There's More to Life

It's been a while since I've posted a link, but this is article is a wake-up call that we should all have more often.  No more snooze-button-pushing!  How we choose to lead a meaningful life changes depending on what moves individuals, but if we each did something every day that felt meaningful, the world would be a much gentler place.  Be the change...

There's More to Life Than Being Happy

My former academic advisor at MSU's Residential College in the Arts & Humanities has started this blog, and out of 365 days is on her 18th.  If you want to feel good about something, here's a little light reading for you... http://kindnessmatters365.tumblr.com/

Love On A Gloomy Friday

I found this little guy this morning while setting up the Farm Store.  I stopped to appreciate the significance of its shape, stepped outside to take this picture, and then continued setting up.  I emailed it to the woman in charge of the Farm's web presence.

And then my New York Times app flashed across the screen of my phone, BREAKING NEWS.  Heartbreaking news.  A mass shooting in a Connecticut elementary school.  Children gunned down.  It seems to have set the entire world ablaze.

I hope to live in a world where everyone has access to affordable mental health care and support.  A world in which children are safe in their innocence.  I'm lucky to have the relationships I do with my parents— they always loved my brother and me.  They even loved us through our teenage years when we didn't necessarily love them back, or love anyone other than ourselves [and sometimes not even then].  Love is all around, but sometimes the patience to seek it out is lacking in our frenetic lives.  I think we owe it to ourselves and everyone around us to take a moment out of every day to appreciate love in some way.  Wouldn't the world be a better place?

Of the Fallen

[click to enlarge]

abattoir |ˈabəˌtwär|
noun
a slaughterhouse.
ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from French, from abattre ‘to fell.’


Just over one week ago I stood on a kill floor for the first time. In many ways I've been building up to that moment for a few years now [at least], learning about food systems and production and how the food we eat gets from the farm to the table. In elementary school we were assigned a research paper, and my initial "animal rights" topic quickly changed to a more focused study of slaughterhouses. What I learned turned me off meat for months, as I recall.

But let's face it. I'm like many other red-blooded Americans who love bacon and steak and fried chicken and Thanksgiving turkey. My studies [and interests in life] led me to food, and I changed the way I bought milk, where I shopped, what I shopped for. My internship in Italy got me so close to the food chain as helping raise animals, and seeing their carcasses return in halves, still warm.

But this whole part about death... that part scared me as it does so many people. It's easier to turn away and pretend that pork chops simply come from the grocery store in neat little bloodless, and plastic-wrapped, packages. I've seen film footage, both raw and in documentary form about it, but I wondered how I would feel actually being there for the moment of death. Could I ever, EVER, eat it again?

ShakeWeight

We Westerners can safely take for granted the body issues we've been doled out. By the media at large, by ourselves, by our inherited [but ever-changing] standards of beauty. Over the period of a long weekend, I just had two very different image-related experiences that, combined, have made themselves impossible to get out of the forefront of my mind.

Experience #1) Spending time lakeside with one of my best girlfriends. It's summer in Michigan so we all bare as much skin as possible, hoping to kickstart our Vitamin D stores and renew our faded tans. She and I wanted to take a picture looking out over the lake from her deck... and the resulting picture was immediately picked apart by both of us. Women are hard on themselves anyway, but it seems that in combination we multiply all of the things we've been trained to hate about ourselves and throw in a couple imaginary ones for good measure. It's as if we need to go around and around the table until every possible flaw has been accounted for.

Experience #2) Spending time lakeside with a large group of friends, some of whom I already knew, some of whom I had just met. More running around in bathing suits and the like. One of the guys on the trip made a comment to me, something about "all 98 pounds of you." At first comes the oh yeah right, look at all this beer I've been drinking and I haven't gone for a run in 5 days thoughts. Then the [hopefully] inevitable, wow, stop it, you look and more importantly feel great and healthy. Don't knock yourself.

