Watching Jamie Oliver, Channeling Owen Meany

I can't stop thinking about Owen Meany.

Owen Meany isn't real. He is a fictitious character. His story was told in John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, which was recommended by Cate at Liberal Simplicity. In a little league game in the summer of 1953 in Gravesend, New Hampshire, he hit a ball that strikes and kills his best friend's mother. The story that followed still haunts me long after I've read it.

Owen Meany was extremely small in stature and voice, virtually childlike into his adult years. He was not small in opinions. He was THE VOICE! of his school newspaper. Each time he appeared, his voice was written as ALL CAPS. He was not just a witness of the injustices he saw in society around him, he was an activist.

Jamie Oliver introduced the word activist to some students on episode two of his Food Revolution show. Activist, are you one for what you believe in? We need more activists.

Owen Meany faced bullies in school, so did I (though not to the extent he did). Jamie is facing bullies on the school board. No matter how old you are, and what situation you are in, bullies are everywhere. We must not be afraid to take them on.

Like Owen and Jamie, we must not fear change. The owner of Patra's fast food restaurant in Los Angeles resisted any efforts to improve the nutrition on his menu, even though it was later revealed his father died of heart disease due to a poor diet, and that all he had in the end was his food. Excuse me as I invoke the spirit of Owen Meany for the following editorial:

JUST BECAUSE YOUR PARENTS DID IT ONE WAY DOESN'T MAKE IT THE BEST WAY! WE MUST NOT BE NOSTALGIC AND IGNORANT ABOUT EATING FOOD ON A DAILY BASIS THAT IS SENDING US TO AN EARLY GRAVE! PAYING HOMAGE TO HIS FATHER WOULD BE TO MAKE SURE OTHER PEOPLE'S LOVED ONES DON'T HAVE THE SAME FATE INSTEAD OF HIDING BEHIND THE EXCUSE OF THAT'S WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT.

EVERYONE KEEPS TALKING ABOUT MONEY. WELL, HERE'S A QUESTION: WHO WOULD YOU RATHER GIVE YOUR MONEY TO, ENDOCRINOLOGISTS, ONCOLOGISTS, CARDIOLOGISTS - OR FARMERS? FARMERS – PEOPLE WHO CULTIVATE AND NURTURE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES AND ANIMALS IN THEIR NATURAL STATE AND RESPECT THE SOIL, WATER AND AIR. NOT PEOPLE WHO CRAM 6 CHICKENS IN A WIRE CAGE IN WAREHOUSES WITH THOUSANDS OF OTHER CHICKENS, OR DON'T LET PREGNANT PIGS TURN AROUND, OR SPRAY SO MANY PESTICIDES ON THEIR CROPS THEIR WORKERS GET CANCER. THAT IS NOT FARMING! I DON'T THINK THOSE PEOPLE SHOULD EVEN BE CALLED FARMERS. SINCE I WAS BULLIED, I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE WHO BULLY OTHER PEOPLE, ANIMALS OR THE EARTH. BULLYING IS AN ABUSE OF POWER! AND WE AS A NATION SUPPORT IT EVEN IF WE DON'T DO THE BULLYING OURSELVES!

ARE YOU READY TO SUPPORT REAL APPLES AS MUCH AS WE SUPPORT APPLE (THE COMPANY?) BETTER PRODUCE AND LIVING CONDITIONS FOR ANIMALS AS MUCH AS WE DO BEST BUY? ASK YOURSELVES WHAT YOU VALUE MOST: THINGS, OR LIFE?

JAMIE HANDED OUT T-SHIRTS FOR THE CHILDREN THAT READ, "FEED ME BETTER." LET'S FEED OUR BODY, MIND AND SOUL BETTER! REMEMBER, NO CHANGE OR VICTORY IS TOO SMALL. ONE PERSON IS NOT A REVOLUTION. WE MUST ALL MAKE BETTER CHOICES, AND LEAD BY EXAMPLE! AMERICA, I HOPE YOU ARE WITH ME!

Find a family farm near you through LocalHarvest.

Watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution online.

Better than a mall: Old Hook Farm, Emerson, New Jersey.

