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Everyone in my immediate family has at least one tattoo. When I turned 18, it was expected that I would also get one, but I had never been crazy enough about any particular design to get one permanently inked into my skin… until the fall of 2009. While looking at a display of Celtic jewelry at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival, I came across a tree of life. I became enchanted with this symbol which communicated the interconnectedness of all living things, and began sketching my own version of the tree because I knew that I had finally found something worthy of a tattoo.
The tree of life describes so much of what I value as a person, but unfortunately a tattoo on my back is not enough to keep me from getting caught up in the daily races and occasionally forgetting my place in the grand scheme of things. It’s so easy to get lost in all the noise. I want to live quietly: I want to be less offensive, selfish, and obnoxious. I want to live more peacefully, simply, patiently, and deliberately. Therefore, I will be walking my talk this month by taking time every day to meditate. I’ve already started to practice clearing my mind by doing this inside, but next week I will be moving out of doors so that I can more easily reflect upon my place in the natural world. Awareness and appreciation are the first steps in acting responsibly toward the environment and my fellow living beings, right?
If nothing else, at least Neil deGrasse Tyson also likes being connected.
Not quite. For the last month or so I have been waiting to post my final blog in order to get some things in order. Mostly, it gave me a chance to propose these ideas to different communities I am involved in and reflect on their reaction. Statistically speaking, Over the past three months I have saved about $45. There are two different ways I was able to save this money.
1 – Reduction in use of water bottles (only using one) = $25.
2 – Avoidance of buying plastic items (mostly drinks) = $20.
Before this project, I would have at least one water everyday from packages that cost about $6 for every 24 bottles. More often than not, I would buy other bottles for convenience in the price range of $1 to $1.25. So, $25 is a rough estimate.
Also during this project, anytime I would be purchasing an item that was contained in plastic, I would avoid it and wait until I could make another choice. For the amount of coffe, tea, other drinks, or food that I refused to buy, I estimate I saved at least $20.
Both of these estimates are not very precise, and would vary for each person. I’m not a large coffee drinker, in fact, I drink water most of the time. So, for someone else who doesn’t drink water much but enjoys sodas and other flavored/caffeinated drinks – the result would be different. However, there is no doubt that money would be saved here.
Although I attempted to g out how this project looked for me financially, I reflect more on how much I did not consume when I could have made the simple and easy choice to do so. My financial stats do not contain all of the to-go cartons I never used, the daily newspaper I put back on the rack (except for the crossword..), and it does not contain all of the efforts I made to make environmentally conscious decisions rather than ones for my own convenience.
In my communities I gained much more of a perspective of where my peers thoughts were. Up until my last blog all my feedback had been from people who had never thought twice about recycling or their consumption levels. When they heard what I had to say, I usually realized they had stopped listening as soon as I said the word, “recycle” or “reduce”. I was plesantly suprised! In my English class for example, I teamed up with another girl from my class to present ways to recycle on campus. We did a presentation of all of the local opportunities here, and of all the ways you can reduce your consumption on a daily basis. On the day of our presentation, out of all 6 groups that presented THREE were about environmental topics! One even said that hybrid cars were just a capitalist ploy to get money, because in the longevity of their life they have 25% more emissions than normal cars. WHAT?! I have no idea where he got his information, but wow. Is this true? I haven’t gotten the opportunity to check around. But my point is – I totally underestimated my classmates motives and ideas. Needless to say, I was glad to know other people were at least thinking about their choices, and attempting to educate others.
Another plesant suprise I had was finding out information that related so closely to this topic in the most unusual places. I was coming out of one of the residence hall dining centers, and they were handing out bags. They were reusable shopping bags. And sure, we’ve all seen these before. But it had some interesting information on it. Zero paper bags can biodegrade in landfills because of the lack of oxygen. Fourteen of the plastic bags contain enough petroleum to drive a care ONE MILE. There website has other sorts of information and resources at www.onebagatatime.com.
