Obsessive Garlic Disorder

I developed a serious case of this newly identified (to me) syndrome this past weekend.

I attended Mooseman: a precompression Burning Man regional event. Five days of survival camping in the forest of Haliburton. No water. No electricity.

The first 36 hours of the event were like a roller coaster of new experiences - both positive and negative, both personal and interpersonal. The first night I met some truly lovely people around a very large fire held in a large circle of stones. The following day I experienced a few interactions that were less than ideal. My physical challenges were brought home to roost and I considered leaving in case they worsened. The team of onsite Rangers helped mediate what was a challenging and baffling situation for me and I ended up staying due to their support. Two of the 10 Burning Man principles were driven into me throughout the beginning part of my experience at Mooseman:  Radical self-reliance and Radical inclusion.

On the Saturday of the event after I had rested (I was exhausted from the emotional roller coaster and physical demands of survival camping set up!) I ventured back to the sacred circle. I was told that there was garlic braiding down at the main house (the owner of the property) and that it was a lot of fun.  I decided I would rather take a walk through the forest which was set up with four theme camps and I wanted to see what they looked like in their finished state (I saw the skeletons of these camps on a Thursday night walk about).

The effort put into these theme camps is dumbfounding and humbling. One of the camps, Powder Monkeys, had a pirate theme and the decorations and plounges were so creative. This camp also hosted a Baconade on the Sunday morning and everyone who participated in that achieved Peak Bacon. There were two types of bacon, bacon dip, bacon brownies, bacon apple pie, bacon/cheese roll-ups, bacon chocolate chip rice krispies, etc.

On the way into the forest there was a Toga Toll Camp. These lovely people provided a candy tray that they also took throughout the event at times. There was bug spray on offer and other provisions if needed. Did I mention that all Burning Man events operate on a gift economy basis? No money exchanges hands. Every participant is expected to gift what they can and high octane volunteerism is the norm.

I didn't spend as much time as I would've like to at the Big Rig Rockin Robin's Truck Stop Jamboree. They had built a replica of a truck complete with a truck stop diner and a country store that I shoplifted a pocket knife from (I had lost mine). They had some fine trombone jamming happening on Saturday night when I was there.

Lastly there was a Hammock Camp at the end of the forest trail. Peace and tranquility was found in one of the hammocks hanging there :)

On Sunday afternoon after dancing in the forest for a few hours to some wonderful beats I remembered the garlic braiding and wandered down to the main house (past the coffee cafe which served delicious free coffee all weekend long!). Outside of the house was a circle of chairs and instruments of garlic disorder. I stood and asked the three people about what was going on and shared a bit of my food justice passion with them. Doug, the owner of the property, saw a fellow food spirit and he eagerly invited me to sit down and try cleaning some garlic myself. Silvie, another Mooseman attendee, patted a chair and proceeded to show me how to clean the garlic (rub the stalk and bulb with love to remove the dirt, trim the hairy end and brush out the dirt). In the course of learning this new skill, Doug, Silvie, another young man and I got into a wonderful conversation that alternated between philosophy, therapy, camaraderie and hilarity.

After a few minutes of this pleasant learning - interactive engagement Doug became perturbed while I was talking. I wasn't staying on task since I use my hands while I talk. He told Silvie to take me down to the shed to see the enormity of the garlic cleaning task at hand.

Have you ever seen 1700 bulbs of garlic in various stages of 'processing'? Doug had already informed us that it takes 20 passes through human hands to fully process garlic (now you know why most of it comes from China since it is so labour intensive!). So when I rounded the corner into the shed I saw how massive the operation was and how many uncleaned bulbs there were - well, that was when the disorder struck me.

I returned with Silvie and spend the next few hours mastering the art of conversing while cleaning garlic bulbs at a steady rate. I was rewarded with a fine meal from Lynn (Doug's partner) that included potatoes freshly harvested from their garden and the opportunity to braid my very own set of bulbs which I later purchased on my way out of the event.  The ideas, love, inspiration and garlic imbued soulfulness of the experience will last my lifetime. In fact, the whole weekend will. The final of the 10 principles of Burning Man was cemented into my heart that afternoon and sealed with the burning of the Moose effigy that night:

Immediacy

Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience. (source)

Unbraided but cleaned fruits of our Obsessive Garlic Disorder

There are no rats in this race. None.

