making food visible

Michael Pollan's NYRB article, which I like very much, is here.

in the long-legged house

A play based on some of Mr. Berry's poems has just gone up in Louisville.

This, from the Omnivore's Dilemma, was very striking:
Take the issue of scale. I could sell a whole lot more chickens and eggs than I do. The're my most profitable items, and the market is telling me to produce more of them. Operating under the industrial paradigm, I could boost production however much I wanted - just buy more chicks and more feed, crank up that machine. But in a biological system you can never do just one thing, and I couldn't add any more chickens without messing with something else. - Joel Salatin.

Seems as though this has a wider application. I am thinking a lot about not just doing one thing and the need for the different things I take in (from food to music, writing, poetry, news, conversation, etc.) to feed one another.

This was all somehow reinforced seeing Howard Fishman and band perform selections from Dylan's Basement Tapes this evening - a really great show, which reminded me of David Dark quoting Dylan on Johnny Cash - Dylan saw 10,000 years of history falling from him. The whole of our gospel-laden history is laid out before us.

industry of war and the industry of farming

Reminded twice in the past two days of war industry repercussions reaching through to today. Both of them to do with farming as industry. There was the quote above and then today in the Guardian an article on Monsanto. The odds against real change felt insurmountable again.

i can smell meat...and garlic

I am posting this just to have something to post, as much as for any other reason. I have not been happy with anything I have drawn since last week's watch - so no pictures or much original thought here. When I started the blog I thought, I will post something every day for a month and then I will relax about the whole thing. This was silly. Now I think, I will post something every week for a (er...) and then I will relax about the whole thing.

I have not seen this film but have read that it is good (it is only available in the UK). Watching the trailer I am tempted to think that it looks a wee bit sentimental. But I can like that. Especially when a wee bit homesick.

I have been thinking about food (I finished In Defense of Food this week) and community (Colossians RE:mixed was very good on this). Without community (at the broadest level) the food is never going to reach your plate. Without community, support, friendship, it is not going to be possible to achieve much of anything at all. I get this at all sorts of levels (raw need being one) but have not engaged in acting on it much recently. The trailer at some level points to some of the ways things should be. Revolution is possible. People change. Sets me off thinking about the kingdom.