Backyard Bounty

Before:

After:

Kale, broccoli, spinach, and eggs from our backyard. (it feels pretty good to eat in a 50 foot radius from my bed.) Well, the tortillas are from Sacramento, but c’mon.

Shouts out to my housemates for making all of this happen, even down to the community olive oil and soy sauce I cooked with..

Deeper more academic posts coming soon (maybe).

love,
jer

Real Talk NYC Style– Fine Lookin’ Addicts and Trannies.

Here is an amazing excerpt from a g-chat with my sister Ivy. She lives in Queens, NYC and is pretty damn hard.

…Ivy: well, you’re a lightweight
omg SPEAKING of heroin addicts……
i went to the public assistance office with my girl the other day…she’s getting a divorce, the bastard is being mad withholding, and she has to apply for food stamps for her daughters
it was my first time at the welfare office
omg
it was like tales from the crypt in that motherfucker

me: woooah

Ivy: a gang of youth toking up outside the building….like on a major thoroughfare in broad daylight.

Ivy: huuuuuuuuge trannies. with high cheekbones and fine noses, and stubble.
but the best was….
we saw this one heroin addict.

FLY boy. very young, like 22, but GORGEOUS. like, there are no heroin addicts this hot.

he was there with a woman we figured was his mother….she was about 50, very fat, thick black moustache.
had a prison rip in her face

until he sits on her lap and starts making out with her
then we realized she was not his mother.

me: ooof!!!

Ivy: so when she gets up to go to the bathroom, he noticed our attempting covertness glances. and he goes, “yeah, i know she’s not that cute, but i LOVES that bitch. she got a good heart.”

Ivy: The End.

Real Thoughts, Real Linguistics, Real Food: a weekend inside my head inside Santa Cruz

This convergence was different from the CSSC-wide one I attended in November in that I most value the conversations/ interactions I had outside of the event programming. Friday was pretty great because we picked up two fellow convergence goers in Berkeley on the way to Santa Cruz. I enjoyed pleasant food related and un-related conversation and silently mused that I’m not so disappointed that I didn’t apply to Berkeley after all—every place has advantages and disadvantages, routines, communities, etc. Despite the structural arguments to social problems/solutions that I’m currently pursuing in an academic context, “making the best of it” still counts, especially on an individual level.

After the ice-breaking welcome activity on Friday night, I observed a really thought-provoking conversation between my friend Hai and a couple of attendees from other schools. They asked Hai where he is from and he replied “I am living in Davis” with his typical smile and warm tone of voice. Assuming that living in Davis means you go to UCD, they asked “oh, what’s your major?” Hai replied “I am not a student. I am currently studying landscape architecture and animal husbandry” Everyone nodded in agreement, assuming Hai’s internship at the veterinary school or something.

Hai, in fact, recently graduated from UC Irvine and is indeed studying landscape architecture and animal husbandry—he’s gardening and taking care of the chickens and ducks in the backyard he’s sharing with several other people and searching for jobs on the side. Most people in his position probably would have responded “nothing for now, just looking for a job.” Hai’s phrasing was striking, then, because it puts extra-economic pursuits on a level playing field with the mainstream pursuits of youth that are college and career. By simple word choice Hai legitimized activities that young people often discount in exchange for more “important” things. His phrasing made me question both our value system and the extreme potential words have for creating perspective. Hai commented that replying “nothing” could have shut down dialogue or invited a judgment about him. Instead, he used university-style language to create a safe environment for dialogue.

I value the convergences for these opportunities to explore different ways of communicating via social learning—observing other’s strategies—and via experiential learning, like trying to get my point across in workshops. On our tour of an on-campus garden, someone asked, “what is agroecology?” after numerous references to the term. I noted that, first all, it had not crossed anyone’s mind—least of all our guide—to explain a concept that is the basic premise of the garden. Secondly, our guide’s explanation was a very involved definition that included a bunch of other terms we would already have to be familiar with to understand it. This made me question to what extent being immersed in an environment characterized largely by a single ideology erodes our ability to explain complex concepts to those not already “in the know.” Well, is the point of creating knowledge only to disseminate it? If so, to what extent do we accomplish this goal? What other reasons are there to create knowledge?

