Vacation is a good time to write blog posts

See my other post up at Undercurrents blog.

White Girl

Oaxaca is as I remember it, beautiful but also grinding. I asked myself why this adjective surfaced for me. It has something to do with seeing all around you how hard people hustle to make a living, and how it’s written all over their bodies. I feel truly conspicuous even standing still. My sandals seem like gleaming, impossible footware from the land where all your needs are anticipated, you just have to choose the right options package. My soft cottons in natural colors, brown, grey and slate blue- their softness and cut like a shining beacon among the starchy acrylics in neon pink and green that are so common in Oaxaca. Everywhere I went it felt clear to me, oh man, here steps a White Girl.

We teased our Oaxaqueno friend, who is now dating an American girl working for a non-profit in the city. I thought of his beautiful, accomplished ex, who we’d be seeing the next day. We have no idea why they broke up, but it just seemed to be a part of the larger anecdotal thread that I was overhearing at the club. Our friend Rachel was being chatted up by a Oaxaqueno friend from work. When he moved away from the table she said on earlier occasions she’d had to remind him “if your [Mexican] girlfriend knew what you were up to with an American girl, she’d totally break up with you.” It seemed that no matter how long they had dated their Mexican girlfriends, or how much they liked them, landing a White Girl was the ultimate prize at any cost.
And I’m thinking almost any White Girl would do. You know all those subtle identity markers we spend our whole lives setting up to distinguish ourselves from others? They easily collapse into the larger umbrella identity that our race and nationality confer on us. What pains I’ve taken to be “alterna girl,” in no way similar to the Trinity sorority-types that I’d heaped scorn on. Well guess what. When me and Trin-girl are dancing at club Sabina, all that is apparent is our glowing health, our ease, and most of all our belief that we are living out some journey or career: that this is just one stop for us, that life is an endless series of choices for us to make, that our lives are not going to be ground into dust. And even if our lives are secretly expendable in the political machinations of our country, we’re at least taught otherwise and sent out to act in perfect faith.

I’ve been gone eleven months, and what’s most apparent is just how “stuck” most of our Mexican friends seem. Hannah and I talked it over, the best shot for economic advancement is tied to coming to work in the US somehow. We hear stories, a cousin who works for IBM in IT in the states,  our former house-mom who left to go work in the states around the same time I left, and is still there. She’s a nanny.  I start doing what I call the “impossible math of Mexico” in my head often, trying to add the pesos up in my head to get a picture of survival here. I can never get the math to work. Our friend Rachel worked as a bartender, so we know bartending brings in around $10-15 US dollars a night. I use these numbers to make the calculations for Lulu, our Oaxaquena friend who is bartending in the Reforma district. She makes it work somehow, they all make it work somehow, but it’s a mystery for me, and there’s no doubt the margin of survival is small here, and inextricably linked to the States.

So there will always be us White Girls in the bars and clubs of Oaxaca, making friendships and connections, in town for various reasons. The friendships are sincere, the camadarie true, I don’t doubt this. But there is something else going on as well, something that turns us from being Maureen and Hannah, as we’re eclipsed into being White Girl, perhaps in the very moment we wave goodbye and continue on, secure in our freedom of movement.

hot hot heat

One hot, muggy and overcast day I realized this is the first time I’ve had Hannah and a CT summer. Summers in CT up until now have meant separation, and lots of moping. I was in the passanger seat of the car while Hannah was driving when I realized this. I’d been triggered by the pining-for-Hannah weather! But she was right next to me. (A miracle, Sylvia Plath would say. The comeback in broad daylight.)

Today in the concrete park that was created on the highway overpass I told Hannah that the month of May was really a stinker, and I’m glad to be almost done with it. I can’t even really blog about it, because one of the cardinal rules of blogging is never, ever write about work because no matter how obscure your blog is someone will read it, and you might as well have taken a great big dump in the conference room. So I’ll stick to the facts: my direct supervisor, whom I worked with closely and trusted pretty much 110%, took another development job in Hartford. Another fact that is apparent enough, this makes me sad. I have run my job situation up and down in my mind, through blenders and petri dishes and microfiche.

I still don’t know what to make of it. It kind of changes every day, and sometimes every hour. But a larger picture emerged, beyond just this one job. The closing of the IPA has affected me, A Lot. I’m pretty sure it’s my life’s work to keep independent publishing viable, no matter what the challenges. I didn’t know a damn thing about development when I started this job, but six months later I’m amazed at what you can do. Independent media hinges upon one question right now, how do you pay for it, and I feel like I’ve stumbled on some answers.

