Hello again, everyone.

This week brings the start of the blog that will be the context for our regular exchange of reflections and, in many ways, the motor of our class. You’ve already seen my general description of the weekly posts. I hope that if you have questions you’ll feel free either to email me at <elder2348@gmail.com> or to check in with Heather, Mae, or Ariel or with the other Fellows at your site. In a recent PolyCom chat with Ariel she made a couple of suggestions I want to let you know about. One is to assign midnight on Mondays and Thursdays as the time by which those posts should be entered; the other is to push the Thursday post for this week off to Friday, since we’ll all be involved in a videoconference on Thursday evening. As my role-model Homer would say, “Done and done!”

Take whatever approach to the readings lends your post energy and a manageable focus. Here are couple of broad prompts you could use if you liked, though, just to break into this exploratory mode of writing. 1: Berry, Pollan, and Petrini all offer a rationale for the local food movement (or in Petrini’s case for the closely affiliated Slow Food approach). Does one of them formulate this in a way you particularly like, or dislike for that matter? Do you feel a strong contrast between some pair of these readings? 2: Ladonna Redmond, in the YouTube of her talk, brings the topic of local food into an urban world and relates it to issues of social equity. Does that seem to you a critique of the others’ approach? an extension of it? some combination of the two? I look forward very much to reading these responses, and from time to time entering into dialogue with folks in the class.

One other point to make about the blog, here at the outset. The voice can be personal, the approach exploratory. Have fun with them. But you should know that, though only members of the Food Works program can enter posts or comments, it is like most other blogs a public forum. So please bear in mind that strangers may be reading your entries as you choose your words. I actually think this is a crucial skill for us all to hone in the age of email and Face Book: an authentic combination of candor and carefulness.

In Thursday’s videoconference we’ll each introduce ourselves to the whole group. I’ll ask everyone simply to go around and say their names, where they go to school and where they live, what their majors are, and what their summer’s internship is. There’ll be two main topics for this session. The first is to talk a little more about the week’s readings, as a way of building upon, and also enriching, the blog. Ariel will frame and facilitate the next part of the videoconference, which will focus on the themes of urban sustainability and resilient cities. Here are some readings she suggests as relevant to those topics. Like all our readings, they’re pretty brief. You might like to take a look at them in the run-up to Thursday.

Could Washington DC Become the American Capital of Urban Farming?

Behind the Success of DC’s Unstoppable Food Incubator, Union Kitchen

100 Resilient Cities

You certainly do not need to post about these, but you could if you wished. Similarly, if you ever wanted to post about one of your Fifth Days rather than about a reading that would be fine. The whole point of the blog is deepen and sharpen our conversation as the summer progresses.

I wish you a pleasant weekend after the intensity of getting your internships up and rolling!

Sincerely,

John

 

Hello, everyone.

I’m really glad I’ll have the chance to meet everyone in the class individually over the next several weeks. In the meantime, though, I want to follow up on the information about the blog that was conveyed in my recent email message. For many years, I’ve found informal writing a great resource in fostering a sense of educational community. But even when I’m seeing students regularly in person, it’s always necessary to return to this aspect of class repeatedly at the beginning of a term. It’s so important to get across that this is an ambitious part of our endeavor, yet not a formal part: it’s a practice of writing as discovery pursued in a responsive social context. Please feel to contact me anytime at elder@middlebury.edu. Think of me as holding continuous office-hours!

Let me just reiterate briefly that the writing aspect of the blog will now involve two posts per student every week, starting on Monday, June 8th. After reading the selections for that week, as indicated in the syllabus, take about half an hour to respond to some aspect of one reading. You could take a number of tacks. A personal, narrative response, a comparison with something else you’ve read, or a close look at the images and implications of a given passage would all be great. Just go for energy, an authentic voice, and a sharp focus. You’ll get the hang of it soon! On Thursday of every week, please just focus on the Monday response of a colleague in the class (a different one every week) and share your thoughts with that person. Again, give it a half an hour or so, have fun, and don’t worry about editing or evaluating it. The point here is dialogue. I and the other members of the FoodWorks staff will enjoy reading and occasionally writing in the blog too.

The other piece of our work on the blog is that every Saturday, starting on Saturday the 13th of June, four members of the class will be asked to post a video interview, of approximately two minutes, which you will have carried out with some member of your summer’s local-food community. This could be a person at the place you’re interning or just another interesting individual you’ve gotten to know. These individual interviews will be the basis for a final digital story produced at each of our three sites by the end of the summer. I’m attaching a video of Aylie Baker talking about digital interviews from a variety of perspectives at the April retreat in Middlebury. Aylie Baker Video Those who were there will appreciate this refresher, while those who couldn’t get to it will have a chance to gain a fuller view of this aspect of our work. I’m really happy to have digital stories as part of our conversation, and know that we’ll all gain confidence in this activity as we go along. The coordinators and your fellow-students will all be good resources here too. Could I ask Fredy Rosales, Grace Levin, Yingshi Liang, and Charlie Mitchell to post the first video interviews on the 13th? (Those are just the two names listed at the top of our D. C. roster and the top names from the Louisville and Middlebury rosters.)

Wishing you an exhilarating first week of the course,

John