Thresholds and Vows

All the true vows

are secret vows

the ones we speak out loud

are the ones we break.



There is only one life

you can call your own

and a thousand others

you can call by any name you want.



Hold to the truth you make

every day with your own body,

don't turn your face away.



Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image

you were born with.



Those who do not understand

their destiny will never understand

the friends they have made

nor the work they have chosen

nor the one life that waits

beyond all the others.



By the lake in the wood

in the shadows

you can

whisper that truth

to the quiet reflection

you see in the water.



Whatever you hear from

the water, remember,



it wants you to carry

the sound of its truth on your lips.



Remember,


in this place

no one can hear you



and out of the silence

you can make a promise

it will kill you to break,

that way you'll find

what is real and what is not.



I know what I am saying.

Time almost forsook me

and I looked again.



Seeing my reflection

I broke a promise

and spoke

for the first time

after all these years



in my own voice,



before it was too late

to turn my face again.

- David Whyte, "All the True Vows"





David Whyte’s words were some of the first uttered by Bill Plotkin as he introduced us to his weekend intensive entitled: Cultivating Visionary Leadership and Soul-Infused Artistry in a Time of Global Change. Little did I know or understand at the time (as is always the case, right?) that these words, my whispers, my promises and my reflections would present me with a threshold, that once crossed would mean no turning back.

Bill believes that there are eight levels of personal / soul development (more on that later). He also believes that 75% of Western individuals have become perpetually stuck in their adolescent phase. By no means should you confuse the adolescent psychological phase with that of the physical sort. Yes, they can occur in tandem but physical growth during the adolescent period is more of a natural occurrence and passes with the awkwardness and humility that most of us are familiar with. The psychological aspect of this phase, however, is deeply personal and cultural. Unfortunately for most Westerners and an ever growing contingent of the non-Western world, our market driven constitutional delusions of individuality and isolation are at the heart of our problems culturally and collectively. Bill believes, as do I, that our collective problems stem from our deep seeded individuality and our lack of developing to our full human potential. He pushes further by stating that, “A truly initiated adult knows their place in the world.” Do you know your place in the world? Do I?

Over the next day Bill introduced us to several techniques he uses to check the ego to allow an individual to transcend into a more soulful level of consciousness. We integrated music, art, story, naming (psychological birth), dream work, and wilderness excursions into our day. My most significant learning came from our wilderness excursions. We were given the idea of finding a physical threshold whether it be a stick, log, fence, curb, etc. and cross it knowing that we were attempting to transcend the realities of the ‘real world’ by entering the world of the soul, the underworld. Walking alone in a state park I selected my threshold, crossed it and found a tree willing to listen to my silent truths. As I emerged from my conversation / meditation and stepped over the threshold between the worlds of the soul and reality, I knew something was different. I can’t put into words how I knew, nor do I want to, but I just felt it.

One of the last things I wrote down from that day was something Bill said, “Embodying our own personal mystery is the best action (and perhaps most creative?) we have to create social and cultural change.” Fast forward to now, almost three weeks since my weekend intensive and I’ve mutually ended a five and a half year relationship and reconnected with myself, with my soul. My former partner and I have our own and shared reasons for ending our intimate relationship but undoubtedly, for me, Bill’s work influenced this life event as did the conversations I’ve had recently, some of the realizations I’ve made during my time at Antioch and my own soul screaming for release, for freedom. I’m now staring into a future full of potential, mystery, adventure and unknowing... and I like it.

Food is Culture

My introductory readings for this personal study were chosen to supply me with a historical baseline from where to proceed. Those readings are “Food is Culture” by Massimo Montanari, “Indians of the Oaks” by Melicent Lee and a short essay by Margaret Mead, “The Problem with Changing Diets.”

If “Food is Culture,” then what is culture? Montanari has a reply: “What we call culture takes it place where tradition and innovation intersect. Tradition is made up of knowledge, techniques, values, which were handed down to us. Innovation exists insomuch as this knowledge, these techniques, these values modify the place of man in the environmental context, rendering him able to experience a new reality (Montanari 7).”

This book is a short, fantastic piece that immediately set me back on my heels, forcing me to reevaluate assumptions that I held as I approached this course. I had hoped to learn about the diets of the peasantry, who would have made do with only locally available foodstuffs as opposed to the higher classes who could afford the high price of imported goods from traders. But what can I learn if no account has been made.

Because the lower classes did not commit their own experiences to writing but relied on oral transmission, they have seemingly left us nothing (Montanari 36). Theoretically speaking, orally transmitted cooking is destined not to leave traces of itself over time (Montanari 35).

