As I continue my struggle to lose weight and change my eating habits, I keep my eyes open for examples of interesting people who have continued to "evolve" over time. I know I am not alone. How we produce, process and consume our daily bread (food), is a hot topic. As of 2006 there were 800 million people on the planet who were hungry, but they were outnumbered by the billion who were overweight. Americans spend less of their income on food than has any culture in the history of the world, but they pay dearly in other ways: losing the flavors, diversity, and creative food cultures of earlier times. The environmental costs are also high, and the nutritional sacrifice is undeniable: on our modern industrial food supply, Americans are now raising the first generation of children to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Things are out of balance, we must make a fundamental shift. I am a newcomer to "moderation" in my dietary practices. I am always looking for help.
My new hero, heroine, is Barbara Kingsolver. When she was young, her mother told her, "You won't find Betty Crocker in the Congo". Her life reads like a novel: childhood experiences in the wilds of Africa, PHD research studies about the social life of termites, to a novel, "The Poisonwood Bible", about life in the Congo. Her book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" follows her family through the first year of an experiment. They move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. They find themselves eager to move away from the typical food scenario of American families: a refrigerator packed with processed, factory-farmed foods transported long distances using nonrenewable fuels. In their search for another way to eat and live, they begin to recover what Kingsolver considers our nation's lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production.
The audio book company Audible.com has a 50% off sale on over 1,000 of their listings. Several works by Barbara Kingsolver are available. While I have been reading (listening) to her books, some research has revealed that her writing workflow and discipline is admirable.
While working on Poisonwood Bible, she began nearly every writing day by perusing a huge old two-volume Kikongo-French dictionary, compiled early in the century (by a missionary, of course). Slowly she began to grasp the music and subtlety of this amazing African language, with its infinite capacity for being misunderstood and mistranslated.
Another of the novel's challenges was the matter of capturing the language of teenage females from the Southeastern U.S. in the late 1950s. Since she was barely alive then, this was also foreign territory. Teenage speech is stereotyped and notoriously ephemeral; if she had just guessed, it would have sounded inauthentic. This stumped her, until she hit pay dirt in a used book store in Boston: 35 pounds (she had to mail them home) of Life, Look, and Saturday Evening Post magazines from 1958-1961.
Advice from Barbara Kingsolver to writers: "Revise, revise, revise, revise. Fill up that (waste basket) recycling box. A first draft is a work of construction; the seventh one is the work of an artist. Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write."
While not a qualifying ride for the Tour de France, the Tour De Cure is a noteworthy cycling event. All across the United States 30,000 riders become reacquainted with their bicycles. For some, it's just a matter of grabbing a few power gels and a bag of granola, filling a Camelback with water and heading out for a 100 mile ride. For others, it's trying to find tubes to fix the flats and WD 40 to dissolve the rust accumulated on the chain while the bike sat in the garage since the last Tour. Most riders are somewhere in between Fit and Desperate. My next ride will be along the shore of the old fishing town Gloucester, Massachusetts. If you would like to donate to our efforts as a sponsor, you may do so online: ADA sponsor page for the E Team. Each mile I ride, each dollar I raise will be used in the fight to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes. No matter how small or large, your generous gift will help improve the lives of more than 20 million Americans who suffer from diabetes, in the hope that future generations can live in a world without this disease. Together, we can all make a difference! Thank you for making a generous contribution to this cause that is so important to me!
You may enjoy reading: History, culture and community values are embedded in agriculture.
The creature, called Swamp Thing, was originally conceived as Alec Holland mutating into a vegetable-like creature, a "muck-encrusted mockery of a man". However, under writer Alan Moore, Swamp Thing was reinvented as an elemental entity created upon the death of Alec Holland, with Holland's memory and personality intact. He is described as "a plant that thought it was Alec Holland, a plant that was trying its level best to be Alec Holland."
Alan Moore's Swamp Thing had a profound effect on mainstream comic books, being the first horror comic to approach the genre from a literary point of view since the EC horror comics of the 1950's, and broadened the scope of the series to include ecological and spiritual concerns while retaining its horror-fantasy roots.
Waldo County, situated in mid-coast Maine along scenic Penobscot Bay, has genuine New England character evidenced by working port towns and quaint rural villages. Visitors are awed by the area's unspoiled beauty. From striking coastal views to sweeping mountain vistas, dramatic natural settings abound. In addition great care has been taken to preserve and refurbish numerous historic landmarks, homes and buildings. Consequently, the Maine of yesteryear is still found here.
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