Maybe I should have prefaced this all by saying that I'm very happy with myself and I think I have a pretty healthy body image. I'm active and I eat well, but I also love splitting a large pizza with a friend or indulging in late-night ice cream sundaes and the like. I consumed 3 pounds of Cheez-Its in January [thanks for the excellent Christmas gift, Dad!] I think it's completely possible to have it both ways and I've found a good balance in my life. I also read up on some delightful plastic surgery blogs and frown upon the excessively thin, pinched-looking women I see working out in my gym. They just can't be having that much fun, at the gym or in life.

That said, I see wiggling when I look in the mirror sometimes, and I know exactly where weight goes when I gain it. We're always our most unforgiving and merciless critic.

Little Something

I'm, quite frankly, getting pretty tired of hearing people jabber on and on about how they want to buy organic food and "be green" and then see them do nothing about it. Sure, buy "organic" things from WalMart and buy 17351 "eco-friendly" shopping bags when one or two would be enough, and then forget them at home and end up with new paper or plastic anyway.

En Transit

This is a rough draft that I wrote on the train on my way to Paris... it's definitely not finished and there's a huge block of a quote that I haven't yet broken down into the essay, but you'll get the idea.

I wrote an update about my time in Paris and Helsinki but currently can't access it due to a dead computer! Exactly one hour from now I will board a train to Venice, and am officially in my last 10 days here as of tomorrow morning. Hard to believe.

Anyway, here's this... enjoy.


“How we eat can change the world.”
— Alice Waters


Almost as amazing as what I learned each day working with maiali, pecore, vacche, gallini [pigs, sheep, cows, chickens], constantly broken recinti [fences], and my broken Italiano, are the things I learned from the people there. From the owners of the estate, Randall and Francesca, I learned about the history and vision of Spannocchia; from the staff I learned about various workings of the farm; from the other interns I learned about food! Of course, I learned a lot about food anyway, as we were surrounded by traditional Tuscan dishes each night at dinner, and participated in tastings of wine, cheese, and regional aperitivi [appetizers] as much as time allowed. But that aside, I was constantly amazed by the knowledgability of my fellow interns on the subject of all things food. Anne has been working in a New York City bakery for the past few years, and Alison was a waitress at the revered and world-renowned The French Laundry restaurant in Napa before arriving in Italy. We also had the distinct pleasure of getting to know Jay, who came to Spannocchia as a “transformation” volunteer for five weeks. He has worked as the top chef in a number of restaurants in the States and has big plans to open his own small-scale animal processing facility in Kentucky, emphasizing quality over quantity.

And so we come to the crux of the European food experience, the reason Carl Petrini started the Slow Food movement in Bra, Italy, the reason so many people travel to Europe for the food and to America for the vistas. Quality over quantity!
The restaurants in Tuscany advertised their steaks proudly, proclaiming them to be Chianina beef. Chianina is a heritage breed very similar to the Kalvannah beef raised at Spannocchia. In America, steakhouses shout their steaks to you in ounces, the bigger the better. It doesn’t seem to matter where they came from or what kind of beef it is, nor does it matter how it was raised, or on what sort of food. Grain, rendered animal parts and antibiotics? Yum! I’ll take your biggest New York Strip please!

Community and Place

“[T]o a great extent we are a de-placed people for whom our immediate places are no longer sources of food, water, livelihood, energy, materials, friends, recreation, or sacred inspiration.”
— David Orr


William Vitek (1996) discusses “community and the virtue of necessity” in an article he wrote by the same name, from the anthology Rooted in the Land: essays on community and place. His assertion that “necessity leads inevitably to virtue for the individual and well-being for the community” makes a lot of sense when you consider the oftentimes selfish nature of humans. It serves as a reminder that, without necessity, we tend to live without regard for others or the Earth— until faced with some sort of catastrophe or day of reckoning.

