Eating from my backyard

I have recently begun volunteering at the edible plant project in Gainesville and it is absolutely amazing how much I do not know. For those who do not know, the edible plant project is a non-profit project that promotes planting edible plants throughout the city of Gainesville. They are big advocates of eating locally grown food, and part of the project involves making things available locally. They sell plants and fruit at the local farmers' market as well as planting in sites around town.

I was expecting to see a greenhouse filled entirely with fruit trees. But it looked like one of the greenhouses at UF, with a lot of ordinary plants that I had no idea were edible. Every time I asked someone, they could tell me which part was edible and usually several uses for the plant. And I believe all the plants are either Florida natives or Florida friendly.

Isn't it crazy that all this knowledge is out there and we don't utilize it. I worked in environmental horticulture for seven years and never learned about any edible foods. Not to criticize the department - it just isn't a priority. But when you really think about it, it's so important and it could make the local food diet a lot easier. It's also funny how hard it was for me to eat a piece of lettuce that I pulled off of an Indian lettuce plant. Although I eat fruit from trees all the time, there was something weird about eating he plant itself. I found out that several things that grow in my yard are edible, such as spiderwort and dogfennel, but I haven't dared to take a bite of them yet.

On a local food note, the farmer down the street from my house told me they would have strawberries in December, which is so exciting for me. Apparently the plants start producing before winter and then stop when it gets really cold. If anyone knows more about this, let me know.

waiting for the storm

Waiting for Tropical Storm Fay to blow through any time now reminds me of the last hurricane I went through in 2004, during which I had to re-read Things Fall Apart by candlelight - No circumstance excuses English majors from completing their reading assignments.

I hated the book the first time I read it in the summer before ninth grade. At that point, I didn't realize that the protagonist in every story doesn't have to be one that I fell in love with. Before that, my books of choice had included Jack London novels, Greek myths like the Odyssey with the classical hero, and various other adolescent girl novels. Okonkwo did not fit into my mold of a hero. He was a misogynistic wife-beater who killed his adopted son, and I imposed every Western moral I had on him just like the Christians in the novel.
Re-reading it made me realize that morality is a construct - an illusion. It allows us to live together relatively peacefully until our morality clashes with another, like walking in on someone else's dream. This is the point of the novel - that human society is fragile and the barbarian waits beneath the surface to shatter our illusion of a world in anything other than chaos.

The Crisis of the American Dream

Watching a news feature about people who lost their homes in the mortgage crisis really got me thinking about American ideals, which still correspond to none other than the good old American Dream. People think a big, new house with a white picket fence is the key to their happiness and this is what we are force-fed on a daily basis by media and advertising. Yet, it is widely accepted that most Americans are not happy.
This particular story was about a single older woman who lost her excessively large house when her interest rate jumped up and doubled her monthly mortgage. It was a sad story, but why did she need that huge house? There are so many empty houses, but people keep expanding, building new neighborhoods. I see this especially in Gainesville. Areas that were green space get developed while old house and business sites are left empty.
Americans need to revamp their way of thinking. Unfortunately, this is impossible to do while maintaining our current system of capitalist expansionism. An economy that is based on expansion discourages any sort of sustainable lifestyle. Where do we go from here?
There is a really great essay on this topic by E.F. Schumacher entitled "Buddhist Economics." Schumacher analyzes the differences in the world-view of Western societies as opposed to the Buddhist world-view, and proposes a change in Western ideals in order to live more sustainable lifestyles.

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Kate's podcast

This is my podcast about current research in mass media, which suggests that the globalization of American culture is also resulting in the globalization of American eating disorders. Many Asian countries, who are heavy consumers of American media, are now seeing a rise in eating disorders and fad dieting among their citizens. This correlation suggests that mass media are responsible for negative body images in men and women.