Food Notes 2

Posted on April 3, 2020 by JMN
Like health care workers and emergency medical workers, America’s farmworkers, like these in Oxnard, Calif., are putting themselves in harm’s way for the rest of us. Credit… Norma Galeana/Reuters.

America’s 2.5 million farmworkers are among the groups most at risk of contracting the coronavirus. And if they are at risk, our food supply may be too.

Picture yourself waking up in a decrepit, single-wide trailer packed with a dozen strangers, four of you to every room, all using the same cramped bathroom and kitchen before heading to work. You ride to and from the fields in the back of a hot, repurposed school bus, shoulder-to-shoulder with 40 more strangers, and when the workday is done, you wait for your turn to shower and cook before you can lay your head down to sleep. That is life for far too many farmworkers in our country today.

(Greg Asbed, “What Happens If America’s 2.5 Million Farm Workers Get Sick?” NYTimes, 4-3-20)

Greg Asbed, a founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2017 for his role in developing the Fair Food Program to protect farm workers’ human rights.

(c) 2020 JMN

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Food Notes 1

Posted on April 3, 2020 by JMN
Richie Pope.

California produces a third of the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts…

The United States relies on foreign suppliers for almost 20 percent of its food…

The United States relies on foreign suppliers for 80 percent of its seafood, almost half of that coming from Asia…

About half of America’s imported dairy products come from Europe…

Almost 25 percent of America’s cheese comes from Italy…

Kazakhstan, a major exporter of wheat flour… has suspended exports of the product.

Vietnam, the world’s third-largest supplier of rice… has suspended exports of the product.

The United States no longer holds national grain reserves…

Significant parts of the food supply could be jeopardized should food protectionism accelerate.

Source: Shub Debgupta, “Will the Coronavirus Threaten Our Food?” NYTimes, 3-31-20.

Dr. Debgupta is an economist who focuses on food.

(c) 2020 JMN

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“Disconfirming Experiences”

Posted on April 3, 2020 by JMN

Reading this article gave me a visceral boost, because it gives a name to what I happen, unforeseeably, to have with another person: deep reciprocal attunement effortfully gained.

Bonnie Badenoch, quoted by David Brooks, says disconfirming experiences are experiences of “deep reciprocal attunement with others that make you feel viscerally safe.” They are the best way to combat a “visceral sense of fear and disassociation.”

Creating these experiences takes effort. “Being together is not the same as being connected,” Columbia professor Martha Welch told me. She recommends that people engage in deep intentional and vulnerable conversations… She and the other experts I spoke with endorse anything rhythmic. Anything that will create an experience of attunement: singing, dancing, yoga, deep eye contact, daily rituals and games.

(David Brooks, “Mental Health in the Age of the Coronavirus,” NYTimes, 4-2-20)

I read “Being together is not the same as being connected” as implying that being together isn’t necessarily required for being connected.

Physical separation: Check!

Deep intentional conversations: Check!

Shared rhythmic pursuits: Check!

It’s arresting and gratifying when language catches up with life.

(c) 2020 JMN

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You Can’t Get There from Here

Posted on March 30, 2020 by JMN
Stacey Abrams at a Democratic National Committee gala last June to raise money for a program aimed at registering voters. Credit… Dustin Chambers/Getty Images.

“Opportunity definitely died on election night 2016 for federal court reform,” said Scott Greytak, a lawyer who worked at Free Speech for People… Now, he said, “All the energy and attention has been pushed down to the state and local level…”

… “There is more energy on democracy reform now than 10 years ago,” when practical, direct policies were mostly stopped in their tracks. “People realize we can’t get there with the democracy that we don’t have [my bolding].” (Dorian Warren, head of the nonprofit Community Change)

(Talmon Joseph Smith, “Legalized Bribery by Elites Is Here to Stay. Now what?” NYTimes, 1-25-20)

Let’s change where here is, then. Hope is there, closer to home.

(c) 2020 JMN

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Compassionate Conservative

Posted on March 28, 2020 by JMN
A woman offering a prayer at a church in Milan. Credit… Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times.

A column in The Times by Bret Stephens got POTUS’s attention recently. There is conjecture that it may have contributed to the “cure-worse-than-the-disease” propaganda that trumpets against efficient pandemic control.

My mom puts the groceries away and we sit down to talk on her patio, keeping our chairs far apart. She didn’t think much of my last column, in which I argued that we need to balance the public-health risks of pandemic against the risks of a global depression.

“I don’t remember your degree being in medicine or epidemiology,” she observes.

Stephens is a thoughtful, informed, and sensitive voice for conservatism. I sense that he is offsetting here what may have been his inadvertent contribution to fostering indifference to the virus’s potential toll on the more vulnerable segments of the population.

So I sit on my mom’s patio and listen. Not out of filial deference or compassion, but because deep down I know there’s usually more wisdom in my mother’s instincts and perceptions than there are in my clever (or not-so-clever) concatenations of facts, concepts and hypotheticals. And while I can’t hug her, I can at least try to honor her by paying close attention — as we should all of our elderly loved ones, now so vulnerable, never more precious [my bolding].

Stephens’s mother is a Jewish refugee born in Milan who fled Nazi control of northern Italy.

(Bret Stephens, “In This Emergency, Mom Knows Best,” NYTimes, 3-27-20)

(c) 2020 JMN

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Upping the Steaks

Posted on March 28, 2020 by JMN
Chang at Momofuku Ko in 2012. Gabriele Stabile.

