Song

I know now I had no idea how much it meant back then; how much I had nor how unique it was. Every year ten or fifteen families as well as a few stragglers would show up a few days before Christmas, each carrying some sort of dish to share. Main dishes, salads, breads, desserts, dressings, drinks, chips, salsas, the list goes on and on. Mum would have made her famous homemade lasagna, both a meat and a vegetarian, their rich aromas barely contained by the aluminum foil before billowing forth to fill the house with their intoxicating goodness. Two families would always come earlier than the rest. These were our closest friends. We would do a gift exchange before the others arrived and I relished in the feeling of importance. Not that they came over just for me, but that for bit of time, I had a friend or two all to myself, before other kids came and stole them from me.

When the others arrived, the kids would immediately tear away from their parental units to our unfinished but spacious attic to play with any number of toys. Cardboard bricks, one pair of rollerblades accompanied by two battered hockey sticks and a puck, plastic golf clubs, and of course, the annual piñata that my brother, myself, and mum had painstakingly made out of paper maché. We would play our hearts out while the parents did whatever boring things parents did. Finally the call to eat would ring up the ladder from the kitchen and we would push and shove to be first in line to fill our plates.

After shoveling down the food without a thought, we’d return back upstairs until the second call came. A little less hurriedly we’d make our way downstairs to the living room and sit with each of our families as my mum would hand out the lyrics packets. She would take her place behind a guitar and the singing would begin. Timidly at first, as we all fell into rhythm, as we all remembered that we could trust each other and actually let our voices be heard. Soon the carols filled the room and threatened to burst through the windows into the frigid night air. We would stop only to vie and vote for the next song, then once again our voices and hearts would unite into one song. O Holy Night. What Child is This. In the Bleak Midwinter. Deck the Halls. Little Drummer Boy. And on and on.

The agenda for the night never changed. But we grew. The two families coming early; the gift exchange followed by the eager anticipation of others arriving; the kids grouping together, each year trying to act more mature but not join the boring adults. Finally the call to food; each year my curiosity and appreciation growing as I tried to find out who had brought which dish and whether they had made it by hand or bought it from the store. Then the climax of the night. The singing was always the part that I didn’t look forward to, but that I enjoyed the most when I was in it. Mum always played the guitar while the rest of us simply gave our vocal chords.

This tradition went on. By the time it ended the year of my parents separation, it was the 16^th annual sing and I had begun to look forward to the singing part just as much as the food (if not more, but shh, don’t tell anyone). There is something powerful in singing together. In uniting our voices into one song. Even this Christmas Eve, Ash and I attended a church service in the historic Black Church in the center of Brașov, Romania. The service was conducted in German, so we understood nothing of what was said or sung. But then, the choir sang Silent Night, and the congregation joined in. A thousand voices became one powerful, pounding chorus. The lights were turned off and the only the candles sitting precariously on the Christmas trees at the front of the church and on the alter shone. Though we couldn’t join in the German version, we closed our eyes and let our souls join the thousand others singing in the darkness.

I’m sure there were a lot of different people in that church that night, as I know there were different people who came to our home for so many years. Each with their different view points. Their different political orientations, passions, hopes, dreams and sorrows. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered as the height of the chorus peaked. We were together. All of us. Together in the song.

How beautiful would it be if the whole world joined together in a song?annuadr of hockey sticks and a pNourse, the annual pins, one pair of rollerblades accompanied by a pair of hockey sticks and a p

Holiday Meats

This blog entry was written for FeelGoodNow. If you'd like to read that version, click here. Sorry for posting it late, but the message still applies :)

What to serve? What to make the centerpiece of the table for family and friends this Christmas? Admittedly I have to beg the forgiveness of vegetarians and vegans as I’m going to focus on meat for now. Thanksgiving was a no-brainer for most, roasting a turkey was the obvious answer. Yet I know for me growing up I never had a traditional Christmas meal. We had ham a few years, turkey some others, and I even remember throwing some steaks on the grill in the snow one year. But since I’ve started learning more about where our food comes from and how it’s processed, I’ve been forced to reconsider the question of what kind of meat, if any, to serve.

Though there has been a lot more awareness raised in recent years as to the sorry state of our food industry and in particular our meat industry by well-known authors and filmmakers like Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, etc), Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Robert Kenner (Food Inc.) and Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me), much of the relevance to each of our personal lives has unfortunately remained elusive every time we walk into the grocery store. The food we eat literally shapes who we are. And because of its centrality to our culture today, meat has a special potency to either enrich our health, or destroy it. Because overconsumption of meat leads to heart disease, obesity, hypertension, and other illnesses, we must first choose to consume less meat. Then, once we’ve reached moderation, choose the meats which in and of themselves offer the highest of qualities with the smallest of costs to our personal health, the public health, and the environment which sustains us.

