had a big conversation with my co-workers at slow food usa a couple of summers ago about alice waters & carlo petrini, what inspiring, visionary leaders they had been and how totally incapable they were of seeing anything other than sweeping vistas and grand moral imperatives. they’ve done good work in creating & coalescing a movement (whatever that means*) but they’ve failed at getting that movement to do good work; their attention and energy never quite manage to focus properly and so we have these beautiful, charming photo essays and a nation full of people who believe that slow food means nothing other than overeducated white people sneering at your dinner table and insisting that it’s for your own good.**

there’s so much tied up in the debates over food and cooking— race and class and gender, for starters— and i think that’s why this stuff is so impossible and so important to try to talk about. but it requires a good deal more nuance & careful thought than kalman gives it. this piece exists in the fantasy land of the simple answer, which is of course compelling— the idea that someday we’re all going to lie down in the grass and feel the sunlight on our faces and eat perfectly poached eggs with just some fresh olive oil and baby greens and that will be enough. i found it charming and that’s maybe why it’s most dangerous, because it manages to lull some and alienate others and ultimately, it’s not at all about how the fuck are we going to move forward because it turns out that this shit is complicated and difficult.

i don’t have anything to offer beyond that observation, really, but i think it’s something that doesn’t get said enough: this shit is complicated and difficult and best worked out by, well, actually working. the most naunced photo essay in the world wouldn’t solve issues of pesticide runoff and food insecurity but this one doesn’t even contribute anything to the conversation. it imagines and addresses a world entirely other than our own: pleasant to visit, but nothing like home.

* http://peoplesgrocery.org/brahm/peoples-grocery/slow-food-nyt for a great piece on the problems of community as created by slow food as an organization & the notion that this has to be a cohesive movement speaking with a single voice.

**i mean, there are people doing good work, but you’d never know it to read much of what’s written about slow food & sustainable ag.

choire:

This Maira Kalman meditation on Thanksgiving is a profoundly irritating and class-unconscious thing (even though, to her credit, she notes that rich people have the opportunity to eat better). And I do actually enjoy me some Maira Kalman. (And also her hat-making sister! You can buy her truly adorable hats at Moss, starting at just $200!) Basically, you are all getting fat from eating fast food and from having BAD PRIORITIES, so you should go eat at one of the most expensive restaurants in the United States, and maybe you should go back to the land in your spare time and raise chickens when you are not working at WalMart, so that you will be a better person, also happy Thanksgiving, and PS be more like Adams, Jefferson and Madison. (You mean I should ban U.S. trade with all other countries, or…?) Also, there is a reason that the U.S. looks “naturally agrarian” when you are flying across the country, which is because much of it is! If by naturally, or agrarian, you mean massive corporate soy, wheat and corn-growing operations. Lest we forget, it really was a lot easier for those fuckers in Ye Olde Times to be a farmer and run a country and write books because they had dozens of slaves and maids and valets to do everything for them.