Food For Thought

On Saturday I attended the annual Food for Thought festival, put on in Madison by the REAP (Research, Education, Action, and Policy) Food Group. It is such a cool event, starting in the morning and going into the early afternoon, in conjunction with the Dane County Farmers' Market. I roused myself from my Saturday morning stupor to go and hear Michael Pollan speak. He was speaking under a large tent, with many people spilling out the edges. I settled myself on the sidewalk, pulled out my knitting (of course), and was thoroughly inspired.

There was some (what I consider to be) trumped up controversy surrounding Pollan's visit to Madison. This from a REAP email:

The president of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau suggested that Pollan is against farmers and in an op-ed called some of his ideas "disturbing and immoral."

A bus load of farmers showed up, wearing "In Defense of Farmers" t-shirts and calling Pollan's work "elitist". Personally, I think they lost a great deal of credibility when I found out that a big agri-business had chartered the bus and rallied them. I also wondered how many of them actually have read Pollan's work. It smacked of tea party politics.

Pollan called for a regional food economy, saying he is not a dogmatic locavore. A regional food economy has room not only for the small farms producing heritage and artisan foods, but the mid-sized farms as well. He emphasized the need for all farmers to diversify, noting that separating animals from crops (to paraphrase Wendell Berry) took a near-perfect system and created 2 big problems: what to use for fertilizer and where to dump the animal waste.

He also issued a passionate call for people to prepare meals at home using real food. I know that will raise some people's hackles -- but tell me, just how convenient is so-called "convenience food"? I was thinking, I can make a pan of mac & cheese in 25 minutes, plus baking time. The boxed stuff is not much quicker than that!

He also warned that the food industry is beginning to fight back, and it is important to vote with your dollars and be a food activist.

I also enjoyed browsing among the many displays from food-oriented businesses and non-profits. I had to resist the urge not to say something snide to the Whole Foods people. I went out of my way to greet chef Tori from L'Etoile and thank him for everything he does for my daughter's middle school (while munching on one of his homemade brats -- mmmm.) I picked up a recipe for making an anti-viral tea ('flu preventative) from Community Pharmacy.

Oh yeah, and I bought In Defense of Food from A Room of One's Own, my favorite independent bookstore. I was so happy to see them there and told the owner so, as I paid cash for my book. "Thanks, Suzy. We appreciate your support," and I thought, "She knows my name!!" Guess I'm a preferred customer now. (Yeah, yeah. Little things can give me big thrills.)

I was still a bit buzzed about the festival when I went a book sale at one of our branch libraries on Sunday. I bought a 1946 edition of Irma Rombauer's Joy of Cooking for $2.00! At first I was thinking it would just be a neat curiosity, but as I read through the recipes I realized that it has a lot of relevance to what Michael Pollan had been saying. Real food, prepared at home, on a family budget. I quickly cleared two froo-froo cookbooks off the shelf -- ones that I sometimes salivate over, but never cook from -- to make room for my vintage Joy. (And I just read that this is a virtually the same as the 1943 edition -- the one that Julia Child received as a wedding gift -- and has a collectors' value of $60 - $200! How cool is that? Of course, I will not be selling it.)

That was my weekend. Yours?

More from the mouths of kindergartners …

As a 23-year veteran kindergarten teacher I have developed the skill of waiting … waiting for the stragglers to come to the rug, sit criss-cross applesauce (kindergarten language for sit down and shut up,) clean up the playdough, get in line, etc. I have a whole repertoire of waiting songs. So on Friday the entire class but one is in line to go to art class. The one is putting on his shoes. It is taking a long, long time. I start singing this song (you know, so the others don't get restless and start some insurgent activity) that has movements for the kids to copy. We're singing, and gosh, the kid is taking a long time, and I'm running out of ideas for hand motions, so I start to do this bastardized rock-and-roll thingy, moving my fists up and down, and this little girl pipes up from the back of the line: "Teacher! Are you squeezing a cow's boobs?"

Making the Case for Manual Labor

I just finished reading the book Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford. I have to say, I knew nothing about this book when I first opened it. I selected it purely because of the title. In fact, I thought it might have something to do with the sort of projects you find in the magazines Readymade or Make. Silly me. But, boy, was I glad that I read it.

