Contemplative practice #9 asks what kind of soil I plant myself in. It’s a great question. For a good part of my life, the answer would have been industrial soil—overworked, pushed for yield, with little time to rest. I was not at all unique. Most of my friends and colleagues had talked about their busy-ness like the weather, resigned about… Read more »
In the poem On Work, Khalil Gibran’s prophet Almustafa counsels, You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite. Over the past ten weeks… Read more »
In sharing the ancient practices used to harvest rain in India’s Golden Desert, and the ‘unwritten bylaws’ that have protected this supply for centuries, Anupam Mishram reminds us that violent conflict is not inevitable in the face of resource scarcity—humans can and have responded with collaborative ingenuity. Similarly, Gidon Bromberg of Eco Peace Middle East suggests that protecting the planet… Read more »
Much has been written about Cuba’s shift from industrialized to organic farming after the fall of the Soviet Block in 1989. During this Special Period, with no ability to import equipment or fertilizer, Cuba installed community gardens throughout its urban areas, and rural communities returned to the ‘ways of the campesino’ (Cuba: The Accidental Revolution, 2007). As the world considers… Read more »
Compare the diets of the LeMoines of France and the Batsuuris of Mongolia, as Menzel and D’Aluisio have in Hungry Planet (2005), and the impact of climate, culture, and industrialization becomes clear: The LeMoines’ larder is full of packaged, ready-to eat fare while the Batsuuris’ table still recalls the traditional diet of nomadic herders. Mongolia’s harsh winters and short, inhospitable… Read more »
Oil runs through my veins. That’s what I think as I sit, cross-legged, listening to the contemplative practice on living systems from week two of our class. I’m returning to it a second time, four weeks later. Before, I reflected on ‘the far-flung resources’ that brought me my dinner. Today, I imagine dinner floating past on an inky, petroleum river…. Read more »
My breakfast this morning was made possible by globalization. Banana chocolate chip pancakes are a standard at my local diner, so it can be hard to imagine a time when they were considered exotic, with their Ecuadorian bananas and chocolate chips made from ingredients sourced in the Ivory Coast. But transcending the limits of local climes and growing seasons, global… Read more »
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is persuasive that today’s industrialized agriculture model and the resulting Western diet has led to an American population that is overfed but undernourished, eating more calories than ever before (on average 300 more per day than in 1985) and showing alarming rates of diet-related disease including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and cancer. [1] In… Read more »