Sustaining Local Brilliance

(image: gil and lisa listen intently; craig harris and abby on the right -- literally, not intellectually!)

Every year for the last eleven years, I've gone to a conference sponsored by the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society.   Those names are a mouthful, but the issues discussed by academics and activists are practical, significant, and easy to digest if you care about the way we lead our everyday lives.    We discuss sustainable projects ranging from growing methods to labor to consumption, the historical and contemporary conditions that produce cuisines through the mixing of cultures and ingredients, the unequal distribution of goods, services, technology, and information that shapes what we grow and how we eat.    Well, the list goes on.

I have just returned from this year's conference, which was in State College, PA, a town I've been visiting regularly since 1981 (in-law family).  Not as exciting as last year in New Orleans, you'd think, but there was beauty to be found, especially in the tours the day before the paper sessions began.  I went on the Dairy Diversity tour, starting at Meyer's Dairy, a local milk and ice cream stand that we stop at all the time.  The ice cream is good, the milk is incredible, and it was cool getting to go behind the scenes, walk through the bottling section and then into the walk-in freezer where you could stare out over the products on the shelf and into the store itself.     

Then we went on to Triangle Organics, Elmer King's small Amish farm producing raw milk, ghee, and butter.    A beautiful place where these lovely ladies live.

(triangle organic cows)

On to the Elk Creek Cafe  in Millheim, with sustainable community, good beer, and local food in abundance (and more ice cream, the best of the day, I thought).   More farms with, as one of my van-mates kept exclaiming annoyingly, "amazing camembert,"  made by an unassuming dairy farmer("it's just cheese," he said) who, when describing the process behind a smoked cheese, simply asserted, "when in doubt, smoke it."   

We all want shirts with that across the front.

All weekend there was lots of evidence that the foodie label attaches to agriculture-types, agricultural concerns shape foodie interests -- it's a mixed up, shook up world.    Finally, the tour took us to the Industrial Strength Penn State  Berkey Creamery, where a dude in a suit described cows as "commodities who really are happy in their stalls" and stood beside the multi-million dollar equipment designed to train budding food scientists headed to Ben and Jerry's, Breyer's, and beyond.  My favorite part was meeting Rufus, who is 4 and clearly a budding food scholar, and my best photos are of him, but I'm not sharing without parental permission.

Back in the insularity of the Penn Stater hotel and conference center, there were too many papers to describe, although as always, I was drawn to a ton of sustainability panels that I simply couldn't attend, heard some great papers on food and culture, and was profoundly impressed by the array of grad student work intermingled on all the panels.  Finally, I think, we are taking race and class and gender seriously.  The DeVault panels were solid all the way around.  What's still in my head: Kerstin's happy take on German food blogs, Psyche's cut-to-the-bone analysis of the ways in which her husband's Ghanian sisters integrate their feeding work into her mixed-food-culture marriage, Liora's sensitive eye trained on the market in Tel Aviv,  Kelsey's images of older African American women from Gee's Bend, talking about the changes in food over their lifetime, and Emily Bailey's contemplative stories about food in a convent where the average age is 69.

I loved talking over breakfast with the "older" scholars (I can say that, as Gil stands poised for early retirement, but he's not old in any other sense) whose calm assessments reassure me that scholarship keeps going despite recessions, intellectual fads, sexist department chairs who screw up your work environment, and worn idealism.  I love knowing that Alex will wear his Spam t shirt some time during the weekend.

I watched Annie, with that deep hawk gaze, working hard with a group of presenters right before their panel, coordinating their talks. I thrilled when Jan P. told Syd that her paper provided her with excellent pedagogical evidence for the marriage penalty.  I laughed til it hurt with Netta every time we went up the elevator and turned to the ENDLESS hallway down to our room (I'll try to post Kristina's image of it), enhanced by the optically challenging carpet design.

(image: endless penn stater hallway courtesy of kristina nies)

 I am always thrilled to escape with Danny so that we can cover everything we need to (from kids to Chicago to teaching to community activism and beyond), walking, knowing he'll get us where we need to go (although this time I still have blisters...and his souveneir map).    Talking with Jessica, Beth, and Syd over the din of the crazy Austrian bistro, Herwig's (finish your plate -- that's my only warning), meeting Martha, who  (yes, academic rock star worship) personally KNOWS Dorothy Smith well enough to have her just read over her PAPER.    Thanks for letting me crash on the memory foam bed in your hotel room, Martha.

I've forgotten the endless meetings already, but I felt like the Tazmanian devil, jumping up and down to make sure we got something done, wanting it to end before it started (the only time I felt that way all week), and sighing at how much there still is to do in order to keep this thing, this precious moment, and group that I love, going.   

I posted this, added Kristina's photo, and now have to stop myself from deleting that last sentence. It's so raw -- I wrote it almost immediately upon coming home -- certainly not normative to have strong feelings about a marginal 300-person organization (that's not a cult) that could certainly survive if i were not in the forest to hear the trees falling.  I'm leaving the sentence in.