Matthew Crawford holds a PhD in Philosophy, and now supports himself doing motorcycle repair. Shop Class is a difficult book to classify. Part autobiography, part pornography for motorcycle geeks, Crawford makes a very strong case for manual labor. He begins the book by talking about the history of "shop class" in the twentieth century and the dismantling of most high school shop programs in the eighties and nineties, as everyone was supposed to become "knowledge workers." He shows how disastrous this trend has been for American workers as more and more jobs have been shipped overseas where labor costs less, and points out that your x-rays can be read by a technician in India while plumbers, on the other hand, must be local.

Crawford discusses the disconnect that so many workers feel in white collar "knowledge" jobs where they never see the results of their work, compared to jobs in the trades where there is a very clear connection between the work and the results. (I was pleased that he included teachers in that second category.)

Yet the trend continues, where high school students are steered toward 4-year colleges, 2-year technical colleges are offering more "college prep", and the trades -- some of the most stable professions around -- are stigmatized. (This is personal for me as I watch my daughter struggle to pay off the $30,ooo loan she accrued in just one year of college, and people don't understand why she "dropped out" to work in a restaurant.) I found it curious when I watched President Obama address the nation's schoolchildren, that he encouraged them to go on to college, to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, join the military … and he did not say a word about entering the trades!

My one criticism of this book is that the writing was fairly dense -- or maybe just too geared toward gearheads. I am neither a motorcycle mechanic nor a rider, and there were points where my eyes glazed over and I skipped whole chunks of the text. But the overall theme resonated so strongly with me, and I had a hard time putting it down. In fact, I will be buying this book to re-read and mark certain passages. This is a very important book -- highly recommended.

The GOP's Latest Health Care Plan

Who says that affordable health care isn't available to everyone?

Looking forward to …

• seeing Brandi Carlile in concert this Monday. Gratitude to David for introducing me to her music!
• going to hear author/local food advocate Michael Pollan speak on Thursday. (No, he's not local; he passionately advocates for the buying and eating of locally grown food.) He is also speaking at a $200/plate fundraiser for my daughter's middle school, which is just so cool.
• going to hear author/poet/farmer Wendell Berry speak on October 11. (He is the author of one of my favorite novels ever, Hannah Coulter.)

INDOCTRINATION!!!

I finally saw President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren in its entirety. It was bad enough that children were being forced to listen to subversive messages like, "Obey your parents and teachers" and "Do your homework." But when he said, "Wash your hands so you don't get sick," well, I felt downright unclean.

(It was shown at our first all school assembly of the school year. One youngster was escorted out in tears. When the principal questioned her about why she was crying she said, "I'm - I'm just so happy he's president, it makes me cry.")

Paddling My Own Canoe

I have canoes on my mind. Maybe it's because I'm reading the book Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). We've owned a canoe for several years. It's a big old aluminum Grumman that we inherited when Mr. Ether's parents moved from their house to a condo. When we first acquired it we were very excited, and bought new PFDs and paddles for our anniversary. I envisioned sunset picnics and Sunday afternoon outings on Madison's 4 lakes.

Well, since we've had it, we've gone canoing exactly twice -- once when we loaded it on top of the car and drove across town to Lake Wingra, our smallest lake. It was lovely. We paddled across the lake to the University of Wisconsin Arboretum and visited haunts that we normally access by foot. The other time we took it up to Lake Michigan with us on our annual camping trip. It is definitely not designed for the bigger waves. I got scared, Mr. Ether got exasperated with me, and we had a little fight out on the water. Since then the canoe has held the concrete of our driveway down very nicely and that's all.

Recently I had been thinking of getting rid of it. It's monstrously heavy. We live, literally, two blocks from a gentle peaceful river that connects two of our lakes, and we never use the canoe. Last weekend I was talking with a friend about it, and she threw out the idea that some of us could go in on a nice lightweight canoe as a kind of time-share and rent space from the city parks department to store it.

*Lightbulb above my head* Why don't we -- DUH -- instead of buying a new canoe, just rent a spot for the canoe we already possess? I called the parks department today, and for $75/year I am leasing a berth on a canoe rack that is right next to the river three blocks from our house! I am psyched!

