My Mashup of “Honesty”
Last week acclaimed food photographer Brian Ferry wrote a post about honesty. He confessed: “I’m tired of taking photos of food, and I’m really tired of looking at photos of food online (perfect meals and those perfect table settings). It all looks the same. The faux-urban-rustic aesthetic, with mason jars for glasses and twine-wrapped napkins. The perfectly placed spoonful of brown sugar on the table (in a vintage/antique spoon, please), the sugar crystals artfully scattered around the spoon. You know what I’m talking about.”
He went on to say, “I want to shake it up, make it feel personal and real, make it really mean something to you. I’m not 100% sure how to do this, but I’m working on it.
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#F27
Today was a big day for big food.
Judge Naomi Buchwald ruled that farmers could not sue seed giant Monsanto for the threat of transgenic seed contamination. At the same time, people from all over the world gathered to protest the consolidation of our food system. This growing movement represents a sea change in people’s relationship with food, our most intimate commodity. From guerilla gardens to home-cooked feasts for strangers to today’s seed exchange at the New York Stock Exchange (poster above), people are finding creative ways to connect to food and to each other.
Creative expression is a critical part of this - and many - grassroots revolutions. It can make something distant feel close.
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Depleting, Sustaining, Transforming
I have been thinking a lot about this site and what it’s meant to be.
Do we continue to wrestle with the conditions of change? Do we focus more acutely on cultural sustainability and the need to move beyond the people/ planet/ profit paradigm?
Should we be satisfied with an inquiry into, “What Sustains Us?” when we need to go beyond sustaining to thriving? Is it too big of a chasm to cross over from our current state of depleting to one of resilience and flourishing?
I am not sure.
I know I want this site to embody the change we wish to see. To be curious and beautiful and strong. To make big leaps. So I think it’s time for a new identification. Please let me know if you agree.
Metamorphose comes from the Greek μεταμόρφωσις meaning ”transformation, transforming.”
met·a·mor·phose
[met-uh-mawr-fohz, -fohs] verb, -phosed, -phos·ing.
Tiny Monsters (a story about change - or something bigger)
Yesterday afternoon filmmaker Joshua Homnick told me a story about change. I can’t remember all of it. This is a bastardized version of the story.
It was about a girl, having a dream.
In the dream, she finds herself being tormented by monsters. The monsters are chasing her, hurting her. She tries to run from them, reason with them, all attempts to change the pieces of the dream.
And then she tries something radical.
She wakes up.
She goes from trying to change the situation, to transforming it.
From Ecotricity, a British electric service provider that provides a clean choice for British citizens who use electricity.
“…Accept that the environment is a large, messy problem that requires a large mess of solutions, big and small, conservative and radical.” Julian Baggini, Financial Times, 12/31 - 1/1/12
How good it feels
To drive an electric vehicle west toward Topeka, at 7AM and see a soccer mom in her minivan, waking up her kids, so they don’t miss it. To see her wave a thumbs up. Ready to buy one for her family.
HOW PETALS ADAPT
Via jtotheizzoe:
The genetic inheritance of color. Flower petals from Hans Rasmuson’s studies of flower petal inheritance patterns in Godetia, circa 1920.
Walked past this guy near the metro station at Hollywood and Vine. I didn’t stop to get a hug because I was late, but even seeing him standing there, in business attire, in the business of… giving free hugs, I felt like I had gotten one.
I happened to walk by this, posted in a tiny patch of green in front of a plain, non-store-front, non-descript business building on Larchmont near Melrose in LA. I’m posting this now so you can start working on your picture. I’ll have my picture for you tomorrow.
If history can be said to be a version of the truth written by human winners or losers of various wars to justify their actions and motivations, then which side of the winner/loser table are humans sitting on when we write the history of the world?