On Saturday night I rode down the hill from campus to Mission Street in the fog at 35 mph on a bike. It was terrifying. I was in complete concentration the whole time, trying not to die, and for the first time that day, actually in weeks, I couldn’t hear my own thoughts at all. Meditation does not always happen on a yoga mat. I wanted to continue this the next day, so I spent Sunday morning biking around SC and missed the end of the convergence programming. This seems to be part of my nature—I seek out solitude even though I’m often lonely. I’m trying to figure out what my skills are and what I have to offer, especially to such an active and community oriented movement as RFC. I think this convergence may have brought me closer to finding out what that is in some fashion, although I can’t quite see it yet.

Personal Development– frying eggs at a Land Grant University

This a pair of two perfect eggs over-easy. I made them on a cast-iron skillet. Eggs stick to cast iron like gum in a 4th grade pony tail, so I’m proud of flipping these eggs from our backyard over with yolks intact.

Flipping eggs is one of several skills i’ve been practicing in Davis this year. Communication and thinking critically are two others.

So how does this relate to land grant universities (LGUs)?

Well, I’m enrolled in one and lately I have been dissatisfied with the quality of the education I’m recieving. Actually, I’ve been dissatisfied with the fact that I am receiving it– that I am being taught (note the passive voice construction)– not teaching myself, and so are my peers. In fact, I have been most dissatisfied with the level of disengagement I notice in my peers, TA’s, professors, and myself depending on what class I’m in. We all–particularly the students– seem to be going through the motions, eyes glazed over, waiting for our educators to deposit more “knowledge” into our heads which can then congeal into a form that appears our own.

How did we get this way? Is it just because our class sizes are too large and our professors are researchers, not teachers? Am I just not taking the classes that other people are interested in? Or is it something larger– does this university level disengagement make a powerful statement about our society? Most importantly- are we accomplishing what an education should be?

Wait, what should it be? Lets see what Justin Smith Morrill, the guy responsible for the Morrill Act of 1862 that established the land grant university system has to say:

“[W]ithout excluding other scientific and classical studies and including
military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to
agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the
States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and
practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and
professions in life.”

Now why would we want to educate the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life?

Education creates critical citizens who engage with their communities in a variety of ways, like voting. It seems like education has everything to do with a functioning democracy i.e. the foundation of our country. Before land grants, higher education was accessible only through ivy gates– it was a high-priced ticket to an elite social and economic class.

Education, then, is a way to increase the scope of our democracy, at least according to me and Justin Morrill.

So what do my classmates think?? My group and I were suppossed to lead our discussion section in a class called “Rural Change in the Industrialized World” on the week of the lecture about LGUs (where I got the Morrill quotes). We decided to ask our classmates “why did you come to this school?” and “what is a university for?” and then mind-map their answers on post-it notes A lot of people came because of their parents expectations, others came for more opportunities, and others (including me) had come to study one interest only to get confused and study something else. There were patches of enthusiasm, but mostly disillusionment. A lot of people spoke of “the machine”– the university– and how it simply churns out people with degrees stapled to their chests. People were much more engaged in why they came than what a university is for. Note, however, that people were engaged (!). What does this say about how we learn? What was the difference between this discussion section and others? For me, there is still a lot to process here, but those 50 minutes were pretty fascinating and, on a personal level, made me feel really good about the new thoughts and skills I am trying to develop.