This missive serves as a formal thank-you note to the parenting warriors I know.  And no, you do not need to be a parent in order to be named a parenting warrior.

All of us wear, as a public front, the results of our parenting.  So if I directed you here I was informed by you and your actions as to my own parenting choices. I likely talked about you with Daughter in the form of "There is this really cool person I met from a food thing/school thing/random thing (including the internet)...this is their story or why they are cool". And some of you I know more intimately than that but I might not have directly named you in my story telling.

The internet allows me to mask identities with Daughter if I have intimate knowledge of something and I was to pass along a great story but not reveal true identity.  More often than not I have chosen to share stories of action rather than stories of identity so I guess that means I've fully rejected most notions of idolatry .Which also happens to make me a really great atheist, eh?

There are tumultuous times as parents. Birth. Toddler. Preschool/early school. Grade 6 (for estrogen heavy children especially). And then, finally, the holy grail of parenting: Teenagehood. A last childhood stage that hopefully finales with a goal towards further education (formal or otherwise) and intelligent voting (I'm not joking).

Daughter moved away to university yesterday. She and I both entered a whole new world. One where my role as a parent will have shifted away from one thing to another.  And, according the to the God (Dr.) Seuss :  Ah, yes of course. Thing 2 would like to clarify that just because he wears the number 2 does not imply in any way that he's inferior to Thing 1. 

And like everything else in this world, when life is tumultuous one tends to turn to others in order to support and inform. And sometimes literally carry you (extra long hat tip here to The Parents, luckily both still alive and healthyish).

So whether or not you knew it, if I've directed you here then you were part of my own personal strongly social media infused Information and Support Team: Parenting Branch. (Brief Aside to an interesting fact. I first went online in 1993 seeking out parenting support after a devastating miscarriage. This makes me an original netizen).

You were the people on whose backs I often trod. And most of you know I'm kind of addicted to learning so many of you were just plain teachers. But the best kind of plain teacher is the one that you actually learn from. So thank-you for teaching me even if you had no idea I used you for my parenting role model (especially if you are not a parent lol).

Parenting was the biggest challenge I ever took on and I had heaps and heaps of learning to do on the subject since I was not part of any large familial structure as a first generation Canadian. An extremely grateful Canadian, now.

Some of you I do not or can not name because our interactions were so brief I failed to obtain a name.  And some of you I do not name because you do not getz the social media internetz thang (remember, I am 45, GenX - we GASP wrote snail mail in our youth and many of us still do...not me though lol).  But I might actually snail mail a few of those sorts of characters.  And, of course in the age of social media, some of you I name, but do not know face to face since we have never actually met.  And sadly, there is one dear friend who I especially wish to thank but she recently passed on. She was, ultimately, a fatal victim to her own childhood demons.

Memory, being what it is, will forget some. And memory, being what it is, will enlarge some.

Be that as it were, I now attempt to name you here via various sorts of social media avenues including good 'old fashioned' email. Because, you see, in the land of social media I can now name my not-necessarily-blood-related-clan. And not only name you but sometimes to also publicly thank-you, without a face-to-face ceremony. And ceremonies traditionally employ food and it just so happens that I've broken bread with most of you. And much of it good healthy AND tasty food at that :)

I am transitioning to stage II parenting now. And I certainly feel a ceremony should occur. So this is mine.

My transitioning parent ceremony will occur over the course of the entire month of September and I will attempt to blog here regularly about my reflections on parenting as I drive across Canada from Vancouver to St. John's along the Trans-Canada Highway.  I'm also hoping to get a few cross Canada harvest food related stories up on my newish food themed blog (but not recipes: they are here).

Namaste and again, thank-you.  Go forth and multiply the intelligent and humane sorts of folks that we are capable of creating.  Be a seed, as it were.  Plant yourself, flower and prosper.

ECON 101: Sustainability Work is not Sustainable

I saw two call outs for food activist writing in the last few days.  One was for a chapter/story in an anthology of food writing. The other was for article proposals in a well known magazine on environmental matters.