But in the short-term, the Ramones play on a loop in my head:  should I stay or should I go now?

pop vs. soda

I thought people might be interested in this site I stumbled across while researching beverages to sell at the farmers’ market.  Ever since I left the shelter of home at the tender age of 18 I’ve been teased and patronized for calling carbonated drinks by their rightful name–pop.  This guy has broken down the nomenclature across the country with his online survey that you too can be a part of.  His conclusion: people who call it pop are much, much cooler.

new job

I am long overdue in writing about what I’m doing to make my life financially solvent. I’ve been working to establish Hartford’s newest farmers’ market for almost the past three months. The job puts me exactly where I want to be, so I am happy, although a bit overwhelmed at times. I never stopped to think about all of the various factors that need to be addressed and balanced in order to pull off a successful market. I am the sole person establishing, coordinating, and then mediating the vendor-side supply and consumer-side demand. Thankfully, I have a great diversity of vendors already committed to selling, which frees me up to put all of my efforts into ensuring their success.

Because the market job pays me enough to cover expenses I have had some breathing room to consider what else I want to do with my week. My recent epiphany that there is a variety of food-related work one can do outside of a restaurant has freed me to pursue things I had previously considered extra-curricular. These interests have become clearer and more specific with experience, travel, and study. Currently I am taken by artisinal food crafts–ways of making food products that have been around for as long as people have been eating. I’m talking about cheese, sausage, fermented foods, bread, wine, and beer. My hope is to learn some of these crafts, and I am starting with cheese. Beginning this week I will be helping to make high-end aged raw cow’s milk cheese at Cato Corner Farm in Colchester, CT, which is about a half hour southeast of Hartford. And I’m getting paid. No more of this unpaid internship bullshit for me!

False Spring, 4/12-4/18

This is the point when the earth
wobbles and the days lengthen

I thought we had acheived this moment, I thought I felt it in my bones when the change happened. Surely spring had happened, the promise of it was everywhere. But then the reversal happened, the grey returned and I had the distinct sense of having been plucked out of chronological time, set adrift in these chill days.

Phone calls with bad news. Unease and sadness. The impossibility of an untimely death, not my friend but her brother. Oh my god, we all have younger siblings I thought, a crushing sensation of loss.

I had gotten two phone calls within the hour after it was announced at church, at the stations of the cross. Windsor Locks is like a series of Venn diagrams, those oval markings that show overlapping relationships. On this evening the Venn diagrams formed a daisy chain spilling out of the only funeral parlor in town and into the parking lot. I stood next to Sue, we huddled in the cold as the sun went down: we were underdressed, somehow we hadn’t expected the onset of cold at sunset. It occurred to me that we’d keep returning here over and over again: me, Sue, Matt, and Stephen. We are so young still, and we have so much yet to support each other through.

The point when the harness
that pulls the sea pulls each
of us into spring and makes us
shudder again when the first
red appears, the bleeding
that quicker than not becomes
green.

What if the buds do not burst, what if this strange stunted feeling persists? There is comfort on another morning, a rainy Sunday at the local diner. A small packed rail-car style diner, it practicaly is steaming from the crush of damp people against each other. I sit with Hannah at the counter, with the paper. Hannah asks me, “the paper says we are experiencing a ‘true nor’easter,’ what the heck is that, I’ve never heard of it.” I look dumbfounded- I can’t define it because it’s just something assumed to be understood: clearly the paper thought so too, it could only define it by classifying it as “true.” Later I think a nor’easter is when a lot of something happens and it is unwelcome.

You will always be here
as long as water cuts deeper
into soil and the coursing
adds to what is left, as long as
leaves are drawn out by the tide
and buds bleed through bark,
even you who are lost will always
be here as long as the moon
circles into its line with sun
and the oceans respond, as long
as we are able to find the moment
when the winds make the globe
waver, as long as the earth
corrects itself, as long as
pain takes faith in its bud
and flowers.

The poem is “Lecture On The Tides,” by Hugh Ogden, a Trinity creative writing professor who died this past New Years when he fell into the ice at the pond bordering his home in Maine. www.hughogdenpoet.com.

I’d like to get to know you better. (Do you remember me?)

So while I work on an actual post, please enjoy the hilarity that I discovered while searching for fundraising letter samples. Here is your one-stop shop for professionally written love letters, meeting a variety of needs (see actual product topics below), and all for the low, low price of $12.99. A steal!

All of our love letter products contain letters for these topics:

• Can we start over? (Let’s see if the magic is still there.)
• Dear Ex: Things turned out okay for everyone. (We’re older now, but wiser.)
• Goodbye forever (It’s time to go our separate ways.)
• Has someone come between us? (I see the telltale signs.)
• I love you. (Last night was unforgettable!)
• I’d like to get to know you better. (Do you remember me?)
• I’ll do whatever it takes. (Just please come back.)
• I’m falling for you. (We’re made for each other!)
• I’m glad we went out together. (I want to see you again.)
• Let’s part on good terms while we can. (It’s time to go our separate ways.)
• Please forgive me. (This relationship is worth saving!)
• Sorry we didn’t agree. (But can we kiss and make up?)
• Sorry, this isn’t working for me anymore. (We need to separate for a while.)
• Tell me what I did wrong. (I know I can make it up to you.)
• That was a stupid thing I said/did. (But I don’t usually behave this way.)
• Too many things have come between us. (Let’s go back to the way we were.)
• Want to spend the rest of my life with you. (My love is real and so is my commitment!)
• We need to see a marriage counselor. (It’s time we let someone come between us!)
• We need to slow down. (I’m feeling a little crowded!)
• We never really talk. (Tell me what you’re thinking.)
• We’ve come to a standstill. (Let’s reconsider our goals.)
• You mean everything to me. (You’re my better half; we make each other whole!)
• You really hurt me. (But tell me your side of it–I’m listening!)

