Dove's Eye View

The City that Ended Hunger

Yes Magazine writes about The City that Ended Hunger :: Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market, you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.
The new mayor, Patrus Ananias, now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort, began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources, the "participatory budgeting" that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil.
During the first six years of Belo's food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city's participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.
The city of Belo Horizonte puts "Direct From the Country" farmer produce stands throughout busy downtown areas. The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce which often reached 100 percent to consumers and the farmers. Farmers' profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

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Positivity: The Science

Four weeks ago I had a literary and spiritual crisis. I had just read a profoundly beautiful work of fiction that made me depressed about the future of humanity. The book is a masterpiece, and I felt there was no way I could write a story so well, nor could I stand to create a work that examined the cruelest impulses of human beings in such detail.

Upon finishing the book, I threw it on the bed and said aloud: I give up.

What did I mean? Give up on human beings. Give up trying to write fiction. What was the point? So many masterful writers describe war, poverty and suffering with such power (and many of them are friends or teachers of mine). I could not bear to write into such dark territory.

Furthermore, if the vision of human life I read in the book was true, then we're all screwed. What's the use of writing about signs of hope in the blog, even?

I called my friend Carolina De Robertis, who is a fiction writer of the highest caliber, and who is also wise in the ways of the soul. She came right over with her new baby and a photocopy of an article from The Sun Magazine:

The Science Of Happiness.

It's an interview with researcher Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, who studies emotions and positive psychology. Dr. Fredrickson has developed a theory that positive emotions lead to novel, expansive, or exploratory behavior. One paragraph describes what I meant to do when I started this blog five years ago:

"Negative experiences can demand our attention so much that it takes self-discipline, willpower, and practice not to focus solely on them, and to look at all that's positive in our situations, as well. Negativity doesn't always feel like a choice; it feels like it just lands on you, and you have to deal with it. Positive emotions, I think, are more of a choice."

The interviewer asked "Isn't focusing on positive emotions a luxury available to only those who can afford it? What about people who are mired in conflict, or poverty, or awful social conditions?"

That has been my conundrum in this blog since the beginning. If I keep posting signs of hope while the world goes to hell, am I not just flaunting my own privilege and fortune? Perhaps I am even collaborating with evildoers if I chirp about kite-flying and school-painting while the forces of oppression commit great crimes, out of the way of the cameras.

Here is Fredrickson's answer:

"Positive emotions are available to everybody." Research conducted on the lives of slum-dwellers and prostitutes around the world suggests that "positive emotions have less to do with material resources than we might think; it's really about your attitude and approach to your circumstances.... "We think that having certain illnesses or physical limitations must be terrible all the time. But...you find that (people in extreme circumstances) still feel good when they are with their friends or families.... It's in the ordinary transactions of life that positive emotions grow."

My own experiences bear this out. I have had more than the usual share of trouble in the last eight years: illness, war, many deaths in the family in rapid succession. And yet even during chemo, even now with the shadow of cancer always hanging over me, I have moments, hours, days of great joy. Fredrickson also says,

"...Researchers have found some stunning correlations between expressing more positive emotions and living longer. My role is to ask, How does that happen? How do you go from experiencing these pleasant momentary states to living longer — perhaps even ten years longer?"

While she works on the research, I am going ahead with applying the theory. Yes the world is full of trouble. The Buddha famously said that all life is full of suffering. Our job while here is to refuse to be tossed away by the miseries. Our job is to keep breathing and be awake to the glory: the beauty: the power and joy of each moment of this life.

So I will continue to post signs of hope, and instructions for dinner, in order to keep myself and perhaps the rest of you going a little while longer.

Palestine Literature Festival: the Twitter feed

The Palestine Literature Festival just completed its five day run, and they have now compiled their Twitters, text and pictures, in a single page:

Twitter Series.

Sponsored by the British Council and the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization, this festival brought writers from around the world to different locations in Palestine. They held panels, cocktail parties, and poetry readings. They were shut out of their opening and closing nights in Jerusalem by Israeli police, because their activity is political and therefore illegal under the occupier's rules.

Too bad for the military, because with YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, the world could follow along and see for themselves what it looks like to try to have  culture when your occupiers want you to shut up and disappear. Doesn't make for great public relations for Israel, does it? What do they say, 'the only democracy in the Middle East?' If that's democracy, then I'm a Republican.

The sign of hope: never give up. Never, ever, ever give up. And poetry can live no matter how brutal the prison.

10 Ways To Make Yourself Miserable

Blogs that give you tips for better living have become wildly popular. I actually like such posts, in small doses. Here's one that made me laugh, from a blog called Dumb Little Man:

10 Ways To Make Yourself (And Everyone Around You) Miserable.

I.e. - don't do these if you want to be happy!

Obama Foodorama: Mrs. Obama says processed food is bad

I read Obama Foodarama blog for fascinating analysis and information about the Obama administration's food policy. OF is media savvy and points out things about image and media presentation that I would miss.

This post tells us that Michelle Obama pronounces one of my rules of thumb:

First Lady On The Record At Bancroft Elementary School: Processed and Take-Out Food Is Bad, School Food Needs To Be Affordable, Accessible.

The First Lady was also promoting home cooking, as a way of encouraging better nutrition; teaching nutrition through cooking is another piece of the policy puzzle that the White House is interested in. The inclusion of the Kids Kitchen at the 2009 White House Easter Egg Roll was just the beginning of this kind of initiative. --BTW, look for the processed food quote to be repeated ad infinitum for the next three and a half years.