Reading through the details of both of these call outs for contributors got me thinking about an announcement that was made to a large room of food activists here in Toronto recently.  The announcement was made by one of the partner organizations for the event.  The executive director proudly announced that they had taken the funding for one full time job and cleverly carved out eight one day a week jobs. This cleverness was applauded by the gathering.  I was appalled.

I had seen the advertisement for the eight (identical) part-time positions.  The position demanded a wide range of skills and talents but only offered $15/hour with no benefits (unless you count TTC tokens and lunch every second week) and for only eight hours on that one day.  The contract was for only six months with no guarantee of renewal.  And oh yeah, you had to be a welfare recipient.  So that means that this clever NGO took a job originally intended as one decently paid full time position and created eight ridiculously underpaid jobs out of it.

Underpaid you ask?  Doing the math:  8 hours/day one day a week for 6 months = $3120. If you multiply that amount by 8 for the number of part time positions they created then you get $24960.  So the original grant was for one full time job that would have earned one person $24,960 for six months.  That full time worker would have had benefits and taken home less than that but still it is recognized that this is a living wage and values the wide set of skills necessary for the advertised position.  So back to the eight people who were'lucky' enough to land one of the new part time jobs.  The before tax low income cut off (LICO) line (based on 2006 data) for a single person the city of Toronto is $22,637 and for a family of two is $28,182. Even if each of these people were able to land similar jobs for the other four days of the week - which you and I both know is extremely unlikely, their equivalent earnings would only be $3120 x 5 = $15,600 which is marginally better than the LICO for a single person and pretty close to the LICO for a two person household.  And just because TTC tokens and an occasional meal are thrown in doesn't make the reality of the meager income any more attractive.

At the end of another recent event I volunteered at, every single person from the participating organizations was called out and asked to stand to receive applause as thank-you for their efforts for arranging the event. All of the people asked to stand were getting paid by their own NGOs to organize the event. At the very end of the long list of people called and asked to stand, the MC for the event mumbled "And oh yes, the volunteers too" and didn't ask us to stand but merely started clapping and the audience weakly joined along while also rising from their seats hurrying to get out of the hall (it had been a long day and the long list of contributors and clapping was unnecessary).

Both of the call out for food activist writing submissions I mentioned at the beginning of this post had a token honorarium offered in lieu of a meaningful payment.  A payment that values the work of writing.  In reading these announcements I was also reminded of the truism: the rich get richer.  For surely the only people writing for these type of outfits (Huffington Post being the classic example) are people with decent jobs, businesses or cushy retirements.  Officially, in Toronto, for a single person, that would be a job that earns at least $22,637 (using very old 2005 data).  Anybody else that takes on these kind of positions ($15/hour or token honorariums) is not realizing that by accepting these types of opportunities they are contributing to an unsustainable world.  Not in the climate change way but in the economic change kind of way.

Women have historically been the volunteers.  The ones whose often back breaking work is not valued.  The new economic reality is that now not only women are doing slave type labour but also students and the long term unemployed.  The people desperate for the crust of a loaf of bread  - to toss a Dickensian metaphor out there.  Earning under $22,637 in the city of Toronto is the seemingly new normal in the activist circles I move in.  Applauding the people who manage to earn (significantly) more than that and those that dream up clever ways to perpetuate poverty is ironic in rooms filled with people that publicly pledge allegiance and work towards food justice and food policy change making.

The food justice community in Toronto, with their offerings of meager dollars for work that wants to eradicate food poverty, seems to be part of the problem and not the solution.

Harsh?  Please offer your feedback.

I'd like to see evidence that at least one other person concurs with my observations and conclusions.

All the Rage

The other night Mama D asked me if I was a Raging Granny after I inquired as to whether she was one (she was with a woman who I know is a Raging Granny).  She said:  "Yes, Are you?"

As a 45 year old woman with a child just graduated high school my cultural conditioning told me to be offended.  Inside, my thought immediately was:  "Do I look that old?"  But I merely mumbled, um, no, and our conversation took off from there.

