Dove's Eye View

Farming and the City

Blogging this morning with friends on two other continents (Southwest Asia - Rami Zurayk, and North Africa - Maryanne Stroud Gabbani). Maryanne just posted about food around her farm in Giza, in the exurbs of Cairo, and Rami thought the link I sent him so charming that he blogged it from his desk somewhere in Lebanon.

Rami also blogged this article on eating local in New York City from the latest New Yorker. I sent him the link via email last night. Read the magazine as well for a terrific profile of my favorite cookbook writer, Claudia Roden - more on this later.

My comments to Rami on the possibilities for food gardening in New York City:

A friend of mine in the old days in NYC kept pigeons in an enormous, room-sized coop on his roof. He flew them for pleasure - never ate them. He also kept a rabbit or two, tropical birds, designer chickens, a dog and a cat. His children's friends claimed they lived in a zoo.

When I lived in NYC on the Lower East Side (1981-84), my apartment was in a back building off the street, with a hidden courtyard garden. The superintendent, an elderly Italian, gardened and composted with a passion. He tended four enormous compost boxes on the property and collected food scraps in his hand cart from merchants and cafes all around the neighborhood: orange rinds, coffee grounds, lettuces etc. The whole plot was devoted to flowers, however, not a single food item. It was nevertheless miraculous. Living there was hallucinatory. You would step from a concrete-lined street filled with drug dealers and burning trash cans into this secret oasis. When I was a child my Lebanese family referred to walled gardens as "jenainy", an Arabic word meaning paradise, and this garden on East Third Street was indeed a jenainy.

These men gardened and raised food animals in the oldest and most crowded urban slum in the Americas - in the shadow of the great financial and intellectual towers of world commerce. Therefore I am not surprised that Adam Gopnik can find local NYC-grown food to eat in 2007. City dwellers can grow their own food - or some of it - if necessary. In fact the process could be quite sustainable, since composting removes organic matter from the garbage stream.

One more note - my college biology professor, Paul Mankiewicz invented a super-light-weight soil to use on rooftops where you don't want heavy soil boxes harming the surface and supports. Mankiewicz also kept fish tanks in his office for all manner of projects, including food-fish-raising, and he once brought his own home-made wine to a school party (in those days the drinking age was eighteen and sharing a bottle of wine with a teacher was not the illicit, prohibited activity it has become today). I later discovered Mankiewicz installed at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where he tended a series of burbling tanks in an alcove in the main sanctuary. That was in 1990 or so.

I don't know why all these permaculture people move through my life - I was friends with urban gardening pioneer Karl Linn, as well. There must be some message in it all.

Resist Chaos, Resist Oppression: Play Music

An electronic hip-hop collective in Beirut will play two public concerts against the crisis - the intent seems to be to bring all sides together to enjoy music and resist the fragmentation, sectarianism and violence that is depressing Lebanon's vibrant society: UrShalim: "Anti-Crise" Musical Festival - An Invitation.

Hello everyone!

Our band "Hudna" or "Hudneh" or "Hedneh" - as you wish to pronounce it - shall be performing as part of the Anti-Crise event organized by INCONCERT.

Update - Revised dates, please note:

Friday 7-9-2007 Beirut- Sanayie Park 8:30 - 9:00 PM
Saturday 8-9-2007 Tyre Port -Tyre City 8:25 - 10:00 PM

We will present NEW songs of ours and other traditional songs that you love.
TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND BE THERE! :)

"In Concert" has the pleasure of inviting you to overthrow a political, educational, economical and presidential crisis by attending the "Anti-Crise" musical festival.
All concerts are free of charge and open to everybody without any discrimination. Your presence is very important to keep music culture alive in Lebanon.

Since I am merely an American of Lebanese origin, I am certainly missing any sectarian or political subtexts in this announcement, and may therefore offend somebody. Oh well, such is life amongst Lebanon's shifting alliances.

I support artists who take their art to the streets. Political leaders and military tacticians (irregular or governmental) think they can manipulate the people at will. It's true we don't have much power to prevent car bombs, aerial bombs, police state tactics or street-level thuggery - but we can show up to protest. We can show up to concerts. We can stand up for culture, for music, dance, film, visual art, poetry.

Make culture, not war.

All over the map

At the Mutanabbi Street reading the other day, my dear friend said of this blog "It's all over the map!"

She was being kind, and yet I suspected that she's just not sure what the hell this blog is about, anyway. Middle East Peace? The environment? Food? What?

I started this blog in January 2004 because I was so depressed at the news from Iraq and the rest of the Middle East (as well as the USA). I knew people were agitating and organizing on the ground to build bridges and affirm life. I thought I would put up links to such efforts, just as a small antidote to the mass of bad news online.

Well life seems to have gotten worse. Since this blog began we've seen Abu-Ghraib and the nightmare of the war in Iraq; we've seen Lebanon (my father's home country) suffer terrible violence; we've seen a hurricane devastate an American city and expose how little our government is able to protect us. Bush on the Constitution and civil rights is enough to make me tear my hair out. I got cancer, was treated and recovered. My dad got cancer and died. My cousin got cancer and died (aged 38). My other cousin had a stroke and died.