Additionally, I expected that this course would solidify my belief that the introduction of new foods into traditional diets was mostly harmful. Montanari has challenged that belief.

The food system is therefore an extraordinary vehicle of self-representation and of cultural exchange. Food can serve as a mediator between different cultures, opening methods of cooking to all manner of invention, cross-pollination, and contamination (Montanari 133). Every culture, every tradition, every identity is a dynamic, unstable product of history, one born of complex phenomena of exchange, interaction, and contamination. Food cultures are so much richer and more interesting when the encounters and exchanges have been lively and frequent (139).

The writing of Melicent Lee did not disappoint either. “Indians of the Oaks” is a fictional story based upon the author’s time spent with members of the Kumeyaay Indians of present day Southern CA and Northern Mexico. I learned a great deal about the foods eaten by the Indians as well as the rituals that were equally important aspects of those meals. I look forward to my interview with a young tribal member of a Kumeyaay band to learn about his diet and his attempts to retain his food heritage.

Mead’s 20-page piece was a technical look into the physiological arguments of why retaining one’s traditional diet is most efficient. It was chock full of technicism and read longer than the immaculate 140 pages of Montanari. In retrospect, I would have chosen an alternative reading to begin the course as I do not feel that the essay delivered what it’s title evoked. I was relying on the author to reinforce my belief that Montanari had challenged and came away quite disappointed. As the old saying goes, don’t judge a book by its cover, or in this case, an essay by its title.

An eye-opening and mouth watering inquiry

As we embark on our summer of studying the local food movement in Seattle, I have become more conscious of the role that food has in my life. Besides the basic nourishment factor, my life truly does revolve around food. Growing up and still today, my family plans their days, especially holidays, around what we are going to eat together. Every Sunday my parents spend the entire day cooking spaghetti sauce on a brick on their stove and on special occasions, such as every Christmas Eve dinner, they accompany the sauce with homemade raviolis. Each year before the holiday season, I start to dream of ravioli and when the day arrives to start the dough and meat rolling process, I finally feel that twinge of holiday spirit.

As I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I am recognizing how even though food has always been a central part of my life, it has been there in a somewhat superficial or incomplete manner. I have never been aware, or actually really thought about, where my food was coming from. Although the food we ate was bought from the grocery store chain around the corner, I was always under the impression that what we ate as a family was healthy and even, “pure” because the meals were homemade instead of a frozen meal from Market Day. Because cooking is a large part of my family’s culture, the act of being together while you create a meal was what always stuck out as important but the rest of the story went untold.

In reading this book which accounts for a year in the lives of a family who vows to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves or learn to live without it, my notions of the sanctity of food and the connections it can build between family and community are being transformed. The act of cooking is without a doubt significant to the author’s family and their local food journey, but it is taken to a new level since there is a story, and even a relationship, between the family and each and every tomato chopped, egg boiled and Thanksgiving turkey carved. Through this inquiry project, I am coming to learn quickly that I have been missing the most important chunk of the story of food and it feels embarrassing, intriguing and overwhelming. I’m watching myself read each chapter of this book with increased admiration to the farmers whose livelihood it is to keep us fed and a new found concern as to what corporations are controlling one of our most basic human needs.

Connections: the Duwamish and traditional food

In reading Dan Klempner's thesis about the history of the Duwamish tribe, I see several connections to what several others in this course are studying. The overall focus of his thesis is the history of how the Duwamish tribe was marginalized by the numerous efforts of settlers to reconstruct what we now know as "Seattle". His thesis also looks at the current efforts by the EPA to conduct a superfund cleanup of the Duwamish river waterway and asks if this cleanup can be conducted without further marginalizing the Duwamish tribe.

Dan writes about the struggles of the Duwamish tribe to regain and/or hold onto their cultural identity over the past decades. As the Duwamish have been pushed out of their traditional lands in this area they have often focused on enforcement of their fishing rights as stated in major treaties such as the Elliott Point one. James Rasmussen, co-chair of the Duwamish tribe told him that this narrow focus on fishing rights as part of their cultural identity leaves them vulnerable on many levels. One example is around the whole debate about what fish are safe to catch and eat from the Duwamish river. The tribe is constantly told that they shouldn't really catch and consume a lot of fish from the river due to the high levels of toxins including PCBs in the fish. Yet fish is so central to the traditional diets of the Duwamish. So as I read his comments I'm thinking of Jonathan's examination of traditional diets of several cultural groups in San Diego, and Jo's examination of salmon habitat restoration too.