It's not just that Michelle said this, it's the policy significance of the First Lady saying this. McDonald's, Burger King, and the Restaurant Association are not going to be happy. Thanks to Obama Foodorama for tracking these matters for us.

Marion Cunningham wrote a book several years back called "Lost Recipes" that urged readers to cook at home. Better nutrition, yes, but also reclaim family and friendship. It seems obvious, but in real life as we live it, it's hard to do: make meals regularly, share them with the people we love.

Mondoweiss: Gaza is alive

Philip Weiss, the American journalist, is in Gaza and has filed a report that sounds like something I would say. He gets it. He is now looking at signs of hope - amid the rubble, yes. Hope always lives.

Mondoweiss: Gaza is alive.

I remember during the Gaza slaughter that some tried to stop commentators from comparing Gaza to the Warsaw ghetto. Now I am here and I find the analogy helpful. In the Warsaw ghetto, and in slavery in the south, or in Jim Crow 100 years later--in any of these historical episodes of persecution that had a racist component--it wasn't as if the victimized people laid down and died. No, the blacks of the south created a rich culture on whatever terms were afforded to them. And the books my mother gave me of the Warsaw ghetto conveyed the treasure of Jewish life and culture that persisted even under the most humiliating circumstances. So in Gaza, with Israeli jeeps creeping up one border and gunboats cruising along the other, and bomb craters everywhere, and no one allowed to pursue their dreams, Palestinians are still leading engaged, serious, and even at-time joyous lives. Last night I watched the European Cup finals with about 100 of them in a crowded restaurant. The cruelty of the fact that a global festival that calls on talent from across the world is in no real way open to the people in the place was lost for an hour or two amid the shouts for Messi and Barcelona.

Mondoweiss, the blog, has been on fire lately. It is a must-read for information on Palestine, Israel, and organizing to change the status quo. Today there's a post about Einstein's view of Zionism and Israel (it wasn't fond). Weiss' thesis is that Judaism does not equal Zionism, and being a good Jew does not mean you automatically support the state of Israel and all of its actions and works. He is also outraged at the way coverage of Palestine has been suppressed in this country.

Where to find the real news

I don't trust the mainstream American press for Middle East news, and have not for a good eight years. Beware newspapers bearing tales of the Iranian Menace. The yellowcake/Niger/WMD boondoggle was only six years ago - how quickly we forget!

When I want to know what's happening in Lebanon and the Arab world, I read

• Syria Comment by Professor Joshua Landis, Syria Studies expert at the University of Oklahoma
• Informed Comment by Professor Juan Cole, Middle East historian at U. Michigan
• Qifa Nabki, Lebanese grad student at Harvard currently living in Lebanon doing research.
• Sic Semper Tyrannis, Colonel Patrick Lang, retired U.S. Army Intelligence and Arabist whose portfolio was the Middle East during the Gulf War.
• Mondoweiss by journalists Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Keeping an eye on Zionism.
• I also check Angry Arab. He's angry and he doesn't use paragraph breaks, but he's often right.
• The Economist's Middle East desk is chaired by Max Rodenbeck, who is smart and knowledgeable and fluent in Arabic. He grew up in Cairo. He is not a neo-conservative nor is he an apologist for Israel.

Land and People: Aleppo

Rami Zurayk, Mr. Slow Food Lebanon (but so much more) went to Aleppo a couple of weeks ago. His pictures of the food souk here:

Land and People: Aleppo.

Photo by Rami Zurayk, 2009

Read Rami's blog for third world food politics, sustainable agriculture in the Middle East, and traditional Lebanese food. Rami also travels to places like Irbil and Cairo and documents what to eat.

Small farm revival: Bay Area and beyond

  

Urban farm in Chicago, IL from Wikipedia Images.

Food security, local eating, food justice for the poor. This article in the Oakland Tribune describes a movement I see growing all around me. I have hope.

Security, business drive small farm revival - Inside Bay Area.

In counties around the Bay Area, there's a similar burst of agriculture in formerly empty fields, vacant lots and backyards.

Older farms, survivors of a long-gone pastoral era, are also facing a fresh future as new markets and policies support their operations. And a new generation of farmers dedicated to environmentally-friendly practices and equitable distribution of fresh foods are starting new endeavors with colorful names.

From 2002 to 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported a surge in the growth of small farms in the Bay Area, with a 24 percent increase in Alameda County, 7 percent in Contra Costa County, 8 percent in San Mateo County, 4 percent in Santa Clara County, and 13 percent in Napa County. (The agency didn't survey San Francisco.)

It's a trend occurring nationwide, as the number of U.S. farms grew 4 percent during that time.

Welcome Bitten Fans

Hello, and thanks for dropping by Dove's Eye View. Today many new people are visiting because of a comment I made at Mark Bittman's excellent food blog, Bitten.

I've been blogging signs of hope for peace in the Middle East for the last five years. I also post recipes, because when there's no hope left, you can always make dinner.

If you came by looking for the red lentil soup recipe, here it is.

My basic lentil soup, evolved from the old New York Times Vegetarian cookbook.

This blog is a mishmosh of musings on food, environment, and culture, with politics thrown in. I used to focus a lot more on the politics, but to protect my health, which is ... challenged ... I have to detach from the news. You'll find the sources I like on Middle East affairs in my sidebar. My real purpose is to affirm that whatever the appearance of discord, conflict, or outright evil, good always exists, and it's our job to focus on it. What you put your attention upon grows.

I am working on a series of posts about positive emotions and dealing with crisis, so please check back within the next week. Food posts are only part of Dove's Eye View.