Local Food Short

Storyboard

Digital Short

I want to tell a story contrasting store bought versus local food.  I want to showcase something that people don’t typically think of when thinking of local.  I believe that people would stereotypically think of vegetables or some type of produce.  I want to tell the story of pre-made cookies and homemade cookies utilizing as many local ingredients as possible. 

-Image of pre-made store bought cookies with their uniform size and shape

-emphasize the point they are all about what is cheapest to produce

-Image of the ingredients list

-emphasize the point that there is no story to these ingredients: idea thought of in a boardroom, recipe formulated in a lab, product made in factory and then transferred to grocery store shelf to sit indefinitely

Compare to-

Cookies made with local ingredients:

-Image of each of the ingredients:

             -milk from hatcher, jd creamery or west wind

            - chocolate from olive and Sinclair

            - eggs from local farmer

            - butter from local dairy

            - flour from Falls Mills

-All of these ingredients tell a story; of the farmer; of the land; of the animals; of the hard work and dedication; of the care given

-Explanation of each farm where ingredients come from

-Money spent on local ingredients stays in the local economy versus it going to a large corporation

-Image of both sets of cookies after cooking: local ones are unique and each has their own characteristics. Pre-made, pre-cut ones are uniform.  They look factory made.

To Do

To do:

·         Interview member of Slow Foods

·         Observations from the Farmer’s Market

·         Interviews from the Farmer’s Market

·         Tour Real Food Farm

·         Collection of texts to use: magazines, books, articles, media

·         Collection of images that are relevant

·         Interview more members of Slow Foods

·         Interview L

·         Interview N

·         Possibly interview local artisans?

Service Learning Reflection #2

The material artifacts that made the largest impact were the lesson plans that NALC provided.  They influenced not only on the way that I “taught” but what the student learned.  They were a list of vocab words and exercises developed to further their understanding of the words and languages.  They often revolved around one common theme.  For example, one lesson plan was based around the theme of messy vs. neat.  The vocab list was composed of various words revolving around this topic and above the list was a picture of two roommates, one who was messy and always late and the other was one who was organized, composed and always ready for the task at hand.  What I found so interesting, particularly the one dealing with the topic of messy vs. neat, is that they are sanitized, stereo-typical models of what one , in America, would describe as a person who is organized compared to a person who is chronically unorganized.  To start with, both the characters in the picture are white males, about college age.  The typical messy man has papers strewn everywhere, is constantly late, does not keep a tidy room, does not have time for breakfast and focuses on leisure activities rather than on homework. His roommate, on the other hand, finishes all his work on time, studies hard rather than participate in leisure activities, wakes up in the morning with enough time to shower and eat breakfast, and keeps a neat room. How much of this lesson plan is influencing the student and helping to form their opinions?  Are they learning from this picture that our country values tidy people and those who are messy and unorganized turn out to be lazy and unproductive?  Even the vocab words make me question the makers of the lesson plans.  The words are archaic versions that are rarely used in common vocabulary.  Would it not be better to teach the words that are useful to acquire; those that would help these students in their everyday speaking and writing?  It reminds me of the type of lesson plans that were in my French books from high school.  They taught us these words that were outdated and rarely used in everyday language.  We practiced the scenes provided with our newly attained vocab words; scenes that we were unlikely to ever participate in.  Again, the question arises, would it not be better suited to teach foreign language learners the practical vocab of the language, maybe even the slang terms used every day?  That is one of the first signs to cue me in that the person is not a native English speaker.  I can tell that they are reciting from memory, one of the words acquired from a vocab list.  The focus needs to be moved from the more academic words to the more useful everyday vocab.