Mad Men Mondays: On Nostalgia

"Nostalgia, it's delicate, but potent...in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound. It's a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. Goes backwards, forwards, and takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called "The Wheel," it's called "The Carousel." It lets us travel the way a child travels, round and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved." - Don Draper, Mad Men Season 1, talking about a Kodak Carousel that displays images invoking nostalgia.

Maybe because the news seems so dour lately, or perhaps it's part of aging, but I've been feeling nostalgic for more simpler times. In this CBS News story on nostalgia, Lemoyne College psychology professor Krystine Batcho observed that when something brings back memories, people are more likely to focus on people than items. "The things that people are most nostalgic for in their growing up years were simple things like having dinner with Grandma...or going camping -- as a family... Even if it's just getting together to have a simple meal, getting together to pray or whatever those experiences are that bring a family closer to one another." Something to remember during these trying economic times. People, not possessions, the soul remembers.

Looking back on my childhood, I recall simple "things": scratch and sniff stickers, my pink Smurfette lunch box, or earning prized Looney Toons eraser heads for getting enough gold stars in the third grade. But so much of what I remember are experiences, like...

Eating cherries and raspberries in an old farmhouse in Switzerland. We spent a lot of summers there as a child.
Making mashed potatoes with my grandfather, and eating them off of my grandparents' pretty blue plates in their home in Switzerland.
Sitting in a garden with my grandmother in Switzerland.
Dancing around the living room with my big sister to records.
Going swimming in the summertime.
Playing with our two cats.
Going sledding with my mom and dad in Van Saun park in winter, and making a snow man outside.

A new crop of enthusiastic sledders in Van Saun, on the same hill I went down as a child.


I think about smells too. One of my favorites, still is, is honeysuckle in the summer. Freshly mown grass transports me to a warm, sunny day in late June sitting in class longing for the lazy summer ahead. I think as adults, we should all get one summer off. Wouldn't that be nice?

The CBS article mentioned, "Nostalgia can be a lot about geography. So, if you grew up on the east coast, the smell of flowers made people nostalgic for their childhood. In the south, it was the smell of fresh air. In the Midwest, it was the smell of farm animals. And on the west coast, it was the smell of meat cooking or meat barbequing." Since I'm a vegetarian, good thing I grew up on the east coast.

What are you most nostalgic for? Don't life's seemingly simple pleasures and experiences sometimes seem the ones the memory most longs for? Isn't the memory trying to remind us what is most important in life?

This Time, In Praise of Records

Maybe because everything is so fast moving and disposable in our modern age, many people are looking to the classics for comfort. Typewriters to defy our upgrading-obsessed world. Letters to record our thoughts in ink that cannot be erased by "delete." Vintage clothes that have lasted decades, while many cheaply made clothes of today fade after a few washes.

There's something about spending an evening at home listening to vinyl records that is so inviting. Unlike with an iPod which you can take anywhere, a vinyl forces you to be in the moment. Savor it while you can. Sit, lie, or dance to the music. You can be transported back in time. In a Golden Girls episode, Dorothy asks Blanche if she's donated to charity and Blanche says, yes, she bought a copy of the We Are the World album in 1985. Who didn't? I try not to romanticize any era too much (each time has its positives and negatives), but wouldn't it be nice to be in more innocent times? Before words like "sexting" was in teens' regular dialogue? When sweethearts grabbed for each other's hands and not a gadget on a date? No matter how fast and convenient a download can be, it cannot compete with flipping through the liner notes on a record and admiring the art.

Today, April 16, is National Record Store Day. I stopped in at my favorite shop, Music Merchant in Westwood, New Jersey, which I've been patronizing since I was a teenager. Do you patronize any record shops, or have in the past and miss doing so? As of late, I've be browsing thrift shops as well for steals on records.

These timeless albums, Carpenters and The Sound of Music, were part of two crates of records found disposed of by the curbside many months ago. Countless gems were in the collection, from the Gigi soundtrack to Elvis Presley.
Aren't we forgetting about and throwing away so much that is great about American culture? When it was less about gimmicks and shock value (ahem, Lady GaGa). When it was just about the music, and an entire album was worth listening to, not just a download? When we didn't hear "tweets" from our favorite singers except their actual singing, and didn't take out our music to drown out other sounds of technology (like people's distracting cell phone conversations)?

I also love the community feel of record shops, book stores, the library and the like, with their more personal, human connection which we all need, over the online alternatives (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) The shop owners and librarians know me by name. That cannot be said of a computer.

