No such thing as a free lunch (literal edition)
It never ceases to amaze me that people are surprised by things like this: Kids in England don’t like the healthy lunches the schools are serving them. Why are they surprised that kids will happily...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We Dare Defend Our Rights
Read enough history and you find yourself crowded by the dead. They mill about as palpable as the living, and more numerous. Stoop to retrieve a slobbery tennis ball and assailed by the recollection...
View ArticleForget the USDA
I try to avoid politics on this website, but there has been so much hand-wringing this week in the sustainable agriculture community about Barack Obama’s agriculture choice for Secretary of Agriculture...
View ArticleCan we just eat, Mom?
Is anybody else getting tired of the constant drama about what we should and shouldn’t eat? Maybe it is because I have been thinking about this stuff for fifteen years and I am just tired of it, but it...
View ArticleLocal ground and rhetorical ground
Benjamin Cohen writes on Grist this week (“What bean-counting ‘contrarians’ miss about the local-food movement”) about some issues I’ve been mulling over since getting involved in the “local food...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Two gardens
Behind my house is a patch of ground that used to be a garden, a raised bed. Our old dogs left it alone; the new ones persisted in digging it up. So I took down the boards, shoveled out the dirt,...
View ArticleKeep home economics in the home
In today’s New York Times, Helen Zoe Veit argues that America’s public schools ought to revive the teaching of home economics. That simply isn’t going to happen, not given the state of public school...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Boycotts, action, and penance
Last week, walking across campus to the library, I was interrupted (I don’t want to say “accosted”) by a woman in her early twenties wearing a Greenpeace t-shirt. “Are you on your way to teach, or do...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Redistricting and electoral fairness: the view from Eno precinct
As if the election wasn’t annoying enough, I got redistricted this year here in North Carolina. I haven’t moved, but I’m in a completely different congressional district — or, rather, I will be when...
View ArticleArea man still not eating his veggies
Despite pleading and prodding from the feds, kids still won’t eat their veggies. A New York school district has decided to forgo federal funding for school lunches because of complaints about mandated...
View ArticleLimits and conscientious consumption
Originally published at Front Porch Republic. Lincoln, I was informed when I was nine years old, freed the slaves. I learned that lesson well; I was an excellent student. Lincoln freed the slaves and,...
View ArticleThe angry poet lashes out at his solicitors on election day
Damn you, sirs! My vote is not my voice! —He cried in futile fury at his email— As if for quadrennia I silent slumbered And woke to make myself a number! A vote is a mere puny choice Of wan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A brief history of USDA nutritional advice
The USDA has made a big deal the last couple of years about its “healthy plate” model of good eating, which replaces the old food pyramid, which replaced the four food groups, which replaced… well… I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fat(e), free will, and forgiveness
A hundred-odd years ago, gluttony was a sin, but fat men could be seen merely as successful. We seem to have reversed the calculus. Some of the new research on possible causes of obesity is...
View ArticleMeat and mystery
Another day, another tale of mystery meat. Nestle voluntarily recalled two of its Hot Pocket products as part of a larger meat recall…. These products may have been affected by a recall by Rancho...
View ArticleThe eve of destruction
A sermon preached at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church in Durham, N.C., February 28, 2016. Gospel: Luke 13:1–9 It’s 30 AD, give or take. Galilee is abuzz with the news of yet another atrocity of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
One man’s hope is another man’s nightmare
Nine days from Thanksgiving and the leaves still cling to the trees, many of them, even the half-shorn maples still gold and rusty, the oaks just dipping the edges of their leaves into copper. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The mad farmer, after the election
Every Wednesday, as part of our homeschool curriculum, I read a poem with my daughter. We talk about what it means and whether we like it (and why). Sometimes we analyze it. Then she responds by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Conserving our self-image
I like birds, as you may notice if you read much around here. I find them fascinating. I’m alternately amazed by and fearful for the complexity of habitats and migratory patterns; I worry about the...
View ArticleOne man’s hope is another man’s nightmare
Nine days from Thanksgiving and the leaves still cling to the trees, many of them, even the half-shorn maples still gold and rusty, the oaks just dipping the edges of their leaves into copper. I...
View Article
