You know those moments when you are slapped around by the jolting movements of time, your neck aching with heaviness of its own weight and measure? These moments can be so revitalizing when you back against the wall, breathe into the empty pipes of your body, and curl into a good book of words and thoughts. Last night with a quiet spirit for New Year’s Day, I sat mesmerized by the words of Wendell Berry, farmer, poet, and novelist. After such rushing through the holidays, a day to sleep until 3pm and then think of nothing but beautiful words put into thoughts was sanctifying to say the least…

From Wendell Berry’s The Mad Farmer Poems

Don’t worry and fret about the crops. After you have done all you can for them, let them stand in the weather on their own.

If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed.

But the real products of any year’s work are the farmer’s mind & the crop land itself.

If he raises a good crop at the cost of belittling himself & diminishing the ground, he has gained nothing. He will have to begin over again the next spring, worse off than before.

Let him receive the season’s increment into his mind. Let him work it into the soil.

The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer.

Make the human race a better head. Make the world a better piece of ground.

Putter patter putter tonight in the kitchen, making a thick and speckled soup. Potatoes from Tantre Farm were on sale a couple weeks back, and of course many were still lounging in their private drawer, sprouting leggy new parts. Oh these morphing vegetables must be used before they walk out of my drawer and into a fighting match with the carrots. After shopping for a cabbage to include in this wintery soup, and restocking our supply of caraway seeds that unabashedly went MIA, I brewed a pot of tea and made this really comforting soup. Some fresh and crusty bread from an Ann Arbor bakery lay in wait, crumbs pouring forth from the paper bag as though ready to be scooped into an utter, soupy destiny.

That was tonight. But two weeks ago things felt a little different.

I was in Chicago, spending a week in a room with a lot of people agreeing to spend a year volunteering, earning wages from the government as a stipend based on the local poverty line. Most local poverty lines lay between the $12-13,000 a year range. I was one of those people preparing for a year of volunteer service. Being that so many of those gathered were from Michigan, a state whose failing businesses are begging for some sort of relief from the government, you can imagine that many of these people were accepting this volunteer year because it provided them with more than they currently earned. The days were fairly intense, the entire group being divided into sections of 30 people, all of which have personal stories of poverty to some degree or in some fashion.

The first day our facilitator gathered us in a circle, dark faces and light faces, thick accents and thin, and presented us with the questions: “What is poverty?” & “What causes poverty?”. Maybe stop for a second. Think about what comes to your mind. As a person in the country where you exist, what does poverty mean? I’ve seen poverty in a third world nation and I’ve seen poverty in East St Louis, in Detroit, in Omaha, so many American towns. I didn’t like seeing the repercussions of poverty, either. As the passing of thoughts circled in that room, I listened to lots of single women, many with multiple children, discuss what it’s like not knowing where their family’s food, clothes, books will come from. It affected me, not being at a level where I was there to help those in this group, but being a part of the group. Often I have found myself in positions where I am there to aid, help, teach, fight injustices. But then, there I was, with people choosing a similar path, many who were deeply and authentically experiencing poverty. Together we discussed this nation that has so many discrepancies with health, with hunger, with obesity, with malnutrition, with diet-based diseases, with poverty.

Tonight there was an NPR On Point program about hunger in America. Joel Berg, the executive director of the NYC Coalition Against Hunger, fielded discussion about hunger, subsidies, food banks, food stamps, and many economic issues that hover around food. It was satisfying for me to hear this while being in the depths of thoughts on hunger and poverty. My present week has been spent studying outreach, gardening, and preparing to lessen the divide for access to healthy food. The radio show was distressing, as they often can be, listening to the statistics on depleting food banks, lines of people that are turned away from food banks, and the increasing health issues that are arriving daily on our neighbors doorsteps due to a lack of understanding, education, and/or access to healthy food. However! There are a few counter thoughts to dwell on: 1) Joel Berg ended the show saying, “The Economic Stimulus Package signed into law by President Obama on January 21st of next year can have a serious down payment on ending hunger in America.” So that’s a possibility. And, 2) the research I have been doing surrounding my new position as Ypsilanti’s Farmers’ Market Manager is really quite positive, the statistics all returning to increasing numbers of vendors and customers, increasing sales, and an increasing usage of food stamps and other low-income food coupons.

I live in a vibrant community that is full of opportunities for local, fresh, healthy food. There are nearby restaurants that create menus based on that philosophy. I have at least six stores in walking distance where I can by high quality groceries and produce. This is not the norm. On the other hand, low-income neighborhoods are more likely to live in a food desert where the candle lit dinner is accompanied by a two liter bottle of soda and a bag of chips that came from the corner gas station. It’s not really fair, this creamy potato soup I ate for dinner tonight. Well, maybe it is fair that I ate that soup, and it’s even okay that I relished the time spent making it. But it’s not really fair that so many others don’t have that chance to be hugged by their very own kitchen. Food and its preparation is a given right to all life. And I think good food, whole and free of preservatives, should be included in that right.