I also flew a kite for peace, got my picture in the paper, and was insulted by people who called me a Zionist appeaser (you see, flying a kite for peace makes Zionists feel good about themselves, so it's appeasement).

With all this going on, what hope is there? Yes, I get depressed about the situation, and sometimes it spills out in my posts. Or I just go silent for a while. People don't like it when I express despair on this blog - it contradicts the stated purpose up there on the top of the page.

I post about food because when there's no hope left, you can always make dinner.

And we peaceniks persist in throwing potluck parties and breaking bread together. Maybe the fascists can destroy a whole country and threaten to invade two more, but we will still share hummus and sing kumbaya.

Think that's contemptible? Why is it more contemptible than destroying countries? Have some tabbouli, and sing another round of "Imagine". I'd rather do that than support war any day. And if all I do is share hummus with some other folks, then I've done more than most people do to flout the culture of war.

I post about the environment because, as I wrote to a Jewish peace activist years ago: "Global warming is going to fry all of our Semitic asses if we don't do something about it."

Since the blog format had its origins as a personal record on the web, I do reserve the right to post personal milestones or other musings. (graduation, chemo treatment, first day teaching at college). I also like to post about the accomplishments and performances of my friends and relations. If you are my friend/relative and want your concert/book/art exhibit/charity event publicized, let me know and I'll be happy to post about it. It doesn't even have to relate to the Middle East, food or the environment. I have posted on a fertility memoir, a children's rock star, a classical music quartet and more, all because the artists were friends of mine.

Hope this helps explain what Dove's Eye View is all about.

Two States or One State?

Two States or One State? That is the nuclear question. Answer it with an integer (one? two? three?) and an avalanche of assumptions, condemnations and arguments falls upon your head.

I am wishy-washy on the subject. For a long time two states seemed the reasonable, moderate solution to me. Now it seems that Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush agree (well Sharon is in a coma, but he had come to agree before his final illness) on two states. We'll leave aside what their vision of two states looks like... Meanwhile, Israel's behavior of the last six years - no, seven, counting from September 2000 - has pushed me to consider more radical solutions than I was willing to entertain before. Hence my occasional jabs toward the one-state position.

Sabeel, the union of Palestinian Christians, supports a two-state solution.

Vineyard of the Saker has reprinted the transcript of a debate that took place in Israel between Ilan Pappe and Uri Avnery. It's worth reading.

The Vineyard of the Saker: “Two States or One State” - a debate between Avnery and Pappe.

Original Gush Shalom Forum here.

Of course after reading the whole thing I still don't know definitively which I would vote for if someone held a gun to my head and demanded I choose one or the other. As an American-Lebanese I don't really deserve - or get - a vote. In an ideal world, the parties affected would work it out, on a level playing field with equal power. This is not likely to happen soon.

You really ought to read the discussion just to see how leftists in Israel talk about the issues.

Personal Culinary History

Kevin Drum at  The Washington Monthly has been writing about the early history of tacos in New York. He was puzzled that the taco was a novelty in NYC as late as 1974. This sparked a comment thread on what foods were new when. America's eating habits have changed probably non-stop since white people arrived (bringing Black people with them by force BTW). But in my lifetime food habits have changed significantly. About the time I went off to college, new ingredients were arriving in big cities, and by the time I was a young adult working on my own, many of those ingredients and foods had made their way out of the cosmopolitan cities into the heartland towns where I grew up.

When I was a college kid experimenting with new food in NYC of the 1980s, sushi was the big new unfamiliar thing (I'm talking early 80s here). My mother would shudder and gasp as I described chirashi sushi or the sashimi I loved. Raw fish????

What else was new - tofu. My Southern grandmother loved to tell people that I was in New York sleeping on a futon and eating tofu. She loved those two words. (Futons were different, too). I learned to sliver raw ginger into soups, and I experimented with ramen. A Japanese noodle restaurant in mid-town made a sea food noodle soup, with added vinegar and hot pepper, that was my preferred head cold remedy.

We also ate black bread, bialys, bagels and pierogi from shops on the Lower East Side; and we bought whole fish to bake from Chinatown. I learned some recipes from an Italian boyfriend (as in native of Rome) that included fresh mozzarella with basil. The cheese shop on East 11th Street not too far from me made fresh mozzarella on-site; the guy would light a fire in a rusty metal trash barrel on the sidewalk and lower a whole string of mozzarella balls into it on a stick - to make smoked mozzarella. I saw this procedure often and yet it seems completely improbable now. God knows why the health department didn't shut them down, but those were the bad old days on the Lower East Side, when the cops didn't venture east of First Avenue, and smoking cheese balls on the sidewalk was the tamest activity on display. I mean there were abandoned buildings full of drug dealers on my block; the junkies lit fires in trash cans to keep warm in winter while they sold heroin on the corner. Cheese balls were respectable compared to that.

Mutanabbi Street Memorial Reading

Reading in San Francisco on Sunday in honor of the famed Street of Booksellers in Baghdad:

Link: Mutanabbi Street Memorial Reading.