Intro

The back of the van is opened, revealing hundreds of melons.  I wait anxiously as Farmer Dave describes the different varietals available.  “I have Crenshaw melons, Snow Leopard honeydew, and smell this French Chanterais melon.  It smells French doesn’t it, with its light, sweet perfume? Pick out what you would like” Farmer Dave says with a smile.  I try to contain my excitement while picking out which melons to get, rationalizing that I need at least five melons, maybe I possibly need the whole van full?!  This is a memory that fills my mind with the sweet taste and smell of summer.  It is an entirely different experience than strolling through the fluorescent filled produce aisle of the grocery store hoping that maybe this generic cantaloupe will taste less like cardboard than the last.  It does no evoke memories of summer; rather it reminds me of every bland fruit salad I have ever been served, even in the dead of winter.  There is no comparing tasteless grocery store melons to local grown melons fueled by the hot summer sun and picked at the peak of their ripeness.

My aim is to explore Local Food culture and find out why people are choosing to source their food locally and what it entails.  In the past couple of years what started as a grassroots movement has gained an ample following.  Growing concerns with where our food is coming from, our health as a nation, and the treatment of the animals we eat have been some of the issues that have garnered attention.  As a result people have been going “back to the land”.  Those interested in local food are supporting local farmer’s markets, subscribing to CSA’s and in some cases are growing their own food.  I want to get a better understanding of why people are making this move and shunning cheap, readily available food in favor of local products, which are generally more expensive and only available during their specific growing season.

            I would consider myself somewhat of an insider of local food culture.  For many years now I have held a fascination with European culture and their tendency to eat food sourced from their regions.  The combination of this fascination, a joy of cooking and a medical condition made me take a hard look at the food I was eating.  This was about six years ago, a time when local food had not made it to the forefront via avenues such as Omnivore’s Dilemma or Food Inc.  Local food was not something that was readily available, especially in Nashville.  It is something that has gradually bloomed and now has a rather large following.  I try to shop at stores that provide local and regional produce when I cannot make it to the farmer’s market and try to buy products from local vendors.  Last summer I participated in a program called a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with Real Food Farm.  Each week throughout the summer I received a new box of freshly picked produce.  This semester I have become part of a group called Slow Food on Belmont’s campus.  I highly advocate Local Food and want to get as many people as possible involved in the culture.

            So what is my point of choosing this topic for my project?  I want to examine the many motives that have caused people to eat locally.  I want to explore why something so natural as eating food from local farms has become the “in vogue” thing to do and why the elite are readily jumping on this food movement while the lower classes are stuck eating cheap, highly-processed foods.  Eating food from a local or regional source is a practice that goes back through human existence and would be the logical and natural way for us to eat.  All of this changed through industrialization and the globalization of food commerce.  Food was no longer being purchased in the region, because we had access to food all over the world.  Then the real downfall of local food happened when major corporations started taking over the food industry.  It became about what is the cheapest to produce and for the consumer to buy, regardless of the consequences.  So why are people now taking a stand against these major corporations and standing up for the local farmers, that just a few years ago, were being run out of business?  What has shifted in our world and specifically in our country that has caused people to take a hard look at what they are eating and making them forgo the cheapest product in favor of the local product?   That is what I will examine.

Service Learning Reflection #4

While reading “Inventing the University,” the idea of privileged language and the discourse of academic writing seemed particularly relevant to experiences at NALC. I have always been somewhat uncomfortable writing in an academic setting.  I feel that there are so many technical details required and a certain way of writing to make one sound knowledgeable and authoritative of their work.  I feel I often do not possess these certain skills or rather, am not fully capable of accessing this particular language.  While thinking about my particular education in reading and writing it struck me that the people I have been tutoring have similar struggles.  Though they are not necessarily performing in an academic forum, I am the teacher and their audience.  My knowledge of the English language places me at a level where I am familiar with certain terms and discourse.  This is what the students of NALC are trying to learn.  They are trying to become a part of this world of privileged language.  It therefore becomes a comparable situation.  I am writing for an audience of which I am not familiar with their particular discourse and the NALC students, the non- native speakers, are trying to learn the ends and outs of the specific language.  Though we may both possess a basis of the language, we may not be particularly knowledgeable of the ‘insider’ vocabulary and terminology used.  This can prevent both of us from exploring these languages.  The fear of using the wrong term in front of our audience can hold us back from learning as much as possible.  Every time I sit down to compose a paper anxiety consumes me.  I am afraid that my point does not come across in their language and I will be deemed a bad writer or uninformed on the subject.  This is mimicked through the students of a foreign language.  Often times the students become very self-conscious about speaking at NALC because they are afraid they will use the wrong term or what they say will not make any sense.  In these situations we tend to filter ourselves.  Confidence level is diminished when I, as the writer, and the foreign speaker are aware that we are unfamiliar with the particular discourse.  We end up choosing our words carefully.  In order to overcome this barrier we have been told to practice what we learn.  We have to learn to integrate what we have learned into our basis of knowledge.  Though we may never be entirely comfortable with this “privileged language” whether it be academic writing or foreign speaking, we can get a basic understanding and knowledge that will help us in the future.

