food to fork

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LEARN: For an introduction to the facts, read these factsheets published by the Student Action with Farmworkers.
· READ: Check out our Triple Pundit series on the business of sustainable agriculture.
· WATCH: Watch the Fair Food Project documentary (15 min).
· JOIN: Find out if there’s a chapter of the Student/Farmworker Alliance, Student Action with Farmworkers, the Real Food Challenge, aaaand so forth.

Just got an email about nat'l farmworker awareness week. amazing to think how often we eat things without considering how it got to us. There's so much more to a tomato now than what we put on our salads and sandwiches. I've been taking this Environmental Health class and we watched Food, Inc. (love that documentary!) and I'm doing a research study on sustainable fisheries, so I've been thinking a lot about food and what it is that we are really supporting here. And growing my own stuff as much as I can or buying locally(though living in a city is limiting...)I wonder how much of a difference we can make... I wonder if we can change the agri industry... hmm. If the only vote we have is through our consumerism, I'd say that's a pretty good amount of power.
Here's another interesting article from national geographic about sustainable agriculture.

and while i'm on the subject.
google Wangari Maathai because she's fabulous.

loud & proud, baby

i'd rather not post a rants and raves section, but...yeah. what's up. i'm a theoretical feminist.

you must be out of your mind if you don't think this is what's happening in the world.

I want a life standing on two strong legs, with spiritual and mental health sound. People in my life who are supportive of that standing - not afraid to identify as a feminist. Why is that a dirty word?
A feminist is someone who believes gender equality should exist. If you do not think that a woman should be making 77 cents to a man's 1.00, you're a feminist. If you believe that women should be equally represented in this country, you're a feminist.
If, however, you do not support those ideas or you are embarassed to label yourself as such due to attached social stigma (which, more often than not, is due to ignorance) then you 1) do not support me as a human being and 2) make me wonder what else you wouldn't stand up for for fear of other people's scrutiny.

As much as I wish this stuff didn't infuriate me - I'm glad it does. I'm paying attention.

why oh why have i not bought galloshes.

some sunshine perhaps, on such a cloudy day?

stuck inside of mobile with the memphis blues again.

thanks for the daffodils

:)
my sister came this weekend!

(image by)

mini playlist -

teardrop - jose gonzalez

not a robot, but a ghost - andrew bird

for the windows in paradise, for the fathers in ypsilanti - sufjan stevens

leave me alone, but don't leave me here, alright?

.......

if ecologists ran the world...

This is fabulous - it's a ted talk. in case you haven't heard of ted talk, check out the website, they add new talks every week. They are usually done by specialists in the field who have composed a relatively brief and highly entertaining way to put across a message that is important to them.

Ted Talk - Why I fell in love with a fish

Why you should listen to him:
Dan Barber is the chef at New York's Blue Hill restaurant, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Westchester, where he practices a kind of close-to-the-land cooking married to agriculture and stewardship of the earth. As described on Chez Pim: "Stone Barns is only 45 minutes from Manhattan, but it might as well be a whole different universe. A model of self-sufficiency and environmental responsibility, Stone Barns is a working farm, ranch, and a three-Michelin-star-worthy restaurant." It's a vision of a new kind of food chain.
Barber's philosophy of food focuses on pleasure and thoughtful conservation -- on knowing where the food on your plate comes from and the unseen forces that drive what we eat. He's written on US agricultural policies, asking for a new vision that does not throw the food chain out of balance by subsidizing certain crops at the expense of more appropriate ones.
In 2009, Barber received the James Beard award for America's Outstanding Chef, and was named one of the world's most influential people in Time’s annual "Time 100" list.
"Dan Barber is increasingly becoming known as a chef-thinker, popularizing simple ideas that upend the way people think about the food we eat."
Gothamist.com

it's no coincidence that 'let's get it on' came on as i was typing this post

So i got a new job and part of the uniform in wearing chuck taylors. I have to keep em dark, but I wanted to brainstorm on how to funk it up a little bit. This is a good site for some sweet ideas:



punk your chucks







and i'd never be able to get away with these at work, but... i'd love to kick around in these for a day:

Here's hoping that everyone can find some sunshine on this dismal day... and that the person next to me in the computer lab stops dropping death bombs.

in honor of go women! month,

karen o

.

this needs to be blown up poster sized and plastered on my living room wall.

care for some herbal refreshments (?)

I know it's been out for years, but a great song by Bright Eyes is 'first day of my life' and I suggest checking that tune out.


Secondly I would like to tell you that I have been doing a terrible job with my new years resolution of having a creative outlet. Apart from 1) dropping my painting class that i've waited four years to take because i'm yet again failing my statistics class, I 2) have never been following through with my ideas apart from thinking and jotting something enthusiastic with eventual and inevitable discard. so let's work on following through with this next idea because it's a simple thing that will add a lot of happiness to my life. and that thing is an herb garden.

helpful starters...

• stop right there
• herbs for culinary use & drying & storing herbs & medicinal (same-ish site)
• name this herb

This is a really, really cool thing. You can have a few pots on your windowsill and all you need is relatively little. I mean... think about it. You're either buying packaged teas or cooking herbs that come in containers, were farmed somewhere across the united states/world, using some container that causes PCBs to emit into the atmosphere & our environment, and then said herb container needs to be shipped all the way to your local grocery store (carbon footprint anyone?) - OR - you can get a pot, soil, & seeds , stick em on your windowsill and pluck a few leaves anytime you want something fresh and delicious added to your food. Soooooooollllldddd.

i might be failing statistics for the 4th time, but damn... have i learned to doodle.

all the right things in all the right places

spring break, buck wild ...

Intro to Conservation 1101

The law locks up both man and woman

Who steals the goose from off the common

But lets the greater felon loose

That steals the common from the goose

- an English folk rhyme of the late eighteenth century

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

- Albert Einstein

do you remember that day you fell out of my window?

Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

happy two

photo by my good friend paul

i want to see you. i want you to see me. i don't want to give that up

and they register what I'm saying and say yes, they understand.
But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert.
They're just symbols. They're dead, you know?
And so much of our experience is intangible.
So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable.
And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another,
and we--
we feel that we have connected,
and we think that we're understood,
I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion.
And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.