On March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. Named after the famed 10th century classical Arab poet, Al-Mutanabbi, this is an old and established street for bookselling and has been for hundreds of years. It has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.

We are among the pages of every book that was shredded and burned and covered with flesh and blood that day.

And to those who would manufacture hate with the tools of language . . .

Those who would take away the rights and dignity of a people with the very same words that guarantee them . . .</p>

And to anyone who would view the bodies on Mutanabbi Street as a way to narrow the future into one book . . .</p>

We say, as poets, writers, artists, booksellers, printers and readers</p>

Mutanabbi Street starts here. The Mutanabbi Street Coalition will host a Mutanabbi Street memorial reading at the San Francisco Public Library, on August 26, at 1pm.   Please help spread the word by downloading and distributing our General Flier, Call to Booksellers, or Call to Printers (all pdf documents).

Additionally, on Friday, September 28, the San Francisco Center for the Book will host an evening dedicated to Mutanabbi Street and specially-printed broadsides. The event will include readings, and we will print a broadside on the Center’s Vandercook.

Jewish surfer seeks wave of peace in Gaza

Rockslinga blogged this first: Jewish surfer seeks wave of peace in Gaza - Los Angeles Times:

"Dorian Paskowitz, the American surfer credited with introducing the sport to Israel in the 1950s, returned this week with a new idea: using donated surfboards to bring Israelis and Palestinians together.

After two hours of bickering, the retired physician from Dana Point persuaded Israeli authorities to open the Erez border crossing Tuesday so he could personally deliver a dozen new surfboards for a Palestinian training center in the Gaza Strip. ...

Paskowitz, who is known as Doc, said he told the officer:

"I came 12,500 miles from Hawaii to give away these boards. The guys who need them are standing 50 meters from here, and you're trying to stop me. How can you do that to a fellow Jew?"

I don't have the guts to surf, especially not here in the cold, turbulent waters of Northern California. But the sport is fascinating to watch and I have spent much time on the coast at Santa Cruz and San Francisco watching intrepid surfers fling themselves into the churning water. At Santa Cruz they climb straight down a cliff, somehow holding their boards, and then paddle out to where the waves will take them crashing back toward the cliff. I don't get how anybody survives. It's a matter of deep intuition and connection with the water, the board, and your own body.

Scott H., if you are reading this blog, you ought to keep writing about surfing. I still remember that surfing scene you read in class more than a year ago.

California - the rest of the world can laugh at us but we know how to live. Those hippies at the sulha (previous post) are straight out of any California peacenik gathering; and surfing is of course a California culture that has spread across the world. Yeah you "realists" think we're silly because we wear flowing, natural-fiber clothes; beat on drums; eat organic food; and surf. But if everybody lived like that, the world's problems would dissipate like foam on the waves.

In fact, 40 years after the summer of love, we can say the hippies got it right. Make love, not war; share your stuff and own less of it; be free and love life. That's all. (The drugs are optional and should be used with great prudence; same goes for sexual experimentation. But remember to compost!)

SULHA Peace Project

I first heard about sulha from an Israeli-American friend who used to hang out with a Druze sulha practitioner in Israel back in the 1980s. It's a traditional Arab form of mediation or peacemaking, intended to reconcile the bitterest enemies.

Now you can view a video from a sulha gathering in Israel between Arabs and Jews: YouTube - SULHA Peace Project - Part 1 of 2.

Thanks to Len Traubman for the link.

Arab Cultural Festival in San Francisco

Be there: Arab Cultural Festival in Golden Gate Park.

Hikayatna - "Our Stories"
Sunday August 26, 2007
11:00am-6:00pm
San Francisco County Fair building, Golden Gate Park, Corner of 9th avenue and Lincoln
Admissions: Adults $5.00. Children 8-16: $2.00, Under 8: Free

    * Live entertainment
    * Children's activities
    * Delicious Arabic food
    * Henna Painting
    * Booth Bazaar
    * Arts and Crafts
    * Raffle

I'll see you there, insha'allah.

The American Community College

Today I start teaching English 1A (Freshman Composition and Reading) at a local community college. Here is a post from The Washington Monthly to make my heart glad:

How good are community colleges compared to 4-year universities? A few years ago a group of educational reformers created an annual survey (the NSSE) that measured how well universities implemented research-proven best teaching practices, and then followed that up with a similar survey for community colleges (the CCSSE). Kevin Carey writes in our current issue that the results were surprising:

    On a number of important measures, the [community] colleges on our list outperform their four-year peers. More than two-thirds of the community college students ask questions in class or contribute to class discussions, compared to only half of the four-year students. Student-faculty interaction is also better — the community college students are more likely to get prompt feedback on performance and to interact with their professors during and outside of class. And the level of academic challenge is more than comparable — the community college students were more likely to work harder than they thought they could to meet their professor's expectations.

Wish me luck. We'll be reading the Seymour Hersh profile of Anthony Taguba later in the semester, among many other essays; and we're reading Laila Lalami's novel of migration, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits.

Next term I want to teach Titus Andronicus and show the Juliette Tamor film. Next term.