Service Learning Reflection #3

Through my interactions at NALC I have been able to connect what I have encountered to reading in class.  What I find so amazing are the sacrifices that people make for education.  This theme was extremely prevalent in Three Cups of Tea and through talking with J. I have witnessed that educating children is worthy of extreme sacrifice.  While reading Three Cups of Tea the story that seemed to remain with me long after I finished the book was that of Uzra Faizad.  She was the teacher in Afghanistan who refused to stop teaching her all girls’ class during Taliban reign and America’s continual bombings.  She truly cared about her students receiving an education: “Here was this strong proud woman trying to do the impossible.  Her school’s boundary had been blown to rubble.  The roof had fallen in.  Still, she was coming to work every day and putting the place back together because she was passionate about education being the only way to solve Afghanistan’s problems” (284).  This sacrifice in order for children to be educated was paralleled in the story of J.  She left the comfort of her homeland, her native language, her family and everything she knew in order to provide better education for her children.  She moved her kids here and sent them to David Lipscomb while her husband stays back in their homeland and works.  Both of these women show a tremendous amount of courage and sacrifice.  It is a concept that, here in America, most of us could never fathom having to do.  We so often take for granted what we are provided and education is one of the things we tend to look at with a passing glance.  Our educational system definitely has its faults but compare it to other countries and we should realize how lucky we are.  These women have made education their lives and we can learn so much from their stories.  They have had to adapt, make numerous sacrifices and show extreme courage in order to make their goal of education come true.  Their day to day lives are shaped by education in one way or another.  In the case of J., she has had to learn a new way of life, a new language, and being the only visible parent in order to provide a better education for her two kids.  Uzra has devoted her whole being in order to change the lives of Afghanistan girls and provide them with better lives. It is because of women such as these two that we can have hope for our future generations.

Service Learning Reflection #1

What I find so intriguing is the fact that I keep referencing my memories as a foreign language student to help me to understand and connect with the participants of the Adult Literacy program.  Because of my experiences as a student of a foreign language I find that I am able to relate to what these people are trying to accomplish and some of the setbacks that they are encountering.  Since English is my native language and obviously comes to me naturally at this point, I would find it more difficult to relate to what they are going through if I did not have prior experience of learning a new language.  So far in my tutoring, the students have either been from China or Korea and already have a good basis of the language.  Their goal in coming to Nashville Adult Literacy is to practice conversational English. After discussing with them the difficulties of learning a new language we have concluded that is especially difficult to listen to and carry on a conversation with a native speaker because they, usually unknowingly, speak fast and use slang terms.  Similar to my own experiences of learning a foreign language, the students can pretty easily read and write but it is the listening and speaking that prove to be a continuous challenge.  Because of this knowledge I feel that I am not only able to relate to them more easily but feel that I may be truly helping them.  I feel that because I can open up to them about some of my failures in learning a new language it sort of breaks the ice and helps them to know that I understand what it is like to be in their shoes.