I also really appreciate Dan's questioning about whether the ongoing superfund cleanup can be conducted without further marginalizing the Duwamish. This question could also be applied to other groups of people who use the Duwamish river and are marginalized groups. He interviewed several homeless people who live along the Duwamish river and they told him that they would like to have restrooms and facilities where they can shower and do laundry. Previous restrooms were taken away with the justification that having them just means that homeless folks would trash them and conduct illegal activities in them. From the perspective of the homeless people whom Dan talked to, having such facilities helps them maintain their own dignity. Plus, from my own experience of working with homeless families I know that having such facilities makes it more possible for people to maintain themselves and live - whether that's going to work, school, job training or whatever else people can do to get back on their feet.

Joyce

What are "Green Jobs"?

As part of my continuing outreach for DRCC's upcoming River festival, I talked with Melinda Nichols yesterday. Melinda works for Seattle Parks and Recreation in a summer youth employment program which educates youth ages 15 to 24 about urban forestry and related areas. She stated that no one knows what "green jobs" really are, but her students ask her "where's my Green job?". She said that the concept of "green jobs" is difficult because it isn't "real". She said that a first question to consider with respect to creating future "green jobs" is to ask "How can existing jobs be made greener?"

Her comments help me to remember all the many ways companies are trying to become more environmentally conscious and implement sustainable "green" practices that I learned about in Eco-sustainability last year. How can companies change their manufacturing processes so that they eliminate waste, and recycle everything they use? How can companies do the same in providing services to customers and clients?

Melinda also commented that forests in the Seattle area have been decimated by invasive foreign plants including ivy, laurel and blackberries. She said that in order to restore urban forests you can't just remove invasive plants and plant new ones. It's a process of adding back to nature, by adding in native plants and shrubs carefully. Her program gets 70,000 hours annually of volunteer time from volunteers. She also stated that the overall focus of her program is to "elevate their understanding of the world they live in, that this is their world". So part of their environmental education is to go on boat tours such as the DRCC tour of the Duwamish, and the tours by Seattle Pacific University of the Cedar River watershed. In addition her program tries to show its participants that they do have options for livable wage jobs in fields such as urban forestry, GPS, landscaping and construction.

Joyce

An Introduction

Have you ever sat on the edge of Crater Lake National Park in awe and admiration contemplating the vibrant blue of the water and wondered if all water should look this way, so clean and uncontaminated? Have you ever had the chance to visit the Natural Bridges National Monument, one of the least light polluted places in the country and sit in jaw dropping fascination as you gaze at the galaxy and marvel at the endless dance of shooting stars streaking across the night sky as coyotes serenade you? Have you ever hiked the Virgin River in Zion National Park leaving all the visitors behind to be greeted by the warm sun, narrowing canyon walls and the welcoming coolness of the river when your only companions are the ravens overhead? Have you felt the rush of solitude and eerie feeling of complete stillness while descending down into the lava tubes in Lava Beds National Monument with only your flashlight for comfort and company?
Why is it important to preserve these places? What makes them so special? I think it would be safe to say that anyone who has ever visited a national park has had some feeling of appreciation and sense of the grandeur and unspoiled beauty all around them. These are the places where it seems that time stands still, the land and animals seem free of human development and encroachment. They are the places that are still wild and free, that may look very similar to the way they did hundreds of years ago, especially if one ventures into the backcountry. Millions of people from all over the world visit the national parks every year for reasons that cannot be found anywhere else but in the parks. Our parks are abounding with a multitude of cultural, historical, biological, ecological, educational, recreational and inspirational experiences for all to enjoy. They are the last of the unspoiled places in the United States. They are home to some of the most diverse and rare species on the planet. They are wild and untamed. They are my passion, my love, my salvation, my inspiration, and my peace.