So we return to Christmas dinner. Pork? Turkey? Beef? Chicken? Though an in-depth analysis of each of these merits its own thesis, I’ll do my best to highlight the basics here:

·      Pork. Unfortunately, only four massive companies produce over half the pork consumed in the United States through Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), where pigs (not uncommon numbers for the industry are 25,000 swine) are so crammed together and so stressed that the managers of the firms have to chop off their tails to keep them from biting them off one another in their panic. But don’t fear, there are local producers which allow pigs to roam in their natural state and act as only pigs can before providing them as humane a death as possible.

·      Turkey and chickens. Not the same, but both awkward birds that can’t fly. Some 99% of all poultry grown in the States is genetically modified to grow faster (life spans for meat chickens is down to only 48 days). They live short, brutish lives crammed together by the thousands – up to 100,000 – under one roof for meat birds, called broilers, or confined to one-foot square cages for egg laying hens, called layers. There are local producers of chickens and turkeys, though they are certainly only found through famers markets or direct farm-to-consumer programs.

·      Beef. The vast majority of cows in this country (dairy and beef) are grown in CAFOs. There, they are fed mainly grain diets, which increases the amount of e coli viruses in their gut and increases the amount of fat in their muscles. If you’re planning a beef BBQ for the holidays, search for grass-fed and finished beef. This way you’ll know that at least the cows ate a diet for which their bodies were designed. This meat will also be more lean and healthy for you!

In general, purchasing USDA Certified Organic meat is a step up from regular meat. This certification, while not necessarily changing the living conditions of CAFOs, prevents the harmful overuse of antibiotics as well as avoids the synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the food chain to result in less toxic meat, happier animals, and a healthier environment. It is always best to buy meat directly from a local producer. This increases the accountability between producer and consumer, usually means the farmers don’t use CAFOs to produce their meat, and supports the local economy.

So, if you’re looking for meat to serve this holiday, give it a second glance: a second thought. If we rethink how we buy, tending towards healthier, leaner, more consciously grown meat (and less meat in general!), the producers will produce meat which is grown in accordance with nature, not against it. For Denver residents, I strongly suggest a visit to In Season Local Market for all your holiday food needs. They source all their food from within 250 miles of the store and have done all the research for you. I’ve fact-checked their meats and the farms they source from are top-notch. You’ll fiind them up on 32^nd and Wyandot in the Highlands. For those outside the Denver-metro area, check out eatwild.com to find the nearest source of natural meat.

Happy holidays and all the best.

Killing a Turkey

When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I took a course in hunter safety and received my hunter’s safety license so I could go hunting. Only one small problem: I didn’t believe in hunting. I had a problem with the idea of killing an animal to eat it. Yet apparently this problem wasn’t big enough to keep me from eating meat, I think I simply didn’t think about it. My brother went hunting one year and bagged a buck. I was morally opposed but secretly fascinated to sneak down to the garage where dad was working with our neighbor the Game Warden to skin, gut, and butcher the deer carcass. Somehow it took me another 10 or so years to realize that my moral objection to personally killing an animal was just plain hypocrisy and denial.

I had learned much more about our food system and how it abuses, mutilates (both genetically and otherwise), then slaughters literally billions of animals to provide us all with our meat cravings at a cheap price tag. I had to confront my hypocrisy face to face. How could I judge hunters then walk to the freezer and pull out a bag of Tyson frozen chicken strips (boneless of course!) to eat for dinner? So, Ash and I became vegetarians, mostly. We only ate meat when we could verify where the meat came from, the conditions in which the animal was raised and slaughtered, and what it was fed. Since arriving in Moldova, I have, rightly or wrongly, let go of this distinction. Mostly because almost all of the meat Moldovans eat comes from their backyard or that of a neighbor. Yet every time I eat meat, I think about the animal it once was, and wonder, where and how did it live? Did it know it was going to be eaten? Did it understand that it was only fed in order to become food?

Then Ash signed me up (ok, I also volunteered…) to help kill the Thanksgiving turkeys with a few other volunteers and then help prepare them for the big volunteer meal the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Although I jumped at the opportunity, I did so with an understanding that I would again have to confront my beliefs, thoughts, convictions, feelings, and motivations for eating meat. Yet this time I’d be doing it with an ax in my hand.