As far as the lesson plans go, I definitely see similarities to how I was taught a foreign language.  Both this program and my learning of French rely heavily on list of vocab words to translate and understand and exercises developed to further the understanding of the language.  But for me, as well as for the students that I have tutored, it is practicing speaking through conversation that is the most beneficial exercise.  This is where we are able to pick up on the nuances of the language and learn all the lessons the grammar books do not teach us.  The biggest difference I have noted between my literacy experience compared to that of the NALC students is the fact that my learning experience was a chosen elective.  Other than for my pleasure and hope for going to France, my learning was not necessary.  I was given the option of what language I wanted to take and the option of how hard I wanted to study in order to retain the information I was learning.  While the NALC students still have the option of how hard they want to study, for most of them learning English is somewhat of a necessity.  Though most of the participants I have taught have enough knowledge of the language to get by, they want to improve upon what they know in order to have a more successful life in America.  

Local Table

A large portion of Local Table is devoted to the various CSA's offered throughout Middle Tennessee.  It breaks down the CSA's by county and then gives a description of what each farm provides.

The magazine also gives a list of Farmer's Markets available throughout the region and a blurb describing each one followed by hours of operation and contact info.

One of my favorite tools offered by the Local Table is the Local Table Seasonality Chart offered on the back cover.  It gives a list of produce and the months when they are at their peak.  This encourages people to buy their produce when it is at its peak and most flavorful.  This is a step away from the supermarket idea of produce being available at all points throughout the year.  As a result of the phenomena, food is being shipped from all over the world, picked before its perfect ripeness and places on store shelves.

Local Table is a seasonal magazine published throughout the year, archiving the growing number of farms available for CSA's and different local businesses.

Three Cups of Tea

So many of us have this preconceived notion of the countries in the Middle East.  What we think is heavily influenced by the media who portrays people from the Middle East as highly religious extremists.  Greg Mortenson is able to offer us a different view.  Through Three Cups of Tea Greg offers himself as a window for us outsiders to be able to look into the lives of these people.  We are able to learn who they are and what they stand for.  He was able to be as much of an insider into their culture as any “outside” person could be.  He accepted their views and ways of life and therefore was “let in” to their culture.  He became an outsider who acquired insider knowledge.  Because of his nature, Greg was able to easily adapt and be welcomed into many different groups.  As a result, he is able to explore and gain insider status into many of the groups within Pakistan and Afghanistan.  He starts in the mountain town of Korphe but is let into many drastically different cultures such as the large city Rawalpindi, to the secretive Wazir, and finally into Badahshan. With each meeting he gains new knowledge and shares it with his readers.  Because of the respect he earns he is able to break barriers down between men who had become enemies and gets them to work towards one common goal, education.  He not only educates these children but he educates us.  He offers glimpses into these people’s lives and offers up a different way of thinking for us. He enables the readers to let go of their preconceived notions and look at this as an opportunity for growth for all parties involved.

            Greg shares his story as told through his eyes.  He not only lets us in to these people’s lives but into his life as well.  He gives the reader enough details of his own personal life to garner our attention and trust.  Because of this we are willing to listen to his story.  He shares the many triumphs, failures and hardships he endures not only in his personal life but in trying to build schools in Pakistan.  Since he shares his vulnerabilities the reader is able to realize he is not out to promote himself.  He really wants us to listen to the message he is trying to convey.  Though it may seem sometimes that he gets stuck in this rut of self-righteousness the people of Pakistan are able to quickly draw him out.  Because of the way the book is set up as a time-lined story, the reader is able to share in his failures and wait excitedly for his accomplishments.  He is able to draw his reader in to the story and offer them the precious gift of being able to see what an education really provides.