She is a fascinating individual:  edgy and intensely humourous. After talking with her awhile, I felt like I was allowed entrance to her widely extended clan.  This woman emanates a sense of clan felt only rarely in my life.  My high school drama teacher also had this type of aura about her and I believe today that this is why all of us former drama geeks still feel a connection beyond the facebook poking and posting.  I envision Mama D going around and gathering fellow clan members into her fold...a long trail of other gathered clan members behind her and myself being the latest in her trailblazing harvest.  Me:  the newbie with cotton wool in my ears that is ready to be yanked out and replaced with vaults of unknown wisdom that will enrich and disrupt my current life paradigms. That is what meeting Mama D felt like to me and I look forward to her teachings.

Of course, the first lesson she has taught me is that despite my knee jerk response to her question, there is no doubt in my mind that I'm a Raging Granny.  So I guess I'm Toronto's newest and possibly youngest Raging Granny.  Biologically I am definitely of an age where I could be one.  And these women are seriously cool so you're darn right that I want to be one.

As a group, the Raging Grannies are known to be a tricky bunch.  You never know what these women will be up to next.  Ever since their debut as an activist movement in the wild west of British Columbia in the late 1980s they make news using delightful songs and public performances that tend to really shake up things. Check out the Florida Raging Grannies parody on the republican uterus controversary (done in 2011 but we could update it and use the word vagina after the recent Lisa Brown abortion debate in Michigan fiasco). But they are not only about song. For example, check out the Montreal Raging Grannies calendar to raise funds to make a film of the groups 25 year long 'herstory'.  Their formula for success seems to be take an issue, create something to mock it, dress appropriately, gather together and perform.


I leave you with a performance by Mama D that removed whatever doubt I had about my declaration of being Toronto's newsest Raging Granny.  If Raging Grannies get to do cool stuff like this, you're darn right I wanna be in on it.  You can buy her CD here.

Seize the Seed

I am not a biologist but I am an urban farmer.  So seeds are something I'm well familiar with. I've grown food inside my home in my windows and under grow lights and outside directly in the earth and in containers.  I've gleaned bounty from seeds that I've purchased, swapped, and found.

As an urban farmer I've witnessed, many times over, the joy of the first indication of life (to the visible eye).  This first glimmer of a sprout poking up through the earth is a moment of pure joy.  It is a moment of connection.  My life symbiotically sprouts with each sprout.

A seed needs fertile ground in order to 'spring' into action.  That is why the metaphor of sperm being a seed is used.  A woman's unfertilized egg provides this fertile ground for one sperm seed to spring forth a new human life.  The birds and the bees metaphor takes this imagery back into wild life where the birds and bees provide the mechanism by which plants can bear fruit with their blossoms.  The flower blossoms are the eggs and the seeds are the pollen that is transferred by the birds and the bees.

The whole cycle of seed to fruit is the cornerstone of the circle of life and my humble practice of urban farming allows me to witness and absorb this every single calendar year.  I hope I never grow too old or feeble for this. An ideal death for me would happen in the harvest season after my latest crop has been harvested - however small that might be at that stage.

Today there are disturbing trends around the world that centre directly and indirectly around seeds.  There are multinational corporations that have successfully patented seeds (and DNA).  There are governments and religions that wish to ensure that a planted seed, in a woman's womb, stays there without asking for her opinion.  Conversely, multinational seed corporations have successfully taken farmers that have had their own fields polluted by GMO seeds to court.  The power of the seed, that same power that I feel with each and every sprouted planting, has literally been seized by the state {ergo, the corporation}.

So this spring grab some seeds at a local Seed Swap (Toronto locations are listed here).  Or go to a local farmers market (Toronto list is here) and buy some squash and harvest the seeds to plant yourself.  Imagine if all public spaces contained edible plantings (like Incredible Edible Todmorden).

Seize the seed and feel it's power.

Nourishment 101

"Her eyes were quivering." I am a voracious reader so I no doubt have read this description more than once in my life. Until this past Friday night I hadn't witnessed it first hand without emotions overwhelming me simultaneously so the trite description didn't immediately spring to mind in real time.