In the end, I have hope. I have hope that we can turn this around, and do what is best for each other and the world that we live in. Ultimately, we have to reduce. That is the only thing that will help solve the problem. Without it, we will always be searching for some sort of unknown solution with energy, recycling, and many other obstacles. People will definitely say they support these actions, and even that they believe it is necessary. But they must act. Action is crucial if we want anything and everything that needs to happen become a reality.
To summarize (but never finish), there is no such thing as “Out of sight, Out of mind” so let’s get rid of this idea. We do affect what is going on in our waters like the collection of plastic waste in a plastic garbage patch. We must act NOW. We are never in this alone.
RALLY CRY: ONE PERSON CAN DO IT!
I have now presented my poster to the class about my window farm. Thanks to everyone that stopped by to learn about window farming. Showing my window farm to people gives me an opportunity to educate others about creative gardening and producing/buying local organic food.
I was asked many times today about what I was going to do with window garden now that the class project is over. My garden will live on so do not worry. My window farm will be moving with me to a Boy Scout summer camp that I run. There it will hang in a window in the dinning hall. With this prime location I will have around 1500 people walk by it during the summer and I am sure that many of them will stop to take a look.
The possibility of having 1500 people learn about local food is an exciting idea that I cannot turn down. Exceptionally sense most of that 1500 will be middle school kids. Teaching kids at a young age is the easiest way to make meaning life changes.
And after camp the garden is moving with me to Chicago where I hope to expand it.
I hope that many of you are think about making your own window garden, and if you do please let me know. Here are a few things that I have learned from making my own can could help you.
First, herbs are the best to plant in a window garden because many of them do not grow to big. This style of gardening is not good for large plants. Also herbs allow you to continually harvest them without completely killing the plant.
Second, do forget to water them. The bottles themselves are not very big and with that they cannot store a lot of water. I have to water my garden every two days or it will quickly dry out. I learned this the hard way and my lettuce has not fully recovered from it yet.
Last, come up with a design of your own. You could simply build one close to mine or you could be creative. Being creative with your garden makes this project such a fun to do. A good friend of mine is now making one out of old sections of plastic plumbing of different sizes. Some of the pipes even have right angles in them so he can be even more creative with the design. He is planting wild flowers in his.
Over all this has been a fantastic project. I have truly enjoyed designing and building my garden and learning about environmental issues at the same time in class.
I keep mentioning this concept of “Found Object Art,” which I figured was pretty self-explanatory, but after doing more research I have found that there are multiple interpretations for this concept so I would like to share my findings to clear up any loose ends.
What is found art?
Art that is found. Most contemporary artists now interpret this as rediscovered, refurbished, repurposed, or reused. It may be that you are looking at something left on the side of a street, thinking, “Why did they throw that out? It just needs a paint job.” You, the artist, find an irresistable object in a store, on the street, in your friend’s garage while you are helping to get ready for a yard sale, or under your bed.
Some found objects are created in the fury and frenzy of artistic creation. In the excitement of creating a found art piece, some artists deconstruct items in their home or will use objects in their immediate vicinity to assist in evoking emotions felt at the time or powerful concepts. Found Object Art is created by the use of everyday or truly found objects, given purpose and significance by those who find and conceptuallize them into artwork.
Is Found Art Modern Art? History into Contemporary Art
Found Art is thought to have practicing origins from the artist Marcel Duchamp, whose readymade works were controversial for the turn of the twentieth century. He created such famous works as Fountain and Bottle Rack.
Around the time of Pablo Picasso’s cubist phase of creation, Picasso also employed the use of found objects, such as La Petite Chouette (an owl constructed from found objects), which was made from household and building materials, including screws, pliers, a missing piece of a sauce pan, and pliers. The piece is said to have sold in 2000 for over one million dollars. Picasso’s piece was grounded in expressing the emotions he felt at the moment of creation.
Female artists had their hands in the beginnings of found art as well. Louise Nelson created unique three-dimensional sculptures from wood in the 1930s.
