Eggs

Can Trump fix eggflation?

"You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs" is a maxim attributed to leaders on both sides of the French Revolution. "Move fast and break things" is today’s equivalent, emanating from Silicon Valley and amply demonstrated by Donald Trump and Elon Musk in their approach to government and geopolitics. "You can’t make omelettes at all if you can’t afford eggs" might be the next variant: inflation and scarcity afflicting America’s favorite breakfast have become a major political issue. In brief, a dozen US eggs used to cost $2 or less but by January this year the supermarket price was $5 and rising – in some places $9 was reported, rationing had to be introduced and Mexican suppliers were spotted smuggling truckloads across the border.

eggs

How eggs became the symbol of Easter

Thirty feet in the air off a northern Canadian highway stands the giant Vegreville Easter egg, rotating gently in the wind. The egg is eighteen feet wide, nearly twenty-five long and designed to turn with the breeze like a weathervane. It is decorated in a traditional Ukrainian pysanka pattern with thousands of gold, black and white aluminum triangles, for the egg is an homage to the Ukrainian immigrants who settled the area long ago. It is a technical feat: the tile- cutting technology developed to produce the mosaic on the egg’s curved surface was later used to tile the exterior of the Space Shuttle. Whatever day of the year you may spy it, it is undeniably an Easter egg.

Easter