Letter

Hey mom! So I am pretty excited about my project for third year writing.  You know how passionate I am about Local Food and eating as much as possible from farm to table, well I am doing a project centered around local food.  I could go on and on for days about everything involved in local food and I am kind of having a hard time editing down what I need to do because I know that I am not going to be able to accomplish everything I would like to by the time the project is due.  My main focus is on why are people choosing to eat local food and invest money in CSA's and go each weekend to the farmer's market.  What kind of community does that entail?  So far I have interviewed N about working last summer and installing raised garden beds into people's homes.  I would really like to interview L about why she is involved with a CSA and what it means to her.  I want to talk to the owner of a local restaurant here that I am particularly infatuated with because he tries to source as many local products as possible. You know I am kind of obsessed with Alice Waters and this whole concept that she kind of founded and brought to the fore-front of having your own farm and producing everything you need for the restaurant on the farm.  This has become more prevalent across the country and I am just in love with this whole idea.  My next steps are to go to the Franklin Farmer's Market on a Saturday and possibly interview people but generally just write about my experience there. I would also love to get to go to Farmer Dave's farm and talk him but I know that he is probably going to be really busy since spring is starting and he will be delivering produce to all the local restaurants.  Another part of local food that I am really interested in are those people who are growing their own food, even if it is in their backyard of a neighborhood house.  Why have people made this change from accessing all of their food from grocery stores to planting, growing and harvesting their own food?  I am particularly fascinated by programs such as Edible Schoolyards where they are trying to install gardens into schools and have the kids grow food and learn how to cook and sit down and eat together.  This is so important, especially now when most kids are eating fast food or out of a box and eating it while watching tv or playing video games.  There is no longer that community of preparing the meal and sitting down together at the table and we are loosing so much by no longer participating in this. I love watching Anthony Bourdain's tv show No Reservations, where he visits other countries and learns about the traditional food they eat and prepare together.  What happened in our country where we are no longer interested in doing this? It is so sad. Ok hope you are having a good day and I will talk to you later! Love you. - Alex

Interview with N

With America's food habits laying heavily on our minds, people have started going back to basics with choosing what they eat.  I spoke with N who spent the previous summer installing personal gardens into homes for a local landscaping company.  Organic plants in tote, he and his co-workers set out to build raised bed gardens, install plants and teach people how to grown their own food.  The focus for these personal gardens was for people to obtain the experience of growing, caring for and harvesting their own food. N emphasizes this saying, "They [the raised bed gardens] were duel purpose.  They could be flower gardens but they were mostly intended to be personal farming gardens to help people get into growing their own food rather than purchasing it".  Regardless of how much or how little they knew these people were interested in the experience of growing their own food; having weather patterns affect what they ate, as well as finding what grows best in this region.  With this came the inevitable community that often develops around food.  People were swapping around vegetables with friends, giving away their over abundance of crops they couldn't eat themselves and trading ideas and recipes for what to do with their freshly harvested food.  I have this notion that the majority of the people able to access and buy local food are from the middle and upper classes but N quickly corrected me by saying, "we also installed beds at schools and low income neighborhoods trying to help kids rather teach their parents about proper eating and food nutrition".  It all comes back to educating people and trying to get people to get back to their roots with eating.

Insider Language

• CSA: community supported agriculture
• markets
• organic
• pesticide free
• bio-dynamic:" is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms,emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food. As in other forms of organic agriculture, artificial fertilizers and toxic pesticides and herbicides are strictly avoided."
• raw milk and cheeses: dairy products that aren't pasteurized
• rBHT free: dairy products from animals not fed a growth hormone
• regional
• free range
• pasture and grass fed: animals whose main diet is grass rather than corn and grain
• Farmer Dave: a well known farmer who provides a lot of the local restaurants with produce
• Nashville Restaurant Group: a group of local restaurants  most of whom use local produce and products
• Pick Tennessee: campaign focused on promoting local and regional products
• Sustainability: defined as "an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will last over the long term."

nterview

nterview

Rachel and I discussed several aspects of food.  Through the interview I learned that she and I have similar views on food and the American diet. I found that our views on food and the American diet are very similar; the one thing that kept getting mentioned was moderation.The thing that stood out the most was that we kept focusing on moderation.  The fact that Our portion sizes are too big and the belief that we have to clean our plates, is one of the major problems with the way we eat in America.  We also talked about Processed foods and the health consequences that are arising from eating too many of them is another group of problems that are arising in this country.  She spoke about living on campus and The food Rachel had to eat because there were no other options  Because the majority of the food was processed and chemical laden and it typically made her physically feel awful.  We ended the interview talking about Growing up in families with parents who cooked almost every night and the impact that has had on our attitude towards food.