Dadaists (ManRay as a prime mover) and Surrealists incorporated found objects into their practices. Post-Modernists or Contemporary works carry on the tradition today with variants and combinations of preoccuring art movements, with new subgenres, such as Steampunk, Assemblage, and Junk Art. Both Found Art and its subgenre Assemblage have a relation to collage, of which Picasso is a famous practitioner. Rauschenberg’s paintings are a dynamic combination of flat surface with protruding found objects, resulting in a common connection between everyday life and art as more than association.
Duchamp, Hirst, ManRay, Picasso, Nelson, Koons, Scwhitters. These are but a few of the names that assisted in the success, persistence, and development of Found Art as a movement.
The development of Found Art can also be seen in mainstream consumerism and the efforts of society to Go Green. Used Rubber USA, an intriguing example, takes used tires and reuses them, in the form of stylish wallets, ID holders, briefcases, and other forms.
Found Art is Not True Art? The Critics
Throughout its development as an art movement and practice, Found Art has faced criticism. Duchamp’s Fountain (an unusable urinal) was rejected in 1917 by the Society of Independent Artists as not true art. There are still those today who view Found Art and other related movements as a not a true form of art. Yet many, like Damien Hirst, suggest that even traditional forms of art are truly Found Art. (Paint is transformed into its medium by scientific and biological means and placed on a canvas, given significance by the artist and the viewer.)
There were those before the Modern art era who recognized the potential of turning everyday objects into fine art. We see it in the conceptual, aesthetic, and philosophical writings from the Greeks into the modern period. But what is Found Art?
The beauty of this movement is that is left up to the artist, who gives the found object its own life through the artist’s concept. An object that has undergone its own period of existence and use has its own readymade signficance of which the artist taps into or chooses to ignore.
KEY: FOUND ART CAN INCORPORATE ANY FOUND OBJECT. You don’t have to use items that just look neat, get messy, get creative, throw in something that smells funny, do what you do.
Read more at Suite101: What is Found Object Art? An Overview http://artsociety.suite101.com/article.cfm/what-is-found-object-art-a-simple-overview#ixzz0n8uNnDTu
So, now that we’re all experts in found art, what is Assemblage art???
Assemblage Art
Art form in which natural and manufactured, traditionally non-artistic, materials and objets trouvés are assembled into three-dimensional structures. As such it is closely related to Collage, and like collage it is associated with Cubism, although its origins can be traced back beyond this. As much as by the materials used, it can be characterized by the way in which they are treated. In an assemblage the banal, often tawdry materials retain their individual physical and functional identity, despite artistic manipulation. The term was coined by Jean Dubuffet in 1953 to refer to his series of butterfly-wing collages and series of lithographs based on paper collages, which date from that year. Although these were in fact collages, he felt that that term ought to be reserved for the collage works of Braque, Picasso and the Dadaists of the period between 1910 and 1920. By 1954 Dubuffet had extended the term to cover a series of three-dimensional works made from primarily natural materials and objects. The concept of assemblage was given wide public currency by the exhibition The Art of Assemblage at MOMA, New York, in 1961. This included works by nearly 140 international artists, including Braque, Joseph Cornell, Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray and Kurt Schwitters. Several of the works shown were in fact collages, but the breadth of styles and artists included reflects the wide application of the term and the sometimes fine distinction between assemblage and collage. The ‘combine paintings’ of Rauschenberg, for example, fall awkwardly between the two, being essentially planar but with often extensive protrusions of objects. The inclusion of real objects and materials both expanded the range of artistic possibilities and attempted to bridge the gap between art and life.
