world, from places such as Banda in Indonesia and the island of Zanzibar. I read how archeologists combing the very Mesopotamian deserts walked by Abraham have discovered in the ruin s of a house dating to approximately 1721 BC a small vessel containing cloves The shocking thing about this discovery is that cloves were only found in a handful of islands in the Indonesian archipelago. These cloves had been traded through countless hands, all the way across the ancient world to Mesopotamia.

I discovered that the Bible was filled with the alluring power of spices. Song of Songs used the imagery of the spices, The Magi heralded the arrival of Christ with the gift of spices, Joseph of Arimathea honored Christ by embalming his body in spices. I stopped buying my spices from the supermarket and began to venture into the local Indian ad Arabic stores. I soon discovered the passion that these communities had for spices. They were not simply a substance to mindlessly toss onto my breakfast; they in the words of historian Jack Turner brought "a bulging bag of associations, myth and fantasy . . . a whole swathe of potent messages." I began to learn about the various classic spice mixes, such as garam masala and ras al-hanout. Soon I began to chat with the local Arabian store owner who would duck out the back, enthusiastically bringing out for me the latest stash of Bahrahat spice mix, prepared by a local chef and made from a secret family recipe. It was like I had been initiated into a secret society. Now my spice rack had been transformed into a treasure chest—every time I opened my pantry a wave of spicy fragrances filled the kitchen with their aroma and my mind would be taken to stories, people, places around the globe by their scent. I had unwittingly de-commodified the world, no longer were spices simply items that I ripped from the supermarket shelf. They had been deepened, put in their proper place. By understanding their context and their story, their true worth had been revealed.

—Mark Sayers, The Road Trip That Changed the World (ellipsis in the original)