I have a certain type of face.  The type of face that strangers regularly approach for directions.  And the type of face that says:  You can confide in me; I am all ears and empathy.  I can thank genetics for this - it runs in the family.  At times it can be uncomfortable but it is always a moment of real communion with a fellow human.


I had such a moment on Friday night.  I attended the approximately bi-monthly, and for now, roving St. Jamestown Community Café.  I learned about this endeavour at the monthly (intentionally roving) Foodie Drinks.  The organizers I met (Nancy Slamet and Lucas Lu) certainly captivated my interest and I attended not only to support their efforts but also as a detective.  I was sussing out the vibe in order to bring back info to my upcoming community association meeting.  The St. Jamestown Community Café is hoping to eventually create an incubator model for other cafés and since Nancy herself interned at the long time successful Queen Street Commons café in Kitchener, I have tremendous faith in the likelihood of the success of the St. Jamestown Community Café.

St. Jamestown community café Friday November 18th, 2011.

I spent most of the evening parked in the same chair munching down on delicious and healthy food that attendees purchase using a pay-what-you-can system so that anyone, with any means, can come participate in the café.  The pay-what-you-can model has been utilized in a few well known establishments and I foresee a huge increase in it's use due to changing worldwide economic circumstances and the increasing popularity and acceptability of social enterprises.

While I stayed stationary at the same table, the cast of characters surrounding me completely turned over three times.  I first enjoyed an amusing rapport with three long term residents (30+years!) from the community.  These three women have raised children and buried husbands together.  The only one with a walker departed by getting up and dancing her way to the front of the room (where the musicians were providing an excellent foot tapping show) before returning to collect her walker and go home.  I was still giggling when a much older woman with a walker came through the door.

The elder woman's paid caretaker saw my now empty table and got the woman seated and her walker stashed away before going to collect her a plate of food.  The woman settled quite close to me and I asked her her name.  She told me and was quite delighted to find out that I knew it was italian since one of my own neighbours that is about the same age (91) has the very same unusual italian name that has fallen out of favour since the earlier part of the 20th century.

This woman was as sharp as a tack and her immediate familiarity with me was a little daunting but quite enjoyable.  We meandered our way through the niceties and I found out that she too is a long time resident of St. Jamestown and in fact moved to the area after her mother died in Kapuskasing, ON.  She was 20 years old so that means that she has lived there for over 70 years!  A veritable walking history book!

In the course of the conversation I thought to ask her if she had any children.  That is when her eyes started quivering and I simultaneously thought of the trite phrase whilst panicking at what I was to find out.  "Yes, my daughter.  But she left me.  Five years ago.  I buried her.  She had taken a job since she was broke.  She hit her head.  Her work didn't phone a doctor, and so she just went to bed that night.  AND DIED."  I capitalize since by the end of this halting speech the tiny frail woman was wailing.  And I was bawling.  And during the course of her delivery I had instinctively reached out and grabbed the tiny arm and felt the life force of this woman humming along, albeit in vast amounts of pain.   I could not choke back my sobs.  So we sat there and cried a bit with me holding on to her arm with both hands now - an awkward but universal type of embrace that is instinctive to humans sharing pain.  After a few minutes I said that I applauded her courage to get up every day and go out and that no mother should ever have to bury a child.  After a few more weepy minutes we gravitated away from the subject and she entertained me with stories of her life as a cleaning woman in Toronto and her cat and the bedbugs that her nursing home is fighting.  She left after eating a healthy sized meal for a 91 year old and I hope to see her again.

The last cast of characters at my table were also fascinating and engaging people.  Two of them were the musicians finally enjoying their repast after entertaining us so wonderfully.  In fact we were all so engrossed in conversing with one another we were literally kicked out (laughingly)!  I had not realized that the tables were being packed up around us and ours was the very last table to be dismantled and put away.

Kudos to the St. Jamestown Community Café.  If my experience can be considered representative of other attendees, I have no doubt that your community development efforts will be successful.  I left the event nourished completely in both body and spirit and I can't imagine any other measure of success that such an effort would desire.

My year of living civically

I wonder if Canadian data would be similar?