The ancestry of the assemblage can be traced back to the artistic and literary environment of late 19th-century France. In his later poetry, especially Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (1897), Stéphane Mallarmé adopted a technique in which poetic fragments were pieced together in unusual semantic and typographic arrangements. Guillaume Apollinaire later extended this method in his Calligrammes (1918). By emphasizing the visual appearance of words their traditional role of signification was both enhanced and expanded. In the same manner assemblage emphasizes the visual or tactile qualities of formerly utilitarian objects while nevertheless exploiting the perception of the banality of such objects. In the visual arts, one of the most notable early attempts to use non-artistic materials can be found in Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged 14 (1880–81; bronze version, London, Tate). In an attempt to achieve greater realism, Degas included a real muslin skirt and hair ribbon in the bronze version, and the original clay and wax version also included a horse-hair wig.
“Assemblage art is non-traditional sculpture, made from re-combining found objects. Some of these objects are junk found in the streets. It is doubtful that this form of art could have existed before the 20th century. We needed copious junk to have this art form…It expresses an attitude or statement by the artists about our throwaway society…” <–KEY!
We currently live a throwaway society, where over-consumption and wastefulness is the norm. One way to curb this horrible trend is to, uh, do something about it! Captain is my attitude and statement, what’s yours?
….and that is the art lesson of the day 
This last weekend my window garden took a turn for the worse. I had to be out of town to finalize some post graduation plans in Chicago, where I am moving to, and while I was out of town my garden did not get watered. The red lettuce and chives both are not looking so well, but I believe that they will pull through. I have always had plants growing in my room and have seen them look worse then this before and they have always came back. I am hoping that this happens this time as well.
This does bring up a problem with my design of a window garden. The amount of soil in each bottle is small and therefore the amount of water it can hold is small as well. This means that I have to keep up with the watering or the plants will quickly die. I have been watering every other day or so, but over the weekend they went four days with out water. Just these four days made the plants look sick.
The window farming website does have some plans for building an automated watering system for those who are to busy to water everyday.
Also my last post I talked about a new question that I had come up with. I wanted to know how many trees would I have to plant to cancel out my CO2 emissions. That way I could eliminate all my CO2 emissions and be carbon neutral. Here is what I have found from reliable sources.
The average person in the United States emits 10,185lb of CO2 per year. (International Energy Agency 2009) And a tree absorbs on average 48lb of CO2 per year. (U. S. Department of Energy 2008) Which means I would have to plant 212.2 trees, a huge number but doable at the same time. Please note: This is rough average calculation with many variables not taken in to account and this is also for only one green house gas. With that said this still shows an interesting solution.
I find this to be a fun idea to play with in my head, trying to figure out if this is truly doable.
One last thing, last week I had an unexpected surprise come out of my garden. In with my red lettuce I had a foreign plant start to grow. After it got large enough I was able to identify it as a sunflower. A seed must have gotten mixed in with the potting soil. A sunflower is way to big to grow in a bottle, so I am trying to decide what to do with it. This is one of the things that I love about gardening. You never know what is going to happen.
When I started this project I never realized how much I would re-learn. When I mean re-learn I just realize just a couple of days ago that I actually had forgotten some things I used to do before I came to college and somehow I lost along the way. Then re-learn because I had to learn how to brush my teeth and turning of the water, or take shorter showers. This also helped me spread the word to other people such as friends and family regarding what I was going and why I was doing it. I also think that just because the project is over does not mean I will stop and go back to my old ways. At least I want to believe and try that I will continue to be cautious regarding my usage as well knowing that I can live without eating meat 2-4 days out of a week, plus greens are good!
As far as the ovo-lacto vegetarian goes, I am please to say that it brought me back to what I used to do before I got to college. What I mean is that before college, I would not eat so many process foods or even can foods, i would normally eat fresh food. When I say fresh not always organic but not canned. I would also not eat out as much if I did it would be on the weekends on Sundays as a treat and only 1 meal. How did being an ovo-lacto vegetarian help me do that? Well to start of I wanted to eat healthier than what I had been, and I knew that most of the foods I had were meat related microwaveable meals. Excuse was no time to cook, or too tired to cook. As well as the cheap the better since I am poor. So when meat was cut off from my diet 3 days out of the week I had to re-invent my meals. I found it a bit hard to find microwaveable meals that did not contain meat, or in other words that were fresh and healthy. So I actually had plan my meals, and most of the recipes where ones I learn from home and they all require fresh ingredients, even if some people substitute it with other non fresh ingredients. That forced me in a way to buy only what I needed for that particular dish and probably 10 time healthier than a Banquet TV dinner plus I had left overs!