So I travelled to the volunteer’s village in which we’d be doing the deed on Thanksgiving and helped him start to prepare pumpkin pie filling and crust as well as cooking a vegetarian chili to eat with his host family and the other volunteers who would be joining us that night. Friday morning we awoke early and, with Grișa, the host dad, hopped in the car and drove across the village to pick out the turkeys. The sun was setting the strips of clouds on the horizon afire and making the backdrop of sky appear a deep purple as we got out of the car and walked through the gate to greet the family who had agreed to sell us six of their turkeys. Us five Americans were obviously clueless as to how to carry live turkeys as we struggled to hold onto their wings and carry them over to the house from the massive yard in which they lived with their about thirty or forty fellow gobblers.

Soon we were on our way back to the house, six live turkeys, incredibly docile, occupying the trunk of the aging white Lada. Back within the confines of the low green wooden fence of Grișa’s house, we carefully unloaded the live cargo, which, with their legs tied, simply plopped down on the grass quietly. We then worked together to start the fire which would boil the water to loosen the turkey’s skin’s hold on their feathers. Soon came the time. Grișa took hold of the first turkey, saying he would show us how then we could each have out turn. Holding the wings together in one hand with the feet looked simple enough. He held the bird upside down like that with his left hand, slowly and gently placing its head on the small block of wood before picking up the small ax with his right. The bird was completely calm, not making a noise nor moving at all as the ax came down perfectly on its neck, severing everything but a tiny bit of skin. Grișa held the body upside down to let the blood come out, then handed it to me to hold until it stopped twitching, at which point he showed me how to dip the whole bird in the boiling water quickly before pulling it out and tasking a few of us with the tedious job of plucking.

Each of us went in turn, and suddenly it was my turn, the last bird a pure white turkey weighing around 6 kilograms. It was quickly obvious that the skill of holding both wings and both feet in one hand firmly enough to not let a wing erupt was a skill Grișa had acquired over many years. I managed to get the grip, and to place the birds head on the block. As I reached for the ax, I thanked God for the turkey in my hands. I thanked him for making it, for the life it had lived, and for the nourishment it was going to provide our bodies. Then the ax fell and I was again holding a twitching body.

The experience was one which I would not have missed, and, if given the chance, will do again. I don’t enjoy killing things. To the contrary, I take the deed with the utmost responsibility and seriousness, knowing that what once was living is now not because of a movement of my arm. It makes me confront profound questions about the meaning of life, humans and our place on this Earth, and how we should be filling our role as stewards of the ecosystems on which we depend for life. We are indeed a part of this world, not separate from, above, or below it. Yet somehow we are apart. We have the power to take a life and to reflect on the life we took. Because we have this power, we have the responsibility to use it. To reflect on our impact on those around us and the world in which we live. To reflect on the consequences of our actions, both large and small. Will you reflect with me?

Urban Agriculture

“Urban agriculture is an oxymoron. People that believe in that are just fooling themselves.” This was the response of a man who was presenting to my Peace Corps program group during a training session recently. He had asked for us each to say our name, where we were from, and if we had any experience with agriculture. Given my experience with Revision International’s program Re:farm Denver, I said that I have some experience in urban agriculture. The man, we’ll call him Bob, was a Ph.D. biologist who specialized in high-output greenhouse vegetable production. He had been brought to Moldova by an amazing program that brings experts in different agricultural fields from the States to consult and help Moldovan farmers for usually around 15 days.

Although his session was extremely informative and it was obvious he had an abundance of knowledge about how to get the most production out of any given greenhouse setting, I couldn’t help but ponder his somewhat upsetting comment about urban agriculture. Indeed his sentiments are nothing new. I’ve seen the same thoughts tracking across the faces of most farmers whom I’ve told about the work we do with Re:farm Denver in the city; they simply think we’re not doing real work. Their looks say that if we’re serious about feeding the world, we’d go lease 1000 acres, get a John Deere tractor, sprayer, and combine to plant, inundate, and harvest a single commodity crop which would then more than likely make its way into the stomachs of animals who weren’t meant to eat that kind of food anyway before the fat on their bones makes it to our mouths. The only exception to this has been my father-in-law, a South Dakotan farmer who has shown a genuine interest in my work with food in the city.

