While navigating the shoals of this great waterway of words, one of the backwaters where we small fish gather to school ourselves in new ideas, I ran onto a comment that has stayed with me for days. It was part of a small thread on sustainable living, the price of oil, and other dystopian fodder. It was a continuation of themes I have read repeatedly as we have collectively mulled over the present social and political meaning of Appalachia, where I now live.
I will take the liberty of correcting the poster's grammar, while clipping his response to my argument that rural communities would not become ghost towns in a post-petroleum world:
You're out of your mind. Yeah you might eke a living out of the outback, but the future is in well planned, multiuse urban communities. End of story.
Leaving aside a long meditation I mean to come back to, a contemplation of what it means to make a living, I am fascinated by my growing awareness of urban entitlement. Except, as you'll hopefully read across the fold, it's really much more a culture of dependence on the mass-produced.
A second vignette, from the same day. The checker at Kroger paused over my bundle of cilantro, frowned. (I can remember when supermarkets were union and the checkers were familiar faces, well-versed in the products carried throughout the store, and helpful. Those days are gone, as are the days such employees can afford mortgages.) Asked what it was. How to spell it. And then, what one did with such a thing.
I did not trouble her with the fact that we meant it for a garnish on an Americanized vegetarian vindaloo recipe my wife was busy making at home. She was, let's see...my checker said she had a daughter 17 (I was wearing a band t-shirt), so she must be at least in her mid-30s. She wore enough makeup to suggest she still cares deeply about how she appears, her hair could have been any color but the colors she had made it, she was carefully dressed. I did not trouble her with our purpose for buying cilantro, just suggested that it was the key ingredient in good salsa.
"Really?" she said. "I don't cook." And so, because nobody was behind me in line and I live in a small town where such things are possible, I recited a quick recipe for making salsa that didn't oblige her to cook anything, only to chop up an onion and some garlic and open a couple cans if she liked black beans or corn. She won't make it, even though she was thinking about making it at just that moment, and it sounded good.
My argument a few days ago here -- the one that prompted the comment that I was out of my mind -- was that rural America is better suited to hard times than the cities are because we still have crop lands, we still have access to (if not immediate knowledge of) the skills and wisdom necessary to grow things. And that information age city dwellers -- painting quickly with a broad brush -- know nothing about the growing of food, nor the fixing of plumbing, nor repair of torn garments.
We have a country in the throes of multiple dietary crises, from diabetes to obesity to the varied consequences of simply eating crap and not caring. Not having or making time to care. On the far side of the discussion are writers like Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan, writing hard for local, natural, sustainable food. And a few people like me, late in life trying to figure out how to get the tractor started, and what to do with it once it's running.
I think my checker has given me part of the answer: We have, as a culture, lost the impulse to cook for ourselves. Especially the poor, who most need to conserve their resources. We're too busy, that's part of it. (And how else to explain cooking as a spectator sport on the Food Network?)
And this: Several generations of women, from the GI Bill through the dawn of the computer age, refused to learn (or to admit knowing) how to type, so as not to be chained to a secretary's desk. I wonder if subsequent generations -- men and women both -- have refused to learn to cook for many of the same reasons. Add into that the emphasis on prepared foods, the rise of fast foods, longer double-income workdays, softball practice, exurbs, the rush of urban life...who has time to cook?
It took me almost two hours this morning to make chili, from the most excellent Threadgill's recipe book. Most of the ingredients came from a few miles of home, and many of them came out of the freezer from last year's harvest. But I had those ingredients, that freezer, the luxury of that time. A certain amount of training (thanks, mom) and luck.
We're going to get caught up on energy self-sufficiency this election cycle, as we should be. But it's not just energy itself that we need to work toward making self-sufficient. We must free ourselves from the tyranny of cost accountants and economists, who have taught us that preparing our own food is a waste of time and financial resources. Here's a small suggestion, a start in an unexpected place: Require high school sophomores (the drop-out rate here is high, so let's get them early) to take a class in cooking. Home economics. Teach them to make a few simple things for themselves, explain unit pricing, the logic of shopping. The fundamentals of nutrition. Not just the girls, not just the boys hoping to meet girls, not just kids looking for an easy grade. Every high school sophomore.
It's a thought, or the beginning of a thought.
And now, because it's here to be played with, and because I'm truly curious about the results, a poll: