{"id":2449,"date":"2017-05-18T18:32:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T00:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=2449"},"modified":"2018-06-01T09:21:40","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T15:21:40","slug":"cooking-pulling-weeds-and-political-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=2449","title":{"rendered":"Cooking, Pulling Weeds And Resisting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_3001-e1495153785710.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-2459 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_3001-e1495153785710-768x1024.jpg?resize=474%2C632&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"632\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_3001-e1495153785710.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_3001-e1495153785710.jpg?resize=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1 225w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_3001-e1495153785710.jpg?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_3001-e1495153785710.jpg?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I never thought I&#8217;d hear myself say this: Trump gave me a huge gift when he was elected.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s hard to imagine myself saying that because my inspiration usually comes from very different kinds of sources. Yet perhaps it&#8217;s just the mind- and spirit-numbing nature of Trump&#8217;s\u00a0presidency that compels me to reexamine myself and clarify my course through life.<\/p>\n<p>Like the 2008 recession, Trump&#8217;s presidency causes me\u00a0to take additional steps on my journey\u00a0toward self-awareness. Taking these steps involves some education\u00a0and some house-cleaning to bring my values in different segments of my life into alignment. Most importantly\u00a0I had to recognize both my limitations and my abilities as I figure out how best to respond to\u00a0an event\u00a0I experience as nothing less than a cataclysmic step backward in our culture and democracy not to mention our responses to a suffering planet.<\/p>\n<p>I never considered myself a &#8220;political&#8221; person. In fact, until 2008, I was fairly apathetic for reasons I&#8217;ve explored with myself in recent months. Post Jan. 20, I tried to get politically involved in the traditional sense of that word. I attend meetings, I volunteer occasionally, I go on marches. I&#8217;ve learned a lot, but one of the things I have learned is that this isn&#8217;t the best place for me to contribute passionately and knowledgeably. Of course I&#8217;ll still continue to be as involved as I can, but I needed to focus my energies in other directions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I deepened my exploration of\u00a0veganism through my own cooking and\u00a0writing.<\/li>\n<li>I jumped at the opportunity to create recipes to go with the boxes that come from my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobsfreshandlocal.com\/\">Bob&#8217;s Fresh and Local<\/a><\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>I understand my volunteer work in the\u00a0farm fields in a different way, as something much deeper and broader than physical and spiritual health.<\/li>\n<li>With a fairly extensive background in academics behind me but little involvement for a quarter of a century, I decided to work my way through the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. I wanted to discover in greater depth what it has to say about human life in relation to the planet and other life on it. My blog posts on this topic, largely notes to myself as research, will become the basis of a book. More importantly, my research is providing me with a strong foundation for steps toward meaningful activism. At the very least, it provides me with information I use in evaluating people and policies.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m teaching for the first time in many years, which demands from\u00a0me further clarification of\u00a0my thinking and message.<\/li>\n<li>I decided to engage with my synagogue in ways I haven&#8217;t before, to take on a role beyond participating in services and preparing food now and then. While it&#8217;s shaky ground for me to take on a role in shaping policy,\u00a0I hope it will be a growth opportunity\u00a0I can manage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think these steps toward more and deeper engagement in various aspects of my life will begin to converge at some point. As my passions become more focused, a path toward taking on my part, however small, in reshaping our world will become apparent.<\/p>\n<p>My engagement with food and the environment developed over the course of 45 years, not so much through academic or professional expertise but through hands-on involvement. I had the opportunity to create a large organic garden in 1972 following the birth of\u00a0 my first son, the same year that hippies tore up the turf in Berkeley, California. I think part of their impulse probably matched my own, a reaction against Big Food, Big Ag and Big Brother, who don&#8217;t always know best. I felt that packaged foods, pesticides and our alienation from nature were somehow an assault on our physical and spiritual health.<\/p>\n<p>I read as much as I could put my hands on at the time. One little book in particular drove my decision to become vegetarian, a path that has had its zigs and zags. That book was <em>Diet for a Small Planet<\/em> by Frances Moore Lappe. Her message still resonates with me today, that there is a social justice connection to what we eat.<\/p>\n<p>Until I worked in the food industry, though, I didn&#8217;t make that connection at a gut level. Then one day I was writing a post and came across an article that mentioned the\u00a0life expectancy is lower in Mississippi than in the rest of the country and related it, at least in part, to food culture &#8212; and to the non-availability of truly nutritious food.<\/p>\n<p>As Michael Pollan pointed out, yams in the produce aisle don&#8217;t have health claims attached to them since that won&#8217;t make money for Big Food, and our government subsidizes things like corn, that produces cheap high fructose corn syrup. And as that article pointed out, large food deserts force people into gas stations for food products, and gas stations are even less likely than supermarkets to feature nutritious life-sustaining foods. Something clicked about the relationship between food, social justice and public policy, and I really got it.<\/p>\n<p>There was another milestone\u00a0two or three years ago, well after I began my exploration of veganism. As I expanded my understanding of justice beyond the human realm, I worked\u00a0hard to adjust my cooking practices, to separate from well-loved recipes, to find my new cooking philosophy or adapt my old one (real food) and to represent myself through food\u00a0passionately and deliciously among family and friends already wearied from my years of vegetarian experiments with them. Then one day I looked down and noticed my leather shoes and realized with some shock how segmented my own thoughts are. I grew up in a world in which animal products were pervasive. There was simply a disconnect for almost all of us between the lives of our fellow creatures and the food we ate and clothes we wore. Despite my efforts to resolve that disconnect, there it was.