My thoughts on Permaculture were posted on Construction Lit Mag…
The article, posted today on Construction, talks about my visit to Tierra del Sol, a permaculture farm just outside Oaxaca, and introduces the context of my group’s trip to Mexico… See the full article here: http://www.constructionlitmag.com/culture/mexican-food-chronicles-introduction-permaculture/
A Mystical Journey on the Wings of the Maguey
My journey through Mexico in January can be traced back on the wings of the magical, mystical maguey plant: it marked my time there not in any particular objectively obvious way, but in the way that the majestic rolling hills unfold towards the horizon, and it is only on second glance that you notice they … Read more
Permaculture at Tierra del Sol
When I looked over the fence from Tierra del Sol into the next farm, I saw rows of corn stalks, withered and dried, stretching out practically to the foot of the hills – the remnants of the previous harvest. I saw an enormous monoculture, dependent on one crop, concerned with extracting maximum production from the … Read more
La Preciosita
In La Preciosita, a small migrant community village about an hour outside of Puebla, Mexico, the streets are quiet when the sun is at its peak. The air is dry and still. The hills unfold endlessly outward, dotted with maguey plants with leaves spread wide like a hawk in flight. About 1/6 of the Puebla … Read more
A Coffee Plantation in Oaxaca
My professor, Dr. Carolyn Dimitri, who is leading our class’s trip to Mexico, asked me to write a guest post on her blog. You can read the original post here. Monday was a day of ascents: we rode up the mountain from Oaxaca to San Augustin Loxicha over the course of five hypnotizing hours filled … Read more
USDA Farm to School Grants
Note: this post first appeared on the Slow Food USA blog. On November 14th, USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced the first-ever USDA Farm to School grants, which totaled more than $4.5 million for 68 different projects around the country, and will go a long way towards reshaping the interplay between our children, the schools … Read more
Big Money, Soda Taxes, and GMOs
Note: this article first appeared in Construction Lit Mag. While big money did not win out in the presidential election (see: the amount of money spent by Crossroads GPS, Karl Rove’s Super PAC, and its success rate in the races it tried to influence), when it came to food issues on the ballot in California, … Read more
Darkness in the Red Hook Houses
Sharing food connects us to our primal urge to gather together, to rebuild our tired, weary bodies while sitting around the proverbial fire. If nothing else, that is what makes us human: feeling the need to join others, to find restoration there. We can rise even further than that, by recognizing that we all belong … Read more
The French Food Chronicles, Part III: Synthesis
Note: this article first appeared on Construction Lit Mag. Though I was in Paris, at the Marché Raspail, and the presence of French speakers shouldn’t have surprised me at all, when I heard the French language around me at that particular moment, I knew that something special, something new was happening. It was lunch hour on a … Read more
Visions of McCarren Park Urban Farm
Last Thursday, my friend Ryan and I (and a group of other North Brooklyn residents) attended the participatory budgeting meeting for the 33rd District. It was a chance for community members to voice concerns about problems in the neighborhood, present ideas about how to fix those problems, and start the process of deciding how … Read more