As far as dinero ($) having a plan of my week meals helped me not to buy out of the list items like chips, juice, cookies and well junk food saving me money! plus having left overs helps because I would not always have to cook the next day unless I wanted something different then I would just save the left overs for another day.
Another perk is that I have lost some weight, and that’s because I actually get full with a meal instead of having to eat 2 TV dinners. I also feel healthier even if I have been getting sick lately… I think is for the lack of sleep not nutrients though… but Its the end of the semester and I am always sick toward the end… but over all I have also worked out, and when I walk I don’t feel like I am about to die! So Woohoo!! Plus when I don’t buy my TV dinner is less cardboard
Water usage… I have cut down a lot of my water usage, my showers have been cut down to 12 minutes and if i’m not too dirty 9! If I don’t shave then 5 minutes. Over all m usage of water has lowererd and I’m happy for that. I no longer wash my dishes by hand since my roommate prefferse to do it plus according to this article a dishwasher is better than hand-washing: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/08/dishwasher_vs_h.php
Electricity usage: This last bill was $65.52! so if you remember from $138.65 to $81.03 and now to $65.52 15.51 was saved from the last bill to this new one. Over all savings have been $73.13 so I think that says pretty much everything. I won’t deny it’s been hard at times, because unplugging everything can be frustrating in the beginning but after a while its just part of your daily routine.
Recycling: I never thought that most of our trash was made up of cardboard, paper, and plastic. As I mention before before we took out 4 trash bags of more if we had extra people over, but now since we recycle we only take out 1 trash bag a week or 2 if other people are over, or my roommate eats out then we have extra trash… Eating out and having left overs make a lot of trash… never thought about it before but they just take so much room… and most of the containers can’t really be recycled… but over all thanks to recycling our trash has been cut down more than 50%. This I should have known because I used to do this all the time in California, but when I moved to KS in 2002 somehow it just diapered… or in other words its easier to be lazy and just do one movement instead of two… that should not be so!
Over all this project made me happy, it made me realized what I was missing and it makes me crave healthy food! I will be going to the farmers makerket this saturday!! I can’t wait I love food, and when its fresh and good for you even more!
I have to give thanks to Dr. Carroll for giving us this opportunity because I believe we all learned so much not only new information but we learn new things about ourself, and I know we will all take something with us from this projects. I am not looking forward to having my own garden of fruits and vegis, and just eating more healthy and in hopes that some people might also get motivated to be more green and diminish their foot print on earth.
Also Fox has some good ideas that we can all try, please take a look:
Also if you are intresting in doing something good this can help you start that project:
http://www.dosomething.org/dosomething101/home
Also you can enter to win the Green home from HGTV, the car you can sell since its an SUV. But how cool is it to have such a green home, and be close to shops and all you need in walking distance! At least thats what they said.
http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv-green-home-2010-giveaway-enter/package/index.html
P.S
As I said this is the end to a new beginning! I hope its the same to all of you. 
Here is my presentation board.
It pretty much has the information that is provided here in my blog, just more colorful:
It has taken me longer to wrap up these blogs than my initial game plan was (oops!). Things have been just a smidge insane but here it goes.
If I have learned anything over the course of this project it would be that reducing my food consumption is really difficult! I hadn’t realized how much I eat and, consequently, how much I also waste.
I like that I have come to a more full understanding and appreciation of the food I choose to eat and the importance of the time I take to eat it. Food is, obviously, an important part of all of our lives. It’s really unfortunate that for the most part people have lost a lot of consideration for what they put inside of their bodies. We need food to keep us alive and healthy.