When your source of employment evaporates, almost overnight,  what would you do?

In August 2010 that choice was put before me.

So I strapped on my boots, printed up a few business cards, and headed out.

Part of my motivation was the ole' networking thing.  Maybe something or someone would turn up that could offer me employment or at least some contract work.  But, to be truthful, a much larger part of myself was excited at the prospect of just getting out there.  Being involved.  Being aware.  Being engaged with the citizens of my community in a way that I was deprived of for most of the past 12 years living in the city.

I moved to Toronto from a community where I was actively involved during most of my adult (post undergraduate) life there.  I was on the board of the community band.  I volunteered at my child's preschool.  I was on the board of the food cooperative.  I started exploring alternative community based groups such as a local bartering system.  I got involved in a fledgling political party.

When I moved to Toronto my life went into a kind of warp drive of frenzied employment search and then the life of teaching seemed to suck the soul right out of me.  Couple that with a diminishing physical ability due to a degenerative illness (undiagnosed for years) and a lack of child care options led to a huge gaping void in my life that I was unaware of until last year when the option to renew this core part of my life was put before me.

My first civic minded involvement came early.  I recall launching a class endeavour in grade 3/4 (I did both grades in one year).  We staged the Wizard of Oz for a performance to the the younger grades with minimal help from our teacher.  Years later, in middle school, our catholic school religion department became infested with hippies and my life as a protestor started in earnest.  I recall signing my first petition and proudly wearing my first protest button in the late 70s (the boycott Nestle movement).  I attended an anti-nuclear protest shortly afterwards. Besides being roped into a pro-life march or two, the civic engagement training provided by my religion (hippie) teachers throughout middle school and high school was most informative and taught me the importance of being civically aware AND involved.

So, after almost 12 years being trapped in my own home due to unavoidable circumstances, my sudden and unplanned state of unemployment was like a gift.  My life literally opened up.  My child, now old enough to feed herself occasionally and also quite active with her own teenage social life, no longer needed me around and my time was like a blank slate.

So I got out there.  I had already been dabbling a bit with the Toronto Food Movement and had spent a year on the board of one of the food co-ops.  I had petitioned my councillor about urban chickens.  I had attended a few local food policy events.  So that was my starting point.  The fall of 2010 also had a municipal election so I became aware of my local issues and joined the only local resident's association (which isn't very local).  I jumped into the spring 2011 federal election by volunteering to be a campaign manager.  I was a founding organizer of a local arts festival.  I volunteered for three different food organizations.

I figure that in one brief year I managed to cram in about 5 years of community involvement.  Not one job offer but a wealth of experience was gained.

I've learned that politicians can be slimey.  Even the ones that purport to be your friends (my local councillor has recently blocked me on facebook and so did his provincially elected father, I have supported both of these men so the blocking is rather puzzling and irritating since I no longer have access to community information).

I've learned that young people make up the backbone of the food movement which startles me (a bit) since they are not the ones actually feeding the next generation, yet.   My own food awareness was basically launched the day I gave birth so perhaps that clouds my judgment.  I do believe there should be more representation from people actually feeding families and perhaps events should be orchestrated to facilitate this.

I've learned that most people are on a payroll of some sort when they are civically engaged which means that there is always an ulterior motive and/or agenda.

I've learned that volunteers might be recognized but they will never be given more than a terse thank-you.  I've also learned that most volunteer jobs should be paid employment - and that especially is applicable to the alarming rate of growth of the Canadian internship industry.  And many perpetual volunteers are unpaid women in my general age range.  Male volunteers/organizers [unpaid] are few and far between.  They tend to get paid for their civically engaged gigs - maybe not directly but in the form of future speaking gigs or book sales which are promoted at the volunteer gig.  I've also learned that stating this fact does not make one very popular.

After my month pseudo-unplugged I decided to reign in my civic involvement.  I've beefed up my resume a bit with these experiences and I have no regrets.  I've met some very interesting people and look forward to watching some of their personal endeavours blossom.  And I suspect that this past year will act as a bit of a reboot for the rest of my life since I don't think I will ever let my civically minded inner champion disappear like that again....at least not without one helluva fight.