Kindergartners -- Can't Live With 'Em, Can't Live Without 'Em

Day 5 of the new school year. I finished work, went home for a little while and then it was back to school for the PTO meeting. (I am a regular attender, along with my knitting.) Leaving the meeting to go home and walk the dog, my principal stopped me in the hall to inform me that one of my students had smuggled his scissors onto the school bus in his backpack after school, and given himself -- and a friend -- haircuts! The other child's parent was at the PTO meeting. Fortunately she was laughing about it. Fortunately my principal was laughing about it too. I'm wondering, is it enough of a logical consequence to have to go around with funky hair until it grows out? I'll say one thing for certain about my job -- it is never boring.

Three Little Words: A Memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter

This book made me late yesterday. (Really, I would have been on time otherwise.) Each time I sat down to read just a little, I became so totally engrossed in Ms. Rhodes-Courter's story that I could not put the book down. When Ashley Rhodes-Courter was 3 years old, she was removed from her mother's custody and became a ward of Florida's foster care system. Thus began a 9 year long nightmare, over the course of which she had 19 different foster parents, some okay, some marginal, and one in particular, frighteningly bad. When she was finally adopted by a loving couple at the age of 12, it took many years for Ashley to trust that these parents were really there for her, and she finally began the long journey toward healing.

While the book was clumsily written at times (she wrote it as a very young adult) Ashley Rhodes-Courter impressed me with her resilience, her clear-eyed observations, and her amazingly positive outlook even after everything that she went through. This is a scathing commentary on Florida's foster care system. At a couple of different points she poses the question of why the state was willing to pay millions of dollars for a failed system where people ran foster homes like puppy mills and caseworkers looked the other way, but was utterly unwilling to spend even a penny to help teenaged mothers like Ashley's so they could provide a home for their own children. She also wondered why -- even when the evidence was in plain sight -- the caseworkers and therapists always assumed that the children were lying about their mistreatment, to get attention. (They even ignored multiple phone calls to the child abuse hotline from Ashley's teachers!)

Ashley eventually brought a suit against the state of Florida. In reviewing her files, she figured out that out of 195 people who had had some responsibility for her case over those 9 years, the two who had really advocated for her and gotten her out of the system -- a Guardian ad Litem and a lawyer -- were volunteers.

I admit that I wept while I read this book. It made me consider the carelessness with which some people treat their lives and the lives of others. Ashley's mother was not a bad person, but was herself a product of careless parenting -- as was the abusive foster mother. I found Ashley's story to be very important and moving. Highly recommended.

Book Review: A Yellow Watermelon by Ted Dunagan

A Yellow Watermelon was published by Junebug Books -- the children's division of New South Books, a publisher that specializes in contemporary Southern authors. It tells the story of one memorable summer in the life of 11 year old Ted Dillon. Ted is the youngest of 3 boys in a family that is just barely scraping by in small town Alabama. His dad works in the local sawmill which, like just about everything else in the vicinity, is owned by Mr. Cliff Creel. Ted makes pocket money by selling the weekly newspaper Grit.

One evening Ted sneaks into the sawmill after hours to explore, where he meets Jake -- a black man who has been hired to watch the mill. Through Jake he learns of the Robinsons, a dirt-poor black family who are in danger of losing their farm through the dirty dealings of Old Man Creel. Mr. Creel, in collusion with the local preacher, is also stirring up prejudice against the Robinsons. Ted befriends Poublum Robinson, a boy his own age, and is determined to help them out.

A Yellow Watermelon tells an interesting story and has a whole lot of heart, and I really, really wanted to like it, but in the end I found it disappointing. I thought that it oversimplified the whole idea of racial prejudice in the Jim Crow South, to the point of making it seem insignificant. The onus for the hateful behavior was put on mean Old Man Creel and the weak-willed drunkard preacher with everyone else being bystanders who didn't say much but acted sympathetic to the Robinsons because no one liked Mr. Creel very much. In no way was the hateful institution of Jim Crow laws ever even addressed! In fact, while it was believable that Ted might have befriended both Jake and Poublum, I found it utterly unbelievable that everybody accepted the friendships with almost nary a word, even while they all referred to their black neighbors as "niggers" and "darkies."