The song was so right, the times they are a-changing. Change is constant. But we can tailor the times to a world we want for ourselves. I'm so glad records are part of mine.

Now, a night with Simon & Garfunkel awaits.

A Letter Praising Books

Dear readers,

I'm writing to you in letter format again, since I'm hoping to keep up the awareness and art form of letter writing, even if it's composed over e-mail or other technological form.

This week, I got a delivery of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies from a co-worker, with the most beautifully written thank you note on a stationary with her name attached to it. I thought I couldn't remember when I last received such a fine note, and this one from a child. Even on Christmas cards, I barely get more than "Merry Christmas." Truth be told, I don't recall receiving any letters in the mail since my college years.

Here's the reason for today's letter...

Some women covet shoes. Others bags. Here's what draws me like a moth to a flame: books. Filled with words that move me and stay with me, actually become part of me, ideas that challenge me, stories that make me dream, time that knows no boundaries.

Books: actual turn the page, put a bookmark in it, flip back to a cherished passage you were lingering over - those books. I hope they remain stalwarts.

I considered this recent New York Times article that Amazon will begin selling $114 Kindles which will include ads as screen savers and at the bottom of the home screen, and selling special offers. Why does consumerism need to be infused in every element of our lives? Shannon Hoon sang in Blind Melon's No Rain, "All I can do is read a book to stay awake, and it rips my life away but it's a great escape." There's no escaping commercials.

I don't despise eReaders the way many book lovers do. A friend thinks they will co-exist peacefully among books. And promoting literacy in our age of arts and education cuts is a good thing.

But I find so much of what I read through thrift shops and library book sales. I discovered my favorite new author, Keith Donohue, at thrift. His latest, Centuries of June, is coming out May 31st, and I'm actually giddy. Giddy over a book. My last read, Witch Child, which still haunts me and my mother is now enjoying, was 25 cents from a library book sale. I would have never been exposed to either if the physical books weren't bought and passed on. I love passing on a cherished book once I've read it (I keep a few for my own).

The New York Times wrote a beautiful love letter of an article to typewriters, and I thought of the parallel to books. Here are some of my favorite passages from it:

"Manual typewriters aren't going gently into the good night of the digital era.

For one, old typewriters are built like battleships. They survive countless indignities and welcome repairs, unlike laptops and smartphones, which become obsolete almost the moment they hit the market. "It's kind of like saying, 'In your face, Microsoft!'

Young typerwriter afficiandos...chafe against digital doctrines that identify human "progress" as a ceaseless march toward greater efficiency, the search for a frictionless machine.

Louis Smith, 28, a drummer from Williamsburg, stated "It's about permanence, not being able to hit delete. You have to have some conviction in your thoughts."

I loved this, and I consider the concept of permanence in our world of texts and e-mails gone so quickly, stories never passed on, and a book outlasting decades while gadgets get upgraded.

I'll write again soon, as I have a fine book calling my name. As you can see, I have far too much to read, but in my book (pun intended), that's the best kind of excess in life you can have. Happy reading.

Warmly,
Catherine

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution: Do Something

There are many things that are overwhelming in this world when we watch the news and can leave us feeling helpless, but we do have control over what food we put in our body, Gene Baur, President and Co-founder of Farm Sanctuary has expressed.

I thought of Gene's thoughtful words as I watched the premier episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (airing every Tuesday at 8 PM EST time on ABC (Watch the shows online). Like his approach or not, I hope we can agree on some of his goals, including less processed, healthier foods for all groups, and better school food, including eliminating flavored milks. One parent spoke of children drinking chocolate milk and pouring chocolate milk over cereal. I, for one, use almond 'milk' on my own.

Another parent simply observed of school food what also sums up the state of our nation's food supply: It's not okay. Repeat after me America: It's not okay.

Jamie approached a local fast food restaurant operator to revamp his menu to make it healthier, and when he asked him where his meat comes from, he had no idea. He gave a vague explanation of the supplier and admitted he knew nothing about it.

Blame shifting: it's become ingrained in American consumer attitudes as part of the entitlement culture. It's not my fault how the animals are raised or the end quality, it's the producers (even though I'm contributing to the demand). Wasn't it Don Draper in Mad Men who talked about the role of advertising is to make you feel okay about your actions? Wasn't he so right? We'll justify our bad behavior right and left with any excuse we can find to help ease our conscience.

