Sad for Fountain Hills

I have been in Arizona for almost a day and I have already gone through such a range of emotions. Driving into Fountain Hills from the airport was great, it is a very beautiful landscape once you leave the cementness of the city. Red Rock was a great sight as it stood against the desert that was green from recent rain. Once we got to town we hand to arrange for food and that is when things took a turn. We went to Safeway because the more local chain seems to be under construction and I couldn't go there. Safeway is enormous and filled with lots of nothing in my mind. It was very overwhelming to navigate the many isles of boxes and packaged goods. As I went through the store I wondered how it is that the people have come to demand this sort of nonsense. It took us a long time to get here, but I have to hope that if people stopped to think about it, maybe they would be appaled too. I went to get Claire an avacado and was shocked when I read the label that bragged that it was from Chile. CHILE! I was fortunate to find one ripe avacado in the organic section that was from California, so we took it. While we were looking for some fresh pasta the store manger tried to hock some ribs at me, claiming that I could get some special discount. I asked where the meat came from and he looked at me like I had a third eye, why would you want to know that? He didn't answer just walked away. We made it out of the store and to the safety of my parents home where I was greeted by cases of bottled water, sad. The next morning Claire and I set off to the health food store, I remembered that they had been carrying local produce and I was excited to see what they had. I was really sad to hear that they were not able to keep offering the locally grown products because nobody would buy it. The customers reported that they were driving 25 minutes to another store to get stuff that was cheaper. At that moment my heart sank. This wonderful local business trying to do a good thing for all parties involved couldn't continue because the consumers wouldn't support the effort because it wasn't cheap enough. This is in a town filled with golf coarses, 600k condos and big burly Hummers. This morning I really feel sad for Fountain Hills, they have the resources to have it, but not the intelligence to know what it is.