I have been at Spannocchia now for five weeks and feel remarkably settled into life here. I enjoy waking up early, knowing that the animals are hungry and waiting for me. I enjoy spending my days outside, and really, many days I am outside for 12 hours. On the days when we only work in the morning and have class in the afternoons I feel restless, anxious to put my boots back on and get outdoors again. I have been working with one of the horses here, so after I finish evening chores [or class] I run down to the stable until it’s time for dinner. What a change from my life at home, and oh, how much I am going to miss it when I leave.

Saving the World [or not]

This seems like a fitting last entry to make before heading off to Spannocchia to work on a farm for three months. Cracked.com posted an article titled, "5 Ways People Are Trying to Save the World (That Don't Work)." Of course, I thought it sounded interesting and I was curious not only what the five things were, but what the justifications were behind them, and if there were any solutions mentioned. The article begins,

Between the hybrids, the reusable canvas shopping bags and cloth diapers, everybody's doing their little bit to save the world. Entire industries have sprang up to cater to us socially-responsible types who want to leave behind a better world for the robots to inherit once they take over.
But, most of the time, making you feel better is about all it does.

How ominous. There's certainly been a lot of press about how many of the "green" or "eco-friendly" products out there don't really work, and as it tends to do, corporate greed managed to capitalize on the earth-conscious trend by making crappy new products that weren't any better than the old ones— effectively diluting the meaningfulness of the movement to the average consumer. People realized that buying eight thousand cloth bags didn't really help the environment at all, especially when they forgot them at home anyway.

So what are the five things, you ask?

Talking Trash

According to GOOD magazine, each American throws away 5 pounds of trash per day. That, coupled with industrial waste, generates 251 MILLION TONS of trash each year. You can watch the video here.

So it got me thinking about the things I throw away. I am currently living at home with my mother, and between the two of us, we barely generate any trash whatsoever. Garbage collection is tomorrow and there is nothing to be taken out this week. Sure, we have a half-full bag in the kitchen, and sure, there are bags filled to varying half-degrees elsewhere in the house, but that represents one week where we will not contribute a thing to a landfill.

Last week, there was one bag. I noticed it because, the night before, I was going to take the trash out to the curb, but there was nothing to go out! The next morning, before she left for work, she took the mostly-filled bag of kitchen trash out. And that was it.

The Logic of War

I've been reading an anthology of essays edited by Ira Glass, The New Kings of Nonfiction, and was struck by an essay by Lee Sandlin entitled Losing the War. He points out what over and over again history books and docudramas seem to marginalize about World War II: "what an absolutely miserable, pointless, blundering, screaming bloody hell it was," to quote one review.

What I found most interesting, after reading it, was that the piece was written in 1997. It's so relevant to the current situation in Iraq and, in my humble peacenik opinion, just about any other war that has ever been waged. War is so barbaric, so out of place on this small planet, and yet conflict smolders and burns all around us.

Sandlin does a quick run-down of what he calls "the standard autopsy of the causes" of WWII: Germany crumbling after WWI, Japan's wounded national pride, racism, military stockpiling, fear mongering. And then he hits you upside the head with this...

"All of this is true enough, yet there's something faintly bogus and overly rationalized about it. The approaching war didn't seem like a political or economic event: it was more like a collective anxiety attack. Throughout the '30s people around the world came to share an unshakable dread about the future, a conviction that countless grave international crises were escalating out of control, a panicked sense that everything was coming unhinged and that they could do nothing to stop it."

As I read that, I had to stop and remember that Sandlin was writing about the days leading up to WWII, not the current fears about which the world is currently so panicked. Not only is this not written about our current world crisis, but the article is ten years old. So many other articles in ten years would feel quaintly outdated, but war is always familiar.

Peppermint Jim

Rather than retype and slightly retool a post I just made regarding the fate of a fourth generation family-owned mint farm near my house, I'm going to redirect you here, to another blog to which I contribute. Peppermint Jim reminded me a lot of Dellis, so you know I pretty much fell in love immediately. I'm sure you will too.

The Rowan Homestead

... or, How My Life Changed in Mabie, WV.


