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Words and images - address the meaning of sustainability in relation to our food system.

Early last summer I learned of a national project - The Lexicon of Sustainability - which was an effort to focus on local food systems and the meaning of terms that get thrown around referring to "sustainability" and all its nuances. After seeing images on their website, then a subset of them in person in Goshen, IN, I decided that I wanted to do a show here in Southwest Michigan.

Michigan is an agricultural powerhouse, yet we, like most areas, import most of the food we eat. That makes no sense to me. Oh I understand that we are at a point where we also probably can't support our population without some level of imports (imports meaning "originating outside the state") but I do believe we can do better at sustaining ourselves with what we have nearby. Our food system has over the years morphed into something that I want to change. I believe it's time to chip away at it in a mindful way. And I believe that it is everyone's responsibility. Everybody eats.

So when the opportunity presented itself to bring posters dealing with sustainability and the food system to my little part of the world, how could I not?

Information on the show is here. I hope you will stop by and join the conversation.

A Tribute to Evelyn

Back in May I posted about starting to rid myself of excess paper and the weight of past. Lots of things intervened in the months since then to thwart my progress at shredding all those old tax returns. But I'm going back at it and also trying to eliminate lots of other "stuff" in preparation for transitioning to a tablet (replacing a notebook) and transitioning to a different home (downsizing and simplifying).

I've started to throwing things out again. Literally throwing them in the trash as I run across them. Real trash that gets taken away every week. And the swooshy/crumply sound as computer files hit the virtual trash.

The other day I ran across a Word doc reflecting on a friend who had died. It was (I think) written shortly after her funeral. Shown to no one it sat on my computer for several years before I stumbled on it again. I vaguely remembered writing it and reading it I was glad I had run across it. Maybe some things need to be carried on life's journey. Understanding what is important and what isn't is a lesson I'm still learning. I'm keeping this. Here it is...

A Tribute to Evelyn

When I knew she was dying my first thought was for myself. I suppose it always is for everyone – “what will I do” or “I will miss her so” or “oh, we never got to....”. As time passed, my self-absorption gave way to a healthier focus on her. “She is dealing with this so gracefully” or “you are such a great friend because you....” or “you have every right to decide not to have any more chemo or radiation.”

She had been the glue that held a small band of people together around breakfast, once a month. Breakfast Club had been going on for decades and in my last conversation with her just nine days before she died, she said she was looking forward to the next Breakfast Club. Did she think then it would be her last? And she also said she was looking forward to the Greek Festival this same group of friends had been going to for even longer. It was two weeks after Breakfast Club.

The day before Breakfast Club was scheduled the email arrived saying she’d been taken to the hospital in great pain. Pancreatic cancer is a bitch; I’ve seen an aunt and another good friend die of it. They were going to try to regulate her meds to deal with the pain. I knew this wasn’t a good sign.

Later in the day, in the shower, I found myself saying out loud, “Evelyn, I don’t want you to die, but you do what you need to, do. It’s ok for you to die. We’ll get along, muddle through without you.” I had given my father and uncle permission to die as I was by their bedsides, and even though I wasn’t by her bedside, I guess I believed she could hear me. Hearing is the last thing to go the experts say.

During the evening I exchanged emails with a mutual friend and learned that she had been moved to a hospice, that the hospital had been an effort to regulate her pain so she could be in hospice at home. When I saw her last less than a month ago she mentioned she had to see her insurance guy; I didn’t ask why. Was she making moves to hospice then? She knew she was dying; was she that determined to be as organized and as little of a burden as that?

As is normal for me, I woke early, before dawn and read to fall asleep again for a while. In that early morning sleep I often dream, and today was no different. I dreamed I was in my garden working with people who I had just the day before been working with in horribly hot sun and high humidity. We were slowly, slowly building wood paths through all the gardens, ostensibly to keep the weeds out of the paths and the weeding to a minimum. It was a much bigger process than envisioned. (Evelyn had had a small garden in her back yard, probably as big as one of the 50+ beds we have where I garden. Enough. Not so much as to be overwhelming as I’d been finding mine to be.) In the dream the people I was working with  were in various gardens, one on the other side of the greenhouse where I couldn’t see them. Suddenly there came a high pitched “Oh!!” from the other side of the green house. In the dream I thought to myself, “oh, Brad has hurt himself” then I thought “no, Evelyn has died.” I woke from my dream to realize this, and looked at the clock. It was 6:15 Eastern time.

A while later, I got up and was doing laundry before going downstairs to eat and start the day. The phone rang and I groaned. Of course, I already knew. It was a number I didn’t recognize. Oh, let this call not drop the way so many do on my cell, I thought as I answered. “Hello?”  Again, I said “Hello?” Then I heard his voice, “Paula, I have...” and I knew “...bad news. Evelyn passed away over night.” Without missing a beat I said, “I know.” He said, “Oh?” “Yes, I said, I heard her.” He went on to tell me she died without pain (a blessing of hospice where she had been moved) and that he didn’t know anything about services. I was enlisted to pass the word to others as Jim didn’t have their phone numbers at home and his internet was down. He had known Evelyn longer than I (and I had known her 31 years) so he was likely feeling even deeper loss than I.

Recently at my brother’s funeral (just a few months back) I heard a saying that at an earlier time in my life I would have taken umbrage at. “Don’t let the dead get in the way of the living.” It is true; it is not heartless. The living have to live – that is what they do. Grieve, yes. Reflect, yes. But live, nonetheless. Dying while alive is not giving tribute to all that life is. Evelyn knew that. She lived so fully until she couldn’t. Then she died. It was simple. It was 

True Choice

I was saddened and angered to learn something at a farmers market this past weekend. If I'm totally honest I would have to say it doesn't surprise me. But to have it occurring in my back yard is almost more than I can bear.

Around here we're pretty proud of what we grow. After all, we're "The Fruit Belt." And this time of year the joy of fresh, local peaches - particularly the Red Havens that are a favorite - is much anticipated. Of course peaches are available year round in the grocery, but they virtually never taste really good, like true, just picked fruit. They can't. They weren't tree-ripened and just picked. But that's another story.

Farmers markets are touted as places to meet the people who produce your food, to have a chat and build a relationship. To get close to your food like in the past. To get fresh peaches in season. What's there to be sad or angry about?

What made me sad and angry was that I'm told some of the very people who we've been encouraged to trust because they grow our food and who we can look at eyeball to eyeball at a market are betraying that trust. How? In this case by buying Georgia peaches and selling them in peach season in The Fruit Belt. I was told that they even peeled off the Georgia labels and stuck on Michigan ones. Huh? How did we get here? Not only misrepresenting what they were selling, but since when did growers small enough to consider the work of a farmers market worth the effort, start stickering their fruit? Is there any hope of reconnecting people who shop at farmers markets to their food sufficiently that they no longer tolerate such practices?

In a world where the food system is so interconnected that I can have virtually whatever I want, whenever I want it, it my reaction may seem unreasonable. Yet the choice that is most important to be is to be able to confidently buy local produce from local farmers. I want the truth from the people I entrust to grow my food. I stopped trusting the big food companies years ago. Please don't tell me I have to stop trusting small farmers now too...