Landship Foods: January 2012

The Scoop

Landship Foods is inspired by the conviction that growing and eating healthy food is one of the most important things we can do for both ourselves and the broader communities of which we are a part. The name comes from the language of pre-industrial Europe. Before the enclosure movement and the associated rise in notions of private property swept England, the suffix “-ship” (as in "relationship," or "friendship") referred to an object or an abstraction with collective duties and mutual rights. Thus, the term “landship” suggests that land was an entity through which humans were joined to each other by a set of rights and responsibilities. I advocate for a revival of this awareness.

Monday, January 16, 2012

MLK and kraut

A friend sent me this link to some of Martin Luther King's most famous speeches. I listened to it as I made some sauerkraut. It is well worth a little time to recall his message of non-violence, love, and respect for all. It is still as true today is in 1967 that "either we go up together, or we go down together." This basic maxim is strikingly relevant: according to a recent article the US ranks 27th out of the 31 'developed' countries surveyed in terms of social justice. For instance, whereas in Denmark only 1 out of 27 children live in poverty, the rate in the US is more than 1 in 5. Not too long ago GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney argued that all those who claim there is too much wealth concentrated at the top of the economic ladder in the US are simply jealous...It sounds to me like most of them are probably hungry, too. Those of us who are lucky enough to not be literally hungry have to make sure that the free market ideologues don't gain any more ground in the depths of our current economic woes, or else 1 in 4 US children will grow up in poverty pretty soon.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

New-ness

2012 is here but before the new semester started I got to sneak in a sea kayaking trip down to Charleston, where I plan to be doing my dissertation research soon.

It was early in the New year, and I woke up early on the final morning to see the New day dawn.

At punctuated symbolic times like the New year and the New dawn it is more common for us to let the omnipresent concerns of "doing" fade into the experience of "being". But it is also true that every moment is a New one, and my resolution this year is to welcome them all, rather than just those that are prejudged to be important.

Pulling New carrots out of the ground is worthy of notice, too: