words

WORDS of wisdom

In the wise of words of a woman I met this evening - There are two ways to do everything. Learn to do it the second way. 

Don't Let Your Children Grow Up to be Farmers

OPINION Don't Let Your Children Grow Up to be Farmers by Bren Smith via New York Times

Why am I taking out loans to go to grad school? Because I think it's less risky than taking out loans to become a farmer and maybe it'll give me a shot at affording a farm business some day. So twisted is this path. This opinion piece rants about the barriers young people face in pursuing small-scale farming:

The dirty secret of the food movement is that the much-celebrated small-scale farmer isn’t making a living. After the tools are put away, we head out to second and third jobs to keep our farms afloat. Ninety-one percent of all farm households rely on multiple sources of income. 

A Tourist's View

ESSAY A Tourtist's View of Marriage by Esther Perel

An insightful read on the Third Reality that is constructed and negotiated between partners of cultural difference. 

"Another way to conceive of the spectrum is individualism versus collectivism. In low context societies such as Germany, the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, England, Australia, and the United States (often countries rooted in Protestant Calvinism), people compartmentalize personal relationships and work, and focus on short-term relationships. Factual information is stressed, as is explicit verbal expression. The high-context societies are more rural and less industrialized than the low-context societies. In Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean countries, the Arab world, India, China, and Indonesia, extensive information networks exist among family, friends, and colleagues. This shared experience allows for a greater degree of tacit understanding. People are often involved in close and lasting relationships."

In an age of mobility and constant crossing, how will our generation adapt to living out simultaneous realities? 

A Strange New Cottage

POEM A Strange New Cottage by Allen Ginsberg

Illustration by my uncle of the cottage he built in the mountains in Taiwan.

A Strange New Cottage

    All afternoon cutting bramble blackberries off a tottering brown 
fence
    under a low branch with its rotten old apricots miscellaneous under 
the leaves,
    fixing the drip in the intricate gut machinery of a new toilet;
    found a good coffeepot in the vines by the porch, rolled a big tire out
of the scarlet bushes, hid my marijuana;
    wet the flowers, playing the sunlit water each to each, returning for
godly extra drops for the string beans and daisies;
    three times walked round the grass and sighed absently;
    my reward, when the garden fed me its plums from the form of a small tree in the corner,
an angel thoughtful of my stomach, and my dry and lovelorn tongue. 

Living a block and 50 summers away from the setting of this poem, I wonder what draws me to this place - scenes of Berkeley in the summer, tucked away behind a mess of plum branches and leaves back lit by the sun. Music echos with the sound of construction and brown carpet silent under my feet. With a precious number of summers ahead, I wonder where I'm headed and what kind of fruit I'll have to eat. 

Gentrification and the Urban Garden

ARTICLE Gentrification and the Urban Garden via The New Yorker

Regarding development in West Oakland and neighboring areas. The issue of gentrification here brings up the question of how survival-based practices and craft have become objectified, packaged, and sold to boutique buyers at the expense of others. Urban gardening, farming, and beekeeping - these productive practices come from a history of struggle and celebration, not really from magazines or cute shops (as much as I love them).