The owner also said he wouldn't make milkshakes at home for his kids with the artificial syrup he uses in the restaurant and when Jamie, who wanted him to use real fruit, asked him to treat his customers like his children, he balked. I thought of the extremely disturbing film Food Beware: The French Food Revolution about the food culture in France (the highest pesticide user in the EU) in which farmers would not eat their own food. Not good for mine, but good for others.

When a customer was asked which quality food he preferred, it was the better one. Which one he'd buy, the cheaper one. Do we spare any expense on our entertainment budget? Do we cut out cable, expensive phones (with service plans), upgrading that television? But when it comes to life's basic essential, food, we're quick to cut costs, no questions asked. I ask a question: Why?

Plastic Nation
Jamie was rightfully horrified that school meals are being microwaved in plastic. I often wonder why people are not the least bit concerned to eat pesticide laden produce and factory farmed animals on a regular basis, but they won't drink tap water. I consider this selective fear. Consider the exposure to the plastic that the bottled water sits in (for who knows how long).

Convenience foods are a major part of our food life. At work in my office in Manhattan, I see people heating up those Lean Cuisine type foods (in plastic trays) almost every day. The plastic question gives me pause. It's in everything. I don't usually heat up food in it (I put the food on a plate and cover with a paper towel), but I heated up rice from Trader Joe's to go with my steamed vegetable dumplings, and it was packaged in plastic. I won't be doing that so much anymore. I also consider plastic holds soup I get at the farmers' market, and my organic peanut butter, tofu, hummus etc. are all packaged in it.

I'll be blogging about Jamie's show, as a vehicle for dialogue and provoking thought about our food culture. I don't want to be part of a culture that feigns or embraces ignorance, or one that is controlled, and hope you don't either. I want to take ownership over my actions and the results on others. I do not expect perfect, ideal food choices out of anyone, since I don't do that myself.

When I saw reference to a "Do Nothing" congress in The New York Times, I thought how much we've become a "Do Nothing" population when taking accountability over what's going into our body (and children's bodies) and into our Earth. Let's become a "Do Something" food culture for positive change. Don't be afraid of change, especially if it means a healthier you and healthier family.

When Michael Stipe sang in R.E.M.'s "I Wanted to Be Wrong,"
"Mythology's seductive and it turned a trick on me, that I have just begun to understand.
I told you I wanted to be wrong but everyone is humming a song that I don't understand."

I thought not of any war (which is what the song is about), but of my own enlightenment path with our food culture. Moreover did I relate to these simple words he reminds me in UBerlin, "Don't forget the change will save you."

Learn more about Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.

Check out Gene Baur's book, Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food.

Mad Men Mondays: Four Stories

Her name is Betty. She appears to have it all, but appearances are always deceiving. She puts saccharin in her coffee instead of sugar, because the forces (also frequently known in society as "they") told her it's better, that sugar is bad for your health. Yet she smokes and drinks even while pregnant because that's what was done. She is an example of the great paradox of how we compartmentalize our bad behavior and change what's easy and convenient and keep doing what's not and remain in denial.

She predictably buys Heineken at a grocery store for a dinner party when it was on display, because marketers studying our behavior know us better than we know ourselves. She is the "made" consumer. I look around at our very homogenized culture (at a rare mall outing, everyone seemed to be in "uniform," literally: UGG boots, grasping Blackberry, toting expensive (fill in the blank...Coach, Louis Vuitton, etc.) handbag.

Her name is Sally. She is Betty's young daughter. Betty catches her smoking in the bathroom, trying to emulate adult behavior, which youth so often does. But instead of simple games of dress up, America's youth seems more corrupted than ever. Sexting is now part of our vocabulary, and their toys (expensive phones with monthly service plans, pricey clothes and bags, seem bewilderingly entitlements). When Betty has a new child on the way, Betty buys Sally a Barbie as a gift from the baby. Buying happiness. Isn't that the American dream? What Sally wants is time.

Her name is Peggy. She's trying to navigate and advance in the all boys club where people refer to their secretaries as "your girl." She's mocked when she gains weight, even asked to test out a weight loss device. She wants better pay and better treatment. Some losses (pay), some battles won (the private office). She at times seems to do almost anything to fit in (going to a gentlemen's club, smoking pot). She strikes me, like Betty and Sally, as being extremely lonely.

