is the title of this NY Times piece by Mark Bittman,.
The sole purpose of my posting this for me exceedingly brief diary is to draw your attention to the Bittman piece.
If you care about food ....
if you care about the land ...
whether or not you already know about Wendell Berry ....
this is MUST READ.
I am going to push fair use with probably a bit more than I should quote, from the middle of one paragraph on:
We eat. It’s all local, food they or their neighbors or friends or family have grown or raised, food that Tanya has cooked. There’s little fuss about any of that, only enjoyment and good eating. I note that I can’t stop devouring the corn bread, and that the potatoes have the kind of taste of the earth that floors you.
And we chat, and then Wendell takes me for a drive around the countryside he was born in and where he’s lived for most of his life. As he waves to just about every driver on the road, he explains that the land was once home to scores of tobacco farmers, and now has patches of forest, acres of commodity crops and farms where people do what the land tells them to. That’s one of Wendell’s recurring themes: Listen to the land.
There really is not that much to see until I try to see it through Wendell’s eyes, and then every bit of erosion becomes a tiny tragedy — or at least a human’s mistake — and every bit of forest floor becomes a bit of the genius of nature. (If you imitate nature, he’s said, you’ll use the land wisely.)
He knows the land the way I know the stops on the Lexington Avenue subway line and, predictably, I begin feeling like the fairly techie city person I am and wonder if it could have been otherwise.
Bittman is a good writer. Berry is a superb writer, and an even better human being.
Read the Bittman.
That's an direct assignment from your (favorite) teacher.
Peace,