But who am I? My name is Laura and I am a student, an apartment manager, a hiker, a skier, a climber, a kayaker, and a nature lover. I am one person who cares about our country’s national parks. I have worked in two national parks and they allowed me to live and work in some of the most beautiful places in our country and to get to know the intricacies and connectedness that our parks share with the rest of our world. Most of my vacations or extended road trips will include destinations to the national parks for hiking, enlightenment, inspiration and enjoyment. I recently took a 4000 mile trip to Glacier, Yellowstone, Arches, Canyonlands, Natural Bridges, Lava Beds and Crater Lake. Along the way I informally interviewed park personnel and asked many questions about climate change and its effects on the parks. Initially I got a lot of canned responses, very official and government like, referring me to park web sites and other links to their research and studies. Eventually I learned to ask the right questions. It was amazing and inspiring to see the eyes of the ranger at the visitors center light up once I asked about more than the usual questions of “What is good to see in the park?” and “How long does it take to drive through to see it all?” What I found were park service employees who were lively and passionate about their parks. They were willing to talk at length about the effects of climate change within the park and how it is affecting the fragile ecosystem. For instance, Skull Cave in Lava Beds National Monument is a short walk through a lava tube that culminates in very steep staircases leading you down into the earth to reach the bottom of the cave where ice is on the ground year round. The ice floor used to be open to visitors so they could stand on the ice in freezing temperatures when they came from above 90 degrees just moments ago. Years of visitors carrying dirt and sediment on their shoes has degraded the clarity of the ice and has consequently caused its depletion. Increasing average global temperatures has also lead to the depletion of the ice in Skull Cave, just one small example of the changes our national parks are facing with regards to climate change. Likewise at Glacier National Park in Montana, many of the glaciers are but a fraction of what they were just 50 years ago. Perhaps this park will need to be renamed in the near future. In short many of the reasons we initially preserved these places as national parks or monuments are because of the unique qualities found only in that specific ecosystem. Climate change has begun to affect the very reasons why we set aside these places as pristine or unique. If these unique qualities cease to exist and our parks change beyond recognition will we still value them? What if there were no more glaciers in Glacier NP? What if the bison were gone from Yellowstone and Old Faithful never erupted again? How would we feel if we could never again see the azure of the water at Crater Lake? I feel it is vitally important to understand and study the effects of climate change on our parks in hopes to help them defend themselves from this change. If unchecked, unstudied, and not understood, the parks are susceptible to species extinction, resource depletion, pollution, and catastrophic disease and insect infestation. I deeply believe that we can make a difference. I am only one person passionate about something, yet that is where change begins. Caring individually is a wonderful thing, but collectively caring about something is where social change blossoms and prospers. America’s Best Idea needs your help. Please support your National Parks by visiting them and voting for increased funding. Your children and I will thank you.

Food Justice

In response to Britt's comment about uploading videos, I want to share one that I think is phenomenal! Unfortunately, I can only give you the link to the website, http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/watch/goodfood/food_justice_a_growing_movement.

Media That Matters hosts a film festival and all the videos are archived on their site. I encourage everyone to explore all the interesting and inspiring films available!!

Thanks,

s.

If you would have told me that I would be spending time in graduate school investigating how to connect people interested in salmon recovery through internet tools like Twitter and blogging, I would have turned my nose up at you. In fact, I couldn’t even figure out how to post to this blog until today. You might be thinking that things aren’t really looking good for me considering I don’t even have a Facebook account and this is my first blog entry EVER (note the year). But alas, here I am wondering how to share information, tools, and ideas across regions, groups and cultures in order to build more a collaborative and cohesive strategy to restore wild salmon.

Needless to say, this seems like a daunting task and I am often wondering if it is even possible to bring such diverse interest groups together through something as abstract as the internet. This is definitely the road less traveled. However, the more I talk about it with people, the more momentum the idea gains and the more connections I make. Two months ago, I crossed paths with a woman who implements Kitsap County’s salmon restoration program and is a strong champion for strengthening the dialogue among salmon recovery participants. Just yesterday I was talking with one of the regulars at the coffee shop in which I work. She has been coming in before I started working there nine months ago, but never had I known what she did for a living. Turns out she works with social media to bring together communities around ideas or businesses and is interested in helping me get started using WordPress, anyone familiar?

So the lesson this week is a reiteration of the importance of community, whether it is on the internet or in the corner coffee shop. Often our best resources are right in front of us. I find comfort in the thought that even if my idea for an online dialogue centered on salmon restoration flops, I have built invaluable relationships with people I may never have otherwise.

More on the history of salmon restoration next time…

Are Traditional Diets Important?

Traditional diets connect people to their cultural history, but more significantly than that, peoples have co-evolved with food. The co-evolution of peoples with their place-specific diets has allowed the consumers to efficiently assimilate into themselves the necessary nutrients from regionally available foodstuffs. Changes in diet have consistently occurred over time, though on a gradual basis, in tune with the migration of people. New food items are introduced into diets by traders and travelers and if accepted have been cultivated when possible. Subsequent generations of the introduced crop become adapted to the region as well as to the people who inhabit it.