My name is Catherine. I don't envy people like real life Betty Drapers for being thinner, attractive, having the dream wardrobe, clothes, and family, because one has no idea what life is like for other people unless you've walked in their shoes.

I don't want to be a "made" consumer and mindlessly consume. I am an independent thinker, and I question things all the time. However, I don't make the right decisions with every choice, and know standards of perfection will set you up for failure and misery.

I'm not afraid like Peggy to go outside my comfort zone (although I would never do drugs). Like Michael Stipe in R.E.M.’s sonic poem Blue, I try and see outside myself. I look at my decisions and think, how will this affect the animal, person, planet? I wonder, when, how, why, where, did the pursuit of happiness become such a tunnel vision focus, only concerned about our own happiness, regardless of its impact on others? Perhaps it has always been that way since we displaced the Native Americans.

There's a scene in the film Julie & Julia where Julie Powell says in a fight with her husband, "What do you think a blog is? It's me, me, me day after day."

I don't aspire to have a "me, me, me" blog or life, and I hope you don't either.

But I know there's a little bit of Betty, Sally and Peggy in all of us. We're all imperfect, a contradiction in terms, sometimes lonely (hopefully not too much), want recognition, trying to figure it out.

My least favorite four letter words for this post and learnings from Mad Men: (don't) envy or (be the) same, and self (it's not all about you).

Share Art: Indian Names

A Native American dugout canoe that was on display at the Steuben House in River Edge, New Jersey, thanks to the Bergen County Historical Society. George Washington watches over it, in a room he stayed in while headquartered with the army. With a new nation begun, an ancient civilization would soon be forgotten, or perhaps, seemingly just erased.

"Our injustice and hard-hearted policy with regard to the original owners of the soil has seemed to me one of our greatest national sins," Lydia Huntley Sigourney lamented. A singer from upstate New York, Natalie Merchant (the former lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs), transformed poems into sonic shape for Leave Your Sleep. One of them (on the double album) was Indian Names by Sigourney, "who was once the most popular American female writer of the nineteenth century, with an astounding seven thousand articles and eighty books published in her lifetime [born 1791, died 1865]", according to Merchant. Isn't it amazing how household names fall into obscurity? Merchant has talked about the project being about the past pulling her back and her pulling the past forward. On my own path, including the writing process, I very much relate to those sentiments.

"In 1822, at a time when most good Christian women in New England joined the temperance movement or advocated for the rights of slaves, Siguorney paid tribute to the Native Americans in an epic poem, 180 pages in length, Traits of the Aborigines of America," Merchant writes.

Artifacts from the past remain at exhibits, but think of how many names are of Indian descent. Lydia reminds us their spirit is very much with us, and rightfully so as the namesake of the lands, rivers, and mountains they revered and protected.

Reflect on these haunting words, in the moving poem (watch a live version of Merchant here).

Ye shall say they all have passed away,
That noble race and brave,
That their light canoes have vanished
From off the crested wave.

That 'mid the forests where they roamed
There rings no hunter's shout;
But their name is on your waters,
Ye may not wash it out.

'Tis where Ontario's billow
Like Ocean's surge is curled;
Where strong Niagara's thunders wake
The echo of the world;

Where red Missouri bringeth
Rich tributes from the west,
And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps
On green Virginia's breast.

Ye say, their cone-like cabins,
That clustered o'er the vale,
Have fled away like withered leaves
Before the autumn gale:

But their memory lives on in your hills,
Their baptism on your shore;
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore.

Old Massachusetts wears it
Within her lordly crown,
And broad Ohio bears it
'mid all her young renown;

Connecticut hath wreathed it
Where her quiet foliage waves,
And bold Kentucky breathed it hoarse
Through all her ancient caves.

Wachuset hides its lingering voice
Within its rocky heart,
And Alleghany graves its tone
Throughout his lofty chart:

Monadnock on his forehead hoar
Doth seal the sacred trust;
Your mountains build their monument,
Though ye destroy their dust

Learn more about Lydia Huntley Sigourney.

Learn more about Natalie Merchant's Leave Your Sleep, including a video on the project, which has very much stirred my own newfound interest in learning about poetry.