It’s a good thing that the Farmers’ Market phenomenon is growing! And people can use food stamps at growing numbers of them! And that small farmers are fighting for their rights! And that we understand the connection between diet and obesity and so many diseases…. Things will be okay. We just need to watch out for each other. I think we can do that. It’s pretty natural.

Great Meals for Two, Under $100 (It’s Possible)

I haven’t even begun to get past the title of this article. Maybe it will shock me with some grassroots thesis. But unfortunately, it probably will just isolate me even further in my fight with DHS for foodstamps, but remind me how worthwhile our “expensive” and delicious homemade Indian meal last night was, cooked for a friend’s birthday. What a weird thing to say, surprised by good food under $100.

To celebrate the day, Josh and I had Roos Roast coffee to start off the morning. We love the paper bags our roasted beans come in, printed with authentic art, the beans freshly roasted. Saturday we treated ourselves at the farmer’s market to a half pound bag and a fresh cup of lobster butter roasted coffee. The coffee we drank from the cup had been brewed cowboy style, boiled in water and then strained from the top. John, the roaster of Roos, is an interesting and somewhat addicting guy, his pores seeping from either a severely optimistic mindset or a lot of coffee. I would wage on the coffee side of things. We love this business. It’s so local, you know?

So we voted today. Our lines were about one hour and it was phenomenally satisfying. Marking in our presidential candidate with a solid black oval made my lungs fill with pure Ann Arbor oxygen. Tonight I have the privilege of bartending my last real bartending shift at the pub. We are bringing in many tv’s for the results, and voters from all over will be coming in to the watch. It’s almost the way things are supposed to be, finishing my unexpected career at a bar, heading into the late fall with new beginnings, personal and political. I’m ready. I really think I’m ready. Speaking of… I’m running really late! Here we go, stepping into an emotional night! It’s really here.

We receive emails from CAID, the Contemporary Art Institute in Detroit. They do a lot of work within and for the city of Detroit. The ideas that they produce are inspiring and inventive, crossing the boundaries of social issues in Detroit and using fine art to better its surrounding civilization. Here is one such email that we received this week that is a curatorial statement from a past show called Shelter. This copied in its entirety from the email sent by CAID.

How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold?
-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

In the early pages of Solzhenitsyn’s signature work we get a palpably bone chilling description of the gap between those who experience and expect comfort and those who do not. The problem is simply and starkly stated. The gap is one of understanding. The out side temperature is 17 degrees, Ivan’s is 99 – not enough to get him a work release for the day — a decision made by the man sitting comfortably behind a typewriter who thinks Ivan is a slacker.

First comes understanding then comes solutions.

No, that’s not right.

First comes experience then comes understanding then comes compassion then comes the attempt to find solutions.

The poor you always have with you.

Until we understand.

We are the poor.

I wish there was a requirement that anyone aspiring to become an elected political official would have to spend at least four years living below the poverty level (college would not count)

I wish those aspiring to the Priesthood or the Ministry or the position of Rabbi or Mullah would actually have to spend at least two years raising sheep. (Mohammed said that no one could be a prophet if they were not first a shepherd.) If they spent all night delivering lambs in the minus10 degree temperatures of February they would understand what it’s like to have cold so deeply rooted in their bones that they couldn’t get warm enough to fall asleep. (Preferably, this requirement would take place in Michigan)

And for every lamb lost they would experience grief and guilt beyond their imagining without the sound of rifles or bombs.

(Ok, this should be a requirement for politicians as well.)

I wish those in need would have shovels. There is no tool that gives a person such a sense of power.

A garden is power (even if a house is cardboard) and potatoes are easy to cook.

But what do I know?

I am (when all is said and done) a stonecutter, a shepherd, the father of seven children, the maker of hundreds of dollars a year, the builder of my own house, a man sitting uncomfortably cold behind his computer, writing.

Shoveling,
Shoveling,
Shoveling.

Seeking potatoes.

In the course of putting this exhibition together, I had the amazing realization that “shelter” is a noun and a verb – the measure of our humanity and culture.

Hugh Timlin, Shelter Exhibition Juror
September, 2006

Michael Pollan somehow speaks my thoughts so eloquently as to America’s food system and the network of political issues it impacts. Check it out here in the New York Times magazine, and be prepared to either skim or spend some time with it!