For those groups whose diets evolved more rapidly than the consumers, re-establishing a connection to the diet that they evolved with would contribute to the reduction in diet-related disease. Additionally a reconnection could act as a vector through which an increased connection to ones cultural history could be achieved. America has become so proficient at exporting its diet to the world, it has become desired globally. Now the foodstuffs alone do not suffice, the ideology is desired and has begun to permeate the belief systems of other regions as well. The efficiency of globalism in making the foodstuffs themselves and the ideology behind their production widely available has allowed for their adoption more rapidly than the novel consumers can evolve to efficiently utilize thus leading to disease in the forms of diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Peoples that have immigrated to different global regions may not be able to maintain their traditional diet due lack of availability but their past could inform new food choices. There are several traditional meals that I can recall eating regularly as I grew up, none of which I consume any longer. The most immediate impact I may have on promoting other people to readopt their traditional diet, or a variance of it, would be to do so myself. By replicating traditional meals and the experience surrounding it; the gathering, preparing and eating of the food with others, I may prompt others to do the same.

Muddling Through

These first few weeks will involve lots of reading on the history of Germanic tribes and researching what historians know about them and their culture. The first book I'm reading is called Before France and Germany by Patrick J. Geary and is a great preliminary read. One of the things that I've noted so far is the fact that the "Barbarians", as the Romans called them, did not have written history but relied on oral traditions. While this is not surprising, it proves to be difficult in truly understanding the Germanic culture before becoming "civilized". Geary points out that “when historians attempt to understand the barbarian world of late antiquity they must invariably turn to the written sources of their civilized neighbors, the Greeks and Romans…however…in describing the barbarian world, ancient ethnographers and historians had their own purposes and followed their own conventions that had little to do with what might today be called descriptive ethnography.” (39) The author goes on to describe how the Greeks and Romans saw the barbarians through a certain lens and often did not understand or misinterpreted their actions. Like a game of telephone spanning several centuries, there are invariably misprints and falsehoods that we have to muddle through to find understanding.

In reading this I feel thrown back to first quarter, talking about our mental models. How can we understand a people through the mental model of another, foreign culture? Is it even possible? Even if not, some of the descriptions the Romans gave are in the least entertaining: “They are generally tall, blond, and foul-smelling; they lived not according to fixed, written laws but according to senseless and unpredictable customs. They are fierce and dangerous in war, but slothful, easily distracted, and quarrelsome in peace.” (41) But I wonder, what is really going on here? If this description is accurate and I were to think of how this relates to German culture today, I would say that they are enjoying life. While modern Germans have a reputation for being hard workers, they also enjoy afternoon naps followed by coffee and cake and lively banter on the state of the world. I find it interested (though not surprising) that cultural misunderstandings have not gotten better over time. This churns my mind even further to think about cultural misunderstandings in my own life, specifically in Houston and the large Hispanic population. General stereotypes about all “Mexicans” abound in Southeast Texas because of cultural misunderstandings. But, I digress… the wheels are turning and its sure to be an interesting ride…

Food/Culture Group Guidelines

Group Members: Anise, Jonathan, & Stephanie

Blogging: Anise and Jonathan have separate blogs but will re-post those on the Coll. Methods blog so that we can all collaborate on the same forum. We will each post once a week and respond to each others' posts.

Meetings: Since we are all basing our studies on food, we'll meet once a month in a potluck or collaborative cooking setting while discussing our findings and further exploring our studies. For the final food/harvest ceremony Jonathan and Stephanie will aid Anise in leading the group.

Ecology: A New Story

I've posted about a talk I attended by Brian Swimme over on my blog. An excerpt:

Swimme opened by letting us know that he has been influenced by his mentor, Thomas Berry. Berry’s message that the environmental destruction around is happening because we have forgotten the sacred dimension of nature was a key part of the talk. Swimme, as a scientist, has explored how science has contributed to this forgetting. Rooted in 18th century thought, science sees the universe as a machine, and its parts as lifeless (mechanism). Religion was also affected by this form of thought, forgetting the presence of the divine throughout the natural world.

Swimme called this a tragedy, and I would certainly agree. “If the universe is just stuff, then it’s there for us to manipulate – a resource.” Viewing everything that makes up our planet – sparkling rivers running through a forest, salmon returning home, the skin of sea otters, trees older than human memory, a mountain created millions of years ago, the muscles and milk of herbivores, the labor of humans – as a “resource” belies its sacredness, its divine presence, its life. The use of the word “resource” shows how the universe is viewed – something Swimme suggested would amaze and disgust future generations – and he preferred to call it the “r-word.” Every time I have come across that word since his talk has given me a moment’s pause, and something to reflect on. Try this yourself, and see how pervasive it is.

Swimme mapped out the challenge that we now face:

1. To awaken to the current unraveling, to re-evaluate what we are about. He noted that it is not easy to eliminate a species, and given how often that is happening, there is something deep and pervasive going on.
2. To find a way to experience directly the immanent presence of the divine. The universe, Swimme argues, is permeated with divine light, that wants to create, to do something.