Since coming to college I have noticed more and more that most of the foods that I do consume are of the overly processed and packaged variety. While this is cheap and convenient, it’s not really ideal. From the information I have gained through our readings and class discussions, other people’s blogs, and my own research I have a new outlook on the foods I want to put into my body.
Over the course of this project I had to sit out a few social events on account of my friends heading down to Aggieville to grab dinner, but other than that I don’t really feel like I “missed out” on anything too dramatic. I feel like I have gained way more—both financially and for my overall health. I have opted to try and find more responsible alternatives to many of the things I enjoy—for example fair trade coffee and tea. I have been doing some research on farmer’s markets that I would also like to start visiting.
I will most defiantly continue trying to keep my food consumption and waste under control. I have talked to my family about plotting out a garden in our backyard and I know that my grandparents have been working hard getting tomatoes and some herbs ready. I’m excited to be home this summer and further my food reduction and pass on my knowledge to my family.
I think that this project has been helpful in just making me more aware of things and figuring out what I can do individually to find solutions that are best suited for my lifestyle.
Long time no blog, sorry about that. I’ve had several rough weeks and since the passing of my grandmother last month, have been struggling to keep up with the winding chaos that is my life.
The Captain is finalized!!! Pictures to follow my ranting
This project has worked to shape a new form of consumer in myself. Building the captain was a lot more difficult than I originally expected, the glue issues was only one of the obstacles. The last time I sat down to put on the upper body and final touches, I literally stared at this pile of junk I was creating for hours wondering what my next move would be. It’s one thing to have a vision, its another to execute it. I have many visions, many aspirations and random outlets for my creative craziness, but more often than not I don’t follow through. TIME TIME TIME, what a bitch. Always getting in the way of my fun, preventing me from truly expressing myself and limiting the things I can/want to do. But was it time that was really getting in the way? We all wish for more hours in the day, but 24 is what we have and I think we just lost a second or two thanks to some earthquake centered shifts in the earth’s crust or something…my roommate is always telling me some interesting fact about geology or war or tech stuff, he’s quite the resource. Anyhow, I’ve come to realize how horrible I am at utilizing my time. I spend more time being depressed about the stuff I need to get done than I actually spend doing the stuff that I need to get done. And playing catch up for the past few weeks has been an extremely depressing feat. However, what I lack in time management I make up for in pure awesomeness. Constructing the captain has made a new “woman” out of me. I use “woman” because gender roles are arbitrary.
My consciousness as a consumer has been altered entirely. Yes, I’m more aware of packaging in new light. Yes, I buy less. But the big YES comes from a new gained realization into how everything fits together. I’m not talking about globalization but how everything we throw away literally fits together. When I got the idea to build the captain and friends, I imagined a figure created out of aluminum cans as the only material. And with the glue issues, I quickly discovered that that was impossible. And I’m super broke again so I couldn’t afford the poxy that I needed to really get everything secure no matter what the material. I have yet to construct to rest of the crew and I’m not sure I will, I started changing my mind and wanted to build Gaia so ideas are up in the air and flowing once again.
Back to my point…
I used crushed cans and uncrushed cans for the base, but building the top half couldn’t be done with more crushed cans….so I had to look outside of that medium. And this is the mind blowing part folks, I transitioned to all of the other resources I had readily available (i.e. trash)…hence, Junk Yard Champions, yeah. So, besides the original cans, there were some bits of cardboard attached and so now I could build the torso with more cans but the arms and head was another story. So, I did what any brilliant artist does in the modern age and let go of preconceived notions of what I initially wanted and let the Cap’n do his own thing. The arms came together with bottles that I cut, and target bags I had saved for my room trashcan. I used old bath gloves to secure some hard to glue spots, I found an old mouthwash bottle and used it for the head. I took packaging from the bath gloves to make the belt and the top of the mouthwash bottle became the emblem on his chest. Voila! And he looks dope. Its a mixture of all the junk that either could or could not be recycled, some stuff we know would just get thrown into the dump with no other alternative. Well, I found another alternative dammit! And the parts fit in this magnificent way, it came out better than I imagined. When you view the pictures, think abstractly, its made in the image I drew and in the image of the actual animated character but its also a representations of how “junk” flows through our lives without us stopping to think about it. NOW I CANT STOP THINKING ABOUT IT! Everything I purchase, I look at it as a potential piece to the puzzle, admiring how I could add it here or there, or what could be made out of it. Remember, I’m not thinking of the food or products that I’m buying in the same way, nor am I considering the things they come wrapped in, in the same way. I’ve avoided some things because I know it would end up useless at the end of the cycle and I’d be a bad consumer if I let that happen.
