Blacksburgia webisode 6:
Save the Curb Strip
A group of green activists have blocked the scheduled demolishing of a small curb strip that is soon to transform a 2-lane stretch of road into a 3-lane-stretch of road. Although the curb strip has only 400 sq. ft. of grass and three small bushes, the activist group relentlessly stands in the way of construction plans on every level.
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[This week we’ll be saying goodbye to summer with three summer-themed poems I wrote during the summer.]
Picking Blueberries at 3 Birds
by Caleb Coy
I bring my son for the first time
To pick berries from the vine
Thirteen months old, he grabs them
By the handful
Out of the bucket
And off of the ground.
Clustered like grapes
They twist and pull
and fall into our buckets lightly.
Hand in hand we walk
Through the rows of the glade.
Among the gatherers
Among the Dutch visitors who came at dawn
In a cool June morning
When broke out the sun.
A belly full of berries
He rides on my shoulders
And gibber-gabbers
About sweet warm berries
In a perfect morning
Of a perfect day
The perfect day is pesticide free.
[For Noah]
Here is a link to 3 Bird’s Berry farm.
A Digest of The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 6: Resolving Our Food Dilemmas
or
“What is the perfect meal, anyway?”
“The blessing of the omnivore is that he can eat a great many different things in nature. The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of those things are safe to eat, he’s pretty much on his own.” -M.P.
Humans are able to eat so many things, and yet so much that we eat (or can eat) is also harmful. We have natural instincts that keep us from dying, like taste, disgust, and the feeling of a full belly. But we also like to refuse to listen to our body, or our mind.
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A Digest of The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 5: Eating Animals
or
“Should People Eat Tasty Animals?”
“Every good hunter is uneasy in the depths of his conscience when faced with the death he is about to inflict on the enchanging animal.” -Ortega y Gasset
For his book’s journey Pollan ate (and explored) a McD’s meal, a supermarket “organic” meal, and then a local, organic, sustainably farmed meal. His final meal requires two hunts: One hunt for fungi, and another hunt for pig. I learned a whole lot about fungi, but what I mostly want to talk about is the hunting of animals.
I’ve never killed a mammal for food. I’ve know many who have, and have tasted of what they killed. I even once ate a deer hit by a truck (thanks to my friend T-Dogg). When I was little my dad took me hunting but I didn’t have the patience for it. The same went for fishing, although I remember chopping the heads off a couple fish before my dad cleaned them. I’ve always wanted to go through the experience of hunting just once. It fascinates me now. In one way because of the art and poetry of going off into the woods and hunting for food, being alone, accomplishing the hunt, performing an activity older than buying cooking. Another way it fascinates me is the almost sadistic attitude some hunters have, and how some people hypocritically look down on hunting yet eat meat that is killed in less authentic ways than hunting.
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A Digest of The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 4: Big Organic and the Supermarket Pastoral
or
“The Proof is in the Organic, Natural Flavor, No-Preservatives-Added, Corn-Syrup-Free Pudding”
“Organic.” “Natural.” “Sustainable.” “Free range.” “Vegan.” “Gluten Free.” “Diabetic friendly.” “No preservatives.” “Low Carb.” “Contains no added elements.” “Kid tested; mother approved.” Lots of labels out there these days that are specialized. What do they mean, and can we trust them?
A Digest of The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 3: Polyface Farm
or
“All Flesh is Grass”
“Mother earth never attempts to farm without live stock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease.” —Albert Howard, An Agricultural Testament
Our past two posts on the subjects of corn and meat were not too pleasant, so this post promises to be more hopeful. We’re moving on from mad cow disease to “glad cows at ease”.
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A Digest of The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 2: The Feedlot, Grocery Store, and the McD’s
or
“We’re Not in Kansas Anymore”
“Processed food has become largely a supply-driven business—the business of figuring out clever ways to package and market the glut of commodities coming off the farm and out of the wet mills[..]The underlying reductionist premise—that food is nothing more than the sum of its nutrients—remains undisturbed.”—Michael Pollan
The Cow Factory
It’s not a secret to anybody that most of the beef you buy at grocery stores is from cows squeezed into CAFOs—Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. That’s not new information. It’s just that we’re not reminded of it enough, and when we are, it’s still a distant fact. It’s also not usually woven into a story and set against a more natural story of raising animals.
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A Digest of The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 1: Corn-flation
or
“We’ll Forget the Sun, as We Walk in Fields of Gold”
The Industrial Meal
I learned more about corn from this book than I ever thought I would. When I was in 5th grade, an old woman came to my school as a scholastic performer, playing a banjo and singing about corn:
Corn, corn, sing about corn
It’s a tasty treat
Corn, corn, sing about corn
It’s so good to eat
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“Whatever native wisdom we may have once possessed about eating has been replaced by confusion and anxiety[…we are] a notably unhealthy people obsessed with the idea of eating healthy.” –Michael Pollan
This is my first “foodie” book. Oh, and really, why do people use the word “foodie”? We should start calling people who don’t smoke “oxygenies”, and people who try to dress modestly “clothesies”.
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GOD IS GREEN; GOD IS GOOD.
Meditations on Creation Stewardship
Happy Earth Day, everybody.
Wait. Can I say that?
You know what I mean when I say green. The typical image. Recycling. Saving the whales. Eating organic. Lowering your emissions. Planting trees. Eating veggies. The works. I have purposely not used the word “environmentalist” because the word indicates a specific attribute of the “green” attitude. When I think of issues of personal health and environmental health, it all connects together for me. I consider them all aspects of the creation, from my body to my neighbor’s body to the bodies of land, water and air.
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CALEB COY 