Interview

Rachel and I discussed several aspects of food.  Through the interview I learned that she and I have similar views on food and the American diet. The thing that stood out the most was that we kept focusing on moderation.  The fact that our portion sizes are too big and the belief that we have to clean our plates, is one of the major problems with the way we eat in America.  We also talked about processed foods and the health consequences that are arising from eating too many of them.  She spoke about living on campus and the food she had to eat because there were no other options.  Because the majority of the food was processed and chemical laden, it typically made her physically feel awful.  We ended the interview talking about growing up in families with parents who cooked almost every night and the impact that has had on our attitude towards food.

map for local food

This Vin diagram is useful in seeing all the different aspects of Local Food.  So many of the categories intertwine.  This is also helps to access the big picture of "why."  Why are all of these different groups interested in and support local food?  The diagram also shows the different levels of involvement withing local food from simply eating at restaurants who support local foods, to joining a CSA to growing your own food.  This diagram also helps me to break down the different groups that I can talk to and interview.

Writing

What I would like to focus on most is cohesion.  I generally have a hard time with writing.  Instead of having one main idea as my focus, I tend to keep having ideas pop into my head and continue to use those.  Because of this my writing becomes muddy.  I would like to better be able to develop one idea.  Because of my inability to develop my thoughts jump back and forth and there is a lot of unnecessary filler in my writing. My papers subsequently look undeveloped and do not flow.  I am self-conscious with my writing and usually get frustrated.  My transitions tend to be weak and therefore my papers ideas do not always link well.  If I were able to develop my thoughts better I think that would help move me towards my goal of having cohesion throughout my papers.

CSA box

Original

A CSA box is the quintessential representative of local food.  Once you join a farm’s CSA you receive a box which you return every week to receive your farm produce.  The box holds the key to why people support local farms; we are supporting local farmers and accessing fresh fruits and vegetables weekly, which change throughout the season.  What arrives in the box is not only dependent upon which farm you choose but more importantly what the seasonal factors are.  If it is a bad month for crops then that is going to be reflected in your box, but if the season is bountiful then the box will be bountiful.  This is such a drastic change from the grocery stores we have become accustomed to.  If the crops are poor in the region they will just get them shipped in from California, Mexico, or somewhere else internationally.  The crops are then no longer harvested at their peak and then delivered but are picked before their peak and then shipped thousands of miles to sit on a store shelf.  The boxes differ per farm.  Some only contain vegetables while others contain fruits and/or flowers.  Some farms supple cheeses, eggs and meat of animals raised and slaughtered locally.  The box contains local food.

Revised

A CSA box is the quintessential representative of local food.  Once you join a farm’s CSA box you receive a box.  The box is returned weekly and filled with farm produce.  The box holds the key to why people support local farms.  We support local farms to access fresh fruits and vegetables.  The fruits and vegetables change weekly throughout the season.  What arrives in the box is dependent upon which farm you choose and the seasonal factors.  If it is a bad month for crops it reflects in the box.  If the season is bountiful then the box is bountiful.  This is a drastic change from the grocery stores we have become accustomed to.  If the crops are poor the grocery store just gets them shipped in from California, Mexico or elsewhere internationally.  The crops are no longer harvested at their peak and delivered but are picked before they are ripe and shipped thousands of miles to sit on a store shelf.  The boxes differ per farm.  Some only contain vegetables, others contain fruits and/or flowers.  Some farms supply cheeses, eggs and meat of animals raised and slaughtered locally.  The box contains local foods.

Observing the Curb

What surprised you?
  What I found to be the most shocking was the amount of people eating alone (not that this is a bad thing).  If you put it into a different context of what we are used to seeing while eating out it seems strange.  If I were to go into a restaurant it would surprise me to see so many people eating by themselves, but if I were to go to a coffee shop I would think nothing of it.  It is so interesting what we view as normal or abnormal.