This may be a trifling point, but the dialogue when the black characters spoke was cartoon Southern black dialect, peppered with "sho 'nuffs" and "dis" and "dats". It reminded me of reading a vintage version of The Bobbsey Twins in the Land of Cotton and really bugged me.

There were also references that were way too modern, and seemed designed to teach young readers a lesson about prejudice rather than to make a good story; for example, when Ted crosses the invisible line in his uncle's cotton field to pick cotton with Poublum he says, "In the summer of 1948, I reverse integrated the cotton field."

One review on the back of the book compared A Yellow Watermelon to the classics To Kill A Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn. I beg to differ. This isn't an awful book, but if you're interested in something to show kids what racial prejudice in the South was like, they'd be better off reading Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry or Christopher Paul Curtis' The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963.

Whoa, W-a-a-a-y Behind On My Book Reviews

That's what happens when school starts. The train leaves the station and all I can do is hang on. I have read a few books in the last month, and I will attempt to give a brief synopsis/review of each one. You may have noticed that I like most of the books that I read. I'll let you in on a little secret: If I start a book and really dislike it, I give myself permission to not read any further. I rarely buy books anymore, especially books that I haven't already read, so it is no big deal to just close the stinkin' book and return it to the public library. I LOVE my public library!

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson is a biography of Joseph Priestly, the eighteenth century scientist who, among other things, discovered a process for carbonating water, founded Unitarianism, counted Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson among his friends, and conducted pioneering experiments in his home laboratory on the nature of the air we breathe. He was hounded as a heretic from his comfortable life in England and settled in the United States in its infancy as a nation. This was a fascinating and fun book to read. Highly recommended. (Steven Johnson also wrote The Ghost Map, a story of the last cholera epidemic to hit London. Also a fine book.)

I have a love-hate relationship with Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life by Jenna Wogenrich. On the one hand, she is writing about many of the things that have long been near and dear to my heart: shopping at thrift stores, making your own music, knitting, preserving food, living sustainably, raising chickens … it was like looking into a mirror! (In fact, Mr. Ether declared that she had stolen my identity and I might have to kill her.) On the other hand, here she is, a sniveling 26 year old upstart who has essentially lifted all these things from other people and then has the chutzpa to write a bestseller about it as if she had discovered all of these wonders and was imparting them to us. Harumph. (Here's the super mortifying part. It is a library book and I took it with me on our camping trip. We had a torrential rain storm and the book got wet. I didn't realize how bad it was, returned it to the library, and got a call from a librarian in Monroe, Wisconsin informing me that the book I had returned was wet and moldy! I was so embarrassed! So now I own the book, and I didn't even like it all that much! Oh well.)

Dr. Monkey and I share a common interest in the artist Dahlov Ipcar, author/illustrator of many children's picture books. A few years ago I picked up a copy of A Dark Horn Blowing, a novel she wrote for young adults, and I finally got around to reading it. What a treat! The story is based on several different traditional Scots ballads, as well as Norse folktales. If you like fantasy, this is a great addition to the genre. It reminded me of both Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn and an obscure little book by folklorist Katherine Briggs, called Kate Crackernuts.

Most recently I finished The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly. Written for the middle grades, it tells the story of one year in the life of an 11 year old Texas girl at the end of the 19th century. Calpurnia is a spunky heroine in the Anne Shirley, Jo March, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm tradition. The only girl in the middle of 6 brothers, she is expected to learn "the science of housewifery" when she really wants to be studying the world around her. She finds an unlikely ally in her grandfather, who educates her in the scientific method, loans her his personal copy of the scandalous new book The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin, and shows her that she can follow her dreams. I loved this book! Not to sound sexist, but I think it would be an excellent choice for a girl in the 9-12 year old range, if you know any. It's really a nice break from fantasy stories, as well as the pre-teen "problem novels" that seem to abound. It falls into the category of what my friend Sminthia calls "sciency fiction." (I am looking forward to reviewing Sminthia's book when it comes out!) Highly recommended.

Next up: A Yellow Watermelon by Ted Dunagan. I'll keep you posted.