I’m probably not going to build something out of every piece of trash I encounter, but now I know that trash is no longer just an end to a means, it can take on new form and have new life. But, going to “the” trash should always be the last place my things end up……contradicting a decluttering simplicity that I long for, which I will address in my next blog. My next few blogs, leading up to my final blog should be posted in the near future. Until next time bloggers, enjoy my boy. I think he’s so fly.
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As I mentioned in my last blog, I have been spending more time contemplating what an important role food plays in my life.
Growing up, my family ate dinner together every night. It wasn’t until I left for college that I realized what an incredible gift my parents had given me. There isn’t a better forum, in opinion, to connect with my family. I love going home for breaks and sitting around with them. We learn about each other’s days, seek and give advice, and tease each other relentlessly. Kingsolver talked about the importance of dinner for her family in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and it is something I can really relate to. I just find this topic to be really interesting because really over the course of a single generation this major shift has occurred.
A quick search on the Internet brings up dozens of organizations promoting family mealtime. One of them, http://casafamilyday.org/familyday/, goes so far as to dedicate a day for family time (September 27th to be specific). I think it’s wonderful that people have recognized the importance of dinners but it still makes me sad. It used to be the norm—that’s what families did, they ate meals together—but that is no longer the case for everyone. Miriam Weinstein wrote a book, The Surprising Power of Family Meals, which discusses all of this and more. Her website, http://www.poweroffamilymeals.com/default.aspx , is actually pretty cool and has some really yummy looking recipes (though I still prefer the ones offered by Kingsolver).
This I found really exciting, it is not the same thing as my project but it goes alone with it nicely. So set your DVR, if you have one, to ABC on Friday, March 26th at 8pm.
First you are probably thinking, Who is Jamie Oliver? Well he is a well known British chef who, at age 34, has done some pretty remarkable things. Jamie was born in England and started working with food at a young age at his father’s pub. At age 16 went to Westminster Catering College and spent time in Frances honing his culinary skills. After working under many chefs his first big brake was a TV series where he was known as The Naked Chef. Oliver then channeled his fame and cooking skills into working for the greater good.
In 2005 Jamie made a four part documentary called Jamie’s School Dinner’s where he worked to improve the quality of Britain’s school lunches. This was part of a larger program in the UK called Feed Me Better. This program was successful in getting government money to improve school kitchens, more culinary lessons for cooks, and overall better school lunches. Oliver is very passionate about food and about teaching kids where it comes from and getting them to cook and love fresh nutritious food.
Jamie has now crossed the pond and is taking on an even bigger challenge. He has come to America’s statistically unhealthiest city and is trying to change the way the look at food, he is here to start a food revolution. It is called Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. It first airs Friday, March 26th and is a 6 part series. Jamie isn’t alone on the show, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the person, Ryan Seacrest is also helping with the show check out these previews:
This reminded me of Kingsoliver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle talking about how kids do not know where their food is coming from. This totally shocks me but I admit I know what they are but I have no idea how to eat or cook them. So if you’d like to : Join the Revolution! and sign the Petition! Let’s help Kansas reach 100 members! (as of now we have 96)
Now remember, the show begins March 26th at 8pm on ABC and if you miss it I’ll be sure to update about it and remind you all of it too.