Don’t misunderstand me, large-scale farms (perhaps not as large as today’s farms though), technical equipment like tractors, ploughs, combines, etc, do indeed need to play an important role in the future or our food. Yet, with the global population creeping (read: racing) away from the rural lifestyle and toward the urban and suburban cityscapes, we must engage those settings with the question of how to feed themselves. Oil is dwindling worldwide; fossil-fuel based fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, are growing ever-more expensive; and the transportation to fly, ship, and drive food from the farm to the table is today longer and therefore requires more inputs than ever before in history. All this put together means that using the spaces which are available to us in the urban setting to grow what we can is more than simply not an oxymoron, it is a vital component of creating a future for our children when oil runs out.

It is also important to remember that we (most people in ‘developed’ nations) are forgetting both what real food is, and how to grow it. With grocery stores packed with tens of thousands of combinations of the compounds thought up by food scientists, and an increasingly urban population, we’ve firmly lost touch with where our food comes from. Unlike here in Moldova, where every family has a garden as well as a small plot of land on which they grow corn, grapes, sunflowers (for the seeds and the oil), having a garden in the States is largely considered a luxury or a hobby. Less than 2% of our population are farmers, and that number is still shrinking as my generation grows up and wants to leave the small towns for the big cities. Programs like Re:farm Denver are reteaching people about food. Reshowing people what it means to eat healthy. Reminding people that growing food is always cheaper than buying it.

All the families Revision works with for establishing household gardens are living at or below the Federal poverty line. They also live in food deserts, areas of the city where there is no grocery store. Where the only option for food is the junk food at the cornerstore. These families can’t afford to eat healthy thanks to our current national food system and policies (a topic for another blog), so they have higher rates of Type II diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. I have seen the difference a backyard garden can make in these families’ lives. When a family of four living on a household income of less than fifteen thousand dollars a year saves $40 per week by having a household garden, that is real. When kids are involved in growing their own food and now are excited to eat the vegetables they have helped grow, that is real.

So, urban agriculture can’t be an oxymoron. Cities can, do, and need to continue growing as much food as they possibly can within their own city limits. A very viable path for low-income families toward a healthier lifestyle is through relearning how to garden, which not only connects them with the Earth which sustains us, but also, inevitably, with their neighbors as they search for venues to share their surplus harvests.

Join the movement. Grow some of your own food next year and volunteer or donate to an organization like Revision which helps low-income neighborhoods do the same.

We are all pro-life

It’s a shame the terms ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ have been co-opted into the narrow-sighted and polarizing argument about the morality of abortion (and, by the way, they are not, by definition, opposites; if you really oppose pro-life, doesn’t that mean you’re pro-death? And if you oppose pro-choice, are you pro-indecision?). In reality, there is so much in this world in need of our attention, that perhaps its time we expand the scope of these terms. Indeed the leaders of two of the largest branches of the Christian church, have already expanded the idea of what it means to be ‘pro-life’. In 2002, Pope John Paul II and Ecumenical Patriarch His Holiness Bartholomew I (leader of the Eastern Orthodox church), after concluding a symposium on religion, science, and the environment, together signed a statement detailing a code of environmental ethics.

The unfortunate unwillingness of the majority of Christians worldwide to engage our responsibility to the environment as a mandate from God the Creator is amazing. Not only does this ignore the teachings of Jesus, but it also ignores the entire of purpose of our lives, as Bartholomew of Constantinople and the late John Paul II so eloquently articulate.

“A new approach and a new culture are needed, based on the centrality of the human person within creation and inspired by environmentally ethical behavior stemming from our triple relationship to God, to self, and to creation. Such an ethics fosters interdependence and stresses the principles of universal solidarity, social justice, and responsibility, in order to promote a true culture of life.” (emphasis mine)

They are calling all of humanity, every person of every faith to join together and become pro-life and pro-choice. We must realize that this ‘culture of life’ cherishes the inherent value of all life. To be pro-life should mean that we all “…think of the world’s children [indeed all future generations] when we reflect on and evaluate our options for action.” To be pro-choice should mean to choose to allow this “… love for our children [to] show us the path that we must follow into the future.” So in reality, if we step back and reflect rationally, we should all be pro-life and pro-choice. Yet reason and logic only take us so far in this quest to rethink how we live together with each other and with the Earth that sustains us.

“The problem is not simply economic and technological; it is moral and spiritual. A solution at the economic and technological level can be found only if we undergo, in the most radical way, an inner change of heart, which can lead to a change in lifestyle and of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production.”

Let us deepen our definitions of pro-life and pro-choice. Or perhaps, let us take our eyes off the symptom that abortion is and commit ourselves to addressing the actual illness. We have, as humanity, stepped away from the original purpose we were given; to be stewards of creation, working it and keeping it for our children.