Which brings us back to eggs. Communication, like spatula wielding, is something I’m becoming much more aware of and trying to develop. I’m trying to learn how to: ask guiding questions that get at the heart of what people want to say to help them bring their points to light, to provide connective tissue that helps discussions stay on track and make sense to those involved, to bring out the voices of the less assertive group members, and to create an environment that feels safe enough for everyone to participate. The LGU discussion made me realize that, despite an educational system characterized by blank stares, I’ve made a lot of progress here.

Despite my recent and growing dissatisfaction with school and the prevailing educational pedagogy, I seem to be learning valuable new skills withing this largely mind-numbing institution. I am engaging with disengagement, and learning how to make a pretty mean breakfast while I’m at it.

Olive Oil Taste Test

I think i’ve fallen in love with olive oil. It started on a blustery early December morning in Berkeley. We met at an upscale foodie-type place called the Pasta Shop. The woman working behind the counter introduced us blind-date style. Just me, the oil, and two plastic cups. Real classy.

Anyway, the taste is amazing! It smells like straight-up grass– its really pungent and has all sorts of earthy notes. The flavor is strong but smooth. It just caught me by surprise, I always thought oil was just the thing that made stuff not stick to the pan (which was probably sitting in the cabinet unused anyway).

Then I tried oil made from olives gleaned on the UCD campus, then I tried oil from my friend Genna’s parents’ orchard about an hour and a half from Davis. The taste was different with each oil– part of the charm, no doubt– but the general experience was about the same as it was at the Pasta Shop. Basically, I was fallin for the oil and her smooth taste, silky viscosity, and pleasing aromas. (haha what a geek).

During winter break I wanted to share my new fascination with my parents and with Faby. I asked Genna to mail me two bottles of the Villa Barone olive oil (her parents’) that I had tasted in Davis.

http://www.thevillabarone.com/

Faby was at my house when the oil arrived. Giddy, I set up a fancy lil’ taste test. I poured a small quantity of the golden Villa Barone oil on a saucer, and did the same with the supermarket brand that my parents had prolly bought for $3.50. I asked Faby– and several days later my Dad– to compare the smell (I shoved their noses in the bottles), the look, and the finally the taste of each oil.

They both had less geeky versions of my reaction outlined above. Especially as compared to the supermarket brand which we all agreed smelled, looked, and tasted “like water.”

In the sterile environment that is my parents’ kitchen, the olive oil was a welcomed reminder of the richness, taste, and enjoyment i’ve begun to enjoy and expect from NON no-fat no-carb all-plastic-bagged-up food. It was actually kind of a trip to put Villa Barone on a low-carb tortilla with turkey cold-cuts sold in its own Glad ware thing.

Im starting to feel uncomfortable with how psuedo high-brow california foodie this all sounds. Olive oil kinda lends itself to that I guess, and probably the way I write too. I really dont mean to contrast the olive oil as “fine food” in a sea of “simpleton food” at parents’ house though. They pay a ton of money for what they eat. They just spend the money on things like yogurt that never separates and spinach leaves that look like little individual wafers in their “Ready-to-Eat” brand bag.

Eh, I guess trying to defend what I’m saying as a whole versus fractional food argument is foodie enough by itself :/

Whatever, the point is I really dig olive oil. Its the bomb. I don’t think everyone ‘should’ or ‘needs to’ go buy their own $18 bottle of golden gooey-ness, I just wanna share my lil love story.

Fair Trade— from classroom theory to a border upbringing

I live on the southernmost tip of Texas, right on the border of Mexico.

I’ve said this a million times. I used to say it at summer camp, and now I say it in Davis. I never really cared, either. I knew Mexico was there but I never went. I knew there were not that many white kids but I didn’t really notice. After all, I qualified for the Gifted and Talented program and hung out with kids whose parents had “made it” no matter what race they were. (and if I hadn’t, would they have said no to my master’s degree toting baby-boomer mother if she yelled at them to let me in?) My well-meaning, adorably yuppie-ish parents successfully isolated me from the inequality that surely drives McAllen’s economy, especially in terms of its international trade.