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s curious how \u00a0we can think we&#8217;re fully conscious, making choices based on our values&#8230;and then\u00a0discover our own human frailty, the ways we are embedded in cultural perspectives. And that took me to a path of reexamining another cultural perspective, our deeply held belief that we are superior to other creatures. \u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=1462\">My husband&#8217;s offhand comment<\/a><\/strong> started me along my thought path. My biblical studies are guiding\u00a0my next steps.<\/p>\n<p>My studies and cooking are one avenue to focus my thoughts, prod myself to examine my cultural assumptions and\u00a0modify my course through life. My work at the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobsfreshandlocal.com\/\">farm<\/a><\/strong>, something I had time to take on once I sold my cafe, is another.<\/p>\n<p>I love the beautiful, fresh real food sparkling in the sun with drops of moisture. I love having my hands in the dirt that produces\u00a0the food. I love experiencing the rhythm of the seasons in my body as I work out in the fields. I love the little lessons I learn in each moment that I work. I imagine the deep wisdom I find in the Bible comes in part from its source in a more agrarian world.<\/p>\n<p>But it is the complete exhaustion at the end of the time I work in the fields, especially at the beginning of the season when I&#8217;m rusty after the cold months when my exercise levels drop, that takes me back to <em>Diet for a Small Planet<\/em> and the lessons I learned from Frances Moore Lappe about social justice. Considering those who do this work for long hours every day, struggling to support families on little pay and with no recognition or appreciation, living with insecurity and worse, brings me back to her themes.<\/p>\n<p>This connection, this social justice theme, connects me to biblical themes of\u00a0justice within communities and among nations, justice for all life on the planet, environmental justice. It reminds me that\u00a0every area impacts and influences the others. It is all interconnected.<\/p>\n<p>I was struck this week by this line from Leviticus 18:28 following a set of moral injunctions: &#8220;&#8230;that the land vomit not you out also, when ye defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.&#8221; Like human beings, like our fellow creatures on the planet, the land itself has moral consciousness. It is all interconnected,\u00a0and our sins against one impact the other.<\/p>\n<p>Cooking and digging in the dirt along with biblical\u00a0stories, then meaningful study of this text, have had a significant role throughout my life in shaping and reshaping my consciousness about\u00a0creation, my place in it and what I need to do at this time in our history.<\/p>\n<p>And so I arrive at how cooking and working the fields became my political activism. \u00a0First, my work encouraged me to lift the veil, to look at what is behind the things I see in front of me, whether on my plate, in the claims on commercial foods, or in the pages of the Bible.<\/p>\n<p>Each breath I take with clarity of consciousness, each bite of food, each interaction with another person or with a community of people, is activism. Only with clarity of consciousness about the reasons for my own choices can I have a larger role in shaping my communities.<\/p>\n<p>And there are many ways for me to do that, to be active, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>cultivating the habit of looking behind the veil,<\/li>\n<li>sharing ideas about the implications of what we eat<\/li>\n<li>sharing the specifics of delicious, healthful, affordable eating,<\/li>\n<li>supporting local, sustainable agriculture, and<\/li>\n<li>supporting other community efforts directed toward food and environmental justice.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I continue to learn about so many aspects of my world, so many things I didn&#8217;t know or that I kept from\u00a0coming to full consciousness. I&#8217;ve lived long enough to see how the action of many individuals can change things and to learn that ONLY the action of many individuals can reshape the culture. And I have Trump to thank for intensifying my effort and compelling me to find the political meaning in\u00a0my work.<\/p>\n<p>From<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobsfreshandlocal.com\/\"> Bob&#8217;s Fresh and Local<\/a><\/strong> website:<\/p>\n<div id=\"element38\">\n<div><span class=\"size14 TrebuchetMS14\" style=\"color: #633100; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><i>\u201cBut the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.\u201d<\/i><\/span><span class=\"size14 TrebuchetMS14\" style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><i>\u00a0~\u00a0<\/i><\/span><b><i>Wendell Berry &#8211; The Unsettling of America<\/i><\/b><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For more, visit my blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vegetatingwithleslie.org\">vegetatingwithleslie.org<\/a>, \u201cLike\u201d me on FaceBook\/<b>Vegetating with Leslie<\/b> or follow me on Twitter, @<b>vegwithleslie<\/b>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I never thought I&#8217;d hear myself say this: Trump gave me a huge gift when he was elected. It&#8217;s hard to imagine myself saying that because my inspiration usually comes from very different kinds of sources. Yet perhaps it&#8217;s just the mind- <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=2449\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[108,127,90,34,20,5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible_torah","category-nonhuman-animals","category-politics","category-sustainability","category-thoughts","category-vegan","category-vegetarian"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Cooking, Pulling Weeds And Resisting - Vegetating with Leslie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/vegetatingwithleslie.org\/?p=2449\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cooking, Pulling Weeds And Resisting - Vegetating with Leslie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I never thought I&#8217;d hear myself say this: Trump gave me a huge gift when he was elected. 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I raised a family, owned a farm and enjoyed tending a large organic garden and orchard 40 years ago. I restored a log cabin and enjoyed it as an energy conscious home way before energy consciousness was publicly conscious. I hold a number of advanced degrees focused on religion, literature and languages. I published a chapter in a book on women's rituals in Judaism. I have enjoyed a variety of careers including teaching, educational programming in the not-for-profit sector, technology and web management. For the last eight years I have owned a five-star (YELP) vegetarian cafe. This year we were voted best vegetarian dining experience in McHenry County by the readers of the Northwest Herald. I write articles on food for a local newspaper. 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