Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
“Energy,” said William Blake, “is Eternal Delight.” And the scientific prognosticators of our time have begun to speak of the eventual opening, for human use, of “infinite” sources of energy. In speaking of the use of energy, then, we are speaking of an issue of religion, whether we like it or not. For Wendell Berry, … Continue reading The Eternal Delight Of Decay
“Ah wanna tell ya ’bout a girl,” Nick Cave sings. “Ah wanna tell ya ’bout a sausage,” I sing. Cotechino. It’s 1511 and you’re living in Mirandola, a city in northern Italy in the province of Modena. The famous Pico della Mirandola’s family runs the city, but that’s little help to you now as Pope … Continue reading The Past And Future Of Food: Nick Cave, Cotechino Sausage, The Holy League, The Beatles, Soylent, And Nick Cave Again.
Much has been said and written about children fleeing Honduras for the United States, and yesterday the New York Times reported that our government seeks a remedy to the crisis by interviewing young adults and minors in Honduras to see if they may apply for refugee status on emergency humanitarian grounds. Now might be a … Continue reading The Violence Swirling Around Palm Oil: Roads and Kingdoms Travels To Honduras.
In Tracie McMillan’s National Geographic article, “The New Face of Hunger,” the nature of agribusiness, food production and government subsidies becomes a part of the puzzle of hunger in America. It’s a cruel irony that people in rural Iowa can be malnourished amid forests of cornstalks running to the horizon. Iowa dirt is some of … Continue reading We Don’t Like To Take Advice About Food–And That’s Part Of The Problem.
Two articles that dovetail with their concern over land, sea and sky–how we restore what has been damaged and how we farm what we’ve run into the ground. Ecological and agricultural concerns synchronized. http://www.drb.ie/essays/the-restoration-drama http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/07/01/327248504/the-great-fish-swap-how-america-is-downgrading-its-seafood-supply?ft=1&f=1053 Continue reading Forest, Farm and What Will Be Left.
In Chapter Three of The Unsettling of America, “The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Agriculture,” Wendell Berry pointedly defends the primacy of “wilderness” within the conservation movement in America. What has to be acknowledged at the outset is that wilderness conservation is important and that it has a place in any conservation program, just … Continue reading Wilderness, Good Oak, And Moby Dick
Born in Royal Oak, Michigan, raised in Troy, I really didn’t interact with the city of Detroit until I went to Wayne State University located in mid-town, south of Grand Boulevard and what used to be the General Motors Building, and north of Cass Corridor and dire poverty. My whole stay in the Metro-Detroit area … Continue reading From Small Goat Farms To Megafarms: The Shared Reality of Urban and Rural America.
Grant Wood’s 1930 painting of a pitchfork-wielding farm couple heralds our return to Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. How to interpret this portrait? How to interpret American Gothic, which to my mind means the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Through the lens of The Unsettling of America, an interpretation becomes … Continue reading Unsettling America
This is a truly amazing! I suggest pouring yourself a cool drink, brewing coffee, putting Bach’s Goldberg Variations for String Ensemble on the turntable, boiling an egg and serving with sardines and anchovies, whatever makes for a pleasant afternoon and enjoy the giddy-edificaiton of this site. Here’s the link. http://www.vox.com/a/explain-food-america Continue reading 40 Maps That Explain Food in America
The feijoada rests. I added linguisa and wild boar sausage; and, unfortunately, there’s been a little burn on the bottom, so I’ve been carefully stirring. When I warmed the beans and meat up this morning, I checked news on my phone, and I looked back again to find vigorous bubbling. Ha! Fire does not allow … Continue reading Feijoada Day Two And Cook It Raw