In second grade my new best friend—J.D.—moved into the huge two story house right next to my huge two-story house. His family moved to my cul-de-sac all the way from Michigan cause his dad worked for Bissel vaccums.

But why McAllen?

In addition to great Mexican food and sub-par public schools (unless you live in North McAllen like we do), McAllen is the place to be if you—the capitalist— want to operate a maquiladora, an export-oriented factory in Mexico operated by a foreign company like Bissel.

But why not just open the plant in McAllen? The vacuums will be sold in US anyway, right?

Before I continue, I’d like to point out that part of the insanity of writing this blog post is how little I know about the economy and human geography of the region that I grew up in. Is this coincidence? Was I just not paying attention in school? I am unconvinced. Is it coincidence that we don’t learn about the economy that brought some people to McAllen because its close to Mexico, and other people across the border cause its not Mexico?

Anyway, although I know very little about the specifics of the economy in McAllen, some of the principles we learned about in the lecture “Fair Trade: Can North-South Trade be made truly fair?” seemed like they probably apply. The neo-liberal economics that the United States forces upon the world economy operates on several unrealistic assumptions: perfect information, agents as price-takers, perfect substitution among factors of production, rational behavior, free entry, complete markets, and access to same technologies. Finally, the economic assumption that really struck me was when Ryan said that the so-called free-market assumes that labor flows freely to where wages are highest. Well I know labor from Mexico cant flow freely to the higher paying jobs in McAllen, at least not legally.

Check out this sick slant ledge in Brownsville, also a border city.

This ledge is right on the Rio Grande river—I can see the bridge, the barbed wire, and the Border Patrol installations when we’re skating it. It’s a lot harder to cross the post 9/11 border, but I know for a fact that in the early 90’s my parents would pick up their house-keeper after she waded across the river.

At any rate, because labor cannot (legally) flow to where wages are highest, like at a Bissell plant in Michigan, Bissell can flow to where wages are lowest—to Reynosa or Laredo—and increase their profits. It seems rather convenient that the party from the country that largely controls the world economy benefits most.

Vacuums are far less sexy than chocolate, coffee, or avocados, and they are definitely not Fair Trade.

My thoughts keep returning to how frightening it is that the taste of greasy and delicious tacos comprises most of what growing up on the border has meant to me. Why did I never question the implications of living on the crux of two different cultures and economies? Do people in McAllen not care? Perhaps once people make it to the sub-divisions along second street a Christmas time donation to toys-for-tots is enough thinking about poverty for one year.

I never even saw poverty in McAllen until my senior year in high school. For a statistics project, I interviewed people about their family health histories walking door to door in neighborhoods only two or three miles from my house that looked not unlike those I had seen when I finally made trips to Mexico. The people I interviewed spoke Spanish, sent their kids to different schools than I went to, and lived in houses a fraction of the size of mine, just down the street from the Chamber of Commerce.

To what extent do macroeconomic international trade policies cause inequality and poverty in McAllen? What effect does the maquiladora industry have on political economic structure of border economy and culture? How does the Fair Trade movement relate to worker conditions across the border– can parts of the model be applied? Most importantly, why have I never asked these questions before?

CSSC Convergence– musings on white privilege and sustainability rhetoric

November 6-8 09 California Students for Sustainability Convergence @ UCSC

Exhausted, I slept for a solid nine hours last night even though I have school today. The amount of emotional, intellectual, interpersonal, and food-related stimulus this weekend was unbelievable.
I left without preparation on Friday at noon. Or something. Probably a little later cause I had to brush my teeth and put on some extra deoderant cause I didn’t have enough time to take a shower. Maggie and I listened to the same ten Bright Eyes songs all the way to Berkeley.
Lunch at Udupi palace with Hai, Laura, Mags, and her best friend Elyse was the first zen experience of the weekend. Conversation flowed as people of different backgrounds but similar interests/vibes came into the same space and began to blend into each other. I contributed a little, mostly by asking questions, but I found myself receding into peaceful observation. I explored the features of my new friends’ faces in sharp focus against a blurred Ganesha draped on the on the wall, pairing people’s gestures, fork in hand, with their voices.

