The Farmer’s Market
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 06/23/2007 - 15:43This morning, Kim, Fiona and I went over to a local farmers market. We had signed up with a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. For the next eighteen weeks, we will stop by every Saturday and pick up a box of locally grown fruits and vegetables.
It was a beautiful day. We picked up our box of produce, and then supplemented it with some other food. One farmer was selling fresh picked peas and we bought some of them and some strawberries. We then sat down underneath a tree and shelled and ate some of the peas and ate a few of the strawberries.
I told Fiona of picking peas when I was a kid. We had plenty of pea plants and would spend the early morning picking peas and spend the late morning shelling them. My mother would then freeze them for the winter. If we were lucky, we would get to go swimming in the afternoon.
Fiona said hello to everyone that showed up with a dog and asked if she could pat the dogs. She stopped by and patted a goat and Kim picked up some ribs from a farm in Northern Connecticut. It was pretty close to an idyllic Saturday morning.
For me, this gets to the sort of sacrifices that we need to make in order to live a more sustainable life style. Instead of eating frozen peas grown in Renville, MN and shipped 1,300 miles, not including stops for processing, we ate fresh peas that had probably been picked this morning in Middlebury, CT before their 50-mile trip to the farmers market.
The ribs we will eat this evening will have traveled about as far, coming down from Ox Hollow Farm in Roxbury. However, the ribs may have traveled further than that. Doing a lookup on Ox Hollow Farm, I see that they show some of their livestock at the BigE. Who knows, perhaps I met the pig I am about to eat part of last fall.
Yes, it does take a little more time. It takes time to go to the farmers market with the family. It takes time to shell and enjoy the peas, yet it is time well spent. If you want to deal with climate change, the problems of factory farms, how farm workers are treated, and a myriad of other concerns, a good starting point is your local farmer’s market. Then, a good follow up is getting a few friends to go as well.
Edwards, Poverty and the New York Times
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/22/2007 - 19:40Well, it has been an interesting day. My diary over at DailyKos which I cross posted here got picked up by Huffington Post. Others have been writing great stuff about this as well, in particular, Greg Sargent has this great post about the Times article.
Some folks have suggested to me that I write to the public editor of the New York Times about the article. I have sent my letter to him, which I am including below the fold.
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Who can fight poverty?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/22/2007 - 10:27It is good to see a major media outlet talk about the issue of poverty in America, even if the article is based on a false premise. The article “In Aiding Poor, Edwards Built Bridge to 2008”, June 22, suggests, “the main beneficiary of the center’s fund-raising was Mr. Edwards himself”.
No, the main beneficiaries were the thousands of students who went to hear Sen. Edwards as he visited college campuses around the country and found the hope and the inspiration to address problems of poverty in our country. The main beneficiaries were residents of New Orleans who saw students Sen. Edwards led to help with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. The main beneficiaries are all of us that have stopped and thought a little bit more about the issue of poverty in America, thanks to Sen. Edwards.
The problem with the New York Times article is manifold. It suggests that the rich cannot care about poverty, that throwing money at a problem is the only solution and that candidates cannot care about issues.
A Day in My Shoes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/21/2007 - 20:08Yesterday, Anna Burger of the SEIU spoke during the final plenary session of the Take Back America conference. I was tired and browsed various pictures from Wordless Wednesday. Burger started talking about Walk A Day In My Shoes, a project by the SEIU to get candidates to spend a day living the life of one of their union members. I like that project a lot. We all need to spend more time getting a sense how people outside our immediate circle lives.
This takes me back to one of my old rants, which is about the progressive bloggers. So many of them seem to spend their time talking to one another on certain blogs, but how often do they walk a day in the shoes of others? Anyway, how do you do that online?
Well, I think Wordless Wednesday is a great starting point. I kept scanning pictures of things that are important, beautiful, interesting, or some combination of the above to the bloggers that participate; flowers, rainbows, children, the stuff of daily life. I stopped at Mommy’s Busy to see if there was any news about Faith. I stopped by at Bee’s, who describes herself as a conservative with liberal friends (hey some of 'em aren't too bad - honest!). I visited Sarge Charlie. Sarge and I probably don’t agree on a much political stuff, and that’s probably putting it mildly, but he does have a great picture that people interested in politics should check out. He writes great stuff about his family and about the men and women that serve our country.
When Ms. Burger finished speaking, it was Gov. Dean’s turn to speak. I suspect Sarge might not think the most of Gov. Dean, but the Governor said something that I thought was really important and ties together these thoughts. Immediately after Katrina, the DNC suspended much of its fundraising operations. They felt that it just wasn’t right to be out asking for money from people when the money was most needed on the Gulf Coast. They encouraged staffers to go down to the coast and volunteer. Two of the staffers ended up staying with a couple Southern Baptist women. They were concerned that these Southern Baptist women might not think much about people working for the Democratic Party in Washington, DC. However, after they all worked together, side by side, helping with relief efforts, both the DNC staffers and the Southern Baptist women learned to appreciate each other, and that’s what we need more of.
I hope Sarge and his buddies stop by this blog from time to time, at least on Wednesdays. I hope they go over and visit Stacie’s blog to see how Faith is doing, and to offer up a little prayer for that family. I hope some of my liberal friends stop by and visit Sarge’s blog, and send letters of support to our troops in response to some of Sarge’s posts. Maybe by doing that, our Wednesdays can go beyond being Wordless to being Wonderful.
(Technorati tags: tba2007, takebackamerica)
Take Back America's Illusions
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 06/20/2007 - 11:03The sidewalks are wet from the rain that fell over night. I am exhausted and must have slept through the rain. It has cut down some of the heat and humidity that was so oppressive last night which makes the walk to the Metro station a little more tolerable, however my backpack and the blister that has formed on my foot slows me down.
I had an interesting talk with one friend yesterday. She asked if I had seen anything interesting, new or exciting. I mentioned Elandria from the Highlander Research and Education Center as being the best that I heard. My friend observed that there wasn’t much new in her speech. I noted that for me, finding out about Highlander was new, but I had to agree. At all of the conferences like this there needs to be someone to bring up the issues of the poverty, race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on, in a personal and meaningful way. Elandria is the one who did that here. Perhaps others did as well, but I didn’t hear them, or they did it in a session where their comments were so impersonalized that it faded into the background political rhetoric.
I explored this in more detail over drinks last night. The guy I was talking with spoke about the decline in trust in the public discourse and the increased focus on the private discourse. It was all well and good, but it sounded a bit impersonal, part of the failing public discourse.
How do I explain to the people here why Faith’s story is so important, why so many of the ‘Mommy bloggers’ that I read are so much more important than all these progressive blogs? We talk about authenticity. It is a loaded term. All the politicians try to sound more authentic. However, our political discourse discourages real authenticity. Heaven forbid that a candidate should show real tears for the oppressed.