A streak of pluckiness, or at least a commitment to persist, as well as a capacity to think deeply and grow out of the shallows — these traits peek through David Chang’s glimpse into his personal tribulations and his sober take on the plight of his industry.

We’re still a conservative steak-and-potatoes country, and that bums me out. There’s less risk-taking. That’s OK if you want to be a craftsman, but there’s fewer people that want to do that, too.

What would the alternative to a steak-and-potatoes country look like? Every country has its staples.

That’s a great question. I guess for me it’s: How do we find openness? So much of my life is because of the hell I experienced as a kid. [Chang is a son of Korean immigrants. He grew up with three siblings in suburban Arlington County, Virginia.] A lot of it was like, as silly as it seems, Oh, Chang, you eat dog, or you eat poo, or your house smells. All of these things. What bothers me about steak and potatoes — and I love steak, I love potatoes, I love them together — is when people don’t want to try anything else. That myopic viewpoint scares me. If I learn to appreciate something, then it better allows me to understand someone else’s culture.

(David Marchese, “David Chang Isn’t Sure the Restaurant Industry Will Survive Covid-19,” NYTimes, 3-27-20)

(c) 2020 JMN

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The Ides of Texas Are Upon Ya

Posted on March 26, 2020 by JMN

[Dan] Patrick, who said he will turn 70 next week, said that he did not fear COVID-19, but feared that stay-at-home orders and economic upheaval would destroy the American way of life.

No one reached out to me and said, ‘As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren?’ And if that is the exchange, I’m all in,” Patrick said.

(Jamie Knodel, “Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggests he, other seniors will be willing to die to get economy going again,” nbcnews.com, 3-24-20)

(c) 2020 JMN

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“Porous, Promiscuous Phenomena”

Posted on March 26, 2020 by JMN
Rosalía performing in Madrid in December. Credit… Juanjo Martin/EPA, via Shutterstock.

Jorge Carrión’s article was translated by Erin Goodman, and appeared in the NYTimes on January 26, 2020, entitled “Rosalía and the Art of the Remix.”

Rosalía is new to me, but personal and professional ties to Catalonia and Spain incline me towards her, the more so in view of her absorption of flamenco into her style.

Rosalía, whose full name is Rosalía Vila Tobella, was 13 when she first became spellbound by the music of Camarón de la Isla — a legendary Spanish Romani flamenco singer. She went on to spend a decade training with the flamenco virtuoso, José Miguel “El Chiqui” Vizcaya, before releasing “Los Ángeles,” which she described as “it’s flamenco and it’s not.” The vocal-driven concept album, which melds traditional styles with modern influences, propelled the genre forward.

Carrión pushes back cogently on purists and appropriation-criers who scold artists for straying from norms or crossing cultural boundaries. “Cultural crossover is not limited to Spanish artists,” he writes, calling it “[these] porous, promiscuous phenomena.”

Artistic expression cannot be limited by geopolitical borders nor copyright. Many of today’s artists are aesthetic nomads. Their work embodies, whether intentional or not, the intersection of art and globalization — the remix. No material, rhythm nor narrative can escape the remix because craft and imagination do not belong to one singular community, and nothing that is human is alien.

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.” I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me. I remembered the saying from college Latin, but I needed Google to remind me that it’s Terence.

(c) 2020 JMN

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“Doesn’t Not” Don’t Mean “Yes”

Posted on March 25, 2020 by JMN
Due to social distancing, there were only two dozen or so reporters in the White House press briefing room. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has publicly corrected or qualified presidential assertions about the coronavirus threat on multiple occasions. Trump was asked why Fauci was absent from Monday’s lengthy press briefing.

Trump said: “I was just with him … he’s at the task force meeting right now.” Does he agree with you about the need to reopen the economy soon? Trump: “He doesn’t not agree.”

(David Smith, “Trump’s push to shorten coronavirus shutdown proves the captain is flying blind,” theguardian.com, 3-23-20)

(c) 2020 JMN

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Living in Interesting Times

Posted on March 24, 2020 by JMN
Pablo Delcan.

This essay by Ai Weiwei, published in the NYTimes on January 13, 2020, was translated by Perry Link from the Chinese. (“Capitalism and ‘Culturecide’,” NYTimes).

I learn here that Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was a poet who was banished for 20 years to Xinjiang, a “vast northwest area in China,” for having expressed himself too freely through his poetry.

It’s noted that Xinjiang is the home of the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group. About a million Uighurs have been sent to “‘re-education camps’ where they have been forced to denounce their religion and to swear fealty to the Communist Party of China.”

It’s also noted that numerous multinational corporations have factories in Xinjiang. They include Volkswagen, Siemens, Unilever and Nestlé.

Supply chains for Muji and Uniqlo depend on Xinjiang, and companies such as H & M, Esprit and Adidas use Xinjiang cotton… VW builds its cars in China, including the Audi, SEAT, Skoda, Bentley and Lamborghini brands under its umbrella. It has shown that it sees the future of German industry to be in China.”

Some two months after this essay appeared, we cower advisedly from what a careless president calls “the Chinese virus,” while much of what we consume is made in China — including vital generic drugs. The CEO of VW has said he knew nothing about the Uighur camps, though Ai Weiwei asserts otherwise. Supply chains that move food and medicine globally are groaning from disruption. We live in interesting times.

(c) 2020 JMN

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