Lately when I go to restaurants I usually think about where they source there food. Its so simple. I am eating this…where did it come from? How did it get here? Who brings it to me? This was not always so obvious, however. Im not sure exactly why im so paranoid about forgetting that I once did not ask these questions, but I am. I get really exhausted by foodies and the “if only they knew” (where their food comes from) argument. I want to remember that I too did not care to know, and the reason I do now is mostly structural—I learned it at a University that’s easy for me to attend cause my parents are paying for it. They’re smart, yes, but their ability to get masters degrees and jobs is based in large part of a white privilege rooted in colonialism.

Haha what a deep tangent. I wasn’t really thinking that at Udupi palace, but I sure was thinking along those lines at intervals throughout the Convergence, although on a more visceral level. At the first ‘expert panel’ I went to, someone asked “my roommate thinks that global warming is a hoax—how do we reach people who just don’t care?”

Kevin, an organizer of San Francisco’s Green Festival, answered “when I’m in Philadelphia I wear my Eagles hat, when I’m in St. Louis I wear my Cardinals hat. You gotta blend in and strike up a conversation over the pool table at a bar. And some people just cant be won—you gotta pick your battles.”

Dissatisfied with this manly answer that sounded like “try to pretend you’re “one of them” and if you cant, screw ‘em,” I spoke up.

My heart started beating when I addressed the packed room. Basically, I said that its all about setting aside our incense and scented oils, evaluating where we’re really coming from, and then finding real common ground. In Berkeley I talked to a drunk guy at bar who, after asking me what I was reading (it was my CRD reader), started explaining how he kills his own game and hates super markets while making fun of “hippies, vegans, vegetarians or whatever” at the same time. Without invoking buzzwords like “sustainability, locally grown, or organic” I made this analogy to him: eating your own game is to a CSA as grocery-store meat is to grocery store vegetables. He could have been just being polite, although he was drunk, but he seemed to at least think about my analogy. At the panel I also spoke about sitting down to a stereotypically white conservative Christian dinner with my friend Renee’s family in central Texas, complete with table manners and prayer. I made the point with some force that California alternative food movement activists were not the first people to conceptualize connecting people to food just because Michael Pollan makes it seem novel. Conservative Christians have as much of an interest in feeding their families wholesome local food as us activists do and in some cases they’ve been trying to do it for longer. Its all about how we frame “green” values; maybe the most important part is not calling them “green” or “sustainable.”

The first workshop I attended at the Convergence on Saturday was titled “Real Food Challenge: Are you ready?” Hai, the facilitator, had us split into groups according to the facet of the food system to which we most closely identify—The Earth, Community, Producers, and Consumers.

I chose Consumer because eating represents the only real interaction I’ve had with the food system. In middle school, the Agricultural Revolution sounded like an ancient guerilla war between hunter-gatherers and minivan moms, “community” sounded Christian-only (New York style Jewish kids need not apply), and I saw the earth through so many plate-glass panels and textbook pages that it became more of a concept than a reality. Supermarkets, fast-food, and restaurants are tangible. I am a consumer, even at a sandal-sporting knit-wool-hat wearing anti-consumption Convergence.
People are moving on some exciting projects on other campuses. Becoming aware of other peoples’ efforts was great and it made me appreciate what students have accomplished here. At other campuses students are working hard to have tray-less dining halls, establish community gardens, and get land for a student farm. We already have all those things at Davis and it really makes me appreciate the people who came before my class.
On Sunday Damian Parr and Jessy gave a group of us from CRD 20 a tour of the student farm at UCSC. The socially oriented goals of this farm are still tangible despite some cooptation by the University. The farm house and the kitchen were built by students trying to invent their own version of sustainability in the 70’s. It was cool—the farm house is held together by wooden pegs, there is no metal in the whole design.
In its almost impossible beauty the farm kept with the theme of the weekend—almost unattainable idealism. It is a great place to visit, however, to appreciate on its own and a great place to brainstorm ideas of how to apply some facets of an ideal model to different regional contexts and make it work, just like the Convergence.