I have really strong feelings regarding our visit to Dellis Rowan's farm. In his 70s, he still keeps two draft horses, Dick and Dan, and they work for their keep! Dellis and his horses mow the hay that feeds them, and he puts it all up in his barn. Alone, from what I could tell. Here is a man with an incredible life story.

The Keeper

For the slightly squeamish or uncouth [or perhaps this is uncouth of me], look away now. For everyone left, I just made a post about my decision to stop using tampons here. If you're wondering what the hell else I'm going to do now that tampons are out of my life, or have ever questioned your use of them, I would suggest reading it. You'll definitely learn something, and might even change the way you think about the subject.

Simpler Times...

In honor of Google's 10th birthday, they are enabling a search page from 2001. It's amazing to think of how much has changed since then, and it's fun to see what results turn up for things we take for granted. It's also kind of depressing. Case in point:



Also, the page is archived from a pre-September 11th world. Nothing comes up. No Department of Homeland Security. When you google "President Bush" you get his old campaign website, complete with depressingly out-of-date slogan: "George W. Bush is running for President of the United States to keep the country prosperous." So much for that.

On a lighter note, there's no youtube, no Perez Hilton, no "The Hills." Facebook was still available only to students at Harvard. Feels like so long ago...

Hunting Mushrooms

It rained almost the entire 9 hours we spent in the car driving from East Lansing to Elkins. By "almost" I mean maybe 8.5 out of the 9 hours. When we arrived it was foggy and still raining on and off. It rained the first night as we slept soundly in our dwellings, lulled by the river.


And when we woke up that first morning it looked like... another day of rain. But that was not the case! We ate breakfast out on the porch, trying to ward off the chilly fog with hot black coffee.

Paying it Forward

Today as I was walking to class I noticed the sky darkening and the temperature dropping. I had neither an umbrella nor a jacket with me, and could see that rain was imminent, but it was too late to grab either at that point. Sure enough, by the time class was out an hour and a half later, it was pouring.

I must have looked really miserable, waiting in the rain for the bus in my t-shirt and jeans, because a girl walked over to me and said "You look really cold and wet," and proceeded to share precious umbrella space with me. It was really touching. There I was, a grumpy senior standing in the cold, winter-is-coming rain, thinking about how I should know by now to always have an umbrella in my backpack, and what looked to be a freshman girl offered me some shelter under her umbrella.

Once I was on the bus, I started thinking about the Hollies song, "Bus Stop."


Bus stop, wet day, she's there I say
Please share my umbrella

But it also got me thinking about the concept of "paying it forward."

Living Local

My grandfather lived his entire life here in East Lansing, MI. Maybe not the most glamorous place in the world, but a diverse university town nonetheless. He was born here, grew up in a home on the "main drag" [that now houses students], went to Michigan State University, worked just minutes away from his house, bought cars made in Lansing, contributed to local charities, shopped at a locally-owned grocery store, and didn't like to travel more than a few hours away for anything.

These days, "local" is the buzzword on everyone's lips. Local food, mostly. I was thinking about it today while I ate lunch with a friend at the decidedly non-local Panera Bread Co. [I know, I know. There was a gift card involved!]

Why I love FARK.

FARK never ceases to amaze and entertain. But it also does a service to people who might not otherwise hear about odd stories in the news. Tonight's gold came with an intriguing tag: The AFA has set up an online form to send Hallmark hate mail for making same sex marriage greeting cards, what a shame it would be if logical people used it to send Hallmark support mail instead.

Naturally, I did just that.

The American Family Association sets forth a rabid argument against what Hallmark is doing. I actually thought it was pretty funny— oh, the fearmongering!! Seems like American families have better things to worry about these days than people getting married, but maybe not. I mean, the housing crisis will fix itself, right?