What intrigued you?
   What I found to be interesting was the fact that the majority of the college age kids seemed to be at a healthy weight but almost all of the older adults in the cafeteria were overweight.  It would have been fascinating to go more in depth on this subject by exploring the food choices of the different generations but unfortunately there was not enough time to do that.

What disturbed you?
  The lack of attention given to eating lunch was the thing that I found to be the most disturbing.  People were on their phones and computers or watching tv the majority of the time they were eating.  How did American's adopt this lifestyle of always multi-tasking?  We always have to stay busy with something else and can never just be in the moment.

Proposal

I would like to examine the culture surrounding local foods.  It has been recently become more of a mainstream focus and the question I would like to ask is, “why are people choosing to grow their own or locally source their food?”  I feel that there are many resources I can access in order to find a wealth of information on this subculture.  I have already read two books on the subject called Plenty and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Michael Pollan also does quite a bit of work on locally sourcing food and eating as close to the earth as possible.  There are numerous blogs devoted to people eating locally (usually within 100 miles) for an entire year and they write about their experiences during the process.  I would like to interview some of the local farmers who provide their crops to local restaurants and also those who provide CSA’s, Community Supported Agriculture.  I would be interested in hearing about their growth in the past couple of years and continued interest of people in knowing where their food is coming from.  Two aspects of this culture that I am most interested in are the socioeconomic that seems to be a factor and programs like those that Alice Water’s started, which are incorporating local foods into schools.  We are the only country in the world where are poorest people are the fattest; everywhere else in the world the poorest are the most malnourished.  It has become that those with money are the ones who are able to buy food from the local farms.  Alice Water’s is a chef from California who has not only brought local foods and gardens to public schools to teach children about food but has put these programs into some of the poorest schools where high fat, processed foods are the norm.  She is helping these kids and our country establish a food identity, interested in growing, harvesting, cooking, and preserving heirloom varietals.  This is important because as our country progresses, our farm to table food is diminishing.  There is a whole group of people in this country and throughout the world determined to protect our food and our farmers.

Project Possibilities

The two Discourses I am interested in researching are Local Food culture and Brentwood.

Local Food is a pretty recent movement that has turned into its own subculture, focusing on farm to table foods. The awareness of where our food comes from has become a hot topic and more and more people are investing in their local farms.  Some people have gone so far as to only eating local and not using any goods that are from more than 100 miles away.  This would be a fascinating area to study and would love to hear from the many sources.  There are quite a few books and blogs that talk about eating local, though many of them are based from the West Coast.  I also think that it would be interesting to interview farmers in this region to hear about their business and how the sudden interest in supporting local economy has effected them.  It is a bit ironic because in most regions in Europe, it is normal for them to eat all or mostly local food where in America it has become sort of a privilege.  Maybe I could touch on the socioeconomic factors of eating local and how programs such as Edible Schoolyards are incorporating it into schools.

My second possibility is researching about Brentwood, Tn.  It is the suburb of Nashville that I grew up in.  It always fascinated and irritated me the sort of standards that are present here.  The people here tend to focus equally on wealth and religion, Christianity to be specific.  It is the land of designer bags and the newest SUV's, but there is a strict undertone of attending church and being religious.  The two just don't really seem to fit hand and hand, but this is what Brentwood is about.  As far as being able to access and find resources I think it would be pretty easy since I lived there and my parents still live there and I went to high school there.

Discourse

This video challenges our preconceptions of a flight attendant and the language they use by placing a "ghetto" black woman as the flight attendant and showing the differences in language, pronunciation and body language.

What I would like to work on in writing class

I have always envied those who have a natural ability to write well.  Writing has always been something that I struggle with.  What I would most like to work on is expressing my thoughts better in my writing.  I tend to become easily frustrated trying to stream my thoughts into writing and it seems as if my brain just locks up on me.  I have a hard time translating what is in my head onto paper.