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