Best Post Title Ever

Dan Sinker over at Punk Planet’s website had this to post: “And you will know independent publishing by the trail of its dead.” He started compiling a list of the downed soldiers.

I am trying so hard to articulate for fundraising materials just why print needs to continue for independent media, will someone please comment and help me out?

crossing the line

Maureen asked me the other day if I thought I had crossed some kind of line or milestone by actually making my own granola.  Giving it some thought, I responded that no, I had already crossed it.  I think she was referring to the granola hippie stereotype, and while I personally do not feel like this is a good fit I do wonder intellectually if it in fact is.  Admittedly, over the past several months I’ve slowly been sliding towards a “turn on, tune in, drop out” mentality insofar as food is concerned.  Most would probably agree that my burgeoning commitment to local and traditional food ways have been a long time in coming.  Since deciding to focus professionally on food I’ve been doing some homework which I hold responsible for my incipient radicalization.  In particular, I blame (and recommend) Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Marion Nestle’s What to Eat, and Nina Planck’s Real Food: What to Eat and Why.  The latter posits some compelling and iconoclastic assertions, including that traditional fats like lard and butter are good and “new” fats like conventionally produced vegetable oils are bad and may be cancer causing and that cholesterol is not an indicator or cause of heart disease.  The gist of her argument is that what is wrong with our diet is that it is highly processed and refined, in short: industrialized.  Many of the health problems that ail our society, from heart disease to diabetes, are advents of our industrial age when we stopped eating whole foods, traditional fats, and raw unpasteurized dairy.  Planck discusses but does not advocate what is called the Cave Man or Paleolithic Diet which takes her thesis to its furthest conclusion.  Practitioners of this diet maintain our bodies are not evolved to eat as we do now and that we should instead eat the diet of mostly meat and raw vegetables that humans have eaten for millions of years.  Interesting and compelling, but even I have my limits (I think).

The grocery store has become an unhappy place for me as I try to navigate my new-found knowledge of how our food is produced, marketed, and labeled all the while fuming from the sticker shock.  (Everything is way more expensive in Connecticut–I pay almost twice as much as I did in Berkeley for lesser quality produce.)  My answer increasingly has been to disengage myself from the conventional food industry as much as possible.  I try to not to buy processed and prepared foods as well as conventionally raised meats and dairy products.  I spend my time and money in the bulk section favoring organic choices, cursing the price jump, and trying to remind myself of why it is worth it.  I usually leave quite grumpy.  I’ve found a place nearby called Urban Oaks that produces greens throughout the winter season in greenhouses and sells other local and organic products.  I cruise price listings online for pastured chickens and grass-fed beef at local farms.  Many are already “sold out” for the season.

In truth I am a little overwhelmed by the complexity of the choices and and the financial cost of trying to do what I think and hope is the right and healthy thing.  But on second thought, it’s not all that complex now that I’ve made the commitment to eat and prepare whole and unadulterated foods.  Expensive and time consuming, yes, but it’s actually kind of simple.  I still falter, mostly because of the price, even though I know that the price of conventional goods is artificially low.  And I do allow for some cheating and occasional looking the other way.  After all, there is something wonderful and liberating about popping a pizza into the oven or calling for take-out on a lazy night.

Master of the Market

Many of you may be wondering what I have been up to–my adjustment to Hartford, the progress of my job search.  Some may still be checking here in vain attempts to keep abreast with these developments.  Well, aside from playing with Butch, I’ve been steadily making phone calls and meeting with people of the food/agricultural world in the greater Hartford area.  I’ve even set up the address book on my computer, thereby creating what some might call a Rolodex.  I am a young professional.

Happily the persistence has paid off with the assistance of a little serendipity.  This morning I was offered the Market Master position at a new farmer’s market in downtown.  The Partnership for Strong Communities is a Hartford-based organization dedicated to eradicating homelessness.  As per this mission the Partnership purchased a beautiful old housing complex built over a 100 years ago to board manufacturing employees for the Billings Forge that now provides affordable housing to low-income Hartfordites.  Also being developed at the complex is a community center, a restaurant featuring local foodstuff, a retail front, art gallery space, and starting in July a seasonal Thursday farmer’s market.  I feel fortunate to be involved in such an enormous and dynamic endeavour.  Part of what is great too, is that the Billings Forge is located a few blocks in between the capitol and the Latino quarters, so the market is sure to see a very diverse crowd and I am sure to flex my Spanish speaking muscles.  The position is only part time but is very flexible, so the job search continues.  Nonetheless, I am extremely satisfied.  I had assumed that I would not find work in the food world right away, especially a job like this that offers me so many opportunities for leadership, growth, networking, getting out of the office, speaking Spanish, and the ability to make a positive impact while having fun.