the educated serf

This is a picture of my father from some time in the last few years on the deck of their last house in NH.  It's kind of a big grill so I think it was a few years ago -- the grill got smaller as he got less enthused about cooking -- or maybe that there were less of us for him to cook for, since it was mostly just him and my mother.  And a year ago, the small grill went to Rhode Island to my sister's and they moved to an apartment in a place where the nice people in the dining hall did the grilling for you.   I say that I don't have a lot to say about the things that have happened this summer, that writing about your own life is so self indulgent -- but the reality is that I do and it does not appear that I have access to the usual Upper Middle Class White Person's Solution to Stress (aka "vacations, spa treatments, culinary classes, therapy, shopping, private trainers or marathon running").  So, here is a first shot at it -- this is the eulogy I wrot...

After a book writing hiatus, I am back a little, just a little. Not that there was a huge groundswell of demand for me to return to this, but well, it's here when you find it. In August I managed to finish a book, have interviews for two good academic jobs, return to Pittsburgh without major trauma, and well, isn't that enough? I'll be posting soon on that new job (I got one of them) and other items, but here's a nice photo of the world's biggest gluten-free sign at Soergel's Orchard in Wexford, PA. They've opened a big natural foods and gluten-free section that's as grand as the sign.

Well, we are here in western Massachusetts for the month of July. I am sitting in a Panera, the least local or interesting place where there's wifi and coffee, but it is close to the movie theater where certain minors are watching a movie on the most glorious sunny day imaginable. This is not the Allison Park Panera, where it's very folksy and familiar (as familiar as an overpriced chain can get) but also very homogeneous. I have managed to find things I like and people I who share lives and interests. There's a kind of adjustment that seems inevitable, but takes work. Here's there's a set of grandparents, three kids, and a mom with a t-shirt that says "You know what's SO gay? My family..." So, yeah, you would not get that in western Pennsylvania suburbia (maybe in the city; just maybe). Getting here has been like a bumpy landing while traveling on a propeller plane: it's scary before you're sure it's going to work out. The lands...

Yesterday I spent some time out at Meadow Rock Farm weeding garlic.  Susan, who lost her husband only a short while ago, is hard at work keeping the CSA running on her own.  Her aunt and uncle and their honey-colored bassett hound were there hooking up some truck-based watering systems, washing out bins, and just generally helping out.  I did not get to stay for hot meatloaf sandwiches, which is sad since it sounded better than sitting in the bleachers watching a soccer game with a lot of suburban live-through-your-kids types.   I'll be going back soon -- I have more garlic to untangle. My weeding skills are a little rusty -- especially when you're facing a plot that's had some heavy growth.  Thistle and dandelions, I was prepared for.  But wild geranium plants with carrot-like root structures were driving me crazy, especially since they like to grow right up against the garlic root bulbs.    I wish I could run back up there today and do the other two thirds of the plot.   ...

( 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 ye...

(maybe some photos soon...i used real film in a 35mm camera.  slows things down a bit...) I bought some perennials on Monday.  Things with silver foliage. Straw-like flowers. A scented geranium.  Something with purple leaves.  Variegated sage. A lupine -- because two tiny ones came back on their own and they're too fragile to accomplish much bloom this year.  Cut them some slack -- give them a big sibling to do the work for this July and then next year they'll be big and this one will be setting up shop more permanently.   Last year I pulled out a corner of the endless pachysandra that wraps around our house and started planting a few things: a little mint and oregano and the lupine.  They got all gangly by fall but they came back this year with more heft.  Just today, I planted the whole corner full of what I bought.   I think it's because Zack rototilled a big area in the yard, serious about getting a vegetable garden in.  It messes with the pristine yard effect, which I ...

This is a picture of Erik Selby ,  farmer and  radio announcer.  He and his wife Susan  and his father-in-law ran a beautiful CSA called Meadow Rock Farm in Butler, PA.  Erik passed away suddenly last week and I am saddened by it. As writers, there are certain issues that draw us in but remain elusive.  To speak about knowing someone and about loss is to enter into the realm of the cliched and the overwrought.   For me, it's almost impossible to write without considering the ontological, especially knowing the Other, so I've got to enter that fray each day armed with descriptions, new and old.  But loss is complicated in a different way.  The losses in my stage of life, in my geographic, social, and cultural context are different from the losses of those who live with war or poverty or other hardships.   I quote at length from a story by Jane Smiley, who has chronicled the kinds of worlds I often inhabit:   ..it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arriv...