Foreword

by James Glass

Of the many reasons why the milk pail makes an appealing topic for my documentary, the primary one is that the store truly builds off of a sense of community, and that a sense of community might possibly the single most precious asset that one can live with in the current day and age. As of now (march 2008), we live in a world where so many people only find most of their association with others via text messaging or the Internet. As a result, I feel that we as a species have become more isolated. Such a trend hasn’t been helped either by the advent of Internet purchasing. Now, even buying groceries, a task that has always been the simplest task outside the home, can be done from the comfort of you living room with virtually no human contact whatsoever by buying our groceries off of safeway.com.

The milk pail is, in many ways the antithesis of that. It is a living market that thrives of the sustenance of the people as much as the people feed off of its sustenance. Without the people and the community, the milk pail would simply be a lone dairy which, among other things would have been rendered obsolete. The fact that the milk pail exists today is a testament to it’s unique atmosphere and friendly service.