Texas Department of Corrections– Last meals

explore this link:

http://web.archive.org/web/20031202214318/http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/finalmeals.htm

Why cook when you can CAN?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/24/roadrunner-conch-and-pork_n_368974.html?slidenumber=2IXomAW6EPU%3D

sooooo good <3

Pair a’ Dimes– Experimenting with new-found disdain for the objectivity professed by the positivist lens

Food stuffs are fulla stuff. Thats why you need courses like Food Toxicology where you learn about all the things that are “in” our food and what they can do to you. Howd they get IN there??

Toxicology– noun– the branch of science concerned with the nature, effects, and detection of poisons.

food tox?? Phew! Shit. I knew food does a lot of things– it makes me happy, full, gather ’round the table w/ friends. I learned from some magazines that it also makes you fat (which is immoral) and it can make you skinny too (if you pay enough money). I didnt realize one of the things it does is poison things. Actually, what is food?

Food– noun– any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc.

…must. take energy into the body. substance. get and use for. cells. growth. sustain.

Seriously though, check out that purely biophysical nature of the ‘definition’ of food. Without hippie nonsense, food really does have everything to do with culture. Cmon Webster, you gotta toss that in somewhere.

Just the fact that people often start a persuasive argument with lame-ass dictionary definitions, like I just did for kicks, shows how ingrained a straight-up positivist perspective is in our society. In order to be legitimate, you have to justify yourself with a standard that everyone can understand. Something universal. something objective

Wait– that sounds sorta good. We need standards, numbers, inquisition, process, and objectivity, in order to get a full grasp on our natural world. I learned this in third grade.

But please, give me a break with objectivity already. Scientists not cheating when they write down numbers does not signify ‘objectivity.’ Whyd we choose that variable? who’s funding? why do we think this is important to research? why are these instruments applicable? why doesnt subjective– human– stuff count? why are us scientists magically so much more objective than the general population??? (especially in social science research. come ON.)

or ARE scientists really on a higher level of objectivity, as anyone citing research and operating within a positivist mindset will have us (and themselves) believe by default??

Im unconvinced that a PhD in something from some university makes a person more objective “– adjective– not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased.”

Actually, I think spending 30 years on a project would probably make a person– sorry, a scientist– a little partial to the project’s success or relevance. Nobody would want to feel like they’ve wasted such a huge chunk of their life. I dont think there are many scientists who would change their data, but what about interpreting it in a different way to make it applicable to the real world? what about who uses that research to make an argument?

Oh, my bad, these are not just people, they’re objective people. More a collection of cells (especially brain cells, duh) than emotions. Cause emotions are for…women, right?

Oh, wait….ohhh. wait. dang. Waaaaiiittt…. white males created the “science” that we base our white-male dominated society on? Thats a compelling coincidence. Or is it a correlation?

I’d like to explore–wait, study that idea. I’ll design an experiment.
—————

Well, now that i’ve gone off the deep-end of neo-liberal poppycock, lemme say I Love Science. Here’s why:

I cant really imagine any metric by which humankind’s ability to visualize the planet that we inhabit is not progress.

Here’s another reason why I Love Science:

We have access to our own algorithms. This is actually too mind blowing for me to write about. (I took this pic at UC Berkeley)

Science itself does not make me uncomfortable, I think its the way we use it. Everyone is subjective yet we’re all claiming objectivity. I think if instead we started talking openly about the different perspectives and objectives we all color science with we could have much more honest discourse.