They write, Hallmark Greeting Cards has announced it will begin selling same-sex wedding cards, even though same-sex marriage is legal in only two states. The purpose, they say, is to satisfy consumer demand. It appears that their purpose is also to push same-sex marriage. Last year Hallmark began offering "coming out" cards - as in "coming out of the closet" -- a euphemism for announcing homosexuality.

So if you're feeling saucy, send Hallmark a letter. In mine, I basically said that I appreciated that the company was promoting tolerance and that it would certainly influence my decision to buy cards from them in the future.

I just don't understand why, in the world we live in today, these kinds of issues are what people are devoting all their time and energy to. But I guess there will always be people brainwashed to the point of irrelevancy. If they want to be on the receiving end of ridicule, well, that's their choice and the lifestyle they've chosen to live. Too bad idiocy isn't illegal in 48 states.

Emerging From a Hole

I know I talk about food a lot here. Not only do I find it a really interesting subject, but it is also something that affects each and every one of us on a daily basis. Food's important any way you look at it.

For what seems like forever, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma has been at the top of my list of books to read. Because of school and other activities, I hadn't gotten around to it until this week, when I have been lucky enough to be at my cottage with lots of time to spare. So I read it. I devoured it, really [pun intended]. Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down, finishing it in just a few days. I LOVED it.

The kind of funny thing is that nothing in the book particularly surprised me. It made me realize how much I have learned in the last year or so about food, and our "modern" food system, as well as the kind of food system I want to be a part of [local!]. Since I'm in that just-finished-it haze, now I have to recommend it to everyone who hasn't yet read it. I figure, if I made it this far without reading it, there are others like me. Granted, I have read a fair number of Pollan's articles, and he was already pretty much one of my heroes. But now, now, it's official.

I just sent an email to the keeper of a blog titled The Daily Coyote. She posted an email from a reader who had concerns with the ways cows are treated as they enter our food chain. I thought The Omnivore's Dilemma would be a good way for that person, as well as all followers of the blog, to be introduced to the very subject s/he was asking about.

"I read with great interest the email from the person who was torn about their relationship to food, meat especially. In the last year or two I have become quite interested in our food system, trying to eat locally and buy produce and meat, as well as milk, eggs, flour... from farmers whom I can talk to and ascertain the origin of everything that I'm eating.

" . . . I think that even someone who wasn't aware of how our industrial food system works, or how local agriculture benefits us as well as animals and the environment, would find it a really good entry into the subject. Pollan clearly illustrates the complexity of it all, and the difficulty we all face in choosing what is right for us and our lives. It is organized in a way that is approachable and riveting.

"Maybe even if you didn't want to post this on the blog, you could at least direct it on to that specific person? Sounds like they are searching for answers and not quite sure where to start."

Problem with Religion

Here's one of my biggest problems with religion—

People use religion to justify and explain their lives and things they find unsettling. Death? We're going to heaven. Terrorist attacks? God wills it. Having 18 children [as has just been in the news]? "[C]hildren are God’s blessing and husbands and wives should happily welcome every child they are given." Apparently they've forgotten that humans, as any other animal on earth, are reproductive machines. Having 18 children doesn't mean God has blessed you, it just means that you're not using birth control and aren't afraid of the day when the human population tops out at around 10 or 11 billion people and Earth might no longer sustain our lives. As a bonus, the husband's name is Jim Bob.

I was also disturbed after the September 11 attacks to hear people talk to reporters about their experience. There were many accounts of people who missed their train or randomly showed up late to work, thereby saving their lives. Many of them had answers like "It just wasn't my time to go yet" or "God still had a purpose for me." So what, that means that God decided to save a handful of people while giving a big "fuck you!" to the rest of them? That's such a dangerous way of thinking! That kind of flippant justification leads entire populations to war and genocide.

People also use God in other ways. A guy I went to high school with posts his religious ramblings on Facebook, and lists his religious views as "Jesus is Lord." About a year and a half ago he posted a note that I still think about, reference, and show to friends. He titled it "Dating and Singleness," and it's here for your reading pleasure: