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Food
Sy Safransky’s Notebook
April 2004
How odd that I still distance myself from my feelings, as if sadness itself were my enemy, a smooth-talking terrorist with one foot in the door.
April 2004Quotations
Sunbeams
June 2003This was the dawn of plastic eating in America. . . . We doted on Velveeta. Spam. Canned ravioli. Instant puddings. Instant anything. The farther a thing was from the texture, flavor, and terrifying unpredictability of real food, the better.
The Sun Interview
Earthly Delights
Cultivating A New Agricultural Revolution: An Interview With Michael Ableman
When we focus on regional production and regional distribution, the issues around the use of chemicals and other materials resolve themselves. It’s as simple as standing across the table at the farmers’ market from the person who’s growing your food. Ultimately the basic health of the food system is not about laws; it’s about relationships: interpersonal, ecological, and biological. The people who eat my food don’t need a legislative act to know that what I’m providing is safe to eat. They know me, and they know my farm. That, to me, is the best form of certification. It’s based on outdated ideas like honor and trust.
June 2003
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Cleaned Out
One of the steps AA asks of recovering alcoholics is to make “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of themselves, and now, alone in my motel room, I find myself fairly obsessed with my stuff: how much of it there is and how long it will last. I have my laptop and a suitcase containing T-shirts, jeans, and khakis, three long-sleeved shirts, one pair of shorts, vitamins, and an assortment of toiletries. I have a tote bag stuffed with books, which will, along with the hiking boots I have brought for weekends, turn out to be the most useless items in my inventory.
January 2003The Sun Interview
Before We Leap
Carolyn Raffensperger On The Revolutionary Idea Of Putting Safety First
The precautionary principle is a simple yet revolutionary idea that turns our culture’s practice of science on its head. It says that, when you have scientific uncertainty and the likelihood of harm, you take preventive or precautionary action. On the most basic level, there’s nothing more to it.
November 2002
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Cynthia
Most people thought Cynthia was crazy — and perhaps she was. Isn’t it crazy to park your car (a black 1958 Oldsmobile with a large, garish strawberry painted on the passenger door) anywhere you want to: on curbs, lawns, sidewalks? To sleep three hours a night and eat a stick of butter for dinner?
September 2002
Sy Safransky’s Notebook
August 2002
I get up early. I wait for the light. I still trust the dawn more than I trust religion, more than I trust philosophy. Every morning the darkness disappears; morning never lets me down.
August 2002Readers Write
The Kitchen Table
A satisfying way to masturbate, a feeling of gratitude, a flying full-plate frisbee
August 2002
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
This Bastard Day
It is March 4, a Sunday, and the Northeastern United States is buttoning up for a gigantic snowstorm. Despite these dire weather predictions, in which I have little faith, I have journeyed to Pittsburgh with my wife and two young sons to visit Philip DeLucia, my oldest friend in the world, who is very ill.
July 2002
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